OYENTE

Justin J. Julian

  • 6
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  • 13
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Roadkill King Audiolibro Por Dan B. Fierce arte de portada

A nice "Tales From The Crypt" style novella

Total
4 out of 5 stars
Ejecución
2 out of 5 stars
Historia
4 out of 5 stars

Revisado: 11-22-23

This is a long short story or short novella that I expected to be in the extreme horror or splatterpunk genres given the description. I was pleasantly surprised to find that, instead, it would fit well as an episode of "Tales From The Crypt" or "Creepshow" instead of those gore-soaked descriptors.

While it does have a certain amount of splatter, the focus here is on a very bad man getting his ironic comeuppance rather than on the more vivid outcome of his trade as the master of murdering things with his vehicle. The length also suits the format of those horror anthology shows. Things get started immediately, don't hesitate for a moment, and wrap up in a tidy bow without ever hitting the brakes. Any longer and it would overstay its welcome. Any shorter and it would feel rushed.

As this is an audiobook, I have to point out that the narrator, Jason Myers, is a drawback. His narration lead to some very awkward beats and transitions, such as leaping directly into new chapters without so much as a breath, but also pausing mid-sentence at times, possibly to take one. His accent on the lead, Tatum, was a bit over the top for me as well. These didn't server to spoil the production, but they must be noted. As a self-published book, one can expect some bumps in the road.

I enjoyed the story, and found it to be well worth the asking price. I'd recommend it to all fans of the above-mentioned series of hard-R horror shows who don't shy away from the red stuff in search of a little twisty terror in the short form.

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Playground Audiolibro Por Aron Beauregard arte de portada

Mediocre edgelord splatterpunk

Total
3 out of 5 stars
Ejecución
5 out of 5 stars
Historia
2 out of 5 stars

Revisado: 09-03-23

I'm a horror guy. Kind of an expert. (I'm not gonna get into my "street cred" but yes, I have some.) A lot of these reviewers aren't, so you've got to take them with a grain of salt.

This is very very very "edgy" splatterpunk that's not of high quality. Ed Lee? Richard Laymon? Now you're talking. This is on par with gross out stories on certain sites that end in chan paired with mediocre extreme horror.

Beyond pointless incest/scat/necro porn early on? It's "oh look...I'm killing kids! Ooooo...I'm doing extreme violence to kids! I'm edgyyyy!" Yeah, no writer has done that before. Try the Beast House books by Laymon, then tell me you get edgy with kids.

It's not a terrible book. It's just a bloated attempt to be edgy that isn't nearly as extreme as it wants to be.

The narrator? She should get hazard pay. She does a great job reading -very- icky stuff.

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The Devil Aspect Audiolibro Por Craig Russell arte de portada

The most boring choice

Total
2 out of 5 stars
Ejecución
4 out of 5 stars
Historia
2 out of 5 stars

Revisado: 03-22-23

This book is a perfect example of what happens when an author has a number of choices of directions to go with a plot idea, and chooses the laziest, least original, most boring one.

There were several ways this could have gone. Several things Russel could have done with this. He created a situation filled with tension, horror, and a combination of very real horror and the fantastic. It was just a question of where he was going. Which route he was going to walk down.

The one he chose? Yawn. So predictable. So dull. I've got no idea why this is so highly rated. He chose the one ending you saw from the very beginning, the one silly B-movie ending that makes everything dull and predictable. Only think more hackneyed would have been an evil twin.

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Winterset Hollow Audiolibro Por Jonathan Edward Durham arte de portada

At times frustrating, but sticks with you

Total
4 out of 5 stars
Ejecución
4 out of 5 stars
Historia
4 out of 5 stars

Revisado: 03-22-23

This is one of the strangest books I've ever read. Weeks later, it's stuck with me. I drive rideshare at night in an area that has an abundance of rabbits. They run everywhere at night. And I can't look at them the same way now.

I'm not even touching the plot. Don't learn anything. Don't read anything. Go in cold and just buy the ticket, take the ride. It's a horror novel and it's not for the faint of heart.

As for the execution, as my headline says, it frustrated me many times. Like many horror films, this is one of those stories where you will absolutely be shouting at the people in the book frequently. It's not TOO bad. The author did plug most holes. It's not a story where, if one person did ONE thing, the whole situation would be unraveled. However, there are holes. Pretty big ones. Unanswered questions that the author yadda yaddas over. If you're not willing to just go along with them, you'll be left angry.

Along the course, the characters do suffer from a bit of horror-movie-itis as well. "Why don't they just..." will absolutely go through your mind fairly often. Quite a bit of "oh don't do that, it's a trap" will happen as well. But they aren't total fools, and the author does a fairly good job of patching those up...even if sometimes it's after you think of them, so you can feel him thinking of them after he's passed that point and thinks of them, too. "Oh...um...now it's RAINING...so setting the house of fire wouldn't have worked! Ah! There. Okay. Fixed that."

Finally, I understand why the author wanted to narrate himself. With the verse wrapped throughout, I'm sure he felt only he could be trusted to nail the cadence and feel in his head. I'm not sure that served him well, and having a strong professional reader could have served the more dramatic moments. He's not bad. He's just not as good as it could have been, and he sounds like what he is: an author passionately reading his text.

All that aside, you'll notice my ratings are high. That's for a reason. Those are all the complaints I have. This is a stunningly original, vicious little book I desperately want to see turned into a film with the right budget and right filmmaker.

Mike Flanagan, paging Mike Flanagan, I'm sure we can arrange for a delightful meal of tarts and pies, Mike.

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The Diviners Audiolibro Por Libba Bray arte de portada

Not a bad start, but could have been better

Total
3 out of 5 stars
Ejecución
5 out of 5 stars
Historia
3 out of 5 stars

Revisado: 03-22-23

I'm not familiar with Libba Bray's other work. We'll get that out of the way right up front. Seems a lot of other reviewers here went in with an idea based on that, I didn't.

I also have a major disagreement with one thing regarding this book: this isn't a YA title. They call it that. It won some award for being a "teen" book. It just isn't. Many reviewers based their reviews off that notion, and I can see why they had issues there. It's just plain wrong. Regardless of Bray's attempts to skew it that way, if any, or the publisher's desires to play to that market, this isn't a teen or YA book.

This is an adult horror novel that happens to feature young people. That doesn't make it a YA or teen book.

The best comparison I can make to those reading this review? Buffy the Vampire Slayer. That was not a "teen" show. It was an adult show chock full of adult content and themes that just happened to feature young people. It, like this, had gore, violence, language, and themes that just weren't suited for teen audiences. Twilight, this isn't.

Sure, the "coming of age" themes might appeal to the young, but the age the characters are coming of is adulthood, not adolescence. As such, they're dealing with mortality, capitalism, crime, morality of the deeper kind that threatens the soul, institutional racism of the historical kind, philosophical issues of the permanence of the soul, and stuff that just straight up isn't grist for the average sophomore's mind. Whether or not to be on Team Jacob or Team Whatshisface, whether Peeta is going to survive the next Game, that's the stuff of popular YA. This gets into Nietzsche, brutal sexual assaults, and young women getting their skin ripped off.

That being said, it's not a bad little horror novel set in a time we just don't get a lot of horror set in. You've got an interesting killer with a deep mythos and a fun little chase pursuing him.

The issues arise in what's going on around it. The best way to describe that is indeed Buffy, because this is an origin story launching a new series, and this book spends a vast amount of time on those origins of our Buffy and our large team of "Scoobs" who we assume will eventually become the titular Diviners.

The problem? That doesn't happen here despite the lengthy novel. We meet them all. We get some of their origins, and only hints of others. But while all play some role in the pursuit of this killer, others just barely graze it, and absolutely do not join the team. They're practically Sir Not Appearing In This Film, which leaves you at the end wondering why you spent so much page time following them around and learning about them. Sure, this is Book 1. But it's still a book. It needs to do its business and tell its story. This isn't a comic book, it's not issue 1, we aren't reading a serial. Why, then, do we spend so very much time with Theda and Memphis who do almost literally nothing to add to the tale? Ominous things are suggested, powers hinted, that they might become powerful members of this Scooby team. But they don't here. Yet they take up a simply massive amount of the book. It's very hard not to feel like the reader's time has been wasted while the author builds a world that only exists in her head. If it's not in these pages, it doesn't do us a lick of good.

If it didn't make up a solid 1/3 of the book, it wouldn't be a complaint, but I'm not exaggerating. Remove all bits referencing things that simply don't happen here but refer to things that will happen in later entries in the series and you'd lighten the load by that much, easily. Maybe more. Tell us THIS story, Libba, don't tell us the next one. Tell us the next one in the next one, or get into comic books, which would be an incredible format for this series. Or television.

One comment on other reviewers complaining about our lead character. Yes, she's flawed. Apologies that she's not an immediate, whip-smart, perfect angel of a detective leaping into action, saving the day, defeating every challenge. This is to say she's a flawed human. An actual 17-year-old girl. She was written with depth. I'd advise these reviewers read more fiction not intended for people under 20 to run into more characters like Evie. They might be frustrated at first, but they might also learn to enjoy real fiction rather than tripe.

Finally, a word on the narrator, who is simply one of the finest I've ever heard. She's made of pure gold. Teenage girl? Of course. Elderly African-American male? Got it. Elderly lady? Several different elderly ladies? All performed differently so they're easy to tell apart. Singing? Voice of an angel. Singing badly? Done, and harder than you think to do well. Any challenge thrown at this woman, and she just rushes through it like a gazelle, never breaking pace. Astounding. An entire cast of hundreds in one person. She has no equal.

I can only recommend this title if you want to read the series. It's absolutely Issue 1 of a new comic. The Pilot Episode of a new show. If you enjoy shows like Buffy, you'll dig it. We've got our Buffy, our Giles, and the rest of the Scoobs are coming along...eventually...all with their own special little gifts. Not enough to be derivative of everyone's favorite slayer, but the blueprints are there: soulful but maybe less than human hunk, bookish and (for now) unpowered best friend, rakish competitor for her affections with a bad history, and a whole set of others that can step in and out, along with a group of adults who may be watching out for them or may not have their best interests while some Big Bad is coming for them all and the world with them. With four books already laid down, there are monsters to put down and mysteries to solve.

All categorized, likely incorrectly, as YA.

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Old Bones Audiolibro Por Douglas Preston, Lincoln Child arte de portada

Huge disappointment

Total
2 out of 5 stars
Ejecución
2 out of 5 stars
Historia
2 out of 5 stars

Revisado: 05-16-22

A spinoff of the Pendergast novels, I had high hopes for this potential new series featuring archeologist Nora Kelly and new FBI agent Corrie Swanson.

My hopes were dashed with this sloppy, dull, predictable book where you wait forever for the plot to catch up with what you know will happen. Preston and Child have Pendergast mostly mastered, but when they step outside of his formula it's hit and miss. While this exists in his world, it's far enough outside to be an almost entire miss.

Without getting into spoilers, Nora is convinced to take part in an expedition to find a long lost 3rd camp of the famous Donner Party while, stimulaneously, Connie is given her first real case involving a grave robbing and the death of the person hired to do the digging.

From the start, there's nonsense. The murder Connie investigates doesn't happen until well into the book, and is stupid. These master criminals turn a simple grave robbery that would never be noticed into a federal murder case by trying to cover up their tracks...in a way that guarantees the most exposure possible.

Nora, too, faces seemingly endless obstacles getting the expedition off the ground and into the mountains. We know she'll get there, that's the story. Why do we spend so much time telling and retelling the Donner Party story? No clue. But we do.

Once we're there, we get a step by step of the entire archeological process. Preston and Child did this research and dammit, we're gonna see every moment of it. It's tedious and has zero to do with the plot. The unearthing of the relics and bones has nothing to do with the point here.

Meanwhile Corrie faces constant resistance to the fact that there's an obvious thread of thefts and violence related to one thing, because she's a rookie so of course this obvious thread can't exist. It just keeps occurring, evidence mounting, but she's seeing phantoms because she's inexperienced.

Load on hackneyed stereotype characters for everyone to keep running into defying all logic and reality (sure, go ahead and argue with the federal agent who just ordered you to vacate a crime scene...tell me how that works out for you, Mr Suspect.) and the book becomes beyond dull and dumb and enters into the realm of insulting.

With the authors continually ramming an obvious red herring down our throats in lieu of actually moving the plot forward, the final act just kind of...happens. It almost surprised me when the villain, which I had sorted out ages ago as the authors revealed them since only they could have done one significant action, killing any sense of mystery nearly 1/3 of the book before the end, suddenly reveals themselves. It's almost comedic, as they literally just kind of get tired of waiting and make their move all at once, openly revealing themselves in the most hamhanded way possible when there's zero pressure to do so.

In an epilogue, Pendergast makes a cameo and solves part of the mystery so easily it reads like a parody of how clever he usually is.

The reader here just isn't good. She does a Keanu Reeves impression for the male lead for some reason, the camp cook is done as a dead ringer for Pam from Archer, and worst of all, Pendergast is performed with a straight up British accent rather than his southern drawl. It's as if she wasn't directed in any way and was just left in a room to read the book on her own.

Bad book, bad reader, stick to Pendergast authors and fans.

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