Book Review: The Boy on the Bridge

M. R. Carey's 2017 follow-up to The Girl with all the Gifts, The Boy on the Bridge works as a prequel, and once again focuses on a small group of soldiers and scientists attempting to exist after an end of the world event.

The novel takes place on a mobile science station (think tank mixed with RV) that plays an important role in the original book.  Just as with the first novel, we are given one character to view this strange new world from, but this time, there are two protagonists, a scientist and a young man named Steven Greaves, who is a quiet, perhaps autistic young man who may be the human race's last, best chance for survival.

The novel works to create an incredibly tense, paranoid situation and plays with issues of consequences and living in a perpetual state of fear.

Well worth the read.

Book Review: The Girl with All the Gifts

I actually came across The Girl with All the Gifts not because I'm a fan of the author (Mike Carey's The Unwritten being one of my favourite comic series), and not because the trailer for the film adaption just came out (starring Glen Close - HOLY CATS!), and no, not even because I spent a year reading largely only zombie-themed post-apocalyptic fiction, but instead because my wife read it and thought it would be my thing.

The Girl with All the Gifts is an incredibly well written in-depth character look at a small military base existing in the UK after an (mild spoiler) Extinction Level Event involving zombies. The novel focuses on a ten year-old girl named Melanie and that's just about all I want to say about it, plot wise.

Having read a LOT of zombie fiction over my life, what I really love about this book is the different way it went in concept and just how much it made me care about (or at least relate to) all of it's characters.

Totally worth the read, even if Horror books are not really your thing, and yes, this book will absolutely find it's way onto my shelves at home soon.

Bookmonkey x Penguin Horror: Day 6: Me and the Monster

Of all the books available in the Penguin Horror imprint, Frankenstein is the one that shares the longest history with me. Since I was a little kid, enjoying The Hilarious House of Frightenstein on television, I was always intrigued by the creature. In the context of that show, it is actually just a prop, never doing anything but being background set dressing for the other characters, but always (in my young mind), bursting with the potential to rise.

I read the book for the first time back in junior high (middle school for my US readers), and having reread it three times since (most recently last week), I am always swept away in the epic tragedy of the story, if only Victor had attempted to help his creature, every horrible thing in the novel could have been avoided.

In terms of movies, everyone should see the 1931 James Whale directed classic Frankenstein as well as the 1935 follow-up The Bride of Frankenstein. Although the second moves away from the original source material, the two films together gave us some of the most iconic images of the creature, his bride and their world that have ever been put to film.

The 1957 Terence Fisher film The Curse of Frankenstein is still hands-down my personal favourite Frankenstein adaptation, although unlike the novel it doesn’t even attempt to make the doctor remotely sympathetic. Played by Peter Cushing as one of the most calculating bastards ever to grace the silver screen, the film sits highly in my favourite movies overall.

Although I have read a lot of Frankenstein-based fiction over the years, my current top incarnation of the character is the version used in Mike Carey and Peter Gross’s The Unwritten, which is itself a story about stories, and full of all sorts of twists and turns, but one of my favourites is the inevitably unintentional rising of the creature by the series main character Tom Taylor.

Genre Character of the Week: Mister Pullman

Normally I don't do this - if I'm reading a book that I'll be discussing at one of my book clubs in the near future, I tend to hold off on discussing aspects of the text on my blog until after the meeting.  This month I've been reading The Unwritten a comic book series written by Mike Carey and art by Peter Gross.  I would consider the story as a dark fantasy.  The reason I'm writing about it now, rather than early next month, is that I totally loved the main villain, Mister Pullman.

 

Staying away from spoilers (and The Unwritten has a lot of those) Pullman works for... hmmm...

 

Okay, Pullman has just about the creepiest power (curse?) I've seen in comics to date, you see, when he... right, no spoilers.

 

This just got much harder than I expected.

 

Okay - go read The Unwritten - the first six Trades are currently available for purchase.  It's pretty great, there is a heck of lot going on, and oce you've seen Mister Pullman in action, I think you'll see why I think he's such an interesting villain.

Book Review: The Unwritten

Back in March I asked a couple friends about which current comics they were reading, as one of the titles I'm currently collecting just finished, I thought it would be fun to try something new. One of the first comics brought up was a series by Mike Carey and Peter Gross called The Unwritten. Last week I got the first volume of this series in from my public library and I've got to say - this is a pretty amazing series and I can't believe I hadn't heard of it before.

The premise of the series is pretty interesting; the main character, Tom Taylor, is the son of a famous author named Wilson Taylor, who wrote a massively popular book series about a boy wizard called Tommy Taylor. In the first issue while appearing at a convention, Tom is accused of not being his father's son, which causes a backlash of anger from fans of the book series. The intriguing part is that Tom may actually somehow be from another world - in fact, he might actually even be the boy wizard everyone assumes the character was based on.

The series feels a lot like a mix of Sandman and Fables to me - which is about as high a compliment as I can give a new comic series. I'm only six issues in and the series is ongoing, but seriously, if you are into dark fantasy, give it a look.