pontalba Posted May 27, 2015 Share Posted May 27, 2015 (edited) Hope you enjoy it! I didn't understand it. Honestly, the implication that he is stuck in some sort of loop, which is all I could possibly take from that ending, suggests to me that it's some kind of hell or purgatory where he's being forced to relive the consequences of his actions (which may or may not have actually happened in the real world). That, or he's insane and in an asylum imagining it all. Either way, it undermines the sci-fi element of the book and reduces the whole thing down to a thinly-supported philosophical musing, reminscient (for me) of the novel What Dreams May Come (another example of a film that did away with the philosophical stuff for the most part and ended up far better than the source book). But this is just imo, I don't really go in for vague stuff like this. I'm assuming the world is not actually stuck in a time loop because Hobson managed to explain everything else with his pretty vague science, but there was no mention of loops and no logical explanation for them that the reader can derive. What were your thoughts? Granted, it was peculiar. I took it to be a hallucination. Everything in the dream/hallucination/nightmare was connected to his past. The Maori soldier was a projection of the young Maori from his childhood, with whom he could have been friends if not for the prejudice of his parents and society in general. I think the flashbacks were true happenings. Remember, he woke up at 6:21 and pushed the clock and it continued on, was not stopped at all. He'd attempted suicide because of his separation and of course guilt over his son.....not only the son's death, but the son's condition in the first place. I think he really had killed his fellow scientist and knew he'd be caught. Perhaps a combination of pent up frustration, guilt, and knowledge of all that was and wasn't his fault just came together to form (what I call) his hallucination.. I wish there was a continuation....... (sorry, above shouldn't be in quotes, should have been spoiler...realized after I'd posted, went back and put the spoiler tags in. Edited May 27, 2015 by pontalba Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nollaig Posted May 27, 2015 Author Share Posted May 27, 2015 Haha no worries! Yeah, I don't really like that idea either. For me that just undermines the level of detail that went into the entire novel. But as I say, I love the movie, which is pure sci-fi, so I was always going to be biased I guess. It was a good book, but just not satisfying for me personally. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Alexi Posted May 27, 2015 Share Posted May 27, 2015 I absolutely love your reviews Noll! You've made me want to pick up the Catherine Ryan Hyde that is on my TBR immediately - and add more to the collection.... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nollaig Posted May 27, 2015 Author Share Posted May 27, 2015 Awww thank you so much! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Athena Posted May 28, 2015 Share Posted May 28, 2015 I absolutely love your reviews Noll! You've made me want to pick up the Catherine Ryan Hyde that is on my TBR immediately - and add more to the collection.... Which one is it ? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Anna Begins Posted June 6, 2015 Share Posted June 6, 2015 Noll- ever heard of a book called A Dirty Job by Christopher Moore? Sounds fun. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nollaig Posted June 8, 2015 Author Share Posted June 8, 2015 Huh - no, I hadn't! Just looked it up there on Goodreads, sounds interesting! Has a good rating on there, too. Will have to check it out! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nollaig Posted June 10, 2015 Author Share Posted June 10, 2015 Finally getting around to finishing off my reviews. Three more to follow later, but for now here's my review for Uprooted: Uprooted by Naomi Novik Synopsis: Agnieszka loves her valley home, her quiet village, the forests and the bright shining river. But the corrupted Wood stands on the border, full of malevolent power, and its shadow lies over her life. Her people rely on the cold, driven wizard known only as the Dragon to keep its powers at bay. But he demands a terrible price for his help: one young woman handed over to serve him for ten years, a fate almost as terrible as falling to the Wood. The next choosing is fast approaching, and Agnieszka is afraid. But Agnieszka fears the wrong things. For when the Dragon comes, it is not Kasia he will choose.*** Review: Wow. Honestly, wow. I'd been told this book was good, so I hoped for good. I got 'wow'. Uprooted is a fantasy story imbued with a feeling of fairytales - set in the surrounding areas of an evil wood and starting with a Dragon taking a girl away to his tower. This is essentially as much information as the reader is given on the back of the book, and I am grateful for having no clue where the story was going to go, because I loved just immersing myself in the world and going with the flow. My review might be a tad short simply because I want to retain that mystery for any potential readers - do not read anything about the plot before reading it!Novik's world is captivating and her story compelling. Just the right amount of world-building is employed to create an enchanting setting for a story that takes its time but is never dull. Although quite a chunky read, I tore through it in a couple of days, dying to find out what would happen.The prose is lyrical and light - Novik uses words like rich, vibrant colours in a painting. The descriptions of how Nieshka and the Dragon weave their magic are more metaphorical than literal, and are not just original and clever but also significantly contribute to the feeling of artistry surrounding this book. Everything about Uprooted has the feeling of an old fireside folktale being recollected for modern readers. Not just a simple tale of good and evil, there's a real heart to this one.I actually feel that this would be a great starting point for people wanting to get into the fantasy genre - I'm not an avid reader of fantasy myself but this book had just the right mix of all the best elements of fantasy to make it a wholly satisfying read. Highly recommended.Rating: 4.5 /5 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nollaig Posted June 12, 2015 Author Share Posted June 12, 2015 Sleepless by Lou Morgan (YA/Horror) Synopsis: Young, rich and good-looking, Izzy and her friends lead seemingly perfect lives. But exams are looming � and at a school like Clerkenwell, failure is not an option. Luckily, Tigs has a solution. A small pill that will make revision a breeze and help them get the results they need. Desperate to succeed, the group begin taking the study drug. It doesn’t take long before they realize there are far worse things than failing a few exams.*** Review: This was a seriously fun read. Once I stopped rolling my eyes at the idea of anyone taking drugs bought on the internet, I was intrigued by the premise and excited to see where the story would go. It meanders along slowly to start, introducing quite a few characters and setting the scene for the story - the exclusive Barbican complex in London where only the elite live. Once the drugs have been taken, the pace picks up tremendously - and in a matter of a couple of pages - and it doesn't let up until the very last word of the novel. I've heard criticism of both the slow start and intense ending, but honestly I thought both were just right.Even though this is a YA book, and the pacing and lightness of prose lend themselves well to that category, its still pretty dark!The imagery and descriptions of the inevitable violence are quite ruthless. Additionally, the narrative is told from the perspective of one of the girls who took the drug, so she is both trying not to succumb to her own hallucinations, and trying to protect herself and her friends from theirs. While there are a few standard horror tropes thrown here - making this a great introduction to horror genre for the YA crowd - there is a lot of creativity and originality too, so it's quite a refreshing read even for the older, more experienced horror reader. Additionally, Morgan's ability to portray mental degeneration is superb - I never found myself confused by what was going on, but I was immensely creeped out by the knowledge that was I was reading was someone starting to dip in and out of madness.My only qualm with the story is the origin of the drug. The distribution seemed deliberate, and yet there is never any explanation for how or why this distribution occurred. I'm willing to overlook that, though, because I liked pretty much everything else about the book. My only wish now is that somebody turns it into a film, because it would be a wonderful horror film for teens. Highly recommended read for fans of psychological (and a bit of slasher) horror, and definitely one I'm going to read again.Rating: 4.5/5 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nollaig Posted June 12, 2015 Author Share Posted June 12, 2015 Frozen Charlotte by Alex Bell (YA/Horror) Synopsis: We're waiting for you to come and play. Dunvegan School for Girls has been closed for many years. Converted into a family home, the teachers and students are long gone. But they left something behind...Sophie arrives at the old schoolhouse to spend the summer with her cousins. Brooding Cameron with his scarred hand, strange Lilias with a fear of bones and Piper, who seems just a bit too good to be true. And then there's her other cousin. The girl with a room full of antique dolls. The girl that shouldn't be there. The girl that died.*** Review: Frozen Charlotte is the second Red Eye installment I've read, after Sleepless by Lou Morgan. While imbued with a similar creepy atmosphere that makes it work well as part of a series with Sleepless, it is also a good standalone novel. My attention was drawn by the mention of 'creepy dolls' in many reviews, and the beginning of the novel completely reeled me in. It felt like the start of a Supernatural episode, except that from then on things only got weirder and weirder.Frozen Charlotte is well written novel inspired by actual dolls which I had never heard of - themselves inspired by a cautionary tale about a girl freezing to death. While the dolls give the novel its title, they were not the creepiest aspect of the book for me. Rather, it was that the book employs the opposite of an unreliable narrator - nobody around the narrator is reliable, feeding contradictory stories about each other to Sophie. I genuinely wasn't sure who to trust for quite a while, and this drove my need to find out what would ultimately happen. Despite being aware that one or more of Sophie's cousins were untrustworthy, or outright bad people, I loved the characterization of each one.For a novel that felt like quite a light, easy read, there's quite a bit of depth in it - parts of the Frozen Charlotte story are related, as is the history of the dolls through the history of the schoolhouse where Sophie's cousins now live. Creative, creepy, and full of suspense and twists, Frozen Charlotte is a great little horror read for the YA audience.Rating: 4/5 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nollaig Posted June 12, 2015 Author Share Posted June 12, 2015 The Glass Demon - Helen Grant Synopsis: The first death: Seventeen-year-old Lin Fox finds a body in an orchard. As she backs away in horror, she steps on broken glass. The second death: Then blood appears on her doorstep - blood, and broken glass. The third death: Something terrible is found in the cemetery. Shards of broken glass lie by a grave. Who will be next? As the attacks become more sinister, Lin doesn't know who to trust. She's getting closer to the truth behind these chilling discoveries, but with each move the danger deepens. Because someone wants Lin gone - and won't give up until he's got rid of her and her family. Forever.*** Review: I wanted to love this book. I so wanted to love it. It started out so wonderfully - the entire book is brilliantly written, but the start was aditionally intriguing and unusual. The German setting, the unusual character names, and the alarming circumstances in which the novel opens all immediately reeled me in and set my hopes high for the rest of the book. Some of these elements persisted throughout the rest of the story - the quality of the writing remained high, the level of creativity applied to the history and detail of the windows was fantastic, the terrifying events happening around Lin's family were eerie and disturbing. Alas, the most accurate term I can think of to describe this book is "disjointed".My biggest issue with the book - and I'm sure this will not be an issue for a lot of readers - is that the book walks the line between mere thriller and supernatural horror for almost the entire story, finally swinging in a specific direction only near the very end. And I did not like the direction it swung in. To pull off an ending like that, you need to draw on intensely sad or tragic circumstances, something deeply relatable, something that will really pull at the heartstrings. And there was nothing. There was no credible, justifiable reason for pretty much everything that occured, and that (for me) undermined the whole rest of the novel.My other issue with it was the characterization. For no apparent reason, there is an anorexic girl on the periphery of the story, serving zero purpose and ultimately having no real resolution. I don't think things like that should just be thrown into stories. Michel seems to have never encountered a girl before, and Lin seems used only to manipulating the men falling at her (apparently gorgeous) feet. Also, the sociopathic father seemingly without the capacity for emotion towards his children was utterly unrelatable. He teetered credibly on the edge, until the very end, at which point, like so much else about the book, he fell off the edge into senselessness. Ultimately, none of the characters were likeable.Despite the fact that most of this review is relatively scathing, I'm still giving the book 3.5 for being so much fun to read up until the end. Grant definitely has several writing skills, it's just unfortunate that gelling her work together and good characterization are not among them.Rating: 3.5/5 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Michelle Posted June 12, 2015 Share Posted June 12, 2015 I really enjoyed those 3 reviews, as I've recently read Sleepless and Glass Demon, and I want to read Frozen Charlotte. I remember reading a certain point in Sleepless, and thinking 'ah, so *that's* the direction she's going.. I like this!' the part in the market where they find the body hanging on the hook The Glass Demon - I definitely wanted it to go in the opposite direction at the end, and I do agree about the sister, but overall I enjoyed it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nollaig Posted June 12, 2015 Author Share Posted June 12, 2015 I stole those recommendations from you! I *loved* Sleepless. I've seen a lot of criticism of the ending, and I would have been happy for it to go another way, but I still loved it. The Glass Demon... yeah. I enjoyed reading it, I just felt disappointed by where it went. Currently reading something called Solitaire by Alice Oseman. Allegedly for fans of John Green and Rainbow Rowell, and seems to be based around a blog that documents pranks in a school where a lot of the student body seem to have blogs. Not sure where its gonna go, but I absolutely ADORE the narrator (she's basically me when I'm really depressed, but exaggerated - "I don't remember ever not being serious. As far as I'm concerned, I came out of the womb spouting cynicism and wishing for rain.") The the writing is awesome. The author mentions the narrator (Tori) fiddling with the HTML on her blog to try make the spaces between posts smaller. It just seems real, and modern. I just hope it stays this good! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Michelle Posted June 12, 2015 Share Posted June 12, 2015 Beth won a signed version of Solitaire, and it's also doodled in - it's very cool. Alice is on twitter. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nollaig Posted June 12, 2015 Author Share Posted June 12, 2015 Just followed her! Beth's copy sounds awesome Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Michelle Posted June 12, 2015 Share Posted June 12, 2015 I'll let you into a secret though, please don't tell Alice... our elderly cat had a wee near the book, and a little bit of it got onto the book! So, it's VERY unique! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nollaig Posted June 12, 2015 Author Share Posted June 12, 2015 Oh nooooo! It would be an ex-cat if that happened to me - bad enough when tea got spilt on one of my unsigned John Green books - if ANYTHING happened to my signed TFIOS I'd cry! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Anna Begins Posted June 12, 2015 Share Posted June 12, 2015 Oh nooooo! It would be an ex-cat if that happened to me - bad enough when tea got spilt on one of my unsigned John Green books - if ANYTHING happened to my signed TFIOS I'd cry! My dog ate some of my signed Clive Barker's as a puppy Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kylie Posted June 13, 2015 Share Posted June 13, 2015 I'll let you into a secret though, please don't tell Alice... our elderly cat had a wee near the book, and a little bit of it got onto the book! So, it's VERY unique! Luckily my cat hasn't ruined any of my books (although he's tried his darnedest to!) I'm my own worst enemy when it comes to my books. Just the other day I was opening a brand new book that I'd just received in the mail, and I managed to make a teeny tiny tear in the cover, which is going to bug me forever. I was trying to be careful, but the way they package some of these books... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nollaig Posted June 15, 2015 Author Share Posted June 15, 2015 Argh, animals! I can see one of my family dogs, Roxi, having a field day with books, but luckily my books aren't at my parents house where she is I'm my own worst enemy when it comes to my books. Just the other day I was opening a brand new book that I'd just received in the mail, and I managed to make a teeny tiny tear in the cover, which is going to bug me forever. I was trying to be careful, but the way they package some of these books... Yep, this has happened to me too on more than one occasion. Or I buy a new book, put it down on my bed when I get in, pick it up a while later and a corner has been bent back because I obviously dropped it a bit too carelessly Since finishing Solitaire (which was excellent) I've finish two more books - definitely making up for the lull last week! The additional two were Say Her Name by James Dawson and The Monstrumologist by Rick Yancey (yes, Rick Yancey of 5th Wave fame). Both were horrors, the latter a good light not-scary read, and the latter a more dense beautifully-written gross-out read. In fact, I loved the latter so much that I'm about to dive directly into book two of the series. Reviews for all three to follow! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Athena Posted June 16, 2015 Share Posted June 16, 2015 I'm glad you read some great books, I look forward to see the reviews . Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Michelle Posted June 16, 2015 Share Posted June 16, 2015 Say Her Name was a bit scary for me because I have a thing about not being able to look in mirrors at night! I definitely need to check out the other one! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nollaig Posted June 16, 2015 Author Share Posted June 16, 2015 Say Her Name was a bit scary for me because I have a thing about not being able to look in mirrors at night! I definitely need to check out the other one! Awww really? How come? There were a couple of creepy bits, I didn't like the way Mary was in every single mirror/reflective surface - the idea of going into that cupboard with the mirror to hide from the headmaster person - that was unpleasant alright! but I didn't find it as scary as other books I've read. Thanks Gaia Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Michelle Posted June 16, 2015 Share Posted June 16, 2015 I have no idea where it's come from, but if I get up at night, I have to avoid looking in mirrors, I think I fear I may see someone behind me or something. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nollaig Posted June 16, 2015 Author Share Posted June 16, 2015 Too many scary films maybe? I totally wig myself out with other things, for example when I'm going to sleep, I get it into my head that there could be something (usually resembling Samara from The Ring) in my room, and that if I don't keep my duvet over my head and my eyes firmly shut, I'll look up and she'll be on top of me about to kill me I also can't deal with dark houses in general, I have to run frantically around convinced something is about to attack me Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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