Madeleine RouxRecensioni

Too many character perspectives and jumps in story made it hard to connect with anyone or have s solid plot to follow. 

Enjoyable. Madeleine Roux hit the mark pretty well for her first book in the Warcraft universe. The places are described very well and having played through these areas so much it was very easy to visualize. The characters are treated well and consistently with their portrayal elsewhere. The story was engaging. I feel like I understand a bit better what's going on with regards to the Shadowlands now. Recommended reading.

This one took me a couple tries to finish. It was good, but started a bit slow for me. The ending...man. I hope she writes some more zombie books!

A light and upbeat version of a zombie novel. You kind of want to be along side Allison, cracking jokes, and swinging an axe. At times, I found the book a bit tedious, couldn't figure out why I was reading it. At others, I was right there with them, biting my nails and silently egging them on.

I got this book from a local book store as an Advanced Reader's Copy. Before I read it, I did my research on the book and all the reviews I found told me how boring and stupid the book was.

I disagree to these reviews.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book far more than I expected. It did start off a little slow, but once I got into the book I was addicted instantly. I wanted to know more about the characters and the back story of the New Hampshire College Prep and how it used to be an Asylum.

The plot was fun to follow, and I couldn't guess the ending (which rarely happens! So this book was quite the gem). Some of the aspects of the plot were predictable, but it took wild turns that I didn't see coming, so I enjoyed it.

It did bother me a bit reading this before I went to bed, since it unsettled me a few times when I left off at a more 'scary' chapter, but it wasn't really that scary or a horrible read.

I really enjoyed this book! I did wish there was more pictures to go along with each chapter instead of just one every few (this book has illustrations that goes along with some chapters for added effect). I loved this aspect of the book though! Having illustrations added more insight into the novel and made me more interested in the story.

Overall, an amazing book and I can't wait to get my hands on the sequel!
Five out of five stars!

I received a free copy and decided to give it a go on a long train journey. The found photos were interesting and added ambiance but the writing was dreadful and the characters thinly developed and boring. It reminded me of a cheap horror film where you never remember the plot, just the jump scares.

not an exciting read for me......stayed somewhat stagnate

This one was really disappointing for me due to the author's terrible grasp of the most of the characters. I wanted to give a new author their due but when they write a character who would NEVER accept torture as a means to an end as acceptable, well, it just looks like lazy writing. The author is a player and considering how well written the horde characters were versus the alliance ones I'm guessing they play Horde. That being said, Talanji was one of the worst written characters, a promising character reduced to a teenage drama queen.

The plot itself was decent, but the badly written characters ruined it for me. Plus, a book filled with trolls and you can't write the Troll dialect correctly?! Very poorly done. I'd hate to see how she butchered the dwarven one.

I really wish that I had read this as a serial. there is not much to distinguish it from other novels of this genre except for the personality of the narrator. Much, much better than The Way we Fall but not as good as the first Day by Day or The First Days.

2.5 Stars

This review is also featured on Behind the Pages: Asylum

Dan Crawford can’t wait to start college prep classes. It’s a chance to escape being an outcast and find friends he can connect with. But he never expected an old asylum to be converted into a dorm. Dan can’t help but entice his new friends Abby and Jordan to explore the older sections they were told to stay out of. Together they will uncover unsettling truths about the asylum and stir up ghosts better left alone.

Dan finding true friends was a great theme to add to Asylum, but the character relationships were rushed. Readers barely have enough time to learn about Dan before the story adds Abby and Jordan into the mix. Jordan and Abby bonded outside of the main story, which worked quite well. But Dan did not have enough time with each of them individually to form a connection. The story does mention Dan has difficulties socializing, and the reader is able to witness the internal debates he has with himself as he tries to adjust to different social situations. But there needed to be more examples of Dan’s behavior. Instead of telling the reader, show them his issues and give some background information on what has not worked in the past for him.

The characterization was also inconsistent throughout the story. In one chapter the three friends would be carrying on just fine, then rapidly one of the others would have a complete personality change. Either growing easily frustrated or downright ignoring characters. While eventually, the reader finds out the why behind these sporadic behaviors, it would have been great to have more of a foundation for the reader to guess what happened and then do small reveals to lure readers into the overarching mysteries.

There were many subplots and mysteries to solve in Asylum. Too many. This story brought the teens together at the asylum and tried to connect each one to its past. In addition to this, they each had home lives filled with drama. If this had been a longer book, it may have worked out better, but not enough time was spent on each key point to make the story work. Instead, it seemed to skip forward without properly explaining the character's actions, and not leaving behind enough breadcrumbs for the reader to form any sort of conclusion.

Listening to the audiobook of Asylum did cut out the vintage photographs which are included in the print edition. But even with the photos to add to the mood setting of this story, the plot was too tangled. This was an extremely ambitious book, and if it had cut down on the subplots it would have been able to spend more time on the main story. Not a series I will be continuing.

No matter how different best friends Adelle and Connie are, one thing they’ve always had in common is their love of a little-known gothic romance novel called Moira. So when the girls are tempted by a mysterious stranger to enter the world of the book, they hardly suspect it will work. But suddenly they are in the world of Moira, living among characters they’ve obsessed about for years.

Except…all is not how they remembered it. The world has been turned upside down: The lavish balls and star-crossed love affairs are now interlaced with unspeakable horrors. The girls realize that something dark is lurking behind their foray into fiction—and they will have to rewrite their own arcs if they hope to escape this nightmare with their lives.

Oh dear. I could leave this review at that, but it really doesn’t express what I found so disappointing in this book and, as it is only the second time in my blog history I can remember giving out a one thumb rating, maybe I should elaborate.

I had such high expectations for this based on not only the synopsis but the cover image, and none of those expectations were filled. As I read through this I got the uncomfortable feeling that, not only was this Author aiming to produce a novel with the calibre of Miss Peregrine’s House for Peculiar Children but somewhere in the mix the Author had actually submitted a draft copy to the publishers instead of their final edited copy.

The characters are supposed to be 16 years old, so unless the baseline for all 16 years old has now changed, these were not in that age group. The protagonist is not the kind I was expecting in a book of this genre; he was whiny, possessive and had a superiority complex bigger than any I have seen in a novel. Throughout the novel he is constantly telling the readers about how much better he is than anyone else, and after a time this becomes tedious to the point where I wanted to ground him in his room at home without any outside contact; yes I wanted to put him in solitary confinement. Despite him gradually losing some of these traits as the book progressed, the damage had been done and I found myself being unable to like or even care about him or what happened to him. Too many of the characters were written in a stereotypical manner, or how the Author visualized teenagers to be; the female character who the Author felt they had to reminder the reader every few sentences how beautiful they were, the cookie cutter girls’ gay best friend. This may have been acceptable in this book had the Author only taken time to give the characters depth and something interesting that the reader could catch hold off, unfortunately I found them all to rather too one-dimensional for my tastes.

Abandoned asylum, strange happenings. All the workings of what could’ve have been a very good horror tale were buried so deeply in this book that they were gasping for air. I’m also not sure what yardstick the Author used to decide this would be scary reading for the intended audience but, in my experience of teenagers I think only those with a very weak constitution would have found this remotely disturbing compared to the daily horrors they are subject to in the media. The book does contain some very stunning photographs, unfortunately these are not the Authors original works, which led me to believe that they couldn’t even be bothered to take the time to discover original locations for inclusion.

With good editing and maybe a little more plot and character development this could have been a better book than it actually was; the one thumb rating is purely because I finished it. I’m not going to be reading any other books by this Author and I understand this is the beginning of a series, which will also go unread. However if you looking for a book that doesn’t contain a taxing plotline and deep meaningful characters that you can connect with, this may be the one for you.

Originally reviewed on: http://catesbooknuthut.com/2014/07/28/review-asylum-asylum-1-madeleine-roux/




This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

Just.....OK.

Sixteen-year-old Dan Crawford is excited to spend his summer taking part in the New Hampshire College Prep program - he'll finally be around people who care about their particular academic interests as much as he does about his.

Students in the program will all be staying at the Brookline Dorm, which used to be a psychiatric hospital. Dan and two new friends of his, Abby and Jordan, slip into one of the closed off areas one night and discover abandoned equipment, photographs, old patient files, and more. Dan has always had issues with weird blank spots in his memory, but he suddenly finds the problem getting worse. He has visions of being one of the patients at the hospital, and he feels an odd connection to the hospital's warden. Abby, too, discovers that she has an unexpected connection to this place.

It's all just creepy and unsettling, until the murders start. Is one of the students the killer, or is it one of the former patients, somehow back and getting revenge for the horrific things they experienced at the hospital?

The best thing about this book is the photographs it's illustrated with, some of which are from actual asylums and some of which are custom creations for this book. They have all the creepy, chilling atmosphere that the book itself unfortunately does not.

This was supposed to be a YA novel starring a 16-year-old boy, but it read like stiff Middle Grade starring a younger character, Dan's laser-like focus on Abby notwithstanding. All of the potential creepiness was muted at best. Also, I don't know whether the author intended readers to dislike Dan, but I definitely did. It felt like he became friends with Abby primarily in the hope that she'd date him, and the instant he met Jordan (who Abby had become friends with prior to meeting Dan), he became annoyingly jealous. Dan, Abby, and Jordan were supposedly an inseparable trio of friends at the start of the program, but I doubt Dan would have been half as friendly towards Jordan if Jordan hadn't mentioned that he was gay, and therefore not interested in Abby that way.

Overall, this wasn't as good or as creepy as the wonderful cover image had me hoping it'd be. I'm glad I didn't buy the second book along with this first one.

(Original review posted on A Library Girl's Familiar Diversions.)½

One Sentence Summary: Senna, Han, and Zurri join an experimental program on an isolated moon to erase painful memories, but things stop adding up, and there’s no way out.

Overall
Reclaimed tells a fascinating story of how our memories impact us and what might happen if they suddenly become hazy and vanish. Described as a claustrophobic science fiction thriller, I felt it delivered on every front. The world was fascinating and definitely sci-fi and it, and the story made me claustrophobic. There were so many weird things going on in the dome on Ganymede that I couldn’t shake the creepy feeling and the twists and turns had me madly flipping the pages. Despite a slow start to the story, it was a quick read, though I did love the characters enough that I couldn’t read fast enough to find out what happened to them.

Extended Thoughts
Senna is the sole survivor of a deadly crash on Mars. But, more than that, she’s the sole survivor of the cult that hijacked the spaceship that was used to crash into Mars. Once, she lived completely off the grid, with no implant and no VIT device that literally keeps track of one’s life and offers endless entertainment. Now she’s infamous, and desperate to get rid of the trauma and horrendous memories.

Han is a fourteen-year-old boy with a high IQ who worships reclusive genius and billionaire Paxton Dunn. Ever since his mom tragically died, he’s been desperate to forget the last message she ever left for him. And Paxton Dunn might have just the thing to help him.

Zurri is a successful model everyone knows, though that doesn’t mean she’s immune to trauma. On her rise to fame, she neglected to form certain boundaries, boundaries that will come back to haunt her in a most horrific and public display.

Targeted by Paxton as potential test subjects who can benefit from his unique invention, he invites them for tests before finally inviting them to the distant and dangerous moon Ganymede, where they will live in close quarters with just a handful of other people. There, they will undergo a procedure to remove the traumatic memories, but, no matter how desperate Senna, Han, and Zurri are, they can’t shake the feeling something is very off.

Reclaimed starts off slowly, with most of the first half being not much beyond set up and getting the characters into one place. But, once they’re all in the dome on Ganymede, the claustrophobic part of the book description comes into play right away. From there, the story spins away wildly. The distrust was almost palpable to me. Right away, I started to get suspicious, but part of my mind was afraid to speculate. Still, I found some threads kind of frayed and others kind of forgotten. At the end, I felt only one character really got any closure, leaving me wondering about the others and how the experience really impacted them.

The characters were the big standouts for me. Even though how the reader is supposed to perceive them is set up right away, I still found them fascinating. Senna, Han, Zurri, and Paxton were so different from each other and had some interesting connections to each other that I felt drawn into their web. I loved the diversity from the mousy blond girl to the black supermodel to the Asian teenager who all held a piece of the puzzle and formed a close trio no matter how Paxton tried to change them, though I wish there had been more focus on the impact of the truth of how some of them were connected. It was fascinating, though, to see how they seemed kind of jerked around as they underwent their treatments to remove unwanted memories. I liked how they retained the core of their characters despite all the things being done to their brains, but I do think the edges could have been softened a little so it didn’t feel like it stuck out so much.

Reclaimed tells an interesting story of three people desperate to have certain memories removed, until they are and suddenly something feels like it’s missing. I loved the strange push and pull of them wanting to remove memories and freaking out about the empty spaces. It seems to want to shine a light on how our memories make us who we are and how, no matter what, we’ll still want to hold on to them no matter how painful. I’m fascinated by memories and how our past experiences shape us, so I really enjoyed how the story played out, despite feeling there were maybe a few too many loose ends.

The one thing that really disappointed me, though, was how the memory removal science-y, tech-y stuff worked and what powered it. I am not a science-inclined person, so my forays into science fiction are carefully plotted. I expected some explanation I could barely follow, but ended up disappointed with how, well, kind of out there it was. There is some science basis to it, but I haven’t the first idea to how it actually works. The whole mechanism ended up feeling kind of like a cop out to me. A suitable explanation that did add an interesting layer, but overall felt a little too simple. Though I did like the creepy edge to it.

And Reclaimed is creepy without being too creepy. There’s something odd about the dome and the reader is introduced to it right away. The words are carefully put on the page and the characters lead the readers on, hinting without overtly saying. There’s a very eerie feeling, though not enough to keep me awake at night. Just creepy enough for me, I suppose, and I scare easily. I loved how the dome immediately made me feel claustrophobic and isolated. There’s more weirdness the longer the characters stay, but the dome itself was fascinating. It felt both entirely mechanized and somehow also breathing on its own. It definitely takes all needs into account, but I also couldn’t shake a watched feeling.

Despite a slow start, Reclaimed does tell an interesting story that does offer some food for thought for readers. Once the story got going, the pace picked up and I found myself flying through the pages. I wish more of the story had been focused on it, though it was also interesting to get the backstories of Senna, Han, and Zurri. Overall, a fast science fiction thriller with really interesting characters.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for a review copy. All opinions expressed are my own.

Not as much like Miss Peregrine as one hoped. The pictures were altered and just not as evocative. The self-conscious teen stuff (is this a date? I want it to be a date! I don't want to say it's a date! should I wear a tie? too formal! tuck in my shirt? leave it out? tuck it half in??) was so very cringey. Talk about first world problems. I never got invested in any of the characters. And the solution to what is admittedly a very creepy mystery depends too heavily on a highly unreliable narrator, memory problems, and a deus ex machina type of explanation which is vaguely reincarnation or ghosts or insanity or possession, pick one or more. Didn't Chesterton and Sayers's detective club call that jiggery-pokery?

Things were going so well but there's too many unanswered questions! Course I guess that's why there's a 2nd book but when I was reading it I didn't know that. Just knew that I hit Acknowledgments just did a 'wha'? I had trouble putting this one down, wanted to know exactly what was happening, who was causing it and while I wasn't totally surprised by the culprit it was really good. The ending seemed rushed though, way too rushed. Like someone decided no, you're stopping right here, now, NOW. Guess I have to get book 2 now

"A god is nothing without believers"

I guess I was expecting much more from this book... it was well written with elaborate details but in the end I was wondering if anything new had happened at all. Some new characters were introduced (at least to my knowledge); however, they would have been dismantled by the end of the novel. So much was said and yet it seemed like nothing had happened...

"Only a fool thinks himself an expert in everything. The wise man admits his limitations and endeavors to know more.”

As far as the story is concerned, Sylvanas orders Dark rangers to kill the loa of death. Nathanos, Sira and some dark rangers together with Widow's bite faction try to achieve this goal. Meanwhile, the Horde and the Alliance try to keep their armistice alive as some dispute rise among their leaders considering the opponent faction's measures during the fourth war.

"Perfect rulers live only in memory"

As for characters, I've never been keen on Nathanos and I wish Sira was more involved. Apari was described well enough but I didn't feel pity or hatred toward her which was odd...

I love the Horde council now with all of the faction rulers combined. The book's notable highlight character is Zekhan gaining experience and blooming as a former protégé of Saurfang.

I've lost interest in Tyrande over years... I remember that I liked her character back in War of the Ancients trilogy but I lost my interest in her especially after Legion expansion.

I didn't feel getting enough information about the next expansion. But then again, some events might happen after release of Shadowlands which might be connected to this book.

“When you have washed the bodies of a thousand kaldorei burned and broken, when you have fallen to your knees and kissed the feet of a thousand mourning souls, when you look into their eyes and tell them ‘our Horde has changed’ and they believe you, only then will I accept your apology and treat you as my equal."

I borrowed this book from the library on a whim. I was looking for an audiobook to listen to while I worked. The story has a lot of promise, but I wasn't blown away by it. I can see where a young teen might be intrigued by or enjoy the story much more than I did. I liked it enough to read the second book in the series though! It's a quick read, so if you're interested, you won't waste your time.

Dan Crawford is spending 6 weeks during the summer between his junior and senior years in high school involved in the New Hampshire College Prep Program in history and science. The regular dormitories on campus are being renovated, so the students are staying at Brookline, which is the former psychiatric asylum on campus. Right after Dan arrives, he meets his strange roommate, Felix along with Abby and Jordan who he spends time with. Felix tells Dan of strange pictures he found in the other wing of Brookline and practically dares Dan to go and look. Dan, Jordan, and Abby find the strange pictures along with lots of other documentation left there from when the hospital was still open. Not only are the pictures horrific, but the documentation describes horrible experiments performed on the patients. Abby is drawn to the picture of a girl who has apparently had a lobotomy. After leaving, all three begin to act strangely, and when one of the dorm monitors is murdered, they begin to suspect one another.

Asylum is a creepy book filled with found photographs from actual insane asylums that are very scary. The author did a good job of incorporating those photographs as part of the background in the story. Although the book is light on character development, the unique story is enough to keep the reader interested. Overall, a creepy tone in a scary story, ending with a bit of a cliffhanger leading into the next book in the series.

Madeleine Roux is one of my favorite writers …but of a different genre ...so I was very anxious...as well as surprised to read something different from her. Louisa’s troubles begin from the time she accepts a gold coin from an old woman and follows her promise of employment at Coldthistle House. The House is full of characters with. “Interesting abilities” that makes...or at least should make... the reader question the thin line here that stretches between what is right and what is wrong. The ending was a little disappointing and it cost it a half star... but I believe it’s because the reader becomes so engrossed in the characters...especially funny, cunning Louisa that you just imagine a different ending. If you like gothic stories...you’ll love this one.½

A good YA read. I think it should categorized as horror/paranormal rather than fantasy.

This was fun and straightforward, with a lot of queer themes and relationships for any book, let alone a WoW book. A first! The story was the kind of small narrative setting that comes before an expansion to set tone, but not too much stage as to be narratively critical.

I'm bummed out that I didn't really connect with this book. There were elements I liked, in fact there wasn't anything I disliked... I think it just didn't hit me at this point in time. I might reread at a later date, because I think I would normally enjoy it, otherwise!

Still recommend this if you're into magic, mythology, boarding house settings, etc.