The World of Lore: Wicked Mortals (The World of Lore #2)
Book
A chilling, lavishly illustrated who's-who of the most despicable people ever to walk the earth,...
Peer Gynt
Book
A new Penguin edition of Ibsen's two great verse plays, in masterful versions by one of our greatest...
Build Your Home Around My Body
8.0
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Two young Vietnamese women go missing decades apart. Both are fearless, both are lost. And both will...
Historical Fiction Literary fiction Vietnam
Badlands (Badlands #1)
8.0
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A psychic medium and a skeptical cop solve supernatural murders in Myrtle Beach Medium and...
Urban Fantasy M/M Romance Audiobook Tantor Audio
The First Woman
10.0
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At once epic and deeply personal, the second novel from prize-winning author Jennifer Makumbi is an...
Historical Fiction Africa Uganda Feminism Literary Fiction Coming of age
ClareR (5885 KP) rated Gun Island in Books
May 21, 2021
Deen Datta certainly gets around on his journey. From New York where he lives, to the Sunderbans in India, then onto a California on fire and a more flooded than usual Venice. This could have been a book that preached about the perils of climate change, but it didn’t. It did lay the stark reality out for the reader, but this was just as much a part of the story as the relationships Deen has with the people he meets, and his friends. There is a real feeling that Deen doesn’t have a firm identity: he’s detached from his Bengali roots, and he doesn’t fit in to New York either. But I think he does feel a sense of belonging by the end of the book, with the help of his friends. Cinta, a Venetian, is an old friend, and someone who always seems to push him into doing what’s good for him. Then there are his Indian friends, Piya and Tipu who help him to learn new things about himself and the world he lives in.
I loved this book. It ticked a lot of boxes on my favourite themes list: the environment, India, history, folklore, the search for identity. It’s such a thought provoking, magical novel.
Suswatibasu (1703 KP) rated Pay the Ghost (2015) in Movies
Nov 4, 2017 (Updated Nov 4, 2017)
It surrounds Cage's missing child who disappeared on Halloween. There emerges a rather unclear pattern of missing children and bizarre otherworldly messages. Given that it is New York, it's difficult to see how they established a sequence of missing children as there were far more than just three children going missing on this day every year. And somehow Celtic folklore gets drafted in, where a mother, who was burned at the stake with her three children, seems to be the one taking these kids in revenge.
The end battle is almost comedic, as Cage gets strangled by a burnt witch while hovering in the sky and rotating simultaneously. It's pretty ridiculous - there's nothing that threads the story together, going from all out supernatural to thriller back to supernatural. A flakey story no doubt.
Suswatibasu (1703 KP) rated The Hazel Wood in Books
Mar 2, 2018
The main thrust of the novel asks whether Alice is a character in a tale herself? And if she can escape her fate by running away from her story. And while I can appreciate the author's creativity, there's very little character development and there appears to be a fair few loose ends. The prose is heavy in metaphors to the point that the first half seemed far too long.
While many have described the book as a dark and creepy fantasy, I think it may have been a little overhyped - it's more of a weird version of Alice in Wonderland. Interesting, but not for me.
Winchester Lever-Action Rifles
Martin Pegler, Mark Stacey and Alan Gilliland
Book
Winchester lever-action repeating rifles are an integral part of the folklore of the American West....
Marvelous: The Marvin Hagler Story
Brian Hughes and Damian Hughes
Book
Marvelous Marvin Hagler is a sporting legend. Often called the greatest middleweight boxer of all...