Oldies But Goodies {Put This One on Your TBR List} Book Review: The Ice Limit and Beyond the Ice Limit by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child by Karen S. Wiesner

Oldies But Goodies

{Put This One on Your TBR List}

Book Review: The Ice Limit and Beyond the Ice Limit by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child

by Karen S. Wiesner  

   

Be aware that there may be spoilers in this review. 

Before collaborating authors Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child conceived of the character Gideon Crew in 2011, there was a single-title, standalone book called The Ice Limit, published in 2000. In this book, a massive meteorite, maybe the largest ever discovered, is found near an island on Cape Horn, part of West Antarctic claimed by Chile. A billionaire, Palmer Lloyd, wants it for his rare and exotic archaeological artifact museum. To that end, he hires Effective Engineering Solutions, Inc., a not quite legal, "problem solving" firm headed by Eli Glinn, who eventually hires Gideon Crew first a freelancer and then full-time in the Gideon Crew Series. EES is tasked with recovering and transporting the meteorite, traveling undercover in what appears to be a rusty freighter to steal it from Chile. Eventually, it's discovered that this meteorite is in the range of 25,000 tons (more than double the weight that it was initially anticipated) and that it must have come from outside the solar system. And it may not be at all what they originally thought it was. 

The cast of characters involved in this harrowing endeavor were some of the most interesting I've encountered in a technothriller where plot tends to be so prominent, external conflict all but overshadows those populating the world the action takes place, so that deep internal conflicts may be neglected entirely. That was not the case here, although there were simply too many characters to name in this short review. Suffice it to say that nearly all of them played decently-developed roles in the events within this book. 

As long as this story was (464 pages in the hardcover), reading it was so compulsive, it didn't feel anywhere near its size. I binge-read it not long after it was first published, unable to put it down over the course of a matter of days. That said, I was devastated when I reached the end because it felt like the story was far from finished. The cliffhanger it ended on was frustrating because, at the time this book was published, there was no sequel in sight. Apparently, I wasn't the only one who felt disgruntled. While I didn't realize it at the time I read The Ice Limit, the authors posted a number of fictional newspaper and magazine articles as kind of an epilogue to the story to provide more closure. Naturally, these did nothing for me, since I didn't know they existed, but for years I felt locked into the disappointment of how the book ended. The authors moved on to other books, other series, but somehow they circled back arou

nd to this story--this time within a series they'd begun featuring Gideon Crew, who'd been hired by the EES Corporation in The Ice Limit. Beyond the Ice Limit became Book 4 in that series, published in 2016. Some websites include The Ice Limit as the prequel to that series, though Gideon Crew wasn't really in the original book.

 

In the sequel, the seed of an alien lifeform that had started sprouting thanks to the endeavors of the retrieval crew at the end of The Ice Limit has become a massive structure that's destroying the Earth. Gideon Crew (a master thief and nuclear physicist) is hired to take down this unnatural enemy before that happens. He's promised that this will be the last project before EES is permanently closed, however I see a new book, The Pharaoh Key, was published for that series in 2018 so promise obviously broken. 

While I enjoyed this story immensely, my attempts to read the other Gideon Crew novels didn't go far, maybe in part because I attempted to read them out of order. Whatever the reason, I didn't feel a draw toward the stories or the characters in the one other book in that series I tried to read, though Gideon Crew is much better fleshed out than a lot of action thriller protagonists are. I may attempt to read that series again in the future. In any case, Beyond the Ice Limit is just as exciting and page-turning as its predecessor. I couldn't put it down within the couple days it took to devour it anymore this time than I'd been able to last time. 

Something I love to see as a reader and an author is how the authors have created a shared world connecting many of their novels that cross between their series or standalone novels. For The Ice Limit, at least a few characters moved into the Gideon Crew Series with the sequel Beyond the Ice Limit. Bill Smithback, Jr., a reporter also did that in the Pendergast and Nora Kelly series'. Additionally, in the third Pendergast book, The Cabinet of Curiosities, Palmer Lloyd's museum proposal is mentioned. In Dance of Death and the sequel The Book of the Dead, Eli Glinn appears as a supporting character. 

The Ice Limit and Beyond the Ice Limit are good, old-fashioned horror fests with all the hair-raising developments and excitement you want in a top-notch thriller. I must add that, within a Pendergast novel, Dance of Death, the sixth in that series, a reference is made to a third book for The Ice Limit with what they call there Ice Limit III: Return to Cape Horn. Here's to hoping another sequel is on the way eventually! 

Next week, I'll review another Oldie But Goodie you might find worth another read, too. 

Karen Wiesner is an award-winning, multi-genre author of over 150 titles and 16 series.

Visit her website here: https://karenwiesner.weebly.com/

and https://karenwiesner.weebly.com/karens-quill-blog

Find out more about her books and see her art here: http://www.facebook.com/KarenWiesnerAuthor

Visit her publisher here: https://www.writers-exchange.com/Karen-Wiesner/

Plant Neurobiology?

In reference to my July 25 post on "plant intelligence," coincidentally the September/October 2024 issue of SKEPTICAL INQUIRER contains an article by Massimo Pigliucci titled "Are Plants Conscious?" In his view, a science labeled "plant neurobiology," based on the idea that plants could have intelligence or consciousness, constitutes a "category mistake." Neuroscience studies "brains and their associated nervous systems," physical features of animals but not plants. He concedes that plants in a sense process information. As for responding to "environmental cues," he points out that all living creatures do that. He objects to conflating those general terms with the specific types of behavior we call "cognition" and "intelligence" in animals. Moreover, the claim that plants feel pain is extremely unlikely because, as far as anyone knows, pain and awareness of any other physical sensation require a nervous system. He proposes, "Plants are fascinating in part precisely because they are so different from animals."

If plants feel pain, by the way, consider the ethical implications of eating them. I'm reminded of the satirical song "Carrot Juice Is Murder," by the Arrogant Worms. "I've heard the screams of the vegetables, watching their skins being peeled. . . ."

Carrot Juice Is Murder

The PBS network features a miniseries about the vegetable kingdom called GREEN PLANET, hosted by Sir David Attenborough:

Green Planet

Stop-motion photography produces sped-up films of plant growth to illustrate that these organisms are far from inert and passive. Attenborough's narration talks about phenomena such as seedlings and saplings competing with their neighbors for light and air, or fungus in the nests of leaf-cutter ants telling the ants what type of leaves it wants. That kind of language and the accompanying dynamic videos make it temptingly easy to view plants in anthropomorphic or at least theriomorphic terms.

Noticing how English ivy climbs our window screens seemingly overnight after heavy rains, regardless of how often it's trimmed back, I could easily imagine the vines have "conscious" intentions and preferences.

Margaret L. Carter

Please explore love amonng the monsters at Carter's Crypt.

Open Kimono

Earlier this month, Paige Collins of the Electronic Freedom Foundation published an intriguing article calling for openness on an online dating application. Openness, that is, about how much of a customer's very private data might or might not be revealed to third parties.

But, to digress a little, I'm watching a Monsieur Spade miniseries on Netflix and am baffled by how a great deal of "open kimono" stuff advances the slow moving plot. Clive Owen swims in the nude again and again, and we get hovering drone footage of his lily white buttocks as he does a languid crawl with his arms and drags his feet. Perhaps there is a plot hole down there; if he swims daily in the buff under the sun of southern France, his butt should be nut brown.

Presumably, Sam Spade has something about which to be confident, but like the shark in Jaws, the threat remains unseen by the audience, but we know it's there by the uncomfortable reactions of fully clothed visitors to Spade's territory when Spade drops his towel or deliberately postpones putting it around his waist after his swim.

Back to the EFF concerns about privacy and Bumble, as explained by Paige Collins.

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2024/08/eff-and-12-organizations-tell-bumble-dont-sell-user-data-without-opt-consent

The bottom line is that EFF has joined Mozilla Foundation and 11 other organizations urging Bumble to do a better job protecting user privacy by

1. Clarifying in unambiguous terms whether or not Bumble sells customer data. 
2. Identifying what data or personal information Bumble sells, and to which partners, identifying particularly if any companies would be considered data brokers. 
3. Strengthening customers’ consent mechanism to opt-in to the sharing or sale of data, rather than having to "opt-out.”
   

In August, 2021, Security Magazine discussed a problem with "location" functionality. When one uses a dating application, it might be useful to know how far away from one a potentially interesting person lives, but these apps can reveal where one is in real time, which is entirely TMI.

https://www.securitymagazine.com/articles/95979-vulnerability-in-bumble-dating-app-reveals-users-exact-location

Open kimonos, skinny dipping, inadequate privacy protections.... and now we come to Drip Pricing.

What is that? The legal bloggers of Troutman Pepper discuss dark patterns, drip pricing and Stub Hub.

https://www.regulatoryoversight.com/2024/08/district-of-columbia-ag-sues-stubhub-for-alleged-dark-patterns-and-hidden-fees/

In a nutshell, drip pricing seems to be where one price is prominently advertised, but during the purchase process and often with a countdown clock adding urgency and Fear Of Missing Out, additional fees are tacked on for "fulfillment" and "service". There could be taxes, too. And, maybe, fees for paying by credit card.

The true cost of the purchase is hidden, and comes as a nasty surprise late in the transaction.

All the best,

Rowena Cherry 

SPACE SNARK™  

https://www.spacesnark.com/   

httpa://www.rowenacherry.com

Oldies But Goodies {Put This One on Your TBR List} Book Review: Relic and Reliquary by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child by Karen S. Wiesner

 

Oldies But Goodies

{Put This One on Your TBR List}

Book Review: Relic and Reliquary by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child

by Karen S. Wiesner

  

Be aware that there may be spoilers in this review. 

Relic (which is the original title the authors prefer, not the 1997 movie title of "The" Relic which actually did make it to several versions of the book) was written by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child and was published in 1995 as the debut collaboration by two authors who write separate masterpieces on their own. The authors' website includes information about how they met--via the museum Preston worked and Child, an editor at St. Martin's Press, was so fascinated by that he commissioned a book about its history. They've included very interesting histories and stories behind all of their works on their website https://www.prestonchild.com/ which is definitely worth a look. The sequel, Reliquary, was published in 1997. Classified as horror technothrillers, a genre creation that's predominately credited to Michael Crichton, reviews actually likened the premiere book to a story where a dinosaur-like creature gets loose in a museum. Simply defined, it is that, and very enjoyably so. 

In Relic, an expedition in the Amazon Basin searching for a lost tribe goes horribly wrong (as they so often do), and years later the relics discovered on that journey, along with the journal of the leader, eventually find their way to their intended destination--the fictional American Museum of Natural History in New York City. The setting of the first two books of what later became The Pendergast Series is very nearly the star of this show. As someone who was actually involved in the inner workings of a museum similar to the one portrayed in the books, Preston's early connection lent credulity, insight, and wonder to these two stories. Readers are treated to the labyrinthine corridors and showcases that fill the stories with tantalizing displays that can alternately seem informative in the daytime and horrifying in the night, along with long forgotten treasures from other, lesser explored worlds in secured vaults. 

Additionally, inner workings of the politics and personnel within this structure are intriguing. Naturally, once the bizarre killings begin, centered in the museum, readers can't be sure of what's actually happening, given that there are plenty of real-life bad guys in this setting without having to resort to otherworldly monsters. But, lucky for all us horror fans, there actually is an ancient beast plucked from a shrouded world roaming the maze of hallways, secret rooms, and the long-deserted basement and sub-basement connected below the museum. 

The museum has been planning to unveil the ill-gotten findings from the expedition that causes all the tragedy in both Relic and Reliquary in a massively funded exhibition. The murders threaten to shut it down before launch, which would be financially catastrophic for the museum. As a lover of all types of these, the museum itself was one of the things I loved most about these two books. There's a whole world there that could be explored indefinitely. Inject horror into the equation, and I'm utterly beguiled. 

The murders in the museum are investigated by NYPD Lieutenant Vincent D'Agosta until the FBI gets involved. Initially, Special Agent Aloysius Pendergast takes over, having an interest to the similar pattern of these murders to others he's seen before, elsewhere. Before long, he's replaced by another agent, Coffey, who's a complete and utter idiot. He makes a series of bad choices that very nearly leads to disaster for the entire city. If not for a select few, all would be lost. These heroes save the day, though not permanently, as the story continues into a sequel in which they discover that the horror and murders associated with the museum aren't over after all. 

In terms of plot, action, and suspense, these two books have an absolute playground of all. Like Dan Brown books, the external conflicts in the works of not only the collaborating authors but their individually written titles as well are filled with seemingly unending mystery and thrills--a dark side to natural science and history. You read these books for the nonstop twists and turns, and you're never disappointed by what you're given in that vein. In Brown's stories in particular, I feel that the action is relentless and exhausting, and I've been known to fall asleep in the middle of them--solely because the author doesn't provide enough, if any, downtime. In Preston and Child's books, it isn't quite that extreme, but the plot-heavy stories tend to run in that direction more often than not. Characters and readers alike desperately need downtimes in order to catch their breath so they can continue engaging in fast-paced stories like these. That's where I'm convinced these authors fall just a little bit short (Brown mostly, not as much with the others mentioned).

Additionally, deep characterization in books of these types is generally poor. In Relic and Reliquary, most of the characters are only mildly compelling. Almost entirely because they showed up the most, the ones that made at least vague impressions are D'Agosta; Special Agent Pendergast; Margo Green, a graduate student at the museum, and Dr. Frock, her advisor and a department head there; along with Bill Smithback, Jr., a journalist who's been hired by the museum to writing a book about the upcoming exhibition. Smithback and Pendergast make appearances in a variety of the collaborative authors' works, not always in the same series. For instance, Smithback returns in the Nora Kelly (a renowned archaeologist Smithback eventually marries) Series, as well as more than a few of the Pendergast Series books. His tragic history is chronicled on the following website, https://prestonchild.fandom.com/wiki/Bill_Smithback, for those who are curious about him, but be aware that his character was cut from the movie version of Relic, which is kind of inconceivable to me, if for no other reason but that he was a great comic relief (and the favorite of the authors themselves). To give you an example, during one tense moment where the museum beast is wreaking havoc in another area of the exhibition, Smithback has free access to the tantalizingly fine spread the museum has laid out for those who show up for their new exhibit. He gorges himself without inhibition. Okay, so it's in poor taste (excuse the pun), given the extenuating circumstances, but it was also just the comic relief needed in this situation. Of all the characters included in these two books, Smithback was the one who received most of the fleshing out, and I enjoyed several of his other appearances in the two authors' other works as well. 

On the subject of characterization, in my point of view, whipsaw thrillers that are more focused on plot tend to have the characters necessary manufactured on the fly within the story. They fill the roles they're intended to occupy for the moment, then they disappear altogether or, rarely, make minor returns to the story in random other scenes. Relic and Reliquary are very nearly smothered under the weight of so many point of view characters that enter the story only to die or pass almost unceremoniously out of the book in the same scene. It's very hard to choose who was actually the main character in either of these books--I suppose D'Agosta, Margo, or Smithback come the closest but I wouldn't say that definitively. For each, we learn a few things that were probably listed on a characterization worksheet about them, little or nothing personal that doesn’t pertain to the immediate story, and any internal conflict is almost always directly related to the external conflict. As two examples of that: 

In Relic, D'Agosta relates something about his own son in direct correspondence with the horrific murder of two children at the beginning. We learn precious little beyond that of the police detective's personal life.

Also in Relic, Margo Green's father supposedly just died. At no point in either books are we privy to feelings of loss or grief in this character about that fact (and that was what it felt like--a mere factoid). Little more is said except Margo's single thought about really, really not wanting to go home to take over the family business legacy her father's death leaves to her. 

I guess the best that can be said in books of these types is that characters are meant to serve a purpose. No more. No less. And that's the end of that. But I admittedly prefer much deeper characterization than providing a convenient face to hang the external conflicts in the story on. 

Another character I feel I have to mention because he got a whole book series devoted to him from these two authors is Pendergast. Back in 2016, a potential TV adaptation featuring Pendergast was being tossed around but it was announced early in 2017 that it'd been canceled. I will note here that his character was combined with that of D'Agosta's in the movie version and was completely written out of the story. Further irony is that he spawned a series of more than twenty books, and yet the authors initially found him to be "a pompous windbag, pontificating to Margo about 'compartmentalization of labor' and 'extended similes'." I actually liked him in Relic and Reliquary, but when I tried to follow him into his own series with The Cabinet of Curiosities (published in 2001), where he became more of what readers could expect of him as the main character of the series, I found it much harder to get into the stories. I did read several of them and intend to try again reading all of them. Let's see how far I get this time and whether I'll feel compelled to write reviews of them. 

Other than the superficial characterization you can expect in these two books (and many of their others), there's a lot to love in Relic and Reliquary, especially if you're looking for edge-of-your-seat beastie scares set in a wonderfully creepy environment. I also recommend the movie. 

Next week, I'll review another Oldie But Goodie you might find worth another read, too. 

Karen Wiesner is an award-winning, multi-genre author of over 150 titles and 16 series.

Visit her website here: https://karenwiesner.weebly.com/

and https://karenwiesner.weebly.com/karens-quill-blog

Find out more about her books and see her art here: http://www.facebook.com/KarenWiesnerAuthor

Visit her publisher here: https://www.writers-exchange.com/Karen-Wiesner/

Animal Immortality

Some animals with amazingly long lifespans compared to ours, including one that can survive potentially forever, the "immortal jellyfish":

Animals with the Longest Lifespans

The most incredible is the glass sponge, possibly living up to 15,000 years. Corals and giant barrel sponges are not far behind. Other animals on the list, while impressive, fall within more imaginable ranges, e.g., Greenland sharks (400), ocean quahogs (225), and giant tortoises (possibly up to 250). It's noteworthy that all the most long-lived creatures aside from the bowhead whale (200) are invertebrates or cold-blooded vertebrates. What stops us from attaining such venerable ages? Elephants, at the bottom of the page, have about the same maximum lifespans as humans.

The Wikipedia article on the glass sponge goes into great detail about its biology and ecology but doesn't speculate why it can live so much longer than most animals:

Hexactinellid

"Biological immortality" enables some rare species to avoid aging and thus theoretically live forever. In practice, though, they're not truly deathless, since they can succumb to disease or predators.

Here's a page about the jellyfish with that extraordinary gift:

Immortal Jellyfish

In response to stress, it can hit a "reset button" and revert to its immature polyp stage. The regenerated polyp grows into an adult genetically identical to its previous incarnation. This process of "transdifferentiation," in which "an adult cell, one that is specialized for a particular tissue, can become an entirely different type of specialized cell," is being studied by scientists in search of new ways to "replace cells that have been damaged by disease." Suppose a sapient creature had a similar life cycle? If we did, would we recognize it as a type of "immortality" we'd want? Would memory and learned skills carry over from one phase of the cycle to the next? Bacteria, reproducing by fission, are technically deathless, but if they had individual identities, would that individuality be preserved through their descendants? In musing on the immortal jellyfish, the article raises the question, "If all of an organism’s cells are replaced, is it still the same individual? The genes are the same, of course."

If we consider the issue from that angle, however, almost all the cells in our bodies get replaced throughout a lifetime, too, many of them over and over. Nevertheless, we think of ourselves as the same persons, with continuity of memory, experience, and identity.

Margaret L. Carter

Carter's Crypt

One Star Down Under Can Hurt You

"Down Under" for the purposes of this article means "Australia" and has nothing whatsoever to do with any regions of the body, nether or otherwise.

Have you ever been pressed by a doctor or dentist to write a review? 

Before you oblige them, bear in mind that you are thereby telling the world where you live (approximately), and what kind of doctor or dentist you see, from which information can be extrapolated about your health and spear-phishers acquire a trusted name and email address to spoof in order to trick you into opening a bogus bill or malicious "appointment reminder".

If you live in Australia, and you write a less-than-glowing review, you could be sued and you could lose.

Legal blogger Katarina Klaric of Stephens Lawyers and Consultants discusses a recent court decision concerning a one star review that was alleged to be defamatory and false or fake.

https://stephens.com.au/what-does-a-one-star-defamatory-review-cost/

As Katarina Klaric reports:

"The court ordered the patient to pay $30,000.00 in damages to the doctor."

Not only that, but apparently, the patient's spouse and one of her close family members piled on and posted an additional negative review based on their understanding of the patient's experience with the doctor.  They were ordered to pay $40,000 in damages.

Moreover, the defendants will have to pay the doctor's court costs.

The article has a good deal of advice about what businesses in Australia can do about damaging reviews, and also a warning to folks who believe that anonymity is impenetrable, and is well worth a two-minute read.

In America, the bloggers of the GALA law blog discuss the ramifications of allegedly defamed doctors trying to pay one-star reviewers to take down bad reviews, and/or to suppress the impact of negative reviews by soliciting--and even paying for-- specious good reviews from friends and family and businesses that can be hired to post misleading reviews.

http://blog.galalaw.com/post/102itwe/can-you-pay-consumers-to-take-down-bad-reviews-that-they-have-posted

For anyone in any business, including writers, this particular case has lessons about the consequences of encouraging inauthentic reviews.

For the Who? What? Where? and When? you need to follow the GALA link and read the excellent article. The Why? should be self-evident. As for the shocking How:

"According to the allegations in the complaint, in order to get platforms to take down negative reviews, he would flag the reviews for removal by falsely indicating that they violated the platforms' policies prohibiting inappropriate conduct. He would also have his office contact patients who posted bad reviews and offer to pay them in exchange for removing the review. In order to prevent bad reviews from being posted in the first place on the medical booking site ZocDoc, the doctor would falsely indicate that patients had not shown up for their appointments; that way, the patient would not be invited to post a review on the site."

The bottom line in this case is that the doctor had to take down all the inauthentic positive reviews and pay a $100,000 fine.

The GALA lawyers give wise advice to the recipients of bad reviews on what they can legally do, and what they absolutely must not do.

For writers, if you pay for a review with money, gifts, incentives, access to a lottery or raffle, anything of value, the reviewer must disclose that they were compensated. If you quote from their review, you should probably add a similar disclaimer.

All the best,

Rowena Cherry 

SPACE SNARK™  

https://www.spacesnark.com/  

https://www.rowenacherry.com

Karen S. Wiesner Oldies But Goodies {Put This One on Your TBR List} Book Review: Mina and Blood to Blood: The Dracula Story Continues by Marie Kiraly

Oldies But Goodies

{Put This One on Your TBR List}

Book Review: Mina and Blood to Blood:

The Dracula Story Continues by Marie Kiraly

by Karen S. Wiesner

Marie Kiraly, the author's grandmother's name, is the pseudonym of Elaine Bergstrom. However, the sequel published in 2000, Blood to Blood, was written under her real name, which is probably why I never knew there was a sequel until I went to write this review. You'll find Mina available under either author name.

Mina was published in 1994. I was fairly shocked with the new cover of the book as opposed to the original, which featured the haunting image of a woman with her face turned away, dressed in blood red, staring out at the dark night and seeing a bat piercing the twilight haze. I can feel her longing. I think I prefer the old, though the reproduction below is much more washed out than the first edition hardcover I have, procured from a conference I attended ages ago and actually met the fellow author there.

  

Mina Harker, as everyone who's read Dracula knows, was the fiancée and eventually the wife of Jonathan Harker. She became the obsession of a creature of darkness. Under Dracula's control, Mina was nearly consumed. When Dracula ended, the monster was defeated, his power at an end. Or was it?

Mina: The Dracula Story Continues actually starts during the journey toward Dracula at the end of the original, with Mina, Jonathan, Van Helsing, and Quincey. Following the end-stage events of Dracula, the count's dominion was supposed to be over. Mina could return to her husband, her life, the restraints of the Victorian age. But how to return to a role that no longer fits?

Mina isn't just an erotic romance without depth. The characters were finely drawn, compelling, and even devastating. I was ensnared in the web of complications, driven by the incentive of having come to love and root for Jonathan in the original tale. He was worthy of Mina's undying loyalty. As they were both ensorcelled by an ancient creature of the dark in different ways, they shared more than simply a proper Victorian engagement prior to their misfortune. However, she and Jonathan were shackled by the society they were prominent in and couldn't easily shake such confinement. That said, being the source of Dracula's obsession for however long, Mina couldn't forget the fever awoken in her blood by her irresistible captor.

I first read Mina when I was in my late 20s or early 30s (can't remember exactly). I re-read it earlier this year. I do confess that I now believe the character of Mina, as she's portrayed in this continuation, became depraved and selfish in her quest for freedom for her lust, and I couldn't actually blame Jonathan for his inevitable actions, though his repressed and selfish behavior with Mina wasn't fully justified either. Honestly, an uninhibited conversation between these two might have solved all the problems they made for themselves by remaining silent and unwilling to admit their true feelings. I do understand that's a hallmark of the Victorian age, but it was still frustrating as a reader to recognize how simple the solution to their problems was.

As for whether I believe the character of Mina in Dracula could be extrapolated into this dark version of her, I'm not entirely convinced. While the original character of Mina did seem to desire self-sufficiency beyond what a woman of her time was allowed, I wasn't entirely convinced that her former giving and even self-sacrificing nature in the original story would have allowed the depraved transformation she undergoes in Mina: The Dracula Story Continues, even if she's not fully free of Dracula's shackles in his defeat. Mourning for what Mina and Jonathan tragically lost before their lives were played with like a monster's toy was the true horror of this story.

As soon as I found out about the sequel, I ordered Blood to Blood: The Dracula Story Continues. I found it to be as well written and compelling as the first. Blood to Blood continues the plot lines started in Mina involving the title character, her husband Jonathan, and Arthur--for those who didn't real Dracula (pretty unimaginable), he was engaged to Lucy, Mina's best friend and a victim of Dracula. In Blood to Blood, there's an added twist and tension of Dracula's sister Joanna Tepes coming to London and meeting up with Jack the Ripper himself.

Despite the obvious talent in the execution of this complex story--and really all of the author's work--I nevertheless felt a bit repulsed with this one. When a life becomes about absolutely nothing else but glutting sexual compulsions, a train wreck is inevitable. Both Mina and Arthur are similar in that way, and they de-evolved as characters while their stories moved from Dracula into Mina and finally into this sequel. The only true bright light for me was in the ending given here. (I recognize that fans of erotica might feel differently about that than I do.) Having started in the original, the plot threads carried through all three books were satisfactorily tied up on all fronts by the conclusion of Blood to Blood. For that reason, I recommend reading all three to gain that coveted closure.

Karen Wiesner is an award-winning, multi-genre author of over 150 titles and 16 series.

Visit her website here: https://karenwiesner.weebly.com/

and https://karenwiesner.weebly.com/karens-quill-blog

Find out more about her books and see her art here: http://www.facebook.com/KarenWiesnerAuthor

Visit her publisher here: https://www.writers-exchange.com/Karen-Wiesner/

Changing the Past

I've recently finished the latest book by S. M. Stirling (best known for alternate history SF), a time-travel adventure, TO TURN THE TIDE, first volume in a new series. Partially inspired by L. Sprague DeCamp’s vintage novel LEST DARKNESS FALL (but Stirling's book is better), TO TURN THE TIDE transports a Harvard professor of history and four graduate students to central Europe in 165 A.D., era of the Roman Empire under Marcus Aurelius. They know they've made a one-way trip, since the time machine is stationary instead of a vehicle like the one in H. G. Wells's classic, so they decide to use the literal ton of supplies sent with them as planned by the inventor of the machine (who accidentally fails to come along as he'd meant to). They set out to change history for the better, beginning with simple improvements, e.g, sterile medical procedures and wheelebarrows, and building on their early successes. In this first installment of the series, their innovations consist of “Type A” changes, things the inhabitants of that era and locale can implement with available tools and materials once they’re given the concepts. “Type B” developments, those that require inventing the tools to make the tools to construct the new things, will come later.

In fiction, altering the past in an attempt to improve the future produces a wide range of effects. At one extreme, we have Ray Bradbury's story of a tiny, accidental change with disastrous results, when a visitor to the age of dinosaurs crushes a butterfly, thereby generating a future worse than the one he originally came from (yet unrealistically similar, but, then, it's a short story with no real pretense of scientific rigor). At the other extreme, some of Heinlein's fiction, notably THE DOOR INTO SUMMER, postulates that any alteration you make in the past isn't a real change at all. You're just doing whatever you did in the first place but weren't aware of in hindsight until after you went back and did it. (Is your head spinning yet?) Likewise, in one of the Harry Potter books, the actions of Harry and Hermione when using the time turner simply cause things to happen just as they had all along, previously unknown to the characters. In Diana Gabaldon's "Outlander" series, Claire (the traveler from the 20th century to the mid-18th) and Jamie strive to prevent the 1745 Jacobite rising and Bonnie Prince Charlie's invasion of Scotland. Although not completely powerless, they find their major goals unattainable. After the war unfolds on schedule, culminating in the catastrophic battle of Culloden despite their strenuous efforts to influence the course of events, they realize they can make only minor changes. It's as if the flow of time resists any significant alterations.

Time travel seems to work similarly in Connie Willis's series about mid-21st-century historians from Oxford. The transporting device can't send them anywhere close to a major historical event. If they deliberately or inadvertently aim for a critical nexus point, the traveler is simply bounced to a different nearby location. Thus the timeline corrects itself, smoothing out any ripples the characters create. Or so they believe -- this postulate is tested in the two-volume World War II epic BLACKOUT / ALL CLEAR, in which the historians fear they may have triggered disastrous changes in the original history.

The major theoretical issue with trying to improve the future -- one's own present -- by altering the past is what happens if you succeed. You would have had no reason to go into the past in the first place, and therefore you couldn't have peformed the actions that result / resulted / will or would result in achieving your goal. Many time-travel authors simply ignore this paradox. Some stories work on the premise that the travelers exist in a sort of bubble, in which only they remember both the original timeline and the new one, while everybody else is oblivious that anything has changed. The most logical solution is the outcome Stirling implies: The paradox makes it impossible to reshape one's own original history. Instead, the chrononaut's actions generate a new timeline branching off from the point of intervention. The protagonist of TO TURN THE TIDE can never find out whether that's what happens in the history he and his friends are creating, but the question is moot anyway. In the future they left, every person and thing they knew and loved has almost certainly been wiped out in a nuclear holocaust. Their hope is to spawn a new future without that apocalyptic destruction, even though they'll never know whether they've succeeded.

Although the "branching timelines" model makes the most rigorous sense, I do enjoy stories in which the protagonist achieves positive change by tweaking the past and returns home to enjoy the fruits of his or her efforts.

Margaret L. Carter

Please explore love among the monsters at Carter's Crypt.

Never, Never Say Yes

A couple of weeks ago, a groundhog nibbled my inadequately buried cables, and I lost my landline for more than a week. I thought that there would be a silver lining, in that, with an engaged signal on the line for would-be callers, surely the scammers would give up.

Not so. When my service was restored, my second call (the first was from the cable company to tell me that they'd done their work) was from a caring-sounding someone wanting to know if I can hear her.

Her goal was to record me saying, "Yes".

When does one lower ones guard? A lengthy political survey would be the perfect ruse to trick victims into saying all sorts of useful things, including "Yes".

If informed voters either say "No" to every pollster's question (in which case, pollsters usually end the survey when the answer to whether or not one intends to vote in the November election is no) or the voters hang up on them or block them, we might infer that political poll results might be unusually inaccurate this year.

Cameron Abbott, Rob Pulham, Dadar Ahmadi-Pirshahid, and Adam Asadurian of the cyber law watch blog owned by lawfirm K & L Gates LLP discuss the astonishing perils of scam calls.

https://www.cyberlawwatch.com/2024/07/10/ais-next-frontier-the-new-voice-of-scam-calls/#page=1

In "AI's Next Frontier  The New Voice of Scam Calls", the lawyers discuss recent, frightening innovations to the "Hallo, Grandma" "imposter calls", and also the recent study by QR Code Generator.

In my case, the "Hello, Grandma" calls are way fewer than 33%. I get a lot of calls from sullen foreigners who tell me that they are calling from my TV provider, but they do not know who provides my TV service. I probably talked too much in establishing that!

According to the cyber law watch bloggers, scammers can create voice clones from mere seconds of a recording of a potential victim's family member's voice.

They elaborate. It's a worthwhile two-minute read.

No thanks to AI and autocorrect, scam emails are less easy to recognize by the bad grammar alone. Some neighbors on Next Door have recently suggested that overly polite and lengthy text messages might be a sure sign of a scam in the making.

Apparently, a popular scam on social media sites is where the potential victim offers to sell something second hand. The would-be scammer offers to mail a check. The mailed check arrives and is for a greater amount than the agreed price. The scammer then asks the victim to encash the check and use PayPal or Venmo (or whatever) to quickly return the excess. The scammer pockets the excess, disappears with whatever was "purchased" and meanwhile the original check proves to be a forgery or it simply bounces.

The social media seller loses the sold item, the excess amount returned to the scammer, also banking and overdraft fees, and possibly more.

An oldie but goodie of the anti-scam advice type comes from an EFF blog from last October about the hack of one of the two best-known social DNA testing businesses. In this breach, the scammers wanted to know who in America has even 1% Jewish ancestry. The trouble with that is that one of the business's Jewish ancestry results were an absolute FUBAR (false positives).

The EFF link:  

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/10/what-do-if-youre-concerned-about-23andme-breach

Allegedly, they got in using "credential stuffing" which is where a bad actor takes email addresses, names, and passwords that were exposed in other data breaches and try them out on new platforms, because, of course, people re-use passwords.

Cybercrime Magazine just published an astonishing list of the most recent data breaches up to yesterday (August 10th).

https://cybersecurityventures.com/intrusion-daily-cyber-threat-alert/

 

Bluefin has more details on other 2024 breaches and leaks.

https://www.bluefin.com/bluefin-news/biggest-data-breaches-year-2024/

"Credential Stuffing" is a concept that should concern anyone who has done business with Intel, AT&T, Corewell Health, McLaren Health, ADT, Verizon, Bank of America, Dell, Microsoft, Ticketmaster, and many more as revealed by Bluefin and Cybercrime Magazine.

 All the best,

 Rowena Cherry 

 SPACE SNARK™ 

https://www.spacesnark.com/

 

 

Karen S. Wiesner {Put This One on Your TBR List} Book Review: Murtagh, Book 1: The World of Eragon by Christopher Paolini

{Put This One on Your TBR List}

Book Review: Murtagh, Book 1: The World of Eragon

by Christopher Paolini

by Karen S. Wiesner

Though I bought a hardcover copy of Murtagh, the first in Christopher Paolini's spinoff series The World of Eragon, I didn't actually read it. I also bought an audioCD edition at the same time as the purchase of the book, knowing from previous experiences with The Inheritance Cycle that I was likely to have trouble digesting another nearly 700-page tome.

Armed with my 2023 New Year's vow to incorporate audiobooks into my reading repertoire when it came to overwhelmingly large books that I know I'd like if they weren't "just too big to be believed" (read the article I wrote "Combating Big Book Overwhelm with Audiobooks" on the Alien Romances Blog in January 2023 here: https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2024/01/karen-s-wiesner-combating-big-book.html), I managed to get through the weighty Books 1-4 of The Inheritance Cycle (published between 2001 and 2011) within the first month and a half of the year. Shunning the scolding sense that I was cheating by listening to the book instead of reading it myself, I actually completed the series for the first time without such immense brain fog I couldn't have roused myself from my stupor and told you what any of them were about, beyond the basics. This time, I was clear on the plots of each installment of the series.

Murtagh was Eragon's half-brother; the two shared the same mother. Having acted under the thrall of the villain in The Inheritance Cycle Galbatorix most of his life, Murtagh nevertheless seemed to be helping Eragon for part of the series.                        

{{{spoiler}}}}                    

Inevitably he returned to his master. Hating Murtagh wasn't possible. Murtagh's backstory and the upbringing you're given glimpses of in his dialogue made you sympathize with him, even if you couldn't really root for him in the previous series.

Murtagh is set about a year after the original series ended (and directly after the events of the story collection The Fork, The Witch, and the Worm). With Galbatorix and his evil plans foiled by Eragon and his allies and the death of the villain assured with Murtagh's own hand involved in the deed, Murtagh and his dragon Thorn are nevertheless forced into exile. Though the two weren't given a choice about serving their evil master, there's not really a place in this brave new world Eragon and the heroes of Alagaësia are forging for these two loveable rogues. Even as they're traveling the outskirts of society, trying to survive and lay low, they hear the rumblings of a new evil rising with a stench of brimstone on the wind. A mysterious witch who's far from what she seems to be has powers and plans that could plunge the land into yet another evil scheme.

Murtagh was definitely one of the most interesting characters in The Inheritance Cycle, so it seems fitting that he and his dragon become the focus of the first in Paolini's new outcropping from the original series. The story started very slowly and continued on that rather monotonous course for a long time with bouts of excitement cropping up here and there. One thing I do have to say is that I couldn't understand why Murtagh did half of the things he did. As a Dragon Rider, even an outcast one, maybe he just had an overinflated sense of himself and his abilities, along with those of his dragon. When he ventured into the witch's realm, I couldn't help thinking, Are you completely stupid? I knew what was going to happen and that is what happened. Again, maybe he was just too cocky and believed he and Thorn were stronger than the witch Bachel was.

Another reason occurred to me for his seeming foolishness that could be argued. Murtagh was never evil. He was a puppet, coerced into service by a monster--and he becomes the same in this particular story, though not permanently. Above all, it becomes clear that, if Murtagh had had a different upbringing--say, one similar to his half-brother Eragon--his life would have been vastly different. He wasn't given choices, opportunities, freedom, care or trust. Still, it's not a stretch to believe that what Murtagh wanted most of all was to be a hero and to gain redemption. How the author back-weaved all the years of Murtagh's life into this story make that a certainty. In that way, his questionable actions in this story are plausible and even justified. To gain universal acceptance after his collusion with Galbatorix, atonement in the form of self-sacrifice in order to thwart a growing threat to the land is required of him. Additionally, in Inheritance, Book 4: The Inheritance Cycle, there was obviously a spark of attraction between Murtagh and Nasuada, the leader of the Varden, that remained unrequited at the end of that series. Murtagh continues to think and pine for her in this story, giving the reader hope that his yearning might be fulfilled.

Murtagh ends at a point where you really don't know what will ultimately happen to the rogue Dragon Rider. As the author says in the afterward of the book, "…although Murtagh acts as a stand-alone entry into this world, you will have no doubt noticed that certain storylines are far from concluded." He also said that revisiting the characters in this world was like coming home after being away for a long time. I think it's assured we'll be seeing more books set in Alagaësia under the "World of Eragon" umbrella, though it's unclear whether it'll be from Murtagh's point of view and/or others.

Karen Wiesner is an award-winning, multi-genre author of over 150 titles and 16 series.

Visit her website here: https://karenwiesner.weebly.com/

and https://karenwiesner.weebly.com/karens-quill-blog

Find out more about her books and see her art here: http://www.facebook.com/KarenWiesnerAuthor

Visit her publisher here: https://www.writers-exchange.com/Karen-Wiesner/

A Plant-Animal Hybrid?

Here's a Wikipedia entry about the emerald green sea slug, a mollusc living in marshes, pools, and shallow creeks, which feeds on algae and incorporates their chloroplasts into its own body. It thereby not only turns green but gains the ability to nourish itself with sunlight:

Elysia Chlorotica

The slug can "capture energy directly from light, as most plants do, through the process of photosynthesis." Once it has established a stable population of chloroplasts, this creature has "been known to be able to use photosynthesis for up to a year after only a few feedings." Some research suggests that a slug may "possess photosynthesis-supporting genes within its own nuclear genome."

An article discussing its biology in less technical language:

The Green Sea Slug Steals Photosynthesizing Power from Algae

The caption on that page declares the emerald green sea slug a true "plant-animal hybrid."

Could a human being -- maybe a superhero mutant -- live on light by photosynthesis, like a tree? I've read this wouldn't be physiologically feasible because that lifestyle requires a mainly stationary existence of standing around exposing a large amount of surface area to the sun for many hours per day. Elysia Chlorotica, however, seems to live like an animal and yet derive nourishment from the sun. Suppose a larger creature with intelligence comparable to ours could do that? Wouldn't that make a cool alien species?

Margaret L. Carter

Please explore love among the monsters at Carter's Crypt.

The Mot Juste. Not

"Mot Juste" is French for "the right word". The antonym might be "Mal a propos", which translates as "inappropriate". 

One of the most famous fictional characters who routinely chose the inappropriate word was Mrs. Malaprop in "The Rivals" by Sheridan. Mrs. Malaprop became the eponym for the malapropism, or use of the wrong word.

https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2016/05/23/thirty-malapropisms/

Mrs. Malaprop wasn't the first character in a play to use the wrong word to unintentional comic effect. Before her, there was Shakespeare's policeman Dogberry in "Much Ado About Nothing", with his Dogberryisms.

https://www.rd.com/article/malapropism-examples/

I infer that we prefer not to talk about Dogberryism because of the ugliness of "y" followed by "i". It's no more difficult to pronounce than "skiing", except there are five syllables. It's a pity, because Dogberry's report about "auspicious characters" (suspicious) is much less forced than Mrs. Malaprop's "allegories" (alligators) on the banks of the Nile.

Last week, an immigrant who was cutting my lawn ripped an inconvenient branch off my prized sumac tree. I protested. He did not understand me, because he does not speak English, so he whipped out his "smart" phone, called up a well known search engine's translate application, and called me a Sex Worker while smiling politely.

Giving him the benefit of the doubt, I infer that something --a great deal-- was lost in translation. 

I assume, but do not know, that it is not English language majors who go in for coding. Using a translation app is rather like playing Chinese Whispers. I wonder whether we still call the game by that name. It might not be politically correct! "Russian Scandal" isn't much better.

https://experientialspeaking.co.uk/chinese-whispers/

When I was a teacher at a British boarding school, we escorted the students to church every Sunday, and the vicar was young, lanky and inexperienced. One sermon, he decided to play Chinese Whipers with the girls. Apparently, the message began as "I had brown blancmange for breakfast", but by the time it got to the middle of the fifth pew, it had become an inappropriately braggadocious "I have a very long one".

Once one has eponyms on one's radar, they are all over the place. Braggadocio was a character in Spenser's "The Faerie Queene".

There's a drip, drip, drip of malapropisms and homophones on television and in social media that makes us all dumber, or angier, or both.

Is a politician with quick reactions to difficult questions from the press "adapt" or "adept"? How should AI know? Both are words.

It is succinct to fill out a form? 

Does the heroic Navy seal keep his deadly little knife strapped to his lower leg in a sheaf or a sheath?

Does a terrorist have the whereabouts, or the wherewithal to carry out an attack?

Did the disciples on The Chosen have a leap of faith or a leave of faith?

Do Americans hold their Presidential erections in November every fourth year?

On that low note, I will conclude.

All the best,

Rowena Cherry

Karen S. Wiesner {Put This One on Your TBR List} Book Review: The Dead House by Dawn Kurtagich

{Put This One on Your TBR List}

Book Review: The Dead House by Dawn Kurtagich

by Karen S. Wiesner

It's not often that the definition of a book gets shattered beyond all recognition, becoming something so radically and mind-blowingly different that some might even question whether it actually is, in fact, a book. I think the last time this happened was with electronic books (contrary to popular opinion, ebooks were not introduced by Stephen King's 2000 ebook release of Riding the Bullet, but decades prior to that by countless e-publishers and e-authors that the world wasn't yet ready to accept). I would like to claim that Dawn Kurtagich's books may be the next contender for something wholly new, but in actuality, it's just an innovative approach to a very old form of writing called "epistolary", in which a narrative is arranged in a series of letters or other documents. Some fiction examples that everyone knows include Frankenstein and Dracula. However, I believe Kurtagich's books use an extreme form of this, one that has absolutely no main character, nor an omniscient narrator, in control of the story.

The Dead House was published in 2015 and tells the tale of a teenage girl suffering from Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID). Two decades after a fire claimed the lives of three students, a diary is discovered in the ruins of Elmbridge High. Another student disappeared that night--the owner of the diary. The main suspect of the crime and the "main character" (if it can even be said there is one in this book) is Carly Johnson by day, Kaitlyn by night. The two leave each other notes--mainly in a diary--and they lead very separate lives. Following the suspicious death of the parents, the teenager was put in a psychiatric hospital which was also a boarding school for troubled youth. The "dead house" referred to in the title is this teenager's mind--the space she and her alter ego share and haunt.

As we discussed, if Kurtagich's books had to be categorized, they'd probably be called epistolary novels, but they're unlike any other books I've ever read, including the two popular examples I cited in the first paragraph. I believe this author's stories are much more similar to DK (Dorling Kindersley Limited) books, a British publisher that specializes in illustrated reference guides for adults and children, available in hardback, paperback, and ebooks. I can't say for sure if DK was the first to pursue their unique book concepts, and that's a whole different discussion I won't bother getting into here. But, if you visit https://www.dk.com, you'll be able to preview some of their many offerings and this comparison I'm making will be more easily understood.

Most of DK's material falls into the nonfiction category, but there are some selections with the focus on existing fiction as well (I discovered one for R.A. Salvatore's The Legend of Drizzt {Dungeons & Dragons}!). In all of DK's works, they're chock full of information, illustrations, photographs, diagrams, boxes, sidebars, and whatnot. You almost never know where to let your attention focus first on any given page, let alone where to go from there. Each book is a feast and an extravaganza for the eyes and the mind. There's so much to view, so much to read, so much to do on each page. This marvel is almost like a work of art in itself, or like an uninhibited and uncontained stream of consciousness about a particular topic. That said, every single, busy, barely-any-white-space page is equally overwhelming, exhausting, and very difficult to process for longer than a handful of minutes at a time. More than anything else, Kurtagich's fiction novels are closer to these than to any other type of book form.

I bought two of the author's books from a used bookstore on the basis of the genre (horror), the intriguing back cover blurbs, and the compelling covers, especially the one on the first edition of The Dead House. What a gorgeous cover. But this beauty isn't skin deep. This is truly one of the most beautiful books I've ever seen--outside, and on every single page contained within the cover leaves. I admit, I didn't peek inside the books while at the bookstore. It was several weeks after my purchase that I finally opened the pages. I literally had no idea what I was in for, and I was flabbergasted almost from the very first page. This was not what I was expecting. This story is told using visuals all throughout, including psychiatrist reports, witness testimonials, video footage stills and transcripts, diary entries, sticky notes, police interviews, emails, random quotes from poems, literature, and songs, newspaper articles, photographs, drawings, and doodles. Each of these has a different look. The reader has no idea what to expect from one page to the next. Even as I found it visually stunning, I was instantly intimidated. Initially, there was a newspaper article--in the form of what looked like an actual newspaper. This was followed by two witness accounts separated by a scribbled poem that was above a picture of a note taped to the wall. Next was the first diary entry that's typed but portions have been crossed out and underlined for emphasis. That was just the beginning. Four hundred plus pages of differing media entries are in this book.

On her website, the author claimed it took her eight months to write this novel, but I'm stunned at how that could be possible, considering the sheer amount of work it would have been to not only write, revise, and polish but to format all this media imagery, etc. as well as constructing a logical sequence for arranging the nightmare events contained within the pages. I'm in awe of the massive undertaking involved. Right upfront, the reader is told what already happened--there was a fire, deaths, and the authorities have a suspect who's missing. Given that, in order to tell this tragedy, the author had to unfold the events in a logical sequence in the myriad different means she choose to convey them and all had to make sense of the mess. It's hard to imagine it only took eight months to do all that. This is far from a standard, straightforward novel that conceivably (if my personal experience has any bearing) could have taken a month or so to write chronologically without all the bells and whistles we're given here.

The one thing Kurtagich did not do is tell any part of this in the normal way a story is imparted. The most off-putting thing about this account, to me, was how it was laid out. There's a focus to the narration--Carly/Kaitlyn, yes--but there is no point-of-view (POV) main character. In fact, there are no POV characters at all, in terms of someone driving a particular scene. There aren't really any scenes, as such. I can't really describe to you how disconcerting all this was for me. In every book I read or write, I begin in the head of a POV character who sets the scene and tells one piece of the story at a time, scene by scene. I couldn't do that here. Everything I learned was in diary entries, psychiatrist reports, police or newspaper accounts, and so on. The setting is conveyed in the same way. Secondary characters are introduced through those means. Every part of this account was constructed in a fashion that defied imagining, and I couldn't find a place to settle and dig in. Imagine a scrapbook stuffed full of an erratic compilation of…well, scraps…and you'll understand my disorientation. Each time I tried to get my bearings, I was jarred out of the situation (not out of the story, per se, since it never felt like a linear, cohesive book to me at any point) by being thrust from one page to the next into another type of media.

Maybe I shouldn't be surprised by this, after reading up on the author on her website and in interviews. She declares that by the age of 18, she'd been to 15 schools across two continents, living on a mission, the bush, in city and desert. As a child, she was terrified by books because "words didn't make sense. Sentences moved on the page…" Her book-loving mother forced her to read every day, something the author hated, but, at the age of 12, after reading K.A. Applegate's Animorphs, the author had a breakthrough and monster became magic, walls windows, and dead-ends doors. She stepped through, and three of her first four novels were pre-empted (in other words, the publisher wanted it bad and offered an amount so lucrative, the book never went to auction with other publishers who might have also been interested in purchasing it).

While generally classified as a young adult psychological horror suspense novel and the focus is on teenagers, I wouldn't have allowed my young adult to read this deeply unsettling book while growing up. The recommendation is those under 15 years of age absolutely shouldn't read it, but I would up that limit to 18 at least or older. Honestly, I'm not sure I, an adult, was prepared for what awaited me within these pages. This is a disturbing account--creepy, chilling, dark, twisting, horrifying, manipulative, shocking, harrowing, gruesome and gory, insane, obsessive, and haunting. All this and more describe the icy plunge into a black world so upended, there's no way to leave it unchanged. You walk away, looking back over your shoulder in fear, feeling you've been touched by pure evil with no way to outrun it forever let alone wash it off.

I wanted to love The Dead House, or I wanted to hate it, but I couldn't really do either. There's something seriously cool and mind-blowing about the whole thing. Often as I tried to get through it, I thought maybe it would just be so much better presented in a whole different way than as a book--maybe a movie (Lime Productions has optioned it for television), a videogame, or even a VR technology experience. I also wondered if I was just too old and set in my ways when it comes to what a book is and should be and how it should be written and presented. I actually suspect that those much younger than I am, much more modern and "new-fashioned", would find this a compelling way to take in a story. So maybe it's simply not for those of my generation, who expect a story to be a narrative in standard writing form with POV characters you can actually get inside the heads of, follow around, and see the world in a different way through them.

I want to recommend Kurtagich's books, but her style is not for the faint of heart, nor is her method of madness in writing form for every reader. I highly recommend that anyone who's at least intrigued enough to find out more about her books to preview The Dead House at Amazon. If you don't like what you see there, you probably aren't the right audience for it. If you do like the sample, give the novel a shot. You might discover something new and exciting from this prolific author.

Ultimately, I have to agree at least in theory with SciFiNow, which said of The Dead House, "As a literary experiment, it's interesting; as a story, it's too depressing to enjoy." I would revise that to say, "As a literary experiment, it's interesting; as a story, it's too unconventional, too difficult and overwhelming to follow in the form it's presented."

For those interested, there's a sequel companion novella called "Naida" (a secondary character in the original work). I also read And the Trees Crept In by the author, and it's presented in a similar way as The Dead House, but not quite as extreme in its radical form. I suspect this will be true of all the author's works.

Karen Wiesner is an award-winning, multi-genre author of over 150 titles and 16 series.

Visit her website here: https://karenwiesner.weebly.com/

and https://karenwiesner.weebly.com/karens-quill-blog 

Find out more about her books and see her art here: http://www.facebook.com/KarenWiesnerAuthor 

Visit her publisher here: https://www.writers-exchange.com/Karen-Wiesner/