Book Review: Diary [Chuck Palahniuk]

RATING: Haunting. Couldn't put it down!

Misty Marie Kleinmann, who’s lived all her life in a trailer park, likes beautiful pictures and shiny things. She attends art school, where she meets Peter Wilmot, the son of a wealthy family in wealthy Waytansea Island. The promising young artist gets married to her beloved, and she is whisked off to a fairytale ending in Waytansea Island.

Or at least, that’s what she thought.

Twelve years after happily ever after, Misty Wilmot is working as a waitress in the island’s only hotel. The Wilmots are broke, her husband is in a coma, she barely knows her teenage daughter, and her mother-in-law’s a pain in the ass. And if that wasn’t enough, threats of lawsuits are posed to leap from every corner of the tourist-ridden island.

Before the accident that turned him into a vegetable, Peter (a contractor for vacation houses) has taken to redecorating the houses without their owners’ permissions: he has built secret rooms and written cryptic (and rather vulgar, hehe) messages all over the walls.

A confused Misty starts on a mission to find out the truth about her husband’s actions (like if he really did stick people’s toothbrushes up his ass, for example :P). She starts to find other cryptic messages hidden all over the island, written by two women from previous centuries.

And in the midst of it all, Misty (who hasn’t picked up a paintbrush since art school) starts to paint again. Rather obsessively, too, as if being driven by some unknown force.

When she finally pieces everything together, she finds herself in the middle of a secret that puts her family and the entire island in danger.

“Diary” is a hauntingly strange book. The plot is odd, the events unfold in a series of inconsecutive flashbacks, and the story told in second-person where you, the reader, are Peter.

I think "Diary" deserves a five for three reasons: 1) The mystery got me so hooked, I wasn’t able to put the book down. (I finished this one in one sitting); 2) A "whoa" ending that has a way of etching itself into your mind; 3) It's a strange and totally unbelievable story that's packed up so neat and pretty in the end that it’s convincing enough to make you think “What if it’s real?” with series of chills running down your spine.

Game Review: Dead Rising [CAPCOM]

Rating:	★★★★★
Console:	Xbox 360

An experiment gone awry, a mall-ful of zombies, psychopathic survivors, the DHS and the military. An overused plot? Yep. Crummy game? Dead wrong.

Dead Rising is one of the most addicting games I've come across in a long time. You play Frank West, photojournalist, and you have 72 hours to survive in a mall full of zombies and save as many survivors as you can. Sounds simple, right? Au contraire, this game is one of the hardest games I've ever played, especially when you're as OC as I am in saving NPCs. Not only do you get to deal with escorting unbelievably idiotic (running-against-the-wall idiotic), scared-to-death survivors to safety, you've got a time limit as well. So that means making a schedule on how to finish all quests in the shortest time possible- if you don't go psycho and murder the blubbering morons yourself, that is.

The system is simple enough - you get linear gameplay with the hours open for main quests (which you can choose not to do, of course), but you'll certainly get the most fun with the open world free play. It is completely up to you to explore the zombie-infested mall and do whatever you want to do.

This game was especially designed to be played on HDTV - and for good reason too! For people who can appreciate blood and gore games like yours truly, it's quite a treat to watch a blood-and-gut splattered Frank West tearing off zombies apart with his bare hands, sending heads and limbs and god-knows-what flying everywhere.

Blood and gore aside, the thing that I liked most about this game is that you virtually get to use whatever item you can find at the mall to kill zombies. Aside from the usual guns, knives and chainsaws, you get to use HDTVs, potted plants, CDs, and even toy Light Sabers and teddy bears. Or, since your character gains skills while leveling up, you could eventually tear zombies apart like they were made of paper. It's loads of fun thinking up creative ways to kill both living and undead enemies. Boosts replay value too.

It's just really too bad this game doesn't have multiplayer feature. Now THAT would have been insanely fun. *big grin*

This game's got me eyeing the chainsaws in Ace Hardware last time I was in SM. Full marks! I'm definitely never going to look at a mall the same way again! :P

Book Review: Letters from Hades [Jeffrey Thomas]

RATING: Brilliant! Loved it!

Loving the cover art!

A man wakes up in Hell after committing suicide. He is sent to Avernus University to learn the ways of the Damned before being set free to roam around Hell. Our hero is given a flesh covered notebook with a blinking eye in school, but he decides to keep this notebook after his graduation to record his journey, and also as a silent traveling companion.

Our hero travels through different landscapes such as forests, deserts, arctic areas, all of which features different inhabitants, different punishments, all richly detailed. The main city is an urbanized version of Dante's Inferno with elements of Amsterdam and New York thrown into it.

Of course, Hell could not exist without a Heaven, now could it? As if the Damned don’t have enough on their hands dealing with the Demons, all hell – or heaven, rather- breaks loose in Hell when the Angels descend and make mayhem (with God’s consent, of course) by turning Hell into their own, perverted playground.

On one hand, Letters from Hades is a guidebook/travelogue to Jeffrey Thomas' version of Hell- which is definitely something to marvel about. He's created an intricately detailed world that breathes, cries, and bleeds. On the other hand, Letters from Hades is a discourse on concepts of good and evil, right and wrong, and on grabbing life by the reins and actually living it.

An epic power struggle. Unlikely alliances. Throw in a female Demon and forbidden love into the mix, and you get one hell of a good yarn which I give full marks. Whimsical, yet tightly knitted it's almost believable. Stands out. An enjoyable read.