Big Screen Bite

Hola Readers.  Hubbin is a huge zombie fan...me...I find they all end up being the same thing.  That being said, on occasion somebody will come up with a way to refresh the genre...usually in book

form.  This winter I read The Girl With All the Gifts by M.R. Carey, my thoughts on which you can read here.  I mentioned that there was a movie and I was interested in this one in particular 'cause the author of the book wrote the screenplay simultaneously.  He stated that he made the screenplay purposely a bit different from the book to better fit the big screen format.  I was curious how this would turn out so on our last movie night we watched the film version.  For the most part I had almost the exact same feelings about the movie as I did the book.  The casting was pretty spot on, the world felt like a post apocalyptic zombie world, the story followed the book for pretty much everything...it was ok.  I felt that the world was better portrayed in the book, but the little actress that played Melanie really brought it.  I also felt that they could have done a better job advertising in the " hey this isn't really a movie for kids 'cause for real there is a whole lot of adult content in this movie" category.  Overall I felt that the movie really did not bring any of the uniqueness of the book...but still had some of the same pacing problems.  In the end I felt that neither was wholly original, neither was really bad, they were both interesting on certain points...but in the end as almost always, I liked the book better.  That being said, if you have read the book, go ahead and watch the movie 'cause there are some really cool parts.  Happy Reading Everybody!

Bite Me

Hola Readers!  Who is ready for a promised rambling?  Cool, let's get to it.  Today's book is one that was given to me by one of my favorite firehouse buddy's waaaaaaay back in October.  It has been on my TBR pile since then, but various circumstances have conspired to keep pushing the book back until this last month.   The book is The Girl With All the Gifts by M.R. Carey and ended up being both exactly what I thought it was going to be, yet at the same time entirely different...As always SPOILERS AHEAD!

Melanie is a just a school age girl living in a post apocalyptic world...except that her life is limited to a cell and a classroom.  Melanie it turns out is part of...a test subject group of children...(the ellipses are 'cause I don't know how else to describe them.) Anyways during the week Melanie and her classmates are taken from their individual cells and strapped into wheelchairs.  They are also masked and muzzled.  The kids are then wheeled into a classroom where various teachers teach various topics with various degrees of success.  Ms. Justineau is Melanie's favorite and is probably the most effective teacher of the bunch.  Ms. Justineau is also drawn to Melanie, feeling as if she is special in someway.  So pretty quickly we find out that the world has been ravaged by humans turned zombie and that the children are a weird mutant strain of said zombie that are being studied on the military base they are being held.  Turns out that a strain of fungal infection that has mutated from Iphigenia In Aulis (which is a real thing) has jumped species and turned humans into some form of zombie carrier for the fungal spore.  The kids that are part of this strange class are all high functioning infected group called hungriest.  Melanie is by far the smartest and most inquisitive of the group.  Dr. Caroline Cadwell is our resident mad scientist who is willing to do whatever it takes to find a cure for the infection and that includes cutting up the infected kids, using the excuse that they haven't been human since infection.  Eventually the base is over run by humans known as "junkers" that are so far uninfected humans that live off the grid.  The only people to escape are Melanie, Dr Cadwell (who had been just about to dissect Melanie), Ms. Justineau (who went to rescue Melanie), Sgt. Eddie Parks (the hard ass with a heart of gold guy in charge of this whole circus) and Kieran Gallagher ( a young and borderline idealistic soldier).  The group progresses through the landscape in the hopes of reaching the main human settelment on the British Isle called Beacon.  Along the way each member of the group has to cope with what Melanie is, a hungry that has the appearance and mannerisms of a child.  She is intelligent, able to make her own choices and yet still has the hunger for living flesh that her "hungry" counterpoints all have.   Each person deals with it in a different way.  Ms. Justineau essentially believes that she is all little girl who just has an unfortunate disease and needs to be protected.  Dr. Cadwell see's her as her ticket to scientific glory and nothing more then a case to be dissected and studied.  Sgt. Parks see's Melanie as a both an insurmountable danger and an assets and is constantly torn between both view points.  Mr. Gallagher usually just forgets that Melanie is anything more then a child.  As the motley group progresses they come across all manner of hungries.  Most of them are mindless flesh eaters, but a few seem to retain some semblance of their old humanity to varying degrees.  Eventually they end up in London and discover hungries with weird gray stalks growing from their bodies.  Turns out that eventually the fungus eats up the body and starts to grow itself to release new spores.  After much intro and extrospection (that's a word...right?) the group ends up attacked and reduced.  In the end, right before she dies, Dr. Caldwell discovers that some few humans hang on to enough humanity to reproduce and those kids who are born with the infection are much more intelligent and human like...hence Melanie.  The remenents of the group run into a strange grey wall that appears to be massive amounts of fungus stalks with seed pods that burst when set on fire.  More fighting, dying and expounding and Melanie comes to a realization.  She puts Ms. Justineau, the sole remaining human in a bio suit then proceeds to set the grey wall on fire, releasing the spores.  See, Melanie figures that the more human infected hungeries are the next generation in human evolution and started spreading the spores to hasten the process, keeping Ms. Justineau to teach the new hungry children.

World Building - The world is fairly complete, with nothing to original until we get to the gray stalk wall, which adds a bit of surreal otherworldlyness to the whole deal. It is pretty much a destroyed modern day London and surrounding areas in a slightly futuristic and destroyed vibe.  Pretty whole and complete zombie apocalypse with a fungal twist.

Story - The story was an interesting mix of run of the mill zombie with bits of originalness (I'm just making up words all over this post).  The mechanism of the zombie infection was pretty original, and I liked that it had real origins (more on that in a minute).  The real story though is Melanie and everybody's reaction to her.  I have read various thoughts on what the supposed "twist" was in the book, and I would say the ending, with Melanie essentially dooming the whole British Isle and possibly all of humanity, while still possibly saving them was perhaps the most unexpected part of the book...at least for me.

Character - One of the best and worst parts about this book is probably the characters.  On the one hand you have characters like Melanie, who is very accepting of what she is, practical and able to adapt.  She is able to understand what she is without letting it overwhelm her, which is more then I can say for many adults.  On the other hand most of the other characters come across and pretty stock.  We have our mad scientist ho is willing to go way to far in the name of science.  The sweet teacher with a past that just wants to love the poor abandon child, the super gruff with a hidden heart of gold soldier...etc...That being said, even with the...tropieness of most of the characters, I still found myself engrossed in their story and sympathizing with most of them...so...yeah.

Editing - For the most part the editing was fairly decent.  The story moved forward and mostly made sense.  The chapters skipped around with different view points, which for the most part was pretty cool as we didn't only see the story from one perspective.  Every once in a while the transition between chapters was a bit jarring, but mostly it was pretty readable.

The Fungus - Ok, so my logical brain both loved and hated the explanation for the zombie plague.  On one hand the idea that the infection stemmed from a real fungus that really does turn living

creatures (albeit ant's) into fairly legit zombies is pretty cool.  It gives a fairly realistic way for this usually unrealistic plague to happen.  The progression of the fungus also is pretty well thought out and did not trigger any of my "oh right, like that would ever happen" bells.  On the other hand, the piece I do take issue with is that these monster flesh eating creatures would on occasion be lucid enough to get pregnant, carry the kid, give birth, not eat the baby, and then the baby would survive long enough to become the next step in the evolutionary process...not so much...Yeah.

The Author - This is the book that actually inspired my previous post.  I was reading it and thinking it was written for YA by an author that writes for that genre (I don't know why that was my assumption, but their you go.).  Anyways, I was actually a bit on the fence 'cause while I don't feel our youth should be sheltered or talked down to...this book just did not really vibe as one I would hand to a 12 year old.  Then I did some research and discovered who the author was and who the real intended audience was and magically the book totally changed tone for me.  In this case it made the overall experience infinatly better.  It is a gritty book that does not pull any punches and it fit's the authors more comic book style very well.  I also learned that the author wrote the screeenplay for the movie simultaneously, and that he stated that it was purposely different from the book.   I have not seen it yet, but if it is worth it, I'll post about it later.

Expectations - This book was a weird dichotomy for me because it was both exactly what I thought it would be and surprising at both the same time.  I was expecting a book about a kid who was a zombie but not,,,and that is exactly what it was.  On the other hand, the book was much much darker and grittier and philosophical then I had anticipated.  It was strange to read a book that pretty much did everything I expected it to, and yet still had the power to surprise me with various tidbits and actions.  I also feel like the genre/age group that this book was intended for gets muddled.  The idea of the whole book, leads me to feel like it should be a YA book, but the reality is that I feel it is intended for a bit more of a mature audience

Overall Impression - Almost two weeks later I still haven't gotten a handle of how I really feel about this book.  I know that it made me think, which I love.  I know that it made me spend most of a flight talking Hubbins ear off about various things, also good.  I know that it frustrated me 'cause it could have been even better, the ending could have been phenomenal instead of merely great.  The expectations could have been set differently...who knows...I guess I give the book 7 out of 10 bowels of maggots and recommend it to anybody looking for a good zombie book with a hint of something different.  Happy Reading Everybody!

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!

Two Souls One Body And Some Weird Voodoo

Hola Readers. Ready to start our October scare fest?  Found a new book by a new author called The Dead House by Dawn Kurtagich.  I grabbed it 'cause the cover was cool, it involved mental health issues, and a potentially unreliable narrator...which when done right is one of my favorite things.  How did I like the book?  Read on to find out.  As always SPOILERS AHEAD!

The book is written as a collection of culled bits and pieces from various media.  Mostly diary entries, video, and interview snippets.  We start off being told that there was a tragedy that happend at Elmbridge High School, a boarding school in England.  Over the course of a couple months multiple people have died or disappeared, culminating in a fire that left a couple more students dead and a few of them critically injured.  This book is meant to try and piece together what happened before the event.  We meet Kaitlyn, the alter identity of Carly the main character of our story.  Interestingly enough, even though Carly had her own part to play in the story, it is only Kaitlyn we hear from.  Kaitlyn's diary makes up most of the book along with her friend Naida's video diary and various interview snippets.  The gist of the story is that Carly was sent to a mental hospital following the death of her parents in some undisclosed tragedy (the term tragedy is going to be used quit a bit in this rambling, you have been warned).  Carly's therapist won' tell her what happend, rather hoping that Carly will remember on her own when she is ready.  We meet Kaitlyn, the supposed alter to ego to Carly in what their therapist has "dubbed" dissociative identity disorder.  The therapist thinks that the split happened after the accident, but Kaitlyn insists that she has always been their.  This is kind of confirmed when their little sister Jaime knows who Kaitlyn is.  Anyways, Carly is only present during the day and Kaitlyn is only present at night, neither aware of what the other experiences.  The two identities communicate through notes that they hide from the rest of the world.  Carly/Kaitlyn are allowed to go to Elmbridge, a boarding school that works with the hospital.  There they become friends with Naida, one of the few people who know about both personalities.  Naida is also very into some sort of Scottish voodoo.  Kaitlyn meets and falls in love with the mysterious and weird Ari, keeping him a secret from Carly.  One day Kaitlyn wakes up in the morning without Carly taking over.  This completely freaks Kaitlyn out which causes her to hurt herself sending her back to the hospital.  The therapist is surprised as it seems that Kaitlyn, not Carly is the "real" personality, but tries to convince her that she is still really Carly.  Kaitlyn freaks even more and wants Carly back.  Naida breaks Kaitlyn out of jail and hides her in the basement of the school.  Through out this whole time Kaitlyn refers to Dee in her diary, essentially giving her diary a name and personality.  Kaitlyn also experiences a malevolent voice, and hallucinations of an old decaying house she dubs the Dead House (hence the title of the book).  Naida decides that Kaitlyn and Carly are victims of dark magic and get's their friends in all kinds of dark Scottish voodoo to try and get Carly back. They determine that a dark magic worker has sent a demon to possess Carly/Kaitlyn and that it needs to be gotten rid of.  This does not work as planned and results in Naida cutting out her own tongue.  Naida's brother, a shaman comes to try and re-do the ritual the right way, they find out that somebody close to Kaitlyn is the bad guy.  Several bodies later it is revealed that Ari is responsible for sending the demon to possess the girls, because he felt that Carly and her friends were keeping Kaitlyn from living a full life.  We also find out that Kaitlyn is responsible for all the deaths due to the demon possessing her.  We also find out that Kaitlyn is responsible for her parents death as she grabbed the wheel and crashed the car on purpose after and argument with her father.  She told her friend John (a guy she met before the accident and one more body to add to the count) that she was glad they died and that it was the happiest day of her life.  We end the book with and interview with Carly/Kaitlyn's therapist leaning that she lost her licence and started a paranormal research lab on the remains of Elmbridge.  A transcription of a video reveals that Kaitlyn set herself and the school on fire and before she died a shadow could be seen joining her.  Carly/Kaitlyn's body was never found.  Elmbridge continues to be a site of paranormal research and mysterious disappearances.

World Building - This is a contemporary YA novel set mostly in a hospital and boarding school in England.  The world was fairly small, but very well built.  I could probably find my way to the ruined chapel, I could see the various rooms Kaitlyn was stuck in, the Dead House was sufficiently creepy and atmospheric.  As far as settings the world was pretty complete.

Story - I had some issues with the story.  It felt like a mismatch of a truly troubled individual who may or may not have at least one serious mental illness and some weird voodoo magic haunted stuff.  The story felt overloaded, convoluted and in all honesty felt like it never went anywhere.  There were several storylines that were alluded to but we never got back to them, like was Kaitlyn/Carly always a pair, or did they not appear until after the accident, was the school haunted or was that all Kaitlyn and her friends, how many malevolent entities are there and where did they all come from?  If the demon is responsible for all of Kaitlyn's killings then why did she kill her parent's long before she met Ari?  So many more questions and no answers.  It felt like the author had a thousand idea's and instead of really focusing on one or two she just crammed them all in there and hoped for the best...so yeah.

Character - Hmmm, so in some ways I really liked some of the characters.  Kaitlyn was at least interesting, even if she was a bit angsty...though to be fair she actually sounds like some people I know as an adult so even her angst was at least on point.  Naida was pretty cool, I liked her loyalty to both Carly and Kaitlyn, I liked her ability to go and get things done and just her attitude in general.  Scott and John were ok, Ari was fun until the very end when the story went weird...so eh on the characters I guess.

Editing - From a format perspective I thought this book was pretty cool.  The various snippets were fun and gave us multiple perspectives.  From a book stand point I thought some tighter editing would have been an asset.   As mentioned before, I felt that there were just waaaaaaay to many random stories thrown in, and I feel a good editor would have sat the author down and been like "hey chica, these are all great idea's but maybe write like three or four books and really explore them instead of mush them into one confusing mess".  I also felt like the various "twists" where thrown in willy nilly while at the same time the two main mysteries (the fire and the accident) where victims of the let's use ambiguity to stretch out the suspense until nobody cares.  I really felt the editor let this book and author down as far as continuity and readability.

Mental Illness - In some ways I like that this book is a potentially jumping off point for an open and frank discussion on mental illness, especially in young adults.  I feel this book tried to touch on very important topics such as medication, integration and diagnosing of this very real and very poorly understood group of illnesses.  The questioning of the therapists methods were a good reminder that we still need to work on legitimate ways to help people, while Kaitlyn's potentially destructive behavior towards herself and others makes us ponder the balance of personal freedom and the safety of the patient and those around them.  Unfortunately the shaky inclusion of the voodoo magic stuff with no real answer at the end of the book makes it seem that all of the potential realities of this were swept away with the answer of "oh she wasn't really crazy it was probably some voodoo demon so yeah".  I think I am even more disappointed because I have read some very well written books that meld potential mental health issues and the paranormal in a way that is very effective and to me this book did not deliver on that.

Magic - I think my main problem with the voodoo in this book ( to be fair the author did name it something specific...not voodoo...I just call it voodoo 'cause that is exactly what it sounds like) is that it is never even remotely explained.  The only real info I could glean from the book is that is is some sort of maybe Scottish magic and that it seriously resembles Creole voodoo.  We never get a clear picture of what it is or how it works even though it plays a huge part in the book.  Along with that we get a timeline that includes Kaitlyn hearing voices and seeing dead people...or zombies...or ghosts...or shadows or whatever long before she meets Naida.  I guess if some of what was going on was explained better and how SO MANY unrelated characters all knew about it and how to use it was plausible I would have been more willing to believe that it may have been influencing Kaitlyn.  There was a mention of potential mass hysteria and in all honesty if this had been explored a bit more I would have been much happier.

Carly/Kaitlyn - By far the most interesting part of this book for me was the Carly/Kaitlyn dynamic.  What was in the book was very intriguing and page turning.  The idea that the two of them considered themselves sisters, figured out a way to communicate, were aware of each other and would even ask each other favors.  I really really wanted to know more about their history, were they really both around before the accident?  Were they equal as two separate people in one body or was one of them a splintered personality.  Who was really the "real" person Carly or Kaitlyn.  It seems like there was so much story to mine here, so many twits and turns to navigate that I am sad that none of it made it into the story.  I feel like if we had been able to explore at least Kaitlyn as more then the troubled angsty alter ego we may have found some true horror in her all to human psychology.

Overall - I think my feelings have been made pretty clear on this particular book.  I really wanted to like it.  The format, the premise and the topics all seemed like they could be very very interesting but overall I feel this book gave me lots of tantalizing tidbits but ultimately did not deliver on any of them.  I give this book 5 out of 10 purple notes and have now been inspired to write a completely separate post on books I would like to author to rewrite.  I have noted that I am in the minority on my opinions on this book and feel that most teen's would probably very much enjoy it and that is a good thing.  For myself I feel like I ordered a gourmet grill burger and got a McDonald's little cheeseburger instead, it tastes all right but not what I wanted.  Happy Reading Everybody!

Carnival Of Souls

Being the awesome person that I am, occasionally somebody will randomly buy me books, or lend me books, or chuck books at my head that they think I might find interesting.  Usually this is accompyyed by, "hey this book sounds really weird, I think you'll like it."  I'm not 100% sure what to make of this, but I have gotten several good books this way, so I'm not gonna knock it.  One book I aquired in such a manner is Johannes Cabal the Necromancer by Jonathan L. Howard.  As I was looking for one last October book and I had looked at this one several times, I was a happy girl.  As always SPOILERS AHEAD!

Johannes Cabal is a necromancer.  He aquired these powers for a purely scientific purpose and sold his soul to Satan to obtain the secrets of bringing the dead back to life.  As with all deals with the devil, this one is imperfect and Cabal is stuck trying to perfect the process.  He soon realizes that his lack of soul is hindering his expermentation and so goes to Hell to make a deal with Satan.  After a bit of haggeling, Satan gives him a Diabolical Carnival, a ball of his blood to create and control it and a year to get 100 souls in exchange for his own back.  Cabal goes and releases his brother Horst from an old crypt after an incident turns him into a vampire.  Horst is able to actually understand humans and is able to help Cabal put together an appealing, if insane event.  Several little events happen along the way, but the majority of the story follows Cabal and his quest for souls.  For the most part Cabal only collects the souls of people who were probably headed for Hell anyways, and as long as this is the case, Horst holds his tounge.  Along the carnival route, Satan throws a couple of curve
balls just for fun, but Cabal overcomes them and continues to collect souls.  The carnival finally arrives at the last stop, an idyllic town that is harder to woo then previous ones.  Cabal has only two souls left to collect and is feeling pretty good.  Things start to go very very very wrong when instead of his normal bad soul collecting, Cabal pushes a young woman who has been sleep deprived and exhausted by her new baby to kill it.  In exchnge for her soul, Cabal brings the baby back to life. This henious act disturbs Horst to the point that he starts to oppose his brother.  At the last moment Cabal aquires the soul of a good woman who volunteers to give it up in exchange for her fathers life.  Enraged over this apparent lack of humanity, Horst reveals that he stole a form and that Cabal only has 99 out of the 100 souls Cabal needs to reclaim his soul.  Horst then walks out in the sun, ending his life.  Cabal heads back to Hell to deal with Satan once again.  Noting that he is desperate for the souls of the two women, Cabal makes quit a sneaky trade and recieves his soul back.  His cleverness works and he is able to keep the souls of the two women out of Satan's hands.  He goes home to continue his necromancy research and we see that he has kept the body of what I assume was his wife or girlfriend preserved, giving us the reason he is so obsessive.  A sequal is obvious, but the story is complete.

This was a fun and fairly quick read.  It was a bit scattershot, but got the story across, especially in the second half.  Some things of note.  What I think I liked the best was the fact that Johannes Cabal was technically a Satanist, but not for any religious reasons, it was just the only way he felt he could get what he needed.  He deals with all of the incantation, summonings, ghosts, demons, and other otherworldly things with a detached and logical manner that completley belies most stereotypes we have seen in the past.  Cabal also showed a degree of humanism through out the book that was at odds with his supposed villiany.  Many times through out the book he showed a compassion, that though it was tempered with logic and saracasm, was always present.  This helped with the sheer

horror I felt when he encouraged the young woman to kill her baby, and was a very effective writing tool.  I like stories like this where good and bad is not always cut and dry...does it count as stealing a soul if it was going to Hell anyways?  Do the ends justify the means?  What is the difference between magic and science?  All great quetions brought up by this book.  The writing itself tried a little too hard to be humorus and was at its best when the author just wrote the story, not trying to force the clever humor that only works on occasion.  There were a few bits, especially in the beginning that did not seem to fit the story as a whole, but like I said earlier, this seemed to resolve itself later in the book.  I loved the solution to Cabal's issues with Satan at the end of the book, and I really loved that although Cabal got what he came for, his life is still very far from perfect and he still had to live with the consequences of his actions.  I wish we could have seen a bit more of the carnival, mostly because I LOVE LOVE LOVE circus's and carnivals, especially ones with a supernatural twist.  Overall I reccomend this book to anybody who saw The Devil's Carnival and enjoyed at least certain aspects of it, enjoys a good deal with the devil, or just likes a nice story about the harvesting of souls.  I give this book 7 out of 10 Latex Ladies and will probably pick up the sequal at some point.
What would it take for you to sell your soul?  Do you like books that combine horror and humor?  Why does everybody think I like weird things?

Literary Allusions In A Haunted Forest

My birthday weekend rocked.  I have to say I have the best friends and family on planet earth and having a birthday in the middle of fall/near Halloween is just icing on the really yummy molten lava cake they bought me for my birthday.  The weekend started with a two hour Skype with the Mamma, followed by phone calls, video's and cards from all of my nephews.  A quick check in with Daddy and the siblings and I was ready to party.  Baby Sis and her husband came down from PA to party with me, the Hubbin and some very close friends in my favorite Irish pub.  I love the feel of this pub, it is an old in with all these little tables tucked away and you can just imagine your favorite author jotting down his/her story with a glass of Irish whisky in hand.
Saturday started out at my favorite used book store 2nd & Charles and between me and Baby Sis we may have filled up the trunk of the car with books...we may never be allowed to go back.  Dinner with friends and then on to Markoff's Haunted Forest.  The whole event was based on Dante's Inferno with the attractions being named and themed after the seven circles of Hell.  I do not scare easily, but the people I was with do, so I was thoroughly entertained the whole time (all right I admit it, I did my fair share of screaming too!).  We rode the zip-line, which in the middle of the night is the best feeling in the world.  There were bon fires, food, music, and a ton of demons to keep us on our toes.  The best part of the night was the actual trail itself.  You get to wander through the woods, through various vignette's all while clinging tightly to your group.  Six of us ended up going through together and you could tell we were all book geeks by our numerous references to books through out.  One girl got "volunteered" to be tribute (as in Katniss volunteering in The Hunger Games).  There was a swamp that instead of scaring us, led to a five minute discussion on how it reminded us of the Dread Marshes from the Two Towers...until the scary monsters asked us to kindly move along.  One of the sections contained a combination of human and dragon bones that looked like it could have come straight out of Game of Thrones, complete with a GIANT dragon skull that nearly knocked one of our own into the swamp.  Overall the scares were great, the night was perfect and I could not have asked for better people to spend my birthday weekend with.  I hope you all had a great weekend too and can't wait to get some of my ramblings up this week.  Happy Reading Everybody!

And Everybody Dies

I love a good scary story.  I love the chill that goes up your spine, the jumpiness when a door creaks, the urge to turn on a light after you have read a particularly spooky story.  This year I have been searching for a good collection of scary stories and one of the books I read in the never ending quest for a good scary story was Uncle Montegue's Tales of Terror by Chris Priestley.  It is a book of short stories, tied together by the over all story of Uncle Montegue and the stories he tells his nephew.  Here are some of my favorites in the collection.

Climb Not - A boy finds a strange tree on his new estate, and against all warning climbs it.  He is chased by an unknown presence and is ultimately killed.  This is the kind of story that I find scary, one where force is never seen, leaving me to imagine the worst.

The Un-Door - This story features the classic twist of the con-woman becoming the victim when a face seance team discovers that ghosts are real.  Our fake assistant/thief becomes trapped in a doll-house when a supposed fake seance becomes very real.

Offerings - Every parents worst nightmare comes true in this story of a sweet little boy who befriends a deamon.  When a preacher and his family move to a new town, their little boy turns from an innocent lad into a demon influenced killer.

The Gilt Frame- A story about a girl who finds her wishes are coming true in the most horrible of fashions.  This realization becomes even more horrific when she realizes that it is she, and not the girl in the mirror who is bringing this awful events about.

The Path - A boy who is becoming a man decides to leave his small village.  As he is walking up the hidden path, he realizes he is being followed.  He tries to out run this apparition, only to realize it is a bloody, injured, ruin of himself...which turns out to be a terrible foreshadowing of his own fate.

I read a couple of these stories to my Hubbin as we drove through the back roads in the middle of the night and the atmosphere was fantastic.  I found these tales to be moderately spooky, but at the same time a bit predictable.  I found it a bit crazy that in every story somebody died a horrible death...or became a monstrous killer...or both.  Over all the atmosphere, illustrations, and the writers tendency to kill people made this a decent Halloween read.  I give it 7 out of 10 demon bench ends.

What makes a story scary for you?  How do you feel about everybody always dying?  How dangerous is it to scare the person driving you around?

Cloned Blogger

Just so everybody knows, I was originally going to call this book incestuous necrophiliac, but decided I would probably get the wrong kind of audience :-)  What the heck am I talking about you ask?  This is the post where I ramble about Blackout, the third book in the Newsflesh trilogy by Mira Grant.  It has taken me a while to finally finish this series, but here we go.  As always SPOILERS AHEAD!

We left our group being chased by zombie virus infested mosquito's.  Florida has essentially fallen to the zombies and the country is once again in chaos.  Shaun has been bitten by a zombie, and has recovered, make him immune to the Kellis-Amberly virus.  He and his team decide to go and find out just what the heck happened with the mosquito's, as they suspect that they were released on purpose as a distraction from the news story the crew was going to break about the intentional killing of the reservoir condition people, and the attempt to infect people with a stable strain of the Kellis-Amberly virus.  If this is all a bit technical and confusing...well that's how I felt too :-).  Meanwhile Georgia wakes up in a secure CDC facility and learns that she is the most recent in a line of clones that the CDC has produced to try and control Shaun and his crew.  The plan is to make a stable version of Georgia and then mess with her brain enough to control her.  Part of this plan involves surgeries to make the clone Georgia more like the original as they cannot make a clone with the retinal reservoir condition the original Georgia had.  Eventually Georgia II as she calls herself is rescued and finally gets to meet up with Shaun.  Understandably the team, Shaun and even Georgia herself have some reservations about just how much of Georgia is left in the clone.  According to the scientists who created her Georgia II is a 97% match for the original.  After some questions and such they all end up at the White House where President Ryman and his vice-president, the former Newsie Rick attempt to use Georgia against Shaun and his team to repress the news that there will never be a cure for the zombie disease, just a treatment.  The CDC, apart from wanting to keep all the power, believe that the general public will freak if they know there is no cure.  They want Shaun and his team to essentially be the mouth pieces of the government, to only put out what the CDC wants them to, and they are willing to threaten everybody including the president to do it.  Luckily for our team, vice-president Rick has other plans and helps take down the CDC guy and with the help of some friends restores the truth.  The story breaks and everybody who didn't die goes back home to try and live the rest of their lives.  Georgia and Shaun reveal that they are lovers as well as brother and sister (hence the incestuous necrophiliac joke...it makes sense in the book, I promise) and disappear, presumably to Canada.  Life continues and our trilogy ends.

Where to start, where to start.  In the first book we had Georgia as our narrator, in the second book Shaun took over, in this book they switch back and forth.  I have always liked Georgia's voice better, I'm not sure if it is because Shaun is a bit more emotional and broody, or I prefer Georgia's more factual take, but in this book I liked her chapters best.   I also liked Georgia's chapters because they seemed to go somewhere, where Shaun and his team seemed to be going around in circles alot.   You definitely need to read the first two books to understand this book, and for a couple of things relating to why the CDC was after Shaun and his team I had to go back and look up.  For Shaun, I liked that the Georgia in his head did not go away when Georgia II showed up, showing us just how far gone he had been.  I do wonder however why when he saw the Georgia in his head manifest, he saw her without the retinal Kellis-Amberly when he had never seen her without it.  I liked following Georgia II as she learned she was one of several clones, was experimented on, and eventually came to grips with what she was.  I was not a huge fan of the whole lover thing between Georgia and Shaun, even though I saw it coming in the first book.  I know they are not technically related, but...I don't know I still found it a bit icky.  I liked the questions raised with both the scientific and emotional

ramifications of cloning.  I liked how they acknowledged that Georgia II was NOT Georgia, but for some purposes, especially for Shaun, she was good enough.  Overall I liked this book better then the second one, but not as much as the first.  Now that I have finished it, I would like to talk over the series as a whole.  I love the world the author has created, I like that it is not your typical survivalist, living in the woods, shooting zombies to survive type of world, but more of a continuing life with zombies, but I still want my Starbucks type of world.  It is still a unique take, and I really like it.  I also still appreciate the "science" (I put that in quotes, because it is fictional) that the author used to make the virus plausible to those of us who are super nit-picky.  I did find that the three books had a bit of lack of consistency as far as the story line went.  The first book was so focused on the campaign, that when it was barely acknowledged in the second book, and only really brought in at the end of the third book, it felt a bit disjointed.  I know the real story was about the virus conspiracy with the CDC, but that felt scattered to me as well. To me it felt as if each book was telling a different story without it being successfully tied together, but that may be just me.  I also felt that when dealing with Shaun and his crew, it took a really long time for them to get anywhere, it felt like they did a lot of hurry up and wait while the rest of the story caught up or progressed.  I did like the series as a whole, and think that the author is a superb writer.  I enjoyed all three books to varying degrees. I give this book a 7 out of 10 zombie clones and give the series as a whole 7 out of 10 virus tests.
What do you think about unrelated siblings getting it on?  What series have you read that is better when looked at as a whole?  Should I have tempted fate and used incestuous necrophiliac as a post title?

Fairytale Horror

I have heard a couple people talk about how a lot of the new re-tellings of the classic fairy tales are so much darker then the originals.  I guess they must think that the Disney versions, or the little pretty picture books are the originals, because seriously, the original tales could almost all be part of a Halloween Horror Fest.  For example

Cinderella - A tale of a girl who works hard and finally gets the prince and palace she deserves...or is it a tale of how even after getting her prince and crown, a flock of birds comes and pecks the step-sisters and step-mothers eyes out.  This of course after the step-mother aids her girls in mutilating their own feet for a chance at the prince.  That's happily ever after for you.

Sleeping Beauty - A lovely story of a princess woken up by true loves kiss...awwww.  Wait, there is more.  Yep the rest of the story is about how the princess Ogress of a mother attempts to eat Sleeping Beauty's children, and not being happy with that, tries to eat her too!  Yay cannabalism.

Hansel and Gretel - Speaking of cannabalism, what is with fairy tales and child eating witches hmmm?  Here we have two sweet innocent kids, who not only get abandonded, but then live through the terror of the witch's house, where one child has to sit by helplessly as her brother is fattened up to be eaten,  Talks about your dread and horror.

Rapunzel - Rapunzel, Repunzel let down your golden hair...ooops another evil witch, and depending on the story several princes died, or in a "happier" version the poor princes gouges his eyes out on thorns.  Of course we then have the requisite wandering in the desert wilds until they find each other, and hopefully a good phsyciatrist.

The Red Shoes - If  you want a good old fashioned horror story, look no further then this moralistic beauty.  The poor girl in this story is punished for her vanity by being forced to dance with no rest, and then to try and get some relief she chops her own feet off.  She then in pennance allows her self to be viewed and humiliated as a lesson to the other until she dies.  Happy Times.

These are just a few examples of stories that have every element of horror in them.  Death, ghosts, witches, warlocks, evil parents, torture, pain, loss.  Seriously I don't know why we don't get out the old Grimm's Fairy Tales as our traditional book of horror every Halloween. Happy Reading Everybody!

I See Dead People

Soooo...today is one of those days that I realize the hazard of reading books loved by other people.  I have just finished Odd Thomas by Dean Koontz, the first in his Odd Thomas series.  I have had it on my list for a while and several people who know what I like to read have recommended it to me with glowing reviews.  I was eager to start it...but to be honest I had a bit of a hard time finishing it...please don't hate me!  First a quick synopsis, as always SPOILERS AHEAD!

Odd Thomas is...well...odd :-)  He has a gift/curse of being able to see dead people who have unfinished business in this world, and on occasion helps them out. While he can see the dead, he cannot hear them. He lives in the little desert town of Pico Mundo where he is a short order cook.  His little town is populated by an array of characters including his love Stormy, his landlord who is terrified of turning invisible, his widowed boss, an obese author, a strangely understanding Chief of police and other various inhabitants.  We see Odd help the ghost of a murdered girl track down and capture her killer and then Odd is off to work.  His life if focused on his town and the people who live in it, especially Stormy who is destined to be with him forever according to a gypsy fortune telling machine.  Odd has been seeing beings he refers to as bodachs, which are fluid, invisible creatures who come around when there is a tragedy about to occur.  He notices that there is more then he has ever seen before and that they are centering around a stranger that he refers to as Fungus Man.  Odd follows him and does some investigating, finally figuring out that there is a conspiracy including several new hires on the local police force to instigate a mass murder event at the local mall.  The perpetrators are all Satan worshipers, considering the killings to be a form of worship.  Odd does what he can to stop the crime from happening, but only succeeds in lessening the killings.  In the end, instead of hundreds of people dying, only 19 died, including Stormy. Odd is himself injured and lives in a bit of a dream world while he recovers, only finally admitting that the Stormy he has been conversing with is just her ghost and he has been filling her side of the conversation in.  He finally lets her go and continues his adventures with the dead in the next book.

So there we have it.  The premise and the story were both good, what I had the most issues with was the writing.  This may be a personal thing, so if you disagree with any of this, that is understandable.  I feel like the book was WAY to long for the story.  Ever single sentence was dripping with over description, metaphor, and comparisons.  These are nice on occasion to add atmosphere, or let you know about a new area, but when it is every single sentence it just gets tedious.  Ok I'm exaggerating, it's not every single sentence, but there is a lot of it.  The writing also felt a bit repetitive, instead of moving on, we kept going back to the same people and the same places rehashing the same thing.  For me this took a lot of the tension out of the story.  The other thing I had an issue with was the sheer over the top personalities EVERY SINGLE PERSON had.  Everybody had a screwed up tragic history, every person had some sort of spiritual mumbo jumbo connection to something, everybody was crazy, or weird, or odd, or quirky, there was no normalcy to contrast these characters against so it felt really angsty to me.  It was also written in the dreaded first person narrative, and had a ton of the "if I only knew then" foreshadowing that gets really old, really quickly for me.  Like I said earlier, the story itself was pretty good, but I wanted more story and less abstract introspection, more moving forward, less dwelling on tragic pasts.  I did enjoy the structure the author put around Odd's gift, the "rules" of it made sense and added a realism to it that I enjoyed.  I can see why other people really enjoy these books, it is just that this kind of writing style is not my particular cup of tea.  I will probably pick up the next book at some point, just to see if the writing style continues to be so angsty, or if it picks up a bit.  I give this book 5 out of 10 local Elvis ghosts. 

What do you do when you don't enjoy a book as much as people want you too?  What would you do if you could see dead people?  What library should I haunt after I pass on?

Carrot Juice Zombie Infection

Hi Everybody (Hi Dr. Nick), sorry a bit of Simpsons humor, couldn't help myself.  How is everybody on this fine snowy morning?  Everybody got a big cup of hot coffee?  Everybody got there big fluffy blankies? Everybody got their ax in case of a snowy zombie attack? Oh...I'm being told it wasn't actually a zombie attack this morning, just a bunch of idiots who can't drive in the snow...well zombies are way more fun so lets talk about those instead.  Undead by Kirsty McKay is a YA book about zombies read because it was handed to me by my Hubbin who said "this looks cool, you should read it and tell me what happens", so I did.  As always SPOILERS AHEAD.

Bobby has it rough, she is a British native who was moved to the US because of her mothers job and then back to the UK for the same reason, this gives her a weird American/British combo slang accent that apparently is the basis for her having no friends.  Her concerned mother has sent her on a school skiing trip in Scotland to try and help her make some friends. This backfires and Bobby spends most of the trip being teased or ignored.  They are finally on their way back and have stopped at some little cafe in the middle of nowhere for lunch.  Bobby decides she has had enough of the teasing and stays on the bus while the others go in and eat.  Smitty a rebel without a cause is also staying on the bus as his bad boy attitude has gotten him in trouble. Their teacher goes into the cafe to get Smitty some food.  Bobby meanwhile needs to pee...bad, which we all know is one of the worst feelings in the world, she does not want to face her fellow students so she attempts to use the bus bathroom, but is informed by the bus driver that it is not usable when the bus is turned off. Bobby notes a poor guy in a giant carrot suit passing out samples of some veggie carrot juice to all of the kids and teachers.  All of a sudden the bus is hit from behind and the driver goes out to see what happened.  Meanwhile one of Bobby and Smitty's classmates, the popular Alice comes screaming out of the cafe, yelling that they are all dead and generally being incoherent.  As they look around they see the teacher that went to get Smitty food come out all slathering, hungry, and gross.  The kids barricade themselves in the bus until Smitty realizes that the driver has yet to come back.  Alice stays in the bus while Bobby and Smitty go drag him in, noting what looks like a bite mark on his arm.  Chaos ensues and the trio along with the

unconscious bus driver end up at a near by gas station where Bobby finally gets a chance to pee.  They meet up with the pale and geeky Pete who has been hiding in the bathroom, and the unsavory Gareth who is the local gas attendant.  More chaos and more zombies and the gas station ends up in flames, incinerating a good portion of the undead.  Gareth runs away with the only laptop and the kids discover that their cellphones don't work.  They head back to the cafe where the bus driver turns and more chaos.  They hunker down and do their best to barricade themselves in the cafe.  Bobby passes out from hunger, which while embarrassing is the sign for them to go find food.  being that they are in a cafe it should be pretty easy, the only problem is they don't know what it is that turned all of their classmates, teachers, and cafe workers into zombies.  Eventually they puzzle out that it was the carrot juice samples and tuck into their sandwiches.  They hood up with Lily and her 3 year old brother Cam who lost their mother to the carrot juice zombie infection.  They find a castle and break in, hunkering down for the night.  The next day as they are exploring they find what looks like cells, with a headless body in one of them and a locked tower.  The current occupants of the castle come home turn out to be not very nice, they make prisoners of the kids and continue with their plans. Lily reveals that she found the tower key and they withhold the information from their captors who are desperate to find it.  More chaos (are you sensing a theme yet) and little Cam turns into a toddler zombie who promptly turns his sister.  The rest of the crew make it up to the tower and watch the very convenient destruction of their captors.  They go through all of the papers and realize that the company responsible for this zombie menace is the same one Bobby's mom works for.  We also find out that Bobby's dad has recently died of cancer and that she has never had a good relationship with her mom.  So very conveniently Bobby's phone starts working and her mom calls to tell her where to find the antidote and how to escape and bring it to her.  Bobby and company escape and trudge across the ice, being chased by zombies to a little island.  They make Bobby's mom tell them what the heck is going on.  Apparently the zombie disease has been popping up in isolated instances all over the world and Bobby's mother's company was hired to find a cure.   Unfortunately human greed jumped into the mix and the rest of the team sold the engineered disease to some baddies who want to use it as a weapon.  The company itself was actually using the cafe and the carrot juice as a controlled test and have plans to wipe out the whole area once the test has been completed.  They try to escape, but Smitty goes through the ice and is bitten by underwater ice dwelling zombies.   Luckily Bobby uses the cure (that could save all of humanity) on Smitty and hopefully that cures him.  They flag down a school bus that is also returning from a school trip and hitch a ride.  As she drifts off to sleep, Bobby see's a carton of the zombie carrot juice...and it is empty.  The book ends with her screaming that they all need to get off the bus.

Eh, the book was ok.  It kind of felt like on of those movies on Disney or Lifetime that you don't look for, but since their on and the remote control is on the other side of the couch you may as well finish it.  I think the book was going for a snarky/comic feel, on review compared it to Shaun of the Dead (such an awesome movie), but I don't think it quite made it there.  The characters were all stock characters, slightly exaggerated, I think the author was trying to use them as satire, or parody, but she did not go far enough.  The situations were uneven and were resolved either in a cliche way or by some randomly convenient event.  The story itself was very straight forward zombie apocalypse, which sometimes worked really well, and sometimes just felt boggy.   The ending made it very clear that there was a sequel coming, so of course very little resolution was presented.  On the plus side, the author did a good job addressing things I always

wonder about in these kinds of predicaments...like having to pee, you almost never see or read about our hero's using the bathroom, but seriously when you gotta go, you gotta go.  One of the main things I teach my recruits at the fire station is that if you have to use the bathroom, especially in the middle of the night, don't wait 'cause their is nothing worse then doing CPR with a full bladder.  Things like eating, peeing, clothes getting sweaty and gross, hair and make going to heck, all of these things that we would have to deal with in real life usually get glossed over, but are addressed in this book.  I also loved that the three year old cutie was the requisite person to turn. In these situations somebody in the main group ALWAYS ends up a zombie and I love that she made it the kid. I also love that the disease was handed out as juice samples by a giant carrot.  I understand what the author was going for in this book, I think she was trying to make teenage zombie book in the vein of a parody, but the execution was not effective.  It comes across as mushy, predictable and a wee bit annoying.  Also the blurb and back of the book description are not at all an accurate representation of whats in the book, nor is the front cover.  Overall I think I may have actually liked this better as a cheesy Syfy channel movie and I give it 4 out of 10 zombie infected carrot juices.
What is the best vector for a zombie infection?  How would you feel if you found out your mother was working for a zombie company?  How horrible would it be if they infected the coffee supply?!?

Hauntingly Beautiful Crazy Scary Perfect

Happy Halloween Everybody!  So far I have spent my Halloween week up to my elbows in real gore (seriously why do people feel the need to stab each other at 2am on Halloween, it's way more common then one would think) so I am a bit on the absolute incoherently exhausted side of things, but I really want to talk about this super perfect creepy scary book...which actually goes along perfectly with my state of mind right now.  I had asked for suggestions for a book that would make me sleep with my light on, I wanted a really good scare and I got a ton of recommendations for The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson and it was everything I wanted it to be and more!  I will start by attempting to summarize it, which might be a bit tough, but I will give it a go as always (SPOILERS AHEAD!)

Eleanor Vance steals her sisters car (which is technically half hers anyways) and sets out to Hill House after receiving an invitation from Dr. Montague, a specialist in the supernatural. Eleanor's sister does not want her to go, but seems more concerned over the lack of car and controlling her sister then she does anything else.  So Eleanor steals the car and heads off to Hill House this is her story.  She drives through the countryside, head full of all kinds of thoughts and stories, each inspired by a sight she sees on her drive; a pair of stone lions, a path lined with Oleanders. She arrives at Hill House and is greeted by Mr. Dudley the scary gate keeper who tries to scare her away, Eleanor knows she should be more frightened, but is determined to go to the house.  She is let in and when she finally catches site of the house, well this quote sums it up nicely " The house was vile.  She shivered and thought, the words coming freely to her mind, Hill House is vile, it is diseased; get away from here at once." The sheer force of wrongness this house exudes hits her
like a physical blow.  She is still determined to follow this adventure through and finally ends up inside the vile house where she is greeted by Mrs. Dudley the housekeeper/cook.  She is a cold creature, informing Eleanor that she leaves before dark and nobody can hear you scream.  Eleanor meets up with Theodora (no last name) a vivacious, attention seeker, Luke Sanderson the caddish soon to be heir to Hill House, and Dr. Montague who invited them all to the house to experience  the supernatural and record there experiences.  Things are wrong right off the bat, Dr. Montague informs them that all of the angles are off just a slight bit, just enough to disconcert a person.  The history of the house is told, and while not horrific, it is not a happy one.  The doors don't stay open, windows and curtains close of there own accord, there are rooms within rooms making it impossible to not get lost, all kinds of crazy stuff.  The first night they are all together the Dr. makes a point to tell them to never go anywhere alone, to always have somebody with them.  He can't tell them why it just is so.  Eventually the house starts to go crazy...or the people inside the house start, I can not do the terror justice, trust me you just have to read it to really get the effect.  This story is about Eleanor and it is inside her mind we dwell the most.  She seems to vacillate between sheer terror and an odd need to accept the insanity.  At one point the phrase "Help Eleanor Come Home" is painted in what appears to be blood at different spots in the house.  Eleanor is jokingly (kind of) accused of painting it herself to get attention, something she adamantly denies.  There seem to be big chunks of time missing, not in a confusing manner per se, more in a Eleanor is living inside her head for bits and pieces of time.  I am not doing a very good job explaining this, needless to say it is very cerebral at this point.  The big thing is that the group as a whole is experiencing certain things, while Eleanor is also experiencing something more personal.  This all culminates one night with
Eleanor (who has been acting more and more erratic) climbing up a very dangerous and rickety staircase, claiming she has surrendered to the house and is now one with it.  She is brought down safely by Luke, and the rest of the group decides that it would be best if Eleanor left and went home, forgetting Hill House and all its horrors and getting back to her own life.  Eleanor does not want to leave, she feels like she now belongs to Hill House.  The rest of her group pack her up and even bring her car around.  As she goes to leave she decides that it is not what she wants, what she wants is to stay, so she drives her car as fast as she can straight into a huge tree.  Her last thoughts as she goes hurling into the tree are finally clear and lucid "Why am I doing this? Why am I doing this? Why don't they stop me?" The other three go back to there mundane lives and Hill House continues to stand empty besides the ever present Dudley's dutifully maintaining the estate, as long as they leave before dark.

I cannot even begin to do this little book justice, every word oozes with atmosphere and double meanings.  It is a perfect example of what really scares me, which is the unknown.  For me the scariest thing is the one that is nebulous and undefined.  The horror that could be anything, but is never given actual form or substance is terrifying to me because there is no rational defense against it.  I think the biggest problem supposedly scary books and movies have is that they feel the need to define the fear, which to me instantly makes it defeatable, or at least named, and a named fear is always better then an unnamed one in my book.  This book does this type of scare beautifully, it is the type of fear that you never know if it is real, or imagined or some combination.  The fact that the whole group experiences the same terrors together indicates that it might be a real evil presence, of course the fact that the next morning there is no evidence of the mayhem of the night before, and the group itself feels silly about being scared makes it possible that it may have been group hysteria (think girls scaring themselves silly at a slumber party by sheer suggestion).  There is no doubt that there is something off about the house, but whether it is a presence or that it is just
atmospheric enough to mess with peoples heads is left up to the reader.   Eleanor in particular is very affected by Hill House (which becomes a character itself very early on).  She is the one we follow, her mental state is the one we dwell in as the reader, and she is our main link to the whole madness. Her odd connection to the house partly stems from her hatred of her old life, where she felt used and unwanted.  In this place, as horrifying as it is, she feels a sense of belonging while still being terrorized.  Her little day dreams and imaginings give us a chilling insight into how her life to this point and the house and stories have affected her mental state.  There are things that may lead us to believe that there are really poor spirits in the house who just want Eleanor to stay with them, which to me is one of the best parts of the book...you are never sure.  To me Eleanor's desperate suicide at the end as an attempt to stay at Hill House, coupled with her final thoughts can be read either way, is she possessed by the spirits of the house, doing everything in there power to make her stay, or is she just caught up in the atmosphere, maybe going a little crazy?  Who knows it's chilling either way.  The sheer foreboding of Hill House and it's actual presence almost like a living being is deliciously scary playing on fears anybody who has come home to an empty house has probably felt at some point.  I think in the end the best part of this whole book is the writing, the author manages to pull of amazing feats of horror, sadness, melancholy, hysteria, desperateness, despair and terror in the most eloquent of words.  Reading through the book (which is pretty short, most people should be able to finish it in a couple sittings...if you don't get too scared) the book, like Hill House, does not seem like it should work, it is slightly off, a little not right, a wee bit disturbing and it all comes together in one of the most chilling books I have ever read. I give this book 9 out of 10 haunted houses.  Go read this right now!
A quick note to those of you who have seen the movie The Haunting the 1963 version is hella scary and sticks with the same vibe as the novel.  The 1999 version however turns it into more of a slasher type movie killing off several people and just vaguely using the novel as a reference.  Remember don't judge a book by its movie!
What is the most terrifying thing you can think of?  What is more scary, the unknown or the known fear?  Why do I like to scare myself silly when all it does is result in a lack of sleep?