This unholy anthology can’t quite break free of its tropes, but it’s certainly something to look at.
A ghoulish collection of short sci-fi, fantasy, and horror stories that explore strange and haunting possibilities.
In this macabre collection, each story borrows from and blends genre fiction, fairy tales, and historical events, as in “The Alamo Incident,” which re-creates the Alamo Mission as a casualty of eldritch beings roaming the American countryside. Most of the plots adapt a common trope (the boy who cried wolf during the Black Death, zombies who are stunned by Shakespeare, an alien invasion at a forced conversion therapy center) and tie it off with the requisite calculated twist. To fulfill that pattern, many of the protagonists display an unerring ability to commit murder or be murdered at the last minute. Sometimes, Eads’ (Lord Byron’s Prophecy, 2015, etc.) premise both carries the plot and allows for particularly apt descriptions to shine. Of those moments, “And the Raindrops—Its Tears” stands out. It follows a sinner in a dystopian civilization where none may look at the sky for fear of going insane upon sight of a sky demon. In other stories, the genres pile up into a terrifying heap. The most emblematic is certainly “Riveter,” in which Eva Braun falls in love with a poster of Rosie the Riveter and tries to bring her to life through some classic unethical sci-fi experiments in the Third Reich. For the stories where Eads sticks to character development and description, his writing sets a pleasing rhythm. But when he tries for metaphorical flourishes, they tend to be too on-the-nose: In “The Dreamist,” dream-projection technology has made skilled dreamers famous, and the narration can’t help itself but repeatedly point out that the story’s surreality makes it feel “like a dream.”
This unholy anthology can’t quite break free of its tropes, but it’s certainly something to look at.Pub Date: June 3, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-59021-656-9
Page Count: -
Publisher: Lethe Press
Review Posted Online: July 28, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
King handles his first novel with considerable accomplishment and very little hokum—it's only too easy to believe that these...
Figuratively and literally shattering moments of hoRRRRRipilication in Chamberlain, Maine where stones fly from the sky rather than from the hands of the villagers (as they did in "The Lottery," although the latter are equal to other forms of persecution).
All beginning when Carrie White discovers a gift with telekinetic powers (later established as a genetic fact), after she menstruates in full ignorance of the process and thinks she is bleeding to death while the other monsters in the high school locker room bait and bully her mercilessly. Carrie is the only child of a fundamentalist freak mother who has brought her up with a concept of sin which no blood of the Lamb can wash clean. In addition to a sympathetic principal and gym teacher, there's one girl who wishes to atone and turns her date for the spring ball over to Carrie who for the first time is happy, beautiful and acknowledged as such. But there will be hell to pay for this success—not only her mother but two youngsters who douse her in buckets of fresh-killed pig blood so that Carrie once again uses her "wild talent," flexes her mind and a complete catastrophe (explosion and an uncontrolled fire) virtually destroys the town.
King handles his first novel with considerable accomplishment and very little hokum—it's only too easy to believe that these youngsters who once ate peanut butter now scrawl "Carrie White eats shit." But as they still say around here, "Sit a spell and collect yourself."Pub Date: April 8, 1974
ISBN: 0385086954
Page Count: 216
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Sept. 26, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 1974
PERSPECTIVES
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
A first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.
Pub Date: July 11, 1960
ISBN: 0060935464
Page Count: 323
Publisher: Lippincott
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1960
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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