![]() ![]() Vella reveals her hatred for guns because her husband was killed by a gun. Apollo learns that the town bully, Lacerta, has been taking "tribute" for nearly 10 yahrens, leaving only enough ovines (cattle) for a family to live on no one has stopped him because of his laser-toting henchman, " Red-Eye".With no one having the heart to tell Boxey that his father is missing, Starbuck and Boomer keep him occupied in the Officers Quarters with the pilots, playing pyramid and drinking fruit juice.Vella tells Apollo to leave immediately, but since his Viper is out of fuel, Vella's second option is to hide the Viper and Apollo. ![]() ![]()
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![]() ![]() But when her oldest sister disappears again, it's as if history is repeating itself. Now 10 years later, Iris just wants to leave it all behind and move on with her life. ![]() When Iris Hollow was seven years old, she and her sisters disappeared for a month, only to reappear with no memories of where they've been or what had happened to them. It'll set you free, right?"Calling all fans of dark fairy tales. The closer Iris gets to the truth, the closer she comes to understanding that the answer is dark and dangerous – and that Grey has been keeping a terrible secret from her for years. But when her eldest sister, Grey, goes missing under suspicious circumstances, Iris learns just how weird her life can get: horned men start shadowing her, a corpse falls out of her sister’s ceiling, and ugly, impossible memories start to twist their way to the forefront of her mind.Īs Iris retraces Grey’s last known footsteps and follows the increasingly bizarre trail of breadcrumbs she left behind, it becomes apparent that the only way to save her sister is to decipher the mystery of what happened to them as children. Iris has spent most of her teenage years trying to avoid the weirdness that sticks to her like tar. Something happened to her and her two older sisters when they were children, something they can’t quite remember but that left each of them with an identical half-moon scar at the base of their throats. Seventeen-year-old Iris Hollow has always been strange. ![]() ![]() ![]() It’s a critical look at the impact the human ego has had on the environment and the cost we’ll leave to future inhabitants, human or otherwise, to pay. It’s less a story about the end of the world as we know it, as it is a call to liberate ourselves from our own domestication, much like that which S.T. ![]() Read Full Review >īuxton’s story about the collapse of mankind.though based around the extinction of man is not your average zombie story. Hollow Kingdom is a surprising, funny, genre-bending novel, an environmentalist parable crossed with an epic adventure story, difficult to describe and even more difficult to put down. S.T.'s relationship with Dennis achieves pathos and an incredibly earned emotional denouement that I would have never predicted at the start of the novel. At the heart of the novel is an entertaining adventure story. What makes Hollow Kingdom special is the ease with which Buxton offsets heavy themes with humor. S.T.'s witty commentary is a highlight of the book, though so frequently profane that it resists quotation. The reader will need to possess an appreciation-or, at least, a tolerance-for copious animal puns. ![]() If this all sounds very weighty, it's important to emphasize that Hollow Kingdom is an extremely funny, occasionally silly book. In its broadest strokes, Hollow Kingdom is an environmentalist parable. Kira Jane Buxton's debut, Hollow Kingdom, offers a unique, oddly hopeful perspective on the end of human civilization. ![]() ![]() ![]() Despite their obvious connection, April insists they've just been putting on an act. ![]() When Mitch's family shows up unexpectedly, April pretends to be Mitch's girlfriend again.something that doesn't feel so fake anymore. But when the weekend ends, so must their fake relationship.Īs summer begins, Faire returns to Willow Creek, and April volunteers for the first time. ![]() April reluctantly agrees, but when dinner turns into a weekend trip, it becomes hard to tell what's real and what's been just for show. While he agrees to help April, he needs a favor too: she'll pretend to be his girlfriend at an upcoming family dinner, so that he can avoid the lectures about settling down and having a more "serious" career than high school coach and gym teacher. Mitch Malone is known for being the life of every party, but mostly for the attire he wears to the local Renaissance Faire-a kilt (and not much else) that shows off his muscled form to perfection. ![]() On the verge of being an empty nester, she's decided to move on from her quaint little town, and asks her friend Mitch for his help with some home improvement projects to get her house ready to sell. Single mother April Parker has lived in Willow Creek for twelve years with a wall around her heart. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review. ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() But Candace is carrying a secret she knows Bob will exploit. They're traveling to a place called the Facility, where, Bob promises, they will have everything they need to start society anew. Enter a group of survivors, led by the power-hungry IT tech Bob. Soon entirely alone, still unfevered, she photographs the eerie, abandoned city as the anonymous blogger NY Ghost.Ĭandace won't be able to make it on her own forever, though. Her bosses enlist her as part of a dwindling skeleton crew with a big end-date payoff. So Candace barely notices when a plague of biblical proportions sweeps New York. She's content just to carry on: She goes to work, troubleshoots the teen-targeted Gemstone Bible, watches movies in a Greenpoint basement with her boyfriend. With the recent passing of her Chinese immigrant parents, she's had her fill of uncertainty. ![]() Maybe it's the end of the world, but not for Candace Chen, a millennial, first-generation American and office drone meandering her way into adulthood in Ling Ma's offbeat, wryly funny, apocalyptic satire, Severance.Ĭandace Chen, a millennial drone self-sequestered in a Manhattan office tower, is devoted to routine. ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() Sadly for me, I continue to research the lives of the Baudelaire orphans, but your time might be filled with something more palatable. I also shouldn’t mention the features of the interactive CD, which include: ![]() It would be best if I didn’t mention any of the unnerving ingredients of this story, particularly, an unruly crowd, a wooden plank, and Chabo the Wolf Baby. ![]() The word carnivorous means meat eating and this carnivorous volume contains such a distressing story that consuming any of its contents would be far more stomach-turning than even the most imbalanced meal. With millions of readers worldwide, and the Baudelaire’s fate turning from unpleasant to unseemly, it is clear that Lemony Snicket has taken nearly all the fun out of children’s books. In fact, in this appalling ninth installment in Lemony Snicket's serial, the siblings must confront a terrible lie, an. For the Baudelaire orphans, their time at a carnival turns out to be yet another episode in a now unbearable series of unfortunate events. In fact, in this appalling ninth installment in Lemony Snicket’s serial, the siblings must confront a terrible lie, a caravan, and Chabo the wolf baby. A carnival is a place for good family fun, as long as one has a family, that is. For the Baudelaire orphans, their time at the carnival turns out to be yet another episode in a now unbearable series of unfortunate events. NOW A NETFLIX ORIGINAL SERIESEverybody loves a carnival! Who can fail to delight in the colourful people, the unworldly spectacle, the fabulous freaks?Ī carnival is a place for good family fun-as long as one has a family, that is. ![]() ![]() (Alas, a digitally de-aged Jack Nicholson doesn’t turn up.) But mainly it’s because the plot which blossoms in Doctor Sleep grows from the seeds planted four decades ago. ![]() Partly that’s because it is so full of references to its illustrious predecessor, from the hexagonal-patterned carpet to the fact that one character’s house number happens to be 1980. It doesn’t have Kubrick’s masterly control of style and atmosphere, either – but what does? All the same, Doctor Sleep doesn’t feel like a betrayal of The Shining. The new film, adapted by writer-director Mike Flanagan from King’s own novel, is an adventure that spans the US and covers almost 40 years. Kubrick’s film, released in 1980, was a mysterious fever dream set in one hotel over one winter. ![]() It is different from The Shining in nearly every way. But its greatest achievement is that it makes The Shining seem like a prequel – a tantalising glimpse of a richer and more substantial narrative. Credible in its characterisation, rich in mythological detail, and touchingly sincere in its treatment of alcoholism and trauma, the film is impressive in all sorts of ways. But Doctor Sleep, a belated sequel to The Shining, wants viewers to care about the boy’s fate – and, surprisingly, it succeeds. He was one of the film’s least engaging characters, ranking somewhere between the ghostly twins and the withered hag in the bathtub. Not many people will have come away from Stanley Kubrick’s classic Stephen King adaptation, The Shining, with a burning desire to know what happened to the boy in the story. ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() Her moral nihilism and thus her murders are a way of life-the only way of life she has ever known.īut when a letter appears in the mailbox that will have the power to topple Kit’s convictions as perfectly as she commits her murders, she must make a decision: follow the only rules she has ever known, or challenge Rule One, and go from there. Every letter she receives begins with “Dear Killer,” and every time Kit murders, she leaves a letter with the dead body. The letters and cash that come to her via a secret mailbox are not a game choosing who to kill is not an impulse decision. Kit takes her role as London’s notorious “Perfect Killer” seriously. The first blow should be the last, if at all possible. Rule Three-Fight using your legs whenever possible, because they’re the strongest part of your body. Rule One-Nothing is right, nothing is wrong. Her trademark? She leaves the letter requesting she kill said victim, but no evidence is left otherwise to indicate her or the letter’s author as the killer. Katherine Ewell’s Dear Killer (which I read as an ARC) is about a teenage girl trained to be a hired serial killer. ![]() ![]() ![]() Sarah Epstein has a keen eye for family dynamics and the small moments of disillusionment with adults that occur throughout childhood. That said, the character drama that the mystery frames is top-notch. Keen readers of mystery novels who are looking to solve the central puzzle may find the plotting of this debut YA thriller a touch heavy on the foreshadowing, and the reveal itself a little flat. And Tash, having come to accept that her imaginary friend was never real, is beginning to see him again. Mallory, traumatised and mute, has no recollection of the week she went missing. Nine years later, the Fishers have returned to Port Bellamy, stirring up old memories and unanswered questions. Yet nobody would believe her account of the event-that Mallory was abducted by Tash's imaginary friend Sparrow. ![]() As a child, Tash Carmody witnessed the kidnapping of Mallory Fisher. ![]() ![]() I love how River thawed from being a grumpy and uptight scientist who is all about his work, to such a sweet man to both Jess and Juno. I like how Jess and River started out being skeptical but eventually warmed up to each other. It depicted a lot of true-to-life scenarios that single parents go through. I thought that their relationship was very mature and realistic as they both try to balance their relationship, career and other personal obligations. I love the chemistry between Jess and River. This book was such a lovely, heartfelt and charming read. As their emotions toward each other grow, they now wonder if science can truly predict love. ![]() The company thinks that this is a great opportunity for marketing, so GeneticAlly then offers to pay Jess to spend time with River to get to know him and ultimately prove that their algorithm works. Jess is dubious at first and is convinced that it’s not possible for her to be compatible with the grumpy and uptight Dr. When Jess received her results, she was astounded to find out that she matched 98% to none other than the founder, River. With both Jess & Fizzy’s curiosities piqued, they both signed up and sent in their DNA samples. River Peña, who is a founder of a genetic-based matchmaking company, GeneticAlly. She typically hangs out at a local coffee shop with her best friend Fizzy, who is a romance author. ![]() Jess is a freelance statistician and a single mom to seven year old Juno. ![]() Christina Hobbs (R) and Lauren Billings (L), authors of The Soulmate Equation ![]() |