Category: Books

The Exorcist Book Review

INTRODUCTION
The Exorcist is one of those iconic movies that no matter when you were born, you probably heard about it. The movie was so intense for the time period that it is claimed it sent people reeling from the cinema in droves, which is believable, given no audience prior to had seen such atrocious scenes laid out before them. Night of the Living Dead was one such film of its timeframe in 1968, but by 1973, the film landscape had changed so vastly that Night of the Living Dead just seemed tame in comparison. Still to this day, few movies with more balls have been made. Can you imagine forced pedo-sapphic incest happening on screen today? Nope and this is why this film is still considered legendary. Having first seen this film in the 90’s, I thought it was tame. I honestly hate anything religious, especially religious horror, because the idea of possession is so mentally absurd, that I can’t suspend my disbelief to believe it is happening. Unlike Freddy, which we know isn’t believed by idiots, we can easily suspend disbelief. Regardless, I decided all these years later to give the book a go and this is my thoughts on Blatty’s iconic novel.

SYNOPSIS
A young Hollywood actress’ daughter becomes “possessed” by a “demon” and you guessed it, an exorcism happens.

CHARACTERS
The only thing less developed then the 12 year old lead in this book is the supporting cast. Most are just there with nothing overly interesting about them. Karras and Lt. Kinderman are the only interesting characters in this novel as with the movies.

PROSE
It’s alright, but it isn’t better than most New York Times bestselling books out there. Blatty had his moments, but it isn’t overly painful to read like Game of Thrones is, either.

SUBTEXT/THEMES
Thematically the book deals with mental illness, religion, belief and other “fun” concepts, but subtext is pretty non-existent, minus one Youtuber who pointed out that the movie had great subtext for sexual abuse. Sadly, while I agree with it, the point of view and how this book is written, along with how the movie goes, pretty much refutes that. Blattly himself even said he didn’t intend for it that way. So, sadly, possession in both the movie and book are quit literal.

CONCULSION
Hardly the worse book I’ve ever read, but it seems more like a parody of the movie. I mean, Regan is a dork, red head kid and the iconic scenes of the movie don’t register the same in the book, they seem weird and don’t fit. Calling the kids rags, is laughable and a horrible nickname. Everything people love about the movie, in this book, seems more mocking in tone, which was clearly not the intent. Mind you this book is 40 years old, along with the movie, but the movie, while I loathe it, holds up better. If you really want to give it a go, feel free to, but otherwise, much like how the book was received prior to a lucky chance appearance by Blattly on a talk show in the 1970’s which catapulted it to fame, I think it is better ignored.

3 out of 5

Kagegiving: Game of Thrones Book Review

INTRODUCTION
     Once again I find myself reviewing a book that I just couldn’t pick up. The complete antithesis of what a reader wants in his novel. To be fair, I did make it to page 200, before the boring, mundane, Seinfeld style writing of daily medieval drudgery forced me to desire to commit suicide. I called a hotline, but they told me they loved it and such thoughts were silly. While I didn’t disagree, my plight being misunderstood made me sulk like an emo vampire. So I feel a need to write this review. Remember kids, I read them so you don’t have to, or in this case, partially read them so you don’t have to.

SYNOPSIS/PLOT
     I don’t fucking know! Something about a battle for a throne, I think. Opining about the days of dragons too. The ongoing day to day lives of tedious people. I think the book is really about testing my patience as a reader, much like Stephen King’s IT. To be fair to Stephen, he was on a hell of a lot of coke to make him a shitty writer. George is, as far as I know, sober. So spin the wheel of plots and fill in the blank as to what this book is about, because George forgot to.

CHARACTERS
     George gets a lot of praise for killing off main characters, something comic books have been doing for years. This doesn’t bother me in the least. I would just like to know who the fucking main characters are. Also, I would like to see them developed so that I might be able to at least feign a twinge of sadness for this idiocy that is Game of Thrones, but I can’t even fake it. Here are all the characters I recall, the shit head brat, but only because of trailers for the show, the lord king, which George constantly reminds us about every fucking time he enters a room. I’m not sure if this is some weird Monty Python style joke, where instead of blaring trumpets upon his entrance to remind us he is a very important person, they tell us, instead. Then there is John Snow, who is a bastard son of 20 slightly mentally ill people. I know this, because, like the Lord Cunt, I am constantly reminded. Is this to make me feel emphatic towards an under-developed virgin? It doesn’t work, because I don’t give a fuck! There is a three eyed raven in a trippy dream sequence, because some kid was pushed out a window and left for dead as well. Oh and my personal favorite, which is when this book is at its most enjoyable, Tyrion Lanister. The God of tits and wine himself. He is a midget with a serious boner for reading, drinking, fucking, Machiavellianism and dropping badass lines like “I drink and I know things.” Fuck yeah, a character I can finally relate to!

PROSE
     Concise as fuck! George is often touted as “The American Tolkien” and it shows in his writing, because an Englishman would of written a better book in the shitter than Game of Thrones is. Tolkien builds worlds, is vivid in his descriptions and builds characters well, throughout just one book. It reads like a dream and is fantastic, especially when Fantasy like this, is not my personal favorite genre. George can’t seem to write interesting scenes worth a good goddamn, but man does he know how to write when it comes to sex, between siblings and other rapist. The plus side to this is, I know all of George R.R. Martin’s fetishes.

DIALOGUE
     It is good. Nothing too medieval, but still with a similar style. Easy to read, no real awkwardness, well from dialogue anyways.

SUBTEXT
     None that I could discern, except that “Winter is coming” is clearly an analogy for a middle age George R.R. Martin who was clearly desperate for a hit before he entered the winter of life, or in this case, old age.

CONCLUSION
     This book sucks. I mean, really, really sucks. Not just a little suckage, I mean air lock blown out on a hanger bay in space, level of suckage. I don’t know what it is about this, but the characters suck, the scenes suck, and the world sucks. It is predicated on a fallacy that incest is best, because Martin wanted very little science involved, yet he wanted it realistic. Well George, it is hard to be fucking realistic when incest would have killed all the bloodlines in the book, so there is no world. Nothing seems of consequence and is insubstantial. Magic has very little write up, but I read that in the Wiki write up of this book. The ending is about dragons returning, as if that fucking matters, because I skipped to the end page to find this out. Winter is coming, but who cares? Shit, the most interesting aspect of the novel, the weird seasons, is just pretty much forgotten about, because, as far as I know, winter still hasn’t come in close to twenty years. Maybe winter should find a fuckin’ Viagra. Also, George must be from a warmer climate, because for those of us from New England, winter coming is nothing. Shit, I intentionally go out in blizzards, just to buy beer so I can enjoy the storm. Hard to make me feel a sense of urgency and doom over season that could potentially last 10 years, when a New England winter fuckin feels the same way.

     Regardless, when Martin does things well, he knows what he is doing. It is just a shame there is so little of that competency shown in this book, because he really grips you when he nails it. So what am I thankful for? This nightmare finally being over!

3 out of 5

Kagegiving: Interview with the Vampire Book Review

INTRODUCTION
     Long before vampires sparkled, they brooded and could not shut up about it. I should probably point out, I was never an Anne Rice fan. I read Servant of the Bone, since she was recommended to me, because I liked Stephen King when I was a child and hated it. That was 20 years ago, so I decided, hey, why not give it another shot. Oh boy, was that the wrong way to think. This review is going to give a subjective opinion, but with an objective star rating.

SYNOPSIS
     Young, possibly gay or bisexual, introverted male, gets turned into a vampire by extroverted bisexual vampire, who then live a weird life of pedophilia together and bitch like a married couple, whilst nothing else of merit happens. Oh and a holocaust so easy to cause, that it would make Hitler blush.

CHARACTERS
     Let me start by saying that Anne Rice is very good at making her characters developed with very little. What would make other character’s shallow by other writers, she can get away with. So I’m very pleased that the characters are evenly built and seem like real people, when they are not just melodramatic and throwing tantrums. The main character is an analogy for herself, because homosexuality makes great subtext for your wishy-washy feelings about god. Lestat is a boyfriend, apparently similar to her husband and then there is the sexually abused girl.

DIALOGUE
     This is something I have often overlooked in reviews, mostly because it takes a hell of a lot of effort to write really bad dialogue, but I’m going to start including it here. Dialogue is mostly decent, given one or two weird spots. Not much to complain about.

PROSE
     You can tell Anne didn’t know if she wanted this to be third person or first person, so she settled for both, but wrote 99% of it in first person. The book is annoying in third person, with great lines such as “The vampire looked at the interviewer.” How the hell does anyone know he’s a vampire yet and if God is telling the story, why the fuck do we have to deal with a whiny emo bitch? Once she finally picks a fuckin’ narrative, business picks up. Spoiler alert, she picks first person, presumably because she realized what an “Interview” was and that it did not allow for third person, but I might be giving her too much credit here.

     She is descriptive enough to make the world seem plausible. She does not overdo it with too much description, but it isn’t lackluster either. That said, this woman doesn’t know what the fuck a chapter is, nor what a scene break is and the writing is dense as fuck. To be fair, by the end of this book, she finally got scene breaks right, but far too late as reading this is a nightmare.

     Other than those technical aspects, the only flaw would be the waxing philosophical about nonsense topics. Pseudo intellectualism has never been more fun with such shallow topics. Interview with the Vampire is like doing your Philosophical PhD thesis on the Insane Clown Posse, but instead of being laughed at and ejected by the college, people willingly paid you hard earned money to read your work. It wants to be literary and in some cases, it has merit, but like I said, it isn’t decent enough to be called such.

CONCLUSION
     While Anne is on record saying the main character is an analogy for herself, which always makes for horrible writing, at least I could understand why this was fresh in 1976. Up until that point, most vampires were vicious and here is one that is different from all the rest. The homosexual aspect was not needed. I’m on record as stating that vampires being dead, do not need a sexuality. I’m not saying you cannot see them as analogies to feeling like an oppressed minority, but straight up making them that way is dumb. One of the things that makes classics is the ability for multiple people to pick up different aspects of subtext, which could have worked to make this a classic like Dracula, but falls way short of that. Vampires are predators, first and foremost. Sexuality is a sirens call, at best and an easy way to trap prey. I noticed that Anne and others like pointing out the vampire’s fetid breath, normally to showcase dead people do not bush their teeth. Logic states that if vampires don’t eat or brush their teeth, they don’t have enough time to suck cock either, just saying. Regardless of that gripe, she at least cut out a lot of stupid shit, like garlic and crosses, so that was a plus. She was the progenitor of the near sparkling vampire though. Also, it could of removed the weird pedophilia shit as well. So is this book something to be thankful for? Nope, it is like giving a small pox blanket to a Native American.

     3 out of 5.

Heffalumps and Woozles: The Devil Crept in Book Review

INTRODUCTION
     I really had high hopes for this author. I did a Google search looking to see what the modern landscape offered for new authors and most things yielded surprisingly little, which is shocking, given one Amazon search yields millions. Ania showed up on a list, along with Mylo Carbia. I had hopes for Ania, but Mylo seemed more like a waste of time. My thoughts weren’t entirely unfounded, but sadly, they we’re not entirely accurate, either. So let us take a look at the book on a deeper level.

SYNOPSIS
     Two cousins, best friends, live in a small town called Deer Valley. It’s a weird place, ala Stephen King and Joe Hill, but there is something more afoot, something evil, perhaps and it isn’t long before both find themselves in for the fight of their lives.

CHARACTERS
     We are treated to one, really good developed character. Two piss poorly developed characters through too much told back story, The rest are, well, pretty much just cunts to elicit sympathy from the reader. Alcoholic abusive stepdaddy, cliché I don’t believe my child mom, The douchebag older brother, think Buzz in Home Alone, Kindly old convenience store man and an aunt with nothing interesting about her. Stevie is the main focus and he is built well. I like him as a character. Jude is slightly more relatable, if you were ever the kind of child that marched to the beat of your own drum, which I did, but sadly, Jude wasn’t much developed past that and pretty much just labeled a nuisance for such.I’m not going to discuss the other two characters, because I would give too much away, in case you still want to read it.

PROSE
     When she isn’t bogging us down with backstory, she can be pretty decent, albeit, sparse writer. She reminds me more of Stephen King, but not as evocative as King, in terms of imagery. I think the biggest problem I have is with this being professionally done novel, with an editor, who is clearly inept. A running theme is “But” starting a sentence, when the last sentence didn’t need to end. Sometimes, you see the sentence as it should have been written, with just the “but” being the bridge of the sentence with or without comma. The word Tic for a mannerism, is spelled Tick throughout. Add in a few awkward analogies and it makes it seem like they rushed to print or the editor, as I said, was too inept. I’m not going to fault her here, because she is Polish, so English may be her second language and for the fact it isn’t her native tongue, she shows a lot of competency.

SUBTEXT
     There is none, except for some autobiographical writing. Such as a woman immigrating from Poland and the fear of being a foreigner, a mention of an inability to write a romance novel, which if you read the acknowledgements, you will see the link to her and not to mention, I think there was fear about being a new mom, strewn throughout.

CONCLUSION
     If she can improve the imagery of the world she is building, heighten up the suspense to actually make it scary, evenly build the characters, fix the few flaws with the style or find a better editor and pull back that exposition dump, she is well on track to actually being the next Stephen King, as opposed to Mylo Cabina, who pretty much called herself that. Outside of these few technical flaws, my only gripe with the book comes down to being able to call the entire ending by page 50 and the fact she has two narratives going back to back by the middle of the book, which wasn’t needed at all. It would have been better to perhaps made the child birth scene a prologue and stuck to one narrative, which, even with the bog of backstory, to build up Jude, would of made the pace of the book move faster. Still, I bought three of her other books on Kindle and plan to pick up a couple others, because I really feel she has a lot of potential. Either way, she is worth watching to see how she grows as a writer.

     3 out of 5

Halloween Movie Novelization Book Review

INTRODUCTION
When I was a child, almost all movies had a novelization. Why? Most likely because Hollywood wanted to make more money and much like a McDonald’s Happy Meal toy, this was one more worthless item to shill to kids or fans of popular novels. Sadly, the novelization was almost always terrible prose, aimed at the lowest common denominator and forgotten about with glee, shortly after you bought it. Remember the heyday of these is pre-DVD, when extras weren’t as easy to come by via VHS and some audiences were clamoring for more of these favorite flicks, so you cannot really blame anyone for giving them a gander, as they weren’t all terrible, but they weren’t very good, either. My reason for buying these as a child, they often could give more insight into scenes that were cut from the movie, as well as hopefully develop characters past the confines of the movie, whilst giving us more depth in general as well. Few ever lived up to that, that is until Halloween 2018, went retro and made a novelization for its movie and that is one reason for me to buy it, as I am waiting for the DVD or a Double feature of this and the original 1978 classic to finally see it. So is this little gem worth it?

SYNOPSIS
Jason Micheal is accidentally released back into Haddonfield on the eve of his transfer, exactly 40 years to the day of the babysitter murders. Laurie, estranged from her family, finally gets a chance to end her nightmare that started back in 1978. Who will rise victorious? (Hint: it’s Hollywood, it’s almost never the bad guy.)

PROSE
Finally, a novelization that does prose well. Holy shit! Not only is this guy hyper competent, but he adds a bit too much description. There is very little errors within this book, minus like one that you can discover for yourself should you read this. Not only is the description spot on, but the word use makes this one of the smartest novelizations ever. Mea Cupla for instance, is Latin. That is high brow for this type of book and I am very happy to see such. It also adds a bit of physics and quoting of Nietzsche. If all this sounds right up your alley, you will love this.

CHARACTERS
They’re developed enough, but not really in a memorable or you will care sort of way. Most the cast is simply there.

SUBTEXT/THEME
Not much, but they occasionally add a tiny insight when it comes to evil in the word and like I said, it’s a novelization.

CONCLUSION
While this book is sadly just relaying the movie with no real additions via different scenes or extrapolation to the world that is Haddonfield, the myth of Michael or developing the characters more, it still one of the better efforts that a novelization has ever undertaken, even if it lacks suspense, has kills which are weak and is longer than it should be. Overall, I think this and the movie are going to be worth your time.

3 ½ out of 5

Heffalumps and Woozles:The Raping of Ava Desantis, Book Review

INTRODUCTION

     I don’t what to think about this novel, whatsoever. I ordered it a few days ago, started it at 1pm today and just finished it about 8:30 pm. When I first looked up this novel, it was to investigate what it was about. Apparently it was a multi-award winner in 2015, but I never heard a damn thing about it, nor of the awards it won. It claims they’re industry related, but it is hard to have industry related awards when none of them are well known brands. I mean, I have an award for best critic of the year, but I made it up just now, so I’ll be like Donald Trump and Barrack Obama and put it on my book, just to sell more copies, because why merit anything when you can just pull bullshit out your ass, because the sorry ass consumers cannot be bother to do so much as the bare minimum of research in order to vote, never mind buy a fuckin’ novel. One “reviewer” claimed it made 50 shades of grey look like a training manual. Did that idiot even read either book or does he/she have rape fantasies? It isn’t even a horror novel. Goosebumps have more horror. So much seems wrong, but whatever, let us look at this novel a lot deeper than other “reviewers” have.

SYNOPSIS

     It is 1991, nerdy introvert needs to help jock type get good grades, invites her to frat party, even though cliché stock character doesn’t like her. The basic bros do too much drugs, and rape the chick to kingdom cum. The mother pays her off to keep, well, mum. She gets paid, but decides to avenge herself.

CHARACTERS
     This book isn’t black and white, but it isn’t color either. The only thing less developed than the characters in this book is the infrastructure the GOP keeps promising to fix. This book is like John Hughes took a copious amount of blow and forgot what he was able to accomplish, ala Steven King in the 1980’s.

PROSE
     Shallow, uneven, but with bits of competency as a writer, strewn throughout. It is super concise and can be read quickly. She knows how to paint a background, showcase humans, but everything else ultimately make this novel wonky at best. It is a debut novel, so perhaps she could be forgiven? Well, she claims to have been a Hollywood ghostwriter for years and to be fair, it shows, when she writes her onomatopoeia in all caps like this RING. In screenplay writing, you do that in order to show where the camera is to place emphasis. It is lost on most readers in this novel and doesn’t add anything.

THEMES AND SUBTEXT
     This isn’t the book to be looking for such, it is shallow as a puddle. I mean, we don’t even have a motive for why she is bothering to kill these people in the first place. The only thing I can gather is the following: 1. the writer has the mind of a man. 2. She is possibly bi-sexual. 3. She likes redheads, which I can relate to, but I still like brunettes and blondes too. 4. She has possibly engage in very weird, kinky sex or wants us to think that. 5. She has a fake publishing LLC just to post reviews of her own book and drum up publicity, including hiring actors. 6. The awards are dubious. 8. She clearly wants to be famous. 9. She is at least semi competent. 10. She will probably fare very well in the future.

CONCLUSION
     Mylo Carbia has managed to write an entire book that is like a episode of Seinfeld. I mean, nothing happens, yet, is has some appeal, or enough to have keep me reading it. It has uneven prose, zero suspense, shallow characters, a dumb double twist that was never set up nor is it actually a twist. The references are understandable, even to a younger audience. I mean, I’m confused as to if I enjoyed it, even with the flaws or not, to even recommend. Still, Mylo shows promise and clearly a drive to succeed, if you’re faking an organization just for reviews. With a few tweaks, she could have a hell of a lot of potential, even if she is the equivalent of a Millennial in GenX form.

3 out of 5.