Take a photo of a barcode or cover
deadgoodbookreviews 's review for:
In The Pines
by Erik Kriek
Full review and more up on my blog:https://chaininteraction.wordpress.com/2018/01/20/in-the-pines-erik-kriek-book-review/
This is a collection of murder ballads. That description alone called to the morbid human in me, I like something a little twisted, a little dark and you can’t get much weirder (without wandering completely into the realms of fantasy) than these murder ballads. These are stories in which people die and then generally there’s some kind of otherworldly element such as a haunting or similar. If you like a ghost story you’re pretty much guaranteed to like these stories.
I thought the illustrations were – for want of a better word – lovely. They definitely fit with the tone of the stories and they are certainly interesting to look at. This was the perfect medium in which to tell these stories.
The thing that stopped me from liking these stories as much as I otherwise might have was the lack of women. I think out of all the stories there’s one (maybe two?) in which a woman is the strong character. More often than not they are simply either murdered or cheating on their husbands with their best friends. I think this is representative of the source material as opposed to this particular author/illustrator but there were a good number of stories that could have been edited/adapted to reflect a more balanced world. Maybe that’s straying too much from the core ideas of the book and these stories, I’m not sure, but personally that was what hindered my enjoyment.
My rating: 3/5 stars
I received a digital advanced review copy of this book from the Publisher via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own.
This is a collection of murder ballads. That description alone called to the morbid human in me, I like something a little twisted, a little dark and you can’t get much weirder (without wandering completely into the realms of fantasy) than these murder ballads. These are stories in which people die and then generally there’s some kind of otherworldly element such as a haunting or similar. If you like a ghost story you’re pretty much guaranteed to like these stories.
I thought the illustrations were – for want of a better word – lovely. They definitely fit with the tone of the stories and they are certainly interesting to look at. This was the perfect medium in which to tell these stories.
The thing that stopped me from liking these stories as much as I otherwise might have was the lack of women. I think out of all the stories there’s one (maybe two?) in which a woman is the strong character. More often than not they are simply either murdered or cheating on their husbands with their best friends. I think this is representative of the source material as opposed to this particular author/illustrator but there were a good number of stories that could have been edited/adapted to reflect a more balanced world. Maybe that’s straying too much from the core ideas of the book and these stories, I’m not sure, but personally that was what hindered my enjoyment.
My rating: 3/5 stars
I received a digital advanced review copy of this book from the Publisher via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own.