Sinnful Books

Book Review — Spinning Silve

Title: Spinning Silver

Author: Naomi Novik

Genre: YA Retelling/Fantasy

Pages: Hardback, 466

ISBN: 978-0-399-1809-9

Opening Lines: "The real story isn't half as pretty as the one you've heard."

Rating:

Miryem is the daughter and granddaughter of money-lenders, but her father's inability to collect his debts has left his family on the edge of poverty—until Miryem takes matters into her own hands. Hardening her heart, the young woman sets out to claim what is owed and soon gains a reputation for being able to turn silver into gold.

When an ill-advised boast draws the attention of the king of the Staryk—grim fey creatures who seem more ice than flesh—Miryem's fate, and that of two kingdoms, will be forever altered. Set an impossible challenge by the nameless king, Miryem unwittingly spins a web that draws in a peasant girl, Wanda, and the unhappy daughter of a local lord who plots to wed his child to the dashing young tsar.

But Tsat Mirnatius is not what he seems. And the secret he hides threatens to consume the lands of humans and Staryk alike. Torn between deadily choices, Miryem and her two unlikely allies embark on a desperate quest that will take them to the limits of sacrifice, power, and love.

~ Jacket copy

In a small town forty minutes away from Vysnia, a young Jewish girl and her family fight for survival. Despite being the daughter of a moneylender—and the granddaughter of a renown moneylender—Miryem knows the bite of cold and the bitter sting of hunger. Unlike her grandfather, Miryem's father's generosity is his downfall. Rather than collecting the debts owed to him, he allows the townspeople to walk all over him and forgives their debts. As the town grows fat, his family goes hungry. When her mother falls ill, Miryem takes up her father's books and starts collecting the debts. Following her in grandfather's footsteps, she is rumored to "spin silver into gold". Unfortunately, the rumors find the ear of the Staryk lord—fey who are known to covet gold—and he sets a challenge for her . . . One that will ultimately mean her life.

Title: HorrorStör
Author: Grady Hendrix
Genre: Horror
Pages: Oversize paperback, 243
ISBN: 978-1-59474-526-3
Opening Lines: "It was dawn, and the zombies were stumbling through the parking lot, streaming toward the massive beige box at the far end. Later they'd be resurrected by megadoses of Starbucks, but for now they were the barely living dead."

Rating:

Something strange is happening at the Orsk Furniture superstore in Cleveland, Ohio. Every morning, employees arrive to find broken Kjërring bookshelves, shattered Glans water goblets, and smashed Liripip wardrobes. Sales are down, secuirty cameras reveal nothing, and store managers are panicking.

To unravel the mystery, three employees volunteer to work a nine-hour dusk-to-dawn shift. In the dead of the night, they'll patrol the empty Showroom floor, investiage strange sights and sounds, and encounter horrors that defy imagination.

~ Jacket copy

As a subpar employee, Amy is not surprised to find herself called into a meeting with Basil, the store manager. However, upon meeting Ruth Anne—a well-loved and all-star employee—waiting for the same meeting, Amy starts to question Basil's motives. Amy knows sales have been down, but firing Ruth Anne seems like a calloused and stupid move. Basil, however, has another offer for the ladies—work an overnight shift with him, make some extra money, and find the person squatting in the Showroom before the regional managers and risk assessment team arrives in the morning. With the threat of being evicted from her apartment for late rent, Amy begrudgingly accepts the offer. Besides, what could go wrong? At least that's what she thought before strange graffiti appeared in the women's bathroom, water spots started showing up on the break room ceiling, and a squatter helps them perform a seance to summon the souls of mental institution . . .

This book . . . First of all, Hendrix does a brilliant job of balancing horror and humor. The names of the furniture, the comments about IKEA, and the slowly building suspense is priceless. I had a hard time putting this book down to sleep.

The Good:

-- The ghost hunting TV show

-- Everything surrounding the beehive (it was downright creepy)

-- The setting

-- The characters

The Bad:

-- The ending. While it made sense, it felt as though it fizzled out. It left me wanting more.

If you ever wonder what it would be like to cross an horror movie with an IKEA store, HorrorStör is definitely that book! Grady Hendrix never ceases to entertain!

Book Review — Alice

Title: Alice
Author: Christina Henry
Genre: Retelling
Pages: Oversize paperback, 291
ISBN: 978-0-425-26679-3
Opening Lines: "If she moved her head all the way up against the wall and tilted it to the left she could just see the edge of the moon through the bars. Just a sliver, almost close enough to eat."

Rating

"In a warren of the crumbling buildings and desperate people called the Old City stands a hospital with cinder-block walls that echo the screams of the poor souls inside.

"In the hospital, there is a woman. Her hair, once blond, hangs in tangles down her back. She doesn't remember why she's in such a terrible place—just a tea party long ago, and long ears and blood . . .

"Then, one night, a fire at the hospital gives the woman a chance to escape. She tumbles out of the hole that imprisoned her, leaving her free to uncover the truth about what happened to her all those years ago.

Only something else has escaped with her. Something dark. Something powerful.

And to find the truth, she will have to track this beast to the very heart of the Old City, where the Rabbit waits for his Alice."

~ Jacket copy

Do you ever wonder what happened to Alice after her strange adventures in Wonderland? Did her family believes her wild tales of "Eat Me, Drink Me"? Were they enraptured by the concept of a talking rabbit who is always late "for a very important date"? Maybe they merely pawned it off as the strange murmurings of a mid-afternoon nap. Or maybe—just maybe—they feared Alice might be truly and utterly mad. And, rather than allowing their mad daughter to upset their social status, Alice's family had her committed to a life of living hell—an asylum for the insane.

Title: Clariel
Author: Garth Nix
Genre: YA dark fantasy
Pages: Oversize paperback, 382
ISBN: 978-0-06-156157-3
Opening Lines: "Old Marral the fisherman lived in one of the oddest parts of Belisaere, the ancient capital of the Old Kingdom."

Rating

"Clariel is the daughter of one of the most notable families in the Old Kingdom, with blood relations to the Abhorsen and, most important, to the King. She dreams of living a simple life but discovers this is hard to achieve when a dangerous Free Magic creature is loose in the city, her parents want to marry her off to a killer, and there is a plot brewing agains the told and withdrawn King Orrikan.

"When Clariel is drawn into the efforts to find and capture the creature, she finds hidden sorcery within herself, yet it is magic that carries great dangers. Can she rise above the temptation, escape the unwanted marriage, and save the king?"

~ Jacket copy

In the Old Kingdom, Free Magic creatures roam the country, the dead rise, two different magic systems vie for control, and the old is unwilling to take control of his country. Stuck in the middle is a young girl who--despite her relation to the King and the famed Abhorsens--merely wants to live alone in the Great Forest.

Title: The Haunted
Author: Bentley Little
Genre: Horror
Pages: Oversized paperback, 347
ISBN: 978-0=593-19997-8
Opening Lines: "'We're here again, Dad.'"

Rating

"Julian and Claire Perry and their two children, Megan and James, have made the move to a bigger, nicer home in their city's historic district. But something isn't right

"The neighbors seem reluctant to visit. Claire can't shake the feeling that someone is watching her. Megan receives increasingly menacing and obscene texts. And James is having terrible dreams. No wonder, considering what he's seen in the corner of the basement, staring at hime and shuffling ever so slowly.

"Pity no on warned them about the house. Now it's too late. Because the darkness at the bottom of the stairs is rising . . ."

~ Jacket copy

Most smaller towns in the United States have that one neighborhood with that one house. You know the one. All of the children are afraid to go near it during Halloween, and most times teenagers will dare each other to enter just to demonstrate some machismo. Unfortunately, the Perry's new home is that house. And they're about to find out what the truly entails for the inhabitants.

Title: Underneath
Author: Robbie Dorman
Genre: Sci-Fi/Horror
Pages: Paperback, 257
ISBN: 978-1-7336388-2-1
Opening Lines: "Mary Jensen didn't expect to see the body of the person she replaced, but it waited for her at Research Station Tau."

Rating

"Mary Jensen, a trained medic, needs a new start and she's getting one at Research Station Tau, in remote Antarctica. Called in as an emergency replacement, Mary soon finds out Tau's mission: to find a lost elementary particle, deep down in the ice.

"Dr. Ian Schuller, the station lead, thinks the particle is the key to humanity's evolution. As they drill into the ice, complications arise and Mary starts to worry about his sanity. As he pushes harder and harder for results, the group begins to fracture.

"And then the hallucinations start.

"Something is in the ice, and it is changing them.

"Now Mary must surivive, and face what's underneath."

~ Jacket copy

The sci-fo genre is ripe for horror. Something about the isolation of space coupled with the unknown, unexplored depths. Drifting alone in the "vasty nothingness" allows the brain time to contemplate the unknown . . . The things just outside our reach. This is why the Alien franchise has done so well. And why we have seen survival horror games dipping its toe into the uncharted depths of space in Dead Space. However, what we never considered is the unknown, isolating element of space is right next door—Antarctica.

Title: The Summer I Died
Author: Ryan C. Thomas
Genre: Horror/slasher
Pages: Paperback, 186
ISBN: 9781977576088
Opening Lines: "To avoid the nightmares of that summer, I take caffeine and diet pills, any type of speed to keep me up for as long as possible."

When Roger Huntington comes home from college for the summer and is met by his best friend, Tooth, he knows they're going to have a good time. A summer full of beer, comic books, movies, laughs, and maybe even girls. The sun is high and the sky is clear as Roger and Tooth set out to shoot beer cans at Bobcat Mountain. Just two friends catching up on lost time, two friends thinking about their futures . . . two friends suddenly thrust into the middle of a nightmare. Forced to fight for their lives against a sadistic killer with an arsenal of razor sharp blades and a hungry dog by his side. If they are to survive, they must decide: are heroes born, or are they made? Or is it something more powerful happening to them? And more importantly, how do your survive when all roads lead to death?"

~ Jacket copy

The slasher genre has long been seen as the bastard child of the horror movie genre. Despite the critics, slasher films have always held a special place in horror. Looking closely, it supports conservative paradigms and beliefs--don't have sex outside of marriage, listen to your parents, don't drink, and so on. The unfortunate victims of the slasher always violate some type of boundary and are punished for their infraction. However, the 2000s have taken the slasher genre and started to morph it into something different--pseudo gore porn. The Summer I Died is not any different.