A boy goes chasing a missing girl who left clues behind, and his image or idea of the girl becomes larger than the reality that she’s kind of a selfish person who left everyone behind. “Maybe she loved mysteries so much that she became one.”
So… I discovered good teen fiction. Way too damn late. GAH!
Plenty of Walt Whitman poetry in the book, and the characters feel like teenagers. Maybe a bit too smart, but maybe the teens I know are just too dumb. I liked it.
Simple Kid: A little like Gorillaz, a little like Beck. Funky, weird, and enjoyable. I picked it up at the pawn shop and did NOT expect to have this much fun.
*review
It’s about the life of a child living under military secrecy, with the strange allies and lifestyle. Then, when he grows older, he turns back to study the military secrets that caused the change in his life.
The work is a lot like Slaughterhouse V, but without aliens and time travel and a lot more dreamy. It comes off very dry and thoughtful. I wouldn’t recommend it to myself, but it wasn’t half bad and there’s definitely an audience for this kind of book. Just not me.
The lesson I drew from the book is: You can’t bring back the past. The main character spends much of his life trying to figure out the military secrets of his family and his childhood and tries to reconnect with the characters of his youth, but time has not been kind. Eventually, he moves on, having learned everything he could.
Quite possibly the worst book I have ever read. If you were to buy it from your used bookstore just to burn it, the world would be a better place. It baffles me that someone thought this was worth publishing. I thought I was losing my touch with quality in books, but nope, this brought me right back to reality.
It’s basically the Great Gatsby, but modern and brainless. A bunch of rich kids getting into parties, trouble, and girls, and backstabbing each other, but with no charm and no vocabulary. Written for seventh graders. Has no impact whatsoever. I mistakenly read till the end hoping for some redeeming aspect, but no. Two hours of my life, gone.
Plus, switching fonts for different perspectives is not hard, but this book decided to make it hard. Add that the main character is attracted to an 8th grader and one of the “crew” doesn’t appear until the end. I didn’t think I could hate a book this much, and I am definitely purging it in holy flames.
It’s about good and evil, power and temptation, and friendship, even through death.
Basically, these demons want to convert specific individuals who are intelligent sources of “righteous anger,” and the internal struggle of temptation. Righteous anger comes from righteous people, which gives the decision more difficult.
Of course, it has hints of horror (vampires), but not a horror novel. Set in the aftermath of Vietnam for a legless veteran, the temptation lies in getting his legs back. His philosophy major and doubt of reality make his struggle feel authentic, and the choice is artfully brief. But the gold of this novel is the bonds between characters and the philosophical nature of good and evil.
It’s a pity we’ll never get to see what those soldiers KIA could have been. Sure, there’s a quasi-rational explanation for undying demon-vampires, but in the end who knows? Better not to think about it.
With some context, contains sensitive content that not everyone’s down for, which makes the incubus demons feel truly monstrous. Does have a somewhat “rushed” ending, but I felt it was earned, and prevents it from being dragged out into a series.
Am I getting numb to the violent/sex shit authors so love to publish?
*review
*edit: I gave this a 5/5 just to try it. Being a downer is boring.
Surprisingly realistic, Reece’s countercampaign is quick, violent, and served to the completely deserving. Jack Carr knows what he’s doing, and so does Reece.
Although it feels like the murder pool should have been larger, it is reasoned that the less people involved in the conspiracy, the better. Additionally, some of their deaths felt too “clean” for what they did. Imagine that! I guess I’m complaining that I didn’t get to read more of Jack Reece’s exploits.
*review
Balefire, by Kenneth Goddard. 3.0
Don’t believe the description, the antagonist is very much afraid to die. A subpar thriller, interesting enough to read but the police officers blend together and the masterminds feel flat. Definitely a product of older times.
The prose is good, and the story is interesting and told in an interesting format, but personally it falls flat. It’s not super memorable, and it’s only at the very end of the book that we actually reach the main conflict.
The book is more about the individual character’s conflicts, and is told in a way where each character influences the story and passes the torch to another character to continue the story until it reaches our first character again, now an old grandmother. Which I think is the main message of the story: each person has their own arc and choices and regrets that affect the grand story.
It’s interesting that each character has a decision they regret; Holly regrets leaving Jacko, Hugo wonders if he could have had love over immortality, Ed regrets leaving his family and causing the deaths of his handlers, and Crispin Hershey regrets exacting veneance on his critic by putting him in a foreign prison for three years. Unfortunately, getting invested in each character’s story only for them to literally disappear (magically) or die gets tiresome, and the main payoff is that at the end of the story, Holly is able to send her granchildren somewhere safe, while she is left to die in Climate Change hell.
*Writer inserts modern culture war themes into literature in a semi-feasible way that isn’t too painful to read.
Red Snapper’s Prince Blimey is just a masterpiece. There isn’t one bad song on here. In fact, they’re all good songs. Imagine BadBadNotGood’s third album, but they slowed down and used electronic effects, like Silver Mt. Zion’s “He Has Left Us Alone…” . This stuff moves. And the effects aren’t overt, they’re the bass to lead guitar. Emphasis still on jazz, it’s a tempo piece with heart.
It’s like Rent, but bad. Not worth watching.
The characters seem hell-bent on making me hate them, and while it makes a dumb protagonist acceptable, the dance numbers are shunted into the film in a disorienting fashion. Are the song parts hallucinations? Parts of the plot? Or are they giving us perspective from inside the mind of the main character? What is going on? There’s no expanation until the song parts are such an obvious distortion of reality that the only way it makes sense is that it is seen from the viewpoint of the idiotic main character. In which case, what is the point of this visage, when it doesn’t affect the plot in any way?
Additionally, the majority of the film seems dedicated to women in the nude or singing about you know what. Did I mention Weinstein is listed in the credits? When the only good part of the film is based on showmanship, it’s kind of disheartening to see such a display.
The only part I like from the film is that of the husband Amos, the normal guy who chooses to protect his faithless wife and never gets recognized. Of course, he’s a side character.
It’s like Radiohead decided to try being Godsmack. The guitar riffs are awesome, but the singing and lyrics… not so much. Must every song be about sex? The worst part isn’t that it’s bad, the worst part is that it’s so close to being really good. I’ll have to look at their other work, especially that of Dave Navarro, the guitarist.