Book Reviews

[Brian861]

Thanks Brian. We're agreed, this is a really special story. It's startling how fast things change and it's Mr. King's ability to bend reality that makes it so much easier to gain perspective. I loved this book as a whole but especially feel that impossible connection he forges with readers in the first half (first 100,000 words!) is just pure magic.

You're most welcome, Andrew. Agreed!

[bugen]

Darker Places - Richard Matheson

"You're improving on evolution then."
"Let's just say cooperating with it."

In his introduction Mr. Matheson makes it clear these were predominately earlier stories and that he tried over his career to maintain his distance from the horror and dread contained here. He never wanted these published, considering them too dark and having mostly forgotten about writing them, but relented for a 2004 Gauntlet edition.

“Revolution” – A very young boy is at the butcher’s with his mother and their pet dog Muggins when the boy questions the butcher about meat. He begins to understand meat comes from creatures that have been alive and enters into hysterics for Muggins’ life, thinking the dog will become food next, and his horror spreads to his family.

The Puppy – One of two novellas, Sara is desperately trying to care for her young boy Davie and one night is startled to find a puppy in her apartment, one she is afraid might hurt her delicate son. She decides to get rid of it, a task more difficult that it might seem.

“Little Girl Knocking On My Door” – The crowning achievement here, a mother remembers when a disturbing child showed up at her door, asking the somehow chilling question, “please ma’am, may I play with your little girl?”

Cassidy’s Shoes – The second novella, a virtuoso lead in a troupe of dancers expires after a period of spiraling down into madness and while management figuratively scrambles to fill his shoes a cast member literally does so.

“The Hill” – A man is on his way to the post office when interrupted by another man who needs his help in keeping a lookout for a third party who will be along shortly. One of my favorites.

“Intergalactic Report” – This one's written as a kind of alien, computerized document concerning investigation of a slaughter that occurred at a temple containing The Ultimate Truth. Another of my favorites here, and basically just a single page.

Creature – A screenplay based on a John Saul novel that never made it into production (he explains why in his introduction to the script), this is the story of bio-engineering in a small town that’s working on producing the next wave of human evolution, and is producing a current wave of super-athletes. But the price associated this kind of advancement is high.

Creature makes up the bulk of the collection, about half of the book, and throughout the read conjures up images of 70’s style cutting-edge technology. This could just be me, though. It’s the first script I’ve ever read and I liked it but felt most of the other stories here edged it out.

Overall this is definitely dark stuff, and from a master storyteller like Mr. Matheson you can’t go wrong here if you like horror.

4 stars

*Since this edition stands alone, I’ve never seen any of these stories elsewhere, I’ve got to point out there are a couple of typos in “Little Girl Knocking On My Door” (bands for hands and cheat for chest) that are enough to interrupt the flow, and another minor one a few pages later. Also the page numbers in the TOC don’t actually match the page numbers of the stories, becoming progressively more inaccurate—by the time you hit the introduction for Creature there’s a 12 page difference. Not the end of the world but unfortunate in an expensive book.

My copy, ordered from Gauntlet, did not come with the script page signed by Matheson as did the other lettered copies of Darker Places. I asked Barry about this and he sent the following as a replacement. It is a digital copy of a handwritten, signed document, but Mr. Hoffman assured me this (copy) was in fact the exact, original document he received from Mr. Matheson via FedEx when putting together the book in 2003 prior to its publication as the backstory to “Creature.”

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[bugen]

Survivor – Chuck Palahniuk

Every breath is a choice.
Every minute is a choice.
To be or not to be.
Every time you don’t throw yourself down the stairs, that’s a choice. Every time you don’t crash your car, you reenlist.

In his 30’s Tender Brandon is one of the last known survivors of a religious cult that terminated in mass suicide a decade earlier. The number of members who lived through the ordeal is dwindling due to a deeply ingrained sense that members need to kill themselves when the timing is right. And someone may be stalking the remaining few to speed things along. The books opens with Tender alone on a commercial aircraft, explaining his life story to the black box before the plane runs out of fuel and nosedives.

We learn Tender was a born and bred slave to menial labor and sent out into the world, as are most all of his brothers and sisters, as nearly unpaid experts in things like gardening, cleaning and cooking. While balancing his life of labor and meetings with his social worker Tender meets the girl, Fertility, who sees the future and meddles with his life. When the media learns the number of survivors is narrowing to just him they turn everything into a ticket-selling feeding frenzy.

The story is irreverent and contemptuous, a vicious social satire framed with religion, and everything is crackpot. Shots are taken at numerous aspects of the modern consumerist lifestyle and none of them are off the mark. Of course, this perspective on modern life was already laser-sighted and brutalized with his first novel, Fight Club, but that doesn’t make anything here less true. It’s about a modern human organism so socially dumbed-down, so beholden to celebrity lifestyles and reality television that the last thing we want to do is make our own decisions when others can make them for us. Our lives have been taken over to the extent we’re not really alive, we’re just inevitable statistics on actuarial tables waiting to be realized, moved from the red column to the black. Marketing taking priority over substance is the key to Survivor.

Let’s look at Amazon’s rating system for an ironic example:

This book rates as 4.5 stars, as does Fight Club, but they are not equal. Survivor is good. It’s very good, but Amazon’s system, where every positive experience needs to rate a 4 or a 5, doesn’t allow for real distinctions. If a more realistic, less sensational rating system were adopted we could actually trust ratings. I know it wouldn’t sell as many books, at least at first, because books wouldn’t be artificially boosted at a glance, but we also wouldn’t have to wade through so much to get at the good stuff. It’s just possible the number of serious readers would increase.

If John Doe gets turned on to reading after a friend’s great book recommendation, then starts out on his own journey only to repeatedly encounter mediocre books all rated by the masses as averaging between 4 and 5 stars, how soon until he gives up and goes back to television and everyone loses? This book’s a perfect example. It’s good, and you can’t go wrong reading it. But if you only have the time left in your life to read one more book with a philosophical bent it shouldn’t be this one. Go for Paulo Coelho’s The Alchemist. Or Voltaire’s Candide. Or King’s The Stand. Or Bradbury’s Martian Chronicles. Or Oscar Wilde’s The Happy Prince and Other Tales. Or Fight Club, or this or that; there’s a big list that I know of and a much bigger one that I don't. But with Amazon you couldn’t tell because everything that's good has a 4.5 star rating and looks like it's a masterpiece. They’re the de facto leader yet they’re confusing things for people who want to learn and not just follow a train of lemmings right off the Stupid-Cliff. It’s not about truth, it’s about selling stuff. And that’s exactly the type of thing Survivor is skewering.

Fantastic social commentary resides within these pages but keeping it from the top echelons is its uneven transitions between the sometimes sly but usually biting implications of modern society and occasional stale passages of exposition—it just bogs down a little here and there. But when it on, it’s on.

Survivor is a well-recommended read that you probably won’t want to have missed it when it’s all said and done. Fight Club is a similar but superior novel so go for that one first, and if you liked it chances are you will this one as well.

“You can tell people the truth, but they’ll never believe you until the event. Until it’s too late. In the meantime, the truth will just piss them off and get you in a lot of trouble.”

3+ stars

[Theli]

I've only read one Palahniuk novel, Haunted, and I just did not like it. Pretty much turned me away from his work for good. Just came across as short-sighted, vitriolic, pompous and poorly written. The attempts at social commentary were laughably shallow, ignorant and judgmental.

[bugen]

I've read a little about Haunted and not sure it's my thing but might check it out at some point. Maybe not, though, if you hated it that much. There's too much good stuff to get to.

Sometimes I'll break up huge novels with short stories here and there, and in doing so came across the Palahniuk story "Zombies."

I thought this one was brilliant, so good that it pushed me to read Survivor before returning to the novel I was already in the middle of. It's about an epidemic of youths using defibrillators on themselves to escape societal pressures, is about a 15 minute read and is available free online at the below (it seems the name changed from "Zombie" to "Zombies" somewhere between original publication and the collection I was reading). If you ever feel you may give the author another chance I'd suggest this one. If you don't like it then that would be it, that's my big gun.

http://chuckpalahniuk.net/news/zombi...huck-palahniuk

[Theli]

Fair point! Thanks for the recommendation. I also kind of do that, read novellas or collections to break up longer reads, especially series. I don't want to take a huge break and lose track, but it's sometimes nice to have a respite.

[Tommy]

"Guts" is a stunning piece of work and the best part of Haunted in my opinion. I did not like all the stories in Haunted but the ones I did have never left me. "Exodus" is also really disturbing. The connective story of the writers' retreat did not work that well for me and I think the book would have been better if it had simply been a collection of short stories.

My favorite Palahniuks are Invisible Monsters, Fight Club, Survivor, Lullaby and Choke.

[bugen]

Thanks to both of you guys for weighing in and Tommy for the list. I can say I’m about ¼ through the collection Make Something Up, loving it, and will probably write about it here when finished unless it takes a huge downturn.

[bugen]

Well, I’ve now checked out both “Guts” and “Exodus,” skipped everything else from Palahniuk’s Haunted, and have a couple of things to say.

First, Tommy, repped. And I need to rep more people, but same to you, Theli, as just based on these two stories alone I can see where you’re coming from. These things are pretty sick, and no, they don’t represent huge portions of our society like I feel some of Mr. Palahiuk’s other works do. Although “Exodus” masquerades like it does and is a strong story, it’s not fair to judge all of us like it does by proxy with the detectives. I’m not sure reading this whole novel/collection is worth it and will probably save time by skipping it, at least for now.

But back to Tommy, I really appreciate you calling these two particular stories out. I read a little about “Guts” before picking it up and according to Wikipedia the count is now up to 73 people who have fainted at public readings, and a teacher in New York was suspended for letting his 11^th grade class read it. And the three instances in the story are all supposedly based on true events.

Like the first couple of sentences say, “Inhale. Take in as much air as you can.” By the end of “Guts” I don’t know how long I’d been holding my breath or if I’d just been breathing shallowly, but there was a marked change after finishing—I certainly hadn’t been breathing normally.

“Guts” IS NOT for all horror fans and is available free online but I’m not linking it here. It’s truly disturbing and I’d expect a ton of people to have nuclear-powered reactions. It’s tough to recommend to anyone but explorers looking for the edge and it pushed me out of my comfort zone. I'm glad I read it as well as "Exodus."

Thank you guys again for your comments.

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*Most of the other pics I found for this story are pretty nasty and there's no way I'm posting them here

[Tommy]

Well, I’ve now checked out both “Guts” and “Exodus,” skipped everything else from Palahniuk’s Haunted, and have a couple of things to say.

First, Tommy, repped. And I need to rep more people, but same to you, Theli, as just based on these two stories alone I can see where you’re coming from. These things are pretty sick, and no, they don’t represent huge portions of our society like I feel some of Mr. Palahiuk’s other works do. Although “Exodus” masquerades like it does and is a strong story, it’s not fair to judge all of us like it does by proxy with the detectives. I’m not sure reading this whole novel/collection is worth it and will probably save time by skipping it, at least for now.

But back to Tommy, I really appreciate you calling these two particular stories out. I read a little about “Guts” before picking it up and according to Wikipedia the count is now up to 73 people who have fainted at public readings, and a teacher in New York was suspended for letting his 11^th grade class read it. And the three instances in the story are all supposedly based on true events.

Like the first couple of sentences say, “Inhale. Take in as much air as you can.” By the end of “Guts” I don’t know how long I’d been holding my breath or if I’d just been breathing shallowly, but there was a marked change after finishing—I certainly hadn’t been breathing normally.

“Guts” IS NOT for all horror fans and is available free online but I’m not linking it here. It’s truly disturbing and I’d expect a ton of people to have nuclear-powered reactions. It’s tough to recommend to anyone but explorers looking for the edge and it pushed me out of my comfort zone. I'm glad I read it as well as "Exodus."

Thank you guys again for your comments.

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*Most of the other pics I found for this story are pretty nasty and there's no way I'm posting them here

Nice review bugen! I agree that Palahniuk can be extremely offensive and almost mean-spirited in some of his work but there's something about how he does it that makes me forgive him every time. There are other stories that are worth reading from Haunted that are less severe than those two. Some of them are actually very funny.

I don't know what that teacher was thinking letting his class read "Guts". I would have been furious if my kid came home from school and told me they had read "Guts". Mainly because I wanted to read it to them first!

[jigertz]

Nice review bugen! I agree that Palahniuk can be extremely offensive and almost mean-spirited in some of his work but there's something about how he does it that makes me forgive him every time. There are other stories that are worth reading from Haunted that are less severe than those two. Some of them are actually very funny.

I don't know what that teacher was thinking letting his class read "Guts". I would have been furious if my kid came home from school and told me they had read "Guts". Mainly because I wanted to read it to them first!

I am a huge Palahniuk fan, and I think Haunted is a brilliant satire, especially since some of the methods a satirist uses are shock and grotesquerie. Things like The Onion and The Daily Show have caused us to think that satire is all about humor, but that isn't the case. I think that something like "Guts" has a quality like American Psycho--it makes us think because we get so disgusted and disturbed by it that we're forced to stop for awhile. Satire is supposed to shock us out of complacency, and I'd say Palahniuk consistently does that.

All that being said, I read Haunted when it first came out, and it was my first Palahniuk book. I remember having no idea what was up with that guy. But after reading all of his other books, when I reread Haunted a few years ago, I was blown away. It's actually near the top of my TB(re)R pile now.

[Dave1442397]

The Martian Chronicles – Ray Bradbury

“Amoebas cannot sin because they reproduce by fission. They do not covet wives or murder each other. Add sex to amoebas, add arms and legs, and you would have murder and adultery.”

Today it came to my attention I’ve approached Ray Bradbury like an idiot, which doesn’t surprise me because it’s from that same direction I’ve approached all kinds of things. Most of my experience with the celebrated author has come from more modern anthologies often using tales that don’t properly represent him. Cheaper tales, maybe. I allowed those stories to form an initial opinion of the writer as well as dictate the urgency for his main works to be read. That was a mistake, and I understand I’m possibly the last person on these boards to have read this.

The Martian Chronicles consists of a series of short stories stitched together to form a cohesive whole, which I’d heard is ‘greater than the sum of its parts’ and I agree. The version of the book I read is the updated one, changing dates to be more futuristic for the modern reader and removing the tale “Way in the Middle of the Air” for PC sensibilities (don’t get me started) which I tracked down and placed back into its proper order after “Musicians.” In 1997 when this tale was removed from the collection and all story dates were moved out 31 additional years two other shorts were added in, “The Fire Balloons” and “The Wilderness.” All are considered here.

At the beginning mankind has perfected rocketry and launched a series of expeditions to Mars, which is a surprise to the Martians because their scientists had always told them that the atmosphere on Earth was too oxygen-rich to support life.

The first couple of humans meet opposition all too familiar to us today. The next aren’t believed to be Earthlings and try to prove themselves to the inhabitants. The third has humanity revealing some of the weaknesses that caused people to want to abandon Earth in the first place. Martian and man meet at the same time while thousands of years apart. Inhabitants realize colonization is inevitable and retreat. Man exerts his will on the planet, removing signs of previous ownership. These are some of the stories, and familiar characters weave in and out throughout the book.

Overall it’s a kind of Wild West on Mars as people on Earth rush to escape war, poverty and oppression and take their chances on new lives. But man will be man, and most of the heavier thinkers among the early pioneers know that it’s only a matter of time, maybe 100 years, before all earthly problems have migrated to the new world.

And that’s what happens. And that’s the point. We can’t escape ourselves, ever, and while man is capable of breeding individuals with the drive to change, to do good works, eventually the sheer weight, volume and volume of humans drowns out sense. No one has yet solved this problem on our world today, and Mr. Bradbury knew this and wrote about it. This book is an examination of those foibles, the issues that keep us from being better than we are even when we give it everything we’ve got. But there’s hope. Every time one of us does something good, something that makes the world just a little bit better there’s a little bit more hope, and I guess that sounds cheesy but it’s still about the most important thing we can do. Will it help? Will we survive? We can hope.

Great review! In fact, all of your reviews are great I just got a copy of this book from The Folio Society (along with 2001, A Space Odyssey). I haven't read either of these since the '80s, and I'm looking forward to reading them again. I had never ordered a book from TFS, and I was curious to see how well made they were. The slipcases are nothing special, but they do a good job of protecting the books. The books themselves are well constructed, and I like the new introductions and artwork. For around $50 each, I'm happy with them.

Some shots of the book:
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This is a pic from 1983, when The Martian Chronicles was on TV back in Ireland. We didn't even have a VCR back then, so I had to book the TV ahead of time and bar the rest of my family from their normal viewing

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[bugen]

Thanks Dave, I really appreciate that. And thanks for posting the great pics!

[bugen]

The Passage - Justin Cronin

“It’s all over, isn’t it, Amy?” He looked down at the girl’s sleeping form and gently touched her hand. “Over at last.”
Wolgast could stand it no more. “What’s over?”
Lear lifted his face; his eyes were full of tears.
“Everything.”

Vampires. If I somehow get duped into reading one more book where the smart, rebellious young girl falls hopelessly in love with the tough but misunderstood vampire I’m going to stake someone. But this isn't that kind of novel.

At well over 300,000 words, major thematic sections make this first book in the trilogy feel much like three separate novels itself. The first section is a modern experiment where a particularly interesting virus is discovered deep in a jungle. The project is quickly militarized and human subjects, mostly career criminals on death row, are given a chance to live past their upcoming death sentences if they’ll voluntarily participate. The experiment is huge, expensive and disastrous.

The second section, 100 years after the events in section one, is much like the Wool novels but significantly slower, where a post-apocalyptic group of survivors eke out existence in a small, enclosed community while the rest of the world is presumed destroyed. But lives in this self-contained community are soon to change as a key component to the power source they’ve been depending on for the last century is about to fail. And it’s nearly impossible for them to set foot outside the walls of the community because of the monsters, called virals, roving the country at night.

The third section mainly uses a handful of the characters from the second and chronicles a journey from an entrenched habitat in California back to where the story began in Colorado. Action is bumped back up again and this feels much more akin to the first part of the book and also has the kind of pioneering spirit you find in westerns.

My takeaway is there are three major working emotions tied to the novel, each to a main section. The first is excitement, building to a fever as the stage is set. The agents running around picking up the prisoners are especially likeable and easy to relate to, getting you involved in the story quickly. But even the facility caretakers, and the prisoners themselves, take root nicely.

The second is really a kind of bored frustration as the story sags under the weight of introducing a slew of new characters in desolate, somewhat hopeless existences. The day-to-day seems petty compared to the overall scope we’re expecting from a book like this but the stark contrast with the rapid-fire first section may also have played a role in perceiving things slowing down.

And in the third movement, the journey with a strong sense of adventure where our characters are put to the test, I finally fell a little in love with the story—a deeper, affectionate appreciation. It's not a point A to B journey, either, but has constant obstacles cropping up that keep the characters second-guessing. I devoured the first section, plodded through the second and savored the third.

It's a complex, largely adventurous book and has a number of intense scenes of horror I’m thinking will be more frequent in the final two volumes. Mr. Cronin draws vivid, scary pictures that will burn into your brain when the virals are present. And these are the true monsters vampires were before they were neutered over the last few decades—the kind of monsters if you see, you’re already dead.

“Lacey felt no fear, only wonder at the magnificent workings of God. That He should make a being so perfect in his design, fit to devour a world.”

4- stars

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[Brian861]

Another great review, Andrew! Can't wait to get to this one. I'm so far behind on my reading. Ugh!!