I must admit to discovering this book through news of the film adaptation being made, starring Scarlett Johansson. I'm in two minds about movie adaptations - I used to prefer watching the movie first before reading the book it's based on, having been disappointed by how "Lost World" didn't live up to the novel, but more recently have been won over to the opinion that having deep background from having read the book rather complements the experience of seeing the movie adaptation.

That being said, the plot of this book -- and it's setting -- is too intriguing to defer reading until the movie comes out. Scotland's bleak (yet beautiful) landscape is pretty much the perfect setting for a novel in which the protagonist (?) is an alien preying on humans ... intriguing as a social commentary in itself. Faber managed to make us sympathize with her all throughout -- in the tradition of sci-fi as political commentary, we see her as escaping an even more hideous fate on her home planet, and after all, her victims are not really civilized "humans" (ironic, the role reversal there).