Jump to content

Karsa Orlong

Advanced Member
  • Posts

    7,149
  • Joined

  • Last visited

Everything posted by Karsa Orlong

  1. The Hunt by Tim Lebbon 2015 - Avon ebook - 400 pages Escape and they’ll kill your family. The cruellest game. The highest stakes. Only she can bring his family back alive … Rose is the one that got away. She was the prey in a human trophy hunt organised by an elite secret organisation for super-rich clients seeking a unique thrill. She paid a terrible price. Every moment since she has been planning her revenge … And now her day has come. Chris returns from his morning run to find his wife and children missing and a stranger in his kitchen. He’s told to run. If he’s caught and killed, his family go free. If he escapes, they die. Rose is the only one who can help him, but Rose only has her sights on one conclusion. For her, Chris is bait. But The Trail have not forgotten the woman who tried to outwit them. The Trail want Rose. The hunters want Chris’s corpse. Rose wants revenge, and Chris just wants his family back. The hunt is on … And that's all there is to it, really The Hunt is a straight ahead thriller, the first of its kind Lebbon has written as all of his previous work has been in the horror genre. And when I say straight ahead, I mean straight ahead. It hits the ground running, quite literally. Chris Sheen is out one morning for a 12 mile run. When he gets home his wife and family are gone, there are signs of a struggle, and a stranger's in the kitchen drinking coffee. The stranger tells him to wait for 50 minutes and he will receive instructions. During that 50 minutes Rose appears in his house, spinning some claptrap about an organisation called the Trail, and the human trophy hunts they organised for bored, rich psychopaths. Needless to say, given the evidence, Chris's disbelief soon begins to disappear. What follows is a very simple chase story. It's told from three points of view: Chris, Rose, and Chris's teenage daughter, Gemma. The latter was a bit of an eye-opener for me because, given the wonderful character of Ally from The Silence, Gemma quickly brought home to me that these characters were only very rough sketches in comparison. She gets very little page time in the book but the reader is supposed to immediately accept that she is brave and very clear of thought in an extremely scary and tense situation, whilst her mother wibbles in the background. It was quite a stark contrast in the nature and depths of the characters in the two books, I thought. Also, the baddies - the hunters and the members of the Trail - get no character at all - zero, zilch, nada. I really felt the book needed that - I really wanted to know what made these people tick, why on Earth they would want to hunt down and kill a fellow human being, let alone murder his wife and kids. Oh well. My real problem with the book, though, was its length. I think straight up action/thriller novels such as this have a finite life before they become repetitive, and this one passed it quite early on. By about the fifth time Chris thought about calling the police, and then running through all the reasons why he couldn't and shouldn't do that, I felt like shouting at him "yes, we get it, move along already!" Also, I noticed in the author Q&A at the end of the book, that Lebbon wanted Snowdonia to become an extra character in the novel. It's true, there are endless descriptions of hillsides and ridges and hollows and streams, but I never really felt like I was there. To me, repeating that sort of thing over and over again, as if the reader doesn't already understand Chris's predicament, is just padding. Cut all that out, reduce the page count, and I would've liked it more. I also wasn't overly sure about the central premise: tell him he's going to be hunted and, if he gets caught, his family will be set free. He had no guarantees of course. Get caught and they die. The whole idea behind that didn't quite add up, IMO Overall, I found The Hunt reasonably enjoyable, but nowhere near as good as The Silence. Warning: Some animals may get hurt during the course of this novel. And a lot of humans, too.
  2. My knee-jerk reaction is to think it's the worst idea ever. But then I think about the new Trek movies and how good the younger cast has been, so who knows. If they come up with a great story to back it up it might work. Whatever happens, it's inevitable that I'll go and see it
  3. Two of the books arrived today: Stranger in a Strange Land is out of stock at the moment Thanks again, Michelle
  4. I've only read Heroes Die so can't comment on the rest. It was pretty good and I'll probably read Blade of Tyshalle at some point. Can't say it changed my life, though
  5. It's okay, you keep right on digging No comment
  6. http://www.starwars.com/news/christopher-miller-and-phil-lord-to-helm-han-solo-anthology-film
  7. For anyone else like me who has fond memories of England's performances at Italia 90 and Euro 96, and who didn't see it the other week, this was just brilliant:
  8. I thought the second book was very good, actually It was the third one that was the problem for me. I often feel that these trilogies would be better as two-parters. Get rid of all the padding and strip the story down. I get the impression that authors invest so much time in creating their worlds that they then feel obliged to spend as many books in them as possible regardless of whether the story actually needs it or not
  9. No need to apologise, I was just amused when you said an SF fan wouldn't find it a worthwhile read when you know one who did
  10. I mentioned it in my review last year - not that it's much help to you now Given that there are a lot of animal lovers here - and this is the second time I've encountered something like this in the last few days - I'm thinking of adding a warnings section to my reviews. I'm just not sure how to do it without spoiling
  11. Yeah! It's about the Norwegian team that originally found the alien ship. Rather confusingly, it's just called The Thing again It's actually not all that bad, it's just got a lot to live up to (IMO)
  12. Yeah, that was exactly how Gene Roddenberry envisioned it. I think, for it to be called hard SF, the Enterprise would have to have spinning sections to generate all that gravity they seem to walk around in, and there'd be no noise in space. For a start I reckon it sits somewhere around the middle between hard SF and soft SF, a bit like the Vorkosigan Saga books. The more I type these classifications the less I like them, though I think you hit the nail on the head with the human drama part. At its best it was always about using science fiction stories to examine the issues of the time, whilst allowing Kirk to get his shirt ripped to expose his nipples and also get the nearest female to swoon and fall into his arms (in soft focus)
  13. I saw that. I still have no idea who or what it is On Stranger Tides is good fun
  14. Karsa Orlong

    Tennis

    I noticed the highlights programme got moved back into the studio last night
  15. Oh you can't go around feeling guilty about that sort of thing - if I did I'd never get up in the morning
  16. Yes, he does sound sensible
  17. For anyone interested (and who has Sky), Agent Carter gets its UK premiere on Fox (UK) at 9pm on 12th July. It's well worth a watch. Clicky
  18. Um . . . no I really don't have a leg to stand on if you don't like my recommendations, do I?
  19. I think he rationed her appearances well in the first two books, but in this one there's far too much of her, to the point where she stops being funny and starts being a bit annoying
  20. Actually, no it wasn't http://www.bookclubforum.co.uk/community/index.php?/topic/5629-the-coldfire-trilogy-by-c-s-friedman/page-5
  21. After last month's binge on the Kindle Daily Deals there's absolutely nothing there this month that I fancy
  22. Given what happens to the dogs in John Carpenter's The Thing I'm not too surprised! The John Carpenter version is more faithful to the novella upon which both films are based, Who Goes There? by John W. Campbell. The first movie, The Thing from Another World, is great fun in that classic 50's SF kind of way but they've changed the original premise so much from the Campbell story it almost shouldn't be compared, IMO. ETA: Btw, I wouldn't compare either of them to the 2011 prequel
×
×
  • Create New...