ed_moore's reviews
224 reviews

dark emotional tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.25

I read Stephen King’s ‘Carrie’ as I am involved in a production of the musical in a week, and was honestly surprised how quickly events unfolded in the book. Carrie is about a 17 year old girl who is outcast in school and faces abuse from her fanatically religious mother at home, yet finds she has the power of telekinesis and uses such to get her revenge on the town that wronged her for so many years.

The primary surprise was how early Carrie’s telekinetic powers were revealed, I was expecting this to be more of a self-discovery plot point and twist in Carrie though I am content to mention it in this review as it was more or less revealed on the first page. The ending also wasn’t left for the readers to theorise as due to fictional extracts from supposed non-fiction books written about the actions of Carrie White on prom night the ending was revealed early on and continually referenced throughout. I really didn’t enjoy the inclusion of these books within books as though aware of the story, it still very much took away from the ending and diverted from the plot, and any comments that foreshadowed were intentionally far too obvious. ‘Carrie’ was not a book written to leave the reader on edge guessing whatsoever, which really defeated its main draw within the thriller genre.

Despite my prior knowledge of the story the narrative and writing was however still harrowing. Scenes relating to the menstrual cycle and also child and religious abuse were extremely graphic, and the final sequence of events was absolutely brutal and apocalyptic, likely written in a means to mimic the biblical ‘Judgement Day’. It was also enhanced in the graphic imaginings of such as the scenes were often repeated from multiple perspectives, which increased reader exposure to violence but also failed to add much to the story.

Content Warnings

A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini

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emotional sad medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

4.25

Hosseini’s ‘A Thousand Splendid Suns’ is the tale of two women surviving through the patriarchy and political turmoil of Afghanistan, this being the control of the soviets, violence and civil war between different rebel factions and the rise of the Taliban. It was a brutal and honest depiction of Afghanistan’s struggles which didn’t shy away from depicting the true horrors of living there from starvation, violence and patriarchal control, to war and occupation and the labours of childbirth.

It is difficult not to reflect on this alongside the other work of Hosseini’s that I have read: ‘The Kite Runner’ and whilst I preferred the longer term focus on the turmoils of Afghanistan which was lost in ‘The Kite Runner’s’ movement to America, I did however find myself much more attached to the characters of that book and to be more emotionally impacted by such. That may be down to gender resonance. That is not to discredit from ‘A Thousand Splendid Suns’ however, as it was still utterly heart-wrenching and persistently took from the reader alike to the persistent theft of the livelihoods of Laila and Mariam. His use of foreshadowing is also really effective but in cases a bit explicit, it is clear when such is occurring but I would conclude it still works well.

Reading in todays political climate, with the return of the Taliban plaguing Afghanistan, it was also likely more harrowing and impactful than it would likely be if I read such when it was published. Knowing the country has regressed to the under-occupation state it faced in the book after 20 years independence and rebuilding was constantly on my mind and made every tragedy Hosseini described even more saddening and relevant. Hosseini really has a talent for tugging on the heart strings.

Content Warnings

Modern Greece by Felicia Hemans

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informative reflective sad medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? N/A
Strong character development? N/A
Loveable characters? N/A
Diverse cast of characters? N/A
Flaws of characters a main focus? N/A

3.0

Hemans’ poem ‘Modern Greece’ is one of very similar tone to Byron’s ‘The Curse of Minerva’ (you can tell I am working on an essay on this topic), though slightly less scornful on the fall of the great past empire. Though, alike to Byron, Hemans mourns what once was and claims the country to be only able to regain independence and restore its glory through the rebirth of the heroes of myth. I do however believe ‘Modern Greece’ was less effective at voicing these ideas than ‘The Curse of Minerva’ unfortunately.

The Curse of Minerva by Lord Byron

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challenging reflective medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? N/A
Strong character development? N/A
Loveable characters? N/A
Diverse cast of characters? N/A
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

3.5

Lord Byron’s Poem ‘The Curse of Minerva’ is the poets scornful response to the theft of the Elgin marbles from the Pantheon in Greece. He sides with the debate that such was an unjust theft rather than saving the marbles from the sacrilege of the Turkish, hence proclaims that until their return, they will therefore be cursed by the God, explaining the sinking of his ship in 1803. I stumbled upon this for an essay on Byron and the Elgin Marbles, reading it simply because it had a mythologically themed title and I hoped it’d be related and honestly the joy upon realising just how related it was really enhanced my enjoyment of this poem. It was scathing towards Elgin and Britain and exploring an issue that still is as conflicted upon and unresolved in the modern day, however this being a point of contention of 200 years ago, was of great interest.

The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini

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challenging sad tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.5

(In starting another of Hosseini's works I have decided to take the opportunity to start trying to backlog relevant books I read pre-downloading storygraph)

I read 'The Kite Runner' a few years ago as I was studying it for A-Level and it is one of the best books I have ever studied. It was such an impactful and emotional bildungsroman tale of growing up within the racial prejudice of Afghanistan, and the political impact of the rise of the Taliban and their rule in the country. Seeing a first hand narrative account of how this devastated what was once a country so full of life was heartbreaking and truly eye opening.

I recall Hosseini's writing being so beautiful, his characters so vivid yet so painfully written and the narrative extremely engaging (especially the two sections set in Afghanistan exploring the political climate, I don't recall being enthralled by the America section.)

I am recalling from three years ago so my review is far more limited, but shall try add backlogs from time to time :)

If We Were Villains by M.L. Rio

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dark mysterious medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.25

M.L. Rio’s ‘If We Were Villains’ was a book that just had something special about it that I can’t explain, it was such a vivid and engaging story that swooped the reader away to a place I adore, theatre and literature. It’s a dark academia about 7 students at Dellecher arts college that exclusively study Shakespeare, and when cast outside of their archetypal roles the system that they operate within slowly falls apart.

The works of Shakespeare were so cleverly intertwined into this book in its structure, chapters being acts and scenes, the plot mirroring a classical Shakespearian tragedy and sections of speech structured in script (of which wasn’t a feature I was a huge lover of but just accepted as the story unfolded). Each character reflects the classic archetypes of Shakespeare’s tragedies and are equally all in some manner flawed, and this engagement with the bard across the book was honestly such a motivator to push forward through my chronological reading of his complete works. It was also reality accessible in the manner it was written, one does not need to be a scholar in Shakespeare to engage with and enjoy this book, it’ll just make you want to become a scholar in Shakespeare.

It started so well with such a good exploration of friendship dynamics and life in academia and I was worried, knowing how the story was roughly going to unfold from the preface, about it becoming consumed by a murder mystery, but this aspect wasn’t too heavily leant on and it maintained its charm throughout which I was so glad for. Though the vibes were brilliant, the characters I struggled with a little more. They all play their archetypal roles for the most part and are largely dislikable figures but written to be so human that they were great, I just didn’t really get on with the protagonist Oliver. He was so painfully average, whining that he’s nothing special and just normal constantly and it gets such a brain numbing voice to be stuck seeing this story through the head of. He isn’t meant to be an overly likeable guy and we obviously see the world through his angle of it, but this overarch of constantly believing he as the mundane was hard to distance oneself from.

The ending was also turbulent. I had so many perceived directions and it wasn’t the end I would’ve praised from a structuring perspective, it taking a more modern twist to a tragic finale rather than a direct mirroring. The initial ending I was very disappointed by I won’t lie, whereas the epilogue completely subverted this and had my jaw dropped, the sudden shift was so good and impactful. That being said there was a final twist that decayed the impact of the epilogue a little but I think it can largely be read as the reader desires so mentally am discounting such as having an impact on the story, or at least how I view it.

Now I shall revel in the motivation to indulge myself in the next couple of Shakespeare’s plays on my list.

A Thousand Ships by Natalie Haynes

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emotional informative medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

4.0

Haynes’ ‘A Thousand Ships’ tells the story of the Trojan War from the perspective of the women involved but often pushed into the shadows by the speed of Achilles or bravery of Hector. It grants around thirty of these mythological figures a voice, from justifying the likes of Clytemnestra, illuminating the silenced Iphigenia and Polyxena, and vocalising figures that have been completely ignored by mainstream mythology such as Themis, the first wife of Paris: Oenone and the wife of Protesilaus: Laodamia, these stories being ones I was completely unaware of beforehand.

The highlights were the chapters voiced by the muse Calliope and Penelope. In writing letters to Odysseus across his long journey home she gradually becomes more frustrated by his need to always be the hero and go on one more adventure, not thinking at all about her. It was such an understandable perspective which is completely silenced by Homer until Odysseus finally returns to Ithaca and her emotions in such are so honest yet also humorous. I lobed the voice of Calliope, which parodied the epic tradition to summon the muse but she is so tired of the constant summoning to men who want to sing of the many men they have killed and cities they have sacked. She is so unbothered by it all which is wonderful, yet also serves the role of ensuring the female stories are told, highlighting the frontal idea of ‘A Thousand Ships’ that the real heroes and victims of the Trojan War were the women, for they too lived through it with no credit, kept fighting as widows to husbands that abandoned them or died, and also suffered the price of surviving. The men died heroic deaths and were remembered by history and the women of Troy continued to suffer enslaved.

That being said, whilst the structure was commendable for covering so many voices, it was very fragmentary which wasn’t helped by the fact the stories were not placed chronologically. Hence, I therefore found it very easy to put down the book at the end of a perspective and therefore took longer on it than it’d typically take me to read such a book. Also naturally, with so many perspectives, there were the strengths of Penelope and Calliope but many were quite weak narrative voices that didn’t offer much in regards to am interesting writing style.

The Call of Cthulhu and Other Stories by H.P. Lovecraft

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dark slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

1.5

The Call of Cthulhu: 1.75 Stars

For an iconic horror story that has inspired so much, and the most famous work of the man who coined the term ‘Lovecraftian’, ‘The Call of Cthulhu’ was extremely lacking. The narrative perspective was perhaps the greatest flaw, this being in the first person view of Thurston, however all the “action” happens only through him reading his great uncle Angell’s manuscripts and hearing recounts, in some cases recounts of recounts and then main terrifying plot element occurred within a dream of a character who is interviewed within the manuscript, placing the reader about 3 people away from any engaging events and hence nullifying any response or connection to the story. It all reads like a bland recount, and opens with an overly dramatic, almost non-fiction in tone analysis of the idea of occult which also removed any believability from the story. There is so much without explanation, the figure of ‘Cthulhu’ is very limited in appearance and not a major threat (though the cult of Cthulhu seem to be framed as the main antagonists, even still they have little fear factor and are easily subdued), and the present plot line was extremely mundane. The writing was entirely uninspiring and not to mention Lovecraft makes many racist remarks and insinuations which do absolutely nothing to help his case, just making an already weak story extremely problematic. The most unsettled I was reading this was when random classical music blurted out between chapters in my audiobook which caught me completely off guard, which is zero credit to Lovecraft’s writing.

The Dulwich Horror: 1.25 Stars

The Dulwich Horror tells of Wilbur Whateley, a boy who ages at an abnormal rate who is harbouring and summoning an entity to terrorise the town of Dulwich. This was written so poorly, it was difficult to follow, unbelievably mundane, the horror wasn’t at all threatening and the characters depicted as ‘outsiders’ and hence played the roles of the worshippers of the satanic were so heavily racialised and written in such an offensive manner. The story was so mundane and the ending came to such a swift conclusion with far too much ease in comparison to the threat that Lovecraft created.

Dagon: 2.75 Stars

This was the shortest of the three stories in the collection by a significant margin and largely benefitted from such, there was no room for Lovecraft to make a threatening entity seem extremely mundane, allowed for more individual imagination by the reader, and had little space to weave in any racist remarks. Dagon is the encounter of the speaker with a huge fish entity, that encapsulates the idea of the Lovercraftain megalophobia far better than ‘Call of Cthulhu’, ultimately Dagon is a suicide note, this encounter driving the speaker into madness, and therefore the story has enough mystery but unlike the other two resolves in at least some manner. That being said, it was still noting remarkable.

My total rating of Lovecraft’s stories is an average of each individual review.

Content Warnings

A Dog's Heart by Mikhail Bulgakov

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challenging dark tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

3.5

Bulgakov’s ‘The Heart of a Dog’ is a story with so many parallels to Shelley’s ‘Frankestien’, and alike to such explores so much in such little room. It follows the perspective of an abandoned dog, Sharik (or for some reason Furball in the English translation), living on the streets of Moscow, and its opening could be seen as a text raising awareness about animal abuse, and whilst this could be read across the whole book the core arguments develop into so much more. Sharik is taken in by a doctor, Phillip Philippovich, and surgically experimented on in a manner just like Victor Frankenstein and his monster, where Philippovich successfully has Sharik humanised by changing the makeup of his brain.

The second half of the book looks at Sharik’s life as a human, exploring class dynamics by posing Sharik as a lower class troublemaker and Philippovich as among the Moscow elite. This in tune leads to a direct criticism of the communist soviet government Bulgakov was writing under (hence the books publication 60 years after it was written) with Philippovich opposing communist ideals through his satirical feud with the housing committee and criticism of Sharik in his new human form.

Alike to ‘Frankstien’, Bulgakov heavily explores the themes of the morality in playing with life, responsibility in relation to ones creations and the dangers of taking science too far, that just because it can be done, should it? This being a question increasingly relevant today with the development of artificial intelligence. In addition to this, the political satire and criticism is smoothly blended into the work. I would however argue that the length of ‘The Heart of a Dog’ hindered it, it tries to cover so many huge debates in so little space and could’ve done all of such to much greater effect in a longer novel. The writing also wasn’t the most elegant, and made me feel extremely queasy at times during operating and experimenting scenes, it doesn’t skip over this element unlike Shelley. McMillan, the audiobook narrator, also chose to put a voice on for Sharik and in attempting a ‘dog accent’ it became quite difficult to understand at times so in addition to the dense themes wasn’t an easy reading experience. Overall Bulgakov covers so many themes, isn’t the most original in his imitation of ‘Frankenstein’, but the length left me wanting a deeper exploration.

Content Warnings

The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro

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lighthearted reflective sad slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.25

Kazuo Ishiguro’s ‘The Remains of the Day’ follows Stevens, the butler of Darlington Hall, as he takes a week out from his position to go on a motor trip through the English countryside. The present day storyline is extremely basic and unexciting for the most part, but the book is primarily made up on his reminiscing of past experiences as butler for Lord Darlington, often serving on the global geopolitical stage in the period between WW1 and WW2.

A lot of Stevens’ recounts focus on what makes a good butler and why he believes he is such, not one of the ‘greats’ but still highly experienced and successful. This leads to a lot of emphasis being placed on duty before anything else, and in the cases of his empathy towards others being backseated in favour of professionalism he occasionally comes across quite dislikable. For the most part, however, Stevens is a respectable and likeable character with a lot to share.

It happens to be the second book of the week about a journey through the countryside, reminiscing on the past and discussing the rise of fascism, of which is a really strange coincidence for this wasn’t intentional, though I think ‘Remains of the Day’ did the latter two similarities far better than Orwell’s ‘Coming up for air’, that being said, though Ishiguro is likely only trying to portray Stevens as extremely loyal and professional, his emphasis on duty meaning he does not question and oppose neo-fascist ideologies despite limited internals hints of opposition is both problematic but an interesting look at conformity of those in lower-class positions. In the political debates though, I did prefer ‘Coming up for Air’. This may have been an unlikely book to draw on for this review but it was such a recent similar read I felt obliged to.

‘Remains of the Day’ is largely a quaint relaxing story too, raising interesting questions on morals versus duty and also embracing nature. There isn’t much character development and the final message was a little rouge given the tone of the book, but it was ultimately enjoyable.

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ed_moore's reviews 224 reviews

ed_moore's reviews
224 reviews