Richard Marsh’s The Beetle was a success when it was published in 1897. At one point it even outsold Dracula, which came out in the same year. However, unlike Dracula, it hasn’t remained as popular in the years since. This is a shame, because it’s a rich slice of late-Victorian Gothic fiction, with well-drawn characters, an exciting plot, and atmosphere in spades.
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Children of Dune is the third book in the Dune series, but feels like more of a sequel than the second, Dune Messiah. Messiah was much smaller-scale than its predecessor, with comparatively less at stake (the fate of Paul Atreides vs the fate of the Fremen, Arrakis, and the Empire in Dune). Children, on the other hand, has the same kind of epic scale as the first book, with the planet and the future of the universe once again under threat.
Michael Ende, the author of The Neverending Story, wasn’t happy with the film adaptation. The film was only adapts half the book, and in his view was made for commercial rather than artistic reasons. He called it ‘a humongous melodrama of kitsch, commerce, plush and plastic’, and even went to the extent of removing his name from the production. Although I’m a fan of the film, it’s not hard to see why. The book carries with it a sobering message of not losing yourself in fantasy, which the film not only ignores but puts across the exact opposite message instead. It’s a shame, because there’s a lot of ideas in the latter half that would be interesting to see in a film.
Come away, O human child!
To the waters and the wild With a faery, hand in hand, From a world more full of weeping than you can understand. So wrote Yeats in his famous poem The Stolen Child (this version of which by The Waterboys is one of the most beautiful combinations of words and music I’ve ever heard). It’s not a spoiler to say that Foxglove Summer, the fifth book in Ben Aaronovitch’s Peter Grant series, centres around two children who may or may not have been stolen by the faeries. The action in the series normally takes place in London, but in this book our boy Peter has to brave the English countryside in his search for the missing girls. |
Atticus Book ReviewsBook reviews and reading recommendations written by volunteers and friends of the shop! |
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