Talulla Rising

Talulla Rising by Glen Duncan
Canongate Books - April 5, 2012
425 pages

(DO NOT READ ANY MORE UNLESS YOU HAVE READ OR DO NOT INTEND TO READ THE LAST WEREWOLF. THIS IS FOR YOUR OWN SAFETY.)

Talulla Demetriou is the last living werewolf. And she is pregnant. Pursued by enemies and racked by the need to kill, she flees to a remote Alaskan hunting lodge to have her child in secret. There, with her infant son in her arms, it looks like the worst is over. Until the door bursts open - and she discovers that the worst is only just beginning...Talulla is plunged into a race against time to save her son. Tormented by guilt and fueled by rage, she is pursued by deadly forces - including (rumor has it) the oldest living vampire on earth. Hopeless odds. Unless, of course, a mother's love for her child turns out to be the deadliest force of all...

This was better than The Last Werewolf. Okay, this was actually way better than The Last Werewolf, but that doesn't take much. It includes none of the main things that I griped about in the previous article; no more sexism, better writing, and only one viewpoint in the entire book.

I love the emergence of the female werewolf that doesn't kill herself after her first kill, because that's a resourceful, brave woman that isn't afraid to take what's hers. Not to mention, she actually has compassion for her fellow humans (or at least some of them), unlike Jake's constant hatred of everyone else that isn't the one female werewolf he happens to come across.

That being said, there's some disturbing stuff in Talulla, and not of the violence variety. In particular is a scene between Talulla and one of her captors, Devaz. I will be scrubbing my brain to rid myself of that entire chapter.

The ending sets it up for a third entry, which will probably focus on (MAJOR SPOILER!)the pack that Talulla has joined(SPOILER END). So we'll see how it goes in that one, because Jake's story was bad and Talulla's good.

Grade: B+

The Shining Girls

The Shining Girls by Lauren Beukes
Random House Struik - 15 April 2013
375 pages

THE GIRL WHO WOULDN'T DIE HUNTS THE KILLER WHO SHOULDN'T EXIST.
Harper Curtis is a killer who stepped out of the past. Kirby Mazrachi is the girl who was never meant to have a future.
Kirby is the last shining girl, one of the bright young women burning with potential whose lives Harper is destined to snuff out after he stumbles upon a House in Depression-era Chicago that opens on to other times.
At the urging of the House, Harper inserts himself into the lives of the shining girls, waiting for the perfect moment to strike. He's the ultimate hunter, vanishing into another time after each murder, untraceable--until one of his victims survives.
Determined to bring her would-be killer to justice, Kirby joins the Chicago Sun-Times to work with the ex-homicide reporter, Dan Velasquez, who covers her case. Soon Kirby finds herself closing in on the impossible truth...

Define "soon".

Because if you mean the first 84.4% of the book, then you're sorely mistaken. That part of the book is Harper killing various girls who only get one chapter, Kirby talking to murder victims' families and supposed killers trying to figure something out, and Dan getting a huge, overly creepy crush on Kirby. And yes, I actually did the math to figure out that 84.5% through the book is when Kirby finally figures out that Harper comes from the future. After that, everything wraps itself up in a pretty little ribbon all at the end, just like Where'd You Go, Bernadette.

Most of the book was spent either with one-shot chapters in the point of view of one of Harper's victims or of Harper OR Kirby doing God knows what about serial killer nonsense. Did I repeat that? Not exactly, with a few different words? I'm sorry, I guess I'm like Beukes and have to show you the same thing over and over with a couple of variations.

The characters were all one-dimensional things that didn't really seem to have any life. I've seen boxes of cereal that were less cardboard than Harper, Kirby, and everyone else.

Maybe I kept reading this book because I thought that something would happen, or maybe because the chapters were so short I thought that maybe I could just read a few and then stop. Or maybe I just wanted to prove I could slog through this book. No matter what, I was a fool.

Grade: F

Red Moon

Red Moon by Benjamin Percy
Grand Central Publishing - May 7, 2013
533 pages

They live among us.
They are our neighbors, our mothers, our lovers.
They change.
When government agents kick down Claire Forrester's front door and murder her parents, Claire realizes just how different she is. Patrick Gamble was nothing special until the day he got on a plane and hours later stepped off of it, the only passenger alive, a hero. Chase Williams has sworn to protect the people of the United States from the menace in their midst, but he is becoming the very thing he has promised to destroy. So far, the threat has been controlled by laws and violence and drugs. But the night of the red moon is coming, when an unrecognizable world will emerge...and the battle for humanity will begin.

(Spoiler level: MAJOR!!!)

I really hope they're making a sequel to this.

Not because I liked it.

Because there was no...freaking...ENDING!!!

You know how in the end of Inception, Leonardo DiCaprio spins the top and it cuts out before it lands so you don't know whether he's dreaming or not and you can make that up for yourself and it's open-ended, but in a cool way?

Not this. Not this at all. Instead it leaves all of its characters stranded. Patrick got bitten, but he's given a vaccine that will "help" him, but I'm pretty sure that the shot is supposed to prevent you from getting infected before you're bitten, and once you're bitten there's nothing you can do about it. The president is limping around in the forest with a bloody foot, and Miriam is slinking around in the woods with people after her and...GRR!!!

I'm also pretty sure that Buffalo died three times, and then the same grammar mistake happens again and again of putting an object pronoun after an incomplete comparison (e.g. "more than him" when it should be "more than he".)

Ugh. It was some fun in the beginning, but it was too long not to have an ending.

Grade: D

Needful Things

Needful Things by Stephen King
Viking - October 1991
690 pages

Leland Gaunt opens up a new shop in Castle Rock called Needful Things. Anyone who enters his store finds the object of his or her lifelong dreams and desires: a prized baseball card, a healing amulet. In addition to a token payment, Gaunt requests that each person perform a little "deed", usually a seemingly-innocent prank played on someone else from town. These practical jokes cascade out of control and soon the entire town is doing battle with itself. Only Sheriff Alan Pangborn suspects that Gaunt is behind the population's increasingly violent behavior.

(Minor spoilers ahead)

Unlike The Tommyknockers, which I still can't believe is only 558 pages, this book is worth its 690. Although it's filled with the usual King puffery of long tangents and characters that don't mean anything, it was still all rather entertaining.

One thing that I wish had been played on more was in the end, where the town turns against each other completely and all of the objects turn into something useless, like Brian Rusk's Sandy Koufax card turning into a useless rookie and Deputy Clutterbuck's fishing pole turning into a bamboo rod. Actually, those are the only two examples I can think of, which is probably why I'm saying it could have been done more.

Apart from that, it was all good fun. I particularly like the ending and hope that King sets a future work up in Paradise Falls, Iowa. That's all I'm going to say.

Grade: A-

The Ocean at the End of the Lane

The Ocean at the End of the Lane by Neil Gaiman
William Morrow and Company - June 18, 2013
192 pages

Sussex, England. A middle-aged man returns to his childhood home to attend a funeral. Although the house he lived in is long gone, he is drawn to the farm at the end of the road, where, when he was seven, he encountered a most remarkable girl, Lettie Hempstock, and her mother and grandmother. He hasn't thought of Lettie in decades, and yet as he sits by the pond (a pond that she'd claimed was an ocean) behind the ramshackle old farmhouse, the unremembered past comes flooding back. It is a past too strange, too frightening, too dangerous to have happened to anyone, let alone a small boy.

A lot of the people who have been giving this book bad reviews say that it is just a puffed-up short story that was "expanded" by the author just to illicit more money out of his readers. My complaints are different.

I like Neil Gaiman, I really do: I like Coraline and The Sandman and The Last Temptation, a sort of comic collaboration with Alice Cooper and Michael Zulli. I think he's a great author. This one I wouldn't recommend to a Gaiman beginner who wanted to see how he writes (much as I probably wouldn't recommend The Dead Zone to a Stephen King beginner).

Gaiman tries much too hard in this one to be confusing in a good way, where you're not always supposed to understand what's going on, but you still read it because it's fun to go along. This wasn't the case. There are so many layers of nonsense and craziness that it's impossible to find anything fun in it.

The characters are all pretty lackluster; Gaiman decided it would be "edgy" not to give his protagonist a name, which has already been done in Fight Club, Invisible Man, and Rebecca. I swear, if this were a normal-sized book, I probably wouldn't have gotten through it.

Grade: D 

The Last Werewolf

The Last Werewolf by Glen Duncan
Canongate Press - March 1, 2011
293 pages

Meet Jake. A bit on the elderly side (he turns 201 in March), but you'd never suspect it. Jake is a werewolf, and after the unfortunate and violent death of his one contemporary, he is now the last of his species. Although he is physically healthy, Jake is deeply distraught and lonely to the point where he is actually contemplating suicide--even if it means terminating a legend thousands of years old. It would seem to be easy enough for him to end everything. But for very different reasons there are two dangerous groups pursuing him who will stop at nothing to keep him alive. In Jake, Glen Duncan has given us a werewolf for the twenty-first century--a man whose deeds can only be described as monstrous but who is in some magical way deeply human.

(Spoiler rate: Minor)

First, the sexism. There are fewer female werewolves (called "Shes") than males (well, I suppose that since Jake is the last werewolf and he's a man, there would be fewer Shes). I thought that there was going to be some completely scientific explanation for it, such as the metabolism of women doesn't hold up with the werewolf virus or something like that. Nope! It's because women are so much more sensitive. They'll make their first kill and stay up all night crying about it, then swallow a silver earring to kill themselves. Great.

Second, the actual writing. First of all, there are some downright confusing sentences where nothing makes sense. Either a word or proper punctuation was missing to make it simply wrong. Second, I counted multiple instances in which there was a period missing. Third, there was the use of language. I have nothing against obscenities in literature when it advances the plot or is used for characterization purposes. I get it, people talk like that. It doesn't mean that every time that you come to a human body part you have to use one of the "terrible c-words" to describe it.

Third and finally (and this is more of a minor aggression than the sexism and writing above), about three-quarters into the novel, maybe more, the book switches viewpoints. While we were hearing all of Jake's thoughts up until then. For the next part, we hear about Talulla, who I'm just going to say is someone very special to all characters involved. No major spoilers here. I'm fine with multiple viewpoints, having handled everything in A Game of Thrones, but the problem is that if you are in a first-person novel and switch the viewpoint, you have to tell the reader right away. I was about two pages in when I realized that it was no longer Jake's thoughts. Everything made sense again.

There is a sequel, however, to The Last Werewolf. It's called Talulla Rising. Since it's about Talulla, it solves the sexism and (I hope) the viewpoint problems. Talulla is also a much more sympathetic protagonist than Jake is. No matter how much of a train wreck The Last Werewolf may have been, it was still an exciting romp, and with a change of personality, the sequel will be on my list.

Grade: C-

The Dark Half

The Dark Half by Stephen King
Viking - October 30, 1989
431 pages

In 1985, 39-year-old Stephen King announced in public that his pseudonymous alter ego Richard Bachman was dead. At the beginning of The Dark Half, Thaddeus Beaumont does the same. Beaumont's pseudonym is not as docile as King's, though, and he comes back for his revenge.

Spoiler alert: Nonexistent

Ah, this was the perfect cure to the aformentioned bloated mess that was The Tommyknockers. 431 pages of large font, a quick plot, and an amazing execution. I love this book. It's one of my favorite Stephen King books, right up there with such great books as Rage, Cujo, The Eyes of the Dragon, and Misery.

This is in the same category as The Tommyknockers where it was not scary because I knew that it could never happen, but if I were put in the situation I would be running and screaming and naturally going insane with terror.

King brings back one of the things that I loved in Misery, which was the insertion of pieces of the book the protagonist was writing inside the actual book. The parts that were inserted were actually supposed to be of the next Richard Bachman novel, but Bachman was then revealed.

The plot moved extremely quickly, and there were a few tangents, but the story was always brought right back to the central plot so that you would barely notice the tangents if you were reading for fun and not reviewing. Overall, it was excellent.

Grade: A-

The Tommyknockers

The Tommyknockers by Stephen King
Putnam - November 10, 1987
558 pages

Late last night and the night before,
Tommyknockers, Tommyknockers, knocking at the door
I want to go to sleep, don't know if I can
Cause I'm so afraid of the Tommyknocker man

Bobbi Anderson and the other good folks of Haven, Maine, have sold their souls to reap the rewards of the most deadly evil this side of hell.

Spoiler level: Minor

I have no idea what the summary is talking about; they didn't actually "sell their souls" by choice in this book. It was more like Bobbi Anderson found a spaceship in the ground that turned everyone into aliens that were given the name Tommyknockers.

This is one of the Stephen King novels that falls under the category of "bloated". Some of it should have definitely been left of the cutting-room floor and, on this count, I'm going to admit that I am guilty of page-skimming at some points. It wasn't until part two that I really got into it. That was when it got into the stories of the other townspeople, not just the unsympathetic Bobbi Anderson and Jim Gardener.

The Ruth McCausland story, however, was pretty bloated as well. Yeah, yeah, we get it, she was mysteriously killed and everyone's trying to call it an accident but in reality she was murdered by the Tommyknockers, but do we really need over a hundred pages devoted to this nonsense?

While I am calling it a bloated mess, there was also some horror in there. As someone who does not believe in aliens, it wasn't enough to pin me to the sheets with fright, but I always think in a book, "What if I were in this situation?" The answer to The Tommyknockers was run and cry. And then die because you're not allowed to leave Haven or you die.

Grade: C

A Game of Thrones

A Game of Thrones by George R.R. Martin
Bantam Spectra - August 6, 1996
694 pages

After Jaime Lannister killed Mad King Aerys Targaryen II in the Sack of King's Landing, the Targaryen line of rule was broken and King Robert Baratheon was appointed king of Westeros, starting a happy rule. Then Jon Arryn, the Hand of the King, dies mysteriously and Eddard Stark discovers the secret that Arryn died for, putting his life at risk when Baratheon is killed by a boar. Jon Snow, Eddard's bastard son, joins the Night's Watch to gain some sort of respect. The Watch guards the Wall at the northern border of Westeros, which keeps out the Eskimo-like Wildlings and the mythical Others. And Daenerys Targaryen, one of the two surviving Targaryens, is sold to the Dothraki people by her brother Viserys to get money, where she is wed to Khal Drogo. In addition, the seasons were made supernaturally long by a magical event many years ago, and after a ten-year summer a ten-year winter is coming.

As someone who doesn't have HBO, I was excited to find a high fantasy show until I learned that it was on digital. Then I found out that the series is based on the A Song of Ice and Fire series by George R.R. Martin and picked up the first book. While I was a little suspicious at the beginning that there may be too many characters, it turned out to be perfect. Some fantasy novels prefer taking a lighter approach with a tight cast of characters and one point of view, but I prefer the sprawling, epic sagas with a few storylines (but still enough to handle). Sansa Stark, however, I wanted to be killed by her own direwolf. She was the one low point of the entire thing, but I suppose that you can't have it all with such a large cast.

Grade: A-

A Clockwork Orange

A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess
William Heinemann - 1962
192 pages

In a dystopian near-future England, teenage gangs, their members called "droogs", speak a Russified English with some Cockney rhyming slang and Roma and roam the streets at night. One of these such "droogs" is Alex, whose only solace is classical music. Alex gets arrested and is put on a new technique called the "Ludovico Technique", where he is forced to see horrifying images put to the classical music that he so loves.

The book that I read was as it was published in the United Kingdom: with a full twenty-one chapters. The early English versions, including the one that the film is based on, leave out the twenty-first chapter because they felt it had a different tone and American audiences wouldn't like the new version. Twenty or twenty-one chapters, the novella is still wonderful. The Nadsat was difficult to understand at first, and I had to read slowly, but as I went on I got more of it and could pick up the pace and could truly enjoy the book.

Grade: A

It

It by Stephen King

Viking - September 15, 1986

1138 pages

 

When Bill Denbrough's little brother George decides to float a paper boat for Bill, who is sick with the flu, things begin to happen. George falls and the boat is carried into the sewers, which are still flowing water from a large storm the night before. George looks in the sewers to see if he can see the boat, but he finds a clown named Pennywise instead. Pennywise offers him the boat back and a balloon, and when he reaches down to get them, the clown is filled with malice and attacks. So begin the 1958 killings of It.

 

This novel was... interesting, to say the least. It was told in a flip-flopping style that occasionally had me want to slow down just so I could keep track of what was happening in both 1958 and 1985 at the time that I was reading. In addition, for the last 100 pages or so I had no idea how they (spoiler alert!)kill It(spoiler end), as it was told at least three different ways, despite the fact that there should only be two maximum. I did, however, appreciate the references to Christine and The Shining.

 

Grade: C

Thinner

Thinner by Stephen King as Richard Bachman

New American Library - November 19, 1984

309 pages

 

An arrogant and obese lawyer named Billy Halleck was driving across town when he ran over an old Gypsy woman. Someone who he believes to be the woman's husband only utters one word: "Thinner". Soon Billy starts to lose weight frighteningly quickly, and there are consequences for others as well. The judge who gave an unfair verdict to Billy begins to grow scales all over his body, and the town cop who helped to soft-pedal the charges against Billy is cursed with a horrifying case of acne.

 

Thinner was the horror novel of all horror novels that I have ever read. This was no dark fantasy, my favored genre that is rarely terrifying, but rather a truly gruesome, horrifying novel. Thinner is, as well, filled with surprises, such as what the Gypsy man's relation to the dead woman really is, and the signature Stephen King twist of the ending.

 

Grade: A-

The Talisman

The Talisman by Stephen King and Peter Straub

Viking - November 8, 1984
646 pages

Jack Sawyer is a twelve-year-old boy whose mother is the famous Lily Sawyer (previously Lily Carvanaugh), known as Queen of the Bs back when she was acting. A man named Speedy Parker tells Jack that the reason his mother brought him to New Hampshire was because she was dying of cancer. Speedy then goes on to explain that there is another world called the Territories, and Jack's mother has a "twinner" (someone exactly like you under another name in the Territories) that is the queen. If Jack's mother dies, then Jack's evil uncle gets to be king of the Territories. He must top this by getting a talisman in California, flipping back and forth to save him from evils in the other world.

This, I believe, was one of Stephen King's best. It may be Peter Straub's helping, I'm not sure, but this was truly a wonderful work of fantasy. The Territories are a well-crafted land that is perfectly balanced between the modern and the medieval. My favorite character was Wolf, part of a group of "wolfs" (never wolves). These wolfs are werewolves that serve the Queen. Wolf's transformation was rooted in a strong, but not overpowering backstory. The story was fast-paced and actually picked up much earlier than other Stephen King books.

Grade: A

Cycle of the Werewolf

Cycle of the Werewolf by Stephen King

Land of Enchantment - November 1983

127 pages

Reverend Lester Lowe has always been revered in the Maine town of Tarker's Hills. However, that was before the beast attacked him and changed him into a monster that terrorized Tarker's Hills. Every month he changes into an anthropomorphic wolf with extreme strength that kills one person. However, nobody would suspect that the kind Reverend Lowe would be behind the murders until later, when Marty Coslaw notices that the Reverend has an eyepatch after Coslaw shot out one of the werewolf's eyes with firecrackers.

I don't really know if I can give this one a review being as it was so short (a Stephen King first; he has three in the thousand-plus club). That being said, the shortness gives Cycle of the Werewolf some serious faults. Each of the victims you rarely get a page or more of background knowledge about before they are finally offed by the werewolf. I would care more about their deaths if I had really gotten the chance to know them before. However, the fact that it is only around 125 pages means that it is a quick read and the action has to pick up quickly, unlike in Pet Sematary.

Grade: B

Pet Sematary

Pet Sematary by Stephen King
Doubleday - November 14, 1983
416 pages

Louis Creed and his family are moving from Chicago to the small town of Ludlow, Maine. He has a wife named Rachel, a kindergartener named Ellie, a two-year-old named Gage, and a cat named Winston Churchill (Church for short). Their neighbor is an elderly man named Jud Crandall. Jud and Louis become fast friends, and Jud warns the couple about the highway that passes by their house and shows them the pet cemetery (misspelled pet sematary). This causes Ellie distress, thinking about what would happen if Church died, and causes a fight between Louis and Rachel. A short while later, a college student named Victor Pascow leads Louis to believe strange things are happening.

If you don't like the last sentence because it's so mysterious, I apologize. I read this a while ago and didn't have the time to review it until now. One thing I found very distracting about Pet Sematary was the fact that Jud Crandall has a Yankee accent, one of the most annoying accents ever to be spoken (see Christine review). Another thing that I didn't particularly care for was the fact that nothing really seemed to happen that was suspenseful until the last fifty pages or so. When (spoiler alert!)Church gets run over on the highway but comes back to life(spoiler end), you assume that things are going to get strange, but yet they don't. They really don't get strange until the end, and by then you wonder why this couldn't have been accomplished in fewer than 416 pages.

Grade: C

Christine

Christine by Stephen King

Viking - April 29, 1983

526 pages

Arnie Cunningham noticed the 1958 Plymouth Fury when his best friend Dennis Guilder was driving him home from a day of high school, and he immediately wanted it. Roland LeBay, an elderly man with a back brace, sells Arnie the car for $250, though it will take much more to repair it. LeBay refers to the car as "Christine". Soon after, Roland LeBay dies suddenly and Dennis begins to notice a transformation in Arnie Cunningham. He and Arnie's girlfriend Leigh must work together to stop Arnie and Christine.

I appreciate the Philadelphia setting of this novel, a change from King's usual small-town Maine (which is occasionally filled with an annoying Yankee accent). However, what I do not appreciate is the overwhelming sexism in the novel. The one true female character (I'm not counting Christine here) is a teen-queen object of every man's affection, and she ends up doing little to stop Christine in the end of the novel.

Grade: B-

Cujo

Cujo by Stephen King
Viking Press - September 8, 1981
319 pages

Cujo was always the friendliest St. Bernard in Castle Rock, Maine. He was always friendly towards the children, the only danger he posed to them would be crushing them in his friendliness. That was until he went off chasing rabbits. When Cujo gets stuck in a hole after running after a hare, a colony of bats comes flying from the trees, and one scratches Cujo on the nose. The St. Bernard has never had a rabies shot in his life, and he immediately becomes infected. The town of Castle Rock has a new terror.

I am glad that the car was replaced before I read this book. The main part of Cujo takes place with a standoff between Cujo and two people, a woman named Donna and her son Tad. The whole thing takes place in Donna's Pinto because the car breaks down, which was what the old car was about to do before it was replaced. The book itself was one of the better King novels I've read so far; the occasional lapses into the mind of Cujo while he was affected were something that I did not see coming. I saw the end of the movie, and the end of the novel itself is much darker. However, in my point of view, darker is better.

Grade: A-

The Dead Zone

The Dead Zone by Stephen King

Viking Press - August 1979

428 pages

After winning big at the Wheel of Fortune at the county fair, Johnny Smith takes his sick girlfriend Sarah home and then jumps in a cab, planning to go straight to his home. Today is not Johnny Smith's lucky day, however. The taxicab gets caught in an accident that kills the driver and puts Johnny into a coma for five years. When he wakes up, he needs extreme surgery on his legs, arms, and neck, but that's not all. When Johnny wakes up, he realizes that he's psychic.

Okay, that doesn't even begin to describe the plot of the book, but I couldn't reveal any more without giving it away. That alone is about the first 75 or so pages of the book. The reason that it doesn't even begin to describe the plot is because there isn't just one plot. And yet, it's all (for the most part) in Johnny's viewpoint. The problem is that this would do better as a book series or a television show (it actually was a TV show from 2002-2007). It cannot follow one storyline. Storylines are finished at various intervals, and a new one begins. Very few loose ends were tied up at the end, and the ending seemed like an easy way out of the book. I'll allow you this one bomb, Steve. But next time you'll be getting a letter and a copy of the review.

Grade: D

The Long Walk

The Long Walk by Stephen King as Richard Bachman

Signet Books - July 1979

384 pages

In future America, the ultimate sports competition is an annual walking contest known as "The Long Walk". All boys over the age of twelve take a physical and mental exam. One in fifty passes. Those who pass, up to the age of eighteen, are put in a drawing to get selected for The Long Walk. Two hundred are chosen; the first one hundred are Prime, meaning that they walk immediately. The other hundred are back-up, in case Prime walkers decide that they're terrified of The Long Walk and refuse to do it. Garraty is a Prime walker who will not back out.

I am dismayed by the sexism in this book to start. I understand that in most totalitarian dystopian societies men would be given more opportunities than women for any number of reasons, but this is a new level. Since walkers are allowed to have contact with anyone in the crowd as long as they stay on the road, walkers who have girlfriends will kiss and grab at girls in skimpy clothing in the crowd. They also talk about their women as objects that they can use to their will. Sexism aside, I found this novel interesting. (I also find it hard to believe that the original edition was 384 pages. I read it as part of the Bachman Books). While most of the walkers succumbed to physical tests, such as being shot after slowing down too much, some of them took a mental turn for the worse when the threat of death was continually being used. Sometimes a walker would be so beaten and bloody that they believe death would be better than continuing to walk. Another interesting novel from King's dystopian-favoring pseudonym.

Grade: B+

The Shining

The Shining by Stephen King
Doubleday - January 1977
447 pages

After ex-alcoholic and writer Jack Torrance gets fired from his job on the debate team at a New England prep school for injuring a student, he'll take any job he can to get the money. The job in mind for him is to be the caretaker of the Overlook for the winter, a mysterious Colorado hotel that the cook says is home to some horrible things. His son Danny has what is known as "the shine", telepathic abilities that make him sensitive to supernatural forces. The cook warns him to stay out of room 217, and that if there's any trouble he can just call using his powers.

The Shining, like other Stephen King novels I've red, started off incredibly slowly, but then picked up the pace much later. The topiary animals were extremely frightening to me, as well as the transformation of Jack Torrance. I thought that some parts were unneccessary when they were happening, such as the repeated mentioning of the boiler, but it turned out to be neccessary in the end. The scene where (spoiler alert!)Wendy stabs Jack with a butcher knife, but he turns out to be alive and comes at her again with the roque mallet(spoiler end) was one of the most frightening things I have read. This was a truly great example of horror fiction, and it made me scared to go to a hotel in Colorado.

Grade: B+