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dreizehn's reviews
1164 reviews
The Reapers are the Angels by Alden Bell
2.0
I thought I would be a fan of this book. I really did. I like zombie books, and I like a good survival story in a post-apocalyptic setting. Combine that with a strong heroine, and I thought I had myself an enjoyable novel. Unfortunately, I was wrong. I did not like this book.
It started out well enough. Actually, scratch that. It started off with me wondering how I received an e-Book with such broken formatting. I quickly realized that it was another of those stylistic things. I’ve been taken aback by this before in Blood Red Road and Shatter Me, so I moved past it and did my best to move on. However, I think it does bear mentioning that you should be prepared to find zero quotation marks in this book. In a book that uses dialogue and inner thoughts to drive the plot, it sometimes becomes difficult to muddle through exactly who is speaking, and if Temple is speaking aloud or in her head.
That aside, the book started off on a pretty good foot. It was a book about a young girl making her way in a country defeated by mindless zombies. She is thoughtful, considering God and the way things may have been before — when there were enough people to keep civilization running smoothly. But Temple knows that God works in mysterious ways, and that nature will always win. She moves on from place to place as the zombies or nature itself force her out. Pretty soon on from there it becomes apparent what the problem with this book is. At least, what I consider to be the problem.
That is, the author. Trying far too hard. This novel is chock full of purple prose and leading situations. Alden Bell has tried too hard to craft a literary zombie novel, and to me it shows. This is a book the author clearly intended to be analyzed in an English class, with students pain-stakingly examining between the lines for evidence of allegory, symbolism, motifs and themes. In my opinion, this is not a book written to be enjoyed, and it was not. I stuck it through to the end, because I hate leaving a book unfinished. But by the last few chapters, I was sorry I had done so, because the forced literary elements just piled on at the novel’s conclusion.
I’d only recommend this novel if you consider yourself a person that enjoys the kind of work that goes with reading a novel not just for enjoyment, but for hidden messages. Perhaps you will find yourself a good match for this book.
It started out well enough. Actually, scratch that. It started off with me wondering how I received an e-Book with such broken formatting. I quickly realized that it was another of those stylistic things. I’ve been taken aback by this before in Blood Red Road and Shatter Me, so I moved past it and did my best to move on. However, I think it does bear mentioning that you should be prepared to find zero quotation marks in this book. In a book that uses dialogue and inner thoughts to drive the plot, it sometimes becomes difficult to muddle through exactly who is speaking, and if Temple is speaking aloud or in her head.
That aside, the book started off on a pretty good foot. It was a book about a young girl making her way in a country defeated by mindless zombies. She is thoughtful, considering God and the way things may have been before — when there were enough people to keep civilization running smoothly. But Temple knows that God works in mysterious ways, and that nature will always win. She moves on from place to place as the zombies or nature itself force her out. Pretty soon on from there it becomes apparent what the problem with this book is. At least, what I consider to be the problem.
That is, the author. Trying far too hard. This novel is chock full of purple prose and leading situations. Alden Bell has tried too hard to craft a literary zombie novel, and to me it shows. This is a book the author clearly intended to be analyzed in an English class, with students pain-stakingly examining between the lines for evidence of allegory, symbolism, motifs and themes. In my opinion, this is not a book written to be enjoyed, and it was not. I stuck it through to the end, because I hate leaving a book unfinished. But by the last few chapters, I was sorry I had done so, because the forced literary elements just piled on at the novel’s conclusion.
I’d only recommend this novel if you consider yourself a person that enjoys the kind of work that goes with reading a novel not just for enjoyment, but for hidden messages. Perhaps you will find yourself a good match for this book.
F in Exams: The Best Test Paper Blunders by Richard Benson
2.0
This was a very quick read. I think it took me all of 10-15 minutes. I'd say it's a good book to have out as a coffee table book, or in a waiting room. Some of the examples are very funny, others less so. You may have already seen several of these funny answers somewhere on the internet (funnyexams.com comes to mind). The humor of the book is somewhat lessened to me because I'm concerned that many of the examples are fake. If you notice, *several* of the examples are written in the same "handwriting". It becomes quite clear at this point that the answers are written in various handwriting typefaces. I feel like the book would have been better if the examples were more authentic. Being able to think that students actually used these answers adds a greater level of humor for me. Overall, I would not recommend purchasing this book other than in the circumstances I mentioned above. If you happen to see the book somewhere, however, it's worth a quick flip-through.
Shadows by Ilsa J. Bick
3.0
What a gorefest. I am fairly certain that Shadows is the goriest book I’ve ever read in my life. And that’s including that one werewolf book I reviewed a few years ago that sticks in my mind for its inability to stop talking about brain-eating. That aside, I can’t quite decide how I felt about this book.
Ashes was told entirely from Alex’s point of view. Many story threads interweave to make up the final braid of Shadows, which creates a very turbulent, stop-go pace. Most chapters end at a high point in the stakes and action. More often than not, when you turn the page, you are unceremoniously dropped into another place and character’s experience. Some of the points of view are from what I considered to be minor characters. The jumping around is enough to give the reader whiplash. Sometimes, by the time you get back to the characters you were reading about previously, you’ve forgotten where you left off with them, and what has happened since. This effect is exaggerated if you are unable or unwilling to do marathon reading sessions.
On the one hand, Bick does a great job of intertwining a rather intricate and varied story. By the time all is said and done, you’ve read a book with many things happening in a lot of different places, roughly at the same time, which finally connected to the other loose threads at some point. However, when you step back and think about it, what happened, really? Honestly, the time course of Shadows is relatively short. It only seemed like a lot was going on because the story was told from so many points of view. I felt like my satisfaction was greater with Ashes, told from only Alex’s point of view.
I suppose that there are other factors that made me like Ashes much more, however. It felt much more like a survival story than a straight-up horror story. This big thing happened, and we didn’t know why or what really happened, or why some people just came back wrong from it. I liked seeing that part of the story unfold. Once Alex got to Rule, some of the appeal wore off for me, but the very end was strong and left me with high hopes for the sequel. Which didn’t really pan out.
Speaking of the end of Ashes, unless you read the book in the last month or less, I suggest looking up the author’s blog post “So You Read Ashes a Year Ago,” because Shadows offers approximately zero recap. If you don’t remember every person that Alex met along her journey, you’ll be even more confused by the plethora of points of view.
Overall, Shadows made for a very creepy, well-written, get-under-your-skin-and-stay-there kind of horror novel. If you can’t stand to read the gory bits, you might as well look for a different book. Although I didn’t like it nearly as much as Ashes, I will finish the series, because I’m curious to see how things will go in the end.
Ashes was told entirely from Alex’s point of view. Many story threads interweave to make up the final braid of Shadows, which creates a very turbulent, stop-go pace. Most chapters end at a high point in the stakes and action. More often than not, when you turn the page, you are unceremoniously dropped into another place and character’s experience. Some of the points of view are from what I considered to be minor characters. The jumping around is enough to give the reader whiplash. Sometimes, by the time you get back to the characters you were reading about previously, you’ve forgotten where you left off with them, and what has happened since. This effect is exaggerated if you are unable or unwilling to do marathon reading sessions.
On the one hand, Bick does a great job of intertwining a rather intricate and varied story. By the time all is said and done, you’ve read a book with many things happening in a lot of different places, roughly at the same time, which finally connected to the other loose threads at some point. However, when you step back and think about it, what happened, really? Honestly, the time course of Shadows is relatively short. It only seemed like a lot was going on because the story was told from so many points of view. I felt like my satisfaction was greater with Ashes, told from only Alex’s point of view.
I suppose that there are other factors that made me like Ashes much more, however. It felt much more like a survival story than a straight-up horror story. This big thing happened, and we didn’t know why or what really happened, or why some people just came back wrong from it. I liked seeing that part of the story unfold. Once Alex got to Rule, some of the appeal wore off for me, but the very end was strong and left me with high hopes for the sequel. Which didn’t really pan out.
Speaking of the end of Ashes, unless you read the book in the last month or less, I suggest looking up the author’s blog post “So You Read Ashes a Year Ago,” because Shadows offers approximately zero recap. If you don’t remember every person that Alex met along her journey, you’ll be even more confused by the plethora of points of view.
Overall, Shadows made for a very creepy, well-written, get-under-your-skin-and-stay-there kind of horror novel. If you can’t stand to read the gory bits, you might as well look for a different book. Although I didn’t like it nearly as much as Ashes, I will finish the series, because I’m curious to see how things will go in the end.