 Hello everybody, E here. Welcome back to another episode of 31 Days of Halloween. Today I have a book review for you, but first, a word from our sponsor. Whether you're shopping for Christmas gifts for youngsters or the young at heart, debut author Cassie Daly has the perfect present. Rosie Paints with Ghosts is an imaginative story about Rosie, a young girl who goes through a mysterious door under her bed and finds herself trapped in a colorless world. Rosie can't find a way back home and decides to help the ghosts who live in tomb by bringing color back to their world. This is a heartwarming story about friendship and resourcefulness and using your talents for good. Visit Let'sGetGalactic.com for more information about Rosie Paints with Ghosts and Cassie's artwork. Yes, the book's hardcover version sold out. Contact Cassie for information about ordering when Rosie Paints with Ghosts is back in stock. Many thanks to Cassie Daly for sponsoring today's episode. Now on with the review. Today we are reviewing Malignant Summer by Tim Meyer. I almost forgot to do the name. I know Tim Meyer. We're not friends. We don't talk on the daily or anything like that, but I know him. I've read his book, The Switch House, and I have absolutely no idea why I have not read more of this dude. So the TLDW too long didn't watch. I absolutely love this book. I have one minor, super minor criticism. Since everybody wants to talk about It, Stephen King's It when they talk about this book, this would be like hating the entire version of It just based on that one scene. Everybody knows. If you've read the book, there would be like hating that entire book based on that one scene. I don't think people should do it. I certainly don't do it. It is a rough scene to get through. And the scene in this one that I'm going to talk about has nothing to do with that, but that's how I feel. You know, judging an entire book, this paperback is 555 pages. If I'd based my entire review on this one scene that irritated me, that'd be stupid, I think. But anyways, it certainly didn't ruin the entire book for me. And I'm going to cut off 0.25 of a star. So 4.75. Basically, I am suggesting this, recommending this to damn near anyone, especially if you like Stephen King. Especially if you like Stephen King's It. Now, the reason I am harping on this is because not only are people saying this, but there are some heavy, heavy odes to It in this book. In fact, the last 100 pages of the book felt so much like It, I had a moment. But I was like, wait a second here. Are we doing the exact same thing? Luckily, we didn't. But it was very, very close. Anyways, that's not what I'm talking about. I had a lot of fun. Is it This Generation's It? No. But it is a good book. It is nowhere near the scale of Stephen King's It. It doesn't, you know, jump around between past and present. Well, it does jump around like that, but you're not dealing with kids who then grow into adults. You're dealing with things that had happened in this town. So if you were to cut Stephen King's It in half, you might be closer to this one. But instead of an entity named Pennywise, you have an entity known as the mother. And the mother infects people's dreams. She eats dreams. She does all this gnarly kind of stuff to dreams and is up to this ragtag group of kids to beat her. And I'm just like, I like how much there is here that is like It. I wouldn't, I would no way call this fan fiction or anything like that. Tim does his own thing. The book is fun without the references, but Stephen King is referenced a lot. And that's the one reason why I feel comfortable talking about It as much as I do. Because I do believe that, you know, Tim did his own thing here. Even at the last 100 pages of the book felt awfully familiar. It was still a lot of fun. I don't know how to talk about this scene without spoilers. But the woman that's pregnant, that scene, that bothered me. Like it was a very Clyde Barker-ish kind of thing, because not enough was told. But there was plenty to give you nightmares, that kind of thing. I think Stephen King does that a bit also. He does that quite a lot. I don't know what I'm talking about, but if you explain the mystery too much. And this isn't really mystery. This is what you're looking at. And Tim really lets your mind run away with itself. Now I read this book over the course of this entire month. Of course, I got done early so that I could film this. So I could take a little bit off before I start shooting videos in November. I believe you have two or three more videos after this one. And then I'll be done. So they should, well, not they should already be out. This is in the Halloween video. But I think two or three more videos coming your way all the way up until the 31st. And I'm going to start shooting again. No idea if I'm going to be doing daily videos. We'll talk about that later. Now let's get back to the book. So I look for three things. I look for characters, pacing and dreads. So the characters were phenomenal. I loved them. Each one had their own feel. Jewel Conti was my favorite character in the book. I love a redemption arc. I love a character who is just absolutely terrible, who ends up becoming more, not really, I don't want to spoil anything, but more than you suspected at first. Most of Stephen King's bullies are one note. Jewel Conti is not one note. If you start reading this and do like I did, it's like, well, this seems awfully familiar. It was another Stephen King thing. I was thinking, you know, Christine, it's, you know, numerous things with bullies. It would be like seeing more from Henry Bauer, but in a positive light. You know, I don't want to spoil it for you, but Jewel Conti is my favorite character in the book because of her arc. I like Jesse. I liked Doug. I liked, let's see here, not Gordy. Gordon is the dad, and they call him Gordy. There's another one with a G. Grady. Grades. There's Jimmy. There's, I think it's a testament to how good, but there's Maddie. There's Abby. I think it's a testament to how good these characters are that I remember so many of their names. There's Dylan Walker. And he has a really small role in the book, but I remember him too. It's just, I think the character work was damn, damn well done here. I think that's the best part of the book for me. Now the pacing, let's talk about the pacing here. I did read this over the course of an entire month. I kind of suggest you read this one slowly also because I've been reading reviews from people that I know to be very quick readers who are saying that the middle feels like it bogs down, but all of your character work, all of your character development, every reason why you love these characters and you want to see them succeed or you want to see them ruined, you want to see them destroyed, all of that stuff is in the middle of this book. You take away the middle of this book and you have very vapid cardboard characters. That's it. Because the stuff that you get up front, this is also a scavenger hunt story to begin with. I love scavenger hunt stories. I absolutely love them. One of my favorite books in that subgenre is Richard Layman's In the Dark. And this one is a scavenger hunt at night. The book opens up with that and then you have a very, very thick chunk of book that you have to get through for all the character development and then you have the ending sequence which is basically about the last 100 pages. So much fun. I love getting to know these characters. My favorite, absolute favorite bits of this book were Doug and Maddie and their relationship. Now I know I said Abbey, not Abbey, sorry, Jewel Conte is my favorite character. But as far as pacing is concerned, I loved Doug and Maddie's section. Them getting to know each other, all that stuff. It was a young romance done really, really damn well. And I applaud Tim for that because that's one of the harder things to do. It was really good. I don't want to spoil it. You can tell how excited I am. Fantastic book. I'm filming this today that I finished the book so it's all pretty fresh in my head also. Next is Dread. The Dread for the first bit of the book, the whole part with the scavenger hunt, that was really well done. But then it kind of fell off in the middle because you're getting to know your characters. So you're not really dreading as much. But once you get to the final showdown, man, I had no idea who was going to survive. No idea who was going to die. And luckily, there is a smattering enough of people that I did not expect to die who died and I think that is a plus. I can see Lierty's down there quoting me out of context. I love it when you guys quote me out of context. It's like, I love it when good characters die. Yes, I do. Actually, I do love it when good people die in books. People that you expect to live. I think that's a horrifying thing. It happens in real life and it should happen in the books too. The whole hero's journey thing doesn't really jive too well with me. Anyways, this is a fantastic book. I could literally sit here and talk about this book for probably hours with someone who has read the book. I could go over spoilers. This is a massive chunk of a novel. I'm thinking it's about 200,000 words, roughly, because King's It is 400,000 and this one is right at the half mark. It is 1,000 pages, 400,000 words. This one is 550, so I'm feeling like it's more like a 200,000, 220, something like that. It is a chunker of a book and I had a blast with it. It feels like early Dan Simmons. It feels like early Graham Masterton. It feels like early Ramsey Campbell. It feels a little bit like Stephen King. The writing isn't much like Stephen King, but it feels that way. And if you like 80s, 90s horror, like zebra paperbacks and small town horror and all that stuff, you're going to have a lot of stuff that you're going to love about this book. But it is a chunker and I suggest you read it slowly, maybe with another read alongside of it. I don't care how you do it, but I highly recommend that you do try it. But if you have read it, I would love to talk to you in-depth about spoilers, maybe on Twitter or through email or whatever. I would love to talk to people about this book because I have so much I want to rave about that I can't because I don't want to spoil anything because so many of you don't listen to the spoiler tags. You're just like, I'm just going to go ahead and ruin the book for myself. Shame on you. Anyways, but tell me whether or not you liked it. Now they're in the Dooley Doo. Tell me whether or not you liked it. You loved it. You hated it. You felt mad about it. Any of those things. But explain why you felt that way so that we can have a discussion. But until next time, I have an E. You have an U. This has been another episode of 31 Days of Halloween. That is a mouthful. I've been stumbling all over it all month and I'll be glad when I'm done. I'll talk to you guys later. Bye-bye.