Book Review: The Forest of Hands and Teeth

Last week I read something I had never expected to come across in Young Adult (YA) fiction - a really great zombie apocalypse novel. Although I'm sure there are many others out there, I have personally never come across a book aimed at teens that shows so effectively the relentless terror of a world overwhelmed by zombies and the people who have somehow managed to survive.

The Forest of Hands and Teeth by Carrie Ryan is really, really good. If you've never read a zombie novel before I can't think of another that would be a better introduction to the sub-genre. The novel focuses on a young girl, Mary, who lives in a small forest village surrounded by walls that are in turn surrounded by the undead (BTW - I love the fact that my computer's dictionary still doesn't acknowledge the word undead as being legit; somehow the fact that it appears on my screen underlined in red makes me feel like my genre tastes are still edgy and not necessarily accepted as the norm).

Without going into a synopsis, I can only say that Mary comes across as a fully realized three-dimensional character; her wants and dreams are easy to relate to and her wish to see the ocean (something she has only ever head about, as a sort of legend), is heartbreaking in its innocents.

The book has a sequel and I will definitely be checking it out. This is one of those few books that I knew I would need to own within the first hundred pages. Seriously, it's that good.

Things I've Noticed: Keeping your blog clean can be tough

On Tuesday I was speaking to my BFF Mike for our regular coffee break chat when he let me know that he could no longer access my blog from his place of work. When he tried to go to my site he was met with the message

THIS SITE HAS BEEN BLOCKED DUE TO QUESTIONABLE MATERIAL

HATE : OTHER

So of course I immediately went through my last weeks worth of tags to see what I could have done to trigger such a response from his IT department. Here's what I found

* Book Reviews, Haunted Houses, Dollhouse Murders

* Things I've Noticed, Young Adult Fiction

* Amy Carter, Ann Reed, Curse of the Cat People, The Sixth Sense, Val Lewton

* E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, Favourite Kisses, The Princess Bride, Valentine's Day

* Colin Farrell, Planning, Ryan Reynolds, The Fly, Valentine's Day

So assuming that it wasn't any of these, it must be the title of my blog (maybe Wisdom, Books or Monkeys represent hate for some people?)

Anyway, now that I have this new bad-boy blogging reputation I've got to figure out what I should do next... should I make my posts really dark and whatnot (no... my mom read this), or attempt to clean up my tarnished image? Maybe I'll just try to find a new font for my blog title.

Genre Character of the Week: Detective Dan Atwater

One of the things that have always interested me in stories involving telepaths is the question of how they interact with other people. In some cases, like Sookie Stackhouse, the telepath effectively becomes a hermit (and the town crazy), while in cases like that proposed in the novel The Demolished Man, they become a terrifying police force.

Last week I read the book Through Violet Eyes by Stephen Woodworth, and the book deals with a very similar question. In the world of the novel, a small group of people (163 in the USA), are born with violet eyes and the ability to become possessed by the spirits of the dead. These peoples (called Violets) are used in solving murder investigations, communing with the spirits of the departed and even helping artistic geniuses continue their work from beyond the grave.

The main character of the novel, Detective Dan Atwater is a Los Angeles cop who has worked with Violets in the past but does not enjoy their company, the reason being that Violets commune with the dead by using touchstones, items which hold an intense emotional connection to the spirit, and as Dan was responsible for the accidental death of a man a few years ago, he doesn’t want to confront his victim again.

What I like about Dan is pretty simple, he’s willing to do whatever it takes to get the job done, even when that includes working very closely with a Violet who has issues of her own. Dan’s approach to his work is straight-forward and unending, he simply works the clues until something comes loose – not unlike Robert B. Parker’s Spenser.

I hadn’t actually heard of this series before last week, but after the great time I had with the first book, I will definitely be looking for the rest of the series.

Book Review: The Dollhouse Murders

This is a sad place, she thought, as she had before. The sadness was not just upstairs in the dollhouse; it was all around her.

I am a huge sucker for Haunted House stories, from the Haunting at Hill House, to The Shining, and my personal Favourites Hell House and Burnt Offerings, there is just something about a creepy old house that really gets to me.

The story follows a twelve year old girl named Amy Treloar, who after having a fight with her mother moves in to her aunt’s old house for a week to help with the clearing and cleaning so the house can be sold. The house is big, filled with old furniture (no one has lived there for years) and in the attic Amy finds a dollhouse, one that matches the actual house down to every detail.

As with any haunted house story, the old place has a dark history, one involving murder, and very slowly the dollhouse seems to be re-enacting what happened...

Considering that this is a young adult novel written in 1983 for Scholastic books (you know, the ones that you could order from your class room in Elementary school), I was pretty darn impressed with the books atmosphere and its building tension throughout. Although it was a pretty fast read (I read it on my communte and during my lunch hour on Friday), I found it to be a pretty cool horror story for younger girls.

Things I’ve Noticed: It is not a good idea to ignore YA Genre Fiction

Next week I’m planning on checking out a Young Adult (YA) mystery novel suggested to me by my friend Trish. It’s called The Dollhouse Murders and she recommended it as it has a lot of horror elements she thought I might like to check out.

As I placed her copy of the book on my “To Be Read” Shelf, I wondered about which other young adult books I’d been meaning to read, so I checked out my 13-year-old daughter Kaia’s room.

Wow.

Last October, in a desperate bid to keep up with what my kids were reading I decided to spend a month reading the Twilight Saga, and afterwards I figured it might be a good idea to continue checking out some of the books my daughters are raving about.

Here’s the problem, between The Hunger Games, The Gone Series, The Redwall Series, The Mortal Instruments Series, and many, many one shots I’ve been meaning to get around to (after The Dollhouse Murders, I’m moving on to a book called The Forest of Hands and Teeth, which my wife says is right up my alley), I’m wondering how much time I’ll have for my regular fiction.

Also there is the question of reading order – where do I start with all of these books? I’m not even getting into the comic book series Kaia owns or the significantly larger YA collection my 18-year-old daughter Lorisia has downstairs.

It’s kind of funny, but right now the scariest books in my house are the steadily growing collection of books meant for kids.

Genre Character of the Week: Amy Reed

A few weeks back my friend Ron loaned me a DVD box set called The Val Lewton Horror Collection, which contained nine films produced by the man in the 1940's which were all low on budget, but high on atmosphere and story. After watching the first film, The Cat People, I was really excited to see its sequel, The Curse of the Cat People, as the first one did a great job of creeping me out. Although the sequel was not anything like I expected, (for example, there are no cat people), it did contain my genre character of the week Amy Reed (pictured left).

Here's the thing, the sequel keeps two of the leads from the first film, and basically transports them from a horror film into a psychological drama focusing on their young daughter. To call this film a sequel is really stretching the meaning of the term, but they are reprising their roles from the first film, so I guess I cant' complain too much.

Now happily married, the couple have a young imaginative daughter named Amy who is often lost in her own daydreams. Amy is just this enchanting little girl who seems entirely off in her own world. After a disastrous birthday party (she forgot to invite her friends), Amy makes up an imaginary friend and her parents freak out.

Here's what I like about Amy - she's honest. She wants to have friends, she's a sweet kid. Played incredibly by Ann Carter (I haven't been this impressed with a little kid actor in a horror since I first saw Haley Joel Osment in The Sixth Sense), you can't help but fall in love with her character and hope she will get the friends she truly deserves.

In the end this film was nothing like I expected, but it ended up being so much better than I could have imagined. Seriously, give this film a try if you have the opportunity.

Favourite Genre Kisses

Happy Valentine's Day from Bookmonkey!

Today's post will actually be pretty brief, as I've got Valentine's preparations to work on for my lovely wife, but I thought I'd share my favourite two kisses in genre films from my childhood - the two that had even me at the time (a little boy with a lot of sisters who therefore was way too cool for disgusting things like kisses) really happy.

The first is, without a doubt, Gertie kissing E.T. good-bye (pictured above) - I say this the year it came out in theatres so I would have been six at this point and I've got to say, this may be the sweetest kiss I can remember from any film I saw as a little kid.

The second was the kiss between Princess Buttercup and the Dread Pirate Roberts (pictured above) in the film The Princess Bride, which I would have seen at about the age of ten, and very much like the little boy in the film, I started out hating the idea of romantic kissing in movies and ended up being swept away by it.

Happy Valentine's from Bookmonkey