Book Review: HOUSE

Title: House

Author: Frank Peretti and Ted Dekker

Publisher: Thomas Nelson

Pages: 362

My GoodReads Rating: 

Jack and Stephanie Singleton, he a published author, she a country singer, are a married couple who are drifting apart. They are heading to a counselling session when a patrolman causes them to lose their way. Later, the cop, Morton Lawdale, gives them directions to where they want to go, but they still end up in the back of beyond where a rubber mat with steel spikes in the middle of the road messes with their tyres, leading them to seek shelter at the Wayside Inn.

There they meet hotelier Randy Messarue and his partner, psychologist Leslie Taylor, who have met with a similar accident and have sought shelter at the Inn. Later, the four meet the house owners, Stewart and Betty and their son, Pete. From the beginning, it is apparent that there is something off about these houseowners.  

At this point, a man wearing a tin mask, the Tin Man, crashes a car into the front porch, then throws a tin can into the house. The can contains a sheet of paper with three rules. 1) God came to my house and I killed him. 2) I will kill anyone who comes to my house as I killed God. 3) Give me one dead body, and I might let rule two slide. Game over at dawn.

Before long, the houseowners and then the guests are trying to serve up one dead body, in the hope that they will be able to leave. Then they meet a young girl called Susan who has been hiding out in the House. The Tin Man wants the guests to kill her in exchange for freedom. What they don’t know is that the House has an appetite, and they might never leave.

 

 

WHAT I LIKED:
The patrolman rolled his head to crack his neck was such a potent image of menace and aggression.

 

The tension shows up pretty early in the story. The tension between Jack and Stephanie was so intense that by the time they reached the inn, it was clear that this was a horror story with the tropes of haunted house and crazy killing ahead. This tension was also evident when the seven sat down to the evening meal. The meal itself is a classic horror trope, rotting meat with maggots crawling in it.

 

WHAT I DIDN’T LIKE:

I didn’t like this sentence: Hated the terror that had him squealing like a schoolgirl in his own mind. Isn’t fear a raw human emotion that affects both genders equally? Why couldn’t this sentence be rephrased so the misogyny was removed?

I found Stephanie very selfish and self-centred. The others showed better character under duress, at least initially. Why she began to hate Leslie almost at sight sounded very petty and trivial.

 

The narrative induced neither fear nor chills. The house is alive, and keeps changing the layout constantly, and bad things begin to happen. The house serves up double and later, multiple, versions of the characters. And there’s no way for us to figure out whether what’s happening is real or an illusion. The premise sounded good, but it made for exhaustive reading and became tiresome. There were no dips and crests, just lows and more lows. Nothing to help us catch our breath.

 

At one point, the narrator tells us that Betty looked at Jean, several paragraphs before Betty has even introduced herself to the newcomers in her house.

 

WHAT DIDN’T WORK FOR ME:

Technically, the Tin Man’s three rules are only 1 feeble rule, Rule 3. The first is a confession, the second a stated intention.

 

For a horror story to win, the reader needs to care for the characters and what happens to them. I didn’t feel invested in any of the characters, not even in Jack, who had the most agency and whose limited PoV the story was written in.  

 

It would have helped if the authors had revealed something, but as late as the 78pc mark, we have no clue why these four are in the soup they are in.

 

The allusions and references are Christian, but their impact is nullified as they weren’t clear in the context of plot events. Unlike say, Oscar Wilde’s The Selfish Giant or CS Lewis’ The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. How and why Susan is revealed to be what she is revealed to be makes no sense. The advice she offered was utterly vague. After 400 pages, I came away feeling relieved the book was over.

 

As a concept, it may have sounded fine at the idea stage but reading it doesn’t give us a sense of having encountered some dark night of the soul. Susan’s words don’t resonate with us. And after all of that, her identity was never properly clarified.

ALL SAID AND DONE:

This was my first book by either of the two authors. Given their reputation, I expected something better than this.

 

(I read this book on NetGalley. Thank you to the author, the publisher and NetGalley.)

Book Review: THE SECRETS BELOW

Title: The Secrets Below

Author: Camilla Sten and Viveca Sten

Translator: AA Prime

Publisher: Amazon Crossing Kids

Pages: 352

My GoodReads Rating: 

The story begins with a little baby girl, who falls out of her mother’s arms while they are on the deck of their boat. The next chapter takes us to the Stockholm Archipelago, with 12yo Tuva on her way to school. She is shunned by her classmates, especially Hanna, Isabelle, Axel and Rasmus.

On a particular field trip in the woods surrounding the school, Axel suddenly disappears. The police question Tuva on the disappearance as well as on the trance-like behaviour of Rasmus. This is the third disappearance of this kind.

The story is written in the first person, present tense PoV of 12yo Tuva.

 

WHAT I LIKED:

I liked the fact that Tuva sought to resolve issues on her own, and that Rasmus was a good friend, and not the ‘hero’ in her story. It is good to see young girls essaying powerful roles in their own lives.

Among the minor characters, I liked Tuva’s parents.

WHAT I DIDN’T LIKE:

The mean girls, Isabelle and Hanna, and Grandma Gerd seemed like caricatures. There was no reason for why they behaved as they did.

The fact that we never ‘see’ the antagonist ourselves weakens their power over us.

What I really liked was the attempt to raise awareness about oceans and how to prevent pollution. But the plot gets lost between the emphasis on mankind’s deliberate disrespect towards nature and the supernatural antagonist.

 

WHAT DIDN’T WORK FOR ME:

I found the writing a little repetitive, then realized that it was meant for school grade children. Also, I don’t know if some things have been lost in translation.

I didn’t find the plot very impressive. But then again, I’m not the target audience. Young children who are not very familiar with the genre would have a better experience.

I wasn’t sure if merfolk as heroes were very credible. Bringing together diverse myths such as the mara, the merfolk, fairies, elves and gnomes seems like overkill. The word, mermaid, is never used, possibly in order to be politically correct.

We receive no closure on what happened to Axel. It should have been addressed here, not left for Book 2 in the series.  

ALL SAID AND DONE:

I would have liked to see more of the dynamic between Tuva and her parents, and to understand a little more of her backstory. Also, the antagonist should either have been human or supernatural, but not both together.

(I read this book on NetGalley. Thank you to the author, the publisher and NetGalley.)

Book Review: THE SPIDER SILK SCARF

Title: The Spider Silk Scarf

Author: Ana Reyes

Publisher: Amazon Original Stories

Pages: 32

My GoodReads Rating: 

Nora, a young receptionist with a compulsion for stealing, lives with her boyfriend Ben, a plumber. They both hail from the same seedy part of town, and face the same lack of opportunities. 

Nora likes to steal luxury items, watches etc, a compulsion that began when her older sister, Gretel, then only 16, was diagnosed with a terminal disease. Gretel expressed a desire for a shiny, silver mirror, and Nora promised to get her one just like that the following week at her birthday. Gretel died just before her birthday, and Nora has, since then, felt the compulsion to steal luxury items she cannot afford.

When Ben returns from a plumbing job at the home of Mrs Martin, the most reclusive woman in town, he tells her that he heard Mrs Martin speaking on the phone to someone at the museum, telling them about a spider silk scarf she wants to donate to the museum. The scarf, apparently, took 12 men seven years just to harvest the silk, and then one of the men died. Nora is consumed with desire for the scarf.

Nora breaks into Mrs Martin’s house at midnight to steal the scarf. The trouble is that Mrs Martin is known to be a witch who eats pet animals. Will she get out of the escapade alive?

 

WHAT I LIKED:

The writing is lush, rich and atmospheric, and brings out beautifully the themes of grief, pain and regret. At the end of the story, Nora learns two life lessons that redeem her and heal Mrs Martin.

 

WHAT I DIDN’T LIKE: Nothing.

 

WHAT DIDN’T WORK FOR ME:

I should probably change that to "What doesn’t usually work for me". I don’t read Fantasy, and this story shifted into fantasy territory at one point, a shift that isn’t quite explained. But the writing was interesting and this encouraged me to continue reading.

 

ALL SAID AND DONE:

A lovely, lush read.

 

(I read this book on NetGalley. Thank you to the author, the publisher and NetGalley.)

Book Review: THE TWILIGHT ZONE: STORIES FROM THE FIFTH DIMENSION

Title: The Twilight Zone: Stories from the Fifth Dimension

Author: Several authors, letterers and illustrators

Publisher: IDW Dark

Pages: 128

My GoodReads Rating: 

The Twilight Zone: Stories from the Fifth Dimension is inspired by the Original CBS Television Series. I got excited when I saw this title on Edelweiss. In my excitement at finding stories based on The Twilight Zone, of which I am a huge fan, I missed the fact that this was not Fiction, but in the genre of Comics and Graphic Novels.

 

There are no good guys or bad guys in these stories. There is just the Twilight Zone and how there is no coming back from it, whether for good or evil. Entering the Twilight Zone spells the end of the world as the characters know it. It is either a new beginning or the end for them. Interestingly, each story was exactly 22 pages long.

 

Blanks by Dan Watters (writer); Morgan Beem (artist); Sandy Tanaka (letterer), Nicolas Niño and Ellen Boener (co-editors); Rating:  ⭐⭐⭐  

A billionaire, Edward Kane, has contributed enormous sums of money to fund research into finding a cure for the ills of the human condition. In other words, to eliminate disease and ensure longevity and immortality. This research is being undertaken on an unknown island. Suffering from stomach cancer, with less than a year to live, Kane insists on being subject Zero for the ‘benevolent virus’ which is expected to infiltrate the body and wipe out the immune memory, removing all traces of decay and degeneration. 

He wakes up from the experiment, feeling 20 years younger, only to learn from the doctor that everyone at the research facility has been rendered faceless, without thought or feeling, as the virus mutated, stripping them of the very things that make us human.

As Kane seeks to escape on the helicopter on which he arrived on the island, the doctor destroys the helicopter, saying that the only way to contain the horrible phenomenon is to ensure that no one ever gets to leave the island. Kane, forever young, healthy and ageless, is now doomed to spend eternity with the “Blanks”.

Like the TV series, the story here succeeded in hitting long after we turn the last page, as we imagine the fate of Kane, who will likely spend eternity longing for death. The story also sounds a note of caution, reminding humankind not to mess with the essential nature of life and humanity. Mankind can play God only at its own peril.

 

World of Your Wildest Dreams by Tom Scioli (writer, artist and letterer); Rating:  ⭐⭐⭐

The story is set many centuries in the future. First Officer Arlo Chapel is leading a team into outer space. When the vessel finds a planet with an atmosphere like that of earth, they decide to make a landing. They find life on the planet, in the form of vegetation and insects. Soon they realise that the world is responding to them based on their thoughts. Presently, people show up and take them away, accuse them of killing and jail them. The crew realise that shouting out bad things causes the prison walls to weaken and disintegrate, enabling them to escape.

The captors catch up with them and reveal that theirs is an asylum world. People come to them from other worlds to seek help. The terrain on the world is such that it mirrors the individual’s inner world, forcing them to confront it and deal with the fallout. 

The beings on this planet can change their external form in order to engage with visitors based on their psychological trauma. The beings scold the earthlings for not having learned to deal with their trauma, even as a species. However, the good news is that help is at hand. This planet is a resort, where visitors stay as long as possible to get their issues resolved, days, weeks, months, years, even centuries.

While the others choose to stay back and heal, Arlo decides to head home. Once he returns to his base on Planet Earth, he is committed to an institution. Everyone thinks that he abandoned his crew, and has now constructed an elaborate fantasy to explain his guilt away.

Centuries later, human greed remains unchanged. Space vessels are being sent out to look for minerals and to open chains of coffee shops and malls, in pursuit of power and wealth. When Arlo and his team espy an animal, one of them asks, “What should we name the new species?” – a classic colonial move, establishing supremacy on lands that have rich cultures and don’t need your dominance.

There was altogether too much text here. Graphic novels and comics work only with minimal text. Here, characters keep speaking, as if they are in a novel. A lot of the conversations involve characters telling each other things they should rightly know. As a concept, I found this story interesting, but the execution fell short.

In between, there was a page from the first story that seemed to have crept in inadvertently. 

 

The Relic by James Stokoe (writer, artist and letterer); Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

This story is about a cruel king who, on the strength of his army, has been plundering other lands, dominating their tribes, seizing their wealth and trampling upon their gods. Most tribes either flee when he attacks or pay obeisance. One tribe, professing to worship the Voice of the True God, refuses to flee or bow low. The plunderers break into the stronghold of the tribe. There they destroy the people completely, leaving just one prisoner, and find a power that overpowers their own. The king tells the prisoner to show him how to wield the power of this god. The prisoner leads him to their sacred temple (a museum) the first chamber of which contains the skeletal remains of creatures long gone (dinosaurs), the second chamber contains guns, tanks, fighter planes, and other weapons of destruction, and the third and final chamber contains a kitschy brand, which is being worshipped.

The story asks us to mull over a very important question. Many years, centuries or even millennia hence, when war has destroyed every vestige of progress and development that mankind has spend millennia garnering, what will the people living then worship? Our art, our learning, or something debased. The Voice of the True God, it is revealed, is a cheesy jingle created to sell a sugary sweet and unhealthy drink.

The final page tells us: In the centuries after the bombs fall, when human progress hasn’t just been taken down a rung but thrown violently off of the whole ladder, what treasures of our age might survive for those ignorant souls that follow?

Will they be drawn to a piece of exquisite art that fully encapsulates the cultural footprint of our time? Maybe some fragment of wisdom from one of our greatest thinkers that lights them a path out of squalor and darkness?

Or perhaps something more common…A throwaway gag of consumerism, dreamed up in a boardroom to catch as many thirsty eyes as possible, misremembered, deified and mistakenly placed on the highest plinth amid the ruins of mankind’s greater histories.

A kitschy advertisement for the world that was, here in the Twilight Zone. 

 

False Bottom by Nate Powell (writer, artist and letterer); Rating:⭐⭐⭐⭐

Twins Chet and Laura and Laura’s husband, Gabe, hire a houseboat to celebrate Chet’s first step towards independence, moving out of his mother's basement and getting his first apartment. Laura is happy for Chet but he persists in behaving in a curmudgeonly manner and resents the help she extends to him. They discover that the main deck of the houseboat has nothing in the way of furniture, except for a single futon and a rectangular opening filled with water in the middle of the room.

Laura is not happy that Chet didn’t go for a job interview that she has secured for him. He thinks that she is too condescending and controlling while she thinks that he’s not a functioning adult yet. They are still bickering. when Gabe hears some music coming from the cutaway, the rectangular opening.

Chet jumps into the water, and Laura and Gabe jump after him, but they cannot find him in the water. He has vanished into another world. Chet steps out of the water, and finds himself in a dark place, welcomed by some hairy beings. Their faces are in darkness, and he has a bad feeling about it. When Laura and Gabe come out of the water, they can’t find Chet at all. What’s more, it’s as if he was never on the boat. The boat itself is beautifully appointed now, furnished well with everything one might want on a holiday. Gabe tells Laura to forget about Chet. He is content to move on without deadweight Chet but Laura won’t give up on her brother. Except that now they are in the Twilight Zone and the situation is out of their control. Laura jumps into the water once again and comes up to the floor of the cutaway. There he is. Separated by glass, the siblings can never find their way to each other again.

 

Silent Warning by L Marlow Francavilla and Francesco Francavilla (writers); Francesco Francavilla (artist); Sandy Tanaka (letterer); Rating: ⭐⭐

In a world in which the biggest danger is the sound you cannot hear, Dr Emily Sorensen is a soundwave virtuoso. But other scientists look upon her work with scepticism and even derision. When a meteor crashes into the ocean, Dr Sorensen is called in. A research nearby has picked up sonic pulses and the government needs Dr Sorensen’s help to decipher their meaning. At the base, Dr Sorensen meets four men, Chief James Eddington who heads the mission, marine biologist Dr Andy Carson, seismic expert Lt Arthur Jeffreys and Lt Michael Oguri, the pilot.

The men have no regard for Dr Sorensen’s competence. There may also be some dismissal of her because she is a woman. The men decide to step into the water to investigate the activity below, despite Dr Sorensen’s warnings and reservations that there may be toxic gases around.

This story was more like a disaster flick, where the destruction is mindless, and not as a result of an act of hubris on the part of the characters. 

(I read this book on Edelweiss. Thank you to the author, the publisher and Edelweiss.)

Book Review: THE KNOCKING

Title: The Knocking

Author: Laura Lee Bahr

Publisher: Little A

Pages: 288

My GoodReads Rating: 

EA (Edith Ann) Howe, a budding newspaperwoman, travels to the home of Horace Greeley of the New York Daily Tribune to show him the editorial she has written on the Congressional Compromise. She finds Greeley’s house a massive and dark mansion, with a reputation for being haunted. Mr and Mrs Greeley have buried four children. Only three-yo Charlotte is still alive.

At the mansion, EA meets Mary Greeley, who seems deranged, Cathie Fox, an 11-yo ward of Mr Greeley, and Jessica Elliott, Cathie’s beautiful English governess. Cathie is a medium and can channel and talk to spirits. Mrs Greeley uses Cathie’s services to connect with her dead children, especially Arthur, the child she loved the most.

All EA wants to do is to get Greeley to print the editorial she has written in favour of the liberty of the former slaves and against the Congressional Compromise which revokes the freedom of the emancipated slaves. But her views are too radical for Mr Greeley. He gives her a test to prove her worth; she must write an article on Cathie’s abilities. In fulfilling her new assignment, she gets caught up in the middle of danger.

 

The story is written in the first-person present tense of EA.

 

WHAT I LIKED:

I liked the character of EA, her passion and pluck. Her backstory gives her the demons and vulnerability that come out to haunt her in a home that is supposedly haunted. Her heart is in the right place, and she cares for issues related to women and former slaves. She is sensitive to the pain of others and aspires to be America’s third newspaperwoman. Her experience with publication tells us how hard it is for women to get ahead in male professions.

 

There’s a thread of humour that is woven through her self-deprecation and even her interaction with Jane Swisshelm, her mentor, and Mr Greeley.

 

I especially liked the line in her editorial where she questions what kind of world is it when one cannot discuss what is moral, what is good and evil… To compromise with evil is to be complicit in it. She believes that the world is leaning towards authoritarianism, and that there is too much power in too few hands. I liked this about EA, that she has convictions and is willing to speak up for them.

After Greely insults her for having morals and ethics like a schoolgirl, she thinks, May the schoolgirls take over this earth if they are the only ones who will speak the plain truth.

 

WHAT I DIDN’T LIKE:

When EA comes to know about Jessica’s intentions, she does nothing about it. For someone who has ranted on about justice, she refrains from taking the smallest step towards the cause. When it really mattered, it appeared that her quest for justice wasn’t real. Her unwillingness to pursue justice made her weak, physically and morally, after establishing her as a strong character for the greater part of the book.

 

WHAT DIDN’T WORK FOR ME:

There was much scope to make the story about EA and her own relationship with her mother. Instead, she is one good protagonist around whom the story happens, mostly to other characters. The plot events concern Cathie, Mary Greeley and Jessica Elliot, Cathie’s governess.

We don’t hear enough about the mother who tried to kill her and killed her older brother. That would have made a far more interesting story than that of Cathie and Jessica.

 

ALL SAID AND DONE:

I didn’t like the way this story turned out. Even the aura of the haunted house failed to materialize. It was a dank, dark place, but the menace of the haunted house wasn’t evident.

(I read this book on NetGalley. Thank you to the author, the publisher and NetGalley.)

Book Review: THE MUSIC MAKERS

Title: The Music Makers

Author: James D Snyder

Publisher: Pharos Books

Pages: 264

My GoodReads Rating: 

Greta lives with daughter, Heidi, a librarian and violinist, and son, Max, a car mechanic and musician who aspires to make it big in the West and is working on a way to escape. Greta invites Leo Strus, the janitor at the school where she teaches, and a musician, to join them in playing folk songs to entertain people on street corners on Sundays. They are the music makers.

When winter sets in, the Music Makers need an indoors venue, and are led to a trade union hall, which is ‘wired’. At first, they only sing folk songs and feel-good music, but then Max, in a fit of passion, sings Wind of Change by The Scorpions. This brings them to the attention of the Stasi and the KGB.

The story is set in 1989 in East Germany.

 

WHAT I LIKED:

Greta is writing a book that the Stasi and ruling party would approve of, but it is also a lesson in sarcasm. I particularly liked the excerpts, which are bolstered with true examples from history.

The writing of the larger book by the author combines the best of non-fiction into the fictional telling of the characters’ lives. The very real developments on the historical front are juxtaposed against the lives of ordinary people. We learn how the playing of the music served to remind Germans about another time before the War, how the demonstrators continued to protest safely.

We see how slowly the desire for freedom begins to spread. I enjoyed the history lesson about East Germany’s rejection of Western ideology and its fascination for Western technology.

When Max sings Wind of Change, presenting the lyrics, I had to stop reading and listen to the song once again, after ages.

I liked Max’s quote: …we may not be able to knock down or dig under the wall, but we can make sound travel over it.

 

WHAT I DID NOT LIKE: Nothing.

 

WHAT DID NOT WORK FOR ME:

The story employed different forms. It began as a letter, then became an interview with the characters, excerpts from a book that one of the characters is writing, and bits of historical accounts.

In the letter, Greta Braun writes to her sister, Christa, who lives in the country with her husband, Bruno, with a business idea. The business idea and the characters Christa and Bruno were incidental to the story, and so the form seemed forced as a means of bringing us readers up to speed. A kind of story-so-far. Greta uses the letter to tell her sister, and us, about the routine surveillance in the police state, the rhythms of life, the loss of ownership to the state in a Communist society etc.

In Chapter 2, the form changes to a character interview, with the author conducting full interviews with five important characters, who we haven’t met so far, although we know a little about two of them, Max and Heidi, Greta’s kids. The other three characters, Gerhard Koln, Stasi officer, Vladimin Pushkin, KGB officer, and Leo Strus, a janitor and musician, are totally new to us.

It’s not a commonly used technique. Authors do this generally outside the pages of the book. Involving readers in this exercise drops the barrier between us. So we end up getting a lot of the background information in one huge dump, but it seems different because of the format.

In Chapter 3, the action moves forward from April in Chapter 1 to May Day that year, and the form changes to non-fiction writing. In between, there is another form: Excerpts from Greta’s book, Lessons in Leadership.

There was a mistake in the numbering. Lesson 7 was numbered 6 by mistake. Another issue that I had with the writing was the change of tense from one paragraph to another.

 

ALL SAID AND DONE:

I was quite young when history was being made, and I enjoyed this read.

 

(I read this book on NetGalley. Thank you to the author, the publisher and NetGalley.)

Book Review: THE BLACK CAT DETECTIVES

Title: The Black Cat Detectives

Author: Kit Gray

Publisher: Crooked Lane Books

Pages: 304

My GoodReads Rating: 

Mila MacAllister is a 28-yo magician in a small town, Corvin’s Crossing, hoping to make it to the big league. On the morning of her performance, at which she expects to be scouted for a resort that is looking for performers, Mila finds three black kittens, with the mother nowhere in sight, in a box in the alley outside the club where she is to perform. She rescues them and takes them to the vet and decides to adopt them.

That evening, Mila’s successful performance comes to a sudden close when the body of her boyfriend and manager, Brandon, comes crashing through the roof to the stage, with Mila’s pocket knife protruding out of his chest.

 

The story is written in four PoVs, the 3^rd person PoV of Mila and the 1^st person PoVs of the three kittens named Bippity, Boppity and Boop. Bippity is female, Boppity is male, and Boop is non-binary. The other two kittens use they/them pronouns while referring to Boop.

 

WHAT I LIKED:

I liked the emphasis on friendships and the family ties you build for yourself.

I am no lover of cats, yet I was quite amused and intrigued by the antics of the kittens. The characterization of the kittens is done with a gentle touch. Bippity sees herself as a leader, born to lead her siblings. Boppity fancies himself as a great warrior and is always ready for battle. Boop is always gentle, preferring naps and cuddling to anything else. The curiosity, independence and vulnerability of the cats rang true, even though I know very little about cats.

The voices of the three kittens were strong and striking.

The descriptions of the foods cooked by Ms Fi, and Q and Mrs Scarborough all popped off the page.

In terms of diversity, Asia is well represented through Ms Fi and Becca Varma, Mila’s best friend.

WHAT I DIDN’T LIKE:

The focus should have been on the murder mystery. Instead, the cats took up excessive space, causing a lot of repetition, given that there are three kittens and only one Mila.

Why Becca should be a Varma, an Indian origin surname, makes no sense. We see no evidence of her background or culture, making the name tokenish. She might as well have been white.

In keeping with what has almost become the trope of the genre, Mila was both smart and dumb.

I found the conclusion rather tame. The killer wasn’t convincing enough, nor was their rationale for killing.

The Physics-based superpowers of the kittens weren’t very clear.

Mila’s back story was minimal. It was unclear why she left her parents’ home. They neglected her, and led their own lives, but her trauma suggested something far worse. Also, where and how she learnt magic was something that wasn’t explained.

 

WHAT DIDN’T QUITE WORK:

In one place, Bopp had male pronouns used, possibly a typo that slipped past.

There is a whole chapter set at the vet’s where Mila takes the three kittens. This chapter was wholly unnecessary.

 

ALL SAID AND DONE:

This was a cozy mystery that ultimately ended up being more cozy and less mystery, with the kittens overshadowing the resolution of the mystery. 

(I read this book on NetGalley. Thank you to the author, the publisher and NetGalley.)

Book Review: WHEN THE RAIN CAME

Title: When the Rain Came

Author: Matt Eicheldinger

Publisher: Andrews McMeel Publishing

Pages: 314

My GoodReads Rating: 

Aurora, 17, lives with her foster parents, Niko and Jada, when the rain begins. A relentless mix of drizzle and downpour that scientists call an unprecedented global disaster. As the water levels rise, the mansion they live in gets flooded. Niko and Jada are preppers and they have prepared for the worst eventuality, with emergency bags all ready for use. They also impress upon her the rules. Rule no 1: You prep for you and no one else. Rule no 2: Two is one and one is none.

Niko and Jada provide for Aurora but show her no affection. One night, Jada lets her guard down and shows Aurora her vulnerable side. The next morning, Niko and Jada have disappeared, gone with their emergency bags. Once they have gone, Aurora finds a map to a place called the Hill, which promises a refuge. When the mansion is attacked by men with criminal intentions, Aurora escapes, intent on getting to the Hill.

Along the way, she befriends a young boy called Kota and learns of the Dark Pools, supposedly controlled by Shui gui, a supernatural entity, that swallow everything in their path. Both Aurora and Kota are in a vulnerable situation and they settle into a protective sibling vibe. For Aurora, who has never had a family, Kota is the nearest thing to one.

In the midst of terrifying challenges, the two learn to prioritise and think on their feet. Will they ever manage to get to the Hill? When they reach it, will they find it a place of safety or danger?

 

This is Book 1 of a trilogy, and is written in the 1^st person POV of Aurora.

 

WHAT I LIKED:

The chapters are short. The author has done a wonderful job with the setting. The writing was urgent and atmospheric, making me feel sadness, fear and concern for Aurora and Kota.

The descriptions were beautiful:

Each drop explodes like tiny bullets, turning the surface of brown liquid into a roiling battlefield of ripples and waves.

When that sky meets the horizon of the water, steam rises in a ghostly fog, shrouding the scene in an apocalyptic mist.

Rain pounds everything in sight, a thousand tiny hammers drilling into the surface of the churning water.

The action keeps us on edge, as Aurora battles dangers as varied as cruel humans, wild animals and the wrath of nature. The characters’ actions and the description of the setting and the situation complement each other.

There is an ironic foreshadowing in the words, Today … ended as a memorable day. A good day. And maybe tomorrow will be even better, that piqued my interest.

The thing that struck me about this book, from the very first paragraph, was the voice of Aurora, how strong and expressive it was.

We get a sense of disaster and chaos, a dismantling of order. The disaster helps us understand what is truly significant, and how we humans chase the wrong things. Things that people owned and took pride in, cars, bicycles, fences, all trapped under the moving slush of filth and debris.

The tagline of the book 'If everything falls apart, what will you hold on to?' was something that the book succeeded in living up to.

 

WHAT I DIDN’T LIKE:

This book would have fit squarely under the genre of Climate-fiction, a genre of literature that is sorely needed these days, but no one, not even the preppers, ever addresses why it is raining for months on end.

The world is in chaos, and yet some systems are working. Even when Niko and Jada begin to run out of food and water, there is no mention of sanitation issues. In one building where the children take refuge, Kota uses the toilet, so sanitation is apparently fine. None of the characters talk about bodily discomfort issues. There is a nightmare on, and sewage entering homes should have been the first consequence.

There are some things that don’t make sense. How is a parking lot dry when tall buildings are flooded, with only the tips visible?

I would have liked to have had a little more back story about Kota. He seems to be a token diversity character. We are not told anything about his background, except that his grandmother has told him about the shui gui, spirits from Chinese folklore, while he calls his father Baba, a term for father in Indian, Middle Eastern and African cultures.

 

WHAT DIDN’T WORK FOR ME:

The situation isn’t rooted in time and place. We get no sense of when this is happening, a future time, or even a parallel earth.

When Kota steps into an abyss inside a building to get a canoe, Aurora gives him a flashlight which he clenches between his teeth, before swimming away. Moments later, both Aurora and another character, Markell, ask him a question, and he answers both questions easily. We are not told about him having taken the flashlight out of his mouth to answer.

Aurora didn’t act as if she was 17. She seemed to me to be younger, around 14 or 15. Also, for someone who has lived all her life in the foster system, she has no experiences, positive or negative, related to foster homes. Just an indifference to that part of her life, which is strange. Also, she never talks about herself in the near future, her plans for when she turns 18. This adds to the impression that she might be younger.

 

ALL SAID AND DONE:

Living in a city with poor infrastructure, I have seen enough of the damage that flooding can do to assess how much worse things could get when worst-case scenarios become real. There are some kinks that should have been edited out. Despite them, I enjoyed this story about a modern-day deluge of Biblical proportions.

(I read this book on Edelweiss. Thank you to the author, the publisher and Edelweiss.)