I’ve loved Barbara Vine for like ever. I know she doesn’t exist and is in fact Ruth Rendell, but still. It’s an irony that I have not now nor have I ever had any desire to read a Rendell novel. Vine first showed up on my radar when A Fatal Inversion was televised for the BBC way back in time before the hula hoop. Okay, it was like 1992 or something but still, I’m old, alright? Anyway, I read the book of that, then burned my way […]
Just What Kind of Fake Psychic Are You?
Ah, Linwood Barclay. As I have documented on previous reviews, I loved him, then I nearly broke up with him, and then with Trust Your Eyes, he won my heart all over again. This short sharp little story first appeared as a novella titled Clouded Vision, which was published for the Quick Reads initiative. Barclay has expanded the original novella into a fully fledged novel (though still short, at just 270 pages), though as I haven’t read the original, I can’t do a compare and contrast. Barclay brings back […]
Not Your Average Vampire Tale
Paranormal fiction is all the rage right now with beautiful teens falling for sexy vampires and such, but the vampire story I just finished is most definitely NOT your typical vampire story. In fact, there are no sexy vampires and not even any blood-sucking anywhere in this book. There is, however, a cute, fluffy little vampire bunny who will suck all the juice (and color) right out of your vegetables. The Editor’s Note at the beginning of the book tells you that the manuscript for […]
Ghost Bride Proves to Be a Promising First Novel
“One evening, my father asked me whether I would like to become a ghost bride,” begins Angsze Choo’s captivating novel about Li Lan, a young Chinese woman with few marital prospects in nineteenth century British Malaya. What follows is a mixture of romance, a coming-of-age story, a tale of the supernatural, and a love letter to Chinese tradition and afterlife. Li Lan comes from a respectable but bankrupt family. Her mother having died of smallpox years earlier, her father has become an opium addict […]
Mockingjay a Weak Finish to the Hunger Games Trilogy
Last year I decided to jump into the world of the Hunger Games and see what all the fuss was about. I thought the first installment was inventive and compelling (if a little light on characterization), and the second was a fantastic driving force, pushing the reader towards the inevitable climax. The third installment, Mockingjay, left me disappointed. First off, I want to be fair. This wasn’t really the book I was expecting, and that contributed largely to my disappointment. Suzanne Collins focuses on the […]
Let the Rain Wash Away All the Pain of Yesterday
“The Year of the Flood” isn’t really a sequel to “Oryx and Crake.” Instead, it tells the story of Toby and Ren, two members of the cult God’s Gardeners (GG), and how they have been able to survive in the post-apocalyptic world. It also, thankfully, fleshes out the two decades leading up to the cataclysmic plague from “Oryx and Crake” and manages to fill in the cracks from Snowman/Jimmy’s story. Toby came to the GG following the traumatic death of her parents, when she dropped […]
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