Authority – DaneCobain.com

Title: Jaws

Author: Peter Benchley

Type: Fiction

Page Count/Review Word Count: 288

Rating 3.5/5

I’m not exactly a super fan of Jaws and so while I’ve seen the movie, I don’t particularly remember it. I have it on good authority, though, that the book and the movie are totally different, and I can imagine that. Certainly none of it felt familiar while I was reading it.

Unfortunately it took me a while to get into the book and so I ended up reading it as my bedtime book. I also thought there were a few problems with the way that Benchley wrote about women which carried through not just in the words and actions of the characters but in the actual narrative voice itself.

But once you get past that and you settle yourself in for the fact that this is more of a small town drama than a Hollywood blockbuster, it’s pretty easy to get drawn into the story and the subsequent hunt for the shark. Sure, the ending was a little bit of an anti-climax, but that almost didn’t matter. That wasn’t really what the book is all about.

I think what Benchley did well here is similar to what Stephen King does well. Both authors are able to tap into the inherent fears we have as human beings and to write stories that tap directly into them. Although in all honesty, I wouldn’t say that Jaws is particularly scary. Suspenseful, but not scary. But if you like the movie and you’re a fan of suspenseful novels, it’s got to at least be worth checking out. Make of that what you will! As for me, it’s time to read something else.

Click here to buy Jaws.

Marius Gabriel – The Mask of Time | Review

Title: The Mask of Time

Author: Marius Gabriel

Type: Fiction

Page Count/Review Word Count: 314

Rating: 9/10

Marius Gabriel – The Mask of Time

Disclaimer: While I aim to be unbiased, I received a copy of this for free to review.

The Mask of Time is a cracker of a book, one of those rare novels which jumps backwards and forwards in time throughout the narrative and which, nevertheless, still makes for a highly enjoyable read. Too many authors move through time as a gimmick, but Gabriel had no other choice – his story wouldn’t have made sense without it.

Broadly speaking, the plot follows a mother and daughter who discover that a previously unknown family member could still be alive, and who investigate the past as a result. That past includes two fugitives from the German army who fought as partisans in the Second World War, as well as the Italian family that harboured them. Oh, and did I mention that they have to track down this information whilst simultaneously trying to avoid assassination from unknown assailants?

The novel, then, is a sort of historical thriller that’s half set during the Second World War and half set in the 1990s, which was when the novel was written and released. It puts me in mind of a Dan Brown novel, only Dan Brown isn’t this good – Marius Gabriel is the author that Dan Brown tries and fails to be. Everything is top notch here, from the story-line to the characterisation to Gabriel’s writing style to the thorough research that he must have done to write with such authority.

There’s only one thing that bothered me, and that was the occasional formatting errors – for some reason, a lot of words are unnecessarily hyphenated, like ‘cig-arettes‘ or ‘with-drawal‘. I also spotted a single, solitary typo, but I was prepared to overlook it because I was just so engrossed.