![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
some recent reading
Jun. 26th, 2014 04:32 pmI've gotten no further in Bitter Eden than I had when I posted about it two days ago. As I said, not an easy read.
In other reading, I've tried a couple of books recommended by Ellen Datlow in one of her The Year's Best Horror anthologies.
The German, by Lee Thomas, is about a Texas town during the Second World War. A series of brutal murders of teenage boys sparks panic, and blame soon centers on the town's German immigrants, particularly on an unmarried loner. You can predict most of what happens next. The German a pretty standard novel about Why Prejudice Is Bad, except for one extremely weird authorial choice. ( spoiler )
Michelle Paver's Dark Matter: A Ghost Story tells of a 1937 British expedition to a Norwegian Arctic island that intended to overwinter and study the climate etc. A string of bad luck pares the original five-man team down to just our narrator, Jack, who only joined up because his scientific ambitions were ruined by the Depression. Jack now finds himself alone in constant darkness. Dark Matter is scary as hell in a very primal way, tapping into our fears of what might be out there in the darkness, but it's not gory or gratuitously violent. It's also well-written and an engaging read, and unlike Dan Simmons's The Terror, to which Datlow compares it, it's not homophobic either. I liked it a lot.
In other reading, I've tried a couple of books recommended by Ellen Datlow in one of her The Year's Best Horror anthologies.
The German, by Lee Thomas, is about a Texas town during the Second World War. A series of brutal murders of teenage boys sparks panic, and blame soon centers on the town's German immigrants, particularly on an unmarried loner. You can predict most of what happens next. The German a pretty standard novel about Why Prejudice Is Bad, except for one extremely weird authorial choice. ( spoiler )
Michelle Paver's Dark Matter: A Ghost Story tells of a 1937 British expedition to a Norwegian Arctic island that intended to overwinter and study the climate etc. A string of bad luck pares the original five-man team down to just our narrator, Jack, who only joined up because his scientific ambitions were ruined by the Depression. Jack now finds himself alone in constant darkness. Dark Matter is scary as hell in a very primal way, tapping into our fears of what might be out there in the darkness, but it's not gory or gratuitously violent. It's also well-written and an engaging read, and unlike Dan Simmons's The Terror, to which Datlow compares it, it's not homophobic either. I liked it a lot.
