Target: Sergei Lukyanenko’s Night Watch. Translated by Andrew Bromfield Profile: Urban Fantasy, Suspense, Horror, The Watches Pentalogy (Read in stereotypical movie preview voiceover) In a world where epic battles between good and evil are a dime a dozen on the Teen Fantasy shelves, one Russian author struggles to bring a sense of subtly and realism to stories about vampires, werewolves and wizards. (End voiceover) And that’s to his credit. Lukyanenko’s vision of a supernatural world where nothing is as it seems sounds trite on paper, but […]
Vampires in Maine
If you grew up in a small town, there are probably a number of fairly inoffensive words that come to mind to describe it—at best, you might say “peaceful”, “prosaic” or “familiar”. If you didn’t like your small town, it was probably “boring”, “insular”, or “depressing.” A lot of small towns I can think of, including the one where I lived some of my childhood, do not inspire strong feelings one way or the other – perhaps above all, they just don’t register as very […]
14 – The Apartment Too Good To Be True
“14” What a great fun book! Couldn’t put it down Our hero, Nate is a slacker SoCal loser dude. Down on his luck, no girlfriend, needs new apartment and – Bam! – he stumbles into the best deal ever on a cool vintage apartment in downtown LA. The Kavach Building. Ok – so, sure there are some rules, strange rules, kind of an odd super…but whatever right? It’s cheap, it’s nice, the power is free! the neighbors are nice. Oh, wait – […]
Time. Traveling. Ghost.
I think this book could be used to start discussions with girls and boys about unacceptable ways to be treated or to treat other people, because this is pretty much a novel-length exploration of how not to look out for your own safety. We skip the prologue from a killer and go straight to Melissa Dryden waking up the house because there are tree limbs knocking on her window and she’s afraid of the Fear Street Prowler. Melissa is rich, lives on Fear Street, and […]