Horror World Book Reviews
June, 2010
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Thrillers:100 Must Reads edited by David Morrell & Hank Wagner, Oceanview Publishing; 2010; 400 pgs; $27.95
“Best of”s, “Must Reads,” Essentials in _____” usually come with an asterisk. Favoritism abounds, odd quirks and tastes emerge, and even high falutin’ literary “criticism” excretes from whatever author decides to plug his choice. With a few exceptions, this has become a sad rule.
David Morrell, to some, the master of the modern thriller, and Hank Wagner, reviewer of seemingly everything under the sun, decided a few years ago to undertake something special. They agreed to forsake the usual pitfalls that plague this kind of effort. Enlisting almost a hundred authors of many an ilk, from all sorts of thriller types (action, horror, paranormal, techo, romance, humor, literary, historical – you name it), they invaded Thrillerfest and sought out a list which truly marked the widest array of thrillers possible. How wide? This volume spans over 3500 years in “publication” – that being noted, many of the favoritism had been knocked out in lieu of the writers truly seeking worthy choices.
From Lee Child discussing “Theseus And The Minotaur,” THRILLERS travels a journey which encompasses over three millennia and several subgenres, culminating in Steve Berry’s mini-treatise of the genre rather than focusing on his choice, The Davinci Code (which is not necessarily a bad thing, but still odd.) Child’s opening does more than autopsy his choice; he points out that not only is Theseus akin to James Bond, but that the birth of the thriller contained many archetypes key to the psyche of mankind. Read through the rest of these 100 selections and draw your own conclusion. Rather than simple imitation, he posits that the character and plot elements are essential to any good thriller.
Some discuss interesting details to chew on without giving away too much about the novels. Who knew that The Count Of Monte Cristo clocked in at 1,243 pages? Or that Mary Shelly’s Frankenstein was originally published anonymously, then predictably criticized when people found out that a woman wrote such a piece? King Solomon’s Mines was written on a bet that H. Rider Haggard couldn’t top Treasure Island. Who would’ve thought that Rambo (from the master, Mr. Morrell in First Blood) didn’t have a first name? Hollywood added it – John is so original. Okay, so that’s small potatoes. What about the fact that his wife brought home an apple one day – its variety? A Rambo apple.
Many of the choices here are typical, but many more will surprise. Rebecca is a novel not on many thriller readers’ list but when dissected, it holds all the key elements of a classic. R.L. Stine’s Silent Night, a thriller? Sure thing. Sandra Brown’s romantic novel, Witness? Why not? All of it makes sense when explained by the right person.
This should be as influential as the A.F.I’s top 100 movie list for readers – of any genre. Fans will find their favorites within but will also find themselves digging for some of these “lost” treasures. “Lists” books rarely are or should be recommended for purchase, but it is nearly impossible not to be somewhat curious – even for the stubborn readers – to step outside of the comfort zone and find themselves wowed by what lies between the covers here.
Dave Simms
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A Host of Shadows, by Harry Shannon; Dark Regions Press; 2010; 198 pgs; $50.00
Harry Shannon is one of those writer’s who might be termed an “author’s author.” Although he has not received as wide acclaim as he deserves, he is revered as a master of his craft by his fellow writers. Probably the best know of his work is the “Night” trilogy (Night of the Beast/Werewolf/Daemon) which is sadly out of print. Host of Shadows is his first short story collection since 2002, and the forthcoming volume from Dark Regions will be the only one in print. It is scheduled for publication in June.
Shannon, who has had a varied and interesting life, is currently putting his degree in psychology to good use as a counselor, and the 25 stories in this book mostly share a keen insight into the psyches of the sometimes unfortunate protagonists. There’s never enough space in a review to discuss every story in a collection, but some of the standouts for me were “Blood and Burning Straw”, a story about a man haunted by the ghosts of his actions in Viet Nam, “Night Nurse”, about the horrors that await us in the medical system, and the World War II cannibalism story “And the Worm Shall Feed”. All the stories are tightly constructed, and offer a mixture of chills and insight into the human condition.
Shannon seems to enjoy collaboration, as the volume includes stories co-written with Steven W. Booth, M. Steven Lukac, the late dgk Goldberg, Gord Rollo, Jack Fisher, and Kealan Patrick Burke. There is a foreward by Rich Hautala, and a set of endnotes in which the author describes the background for each story. The author says he isn’t too fond of these, but I am grateful they are there, as they offer a look behind the curtain to the process of creation.
Joe Howe
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Bible Black, by J. Morvay; Gauntlet Press; 2010; 32 pgs; $12.95
J. Morvay’s Bible Black is a strange duck: Presented in a comic-book format, but not quite a comic-book, it’s a collection of prose stories with spot illustrations by a variety of artists, including John Masse, Dariusz Skitek, Oliver Cereto, Simon Johns, Antti Isosomppi, Shane Deruise, Shelley Bergen, Michel Winckler Krog, and Helmuth Voss. The art runs the gamut from very good to excellent, but the book is there to showcase the Writing of J. Morvay, and the quality of the stories is uneven, to say the least.
There are some disturbing ideas at play here, especially in Stickey Dollars, where a group of young boys are paid by an old lady to contribute to her own personal fountain of youth, and Hollow Cause, one of many stories/poems in the collection that focus, directly or indirectly, on The Holocaust. Other stories, such as California Lottery, tread on ground that will be overly familiar to most Horror fans. For the most part, the stories in BIBLE BLACK don’t seem to have any real point, no end that they’re driving towards…they just kind of stop, leaving the reader to wonder just what Morvay was getting at.
As a life-long comic-book reader and collector, the thing that struck me the most about BIBLE BLACK was how outrageously high it’s cover price was…..$12.95 for a standard-sized, 32 page comic is just insane. It’s a full nine dollars higher that the soon-to-be-industry-standard of $3.99, and aside from the quality, glossy paper, it’s hard to justify the price. The book doesn’t seem to have gotten any comic-shop distribution, and it’s not mentioned anywhere on Gauntlet’s website, so copies may be hard to find for any interested parties.
Daniel Reilly
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EMPIRE: A ZOMBIE NOVEL, by David Dunwoody; Gallery Books, 2010; 293 pgs; $15.00
Confession time: I really didn’t want to read this book when I got it. You see, it’s a zombie book and I’ve read so many of them lately that I really wanted to take a break from the undead hordes. I mean I love the capering corpses, I really do, but everywhere you look these days its zombies, zombies, and more zombies. Yet as resistant as I was to this book, someone did send it to me to review, so what could I do? Well I guess I could have just not read it, but then I would have felt bad for not giving it a chance. Well screw that. If I’m going to get all depressed it’s not going to be over a book, by God! So I sat down to read this novel called EMPIRE and I dared it to bore me. I said to the book, “give me one reason to put you down and you’re done, pal.” Naturally the book didn’t respond, but I took its silence as an admission of guilt. I was sure it would turn out to be another by the numbers bloodbath book, filled with gut-munching and gunshots to the head. Yeah, it looked the type. So with a sneer I opened it up and began to read.
I now humbly and freely admit that I was completely wrong about this charming little novel. It does something that too few zombie stories do these days, it tries new things. Does it always succeeded with them? Well no, but the fact that it willing to fail at times in the pursuit of new ideas should be commended. And when EMPIRE gets things right, it gets them very right.
From the start this book says, “Hey, I’m different” with the action taking place a century into the future, but don’t expect any Buck Rodgers-like shenanigans here. No what you get is a Hundred Year War against the undead. The zombie plague has been raging for over a century and mankind is about to lose the war. Supplies are dwindling, hell living people are dwindling, and the remnants of government are falling back. Worst of all, the undead seem to be growing stronger. Not just in numbers, but the individual zombies themselves seem to be gaining in power. The more a zombie eats, the stronger they get. How is that possible? Well through a mix of black magic and science. Your see there are two kinds of zombies here. Those that rise up through the power of Old Gods, and those that become infected with a zombie virus and thus are able to infect others. So right there you get three things that most other zombie stories don’t have. A century of undead ass kicking, otherworldly powers from beyond, and multiple undead types. Oh, and let’s not forget Death. No, not the act of dying, I’m talking about Death, the scythe brandishing fellow from the Ingmar Bergman films, not to mention Bill & Ted’s Bogus Journey. Yes the Grim Reaper has gotten sick of everyone mocking him and refusing to fully die so he has come to town to take care of matters himself.
The town where Death takes a holiday is Jefferson’s Harbor, Louisiana; a place the U.S. government has just abandoned to its fate as it pulls back to the relative safety of fortified cities to the north. This coastal town also happens to be close to one of the mystical spots, perhaps the mystical spot, that started the whole zombie mess in the first place. So naturally this is the place Death would want to go to get to the bottom of things. However Death is not alone in his interest in this town. An evil man with visions of harnessing that eldritch power to command his very own army of the undead is also here, not to mention a whole mess of zombies.
Caught in the middle of all this are the remaining residents of Jefferson Harbor including a cop trying his best to protect and serve, a female singer who was trying to keep up morale, a woman of faith trying to maintain a shelter, and assorted others. Perhaps too many others, honestly. In one of the few missteps that bugged me, Mr. Dunwoody introduces a lot of characters only to not really develop them much before they become zombie chow. And yes, a lot of folks become corpse kibble in this book. I’d much rather of had fewer characters if that meant I could get to know them better before they bit the dust. As for the main characters, they are all pretty well developed and I liked them all about equally, with the notable exception of the one that makes this book unique; Death. Most of the time I really dug him, but at times his actions or inclusion in the story just seemed kind of silly. But I guess you run that risk when you introduce and entity such as Death as one of your protagonists.
Those minor quibbles aside, I really dug EMPIRE for its breath of fresh air approach to a very overdone subgenre. This novel has resurrected my taste for other zombie books as long as they are handled this well and also offer new things to the world the Romero built. If you don’t like the idea of Death strolling around with a bunch of people and actually trying to save the day (what a concept) then this might not be the book for you. However if that doesn’t bother you and you’re looking for a well written, fresh take on flesh eaters then you’ll want to give EMPIRE a try. You might be shocked at how much you enjoy it. I know I was.
Brian M. Sammons
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How to Make Friends with Demons, by Graham Joyce; Night Shade Books; 2010; 298 pgs; $14.95
If you’ve ever wondered how Frank Capra’s It’s a Wonderful Life might play if it were filmed by Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds, look no further. William Heaney is by some counts a functioning schizoid, a man-whore with a heart of gold, a charity case in search of a cause, a complete nutter, or just a hopeless romantic. He’s haunted by personal demons, the kind that influence not the decisions one does make, but more significantly, the decisions one avoids making. Perhaps he’s been burned too many times, and only now is this reality completely coming into bloom as he begins to grow older, if not yet wiser. “As far as I’m concerned, the crisis started when as an infant I was removed from the maternal breast and the situation will continue to remain critical until I am comforted by the black teat of death.”
William Heaney sees demons. Everywhere. In fact, he’s identified one thousand five hundred and sixty-seven of them. Life must go on, but how, what with all these temptations and the fear and loathing and soul-sucking baggage of a man just past his prime, alone with his demons. His family has splintered, but it’s just another repercussion of a past crammed with irrational decisions based on insecurities that have caught up with him like the karma police. You only have so many fingers to plug the holes. Sooner or later another leak will spring, leaving you soaking wet and cold and extinguishing all the fires that burn in your heart.
William’s wife has exited the picture for a celebrity chef. His children have grown and distanced themselves. Maybe he deserves it. After all, his life has been one of personal deception since his days in college. That’s when he began a side career in antiquarian forgery. There’s lucrative money to be had in faking old manuscripts, perhaps because some people confuse love with holding onto the past. Unfortunately, one of these books involved satanic rituals. It was gibberish, thought William, until it fell into idle hands on campus. When certain locks are broken, it leaves behind doors that can never be forced shut again, if that’s what you want to believe. And so bizarre things, nasty fates, awaited William’s ex lovers. He saw no choice but to try to outrun the demons himself, not realizing one can’t escape their own fears unless they face them. That’s a lesson wasted on a young man, with hands not yet calloused, and with a grip still firm enough to break and bend hearts like steel bars.
The worst guilt trip is the one where you venture off out on your own, with each day bringing you one step closer to forgiveness, and two steps back to square one, deeper in the hole. Graham Joyce takes his reader on a bittersweet journey of redemption. To have lived and to have loved and all that. Just remember: every time a man falls in love a demon gets his wings. But that’s no sin. It’s just a happy ending.
Joyce has created something exceptional here, and it ranks up there with Neil Gaiman’s finer works.
Joshua Jabcuga
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Nightmare Frontier by Stephen Mark Rainey, Macabre Ink; 2010; $ 4.99 (ebook)
Lately, the most enjoyable dark fiction I’ve been reading reminds me of the better horror novels that were released in the mid 1970’s to the early 1980’s. Many of those books were written by authors who possessed an abundance of imagination, and the stories themselves had an exciting “anything goes” type vibe to them. Readers never knew what to expect when cracking open the spines, but chances are the story would feel original and the plotting would keep them on the edge of their seats. Stephen Mark Rainey channels that time period to great effect with Nightmare Frontier, and whether you are a retro horror fan or not, I’m betting that you are going to love this one.
Nightmare Frontier opens up in the middle of a firefight during the Vietnam War. A band of U.S. soldiers are investigating an old stone building in the jungle when all hell breaks loose. The quickly discover that it is a different sort of enemy they are confronting, something that is definitely not human. On retreat, one of the soldiers finds a blue emerald stone in the rubble and begins to leave with it, when to everyone’s horror, a tentacle comes out from the debris and starts to pull the soldier back into the ruble. Amid his fear and pain, the soldier drops the stone, and the troop’s commander picks it up and manages to escape.
From there, the story picks up many years later with a man named Russell Copeland who’s traveling from Chicago back to his hometown called Silver Ridge, in West Virginia, to attend his nephew’s funeral. The young boy’s body was found broken and burned, and there are no suspects. We learn that the boy was found on the property of a hillbilly clan who are odd, filthy, and dangerous. Copeland suspects that the clan is at the heart of his nephew’s demise and he sets out to prove it. It is shortly after this point where the story becomes a hallucinogenic nightmare.
The roads out of Silver Ridge suddenly disappear at its borders, sometimes dead ending in an impossibly tall forest of trees or in an endlessly deep canyon. The color of the sky changes and strange glowing spheres of light are appearing all over the town. People hear their names whispered from far away, and some hear choral music from the church that turns sinister. But the worst of it may be the worm-like creatures that make a metallic clicking sound who kill everyone they come in contact with.
Copeland soon learns that the hillbilly clan is responsible for this paranormal activity, and the blue emerald, the one that the commander took home with him from Vietnam all those years ago, is the catalyst. It turns out that the stone opens up a portal to another world when a holder of the stone dreams. In Silver Ridge, the leader of the hillbilly clan has possession of the stone, and he dreams of revenge.
In horror fiction, the hardest job for an author of surreal fiction is to make the readers suspend their belief in the impossible, and the more bizarre the story line is, the harder that job becomes. In Nightmare Frontier, Rainey does a fantastic job through tight plotting, great characterization, and an intelligent writing style, of convincing the readers that we are there, fighting right alongside Copeland…and that the nightmares he faces are real.
I highly recommend Nightmare Frontier to all dark fiction readers who prefer chills and tension filled scares over extreme horror. You won’t be disappointed.
T. T. Zuma
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Still Missing, by Chevy Stevens; St. Martin’s Press; 340 pgs; $24.99
Chevy Stevens has just published her first novel, Still Missing, which recounts the abduction experience of an early-thirties realtor. Stories of abduction are quite common, but this book adds a novel twist to its telling and steps up the detail quotient to a level bent on defiance of pruriency statutes. Well, that might overstate the matter a bit, but parts of the book are unusually raw.
The victim is Annie O’Sullivan, a real estate agent who was abducted during an open house for a property she was hoping to sell. Her attacker takes her to a remote cabin and holds her hostage there as his “wife” for a year. During this time, Annie is subjected to not only sexual abuse but all manner of other tortures including beatings and psychological attacks. After she finally does get away, she tells her story to her psychiatrist. The novel, then, is a kind of transcription of twenty six therapy sessions. During the talks with her therapist (which are more like confessionals as Annie is the only one talking) she also reveals details of her life growing up, her parents, and other challenges she has faced and with which she still struggles. While the story is compelling, the details are often uncomfortably intimate. For some readers, the candor will draw them in all the more but others might be put off by it. What is more questionable, and a big problem from the literary point of view, is the structure of the novel. It is presented as a person talking to her psychiatrist. Sometimes the narrative reads exactly this way and you get a genuine feeling of eavesdropping reading the passages. Other times, the writing slips into a more common narrative style and the language shifts from the conversational into a more abstract and descriptive tone. While I am sure this is entirely intentional, I find it distracting. You can see it cinematically: each scene opens in the therapist’s office with Annie talking, then slowly fades to a reenactment of the narration. It sounds like it might work well for a movie but it is less well suited for a novel, especially when the effect is repeated twenty six times. You lose your place a little when this happens and the illusion of voyeurism crumbles. This lack of consistency makes the experience of reading the novel a less entertaining.
Many readers will find Still Missing a poignant study of a woman’s suffering and self-analysis. I give it a cautious recommendation and suggest it only to the target audience.
Wayne Edwards
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Universal Studios Monsters: A Legacy of Horror by Michael Mallory, Universe Publishing; September 2009; 252 pgs.; $40
Back in the 1970s, it wasn’t uncommon to find remaindered coffee table books that featured scores of photos from old horror movies—including the Universal and Hammer studios. Those books had garish covers, designed to stir the monster-lover in passing booklovers.
But that was a long time ago.
Monster-lovers of today—including any purists who adore iconic characters such as Dracula, Frankenstein, the Mummy, and the Wolf Man—will rejoice to learn of the publication of by Universe Publishing.
This is no garish tome, though. The book is an homage to the studio that propelled Lon Chaney, Bela Lugosi, and Boris Karloff into legendary status. It covers Universal’s monster movies from the 1920s through the 1950s, including the silent era. And Michael Mallory does it with style. This is the kind of oversized coffee table book that will actually be read.
Universal Studios Monsters is richly illustrated, to be sure, but the stills and full-color theatre posters are accompanied by great stories about the actors and the monsters they portrayed. There are even “spotlights” dedicated to the people who worked behind the camera to frighten generals of theatre-goers. In addition to stories about Chaney and Son, Lugosi, Karloff, and Dwight Frye, readers will be delighted by vignettes devoted to the likes of Curt Siodmak, John P. Fulton, James Whale, Jack P. Pierce, and Hans Salter. (FYI: Siodmak was a writer; Fulton was a special effects man; Whale was a director; Pierce was a makeup wizard; and Salter was a composer and musical arranger.)
Fans of 1950s Universal films won’t be disappointed. The Gill Man from “Creature from the Black Lagoon” is included, as are “The Mole People” and “Tarantula!” There is also a rogues gallery that gives snapshot bios of many supporting actors from the monster movies, as well as a scream sirens section that highlights some of the actresses that were threatened by the best monsters Universal produced.
All in all, Universal Studios Monsters: A Legacy of Horror is well worth the $40 cover price. Heck, if any unwanted monsters ever break into your house you could use this oversized book as a weapon. So, monsters beware.
William A. Veselik
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The Terror & The Tortoiseshell by John Travis; Atomic Fez Publishing; 304 pgs; $34.99 HC
Atomic Fez has recently been making a huge push in the small press lately and garnering a lot of praise. This first of three reviewed here deals with a 6 foot cat, more specifically, a tortoiseshell cat who overnight becomes a gumshoe.
John Travis has penned a novel that’s sort of ANIMAL FARM, partly classic noir, and definitely acid trippy weird – but all in a good, fun, highly readable and entertaining way. Benji Spriteman (he took his owner’s surname) wakes up one morning to find himself changed, human-sized, with the ability to speak while his “person” cowers in fear and runs for his life. It seems that “The Terror” has occurred overnight and changed the world forever. Cats, dogs, gorillas, rhinos, etc. run rampant in the streets and they’re pretty pissed at the humans for all the trouble they’ve caused. Many are dead set on eliminating the humans as they’re loving the idea of being the dominant two-legged species. Also, the animals take on the jobs their people had so Benji becomes a private eye and begins his own journey. Hopefully, it’s one that continues for a long time.
Very dark, but also funny in the sickest of ways. Here’s to hoping the world gets to enjoy much more of Benji – maybe if Atomic Fez offers a dimebag of catnip?
Dave Simms
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What Will Come After: The Complete Zombie Stories Of Scott Edelman, by Scott Edelman; P.S. Publishing; 186 pgs; $24.00 (Trade HC)/$56.00 (Signed & Numbered HC)
Cinematically speaking, Zombies have always been a love of mine…seeing the undead shambling around (Or running around, as the newfangled Zombies have been known to do…) always brings a smile to my face. Literary Zombies, on the other hand, have not met with such great success….Aside from Brian Keene’s masterful The Rising, I haven’t really been blown away by anything Zombie that I’ve read. Maybe it’s the fact that, since they pretty much just shamble around and moan, they don’t really have any personality or particular menace to contribute, aside from an occasional “Aaaarggh!” In that respect, Scott Edelman’s What Will Come After: The Complete Zombie Stories of Scott Edelman aims just a bit higher, shining the light of literacy on the Zombie genre.
Edelman uses the nine stories lurking under Les Edwards striking cover illustration to broaden our Zombie horizons, taking us away from the usual “Band of Survivors run away but get overwhelmed by the undead in the end” tales that we’re used to. There is some of that, as witnessed by “Almost The Last Story By Almost The Last Man”, a fascinating first-person narrative told by a survivor trapped in a Library, struggling to find a way to commit his story, and the story of the end of the World, to paper before he dies, and “Goobers”, where a trapped projectionist keeps a Zombie movie marathon running to placate his undead patrons. But Edelman also dabbles in literary mash-ups, with “Live People Don’t Understand”, “Tell Me Like You Done Before”, and “A Plague On Both Your Houses”, Zombified versions of Our Town, Of Mice And Men, and Romeo & Juliet, respectively. Unlike more recent mash-ups like Pride & Prejudice & Zombies, Edelman plays it straight, and uses the Zombie backdrop to wonderful effect.
I must confess that, after a few hundred pages of Zombie stories, I was feeling a little burned-out on the genre, and I probably won’t pick up another Zombie book for a good long time, but that’s no reflection on Edelman’s skill as a storyteller. His Zombie stories are both literate and satisfying, eschewing the quick gross-out for atmosphere and characterization. If you’re into Zombies, you could do a LOT worse than What Will Come After.
Daniel Reilly
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Sideshowby William Ollie; Dark Regions Press; 2010; 214 pgs.; $ 18.95 (Trade Edition)
Could anybody really call themselves a true horror fan if they are unfamiliar with the following line from Shakespeare’s, Macbeth?
“By the prickling of my thumbs, something wicked this way comes”.
The phrase, written in the early 1600’s, was popularized for contemporary audiences when Ray Bradbury chose the latter portion to title what may arguably be his most famous work, Something Wicked This Way Comes. Bradbury’s novel was a coming age tale involving two young boys and their terror filled misadventures involving a touring carnival with the name of Cooger & Dark’s Pandemonium Shadow Show. With Something Wicked This Way Comes, Bradbury set the ultimate high standard for all future horror novels involving circuses and traveling carnivals as a plot device. As a result, a critical comparison against Bradbury’s classic is guaranteed for any horror novelist with story involving a Big Top backdrop. Facing that kind of scrutiny, it makes you wonder why any author would even attempt to write a circus themed horror novel knowing the critical analysis that’s to come.
It appears that William Ollie was more than cognizant of the inevitable side-by-side comparisons to Bradbury’s masterpiece that he would be facing with Sideshow. What we discover upon reading Sideshow, is that instead of simply stripping Bradbury’s classic tale down to its bare bones circus and carnival themes, and then reconstructing the story as a modern tale of extreme horror, Ollie did a sensible thing…he decided to pen a homage that borders on reverence. The question is, did he pull it off?
I can honestly say that William Ollie has succeeded brilliantly with Sideshow. With a tip of his hat (and a wink in his eye), Ollie has not only paid his respect to Something Wicked This Way Comes, he’s created one heck of an entertaining story that is more than just a pleasing compliment to Bradbury’s tale.
In Sideshow, we are presented with the story of two young boys, who, much as in Something Wicked This Way Comes, find themselves in a fight for their lives when a traveling carnival comes to their small town. The boy’s coming-of-age back-story in Sideshowmirrors the one in Bradbury’s novel, only the trials they face are decidedly more modern in Sideshow. For instance, one of the two boys, Mickey, has a single parent, his mom, who’s an alcoholic that hangs around in bars and sleeps around, mostly with a local married hot shot.
Mickey, and his best pal Justin find themselves drawn to the circus from the moment it arrives. Initially they are fascinated at the wondrous site presented before them, but soon they find themselves curious and questioning if there is more to the carnival than meets the eye. As they watch the carnival set up, rides seem to spring up out of nowhere. Then endless groups of festive people appear; taking their turn on the rides, crowding the midway for its food, and lining up for the opportunity to try their luck on the games of chance. And though the boys recognize some of these people, something just doesn’t seem right about the crowd. And then there’s the mysterious Hannibal Cobb, the Ringmaster of the carnival (the doppelganger to Ray Bradbury’s, Mr. Dark).
At first the boys, and others, are captivated by Cobb’s ability to be able to make the strangest illusions from the smoke rings of his pipe, and to convince just about any customer to they are going to have the time of their lives once inside the carnival. But as the story progresses, it becomes very apparent that there is a lot more to Cobb than parlor tricks and having a glib tongue.
And it doesn’t take all that long for the boys to discover that there are many other things that may not be as they seem once inside the carnival. Freaks, some in bottles, others in cages, look very familiar to them. And occasionally, something in Justin’s visual perspective briefly shifts. The clean walkways between the booths become dirty and cluttered. The brightly colored, metallic painted rides turn dull and rusty. And the food, which looked so fresh, and tasted so wonderful earlier, now, at a sideways glance, appears to be foul smelling and spoiled.
Though Ollie has borrowed plot points liberally from Something Wicked This Way Comes, he hasn’t simply cut and pasted them into Sideshow. Ollie has brought his own unique twist to Bradbury‘s story, infusing these moments with his own version of physical and psychological terrors. And Ollie has not shied away from the moral issues raised inSomething Wicked This Way Comes. The burden of overwhelming regret, the longing of eternal youth (vs. the implied freedom of maturity), and the struggles of emotional pain are all undercurrents that figure prominently in Sideshow. And Ollie delves even further into his characters psyche by addressing the twin themes of retribution and revenge, with consequences that are terrifying, and at times gag inducing.
So, what’s the answer to the most obvious question concerning Sideshow?Does it compare favorably to Something Wicked This Way Comes,or does it come across as a well meaning but uninspired tribute?
Though it might be impossible to ever live up to a classic that is embedded so fondly into everybody’s consciousness, Sideshow does a damn fine job of making the reader forget its origins. And while it is at first tempting to start making comparisons between the two novels, readers will find themselves so enamored of Ollie’s version that thoughts of Bradbury’s classic soon find themselves safely tucked away into a corner of their mind.
And, if for some unfathomable reason, a reader is not familiar with Bradbury’s classic tome, then, taken on it’s on own merits, readers will be absolutely delighted by Sideshow. Sideshow is one heck of an entertaining and wild ride into carnival hell. It’s weighed heavily with scenes of terror, extreme horror, with the tension in the story often as tight as an elastic band stretched to its breaking point. For many readers, Sideshow just might be one of the best horror novels they read this year. This one is highly recommended.
T. T. Zuma
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Firefly Rain by Richard Dansky, Simon andSchuster.com; 2010; 343 pgs; $15.00
When an ad for Firefly Rain flashed across my computer as a recommended read from one of the on-line book sellers, I decided to give it a look over. The description of the book, a haunted house story in the southern boonies, really piqued my interest. And I noticed that the cover blurbs were from some pretty respected review outlets, all proclaiming it to be an excellent book. To top it off, one prominent author who I respect, claimed that it reminded him of Stephen King. I was hooked, and purchased it. After reading Firefly Rain, I’m now wondering how I could have been so gullible.
I will say that I thought the book was an o.k. read, and I was for the most part, somewhat entertained. But I can’t for the life of me see what Publisher’s Weekly, Library Journal, or Douglass Clegg thought was so great about it.
Firefly Rain tells the story of a young man named Jacob who moved away from his southern roots under protest from his Mother and Father, to go to school and set up shop in Boston. After many years his business fails, and he’s now broke. So with nowhere else to go, he decides to head back home for a short while, recharge his batteries, and decide where to go from there. His parents had both passed on a while ago so the homestead is empty, though well maintained over the years by an old family friend.
The thing is, Jacob can’t stand his home. He avoided going back the whole time he was in Boston, only visiting during his parents funerals, and now that he is back, he plans on spending as little time there as possible. But as they say, the best laid plans of mice and men do oft’ times go astray, so not only does he feel trapped now that he’s back home, he almost feels like there is a conspiracy to keep him there.
First, the moving van with all his belongings winds up in an accident and everything inside it is ruined, so he has nothing left of his time in Boston to help make the house feel like it’s his. Then, shortly after he arrives, his car is stolen, and since it’s an awful long walk into the nearest town, he feels like a captive in the house. And the old man who been doing the maintenance on the property, well he keeps telling Jacob that he belongs here, and that his mother doesn’t want him to leave.
Jacob soon is subject to quite a few other odd occurrences. He discovers that fireflies die when they come onto his property, doors won’t open when other people are around, and they won’t stay closed when he wants them to. Then there’s that large dog that comes around in the evenings trying to break into the house and kill him. And he discovers that his shotgun mysteriously reloads itself after he has fired it. But the most frustrating thing of all is that the person who stole his car keeps driving it past his house at night, taunting him, but when he gets close enough to see inside, there is either a very fat person driving it, or Jacob can’t see any one at all.
As far as a haunted house tale, Firefly Rain has all the ingredients to make up a pretty decent scarefest, but for a few reasons, it falls flat, and a lot of it has to do with the first person narrative. Jacob endlessly over thinks everything. The reader gets tired of revisiting the same thoughts over and over again, and boy, does Jacob go on and on when he does get to thinking. Also the reader will have a hard time identifying with Jacob. Sometimes he comes across as a hard, headstrong young man who’s willing to face any predicament with strength, hell, we even see him physically fighting his way out of some really bad situations. But at other times, he comes across as a weak kneed pussy, either running scared or cowering. And for some reason, Jacob has a tendency to make some pretty bad decisions, often putting him in harms way. And what’s with him being led around the nose by various women? At one point he’s doing the dishes while a female friend has it out with the local police chief!
And finally, I was confused by the whole firefly business. It seems that they have something to do with the ghost in the story not being able to make it to heaven, but there are also plot points’ pointing out that it was a promise and a curse of sorts that kept the ghost earthbound. Truth be told, the whole firefly business seemed a little ridiculous to me, and distracting as they didn’t really add all that much to the story.
If you’re the type of reader who generally agrees with the blurbs on the covers of novels, I’m betting you will love Firefly Rain. On the other hand, if you take blurbs with a grain of salt and go into Firefly Rain with an open mind and no expectations, then most likely you will have a somewhat entertaining read. But either way, I think you’ll find that Firefly Rain not a very memorable book.
T. T. Zuma
* * * * * * *
Dark Faith edited by Maurice Broaddus & Jerry Gordon; Apex; 320 pgs; $19.99
A religious anthology? Some would shy away from reading this or consider it to be capitalizing on the Dan Brown craze. Maurice Broaddus & Jerry Gordon thought they had something here.
They were right. Dark Faith rocks. It’s been awhile since an anthology, especially a themed one was this solid. Usually one skims through the half weak stories for the few gems and “names” yet these guys chose wisely and the ratio of winners to losers is amazingly high. Whatever deity you believe in, he or she would approve of this.
From the opening poem from Linda Addison to the Braunbeck closer, “For My Next Trick I’ll Need A Volunteer” (can the man write a bad story?), quality reigns within the covers. Jennifer Pelland’s “Ghosts of New York” tackles 9/11 with a woman who relives the event over and over in a chilling but poignant tale and alone makes this collection worthwhile. Brian Keene & Wrath James White follow with stories of a vengeful God that besides their unconventionality, lend some unique insight into those who used to worship blindly. Other knockouts include stories by Douglas F. Warrick, Rain Graves (poem), Jay Lake, Richard Dansky, Chesya Burke and Lucien Soulban. That’s not to knock others but these are far beyond what usually are contained in themed anthologies. Tom Piccirilli further cements his status as one of the best writers out there, no matter what the genre, in “Scrawl.”
Whether the topic is a vengeful god, an autistic boy, the fate of war torn soldiers, muses, art itself, or otherwise, most of these stories fulfill what an anthology should be. Tones and forms differ throughout and most work - thankfully, in almost every tale, one can tell if the story and characters work or not. Again, in most cases, they do.
Dave Simms
* * * * * * *
Chasing Light by Gabby Taub, Lulu, 2009, 300 pgs. $12
Gabby Taub is a 18-year-old self-published author from New Jersey who has already written four books, one of which is entitled Chasing Light. It’s impressive enough that Taub has four novels under her belt and she’s just graduating from high school. What’s more impressive is the quality of her latest outing.
Here’s the author’s own description of the plot of Chasing Light: “Everyone knows that fossil fuels are finite, and when the United States begins to run low, scientists scramble to find an alternate fuel. What they come up with is apocomium, a man-made fuel that will never run low and never become extinct. However, nobody expected a rat to accidentally ingest apocomium and contract a new disease, called the Corpus virus. What begins as a dehydration problem turns for the worse when its victims begin to thirst for human flesh. Quasi-zombies run rampant throughout the nation as four teenagers try to find refuge in the only known haven: New York City. Little do they know, one of the four is carrying a secret with him that could put a stop to the apocalyptic nightmare beginning to take hold.”
Keep in mind, though, that Chasing Light is certainly no George Romero chomp-fest. The violence is minimal. You won’t find zombies running around with half-chewed entrails dangling from their teeth, which makes the action more appealing to a mainstream audience.
Teen-agers should enjoy reading Chasing Light, since a group of them comprise the main characters in the novel. The teens are likable and Taub’s dialogue between them rings true throughout. At the same time, adults alike will find much to enjoy here, thanks to Taub’s surprisingly mature writing style.
What’s most important is that readers of horror—even “horror lite,” in this case—support and encourage emerging authors, including Gabby Taub. Who knows? Her next novel, and there will undoubtedly be a next novel from her, might end up being released by a major publisher. You’ll want to be able to brag to your friends that “I read Gabby Taub when she was still self-publishing her work.”
By all means, start with Chasing Light.
William A. Veselik
* * * * * * *
I’m Not A Serial Killer by Dan Wells; Tor; 272 pgs; $21.99HC, $9.99 PB
John Wayne Cleaver was not named after Gacy, or so his mother claims. Maybe she played with fire and held her womb too close to the flames. Her son has a disability – he’s born a sociopath in this great debut from Dan Wells. Is it YA or not? Sometimes it seems to be, sometimes not, but who the hell cares? It’s a great story.
In the boring little town of Clayton, John leads a pretty boring life but it works for him. He knows he’s different than most people and most of them know it too. His mother worries, his therapist is intrigued, and his classmates just think him weird. His fascination with serial killers is growing to a level that worries everyone yet he doesn’t worship them – he’s simply fascinated by their crimes and who they are as people. You see, he knows they’re also sociopaths for the most part and he does not want to become one. In fact, he follows a strict set of guidelines in order not to become one. His life, however, isn’t very conducive to staying “clean.” He helps his mom out in her funeral home and works on the bodies which to date have died in normal manners.
Then a body is discovered with an organ missing and John’s world spirals into something new. He attempts to profile the killer and, of course, wishes to catch him somehow. Of course he thinks he’s better equipped since he’s only a swish of a blade away from the same lifestyle.
This first of an intended trilogy will draws parallels to Jeff Lindsey’s Dexter series yet it’s different enough (having a young protagonist works pretty well) and the fact he refuses to fall into the same trap by killing people, good or bad, separates it. John Cleaver works hard to stay the course and off the path of a criminal.
One will wonder where Wells will head next with his young protagonist. He manages to create a deep character in Cleaver – pretty difficult considering John feels nothing – and surrounds him with a cast worthy of Dexter.
Recommended for both teens and adults.
Dave Simms
* * * * * * *
Top 100 Horror Movies, by Gary Gerani; Fantastic Press; 189 pgs; $24.99
I love books of lists. The best part about them is disagreeing with whatever the author has decided is the Top 100 Whatever. It is a source of endless amusement and distraction, analyzing the choices and justifying your own personal picks. At long last, we now have a robust list of top horror movies, titled, with stunning acuity, Top 100 Horror Movies.
Author Gery Gerani (who was also one of the writers on the great 1988 horror movie Pumpkinhead) does not give just an arbitrary list of one hundred horror movies everybody has seen a dozen times. Instead he lays out very precisely his reasoning for selecting all the films in the book. For each placeholder, Gerani tells us Who Made It, What’s It About, and Why It’s Important. He definitely has a method to his madness. The list itself? Apparently Gerani and I have a lot of the same likes and dislikes. I only found a couple of movies I would have categorically left off the list, like Sweeney Todd (2007) and The Abominable Dr. Phibes (1971). This minor disagreement was more than made up by the dozen or so startling inclusions you usually don’t see on Top lists but that should be on all of them, like Kwaidan (1964), I Bury the Living (1958), Island of Lost Souls (1932), and The Man Who Laughs (1928). As for the number one slot, well, I won’t give it away but I will say I would have chosen an older film. How’s that for a teaser?
The book is loaded with photos from the movie sets, posters, insightful commentary from the author, and an introduction from the irrepressible Roger Corman. It is a book you can go back to over and over to leaf through and enjoy. Fun stuff. Highly recommended.
Wayne Edwards
* * * * * * *
Black Static 16; TTA Press; 64pp; $3.95 (British)
With its 16th issue, BLACK STATIC revamps its format and comes out the other end looking even better than before – which is pretty hard to do. Already the most regular horror mag out there, and in the top two in quality, the upgrade should scare the competition straight.
The table of contents now gives a preview of each column and story, complete with illustrations. This issue includes stories by Tim Casson, M.G. Preston, Mike O’Driscoll, Alison J. Littlewood, and Lynda E. Rucker – the quality of which exceeds most publications whether compared to those in the UK or US. Stephen Volk’s “Electric Darkness” focuses on the horrors of reviews, criticism, and crap we have to deal with in the writing biz in “Holding Hands in Quicksand” – a must read for anyone who’s ever been knocked down by a rejection. Mike O’Driscoll delves deep into James Ellroy’s trilogy about an “alternative” American history that is more analysis than review. Chris Fowler’s “Interference” discusses more of the downfall of the cinematic public, from Romero’s initial vision to the stupidity fed to teenagers today. His views on what’s still scary versus what’s asked for by a lobotomized society are dead on – which is scary.
As usual, the reviews, both movie and book, are vast, and contain many giveaways for most DVDs.
The feature author this month is the delightful Sarah Pinborough. Besides being beautiful and charming, she can scare the pants off of any man (or woman) with her fiction. From her Leisure titles to the entirely different DOG-FACED GODS, she discusses her writing journey. Again, Black Static offers a chance at winning copies of each.
One of the few magazines worth subscribing to out there in the horror field.
Dave Simms
* * * * * * *
Solomon’s Grave, by Daniel G. Keohane; Dragon Moon Press; 304 pgs; $19.95
This reviewer found Daniel G. Keohane’s first novel, a 2009 finalist for the Horror Writer’s Association Bram Stoker Award for Superior Achievement in a First Novel, to be a bit of a conundrum. The author certainly displays an ability to write at a professional level, and further spins a good yarn that for the most part is fast-paced and keeps readers interested and guessing. One would expect no less from any novel that makes it onto the final ballot for the Stoker Award.
The novel attempts to combine facets of historical-religious-adventure genre novels and films like The DaVinci Code and the four Indiana Jones movies and novelizations, along with darker aspects straight from the more explicit, gore-and multiple-killings-laden heart of much contemporary horror. In many ways, it is a match made in … er, … Hell.
After a brief, intriguing Prologue that takes place in Constantinople circa 1204 A.D., we are whisked forward to contemporary Massachusetts, and the small town of Hillcrest. The novel’s protagonist, young Minister Nathan Dinneck, is coming home fresh from Divinity school where he’s earned his degree, and a promising stint as an assistant minister in a Florida community, back to the town where he’d been born and raised, in order to take over as only the second ordained minister to lead the town’s First Baptist Church. This is a source of pride to Nathan’s parents, who raised their son steeped in traditional values and a healthy belief in and respect for God. However, all is not right with the young man of God, who is introduced to readers as he is in the throes of an all too vivid and terrifying nightmare, while riding on a bus and nearing his home town.
Nathan also soon learns that his father, a normally deeply religious man and regular churchgoer, has in recent months joined some new, local “men’s club” that has popped up seemingly out of nowhere, and now refuses to attend church at all. As Nathan spends his first week in town learning the ropes from the now elderly and retiring minister from whom he is taking over, Nathan meets a number of odd people that seem to unnerve him, including Vincent Tarretti, the overly quiet and reclusive man who has taken care of the town’s cemeteries for the past thirty plus years, and who keeps giving the new minister a more-than-normal inspection, and Peter Quinn, the distinguished looking, white-haired man who presides over the new Hillcrest Men’s Club. Both men harbor substantial secrets that could conceivably rock the entire earth and human race, and are both far more than they seem. These men all play parts, on different sides, in a vast, hidden conflict that will pit true men of God against men, and others, all of whom have sworn allegiance to an ancient Pagan god, a King of Ancient Biblical Demons, who still has connections with humanity these millennia later. Author Keohane is efficient at moving his characters and his story narrative forward at a good pace so that there isn’t much, if any time left for boredom to set in amongst readers. He also presents readers with a number of plot twists and turns that most will not readily guess, and that keep readers turning pages as quickly as they can.
However, to be fair, there are a few times that the author over uses and over relies upon sudden shifts in his narrative to “future-flashbacks” - where a character, typically the protagonist, suddenly experiences (as do the readers) a sudden flash-forward, looking backwards, which act as too obvious foreshadowings and are overblown and seemingly only succeed in draining all suspense from certain scenes, as the author actually hereby tips off readers that his protagonist must still remain alive and comparatively well to be having such flashbacks whilst in the future. A small example, and not the only one, can be found on pages 110-111 of the novel:
In the nightmare that followed, he would look back often to this one moment
In his life, the moment before he answered the call. he would see it frozen like a snapshot, play the last few sounds of normalcy over and over in his mind. Her hand on his. Before everything changed forever
Another point of confusion, admittedly more involving personal opinion rather than any kind of universal approbation, are some of the personal quirks and qualities the author decided to saddle his protagonist with. Nathan Dinneck cannot be said to bear many of the qualities that are ordinarily found in more traditional young, male horror genre “heroes.” For instance, Nathan is, when you get right down to it, a pretty big “wuss,” and perhaps uncomfortably in touch with his “feminine side” Here’s one young, male horror story and adventure protagonist that isn’t afraid to openly weep in public, and who really turns on the waterworks. He isn’t afraid to do this even in front of his girlfriend, the supposed ”love of his life,” whom he hadn’t seen in five years. He is also apt to faint dead away at the drop of a hat, or little daymare, right in front of his new congregation. He is also easily intimidated by his girlfriend, who can boss him around almost mercilessly. One would think that as a man of God with a divinity degree and who has worked as an assistant minister in a big city in Florida, Nathan would have both been taught enough and experienced enough to have built up the kind of necessary tough outer-hide that ministers, like doctors, attorneys, judges, and social workers, among others engaged in community and human services professions, quickly develop so as to be able to professionally minister to the needs of those seeking their help.
Again, talk about confusion, the only time that Nathan is ever seen to act in any harsh or physically intimidating way towards anyone, which is in itself, out of character for him, is when he physically attacks and shakes poor Vince, the cemetery groundskeeper, a man many years his senior, whom he violently confronts with his emotions completely out of control. That scene seemingly conflicts to such a degree with everything else we’ve seen and known about Nathan so as to make it not really believable in this young man of God.
Speaking of contradictory behavior that seems out of place, there is also a scene wherein Vince, the cemetery groundskeeper, who has been ultra careful and even obsessively secretive and ultra-cautious for many decades, and who fears that his cover may have been blown, suddenly decides to spill all his secrets when Nathan disobeys his direct orders and shows up at his door with his girlfriend, a complete stranger whom the grave keeper does not know. Again, while this, like the other seeming contradictions and confusions previously mentioned, are not so overwhelming as to override or destroy the entertaining reading experience engendered by Solomon’s Grave; rather, they act as a few, minor wrong notes, barely there, but sufficient to be noticeable when listening to a concerto might act as a minor irritant in an otherwise beautiful rendering. Considering the overall skill and acumen displayed by author Keohane throughout, and taking into account that Solomon’s Grave is his first novel, these are the kinds of things one can expect to disappear from the author’s work quite quickly as he gains further experience in writing novel length works. In conclusion, on balance Solomon’s Grave is an entertaining, fast moving, supernaturally-tinged adventure yarn, with a fair share of horror, that will leave readers satisfied and is well worth a read.
Norman L. Rubenstein
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