Book Review: One Second After by William R. Forstchen

One Second After by William R. Forstchen ***** 352 pages Forge books

I admit I almost passed on this book, since being the far left dude that I am I am not in the habit of reading books with a forward by Newt Gingrich. I still think Newt is a far right wing windbag, but we now have something to agree on – This is a must read book.

Fortschen is a military historian whose previous books include a series of historical military novels with the former speaker and a series of Wing Commander novels. I get the feeling the that he publisher considered this novel to be a bit higher class than his past work, and I have to say it is a novel of very high quality. It is a fantastic end of the world novel. I love this sub-genre, the author wasn’t shy about telling us up front that he wanted to make this book a entry in a pantheon that includes classics like On the Beach and Alas Babylon. I personally would add John Brunner’s classic “The Sheep Look Up” Or Norman Spinrad’s “Greenhouse Summer.”

Like those novels One Second After is a warning novel, that is what I call this sub-genre, It helps to have strong characters and settings but the point of these novels is dramatize a possible coming crisis. There are plenty of nuclear war novels, climate change and pollution.

Forstchen sets the novel in his North Carolina home town and based the main character thinly after himself. I can’t say how much of the town and the characters are based on real life but this novel feels extremely honest. They feel real.

The main character is a widower trying to raise two teenage daughters, including one with diabetes . the conflict comes when suddenly Civilization dies. It comes not in a Nuclear blast/winter, but a high atmosphere blast that causes an EMP (look it up if you have never heard of it). The aftermath leaves the skeleton of society, but instantly destroys all electronics.

Cars, Refrigeration, medicine production, hospitals and modern mass communication are instantly gone. The novel follows the year after the death of electronics and the results is a series of horrible events and a struggle for a spoiled and overpopulated nation to survive.

The action of the novel is well written, the characters are so strong that several moments are genuine tear-jerkers. It also has the most tragic use of a dog character since Matheson’s I Am Legend. This novel also manages to unintentionally make a very similar point to John Shirley’s Everything is Broken, while also warning people to a new danger. I think you should read this book, and maybe start a garden.

Book Review: The Passage by Justin Cronin

The Passage by Justin Cronin *** 879 pages Ballentine books.

I have been interested in this novel since it was released. At first I wondered why NPR (I mean all things considered even) did stories on this novel, but then when I listened to the story it became clear that Cronin was something the industry considers to be a author of fine literature. Sure it's a end of the world novel, filled with vampire but since this guy wrote some mushy over award nominated snoozer then it makes this novel beyond the genre ghetto and worth promotion on NPR. OK, maybe I am blowing this up a bit and honestly I have not read any other novels by Cronin so maybe they are not snoozers. I was interested to see if the publishers ignore the obvious fact that this was a Speculative horror novel.

The worst example of this was Mary Doria Russel's amazing novel "The Sparrow" (I reviewed it in Feb. 2009). That novel is 100% hard Science fiction and I would argue one of the most disturbing horror novels at the same time. Genre was completely ignored in the marketing of it, this was serious literature folks. I don't think Cronin and his publishers did that here thankfully. This novel has alot in common with multi-character end of the world novels like The Stand and Sawn Song although I would say it is not nearly as strong of a novel as those two. For my money Del Toro and Hogan's Strain trilogy was also a better take on almost the same story.

This novel is ambitious for a novelist entering into the genre for the first time, it has a grand apocalyptic canvas, several dozen characters, and equally as many story lines that weave together even if it seems they never will. It has almost an 800 page hardcover page count. Cronin's take on vampires is original enough, but in my opinion could have been cut into two different novels, and since it was left open for a sequel it might have been better served as a series of short novels.

The opening two and fifty pages are the strongest in the novel, there is a serious sag in the middle 2 or 300 pages like a tent missing a vital bar to hold it up. The first 250 pages were seriously so well written that it perhaps made the middle part look worse than it really was.

The ending pulled it out but there were several hundred pages where I was confused and wasn't sure how anything that was happening related to the brilliant opening. I kept reading thus proving Silence of The lambs director Jonathan Demme's writing advice "You can confuse me for twenty minutes but don't bore me for 5 seconds." He said something like that.

Book Review: The Touch by F.Paul Wilson (Adversary cycle book 4)

The Touch ***** Forge 448 pages

Wow, I read all 448 pages of this novel in a weekend, while still reading another book. I found this medical horror drama to be a serious page turner. This book is considered to be book four in the Adversary Cycle and fits into the Secret History of the World timeline just after Ground Zero (Repairman Jack #13) and Reprisal (AC Book #5).

Written back in the 80’s I read the 2004 edition which is updated and also contains a bonus prologue short story. As an author I personally strive to write books that are so perfect for me that no one else could write them. In many ways The Touch is very much a novel that only F.Paul Wilson could attempt. Wilson you see was a practicing doctor before devoting himself to writing full time.

The story of the Touch is about a doctor named Alan who is the last of a dying breed. A family doctor with a private practice. He loves being a doctor and is called to heal. Then one day after a bizarre interaction with a homeless vet, Alan discovers he has the ability to heal any illness with a single touch.

What follows is not your typical horror novel. Sure you could call it a supernatural medical drama, but the horror of what this power means to Alan is very real if you do horror readers only job(put yourself in the shoes of the character). The characters are so well written it really helps the pages turn, you will become involved in the characters, even if it lacks Wilson’s trademark adventure.

Doesn’t matter the novel cooks. It connects to the series in minor that I can tell but I imagine once I read to the next two Adversary books they might tie in more. The character of Clubfoot Annie is an interesting one and readers of the series will find an explanation for her condition in the Repairman Jack novel Conspiracies. Willson…dude you are a genius of plot weaving. I’m in awe again. I feel like the Wayne’s World guys, like I should be on my knees saying I’m not worthy.

The Touch gets a bit preachy at times, but who am I to complain about that? Wilson is a libratarian and a doctor, this bleeds through the pages, but I can’t begrudge a Doctor getting on his/her soapbox for a few pages.

Great novel, read it even if you don’t want to commit to the series. It stands alone.

My novella is in the 'Best Bizarro Fiction of the Decade" anthology

My novella "Punkupine Moshers of the Apocalypse," was elected to be in the best Bizarro Fiction of the Decade collection. I am super honored to be selected and in this book with so many awesome authors.

Edited by Cameron Pierce, the Wonderland Book Award-winning author of Die You Doughnut Bastards, Lost in Cat Brain Land, Ass Goblins of Auschwitz, The Pickled Apocalypse of Pancake Island, and other books.

"A feeling has been tearing up the underground of the fiction world. It’s a nightmare reflection of the society you inhabit, a surreal explosion of pop, punk, and the post-apocalypse. Over the last decade, Bizarro Fiction has changed the definition of avant garde, it’s abolished the traditional prose of yesterday and established a new precedent for awesome. Collected in this anthology is some of the best weird fiction from the past decade. Award-winning writers, cult prodigies and burgeoning talents all collected together in one place. This is what you’ve done with the last ten years of your life."

Featuring stories by D. Harlan Wilson, Alissa Nutting, Joe R. Lansdale, Carlton Mellick III, Kevin L. Donihe, Blake Butler, Ryan Boudinot, Vincent Sakowski, Cody Goodfellow, Amelia Gray, Robert Devereaux, Mykle Hansen, Athena Villaverde, Matthew Revert, Garrett Cook, Roy Kesey, Jeremy Robert Johnson, Aimee Bender, Ian Watson & Roberto Quaglia, Jeremy C. Shipp, Andersen Prunty, Jedediah Berry, Andrea Kneeland, Kurt Dinan, David Agranoff, Ben Loory, Kris Saknussemm, Stephen Graham Jones, Bentley Little, David W. Barbee, and Tom Piccirilli.

Book Review: A Matter of Blood (Dog Faced gods #1) by Sarah Pinborough

A Matter of Blood (Dog Faced Gods book #1) By Sarah Pinborough ***** Gollancz books 421 pages

This is one of those reviews where I have to be careful of hyperbole. Each year I read a novel by an author I have never read before that knocks my socks off. This novel was the 2012 entry and thankfully there are two more books in this trilogy. This British import is trying to find a north American publisher and there are rumors that Penguin is releasing them under the title Forgotten Gods. Personally if you like original horror and speculative fiction specifically Dystopias, serial killer novels and all around Crime novels don’t wait for them to get their act together order this on the internet.

I discovered this novel from an article about the ending of the trilogy in Rue Morgue magazine. The plot sounded interesting but I admit it was the author mentioning that the trilogy had a champion in F.Paul Wilson that got my attention. I have four books into the Repairman Jacks books as Pinborough pointed out that Wilson was not only an influence but he was a fan helping to get the books published. What interested me is the dark dystopic environment that this brutal sounding crime novel was set in.

Rue morgue described the trilogy as an apocalyptic murder mystery, but having now read the book I felt the first book was light on apocalypse but heavy on dystopia. Not to worry end-of –the-World novel fans, the undoing of the world gets a strong foundation in this dark brutal hard boiled supernatural crime novel. It is an understatement to say that darker days are coming. This is the story of Detective inspector Cass Jones, who is hiding a drug habit and depression after he returns to the work in wake of an undercover assignment gone horribly wrong. His life is rough, hated by criminals and distrusted by the authorities. Not your typical heroic cop character, he is knee deep in a murder investigation of two kids who were gunned down in the street and attracting intense media coverage.

When one of his co-workers gets ill, he has to take over the investigation of a series of brutal murders. The crime scenes are well staged but also covered in an unnatural amount of flies. The killer refers to himself as the man of flies, and managed to somehow implant eggs of maggots under the eyelids of the victims without damaging their eyes.

All this before Cass finds out his brother has killed himself and his family. When Cass is framed for the murder of his brother, he begins to suspect the cases are connected.

How does this relate to the end of the world? Well, this novel is set in very dark times a very near future dystopia of future Britain that survives an economic collapse by surrendering to a mysterious cabal known as “The Bank.” The atmosphere of the novel has a dark surreal feel, I pictured everything with a grey filter that made Oregon winters seem like southern California. I also have the feeling that this first novel was meant to establish the characters while the next two will deal with grander issues.

Like Wilson’s Repairman Jack series I would define this novel as horror , but also as Weird Crime. That is not the only comparison I think is valid to Wilson’s Jack series. Like that series this has intricately woven plot, but it also has a much darker tone.

The tone makes all the difference in this novel, I mean for one thing Repairman Jack is a hero we can root for. The world that Pinborough has created here is filled with very dark shades of grey with almost zero characters worth rooting for. Oh you’ll be interested in them; you’ll want to keep turning pages.

On top of all those elements this novel also has a powerful plot line about a serial killer, including one of the creepiest serial killers I have read about since Brite’s Exquisite Corpse, but at the same time were talking about a novel with a subtle social conscience.

It is one of those novels that dragged me in quickly through the pages, creating dark moment of suspense that were so powerful I wanted to jump in the book and warn characters. There were several moments that made me uncomfortable enough that as a horror author myself I dog eared the pages so I could go back at marvel at how she created such gnarly atmospheric moments.

I can’t spoil it, but the Man of Flies has a moment early with a homeless boy and his dog that was gut-wrenching and awful. I loved it! Cass had a moment where he thought he saw the ghostly imagine of his dead brother, nothing ended up being there but Pinborough did such a wonderful job that I felt his very natural fear at thinking he had just seen his dead friend. Prime examples of master level horror writing by an author I somehow never read before.

Am I sold on Pinborough or the series? Of course I am sold on both. Is this the best novel I have read all year. No, probably not the best but I am sure it is my favorite. What are you waiting for?

Book Review: 11/22/63 by Stephen King

11/22/63 by Stephen King **** 849 pages Scribner

I admit when King first went on the Today show to promote his latest weight set style novel I thought it sounded a little silly. I had time on my hands and this was at the library so I decided to give it a shot. I am coming off disappointing turns with Duma Key and Lisey’s Story which I thought were awful. I did however still like Cell and thought Full Dark, No Stars was fantastic. It is not often that I read a 900 pager that I don’t think could stand to lose a little of the meat off it’s bones.

11/22/63 has been promoted as King’s novel about the Kennedy assassination, and Time Travel. It certainly is about that stuff, conspiracy theorists will be bummed that King basically agrees with the standard narrative- Oswald the lone gunman. I enjoyed this novel, Think it is one of the better ones King has written in some time. (I think Cell and Bag of bones are his best this century) The Oswald/Kennedy stuff however was the least interesting part to me. The love story which is the real core of the novel and the moral dilemma of what is really of value in one’s life is what makes this novel really pop.

Sure there are time travel elements that make you think and laugh. Sure there are lots of political issues that King raises when exploring how America might be different if history changed. All interesting stuff, but the best parts involve the love story between our time traveling hero Jake Epping and the love of his life Sadie Dunning. This is his best romance and at several points in the novel he actually made me teary eyed. It is funny because I have seen reviews where this aspect of the novel were considered a part of a sagging boring middle. Really?

Keep in mind there are really three novels here. King spends two hundred and fifty pages just showing us how hard it is to change the future. Could that have been done quicker, sure but I didn’t really mind.

I am not sure if I didn’t have so much free time when I read this if I would have read it in a week. I am also not sure I would have enjoyed it as much if I read it slower. This is in the end a power time travel story about love. I understand why it was marketed about JFK but it has more in common with Matheson’s Somewhere in Time than Stone’s JFK.

Read it for the love story.

Book Review:The Tomb By F.Paul Wilson (Repairman Jack book #1, Adversary cycle #3)

The Tomb By F.Paul Wilson (Repairman Jack book #1, Adversary cycle #3) ***** 448 pages Tor books

So here is folks, were starting a journey here. Little personal background before I start this review. February 2010 I took a workshop for novelists called Borderlands. There was an author who taught apart of the workshop on “plotting” named F.Paul Wilson. I was already a fan thanks to Wilson’s classic horror novel “The Keep.” The reason he is teaching plotting is clear and this novel the Tomb is a good place to start to talk about it. You “The Tomb” is the first in a 15 Repairman Jack novels, (well 19 if you count the YA novels about Jack’s teenage years) but it is also the third novel in a different series of 6 novels called the Adversary Cycle. Both series end in the same novel called “Nightworld,” which is both Repairman Jack #15 and Adversary Cycle#6. At the same time there are other short stories and random novels that fit into the timeline of this mythos which Wilson calls the Secret History of the World.

Slightly...OK very influenced by Lovecraft but not quite Lovecraftian I would argue this mythos is deeper and more intensely plotted than even the Dark Tower series. It all starts in “The Keep,” but I had read that twice in the past and I had never read The Tomb, so when I saw it and the following two books in the series I decided I would read the first three Repairman Jack novels, and well I got hooked.

I decided that 2012 would be the year of F.Paul for me and set out of the goal of reading entire secret history of the world this year. So I’m reviewing the entire series over the next couple months and I intend to write detailed article at the end. I hope also to interview Wilson at the conclusion. Each review will have a section of spoilers for Jack fans, I hope to spark discussion. If I talk you into reading this series maybe you’ll come back and see if our opinions match. Talk about them, you know interact.

So Let’s start with the Tomb. Originally released in 1984, the novel has recently been updated to make it modern and fit the timeline. I read the updated book and certainly think that is where you’ll need to start there, I mean this version has cellphones and the internet. I generally am against these kinds of updates as I am a fan of out dated science fiction, however in this case it’s justified to update the books and link them together.

Repairman Jack is a great hero, in many ways the anti-hero, but the longer you get to know Jack you’ll see that whole Anti-thing wears off. Jack is a fix-it specialist. He is a repairman, but not for your fridge. Maybe you have a problem, one you can’t go to the police about. Need to find someone, get revenge. Jack is living outside the system, and he is really good at revenge, among other things. The Maguffin of the story is a necklace stolen off the neck of an old Indian woman who is dying in a Manhatten hospital room.

Jack is hired for this impossible job, find a necklace randomly stolen on the streets of NYC. Once he starts to track it down, a conflict arises. His recently ex-girlfriend Gia’s family members have disappeared. So at the same time he decides he needs to help find them.

Along the way Jack learns not only the history of this necklace, which tracks back to a bloody conflict over colonial India but the connection to the family whose disappearance he is investigating.

The Tomb is a great action horror novel which combines monsters,suspense, mystery and interesting characters. It is an excellent introduction to the world of Repairman Jack. It’s important you read this one because it effects the events of novels far into the series.

Spoilers: This is the first book but if you were to read the secret history in a straight timeline you would have read several adversary cycle books, Black Wind, Cold City and the Young Jack secret histories at this point. It is a great induction but looking back on it now after reading 14 other Repairman Jack books the strangest aspects of the book is the intensely erotic love story that Jack has with a woman who was not Gia.

This novel stood up on its own but as an introduction to Jack it stands out. It takes a while for the mystery to unravel and reveal the monsters. The impatient horror reader might have a problem with this, but it’s too bad. The final third of the novel cooks.