If you do not know the plot of the Hunger Games by now, then where have you been living? Under a rock? Well, it goes something like this: in a future time, the world is divided into twelve areas and controlled by the Capitol. The evil leader, President Snow, makes each area give tributes, one teenage boy and one teenage girl, to the Hunger Games- a fight to the death in a natural arena. Much like the Roman tradition of pitting gladiators against animals and each other, these battles resulted in only one victor. Buy The Hunger Games Trilogy in a boxed set or electronic format* After the big movie release, reviews of the Hunger Games series probably came out of the woodwork. Truthfully, I had no interest in reading the books until after I watched the movies. My friends kept telling me how great they were and how I should go read them now, but I did not see the appeal. After all, aren’t they just another young adult series? That plus the idea of kids fighting to the death kind of put me off to the whole thing. Eventually, however I caved in enough to rent the movie…
Article first published as Book Review: Vlad by Carlos Fuentes on Blogcritics. About: Vlad by Carlos Fuentes is a short novel taking place in Mexico City, Mexico. The story was part of the 2004 collection “Inquieta Compañía” and recently came out as its own book translated by Alejandro Branger and Ethan Shaskan Bumas. 112 pages Publisher: Dalkey Archive Press; Tra edition Language: English ISBN-10: 1564787796 My rating for Vlad – 4 Buy this book in paper format from Amazon.com* Thoughts: Vlad by Carols Fuentes takes on an interesting premise, what if Dracula still lived and settled inMexico City. As one might expect, there is a lot of dark humor in this book, starting with the strange requests the client is making of the real estate agent (“remote”, “easy to defend”) to the client’s look which consists of a silly wig and glued on mustache. What I found to be different in this book is that the reader knows a lot more than the narrator. This style of storytelling invigorates the dark comedy and brings a sense of ominous foreboding to banal and meaningless lines said by the famous Count. In this rendition of the story, Fuentes marries vampire and lawyers – both server as vessels for…