Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter reviewed

In 2009, there was a book that took the horror world by some kind of storm called Pride and Prejudice and Zombies.  I would say more about that but I haven't read it since I never  read or watched Pride and Prejudice so the basic story would have been lost on me.  But that would soon be rectified for Seth Grahame-Smith's new book, Abraham Lincoln Vampire Hunter.  Everyone knows about Lincoln and what he did and how he died so I had no need to do some additional reading to try and get it so I bought it and read it.  Now with that said, let's sharpen our axes as we stake our way into Abraham Lincoln Vampire Hunter.

Like I said, we all know about Lincoln and his accomplishments but what if there were some secret journals?  What if vampires were real...for realsies?  What if the Civil War was actually a proxy between vampires who want to enslave humanity and rule the world between the other vampires who didn't want those things?  Well thanks to some recently unearthed secret journals of Lincoln we find out that those things are TRUE!  Okay, not really but it would be kind of awesome right?  No, it probably wouldn't but I digress.  Basically it's Lincoln seeing his mother die from vampire blood as a boy and vowing to kill every vampire that exists and as he grows up the stakes keep getting higher and higher.

Now for a book that has Abraham Lincoln that hunts and kills vampires with an axe, the book surprisingly reads more like a text book than an action novel.  Granted, that is obviously its intent and there are some narrative flourishes between the journal texts but things play out in a mostly academic manner.  I mean I was entertained and at times excited but things didn't pop like they should have.  But there is one part where things they do, John Wilkes Booth as a vampire.  His backstory is full of intrigue and excitement that after reading it, I was wishing that the book was based off him.  Don't get me wrong, the Lincoln stuff isn't bad and it does have great moments but it should have been better.

But there's more to this story.  Grahame-Smith wants to connect the horrors of vampirism to the horrors of slavery.  On paper, it seems to be a horribly pretentious idea of making a stupid statement about a long dead issue but I will admit that this idea isn't executed as horribly as it could have been.  On a visceral level where Lincoln sees the vampires eat the slaves do have some decent imagery and it drives the plot forward even though intellectually, it does slow the book down a bit.  But the fact that this idea isn't executed as horribly as it should be is worth commending Grahame-Smith though.

So while I may be a bit too hard on this book, it is basically good entertainment.  It's the same level as a summer blockbuster movie where you turn your brain off and enjoy yourself.  Some ideas should have been better and some ideas may have worked better than they should but Grahame-Smith has created a decent world here.  Just give it a read and you probably won't be disappointed.

7/10

The Lovely Bones novel reviewed

The first time that The Lovely Bones came into my radar, I'm sure like a good number of people, was when Peter Jackson made his adaption of it which got slaughtered by the public.  Whether it was deserved or not, I don't know since I haven't seen it but it did plant the desire to read the book in my mind.  But it took me a few months afterwords to actually get around to checking it out at the library.  So now that I've read it and all, it's time to dig in, not literally of course, into The Lovely Bones.

So there's this 14-year old girl named Suzie Salmon, like the fish, who's on her way to home from school.  She bumps into her creepy neighbor Mr. Harvey who wants Suzie to see his hidey-hole and by that I mean rape and kill her.  So now she's in heaven and she's looking down on her family and how they are going through this terrible tragedy.  Now all she can do is just watch helplessly as her father grows suspicious of Mr. Harvey and tries to get the police to investigate him further which causes a rift in the family.

Now, for some reason or another, I've been thinking of my own mortality and what happens after we die.  Of course, this somewhat scares me whether this an afterlife or not but The Lovely Bones did put me at peace with mortality.  It doesn't talk about heaven a lot but when it does, it does paint a great picture with Heaven being whatever made you the happiest.  But the wonderful use of imagery doesn't stop at heaven.  The aftermath of the murder is also told in such a way that it does feel real.  It's written in a way that's utterly believable.  A lesser book would probably focus on the mystery but that isn't the point, it's all about acceptance.

However, at times the writing gets a bit full of itself.  It does go overboard in its descriptions to the point of it being written in the dreaded purple prose.  No one has pale skin, it's moonlight glow.  The mother's eyes aren't pretty, they're like oceans...but then again, two of the characters do comment on it quite a bit.  And I realize that the whole mystery isn't the point of this book but it still feels perfunctorily.  It's there, at times it may move the plot along but the book doesn't really regard it as all that important, even at the beginning when it's the most important.

This book may have flashes of being pretentious, it is still a good read.  The heaven passages are amazing.  When it's not being written in purple prose, it does have an hypnotic factor to it.  If anything, it reminds me of Watchmen where it's more of an experience rather than a narrative story and who knows, maybe it would benefit from having order put into this chaos with a movie since there are some rooms for improvement but don't think of me being too hard on the book.  It's still really good, it's just flawed.

8/10

Twilight reviewed...the novel, not the movie

So a week or so ago, I saw the Twilight movie and noticed it was like a crappy self-insert fan-fic. So like a rube, I wanted to see how bad the book without the movie blocking the worst tendencies of novels. So what did I learn from this? What do I see when I look into the fans eyes? Why did I bang my head on the book a few times out of frustration? Let's find out as we go into Twilight.

So our story begins with our Mary Sue...I mean Bella Swan moves to Forks, Washington from Phoenix(I'll get to Bella's Mary Sue-ness a bit later). She's all awkward and clumsy and stuff like that but by some miracle she has her own guy following cause she's all hot and stuff but she doesn't get it....apparently she doesn't look at mirrors or any other reflective surfaces. But one day, she notices EDWARD CULLEN, the hottest guy on Earth, ours and all parallel Earths. But little does she know that he's a VAMPIRE!!!!!1111EXTREME!1!!1 Then she knows...then they date. Finally some other vampires try to kill Bella cause they're evil and they hunt the blood of humans, while the Cullen family hunt the blood of animals.....EXTREME!!!111!!!!

The first thing that you notice about this book is the quality of the writing.....IT'S HORRIBLE! And I'm not talking about the fancy things like plot, characterization or dialogue. I am talking about sentence construction, pacing and grammar. If you read any random sentence aloud, it just reads fake and stilted. And then there's the various subplots that don't have any payoffs, lead nowhere and in the end are pointless. Then there's the Tyler Crowley subplot, he was that black guy who almost crashed his van into Bella before Edward used his super speed to save her life, which is insulting. And no, I'm not going to play the race card in this cause Tyler's race wasn't specified in the book(just the movie) so I got to go with the interest in fairness. Anyways, to atone for his sin of nearly killing our plucky heroine, he wants to FORCIBLY take Bella to prom despite him telling him no to that other school dance and making her disinterest known to him in a fairly obvious way. Then he's conveniently ignores the obvious fact that Edward and Bella are DATING EXCLUSIVELY but it's fairly well known....that's not only delusional, that's insulting.

Now there's our hot, sexy vampire Edward who is an expert in manipulation and emotional abuse. What, he is? The first half of the book he's basically like "Hi we can be friends, just kidding. I'm sorry, want to be friends can we? Nah, just kidding. Alright, wanna date?" and then he insults her and tries to shoot her ideas at the climax. Sure there's good moments but he's just manipulating Bella's weak, girly emotions so she could justify his actions with "But he truly loves me!", like standing out of the window which isn't creepy at all. Then there's all the descriptions towards Edward and it's all very creepy, detailed and somewhat soft-porn at times. I don't wanna sit in the chair that Stephenie Meyer sat in while writing the Edward descriptions. The sad thing is that Edward's the most interesting character, not because he's the most developed character but everyone else is so boring. That book Meyer was working on with Twilight from Edward's perspective would've been awesome. Then it had to be leaked and Meyer had to be a brat and say "No, I can't work on it now so I'm going to kill the project. I'll kill it to death! I'll kill it so it won't be alive anymore, even!" I mentioned I'd get to Bella's Mary Sue-Ness and here it is: she can cook, is instantly popular, is instantly getting guys, has everything about her and she's clumsy...which is a classic Mary Sue trait to make Mary Sue's not Mary Sue's. And we she nearly gets killed by Tyler's death van, pretty much the whole school stops and they visit her! Why? She's only been in town a few days and now she's like ultra-popular....sigh. Everyone else, is not worth mentioning.

Well maybe the villains, if only how they just show up in a failed attempt to generate suspense. There's no build-up, no menance and the end-game just comes out of nowhere...for the most part and in the end, they're mostly pointless. I mean, Laurent just sits the big fight out(maybe he's the smart one), we're only told that Victoria is out doing stuff we never see her do stuff and James is the one we get to see do stuff and he traps Bella in a decent trap. Then he has gloat like a James Bond villain before Edward comes and they have an awesome fight. Oh wait, we don't get to see that cause Bella has to be unconscious and we only have to get little clues about it. Don't get me wrong that is fine, in theory, to imagine the fight based on the clues we're given. Let's see there's some a few sounds, later Edward tells Bella he's dead and then later there's a mention that the fighting place was burned down. THAT'S PATHETIC! What can we imagine from that? Then there was that build-up that James was the most lethal, dangerous and evil vampire from the three evil ones that we should've gotten a real knock-down, drag-out fight like the movie did...and then the movie fight ended with Alice tearing off James head, which was kinda cool, too cool for the book.

So in short, WATCH THE MOVIE! As mediocre as it is, it's better in every conceivable way. The cinematography is good, the chicks are hot and Robert Pattison is pretty good in it. Or you could listen to "Decode" by Paramore. That's a great song, the singer chick is hot and it's like cliffnotes version of Twilight, if it was awesome. If I had a stake, I would stake the book! If it was morning, I would throw it into the sun! If I had holy water, I would drown it! I mean anyone who likes this book doesn't know what love is, doesn't know what emotional abuse is and should just off themselves cause they won't find anyone like Edward to abuse them.

2/10

Mike Nelson's Death Rat reviewed

I will say this first and foremost, I like Mike Nelson. I'm a fan of Mystery Science Theater 3000. I love the Megacheese book that he wrote(without it I will never gave Road House a chance) and I'm sure Rifftrax is good, I just haven't actually purchased anything from there. So when I first about his Death Rat novel I was intrigued and saw it in a few places but I didn't buy it and eventually I forgot about it. Then a couple weeks ago I saw it on my local library's bookstore for a buck. I bought it and then I eventually got around to reading it.

So what would you expect from a book titled Death Rat. You would think a huge rat with laser-vision and massive destruction. Of course you're not going to get it from Nelson, it's too awesome for him to write. Instead it's about some old history writer though some WACKY events is working fast-food. In desperation, he decides to write Death Rat, a book about man vs. a 6-foot tall rat! He tries to sell it but he's too old to actually do so, so he finds out that his fast-food co-worker is an actor and looks the part of somebody rugged and manly. So the actor sells the book...but he forgets to mention that part where the book was FICTION. So now there's a cover-up involving a small-town, Prince...I mean King Leo, some egomanical homespun writer out for revenge, and former govenor Jesse Ventura, I mean current govenor Bart Herzog.

So just because something is different from what I expected doesn't mean it's bad. I'm not one of those people that has to have everything conform to my expectations. But this book is bad in other ways. I think the main problem is that while Nelson is great at making fun of things that already exist, here he's creating something and then making fun of it. It just smacks of desperation and pretty much saying "Look how wacky things are. Look, see it's wacky!". It just doesn't feel right or have a good flow to it. Even when the plot and the characters are come together, it never feels like they are gelling together in any meaningful way.

But it's biggest sin is that it's extremely forgettable. I can tell you the bare essentials of the plot and the fact that I did laugh at somethings, I can't tell you what exactly happened or what I did laugh at. In fact, if you put a gun to my head and tell me exactly what happened, my brain and skull fragments would be on the floor so you can make a stew out my brains & necklaces with my skull fragments to give to people you deemed to be worthy. This book is kinda like cotton candy, it's airy, trivial and it doesn't even taste that good but it's good enough for you finish, if only out of obligation.

But nearing the end of the book, something hit me about Death Rat. It seems to be more of a overly descriptive script than a novel. I do believe it would work better as a movie or maybe a mini-series. The biggest flaws in the novel, the desperation of wackiness, wouldn't be apparent and some actors could give the dialogue a real kick. I mean it's good to support people you like but this isn't something that should be supported. And even though I don't really hate Death Rat, just dislike it quite a bit, stick with Hollywood's Megacheese or Rifftrax or the DVD releases of MST3K.

4/10