Julie

Although only a few pages long, I found this report to be absolutely chilling. Matthew Hopkins was the Witchfinder general and seems to have been absolutely convinced of the righteousness of his cause. The question seem to have been put to him and these are his answers. This was a real man, with a real conviction. Horrific.

This was my third time reading ‘The Passage' and I still enjoyed it as much as the first time. I'm not quite sure why that is.I'm a sucker for survival stories, anyway (if you'll excuse the pun), so that is already a huge plus.
 
Blood-sucking vampire super-soldiers - virals - created by man, have made the human race all but extinct. There are just a few pockets of humanity trying to survive. After almost one hundred years of terror the virals' behaviour starts to change. They realise they have nearly exhausted their food supply and they have to reduce the attacks on the survivors giving them time to multiply but also giving them time to fight back.
 
On the surface this is a horror story about survival but it is more than that. It is a tale of love in all its forms: husband and wife, parent and child, brother and sister. Each time I read it I see more and that for me makes a cracking good story.

Audible Edition
Very good introduction to the Wars of the Roses. Dan Jones narrates his own book very well.

I Feel Stupid This book definately belongs on the same shelf as Vellum, Splinter and Fairyland for me. The shelf should be titled ‘Books I Just Don't Get'. I don't think of myself as being particularly dumb but this one went WAY over my head!. I can follow the very basic plot of the book but the meat of the story was just strange. Never mind. I would like to try another of the author's books but that probably won't be anytime soon.
 
A week later...
Right, so, I've revised my rating for the book because I have had time to think about it and understand what it was that bothered me. I understood the plot and the coming-together at the end, in other words, the basic storyline, which was really good. What I didn't get was the significance of the individuals' stories inside of Diana Hunter's head. I understood the overall significance of the individual characters themselves as part of the whole but their stories threw me. Maybe, I will reread it one day, now that I know what to expect and it will make more sense to me.

Spiders in Space I bought the book based on the blurb thinking I had an idea of what the story was about. Well...I wasn't entirely wrong but had I known it was partly about a race of giant, intelligent spiders I probably wouldn't have picked it up because a) I really can't stand the beasts and b) it would have sounded too ridiculous for my taste. However, I started to read it and once I realised what was going on I somehow wanted to find it silly but I couldn't, I got entirely drawn in. The civilisation building was amazing - I'm always in awe of someone who can imagine something like that. It did drag a little in places but I think that was just because I wanted to find out what was going to happen. When it came to the show-down I couldn't decide who I wanted to win. It felt like a mixture of Doctor Who's Planet of the Spiders mixed with The Face of Evil episodes (yes, I am a Doctor Who fan) add some Rama to it and finish it all off with Kim Stanley Robinson's Aurora and still it had a flavour all of its own. Fantastic!