With the same winning humor, the Garbageman evolves to face deadlier challengers.
In this sequel, an artist finds his psychic powers waning as a serial killer and a supernatural horde descend on Arizona.
It’s been two years since the Bangers shot David Turley and Dr. Newman saved his life. Using the experimental substance Neurogen, the doctor gifted David with healing abilities and telekinesis in Dean’s (Garbageman, 2015) previous installment. Now, David has married girlfriend Julie, and the two artists are enjoying life in Phoenix. One weekend, they visit a Hopi reservation. Julie acquires a new kachina figurine for her collection, and David finds a mysterious man who gives him the corner of a stone tablet. “With this piece of stone comes a great responsibility,” the man tells him. Later, news outlets report that a serial killer called the Fisherman is terrorizing the area, leaving mutilated bodies in his wake. David wonders about his responsibility to the city after using his psychic talent to create a trash monster that fought the Bangers. Recently he’s been visiting Newman—not only to develop a safer version of Neurogen, but also because his powers seem to be vanishing. At his latest appointment, David sits in the waiting room after some tests, anticipating the results. Newman, however, disappears. In this novel, Dean presents his hero—who’s a cross between the Hulk and a dumpster—with some familiar horror villains. Early in the narrative, the ghoulish Fisherman thread brings readers to an underground conclave of vampires and werewolves. The monstrous horde is led by Hellann, whose power over her minions isn’t quite what is seems. Add to this mix some Hopi lore about the shape-shifting Ya Ya, or as David’s mentor Bradley explains, “Have you ever wondered why nobody has ever caught...Bigfoot? It’s because they are Native American skin walkers.” Dean once again keeps the mood fun (at one point, David thinks, “It is time to do some recycling”) yet brutal (a werewolf rips “half a rib cage from a running man”). Sometimes the story flows too placidly, as when David learns about manipulating energy and his “third eye” with little resistance. Horror fans should nevertheless celebrate the author’s flair for demented action and gore.
With the same winning humor, the Garbageman evolves to face deadlier challengers.Pub Date: Oct. 28, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-5353-6670-0
Page Count: 376
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Dec. 1, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Although this sequel doesn’t break new ground, it will appeal strongly to fans of the first book.
More steampunk adventures of a samurai prognosticator, his clockwork octopus, and his human lovers.
Five years after her charming debut novel, The Watchmaker of Filigree Street (2015), Pulley brings back the main characters for another scramble through the dangers and consequences of clairvoyance. Readers of the first book already know the big reveal: that Keita Mori—the eponymous London watchmaker—has an unusual memory that works both backward and forward. (Readers new to the series should put this book down and start with Watchmaker.) This time Pulley sets the action principally in Japan, where Mori; Thaniel Steepleton, a British translator and diplomat; Grace Carrow Matsumoto, a physicist; and Takiko Pepperharrow, a Kabuki actress and baroness, are working together to foil a samurai’s power grab and turn away a Russian invasion. At least, that’s what Mori’s doing; the others are rushing blindly down paths he’s laid out for them, which may or may not get them where he wants them to go. But if Mori knows what’s coming and what steps they can take to change the future, why doesn’t he just tell them what to do? The answer is half satisfying (because, as in any complicated relationship, communication isn’t always easy; because the characters have wills of their own and might not obey) and half irritating (because if he did, there wouldn’t be much of a story). Pulley’s witty writing and enthusiastically deployed steampunk motifs—clockwork, owls, a mechanical pet, Tesla-inspired electrical drama—enliven a plot that drags in the middle before rushing toward its explosive end. Perhaps more interesting than the plot are the relationships. The characters revolve through a complex pattern of marriages of passion and convenience, sometimes across and sometimes within genders and cultures, punctuated by jealousy and interesting questions about trust.
Although this sequel doesn’t break new ground, it will appeal strongly to fans of the first book.Pub Date: Feb. 18, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-63557-330-5
Page Count: 512
Publisher: Bloomsbury
Review Posted Online: Nov. 9, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2019
Not his best, but a spooky pleasure for King’s boundless legion of fans.
Horrormeister King (End of Watch, 2016, etc.) serves up a juicy tale that plays at the forefront of our current phobias, setting a police procedural among the creepiest depths of the supernatural.
If you’re a little squeamish about worms, you’re really not going to like them after accompanying King through his latest bit of mayhem. Early on, Ralph Anderson, a detective in the leafy Midwestern burg of Flint City, is forced to take on the unpleasant task of busting Terry Maitland, a popular teacher and Little League coach and solid citizen, after evidence links him to the most unpleasant violation and then murder of a young boy: “His throat was just gone,” says the man who found the body. “Nothing there but a red hole. His bluejeans and underpants were pulled down to his ankles, and I saw something….” Maitland protests his innocence, even as DNA points the way toward an open-and-shut case, all the way up to the point where he leaves the stage—and it doesn’t help Anderson’s world-weariness when the evil doesn’t stop once Terry’s in the ground. Natch, there’s a malevolent presence abroad, one that, after taking a few hundred pages to ferret out, will remind readers of King’s early novel It. Snakes, guns, metempsychosis, gangbangers, possessed cops, side tours to jerkwater Texas towns, all figure in King’s concoction, a bloodily Dantean denunciation of pedophilia. King skillfully works in references to current events (Black Lives Matter) and long-standing memes (getting plowed into by a runaway car), and he’s at his best, as always, when he’s painting a portrait worthy of Brueghel of the ordinary gone awry: “June Gibson happened to be the woman who had made the lasagna Arlene Peterson dumped over her head before suffering her heart attack.” Indeed, but overturned lasagna pales in messiness compared to when the evil entity’s head caves in “as if it had been made of papier-mâché rather than bone.” And then there are those worms. Yuck.
Not his best, but a spooky pleasure for King’s boundless legion of fans.Pub Date: May 22, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-5011-8098-9
Page Count: 576
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: March 4, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2018
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
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