Robert H

• Rated 0 stars

“Coming with pretty serious recommendations, I decided to give this book a try and read it. Being a short picture book made the decision quite easy.

On reading it, I found glimpses of good fairy tale writing, and glimpses of beginner writing. The plot moves at a far too rapid pace (and feels like an executive summary)... so it wasn't much of a surprise to find out that this is a retelling of a much more substantial novel (which, being made with certain Victorian ideas, would not be considered safe / PC for today's children).

So I downloaded the original novel, because, as abbreviated as this version is, there were glimpses of something epically beautiful in there. In the short space of this picture book, and without room and vocabulary freedoms to build with, these glimpses are all the more appreciated. The original has definitely ended up near the top of my reading list now.”

Robert H wrote this review Wednesday, January 28 2009. ( reply | permalink )

• Rated 4 stars

“Paris, a spoiled rich girl, joins her uncle Franklin on a strange and mysterious expedition into the Himalayas. Tahr, an orphan boy and young monk in training, is taken on a journey by his master. And then there is a third entity, living in the wild, not expecting outsiders. Their paths are going to cross...

The Lastling is an adventure story. It is never boring. Some details are kept suitably vague - we're never quite sure which country we're in, who the rebels are and whose war is being fought. But that is OK - our main characters, Paris and Tahr, seem just as oblivious to the big picture.

There are some technical hiccups along the way - some characters seem to know things which were said in conversations where they weren't present, and sometimes the level of English that Tahr speaks fluctuates, but minor inconsistencies aside, the story is very gripping. There are chilling moments, and tragic ones. There is a menacing undercurrent to the narrative, and the mood of the story is certainly not light-hearted.

All in all, I'd recommend it as a darker, relentless adventure story - but not necessarily to fans of squaky clean Disney style narratives.”

Robert H wrote this review Wednesday, December 31 2008. ( reply | permalink )

• Rated 4 stars

“Going for Stone is the story of a runaway teenager who tries his hand at making a living as living statue. He's got a natural talent for it, and gets recruited by a suspicious secret, secluded training camp.

It is a very original, tense read, creepy and thrilling in equal parts. The back cover seems to suggest something supernatural might be going on, but the book itself is quite different from what is being implied on the cover. Parts of it feel like Lord of the Flies, others like Otfried Preußler's Krabat. In the end, it is a very good read, with hardly a flaw. I'd wholeheartedly recommend it. ”

Robert H wrote this review Monday, December 29 2008. ( reply | permalink )

• Rated 3 stars

“A quick and easy read. As spy thrillers go, this one is tongue in cheek, but not hillarious, gently entertaining but not exciting, vaguely readable but never credible.

Our hero is sarcastic and always with a comeback at the ready for anything said to him. He is smug, not as clever as he thinks he is, and not really multidimensional. A competent hero type. The rest of the cast are quite formulaic (femme fatales, anoraks, subservient ethnic pals, sinister military types). Unfortunately, the formula is never subverted or used for anything exciting.

All in all, it reads a little like wish fulfilment literature, like a story for teenage boys. I enjoyed it, but had hoped for something a bit more interesting.”

Robert H wrote this review Sunday, December 28 2008. ( reply | permalink )

• Rated 3 stars

“Written in modern language, this book still succeeds (almost) at being convincing in its medieval setting. Almost, because other writers (notably George R R Martin) manage to be slightly better at getting the tone right.

The Pillars of the Earth is the story of the construction of a Cathedral. With a cast of many characters, and set in a time of civil war, there is some excitement to be had in this book.

Ken Follett is mostly known as a thriller writer, and in some ways this shows. The characters aren't quite as complex and multidimensional as one might hope for - or their multidimensionality does not convince. The villains are too evil. The good guys do have weaknesses, but they tend to be too resourceful. In the end, this is a story about fundamentally good people outsmarting truely evil people, again and again and again, with the system / powers that be mostly siding with the evil people.

As a novel, it is long, but quite engrossing and readable. I'm not sure it deserves to be on Britain's 50 best books list, but then again, those TV-audience created lists aren't exactly the stamp of quality that the cover blurb makes them out to be.

Decent read, but not great.”

Robert H wrote this review Saturday, December 27 2008. ( reply | permalink )

5 of 5 members found this review helpful.

• Rated 4 stars

“The Graveyard Book, critics (and the writer himself) will cheerfully point out, is a bit like the Jungle Book, with all the animals replaced by ghosts and ghouls. Now, it's been a long while since I read the Jungle Book (and I am not sure whether I ever read all of it), but the similarities are clear even to me.

A toddler narrowly escapes murder, and ends up in a graveyard. The deceased, after brief humming and hawing, decide to adopt and raise the child.

The book is told in chapters that could be read almost independently. Each chapter is an accomplished short story of its own. And, for the most part, each chapter is beautifully written.

There is, however, one flaw: The final chapter(s), which tie it all together, feel forced. After meandering through little disconnected episodes for most of the book, the grand finale suddenly feels the need to unburden a lot of plot on the reader; to reveal some (but not enough) back story; to deliver an ending. And the plot is a little bit silly. Ancient conspiracies are only scary and convincing if they slither their tentacles into an entire book. Prophesies, ancient quests, and mysterious guardians need space, room, and time to build up momentum. Here, they all feel thrown together at the last minute - something which detracts from this otherwise wonderful children's novel. I almost wanted the book to scrap the plotlines at the end, and solve the story by having the start rewritten, so it would not need to be resolved in the end. The book is at its best when meandering along at a leisurely, episodic pace. Did it really need to stomp on the accelerator and put in some kids vs professional goons action sequences? Did it need epic secret orders and ancient conspiracies? The answer, to me, is "only if this is meant to become a movie"...

Well, the movie rights have been sold already... Pity. It would have been much better as a TV series.”

Robert H wrote this review Sunday, October 19 2008. ( reply | permalink )

• Rated 3 stars

“This is not a graphic novel, but a single comic book, reprinted on slightly nicer paper. As such, it does not really feel like good value for money.

However, it is a fairly good comic book. Alan Moore, let loose on Batman and the Joker, delivers a suitably epic and sinister tale. If there is one flaw, it's that the story is far too short to feel the magnitude and impact of some of the events contained within. As someone new to the Batman comics (I have only watched the movies, so far), the sufferings of some of the characters, gratuitously horrific as they were, did not have the impact they deserved. And giving the Joker a backstory? Well, this is something The Dark Knight (the movie) handles much more elegantly...

It's good Alan Moore, but there isn't enough of it to be truly a classic.”

Robert H wrote this review Saturday, October 18 2008. ( reply | permalink )

• Rated 3 stars

“Adding virtually nothing to the "Nazi Germany" genre, this book is reasonably readable, occasionally pretentious, sometimes tearjerky, but ultimately hollow. Richard and Judy would love it, then.

The "narrated by death" gimmick is never really convincing, and only serves to offer little polaroids of text, with headings, as sideways remarks by the narrator. They are meant to be poetic, or revealing, or amusing, or touching. They come across as overly indulgent on behalf of the author. (I have never read Enid Blyton, but a recent article about her work suggests her narrative voice does this all the time. I don't think putting it in bold, and a different font, really makes the swipes any more noble.)

So what is this story about? It's the tale of a girl growing up in Nazi Germany. It takes place between 1939 and 1943 (I think), in a suburb of Munich. The girl is given to her Bavarian foster parents at the start of the tale, and so we are with her as a family forms around her. It's all meant to be very quaint, the constant use of "Saumensch" and "Watschen" in the text. The characters are meant to be droll. A person without a sense of humour would probably say that putting the abusive language into a foreign language, and the beatings, too, is not really making them cute, droll, or quaint.

In a way, the narrative voice, the German phrases sprinkled into the tale, the snapshot remarks by death - they all serve to build up distance between the reader and the story. The story gains that golden glow, that sugarcoating, that makes it safe to read, and that ensures little is absorbed. It is almost surprising, then, that the bits with the biggest impact on this reader are stories within stories - a couple of hand drawn picture books that appear in the tale. They are exquisite, and the novel feels, at times, like it is just padding, just a large container for a small grain of beauty, needed to give those short stories a context to sit within, to give them meaning.

In the end, there were two things which I found more annoying than all the stylistic imbalance. Liesel did not need to be a persecuted girl for her story and character to work. I could not help thinking that the author lacked the guts to write about a purely Aryan girl. And secondly, if I remember correctly, we're never told what happened to her natural mother - we don't get any backstory on Liesel up to the point when we meet her, nor do we get any context for why the Hubermanns became her foster parents, of all people in the world. Given how indulgent the narrating Death is in giving us the death moments of many, many characters, it is odd to miss out something so central to Liesel's character.

So, all in all, an average effort, sold because of its gimmick more than because of any real merit.”

Robert H wrote this review Sunday, September 7 2008. ( reply | permalink )

1 of 1 members found this review helpful.

• Rated 0 stars

“Doris Lessing has just won the Nobel Prize for literature. Curious, I decided to give this book a try (I don't believe it is the one that won the prize, but it caught my eye).

Having read it, there are a couple of observations:

First: Don't read the back cover. It tells you everything that happens, and nothing about the book. The entire book loses any chance to surprise if you read the back cover summary first.

Second: I can see why Doris Lessing is highly acclaimed.

And third: ... But I don't think I'll be reading any other of her books.

The characters she creates feel completely, utterly, and unquestionably real. In fact, having read the book, I am half convinced that some people I know must have been squatters once. She certainly manages to capture a very complete, rich and genuine atmosphere in her writing, down to the smallest character details. Perhaps because they are so real, the story does not have a set plot, and develops sometimes in surprising directions, never quite leaving the characters to be in full control of their own fate.

That said, I could not stand a single one of the characters, and wanted them all to die horribly. Not because they were communist, nor even because they were self-contradictory communists. No, it's their mixture of arrogance, selective blindness and prejudice that makes these characters so difficult to bear. Sure, they are all messed up and not quite right in the head. But they are also willingly stupid.

In amongst these arrogant, hypocritical wannabe-revolutionaries lives Alice, hero of the story. 30 years old, but having the mental maturity of a 14-year-old, she has talents for organising stuff / making things work, and single-handedly turns a hellhole of a house into something even middle class people can imagine themselves living in. She also has almost supernatural abilities to read people and body language. Which makes her easily the most competent person in this book, if it weren't for her selective memory and tendency to self-delude, along with almost inexplicable rage and hatred that overwhelms her frequently.

For the vast majority of its pages, this book deals with Alice slowly transforming the house, and with the strange, changing community that inhabits it. Clearly, this book is not written for thriller readers or light reading on a holiday.

All in all, a masterly writing effort, which is almost unreadable for me because there is only so much time I'm willing to spend in the imaginary company of these vile people that inhabit the pages, and because it is too real to be entertaining. Well, and because the cover promised humour, wit, and a dramatic plot, when the actual story has nothing I could find funny, and nothing that entertained me. ”

Robert H wrote this review Tuesday, August 26 2008. ( reply | permalink )

• Rated 1 stars

“The premise sounds almost interesting. Then you read it, and it's schmalzy rubbish that even outdoes "It's a Wonderful World" in cheesiness.

The idea that, after your life, you meet five people who explain it to you, could have been used for something so much more interesting. Instead, the people we meet are just there to pull heartstrings in the bluntest possible manner. But, unlike the movie "What Dreams May Come", for example, the pulling never really succeeds. The tearducts remain dry, and the book is just shallow, pretentious, Richard and Judy type mass-produced pseudo-literary fluff.

Sometimes, I like to think of books in terms of food, and how good / bad they'd be. Well, this isn't McDonalds type stuff (which is where I'd put all the save-the-world-action-thrillers and garish Mills and Boon romance). It's Starbucks-type writing: Upmarket image, but hollow, and just as mass-produced and soul-less.”

Robert H wrote this review Monday, August 25 2008. ( reply | permalink )