Horror World Book Reviews
November, 2009
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Ground Zero: A Repairman Jack Novel by F.Paul Wilson; Tor; 2009, 368pp; $25.99
Jack’s back again. For the 13th time, launched in The Tomb in what seems like eons ago, anti-hero Repairman Jack reluctantly falls into another “fix-it” job. For those following the series and are up to date with the entire cycle, there will be two more “Jack” novels before F. Paul Wilson revisits and slightly alters the iconic Nightworld to end the story arc.
Wilson masterfully weaves together the threads from not only the original “Adversary” cycle which hinted at his fondness for Lovecraft but also from the stunning new YA series “Jack: Secret Histories.” For those who haven’t experienced the genesis of Jack and how he came to be the man who doesn’t exist but solves the problems of New Yorkers who have both human, and supernatural issues, give it a shot. It’s anything but a kid’s series and has enough inside jokes that alone make the read worthwhile. All of it comes together in the descending arc of Ground Zero, set years after the fall of the Twin Towers in a manner that can only be achieved by a true master of plotting.
The female lead from Secret Histories, quirky genius, Weezy, pops up in this story as a 9/11 conspiracy buff along with her brother, who enlists Jack’s help. After an accident, the trio reunites for the first time since childhood and delve into her world of what really happened on that fateful day. Readers are treated to a glimpse of a strange figure in a boat who triggers the collapse of the buildings, a man who is tied into a plan that began millennia ago.
Without giving away the plot, more of the underlying story behind the mythology Wilson has created surfaces, teasing faithful fans with nuggets of knowledge about the “Compendium.” One gets the sense that the writer decided to reward the readers by answering many of the questions most of the “Jack” and “Adversary” books have raised.
Once again, Wilson’s “invisible” writing style triumphs over what could easily be a cumbersome novel in the hands of a less capable author. The entire series is highly recommended.
--Dave Simms
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Feeding Ground, by Sarah Pinborough; Dorchester Publishing; 2009; 310 pgs.; $7.99
With Feeding Ground, followers of Sarah Pinborough are in for one hell of a surprise.
Feeding Ground is such a sharp left turn in Pinborough’s style of writing, that long time fans might find themselves perplexed and repeatedly going back to the cover of this book to confirm that she is indeed the author. Simply put, Feeding Ground is Sarah Pinborough on steroids. Feeding Ground is juiced up from the opening pages and dripping with as much testosterone as you would find in a Vin Diesel Movie.
Though Feeding Ground shares her vision of a desolate and despair ridden world that is populated with the same arachnid creatures as featured in her earlier release, Breeding Ground, there are two major differences between the novels. For one, Pinborough has put an ingenious twist on the spiders that is highly imaginative and serves as an extremely effective vehicle for social commentary. Secondly, she includes a separate set of antagonists that are so over the top disgusting and cruel in Feeding Ground, that they almost rival the creatures in their deadliness’.
The basic plot of Feeding Ground doesn’t stray too far from that of Breeding Ground. For some unexplained reason, women all over London and the surrounding areas are finding themselves getting fat and haggard looking. It turns out that they are pregnant, only what is gestating inside of these women are not human babies but spider-like creatures. These spiders do a quite a number on the women, first taking control of their minds and bodies during the pregnancy and then ripping them apart during the birthing process. And after they are born, like all spiders, they spin webs to capture their food, let their prey ripen for a bit, and then eat them. The thing about these spiders though is that get big, very big, and their favorite food is people. In Feeding Ground, the spider-like creatures portrayed are much more cunning and vicious than in her first novel and Pinborough includes some great scenes of these spiders stalking and pouncing on their victims, and in the process she gives the readers a bird’s eye view of what it’s like to be attacked and eaten by an insect bigger than a tank.
The cast of characters in Feeding Ground is large. It includes a gang of criminals led by a savage Rastafarian named Blane, who, with his loyal right hand man and drug addled posse, figure out how to enslave and tame an inferior breed of the spiders to do his bidding. Over on the righteous side of town, Pinborough’s cast includes a group of students stranded in a tavern as well as some young teens living in a nearby tenement to Blane and his henchmen. These two pockets of young men must not only battle the spiders to stay alive, but steer clear of Blane and his cronies who are looking for food to keep their captive spiders in line.
Pinborough’s portrayal of Blane is wonderfully evil; his metamorphosis throughout the novel from an enterprising drug dealer to a junk addicted sadistic killer is not only devilish fun, it’s truly frightening. And she does an amazing job of getting into the feeling of camaraderie, eventual angst, and the downright terror the young teen’s experience as they find themselves forced to become adults.
After coming off of her entertaining but derivative novel The Tower, Sarah Pinborough has bounced back strong with Feeding Ground. With its high adrenaline action scenes and fast paced plotting, Feeding Ground will please all horror fans. This one is highly recommended.
-- T.T. Zuma
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One by Conrad Williams; Virgin; April 2009; 400pp; $12.99
England and possibly the rest of the world have been decimated by something. Richard Jane rises to the surface from his job as an ocean rig driller to find something went very, very wrong. Bodies explode, deflate, look like diseased Pillsbury Doughboys, and so on – all without a clue as to what occurred. Strange clouds bear overhead, spilling a sickly dust onto the country yet nothing reveals itself to him that would give a simple, plausible answer. No nukes, natural disaster, or conventional means could have done this. He wanders the land, scouring stores and houses searching for answers – and his son – his “one” purpose he has left.
What is it lately with British horror writers lately and the apocalypse? Tim Lebbon, Mark Morris, Simon Clark, and Michael Marshall Smith do a hell of a job of describing how the ball of crap we live on goes to hell in a novel. While they all manage to accomplish this with competent writing, Williams stands out in a literary fashion (this is no way means to slight the other authors). His writing is scary good, as adept with wordplay as Peter Straub or fellow Brit Ramsey Campbell. While not as fascinating as The Unblemished, which could be the best novel of the past five years, any of Williams novels stand out from the hordes of stories rife with tired tropes.
The plot touches upon nothing new here but the manner in which he delivers the end of the world brings together subtle elements of Cormac McCarthy’s The Road with the excitement of Brian Keene’s The Rising. Jane’s character avoids every overdone main character cliché and embraces flaws in his being which feel natural and unforced. Others react to the events as normal people might, in quirky, unheroic actions, that solidify empathy the reader will feel for them.
What further sets One apart is its lack of closure or denouement. While following the iconic paths The Stand and Swan Song have blazed, Williams steers his apocalypse into a very plain but mysterious territory. No pat explanation is given for the “EVENT” which decimated the world. No ultimate bad guy storms out of the shadows to fight for the souls of mankind. Humanity bonds together in the dysfunctional ways that only humans can bond, screwing up the plans in every way, shape, and fashion yet still aim for a new beginning – even if all looks to be hopeless.
Readers will follow Jane on the quest for the son he knows no longer lives, but won’t care about the result. This journey is what matters.
--Dave Simms
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High Moon written by David Gallaher, illustrated by Steve Ellis, Zuda Comics, 200 pp $14.99
Zuda comics has an interesting, innovative approach to publishing. Through its website, aspiring comics creators submit their work which (after a selection process) gets posted on the Zuda website. On the website, users vote on whether they like the comic. Whichever comic gets the most votes during each monthly competition wins and the creator receives an on-line publishing contract. This participatory approach might just work as long as there are many talented creators out there willing to submit their work for public scrutiny. Judging by what’s on the website, there are a lot of great comics we might never have seen without Zuda.
David Gallaher’s High Moon was the first monthly Zuda winner and has now been collected in a print volume for your tactile enjoyment. A mixture of horror and the old West, this comic is a bullet-ridden tale of pursuit and escape set in a world imperiled by the traditional supernatural threats of vampires and werewolves as well as less common terrors. For me the plot is a little murky here and there and the transitions clank a bit now and then. Taken as a whole, however, it is an excellent horror comic. The soft-toned illustrations by Steve Ellis are not only beautifully executed but mark a curious contrast to the subject matter that leaves a strong and memorable impression.
Looking at this first release from Zuda it is obvious they are off to a good start. Gallaher and Ellis have made a statement here as well, loud and clear: their work is not to be missed. The story told so far in the first three parts collected in Volume One of High Moon definitely leaves you wanting more. And you can get more immediately by going to the Zuda website where, as the tag-line reads, the story continues. Recommended.
--Wayne Edwards
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Kingdom of Shadows, by Greg Gifune; Darkside Digital; 2009; 93 pgs.; $4.95
Kingdom of Shadows reminds me of the first time I opened up Clive Barker’s “Books of Blood Vol. 1”, and the impact it had on me after just reading the first few stories. I remember being stunned at how viscerally powerful they were. To this day I can recall cringing with both awe and revulsion as those stories slammed into my brain with all of those bizarre visions of horror, and how those stories lingered long after I read them. At the time, authors like King and Straub made me feel more like a spectator rather than a participant as I devoured their novels, Barker’s horror however affected me on a much more personal level. Barker made me feel like I was more than just a witness to his tales; he managed to make me feel his characters fears as if they were my own. Though there are a few contemporary authors that affect me much like Barker had (Tom Piccirilli and Gary Braunbeck are two good examples), in my mind, there is no one who deserves to be more favorably compared to Clive Barker than Greg Gifune.
Gifune is a master at entertaining readers as he scares them half to death. He does this by not only appealing to our basic instincts and our more visceral emotions as Barker does, but with the use of religious subtext in his plotting and by infusing his characters with a sense of existentialism. Threads using the basic tenants of Christianity, along with a propensity to put his characters in situations where they knowingly choose to put themselves at odds with those tenants, are rife in Gifune’s fiction. In Kingdom of Shadows, Gifune uses this talent to stunning effect.
In Kingdom of Shadows, Gifune presents us with a group of men who find themselves questioning their very existence. Their memories are cloudy, their lives aimless, and even their reality appears to be shifting. They were all once part of a gang whose last bank robbery went horribly wrong, resulting in one of their own dying. After fleeing the scene of the robbery, they find an abandoned farm house on the outskirts of town and take refuge there to bury their dead and to split the money. But something seems very wrong with this farmhouse. All of them, for some reason, share a feeling of familiarity with it, and they are spooked by six scarecrows that watch over a nearby weed infested field. After addressing their fears of the farmhouse, the gang of thieves decides to quickly split their take and leave, but when they open the bags that they had stuffed with the banks money, all they find is shredded newspaper.
Presently, we learn that all of the men had separated after that night and have gone on with their lives, but none of them have any memory of what occurred after they discovered the money was missing. All of their lives have changed for the worst since that evening in the farmhouse as they are all plagued with bouts of amnesia, depression, and hallucinations; all of which are causing them to question their sanity. Then one morning a member of the gang named Snow contacts another member called Rooster to tell him that he has discovered what happened to them in the farmhouse that night. The two men set up a meeting where Snow reveals how the gang had been unwittingly involved in an experiment that literally sent those men into the farthest reaches of Hell.
Gifune doesn’t hold anything back in Kingdom Of Shadows as the carnage in this story is as gory as it gets, so those readers who love a generous heaping of blood served with their horror will be delighted. And for those that come to expect an intellectual bent in Gifune’s work, they will not be disappointed either. Gifune addresses the very nature of Hell (physically and psychologically), the deceits of ordinary life, and if redemption can get you a free “get out of Hell” card.
It would be safe to say that Kingdom of Shadows is a powerful piece of work and made even all the more stunning considering all the elements that Gifune has packed into its moderate length. Greg Gifune fans will embrace Kingdom of Shadows and those that have never read any of his novels now have the perfect opportunity to sample his work inexpensively. So this evening, instead of spending five bucks on two cheeseburgers, fries, and a Coke, use the fiver to purchase Greg Gifune’s Kingdom of Shadows. You’ll find yourself savoring it a lot longer, not to mention it will certainly be tastier. This is one download that is highly recommended.
--T.T. Zuma
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Trick ’r Treat written by Marc Andreyko, Wildstorm, 96 pp $19.99
Michael Dougherty directed (and wrote) a delightful Halloween horror movie called Trick ’r Treat. The movie reportedly faced many delays before being released and received a direct-to-DVD distribution. The film has been very well received causing many, me included, to pause and ponder why it did not receive a theatrical release. Hmm. In any case, one thing the movie did get that not every movie receives is a graphic novel tie-in. Written by Marc Andreyko and illustrated by four different artists – Mike Huddleston, Grant Bond, Christopher Gugliotti, and Fiona Staples, to list them in order of appearance – the book follows the plot of the movie very closely. It might seem a bit redundant to do a direct adaptation of a current movie into a graphic novel. This movie, though, is particularly well suited to the enterprise because it is an anthology movie in the first place and each chapter in the book gets a different illustrator so, as a reader, you get cascading layers of interpretation of the primary source material. It works quite well.
Each vignette is a Halloween tale of murder and mayhem. The author strikes an excellent balance between the traditional Halloween/horror fare and tasty little twists on the expected so that the reader is always a bit uncertain about what will come next. The stories are tied together by a wandering, savage, short-statured entity who wears a bag over its head and is pretty much indestructible. Very creepy. The artwork varies from simple to muted to expressionistic to jagged, accumulating in an enhanced feeling of unsettledness that genuinely augments the thrills in the narrative. Recommended.
The only question now is which to experience first, the book or the movie? I cannot help you out there. It is a personal preference kind of a deal. I read the book first and then saw the movie. If I had it to do over, I would probably reverse the order. Whichever way you go, you should certainly do both.
--Wayne Edwards
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Twists of the Tale edited by Ellen Datlow; Wildside Press, 2007; 248pp; $14.95
When this book came out, the “themed” anthology was at its peak (or nadir) and many groaned at the idea of cat horror. Why bother? Cats are overdone, annoying, haven’t been relevant since Egyptian times, and why not dogs instead? Well, screw them. Cats rule – any horror reader thinking otherwise can sit their ignorant ass in the doghouse and chew on a bone. Okay, just joking – all animals are amazing, but there’s no denying the certain mysterious quality that the feline furballs possess.
If there’s one thing Ellen Datlow knows how to do well, it’s put an amazing anthology together. From The Year’s Best Horror to Poe to The Dark, she has never failed to capture the essence of the concept she set out to accomplish. The best stories are always chosen, not the most well-known authors, which results in nearly flawless products for both seasoned horror fans and those who just might be browsing.
Within this collection of twenty-three catnip infused tales, every side of the creatures’ nine lives is explored, from the exotic to the domestic, from ghostly to mythic. Datlow’s choices sidestep the obvious and eschew the “bad cat/bad luck” trope in favor of ideas which push the envelope. Horror often takes a backseat to the fantastical here but creepiness sneaks into many of the tales, regardless.
When a Stephen King story is one of the lowlights in an anthology – and that’s not knocking him, just pointing out the ingenuity of the other writers – the reader is in for a pretty good time. From the opening story to the closing, quality purrs throughout the pages. A.J. Morlan’s “No Heaven Will Not Ever Heaven Be” seems at first to be a touching, sweet tale of an artist who draws seminal cats for a living – yet closes with a few lines that will linger longer than the average hairball. Tanith Lee’s “Flowers for Faces, Thorns for Feet” ends the anthology with a magical story.
One notable quirk to this collection is the theme, purposeful or not, regarding the issue of abuse, both in children and women. Yet just like with the furballs we serve in our houses, these characters have more than one layer to their being. Justice has a way of finding a home in most of the stories but thought provoking ideas run rampant in all.
Highly recommended – even for those who prefer dogs.
--Dave Simms
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Bar None by Tim Lebbon; Night Shade Publishing; 2009; 240pp; $13.95
Tim Lebbon must truly hate the world we live in – maybe not the people close to him (thank god) but society in general and most two-legged creatures. He seems to love the apocalyptic thrillers which pretty much make up most of his novels. Even his fantastic Noreela world horror-fantasies are set in an Earth that has spit out the old societal ways.
However, anyone who has ever met the smiling guy knows he’s as happy as a clam – and loves a good beer in his hands. That explains a lot in the gestation of Bar None, a short novel about what else? The end of the world as Lebbon knows it. Thankfully, he’s an ace in coming up with unique twists on the idea and populates his novels with the everyday man/women.
In his latest offering, Lebbon imagines the end of the world ala “Captain Trips,” the virus which decimated the world in Stephen King’s The Stand. All of Britain is gone – but just people. Animals and plants thrive – sometimes too much. Darker in tone than his The Nature Of Balance but also injected with a good deal of humor, the book opens in a secluded hotel in the English countryside with a handful of survivors. The unnamed narrator tells the tale of a stranger who rides up and convinces them to seek out Bar None, the last existing tavern in the world. The enigmatic Michael visits each of them separately before vanishing, leaving only his motorcycle.
Each section features a flashback to the narrator’s happier times, and the beer that washed it down. One feels like the novel should have come with pretzels, a smiling waitress, and pub menu. Instead of detracting from the meaning of the piece, it solidifies the notion that some of the best times in life are spent with friends and loved ones, as well as some of the toughest moments, over a drink to ease the pain of a very bumpy road. Some people look to landmarks, key points in history, sports, or birthdays to provide a timeline. Lebbon chooses beer – is there something wrong with that?
The journey the survivors undertake rattles their resolve and reveals who they truly are. Most find the surprising and shocking grip nature retakes the country with as refreshing. Deer and wolves fill towns formerly polluted with people. Humans are reduced to litter on the highways and fodder for the new environment. The group encounters other survivors who have lost most of their humanity, literally or figuratively.
The end result is something not expected but wholly satisfying, especially for those who have spent some special moments of their lives in places similar to a place like Bar None.
As always with a Tim Lebbon work, he raises as many questions about life as he answers regarding the exquisite threads of his stories. Pick it up and wash it down with your favorite brew.
--Dave Simms
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Blue Canoe by T. M. Wright; P.S. Publishing; 2009; 207 pgs.; $20.00
Blue Canoe might be the first novel I’ve ever read where I’ve had no idea what was going on while reading it. Even the end didn’t bring a breakthrough for me. The novel is difficult to follow, is repetitive at times, lacks a coherent plot, and it’s not very scary. With all that said the question begs, is Blue Canoe worth reading? The answer is a resounding YES! Because at its heart, Blue Canoe is the most personal of horror tales. It deals with the possible failing of ones mind and it’s up to the readers to decide if the horrors presented to them are real or imagined.
T. M. Wright’s main character in Blue Canoe is a man named Happy Farmer who is confined to a room somewhere in a communal home. He is served meals by a very attractive woman who is the only person he has contact with.
Or, is T. M. Wright’s main character in Blue Canoe a man named Happy Farmer who is not in a communal home at all, but is a man who wanders around in a town named after a nearby lake who occasionally takes trips to an island in a blue canoe?
Wright explains to us early on that Happy Farmer is a man who has had very little sexual experience in life.
Wright also explains to us shortly thereafter, that Happy Farmer is a man who had a beautiful girlfriend who he had sex with quite often.
And so it goes. What is the truth? What is real? Don’t ask Happy Farmer, because he sure as hell doesn’t know.
The narrative is told in a diary like form with chapter headings that could be in roman numerals for a while then change unexpectedly to regular numbers, and then back again. And different chapters have the same number heading (the narrator is fond of the number six). The narrator, who most of the time believes his name is Happy Farmer, is either an old man with dementia who is living in a nursing home, a dead person trapped in a dark oval enclosure, or a free roaming ghost cavorting with the living. Happy Farmer doesn’t know who, or what he is, though he struggles mightily to find out.
All Happy Farmer knows is that he is non-corporal and that he alternates between witnessing scenes from the present along with memories from the past. But then again, maybe he’s just hallucinating all of it. But for whatever the reason, these scenes and possible memories can be endlessly fascinating.
Like the time his aunt stripped naked and tried to seduce him; or the time he was forcefully making love to his girlfriend (whose name may be Epistobel) and he was desperately trying not to orgasm first; or when he gets into his blue canoe and travels to the island to talk to a young girl who isn’t always there; or when he starts telling stories that seemingly have nothing to do with the narrative (like the time he tells about a man hiring a detective to find a missing girlfriend); or the constant ringing of the phone which he refuses to answer and the woman on the other end becomes angrier with each new call; or as he recalls the words his philosophical father would recite to him (things like “There are Times in Our Lives, some of us, not all of us, when Our memories, the things we actually remember, become unreliable”); or the slaps in the face he receives from his mother when he tells her that he thinks ghosts are cool.
Happy Farmer recalls and shares with his readers all of those things above, and he takes great pains to let the reader know how important they were in his life. Only to admit later on in the next chapters that he invented them. Only to admit later on in the next chapters, that yes, in fact, they did occur, and then goes into greater detail when recounting them all over again.
Readers will find themselves playing along with Wright and trying to guess the nature of Happy Farmers recollections. For instance, is the character he writes about in a story at the end of the novel a young Happy Farmer? Is his constant reciting of the origins of everyday objects his way of staying grounded? Was he a serial killer? Why did his father owe the woman next door to them money?
As you can guess, Blue Canoe won’t be for everybody. It will take some patience and an open mind to get through to the end of the book, but for those that possess those qualities, Blue Canoe will be well worth the read. But then again…maybe it won’t.
--T. T. Zuma
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Water Witch by Deborah Leblanc; Dorchester Publishing; 2008; 290pp; $7.99
The bayou reigns supreme in the realms of atmosphere. A reader or moviegoer would be hard-pressed to name a locale that invigorates and swallows the senses as deeply as the alien-down-home feeling of southern Louisiana. In the midst of that beautiful, swampy place rife with creatures of all sorts, a new queen sits on the throne who captures its essence in every story, every line, every person.
When you meet Leblanc’s characters, you sink deep into their lives, their feelings, just as if you had stepped in quicksand or the ancient silt which lies beneath the mysteries of her settings.
Ritual and tradition are essential to every one of her novels. Water Witch is no different, with its supernatural command of the spirit world by Olm, an odd character who wishes not only to follow in his ancestor’s brutal ceremonies of the Pawnee tribe. Rituals, just like recipes, are seldom followed to the “T” – improvisation keeps things fresh and fun. However, the kidnapping of a young boy and girl bring out more problems than solutions. Some might say Olm is a simple-minded character, but look deeper for a strong parallel to modern religious leaders. The insertion of such “natural” phenomena in the bayou as the feux fo lais and affects of the wildlife bring an “is it or isn’t it?” conflict which again, brings home the mystery of a land foreign to most readers.
Characters in Leblanc’s novels never fail to mutate away from the standard formula, shown to perfection in Family Inheritance and Morbid Curiosity. Those who populate Water Witch don’t disappoint. Besides the enigmatic Olm and grandmotherly Poochie, who feel as tangible as an alligator hide, the main character shines in a manner not seen before by this author.
Dunny ranks high on the list of memorable heroines as she holds a special power – due to an extra finger. Rather than compare her to King’s Johnny Smith or Koontz’ Odd Thomas, Dunny deserves her own categorization. Also reluctant, she pulls herself into a world of seclusion, wary of the social implications that would accompany a finger that helps locate objects and people. Leblanc pulls her out into the real world, albeit the strange one detailed here, but also manages to pull in the reader.
--Dave Simms
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