Arcane

The Book of Koli, meets Snowpiercer, meets huh???

Revisado: 03-15-21

This book had a pretty good concept. BUT, it introduces a lot of things that I think are suppose to be familiar to you, or that you are suppose to relate to, but really it was just confusing. Every new thing that was introduced (and there were like 30-40) was given some vague description that was just loosing me. This is such a short book and I could Not wait for it to be over.

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So much better than the movie! A fantastic horror

Revisado: 11-24-20

This was a great book and I was very impressed. I looked into reading it because I really enjoyed the movie. However, I was blown away at how much better the book was! I know some people would say that the book is always better, but they would be wrong (Peter Benchley’s: Jaws). I will explain why at the end, and if you are thinking about reading the book and want to see some comparisons to the movie (with some spoilers) just read the end.

I avoided reading this for some time because it had so many negative reviews. People were saying that it was boring or slow or nothing happened… I don’t think they read it. It literately starts with something very odd and crazy happening and its pretty consistent. But this might be the best way to explain how engaging it was:
Every time I would stop reading, when I would pick it up again, I would think to myself “Wow! I stopped right when something crazy was happening.” And this happened like 10 times before I realized that maybe the book just has a lot of really interesting things happening most of the time.

As someone who loves horror and reads a lot of it, I can honestly say that this is now in my top 10 favorite horror novels.


I thought it might be interesting to compare the movie to the book, so spoilers for both ahead.

The movie was otherwise great but it had 3 main things that stuck out and as odd and really took away from the development of the story.
1) The friend Rob who gets killed in the store. This set a pace and direction for the movie that is then completely abandoned for a much better version of itself. However, we are forced to relive this uninteresting part over and over and it even becomes the side plot and strength/weakness of the main character.
2) The lack of the creature that is around. You get a glimpse of it in the middle and kind of see it at the end, but I really wanted more story around it. Why is it there? What is it?
3) The cult. This was so out of place and odd… Like they were a group of humans who could live forever and serve the forest creature? And they want Luke to join them because he is broken? So… They are saving him? Killing him? It just never really sat well with me.

So, good news,
1) Rob isn’t even in the book. At all. There is no fifth friend to their group, there was no liquor store attack and there was no mourning. In fact, if such of an event had happened the character Luke would not have been one to hide. Dude is a loose cannon.
2) The creature is all around. And you are introduced to its ‘children’. You get a pretty good idea as to what it is, why it is there and what the small village is. Pretty cool.
3) There is no cult like that. There is still a village and some people who want to sacrifice Luke, but it is done much better. It doesn’t feel so out of place. They are not trying to get him to join him and they are not scared of the creature. Felt so much more polished.

I don’t know why they made the changes they did in the movie. I know most of the time it is for time-sake, but it seems to me like they could have made the better story work by not adding the wasted time themselves! Feels like they shot themselves in the foot.

And, now, I don’t think I could watch the movie again. The book did it right!

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Great version of a classic! But, dumbed down

Revisado: 10-14-20

This was a great version of The Art of War, and the narrator was good. But, it was just a little too dumbed down. Now, for the sake of time I don't really have a lot of complaints about that, but it felt lacking in some places that I felt it shouldn't have skimmed over.

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Different enough from the movie to be great!

Revisado: 09-04-20

I love horror and I have seen Jaws the movie many times.

I am a believer that most of the time it is worth reading a book even if you have seen the movie. They are not always better (believe it or not) but most books have something different enough about them to warrant a read even if you have seen the movie a hundred times.

This book is different, but really only in two ways.

1) The book has a lot of garbage that is completely not worth the time.

a) The book makes the mistake of fleshing out and spending a great deal of time with the wife, who, is not only not a main character, but is very boring. In the end her story-line goes nowhere and does nothing. It was kind of bizarre. Like Peter Benchley and his wife had problems, so he just wanted to give her the middle finger in his book. To put this into perspective, she is not one of the five major characters and she is not one of the three main characters, but she has more time on the page than the shark and Captain Quint (a main character) combined!

b) Likewise, the book spends a great deal of time trying to show you that the shark is tearing the town, its citizens and everything it has stood for apart, just because it is a shark. And for me, at least, this never sells. It just seemed like a new pressure was placed on a structure that wasn’t up to code to begin with. But the book wants you believe that it is the shark SOOOO bad. I mean, it will force feed you that the whole time. But, at its core it is really just corrupt politicians, and others making bad choices for personal gain, leaving one man to solve the problem because it is the right thing to do… It’s not so unique.

2) The good things about the book don’t transfer to picture nearly as well.
When the shark shows up here in the book, it is a really cool experience. You know right away that he is around. And the ending was fantastic… But I am sure it would have been really hated in movies.

So, was it worth the read? Yes! Quint is an awesome character and the shark is very intense!
Is it better than the movie? Well, it is different. If you want to be spoon fed the thrilling excitement that the movie has brought people for 45 years, then the movie is what you want. If you want an original fish boat captain, some spooky shark scenes and what feels like 20 chapters of a super unhappy wife, then this is your book!

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Wanted to like it... But did not

Revisado: 09-04-20

I read this book to see if I would like Laird Barron's writing style, which might prompt me to read some more of his works. At first I thought the book was a bit boring, but I figured it would kick up. Then, I started to really like it and had hopes for the direction it was headed in... But it did not.
Instead it took a turn for the confusing and bizarre. I had to go back and re-listen to a parts over and over to figure out what had actually happened.
When it finally made it to the end I was just hoping for a really good payoff...
No. The final little insert in an attempt to make it a horror, or even a thriller, which it wasn't for 90% of the book, was a total waste!
This to me was a perfect example of trying to do too many things and because of it, they all fail.

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Narrations was not so bad, book was par

Revisado: 07-11-20

Anyone who sees my profile can see that I read a lot of Horror. And, the man to watch in the world of horror right now is Paul Tremblay!
So, I picked this book up! But, it was... par.

Narration - There are a lot of complaints about the narration in this book. Yes, it is a bit goofy but it really didn't bother me a ton. In fact, within the first 2 hours the voices were just blending together. The people who were annoyed by this are not wrong, But I think this comes down to those who just want to read the book verse those who want a story telling experience. If you want different voices and unique characters then this could be an issue for you. But if you don't care about all that, then I think you could easily get past it.

Pacing - The pace of the story was good. It didn't really lull and I didn't feel like it was longer or shorter than it should have been. However, when it came time for the end it just ended. Everything was wrapped up(ish) so that was not an issue, but this book is like 10% beginning, 88% Middle, 1.9% end and .1% wrap up.

Story - The story is just a bit uninspired. It felt like there were so many small things that he could have added that would have been so satisfying. But he didn't. Like any other avenue that he could have taken would have been the better story. I would have loved to know more about the other characters. What roles did they actually play. What was with the colors of their shirts. How biblical was all of this. But instead we are just kind of given dullest version of this otherwise unique idea.

My biggest complaint with this book was the lack of a bigger story. Now, that is fine if a book doesn't promise of a bigger story, but this book constantly does. Looming just above! At any moment what could happen is going to be this amazing, omega, galaxy shattering event and the angle that we experience it from is stuck in the heads of 2 men who's whole lives goals are to have good jobs, fall in love and have a kid? So, like Dull-Joe-Everyman? And we never see outside of this. Even at the very end. That was very disappointing.

All and all, it was worth the read and worth a credit. But I admit, I would not have paid full price for this book and I would not have even picked it up if not for Head Full of Ghosts, which I strongly suggest.

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Hard to rate an author that I love, but...

Revisado: 01-14-20

I love David Sedaris and have read all of his works, although this is the first I have listened to.
He has many great books under his belt and countless solid, meaningful and amusing stories. But, few, if any of them, were in this book.

If there was a theme to this book, it would be mortality.
He has dealt with the subject of death before in other stories, but this was different. It was like hearing the stories of an old friend who had lived a great life and were now just waiting to die. And it wasn't just him waiting to die, from David's prospective it was his whole family. Like they all kind of lived on the side, in their free time, but mostly they all just waited to die.
It was kind of unfortunate... It was kind of morbid.

The music between stories was bizarre and off-putting.
A few of the stories were from actual readings, which I am sure some people really liked but I found that it felt cheap and like a lazy last minute addition.

This book is worth the read and the money spent, there are no doubts.
And if you like the works of David Sedaris, you will like this one too!
But, if you are new to David Sedaris, I would recommend starting with some of his earlier works first.

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Not great.

Revisado: 03-12-19

I started this series with book 2 (This book is full of spiders) which was Very good! I have such little bad to say about it. And before I finished I knew that I wanted to read more about John and Dave.
But, I don't think that I will ever make it to book 1 (John dies at the end),
It should be noted that the author does not think you need to read them in order

This book, however, did not have an ending. Nothing was resolved at all and the book just kind of stopped. In the words of Dave in the story, they "could have done nothing and the results would have been the same." He really said this in the book and it fit this story perfectly.
All and all (narration aside) this book was, not great.

Even though the story being presented in this book was less than par, this was not even close to the main reason I disliked it. The real issue here is the narrator. His desire to make almost every character sound the same was a bad choice. The one exception to this was John, who he made sound like Jack Nicholson,.. This was so bad. So hard to listen to. So not what I expected from this character.
I will never buy anything from this narrator again. He was just terrible.
This means, that sadly, I will not be buying the 1st book in audio format, because it was narrated by the same guy... Maybe in paperback someday.
In the mean time, I will be staying away from Stephen R. Thorne.

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