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 Non-fiction books are hard to review, apart from ones that are just stupid self-aggrandizing fluff. Especially one dealing with a real life disaster. I wasn’t there, and I don’t know much about it, so there’s no way I can judge its veracity. However, I did think this was a well told horror story, and I’d recommend it. I like how honest Krakauer was with his own failings and his actions. There is also a lengthy rebuttal to accusations by another author that I found enlightening. 

All in all, it’s a good book. 

This was really neat. I haven’t looked at SCP in aaaaages- probably nearly a decade at this point- so it was all pretty fresh to me. It only felt serial in a few places, mostly just the episodic structure. The first half, and especially the opening scene, is the strongest, though there is a really neat sequence involving a giant monolith later on. Unlike a lot of other cosmic horror that I’ve read, this one has a rather uplifting and hopeful ending, and I appreciate that. As for the horror, I found it particularly effective, since it taps into an irrational fear that I have: <spoiler>memory loss.</spoiler>

I recommend it.

(don’t tell anyone, but I liked it more than the Southern Reach sequels)

 Yeah, sure, it’s good. If you like historical narratives, you’ll dig it. 

HOWEVER 

It never really fulfilled the promise of the premise, for me. What I mean is that the stories never intertwined. Neither was necessary for the other. It ended up just being two narrative threads that ran parallel to each other, each with it’s own set of characters and events- never really uniting, nothing shared save the time frame. 

And, unfortunately, one story is far more compelling than the other, but, really, how thrilling can you make architecture? Maybe if I was more into that field, I’d dig it a lot more, who knows. Actually, I would have liked to read a lot more about the exhibits and the technology on display. 

As for the Holmes stuff, so much of it is conjecture and supposition, which is necessary, because the …

A little bit more layered than a standard haunted house story, and I appreciated that. I think it will resonate(perhaps uncomfortably) with a number of readers, particularly ladies. The final act might be frustrating for readers who are invested in a particular interpretation of the events of the book, but I was okay with it. Recommended. 

 It’s getting weird. Pretty distinct from the game, with far less monster blasting and far more bizarre Mormon apologism, typos, and strange leering descriptions of a 14 year old girl. Very choppy and disjointed once Fly and Arlene reach Earth. Feels very first draft-ish. <spoiler></spoiler>

Short and sweet. Unchallenging. Basically just some 40th anniversary fluff, but it's nice.

First off, a confession: I have been a loser dork nerd my entire life, and I know two industries, videogames and film. So when someone writes in those two spaces, I know what’s authentic and what isn’t. 

So, onto the book. 

It’s actually quite a sweet tale of friends and partners throughout their young lives. Sort of platonic lovers, I guess. I suppose the central idea is that creative partners can be closer than romantic partners, sharing everything but sex. It’s an interesting idea, and very youthful and modern(I don’t mean that in a derogatory way). I don’t know if I fully buy it, but it’s a nice idea. I feel like there is a lot of asexuality involved, but I’m an old fool and don’t know much about anything. 

Anyway, yeah, it’s not bad. It’s kind of a life-long love story about platonic …

 Feels like a find-and-replace edition of the first book. Same cast of characters, same bizarrely bloody death scenes, same conflict between the main character’s father and his employer, same attachment of a baby version of the central monster. Just swap plesiosaur with utahraptor and add in stuff about mutations, and boom, you’ve got Raptor. 

It’s just not very good. Uta in particular seems to be misused. What at first seems a confident, strong, resourceful native girl quickly becomes just a shrieking, emotional, scared mess who has to be comforted by the white boy hero. Kind of a bummer. I saw someone compare it to a Syfy Channel movie(post SciFi Channel, RIP), and that feels very true. 

 I read these books over a decade ago, but I guess I never logged them, so here we go. 

As I recall, the series gets pretty bizarre, but this one follows the three base episodes of the game(Knee-Deep in the Dead, Shores of Hell, and Inferno) pretty closely. There are boss fights against the Hell-Knights from Knee-Deep, the Cyberdemon from Shores, and the Spidermastermind from Inferno. There are even key-card searches, mazes, hidden doors, teleporters, computer maps, and crushing ceilings. All recognizable stuff. 

But, it isn’t just a dry retellling(though the prose is kinda dry). It’s kinda hard to explain, but the book manages to interrogate the nature of the game and setting in unexpected ways. 

That’s not to say that it’s a really good book, because it isn’t. But it’s a bit more interesting than I remember it, and it does some things …

 When I was in middle school, I read a pretty rad book called The Doom Stone. I’ve been wanting to reread it, so I went to my library. They didn’t have it, so I had to do an interlibrary loan. And thus I discovered that it’s the second in a series called The Zone Unknown. Which I never knew, though I don’t think it’s an episodic series. Seems to be more of a thematic one. 

Anyway, Loch is the first book, and I bet I would have loved it as a kid. It would actually probably make a pretty fun movie. The writing is kind of ho-hum, however, and the third-person omniscient is a little jarring sometimes. It’s that weird sort of YA book where it’s very breezy and characterization is very thin(apart from Zaidee, who rules), but there are moments of sudden gnarly gore and violence. 

I liked it, though, I suspect if you’re not a fan of Uncle Steve, it won’t convert you. And, yes, it does retread some of the material of The Stand, though not much. The Stand is a reading journey, and it covers a lot of ground. In contrast, Cell is much more brief. It’s not shallow, but it’s considerably less hefty. 

Overall, the characters weren’t as strong as Uncle Steve’s usual cast. Nobody really popped, with the exception of the three main characters and their friendship. That was solid. It is a sort of zombie apocalypse tale, but if you’re looking for carnage and sieges and battles against the living dead, this won’t satisfy. Very little of that. 

It does have one of the most difficult death scenes I’ve read in a while, and the final few pages are particularly emotionally wrenching. So, no real complaints, …

 Actually a bit more ambitious that I’d anticipated, especially for a debut novel. I thought it was going to be a simple, straightforward story, but Uncle Steve gave me a partially epistolary novel. 

As for the writing itself, you can tell that it’s an earlier effort. The characters aren’t as alive as his later works, nor is the town as fleshed out, but that’s not to say it’s bad. It’s certainly very good and still has his trademark flair for unrepentantly evil characters. Mrs. White and Billy are bad bad bad and Chris is wickedly cruel. 

All in all, though, it’s a really sad book. Carrie is a tragic character and the world so cruel. I wish things had been better for her. 

 I didn’t adore it as much as the first book, but I still greatly enjoyed it. A bit different vibe than the first book. This one has a lot more oration and holding forth from Roger, which, to be fair, is still good stuff. And, by the end it felt more like a Hardy Boys book, or an episode of Suspense. 

But, yeah, I definitely liked it. 

 I don’t know, man. It all felt very nosleep-ish to me, for good and for ill. Even the title itself is in that current very clickbait-y style, and its rather episodic with a lot of repetition of lines and ideas. 

Also, let me just say that I’ve never found clowns scary. I’ve actually always been a fan of clowns, as a shameless slapstick lover. There are exceptions, of course, such as Pennywise or the Killer Klowns, but that’s because they themselves are scary, apart from being a clown. Like, they’re not scary because they’re clowns, they’re scary because of what they do. Granted, this is a circus, and not just clowns, but I’ve always enjoyed those, too - apart from the insane animal cruelty, that is. And that’s nothing to say of the sickening horror of the ‘freak show,’ which is its own nightmare of barbarism. 

What a wonderful little book. I recommend it to anyone.