28
Nov
The November edition of Apex Magazine (again, which is a completely free webzine) starts with William T. Vandemark’s “A Splash of Color”. A teched out tribute to art it speaks of both the potential and the danger when every bit of us can become artistic medium. Stories of body parts and fluids used in paintings are easy to find in the horror genre, but none are like this one and can barely dream of ever being so.
In “The New Breed” Michael A. Burstein tackles reproductive rights in a world where our planet has been conquered and is run by aliens. While more could have been done with the climax and end, matching it to the layered depths set up at the opening of the story, Burstein expertly captures the difficulty of decision making when none of the options are good.
“Take Your Daughters to Work” by Livia Llewellyn brings a sinister Elder Gods feel to a world that’s part science fiction and part throwback to an era of steam and industry. Sadie approaches the tradition of going to work with her father with pride and bit of worry. He’s the boss after all, and she needs to be worthy of him. Llewellyn pushes the twisted feel readers get while Sadie observes the city and her father’s work all the way to the end without relenting or depending on a twist ending.
“Behold: Skowt!” by Jason Heller is a crude and beautiful tale of the streets in the future world where the have-nots are as proportionately worse off as the haves are better, compared to our world. Skowt is the hard as stone alter ego of a boy living on the streets who aspires to only one thing, one glorious act which will make the world finally notice him. It’s raw, in an intense, effective way reminiscent of S.P. Somtow’s harsh urban fiction.
“The Moribund Room” by Carol Lanham first appeared in History is Dead, a wonderful anthology of historical zombie tales. The dark love story, heavy on the morbid, holds up to multiple readings and the prose still holds magic after all is illuminated.
It should also be pointed out that Apex Magazine is more than just fiction. Each issue also features columns, interviews and essays both genre-clectic and general literacy-based.
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Any Given Doomsday, for better or worse is best summed up as what the Anita Blake series by Laurell K. Hamilton would be if all supernatural creatures (almost) were actually the spawn of fallen angels, left on Earth to challenge (aka slaughter) humankind.
The set up demands that readers accept the absolute existence of God and the Christian mythos, whereas most urban fantasies ask a reader to believe in the creature, but leave religion out of the picture. This can potentially bring Christian readers into urban fantasy, if they can get past the sex.
And the sex… is non-consenting. Definitely an aspect that will turn off many readers Elizabeth, the heroine, is drugged, and raped graphically multiple times within the book. This is completely forgivable (in the context of the story) because sex is vital to Elizabeth’s powers. While I normally avoid giving such blatant spoilers these I found particularly troubling.
The story itself starts when Elizabeth Phoenix finds her foster mother dying on floor of her home, attacked by something Elizabeth can’t explain. With a few cryptic words and a dark vision Ruthie passes something on to Elizabeth that lands Elizabeth in a coma. When she wakes up Elizabeth learns from her ex-coworkers, the Milwaukee PD, that her foster brother and ex-lover Jimmy is their number one suspect. Jimmy himself breaks the news that Ruthie passed her powers to Elizabeth, which makes Elizabeth obligated–for her own safety–to hunt down Ruthie’s killers. And Elizabeth isn’t just a seer, she’s THE prophesied seer, meant to be the most powerful one, a seer and a demon killer and the person who is supposed to lead the side of good in the war against the evil Nephalim.
Elizabeth’s complete lack of knowledge about the supernatural world does not set the story up in a good frame. Instead of being introduced to the rules of the magical world slowly it leads to the reader, like Elizabeth, to have no clue what’s going on, but being pressured to accept tension, and to see Elizabeth attacked with no real idea of how these things are important. The pacing is slow, the revelations convenient and Elizabeth herself is a much quieter, less dynamic urban fantasy character.
The pace is unsure, more than once a fact is hidden from the reader for effect, though the story is told in first person and Elizabeth herself already knows of it. Readers are never given a solid idea of the “rules” of magic and the paranormal because they seem cherry picked for effect rather than for character building. While all Nephalim are absolutely evil both men presented as love interests have Nephalim blood and Elizabeth herself may have (after all, she has everything else that might make her powerful, other than strength of personality).
Any Given Doomsday has action, but feels slow despite it, reluctant to participate in or commit itself to its own story. The similarities to other series and the Biblical/Apocalyptic set up could bring in a fan base, but many will find this book vapid and unsatisfying.
Apex Publications, in addition to offering a free online magazine, is now offering free samples from most of its books and anthologies as well.
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Readers should be aware that Blood of the Dead is the first book in Fuchs’ Undead World Trilogy and as such it does not offer a resolution in this volume. What it does have is a zombie apocalypse, four humans fighting against hordes of the hungry undead and struggling to survive in a desolate world, and some excellent pacing and tension…
Full review at Monsterlibrarian.com
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The Parasitorium: Parasitic Thoughts is the latest collection from the Yahoo writers’ group, The Parasitorium. This one is collection of nine tales of insanity and shocking violence.
“My True Name” by John Claude Smith kicks off the collection by setting the thematic mood. A gory tale of Triggerboy and Bill DeathDaughter, a pair of men who are outside of the throes of reality, and whose true names define themselves and their place in life. Triggerboy embraces his chaotic roll, but Bill shows some remorse, immediately following it up with a “but it’s not really my fault”. However, one day their morbid exploits come to an end when they meet a family at a rest stop that seems to know much more than they should and appear willing to share, for all the sense it makes. This tale exists somewhere between hard gore, bizarro and Cthulhu Mythos but never makes a solid decision as to what it wants to be.
Nancy Jackson’s “Cocked and Ready” is sex crazed story of a gorgeous woman too dim to live and Damien, the porn store clerk with a one track mind who is more than willing to see her to that nasty end. That the lovely, naive Christy follows Damien through a dank, foul subway tunnel to a concrete room beneath the city (that has a phone) kills any sympathy the reader might have with her as a character. Ultimately “Cocked and Ready” is a familiar mix of torture porn and exploitation tale without any last minute saves.
In “Days, Hours, Minutes, Seconds” by Jodi Lee the lead tells the reader at the opening that she’s crazy, to put it lightly. In fact she doesn’t know much, other than she’s crazy and she’s hearing voices in a house. She’s not just hearing the voices of the tortured and murdered children that live between the walls, but there’s an impostor named Maya who looks like her doing horrible things. The drama is turned up pretty high on this one, it’s successfully moody and dark, but the concreteness of the “house” is open to interpretation, which could work for or against the tale depending on the reader’s views.
“Father’s Pride” by Keith Gouveia is the tale of Jim, a blatant hick terrified that his son is gay (to the point of needing a psychiatrist to assuage his fears) and his son, who has reason to be scared of girls. Jim’s determination to make his boy a man (and deny his own past explorations) leads him to a strip club back room (even though his son is a minor) where an aging whore attempts to service the teen and where Jim’s true feelings about his son are revealed. Flat and depending on stereotypes “Father’s Pride” is a fast paced and twisted sex tale.
“Interloper” by Spider has most of the plot of Fran Friel’s “Mama’s Boy” but none of the subtlety. Rudy rushes to a diner at the wee hours of the morning only to find his friend Jake shaking and ranting, claiming the most bizarre things. Then he helps Jake home to disastrous consequences. Readers can probably guess what the men find, and what happens next in this Goosebumps style tale for grown ups.
“Keepsakes” by Jane Gwaltney is a poetic piece, a slice of thought bit of the mind of a murderous crazy woman. Like one of the previous stories boiled down to the strongest imagery it benefits from the short punchiness.
Also by Jane Gwaltney “Triad” starts out with a touch of dark humor, just as it’s predecessor ends. The twisted, parasitic tale of a man torn between siamese twins it’s one of the best in the collection.
In “Gemini Rising” by Scott E. Hancock Jason is pulled home from a conference in Vegas by police with the horrifying news that his wife has been killed. While he tries to move forward with his daughter he’s haunted by his own actions while asleep and when he seeks help from his daughter’s psychiatrist he discovers the truth about his wife’s death and his little girl. A fantasy tale of multiple personality disorder it also touches on Lovecraftian themes.
Last up is “Mind Games” by Paul Harris which looks at another form of psychosis outside of voices and sociopathy. Paranoia tinges this tale of an agoraphobic, housebound man whose hallucinations might just be real. It’s a gushing end to an anthology about sex, violence and extreme insanity that goes for fast, hard horror rather than slow building dread.
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*I received this book as part of the LibraryThing Early Reader Program.
If you love real life ghost stories and tales of haunted houses, hospitals and highways this is an excellent book for you. A compendium of tales of apparitions and mysterious happenings the book is cut into small, easy to digest pieces and often includes contact information for the restaurants, hotels and stores that claim to have ghostly residents.
Rule does offer some research into the possible identities of the ghosts, as well as token information on area ghost hunters and enough contact information to plan a ghost theme vacation.
She doesn’t offer a skeptic’s point of view or attempt to make the otherworldly scientific (aside from mentioning EVPs and batteries draining on investigations). She does include many interesting pictures that while not supernatural are mood setting.
If you don’t like tales of hauntings then you won’t find anything new here. But ghost fans can be insatiable and this is a fine starting place or addition to a fan’s library.
13
Nov
Black Death Books and KHP Inustries are offering a free pulp serial novel (it started November 1st). Blurb below:
THE STING OF THE SCORPION by Warren Stockholm, #1 in the Scorpion series.
Imagine a world where the Allies lost the war to Nazi Germany and America has spent sixty years under duress by Axis powers. Now imagine an America newly freed from oppression and trying to find its way—through crime and punishment. Welcome to the new America.
Kurt Reinhardt is a powerful and debonair newspaper publisher by day—but by night he becomes a crime-busting vigilante feared by the criminal underground and relentlessly pursued by the police. He is neither entirely good nor is he evil—and as The Scorpion his agenda is his own. To fight the criminal element he utilizes the awesome .50 caliber Sting, a garrote of piano wire, and secrets best left buried forever in the past. Aiding him in his ruthless quest for “death for death and blood for blood” are hard-boiled Police Captain Dick Barracks, Spike Malone, a cynical young hooligan out of the river district, and Suzaku, his loyal Japanese retainer. At night in Steeltown the shadows are alive and The Scorpion crawls…
11
Nov
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Don’t let the first story in Fran Friel’s collection, Mama’s Boy and Other Dark Tales, deceive you into thinking this is some sort of “Horror Lite” book. The first story, “Beach of Dreams,” is a surreal, exotic tale..