I think if this book had been written later on, it would have been handled under Stephen King's alter ego's name. The near lack of supernatural elemenI think if this book had been written later on, it would have been handled under Stephen King's alter ego's name. The near lack of supernatural elements, the heavily judgmental tones toward a government that would run such programs as MK-Ultra... There's a lot of bitter anger in here that he usually reserves for the face he doesn't have to show the public.
The story of little Charlene "Charlie" McGee, her parents, and the monolithic bureaucracy that wants to vivisect her is as cynical and fearful an X-Men tale as you're likely to find. After having been dosed with experimental hallucinogens during their college days, Andy and his wife Vicky have a daughter, Charlie. While they each have mild psychic powers following the experiment, the child is a full-blown pyrokinetic. The story takes off with Andy and Charlie fleeing from the nebulous government organization hot in pursuit, and plows forward with surprising energy - dopey names aside (my condolences to anyone with the last name "McGee"), it's easy to care for the renegade espers, and King has always had a knack for presenting all the ugly, ignorant, arguably-insane aspects of a bureaucratic organ gone cancerous and out of control.
This is not a tale of supernatural spooks or otherwordly horrors, not really, just a rich and hardy stew of What-If History adventure. And bitter contempt for reckless government. Can't forget that part. Despite the fact that it technically took me nearly 25 years to finish this, I blame that mostly on the 24 year long break in the middle. It's an enjoyable page-turner and honestly a damn fine spot to start at if you're looking to branch into the larger King-verse....more
Stephen King doesn't really do clumsy, at least not anymore. He's been in the game for so very long now that it would be insane for him to bungle a boStephen King doesn't really do clumsy, at least not anymore. He's been in the game for so very long now that it would be insane for him to bungle a book through carelessness. Being timid, though? Overly cautious? Now those are definitely still on the table - perhaps in large part because of his many years of experience - as we can see in Doctor Sleep, the sequel to his earlier book The Shining.
Danny "Doc" Torrance and his mother survived the horrors of the Overlook Hotel and the downfall of his father, Jack Torrance, but as anyone who has undergone severe trauma will tell you, the baggage you carry out from an event like that will hound you for years. And so it was with Danny, who escaped his father's fury only to be seduced by the same demons that were his downfall: liquor, rage, self-loathing... And so you have our hero travel into Frazier, New Hampshire with a tenuous will to live and a raging monkey on his back, just in time to meet a very special little girl and a roving band of terrible, terrible people.
Not a bad setup in the least for a King horror-fest, but that's not what we get this time around. Good horror really requires a lot of elements that just aren't present here. The book has an irritating habit of sorting things out for the reader very cleanly. As you might have guessed, the "very special little girl" mentioned above also shines, and more powerfully than anyone Danny has ever known. And unlike little Danny, young Abra is comfortably living la vida Matilda from a very early age, messing with minds and furniture with reckless abandon. And so, while Mr. King did a very good job creating unsettling demihumans with unearthly appetites and sinister powers... you don't really ever get to see them in use. Hell, most of the scary stuff they pull off involves the tech geek of the group using publicly available web resources to hunt down a little girl states away. Confrontations that you expect should leave the heroes reeling are instead one-sided total victories. King might have a fondness for villains that are paper tigers, but this time around he goes waaaay too far, leaving you with 500-or-so pages that run out of tension real fast.
What you're left with is rather Hallmark-y. Bruised and broken by life, Danny Torrance rebuilds himself through the twin miracles of friends and family. Because he is a good and noble man, he resists all temptations and comes through stronger than ever. A happy, well-off suburban white family gets a happy ending, and you leave with a yawn. There's some competent writing between the covers, and some compelling baddies who you almost want to care for, but it all ends up amounting to a lot of wasted effort. At some point during his preparations, King thought he could structure the plot just so and create a compelling story that doesn't undermine his actual hope and optimism for the youth of America (or so I am smugly assuming, at least). There may have been some flaws in his calculations, unfortunately...
2.5 stars. 3 if it wasn't the sequel to a gosh dang thrill ride home run of a horror classic, but it is. Unlike Danny Torrance, Doctor Sleep isn't quite able to escape the horrors of its father. Read it if you want - it's not poison - but keep those expectations locked up nice and tight....more
Much like Garfield Minus Garfield, it's amazing how much more effective and frightening David Wong's Lovecraftian horror becomes when he gets rid of aMuch like Garfield Minus Garfield, it's amazing how much more effective and frightening David Wong's Lovecraftian horror becomes when he gets rid of all the Lovecraftian horror.
Set largely in the fictional megalopolis of Tabula Ra$a, Futuristic Violence and Fancy Suits tells a tale of near-future technology gone horribly, horribly wrong, much like if Black Mirror cranked up its explosion budget to 11 and spiced up its scripts by letting Kevin Smith add in dick jokes every other line. Zoey Ashe is the barista daughter of a single mom, living in a middle-of-nowhere trailer park and caring for a cat with a deeply unpleasant skin condition. She is also, wackily enough, the daughter of one of the wealthiest men on the planet, a scumbag she wants absolutely nothing to do with. So when he dies under perfectly unsuspicious circumstances and hauls her into the tangled web of crime and mustaches that is his existence, she is understandably less than pleased. Throw in a quartet of frighteningly talented personal assistants, one Alfred-grade ultra butler, and the planet's most depraved and lawless urban area / theme park, and voila! You have the most unsettling David Wong novel yet on your hands.
As far as the comedy goes, it's spot on. While What The Hell Did I Just Read? fell flat for me, FVaFS seems to relish the fresh setting and concepts, bringing back much of the energy and humor that made me love John Dies at the End so much. Still, it suffered a bit for its lack of weirdness - when I first read Transmetropolitan nearly two decades ago, the hedonistic excess of a near-future with far too many toys and far too little justice was fun, if a little nauseating. Now, the setting's not nearly so novel, maybe even a little familiar.
What caught me off-guard though was how difficult it was to handle the tonal contrast between the comedy and horror this time around. Given Wong's earlier works, you'd think that I'd have been braced to handle that sort of thing, but it's different now. Harder to discount. JDATE's villains were all sophomoric supernatural horrors, creatures I can easily remind myself don't exist and won't actually inconvenience or murder me any time soon. FVaFS continues the theme of the evil in the universe being distinctly alpha bro in nature, but tosses out the supernatural in favor of good old-fashioned humans being horrible to each other. And it's believable. The technological details might be largely bullshit, but they're placeholders for plenty of currently-available badness, and I came through at the end with a sickening lump in my gut tampering down the ha-has. Maybe it's a matter of personal taste, but I came out of this house of horrors a lot less giddy than my first time around.
Which may have actually been the goal of the dang thing? Who's to say!
Regardless, any book that manages to yank a strong emotional reaction out of me is technically a success, and I recommend any fans of David Wong's work who have stuck to his better known JDATE trilogy to give the book a shot. It ain't perfect, but few things in life are. Also, if anyone manages to actually make Zoey's Cthulhu tea and reply to this review with photographic evidence, you have my respect....more
I don't think I've ever 1-starred a King before, but yeesh, this one deserves it. Years back, I read and generally disliked DesperatioAugh it's awful.
I don't think I've ever 1-starred a King before, but yeesh, this one deserves it. Years back, I read and generally disliked Desperation, an initially promising but eventually disappointing attempt at capturing the terror of being pulled over in a strange place by the long arm of the law. I wasn't a fan, but it had its charms. A little research revealed the book had a sibling, The Regulators, written by King's rambunctious evil twin Richard Bachman. I figured I'd check it out if I stumbled across it down the line.
I regret that stumble. It's an unsubtle pile of violence porn in which small town America falls under assault by futuristic vans filled with assholes wielding super shotguns. The vast and meaningless cast of townsfolk blunder around, trying to figure out what the hell is going on. People die grotesquely. Things get weird. There's autism? More people die. Now there are cowboys. Watch out for the perils of racism! More death, now with explosions and coyotes. Augh. Augh. It was so painfully boring in spite of being as cartoonishly weird as King could muster.
I love the guy, don't get me wrong. King is a madly prolific writer who swings for the fences, producing fantastic worlds and memorable characters. Sometimes though, the end product just leaves me scratching my head. This is one of those cases. The Regulators is definitely one to avoid unless you are absolutely starved for weirdness or are trying to finish off the man's entire bibliography....more
A little bit graphic novel, and a little bit short story prose, The Truth is a Cave in the Black Mountains is strong evidence that Neil Gaiman is a reA little bit graphic novel, and a little bit short story prose, The Truth is a Cave in the Black Mountains is strong evidence that Neil Gaiman is a remarkable story teller. Set in Scotland during the Jacobite period, this is a sweet little tale of simple men, and terrible deeds, and a cave where one strike a very straightforward bargain for a very large deal of gold. This is definitely the sort of Gaiman tale that leaves you with a wolfish grin, rather than the warm fuzzies....more
Some books are stumbled upon, odd titles and curious cover art luring one into picking them up and taking them home and letting them into one's heart.Some books are stumbled upon, odd titles and curious cover art luring one into picking them up and taking them home and letting them into one's heart. This was not one of those books. The Raven Cycle is a YA series that was thrust upon me violently by a thousand assailants, all insisting it was glorious and brilliant and beautiful with phenomenal characters, delightful wordplay, and a masterful sense for magical realism. From start to finish, Maggie Stiefvater's put together a series that is well worth your time, attention, and nagging need to find out Just What Happens Next.
Book 4, The Raven King, is what we in the business call conclusive. Which business? We cannot say. But that is beside the point. Book 4 ends the tale authoritatively, which makes sense since the cycle was intended to end here initially, even if there are hushed rumors of a Book 5, gasped possibilities of 6+.
Commander Stiefvater sends us off with a flourish, pulling out every stop for this final showdown. Throughout the series I'd marveled at how she could effortlessly pull out the loveliest purple prose you ever did see, then squash it with a hammer and leave you staring at a teen slasher flick gore heap, and The Raven King shows off that talent at its finest. Don't worry, there's still oodles of character development, and worthwhile new characters popping up; there are soft words and hard choices, budding romances and fast friendships; all the things that Dawson's Creek promised you and failed to deliver believably. It's just forced to cringe in the hideous blacklight of Maggie's demonic nightmare fiesta. And so, the story builds up into nail-biting intrigues and anxiety-boosting terrors, only to... conclude acceptably. There's an ending, and it's okay I guess. I may have vented to a friend for a while about how things draw to a close. There may have been calls of "bullshit," but that's harsh. Promises were made, and kept. Foreshadowing lurked upon distant walls, and was revealed. Just because the craftsmanship's a bit less seamless, maybe a touch hurried, doesn't invalidate the end result. The book's still rather good. Not the best in the series, though it has some rather tantalizing peaks.
And so, having pounded out four of these dang things, I give The Raven Cycle as a whole four stars. One for each book, pow pow pow pow. The final product is a delight overall, keeping me eager for more ever since I hit the first whatatwist! of The Raven Boys, and while none of them are flawless, they all have a lot of good to offer. Do yourself a favor and grab the quartet, and if you do so veeeeery slowly, perhaps book 5 will be out when you're done....more
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