The Twelve - Justin Cronin

   So all last weekend I had The Twelve beside the computer, planning on writing my book review of it.  Then company came over, and I got sidetracked by pretty butterflies and life events, so here it is, Wednesday, and I discover that my friend Bride over at Bride of the Book God has already written a review of The Twelve today!  So here is the link to her fun review.

    I pretty much agree with what she says, so I'm going to say what I want to say about the book, starting after (and which includes) everything she says.
           

Mainly, I am disappointed it didn't have the creepy factor with the vampires.  It is still a well-written series, excellent characters and pacing, thrilling tension as they try to avoid the vampires - but that danger, that terror of them that prevades the first book, The Passage, is missing.  I know we have all seen the terror, but I want it to continue through the books. Not that the vampires have to develop into anything new, or unbelievable - absolutely not.  I wanted - want -that horror back, that creeping sense that we had all through The Passage of the wrongness of the vampires, of the sense of unease, the dread, of them.  Even though The Passage was about what caused them and how the world so drastically changed in the event, I think that a 100 years later of dealing with the vampires, that horror would still be there.  I think maybe there wasn't enough attacks, enough fighting them off, though there is one - In the beginning of the book is the set-up to an attack that I wish we had gotten the full details of , that we got to see it in full.  I think this is what changed the book for me, that we don't get to see the characters die, so the immediacy of their deaths is missing. This attack turns out to be important to the plot of Book 2, and some characters, so I think a chance was missed to make this a full horror novel here, and an outstanding one.  We do find out in flashback, what happens to the survivors, but I have to say, I like straightforward writing too.  As Bride calls it, timey wimey can be interesting, but it has to be carefully done, and maybe this is where that sense of distance comes in The Twelve, so that made it less of an impact that The Passage had.

 The evil of the Twelve is what they do to their followers, as the vampires are called (each main vampire spawning his own group of vampires).  Maybe it was just the sense of menace was missing, because the groups had defined - the survivors in their areas, the vamps in theirs.  Although the vampires are still hunting whoever they can find, and leaving a known safe area is still extremely risky.  I just missed the real wrongness that is a vampire, although there is plenty of darkness, and some horror, and lots of bravery and good souls in this book.  I do enjoy this series very much, and highly recommend it.  These are mostly minor quibbles about why I found this book less scary than the first one, and I'm in this series to be scared.  I want to see it written to scare, to terrify, like the first book, so I'm hoping Book 3 will be all that, and more.

       Amy is still a fabulous character, and developing along interesting lines in the book.  I like Peter, and Alicia.  Alicia is kind of scary, actually.  

 I will be reading Book 3 whenever it is done!  I also really enjoy the different covers, interesting how the publishers thought it would appeal over in the UK, and here.  Nothing about Fear the Dark, as her book cover has.

I also read this book in less than two days, that's how much I enjoyed it and couldn't put it down.  So if you are a little bit worried about being too scared, this is a good book for you  :-)    A very good vampire series, so far.

Other reviews:
The Book Smugglers
S Krishna's Books
Coffee and A Book Chick
Chrisbookarama

If you reviewed this book, please let me know and I'll link to it.

RIP VI round-up - 4 novels of thrills and chills, and one fairy tale

Happy late blogversary to me!!
I am dismayed to see that it has been two weeks since I last posted.  I am chagrined, since I meant to post more often these past few weeks, and get back into some semblance of regular writing here.  However, my life is beyond topsy-turvy this year, it is whirlwind of change. And somehow, I have passed my anniversary again!  Every September I get ready to celebrate blog cake and drink with you, and every mid-October I suddenly realize it's gone past, slipped by in the annual frenzy that is October for us.   For today, happy late 4th anniversary to me!  October 1, 2007, was my very first blog post, here.  I've come a long way since then, and not so far, either.  I've made some very good friends, I've learned about Christmas customs around the world thanks to Kailana and Marg's annual Christmas Advent Tour, and most of all, I've discovered that the love of books is indeed the world over. This love of reading, and sharing the books we love, talking about and discussing ideas that books hold, is what I cherish the most - our book blog community.  So even if my posts are a bit far between, it's not because I love you any less, my dear book community, it's that so much is occurring in my personal life that I am not able to come here to talk about books as often as I would like right now. 

RIP reviews:  books I really enjoyed
So, because despite my wish to talk about each book I read in its own post, in order to get these reviewed in this last week of Carl's RIP VI challenge, here are five more books I have read for RIP this year:
Winter House - Carol O'Connell            
   Long-time readers of this blog will know of my love for Detective Kathy Mallory, fictional police detective in the ongoing Mallory series by Carol O'Connell.  Mallory is a detective unlike any other.  She was kidnapped as a child and sold to a child snuff video maker.  She escapes, but what this has done to her, has made her into a beautiful, feral person, completely amoral, and yet with her own sense of right and wrong.  She is also highly intelligent, and the way O'Connell writes about her, surprisingly vulnerable as well as loyal.

Now onto the book - Winter House is a gothic mystery.  Winter House is the name of the house where a most famous massacre in NYC history took place.   The Winter family, whom of most were massacred nearly 60 years ago, consisted of   9 children and  2 adults, plus two servants (a cook and nanny).  Only 4 children survived, two of whom disappeared shortly after.  They were all killed by an ice pick stabbed in the heart.  The case is unsolved though generally believed that one of the surviving children, Nedda Winter, who was 12 at the time, and one of the ones who disappeared, is the killer.  Winter House opens with the discovery of a burglar who is dead in Winter House, stabbed through the heart with an ice pick, and the discovery that Nedda Winter has been found and brought home secretly by her niece, for a reconciliation with her two surviving siblings. Kathy Mallory picks up on the case because it is set in such an infamous locale, unsuspecting that Winter House is more than just a house darkened by its tragic past.  This is a case that will threaten her and her friend Charles Butler's sanity.  Is Winter House haunted?  Maybe.  It's a house where nothing is what it seems, where no one appears as they are, where murder is only the worst of the crimes committed on and by the Winter Family.  It's a very good mystery, though a bit convoluted in how Nedda Winter goes undiscovered for so many years.  Tarot cards play a part, as does jazz, and a bird.  Very very gothic mystery, and perfect for RIP. 4.5/5

Tricks - Ed McBain
 I just finished this mystery last night.  I am really glad I read it, after putting it on my RIP list for the past 2 years.  This is a pure police procedural.  It is set in New York City also, like Winter House, and is one of many books in the 87th Precinct series by Ed McBain.  It takes place in a 12 hour period, on Hallowe'en night,  covering  the different crimes that take place for the evening shift of the 87th precinct.  There's a cut-up corpse whose body parts are found in different locations of the city; there's the police set-up to try to catch a serial rapist/murderer, and there's a gang of children raiding liquor stores and shooting the owners.  I really enjoyed this mystery.  I liked the blunt cop talk, the realism of policing the streets, of working with partners, of talking with civilians, of trying to solve crimes in the midst of facing dangers, and of the risks and payouts men and women of the badge take and face every night.  There are several deaths in this novel, most by gun, and a chilling cat-and-mouse game between the policewoman set up as a decoy for the serial rapist, and the rapist.  Good plain policeman's work, and little bit of luck: very enjoyable novel to read, and sets the mood for Hallowe'en next week.  4.5/5 
Uncle Montague's Tales of Terror - Chris Priestley    
I have been on a reading spree this weekend, as I suddenly realized October was almost over and I was nowhere close to my goal of 80 books read by the end of this month.  That will leave me 10 books each for November and December to make my 100 books read in a year.  Luckily it's a break in between birthdays and seasonal events, and cloudy enough outside that I don't feel guilty AT ALL staying to read as much as I can.

Uncle Montague's Tales of Terror is absolutely delightful.  It is a young adult novel of ghostly terror tales, told by Uncle Montague to his great-nephew (or great-great, or even further back, no one knows for sure) Edgar, in his great old dark house all by itself in a corner by some woods.  Edgar goes to visit him when he is home from school, to hear these ghostly tales of eerie horror, even though the woods slightly frighten him, even though his Uncle lives only with the mysterious Franz who Edgar has never ever seen, even though the house is so dark and so cold, that Edgar goes - and has seen only - the study, where they spend all their time in front of the fire drinking tea and eating biscuits, and the lavatory for when Edgar has had too much tea. In this darkly thrilling house - because I don't know about you, Gentle Reader, but I would love to see this house, and go into it, because of the ghostly presences we become aware haunt it.  The tales themselves are everything good ghost stories are:  filled with all kinds of children who never quite fit in with their surroundings, who find mysterious girls and boys appearing to them, who lead them to danger, to horror, and sometimes to death.  Haunted trees, paintings, macabre items, and terrifying glimpses of madness and horror - these stories have them all, told delightfully by Uncle Montague to lonely Edgar.  When we finally reach the ending, as Edgar starts his walk home through the same forest that still makes him uneasy, Uncle Montague reveals his terrible secret, and it is so satisfying.  This is one of the best ghost story novels I have read in a long time. I can hardly wait to read it to my children.  The illustrations are eerie and fabulous, reminiscent of Edward Gorey - down to the pen and ink black lines and off-kilter subjects - and I am totally in love with both. 5/5

Snow-White and the Seven Dwarfs - retold by Randall Jarrell from the Brothers Grimm, illustrations by Nancy Ekholm Burkert                
I put all that down for the author/illustator, because they are both important for why this retelling of Snow-White and the Seven Dwarfs is so enjoyable.  Many of you know that while I read the Disney versions of many Grimm tales as a child, I am not a big fan of Disney.  I discovered this edition of Snow-White and the Seven Dwarfs sometime this year, in a second-hand bookstore.  I picked it up because the illustrations are lovely.  I really just grabbed it without looking at it closely, because of the pictures.  I didn't know that Randall Jarrell was a poet, and I didn't know that he kept the original ending of this fairy tale. I was shocked, thrilled and a bit disturbed by the ending which is what a fairy tale is really supposed to do to us. The Evil Queen Stepmother is made to put on a red-hot iron pair of dancing shoes and dance until she dies. I was disturbed in part because I think of this ending as the ending to the Red Shoes, and shocked because I still think it is too good a death for the wicked stepmother.  That got me thinking to what Snow-White and the Seven Dwarfs might really be about: beauty.  In some versions of Snow White, she is kind, so kind and soft-hearted and sweet that the Huntsman spares her life, that the animals love her, that the dwarves love her, etc.  What this retelling - and I have to go back and reread the original Grimm, too - makes clear, is that it is Snow White's beauty that affects how everyone treats her.  Several things occur to me here:  where is Snow White's father, the king?  Nowhere. This isn't a story about parents and children (because he doesn't look for her either, does he?  Does he even notice she's gone? what kind of father is he?); it's a story about women and beauty.  From the opening lines when her mother asks for a daughter as beautiful as the red blood on the snow when she pricks her finger:  "a daughter as white as snow, as red as blood, as black as the wood in her window frame."
Nothing about her character, her personality, nothing about being good or pure or kind or loving.  It's about looks.   Snow-White - named because she looks as pure as white snow, another image of purity and beauty-  is shaped by her looks, from her name, to why she is cast out (jealousy), to why the huntsman saved her , to why the prince falls in love with her, to why the dwarves don't stone her or drive her out: her beauty. It is the making of her doom, and also her future happiness, with the making of her place in the world beside the prince, because she is beautiful.  As an illustration of how we judge others by how they look, this book is perfect.  As a book about how Snow White's goodness outshines her beauty, we see this by how the animals don't eat her, and how she bargains with the dwarves for her livelihood : not through sex, but through keeping house. It is fortunate for her that she is a child, and not a teenager, when she is cast out!  It is why I love fairy tales too, and having read this version, I am reminded that the best fairy tales are dark, and about the good and the bad in the human heart. I loved this version, and can see myself rereading it many times in the future.

The illustrations are superb.  The dwarves, wonderfully, magically, are not rendered boyish or non-sexual, but are true dwarves, each with their own face and body, short men. Each with their own personality and character clearly designated - not happy, or sleepy, or another stupid name like that, but real people.  I wonder if the dwarves serve a deeper purpose in this tale than I ever suspected, in that once they get over her beauty, they tell her she must do - she must earn her keep.  It is this that makes this fairy tale so magical for me, not just that the animals love her so, but that she makes her way willingly in the world and earns her way not through her beauty, but by working.  I love the fact that in this version, the dwarves are there at the end, making music in the castle as the prince and princess (because Snow-White is a princess after all) marry.  The other picture I absolutely love, is the one of Snow White fleeing in the forest:  all the animals have come to watch her, drawn to her beauty, and they are partially hidden in the drawing, so it draws your eye in to the scene. It's a lot of fun picking out all the animals, all rendered true to their forms, too.  Wonderful. 5/5

Poltergeist - Kat Richardson
The final book I have read for RIP VI so far - because I am reading two more this week, I hope - is the second in the Greywalker series.   My review for the first in the series, Greywalker, is here.  I read it last year for RIP 5.  (and look, I missed blogging about my anniversary last year too!) Poltergeist is about just that, a poltergeist.  It's not so simple though, as it is also the result of collecting a group of assorted people for a psychological project on what happens when you gather a group to see how far the group will go when they believe they have created something for which they are not responsible for the subsequent actions of.  In this case, paranormal research:  if you create an entity from scratch, a personality, will it begin to have a life of it's own?  What if someone in the group does have latent psi skill of some kind?  And all the members are carefully chosen for their strength of will or suggestibility? What if they do pool their collective mental and emotional energy, who is responsible for the entity?  It's a fascinating premise.  PI Harper Blaine is recommended to come examine if there is something 'fishy' with the experiment, as there is more poltergeist energy than the coordinator things there should be, and he is wondering if someone is sabotaging the experiment.  One person involved in the experiment dies shortly after.  PI Blaine is not your usual private investigator, though.  She died for two minutes, and ever since she can see spirits, talk to ghosts, and walk in the world between this world and the next; the gray world where vampires, zombies, the undead, the ghosts, hang out. She's also smart, and wary, and soon comes to the conclusion that she is being set up to take the fall for the experiment if it fails or more people die.
I really like Harper.  She is still coming to terms with being able to see the dead, the undead, and everything else, and what it means for her life. The series is set in Seattle, and the author, Kat Richardson, uses some real settings - houses, streets, events - to ground this series in the here and now.  I love how the supernatural affects - intersects - with reality, with how Harper has to learn how to ignore the supernatural around her, because they are everywhere.  This novel also involves theories about what causes poltergeists, and hauntings, and how people can be the agents allowing them in, and how this would work. There is a groundedness to this series that makes it viable - she has a ferret names Chaos, who when is let loose in the house, creates pandemonium and chaos much like a poltergeist would. She has a few friends, who give her space and who also have their own unique talents - like calling to like, as it were. I really enjoyed the theory about how ghosts can seem to walk through walls - its because for them, they are stuck in their time period when they lived, where most likely there wasn't a wall or door there. In other words, ghosts walk and see what they know from their lifetime, not from what exists in the now.  I enjoyed this book a bit more than the first, as I like the supernatural  a bit more than sorcery which the first book featured.  Highly recommended, a lot of fun, and very good. 4.7/5

This is also an eerie series, with encounters with the undead, the supernatural, evil, filling both books in the series so far.  I've run out and bought the next two, Underground and Vanished. I hope to catch up soon, as Labyrinth, the one from last year, has a lot of good reviews.

So how is your RIP VI reading coming?  Have you been enjoying this challenge?  Are you in a mood for Hallowe'en in a week's time?  I can't believe it's only one week away.......

Feed - Mira Grant, plus some more horror stuff

Feed by Mira Grant is a fabulous zombie book.  Think of a modern, socially relevant novel that features blogging as part of how the story is told, while all around the storytellers are zombies, and zombie attacks.  Think of a political event, an election, and trying to run an election while avoiding large crowds because they attract zombies.And then think of that hidden fear we all carry around, you know, that fear that the government is NOT telling us what we need to know to survive, and indeed, in this novel, discover that the government might be working for maintaining the fear instead of solving it. Relevant  to today's world? Oh yes. And then throw in two of the cleverest, questioning-everything twenty-something main characters, and you have Feed.  It's about media too,which the word 'feed' plays into - how news is reported, and how to find who to trust to tell the news.  Who do you trust now?  Who would you trust in the event of a world calamity?

In Feed, we learn how the world has changed 20 years after a virus has been released that changes its victims into zombies.   It is riveting reading, full of surprises, including one at the end that found me crying while I was standing in line waiting for a bus.  That's how good Feed is.  Even if zombies scare the dickens out of you like they do me, get this book.  It's really good.  If the tv show The Walking Dead is about how the world ends now with zombies, Feed is about how we have survived the collapse of the world.  It's a  very good horror novel, and one that even those who don't read alot of horror can read, I think.  The gory parts aren't as bad as the tension of waiting for the attacks, because just knowing zombies are lurking everywhere creates its own tension.

As I said, zombies are my 'thing' that I am terrifically horrified by.  I can't even get through 'Night of the Living Dead', which I've tried to.  I can watch 'Sean of the Dead' because of the humour, but not 'Night of the Living Dead'.  I mention this because 'Night of the Living Dead' is referred to in Feed, as is George Romero, the director of this movie and most of it's sequels.  Oh, I have seen 'Dawn of the Dead', barely - stuck in a shopping mall with the undead is kind of like how I feel on most shopping days.  Most of the time, the lurching mindless bodies of the brain-dead fill me with a suffocating panic.  I dream of fighting off zombies, when I do dream of them.  Not werewolves, not vampires - interesting that two of my children have dreamt about vampires, but not zombies, I think.  It's my fear, and that's what I think fear is - intensely personal, a visceral reaction to something that comes deep from my gut, an instinctual 'run away' as fast as I can. So I know there's an important truth there for me too.

What do you think?  Do you have a personal horror or nightmare figure that seizes you when you come across it?  Do you avoid certain types of books or movies because of this type of figure?   have you ever wondered why you are afraid of something?  I have! and now you know - zombies are my thing.  And I still think Feed is an excellent horror novel, despite the eating of flesh.  I'm currently looking for Deadline, the second one in the series.

Look! I bought another book for RIP!!
I read this for Carl's RIP VI challenge.  I am having so much fun with this challenge.  I also bought a new Hallowe'en short story collection that is just out:

Hallowe'en, edited by Paula Gunn.  I found a link to it, here, on Amazon.com, although they are saying that it's only available as an e-book for Kindle.  Since I'm holding a real book in my hands, they're wrong! lol it's a collection of hallowe'en short stories, featuring all the wonderful scary authors you would hope for: Ray Bradbury's October Game, Peter Straub, Charles de Lint, E. Nesbitt, Nina Kiriki Hoffman, Sir Walter Scott, Norman Partridge, Caitlin Kiernan, Edgar Allen Poe, and many more - a wide range of authors from several centuries, all featuring hallowe'en in the story.  I've already read the first story, and plan  to indulge to read more to get ready for Hallowe'en in two - 2! - weeks.  Since I'm currently in a mini-slump of reading, despite being so close to my goal of 100 books read this year, I'm hoping this will charge me up for the final run. 

Scary images to get into the mood for Hallowe'en:
Over at Book Chick City, Carolyn and Laura (the Book Chicks)  are featuring a lovely scary collection of scary art to chill you.  I also love how they managed to decorate their header with hallowe'en items!  I want them too! The very first image featured in the photos is one that we also have in front of our National Art Gallery here in Ottawa, and I hate walking underneath it.  The scary art also features the previously-mentioned zombies.  They really are everywhere!  Is there anything  featured in this collection of art that scares you?  Let them know! and me.  I want to know I'm not the only one scared of spiders and creaky noises in the night and the shambling, walking dead.

RIP VI - Anya's Ghost and The Thirteen book reviews, plus Under the Dome and The Strain

I am feeling so proud of myself:  I have already read two books for RIP VI, and I'm working on book #3!!  Plus, for fun, at the end, I'm going to throw in book reviews for two other horror books I read just before the challenge started.
Anya's Ghost - Vera Brosgol.
This is a YA graphic novel, newly published this year, and a terrific read.  It's about Anya, who falls down a well, and what she finds at the bottom.  It's about high school, and fitting in, and discovering that no one is exactly as they appear.  And it's about discovering that even ghosts aren't all that they appear to be, either.  The characters are all fun and wonderful, from Anya herself, a teen Russian emigre who has done everything she can to fit in, including shortening her surname to something pronounceable, to all the teens at the school - the author has taken the popular girl, handsome boy, gym class, and made them universal  figures: we all knew a girl in school like Elizabeth, beautiful and graceful, and her boyfriend Sean, good at sports and gorgeous, who Anya has a terrible crush on.  Anya's family - her round mother who feeds her and younger pest brother seem familiar, from the first page.  Yet, Anya's mother with her round smiling face and 'eat, you're too thin' jump off the page like concerned, loving mother she is.  They are real people caught on the page.   Anya's ghost is the other main figure, and it's so much fun to watch how the ghost moves around Anya, and what Anya learns from the ghost.  This is a little darker than you would expect, which makes it all the more believable and fun to read. Including myself, every teen I know comes up on the dark in their teen years, in themselves and in others. Anya's Ghost is a graphic novel about the truth behind the image, just like the ghost who is more than she seems.   Plus, it's a ghost story.  I really liked Anya, and I'm really glad she did what she did at the end. Lovely graphic novel, a little bit eerie, and very enjoyable. 4.7/5

The Thirteen - Susie Moloney
Susie Moloney has published three other horror novels:  Bastion Falls (which I haven't read yet), A Dry Spell (read quite some time ago), The Dwelling, and just this month, The Thirteen.  The Dwelling scared me so much - a true haunted house story, with an ending that still bothers me (in the good way, that I'm still thinking about it) now, several years after reading it.  Susie Moloney is Canadian, and it's lovely to have a really good horror novelist in Canada.  That's not to say we don't have lots of short story writers in horror, we do, but a consistent good horror novelist - Susie Moloney is one of our best.  Plus, she shares my name, sort of (I've never been a Susie).  So, onto The Thirteen:
The premise of The Thirteen is that a circle of women have a made a deal with the devil in order to get all that they want.  Now, being someone who knows quite a few pagans, many of whom are practicing wiccans, normally I wouldn't give this book another look.  I get tired of the idea that witchcraft and wicca are 'bad' and evil.  Certainly you can use magic for ill, to harm another - and in a way, what these witches in The Thirteen find out is that even with the best intentions, if you make a bargain with something that is inherently evil, all your good intentions turn on you in the end.  The price they pay is high, and that's part of what makes this book so satisfying.  The other part is that the heroine, Paula Wittmore and her daughter Rowan go home because Paula's mother is in the hospital, and what they find in Paula's old childhood suburb Haven Woods, is anything but a haven.  This is a fun read, with magic shown properly - the bad uses of it, and the good. It's creepy, and it's fun too - Paula finds love in the most unexpected place, and in the end, it comes down to family.  Even the ending, which is a bit of a shocker, makes sense.  Very well done 'witchcraft gone bad' book, a lot of fun to read, and makes good use of those soulless places, the suburbs. I think this might be the most satisfying of all of Susie Moloney's books to read.  Highly recommended. 4.5/5


So, my two freebie reviews for this RIP VI challenge, are for two books I read just before the challenge started.  I couldn't wait!  One really good read, and one so-so.
Under the Dome - Stephen King.
Unputdownable.  This is the most recent of King's novels, a hefty 1,072 pages.  It is good.  One of his best novels, for me.  I loved his resolution - it sounds preposterous, and yet, who among us hasn't had that very same thought?  I can't reveal it for those who haven't read the book yet, but it's a thought I think everyone has had.  It's all to King's credit that he makes this a good horror novel from two angles:  from the mystery of the dome that is placed over the town, and if they can solve it, and from the townspeople themselves, especially the awful family of  Jim Rennie and Junior Rennie.  It even had moments that made me laugh out loud, in the midst of horror and nightmare scenes - pantries were never my favourite place to begin with, but now they will carry with them an unforgettable image of Junior and his girls. It's good to see black humour in a novel of Stephen King's, and Under the Dome has it.  Which didn't detract from the horror or the believableness of the book - I found the laughter good, like King had taken time to be with his characters and see that in the midst of terror, there can be moments of hilarity and humanness.  All of King's strengths are here:  his amazing realistic characters, the way a small town works - the power of the town council, how most people try not to think too hard about what's going on, about how terror can be used to control a population.  I found the last particularly satisfying given the last 10 years of Western culture and the feeling of terror that we've never managed to let go of (I have my own cynical reasons for why this has happened).  The heroes - Barbie, Julia, Andrea, Scarecrow Joe, Norrie, and all the one who act bravely and still die - they are ordinary people who could be any one of us.  That is Stephen King's greatest strength in his writing, his characters and how they talk, that they are just like you and me, caught on the page.  I started reading and I couldn't look away.  The horror is good, and creepy in places, though this is not a 'ghost story haunted house' book, this is about the horror that we do to one another when under stress. And that makes it one of his most frightening and realistic horror novels of all.  4.7/5 (because throwing in a haunted house would have been so cool! lol)

The Strain - Guillermo Del Toro and Chuck Hogan.

                       I wanted to like this book. I really did.  I picked it up with all good feelings, because Bride had bought it - she is usually a good judge of horror books.  The sequel is out in paperback too, so I thought cool, I could get in on the series.  Alas, I didn't find much that was believable in this vampire novel.  There are moments that are very good, and very eerie, and how the vampire plague spreads was quite good.  But the premise - that some old guy from ancient history revived itself during the Holocaust, and has somehow eluded any notice until a dead plane lands, with a mysterious big box aka the coffin, arrives and 'disappears' on video - and no one thinks, hmm, Dracula even - that bothered me.  Dracula and the box of earth have filled our literature since the beginning of the 20th century.  I'm not saying the old creature couldn't stay hidden, I just found the idea that someone else wanted him brought over in order to start a plague, a bit iffy, AND how did the vampire know to start a plague in New York City? Was he hired?  If so, what could a vampire possibly want that anyone human could offer him? (except the way over the ocean, but as Stoker showed, pretty easy to arrange.....)  So, I had struggles with this book. I kept seeing it as a movie, and I think that's exactly how it was written, as Guillermo Del Toro is a movie maker first.
     The characters are good, the setting - New York City - very believable, especially the infighting amongst who had responsibility for the flight, the bodies afterward, though why only four survivors - again, not explained.  If you need to escape completely for a day, this would be a good book to do it in, as it is well-paced and full of action.  Just not entirely believable.    I will say though, how the plague expands - that's the best part of the book, the horror part.  I wish we had more of the horror, the being stalked by the newly made vampires, that eerie feeling of being watched, and the slow realization that something is wrong, in your house, in your street, in your neighborhood.  Maybe Bk 2 will have it..... 3.5/5.

So, how has your RIP VI reading going?  Have you read anything good and satisfying so far?

If you are in the mood to discuss horror, Emily over at Telecommuter Talk has a post on why she reads horror, here.  She took it from my previous post with questions I asked at the end, of my thoughts on why I read horror, here.  Do you have any ideas about why you enjoy reading ghost stories or horror, that you are discovering while you make your way through this challenge?  Why do you look forward to this challenge so much?  What have been your favourite discoveries over past RIP reads?  Please let me or Emily know, we both love to discuss horror, as you can see!  (Thanks Emily, too, for doing a whole post on this subject!)

My favourite RIP reads
I've been a part of RIP for three years now.  I have read some really good ghost stories, been thoroughly scared, and discovered some very good novels.  In fact, one of my RIP reads became my books of the year:
Lonely Werewolf Girl(actual book review here) - Martin Millar - 2008.  I see that The Woman in Black - Susan Hill, and The Terror - Dan Simmons, and The Night Country - Stewart O'Nan, were all read that year.  No wonder I couldn't decide which to pick - in looking back, these all could easily be my books of the year.  In fact, I thought The Terror was,  I loved it so much also, for a separate year.  I think in my mind they are tied now, both are so good.  2008 was a banner year for me.  Coraline by Neil Gaiman - another YA horror book that lingers.  Tamsin by Peter S. Beagle.  They were all on my top 10 books for 2008.  I've linked to all my reviews in case you are looking for something to read for RIP, or just want to see what I thought about the books.  Those are all my favourite reads, too, now.  Books that are permanently on my shelf, along with The Unseen by Alexandra Sokoloff, and The Passage by Justin Cronin.  I couldn't wait for RIP to read the last two, but if I had, they would be part of this select group.