I'm sleepy today because last after work and after dinner I did a stupid thing. Instead of working on any one of my still pending projects for grad school, I picked up young adult horror novel.
Darren Shan's Lord Loss, book one in his still ongoing Demonata series. I'm not going to do a full on review because, frankly, it's a bestseller and doesn't really need the publicity. But the damn thing grabbed me and wouldn't let go. It was a lot of fun, and I blasted through the 250 pages in about three hours.
When I was in sixth grade---probably about the right age for this novel---I had a fire in my bedroom right before Christmas. No one was hurt, but I spent the next several months sleeping on the sofa in the basement while my bedroom was repaired. I had just gotten into the wonderfully creepy books of John Bellairs. Reading them freaked me out. Reading things like The House with the Clock in it's Walls at night, I kept hearing noises and seeing shadows that weren't there, but I kept reading anyway. I had to know what happened. It's why I read so much as a kid and, at least partly, why I keep reading now.
After English classes and a writing program it's easy to forget that novels aren't always about deep character development, powerful themes and poetic prose. Sometimes they're just meant to be enjoyed, and critics and reviewers---myself included---forget that sometimes. I think that's part of why I like comics so much. They tend to pull me into the story in a more immediate way than most novels can do.
Anyway, reviews and other madness coming as the demon lord of grad school papers permits.
Excelsior
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