Bored to Tears (Famine - Graham Masterton)

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Product:	Famine - Graham Masterton
Date:	13/05/03 (34 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Some good characters.

Disadvantages: Unnecessary sex scenes., Predictable., No WOW factor.

I first read a Graham Masterton book when I was around the age of 17, but before this I had never heard of him. I absolutely loved horror stories and so my neighbour lent me one of his books. From then on, I became hooked. I have bought every book I could find on him, which isn't many. Shops just don't tend to sell them very often.

Anyway, it usually takes me about a week or two to read a book of this size (376 pages), but I've already been reading this for a week now and I?m only on page 116, so I am writing this op as I go along. Don't get me wrong, when I?m actually reading it, I am interested, but picking it up again proves difficult. It hasn?t got that WOW factor that I love in books.

It is about a farmer named Ed Hardesty, who has inherited his father's farm after he and his older brother dies. Ed left the farm at an early age to pursue a very different career and so when he's given the farm, it?s a big change for him, his wife and child. The wife is portrayed as a lazy, stay at home mother, whose only aim in life is to shop and moan, which I didn't really like, as housewives are nothing like that. But it was published in 1981, so what did I expect.

The story goes straight into the plot of Ed's grain crops rapidly decaying from a blight that is appearing on all crops everywhere in the world. The government is trying to hide the fact of how serious the situation actually is, and that they may run out of food in the near future, hence the title 'Famine'. When all this begins to occur, Ed's wife leaves taking their child back to the city to take a break, splitting them up.

They soon discover that the blight is caused by a man-made contamination that they believe to have sprayed on all the crops. Somewhere along the line, Ed ends up having an affair with a woman from the Governments ?Blight Appeal?, named Della, who has arrived to keep an eye on things and to get Ed on television wit
h the Senator. I feel that this was totally unnecessary, pointless and unrealistic. About the same time, his wife is also doing the same thing with a vicar! What is going on? Also pointless to the story.

Ed ends up staying at the Senators home to await a television appearance. While there, he meets another woman, named Karen, the secretary to Peter Keiser who is helping the Senator launder money from the appeal. She tells Ed that she has overheard the whole seriousness of the blight, and that the Government have started storing food for themselves and that a serious world wide famine may happen very soon. She wants him to say all of this on television so that the public can be warned. This he does which puts him in danger.

Well I am now into my second week of reading this, and guess what?..I still haven't finished it. Now the second part of the story begins which leads into all the action.(I hope).

After Ed's speech at the appeal, the public begin to panic. They start breaking into food stores, stealing anything they can lay their hands on. Della turns out to be an FBI agent, wanting to catch the Senator stealing money. She and Ed steal evidence of this but are caught by guards and Peter. They outrun them into the Senators bedroom area, and kidnap him to make their getaway in a limo. Peter and the guards chase them and hold Karen as their hostage. The limo crashes but noone is hurt but it gives the others chance to catch up. There is a shoot out ending with the guards killed, Peter is kept alive for evidence, and Karen escapes unscathed. I think this was all a bit too predictable for my liking. The good guys get away and the bad guys are killed. And yet I still feel compelled to finish the story. Why???

Yes! I can now breathe a huge sigh of relief. I have finished the book, after only three weeks of reading.
If you do read the book, I wont spoil it for you by telling you the ending. Apart from that it just stops m
id-air with no proper finish. Maybe the writer becam
e bored aswell so he just ended it, I don't know but I'm glad its finished.

Overall, the storyline was okay, but there were too many predictable scenes and damsels in distress for my liking. Could have been much better. Compared to his other works, this is just so disappointing. But it definately hasn't put me off reading any of his other novels.

I wouldn't recommend this book as its one of the worst Graham Masterton books I have ever read.

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