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art_cart_ron 's review for:
The Shuddering
by Ania Ahlborn
Going to a 3.5 for this fun fast-paced horror ride. To me, it reads like an above-ground The Descent. In place of the deeper relationships of that film, you get substantial ones that are just fleshed out enough to make you care for who lives and who may not.
It always seems brave to me when an author kills their darlings. Ania does it well, and has some method in her approach that keeps her from telegraphing. She uses lots of tropes, but not without original takes - and I wager she's an honest horror fan b/c a lot of her apparent inspirations are quality ones. It would make a pretty good movie, and it makes a good homage to one-off just-for-fun horror movies, and the reams of fun speedy horror novels that populated grocery and drug store shelves a few decades ago.
There are a couple of technical problems, like the the mechanics of regular folks making torches that they expect to last 4-6hrs at a time (if not a day or more), using table legs tee shirts and gasoline - - and some natural science angles involving woodland food sources.
I read this as a December book club choice (that ran all-too-long for me, because my life is stupidly storm-tossed these days/years), and was glad to have had it as a celebration of Winter. A remarkable number of readers don't want bad things to happen to dogs, it's a sacred situation that readers lose all perspective with, so I'll finish this sentence without elaborating or spoiling anything.
Add to your snowy-season reading pile. Especially if you ski or snowboard, and you want some lodge reading :)
It always seems brave to me when an author kills their darlings. Ania does it well, and has some method in her approach that keeps her from telegraphing. She uses lots of tropes, but not without original takes - and I wager she's an honest horror fan b/c a lot of her apparent inspirations are quality ones. It would make a pretty good movie, and it makes a good homage to one-off just-for-fun horror movies, and the reams of fun speedy horror novels that populated grocery and drug store shelves a few decades ago.
There are a couple of technical problems, like the the mechanics of regular folks making torches that they expect to last 4-6hrs at a time (if not a day or more), using table legs tee shirts and gasoline - - and some natural science angles involving woodland food sources.
I read this as a December book club choice (that ran all-too-long for me, because my life is stupidly storm-tossed these days/years), and was glad to have had it as a celebration of Winter. A remarkable number of readers don't want bad things to happen to dogs, it's a sacred situation that readers lose all perspective with, so I'll finish this sentence without elaborating or spoiling anything.
Add to your snowy-season reading pile. Especially if you ski or snowboard, and you want some lodge reading :)