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rcsreads's reviews
747 reviews
The Fade Out: Act One by Ed Brubaker
dark
mysterious
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? N/A
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
The Road Through the Wall by Shirley Jackson
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.0
The Day of the Triffids by John Wyndham
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
3.5
I finished reading The Day of the Triffids over the weekend and was surprised that the Triffids were basically irrelevant for 80% of the book. I did enjoy that Wyndham thought people were dumb enough to cause themselves three apocalypse level problems at the same time!
Our main character wakes up in hospital to discover that while he was recovering from surgery everyone else looked at some pretty, green meteors and went blind. He also invents a horror cliche! This is quite an exciting opening and then chapter two is just hours of incredibly boring exposition that almost made me give up on the book. But don't worry because we meet more people who can see (they're all posh, only posh people can survive the apocalypse!); fall obsessively in love with the first woman we come across; and enjoy various hijinks which mainly involve looking for supermarkets; oh and if the blindness and killer plants weren't bad enough we've got a plague too!
I can appreciate how influential this book is but it's surprisingly dull.
Our main character wakes up in hospital to discover that while he was recovering from surgery everyone else looked at some pretty, green meteors and went blind. He also invents a horror cliche! This is quite an exciting opening and then chapter two is just hours of incredibly boring exposition that almost made me give up on the book. But don't worry because we meet more people who can see (they're all posh, only posh people can survive the apocalypse!); fall obsessively in love with the first woman we come across; and enjoy various hijinks which mainly involve looking for supermarkets; oh and if the blindness and killer plants weren't bad enough we've got a plague too!
I can appreciate how influential this book is but it's surprisingly dull.
The Beetle by Richard Marsh
adventurous
dark
mysterious
tense
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
4.0
The Beetle was released in the same year as Dracula and outsold it at the time. I think the main reason it hasn't stayed the test of time as well is because it's massively racist. It's very much steeped in Victorian Egyptomania and post-colonial fears; and there's a lot of Orientalism and othering of anyone who's not a posh English person. The main villain is Egyptian and part of a weird cult called The Children of Isis. They like to make human sacrifices and they prefer to use white, English women. This makes zero sense as they're clearly supposed to be following an ancient Egyptian tradition and there weren't a lot of British people kicking about Egypt 3000 years ago!
It's a shame the main premise is so problematic because it was incredibly readable, a real page turner. It lays down a really good mystery at the start and there's enough peril that I needed to know what was going on. Also, the main female character is a badass and does as she pleases and makes the men treat her as an equal. They all wanted to marry her and she could have done better!
The actual Beetle is super creepy and there's a lot of people hearing the faint whirring of wings that's surprisingly scary. Also at one point it crawls onto a man's face and I'm amazed he didn't just die from it being so gross!
It's a weird tale worth reading and looking at in it's wider historical context. Obvious trigger warnings for racism and also for sexual assault.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Death, Mental illness, Panic attacks/disorders, Racial slurs, Racism, Rape, Sexual violence, Torture, Xenophobia, Islamophobia, Kidnapping, Religious bigotry, Stalking, Murder, Schizophrenia/Psychosis , and Fire/Fire injury