Reviews and Comments

Suffering a bit from SFNS (Silly Fantasy Name Syndrome) but it's Daniel Abraham, who co-wrote The Expanse, so the prose and pacing thus far more than makes up for the glossary's worth of hard to take seriously place and character names to remember. Getting a bit of Malazan vibe so far, which can only be a good thing.

I've decided to start a re-read of Holdstock's Mythago cycle in the story order as opposed to the published order... It's an interesting experience thus far as I've not re-read them since they were published (with the exception of Mythago Wood & Lavondyss) - and I've not read the final novel Avilion at all - I was too upset at Robert dying so unexpectedly and young.

I think I need something more intellectually stimulating after a string of ... er ... shall we say somewhat lightweight reading. This should be the ticket.

Reading this was for me much like watching an episode of 70s UK TV like The Sweeny or The Professionals - slightly iffy but enjoyable enough mid- to low-brow entertainment to pass an evening, but nothing more than that. The quality of the prose was quite poor in many places, so I dropped a star from what would otherwise have been a down the middle three star average read.

Well, I'm starting to warm to this somewhat now. The quality of prose is still pretty iffy, but its starting to feel a somewhat better standard of dodgy - The Sweeny if it was made in the early 2000s.

I'm undecided as to whether the protagonist Roy Grace is intentionally as unlikable as I'm currently finding him.

Starting off like a slightly dark version of Vicar of Dibley, but I've enjoyed what I've read of Rickman's other works, so I'm willing to give it a go. Also, I'm in the market for a bit of low-commitment entertainment right at the moment.

Struggling through - having a difficult time putting myself in the mindset of a moody teenager. I'm trying to keep in mind that in 1976 all of the modern goth vampire tropes didn't exist. On the other hand, I haven't given up, since some aspects of it are better than I remembered.

As the saying goes: "don't revisit a book you read & loved back when you were a teenage goth". Or not. Thus far, I'm amazed at how all-over-the-place the prose is. It's either bad, or more experimental than I remember it. Knowing now that it was written in response, or at least influenced by, the death of Rice's daughter, I'm finding it more nuanced than when I first read it. We shall see.

Simultaneously the fairytale of a girl and her father living alone in an isolated cottage in the woods, and a tragedy of abduction and mental illness. Written primarily from the perspective of the young girl, the quality of the prose captures the developing awareness of the narrator’s situation very well. The pacing and narrative structure was a little… fluid shall we say, which I wouldn’t necessarily say is a negative thing, considering the nature of the narrator and the subject matter. A great debut, I’m looking forward to reading her subsequent novels.