Scan barcode
colorfulleo92's review
3.0
A Sci-fi novel from 1955. The audiobook was rather short, just almost 5 hours. Eh this went over my head. I'm not sure quite what I was listening to. Might done better of i had read it or I'm just not enough well read in the Sci-fi genre as I've thought. It was alright but thought the actions and the plot was rather meh, didn't really get any bigger meaning to the story.
emdiddy01's review against another edition
challenging
dark
mysterious
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.5
frakalot's review against another edition
dark
emotional
mysterious
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.0
Our man obsessed, Jeff, hated all the frivolities of society around him. But the thing he hated most was Paul Conroe. So he had fixed to kill the man and was ever in hot pursuit. Blinkered and fettered by his fixation he follows his bounty into a madhouse that it is said nobody ever comes out of - A place where the patients are subjected to morbid experimentation.
"He ran across the room and struck the solid brick wall full face. He hit with a sickening thud, pounded at the wall with his fists, screaming out again and again. And then he collapsed to the floor, his nose broken, his face bleeding, his fingers raw with the nails broken."
You're wondering at this point... why wouldn't Jeff leave his prey to the terrible fate that is sure to become him inside that madhouse? Well, that would not a story make. Oh. And Jeff is convinced that Conroe would find a way to escape the place. So Jeff runs on in and finds himself a patient in no time at all. He bunks up with a woman who wields a knife and makes it clear that she won't take any of his shit, but she's a strange character who becomes more of a sad, helpless case as the story progresses. Some of the language that Jeff used towards her later in the story is regrettable.
Interestingly, Conroe is barely glimpsed for much of the story but does play an important part in the ending. The ending is, well, not surprising but still interesting. The main theme in this story is (obviously) obsession and how it affects a person's choices, but it also touched on a few other psychological ideas, many of which are less connected to reality than readers might have believed in the 1950s.
This is my second by Nourse and I thought the writing in this was much less thoughtful than in 'Star Surgeon'. One character is almost always referred to as the "Nasty Frenchman". A line near the start of the book - "Hysteric laughs of feminine noise" - also felt very dated.
I guess you could still plonk this in a pile of medical scifi stories because of the premise but I'd be more inclined to label it medical horror.
This is another one that I listened to in the Librivox app and the narration by Mark Nelson was very good.
"He ran across the room and struck the solid brick wall full face. He hit with a sickening thud, pounded at the wall with his fists, screaming out again and again. And then he collapsed to the floor, his nose broken, his face bleeding, his fingers raw with the nails broken."
You're wondering at this point... why wouldn't Jeff leave his prey to the terrible fate that is sure to become him inside that madhouse? Well, that would not a story make. Oh. And Jeff is convinced that Conroe would find a way to escape the place. So Jeff runs on in and finds himself a patient in no time at all. He bunks up with a woman who wields a knife and makes it clear that she won't take any of his shit, but she's a strange character who becomes more of a sad, helpless case as the story progresses. Some of the language that Jeff used towards her later in the story is regrettable.
Interestingly, Conroe is barely glimpsed for much of the story but does play an important part in the ending. The ending is, well, not surprising but still interesting. The main theme in this story is (obviously) obsession and how it affects a person's choices, but it also touched on a few other psychological ideas, many of which are less connected to reality than readers might have believed in the 1950s.
This is my second by Nourse and I thought the writing in this was much less thoughtful than in 'Star Surgeon'. One character is almost always referred to as the "Nasty Frenchman". A line near the start of the book - "Hysteric laughs of feminine noise" - also felt very dated.
I guess you could still plonk this in a pile of medical scifi stories because of the premise but I'd be more inclined to label it medical horror.
This is another one that I listened to in the Librivox app and the narration by Mark Nelson was very good.
More...