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feralnebulous's reviews
108 reviews
A House of Ghosts by W.C. Ryan
2.0
It is with great remorse that I inform you that this book suffers from a case of being too big for its britches (or something along those lines). The story has great bones, everything that would get me absolutely hooked in less than two seconds: a haunted manor in winter on a remote island with mysterious guests during WWI. My favorite thing in the whole world is a good ghost story, and while there are ghosts in this story, they don't play much of a role. It's mind boggling to me how much you would actually have to try to make this story boring given the setup, but it really tried. I found myself being unable to keep any characters straight, and the ones that do appear most often are generally about as interesting as a blank, beige wall in some god-awful refurbished old Victorian home that people keep ruining. The descriptions of the ghosts in this book are about as interesting as the characters as well, you couldn't put any more effort into making them a bit more dynamic than the furniture? Watching the absolute failure of this book to tell a compelling story is like a car crash: hideous, but I still couldn't turn away (which I should've done, that would have saved me a large portion of time that I could spend laughing or being generally more happy). This book was also a case where I guessed the "plot twist" at the end, so maybe I'm just a genius, or I guess things randomly while I read mystery novels so I can eventually get something right.
One positive about this book: I learned some new words.
One positive about this book: I learned some new words.
Babel by R.F. Kuang
5.0
One of my fatal flaws is the fact that when I love a book, I have almost nothing to say about it. Maybe I feel like I couldn't do it justice with whatever I have to add, I'm not known for really intelligent discourse, but I will do my best to collect some of my thoughts.
The raw emotion that Babel is built on was what really sold it for me (and the fact that I loooooove some etymology, even if many people thought it was dry or unnecessary). There are many things that I won't be able to relate directly to, but the way this book let me follow Robin's journey, when he finally feels happiness and belonging in an institution that is harmful at its core, the internal conflict of surviving vs doing what is morally right, transported me directly into this world without even needing to build some kind of atmosphere. The way the magic system is so grounded in something so deeply personal to someone's identity as the language they speak or think in made so much sense to me as well, which I was happy about as someone who doesn't regularly read fantasy. The deep sense of loss that was at the center of the end of this book is something I won't quickly recover from, which is definitely welcome after reading intensely mediocre books recently. That's the best I can articulate my feelings about this, but if I could regurgitate the experience I had with this book, I would've done it already.
The raw emotion that Babel is built on was what really sold it for me (and the fact that I loooooove some etymology, even if many people thought it was dry or unnecessary). There are many things that I won't be able to relate directly to, but the way this book let me follow Robin's journey, when he finally feels happiness and belonging in an institution that is harmful at its core, the internal conflict of surviving vs doing what is morally right, transported me directly into this world without even needing to build some kind of atmosphere. The way the magic system is so grounded in something so deeply personal to someone's identity as the language they speak or think in made so much sense to me as well, which I was happy about as someone who doesn't regularly read fantasy. The deep sense of loss that was at the center of the end of this book is something I won't quickly recover from, which is definitely welcome after reading intensely mediocre books recently. That's the best I can articulate my feelings about this, but if I could regurgitate the experience I had with this book, I would've done it already.
The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafón
4.0
If I could write my life story to be half as hauntingly beautiful as any work by Carlos Ruiz Zafon, I could die happy. There’s some deep sadness within me after finishing this book (a good kind of sadness) that was left by the artful descriptions and bittersweet longing in this story, as well as the fact that I will never be able to create something as beautiful as this. That being said, as much as I was swept up in this story, it has a few flaws (mostly in the revelation of the whole mystery given by a note near the end of the book, it felt a little too convenient but I still enjoyed it). Also, this will always pale in comparison to the author’s book Marina, that one is the true paragon of perfection.
I Was a Teenage Slasher by Stephen Graham Jones
I don't feel qualified to give a comprehensive review on this since I only made it to page 115, but I do feel qualified to speak on the subject matter, since I only consume horror/mystery media.
Horror is an art. Well done horror is something rare that must be treasured. Maybe I'm not a part of the target audience here, or I just have unreasonably high standards, but this is not horror that is well done. If this book were a steak, it would still be mooing in the fields, that's how far it was from well done. The slasher is not something I feel translates well to a book. You can get the kills down, you can have all the lighthearted gory fun you want, but the stream of conciousness narration is NOT it. There's a good chance that it would work well in a movie, but on the page it acts as a 300 ton anchor strapped to the bony body of some scurvy-ridden deckhand: it gets bogged down (to say the least). I tried to believe in this, but if I have to re-read pages another time just for them to make less sense, or if, god forbid, I have to sit through another unrelated tangent about forklifts, I will get violent (which I am entitled to for making it through 115 pages of this).
Horror is an art. Well done horror is something rare that must be treasured. Maybe I'm not a part of the target audience here, or I just have unreasonably high standards, but this is not horror that is well done. If this book were a steak, it would still be mooing in the fields, that's how far it was from well done. The slasher is not something I feel translates well to a book. You can get the kills down, you can have all the lighthearted gory fun you want, but the stream of conciousness narration is NOT it. There's a good chance that it would work well in a movie, but on the page it acts as a 300 ton anchor strapped to the bony body of some scurvy-ridden deckhand: it gets bogged down (to say the least). I tried to believe in this, but if I have to re-read pages another time just for them to make less sense, or if, god forbid, I have to sit through another unrelated tangent about forklifts, I will get violent (which I am entitled to for making it through 115 pages of this).
All Hallows by Christopher Golden
1.0
The internet defines a lost cause as a person or thing that can no longer hope to succeed or be changed for the better. I wish I had realized this book was a lost cause before reading 265 pages of it.
The concept of the book itself has potential, I love a good monster haunting a town on Halloween night situation, but the writing viciously neutered this creature down to something as terrifying and threatening as a little baby chick. Where is the poetry, the romance, when describing someone's death as (and I quote) "And he died"? Or when a character said something was filling his lungs "like air but not air"? I don't mean to be too harsh on this book, it was fine enough, but trying to execute this sort of story on the timeline of everything happening in one night, giving us no background whatsoever and expecting us to be scared of something that could only be described as the Trickster from the Summerween episode of Gravity Falls (which is being generous), you can't expect me to be that thrilled as a reader.
So, I will continue my search for a Halloween story that scared me as much as the Headless Horseman episode of the 1995 PBS show Wishbone did when I was younger.
The concept of the book itself has potential, I love a good monster haunting a town on Halloween night situation, but the writing viciously neutered this creature down to something as terrifying and threatening as a little baby chick. Where is the poetry, the romance, when describing someone's death as (and I quote) "And he died"? Or when a character said something was filling his lungs "like air but not air"? I don't mean to be too harsh on this book, it was fine enough, but trying to execute this sort of story on the timeline of everything happening in one night, giving us no background whatsoever and expecting us to be scared of something that could only be described as the Trickster from the Summerween episode of Gravity Falls (which is being generous), you can't expect me to be that thrilled as a reader.
So, I will continue my search for a Halloween story that scared me as much as the Headless Horseman episode of the 1995 PBS show Wishbone did when I was younger.
The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins
4.0
This may not be the best book ever written, but I thoroughly enjoyed this. Maybe I guessed the plot twist well in advance, maybe I thought some of the plot could have been ironed out a bit more, but I absolutely loved how things were revealed in this book. The way that things weren't laid out too obviously (I'm looking at you "'Delilah,' I said, as that was her name," from All Hallows) was very refreshing. I am simply a girl that loves trains so of course this book was made for me!!
Ordinary Monsters by J.M. Miro
Yet another book I didn't finish and I have not read 210 pages of something so thoroughly mediocre. There was something so profoundly bland about this writing, which can be helpful in some of these fantasy books because it helps my little brain comprehend what's going on but don't you DARE approach me with sentences that keep going "and then, and then, and then"! Where is the poetry, the romance? The writing just didn't sing in so many places, it had me saying things like, "Yeah, but this word would sound so much better here" out loud to myself as I read. You know things are dire when I'm correcting the writing of your novel, I don't consider myself to be very artsy in writing but at least my musings on Wattpad as a 16-year-old didn't suffer so much from tell-don't-show syndrome. You know what fell even flatter than the writing? The characters. Being surrounded by cardboard cutouts that switched haphazardly between perspectives with little to no voice distinction besides the occassional "Aye" had the crowd going absolutely mild. That could be my fault for only reading 210 pages of a 658 page behemoth, but the character development had less momentum than a wagon standing on a street in kansas on a day with no wind. I think I'll blame myself for not sticking with it, at least Marlowe was a sweet addition to the cast. As a finishing thought, I'm sure the story could be pretty good, but it's just not worth it to dig around for something worth reading here.
Holly by Stephen King
3.0
I have made many mistakes in my life. I wouldn't say reading this book is one of them, but my mistake was not reading the five books that the protagonist has been in prior to this one. Missing all of that character development made me a feel a level of apathy towards the main characters that I didn't know I could feel. Other than that, the story was engaging enough, but I have some thoughts:
1. Good villians should be complex. Now, there's no definite way to make your antagonist complex in every story, but the villains in this story felt so completely two dimensional that I could reach inside the book and knock them right on their flat backs. I understand that we as an audience are supposed to hate them, but giving them these cartoonish levels of evil energy was simply unbelievable to me. I know that there are obviously people like them out there, but deciding to have your villains be racist, homophobic, Covid deniers, January 6th truthers, AND cannibals who like to perform behavioral experiments on their kidnapped victims? I can see them twirling their evil handlebar mustaches as I type this review. Am I supposed to feel bad for them because they're old and they're trying unsuccessfully to cheat the slow decline of aging? If so, it failed miserably because they're so unlikeable outside of that fact.
2. I find Stephen King to be somewhat like Colleen Hoover in how he writes his books. Before anyone rips me to shreds for even daring to compare these two when their writing is so different from each other, hear me out. Colleen has these biases that she thinks fly under the radar if she puts them in her writing (e.g. her book Verity, where the main character talks about how choking is a disturbing kink that someone in their twenties shouldn't have and that vanilla sex should be enough for everyone that young and if it isn't, then you have a problem) but they show through when a lot of the same sentiments start popping up in her books (like her feelings on women getting pregnant and being a mother and how that should basically be a woman's life goal). Both Stephen and Colleen are entitled to feel however they want to feel, and I would be lying if I didn't agree with a lot of the ideologies related to Covid, racism, homphobia, etc that Stephen King includes in this book, along with the fact that I think authors are perfectly fine to write things like this, there has to be some way to write it in a way that didn't piss me off so much. I realize that many people have said this book is too woke when Stephen King has been writing like this for years, but this was my first introduction to his books and I found the simulated dialogue to be grating and, frankly, cringe. Stephen King really tries to be hip with the kids I feel, and it just shows his age more. Slightly unrelated, but I just wanted to include this as well: in his note at the back he talks about how Roddy Harris is meant to be "crazy as a loon" (and he thinks that comparison is an insult to loons) and all I could think was 36:38-36:54 of one of my favorite videos (https://youtu.be/z7F3xJN7_yw?si=YOU3ZIdV2dYXDDCF - the new mean girls is really bad, you guys by maxwell greene).
3. This was obviously the wrong choice for just wanting to try reading Stephen King, but I would say it was fine enough. For better or for worse, Stephen King is a blunt writer, which I knew going into this. However, I found his style to be relatively palatable, somehow just long enough to explain what was happening but short enough to let me as a reader fill in some details from context clues. I thought the plot of having old people cannibals was fun enough, gave them some motivation without them needing to have a solid motive for killing every one of their victims. Because we are told who the killers are in the first chapter of the book, I did find myself getting frustrated at characters who didn't have enough to piece things together, but seeing them solve the mystery on their own was fun in its own way. One thing I can praise this book for is not having some obvious plot twist that I could've guessed even if I was only paying attention half the time, thank you Stephen King for that. I will probably go find another one of his books to read just to see if anything can score higher than mediocre in my book or if I just don't get along with his writing, but he does write an engaging story if nothing else.
4. If I hear the beginning of that "a new millionaire walks into a bar" joke one more time........trust Mr. King you WILL be dealt with
1. Good villians should be complex. Now, there's no definite way to make your antagonist complex in every story, but the villains in this story felt so completely two dimensional that I could reach inside the book and knock them right on their flat backs. I understand that we as an audience are supposed to hate them, but giving them these cartoonish levels of evil energy was simply unbelievable to me. I know that there are obviously people like them out there, but deciding to have your villains be racist, homophobic, Covid deniers, January 6th truthers, AND cannibals who like to perform behavioral experiments on their kidnapped victims? I can see them twirling their evil handlebar mustaches as I type this review. Am I supposed to feel bad for them because they're old and they're trying unsuccessfully to cheat the slow decline of aging? If so, it failed miserably because they're so unlikeable outside of that fact.
2. I find Stephen King to be somewhat like Colleen Hoover in how he writes his books. Before anyone rips me to shreds for even daring to compare these two when their writing is so different from each other, hear me out. Colleen has these biases that she thinks fly under the radar if she puts them in her writing (e.g. her book Verity, where the main character talks about how choking is a disturbing kink that someone in their twenties shouldn't have and that vanilla sex should be enough for everyone that young and if it isn't, then you have a problem) but they show through when a lot of the same sentiments start popping up in her books (like her feelings on women getting pregnant and being a mother and how that should basically be a woman's life goal). Both Stephen and Colleen are entitled to feel however they want to feel, and I would be lying if I didn't agree with a lot of the ideologies related to Covid, racism, homphobia, etc that Stephen King includes in this book, along with the fact that I think authors are perfectly fine to write things like this, there has to be some way to write it in a way that didn't piss me off so much. I realize that many people have said this book is too woke when Stephen King has been writing like this for years, but this was my first introduction to his books and I found the simulated dialogue to be grating and, frankly, cringe. Stephen King really tries to be hip with the kids I feel, and it just shows his age more. Slightly unrelated, but I just wanted to include this as well: in his note at the back he talks about how Roddy Harris is meant to be "crazy as a loon" (and he thinks that comparison is an insult to loons) and all I could think was 36:38-36:54 of one of my favorite videos (https://youtu.be/z7F3xJN7_yw?si=YOU3ZIdV2dYXDDCF - the new mean girls is really bad, you guys by maxwell greene).
3. This was obviously the wrong choice for just wanting to try reading Stephen King, but I would say it was fine enough. For better or for worse, Stephen King is a blunt writer, which I knew going into this. However, I found his style to be relatively palatable, somehow just long enough to explain what was happening but short enough to let me as a reader fill in some details from context clues. I thought the plot of having old people cannibals was fun enough, gave them some motivation without them needing to have a solid motive for killing every one of their victims. Because we are told who the killers are in the first chapter of the book, I did find myself getting frustrated at characters who didn't have enough to piece things together, but seeing them solve the mystery on their own was fun in its own way. One thing I can praise this book for is not having some obvious plot twist that I could've guessed even if I was only paying attention half the time, thank you Stephen King for that. I will probably go find another one of his books to read just to see if anything can score higher than mediocre in my book or if I just don't get along with his writing, but he does write an engaging story if nothing else.
4. If I hear the beginning of that "a new millionaire walks into a bar" joke one more time........trust Mr. King you WILL be dealt with