Season 8 Book 3
ISBN: 9781595827652
Likely my favorite volume of Buffy so far, Book Three starts off with Buffy finding out about the major plot from the last volume, the lingering number of Slayers who have escaped her tutelage and have become something other than the first line of defense against evil.
But before Buffy and the gang have time to assess this new threat their castle is attacked by a group of vampires, unlike any other, who can shape shift to mist, and wolves and bats. They’re after the Slayer’s Ultimate Weapon and when they get it Buffy and the Slayers and Scoobies have to go on a quest to get it back before something really bad happens.
Joining them in their quest is the immortal, and bored, Dracula, whose powers the vampires used to get past the Slayers in the first place. What results is a hilarious, offensive, dark romp through the Buffy-verse that could rival the infamous Puppet Cancer episode of Angel.
This plot is a side aspect of the overall arc for this “season” but the events and character building in this volume is no less important to the texture and depth of the world itself. This is how one entertains and creates a complex, vivid world with a scope every bit as varied as our own.
ISBN: 978-0981639000
Despite the flavorful title, Gene O’ Neill’s Taste of Tenderloin doesn’t feature eight stories dedicated to culinary tales, but instead it’s his ode to the San Francisco Tenderloin District, bent on making the area a vivid, magical place all its own.
The first story, “Lost Patrol”, is not necessarily a traditional story with a beginning, middle and end. Instead it’s a character profile, short, but vivid, with a delicate stretch of story surrounding it. Like an appetizer, there’s not much here, but enough to get a good taste of what’s to come.
Next comes “Magic Words”, an old school urban fantasy tale of dark magic and a mysterious homeless woman who one night, taking only a promise for the future as payment, gives a man the exact words he needed to move forward in his life. Unlike a lot of other stories, this one doesn’t try to present a “be careful what you ask for” moral. Instead it just presents itself as it is, adding an element of mysticism to the Tenderloin.
“Tombstones in His Eyes” tackles the overlapping tales of the junkies on the street, using some very interesting symbolism. Again, O’ Neill doesn’t so much tell a story as present a character and their tale, in the good and bad, for the reader’s viewing.
“Bushido” is also lovely, the tale of a man who finds salvation in the streets walking alongside doom. But the imagery and the climax bear a strong resemblance to the previous tale, and so it lessens some of the impact.
“Balance” follows a vet suffering from a disconnect with reality. It’s hard to watch Declan’s version of getting more control over the world around him, since he can’t seem to control his own brain functions. But this story, like the other so far, is present unflinchingly, with little effort to make the reader sympathize with the characters. Instead O’ Neill just beckons you to come and listen.
With “The Apotheosis of Nathan McKee” O’Neill ties the people of the Tenderloin and the stories in this collection together firmly, making each minor, barely mentioned character the owner of their own story. Nathan, interchangeable with the attack victim in “Bushido”, discovers a beating has left him not only for with a complete lack of desire for the booze he used to drug himself, but it’s given him a unique ability. Only he’s not quite sure what to do with it. The first overall positive tale, without a bittersweet touch, it possesses a delicate aspect of intriguing urban fantasy.
In “Bruised Soul” Mickey D, an ex boxer abandoned to the streets by time and suffering from damage taken through the length of his career, hits the streets after a stint in a mental facility, only to discover the good things have gotten that much worse in his absence and the bad things, of course, never change. It’s his new neighbor that piques his interest this time around, an exotic woman named Jenna who seems to have a peculiar ability. Threaded just as finely is an end question, what is real and what has Micky D imagined, without the heavy-handedness of other stories.
Finally is “5150”, the first first person story in the collection. Here the lead might not seem like a true member of the Tenderloin, but by the sad, shattering end of this cop’s life you can see every character story so far caught up in this one tale.
Readers should be warned that these characters seem fleshy and real, their tales often dark and hopeless. It is easy to get pulled into the hopeless feeling of this collection.
Taste of Tenderloin is a tight network of precise details and emotion presented, but firmly held back from influencing the reader in each story. A delicate balance of realism, surrealism and unique storytelling makes it a compelling read.
Eric S. Brown’s Season of Rot is a collection of five zombie novellas that from the first page demonstrates how well-versed Brown is in the zombie genre. In scene after scene, readers will find good guys and bad guys, women and children, all trying to survive the undead plague while holed up in hospitals, military bases and even luxury cruise ships converted for war against the undead.
What’s hard to find is a true sense of storytelling in any of Brown’s offerings…
Full Review at DarkScribe Magazine.
17
Sep
Full Disclosure: I read this book as a judge for the 2008 EPPIE Awards. As such this won’t be a traditional review. However, even a year later I haven’t been able to get this book out of my mind. It’s because of a recent flare up of the GLBTQ inclusion debate that I feel the need to “go public”, as it were, and recommend this book.
Body Parts by Adrianna Dane is an erotic, gender-fluid re-telling of Frankenstein. It is paranormal horror and it features explicit sex between male and female and male and male.
Body Parts is about Athan, a creature created from a marriage of science and magic. After the tragic death of his creators Athan has to live alone with his secrets, taking lovers for the energy they bring to him that keeps him alive.
Body Parts is a love story, but with the exact same strength it is a story of corruption and human failure as well as being a re-telling of Frankenstein. On the romance side it deals with attraction and raw sexuality that doesn’t have a clear target. Athan is bisexual, seeking out the best providers of energy, and furthermore he truly enjoys the act of sex no matter which gender he is with. He has the same passion for men as he does for women.
I think it’s important to note here that out of all the GLBTQ books I read for the EPPIES (which was not many, so please do not assume this is an accurate representation of the available fiction out there) Body Parts is the ONLY one that did not involve 1) A borderline or completely abusive m/m relationship or 2) a straight man falling for a gay/bisexual man (which almost always feels stodgy and forced to me as a reader). Dane’s handling of Athan’s sexuality and sex itself is masterful, never forced, and completely organic.
Likewise the horror aspects are just as well handled, making the erotic portions no more important than the themes of human jealous and self-sabotage.
As Athan develops feelings for Korrie, the scientist studying the research materials and journals of the scientists who created Athan, and Korrie becomes enamored of him as well, Korrie’s selfish, jealous coworker plots to tear everything of value from both of them with no idea what exactly that entails.
Subtle and manipulating, the story comes together beautifully at the end, making an even bigger point than the themes of sex, sexuality, sexual identity, human nature and science threaded before it. I can’t say too much without ruining a very good execution, but I strongly feel that this book has great value as part of GLBTQ fiction and horror fiction.
Dane can write the pants off quite a few horror writers I’ve read, despite that Body Parts and Dane likely aren’t even known by the horror community. Body Parts is in my top three GLBTQ works that I feel interested readers should read and is available in ebook form from Loose ID.
Dark Regions Press kicks off its New Voices of Horror series with a strong – and rotting – foot with this collection of tales from David Dunwoody. It’s clear from line one that Dunwoody knows what he’s doing when it comes to writing good fiction. Inside these pages we see every kind of savage inhuman monster, from the zombies Dunwoody is known for, to demons, werewolves, and things that have no explanation — even in the horror realm…
Full Review at DarkScribe Magazine.
Season 8: Book 2
ISBN: 9781593079635
If Buffy, the petite pop-modern vampire slayer wasn’t enough for you this second volume from Joss Whedon’s “Season Eight” of Buffy brings tortured, anti-heroine slayer Faith back into play in a role even more suited to her than vampire and demon slaying.
Part of the draw of the Buffy-verse is the balance of darkness and good. Every character has had their dips into evil, from Xander’s flirtations with all manner of monsters to Willow’s grief-induced stint as the Big Bad. But some characters start out from deeper in the evil well. Giles and Faith are two of the darkest, Faith representing the out of control youth, caught in a cycle of violence from a young age and carrying on the chaos in her own life in a sort of self-fulfilling prophecy. Giles’ history, merely glanced upon in the TV series feels more like a betrayal, when you come to love this patient, always-trying man only to discover he has a hard core of frightening ruthlessness.
Buffy, Xander and even Willow are the Superman and the Spidermans of the Buffy-verse, but Faith and Giles are the Punishers.
This analogy is proven hard and fast from the first few pages when Giles calls on Faith to do what the other Slayers can’t, walk into the house of a single mother who was turned into a vampire and slay the kids she turned. After this trying scene Giles meets back up with Faith at her apartment and asks her to handle a special case for him, one he doesn’t even want Buffy, Xander, Willow and the other Slayers to know about. It stands to reason that not all the Potentials who are now endowed with Slayer powers would turn out good, especially as other creatures of power find and foster them since Buffy’s operation is busy with the new threats from the mysterious “Twilight” and the good old U.S. Government.
Assassinating a Slayer, even if she is evil is not an easy task, as this volume proves.
Furthermore, “No Future for You” also proves that the switch to comics was an excellent move for Whedon and the Buffy-verse as the format allows a lot more playing, and a hyperfocus on characters otherwise glanced over in the series. Many plots dealt with Faith and her waffling between the forces of good and evil, but the glimpses we see of her past in these pages are heart breaking and enlightening at the same time.
One could easily argue, after this addition to Season Eight, that Faith might make a better lead, if the audience can handle a grittier, darker, less reliable narrator.
*Also, this volume features the cameo of my publisher’s wife, Robin, which I was very glad to finally get to read.
8
Sep
ISBN: 9780061649691
Coraline Jones, ignored, unappreciated and outright bored, lives in a house with a crazy old man who trains rats in the flat above her, and a pair of retired actresses and their dog in the flat below her. In her flat there is a most wondrous door, which leads to nowhere, except at night, when it leads to a whole other world built just for her.
By now between the book and the movie, you’ve probably heard of it, if not seen or read it. But for those who haven’t met Coraline and her creepy, button-eyed other mother there’s a few things they should know.
Coraline isn’t Gaiman’s best work, or the prettiest as far as story or prose goes. What it is is incredibly imaginative and unlike any other scary kids book out there. The stand out element isn’t the true bizarreness, but Coraline herself, strong, courageous and most importantly a very smart little girl.
This book is as much about how a child deals with the bad things in life as it is about parental abandonment or the scary things that go bump in the night. Like the Harry Potter series faces themes of losing the people you love, Coraline contains a subtle, encouraging message about being strong, fierce and bringing your own bravery into all the challenges you face.
For this reason alone it’s a must-have addition to any child or child-oriented library. The other elements just add to the experience, making Coraline a potential children’s classic for years to come.