Tuesday, June 28, 2011

Review of Children of Men



Children of men was a multilayered read which invoked oddly combined pleasure and frustration. 
The main theme of the novel was one that interested me from the start. Which means the day I saw the trailer for the movie adaptation. Me and my husband watched the movie and were impressed, which lay the foundation to read the novel one day. 
And that is now a done task. 


The possibility of our human race to be or to get extinct is a theme that fascinates and terrifies people all over the world, it's a tale told many times over, starring aliens, diseases, climatic catastrophes, outer space debris, or whatever our combined creative minds come up with. We see ourselves as nearly unconquerable, yet we are afraid of the big "IF". 
What will happen when such an event happens? Will society return to chaos and will we let the inner beasts loose, or will we go to the end civilized and accepting? 
Children of men deals with the slow decay of mankind, simply because men aren't furtile anymore. No more babies means the end of the world as we know it. 
It focuses on the thoughts of one man in particular, Theodore, the cousin of the Warden of England (some kind of military coupe of the monarchy has taken place). He is gently dragged into the company of a group of revolutionaries, which takes him further then he could've expected and which sets him on a path he could never have foreseen. 
Along with them, he begins to see sense in their arguments and sees the ugly truth behind the beautiful facade, when suddenly a fact is revealed that will turn his world upside down.


As I mentioned before, this was both pleasure and frustration. The pleasure came from the story and the deeper meaning of it. The frustration came mainly from the author's tendency to go on and on. Theodore's thoughts were sometimes a bit hard to follow and I have yet to discover the need for his frequent nostalgic ponderings. Was this to sever his emotional ties with his cousin, so the decision he made in the end could be made without a hefty conscience to deal with? Or did we need to see the human side of someone portrayed a savior and a tyrant at the same time? Maybe we needed to see how Theodore and his cousin grew up and his silent protest against his cousin when he decided he would step out of the counsil? 
Anyway, it was a bit much and distracted me from the main thread in this novel. 

All in all, it's a good read but not the best out there.

Monday, June 27, 2011

Review of Your Heart Belongs To Me


Author: Dean Koontz
Published in 2008
Thickness: 325 pages
Read in dutch
Personal rating: 2 stars

In short

Ryan Perry, at 34, is a young man – hardly of an age to be on a waiting list, nervously hoping for a heart transplant. Luck appears to be with him: he is the recipient of a new heart, and (fortunately) the transplant takes, triumphantly. But a year passes, and Ryan begins to receive gifts in the shape of hearts, sent anonymously. A feeling of paranoia sets in – and this feeling is exacerbated when a large amount of money vanishes from his bank account – it has been donated to a local hospital’s cardiology department. Needless to say, all of this is a prelude to something truly horrific: everything he owns – including his new heart – is to be torn from him, and he is informed he will die a grisly death. Who is Ryan’s tormentor? (www.goodreads.com)


My two cents


Sometimes I dread the time when I need to write a review again, especially when the novel in fact is as bland and uninspiring as Your Heart Belongs To Me.  
Dean Koontz has been put against Stephen King, probably because they are both labelled horror writers and rank next to each other in the alphabetized racks in store and library. Koontz couldn't be closer to Stephen King as the moon is to the earth, at least going on my experience with him. 

Why read something of his then, you might ask? Well, a few weeks ago, there was a sale at the library and this novel happened to be in one of the boxes. Sad to say, it was the 2 euro I paid worth, but not a cent more. 


Reasons why I didn't like it? It was a story of a rich man, with a perfect life to whom something dreadful happens. Of course his money brings salvation, only a little more twisted then he had hoped for. Money can buy everything, but a clear conscience you might say. Saying more would be revealing the entire plot and you got a good teaser in the summary. So I rest my case and gladly go on to the next novel.

Worst of all though, now I'm stuck with a novel I can't return to the second hand bookstore since it got a big sticker of the library on its front, guess it will go the charity.

Sunday, June 19, 2011

Review of Lord of the Flies





Author: William Golding
Published in 1954
Page count: 225 pages

In Short

A plane crashes on a desert island and the only survivors, a group of schoolboys, assemble on the beach and wait to be rescued. By day they inhabit a land of bright fantastic birds and dark blue seas, but at night their dreams are haunted by the image of a terrifying beast. As the boys' delicate sense of order fades, so their childish dreams are transformed into something more primitive, and their behaviour starts to take on a murderous, savage significance. (www.goodreads.com)


My two cents


Lord of the Flies is such an icon among english fiction, that I partly wondered why I waited so long to finally read it and partly had an inclination to put it on a pedestal unread as not to disturb its daunting content. Afraid I might not be as amazed as everyone else seems to be by this novel, I waited to read it until my husband literally put it in my hands and forced me to open the first page. Forced is a strong word though, it just means that I let him choose my next read from time to time and this time he chose this one. Not that he has read it, but maybe it rung something inside his head, some distant memory of being in school and hearing of this one of a lifetime read. Of course I couldn't not ask him why he had chose it, the explanation being terrific as well as fantastically innocent. He loved the Lord of the Rings trilogy and since this also feature a Lord in the title he thought I might like it. 


As for my opinion, you might have derived from my 3 star rating that I was quite untouched by it. 4 or 5 stars mean that I'm positively moved, and less that 3 stars consequently mean that I am touched but negatively. 3 stars are most easily explained as those books that I read and vaguely remember as being not too bad. 

Having read other reviews of this novel, it seems to invoke strong reactions. Either they think it sublime and seek so much meaning behind the words, or they think it rubbish of someone who has no faith in humanity. I wonder why William Golding just couldn't write a Goonies story but with a savage outcome, without readers putting so much symbolism behind the words he chose. Kids are cruel, no less, it's the adult responsibility that largely erases that streak of cruelty we all experienced. 

Being all kids on the island, with no supervision what so ever, in a day and age that was unheard of, could have these results. What's a kill when there is no one to tell you off? What's bad behaviour when no one is there to correct it? 
Ralph, the protagonist, the 'sanest' of them all, tries to be the adult they seek, but being only 12 he lacks to autority that comes with age and is easily overthrowed by Jack, the antagonist, who instead of hard work of keeping the fire going so they can be rescued, promises a good life and plenty to eat. 


In the end, the cynical outcome is not lost on me. Those who didn't think the fire, aka rescue, was important are those who in the end make the greatest fire which result in a ship taking them to a world where they have to take responsibility for there actions. 


Still, it didn't do so much for me. Maybe I'm immune to the classics. :)

Sunday, June 12, 2011

Review of Full dark, No stars


Author: Stephen King
Published in 2010
Page count: 416 pages
Personal rating: 2 stars

In short

This is a collection of four novella's, one more lenghtier than the other, all dealing with retribution. 

1922 tells the tale about a farmer who kills his wife with the help of his son and what becomes of him when his wife doesn't quiet down as easily as he had expected. 

Big driver is about a woman raped and left for dead and goes in search of the culprit herself. 

Fair extension recaptures the infamous deal with the devil. 

Good marriage is a horror story for those who think they know their significant other and find out they don't. A woman's world is turned upside down when she discovers the secret her husband has held all those years. 

My two cents

I have rated this collection of stories rather low when you compare them with other stephen king novels I've read.
First of all I'm not a big fan of his short fiction. He's a master of spinning the thread of suspense and surprise when he writes a novel 300 page or more. Few can follow in his footsteps. His short fiction doesn't live up to that, so in giving this only two stars, so stating I'm finding it okay but not terribly good, is partly a statement to this novels of his that our superbly and outstanding.

But second, I found this novella's to be repetitive. All feature a hidden persona inside the main characters mind and when I didn't mind that coming up in 1922 because it being the first of the collection, it did annoy me when it showed it's face in the other stories.
Big Driver felt like a story told too many times already. I just saw a movie (I spit on your grave) which tells more or less the same story. Also Last House on the Left brushes the same subject and is mentioned in the story.
Fair Extension made me feel uncomfortable. It lacks a moral and I had no idea I needed one when reading that kind of story. Streeter just seemed really really bad, no matter what his best friend had done to him all those years ago. Envy can be a treacherous ally.
Good Marriage was the story I liked the best. It's something we are all afraid of, not knowing the person we love the most.

Sunday, June 5, 2011

Review of Guilty Pleasures - An Anita Blake novel





Author: Laurell K. Hamilton
First published in 1993
Page count: 368 pages

In short

When St. Louis's most powerful vampire comes to Anita Blake for help, she is faced with her greatest fear-a man capable of arousing in her a hunger strong enough to match his own. Anita Blake lives in St. Louis, Missouri, in a world where magic, vampires, werewolves, and the like are, and have always been, "out of the closet" and, in some cases, even legal. Anita is an "animator," with the ability to raise or inter zombies. She uses this ability in employ at "Animators, Incorporated," where she raises the dead for various purposes including murder investigations, will explanations, and other legal services. Anita also works as a "vampire executioner," killing vampires (by court order) and advising the police on supernatural crimes.(www.goodreads.com & www.wikipedia.org)

My two cents

This first Anita Blake novel I tried, delivered me with mixed feelings. For a first novel I didn't find it captivating enough to read on, but since it thrives on such a large fan base I probably will try the next novel, just in case it should get better.
Anita is portrayed as a strong female doing a dangerous job in an equally perilous world, we can hardly imagine. She's an animator, which in short means she can raise the dead and she is known as the executioner, for she occasionally takes part in the taking down of dangerous vampires. Also, she seems to be working along side with the police in helping with the supernatural crimes.
My thoughts with all this information is that is feels like I picked up a novel somewhere in the midst of the series, instead of the very first, that's how much information is being thrown at you.

I read a couple of reviews of this novel and all seem to be perplexed Anita doesn't like vampires, as Sookie, Bella or even Buffy does, but that doesn't bother me. We can't all love the lethal toothy ones and Anita has a right to feel about them as she want, but what would've been great if we knew a reason why. It doesn't even need to be a fully explained reason, just a peak into something traumatising would've been good too.

The anita blake series haven't had that WOW-effect with me, but overall it wasn't an all too bad read.

Check out these other reviews!!!