Bitter In Black

Had a bout of insomnia the other night...so that means I got to finish another book so YAY!  This of course means time for a haunted rambling to continue our October of awesome.  The book is The Woman in Black by Susan Hill which is the inspiration for the movie by the same name.  Was I to scared to sleep?  Let's find out...as always SPOILERS AHEAD!

Arthur Kipp starts us off by telling us where he is at now.  He is happily married to his second wife after being widowed at a young age and now enjoys his later life with his wife, step-children and grandchildren.  The family starts telling ghost stories which triggers a pretty intense memory in our narrator Mr. Kipp.  He takes us back to his younger days where he was working on making partner at his law firm.  He ultimate goal was to provide a comfortable home for his fiancee Stella and their future family.  To this end he is sent by his boss to the remote town of Crythin Gifford and further out to an old manor Eel Marsh House.  A crumbling pile that is regularly cut off by the high tide.  Mr. Kipp's job is to attend the funeral and then the business affairs of the late Alice Drablow, the last remaining Drablow to live at Eel Marsh House.  Mr. Kipp finds himself quit comfortable in the little town and sets off with the local solicitor Mr. Jerome.  During the funeral Mr. Kipp see's a gaunt and wasted figure in all black.  He enquirers about her and only receives fear and silence in answer.  Mr. Kipp heads out to Eel Marsh House and again encounters the Woman in Black and determines that she is not only unhuman, but potentially malevolent as well.  As Mr. Kipp continues to go through the house he is stuck in a fog and in that mist he hears the sound of a pony and trap go off the road and the screams of a child as they are sucked down and drowned in the treacherous marsh.  Mr. Kipp is shaken up until he is picked up by his man and realizes that what he heard was not real.  He decides to get provisions and stay at the house until his business is complete.  To this end a new friend insists that he borrows his little terrier Spider to accompany him.  Mr. Kipp is woken in the night by a sound coming from a locked door.  He breaks it open and discovers the room of a young boy and a rocking chair in motion.  After going through various documents in between being scared and startled by various noises he finally get's the tragic story of Eel Marsh House.  Turns out that Alice Drablow had a sister Jennet who gave birth to a child out of wedlock.  Because of the circumstances and time period, Jennet was forced to give the child to her sister to raise.  Jennet could finally no longer stand to be away from her son and came to Eel Marsh House.  One day, while Jennet was standing at the window she watched in horror as her son, his nursemaid and the driver of the trap and pony lost their way in the mists and were instantly sucked down and drowned in the marsh.  These are the screams Mr. Kipp kept hearing in the marsh.  Jennet died 12 years after her son, bitter, angry and blaming everybody for her sons death, haunting the town many years after her demise.  After some more terror, Mr. Kipp is brought to his friends house to recover.  It is here that Mr. Kipp learns the horrifying aftermath to the story.  Apparently every time the Woman in Black is sighted, a child dies a horrible death.  Mr. Kipp goes back to London to try and forget the terror of his trip.  He marries Stella and they have a son.  One day Mr. Kipp, his wife and infant son are at a fair.  Stella takes their son on a carriage ride while Mr. Kipp looks on.  As the carriage rounds the corner on its return trip, Mr. Kipp sees the Woman in Black step in front of the carriage, causing it to crash into a tree.  Mr. Kipp's son is killed instantly and Stella is grievously injured.  After 10 months of pain, Stella finally succumbs to her injuries, leaving Mr. Kipp as another victim of the bitter and angry spirit of the Woman in Black.

World Building - The atmosphere created by the author of this book was complete and enabled one to get lost in the moody and damp landscape.  The only real issue I had with the world building was how much of the book was spent describing the environment instead of showing it.  It felt like at least a third of the book was just descriptions of the dank marsh and the spooky, musty house.  While making a complete world, this also had the detrimental side effect of making the first 3/4 of the book a bit boring.  That being said, the setting was pretty perfect for the story.

Story - The actual ghost story part of this book is pretty awesome.  It was a story that was scary on two levels.  One, the story made sense, you could understand why the ghost was so angry and why she got revenge the way she did.  The second level of scary is that it involved innocent children.  It's bad enough when an adult with resources and reasoning is haunted, but when you involve children the chill factor jumps a ton...at least for me.  As for the rest of the story, again, the first 3/4 of the book was long drawn out set up that made me want to skip pages.  It wasn't until the last quarter of the book where I got super engrossed in the story so...

Characters - The characters where pretty much your average ghost story characters, slightly naive man, haunted villagers unwilling to part with information, the convenient friend, the cold recluse old lady, the angry spirit.  Nothing spectacular.  Nothing bad, just no real character development in anybody other then Mr. Kipp.  It was nice to see that he had overcome his past to a degree and found some happiness instead of letting it destroy him, but other then that pretty run of the mill characterization.

Editing - The combination of having this book be narrated in the first person and wanting this to be a full length book made most of it angsty and boring.  I am torn between blaming the author and blaming the editor for the pacing of this book.  The contrast between the excruciating slow bulk of the book and the amazingly creepy end of the book left me pretty frustrated and wondering how most people got far enough in to appreciate the spectacular last fourth of the story.  I personally feel that this would have been perfect for an under 100 pages story but that's just me.

Ghost Story - Let's get back to the ghost story part of this book for a minute shall we?  I was seriously scared for this part of the book.  After a ton of pages of feeling like I just wanted to put the book down it got really scary very quickly.  I really loved how squirmy and heart in the throat this part of the book made me.  I was in bed and even had a big strong Marine sleeping next to me and I STILL had the covers over my head!  This is what I look for in a good scary story.  Blood and gore don't really do it for me, but a great ghost story gives me all the chills.  I am pretty stoked that after slogging through so much blah, the pay off at least was pretty awesome.

The Movie - I loved the newest movie adaption of this book.  They definitely changed some things, but I felt, especially in movie format that the changes made the story even better.  In fact I liked the movie so much it inspired me to go hunt down other great ghost stories.  I totally got where the book inspired the creepiest parts of the movie, and the Eel Marsh House and surrounding environs were spot on match for the book.  Overall for a movie adaption I would strongly recommend it to anybody who prefers atmosphere and story over blood and gore for their chills.

Cause and Effect - I think the reason the actual ghost story part appeals to me is that it follows my own personal appreciation of cause and effect.  My favorite stories are ones where I can follow a reason for something to happen.  Many times, especially in supernatural tales, a ghost or spirit or monster is malevolent just because it makes the story scarier.  In stories like this, human actions have long term consequences AND the consequences are logical (or a logical as a bitter child killing ghost can be) to the actions that spawned them.  In this story a woman was forced to give up her child then had to watch him die a horrible death.  The consequences are that she now takes children away from their parents...makes sense in a way.  To me this is the potentially scariest thing ever 'cause it means that you have to be responsible for your actions or you or potentially innocent people will suffer for it.

Overall Impression - This is another case of a book I wanted to like a lot more then I did.  It was really excruciating to get through the majority of this book and the awesome chills I got from the last part may or may not make up for it.  In all honesty I will probably just skip to the good part if I ever read this book again.  I recommend it for anybody who has patience...or doesn't mind skipping right to the end.  I am torn because it was almost like reading two books, so I guess I give the first 3/4 of the book a 4 out of sheer boredom and the last 1/4 a 9 'cause it was super awesome...which averages to I don't know...maybe a 6 or 7 unreadable gravestones.  Anyways Happy Reading Everybody!

GrAwErBlah

Have had absolutely no time to read at all lately, getting a little frustrating.  I am going to do my best to finish at least one book by the weekend so I have something to blog about!

Thanks for all your patience, normalish posting will resume on Monday.  Happy Reading!

Crewel Intentions

One of my favorite things about e-books is the sheer variety one can now find, of course one of my least favorite things about e-books is the sheer variety of crapiness one can also find.  The upside is that most major online retailers (notably Barnes and Noble and Amazon) have a daily deal or even several deals where you can buy books that normally cost upwards of $18 for a mere couple of bucks.  Most of the books in these categories are from lesser known authors, or titles you may not have heard of before.  I have purchased many of these because hey for a couple bucks it is totally worth the risk.  I have found a few amazing books this way, and found new authors to love that I would never have the opportunity to find before this.  I have also found some really horrible books, crappy editing, amateur writing, books drug out into series that should have stayed as one book. And then there are the inbetweeners, books that have great potential but suffer from various issues.  Crewel by Gennifer Albin was one of these inbetween books.  I really wanted to like it.  It had an interesting premise and potential to go in many different directions, but in the end it just did not work for me.  Lets get to it shall we?

As always Spoiler Ahead!

We meet the main character Adelice Lewys, a teenage girl who lives on the world Arras.  This world is a highly controlled place, where women are subject to men and everything from food to jobs to education to the number of children your allowed to have is regulated by the all powerful Guild.  We learn that Adelice has just come from a mandatory testing to become a Spinster, a female who can see the "fabric" of the world and manipulate it.  To become a Spinster is every girls dream, it allows them to live in the lap of luxury and they are treated like celebrities.  For some reason though Adelice's parents are dead set against her becoming a Spinster.  Even though she displays immense talent at a young age, her parents teach her to hide it, to act clumsy and graceless. Unfortunately on the day of testing Adelice slips and weaves on the Loom that has been set up for testing purposes.  Her younger sister Amie, who is the most important person in Adelice's life is completely

oblivious to the tension surrounding the testing.  Adelice lies to her parents about her slip, trying to have one last night with her family before they take her away.  When they come for her, Adelice's parents do something unusual, they drag the girls to the basement and try to escape out of tunnels that had been built just for this purpose.  It is to no avail Adelice is captured, her father killed and her sister and mother's whereabouts are unknown. Cormac Patton, the Ambassador between the all powerful Guild and the Coventry (which is where the Spinsters live) warns Adelice to cooperate or bad things will happen. Adelice is taken to the Coventry where she is placed in a cell with nothing but a stone cold floor for company.  She meets Jost, the head valet who brings her food and has a bit of a sarcastic streak.  She is finally brought to her new rooms, which are palatial and belong only to her.  She is given a make over and a wardrobe and more food then she has ever seen in her life.  She is also given a mentor, a kind hearted Spinster by the name of Enora.  Enora gets her situated, but cannot or will not answer most of Adelice's questions, she is taken to orientation and meets her fellow trainee's for the first time.  It is here we learn not every girl selected actually ends up a Spinster, much testing is done and only a very few end up actually able to weave at a level needed to become a Spinster.  Everybody else is given other jobs in the Coventry, but none may leave. A bunch of stuff happens...kind of...ish.  Adelice makes enemies of pretty much every one, because she can't keep her mouth shut.  She meets Erik and a bit of a love triangle forms between her, Erik and Jost...kind of.  She learns the "shocking" (yes that is in quotes because, seriously not shocking at all) truth about her world from the Creweler Loricel.  Apparently only the most super duper talented girls can become the Creweler, a Creweler can see the weave of the world and manipulate it without a loom.  A Creweler is the only person who can harvest raw materials and weave more actual substance into the world of Arras.  All the other Spinsters can do is manipulate the material that is already present.   The "shocking truth" of Arras is that it is built over, or around, or on top of, or through or something (this part doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me) Earth.  Apparently humans were busy planning to bomb each other to end a war (it sounds like it may have been WWII from some of what they were saying, but I haven't been able to confirm it yet), but one of

the creators of the bomb posed some sort of space/time theory and the result was 12 nations of Earth decided to "weave" themselves a new home. Every body who knows about Earth assumes that the people left there have utterly destroyed themselves and the world with it.  Resources are pretty limited and everybody lives in utter and total fear of any type of discord, so the Guild has taken over for every body's own good.  From what I read, it sounds like the world of Arras has only been around for a couple of generations, but again not a lot of actual facts or consistency.  Adelice is continually being dragged back and forth between being wooed and coddled for her talents and threatened and tortured for her uppity behavior.  On top of all this Adelice discovers multiple conspiracies...kind of.  There is a process called ripping, which essentially means a Spinster can pull a persons thread and they disappear to who knows where.  The sick part is a person can put in a request to have an elderly or sick relative ripped without their consent.  What happens to a persons thread after they are ripped is never really talked about (probably because there are two more books), but a Big Bad Conspiracy is hinted at. More stuff happens...kind of.  Adelice finally has had enough and realizes she can use her super duper weaving power to rip a big whole in reality itself.  She takes herself, Jost and Erik through the rip and ends up on Earth.  The book ends just as a zeppelin type things comes over the horizon.

Other stuff happened in the book, there were lots of characters and lots of ideas and lots of conspiracies and lots of mysteries...kind of.  Are you getting sick of my kind of's yet?  Yeah me too.  I think that this was my biggest problem with the story, there was a lot going on, but none of it seemed to be going anywhere.  It felt like the author had a lot of great ideas, but did not know how to fully integrate them into one functioning story.  She missed a lot of opportunities to give us information to help us acclimate to this world we knew nothing about.  Every once in a while she would throw out a custom, or a geographical type reference, but for the most part I was left feeling like I did not know enough about this world to care what happened to it or its people. To me the key to a story like this is to really build a world that you want to know more about, and this book seemed like it wanted to, but it never was fully formed for me.  The idea/theory that Arras is based on, that it is a world literally woven out of space, time and stuff is a cool one and I would have loved to

explore the idea fully, but again the author left if until about 2/3 of the way through the book to even attempt to explain why they even needed Spinsters (which is the sole focus of the book), and then it felt like it was supposed to be this huge twisty reveal...which it wasn't.  I think it would have been better for the reader if the author had just shown us how the world worked pretty quickly, then you might have been able to enjoy the story instead of constantly wondering what the heck was going on!  The main character Adelice drove me banana's.  She seemed to come across as a feisty truth seeker, which is awesome.  She was loyal to her family and always had her sisters best interest at heart, she even risked her own little bit of happiness to reveal some potentially life changing information to Jost, all admirable and wonderful traits.  Except for all her mouthing off, she came across as completely powerless.  From the early parts of the book, she is aware of her super duper weaving ability, by half way through the book she knows she can pretty much do whatever she wants with the weave of the world AND she knows that you can rip a persons thread out of the weave...so what does she do with all this as they are torturing her, her loved ones, and friends? NOTHING! That's right, all it would take is for her to reach out and tug on a persons life thread as a reminder that she does not even need any special tools

to use the weave, she can rip you or your loved ones any time she wants if you don't do what she wants, but no, she whimpers and sneaks around and freaks when they decide to do mind experiments to get her to behave.  I wanted to shake her and shout "FOR THE LOVE OF LITTLE GREEN APPLES YOU CONTROL THE WHOLE FREAKING WEAVE!!!!!!" Anyways, a bit on the frustrating side.  I wanted to know more about this world and how it worked, I wanted to know how it was the Guild came to be and how they keep such tight control, I wanted to know if women were the ONLY ONES who could keep this world from fading away, why did they allow themselves to be second class citizens?  I wanted to know what all these supposed awesome clothes looked like (other then jewel colored), I wanted this book to be what it could have been.  I give it 4 out of 10 woven tapestries
What book(s) frustrate you with unrealized potential?  Did you think this book was going somewhere or did it get to caught up in its own ideas?  Am I being unrealistic in my demand for perfection? Do you ever feel bad not liking a book?

My Literary Pet Peeves

I have finally gotten some time to actually finish (or almost finish) a bunch of books I had started YAY ME! I have also discovered I am a bit of a book snob, expecting the near impossible of my beloved books.  Once again I am going to have to put in a bit of a disclaimer here, this post is in no way bashing books or authors, it's just a post about the part of the whole experience of reading, and to my fellow addicts out there you all know the more you read, the more there is to nit-pick.  OK disclaimer portion of our tour is out of the way on to the whining.  Yep today's post is about my book pet peeves, my literary Achilles heels, my biblo-flys in the ointments if you will.  See the more books I read the more a pattern emerges of things I love about books, and things that really annoy the heck out of me.  Let us explore some of them shall we.

Napkindad

Deus ex machina- this literary device as defined by Wikipedia.org is " 'god out of the machine'; plural: dei ex machina) is a plot device whereby a seemingly unsolvable problem is suddenly and abruptly solved with the contrived and unexpected intervention of some new event, character, ability, or object."  This is one of those things I absolutely HATE in books, I can be cruising along, really enjoying a story, thinking what a great author this is when BAM you realize there are only 10 pages left in the book and not a single thing has been resolved.  All of a sudden your long-lost mother who just happens to be an all powerful zombie god-mother who has access to unlimited funds and is also the lead singer in that awesome band you promised your friends you could get tickets to appears and everything is all better...even though the story was about film noir mystery solving monkeys?!?!? (Not a real book but seriously that actually sounds like a kinda cool book)  A word to authors, not everything has to end epically (is that a word?)  not every tiny detail needs to be gift wrapped, and yes we want the end of the book to actually make us feel like reading the whole book was worth it, because to me when you fix something last second with a curve ball that has little or nothing to do with the rest of the book it feels like a waste of time to read the last 200 or so pages.  All that being said I would guess that trying to end a story would be extremely difficult and I myself would have no idea how to write a satisfactory ending to half the books I complain about.

Series that won't end- I hate, hate, hate it when you get almost done with a great story, the author has given you a beginning, middle, and once on little detail is revealed and end...you get to the last couple pages when all of a sudden a bunch of weird characters show up, or the situation just kinda peters out when you realize OH NO they are going to make this into a series!  Now I have nothing against series, if they are either a) planned that way (like Harry Potter) or b) the material is obviously episodic (like Nancy Drew).  When a story feels like it is complete and ESPECIALLY (I really like my caps lock today) when the next books are not anywhere near as good as the first one it feels like the author (and/or publishers) just want's to squeeze extra money out of us.  Along the same idea, I hate it when a series that starts good goes on to long.  I have read triliogies that are awesome then at the back of the last book you see and excerpt for the next book and I'm always bewildered 'cause I thought the story wrapped up nicely.  I have also seen authors who feel there books should be trilogies (what is with the love of trilogies?) when you could usually very easily combine the second two books into a much better story.

Unclear writing styles- this is what I call books that feel like they were written with more then one voice or writer.  There is only one author listed, but it feels like there are disparate viewpoints or styles mixed into one book.  I am not talking about books that have several points of view, but for example, I finished a book about a month ago that the premise was very interesting and the world building came across complete, inventive and mature.  The story itself however seemed very simple and childish, the descriptions were trite and stereotypical.  I am not sure if the author took somebody elses idea's and built a story around them, or if there were actually multiple writers, or if the editors just really screwed up.  These books usually drive me insane because I want to like them so bad, as certain parts are so well written, but the hacky parts are made just that much worse!

To much blatant politicizing-I understand that a book is an expressive art form for an author, and when it is done correctly I don't mind when they try to get a personal ideal or belief into there books, but when it starts to take away from the story, or go into blatant preaching/politicizing to me it just gets obnoxious.  I have read books and series that I love and have been able to mix in these idea's almost flawlessly, and I have read books and series I love where on second reading I skip whole pages and chapters that contribute nothing towards the story.  The exception here obviously is when the book is supposed to be about whatever topic the author is pontificating on.

I want to like a book, but I can't- sometimes I'm not sure why I don't like a book.  The story is fine, there are none of my biggest pet peeves, nothing to offensive, but for some reason I just can't get into the book.  This is usually the most frustrating for me because I always want to like a book, I always go in looking for ways to love a story and when I can't tell you why I don't I feel like maybe it's just me.  Sometimes a person will recommend a book to me and I will be very excited because it seems like my type of genre, or the premise sounds exciting and I crack it open...and nothing.  I keep reading because on many occasions once I get a couple chapters in I can really get into it...but still nothing...kinda like a bad blind date, it looks great on paper but no chemistry in reality.

What are some of your biggest pet peeve?  Can you figure out what books I am referring to with my complaints?  Am I really being too nit-picky? Should the 14 chapter camping scene in the last Harry Potter get it's own special peeve?