Tag: ghost

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6000 pages book reading reviews

6000 Pages 2011, Anya’s Ghost – Vera Brosgol (pages 5910-5964)

If you recall I’m not really supposed to go on to a new book when I haven’t written up the previous two. Well I’ve completed three since the last 6000 pages update, and NaNoWriMo’s going ot be taking a lot of my time, so in order not to get too far behind I’m catching up:

Anya’s Ghost is another graphic novel, this time an actual graphic novel i.e. written and conceived as a single story rather than issues of a comic book. It’s relatively short (though remember I use the metric 4 comic pages = 1 regular page). I bought this book because it popped up in my Amazon recommendations, the ‘see inside’ preview looked interesting and it has a Neil Gaiman quote on the cover.

I say all this only to justify myself and mitigate my review because I’m not really the target audience for this.

Anya is a high school girl in an American private school. She comes from a Russian immigrant family and is painfully aware of her differences and wants to fit in. She also has the usual teenage hopes and dreams such as whether the cute boy in her class likes her.

Then one day she meets a ghost, a girl of a similar age who died nearly 90 years ago. She befriends the ghost and together they navigate some of the trials of high school. Only maybe her new best friend is not quite all she seems…

As I said above, I am really not the target for this book. So when I say that whilst I thought it was well-drawn and competently told the story was a little too straightforward and predictable, and the issues it dealt with (self-acceptance, peer pressure etc) a little cliche, then I am aware that I’m being unfair. On its own terms and for the market it’s aimed at it works well. For me it was enjoyable but just ok.

6/10 A fun halloween read for a younger person than I.

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6000 pages reading reviews

6000 Pages, Winter Ghosts – Kate Mosse (pages 4376-4679)

Winter Ghosts

The Winter Ghosts is, unsurprisingly, a ghost story. It concerns Freddie Watson who in winter 1928 takes a trip to the south of France. For the last decade or so he’s been dealing with the guilt of surviving a brother who was killed in World War I. He crashes his car and is forced to take refuge in a remote village. Whilst there he goes to a village festival and meets Fabrissa, who has also suffered loss and grief. However all is not quite as it seems.

OK, I say “all is not quite as it seems”, because it’s one of those trip off the tongue cliches, but in fact if you’re expecting a ghost story (and the title gives that one away doesn’t it?) then you’ll probably see exactly where this is going.

Which is not to say I didn’t enjoy The Winter Ghosts, I did. The predictability is almost comforting in a way, like watching a familiar film on TV at Christmas. It has the feel of one of those classic Victorian ghost stories. Also the Kindle edition which I read had ‘wood-cut’ style drawings as illustrations interspersed with the text and this gave it a nostalgic feel reminding me of some of the books I read as a child e.g. the Narnia chronicles.

(I just found out how to do screenshots on my Kindle – cool huh?)

I’ve read that The Winter Ghosts started life as a shorter story called The Cave and I think it shows. There were times when it feel padded with description. However I did think there was a nice sense of atmosphere and I learnt something about the history of the Cathars in the Pyrenees.

7/10 – a wintry ghost story, perfect for Christmas reading.

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reviews TV

Dollhouse 1.01 – ‘Ghost’

Dollhouse Dollhouse is the new TV show from Joss Whedon, starring Eliza Dushku. You may not have heard much about it, you certainly haven’t from this blog because I’ve been keeping a low profile. I’ve been deliberately ignoring hype and information for two reasons:

  1. I think I’ll enjoy it more with less pre-conceptions
  2. I think I’ll be less invested in it if it gets cancelled.

However it’s Joss Whedon and it’s the first new TV from him in a long time, virtually the first new anything. So I’d lying if I said I hadn’t been looking forward to it.

Unfortunately it’s not great. I mean it’s not great, not insanely fun and re-defining what you can do with the genre, it’s merely OK. At least that’s true of episode 1 – Ghost. I hope and pray (almost truthfully) that it will get better. All three of Joss’ previous TV series had merely ok eps, Angel and Buffy at least had some not good at all ones. So I’ve been trying to convince myself that it’s ok, that it can have a mediocre start and get better. I’m having a little trouble though because all his previous shows were better than this from ep 1. Even Firefly‘s “The Train Job” which was a re-tooled, and significantly less-good, pilot from the original two-hour Serenity – even that was better.

By now you’re probably thinking I hated it. I didn’t but let me put it this way. If you’d shown me this and I didn’t know it was from Joss I would never have thought he’d been involved. It had none of his humour or flair for dialogue. It pretty much just played it straight all the way through.

Unlike some other fans/reviewers I don’t see the concept – agents or ‘actives’ are programmed with personalities/skills, hired out and then have their minds wiped on return – as inherently a problem. I can see that it could mean there’s no chance for character development, that we’re watching Eliza play a different role each week and so it’s hard to care – but someone as smart as Joss will have thought of that.

I’m more worried that take away the Joss humour and edge and what you’re left with, on the evidence of Ghost, could be a ep of pretty much any lawyer/cop procedural – albeit with a scifi twist.

I’m writing this now, over a week after I watched it because I’m about to watch ep 2, “The Target“. I’ll report back soon as to whether it got any better.

Eliza wakes up

Almost forgot the most important part – 5/10