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sarahf1984

Sarah's Library

I read pretty much anything, from fantasy (City of Stairs by Robert Jackson Bennett) to romance (Bared to You by Sylvia Day) to classics (Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad).  The only genres I don't read are self-help and comic books/graphic novels.

Currently reading

The Last Honeytrap
Louise Lee
Progress: 100/346 pages
Complete Works of William Shakespeare
William Shakespeare

Dead Calm by Charles Williams

Dead Calm - Charles Williams

8/7 - An impressive knowledge of boat and sailing terms that kind of boggles the mind of a reader who is almost completely clueless about all things nautical. Most of the time I have no idea what action of the boat (or is it a ship?) is being described. For example this sentence:

"He cast off the genoa sheet, carried the sail forward around the stay and outside the starboard shrouds, and trimmed the sheet on the port tack."

I can't visualise what's happening during that sentence, at all. Other than being at a complete loss as to what Ingram is doing when he's driving the boat I'm enjoying the story. The atmosphere was quite tense before Warriner revealed himself, when we didn't know exactly what the situation was, whether all of his fellow shipmates were dead or not. Once we knew what Warriner had, and hadn't done the tension dissolved out of the story. It's a shame the tension had to disappear so early on in the book. I was expecting the mystery of what had happened on the boat - who was dead and how, etc. - to be dragged out for much longer. But signs of life are revealed at only page 42, and the rest of the story is told over the next 20 pages or so. We know pretty much everything there is to know way before the halfway mark. To be continued...

 

9/7 - I had every intention of finishing this last night, but I kind of flung my book down in disgust when Rae decided that she just couldn't kill Warriner despite the fact that her sentimentality over her kidnapper could likely mean the death of her husband. I'm sorry but if it's a choice between killing a crazy person who is in not in their right mind (and therefore legally not responsible for their actions) or allowing them to continue to kidnapping me and leaving someone I love in a situation that is very likely to result in their death, I would feel no compunction about killing them as soon as I had the means and opportunity. When I go back to it tonight, with 24 hours having passed, I think I'll be able to go on and finish it. To be continued...

 

10/7 - The tension ratcheted back up when Rae finally managed to get back to Ingram, Mrs Warriner, and Mr Bellew (funny how everyone except Rae goes by their last name) just in time to rescue them. I found the climax of the story quite satisfying, everyone got what they deserved and I would have found it hard to believe that everyone would've survived to make landfall if things hadn't turned out as they did. There was no way Bellew and Warriner could have spent any time together trapped on a two person yacht without someone committing violence.