Where the Strangers Live, by Oliver Phipps

Where the Strangers Live by Oliver Phipps My rating: 1 of 5 stars I don’t know how this book ever made it to my to-be-read pile. It’s a clumsily written short novella about a woman, Sophie, and two men, Elliot and Roy (who only have eyes for Sophie’s butt, breasts, etc.) who happen to enter a submerged alien base… The story itself reads like a truly bad b-movie but as if that wasn’t bad enough, the writing style is repetitive (we keep reading the “three submariners” and other constantly repeating phrases and denominations) and clumsy. Furthermore, there are countless truly grating grammar issues (tense!), typos and other mistakes (“to” versus “too”) that made me think the author must be a non-native speaker (as am I)… The fight scenes were atrociously badly written, a crime against Phipps’ readers! Long-winded, boring and, of course, also badly written. Stay away from this! One out of five stars because I can’t award none. Ceterum censeo Putin esse delendam View all my reviews[su_spacer]

https://turing.mailstation.de/where-the-strangers-live-by-oliver-phipps/?feed_id=3200&_unique_id=6627e9320dc0c

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Walking Dead (graphic novels), by Robert Kirkman, Charlie Adlard & Tony Moore

Image
The Walking Dead, Vol. 1: Days Gone Bye by Robert Kirkman My rating: 5 of 5 stars In my youth, I loved comics. I regularly read Asterix , Spirou & Fantasio , The Adventures of Tintin and Gaston ; just to name a few. I still love those dearly, despite quite a few of them (especially Tintin) not aging very well because those comics are “children” of their time - they’re ranging from “culturally insensitive” to “fairly damn racist” which I realised when I started re-reading Tintin after all those decades. So, lesson number one: Be careful if you revisit the heroes of your childhood. Another thing I’ve learned long ago: I don’t like post-apocalyptic stories. Call me an incurable optimist but in spite of all the challenges we, as humans, face, I’m sure we will overcome those challenges and prevail. So, apocalypse? Go away. In 2012, I played Telltale Games’ adventure game “The Walking Dead”. Pretty much a post-apocalyptic interactive novel. The game - as its successors - focuses s...
Read more

Failure to Match (Bad Billionaire Bosses #2), by Kyra Parsi

Image
Failure to Match by Kyra Parsi My rating: 3 of 5 stars After the police procedural version of a “grimdark” novel , I needed “light” - and quickly! “ Failure to Match ” by Kyra Parsi got the job done. Of course, everything was highly predictable and, yet, I enjoyed reading how Jamie fell in love with Jackson. In the beginning, I was highly sceptical considering character descriptions like these: » Minerva Sinclair was a tall, willowy woman with stark white hair and cutting features, and her signature “look” consisted of cherry-red pantsuits, vintage cat-eye sunglasses, and knife-sharp stilettos. Per our client paperwork, she had her personal tarot reader (Imogen) on speed dial and kept her wrinkly sphynx cat (Harry) cradled against her bony chest everywhere she went, as per the guidance of her spiritual advisor (Velma). « Or eye-roll inducing humour like this: » Also, she’d literally named her hairless cat Harry, and I didn’t think she’d intended the pun. « (Since it’s so bad: It...
Read more

Rebecca, by Daphne du Maurier

Image
Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier My rating: 2 of 5 stars I never learn… Classics and I are incompatible and yet I still hope to come to terms with at least some of them. “ Rebecca ” by Daphne du Maurier was another attempt at just that - and one that failed. The unnamed heroine and narrator meets Maxim de Winter, a widower, agrees to his marriage proposal after a few weeks, and moves with him into his ancestral home Manderley where nothing much happens for a long time. The shadow of Maxim's first wife, the eponymous Rebecca, looms large over their marriage, and the new Mrs. de Winter finds herself constantly compared to her predecessor and struggling to fit in with the household staff and society. Maxim is also very thoughtless and inconsiderate towards the protagonist, especially in the early stages of their marriage. He doesn’t fully open up to the new Mrs. de Winter about his feelings and emotions which leads to misunderstandings and a lack of communication between th...
Read more