9/11 – DaneCobain.com

Title: Black Sunday

Author: Thomas Harris

Type: Fiction

Page Count: 320

Rating: 2.75/5

I was expecting good things from this, purely because I’ve read the Hannibal novels and so it had a lot to live up to. In fact, as far as I’m aware, this was the only Thomas Harris novel that I hadn’t read other than his most recent one.

This one was actually published way back in 1975 when Harris was in his thirties, and I have to say that it shows. He attempted to write a sort of fast-paced political thriller, but it doesn’t really work so well when you compare it to some of the newer novels to have hit the market in the last twenty years.

There’s also the fact that this deals with terrorism but was written over a quarter of a century before 9/11. Some of the stuff that he wrote is still relevant, but a lot of it has been superseded by events, and it definitely feels like a product of its time. The writing isn’t particularly good either, and nor is the plotting. In fact, it just comes across as a pretty generic book, something pretty forgettable as far as I’m concerned.

There is a saving grace though, and that’s the complex antagonist with his Vietnam flashbacks and his plot to blow up the Superbowl using an explosive-laden blimp. In fact, I’m kind of surprised that it was so dull considering the subject matter. It could have been awesome. It just wasn’t.

I’m not sure that I’d say that it’s a bad novel either, I just think that it’s very much a product of the time it was written and published in. I think it would have been good enough at the time, but I don’t think there’s much point reading it now. I would have given up if I hadn’t already read Harris’ other stuff.

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Stephen King – Just After Sunset | Review

Title: Just After Sunset

Author: Stephen King

Type: Fiction

Page Count/Review Word Count: 358

Rating: 7/10

Stephen King – Just After Sunset

At its basic level, Just After Sunset is a collection of Stephen King’s short stories, and to be honest, that’s probably all you need to know about it. It’s a fairly recent collection – around 2008, I think – and because King wrote his own afterword explaining how each of the stories came about, I don’t think I need to cover that here.

I’ll be honest, I didn’t really enjoy it. Oh sure, it was well-written, and there were a few stories throughout (N. in particular) that made me remember why I was reading it, but it also fell victim to the age old issue with Stephen King’s work – sometimes, it’s just too long.

And it’s not that the characters weren’t fleshed out – on the contrary, even in the more tedious stories they tended to stick out and make themselves easy to remember – it’s just that there were times when they didn’t need to be. It’s been a long time since I’ve found myself zoning out while reading, but it happened here – not for all of the stories, but from time to time.

Stephen King Quote

But still, for every story that bored me, there were two that reminded me why I was reading it in the first place. There was an interesting short that took a look at 9/11, and another one that followed the story of a man who was trapped in a portaloo by a neighbour with a grudge. And the author’s note at the end helped to add a heap of context to what you were reading – a useful, but not entirely necessary, addition.

Overall then, I definitely wouldn’t recommend this one if you’re new to Stephen King, but I also wouldn’t discourage you from reading it if you’re already familiar with his work. It feels a bit like this book is just a byproduct of him being alive – he was born to write and so he does, but this isn’t The Shining or IT. It’s just a book – competent, but not mindblowing, and it could’ve been written by anyone.