Book 51: THE RED HOUSE MYSTERY by A.A. Milne, isbn 9780099521273, 211 pages, Vintage UK (Random House), $7.95
The Premise: (from the back cover) Far from the gentle slopes of the Hundred Acre Wood lies The Red House, the setting for A.A. Milne's only detective story, where secret passages, uninvited guests, a sinister valet and a puzzling murder lay the foundations for a classic crime caper. When the local police prove baffled, it is up to a gueset at a local inn to appoint himself "Sherlock Holmes" and together with his friend and loyal "Watson," delve deeper into the mysteries of the dead man. The Red House Mystery is a lost gem from a time before Tigger and a perfectly crafted whodunnit with witty dialogue, deft plotting and a most curious cast of characters.
My Rating: 3 stars
My Thoughts: I wanted to enjoy this a lot more than I did. Sadly, I don't think it quite delivers on the promises of the back-cover copy. Which doesn't make it a bad story. There is a clever set-up, and a clever method of getting "Holmes," aka Anthony Gillingham, knee-deep in the action while remaining an outsider with an impartial eye to the murder. Milne lays out the hints all along the way, so this really is a fair-play mystery, more Agatha Christie than Conan Doyle. And there is a lot of oh-so-clever banter that makes me wonder why this story has never been adapted by the BBC/PBS (and a quick scan of IMDB tells me it hasn't), being a classic "drawing room cozy mystery."
I liked the characters of Anthony Gillingham and Bill Beverley ("Holmes" and "Watson," as they style themselves) enough that part of me wishes Milne had written further books with them. But part of me is also glad he didn't, as I think he'd have to have gone to more and more ridiculous lengths to get them involved in mysteries where they would remain the impartial outsiders unless he went the length of having them set themselves up as rivals to Holmes and Watson. They don't quite have the feel of a Hercule Poirot or Jessica Fletcher where adventures would just fall into their laps.
The downside to the book is that Milne dispenses with "curious cast of characters" pretty quickly. Within the first few chapters the cast is pared down to Gillingham, Beverley, the "sinister valet," the cop, and the missing man at the center of the murder. The other house-guests and the house-staff are shuttled off-stage quickly, part of Milne's wish to not have too many red herrings to distract the reader. That cuts down on the mystery as well. For me, the book quickly became a case not of "whodunnit" so much as "how-and-why-dunnit."
Showing posts with label book review. Show all posts
Showing posts with label book review. Show all posts
Saturday, September 10, 2011
Review of Ghost Story (Butcher)
Book 50: GHOST STORY (The Dresden Files, Book 13) by Jim Butcher, isbn 9780451463791, 481 pages, Roc, $27.95
The Premise: (from the Goodreads.com plot description) When we last left the mighty wizard detective Harry Dresden, he wasn't doing well. In fact, he had been murdered by an unknown assassin. But being dead doesn't stop him when his friends are in danger. Except now he has no body, and no magic to help him. And there are also several dark spirits roaming the Chicago shadows who owe Harry some payback of their
own. To save his friends-and his own soul-Harry will have to pull off the ultimate trick without any magic...
My Rating: 4 stars
My Thoughts: The latest Harry Dresden book was eagerly awaited, and I tore through it in just a couple of days. I have learned this lesson when it comes to Dresden: I am incapable of savoring him. I devour. Then sometimes I can go back and take things slower. This time, for instance, I found myself able to re-listen to the book on cd (this time narrated by John Glover) just a few short weeks after reading it.
Overall, I loved the book. Without spoiling the major plot points I think it's safe to say that of course nothing is as it seems. Harry thinks he's coming back to find his murderer and save three of his friends from vaguely-worded premonitions of doom (and the kicker is, he doesn't know which three friends) but when has a Dresden plot ever been as simple as that? Not since the third or fourth book, at least. So yes, there are bigger issues, and bigger machinations, at work in the background, and Harry working through the mystery while being incorporeal is pretty much the least of his problems.
Because Harry is stuck as a ghost/shade, the book has a slightly different feel to it: Harry can't just blunder in, make a mistake, and fix it later. At least, that's what we're told repeatedly: that he can't physically affect anything so he has time to slow down and not blunder right in ... except that I counted at least 3 times where he did exactly that, once to nearly disastrous results. He may be slower about making the blunders, but he's still Harry and he still manages to make things worse before he can make them better.
But, and this is an upside to the book, because Harry is stuck as a ghost, he is also far more dependant on his supporting cast than he ever has been before, and so more of them get more screen-time than some of them have had in ages. Tertiary character Mort Lindqist gets a major step-up, Butters gets some great moments, Father Forthill plays a major role, Daniel Carpenter gets to show that he is made of the same mettle as his father ... in fact, these four move the action along far more than usual co-stars Karin Murphy, Molly Carpenter, Thomas Raith and Gentleman John Marcone. And that is a nice change of pace. Of course, Karin and Molly are not completely ignored -- a large part of the subplot of the book centers on how these two women, who both love Harry in their own way, are suffering from his death. And they get some of the most poignant, heart-wrenching moments in the book. But still, cast-wise this might be the most inclusive of any of the Dresden Files. Only a few beloved (or behated) characters go unseen/unmentioned. (I mean, seriously, where the hell are Toot-Toot and the Za Guard?)
There are some things I didn't like about the book, particularly in how often Harry repeats information he's already shared with us three times, as if we can't be expected to remember those details throughout the book. I think on this score Butcher has underestimated most of his readership. Even someone accidentally picking this book up without ever having read a Dresden book wouldn't need to be beat over the head with why Harry did what he did in CHANGES as many times as Butcher has Harry retell the story with basically the same details every time. Another quibble is the characters who do go unmentioned (in addition to Toot, we also don't see or hear anything about a couple of other people/beings one would expect Harry to be curious about as he's checking in/up on those he's left behind). But overall, these are quibbles rather than major problems, at least for this reader.
I know there are people out there also crying "foul" that this book seems to end with another cliff-hanger. At first I felt that way too, but after relistening to the book, I realized that no, it's not really a cliffhanger. We know exactly where Harry stands (or floats, as the case may be ... you didn't really think I was going to spoil the end of the book, did you?) and we have a hint as to how Butcher is going to move into the next phase of Harry's story. Butcher's always been clear that CHANGES was pretty much the halfway point, and there's still plenty of Dresden Files to be revealed. However, we're beyond the point where the books can work as stand-alones. The mythology is too dense, the core mysteries of Harry's past and present too involved, for any remaining book to be read (or written) completely without links to past and future books.
So, from me: four stars and a recommendation that if you've never read a Dresden Files book, you start at the beginning. It's worth it.
And a final question: what is it about dead wizards named Harry and train stations, anyway?
The Premise: (from the Goodreads.com plot description) When we last left the mighty wizard detective Harry Dresden, he wasn't doing well. In fact, he had been murdered by an unknown assassin. But being dead doesn't stop him when his friends are in danger. Except now he has no body, and no magic to help him. And there are also several dark spirits roaming the Chicago shadows who owe Harry some payback of their
own. To save his friends-and his own soul-Harry will have to pull off the ultimate trick without any magic...
My Rating: 4 stars
My Thoughts: The latest Harry Dresden book was eagerly awaited, and I tore through it in just a couple of days. I have learned this lesson when it comes to Dresden: I am incapable of savoring him. I devour. Then sometimes I can go back and take things slower. This time, for instance, I found myself able to re-listen to the book on cd (this time narrated by John Glover) just a few short weeks after reading it.
Overall, I loved the book. Without spoiling the major plot points I think it's safe to say that of course nothing is as it seems. Harry thinks he's coming back to find his murderer and save three of his friends from vaguely-worded premonitions of doom (and the kicker is, he doesn't know which three friends) but when has a Dresden plot ever been as simple as that? Not since the third or fourth book, at least. So yes, there are bigger issues, and bigger machinations, at work in the background, and Harry working through the mystery while being incorporeal is pretty much the least of his problems.
Because Harry is stuck as a ghost/shade, the book has a slightly different feel to it: Harry can't just blunder in, make a mistake, and fix it later. At least, that's what we're told repeatedly: that he can't physically affect anything so he has time to slow down and not blunder right in ... except that I counted at least 3 times where he did exactly that, once to nearly disastrous results. He may be slower about making the blunders, but he's still Harry and he still manages to make things worse before he can make them better.
But, and this is an upside to the book, because Harry is stuck as a ghost, he is also far more dependant on his supporting cast than he ever has been before, and so more of them get more screen-time than some of them have had in ages. Tertiary character Mort Lindqist gets a major step-up, Butters gets some great moments, Father Forthill plays a major role, Daniel Carpenter gets to show that he is made of the same mettle as his father ... in fact, these four move the action along far more than usual co-stars Karin Murphy, Molly Carpenter, Thomas Raith and Gentleman John Marcone. And that is a nice change of pace. Of course, Karin and Molly are not completely ignored -- a large part of the subplot of the book centers on how these two women, who both love Harry in their own way, are suffering from his death. And they get some of the most poignant, heart-wrenching moments in the book. But still, cast-wise this might be the most inclusive of any of the Dresden Files. Only a few beloved (or behated) characters go unseen/unmentioned. (I mean, seriously, where the hell are Toot-Toot and the Za Guard?)
There are some things I didn't like about the book, particularly in how often Harry repeats information he's already shared with us three times, as if we can't be expected to remember those details throughout the book. I think on this score Butcher has underestimated most of his readership. Even someone accidentally picking this book up without ever having read a Dresden book wouldn't need to be beat over the head with why Harry did what he did in CHANGES as many times as Butcher has Harry retell the story with basically the same details every time. Another quibble is the characters who do go unmentioned (in addition to Toot, we also don't see or hear anything about a couple of other people/beings one would expect Harry to be curious about as he's checking in/up on those he's left behind). But overall, these are quibbles rather than major problems, at least for this reader.
I know there are people out there also crying "foul" that this book seems to end with another cliff-hanger. At first I felt that way too, but after relistening to the book, I realized that no, it's not really a cliffhanger. We know exactly where Harry stands (or floats, as the case may be ... you didn't really think I was going to spoil the end of the book, did you?) and we have a hint as to how Butcher is going to move into the next phase of Harry's story. Butcher's always been clear that CHANGES was pretty much the halfway point, and there's still plenty of Dresden Files to be revealed. However, we're beyond the point where the books can work as stand-alones. The mythology is too dense, the core mysteries of Harry's past and present too involved, for any remaining book to be read (or written) completely without links to past and future books.
So, from me: four stars and a recommendation that if you've never read a Dresden Files book, you start at the beginning. It's worth it.
And a final question: what is it about dead wizards named Harry and train stations, anyway?
Friday, September 9, 2011
AFTERTHOUGHTS and NAPOLEON'S WEB
Book 48: HUNT THROUGH NAPOLEON'S WEB by Gabriel Hunt and Raymond Benson, isbn 9780843962574, 320 pages, Dorchester Publishing, $14.00
The Premise: In the sixth, and possibly final, adventure of relic-hunter, and modern-day Indiana Jones, Gabriel Hunt finds himself on a quest to rescue his estranged younger sister, who has been kidnapped by a secret society intent on returning the ancient Egyptian treasures stolen by Napoleon and his men centuries ago. Of course, things are not quite as they seem, and there's the possibility Napoleon had secreted away another Rosetta Stone. Will Gabriel rescue his sister and find an artifact that might already have changed the course of history once?
My Rating: 4 stars
My Thoughts: If this really is the last hurrah for Gabriel Hunt, he goes out in fine form thanks to Raymond Benson. As with the preceding five Hunt books, HUNT THROUGH NAPOLEON'S WEB starts out in a rush (Gabriel and a cohort in the midst of a spelunking accident) and gets faster from there. Oh, there are a few quiet moments mid-book, but like the best pulpy thrillers (both old and new)the quiet doesn't last long.
Benson's story balances the "hunting for clues" and "high adrenaline adventure" aspects pretty well, driving home the point I've made with each book: that Gabriel Hunt really is a modern Indiana Jones, albeit one with a more familial support system than Indy had in the original three movies. Of course Gabriel gets a woman, no surprise there. The least suspenseful part of the book is the "how will they end up in bed" question -- it's become such a predictable part of the books that I don't even worry my little head about it beforehand, unless there's more than one potential bedmate in the book (and in this case, there's not). Benson also provides we faithful readers of the series with a moment we've been waiting for through several books now, and it is a satisfying one.
On the downside, if this is the last Hunt book, there's at least one series-long mystery that has not been resolved and that left me a little frustrated. The background mystery of what happened to the Hunt parents when they disappeared from that cruise ship a decade ago is an intriguing one, but it's also one I'd hate to see go unresolved forever. Hopefully, publisher Charles Ardai can convince someone to bring out at least one more Gabriel Hunt book. And if Raymond Benson writes it, I'm okay with that too. (Benson, or Christa Faust, or Ardai himself -- they've provided I think my three favorite installments of the six, not that I've been disappointed in any of them.)
Book 49: AFTERTHOUGHTS by Lawrence Block, isbn 9780843962574, 320 pages, Dorchester Publishing, $14.00
The Premise: A lot of Lawrence Block's early work has been reissued recently in e-book format, and Block has written new afterwords (and in some cases forewords) to explain a bit about how the books were written. All of those pieces are collected in AFTERTHOUGHTS.
My Rating: 5 stars
My Thoughts: Every time in the past month that I told people I was reading a book collecting Lawrence Block's afterwords (and some introductions) from various ebooks, I got the same response: a somewhat quizzical raising of the eyebrows and a vague "oohhh" sound that indicated I had perhaps lost my mind, because how interesting could a bunch of afterwords be, anyway?
Very interesting is the answer.
Block is a master storyteller not matter what form or format he's working in. These essays (and that's what they are) are the next best thing to a full-on memoir. In them, he relates how each book he discusses came to be written but he also manages to tell the highlights of his life story and of course share some anecdotes about his writer friends.
What makes the book interesting is that each afterword was originally written and published separately. And so what we get when we take them as a whole is various angles on the same set of life experiences. In some hands, that could just feel repetitive. But Block doesn't tell the story the same way twice even as he manages to keep all the details consistent. By the sixth or seventh (I didn't bother actually counting) retelling of his time working the slush pile for the Scott Meredith Agency, I felt like I was hanging at the bar with an old friend listening to a story I knew the ending to but couldn't wait to hear anyway.
If you want a glimpse into what the "paperback originals" market was like for writers in the 60s and 70s, as well as a look at why someone would choose to write under multiple pseudonyms long past the time where he'd need to, read AFTERTHOUGHTS. If you want an overview of a writing life, read AFTERTHOUGHTS. If you want to get to know Lawrence Block better, but despair of ever meeting him in person, read AFTERTHOUGHTS. If you want to laugh while you glean some advice on writing, read AFTERTHOUGHTS.
Well, what are you waiting for? Go read AFTERTHOUGHTS already!
The Premise: In the sixth, and possibly final, adventure of relic-hunter, and modern-day Indiana Jones, Gabriel Hunt finds himself on a quest to rescue his estranged younger sister, who has been kidnapped by a secret society intent on returning the ancient Egyptian treasures stolen by Napoleon and his men centuries ago. Of course, things are not quite as they seem, and there's the possibility Napoleon had secreted away another Rosetta Stone. Will Gabriel rescue his sister and find an artifact that might already have changed the course of history once?
My Rating: 4 stars
My Thoughts: If this really is the last hurrah for Gabriel Hunt, he goes out in fine form thanks to Raymond Benson. As with the preceding five Hunt books, HUNT THROUGH NAPOLEON'S WEB starts out in a rush (Gabriel and a cohort in the midst of a spelunking accident) and gets faster from there. Oh, there are a few quiet moments mid-book, but like the best pulpy thrillers (both old and new)the quiet doesn't last long.
Benson's story balances the "hunting for clues" and "high adrenaline adventure" aspects pretty well, driving home the point I've made with each book: that Gabriel Hunt really is a modern Indiana Jones, albeit one with a more familial support system than Indy had in the original three movies. Of course Gabriel gets a woman, no surprise there. The least suspenseful part of the book is the "how will they end up in bed" question -- it's become such a predictable part of the books that I don't even worry my little head about it beforehand, unless there's more than one potential bedmate in the book (and in this case, there's not). Benson also provides we faithful readers of the series with a moment we've been waiting for through several books now, and it is a satisfying one.
On the downside, if this is the last Hunt book, there's at least one series-long mystery that has not been resolved and that left me a little frustrated. The background mystery of what happened to the Hunt parents when they disappeared from that cruise ship a decade ago is an intriguing one, but it's also one I'd hate to see go unresolved forever. Hopefully, publisher Charles Ardai can convince someone to bring out at least one more Gabriel Hunt book. And if Raymond Benson writes it, I'm okay with that too. (Benson, or Christa Faust, or Ardai himself -- they've provided I think my three favorite installments of the six, not that I've been disappointed in any of them.)
Book 49: AFTERTHOUGHTS by Lawrence Block, isbn 9780843962574, 320 pages, Dorchester Publishing, $14.00
The Premise: A lot of Lawrence Block's early work has been reissued recently in e-book format, and Block has written new afterwords (and in some cases forewords) to explain a bit about how the books were written. All of those pieces are collected in AFTERTHOUGHTS.
My Rating: 5 stars
My Thoughts: Every time in the past month that I told people I was reading a book collecting Lawrence Block's afterwords (and some introductions) from various ebooks, I got the same response: a somewhat quizzical raising of the eyebrows and a vague "oohhh" sound that indicated I had perhaps lost my mind, because how interesting could a bunch of afterwords be, anyway?
Very interesting is the answer.
Block is a master storyteller not matter what form or format he's working in. These essays (and that's what they are) are the next best thing to a full-on memoir. In them, he relates how each book he discusses came to be written but he also manages to tell the highlights of his life story and of course share some anecdotes about his writer friends.
What makes the book interesting is that each afterword was originally written and published separately. And so what we get when we take them as a whole is various angles on the same set of life experiences. In some hands, that could just feel repetitive. But Block doesn't tell the story the same way twice even as he manages to keep all the details consistent. By the sixth or seventh (I didn't bother actually counting) retelling of his time working the slush pile for the Scott Meredith Agency, I felt like I was hanging at the bar with an old friend listening to a story I knew the ending to but couldn't wait to hear anyway.
If you want a glimpse into what the "paperback originals" market was like for writers in the 60s and 70s, as well as a look at why someone would choose to write under multiple pseudonyms long past the time where he'd need to, read AFTERTHOUGHTS. If you want an overview of a writing life, read AFTERTHOUGHTS. If you want to get to know Lawrence Block better, but despair of ever meeting him in person, read AFTERTHOUGHTS. If you want to laugh while you glean some advice on writing, read AFTERTHOUGHTS.
Well, what are you waiting for? Go read AFTERTHOUGHTS already!
Tuesday, August 16, 2011
Review of The Last of Kal
Book 42: The Last of Kal (The Battles of Liolia, Book One) by Will Mathison, isbn 9780615451268, 229 pages, WBM Publishing, $9.00
The Premise: (from the back cover) "Speilton is all alone after his village is destroyed. Left with nothing but a small blue egg and instructions to go north into unknown lands, he begins a journey that changes his life forever. Along the way he meets challenges, finds new friends, and realizes he had more strength and courage than he could have ever imagined. All proceeds from the sale of this book will be donated to Relay For Life." (RFL is the American Cancer Society fundraising arm.)
My Rating: 3.5 stars
My Thoughts: Okay, let's get this out of the way: Yes, Will Mathison was in fifth grade when he wrote and illustrated THE LAST OF KAL. Yes, his parents put up the money to self-publish the book because Will wanted to use it to raise money for the American Cancer Society Relay For Life event in his suburb of Atlanta. No, those are not good enough reasons for you to ignore the book. Because honestly: if Will Mathison is this good at plotting, if he has this kind of recognition of the genre tropes of high fantasy, if his sentence structure and narrative sense are this strong, at the age of eleven ... man, I can't wait to see what he can do when he's twenty-one.
The book is not perfect. There are times when you read a sentence and think "oh, yes, obviously the work of a fifth-grader." Mathison occasionally allows his "writer's voice" to interrupt the narrative, because he's so excited to make sure you know what happens next isn't what you might expect to happen. He struggles a bit with keeping a consistent point of view -- most of the book is from Speilton's POV and then there are chapters that show events going on outside of Speilton's range of knowledge. Those are fine, but every now and then there's a POV shift mid-chapter. These are all small qualms, and easily fixed in the hands of a professional editor. Definitely not enough to detract from the overall enjoyment of the book.
Mathison has obviously read and/or watched, a lot of high fantasy. He hits all the tropes: orphaned child hero, mystical pet, gruff but likable mentor figure, mysterious mission, dark-clad enemies, a prophecy to be fulfilled. He keeps the action moving along, and gives us a chance to get a sense of the entire world these characters are operating in along with Speilton, who has never left his island-village. And, of course, he sets up future books while capably provided closure to this first story of Speilton Lone.
There's also something a bit cute and fun in deciphering Mathison's character and creature names. Most (but not all, the title character being a notable exception) names draw from real words. I won't spoil the fun of figuring out Mathison's method of coming up with names. You'll figure it out quick enough.
I'm definitely recommending THE LAST OF KAL to people. It's a fun book, and the proceeds go to a cause close to my heart. I'm looking forward to Will's next book (which I hear is closing on on 500 pages -- yeah, he's got that part of the high fantasy series tropes down as well: the second book is always longer!) to see how he grows as an author.
The Premise: (from the back cover) "Speilton is all alone after his village is destroyed. Left with nothing but a small blue egg and instructions to go north into unknown lands, he begins a journey that changes his life forever. Along the way he meets challenges, finds new friends, and realizes he had more strength and courage than he could have ever imagined. All proceeds from the sale of this book will be donated to Relay For Life." (RFL is the American Cancer Society fundraising arm.)
My Rating: 3.5 stars
My Thoughts: Okay, let's get this out of the way: Yes, Will Mathison was in fifth grade when he wrote and illustrated THE LAST OF KAL. Yes, his parents put up the money to self-publish the book because Will wanted to use it to raise money for the American Cancer Society Relay For Life event in his suburb of Atlanta. No, those are not good enough reasons for you to ignore the book. Because honestly: if Will Mathison is this good at plotting, if he has this kind of recognition of the genre tropes of high fantasy, if his sentence structure and narrative sense are this strong, at the age of eleven ... man, I can't wait to see what he can do when he's twenty-one.
The book is not perfect. There are times when you read a sentence and think "oh, yes, obviously the work of a fifth-grader." Mathison occasionally allows his "writer's voice" to interrupt the narrative, because he's so excited to make sure you know what happens next isn't what you might expect to happen. He struggles a bit with keeping a consistent point of view -- most of the book is from Speilton's POV and then there are chapters that show events going on outside of Speilton's range of knowledge. Those are fine, but every now and then there's a POV shift mid-chapter. These are all small qualms, and easily fixed in the hands of a professional editor. Definitely not enough to detract from the overall enjoyment of the book.
Mathison has obviously read and/or watched, a lot of high fantasy. He hits all the tropes: orphaned child hero, mystical pet, gruff but likable mentor figure, mysterious mission, dark-clad enemies, a prophecy to be fulfilled. He keeps the action moving along, and gives us a chance to get a sense of the entire world these characters are operating in along with Speilton, who has never left his island-village. And, of course, he sets up future books while capably provided closure to this first story of Speilton Lone.
There's also something a bit cute and fun in deciphering Mathison's character and creature names. Most (but not all, the title character being a notable exception) names draw from real words. I won't spoil the fun of figuring out Mathison's method of coming up with names. You'll figure it out quick enough.
I'm definitely recommending THE LAST OF KAL to people. It's a fun book, and the proceeds go to a cause close to my heart. I'm looking forward to Will's next book (which I hear is closing on on 500 pages -- yeah, he's got that part of the high fantasy series tropes down as well: the second book is always longer!) to see how he grows as an author.
Sunday, July 31, 2011
review of Wilde Stories 2011
Book 41: Wilde Stories 2011 edited by Steve Berman, isbn 9781590213032, 289 pages, Lethe Press, $18.00
The Premise: WILDE STORIES 2011 is the fourth installment in editor and publisher Steve Berman's annual collection of the best gay speculative fiction. This time he's drawn from a variety of anthologies and magazines to compile 14 stories with strong gay characters at the center of the action. The stories skew heavily to the fantasy and horror quadrants of the speculative fiction map; possibly there were just not that as many hard-sf stories with gay characters to choose from.
My Rating: 4 stars
My Thoughts: I was already familiar with two of the entries: Christopher Barzak's "Map of Seventeen" from its appearance in THE BEASTLY BRIDE, and with Jeremy C. Shipp's "How To Make A Clown" from his FUNGUS OF THE HEART collection. I liked both stories the first time I read them, and liked them equally as well reading them again. Barzak's tale is great YA fiction with a straight female narrator talking about her older gay brother and his new boyfriend; Shipp's story is classic bizarro fiction that makes my brain hurt in a good way.
Possibly my favorite story in the collection was Laird Barron's "Mysterium Tremendum." I described it in a tweet as "Lovecraft meets Danielewski." I'd like to expand on that a bit: Barron, in his own style, evokes the best of Lovecraft's stories -- the focus on human characters chancing upon physical manifestations of the great unknown -- but the tone and pace of the story put me almost immediately in mind of Mark Z. Danielewski's THE HOUSE OF LEAVES. That novel is not perfect, but what lingers with me years after reading it is the sense of what I can only call "claustroagoraphobia." Barron's story (and Danielewski's) makes me feel tense because spaces that shouldn't be vast and endless (say, a cave hidden in a hillside) suddenly are, and spaces that should feel wide open (hiking trails in the Pacific Northwest) feel tight and threatening. For this story alone, pick up this collection.
I also really enjoyed Nick Poniatkowski's "How To Make Friends in Seventh Grade." It's not quite hard-sf, but that's okay -- a coming-of-age drama set against an "alien invaders are watching us" backdrop, it works very well because of the authenticity of the narrator. Sandra McDonald's "Beach Blanket Spaceship" is closer to hard-sf and feels reminiscent of the scenes from 2001 where Dave is alone with HAL and he knows something is not right but can't put his finger on what.
Barbara A. Barnett's "Mortis Persona" is also moving, a tale of love cut short by death and how both the departed and the left behind deal with it. There's a tinge of horror that is highly effective, but again it's the human emotions that make the story.
I'm a fan of pulp and Victorian sleuths, so I also really enjoyed Chaz Brenchley's "Hothouse Flowers, Or the Discreet Boys of Dr. Barnabas." It is an homage to Stoker and Doyle in style but is also entirely Brenchley's own. I'd enjoy further adventures of Messrs. Furnival and Alshott investigating the outre. They'd be a fine addition to the greater Wold-Newton Universe, as well.
I'll admit I struggled with Hal Duncan's "Oneirica." There were portions of it I liked, but I think I might have missed the point in it somewhere along the line. But even this story I can't say was "bad," just that it didn't work for me as well as most of the others. Likewise Alayna Dawn Johnson's "Love Will Tear Us Apart," Peter Dube's "Blazon," and Richard Larson's "The Noise." All GOOD stories, but for me not GREAT.
Joel Lane's "All The Shadows" was moving and didn't end the way I expected (that's a compliment). Jeffrey A. Ricker's "Lifeblood" shares some ground with Alayna Dawn Johnson's tale without sharing any plot points. Richard Bowes' "Waiting For the Phone To Ring" feels like it wants to be a novel but works in the shorter form.
Overall, a book well worth picking up when it hits stands in August. Of course, as with any multi-author collection, the stories I enjoyed the most may be the ones you enjoy the least -- but don't let that stop you from checking the book out and experiencing some authors you've never read before.
The Premise: WILDE STORIES 2011 is the fourth installment in editor and publisher Steve Berman's annual collection of the best gay speculative fiction. This time he's drawn from a variety of anthologies and magazines to compile 14 stories with strong gay characters at the center of the action. The stories skew heavily to the fantasy and horror quadrants of the speculative fiction map; possibly there were just not that as many hard-sf stories with gay characters to choose from.
My Rating: 4 stars
My Thoughts: I was already familiar with two of the entries: Christopher Barzak's "Map of Seventeen" from its appearance in THE BEASTLY BRIDE, and with Jeremy C. Shipp's "How To Make A Clown" from his FUNGUS OF THE HEART collection. I liked both stories the first time I read them, and liked them equally as well reading them again. Barzak's tale is great YA fiction with a straight female narrator talking about her older gay brother and his new boyfriend; Shipp's story is classic bizarro fiction that makes my brain hurt in a good way.
Possibly my favorite story in the collection was Laird Barron's "Mysterium Tremendum." I described it in a tweet as "Lovecraft meets Danielewski." I'd like to expand on that a bit: Barron, in his own style, evokes the best of Lovecraft's stories -- the focus on human characters chancing upon physical manifestations of the great unknown -- but the tone and pace of the story put me almost immediately in mind of Mark Z. Danielewski's THE HOUSE OF LEAVES. That novel is not perfect, but what lingers with me years after reading it is the sense of what I can only call "claustroagoraphobia." Barron's story (and Danielewski's) makes me feel tense because spaces that shouldn't be vast and endless (say, a cave hidden in a hillside) suddenly are, and spaces that should feel wide open (hiking trails in the Pacific Northwest) feel tight and threatening. For this story alone, pick up this collection.
I also really enjoyed Nick Poniatkowski's "How To Make Friends in Seventh Grade." It's not quite hard-sf, but that's okay -- a coming-of-age drama set against an "alien invaders are watching us" backdrop, it works very well because of the authenticity of the narrator. Sandra McDonald's "Beach Blanket Spaceship" is closer to hard-sf and feels reminiscent of the scenes from 2001 where Dave is alone with HAL and he knows something is not right but can't put his finger on what.
Barbara A. Barnett's "Mortis Persona" is also moving, a tale of love cut short by death and how both the departed and the left behind deal with it. There's a tinge of horror that is highly effective, but again it's the human emotions that make the story.
I'm a fan of pulp and Victorian sleuths, so I also really enjoyed Chaz Brenchley's "Hothouse Flowers, Or the Discreet Boys of Dr. Barnabas." It is an homage to Stoker and Doyle in style but is also entirely Brenchley's own. I'd enjoy further adventures of Messrs. Furnival and Alshott investigating the outre. They'd be a fine addition to the greater Wold-Newton Universe, as well.
I'll admit I struggled with Hal Duncan's "Oneirica." There were portions of it I liked, but I think I might have missed the point in it somewhere along the line. But even this story I can't say was "bad," just that it didn't work for me as well as most of the others. Likewise Alayna Dawn Johnson's "Love Will Tear Us Apart," Peter Dube's "Blazon," and Richard Larson's "The Noise." All GOOD stories, but for me not GREAT.
Joel Lane's "All The Shadows" was moving and didn't end the way I expected (that's a compliment). Jeffrey A. Ricker's "Lifeblood" shares some ground with Alayna Dawn Johnson's tale without sharing any plot points. Richard Bowes' "Waiting For the Phone To Ring" feels like it wants to be a novel but works in the shorter form.
Overall, a book well worth picking up when it hits stands in August. Of course, as with any multi-author collection, the stories I enjoyed the most may be the ones you enjoy the least -- but don't let that stop you from checking the book out and experiencing some authors you've never read before.
Tuesday, July 5, 2011
Review of The Peerless Peer
Book 40: The Peerless Peer (The Further Adventures of Sherlock Holmes #13) by Philip Jose Farmer, isbn 9780859681201, 139 pages, Titan Books, $9.99
(Original 1974 paperback publication: The Adventure of the Peerless Peer by Philip Jose Farmer, 128 pages, Dell, $1.25)
The Premise: (from the back cover): "Sherlock Holmes and Watson take to the skies in quest of the nefarious Von Bork and his weapon of dread... A night sky aerial engagement with the deadly Fokker nearly claims three brilliant lives... And an historic alliance is formed, whereby Baker Street's enigmatic mystery-solver and Greystoke, the noble savage, peer of the realm and jungle lord, team up to bring down the hellish hun!" The Titan Books edition also included an afterword on the "Wold-Newton" concept by Win Scott Eckert, and a preview of Kim Newman's Moriarty: The Hound of the D'Ubervilles.
My Rating: 4stars
My Thoughts: From the beginning of Titan Books' series of reissues of classic Holmes pastiches and crossovers, I'd been wondering if they would manage to secure the rights to finally reprint Farmer's 1974 classic teaming Holmes and Tarzan. Granted, the original story penned by Farmer is relatively slim at 128 pages. As compared to most of Titans' reissues it's more novella than novel. Still, it's good to see the story back in print in a widely-available format that doesn't require fans to scour used bookstores or pick up pricier limited edition anthologies from specialty presses.
For fans of Farmer and his "Wold Newton" concept, this book is pure gold. Any Wold-Newton-connected story, whether by Farmer or Win Eckert or anyone else, is a treasure-hunt: how many casual references to other fictional characters can you find? As expected from the man who built the original Wold-Newton Family Tree, Farmer drops plenty of names in these pages. He also carefully closes the connection between Holmes and Greystoke that he first outlined in his Tarzan Alive: that Holmes' "Adventure of the Priory School" involves the Greystokes, with Watson changing the family's name to Holdernesse in the published version to protect the family name and prevent public scandal.
For fans of fast-moving pulp fiction, the book is pure gold as well. Even when the main characters are completely at rest (for instance, during long hours of air travel), the book still zips along. There are no long drawn-out descriptive passages (except, curiously, when Watson is describing the aircraft they are riding in). Holmes' mission is to stop Von Bork; the encounter with Tarzan only helps move that mission along. There aren't any secondary stories or side-trips; the longest lull in the action is the short breather towards the end where the Holmes-Tarzan connection is spelled out by the Great Detective.
As far as the "extras" in this edition go: Win Scott Eckert is perhaps THE torch-bearer for the Wold-Newton concept now that Farmer has passed away; along with folks like Christopher Paul Carey, Eckert has been completing unfinished Farmer novels and writing stories that fill in "missing pieces" of the Wold-Newton family tree. Eckert's essay "puts the pieces together" for those who are not as well-versed in the published careers of Tarzan and Holmes, explaining most of Farmer's off-hand references to other characters and clarifying things like "the succession of ducal titles" that is so important to the Greystoke/"Holdernesse" line of succession. Eckert also explains the connection between PEER and "The Adventure of the Three Madmen," and nods to Dennis E. Powers' great essay reconciling the two stories. For anyone interested in knowing more about Wold-Newton scholarship, Eckert's Afterword to PEER is a great place to start.
My only regret is that Titan didn't include "Three Madmen" in this volume. Rounding out the book with Farmer's alternate take on the story, and Powers' essay, would really have made it a complete package.
So there you have it: a rollickin' good adventure that doesn't take very long to read, and a great essay to follow it up? What's not to love?
(Original 1974 paperback publication: The Adventure of the Peerless Peer by Philip Jose Farmer, 128 pages, Dell, $1.25)
The Premise: (from the back cover): "Sherlock Holmes and Watson take to the skies in quest of the nefarious Von Bork and his weapon of dread... A night sky aerial engagement with the deadly Fokker nearly claims three brilliant lives... And an historic alliance is formed, whereby Baker Street's enigmatic mystery-solver and Greystoke, the noble savage, peer of the realm and jungle lord, team up to bring down the hellish hun!" The Titan Books edition also included an afterword on the "Wold-Newton" concept by Win Scott Eckert, and a preview of Kim Newman's Moriarty: The Hound of the D'Ubervilles.
My Rating: 4stars
My Thoughts: From the beginning of Titan Books' series of reissues of classic Holmes pastiches and crossovers, I'd been wondering if they would manage to secure the rights to finally reprint Farmer's 1974 classic teaming Holmes and Tarzan. Granted, the original story penned by Farmer is relatively slim at 128 pages. As compared to most of Titans' reissues it's more novella than novel. Still, it's good to see the story back in print in a widely-available format that doesn't require fans to scour used bookstores or pick up pricier limited edition anthologies from specialty presses.
For fans of Farmer and his "Wold Newton" concept, this book is pure gold. Any Wold-Newton-connected story, whether by Farmer or Win Eckert or anyone else, is a treasure-hunt: how many casual references to other fictional characters can you find? As expected from the man who built the original Wold-Newton Family Tree, Farmer drops plenty of names in these pages. He also carefully closes the connection between Holmes and Greystoke that he first outlined in his Tarzan Alive: that Holmes' "Adventure of the Priory School" involves the Greystokes, with Watson changing the family's name to Holdernesse in the published version to protect the family name and prevent public scandal.
For fans of fast-moving pulp fiction, the book is pure gold as well. Even when the main characters are completely at rest (for instance, during long hours of air travel), the book still zips along. There are no long drawn-out descriptive passages (except, curiously, when Watson is describing the aircraft they are riding in). Holmes' mission is to stop Von Bork; the encounter with Tarzan only helps move that mission along. There aren't any secondary stories or side-trips; the longest lull in the action is the short breather towards the end where the Holmes-Tarzan connection is spelled out by the Great Detective.
As far as the "extras" in this edition go: Win Scott Eckert is perhaps THE torch-bearer for the Wold-Newton concept now that Farmer has passed away; along with folks like Christopher Paul Carey, Eckert has been completing unfinished Farmer novels and writing stories that fill in "missing pieces" of the Wold-Newton family tree. Eckert's essay "puts the pieces together" for those who are not as well-versed in the published careers of Tarzan and Holmes, explaining most of Farmer's off-hand references to other characters and clarifying things like "the succession of ducal titles" that is so important to the Greystoke/"Holdernesse" line of succession. Eckert also explains the connection between PEER and "The Adventure of the Three Madmen," and nods to Dennis E. Powers' great essay reconciling the two stories. For anyone interested in knowing more about Wold-Newton scholarship, Eckert's Afterword to PEER is a great place to start.
My only regret is that Titan didn't include "Three Madmen" in this volume. Rounding out the book with Farmer's alternate take on the story, and Powers' essay, would really have made it a complete package.
So there you have it: a rollickin' good adventure that doesn't take very long to read, and a great essay to follow it up? What's not to love?
Review of The Lincoln Lawyer
Book 39: The Lincoln Lawyer by Michael Connelly, isbn 9780446616451, 516 pages, Grand Central Publishing, $7.99
The Premise: (from the back cover) "For defense lawyer Mickey Haller, the clock is always running. With two ex-wives, four Lincoln Town Cars that he uses as offices, and dozens of guilty clients, he can't afford to miss a trick. When he gets picked by a Beverly Hills rich boy arrested for assault, Mickey sees a franchise case: a nice, long, expensive trial with maximum billable hours -- until it hurtles him into the last place he wants to be. Suddenly hustling, cynical Mickey Haller is confronted with pure evil and someone may be truly innocent. Now, for a lawyer who has always gone for the easy score, getting justice means taking the deadliest risk of all."
My Rating: 4 stars
My Thoughts: I actually enjoyed this more than I thought I would. It was the June pick for our office book club, and I honestly didn't know what I'd make of it. I like detective and crime fiction, but courtroom dramas are not usually my thing. Still, I found myself pulled into the plot fairly quickly, and the courtroom scenes, when they did come in the second half of the book, were not nearly as tedious as I'd expected. Connelly keeps the action moving at a fair clip and doesn't let long lawyer-speech drag the action down. In fact, he goes out of his way to mock long, rambling speeches in front of the jury, which made me smile.
Character-wise, Mickey Haller is saddled with more than enough personal foibles. He's got two ex-wives both of whom are connected to his professional life, a young child he doesn't see often enough, and a mortgage he can barely meet. Most of his clients are guilty of what they've been accused of and it's Mickey's job to get them off on technicalities; most of the cops he encounters openly dislike or out-and-out hate him because he is the epitome of a slimy defense lawyer. And yet, there's also something endearing about Mickey -- as much as I wanted to dislike him, I just can't. Almost from the beginning of the book, you can tell there's a bit of a "heart of gold" underneath all that lawyerly slime. And it perhaps helps that most of the prosecution attorneys he meets are just as slimy as the cops think Mickey is; he definitely comes across as the lesser of two evils. He's also got daddy-issues that are not deeply explored in this book but are mentioned enough times that you know it's a character point Connelly intends to explore further in later books.
Plot-wise, Connelly paces the story out very well. Again, what could have been a drawback (long speeches in court) Connelly plays to his main character's advantage, at once utlilizing the conventions of the genre and tweaking his nose at them. It's the fast pace that makes even the most predictable twists in the plot (and there are one or two moments that you can see coming a mile away, although the big final twist did take me by surprise) palatable. The feel of the book is very cinematic -- fast cuts, no scenes that are there just for padding. Even the most trivial of scenes ties into the whole somehow; nothing is there "just for character development" or "just in case this becomes a book series." Every character mentioned has a role to play towards the greater plot, too. Some, granted, are peripheral but none are extraneous. All of this helps sweep the reader along.
The only thing that really pulled me out of the story was the stylized manner of speech for Mickey and most of the main characters. I'm hard-pressed to find anyone in the book who speaks in contractions, and that sort of stylization in a story set in modern times always feels forced to me. I can accept it easier from the young female lead of True Grit than I can from a lawyer in a contemporary courtroom thriller. It's a personal thing, to be sure. I've been informed by a friend who knows a lot of defense lawyers that most defense lawyers speak without contractions whether they're in court or not-- precision of language very quickly becomes ingrained, is the way my friend worded it. As true to life as that may be, it still felt a bit jarring the times I noticed it. But that's really my only complaint. The book is overall a fun read. I'm not sure I'll be running out to read the rest of the Mickey Haller books, but again, that's largely because I'm not a usual reader of courtroom thrillers.
The Premise: (from the back cover) "For defense lawyer Mickey Haller, the clock is always running. With two ex-wives, four Lincoln Town Cars that he uses as offices, and dozens of guilty clients, he can't afford to miss a trick. When he gets picked by a Beverly Hills rich boy arrested for assault, Mickey sees a franchise case: a nice, long, expensive trial with maximum billable hours -- until it hurtles him into the last place he wants to be. Suddenly hustling, cynical Mickey Haller is confronted with pure evil and someone may be truly innocent. Now, for a lawyer who has always gone for the easy score, getting justice means taking the deadliest risk of all."
My Rating: 4 stars
My Thoughts: I actually enjoyed this more than I thought I would. It was the June pick for our office book club, and I honestly didn't know what I'd make of it. I like detective and crime fiction, but courtroom dramas are not usually my thing. Still, I found myself pulled into the plot fairly quickly, and the courtroom scenes, when they did come in the second half of the book, were not nearly as tedious as I'd expected. Connelly keeps the action moving at a fair clip and doesn't let long lawyer-speech drag the action down. In fact, he goes out of his way to mock long, rambling speeches in front of the jury, which made me smile.
Character-wise, Mickey Haller is saddled with more than enough personal foibles. He's got two ex-wives both of whom are connected to his professional life, a young child he doesn't see often enough, and a mortgage he can barely meet. Most of his clients are guilty of what they've been accused of and it's Mickey's job to get them off on technicalities; most of the cops he encounters openly dislike or out-and-out hate him because he is the epitome of a slimy defense lawyer. And yet, there's also something endearing about Mickey -- as much as I wanted to dislike him, I just can't. Almost from the beginning of the book, you can tell there's a bit of a "heart of gold" underneath all that lawyerly slime. And it perhaps helps that most of the prosecution attorneys he meets are just as slimy as the cops think Mickey is; he definitely comes across as the lesser of two evils. He's also got daddy-issues that are not deeply explored in this book but are mentioned enough times that you know it's a character point Connelly intends to explore further in later books.
Plot-wise, Connelly paces the story out very well. Again, what could have been a drawback (long speeches in court) Connelly plays to his main character's advantage, at once utlilizing the conventions of the genre and tweaking his nose at them. It's the fast pace that makes even the most predictable twists in the plot (and there are one or two moments that you can see coming a mile away, although the big final twist did take me by surprise) palatable. The feel of the book is very cinematic -- fast cuts, no scenes that are there just for padding. Even the most trivial of scenes ties into the whole somehow; nothing is there "just for character development" or "just in case this becomes a book series." Every character mentioned has a role to play towards the greater plot, too. Some, granted, are peripheral but none are extraneous. All of this helps sweep the reader along.
The only thing that really pulled me out of the story was the stylized manner of speech for Mickey and most of the main characters. I'm hard-pressed to find anyone in the book who speaks in contractions, and that sort of stylization in a story set in modern times always feels forced to me. I can accept it easier from the young female lead of True Grit than I can from a lawyer in a contemporary courtroom thriller. It's a personal thing, to be sure. I've been informed by a friend who knows a lot of defense lawyers that most defense lawyers speak without contractions whether they're in court or not-- precision of language very quickly becomes ingrained, is the way my friend worded it. As true to life as that may be, it still felt a bit jarring the times I noticed it. But that's really my only complaint. The book is overall a fun read. I'm not sure I'll be running out to read the rest of the Mickey Haller books, but again, that's largely because I'm not a usual reader of courtroom thrillers.
Tuesday, June 28, 2011
Review of Deadline
Book 38: Deadline (The Newsflesh Trilogy, Book Two) by Mira Grant, isbn 9780316081061, 608 pages, Orbit, $9.99
The Premise: (from the back cover): "Shaun Mason is a man without a mission. Not even running the news organization he built with his sister has the same urgency as it used to. Playing with dead things just doesn't seem as much fun when you've lost as much as he has. But when a CDC researcher fakes her own death and appears on his doorstep with a ravenous pack of zombies in tow, Shaun has a newfound interest in life. Because she brings news -- he may have put down the monster who attacked them, but the conspiracy is far from dead. Now, Shaun hits the road again to find what truth can be found at the end of a shotgun."
My Rating: 4 stars
My Thoughts: At the end of my review of FEED, I said, "I can also say (and I doubt anyone would be surprised) that FEED is the first of a trilogy. I'm not sure how quickly I'll rush out to pick up book two, DEADLINE. I think FEED stands well enough on its own that I don't necessarily feel the need to see the story continued; I guess my decision will rest solely on how much I miss the surviving members of Team Mason by the time the new book hits the stands."
Obviously, I missed the surviving members of Team Mason far more than I thought I did. I bought DEADLINE the moment I saw it on the shelf. It took me another week or two to get around to reading it, and it's been over a week since I finished reading it, but I don't regret snapping it up as soon as I saw it.
Any complaints I had about the first book, in terms of characterization or the same-ness of the different characters' blog entries, are pretty much gone in this book. The pacing is excellent. The new characters (or the old supporting characters with increased importance and screen-time) fill out the cast nicely in the wake of the main characters lost in FEED. Becks, Mahir, Alaric, Kelly -- all add more depth to a story told entirely through the lens of Shaun Mason's slowly increasing insanity.
Yes, Shaun is going insane thanks to what happened in FEED. No doubt about it. The other characters know it, and any reader who writes it off as hyperbole or as some clever trick of the author -- no, sorry. He's nuts. He knows he's nuts. He's functioning (barely, some days) but he's nuts. Actually, I take that back -- there is a clever trick on the author's part. The trick is in making us understand that Shaun is almost certifiable and yet still making us believe he can solve whatever problems the team is faced with as he tries to dig deeper into the conspiracy that has effectively ruined his life and is quite possibly going to ruin the world.
I described FEED as a "zombie political thriller ala ALL THE PRESIDENT'S MEN." I've been describing FEED to people as a "zombie medical thriller ala Robin Cook's books." Once again, while the zombies are the every-day problem the characters need to deal with, it's the medical conspiracy Kelly brings to the team's attention that is the main focus of the book (just as the political campaign intrigue was the focus of FEED). And I think this is why I'm enjoying Mira Grant's books far more than any other print zombie story I've ever read -- because the zombies are there, but the focus is on a bigger story than just "let's try to survive while undead creatures try to eat us."
Once again, I find I can't say too much about what really makes the book work for me without spoiling major events. So it'll have to suffice, I suppose, if I say that the events at the close of FEED provide the major momentum for the events of DEADLINE, and the last 20 pages of DEADLINE will provide the momentum of the final book in the trilogy, BLACKOUT. And this time, there's no doubt in my mind: I will be picking BLACKOUT up the week it hits the stands, and probably reading it that quick. I need to see how this whole thing wraps up.
The Premise: (from the back cover): "Shaun Mason is a man without a mission. Not even running the news organization he built with his sister has the same urgency as it used to. Playing with dead things just doesn't seem as much fun when you've lost as much as he has. But when a CDC researcher fakes her own death and appears on his doorstep with a ravenous pack of zombies in tow, Shaun has a newfound interest in life. Because she brings news -- he may have put down the monster who attacked them, but the conspiracy is far from dead. Now, Shaun hits the road again to find what truth can be found at the end of a shotgun."
My Rating: 4 stars
My Thoughts: At the end of my review of FEED, I said, "I can also say (and I doubt anyone would be surprised) that FEED is the first of a trilogy. I'm not sure how quickly I'll rush out to pick up book two, DEADLINE. I think FEED stands well enough on its own that I don't necessarily feel the need to see the story continued; I guess my decision will rest solely on how much I miss the surviving members of Team Mason by the time the new book hits the stands."
Obviously, I missed the surviving members of Team Mason far more than I thought I did. I bought DEADLINE the moment I saw it on the shelf. It took me another week or two to get around to reading it, and it's been over a week since I finished reading it, but I don't regret snapping it up as soon as I saw it.
Any complaints I had about the first book, in terms of characterization or the same-ness of the different characters' blog entries, are pretty much gone in this book. The pacing is excellent. The new characters (or the old supporting characters with increased importance and screen-time) fill out the cast nicely in the wake of the main characters lost in FEED. Becks, Mahir, Alaric, Kelly -- all add more depth to a story told entirely through the lens of Shaun Mason's slowly increasing insanity.
Yes, Shaun is going insane thanks to what happened in FEED. No doubt about it. The other characters know it, and any reader who writes it off as hyperbole or as some clever trick of the author -- no, sorry. He's nuts. He knows he's nuts. He's functioning (barely, some days) but he's nuts. Actually, I take that back -- there is a clever trick on the author's part. The trick is in making us understand that Shaun is almost certifiable and yet still making us believe he can solve whatever problems the team is faced with as he tries to dig deeper into the conspiracy that has effectively ruined his life and is quite possibly going to ruin the world.
I described FEED as a "zombie political thriller ala ALL THE PRESIDENT'S MEN." I've been describing FEED to people as a "zombie medical thriller ala Robin Cook's books." Once again, while the zombies are the every-day problem the characters need to deal with, it's the medical conspiracy Kelly brings to the team's attention that is the main focus of the book (just as the political campaign intrigue was the focus of FEED). And I think this is why I'm enjoying Mira Grant's books far more than any other print zombie story I've ever read -- because the zombies are there, but the focus is on a bigger story than just "let's try to survive while undead creatures try to eat us."
Once again, I find I can't say too much about what really makes the book work for me without spoiling major events. So it'll have to suffice, I suppose, if I say that the events at the close of FEED provide the major momentum for the events of DEADLINE, and the last 20 pages of DEADLINE will provide the momentum of the final book in the trilogy, BLACKOUT. And this time, there's no doubt in my mind: I will be picking BLACKOUT up the week it hits the stands, and probably reading it that quick. I need to see how this whole thing wraps up.
Friday, June 24, 2011
Review of Challengers of the Unknown
Book 37: Challengers of the Unknown by Ron Goulart, isbn 9780440113377, 155 pages, Dell, $1.50 (1977 cover price)
The Premise: (from the back cover) Deep in the South American jungle, a real and sinister menace lurks in the shadows of the supernatural... In a remote lake, a legendary monster, incredibly vicious, surfaces after a sleep of centuries. Acting to protect its oil stake, the U.S. Government calls in... The Challengers! Men with young faces and old memories move mysteriously in the area, speak in low tones about the capital city. The country's president alerts... The Challengers! A dying man names a desert fort, many miles away... bizarre mechanisms keep the curious away... Unseen enemies... Strange accidents... Strong-arm assailants... A hair-raising test of the celebrated ingenuity of the Challengers of the Unknown."
My Rating: 3 stars
My Thoughts: Anyone who knows me knows I have a soft spot for pulp adventure, and just about any pulp adventure I read is going to end up with around 3 stars: they're not always great literature, but rarely are they disappointing either.
Anyone who knows me knows I also have a soft spot for secondary (and tertiary) DC comics characters like the Challengers of the Unknown. I loved collecting the out-of-print original run of comics from the 60s, I loved the revival in the late 70s. I remember reading this novel (the only one written featuring the Challs) back in high school. I lost that copy, but found another not long ago in a Half-Price Books somewhere (probably Pittsburgh, but might have been Dallas).
Sadly, I cannot say it was as good as my teenage self thought it was. But it was still a rollickin' good pulp adventure.
What I didn't like about the book can be summed up with two words: Characterization. Dialogue. Aside from Ace Morgan and Red Ryan, the Challs feel "off" somehow. Prof. Haley in this version is a rabid womanizer, sort of a brainiac young Hugh Hefner. Rocky Davis is a wrestler rather than a boxer (I seem to recall in the comics he was ret-conned to have been trained by the great Ted Grant), a health-food nut (that I can accept). June Robbins comes across far ditzier than she should (and if it's meant to be an act for her reporter cover story, that's never stated in the book). And the dialogue -- I'm not saying the Challs have to have stereotypical speech patterns that fit their roles (Ace as gruff ex-AF, Red shouting "hey rube," Prof sounding like a thesaurus, Rocky sounding addled from too many blows to the head), but they should at least sound consistent throughout the book. There were points where I was jarred out of the book because something Rocky said was written in Prof's style, etc. Ron Goulart is a good writer with a strong sense of pulp history -- I was disappointed that he seemed to drop the ball on dialogue.
Now, for what I did like: pretty much everything else. The plot is classic pulp adventure: Challs get sent to South America to deal with a supernatural menace and end up encountering a human menace that is as bad or worse. Straight-forward action segues into trippy 70s supernaturalness with just a dollop of Lovecraftian mythos. The Challs, like their peer Doc Savage, overcome sometimes ridiculous odds to beat both menaces. Extra bonus: Wold-Newton Universe fans don't have to dig very far to make connections to Farmer's works and world.
Three stars for pulpy goodness -- grab this for a light, fun read (I read it on one short plane flight). Maybe someday someone will write more Challs novels with these original five characters. If any secondary DC characters could carry a tv series (SyFy at least, preferably HBO) or movie series, it'd be the Challs.
The Premise: (from the back cover) Deep in the South American jungle, a real and sinister menace lurks in the shadows of the supernatural... In a remote lake, a legendary monster, incredibly vicious, surfaces after a sleep of centuries. Acting to protect its oil stake, the U.S. Government calls in... The Challengers! Men with young faces and old memories move mysteriously in the area, speak in low tones about the capital city. The country's president alerts... The Challengers! A dying man names a desert fort, many miles away... bizarre mechanisms keep the curious away... Unseen enemies... Strange accidents... Strong-arm assailants... A hair-raising test of the celebrated ingenuity of the Challengers of the Unknown."
My Rating: 3 stars
My Thoughts: Anyone who knows me knows I have a soft spot for pulp adventure, and just about any pulp adventure I read is going to end up with around 3 stars: they're not always great literature, but rarely are they disappointing either.
Anyone who knows me knows I also have a soft spot for secondary (and tertiary) DC comics characters like the Challengers of the Unknown. I loved collecting the out-of-print original run of comics from the 60s, I loved the revival in the late 70s. I remember reading this novel (the only one written featuring the Challs) back in high school. I lost that copy, but found another not long ago in a Half-Price Books somewhere (probably Pittsburgh, but might have been Dallas).
Sadly, I cannot say it was as good as my teenage self thought it was. But it was still a rollickin' good pulp adventure.
What I didn't like about the book can be summed up with two words: Characterization. Dialogue. Aside from Ace Morgan and Red Ryan, the Challs feel "off" somehow. Prof. Haley in this version is a rabid womanizer, sort of a brainiac young Hugh Hefner. Rocky Davis is a wrestler rather than a boxer (I seem to recall in the comics he was ret-conned to have been trained by the great Ted Grant), a health-food nut (that I can accept). June Robbins comes across far ditzier than she should (and if it's meant to be an act for her reporter cover story, that's never stated in the book). And the dialogue -- I'm not saying the Challs have to have stereotypical speech patterns that fit their roles (Ace as gruff ex-AF, Red shouting "hey rube," Prof sounding like a thesaurus, Rocky sounding addled from too many blows to the head), but they should at least sound consistent throughout the book. There were points where I was jarred out of the book because something Rocky said was written in Prof's style, etc. Ron Goulart is a good writer with a strong sense of pulp history -- I was disappointed that he seemed to drop the ball on dialogue.
Now, for what I did like: pretty much everything else. The plot is classic pulp adventure: Challs get sent to South America to deal with a supernatural menace and end up encountering a human menace that is as bad or worse. Straight-forward action segues into trippy 70s supernaturalness with just a dollop of Lovecraftian mythos. The Challs, like their peer Doc Savage, overcome sometimes ridiculous odds to beat both menaces. Extra bonus: Wold-Newton Universe fans don't have to dig very far to make connections to Farmer's works and world.
Three stars for pulpy goodness -- grab this for a light, fun read (I read it on one short plane flight). Maybe someday someone will write more Challs novels with these original five characters. If any secondary DC characters could carry a tv series (SyFy at least, preferably HBO) or movie series, it'd be the Challs.
Sunday, June 19, 2011
review of THE FALLING MACHINE
A friend described THE FALLING MACHINE to me as "part Sherlock Holmes, part Justice League of America, all Steampunk." I think he hit the nail on the head. I'm not a huge steampunk fan -- as a genre I have no problem with it, but I don't tend to be drawn to it -- but this premise intrigued me. And the author's appearance on the #sffwrtcht thread on Twitter a few weeks back helped cement my decision to read it.
It is both a fast read and a good read. I was immediately pulled into the world Mayer has obviously lovingly created. The attention to the details of 1880s New York City pays off in a number of places, from the opening sequence on the still-incomplete Brooklyn Bridge to a visit to the infamous Five Points district. Mayer, sometimes in just a sentence of two, conveys both the shining hope and dirty underbelly of "the greatest city in the world" at that period in time, name-dropping real life personalities like Thomas Alva Edison and inserting his steam-powered super-heroes fairly seamlessly into the real history. He even manages to drop a comment or two about why the existence of steam-powered super-heroes hasn't appreciably changed history ... yet.
Sarah and Tom (The Automaton) are the most full-realized characters in the book, as it should be since they are the focus. Sarah is a great central heroine -- and even better, she's not perfect. She makes mistakes, gets herself into scrapes, and needs the help of friends to get out of some of them. In other words, she's a very real person dealing with out-of-the-ordinary situations... just what I like in my fiction.
I also have to give credit to Mayer for creating a pair of secondary characters I want to know far more about. It would have been easy to let the steam-powered members of The Paragons be mostly one-note riffs on whatever their individual theme happened to be, but he's given almost all of them some deeper characteristic (almost all ... the Submersible feels like a stereotype, and Nathan/Turbine does as well) to make them stand apart. The two secondary characters I really wanted to see developed (and this being the first book of a trilogy, with a rich history to be explored, there's plenty of time) were The Professor and The Sleuth. Their relationship is at first implied, and then outright commented on, derogatorily, by their peers. Gay-bashing was just as much a part of 1880s life as it is now, if not moreso, and while many of us would like to imagine our super-heroes would be more accepting than real people are the fact that Mayer includes some queer-baiting among the team's conversations feels more realistic to me, especially considering this book takes place during Oscar Wilde's lifetime. Still, I hope we'll get to see more of The Professor and The Sleuth's history in subsequent books.
If there's any downside to this book, it is that it explicitly IS the first book in a trilogy, and it makes no apologies or concessions. If you get to within 50 pages and you're wondering, "wow, how is Mayer going to wrap all of this up," don't be surprised that he doesn't. He wraps some of it up, but the book ends with a fat old cliffhanger that has me wishing book two was already on the stands.
It is both a fast read and a good read. I was immediately pulled into the world Mayer has obviously lovingly created. The attention to the details of 1880s New York City pays off in a number of places, from the opening sequence on the still-incomplete Brooklyn Bridge to a visit to the infamous Five Points district. Mayer, sometimes in just a sentence of two, conveys both the shining hope and dirty underbelly of "the greatest city in the world" at that period in time, name-dropping real life personalities like Thomas Alva Edison and inserting his steam-powered super-heroes fairly seamlessly into the real history. He even manages to drop a comment or two about why the existence of steam-powered super-heroes hasn't appreciably changed history ... yet.
Sarah and Tom (The Automaton) are the most full-realized characters in the book, as it should be since they are the focus. Sarah is a great central heroine -- and even better, she's not perfect. She makes mistakes, gets herself into scrapes, and needs the help of friends to get out of some of them. In other words, she's a very real person dealing with out-of-the-ordinary situations... just what I like in my fiction.
I also have to give credit to Mayer for creating a pair of secondary characters I want to know far more about. It would have been easy to let the steam-powered members of The Paragons be mostly one-note riffs on whatever their individual theme happened to be, but he's given almost all of them some deeper characteristic (almost all ... the Submersible feels like a stereotype, and Nathan/Turbine does as well) to make them stand apart. The two secondary characters I really wanted to see developed (and this being the first book of a trilogy, with a rich history to be explored, there's plenty of time) were The Professor and The Sleuth. Their relationship is at first implied, and then outright commented on, derogatorily, by their peers. Gay-bashing was just as much a part of 1880s life as it is now, if not moreso, and while many of us would like to imagine our super-heroes would be more accepting than real people are the fact that Mayer includes some queer-baiting among the team's conversations feels more realistic to me, especially considering this book takes place during Oscar Wilde's lifetime. Still, I hope we'll get to see more of The Professor and The Sleuth's history in subsequent books.
If there's any downside to this book, it is that it explicitly IS the first book in a trilogy, and it makes no apologies or concessions. If you get to within 50 pages and you're wondering, "wow, how is Mayer going to wrap all of this up," don't be surprised that he doesn't. He wraps some of it up, but the book ends with a fat old cliffhanger that has me wishing book two was already on the stands.
Saturday, April 30, 2011
Review of Water For Elephants
I vacillated between 3 stars and 4 for this, but after our office book club discussion I settled on the 4. Water For Elephants is a memorable book, and I would recommend it to almost everyone. Being a fan of the science fiction and mystery genres, I wasn't as thrown off by Gruen's alternating time-periods as some would be; most of the novel is told in flashback and the jumps between times are fewer and farther between as the novel progresses. What happens during Jacob's time with Benzini Brothers is the real story here and the modern sequences are simply framing and used to heighten tension. So if the modern scenes had been cut, would the novel have been as effective? I personally think so. While the modern scenes flesh out Jacob's character and do add the secondary tension (how did he get from his life with the circus to a miserable retirement home?), I think they could just as well have been done without. Gruen creates more than enough tension in primary, secondary, and even tertiary storylines surrounding the circus. She does this not only through the four main characters (Jacob, Marlena, August and Rosie) but also by letting Jacob interact with secondary characters (like circus owner Big Al, Walter the dwarf, and Camel the roustabout) and even tertiary characters (Carl, Pete, the other animal handlers and the other animals) and letting their own problems influence Jacob's actions. Two major scenes near the end pull most of these characters together magnificently. And Gruen's descriptions of the world of the traveling circus are terrific -- she gives us all the pomp and circumstance and color we expect from a circus setting, but also brings in the miserable living conditions and dirt around the edges that the workers and animals dealt with. Her ability to mix the colorfulness of the musical BARNUM with the bleakness of the Showtime series CARNIVALE so perfectly really impressed me.
My only real complaint would be in how patly everything wraps up for Jacob after the major events of circus portion of the book -- the explanation of how he got from circus to nursing home feels a little too perfect, a little too "let's wrap everything up and have no loose ends." That might be what keeps me from giving the book an even higher score; to explain further would be to risk spoilers for those who haven't read the book (or seen the movie) and intend to.
My only real complaint would be in how patly everything wraps up for Jacob after the major events of circus portion of the book -- the explanation of how he got from circus to nursing home feels a little too perfect, a little too "let's wrap everything up and have no loose ends." That might be what keeps me from giving the book an even higher score; to explain further would be to risk spoilers for those who haven't read the book (or seen the movie) and intend to.
Friday, April 15, 2011
review of Mockingjay
I'm giving this the same rating I gave Book Two. Although Collins does a good job of incorporating the important information about the events of books one and two into the action here without resorting to "info-dump" style writing, I still don't think you can pick this book up and run with it without having read the earlier installments. That's part of the reason for the slightly lower grade than book one received. The other reason is that the things that made book one so interesting and such a fast read (the fast pace of the prose; Katniss' innocent inability to understand the actions of her peers in context of the bigger picture; Katniss' inherent inability to trust anyone) are now feeling a bit predictable and old hat, until near the end. I found myself, in this volume more than the other two, wanting to tell Katniss to get her head out of her ass and start picking up on the not-so-subtle comments of those around her. In book one, I was fine with Kat not realizing that Peeta's love for her wasn't an act; by this book I was aggravated at the things Kat took for granted and failed to connect on. (I'd say more on that score, but I don't want to spoil anything for those still intending to read the books.)
What redeems the book and keeps it from dropping to a "three" rating is most of that ending. Kudos to Collins for not delivering on my jaded expectations as to who would live and who would die. (Okay, at least one of the deaths near the end was expected; but one most surely was not, at least by this reader, and the two deaths I most expected did not happen at all.) The very very end (as in the last three pages or so) felt a bit rushed -- which is saying a lot in a series that moves as fast as this one does -- but that doesn't detract from the emotion and turns of the 50 or so pages that precede those three.
I have to say I am glad I read these books. I may have gotten aggravated with her at times, but I like Katniss. I like Peeta and Gale and Prim; I even liked Haymitch and Finnick despite the initial dislike accorded their actions when they first meet Katniss. I also have to say I understand why my friends who have kids find the series increasingly uncomfortable. It's sort of like reading Stephen King's PET SEMATARY -- you don't want these things happening to kids you actually know, and by the end of these books you feel like Katniss and Co are kids you know. You also recognize that they are for the most part older than their years.
What redeems the book and keeps it from dropping to a "three" rating is most of that ending. Kudos to Collins for not delivering on my jaded expectations as to who would live and who would die. (Okay, at least one of the deaths near the end was expected; but one most surely was not, at least by this reader, and the two deaths I most expected did not happen at all.) The very very end (as in the last three pages or so) felt a bit rushed -- which is saying a lot in a series that moves as fast as this one does -- but that doesn't detract from the emotion and turns of the 50 or so pages that precede those three.
I have to say I am glad I read these books. I may have gotten aggravated with her at times, but I like Katniss. I like Peeta and Gale and Prim; I even liked Haymitch and Finnick despite the initial dislike accorded their actions when they first meet Katniss. I also have to say I understand why my friends who have kids find the series increasingly uncomfortable. It's sort of like reading Stephen King's PET SEMATARY -- you don't want these things happening to kids you actually know, and by the end of these books you feel like Katniss and Co are kids you know. You also recognize that they are for the most part older than their years.
Review of Name of the Wind
This is another book I struggled to rate; part of me is expecting to be lambasted for giving even this low of a score, and part of me wants to drop it down to a 3. I know how much this books means to so many people (and in fact one of the friends who loves it so much read it because I pointed it out in a bookstore and said "yeah, I've heard great things about this one..."), and I wanted to like it more than I did, but ultimately I felt it was Very Good, but not Unequaled.
So what did I like or admire (not always the same thing)? I give full marks to Rothfuss for writing an epic fantasy in first person, with the Hero of Legend telling his own story not-so-many years after the fact. Kvothe, once he gets on a roll, has a voice that must be paid attention to even if you don't believe half of what he's saying. And the details of the world-building are terrific -- I really felt like I was "in" the cities with Kvothe, the workings of the world make absolute sense, there's a great internal logic to everything that is clear and yet allows room for mystery. The tactic of "here's the real story behind the story" has been used before (one of my favorite instances being Parke Godwin's FIRELORD, a novel of King Arthur narrated by Arthur, which starts with the classic phrase "who you are depends on who's telling your story.") but Rothfuss elevates it with his use of language, and what I perceive to be his willingness to allow us to dislike Kvothe.
Because honestly, when it comes down to it -- I do dislike Kvothe. And I'm sure I'm in the minority in that opinion, but hear me out. Framing sequence or not, what we get once Kvothe starts talking is a man who claims to want the truth of his story set down to contradict the legends and fabrications that have grown about him and his deeds, but who in actually is building that myth himself. There are points where the adult Kvothe says that events have been exaggerated and yet his own version of those events is structured to cast him as something larger than human and greater than those around him. Every woman he encounters eventually swoons in his presence or feels he can do no wrong; every man is either his fast-and-best friend or his sworn enemy, or not important enough to rate much more than a name (with the exception of a few of the University Masters, the only characters who seem truly ambivalent about Kvothe). Now -- disliking Kvothe does not equal dislike of the book. Like I said, Kvothe has a voice that must be listened to, once he gets moving. For me, that took close to 300 pages; proportionately that's about as much time as I give any novel to make or break.
What did I dislike? The framing sequence and interludes slowed the pace of the book down -- and in a book where it takes 700 pages to lay out the hero's childhood (and not even all of that!) and only barely touches on the legendary things he supposedly did, a slow framing sequence feels deadly. I understand the reasons it exists (Why is Kvothe telling his story, and to whom? And what are the current events that may bring him finally out of "retirement"/hiding?) but everything that happens in the present feels unimportant at this point. I'm sure by the time the Chronicle is done, those events will have taken on greater significance, but by then I'll probably have forgotten the Smith's Apprentice's name and what he did to earn Kvothe's respect. I also disliked the incredible amount of detail in Kvothe's rememberances -- again, for someone who claims to want his truth put down clearly, he spends an awful lot of time recalling details of what people were wearing and how often they sneezed (okay, that's an exageration, I don't think he ever mentions sneezing or any other bodily function -- but in retrospect it sure feels like he was that detailed in his account). There's a certain willing suspension of disbelief in first person narration -- no one can possibly remember exactly what everyone said in any given situation -- but I felt like at points Kvothe (thus, Rothfuss) took it a bit too far. Perhaps almost 800 pages x 3 books is a bit much for that suspension.
So, for me personally, the book doesn't quite live up to the hype. I'm glad I read it, and I will read THE WISE MAN'S FEAR (book two) when it comes out in paperback. The book is still good, and Kvothe's voice is still interesting to me.
So what did I like or admire (not always the same thing)? I give full marks to Rothfuss for writing an epic fantasy in first person, with the Hero of Legend telling his own story not-so-many years after the fact. Kvothe, once he gets on a roll, has a voice that must be paid attention to even if you don't believe half of what he's saying. And the details of the world-building are terrific -- I really felt like I was "in" the cities with Kvothe, the workings of the world make absolute sense, there's a great internal logic to everything that is clear and yet allows room for mystery. The tactic of "here's the real story behind the story" has been used before (one of my favorite instances being Parke Godwin's FIRELORD, a novel of King Arthur narrated by Arthur, which starts with the classic phrase "who you are depends on who's telling your story.") but Rothfuss elevates it with his use of language, and what I perceive to be his willingness to allow us to dislike Kvothe.
Because honestly, when it comes down to it -- I do dislike Kvothe. And I'm sure I'm in the minority in that opinion, but hear me out. Framing sequence or not, what we get once Kvothe starts talking is a man who claims to want the truth of his story set down to contradict the legends and fabrications that have grown about him and his deeds, but who in actually is building that myth himself. There are points where the adult Kvothe says that events have been exaggerated and yet his own version of those events is structured to cast him as something larger than human and greater than those around him. Every woman he encounters eventually swoons in his presence or feels he can do no wrong; every man is either his fast-and-best friend or his sworn enemy, or not important enough to rate much more than a name (with the exception of a few of the University Masters, the only characters who seem truly ambivalent about Kvothe). Now -- disliking Kvothe does not equal dislike of the book. Like I said, Kvothe has a voice that must be listened to, once he gets moving. For me, that took close to 300 pages; proportionately that's about as much time as I give any novel to make or break.
What did I dislike? The framing sequence and interludes slowed the pace of the book down -- and in a book where it takes 700 pages to lay out the hero's childhood (and not even all of that!) and only barely touches on the legendary things he supposedly did, a slow framing sequence feels deadly. I understand the reasons it exists (Why is Kvothe telling his story, and to whom? And what are the current events that may bring him finally out of "retirement"/hiding?) but everything that happens in the present feels unimportant at this point. I'm sure by the time the Chronicle is done, those events will have taken on greater significance, but by then I'll probably have forgotten the Smith's Apprentice's name and what he did to earn Kvothe's respect. I also disliked the incredible amount of detail in Kvothe's rememberances -- again, for someone who claims to want his truth put down clearly, he spends an awful lot of time recalling details of what people were wearing and how often they sneezed (okay, that's an exageration, I don't think he ever mentions sneezing or any other bodily function -- but in retrospect it sure feels like he was that detailed in his account). There's a certain willing suspension of disbelief in first person narration -- no one can possibly remember exactly what everyone said in any given situation -- but I felt like at points Kvothe (thus, Rothfuss) took it a bit too far. Perhaps almost 800 pages x 3 books is a bit much for that suspension.
So, for me personally, the book doesn't quite live up to the hype. I'm glad I read it, and I will read THE WISE MAN'S FEAR (book two) when it comes out in paperback. The book is still good, and Kvothe's voice is still interesting to me.
Friday, April 1, 2011
Review of Vampire Relationship Guide
I'm going to break this down into The Good and the Not-So-Good to try and keep my thoughts a bit more on track than the first draft of this review turned out.
The Good: This may be one of the funniest genre pastiches I've ever read. Vampire (and other supernatural creature) Romance is a huge market right now, and in 90 pages Evelyn Lafont manages to crack wise about almost every trope of the genre. I haven't even read that much supernatural romance (urban fantasy of the detective/crime realm is more my cup of tea) and I found myself smiling or laughing or nodding knowingly throughout the book. The main reason I enjoyed the book is that it does not take itself too seriously. The book is a fast easy read with lots of funny dialogue and wink-wink-nudge-nudge humor regarding the current obsession with sexy vampires. The author also does a nice job of taking all the standards of vampire lore and giving them the tweaks necessary to make them work in her world without straying too far from what is "canon" about vampires: they drink blood because the magic in their bodies prevents them from making new red blood cells; channels in their teeth draw the blood directly into their circulatory system; drinking blood is an act of sustenance not sexuality; anything that would cause a vamp to lose blood or that would destroy blood cells will eventually kill them (not just a stake to the heart, but any gaping bleeding wound, etc). The main character, Josie, is a bit of a rural rube in her thirties -- almost too innocent despite claims of being jaded -- that is a perfect send-up of the young-nubile-innocent heroine trope. The lead vamps, Gregory and Walker, fit the standard romantic types as well.
The Not-So-Good: Because of the length, there is not a lot of obvious world-building beyond those basics of vampirism, and what other world-building details are mentioned are inconsistent throughout the book. For instance, we are told early on that Vampires are as publicly recognized a minority as any other group you can think of and that laws have been passed declaring that businesses must stay open 24 hours a day to accommodate those who cannot go out in the sun; there's no detail on how long ago Vampires "came out," or how readily they were accepted into mainstream culture. This creates a problem for our main character: vampires are common enough that it's apparently fairly easy to find them, and yet Josie knows so little about vampire culture that she asks incredibly personal questions at the absolute most wrong moments. I realize Josie's questions are a way to get the basic info about vampires mentioned above into the reader's path, but the result is a main character who in social situations is either incredibly stupid (this stuff should be mostly common knowledge and she doesn't have that knowledge despite her vamp-obsession) or incredibly insensitive (she knows what she's asking is a bit personal, but asks anyway, almost like she has no verbal filter between her brain and her mouth). I'm leaning towards the former, because I like the idea of Josie as a play on the young-nubile-innocent heroine and if she's knowledgeable-but-insensitive I don't think I like her as much.
The Part I'm Undecided About: As the book moves from "meeting vampires for sex" to "our heroine is in danger, who will save her" tropes, the plot either becomes burdened with holes large enough to drive a hearse through or becomes a pastiche on the action/adventure genre. i can't speak for the author or her intent, but I have plans to interview her and hopefully will get some insight. I'll post a link when I put the interview up on my website.
Overall, though, I recommend VAMPIRE RELATIONSHIP GUIDE to anyone who enjoys vampire romance fiction and likes a good send-up of genre tropes. I suspect Evelyn Lafont will be continuing the series (otherwise why call this Volume One) and it will be interesting to see how she maintains the tone of this volume.
The Good: This may be one of the funniest genre pastiches I've ever read. Vampire (and other supernatural creature) Romance is a huge market right now, and in 90 pages Evelyn Lafont manages to crack wise about almost every trope of the genre. I haven't even read that much supernatural romance (urban fantasy of the detective/crime realm is more my cup of tea) and I found myself smiling or laughing or nodding knowingly throughout the book. The main reason I enjoyed the book is that it does not take itself too seriously. The book is a fast easy read with lots of funny dialogue and wink-wink-nudge-nudge humor regarding the current obsession with sexy vampires. The author also does a nice job of taking all the standards of vampire lore and giving them the tweaks necessary to make them work in her world without straying too far from what is "canon" about vampires: they drink blood because the magic in their bodies prevents them from making new red blood cells; channels in their teeth draw the blood directly into their circulatory system; drinking blood is an act of sustenance not sexuality; anything that would cause a vamp to lose blood or that would destroy blood cells will eventually kill them (not just a stake to the heart, but any gaping bleeding wound, etc). The main character, Josie, is a bit of a rural rube in her thirties -- almost too innocent despite claims of being jaded -- that is a perfect send-up of the young-nubile-innocent heroine trope. The lead vamps, Gregory and Walker, fit the standard romantic types as well.
The Not-So-Good: Because of the length, there is not a lot of obvious world-building beyond those basics of vampirism, and what other world-building details are mentioned are inconsistent throughout the book. For instance, we are told early on that Vampires are as publicly recognized a minority as any other group you can think of and that laws have been passed declaring that businesses must stay open 24 hours a day to accommodate those who cannot go out in the sun; there's no detail on how long ago Vampires "came out," or how readily they were accepted into mainstream culture. This creates a problem for our main character: vampires are common enough that it's apparently fairly easy to find them, and yet Josie knows so little about vampire culture that she asks incredibly personal questions at the absolute most wrong moments. I realize Josie's questions are a way to get the basic info about vampires mentioned above into the reader's path, but the result is a main character who in social situations is either incredibly stupid (this stuff should be mostly common knowledge and she doesn't have that knowledge despite her vamp-obsession) or incredibly insensitive (she knows what she's asking is a bit personal, but asks anyway, almost like she has no verbal filter between her brain and her mouth). I'm leaning towards the former, because I like the idea of Josie as a play on the young-nubile-innocent heroine and if she's knowledgeable-but-insensitive I don't think I like her as much.
The Part I'm Undecided About: As the book moves from "meeting vampires for sex" to "our heroine is in danger, who will save her" tropes, the plot either becomes burdened with holes large enough to drive a hearse through or becomes a pastiche on the action/adventure genre. i can't speak for the author or her intent, but I have plans to interview her and hopefully will get some insight. I'll post a link when I put the interview up on my website.
Overall, though, I recommend VAMPIRE RELATIONSHIP GUIDE to anyone who enjoys vampire romance fiction and likes a good send-up of genre tropes. I suspect Evelyn Lafont will be continuing the series (otherwise why call this Volume One) and it will be interesting to see how she maintains the tone of this volume.
Monday, March 28, 2011
Review of Composed
Book 21: Composed: a memoir by Rosanne Cash, isbn 9780670021963, 245 pages, Viking, $26.95
Premise: (from the inside cover flap): "Composed is the story of an artist finding her voice -- both figuratlively and literally -- in the context of her family legacy, of the commercial imperatives of the music business, and of a desire to preserve some measure of privacy in a life that has been too often subjected to public scrutiny." This is Rosanne Cash's story, in her own words, from being the eldest child of Johnny Cash through being a step-daughter, sister, wife, mother, singer, and songwriter.
My Rating: 5 stars
My Thoughts: Anyone expecting a seething tell-all memoir with the gritty details about Rosanne's parents' divorce, or her divorce from Rodney Crowell, or the health battles of her parents and step-parents, is going to be sorely disappointed in this book. And anyone expecting that kind of memoir doesn't really know anything about Rosanne Cash. Rosanne is gracious to a fault and despite how much time she spends on Twitter she is a very private person. She's spent her whole life (as this book attests) walking that fine line between being a public performer and having a private life. More famous people could follow her lead, and I personally would be happier for it.
What is wonderful about this book is how intensely personal it is without being intensely detailed. I was able to feel Rosanne's pain in all of the above-mentioned life moments; I was able to feel her pride in her children; I was able to feel her confusion about her life-path when things got rocky ... and yet I was able to feel all of this without being privy to every detail of what led to the divorces or what was involved in the childbirth. Rosanne even manages to communicate what it was like being a New Yorker on September 11, 2001, including how most New Yorkers just don't talk about it anymore.
We get plenty of detail about the creation of all of Rosanne's albums, but even there, when she talks about difficulties with the record label or with different producers -- she never lays blame at anyone's feet and never casts herself as completely blameless. She is as gracious to the people she's disagreed with over the years as she is to her friends. I can't imagine her airing dirty laundry ever. The harshest she ever gets in this book is talking about how she argued with the producer on her first album over whether she should record a "guaranteed hit" song. I think the most personal she gets regarding her family is allowing us to read the full text of the Eulogies she delivered for her step-mother and father and mother. I have to be honest that I had to blink away tears reading them. They made me think of all the things I didn't say to my own parents before they passed, and all the things I didn't say about them in the memorials we gave them. (Rosanne talks about the struggles with losing her voice due to illness; I lost my facility for words in the wake of my parents' passings and wish I could have been as eloquent as Rosanne was.)
What we don't get in personal detail is more than made up for in creative detail. Throughout the book, we see how real-life events influence her writing and her willingness to also record songs written by others. We see the influence her father has had on her creative side, as well as the influence of first husband Rodney Crowell, current husband John Leventhal, her daughters and son. She talks about "postcards from the future," songs that become somewhat prescient after they're written.
I feel like this review is rambling, so it's probably time to end it. I'm giving the book 5 stars because I admire the way Rosanne Cash manages to bare her soul without digging dirt, the way she takes the intensely personal and makes it universal, and the way she takes the universal and tinges it with the personal. Even if you don't read a lot of memoirs, I have to recommend this one.
Premise: (from the inside cover flap): "Composed is the story of an artist finding her voice -- both figuratlively and literally -- in the context of her family legacy, of the commercial imperatives of the music business, and of a desire to preserve some measure of privacy in a life that has been too often subjected to public scrutiny." This is Rosanne Cash's story, in her own words, from being the eldest child of Johnny Cash through being a step-daughter, sister, wife, mother, singer, and songwriter.
My Rating: 5 stars
My Thoughts: Anyone expecting a seething tell-all memoir with the gritty details about Rosanne's parents' divorce, or her divorce from Rodney Crowell, or the health battles of her parents and step-parents, is going to be sorely disappointed in this book. And anyone expecting that kind of memoir doesn't really know anything about Rosanne Cash. Rosanne is gracious to a fault and despite how much time she spends on Twitter she is a very private person. She's spent her whole life (as this book attests) walking that fine line between being a public performer and having a private life. More famous people could follow her lead, and I personally would be happier for it.
What is wonderful about this book is how intensely personal it is without being intensely detailed. I was able to feel Rosanne's pain in all of the above-mentioned life moments; I was able to feel her pride in her children; I was able to feel her confusion about her life-path when things got rocky ... and yet I was able to feel all of this without being privy to every detail of what led to the divorces or what was involved in the childbirth. Rosanne even manages to communicate what it was like being a New Yorker on September 11, 2001, including how most New Yorkers just don't talk about it anymore.
We get plenty of detail about the creation of all of Rosanne's albums, but even there, when she talks about difficulties with the record label or with different producers -- she never lays blame at anyone's feet and never casts herself as completely blameless. She is as gracious to the people she's disagreed with over the years as she is to her friends. I can't imagine her airing dirty laundry ever. The harshest she ever gets in this book is talking about how she argued with the producer on her first album over whether she should record a "guaranteed hit" song. I think the most personal she gets regarding her family is allowing us to read the full text of the Eulogies she delivered for her step-mother and father and mother. I have to be honest that I had to blink away tears reading them. They made me think of all the things I didn't say to my own parents before they passed, and all the things I didn't say about them in the memorials we gave them. (Rosanne talks about the struggles with losing her voice due to illness; I lost my facility for words in the wake of my parents' passings and wish I could have been as eloquent as Rosanne was.)
What we don't get in personal detail is more than made up for in creative detail. Throughout the book, we see how real-life events influence her writing and her willingness to also record songs written by others. We see the influence her father has had on her creative side, as well as the influence of first husband Rodney Crowell, current husband John Leventhal, her daughters and son. She talks about "postcards from the future," songs that become somewhat prescient after they're written.
I feel like this review is rambling, so it's probably time to end it. I'm giving the book 5 stars because I admire the way Rosanne Cash manages to bare her soul without digging dirt, the way she takes the intensely personal and makes it universal, and the way she takes the universal and tinges it with the personal. Even if you don't read a lot of memoirs, I have to recommend this one.
Saturday, January 15, 2011
Multiplex Review
I realized as I did my End-of-2010 wrap-ups that I didn't read/review a single graphic novel / trade collection last year. I read plenty of single issues of comics, but I don't usually count those towards my book count (although occasionally I have finished a storyline, noticed that a trade collection was available, and posted the review). Going to try to rectify that this year since I have so many GNs/collections on my shelves that I haven't read (and some I've been dying to reread). Kicking things off:
Book 02: MULTIPLEX: Enjoy Your Show, Book One by Gordon McAlpin, isbn 9780984322206, 218 pages, Chase Sequence, $19.95
The Premise: We all know working retail can be hell ... working movie theater retail can be even worse. The staff at the Multiplex 10 in suburban Chicago make the best of it, though. Kurt, Jason, Becky, Melissa, Franklin and the rest fight the never-ending battle for better movies, intelligent snark and romantic shenanigans. Multiplex is a work-place comedy, a Brat-Pack flick and "Dinner For Five" rolled together in a clean, crisp, simple art style. Book One collects the first 102 strips from the Multiplex webcomic, but also includes 12 pages of new "prequel" story set on the night "Revenge of the Sith" opened.
Rating: 3.5 stars (after some internal struggle)
My Thoughts: Because I feel like I've become friends (or at least acquaintances) with Gordon McAlpin through Twitter and through the crowd-funding project that enabled him to bring Multiplex to print form, I had the urge to just paste a 5 star rating onto this. But that wouldn't be an honest assessment of the book, and I'm sure Gordon would rather have an honest review than a kiss-ass/flattering one.
So why 3.5? Because I've grown so accustomed to where McAlpin's webcomic is currently at that looking back at the earliest strips is a bit jarring. There's a little bit of rough edge to a portion of this book. McAlpin hits his story-telling stride towards the end of this volume and really comes into his own in the strips that I presume will someday form Book Two. If I were reviewing the webcomic in full, I'd give it 4 stars for sure, possibly 4.5. But honesty compels me to recognize that at this early point in the series (2005), McAlpin was still finding his way into his story pacing, his characters, and his art.
And I do honestly enjoy the characters. I see parts of myself in several of them -- I mean, hey, I am still a pop-culture geek and occasionally a bit of a snob and a bit of a hopeless romantic as well -- and even more so I see quite a few of the twenty-somethings I know in the characters as well. I've enjoyed, over the last few years of the webcomic, watching them grow, watching the cast expand and diversify, and watching Gordon's art improve and change to fit the type of story he's telling.
But what really shines in this book is the brand new "prequel" material not found on the website. Twelve pages set on the night of the premiere of Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith, in which McAlpin introduces us to the main and supporting characters who run through the first 102 strips. It gives new readers a chance to get to know Kurt, Jason, Becky and the rest, and to see just how much they really do love their jobs (no matter what they may say to the contrary). I'm glad Gordon was able to take the time to add these pages and kick the book off showing what he's capable of.
I definitely recommend checking out Multiplex on the Web. And if you really want to laugh, go check out my original review of the webcomic from almost three years ago on the now-defunct Comic Fencing website.
Book 02: MULTIPLEX: Enjoy Your Show, Book One by Gordon McAlpin, isbn 9780984322206, 218 pages, Chase Sequence, $19.95
The Premise: We all know working retail can be hell ... working movie theater retail can be even worse. The staff at the Multiplex 10 in suburban Chicago make the best of it, though. Kurt, Jason, Becky, Melissa, Franklin and the rest fight the never-ending battle for better movies, intelligent snark and romantic shenanigans. Multiplex is a work-place comedy, a Brat-Pack flick and "Dinner For Five" rolled together in a clean, crisp, simple art style. Book One collects the first 102 strips from the Multiplex webcomic, but also includes 12 pages of new "prequel" story set on the night "Revenge of the Sith" opened.
Rating: 3.5 stars (after some internal struggle)
My Thoughts: Because I feel like I've become friends (or at least acquaintances) with Gordon McAlpin through Twitter and through the crowd-funding project that enabled him to bring Multiplex to print form, I had the urge to just paste a 5 star rating onto this. But that wouldn't be an honest assessment of the book, and I'm sure Gordon would rather have an honest review than a kiss-ass/flattering one.
So why 3.5? Because I've grown so accustomed to where McAlpin's webcomic is currently at that looking back at the earliest strips is a bit jarring. There's a little bit of rough edge to a portion of this book. McAlpin hits his story-telling stride towards the end of this volume and really comes into his own in the strips that I presume will someday form Book Two. If I were reviewing the webcomic in full, I'd give it 4 stars for sure, possibly 4.5. But honesty compels me to recognize that at this early point in the series (2005), McAlpin was still finding his way into his story pacing, his characters, and his art.
And I do honestly enjoy the characters. I see parts of myself in several of them -- I mean, hey, I am still a pop-culture geek and occasionally a bit of a snob and a bit of a hopeless romantic as well -- and even more so I see quite a few of the twenty-somethings I know in the characters as well. I've enjoyed, over the last few years of the webcomic, watching them grow, watching the cast expand and diversify, and watching Gordon's art improve and change to fit the type of story he's telling.
But what really shines in this book is the brand new "prequel" material not found on the website. Twelve pages set on the night of the premiere of Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith, in which McAlpin introduces us to the main and supporting characters who run through the first 102 strips. It gives new readers a chance to get to know Kurt, Jason, Becky and the rest, and to see just how much they really do love their jobs (no matter what they may say to the contrary). I'm glad Gordon was able to take the time to add these pages and kick the book off showing what he's capable of.
I definitely recommend checking out Multiplex on the Web. And if you really want to laugh, go check out my original review of the webcomic from almost three years ago on the now-defunct Comic Fencing website.
Monday, November 1, 2010
Johnny Halloween
Book 64: Johnny Halloween: Tales of the Dark Season by Norman Partridge, isbn 9781587672231, 125 pages, Cemetery Dance Publications signed limited edition, $30.00
I've been meaning to read more of Norman Partridge's work since I literally tripped across his novel DARK HARVEST a couple of years ago on a business trip to Phoenix. I had left the hotel without any reading material, and if there's one thing I hate it's sitting at dinner in a restaurant with nothing to read other than the menus. This has happened more than once, and occasionally has led to me purchasing books I never finish reading. DARK HARVEST was one of the best impulse buys I ever made. So when I saw that Cemetery Dance was issuing a new Partridge collection with a Halloween theme, I couldn't resist ordering it and then letting it sit until the holiday weekend.
There are only 6 stories, plus an introduction and an essay, in this slim volume. The introduction and the final story are brand new; the other 5 stories and the essay are collected from various other sources but were all new to me. Only one story, "Black Leather Kites," disappointed me and even that story held some charm (mostly in imagining what it would look like on the big screen or HBO). My favorite story in the book is probably the title story, about a sheriff recalling the crime he stopped when he was a teenager and how that comes back to haunt him in the present. I was also looking forward to the Dark Harvest-connected story that concludes the book, "The Jack O'Lantern," but I will caution anyone who has not read the book -- this story contains a fairly significant spoiler about the events of the novel. If you've read DARK HARVEST, "The Jack O'Lantern" will make your heart-rate race the way the book did, and will fill out the picture of just what goes on in this small town on the night of The Run.
The essay in the book, "The Man Who Killed Halloween," is Partridge's first person account of what it was like to live in Vallejo, California, at the time of the Zodiac killings, and how that unsolved crime spree forever changed the way that town celebrates Halloween (and most other holidays, I would think). Non-fiction rarely scares me or unsettles me the way fiction does, but the story is so personal to Partridge that I felt the hairs on the back of my neck standing up as he described not on the crimes but the way most people found out about them. Perhaps it's because I've been reading IT recently, but Partridge's essay connected strongly with my reaction to the 1950s sections of that novel.
Definitely a good read if you can get your hands on a copy.
Individual story reviews can be found here.
I've been meaning to read more of Norman Partridge's work since I literally tripped across his novel DARK HARVEST a couple of years ago on a business trip to Phoenix. I had left the hotel without any reading material, and if there's one thing I hate it's sitting at dinner in a restaurant with nothing to read other than the menus. This has happened more than once, and occasionally has led to me purchasing books I never finish reading. DARK HARVEST was one of the best impulse buys I ever made. So when I saw that Cemetery Dance was issuing a new Partridge collection with a Halloween theme, I couldn't resist ordering it and then letting it sit until the holiday weekend.
There are only 6 stories, plus an introduction and an essay, in this slim volume. The introduction and the final story are brand new; the other 5 stories and the essay are collected from various other sources but were all new to me. Only one story, "Black Leather Kites," disappointed me and even that story held some charm (mostly in imagining what it would look like on the big screen or HBO). My favorite story in the book is probably the title story, about a sheriff recalling the crime he stopped when he was a teenager and how that comes back to haunt him in the present. I was also looking forward to the Dark Harvest-connected story that concludes the book, "The Jack O'Lantern," but I will caution anyone who has not read the book -- this story contains a fairly significant spoiler about the events of the novel. If you've read DARK HARVEST, "The Jack O'Lantern" will make your heart-rate race the way the book did, and will fill out the picture of just what goes on in this small town on the night of The Run.
The essay in the book, "The Man Who Killed Halloween," is Partridge's first person account of what it was like to live in Vallejo, California, at the time of the Zodiac killings, and how that unsolved crime spree forever changed the way that town celebrates Halloween (and most other holidays, I would think). Non-fiction rarely scares me or unsettles me the way fiction does, but the story is so personal to Partridge that I felt the hairs on the back of my neck standing up as he described not on the crimes but the way most people found out about them. Perhaps it's because I've been reading IT recently, but Partridge's essay connected strongly with my reaction to the 1950s sections of that novel.
Definitely a good read if you can get your hands on a copy.
Individual story reviews can be found here.
Trysts by Steve Berman
Book 63: Trysts: A Triskadecollection of Queer and Weird Stories by Steve Berman, isbn 9781590210000, 148 pages, Lethe Press, $13.00
I first came across Steve Berman's work when I ordered his short novel VINTAGE from the InsightOut Book Club (an arm of the Book of the Month Club aimed at gay and lesbian readers). I enjoyed the book, as you can see from the review found here. I posted my review and discovered that Steve is here on livejournal, both on his own journal and through the journal for the publishing house he runs,![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif?v=1)
lethepress . This gave me the opportunity to seek out more of Berman's work, which has most recently appeared in the anthologies PAPER CITIES (his story reviewed here) and THE BEASTLY BRIDE (his story reviewed here). I ordered both of Steve's personal short story collections from Lethe, and have finally gotten around to reading the earlier of the two, TRYSTS.
There are twenty stories in TRYSTS, and several of them show the rough edges of a writer who is just starting out. These stories date from the late 90s through the collection's publication in 2001. Four of the twenty stories take place in Berman's dark-fantasy world of The Fallen Area, a section (or perhaps all) of Philadelphia that has been cut off from the rest of the civilized world because something has happened to change it -- magic works, people develop Talents or Afflictions, normal people struggle to survive a world they no longer hold primacy in. All four stories feature individuals new to the Fallen Area who find themselves in over their heads; some adapt better than others.
Not all of Berman's stories are Dark Fantasy / Horror. "His Paper Doll" is nearly whimsical and "Beach 2" isn't really supernatural at all. Some of the stories are homages to other authors. "The Resurrectionist" owes a lot to Poe (and perhaps Hawthorne), while "Path of Corruption" is positively Lovecraftian. A few of the stories didn't work for me (notably "Left Alone," which feels incomplete, and "Stormed and Taken in Prague," which seems too focused on the sex the main character has to really get across the kind of hole the character is potentially falling into) but even those stories don't lack for potentially interesting premises. I would recommend this collection for the Fallen Area stories in particular, and for a look at early Berman.
Reviews of the individual stories can be found here and here.
I first came across Steve Berman's work when I ordered his short novel VINTAGE from the InsightOut Book Club (an arm of the Book of the Month Club aimed at gay and lesbian readers). I enjoyed the book, as you can see from the review found here. I posted my review and discovered that Steve is here on livejournal, both on his own journal and through the journal for the publishing house he runs,
lethepress . This gave me the opportunity to seek out more of Berman's work, which has most recently appeared in the anthologies PAPER CITIES (his story reviewed here) and THE BEASTLY BRIDE (his story reviewed here). I ordered both of Steve's personal short story collections from Lethe, and have finally gotten around to reading the earlier of the two, TRYSTS.There are twenty stories in TRYSTS, and several of them show the rough edges of a writer who is just starting out. These stories date from the late 90s through the collection's publication in 2001. Four of the twenty stories take place in Berman's dark-fantasy world of The Fallen Area, a section (or perhaps all) of Philadelphia that has been cut off from the rest of the civilized world because something has happened to change it -- magic works, people develop Talents or Afflictions, normal people struggle to survive a world they no longer hold primacy in. All four stories feature individuals new to the Fallen Area who find themselves in over their heads; some adapt better than others.
Not all of Berman's stories are Dark Fantasy / Horror. "His Paper Doll" is nearly whimsical and "Beach 2" isn't really supernatural at all. Some of the stories are homages to other authors. "The Resurrectionist" owes a lot to Poe (and perhaps Hawthorne), while "Path of Corruption" is positively Lovecraftian. A few of the stories didn't work for me (notably "Left Alone," which feels incomplete, and "Stormed and Taken in Prague," which seems too focused on the sex the main character has to really get across the kind of hole the character is potentially falling into) but even those stories don't lack for potentially interesting premises. I would recommend this collection for the Fallen Area stories in particular, and for a look at early Berman.
Reviews of the individual stories can be found here and here.
Feed By Mira Grant
Book 62: Feed by Mira Grant, isbn 9780316081054, 599 pages, Orbit, $9.99
I have to admit up front that I only picked up FEED because it was the October entry in the online book club run bycalico_reaction and I always read as much horror as I can in the month of October anyway. I also have to admit that really, I'm not a zombie fiction fan. For me, zombies work great on the screen (I love the original Romero trilogy as well as 28 Days/Weeks Later) but don't seem to have the same hold over me in print. So I was skeptical that I'd really get anything out of this book other than a chance to say "I told you so" and an addition to my year's total page-count.
Thankfully, I can say my skepticism was wrong. While I don't think FEED is anywhere near a perfect book, I can say that overall it worked for me: the characters clicked and a couple of the action sequences got my heart racing a bit.
In 2014, super-cures for cancer and the common cold are released to the air, and combine to create Kellis-Amberlee, the virus that brings the recently dead back to life with an insatiable hunger. Twenty years later, people live in rigidly-defined hazard zones based on the likelihood of encounter with Infected (humans or other mammals). Society hangs in there under a constant cloud of fear, and faith in traditional news media is low. Twenty years after the Uprising, more people trust Bloggers in the world of FEED, and two of the most well-regarded bloggers are "Newsie" (hard-news reporter) Georgia Mason and "Irwin" (adventure-based reporter) Shaun Mason, a brother-and-sister team aided by their technical support and fiction-writing third partner "Buffy" Messionier. The team is tapped by Senator Peter Ryman to accompany his Presidential Campaign, from before the party primaries all the way up to Election Day if they go that far. Georgia, Shaun, Buffy and new team member Rick discover they are on to the biggest story of their careers, and it's bigger than just following a candidate around.
The book starts off a bit rocky, in my opinion, with a lot of the world-building info repeated almost ad nauseum not just from chapter to chapter but occasionally from page to page. Most of the first section of the book (which is divided up into five distinct sections) feels like an info-dump. While it establishes the characters of Georgia, Shaun and Buffy very clearly, it also repeats so much information over and over again that you begin to wonder if Georgia, who narrates, is the reporter she's built up to be. But if you can get past the first hundred pages, the narrative kicks in and the characters spend a lot less time repeating themselves. The baseline information about the world they live in has been driven home through repetition and the story can begin to move. The book gets good when it stops re-explaining how people get infected and what's been done to protect the populace and starts getting into what the book is really about: political machinations and the use of fear as a means of controlling the populace. Georgia and the team get an up-close-and-personal look at the political side of terrorism as well. The action sequences also get stronger, more pulse-racing, as the book goes along; it's almost like Grant knowingly saves her best action-prose for the end, although the fight in Eakly occurs relatively early in the book and contains at least one very tense moment.
To say too much more about the twists the book takes would be to spoil it for anyone who has not read it yet. I can say a few things. The encounters between Team Mason and the zombies start out almost mundane (see how silly we are, poking zombies with sticks to get higher ratings for our blog) and grow deadly serious (a multi-car-wreck has lasting effects on the team) right up to the very last pages. I was pretty sure I had tagged who was behind the terrorism early on, and I'm sure most astute readers will manage to figure it out too. But sometimes, knowing who the "big bad" is and knowing how events will reveal that "big bad" to the characters are two very different things, and the direction the reveal took very definitely surprised me. Each chapter ends, and each of the five sections begins, with quotes from the blogs of Georgia, Shaun, Buffy and Rick; flipping back through the book after I'd reached the end, I was not surprised to find that most of them gained a "you should have seen that coming, gentle reader" tone in hind-sight. If I have any complaint about those quoted passages, it is that they don't seem to have unique voices. For all the characters talk about how Newsies, Irwins and Fictionals approach the news with distinct voices, there wasn't anything particularly individual about the posts of Georgia, Shaun and Rick (Buffy is set apart because she's writing poetry about the events around them, not non-fiction reportage).
I can also say (and I doubt anyone would be surprised) that FEED is the first of a trilogy. I'm not sure how quickly I'll rush out to pick up book two, DEADLINE. I think FEED stands well enough on its own that I don't necessarily feel the need to see the story continued; I guess my decision will rest solely on how much I miss the surviving members of Team Mason by the time the new book hits the stands.
I have to admit up front that I only picked up FEED because it was the October entry in the online book club run by
calico_reaction and I always read as much horror as I can in the month of October anyway. I also have to admit that really, I'm not a zombie fiction fan. For me, zombies work great on the screen (I love the original Romero trilogy as well as 28 Days/Weeks Later) but don't seem to have the same hold over me in print. So I was skeptical that I'd really get anything out of this book other than a chance to say "I told you so" and an addition to my year's total page-count.Thankfully, I can say my skepticism was wrong. While I don't think FEED is anywhere near a perfect book, I can say that overall it worked for me: the characters clicked and a couple of the action sequences got my heart racing a bit.
In 2014, super-cures for cancer and the common cold are released to the air, and combine to create Kellis-Amberlee, the virus that brings the recently dead back to life with an insatiable hunger. Twenty years later, people live in rigidly-defined hazard zones based on the likelihood of encounter with Infected (humans or other mammals). Society hangs in there under a constant cloud of fear, and faith in traditional news media is low. Twenty years after the Uprising, more people trust Bloggers in the world of FEED, and two of the most well-regarded bloggers are "Newsie" (hard-news reporter) Georgia Mason and "Irwin" (adventure-based reporter) Shaun Mason, a brother-and-sister team aided by their technical support and fiction-writing third partner "Buffy" Messionier. The team is tapped by Senator Peter Ryman to accompany his Presidential Campaign, from before the party primaries all the way up to Election Day if they go that far. Georgia, Shaun, Buffy and new team member Rick discover they are on to the biggest story of their careers, and it's bigger than just following a candidate around.
The book starts off a bit rocky, in my opinion, with a lot of the world-building info repeated almost ad nauseum not just from chapter to chapter but occasionally from page to page. Most of the first section of the book (which is divided up into five distinct sections) feels like an info-dump. While it establishes the characters of Georgia, Shaun and Buffy very clearly, it also repeats so much information over and over again that you begin to wonder if Georgia, who narrates, is the reporter she's built up to be. But if you can get past the first hundred pages, the narrative kicks in and the characters spend a lot less time repeating themselves. The baseline information about the world they live in has been driven home through repetition and the story can begin to move. The book gets good when it stops re-explaining how people get infected and what's been done to protect the populace and starts getting into what the book is really about: political machinations and the use of fear as a means of controlling the populace. Georgia and the team get an up-close-and-personal look at the political side of terrorism as well. The action sequences also get stronger, more pulse-racing, as the book goes along; it's almost like Grant knowingly saves her best action-prose for the end, although the fight in Eakly occurs relatively early in the book and contains at least one very tense moment.
To say too much more about the twists the book takes would be to spoil it for anyone who has not read it yet. I can say a few things. The encounters between Team Mason and the zombies start out almost mundane (see how silly we are, poking zombies with sticks to get higher ratings for our blog) and grow deadly serious (a multi-car-wreck has lasting effects on the team) right up to the very last pages. I was pretty sure I had tagged who was behind the terrorism early on, and I'm sure most astute readers will manage to figure it out too. But sometimes, knowing who the "big bad" is and knowing how events will reveal that "big bad" to the characters are two very different things, and the direction the reveal took very definitely surprised me. Each chapter ends, and each of the five sections begins, with quotes from the blogs of Georgia, Shaun, Buffy and Rick; flipping back through the book after I'd reached the end, I was not surprised to find that most of them gained a "you should have seen that coming, gentle reader" tone in hind-sight. If I have any complaint about those quoted passages, it is that they don't seem to have unique voices. For all the characters talk about how Newsies, Irwins and Fictionals approach the news with distinct voices, there wasn't anything particularly individual about the posts of Georgia, Shaun and Rick (Buffy is set apart because she's writing poetry about the events around them, not non-fiction reportage).
I can also say (and I doubt anyone would be surprised) that FEED is the first of a trilogy. I'm not sure how quickly I'll rush out to pick up book two, DEADLINE. I think FEED stands well enough on its own that I don't necessarily feel the need to see the story continued; I guess my decision will rest solely on how much I miss the surviving members of Team Mason by the time the new book hits the stands.
Haunted Legends
Book 61: Haunted Legends edited by Ellen Datlow and Nick Mamatas, isbn 9780765323019, 347 pages, Tor, $15.99
I have never been disappointed with any anthology edited, or co-edited, by Ellen Datlow, and HAUNTED LEGENDS continues that trend. While there are a few stories in this collection that didn't really work for me, the majority of them did.
The theme is exactly what the title implies: those local, "home-grown" tales of hauntings and other oddness that you often find retold in poorly-edited "local legends" tomes sold in airports kiosks and tourist-trap gift shops. Datlow and Mamatas' edict to the participants in this anthology was to rescue those local legends from poorly-written retellings and to give them new life -- to make them universal while not sacrificing their local flavor. And most of the authors succeed.
There are 20 stories in the collection. My favorites are "As Red as Red" by Caitlyn R. Kiernan, "Shoebox Train Wreck" by John Mantooth, "Tin Cans" by Ekaterina Sedia, "Return to Mariabronn" by Gary A. Braunbeck, "The Redfield Girls" by Laird Barron, "Between Heaven and Hull" by Pat Cadigan, and "Chucky Comes to Liverpool" by Ramsey Campbell. With the exception of the Kiernan and Campbell stories, they all have to do with transportation-related ghosts -- something I didn't realize until I listed them all together like this. There are a couple of stories that disappointed me, notably "The Folding Man" by Joe R. Lansdale and "Down Atsion Road" by Jeffrey Ford, but not every collection can be perfect.
Even though Halloween is over as of a few minutes ago here on the east coast, I recommend seeking this collection out if you like "local legends" and "home-grown ghosts." It's worth the effort.
More detailed story-by-story analysis can be found here and here.
I have never been disappointed with any anthology edited, or co-edited, by Ellen Datlow, and HAUNTED LEGENDS continues that trend. While there are a few stories in this collection that didn't really work for me, the majority of them did.
The theme is exactly what the title implies: those local, "home-grown" tales of hauntings and other oddness that you often find retold in poorly-edited "local legends" tomes sold in airports kiosks and tourist-trap gift shops. Datlow and Mamatas' edict to the participants in this anthology was to rescue those local legends from poorly-written retellings and to give them new life -- to make them universal while not sacrificing their local flavor. And most of the authors succeed.
There are 20 stories in the collection. My favorites are "As Red as Red" by Caitlyn R. Kiernan, "Shoebox Train Wreck" by John Mantooth, "Tin Cans" by Ekaterina Sedia, "Return to Mariabronn" by Gary A. Braunbeck, "The Redfield Girls" by Laird Barron, "Between Heaven and Hull" by Pat Cadigan, and "Chucky Comes to Liverpool" by Ramsey Campbell. With the exception of the Kiernan and Campbell stories, they all have to do with transportation-related ghosts -- something I didn't realize until I listed them all together like this. There are a couple of stories that disappointed me, notably "The Folding Man" by Joe R. Lansdale and "Down Atsion Road" by Jeffrey Ford, but not every collection can be perfect.
Even though Halloween is over as of a few minutes ago here on the east coast, I recommend seeking this collection out if you like "local legends" and "home-grown ghosts." It's worth the effort.
More detailed story-by-story analysis can be found here and here.
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