Reviews – Books: I
RATINGS KEY
0/5 – Terrible. Avoid this book at all costs.
1/5 – Bad. Only read it if you’re a truly hardcore fan of the author/topic.
2/5 – Okay. It’s not bad, but it’s not good either.
3/5 – Average. A decent one-time read.
4/5 – Good. Worth reading and worth buying.
5/5 – Excellent. One of my favorites; a worthy classic.
I Am Legend by Richard Matheson
4/5 | Reviewed 9.03.07
I expected a book about the last living (read: not undead) survivor of a mysterious plague that turns all of humanity into vampires would be right up my alley . . . and it kind of was. Kind of. Plots like this, though, should reach out of the book and grab you by the throat (and bite down, and suck your blood, and—erm, sorry), and this one just . . . didn’t. There was nothing wrong with it that I could pin down, exactly; it was well-paced and well-thought-out, and the matter-of-fact approach to humanity’s downfall was effectively chilling. Something about it, though, had the musty smell of very old sci-fi, and while that’s not in itself a bad thing, it inevitably leaves the reader with a creeping sense of deja vu and the distracting aftertaste of the era in which it was written. Maybe I’ve just come across the “last human on Earth vs. the UNDEAD ZOMBIES!!!” plotline one too many times. It’s definitely worth a read, though; if the tone of this review is more personally disappointed than appropriately laudatory, it’s because I had heard that this book would rock my world, and it didn’t. But then, neither did Dracula. . . .
In the Wake of Madness by Joan Druett
4/5 | Reviewed 12.16.05
If there’s one thing I’ve learned from nautical nonfiction, it’s that whaling trips rarely end well for the whales or the sailors. That conclusion is proven once more in this, the tale of the whaleship Sharon and its shockingly violent mishaps. The official story has always been that the captain was ruthlessly murdered by “savages” while the rest of the crew was off in the whaleboats; digging deeper, however, it becomes quite clear that the savagely violent captain—a man who systematically tortured one of his men to death over several months—had it coming. The story takes a little while to get going, but the author tells it well; indeed, it’s almost impossible not to get drawn into this horrible saga. A good, solidly entertaining (and somewhat chilling) read—just don’t read it in public places if you’re the kind of person who squeals aloud in disgust at gruesome passages.
