Horror List Book Review: Slaughterhouse Five

Remember this? I'm slowly, but surely, getting back to my old routines. Now that I'm done with school, I can get back to the best horror list!

I'm reading through three lists of best horror with two friends (DeAnna Knippling andM.B. Partlow), posting reviews as we go. (For more information, including a list of the books, see this post.) To see the books I've reviewed so far, you can view the list at the end of this post where I rank them.

This week I'm reviewing Slaughterhouse Five, by Kurt Vonnegut.

This is my first time reading a book by Vonnegut, and I may be hooked. His prose is quick and almost rhythmic sometimes. Fluid. There are quotable bits ("How nice--to feel nothing, and still get full credit for being alive.") and other impactful parts that aren't as quotable. 

In this book, we follow a character named Billy Pilgrim, a soldier in WWII who was present at the bombing of Dresden. The memories/scenes shared show the uselessness, hopelessness, and ineffectualness of war. There are no great battle scenes in this one. Instead, there are lost soldiers and quick captures.

The narrative jumps back and forth in time, ostensibly because Billy has become disconnected from himself and jumps to different time periods. At some point, he was kidnaped by aliens, or so he relates, much to his daughter's chagrin. The reader never knows where they'll be next, or what might cause the leap. 

A satire on war, there are comic moments, but also deeply horrifying moments that are intentionally thrown out in a lackluster way. The words "so it goes" punctuate many of these moments.

The horror in this lies in the psychological aspects of war and what humans do to each other. Understated and almost comical at times, the horror is still there.

I'm glad I finally read this one after decades of hearing about it. It's definitely a lesson in writing horror that doesn't look like horror on the outside.

Have you read Vonnegut? What's your favorite book by him? Have you read this one? What did you think?

May you find your Muse.

Reading Catch Up & Best Horror Reviews

It's been a while since I posted books read and all that good stuff, so I thought I'd catch up with a media roundup. This one will focus on the books. Hey, maybe you'll get gift ideas from it.

Before I start, I wanted to share our house decorations with you. My husband loves Christmas. Each year he tries to add something new. This year it's the mega tree.

Also, I'll be doing a reading tonight of one of my Christmas horror stories, Last Elf Standing, from Happy Ghoulidays. It's free, and you can watch it on YouTube. I'll try to post a link in my next post (if I remember, which is always the real issue) of the completed reading. 

You can find the link in the FACEBOOK EVENT.

This is THE book on the Golden State Killer (aka Original Night Stalker). Michelle McNamara passed away before it could be published, but her husband made sure it saw print. She was an excellent writer, who had incredible insight and empathy when discussing the cases. The police officers in various departments accepted her, and some say she helped the case. If you like true crime, I HIGHLY recommend this one.

It took me a couple months to read this, because it was three books of short stories rolled into one, so I'd read a few, read a novel, read a few, read a novel. So on and so forth. The more I read of Barker's, the more I respect him as a writer. In my head, he was Hellraiser. That's it, because that was all I was familiar with. Then I read an understated short story of his in a best horror volume, and I realized I had no idea. (Also, this is part of my ongoing reading of books on Nightmare Magazine's Best Horror list (this post will lead you to more information about the challenge and links to the lists I'm reading through).

This book is also from the best horror list. It's more like a novella, so pretty short. I enjoyed it. It's almost a classic haunted house story. Set out on the moors, a solicitor must close out a recently deceased woman's property. Unfortunately, the house has it out for his sanity. Good creepy moments and lovely writing style.

I read this one for my Sisters in Crime book club, but also because Becky's a friend. She has a quick and clever wit in real life, and it shows in her books. The main character works at a restaurant as a waitress, but also creates crossword puzzles for the local paper. When a dead body turns up at the restaurant and her boss is arrested for the murder, she sets out to prove he had nothing to do with it. In the meantime, she's running the restaurant completely on her own, including doing the cooking. A fun read for those who enjoy cozies.

Also written by a friend, this one's a steamy romance. In other words, when things get spicy, the scene doesn't just magically end. The best thing about this book? The best part is, the boss isn't the man. The main character is intelligent and successful, but does she have the time for more than a fling?

If you've never read Tim Dorsey, you're in for a surprise. His main character throughout his books is a psychopath...but one that means well. In this book, he's on a mission to duplicate Easy Rider, taking his hapless companions on a bike ride in Florida. In the meantime, an honest man has an entire town working against him. The ridiculous humor in these is always fun.

I posted about the others in this series, but this is the last one I read (though technically not the last one that should have been read.) This one takes railroad cop Sydney Parnell back to Iraq, where she helped save a young boy, who she's intended to find since she returned to the states. But this time, she's racing against The Alpha, who also has their sites on the boy, and not to protect him. Full of tension and heart, the entire series is a must-read.

Have you read any of these? Any of them look good to you? Have you read anything you'd like to recommend?

May you find your Muse.

Horror List Book Review: Naomi's Room

I'm reading through three lists of best horror with two friends (DeAnna Knippling and M.B. Partlow), posting reviews as we go. (For more information, including a list of the books, see this post.)

This week I'm reviewing Naomi's Room, by Jonathan Aycliffe.

This was a solid ghost story. It reminded me of The Shining, due to it being about a man from the past influencing a man to harm his family. The Shining did it better, but this was a much shorter book than that one. 

Though there are explicit crimes mentioned, no major details are given, and they happen "off-stage." 

The description of the book says this is about a grieving father. It felt like that at the beginning, but by the end he's indifferent, and therefore, so am I. While I think his indifference was intentional, I would have liked to see more internal conflict from the main character, which would have engaged me more.

The writing was good and kept me reading, but the book was predictable. It never emotionally engaged me as much as it should, considering it's about a child who gets murdered to begin with, and only gets worse from there.

My Top Ten stands:

1. The Handmaid's Tale (Margaret Atwood)

2. The Girl Next Door (Jack Ketchum)

3. The Bottoms (Joe R. Lansdale)

4. The Collector (John Fowles)

5. Coraline (Neil Gaiman)

6. The Bridge (John Skipp and Craig Spector)

7. A Choir of Ill Children (Tom Piccirilli)

8. Needful Things (Stephen King)

9. 1Q84 (Haruki Murakami)

10. Rebecca (Daphne DuMaurier)

Now for some links. Bear in mind I'm not endorsing these, merely passing them along. Always do your own due diligence before submitting.

Accepting Submissions:

The First Line is seeking flash fiction and short stories beginning with a previous first line (lines are available on the website). 300 to 5000 words. Pays $25 to $50. Deadline February 1.

Unnerving Magazine is seeking horror and other forms of dark fiction. 800 to 4000 words. Pays $.03/word. Deadline February 1.

The New Southern Fugitives are seeking fiction, nonfiction, poetry, art, and photography. Up to 2000 words. Pays $40 to $100. 

Reader's Digest is seeking short works of various themes/types. Pay and lengths vary. 

Have you read Naomi's Room? How about Aycliffe? What did you think? Are any of these links of interest? Anything to share?

May you find your Muse.

Horror List Book Review: The Resort

I'm reading through three lists of best horror with two friends (DeAnna Knippling and M.B. Partlow), posting reviews as we go. (For more information, including a list of the books, see this post.)

This week I'm reviewing The Resort, by Bentley Little.

Bentley Little has a formula that's worked for him for quite some time. He takes a normal person (or family, in this case), sticks them somewhere seemingly normal, even idyllic, then all hell breaks loose. Things go terribly wrong. That's precisely what happens here.

A family goes to a resort in the Arizona desert. They've gotten a deep discount. Weird things start happening right away, including getting back to their hotel room to discover someone else is in there. The management has to convince this someone to let them in long enough to get their things, and they're given a new room.

The little things build for quite some time, and we see different POVs, but this family provides the bulk of the POVs. The adults are having one set of experiences, while the kids have others. The vacation sounds great until everything goes nuts.

When it goes nuts, it goes full Lord of the Flies in the Overlook Hotel nuts. Animalistic behavior takes over some of the residents of the resort, and it's normals against psychos. There's full on violence and odd sexual behavior. The family tries to escape, but the resort throws barriers in their way.

I had certain expectation for a Little novel, and they were met. However, the ending was overly simplistic and the violence and behavior over the top. Still, I accepted the behavior until being disappointed in the end. I would have liked to see a real resolution.

Expect absurdity, violence, and odd, over the top characters if you read this.

My Top Ten:  

1. The Handmaid's Tale (Margaret Atwood)

2. The Girl Next Door (Jack Ketchum)

3. The Bottoms (Joe R. Lansdale)

4. The Collector (John Fowles)

5. Coraline (Neil Gaiman)

6. The Bridge (John Skipp and Craig Spector)

7. A Choir of Ill Children (Tom Piccirilli)

8. Needful Things (Stephen King)

9. 1Q84 (Haruki Murakami)

10. Rebecca (Daphne DuMaurier)

The next book I review will be Dark Descent, edited by David G. Hartwell.

Have you read The Resort? How about a different Bentley Little novel? Are you a fan? 

May you find your Muse.

Horror List Book Review: A Scanner Darkly

I'm reading through three lists of best horror with two friends (DeAnna Knippling and M.B. Partlow), posting reviews as we go. (For more information, including a list of the books, see this post.)

This week I'm reviewing A Scanner Darkly, by Philip K. Dick.

I really had to stew on this one for a bit after I read it and just let it sink in. Ultimately, I rated it better than I would have had I done my rating and review right away.

At first, I thought, huh, this is more sci-fi than horror. Of course, as it simmered in my brain it was obvious where the horror lived within the story. It follows a cop named Fred who is surveilling a junkie drug dealer named Bob. Mixed into the stream of consciousness thoughts of the narrators, who are fried on the drug Substance D, we discover Bob and Fred are the same person, only they don't know that most of the time.

The horror of the story lives within the twisted brain of the cop who took on a dead end position where it was expected he'd dabble in the very drugs he's trying to track and stop. Not only that, but it turns out there's more behind the story than one might expect. Who are the real bad guys?

Dick's writing has elements familiar in the writings of Hunter S. Thompson, Ken Kesey, and William S. Boroughs. In his end comments, we learn he's used his own experience with drugs to write the often confusing and random discussions within. In fact, the end commentary is a horror story all its own, listing the friends who've died or been dangerously impacted by their drug use. Philip K. Dick is on that list.

This style of writing isn't for everyone, but the story is solid, the subject matter disturbing in a very real world sort of way. There's nothing gory or visceral here. The horror is in the stark sadness of one man's devolution, the cost of his career.

My top ten stands.

My Top Ten:  

1. The Handmaid's Tale (Margaret Atwood)

2. The Girl Next Door (Jack Ketchum)

3. The Bottoms (Joe R. Lansdale)

4. Coraline (Neil Gaiman)

5. The Bridge (John Skipp and Craig Spector)

6. A Choir of Ill Children (Tom Piccirilli)

7. Needful Things (Stephen King)

8. 1Q84 (Haruki Murakami)

9. Those Who Hunt the Night (Barbara Hambly)

10. Rebecca (Daphne DuMaurier)

Have you read A Scanner Darkly? What did you think? Read anything else by Philip K. Dick? Seen the movie?

May you find your Muse.

Horror List Book Review: The Drive-In

I'm reading through three lists of best horror with two friends (DeAnna Knippling and M.B. Partlow), posting reviews as we go. (For more information, including a list of the books, see this post.)

This week I'm review The Drive-In by Joe R. Lansdale.

When you scroll down, you'll see that Joe R. Lansdale's The Bottoms is one of my top ten so far in this reading challenge. However, I wasn't overly fond of The Drive-In. I went in prepared to love it, as I love his voice. It just didn't do it for me.

From what I can tell, the primary reason I didn't enjoy it all that much was the fact that I didn't care about the characters. It didn't matter to me. The narrator lost me because he goes into shock and zones out during a portion of the story, and everyone goes off their rockers. In fact, the friend that takes care of the narrator during his shock is the closest I come to caring about anyone. He's a good guy, keeps his head, controls the situation where he can, and lets things go if he can't control them. So I guess I cared about one character.

The Drive-In is about a bunch of people stranded at the drive-in after a freaky comet with a face leaves behind a black substance that surrounds the drive-in like some kind of foam filling agent and burns through anyone that tries to go through it. Chaos ensues, anarchy reigns, and things get crazy.

Super crazy. The Popcorn King is the pinnacle of crazy.

At first, I thought this was going to be a Lord of the Flies-style examination, wherein we observe society breaking down when they realize they only have so much food and they're trapped in this dark world for who knows how long. Perhaps that's why what actually happened didn't appeal to me. I like a bizarro, freaky horror piece as much as the next person (okay, probably more), but I wasn't prepared for it in this case. Perhaps this would have been easily solved had I read the description of the story, but since I've agreed to read this entire list and review it, I usually go in without having read what the story is about. Sometimes this works in my favor. Sometimes it doesn't.

Instead of a gradual breakdown, we speed-surf through the initial breakdown and then we screech to a halt and watch the already crazy antics take place. There are supernatural elements. Aspects of this vaguely reminded me of Stephen King's writing, but they didn't quite fit.

My top ten remains the same.

My Top Ten:

1. The Handmaid's Tale (Margaret Atwood)

2. The Girl Next Door (Jack Ketchum)

3. The Bottoms (Joe R. Lansdale)

4. Coraline (Neil Gaiman)

5. The Bridge (John Skipp and Craig Spector)

6. A Choir of Ill Children (Tom Piccirilli)

7. Needful Things (Stephen King)

8. 1Q84 (Haruki Murakami)

9. Those Who Hunt the Night (Barbara Hambly)

10. Rebecca (Daphne DuMaurier)

My next book will be either Bubba Ho-Tep, by Joe R. Lansdale, or Ghost Road Blues, by Johnathon Maberry.

Have you read this? How about the rest of the series? Are you a Lansdale fan? What did you think of this one? 

May you find your Muse.

Horror List Book Review: The Ignored

I'm reading through three lists of best horror with two friends (DeAnna Knippling and M.B. Partlow), posting reviews as we go. (For more information, including a list of the books, see this post.)

This week, I'm reviewing The Ignored, by Bentley Little.

This one gave me a lot of mixed feelings.

I found the idea intriguing, but at times it dragged and felt like the main character was whining endlessly about his own insecurities. And I felt the premise pushed the boundaries too much for me to get behind. Yet I found myself returning to the story each day and having trouble putting the book down, because I wanted to see where Little took it.

The Ignored is about a Bob Jones, a regular schmo. Overlooked by those around us, the only attention he gets is from a boss that seems to have it out for him. He never gets a word in edgewise. No one at work invites him out or talks to him. His job is dull and takes no skill.

His doubts about himself at work extend to his home life, and he starts questioning his significant other's interest in him. Ultimately, he falls in with a crowd of his fellow Ignored, leading to terrorism in an attempt to become visible to society.

Oddly, this story brought to mind the book American Psycho, but combined with Office Space. Instead of discussing the numbness of society and its reliance on consumerism, it addressed feeling lost in life and trying to stand out, plus the generic middle of the road variety of consumerism, where what's readily available is what is pleasing or at least neutral to the average person. Patrick Bateman (American Psycho) disappears behind his grandstanding and brand knowledge (and everyone else's dire self-involvement), despite his violent and narcissistic tendencies, whereas Bob Jones just disappears, because he's every-man. He's nothing. He's forgettable. Given, it turns out there are other reasons for how average Bob Jones is and why he's Ignored, but in general he's representing the average guy, lost in a dead end job, invisible to his peers. 

I was unprepared for the fantastical elements that came into play later in this book, so they threw me. Don't let the premise fool you--there is violence and there are weird things that happen. So, while it may sound fairly mundane, it isn't.

The book makes an impact for sure. I imagine I'll keep waffling on how I feel about it for a long time to come. There's no doubt it's skillfully written, though.

My top ten remains the same.

My Top Ten:

1. The Handmaid's Tale (Margaret Atwood)

2. The Girl Next Door (Jack Ketchum)

3. The Bottoms (Joe R. Lansdale)

4. Coraline (Neil Gaiman)

5. The Bridge (John Skipp and Craig Spector)

6. A Choir of Ill Children (Tom Piccirilli)

7. Needful Things (Stephen King)

8. 1Q84 (Haruki Murakami)

9. Those Who Hunt the Night (Barbara Hambly)

10. Rebecca (Daphne DuMaurier)

My next review will be of Joe R. Lansdale's The Drive-In.

Now for some links. Bear in mind I'm not endorsing them, merely passing them along. Always do your own due diligence before submitting.

Accepting Submissions:

Subprimal is seeking poetry and flash fiction. Pays $20. Deadline June 15.

Independent Legions Publishing is holding a horror novella contest. The winner gets published with a $600 advance. 45,000 to 50,000 words. Deadline June 15.

Lamplight is seeking literary dark fiction. Short stories and flash fiction. Up to 7000 words. Pays $.03/word. Deadline June 15.

Spider Magazine is seeking fiction, poetry, activities, etc. appropriate for ages 6-9 with the theme of Monsters. 300 to 1000 words. Pays up to $.25/word. Deadline June 15.

Have you ever read The Ignored? How about other works by Bentley Little? Do you ever feel ignored/invisible? Are any of these links of interest? Anything to share?

May you find your Muse.

Horror List Book Review: Dark Forces

I'm reading through three lists of best horror with two friends (DeAnna Knippling and M.B. Partlow), posting reviews as we go. (For more information, including a list of the books, see this post.) To see the books I've reviewed so far, you can view the list at the end of this post where I rank them.

This week I'm review Dark Forces, an anthology edited by Kirby McCauly.

I haven't done a book review since December! I decided to give myself a break to try to get through the rest of my giant TBR list, because reading these every other book was really cutting into the rest of my reading.

This was a good collection of stories, even though, like most other anthologies of horror published before a certain time, it is heavy on male contributors and extremely light on female contributors (there are two women, and twenty-two men.) The authors in this anthology were Stephen King, Dennis Etchison, Isaac Bashevis Singer, Edward Bryant, Davis Grubb, Robert Aickman, Karl Edward Wagner, Joyce Carol Oates (the one woman I consistently see in these older collections), T. E. D. Klein, Gene Wolfe, Theodore Sturgeon, Ramsey Campbell, Clifford D. Simak, Russell Kirk, Lisa Tuttle, Robert Bloch, Edward Gorey, Ray Bradbury, Joe Haldeman, Charles L. Grant, Manly Wade Wellman, Richard Matheson, Richard Christian Matheson, and Gahan Wilson. A power house of folks, to be sure.

There were some patterns to this collection of stories. One of them was vengeful females. Another was a proliferation of crones. And women scorned. The number of stories centered around angry women was surprising. It actually made me wonder what books and/or movies came out that year, or what was in the news, that would cause these to be common recurring themes.

The first story in here was written by request. You might recognize it: The Mist, by Stephen King. The Mist is a good story, despite the fact that I was dismayed at the sexism inherent. Not Stephen King! Yes, Stephen King. The female characters in this story were all either attractive or old, and all were described by their looks and appeal to the main character. And the main character sleeps with a young girl while they're trapped in the store, even though he's worried about his wife, who remained behind at their house. Given, he's thinking about his wife while they have sex. I don't know if that makes it better or worse. 

Other than that, it's a solid horror story. He's rather good at writing the eccentric religious zealot, as well as the psycho bully (in this case, the same person). He manages to describe the dregs of humanity well in all his stories, to make you ache for something bad to happen to certain characters. But he also had some incredibly likable characters, from the grocer who stands with him to an elderly woman who takes no nonsense and doesn't appear to be afraid of anything. Even giant escaped creatures, that loom out of the mist to eat people and do terrible things to them.

The other stories included twisted late night clerks, a woman who gets delicious revenge, a Yiddish man mistreated on a cruise for no reason, a new take on the demon barber of Fleet Street, a frightened man who pays a steep price, a man who styles himself an antique dealer suffering for one of his oddities, a conceited jerk who wrongs a woman, sewer invaders, a dream detective, accidental revenge, killer crones, a mysterious well, a cosmopolitan gathering, killer stones, a deadly Christmas tree, a cartoon about a boy who wouldn't get out of bed, a time traveler, tourism gone wrong, doomed punishment, a grizzled man and an ancient monster, a confused man in a coffin, and an extermination gone wrong.

Dark Angel, by Edward Bryant, was my favorite story. A woman takes the ultimate revenge on a man who left her in a bad situation. This one might actually be more horrifying for men than anyone else, but it left me feeling a mix of satisfaction and horror. 

All in all, I don't think there was a story I disliked. There were a couple that fell flat for me, but I figure they would work for other folks. This was a solid collection of short dark fiction, with some fantastic writing from the contributors. I thought it was cool that an illustrated story was included, that Gahan Wilson told a story in words instead of pictures, and that Richard Matheson and his son did a story together.

Before I close this post out, I want to do a quick tribute to Ed Bryant, who died this past week in his sleep. He was a local horror author, a regular at various cons, and an all around wonderful guy. He had a voice like deep velvet and he was incredibly kind to everyone around him, especially newer writers. He had stories in almost every collection of dark fiction out there, and was prolific. I'm going to miss him at the next con.

My new rankings:

1. The Handmaid's Tale (Margaret Atwood)

2. The Bottoms (Joe R. Lansdale)

3. Coraline (Neil Gaiman)

4. A Choir of Ill Children (Tom Piccirilli)

5. The Year's Best Dark Fantasy & Horror 2010 (Paula Guran)

6. The Year’s Best Fantasy: First Annual Collection (Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling)

7. Needful Things (Stephen King)

8. 1Q84 (Haruki Murakami)

9. Those Who Hunt the Night (Barbara Hambly)

10. Darkness: Two Decades of Modern Horror (Ellen Datlow)
11. Rebecca (Daphne DuMaurier)

12. Dark Forces (Kirby McCauly)

13. Dawn (Xenogenesis, Book 1) (Octavia E. Butler)

14. The Stranger (Albert Camus)

15. Dead in the Water (Nancy Holder)

16. The Witches (Roald Dahl)

17. Psycho (Robert Bloch)

18. The Damnation Game (Clive Barker)

19. The Wolf's Hour (Robert McCammon)

20. Berserk (Tim Lebbon)

21. Prime Evil (Douglas E. Winter)

22. Best New Horror, Volume 1 (edited by Stephen Jones and Ramsey Campbell)

23. Flowers in the Attic (V.C. Andrews)

24. The Tomb (F. Paul Wilson)

25. Shadowland (Peter Straub)

26. Blood Meridian (Cormac McCarthy)

27. The Imago Sequence (Laird Barron)

28. My Soul to Keep (Tananarive Due)

29. Penpal (Dathan Auerbach)

30. World War Z (Max Brooks)

31. From the Dust Returned (Ray Bradbury) 

32. The Red Tree (Caitlin R. Kiernan)

33. In Silent Graves (Gary A. Braunbeck)

34. The Cipher (Kathe Koja)

35. Drawing Blood (Poppy Z. Brite)

36. The Doll Who Ate His Mother (Ramsey Campbell) 

37. Hotel Transylvania (Chelsea Quinn Yarbro)

38. Naked Lunch (William S. Burroughs)

Next book? Not sure. But I will try to read it within the next two weeks to get back on schedule a bit.

What do you think of the writers in this collection? Any of them favorites? Have you read this anthology? Have you read The Mist (I'm pretty sure it also showed up in one of King's collections)? Seen the movie?

May you find your Muse.

Horror List Book Review: Naked Lunch

I'm reading through three lists of best horror with two friends (DeAnna Knippling and M.B. Partlow), posting reviews as we go. (For more information, including a list of the books, see this post.) To see the books I've reviewed so far, you can view the list at the end of this post where I rank them.

This week I'm reviewing Naked Lunch, by William S. Burroughs.

I really struggled with this one. If I had to sum up what it was about it would go something like this: This book is hallucinogenic gay snuff porn. It's Fear and Trainspotting in Space Station, Port 9.

Alright, that's incredibly simplistic. The author was an addict (recovering?) who also happened to be homosexual. The book was intentionally (I believe?) cut up into quick scenes that location hopped, and were meant (again, I think?) to represent a druggie's way of seeing the world. There are aliens. There are drugs. There is a lot of sexual violence. There is a lot of American government bashing. 

If you enjoy Hunter S. Thompson, you would probably like this. It felt quite similar to me. He's considered to be of the Beatnik group, such as Kerouac, and he got a lot of support from that quarter.

Part of my problem was that you really have no concept of who the narrator is. There's no reasoning for the travel, or for the narrator being at these places. Is it omniscient? Possibly? 

My ADHD brain just couldn't get into this book. I think it took me two weeks to read.

I assume the "horror" this was supposed to represent was government overreach and drug addiction. But it was so nonsensical, I couldn't get that sense of horror. Then again, maybe the snuff porn was the horror, but it was so ridiculous and implausible there was no way I could get into it enough to care. I certainly couldn't get into the narrator's head. There was no character to identify with or even to care about. I. just. didn't. care. And, yes, I'm clear that it was satire, as well. I enjoy a good satire. I got the points being made. I just didn't enjoy reading it.

Interesting factoid: There were obscenity charges concerning this book, and an attempt to ban it state-wide in Massachusetts. The Supreme Court cleared it, and declared it protected by the 1st Amendment. The beginning of the edition I read has transcripts from folks like Norman Mailer and Allen Ginsberg, who staunchly defended the book.

Having said all that, there was something fascinating and compelling about the book, which is the thing that allowed me to continue instead of just giving up and deciding a review wasn't worth it. I wanted to understand it better, but I didn't have the time, the energy, or the attention span to do so. I think it would take several readings of this book to understand it better, and I believe each reading would illuminate something new, if not many somethings new. I'm just not willing to put in that time. More intellectual sorts might enjoy this book as a study and commentary. I read for entertainment.

My new rankings:

1. The Handmaid's Tale (Margaret Atwood)

2. The Bottoms (Joe R. Lansdale)

3. Coraline (Neil Gaiman)

4. A Choir of Ill Children (Tom Piccirilli)

5. The Year's Best Dark Fantasy & Horror 2010 (Paula Guran)

6. The Year’s Best Fantasy: First Annual Collection (Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling)

7. Those Who Hunt the Night (Barbara Hambly)

8. Darkness: Two Decades of Modern Horror (Ellen Datlow)

9. The Stranger (Albert Camus)

10. Dead in the Water (Nancy Holder)

11. The Damnation Game (Clive Barker)

12. The Wolf's Hour (Robert McCammon)

13. Berserk (Tim Lebbon)

14. Prime Evil (Douglas E. Winter)

15. Best New Horror, Volume 1 (edited by Stephen Jones and Ramsey Campbell)

16. Flowers in the Attic (V.C. Andrews)

17. The Tomb (F. Paul Wilson)

18. Shadowland (Peter Straub)

19. Blood Meridian (Cormac McCarthy)

20. The Imago Sequence (Laird Barron)

21. My Soul to Keep (Tananarive Due)

22. Penpal (Dathan Auerbach)

23. World War Z (Max Brooks)

24. From the Dust Returned (Ray Bradbury) 

25. The Red Tree (Caitlin R. Kiernan)

26. In Silent Graves (Gary A. Braunbeck)

27. The Cipher (Kathe Koja)

28. Drawing Blood (Poppy Z. Brite)

29. The Doll Who Ate His Mother (Ramsey Campbell) 

30. Hotel Transylvania (Chelsea Quinn Yarbro)

31. Naked Lunch (William S. Burroughs)

The next book I read will be Roald Dahl's The Witches. I need a break.

Have you read Naked Lunch or seen the movie? What did you think? Have you read any of his other works, and are they similar? Do you have an example of good satire in novel form?

May you find your Muse.

Horror List Book Review: A Choir of Ill Children

I'm reading through three lists of best horror with two friends (DeAnna Knippling and M.B. Partlow), posting reviews as we go. (For more information, including a list of the books, see this post.) To see the books I've reviewed so far, you can view the list at the end of this post where I rank them.

This week I'm reviewing A Choir of Ill Children, by Tom Piccirilli. 

Finally, hallelujah, one I liked. It's been awhile. Piccirilli's writing style was lyrical. He used imagery to great purpose. The situation he set up was unique. He didn't have any crazy writing style that drove me nuts. The plot was intricate, involved. It took the reader back to the past in a circular fashion, dropping little hints along the way about the reality of Thomas's past. 

In A Choir of Ill Children, Thomas is a rich man (at least for the area), living with his three brothers, who are connected at the head, but have three fully functioning bodies. They often speak in chorus, with bits and pieces coming out in the fashion of the brother speaking. Each connected brother has his own personality, and you can tell who he's talking about by the way he acts, thinks, or speaks. 

They live in a southern town (this was quite southern gothic). Nearby are the bottoms, a swampy backwater area full of hillbillies (never called such) and granny witches. Because of his financial position, Thomas is looked up to, yet often reviled, by the locals, and they come to him with problems. 

Throughout this tale is a weaving of supernatural entities, dreams, and swamp magic. Thomas dreams his mother's dreams and listens (well, he hears, but doesn't necessarily listen) to the voices of the dead, who try to warn him of bad things to come. His brothers sometimes act as a living oracle. In Kingdom Come, not everyone stays dead.

I was bemused by the fact that everyone seemed to want to sleep with Thomas. Whether it was the money and power, I don't know. We never find out if Thomas is good looking, because he's the teller of this tale, and he isn't bragging, merely relating his day to day. It also became apparent that sex was power, and that there are forces trying to take advantage of this, both for good and bad.

Each character had a personality, and no one was without their flaws, including the local preachers, one of them his good friend who lapses into speaking tongues and having fits when around Thomas. I didn't find any character to be a caricature, despite them sometimes bordering on it. There was always a twist to the character that kept them from being outlandish. Thomas looked beyond the surface at people's intentions, their fears, and what drove them, often revealing things the reader wouldn't see on their own, and opening the reader's eyes to the fact that not everyone is what you expect them to be (in fact, few are). Those who at first came across as good, might do awful things in the end, and those you thought were crazy or bad, might surprise you.  

In terms of flaws, a handful of times Thomas would say what another character was thinking or feeling in that moment, abruptly taking us out of the current POV. At times, I wasn't entirely sure what was going on, but I felt this was usually lack of understanding on the POV character's part. Sometimes I didn't know what was real or dream. Yet I didn't mind it, because it lent itself to the story. However, in the very beginning, things were unclear, and I was wondering if I would dislike the book. But then it started becoming clear, as we moved forward and backward in time and got those snippets and clues I mentioned above. I believe this circular start was intentional.

I also felt like we could have felt more of what Thomas was feeling. It was never enough to take me out of the story, but in hindsight, there could have been more of his physical and emotional.

Now...was it scary? No, but it was creepy, surreal, and atmospheric. And it was a good read. I was certainly plunged into a different world.

This book was a little Lolita, a little Something Wicked This Way Comes, a little Hamlet, a little The Bottoms, and probably a little of five billion other inspired choices I could list if I wanted to sit here and do so. His writing wove a song I was happy to listen to, yet within the story was a lot of ugly that still matched the right notes. There was drug addiction, racism, murder, and jealousy, yet there was also love, friendship, and a desire for knowledge. I'll definitely check out more of his books. 

My new rankings:

1. The Handmaid's Tale (Margaret Atwood)

2. The Bottoms (Joe R. Lansdale)

3. Coraline (Neil Gaiman)

4. A Choir of Ill Children (Tom Piccirilli)

5. The Year’s Best Fantasy: First Annual Collection (Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling)

6. Those Who Hunt the Night (Barbara Hambly)

7. Darkness: Two Decades of Modern Horror (Ellen Datlow)

8. The Damnation Game (Clive Barker)

9. The Wolf's Hour (Robert McCammon)

10. Berserk (Tim Lebbon)

11. Best New Horror, Volume 1 (edited by Stephen Jones and Ramsey Campbell)

12. The Tomb (F. Paul Wilson)

13. Blood Meridian (Cormac McCarthy)

14. The Imago Sequence (Laird Barron)

15. My Soul to Keep (Tananarive Due)

16. From the Dust Returned (Ray Bradbury)

17. In Silent Graves (Gary A. Braunbeck)

18. The Cipher (Kathe Koja)

19. Drawing Blood (Poppy Z. Brite)

20. The Doll Who Ate His Mother (Ramsey Campbell)

21. Hotel Transylvania (Chelsea Quinn Yarbro)

The next book I review will be Dead in the Water, by Nancy Holder.

Have you read Piccirilli? Did you like it? Why or why not? Have you read southern gothic? What did you think? Do you enjoy surreal imagery, or does it annoy you?

May you find your Muse.

Horror List Book Review: My Soul to Keep

I'm reading through three lists of best horror with two friends (DeAnna Knippling and M.B. Partlow), posting reviews as we go. (For more information, including a list of the books, see this post.) To see the books I've reviewed so far, you can view the list at the end of this post where I rank them.

This week I'm reviewing My Soul to Keep, by Tananarive Due. 

I really wanted to like this book. There were historical elements that were fascinating, and I enjoyed how those were wrapped in with the story. I was intrigued by the storyline. However, the story was too much about emotions. Which sounds weird, probably, but what I mean is that we were in the character's heads way too much, and there was a lot about their internal struggles and, yes, their emotions at any given moment. There's character driven and then there's character infested. The plot felt secondary to me. 

My Soul to Keep is about an African immortal and the human woman he's married. She has no idea he's immortal or that he has lived many lifetimes. When he feels his secret is threatened, he shows a sudden lack of conscience and starts killing, devastating his wife in the process. 

The husband, David, is so sensitive and emotional that I pulled back from him right away. (And, yes, I would have pulled back from a female character who was the same way.) He was needy and possessive of his wife, and my abuse-meter was twitching. While he didn't abuse her (not in the classic sense, anyway), I was uncomfortable with his level of neediness and his discouragement of her pursuing a coveted career in publishing. He's not supportive of her career in journalism or her dreams. In addition, he keeps making decisions for her. Another thing that triggered the abuse-meter. He doesn't feel she can make the right decisions, so he takes that power away from her. He thinks he loves her, but I didn't see love in his actions. I saw desperation and selfishness. There was nothing about him that made him appeal to me. The first chapter is all about his emotional agony over their dog being seriously ill, so his level of sensitivity is established right off. Everything rubbed him raw, both emotionally and physically. Which, in turn, rubbed me raw.  

I couldn't feel empathy for David, and I could only sometimes feel empathy for Jessica. I wanted her to be strong and independent. She had all the makings. But allowing her husband to be controlling and discourage her from what she wanted bothered me. The fact that she saw no problem with his behavior also bothered me. While she does take their daughter and run when she realizes something isn't right, it took her a long time to get to that point. However, her character arc is significant, and she does learn strength in the end.

As often seems to be true these days, I preferred the secondary characters to the primary characters. Jessica's sister was the type of woman I wanted to see at the helm of the story. Jessica's friend and co-worker is a great guy with a sense of humor and the desire to encourage and aid her in her dreams. 

The biggest issue is that I was reading this because it's on the best horror lists. There were moments where I was horrified by the actions of David, because he kept targeting innocents, and because he did so soulessly. Due hit the softy in me, but it was the type of horror I feel when watching the evening news, not the kind I seek out for escapism. David wasn't scary; he was a selfish, needy ass. He was like Dr. Frankenstein, taking others' lives into his hands to experiment with them against their will, and without a Jiminy Cricket on his shoulder to tell him this wasn't okay. Everything was about what he wanted, how things would impact him. Blech. 

There are elements of the supernatural (outside of the immortality), but these are peaceful and comforting. They are not part of the horror. Religion and history are entwined with the storyline in wonderful ways. Seeing the history of the world from the eyes of a man who began time in Africa is a departure from the norm. History was a different place for someone of African descent, and rarely do we get to see that kind of world in this type of story. He traveled the deserts of the Middle East, he was a slave, and he was a jazz musician in a questionable time. To put this together with a tale of an immortal man was clever and intriguing, but not enough to carry the story through. It held so much promise that I think I fell too hard. Perhaps my review is doubly harsh because of that.

Her writing and description were strong, so it isn't that she can't write. It just wasn't the book for me. The pacing was far too slow for me. The plot was underdeveloped. The main characters were well developed, but not as likable as I needed them to be. And I was deflated from the eagerness I approached this book with. Those who enjoy character driven stories might see this book in an entirely different way than I do (it has excellent ratings), but I need more plot to keep me interested, and characters that make me want to invest myself in the story line. And I definitely need to feel like we're going to get somewhere with the story eventually. 

My new rankings:

1. The Handmaid's Tale (Margaret Atwood)

2. The Bottoms (Joe R. Lansdale)

3. Coraline (Neil Gaiman)

4. The Year’s Best Fantasy: First Annual Collection (Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling)

5. Those Who Hunt the Night (Barbara Hambly)

6. Darkness: Two Decades of Modern Horror (Ellen Datlow)

7. The Damnation Game (Clive Barker)

8. The Wolf's Hour (Robert McCammon)

9. Berserk (Tim Lebbon)

10. Best New Horror, Volume 1 (edited by Stephen Jones and Ramsey Campbell)

11. The Tomb (F. Paul Wilson)

12. Blood Meridian (Cormac McCarthy)

13. The Imago Sequence (Laird Barron)

14. My Soul to Keep (Tananarive Due)

15. From the Dust Returned (Ray Bradbury)

16. In Silent Graves (Gary A. Braunbeck)

17. The Cipher (Kathe Koja)

18. Drawing Blood (Poppy Z. Brite)

19. The Doll Who Ate His Mother (Ramsey Campbell)

20. Hotel Transylvania (Chelsea Quinn Yarbro)

If you are curious about any of the ranked books above, you can click on the title to read my review.

The next book I review will be either Dead in the Water, by Nancy Holder, or A Choir of Ill Children, by Tom Piccirilli. I have both standing by, but I'm reading Terry Pratchett for the first time, and we'll see what I'm in the mood for once I finish that book.

Have you read Tananarive Due? This book? How do you feel about character driven stories vs plot driven stories? Does neediness in a character turn you off?

May you find your Muse.