The Fireman by Joe Hill

The Fireman by Joe Hill

Some say the world will end in fire… And in Joe Hill’s long, sometimes bumbling novel, that’s certainly the case. This is a decent thriller and a half-hearted stab at the type of post apocalypse that his father did so fine a job of in The Stand. Unfortunately, we end up bogged down in small-camp politics and end up missing out on any greater theme or lesson. And since I’m using words like bogged and bumbling, I suppose that tells me that we also miss out on a particularly thrilling adventure or story.

Will still happily read more of Joe Hill’s work, but this was perhaps my least favorite of his so far.

Little Star by John Ajvide Lindqvist

Little Star by John Ajvide Lindqvist

A childless couple finds a little girl on the side of the road. But she turns out to be some kind of a weirdo siren, who, as she gets a little older, ends up leading a bunch of other little girls into a weird American Idol style death-cult.

I like his writing, and I like some of his stories, but this one was a bit goofy.

Slade House by David Mitchell

Slade House by David Mitchell

A short collection of vignettes which reveal the mystery of the sinister Slate House. This is the least impressive book of Mitchell’s that I’ve read; it felt like a few notions from his earlier works that barely amounted to a look at a haunted house tale.
The prose is fine, but unimpressive. The revelation(s) are obvious from a long way off.

I enjoyed this book, but it is nowhere near the level of quality of some of his other works.

Revival by Stephen King

Revival by Stephen King
The preacher starts messing with electricity. Fate deals him a rough blow and his fortune becomes tied with a small boy. Each travels through a few decades of America in the back half of last century. Their paths cross on occasion.

The preacher gets dangerous, becomes a demagogue and a revivalist. He cures people, but… They have unexpected side effects. Perhaps because they are ripping a tear in the warp and weave of things and starting to let in parts of the Great Old Ones? You’d have to read to find out.

This is King, so it’s a good yarn, loads of jus’ plain folks writing, and a whole lot of the author’s love of rock n’ roll and Americana.

Naomi’s Room by Denis MacEoin

Naomi’s Room by Denis MacEoin

Atmospheric and sad horror novel that ends with a skull-crushing nose-dive into clichéd resolution. It was the ancient crap in the attic from the time the house was owned by that eeeevil guy who did the eeevil stuff. Too bad he ate your daughter’s soul, dude.

It’s been a while since I read this, and I recall that the writing was acceptable. I remember thinking the scene in the London shopping center when the girl disappears was compelling; I could feel the growing terror in the main character as the terrible realty that his daughter had been kidnapped

N024A2 by Joe Hill

N024A2 by Joe Hill

Christmasland is not a place you’d like to visit. Lucky for you, you’re too old anyway. The Gas-mask man would just rape and kill you (maybe not in that order) and bury you in the House of Sleep. But if you’re one of my younger readers, say, Greyskull’s age, then you might get taken to Christmasland… Your parents won’t be too pleased about it, but in time you’ll learn to love it there. With so many games to play ("Scissors for the drifter!") and so much fun to be had, you can remain there in Christmasland forever. Never grow up, never deal with the hangover of New Years and the come-down of getting any older…

Joe Hill is getting better with every book. He’s got at least five memorable characters here, and a story that defies cliché at several turns. This is good horror, and if the worst criticism one can level is that he’s starting to sound a lot like his dad, well… Then we’ve all got a lot to look forward to from the rest of his career.

Doctor Sleep by Stephen King

Doctor Sleep by Stephen King

Turns out, there’s a sequel to The Shining! Who knew?

Started this one when the weather had just turned in Burnaby; finished it on a glorious drunken evening in a small cabin on the beautiful shore of Discovery Passage, Quadra Island, BC. The lodge attached to the cabins was busy shutting down for the season. All the half-indian girls who worked the place were busy talking about their upcoming vacations to sunnier climes. (Belieze and Costa Rica were favorites.) A few of the older groundskeeper types were planning on staying the winter nearby to keep an eye on the place, just like Jack Torrence did for the Overlook Hotel long ago…

Doctor Sleep picks up with Dan, the little boy with the strange gift of “Shining” which allows him to see the future, communicate telekinetically, see ghosts, and a few other things. Dan’s gift is a curse as well, so he’s crawled deep into a bottle to try to blot out the ghosts that still follow him around. Eventually, he hits rock bottom (in one of the novel’s more contrived and silly scenes) and decides to go straight. Enter AA, which forms something of a framework and theme for the novel. (The Shining = addiction, Doctor Sleep = recovery.)

Dan forms a psychic connection with a little girl who also has the Shining, only much stronger than he. The two of them and a few of Dan’s AA buddies track down a wandering tribe of psychic vampire types who abduct and feed on children. Plot ensues.

The novel is fun, never dull, but very far from the tight plotting and genuine frights of its predecessor. King’s afterward at the end of the novel briefly addresses how difficult it must be for a creator to revisit one of his most successful works forty years later.

The Ocean at the End of the Lane by Neil Gaiman

The Ocean at the End of the Lane by Neil Gaiman

Gaiman writes a great short work of fantastic fiction. I’ve found some of his longer works get a little tired by their conclusion, but I’ve yet to pick up a novella or collection of shorts stories by him that doesn’t deserve an A+.

The Ocean at the End of the Lane is such a novella. A man returns to his childhood home and encounters an old friend, who helps bring back his memory of one extraordinary month long ago…

Fantastic, nostalgic, imaginative, moving, scary, fun. Enjoy.

Joyland by Stephen King

Joyland by Stephen King

Nostalgia soaked tale of a young man’s coming of age summer working as a carny in one of the last indipendant carnival attractions on the East Coast. Joyland is a murder mystery, a love story, and a delightfully fun King bon bon without much lasting impact.

A fun yarn that gets occasionally a little bit heavy handed with the carny-speak, but is otherwise pretty vintage King. Lots to like here if you are a fan of his work.

The Horror Stories of Robert E. Howard

The Horror Stories of Robert E. Howard

Howard penned the original Conan mythos back in the Nineteen twenties, almost a hundred years ago now. He was a Texan, and one of the very early American writers of the fantastic, usually mentioned alongside his friend and mentor H.P. Lovecraft. Like Lovecraft, Howard was published primarily in Weird Tales an early pulp magazine which catered to the macabre, the swashbuckling, and early sci-fi.

In this collection of republished tales, Howard addresses werewolves, dream-serpents, more werewolves, and other things that go bump in the night. It is possible that at the time these tales felt innovative; my mental chronology of fiction from the time just isn't quite tight enough to be able to say for certain. But they all feel like retreads.

Harder to deal with than their lack of fresh content is the decrepitude that infects Howard's language, making each paragraph a wooden, plodding affair, in which subjects and verbs seem as soggy and downtrodden as the settings and characters within. I'm willing to give some fair amount of blame here to the simple passage of years; it’s equally challenging to fight through, say, Natty Bumpo tales. Language has evolved, and some types of construction used regularly here seem as if they would be better to have remained buried. However, since there are some writers from equally long ago whose prose remains supple, Howard must ultimately shoulder some of the blame.

As a result, this collection isn't so much dreadful as it is dreadfully boring. Even as vacation reading, it was a challenge to plow through.

Bad Moon Rising by Jonathan Maberry

Bad Moon Rising by Jonathan Maberry

In this strong conclusion to the trilogy, shit truly goes awry, as we go from two or three vampires to about two hundred. Luckily, our heroes firepower escalates too.

I was delighted and surprised by the epic scope of the novels, and the tight way Mayberry managed to wrap things up.

Dead Man’s Song by Jonathan Maberry

Dead Man’s Song by Jonathan Maberry

Like vampires? Comic books? Werewolves? Necromancers? Criminals? Cops? Ju-jitsu? Shotguns full of garlic rounds? Chosen-one samauri kid Dhampir? Then you’d probably really like this series.

Mayberry is good at pop-culture action horror.

Ghost Road Blues by Jonathan Mayberry

Ghost Road Blues by Jonathan Mayberry

In a small town which is obsessed with Halloween an old evil necromancer type rises. A band of unlikely heroes fight him and his vampire minions.

Mayberry’s trilogy starts out as basic, fairly generic horror. But over the thousand or so mages of the Ghost Road trilogy, things get really interesting and turn into a Bruckheimeresque vampire high-action fest.

The Bottoms by Joe Lansdale

The Bottoms by Joe Lansdale

Landsdale has been a bit of a legend in East Texas for more than a decade as the local boy who done good. I’ve always intended to pick up and read one of his novels and thanks to the Senator and KMK’s kind Christmas gift, I was able to read through The Bottoms over two beautiful, relaxing, sunny days in The Heights just before Christmas of 2012.

In The Bottoms, Landsdale has written a murder mystery with a little horror and a lot of southern gothic homage. A black woman is found murdered. The local constable, our hero’s father, begins an investigation. Since this is East Texas in the early 19^th century, no one in the white community is particularly bothered by the slaying.

A few more bodies appear, and the small, segregated East Texas towns begin to respond with fear, lynchings, etc. Ultimately, the identity of the killer is predictable, as is the not-very-surprising third act twist, but the novel is still a satisfying little bit of Thomas Harris meets Harper Lee. The writing is decent overall, though the use of truly corn-pone dialect throughout is a bit much on occasion. 

77 Shadow Street by Dean Koontz

77 Shadow Street by Dean Koontz

Bit of a stinker, this one. Old famous house turned apartment building has evil goin’ on. And… not very likeable sketch characters get eaten by the evil. And… Moving on.  

Harbor by John Ajvide Lindqvist

Harbor by John Ajvide Lindqvist

Lindqvist writes atmospheric, moody, and mildly cerebral horror set in Sweden. After his excellent work, Let the Right One In, I was eager to read more. I read Harbor in early summer, mostly while sitting beside the ocean in a place where the population has exactly the kind of abusive loving relationship with the sea that the residents of “The Harbor” enjoy.

The remote village of wherever in Sweden sits on an isolated island, far from the bustle of Stockholm. The residents are mostly fisherman, Coast Guard, lighthouse keepers, or smugglers, all of whom make their living from the sea in one way or another. And it seems that the sea is extracting a toll for its bounty…

The characters are less sordid than those in Let the Right One In, but no less tragic, brokedown shells. The writing is breezy, even in translation, though I cannot recall anything particularly inspired in Lindqvist’s language.

I like the Swedish darkness and the superb way in which Lindqvist uses setting to establish a consistent tone and theme. I’m eager to read more of what he writes, and I need to remember to ask my new friend, The Viking, about how Swedes perceive his work. 

What the Night Knows by Dean Koontz

What the Night Knows by Dean Koontz

What does the Night Know? I can barely remember… This little piece of popcorn was amusing, and I tore through it in about 48 hours of planes and hotel rooms.

Oh yes! The Night Knows that a killer’s spirit is possessing people and seeking to recreate a series of brutal serial murders. It’s also trying to get back at the detective who put an end to its original kill spree a few decades before.

Koontz writes a tight airport-bookstore horror novel. His style is sufficiently USA Today to be readable, and none of the shadows he summons linger long enough for the following night to recall them. 

The Dust Man's Birthday Party

Happy Halloween. Here's the result of the "1000 word scary story in 1 hour" challenge that Dr. Stout and I enjoyed on a dark and stormy Halloween night in Burnaby in 2012.

The Dust Man’s Birthday Party

The Tall Man hid behind the boiler for almost a week. He wanted to wait until the four year old’s birthday party had come and gone. The family could talk of little else on their last Sunday alive. They had invited two cousins. The mom couldn’t stand the cousins. She and the Dad argued loudly about it just outside the closet where the Tall Man hid. The mom thought one of the cousins had stolen something the last time they had visited. The Dad, sounding tired, just pleaded with his wife to be nice to his sister and her kids. The Tall Man got the sense that they were really squabbling about something else. But he didn’t care. They would both die either way. Then the Dad wouldn’t be tired anymore.

The Tall Man wasn’t tired at all. He slept during the day, and walked around the house at night while the family was asleep. Sometimes he watched the two little ones in their beds. One night he listened at the door of the parent’s bedroom while they had quiet sex, then tiptoed away when he heard the mom get up and go to the bathroom.

He listened to the birthday party through the walls. With only a week to go before Samhain, it sounded as if some of the visiting children had dressed up in costume. He could hear them running around the house, playing a game of hide and seek. It was a game he remembered from his childhood. He was very good at hiding.

At one point, he had a moment of concern, when he thought he might be forced into action. He hard children’s footsteps running, and the door to the boiler room opened, letting in a blinding light. He had not seen true daylight in months, preferring to operate by night. He caught a glimpse of a boy in a pointy hat. The shaft of light stabbed his eyes and he willed himself further back into the recesses of the closet. He heard the child pull the door shut, and he listened to the sound of the little boy breathing hard, trying to hide.

The Tall Man tried to remain perfectly still in the back of the closet, just a few feet from the boy. He knew he could reach out and wrap his long fingers around the child’s neck. But there were too many people in the house. He tried to hold his breath and imagine himself invisible in the darkness. The dust behind the hot water heater seemed to settle into his lungs.

He thought about dust, and about how he’d heard that it was mostly made up of shed human skin that had already died and been sluffed off by the body. He wondered how much of the dead skin in his nose belonged to the Mom, and how much to the Dad.

The idea of her skin inside his mouth and nose was exciting, and the Tall Man knew he wouldn’t be able to contain himself much longer. Then the boy would be dead, and he would have to prepare to fight whoever came looking.

Suddenly the child threw the door open and ran out into the hallway, shouting for his playmates. The Tall Man reached out a long arm and pulled the closet door closed. It snicked shut with a satisfying sound, and he let out a long breath.

The party continued, and he heard the sound of children and adults singing to a cake. He didn’t like the burning candles he could imagine on the cake. Fire scared him.

The children applauded and made noise for a while, then the house slowly grew more quiet as the guests left. The family put the children to bed while the Tall Man hid in the closet. Then the parents talked in low voices. Gradually their discussion grew louder and more heated. He heard the mom hiss something at the Dad. Then he heard the sound of a door slamming.

The birthday boy’s feet pattered up the hallway, past the closet, and the Tall Man heard a tentative knock on the parent’s bedroom door. The child asked something with a sniffle, in a whiney voice, and was admitted to the room.

The Tall Man listened gleefully to the sound of the Mom’s voice, telling the child he should go back to his own room. The father’s comments were little more than a bass rumble. He and the Mom argued for a moment, then she acquiesced. The birthday boy squealed a sound of delight, and the Tall Man heard bedsprings creak. 

From the hot-water heater closet, he listened, and squeezed his fist tight in rage. The child had been given permission to sleep in bed with his parents! The ritual couldn’t be enjoyed if the family were all together. The Tall Man needed to visit each bedroom individually, tiptoeing from one bedside to the next, and saving the Mom for last. He shook with anger. They were ruining his plan!

Gradually he unclenched his fists and let out a long, slow breath. He could be patient. He was better at hiding than anyone, and he could take his time.

The Tall Man ran his finger across the back of the boiler, gathering dust on his fingertip. He raised it to his mouth and tasted the dead skin on his tongue. He could be patient. There was always tomorrow night.

The Guardians by Andrew Pyper

Mr. Pyper writes a decent, if somewhat predictable psychological thriller / ghost story set in a small Canadian town. Four members of a boys’ hockey team get involved in the disappearance of a local teacher, and their lives are forever changed by their exposure to the supernatural, and the eeevil that lurks within the hearts of men. The first quarter of the book borrows heavily from Stephen King’s IT, in which the return of evil summons back a far-flung collection of adults to their childhood home. The back half of the book wallows in a predictable resurgence of the events of the past and the troubles an adult has facing up to the deeds of his childhood and the misspent years since. Structurally, the book also mimics IT; even chapters are set in the present, odd chapters set in the past.

The setup to the big surprise is so wrapped up in the hammer-heavy themes of the book (you never know who might be evil!) that the conclusory chapters feel plodding in their obviousness. Also, the sex is dry and boneless.

Still, the book moves quickly, and some of the imagery is decent. Overall, I give it a C+.

Let the Right One In by John Ajvide Lindqvist

Awesome dark and twisted Scandinavian vampire fiction. The novel is considerably more depraved than the film, and offers a bit more insight into the world of Oscar and his deadly lady love. Lindqvist sets a sustained tone of urban blight and despair in a snowswept hell. None of the characters are more than a deep shade of moral grey, and most of them tend towards the dark black. Even our hero appears to be a budding serial killer.

The book is fast, twisted, and generally, some of the most interesting horror I’ve read in quite some time. Nice work, Mr. Lindqvist.