Lornographic Material

No frills. Pure necessary information. I requested this book for review from Crown Publishing with the intention of giving it to my daughter, as she's shown not only an interest but and aptitude for drawing. She loves it. 

"It's helped me a lot. Especially with shading and pencil techniques. Now I know what I need to get certain results. It's very cool."

There you have it. Recommended.

Oof. This is gonna be a tough one to review. 

First, it should be known that I was not looking forward to this book. Nothing about it called to me. Nothing about the film adaptation ever made me want to watch the movie, either. (Let it be known that I still have no interest in watching the movie.) And if it weren't for this John Irving Challenge I'm doing, where I'm trying to read all of his novels in a year's time, I likely never would have picked this up. Do I regret reading it? Yes and no. Let's discuss, shall we?

I hated the first chapter and a half of The Cider House Rules. I've come to expect that I'm gonna be pretty confused for the first fifty to a hundred pages of an Irving novel. Usually the stuff at the beginning doesn't pay off until halfway through the book, and sometimes he makes you wait until the very end before he returns to why the opening chapter was needed. Here, I never felt like that opening chapter was needed, not to mention the chapter is just fuckin boring to read. We could've easily opened with Chapter Two (Larch's history) and then summarized the info from Chapter One into the beginning of Chapter Three. That's how I would've done it, anyway.

I only really liked one of the characters, and it wasn't until Homer started learning from Larch that I really started to care for her. I never once cared about Homer, period. For a main character, dude was surprisingly weak. And him constantly answering everything with "Right" got on my nerves as much as it got on Wally's nerves. I was thrilled when Wally finally decked him in his cocksucker. Which brings me to Authorial Intent. Did Irving mean for Homer to be an annoyingly weak character? I believe he did. Doesn't mean I have to like it, though. It only means Irving possibly accomplished what he set out to do. Bravo, or, you know, whatever.

My favorite character throughout the entire mess was Melony. She rocked. I dig a multi-layered strongly-developed female character and Melony checked all of those boxes. Lorna and her love story was beautiful and heartbreaking, and I'm glad Irving took the time to follow Melony's storyline all the way to the end. I was worried that there for a moment the book would end on Homer, and I thought, "Fuck everything about this book." Then Irving brought it all home and I was graciously satisfied.

Oddly enough, despite the exclusion of wrestling and bears, this was Irving's most repetitive work. I've read about all of these characters before, some more than once, and I think that's why I didn't give a fuck for any of them. They all felt like carbon copies of better-drawn characters from earlier novels. Irving just changed their names and put them in a different story. 

Some other aspects of Irving's work has become predictable, too; mainly who will live and die by the end of the book. He sets up character's deaths the same way each and every time, and the formula has become irritatingly obvious. A major character's death was ruined for me in this book because of Irving's signature phoning-in of plot points. This isn't a thriller, the book does not depend on surprises, but I'd still appreciate not being able to see certain things coming.

As with all of Irving's novels, this one relies heavily on a strong ending. The middle of the book is a padded mess, detailing long stretches of time I didn't give a single shit about. These lengthy chapters are further rendered pointless when, later in the book, Irving skips ahead in time fifteen years. If he could skip fifteen years of a child's life and still make us care for the kid, why couldn't he find a better way of telling of Wally's time in Burma succinctly? What a clusterfuck of odd details that chapter was. And if Irving's able to skip fifteen years in the life, why drone on and on about the day to day life of orchard workers when, by the end of the book, none of it really matters? Why? Because Irving cares about what Irving cares about. These are, first and foremost, his books, and he will write them how he sees fit. He also know that, (again) by the end of the book, you won't give a shit about the bloated middle. By the time you flip that final page, you will be basking in the glow of an ending so well told that you will let slide all the times you were bored, even if that time was less than a hundred pages ago. Yes, the ending is that strong. Irving's endings always are. 

In summation: Nowhere near his best work, but much better than his debut novel, Setting Free the Bears. So far in my challenge, I've thought, "I will reread this book at some point in my life," but I will never reread this one. It was a chore just finishing it the first time. Recommended for Irving completionists and fans of apples and abortions.

Final Judgment: Show up for the coming-of-age aspects that Irving does so well, and stay for Melony and Lorna's story.

If you're going to write the same old shit, the least you could do is write with some flare. But no. Not here. Haylen Beck goes through the motions, traveling a road of cliches and uninspired prose into a congested horizon filled to bursting with mediocre writers.

In the first six percent this book has someone daydreaming while driving, only to come back to reality mere seconds before running headfirst into a semi coming the other direction. And someone's *coughtheauthorcough* read Uncle Stevie's DESPERATION. Collie Entragian called. He wants his bag of weed back. Tak!

File this under: Life's too short to read the same book with a different title.

The Tempest is one of my favorite works by Billy Shakes. For that reason, I thought I'd love this. This is my first Atwood book and I doth believe she's not for me. I wouldn't have bothered to review this, but it's a review copy, so here you go. A one-star DNF review. Sad panda. 

"There's nothing new under the sun."

If you're an insecure creative person, you'll hear this phrase quite often. Friends will try to build you up, because there's no easy (or friendly) way for them to say, "Maybe storytelling isn't for you, you know? Perhaps take up model-building or lint-collecting?"

I used to agree with "There's nothing new under the sun." Really, I did. Hell, I'm even guilty of uttering it once or a dozen-hundred times. The truth is, that sentence is bullshit. "There's nothing new under the sun" is a lie creative people (or people who identify as creative people) tell each other when they can't think of something original. How do I know this? Because books like this exist.

I've recently (recently, as in, like, yesterday, fam) sworn off bitching about unoriginal content and shitty writers. You assholes do you. But when you get a negative review lambasting your ass for unoriginal content and/or crap writing, you don't get to complain. I tried to warn you that you were shit. You just wouldn't listen.

"Big words from some fat fuck on a computer. My mommy says I write all the good words!"

Good for you, Pudding. Here's a pat on the back. Now kindly go write another couple thousand words on your super-original vampire/werewolf/zombie/plague novel set in Nazi-run Victorian England. There's totes an audience for it. I promise. smooches.

John Dies at the End was written by a data entry clerk in his free time. Word of mouth begat word of mouth and soon enough he had offers from publishers and filmmakers alike. You can tell the author is not a trained writer. He's a gifted storyteller, but the writing is your basic high school creative writing. We're not talking Billy Shakes here, but I think you already knew that. Dude's got a tale to tell and he's gonna tell it in the simplest way possible: with pop culture references and a metric fuck-tonne of naughty language. Sometimes the best stories are written this way. Nothing pretty to get in the way. Just words in the proper order to waylay confusion. Rad.

Me? I loved every minute of it. Yes, even the wacky pacing and start-over mechanic employed between parts one and two. The only thing I could've done without was the use of "retarded" in place of "stupid", but given the narrator is the type of guy he is, it fits the profile. I was certainly not triggered. Just wanted to let those of you who are sensitive to such things know that such things happen in this book. A lot. Like, everything's retarded to this dude. Even himself. Then again, I think I'm only one of like six people who haven't read this book or seen the movie. So whatever.

I will refrain from talking about the movie here because I don't remember a fucking thing about it. Like, nothing, son. I know I watched it. I even discussed it with my dude Linton the following day. We were both confused by the fact that (view spoiler). Still, I have no idea what happened in the movie. I do hope the book is not equally forgettable.

Will I be reading the next book, This Book Is Full of Spiders: Seriously, Dude, Don't Touch It? Probably. Not anytime soon though because I have twenty-three bazillion kajillion other books to read before the end of the year. But, yeah, I want to.

In summation: A wacky, original novel with a few pacing problems and a dumb-fun narrator who's equally likeable and offensive. What might shock you is the level of character depth on display. More than once the author sneaks deep moments into his otherwise shallow narrative. Bravo to him.

Final Judgment: Come for the bizarre shit. Stay for John's one-liners.

1.5 stars rounded up. It was, in parts, "okay".

First and foremost, thank FUCK that is over. I started reading this on April 23 and I am just now, today, June 5, finished reading it. Considering I finished the other books in ten days or less, I gotta say my pace here is telling.

This book is a padded mess of inconsequential bullshit, and I would be the worst kind of fanboy if I ignored the hundreds of pages of filler here and five-starred this train wreck of a novel. But I think the WHY of the matter is the most interesting subject here, so let's discuss why I feel that Greg Iles stuffed this book to bursting with filler in order to create (or force) some kind of legacy.

Many years ago (2011, I believe), Greg Iles was in a car accident in which he almost died. He lost a leg and had a long recovery ahead of him. Before the accident, he'd written almost to completion a book called Unwritten Laws, which can still be found on Goodreads. The novel looked to be a direct follow-up of Iles's novel The Devil's Punchbowl because he mentions at the end of PUNCHBOWL that Cage's story will continue in 2011. Great. Wonderful.

Unfortunately for Iles fans, we will never get to read Unwritten Laws.

So what the fuck happened to Unwritten Laws? My theory is this: Greg Iles, fresh off almost dying, decided to chop the book up into three novels and pad them with some insane JFK subplot. If you were to strip the JFK nonsense from Natchez Burning and The Bone Tree you'd have a very tight, albeit lengthy literary thriller. I can only imagine that Mississippi Blood will lend further evidence to my theory, should I ever choose to read it. The JFK stuff is nothing but expositional dumps that are a fucking BORE to read. Had I not read and loved the previous four books in this series, I would have tossed this pile of overstuffed nothing out the window.

But why would Iles do such a thing? Because near-death experiences make people do weird shit. Look at Stephen King. After getting ran over in 1999, and the long recovery he suffered, we got the utterly garbage Dreamcatcher. But we also got the final three Dark Tower books. Nothing lights a fire under your ass like the realization your ass won't be around forever. So Iles came back to Unwritten Laws, butchered it, and added a bunch of JFK conspiracy theory nonsense in order to create, in his words, his "magnum opus".

Spoiler alert: It's never a good idea for an author to go into a project expecting it to be the greatest achievement of their career. I don't care how good you are, it never works out well. You end up coming off as a try-hard.

And Greg Iles tried too hard. This storyline did not need the JFK subplot. There is some terrific shit in this book, but it's all overshadowed by Greg Iles's attempts to create a literary legacy. You can pinpoint every scene that is tacked on because they feel exactly like that--tacked on. Every scene that doesn't mention JFK is superbly written, while every chapter that mentions the assassination feels like someone else wrote them. Someone drastically less talented than Iles has proved himself to be with previous books. The plot becomes so absurd that even the characters start commenting on it. Toward the end of the novel, Penn Cage says "Unbelievable" in response to another asinine and obviously forced plot twist. This is because, deep down, Iles knew how badly he was fucking up, but he wanted so much for it to work. So much, in fact, that the desperation drips from the page. "Please, believe this, dear reader! PLEASE!"

Iles drones on and on trying to make his theory plausible, but it never takes hold. By the end of the book, I was defeated and dejected. I'm seriously contemplating not reading the final book. I'm so goddamned disappointed. Because there is a good story in here. Somewhere.

FInally, we lose some cherished fan favorites, but their passing is tainted by the thriller-filler bullshit of the JFK subplot. I wasn't remotely affected by their passing, even though the scenes were well written. I remember how hard I took a major character's death in The Quiet Game and I can't help but feel like Iles failed the characters in this book. They deserved so much better than to be bookended by an insane subplot and cheesy thriller elements.

Why, man? Why?

Sometimes, authors are their own worst enemy. That's why.

In summation: No doubt the weakest book in the series, and definitely the worst Greg Iles book I've read. Nowhere near his usually high quality. A perfect example of an artist wanting too badly to be taken seriously when they were already fine the way they were. Super disappointed and unsure if I'll carry on to complete the series.

Final Judgment: NOTICE ME, SENPAI!

I suppose with the world heading in the direction that it's headed, books like this will become the norm: overly PC books that try their damnedest not to piss anyone off. The problem I see with novels like Long Black Veil is author intrusion. When you move forward with a piece of art (music, film, literature, etc.) with the sole purpose of being progressive and inclusive, you better be damned sure your own hangups do not float to the surface. Because, in a book that struggles to always use the proper pronoun and goes out of its way to discuss gender and religion and race with the utmost respect, any deviation from your course will be painfully obvious.

Yes, the political-correctness within this book was strong but not a bad thing, but it is my opinion, founded solely on evidence written in this book, that Jennifer Finney Boylan has a problem with the morbidly obese, or as she calls them in this book "fat fucks". Normally those two words wouldn't bother me, because I am, and have always been, a fat fuck. But when every race, religion, gender, and so on gets treated fairly and equally and suffers no slurs, I find it odd that "fat fuck" would be left in. Which goes a long way in proving that, even in progressive-minded literature, it is still okay to pick on fat people. Poor goddamn Casey, man. He couldn't catch a break. He was either a fat fuck or a walrus or the morbidly-obese friend, or my favorite, "worthless." While everyone was accepting of the two trans characters, poor fut-fuck Casey bumbled around, bouncing off shit and just being all around too fat to be respected. For fuck's sake, I think the only time Boylan described her character's appearances were if they were fat. If they were otherwise normal, meaning not a fat fuck, we got no description of their appearance whatsoever.

Anyway, enough whiny bullshit about how offended I was or was not. I really wasn't offended at all, but I mention it as much as I do to prove a point; everyone has their own prejudices, even Boylan, who makes a point of using as many acronyms as she can in her bio. I honestly couldn't give a fuck what she thinks about chubby bastards like myself. I'm simply pointing out how it's still completely acceptable to shame the fat character, be the author liberal, conservative, or any other asshole. The one thing we seemingly all agree on is, fat fucks are fair game. Moving on...

The writing in this book is fantastic. I can pick on the author for showing her prejudices all I want, but she truly can write her ass off. I enjoyed every bit of this read, aside from maybe the suspense-killing reveal toward the middle. If the characters hadn't been so terrifically drawn, I probably would have quit reading as soon as the killer was revealed. Literary-minded types will scream, "The murder wasn't the point! The book is about identity and WHINE WHINE BITCH BITCH!" I get that, Internet Rage Machine. I might sound like an illiterate fat fuck, but I do pay attention to theme. What I'm saying is, the writing and character-development was what kept me reading, not the pasted-on murder plot. Calm your moobs, dude.

There will be some people who have a fit over the soft-thriller aspects because, for all appearances, it looks like a literary thriller. There is nothing thrilling or suspenseful about this book. It's a character drama. That being said, the final 50 pages were too much melodrama for even me and I found myself simply wanting the book to end. I feel Boylan's points were made just fine without the silly-ass who-lived-and-who-didn't bullshit and the I-died-twice nonsense. You can stuff all that shit right back up where it came from.

One final note, smarty pants. Frankenstein was the doctor, not the creature. So when you write that there were several Frankensteins walking around the party, I hope you meant people wearing lab coats and god complexes.

In summation: If you're into PC-culture and fight on the SJW side of things, this is probably the book you've been waiting for. It is built on an offend-no-one chassis, but its tires are too fat to move too quickly, so expect some lulls. Expect mucho melodrama at the ass-end that no one asked for, and you should be just fine.

Final Judgment: If Nicole Arbour and Lacy Green wrote a book, this would be the eventual outcome.

Many thanks to Crown Publishing for the review copy, which I received for free in return for a review written by a fat fuck, aka me.

As much as I want to give this book five stars based on enjoyability alone, I'm not going to because it does have its problems. The middle of the book could use another proofread or two for typos and missing words. This seems to be a running issue with Sinister Grin Press and modern horror novels in general. I really wish authors and publishers would do better with their editing. Sinister Grin's covers and formatting are great, and they pick great stories, but the quality of the editing is half-assed at best. This one was much cleaner than the first two SG books I read, but there were still more errors than I was comfortable with. And I have a feeling that it was cleaner because Shea's been around a while and knows what he's doing.

One thing's for sure, the story is terrific. I had a lot of fun getting to know West and Matt and Debi and Grandpa Abraham. And, yes, even Faith. By the time the shit hit the fan, I knew each of them well enough that I cared what happened to them.

The last 60% of this book is adrenaline-fueled madness. I only put it down to eat and use the restroom, but I didn't want to put it down even then. Were it not for the necessities of being human, I'd have easily finished the last 40% in a single setting.

It's been a long time since I read a horror novel that cared this much about its cast. I'd forgotten how much fun it is being invested in the people I'm reading about. I can't think of the last horror novel I read whose character's names I can remember. Several times I found myself thinking, "Man, what's gonna happen to West... or Debi... or Matt." I loved that these characters were flawed but still likeable. Especially Matt. Even Grandpa Abraham's curmudgeonly ass. Sure he was racist and crude and an all around dickhead to everyone, but I wanted to read about him. I wanted to know what was going to happen.

Not sure if Hunter Shea reads his reviews, but I have to apologize to him. I'd put off reading the guy for the longest time because I was told he was just another word mill, someone who cared more for quantity over quality. If this book is anything to go by, the person who told me that was wrong. I hate that I've missed out on reading Shea's work. I plan on fixing that ASAP.

In summation: This book brought back a slice of my childhood; memories of reading under the covers with a flashlight, of chewing my nails in anxious anticipation of what was going to happen next, of rooting for the good guys to overcome the bad guys against all odds. This book is simply a lot of fun, which makes the lack of proofreading hurt that much more. But that seems to be the state of modern horror fiction, and horror fans don't seem to care, either. I guess I'll just have to learn how to ignore it. I'll definitely be looking up more Hunter Shea in the near future.

Final Judgment: The most fun I've had with a horror novel in ages.

There's very little I liked about the first three stories I read. My main problem is I do not connect with the way Barkan writes. Sad to say, because the ideas behind the stories themselves were interesting. The delivery just isn't my thing. I have no want in my heart to pick this up again, so I'm not going to. 

I'm giving this two stars instead of one because it's not garbage. It's simply not my thing.

This wasn't terrible, but certain parts were fucking annoying.

For one, the entire cast is garbage. All throwaways. Nobody you haven't read about a million times. In fact, these people are so generic the main character, Simon (or Si), thinks of them as Depressed Harry Potter and Hannibal Lecter, or other famous people. The cast? Nothing to see here.

The plot is all over the place. You start out the book with a prologue that lasts 20% of the whole book. I thought the novel was gonna be about Si in that cave and then I'm thrust into a different scenario and made to get to know new people. Okay. Whatever. Moving on.

Sarah Lotz doesn't do scary well. She seems to have a very old school sense of horror: seeing things from the corner of your eye, eerie presences, hair raising on the back of your neck... That would be all well and good if she could pull it off. She doesn't. Here it comes off as cheesy and she ends up looking like a try-hard.

Can we please stop with the goddamn blogger characters in horror fiction? The only thing horrifying about them is how unsuitable they are for horror novels. Paul Trembley proved as much in his godawful A Head Full of Ghosts. They kill the terror with their text-speech.

4 real #nojoke tl;dr but this book is totes meh

My final complaint is the godawful formatting. I hope they fix that shit before publication because reading strikethrough text is fucking distracting and annoying and FUCK YOU, FORMATTER!

I did like the way Lotz wrote and the mixed up structure. That's probably the only reason this isn't a one-star review. It wasn't like everything else, and I commend her for trying something different. That being said, you need to leave epistolary style where it belongs, in the 19th century.

In summation: I was hoping for a chiller and I got a decent mountain adventure. No big loss, as the book was provided free of charge in return for this here review.

Final Judgment: Not terrible.

How quickly I read this (862 pages in 9 days; that's almost a hundred pages a day, which is a lot for me nowadays, given how busy my life has become) is a testament to how fucking amazing Greg Iles is. Anyone who can make almost 900 pages consistently and constantly thrilling gots to be a damn wizard, yo. (#IlesTheGray) There are authors working with half this page count who can't hold my attention for more than 200 pages.

*coughsjamespattersoncoughsdanbrowncoughsjohngrishamchokestodeath*

But, boy oh boy, if I'd read this when it first came out and had to wait for the next book, I would've lost my shit. (#firstworldproblems) This is the first Penn Cage novel that does not stand alone. It doesn't tell one complete story from beginning to end, which honestly shocked me. I expected Iles to wrap up one thread completely, but he didn't. All he did was put a tourniquet on a severed appendage.

Spoiler alert: you're in for a disgusting cliffhanger at the end of Natchez Burning. I suppose that's all right, considering I have the final two books in my possession, but I feel for those people who had to wait multiple years to get the entire story. I

've debated deducting a star due to some reused plot ideas and themes Iles lifted from the first three books in this series but have decided not to. Even though the book deals with a cold case (like The Quiet Game), finding out someone we suspected to be of strong moral character is really an adulterous asshat (ala Turning Angel), and an unstoppably powerful villain with legion and uncountable wealth at their disposal (circa The Devil's Punchbowl), I was thoroughly entertained. Sure the book is a hybrid of the first three books in the series, but that doesn't mean it wasn't a fucking blast to read. I wouldn't change a thing about it, so it gets all the stars.

Actually, I take that back. I missed Kelly. I hope I see my boy Kells in the next two books. He really is my favorite character in this series. Such a stone-cold badass. #mancrush

In summation: Sorry this review is short but I have two more 800+ page novels to read in this series so I'm under a time crunch and fuck you this'll have to be enough goodbye.

Final Judgment: Cliffhangers-R-Us