The Woods Are Dark by Richard Laymon

What a turd. This horror novel is an incoherent mess and dirty in a way that reminds me of a kid drawing pictures of genitals with crayons. I doubt even Dimension Films would option a script for this thing. Plot: Two women driving at night stop in a dinner. They are kidnapped to be sacrificed to a local tribe of savage barbarian sex-fiend man-beasts. Some other dumb shit happens. Beasts win.

Lucky for Laymon, I was trapped in a middle seat on a trans-Pacific flight between two chattering Chinese and no choice but to devour his crappy horror novel.

Patient Zero by Jonathan Mayberry

When the TERRORISTS start creating ZOMBIES to attack the US, you know we’re fucked. Luckily, Detective Joe Ledger is there to save the day with Ju-jitsu, an MP5, and some hand picked members of Echo squad! The results are… perfect for beach reading!

Not sure I really need to say much more about this book. Did I mention TERRORISTS and ZOMBIES on the same plate???

Read it on a beach in Akumal in March while the Professor celebrated her spring break.

Vagabonding by Rolf Potts

Recommended on Amazon and by a few friends, but...

Rolf Potts had nothing new to say. The only interesting parts in his book were the quotes from other, smarter people, who had already laid down the philosophies he so clearly ill-understood. The quality of his writing was poor, and there was little to no substance. Dr. Seuss managed to capture the core spirit more succinctly in “Oh The Places You’ll Go!”

Potts was mighty proud of himself for being a person who had done some wandering, had a bunch of experiences seemingly at random – (yeah, okay, I get it, you scored with a Hungarian girl one time on the road – good for you) --and seemed to have drawn few useful conclusions from them. (“When you get home, your friends won’t understand you.” Being about the most profound— better summed up by Wilco a decade earlier.) His constant looking down his nose at others who are doing the EXACT same thing as he was irritating (see the section on “Trustafarians” and “Tourists” for examples). Aside from being a good refresher on “Common Quotables: From Thoreau to Muir”, I just didn’t see much in the book. In short, it was self aggrandizing without substance.

Don’t get me wrong. I don’t have anything against “vagabonding” as a way of spending some time. I just don’t really see either capital-T “Travel” or capital-V “Vagabonding” as an actual lifestyle or philosophy; just a way of making the act of seeing new places both more and less profound at the same time.

Four Hour Work Week was a far better look at similar topics.

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The Keeper by Sarah Langan

Sometimes you just want pulp horror. Which makes it easy to delve into the D list section at a local grocery store or mega-bookstore’s rack. And when you come up from the stacks, raw and wriggling, holding a real stinker in your mouth, you remember that there’s a reason the Barker’s, Koontzes, and Kings of the world have sold so many copies. Because there’s a lot of really lousy horror out there. Take The Keeper, by Sarah Langan, for example.

It’s not so much that the book is poorly written, though it most certainly is. Nor is it is incoherent plot, which involves a proverbial kitchen sink’s worth of explanations for all the non-sense which unfolds that bothers one the most. Nay, nor do the shallow characters, weak dialog, or jerky pacing really distract too terribly much from the overall trainwreck. No, the real disappointment here is the PG-13 level of lurid detail in what promises to deliver “monstrous visions of violence and horror.” It’s as if Mrs. Langan wanted to give us possessed small town whores, infanticide, evil profit driven factory owners, alcoholic lead characters, and all the rest without having actually read how the masters deliver on these exact same hackneyed devices. (Respectively, loosely: Great and Secret Show, Trainspotting, Desperation, Dark Half.) Besides, instead of any genuine terror at the end, there’s hugging, crying, learning and growing. The sex scenes lack focus, as if the camera has simply drifted away from the action out of boredom. The heroine and her beau are dullards, who lack even the teen angst found in Judy Blume.

I will give props for a brief Elliot Smith reference buried somewhere in here. Also, can’t help but notice that overall, folks on Amazon give this novel fairly high praise. The collection of five star reviews for this two and a half star book makes me suspect they are mostly shills, or friends of the author, but I suppose it’s possible that I just missed some secret gem buried in all this cliché. On the cover of the novel there’s a quote from Peter Straub, hoping that The Keeper “begins what should be a very fruitful career.” This quote reminds me of Atticus Finch saying, “You look just like a picture, Mrs. Debois.” To which Scout repiles under her breath, “he don’t say a picture of what!” Perhaps Mr. Straub is right, and when Mrs. Langan’s second novel wins a Brahm Stoker award or similar, I’ll eat my words. But it will take significant improvement. Luckily, since Mrs. Langan made it into pulp press in the first place, she’ll likely get the chance.

All the above notwithstanding, I’m still not sorry I spent money on a new author; if only to support a wider circle of horror writers I hegetting published. Best of luck with your future novels, Mrs. Langan. May they be better paced, with better characters, who are better written and better received.