Ling's Report

Mythago Wood by Robert Holdstock is a book that immediately caught my attention from the moment I saw its summary. A labyrinthine forest filled with primeval magic? Entities born from old legends and fairytales? A place where fascination can turn into obsession and insanity? I was sold as soon as I finished reading the summary.   Mythago Wood is about a young man named Steven Huxley. His father, George Huxley, had been obsessed with the Ryhope Woods up until his death. George was convinced that Ryhope Woods was a place where legends and stories came to life, and he was particularly obsessed with the story of Guiwenneth, a warrior’s daughter who was rescued and raised by magpies after her aunt tried to take her for herself. Steven finds that his brother Christian is slowly starting to become just as obsessed with the Woods and Guiwenneth as their father was. When Christian disappears into the Woods to search for Guiwenneth, Steven soon begins to be drawn into the strangenes...

Since October is the month of frights and monsters, I figured I’d start the month off with a review of a book that had recently caught my eye: Asylum by Madeleine Roux. I have always been a fan of horror stories, and the combination of title and cover was enough to pique my curiosity. Asylum is about a boy named Daniel Crawford who is enrolled in the New Hampshire College Prep program. Once he reaches the place, however, he discovers that the usual summer housing program is closed, so students will need to stay at the Brookline dorms. As usual, there is a catch: Brookline dorms used to be a psychiatric hospital that housed the criminally insane. Dan still does what he can to make the most of his stay, even making friends with a girl named Abby and a boy named Jordan. However, Brookline hides many dark secrets, and Dan soon finds that he might be connected to its grim past. And then, strange things start happening: it starts with emails that only he can see, and then he...

As much as I like stories about the supernatural, I do not read that many books with vampires. Perhaps it was because most of the vampire books I did read when I was younger did not leave a good impression, since most of them featured an unlikeable, misanthropic heroine who wanted to get together with a brooding bloodsucker with all the personality of a cardboard box. When I was an undergraduate, I often went to the local Barnes & Noble to see what books were out, and I recalled seeing the Young Adult section filled with a whole bunch of paranormal romance books featuring vampires and werewolves. I suppose most of them were trying to appeal to the same audience that enjoyed Stephenie Meyer's Twilight series, an audience that I was not a part of. I found myself wondering if I would ever be able to find a vampire story that could hold my attention without being some vapid tale of “Idiot Girl meets Angsting Bloodsucker.” Then, one day at my local library, I found The Str...

On July 2001, McFarlane Toys released six action figures designed by English writer Clive Barker. Each toy was packaged along with a chapter of a novelette penned by Barker himself, detailing the character’s history and the world that they live in. This series of action figures was known as Tortured Souls and sought to convey what Barker described as ‘the use of flesh as canvas.’ The chapters would then be bundled together in a book titled Tortured Souls: The Legend of Primordium . Primordium is a city that is said to have existed before all other cities. It is a place of corruption and decadence, a place where the rich and powerful indulge in all manners of sins. An assassin named Kreiger kills a Senator on behalf of the criminal Duraf Cascarellian. However, Kreiger ends up running into the dead Senator’s daughter, Lucidique, who persuades him to try to strike back at the Empire that made his life so miserable. To do this, she leads him to the enigmatic Agonistes, an entity ru...

I was first introduced to this book by a boy that I was tutoring in writing. He wanted to read The Emerald Atlas for his weekly reading assignment and he showed me the copy he was using so that I could get a better understanding of what it was about. I read the summary and I was immediately intrigued, probably because I love fantasy books and because the summary of the book had several things that appealed to me as well: magic, adventure, children finding out that there is more to the world than they imagined, monsters that pose great challenges, and several other things.   The Emerald Atlas is the first book in the “Books of Beginning” series by John Stephens. The book features three children whose parents left them behind for some unknown reason: Kate the responsible oldest sibling, Michael the dwarf-obsessed middle child, and Emma the rambunctious youngest sibling. The three of them were recently adopted by a man known as Abraham who seems to possess the power of mag...

I will freely admit that I love fairytales and that I love folklore. I love reading about the fairies of old, the sort of fairies that both entranced and terrified people with their strange powers and their alien sense of morality. That is why, when I first heard of the premise of Forgotten Gods by S.B. Stewart- Laing and Michael J. Chernicoff, I knew that I had to pick it up and give it a read. I was not disappointed by my decision.   Forgotten Gods is an alternate history story set in 1745 Scotland. Scottish rebels are at war with the British Empire, but they are not doing very well and defeat seems to be inevitable. In desperation, the rebels decide to call upon the daione sidhe , known to others as the fairies. The Fair Folk say that they will help out in the war on one condition: that they be allowed to roam free in the human world. The rebels, who are in dire need of as much help as they can get, agree to the terms. The daione sidhe make good on their promise and soo...