Posts
The most striking thing to me about Moka's L'enfant des ombres ("Child of Shadows") is the cover: it's a beautiful piece of art, that perfectly encapsulates a gothic sense of the uncanny in the midst of innocence. The artist, Istvan Sandorfi, has done some other really interesting paintings.
The book itself is mildly interesting. It takes place at an orphanage, where the adolescent boys and girls are kept in separate dormitories and only meet for classes. Two of the boys and three of the girls decide to form a "secret club", which involves sneaking out of their dorms every night to explore the orphanage's strange attic. Soon after they start meeting, a series of accidental (?) deaths start to take place in the orphanage and shadowy figures are seen by one of the girls, but no one believes her. The series of unexplained phenomena culminates in a (surprisingly grisly) showdown between the orphans and the mysterious creatures haunting the place.
All the ingredients are there for a sense of foreboding and dread, but for some reason the characters and the story just didn't really click with me. I think if it would have been a little bit longer (it's only 200 pages) with a more complex plot (there's some stuff about Celts and ley-lines, but not really fleshed out), it would have been a really intriguing story. On the other hand, it is a book meant for teenagers so I shouldn't necessarily have adult literary expectations.
The book itself is mildly interesting. It takes place at an orphanage, where the adolescent boys and girls are kept in separate dormitories and only meet for classes. Two of the boys and three of the girls decide to form a "secret club", which involves sneaking out of their dorms every night to explore the orphanage's strange attic. Soon after they start meeting, a series of accidental (?) deaths start to take place in the orphanage and shadowy figures are seen by one of the girls, but no one believes her. The series of unexplained phenomena culminates in a (surprisingly grisly) showdown between the orphans and the mysterious creatures haunting the place.
All the ingredients are there for a sense of foreboding and dread, but for some reason the characters and the story just didn't really click with me. I think if it would have been a little bit longer (it's only 200 pages) with a more complex plot (there's some stuff about Celts and ley-lines, but not really fleshed out), it would have been a really intriguing story. On the other hand, it is a book meant for teenagers so I shouldn't necessarily have adult literary expectations.
Next: Isaac Asmiov's Le club des veufs noirs ("The Black Widowers Club")
No comments:
Post a Comment