25.09.25
Fun, and sneakily clever, short story/novella, in which much symbolic use is made of penetration by stakes and steel.
Showing posts with label violence. Show all posts
Showing posts with label violence. Show all posts
What You Did - Claire McGowan
21.09.25
I read this because the author went to the same college as me, and a sort-of unnamed version of it did feature - but it was nothing like my experience. She seems to have hated it as much as she hated her protagonist, who has so few redeeming features that I hoped she sank under the increasingly heavy pile of increasingly ridiculous Bad Things that happened to her. It was hardly the gritty realism I suspect it was intended to be.
(I didn't realise this was by the same author - it was both similar and quite different.)
Black Sheep - Rachel Harrison
60%
08.12.24If you confuse this with the Georgette Heyer novel of the same name, you'll get quite a shock. I'm not generally a horror fan but I enjoyed the way this ramped up from 'disaffected daughter reluctantly returns home' to full-on blood sacrifices before the fires of Hell. The wry tone was well judged and the structure engaging, but what's with the annoying trend for omitting conjunctions and gerunds? ('Julia read the sentence, shouted at her Kindle in frustration. She didn't like it, took her out of immersion.')
Hell Bent - Leigh Bardugo
Since this was on offer, I thought I'd read it before I forgot what happened in the first book. Just as well, as it was even more confusing. Still well written and intelligent, with unusual care and thought given to character development, and not afraid to confront the ugliness of life, but the actual story was still muddled and oddly paced.
Also, the dead rabbit on the cover? Not all that significant.
Ninth House - Leigh Bardugo
This was a mess - complicated, confusing and with a timeline that was all over the place. The characters were annoying and didn't communicate like normal people. It assumed that nothing important happened outside the USA. Only one of the various plotlines resolved, and that was in a weird and coincidental way. And yet... and yet, I really enjoyed reading it. Why? Well, because it was well written and also I suppose because it wasn't as worthy and boring as that other hyped "magic college" novel, Babel. This, you just had to take as it came: a wild ride.
A Slow Fire Burning - Paula Hawkins
26.01.23
You don't have to like a book's characters - and these were universally unlikeable (a known problem with this author) - but you do have to be interested in what will happen to them - and I wasn't. The people and their stories just didn't hang together, to the extent that I wondered how much the author cared.
The Beautiful Dead - Belinda Bauer
12.10.22
I'm a big fan of Bauer's thrillers but this wasn't her best. Why? Perhaps it was a bit too weird, without the oddly humorous, very British, small-town authenticity of Snap or Exit. And there was the big problem of the serial killer's eight or nine (I lost track) victims not being as important as preventing the deaths of the protagonist and her father. But it was still better than most novels in this genre.
A Clash of Kings - George RR Martin
31.03.16
How odd. After enjoying the first book so much, the second one made so little impact that I forgot to review it for a month. It's more of the same, but sillier and grimmer and with even less resolution. And so many kings (and queens)! If any land needed to be a republic, it's this one.
A Game of Thrones - George RR Martin
21.02.16
It's an unpromising mix of things I don't usually choose to read: dodgy sex, graphic violence, tedious politics, suffering innocents and superfluous adjectives. It didn't end properly, there were too many names, and one story arc remained totally detached from the rest. But it's also clever and well constructed with fascinating, three-dimensional characters and [sighs in resignation] I couldn't put it down.
Purple Hibiscus - Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
05.01.15
Adichie is an astonishing writer, really - all her novels are so different in style and tone but share a powerful use of language and character and an unusual insight into Nigerian life and politics. This is a surprisingly complex story that would bear a second reading, though the ending seemed rather stunted.
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