Tag Archives: Apocalypse

Adventure, Fantasy, Science Fiction, Young Adult

Ee, Susan: World After (Penryn And The End of Days II) (2014)

2014-03-30 humanitysdarkerside Leave a comment

Seven years old. That is how old poor Paige is when the angels take her from her mother and sister and do medical experiments on her. Seven years old is how old Paige is when Penryn manages to rescue Paige and seven years old is how old Paige is when she sees the rejection of her new self from her sister and others. The only one who accepts Paige as she is happens to be her schizophrenic mother. Seven years old. Seven years old.

Paige’s story is the one that affects me the most in World After. Paige’s story is the one that causes my mind to ponder the concept of rejection and how rejection creates invisible wounds in an already visibly wounded body. And Paige’s story is the one that brings to mind the many people out there who have been changed visibly and invisibly themselves. How do I meet them? Am I one of them? How many wounds can a person bear before they become lost?

Penryn and Paige’s mother is a paranoid schizophrenic. Except in The End of Days serial many of her paranoias are real. Now the monsters are here and doing their best to off humanity. My grandmother was a paranoid schizophrenic. From what my father has told of his childhood Susan Ee‘s description of how a paranoid schizophrenic can appear to others seems right on the dot. The pain of the fear a person carries in such a condition is incomprehensible.

Penryn feels guilty at not being able to accept Paige as she is. I believe that is probably a common feeling when a person comes back changed from an accident or war or disease. After all, the person we loved seems to have disappeared. Perhaps they have. Perhaps we just need to see past the wounds and scars. Penryn is only 17 and 17 is awfully young to have experienced what she has. So Penryn carries wounds of her own, although hers are invisible. Her childhood and the responsibilities she ended up with, the first days after the world ended and having an angel steal her little sister would threaten to destroy a person. In part it does. But not completely. Penryn finds short-term solutions to deal with her inner wounds and a way to hold on to hope.

Penryn And The End of Days serial is a difficult serial to read for an old woman due to Susan Ee’s amazing writing. This is definitely a serial I recommend, painful as it is.

Reviews:

Paperback: 336 pages
Publisher: Hodder Paperbacks (21 Nov 2013)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1444778536
ISBN-13: 978-1444778533

My review of Angelfall

Fantasy, Romance, Science Fiction, Thriller

Gimpel, Ann: Earth’s Requiem (Earth Reclaimed I) (2013)

2013-10-10 humanitysdarkerside 3 Comments

Earth’s Requiem is the first installment of the serial Earth Reclaimed. Being a serial, it did what all proper installments of a serial should – ended on a cliff-hanger.

I should probably tell you that there is explicit sex in Earth’s Requiem but no explicit violence. The sex was consensual and safe. Here in Norway teen-agers read this kind of stuff. Other places have other rules.

If you check out Ann Gimpel’s blog, you will see that she has been writing fiction since 2009. She has generally written urban romantic fantasy. Earth’s Requiem is my first meeting with Ann Gimpel and it was sent to me as a reviewer’s copy.

Earth’s Requiem is not urban romantic fantasy. Instead it could be called apocalyptic romantic fantasy. I’m calling it fantasy because we are dealing with the old gods of celt mythology but it might also be deemed science fiction because of the Lemurians who have entered the Earth through gates opened by – you guessed it – humans. We humans are stupid and curious little monkeys. If there is a lever to be pressed, a ritual to be performed or aliens to be contacted we will do our be to do the deed. I’m that dumb myself. When I was a kid I would put a knitting needle into the wall sockets just because my dad had warned me not to. I’ll still do really stupid stuff just because I wonder what would happen if …

Once I started looking for info on the gods in Earth’s Requiem, I became fascinated with Celtic mythology. The celtic gods we get to meet are:

Fionn mac Cumhaill: God of wisdom, protection, and divination. A warrior-hunter and god of the wood-lands.
Bran the blessed / Benedigeidfran: God of prophecy, the arts, leaders, war, the sun, music, writing.
Arawn: God of the underground kingdom of the dead. Revenge, terror and war.
Gwydion: Greatest of the enchanters, warrior-magician. Illusion, changes, magics, the sky, healing.
Dewi: Dragon goddess

As this is a romance novel all four human-like gods are devastatingly good-looking. Fionn mac Cumhaill is the god we are particularly interested in. He is the paramour of our main protagonist, Aislinn Lenear, whose mother was Tara MacLochlainn. Tara MacLochlainn was thrown into a vortex by one of the new rulers of the Earth when her sanity was insufficient to please the Lemurians. Aislinn’s father had already been killed by one of the Dark gods. The Lemurians and Dark gods fight each other for dominance of the Earth and humans are being used as their tools.

While Aislinn has realised that all she is to the Lemurians is a tool, she has been so wrapped up in her grief that she has been unable to see past that. The compulsion that has been laid upon her and all humans under the thumbs of the Lemurians might have something to do with that inability as well. But after three years, Aislinn meets the above Fionn and he manages to rescue her from that compulsion. Together they spear-head the resistance that includes humans and celtic gods.

It wouldn’t be a romance novel without some pretty complicated inner dialogue about whether or not to love a person, how to love them and all of that other stuff. I always tend to zone out when romance comes along and that is a pity because Ann Gimpel writes well enough to deserve a romance reader that can appreciate romance. I enjoyed the action and the premise of the resistance group and the fascinating stuff this story led me to on the net.

Fantasy, Science Fiction, Thriller, Young Adult

Murray, R.J.: The Event (Tales of the Triad I) (2011)

2013-10-06 humanitysdarkerside Leave a comment

If an author is going to create an Apocalyptic event he might as well do it thoroughly. Killing off seven billion people overnight seems to be pretty thorough to me. Messing with the environment and changing the stars and planets we usually see adds to that thoroughness. R.J. Murray shares such an event with us in The Event. The Event appears to be a science fiction tale that slowly but surely leans toward fantasy. Not fantasy as we know it but rather new technology that has to be developed due to the teeny tiny damages wrought by Earth’s changes. Mutated people that have the qualities we find in traditional fantasy adds to the fantasy feel of the story.

As with other apocalyptic tales, we find that the qualities people already have seem to intensify in times of crisis. This is a normal trait in humans. Any type of traumatic event tends to pare down all of our extras leaving some sort of quality central that we draw upon. This is when we see a person run back into a mall again and again saving people’s lives while others break into buildings raiding them of wares, beat up others and do other heinous deeds. People are people whether our skyline changes or not.

The mutations we see are people whose bodies morph into something other than they were used to being (that is, those who did not turn to dust or remain human). Let’s see what we have:

Wizards are people who find themselves younger/stronger/longer-lived and able to handle the tools left from before the apocalypse. All races have their own wizards.

Elves also seem to be long-lived and changed into a stronger/younger version of themselves. But they seem more attuned to plants and living creatures rather than technology.

Dwarves are like the ones in stories: like to live underground and have an affinity for stone. Dwarves are shorter and more compact than humans. They will probably end up being longer-lived as well.

Humans are more numerous than the others and breed easier. There really isn’t much more to say about them.

Goblins are like the goblins we know from epic fantasy. There are various types, sizes and numbers. Most of them live underground or underwater. They too have wizards.

Thankfully Murray hasn’t fallen for the temptation of making people smarter or dumber than they were just because they happen to be elf, wizard, dwarf or goblin. There are qualities that are intensified but if you were dumb as bread before the apocalypse, well, you are going to remain dumb as bread – and probably dead within a very short time. Some of the people have to learn the hard way and for some that means they end up dead.

That probably tells you that it is not all happy endings. In spite of that I would not say that The Event is particularly dark. It is more like the traditional sword/sorcery stories in tone. I’m guessing this is a young adult story. It’s a pretty straight-forward tale without explicit violence or explicit sex. There is action and plenty of it.

Murray builds his world for us showing us how people become what they are and what happens to the Earth itself. By the end I felt pretty comfortable with the whole thing. I felt there was a proper ending although there was a tiny hill-hanger showing me that a continuation was on its way.

A pretty enjoyable tale that looks as if it has great potential.

Reviews:

Print Length: 398 pages
Sold by: Amazon Digital Services, Inc.
Language: English
ASIN: B0083CMJ74

Science Fiction, Thriller

McManamon, Michael: Glory 1 (2013)

2013-10-01 humanitysdarkerside Leave a comment

Glory

Glory is book one of a five book series. I see that number two is now out on the market.

We enter the world of Glory at the beginning of the Apocalypse. Let me tell you, Jackson was a surprise. He is the first person we meet who seems to be affected by what is striking people.

“Are you all right?” he asked.

By now, the words meant nothing to Jackson. He could only hear sounds coming out of the old man’s mouth. He didn’t know what they meant. The concept of language had left him moments ago.

He didn’t respond.

“Are you all right?” the man asked again. Slower this time.

Jackson continued to look at the old man, but still didn’t say anything.

He looked down at the fingers touching him. He could make out the white hair on the knuckles. Grabbed him. Squeezed him. He didn’t know why this old man was touching him, but he did know that he didn’t like it. He felt anger well up inside of him.

He looked up again at the old man. The old man was smiling his skewed smile, trying to make light of the situation and find out what was wrong. To Jackson, his face caused his anger to turn to rage.

The old man. Smiling. Looking. Staring.

Jackson roared.

Then he took his knife, grasped it tightly and stabbed it into the old man’s throat. The old man’s eyes opened wide with surprise. He tried to grab at the knife as Jackson pulled it away. Blood spurted from the wound and covered the table.

It’s bizarre. People seem to turn in the space of a few minutes. All comprehension of the meaning of words or other people’s actions seems to evaporate. Anger is the prevailing emotion they are left with. Without thought of pain, hunger or consequence they just attack. In that sense they are like zombies. Otherwise they are totally different. Alien infection or some kind of engineered disease were my first thoughts.

The prologue is tense. The whole novel is intense. McMananon writes incredibly well drawing the reader into his world and keeping us there.

What we get after the prologue is easy to imagine. A total collapse of society as we know it occurs. Those who are left “normal” discover they have to stick with each other. But sticking with some of the survivors might not be such a good option. Some of them are almost worse than the diseased in that they have “all of their faculties intact”. Good people remain good and not so good people remain pretty awful.

There is some explicit violence in Glory. Sexual violence is part of that violence. Thankfully, we also encounter samaritans. All of these actions were believable. The shock, anger, helplessness, courage, violence, friendship. All of them were perfectly believable. This is probably what would happen in this world if something like McManamon’s version of Apocalypse happened.

Would I recommend Glory to young adults. NO. Glory is just too dark. On the other hand, kids these days see a lot of violence and sex that I never did back when the dinosaurs lived. Maybe it is good for them to encounter it. I know the feelings portrayed by the sexual abuse victims were pretty much the way real life abuse victims experience them.

We were left with a cliff-hanger or maybe we were already falling off it. Shame on McMananon for sending us to the edge. Glory 1 is an excellent first novel and I very much encourage you to read it.

Adventure, Fantasy, Humour

Pratchett, Terry and Gaiman, Neil: Good Omens (1990)

2012-09-01 humanitysdarkerside 1 Comment

First off, I have to say that there is so much incredible artwork out there dealing with Pratchett and Gaiman. I wish I could include all of it. For most other authors I end up with the cover art, but with these two guys I’m in heaven. I recommend that you google “Good Omens”, go to images and sit back and enjoy yourselves. Below are three examples of what you’ll find.

“Good Omens – Armageddon” by himlayan

Good Omens starts off with a prologue placed in the Garden of Eden. You see, there was this serpent, Crawly, who was sent there to do his best to make trouble. He did. In the meantime the angel with the flaming sword, Aziraphale, gave his sword to the humans as protection because he felt sorry for them.

6000 years later Crowley meets up with fellow demons and gets handed a basket with a baby in it. This is the baby presaging the End Of The World. He is told to deliver it at a certain hospital making certain that it gets exchanged with the chosen baby. Something goes wrong, and the baby ends up with the wrong family – unbeknownst to the minions of Hell.

“Good Omens: Humans” by Julie Dillon

In Lower Tadfield, young Adam and his gang run around being the kind of nuisance only a gang of 11 year olds can manage to be. They are happy in their lack of knowledge about the future and the imminence of the end of the world.

Crowley and Aziraphale discover that something is wrong with the child they thought was the son of the Devil when a promised delivery from Hell does not arrive at its appointed place. Ooops.

“Apocalyptic quartette” by Aviv Or

The four horsemen are gathering to fulfill their destiny, but no one knows quite where to go. Where is the promised son of the Devil?

You just know that when you pick up a book by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman that you are not going to get anything even remotely resembling normality. Good Omens is filled with interesting characters and a strange sense of logic. Whenever I read their books, I get into this weird thought-mode where I go – yeah, that could happen. I did it this time as well. Maybe that’s what I like best about both of them, their ability to fool me into believing them. Kind of cool, that ability.

My favorite characters were Crowley and Aziraphale, both rebels in their own right. After 6000 years neither is wholly good or wholly evil. They are still stuck in the mold they were created for, but little bits of them are able to crack that mold just a little.

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