its_kievan's reviews
183 reviews

A fun little horror novella, but unfortunately having already seen

The Fall of the House of Usher

and

The Last of Us

I’d figured the whole plot out about fifty pages in.

Very complicated feelings about this one. Spoilers ahead.

Obviously, reviewers are right to point out that a fair chunk of the horror lies in the sexual abuse of two women, not to mention the implication that the "reason" someone is a lesbian is either they are being possessed by a pervert ghost or they were molested as a kid. No matter when the book was written, that's still deeply uncomfortable in a way that goes far beyond the limits of a horror author trying to freak you out. If someone put down Hell House for that reason, that is completely fair enough.

However, I still though the book was a great example of haunted house horror, and I really enjoyed it. Is that hypocritical, or insensitive? Maybe. But the fact is that part of when makes horror so fascinating is its ability to evoke visceral reactions from people even when they know it's all made up. The horror in Hell House feels real. It's not upside-down crosses and some dopey Satan lookalike. It's a house utterly besmirched by debauchery, by elites with no desires beyond their own hedonism. It's the hateful, vile echoes of those elites reaching down through the years to torture others for no reason beyond the simple fact they can. It's unpleasant. And, more impressively, it's a good read. You'd be amazed how hard it is to find an author who can manage both.

Is it problematic, in a way that can't be excused just by pointing out that a pervert murder ghost from the 1920s probably isn't very PC? Absolutely. And again, I firmly believe that if these topics are something you don't want to read about, then you shouldn't have to apologise for that. But, if you are comfortable looking past that, you will find an excellent haunted house novel that rivals even Haunting of Hill House - if not in writing quality, than at least in sheer skin-crawling unease.

Hm. Not really sure where I landed with this one. A fun little read before bedtime. I will say, Kiernan did definitely commit to being really fucking weird, and that's always fun to see.

Disappointing, because I really wanted to like this one. There's a lot of potential here - from the postwar New England gothic-ish setting to the idea of recasting Lovecraft's (famously racist) mythos as a condemnation of human intolerance - but Emrys never really does anything with it. The writing was often confusing, and characters seemed to lack, well, character. The setting felt very vague, trapped in a weird in-between space where magic was widely known to be real but also completely hidden and ignored. Even the portrayals of discriminiation, the Big Message of the book as far as I could tell, felt perfunctory. I was just really hoping for something more than I got.

Definitely needed a bit of trimming, but Tchaikovsky has created an absolutely fascinating world with a keen eye for characterisation. Fantasy writers love a revolution, but I've never seen anyone do it right until now. Deserves a better rating, frankly - the 3.5 stars say more about where I was at when I read this than about the book itself. I have another Tchaikovsky book on my shelf and I can't wait to read it at a better time.

Definitely among the weakest of the Discworld books, but it’s also one of the earliest so fair enough. I wish Coin had been given a bit more space on the page, he could have been a really fascinating character. I’ll always have a soft spot for Rincewind though.

It’s David Mitchell, so it’s very funny, surprisingly informative, and probably could have used another round of editing.

Deeply underwhelming. Lacks the character depth of Death on the Nile or Murder on the Orient Express - let alone the masterpiece that is And Then There Were None - and without that there wasn’t really anything to carry me through to the ending. An ending which was unexpected, sure, but felt redundant and anticlimactic. Christie’s writing is still good, and there’s something I find so fascinating about the little slice of mid century English country life that she portrays, but this might be the last one of her books I try for a while. At least Poirot wasn’t too annoying in this one.

Chose not to rate this because it took me over a year to read and I was taking notes the whole time.

Crazy book. So funny that it’s considered a foundational text of political philosophy when so much of it is Socrates/Plato saying “obviously we all know that the human soul has three parts so the ideal city should have three groups” and Glaucon or whoever is like so true bestie.

Still a fascinating book to read, despite the frequent unhinged leaps of logic. The actual politics part of it was much more tangential than I was expecting: he’s not trying to describe the perfect city, he’s explaining how the perfect city would arise from the philosophical framework he’s created. The city itself is deeply bizarre, devoid of most art and poetry and guarded by a warrior caste raised from birth on propaganda. I definitely don’t agree with Plato’s politics or the philosophy underpinning them, but I can see why this is the book for so many other philosophers.

Promises a straightforward, easy-to-digest overview of the English Civil Wars, and provides exactly that (albeit with a bit of clunky language).