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I have to say right at the beginning that I really love stories about vampires. That’s not to say that I am uncritical; there are at least two series of vampire novels that I’ve stopped following because the the stories have become formulaic (I won’t mention any names…..). But it means that I’m always on the lookout for something interesting in the genre, and was thrilled to come across Let The Right One In by accident when browsing in a bookshop.
According to the blurb on the cover, Lindqvist has “reinvented the vampire novel” and there is “a whiff of the new Stephen King” so this was a no brainer for me. And I’m so glad that I picked it up, as it is a genuinely creepy and unsettling book which has been stuck in my head over the few days since I finished it.
We are in Sweden, a suburb of Stockholm to be exact, on a council estate. Oskar is 12 years old, being brought up by his mother alone and bullied at school. One night, while acting out a fantasy of revenge in the local play area, he meets Eli, a girl of indeterminate age, and they form a bond. She gives him the courage to face up to his problems, but it soon becomes clear that she isn’t what she seems; she is in fact a vampire who is at least 200 years old.
That’s the set-up, but there is so much more to this story. It’s incredibly bleak in places, a lot of the characters lead disappointedlives, the children are mainly from broken homes. However, the supernatural element blends in; Eli is a victim also, turned into a vampire when a child, not really understanding how it all works but knowing what she needs to do to survive. It’s incredibly gruesome in places (which I don’t mind) but also really affecting, and I found the end satisfying.
I’m not sure I’ve done this unusual story justice, but if you want something new in the vampire tradition then give this a try.
This is my third read for the RIP III challenge.
First things first – I loved this book. I read it slowly so that I could enjoy the experience for as long as possible and I’ve been mulling it over ever since, trying to work out exactly why Heart-Shaped Box is so good.
I think it’s basically such a wonderful idea – rock star buys ghost over the Internet and when the titular heart-shaped box containing a black suit arrives, he finds himself genuinely and creepily haunted. And it all goes downhill from there, as he and his current lady-friend try to find a way to rid themselves of this malicious presence.
It helps if you like the characters and I thought all of them were well-rounded, particularly Jude and Marybeth, and I found it was really easy to invest myself in their survival. I particularly loved the stuff about the dogs- I won’t say anymore as I’m sure I’m not actually the last person in the world to read this, although it feels like that sometimes.
It would be really easy to compare Joe Hill’s writing to that of his dad, who as everybody probably knows by now is the great Stephen King, but that comparison would be a bit unfair as Hill has his own distinctive voice. I’m really looking forward to reading more – I have Twentieth Century Ghosts tucked away somewhere for winter reading.
If you haven’t read this you should really give it a try. Great stuff.
This is my second read for the RIP III Challenge.
The Terror is my first Dan Simmons novel, and I have to say that I’m really very impressed. I wasn’t at all sure what to expect, but found the story really gripping and I read what is a fairly chunky book (at over 750 pages) in pretty quick time for me.
So this is based on the true story of Sir John Franklin’s expedition to find the North West Passage in the 1840s, an attempt that failed with the apparent loss of the crews of the two ships involved, The Erebus and The Terror. Over the years it has become clear that the ships had become stuck in the ice and that the men succumbed to scurvy, starvation, botulism and lead poisoning, the latter from the poorly soldered cans in which much of their food was provided. Dan Simmons builds all this into his tale, but adds a little something extra – what if there was also something out on the ice stalking the men, picking them off, something not natural….?
I couldn’t tear myself away from this, picking it up at every spare moment to find out what was going to happen next. The story is told from the viewpoints of several of the main characters, almost all based on real crew members; this works really well. There is a real sense of foreboding in the novel and the sensation that even the widest of wide-open spaces can be oppressive when you can’t get away. I even enjoyed all the detail about ship-board life, the difference between whaleboats and pinnaces, and I now know much more about the effects of scurvy than I probably wanted to! I also know a little bit more about Inuit mythology than I did before. I found the resolution satisfying, and the mixture of historical fiction and horror worked well, so recommended.
This is my first read for the RIP III challenge.
So ever since Carl announced RIP III I’ve been wandering around the house looking for suitable books to use as my pool for the challenge.
And even though there are more I could add, I think I’m going to plump for the following list from which to complete Peril the First, where I have to read four books of any length from any subgenre of scary stories I choose:
- The Terror by Dan Simmons [6 September]
- Duma Key by Stephen King
- Come Closer by Sara Gran
- Let the Right One In by John Ajvide Lindqvist [25 September]
- Uncle Montague’s Tales of Terror by Chris Priestley [3 October]
- Midwinter of the Spirit by Phil Rickman
- Heart-Shaped Box by Joe Hill [14 September]
- Something Wicked This Way Comes by Ray Bradbury
I would love to have included The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman but it doesn’t come out in the UK until the end of October as far as I can tell.
I also intend to round off the challenge with my annual viewing of The Nightmare Before Christmas, which seems fitting given Carl’s fabulous challenge button!
Bride of the Book God 