Along Came a Spider by James Patterson

Along Came a Spider by James Patterson
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

The ending of this was really well done but shocking which I liked.
This is the first book in the Alex Cross series.
Alex Cross is an african american police detective with a psychology degree who is investigating a series of murders in the black community when he and his partner (Sammy) is pulled off the case to investigate the high profile kidnapping case involving the child of an actress and the child of the minister of finance.
Patterson does a really good job building the suspense and setting the scene without making gorey descriptions. What he fails at miserably though is writing a sex scene that doesn't make you either spit take you hot beverage or just laugh at the patheticness of. Seriously, they so are terrible that I hope that is was nominated for Bad Sex in Fiction Award.
Thankfully that is not what I am reading these books for and I look forward to reading more in this series.

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Appointment with Death by Agatha Christie Review

Appointment with Death by Agatha Christie
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I listened to the BBC dramatisation version of this audio book and thoroughly enjoyed the voice acting. The story and the murder was set mostly in Petra, somewhere I truly wish to visit but even if I wasn't aware of this spectacular wonder, I would have had no trouble visualising the scene of the crime.
In normal Christie style, all of the evidence is laid out before us and I still was none the wiser as to the murderer until dutifully informed by Monsieur Poirot along with the rest of the dumb struck and gapping cast. I need to read more of these and maybe I will get a little wiser.

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The Ask and the Answer By Patrick Ness Review

Patrick Ness has succeeded in continuing a truly unique young adult story without all the trappings on most of the other series in that genre.  The Ask and the Answer is the second book in the Chaos Walking Trilogy by Patrick Ness.

The first book in the series, The Knife of Never Letting Go, was a fast paced story of the chase of Todd Hewitt across largely uninhabited frontier land of a newly colonised planet with new comer Viola Eade, who’s parents were killed in the crash landing of their scout vessel.

In this instalment of the story, Todd and Viola are caught in between two warring factions when Major Prentiss (now President Prentiss) finds resistance to his hostile takeover of Haven (renamed New Prentisstown) in the form of Mistress Coyle (a local Healer) and her reformed gorilla group from the Spackle Wars, The Answer.

The Answer snatch the uncooperative  Viola away to help in their bombing raids of New Prentisstown. Whilst Todd is held captive and manipulated into working for President Prentiss’s cause.

This book is written in an amazingly graphic and compelling manner, with the change in font for both main characters POV and that of the “noise”. I felt like screaming at the characters at points when I knew they would be walking into a trap, and crying with them in others when everything seemed so without hope. These emotions, I believe are the signs of a well written book. Can not recommend this series enough. 4/5 Stars 

Catwoman vol 1. New 52

Well I finally got the chance to sit quietly and digest this yesterday and honestly i love it as much as i ever used to as a teenager. (*Warning this will contain spoilers)
I love the rawness of Selina's personality. She has been broken and had to build herself up again and again and had no one to rely on until she found Lola. This means that she takes unnecessary risks, almost childlike in behavior that get her in trouble that she then has to get herself out of. This risk taking, reckless behavior combined with the beautiful drawings and layout by Judd Winick and Guillem March make it one of my favorite comics yet again.
I may have cried a little bit when Lola was killed and then again when Selina (Catwoman) went to Gwen for help at the end, even though she promised herself she would not. This volume has set up Catwoman beautifully to be that rather damaged cat burglar that i have come to love. The best bit is they haven't gone into the territory of Selina becoming unhinged like Harley Quinn and that way i have two strong women to read about. Yay!
I will be going out next week and getting the next volume so stay tuned if you want to find out more.

Panic (Wildfire Chronicles Vol 1.) By K.R. Griffiths

Panic is a apocalyptic zombie-esque secret society driven disaster story set in the rural village of St. Davids in Wales. The ball is set rolling with the landing of steel canisters in the back yard of one of the villages’ houses that results in the first “zombification” resulting in the typical struggle for survival.

One thing made me love this book and would prompt me to actually buy the further volumes of the series. That was the fantastically vivid descriptions of the carnage and the fast nature of the story telling.  The story writing doesn’t labour over the small unimportant details of the scenery or talk down to the reader by explaining who everyone is and their back-story in more detail than necessary.

However, what makes me think again was the lack of trigger warnings for one or two of the scenes at the end.  These sorts of this might be where the human condition goes to during this sort of event but please lead up to it with something to at least warn the reader of what to expect.

Well paced, fast read with a typical cliff hanger ending to keep you coming back. 

3.5 stars.

I received this book to review through Library Thing Early Reviewers. 

The Yellow Wallpaper

Today I finally read "The Yellow Wallpaper" by Charlotte Perkins Gilman.

I have been aware of this book for a while and am well aware of the plot and its feminist overtones, with Gilman making statements on the wrongs of women only being "true women" when fulfilling a role of mother and housewife and the horrible methods with dealing with mental illness or the "fragility" of women of the time. However, after reading "The Yellow Wallpaper", I am struck by the truly horrible plight of the our poor narrator and how she documents her spiral into madness.  Her sad story made all the more poignant by the fact that she has no name...... this story could be anyone's. I am left wondering how far we have actually come in the treatment of mental illness in the 120 odd years since the publication of this book.

People with a mental illness are still treated with disdain, and called weak willed when they can't just "smile and get over it." Its like smiling and getting over a broken leg, can't be done with will power alone. People have to struggle and suffer through years of the wrong prescriptions with no guarantee that they will ever get the right ones.  They may not be able to work enough or at all the support themselves or even dependants because of the reality of their illness. I honestly don’t think we have come very far from this truly haunting tale.

The gut wrenching final scene of this story, I think will stalk my dreams for a long time.  Where our narrator, in her delirium, believed that she had in fact freed herself from the ghastly yellow wallpaper by ripping as much as she could reach off the walls and then continues to creep around the walls, following the smudge, crawling over her husband’s body,  celebrating her freedom in her utter madness.    

Review Smog – Baggage of Eternal Night

This is another of the Double Down series that delivers two novellas in one neat little package.

Smog by Lisa Morton was a really easy read that flowed beautifully.  Set in the 1960’s when everything was more innocent and the only thing to fear was the Russians. This little slice of Americana becomes the setting of a chemical induced lord of the suburban flies where the main character , the tomboy Joey, has to fight for survival and deal with her first period.  A fun take on the coming of age story.

Baggage of Eternal Night by Eric J. Guignard is less of an easy read but a far grittier story. This story touches at the hoarder and collector in all of us. Charlie’s friend, the recovering problem gambler Joey Third, gets more than he bid for  on the purchase of a suitcase from the hotel auctions. Feeling a bit like House of Leaves, this story uncovers the things in the shadows that we don’t like to think about to truly giver the reader the yips.

The two novellas are certainly worth the Sunday afternoon perusal.    

I received this book to review through Library Thing Early Reviewers