Tag Archives: supernatural

Early Review: The Black Isle

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The Black Isle by Sandi Tan (pub date 8/7/12)

“All my life, people have tried to erase me, in big ways and small, publicly and privately, thoughtlessly and with supreme, awe-inspiring malevolence.  All my life.  But I refuse to let them win.  They will not wipe me out.  I will not become a ghost.”

From a new voice in fiction comes this epic debut about the ghosts (both figurative and literal) that haunt our lives.  When I read the description in “Publisher’s Weekly,” I knew this would be both a strange and interesting story.

The Black Isle is a coming-of-age story, both for the protagonist and the island she lives on.  Ling is a Chinese girl born in 1920s Shanghai.  Those she and her twin brother Li live a life of privilege, they are often neglected by their parents.  Ling and Li are inseparable, until a strange event on their seventh birthday causes a rift in their relationship.  After this event, Ling starts to see ghosts everywhere she goes.  She would come to find this both a gift and a curse.

When their father loses his job as a professor, their mother demands that he leave China to find work, and that he take Ling and Li with them.  The trio travels to the Black Isle, a place filled with poor immigrants, jungle, and more ghosts.  Ling’s life journey takes her from working on a rubber plantation, to falling in love, to being forced into a pseudo marriage with a cruel Japanese military officer during the island’s occupation.  She changes her name to Cassandra, which is fitting since the Cassandra of Greek mythology had the gift (and curse) of prophecy.

Cassandra continues to see ghosts all throughout her many trials, and her relationship with these ghosts changes as she gets older.  As a child, she is not afraid of them and accepts them as part of her life.  As an adult, she learns how to channel their power and manipulate them…at great cost.  As an old woman, she fears becoming a ghost herself.  As the story progresses, the ghosts become a symbol of the island’s past.  Cassandra’s friend Kenneth, who becomes the Prime Minister of the island, says he wants to rid the island of the ghosts.  But in his efforts to modernize the island, he ends up creating ghosts of his own.

This is a sweeping, cinematic story, with way too many details and plot developments to write about in one blog post.  The prose is excellent and the characters are rich and well made.  It didn’t surprise me at all to learn that Sandi Tan studied screenwriting, because her characterization and plot development are amazing.  Cassandra is a fascinating protagonist, full of inner conflict.  The story is not only gripping, but it gives a lot of insight into Chinese culture in the early 20th century, as well as insight into the Japanese occupation during World War II.

If you enjoy historical fiction or stories about Asian culture, you’ll definitely enjoy The Black Isle.  It’s a rich story with some creepy supernatural elements and occasional erotic imagery, and it’s sure to leave an impression on you, as it did me.

Book Review: Afterwards

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Afterwards by Rosamund Lupton (pub date 4/24/12)

“And for a moment he feels my presence.  For a second I am a draft on his back, a tingling in his scalp, something touching his thoughts.  A mother.  A guardian angel.  A ghost.”

Imagine being the victim of a terrible incident, and wanting to help uncover the truth about what really happened but being unable to.  Not because you are too afraid to speak up, but because no one can see or hear you.  For the protagonists in this excellent novel, this is their reality.

Set in England, Afterwards is both a thriller and a story about the power of a mother’s love.  Grace is a typical upper middle class wife and mother, whose teenage daughter Jenny and eight-year-old son Adam attend a prestigious private school.  On a seemingly ordinary day, Grace is rushing to get her children to school for its annual sports day.  Later that day, a fire breaks out in the school, and Jenny is trapped inside the building.  In an attempt to save her daughter, Grace runs inside the building and is injured when part of the structure collapses on her.

Grace and Jenny are rescued and rushed to the hospital.  Both are in a coma, and it is unsure if either one of them will survive for long.  Shortly after arriving at the hospital, both Grace and Jenny find themselves having an out-of-body experience.  They are able to see their own bodies, to move around the hospital, and to see and speak to each other.  But tragically they are unable to speak to their loved ones, or to the police who are investigating the fire.   Grace’s husband and sister-in-law are determined to uncover the truth about who started the fire, and piece by piece, the key players and clues are revealed.

I really enjoyed this inventive and suspenseful novel.  Afterwards combines a Law & Order type of story with supernatural elements, creating an engrossing book.  The story pulls you in from the first page and keeps you guessing until the very end.  The characters feel very real, and Lupton does a great job of depicting the attitudes and social politics of the parents and teachers at the school.

Afterwards is a perfect book for anyone who enjoys thrillers.  But it’s also a deeply moving story about the nature of a parent’s love.  It’s altogether a compelling and well-crafted book.

Book Review: Horns

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Horns by Joe Hill (2011)

“Ignatius Martin Perrish spent the night drunk and doing terrible things.  He woke the next morning with a headache. put his hands to his temples, and felt something unfamiliar, a pair of knobby pointed protuberances.”

That’s how this story begins.  Ignatius Perrish (or ‘Ig’ to his family and friends), a seemingly ordinary person, wakes up after a drunken night to find he is growing horns at the top of his head.  As if this weren’t strange enough, he notices people acting differently around him.  When people see him they start confessing their worst thoughts to him, seemingly asking his permission to do bad things to other people.  It isn’t long before Ig notices a connection between the horns and people’s behavior around him.

Then slowly the book’s main plot is revealed, and we discover that Ig is a man with a painful past.  His girlfriend Merrin was raped and killed a year ago, and Ig was accused of the crime.  Despite being cleared of the charges, he is still a social pariah, the whole town believing that his wealthy family paid his way out of trouble.  Finally, Ig decides to use his newfound powers of persuasion for a real purpose: to find out who really killed Merrin.

Even though this book came out last year, I hadn’t heard about it until I got it as a birthday gift.  Joe Hill also writes the graphic novel Locke & Key, a really enjoyable series which also comtains elements of the supernatural.  He is also Stephen King’s son, and it really is creepy how much they look alike!

Horns is a great book.  It’s a story of supernatural revenge which grabs ahold of you from the first page on.  Ig is a truly tragic character.  Living in the shadow of his perfect older brother his whole life, and taken advantage of by people who claim to be his friends, the only true happiness in Ig’s life was his lover Merrin.  And when she is taken away from him, Ig becomes the ultimate irony: a good man who embraces evil to find justice for a life lost.

This is a perfect story for anyone who enjoys thrillers and crime stories.  It’s more a story about revenge and the faces of good and evil rather than a supernatural story.  It’s a sad book, but still quite moving in its own way.  It definitely makes me want to go back and read Hill’s other books.  But first I think I’ll dust off and re-read my issues of Locke & Key!