Title: World Without End
Author: Ken Follett
Published: 2007 by Pan Books (at least this edition is...)
Genre: Historical fiction!
Pages: 1237
It says on both covers something along the lines of You can't put this book down once you pick it up, and, well, that's pretty much 100% accurate. This epic just suck you in.
It's been, oh, some 12 or 13 years since I first read Follett's medieval epic Pillars of the Earth. I was really into things medieval back then, and even used the book as a part of my Finnish matriculant essay exam. World Without End is its sequel, as in it's set in the same place, Kingbridge, around the same cathedral which was built during Pillars of the Earth, but some 200 years later. It's Halloween 1327, and four young children happen to witness the murder of two men in a forest near the cathedral. World Without End follows these four kids, the ups and downs of their lives.
And man. Every time, EVERY SINGLE TIME someone gets an up, they immediately get whacked down. Oh hey, he's doing good, isn't he? Nope, not anymore. But she's figured out how to--- Nope. Well how about him, is he--Nope. Oh come on, at leas---NOPE!!! And then it's HAPPY FUN PLAGUE TIME! \o/ Fun fact: this was the first time ever I actually shouted "Fuck!" out loud because someone sneezed in a book.
Don't get me wrong, I loved every fricking second of reading this book. I spent one weekend on the sofa reading it. Well, some 500 pages of it. I got anxious around page 900 because it would be over soon! World Without End sucked me in good and proper: the characters were such that every time one was whacked down, I had to keep on reading to see that they'd get up again. I think I'll miss them, now that it's over.
So yeah. Good times!
"I'll keep your secret, if you'll keep mine."
tiistai 21. helmikuuta 2012
perjantai 17. helmikuuta 2012
In the Garden of Iden
Title: In the Garden of Iden
Author: Kage Baker
Published: 1997 by Avon Books
Genre: Historical science fiction!
Pages: 294
My better half's been telling me to READ THIS SERIES!!! for a long while now, and I finally obeyed! In the Garden of Iden's the first book of Kage Baker's Company-series. Let's see if I can explain it a little.
Okay, so, a few centuries in the future, there's this organisation, the Company, who aim to preserve extinct species and plants, protect works of art and so on. They do this by traveling in time, to the past, taking orphans and making them immortal. These kids are brought up to work for the Company; for example Iden's main character, botanist Mendoza, on her first assignment rescues valuable plants from extinction from Sir Walter Iden's famous garden in Elizabethan England. She and a few other operatives stay as Sir Walter's guests, and young Mendoza is immediately smitten with the Sir's gloom cookie of a secretary, Nicholas Harpole.
So, it's kind of a historical romance -Baker being an expert in Elizabethan England- with lots of science fiction elements. And a fake unicorn. And nice amounts of humour.
According to the SO, the series gets better along the way, the first few books taking it slow. But I really liked this one, too, with all its introductoriness, so the series is looking to be pretty darn good. Like with the Song of Ice and Fire, I'm going to try to take this slowly. Read a book now, another in a while. Make it last. Like with the Song of Ice and Fire, I'm most likely going to fail fantabulously in this endeavour and finish the series before summer.
We crossed a lot of water and flew over a dry red land, remote and silent. We touched down within the high walls of Terra Australis Training Compound 32-1800. It had been there about fifteen hundred years when I was enrolled, and had had time to install all the little amenities: air conditioning, laser defense, a piano in the gymnasium. Within its towering walls were gardens and playgrounds and the domes of cool subterranean classrooms. And hospitals. And warehouses. In fact, most of the place was underground.
It wasn't all that different from any particularly demanding boarding school, except that of course nobody ever went home for the holidays and we had a lot of brain surgery.
Author: Kage Baker
Published: 1997 by Avon Books
Genre: Historical science fiction!
Pages: 294
My better half's been telling me to READ THIS SERIES!!! for a long while now, and I finally obeyed! In the Garden of Iden's the first book of Kage Baker's Company-series. Let's see if I can explain it a little.
Okay, so, a few centuries in the future, there's this organisation, the Company, who aim to preserve extinct species and plants, protect works of art and so on. They do this by traveling in time, to the past, taking orphans and making them immortal. These kids are brought up to work for the Company; for example Iden's main character, botanist Mendoza, on her first assignment rescues valuable plants from extinction from Sir Walter Iden's famous garden in Elizabethan England. She and a few other operatives stay as Sir Walter's guests, and young Mendoza is immediately smitten with the Sir's gloom cookie of a secretary, Nicholas Harpole.
So, it's kind of a historical romance -Baker being an expert in Elizabethan England- with lots of science fiction elements. And a fake unicorn. And nice amounts of humour.
According to the SO, the series gets better along the way, the first few books taking it slow. But I really liked this one, too, with all its introductoriness, so the series is looking to be pretty darn good. Like with the Song of Ice and Fire, I'm going to try to take this slowly. Read a book now, another in a while. Make it last. Like with the Song of Ice and Fire, I'm most likely going to fail fantabulously in this endeavour and finish the series before summer.
We crossed a lot of water and flew over a dry red land, remote and silent. We touched down within the high walls of Terra Australis Training Compound 32-1800. It had been there about fifteen hundred years when I was enrolled, and had had time to install all the little amenities: air conditioning, laser defense, a piano in the gymnasium. Within its towering walls were gardens and playgrounds and the domes of cool subterranean classrooms. And hospitals. And warehouses. In fact, most of the place was underground.
It wasn't all that different from any particularly demanding boarding school, except that of course nobody ever went home for the holidays and we had a lot of brain surgery.
lauantai 4. helmikuuta 2012
Haunted
Title: Haunted
Author: Chuck Palahniuk
Published: Originally in 2005, this edition by Vintage in 2006. I seem to have a lot of books by Vintage.
Genre: Chuck does scary stories
Pages: 404 + afterword.
Well well well. About a decade since I've become acquainted to Mr. Palahniuk's work by seeing Fight Club for the first time, and he finally makes me want to take a bath between my ears. Well played, Chuck. But not with Guts, the infamous story from this book, reading of which has caused over 70 people to faint. That one made me laugh out loud nigh hysterically. No, it was Speaking Bitterness, and also, to a lesser degree, Hot Potting. I was eating while I read the latter one. Not a good idea, that.
Soooo, Haunted. It's about a bunch of people saying goodbye to the world for three months, while they go on a writer's retreat to finally write That One Book Which Will Make Them Famous And Rich. Or, at least, that was the idea. What actually happens is very different. The book consists of short introductory poems of characters before they tell their big stories to the others while waiting for death or salvation. Between these the unnamed narrator tells what goes on at the retreat, which is, basically, a wave of mutilation.
This book is awesome. Chuck is awesome. I don't know where he pulls these ideas and stories from, but just when you think that the one you just read is the most horrifying/funny/gory thing you've read, on comes the next one. And the scariest thing is, it's all pretty much just... human nature. What a fucked-up bunch we are.
"And someday soon, any day now, the world will come open that door and rescue us. The world will listen. Starting on that sun-glorious day, the whole world is going to love us."
Author: Chuck Palahniuk
Published: Originally in 2005, this edition by Vintage in 2006. I seem to have a lot of books by Vintage.
Genre: Chuck does scary stories
Pages: 404 + afterword.
Well well well. About a decade since I've become acquainted to Mr. Palahniuk's work by seeing Fight Club for the first time, and he finally makes me want to take a bath between my ears. Well played, Chuck. But not with Guts, the infamous story from this book, reading of which has caused over 70 people to faint. That one made me laugh out loud nigh hysterically. No, it was Speaking Bitterness, and also, to a lesser degree, Hot Potting. I was eating while I read the latter one. Not a good idea, that.
Soooo, Haunted. It's about a bunch of people saying goodbye to the world for three months, while they go on a writer's retreat to finally write That One Book Which Will Make Them Famous And Rich. Or, at least, that was the idea. What actually happens is very different. The book consists of short introductory poems of characters before they tell their big stories to the others while waiting for death or salvation. Between these the unnamed narrator tells what goes on at the retreat, which is, basically, a wave of mutilation.
This book is awesome. Chuck is awesome. I don't know where he pulls these ideas and stories from, but just when you think that the one you just read is the most horrifying/funny/gory thing you've read, on comes the next one. And the scariest thing is, it's all pretty much just... human nature. What a fucked-up bunch we are.
"And someday soon, any day now, the world will come open that door and rescue us. The world will listen. Starting on that sun-glorious day, the whole world is going to love us."
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