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Haiti Glass
Book
Winner of the 2015 PEN Oakland Josephine Miles Literary Award In her debut collection of verse and...
Child Protection and Parents with a Learning Disability: Good Practice for Assessing and Working with Adults - Including Autism Spectrum Disorders and Borderline Learning Disability
Book
Child Protection and Parents with a Learning Disability provides the practical knowledge that...
Advances in Human Factors, Software, and Systems Engineering: Proceedings of the Ahfe 2017 Conference on Human Factors, Software, and Systems Engineering, July 17-21, 2017, Los Angeles, California, USA
Tareq Ahram and Waldemar Karwowski
Book
This book provides a platform for addressing human factors in software and systems engineering, both...
Quantitative Approaches in Logistics and Supply Chain Management: Proceedings of the 8th Workshop on Logistics and Supply Chain Management, Berkeley, California, October 3rd and 4th, 2013
Hans-Jurgen Sebastian, Philip Kaminsky and Thomas Muller
Book
This contributed volume presents selected research papers from the 8th workshop on Logistics and...
Acanthea Grimscythe (300 KP) rated Kill Creek in Books
May 15, 2018
When I open up a book, I’ve come to expect one of two things: a slow simmer with no reward, or something brimming with action. Rarely do I find one the former of those two to be worth the time spent building up to the climax. Scott Thomas’s debut novel, Kill Creek, defies those odds with an amazing payoff to its agonizingly long crawl.
One of the things I liked early on about Kill Creek is its homage to several different types of horror authors. The main characters, T. C. Moore, Daniel Slaughter, Sebastian Cole, and Sam McGarver, all represent different corners of the genre – and vastly different personalities. It’s a welcome relief from books filled with the same drab, rehashed characters of different names. (Seriously, I’ve read books where the main characters were pretty much identical and it’s a bore!)
In Kill Creek, Thomas takes a rather unusual approach to the whole haunted house thing. Rather than having a locale of note infested with ghosts, he takes slightly different strides: i.e., he personifies the house itself – a welcome respite from your traditional ghost stories.
I think my biggest issue with this book is its pacing. Several times I nearly put it down and many other times, I fell asleep reading it. That’s not to say that Thomas’s prose is drab – it’s not. Nor is the book a snoozefest. However, the first 70% of the novel is largely exposition and minor build-up. It’s not until the final 30% of the novel that things start to get messy and fun. Fortunately, Thomas’s ability to terrify, though more saturated near the end of the book, can be tasted subtly in that first, drier bit of his prose. (I had nightmares, y’all. Seriously.)
Because of that awfully slow burn, I can’t give this book all five skulls. I want to, and the last bit of the book nearly redeemed it, but to have more than half the novel filled with something that drags on so horribly is a nope in my book. Nonetheless, I know this man can write and I gladly look forward to more of his books.
I’d like to thank NetGalley and the publisher for providing me with a free copy of the book in exchange for an unbiased (albeit horribly late) review.
One of the things I liked early on about Kill Creek is its homage to several different types of horror authors. The main characters, T. C. Moore, Daniel Slaughter, Sebastian Cole, and Sam McGarver, all represent different corners of the genre – and vastly different personalities. It’s a welcome relief from books filled with the same drab, rehashed characters of different names. (Seriously, I’ve read books where the main characters were pretty much identical and it’s a bore!)
In Kill Creek, Thomas takes a rather unusual approach to the whole haunted house thing. Rather than having a locale of note infested with ghosts, he takes slightly different strides: i.e., he personifies the house itself – a welcome respite from your traditional ghost stories.
I think my biggest issue with this book is its pacing. Several times I nearly put it down and many other times, I fell asleep reading it. That’s not to say that Thomas’s prose is drab – it’s not. Nor is the book a snoozefest. However, the first 70% of the novel is largely exposition and minor build-up. It’s not until the final 30% of the novel that things start to get messy and fun. Fortunately, Thomas’s ability to terrify, though more saturated near the end of the book, can be tasted subtly in that first, drier bit of his prose. (I had nightmares, y’all. Seriously.)
Because of that awfully slow burn, I can’t give this book all five skulls. I want to, and the last bit of the book nearly redeemed it, but to have more than half the novel filled with something that drags on so horribly is a nope in my book. Nonetheless, I know this man can write and I gladly look forward to more of his books.
I’d like to thank NetGalley and the publisher for providing me with a free copy of the book in exchange for an unbiased (albeit horribly late) review.
Joe Goodhart (27 KP) rated Firefly: Big Damn Hero (Firefly #1) in Books
Nov 30, 2020
WOW! No, really, <b>WOW!</b> That was gorram incredible!
It's been ages since I read any fan fiction, as so much of it, at the end of the day, was just glorified 'Shipping. It's been almost two months since I have picked up anything (comic or prose) to read, as my wife and I have been through a hellish two months (started with the MS diagnosis, and ended with our 14 year old Mini Schnauzer having to be put to sleep). Long story short, not a whole hell of lot of reading going on my life, as I have been walking around in a fog, caring not one whit about much of anything, including eating or reading.
FIREFLY: BIG DAMN HERO came out on my Kindle November 20th, the day before my 50th birthday (without Lily, our 14 y.o. Mini, no longer with us, it was more like an UnBirthday, as I really felt it was no longer worth celebrating). I read the first two Chapters, or rather, I <i>tried</i>, but they seemed as though I had not when I returned to the book last week.
No matter, for it appeared not to affect my overall satisfaction that the FIREFLY prose novels were off to a very good start indeed! And I was able to focus my attention enough to finish the book in such a quick time!
From beginning to end, we are a presented with a tale of the SERENITY and her crew early in the first Season. Everyone is true to form, from Mal to Wash and Zoë to Simon and River, etc. No one ever seemed out-of-character.
At a base level, this was a Mal-centric story. We gain some backstory into his past, on Shadow, just prior to the War. We are also given an inside track to his inner thoughts, allowing us to gain an even deeper understanding of his character, beyond what we learned in the short-lived TV series and subsequent movie SERENITY.
DOCTOR WHO is a hot mess right now, something I am unable to get behind (after being a fan for almost 48 years). Too many changes, good and bad. Fortunately, though, FIREFLY remains the same, untouched, let to continue as the way it was intended, and I am totally fine with that!
If you love FIREFLY as much as I do, you owe it to yourself to pick this one up!
It's been ages since I read any fan fiction, as so much of it, at the end of the day, was just glorified 'Shipping. It's been almost two months since I have picked up anything (comic or prose) to read, as my wife and I have been through a hellish two months (started with the MS diagnosis, and ended with our 14 year old Mini Schnauzer having to be put to sleep). Long story short, not a whole hell of lot of reading going on my life, as I have been walking around in a fog, caring not one whit about much of anything, including eating or reading.
FIREFLY: BIG DAMN HERO came out on my Kindle November 20th, the day before my 50th birthday (without Lily, our 14 y.o. Mini, no longer with us, it was more like an UnBirthday, as I really felt it was no longer worth celebrating). I read the first two Chapters, or rather, I <i>tried</i>, but they seemed as though I had not when I returned to the book last week.
No matter, for it appeared not to affect my overall satisfaction that the FIREFLY prose novels were off to a very good start indeed! And I was able to focus my attention enough to finish the book in such a quick time!
From beginning to end, we are a presented with a tale of the SERENITY and her crew early in the first Season. Everyone is true to form, from Mal to Wash and Zoë to Simon and River, etc. No one ever seemed out-of-character.
At a base level, this was a Mal-centric story. We gain some backstory into his past, on Shadow, just prior to the War. We are also given an inside track to his inner thoughts, allowing us to gain an even deeper understanding of his character, beyond what we learned in the short-lived TV series and subsequent movie SERENITY.
DOCTOR WHO is a hot mess right now, something I am unable to get behind (after being a fan for almost 48 years). Too many changes, good and bad. Fortunately, though, FIREFLY remains the same, untouched, let to continue as the way it was intended, and I am totally fine with that!
If you love FIREFLY as much as I do, you owe it to yourself to pick this one up!
Suswatibasu (1701 KP) rated The Secret History in Books
Jan 3, 2018
Engrossing at times but overall disappointing
This novel left me with mixed feelings, as sometimes the prose was wonderful while other times, there were glaring flaws.
Surrounding a misfit at an exclusive New England college, Richard finds kindred spirits in the five eccentric students of his ancient Greek class. He becomes engulfed in their dark secrets and things spiral out of control.
The atmosphere surrounding this group of elitist college students smacks of a wannabe Great Gatsby - there's a sense of self-importance, entitlement, and grandeur, of self-indulgence and pretence. While this worked to an extent in terms of characterisation, it also made for a great exasperation for the reader. The characters are so unlikable that you don't even care about what happens to them. And they do appear to be grotesque caricatures of 19th century archetypes bolted on to an otherwise standard 1980's drink and drugs college environment.
The characters lacked depth, although Tartt attempted to mirror them in the Greek stories they studied. In essence it is a good story with some stylish writing but also some dull and tedious conversations and descriptions. Disappointing.
Surrounding a misfit at an exclusive New England college, Richard finds kindred spirits in the five eccentric students of his ancient Greek class. He becomes engulfed in their dark secrets and things spiral out of control.
The atmosphere surrounding this group of elitist college students smacks of a wannabe Great Gatsby - there's a sense of self-importance, entitlement, and grandeur, of self-indulgence and pretence. While this worked to an extent in terms of characterisation, it also made for a great exasperation for the reader. The characters are so unlikable that you don't even care about what happens to them. And they do appear to be grotesque caricatures of 19th century archetypes bolted on to an otherwise standard 1980's drink and drugs college environment.
The characters lacked depth, although Tartt attempted to mirror them in the Greek stories they studied. In essence it is a good story with some stylish writing but also some dull and tedious conversations and descriptions. Disappointing.