A big Happy Birthday to Howard Phillips Lovecraft. Born August 20, 1890, H.P. Lovecraft wrote some of the most chilling fiction ever penned. Lovecraft is best known for being the creator of Cthulhu. He passed away on March 15, 1937. Happy Birthday H.P. Lovecraft!
The dark night of your stay in the curious old hotel is punctuated by the faint sound of sneaking back and forth outside your door. The carpet barely muffles the floorboards in this place but no new visitors clomp down the hall. But are you imagining the sound of small feet? Or brushing tails? The hint of a purr? Sometimes mewing or a screech is heard as if some cats were having a brief argument down the hall. Something about the sounds make you think they are either too big or too small, or maybe both. But that could only be the acoustics of the tall ceilings in this ancient structure, or an overactive imagination. You bury your head under your pillow and resolve to bring your stay here to an end tomorrow.
In the morning you wake to find the sun streaming through the windows of your room and laugh at your foolishness the evening before. As you exit your room, this ominous piece of furniture greets you in the hallway and you can’t help but wonder if there are crafty animals under the cover. Did it just move?
It’s my birthday. Of course I can’t tell you how old I am, or the agents will visit again and remind me to be discreet. In honor of my birthday, however, I have decided give you a present. I wrote you a story about Ominous Furniture. Happy Birthday to me!
More Monster Alphabet.
Confidential to Secret Admirer: Buy Two 750s For Me Please Sweetheart.
Earlier this week I reviewed the NECA Coraline Figurines, which are otherwise known as the “NECA Coraline 3 Inch PVC Figure 3-Pack Star Sweater Coraline” set. I thought the toys were really cool and looked better in person than they did in the photographs. I also commented that they looked pretty fragile, especially the Cat and the Sweet Ghost Girl.
I’ve actually been warming up to the Sweet Ghost Girl. She still kind of looks like she’s winding up for a kiss, but I guess it’s OK. I like the Tall Ghost Girl the best out of the button-eyed ghostly children. As you’ll recall, there’s also a Ghost Boy in the movie, and there are figurines of all three of them available in different of these NECA Coraline toy sets.
Anyways, blah blah blah. I sure can go on. Just put a quarter in old Dark and watch him blab on to himself and the world about any subject that he can get obsessed about. So, to business:
What is up for grabs: All the figures from the NECA Coraline Star Sweater set EXCEPT the lovely Other Mother. So that’s the Cat, the Sweet Ghost Girl, and Coraline herself.
Who will win: Leave a comment on this post. If you have a preference for which of the three Coraline figures you would want to get, include that in your comment. Make sure when you post your comment that you make sure to put in the right email address in the field. That’s how I’ll notify the winners. (I can only afford to ship to the US and Canada, so people from other countries please don’t enter. Sorry!)
What they will win: I have one set to split up, so there’s going to be three winners. One winner will get the Cat. One winner will get the Sweet Ghost Girl. One winner will get Coraline.
When and how the winners will be chosen: Saturday, July 25. Winners will be chosen using random.org. Which figure will go to which person will be worked out as well as possible, but if they stated a preference, the first winner will get the toy they chose. Likewise the second will have next priority. So the second and third winners will get the toy of their choosing if it is still available and if they stated a preference. Otherwise I’ll just do some coin-flipping. Confused? So am I!
Notification: Winners will be notified by email July 25 and will have until July 31 to get back to me. After that, their prize will be forfeited and awarded to someone else chosen with a random.org number.
Here they are:
The Cat
Coraline
Sweet Ghost Girl.
Don’t miss my papercraft Coraline Doll, papercraft Coraline Circus Mouse, and also my post on the Coraline DVDs. Here are the three Coraline Toy sets: The set with Wybie, the set with Mr. Bobinsky and the set I got, with the Other Mother!
Thanks to Evil Buttons for featuring us!
OK I’ve got to come out and say that Green by Jay Lake is a weird book. Now I know what you may be thinking, because I’m thinking it too. You’re thinking, “The Dark is such a weird and bizarre monster that he probably thinks David Lynch movies are perfectly normal and romantic comedies are strange.” You’re right after a fashion, but believe me, I know weird when I see it. Sometimes weird is like David Lynch movies and other times weird is like opening a closet to investigate a strange noise and finding a giant Persian cat doing something unnatural with a goose. The goose might be wearing a hat and saying something over and over in Portuguese. This book is a little like that kind of weird. (Please note that the above scenario has never happened to me, I swear.)
Yes yes this is a fantasy book. It’s not exactly what I call “dark fantasy” but it was dark enough to keep my attention. Green is set in another world somewhat like our own and maybe in Asia somewhere. A little girl is sold by her dirt-farmer father to a man who hopes to turn her into a concubine. Fortunately or unfortunately, the man also has a hidden agenda. Besides the concubine gig, he also wishes to turn the little girl into an assassin to kill the Duke. The Duke rules the city and has used magic to live far beyond his years. The man wishes to end the Duke’s life and rule. For the most part, the reader is left to ponder who is part of this conspiracy and who is not. Along with being taught how to be a very well educated concubine, the girl is basically ritually abused and also, on the sly, schooled on how to be an assassin.
As you can probably guess, after years of this sort of treatment the resulting person, who calls herself “Green”, ends up being a little twisted. While she is ultimately compelling and sympathetic, Green spends most of the book in a bad mood and is vaguely naive and unpredictably violent. Green likes to dress up in strange menacing costumes and wander around cities. Green joins a cult of women who hunt down and kill murderers. Green finds she has a taste for being tied up and lashed to get her kicks.
The book is quite the page-turner. You know the kind of book where if you’re busy with something else (like say you’re toiling over some diabolical project in your lab), it’s almost like the taste of the book is stuck in your head, and you want to go read some more? It’s that kind of book. The writing is excellent. The characters are well-developed and compelling. The story is suspenseful. My only complaint is that it gets kind of bogged down in a few places and I found myself thinking that the plot ended up being kind of more complicated than it needed to be. At the same time, I couldn’t stop reading it.
Creepy Factor: 1 out of 5
Suspense Factor: 4 out of 5
Weird Erotic Tension Factor: 3 out of 5
Funny and/or Strange Factor: 1 out of 5
Final result: We have a winner. If you’re a fan of Fantasy fiction and you’re looking for a good book to read I say look no further. I also have to say that the cover art by Dan Dos Santos is spectacular. I found you can download wallpaper-sized copies of the cover here, after you jump through some hoops.
Green by Jay Lake – Tor Books – 2009
Jay Lake on Amazon
Green by Jay Lake on Amazon
Many thanks to Tor Books for sending me this book to review. (See my disclosure policy.) Thanks for reading another one of my book reviews. Hopefully next time I review a nice juicy horror novel with loads of Weird Erotic Tension. I’m working on it! See you next time!
Recently I was pining over my poor broken heart. As many of you know, I’ve got an incurable crush for the Other Mother in the movie Coraline. I found out that they’re selling these 3 inch Coraline dolls by NECA “Reel Toys”.
On the box it says they’re “figurines.” It also has some writing in creepy font:
From Henry Selick, visionary director of The Nightmare Before Christmas and based on Neil Gaiman’s international best selling book, Coraline, is a spectacularly original stop-motion animated adventure that will speak to audiences of all ages with it’s fantastically fun, magnificantly spooky, and ultimately triumphant story.
That sounds good. I like the sound of “Magnificently Spooky” and “Ultimately Triumphant.” It sounds like someone I know very well. Maybe too well. The box says these toys are not for kids under 3 years of age and recommended for 13 and above. On the back there is also a picture of that brat Coraline looking scared. Which is pretty cool. I got the set with the Other Mother, naturally. In the same box is a Coraline doll with the star sweater, the Cat, and one of the ghost girls. I’m presuming this one is the Sweet Ghost Girl because the other one is called the Tall Ghost Girl and this one is short. I actually like the Tall Ghost Girl better because she’s frozen in a look of horror, whereas the Sweet Ghost Girl looks like she wants a kiss.
There are two other Coraline NECA Doll box sets. One of these comes with PVC dolls of Wybie, the Cat, Tall Ghost Girl, and Coraline in jeans with her little rag doll in raincoat. The other set has a Coraline doll in her yellow raincoat and boots, Mr. Bobinsky in full circus regalia, and the Ghost Boy.
The Coraline NECA toys are small. Actually, I guess they’re about on scale with most action figures even though most of these toys are only three inches, because most of them are children (or animals). They are definitely not posable, and are fragile-looking, especially the tail on the Cat and the arms and legs of the Sweet Ghost Girl. The paint jobs are good. There are little blots of paint in places where they probably shouldn’t be, but the overall effect is nice. I think they’re pretty cool. They look way better in person than they do in the advertising photos.
The Cat, Coraline in star sweater, and Sweet Ghost Girl NECA Toys. Here are photos of the real star of the show – the Other Mother doll.
Here she is looking really horrifying. She is so hot!
Here she’s showing her more pensive, haunted side.
One last photo – the Coraline group with my Monsters Inc. Child Detection Agency Agent toy and a couple others I had monster servants of mine secure from the Giant Robot store in Los Angeles several years ago.
Although I really like the other toys, I’ve decided to do something revolutionary and share. This week I’m going to do a give-away (announced in another post) to give away the Coraline doll, Sweet Ghost Girl doll, and the Cat. Later note: The Coraline NECA Figurine Giveaway is up!
Creepy Factor: 4 out of 5
Suspense Factor: 2 out of 5 (dolls just aren’t very suspenseful.)
Weird Erotic Tension Factor: 5 out of 5 (ALL of that from the Other Mother.)
Funny and/or Strange Factor: 3 out of 5
Final result: I’m not the best person to be grading toys and dolls, but I think these are pretty cool. Check out my Other Mother page for my Coraline Doll. Also, here is information about the Coraline DVDs which are coming out soon, and the 3D glasses for them.
Fhtagn Spoken Here.
© 2008-2011 Dark in the Dark * Book reviews, dark stuff * All Rights Reserved
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