Tag Archive for '2010'

Black Wings of Cthulhu

This collection, Black Wings of Cthulhu was edited by noted H.P. Lovecraft expert S.T. Joshi, and features the works of 21 authors who range from the famous and popular to the practically unknown. Like any good collection of short fiction, the stories are varied and there is something here for just about anyone. For lack of anything better to do, here is a list of titles that I have some feelings about.

We’re off to a solid start with a sequel of sorts to Lovecraft’s own PICKMAN’S MODEL. This first selection paints an uncanny portrait of PICKMAN’S OTHER MODEL, a decidedly unsavory woman with how-do-you-call-it? Fishy ancestry. As told by a malcontent lowlife who spends some time tracking her from a distance. By Caitlin R. Kiernan

Speaking of lowlifes: Besides fatally curious academics and deranged artists, who else seeks forbidden supernatural knowledge? If the quest of the Twenty First Century Cthulhu cultist amounted to a drug deal crossed with an urban legend, then it might be called COPPING SQUID. Interesting idea, but comes off a little comical. By Michael Shea

My favorite story from this collection details the descent and corruption of a man haunted by supernatural beings who he first encountered in his youth. While he has spent the intervening years trying to forget, they have merely been biding their time. The beginning and end occur underneath our protagonist’s current domicile, a residential hotel named THE BROADSWORD. By Laird Barron

A loving husband finds himself USURPED, and attracted like a moth to a flame, when a terrifying and unexpected brush with the supernatural sends him on a journey to find its source. By William Browning Spencer

The world has come undone, and a person in the know details how it was caused by DENKER’S BOOK, the product of a man who would pay any price and go to any lengths to translate a tome of forbidden knowledge. By David J. Schow

Creepy, thrilling, and at times maddeningly boring, but ultimately humorous and satisfying: TEMPTING PROVIDENCE. An artist visits his alma mater to find himself in a battle of wits with unwelcome trans-dimensional predators and a psychopathic gallery director. By Jonathan Thomas

A scientist interested in crytozoological genetics visits a remote English island hoping to uncover THE TRUTH ABOUT PICKMAN, and leaves with far more truth than he probably wanted. By Brian Stableford.

I personally would not have expected a Lovecraftian anthology to contain a post-apocalyptic gore-fest as perpetrated by LESSER DEMONS, but I still thought this was a hum-dinger. By Norman Partridge

Completely unknown to the world at large, events that might eventually unknit the world are happening deep inside SUSIE as she molders away in an Edwardian insane asylum. By Jason Van Hollander

Here we have interesting stories based on various parts of the Lovecraft mythos, three different stories with takes on Lovecraft’s PICKMAN’S MODEL, and a few stories that don’t really have much to do with Lovecraft, but which are still entertaining in their own right. I think it’s safe to say that nobody REALLY writes like Lovecraft, especially the authors who claim that they do. Is that a bad thing? It’s hard to say. Mostly I’m glad to read a collection like this, where some great authors have taken the time and effort to craft stories that Lovecraft fans will find entertaining and interesting. Sure there were some disappointing stories here, but for the most part this collection is worthwhile. I would recommend it to fans of the genre.

Black Wings of Cthulhu – Edited by S.T. Joshi – Titan Books – 2012

Many thanks to Titan Books for sending me a review copy of this book.

Posted April 8, 2012 at 3:01 pm in Book Reviews with Tags: 2010, 2012, Cthulhu, H.P. Lovecraft, Titan Books. See 0 Comments

Sequels and Second Novels

I’ve got a terrible revue backlog, so the time has come to do some quickies. Coincidentally, most of what we have here today are sequels and second novels.

As it follows pretty much the same central characters as Anno Dracula, but occurs 30 years later, there are a lot of similarities between Anno and Bloody Red Baron. The book is very readable. Set in an alt-historical World War I being fought with Dracula himself goading the Kaiser, a parade of real historical figures and fictional luminaries make cameos or serve as main characters. Included in the bunch are Edgar Allan Poe (here eschewing his middle name and living the unfortunate life of a Kafka character), the Mata Hari, Count Orlok, Manfred von Richthofen, and the Baron’s brother, Lothar. There is no Genevieve Dieudonne, sadly. As with Anno Dracula, the plot is meandering and sometimes seems headed nowhere. In Anno, this meandering supplied more delicious background. In Bloody Red Baron, this meandering led your undeserving servant to distraction and annoyance. I find myself hesitant to read the next and last in this series.
Bloody Red Baron by Kim Newman – Carroll & Graf – 1995
Bloody Red Baron on Amazon

After having read The Sad Tale of the Brothers Grossbart and love love loving it, imagine my delight in finding that Bullington had published another book this very year. The Enterprise of Death is a parable on how tricky it can be to rise above the circumstances from which we emerge. In the case of our heroine, Awa, those circumstances are rather dire. Awa is a former slave who, along with her mistress, is waylaid by a cruel necromancer shopping for a rather rare sort of successor. The kind of successor who, if they learned their true fate, would not go willingly. The good news, if it could be called good, is that Awa learns how to be a passable necromancer. We witness her horrific training, and follow her later adventures. As in the Brothers, the violence is hyper-photographically brutal, the sexy bits are graphic and never kink-free, and the main characters are caught in machinations that remain mostly beyond their ken. There is a scene late in the book where Awa is magically granted greater intelligence and she is stunned to look back and see how stupid she’s been. For years. My gripes: The ending does not ring true to these ears, and the Bullington’s carefully measured language is suddenly peppered with frank explicit sexual vocabulary starting at about one third of the way through the book, and I found it distracting. Still, The Enterprise of Death is an entertaining read. Those who are not entertained will be offended, and the Hyena wins my award for the most horrific monster of the year.
The Enterprise of Death by Jesse Bullington – Orbit Books – 2011.
The Enterprise of Death on Amazon

Ha ha ho ho hee hee is it awkward explaining to all my friends that I’m not just reading these thinly veiled vampire/werewolf romance novels, but that I think they’re fantastic. See my review of the first, here. Yes. Yes I’ve read all of them now. They are in order, after Soulless: Changeless, Blameless, and Heartless. Another, Timeless, is due March 2012. Gail Carriger continues the fascinating adventures of Alexia Tarabotti as she thwarts enemies, spouts wry observations, and dodges multiple assassination attempts by various nefarious 19th Century organizations, all while keeping appearances and providing proper guidance on manners. I spent a lot of time thinking about this, and found one nit to pick with these books: The covers are not getting better, and they really need to get somebody working on that. Everything else is grand. The books are an easy read and hard to put down. New York Times Bestselling. Still not ready to take the plunge? Just repeat after me: Low-brow is high-brow. Low-brow is high-brow. Low-brow is high-brow. There’s no place like home.
Changeless, Blameless, and Heartless by Gail Carriger – 2010, 2010, 2011 – Orbit Books
Check it out! The first 3 books available CHEAP for the Kindle.

Posted August 9, 2011 at 7:09 am in Book Reviews with Tags: 1910s, 1995, 19th Century, 2010, 2011, dark fantasy, dystopian, horror, mad scientist, secret societies, ultraviolence. See 3 Comments

Jason Dark Dime Novels by Guido Henkel

Anyone who has spent even a few minutes on my site can probably tell that I enjoy pulp fiction. I like terror, suspense, damsels in distress, vague shambling monsters, and horrifying visions of darkness. I also like a good Victorian ghost story here and there. So when the publisher contacted me about this series, obviously I had to take a look. Here is the blurb from the author:

Launched in January of 2010, “Jason Dark” is a dime novel series in the vein of the old classic monster movies and detective stories. Playing Victorian England, it revolves around Jason Dark, a fearless and resourceful ghost hunter, that follows in the mold of Sherlock Holmes combined with Randall Garrett’s Lord D’Arcy. While using familiar themes and visuals, the story also tries to put a spin on various myths and genre stereotypes. Filled with plot twist and furious action, as well as handfuls of historic and literary references, they are somewhat sensational mysteries, just the way classic dime novels used to be… Working on a periodical release schedule, since the initial launch in January we have already released a number of new adventures…
Each adventure is 64 pages long and sells for $2.99 in a large variety of formats, such as a printed booklet, in PDF form and just about every eBook reader format in the market, including, of course, the Kindle, Nook and iPad.

I’m really bummed about these books. On one hand, they are presented as trashy dime novels right down to their pulp-style, two-column text format and their sensationalist covers. So part of me wants to turn off my brain and enjoy them. The problem is that, just because they were trashy sensationalist fiction, it doesn’t mean that the dime pulps of old were poorly written. It also doesn’t mean that that the stories in dime pulps were published unedited and were never passed under the eyes of a proofreader.

I always feel a little bad complaining about someone’s writing. I’m not a professional author, for sure. I sometimes use the word too when I mean to use the word to. I have to think about where the period goes when I’m making a parenthetical statement. I’m not sure if that apostrophe belongs in the first sentence of this paragraph. There was a time when I had a very beautiful and mysterious editor who would read all the posts on this site before they got published, but she’s up to other things these days. Like luring poor sick orphans to their dooms, or inventing new ways to use mummy bones in diabolical recipes. And who can blame her? I certainly can’t.

While they are entertaining in chosen subject matter, (I really liked the blood bath vampire orgy at the end of Theater of Vampires), the writing in the books is rather… OK I’ll say it: bad. Sentence structures are awkward. Punctuation is missing here and there. There are adverbs put to use in ways that made me sigh and groan. There are words used incorrectly. My particular favorite incorrectly used word in Theater of Vampires is quite a doozie. Here we find our heroes on their way to a hotel restaurant:

“The large driveway that led up from Regent Street was awash with warm color when Jason Dark and Siu Ling pulled up in their chaise lounge.”

A CHAISE LOUNGE

Later in the book, during a fight:

“Every muscle strain in her body tightened and wound up like a coil, ready to explode into action.”

While I enjoy the subject matter of these books, and think that the dime pulp format is interesting, the writing is impossible for me to get around. It’s certainly not as bad as this abominable past entry who also just happened to be emulating old pulps, but it’s still not good.

(LATER NOTE: The author contacted me after reading my review and has advised me that the electronic format copies of these books have been revised and they are not all full of bad language now, having been properly edited. I haven’t had the chance to read them to verify this, but figured that I would let it be known.)

Creepy Factor: 2 out of 5
Suspense Factor: 1 out of 5
Weird Erotic Tension Factor: 0 out of 5
Funny and/or Strange Factor: 1 out of 5

Stereotypical two-dimensional characters. Utter lack of eroticism. No sense of humor. Painful dialogue. Bad ’80s lingerie on the supposedly Victorian vampiress on the cover. And most of this I probably would have forgiven had the trouble been taken to edit and proofread the story.

Theater of Vampires by Guido Henkel – Thunder Peak Publishing – 2010

Posted March 6, 2011 at 7:47 pm in Book Reviews with Tags: 19th Century, 2010, creepy, mystery, pulps, sleazy cover, vampires, vintage fiction. See 0 Comments

Book Review: Factotum by D.M. Cornish

Factotum by D.M. Cornish is the third (and final?) book in a series which was called “The Monster Blood Tattoo” series, but which is now being called “The Foundling’s Tale.” I personally like the title change. The first two books in the series are Foundling and Lamplighter (review here).

Ah, books in series. I have to admit that they are much more my speed. Although I like a good short story if it’s really really good, give me a novel and I’ll be more satisfied. A good series, though, is a happy investment. The only problem is that sometimes a series can suffer from quality issues. For example, sometimes the author changes styles and themes wildly like Anne Rice did with her famous Vampire Chronicle novels. Sometimes things get really really weird, like in Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials series. Other times the more you read, the less patience you have with the author, which is what happened to me while reading through all of James Ellroy’s “LA Quartet” (although I still really highly recommend Black Dahlia). It seems like, inevitably, simply because of the time and effort involved in writing something so massive, there are going to be some inconsistencies, and the reader is going to prefer one book over another.

Wow, it almost sounds like I’m winding up to deliver some bad news. Actually, the books are very consistent well-written. To me, they don’t have any of the problems associated with novels in series that I mentioned above. There is a little bad news: The first quarter of Factotum is a kind of dry and stiff. I ended up getting kind of annoyed with the hero of the series, Rosamund himself. The kid is earnest and he means well. He just keeps getting into trouble. I guess that there has to be conflict, otherwise there wouldn’t be any plot and most books would feature people who just sort of float along through the landscape. But at the same time, the main conflict of this book seemed manufactured to me, and I think that it got in the way of what should have been the real adventure. That being Rosamund working for Europe and the fallout from the events of the second novel. Maybe with some Threnody thrown in for good measure.

What happens? Rosamund and Europe travel to Europe’s home after the events of the second book. They’re kind of dazed and looking to get back to “normal”, whatever that would be in this situation. As mentioned above, Rosamund manages to stir up some new trouble, and a little old trouble comes looking for them. Then they leave town on a monster-hunting trip with the hope that things back home will cool down. Rosamund and Europe go to slay monsters for pay, but find themselves on an adventure of discovery.

On to the good news. The book is at least as imaginative as the other two in the series, and once the adventure starts the book is extremely entertaining. I had a hard time putting it down. Fans of the first two books will be happy to find that some of the loose ends of the series get a little better tied up. I also think Cornish did a great job of adding depth and explanation to what was happening in the background of the series without spelling it out for the readers. We get a lot more of Europe, which is good news. However, there is no Threnody, which I guess shouldn’t be a big surprise, but I was still disappointed.

Creepy Factor: 3 out of 5
Suspense Factor: 4 out of 5
Weird Erotic Tension Factor: 0 out of 5 (it’s about a boy, so…)
Funny and/or Strange Factor: 3 out of 5

Final result: I didn’t think this was as amazingly great as the first two books, but I still loved it. Great adventure, deep characterizations, cool illustrations, hard lessons, strange monsters, and enormous suspense all in one place.

Foundling by D.M. Cornish – Speak – 2007
Lamplighter by D.M. Cornish – Putnam – 2008
Factotum by D.M. Cornish – Putnam – 2010
Get Foundling on Amazon
Get Lamplighter on Amazon
Get Factotum on Amazon

Posted January 26, 2011 at 11:15 pm in Book Reviews with Tags: 2010, art, childhood, monsters, young adult. See 0 Comments

Book Review: Man-Made Monsters by Dr. Bob Curran

Thanks very much to Career Press for sending me a copy of this book, Man-Made Monsters by Dr. Bob Curran, illustrated by Ian Daniels. This is a rather extensively researched book on things such as homunculi, golems, Frankenstein’s monsters, and ancient robots. So yes, the topic of this book is anything that is man-made that can move by itself and/or do the bidding of its creator (and/or maybe kill kill kill!).

Written as a field guide, the book explores history, literature, and superstition to investigate whether or not such things have existed. Along the way, we learn about the author of Frankenstein, Mary Shelley, and the people and mythical figures she may have used to form the basis for her famous novel. The book also digs deeply into Jewish lore about the Golem, which is a mythical figure made of mud brought to life by powerful rabbis. Curran also looks into the history of the Knights Templar and ancient Middle Eastern alchemists who may have held the secrets to creating man-made life. Later in the book, Curran details ancient myths and stories about creatures that resemble robots. Finally, the book spends some time examining man-made life in current events, such as cloning. Did I mention reanimating the dead? That figures into it as well.

I thought that this was an uneven read. If you’re at all interested in the Knights Templar, Jewish mysticism, the Shelleys, Alchemy, or Greek myths, you will certainly find interesting information here. I found some of this worthwhile, having read Tim Powers’ The Stress of Her Regard not too long ago. It made me consider the events of that book (which is really an incredible, insane vampire tale – you must read it!) in a different light. I also found the parts about Middle Eastern Muqarribun fascinating – mostly because I’m a big fan of the Book of the Thousand Nights and One Night.

My Favorite Illustration from the Book

My Least Favorite Illustration from the Book

Needs More Mommets

The artwork makes me think that the intended audience of this book might be someone who would use the information to plan a Dungeons and Dragons adventure. Interspersed among the tasty tidbits is an unfortunate amount of information on obtuse historical figures. The book gets a little bogged down in some of these details, such as “this rabbi studied under that rabbi, who probably had occasion to read this now-lost tome by this rabbi, who was said to have created a golem that kept his house clean.” In other words, too much history. Not enough applying electricity to dead convicts to see if they will come back from the dead.

More by the Doctor

It bears mentioning that Dr. Bob Curran is also the author of quite a library of related lore. Here is a list:

Can you tell I’m on the fence about this one, dear reader? Let’s put it this way: The contents were interesting enough that now I’m curious to read one or two of the books listed above. I think that’s a good sign. Let’s see the numbers:

Creepy Factor: 3 out of 5
Suspense Factor: 0 out of 5 (it’s not a story, really)
Weird Erotic Tension Factor: 0 out of 5
Funny and/or Strange Factor: 4 out of 5

Final result: People and monsters who are interested in history as it relates to forbidden and arcane subjects like this will probably find Man-Made Monsters an interesting read. It is a little dry at times. Cover will require paper bag book cover if reading in public (I’m just saying). Needs more ghouls, mommets, and clockwork automatons.

Man-Made Monsters by Dr. Bob Curran – with illustrations by Ian Daniels – Career Press / New Page Books – 2010

Buy Man-Made Monsters on Amazon now!

Thanks again to the publisher for sending me a copy of this book to review. See you all next time!

Posted December 30, 2010 at 11:09 pm in Book Reviews with Tags: 2010, creepy, evil mechanism, fairy tales, folk tales, history, monsters, non-fiction, psychopaths, secret societies. See 1 Comment

Tag Archive for '2010'

Black Wings of Cthulhu

Sequels and Second Novels

Jason Dark Dime Novels by Guido Henkel

Book Review: Factotum by D.M. Cornish

Book Review: Man-Made Monsters by Dr. Bob Curran

Needs More Mommets

More by the Doctor

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