Tag Archives: Horror

Big Machine by Victor LaValle

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Synopsis:
A brokedown junkie, ex-cultist and mass murder survivor gets a mysterious invitation to become an Unlikely Scholar investigating odd phenomena across America.

Review:
Wow, wow, wow, wow, wow. Big Machine rocked my world. Stylistically, it’s a mash-up of Haruki Murakami and Stephen King, with a bit of Ralph Ellison for good measure.

When junkie Ricky Rice becomes an Unlikely Scholar under way mysterious circumstances, he finds himself scouring newspapers for stories that give evidence to The Voice. His journey grows ever more wild, and as he travels across the country from Vermont to northern California on the trail of the Voice and something more human and more ominous, he reflects back on the journey that got him to this point. His childhood in a cult, his years as a junkie and petty criminal, and his efforts to stay on the straight and narrow become more than just a life story. It’s a Pilgrim’s Progress founded on doubt–but a doubt that might be stronger than the faith of some.

LaValle has a lot to say about American fanaticism of all stripes. The social commentary here is fascinating, specific, and outrageously funny. Ricky Rice will become one of my favorite characters for the unique voice LaValle gives him, at once guileless and sneaky, wise and foolish, a street smart risk taker who has survived way too much.

The story is wild beyond imagining, with horror elements that don’t hold back. LaValle is not genre-slumming here. He genuinely wants to freak us out.

I was fortunate enough to hear LaValle read a large chunk of the opening of this book, and I was hooked. Definitely planning to read more of his work.

Full Dark, No Stars by Stephen King

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Synopsis:
4 new stories that probe what ordinary people might do when faced with evil.

Review:
There were times when I considered putting down Full Dark, No Stars because it went so deep into the blackness. I know that sounds odd, because of who the author is, but for some reason these stories felt compressed in an unpleasant way. When King takes more time to develop his stories and let them breathe, you get some relief from the evil. That’s not the case with these small stories. And because in each one the evil is so intimate, the stories are claustrophobic to the extreme. I much prefer the mode where the evil is externalized to a greater degree. To me, his gold standard for the short form is “The Langoliers,” where you have an outside menace that then causes a moral breakdown amongst a group for characters. Moving among points-of-view provides a bit of an escape and some characters are also freed to find their best selves. Here you do get some glimpses of courage and even heroism, but the overall mood is relentlessly cynical and bleak.

That said, these stories do have solid literary merit, in terms of concept and execution. I guess I just might have too much Christmas spirit to appreciate them now. I might have liked them better in March.

The Painted Darkness by Brian James Freeman

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Synopsis:
There’s something in the basement… and Henry is home alone.

Review:
The Painted Darkness is a slim book with a big debt to Stephen King, plumbing the same sorts of externalized inner horror that he specializes in. That’s not to say that the book is derivative, merely that it wears its influences proudly.

Henry is home alone in the middle of a snowstorm, and has to go check the boiler. While down there, he discovers that he is not exactly alone. He then remembers a childhood horror that might explain the mysterious paintings he doesn’t quite remember creating. It’s short and very scary!

The Killing Doll by Ruth Rendell

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Synopsis:
A lonely young man sells his soul to the devil so that he will grow tall, but it’s his troubled sister who falls under the sway of the occult.

Review:
The Killing Doll is an odd little book, with more horror elements than can usually be found in a Ruth Rendell crime novel. I’m used to the pettiness of her characters, but usually there are one or two who engage me. I really didn’t connect to any of these people, and was glad when the book was over.

Lisey’s Story by Stephen King

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Synopsis:
Two years after the death of her famous writer husband, Lisey Landon must return to the other world where he both drew his inspiration and unearthed his demons in order to defeat a madman and put her husband’s legacy to rest for good.

Review:
I listened to the audiobook of Lisey’s Story, narrated by the incomparable Mare Winningham, and this was actually my second encounter with the book, which I have read once before. It’s one of King’s most ambitiously intimate stories, delving deep into what he calls the “dark heart of every marriage.”

As Lisey Landon travels back and forth to Scott’s alternate world, home to “the well where we all go down to drink,” she faces demons both internal and external, tangible and terrifyingly supernatural. In doing so, she probes every corner of her life with famous writer Scott Landon, to name the darkness that nearly consumed them both.

I liked Lisey tremendously, though I felt like the conclusion to the storyline involving her stalker ended on an odd note. She’s a wonderfully realized character, and a real woman. I’m not sure I’ll be reading this one again, though. I think I’d actually get bored on a third read, and I don’t want my memories of Lisey despoiled.

Just After Sunset by Stephen King

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Synopsis:
A collection of short stories.

Review:
Just After Sunset offers a lackluster selection of short stories, hardly any of which really grabbed me by the collar. Many of them had a fancy twist ending that could be spotted a mile away (“The Mute”), while others were just deadly dull (“The Things They Left Behind”).

I did enjoy “N,” which evoked the same creepy unease that I so loved in Mark Z. Danielewski’s House of Leaves. However, once it reached the final section it had no more surprises for me. “The Stationary Bike” was hypnotic, particularly because I listened to it while driving a very long stretch of I87 from Albany back to New York City. However, it just didn’t blow me away. Finally, “A Very Tight Place,” which concerns a man trapped in a tipped-over, locked port-o-potty, managed to gross me out, keep me riveted, and surprise me with some nice character touches. I think it’s the best of a subpar bunch.

Under the Dome by Stephen King

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Synopsis:
An impenetrable dome smashes down over a small Maine town, completely isolating them from the world.

Review:
I devoured Under the Dome, thoroughly enjoying King’s blend of deft characterizations, manic plotting, and outrageously broad social satire. Imagine the world coming to an end–but only over a few square miles, while the rest of America watches helpless to intervene.

In true King fashion, he takes an external horror device and uses it to expose the evil within. I’d call him a Calvinist, except it seems that the only kind of Christian King approves of is the one who has decided God doesn’t exist. Here, we get Lester Coggins, a vaguely charismatic preacher prone to apocalypticism and hypocrisy–always going down on his knees even when negotiating his stake in a drug deal–contrasted with Piper Libby, a minister whose growing agnosticism serves to make her more heroic by the minute. He’s toned down his vitriol against “Christians” in his last few books, but methinks that’s only because his recent works have been relatively intimate affairs with few characters. In addition to Coggins, he gives us Big Jim Rennie, a larger-than-life villain in the form of an obese Selectmen, one of Coggins’s flock who uses some Christian vocabulary but otherwise bears no resemblance to an actual believer. I don’t even have a problem with nominal Christians being satirized, but it seems to me that King’s analysis is stuck in the Falwell 80s. The Cogginses of today are more likely to be preaching wealth and prosperity without ever mentioning Jesus at all. I wasn’t buying that Big Jim Rennie needed Jesus to achieve his political goals. King would have me believe that Rennie actually thought Jesus was on his side and I’m not buying that either. King didn’t make it work because he doesn’t believe that there could be real Christians in the first place.

My other critique of the novel comes in its lack of a compelling protagonist. Big Jim Rennie looms so large over the pages of the book, and his heroic counterpart, Dale Barbara, a retired military man now slinging hash at Sweetbriar Rose’s, doesn’t match him in intensity. The others on Barbie’s team all have their moments, but none pop the way that the baddies do. Big Jim’s goals are very clear; the rest have only survival on their mind, but because they can’t escape they’re all trapped in a reactionary mode. I didn’t really latch on to any of them emotionally, so I ended up that same reactionary place.

Cirque du Freak: A Living Nightmare by Darren Shan

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Synopsis:
The arrival of a freak show to town turns young Darren’s life upside down as learns that vampires are real–and not necessarily evil.

Review:
I had to stop reading A Living Nightmare after a vampire called one of Darren’s young friends “evil.” (I’m a mom, I can’t help but be tender-hearted.)

Middle grade and YA horror have never been genres I enjoy, because I’m always uncomfortable with darkness being peddled to children. Additionally, I try to avoid books that call evil good and vice versa, and I think those moral inversions are especially confusing for children. But if you don’t share my theologically-based reservations, then you’ll enjoy the fun, witty writing and inventive plot.

Many thanks to Little, Brown for the review copy.

Oath of Gold by Elizabeth Moon (The Deed of Paksenarrion)

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Synopsis:
In her final adventure, soldier turned coward turned paladin Paksenarrion finds herself on a quest to crown the true king, a quest that will bring her face to face with darkest evil.

Review:
Oath of Gold concludes the Deed of Paksenarrion trilogy in a most satisfactory manner, no matter how trite my one-liner may seem. (Have I mentioned lately how hard it is to summarize epic fantasy?)

I was thoroughly satisfied by the breadth of the journey upon which Elizabeth Moon sets her intrepid protagonist. Paksenarrion’s story is as thorough an examination of the nature of heroism as any I’ve ever seen. As a young girl, she dreamed of being the shining, heroic knight on a horse, but the events of Divided Allegiance left her utterly broken, unable to wield a sword or even bear the sound of a galloping horse. Her cowardice shames her to her core, and she mourns her lost chance at becoming a paladin, a knight blessed with the power to heal, and the ability to discern good from evil.

Needless to say, Paks is given a second chance–but what I love is that she values her suffering as much as her glory. When offered healing of her memories of her darkest days, she says, “No. I thank you for the thought of that gift. But what I am now–what I can do–comes from that. The things that were so bad, that hurt so, if I forget them, if I forget such things still happen, how can I help others? My scars prove that I know myself what others suffer.”

Grounded as they are in her worship of a holy God, Paks’s statement has theological dimensions that make me shiver with joy. And her story made me ponder the meaning of “the suffering servant,” a name for Jesus that Paks’s story has helped me understand in a deeper way.

The Dark Tower by Stephen King

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Synopsis:
Roland the gunslinger reaches the Dark Tower he’s been pursing for a thousand years.

Review:
Obviously there’s a lot more to The Dark Tower, book 7 in Stephen King’s epic series of the same name, than my one sentence synopsis implies. But essentially, that’s it. And, honestly, was Roland’s not reaching the Tower ever an option for King? The suspense has never been “will he?” but “what will it be like?”

But before Roland can reach the tower, he and his ka-tet (a former junkie, a legless woman, a kid, and a talking dog) have to save the world. And to do so, they need to save Stephen King himself from the car accident that nearly took his life in 1999. If King dies, the Tower falls and all of the universe will wink out of existence forever.

In every other version of America that Roland and co. have visited, the existence of the Tower and Roland’s quest have been unknown. Here, Roland goes to a version of New York City where his own Tet Corporation is protecting the rose that called to him from the empty lot. It’s a bit disconcerting to hear regular people using Calla-lingo and referring to things like Gan and the Prim and the can toi. It’s almost like seeing the story in its underwear. For me, it takes me out of the world of the story in a way that not even King’s inclusion of himself did.

Roland also has to face down his nemeses, the Crimson King and his bastard son Mordred. A bit anticlimactic, almost rushed–but King more than redeems himself with the nightmarish Odd’s End sequence. And the poignancy of the shattering of the ka-tet has depth and resonance to spare. King executes all of the emotional elements beautifully.

So what does it all mean? Well, ka is a wheel, and time is a face on the water. But like Ray Bradbury knew, one tiny breath can topple an empire. Am I satisfied by the ending? That’s not really the point. Do I think it’s the right ending? Yes. I may not like it, but I don’t think King could’ve ended it any other way, not with the cosmology and theology operating in the series. I don’t at all agree with his conception of ka, the cruel bitch that makes suckers of us all. I would love to see Roland’s journey rewritten in a universe with a good and sovereign God rather than fickle ka. It’s an interesting thought exercise.

I’m now curious to reread some of his post-Tower works to see if King fully exorcised Roland’s ghost, or whether he’s still on the path of the Beam. I did borrow the first two comic book compendiums from my brother, but I’m not going to read them. I don’t like comic books or graphic novels, and I’m not interested in reading Roland’s story in chronological order.

I think that might be my last reread of the Dark Tower series. (I doubt that’s true, but I’m not keeping the books in my permanent library.) Ultimately, the darkness of the meaning of the series overshadows the myriad pleasures I take from the storytelling.