Tag: Paul Sheldon

Oli Jacobs – Wilthaven | Review

Title: Wilthaven

Author: Oli Jacobs

Type: Fiction

Page Count: 396

Rating: 4.25/5

I’ve read about a dozen of Jacobs’ books by this point, and all of them have been worth reading. This one is cool because you can read it as a standalone but it also still functions as part of a wider realm. It’s almost King-like in that respect, and indeed I think King would approve of it because it lives up to his saying that “there are other worlds than these”.

Wilthaven follows the BPD, the Bureau of Paranormal Detectives, and essentially documents their investigation into this strange, eldritch, Lovecraftian town called Wilthaven where nothing is quite as it seems. It’s almost reminiscent of Jay Kristoff’s Illuminae series in the way that it plays with layout, except I didn’t finish Illuminae while I tore through this one and had a blast while I was at it.

What’s quite cool here is that there’s a nice little range of genres, with a lot of Lovecraftian creepiness, some dark humour and some honest-to-goodness horror. One of my favourite bits was when a bunch of limbs just appeared out of nowhere. That was actually pretty brutal and not for the faint-hearted, but at this point I’m pretty sure there’s nothing I can read that will properly shock me. I’m immune.

There was also a pretty cool little subsection in it which was kind of a book within a book, and I think that it worked really well in context here. Because the book itself is presented as a dossier of documents, it makes sense that there’d be a book within a book. It worked better than Paul Sheldon’s book in Misery, in any case.

So would I recommend this one? Oh, absolutely, especially if you’re looking to read some more indie authors and to help to support the ecosystem. I’ve always enjoyed Oli’s stuff and this is him at his best, at least in my opinion. I’d take this over Kirk Sandblaster any day, and probably over another installment in the Filmic Cuts short stories series.

Oh, and did I mention that there’s a photo of yours truly in there? Oli was looking for volunteers to be featured in the Wilthaven files, and I of course jumped at the opportunity. Even though it’s a super old photograph. At least it’s heavily stylised though.

Learn more about Wilthaven.


Stephen King – Rose Madder | Review

Title: Rose Madder

Author: Stephen King

Type: Fiction

Page Count/Review Word Count: 471

Rating: 7/10

 

Stephen King - Rose Madder

Stephen King – Rose Madder

 

Rose Madder seemed to drag by for me, which is a shame. Sure, King has a habit of blowing my mind with the word counts on his releases, but usually you still find yourself barreling through towards the end. With this one, I felt like I was forcing myself to finish it, although I will at least admit that it got better as time went on.

Loosely speaking, the story line follows a woman called Rose as she tries to escape from her abusive husband. Rose’s husband is a cop, and he likes to hit her in the kidneys so that the bruises don’t show. He’s a manipulative son of a bitch and he treats her horribly, and even when she finally plucks up the courage to leave him, she’s absolutely terrified.

Along the way, Rose makes a number of new friends and tries to get her life back on track, meeting a new man and purchasing a painting which ends up taking on a lot of significance within the story. I’ll be honest, I’m not really sure why that part of the story line was even there, because it felt forced and distracted me from the overarching action. But if you like horror and realism mixed together, but with elements of magic thrown in, then perhaps this is the book for you.

 

Stephen King

Stephen King

 

For me, I thought it was an okay read, but I’d have trouble recommending this one ahead of any of the other Stephen King books that I’ve read. It felt like it could have been written by anyone, which usually wouldn’t be much of a criticism, but when it comes to Stephen King, I expected better. Although there were moments here and there where he was self-referential, like when he referenced ka and when he talked about the characters reading Paul Sheldon novels. Sheldon, if you didn’t know already, was the main character in Misery, the author who was imprisoned by his terrifying number one fan.

The alternate reality on the other side of the painting was also a little bit like the windows in King’s Dark Tower series, and while it was interesting to see King explore how events in one universe can affect events in another, it seemed out of place with the rest of the story line. It’s a bit like if you were reading a James Bond novel and then suddenly, out of nowhere, the bad guy whips out a magic wand and fires off the cruciatus curse.

Overall then, this is a professional quality book but it just lacks that certain something, that special spark of brilliance that makes a Stephen King book what it is. Read it if you want – it’s your call!

 

Stephen King Quote

Stephen King Quote

 

Click here to buy Rose Madder.