Two sharp, distinctive, and complementary clusters of stories.
Editors Acevedo (University of Doom, 2017, etc.) and Viola (Blackstar, 2015, etc.) offer an anthology of noirish tales exploring the dark recesses of both real and supernatural worlds.
In Mark Stevens’ “Bone on Wood,” a preacher who makes house calls to parishioners is revealed as someone who may not be the best man to lead his congregation. Seedy characters populate the collection’s first half, and they’re often depicted as overtly unsavory. One example is the shiftless, drug-dealing Roach in Paul Goat Allen’s “Slug,” who wallows in his excesses. But although these tales are steeped in the gloomy shadows of noir, the anthology’s second half consists of otherworldly stories that often playfully twist the genre’s trademarks. Conventional private eye protagonists, for example, take on rather unconventional cases. In Alyssa Wong’s “A Clamor of Bones,” private investigator An Mei, who can speak to the deceased, needs help from a dead man who’s in pieces, while Devin in Betsy Dornbusch’s “A Rose by Any Other Name” searches for a thief of magic. Patrick Berry’s gleefully bizarre “Divided They Fall” is set in the world of mathematics (with characters named after numbers, gathering at a bar called The Denominator), but its base plot is about a gumshoe hunting a murderer. Throughout, the tales feature catchy dialogue: in Gary Jonas’ “An Officer and a Hitman,” Jenny, back from shopping, tells her killer boyfriend, “I got us some bullets and burritos”; and apparently immortal Pagey professes, “I gotta say, Juma, I’m feeling pretty damn good for a guy who got his brains blown out today” in Viola’s “Outsorcery.” Alvaro Zinos-Amaro’s somber “Morphing” goes in a grimmer, more surreal direction as it follows Cadmus, who’s simply trying to eliminate his rodent problem by using scores of ball pythons, and then his senses gradually disappear. Sean Eads closes the book with “The Ash of the Phoenix,” a poignant memorial to the late Edward Bryant, whose stories open both sections and to whom the book is dedicated.
Two sharp, distinctive, and complementary clusters of stories.Pub Date: Nov. 7, 2017
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 167
Publisher: Hex Publishers
Review Posted Online: Sept. 26, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.
Are we not men? We are—well, ask Bigfoot, as Brooks does in this delightful yarn, following on his bestseller World War Z(2006).
A zombie apocalypse is one thing. A volcanic eruption is quite another, for, as the journalist who does a framing voice-over narration for Brooks’ latest puts it, when Mount Rainier popped its cork, “it was the psychological aspect, the hyperbole-fueled hysteria that had ended up killing the most people.” Maybe, but the sasquatches whom the volcano displaced contributed to the statistics, too, if only out of self-defense. Brooks places the epicenter of the Bigfoot war in a high-tech hideaway populated by the kind of people you might find in a Jurassic Park franchise: the schmo who doesn’t know how to do much of anything but tries anyway, the well-intentioned bleeding heart, the know-it-all intellectual who turns out to know the wrong things, the immigrant with a tough backstory and an instinct for survival. Indeed, the novel does double duty as a survival manual, packed full of good advice—for instance, try not to get wounded, for “injury turns you from a giver to a taker. Taking up our resources, our time to care for you.” Brooks presents a case for making room for Bigfoot in the world while peppering his narrative with timely social criticism about bad behavior on the human side of the conflict: The explosion of Rainier might have been better forecast had the president not slashed the budget of the U.S. Geological Survey, leading to “immediate suspension of the National Volcano Early Warning System,” and there’s always someone around looking to monetize the natural disaster and the sasquatch-y onslaught that follows. Brooks is a pro at building suspense even if it plays out in some rather spectacularly yucky episodes, one involving a short spear that takes its name from “the sucking sound of pulling it out of the dead man’s heart and lungs.” Grossness aside, it puts you right there on the scene.
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.Pub Date: June 16, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9848-2678-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Feb. 9, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
An author to watch, Buehlman is now two for two in delivering eerie, offbeat novels with admirable literary skill.
Cormac McCarthy's The Road meets Chaucer's Canterbury Tales in this frightful medieval epic about an orphan girl with visionary powers in plague-devastated France.
The year is 1348. The conflict between France and England is nothing compared to the all-out war building between good angels and fallen ones for control of heaven (though a scene in which soldiers are massacred by a rainbow of arrows is pretty horrific). Among mortals, only the girl, Delphine, knows of the cataclysm to come. Angels speak to her, issuing warnings—and a command to run. A pack of thieves is about to carry her off and rape her when she is saved by a disgraced knight, Thomas, with whom she teams on a march across the parched landscape. Survivors desperate for food have made donkey a delicacy and don't mind eating human flesh. The few healthy people left lock themselves in, not wanting to risk contact with strangers, no matter how dire the strangers' needs. To venture out at night is suicidal: Horrific forces swirl about, ravaging living forms. Lethal black clouds, tentacled water creatures and assorted monsters are comfortable in the daylight hours as well. The knight and a third fellow journeyer, a priest, have difficulty believing Delphine's visions are real, but with oblivion lurking in every shadow, they don't have any choice but to trust her. The question becomes, can she trust herself? Buehlman, who drew upon his love of Fitzgerald and Hemingway in his acclaimed Southern horror novel, Those Across the River (2011), slips effortlessly into a different kind of literary sensibility, one that doesn't scrimp on earthy humor and lyrical writing in the face of unspeakable horrors. The power of suggestion is the author's strong suit, along with first-rate storytelling talent.
An author to watch, Buehlman is now two for two in delivering eerie, offbeat novels with admirable literary skill.Pub Date: Oct. 2, 2012
ISBN: 978-1-937007-86-7
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Ace/Berkley
Review Posted Online: Sept. 1, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2012
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