keep

The Keep (Adversary Cycle)
$6.99
Now that Tor has re-issued all of Wilson's books in new paperback editions my local library finally has a copy of THE KEEP and I had the chance to read this book which I'd been trying to track down in a cheap or free copy for several years. Frankly, it should've stayed out of print. This is clearly the work of a novice writer. It's filled with overwrought metaphors and is heavily influenced by extremely old fashioned stylists. The writing is laughably amateurish and suffers from a poor editor who missed cutting out huge chunks of repetitive narrative and entire chapters of unnecessary "character development" that interrupt the story's flow. The book should be less than half it's turgid length. The writing is also sloppy - it continually flits back and forth between a quaint and florid anachronistic style and poorly constructed, very contemporary, sentences. The dialogue also suffers this schizoid identity problem - it's a mix of that arch period manner of talking you hear in old 1930s movies and then will shift into speech lifted from a bad 1980s made-for-TV movie revealing when it was originally written and published. When I reached the point in the story when the secret cache of forbidden books was unearthed in the walls of the keep I smiled and actually laughed. Here are all those damned books of demonology that appear in the Cthulhu Mtythos stories by Lovecraft, Derleth and his gang. And I kept waiting for the Lovecraft "old ones" to appear. But what do we get? A lame vampire rip-off. The book boils down to nothing more than a tired twist on the vampire legend with Nazis as victims and a hero with a magic sword. I have to mention the most jarring and ridiculous part of the book: thrown in for the hell of it is a trite romance between the damsel in distress and a red-haired hero. The hero is an obvious vampire hunter (although he is dealt with ever so mysteriously and we are meant to believe that he is a villain, it is not hard to be fooled here) who carries a secret weapon in a long case that no one is supposed to touch or else. Just like those Gothic dumbbell heroines in any Had-I-But-Known book Magda opens the "untouchable" case and discovers the magic sword right out of some Robert E. Howard story. The hero discovers her with the sword in her hand, loses his temper, but almost immediately after grabbing her away from the sword and case he also loses his identity and he transforms into an escapee from a trashy Harlequin romance. Then follows the obligatory (and typically censored) sex scene that had me rolling my eyes. The virgin heroine is ravished by our muscular and scarred he-man. She has a beautiful body described in great detail; he has nothing but shoulders and chest. He, of course, "enters" her and she is transported into an ecstasy beyond her imaginings. Are you kidding?! What is this doing in a book of "Lovecraftian horror"? This really was a sad reading experience for me. But I kept plodding ever onward through a mountain of clich��� and predictable scenes, jaw-droppingly awful metaphors and horrid dialogue hoping something new and different would happen. But it's just a long-winded, repetitive and hokey homage to all the Weird Tales boys. Amid all this I could faintly hear the writer whispering to me (at times shouting at me!): "Look at me! I'm a Weird Tales fan. I can fill up 400 pages with allusions to my favorite writers and write just like those pulp guys." But I'm afraid I will have to strongly disagree. I am astonished at all the rave reviews here. The Emperor is naked, kids! One of the 100 Best Horror Books of all time? Absolutely not.

Kenny Rogers Christmas Special: Keep Christmas With You
$6.99
This is a very entertaining dvd. I like Kenny Rogers and enjoy his singing. My husband and I enjoyed watching this dvd

Castle Keep (Widescreen Edition)
$14.94
Fantastic eurpean back drop. Amazing glamorous casle. Slow build up at first. Energetic but short action ending.

The Keep
$13.95
I am really torn between 2 and three stars, maybe 2-1/2? I was very excited to read this book, the description was exactly the kind of story I usually enjoy reading. It started off OK, then got better, then ended....I think I wanted more. I haven't read any of Jennifer Egan's other books, and if they are similar to this one, I don't think I will.