The Darkest Shade of Grey
Alan Baxter
The Red Penny Papers, Digital, $1.99
Review by Matthew Tait

The Red Penny Papers is a journal (electronic) of fantastic fiction publishing novellas in a serial style reminiscent of a bygone era. Merged in this fashion with a webfiction factor and you have an appealing disparity of new technologies with a penny dreadful twist – a welcome hybrid of the modern with the historic. With The Darkest Shade of Grey, Alan Baxter has concocted a tight and stylish supernatural thriller daubed in the ethereal tones of film-noir.

David Johanssen is a broken man. After a devastating encounter with an Ouija board many years previous he has slowly succumbed to a species of insanity, losing his entire family in the process. Now his days are regulated to imbibing huge quantities of alcohol and trying to keep his job as a small time reporter intact. It doesn’t help that he has begun to see the auras of those that surround him – colours and ill-defined shapes that reflect a world burgeoning with chaos and mystery. When a homeless hobo drifts into his life espousing the cryptic message of another realm, David is soon drawn into the dark underbelly of a different world entirely – a world where deities play among the masses and salvation is just a fairy-tale for mortals.

Right off the cusp we’re introduced to Alan’s breezy style, and it’s one that most readers of speculative fiction will find easy to digest (if not find overly eccentric at times). There’s an everyman quality to the syntax with subtle humor smirking from just around the corner of every paragraph. Our protagonist is flawed but ultimately good: a motif that works – especially within the confines of noir – because it taps into the constant reader’s receptivity. With novella length stories becoming more admired at every turn in the publishing industry, The Darkest Shade of Grey is just the right length to fit nice and snug into a serial arrangement or have a permanent home on an e-reader device.

The only quibble I had with the tale (and it’s minor) has to do with personal predilection. When Gods and Demons stampede across the pages of dark fiction, I have often been disillusioned when they inhabit human form. A perfect example of this would be the dovetailing plot-strands of the latter episodes of the TV series Supernatural. Angels shift into our realm, and when they do, the effect can become juvenile (or comedic) and frequently overshadows any emotional impact we might have expected in the climax.

Predilections aside, this is an accomplished little tale from a writer whose evolution has been interesting to watch. Also featured is a mini- author interview where Alan talks about the genesis of David Johanssen.

The Darkest Shade of Grey is available to read in serial format at The Red Penny Papers and can also be purchased in the Amazon Kindle store.

[Editor's Note: Matthew Tait’s novella Slander Hall is currently available for the month of May for only $0.99]

Corrupts Absolutely?
Edited by Lincoln Crisler
Damnation Books
Trade Paper
217 pages, $20.25
Review by Sheila M. Merritt

There is an adage that power corrupts. Does that then mean, by extrapolation, that super powers can irrevocably taint the soul? The stories contained in Corrupts Absolutely? (note the implicit query in the title’s question mark) examine the ethical ambiguities and inherent moral issues of those endowed with extraordinary abilities. Editor Lincoln Crisler has gathered 21 stories in this fine collection; tales which delve into the minds of beings who possess superhuman attributes. For some, the anomalies are an affliction, while others lose what remains of their fragile human side. It is that loss of humanity and humility that creates the utmost horror.

“Hollywood Villainy” by Weston Ochse best exemplifies that horror. The author fashions an individual who is, indeed, absolutely corrupted by his powers. Mired forever in the body of his boyhood, the concocted aged entity revels in sadistic acts. Taking a page from Stephen King’s Carrie and other works concerning vengeance by abused misfits, Ochse superbly executes the deranged venom of his protagonist. There is little room for sympathy for the main character or for his victims; the yarn is set in Los Angeles, and everyone who dwells there is guilty of something. The seedy city seethes with corruption. Even its edifices are contaminated: “Everything is in a state of decay. The floor looks as if it’s hosted a hundred orgies. The furniture is tattered and filthy. The tables are scarred and scored with cigarette burns. The walls are tan from too many cigarettes. The popcorn of the ceiling seems ready to drip like snot from the nose of a flu victim.”

Ochse’s narrative depicts a youthful caped crusader who, like Darth Vader, ultimately embraces the dark side of the force. For others with powers, however, the choice is less black and white. And comes with collateral baggage. Several of the characters who inhabit the pages of the anthology are in therapy; hoping to find coping mechanisms to help deal with their abnormalities. In “Mental Man” by William Todd Rose, for example, the first person narrator verbalizes his internal torment: “Pain, guilt, remorse, agony, despair, terror: a tsunami of emotion and sensation crashed over me as the scene exploded in a brilliant burst of light, like a flashbulb going off in a darkened room.”

Dealing with one’s powers also entails knowing the mechanics of them. The main character in Jeremy Hepler’s “The Real Church” must work out some kinks in his raising-of-the-dead technique. The story features a wonderfully gripping and amusing opening sentence: “It started when I resurrected Mister Fulton’s Chihuahua, Brutus.” Hepler’s protagonist refines his skills, and manages to happily prosper from them.

The end is not nearly so satisfying for the eponymous characters in Andrew Bourelle’s “Max and Rose.” The two lovers are torn apart by one’s abuse of power. Max can will others to do his bidding; cavalierly flaunting his psychic prowess. He demands people pay heed, to stroke his vanity. His egocentricity and pettiness take their toll on Rose, and the severing of their relationship is both shocking and sad.

Lincoln Crisler’s compilation is commendable for showing a range of variations on its theme. The contributors address the motif from different aspects and genres. Aficionados of horror will find several tales to whet their genre appetite. There is deep darkness of the soul when power corrupts – absolutely.

The Fourth Fog
Chris Daniels
Lillies and Cannonballs Review, 2011
Review by Matthew Tait

Taking on a novel where one has zero preconceived notions can be liberating. Almost no information about the author exists online – and there is relatively no news about said book. One of the reasons I do this is to discover works like The Fourth Fog … a book quite unlike any other in the genre.

Newlyweds Ben and Tula have moved into area ‘C’ and a new apartment complex. Ben is a book editor surrounded by a mish-mash of clearly unlikable individuals. Tula works as a nurse … but their home is far from the welcoming sanctuary they envisioned.
Soon, an infestation of flies take root as something in the ceiling perishes. Yet the flies appear to be something far more sinister than the common house fly: they have purpose and intent – a malign, elusive quality. Not only that, but Ben has become increasingly dependent on a popular drug called HAL. But is this the sole cause of the small but meaningful signs of increasing paranoia around him?

To call this novel ‘bleak’ is an understatement. But I have an inclination that is exactly what the author intends. Beginning with a mere domestic setting, there is a slow build-up of palpable dread, enhanced by Ben’s slow downward spiral into confusion and melancholy. It reaches boiling point when the supernatural elements – which are never overtly defined – are shoved into the mix with gross management but ultimately superior handling. Although the backdrop and plot are pertinent, the whole bizarre thing seems to be a vehicle for the author’s unique prose and depressing (yet droll) social commentary.

With a tag line consisting of: A Horror Novel for the Ages starring God, Terror and (you guessed it)! KILLER FLIES … The Fourth Fog is more than recommended for those seeking something unique.

Nocturnal: A Novel
Scott Sigler
Crown
Hardcover, 576 pages, $26.00
Review by Sheila M. Merritt

Murderous mutants abound in Nocturnal. Scott Sigler’s novel features a subculture comprised of nasty abnormal beings. The revolting, in multiple meanings of the word, entities reside in tunnels beneath San Francisco. Aberrant behavior and odd chromosomes often go hand-in-paw, and the mantra “Magneto (or his spiritual doppelganger) Made Me Do It,” seems a perfect T-shirt logo for the strangely endowed who have grievances. They are indeed fired up down below the city streets, and there’s hell to pay. Filled with energetic dialogue, vivid fight sequences, and characters possessing depth, Nocturnal is a cut above the standard misanthropic monsters yarns. The length of the tome denotes an aspiration to saga status. And Sigler mostly succeeds in sustaining a tautness of tale throughout the many pages. In the extended scenes set in the tunnel domain, the novel reads rather like Gulliver’s Travels on acid. Depending on the tastes of the reader, this may be taken as a positive. The book fares best when the action takes place above ground. There, those who populate the narrative better display the motivations behind their conduct.

Homicide detectives Bryan Clauser and Pookie Chang are on the trail of a serial killer. Clauser is known as “The Terminator” by his co-workers on the force. As the nickname would indicate, he can kill with great efficiency and detachment. After exposure to a particularly gruesome crime scene, however, his personality shifts. He starts having prophetic nightmares and his physical health deteriorates. His professional partnership with the hip and droll Mr. Chang gets shaky, but the bonds of their friendship remain strong.

As the pair’s investigation leads to astounding discoveries, it becomes evident that there is a major cover-up occurring within the department and up to city hall. Clauser, Chang, and some cohorts (including Clauser’s beautiful ex-lover who works in the Medical Examiner’s office) are left to their own devices in solving the mystery. A cult that dates back to the gold-rush era is at the heart of the conspiracy, and Bryan Clauser has a hidden connection to it.

The story that initially runs parallel to Bryan’s focuses on a bullied youth, who is also plagued by dark dreams. The dreams, however, are a turn-on for him; in them he obtains retribution against his abusers. And the revenge gets even sweeter when he realizes that he has a propensity for making violence happen. His evil destiny is linked with the police detective’s. The aligned stories cross with a vengeance.

Nocturnal has a high body count, and the mayhem and slaughter are described in detail. There are some surprising casualties, and unsparing depictions of mutilations. One of the most repugnant passages though, concerns copulation with a loathsome creature known as “Mommy.” This gal makes Jabba the Hutt look like George Clooney.

On the flip side of kooky characters, there is the aforementioned and eccentrically endearing Pookie. Another highly memorable character is a fortune teller who requires a voice box to communicate – and suffers from Tourette’s syndrome. Simultaneously strange and hilarious, the exchanges between him and Clauser and Chang are absurd and grand.

Scott Sigler appears to have had a great time writing his big byzantine and bizarre opus. Nocturnal is a nocturne that provides fine music of the night.

The Thirteen: A Novel
Susie Moloney
William Morrow Paperbacks
Trade Paper, 336 pages, $14.99
Review by Sheila M. Merritt

In Conjure Wife, the famous dark fantasy novel by Fritz Leiber, women practice black magic to ensure their husbands’ career success. The witches of Susie Moloney’s The Thirteen are also concerned with obtaining social status and financial security. Since this is the 21st Century, however, the male spouses are merely a means to an end (and sometimes they meet their end as part of the bargain.) The sorceresses in this narrative ultimately serve only one master. And the rest of the guys can just, well, go to hell. Moloney’s tale is set in a supernatural suburbia rife with petty jealousies and cattiness: some very literal cattiness, since nasty feline familiars figure prominently in the plot. Cat fanciers may take offense at the creatures’ evil depiction; dogs are the virtuous animals in this story. Totally aside from possibly alienating/dividing her readers into respective furry camps, the author creates an entertaining divertissement. She ventures into the Devil’s den and smoothly balances humor with horror. There are some stylistic quibbles to be addressed, but such minor detractions-distractions don’t unduly hamper the read.

The community of Haven Woods is having a crisis. One of the ladies in league with you-know-who has killed herself, and another is going rogue. The remaining members of the coven are confronted with drastic fallout; there must always be thirteen in the club or the structure starts coming apart. And when that happens, their comfortable way of life gets severely compromised: Extended youth ends; beauty suddenly fades; a dancer’s leg is handicapped; one food grabbing gal even starts shedding her digits. And progeny and husbands start acting peculiar. The perfectly constructed environment gets shattered, but thankfully a former female resident returns to town with her pre-pubescent daughter. Before one can utter “Ira Levin,” a plan is formed by the diabolic dames. The inverted Stepford universe can be restored to normalcy with a little sacrifice.

The key players in the narrative are nicely fleshed out, especially Izzy who is the leader of the pack. She views the planned sacrificial rite as “Necessary-like doing dishes, tidying, laundry. All odious in their own way.” Another great distillation of Izzy’s warped personality is this summation: “Being in the presence of illness gave her such a feeling of vitality.”

Other characters are a bit slighted or underdeveloped, but a detailed description/history of a baker’s dozen of witches could prove yawn-inducing. And make for a much longer work. The aforementioned stylistic quibbles, however, mainly concern the author’s tendency to enclose unspoken (and unpunctuated) musings in parentheses. And also giving said parentheses a paragraph of their own. She does this throughout the book. What at first seems a clever, and arty, means of expression becomes tedious because of overuse. Here’s one example of the too frequently employed device:

… Just thinking about it creeped her out

(everything here creeped her out)

All nit-picking aside, The Thirteen is a well-crafted look at “The Craft.” Susie Moloney nicely infuses the suburbs with the scent of sulfur.

Gypsy Blood
Steve Vernon
Crossroad Press & Macabre Ink Digital, $2.99
Review by Darkeva

Steve Vernon is the dark scribe behind such works as Devil Tree, Bad Valentines, and The Weird Ones among others. Starting in 2011, Crossroad Press began releasing his backlist titles as e-books, and I, for one, think this is a great measure to help the author find a new audience and to make his classic works available in a new format, particularly as publishers are reprinting physical backlist copies less and less and will likely turn to digitizing them as a way of re-releasing them. Having read Gypsy Blood and being new to Vernon’s work, I am happy to have made a new discovery – it’s heavy on the supernatural elements, which is just the way I like it.

We’re introduced to the main character, Carnival, as he contemplates killing himself, but the trouble is that there’s a spirit caged inside his chest beside his heart and it’s trying to encourage him to hurry up and do it. Not only that, but it’s the spirit of his father, Poppa. We learn that Carnival imprisoned his dad’s ghost inside him, although it’s not immediately clear why. Poppa and Carnival have a wonderful dynamic, particularly with their opposing voices.

Carnival is a shuvano, the Romani word for witch or sorcerer, and although Poppa pokes fun at his son for thinking he’s a gypsy when he’s really only half, Carnival isn’t so picky about half-gypsy or full. At first, it’s a tad confusing to tell what he is, because the reader essentially learns new and important information through Poppa’s dialogue (mostly insults), but it gets better as the novel continues.

Our unlikely hero is on a mission to kill a succubus; I thought it was creative that he stuffed his ears with candlewax to become immune to her lure, but of course, she has other methods of persuasion. Although I did wonder what a succubus would be doing in a church, I thought it was a great scene, and it established the villain well.

I found the point of view a bit tricky at times, because it seemed like third person limited at first, but when Carnival left the church, he wouldn’t know the Red Shambler, the villain, was there, or how it would be possible for Poppa’s laughter to ring out ominously and for him not to hear it.

Getting back to the strength’s, Vernon utilized incredibly unique descriptions that take his writing up a notch. As the novel progresses, we see that Carnival works as a fortune teller. When he looks into cards, it’s like looking into the other person’s mirror – whatever his client thinks is what the cards see. The action intensifies when an attractive female vampire calling herself Maya comes to his door. He lets her in despite Poppa’s admonitions not to.

Maya makes victims drown in their memories and then sucks them dry. In this universe, vampires aren’t created through a virus that someone catches – one can only inherit vampirism. Carnival finds himself getting even more tangled in Maya’s web as he becomes unsure of who he can trust, and he becomes embroiled in a conflict with something beyond his worst fears. And just as Poppa has an important role to play, so too does Momma. The conclusion is epic and exciting, and makes for a great hero-villain confrontation, and there’s the slightest hint that although much tragedy has taken place, there may be a ray of hope after all.

If you haven’t read Steve Vernon’s work before, Gypsy Blood is a fantastic place to start with lots of action, humor, plot twists, and supernatural elements to keep you coming back for more.

Bad Juju
Randy Chandler
Acid Grave Press
Digital Edition, 2012, 3.99
Review by Darkeva

Originally released by Walt Hicks of HellBound Books in 2003, Bad Juju would never, it seemed have the chance for a second print run until e-book publisher Acid Grave Press decided to re-release the book this year so that more readers could discover the macabre and enjoyable tale set in Vinewood, Georgia. No longer will readers have to be frustrated with the formerly limited availability of the book.

Acid Grave has been making a great name for themselves in the horror community since they emerged on the scene, and Bad Juju is a great fit for their list. The book starts off with Skeeter, the main character, who is on a hunt with his friend, Joe Rob. The objective is to nail rats, of which there’s a plague in town. On their hunt, they bump into Odell Porch, a mojo man who is nothing but trouble from the minute he shows up. The first thing that I distinctly noticed about this book was how unique the narrative tone is, as well as the voices and dialogue of the characters, which are quite distinct. It’s important in a novel like this in which there’s a regional dialect at play that more than one character employs, and author Chandler handles it very well.

All three men see a woman in the woods. She’s scared and running away from “the dark thing,” which, as it turns out, wants nothing more than to devour the whole town of Vinewood. Odell insists that the men leave her to him and Joe Rob knows nothing good can come of this. Against his better judgment, and enacting the credo of “no good deed goes unpunished,” the girl starts reciting an incantation, and a killing later, it all goes downhill from there.

We then meet Luke, an ex-cop, who is in town for a funeral, and while it’s important to get a glimpse of him, we switch back to Joe Rob, whose life is really going down the toilet. He gets fired from his job, he starts having urges to hurt people and acts out on them, he starts doing things he would normally never do, but things really start to get interesting when the Porches notice Odell’s absence and that’s when things really kick into gear even more. Odell’s family, the Porches, are some of the most compelling, despicable, and nerve-wracking characters I’ve encountered.

The rest of the novel turns into a rollercoaster ride that takes the reader along sharp twists and turns, delves deeper into the plots with the “dark thing” from the beginning, and switches gears in terms of who becomes the real hero. It’s a fantastic read heavy on the action, magic, and suspense, and I highly recommend it.