Reviews by Gemma

I downloaded this after listening to Endurance by the same author and I noticed many common themes running through these stories as well as Endurance. Amputation, limb loss and cannibalism feature in the majority of the stories so it starts to get very predictable after you've heard a few. And just like Endurance I found that none of these stories are actually scary but are more like black comedy, which is not a negative point, but isn't what I expected when I downloaded "Horror Stories".

What is strange about this audiobook is that the author writes little introductions to his stories which often give the main theme of the story away before it's even begun. For example there is one story where a character is revealed to be a vampire mid-way through, but the author has already told us it's a vampire story before it begun. Very bizarre!

Narration is very good and some of the stories are truly funny, especially the one about Santa Claus and the last story which was written with J A Konrath!

I enjoyed this trilogy immensely as a teenager and I thought I would find out how good they are as an adult. I still enjoyed the story and the writing very much but I was disappointed in the choice of narrator. Anton Lesser reads very narrative very well but the dialogue was missing something, perhaps because his voice doesn't have much range and he was speaking for several female characters as well as male.

This would have been perfect with a full cast, as His Dark Materials had.

One of the best books I have read/listened to in a long time. Frank is a wonderfully developed character, and all the side characters are interesting too. Despite the rather horrific narrative this book is often very funny, and the phone calls between Frank and Eric had me in stitches.

The narration is perfect, I could listen to Peter Kenny's voice all day.

I couldn't finish this audiobook. The narration was dull and there was not enough distinction between the character's voices. The timing was also poor and description and dialogue were said in the same breath so I found myself losing track of who was talking and didn't have time to digest the narrative.

Very disappointing. I would have chosen John Lee who narrated Pillars of the Earth for this.

This should probably be classed as "black comedy" as well as horror to avoid disappointment from people who like their horror serious and sinister. Kilborn's style is to throw at you as much gore and as many disgustingly painful ways of killing people as possible but in a darkly humorous way. I laughed out loud at several points and rather than detract from the horror, it makes it even better.

This is the third Kilborn audiobook I've downloaded and he is definitely a bit obsessed with cannibalism, people who are deformed or physically different (like being super tall) and people who are mentally unstable. I found this novel quite similar to Endurance, and I think Endurance does it a bit better. I don't think the pacing of Trapped is quite as good as it takes a while to really get going and then there isn't really a building of tension.

One thing I have really enjoyed about Kilborn's books is that the characters are very original and not the usual horror stereotypes. He seems to like using strong female protagonists to fight the bad guys and doesn't just use them as fodder - that's a refreshing change. However I found Sarah quite uninspiring as a heroine in Trapped. I much preferred the characterisation of Tyrone and Cindi and my biggest disappointment with this is that we didn't spend more time with Georgia, who was fascinating and entirely unique. In a way I think it's a shame she was a bit part in a novel and didn't get to star in her own.

I can see from the other reviews that I'm not the only one who thought "this would make a good movie" while I was listening. Hopefully some movie makers will see our reviews!

I can't praise this novel highly enough. Several times I jumped back a few chapters just to hear them again! It is very well written, the plot goes forward at a good rate and the characterisation is excellent. I see inspiration here both from Memoirs of a Geisha (with the language, not just the fact that there is a Japanese lady) and Perfume by Patrick Suskind. I especially like that Lecter and Grenoille both have a 'memory palace' and both novels are quite darkly comic as well as being unspeakably sad.

At first I was disappointed with the narration. It should be much longer than 7 hours because Mr Harris narrates too quickly. However after a few chapters it stopped bothering me and I enjoyed his natural accent as well as the other accents he attempted.

What I like most about this is that it doesn't reduce a mysterious, almost superhuman 'bad guy' to a normal guy with a bad past. It does explain why he first kills - and it's a motivation that we can probably all sympathise with - but it does not explain why he carries on killing after the novel's events. It is at the end of Hannibal Rising that he becomes a monster, and once a monster he is no longer subject to normal human desires and motivations.

Well worth a listen.

I love a nice long audiobook and I was encouraged to download this one by the glowing reviews. I don't regret my choice at all. It took me several weeks to get through the whole thing and I will still listen to it again in the future as I like revisiting mysteries once I have the benefit of hindsight.

Whenever I read a Victorian novel I'm delighted with the language. Some find it a bit wordy and lacking in style but I adore it, and this was written excellently.

The negatives are that the story lost its way a bit in the middle, and pages and pages go by with not much happening. It is also fairly predictable although there were a number of things I didn't guess correctly so I didn't feel like my time was wasted. The narration was fantastic although I wish they would have chosen a woman to narrate Marion's part, which was rather long, and I couldn't really immerse myself in her story when it was so obvious a man was relating her tale.

I enjoyed this book and I also enjoyed the ending, which many fans did not. It did get changed for the film so people who have seen that first may be a little bit shocked by how differently the novel goes. I think the writing is excellent, the character of Dr. Lecter is as brilliant as ever and I would always give Thomas Harris books a try.

The narration was generally good although much of the time I struggled to understand what Mason Verger was saying. That is true to the story as Verger finds it hard to speak due to some medical problems, but I think for the sake of clarity it should have been toned down a bit in the reading.

This book chronicles the months that the Chilean miners were trapped, from the day of the collapse to the day of release. I wanted to know about the psychology of the miners' experience, how they felt and how they coped with the situation and what they did down there. Some of that is explored but not in enough depth for my liking so I finished it feeling a bit frustrated. As a listener I felt like a distant observer rather than putting myself in the shoes of the trapped men.

The book alternates between explaining what was happening in the mine and what was going on above ground with the politicians and rescue efforts. Because the author was with the rescuers and politicians the book leans more heavily towards that side, which wasn't my area of interest.

I suppose the author wanted to stick to the facts he had got himself but I wish it had been a bit less dry and more colourful and imaginative.

Wow, I loved this! It's odd because, for a horror novel, it's not actually very scary. It's pretty obvious from the start what is going to happen because it's the same as every other horror story, but strangely that doesn't detract from it. It is extremely gorey, very blackly comic in places and touching in others. There is good character development for a novel of this type, although many of the bad guys are completely unbelievable - that was quite a relief as I'm not a fan of exploring the psychology of the baddies too deeply. Quite a lot else is unbelievable, especially how many injuries people can take and still live, but I suppose it's hard to write a horror story without that.

The narration is brilliant, one of the best I've heard. Christopher Lane has just the right accent and tone for a story like this and he puts on good voices for the different characters.

I really recommend this for fans of gore, but not for people who prefer subtle psychological terror from horror.