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.

Three short story reviews for RIP - and a link to Niagara Falls and holidays

Before I get started on my short story reviews, I wanted to tell you about an awesome giveaway I just saw over on Court's blog Once Upon a Bookshelf.  She is giving away a new Fringe book!  Yes, a new book about one of my all-time favourite shows has just been published, and she won a copy in a bag of goodies she won at last weekend's FanExpo Canada 2012.  Lucky, lucky her, and us, because she's never seen an episode of Fringe....so if you are like me and love this show, this sounds like an interesting book just published about the themes and elements and plot.  Happy sigh.  I've already entered.....Into the Looking Glass, Exploring the Worlds of Fringe, by Sarah Clarke Stuart.  Hmm, if I don't win, I'll add it to my Christmas wish list.....

Ok, on to three really good, no, awesome horror short stories that I've read over the past week.  Two are  from The Year's Best Dark Fantasy and Horror 2010 , edited by Paula Guran. 

Monsters - Stewart O'Nan.  This is the story about a young boy, Mark who is playing with a pellet gun that belongs to his friend Derek. They are shooting bottles, and then the game expands in the way that it does when the pellets are harmless, and the bottles don't break.  Something does happen, and this is the story about how everything changes in an instant.  It's heartbreaking, and moving, and it hurts.  That sense of guilt that Mark feels eats away at him, even though no one blames him, and he is not able to forgive himself. That's where monsters come from,inside us.  An amazing story that feels so true, powerful and unsettling - I certainly have felt that guilt, and forgiveness is much harder to do than it sounds, especially towards one's self.  Oh, and no one dies, so don't avoid the story out of fear that it's like that.  It's much more subtle.

The Coldest Girl in Coldtown - Holly Black. A vampire story, but not like any you've ever read before.  Vampires are caused by a virus that mutates, an infection that sets in when you are bitten.  If you get a taste of human blood after being bitten, you become a vampire.  If you don't?  Well, read what happens to Matilda, who has been bitten, and is trying to not become a vampire.  Then her friend Dante finds her, and tells her the boy she loves has crossed over into Coldtown - so named, because every city and town has a Cold area barricaded, where all the vampires live - along with Dante's sister.  They are both still human and alive. There is only one reason to go to Coldtown, however.  What Matilda does will chill your heart and make you cry at the same time.  An amazing story, one of the best short stories I've read about vampires.  As Guran says in her end note, you will want to know more about Matilda, and Cold Town, after.   I certainly do.  Fascinating.

The third short story I read is from The Oxford Book of English Ghost Stories, edited by Michael Cox and R.A. Gilbert:

The Upper Berth - F. Marion Crawford.  A haunted berth on a passenger ship, and a narrator who is a no-nonsense kind of man, until he meets the - thing that haunts the berth.  It is a ghost/dead thing that will make your hair stand on end. awful in its wrongness.  It is written in 1886, so Victorian in tone and attitude, for those who like the early ghost stories.  I liked this one, it reminded me that ghosts are all about the unknown, and the uncanny, and that to be touched or in the presence of one, reminds us in our core that it's not the natural way of things.  The Upper Berth is available here, online.

All these stories rate 5/5.  Have you read any of them?  How is your short story reading for RIP?  I'm so excited that I wrote reviews for short stories  for RIP!  They are all so very good, you have to check them out if you can. Go on, I dare you. 

And now for something completely (but not so unrelated) different:
Niagara Falls
Sidenote:  I was just exploring online to see if I could find Monsters online as well for you to read.  Well, I found this instead, a review of Stewart O'Nan's new book, The Odds.  It's set in Niagara Falls.  Now before you wonder what I'm on about, I just went on my summer holidays to Niagara Falls, last month.  I hadn't been there since a child, and I wanted to show my soon-to-be ex husband and children the Falls.  We had a fantastic holiday, one of the best ever.  So to find out that O'Nan's book is set there - and the main couple go there to see if their thirty-year marriage can be rekindled or if it's  over, because the Falls are one of the Honeymoon capitals in North America.  (We didn't go for that reason, and all my romantic prone friends are dismayed that the Falls didn't work magic on us anyway). Well, you know me, my friends, I had time to look for a bookstore, and eventually found the only one in the central area, a second-hand bookstore called One Page, not so far from our hotel. I even got in while it was open, and bought some books.  Well it turns out that Stewart O'Nan likes this store too - see the bottom of the article I've linked you too.  Small world......and now I definitely have to read his novel, with Niagara Falls fresh in my mind.

By the way, I LOVE Niagara Falls.  Not the Clifton Hill attractions, which are like Blackpool in England only smaller (so my ex says), but the Falls themselves are extraordinary and beautiful. As a child I saw them many times, as most of my family is from the nearby London area. It was fun to go back as an adult and realize they are just as awesome and beautiful as ever.  Below are four pictures from our trip. How is this related to the above?

So about the horror RIP link:
Well, my youngest son was determined to see some ghostly or ghastly wax museum.  When I went a as child to Niagara Falls, I clearly remember going through the Chamber of Horrors, which was set in the bottom of Louis Tussaud's Wax museum.  I would start off slowly, and then when the exhibits got too much for me, I would start running until I was dashing through the exhibit.  That was when I was 10. Flash forward to now, 39 years later.  We eventually found two wax museums which each had a tiny horror section.  My reaction to both was the same:  I started off okay, and if it was too dark and the exhibits moved or were too close to us, I began to move faster and faster until I was almost running.  My youngest son is most disappointed in me.  I failed the 'cool mom can go through a horror museum' test. I think I got clammy hands at one point,and we had to take the short cut through one part.  My son kept saying, " They're only statues, mom!  they can't move! They're not real!"  I kept thinking that something was behind me when I wasn't looking......so that's my real live RIP moment, brought to you courtesy of Niagara Falls.  That Freddy Kreuger statue was very life-like and much too close in the passageway.....