Review: Life as We Know & The World We Live In by Susan Beth Pfeffer

Title - Life as We Know

Author - Susan Beth Pfeffer

Year - 2006

Stand Alone or Series -Book I

Pages - 337

Reading Time - 6 days (Nov 2009)

Rating - 8/10

Title - The World We Live In

Author - Susan Beth Pfeffer

Year - 2010

Stand Alone or Series -Book III

Pages - 221

Reading Time - 4 days (Oct/Nov 2010)

Rating - 6/10

As you all know I love a good book about apocalpyitic-fiction. This was a bit different from my usual reading. The first book reads as 16 year old girl's journal. The third book follows Miranda journal and the "hero" of the second book (which I did not read because it did not felt quite right in the preview). Since we don't need to read book two I jumped to book three.

 

The story follows a girl life before but mostly after an apocalyptic event that changed life on earth. An asteroid struck the Moon and made it closer to earth. Due to that aproximation there were some cataclysms like huge tidal waves or volcanos erupting that engulf all earth. Our main character Miranda starts as an normal teenager preocupied with boys and homework and such. After that event everything change and we see her change... and that is the key plot for all novel. Something worth reading about... one odd situation was a "green" fresh start. Even after all the chaos people remain somewhat civic and the governmant still helps them... that's not usually what happens. Usually it just ignores the little people or colapses alltogether.

 

The book is written in such easy way that you read a chapter after another just wainting to the end... and the end was quite good. It in own was an ending and to me it would be the perfect ending.

 

Well my first impression of the first book was... "Well, that's quite a read..." ; the third book... "Meh, If I did not read this book I would be happier and with a good impression of Susan Pfeffer abilities..."

I say this because focus more on that relation of both protagonists an unfortunaly everything is disgraced in the end. What were those "Safe Towns"? What a heck? Bah.. And the cat died. It was the only character I did like in the third book where everyone was behaving so different from the first one. They changed a lot in their first year (first book) but the second they were different persons. In overall I would give the series 7.5 but only because of the first book.

Thoughts (IX) Mina Anguelova

Mina Anguelova

Moonlight sets in and we are together 

Night is cold but we are warm

Hands grasp one another as we kiss

You are as beautiful as the first time we met

Like a greek statue imbued in marble

My skin has goose bumps as we touch

My love goddess, my very Life is you

My spirit unified with yours

This neve' ending flame in me

Obi4am-te liobov moia

Ot zemiata do nebeto

An gifted Slav and a proud Lusitan together

Forever we remain; as we are One!

There is pattern; a key if you wish with your name... dedicated to you my sweet byzantine princess...

Review: Swastika Night - Katharine Burdekin

Title - Swastika Night

Author - Katharine Burdekin

Year - 1937

Stand Alone or Series -Stand Alone

Pages - 196

Reading Time - 17 days (November 2010)

Rating - 8.5/10

ReviewThis was an interesting reading. A bit different of other books I've read about a hypotetical Nazi victory. Usually the tales are a couple years to decades into the future but this tale takes us to almost 700 hundreads years into the One Thousand Year Kingdom that Hittler envisioned.

This book was written over 70 years ago. Let's not forget that at that time woman in some countries were gaining a bit of respect but most of the world womens were seem beneath man. This book was written by a woman and depicts a world divided by Japanese and the Nazi Empire. Both treat woman alike. Like cattle. There is one law that said "As a woman is above a worm; so is a man above a woman. As a woman is above a worm so is a worm above a christian." This says a lot no? This story has no major character as a woman but the story concentrates heavily onthe oppression of women and portraying the Nazis as homosexual misogynists. Christians are marginalized (like the europeans did to the Roma people some hundreds years ago) and of course the Jews were eliminated (at the time of the writing of the book there was no plot afoot about the killings of the jews).

This book is a propaganda book. There is no doubt about it. Nazis = Evil and homosexual (in these case the woman who wrote seem to have something against homosexuals). Woman = Poor woman. Christians = Poorer christians and of course Comunism = Good! And that's about it. He even says why fascism and democracy are poor choices of goverment. BAH!

These tale focus on a Knight (German noble) and a englishman as he tells him some secrets about the Nazi Empire.Adolf Hitler is a tall, blond god who personally won "The Twenty Years War". Alfred (the englishman) is astounded when shown a secret, historic photograph depicting Hitler and a girl before a crowd. First, he is shocked that Hitler is a small man with dark hair and a paunch. The crowd seem more interested in the girl; this does not fit the world view of Hitler as god. The photograph's most shocking betrayal of myth is the girl's appearance. Alfred believed her to be a boy — the attractive figure has a proud posture and long, blond hair — and is appreciated by the crowd. Women have developed self-loathing, becoming pathetic beings who have difficulty performing their sole, utilitarian function: reproduction.

Most of the book is the Knights tales about history, woman and christian values are not that bad (and indeed they aren't) but as I said before the book seems a lot about a propaganda book. After the tale that lasts for almost 120 pages the englishman is entrusted with a book depicting the Truth but Alfred is killed by a nazi but before he passes the book to his son telling him that the world is not ready yet.

Believe me when I say it's a nice tale and one to read it for anyone who loves alternative history or philosophy/politics. But as I said the propaganda about womans rights and the freedom of religion and above all the one thing I loath ... comunism!

Everyone is free to write whatever they want, right? We only read it if we want it.

Review: The Black Corridor - Michael Moorcock

Title - The Black Corridor

Author - Michael Moorcock (and Hilary Bailey)

Year - 1969

Stand Alone or Series -Stand Alone

Pages - 126

Reading Time - 7 days (November 2010)

Rating - 6.5/10

Summary

The world is sick. The Forces of Chaos have energised the planet. Leaders, fuhrers, duces, prophets, visionaries, gurus, and politicians are all at each others' throats. And Chaos leers over the broken body of Order. So Ryan freezes his family into suspended animation and sets off for the planet Munich 15040, five years distant. There he will re-establish Order in a New World - and create a happier, healthier, saner and more decent society with the ones he loves. But they are suspended. And they cannot talk. And he is alone in space. And he has been travelling for three years. And he will still be travelling two years hence, and he cannot see his destination, and he is ALONE and LOST and CRACKING UP.

Review

So a Moocock book. After reading the review at Graeme's Fantasy Book Review I  decided to buy and read it. In my opinion the book was not as good as he portrayed it. The book is divided in two parts... the first part is the ramblings of Ryan (our main protagonist) as he travels into another galaxy to settle there with his family. Inbetween chapters we learn about their society and why they must do the voyage. The book is quite easy to read but there are a lot of references of Moorcock own political ideology. That put me off my interest. I must say that I am most displease with all the authors out there simple minded that can don't know anything else than write novels that are more than propaganda fiction. Ken Macleod is another example. It just upsets me. I try to read them but they are so single-minded in their own convictions that they made an image than everything else is just stupid. Bah.

Returning to this novel the ending was quite interesting... It makes you think what a heck happen? Were the pods with only corpses? Weren't there any bodies at all? Was this all the fruit of his own imagination? I think that was the best part of the novel.

In the end I was not displease with everything but those "teachings" he gave about society was excusable.



Review: Darkness on the Edge of Town - Brian Keene

Title - Darkness on the Edge of Town

Author - Brian Keene

Year - 2010

Stand Alone or Series -Stand Alone (Part of

Pages - 264

Reading Time - 4 days (November 2010)

Rating - 7.5/10

Summary

One morning the residents of Walden, Virginia, woke to find themselves cut off from the rest of the world by an impenetrable wall of darkness.

Review

This is my eight book by Brian Keene. He is probably one of my favourite horror writers. My interest began in The Rising and City of the Dead back in 2005. Then it took 4 years for me to rread Castaways, Dead Sea, The Conqueror Worms, The Rising: Selected Scenes from the End of the World, Urban Gothic and now this one. I've made reviews of them all and if Urban Gothic (the last one I read) was somewhat different from what I was used.

The concept of this novel is not new. The Mist or Under the Dome by Stephen King or one episode in Twilight Zone are rather similar. With several connections to other novels like the crazy person Dez (by him we learn a lot about Keene's multiverse about The Darkness or Ob). This was the most interesting part of the book. Everything else is not new...

The plot is quite simple. Darkness surrounds the city and we've got three friends (and a neighbour) that are trying to survive. In the beginning they are only trying to survive by looting a store then they try to escape and in the end they only try to survive until some christian fundamentalists try to kill them.

As the story goes we learn that the darkness is also affecting them. The darkness is not only surrounding them but also inside them. It's making them angry and hateful. We've got murders, raping and several other disgusting activities.

Now the characters... We've got Robbie (our main character) and Christy (one of the worst characterized characters in Keene's multiverse and his long life friend Russ which is the second main character if you life. We've got several other characters but.. meh. Only Dez is different.

The ending was quite interesting and as much of Keene's novels it ends with a cliffhanger. What happened to them? If following Dez ramblings about The Darkness then they were killed by it. Most books by Keene ends not in a nice way (and in my opinion is quite good). Time to time I like to read books with a happy ending but a book with an unhappy ending for the characters are even greater. Specially this kind of endings where we don't know what happened but we know it can't be nice. 


PS: I made a lenghtly review but my computer made me a prank and I lost everything. Bah...

Thoughts (VIII)

People are dumb! Or else the producers make the actors that way. Why?

Imagine this. We've got a full invasion of zombie and some people are safely in the woods.

Good, right? You'll think that right? Wrong. You are in the woods surrounded by trees with animals. Either they turned into zombies and kill you or the zombies come silently in the cover of the night and the sounds of the animals and overrun you.

The second thing is... it's normal you comeback to the ancient rituals of harvesting and hunting. Right? Then why patrol alone? Or gathering  mushrooms and other fruits alone? That's dumb.

There are alot of survival kits (and survival zombie kits) out there. Before making a movie of zombies or another kind of apocalpytic fiction read it...

Book Review: Cycle of Werewolf - Stephen King

Title - Cycle of Werewolf

Author - Stephen King (images by Bernie Wrightson)

Year - 1983

Stand Alone or Series - Novella; Stand Alone

Pages - 128

Reading Time - 7 days (October 2010)

Rating - 7/10

Review

This was an odd book so say the least. This can be considered a novella or a collection of 12 linked short stories. Each story had only four of five pages, one of them would be a painting by one famous (not to me) artist. The paintings are not that good. My girlfriend could do a better job in my opinion.

As I said all stories are linked and each story deals with an werewolf attack or related. This tale is set, as much of King stories, in Maine. A werewolf is killing people and animals and every incident takes place in full moon. Our hero is an unsual one. An eleven year old paralapegic boy. Each story we get a individual character and his life and how they die or worse. In May we've got the first view on Baptist Revedrend Lester Lowe with a strange dream of a church full of werewolves and himself turning into one. In the Independence day we have the first meeting between Marty Coslaw (the eleven year boy) and the werewolf where they boy  injuries the werewolf. In December in the last battle between the boy and the werewolf (which he discovered being the reverend) where he killed it.

This novel has some gruesome writing images (not the paintings) and each kill is somewhat horrible than the next. Specially when the werewolf strips the flesh of the face of a man and wears it.

There are some connections with other King's stories (this part I only knew after reading in wiki), The fifth person killed was Clyde Carliss who is a character from Salem's Lot. There is also another character called Father Callahan.

In my humble opinion I enjoy some of the stories and they all linked nicely. I am not a fan of short stories but that doesn't drift me away from reading them. I am currently reading (along several books) Skeleton Crew, another Stephen King short story collection.



Thoughts (VIII)

"Perhaps one has to become a wolf, however, to fight wolves." - Black Corridor by Michael Moorcock

Is this sentece correct? Must we be evil to fight evil? Someone who fights, to defend himself, in the same way as his attacker is as bad as him? I don't believe it. I believe that wolves eventually will destroy one another.

Fight Evil With Evil - That's a great motto.