Alma KatsuRecensioni

82000

It is ok. The idea is promising, but just not executed well. It had me losing interest much of the time.

I've heard such fantastic things about this author, but it seems I started with the wrong book. In truth, the more I think about this one, the less I like it, and that's never a good sign.

It's a page-turner through the first third--I have to give it that much. Early on, I was fully engaged and anxious to keep going, thinking it was a fantastic way to start off a new year of reading. But then things fizzled. One problem is the number of POV characters. There are so many POVs that, unique as they are, all of the main characters come across as somewhat superficial and undeveloped simply because of the sheer number of them. You may feel truly engaged by one, and then not come across it again for another sixty or seventy pages. Similarly, there are a number of chapters devoted to exploring particular characters' histories...but since we see so little of the characters in the present, and the backstory doesn't add much which couldn't be summed up quickly, all that backstory only separates us from the readers more, making it feel as if we're getting snapshots and ideas of who these people are rather than actually being allowed to engage with them.

But perhaps that brings us to the fact that, to Katsu's way of thinking/planning, these characters are based off of real people and real history. Unfortunately, my uncharitable view is that Katsu changed so much about the characters--oh, how I'd be mad if I were one of their ancestors!--and did so little justice to the actual history which supposedly inspired this book, that the only reason I can think for her to even bother connecting this book to the history is that she wanted to 'cash in' on the historical connection. I truly can't come up with any other rationale, much as I hate to say it, because the characters are so different and this could so easily have simply been fiction without any mention of history. And, it likely would have been better...after all, part fo the problem here is that the reader loosely knows what's coming because of the history Katsu supposedly focused on, which means that plot can only hold so much mystery. Leaving a reader to focus on character development and engagement, which doesn't get us very far.

All told, I'm not sure when (or if) I'll try Katsu again. The taste in my mouth from this book is, put bluntly, one of disrespect. That she disrespected the history and the real people involved by tying this book--this work of fiction--to their names and their tragedy. And when it comes right down to it, I'm not sure why I should support an author who'd do that when I have so many other choices demanding to be read.

Obviously, this isn't one I'd recommend.

I loved the beginning. I loved the characters. I especially loved Fran. The folklore was really interesting. Aiko's visions were wild and she was an excellent kid - I wanted more of her.

A little over three-quarters of the book Katsu seems to forget that she's writing a mystery with hints of supernatural horror. The whole book just falls apart. Aiko isn't special anymore, she's just a brave little girl. Fran disappears. The elements that made it exciting are no longer special. The climax of the book is like a firecracker that fizzles out.

The resolution felt unsatisfying and tacked on. I'm disappointed.

This short piece had the potential to be interesting as I enjoy both history and folklore, but the execution was lacklustre sadly. Uwe is a farmer in 1945 in Germany whose village is about to be menaced by the arrival of the allies - both Americans and Russians. An unpleasant character in the village who has deserted from the front persuades him to join a band of resistance fighters to defend the village from the allies - but at a terrible cost to fellow villagers and ultimately Uwe himself.

The characterisation was pretty flat and the historical background shaky. In 1945, even young boys and old men were forcibly conscripted to fight so the idea that a fit young farmer has been spared the call up isn't credible. Neither is the idea that a deserter who returned to his home village has got away with not being denounced: my recent non-fiction read covering this period, 'A Village in the Third Reich', makes it clear how easy it was to point the finger at other people in a community with no comeback. Plus the idea that both Russians and Americans were wandering around in the same area is completely wrong.

The wolf skin belt comes from old folklore and is unusual in werewolf fiction, but Uwe is stereotypical in his inability to stand up to the bully until too late and the ending is unbelievable. I can only give this 1 star as I found it a real disappointment.

2.5 stars rounded up to 3 stars for sheer artistry.

The Hunger will be a great read for the right reader - if you like historical fiction with a bit of spookiness, or paranormal westerns, this book will probably be for you but it wasn't completely for me. I appreciated this novel but I did not love it.

With that being said The Hunger is a well written, well researched slow burn of a horror/historical fiction novel. In the prologue, set in April 1847, a team of rescuers sets out to find the last survivor of the expedition, Lewis Keseberg, but they locate only his abandoned cabin. “What looked like a human vertebra, cleaned of skin” and a “scattering of teeth” lie outside in the snow. Flash back to June 1846. George Donner is leading a wagon train to California. Those headed west often leave letters under rocks in the hope that an eastbound traveler will retrieve them and take them to the nearest post office. In one place, one of Donner’s teenage daughters finds hundreds of such letters, all with the ominous message: “Turn back or you will die.” Then a young boy disappears and is later found savagely mutilated, as if by an animal. The members of the party come to suspect that shape-changers are responsible for the carnage, and they encounter increasing challenges to their survival....The party states to discover further remains. One of their dogs tastes what little flesh remains, then bites his owner. And within little more than a week, the man will undergo a frightening transformation, from a meek, sickly individual to something aggressive, feral – and hungry. The identity of the creatures that have been trailing the wagon-train slide into focus: they are a form of lycanthrope (Lycanthropy is the mythological ability or power of a human being to undergo transformation into an animal like state, such as a werewolf) and they are deadly. As the party’s situation grows steadily worse, so does the creatures’ menace increase.

It is interesting that Katsu decides to opt out of making the lycanthrope a symbol for the Native Americans, but instead uses the ravenously hungry monsters as a trope for the appetites that drove many of the settlers to leave their homes and join the wagon train. The appetite or the "hunger" of the man-wolves symbolize the white man's desire to dominate women, to dominate land, to dominate others. I can appreciate this. To be honest, most of the men in the wagon party scared the shit out of me as they were as opposed them turning into man wolves. Many of the men were already brutes to begin with.

While the creatures' meance increase as our characters of the story glide to their inevitable fate, I never did feel the tension or the fear profoundly...maybe that's because I know the fate of the party? Maybe the thrill of horror is gone when you know the outcome (um, the party all dies)?

I must note the characterization of the book is completely well done (as stated I hated many of male characters - and I think that's to Katsu's credit), but sadly, I just didn't connect wholly to this one.

I enjoyed Alma Katsu's creativity, and despite my low rating for this book, I think Katsu is in fact a talented author who came up with a very intriguing novel. I just might not be a huge fan of historical fiction or paranormal westerns.

I'd love to hear your thoughts.

A very solid, fast-paced thriller! Would definitely read more by Katsu.

I think this book was trying to do too much.
I'm not a huge fan of Historical Fiction, though I have read quite a few, and those parts of this were pretty good.
The "horror" parts were - "eh" at best. I'm still interested in reading the Hunger by the same author, as I did enjoy her writing style, but the book just felt disjointed.

I don't like rating books lower than 3 stars because of the amazon algorithm. Do not recommend!

An interesting book in which I learnt a lot about a slice of history I knew nothing about. As always, Katsu's ability to realise history is highly accessible and and produces a fascinating insight into something she has clearly well researched knowledge about.

Unfortunately the story is let down by the supernatural element. Bringing in Yokai to mix into the story was an amazing idea, but they barely seem to gel neatly with the story. Instead they feel like something that happens superfluous to the (much superior) historical narrative going on. Compare that to the seamless intwining of the horror and history in The Hunger and this is somewhat of a let down.

It's still an enjoyable and fascinating book, but sadly didn't blend horror and history in a strong enough way to make it one of her best

I wanted to read this book because I loved Jenkins' novel about Evelyn Hugo. I was also intrigued by the story line about the Japanese internment camps in our country, which is a dark stain in American history. Many American-born and naturalized Japanese citizens were sent to the camps where they endured crowded, unhealthy conditions. The round up of so many Japanese left citizens of other Asian descent wearing signs that denoted they were Chinese, Korean or another Asian ethnicity for fear of being imprisoned. This novel has several areas of interest for everyone - history, fiction and elements of the supernatural.

Meiko is a Japanese woman married to a Caucasian fighter pilot who is serving his country while she and their daughter are imprisoned in a concentration camp, which seems like a horrible travesty. When a strange disease breaks out in the camp and threatens to spread to the nearby town, the officials are very concerned. This also gives the townspeople yet another reason to revile the camp inmates. One of the aspects of this disease is the appearance of mysterious spider demons, which is where the supernatural emerges. Unlike some readers, I am not a fan of supernatural occurrences; hence, my 3-star rating.

The characters were good. The potential of the plot made the story pretty interesting, but the ending seemed a bit too contrived.

I received the America covered version of the book, I have seen that the UK version has a different cover to it.
First off The Taker is a large book with 450 pages which I did think was a bit daunting when I started reading it. With a blend of historical romance, paranormal and some sexual content.

The book starts off with Dr Luke Findley at work in the hospital when Lanore is brought in covered in blood but also a murder suspect.
The book then goes back in time and Lanore is telling Luke her story of her life from a little girl, to being immortal and being 200 years old!
During the time Lanore is telling Luke about her past she also talks about the past of another person who made her immortal. Every so often the book jumped back into the present.

Lanore was in love a boy named Jonathan the most handsome boy in the world in her eyes. She would do anything for him, to be with him for him to love her like she loved him.

The Taker was very sad, evil in places , spellbinding and heart wrenching there were a lot of surprises along the way.

I am not usually one for historical type books but as this had other elements in it too it was AMAZING. It was well written, kept me wanting more and after reading all the good reviews on it before has it didn’t let me down at all.

As always Alam Katsu does an amazing job with writting. Loved the name of the book for personal reasons.

I don't read many espionage thrillers, so I don't have a great breadth of experience to compare with, but I really enjoyed this. I thought it was well paced, definitely a page-turner, and I found the main characters interesting and complex. This seems like the start to a series I will enjoy following for many years.

This was an interesting book told from two different time lines, four years apart. I like that both parts of the story took place on White Star Line ships that ended their service by sinking. I thought the intertwining story lines of the characters was a great touch, it made all the twists and turns even better. Looking forward to reading more of Alma Katsu's books in the future.

I think the reason I'm not rating this higher is that the plot never gripped me. It's either too long (there really isn't much plot going on) or too short (there are SO many characters) that it doesn't really work for me as a work of fiction. And maybe I would have preferred a non-fiction version of this, because I don't know much about the Donner Party, but it does seem like the kind of morbid shit I'm usually into.

However, something I must praise it for is how it handled prejudice. It's set in 1846, people were not fucking woke, and the book never pretends otherwise, but it also doesn't take the setting as an excuse to use the n-word excessively or otherwise say racist shit one wouldn't normally do. The author clearly cared to make it not offensive while also not glancing over the fact that offensive shit was done back, and it shows.

The “Werwolf” was a rather obscure Nazi plan to create a guerilla resistance force to repel Allies advancing through German territory. In The Wehrwolf, Alma Katsu references this historical fact, by setting a werewolf story in a rural German village in the dying days of the Second World War.

Uwe Fuchs, the protagonist, has escaped conscription because of an exemption to allow him to care for his ailing mother. He is a simple farmer, whose priorities in life iare his wife Katya and young daughter Liesl. As news from the front worsens, paranoia descends on the village, and Uwe is pressured into doing his bit for his country by joining a local militia led by strongman (and alleged army deserter) Hans Sauer. Uwe soon realises that he has struck a devilish bargain, and that the local legends about men-wolves may not be so fantastic after all...

The premise of The Wehrwolf is an interesting one. As in her longer novels, Katsu combines supernatural horror with historical fiction but here she also adds a cautionary note about the danger of ordinary, good-natured people being drawn into webs of evil. The execution however left me unimpressed – the language and style struck me as quite bland, and the werewolf/Nazi metaphor was promising to begin with but then became increasingly obvious and unsubtle. This was an entertaining evening’s read but not much more than that.

https://endsoftheword.blogspot.com/2022/10/the-wehrwolf-by-alma-katsu.html

In The Hunger, author Alma Katsu took the tragedy of the Donner Party and added some additional horror to the already sensational story and elevated the tale to new heights of dread and terror.

It starts with the disappearance of one child. When they discover his body it is obvious that the child was taken by something unworldly. The question is whether the “something” is part of the wilderness, or part of the wagon train. The questions mount as the story continues and more and more people come to questionable ends. Are there supernatural creatures stalking them or is there a strange disease, a disease that causes a hunger for human flesh driving one of the members of the expedition. This fear is added to the poor leadership, bad timing and adverse weather conditions they experienced. giving the story a claustrophobic feeling and a very dark atmosphere.

I am a fan of western stories and of horror stories so this book was right in my wheel-house. The author slowly built the tension and mixed the actual history with horror fiction in an interesting way. The Hunger is a solid and eerie version of a well known episode in America’s westward travels.

En St. Andrews, un pequeño pueblo de Maine, ingresa en urgencias una joven acusada de haber matado a un hombre. Luke, el médico de guardia, un hombre atormentado por demonios interiores tras haber abandonado a esposa e hijas, está dispuesto a escuchar la versión de la bella Lanore. Dice ser una inmortal desde hace doscientos años.
Tiempo atrás, con el corazón roto, Lanore se vio obligada a esconder la vergüenza de un embarazo incómodo lejos de casa, en Boston. Pero antes de llegar al convento, cayó en las garras de un hombre a la vez fascinante y aterrador: Adair, un noble de origen húngaro, que le prometió un mundo de sensualidad y placer ignotos, de poder sin límites... Lanore creyó que si se unía a su séquito recuperaría a Jonathan. Pero ¿a qué precio?

Wow, this was deep! The story is a combination of history and horror--ironic considering that much of our history IS horror.

The story takes place in a small, out-of-the-way German village during the tail-end of WWII. It follows Uwe, a kindhearted farmer whose only major care is for his wife and daughter. The Nazi party had all but lost the war at this point, and there was much talk in the village regarding the possibility of Allied soldiers storming the village.

As always, there was one loudmouth, alpha male, Hans, who bullied enough men into forming malitia to "protect" the village. Hans preyed on Uwe's insecurities and sense of duty to convince him to join the malitia. What he didn't do was tell the truth about what initiation into the malitia entailed.

Without spoiling, this short story felt like a full-length novel. It was full of backstory and substance. I felt I knew the characters and was in the struggle with them. It was full of emotion and heartache. I felt for Uwe, who only wanted to feel the comraderie of his peers and to do what he believed was right to protect his family. He was naive and taken advantage of. His desire to protect his family became his downfall. It was heart-wrenching and so beautifully written.

A short but very enjoyable and well written werewolf tale. Perfect for this time of year.

I really wanted to like this one, but it just didn't land for me. This book takes place during the Japanese Internment during WWII and is partially set in one of the camps. A mysterious disease starts spreading in the camp and in rural areas in the US. Is is man made? Biological? Supernatural? Sounds like a great premise, right?

The problem is that the book has a point it wants to make about xenophobia and anti-Asian violence and it misses no opportunity to do so, to the point of hitting you over the head with it at points. I think this point could have been made much more subtly if, for example, some people who became infected exhibited anti-Asian rage while others targeted Germans or communists or atheists or other groups. Instead literally every infected person hates Japanese people specifically with no other demonstrated targets of their rage and paranoia.

This one had the potential to be an amazing "Hill House meets Rebecca but on the Titanic!" but it lacked the spark.

It's difficult to explain what wasn't there for me without using spoilers, so to whoever reads this, you have been warned. Spoilers ahead.

I loved that there were many characters and all were multifaceted. Not all were young, rich nor straight. The feminist notes throughout -the commentary on gender inequalities, gaslighting, women's desire alongside the tender queer representation were refreshing and gave vibrancy to the world. The ending was somewhat expected and had been solidly planned since the beginning, I felt neither cheated not bamboozled as a reader. There were multiple clues throughout but the solution also had a few surprising notes.

What was missing then?
I fear it's a less than perfect presentation of the character's inner thoughts. We learn than Annie was haunted and so had the memories and wants of 2 different people. While this was presented in an elegant way, it created an important flaw for me. I never got to know her, and most of the story is from her point of view. I didn't know or care about her in any way.

More than that, most characters hide things that are later revealed casually, creating confusion as to their own desires. Most times this is done deliberately to hide the duplicity of Annie, but to me it created a needles confusion and it was a thinly veiled attempt to mimic the classic "turn of the screw" of hauntings, where the reader is teased and left to wonder if the haunting was real or if it was all in the imagination of a troubled person.

The last thing that bothered me was that it was all a love story, a story where women throw everything away for the love of a pretty, but ultimately, useless man.

The notes of “so close yet so far away” concerning warnings about icebergs and mines (the pitfalls of the Titanic and the Britannic) that both have the involvement of main characters as an explanation for the sinking of the ships is, at best, tacky.

In all the writing was pleasant, most themes were enjoyable, the research was thorough and I had a good time.

Ask me the plot though and besides the sinking of the ships I find it hard to answer anything other than “lady killed herself and haunted a maid to spy on her husband on both ships”.
Ultimately it was a forgettable book that graced me with two evenings of enjoyment. Not bad overall.