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Jonathan Sims (1)

Autor(a) de Thirteen Storeys

Para outros autores com o nome Jonathan Sims, ver a página de desambiguação.

7+ Works 288 Membros 11 Críticas

Obras por Jonathan Sims

Associated Works

Great British Horror 7: Major Arcana (7) (2022) — Contribuidor — 5 exemplares

Etiquetado

Conhecimento Comum

Outros nomes
Sims, Jonny
Sexo
male
Locais de residência
Manchester, Lancashire, England, UK
Ocupações
author
game designer
voice actor
scriptwriter
Agente
Bent Agency

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[from The Bent Agency website]
Jonathan Sims is an award-winning author, script-writer, voice actor, stage performer and games designer whose main goal is to scare you silly in every medium. He has two books currently out from Gollancz: Thirteen Storeys, a socially-focused horror story about a haunted London tower block, and Family Business, which follows a team of death cleaners as they clear away the remains of the forgotten. He is also the mind and the voice behind acclaimed horror podcasts The Magnus Archives and the upcoming The Magnus Protocol, as well as story-game design duo MacGuffin & Co. He lives in Manchester with the two best cats and an overwhelming backlog of books that he really should get round to.

Membros

Críticas

Podcast. Short story format tied together by a cosmic horror 'X-Files' theme.

The archival stories are great. The characters in the main theme are okay. It's a shame that they felt the need to pull the stories together with the theme of the archival agency that collects the stories. The short stories stand well enough on their own - They are genuinely good - really creepy and scary. The agency story is passing. Mostly it's over dramatized and Melanie is super-duper annoying.
 
Assinalado
rabbit-stew | Dec 31, 2023 |
Tobias Fell was a multi-billionaire recluse living in the penthouse of a rather strange apartment building.... until he invited thirteen very different people to a dinner party, all of them associated in some way with the building and all in some way haunted. It ended in the violent death of Fell, and with no one who was present being willing to breathe a word of what happened.

I picked this one up because I absolutely loved Jonathan Sims' horror fiction podcast, The Magnus Archives. And I think for fans of Magnus, there are a lot of elements here that will be familiar. We've got a bunch of little stories about people, each in their own unique ways, having creepy encounters with the supernatural, all of which end up eventually fitting together into a larger narrative, and we've got the use of supernatural horror to reflect on the real-life horrors of exploitation and capitalism.

But, while this isn't bad, I did find it a little bit disappointing by contrast. I was less impressed with the writing here than in Magnus, maybe in part because here we're lacking Sims' fantastic delivery to breathe wonderfully disturbing life into his words. And the social commentary aspects feel a lot more heavy-handed and a lot less nuanced. The structure, while interesting, didn't entirely work for me, either, as each little sub-story just ends quite abruptly, with a dinner invitation right where the exciting climax should be.

All that having been said, though, I did still certainly find it worth reading. When Sims hits with the creepiness, he really hits, and even if he mostly doesn't manage it here as well as he does in the podcast, there are still some very good moments. If nothing else, the chapter about the plumber is definitely going to stick with me for a while. And the central idea is a really clever, interesting, and suitably horrifying variation on haunted house stories, one that impressively widens their scope.
… (mais)
½
 
Assinalado
bragan | 6 outras críticas | Oct 27, 2023 |
Enjoyable read! I thought the front cover was a white shirt until about halfway through the book when I realized it was a sheet and a corpse. I wish the "monster" had been introduced a little bit earlier or that it was more viscous at the end but still a great creature. I always want more horror but I think this book makes a good intro to horror for people who aren't quite ready to take the full leap into the world of horror. The language and writing of the book is very good and very easy to read and follow along with.

I think about this story whenever I drive past the billboard for crime scene cleanup!
… (mais)
 
Assinalado
Lili_Vagarious | 1 outra crítica | Jul 28, 2023 |
A clever idea, 12 short stories tied together by a single narrative theme, each written with a different horror trope/style, coming together in the final story. Interesting, but not great, though I would read Sims again.
 
Assinalado
rumbledethumps | 6 outras críticas | Jun 26, 2023 |

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Estatísticas

Obras
7
Also by
1
Membros
288
Popularidade
#81,142
Avaliação
½ 4.3
Críticas
11
ISBN
9

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