Trapped by Jack Kilborn

Cannonball Read III: Book #8/52
Published: 2010
Pages: 323
Genre: Horror

This is my third Jack Kilborn book. I really liked the first one I read (Endurance) and wasn't crazy about the second (Afraid). I have to say I'm glad I gave Kilborn one more chance because Trapped was definitely my favorite. One of the sickest books I've ever read too. Definitely not one to read before bed.

The book follows a group of juvenile delinquents, who are in some sort of remedial program, and their adult chaperones as they camp out on an island. Unfortunately for them, the island is full of cannibals. Even more unfortunately, the cannibals aren't the worst things on the island.

The Kindle edition that I bought had two copies of the book. The first, was an edited draft and the second was the first, uncut draft of the novel. They were very similar, but I liked the first one better. It trimmed out a few unnecessary parts that didn't add much to the story. The only thing I didn't like better about the first one was the fact that Sara had an infant strapped to her chest who didn't make a sound the entire time she was running around the woods away from cannibals. Why even introduce the baby if you're not going to use it to add some suspense? Like having the baby cry at inopportune times.

Also, in both versions, some of the kids were almost comically stereotypical. I don't know if I could handle one more black kid from a gang using the phrase "hells yeah!". The white kid with ADD of course just said "frickin'" between every other word. The teen lingo Kilborn tried to use was atrocious. However, this wasn't quite as bad in the first, cleaned up version of the novel. By the time I read the second edition, it was just starting to grate my nerves.

Overall, I loved the book. The characters were great, despite the attempts at "hip" lingo. I loved the twist at the end. Definitely didn't see that coming. There were some smaller twists along the way too. I really couldn't put this book down.

Afraid by Jack Kilborn

Cannonball Read III: Book #7/52
Published: 2009
Pages: 372
Genre: Horror

Well, I'm glad I read Afraid after Endurance, because otherwise I don't think I would have bothered. This one was definitely not as good as Endurance.

Afraid is about a small town called Safe Haven (oh, the irony) that is being destroyed by a group of five super soldiers for an unknown reason. I thought it was good until we found out they were former serial killers or death row inmates with some kind of chips in their head (don't worry, we find that out very early, so it's not a spoiler). I don't know why, but I probably would have liked it better if they were just normal men and not super strong half computers. That's probably why I liked Endurance better. To me, real crazy people are way more scary.

I did think the townspeople were well written. So far, I like Kilborn's characters. He doesn't just make them all throw away characters to be murdered. People die, but they're people you care about.

I just started Trapped, also by Jack Kilborn. Hopefully, I'll like it better than Afraid. If not, I don't know if I'm going to be picking up any more of his books.

Endurance by Jack Kilborn

Cannonball Read III: Book #6/52
Published: 2010
Pages: 328
Genre: Horror

I pretty much bought this book because it was only $2.99 on my Kindle, and I love a good horror novel. Also, I might have been born and raised in West Virginia, where this novel takes place. Don't judge me. And no, in the 18 years I lived there, I did not see any mutant inbreeds living in the woods.

Endurance is about a group of people who find themselves staying at a very peculiar bed and breakfast out in the middle of nowhere, WV. Most of the guests are attending an Iron Woman tournament in a nearby town. We have Deb, who lost her legs in a mountain climbing accident who came with a reporter named Mal, a family trio entering the Iron Woman competition (grandma, mom, and 12-year-old daughter), as well as Maria, who went missing during last years competition.

When I first read some reviews on this book, everyone kept talking about the gore and how it was so awful. I honestly didn't think it was THAT bad. It was definitely gory, but it wasn't any worse than a lot of Stephen King books. Maybe I'm just jaded from reading too many horror novels, but if you can tolerate any sort of gore in books, I think you'll be fine with this one. The descriptions of the mutants freaked me out more than the actual gore.

I thought the characters were well written and I actually cared whether they got out alive or not. Although I did think it was kind of convenient that most of them were trained athletes, although they were fairly varied - grandma, young kid, woman with no legs. Although the Cam character (Maria's brother, who along with her fiance, have been trying to find her for a year) felt a little forced. I don't really understand why he was thrown in as a "monster", when we have enough of them to deal with already.

I actually loved the book and already put a few more Jack Kilborn books on my to-read list. I think it's awesome that he publishes his novels on his own as e-books and only charges $2.99. I probably wouldn't have picked up a book by an author I'd never heard of if it wasn't that cheap. Endurance probably isn't the most intellectual book you'll ever read (I hope not anyways), but it's a fun read.

1001 Books to Read Before You Die

I was reading a list (found here) of the 1001 books everyone should read before they die. I wanted to see how many of them I have read and thought I'd post the list here. I'll only post the ones I've read since there are so many, but check out the link if you want to see the entire list.

My list:
1. Choke – Chuck Palahniuk
2. House of Leaves – Mark Z. Danielewski
3. American Psycho – Bret Easton Ellis
4. Contact – Carl Sagan
5. The Handmaid’s Tale – Margaret Atwood
6. The Shining – Stephen King
7. A Clockwork Orange – Anthony Burgess
8. The Lord of the Rings – J.R.R. Tolkien
9. Lord of the Flies – William Golding
10. The Catcher in the Rye – J.D. Salinger
11. Nineteen Eighty-Four – George Orwell
12. Animal Farm – George Orwell
13. The Little Prince – Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
14. The Hobbit – J.R.R. Tolkien
15. The War of the Worlds – H.G. Wells
16. The Yellow Wallpaper – Charlotte Perkins Gilman
17. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn – Mark Twain
18. Treasure Island – Robert Louis Stevenson
19. Little Women – Louisa May Alcott
20. Journey to the Centre of the Earth – Jules Verne
21. The Scarlet Letter – Nathaniel Hawthorne
22. Wuthering Heights – Emily Brontë
23. The Pit and the Pendulum – Edgar Allan Poe
24. The Fall of the House of Usher – Edgar Allan Poe
25. Robinson Crusoe – Daniel Defoe
26. The Pilgrim’s Progress – John Bunyan
27. Aesop’s Fables – Aesopus

Hate List by Jennifer Brown

Hate List
Cannonball Read 2011 #2
416 pages

Hate List is another fictional take on high school shootings. However, it shows everything through the eyes of the shooter's girlfriend. Valerie had been dating Nick when he decided to bring a gun to school and shoot a bunch of people before he committed suicide. Valerie not only has to deal with the death of her boyfriend, but also the blame that others have thrown on her. Hate List follows Valerie through her senior year of high school in the aftermath of the tragedy.

Valerie's dilemma is pretty complex. One one hand, she DID participate in a "Hate List" with Nick. They kept a notebook of everyone and everything that they hated. Apparently Nick used the list as a guideline for his shooting spree. Because of the list, everyone assumes Valerie was involved in planning the shooting or had Nick shoot her enemies for her, even though she had no idea what Nick was planning.

On the other hand, during the shooting, Valerie stepped in front of one of the girl's she had put on the "Hate List" and literally took a bullet for a girl that harassed her in the past. Even so, people are reluctant to believe that Valerie had no part in the shooting.

The book was a fairly quick read. It doesn't drag along in spots or try and get "preachy" about bullying or violence. Even though it is fiction, I feel that it was a very realistic portrayal of what a high school would really be like after something like this happened. Valerie gets really upset at one point at the news stories that make their high school look peaceful and unified after the shooting. In reality, there will always be bullying in high school and everyone is not going to suddenly hold hands and be friends even after a tragedy.

I would recommend this book to high schoolers or someone who likes YA books. It's not exactly a work of literary genius, but it gives a fresh perspective of the subject.

Fragment by Warren Fahy

Fragment
Cannonball Read 2011 #5
384 pages

I should have turned away when I first read the horrible reviews for this book. But it says it's like Jurassic Park and I love Jurassic Park...book, movie, anything. The only thing Fragment has in common with Jurassic park is that people get eaten on an island. Sounds cool, but you had to wade though a bunch of boring, useless crap to get to the good stuff.

The basic plot centers around a very remote island that has been left to evolve on it's own for millions of years, resulting in some very strange creatures. Every creature on this island is incredibly violent, except for one, which I won't spoil for you. It's maybe the most interesting part of the book. A group of scientists and crew members for a reality show are sailing around the world when they hear a distress signal from the island. They go to check it out and well, lots of people die.

First of all, I don't know if the author was getting paid for every time he dropped the name of a label or what, but he uses brand names for EVERYTHING. We're talking excruciating detail about all thirty characters (or however many...there were way too many) were wearing every time we went back to them. It reminded me of The Baby-Sitters Club books when they would take up a whole chapter describing their outfits.

Also, these strange creatures found on the island were extremely hard to picture because the descriptions were almost over detailed. They were also inconsistent. For instance, there was one recurring animal that was sometimes described as a giant tiger with spider eyes/legs and other times as a giant spider with tiger stripes/fur. I had no idea what to picture for this thing.

I also don't get why they used the reality show idea. It didn't work and just added more characters that they didn't need. Between the camera crew, the scientists, then later on the military, there were too many characters to even care about any of them, so it wasn't even a big deal when most of them died. I knew more about what the characters were wearing than their back story or personality. They actually had a character named Ham Pound. They probably ran out of names.

Fragment wasn't anywhere close to a "good" book, but it was a pretty quick read. The the second half was much better than the first with much more action and even some suspense at times. The rest was just mindless carnage of characters that I didn't give a damn about.

Full Dark, No Stars by Stephen King

Full Dark, No Stars
Cannonball Read 2011 #4
384 pages

Full Dark, No Stars is Stephen King's newest anthology. It contains four novellas called 1922, Big Driver, Fair Extension, and A Good Marriage. They were kind of hit or miss for me as I only enjoyed two of the four. I'm a pretty big Stephen King fan, but there are some of his books and stories that I just have a harder time getting into.

My favorites were definitely Big Driver and A Good Marriage, with Big Driver probably being my favorite overall. It was about a female writer who takes a shortcut home from a book signing where she gets raped and almost murdered. She opts to get revenge herself rather than go to the police. It starts a little slow for a shorter story, but once the action gets going, it's a pretty intense ride.

A Good Marriage is about a woman who finds out that her husband is an infamous serial killer who has alluded the police for years. King says that his inspiration for this story was the BTK killer, who had a normal life with a wife who supposedly had no idea that he tortured and killed women on the side. I thought this story had good pacing as well.

As for 1922, it was probably my least favorite. Unfortunately, it was also the first and the longest novella in the book. It is about a man in the 1920s who decides to murder his wife with the help of his son. The two are fighting over some land she inherited from her parents - she wants to sell and he wants to keep it. The story is well-written, but I just found it too drawn out and slow at times.

Fair Extension was fairly forgettable. It is about a man with cancer who makes a deal with the devil for his health. Of course dealing with the devil always has consequences, so in order to prolong his life, he must cut someone else's short. The story wasn't bad, but it just wasn't that memorable either. It also seems vaguely familiar, like I've read or seen something similar that I just can't put my finger on.

Overall, it's a pretty solid read from King. He's a phenomenal writer, but different people tend to like different things from him. I tend to like his ones like Carrie and Misery. This one might be more suited towards fans of slower moving, less horror stories like Bag of Bones.

The Scorch Trials by James Dashner

The Scorch Trials
Cannonball Read 2011 #3
384 pages

The Scorch Trials is the sequel to The Maze Runner, which I reviewed back in May. This time, the group of boys from the maze find themselves put through another mysterious "trial" while Thomas tries to piece together his past. Again, the plot is extremely interesting to me, but the execution is sub-par.

I still absolutely hate the made-up slang that the boys use. It's so distracting from the story and just makes me think that they're using it as an excuse to add curse words to a YA book. It's obvious that the words are just fill-ins for common curse words (i.e. "shuckface" or "piece of klunk") and it does nothing to further the story or add to anything.

Also, what kind of crack is this guy on that thinks of this stuff? The first book was more puzzles and this one just throws everything out into left field. We have metal balls that eat peoples heads (which are never explained), giant faceless creatures with orange bulbs growing off of them, and diseased crazy people called Cranks - and that's just to name a few. You're constantly being hit over the head with just straight-up weirdness.

I also can't help but wish that James Dashner just sold his idea to a different writer. I hate his execution. The world he created is so creative and so original, but I can't help but think think that everything is going to lead up to a very disappointing ending. You're not going to find any answers in this book. I'm not sure how many books he has planned for this series, but I'm guessing we'll have to wait until the very last one to get any answers. It's almost as bad as Lost.

I'll probably continue reading this series just because I LOVE the whole idea behind the books. I love puzzles and dystopian futures and mysteries. I just really wish these books were as good as I want them to be. All I can say is that there better be a good payoff at the end.

Let The Right One In by John Ajvide Lindqvist

Let The Right One In
Cannonball Read 2011: Book 1
410 pages

I don't like vampires. I don't like books about vampires. I prefer less supernatural forms of horror. I'm was pleasantly surprised to find that I could not put this book down. It is absolutely one of the most engaging books I have read in a while. It takes place in Sweden in 1981 following a 12-year-old boy named Oskar as he befriends a strange girl next door named Eli.

There is virtually no one likeable in this story. Oskar is obsessed with murder and serial killers to the point of having a scrapbook of newspaper clippings on the subject. Eli is found out to be a vampire who must kill to live. Eli lives with an older man who brings her blood because of his obsession with her (he's a pedophile). The friendship that Oskar and Eli have is perhaps the most touching thing. There is really no romance - they are 12 years old (well, Eli is really several hundred years old, but in a 12-year-old's body). They're just two lonely children who form a close bond, even after Oskar figures out who she really is.

This book also has one of the scariest moments I have ever read. I read a lot of horror, but when Tommy was caught in the basement with that horribly disfigured (he poured acid over his head earlier) thing, it was one of the most terrifying passages I have read in a book. The whole thing was just written so well. The translation was also well done. I've read a few Japanese translated novels and the dialogue tends to come out kind of clunky at times. Maybe it's harder to translate from Japanese to English, but the Swedish-to-English translation was done flawlessly here.

One thing I didn't care too much for was the abundance of extra characters. I felt that there were too many minor characters at times, which were sometimes hard to keep apart. As a whole, I see how they forward the story, but while reading it almost feels like you're being taken out of the story to read about these random people. But overall, I loved this book. One of the best I've read in a while.