Speculative Fiction Junkie

Read Some Jean Ray Stories!

2011-11-21T11:27:00.000-05:00

Even now, almost fifty years after his death, the short stories of Belgian author Jean Ray are notoriously difficult to find in English. There are in fact only three collections of his work available in English and all of them can be difficult and expensive to acquire. Any small increase in the availability of his work is therefore a cause for celebration.

As if the inclusion of two Ray stories in the VanderMeers' mammoth The Weird (table of contents available here) wasn't enough, they have now posted two additional stories on the book's companion site, Weird Fiction Review.

That means there are now four Ray stories that should now be permanently in the easy to find category:

"The Mainz Psalter" (in The Weird)
"The Shadowy Street" (in The Weird)
"The Formidable Secret of the Pole" (available here)
"The Horrifying Presence" (available here)

If you haven't ever read Jean Ray's work before, you are in for a treat. You can read my review of his latest collection, The Horrifying Presence and Other Tales, here. It made #2 on my Top Reads of 2010 list.

Look for The Weird to be reviewed here at some point in one fashion or another.

Review - Nightingale Songs

2011-11-05T16:24:00.000-04:00

Simon Strantzas

If you've ever read and enjoyed a work of weird fiction after reading a review of it here at Speculative Fiction Junkie then you owe a small measure of gratitude to Simon Strantzas, whose second collection, Cold to the Touch (review here), was my introduction to weird fiction. I found it so compelling that I have been reading and reviewing works of weird fiction ever since. There are, quite simply, few things I look forward to more than a new collection from Mr. Strantzas. Nightingale Songs is his first new collection in over two years.

Nightingale Songs collects 12 short stories, 4 of which have never been published before. While his previous two collections were similar in a lot of ways, the stories in his debut, Beneath the Surface (review here), tended to be a bit more stark and in-one's-face than those found in Cold to the Touch. The latter was comprised of tales that were generally more subtle and atmospheric. Nightingale Songs bares a closer resemblance to Cold to the Touch than it does to Beneath the Surface in that most of the tales it collects rely on subtlety rather than starkness to work their destructive magic on the reader.

Already accomplished in this regard, Nightingale Songs shows that Mr. Strantzas is becoming even more adept at navigating the logic of dreams and nightmares. Just as dreams are sometimes obvious metaphors for one's life and other times seem practically nonsensical, Mr. Strantzas' work is truly dreamlike in that it is often difficult to discern the significance of what one encounters in his stories, even as it is obvious that one is staring at and contending with symbols, metaphors, and other reflections.

"Tend Your Own Garden" is a perfect example of a story that is more nakedly metaphorical than some of the others. It concerns a man who returns to the home that he had shared with his wife until they split up and he was replaced by his wife's former lover. Ostensibly, he has returned for a box of old blueprints that he thinks he has left in the house. While there, he recalls how while he was renovating their marital home--shoring up its foundations--she was laying the seeds of infidelity by reconnecting with an old lover via their computer. Once in the house, the man quickly discovers that he is disoriented and doesn't remember where anything is. The metaphor is obvious but that does not diminish this story's power in the least.

On the opposite end of the spectrum in the sense that its symbolism is much less easy to discern, is the first tale, entitled "Out of Touch." Here, one gets an early glimpse of one of this collection's most pervasive themes: imprisonment. "Out of Touch" is about two boys who are trapped in numerous ways. One is imprisoned in his room by illness, the other imprisoned by the brokenness of his family in the wake of his father's departure. Both are further imprisoned by the monotony and monochromatism of suburbia; so much so, that an oddly nonconforming house that is across the street from one of the boys--the mirror of the boy's house--becomes irresistible, the only means of escape.

Somewhere between these two lies the excellent "Her Father's Daughter," which first appeared in Strange Tales: Volume III from Tartarus Press (review here) and which also concerns imprisonment of a sort. In it, a young woman's car breaks down in the middle of a stretch of unfamiliar farmland on a winter night while she is taking a detour on her way home from school. Her father's past admonitions and likely reactions to her present poor planning are ever present as she tries to figure out what to do. In the only nearby house, however, she encounters overbearing paternal presence run amok in a way that is quintessential Strantzas.

Another standout story that I have been unable to stop thinking about since I read it is "The Nightingale." It is the only story in this collection that really seems to be of a piece with the kind of work collected in Beneath the Surface. It is far less dreamlike than the other stories in this collection and is really more of a traditional horror story than the others. It is about the beautiful songbird Elaina Munroe. Two men hear her singing at the Nightingale club one night and find her irresistible; so much so, that one of them asks her to accompany him overseas. The man left behind, however, is unable to forget about her and may yet be destroyed by her irresistible songs.

Another story dealing with imprisonment is "Pale Light in the Jungle," a story that does a wonderful job not only of illustrating our culture's addiction to television but also of showing how frightening the world can be for us addicts when we finally try to cut the cord. This is one of the most atmospheric tales in the collection and also one of my favorites.

The remaining stories in this collection are all enjoyable, but those discussed above are easily my favorites.

With Beneath the Surface, Mr. Strantzas proved himself to be a compelling new writer of weird fiction. Cold to the Touch showed that he was not the sort to rest on his laurels but instead was continuing to evolve. With the release of Nightingale Songs, Mr. Strantzas has truly arrived. He has perfected a voice and style of weird fiction that is all his own and has cemented his reputation as a modern master in a field already crowded with talent. Whether you read these stories in the traditional manner or are lucky and cursed enough to hear them sung to you late one night by Ms. Elaina Munroe, Nightingale Songs will stay with you.

Rating: 10/10

The True First

Nightingale Songs will be released in February of 2012 by Dark Regions Press. It will be available in two editions: a signed, lettered edition limited to 26 copies and a signed, limited edition of 100 copies.

[This review was based on an electronic review copy]

Review - Curfew and Other Eerie Tales

2011-10-08T15:12:00.004-04:00

Lucy M. Boston

Reviving the works of authors who might otherwise slide into obscurity is one of the nobler endeavors undertaken by many of the small presses operating today. The smaller scale of their operations allows them to publish works that larger publishers wouldn't even consider publishing.

With its latest offering, newcomer The Swan River Press, run by author Brian J. Showers, attempts to rescue from obscurity the supernatural tales of Lucy M. Boston, best known for her award-winning children's novels. The book, entitled Curfew and Other Stories, collects three previously published short stories, three previously unpublished short stories, as well as a previously published play.

In the end, I found the collection to be a mixed bag. While none of the stories are bad, per se, most of them simply fail to make much of an impression. The first story, "Curfew," for example, concerns three young brothers who are spending a school holiday with an aunt and uncle in a newly purchased rural English farmhouse. A number of ominous objects are discovered, including an old coffin and an old bell that was once used to signal curfews and about which the locals still tell stories of evil. The story thread that knits these elements together, however, is so utterly lacking in atmosphere that when scary things start happening to individual characters, the story falls flat because they seem to come out of nowhere and be too tenuously connected.

In a similar vein, some of these stories have simply not aged well. In "Many Coloured Glass," for example, any potential for eeriness is forced to contend with dialog like the following:

"What are you looking at?" said Phillip. "Attend me!"
"It's too public here. All your admirers are still out there."
"Good luck to them."
"No, Phillip, not now. Not here. Oh dear, that was a lovely waltz."
"Why Oh dear in that tone? Why not 'You dear!', or 'my dear', my dear?"
"I don't know what I'm saying or doing," she answered.

I understand and respect the fact that language has changed over time. I think that, where possible, it's important to look beyond language that may sound awkward to us today but that was perfectly ordinary in its own day, but it is difficult to see how any sense of eeriness can survive dialog like this.

Despite its shortcomings, there is one story in this collection that is astoundingly good. It is the previously unpublished story entitled "Blind Man's Buff" (and no, I did not misspell that title). In it, a Captain Fernley recounts the harrowing calamity that would eventually lead him to his sorry present state. Once a promising young man, we learn that his rapid ascent would eventually be brought to a halt by a terrible experience that took place while he was in Venezuela. What happened is truly horrifying and the resulting story of revenge reminded me of Jean Ray's excellent tale "Cousin Passeroux" with its haunting refrain of "Like me...Cut in two... Eaten... Rotten." Any fan of weird fiction will be impressed by "Blind Man's Buff."

Ultimately, most of the stories collected in Curfew and Other Eerie Tales don't leave much of an impression. With one notable exception, they have not aged well and feel like kids' stuff when measured against the efforts of many of our modern scriveners of nightmares, including those penned by Brian J. Showers himself. I have high hopes for The Swan River Press, but its reputation will almost surely be built on works other than this collection.

Rating: 5/10

The True First

Curfew and Other Eerie Tales was first published in August of 2011 by the Swan River Press and was limited to 350 copies.

[This review was based on a review copy]

Review - Old Albert - An Epilogue

2011-09-14T17:31:00.000-04:00

Brian J. Showers

Brian J. Showers has quietly been one of the stars of short fiction horror writing since the publication of his first collection of stories, The Bleeding Horse and Other Stories (review here). That collection made it onto my Top 5 Reads of 2010 list and I've been impatiently waiting for him to publish a follow up collection for some time. For those who have found themselves in a similar position, the wait is finally over; that is if you can get your hands on one of the merely 60 copies of Old Albert - An Epilogue that are being offered for sale.

Old Albert is effectively a continuation of The Bleeding Horse and Other Stories and so like its predecessor, the stories that comprise Old Albert are set in the Rathmines district of Dublin. Specifically, these stories tell the purported history of an estate known as Larkhill, which we're told was first permanently settled in the middle of the nineteenth century.

In the first tale, "Ellis Grimwood of Larkhill," we learn that the estate was built by a wealthy ornithologist who made his home there because, at the time, a profusion of larks and other birds made their homes there as well. As time progresses, Grimwood becomes increasingly eccentric and reclusive. Next is "This Terrible, This Unnatural Crime," which is essentially a retelling of an actual famous killing and subsequent murder trial. While complete in their own right, these two tales also set the stage for what is to come.

"An Exaltation of Skylarks," is the firs tale in Old Albert to occur after Mr. Showers has hinted to the reader of the peculiarities of Larkhill. It is the tale of a wealthy wine importer who comes to occupy Larkhill with his new wife. His wife proves to be far more popular than her businessman husband and let's just say that this tale ends poorly for all concerned.

Forty years later, as recounted in the next tale, "Thin and Brittle Bones," the General Council of the Holy Ghost Fathers decides that Larkhill is the perfect place to house a new secondary school. While renovating the property, a troubling discovery that sheds light on the history of Larkhill is made, but the school nonetheless opens shortly thereafter and remains open until World War I. After a decade during which the property is leased to various tenants, the school reopens and has operated ever since.

The final tale, "Come Like Shadows, So Depart," is the crescendo to which the previous tales have been building. I am not going to say anything about it other than to mention that it is the story of a friend of the narrator who once attended the school at Larkhill. It makes a very fitting ending to this collection.

In the final analysis, Larkhill turns out to be a place with its own essence and power; one that draws its occupants to it and never lets them go. And the unique fate that a schoolyard rhyme called "Old Albert" warns against afflicts those who pass through the place regardless of the particulars of their individual lives.

Ex Occidente Press has given this book the beautiful treatment it deserves. I just hope that one day it will be more widely available, and perhaps reunited with its predecessor in a single volume.

All of the strengths that The Bleeding Horse and Other Stories possesses are also on display in Old Albert. Old Albert isn't just a subtly powerful work of supernatural fiction, it's also a work that demonstrates the profound ability Mr. Showers has to infuse a seemingly nondescript locale with a sense of history, with a sense of place in the flow of time. I have not come across any other writer working today who is writing quite like Brian Showers is. Get your hands on this one if you can.

Rating: 9/10

The True First

Old Albert - An Epilogue was first published in 2011 by Ex Occidente Press in an astoundingly low print run of 60.

[This review was based on an electronic review copy]

Review - Southern Gods

2011-08-26T18:25:00.000-04:00

John Hornor Jacobs

In my experience, it is easier for works of horror to fail than it is for works of any other genre. A work of horror can inspire terror in a number of different ways, and what one person finds effective often doesn't work for the next person. Is it more frightening to know that you're being watched from the woods by something unknown? Or to know what horrible thing it is that's watching you? Is it worse to fear what may become of a character or is it worse to know what horrible thing happens to that character? In other words, how much of terror is a product of mystery and the unknown on the one hand, and certainty of known horrors on the other?

For me personally, the intimation of the terrifying--the approach that focuses on developing a sense of mystery and the unknown--is almost always more effective and interesting than an approach that emphasizes known horrors. Southern Gods, the debut novel from John Hornor Jacobs, utilizes both approaches and for that reason the first half of the book was some of the most effective horror writing I've encountered in some time while the second half really fell flat for me personally.

The premise of this novel was simply too promising to pass up. Tough guy veteran Bull Ingram is hired by a record company owner to search post-World War II Arkansas for two things: one of his music promoters who has vanished, and a man by the name of Ramblin' John Hastur, a local blues legend who is said to have sold his soul to the devil in exchange for his musical abilities, Robert Johnson-style. Hastur's music is said to cause people to go insane and to act out their basest violent and sexual proclivities. Ingram gets a taste of this when he hears a sample of Hastur's music and immediately starts feeling inexplicably violent and enraged.

The first half of the book takes this extremely promising premise and runs with it. Bull enters a the rural Arkansas backwater and encounters increasingly frightening evidence that things did not turn out well for the missing promoter and that there really may be something to the rumors about Hastur. I could not put this work of the Southern Gothic down for this first part. While this is only his first novel, Mr. Jacobs does a wonderful job of creating suspense and conveying a sense of the ominousness of backwoods Arkansas. At this point, I thought there was a chance that Southern Gods might even dethrone Bill Hussey's Through A Glass, Darkly (review here) as my favorite horror novel ever.

At some point, though, Mr. Jacobs moves the focus of the novel away from Bull's increasingly ominous descent into rural Arkansas and begins to focus on another aspect of his narrative. This other aspect concerns Sarah, the abused wife of an alcoholic, who has retreated with her daughter to her childhood home in Arkansas to get away from her husband and to gather herself. There's nothing particularly wrong with this thread of the story, except that it served to interrupt and often diffuse the suspense and mystery that Mr. Jacobs was so capably developing in the Bull thread of the story.

The suspense, mystery, and terror was finally killed for me when the source of the events turned out to be a Lovecraftian entity. Say what you will about Lovecraftian fiction, but the complete lack of mystery and suspense that accompanied this resolution was so antithetical to the brilliant first half of the book that I was almost angry that Mr. Jacobs had squandered such a promising start.

Despite my qualms with the book, it is undeniable that Mr. Jacobs is a very promising entrant onto the field. His prose reads more like that of a seasoned pro than it does a debut novelist. More importantly, as he demonstrates with the first half of the book, Mr. Jacobs clearly possesses the capacity to write extremely effective horror. Keep your eye on this one. He has a bright career ahead of him.

Rating: 7/10

The True First

Southern Gods was first published by Night Shade Books in 2011 as a trade paperback. Sadly, no hardcover edition is available.

[This review was not based on a review copy]

Review - Shadows & Tall Trees - Issue 1

2011-07-11T22:10:00.000-04:00

Michael Kelly (Editor)

With Simon Strantzas and Adam Golaski in the same publication, you knew it was only a matter of time before the inaugural issue of Shadows and Tall Trees was reviewed here at Speculative Fiction Junkie. The truth is that I meant to write about this one months ago. So much time has elapsed since I initially read this journal that I did what I almost never do just for a review and reread Shadows & Tall Trees - Issue 1 in its entirety.

There were a number of special features that accompanied the release of this first issue of the journal. For one, it was signed by both Michael Kelly and Simon Strantzas. Secondly, it was numbered (which future issues will not be). Finally, and most impressively, Adam Golaski personally mailed a postcard to each purchaser of the inaugural issue. In addition to each postcard being unique and signed by Mr. Golaski, each featured a handwritten line from "an original weird little story currently in progress." Awesome. Just to get a sense of what I'm talking about, here are a couple of pictures of the postcard I received:

From a production standpoint, my only complaint is that the journal seems to have been printed on somewhat inferior quality paper. My copy is only six months old and already I'm convinced that it won't last long. I would pay an extra $5 per issue if it could be printed on something more durable.

The first story in this issue is the excellent "Crow's Nest" by master of urban decay Joel Lane. Mr. Lane's work is often extremely bleak, and this tale is no exception. In it, a twenty-something young man gets some time off work between Christmas and New Years and so returns to North Birmingham (UK) where he grew up. There, he engages in a series of heavy drinking binges and wanders around his boyhood home town, encountering all manner of ghosts from his past.

Another excellent story was "Stone Head" by Adam Golaski. It is the story of a man's estrangement from his suburban existence. It is typical Golaski and is worth the price of admission by itself.

The biggest surprise in this issue by far was "The Ghost Days of Melody Brown" by relative newcomer Geordie Williams Flantz. This is a moving tale of two young girls who continue to live as ghosts near the rural cabin where their father murdered them some years earlier. I had never heard of the author before, but this story put me on notice that Geordie Flantz is a writer to watch in the future.

The remaining stories, including the piece by Mr. Strantzas, were quality pieces but they didn't quite appeal as much as those by Lane, Golaski, and Flantz. The issue also contained interesting movie reviews and at least one book review. I'd like to see more of this sort of thing in future issues.

Shadows and Tall Trees appears to have a bright future and may well become one of the places to go to find new weird fiction.

Rating: 8/10

The True First

Shadows and Tall Trees - Issue 1 was initially published by Undertow Books in an edition of 150 copies in November of 2010. Sadly, the issue is sold out from the publisher. Even more regrettably, the publisher has decided not to release an electronic version of the journal. I think this is a mistake, but nobody asked me. Presumably, some of these stories will find their way into future single author collections by their respective authors.

[This review was not based on a review copy]

Review - Beyond the Door

2011-06-11T13:48:00.001-04:00

Jeffrey Thomas

If you're reading this review, you are probably the sort of reader who does a little bit of investigating before committing to read an author with whom you're not familiar. It may sound like a boring exercise to some, but with so much to read and a mere mortal's allotment of sand in the hourglass, the serious reader is often forced to do a little research to ensure that time is not wasted on incompatible books. Even more fundamentally, though, the truth is that the hunt for new authors and quality works is as much a part of the reading experience as the reading itself is.

It was on one of these periodic hunts in the jungles of the internet that I stumbled across Beyond the Door by Jeffrey Thomas. The awesome cover art by Zach McCain ensnared me immediately and the story looked interesting enough for me to take the plunge and purchase a copy even though I had never read anything by Mr. Thomas before. As it turns out, I was right to trust my gut in this case: Beyond the Door is an unheralded gem of weird fiction.

As the novella opens, we find the protagonist, Ware, attempting to enter a bathroom stall in Boston's South Station--"a hub from which so many other directions and destinations might be taken"--only to find that it is occupied and the occupant has not locked the door. Returning to wait in line, Ware says "Where I come from, people lock the toilet stall door." The man in the stall responds, "Well where I come from, people knock on the door before they open it." Thus begins a back and forth exchange between the two strangers that proceeds along similar lines until Ware realizes that his overreaction might have been a result of a memory from his youth. So after his next "Where I come from...." he proceeds to tell the stranger beyond the door the story of what happened.

The stories that each relates to the other become stranger and stranger, concerning such things as a neighborhood haunted house with a real horror in it, a fleetingly present carnival that seems to claim the same casualty every time it's in town, an ill-fated sanitarium, and more. For those who enjoy strange tales, these stories are worth the price of admission in and of themselves. They are truly excellent and memorable. But what slowly emerges is more than just a collection of weird vignettes. It is a celebration of the role of the weird itself in the lives of those who possess imaginative dispositions:

"Every town had such stories, Ware reflected. Not that the incidents they had shared thus far were universal, by any means, but stories of unique interest, stories of abnormalities, deviances from the cicada drone of the mundane that blanked the mind of most...the subconscious-yet-deafening buzz that drowned out the imagination and soothed the inner robot. For a more sensitive soul, however, a brightly inquisitive mind, that ceaseless drone of mediocrity might drive one mad were it not for accounts of frogs falling from the sky, an unidentifiable blob washing up on a beach, demonic claw marks spontaneously appearing on a troubled girl's tender flesh." (p. 80)

These weird vignettes, in other words, turn out to be not just unexplained abberations but also the ingredients that make up the proverbial spice of life. And as each man relates additional tales to the other, he is able to connect with both the other person as well as is his own past.

In the end, therefore, Beyond the Door is a novella that is not only an outstanding collection of almost nostalgic weird tales but also a celebration of the importance of the weird itself. I am a little surprised at the lack of buzz that the book has generated. I know that I will definitely be checking out more of the work of Mr. Thomas in the future.

Rating: 9/10

The True First

Beyond the Door was first published in April of 2011 by Delirium Books in an edition limited to 150 copies. The books is also available in eBook format.

[This review was not based on a review copy]

Review - Sourdough and Other Stories

2011-04-16T19:40:00.001-04:00

Angela Slatter

Tartarus Press is unquestionably one of the better independent presses in operation today, and in recent years, they've expanded beyond the traditional weird fiction of their early days and have started publishing contemporary fiction. These contemporary offerings have been the subject of widely divergent reviews here at Speculative Fiction Junkie: one of their books was #1 on our Top 5 Reads of 2009 list while another received the second most negative review any book has ever received here. Angela Slatter's collection, Sourdough and Other Stories falls somewhere in between these extremes.

Before diving into the contents of the book, it's worth noting that Tartarus Press has really stepped up the production quality with this book. To see what I'm talking about, take a look at this photograph. I really hope that they continue this trend in the future.

I always keep tabs on anything published by Tartarus Press but what piqued my interest in Sourdough and Other Stories was that I kept hearing and reading about it everywhere. What's more, once I started investigating further, every single review I encountered was extremely positive. In fact, I have not encountered a single negative or even hesitant word uttered about this book.

Sourdough and Other Stories is a collection of sixteen dark fairy tales all set in or near the imaginary city of Lodellan and their subject matter is consistent with what is found in traditional fairy tales. Most of the tales appear to be original stories but the collection also includes the retelling of a traditional fairy tale from a new angle. Women protagonists are also more prominently featured in these tales than is often the case.

Ms. Slatter is a very competent prose writer. As others have noted, her prose is effective and poetic, and a few of the stories in the collection really stood out. I'm thinking here in particular of stories like "The Navigator," the tale of a seafaring merchant who inherited her father's ships as well as his navigator, one of the last of a breed of flying creatures whose wings were clipped by the captain when his young daughter gave him reason to believe that the navigator might be plotting to leave his service. Her struggles against dwindling prospects and his against the plight of winglessness lead to a poignant conclusion.

To be completely honest, however, while most of the stories in this collection were enjoyable on some level, they didn't really leave much of an impression on me. I couldn't help but think that while Ms. Slatter populates her tales with the subject matter and frequently dark tone of the traditional fairy tale, most of the stories never achieved the sort of archetypal force that the best fairy tales do.

I also found that these stories were simply told a bit too matter of factly for my personal tastes. Most of them proceed directly from point A to point B without much intrigue, mystery, or atmosphere, and I just could not really get into them for that reason. To be fair, the same could be said about most traditional fairy tales as well.

I'm really somewhat torn about this one. One the one hand, Ms. Slatter is definitely a competent writer and many people obviously love this collection, but on the other hand, I could not get into it for the life of me.

Rating: 6/10

The True First

Sourdough and Other Stories was first published by Tartarus Press in 2010 in a limited edition of 300 copies.

[This review was based on a review copy]

Review - The Quantum Thief

2011-03-01T11:05:00.001-05:00

Hannu Rajaniemi

Is The Quantum Thief by Finnish debut novelist and Scotland-based string theorist Hannu Rajaniemi as big of a deal as everyone is making it out to be? Yes. It is. And I almost didn't even read it.

When I took what was at the time an indefinite reviewing hiatus a few months back, I contacted most of the publishers that periodically sent me review copies to inform them that that they no longer needed to do so. Everyone got the message except apparently for the kind folks at Tor. For months, I continued to get several books a week from one person or another at the science fiction publishing juggernaut, all of which went unread and unreviewed.

Even though I've since started reviewing again, I wasn't really inclined to read this book because I've got such a large backlog of reading material already. While the publicity materials that accompanied the book lauded it as "the most exciting SF-adventure debut in years," this had absolutely no effect on me because, frankly, publicists have lost almost all credibility in my eyes when they make statements like this. This is especially true with respect to the fantasy genre, but it is also true to a lesser extent in the science fiction world. What did catch my attention, however, was the nearly universal praise that the book has garnered from my fellow bloggers. Their praise was enough to get me through the door and once I started reading, I blazed through the book in record time. I don't think I'll ever say this again, but this book is exactly what its publicist claims it to be.

The Quantum Thief is the story of renowned thief Jean le Flambeur, who when we first find him is securely imprisoned in a Dilemma Prison somewhere near Neptune. Here, in a series of glass-walled cells that branch infinitely in all directions, for the pleasure of his captors he is forced to repeatedly act out deadly confrontations with his neighbors as part of a sort of neverending game theory engine. Soon, though, he is rescued by Mieli (who hales from the Oort Cloud) and her sentient ship Perhonen, who after another narrow escape seek to enlist his help with a new bit of thieving on behalf of Mieli's employer. Before that can happen, however, he has to retrieve his memory.

This takes him to the moving Martian city known as the Oubliette--part of a terraforming effort commenced long ago--where most of the book takes place. Oubliette society is complex and a large part of its unique culture can be attributed to the interplay between the omniscient exomemory and the counterbalancing system of privacy controls known as gevulot. Exomemory records everything that occurs in the Oubliette necessitating the creation of gevulot, a system of controls that allows people to determine how much of themselves is available to whom. Another central pillar of Oubliette society is the fact that time is the currency of the realm. Once a person's time has expired, the person becomes a Quiet, which means that their soul is placed into one of a number of different bodies and they are then set to work performing maintenance and other menial tasks for the benefit of the Oubliette. These and numerous other facts, along with the general expertise with which Mr. Rajaniemi has painted the Oubliette, make the Oubliette one of the more interesting locals I've encountered in recent memory.

One fact that immediately confronts the reader is that this book is full of references to technologies and ideas that are not explained right away. This is a work of hard science fiction and Mr. Rajaniemi has elected to immerse his readers head first into his solar system without laying much groundwork. While this can be a little disorienting at first and may put more than a few readers off, those that survive the initial shock will likely conclude that the book would have lost some of its power had Mr. Rajaniemi elected an alternate course. The book also contains numerous references to real life persons, locales, and ideas throughout. For those who wish that the book had come with a glossary, there is one available here. It does contain spoilers though so I recommend not consulting it until you have read the book.

A lot of books that are this ambitious from an ideas standpoint end up ultimately failing as stories because the author's drive to include so many ideas seemingly leads to the eclipsing of the story itself. These books become less about a coherent place with a coherent story than an unsatisfactorily loose collection of ideas and impressions. I'm thinking here in particular of books like Scar Night (review here). The Quantum Thief does not suffer from this problem and instead expertly incorporates numerous novel ideas in such a way that the story is augmented rather than hampered.

This idea saturation alone would have probably made this a successful novel from a hard science fiction standpoint, but it is the fact that this aspect of the book is wedded to an extremely satisfying core adventure story that really makes it shine. This story is both rigorous but, like many heist stories, lighthearted for the most part at the same time.

The Quantum Thief is an extremely ambitious and nearly flawless work of hard science fiction that succeeds at operating on numerous levels. The book manages to be everything: a novel of ideas, a work of science fiction, an adventure story, a heist story, a comedy, and even a sort of future period piece. The author's writing is precise and achieves a synthesis that would have been unthinkable in less capable hands. I have no doubt that this will be the book of the year. Mr. Rajaniemi, please do quit your day job.

Rating: 10/10

The True First

The Quantum Thief was first published in the UK by Gollancz in 2010 in both a hardcover and softcover edition simultaneously. This first printing was limited to a mere 750 hardcover copies and 3,000 trade paperbacks. Needless to say, copies of the hardcover edition are very expensive to acquire. The book will be published in the United States by Tor in May of 2011.

[This review was based on a review copy]

Review - Revenants

2011-02-06T10:54:00.000-05:00

Daniel Mills

When I decided to take a break from reviewing a little more than six months ago, one of the main reasons was the dawning realization of the relative futility of reviewing books that few could afford to get their hands on. While many of the sort of books that get reviewed here continue to suffer from the effective scarcity that high prices create, newcomer Chômu Press has done its part to bring quality works to the masses by recently emerging as a purveyor of strange fiction at affordable prices.

Revenants by debut novelist Daniel Mills is the second Chômu Press book to be reviewed here at Speculative Fiction Junkie. It is the story of the isolated seventeenth century Massachusetts village of Cold Marsh, home to a small group of simple, religiously zealous people of a sort that will be familiar to readers of Nathaniel Hawthorne. In addition to religiously-based self repression, the villagers are oppressed by unbearable burdens of guilt for acts committed both individually and collectively, including the massacre of a group of Native Americans some years before. Shortly after the story opens, a young villager disappears, the third to do so. Three parties of villagers are sent into the surrounding wilderness to find her.

Mr. Mills expertly evokes the rhythms of colonial life, its closeness to nature. The reader constantly hears the sounds, smells the smells, and feels the weather of rural seventeenth century village life. Mr. Mills also does a great job of portraying Cold Marsh's isolation and the menace of the surrounding wilderness. The result is that the book steadily establishes a very compelling atmosphere early on, one that is simultaneously pastoral but tense. Unfortunately, while Mr. Mills' prose is occasionally brilliant and poetic, his descriptions eventually get to be a bit too long winded in my opinion. This dampens the effectiveness of the atmosphere that he has so capably crafted.

The prospect of three separate parties venturing into the menacing wilderness to search for the missing villager had great potential to both frighten and to allow the further exploration of various characters' unique burdens of guilt. Mr. Mills, though, seemed to focus most of his energy on the latter rather than the former. While this is certainly allowable, I couldn't help but feel that this portion of the book had much less of an emotional impact because of it. Instead of a high strung brew of fear and guilt, this part of the book felt more emotionally tepid than it might have. I also couldn't help but feel that this part of the book was too short. By the time the parties emerge from the wilderness, it felt as though they had been gone for just a few hours.

Revenants contains elements of the weird, mystery, and horror but it doesn't really excel at any of these aspects in particular. Nonetheless, Mr. Mills is clearly a writer to watch: but for a few balance issues and a failure to fully capitalize on the tension created in the first half of the book, Revenants would have been an excellent read.

Rating: 7/10

The True First

Revenants will be published by Chômu Press in February 2011 as a print on demand title.

[This review was based on a review copy]

Review - The Boats of the "Glen Carrig" and Other Nautical Adventures

2011-01-23T12:54:00.000-05:00

William Hope Hodgson

When it comes to reading, I have yet to really even scratch the surface of the writings of the early masters of weird fiction. Sure, I've read a Lovecraft and a Poe story here and there, but upon finishing one, I've never felt compelled to immediately move on to the next. The same, apparently, cannot be said about the work of William Hope Hodgson. On the contrary, it will be difficult to read much else until I've finished reading his entire output. Thankfully, this task will be made much easier by the publication by Night Shade Books of a five volume set of The Collected Fiction of William Hope Hodgson, of which I've already ordered the second volume. The Boats of the "Glen Carrig" and Other Nautical Adventures is the first volume of this collection and if the others are even half as riveting as this first installment then I will have to track down the remaining three more or less immediately.

Hodgson's writing is of the visionary, rather than the cerebral, variety, which is to say that it's effectiveness is almost entirely a product of the potency of the underlying vision and atmosphere it reveals to the reader than of the plotting, characters, overall quality of writing, or anything else. In my opinion, this makes Hodgson an early forerunner of writers like Adam Golaski and Simon Strantzas.

As the title of this volume suggests, the thing that the materials that make up this collection share in common is that they all tell stories that take place at sea. Regarding the author's relationship to the sea, science fiction guru Sam Moskowitz once said that "Hodgson, whose literary success would be in a large measure based on the impressions he received at sea, actually hated and feared the waters with an intensity that was the passion of his life." Having now read his nautical fiction, I can definitely believe that this might be true.

The first piece in the book is the collection's only novel, entitled The Boats of the Glen Carrig. In it, an eighteenth century man recounts the events following the sinking of the ship on which he was traveling, the Glen Carrig. When the story begins, the travelers are already in life boats. They soon discover a hostile land in which they find a hastily abandoned ship and from which strange cries emanate. Their nights there are accompanied by clear evidence that something pursues them. They soon return to sea in their lifeboats where numerous new terrors await them. If the reader succeeds in placing herself in the place of the narrator, then this novel contains some of the most terrifying writing one is likely ever to encounter. I say "if" because the quirky writing style will prove too great a barrier for some. The reward is great, however, for those who persist. Hodgson's vision succeeds at terrifying the reader in several ways: by instilling a sense of utter isolation and then threatening the reader with all manner of things both manifested and merely hinted at. Sadly, the sense of terror that Hodgson creates rapidly dissipates towards the end of the novel, at which point the survivors' efforts to deal with their predicament take on something of a non-terrifying, utilitarian MacGyver feel.

The next six short stories are collectively known as Hodgson's Sargasso Sea Stories. Presented here in the order in which they were originally published (with one exception), the best of these stories are the first two: "From the Tideless Sea" parts one and two. All of them, like portions of The Boats of the Glen Carrig, take place in the Sargasso Sea, an area of the Atlantic characterized by massive seaweed clumps and frequently calm winds, which no doubt led Hodgson to populate these stories with ship-trapping islands of seaweed, strange, deadly creatures, and other things hinted at more than seen. These stories take place in the same universe as The Boats of the Glen Carrig and inspire terror for the same reasons. Unfortunately, they are all very similar. While it would be going too far to say that when one has read one, one has read them all, these stories rapidly lose effectiveness from one story to the next because the reader is confronted with more or less the same thing over and over.

The next thirteen stories, collected under the heading "The Exploits of Captain Gault," are really nothing like what precedes them except that they too concern the nautical life. In them, Hodgson has left the strange waters of the Sargasso Sea and moved into the calmer waters of the civilized world to relate the exploits of the fictional Captain Gault, ladies man, renaissance man, and smuggler. Most of these stories involve the outsmarting of customs agents through various ploys, many of which he reveals in detail to their victims after the latter can no longer harm him. These stories of cleverness and small adventures are lighthearted for the most part and are enjoyable to read. They do, however, constitute what in my opinion is the weakest part of this collection and can get a bit repetitious. I guess one must remember that these stories did not initially appear side by side, which likely would have diminished the feeling of repetition.

The third set of stories, only two in this case, are dubbed "The Adventures of Captain Jat," and their content is sort of a middle ground between the weird fiction of the first part of the collection and the adventure tales of Captain Gault. These stories concern two of the more interesting characters of the collection: the tall, "rum toddy" loving, hot tempered (I think we would say "abusive" today), Captain Jat, and his trusted, savvy cabin boy, Pibby Tawles. Both of these stories involve sneaking onto inhabited islands in pursuit of some treasure and both are excellent adventure tales that contain elements of horror and the weird. They're also slightly humorous due to the juxtaposition of the image of the tall captain next to his tiny cabin boy. I wish that Hodgson had written more of these tales.

In a similar vein are the last two tales in the book, which concern another fictional character named D.C.O. Cargunka. Here again, Hodgson's ability to inject the humorous into his adventure tales is manifest. "D.C.O," we learn, stands for "Dot-and-Carry-One," a reference to the way in which Cargunka is forced to walk as a result of having one leg that is longer than the other. The resulting limp led him to idolize Lord Byron, who suffered from a similar affliction, and Cargunka is constantly comparing himself favorably to the poet. A further humorous detail is that Cargunka, the wealthy owner of bars and ships, nonetheless insists on signing on to his own ventures as the ship cook. The two D.C.O. Cargunka tales are excellent adventure tales but they lack the elements of horror and the weird that the Captain Jat tales possess.

Despite the minor shortcomings noted above, Hodgson has become one of my favorite authors solely on the strength of this collection. His prose can take some getting used to and it is not for everyone, but those who penetrate it and reach the heart of his stories will find it difficult to come away unimpressed. In Hodgson's weird fiction can be found the seed of all that distinguishes true horror from the often ineffectual drivel that masquerades as horror today; a type of terror that often seems to be almost completely absent from contemporary books and film. In addition to the absolute terror that Hodgson's writing invests the sea with, his is also one of the greatest portrayals of human isolation and loneliness I've ever encountered. When you add to this his refined sense of humor and his excellent ability as a writer of adventure tales, Hodgson is revealed to have been not only one of our finest authors, but a man with an extraordinary range and depth of humanity; a human's human. It's nothing less than an absolute tragedy that he was killed in World War I at 40 years old. Who knows what further treasures he may have given the world?

Rating: 9/10

The True First

The Boats of the "Glen Carrig" and Other Nautical Adventures was first published in 2003 by Night Shade Books. While the first printing is now sold out, a second printing is available directly from the publisher. Furthermore, first printings can be still be found relatively cheaply.

[This review was not based on a review copy]

Hiatus: A Further Explanation

2010-07-21T08:55:00.005-04:00

One of the main reasons I created Speculative Fiction Junkie was to spread the word about great fiction. As the site evolved, more and more of the works reviewed came from the ranks of independent presses producing works in very limited quantities. I never made a conscious decision to review books printed in runs of, say, 200 copies, but it just turns out that some truly excellent fiction of the sort that interests me is being published in this manner these days.

A few weeks ago, during a phone conversation with a friend of mine who lives in another state, we got to talking about short stories. He, like many people, doesn't think very highly of them, while I on the other hand immediately thought of at least two dozen excellent examples that I thought he might enjoy immensely and that might get him to change his mind about the merits of the form.

The problem of course is that these stories are scattered across perhaps 18 or more collections whose small print runs and high production values mean that acquiring them might be a $1000+ USD proposition. Furthermore, since my friend lives hundreds of miles away, lending him the books is not a practical alternative.

I tried unsuccessfully to figure out a way to share these stories and even considered for a short while courses of action that would have been frankly illegal. In the end, however, I did nothing and concluded that the fact that these authors' works aren't available electronically or in affordable physical form, effectively precludes the possibility that my friend, and others like him, will ever read these works or come to know and revere the names of their authors. Thus will the laws that were designed to protect authors instead in this case contribute to their continued obscurity.

Now, it's all fine and good to say that authors and publishers deserve to be compensated for their work at whatever price the free market will support, but my goal is to share works of fiction with people who may not have discovered them and $100 books with print runs of 200 make accomplishing this goal impossible as a practical matter, which is to say that this site cannot achieve one of its primary purposes. As a consequence, the hiatus here is likely a permanent one. I will continue to seek out and enjoy the works of the small presses I've come to love over the past few years, but it's doubtful that I'll continue to review them.

Hiatus

2010-07-05T16:02:00.000-04:00

I've fallen a bit behind in reviews because of some extremely taxing days at work lately. Partially as a result of this, I've decided to take, for the first time in over two years, a bit of a break from Speculative Fiction Junkie.

This decision was prompted by a number of things, including a general sense of fatigue with my various obligations, a desire to pursue other hobbies like learning more French, and an increasingly persistent suspicion that touting the virtues of books that few can afford to buy when they're lucky enough to find them at all may not enhance to any meaningful degree the likelihood that those works will end up in the hands of new readers. I may have more to say about this later...

Until then, happy reading everyone and I'll see you after the break, in perhaps a week or a month or two...

Review - Literary Remains

2010-06-18T10:04:00.000-04:00

R.B. Russell

Ray Russell has become very familiar around here. With the publication of this review, we've reviewed all of his published collections. We've also reviewed several books published by the excellent Tartarus Press, which he and Rosalie Parker run. The two of them were also kind enough to take part in the inaugural interview of our new small press interview series. Mr. Russell's talents go even further still and include illustrations for Tartarus Press covers and musical composition, making him one of several renaissance men who seem to appear in greater concentrations among weird fiction authors than they do among other populations.

Mr. Russell's latest collection, Literary Remains, collects eight original short stories as well as two that were previously published elsewhere. This collection, and indeed the rest of Mr. Russell's work, couldn't be more different from the intellectually shocking, in your face brand of weird fiction practiced by Mark Samuels. Mr. Russell's brand of weird fiction is far gentler and subtler.

One of my favorite tales in Literary Remains is "Another Country," which is one of the more overtly weird in the collection (it's ending is, anyway). In it, the publicist for a major publishing company attempts to visit one of its critically acclaimed authors who has more or less gone AWOL in an unnamed country. What he finds is a disgruntled man who has numerous grievances against his publisher and the only other person in his life, his ailing mother. As other reviewers have noted, this story creates a very claustrophobic atmosphere. Additionally, permeating the whole thing is a sense of melancholy emanating from the fact that the author's work has in his eyes been twisted into something that is meaningless to him.

Also good was "Loup-Garou," in which a man views an obscure French film at a cinema while waiting on a job interview for which he arrived much too early. The characters in the film share a number of uncanny resemblances with the man's life that cannot be easily explained away. Years later, when he is finally able to track the scarce film down, it is not entirely as he remembers it and reality itself becomes impossible to ascertain. The resulting rage that is mentioned towards the end of the tale threatens to turn him into the creature that gave the film its name.

Another favorite was "Blue Glow," which in my opinion is as representative of Mr. Russell's work as any tale is. It is the story of a recently divorced man who notices what appears to be a dalliance between a man who lives across the street and a woman who visits him periodically. Eventually, he meets the man and thus begins an odd process whereby he comes to occupy the man's apartment, his clothes, his possessions, his woman, and his very identity. Meanwhile, the things he's disposed of in order to obtain this new life show signs of being used by someone. The reasons and motivators for the characters' actions are vague at best and in the final analysis, no one seems to be in control of their own destinies.

"A revelation" is also enjoyable. In it, a council inspector making a routine inspection of a home encounters an attic with a padlock on it and a nervous tenant. I'll say no more.

Finally, "Where They Cannot Be Seen" is a great conclusion to this collection. It is the story of two married couples taking their regular vacation together. Tensions among the group are manifest from the outset, and when two members of the group pair up illicitly one night, their actions separate them from their spouses in a uniquely physical way. This story feels like the most heartfelt and of any in the collection and its portrayal of tension reminiscent of Mr. Russell's excellent novella Bloody Baudelaire (review here).

Literary Remains feels in many respects like a work of transition for Mr. Russell. While he maintains his trademark subtlety, the stories in this collection feel on balance less atmospheric and more overtly weird than his earlier work. However he proceeds in the future, I have no doubt that Mr. Russell will continue to be one of the more unique voices in weird literature. Let's hope he keeps writing at a relatively quick pace.

Rating: 8/10

The True First

Literary Remains was first published by PS Publishing in 2010 in two editions: a standard jacketed hardcover and a traycased jacketed hardcover signed by the author.

[This review was based on a review copy]

Review - The Man Who Collected Machen and Other Stories

2010-06-08T07:43:00.000-04:00

Mark Samuels

Speculative Fiction Junkie just celebrated its second birthday and, fortuitously, the book I happened to be reading on that day was one worthy of the occasion; a book that is almost guaranteed to appear on my Top 5 Reads of 2010 list. That book was The Man Who Collected Machen & Other Stories by modern master of the weird tale Mark Samuels. If ever there was a book that I didn't want to end, this is it.

The occasion was made even sweeter by the fact that it marked a successful return to ordering books directly from the publisher, Ex Occidente Press. To put it mildly, I've had problems in the past ordering books directly from the press, I hope that my success in acquiring this book marks the dawning of a new day for Ex Occidente Press.

The Man Who Collected Machen and Other Stories starts off strong with "Losenef Express," in which a successful but unhealthy and disillusioned American writer attempts to get away from it all by retreating into an anonymous alcoholic haze in Eastern Europe. After drinking a lot of whiskey one evening, he spots a fellow bar patron staring at him with contempt and decides to follow his antagonist into the misty night when the latter departs. What he does to the man when he catches up with him, and the chain of events it ignites, is chillingly effective.

Also excellent is "Glickman the Bibliophile," the story of a retired bibliophile who goes to meet with the publishers of his latest collection of weird tales only to find that they are not as friendly towards his work, or indeed to the written word in general, as he expected. He discovers, in fact, that the publisher's operations are part of a larger endeavor that is concerned with the dissemination of literature in a peculiar and shocking way.

"Thyxxolqu" is another highlight among a book filled with them. It is the tale of a man who starts to notice that the writing on familiar objects has been replaced with an unfamiliar script. Eventually, the ability to see the script looks more and more like a disease, one which comes with a physical deformity that enables the afflicted to speak the strange dialect better. What the protagonist learns of the language is classic Samuels.

"The Age of Decayed Futurity" is also a tale that only Samuels could write. This story, which originally appeared in Cinnabar's Gnosis, tells of Joanna Wolski, who takes a sojourn in a hotel on the Baltic Sea to work on her fourth novel. While there, a hideously disfigured guest tells her of the Reassembly Cartel, which, he alleges, has absolute power over human society and is to blame for his disfigurement. The precise nature of the conspiracy is shocking and its ultimate effect on Wolski no less so.

My final favorite is "A Contaminated Text," in which a librarian finds among the recently acquired stock of an occultist a book that tells of the Voolans, evolutionarily decayed creatures who dwell in the center of worlds and relish in the piecemeal destruction of the universe. The book soon starts to exert an influence that explains why its previous owner attempted suicide.

While the five tales I've singled out are excellent, the remaining five are also wonderful. The main thing that distinguishes Mr. Samuels' work from that of many other modern writers of the weird tale is how cerebral it is. If writers like Simon Strantzas and Adam Golaski affect the reader primarily through their imagery, Mr. Samuels' work derives most of its potency from the core idea that is at the heart of most of his stories. These ideas are often stunning notions about the nature of time, the world of the dead, language, the universe, or any number of other things, but what they all have in common is that if you distilled them into their fundamentals, they would be absolutely fascinating even without the narratives that Mr. Samuels constructs around them.

But of course, Mr. Samuels does create narratives around them, and in this he excels too. His prose is targeted and economical and is the perfect vessel for elevating his ideas into true works of art.

Mr. Samuels is a genius and the value of his work has not yet been fully appreciated. He is an absolute original for which there is no substitute.

Rating: 10/10

The True First

The Man Who Collected Machen and Other Stories was first published by Ex Occidente Press in 2010 and is limited to only 170 copies. If you are on the fence about getting this one, trust me: make the jump.

[This review was not based on a review copy]

As a bit of an aside, I thought I would mention that Mr. Samuels' work can even affect creatures of the feline variety. Take a look at this picture of one of my cats:

Now look at the same cat after she had just finished reading Mr. Samuels' debut collection (scary!):

Review - Remember You're a One-Ball!

2010-05-29T12:41:00.005-04:00

Quentin S. Crisp

Anyone who reads weird literature is probably familiar with the work of Quentin S. Crisp, an author who no less of a giant than Mark Samuels believes to be "the most important writer of his generation." Until I read his recently published novel Remember You're a One-Ball!, however, I was completely unfamiliar with his work (yet another shameful void in my reading). Having just completed the book, I am certain that I will be reading more of his work in the future; and this despite the fact that this book is one of the most difficult I've read in years. Indeed, not since reading The Angel Maker by Stefan Brijs has a book left me feeling so empty.

Remember You're a One-Ball! is the story of Ramsey Blake, a somewhat misanthropic outsider who returns to teach at the elementary school that he himself attended as a boy. When a particularly poorly adjusted boy named Norman has to be dragged kicking, screaming, and sobbing into his classroom one day, it marks the beginning of a series of events that will lead to the young unfortunate losing one of his testicles and thereby becoming an even larger target for his peers' multifaceted torments. Norman's unfolding story, memories from Blake's own life, and what Blake learns about another boy who was similar to Norman in a number of ways, lead Blake down a path of discovery that shocks the conscience in a multiple ways.

This book works on a number of levels and I think it is susceptible to being interpreted in many different ways. At the heart of Remember You're a One-Ball! is an unflinching portrayal of the suffering of the ostracized and maladjusted, and of the cruelty of their tormentors. This aspect of the book easily overshadows the elements of bodily horror that it contains in my opinion. Whatever else Mr. Crisp may be saying about this suffering, it is its devastating portrayal that is the book's chief accomplishment. I found it to be so terribly effective that I felt almost physically stunned, as I imagine Blake does at the point in the novel where he confesses the following:

I do not know how to describe the utter emptiness with which Harley's tale had left me. It only seemed to me that I now knew the tangled hopelessness of All Things. I knew that it would make no difference what role I was forced to play in the human drama--it was the drama itself that was obscene.

The horror of the book's central conspiracy is even more devastating because of the way that its perpetrators approach it. They are, all of them, completely unflinching in carrying it out, quietly assured that everyone has their role to play and that they are simply helping their unlucky victims move along the natural trajectory toward which their lives tend.

Mr. Crisp's portrayal of suffering is such a prominent part of this book that it would almost be easy to overlook the fact that he is a master of crafting prose. His prose is outstanding, and he writes with a degree of patience rarely seen, although he sometimes stretched things out so much that I felt the book occasionally started to drag a bit.

Remember You're a One-Ball! is a thoroughly devastating, soul crushing book because it plumbs the depths of our capacity for cruelty to an extent seldom even attempted. In doing so, though, it also arouses correspondingly deep feelings of sympathy, so that it becomes at once a thing of unspeakable horror and a means of awakening our deepest seated compassion.

Rating: 8/10

The True First

Remember You're a One-Ball! was first published in May of 2010 by newcomer Chômu Press. However, since it is a print on demand book, it doesn't make too much sense to speak of a true first edition.

[This review was based on a review copy]

Review - Feesters in the Lake

2010-05-19T21:56:00.001-04:00

Bob Leman

I've had remarkable success this year with books recommended by readers of this site. The latest such success is Feesters in the Lake, from Midnight House, which collects the entire published output of Bob Leman, whose name I had never heard prior to having his work recommended to me.

All but two of the fifteen stories in this collection were originally published in the Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. Of these two, one was previously unpublished, intended as it was for Harlan Ellison's The Last Dangerous Visions anthology, which was never completed.

The stories that make up this collection span the horror, science fiction, and weird fiction genres nicely. What strikes me most about Mr. Leman's writing is how uniquely American a lot of it feels in both subject matter and tone. Leman brings myths and ideas that have permeated genre fiction for countless years to small town Appalachia in a way I've never encountered before, and the tone of a lot of his work is wryly humorous and distanced in a way that reminds me of the short stories of the great Walter M. Miller, Jr. as well as of the way my late grandfather used to tell stories.

Another thing that makes Mr. Leman's fiction stand out is his use of the fictional Goster County and the town of Sturkeyville. Places and people make appearances in multiple stories and together flesh out what is one of the more interesting settings I've encountered in weird fiction recently. Other writers have employed this tactic before but I never tire of it.

While there is not a single dud in this collection, a few of the stories really stand out. The first of these is "Window," in which a military experiment creates what appears to be a window into the past. In this bubble is a Victorian house complete with what looks like a happy family. The inhabitants appear to be completely oblivious to the existence of the modern world around them and indeed the military can only penetrate the "bubble" for a few seconds every day. When one of the men is lured by the idyllic vision to try to breach the barrier, the nature of the window becomes strikingly apparent.

"The Pilgrimage of Clifford M." is perhaps the book's best story. It is a vampire tale of sorts, but one that brings a different angle and tenor than is usually encountered in this sort of story. I found it to be the most moving and haunting tale in the collection.

"Olida" was also outstanding. In it, a man returns to the town he grew up in only to have his elderly aunt request his assistance in figuring out what has gotten into her son. The son has decided to marry one of the Selkirks, a despised tribe of a family that resides in the mountainous region outside of town known as Grill's Fork. This story is a satisfyingly weird variation on the outsider-visits-insular-mountain-enclave tale.

Other favorites in this collection include "Industrial Complex," "Loob," "Feesters in the Lake," and "Instructions." To be truthful, all of these are almost as good as the three I singled out above. This is just a truly solid collection.

Mr. Leman's writing seems to me to be sort of a bridge. On the one hand, his writing is firmly rooted in the intelligent, but often somewhat sanitized, genre writing of an earlier age, but on the other hand the effectiveness of most of his tales derives from his ability to deftly introduce the weird and horrible into this seemingly sanitized world just when the reader was getting comfortable.

Bob Leman is an American classic, and Feesters in the Lake is the definitive (and only) complete collection of his work. I have no doubt that it will eventually be republished in one form or another but until that happens, if you have the opportunity to snap up this rare gem for a reasonable price, don't hesitate.

Rating: 9/10

The True First

Feesters in the Lake was published by Midnight House in 2002. Only 460 copies were published and of these only 450 were offered for sale.

[This review was not based on a review copy]

Couldn't Finish - Watcher in the Woods

2010-05-02T12:27:00.000-04:00

Florence Engel Randall

There is a diverse group of people, most of whom are in their late twenties today, who will tell you that the scariest movie they've ever seen was a Disney film. They will go on to say that the film was rated PG, and if you're still listening, they will finally tell you that this film was shown to them by their parents or some other caregiver when they were no more than, say, ten years old. I've met these people all over the United States and I'm one of them myself. The movie I'm talking about is The Watcher in the Woods. It gave me nightmares of both the sleeping and waking variety for at least a year and it's no exaggeration to say that this movie marked the beginning of my lifelong preference for horror of the suspenseful and supernatural variety as opposed to its gorier and less intelligent cousin.

Regrettably, it was filmed during a period of terrible hairdos, awful fashion, and, apparently, mediocre acting. However, I watched it again recently and have to say that if you can look beyond these glaring problems (a herculean feat), it is still a terribly frightening movie.

I learned a few years ago that the movie was based on a book of the same name published in 1976 by Florence Engel Randall, and it was only a matter of time until I forced myself to return to the source of my childhood fears by reading it.

Having attempted to read the book, I'll just say this: in my opinion, the book is unfinishable. Don't even bother attempting to read it, but do see the movie (which is sorely in need of a remake) if you can stand it.

Review - Witchfinder: Dawn of the Demontide

2010-04-22T22:27:00.001-04:00

William Hussey

It's been a while since I read and reviewed Bill Hussey's debut novel Through A Glass, Darkly (review here); so much so, in fact, that I began that review by noting that "[m]y interest in reading horror books is episodic at best." My, how things have changed since then! In the year and a half since that review, I've ramped up the horror reading quite a bit but have yet to read a horror novel that surpasses Through A Glass, Darkly. Mr. Hussey's follow up, The Absence (review here), was also spectacular even if time has revealed it to be less enduring in my mind than its predecessor.

As a huge fan of Mr. Hussey's work, I was intrigued to learn that he was working on a trilogy of young adult books. The young adult/adult fiction distinction often seems to be largely one of marketing rather than substance, and I never tire of asserting the obvious fact that young adult books can be just as rewarding as works meant for older eyes. I therefore fully expected the first book in Mr. Hussey's Witchfinder Trilogy, Witchfinder: Dawn of the Demontide, to be a treat. Ultimately, however, it wasn't as satisfying as Mr. Hussey's adult fiction.

Witchfinder: Dawn of the Demontide is the story of Jake Harker, a teenage boy who loves all things horror and whose parents work for the mysterious Hobarron Institute. One evening, while walking home from the Institute, Harker's mother and a friend of his are murdered by something nonhuman, something terrible. As a result, Harker learns the truth about the work his parents have been doing at the institute; work designed to combat an event called the Demontide, which, if it comes to pass, will see the demons of hell unleashed on Earth. Prior to her death, Harker's mother had been working on a secret weapon to up humanity's chances, but when it fails, the only option may be to temporarily delay the Demontide by performing a horrifying ritual that may cost Harker dearly.

While the writing and prose live up to Mr. Hussey's high standards, several conceptual issues made it difficult for me to enjoy this book from the start. As an initial matter, the notion that witches and demons would be combated by a scientific-ish institute was both unconvincing and unappealing. I'm sure that to some extent this is just a matter of personal preference, but think of it like this: imagine you're reading the Book of Exodus and you reach the part where Moses is about to cross the Red Sea. Imagine that in lieu of the Red Sea parting as it does in the book, Moses instead pulls a little circuit board out of his bag and this device begins, through some scientific process, to part the Red Sea. At the very least such a vision would be unconvincing and at worst, it would seem to diminish the power of both myth and science. Mr. Hussey's decision to take what I deem to be a similar course in Witchfinder: Dawn of the Demontide meant that the book would never appeal beyond a certain level. The entire concept of the Demontide suffered from a similar flaw in my opinion.

My final quibble is that the action began before a sense of atmosphere had been adequately developed, and this was never really remedied through a gradual building of mystery or suspense.

If you haven't read Mr. Hussey's adult fiction, you absolutely should do so right away, but I can't give as strong an endorsement to his debut work for young adults.

Rating: 7/10

The True First

Witchfinder: Dawn of the Demontide was first published as a trade paperback in 2010 by Oxford University Press.

[This review was not based on a review copy]

A Different Approach to Ex Occidente

2010-04-21T22:31:00.002-04:00

A little less than a year ago, I published a post about an extremely bad experience I had with Ex Occidente Press. In the months since, that post has become the single most viewed post Speculative Fiction Junkie has ever had and elicited dozens of comments.

Meanwhile, I've continued to review Ex Occidente's books and given all of them high marks. One of them even appeared on my best read of 2009 list. The dissonance between my "Ex Occidente rant" on the one hand and the increasing esteem in which I hold their books on the other has continued to grow since I published the original post. It's reached the point that I'm no longer comfortable being the place that people go to report negative experiences with Ex Occidente Press. As such, I have decided that the time has come to retire that post and so I've removed it from the site.

My decision in this matter is in no way meant to diminish the complaints of the people who wrote comments to the original post. I just don't want to be an impediment to a press that is producing books of this quality.

Continue to demand that you get you what you pay for, and continue to complain if you don't. I know I will. I'm just no longer comfortable having my site be the public forum in which discussions of Ex Occidente's shortcomings take place.

Review - Beneath the Surface

2010-04-12T22:27:00.000-04:00

Simon Strantzas

The second collection of short stories from Simon Strantzas, Cold to the Touch (review here), was my favorite book of 2009. I credit it with ushering in a frenzy of weird fiction reading on my part and my review of that book marked the beginning of a series of reviews of works of strange fiction here at Speculative Fiction Junkie that has continued to this point largely unabated. It was amazingly frustrating, therefore, to find out that his first collection, Beneath the Surface, was out of print and virtually impossible to find. It turns out that the publisher had gone out of business just as the book was being released and so only a few copies made it into the world. It took months to finally locate a copy, and the only book I've ever had to work harder to find was R.B. Russell's Putting the Pieces in Place (review here). I finally managed to track it down, however, and it was definitely worth the wait.

If the protagonists in Cold to the Touch were alienated and dispossessed, this is doubly true of those that inhabit the stories in Beneath the Surface. They are burdened with things far worse than mere alienation and are in many cases more than a little disturbed. The whole collection, in fact, feels far bleaker than Mr. Strantzas's second collection, and his writing is often much more stark.

Several of these stories really stood out. The collection's opening story,"A Shadow in God's Eye," is absolutely fantastic. In it, a man answers a flyer's summons to an unlikely church to hear a sermon about the deteriorating world. The manner in which he is given the power to see the truth is shocking and the truth itself too big for the head, to paraphrase the protagonist's impression. It's conclusion is cosmic horror of the finest sort.

"Behind Glass" is another wonderful piece. This one is freely available online and it was the first story by Mr. Strantzas that I ever read. It is as compelling a tale of corporate horror as you're likely to find and immediately brings to mind similarly toned stories by Thomas Ligotti. In it, we follow a man named Hawksley as he starts a new job with the company that bought out his former employer. If you've ever worked in a corporate environment and if you're the sort of person who enjoys weird fiction, you're going to love this story.

Also excellent was "In the Air," even if I still don't fully understand it. It is the story of a widow who returns with her sister-in-law to the small town where her husband's plane crashed. Once there, she gains a peculiar insight into the nature of existence and a glimpse similar to what her late husband must have seen from the sky.

Finally, I also thoroughly enjoyed "The Autumnal City," a tale with a feel reminiscent of The Matrix in which a worker in a monotonous city glimpses what he thinks is a chance at freedom in the form of the fleeting image of a woman dressed in white, as well as "The Constant Encroaching of a Tumultuous Sea," which displays a particularly interesting form of alienation towards the city.

The remainder of the stories in Beneath the Surface are solid even if in my opinion they lack some of the variety of tone and content that Cold to the Touch displayed. All of the stories in this collection share a similar feel: they are, at least in a sense, different aspects of a single nightmare. And while it is a compelling and fascinating vision, I think this sharper focus ends up causing this debut collection to lack some of the depth that Cold to the Touch possessed.

Nevertheless, this book is definitely one of the better collections I've read recently. Like Richard Gavin's The Darkly Splendid Realm (review here), Beneath the Surface is a strong collection punctuated here and there by near perfect stories. No one is better at writing compelling nightmares than Mr. Strantzas.

That's why it's absolutely mind boggling that the book is out of print. I don't know how the publishing world works but I can't think of a satisfactory reason why this book is still out of print.

Rating: 9/10

The True First

Beneath the Surface was originally published by the now defunct Humdrumming Press in 2008. Estimates I've heard from various sources put the number of copies at around a mere hundred.

[This review was not based on a review copy]

Interview - Ray Russell & Rosalie Parker from Tartarus Press

2010-04-09T17:04:00.003-04:00

Tartarus Press was one of the first small presses whose work I encountered and read on a recurring basis, and it has remained one of my favorites ever since. Located in the United Kingdom, the folks at Tartarus have been churning out works of supernatural fiction by both classic and contemporary authors for years. Their works are known as much for their physical quality as for that of their authors. The press has won numerous awards, including most recently a Stoker award for Excellence in Specialty Press Publishing. While I know them only through their fiction, Tartarus also publishes a Guide to First Edition Prices as well as Wormwood, a semi-annual journal on fantastic, supernatural, and decadent literature.

The proprietors of the press, Ray Russell and Rosalie Parker, generously agreed to be interviewed by yours truly and so without further ado:

In a recent interview in Rue Morgue magazine, Ray explained that the initial impetus for the creation of Tartarus Press was the desire to republish the work of Arthur Machen. Having long since accomplished this goal, what motivated you to keep publishing?

Realising that so little by Machen was in print, and discovering previously unpublished material, was very exciting. We’re pleased to report that twenty years later we are still discovering writing that fires our enthusiasm just as much as it did back then. Whether the author appears to be forgotten by modern readers, or if they are writing now, if their work gives us that thrill or frisson that great literature should then we really want to publish it.

The output of the Press seems to fall into two categories: out-of-print or previously uncollected works from the past on the one hand, and a small but growing output of contemporary fiction on the other. What is the process by which works and authors are chosen at Tartarus Press and is there a great plan or mission?

We’ve always worked on the theory that if we like a book then hopefully there will be others who share our taste. Quality is our only criteria for classic or contemporary fiction. There’s no great mission, although we do specialise in subtle, supernatural and psychological fiction. In theory, a full collection of Tartarus Press books should give a pretty comprehensive overview of the genre.

Like many small presses, Tartarus produces books with extremely limited print runs. Are these small numbers required by resource limitations or is it this way by design?

We try and make a virtue out of a necessity. The readership for the kind of books we publish is quite limited, hence the limited runs. Despite the possibilities offered by modern technology we have our books printed up in one run, lithographically, on quality paper. (This means we are not able to just print off another hundred copies if demand requires it – it would mean another serious print run.)

So are there any plans to republish any of your previously published books that are now out of print and fetching prices exceeding $400 USD? These high prices would seem to evidence strong demand for the books in question.

Yes, which is why we’ve made The White Hands by Mark Samuels and The Collected Connoisseur stories by Mark Valentine and John Howard available. We did have a limited reprint of our Robert Aickman collection, but at the moment the rights to reprint Aickman are with Faber and Faber.

Has running Tartarus Press been what you expected? What have been the biggest surprises, both positive and negative?

We can’t think of anything else we would rather be doing. It is hard work and financially risky, but ultimately very rewarding.

Is Tartarus Press here to stay indefinitely? Or does it have a limited lifespan?

All the time we keep finding writing we want to publish we will continue to do so. Even if we have to go out and get proper jobs in the future we can see ourselves continuing to run the press part time. Once a publisher, always a publisher

How do you view the role of Tartarus Press within the larger context of the publishing world today? Is it working in concert with major publishing trends or in spite of them?

We seem to survive outside the major publishing world, often going against received wisdom. For example, the big publishing houses insist that the public want novels rather than short story collections, but our readers seem to prefer short stories. We are told that cheaply produced, almost disposable books are what most readers want, and yet ours like to have well-made, old-fashioned hardbacks.

Who is Ray Russell? Who is Rosalie Parker? Your names have become closely associated with weird literature over the years but for those of us who have never met you, tell us briefly about yourselves.

Ray Russell trained as an architect but never got around to practising as one because of the demands of running the press. He is at heart a book collector and has always wanted to publish the kind of books he would want on his own shelf.

Rosalie Parker did a first degree in English Literature, and then trained and worked as an archaeologist for ten years before being sucked into working for Tartarus full time.

In addition to your work with Tartarus Press, you are both writers. Tell us about your latest projects.

Ray has recently published Literary Remains, a collection of strange/supernatural stories with PS Publishing, and has had a number of stories in recent anthologies and magazines.

Rosalie has her first collection, The Old Knowledge, coming out later this year from Ex Occidente and has had stories published in recent anthologies.

What do you like to read?

We both read in the supernatural/weird/strange fiction genre, and also in the mainstream.

I've noted before that weird fiction seems to be full of mysterious alleyways and hidden treasures, and as people who are ultra-knowledgeable about the subgenre, I couldn't pass up the opportunity to ask you about them. So, are there any authors of weird fiction whose work you believe unjustifiably languishes in obscurity?

Those neglected authors we know about and want to champion have generally been published by Tartarus and some other complementary presses. Some already have a reasonable profile, but we would love to see Sarban’s work better-appreciated both inside the genre and without.

Finally, and feel free to dodge this question because it's one I can't answer satisfactorily myself, why do you think we like weird fiction?

Perhaps it is the nagging belief that that there is more to life than the material, external world around us. Whatever it may be is unclear, but writers like Arthur Machen and Robert Aickman appear to offer some clues. Perhaps it is an entirely romantic notion, but it is an enjoyable search when you are in the company of such great authors.

Is there anything else you would like to add?

No, only to thank you for the opportunity to discuss a subject close to our hearts.

Many thanks to both of you and keep up the fantastic work!

New Feature - Small Press Interviews

2010-04-09T17:02:00.001-04:00

I'm excited to announce a new feature here at SFJ: interviews with the proprietors of small presses. Such interviews have certainly been conducted by others before, but the large focus that small press publishers receive here made it a logical step.

Once an interview is posted, summary information about the small press in question will be added to a growing list that is available under the "Small Presses" tab.

Review - Spellwright

2010-04-03T11:55:00.000-04:00

Blake Charlton

The last dozen or so books reviewed here at Speculative Fiction Junkie have all come from small presses. While this trend will definitely continue, I still read a fair amount of books produced by large traditional publishers. After so much time away from the big publishing world, however, I sometimes forget how powerful its hype machine is. In some respects, going from the small press pond back into the big publisher ocean is like stepping from a quiet hallway into a noisy room, hype-wise. In the world of big publisher-produced fantasy and science fiction, once a publisher decides that a particular book is the next big thing, the hype that is subsequently unleashed can outpace substantive discussions of the book in question and make it hard to distinguish legitimate quality from hype-fueled speculation. I say this knowing full well that sites like this one are often willingly part of that machine.

The latest super-hyped fantasy novel is Spellwright by Blake Charlton, a debut author whose inspiring life journey saw him go from being literally a dyslexic special education student to becoming a novelist, Yale graduate, and medical student. How hyped was this book, you ask? So hyped that even though it was released just this month, as early as August of last year Pat of Pat's Fantasy Hotlist was able to declare that he had it "on good authority that this book will be in contention for best first fantasy novel ever." While Spellwright shows Mr. Charlton to be a promising author, I do not believe that the book is worthy of the hype it has received.

The relationship between his dyslexia and Mr. Charlton's love of reading are at the heart of Spellwright. The protagonist, Nicodemus Weal, is an apprentice to Magister Agwu Shannon, who was once a politically savvy wizard but has since been exiled to the backwater of Starhaven academy where he continues his research and looks after the scorned group known as cacographers. Cacographers are those who have the power to create the runes that comprise spells but who are unable to cast spells themselves because they misspell every magic text they touch. While cacographers are scorned by the rest of the wizard class, Magister Shannon looks after them and believes that one of them, Nicodemus, may be the wizard foretold by prophecy who will prevent a cataclysmic war that would destroy all human language. Unfortunately, because he is a cacographer Nicodemus can't cast spells. The plot begins to unfold when a rival of Magister Shannon is murdered and he is suspected.

In my opinion, the best thing about Spellwright is the strong characterization. Nicodemus and Shannon are fleshed out and likeable characters as are several members of the supporting cast. The second best aspect of this book is its unique magic system. In Spellwright, spells are made of text that is physical. These texts in turn are made of runes which are formed in the muscles of the caster. This is an innovative idea that leads to some interesting things (e.g., a character creates a club out of text and brains another guy with it, etc.). Even so, I found it to be less compelling, and less well executed, than similarly innovative magic systems, such as those found in the novels of Brandon Sanderson.

The first fundamental problem with this book is that it completely lacks any sense of atmosphere. Mr. Charlton seems to be so focused on describing his magic system that he neglects to give Starhaven, where most of the book takes place, a sense of place and feeling. It's not a failure of worldbuilding so much as it is a failure of buildingbuilding.

The second problem is magnified by the first: the story is so awash in fantasy tropes, and trope-laden plot twists, that its lack of atmosphere cannot support its weight and the whole thing crashes in on itself. There's nothing wrong with continuing to use the time-tested tools of fantasy, as the work of writers like Michael J. Sullivan demonstrates. But in the case of Spellwright it's simply too much. The book is full of completely undisguised archetypes: "monsters," "wizards," "demons," "spells," and "prophecies" populate its pages. These are inserted into numerous plot twists that are difficult to explain and in the end revealed to be the sort of stuff that only the fantasy genre can produce, much to its ridicule. Developments like "the monster had to touch the magic crystal to the obelisk every three years to replenish its power" abound. Against a backdrop completely devoid of atmosphere, it just doesn't work.

I have no doubt that Mr. Charlton will have a bright writing career, and I wish him well. But I cannot join the nearly universal praise being heaped upon Spellwright.

Rating: 6/10

The True First

Spellwright was first published by Tor in March of 2010.

[This review was based on a review copy]

Review - The Darkly Splendid Realm

2010-03-25T22:08:00.002-04:00

Richard Gavin

As I mentioned in my Top 5 Reads of 2009 post, the two greatest book-related discoveries I made last year were the unbelievably rich world of weird fiction and the amazing contribution that small presses are making to the world of literature. In the present age, even those books that have not yet made the jump from tree pulp to electrons have not escaped unscathed. On the contrary, they increasingly bear the indelible markings of an ignoble birth: printed on ever cheaper paper, assembled more and more hastily, they decreasingly seem worthy of being the vessel for the great written legacy that the best of their contents represent. Small presses are the only ones systematically resisting this tide and continuing to treat books as near sacred objects, the way they have traditionally been viewed. A quality book from a small press is not just a book, but often a work of art itself, and at the very least demonstrates by the quality of its construction the high esteem in which its creators still hold the written word.

For this reason, I've made it part of my mission this year to explore not just new authors but new small presses too. My latest voyage takes me to the output of Dark Regions Press and to the excellently-titled The Darkly Splendid Realm by Richard Gavin. I can't remember where I first heard about this collection because it was almost six months ago, but once I did, and read its opening story, I knew I had to read the whole collection as soon as I could.

That first story was "Prowling Through Throated Chambers" (available in its entirety as a free download here), and it is one of the collection's finest. On the surface, it is the story of a troubled young man trying to locate a remote, ultra-frightening haunted house, but it also reads as a sort of parable about what can happen to those parts of ourselves that we choose to ignore and try to leave by the wayside. Regardless of how one reads it, it is a fantastic story.

The best story in the collection, in my opinion, is "Waterburns," an absolutely beautiful story that is at least as sorrowful as it is frightening. It tells of a monster that visits a girl and her sister in their youth and of its occasional return into one of the sister's lives over the ensuing decades. "Waterburns," more than any other story in this collection is about love, loss, and the sometimes cruel way in which we find ourselves on different sides of fate at different times.

My second favorite would have to be "The Astral Mask," in which a man has a nightmare of sorts that leads him to question his own sanity. I don't want to give anything away but suffice it to say that by the end, an entire new plane of existence is revealed to him and he is not the man he once was.

Another great story is "Final Night in Nevertown," the story of a town that begins to disappear piecemeal after a thick mist descends on it. The reason is revealed after a fantastical journey into the mist. This tale is very atmospheric and its resolution reminded me of a particularly effective quote from the Mark Samuels tale "Apartment 205" that I won't mention here because it would give away the entire story.

"Children of the Mound" is another great tale; the story of an ill-fated mission of a group of warrior-missionaries to the far reaches of the Roman Empire to discover what befell a similar party dispatched a year previously that disappeared, and to carry on their work of wiping out the beliefs of the locals and erecting a church.

"Where the Scarab Dwells" concerns a man alienated from corporate life and afflicted by guilt for his company's involvement in the destruction of some tenements in the small towns surrounding Toronto in the name of development. In the end, he believes he may get a chance to prove his innocence in a particularly bizarre way. Other good stories include "Dreaming While Adrift on the River of Despair" and "The Bitter Taste of Dread-Moths."

Less good in my opinion were "Phantom Passages," "Primeval Wood," "The Language of the Nameless Region," and "Getting the Strap." To be honest, I was a little surprised that there were any stories in this collection that weren't top notch, since those that are good are astonishingly good.

I suspect, though, that this is inevitable when one writes stories that are this cutting edge. Mr. Gavin's work pushes particular boundaries of weird fiction in a way that feels unique. While most weird fiction by definition involves some aspect of the weird impinging on everyday reality, Mr. Gavin's stories go further and portray the working of vastly powerful forces that could do far more than merely impinge and at whose mercy we all exist. Whether it's the power of nature, disembodied alien souls, or something else, by the time many of these stories conclude, it is these forces and the spheres they inhabit that seem to constitute the main locus of reality and everyday reality that has been relegated to the tangential backwater. This has the effect of casting human affairs in an even more pitiful and precious light than they already are, which is both terrifying and humbling.

While not a perfect collection, The Darkly Splendid Realm does contain a number of perfect stories. I agree wholeheartedly with those who have said that Mr. Gavin's writing is unique. This is the only work of Mr. Gavin's I've read, but it was enough to make me incapable of picturing weird fiction without him.

Rating: 9/10

The True First

The Darkly Splendid Realm was first published by Dark Regions Press in 2009. Three editions were published simultaneously: a lettered edition, a signed limited edition, and a trade paperback edition.

[This review was not based on a review copy]

Review - Red Planet Noir

2010-03-16T23:02:00.002-04:00

D.B. Grady

In recent months, Speculative Fiction Junkie might as well have been called Strange Fiction Junkie since reviews of weird fiction have predominated here lately. This does not mean, though, that I've lost my fondness for works of science fiction and fantasy or that I don't occasionally yearn to read something besides weird fiction. I was glad, therefore, when a novel came my way that promised to simultaneously be a work of science fiction and a noir detective story; a "Raymond Chandler mystery in a Robert Heinlein world," as a press release for the book described it. That novel was Red Planet Noir by debut author D.B. Grady, part of which was written in Afghanistan while the author was serving there as a U.S. paratrooper.

Red Planet Noir is the story of Mike Sheppard, a broke private eye who has no clients and is just barely scraping by until he gets hired by an attractive woman on Mars to solve the murder--deemed a suicide by the locals--of her father, a powerful man on the Red Planet, which is run by the Air Force. As he works the case, Sheppard finds himself traveling all around a dystopian Mars and as far as the asteroid belt. Along the way, he meets all sorts of people, many of whom wish him harm of the fatal variety, and even gets embroiled in interplanetary political upheavals.

This book isn't just a science fiction story with noir trappings. The story and prose itself are completely and authentically rooted in the noir tradition. But even so, the science fiction elements are a bit superior to the noir elements in my opinion, even if the latter are ever present.

The most interesting part of Red Planet Noir is the Orwellian vision of Mars under the governance of the Air Force and the interplanetary political picture that Mr. Grady paints. While the primary mover of the plot may be a noir detective story, I actually found the detective-trying-to-solve-the-murder plot thread to be almost inadequate to the task of moving the book forward. Instead, I found myself reading on to learn more about Mars. The book starts a bit slow in my opinion but abruptly picks up around the seventh chapter when Mr. Grady presents a version of the history of the settlement of Mars. From this point on, the book is in many respects reminiscent of Heinlein's truly excellent The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress.

Overall, Mr. Grady's prose has a polished quality not always displayed by debut authors, but the book does contain an unfortunate surfeit of sentences like "It endured because it was hard, and it was hard because it endured." These of course have their place in noir works but I felt like they were used a bit too much in this book. Furthermore, from a structural standpoint, I sometimes felt that the book struggled to adequately juggle all of the multifaceted elements it brings up.

Despite these criticisms, however, Red Planet Noir is on the whole an enjoyable book that I hope will lead to more stories about Mike Sheppard. While not a perfect book, it is a worthwhile start from an author who seems capable of going far.

[Edit: I forgot to mention that I absolutely love the cover illustration!]

Rating: 7/10

The True First

Red Planet Noir was first published by Brown Street Press in 2009.

[This review was not based on a review copy]

Review - Pieces for Puppets and Other Cadavers

2010-03-07T09:59:00.000-05:00

D.P. Watt

Weird fiction may be a relatively small subgenre but I'm learning that it is as thoroughly developed and full of mysterious alleyways and hidden treasures as any mature literature is. While it has no shortage of giants, many of whom enjoy cult-like status, weird fiction also has plenty of lesser known authors producing truly excellent work. I don't remember where I first heard about D.P. Watt or his collection of six short stories entitled Pieces for Puppets and Other Cadavers. It is inexplicably not talked about very much, but it is a prime example of the sort of treasures that weird literature is yielding these days.

First in the collection is "Dr. Dapertutto's Saturnalia," the short but chillingly effective story of a minor Soviet official trying to apprehend the person who sent him a reel of film, which in the official's eyes is a gesture that constitutes a "blatant and insolent manifestation of bourgeois decadence." What he sees when he views the film disturbs him, but not nearly as much as what he encounters when he personally attempts to apprehend the film's sender.

The second story, "Room 89," is even better than the first. In it, a stodgy conservative intellectual vacationing in a hotel on the Isle of Wight slowly comes to share the fate of his intellectual opposite, a noted political agitator who always wished "to change whole social systems which had run for centuries." This story is throughly traditional in many ways but, like "Dr. Dapertutto's Saturnalia," feels decidedly modern in the starkness of its conclusion.

Next is "The Hobby," a short piece about a once able man worn down by a series of personal tragedies. He now seeks refuge in his hobby of building doll houses, in which he becomes increasingly engrossed. This is a good story but easily my least favorite in the collection.

The fourth story, and the one I find the most difficult to understand, is "Glorious White Marble Lady." On the surface this is a tale about the acquaintance between a man putting on an amateur production of Pygmalion and a young woman who auditions for a part in it. It seems to be concerned with the transitory nature of people and events and with our attempts to lend them more permanency.

The penultimate tale was one of my favorites. Entitled "Of Those Who Follow Emile Bilonche," it is the story of a man's lifelong obsession with acquiring the works of an author by the name of Emile Bilonche.

The final story, "The Comrade" tells of a man who loses his father to a mysterious illness, only to have two men arrive on his doorstep a few days later and show him how to avoid a similar fate.

The title of this collection, and the predominance of the theater in several of the stories in it, brings to mind the work of Reggie Oliver. But Watt's work is in no way derivative of Mr. Oliver's or anyone else's. The quality of his writing is unsurpassable. He writes in erudite prose and structures his stories perfectly, both of which qualities reveal him to be a master of the English language. Without exception, the stories in Pieces for Puppets and Other Cadavers are interesting, well told, and unique. Furthermore, they are multilayered and can be read in several different ways. If you enjoy weird fiction, you owe it to yourself to read this one.

I can't find a website or any other information about D.P. Watt, save for a brief statement that his next collection, An Emporium of Automata, will eventually be released by Ex Occidente Press. I do know this, though: with this collection D.P. Watt has emerged as one of the handful of writers carrying weird fiction forward into the new millennium.

Rating: 9/10

The True First

I am about 85% sure that Pieces for Puppets and Other Cadavers was first published by InkerMen Press in 2006 as a trade paperback. The first 100 copies of this edition are signed by the author. I really wish that a hardcover version were available.

[This review was not based on a review copy]

Review - The Bleeding Horse and Other Ghost Stories

2010-02-25T21:45:00.003-05:00

Brian J. Showers

One of the many rewards of running Speculative Fiction Junkie is that readers and other bloggers sometimes introduce me to absolutely wonderful books that I almost certainly would have missed otherwise. Such was the case with The Bleeding Horse and Other Ghost Stories by Brian J. Showers, which was brought to my attention by the same kind reader who pointed me towards the work of Adam Golaski.

The handful of tales that make up this collection are ghost stories in the traditional vein set in the Rathmines neighborhood of Dublin. They are told in a conversational tone by a narrator who seems to be taking a leisurely stroll from Dublin and progressing south, telling stories about the places he passes on his way.

After reading the first two stories in this collection, I wasn't quite sure that I was going to like this book all that much because these first two feel totally conventional upon first reading. In the first, "The Bleeding Horse," we learn about the lingering ghostly presence of a horse that died around the time of the English Civil War in an inn that was subsequently named for the singular event. In the second, "Oil on Canvas," events suggest that the presence of a painter who died in a nursing home also lingers. While interesting to a degree, my immediate reaction to these two stories was that they didn't say much other than: "there's a ghost!"

Everything started to change with "Favourite No. 7 Omnibus," the story of an accident on a bridge that sent an omnibus and its passengers to the bottom of a river. Here for the first time the real tenor of what Mr. Showers is doing becomes apparent and we are given a story that is both rich in historical detail and frightening at the same time.

A subsequent tale, "Quis Separabit," is even better. It is the story of the Blackberry Fair, a local fair regrettably situated in such a way that it obstructs an old road traditionally used for funerals and, it is rumored, traversed by the souls of the dead. There's a reason, we learn, that both vendors and visitors are not allowed to remain in the fair after dusk.

The capstone of this collection, and my favorite by far, is "Father Corrigan's Diary," which is the lengthiest story in The Bleeding Horse. For years the eponymous man of the cloth's diary has bored helpless Irish students for whom it has been assigned reading. In this story, though, we are allowed to read its final pages, pages that did not make it into the published version because of the light they shed on the man's decline and the fantastic allegations he makes in them.

By the time one finishes reading The Bleeding Horse it's clear that the book is not so much a collection of separate tales as it is a single story; the story of a place still haunted and shaped by the traces of those who made their mark on it in the past. I don't think I've ever read a collection of stories that imparts a greater sense of history than this one does. Everything in the Rathmines portrayed by Mr. Showers is infused with the past as though it were an organic force with a will of its own. Past events find their way into paintings, people, junk, buildings, even the very ground. It is history turned almost literally into paint, flesh, and stone.

When the supernatural element takes center stage in what are already great, four dimensional stories, the result is that Rathmines becomes far richer than some of the most intricate fictional worlds, a place where the veils of time and reality are removed but the setting nonetheless manages to maintain its anchor in the real world. Put differently, Mr. Showers manages to expand reality rather than show the reader an alternate reality, with the result that the reader is left with a sense of awe at the possibilities that abound in a world that often feels mundane.

I can't recommend this book highly enough. If you've liked any of the books reviewed here, I can practically guarantee that you will enjoy The Bleeding Horse and Other Ghost Stories.

Rating: 10/10

The True First

The Bleeding Horse and Other Ghost Stories was first published in 2008 by Mercier Press, which is, according to its website, Ireland's oldest independent publishing house. I have to confess that I wish they would have used some higher quality paper in this book.

Review - Horrible Imaginings

2010-02-16T07:15:00.001-05:00

Fritz Leiber

After being completely mesmerized by Jean Ray's The Horrifying Presence (review here), I quickly learned that there are only a few other collections of Mr. Ray's short fiction available in English. One of these was published by a small press whose work I had never come across before called Midnight House. Their collection of Mr. Ray's stories, My Own Private Specters has long been sold out, but I nonetheless wanted to familiarize with the output of the press and so ended up acquiring a copy of Horrible Imaginings, a collection of Fritz Leiber's short horror fiction. Prior to reading this collection, I had never read anything by Mr. Leiber (one of the many enormous holes in my reading). I can now say that while I'm very impressed with the quality of Midnight House's books, I was less impressed with the work of Mr. Leiber.

While Jean Ray's stories remain chillingly effective today, the stories in Horrible Imaginings do not, in my opinion, stand up quite as well. There are definitely notable exceptions. "Diary in the Snow," for example, is a terrifying treasure that could just as well have been written by Simon Strantzas or Adam Golaski as Mr. Leiber. In it, an aspiring science fiction writer joins a friend in the latter's remote mountain cabin to jump start his writing. Against a backdrop of severe winter weather, a series of increasingly strange events afflict the writer and his host; events that have more to do with the unfolding story the writer is working on than either man imagines. This story, however, was regrettably unique in its effectiveness.

In other instances, Mr. Leiber explores themes that have since been more deeply and satisfyingly explored by later writers. Here, I'm thinking of two stories in particular. The first is "The Hound," in which a young man is pursued by a creature that is, for lack of a better description, a product of the city dwellers' relationship with the city, a beast spawned from the singular psychological state of modern man. The second is "The Girl with Hungry Eyes," a tale about a photographer's professional relationship with a girl who personifies the vampiric nature of advertising in modern times. Both of these stories are ably told and interesting, but the subject of modern man's relationship with cities has been more deeply explored by dozens of authors, and done so with greater effectiveness and nuance. The result is that these stories end up feeling more like historical curiosities than anything else.

My final beef with Horrible Imaginings is that Mr. Leiber sometimes has a tendency to write in a way that can be very tiresome, using a lot of words to say not a whole lot and overusing parentheticals. He doesn't do it very often but when he does it can be difficult to persevere. I had to make no less than five separate attempts to make it through the first story in the collection, the eponymous "Horrible Imaginings."

Despite these criticisms, in addition to the stories already mentioned several others are also worth reading, even if they aren't mindblowingly amazing. These include "The Automatic Pistol," "Answering Service," and "The Ghost Light."

Mr. Leiber is a highly respected author, but Horrible Imaginings just wasn't for me. The physical quality of the book, on the other hand, was very impressive and is consistent with the highest quality books being published by small presses today. I'll be reading more books from Midnight House in the future.

Rating: 6/10

The True First

Horrible Imaginings was first published by Midnight House in 2004. It was limited to 520 copies, of which 500 were offered for sale.

[This review was not based on a review copy]

Review - Putting the Pieces in Place

2010-02-06T14:03:00.000-05:00

R.B. Russell

You will never this read book. That's right. You will never read this book. The reason has nothing to do with its quality but instead is attributable to the fact that it became nearly impossible to find shortly after publication. In fact, it is no exaggeration to say that I had to work harder to get my hands on a copy of R.B. Russell's debut collection of short stories, Putting the Pieces in Place, then I have ever had to work to find any other book.

My initial interest in the book was a result of the praise heaped on it by two of my favorite book bloggers: Colin of Tales from the Black Abyss and Mihai of Dark Wolf's Fantasy Reviews. Interest blossomed into a more pressing hunger after I finished reading Mr. Russell's second book, Bloody Baudelaire (review here), which was excellent and stood out enough to make it onto my Top 5 Reads of 2009 list.

After months of searching every nook and cranny of the internet, I finally managed to find a copy of Putting the Pieces in Place. While it was definitely worth the wait and effort required to track down a copy, Bloody Baudelaire is the superior work in my opinion, which is good news for Mr. Russell's potential readers since copies of the latter are still available.

Putting the Pieces in Place is a collection of five short stories. The first story, "Putting the Pieces in Place," is the most conventional of the five and is more or less a traditional ghost story. It is the story of a man obsessed with collecting everything that has any connection with Emily Butler, a violinist who he clandestinely heard play one evening when he was young and who died tragically. The distinguishing characteristic of this story for me is the great gulf of melancholy that it leaves in its wake.

Next is "There's Nothing That I Wouldn't Do," a disturbing tale about a young woman studying abroad and the consequences of her relative indifference towards a young man's affections. This is probably the most straightforward story in the collection.

The next story, "In Hiding," is my favorite of the five. In it, a British politician seeking refuge in a small Greek village from a scandal back home is invited to visit an island off the coast. While happy and tranquil on the surface, the two men he meets there are not what they initially seem. This is the most subtle and satisfying tale in the book and in several ways reminds me of the stories of Jean Ray.

"Eleanor" is my least favorite in the collection. An elderly author and creator of a famous science fiction character encounters her at a science fiction convention.

In the final story, "Dispossessed," a young woman finds herself without a place to live when the elderly woman she cares for dies. As she is about to leave, a member of the family informs her that he owns some apartments and that she is welcome to stay in one of them until she finds her bearings. What follows is a series of creepy and ultimately violent events.

The hallmark of these stories is their subtlety. The best of them embed a grain of quiet unease in the reader which swells as each story progresses. Mr. Russell, more so than most authors of horror and the strange tale, knows that the greatest source of unease isn't necessarily the obviously odd or frightening, but is often the slow weirdness that can creep into a conversation that is slightly off kilter or the wanderings of the mind and feelings of a character who lacks direction. Putting the Pieces in Place is a wonderful debut from an author who is among those leading the way in blending horror and the strange tale. I prefer his second book to this collection only because Bloody Baudelaire contains a sense of atmosphere and layers of tension that Putting the Pieces in Place does not.

Rating: 8/10

The True First

Putting The Pieces in Place was first published by Ex Occidente Press in January of 2009. There were only 400 copies made and good luck finding one of them! However, as I said above, copies of Bloody Baudelaire are still floating around and Mr. Russell also has a forthcoming collection being published by PS Publishing in the not too distant future.

[This review was not based on a review copy]

A Few Changes to SFJ

2010-01-31T10:05:00.012-05:00

Dear readers,

A few changes have taken place here at Speculative Fiction Junkie over the past few days, and there's at least one more in the offing:

(1) There's a new background image. If you're screen is wide enough, you'll see a dark background image with some calligraphy on it. I created the image by taking a public domain image of an illuminated manuscript, cropping it, and then messing with the color and hue values. I'm quite pleased with it.

(2) Speculative Fiction Junkie now has its own domain! That's right: the new address is, fittingly,

http://www.speculativefictionjunkie.com/

Within a few days, visitors should start being automatically redirected to the new address. That's the hope anyway. It seems just as likely that something will get colossally messed up and I'll have to start over. Cross your fingers.

(3) I created a tag cloud. It's in the right-hand column.

(4) I've got a new feature that I hope to roll out in the coming days. Stay tuned!

Thanks for visiting, as always!

-Ben

Review - The Horrifying Presence and Other Tales

2010-01-28T21:08:00.007-05:00

Jean Ray

What a fantastic drawing on the cover. I may have had some serious problems with small press of the moment Ex Occidente Press, but it is beyond dispute that they are publishing some of the best works of strange fiction being produced today. If one manages to navigate the many obstacles that stand in the way of acquiring their books, the reading experience is usually a very rewarding one. The Horrifying Presence and Other Tales, a collection of twenty-seven weird tales by Belgian author Jean Ray, is the second Ex Occidente book to be reviewed here at SFJ. The first was the excellent Bloody Baudelaire by R.B. Russell (review here), an absolutely beautiful book that made it onto our Top 5 Reads of 2009 list.

Jean Ray (1887-1964) is often called the Belgian Poe and comparisons of his work to that of Lovecraft also abound. A journalist, novelist, short story writer, and translator, he wrote profusely. Curiously, some of his most famous tales were written while he was serving a prison term for embezzlement.

His work is notoriously difficult to find in English. Aside from The Horrifying Presence, I am aware of only two other collections of his short stories in English: Ghouls in My Grave, an unassuming paperback published in 1965, and My Own Private Spectres, published in 1999 by another small press I have yet to investigate: Midnight House. Both of these two volumes are virtually impossible to find today. The Horrifying Presence is therefore the best and only opportunity to read Mr. Ray's short fiction in English that has come along in some years.

Having just finished reading The Horrifying Presence, I am stunned--stunned and saddened--that Mr. Ray's work isn't more widely available in English. His tales are some of the best and most effectively eerie I've ever come across.

There is not a single disappointing story in this collection, a considerable accomplishment for a book that contains so many tales. If I were forced to whittle it down to, say, five favorites, I would include:

"The Graveyard Guardian," in which the narrator takes a job as one of three guardians of an old cemetery purchased from the impoverished town it borders by the recently deceased duchess Opoltchenska. Presumably hired to guard the riches he suspects reside in her newly constructed mausoleum, he eventually discovers that his role is far different from what he initially thought.

"Cousin Passeroux," an unforgettable tale of revenge in which a man on the run shows up on his cousin's doorstep looking for a place to hide. His flight is a result of his less than polite treatment of the inhabitants of a remote island. One of the characters in this story utters a haunting refrain every time he makes an appearance and the way this story progresses stays with the reader long after the story is finished.

From an imaginative audacity standpoint, "The Formidable Secret of the Pole" is unquestionably the most standout piece. In it, a Professor and one of his students respond to a summons to a remote island that they found in a container floating in the sea. What they find when they get there is mind blowing. This one is just as accomplished of an adventure tale as it is a weird tale.

"The Choucroute" reminded me of Ligotti a bit , in its setting at least. It is the story of a man who decides to spice up his life by taking the train to nowhere in particular and getting off at a random stop. The town this leads him to is not what it seems.

"The Moustiers Plate" was another story that feels almost as much like an adventure tale as it does a weird tale. In it, a man falls asleep on a docked ship after finding an old plate in a cabinet and awakens to find that some unwelcome guests have commandeered the ship. He soon finds himself on an island with a very peculiar resident. As the reader soon discovers, everything that subsequently happens to him is directly connected to the plate.

Mr. Ray is a good writer, but his real strength is his top notch, unrestrained imagination. His world is largely water-covered and feels vast and forbiddingly perilous; a gray, storm-chased globe of seemingly perennial autumn, peppered here and there by small, often remote, outposts of humanity. His characters frequently discover that the darkness of the outer world dwells even in these places, the villages and taverns, and sometimes it is they themselves who have brought the darkness with them.

While it is difficult to find anything negative to say about this book, there were a few instances of oddly worded sentences. Perhaps these are minor translation problems or perhaps Mr. Ray's prose is just a bit antiquated. In any event, these do not significantly detract from the reading experience. Mr. Ray also has a habit of making characters expressly state what's happening at a given moment when other authors would simply tell the reader; a character might utter an exclamation like "He was throttling me!" rather than Ray simply telling us that one character throttled another.

The Horrifying Presence was a complete surprise. I didn't think it was possible for writers of this quality to languish in relative obscurity for so long. Why are all of this man's works not widely available in the English speaking world? As soon as I finished reading this book and found to my dismay that the few works of his available in English are out of my price range, I searched libraries across the Southeastern United States for them. I found only one copy of one of his works in English two states over and hundreds of miles away. Infuriating!

Rating: 10/10

The True First

The Horrifying Presence and Other Tales was first published by Ex Occidente Press in March 2009 and was limited to 300 copies. There are still a few copies floating around on the secondary market but they are getting expensive quickly.

[This review was not based on a review copy]

Review - Strange Tales: Volume III

2010-01-19T08:48:00.003-05:00

Rosalie Parker (Editor)

Over the past few months I've been reading more and more strange fiction, to the exclusion of most of the other genres commonly reviewed here at Speculative Fiction Junkie. As someone whose reading material also increasingly consists of the output of the many excellent small presses operating today, it was probably only a matter of time until I picked up one of the volumes of the Strange Tales series edited by Rosalie Parker and published by Tartarus Press. The volume I happened to come across was the most recent one, Strange Tales: Volume III.

Strange Tales: Volume III collects seventeen previously unpublished stories from authors both familiar and with whom I was not, until now, acquainted. The stories in this collection are not strange in any consistent manner, as one might expect from a collection by a single author, but instead bear the unique notion of weirdness imparted by the different authors who gave birth to them. Ms. Parker has done an excellent job of ensuring that a wide variety of styles and ideas are represented in this collection.

Nonetheless, while all of the stories in this collection are well written and are worth reading in their own way, as a matter of personal preference, I found some to be far superior to others.

First and foremost, "Her Father's Daughter" by Simon Strantzas is an excellent story. I named Mr. Strantzas' most recent collection, Cold to the Touch , my #1 Read of 2009, and so my high opinion of this story should perhaps not be unexpected, but I was a little surprised that it stood out so much even among such worthy companions. "Her Father's Daughter" contains two parallel stories about, you guessed it, the relationship between daughters and fathers. It is consistent with Strantzas' prior work in its atmospheric setting as well as in the sense of menace and mystery that permeates it.

Another excellent story is "Countess Otho" by Reggie Oliver. I've only read one collection of Mr. Oliver's work (Masques of Satan from Ash-Tree Press), but I found "Countess Otho" to be superior to anything contained therein. It tells the story of an actor who comes across a previously unknown play. It's effect on him, and the odyssey of the play itself, yield a story that is fairly traditional but extremely engrossing.

The biggest surprise was "Melting" by A.J. McIntosh, who I had never heard of prior to reading this collection. This tale, too, was fairly traditional in many ways but was also utterly captivating. In it, a doctor struggling to make ends meet in nineteenth century Edinburgh comes across a most peculiar patient. I'll be searching out other works by this author.

Some of the other enjoyable stories in Strange Tales: Volume III felt a bit unfinished. I'm thinking in particular about "Morpheus House" by Mark Valentine, "Sanctuary Run" by Daniel Mills, and "A Taste of Casu Marzu" by David Rix. Each of these, in their own way, introduces fascinating settings (a dream museum in "Morpheus House" and a remote religious community in "Sanctuary Run") or objects (the oddest cheese you've ever encountered in "A Taste of Casu Marzu"), but seem to stop shortly after introducing them, as though the thing itself were so odd that the story didn't require further development. Mystery and the unrevealed have an important place in the strange fiction tale but I could not help but feel that these stories were in some way incomplete.

On the whole, Strange Tales: Volume III is a wonderful collection, and perhaps just as importantly, the publication of the Strange Tales series is an important act in the effort to more firmly establish strange fiction in the mind of the modern reader. I'll be seeking out the other volumes in this series eventually and hope that volume III is but another volume of a long series.

Rating: 8/10

The True First

Strange Tales: Volume III was first published by Tartarus Press in December of 2009. I have no idea what the print run was as this information is uncharacteristically not available on the Tartarus Press website.

[This review was based on a review copy]

Review - Worse Than Myself

2010-01-03T00:24:00.002-05:00

Adam Golaski

Adam Golaski's name is one I've encountered repeatedly in my search for weird fiction. While not as prominent as some practitioners of the craft, it seems nonetheless never to be too far from the discussion.

His first collection of short stories, Worse Than Myself, was more difficult to obtain than I had anticipated. There aren't many copies floating around. Worse Than Myself collects eleven weird tales, some of which had previously been published elsewhere and at least one of which has since made it into a "best of the year" anthology.

The subject matter of the tales that make up this collection is varied. An unexpected stay at a remote bus stop, the diversion of a family trip in search of an old animator, frightening encounters in the woods, a good old fashioned zombie tale, and visits from radio personalities long thought to be dead are just some of what you'll find in the stories presented in Worse Than Myself.

In many of these tales, horrors are encountered in close proximity to comforts. Whether it's parents in the next room in "The Animator's House," a mother in the house next door in "In the Cellar," or pajamas and clean sheets in a childhood home in "Back Home," the characters in Mr. Golaski's stories often experience the same "conflicting feelings of comfort and unease" (p. 76) that the protagonist in "Back Home" does and experience the terrifying after straying just a few steps beyond the safety of their usual routines. This dimension adds a welcome focus on safety and innocence that is not present in some of the other weird fiction I've come across.

Other tales are just plain terrifying. While what constitutes terrifying will differ a bit for everyone, I found those stories that are set in the woods to be the most effective in this respect.

The chief accomplishment of the best stories in this collection is the extraordinary sense of atmosphere they create. Even when I wasn't sure exactly what was going on, the atmosphere was thick and immersive and chillingly effective. Upon finishing many of these stories, the reader will feel as though she has stepped out of another world.

My favorite stories in Worse Than Myself were the absolutely terrifying "The Man from the Peak," in which a remote party in a mountain house is interrupted by a mysterious man who arrives from somewhere on the wooded mountaintop; "The Animal Aspect of Her Movement," a wonderfully woven story about the pitfalls of memory and temptation; "The Animator's House," which really contains two chilling stories, one about an encounter in the woods and the other about an encounter in an out of the way diner; and "The Dead Gather on the Bridge to Seattle," a rather straightforward zombie tale. Also enjoyable were "Weird Furka," which is the story of the rediscovery of the work of the dead host of a radio show about weird occurrences in the town of Furka; and "What Water Reveals," a multi-faceted tale involving a struggling alcoholic's discovery of a river island.

Less enjoyable in my opinion were "The Demon" and "A String of Lights," which were, for lack of a better word, a little boring; and "Back Home," which while sufficiently atmospheric seemed rather gimmicky in the final analysis.

Without reservation I can say that those who enjoy strange fiction will love Worse Than Myself. Mr. Golaski practices a brand of the craft that puts a premium on atmosphere and imagery and his stories linger in the mind long after the reader has finished them and moved on.

Rating: 9/10

The True First

Worse Than Myself was first published by Raw Dog Screaming Press in July of 2008, although really, since this is a print on demand title, I'm not sure that one can really speak of the true first.

[This review was not based on a review copy]

Review - King of Deadtown

2009-12-24T10:16:00.003-05:00

Glynn Barrass

My first encounter with the softcover chapbooks of Dead Letter Press was a fairly good experience (see this), so when the opportunity arose to read another of their offerings I didn't hesitate. This time the book was The King of Deadtown by relatively new horror author Glynn Barrass.

In The King of Deadtown, Great Britain and the rest of the world succumb to a virus brought back to England's shores by soldiers returning from Iraq. One in five people is susceptible to the virus, which kills its victims and then reanimates them; that is, turns them into zombies. As the narrator and his family are about to make their escape, the narrator apparently succumbs to the virus and when he reawakens alone he is indeed a zombie. Well, that's not entirely true, for while he is a zombie physically his mental capacities are still decidedly human. How he handles his new predicament is the story that is told in the remainder of the book.

The first part of the book focuses on the narrator's discovery that he is a zombie and what this entails. Unlike his fellow undead, who appear to be the mindless flesh eaters we usually take them for, the narrator retains the mind of a living human and resists the degradations in which his mindless fellows indulge. In this way, Mr. Barrass raises a question about what exactly it is that makes us human. Mr. Barrass doesn't really answer the question but instead goes on to pose it in a different way by contrasting the feelings and actions of the narrator with those of two surviving humans who often forage in the area the narrator occupies. Their treatment of the zombies they encounter is horrific and leads the reader to seriously question who should be feared more: the zombie narrator or the ostensibly human monsters.

While not ultimately groundbreakingly original, Mr. Barrass's tale is nonetheless competently told and a solid, entertaining read. Additionally, the central role that questions about categories and stereotypes play in it elevates it above a mere well told story. If you like zombie fiction, I heartily recommend it. If you're not a zombie aficionado, you still might like it.

Rating: 7/10

The True First

The King of Deadtown was first published in May of 2008 by Dead Letter Press. It is limited to 150 signed copies.

[This review was based on a review copy]

Review - The Saint Perpetuus Club of Buenos Aires

2009-12-11T08:35:00.005-05:00

Eric Stener Carlson

I've become quite a fan of the output of Tartarus Press lately. In fact, during the past few months I've started buying considerably fewer books than I normally do and often use the savings to acquire a Tartarus Press title here and there. Just when I was starting to think I would never meet a book published by Tartarus Press that I didn't like, I encountered The Saint Perpetuus Club of Buenos Aires, the debut novel from Eric Stener Carlson.

Saint Perpetuus is the story of Miguel, who finds a portion of a handwritten diary written between the lines of a copy of Butler's Lives of the Saints he finds in a used bookstore. The author claims to have developed the ability to control time and makes all sorts of other egomaniacal and sociopathic claims. He recounts how he uses this power to overcome the problems he experiences as a bored civil servant. Miguel, himself a bored civil servant, gets drawn in by the story and starts to seek out other copies of Lives of the Saints in used bookstores across Buenos Aires in the hopes of finding other diary entires. His increasingly persistent pursuit leads him across the city and causes him to neglect his family and other duties.

The substance of the book, as well as its problems, are very similar to those found in Zoran Živković's The Last Book (review here). Both books prominently feature books and bookstores and somewhat superficially make use of secret societies.

The main problem with Saint Perpetuus is that it is a boring story. Huge portions of the book are devoted to explaining the tedium of the life of a civil servant. We get a double dose of this because both Miguel and the writer of the diary are dissatisfied civil servants. Whatever end this overly generous serving of tedium was supposed to serve, it was too much, as there is nothing in the rest of the story to make its sufferance justifiable.

What's more, there is very little setting or character development. This makes it difficult to care about the fact that Miguel's relationship with his family is deteriorating because we haven't been given much reason to care about them in the first place. Additionally, after having read this book, I have almost no greater sense of what Buenos Aires is like than I did beforehand. And Mr. Carlson's ultra straightforward writing style doesn't lend any sense of atmosphere to the story whatsoever.

The story thus feels disorientingly unmoored to begin with, but then Mr. Carlson adds elements like a secret society which don't really seem called for by the internal logic of the book and don't really serve any purpose. Mr. Carlson can almost get away with this, though, because the moral of the story doesn't really require that the rest of the book make sense. This too is something it shares with The Last Book.

To top it all off, the moral of the story will be more or less already familiar to anyone who has listened to common tenets of wisdom passed down from parent to child for generations, which makes reading this novel not unlike listening to your grandmother tell a four hour long story only for the punchline to be "be careful what you wish for, because you might get it." Now, without doubt, commonly known tenets of wisdom like this can successfully be woven into stories, but in this particular case the story doesn't really add anything to the reader's understanding of it, which renders the bulk of the reading experience more of a burden than a path to enlightenment.

Rating: 3/10

The True First

The Saint Perpetuus Club of Buenos Aires was first published by Tartarus Press in 2009 and is limited to 300 copies.

[This review is based on a review copy]

Review - Finch

2009-12-04T14:49:00.005-05:00

Jeff VanderMeer

Author and all around book man extraordinaire Jeff VanderMeer's City of Saints and Madmen was one of the first titles ever reviewed at Speculative Fiction Junkie. After absolutely loving this first book in the Ambergris trilogy, however, I sadly found the second book in the series, Shriek: An Afterword, a bit difficult to get through, as the narrator was one of the most annoying fictional people I've ever encountered. While the format of the book was ingenious, I was nonetheless nearly forced to abandon it on three separate occasions. I had no idea what to expect, therefore, from the final book in the trilogy, entitled simply Finch. In fact, I probably wouldn't have even read it this soon if it weren't for the fact that Mr. VanderMeer will be doing a reading and signing in my neighborhood on December 10 and I wanted to be appropriately familiar with it before attending. I'm glad that I went ahead and read Finch because it is a great conclusion to the Ambergris saga.

It's impossible to discuss the book proper without at least a fleeting familiarity with its setting, the city of Ambergris (in fact, while not strictly necessary, you really should read the first two books before diving into Finch). The city as we know it was founded by whalers. However, at the time they arrived, another race of sentient fungal beings dubbed gray caps resided there. One thing led to another and the whalers started massacring the gray caps, who in turn fled underground, where they have resided ever since, only visiting the surface surreptitiously and in small numbers. This tension is the central psychological characteristic of the city, which has since developed vibrant trade, arts, and all of the other trappings of an advanced city. Prior to the events described in Finch, two powerful trading houses begin a civil war that ravages the city for years.

Finch opens about a century after the events described in its predecessor. The gray caps took advantage of the strife of the war between the houses to take over the city and force its inhabitants to live in a sort of Orwellian dystopia and squalor. Reluctant detective John Finch is tasked with solving a double murder, the victims of which were a human and a gray cap. He has to constantly report his progress to his gray cap boss and is always watched and questioned by "partials," humans who have joined cause with the gray caps and been physically altered accordingly. Further complicating his life is the existence of a shadowy resistance to gray cap occupation, freelancing gang boss types, personal relationships, and the necessity of learning the purpose behind gray cap moves, especially their construction of two enormous towers the purpose of which no one knows.

When viewed in the context of the whole Ambergris trilogy, Finch is most notable for the new direction it takes, into the noir world of hardboiled crime fiction and pulp detective stories. Even the sentence structure, often employing telegraphic prose without sentence subjects, is affected. There's no reason to expect success in this addition of yet another genre layer onto the already innovative blend of genres that Mr. VanderMeer's work displays. In fact, when I first read about the book, I was fairly certain that it wouldn't work. I was wrong of course. This new angle raises both noir fiction and the Ambergris cycle to new levels. I'm not sure how enjoyable traditional noir works will be after having read Finch.

The only aspect of Finch I had reservations about was the ending. Until this book, the gray caps, their actions and motivations, had remained shrouded in mystery and, for me, unrevealed mysteries are almost always preferable to revealed ones. This point aside, though, I also found the ending to be almost too small to satisfactorily address the creation that preceded it. This, though, is a testament to the strength and scope of the Ambergris creation and not something I fault the book for too much. It's quite possible, in other words, that my reservations are with the Ambergris trilogy being over rather than with the manner in which it ended.

Overall, Finch is a great conclusion to the Ambergris trilogy; better than I could have imagined. I have to say that I'm sorry it's over and I wonder what Mr. VanderMeer will do in the future. If you've read Finch and are longing for another example of recent attempts to expand the noir genre, take a look at Jebediah Berry's The Manual of Detection (review here). While not nearly as good as Finch, it is still a pretty good work.

Rating: 9/10

The True First:

Finch was first published in November 2009 by Underland Press as a trade paperback. A signed hardcover edition limited to 350 was simultaneously published, information about which can be found here. There was also another simultaneously published signed limited hardcover edition published which is limited to only 150 copies. Information can be found here.

[This review was based on a review copy]

Review - The Sad Tale of the Brothers Grossbart

2009-11-26T12:44:00.003-05:00

Jesse Bullington

If you regularly frequent speculative fiction sites, you've almost certainly heard about the much-hyped debut novel from Jesse Bullington, The Sad Tale of the Brothers Grossbart. Author Jeff VanderMeer first blogged about it back in February of 2008 after falling into a conversation with a guy working at the local video store who turned out to be the future author. Quite a remarkable tale. As Mr. VanderMeer tells it

I was fully prepared to read the novel and make some polite sounds about it being promising–that’s just the odds. The odds of being handed a novel by a new, relatively young writer and being blown away by what you read are…very low. But that’s exactly what happened.

The story of the book's road to publication, Mr. VanderMeer's enthusiasm for it, and the awesome cover art from István Orosz made me eager to read this one. Alas, though assured that I was on the review copy list by someone at Orbit, this apparently meant the list of those who will not receive review copies. Needless to say when the book was publicly released I ran out and purchased a copy right away.

The book's plot is pretty straightforward: the Grossbart Brothers, Manfried and Hegel, are graverobbers forced by their despicable actions to flee across plague ravaged medieval Europe. They eventually hope to reach Egypt where they've heard the tombs hold untold riches. Along the way they encounter evils straight out of folklore and commit the most heinous crimes. It's no exaggeration to say that this book disgusts and repulses in almost every way that a human can be disgusted and repulsed.

But that doesn't mean that it isn't enjoyable. Quite the contrary. The best thing about The Sad Tale of the Brothers Grossbart is the way Mr. Bullington integrates creatures from folklore into the medieval setting. The modern separation between the real world and the world of myth and folklore is completely eschewed here and the result is an unclouded glimpse into the horrors of the fourteenth century as seen through the eyes of that age. While much has justifiably been made about the brothers themselves, the cardinal achievement of this book is the way that it allows us to see the medieval world.

The Brothers Grossbart themselves are the second thing that distinguishes Mr. Bullington's debut novel. I've never encountered characters quite like them. Repulsively violent and disgusting they are nonetheless fairly witty and think themselves to be upright individuals. If I had to compare them to persons more familiar I'd say that they are the medieval equivalent of belligerent rednecks, rednecks whose behavior extends to far more than redneckery and displays a narcissism that completely ignores its own internal inconsistencies.

My only complaint about the book was not an insignificant one. Rather than getting more interesting as it progresses I found the plot to be less and less interesting as the book moved forward. Eventually, it felt like the characters had outlived the plot's ability to support them. It was at this point that the inclusion at the back of the book of an excerpt from K.J. Parker's The Company (review here) started to make sense.

Mr. Bullington is a great writer and I'm looking forward to reading his future work. I do not, however, think that The Brothers Grossbart is the groundbreaking book of the year that many seem to think it is, notwithstanding the wonderful story of its path to publication.

Rating: 7/10

The True First

The Sad Tale of the Brothers Grossbart was first published by Orbit books on November 16, 2009 in the United States and the United Kingdom simultaneously. Sadly, no hardcover edition is available.

[This review was not based on a review copy]

Review - Nyphron Rising

2009-11-19T08:17:00.003-05:00

Michael J. Sullivan

One of the things I mentioned in my recent interview with Harry over at Temple Library Reviews was that I cannot believe that a major publisher hasn't yet picked up author Michael J. Sullivan. The first two books in his Riyria Revelations (reviews here and here) series were excellent.

Perhaps the reason for this lapse is that publishers are overly committed to the grittier side of fantasy for the time being and are consequently not too interested in traditional fantasy tales. I love gritty fantasy as much as the next guy but its proliferation shouldn't come at the expense of consistently good writers like Mr. Sullivan just because they aren't writing on the grittier end of the spectrum. Honestly, if the lack of grit is the issue, the Riyria Revelations could just as successfully be marketed as a young adult series.

With the publication of Nyphron Rising the Riyria Revelations is at its halfway point. And while this latest installment is not my favorite thus far, the Riyria Revelations continues to be an extremely strong series.

As Nyphron Rising opens, things have progressed quickly since the conclusion of the preceding book. The Kingdom of Melengar faces a probable attack from the rapidly expanding Nyphron Empire prompting Princess Arista to enlist the help of Royce and Hadrian to attempt a dangerous diplomatic mission. Along the way, we see a lot more of the world Mr. Sullivan has created and learn more about Royce and Hadrian than we did in previous books.

All of the things that distinguished the previous volumes in the Riyria Revelations series are present in Nyphron Rising and the additional worldbuilding and exploration of Royce and Hadrian's pasts are welcome developments. But I still couldn't quite escape the feeling that this is clearly a transition book. It's similar to The Two Towers in that respect: not the strongest link in the trilogy but very good nonetheless and a necessary bridge to future books. The first half of the book is full of a lot of elements that are good when considered in isolation but these didn't quite gel for me in the same way that the contents of first two books did. The second half of the book, however, is amazing and probably constitutes Mr. Sullivan's strongest work yet.

Nyphron Rising is another capable installment in a fantastic series. Fans of the Riyria Revelations will not be disappointed.

Rating: 8/10

The True First

Nyphron Rising was first published by Ridan Publishing in September of 2009.

[This review was not based on a review copy]

I'm Interviewed by Harry

2009-11-16T09:11:00.002-05:00

Harry of the excellent Temple Library Reviews has just interviewed me as part of his fantastic Reviewer Time series of blogger interviews. If you're interested, the interview can be read here.

Review - Cold to the Touch

2009-11-09T23:16:00.003-05:00

Simon Strantzas

Up to this point, I've tried to ensure that the reviews featured here at Speculative Fiction Junkie adequately represent the full breadth of my love of genre fiction; works of fantasy, science fiction, and horror are all reviewed here. I'm afraid, however, that this is all about to change. You see, I've recently discovered what is perhaps the most consistently satisfying form of speculative fiction: strange fiction.

Now, I'm a bit fuzzy on what the proper label is for the sort of fiction I'm talking about. There is "weird fiction" and "strange fiction," which I believe are different terms for the same thing. Then there's the closely related, but possibly different, term "new weird," which I associate primarily with writers like the excellent China Miéville and Jeff VanderMeer. Then there are closely related, but again possibly different, terms like "macabre," "gothic," and "supernatural." Whatever the proper term is (and please people, help me understand the differences between these things), the chief characteristic of the fiction I'm talking about is perhaps best captured in the following excerpt from an answer that Peter Straub gave in a recent interview to the question of why people are attracted to horror:

Historically, people have enjoyed the Gothic for a long, long time, and it does give one a kind of surreptitious thrill, it's titillating, but at its best there is an undercurrent of unease. And unease is never not worth experiencing, I think. Unease is a genuinely perceptive, accurate response to the underlying structures of the universe. I don't think we're safe, I don't think the world cares about us...

This sense of unease is the defining characteristic of the strange fiction for which I've recently acquired such a penchant. It constitutes a whole new level at which one can experience fiction, and makes strange fiction the literary equivalent of polyphony. To put it differently, think of it like this: while a great work of standard science fiction, fantasy, or horror is like a great meal, a great work of strange fiction is like eating Kung Pao Chicken or some ultra-spicy Chicken Tikka Masala: it leaves one with something more than just satiety; it leaves a spicy, garlicky quasi-intoxication in its wake that makes the meal something more.

I first came across the name of Simon Strantzas while browsing the catalog of the fantastic Tartarus Press. I eventually wound up at Mr. Strantzas' website where I found a small selection of his short fiction. From the available choices, I picked "Behind Glass" and was completely blown away. It was everything I've come to love in strange fiction (I also think it is an excellent barometer of whether or not this sort of writing is for you or not). Almost immediately thereafter I ordered a copy of Cold to the Touch. It was everything I hoped it would be and more.

Strantzas' characters are almost uniformly cast from the ranks of the socially and psychologically alienated and dispossessed. As a consequence of their isolation, the reader expects their perceptions to be slightly skewed. But when Mr. Strantzas places these already odd people into the bizarre situations he has concocted for them we find that the ground of normality is no longer beneath our feet and that we are instead floating completely free in a cloud of strangeness.

The setting and content of the thirteen stories in Cold to the Touch are extremely varied. The collection's first story "Under the Overpass," is the story of a terrible act committed by a group of children and the effect it has on one of them who is never really able to grow up as a result. It superficially reminded me a bit of Shirley Jackson's famous story "The Lottery" and in keeping with Mr. Strantzas' ability to write fiction that is strange on multiple levels, the identity and origins of the victim of the terrible act are itself left a mystery.

In "The Other Village," a woman is forced to vacation with an annoying travel companion as a result of plans that were made before their friendship deteriorated beyond a serviceable state. My favorite thing about this story is the way that the lighthearted awkwardness of their interactions gives way to a sinister, if vague, ending to their travels together.

In "The Uninvited Guest," a party attended by people who are fairly comfortable in life is interrupted by the unexpected appearance of one who is not. As a result, the guests are forced to confront the truth uttered by one of them that those who are comfortable really don't care about what happens to others.

"A Seed on Barren Ground" is a tale of broken lives seeking another chance. Only some of them get one and the price paid by the giver is great. This tale is as much about the lengths to which desperate people are willing to go as it is about the oddness of the story being told itself.

"The Sweetest Song" was one of my favorites in the collection and I can't tell you why. I can't really even tell you much about it other than to say that it concerns two marriages, one new and one old.

In "Pinholes in Black Muslin" (available in its entirety here), a socially awkward man for whom the center of the world is the stars and astronomy loses his bearings as the cold hungry emptiness of space literally consumes his world.

This should give you a basic idea of the variety of stories to be found in Cold to the Touch. They are, all of them, profoundly strange in the most wonderful way. Mr. Strantzas is an amazing writer, seemingly capable of writing about anything and of injecting the strange into every aspect of the tales he tells. The result is that while the reader is disoriented, she is also freed to a great extent from normal ways of thinking and consequently can look at the people and places that haunt the stories in this collection with fresh eyes. It is remarkably liberating and feels almost as if Mr. Strantzas is rewriting the laws of the universe. Cold to the Touch is easily one of the best books I have read this year.

Rating: 10/10

The True First

Cold to the Touch was first published by Tartarus Press in July of 2009. Only 300 copies were made.

[This review was not based on a review copy]

Review - The Mysterious Flame

2009-11-03T22:11:00.003-05:00

Orrin Grey

I came across Orrin Grey's first novella, The Mysterious Flame, while perusing the website of its publisher, Dead Letter Press. I'd arrived there as a result of trying to learn more about the object-of-my-desire-which-I-often-nearly-breakdown-and-purchase-even-though-it's-really-expensive called Bound for Evil. The story seemed intriguing as did the prospect of owning a softcover chapbook, a book format that was new to me at the time. I've since concluded that the softcover chapbook is the least desirable type of book one can own: either the story told fails to impress and the purchaser feels buyer's remorse for having spent a considerable sum on what are essentially some sheets of paper stapled together, or the story is good and the purchaser laments the delicacy and impermanence of the aforementioned stapled papers. The Mysterious Flame was a pretty good tale and I certainly wish that it existed in a more durable format.

The Mysterious Flame tells the story of Barnabus, a clay golem created centuries earlier by a man who was consequently executed for his involvement in such dark arts. When the inquisitors discovered Barnabas, one of them, Narthos, lost his faith in God and sought to learn all he could about these forbidden arts. In the process, he learned to preserve his own existence and is therefore more or less lying in wait when a group of modern day amateur archaeologists accidentally free him from an abandoned Spanish tower. Once unleashed, Narthos immediately resumes his hunt for Barnabus.

Despite its brevity, The Mysterious Flame manages to include an awful lot of action and disparate elements. Whether it's Narthos being awakened from the Spanish tower, Barnabus and his friend taking up residence in an abandoned movie theater, Barnabus hanging out in an isolated diner just to be around others for a bit, the raising of an army of reanimated corpses, or countless other things, this short book packs as much into its forty-four pages as is humanly possible without in any way feeling like it is overreaching or attempting to force too many disparate elements together.

Additionally, for a book with such a potentially heavy subject matter, The Mysterious Flame manages to maintain a surprisingly light tone for the most part. Mr. Grey makes some welcome serious points about the nature of the mysterious flame by, among other things, contrasting the relationship between Barnabas and Daniel with the relationship between Narthos and Joy, but the book simultaneously remains a whole lot of fun.

Mr. Grey is a capable writer with occasional flashes of brilliant description. I haven't seen any other works from him but I will be keeping my eye open for him in the future.

Rating: 7/10

The True First

The Mysterious Flame was originally published by Dead Letter Press as a softcover chapbook. Only 100 signed copies of the book were ever released.

[This review was not based on a review copy]

Review - The Windup Girl

2009-10-25T19:06:00.004-04:00

Paolo Bacigalupi

Paolo Bacigalupi's multiple award winning debut collection of short stories, Pump Six and Other Stories (review here), was one of Speculative Fiction Junkie's Top 5 Reads of 2008 , and when you ask me to list my favorite authors Mr. Bacigalupi's name is always mentioned, on the strength of this collection alone. As such, I was highly anticipating the release of his debut novel, The Windup Girl. Uniformly positive reviews did nothing to abate this anticipation and I was finally able to read it recently. Did The Windup Girl live up to the high expectations that Mr. Bacigalupi's short stories have created? The short answer is no, it didn't.

The Windup Girl takes place in Thailand, in a future in which seas have risen and many of the world's great cities lie underwater. At the same time, many plant species have gone extinct and genetically engineered plagues pose a constant threat to those that remain. The calorie companies, as they're called, make big money by cultivating plague resistant food crops and selling them to those that can afford to pay. These upheavals have led to the expected warfare, mass migrations, and starvation. Thailand, though, has managed to withstand these calamities relatively well by erecting a ring of sea walls and adopting a corresponding protectionism towards foreign products and influence.

Mr. Bacigalupi explores his creation through the eyes of a handful of characters who each represent a different facet of future Thai society. First there's Anderson Lake, a struggling foreign manufacturer by all outward appearances who is in reality a calorie company man trying to gain access to the Thais' fabled seed vault. He is in many respects an embodiment of the foreign influence and meddling that the Thai government has sought so hard to resist. Second, there's Captain Jaidee Rojjanasukchai, renowned for being an incorruptible member of the famously corrupt Environment Ministry, whose task it is to ensure that nothing dangerous is imported, consumed, or distributed in the Thai Kingdom. Third, there's the Trade Ministry, whose interests are represented by a number of characters, which seeks to open up trade with the outside world. Next is Hock Seng, one of the much derided yellow card men, that is, a refugee from violence in his native Malaya who used to be fairly prosperous and dreams of being so again. Finally, there's Emiko, a windup girl, which is the name given to the genetically manipulated human-like individuals who are, subject to very limited exceptions, banned in the Kingdom and exploited.

The prose in The Windup Girl is fantastic as Mr. Bacigalupi's always is. Similarly, the book's characters are well fleshed out and the setting capably realized (for the most part). However, none of this can make up for the fact that the story being told does not, in my opinion, come anywhere close to reaching the high standard set by his short fiction. Judging the worth of a book's plot is a highly subjective business but I can honestly say that if Mr. Bacigalupi hadn't been the author of this book I wouldn't have been able to finish it.

The main problem with the plot is that there was nothing really moving it forward and it felt aimless a lot of the time. It was, in other words, almost boring. While the setting and Mr. Bacigalupi's ideas about the future are fascinating, anyone who has read Pump Six and Other Stories will already be familiar with these and will likely be looking to the plot to carry the book forward. Unfortunately, the plot just doesn't deliver. The main conflict in the book, between the protectionist Environment Ministry and the pro-liberalization Trade Ministry, doesn't yield as much as it might have plot-wise and is instead a relatively uninteresting conflict between two political factions that culminates in an action sequence that is mediocre at best.

Paolo Bacigalupi is a top notch writer and still one of my favorites. I'll continue to read anything he writes for the time being, but The Windup Girl is not his best work.

Rating: 6/10

The True First

The Windup Girl was first published in September of 2009 by Night Shade Books.

[This review was not based on a review copy]

Review - Bloody Baudelaire

2009-10-14T20:23:00.006-04:00

R.B. Russell

I can't think of a better way to usher in the Halloween month than with a review of the latest offering from R.B. Russell. Mr. Russell is not only an author of highly esteemed supernatural tales, he also runs Tartarus Press, one of the most highly respected publishers of weird and supernatural fiction operating today, the output of which a recent article said amounts to "a secret library, a catalogue of weird fiction from its roots in Victorian Britain through to the modern day." While it has been extremely difficult for me to acquire his work, I was recently able to procure a copy of his newest work, Bloody Baudelaire, and it was with much anticipation that I sat down to read it a bit ago.

The story opens with five people spending a weekend together in a dilapidated mansion known as Cliffe House. There is Lucian and Elizabeth, a young and seemingly rather new couple whose future is uncertain since they will soon be attending university in opposite corners of the country. Then there's Adrian, Lucian's friend from school. Finally, there's Adrian's beautiful sister Miranda and her unlikeable partner Gerald. After a day and night of drinking during which various relationship strains manifest themselves, Lucian finds himself playing cards with Gerald, who starts to lose and continues to do so until he's eventually lost a fair amount of money, his painting talent, and even Miranda. Later that evening a fight ensues between Miranda and Gerald and Gerald leaves. He is shortly followed by Elizabeth for similar reasons and by Adrian, leaving Lucian and Miranda alone in the house. As they get to know one another over the course of the next few days, someone continues to work on Gerald's latest painting.

Now, if that doesn't sound like the most interesting story in the world this is partially because I'm not very good at plot summarizing but mainly because the real worth of this novella lies in the atmosphere that Mr. Russell creates and the things he insinuates interstitially. The odd interactions between characters, the dilapidated house, and the bizarre card game slowly combine to create the most superb atmosphere of weirdness. When the tensions that characterize nearly every relationship that is on display in the novella are thrown in as well as the sexual tension between Miranda and Lucian, the result is something truly special. At its heart, in other words, Bloody Baudelaire is a first rate weird tale wrapped in multiple layers of tension that Mr. Russell expertly stokes and manipulates.

Bloody Baudelaire has left me hungry for more weird dark fiction in much the same way that Bill Hussey's Through A Glass, Darkly (review here ) left me wanting more supernatural horror. I'll be sure never to miss another opportunity to read Mr. Russell's work. I don't even need to know what the book's about. If R.B. Russell writes it, I'm going to read it.

Rating: 9/10

The True First

Bloody Baudelaire was first published in June of 2009 by Ex Occidente Press. There were only 400 copies made.

[This review was not based on a review copy]

Review - The Third Sign

2009-09-24T17:22:00.004-04:00

Gregory A. Wilson

Occasionally, too much time elapses between when I finish reading a book and when I sit down to write the review. Sometimes when this happens I simply don't review the book at all. Other times, I write what I remember. Every now and then, I'll reread the entire book again. I did the latter in the case of The Third Sign by Gregory A. Wilson, the first book in his Chronicles of Klune series. While I normally don't enjoy doing this because it can mess up my self-imposed reviewing schedule, I was sort of glad to do it in this case because I was fairly conflicted about the book after my first reading of it. Having finished reading it a second time, I'm afraid I can't really recommend it.

The Third Sign takes place in the land of Klune roughly ten years after it was freed from tyrannical rule by the efforts of a dedicated few. The arrangement that humans have worked out with the Minotaur-like race of Arlics pursuant to which the latter protect the land is about to expire and there is considerable tension between the two groups which threatens to preclude the striking of another agreement. As danger mounts, several of the books' heroes are left to deal with the looming threat as well as with the possibility that the Destroyer may be arriving on the scene shortly.

I read the excerpt of this book on Mr. Wilson's website and thought it looked interesting and that the story sounded promising, but at the end of the day the book fails to live up to its potential, primarily because everything about it is so conventional. The setting, the characters, and the dialog all felt conventional to the point of cliché.

Additionally, there are numerous minor issues that detract from the reading experience. For example, there are several "surprise" chapter endings that just didn't work for me. For example, one chapter in which a man gets murdered proceeds to conclude with this sentence:

"And waiting in a tavern a few streets away, Belezion Drolnar, lost in his own thoughts, lifted his head. He could have sworn he had heard, or felt, someone ask an unanswerable question."

Similarly, there are instances in which characters have forced exchanges in which they recount facts already known to both for the benefit of the reader and these just sounded odd. Other times, the the author sort of went off on tangents that didn't' seem to serve any purpose (there is at one point, for example, a three page conversation about the theft of some fruit).

At the end of the day these and similar issues combined with the conventionality of the story precluded The Third Sign from living up to its potential.

Rating: 2/10

The True First

The Third Sign was first published by Five Star Publishing, an imprint of Gale Cengage Learning.

[This review was based on a review copy]

Review - Mistborn: The Final Empire

2009-09-14T07:36:00.003-04:00

Brandon Sanderson

Brandon Sanderson's name is so ubiquitous these days that it's practically impossible to avoid him. Between hearing constant praise for his standalone novel Elantris and his Mistborn Trilogy, seeing his most recent novel Warbreaker in bookstores, and constantly hearing about his completion of Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time series, his name seems to be everywhere. Somehow, though, I've managed to avoid reading any of his work up to this point.

Why has it taken me so long, you ask? I'm not entirely sure. Part of it, I think, is that once hype for an author reaches a certain point I sometimes start to become more skeptical than curious. In Mr. Sanderson's case, in particular, however, other things kept me away. The first was the other authors he is often compared to. A quote on the back of the second Mistborn novel, for example, assures the reader that fans of Terry Brooks and Terry Goodkind will love Mr. Sanderson's work. No thanks. Similarly, the endorsement Mr. Sanderson's work received from Romantic Times Book Reviews didn't help much either. Even his association with the Wheel of Time series, which I never really got into, led me to keep moving along whenever I saw his books in the bookstore. Eventually, though, I decided that I at least wanted to be fleetingly familiar with the work of this author I was repeatedly passing up.

Mistborn: The Final Empire is the story of a thieving crew whose leader decides to accept the daunting job of overthrowing the ash-covered Final Empire, which has stood for a thousand years. Its equally ancient leader, the Lord Ruler, allows a small nobility to exist but the vast majority of persons belong to the serf-like population of Skaa who toil under the nobles' whips and live at their mercy. The crew consists of a handful of individuals known as Mistings who each have abilities in one of the eight varieties of magic known as allomancy. Additionally, the crew's leader, Kelsier, and its newest recruit, Vin, are both Mistborn, meaning that they have abilities in all eight types of allomancy. Their efforts to overthrow the Final Empire require that they recruit and train an army, keep their plan a secret, defend themselves against the empire's inquisitors, and infiltrate and politick with the nobility.

The most celebrated thing about the Mistborn Trilogy is almost certainly the system of magic it employs, and indeed this is the most striking aspect of the early part of the book. Each of the eight types of allomancy is based on a particular metal. For example, pewter is associated with the enhancement of physical abilities, bronze can reveal the use of allomancy by others, etc. Allomancers access their powers by ingesting and then "burning" bits of the appropriate metal. The fact that most allomancers only possess one type of allomancy can often lead to the creation of some interesting alliances. For example, an allomancer who can burn pewter might be able to break open a lock with her bare hands but she may be in trouble without the assistance of someone who can burn Copper, which hides the use of allomancy from prying eyes.

Mr. Sanderson thoroughly and completely explores the use and implications of such a system of magic and does more with the eight types of allomancy than I would have thought possible. It is, without question, the most inherently interesting and thoroughly explored system of magic I have ever encountered. Even so, somewhere around page 200 I started to feel like the initial overhead required to explain it was stretching on a bit too long at the expense of the story itself. No sooner had I reached this conclusion then things started to pick up.

The story initially felt a lot like Lynch's The Lies of Locke Lamora (review here). Both books, after all, involve bands of thieves attempting to pull off the ultimate job. But Mistborn: The Final Empire quickly distinguished itself. The story may start off rather slow but it gets better and better as the book progresses. Mr. Sanderson eventually finds a near perfect balance of allomancy-laden action, political intrigue, and worldbuilding (although I could have definitely used a bit more of the latter).

I do have a few minor quibbles with the book. Every now and then minor improbable things would happen. For example, there is recruitment for a secret rebellion in public taverns all over a city. In another instance, Vin confronts one of the Lord Ruler's guards who responds by ripping the insignia of his station from his clothes, abandoning his post, and joining Vin's side. These things just seemed a bit unlikely. Even so, these anomalies are reduced to almost complete insignificance by the overwhelming quality of the book as a whole.

The first book in the Mistborn trilogy is a near perfect blend of the conventional and the innovative and belongs to that class of books that are just plain fun to read. In this respect, it reminded me a lot of the work of the Peter F. Hamilton. Mistborn: The Final Empire completely sold me on Mr. Sanderson. It took all the willpower I possess not to dive into the next book in the trilogy right away, and I can assure you that I'll be getting to it shortly.

Rating: 9/10

The True First

Mistborn: The Final Empire was first published by Tor in 2006.

[This review was based on a review copy]

Review - Song of Time

2009-09-04T14:40:00.003-04:00

Ian R. MacLeod

I stumbled across Song of Time by Ian R. MacLeod while browsing the website of its publisher, PS Publishing. There, I read a post stating that the book had won both the Arthur C. Clarke award and the John W. Campbell award. Sufficiently intrigued, I read a synopsis of the book and it sounded somewhat promising so I went ahead and purchased a copy.

Song of Time opens with the elderly and dying violinist Roushana Maitland finding a mysterious man lying in the sand while taking a stroll along the Cornish beach near her home. She somehow manages to drag him back to her home, dresses him, puts him to bed, and wonders who he is. She soon learns that he doesn't know who he is either and together they decide that "Adam" is as good a name as any to give him.

As Adam recuperates and tries to remember who he is, Roushana begins the process of sorting through her own life's memories, an essential part of the preparation for transitioning to the technology-enabled quasi-existence that can follow death if one wishes. Her memories span most of the twenty-first century, during which all sorts of catastrophes occured. Plagues, climate change, terrorism, flooding, humanitarian disasters, political turmoil, nuclear war, shifting borders; she experienced all of these things, sometimes directly and other times from a distance. At the same time, she recounts more personal memories, many of which involve her late husband Claude.

The first thing that impressed me about Song of Time was the quality of Mr. MacLeod's writing. It became obvious very early on that he has the soul of a poet. Additionally, the way he manipulates the two related stories that are being told in this book is masterful. The two stories to which I refer are the personal story of Roushana on the one hand and the larger story of what is happening to the world and to humanity on the other. Sometimes, one of these strands is in focus while the other is distant and other times the reverse is true. But always there is a greater story that emerges from their interplay. While this may be true of many books, Mr. MacLeod is particularly adept at using this dynamic to enhance the overall quality of his work.

For me, the greatest thing about this book is the emotional state in which it leaves the reader. While it probably won't be to everyone's liking, I found it to be singular and nearly perfect in this respect. Inherent in Roushana's recollection of the events of her life is a question about whether or not it makes sense to pursue the existence-beyond-death that technology has made possible. Simultaneously, the world itself, and humanity as a whole, endure a series of similarly trying events that give rise to similar questions about identity and the future. But while these events are at times perceived to be the traumatic events they undoubtedly are, far more enduring for me was the sense of timelessness that the narrative imparts and the suggestion that these upheavals, disorienting as they are, are part of some sort of eternally evolving process that need not be feared.

My only problem with the book is that having been blissfully brought to this emotional level, the end of the book abruptly snapped me out of it as a result of the particular way in which Mr. MacLeod chose to conclude his exploration of the nature of memory. While it works in the sense that it is consistent with the rest of the story, I wish he would have chosen a similar but slightly less abrasive way to make his point.

Song of Time is a fantastic book, one that affected me more than most books do. It is not for everyone, but I suspect that those who like it will like it a lot, and it is fully deserving of the awards it recently received. I'll be reading more by Mr. MacLeod in the future.

Rating: 9/10

The True First

Song of Time was first published by UK Publisher PS Publishing in 2008. I don't know if there are any plans to bring it to a wider audience at this point, but there should be.

[This review was not based on a review copy]

Horror Reanimated: Echoes, You'll Finally Be Able to Read It Soon!

2009-08-26T20:10:00.004-04:00

It's a rare day when news items are posted on Speculative Fiction Junkie, so when it does happen, you know it's a special occasion. What could warrant such a departure, you ask? I have it on good authority that Horror Reanimated: Echoes will be released electronically over at Horror Reanimated any time now!

For those of you who don't know, Horror Reanimated is the web home of horror authors Joseph D'Lacey, Bill Hussey, and Mathew F. Riley. They describe the site's purpose as being "the promotion and investigation of the horror genre in all media" and further state that "it is also the outlet for publishing news from each of the authors, and from Bloody Books. The site offers regular reviews, interviews, video exclusives, writing tips, art features, competitions, giveaways and links to horror hot-spots all over the internet." They do an excellent job and if you're at all interested in the horror genre, you owe it to yourself to become a frequent visitor.

Horror Reanimated: Echoes is the first of what will hopefully be many limited edition chapbooks issued by the Horror Reanimated folks. Only two hundred hard copies of the chapbook were ever made and these were distributed for free to those who attended readings during the recent Horror Reanimated Tour. Sadly, that tour was confined to England (as far as I know) which means that unless you were lucky enough to get a copy of the chapbook at one of these events, the juicy fiction morsels contained therein have remained frustratingly unattainable...until now!...or...err...soon!

Speculative Fiction Junkie has been a staunch supporter of the work of both Mr. D'Lacey and Mr. Hussey ever since I first read each authors' respective work. The work of both authors has been rated 10/10 here at one time or another, and I never tire of bemoaning the fact that their books are not yet widely available in the United States. And while I had never read any of Mr. Riley's work prior to reading his piece in Echoes but I will definitely be looking forward to more from him in the future.

Mr. D'Lacey's story, "Rhiannon's Reach," is the story of a diver who loves, but is also afraid of, the sea and how that fear affects him when he has a second fearful encounter with it. "A Room Thus Stained," by Mr. Hussey, is a nineteenth century tale of a man trying to avenge the murder of a lover. The final story, by Mr. Riley, is "Part of the Landscape," a very eerie tale about the memories that inhabit the places frequented by the story's protagonist.

All three stories are highly enjoyable and if you enjoy horror fiction in the least, make sure to stop by Horror Reanimated in the coming days to download a copy!

Review - The Midnight Charter

2009-08-25T10:45:00.003-04:00

David Whitley

Some of the best speculative fiction being published today is to be found in the young adult section of the book store. D.M. Cornish's Foundling (review here) and Lamplighter (review here), for example, will almost certainly be on Speculative Fiction Junkie's Top 5 Reads of 2009 list. Reading books meant for younger readers with adult eyes is, however, a bit of a gamble, as in my opinion such books tend to fall into two categories: truly great books that can be enjoyed by readers of almost any age and everything else. While David Whitley's debut novel, The Midnight Charter, has several things going for it, I ultimately found that it fit into the "everything else" category.

The Midnight Charter takes place in Agora, a city in which everything is bought and sold: goods, children, ideas, emotions (these are literally extracted from people, bottled, and sold), time, everything. There is no such thing as charity or selfless acts. When people don't have anything with which to barter, or have squandered what possessions they once had, they become "debtors" or "damaged goods," unworthy of any support, as Agoran society has no concept of supporting the poor and destitute since they cannot provide anything in return.

Into this world arrive two orphans who approach this central characteristic of their society in two drastically different ways: one learns to take advantage of it and prospers accordingly, even while making himself vulnerable to the possibility that his fortunes could change at any time as market forces fluctuate or competitors make Machiavellian advances; the other attempts to change Agoran society by introducing charity into it, at substantial personal risk to herself and those close to her.

While Mr. Whitley is a good writer and the setting of Agora is a promising one, The Midnight Charter suffers from one major problem that severely limited its appeal for me: the entirety of the book's point seems to be conveyed by merely describing the city of Agora, leaving little urgency to guide the plot and in fact leaving hardly any reason for their to be a plot at all. The plot, such as it is, betrays this fact, and is at best mildly interesting and often times seems forced.

Mr. Whitley's debut novel is probably a great read for the younger audiences at whom it is directed, and I'll be interested to see what his future works are like, but, for me at least, The Midnight Charter does not belong in that upper echelon of young adult works that can be widely enjoyed by older readers.

Rating: 6/10

The True First

The Midnight Charter was originally published in London by Puffin on August 6, 2009. It will be published in the United States on September 1 by Roaring Brook Press.

[This review was not based on a review copy]

Review - One

2009-08-16T10:08:00.003-04:00

Conrad Williams

Post-Apocalyptic tales are among my absolute favorites, and when Colin of Highlander's Books, one of my favorite review blogs, recommended a post-apocalyptic tale by an author whose work I'd been meaning to delve into anyway, I decided to give it a go. The book in question was One and the author was Conrad Williams.

One is the story of a man's journey in search of his son in the wake of an apocalyptic event that takes him from beneath the North Sea all the way to London. The book is divided into two halves with the first detailing his journey to London and the second, taking place some decade later, portraying his plight and ongoing search once he gets there.

The first thing that impressed me about One was the opening chapter. Put simply, the first few pages contained some of the most exciting and effective opening action I've ever read. The book begins with protagonist Richard Jane deep under the North Sea working on an oil rig, which is where he finds himself when the apocalyptic event occurs. Mr. Williams does an astoundingly good job of conveying to the reader a sense of how Jane and his fellow divers would have experienced this event and it roped me in immediately.

What follows in the first part of the book is the story of Jane's efforts to make it to London where he hopes to find his young son, Stanley. Mr. Williams punctuates the story with Jane's recollections about his former life with his ex wife and young son. As the story progresses these recollections take on an obsessional quality as his search for Stanley becomes Jane's sole reason for carrying on. I found this to be a welcome dimension to the story but some will find that it slows the book down.

The second part of the book takes place roughly a decade later in a vastly depopulated London that has become extraordinarily dangerous due to rats, desperate human beings, and something altogether different and terrifying, brought on by the cataclysm, that can turn animals and humans into creatures much more deadly. This entire second part paints a picture that is practically unrivalled in the desolation it portrays.

The attention Mr. Williams gives to the relationship between Jane and his son is reminiscent of the relationship that is at the center of McCarthy's The Road, but One is distinguishable from other post-apocalyptic tales in at least two other respects. First of all, One, more than other books in the subgenre, focuses not just on particular relationships but examines more generally what happens to the ability of human beings to create relationships in such a broken world, it shows us what those relationships would look like. The resulting picture reveals that in addition to the destruction of the world people themselves, as a species, have been destroyed, are no longer capable of forming relationships of the same quality.

The second thing that distinguished One from similar tales was what we learn about the nature of the creatures that stalks the weary remnants of humanity in London and elsewhere. This last part of the story introduces sci-fi elements that were almost entirely missing prior to this point. They brought an interesting twist to the story but appearing as they did towards the end weren't adequately explored in my opinion.

I really enjoyed One, depressing as it is. I also thoroughly enjoyed the way Mr. Williams writes. Full of juicy metaphors and similes, it felt at once traditional and uniquely effective. I'll definitely be reading more works by Mr. Williams in the future.

Rating: 8/10

The True First

One was first published by Virgin Books in the UK in April of 2009 as a trade paperback. The same publisher made it available in the States in June of 2009 but I have unfortunately not found it in any bookstores around here.

[This review was not based on a review copy]

Review - Mr. Gaunt and Other Uneasy Encounters

2009-08-05T22:44:00.006-04:00

John Langan

I've been in the mood to read some supernatural horror lately and thought I might have found just the thing when I stumbled upon Mr. Gaunt and Other Uneasy Encounters by John Langan. It turns out that I was only partially right.

Mr. Gaunt and Other Uneasy Encounters is the first collection of Mr. Langan's short works of fiction to be published. It contains a total of five stories, four of which have previously appeared in various publications and one of which was previously unpublished.

Other reviewers have noted the allusions Mr. Langan makes to works by Henry James and other writers. I'm embarrassed to say that I've not read much Henry James and my interest in supernatural horror stories is relatively new, so I can't comment on these stories from that angle. My thoughts are based purely on my impressions of the stories as I read them, without being cognizant of their relationship to the work of others.

The first story in the collection, "On Skua Island," was one of the best in the collection. In it, some friends are telling ghost stories when one of their group tells the tale of an archaeological expedition he made some years previously to a remote island near the Shetlands. The narrator recounts the story of what they found there, what happened subsequently, and how he made it out alive.

Next is "Mr. Gaunt," in which a man discovers an audiotape left to him by his late father, on which the father has recorded the exploits of his brother and the latter's son. The son is told never to go into a particular part of the house but disobeys this instruction while his father is away. The result is that he discovers the truth about his father's servant, Mr. Gaunt...

The third story, "The Tutorial," feels almost out of place in this collection but was enjoyable nonetheless. It tells the story of a young man who runs afoul of his professor's sense of what proper prose is and is sent to a tutor and then to another. The story winds up being sort of a Kafkaesque tale.

Next is "Episode Seven: Last Stand against the Pack in the Kingdom of the Purple Flowers," a post-apocalyptic tale with an interesting structure about a pregnant girl and a young man trying to escape a pack of beasts hunting them.

The final story is "Laocoön, or the Singularity", which I found to be difficult to finish. It is the story of a recently divorced artist who works at a video store and one day inexplicably finds a statue of an alien in the trash. The artist decides to re-sculpt the creature's face, etc.

Mr. Langan is a great writer, but I'm still a bit ambivalent about this collection. Despite the quality of his writing, none of these stories except the first one is really scary at all, nor do they evoke the sort of ominous atmosphere that I think is such a vital part of supernatural horror stories. I'm looking forward to reading Mr. Langan's first novel when it is released, but I'm afraid this collection didn't leave that much of a lasting impression on me.

Rating: 7/10

The True First

Mr. Gaunt and Other Uneasy Encounters was originally published by Prime Books in December of 2008.

[This review was not based on a review copy]

Review - Meat

2009-07-26T11:13:00.003-04:00

Joseph D'Lacey

Joseph D'Lacey's The Kill Crew (review here) was one of the best books I've read this year and it left me eager to read the rest of Mr. D'Lacey's work. The obvious place to start was with his debut novel, Meat. While the cover of the book looks suitably frightening, I can assure you that it is nothing compared to what is written on the book's pages. Meat is without question the most disturbing book I have ever read. Period.

Meat is the story of Abyrne, a dilapidated city in the middle of a boundless wasteland. At the heart of the city is meat, its manufacture and consumption, and a sort of worship of the animals from which it is derived, the so-called Chosen. Meat permeates and shapes nearly every aspect of this society: the best jobs are with the meat processing monopoly, Magnus Meat Processing; one's status is measured by how much meat one consumes; eating meat is a dictate of the religion of Abyrne, which revolves around the relationship between the town's inhabitants, the Chosen, and meat.

Richard Shanti, the protagonist, is legendary for the speed with which he performs his grim duties at the meat processing plant, but he is increasingly assaulted by feelings of guilt about the entire machine of which he is such an effective part. Since he has a family to support, however, he cannot risk drawing the attention of either the authoritarian religious authorities or of the secular power in the town, who is none other than the head of Magnus Meat Processing, Rory Magnus.

Let's get this out of the way up front: Meat may very well ruin the experience of eating meat for you. More surprisingly, it may also ruin the experience of drinking milk for you. In addition, the violence and creepiness of some of the characters in this story is truly offensive and horrific.

The horrors that Mr. D'Lacey employs, however, are only half of the story. The other half is his portrayal of the innocence of the Chosen, which is conveyed very effectively in this paragraph, for example:

Shanti didn't understand all of it and he was glad. There was so much innocence to their communication, so much acceptance of their end that it broke his heart to listen. The older calves, usually the respected teachers among them, would become frightened as they neared their time and then the hisses and taps would become a kind of harmonised prayer to give them strength and courage. The dusky halls of the veal yard throbbed with their muted rhythms and Shanti was nauseated.

The juxtaposition of the many horrors of Abyrne and the innocence and plight of the Chosen elicits the real horror that is at the heart of this book: our collective guilt and culpability for the way we treat such innocence. Mr. D'Lacey elicits this response without sounding overly judgmental or admonishing the reader. He simply presents the two images side by side and the contrast speaks for itself. In doing so, Mr. D'Lacey has added a rarely seen dimension to the horror story, one that relies on what each of us carries around inside ourselves as human beings for its effect.

I have only two minor criticisms of Meat. The first is that the horrors described in the early part of the book are so disturbing that I was left sort of numb for the remainder of it, a phenomenon akin to trying to hear the person walking next to you after passing in front of the speakers at a loud concert. Secondly, while I loved the inclusion of the secular vs. religious dynamic, a part of me wished that this part of the story had been developed a bit more. Instead, both powers are portrayed in the book as more or less monolithic entities ruled by men who are essentially mirror images of one another in their power hunger and moral depravity.

In the final analysis, Meat is a major achievement even if it is not, in my opinion, quite as strong a work as The Kill Crew is. Several other reviewers have referred to Mr. D'Lacey as a writer of "eco horror." While I don't think this is incorrect per se, I think it fails to do justice to the scope of what he's doing, which is nothing less than writing stories whose true sense of horror relies on the reader's core humanity for its effect.

Rating: 8/10

The True First

Meat was first published in the UK as a trade paperback by Bloody Books in 2008. It is not available in bookstores in the United States.

[This review was based on a review copy]

Is R.B. Russell Julián Carax?

2009-07-21T19:44:00.004-04:00

When two of my favorite bloggers, Colin of Highlander's Book Reviews and Mihai of Dark Wolf's Fantasy Reviews, both gave Putting the Pieces in Place by R.B. Russell a glowing review I decided to acquire a copy (yes, I know it violates my pledge not to buy books; more about that later). The book is published by the Bucharest based Ex Occidente Press, which I had never heard of before but which appears to have a very interesting catalog.

The problem is that I ordered the book on June 6th and it still hasn't arrived! Upon sending an inquiry to the publisher the gentleman I spoke with told me that it should have arrived already. Since then, he reportedly has tried to send it a second time. For whatever reason, neither book ever made it to my place.

In the meantime I contemplated cancelling my order and attempting to obtain the book elsewhere. Unfortunately, between the time I ordered the book and now, the book sold out. What's more, there are no copies available on eBay or through tried and true outlets like Bookfinder. All this has led me to conclude that R.B. Russell may be pulling a Julián Carax :)

So, if anyone comes across a copy of this book that is available for something approaching it's published price, please drop me an email.

Review - The Last Book

2009-07-15T21:56:00.004-04:00

Zoran Živković

It's always exciting to discover a new author, especially when that author is from a part of the world whose fiction I've not had the pleasure of reading before. I've heard the work of Serbian writer Zoran Živković praised in several quarters and the excellent PS Publishing seems to have been publishing a lot of his work recently.

When I read that his work called The Last Book was both a thrilling mystery and a sort of celebration of books in general I was sold. It didn't hurt that Umberto Eco's The Name of the Rose reportedly played some part in the book either.

The Last Book is told from the perspective of Inspector Dejan Lukić, who, as the book opens, has just arrived at the Papyrus Bookstore in the wake of the seemingly normal death of one of the store's patrons. Soon, however, another visitor dies. Then another.

Having completed the book, the best things I can say about it are that it is mildly interesting and mercifully short. In my opinion, the book fails in almost every way that a book can fail.

First and foremost, the story isn't that interesting or plausible. Mr. Živković's resolution of the mystery that unfolds in The Last Book was at best boring and at worst seemed so totally bizarre and insufficiently related to anything to be satisfying to any real degree. The book might as well have progressed by Lukić learning that the bookstore deaths were the result of the deceased having come into contact with poisonous goo unwittingly left on the books by two extraterrestrial patrons who liked to frequent the shop. In hindsight, it seems clear to me that one of the main reasons for this is that the author appears to be primarily concerned with preserving the ending twist to the book rather than with writing an interesting story. As a result, the book simply fails to capitalize on its promising premise.

To make matters worse, the book's settings are poorly described and the characters are some of the shallowest I've encountered in some time. Now, I know that sometimes it's completely appropriate to be vague about the places that are described in a book, but in this case, the book's other failings made it difficult to overlook the omission. The characters are either poorly described or, to the extent that they are fleshed out at all, just seem out of place and dorky, for lack of a better term.

I'm glad to put this one behind me and doubt I will read anything by Mr. Živković in the future.

Rating: 4/10

The True First

The Last Book was first published by PS Publishing in March of 2008. There were two editions: 300 jacketed hardcover copies signed by both the author and the writer of the introduction, John Grant; and 500 unjacketed hardcover copies signed by the author.

[This review was not based on a review copy]

Review - Avempartha

2009-07-03T20:12:00.003-04:00

Michael J. Sullivan

Michael J. Sullivan's The Crown Conspiracy (review here ) was one of the most pleasantly surprising books I've read so far this year. Eschewing the recent trends in fantasy toward the lengthy, gritty, and dark, the first book in the Riyria Revelations brought the genre back to its roots and contained far more traditional elements, like wizards, kings, dwarves, and elves. But far from being a clichéd Tolkien rip off, The Crown Conspiracy felt refreshingly original in some ways and is perhaps most properly viewed as a distillation of the fantasy genre into its best components: no unnecessarily complicated invented languages, no attempts to be extravagantly original at the expense of the story; just great characters, an original story, humor and drama in the appropriate measures, and just the right amount of worldbuilding. I was predictably excited about reading the sequel, Avempartha.

The book opens with a young woman tracking down Hadrian and Royce and imploring them to travel to her village to help slay the terror that has been killing off villagers one by one in the night. When they oblige, they find out that in order to accomplish their mission, they're going to have to get into the ancient Elven tower of Avempartha, which is no small task, to secure a uniquely effective weapon. As if this weren't enough, they soon have to contend with a host of visitors whose actions may have a significant effect on the future of Elan.

Avempartha is every bit as enjoyable as its predecessor was, and is in some respects even better. The primary reason for this is the extra dose of worldbuilding (and to a lesser extent political intrigue) Mr. Sullivan has included in this tale. We learn a lot more about the history of the land and of the relationship between humans and elves that has shaped the world of Elan. In addition to being interesting because of how it affects the story being told in the book, this also contributes a lot to the reader's interest in the series as a whole. It is this aspect that makes me truly anticipate the next book in the series, Nyphron Rising.

My only complaint about the book is a minor one and is almost identical to a small quibble I had with The Crown Conspiracy. Specifically, there is a moment where one of the characters defends himself in a way that implies that he has become a master swordsman in a relatively short period of time. Asking the reader to believe this is asking too much, but it's a small thing when measured against what Mr. Sullivan has accomplished in this book.

Mr. Sullivan continues to impress. In Royce and Hadrian he has created some of the best characters the genre has seen in some time, and in Avempartha he shows that he knows what to do with them. These books should be in every bookstore and I really hope that they are someday. The Riyria Revelations prove that the fantasy genre is nowhere near exhausted and that there is as much treasure to be mined in its traditional forms as there are in the newer varieties.

Rating: 9/10

The True First

Avempartha was first published by Ridan Publishing in March of 2009.

[This review was based on a review copy]

Book I Couldn't Finish - The Glister

2009-06-26T19:35:00.005-04:00

John Burnside

I really wanted to like The Glister by John Burnside.

I had never read anything by him before and the premise sounded promising: five boys have disappeared from Innertown, an isolated town whose most dominating feature is the closed and dilapidated chemical plant that has left illness, death, poison, poverty, and violence in its wake. The book appeared to me as though it would mix elements of the horror, mystery, and thriller genres.

Unfortunately, it didn't really do anything. The entire point of the portion of the book that I read (I got about 75% of the way through) seems to be to describe the devastation wrought by the closure of the plant and the greedy interests behind it. I get it, but that just isn't enough to build a book around.

This is really unfortunate because Mr. Burnside's prose is amazingly good. Perhaps I'll try one of his other books one day...

Review - Canticle

2009-06-21T15:12:00.004-04:00

Ken Scholes

For the second review in a row, I'm going to have to go against accepted wisdom and review a book months before it's published. In my defense, the reason for this unorthodox departure is that I got the chance to read Canticle by Ken Scholes and I simply couldn't pass up the opportunity. Canticle is the second in his Psalms of Isaak series, and I was pretty impressed with the first book, Lamentation, when I reviewed it a few months ago (review here).

Canticle picks up almost a year after its predecessor left off. As the story opens, many are gathering in what looks to be become the center of the new world, the Ninefold Forest, for a feast to celebrate the arrival of Lord Rudolfo's first child. Unfortunately for those in attendance, the festivities are abruptly interrupted by assassins and many of the guests are killed (I normally try to avoid spoilers but this turn of events is mentioned on the back of the book itself). Mr. Scholes thus begins Canticle with a bang and the action is propelled forward at lightning speed for the rest of the book.

Structurally, Canticle and Lamentation are very similar. Both books contain a number of separate storylines that are told from the perspective of point-of-view characters in relatively short increments and as a general matter the style and tone of both books are nearly identical. In fact, more so than many other multi-volume works of fantasy, the books that make up The Psalms of Isaak really do tell a single story; so much so that I would have to strongly advise against reading Canticle without first reading Lamentation, despite the laudable lengths to which Mr. Scholes goes to inform the reader of Canticle about the events that happened in Lamentation.

Despite their similarities, Canticle is unquestionably a better book than Lamentation for the simple reason that all of the unfolding storylines get drastically more interesting in Canticle, especially the Vlad Li Tam storyline. This is true to such an extent that Canticle left me feeling like Mr. Scholes must have been holding back in Lamentation. The truth, of course, is that Lamentation merely laid the foundation for Canticle, and we'll probably be saying something similar when Antiphon, the next book in the series, is released.

Even though Canticle is an even better effort than its predecessor, it is not perfect. In my opinion the story still suffers from the one problem I had with Lamentation, which was a lack of worldbuilding. Here, I'm not talking about worldbuilding in the sense of mountains of superfluous history and unnecessarily detailed visual descriptions, I'm talking about the level of description that is the bare minimum needed to provide a context to the plot and characters sufficient to allow the reader to understand them at a fundamental level; to take their true measure, so to speak. The Vlad Li Tam story is a perfect example of what I'm talking about: Mr. Scholes does an excellent job of fleshing out Vlad's character and the Vlad Li Tam storyline is one of the best; but practically all I know about where he came from is the name of the place and the fact that his family was a powerful banking family. This limits the extent to which I, as a reader, can come to know the character of Vlad Li Tam. Feel free to ignore me in this regard, though, as no one else has had a similar criticism as far as I know.

If you enjoyed Lamentation, you're going to love Canticle. Mr. Scholes ramps up every aspect of the story in this latest book and simultaneously lays the groundwork for what will surely be excellent future installments. While Mr. Scholes has long been in the upper echelon of short story writers, with Canticle he definitively proves that he is here to stay as a novelist as well.

Rating: 8/10

The True First

Canticle will be published in October of this year by Tor.

[This review was based on a review copy]

Review - The Kill Crew

2009-06-03T12:05:00.007-04:00

Joseph D'Lacey

I've been hearing about the work of horror writer Joseph D'Lacey for some time now. His name is often mentioned in the same breath as friend and fellow author Bill Hussey's is, and the works of both men are published by Beautiful Book's excellent Bloody Books imprint. Sadly, neither's work is generally available in the United States. In what is hopefully a harbinger of change on this front, Mr. D'Lacey's forthcoming novella, The Kill Crew, will be published by California-based Stonegarden Publishing. When I got an opportunity to review The Kill Crew I decided that now was as good a time as any to familiarize myself with Mr. D'Lacey's work.

The Kill Crew tells the story of a diminishing number of people trying to survive in the wake of an unknown apocalyptic event that turned the remainder of the population into zombie-like people called "Commuters." The unaffected survivors, including the main protagonist, Sheri, live in the buildings occupying a single city block, which they've dubbed "the Station." At night, those who are chosen in the lottery to be one of the seven members of that night's "kill crew" go out on patrol to hunt Commuters. While everyone is required to put his or her name in this lottery at some point, people like Sheri volunteer more than others.

This premise sounded pretty routine to me when I first heard it and so I wasn't expecting too much from this novella. The first few pages--told in the first person by hard ass Sheri--seemed to confirm the appropriateness of my low expectations and suggested that this would be a fairly boring read. Surprisingly, though, by the time I finished The Kill Crew, it had become one of the best books I've read this year.

The reason I liked it so much is because it works on so many different levels. As an initial matter, it works in the fundamental sense that it is a thoroughly interesting story. While there's plenty of zombie killing goodness of the sort you would expect in a book like this, a number of things distinguish it from other post-apocalyptic tales I've read. The most salient aspect of the story's early pages is its focus on the psychological isolation of the survivors rather than the cataclysmic event itself. Mr. D'Lacey does a great job of conveying a sense of the despair of the Station's occupants as they struggle to understand what's happened to the world, try to convince themselves that hunting Commuters is a worthwhile pursuit, and fight the ever present siren call of suicide. Other aspects of the story that distinguish it from similar works are the nature of the malady affecting the Commuters as well as its focus in the later pages on the relationship between Sheri, her despicable boyfriend of convenience, Ike, and the emotionally damaged eleven year old girl, Trixie.

The second level at which The Kill Crew operates is the emotional. That may sound like a silly thing to say in a review of a work about zombie-killing survivalists, but it's worth mentioning because it's another aspect of the book that sets it apart from similar works and makes it more than your ordinary zombie story. As alluded to previously, one of the ways that Mr. D'Lacey explores characters' emotions and dilemmas is through the relationship between Sheri, Ike, and Trixie. Each has both internal and external struggles and these lend the story a dynamic that is both interesting in and of itself and serves to flesh out the characters' personalities and dilemmas. Beyond this, however, Mr. D'Lacey also succeeds in infusing each place with its own emotional tenor. When in the Station, the reader feels the isolation of being stuck there. Similarly, when outside of the Station, the reader can feel the increased sense of freedom even while the feeling of terror at being in the realm of the Commuters is present. In other words, the reader feels what the characters feel--the silences, the hollowness, and the fear that haunts these people--and this adds a whole new dimension to the story.

In my opinion, however, by far the most interesting thing about The Kill Crew is the nature of the malady afflicting the Commuters. I don't want to spoil it for anyone so I'll speak in general terms, but suffice it to say that one way to interpret the significance of the Commuter's affliction is to view it as nature reasserting itself against the unnatural way of life lived by pre-Apocalypse society. When viewed in this way, the holdouts in the Station become the unnatural anomaly, not the Commuters. This same theme is contained in many of the subplots that occur throughout the story and it is this dimension that really makes The Kill Crew stand out.

The Kill Crew exceeded every single one of my expectations. Within its mere 80 pages, Mr. D'Lacey has proven himself to be a master of writing complex, multidimensional horror stories that simultaneously scare us and make us think. I wish that more horror was like this. I will definitely be reading his other works. I've had a copy of The Garbage Man sitting around unread for a while and I will also have to track down a copy of his debut novel, Meat.

Rating: 10/10

The True First

The Kill Crew will be published by Stonegarden Publishing on August 10, 2009. You all will have to forgive me for posting this review before the release of the book, a practice that goes against accepted wisdom.

On a related note, I have to take this opportunity to bemoan the lack of availability of what will surely be a prized collectible in years to come. Recently, Bill Hussey, Mathew F. Riley, and Mr. D'Lacey released a signed, limited edition chapbook of original short stories to those who attended their tour. Sadly, however, this book was not made available for sale and was nowhere available outside of Great Britain. Unforgivable, Sirs!

[This review was based on a review copy]

SFJ Is One Year Old Today!

2009-06-01T00:00:00.000-04:00

I'm happy and proud to announce that Speculative Fiction Junkie is one year old today! In the past year I've read some amazing books and met a lot of great friends--fellow bloggers, readers, authors, and publicists--and I want to say thank you to everyone for making this such a rewarding experience!

Review - The Dreaming Void

2009-05-25T12:06:00.004-04:00

Peter F. Hamilton

Peter F. Hamilton has become one of my favorite authors. I haven't read everything he's written yet, but the reason for that is that his books tend to be huge, which puts me even more behind in my reading than I already am. But when my fiancée recently gave me a copy of Hamilton's The Dreaming Void, I dove in right away.

The Dreaming Void takes place in the same universe as Hamilton's Commonwealth Saga books, Pandora's Star and Judas Unchained (review here), albeit several millennia after the events described in those books. While I would strongly suggest reading the Commonwealth Saga before reading The Dreaming Void, Hamilton does a great job throughout the latter of bringing the reader up to speed on all of the relevant events from the earlier books.

Many aspects of the Commonwealth in which this book is set will be familiar to readers of the previous books. The Commonwealth is still a complex, technologically advanced, extremely political society spanning hundreds of planets across the galaxy. In The Dreaming Void, the entire Commonwealth is threatened by a void discovered at the center of the galaxy. The Void, it turns out, periodically expands in what is called a "devourment phase," destroying everything in its path. Attempts have been made to enter it to investigate, but each time the investigating ships are destroyed. But when a man named Inigo starts having dreams of someone inside the Void, a chain of events is commenced that sees the rise of a movement called Living Dream, who want to attempt to enter the Void again. This attempt, it is feared, will bring about a new devourment phase that may destroy the entire galaxy. The stage is thus set for a huge struggle between those who want to see the Pilgrimage through and those who fear the worst if it is allowed to go forward.

If you can believe this, Hamilton has thought up so much mind blowing technology for The Dreaming Void that he makes the Commonwealth of the earlier books look almost medieval by comparison. If you haven't read the earlier books, this may not mean much to you, but those who are familiar with them should find this to be a startling claim because the descriptions of advanced technology that are found in the Commonwealth Saga are some of the best to be found in the genre. In The Dreaming Void, Hamilton supersedes himself and imagines a universe with such things as humans who download themselves into a giant computer and live on in it post-physically, as well as planet specific networks that allow those connected to sense the feelings and thoughts of other connected individuals. Equally impressive as the fact that Hamilton can imagine such things is his ability to seamlessly integrate them into the story as a whole. After an initial, and short, learning curve, the reader will find it hard to imagine a universe without the amazing technological wonders that Hamilton describes.

This is actually one of the reasons that I think I enjoy Hamilton's books so much. While they contain plenty of politicking, war, competition, and destruction, they take place in a universe in which disease, disability, and death are no longer primary concerns and in which poverty is also largely a thing of the past. I suspect that the acuteness of the current global economic situation lends this aspect of Hamilton's work even more appeal these days.

Another thing that made The Dreaming Void even better than a lot of Hamilton's other stellar work is the way he worked two stories into it. The main action is punctuated throughout with Inigo's dreams about the life of a particular individual inside the Void (these are the dreams that eventually give rise to the Living Dream movement). Not only does this allow the reader to come to understand the dreams' significance, the dreams also tell a fascinating story in their own right.

It has been a while since The Dreaming Void was originally released and so I'm not sure how many people will even read this review. Others probably will be uninterested in it because they know what I know: any book Hamilton writes will almost certainly be spectacular and so reading reviews of his work isn't even really necessary.

Rating: 9/10

The True First

The Dreaming Void was originally published in Great Britain by Macmillan in August of 2007.

[This review was not based on a review copy]

Review - The Crown Conspiracy

2009-05-10T18:57:00.002-04:00

Michael J. Sullivan

I've found that a lot of people who don't read fantasy novels often have crazy, stereotypical ideas about the state of the genre and what a typical fantasy book is like. When questioned about their aversion, these people will often reveal that they believe all fantasy novels to be nothing more than mishmashes of wizards, elves, dwarves, and kings stewed together into a Tolkienesque gruel. I always find this puzzling because most fantasy being written today bears almost no resemblance to this stereotypical image. In fact, I can't even remember the last time I read a fantasy book that contained wizards, elves, dwarves, and kings.

So when I first heard about author Michael J. Sullivan's debut novel, The Crown Conspiracy, which does contain a bit of each of these elements, I was wholly uninterested. But for several months thereafter I kept hearing unerringly positive things about this book, and eventually I was forced to capitulate and seek out a copy.

As The Crown Conspiracy opens, we are given an immediate introduction into the way the two main characters, Royce Melborn and Hadrian Blackwater, make their living. The former is a thief and the latter provides the muscle, and the duo puts these skills to use carrying out the nefarious noble-against-noble whims of whoever pays them enough, sometimes targeting the very people who have used their services in the past. Eventually, the entrepreneurial spirit overcomes their better judgment and they accept a job without taking the ordinary precautions. The result is that they are framed for the murder of the King, and find themselves facing a swift execution. Before they can be dispatched, however, they receive a new lease on life that ends up setting them on a dangerous journey.

The first thing that happened to me when I started reading The Crown Conspiracy was that I realized that I couldn't put it down. I tried prying it off my fingers and shaking my hands around like I'd just touched a hot pan but all to no avail. This book is that good. Even more amazingly, Mr. Sullivan manages to sustain this effect throughout the entire novel. The characters are likeable, interesting, and well developed, and the setting is wonderfully fleshed out, complete with a detailed history, political rivalries, varied landscapes, and everything else that readers of fantasy have come to expect. And Mr. Sullivan weaves the action into this story so skillfully that I had to keep reminding myself that this is his first novel.

While elves, wizards, dwarves, and kings are found in Mr. Sullivan's world, he uses them sparingly and never in a way that is cliché, which lends the world he has created credibility and took me back to a time before such elements made me immediately skeptical. The Crown Conspiracy is the first of six books in a series called the Riyria Revelations. All six books have already been written and Mr. Sullivan plans to release a new one every six months. My biggest fear is that six slim volumes won't be sufficient to give readers enough time to adequately explore Mr. Sullivan's wonderful creation.

The only negative things I can say about the book are that the ending felt a tad bit rushed and there was one instance in which one of the characters did something that seemed grossly out of character. All in all, though, this was an extremely enjoyable read from start to finish. The Crown Conspiracy reminds me why I fell in love with the fantasy genre in the first place.

Rating: 9/10

The True First

The Crown Conspiracy was first published in Fall of 2008 by Aspirations Media, Inc. and is only available as a trade paperback. If the remaining volumes of the Riyria Revelations are as slim as this volume is, my hope is that someone will bind them into a hardcover at some point.

[This review was based on a review copy]

My Pledge: No Book Purchases for Three Months

2009-04-29T20:28:00.003-04:00

I work in State government and our Governor just reduced the salaries of all state employees by what amounts to 6%. Unfortunately for yours truly, this cut eliminates my book buying budget entirely. As such, I'm pledging here before all the world that I'm not going to purchase a single book for the next three months. It's going to be extremely difficult and I'm hoping that saying it publicly will help me stick with it. On the bright side, this should provide me with a great opportunity to work on the stack of books I have but have not yet read.

Also, for the record, I've already ordered a copy of China Miéville's new book, The City and the City, and Carlos Ruiz Zafón's The Angel's Game, so these aren't violations of my pledge!

Review - Act of Will

2009-04-26T12:22:00.002-04:00

A.J. Hartley

While I do most of my book shopping online at this point, I still occasionally look for books the old fashioned way, at brick and mortar bookstores. Part of the reason for this is that I just love bookstores, another is that there is a Borders bookstore right next to my apartment, but another benefit of doing things this way is that I'll sometimes come across a book that I might never have even heard about if I hadn't seen it on the shelves. This was how I discovered A.J. Hartley's Act of Will. After seeing it in Borders and reading this excerpt at home, I returned immediately the next day to pick up a copy.

I'm not sure how many regular readers of this site (if such people exist) will be familiar with Mr. Hartley's work. He has written several bestselling thrillers, but this is his first work of fantasy and I had never heard of him prior to purchasing Act of Will, even though he currently resides in my home state of North Carolina.

Act of Will follows the adventures of Will Hawthorne, who, when we find him, is a young adult actor (who always plays women's roles) who seems rather ambivalent towards most things and is just sort of drifting through life. Shortly after the book opens, soldiers attempt to shut down the theater and arrest some of the writers, including Will. Inexplicably, he decides to attempt to evade capture and winds up having to figure out how to flee the city. He finds himself unintentionally mixed up with a band of rebel adventurers who are on their way to distant lands to help put an end to raids by a mysterious company of crimson-clad men who are launching merciless attacks throughout much of the known world.

This book differs in several respects from typical works of fantasy being published today. For starters, Mr. Hartley has declined to follow the trend towards gritty fantasy. There is no sex, no foul language, and only mild violence. Similarly, worldbuilding was clearly an ancillary concern. While the exact loci of action are well described, for example, I never really got much of a sense of the setting as a whole. I found myself having a good feel for, say, the building in which the action was taking place, but not for the city or country in which that building was located. Similarly, I never got a good sense for distances in this book.

Even if these aspects of the story had been more fleshed out, though, they would have almost certainly been eclipsed by the character of Will Hawthorne, which is obviously the aspect of the story to which Mr. Hartley directed a majority of his effort. Put simply, the story of Will Hawthorne is what makes this book unique and what makes it worth reading. The story is told in the first person and it is some of the most hilarious reading I have come across in a long time. In addition to being funny, it gives the narrator a unique route into the heart of the reader. As we follow the exploits of Will and his companions, we see an unremarkable person remain unremarkable but nonetheless accomplish great things. In this way, Act of Will turns out to be less of what we might expect from a work of genre fiction and more just a really fun story that happens to take place in a setting we traditionally associate with fantasy.

Mr. Hartley is a great writer and manages to maintain a tone befitting the age and tendencies of his narrator throughout. He also knows how to write some pretty enthralling action scenes and works elements of mystery into the book. The only thing that I really didn't like about Act of Will was that the underlying mystery of the mysterious raiders, once revealed, didn't quite live up to all the hype in my opinion. However, this in no way detracts from the fact that the book triumphs remarkably in its main goal: introducing us to, and telling the story of, Will Hawthorne.

Act of Will was one of the most refreshing and original books I've read in some time. Do yourself a favor and read this excerpt. I'd be willing to bet that you enjoy it. I sincerely hope that Mr. Hartley continues to write books like this. It looks like he plans to for the moment at least, as a sequel is scheduled to be released sometime in the fall or winter.

Rating: 8/10

The True First

Act of Will was first published by Tor in March of 2009. Oddly enough, my copy of the book appears to be rather fragile as the spine is already bending substantially and the paper has a generally ragged look to it. Oh well. Since Mr. Hartley resides in the same state as I do, perhaps I'll be able to make it to a book signing some day. Based on the sorry shape of my copy of the book, he'll probably conclude that I reread it on a weekly basis.

[This review was not based on a review copy]

Review - The Absence

2009-04-16T20:02:00.005-04:00

Bill Hussey

Bill Hussey's debut novel, Through A Glass, Darkly, blew me away when I read it last year (review here). At the time, I credited it with singlehandedly rekindling my interest in the horror genre and it went on to be #2 on my Best of 2008 list. Unsurprisingly, therefore, I couldn't wait to get my hands on Hussey's second effort, The Absence. To be honest, though, there was a part of me that wondered if The Absence could even come close to the quality of Through A Glass, Darkly. It's not that I doubted Mr. Hussey's talents in particular. It's just that there are plenty of writers who can write one great novel but can't manage to write a second. In any event, I need not have worried: The Absence is a masterpiece, every bit as worthy of the praise being heaped upon it from all quarters.

The Absence centers around an old millhouse in the Fens of England and a father and his two sons rendered dysfunctional by the sudden death of the boys' mother and the father's wife in a car accident. When the father inherits an old millhouse in the Fens from a distant relative he views a trip to fix it up as an opportunity to reconnect with what remains of his family. Unknown to them, however, is a history of dark events that took place in the house and the fact that the family's connection to the the millhouse is greater than is at first apparent.

The Absence succeeds for many of the same reasons that Through A Glass, Darkly did. As was the case with the latter, The Absence is extremely well written in every possible way that a book can be. The prose is fantastic, the various elements of the book are perfectly balanced, and the like.

But while these things contribute to any book's quality, the thing that really elevates Mr. Hussey's work into the upper echelons of horror is that he understands the primordial origin of humanity's fears better than any writer I've ever encountered. While his books exploit the fear of bodily harm to which many horror writers limit themselves, Mr. Hussey immediately races beyond this limited notion of what makes us afraid to exploit the things that mankind has feared ever since he crawled out of the mud, to the things that led him to see vengeful gods and devils all around him. That may sound a bit abstract but those of you who know what I'm talking about will likely never be able to derive too much satisfaction from traditional gorebore horror again (hey, did I just make that term up?).

While I loved The Absence, that doesn't mean that I didn't have a few personal quibbles. While there were some of the fantastic elements that were found in Through A Glass, Darkly I thought there were less in The Absence, which I found regrettable because Mr. Hussey does such a good job with this sort of thing. Secondly, a few times I found the portrayal of a family member's personal struggles to be almost too much to bear. These are really minor things though that do not in any way detract from what is a fantastic book.

Rating: 10/10

The True First

The Absence was first published as a trade paperback in April of 2009 by the Bloody Books imprint of Beautiful Books in London. Inexcusably, there is no U.S. publication of this book in the works at the moment and there is still no hardcover edition available. For more information about Mr. Hussey, check out his new website http://horrorreanimated.com.

[This review was based on a review copy]

Review - The Manual of Detection

2009-03-24T20:30:00.004-04:00

Jebediah Berry

I first learned about Jebediah Berry's debut novel, The Manual of Detection, from this post on Jeff VanderMeer's website. After learning a little more about it, I became convinced that it might be the follow up to Jack O'Connell's The Resurrectionist that I've been craving lately. Having just finished it, I can say that this is partially true and that I'm both impressed and disappointed with this book.

Like The Resurrectionist, the The Manual of Detection is difficult to describe. To call it a noir mystery would be accurate but insufficient because above all, it's a work of surreal fiction.

Set in a time period reminiscent of something you would find in an early twentieth century hardboiled detective novel, the book tells the story of Unwin, an experienced clerk at the Agency who is unexpectedly--and mistakenly, he believes--promoted to detective. He soon learns that the detective for whom he clerks has gone missing and begins to revisit his cases in an attempt to discover any clues that might help him figure out what happened.

One of the best things about The Manual of Detection is the elaborate setting Mr. Berry has created. The city is richly imagined and full of oddities such as a museum with exhibits like the World's Oldest Murdered Man, an undertaker next to a graveyard with a seedy bar in his basement, secret trains, a traveling carnival that no longer travels, and more. The time period in which the book ostensibly takes place and the fact that it's always raining also lend the place a distinct feel. The Agency, too, is a fascinating place. While it has an Orwellian surveillance aspect to it, it's chief characteristic is its organization. Everything is rigidly hierarchical: underclerks archive information, clerks work for a specific detective, detectives are overseen by 'watchers,' messages are only transported via special messengers, etc., and it is highly irregular for anyone to act inconsistently with his or her role.

The surreal scenes that Mr. Berry conjures up are another strength of this book. Some of these are as weird as anything you'd find in O'Connell or Miéville and are just as compelling. There are weird meetings at night that reminded me of Eyes Wide Shut (minus the copulation), weird subterranean rooms in which isolated individuals toil far beneath the Agency, cases of thrice murdered men, and this barely scrapes the surface of how weird this book gets.

While I enjoyed The Manual of Detection a lot, it suffers from two problems in my opinion. First, the weirdness is poured on so heavily that it's disorienting, which is fine by itself, but which in this case made it more difficult to care about the characters and the story. I love books in the new weird subgenre as well as mysteries containing magic realism in the vein of Jack O'Connell, so I wouldn't say such a thing lightly. But without a sufficient grounding in something familiar the artistically weird just becomes the inscrutably weird.

The second problem was that when the ultimate mystery is revealed, it was underwhelming. I don't really know how else to say it. I don't want to give too much away so I'll just say this: a lot of what happens in the book works through dreams, and that just didn't live up to the size and quality of the world that Berry built. It sort of felt like an unbalanced equation. And while the rigidity of the Agency was meant to contrast with the craziness of the rest of the city, this dynamic just wasn't that interesting either.

Mr. Berry is an excellent writer with a wonderful imagination, and I really hope he continues to write books like The Manual of Detection, just not exactly like it.

Rating: 7/10

The True First

The Manual of Detection was first published by The Penguin Press in February of 2009.

[This review was not based on a review copy]

A Great Customer Service Experience

2009-03-21T17:37:00.002-04:00

I've been super busy with work lately and so haven't been posting book reviews as often as I normally do, but in the meantime I thought I'd share a great customer service experience I recently had.

About six weeks ago, I ordered a signed, first edition of a book from Fine1stEditions, a bookseller in the United Kingdom. The book arrived some weeks later (I selected the cheapest method of shipping which can take a while), but there was a problem: it wasn't signed. I contacted the folks at Fine1stEditions about the problem and they quickly responded with an apologetic email, which was nice. The real kicker though was that they refunded my payment and let me keep the unsigned book they had sent me! I don't think I've ever had a better customer service experience!

Your Blog Is Fabulous!

2009-03-09T21:45:00.003-04:00

Many thanks to Mihai, the famous Dark Wolf himself, for nominating Speculative Fiction Junkie for a "Your Blog Is Fabulous" award!

As he notes in his original post, recipients are supposed to list five things they are "obsessed with and can't live without" (strong words, indeed!). I'll follow Tia's approach and not list people. Without further ado, in no particular order:

Books - Surely this will be on everyone's list, right? There are very few trials in life that can't be borne if one has a good book to read before bed and very few days that aren't improved by just a few minutes of reading.

Hockey - Hockey is the best sport. Period. It is so entertaining that it takes something away from my enjoyment of every other sport.

Linux - I'm not a Windows hater but once you've learned to use Linux, you can't help but realize how fundamentally flawed Windows is. MacOS is similarly bad.

Classical music - There are many great kinds of music in the world, but the one that is the most important to me is classical music.

Cooking - No, I'm not a very good cook...yet. I'm just learning how, really, but it is a lot of fun.

I nominate the following five blogs for this award (some of which may have already been nominated):

Highlander's Book Reviews

The Ostentatious Ogre

Sandstorm Reviews

Walker of Worlds

Blood of the Muse

Thanks again Mihai!

Review - Lamentation

2009-03-04T21:39:00.004-05:00

Ken Scholes

Lamentation, the debut novel by accomplished short story author Ken Scholes, has been receiving a lot of buzz recently and is already being talked about as possibly the best debut of the young year. While I agree that it's a worthy effort, I'm not sure it's the debut of the year.

Mr. Scholes doesn't waste any time getting things going in Lamentation. The book begins with various characters witnessing the destruction of the center of the world, so to speak: the city of Windwir. Windwir is the seat of the powerful Androfrancine Order, which guards and selectively doles out the scraps of scientific knowledge that it has recovered from an age long since past. War breaks out almost immediately after the city's destruction and a large portion of the remainder of the book is devoted to introducing us to the main characters and their shifting alliances as everyone struggles to deal with the destruction of Windwir.

As anyone who is familiar with his short fiction knows, Mr. Scholes is a fantastic writer, and Lamentation is no exception in this regard. The book moves along at a very quick pace and the plotting is one of its main strengths. Its greatest strength, however, is the prose itself. Mr. Scholes has that rare gift of being able to craft prose that is simultaneously precise, engaging, poetic, but never unnecessarily lavish. The characters are well developed too even though they do suffer somewhat from the issue I discuss in the next paragraph.

I only had one complaint about Lamentation, but its effects permeated the entire reading experience for me. The one area in which Lamentation fell short was with respect to worldbuilding. The book starts in media res and then proceeds to its conclusion at breakneck speed. This is wonderful and makes for a fun read but it doesn't, in my opinion, give the reader a chance to become sufficiently emotionally invested in the places and people that populate the book. We are told what the Androfrancines did but we aren't told enough about them to really know them and to lament their loss. We are given enough details to move the plot along but not told too much else. I found this especially baffling in light of the fact that the book raises a number of issues that cry out for more in depth treatment, such as the cyclical nature of history, the role of science in society, whether machines can feel, etc. I found myself wondering why Mr. Scholes brought these things up only to seemingly rush past them.

In spite of this, Lamentation is a very enjoyable read. I am eagerly looking forward to the next book in the five book series, which will be called Canticle and which is scheduled for an October release. Ken Scholes is a writer to keep an eye on. His short fiction is among the best out there (this, for example, is a masterpiece) and with Lamentation, he has shown the potential to be a great novelist as well. In fact, I'm sufficiently impressed that I'm going to try to track down copies of everything Scholes has published thus far.

On a more serious note, Mr. Scholes recently lost his father and I want to extend my condolences to him and wish him the best during what is surely a difficult time.

Rating: 8/10

The True First

Lamentation was first published in the United States by Tor in February of 2009. I was looking into ordering a signed first edition but the one bookseller I contacted that had them wanted to charge an extortionate amount for shipping. Who knows, maybe Mr. Scholes will be the one who knocks down the invisible wall that prevents speculative fiction authors from touring the Southeastern United States and I'll be able to get him to sign the book in person.

[This review was not based on a review copy]

Review - Lamplighter

2009-02-17T20:54:00.006-05:00

D.M. Cornish

I was so impressed with Foundling (review here), the first book in D.M. Cornish's Monster Blood Tattoo series, that as soon as I finished it I ordered a signed true first edition from Australia. The shipping cost more than the book itself but it was unquestionably worth it. Having just completed the second book in the series, Lamplighter, I'm afraid I'll be ordering another book from Australia sometime soon. What's more, I'm going to have to track down copies of the U.S. first editions as well, as the artwork on them is simply amazing.

Lamplighter takes up where its predecessor left off. Rossamünd Bookchild, who was an orphan when we first met him, begins his apprenticeship at Winstermill with the lamplighters, whose duty it is to light and douse the lamps along the great imperial roads in order to protect travelers from monsters and maintain order. Fairly early on in the story a girl named Threnody from a powerful family comes to join the lamplighters and begins a love-hate friendship with Rossamünd. As the book unfolds, we watch the progress of Rossamünd and Threnody, witness terrible monster attacks, learn a fair amount about the political intrigue that takes place in the empire, and continue to explore the fascinating world of the Half-Continent.

In my review of Foundling, I said that the greatest triumph of that book was as a completely original work of imagination. This certainly is true of Lamplighter as well, which is to say that the world that Mr. Cornish has created is spellbindingly original and is, standing alone, enough to make this book well worth a read.

Both books are also distinguishable for the masterful characters Mr. Cornish has created. Simply put, almost every character with anything approaching a central role is extremely well developed and very sympathetic, even if complex and morally ambiguous. In fact one of the main testaments to Mr. Cornish's powers in this regard is the way that he makes the reader care about and truly empathize with characters on all sides of the human-monster conflict.

Mr. Cornish's talents go further still though. He manages with these two books to raise some very morally complex issues in what nonetheless remains a highly accessible fantasy tale, and he manages to combine the terribly violent and malicious with the cute and lovable in the same book without detracting from the integrity of either. He manages to do these things while creating a world that is as politically and culturally complex as any you will encounter in fantasy.

My only complaint is that the book occasionally lagged a bit. This happened very infrequently in my opinion and didn't last too long when it did. What's more, at 600 pages, perhaps this is to be expected. In any event, it is of minor concern when viewed against the book's achievements.

In case I didn't make myself clear before, I'll say it again: these books are going to be classics. I still struggle to comprehend why there isn't more buzz about them yet. Sadly, we'll have to wait almost another year for the final book in the trilogy, entitled Factotum.

Rating: 10/10

The True First

I'm actually not certain who first published this book. If anyone can shed any light on this question, please let me know.

[This review was based on a review copy]

Speculative Fiction Junkie

Top 5 Reads of 2011

Read Some Jean Ray Stories!

Review - Nightingale Songs

Review - Curfew and Other Eerie Tales

Review - Old Albert - An Epilogue

Review - Southern Gods

Review - Shadows & Tall Trees - Issue 1

Review - Beyond the Door

Review - Sourdough and Other Stories

Review - The Quantum Thief

Review - Revenants

Review - The Boats of the "Glen Carrig" and Other Nautical Adventures

Top 5 Reads of 2010

Hiatus: A Further Explanation

Hiatus

Review - Literary Remains

Review - The Man Who Collected Machen and Other Stories

Review - Remember You're a One-Ball!

Review - Feesters in the Lake

Couldn't Finish - Watcher in the Woods

Review - Witchfinder: Dawn of the Demontide

A Different Approach to Ex Occidente

Review - Beneath the Surface

Interview - Ray Russell & Rosalie Parker from Tartarus Press

New Feature - Small Press Interviews

Review - Spellwright

Review - The Darkly Splendid Realm

Review - Red Planet Noir

Review - Pieces for Puppets and Other Cadavers

Review - The Bleeding Horse and Other Ghost Stories

Review - Horrible Imaginings

Review - Putting the Pieces in Place

A Few Changes to SFJ

Review - The Horrifying Presence and Other Tales

Review - Strange Tales: Volume III

Review - Worse Than Myself

Review - King of Deadtown

Top 5 Reads of 2009

Review - The Saint Perpetuus Club of Buenos Aires

Review - Finch

Review - The Sad Tale of the Brothers Grossbart

Review - Nyphron Rising

I'm Interviewed by Harry

Review - Cold to the Touch

Review - The Mysterious Flame

Review - The Windup Girl

Review - Bloody Baudelaire

Review - The Third Sign

Review - Mistborn: The Final Empire

Review - Song of Time

Horror Reanimated: Echoes, You'll Finally Be Able to Read It Soon!

Review - The Midnight Charter

Review - One

Review - Mr. Gaunt and Other Uneasy Encounters

Review - Meat

Is R.B. Russell Julián Carax?

Review - The Last Book

Review - Avempartha

Book I Couldn't Finish - The Glister

Review - Canticle

Review - The Kill Crew

SFJ Is One Year Old Today!

Review - The Dreaming Void

Review - The Crown Conspiracy

My Pledge: No Book Purchases for Three Months

Review - Act of Will

Review - The Absence

Review - The Manual of Detection

A Great Customer Service Experience

Your Blog Is Fabulous!

Review - Lamentation

Review - Lamplighter