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.
Saturday, January 15, 2011
Friday, January 14, 2011
Review of IT
I'm baaaaaackkk....
My first book review of the year! And it also helps with the Great TBR Book Challenge I mentioned in this post, as hosted by the ever-gracious RoofBeamReader.
I've decided, after reading so many other people's reviews, to change up what I do slightly. I'm still not going to pretend to be a professional book-reviewer / blogger, and so my reviews will still be gut reactions and will most likely continue to meander. If I feel it's necessary, I'll put portions behind cuts to avoid spoilers for people who may be considering reading the book, but most of the time you should be able to get my general feeling about a book without having to jump behind the cuts.
Book 01: IT by Stephen King, isbn 9780451169518, 1138 pages, Viking (Stephen King Library reissue), $13.95
Premise: There is something darkly wrong with the town of Derry, Maine. In 1958, after the brutal death of his younger brother, Bill Denbrough leads a group of seven unlikely friends on a quest to drive that evil out. Almost 30 years later, those friends reunite as adults to confront that evil once again -- but will remembering their shared past help them succeed or shatter any chance of finally ending the cyclical horror of their home-town?
Rating: Four stars (after some consideration)
My Thoughts: Stephen King's second longest novel (20 pages shorter than THE STAND) has a great deal going for it. Characters that are deeply believable both as children and adults, tons of commonplace items and images that become the stuff of nightmares, the scariest clown in fiction, and a fictional town with such a deep history that you feel like you've been there more than once. All that being said, it's not a perfect novel, which is why I waffled on what rating to give it. Part of me wanted to downgrade to a 3.5, part of me wanted to give it a 4.5. I split the difference because ultimately my problems with the book were outweighed by what I enjoyed.
King does write kids very well. The pre-teen (barely) protagonists of fully half of the novel talk like real kids and mostly act like real kids; the few times where they might seem just a touch more precocious than they should can be attributed to whatever "higher power" is pushing them around the chessboard of the book's action. I genuinely like Stuttering Bill, Richie, Eddie, Mike, Ben and especially Bev; Stan Uris is the only one of The Losers I feel a total disconnect from -- the few scenes from his point of view did nothing to make me feel for him the way I felt for the others. And King transforms those pre-teens into adults so perfectly that you don't need to suspend disbelief that the kids and the adults are the same characters. The personalities come through even if some of the tics are gone.
Part of the reason the book is so long is the inclusion of the "Derry Interludes," compiled by the adult Mike Hanlon as a way of showing just how long-lived It/Pennywise has been around and just how severely influenced the town has been. Most of the interludes were interesting and felt like they could have been stand-alone short stories. One or two of them made the book slow down for me, but not so much that I lost interest in the book.
What I found scariest in the book was not the big group battles with It, but in the individual encounters, regardless of the protagonists' ages. The quieter the encounter, the more tense I felt. This is something of a truism for me with horror fiction (books or movies) -- the bigger the effect, the less scared I am. Darken the room and let things flit around the periphery of my vision, and you've got me hooked. The good news is, in amongst all the town history and big set pieces, there are plenty of these smaller encounters to keep folks like me on the edge of our seats.
Where the book ultimately suffers, for me, is towards the end as the two battles with It overlap. King goes off on a sort of metaphysical tear that I suppose is meant to be Lovecraftian, with talk of the borders of reality and aspects of It and so on. Again, it's the big set-pieces. I had the same problem near the end of THE STAND. Not that I'm afraid of big ideas about the nature of the universe; quite the opposite. But I did feel in this case it came just a little out of left field and lingered just a little too long, distracting from the final fight.
Once he gets that out of his system, the Big Finale tears along like a run down the Colorado River rapids and the ending, to me, is strong and worth reaching. Two moments made my heart beat faster, and at least two made me tear up (granted, an easy thing to do lately). I realized as I came to the end of the book that these were characters I'd come to care about, and while I wanted the book to end I didn't necessarily want their stories to end. Which, when you come right down to it, is a good endorsement for a book.
My first book review of the year! And it also helps with the Great TBR Book Challenge I mentioned in this post, as hosted by the ever-gracious RoofBeamReader.
I've decided, after reading so many other people's reviews, to change up what I do slightly. I'm still not going to pretend to be a professional book-reviewer / blogger, and so my reviews will still be gut reactions and will most likely continue to meander. If I feel it's necessary, I'll put portions behind cuts to avoid spoilers for people who may be considering reading the book, but most of the time you should be able to get my general feeling about a book without having to jump behind the cuts.
Book 01: IT by Stephen King, isbn 9780451169518, 1138 pages, Viking (Stephen King Library reissue), $13.95
Premise: There is something darkly wrong with the town of Derry, Maine. In 1958, after the brutal death of his younger brother, Bill Denbrough leads a group of seven unlikely friends on a quest to drive that evil out. Almost 30 years later, those friends reunite as adults to confront that evil once again -- but will remembering their shared past help them succeed or shatter any chance of finally ending the cyclical horror of their home-town?
Rating: Four stars (after some consideration)
My Thoughts: Stephen King's second longest novel (20 pages shorter than THE STAND) has a great deal going for it. Characters that are deeply believable both as children and adults, tons of commonplace items and images that become the stuff of nightmares, the scariest clown in fiction, and a fictional town with such a deep history that you feel like you've been there more than once. All that being said, it's not a perfect novel, which is why I waffled on what rating to give it. Part of me wanted to downgrade to a 3.5, part of me wanted to give it a 4.5. I split the difference because ultimately my problems with the book were outweighed by what I enjoyed.
King does write kids very well. The pre-teen (barely) protagonists of fully half of the novel talk like real kids and mostly act like real kids; the few times where they might seem just a touch more precocious than they should can be attributed to whatever "higher power" is pushing them around the chessboard of the book's action. I genuinely like Stuttering Bill, Richie, Eddie, Mike, Ben and especially Bev; Stan Uris is the only one of The Losers I feel a total disconnect from -- the few scenes from his point of view did nothing to make me feel for him the way I felt for the others. And King transforms those pre-teens into adults so perfectly that you don't need to suspend disbelief that the kids and the adults are the same characters. The personalities come through even if some of the tics are gone.
Part of the reason the book is so long is the inclusion of the "Derry Interludes," compiled by the adult Mike Hanlon as a way of showing just how long-lived It/Pennywise has been around and just how severely influenced the town has been. Most of the interludes were interesting and felt like they could have been stand-alone short stories. One or two of them made the book slow down for me, but not so much that I lost interest in the book.
What I found scariest in the book was not the big group battles with It, but in the individual encounters, regardless of the protagonists' ages. The quieter the encounter, the more tense I felt. This is something of a truism for me with horror fiction (books or movies) -- the bigger the effect, the less scared I am. Darken the room and let things flit around the periphery of my vision, and you've got me hooked. The good news is, in amongst all the town history and big set pieces, there are plenty of these smaller encounters to keep folks like me on the edge of our seats.
Where the book ultimately suffers, for me, is towards the end as the two battles with It overlap. King goes off on a sort of metaphysical tear that I suppose is meant to be Lovecraftian, with talk of the borders of reality and aspects of It and so on. Again, it's the big set-pieces. I had the same problem near the end of THE STAND. Not that I'm afraid of big ideas about the nature of the universe; quite the opposite. But I did feel in this case it came just a little out of left field and lingered just a little too long, distracting from the final fight.
Once he gets that out of his system, the Big Finale tears along like a run down the Colorado River rapids and the ending, to me, is strong and worth reaching. Two moments made my heart beat faster, and at least two made me tear up (granted, an easy thing to do lately). I realized as I came to the end of the book that these were characters I'd come to care about, and while I wanted the book to end I didn't necessarily want their stories to end. Which, when you come right down to it, is a good endorsement for a book.
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]](https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/blogger_img_proxy/AEn0k_s9kLaTa0pAyyGjLK6Zy7kliyBfqjLjnP3o-oE9dhiuY1R7XQHmEP_NNlnJKgCA_ObhRwYmCSaCIPPkpOHVHE3OL-2cig9stpVo3lkhLx8vg7ErAA=s0-d)
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.
Sunday, October 17, 2010
Horror Stories
A mixed bag of genre stuff this entry. I'm trying to weed out books I know I'm not going to read, to donate to the book drive that will be happening to support National Novel Writing Month. I can't let any anthologies go without at least reading a couple of stories in each. So:
From Cthulhu's Reign, edited by Darrell Schweitzer (the concept of the anthology is "what the world will be like after Cthulthu and the other Lovecraftian monsters return to Earth):
304. Such Bright and Risen Madness in our Names by Jay Lake. Lake takes the anthology's premise and narrows it down to the personal level: the narrator is one of an ever-dwindling group of "rebel" humans / near-humans striving to maintain some kind of resistance against Cthulhu and the humans/near-humans who serve "him." In Lake's interpretation, there seem to be very few baseline humans left: almost everyone has undergone some kind of physical change since the Olde Ones returned. The narrator ends up involved in a plan to wipe out the Lovecraftians, but if every other form of resistance has failed, what are the odds this one will succeed? And is our narrator willing to do what it takes? What works about this story is that it could just as easily be about a resistance cell in an over-run third world country -- if the dictators in the story were not actual monsters, the emotions and interplay of the three main people in this story would be just as heart-wrenching and their decisions would be just as difficult to try to understand. The best genre stories speak to the "real" world, and this ranks right up there.
305. The Seals of New R'Lyeh by Gregory Frost almost crosses genre -- it's a crime caper (let's see if they can steal the heavily-guarded Seals), it's a sort-of buddy flick (if the buddies don't actually like each other but work together anyway) and it's at least dark fantasy, if not outright horror (after all, the setting is The World After Cthulhu Returns). At least twice, I thought I knew where this story was going and found that it wasn't going there. Frost makes several neat turns in the story work with just a word or two; he never beats you over the head with clues to where things are headed, but the clues are there nonetheless in the way the story progresses. See if you can put it together before the end; I'll admit, I didn't but afterwards said "of course!"
And now four from the first Dark Delicacies anthology, edited by Del Howison and Jeff Gelb:
306. The Reincarnate by Ray Bradbury. Is there anything like a Ray Bradbury short story? This is one of those stories that is addressed directly to the reader-as-main-character: "After a while you will get over being afraid." This type of story is, I think, very hard to pull off even in the short form. So far, Bradbury and Norman Partridge seem to be the only authors that come to mind has having succeeded enough for me to not only remember the story, but to add it to my list of favorites. Bradbury's starts off a little rocky for me, but within a trio of paragraphs I was pulled right in and stayed in the story through the really satisfying ending.
307. Part of the Game by F. Paul Wilson. This is a tidy little "pulp / penny dreadful" type story. 1930s Chinatown setting, prejudiced white detective tries to horn in on the gambling and other illicit activities from which a mysterious figure called The Mandarin takes a cut. He tells the Mandarin's Emissary that he wants to "be a part of the game," or else he will bring the entire police department to bear and essentially shut Chinatown down. Famous last words, of course. What I really liked about this story is that Wilson does not attempt to make the detective, or the emissary, or the Mandarin himself, at all sympathetic. Occasionally, a story in which everyone is simply out for himself is exactly what the reader needs. This was one of those times for me. And it's not that the detective is a particularly flat character -- he has motivation and such -- it's just that he's thoroughly unlikeable. Great story, and I'm wondering if Wilson intended "The Mandarin" to be Fu Manchu.
308. Bloody Mary Morning by John Farris. I'm not a "gore horror" fan so much -- I'd much rather watch or read a psychological horror story than see the latest SAW movie. Farris' tale sort of walks the line between the two. There is a lot of blood here, and described in very cinematic terms, even though there are only three deaths. The blood permeates the entire story, and just when I thought it was getting to be a bit too much and perhaps a bit cliche ... Farris ends the story on a grace note that makes you realize why all the blood was necessary and what it was really all about. The psychological dramatic tension (will he get away with it, is the best I can summarize without giving anything away) walks you through a few cliches but not in any way that feels cliched.
309. A Gentleman of the Old School by Chelsea Quinn Yarbro. I read this because it is a Count Saint-Germain story, and it's been years since I've read a Saint-Germain story. That being said ... it's not really a horror story. In fact, I'm not really sure what to call it. It's got murder mystery and serial killer elements in it, it's got the whole "will she learn his secret and what will happen if she does" element, and it's got that "intrepid reporter who might be getting in over her head" element. And they somehow work together, but there's nothing particularly horrific about the story, nor is there anything really in the way of a satisfactory exploration of the serial killer aspect. For fans of Saint-Germain, I think it's a great little character moment, but others might wonder just what the story is doing in this collection.
And finally three from Dark Delicacies II: Fear, also edited by Del Howison and Jeff Gelb:
310. Dog by Joe R. Lansdale. I normally try not to boil stories down to comparisons with other authors, but this story made me immediately think of two Stephen King works: CUJO (for perhaps the obvious reason), and "The Gingerbread Girl" (for reasons that hopefully will become apparent when you read the story). Which is not to say that Lansdale spends the story channeling King -- this is definitely a Lansdale story beginning to end. The tension just keeps ratcheting up through the story. I literally was sweating along with the main character, feeling chased and harried. And left the story with an unsettling feeling that this is the kind of thing that happens to you once, and you can't explain what it was all about but you hope you've done your time and it won't come around to bite you again. Which is meant as a great compliment.
311. First Born by John Farris. This Farris story didn't work quite as well for me as the one above, but it still had its nice twists. The main character is a famous actor who finds that he doesn't remember a promise he made 20 years ago to the man who started his career -- or at least that's what the odd voice on the other side of the phone claims. The caller wants the actor to turn over his first born child -- I'm not giving anything away here because the title pretty much leads you to that already. Farris works in a twist about halfway through that allows the story to resolve in a little bit of a different way than is typical. I think the details he leaves out (allowing the reader to piece things together) are more interesting than the details he leaves in.
312. The Ammonite Violin (Murder Ballad No. 4) by Caitlyn R. Kiernan. I know this is part of a longer book. I read it and decided that I really want to read that longer work now. Kiernan gives us a view through a serial killer's eyes -- a killer who has two passions, killing and collecting ammonite shells. He has a violin constructed using some of those shells and we spend most of the story wondering what his purpose is. It becomes very clear at the end. Kiernan does a great job of building that tension and wording things in such a way that even up to the end you're wondering exactly how the story is going to play out. Very well done.
From Cthulhu's Reign, edited by Darrell Schweitzer (the concept of the anthology is "what the world will be like after Cthulthu and the other Lovecraftian monsters return to Earth):
304. Such Bright and Risen Madness in our Names by Jay Lake. Lake takes the anthology's premise and narrows it down to the personal level: the narrator is one of an ever-dwindling group of "rebel" humans / near-humans striving to maintain some kind of resistance against Cthulhu and the humans/near-humans who serve "him." In Lake's interpretation, there seem to be very few baseline humans left: almost everyone has undergone some kind of physical change since the Olde Ones returned. The narrator ends up involved in a plan to wipe out the Lovecraftians, but if every other form of resistance has failed, what are the odds this one will succeed? And is our narrator willing to do what it takes? What works about this story is that it could just as easily be about a resistance cell in an over-run third world country -- if the dictators in the story were not actual monsters, the emotions and interplay of the three main people in this story would be just as heart-wrenching and their decisions would be just as difficult to try to understand. The best genre stories speak to the "real" world, and this ranks right up there.
305. The Seals of New R'Lyeh by Gregory Frost almost crosses genre -- it's a crime caper (let's see if they can steal the heavily-guarded Seals), it's a sort-of buddy flick (if the buddies don't actually like each other but work together anyway) and it's at least dark fantasy, if not outright horror (after all, the setting is The World After Cthulhu Returns). At least twice, I thought I knew where this story was going and found that it wasn't going there. Frost makes several neat turns in the story work with just a word or two; he never beats you over the head with clues to where things are headed, but the clues are there nonetheless in the way the story progresses. See if you can put it together before the end; I'll admit, I didn't but afterwards said "of course!"
And now four from the first Dark Delicacies anthology, edited by Del Howison and Jeff Gelb:
306. The Reincarnate by Ray Bradbury. Is there anything like a Ray Bradbury short story? This is one of those stories that is addressed directly to the reader-as-main-character: "After a while you will get over being afraid." This type of story is, I think, very hard to pull off even in the short form. So far, Bradbury and Norman Partridge seem to be the only authors that come to mind has having succeeded enough for me to not only remember the story, but to add it to my list of favorites. Bradbury's starts off a little rocky for me, but within a trio of paragraphs I was pulled right in and stayed in the story through the really satisfying ending.
307. Part of the Game by F. Paul Wilson. This is a tidy little "pulp / penny dreadful" type story. 1930s Chinatown setting, prejudiced white detective tries to horn in on the gambling and other illicit activities from which a mysterious figure called The Mandarin takes a cut. He tells the Mandarin's Emissary that he wants to "be a part of the game," or else he will bring the entire police department to bear and essentially shut Chinatown down. Famous last words, of course. What I really liked about this story is that Wilson does not attempt to make the detective, or the emissary, or the Mandarin himself, at all sympathetic. Occasionally, a story in which everyone is simply out for himself is exactly what the reader needs. This was one of those times for me. And it's not that the detective is a particularly flat character -- he has motivation and such -- it's just that he's thoroughly unlikeable. Great story, and I'm wondering if Wilson intended "The Mandarin" to be Fu Manchu.
308. Bloody Mary Morning by John Farris. I'm not a "gore horror" fan so much -- I'd much rather watch or read a psychological horror story than see the latest SAW movie. Farris' tale sort of walks the line between the two. There is a lot of blood here, and described in very cinematic terms, even though there are only three deaths. The blood permeates the entire story, and just when I thought it was getting to be a bit too much and perhaps a bit cliche ... Farris ends the story on a grace note that makes you realize why all the blood was necessary and what it was really all about. The psychological dramatic tension (will he get away with it, is the best I can summarize without giving anything away) walks you through a few cliches but not in any way that feels cliched.
309. A Gentleman of the Old School by Chelsea Quinn Yarbro. I read this because it is a Count Saint-Germain story, and it's been years since I've read a Saint-Germain story. That being said ... it's not really a horror story. In fact, I'm not really sure what to call it. It's got murder mystery and serial killer elements in it, it's got the whole "will she learn his secret and what will happen if she does" element, and it's got that "intrepid reporter who might be getting in over her head" element. And they somehow work together, but there's nothing particularly horrific about the story, nor is there anything really in the way of a satisfactory exploration of the serial killer aspect. For fans of Saint-Germain, I think it's a great little character moment, but others might wonder just what the story is doing in this collection.
And finally three from Dark Delicacies II: Fear, also edited by Del Howison and Jeff Gelb:
310. Dog by Joe R. Lansdale. I normally try not to boil stories down to comparisons with other authors, but this story made me immediately think of two Stephen King works: CUJO (for perhaps the obvious reason), and "The Gingerbread Girl" (for reasons that hopefully will become apparent when you read the story). Which is not to say that Lansdale spends the story channeling King -- this is definitely a Lansdale story beginning to end. The tension just keeps ratcheting up through the story. I literally was sweating along with the main character, feeling chased and harried. And left the story with an unsettling feeling that this is the kind of thing that happens to you once, and you can't explain what it was all about but you hope you've done your time and it won't come around to bite you again. Which is meant as a great compliment.
311. First Born by John Farris. This Farris story didn't work quite as well for me as the one above, but it still had its nice twists. The main character is a famous actor who finds that he doesn't remember a promise he made 20 years ago to the man who started his career -- or at least that's what the odd voice on the other side of the phone claims. The caller wants the actor to turn over his first born child -- I'm not giving anything away here because the title pretty much leads you to that already. Farris works in a twist about halfway through that allows the story to resolve in a little bit of a different way than is typical. I think the details he leaves out (allowing the reader to piece things together) are more interesting than the details he leaves in.
312. The Ammonite Violin (Murder Ballad No. 4) by Caitlyn R. Kiernan. I know this is part of a longer book. I read it and decided that I really want to read that longer work now. Kiernan gives us a view through a serial killer's eyes -- a killer who has two passions, killing and collecting ammonite shells. He has a violin constructed using some of those shells and we spend most of the story wondering what his purpose is. It becomes very clear at the end. Kiernan does a great job of building that tension and wording things in such a way that even up to the end you're wondering exactly how the story is going to play out. Very well done.
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