Archive for Book Reviews
Seven Deadly Pleasures – Book Review
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Seven Deadly Pleasures
Michael Aronovitz
Hippocampus Press
Trade Paper, 250 pages, $15.00
Review by Sheila Merritt
Accountability and guilt fuel the stories in Michael Aronovitz’s Seven Deadly Pleasures. The collection is a compendium of culpability; a supernatural survey of dubious decisions and their emotional fall out. Adroitly mixing the spectral with the commonplace, the author displays an ear for the eerie: The dialogue is sharp and sound. His integration of the mundane with the uncanny is seamless. The six short stories and one novella which comprise this volume are fine examples of how to successfully combine the prosaic with the preternatural.
The book opens with a wallop of a ghost story: “How Bria Died.” A teacher, who prides himself on his ability to motivate his students, is given a comeuppance. Ben Marcus is cocky and complacent about his less than conventional ways of reaching his pupils. While performing as a substitute teacher, he revels in his ability to mesmerize: “It was more than strict attention. It was a submission that was almost divine in nature. They were lambs. There was an incredible cross-current of fear and trust.” Employing a local legend to gain the class’ attention, Marcus gets a potent lesson about using the dead as a means to obtain and sustain control. The instructor learns that invoking the otherworldly for personal reasons isn’t very smart.
The treasure of Seven Deadly Pleasures is its novella: “Toll Booth.” Adolescent rites of passage can be exhilarating and painful; sometimes simultaneously. In this, the last work in the volume, Aronovitz scrutinizes the thrills and terrors inherent in those tender years. Anxiety; peer pressure; the need for social identity; all conspire to consume a young man. Escalation from camaraderie to complicity turns lethal, and the protagonist’s life is forever altered. His coercion to try his first cigarette is expertly described: “Sharp, it hit the back of my throat and rolled into me like a chocolate cloud. It was potent and rich. Forbidden. I blew it out and watched the grey smoke make art on the air, a mushroom cloud spreading to the gauzy, three-figured hand of a beckoning witch, to thinning curlicues, drifts, trails. My head spun a bit in a friendly sort of way, and I knew I could handle this. I was older now. Better. I spit my gum out and took another deep drag.”
Later, the youth is embroiled in concealing a deadly car accident. While trying to dispose of evidence, he must confront the corpse in the shattered vehicle: “It felt like wet webbing over caved seashell plating. I felt it mold and contour, and a burst of liquid smeared between my lips. It was a woman’s face wedged between me and the wheel. My first kiss in the dark.”
Michael Aronovitz is a wise writer. He carefully builds a character’s vulnerability; then he subsequently uses it as a propellant for the action. Flawed individuals who act from ego (large or small), or who are driven by image, make some horrible decisions. These result in horrific consequences; rife with ramifications.
The Seven Deadly Pleasures doesn’t only target the jugular with its indelible images; it artfully aims at the Achilles’ heel, as well.
The Shadows of Kingston Mills – Book Review
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The Shadows of Kingston Mills
David B. Silva
Dark Regions Press
Limited Edition Hardcover, Short Story Collection, $45.00
Review by Sheila Merritt
The trend in recent horror fiction is that bigger is better: The threat should be gigantic; a huge covert government agency should be involved; the implications should be monumental. A grandiose conspiracy doesn’t hurt, either. In The Shadows of Kingston Mills, David B. Silva reminds that small towns have their own demons, and that they can be just as pervasive and shocking as the big scale variety. On a per capita scale, the enormity of the supernatural aberrations in the town of Kingston Mills can easily go mano-a-mano (or fang-to-claw) with the larger implications of a global threat. In reference and reverence to Ray Bradbury and Stephen King, Silva harkens back to the terrors of a contained community. Sometimes a place with no anonymity, where everyone knows everyone, can be scarier than a world that has internet access.
There are several themes in Silva’s tales: The agony of aging, the yearning of youth, the dealing with death. The most common thread, however, is stagnation. The motivation of many of the characters is based on a need to alter their lives. They feel, metaphorically, trapped in amber. As the protagonist in “It’s All Happening on Fillmore Street” states: “Funny how you look at yourself in the mirror every morning but you never really see yourself. You see what you have to see … the stubble that needs shaving, the hair that needs combing, the teeth that need brushing. But you look past the tired eyes, the extra weight that’s beginning to show in your face, the hair that’s starting to thin and turn gray. There’s a stranger staring back at you and somehow you’ve learned to look past him.” This introspection leads to a sojourn of the soul; and the result is tragic and startling.
In “Love Never Lost,” a phone call from a decades old high school sweetheart forces a man to come to grips with the waste and horror of stasis. The man’s long lost love has been turned into a vampire. She looks just as young and desirable as she did before she disappeared thirty years ago. Her former boyfriend has, of course, physically aged. Emotionally, however, he is stuck in time; he never got over her, and his subsequent relationships have suffered. Their reunion is sad and eerie. In exposing her true fearsome vampire visage to her ex-love, she viscerally verifies her condition. This justifiably jolts the man, who comes to understand that she is doomed to a forever unchanging non-life. It mirrors his own joyless, solitary existence. The couple join together to transform their conditions. Change is achieved in a heart wrenching way.
Transformation also occurs in the story entitled “The Itching.” In it, a young man who feels unfulfilled in his life discovers his destiny with the help of a local elder. In Kingston Mills and its vicinity, no one is quite as benign as they seem. The elderly may have secrets or some tricks up their sleeves; there can be no cries of “ageism” in these tales.
As with all collections, some stories are less successful than others. “Darkness and Light” has elements of King’s Carrie and the movie Pan’s Labyrinth, but doesn’t reach the heights of either. It is the least satisfying of tales in the compilation.
The twelve tales that comprise The Shadows of Kingston Mills are mostly of very high quality. There is one reprint story: “Nothing As It Seems,” which features a remarkable creature called The Abductor: “He was maybe five feet tall, thin, wearing a lightweight jacket over a tee-shirt, both of them the same color, which was not really a color at all. It was something metallic-like, almost chrome-like, and even more surprising … it matched the man’s pigmentation perfectly.”
Stoker award winning author David B. Silva makes sure the journey to his small town is most memorable. In Paul F. Olson’s brilliant introduction to the book, there is a favorable comparison to The Twilight Zone. This is certainly true; but Silva’s prose is very much his own. After leaving Kingston Mills the reader will still feel a part of the place; and learn a valuable lesson from one story: Beware of book store owners who want to give away a signed first edition of Bradbury’s Something Wicked This Way Comes.
The Pack: Winter Kill – Book Review
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The Pack: Winter Kill
Mike Oliveri
Evileye Books
Trade Paper, 210 pages, $12.95
Review by Sheila Merritt
The hyper and hairy face off against skinheads in Mike Oliveri’s The Pack: Winter Kill. Werewolves defend their turf against mercenary gun runners and neo-Nazis. To build a literary pyramid of who is the most dastardly, it is easy to see that the canine inclined are merely doggedly following instincts. The White Supremacists are obviously mega-villains. The armament traders, led by an African American, are motivated by venal economics: A legitimate excuse for taking out whoever gets in their way? Certainly not. Morally speaking, the lycanthropes are top dogs. Oliveri has fun playing off the drive behind each of the faction’s actions. There is a lot of background and build up before the final dramatic reckoning. It is worth the wait to sit tight for this well written inevitable crossing of paths.
Looking for Bigfoot in the mountains of Minnesota turns lethal for a husband and wife. They are innocent interlopers shot to death during a business exchange involving the neo-Nazis and mercenaries. The aftermath of the killings brings in FBI special agent Angela Wallace. She smells a rat, but gets involved with a mammal of greater size; one that possesses an equal amount of rabid inclination. During her investigation, Agent Wallace confronts Cole Tyler and his family. Cole is the clan’s alpha male. He is bemused by the determined special agent, so there is a set-up for a potential craggy romance. Their situation is established as being fraught with tension; it is therefore likely that the two characters will engage in more conflicted interplay in subsequent books in the series.
For much of the story, the mix of the supernatural with crime novel and thriller doesn’t meld into a cohesive whole. Each subgenre stays a tad too delineated to blend seamlessly. There is a long stretch before the final shoot-out where all factions converge. The elements have been in place for this to happen; it just takes a while for the culmination to occur. Once it does, however, there is a rip-roaring tossing together of predators (human and other species) and law enforcement agents. Gunfire, claws, and teeth all erupt in one wild melee of mayhem.
Mike Oliveri delivers the climax and denouement with great skill. A recipient of the Bram Stoker Award for his first novel, The Deadliest of the Species, he has created some promising characters and situations in The Pack. It will be interesting to follow their trajectories in the next installment of the Tyler family saga.
The New Dead – Book Review
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The New Dead: A Zombie Anthology
Christopher Golden, Editor
St. Martin’s Griffin
Trade Paper, 400 pages, $14.99
Review by Sheila Merritt
Just when it seems that all the permutations of zombie fiction have been written, along comes a wondrous new anthology. The New Dead, edited by Christopher Golden, features nineteen stunning stories; none of which have been previously published. Some are poignant; all are powerful. The book accentuates not only a variation on a theme, but also the diverse writing styles of its contributors. The result is as stellar as the writers themselves: John Connolly, Joe Hill, Jonathan Maberry, Kelley Armstrong, to name a few.
Armstrong’s tale of revenge, “Life Sentence,” examines one man’s egocentric inhumanity. His inevitable comeuppance is horrific and sadistically satisfying. Resolution through retribution is also addressed in “Delice” by Holly Newstein. It is fascinating to compare and contrast these two stories of malevolent reprisal: They have vastly different settings, style, and structure; but are alike in their vehement outrage and compassion.
Compassion, and lack of it, get put under the literary microscope. In James A. Moore’s “Kids and Their Toys,” a group of children torture a zombie. First poking and prodding, and then escalating the violence: “The zombie was opened up like a grisly flower, his abdomen cut wide and his skin spread open like petals.” Jonathan Maberry’s “Family Business” gives a heart wrenching look into the quality of mercy. A young man is educated by his older brother to develop tenderness and tolerance. The emotional price of pity is high, but the brothers’ shared burden creates a bond. Gentle, yet potent; this story of fraternity, in multiple senses of the word, is haunting.
The love between spouses is explored in Brian Keene’s touching and ironic “The Wind Cries Mary.” Examining a marriage of opposites, Keene sensitively probes the foibles and foundation of a relationship. Death paradoxically separates the couple; as in life, they are together, but divergent.
For out and out scares, the tales by Tad Williams and Joe Hill rank high. Williams’ “The Storm Door” is a profoundly creepy story of a paranormal investigator who discovers “cold, hungry things, that had been hiding behind that darkness, hiding and waiting and hating the living for so long…” Hill’s “Twittering From the Circus of the Dead” is the compilation’s grand finale. “Twitter” becomes terrifying as the tweets progress from the mundane to the monstrous. The build up from shallow to shattering is a tour de force.
In his excellent foreword to the volume, Christopher Golden metaphorically scratches his head over the popularity of the zombie subgenre: “Eating brains, my friends, is not sexy.” Given the extraordinary stories he has assembled in The New Dead, he really shouldn’t be puzzled.
Original Sin (Seven Deadly Sins) – Book Review
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Original Sin (Seven Deadly Sins)
Allison Brennan
Ballantine Books
Paperback, 464 pages, $7.99
Review by Sheila Merritt
What is a “paranormal romance?” Allison Brennan’s novel Original Sin is marketed as one. After reading the book, it could be assumed that a paranormal romance involves: Fast and loose playing with Christian doctrine; occult practices; hot and heavy passion; and supernatural secret societies with major issues. Oh, and by the way: The future of the world is at stake. In this tale, Envy is the heavy. Yes, Envy; the embodiment of the sin, incarnate. The other sins will be addressed in, presumably, six sequels to this book. Talk about a built-in franchise. Seizing on the trend for the romantic otherworldly “we are soul mates who can never be a couple” dynamic, author Brennan does a nice job zeroing in on the tastes of readers of the subgenre. She knows her audience, and what they want and expect.
In a mother and daughter power struggle, witches Fiona (mother) and Moira (daughter) face off with mutual antipathy and antagonism. Evil Fiona, uses her abilities for wicked gain, and Moira has been tragically victimized by her mother. Vengeance and merciless maliciousness are venomously volleyed between the duo; with some calamitous collateral damage. The Seven Deadly Sins are being invoked by Fiona and her coven to walk the earth, and create an imbalance in the cosmos. Just a parenthetical reiteration of an aforementioned comment: The future of the world is at stake. This isn’t merely witchy bickering on a grand scale.
Envy is the first activated sin. Its essence prompts the locals of a small town to commit acts of murder and mayhem, as a response to their feelings of covetousness. The Sins are described as psychic leeches: “They’re like legendary vampires, but instead of sucking blood they crave our greatest weaknesses, drawing them to the surface, pushing us to act on our sins, that hurt not only us, but others. And the more we give in, the more we want. The more we need.”
In her struggle to defeat her mother and save the universe, which amounts to the same thing but with an unbalanced personal emphasis, Moira’s strengths and skills are accentuated. She has been trained, à la Buffy the Vampire Slayer, in combat and in knowledge of demon behavior and weaknesses. Possessing inherited arcane abilities, she has a strong psychological arsenal from which to draw. Still, of course, she is vulnerable; and hence, not immune to a sensitive, moody/broody Celtic cutie. Moira is a feisty and capable protagonist. She is also a weak in the knees, when it comes to love, romantic heroine. These dichotomies are characteristic attributes in such novels, and are used with abundant abandon it this book.
Author Allison Brennan gets credit for taking a popular trend, and understanding the elements within it that enrapture its many readers. This very calculated novel is written with aplomb. It is shrewd in its assuredness of expectations; a very commercial comprehension.
Darkness On The Edge Of Town – Book Review
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Darkness On The Edge Of Town
Brian Keene
Leisure, February 2010
Mass Market Paperback, 264 pages, $7.99 US; $9.99 Canada
Review by Shannon Riley
Two-time Bram Stoker Award-winning author Brian Keene took the horror genre by storm with his 2003 novel The Rising and hasn’t slowed down since. Credited with ushering in the zombie movement in modern horror (along with filmmaker Danny Boyle), Keene’s influence in the field continues to grow. Recent novels like Castaways and Urban Gothic keep his fans hungry for more. His latest from Leisure, Darkness on the Edge of Town, is a fast-paced, character driven, post-apocalyptic nightmare spiced with a taste of Lovecraftian mythos, a modern day story with a nod to the genre’s past.
Darkness has descended upon the little town of Walden, not the natural darkness of night, but an oppressive and deadly darkness, a menace in and of itself that has obliterated the moon and stars and never ends. Held at bay outside the town by magical sigils, it seeps into the minds of the townspeople, taking control, twisting their emotions and playing their weaknesses against them as it tempts the unwary to venture too close.
The darkness holds images of lost loved ones who plead with family and friends to come and join them, and it reveals others’ worst nightmares, feeding off their fear. Those who enter the darkness never return.
Communication with the outside world has been lost, and Robbie Higgins, who lives in a Walden apartment with his girlfriend, Christy, determines to find out if anything exists beyond the town’s boundaries. His plan fails, resulting in the loss of life of several people. The town turns against him and he, Christy, and his friends are forced into hiding.
In a lawless and isolated town with desperation growing and the madness of whatever entity confines the community taking hold, murder and mayhem rule. When a religious extremist, Anna, incites fear and hatred against Dez, the strange homeless man whose runes have kept the darkness at bay, she turns the townspeople into a mob, leading Robbie and his friends to make a final desperate attempt to survive. Like The Rising, the ending invites a sequel, so the possibility of the story continuing may exist.
Darkness on the Edge of Town is the story of humanity’s struggle to survive against forces beyond its control and a town’s spiraling descent into destruction. Darkness on the Edge of Town is an absorbing and entertaining read from a modern day master of horror. This is one readers will not want to miss.
In The Closet, Under The Bed – Book Review
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In The Closet, Under The Bed
Lee Thomas
Darkscribe Press
Trade Paperback, 269 pages, $ 16.00
Review by Mario Guslandi
A major representative of gay speculative fiction, Lee Thomas is the author not only of various successful novels (the Bram Stoker Award winner Stained, Damage, Mason etc) but also of a number of horror stories, now collected in a single volume (featuring seven reprints plus eight previously unpublished tales).
Even if you don’t care for this particular sub-genre (gay horror fiction) this book can offer moments of exceptionally good reading, thanks to Lee’s solid narrative style and strong imagination.
Personally I don’t mind the gay aspect, as long as the stories are good.
In the best pieces included in the present collection the gay element is irrelevant, in that it blends effortlessly with the structure of the tale. It’s when the story is weak and the plot incongruous that the homosexual aspect appears a bit cumbersome and tedious, but simply because the events, the characters and the atmospheres are not interesting enough.
In other words the weaker tales in the volume would remain such, even if centered around a male and a female instead of two males.
But now to the more remarkable stories.
In “The Good and Gone” – a strong, although slightly implausible piece – a man, lying in a hospital bed, leaves his body to discover the dirty secrets of an old pervert.
“I’m Your Violence” is a sordid story of paedophilia graced by a disturbing, graphic narrative style.
In the splendid “Crack Smoking Grandpa” a gay affair is simply the veneer of a much more complex story where an alien creature pursues its unhealthy plans with cruel determination, while in the tense, thrilling “They Would Say She Danced” a woman waits for the execution of a serial killer whom she knows too well…
“All the Faces Change” on the surface is the portrait of a man who, going home to visit his dying father, meets an old pal with whom he had a fleeting sex encounter in the past. Actually the story is a sharp analysis of the monsters lurking in the depth of our souls and poisoning our daily lives.
The collection’s highlights are two outstanding, unforgettable pieces.
“Healer” is a great, beautifully told story, deeply moving in its terrible cruelty. A sick child bound to die is saved by his father by summoning a mysterious Healer whose fee will be paid only years later.
“An Apiary of White Bees” (previously appeared in Ellen Datlow’s anthology Inferno), is a superb, compelling tale blending different themes into a vivid, disquieting symphony. A man finds, in a secret cave under his newly acquired property, some bottles of a special honey endowed with unusual psychic effects. White bees mark the events of a long gone past which returns to haunt the present and to influence the future. Absolutely memorable.
