The Dark Blood of Poppies, Freda Warrington

However sceptical I am about the whole lush dark vampires thing, these books do captivate me. I love the way the mythology works: the way different people believe different things, and ultimately the way those beliefs shape the whole world. It’s not even really allegory — we really do that, in a way. I wasn’t so sure about her foray into Lilith and Samael and that sort of mythology, but actually, she handles that pretty well too, without forcing religiosity on the books. (In fact, that’s often a danger with her characters, something which blinds them to truth.)

And Warrington still does really well with these amoral, dreadful, detached and yet deeply emotional vampires. She does so well at making me see the monstrous in even the characters we sympathise with, and the human even in characters you want to despise. You get captivated by the power of the vampires and forget their atrocities, even without their magnetic presence to enforce it the way it is within the book. It takes skill.

I really enjoy Warrington’s writing, and really must look into her other series. But first: The Dark Arts of Blood! I’m so glad Titan reissued this series and brought out the next.

Rating: 4/5

The Great Zoo of China, Matthew Reilly

Jurassic Park, but Chinese, there are journalists mostly rather than scientists, and the creatures are dragons. And it’s really not a cutting edge idea: even without Jurassic Park, there’s stuff like Marie Brennan’s A Natural History of Dragons and plenty of other things which have dragons being real and in a real-world setting. The writing wasn’t good enough to sell this idea to me again: I’d rather get round to finishing Jurassic Park, or reread Brennan’s books.

It’s not bad as a light thriller, but it feels definitely gimmicky, like a cash-in. Particularly since I started hearing buzz about it when Jurassic World came out.

One thing in its favour, though: a strong central female character. It’s not so great that apart from her scars she’s conventionally attractive — like the author thought oh, she still has to be pretty — but it is great that she has them, and that they’re a legacy of her actual work with actually relevant creatures.

Rating: 2/5

The Hollow City, Ransom Riggs

I don’t think I have much to add with this book that I didn’t already say when it came to the first book. The juxtaposition of the vintage photography and the story works pretty well, even if the story rather demystifies the photographs by giving them explanations. The pacing is rather less glacial here, because the waiting’s over — a plot is in motion and the children have to keep moving, no matter what.

A little annoyingly, the books lead straight on, one from the other. You ideally need the next one on hand right away. My library doesn’t have the next book yet, so I can’t do that. There’s very little closure to make it feel like a natural ending — just, bam, another crisis, another problem, and… what now?

Well, I do want to find out, but if I have to wait, I’ll probably start forgetting details and get confused when I try to read the next one.

Rating: 4/5

Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children, Ransom Riggs

From the description and the photographs included, I expected this book to be creepier than it was. The story itself, though, didn’t really creep me out — the photos are weird, but having in-story explanations for them kind of takes away that mystery and power. It’s still pretty atmospheric, but not creepy in the way I expected. I was a little surprised to see the fairly lukewarm reviews, though, because I got caught up in the story that’s actually here, and didn’t really mourn the one I didn’t get. (Probably partially because I am a gigantic wuss.)

I had some issues with the characters — why are those people who are repeating the same day over and over, who are hundreds of years old, still acting like children? If they’re learning, why aren’t they changing? They don’t lose their memories, so how are they so static? Even though the headmistress does so much to try and keep them within her loop, and satisfied with it, she can’t stop them interacting, learning from each other and from new people. The situation simply couldn’t stay so fixed, even with the threats the little community faces.

Still, I enjoyed reading this; the narrative swept me along enough that I actually finished it in one sitting, and I’m pondering getting the next book right away. Something about it manages to be compelling, so that I didn’t even really ask these questions while I was reading. Perhaps one best not overthought!

Rating: 4/5