Tag: Devil

Amy McLean – We Are Lucifer | Review

Title: We Are Lucifer

Author: Amy McLean

Type: Fiction

Page Count/Review Word Count: 364

Rating: 3.75/5

 

Amy McLean - We Are Lucifer

Amy McLean – We Are Lucifer

 

I picked this book up as part of Todd and Dane’s Indie Readalong, a project I run on my BookTube channel with a friend to encourage people to read more indie writers. I chose this one in particular because Amy also has a YouTube channel that I watch from time to time and so she seemed like an obvious choice to check out.

Now I’ll admit, I hadn’t done much research on the book beforehand and so I didn’t know much about it. From the title, I thought it was going to be dealing more with the devil and the occult, but it was more like a slightly darker take on the thrillers that are still storming up the bestseller lists. We’re talking stuff like Gone Girl, The Girl on the Train and all of those other books that got people talking thanks to their twists and turns.

This one isn’t necessarily twisty and turny because we get to follow a lot of the action through the eyes of the book’s antagonist, but it’ll still take you by surprise with some of the stuff that happens and I genuinely didn’t predict the outcome, which is a rarity for books like these. It didn’t pretend to be anything other than what it was, and it succeeded because of that.

 

Amy McLean

Amy McLean

 

Of course, there are the occasional little niggles that I always seem to get with indie books, so there were a few minor typos and formatting errors. You could also somehow tell that it was an indie book just from the way that it was written, but I also thought that Amy’s writing style was absorbing and certainly good enough to carry her story.

All in all, it was a pretty good read and above average for an indie novel, but it didn’t blow my mind. I’d probably read some more of Amy’s stuff in the future though, and it was interesting to see how her voice as a writer reflected the author as a person. Go ahead and read it if it sounds good.

 

Amy McLean

Amy McLean

 

Click here to buy We Are Lucifer.


William Shakespeare – Othello | Review

Title: Othello

Author: William Shakespeare

Type: Fiction

Page Count/Review Word Count: 240

Rating: 3.5/5

 

William Shakespeare - Othello

William Shakespeare – Othello

 

This play has been on my TBR pile for a while now, but I didn’t actually get around to picking it up until I saw that Roya Eve Reads, a fellow BookTuber, was reading it. It seemed like the perfect excuse to pick it up too, and I got more out of it than I was expecting to because my copy was second hand and somebody had written their own notes throughout it.

As for the play itself, I enjoyed it, although it was a tad melodramatic at times and there were a few times at which I thought that the plot didn’t really make sense. It was also overly theatrical and ever so slightly racist, but in a weird way it was also fairly progressive for the time at which it was written. And by that I’m basically referring to how Othello is black and how black protagonists were rare, but also how he’s described as thick-lipped. The edition that I had went to great pains to explain that people thought that the devil was black, which was kind of sad to read about.

Still, it’s a decent play and after reading it, I also wouldn’t mind going to see it performed sometime. Not my favourite Shakespeare play, but still a pleasure to read. Bring on A Midsummer Night’s Dream next month.

 

William Shakespeare

William Shakespeare

 

Click here to buy Othello.