Horns

The Book

Horns is written by Joe Hill, son of Stephen King. He looks very much like his father but I think it was very brave, some may say foolhardy, to try and follow in his footsteps and always be measured to him in terms of imagination and creative writing.

Ig wakes up one morning to find he has started to grow horns. They give him the power of suggestion over others (if it is something the victim secretly wants to do), the ability to touch a person and be shown bad things from their past and also causes the involuntary sharing of deep secrets. Ideal powers to investigate the death of his girlfriend, Merrin, who was raped and murdered. Ig needs to clear his name, as everyone thinks he is the culprit, and get revenge on the true killer.
The truth is gradually revealed as he visits family and friends - finding out what they really think and what they are hiding.


Through flashbacks and the re-telling of the fateful night from three perspectives, the scene is set for a final confrontation with the guilty murderer.

Serena

 The Book


Ruthless corporate business and environmental exploitation are nothing new, as Ron Rash explores in his Shakespearean tale of a lumber company during the 1920s depression. Pemberton and his wife Serena hatch plots and dispatch enemies as they lay waste to the forests of North Carolina.

The book starts as it means to go on with the body count clocking off with the outraged father of a young worker girl, Rachel, who has been made pregnant by Pemberton. He confronts the newly-wed Pembertons at the train station and is promptly disemboweled by the husband, urged on by the unfazed and callous Serena. 


The Macbeth couple murder anyone who gets in the way of their business empire, whilst trying to harvest every living tree on their land before it can be turned into a National Park. 

Serena gains a faithful servant and henchman in Galloway, who she saves from bleeding out when a green lumberjack swings at a trunk and lops off the pointing hand of the foreman instead. He has the useful means of tracking victims through his cloudy-eyed mother, who has the second sight. 

The Maze Runner

 I really wanted to enjoy the Maze Runner, as a book that will launch a new series of films (The sequel - Scorch Trials - already scheduled for a 2015 release) now that the Hunger Games trilogy is coming to an end. By the end of the book I felt like an indifferent lab rat ready to give up, however.

"Thomas" is awakened from a metal lift with no memories of his life before and introduced to a new life - an established community of boys that have gradually been brought, via the lift, to a Glade surrounded by an ever shifting maze which contains mutant killer creatures. Instead of a Lord of the Flies type scenario, however, the boys maintain a civilised group with rules and a leadership by elected board in order to stay alive, find a solution to the maze and escape.
It is interesting that the author restricts the group to just boys rather than a mixed society. (Yes "Teresa" is introduced, but only as a means to end the trial). I suppose that if there were girls as well, the group might just have decided not to bother to find a way out and just establish families in the Glade. As the boys have no memories of what they have left behind, they don't know that what they are trying to escape to is better than what they currently have.

Gone Girl

The Book

Nick comes home on his 5th wedding anniversary to find a crime scene in their house with all the clues pointing to the murder of his wife, Amy; except there is no body. As the police investigation gets under way, the prime suspect becomes Nick, with all the evidence stacked against him. As Nick is telling the first half of the story, the reader wonders whether he is being entirely honest, as it is revealed that he was having an affair. 
In essence it is a one trick pony - a big twist that comes not at the end but right in the middle with a change of narrator. This is what drives the narrative on to the end, as a few people I have passed this book on to found it a bit dull until I tell them to just keep going until the middle.
It is difficult to say much more without revealing the twist, but I did find the ending very unsatisfactory. You do not sympathise with or like any of the characters, however, so perhaps the self imposed purgatory that the book finishes on is a fitting finale. It just seems very implausible after all that has gone before.

Before I go to Sleep

SJ Watson's thriller relies on a very clever premise - if you suffer from amnesia and your memory starts afresh every day, how do you know what is the truth and that people are who they say they are.
Christine wakes up and has to piece her life together through photographs and written reminders on a Groundhog type daily basis. This could get repetitive and dull, but the excitement is that every time she uncovers a little bit of new evidence or hint of a lie, will she be able to note it down in time and then re-discover it before she goes to sleep.
Written in the first person, you are put into Christine's blank mind, but, frustratingly, you know what has gone before. Gradually you build up a picture of mistrust with her husband, Ben, as she discovers things that have been kept from her and with Dr Nash, a neural psychologist, but is it just Christine's natural paranoia following her accident? Her journal is a means for her to record her suspicions and remind herself of things that have recently come to light.