Wonder Woman Odyssey: Makes Me Wonder Why More People Don’t Like Wonder Woman!

A Review By: Amelia

Wonder Woman doesn’t get a lot of love from a large segment of the comic community. Most of it comes from the fact that she’s such a hard character to write for and a lot of authors shy away from the challenge in the face of more uniform characters like Batman and Superman. Most Wonder Woman comics are either so homogeneous or non-evolved from what we know of Wonder Woman they pass us by. Or they are so ridiculous and off character that they’re panned by critics and/or hailed as genius and/or send the die-hard Wonder Woman fans into a tizzy that could end all life on Earth as we know it! Wonder Woman Odyssey, thankfully, falls in-between the two extremes to create something new with a splash of the old mixed in for good measure!

Simply put, Wonder Woman Odyssey is a romp of violence and revenge with a pissed off, mostly extinct race of female warriors lead by a magical demi-goddess whose out for blood! Why are they pissed off and looking for blood? Due to mysterious (and violent) circumstances, Princess Diana of the Amazons must track down the truth behind what’s happened to her timeline, her people, and her home.

The main author of Odyssey is J. Michael Straczynski. He’s known for his writer and producing in every media type available and is perhaps most well known as the creator/showrunner of Babylon 5 and it’s spin-off Crusade. His comic work includes The Amazing Spider-Man and Thor for Marvel, and Superman and Wonder Woman for DC.

The main character of the piece is Diana, but not Diana as Wonder Woman. She’s not Wonder Woman in the piece because she’s not a hero–not in the way of Superman or Batman anyways. She’s out for revenge against those who wronged the Amazons while also fighting to stay alive as the people who destroyed the Amazon’s home island are out to kill the small groups of Amazons that are still alive. Unfortunately, even with such an easy plot line to write for, none of the characters ever really feel that fleshed out: they’re all very singular in their purposes and that’s fine, just give them a little more personality, drive, raw emotions–anything really.

The art style of Odyssey is a very detailed, realistic style. There are bright colours, stunning detail in the various locations, and excellent fight scenes that are well paced and really pretty to look at. Diana also has a fresh new costume and, personally, I think it’s great. It’s a costume that’s feminine but tough and it’s modern and versatile. It’s an upgrade that’s been a long time coming if you ask me!

Now, after all this, Odyssey is a difficult comic to critique. It’s Wonder Woman, so I think it’s awesome, and it’s got an awesome storyline. I mean she’s craving her own future with the bone of her enemies while trying to reclaim the past they took from her. That’s wicked. Unfortunately, it’s an epic storyline that isn’t executed as well as it could have been. That being said, this isn’t the worst comic I’ve ever read–not by far–but it also doesn’t really stand out as something that’s going to define a new Wonder Woman. It’s a nice try to get a fresh-eyed set of people interested in a new and improved (depending on who you ask) Wonder Woman–and her costume and storyline are pretty bad-ass–but all in all, it falls just a little short.

Diana in all her ass-kicking glory!

My final thoughts on Wonder Woman Odyssey are that it’s pretty good. Not great, but better than some. The characters–including Wonder Woman herself–all seem a little flat, but Wonder Woman’s a hard character to write for and I get that. Of course that doesn’t mean that we should publish ‘just okay’ pieces about her because authors (who are good with other superheroes) aren’t great with her. We should find new authors with more depth to offer to this iconic ass-kicking lady and show the world that fighting like a girl is a good thing!

Geisha, A Life: If Only We Should All Be So Lucky To Live A Life Like This!

A Review By: Amelia

I’m obsessed with Japanese culture, some might say to an unhealthy level and I will admit that my obsession started with geishas. I will also admit that the novel Memoirs of a Geisha was the very beginning of it. After reading this astounding novel about a culture I hadn’t known existed before hand, I had to know my! My research into the world of geisha led me straight to the book Geisha, A Life.

The author of this memoir is Mineko Iwasaki who was trained, from the age of five, to become a geisha. She lived a life that even a princess would be jealous of with a dozen parties every night and legions of admiring kings, princes, military heroes, and wealthy business men alike. She was said to be the best, most successful geisha of her generation, but she had to leave when she discovered that she needed something else: to live her own life. She retired early but lived a vivid and awe-inspiring life as a geisha which is recalls vibrantly in her memoir.

Iwasaki penned her own memoir when she was left disappointed in the novel Memoirs of a Geisha (which the author Arthur Golden based off interviews he did with Iwasaki). She decided to tell her story of being a geisha–a completely true story. In fact, in the three-hundred-year history of the female geisha profession, she is the first women to come forward and write what might be called a ‘tell-all’ book about the mysterious world of Japanese geisha culture. The writing itself is clear, concise, and very articulate (Iwasaki’s translator having done a good job) and although it doesn’t flow quite like a novel might, it’s still an enrapturing read.

Iwasaki in her prime

Iwasaki in her okiya

Geisha, A Life is such an eye-opening book. It’s a book about being a geisha written by an actual geisha! How much more do you need to be fully immersed in the topic? I will admit that as far as drama goes, Iwasaki’s life as a geisha had little. She lived a charmed life so she wrote about having a charmed life. If you want to read about backstabbing, hateful geisha competing against one another, you best stick to fiction!

My final thoughts on Geisha, A Life are that it is a great book. It gives an insight into a world that the west had no idea existed before the late 1990s! The prose flows beautifully, the story is amazing (even more so when you realize that this woman actually lived this life), and the pictures that are included are just amazing. I highly suggest this book to anyone and everyone!

The Yellow Wallpaper: If You’re Not Already a Feminist, You Will Be After This

A Review By: Amelia

Feminism has been a real hot topic button this past year and I, for one, couldn’t be more pleased. It’s time the world stops looking at women like objects and accepts we’re people too. In honour of the feminist movement I dug into my old university books to retrieve The Yellow Wallpaper–one of the first feminist pieces ever written and a truly creepy short story regardless of that!

Presented in first person through a collection of journal entries, The Yellow Wallpaper is about a woman whose doctor husband has confined her to the attic room to recuperate from what he calls a ‘temporary nervous depression’, a diagnosis given to many women of the period. The windows are barred, the door is locked, and with nothing to stimulate her she becomes obsessed by the pattern and colour of the room’s wallpaper until it finally drives her mad.

The author of The Yellow Wallpaper is Charlotte Perkins Gilman who was a prominent American feminist, sociologist, novelist, and a utopian feminist because of her unorthodox concepts and her lifestyle during a time when her accomplishments were considered exceptional for women. The Yellow Wallpaper was a semi-autobiographical piece which she wrote after a severe bout of postpartum psychosis.

The main character of the piece is the woman narrator who goes unnamed for the whole piece (although it’s likely when the woman mentions a Jane near the end of the piece that she’s speaking about herself). The narrator is an upper-middle-class woman who is newly married and a mother who is being treated for a slight hysterical tendency. Her only company is a secret diary and, as she loses grip of reality, the women she’s convinced are creeping around the attic room’s yellow wallpaper. As she loses touch with the ‘outside’, she comes to understand her ‘inside’ with a comprehension that the women (the ones she sees in the yellow wallpaper) are forced to creep around and hide inside their own lives–lives prescribed to them by the society in which they were born into–and that she herself is one of them.

The Yellow Wallpaper is hailed as one of the first and one of the most important feminist works as it illustrates the attitudes in the 19^th century towards women and the physical and mental health. The woman’s mental decline is thought to be normal by her doctor husband because he couldn’t be bothered to learn that it’s not. It’s a story that brings up feelings of sadness for the women and immense angry at a world that would let this happen to anyone. It’s also a truly creepy piece of literature, though it’s not a horror story based on anything supernatural: it’s quite the opposite. The horror comes from the realization that the narrator (and perhaps the readers themselves) has to lose herself to understand herself and that speaks deeply to the fact that many women, then and now, don’t get to just be themselves; they have to label themselves and then hide behind that.

My final thoughts on short story The Yellow Wallpaper is that it’s hauntingly amazing. Gilman writes with such conviction because, well, she went through something disturbing like this, and doesn’t that make it even more terrifying? It’s a short story that feminists, their critics, and everyone else should read to gain perspective and possibly even lose some.

The Ring: A Novel Turned Movie Turned Manga – And I Must Say, Third Time’s a Charm!

A Review By: Amelia

I love ghost stories! I’ve said it in reviews in the past and I’m saying it again in this review–a well thought out ghost story is the best thing to read, and no one country does a good ghost story quite like Japan does. The Ring is one such ghost story. Like Ju-On (also one of my favourite ghost stories!) it features people with regular lives that are suddenly thrust into a horrifying world of vengeful, powerful ghosts.

The story of The Ring (for those that don’t know) is about a cursed video. When a journalist looks into the existence of the supposedly cursed videotape, she unleashes a ghost upon herself that’s bent on revenge. With the video giving little to nothing in way of clues, all seems lost. When her little boy accidentally watches it though, she has just one week to solve the mystery of the cursed video if she wishes to save herself and her child. Although there are some major changes from the book to the manga to the movies (not even including the American remake) this is the plot that drives the terrifying story forward.

Koji Suzuki penned the novel The Ring to which all other Ring stories are based off of, but if you’ve seen the Japanese movie and read the book, they are very, very different. This is down to Hiroshi Takahashi, who adapted the novel to a manga and a screenplay form. Along with the manga artist Misao Inagaki, Takahashi has taken a story that was good and made it great with a deeper look into the mythos of The Ring.

 

The art style of The Ring is fairly simple compared to what I’ve seen in other mangas. The faces are detailed just enough to show emotion and the locations detailed just enough to show you where the characters are: a forest, a living room, an auditorium–everything is very minimal and features a lot of closes up and a lot of shadows. It’s actually a very striking art style and works well with the horror atmosphere that the plot creates.

The Ring makes a great manga; it makes a better manga than it does a novel or movie! The minimalistic art is striking and doesn’t take away from the story. In fact, it adds to it! By not drawing attention away from the story with showy, over detailed art, the horrifying plot really shines.

My final thoughts on The Ring, as a manga, are that it’s really good. Better than good–it is great! It’s a horror story like no other. It’s an old-fashioned ghost story that is truly unsettling and after so many years of unsatisfying, unintelligent, unscary horror bombarding us from every possible media, The Ring has a manga is a breath of horrifyingly fresh air!

The Birthing House: A Horror Novel That’s Horror Is Stillborn

A Review By: Amelia

I love horror stories, they’re one of my favourite genres to read, and I always browse the shelves of thrift stores for any good horror pieces. The Birthing House was one such book that caught my eye and even had a rave review on the inside cover that compared it to Stephen King’s The Shining. For two bucks I thought it was a steal. Unfortunately it turns out that two bucks and the several hours I spent reading it, were completely and utterly wasted.

When Conrad Harrison impulse buys a big, old house in Wisconsin, his wife Jo doesn’t share his enthusiasm and Conrad is left to set up their new home as she ties up loose ends in LA. But the house isn’t what it seems and Conrad soon hears the wailing of a phantom baby and sees a woman who looks exactly like Jo but isn’t. When he becomes obsessed with the pregnant girl next door, who claims to be a victim of the evil of the house, Conrad’s life begins to unravel and leads him to a nightmarish conclusion.

Sounds pretty good, right? Creepy, original, and weird–maybe just a touch disturbing? Well prepare to be as disappointed as I was. As far as debut novels go, this one should NOT have gotten the author, Christopher Ransom, a book deal.

The main characters of the piece is Conrad Harrison and his wife Jo and boy are these two just a pair of hot messes. Ransom didn’t develop his main characters at all. Or rather, he did, but he did it poorly! Conrad is as shallow as a puddle and about half as interesting and Jo–what a bitch!–and not even in a ‘that’s her character way’ just in a ‘she’s written so poorly and her character is incomprehensible’ way! Nadia, the pregnant next door neighbour, is the only semi-likeable character and that’s only because she’s a mostly vapid teenage girl character and Ransom has apparently seen enough of those over the years to write one himself! There’s also an old girlfriend named Holly that appears in several long-winded and rather pointless flashback chapters but she’s just as hollow as the other characters. If anything, Holly is less a fleshed-out character and more just a fictional teenage fantasy of a fictional man.

I don’t even know where to begin with the themes of this piece. At first, Ransom leads us to believe that the house is haunted, but then it’s not and the characters are simply unravelling because of extenuating circumstances. Then, lo and behold, by the last fifty pages the house is haunted again. What are we, as the readers, supposed to make of that? What does it say about the characters? About the plot development? Nothing good, that much I can tell you!

The location of this disastrous novel is set pretty much exclusively in the creepy old house that Conrad buys. The whole mystery that the book is based on is tied-up completely in the house, but Ransom’s incohesive prose leaves almost all the mysteries of the birthing house unanswered.

The Birthing House is awful. It’s as simple as that. It’s just awful. It’s a book that doesn’t know what it wants to be. The narrator’s voice is sloppy, the prose is ugly and clunky, the characters unappealing, the plot full of holes, the dialogue pure drivel, there are gross and useless sex scenes, superfluous swearing (and I, myself, swear gratuitously so for me to say that means a lot), the mysteries are left unsolved, the horror unutilized–need I go on? There is not one good aspect of this book and I must say, my favourite thing about it, was finishing it and throwing it away!

My final thoughts on The Birthing House are don’t read it. Seriously, just don’t bother. In my opinion, this book should not have been birthed. This is a novel that Christopher Ransom’s editor should have had aborted.

The Long Halloween: Batman at His Finest

A Review By: Amelia

Batman has had a lot of stories. He’s been around for seventy-five years–of course he’s had a lot of stories! Movies, videogames, comics, television, Batman has had more media coverage than some natural disasters. Over the course of so much material, some of those stories are remarkable, some not so much. Batman: The Long Halloween is one of the remarkable ones.

The Long Halloween is a story that spans a year. It’s a Batman epic that revolves around the untouchable crime family the Falcones and some of Batman’s most classic super-villains as a new killer dubbed Holiday kills on one holiday of every month.

Jeph Loeb, the writer of The Long Halloween, is a four-time Eisner Award winner and five-time Wizard Fan Awards winner and his comic book work, most of which he’s composed with artist Tim Sale, has appeared on the New York Times Best Seller list. 

All the rogues that appear throughout.

The Long Halloween, like many comics before it, feature a huge assortment of Batman’s famous gallery of rogues and they each get their own special appearance on a particular holiday. Poison Ivy gets St. Patrick’s day (her hair is made of clovers), Scarecrow gets Mother’s day (he killed his own mother on Mother’s day), and Riddler gets April Fools (for… obvious reasons I think). What makes The Long Halloween so remarkable is that regular criminals make up a huge part of this graphic novel too. The crime lords and their families fight amongst themselves and more than a few of their numbers are taken out by the killer dubbed Holiday. The supervillains of Gotham are only brought in as a last resort to help the Falcone family: it’s a great twist in the usual Batman-fights-freaks story line.

An example of the art deco style

The art style in The Long Halloween is fantastic–some of the best, most original art I’ve seen in a modern comic. It’s not hyper-realistic like, say, Hush (which is also a Batman comic written by Jeph Loeb) but instead has an art deco feel to it. The shadows are all encompassing yet they don’t overtake. Likewise with the colours, which are muted yet still vivid. Batman was, however, created for an art deco universe so the shadows, colours and design of the piece, which are solid, angular, and dark, fit the Bat-universe like a glove.

Batman is my favourite superhero so maybe I’m a little biased but The Long Halloween is perfect. It’s paced flawlessly with a killer whose identity you won’t be able to guess–not that that’s a bad thing, it was actually kind of nice to not know a thing about the killer. The plot is perfect, the art is perfect, just everything about this graphic novel is perfect.

My final thoughts on Batman: The Long Halloween are that it is just fantastic. It’s my favourite Batman comic and I think if you read it now it’ll be your favourite Batman comic too. The art deco style might be a little strange at first if you’re more the ilk of realism, but it grows on you quickly. Even if the art doesn’t appeal to you, the story–the perfect story–it’s more than enough to keep you reading!

Stuff Hipsters Hate: A Book About Hate That I Also Hated!

A Review By: Amelia

Hipsters are a trend that we in the twenty-first century just can’t seem to get rid of. Their numbers have exploded in the last few years from a few disillusioned twenty-somethings that thought they were better than everyone else, to a nation of disillusioned twenty through forty somethings who think they’re better than everyone else! But what do we really know about them other than they work as baristas and claim to have ‘been into that’ before anyone else? This book, Stuff Hipsters Hate, stakes out to educate the non-hipsters.

Stuff Hipsters Hate is an insider’s take down of the two author’s own subculture–hipsterdom. The blog Stuff Hipsters Hate has been deconstructing this often-mocked subculture that’s known for its their wide-reaching disdain for most things.

The authors of this book are Brenna Ehrlich and Andrea Bartz and, as you might have guessed, they also run the Stuff Hipsters Hate blog. They are hipsters themselves, so I just had to trust they knew what they were talking/mocking about.

The plot of Stuff Hipsters Hate is right there in the title–it’s stuff hipsters hate. It’s laid out like a scientist’s field journal in chapters with sections, charts, diagrams, and pictures. It includes statistics and observations as if the hipsters were a hardly studied primate society and not just douchebag twenty-somethings that are too smug for their own good. Oops, is my unbiased hate towards hipsters showing again? Oh well, we’re almost down here.

I’m kind of torn on this book. On one hand, it’s about hipsters and I hate hipsters (at least, the hardcore ones) so reading this was a bit of a chore. On the other hand, it’s about mocking hipsters (I love doing that) so that made me want to keep reading. It was all very conflicting. Now that I’ve finished the book and am reviewing it, the charm of mocking hipsters has worn off–and quickly!

My final thoughts on Stuff Hipsters Hate are that as far as this blog-to-book goes, Stuff Hipsters Hate is average. Two stars out of five stars at most. I got some laughs from this book, and it was a pleasant surprise how unblog-like this book was, but like any online blog/forum/Tumblr page etc., it is way better in small doses on the internet, not ‘I’m going to sit and read for a few hours’ portions. Especially since the topic is hipsters and haven’t we all had enough of this ridiculous trend yet?

Nowhere Fast: A Bleak Steampunk Story About a Future That’s Bound to Happen

A Review By: Amelia

Steampunk is a personal passion of mine. I love the mythology that authors have created over the years all wrapped around the thought of Victorian age machinery that never was. Steampunk! An Anthology of Fantastically Rich and Strange Stories is a book that I was instantly drawn too for this reason.

Steampunk! is an anthology of fourteen short stories that all have something to do with a steampunk world. Nowhere Fast, by Christopher Rowe, was one of those stories and, although not my favourite story in the book, it’s one that really resonated with me as it’s a story of what might the world become when oil runs out.

The author of Nowhere Fast is Christopher Rowe, a writer whose short stories have been nominated for awards such as World Fantasy, Hugo, Nebula, Locus, Sturgeon–all of which are awards for fantasy pieces, so when this guy sits down to write a steampunk story, he knows what he’s doing!

There are a host of characters introduced in the span of this short story but the main characters (which represent the main themes of the piece) are Luza, a teenage girl that wishes to explore the world, Fizz, a teenage boy that wishes to change the world, and Luza’s father and the Federals (the story’s equivalent to the military), that are scared and opposed to the world changing. The story doesn’t present a lot of character development within its thirty or so pages, but I don’t think it was supposed too. The characters–as I stated above–represent an idea more than they do characters that we’re supposed to think are living, breathing beings.

The location of the story is Kentucky in the not so distant future (it’s never said exactly what year it is, but it’s sometime past the year 2050). The world has run out of oil so things like plastics and cars have ceased to exist for years and years. Going any distance is an arduous task, so no one goes anywhere anymore except the Federals which have steam powered machinery. The United States has no federal government and any cities or towns of reasonable size have become their own sovereign states. It’s an interesting concept because although the world isn’t in a completely feudal state, it’s still a world divided.

In an anthology of steampunk stories, Nowhere Fast doesn’t quite fit. It has steampunk elements: coal powered horses, Da Vinci inspired flying machines, and a world built on recycling and reusing. At the same time though, it’s more a story of a bleak future. Whereas steampunk–true steampunk–is about a past in which steam powered machinery is an advancement, Nowhere Fast is a story where steam powered machinery is the only option: it’s not an advancement, it’s in fact a hindrance. It’s a nice twist on the usual steampunk trope.

My final thoughts on the short story Nowhere Fast are that it is bleak. Maybe it’s not supposed to be as bleak as my mind as made it out to be, but–even if it isn’t–it’s still bleak. It’s a story that’s telling us we need to find other ways to live our lives because oil isn’t going to cut it for much longer. It’s not the best, or the most steampunk story in the anthology, but it’s compelling and completely worth it all the same.

Fruits Basket: I Hope You Don’t Have A Weak Heart, ‘Cause This Adorable Manga Could Stop It!

A Review By: Amelia

I personally believe that the root of all cuteness in the world, stems from three things: smiling babies, cats, and Japanese manga. When I sat down to read Fruits Basket, I had no idea that my theory would be confirmed nearly a thousand times over!

Fruits Basket is a twenty-three volume manga about a family cursed by the Chinese zodiac. The curse manifests itself when the cursed person is hugged by someone of the opposite sex and the cursed person turns into an animal from the zodiac! The family deals with it in stride, but when a naïve teenage girl begins living with three of the cursed males of the family, crazy shenanigans ensue!

The author and artist behind the whole of the brilliant series Fruits Basket is Natsuki Takaya who has wanted to be a manga artist since she was in first grade. When Fruits Basket’s twenty-three volume run was complete, Takaya had written and drawn the top selling shōjo manga in North America and the second best selling in Japan.

There are a multitude of characters that appear throughout the twenty-three volumes, but if you narrow it down to characters you consistently see from volume-to-volume, there’s about a dozen. Narrow it down to characters in nearly every panel and you’re left with Tohru Honda, and Kyo and Yuki Sohma. Tohru is the kind-hearted, sweet, selfless, albeit a little naïve girl who, after a series of unfortunate events, has nowhere to live. Yuki and Kyo are the constantly fighting cousins who are two of thirteen people possessed by animals of the Chinese zodiac that Tohru comes to live with and share all kinds of wacky adventures! The characters are all very different and all very fleshed out with different personalities. They’re funny and unique and although some of them aren’t the kindest characters, they have their reasons for being unkind and it makes them all the more human.

The art style in Fruits Basket is a cutsie, quasi-realistic style. I say quasi-realistic because although the characters are drawn with correct human portions it’s still manga so characters’ eyes are huge, the boys androgynously sexy, and everyone has such beautiful and perfect hair it’s enough to drive someone mad! Aside from going crazy over the impossible hair standards though, the art style is really fitting to the story. Everything’s cute and cuddly: the characters’ expressions, their over-the-top reactions, the animal transformations–just everything is neat, crisp, and just so darn cute!

All in all, Fruits Basket is a great experience. It’s a ridiculous concept for a manga–I’ll be the first to admit that–but as it comes together, the story and characters, it’s an amazing experience. There’s romance and fantasy, humour and genuine emotion. The art is adorable and the story line even more so. I really can’t get enough of this manga and it has great re-readability.

My final thoughts on Fruits Basket are that you need to read this manga. Like, right now. It is so cute, so touching, and so SO funny. Tohru’s reactions to the family transforming into animals is enough to bring me back to this manga time and time again!

Ju-On: J-Horror Fiction at Its Absolute Best

A Review By: Amelia

I love to read scary stories: give me a good horror novel and I’m set for days! There’s just something about horror novels that appeal to all of us–they convey chills in written word better than any horror movie ever could and reading them by yourself, at night, is always a terrifying experience! Ju-On, although a novelization of a movie, is a greatly crafted horror novel and shouldn’t be overlooked if you’re longing a good thrill.

Ju-On, by Kei Ohishi, is a Japanese horror story of a murdered woman named Kayako come back as a vengeful ghost who curses all who dare to enter her house (the place where she was viciously murdered). The story is told out of order as different characters enter into it and time jumps around. The main living character is Rika, a woman who has become cursed by entering the house as a social worker. She races against time and the every strengthening curse as she tries to solve the mystery surrounding the house and save herself from a gruesome death.

What makes this story so interesting is that the ghost can go anywhere so long as there’s a cursed person for her to follow. Anyone who steps into Kayako’s house is cursed, they go about their daily lives as the curse manifests around them, and Kayako comes to claim their lives. This leads to some interesting and horrifying places where you think you’re safe, but the ghost can get you anyways. An example of this is when a character locks herself in her apartment and hides under her covers only to discover that the ghost is under there with her!

In my wrap up, I simply must say that Ju-On is what all horror stories should be and that, dear reader, is simple. The simpler, the scarier. There’s nothing in this book but a ghost story. Some readers might be put off by the fact that it is a novelization of a movie and not the original work, but the author, Kei Ohishi, does a wonderful job expanding the characters, highlighting the tension, and adding in extra creepy bits that have nothing to do with Kayako and her curse but add to the overall atmosphere and dread of the ghost story.

My final thoughts on Ju-On are that it is a great horror story because of how plausible it all is. It’s not over the top or complicated–it’s just a good, old fashioned ghost story–and it’s scary as all hell. I highly recommend this book to horror aficionados and causal fright seekers alike!