Colin Mulhern

Books are better, right? That's what I always hear, but I've often thought it was a snobbery - ie, "I'm more intelligent, therefore I can enjoy the depth of a book... bla bla bla." But sometimes a movie comes along that expands and develops a story. With Coraline being quite a short book, I wondered if this would be the case. I read the book earlier this week, when realised I'd never read Neil Gaiman (other than a Sandman comic in the 90s) and keep hearing good things. And then I watched the movie last night. First of all, I love stop motion animation. The movie of Coraline looks fantastic. The models and animations are fantastic, with stunning sets and some brilliant visual jokes (esp Miss Spink and Miss Forcible's musical number). However, there are other differences which really nail the difference between the format of a novel versus a movie. In particular, Wybourne. Wybourne Lovat is a character that doesn't appear in the novel. That...

You know when they say music can take you places. This post is kind of like that. I got this album when I was eleven years old. I liked horror stories, saw this on a friend's t-shirt and simply had to have it. I listened to it over and over, unable to get over this incredible mix of visual story telling and incredible rock music. As I got into my teens I moved onto other stuff and this old album slipped away. And then a few years ago, something popped into my head, so I went out and bought it again (my old vinyl albums went in the skip years ago). I got a massive bolt of nostalgia and started listening to it more and more. When I take my son diving, the Aquatic Centre can be really noisy. I started putting this album on to drown out the noise around me. At first, it did the same old thing that most music does - it takes you away to a place. In my case, that's usually being on stage with a guitar (because in day dreams I can actually play one) and seeing a sea of fans...

Isabella knows that a world exists beyond the confines of her island, and she has maps to prove that. But since the new Governor arrived, no one is allowed to leave and half of the island is strictly out of bounds. But when a girl is murdered, and then the Governor's daughter goes missing, Isabella adopts a disguise in order to join the search party. What she discovers makes her realise the mythical stories her father told her as a child have living roots that run deep into the heart of the island. The Girl of Ink and Stars is an enchanting piece of storytelling with a magical mixture of visual wonder and spellbinding action. Wonderful.

Loved this book. Generally speaking, it's not YA, but I've added the YA tag - more on that later. For the most part, The Three is a book within a book, and then follows the story of the author to see the long term effects of having had that book published. I'm going to keep this short to avoid spoilers, but the basic plot is that four planes crash on the same day. In three of the planes, there is a single survivor and each one is a child. Perfect ingredients for conspiracy theories. What follows is a collection of interviews and transcribed chats, webchats and tweets. Sounds complicated, but the stories grab you tight and pull you in. Very, very readable. But what really takes it to the next level is that each voice is so individual - so take note if you're interested in writing, because this book is quite simply a master-class in controlling your writing style to fit different characters. I particularly loved Chiyoko and Ryu's story. (This is the reason for the...

In gearing up for the launch of The Mayfly , I'm giving away Clash and The Boy Who Buried Dead Things for free. The first chance is this weekend. Starting on Friday, 20th May until Saturday 21st  both books are FREE on Amazon. Share and enjoy. Here are the links: Clash The Boy Who Buried Dead Things

This book won the Costa award, which makes sense: I felt like I needed coffee to get me through it! Having said that, there is a lot that I enjoyed about The Lie Tree . Without giving spoilers, the plot has a wonderful touch of misdirection. I love it when magician hides their secrets in plain sight. Some of the imagery is incredible with beautifully written figurative prose. So I enjoyed the writing too - just not the story.  The plot drags itself into life as Faith, the daughter of a "natural scientist" does little more than observe the actions of adults - after all, she's just a girl in a world where only men have sufficient brain capacity to understand science so there's not a great deal for her to do other than sneak a look at this, listen and feel sorry for herself. She takes a more active role in the second half and pulls off some really cool scenes. The boat, the cave... and I especially liked the bag of rats. But it just wasn’t enough. She had ...

When I first saw the trailer for The Boy, I thought it was a joke. It looked like a sketch by Mitchell and Webb or Harry Hill. The doll looks far too over the top, like it's trying much too hard to be creepy. The film kicks off with Greta (Lauren Cohan) taking a job as a nanny in a big, scary house with a couple that are clearly too old to need a nanny. And so we meet Brahms, the doll that has replaced their dead child. And right there, I got why so many critics hated it. The tentatively dark atmosphere, the overly frightened parents hiding a terrible secret and a scary oil painting stuck on a wall of endless wood panelling and a possessed toy - all the ingredients of a classic, old-school horror to such a silly degree that the movie is smothered in cliché. Hence the reason it comes across as a parody, a joke. But those things are only clichés because we watched so many movies using the same tools - because we liked them. We might look back on them now with a shake of the hea...