The Midnight Palace
Length Of Time In Possession : About 8 months
'The Midnight Palace' is a ruin which provides the headquarters of a club for a group of teenage orphans who when about to age out of their orphanage, discover that one of their number, Ben, is the victim of a curse.
I read a lot of books and I read across genres and age ranges. Certain books are published for and marketed specifically at young adults but in many cases this has not prevented me from enjoying them, and I do really like discovering young adult books with the potential to crossover and have meaning to readers of all ages. I've read another Carlos Ruiz Zafon young adult novel 'The Prince Of Mist' before and really rather enjoyed it
Unfortunately this was not the case with this book : the plot repeatedly made no sense, events were often ludicrous and the book as a whole had this sense of melodrama and hysteria about it. For a ghost story it didn't scare particularly, the villain was a little panto & the box opening denouement was just bizarre.
When I read this book I was so annoyed with it that I tweeted that I just wanted to write 'This book was shit' and nothing else as my review - given that I was never its target audience that seemed a little uncharitable, but it is after all my opinion!
There are at the moment some great books out there aimed at this age range ( I recommend Patrick Ness & John Green) this just sadly, for me, was not one of them
Verdict 3/10
Destination : Charity Shop
Showing posts with label India. Show all posts
Showing posts with label India. Show all posts
Tuesday, 26 November 2013
Monday, 15 October 2012
Turbulence by Samit Basu
Turbulence
On paper, Turbulence by Samit Basu, seems to be directly aimed at me as its target market. Superheroes? I'm there. Ordinary people acquiring super powers? Again up my alley. Similar to the NBC series Heroes? Go on then.
A group of people are on a flight from London to New Delhi - they all have strange dreams, fantasies of who they could be, and when they wake up they have acquired a power which correlates to their fantasy, so Vir the pilot can fly, Uzma the wannabee actress is irresistible to those around her, Aman the computer geek can mentally hack into any computer, the journalist gets premonitions about newsworthy events and so on...
The trouble arises with the structure, we meet our heroes shortly after powers have been acquired and to my mind the huge opportunity of an origin story is missed the chance to build up the scene of all these people before the flight and boarding it, dreaming and disembarking. A chance to build wonder, and mystique. It all seems a bit disjointed somehow.
Additionally the powers they possess are either bog standard (human flight) or a bit naff in terms of their capacity for dramatic impact (mental internet, the power of allurement) And the guy who can control the temperature with his stomach, what's that all about? Useless!
By far the greatest and for me fatal flaw of this piece is the dialogue. It's dialogue heavy, and the dialogue is extremely poor and weak, cringe inducing even. "Hey! we're like the X Men!"
When the writing switches to prose or private thoughts it isn't so bad, but it isn't long before you're hit in the face with yet more cliched conversation of the most contrived, artificial kind. A masterclass in how not to write a cheesy, one star action film that flops at the box office.
I gave this book up at around the 100 page mark, persuaded myself to give it a second go, and quit for the second and final time at around page 140, which is why there's no number present on my count towards 100.
I just found the excessive, and dire, dialogue too much to bear. This is why Turbulence doesn't have a number by its name as it's classed as "Failure To Finish"
Of the 10 Amazon reviews present for this novel, 9 give it 5 stars something that genuinely baffles me, as it is so marred by its flaw as to not even succeed as a genre piece of fluff.
Can't really mark it out of 10 seeing as I failed to finish.
On paper, Turbulence by Samit Basu, seems to be directly aimed at me as its target market. Superheroes? I'm there. Ordinary people acquiring super powers? Again up my alley. Similar to the NBC series Heroes? Go on then.
A group of people are on a flight from London to New Delhi - they all have strange dreams, fantasies of who they could be, and when they wake up they have acquired a power which correlates to their fantasy, so Vir the pilot can fly, Uzma the wannabee actress is irresistible to those around her, Aman the computer geek can mentally hack into any computer, the journalist gets premonitions about newsworthy events and so on...
The trouble arises with the structure, we meet our heroes shortly after powers have been acquired and to my mind the huge opportunity of an origin story is missed the chance to build up the scene of all these people before the flight and boarding it, dreaming and disembarking. A chance to build wonder, and mystique. It all seems a bit disjointed somehow.
Additionally the powers they possess are either bog standard (human flight) or a bit naff in terms of their capacity for dramatic impact (mental internet, the power of allurement) And the guy who can control the temperature with his stomach, what's that all about? Useless!
By far the greatest and for me fatal flaw of this piece is the dialogue. It's dialogue heavy, and the dialogue is extremely poor and weak, cringe inducing even. "Hey! we're like the X Men!"
When the writing switches to prose or private thoughts it isn't so bad, but it isn't long before you're hit in the face with yet more cliched conversation of the most contrived, artificial kind. A masterclass in how not to write a cheesy, one star action film that flops at the box office.
I gave this book up at around the 100 page mark, persuaded myself to give it a second go, and quit for the second and final time at around page 140, which is why there's no number present on my count towards 100.
I just found the excessive, and dire, dialogue too much to bear. This is why Turbulence doesn't have a number by its name as it's classed as "Failure To Finish"
Of the 10 Amazon reviews present for this novel, 9 give it 5 stars something that genuinely baffles me, as it is so marred by its flaw as to not even succeed as a genre piece of fluff.
Can't really mark it out of 10 seeing as I failed to finish.
Sunday, 26 August 2012
Book #75 Narcopolis by Jeet Thayil
Narcopolis
Narcopolis by Jeet Thayil, a Booker 2012 longlist nominee, is a portrait of drug addicts in Bombay. Omniscient narrator Dom describes a variety of characters encountered in Bombay's drug dens. Prostitute Dimple, Chinese refugee Mr Lee, drug dealer Rashid etc.
There are, without a doubt some absolute gems hidden within the prose of Narcopolis, a passage about the nature of doubt stood out for me, and the novel got off to a good start, but there is no plot as such; despite the quality of the prose I found myself disengaging from the novel and at a certain undefinable point it stopped being something I was reading, and became a chore I had to get through.
For readers unfamiliar with India, use of slang and cultural references, will sometimes create a barrier of understanding, or did for me at any rate. I suppose if I wanted to give it a catchy, easily understood summary I'd say "It's an Indian Trainspotting". Likewise did Trainspotting, with its use of local dialect create a comprehension barrier for the average reader.
Narcopolis is the 8th book on the longlist which I have now read, with the exception of Bring Up The Bodies which I read regardless of its presence on the list, at the time of publication, I have been pretty disappointed with this years list, plenty of "good" solid books like The Lighthouse say, but nothing which has transcended words on a page, and entered a part of my mind or heart.
Narcopolis by Jeet Thayil, a Booker 2012 longlist nominee, is a portrait of drug addicts in Bombay. Omniscient narrator Dom describes a variety of characters encountered in Bombay's drug dens. Prostitute Dimple, Chinese refugee Mr Lee, drug dealer Rashid etc.
There are, without a doubt some absolute gems hidden within the prose of Narcopolis, a passage about the nature of doubt stood out for me, and the novel got off to a good start, but there is no plot as such; despite the quality of the prose I found myself disengaging from the novel and at a certain undefinable point it stopped being something I was reading, and became a chore I had to get through.
For readers unfamiliar with India, use of slang and cultural references, will sometimes create a barrier of understanding, or did for me at any rate. I suppose if I wanted to give it a catchy, easily understood summary I'd say "It's an Indian Trainspotting". Likewise did Trainspotting, with its use of local dialect create a comprehension barrier for the average reader.
Narcopolis is the 8th book on the longlist which I have now read, with the exception of Bring Up The Bodies which I read regardless of its presence on the list, at the time of publication, I have been pretty disappointed with this years list, plenty of "good" solid books like The Lighthouse say, but nothing which has transcended words on a page, and entered a part of my mind or heart.
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