Title: The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde
Author: Robert Lewis Stevenson
Published: New York: Penguin Classics, 1979 (1886)
Rating: 5 of 5
Page Count: 70
Total Page Count: 206,930
Text Number: 613
Read Because: personal enjoyment, paperback from my personal collection
Review: Mr Utterson worries that his friend Mr Jekyll, a doctor of good nature and great skill, is being blackmailed by his apprentice, an uncannily cruel man named Mr Hyde. This holds up surprisingly well, despite that the late reveal of its identities is now no mystery. The gothic atmosphere and short, punchy chapters are engaging, and the relationships between Jekyll and Hyde is more compelling than I expected—largely because it's not what I expected: this is more a story about the necessity and danger of acknowledging the innate evil of all personalities than it is a simple good/evil dichotomy—a subtle, thorny theme nestled within a swift narrative. I was entirely satisfied with this, and recommend it.
Thoughts on source material vs. cultural osmosis/adaptation, originally posted on Tumblr:
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Title: The Family Plot
Author: Cherie Priest
Published: New York: Tor, 2016
Rating: 3 of 5
Page Count: 360
Total Page Count: 201,290
Text Number: 614
Read Because: personal enjoyment, ebook borrowed from the Multnomah County Library
Review: When Music City Salvage buys the rights to a Victorian-era estate, they get more than they bargained for: a family of ghosts resides in the old house. This is a haunted house novel that gets a lot of things right. It refuses to engage skepticism, and the time that could be wasted on establishing genre conventions is instead given to a dreamy, surreal ghost story with a slow build and some sincerely haunting moments. Priest has an eye for detail, and here it makes the house and salvage operation come alive. But while the house is a character and a half, the human cast is overwhelmingly prosaic (it took me half the book to tell the male characters apart) and the mystery becomes less compelling the more it's revealed, until the atmosphere is entirely ruined by an overexplained ending and corny final scene. I like the book this could have been, and wish all haunted houses had such a convincing sense of place, but this is ultimately underwhelming and I can't recommend it.
Title: Unexpected Stories
Author: Octavia E. Butler
Published: New York: Open Road, 2014
Rating: 4 of 5
Page Count: 85
Total Page Count: 201,375
Text Number: 615
Read Because: fan of the author/alerted to its existence by![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
ambyr, ebook borrowed from the Multnomah County Library
Review: These are two of Butler's early works, written in the 1970s (before her published work) but only published posthumously. As a result, Butler's writing—which is frequently workmanlike—is especially stiff here, most obviously in the action sequences. But these stories are a fascinating insight into the themes Butler would return to throughout her work, and her first efforts to balance speculative worldbuilding, power dynamics, interpersonal relationships, and plot. The effort is occasionally uneven (the end of "A Necessary Being" lags, but its protagonist's complicated situation is reminiscent of Dawn; "Childfinder" is almost so brief as to be abrupt, but its worldbuilding reveals are organic), but is always engaging and thematically successful, and despite their posthumous release these are finished stories. As brief as this collection is, it's a welcome addition to her body of work.
Author: Robert Lewis Stevenson
Published: New York: Penguin Classics, 1979 (1886)
Rating: 5 of 5
Page Count: 70
Total Page Count: 206,930
Text Number: 613
Read Because: personal enjoyment, paperback from my personal collection
Review: Mr Utterson worries that his friend Mr Jekyll, a doctor of good nature and great skill, is being blackmailed by his apprentice, an uncannily cruel man named Mr Hyde. This holds up surprisingly well, despite that the late reveal of its identities is now no mystery. The gothic atmosphere and short, punchy chapters are engaging, and the relationships between Jekyll and Hyde is more compelling than I expected—largely because it's not what I expected: this is more a story about the necessity and danger of acknowledging the innate evil of all personalities than it is a simple good/evil dichotomy—a subtle, thorny theme nestled within a swift narrative. I was entirely satisfied with this, and recommend it.
Thoughts on source material vs. cultural osmosis/adaptation, originally posted on Tumblr:
( Read more... )
Title: The Family Plot
Author: Cherie Priest
Published: New York: Tor, 2016
Rating: 3 of 5
Page Count: 360
Total Page Count: 201,290
Text Number: 614
Read Because: personal enjoyment, ebook borrowed from the Multnomah County Library
Review: When Music City Salvage buys the rights to a Victorian-era estate, they get more than they bargained for: a family of ghosts resides in the old house. This is a haunted house novel that gets a lot of things right. It refuses to engage skepticism, and the time that could be wasted on establishing genre conventions is instead given to a dreamy, surreal ghost story with a slow build and some sincerely haunting moments. Priest has an eye for detail, and here it makes the house and salvage operation come alive. But while the house is a character and a half, the human cast is overwhelmingly prosaic (it took me half the book to tell the male characters apart) and the mystery becomes less compelling the more it's revealed, until the atmosphere is entirely ruined by an overexplained ending and corny final scene. I like the book this could have been, and wish all haunted houses had such a convincing sense of place, but this is ultimately underwhelming and I can't recommend it.
Title: Unexpected Stories
Author: Octavia E. Butler
Published: New York: Open Road, 2014
Rating: 4 of 5
Page Count: 85
Total Page Count: 201,375
Text Number: 615
Read Because: fan of the author/alerted to its existence by
ambyr, ebook borrowed from the Multnomah County LibraryReview: These are two of Butler's early works, written in the 1970s (before her published work) but only published posthumously. As a result, Butler's writing—which is frequently workmanlike—is especially stiff here, most obviously in the action sequences. But these stories are a fascinating insight into the themes Butler would return to throughout her work, and her first efforts to balance speculative worldbuilding, power dynamics, interpersonal relationships, and plot. The effort is occasionally uneven (the end of "A Necessary Being" lags, but its protagonist's complicated situation is reminiscent of Dawn; "Childfinder" is almost so brief as to be abrupt, but its worldbuilding reveals are organic), but is always engaging and thematically successful, and despite their posthumous release these are finished stories. As brief as this collection is, it's a welcome addition to her body of work.
