William landay author interview with a vampire
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By Jenny Milchman
With Halloween coming to a close, I can’t help wanting to enjoy the scary season for just a little longer. If you’re not ready to lean into the full-blown holiday season quite yet, here’s the remedy: six scary books and films to keep your fall on the spooky side!
The Monster
The Book
Let’s start back in 1818 when Mary Shelley penned a tale so stunning—especially for a woman of her time—that her name didn’t appear on it until the second edition. Though some argue that the novel, about a scientist who creates a humanoid being in his lab, counts as the first true sci fi story, I consider it horror, foretelling some of the modern day ruin of our technology.
The Movie
Several of course, along with spoofs and farces, but the 1931 version with Boris Karloff and the little girl is scariest in my book. Contemporary horror often relies on a kind of pure and stylized evil—think the Saw franchise, or almost any serial killer AKA slasher flick
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Date read: May 22 to 30, 2014
Halfway to the Grave: ★ ★ ½ ☆ ☆
One Foot in the Grave: ★ ½ ☆ ☆ ☆
At Grave’s End: ★ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆
The first book impressed me; the two after it, not at all.
To top it off, it’s the main character that made me quit reading. That doesn’t usually happen because inom don’t follow a series just for the likability of the MC. Whether or not inom “like” or “root for” certain characters is usually an afterthought. So it’s a big deal when a book makes me quit the whole series due to character problems.
What to expect:
Heavy plotting, lots of action, lots of sex and innuendos (not witty unfortunately), lots of cardboard side characters, lots of blood, fetishistic descriptions of blood, and high body count. That’s just on the surface. Furthermore, there’s thin world building, minimal mythology, and unimpressive monster pathology. This last one got to me the most because I read urban fantasy for
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