Book Reviews

[bugen]

Yeah, this one's pretty spectacular. Check my site if you want to see all of them--there's like 50 black and whites in addition to the color illustrations. Greg Staples achieved something special with this book.

[Brian861]

Yeah, this one's pretty spectacular. Check my site if you want to see all of them--there's like 50 black and whites in addition to the color illustrations. Greg Staples achieved something special with this book.

Indeed he did.

[Theli]

I absolutely love it! Great interior art for damn sure, perfect to match some killer stories. Howard was a master of the genre.

[bugen]

Hellblazer Vol. 3: The Fear Machine - Jamie Delano

“You could bet your soddin’ life if I was one of those poncy, media-darling super-heroes and a couple of civilians got creamed in the crossfire, no one’d even mention it. Christ, somebody would’ve bought the movie rights by now.”

Written by Jamie Delano with covert art by mostly by Dave McKean with Kent Williams credited for the final cover, this run collects the individual comics of Hellblazer #14 – #22, all part of The Fear Machine story arc. Most of the interior art is by Mark Buckingham with guest artists Richard Piers Rayner, Mike Hoffman and Alfredo Alcala. The arc tells the story of a powerful group of individuals attempting to create a new world order by assembling psychic energies and channeling them into an ultimate destructive force.

“Touching the Earth” – Constantine is on the run from the law and is nearly captured when hitchhiking. He escapes into the woods and runs into a hippie, Mercury, a psychic child who invites him to her commune to rest and recover.

“Shephard’s Warning” – John’s beginning to enjoy life in the commune. A member recognizes him from the newspaper and he enters her mind to make her forget, which she repays later by dosing him with a hallucinogen. John and Mercury are chased away from a fenced-in stone monument. After he’s dosed John witness a man doing strange things with stones along the local ley lines. At the end of his trip he winds up in bed with Mercury’s mother, Marj.

“Rough Justice” – Fake police raid the compound and kidnap Mercury and her mother. John recovers a drugged and confused Marj from a local police station and returns her to the compound which is packing up to move. He decides to go to war to get Mercury back to her mother.

“Fellow Travelers” – The people who kidnapped Mercury are after the partner of the man John saw in his trip. They use one of their psychics to track him to a train that John also happens to be on and use a Stonehenge-like structure to magnify the power of one of their psychics to induce fear and stop the train so they can capture the man.

“Hate Mail & Love Letters” – John is back in London, gathering information on the organization that kidnapped Mercury, Geotroniks. He runs into an acquaintance from the police and learns he’s no longer a suspect. Mercury begins a diary where she explains the psychic training she’s undergoing involving gathering, trapping and storing fear.

“The Broken Man” – John saves the life of a journalist found hanging in the closet and learns he’s been investigating Geotroniks. Mercury learns her kidnappers are creating a fear-machine that they don’t understand and she threatens to release the monster within. An escalating campaign of suicides sweeps the nation and a homeless man who’d been following John stuffs a note in his hand as he jumps in front of a train.

“Betrayal” – John begins connecting the Geotroniks organization with the Masons. The lead scientist who’s been training the kidnapped Mercury allows her escape and suffers the consequences by a leader who is readying to unleash his world-toppling forces on everyone.

“The God of all Gods” – The Masons have withdrawn support of their plan, but Webster, who’s been running the operation, continues to release the monster with ritual sacrifices. John encounters Mercury and returns the child to her mother and astral-projects to find the terror-thing, which threatens to overwhelm him. Mercury pulls him out of the spirit world.

“Balance” – Webster continues the sacrifices and the god nears its release. Constantine, Marj and the leader of the pagan community the commune moved to when ousted by the police perform their own ritual to balance against the elemental force releasing into the world.

The nine-issue arc deals with Earth awareness in addition to the occult. The magic of ley line energy is heavily featured as well as psychic energy with formations such as Stonehenge serving as focusing structures. The mild police-state we’ve all grown accustomed to is also targeted a few times with things like people expecting to be beaten by police and John lamenting Stonehenge, one of the world’s oldest ritual sites, chained off to the public and regulated to the point you’ll be physically assaulted if you visit without proper permission. We also see the recurring theme of our relative size to Earth, with our biggest plans as just so much dust, paling to the forces of the planet. You can tell John is whipped at the beginning of the story and gains strength and perspective by his rest in the woods despite being a die-hard city boy.

Complete arcs like this are compulsive reading, so if you pick it up expect to finish in a sitting or two. It’s a solid collection of issues with excellent, heavy writing and great artwork, with stepped-up environmental and social themes and with less focus on Constantine’s own magic.

“Sometimes frozen centuries can elapse while all you do is scream, wondering if you’ll take another breath.”

4 stars

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[bugen]

The Killing Joke - Alan Moore

“There were these two guys in a lunatic asylum . . . ”

Joker has again escaped from Arkham. This time, he’s not content with replenishing depleted funds to gain world power, he doesn’t want to punish society and he’s not looking for revenge. He wants to prove everyone in the world is just one step away from becoming him. And to do so he goes after the soft spot, the tender area for any father. He takes down Jim Gordon’s daughter.

Joker cripples, strips, and photographs Barbara during a home invasion. He kidnaps Gordon and hauls him off to a shuttered amusement park that he’s filled with funhouse horrors, including a barrage of images of the commissioner’s tortured daughter. The Joker maintains that every man, no matter how strong, is just one horrific day away from total insanity. The villain’s backstory is also filled out more here. We get to see who he was before he became The Joker—what series of events led to his own downfall.

“Madness is the emergency exit.”

The World’s Greatest Detective arrives at the park where the scene is unfolding. Despite the thousands of lives he might save by doing so Batman will not kill The Joker, a critical aspect of the character. One of the interesting angles of this story is Batman reaching out to Joker, trying to find some way to avert the collision course the two are on, a course he predicts will one day result in one or both of their deaths.

And then there’s the joke, the perfect ending illuminating the razor’s edge of sanity.

The Killing Joke, now nearly 30 years old, broke new ground and gathered enough notoriety even casual fans have heard of it. If you want to know the iconic character, you need this one under your belt. This is horror. This is Batman.

5 stars

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[bugen]

The Averoigne Chronicles - Clark Ashton Smith

“The skies are haunted by that which it were madness to know; and strange abominations pass evermore between earth and moon and athwart the galaxies.”

Spanning a period of hundreds of years, these stories predominantly take place in the fictional region of Averoigne, loosely based upon France’s real world Auvergne. Populated by mythic, demonic monsters, they deal with witchcraft, love and doom.

It’s a stretch calling this fantasy, as despite the lush setting and subject material most stories here have a lot in common with horror. But it’s also not the grimdark fantasy we see a lot of today, which in its own way melds the two genres. Clark Aston Smith’s version is his own brand–a horrific, darkly enchanting fantasy with no grit, no fancy, and no way to put it down once you start.

“The terror that soon prevailed, beneath the widening scope of the Satanical incursions and depredations, was beyond all belief—a clotted, seething, devil-ridden gloom of superstitious obsession, not to be hinted in modern language.”

Favorites include “The Enchantress of Sylaire,” where love and the blindness of it are examined, “The Beast of Averoigne,” unfolding in three letters, where a monster is slaughtering people at night and the language use is just top-notch, and “The Disinterment of Venus,” where a bewitching, nude statue unearthed affects everyone who sees it. “A Rendezvous in Averoigne,” “The Mandrakes” and “The End of the Story” are also incredible tales. But in a bizarre, inexplicable way, not a single story in this collection rates below ‘excellent.’ Not one.

“We are now in a land lying outside of time and space as you have hitherto known them.”

This Centipede edition bears special mention, though you can find much of the material elsewhere. First, it’s a collection consisting of authoritative, definitive versions of the stories. The book uses a thick and creamy paper stock that lends itself to the copious illustrations, all of which are excellent. Even the black and white skull pics are arresting and disturbing, evoking the blackest of black magic. Though Centipede’s standard cloth is always excellent, the boards here are covered with a material that compares like an 800 thread count sheet compares to 300 thread count–just holding it is luxury. The book is also interspersed with Smith’s dark poetry and includes a poem H.P. Lovecraft wrote in honor of him as well as a couple of introductions and an afterward. While the extra material is extensive, it’s the 12 stories and their gorgeous presentation that make the collection a winner.

Most of these are spellbinding. After a couple of pages, despite the breadth of an unequaled vocabulary, reading becomes compulsive. Mentioned in the introduction, stories like these become a part of you, and if you can successfully visit the world a piece of you will always reside there. The Eagles have one of the best lines for this particular brand of sorcery: “You can check out any time you like / But you can never leave.” You will be transfixed not from thrilling, edge of your seat anticipation but from conjured, ethereal, permanent bonds of mist and magic. Consider yourselves warned.

“Thin is the veil betwixt man and the godless deep.”

5 stars

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[RonClinton]

Sorry I missed the earlier Charles Beaumont discussion. I have all his books, and consider him one of my favorite writers of all time, and bugen's insights and comments about the man and his work were well-stated. I have a signed 1st HC of HUNGER AND OTHER STORIES, and it's one of the most prized possessions in my book collection.

[bugen]

Thanks Ron, and I'm super jealous of your Hunger and Other Stories. A signed 1st Beaumont . . . and many of his greatest stories are in there. A prize among prizes--very cool!

[bugen]

Mort (Discworld #4) - Terry Pratchett

THAT’S MORTALS FOR YOU, Death continued. THEY’VE ONLY GOT A FEW YEARS IN THIS WORLD AND THEY SPEND THEM ALL IN MAKING THINGS COMPLICATED FOR THEMSELVES.

Young Mort has been recruited by Death, who has realized sooner or later he’s going to want some time off and will need someone to fill in for him, even replace him eventually. As the boy spends time learning about Discworld from a cosmic perspective and following Death around, he meets Death’s obnoxious daughter, falls in love with an impertinent princess, and constantly finds himself correcting everyone who calls him ‘boy’ instead of ‘Mort.’

Death finally orders the boy (Mort) out on his own to reap a few different souls, one of which is the princess, and all of which are disasters as the boy (Mort) isn’t remotely ready. As he bungles the job a rift in the universe is created and two separate, competing worlds move forward in parallel, inviting disastrous consequences. Despite the lad’s (Mort’s) good intentions, when Death returns from his holiday, there’s going to be trouble. But Death is determined to enjoy himself on his vacation, and while there are a lot of great moments the specter getting wasted in a bar is particularly hilarious.

I DON’T SEE THE POINT, the stranger said.
“Sorry?”
WHAT IS SUPPOSED TO HAPPEN?
“How many drinks have you had?”
FORTY-SEVEN.
“Just about anything, then.”

This book is funny. Like funny funny, and on nearly every page. The absurdities of the specific situation and of life in general are constantly examined and skewered, so if you want a long, somber look at death then this one isn’t for you. But that’s one of the main points of the work. We take ourselves so seriously in a world that doesn’t even consider us at all, and that in itself is just lunacy. The idea of immortality is also brought up a few times and generally blasted, as anyone’s who’s taken a good, long look at life won’t consider the idea of living forever a positive thing. Leave that for the young ones—they’ll learn.

Would eternity feel like a long time, or were all lives—from a personal viewpoint—entirely the same length?

In the end, Mort has a lot of knowledge and serious ideas cloaked in hilarity. It’s a fast read and not one that many are going to want to miss.

People don’t alter history any more than birds alter the sky, they just make brief patterns in it.

4+

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[bugen]

A Mountain Walked - Various - S.T. Joshi (Ed.)

“This prayer must be for you—for you and all the others who must be left behind, who cannot walk with me, up that final flight of wooden stairs, to peace and escape, who must go on living in the shadow of a monstrous evil of which they are not even aware, and so, can never destroy.” -C. Hall Thompson

There’s a lot to cover here not just because the book is massive, but because the stories are complex and there’s an unusual concentration of highly ranked entries to examine.

First things first, A Mountain Walked is an ambitious undertaking. Originally released in a limited edition by Centipede Press, a very similar trade edition was later released by Dark Regions Press. The two versions differ slightly in story content, with Dark Regions dropping a few and adding another. Editor S.T. Josh has stated he feels the Dark Regions book to be in some ways superior to that of Centipede’s in the area of content, citing for the Centipede release he was forced to include a couple of stories by H.P. Lovecraft that didn’t fit the rest of the book. Thematically he is at least partially correct, but from a book-lover’s perspective not so much. Not only is the Centipede release of a quality that is to be championed, the inclusion of the two Lovecraft stories in question was thematically important, though in a non-standard capacity:

Centipede reached out to authors John Kenn Mortensen and Thomas Ott to pick a favorite Lovecraft story and write a series of illustrations for it. And not only are they wonderful tales of horror, they’re beautifully illustrated (pics below).

In terms of artwork there’s no comparison between the versions with Centipede’s containing huge amounts including standard story art, multiple portfolios and comics, but the story list itself is very similar. Here’s the breakdown of differences, and there's a picture of the Centipede T.O.C. in the gallery below:

Dark Regions exclusive:
“The Man with the Horn” by Jason V. Brock

Centipede exclusives:
“Man with No Name” by Laird Barron
“Thirteen Hundred Rats” by T.C. Boyle
“Rupa Worms from Outer Space” by Denis Tiani
“Pickman’s Model” by H.P. Lovecraft (illustrated)
“The Lurking Fear” by H.P. Lovecraft (illustrated)
“Excerpts from a Notebook” by Drazen Kozjan (illustrated)

Centipede’s edition is, by a long shot, the greater of the two anthologies. There is, of course, a huge difference in price. Centipede has the large format, extra stories, tons of artwork and the signatures, and it’s going to cost you. In this case, as in many others with this publisher, it’s worth it. For purposes of completion, all stories from each version are considered here.

*Note: some of the lowest numbered Centipede editions (appears to be a few dozen of them) have an additional overlay page tipped in with Neil Gaiman’s and T.C. Boyle’s signatures—the vast majority of the 500 signed editions do not have this page.

Let’s look at the monster standouts.

"The Deep Ones” by James Wade - Mr. Dorn joins the small research team of Dr. Wilhelm and his assistant Josephine to study dolphins. As the research deepens one dolphin in particular, Flip, is the main focus. Josephine is hypnotized and left with Flip for long periods of time, searching for a telepathic link and yielding disastrous consequences.

This is an outstanding story examining the intelligence of dolphins and what it might mean. And in this case, it means there may be another species on the planet capable of killing man faster than man himself.

“Where Yidhra Walks” by Walter C. DeBill, Jr. - Peter Kovacs is traveling when he’s confronted by a tornado and trapped in a town he will not be able to escape until water levels decrease. During his stay he learns some of the local legends of an Indian cult entwined with the town’s past and he investigates, meeting an alluring young woman along the way.

This is one of the best ‘trapped in a small town and trying to escape’ stories you can find in horror. It’ll get your heart pounding but at the same time asks questions about the history of man and Earth—questions that haven’t yet been answered to many peoples’ satisfaction. Tying everything together into the legendary world of Lovecraft, this is one of the greatest stories in the book.

“Virgin’s Island” by Donald Tyson - Told through the recovered remains of a journal, this is the terrifying exploration of an island all but inaccessible to modern man. Strange rock formations seen from the sea at certain times of the day and times of the year have helped perpetuate the sailor’s superstition to “salute the lady” when near the island.

Virgin’s Island is an incredible story in a book of incredible stories teaming with high notes on the horror scale. Since the journal we're reading from was only recoverable by about 75%, our imaginations work overtime in the gaps, and although a coherent story is told with what remains an extra layer of mystery evolves due to the partially incomplete account.

Furthermore, after the explorer contacts his high school friend, an expert climber, to help him manage the virtually unscalable cliffs, we get the bonus of both the academic mind and the physical expertise to explore realms like this. The natural human fear of subterranean caverns adds a further element of terror, let alone the Lovecraftian monstrosities present throughout these stories.

As far as the modern take on the Lovecraftian mythos, stories don’t get any better, or more infused with creeping dread followed by true horror, than this one. It’s another you absolutely do not want to miss.

“Greater than the mighty ocean is the sea of time on which we float, unbounded and infinite. Who knows what wonders, what horrors, may have transpired in the dim past, before our race stood erect?”

“[Anasazi]” by Gemma Files - A paramedic and his partner, along with two firemen, break down the door of a retired anthropologist only for our main character, Colin, to be viciously attacked by the old man and hurt badly enough he’s forced into retirement; the old man dies in the process. Circumstances lead Colin into renting the same apartment the deceased has vacated, and as he and a new friend digs through the old man’s belongings he begins to feel an ancient, inevitable pull towards violence for the sake of itself. Affecting Colin and others in the area, unveiled slowly in a parallel architecture, are the spirits of the Anasazi Indians, who left this world purposely in a kind of mass suicide in order to spectrally travel the universe and dominate all living species.

This one was brilliant, a near-perfect story of the downward spiral of a man adrift in a society of violence, crammed into close quarters with other people and yet perpetually alone. The story gives us the idea these ancient humans, now war-veterans of the entire galaxy, are coming home to finally destroy the last remaining enemy. What makes it so smart is the influence the Anasazi have on a local area, an area increasing daily in bizarre acts of violence and frenzy, yet we hear similar acts all the time on our regular news. Either we don’t need these ancient warmongers’ influences to devolve into animals, or we do and they’re already here.

“We are the coming wave, the wind of dust, the End of All Things. We are the Unspoken Word, the name whose sound heralds plague without cure. Not the first, we still will be last, or know the reason why.”

“Thirteen Hundred Rats” by T.C. Boyle - An elder gentleman in small community has lost his wife and fallen into despair. His friends keep telling him that he needs to get a pet to help with the loss, and he eventually buys a python. After realizing he’d need to feed the snake rats, he buys a few while his neighbors are on vacation, and after they return they wish they’d never left.

This one’s oddly compelling, and not just because it’s the great T.C. Boyle. The type of story doesn’t exactly fit like a glove with the rest of the anthology, but it is so well put together and disturbingly moving it gets to the point you can’t imagine it not being included.

And now I think I need a pet.

Just because the above stand out as perfect or near-perfect stories, it’s not the case that others pale by comparison. Many other excellent stories are present here with only one miss in the entire collection. Here are some further standouts:

"The House of the Worm" - Mearle Prout
"Spawn of the Green Abyss" - C. Hall Thompson
"Black Man with a Horn" - T.E.D. Klein
"The Last Feast of Harlequin" - Thomas Ligotti
"Mandelbrot Moldrot" - Lois H. Gresh
"...Hungry...Rats" - Joseph S. Pulver, Sr.
"In the Shadow of Swords" - Cody Goodfellow
"John Four" - Caitlin R. Kiernan
"Beneath the Beardmore" - Michael Shea
"Pickman's Model" - H.P. Lovecraft (Centipede only - illustrated)
"Excerpts from a Notebook" - Drazen Kozjan (Centipede only - illustrated)

Centipede claimed on its site, “This landmark anthology will surely be known as a classic in its field,” and the book lives up to that hype. In the end this is an instant classic and already a timeless work of art in word, picture and production. Check it out if you get a chance. It’s likely there’ll never be another Lovecraft anthology to match this one. It’s a shame only the stories themselves are averaged out to rate a book here, but no system is perfect.

As Donald Tyson writes, “It’s a curious thing to relate in the chill rationality of written words, but when I look away from it, the memory of it in my mind appears to dance.”

4 stars

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*I snapped well over 100 photos for this review. Check the blog if you're interested in the entire gallery.

[Theli]

Fantastic review brother! You've succeeded in tantalizing me.

[RonClinton]

I have the Centipede edition of A MOUNTAIN WALKED as well, and you've summed up this incredible package wonderfully. It's one of Centipede's more impressive titles, and that's sayin' something.

[bugen]

Thanks, guys! It really is an incredible book for those interested in that type of horror. Jerad at Centipede is just a one-man wrecking crew. When he designs these large format books they tend to be spectacular in content and presentation.

Martin said it a while back and I've got to echo, 'I like big books and I cannot lie.'

[srboone]

I've been meaning to thank you. Your review of The Averoigne Chronicles was spot on. It turned out to be one of my favorite reads this year.

[bugen]

Thanks for mentioning, glad you liked it!