Kay Drew's Views

It's been a long time since I was impressed by a novel, but at the moment I'm in the midst of reading an exquisite book that mixes fantasy and history that has a dash of horror thrown in for good measure. Miss Peregrine's House for Peculiar Children is the title of Ransom Riggs's novel about Jacob, a teenager who witnesses the brutal death of his grandfather. The story doesn't end there, though. The loss of the grandparent is just the beginning of Jacob's spine-tingling journey. As the months go by, Jacob is lead to Wales. There, he discovers the truth behind the stories his grandfather used to tell him. He learns that reality is stranger than fiction and that monsters just might exist outside of the psyche.  What he sees and experiences, I'll let you find out for yourself. This book is too brilliant to spoil; besides I haven't finished it yet, thus I'm still experiencing Jacob's journey. I will warn you, this book is very hard to p...

To continue with the idea of surprises in stories, I'm going to focus on Kindred by Octavia Butler. Now, for anyone who hasn't read the book, I will be revealing much about the story (including the ending).  This is fair warning to you all, if you don't want the end ruined, click away from this entry. Thank-you. Kindred is this story of an African American woman, Dana, living in 1976 California with her Caucasian husband. While moving into their new apartment, Dana suddenly finds herself whisked back through time to the Antebellum South and in the presence of her ancestors. She unwillingly travels back in time on 6 separate occasions. During her time on her ancestors plantation, Dana learns firsthand what it was like to be a slave all the while trying to keep her ancestor - Rufus - alive long enough for Hagar (the direct descendant) to be born. Her job is not easy because Rufus tends to get himself into a lot of trouble. Every time his life's in danger, she gets ca...

All right, to continue with the surprises theme, I'm going to look at another television show because I see a great transition from my last blog entry to this one. You might wonder, 'What is she talking about?' or 'Where is that transition?' I'll tell you. It's the Others. These Others are different from Lost's. They didn't live on an island. They weren't crazy and take people. Nope, they helped people. They all have special gifts that they used to communicate with the dead or solve mysteries. They lived in a college town and most had jobs and tried to live normal lives, even though they had special connections to the supernatural world. It was a short run show that was brilliant written and crafted. It came out the same year as Nicole Kidman's movie, The Others, but it was quite different from the film, even though Ms. Kidman's movie got more hype. The Others, the movie, was just about ghosts while the TV show dealt wit...

This week, I'm going to write about surprises in storylines. I love a good surprise. I want to think, "I didn't expect that", or "Wow, that was cool", or "Why didn't I think of that?" The bigger the surprise is and the more shocking it is, the more I enjoy it. I think it takes a brilliant writer to craft a surprising plot twist that is believable and works. A shocking revelation has to fit in if it's going to succeed. I've seen a few scenes that were shocking that didn't live up to my expectations and fell flat. However, I'm not going to discuss that. I'm going to discuss plot twists and surprises that I enjoyed! But, to start the week off, I'm going to look at the season 3 opening episode of Lost - A Tale of Two Cities I believe the episode was called. It starts out, as you will see from the clip below, in a village with a woman named Juliet as she prepares for a book club meeting - we watch her get dressed, pull burn...