Read Books This will provide a list of the books I've read with a brief review. Users are blocked, contact me for access. I welcome discussions, but I'm tired of spam.

This is a rather dark Batman tale with the expected gothic overtones. The artwork by Klaus Janson does reflect the spirit well, but the story does not. The characters are a bit flat and the story a bit predictable.

Although certain liberties are acceptable with superhero stories, this story delves too far into the supernatural and feels out of place with the Batman cannon. It was not a satisfying read.

Dracula is well known, I found some of the differences between movies, common myth, and the book of interest. He isn’t quite as fearsome in this version. I think a lot of the issue is the dating of the book. A lot of what Bram Stoker does serves to reduce the horror. An example is the early introduction by watching him scale a castle. His behavior wasn’t consistent with his abilities.

Next is the structure of the book. It is told as a series of diary entries with the addition of a few letters. These come from several people, yet they are all told in the same voice with similar types of content and style. Each person has recorded dialog verbatim, even to the point of the awkward working and spelling of people of different cultures and backgrounds. It felt very unnatural.

Abraham Van Helsing seemed over the top. He has all the answers, he’s encountered vampires before, but his background isn’t adequately explained. He is overly secretive for a matter as grave as this, and parcels out information only sparingly.

The story, itself, could be brought up-to-date. For instance, instead of starting in Romania, I would have started in England with the arrival of the boat whose crew was dead. It could have started by taking the form of an investigation. There were some interesting events early in the book, intrigue around Harker’s apparent imprisonment, his interaction with the other vampires. This could be updated by introducing another victim, probably replacing Harker, and another plot thread in England.

Overall, the book fell short of my expectations. I felt no horror, and felt that Dracula didn’t present himself well. Coupled with the overburdened dialog of the stereotypical Victorian dialog made it slow at times and difficult to accept when belittling women or other minorities. The climax came a bit suddenly and was too abrupt. A rewrite could do wonders for the book, it is a good story.

Although Gregory Maguire has written interesting stories around Oz, this isn’t one of them. The cowardly lion seems to have some potential, but it just isn’t met. He wanders through the story passively reacting to everything around him and not learning from his experiences. The author seems to recognize this shortcoming and suggests some growth in the last chapter, but it was too little and too late to save the story.

Much of the story is spent exchanging stories with Mother Yackle, who is a much more interesting character than Sir Brrr, the Cowardly Lion. He was doing some investigation for the wizard, and spends much of the book with her, recanting his stories in exchange for information.

The first two books in the series are worth reading, but stop there.

What if gods walked the Earth as they did in ancient tales? Neil Gaiman answers that question in his own way, this story assumes that all gods from all pantheons are real, but not quite in the way you might expect. They have their abilities, and we discover some weaknesses.

The book starts off slowly, as the protagonist, Shadow, seems to flow randomly from event to event and place to place. Wednesday seems to be guiding the story, but the reader gets very little information about what’s going on, except that a war is looming.

There are a number of sex scenes early in the book that feel extraneous, and a bit over the top. I think the book would have been better without them.

There are a lot of dream sequences that seemed important. Some of the symbolism seemed to indicate changes in Shadow’s life. Many of the dreams just felt random.

The writing is good, it holds your attention. The second half of the book definitely picks up as you begin to understand what is happening. If the whole book were like the second half, I would recommend it, as it is, it is good, but difficult to get through in the beginning.