Porting over my list.
1.) Gossip From the Forest, Sara Maitland
2.) Ritual, Adam Nevill
3.) The Penny Heart, Martine Bailey
4.) Norse Mythology, Neil Gaiman
5.) The Elder Scrolls: Skyrim Library Volume 1: Histories
6.) The Fishermen, Chigozie Obioma
7.) The History of the English Puppet Theatre, by George Speaight
8.) The Year of Reading Dangerously, by Andy Miller
9.) Republic of Thieves, by Scott Lynch
10.) Women & Power: A Manifesto, by Mary Beard
11.) Wychwood, by George Mann
and finally:
12.) Sleeping Beauties, by Stephen King and Owen King -- All the women and girls in the world are being affected by a strange virus: when they fall asleep, they fall into a deep coma and a strange filmy moth-like cocoon grows around them. If that cocoon is damaged they go into an uncontrollable rage, attacking everyone around them, then fall back asleep. While the women remaining awake dose themselves with speed, caffeine and coke in a battle to stay awake, the men kick the fuck off. Meanwhile the sleeping women awake in another world.
Another solid 'meh' on this one, although so soon after reading Mary Beard's Women & Power it was interesting to draw parallels between the novel Herland referenced there and the all-women world in this. But it was too freaking long, I didn't give a damn about most of the characters (WTF was with the drug-addict doctor?
), and I skimmed most of the battle for the women's prison because it. Was. So. Fucking. Boring. And I found the Evie bits pointless and dull too, although the prison bits (before the agonisingly dull battle) were okay.
It reminded me pretty strongly of a cross between Under the Dome, and Lisey's Story, neither of which were SK's best works, with some feminism mixed in.
If it had been tighter, with a smaller focus, with Evie being handled differently (or not at all, tbh) and less of the talking animals (again, WTF?
), it might have been pretty decent. There were some interesting ideas here. As it was, meh meh meh.
Am currently rereading Adam Nevill's Last Days, which I know is brilliant.