immortality

Review: Night Harvest by Michael Alexiades

by Stefani

night harvest Night Harvest by Michael Alexiades

Published September 26th, 2013 by Turner Publishing

Buy this book at: B&N / Amazon / Book Depository / Books a Million

 

Synopsis:

A riveting debut thriller from one of New York’s most eminent surgeons, Night Harvest follows the bizarre disappearance of patients from a Manhattan hospital into the murky underground of the city.

Fourth-year medical student Demetri Makropolis has been assigned to cover orthopedics at Eastside Medical Center, one of New York City’s finest hospitals. Just as his surgery team begins to operate on New York’s leading drama critic, F. J. Pervis III, the patient suddenly goes into cardiac arrest. The team fails to resuscitate him, so the corpse is moved to the hospital’s morgue. But before the autopsy is even performed, the body vanishes from the morgue and mysteriously reappears a day later—with the brain surgically removed. Even more disturbing is the medical examiner’s discovery: Pervis was still alive when the ghostly craniotomy was performed.

With their reputation at stake, the hospital assigns NYPD’s Detective Patrick McManus to the case; meanwhile, Demetri learns of an eerily similar century-old unsolved mystery that leads him to an enigmatic figure lurking in the bowels of the medical center. With Pervis as his experiment, the perpetrator initiates a chain reaction of chaos and murder in Manhattan.

A gripping tale filled with ambition, romance, jealousies, and black humor, Night Harvest is a thrilling ride that culminates in the long-abandoned elaborate network of subterranean rooms and corridors that still lie beneath present-day Manhattan.

 

Rating: 2 star

 

Review:

Disclaimer: I received a free copy of this book from the publisher in exchange for an honest review. Thank you Turner! Past this point this review contains spoilers.

 

This book was kind of boring. The idea was that this medical student gets involved in the plot of a serial killer when a local celebrity dies on the operating table only to have his body go missing. Then later they find out he wasn’t dead at all and was killed later. Other people go missing, medical student plays detective and we all know how it proceeds from there. I wouldn’t really call this one predictable, because it was just so random. But, I present you the pros and cons of this book.

Pros:

Writing – The writing is not bad. It is adequate for a story of this type, although I felt like it tended to ramble a little too much without really going anywhere. But largely I have no complaints about the writing, it accomplished what it needed to accomplish.

Characters – Again, no complaints but nothing truly spectacular. The characters were decent and not too cookie cutter like. I did really like Demetri and McManus, I would have preferred that the POV was strictly kept between the two of them. The other characters I didn’t really care much about either good or bad. They were just set pieces for the greater story.

 

Cons:

The Bad Guy – This was just weird. He kills because he has found the secret to immortality, but then he alternately kills other people and rapes them just because. He seemingly has no preference for male or female victims to rape, not even seems to care if they are alive or not at the time. This is so out of synch with everything that makes a sexual predator what they are, they have very specific preferences. It just, I don’t know. Oh yeah and did I mention that he is supposedly like 100 years old? Weird.

POV Jumping – We spent time with at least 6-7 different characters and we seemed to jump between them every 2-3 pages. It was so confusing. I still don’t think I know who half of the characters are and how they related to the story. And it seemed like the author wanted to give every character a back story, so it is just a long line of one page of plot and one page of backstory then on to a new character. I found that I learned absolutely nothing about any of the characters as a result.

Plot – Meandering and aimless. I wasn’t sure what the actual point was except to just set us up for a sequel at the very end. Nothing really was accomplished. And I found that I cared less than I should.

Overall it was not a bad book but it was not very well executed. It needed a lot more work before being put on the market to really tighten up the story and characters. So I would rate it as slightly less than average.

Last Days by Adam Nevill

by Stefani

last days Last Days by Adam Nevill

Published February 26th, 2013 by St. Martin’s Press

Cover and synopsis provided by the publisher.

 

Buy this book at: Book Depository / Books A Million / Amazon / B&N

 

Synopsis:

Indie filmmaker Kyle Freeman is hired to create a documentary about The Temple of the Last Days—a notorious cult that met its chilling end in an Arizona desert back in 1975. As he travels to the cult’s birthplaces in London and France, and its infamous demise in the United States, a series of uncanny events plague all his shoots: out-of-body experiences, visits in the night, ghastly artifacts appearing in their rooms each evening, and the deaths of their interviewees.

What exactly it is the cult managed to awaken – and what is its interest in Kyle Freeman?

 

Rating: 1 star

 

Review:

There is only one way to put this.  This book sucked.  It sucked to high heaven.  It bored me nearly to death with every page.  I honestly wondered if all of the good reviews were paid to say nice things about this crappy tome.  Even as I write this, I think that might still be the case.  With all that said, here are my issues with this crappy thing.

The author has zero sense of pacing.  This book moved at a snail’s pace for chapter upon chapter and then suddenly all kinds of things started to happen in the last quarter of it.  The idea of this book is a good one, a filmmaker is hired to do a documentary about a cult from the seventies that committed mass suicide/murder and manages to stumble into paranormal activity that targets him.  That sounds like it should be good right?  It’s not.  In every single city or location the characters visit the exact same things happen.  Every person the characters interviewed said exactly the same thing.    Approximately 300 pages was a repeat of what happened in the first 100 pages. I was bored to tears.

The author’s descriptions were annoying and confusing.  I didn’t understand what was going on most of the time.  As an example, the author described the room in which the last scene takes place for 2 whole pages.  The picture of it was fully formed in my head and it was a great description!  But then all of a sudden he starts talking about a “large plastic tent” in the middle of the room that had never been mentioned before.  Then just a few paragraphs later it’s described as a “plastic cube” that is solid enough that it requires beating it and shooting at it to dismantle it.  But, I thought it was a tent?  And why wasn’t this included in the initial room description if it’s so important?  If it was a tent then why was it so hard to puncture?  By the time I got to this question I had been pulled completely out of the story and just didn’t give a crap anymore.  This happened so often that I was regularly confused and thought I had skipped over something accidentally.  So I would go back and re-read that part and realize, no I hadn’t skipped over it, it was never addressed.

Most stereotypical American characters ever!  Let’s see, there was the sheriff who was a complete hillbilly.  Cowboy hat and boots, spoke with a drawl, kept saying things like “ya’ll” and “ain’t”, could have walked right out of a western…but he’s from Arizona.  Yeah, it confused me too.  Or Jed, the gun toting, muscle bound Jesus freak who thinks he’s on a mission for God, is unstable and keeps pointing guns at his own friends.  I mean, really?  All we needed was an overweight, outspoken black woman and the stereotypes would have been a complete collection!  It was ridiculous.

Kyle was supremely unlikable.  He spent most of the book mentally belittling and mocking the people he was interviewing for believing in this paranormal stuff.  Then he went on to experience the paranormal stuff himself and freaked out, running around and screaming at everyone else to figure out a way to protect him.  Shut up dirtbag!  Nobody likes you!  Just die already and quit your whining.  I hated this guy so much.

I was very disappointed that I hated the book this much.  I heard this author compared to my favorite author, Scott Sigler, and was excited to see if that comparison held true.  It most certainly does not!  This author has no sense of pacing, storytelling, or character building.  I can’t, in good conscience recommend this book to anyone, it was awful.