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: Night Visions

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 making a change. Ranking the books has gotten increasingly harder, and I'm not even sure I'd still rank them the same anymore. Over the course of my reading from this list, I've learned a lot about the different styles of horror. As a lifelong lover of horror, I thought I had it down, but I hadn't been exposed to some of these styles before. Horror covers a lot of ground, and there's quite a bit of horror that isn't acknowledged for what it is, instead being categorized in a secondary genre (for example, a sci-fi horror story being classified as sci-fi, not horror). 

At the beginning of this process, I was opinionated on certain books not being horror, because they didn't follow the "rules" I had for the genre. If I re-read and reviewed them all over again, there would be some changes. To me, that says this whole project has been beneficial to me as a reader, but also as a horror author. It's been a learning process.

Instead, I'll be keeping track of the top ten. For simplicity's sake, the top ten will be novels and collections only, not anthologies. I'll still review the anthologies, but they will not place in the top ten.

Moving on, this week I'm reviewing Night Visions: In the Blood, edited by Alan Ryan. 

This is an unusual anthology, in that there are only three authors, each with several stories. There was a series of Night Visions anthologies done this way, but this was the first one. I'd love to see this formula continued today. It gave a larger taste of authors who were often found in the major anthologies of the day, but just one story at a time. The setup of Night Visions allowed readers to immerse themselves in each author's style, and to discover them in a way a single story didn't allow.

I'm not going to go into individual stories (mostly because I handed the book over to a friend before reviewing, which was a mistake, because I need to be able to thumb through the book and refresh my memory when it's short stories), but I can say my favorite author in the bunch was Charles L. Grant, followed by Steve Rasnic Tem, then Tanith Lee. They're each skilled, but the gothic style of horror Lee writes isn't my favorite, though it's gorgeous. Her stories were beautifully written, but they were slower paced and didn't end up interesting me as much as the others. Grant and Tem both wrote stories that were more straight forward. I think Tem and Grant wrote similarly enough for it to make sense that they were together in this anthology, but that Lee would have been able to shine more if combined with other gothic horror authors. Her style seemed more literary in its focus on the words and the style versus the more straight forward story. I think I would have liked her stories more if they'd been matched up with different authors, rather than at the end of this collection, with me firmly settled in to the previous styles.

Still, I loved the concept of this book, and I intend to check out any others I can acquire. There were some amazing authors collected in this series of anthologies. 

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. A Choir of Ill Children (Tom Piccirilli)

6. Needful Things (Stephen King)

7. 1Q84 (Haruki Murakami)

8. Those Who Hunt the Night (Barbara Hambly)

9. 20^th Century Ghosts (Joe Hill)

10. Rebecca (Daphne DuMaurier)

Next review will be of John Dies at the End.

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

Accepting Submissions:

WolfSinger Publications is seeking short horror stories for the anthology Haunted Hotel. 1000 to 7000 words. Pays $5 plus royalties. Deadline January 15.

Chicken Soup for the Soul is looking for personal stories in the themes Christmas and Holiday Collection, The Empowered Woman, and The Miracle of Love. Up to 1200 words. Pays $200. Deadlines are between January 10 and January 15.

Outlook Springs is seeking fiction, nonfiction, and poetry. Pays $10 for poems, $25 for prose. Deadline January 15.

Myriad Paradigm is seeking short speculative fiction for the anthology Mind Candy 2.0. Prefer science fiction and aren't looking for anything too dark. Up to 5000 words. Pays $.06/word. Deadline January 15.

Of Interest: 

If you're looking for recommended word counts per genre, this Writer's Digest article by Chuck Sambuchino: Word Count for Novels and Children's Books: The Definitive Post.

John M. Cusick wrote Ten Cliches That Make Agents Roll Their Eyes.

And for those looking for horror to read, here's 25 Horror Readers on the Most Gut Twisting Book You Could Buy. 

Have you read any of the Night Visions series? Or anything similar? Have you read any of the three authors in this anthology? Any of these links of interest? Anything to share?

May you find your Muse.

Horror List Book Review: World War Z

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 World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War, by Max Brooks.

While I found the format and the idea for this intriguing, I didn't end up enjoying it. In fact, it was a little bit of a struggle to get through with my limited reading time. 

This story is told as a series of interviews with various survivors of the war, making a lot of them military from different countries. A compelling idea, but I found that the voices blurred together. It's hard to pull off that many characters, so instead of having individual voices, they were cliched in many cases, and often similar. 

I was distracted by the fact that out of all these many characters, only five or so were female. It took awhile to get to the first female, to the point that I thought perhaps the story was that all women had been killed in the war somehow. It could be he was wary of accurately portraying a female voice. Whatever the reason, it was something that I found irksome after awhile. Especially when the male voices all started sounding the same.

It was obviously well researched (or so it seems--I didn't fact check). There were some great details that spoke to the locations, characters, careers and such. To me, it was fun to have the whole world involved, though South America's presence was sparse. He theorized how different countries would respond to the same threat, and how the different cultures and laws might complicate things.

There was no classic arc, but the story progressed from the very beginning of the virus, through its development and fighting it, to afterwards. A couple characters were repeated at the end (I think? There were so many characters, but I'm pretty sure we revisited certain characters again), but we didn't overall see character development. 

With each section covering a specific time period, there was no real mystery or buildup of tension. The first section I was drawn into was an interview with a military veteran who was caught in a situation where they had to try out old fashioned tactics against enemies that didn't feel fear or pain, and they discovered their weapons weren't working the way they expected. There was finally tension in this section, and I read through that interview quickly.

Another section that interested me was bittersweet, and one of three interviews that hit me emotionally. It was an interview with a Chinese soldier serving on a sub. The commander made the hard decision to disappear into the ocean with his men and any family they could smuggle out, in order to save lives. This was another tense section, and it ended on a sad note.

A lot of the story felt like a commentary on politics, world relations, greed, military ineptness, and more. There was a certain respect for soldiers, but not for those leading them. I'm not big on blatant political commentary in my fiction, but it was well thought out, even if I was quickly over it. This played itself into the horror of the story, especially culturally. 

All in all, not a hit for me, but the idea was a good one. The follow through just didn't do it for me, except in some specific interviews featured in the book. 

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. Dead in the Water (Nancy Holder)

9. The Damnation Game (Clive Barker)

10. The Wolf's Hour (Robert McCammon)

11. Berserk (Tim Lebbon)

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

13. The Tomb (F. Paul Wilson)

14. Blood Meridian (Cormac McCarthy)

15. The Imago Sequence (Laird Barron)

16. My Soul to Keep (Tananarive Due)

17. World War Z (Max Brooks)

18. From the Dust Returned (Ray Bradbury) 

19. In Silent Graves (Gary A. Braunbeck)

20. The Cipher (Kathe Koja)

21. Drawing Blood (Poppy Z. Brite)

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

23. Hotel Transylvania (Chelsea Quinn Yarbro)

Did you read World War Z? Did you prefer the book or the movie? What about his other zombie book? Is it any good? Which is better?

May you find your Muse.

Horror List Book Review: Hotel Transylvania

Happy Friday, the 13th! Will anyone else be binge-ing on horror today? Or is that just me?

I'm reading through three lists of best horror with two friends, posting reviews as we go. (For more information, including a list of the books, see this post.) So far, I've reviewed Poppy Z. Brite's Drawing Blood, Robert McCammon's The Wolf's Hour, Laird Barron's The Imago Sequence, Neil Gaiman's Coraline, Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale, Kathe Koja's The Cipher, Barbara Hambly's Those Who Hunt the Night, Best New Horror, Volume 1, edited by Stephen Jones and Ramsey Campbell, and Tim Lebbon's Berserk. This week I'm reviewing Hotel Transylvania, by Chelsea Quinn Yarbro.

I was supposed to post this review two weeks ago, but ran into a problem. That problem was that I couldn't get into this book. I kept putting it down and reading other books instead of finishing this one. Admittedly, I was biased against the time period. I tend to be bored by the frou-frou time period represented in this book. It's set among the aristocratic class in the time of Louis the XIV, Paris. For me, anything in this time period makes me snore. I don't care to watch a bunch of rich people with no responsibilities frolicking in silk clothing, gorging themselves on fine foods, and accomplishing absolutely nothing.

When the story opens, we're immediately looking at "court intrigue" (for lack of a better way to describe it with my limited experience with the time period.) The lavish costumes and settings are lovingly described by the author, who has obviously done her homework and has a fondness for the time period. As I don't like the time period, I just didn't care. I didn't know what half the items of clothing even were. I didn't understand why people's homes were called hotels. I'm just plain not familiar with this stuff.

The story is about Le Comte de Saint-Germain. When I reached the end and discovered this guy had really existed, I was suddenly more interested in him. In real life, Saint-Germain was a respected man, and one full of mystery. He told tales of experiences in times well before he should have been alive and never seemed to age. Long after his alleged death, people reporting seeing him and receiving letters from him. Fascinating. Would I have been more interested if this information had been in a foreword? I don't know, but I imagine it would have been a detriment to have it there. ~shrugs~

Unfortunately, this is the most interesting part, and it's in an afterword. The premise is interesting, in that Yarbro has theorized that he was a vampire, pulling details and vampire "rules" somewhat from Bram Stoker's classic version of Dracula. Saint-Germain is a vampire passing as human among the aristocracy. He quietly works to foil a cult that is all about finding a virgin to desecrate and earn their place with Satan. The cult is dastardly, specifically their leader, Saint Sebastian, who is agonizingly horrid and treacherous. 

The two main characters are strong and interesting. It's a romance, with Saint-Germain lusting after a blood exchange with the young woman being targeted by the cult. She's strong, especially for the time, where it is pounded into the reader that women are supposed to be subservient to their husbands, no matter how awful they are, and that they should be doormats. Madeleine isn't, though, despite her aunt and a cousin, an abbe, trying to force her into that square hole. She loves to learn, to ride horses, to carry on real conversations of actual content. She yearns to be something more, to transcend the life she's currently leading.

Saint-Germain is intelligent, conniving, and an excellent sword fighter. He can also turn into a wolf. However, he moves so slowly in this book that he is ineffective in helping anyone until the end. He knows full well about this cult, and we see him putting minor plans into place, yet he does nothing until about 65% into the book (I read it on e-book). Instead, we are subjected to the drudgery of court gatherings and parties, descriptions of food, tiresome conversations full of double speak and "proper" talk. If I'd had to hear what Saint-Germain was wearing yet again, I would have screamed.

The pace picked up at the 65% mark. Once I hit that point, I actually looked forward to reading it, and finished it quickly from there. I wish the entire book had been like that. Maybe the books that follow are like that.

Again, I'm biased against the time period. I knew on the first page that I wasn't going to be sucked into the book. A lot of people really enjoy this time period, and I think those folks would like this book. It was the first of a series that looks to have been quite successful. Yarbro has won multiple awards and honors for her books. It had similar pacing to well liked movies with the same sort of setting. It simply wasn't for me.

I can't personally recommend this book as great horror. Then again, I don't know that Yarbro even classified it as such. It wasn't even clear he was a vampire until most of the way through the book. There are no classic vampire traits shown to us until later, and even then they're so rare that it wasn't worth it. This wasn't a vampire story. Saint-Germain didn't really struggle with this aspect of himself. Instead, he had it almost perfectly handled. He could walk in daylight, travel over water, so on and so forth. The only thing that could kill him was fire. He wasn't tempted to eat people. He was just a regular guy.

Of course, she didn't put herself on the list of best horror--someone else did. Like I said, I'm not sure how she defined the genre. It simply wasn't horror. Even the cult wasn't enough for it to feel like horror. They were freaky, yes, but they were so villainous as to be hard to believe. The leader rules his cult with an iron hand, but we see no glimpse of humanity in him. He isn't a vampire either. So what's his deal? No idea. His cultists are pathetic cultured idiots who follow him blindly, enjoying torturing people as if it's idle play, something they're entitled to in their fabulousness. They weren't even evil. They were bland and obnoxious. Petty. So many of the characters in this were petty, whether they were good guys or bad guys. Then again, that's why I hate the time period. 

Also, there's some weird sub-plot involving Saint-Germain securing alchemists to create diamonds. I have no idea why he wanted this, as it doesn't come to fruition. Why it was even in the story is a mystery to me. In fact, I forgot it until just now. I just...??? 

If you like the time period, I would recommend you check out the other reviews on Amazon and use the "Look Inside" feature to see if her writing appeals to you. Maybe it's just me. I seriously hate giving bad reviews, and I hate doubly that so many of the books by female authors on this list have disappointed me. 

Current ranking of the books I've reviewed for the Horror List Book Review:

1. The Handmaid's Tale

2. Coraline

3. Those Who Hunt the Night

4. The Wolf's Hour

5. Berserk

6. Best New Horror, Volume 1

7. The Imago Sequence

8. The Cipher

9. Drawing Blood

10. Hotel Transylvania

The next book I review will be The Bottoms, by Joe R. Lansdale. This will be the first of these I've reviewed by someone I've met (at the Pikes Peak Writers Conference.) I hope I like it. Gack!

I have exciting news to share on Monday, so I hope to see you then!

Have you read any of the Saint-Germain series? Have you read any books by Chelsea Quinn Yarbro? Ever heard of Saint-Germain in real life? (You have if you've read Outlander) How do you feel about the time period? 

May you find your Muse.

The Books of Your Nightmares!

Two excellent lists about the scariest books out there recently found their way to my attention, courtesy of a couple friends. Since I've only read a portion of the books on each list, I've decided to read my way through both of them, along with my partners in horror. We're hoping to do some fun stuff with it, including keeping up with our progress on our blogs and discussing/reviewing the books.

If you're interested in the lists, here they are:

Nightmare Magazine's Top 100 Horror Books

Short List's Definitive Scariest Books Ever Written

One of them, M.B. Partlow, has already started. Here's her first post on her progress and what she's doing with the project.

Here are the ones I'm certain I've already read (there are several I'm iffy on, so I am NOT including those until I know for certain I read them):

The Exorcist
Dracula
American Psycho
The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo
Lord of the Flies (multiple times)
Pet Semetary
Frankenstein
The Silence of the Lambs
Something Wicked This Way Comes
Love in Vein
The Haunting of Hill House
Bag of Bones
It
Night Shift
Salem's Lot
The Shining
Skeleton Crew
The Stand
The Bad Place
Strangers
I Am Legend
Interview With the Vampire
The Vampire Lestat
Floating Dragon
Lost Boy, Lost Girl
Rosemary's Baby
Best New Horror, 1st Edition
Sunglasses After Dark

Have you ever undertaken a challenge (of sort) like this? How many of these books have you read? What do you think of the lists? What would you ADD to the lists (I might just incorporate your suggestions into my challenge)?

May you find your Muse.