VALPOT'S BOOK PLEDGE 46-50

Here are the latest reviews from Valpot in her efforts to read 150 books this year. (The end of June should have seen her hit the 75 mark.)

46. Mr Murder by Dean Koontz
An exciting read from this great writer about a chilling villain determined to take his place in some one else's family, and when the family prove unco-operative, he decides to eliminate them. It's got all the ingredients for a good thriller - pace, fear, apparently unstoppable baddie, likable family, interesting origin of the assassin, and Dean's polished prose to tell the tale.
Rating: Good piece of fiction

47. St Thomas Aquinas
If you want a chronological fact-based biography of this saint, don't go for Chesterton's life of St Thomas. However, if you'd like an insight into how St Thomas thought or viewed the world, there is probably no better place to go. "Experts" on St Thomas have declared Chesterton's book the greatest ever written about the saint, and it probably would take a man of Chesterton's intellect to understand the intellect of St Thomas - and certainly he seems to understand him. The book is of course pure Chesterton - and therefore always worth reading.
Rating: Read for Chesterton, not for St Thomas

48. Heart-shaped Box
A scary tale about revenge - or is it? Nasty ghosts and wonderful dogs, and characters whose first impressions are definitely wrong. Enjoyed it very much.
Rating: Good piece of fiction

49. Fly By Night
Garth Nix recommended this children's tale by Frances Hardinge so I reserved it in the library, waiting some months before I got it, and in future, I will be hesitant about his recommendations. The plot probably isn't overly complicated but the plethora of characters and names make it difficult to keep track - and frankly I didn't care enough. The heroine is unlikeable, and I was a little irritated both by the setting (a sort of 18/19th century London, with references but no explanations to things like link boys which must confuse the average child? I only heard of them in G. Heyer) and by the anti-religion bias. The people believe in, and have shrines to, a whole range of gods and goddesses, called things like Goodman Woodberry Who Preserves Jam from Flies, but a few decades earlier some priests came along and said there was one god, the heart, but for some reason went around murdering and torturing everyone...so eventually everyone went back to the many gods again. But the heroine's father (dead, but obviously representing the author's view) said the gods were all children's fairy tales. The only redeeming feature was that the right people were bad - but if they hadn't been, their actions made no sense.
Rating: Almost Darren Shan

50. The Good Guy
Dean is such a good writer, every sentence is so well crafted. Unfortunately, this book held nothing new - in fact, strongly reminiscent of several of his other thrillers - and overall I thought the plot very poor, and contrived, and the end stupid. Very disappointing.
Rating: Readable