Clive Barker's the Thief of Always

The title is something that catches the eye from the spine of the book whilst sitting on the shelf.   The cover then would cause a person to become immediately interested or not interested with the book within.  Barker’s command of the illustrations is astounding with a gorgeous balance of childish sight, but through a skewed, dare I say, demented, lens.  The subtitle then makes the person who would want to read this realize that the story is to be regarded as a dark story such as the style of the Brothers Grimm which most Americans grow up knowing. 

The book follows the story of a boy who is bored with his life and is seeking a sense of excitement.  His life is stagnant whilst he is full of energy.  A strange man then appears at his home to appeal to his traveling with the man to a Holiday House.  When the boy does eventually go, it is realized that the house is called this for a reason.  The seasons shift with each day.  All four seasons within one day, so that every day has a Halloween and a Christmas.  Halloween is the main celebration at the house which is perfectly understandable with the sensibilities of what makes a fable what it is.  The taste of the dark side can be found within Halloween when it is only in childish fun and not to be taken seriously.  That is our current idea of what makes Halloween.  This alludes to the idea of what All Hallows Eve is supposed to be in the first place.  It isn’t about the candy and dressing up as someone or something else.  It is about the rise of the supernatural beings amongst the humans and the dressing up serving as a protection to the mere mortals.  The room of masks and Harvey’s moment of almost bestiality made the idea of what the holiday is supposed to be about come to life and make the reader realize what kinds of things were valued at the strange Holiday House.

The Holiday House is run by Mr. Hood.  He is a figure that is spoken of reverently, but not seen until late into the book.  He is a character of mystery much the same as the house is.  This association of his characteristics mixing with the house was a good touch when it is revealed that Mr. Hood is, in fact, the Holiday House.  He is a great magical being who steals time.  He lures children to his house and promises them fun forever.  Each day goes through all of the seasons because each day at the Holiday House in actually a year outside of the house.  He is the Thief of Always because he is a being that steals time and promises for always and does not let go of what he believes is his.  He is referred to as a Vampire King within the story by Harvey because that is the only way that Harvey can understand the concept of what Mr. Hood is.  This makes the reader look back to the incident during Halloween where Harvey had a moment of feeling bloodlust and almost gave into the vampiric want within himself.  The only way to comprehend what Mr. Hood was and what he wanted was to make Harvey remember how it felt to want in the darkest manner. 

The image of the broken Holiday House around the end of the book reflected the state of Mr. Hood.  His promises of always were broken along with his body.  The want within him was only to reveal how empty he was and how he would do anything to fill himself with the want of others.  He could not want for himself when he could not live for himself, so one of the many morals within this story would seem to be that stealing always from others would only take away from what time you do have with you.

David Almond's The True Tale of the Monster Billie Dean telt by hisself

This book is hard to read at first.  It is worth the effort as is all good literature.  I do believe that this book should become a piece of great and classic literature when time has gone by.  It tells a tale of a child who grows before the reader.  His mind develops in a fascinating manner.  He is a child of nature who understands light and dark so perfectly because he only knows what it is.  He does not know everything, but he is capable of almost anything.  His mind and body are taken over by and possessed by the dead and his hands can heal.  He does not pray as others do, but his view of the world is beautiful in its childish qualities and simplicities.

Brandon Sanderson's the Rithmatist

The Rithmatist is a high fantasy that is set in the 20^th Century with the idea of wild chalkings as baddies.  These chalkings are of mysterious origin and the only way to fight them is to have those that are chosen to create their own chalklings to fight back.  These are the Rithmatists and they are the soldiers.  They are held to a higher standard and given a stipend, but the unchosen question whether they are actually needed.  Like any good high fantasy, this is reflective of real life.  The Rithmatists are seen as on par with nobility even though they are not born to it.  It is similar to when the nobility were first being made as such.  They were the chosen ones to be held above others and yet to be taken for granted once the system started to fail them all.

The main character, Joel, is a fascinating young man.  He is not one of the chosen, but he takes what they do very seriously and is absolutely fascinated by it.  The Rithmatist students are very much a separated and pompous group, but a lot more is expected of them.  Joel is a genius in his own right and just trying to find out more about the history of the Rithmatists, so that he can become a sort of scholar on them.  The plot starts to unfold from there.  In his search for knowledge, he is instrumental in an ongoing investigation of missing Rithmatist students.  Joel started as someone simply seeking knowledge and ends as someone actually using his knowledge for good.  Suddenly, this book becomes something monumental and not to be contained within one book, but that of a series.  

Classic Doctor Who- Story 1-1963

Doctor: William Hartnell

Assistant/Granddaughter Susan: Carole Ann Ford

Assistant Ian Chesterton:  William Russell

Assistant Barbara Wright: Jacqueline Hill

An Unearthly Child

The story starts at the Coal Hill School where Ian and Barbara work as teachers.  They discuss a strange student that they share.  A young girl called Susan who seems to be a genius and to know things that are beyond her years.  She also states that the history books are wrong and that the science isn’t right because it doesn’t consider the fourth and fifth dimensions, space and time.  Their suspicions guide them to check out where she is listed as living with her grandfather on Totter’s Lane.  They follow her into a police box after her grandfather tries to intimidate them.  He is an aloof old man who will not let them leave with the knowledge that they hold of the TARDIS and his granddaughter.  They travel back in time to the early ages of fire.  The tribe

that they come upon is one that is ruled by fire.  The one who can bring or make fire is the one who is the leader.  Two men fight over the position.  One of them is honest, Za, and the other is cunning, Kal.  Barbara proves herself as a humanitarian when she insists that they help the maimed Za who had been pursuing them.  This leads the party of time travelers to not be taken so lightly, but as a great curiosity instead.  It brings their usefulness longevity.   Za eventually is the one to regain power and Ian teaches him how to make fire, while stressing that the whole tribe should know how to do this for themselves.  Za refutes this idea and keeps them hostage.  They fool the tribe by taking skulls from the Cave of Skulls and placing them onto four flaming torches.  They get away and the story ends with them landing on an unknown planet where the radiation levels are dangerously high unbeknownst to them.

Notable Quotes

Za, “I will have to spill some blood; make people bow to me.”

Doctor, “Fear, it makes companions of us all.”

Doctor, “I won’t allow myself to be frightened out of my skin by mere shadows.”

Character Development

Doctor-thinker.

Ian-strength.

Barbara-caregiver.

Susan-the glue to bind them together.

review of Sweet's The Door in the Mountain

A beautifully written book to begin a series. The characters are all from legend and incredibly distinct from each other. The interactions between them form together to give the story. Everything that happens comes from each interaction as a book should show. Recommended for people who are into Greek mythology. Who want to understand and meet the legends.

review of Rowling's Beedle the Bard

This book is a perfect example of what the modern author can do to create something ancient much as a book of fables. The tales are similar to the fables and such that Muggles are brought up with in their basic moral principles. The tale of the Three Brother's teaches patience; the tale of the Wizard and the Hopping Pot teaches responsibility; the tale of Babbity Rabbitty and her Cackling Stump teaches justice; the tale of the Fountain of Fair Fortune teaches self reliance and belief; the tale of the Warlock's Hairy Heart teaches the importance of acknowledging feelings and not locking them away or ignoring them.

review of Monstrous Affections:An Anthology of Beastly Tales

If you're looking for something creative and unique, this is the book. It has a classic feel to it like reading a fairy tale while still keeping itself fresh in it's style. The characters are varying and suck the reader into the story. It could be a story of a kraken in a girl's mind who offers her a release from her life. It could be the story of a vampire working in a nursing home. It could be the story of a girl who stayed on her uncle's ship without him knowing and then the ship being overtaken by pirates. No matter what the story is; the characters are compelling and the situations old and yet unique.

review of Guy Adams' Sherlock Files

An intriguing read that shows how Sherlock Holmes has evolved over time. It has interviews with the creators and cast. It even has the cases of the first two seasons presented in scrapbook form with sticky notes passed between Sherlock and John. Humorous and informative.

book review of Marney's Every Breath

I absolutely adored this book. A modern day adaptation or rather a modern book with elements of the old (cough...homage). James Mycroft, who goes by Mycroft, is best friends with Rachel Watts, Watts. They are downright inseparable with an impeccable chemistry. They visit a homeless friend of theirs, Homeless Dave, to find his throat slit. They decide to be like Holmes and Watson and do their own detective work. The story evolves from there (without giving any spoilers).I would recommend this book to people who are looking for characters with good chemistry and that love a mystery.

Review of Eleven Doctors, Eleven Stories

Review of Doctor Who: Eleven Doctors, Eleven Stories

The first Doctor: A Big Hand for the Doctor

Written by Eoin Colfer

The basic premise is that the Doctor has lost his hand and needs a new one.  His granddaughter, Susan, has been kidnapped and put into a strange blissful state.  Other children are taken with her as the strange Soul pirates have been doing.  He got away with the children by locking the anti-gravity onto his own DNA and keeping in physical contact with all of the children.  (One on his shoulders while Susan hugged the rest to him.) 

The story brings out the grumpiness of the first Doctor while still showing his ingenuity.  Because he was not a Doctor of action, he was a Doctor of thought.  He always outsmarted the baddies and didn’t resort to violence.

On a funny note, the epilogue addressed the similarities of the story with a certain piece of British literature.  It has a man, a writer, thinking of what to write about.  He looks up at the house and sees children floating and surrounded by a strange dust (fairy dust to him) and a hook handed man (the doctor) fighting a pirate (Soul Pirate).  This would seem to be the birth of J.M. Barrie’s Peter Pan.

The Second Doctor:   The Nameless City

Written by Michael Scott

Jamie McCrimmon saves an old man from being mugged and as a thank you gift the old man gives him a book.  The book is old and wrapped up in a cloth.  It is written in a language that very few can read.  He does not tell Jamie that it is, in fact, alien.   In the end, the Doctor gets rid of the Archons by playing very loud music on an exceptional frequency.  Jamie on his bagpipe and the Doctor on his recorder.

The Third Doctor:  The Spear of Destiny

Written by Marcus Sedgwick

This is a story literally of legend.  Odin stands before them with his sons by his side.  He is a man who possesses a powerful weapon, but who will later become a god within Norse legend.  The Master is there under a different guise in order to take the TARDIS from the Doctor and kill him (the usual agenda to be honest).  The Doctor proves himself to be brave and clever and tells Odin of the Master’s deceit.  So, fun times for him and Jo Grant, who spends most of the story being manhandled and sneered at by big smelly Vikings.

The Fourth Doctor: The Roots of Evil

Written by Philip Reeve

The Doctor and Leela go to a planet full of trees since she complains of missing trees.  The natives there are not friendly at all; they seem to be a whole tribe of people dedicated to killing him (revenge).  He insists that he hasn’t been there (the one who will go there will in fact say that ‘bow ties are cool’).  The wildlife goes mental since they were programmed to do so when he arrived and begin to attack.  He then has to band together with the people who have been bred to hate him in order to save them.  All goes well as he sweet talks and befuddles everyone around him (aw, the charm of the Fourth Doctor is unique).  Leela then walks away no longer desiring a forest to surround her.

The Fifth Doctor:  Tip of the Tongue

Written by Patrick Ness

The Doctor is in a town suffering through the Great Depression with his companion Nyssa.  It turns out that the town has been taken over by a strange device that is a fad with the youths.  It attaches to their mouths and tells the truth (Truth Tellers) to all those that the wearer faces.  It spreads chaos and hatred.  This, as it turns out, is the goal of a small alien family that have arrived and taken over the town themselves with their strange shop and immense money.  The Doctor returns the aliens and sets the Truth Tellers free (they had been enslaved).

The Sixth Doctor: Something Borrowed

Written by Richelle Mead

The Doctor is on a distant planet with his companion, Peri.  There is an interesting ceremony/marriage about to take place.  The female is not of the same species and the question arises whether the male will transform into the better being as the rest of his people do when married.  The love within the two hearts of those marrying is supposed to literally transform them in body and mind on a greater level.  Who is this mysterious female?  Can Peri and the Doctor do what needs to be done?

The Seventh Doctor: Ripple Effect

Written by Malorie Blackman

The Doctor and Ace are stuck in the Temporal Plexus.  They get out when the Doctor does something clever.  The TARDIS lands on the nearest planet, Skaro.  This would have been disastrous if it weren’t for the fact that they were in an alternate timeline.  A timeline where Daleks are a people of education and pacifists.  The Doctor must fix this because the universe will start to dissolve.

This story begs the question of the idea of a good Dalek.  It shows how resistant the Doctor is to change and how embracing of it that Ace was.  She was the best type of companion for him because she was someone that would ‘go with the flow’ instead of sticking to the past as the Doctor does with Daleks and Cybermen.

The Eighth Doctor: Spore

Written by Alex Scarrow

Spores start to infect the planet (plants and then people).  They kill within seconds and all it takes is one touch.  It seems to be liquid, but it is a sort of thinking shape changer.  It seeks intelligence.  It infects a planet until the question can be answered.  Only an intelligent race can answer the question and once deemed intelligent; the planet is left alone.  The Doctor is immune and knows how they work, so he makes him into a sort of emissary for the planet. He claims to be an antivirus that was made to wait for the spores and answer the question when they came to Earth. This questions the idea of intelligence because the spores are unable to believe that the people of the Earth cannot even communicate with them.

The Ninth Doctor: The Beast of Babylon

Written by Charlie Higson

The Doctor lands on the planet Karkinos asking if they’ve seen anything.  He’d followed a Starman there. A strange being that is born when a star dies.  It eats worlds and he needs the orb to stop it.  He takes care of that one only to have another (even worse one) appear on Earth in Babylon.  He begrudgingly takes a female from Karkinos (who are renowned for being the best warriors, think berserker) as a companion.   They take care of business with his big crazy grin and her skills as a warrior. 

The Tenth Doctor: The Mystery of the Haunted Cottage

Written by Derek Landy

The Doctor and Martha Jones are in a world that she recognizes from her childhood.  It was the first book that she read from a book series as a child.  It was a mystery with an underlying mystery provided by the Doctor.  The underlying mystery being: how did they get there and where are they?  They travel through the different books that Martha has read until the creature shifts its attention to the Doctor and tries to pull from his mind.  No one can ever contain what all the Doctor’s mind holds, so we all know how it’ll end.

The Eleventh Doctor: Nothing O’Clock

Written by Neil Gaiman

The Doctor and Amy encounter a weird scene in the year of 1984 on the planet Earth.  The people have all gone.  The question is how and where.  The answer is the Kin.  They are a race that is made up of one being who goes throughout time and replicates itself.  They/It wear masks and tear at the fabric of time, taking down planets in the process.  Their goal is to go to the time of the Big Bang so as to make it that they are the only intelligent race to form.  They wish to erase the existence of all others.  To do this, they need a Time Lord.  The Doctor being ever so clever takes the Kin to before the Big Bang where it will wait for existence to begin and not be able to accomplish what it wished.

Katherine Langrish's Troll Mill

Set three years later.  The family's settled in with Peer as one of them.  Now that he's older, he's developing feelings for the lovely Hilde who's always been by and on his side.  Peer just wants to be grown and show how independent and self sufficient that he is to Hilde.  Then, the dilemma of the story.  Kersten, Bjorn's wife, runs at Peer with her baby and tells him to bring it to Bjorn.  She runs off into the water and then the book starts to move.

review of Katherine Langrish's Troll Fell

a fun book that is rich enough to lead to a couple of other books following it.  the character's are engaging and just having to live through injustice. everyone seems to have their own ideas of what happiness is and they all seek it out.  it is set amongst trolls, vikings, and other beings in-between.  it can be very fun or quite dismal with a dash of dark humor. recommended read for people who like to read a good fantasy book that mixes with history and takes itself lightly while not being flippant.

Review of A. R. R. R. Roberts’ The Soddit

This is an obvious parody of J. R. R. Tolkein’s The Hobbit.  Bilbo Baggins has become Bingo Grabbings.  Gandelf is Gandef.  It goes on as such.  The characters have comedic elements added to them.  Bingo has arthritic feet, so he says ‘ow’ when he walks.  Gandef is going deaf and seems to only hear what he wants to.  Thorin or Thorri has a speech issue, a pronounced lisp.  There are several characters that are killed off making obvious and simply mistakes.  They are mourned for one paragraph and then gone from the mind. 

The characters are not long lasting like Bilbo, Thorin, and Gandelf in the Hobbit.  They are thoroughly entertaining for someone who just wants to read something that endorses a lot of fun to be had.

review of the maze runner

This book is unlike any I have ever read.  The closest approximation that can be made would be to compare it to the idea if the Lord of the Flies having taken place in a completely secluded and artificial setting with boys who had severe cases of amnesia.  It is a grand psychological thriller that starts with the same pace and feeling as when it ends.  It smacks of mystery and a sense of not coming-of-age, but more than that.

The boys have to rediscover who they are and they have to do it the fast and difficult way.  Nothing is handed to them.  They take nothing for granted and yet, the seclusion has upped their paranoia and dropped their sense of morality.  Thomas is seen as being belligerent, but he is the one that has still clung to his idea of what is important.  He is the one they pick on for wanting to be the ‘hero’ when he really just wants to do the ‘right thing’.  So, the real question here is what draws the line from a hero and decent human being?

Jeff Lemire’s The Nobody

A strange and tragic tale from the point of view of a not so whiny sixteen year old girl. A man comes into town with his face and hands bandaged and he wears goggles.  He barely eats. He doesn’t socialize.  Who is he and how did he end up the way he is?  That is her innocent curiosity while the older citizens of the small town of Large Mouth are suspicious of him.  Watch and experience the natural human curiosity and suspicion of that which is different take over a small town and sink it to its lowest depths.

review of Wells' War of the Worlds

An excellent analysis of the rise of industry I.e. the Martians and its breaking down of society. The aliens are not benevolent and their goal is not to integrate. They are machines out to kill all of the human race. The machines are used beautifully to represent the rise of industrialization within the British society. It was not the Victorian age, but it was the pivotal time in between that determined the fate of future society. The society was pulled down and the people practically and literally ripped apart from the change that is represented within the book.

review of Rowling's harry potter and the deathly hallows

Review of Rowling’s Harry potter and the deathly hallows

A beautiful end to a splendid series. The characters are fully dimensional. The plot is thick and yet, doesn't go over the head of the reader. The themes are appropriate and important for the age groups that are targeted. The main things to look at in this book are the horcruxes and the hallows. They are the representations of human vanity and vice.  They also show the goodness of people when looked at from a different angle.

The horcruxes are a diary, ring, locket, cup, diadem, snake, and person.  They each represent something great and each is something great in its own right. The diary is supposed to hold a sense of privacy and closeness to the heart. It is only appropriate that he puts a piece of his soul within it first. The diary is an item that holds thoughts and hopes.  They hold futures.   Voldemort’s diary held a part of himself as a teenager.  His hope for the future could be found within and with himself.  He knew or thought it even then.  It is ironic when Harry destroys the diary with a Basilisk fang because the snake is something that Voldemort could understand.  It is a solitary creature much like himself that is mesmerizing and yet, frightening to others. The diadem is a sign of royalty or being of a higher birth and so Voldemort using it was only logical.  The ring is an item to be worn with a sense of ownership or title. The locket is something to hold memories of those lost. The cup represents a sense of taking and receiving.

The hallows are important because they are a great morality tale for how fear should be handled. It is not death that is truly what they are trying to defeat, but fear. Fear is what drives them to choose as they do except for the last brother who is wiser than the other brothers. The first brother chose the elder wand which he wanted to use as a weapon and not as a sort of defense. The second brother chose the resurrection stone, so that he could then bring back what they see as stolen from them. The third brother chose the cloak of invisibility, so that he could hide from death and embrace it when they are prepared.

review of Shan's Zom-b Mission

B is recruited with other Angels to take some human survivors to a settlement.  She meets with an old school friend, Vinyl, who works as a guide.  They learn that the KKK have come over to England and are starting to run rampant and recruit amongst the settlements.  B realizes that the settlement that she just left is going to be attacked by the KKK when she follows a sheep dog to the Owl Man.  They head back to the settlement to intervene, but the KKK get there first.  The Angels scale the wall and go in to fight. 

review of Lane's Snakebite

This book continues the story of the young Sherlock Holmes.  He is, at this point, in deep trouble with the Paradol organization.  They plan to start wars and bring in profit for themselves.  In each book of the series, he had fouled up their plans.  They are at the point that they just want to get rid of him.

The beginning has him on a ship as a stowaway working as a cabin boy.  He acquires another teacher who is Chinese and teaches him Tai chi and Mandarin.  They dock in Singapore and Sherlock starts to put together the information to solve another mystery.  Pirates, a silver skinned man, and a snake with a broken tooth going around biting and killing certain people is the mystery and Sherlock’s just the young man for the job.

review of O'Brien's the Vault of Dreamers

Rosie Sinclair is at a special school for talented teenagers.  They are televised as a reality tv show during the day and at night they are to sleep for twelve hours.  The one night that she decides not to sleep and sneaks out is the night that changes everything.  The next day she must raise her blip ranking (popularity amongst viewers) in order to stay at the school.  She stays, but the question is whether she really wants to be there.  All of the strange things happening might make her change her mind.  She stays and she fights for what she thinks is right.  Rosie wants nothing more than to expose what really happens at the school.  She wants the world to know what Dean Berg is doing with the student’s dreams.