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Bloodsongs Issue 5
Darkland Plot: Daniel Reis falls in love with Lisa DeAngelo. Lisa has a psycho ex-boyfriend, one Blaze Carvelle, who just won’t go away. Blaze stalks Lisa. Blaze and Daniel fight. Daniel gets wounded by knife. Blaze falls fifteen floors to his death. Blaze’s corpse comes back from the dead for some revenge. Got it. Good, now you don’t need to buy it. The only question I have after reading this novel is, why did I bother? This is hackwork at its worst. Characters are cardboard cut-outs, with names so corny even Danielle Steele wouldn’t use them. I mean who would name a character Blaze Carvelle! The plot is so predictable I felt that I had already read the book as I was reading it. I picked every twist and “surprise” thrown at me. I wouldn’t even inflict this on the teenage market, if this is what HC had in mind. Harper Collins must have really scraped the barrel to find this piece of rubbish. This is one of the few books I’ve read with not one redeeming feature. Even the way Harper Collins have packaged it reads corny and rip-off. Here we have 222 pages of large 12 point print and wide leading. I mean the gaps between the lines are so big it almost looks double spaced. In normal 9 point closely spaced type this “novel” wouldn’t even make 80 pages! One can’t really blame the author for this shoddy excuse for a novel. It’s the publisher’s job to pick good material for publication. So I fully lay the blame on the publisher for this piece of trash, since they have obviously chosen this piece of writing to publish and have gone ahead and marketed it in a deceitful way. If I had paid for this I would be asking HC for a refund. I’m really surprised to see this being published in Australia. Yes, Sean Thomas O’Brien is an Australian, and part of HC’s line of new Australian horror nasties. But why this story? I know that they must have received much better material than this. I’ve personally read two novel manuscripts doing the rounds at the moment that are much better than this in every respect. My only guess is that the editor has no idea or understanding about horror whatsoever. If this is the case s/he should be sacked immediately. By the way, if anyone at HC is reading this review, I am available to work for you as the new editor of your horror line.
Host Weighing in at a whopping 624 pages of tiny 9 point print, I had a feeling that when I was handed this doorstop to review it was going to contain quite a bit of padding. I was right. Peter James is being billed as one of the new kings of horror. The packaging says that this guy is being given the big push by his publisher: big thick novel, blurbs from other big shots. It’s all there. They really want this guy to sell. Plot: Computer nerd Joe Messenger has this thing about immortality. He wants to conquer death. This is a dream he shared with his father, who was a leading cryonics scientist, who had his body frozen when he died. Unfortunately the cryonics company paid to keep his father’s “de animated” body goes bust when its two yuppie managers absconded with all the funds letting the frozen stiffs thaw out in a corner of the building. Naturally ol’ Joe isn’t too happy about his old man being left to thaw out and rot. Now Joe wants to find a way to “download” the entire contents of a human brain into a computer, thinking that this will enable one to live on after death. The rest of the book deals with how Joe attempts to do this and the consequences of his actions. Immortality has always fascinated me, and I do agree with one of the basic premises of this book, in that the human life span is just too short. By the time we have acquired the appropriate knowledge and wisdom to reach our true capabilities it’s time to die. Our short life span is also the cause of the way we treat our environment. I’m sure that if we all lived for say 1000 years, I doubt that we would be polluting our planet and wasting its resources the way we are now since we would be around to see the consequences of our actions. My main complaint about Host is that too much time was spent in unnecessary scientific gobble-dee-gook. James spent too much time explaining pseudo-science which got very boring very soon. This novel would have been far more effective had some editor taken the scissors to it and chopped out about half of it. On the positive side, James’ prose is very slick and his characters well drawn. Interesting in parts but in the end a real plod of a read. |
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All material on this site is Copyright 2007 to Chris A. Masters
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