Aesthetic – DaneCobain.com

Title: Bird Box

Author: Josh Mallerman

Type: Fiction

Page Count/Review Word Count: 478

Rating: 4/5

I picked this up because there’s loads of hype around the adaptation, and in fact I watched the adaptation shortly after picking up the book. I think I liked the book more, but I also thought that the two of them differed from each other enough that you can easily enjoy both of them for what they are.

Still, I think I was expecting to like this more than I did. The general concept was great, and I kind of both liked and disliked the vagueness with which the “creatures” or whatever were described. I was expecting some big revelation to come at the end, but again that’s because I didn’t realise there was a short story there.

There are some great bits to the book though, and I think the worldbuilding was pretty good. A great example was when a character suggested that babies should be blinded at birth so that they weren’t at risk. That also foreshadowed the ending nicely. Another big plus was the way in which parts of the story were told through the sense of sound. It helped to engage you as the reader by the senses and to make you feel as though you were really there.

I think this book is also a great example of a writer withholding information from the reader to successfully build a sense of fear and unease. As the reader, it’s easy to empathise with the characters because we can understand ourselves what they must be going through. I also think that’s why the protagonist is a woman trying to protect two children. It taps into our society’s perception of women and children as the more vulnerable members.

So all in all, it’s a pretty good post-apocalyptic novel and I enjoyed reading it, but I also don’t think it was perfect. I’d be interested to see what Mallerman comes up with next, but I also wouldn’t rush to grab a copy of it. That’s partly because of the short story that was included at the end, which made it almost feel like an indie book. In fact, I wasn’t too impressed by the quality of the paper or the overall aesthetic of my copy either, and I’m pretty sure Harper Voyager just used Lightning Source to print it.

I’m still glad that I read it though, and I’m glad that I read it before watching the movie. They were both pretty good, and they were both pretty good in their own different ways. At the same time, you won’t miss too much if you just watch the movie and don’t read the book. I’d recommend them both for what it’s worth, though, so be sure to check them out if you haven’t already.

Click here to buy Bird Box.

Pam Elise Harris – Oblivion | Review

Title: Oblivion

Author: Pam Elise Harris

Type: Fiction

Page Count/Review Word Count: 478

Rating: 7/10

Pam Elise Harris – Oblivion

Disclaimer: While I am to be unbiased and purchased this book with my own money, Pam is also my editor. Full disclosure!

This review is going to be a tough one, because I have a lot of respect for Pam because I’ve worked with her on my own books and her input is invaluable. In fact, that brings us onto the first positive – the book is impeccably copy edited, as you might expect from her, and much more professionally so than most of the indie books you’ll find on the market.

At first, I found it difficult to get into it, but once I stuck with it and started to get an idea of who was who, I got into the swing of things. We follow the stories of six students at Highgarden Academy, a leading New York theatre school, as they try to get their careers on track. And it’s clear that the world of theatre (as well as Doctor Who, which gets referenced throughout) is important to the author, with the level of description clearly coming from someone who’s writing from the heart and drawing on a wealth of knowledge of how things are done in the theatre biz.

I found it hard to relate to some of the characters, but perhaps that’s because it’s such a different world to the one I live in, and it’s not that they weren’t believable – if anything, they were too believable, but they just weren’t my kind of people. That’s with the exception of Chris and Leanna, of course – but I won’t say any more than that because I don’t want to spoil the story line.

Pam Elise Harris

There’s a fair amount of romance here – more so than is typical for the books I usually read – but it all works and is believable, and it’s a nice little compliment to the overarching story line which follows each of the actors as they they spend their careers in oblivion, which you’ll learn more about when you read it. The formatting was strange, though – there were spaces between each of the paragraphs which seemed unusual and threw me off a little, but that’s more of an aesthetic preference than any problem with the book as a whole.

Overall then, this maybe isn’t the right book for everyone, but it doesn’t have to be. If you fancy a cheap trip to New York or have an interest in theatre, or even if you just like a contemporary read with a smattering of romance and a heap of interplay between the different characters, then maybe this is your book. Plus Pam is an indie author and sales are always appreciated, so check it out or tell a friend. Oh, and say hi to Hope for me.