All thumbs.
Yesterday (Sun., 26 May) I read "Thumbprint," a short story by Joe Hill, that I bought for my Kindle for $0.99; it was about a female Gulf War veteran who assisted with the interrogations of prisoners at Abu Ghraib, comes home, acts badly, and finds herself the recipient of blank pieces of paper with, yes, thumbprints on them.
Meh. Aside from the fact that it ends in media res, the story itself wasn't that impressive: a little too pat, the character a little too unsympathetic (with strong hints that she was unsympathetic even before her participation in certain events at Abu Ghraib); "Thumbprint" really suffers in comparison to how Greg Rucka handled a strong female character involved in morally and ethically shaky actions "touching on the benefit of her country" in the Queen & Country comic books and novels. Then again, I'm sure that Hill would be the first to admit that his goals with "Thumbprint" were quite different from Rucka's goals in his portrayal of Tara Chace's character through her actions in Q&C.
On the whole, I much preferred the collaboration that Hill wrote with his father, Stephen King: "Throttle," which was a tribute to / pastiche of the classic Richard Matheson short story "Duel" (the basis for the first feature film directed by Steven Spielberg).
The Kindle edition of "Thumbprint" included an excerpt from Hill's forthcoming horror novel NOS4A2 (NOS4R2 in the UK). My reaction to this excerpt was also "meh," given the fact that the lead character in it was too stupid to live, even in a horror novel. Doubt I'll be picking it up.
In other reading news, I'm seriously considering abandoning Joe E. Bandel's translation of Hanns Heinz Ewers's Alraune, which he self-published on Lulu; yeah, I'm 62% of the way through it (which in actual book terms means I have roughly 120 pages left to go), but I'm really annoyed -- pissed-off, actually -- at the well-nigh non-existent copy-editing that went into this before Bandel clicked on "publish." Basically I paid almost $11 for the "privilege" of proofreading this thing: I should either be paid to correct his many mistakes, or at minimum, I shouldn't have had to pay to do so (if he were a friend for whom I was doing a favor, for example). While I was originally inclined to believe his introduction when he pointed out the infelicities of Guy Endore's 1929 translation, the deficiencies of Bandel's own work make me wonder just how bad Endore's rendition really is.
Too bad that Dedalus Books hasn't seen fit to translate Ewers's work as yet. As it stands, I'm probably not very likely to buy Bandel's other translations of Ewers.
Meh. Aside from the fact that it ends in media res, the story itself wasn't that impressive: a little too pat, the character a little too unsympathetic (with strong hints that she was unsympathetic even before her participation in certain events at Abu Ghraib); "Thumbprint" really suffers in comparison to how Greg Rucka handled a strong female character involved in morally and ethically shaky actions "touching on the benefit of her country" in the Queen & Country comic books and novels. Then again, I'm sure that Hill would be the first to admit that his goals with "Thumbprint" were quite different from Rucka's goals in his portrayal of Tara Chace's character through her actions in Q&C.
On the whole, I much preferred the collaboration that Hill wrote with his father, Stephen King: "Throttle," which was a tribute to / pastiche of the classic Richard Matheson short story "Duel" (the basis for the first feature film directed by Steven Spielberg).
The Kindle edition of "Thumbprint" included an excerpt from Hill's forthcoming horror novel NOS4A2 (NOS4R2 in the UK). My reaction to this excerpt was also "meh," given the fact that the lead character in it was too stupid to live, even in a horror novel. Doubt I'll be picking it up.
In other reading news, I'm seriously considering abandoning Joe E. Bandel's translation of Hanns Heinz Ewers's Alraune, which he self-published on Lulu; yeah, I'm 62% of the way through it (which in actual book terms means I have roughly 120 pages left to go), but I'm really annoyed -- pissed-off, actually -- at the well-nigh non-existent copy-editing that went into this before Bandel clicked on "publish." Basically I paid almost $11 for the "privilege" of proofreading this thing: I should either be paid to correct his many mistakes, or at minimum, I shouldn't have had to pay to do so (if he were a friend for whom I was doing a favor, for example). While I was originally inclined to believe his introduction when he pointed out the infelicities of Guy Endore's 1929 translation, the deficiencies of Bandel's own work make me wonder just how bad Endore's rendition really is.
Too bad that Dedalus Books hasn't seen fit to translate Ewers's work as yet. As it stands, I'm probably not very likely to buy Bandel's other translations of Ewers.