The Fireman

I was lucky enough to get a review copy of Joe Hill's next novel, The Fireman,  from the publisher. It's set in an apocalyptic world, where an infectious fungus causes people to spontaneously combust. The main character is an infected and pregnant nurse who is aided by a fireman with the ability to control fire. The nurse escapes from a psychotic husband to a campground full of infected people who have learned how to avoid combustion by group singalongs.

The the book drags quite bit. It's obvious that the camp is only going to be a temporary solution. The infected are surrounded by people who would kill them if they were discovered. The camp's leader seems to be turning into a religious fanatic. Anyone who doesn't fit is ostracized. It's blatantly obvious after a couple of chapters that things are going to fall apart there, but we still spend about half the book in the camp before the hero sets out on a quest to find a new refuge in Martha Quinn's Island.

Frankly I don't think this is Hill's best work. The novel suffers from a bit of bloat, and would have been much better if the camp scenes had been trimmed a bit. That said, it was still enjoyable if predictable read.

A Head Full of Ghosts

A Head Full of Ghosts is not what I'd normally expect to see in a book where a character is said to be possessed. I mean that in a good way.

This book is told from the point of view of a woman who as a young girl who saw her older sister suffer from schizophrenia. Unfortunately, there father has recently lost his job and found religion. This combination causes him to become convinced that the elder girl is possessed and to get the family to take part in a reality show culminating in his elder daughter's exorcism.

There are no obvious supernatural elements. Instead of being a horror story about a girl's head doing 360° turns while projectile vomiting pea soup, it's about what happens when the horrors of mental illness, religious fanaticism, and the reality TV culture intersect.  This makes for the sort of book that is as likely to appeal to people who don't read horror as it will to those of us who do.

Red Equinox

I have to say that Red Equinox, by Douglas Wynne, is probably one of the better Lovecraftian novels that I've read. It's not a particularly original one, but  Lovecraftian horror usually isn't.

It uses the standard plot about a secret society who is plotting to release the Great Old Ones and bring about the destruction of humanity. This is a plot that H. P. L. himself used, so it's not all that original. Even the addition of a secret government agency tasked with stopping  supernatural evil doesn't help, as that's been done so much it's rapidly becoming cliched.

I think what really set this story apart for me was the characterization. I don't know why, but I found myself genuinely caring about the characters, even to the point that when the protagonist was temporarily grabbed by the aforementioned secret government agency, I found myself getting angry on her behalf.

This is a book that I'd recommend to any fan of Lovecraftian horror.

Dead World Resurrection

It's odd, but despite how many zombie stories I've read over the years, the only Joe McKinney zombie story I'd read was the one in The Living Dead 2, until I got a review copy of Dead World Resurrection.This is obviously going to have to change, as I enjoyed the collection and will now have to get the novels in his Dead World series.

There are some really good stories in this anthology, but there were also some things I didn't care for all that much. There were a couple of short essay-ish pieces, namely "Zombies and Their Haunts" and "Suburbia of the Dead," which would have been better off excluded as they were kind of boring and were reused in the lengthy "A Reader's Guide to Dead World" at the end of the book.

The actual short stories were pretty good, and reasonably diverse for zombie stories. Many of the stories feature the viral zombies of the Dead World series, but despite the title, not all of the stories are do. "Sabbatical in the Ohio Methlands" has zombies that are zombies in a more metaphorical sense.The zombies of "Starvation Army" seem to be more like hungry ghosts. "Jimmy Finder" has zombie-fighting robots. There are even stories where people become zombies from ODing on psychedelic mushrooms or from cuts caused by strange clams.

This is a really good collection of zombies stories  that's far better than the formulaic crap that seems to have flooded the market in recent years.

Dark Screams

I was lucky enough to get a copy of the forthcoming horror anthology Dark Screams: Volume One. It's a really good (short) collection. It's only got five stories, but they're all from fairly well known authors, and they're all good.

The book starts off with its only reprint, "Weeds," by Stephen King. Even if, like me, you haven't read this story before, you still probably know it, because it was used in Creepshow as "The Lonesome Death of Jordy Verrill."  Even if you're familiar with the story from the film, it's still a great read.

The second story is "The Price You Pay" by Kelley Armstrong. It seems to start off as a standard horror trope about two women who get kidnapped and tortured by a psychopath, but it quickly moves into a different direction. I think it might have been my favorite story in the collection.

Story number three is "Magic Eyes," by Bill Pronzini. It's about a man in a mental hospital who claims he's not insane, he didn't murder his wife, and some sort of magic eyes are really responsible. Once again this story starts off seeming like a standard horror trope, but eventually proves to be something different.

The fourth story is Simon Clark's "Murder in Chains," which is about a man who wakes up to find himself chained to a murderous lunatic. Wackiness ensues (and by wackiness, I mean lots of blood and gore).

The final story is Ramsey Campbell's "The Watched," which is about a policeman who seeks revenge against the drug dealers he holds responsible for his daughter's death. Not surprisingly, there is a supernatural twist.

This is a really good anthology, and since it's only available in ebook form, it's cheap, too.

Limbus Inc.: Book II

Limbus, Inc.: Book II has got a really great lineup of contributors. Joe Lansdale is one of my favorite writers. I've rnjoyed eyerything I've read by Jonathan Maberry. I've generally enjoyed Gary Braunbeck's Cedar Hill stories. I've only read a couple of Harry Shannon's books, but I thought they were pretty good. I haven't read anything else by Joe McKinney, but he seems to be reasonably popular.

With that lineup, this book must be good, right? Yes, it and no. As with the previous book, I really don't think it really hangs together very well as a shared world story collection. Limbus is supposed to be a sort of pandimensional employment agency. The problem I have is that in some of the stories Limbus seems to be fairly benevolent, but in others it is utterly malevolent. The stories themselves are mostly good though.

Maberry fan's will probably really enjoy his story, which is a crossover with Sam Hunter (from the previous Limbus book) going to Pine Deep (which Maberry wrote a trilogy about) and teaming up with Joe Ledger (who is the star of Maberry's most popular series).  Joe Lansdale tells a story about a shadow government, a dinosaur hunt, and the Hollow Earth, with Allan Quartermain making an appearance. Gary Braunbecks story, which I found disappointing, was about a librarian who is kidnapped by Limbus and turned into a slightly more psychotic version of James Bond. Harry Shannon's tale is about an alcoholic who gets a job involving time travel and a quest for redemption. Joe McKinney's story is also about an alcoholic on a quest for redemption, only with a ghost instead of time travel.

Realistically, I think most people would be less bothered by Limbus's ambiguous nature than I am, and the stories are really good, so I'd say that you should read this book.

The Ghost Bride

Yangsze Choo's The Ghost Bride is certainly not the sort of book I normally read. Yes, it is essentially a historical fantasy, but it's labelled as simply fiction to appeal to a wider audience. This is a good thing, since it is the sort of book that is likely to be enjoyed by non-fantasy fans, but it's also a bad thing, since that means fantasy fans are less likely to be aware of it, and I think they'd enjoy it too. I know I did.

The Ghost Bride is the story of Li Lan, a young,  19th century Malaysian woman. Her father tells her that a wealthy family has expressed interest in having her marry their recently deceased son. Naturally, she doesn't want to do it, especially after she encounters the ghost of said son, and he proves to be annoyingly self-centered. Soon Li Lan is traveling through the world of the spirits, investigating corruption in the court of Hell (and the alleged murder of her would-be groom).

There is some good adventure. There's romance. There are demons and hungry ghosts. There's a good bit of Chinese folklore. It all makes for a very entertaining read.

Frankenstorm

Have you ever seen the movie 28 Days Later? It's the one where an environmental group frees some chimps that are infected with a rage virus and soon everybody's turned into crazy killers. Ray Garton's Frankenstorm is kind of like that, but there are differences.

For one thing the book takes place during the release of the infected instead of 28 days later. For another thing, the test subjects are homeless people instead of chimps. On top of that, the story is set in California during a hurricane.

This means that instead of being a zombie-esque horror tale, Frankenstorm is more of a horror/sci-fi/thriller. It's a good story with a great deal of conflict involving infected people, a militia, a mad scientist, a secret government black-ops organization, drug dealers, and a sheriff's deputy who's insane before being exposed to the virus.

The book also includes a bonus short story called "The Guy Down the Street." It's a disturbing little tale that I didn't find as enjoyable as the novel.

This book is just good fun, if you idea of fun involves lots of gore and violence.

FaceOff

The title of this book is slightly misleading. Instead of being a collection of stories where the characters FaceOff,it most of the stories involve characters teaming up. Of course, TeamUp wouldn't really have been as cool of a title.

As this book was written to benefit the International Thriller Writers, the characters in question are from popular thriller series. At least I assume they're popular. I'm not really all that well read in the genre and mainly picked the book up for the Repairman Jack story and the story with Grayson Pierce of Sigma Force. While most of the stories weren't super great, I generally enjoyed them and will probably try to read the original series the various characters came from.

I might as  well give my thoughts on the individual stories:

"Red Eye" featuring Denis Lehane's Patrick Kenzie and Michael Connely's Harry Bosch - I definitely enjoyed this story of a detective and a cop teaming up to rescue a little girl from a pedophile. It was a good lead off for the book.

"In the Nick of Time" featuring Ian Rankin's John Rebus and Peter Jame's Roy Grace - This one was more of mystery than a thriller. It is about two British cops solving a 50 year old stabbing case after a man confesses on his deathbed. It wasn't as action-filled as I'd expect from a thriller, but it was still good.

"Gaslighted" featuring R. L. Stine's Slappy the Ventriloquist Dummy and Douglas Preston & Lincoln Child's Aloysius Pendergast - I did enjoy this one, but I was rather disappointed by how little a part Slappy played in the story. Still, not having read the Goosebumps books, for all I know he could have just sat there and stared at people in them, too.

"The Laughing Buddha" featuring M. J. Rose's Malachai Samuels and Lisa Gardener's D. D. Warren - This is another one that's a bit more of a mystery than a thriller. It involves the murder of an antiques dealer and reincarnation, which does make for a good story. While I enjoyed it, I don't think the crossover aspect worked that well and almost felt tacked on.

"Surfing the Panther" featuring Steve Martini's Paul Madriani and Linda Fairstein's Alexandra Cooper - Legal thrillers aren't my cup of tea. I did still enjoy it, but not as much as the others.

"Rhymes with Prey" featuring Jeffery Deaver's Lincoln Rhyme and John Sandford's Lucas Davenport - This was definitely my least favorite story in the collection, which is unfortunate as it is also by far the longest story in the collection. I think the length might be part of the issue I had with this, as the story just seemed to drag.

"Infernal Night" featuring F. Paul Wilson's Repairman Jack and Heather Graham's Michael Quinn - This was the story I was most looking forward to, and while I enjoyed it, it didn't feel very Repairman Jack-ish. I think it might just be that Jack works best in New York, and this is set in New Orleans.

"Pit Stop" featuring Raymond Khoury's Sean Reilly and Linwood Barcaly's Glen Garber - This was one of the more fast-paced stories. It involves a car chase, a kidnapped girl, and a deadly bioweapon. It's a good story.

"Silent Hunt" featuring John Lescroart's Wyatt Hunt and T. Jefferson Parker's Joe Trona - While this story starts off slow, it has a lot of action involving Mexican drug traffickers and a gold mine. It's a cool story with an ending I liked a lot.

"The Devil's Bones" featuring Steve Berry's Cotton Malone and James Rollin's Gray Pierce - This is the story I was second most anxious to read, and I actually enjoyed in more than the Repairman Jack story. This is a team up that worked very well, and produced a story with lots of action.

"Good and Valuable Consideration" featuring Lee Child's Jack Reacher and Joseph Finder's Nick Heller - Two thriller heroes walk into a bar ... it sounds like some sort of joke, but it's the premise of this story. It's not a bad story but it's not as actiony as I'd like for the finale of a collection of thrillers.

While the book could have been better, it's still well worth reading, especially since it supports a worthy cause.

Chaos

When you find out that your new apartment building was built on the site of an old mental hospital, you might be a bit worried. You'd be right to be worried if that mental hospital closed down when that patients and staff slaughtered each other after an administrator accidentally opened a portal to the realm of chaos, as  happened in Mary SanGiovanni's Chaos.

Mary SanGiovanni is a very talented writer, and I think this is one of her best works. It's fast paced. It's weird. It has creepy monsters. There's a fair amount of blood and gore, but not as much as you'd find in the works of many writers. Like many SanGiovanni's books, the plot reminds me of some of the more otherworldly horror of Lovecraft.

The only real problem I have with this book is that it (or my edition anyway) has quite a few formatting issues. The headers, which contain the title and author name, vanish after page 12. The footers, with the page numbers, only appear on pages 1-16, 56-128,  146-148, 160-23, and 249-255. On pages 16 and 147, the text suddenly switches from being double spaced to single spaced for no apparent reason. On one of the unnumbered pages, an entire paragraph is bolded when (as far as I can tell) only the (nonexistent) website HauntedAsylumsofAmerica.com is supposed to be bolded.

Even with those mistakes, which should be fairly easy to correct as this is a self-published, POD book, this is a good read for horror fans.

The Serpent of Venice

I read my first Christopher Moore novel in the 90s when I picked up a remaindered copy of Coyote Blue for cheap. I loved it, but for some reason or another it was more than a decade until I picked up another one of his novels. Lately I've been slowly reading his other books, including his most recent work,  The Serpent of Venice, which I was lucky enough to get a review copy of.

Serpent of Venice is a sequel to the novel Fool.  Fool was a parody of King Lear, starring Pocket, Lear's fool. This book also stars Pocket, and as the title suggests is (partly) a parody of The Merchant of Venice. It's also a parody of Othello with a dash of Poe's "The Cask of Amontillado" thrown in.

Being a Shakespearean parody, the book is fairly bawdy and uses a good bit of  archaic language. Being a Christopher Moore novel, there is a lot of humor. There is also some fool on dragon sex, for the sort of people who get turned on by that sort of thing.

I don't think this is Moore's best book, but it's good, and it's funny enough that I laughed out loud at several points. It's well worth reading.

The Simon Iff Stories & Other Works

Since I'm trying to do reviews more often, it's time for another one. This time, it's Simon Iff Stories and Other Works by Aleister Crowley. I found it surprisingly enjoyable.

The Simon Iff stories are mysteries, which to be honest reminded me of nothing so much as G. K. Chesterton's Father Brown stories.Don't get me wrong, Iff and Brown are to very different characters with very different worldviews. However, both of their methods of deduction revolve around am understanding of the darkness of the human soul more than any clue hunting.

There are some problems with the stories. "An Old Head on Young Shoulders" just left me confused. "Not Good Enough" was one of the most racist stories I've ever read. Despite this, I found the collection interesting.

The "and Other Works" from the title is a collection of stories called Golden Twigs based off of Frazer's Golden Bough. I probably would have enjoyed them more if I'd actually read Frazer's book. They aren't bad, but I didn't like them as much as the Iff stories. Still the book is worth getting just for the Simon Iff stories.

Fossil Lake: An Anthology of the Abberant

I really want to try to update this blog more often, so I'm going to do something I normally wouldn't--review a book that will probably get me into trouble. No, I don't think reviewing Fossil Lake: An Anthology of the Aberrant is going to cause NSA thugs to kick my door down, but there is a strong chance that it will lead to my being harassed.

I'm not going to mention this person by name, because he may be an odious, little troll, but he does know how to find mentions of his name on the Internet.  I will mention that he runs "Lake Fossil Press"--hence the title of this anthology.  You can find his name by googling his press, and you can find anything you want about him by googling his name.

If you've done that, you've probably discovered that this"writer" and "editor" can't write or edit worth shit. He also likes to harass people. In this anthology, a lot of the people he harasses have gotten together to show that they can write better than him, put together a better anthology than he can, and sell more copies of their book than he's sold of all his books put together.

In doing so, they have put together a pretty good anthology. There are quite a few stories with thinly veiled versions of the troll in them.  My absolute favorite of those stories, and probably the anthology in general, was “Apartment B,” by Stinky Cat, which had me laughing out loud the whole time I was reading it. Jerrod Balzer's “Nat Poopcone vs. the Beast of Fossil Lake” was also very funny and weird. “What’s Your Beef?” by Mark Orr was also a good story of this type, though less of a humor story and more a tale of a gruesome demise.

Besides the stories with parodies of the troll, there are also quite a few regular works as well. There are two extracts from longer Ramsey Campbell works, which I now want to read. There is a cool weird fiction piece called “The Ziggurat of Skulls” by Joshua Dobson. There's a good fantasy story called “The Dank” by Doug Blakeslee. There are quite a few horror stores--too many to mention, really.

Overall, this is a good, diverse collection. It's well worth shelling out $2.99 to get this on your ereader.

Innocent Blood

I was lucky enough to get a review copy of Innocent Blood, by James Rollins and Rebecca Cantrell, and I must say that I really enjoyed it, though not as much as I enjoy Rollins' Sigma Series.

The premise for this series is that the Vatican has a secret sect of vampiric priests known as the Sanguinists. They are tasked with, among other things, killing or converting the evil rogue vampires.

The plot revolves around a human archeologist, a human soldier, and one of the Sanguinists. In the previous volume, this trio recovered the Blood Gospel, which was written by Jesus in His own blood. In this volume, they are attempting to use the Gospel to prevent the apocalypse, which is being caused by an immortal Judas Iscariot.

The story has plenty of action and mysteries. I thoroughly enjoyed it, but some may be turned off by the Catholic worldview of the story.

Jim Henson: The Biography

I grew up watching Sesame Street and The Muppet Show. The Muppet Movie would certainly be one of my top 10 favorite movies. The Rainbow Connection, is probably my favorite song. With all this, it's no surprise that Jim Henson is one of my favorite people of all time. Naturally, I jumped at the chance to get a copy of Jim Henson: The Biography, and I'm glad I did. This was a great book. I can tell that Brian Jay Jones did a lot of interviews and research in putting this together, and it really pays off. I learned a lot I never knew about Henson, and got a good feel for him as a man.

It is obvious that that Jones is a Henson fan. He spends a lot of time talking about how much of a creative genius Henson was. He also tends to be very forgiving of Henson's flaws. If it was anyone else, it might be annoying, but with the way it's presented--and with this subject--I don't mind.

This is a great book. If you're a fan of Henson or his creations, this is a must read.

The Miniature Wife

I was lucky enough to get a copy of The Miniature Wife and Other Stories by Manuel Gonzalez from LibraryThing's Early Reviewers program. With my love of bizarro fiction, I figured that a collection of more mainstream weird fiction would be right up my alley. I was right. It does have less gore and sex than a typical bizarro story collection, but I think bizarro fans might enjoy it, too.

This is a good bunch of stories, with some weird twists. The titular story, for instance, is about a man who works in miniaturization whose wife gets mysteriously miniaturized and starts a war against her husband. There are also stories about a hijacking that lasts for decades, a man who talks through his ears, and life in what seems to be a video game. Some of the stories also involve more traditional fantasy and horror creatures like zombies, werewolves, and unicorns.

There are a few minor things I didn't like about the stories. Too many of the stories take the form of mini-biographies or memoirs instead of the more usual types of fictional narrative, although since they are interesting biographies/memoirs, this isn't much of a complaint. However, some of them, most notably, "The Artist's Voice"--that's the one about the man who talks through his ears--do drag a little bit. Even so, this is a really nice bunch of stories

Little Death

I was lucky enough to get a copy of Thomas Kriebaum's Little Death from Library Thing's early reviewer program. It's a shortish graphic novel told in what is, I believe, called a "pantomime strip" format, i.e. with no dialogue.

The book contains fourteen multi-page stories and a few single panel ones. They all feature Little Death who is a toddler-sized skeleton dressed in a Blues Brothers-type suit. The stories center around him touching people and making them die. They are generally very funny, though I admit I'm still not sure exactly what the point was of number six.

If you're interested in lighthearted comics about a mini-grim reaper that are done in the style of older Mad Magazine comics, then this is the book for you. I enjoyed it, anyway.

Ugly Heaven

I'm really not sure what to say about Carlton Mellick III's Ugly Heaven.I certainly enjoyed the book. It was all weird and creepy and was probably the most disturbing version of heaven I've ever heard of.

This is a warped version of heaven, though. God is missing and presumed dead. Everybody looks weird. Shadows chase people around and latch onto them.You can still die in this heaven, and that death is presumably final. There are monsters and dangers everywhere.

The story about a couple of guys called Tree and Salmon who arrive in heaven together.  They meet lots of strange people and have adventures, but there's no real resolution to the story. It's still good, but the ending just feels like the end to a chapter not the end of a story.

By The Time We Leave Here, We'll Be Friends

Have you ever read a book where, when you were finished, you were pretty sure there was some kind of subtext (or some such thing) that went right over your head? I have, and that book is By The Time We Leave Here, We'll Be Friends by J. David Osborne

The book is set in a Soviet-era Siberian gulag. The main characters are all prisoners and guards.  There's drug use. There's a throat parasite. There are placentas wearing diapers.  There are tattoos. There is violence.

Heck, I'm not really sure how to explain it. I will say that even though I didn't really understand it, I did enjoy it.

The Drunken Comic Book Monkeys in Sciencey Tales of Science Fiction

I've met the Drunken Comic Book Monkeys twice, and each time I did, I bought a book from them. They run a local small press, and show up at the local HorrorFind convention and at some of the events at the York Emporium. This time, since I was at the Emporium's Sci-Fi Saturday, I picked up the Monkey's Sciencey Tales of Science Fiction, which is a sequel to their previous book, Scary Tales of Scariness.

Since I've only met them twice, I have no idea if the Drunken Comic Book Monkies are as drunken, clueless, and obnoxious in real life as there counterparts are in the stories that make up this book, but I doubt it. The plots of all the stories revolve around how Brian Chris, the aforementioned Monkeys, keep getting in and out of  trouble while being as obnoxious, idiotic, and drunken as possible. This leads to a lot of funny stuff.

They meet clones. They get shrunk. They battle robots. They go to the Earth's core and to the moon. They meet an invisible fan. They travel to an alternate reality. They find a time machine. They take part in parodies of The Day the Earth Stood Still and The Island of Doctor Moreau. They drink a lot of beer and eat a lot of chicken wings.

These are a bunch of absurd science fiction stories. While I wouldn't rank it with the works of Douglas Adams, it's a good choice for fans of science fiction and humor.