Book Review: Among The Living by Tim Lebbon

 

Among the Living by Tim Lebbon 

 304 pages, Paperback

Published February 13, 2024 by Titan Books

 

 Famously Richard Matheson was watching Dracula and had the thought if one of these vampires is scary what if it was reversed? Thus, one of the greatest horror novels of all time was born. I Am Legend is not alone; many great works of fiction come from watching/reading something and thinking I have an idea to make this better. Or I would love to make something similar. I have a suspicion that Lebbon created Among The Living while thinking about what he would do with a sequel to Carpenter’s The Thing. Something he threw out into during the panel episode of my 1930 SF series with Brian Keene and Mary Sangiovani covering John W. Cambell’s Who Goes There.

 While Peter Watts and Sam J. Miller got away with short stories that played with being sequels to The Thing.  It is a whole different beast writing and marketing a novel. This novel is very much an example of a novel that can be sold to fans of the Carpenter classic looking for something similar. Vibe and tone of a paranoid SF thriller with an additional action component. Most compelling to me is the not-so-subtle ecological messaging that has been the hallmark of Lebbon’s last few novels.

I have made plenty of jokes about the title being the same as an Anthrax album, Lebbon also has a collection that shares All Nightmare Long with Tallica. The Thrax song of course was inspired by The Stephen King classic but we are going deeper than titles here.  Just some trivia for those paying attention to such things.

ATL also reminds me in a great way of Lebbon’s writing partner Christopher Golden’s recent horror epic Road of Bones and the two books make a great double feature. They would be great books to take on a trip together. Both novels have far-north settings, crazy twists, an action-forward plot, and a sense of desperation that drips off the books.

Lebbon has been on a streak of Cli-fi novels although it is a long-standing issue of environmentalism going back to his earliest paperbacks. As a paperback original I want to put this out there this should be a contender for the PKD award.

Much like Lebbon’s favorite movie ALIENS, this novel is built on a foundation of a large cast of characters. The likability of these characters is all over the place, but they are all interesting. Lebbon throws us into the setting quickly and into the action, so some of the backstory comes in careful flashbacks. It is all done with a subtle touch that deepens without slowing the action. One of the magic tricks that Lebbon pulls off is making a propulsive adventure book set in nature at times feel claustrophobic. If you dare to put yourself into the character's shoes even out on this remote island you’ll feel walls closing in. 

The novel balances the characters with such ease that I don’t feel that it has a main character or singular point of view. This is important because the push and pull between the different characters in this extreme situation is what builds the tension. It is the most THING about it. The paranoid reaction to who is infected, and who is not. Can we trust anyone?  Why ? I will come back to that.

A team of environmental researchers are looking for evidence of the effects of climate change.  Their research brings them to Hawkshead, an arctic island that is in a thaw thanks to global climate change. They go into a cave open for the first time in thousands of years. Inside they find cave paintings, and defrosting diseased bodies from long ago. Tempering the amazing discovery is the fear of ancient diseases. The vibe Lebbon builds is top-notch.

“When he reached the first chamber he let go of the rope and turned to look around. His head torch forced back the darkness, shadows hunkering down in cracks and corners. He stuck out his tongue, sniffed the air. He tasted damp and smelled age. He heard trickling of water nearby and echoing from further away. He’d been in places like this many times before but something was different about this cave, something off.”

Weirdness turns to creep factor when one of the team insists that one of the bodies moved. Trick of the eye or something else.

Adding to the character dynamic and the tension are the corporate explorers on this remote arctic island looking for mining potential. The different agendas have made the two teams rivals. This adds to the drama when the disease goes rampant. Dean and Bethan, now on revival teams, used to work together and she sees Dean as a corporate sell-out.  I could see how some readers might now feel that the characters are given development, but I loved how this was done. Lebbon wasted no time, the flashbacks were kept to a minimum and they were all important to the story.  Twenty-five years ago when it was believed that readers wanted longer epic novels a hundred pages would have been wasted on back story and bogged down the terror elements. The pace was great with just the perfect amount of humanity to make me care.

One of the most impressive scenes of writing is when Lebbon cuts many narrative carrots with one knife. Almost a hundred pages in Bethan remembers a conversation they all had about the things they most feared. This chapter provides depth for the characters while also providing world-building. Goyo one of the tough guys working for the mining operation won’t accept boring answers about deepest fears and brings up disease.

“What scares me most is the idea of a disease emerging from the deep past and coming to kill us all.” He goes on to tell the story of a disease on another island that seemed alive and seemed to want to spread.

The disease that the team named Deadeye almost feels born from Goyo’s fears.  However, anything anyone in the novel thinks about is just theory. Smartly Lebbon doesn't put a misplaced expert on the team. The disease is a mystery and remains so. As a reader, I believed it was alien in origin, but to the team all they know is the thing seems intelligent and wants to spread. As we learn more about Wren when he is infected it controls you wanting to spread. Several chapters follow the tough guy character Wren as the infection takes over.

 

It is a new spin on Climate change, and another horror to be mined. Part of me feels I have already told you too much, but I also feel this novel is hard to spoil. The execution, and how tightly wound up the novel is makes for a simple but very effective work of Science Fiction horror.

As accomplished as Tim Lebbon is this book doesn’t have anything award bait about it. It might not make a Hugo or a Stoker ballot. I think it is as high quality as those works It should be considered for a Splatterpunk award. This will be in my top reads of the year, but it is such a book novel for me I wonder if others will be as jazzed as I am.  I mean if you trust my opinions then read it.

Stokercon 2024 Airport to Hotel Instructions (Text + Videos)

 

Airport to Stokercon Instructions 

 Hey Stokercon visitors. David Agranoff here. I am a local San Diego author and part of team helping pull off the Stokercon weekend. This is the detailed instructions for getting from San Diego’s airport to Hotel. You can do it for $2.50 and it will about 45 minutes. Don’t rent a car or spend $20 on an uber.

 Before you land, download the Pronto APP. Non-smart phone users, I will provide an alternative once you get to Old Town.  Put $10 on the app, but at least $5. The AP has real-time information and trip planner functions so I recommend it. You click on Manage and then Load money. You’ll have to connect it to a debt or credit card.

 Terminal 1 Spirit/ Southwest Airlines

 After baggage claim, go outside. You will cross the street where all the pick-ups are happening. There is construction, so it is a little messy but follow the signs for Courtesy Vehicles.  If you stop to ask, you are asking for the San Diego Flyer. That is the name of the shuttle. Terminal one is at a white bus shelter. You want “The San Diego Flyer to Old Town.” It is free. 

 Terminal 2: (all other airlines)

 Once you go down the steps to Baggage claim, there is an info desk, when are facing the info desk, the door you want to go out of is to the right of the info desk.  Go outside to a crosswalk and follow the signs for courtesy vehicles. After crossing you’ll go left and you will see a Sandwich board sign for “The San Diego Flyer to Old Town.”  There is also a sign on one of the posts. You can’t miss it.

 The flyer is free, and it takes about 15-20 minutes to get to the Old Town Transit Center. There are two Flyer stops at Old Town. You get off at the second stop and the Trolley is right there. If you tell the driver that you are catching the east bound trolley they will know how to help you. Two Different trolley line stop there make sure you get on the right one.  You want the “GREEN LINE to Santee.”  (if you take the wrong green line you go to the Mexican border) There is a digital sign that will tell you the wait times. Generally, a Green line comes every 15 minutes. 

 Before you get on the trolley you will scan the QR code on the Pronto app to pay for your ride. You open the App and hit the USE button. There are Scan and ride boxes on the platform. You can be fined if your pronto card/app is not scanned or has money. Transit cops check at random.

 (If you don’t have the app, there are pronto machines and you can buy a $10 transit card and tap that to ride, the card is free but you have to buy 10 in fare) 

 Once you are on the Trolley you will ride for 5 stops if you are staying at the Marriott. If you are staying in the Town and Country you will get off at the second stop - Fashion Valley. 

 (Town and Country folks, get off the Green Line, go down the stairs and the back of the town and country is across the bridge park/river to the south. To check in you’ll have to go around to front. But getting back on the trolley to go to the con is super easy.)

 Marriott folks the fifth stop is Rio Vista. You will get off the train, wait for it to pull away and cross to the northside of the tracks, and walk to the east the same direction the train left in. There is a path that crosses a bridge. You’ll see a sign that says Hotel/ Offices with an arrow that is correct.

 Follow that path and you’ll see the hotel on the left. There is a short path (after some in-progress construction. The path has railings that are painted white. You go left off the path to the north and the hotel is a short walk. 

 

Easy.  I also shot an 11 minute video of the trip so you can see it.

 

 

 

Here is the Video of the San Diego Stokercon AMA from late late March.

 

 

 

 

 

Book Review: I Can See Your Lies by Izzy Lee

 

I Can See Your Lies by Izzy Lee

158 pages, Paperback
Published February, 2024 by Dark Hart Books

New voices in horror are always a good thing.  Izzy Lee is she has been bringing her unique point of view to horror films for a awhile, now but with this novel she is spreading her vision into the domain of prose scares. She first got on my radar with a series of short films that I first saw at Horrible Imaginings Film Fest where she stood out as a short filmmaker who turned limited resources into solid short films. I had her on the podcast to help raise money to make her first feature film House of Ashes.  I am very excited for that film.

She is currently in post-production, so it is a little crazy that she managed to release a book at the same time. Released by Dark Hart collection which is the publishing arm of Sadie Hartman the author and long-time bookstagramer who is most often known as Mother Horror. I think many of us trust Sadie and her publishing this short novel is a great sign.

Izzy Lee is an accomplished horror storyteller, she understands the elements and can build them into an effective story. I Can See Your Lies is a short novel, a little longer than what I consider a novella but technically it is considered a novella. The good news is this book has plenty of story no matter how it is designated and is packed with creepy moments. Fin and her situation reminded me in a positive way of A Sarah Pinborough point of view character. Fans of Sarah Pinbrough’s feminist thrillers will like what is going on here, reminded me of Insomnia, which will soon be a TV series.

There are some first-novel growing pains, but I think an editor can often smooth those out. None of those things take away from the ultimate experience.  Mostly some shifts or reveals in the novel could’ve used more build-up or foreshadowing. I get made fun of for thinking every movie is twenty minutes too long, in this case, my biggest problem with this novel is I wanted more. That is a good problem to have.

The story follows Fin, who has just learned her husband is cheating, the process of dealing with this includes looking into her mother. She lives in LA, her sister works in casting and they grew up without their famous mother who disappeared after filming a movie that won many awards including the big ones.

The strength of the novel is the movie industry's adjacent mystery, the first act focuses on Fin’s marriage as it breaks, it sends up the parallels with her long-lost mother’s experience which she learns through reading her journal. The supernatural elements involve Mrs. Don’t, a ghost/ imaginary friend that both Fin and her daughter are haunted by. This aspect of the story is not surprising but effective.

What’s going on?”
“I saw Mrs. Don’t again.”
Shit. Shit-shit-shit-shit.
“Where are you, baby? Are you in your room at
Auntie’s?”
“Yeah.” Then silence.
“Is she still there? Mrs. Don’t, I mean.” Fin peeled back
the bed’s comforter so as to inspect the sheets. They at
least looked clean.
“I’m under the blankets. I’m afraid to look.”

This is a very strong first effort. I hope When Izzy succeeds in film she will keep writing horror novels.  A longer novel could have rolled out the backstory with a little more mood and vibe. I think a visual storyteller working for the first time at this length will have time to grow. I Can See Your Lies is a good debut, so don’t get me wrong. I think there is a lot to relate to in this novel, and fans of women-centric thrillers like Gone Girl, or Behind Her Eyes should see this as a supernatural cousin.

Book Review: Spin a Black Yarn by Josh Malerman

 

Spin a Black Yarn by Josh Malerman

387 pages, Paperback
Published August, 2023 by Del Rey

 Novellas are often considered the sweet spot in horror.  Long enough to do character development, and to build an idea, at the same time, they are short enough to experiment. There is a reason why the four novella collections are some of Uncle Steve's most popular works. Anyone who reads my reviews on the regular knows that I am a Malerman fan. He is a writer’s writer and as wildly successful as he has been the author is still underrated in my opinion.

Let me say that I think 4 Novella (5 in this case) should be a standard product in every author’s catalog.

As a consistent voice in horror, we need these collections from Malerman. An outside observer who doesn’t actually read his work and judges by the mainstream -meme culture of Bird Box might not have any idea just how creative, and experimental he is. I was a huge fan of Malerman’s last novella collection Goblin, you would not be far off if you remembered it as a novel. Those stories were a tad bit more interconnected, but both novella collections all take place around fictional Michigan towns. Both are amazing in their own right.

Recently Brian Evenson, (who I consider to be the best story author on the planet right now), praised this collection for daring experimentation. High praise coming from that author, but that was evident in Goblin. The novellas provide Malerman space to experiment and take risks. That said his novels range from pretty straightforward horror to bold risky works like Pearl or Incidents Around The House, both are experimental enough that they shouldn’t have worked. Through an almost magical alchemy, Malerman has the talent creativity, drive, and lack of fear to write those books. Thanks to the solid commercial value of Bird Box we have an author with the ability to do it.

One of the amazing charms of Spin a Black Yarn is a couple of stories that it should not work. It does. If you want to go in cold and trust me then here is your jumping-off point. I went in cold and was glad I did. The stories in this collection are set in and around a town called Samhatten, the connection to the setting is very slight in the Science Fiction tale Jupiter Drop, but Egorov the longest and closing novella is very much about the setting.

The novella collection in general becomes a puzzle that the author and editor put together of various tones and pace. Knowing Malerman’s reputation as a horror writer it makes sense to open on a traditional horror story like a haunted house tale. “Half the house is haunted,” is not what you expect in the first few pages. I started to think this was a trial run for Malerman soon to be soon-to-be-released work of genius Incidents Around the House. (reviewed that a few months back).

It is not what I thought. Half the House is Haunted is a psychological tale, that plays less on supernatural goings than it does bother/ sister dynamic. It is also about the power of an idea, how something said to a child can become become haunting lifelong fear in the back of one’s mind. Such a simple idea but it's amazing that no one ever made that point before… His sister would never explain what she meant when she would say half the house was haunted.

“I had to ask about it because, I’m almost embarrassed to say, it never left me alone. That Phrase, and the confidence with which she said it, clung to me like clothes in the rain, and no matter what phase of my life I endured, it was upon me.”

A subtle but effective horror tale.

Next up, is Argyle is creepy story that had an amazing set-up. Probably the only critical comment I have on the whole book is this concept was very chilling but I think maybe less might have been more. It is the story of a man on his deathbed who admits to his children that he struggled his whole life with the desire to kill. He tells many stories of close calls, and times he was challenged. I feel the story might have been more powerful if the story focused on the kids trying to determine if he was telling the truth. Still, there are disturbing and chilling moments. The idea of a child sitting through this kinda of confession is chilling to me.

It is hard to pick a favorite as Doug and Judy Buy the House WasherTM could easily have been it. I loved this story, and before you accuse this Phil-Dickian of seeing PKD in every cloud in the sky you should know that Malerman is a huge UBIK fan, so he does like PKD. The House washer story has a very PKD set-up. Two rich suburban people in the near future want to impress their neighbors by paying for an automatic house washer. It will clean the whole house, the catch is you can be in the house or have to be in a glass tube. Since they paid a lot of money they are curious and want to watch. 

The setup is pretty goofy, intentionally so as this is surreal SF. It is a weird high-concept tale meant to explore the characters. This is a funny, strange piece of work that I loved. “It’s not every day a product requires its purchasers to remain in a Plexiglass tube as the appliance does its job.”

Jupiter drop...oh boy. As a Malerman fan who primarily reads Science fiction I was excited to see him dip his toes into the field. Now this story is more surreal than true “science” fiction. Being a PKD guy I of course love the weirder more out there SF. The story of a man who pays for a trip through Jupiter’s atmosphere is both ludicrous and awesome at the same time.  “The bowels of Jupiter, storms, endless, but only the sounds now, only the music they made.”

The last and longest tale Egorov was a solid character piece that most effectively used the setting. It is a very interesting revenge piece about two brothers who are looking for the murderer of their identical triplet brother. They are part of the Russian immigrant community. A very intense character.

It is my attention to read everything Malerman puts out so I have repeated myself many times. Spin a Black Yarn has everything you look for in a collection. I think the surreal SF stories have been wanting a collection that reads all like that but I am happy with what we have.

Here is the video of Josh and I talking about this book:

 

 

Book Review: Womb City by Tlotlo Tsamaase

 

Womb City by Tlotlo Tsamaase

416 pages, Hardcover
Published January, 2024 by Erewhon Books

Womb City by Tlotlo Tsamaase is a complicated book to review there are positives and negatives all over the place and the ultimate opinion I sort of ended up with - this is a neat novel that could've been great. Fantastic elements but it suffers from trying to pack too much in and it gets very confusing in the last third. The literary equivalent of a CGI battle fest that turns many Hollywood blockbusters into a seizure-causing fest of imagery.  The amount of invention and creativity combined with a very different cultural setting helped elevate the material earlier and seemed to fade into the background later in the book.

Not every book has to be perfect or a masterpiece. Womb City might not make my best-of-the-year lists, but I can tell you Tlotlo Tsamaase is an author I will read again. For the first two hundred pages I enjoyed how it was starting. I liked the setting and the concept, which is built on many cool ideas. I think there were some first novel growing pains and a more heavy-handed editor might have gotten a more clear story out of this novel.

Tlotlo Tsamaase is a talented Science fiction writer from Botswana, which is a major selling point for this novel. We have had plenty of African Science Fiction, but interestingly enough it seems several of the authors who have become popular and readily available here are Nigerian or of Nigerian descent. That is cool but to get a voice from another African community is valuable and as a fan of World SF I can also say that many of the positives outweigh the negatives. Had this novel been just another work of American SF it would have lacked some of the natural strengths that come naturally with SF from cultures often underrepresented.

The reality is the power of getting an SF novel from Botsawa with the voice of an author from that country is worth a little bit of confusion. As a researcher of early to mid-20th century Science Fiction who were made up mostly of voices from New York and California, it is so welcome to have these diverse voices.  

That said, I have to be honest about my experience as a reader. Womb City is a post Cyberpunk novel built on story elements that reminded me in a good way of Altered Carbon - whichis just now becoming old enough to be dare I say a classic work by Richard Morgan. Tlotlo Tsamaase brings a unique point of view and much of the novel’s best moments involve the intense and well thought world-building about this future Africa where our minds can move from body to body. It is the unique social conditions that give humans of this future multiple lifetimes that are fascinating. Criminals have to give up their bodies and good citizens get to live on in their second, sometimes third body. 

“But if you commit suicide, you revoke that right. First – and second–year lifespanners adopt this strategy, selling off their 210 years, which is mainly obtained by foreigners with passport privileges who can declare citizenship through this form. Chinese, Indian, British, or American people possess some of our People’s bodies. Most of the Batswana I see walking in the city, I wonder what white souls colonize their bones.”

This paragraph expresses one of the most powerful and haunting themes of the novel.

Much of Nelah’s drive in the narrative relates to her intense desire to have a child, one growing in a government lab. Her marriage is in trouble, and evry part of her life down to her thoughts are being monitored by outside forces. The very nature of humanity and what makes us human is at the heart of this story. There are examples almost on every page, and multiple times in a chapter where the technology breaks down the aspects of human life by giving the characters a new body, a memory chip, memories that translate to data etc. Womb City explores the characters who exist as souls, ghosts in a sense, and spins around the idea of bodies being almost like clothing.

“for it is only the materialism of this flesh and the laws of this world that muddy the true calibre of our souls.”

As the novel novel unfolds it is clear that there is no freedom in the system as it is. One interesting scene involves two characters figuring out how they could die and force themselves into new bodies. What do race, gender, and experience mean when bodies are so casually exchanged?  

“He stares at me, smiling, unaware of the volcano erupting within me. These intimate sessions mutilate my sense of independence; in this murdered church of my body, every molecule is a screaming prisoner.”

Toward the end, I wondered who Nelah was anymore. An accident does more than break her body and it sets off the action in the last third of the book. Everything till this point I was enjoying quite a bit.
I admit some of my confusion might have been the state where I read the second half. I read the first half taking the bus and waiting for my flight to Indiana for the 2024 solar eclipse. During those days I had an intense spiritual experience with the eclipse, did a release party for a new novel, and then after a flight delay that included an overnight stay in the airport I read the final act of this novel. So I was super tired when I read it.   

I considered re-reading the novel, but I saw other reviews and I was not alone in the confusion in the back half. The first half does an excellent job bringing the characters together, defining who Nelah is, and even though her life is radically different from how we live is clear enough. In the back half the gun battles and action scenes melt together and motivations become less clear. Reading on the plane I found myself staring out the window. I don’t normally do that.

Womb City has more positives than negatives but that final act challenged me as much as the first 2/3 excited me. Tltolo Tsamaase has my attention Xer work whenever I can. This is a complicated story, and