Review – The Death House

Posted August 1, 2015 by Nicky in Reviews / 4 Comments

Cover of The Death House by Sarah PinboroughThe Death House, Sarah Pinborough

I mostly skimmed this book, because the whole creeping fear of the illness thing… it gets to me. It’s one of the things my anxiety does to me: just a constant sense that my body is a ticking timebomb, and sooner or later, something will go wrong. I don’t need the idea of a test to tell if you’re Defective, a whole society that condones locking people who have that gene away. So, yeah, I mostly skimmed this one.

It’s not a bad story, actually. I wasn’t sure, from the concept, but I did find myself getting absorbed and stopping to read some sections. The writing is pretty good — there are some really gorgeous bits, particularly at the end. That last line, “I’m not afraid” — ahh. Lovely.

The creepiness and suspense, well, what with trying to avoid the details of the illness and so on, I didn’t really get a full sense of that. Neil Gaiman blurbed it, though, so you can see what kind of audience this is aiming at, the tone that it goes for. In this case, bear in mind that the rating I give it is a compromise between how good I think the book is (probably four stars) and my discomfort with the subject matter (two stars), since I rate things according to my personal enjoyment.

Rating: 3/5

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4 responses to “Review – The Death House

  1. I haven’t even heard of this one until now. Even the cover is creepy! I’m a huge fan of creepy books (also a huge scaredy cat, go figure), so I’ll definitely be picking this one up!

    • I think this one is creepy in a psychological sort of way with a fear of illness and death and people you can’t trust, rather than out and out gore in any way, so that… might help or not, heh. I’m also a scaredy cat.

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