Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Season 8, vols. 2-4.

Vaughn, Brian K., George Jeanty and Joss Whedon. Vol 2: No future for you. Milwaukie, OR: Dark Horse, 2009.

Goddard, Drew, George Jeanty and Joss Whedon. Vol 3: Wolves at the Gate. Milwaukie, OR: Dark Horse, 2009.

Whedon, Joss, Karl Moline and Jeph Loeb. Vol 4: Time of you life. Milwaukie, OR: Dark Horse, 2009.

Now this is more like it!

A little while ago, when I reviewed the first volume of the collected Buffy the Vampire Slayer Season 8 series from Dark Horse, I was kind of disappointed. I felt the story telling was choppy and jumbled and that it lacked a lot of the real character development strengths of the original TV series.

Well, the next three volumes of the series are a huge improvement.

They are Volume 2, No Future For You, volume 3, Wolves at the Gate and volume 4, Time of Your Life.

The main V2 arc is a Faith story, wherein Giles employs Faith to do some Council-type wetwork, stuff he wouldn't want to get Buffy involved in. It's a good, compelling read, getting two somewhat less involved characters in V1 back into the main line of Season 8. V3 Brings Dracula back, this time on Buffy's side, battling against some rogue Japanese vampires. V4 brings the futuristic Fray back into the mix, as Buffy travels into the future. V4 also brings Willow back into the main stream of the Season 8 arc.

Each volume also has a shorter stand-alone story, which is basically used for some character development, which often gets a bit of short shrift in the main volume arc.

Over all, I am pleased with how the S8 arc is developing -- just like more season arcs developed. Slowly during the first part of the season, setting up the big push later on. And the Twilight Big Bad arc for S8 is still pretty mysterious, so I'm looking forward to seeing how it develops.

I still have a few quibbles, of course, and I think the biggest is how a lot of the character stuff if peripheral to the main story arc. In the tv series, the character development and the story arc were always very tightly bound, basically one growing out of the other. Buffy and the other characters grew and changed because of what was happening to them, and even by S6 what was happening to them became the main story arc. In the comic series so far, they've much more tended to seal off the plot from the characterization. And I think it's a mistake. We really need to get back into the hearts and minds of the characters by the end of the arc, that's what needs to drive everything else. And if it doesn't happen, it'll be hard to judge S8 as a success.

Fox, Andrew. The good humor man. San Francisco: Tachyon, 2009. 282pp.

Andrew Fox's first two novels, Fat White Vampire Blues and Bride of the Fat White Vampire were entertaining and over-the-top, a couple of innovative entries into the vampire cannon. Cinematic and funny, touching and absurd, they were terrific reads if not quite great literature.

Now comes The Good Humor Man. It's a lot of the same things as the earlier books: obsessed with pop culture, very cinematic, funny and absurd although not quite as touching and romantic. On the other hand, it's also a lot more thought-provoking with a satirical edge that's a lot more upfront than the earlier work.

What's it about? Think of it as Fahrenheit 451 for the diet industry. Imagine a future USA where high calorie foods are illegal, and a gang of government-sponsored thugs will raid any high-cal party they find. Imagine if one of the founders of the movement suddenly thinks it's all going too far and that people should really be free to make their own choices in life.


Furthermore, it's also not hard to imagine that Big Food has come up with a few secrets of it's own. Our newly converted hero then needs to save the day.

What results is an amazing road trip into the heart of American food culture – Fat Elvis. Yes, Fat Elvis is the driving force (but not character, remember, it's the future) and inspiration for the book. More than that, I cannot reveal. Anyways, it's all kinda indescribable anyways. Liposuction, for example, is also a strangely important driving force in the novel.

Read it. It's fun and thoughtful and way OTT. In fact, every time you think Fox can't possibly go more OTT, he pulls another fried peanut butter and banana sandwich out of his hat.

Cooper, Seamus. The mall of Cthulhu. San Francisco: Night Shade, 2009. 235pp.

Seamus Cooper's The Mall of Cthulhu is a seriously strange and funny book.

Okay, here goes. A decade before the main action, Ted, a regular college kid, saves his lesbian best friend, Laura, from a horde of vampires trying to initiate her into their sorority; he's traumatized by having to massacre the whole nest of vampires (including a recently turned frat friend). Ten years later, she's joined the FBI as an analyst while he's unable to overcome his past and is following her from city to city as her career progresses, all the while working a series of McJobs.

Now, he stumbles on a Lovecraftian conspiracy. A bunch of white supremacists are working to bring the Great Old Ones back from their dimension. Ultimately, Ted and Laura work together along with a shadowy yet underfunded government agency to fight them back.

Light-hearted yet still a bit scary, this is a fantastic first novel. Good adventure, engaging characters, some self-deprecating insights into slacker/nerd culture, more-or-less tight plotting, tons of Lovecraft and other pop culture in-jokes not to mention a whole lot of winking and nudging – this is an entertaining melange. I certainly hope Cooper will bring Ted and Laura back for more supernatural adventures.

Maberry, Jonathan. Patient zero. New York: St. Martin's Griffin, 2009. 421pp.

If the vampire novel is slipping down into the realm of the bodice ripper, it seems to me that zombies are the new vampire – able to actually embody horror without romance or any kind of soft and fuzzy feelings. Zombies mostly evoke fear and terror and a almost fatalistic wonder at the randomness of the universe.

In the hands of a great up-and-coming horror novelist, zombies can be gold. Jonathan Maberry is just such a writer, the award-winning author of the Ghost Road Blues series of horror novels. Patient Zero is another real winner from Maberry, if anything even better than his earlier trilogy. It's a combination zombie horror and medical thriller – a very good example of the kind of hybrid science fiction horror genre that's bound to become more and more popular.

Basically, the idea is that a Baltimore cop is recruited by a secretive government agency to help stop what seems to be a Middle Eastern terrorist plot to flood the world with a plague of zombies that spread quite easily via victims being bitten. The action is non-stop, the main character, Jack Ledger, is quite well drawn, the plot points are a bit of a stretch but well within thriller limits.

One of the most interesting aspects is that Ledger's best friend, who also gets drawn into the fight, is a therapist who helps cops deal with the stress of their jobs, especially when they are forced to shoot someone. Throughout the novel, he's talking both Ledger and us through what it means to be a human being caught up in a whirlwind of violence and death, helping his friend and the other agents cope with what they're going thought at that basic human level. Very interesting and very well done.

Overall, an exciting and surprisingly thoughtful read. Highest marks in the summer reading sweepstakes. I anxiously await sequels.

(Yeah, I know. Zombies and humour. Zombies are strangely funny, it seems. Argh.)

Frost, Jeaniene. Destined for an early grave. New York: Avon, 2009. 355pp.

Anne Rice, Joss Whedon and the makers of the Underworld series of films certainly have a lot to answer for – turning the vampire genre from a true subset of the horror genre into a rather lame subset of the romance genre. Not that I have any problem with romantic vampires – as long as they're part of a larger field of vampire fiction that also includes evil, predatory vampires. My problem is that the dark supernatural romance seems to be edging out all the rest.

This brings us to Jeaniene Frost's Destined for an Early Grave. Not normally the kind of book I would read, a review copy just happened to land on my desk just as we were leaving for the cottage for a couple of weeks of R&R. So, I took it along. I also read it. Mind you, there were several times in the first 50 pages that I was sorely tempted to hurl it across the room. The romance stereotype characters drove me crazy. The sexy, feisty and tough yet strangely goofy and insecure female lead; the tall, dark, brooding and yet strangely sensitive male lead. The tall, dark, brooding and yet strangely deranged villain. Yeah, they're all there: Buffy, Angel and Spike. The plot and setting also hit all the highlights in the feudal gothic hit parade. Hereditary ruling classes, byzantine rules and regulations that you must just die for, a heroine with secret powers that happens to be the key to everyone's plans.

In the end, though, I did end up finishing the book – as stereotypical as the characters were, the plot had enough twists to keep me turning the pages even if the ending was dead predictable. Of course, it didn't hurt that initially I wasn't quite sure I'd brought enough books at the cottage so I more or less felt I had to read it. In different circumstances I might not have made it much past page 10 much less 50 or 350.

Sort of recommended. Barely.

And speaking of evil vampires, I have enjoyed David Wellington's work and I do look forward to reading the new Guillermo del Toro and Chuck Hogan book, The Strain. It is out there, I just wish the proportions were a bit different.

Whedon, Joss and George Jeanty. The Long Way Home. Milwaukie, OR: Dark Horse, 2007. 136pp.

Joss Whedon and George Jeanty's The Long Way Home is the first graphic novel collection of the Buffy the Vampire Slayer Season 8 series from Dark Horse.

When the Buffy tv show first came out, my sons were quite small so my wife and I weren't really adding any new tv shows to our roster. But the show did make a psychic impression because a lot of people I knew were watching it and reported loving it. So, now that the kids are older and all the seasons are on DVD, my wife and I basically gorged ourselves on Buffy, watching all seven tv seasons on DVD over about a seven month period -- watching the last couple of seasons in about two weeks each. The season-long story arcs made them very addictive and easy to watch the episodes in bunches.

Well, we finished the apocalyptic Season 7 a few weeks ago and it seemed like a good time to give the comics version Season 8 a try.

So, what do I think? So far, pretty good but not amazing.

There's about a 12 month gap between the end of S7 and the first issue here where some sort of Slayer organization has been set up in Scotland and that whole process is really glossed over very quickly. I could have used a bit more of a explanation of what went on with that, even if it did slow down the opening action. Which actually makes sense, of course, as the tv show never really worried about using up screen time filling in character relationships and back story bits. If anything, that's my big complaint so far with S8, that the characters and their personal stories are really getting short shrift in favour of some rather frenetic and disjointed action. It's understandable that some of the pacing habits of tv would have to change in comics, but so far I'm really missing the characters and their lives and personal stories.

The overall arc of S8 seems to focus on something called Twilight, and I do sort of see where they're going, but I'm really looking forward to getting a better sense of where they're taking the characters, in particular some of the minor characters like Dawn, who somehow has been transformed into a giant due to a romantic liaison with something called a "thricewise," whatever that is. In fact, that would have been a great story in itself. As it is, it seems to be an excuse to bring back the whiny, petulant Dawn of S6 rather than the more mature young woman from S7 -- a step back as far as I'm concerned. Giles as well is more or less missing in action so far too.

I found the storytelling a bit choppy, disjounted and flashbacky, an odd choice for a book that is presumably aimed quite a bit at comics neophytes, drawn in by the Buffy connection. Something a lot more linear and straightforward would seem to be better suited, especially for the first volume.

So, potential, yes. I'll be reading the rest of the series, for sure, but I'm a little concerned by the first collection that Whedon lost track of what made Buffy such a crossover hit the intervening years between S7 & S8.

Summer 2008 reading

A bit late on this, I know, but I'm about to start posting some more detailed reading notes from summer 2009, so I thought I'd clear some of this really old stuff out of the "to be posted" pile.

Here goes:

Clancy, Tom. The sum of all fears. New York: Putnam, 1991. 798pp.

Last summer I read A Clear and Present Danger and it was starting to show some of the signs for Clancy's patented literary bloat. This summer, it's The Sum of all Fears and the bloat has pretty well set in. Overall, it's a solid novel, telling the story of Jack Ryan's involvement in some pretty exciting standard Clancy thriller elements like terrorists, submarine tactics, lost nukes, scheming politicians and incompetent and naive liberals. Mostly pretty good stuff, exciting and involving. However, at nearly 800 pages, the book is easily 200 pages too long. Whole sub-plots could have been removed with no difference to the story. The big, explosive climactic event happens around page 600 with 200 pages to go but should have happened at page 200 with 400 to go.


Turtledove, Harry. End of the beginning. New York: Roc, 2006. 519pp.

Last summer's cottage reading included the first part of this two part series, Days of Infamy. Like with Tom Clancy, summer reading always seems to include a Harry Turtledove novel for me. They're quick and easy to read, light but very involving. The large cast of characters and multiple viewpoints make for quick and lively reading. This one is no different.

To quickly set the stage, Japan invaded Pearl Harbor in December 1941 rather than just attacking the American base there. Days of Infamy told the story of the invasion and initial stages of the occupation. End of the Beginning picks up where Days of Infamy leaves off, following the same diverse cast of characters, both American and Japanese, over the next couple of years, until the US bounces back and re-invades.

A bit slow-starting, I did ultimately enjoy the novel. It does a good job of showing the brutality of the Japanese Imperial forces in WWII, something that's certainly not as well known as Nazi brutality. POW camps and comfort women brothels are among the aspects that are well portrayed. If Turtledove's narrative seems somewhat boilerplate, well, that's the nature of what he does. He churns them out pretty quickly, all using the same basic plan. Knowing what to expect, he doesn't disappoint. On the other hand, I do often wish he would be a bit more ambitious.


Now for some super-capsule reviews:


Clapton, Eric. Eric Clapton: The autobiography. New York: Broadway, 2008. 344pp.

Entertaining, frank and surprisingly humble autobiography of guitar hero Eric Clapton. I enjoyed this one a lot, as would anyone interested in guitar players or the classic rock period.


Smith, Scott. The ruins.New York: Vintage, 2007. 509pp.

Good and creepy, a high quality horror novel with a great ending.


Hill, Joe. Heart-shaped box. New York: HarperCollins, 2008. 354pp.

Very good first novel by Stephen King's son. A quick read with some good characters.


Hassel, Sven. Comrades of war. London: Cassel, 2004. 362pp.

War is hell. Dirty, messy, ugly, violent, not for the faint-hearted, not Hollywood at all, this is a provocative read from a controversial author. Supposedly based on his real experiences in WWII, Hassel stretches credibility quite a bit, but much of it rings true.


Latimer, Jonathan. Soloman's Vineyard. London: Xanadu Blue Murder, 1990. 160pp.

A good period hardboiled noir novel. Snappy dialogue, dangerous dames, perverse plotline, at least for the 1940s when it was written. It's all there.


Slaughter, Karen. Triptych. New York: Dell, 2007. 480 pp.

Yikes. This is one violent and intense thriller. A solid cast of characters, tons of action, good suspense, lots of twists and turns. I look forward to sequels -- and must more Slaughterific summer reading. Yes, the aptly named Karen Slaughter is the perfect summer thriller reading.

Catch Up Post August -- December 2007

I haven't been posting for a while, so I thought I'd catch up by listing the books I've read since the last post here with a one or two sentence comment. Trying to do real reviews at this point would be too time consuming and I'd rather get up to speed fast and resume regular posting than risk falling so far behind that I don't bother to start posting again.

1. Pohl, Frederik. The Boy who Would Live Forever. New York: Tor, 2005. 384pp.

   Pretty typical late period Pohl. Kind of rambling and discursive, a bit weak on plot but full of lots of heart and enjoyable characters. Worth it for fans of Pohl's work or the Heechee books but probably not for the casual reader.

   
   
2. Hamilton, Donald. The Wrecking Crew. New York: Fawcett Gold Medal, 1960. 176pp.

   Another short sharp shock, the second in the Matt Helm series. Lots of twists and turns, hardboiled and noir, violent and cruel. Good stuff.

   
   
3. Wellington, David. 13 Bullets. New York: Three Rivers Press, 2007. 336pp.

   Over the top horror at it's finest. A modern vampire vs. copy tale, violent and bloody, no refugees from Anne Rice-land either. the vampires are deliciously evil and demented.

   
   
4. Dozois, Gardner, ed. The Year's Best Science Fiction: Twenty Second Annual Collection. New York: St. Martin's Press, 2005. 704pp.

   Self-recommending. Full of great stories. Read it and it's brethren from previous and later years if you care about science fiction at the shorter lengths.

   
   
5. Stracher, Cameron. Dinner with Dad: How I Found My Way Back to the Family Table. New York: Random House, 2007. 256pp.

   A heart-warming tale of a type-A workaholic dad who tries to slow down a bit and cook dinner for his family more often. A story of overwork, overstress, long commutes and crazy schedules. Mostly, Stracher makes it work.

   
   
6. Stephen Jones, ed. The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror: 16. New York: Carroll & Graff, 2005. 512pp.

   Another can't miss collection. I've been reading these for 10-plus years and I'm not sure if there's been an over all better selection than in this edition.

   
   
7. Scalzi, John. The Last Colony. New York: Tor, 2007. 320pp.

   A bit of a disappointment. A bit too talky and slow-moving compared to the previous installments with not enough emphasis on the action that has made Scalzi famous. Also, he really needs to expand this palette of characterization. Not everyone wise-cracks constantly. Also, the Perry/Jane/Zoe family unit is way too transparently Scalzi's own family for my liking. Again, to get to the next level as a novelist, he really needs to work on his characters.

   
   

Maberry, Jonathan. Ghost road blues. New York: Pinnacle, 2006. 472pp.

A great read, a fantastic first novel full of great action, spooky treats and gonzo villains. Basically, there's this hick town which has turned Halloween into a kind of industry, with specialised boutiques and rides. But, little do we know that the town is haunted by an ancient evil that is reawakening after being defeated 30 years before. The good guys are not really aware of what is going on as the bad guys get all their forces in order for the first cataclysmic encounter. The good guys win, of course, but not without some losses. However, this is the first book in a projected trilogy so I imagine that there's lots of carnage to come.

There are some first novel issues here, including a slightly flabby page count, overly precious and smug characters and an over reliance on snappy dialogue. Crow, for example, is far too obviously an idealized version of the way the author sees himself, while Val is equally obviously an idealized version of his adolescent dreams of a powerful, sexy kick-ass women who somehow totally loves the complete goofball main character.

Overall, though, I have to say that there are far more positives than negatives for this novel and I'm looking forward to reading the sequels.

Armstrong, Kelley. Stolen. Toronto: Random House, 2002. 399pp.

What's the demographic for this novel? I really felt that this novel was squarely aimed at a certain type of fan, the fan of Laurel K. Hamilton & those other spooky sexy romance novels. But could it transcend its demographic and find interest for a 44 year old guy? (Or is a 44yog part and parcel of the demo for a sexy horror novel?)

When you get right down to it, it's all adolescent wish fulfillment, to have power in a world that doesn't recognize your specialness, to have secret powers, to be above the morals of mere humans. Even the good characters are more or less amoral killers, I find the Clay character particularly annoying and smug, even the main character, Elena, seemed a bit of an idealized awkward, gawky adolescent goth: tall, skinny, plain, poor fashion sense, not very accomplished in “real” life, snarky and sarcastic but somehow powerful, sexy, ultra-competent and poised. Not to mention, still somehow able to win the affections of the smartest, most competent, best-looking male character.

A quick outline of the plot: the secret werewolf society becomes aware of the larger world of supernatural beings, including witches, half-demons, vampires and others. The attend a meeting of leaders of these groups to assess the dangers of a group of humans that seems to be hunting and capturing various members of the races. Ultimately, Elena is captured and imprisoned by the humans, financed and lead by a rogue billionaire software geek. Eventually, she escapes with some of the other captured supernaturals, and, well, you can guess the rest.

There's some stuff that's wrong with this novel, mostly that it needed to grow up a bit, to get to adulthood, adult characters and adult situations. The series has a lot of potential, potential I would like to see fulfilled. I liked the first episode of the loose series quite a bit, but this one not quite as much. I do look forward to reading more installments to see how the series and the characters grow, even if the series shifts to the less interesting witches rather than the werewolves. A bit of a sophomore jinx is nothing to abandon the series for.

Preston, Douglas and Lincoln Child. Still life with crows. New York: Warner, 2004. 592pp.

I love the occasional seriously over the top thriller and this series by Preston and Child fits the bill perfectly. This is the fourth in a loose series, the first being Relic, then Reliquary and Cabinet of curiosities. There are three or four more that I haven't gotten to yet.

Gonzo, grizzly and gruesome, the three g-words that describe this great novel. The setting is a microscopically small town in Kansas where a series of increasingly bizarre and violent killing take place, potentially disrupting a hoped-for economic biotech spin off in the town. The killings draw the very stange FBI Agent Pendergrast who teams up with a local teen misfit to solve the crime. It sounds like it shouldn't work but it does. Preston and Child give the book enough narrative drive and gory detail to keep you interested. And Pendergrast is a quirky and odd enough character to keep you coming back to the series (although he isn't in all the previous books, like I said the series so far is quite loose). While Pendergrast is a little too alien a figure to give the books a intimate human dimension, the authors always come up with a local character to identify with. This time it's teen misfit Corrie Swanson, a goth kid who's ostracized by the community but is smart and savvy enough to be a real help to Pendergrast. I think we'll be seeing more of her eventually, as she would surely make a good long-term sidekick one day.

One minor complaint about the series, though. I find they always tease supernatural causes for the mayhem but in the end it always ends with a naturalistic explanation -- and that's ok. I don't need a horror novel to be supernatural, human nature is scary enough. My problem is that they always end up having the whole thing be a bit stretched to the bounds of credibility for my taste, as if they felt the need to push the limit while they were writing and they had to squeeze in the reality at the end.

King, Stephen. It. New York: Signet, 1987. 1090pp.

Reading this novel is like running a marathon. You start and it just goes on and on. One thousand and ninety pages. I've hardly ever in my life read such a long novel; the only other one I can think of over 1000 pages is also King's -- The Stand, Expanded edition, natch. Well worth it, but also a marathon.

I started It during a vacation that I knew had a couple of longish train rides, to get a good head start. But still, it took me a good 3 weeks to get to the end. Was it worth it? On the whole, I have to say yes. If anyone can keep the interest level high over such a long book, it has to be a natural storyteller like King. I really enjoyed the detail, the opportunity to really get to know a few interesting characters. The story of the battle of good and evil in Derry Maine, twice fought, in 1958 and 1985, of a group of kids at 11 and 38, is a good one combining a coming of age and an acceptance of adulthood.

But, such a long book must settle for a short review. Read it, but you better start soon.

Shirley, John. Demons. New York: Ballantine, 2003. 372pp.

This is really two pretty good horror novels bound together as one. The first is Shirley's short novel Demons and the second is its sequel Undercurrent.

Demons is a fairly traditional horror novel, well done in an over-the-top way. It seems that demons have suddenly started appearing in the world, randomly killing people that get in their way. A courageous band of anti-heroes band together to figure out how to get rid of them. Some good gorey sequences and some good mumbo-jumbo supernatural stuff too make for a satisfying experience. Undercurrent, the sequel, picks up nine years later and it seems that the government has convinced everyone (or almost everyone) that the original infestation was a mass delusion. So, it seems that this evil corporation want to...well, I'll let you find that out for yourself. Undercurrent neatly subverts the traditional horror tropes and pushes them into a kind of social citique of capitalist greed. I'm not sure how well it works in the end, nor am I sure that it makes for as compelling a read as the original, but I have to give Shirley props for reaching high.

Skal, David J. Screams of reason: Mad science and modern culture. New York: Norton, 1998. 368pp.

A little pop-cultural analysis is never a bad thing, taken in small doses. In larger doses, however, it can be a bit problematic. The good news is that it can be breezy and light, fun and frivolous while still making some good points and containing a few nuggets of real wisdom. On the other had, it can be plagued with shallowness, of research and analysis, lacking in both depth and breadth. David J. Skal's Screams of reason is a good example of both the strengths and weaknesses of this approach, although in the final analysis I would have to give it more plusses than minuses.

So, what's Skal trying to achieve here (p.18):

A prototype outsider, shunted to the sidelines of serious discourse, to the no-man's-land of B movies, pulp novels, and comic books, the mad scientist has served as a lightning rod for otherwise unbearable anxieties about the meaning of scientific thinking and the uses and consequences of modern technology. The mad scientist seems anarchic but often serves to support the status quo; instead of pressingus to confront the serious questions of ethics, power, and the social impact of technological advances, he too often allows us to laugh off notions that science might occasionally be the handmaiden of megalomania, greed and sadism. And while he is often written off as the product of knee-jerk anti-intellectualism, upon closer examination, he reveals himself (mad scientists are almost always men) to be a far more complicated symbol of civilization and its split-level discontents.

And I would submit that he does a pretty good job of it, each chapter exploring a different aspect of the image of mad scientists (and science/scientists in general) in modern culture. In chapter 1, Skal presents the history of the prototypical mad scientist, Dr. Frankenstein. He does a good presentation of the history of the novel and the various films based on the novel, relating them to his thesis fairly well. He also touches upon some other creations from the same period, such as Dracula. Chapterd 2 and 3 touch on the Frankenstein story some more, this time focussing on artificial life such as robots, electicity and mostly B movies from the 30s and 40s. Chapter 4 doesn't quite see us moving on from Dr. Frankenstein, but we do continue discussing B movies, mostly related to nuclear weapons and fear thereof. Finally, chapter 5 moves on from our favourite mad scientist and discusses the phenomenon of aliens, UFO and abductions. And yes, a lot of B movies and a bit of TV. Chapter 6 is about mad medical doctors and the fears they conjure up. The Nazis get a few mentions, as does, you guessed it, Dr. F. Robin Cook, Hannibal Lecter and AIDS all get name-checked here. Chapter 7 is one of the most interesting, as Skal discusses the whole posthuman movement, with lots of fast and furious commentary on Rock Horror, David Cronenberg and others.

While this is good work, there are some serious weaknesses in Skal's approach. First of all, so much of the ambitious analysis he sets up for himself on page 18 really boils down into a lot of film history. That's understandable, because that's what he's known for with important books on Tod Browning (Dark Carnival), Dracula (Hollywood Gothic) and horror film (The Monster Show) but he really needed to broaden his approach for this project. He barely touches on the science fiction and horror pulps era of the 1930s onwards. Comics, almost nothing, when you consider the importance of several EC titles in horror and sf this is really too bad. Novels also get short shrift, unless a film was made out of it. Even tv didn't get too much coverage. Obvious shows like Star Trek and X Files are touched on only briefly while others like Night Stalker not at all. Even non-US film gets little attention, such as the various Hammer Films getting only brief coverage. Like I said, these are a serious weaknesses. It's like he had a lot of notes left from some of his film projects and thought he could cobble them together into another book.

Some other weaknesses? The tendency to recite film history and plot summary in the place of analysis is amusing and fun, but not really what he's trying to get at. As I alude to above, while Frankenstein may be the most important example I think he relies on the various film versions a bit too much.

Finally, at the end of the book, he gets all post-moderny on us, something that I found kind of surprising. Some quotes (p312-317):

[Carl] Sagan does not seem to appreciate that many people find scientific material threatening and dehumanizing, not because of ignorant apprehensions but because of what science explicitly states. Most people don't want to think of themselves as temporary mechanism destined for the scrap heap of oblivion...Sagan does a commendable job...in debunking pseudoscience...But in rationalizing the abdunction stories into absurdity, he completely misses their metaphorical dimensions and significance. They are the ultimate symbolic expressions of twentieth-century fears about being immobilized and dehumanized by "scientific" authority figures.

*snip*

In her book Science as Salvation the British moral philosopher Mary Midgley note theat "increasing technicality in the sciences...leaves unserved the general need for understanding, and whatever spiritual needs lie behind it." Ironically, "The promise of satisfying those spiritual needs has played a great part in establishing the special glory of the abstraction 'science' in our cultures." But as scientific complexity increases, general understanding wanes. As Midgley elaborates, "Many scienitists will now say flatly that most of us cannot expect to understand what is happening [in science] at all, and had better not even mess around with the popularizations. This gloomy estimate must extend, of course, far beyond the uneducated proles to the scientists themselves, when they deal with anything outside their own increasingly narrow provinces. There cannot, in this view, ever be such a thing as a scientifically-minded public.

And, well, a lot more like that in the last few pages of the book. After such a lively, but limited, journey through pop culture I find it interesting tha the last chapter reads like a bad undergrad paper in the philosophy of science by a 19-year-old that has just discovered postmoderism. In a sense, Skal is saying we're stuck with the image of science and scientists in pop culture becuause scientists are too smart, arrogant and condescending for their own good and that the "little people" are justified in their fear and suspicion because of their own ignorance and lack of intellectual curiousity. Sheesh. Read a book, pay attention in school, watch a documentary, for god's sake.

Anyways, in the final analysis, I enjoyed the book and would recommend it with some reservations. It's got lots of fun B movie history and a few interesting things to say about the place of science in modern culture, even if Skal seems to fall into some of the same traps at the end that he bemoans in the middle. Just skip the conclusion.

Wellington, David. Monster nation. New York: Thunder Mouth Press, 2006. 282pp.

This is the prequel to David Wellington's novel Monster Island I reviewed a little while ago. This one, though published later, fills in a lot of the back story on how the world came to be populated by zombies. Like it predecessor/successor it's full of over-the-top horror and some very dark humour and is completely enjoyable. I can't recommend it enough.

It follows the "lives" of various characters at the beginning of the zombie outbreak in the US, including an army officer who's trying to contain the plague. It also follows a newly created zombie who, due to a bit of oxygen-supplied luck, has kept most of her human intelligence. Both are interesting, in that the officer tries to be brave in the face of unspeakable horror and the new zombie starts by trying not to eat any humans, but soon gives in to her hungers. We also get insight into how the whole plague came about, as a kind of horrific science experiment/supernatural accident.

Wellington has been publishing all his novels online in blog form before the print version. Here's a listing of all Wellington's online serializations. Enjoy.

• Monster Island
  
• Monster Nation
  
• Monster Planet
  
• Thirteen Bullets (vampire novel)
  
• Frostbite (werewolves, currently in progress)

Jones, Stephen and Kim Newman, eds. Horror: Another 100 best books. New York: Carroll & Graf, 2005.456pp.

This is a great book based on a great idea. Ask 100 people in the extended horror fiction family to write a short essay about their favourite book and then publish the results. If you can get authors like Robert Silverberg, Poppy Brite, Nancy Collins, ST Joshi, David Morrell and a whole bunch of others, you're in business. I liked this book a lot, as well as the first book in the series published a few years ago, Horror: 100 best books. It's a great thing to leave around the house and read a chapter or two here and there -- I've been reading the darn thing since June and just finished it today. I actually read all the chapters in sequence, something I've not done yet with the original book. There are also books in the series on science fiction and fantasy. I hope to give all three of those this same treatment one day; in fact, I think I'll be putting the sf one at my bedside today. One great thing about these books is that they also have additional reading lists at the end. This one has the TOC from Horror: 100 best books as well as a year by year listing of important books from 458 BCE (The Oresteia by Aeschylus) to 2005 (The mysteries by Lisa Tuttle).

The best thing about a book like this is that is introduces you to books and authors you've never heard of or didn't know much about and gets you excited about trying out there works. It also gives you a chance to judge your own comprehensiveness in genre reading, letting you know if there are serious gaps.

By way of a meme-y thing, I present the list of 100 here, with the ones I've read bolded and the ones I want to get around to reading in italics. Many of the later, of course, suggested by my reading of the essay in the book. Many thanks to the link here for saving me a lot of typing.

1. Robert Silverberg on The Revenger's Tragedy by Cyril Tourneur
   
2. Chelsea Quinn Yarbro on Pikovaia Dama/The Queen of Spades by Aleksandr Puchkin
   
3. Elizabeth Hand on A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens
   
4. Doug Bradley on Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
   
5. Jay Lake on Rekopiz Znaleziony w Saragossie/The Manuscript Found in Saragossa by Jan, Count Potocki
   
6. K.W. Jeter on New Grub Street by George Gissing
   
7. David J. Skal on The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde
   
8. Les Edwards on The War of the Worlds by H.G. Wells
   
9. Tony Richards on The Hound of the Baskervilles by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
   
10. Rick Hautala on The Boats of the "Glen Carrig" by William Hope Hodgson
    
11. Jean-Marc Lofficier and Randy Lofficier on Le fantome de l'Opera/The Phantom of the Opera by Gaston Leroux
    
12. Tim Lucas on Fantomas by Pierre Souvestre and Marcel Allan
    
13. Christopher Wicking on The Case of Charles Dexter Ward by H.P. Lovecraft
    
14. Barbara Roden and Christopher Roden on They Return at Evening by H.R. Wakefield
    
15. Sydney J. Bounds on Creep, Shadow! By A. Merritt
    
16. Chaz Brenchley on The Trail of Fu Manchu
    
17. Stephen Volk on The Devil Rides Out by Dennis Wheatley
    
18. Gahan Wilson on The Haunted Omnibus ed. Alexander Laing
    
19. Robert Weinberg on The Edge of Running Water by William Sloane
    
20. T.M. Wright on L'Etranger/The Stranger by Albert Camus
    
21. David A. Sutton on Sleep No More: Twenty Masterpieces of Horror for the Connoisseur ed. August Derleth
    
22. Storm Constantine on Lost Worlds by Clark Ashton Smith
    
23. Stefan Dziemianowicz on Jumbee and Other Uncanny Tales by Henry S. Whitehead
    
24. Gwyneth Jones on Great Tales of Terror and the Supernatural ed. Herbert A. Wise and Phyllis Fraser
    
25. Joel Lane on The Opener of the Way by Robert Bloch
    
26. Christopher Fowler on Gormenghast by Mervyn Peake
    
27. Gary Gianni on Carnacki the Ghost-Finder by William Hope Hodgson
    
28. Randy Broecker on Darker Than You Think by Jack Williamson
    
29. Tanith Lee on Tales of Horror and the Supernatural by Arthur Machen
    
30. Lucius Shepard on Nineteen Eighty-four by George Orwell
    
31. David Bischoff on House of Flesh by Bruno Fischer
    
32. Anne Billson on Fancies and Goodnights by John Collier
    
33. Nancy A. Collins on The Killer Inside Me by Jim Thompson
    
34. Laurence Staig on The Third Ghost Book ed. Lady Cynthia Asquith
    
35. Andy Duncan on The Body Snatchers by Jack Finney
    
36. John Gordon on The Talented Mr. Ripley by Patricia Highsmith
    
37. Norman Partridge on The Hunger and Other Stories by Charles Beaumont
    
38. Robert Irwin on The Blind Owl by Sadegh Hedayat
    
39. Mark Morris on The Midwich Cuckoos by John Wyndham
    
40. Howard Waldrop on A Scent of New-Mown Hay by John Blackburn
    
41. Ed Gorman on A Stir of Echoes by Richard Matheson
    
42. Muriel Gray on The Weirdstone of Brinsingamen by Alan Garner
    
43. Terry Dowling on Tales of Terror ed. Charles Higham
    
44. Peter Atkins on Some of Your Blood by Theodore Sturgeon
    
45. Jack Womack on We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson
    
46. Darrell Schweitzer on The Case Against Satan by Ray Russell
    
47. Peter Crowther on Something Wicked This Way Comes by Ray Bradbury
    
48. Ian MacLeod on The Collector by John Fowles
    
49. Glen Hirshberg on Who Fears the Devil? By Manly Wade Wellman
    
50. Simon Clark on A Wrinkle in the Skin by John Christopher
    
51. Nancy Holder on Rosemary's Baby by Ira Levin
    
52. Ellen Datlow on The Playboy Book of Horror and the Supernatural Selected by
    the Editors of Playboy
    
53. Terry Lamsley on Pages from Cold Point by Paul Bowles
    
54. John Farris on Outer Dark by Cormac McCarthy
    
55. Stephen Baxter on The Book of Skulls by Robert Silverberg
    
56. Elizabeth Massie on Harvest Home by Thomas Tryon
    
57. P.N. Elrod on The Night Stalker by Jeff Rice
    
58. Michael Swanwick on Blood Sport by Robert F. Jones
    
59. Nicholas Royle on Nightshade by Derek Marlowe
    
60. Roz Kaveney on Peace by Gene Wolfe
    
61. David Drake on The Year of the Sex Olympics: Three TV Plays by Nigel Kneale
    
62. Marc Laidlaw on Our Lady of Darkness by Fritz Leiber
    
63. Paul McAuley on The Cement Garden by Ian McEwan
    
64. Jo Fletcher on Darkness Weaves With Many Shades by Karl Edward Wagner
    
65. Sir Christopher Frayling on The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories by Angela Carter
    
66. Thomas Ligotti on Sweeney Todd by Stephen Sondheim and Hugh Wheeler
    
67. D.F. Lewis on The Collected Stories of Elizabeth Bowen by Elizabeth Bowen
    
68. Christopher Golden on Dark Forces: New Stories of Suspense and Supernatural Horror ed. Kirby McCauley
    
69. John Burke on Tales from the Nightside by Charles L. Grant
    
70. Yvonne Navarro on They Thirst by Robert R. McCammon
    
71. Poppy Z. Brite on The Face That Must Die by Ramsey Campbell
    
72. David Stuart Davies on The Woman in Black by Susan Hill
    
73. Michael Marshall Smith on Pet Sematary by Stephen King
    
74. Anthony Timpone on Clive Barker's Books of Blood Volumes One, Two, and Three by Clive Barker
    
75. Nancy Kilpatrick on Perfume: The Story of a Murdered by Patrick Suskind
    
76. Bill Sheehan on Finishing Touches by Thomas Tessier
    
77. Kelly Link on Strange Toys by Patricia Geary
    
78. Allen Koszowski on The Dark Descent ed. David G. Hartwell
    
79. Graham Joyce on Misery by Stephen King
    
80. Frank M. Robinson on The Silence of the Lambs by Thomas Harris
    
81. Mark Chadbuurn on Prime Evil ed. Douglas E. Winter
    
82. Jay Russell on By Bizarre Hands: Stories by Joe R. Landsdale by Joe R. Lansdale
    
83. Peter H. Cannon on The Grotesque by Patrick McGrath
    
84. David Morrell on Carrion Comfort by Dan Simmons
    
85. Stephen R. Bissette on From Hell by Alan Moore and Eddie Campbell
    
86. David McGillivray on American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis
    
87. Brian Hodge on Lost Souls by Poppy Z. Brite
    
88. China Mieville on The Course of the Heart by M. John Harrison
    
89. Adam Simon on Flicker by Theodore Roszak
    
90. Paul Di Filippo on X, Y by Michael Blumlein
    
91. Caitlin R. Kiernan on Skin by Kathe Koja
    
92. Tananarive Due on Throat Sprockets: A Novel of Erotic Obsession by Tim Lucas
    
93. Simon R. Green on The Off Season: A Victorian Sequel by Jack Cady
    
94. S.T. Joshi on The Nightmare Factory by Thomas Ligotti
    
95. Roberta Lannes on A Sight for Sore Eyes by Ruth Rendell
    
96. Michael Shea on Reprisal by Mitchell Smith
    
97. John Pelan on A Haunting Beauty by Sir Charles Birkin
    
98. Jeff VanderMeer on House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski
    
99. Richard A. Lupoff on Feesters in the Lake & Other Stories by Bob Leman
    
100. Tim Lebbon on More Tomorrow & Other Stories by Michael Marshall Smith

Hmmm. Only 21 read (23/100 in the first book), not that impressive for someone who likes to think they're a horror fan. On the other hand, I do tend to do best on sf lists with horror in the middle and fantasy worst, so it's not too surprising. The good news is that there's lots of good reading ahead for me to catch up!

Wellington, David. Monster island. New York: Thunder Mouth Press, 2006. 282pp.

Old school, gonzo, over-the-top, gross-out zombie horror! Such joy must come into every life every now and then!

David Wellington's new zombie trilogy begins with this novel, Zombie Island. Interestingly enough, all three novels have already been serialized (apparently in somewhat different form) in blog form by the author. The links are in Wellington's Wikipedia page I link to above and I also link to them at the end of this post. Since each of the 60+ chapters in the novel was originally a blog post, they tend to be short and sharp, each with a good cliffhanger ending. The novel has a very fast, breakneck pace leaving the reader almost breathless as we race through. This is a good thing.

The storyline is rather basic and contrived, of course. For some reason, a UN worker in Somalia named Dekalb is forced by a warlord to journey to New York to get AIDS drugs that he thinks are for sure in the UN building there, possibly the only such stash of AIDS drugs left in the world. The catch? The entire world is overrun by zombies, making the mission to NYC a bit problematic. Once in New York, our hero must face off with the zombie hoards controlled by a newly empowered zombie lord. His companions? A gang of gun-toting teenaged Somali school girls sworn to the warlord. Right, who needs a plot. And I mean that as a compliment.

In any case, we really don't know how the whole zombie plague came about, a question that is apparently answered in the prequel/sequel Zombie Nation. That one's been published in book form and needless to say, I'll be getting it pretty soon.

For fun, here's a listing of all Wellington's online serializations. Enjoy!

• Monster Island
  
• Monster Nation
  
• Monster Planet
  
• Thirteen Bullets (vampire novel)
  
• Frostbite (werewolves, currently in progress)

Jones, Stephen, ed. The mammoth book of best new horror: 15. New York: Carroll & Graf, 2004. 624pp.

Another one of those self-recommending books. If you like short horror fiction, you will like this book. Even if you don't like short horror fiction, you will probably find a few stories worth your effort but perhaps not enough to make it worth buying the book.

This series is pretty reliable, quality-wise. I usually tend to like about half the stories, be indifferent about a quarter and sorta dislike about a quarter. The half I like is usually worth the price of admission. So, how does this volume stack up? Actually quite a bit better than average -- I would say I like upwards of 60% of the stories or even more. Probably one of the best volumes in the series I've ever read, and the first was volume 6, I think.

the stories from this volume that really stood out for me:

• Cell Call by Marc Laidlaw
  
• Hunger: A Confession by Dale Bailey
  
• Mr Sly Stops for a Cup of Joe by Scott Emerson Bull
  
• The white hands by Mark Samuels
  
• Dancing Men by Glen Hirshberg
  
• Bitter Grounds by Neil Gaiman
  
• Child of the Sones by Paul McAuley
  
• Exorcising Angels by Simon Clark & Tim Lebbon.

The closing story, Exorcising Angels by Clark & Lebbon was easily my fave from the book. An eerie WWI/WWII historical, featuring Arthur Machen and miracles and the blitz not to mention a valid historical basis, a real tour de force with a sharply defined setting and a terrific premise.

One small note. This book has extensive front and endnotes giving lots of introductory information on the "year in horror" from 2003 (yeah, a little behind in my reading). The actual stories take up about 520 pages.

Aylciffe, Jonathan. The vanishment. New York: Harper,1994. 227pp.

Jonathan Aycliffe, who also writes thrillers under the name Daniel Easterman, is a very accomplished horror writer. I've read two other of his novels, The lost and The matrix and they were both terrific. The vanishment is no disappointment either. It's a subtle, spooky novel that relies on a building sense of unease rather than a gory payoff (not that there's anything wrong with the occasional gory payoff, of course).

Writer Peter Clare and his wife are vacationing at an old house on the Cornish coast when she mysteriously disappears. The investigation reveals little but Peter does end up delving into the ghostly past of the house. An interesting blend of ghost story and haunted house mixed with a possibly unreliable narrator make for a fun novel. Peter is never less than an interesting character who unwittingly draws others into the supernatural crossfire.

Lebbon, Tim. Desolation. New York: Leisure, 2005. 309pp.

Tim Lebbon is definately one of the great up-and-coming horror writers around today. I've read and loved a number of his stories in Year's Best anthologies and Face was a really terrific novel. Desolation, however, left me a bit cold. It's the story of a very odd man who was held prisoner by his father for many years, held in an institution for still longer after his father died and finally released to a kind of purgatorial half-way house. The odd collection of characters at the half-way house help him discover the truth about his past, which is much stranger than we first imagined. So far, so good. However, there just didn't seem to be enough plot to justify a full length novel -- it could have been very effective at 100 - 150 pages -- but really ended up a bit dull stetched to this length. I'm still looking forward to catching up on some of Lebbon's work I haven't read yet, but this one is not up to the standard of the other work I've encountered.