Book Review: The Last Action Heroes: The Triumphs, Flops, and Feuds of Hollywood's Kings of Carnage by Nick de Semlyen

 

The Last Action Heroes: The Triumphs, Flops, and Feuds of Hollywood's Kings of Carnage by Nick de Semlyen

352 pages, Hardcover

Published June, 2023 by Crown

 

This will be a short review as this is not the kind of book you come here to commentary on. Well I consider myself a pretty high-brow fan of all things speculative and dark literature I also love 80s action movies. I consider Commando the citizen cane of bad action movies. I have read Outlaw Vern's book on Steven Segal, and I have followed the behind-the-scenes articles, and commentaries about all these action stars so I didn't read this book.

Don't get me wrong Nick de Semlyen (whom I know from the Empire podcast) did his job. Most of the details were things I already knew. I knew that Chuck Norris's real name was Carlos but his friends stories of the early days were pretty cool, Van Damme's first stage name was Frank Cujo and the scope of Segal's derangement on the set of On Deadly Ground were the things I felt I learned for the first time. Seriously a biopic TV series about the making of On Deadly ground would be hilarious.

It is great to have all this history between the covers of one book, for that, I give this book five stars.

In the spirit of this book:
Ahhhnold- Commando
Sly - Rambo (IV)
Chuck - Invasion USA (just beat the Octagon)
Van Damme - Sudden Death
Segal - Marked for Death
Bruce Willis - Last Boy Scout
Jackie Chan- Supercop 3

Book Review: The Mimicking of Known Successes by Malka Ann Older

 

The Mimicking of Known Successes by Malka Ann Older

169 pages, Hardcover
Published March, 2023 by Tordotcom

 Sometimes the concept of a novel is so good you marvel at the fact that it wasn't done before. The Mimicking of Known Successes by Malka Ann Older is  The first of a novel series of novels meant to invoke a cozy gaslamp mystery feeling.  In the  Holmes and Watson tradition, our detectives are two characters Mossa & Pleiti who have survived the ecological devastated earth to live in tightly packed platforms high in the atmosphere of a gas giant we assume is Jupiter but referred to through the book as Giant.

This is my second time reading Older and I really enjoyed the blend of social justice activism and near-future world-building of Infomocracy. That novel had more in common with political thrillers than the weird works of the Cyberpunks although the comparisons were out there. Think the Ryan Gosling movie Ides of March meets Leguin. It is part political and part spy thriller.  So yeah I am still four years later suggesting Infomocracy.

This novel which was born out of the isolation of the pandemic, is a great high concept that is not exactly for me. I am not a cozy gaslamp mystery reader but I highly respect the idea and execution. Someone who is Holmes-head (I don't know what they are actually called) would probably find lots of easter eggs and stylistic touches that are sailing over my head.

The mystery is cozy in the sense that the unexplained suicide of a character who didn't seem like he wanted to die is low-stakes. It is not the fate of the universe. There are details that set a Holmes-like mystery with facts that twist and turn the story.

The novel is written in first person from Mossa's point of view. I am rarely a fan of novels told in first person but the story was told well enough that I forgot about it. Unlike Ascension by Nicholas Binge it CONSTANTLY reminded me.

The thing that worked for me was the world-building that expressed the details of an ecological crisis and Earth's postmortem. Page 31 of this book is an info dump but it does an amazing job of answering the many questions the first thirty pages gave me. I liked the way you are through into the world and that was just the right amount of pages to leave the reader wondering.

"There had after all, been many species on earth, once.
Even the small subset of that number whose genetic information had been collected before they were driven out of existence,  and a smaller faction of those who had been resurrected for the Mauzooluem, still resulted in an extremely large panoply of species."

The setting provides a set of stakes and pressures that counterbalance the so-called "cozy" nature of the mystery. The world-building is so well done, subtle at times, intense at others but always handled with skill.  As a real-life Animal rights person I noticed a shout out to my peeps in this future.

"There were of course Animal rights activists who argued that the animals shouldn't  have been reconstituted to live in what is essentially captivity."

Mossa points out that few have taken up this view because that is what humans are dealing with. What is interesting to me about this is what this means for this mystery series. All the mystery cases will be a result of the characters essentially existing in captivity.

Mossa as a character has Holmes's careful considerable intelligence when he calls the academic Pleiti we get the idea that their partnership is more than the mystery. As curious as I was about them I admit I was also interested in the street preacher who only appears on page 46. I am probably the only reader who felt that way but I wanted to know his deal.

Mossa calls back to the street preacher in chapter 17 and that was the first time in a while I really thought about the first-person narrative. Really cool high-concept science fiction and an excellent translation of the concept.

Audiobook Review: Robots of Dawn by Isaac Asimov, William Dufris (Narrator)

 

 Robots of Dawn by Isaac Asimov, 

William Dufris (Narrator)

399 pages, Paperback
Published November, 1984 by Del Rey/Ballantine Books

 Literary awards: Hugo Award Nominee for Best Novel (1984), 

Locus Award Nominee for Best Science Fiction Novel (1984), 

Prix Cosmos 2000 (1985)

Series  Robot (#3), Robot, chronological order (#3), Greater Foundation Universe (#4)

My copy of Robots of Dawn has yellowed paper but I bought it brand new first edition paperback at Waldenbooks when I was too young to understand what I was reading for the most part. It sat on the shelf for a few years then. My first read of this trilogy (there is a fourth book that will come later)  was when I was in 8th grade if my memory serves me.

 Our understanding of Issac Asimov has changed as much as robotics have in the years since this trilogy started with Caves of Steel in 1954 and The Naked Sun in 57. Thanks to wonderful research most famously in Alec Nevala Lee's Fantastic must-read book Astounding, we have a warts and all history of Asimov who kept detailed notes on his own life. In the past, there was a lot of shoulder-shrugging about the heroes of Science Fiction who had some pretty ugly behavior. I remember Watching Harlan Ellison speak to a packed house at Worldcon he made a joke about another writer’s breasts and he paused for laughter and was met with disgusted silence. The community has changed dude,  and soon after a veil of silence was lifted we know some ugly things about Asimov. He groped women, made sexist comments, and was generally gross about using his stardom in the community.  It also appears before his death his behavior had gone away. Did he get it? I hope so.
 
 I like lots of art by problematic artists. For me, it is a case-by-case basis. I am not a fan of British SF writer Neal Asher’s right-leaning views, but I don’t mind that we don’t agree. Dan Simmons on the other hand crosses a line into racism. I have been turned off on his books. With Simmons and Crichton it began to affect the fiction in a way that I couldn't ignore.  I think what we have learned about Asimov affects this book more than most of his canon. Mostly I try to judge books on their own merits but as you’ll see it is hard in this case.

I have no idea if Asimov was planning a trilogy featuring Elijah Baley and R. Daneel Olivaw when he wrote the first book Caves of Steel, it is hard to say because it was decades between books two and three. To mirror that a bit I intended in 2019 to re-read this trilogy and The Naked Sun was one of my wildly too close to reality lockdown reads of 2020. I admit also that I listened to this novel on Audiobook. Something I normally reserve for tie-in novels.

That first book was a very character-driven spin on the detective noir that was augmented by the fantastic world-building. The world of the first book was Earth in the far future, although set in the same universe as the Foundation centuries before the events of that series. Part of the strength of the first book was the dynamic between Baley and Olivaw. One of the complaints about genre works from this era (the 50s) and Asimov, in general, is that he was more focused on the gee-whiz than the actual characters.

None the less The Naked Sun is an excellent sequel to Caves of Steel. Robots of Dawn is more complicated, written in the 1980s it serves a very important role in the Asimov canon. On the surface, it is the story of a Humaniform robot Jander that is “killed” on the colony world of Aurora. It is almost impossible to discuss without spoiling the ending. Caves and Naked Sun feel like they could be translated into exciting detective movies/ TV shows.

Robots of Dawn is talky book, and the tension comes mostly from interactions written by an admittedly awkward scientist writer who was not exactly known for his characters.  
Sometimes it works…

“That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.’ Is that it, Daneel?”
Daneel paused, then said, “I am not certain what is meant by the smell of a rose, but if a rose on Earth is the common flower that is called a rose on Aurora, and if by its ‘smell’ you mean a property that can be detected, sensed, or measured by human beings, then surely calling a rose by another sound-combination—and holding all else equal—would not affect the smell or any other of its intrinsic properties.”
“True. And yet changes in name do result in changes in perception where human beings are concerned.”
“I do not see why, Partner Elijah.”
“Because human beings are often illogical, Daneel. It is not an admirable characteristic.”

But often entire chapters are mucked up in which characters set up how impossible the mystery is. I admit as this was a re-read (well Audio) I knew the ending, and since it is the most interesting part that may have added to my annoyance with these conversations. This is when we get into the uncomfortable Asimov zone that has to do with the character Gladia Delmarre and her relationship with the victim Jander.

“Did they know that you had a robot husband?”
“I had a husband. Don’t call him a robot husband. There is no such expression.”

There is a lot of talk in the section about her needs sexually, this is where Asimov is clearly a man writing a woman, and it feels super icky. At some point in the 70s Asimov was accused of writing prude-ish sterile Science Fiction and considering how grown-up the new wave was writing it did make his books feel a little old-fashioned. Considering the new wave included voices from Malzberg to Joanna Russ, Asimov's lack of sexuality both in horny stuff and political gender stuff was noticeable. For readers anyway. Considering that mutton-chopped minor celebrity had at conventions a bad reputation for being all hands and horribly sexist maybe it was better he left it off the page.  In Robots of Dawn, it is not so much the plot, but the red herring and misdirection of the story.  As such it takes up many pages and all that stuff that made me cringe.

At the end of the sixties, most of Asimov’s publishing was non-fiction books, and he was constantly on National TV for moon shots but the reality was Asimov was in a 15-year Science Fiction drought. That ended when he released the excellent 1972 The God Themselves. This second part of that book is a reaction to Asimov being called him a prude, and there is tons of para-dimension sex just because. I know it sounds weird and it was. I also believe that Robots of Dawn is a reaction to the prude accusations. That is the kindest possible way to look at it, as there is another.

Asimov was very intent on making colony worlds like Solaria (in Naked Sun) and Aurora in Robots of Dawn have very different moral values from Earth where the human species was born. This is most glaring in how these societies view sexuality. There is a whole storyline involving incest and Galdia’s anger over being rejected sexually by her father.  The ick factor is bad no matter who wrote it but considering who wrote it adds an extra level.

Someone writing a  review who was not a part of the SF community probably wouldn’t devote so much attention to this minor aspect, but I can’t help it in this read.  There is one excellent scene where Bailey is trapped in the rain, which doesn’t sound like anything but for a person raised on earth his terror is really felt. From a pure storytelling perspective, this moment of terror from Bailey is one of the better individual scenes of Asimov’s canon.  It is one born purely of the world-building and character-meeting concept.

We also know famously that Foundation was an idea John W. Campbell handed A young Asimov, he wrote the first stories not even thinking of a novel, let alone a saga stretching multiple books. Asimov is dinged for not being able to write characters. Bailey and Olivaw are not exactly the most dynamic characters but they are memorable. Because Asimov started Foundation it really until the second book when The Mule is introduced that you get any sense of plotting at all. The Twist ending of Robots of Dawn is right in the title, which reminds me of Matherson’s  I Am Legend in that sense. Asimov hinted that these stories took place in the Foundation universe just centuries before. The twist is that this roboticide was committed as part of a plan to spread humanity through Humaniform colonies. This connects these robot novels directly to the Foundation series. 

That is one reason I think of this book as the end to the trilogy. The story is continued in Robots and Empire, but is that a Foundation book? I think it is.  Robots of Dawn is a book with ups and downs. There were moments I thought this was a 2-star book, but the ending makes up for a lot. It is impossible in 2023 to not read this any other way than the acknowledgment of creepy Issac. That makes the misdirection of the mystery really tough to read. It is talky, but it is the Science Fiction version of a locked door mystery that in the final act opens up to a wider universe.

As a novel Robots of Dawn shows the strengths of Asimov’s imagination while showing many of his weaknesses as a writer. Overall I think it is an important book in SF canon, as long as the reader can balance the context. I understand if readers might want to focus on writers of the past who were not as problematic, or not problematic at all. To me the books outlive the person and the behavior, the question is does Robots of Dawn highlight the problems with Asimov? It gets damn close, a writer who deserves the benefit of the doubt might not get the same critical to the uncomfortable sexuality. Robots of Dawn is interesting because I believe it is canon and a 3/5 star book at the same time. Important, at a few key moments great but not something I can’t fully get behind.  

Book Review: Vertical by Goodfellow

 

Vertical by Cody Goodfellow     

336 pages, Paperback
Published September, 2023 by Titan Books

Almost two decades ago I went to a coffee house to meet a local horror author to see if there were ways we could work together to promote our small horror community. I read his debut novel before we hung out and frankly, I couldn’t believe how good it was. I had first heard of Cody Goodfellow in an intensely hyperbolic review in Cemetery Dance Magazine by Splatterpunk legend John Skipp. (Skipp would go on to team up with Cody on a couple of novels) Throughout the years there have been lots of reviews and blurbs that will tell you how genius Cody Goodfellow is. Skipp and I are far from alone.

I assumed once the secret got out he was on track to become the biggest writer of our generation, a household name, bestselling novels, home on paperback racks that kind of thing. To me, he was that good. Over time I learned that happens to your Ray Bradburys and Isaac Asimovs. When the people doing really crazy original stuff like Barry Malzberg and Norman Spinrad you get respect from the hardcore but it took death for Octavia Butler and Philip  K. Dick to be recognized as the towering giants they were. They didn’t play it safe; they wrote revolutionary genre fiction and sometimes it helps to be a mad scientist.

 That is what Cody Goodfellow is at heart, a mad scientist, who unlike most literary freakazoids from those earlier generations Cody grew up with more than a massive library, but also punk rock, alternative culture, and an open attitude toward mind-altering genre and chemicals. The kind of alchemy that creates in Cody Goodfellow a human who writes novels that are so good, so weird the world is just not ready for them.

I once asked Cody what he was working on. He responded “A body horror novel about a haunted house with bees that turn you into communists.” The result was a horror novel Perfect Union. This novel is a masterpiece, but when Cody shopped it to major publishers the silence was deafening. In my opinion - they didn’t get it. This novel recently reissued by Ghoulish Books is STILL ahead of its time. It is better in my opinion than hundreds of mainstream horror novels and stomps most Stoker award-winning milk toast.

Didn’t matter if he wrote weird mystery noir like Repo Shark or SF dystopia in Unamerica it was equally good.  I was ready for him to write a straight-ahead action techno-thriller like Vertical. I knew that this project was brought to Cody by Alcon Entertainment. He was given a Screenplay in development, but as a long-time Goodfellow reader I wouldn’t have guessed, because the characters feel like his and the action and details elevate what could be a simple action adventure in a less dynamic storyteller’s hands.  

Vertical is the story of an Urbex crew of adventure activists who pull off daring stunts sometimes with a message.  Outlaw athletes who pull off political pranks they broke up after the last stunt almost killed them.  Michael Foster has moved on to working as tech-bro when Cam and Maddie from the crew recruit him for the ultimate prank.  Climbing the unfinished tallest building in the world being built in Moscow and billed as Vertical City.  Once up the plan is to send a friend to launch in a dangerous wing-suit flight.

The Korova Tower on Russia Day is a prank for the ages. The location and set-up are one that Goodfellow doesn’t rush. The characters are key in thrillers and Cody fills them with reasons, flaws, strengths, and motivations. They are not plot chess pieces, and that is important because when shit gets crazy you need a reason to give a shit about them.  

Let's start by talking about how well Goodfellow sets the stage for the location.

“As they passed out of the tunnel, a gargantuan shadow fell across the highway, eclipsing the pale, rising sun.

Twice as tall as the cluster of gleaming spires around it, Korova Tower looked like a ladder to the stars.  Its one hundred and ninety stories dominated the skyline, surmounted by a forked crane that made the already imposing tower look like it has horns.”

The reputation Goodfellow has for writing bonkers stuff and that kind of hides how powerful and poetic his prose can be. That is an example of excellent writing. This book is filled with moments like that it in a book designed to be a commercial vehicle. Another thing that elevates the book is the balance between knowledge of the gritty underground world matched with above-average knowledge of historical and literary details. Vertical has a urbex crew a reference to the Illiad, and former punk rock Russian cop who makes jokes about Sex Pistols in his narrative POV. Speaking of that guy’s band The Great Train Robbery whose records were pressed on the vinyl on old X-rays, a detail Goodfellow uncovered doing intense research. That is key Vertical is intensely researched. It has to talk about the white-knuckle action of the final act without spoiling the action, so if you want a spoiler-free experience go read Vertical meet me back here at this part of the review.

Going into the book I assumed it would have Die Hard feeling, with the Russian agents or Mob chasing the team around the building but a few set pieces in particular drive the action. The one I didn’t see coming was an earthquake under Moscow. The reason for this is one I appreciate but won't give away.

It is one thing for a city not used to earthquakes to suffer one during the Russia day party, that is enough to add chaos to your adventure story but…

“Like its neighbor, the Federation town, Korova stood on a shelf of sedimentary rock separated by a thick stratum of alluvial clay from deep but perennially depleted aquifer, which served as a perfect transmitter for the longest wavelengths of the distant quake to strum the skyscraper like a taunt string. Built to suspend 190 stories of concrete, steel, and glass on a minimal footprint with little consideration for seismic endurance, the skyscraper’s tripod shaped foundation core tisted against itself as if some greater force was wringing it dry…”

Now imagine your prankster crew of activists are trapped on the half-finished top floors.  Once the building starts to fall part of the adrenaline ride of the story starts. Like another horror or suspense thing you have to put yourself in the shoes of the characters and the whole thing would be gut-wrenching and terror-inducing, not just for the fear of heights but the building falling apart. Goodfellow figures out dozens of crazy ways the building and events would kill a character, and who survives drives the tension.

Of course, this would make an incredible movie, just the scene of Tom Cruise hanging off the building of Mission Impossible was nail-biting, a whole movie of it done right could be crazy good. We don’t need to wait for it. We have to story already playing out in this novel with the unlimited budget of your imagination. Cody Goodfellow is a wordsmith hell-bent on giving you the literary feeling of looking over the of high-up building. Now imagine that building starting to crumble apart. Vertical is an action thriller that works on the page.

Book Review: Alien: Enemy of My Enemy by Mary Sangiovanni

 

Alien: Enemy of My Enemy

416 pages, Paperback
Published March, 2023 by Titan Books

A young or new musician composing a song requires the musician to create something out of nothing. It is different when Tony Iommi plugs in his guitar and goes to write a Black Sabbath song he has certain expectations. He has chords, a guitar sound, and he has Ozzy or Dio’s voice in his head, I know Geezer wrote most of the lyrics but you get the idea.

Writing a tie-in novel is a tricky thing.  Fans of the franchise, are like fans of a band. You have to hit the recognizable notes like a power cord. This novel has to feel like it is in the Alien universe, some readers will complain if something is too different, it has to simply feel like something they have seen before. At the same time, other readers will complain if they don't get something new. I enjoyed it when Brian Evenson (written as B.K. Evenson) did something wild and out there with his Alien: No Exit. That novel was a like Noir with a detective who sleeps in hypersleep until Xenomorph events happen.  Some readers complained it wasn’t Alien enough.  Threading that needle in this novel is a great writer.

Mary Sangiovanni is a knowledgeable writer who has been on my podcast a few times to bring her expertise on all things cosmic horror.  I was excited to see Mary write a science fiction novel, I was personally less interested in Xenomorph of the whole thing as  I was at seeing what Mary did with Sci-fi. This is the third in a self contained trilogy, but I didn't read the other books and I think I was fine.

Mary stuck close to the formula, which is fine because there are many times she gave it her special touch – namely reminding the reader that these monsters are a creation of the darkest corners of the cosmos. Space is always trying to kill us. Consider this moment on page 78…

“Another pass of light showed even larger holes in the floor and more yellow acid that had eaten through the floor around the medical pods.
“Blood can’t do that,” Siobhan said, shaking her head. I don’t care what kind of experiments they’re doing here. How could any living thing have blood like that?”

A moment of suspense for sure, that will remind us that feeling we got watching the movies. The question at the end of this quote speaks to cosmic horror at the heart of these killing machines. It is the reason that the corporation in this franchise want to make the Xenomorph into a weapon. Some writers doing Alien novels just set up the action scenes. No moment of cosmic dread is left behind in moments like this. Many of the best moments of this novel are in the execution.

The set-up is an interesting one. I don't know how much comes from the first two books in the trilogy.  A Weyland-Yutani bioweapons lab is under the gun to provide results as the Moon they are stationed on is in sudden danger as the orbit is collapsing into the planet Hepaestus. Again, the cosmos itself working to kill the characters and creating an added ticking clock besides the Xenomorphs running around. There is another research labs near  and they are a different corporation making drugs. They are all waiting to be evacuated just as a major peace conference is set begin on the nearby conference.  

Quickly, maybe too quickly the Xenomorphs escape the lab, and in the prologue start the killing. This maybe a function of being a third book, and I get why you do that as a writer to open with action and give yourself some room for a little more build-up  later. Sangiovanni certainly uses build up and tension through the rest of the book so this is minor complaint and I absolutely understand  why you would start this way.

There are a couple of elements that give the framing story something original to the alien franchise. The concerns of the two corporations, the ticking clock of the dying moon, the peace conference. These are balanced with moments that feel very familiar, dynamics between the colonial Marines, the lead character, but those are features not bugs.

If you want to go in cold that stop here, buy and read the book and meet me back here. I really enjoy when writers like Tim Lebbon or Mary Sangiovanni play with the tropes and make solid as a rock Alien novels.  I think I personally enjoy the weird B.K. Evenson No Exit style but we are not here to talk any other Alien books and this one is super fun.

For those of you who complain there is nothing new here, let me stop you and present a scene for further evidence.  In the first one hundred pages the local wildlife who are like massive elk on the dying moon are seeded into the background. This pays off on page 120.

“The Xenomorph clinging to the outer wall was enormous, two or three times the size they’d seen so far. Tufts of fur grew between the jutting blades of its shoulders and black spines, and it’s chest was much broader. Most notable, though-  most terrifying – was the set of gigantic bony antlers protruding from the curved, eyeless heads.”

I kinda always understood that the Xenomorphs we’ve seen face hug a human and then they are a human like version. This scene really got me. Cool stuff.

I admit I don’t know the Alien universe, but when the novel get into world-building and background of the conference is when we get details of the wider universe which in the main franchise is mostly expressed in corporate greed. We knew they wanted bioweapons so in this we get some information about the seeds of the conflict, it is light seasoning, a pinch of salt but it did tons for this reader. I am assuming there is more details in the first two books. I suppose I will have to go back and check them out at some point.  
 
The most interesting character was Weyland-Yutani researcher Dr. McCormick, who created meds he thought could slow down the process of Xenomorph gestation up to three weeks. Running out of time this crazy fucker allows himself to become a host, figuring he can prove his science, and in a sense make himself valuable to be saved after he realizes the whole mission will be written off.

This character might be the most interesting thing in the novel, and I was impressed by this whole storyline. It is a interesting wrinkle that comes logically out of the world building we've seen. I also liked that the novel touched on the Prometheus/Covenant events as I am one of the rare fans of Prometheus and the bold swing it took mythology-wise.

Alien: Enemy of My Enemy is a strong powerful power cord that is played with great skill. A fun read for fans of the franchise who want to familiar story with elements of cosmic horror and minutes of elevation. As a writer I was playfully jealous  that Mary got to play in this sandbox and was constantly thinking about more Alien novels that could be. That shows that this novel was stimulating my imgination, telling a fun story and entertaining. Mission accomplished.

Book Review: Holly by Stephen King

 

Holly by Stephen King

449 pages, Hardcover
Published September, 2023 by Scribner

Maybe you have heard of Stephen King? Just kidding look several people have told me they were looking forward to my review as I play it straight up. I love Uncle Steve, I think I love him as a person more than I do as a writer. I love his interviews and the highs in his career have been good enough I will always check out his work.

Like a new Metallica album in the metal scene, the release of a new Stephen King novel will get an opinion out of everyone. My Stephen King love is mostly in the older early work but that doesn't mean I have not enjoyed some recent works. I absolutely loved Doctor Sleep and Later.  At the same time, I found Fairy Tale and The Institute to be unreadable. The Outsider started strong but the end didn't deliver on the promise of the first two hundred pages. My point is I love Stephen King but I am also honest about my opinion.

That said I enjoyed Holly.  Is it perfect? It doesn't have to be. King has written plenty of masterpieces even for Steph Curry misses a shot or two.  I'll take as many Metallica albums and Stephen King novels as we can get.

Holly Gibney is the point of view character of this novel, and although this is the third Holly book if you count 1/4 of a novella collection. This one is Holly in the spine of the book. I admit I leave for vacation tomorrow and I have one foot out the door as I write this review, but let me start by saying that for the most part a lot of the things that annoyed me about books like Fairy Tale are not here.

This novel has a focus. It feels like King, who is notorious for not having plan, had to have an idea. The novel has a structure that Fairy Tale didn't have. Events had to happen in a certain order, there was research he had to do into the Harris couple.

It is not a spoiler to point out that the book is about serial killer seniors. The concept of the super carnivore professor who thinks eating human livers will keep him and his wife young appeals to this vegan. King is said that he wouldn't be good at who-done it. This is a who-done-it for Holly but for the reading is a why-done-it. You dig.

SK cuts back and forth between points of view and timelines to set suspense from the parallel track of the stories. This makes me think he must have had some kind of plan. Just as important to the book as Holly is the 2021 post-COVID era it is set in.  That was interesting to me because I traveled around that time I had the experience of seeing regional levels of public response. Where I live in San Diego the fears of COVID were pretty light, we have year-round warm weather lots of outdoor options. When I traveled to the Bay Area was the first time I was asked for a Vax card to get into a movie. It seemed to me that the COVID reaction was over the top but that is likely my perception.

The story starts with Holly's MAGA mom dying from COVID. There are some interesting moments about online funerals. Holly wants life back to normal and takes a gig looking for Penny Dahl's lost daughter Bonnie. Her partner is sick with COVID and the clock is ticking.

It is no mystery to the readers. We saw the old professors Rodney and Emily Harris take Bonnie and through flashbacks, we know they kidnap and eat their victims. King does an excellent job juxtaposing these events to create tension. while I have some nitpicks overall I think the novel works quite well.  

Before I talk about the nitpicks I want to say I know this is a little like telling Mozart he hit some wrong notes. Stephen King is human and I am just a reader here. I think King being one of those baseline authors that everyone reads means he is like a common language we can speak in. It gives a much wider world of readers and writers a common book we can talk about the mechanics of what works and what doesn't. Being the most popular writer in the universe means he is a language we all speak. Plus a nimrod like me won't hurt his sales right?

So the Harris couple as a serial killer team can't have the motivations of a normal, sad sack lonely serial killer. They are open to each other, so the motivation SK develops is a good one. The idea that this carnivore zealot forces their victims to eat almost raw liver before dying was horrifying to this vegan.  Kudos to him for putting a vegan in that basement who refused.  Because for that scene I had the thought that if I was there I would do the same thing you. You are going to kill me anyways fuck you I am not eating that.

This book has brutal moments, it has thoughtful moments. There were typical asides that SK is known for. He probably spent more pages on the Bowling league which led Holly to find the killers.   My friend Ivan Zoric was more bothered by that, and for me, it was chapters about Barbara, Holly's partner's sister learning from a  poet that felt too long and unneeded. Together 60 or 70 pages could have been trimmed but I am OK with a few Stephen King asides.

I can live with that, but the novel has constant Tell don't show moments. One of the first fundamental rules of writing is Show, Don't Tell. As in don't tell me what happened, show me. It is one of the first bad habits editors have to pound out of young writers. Constantly in a chapter from the victim's point of view, it will give background about the other victims, stuff they couldn't know.

For example on page 271. In the scene, Holly is at the Bowling alley getting closer to the killers Professor Harris, through his bowling team. Several chapters earlier an entire chapter was devoted to Penny Dahl talking about Holly on social media, Rodney and Emily Harris were on to her and it was creepy.  Then in a Chapter from Holly's  POV, "It never crosses her mind  that Penny Dahl has outed her Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter." Well yes it would be impossible for it to cross her mind that. That is the point. You already showed us that earlier no need to tell us again.

On page 290 Bonnie is in the basement "There's a Porta-john in the corner of the cell, and like Jorge Castro, Cary Dressler, and Ellen Craslow before her (Stinky Steinman Perhaps not so much), She knows what it means: someone intends for her to be here awhile."

Bonnie has no reason to know the names of the other victims, or that one victim didn't need a porta potty as much. Where the fuck was King's editor to ren pen that and say "all you need here is She knows what it means: someone intends for her to be here awhile."

Sorry to nitpick but King deserves better editing than that. We all writer sentences like that, we all push ideas that someone has to say "I see what you are trying but it doesn't work." I also feel like King is not trusting his readers to remember. Look I get the man is 75 years old. I hope to live that long and stay as sharp as him but the editing let him down.

Overall I liked Holly, I enjoyed the process but was bothered by a few of these tiny moments. Holly is not a bad book and I am simply holding King up to the high standard I expect from him after reading 50 or so of his books.

Book Review: Ascension by Nicholas Binge

 

Ascension by Nicholas Binge

344 pages, Hardcover

Published April, 2023 by Riverhead Books

I have discovered more than one book or author thanks to the tweets of Stephen King, in the case of Adrian Walker's End of the World Running Club I was totally hooked and thankful that I followed Uncle Steve's advice.  This book was not on my radar until Mother Horror Sadie Hartman thanked King for putting this book on her radar. As soon as the Sci-fi/horror hybrid was mentioned I put a hold on the book and went into it totally cold.

Like every book, I went into Ascension rooting for it to knock my socks off. I don't know Nicholas Binge, and since I understand how much work a book like this requires, it is very hard for me to come across as trashing a book. That said I have published more than a thousand reviews at this point and I have been told they trust me because I am a straight shooter.  I am going to try to be constructive and maybe we can learn from this experience.

Personally, I believe Binge was let down by his editor, as this book is written in a prose style that tore me out of the narrative constantly and made suspension of disbelief impossible. Clearly, this worked for other readers so it may not bother you. There is a five-star old-school SF concept that mirrors At the Mountains of Madness while updating with some Interstellar-like time whimey stuff.

Ascension is a novel about a scientific exhibition. Harold is our point-of-view character who is drafted into a mission to explain this massive skyscraping impossible mountain that has suddenly appeared in the Pacific Ocean. The last research team (that included his ex-wife) mostly disappeared or went crazy from the experience. What is up on that mountain? How did it get here the mystery of it all is an amazing set-up. I am here for it.

The execution is the problem. I ended up rounding in my rating to three stars because I did like the story but the execution is two stars at best.  I have been clear in the past that I am not a fan of first-person narratives. The reason is the novelist often cheats by writing the prose like a novel, there are examples that don't cheat King's Delores Claiborne is my go-to example. Recently his hard case crime novel Later was in first person and the prose grew-up with the character.

Ascension takes it a step further by being both first-person and epistolary. This to me is where the editor failed Binge. Great concept, but this book needed another draft. That said plenty of people are reading and enjoying this book so if you don't want t spoilers here is your chance to jump out of this review and come back and see where you land on this one.

You see for me I was constantly seeing the author making choices, and this constantly took me out of the book and made it hard for me to lose myself in the story. Why? In the prologue, Harold is found in a mental institution with a bunch of unsent letters. The first mistake is throughout the book we know Hardold escaped and was able to write these letters. First mistake of the narrative device. As such each letter opens "Dearest Harriet" which gave me Civil War letter vibes.

This letter set-up could've worked as framing, but honestly, it did nothing for the story at all. Besides divorcing the reader from the events, making the events secondary threw the letters had me nitpicking the language. You see the prose constantly cheats. If you are going to write a novel in letters they have to sound like letters.

Harold survives this harrowing otherworldly experience and writes a letter to his family is he going to write chapter breaks, and end letters with a twist that perfectly sets up the letter, carefully building the tension. No, he wouldn't.  Would he write dialogue scenes like "There's a man," He said, glancing at his colleague. "Well, there's a..." He pressed his eyebrows together." A novelist writing a novel does details and description not someone writing a letter. On page 27 Harold speaks in the "letter" to Harriet but mostly the letter format is forgotten. Using that framing however, meant I was constantly looking for moments that didn't make sense.

There is an easy fix that an editor could suggest, by starting the chapters with letters and fading into third person later.  This Is How You Lose the Time War is a 2019 science fiction epistolary novella by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone uses this method, and that novella is one of the best reads of the last decade for me. The difference is they didn't cheat. The letter format in Ascension comes and goes willy-nilly.

Once we get on the mission in the second act of the book I was able to get lost in the narrative a bit. Still the nagging problem of none of this should be a letter hung around the neck of this story like an albatross. The science elements of the mountain, and the mystery of what it was had a bit of a Solaris/ Lem vibe and I really enjoyed that element. of course, how we got there was a problem.

There is subtle but important cosmic horror commentary "I'm not sure," Thomas said, Leaning in. "That seems like human arrogance. We only think that because humanity imagines itself as the defining model against every other example is copied. Just because we define intelligence by how closely it apes the human psyche, it doesn't mean that it can't be wildly different."

There are some really great reveals and moments deeper into the book.  "I gazed across rises and gorges, across vast plains of ice and mountains of rock, and I saw something odd. Off in the distance, I saw things. A whole group of flickering, moving black shapes they must have been hundreds of meters away. My breath caught in my throat; at first, I was certain that they were more of the octopus creatures but as i squinted I could see they were people."

Who was up on this unnatural mountain with them? I won't spoil but it was a great reveal.  

OK serious spoilers here!!!!

The most important reveal of course comes on page 203 and makes use of Arthur C Clarke's famous saying that any significant technology would be indistinguishable from magic. I really enjoy the reveal here which I consider to be the mission statement of the concept. blending a science fiction horror set-up and using what feels like science and cosmic horror to set up this crazy reveal...

"What are you saying?" I asked as a gust of freezing wind blew past my face. "not just Mount Olympus, but the mountain of all gods, throughout time. Harold if my theory is right, we're standing on the holiest site in the history of the entire human race."

That is the thing. Great concept, the execution of the reveal was good but for me, it was like having a great painting in a hideous frame that distracted from the intended art itself.

Ascension is a cool idea, and I am going to blame his editor whom I assume was paid to oversee this book and apparently didn't see these problems. That said the top-selling author in the history of the universe didn't appear to have a problem with this. There are plenty of five-star reviews from readers who didn't have this problem. It may be a result of my writer's brain over-ruling my reader brain.

There were enough positive elements for me to say I was glad I read it, and I will give Nicholas Binge another chance. I liked the story, and the concept a lot.