Book Reviews

[Theli]

It really makes me want to check them out. Have yet to read any F. Paul Wilson.

[rusty23]

Thanks for this. I loved the Adversary Cycle!

[bugen]

The Adversary Cycle volumes 4-6 - F. Paul Wilson

Reborn

“He had wanted to know, he had hungered for answers. The hunger had driven him to the farthest, darkest corners of the world, where he had learned too much.”

The fourth book in the Adversary Cycle, Reborn functions as the first book in its own trilogy within the six book cycle. It’s the tale of the manly-man Jim, a struggling writer and a legend on the high school football field, Carol, his loving wife and a nurse-practitioner, and Bill, Jim’s high school friend whom a decade ago made his vows and became a priest.

Jim, adopted as an infant, finds out he has an extremely large inheritance from the real father he never knew. He and Carol move into their new mansion where Jim doggedly begins digging into the life of his deceased father, and eventually uncovers the truth about his controversial adoption. As Jim tears further into the past, he becomes more and more frightened. Carol, despite Jim’s efforts to hide the truth, also learns what really happened as the story darkens.

Father Bill, a morally supportive friend busy with his own issues at a boy’s home where he helps children find permanent homes, is a grounded, positive force and helps Carol through an unexpected tragedy.

Dark forces gather against our heroes as a religious cult becomes convinced the Antichrist is about to be born into our world.
The story is well laid out and glides along quickly, and displays a frightening pace near its end. The last few pages serve to rope together the first four books in the cycle, and while the first three books are standalone you’ll get an extra kick having read and understood them before this trilogy. We have this sort of stigma today with stories surrounding an Antichrist-like entity as over-worn, but when I started thinking of examples the list was pitifully small. To me this reads quite fresh, though there is at least one similarity to another book the author himself mentions during the telling.

“The Antichrist? If only it were! When it gets here, you’ll long for your Antichrist. Because prayers won’t help you. Neither will guns or bombs.”
The utter conviction of Mr. Veilleur’s voice drove a shaft of terror through Grace’s soul.
“How… how do you know so much about him?”
Mr. Veilleur gazed out the window as a stray cloud passed across the sun.
“We’ve met before.”

4+ stars

Reborn.jpg


Reprisal

“No, Carol. He needs to learn all he can about the world. After all, it’s going to be his someday.”

Reprisal continues the story of Father William Ryan, beginning about 20 years after the end of the previous book, Reborn. He has shed his identity, his priesthood, his friends and family, and much of his humanity due to a tragedy that happened many years ago, but after the events of the first book in the trilogy. A groundskeeper at a North Carolina university, he keeps the lowest profile possible, not even owning a telephone for reasons which will be made clear. As he is haunted by this mysterious event we’re led back into his life and those whom he’s eventually come to care about, but won’t let himself get close to. Other central characters, including two professors, one male and one female, and an attractive, brilliant male student join a kind of hard-boiled New York detective in rounding out the main cast. One of the professors engages in a perilous relationship with the dangerously powerful student while the other keeps to himself, and the detective relentlessly pursues the vanished Father at the cost of his job. And then there’s the boy…

Reprisal also begins more tangibly tying together the various standalone novels from early in the series. The Keep, The Tomb (or Rakoshi) and The Touch remain excellent standalone novels, but they now start fueling this final trilogy of the cycle.

Mr. Wilson spends nearly the first half of this book in the now, endearing these characters to us, then takes us back to the events that caused all the turmoil affecting the present. This literary device isn’t new, but I’d be hard-pressed to think of it ever being used to better effect in horror. And horror you are in for. Hints are dropped as to what’s going on as the creep sets in but you'll only get the barest of ideas.

The second half of the book is quite easily some of the most horrific material I’ve read, if not the most. It might have been comical to have seen me reading this with a slack jaw, but the humor ends there. I’m not even going to touch the events here besides the basic warning, as anything I write will be a disservice to how this unfolds. As a recent, popular comparison, there has been a lot of talk about King’s Revival, which was an excellent horror story with a hard-hitting gut-punch of an ending, but the terror so many have written about in that book is nothing compared to what happens here. It’s not even close, so be warned.

There’s one final book in the cycle, and I can’t see how it could possibly match the dripping, acidic fear of this entry. My socks weren’t blown off; they were shredded to fragmented, bloody chunks while still on my feet then hurled into space. You couldn’t keep me away from the final entry with all the Hosts of Hell.

“I can’t do this to him.”
“Then do it for him.”

5 stars

Reprisal.jpg


Nightworld

“If he wants this world, he’s going to have to earn it!”

Nightworld fully unites the surviving main characters from all previous books in the cycle into one cataclysmic battle vs. the end of everything. Mr. Wilson has a talent for building characters we fall in love with, then dispatching them mercilessly in service of the story, so the final cast may be different than you’d think. Since there are 5 previous novels to draw from, the participants in this finale are fleshed out beyond what you’d normally find in a single book; some of those geared for this fight had the better parts of entire standalone novels dedicated to their development(s), so this was an interesting dynamic.

As Rasalom, the devil incarnate, makes his final play to destroy humanity, a small group led by his counterpart, Glaeken, attempts to gather items and forces laid out in the previous novels in hopes to oppose the onslaught of night. For while the sun still shines, each day is progressively shorter than the last, and at night all manner of hell-creatures rip through anything human. Early in this final book, when the end has begun, humanity has less than one week before daylight hours have been reduced to nothing and the sun never rises again.

The story is grand and the characters are compelling, and the fact that pretty much everyone here occupied a starring role in their own narratives from previous works makes for a crowded space as each of our leading actors is reduced to supporting roles by necessity. But it’s tough to fault a book for having too many strong, fully-realized characters.

Nightworld has plenty of horror and a giant-sized portion of empathy for the characters, which makes every torn-off chunk of flesh hurt that much more. These guys weren’t introduced to us 100 pages ago, they were given to us worlds ago and we need them to be ok. So if they’re not, the impact is all the greater.

He picked up his duffel and started for the door, then stopped and turned. “I love you, Carol. I can’t think of a moment when I didn’t.”
And then he was gone.

4+ stars

Nightworld.jpg


Final thoughts:

“A long dark night of the soul for the survivors.”

I had never read any F. Paul Wilson books before beginning this set. When first hearing about this a few weeks back (on this forum) I did some basic research and thought I might really enjoy the series, and I’d already known I needed to try out the author. I liked how I’d be able to test the waters with a standalone novel, as again the first 3 books in this series need no support from the others. This seemed like the perfect start.

The Keep (4 stars) was flavor #1, and it tasted so good it took almost no time to move into The Tomb (Rakoshi – 4- stars). I’d heard of Repairman Jack and loved the idea I’d get introduced to an iconic character in the midst of a much larger arc that didn’t focus on him. The Touch (5- stars), as mentioned in its section was mind-bogglingly good.

There seems to be a discrepancy between the order of the books depending on where you look. Every source I’ve seen lists them in the order they’ve been reviewed here, except the limited edition set I purchased, which has Rakoshi (no longer called The Tomb) as the third book in the series instead of the second, switching places with The Touch. Since these are all standalone anyway I’m not too sure it matters much, but if asked I’d still recommend reading in the order I did. The Touch is so highly charged with emotion I found it the perfect end to the standalone sections before entering into the end-of the-world trilogy. I’m sure Borderlands Press had their reasoning for the order here, I just don’t know what it is.

The trilogy itself is a horrific nightmare that hits fever pitch in its second book, Reprisal. This book requires an outstanding introductory novel (Reborn – 4+ stars), and needs an earth-shattering finish (Nightworld – 4+ stars), but itself is the peak of horror as I’ve ever read it. To me, Reprisal (5 stars) represents the single most terrifying book I’m aware of. If anyone has read this and can beat it I’d love a PM showing me what I’ve missed - as of now this is my number one.

We’re all heavy readers here, so we all know what it’s like to have an aching attachment to characters so that a void is left behind when they’re gone. One big difference between this series and other powerful ones is this loss is often realized within the story instead of after it’s over. Dr. Wilson is not cavalier with these guys, but he knows exactly when to sacrifice a rook and a bishop for maximum impact in order to keep the king alive for the win.

“You’re not joking, are you?”
“You think I could make up a story like that, even if I tried?”

The Adversary Cycle – 5 stars

The Adversary Cycle.jpg

[bugen]

The Adversary Cycle volumes 1-3 - F. Paul Wilson

The Keep

“He flashed his beam at the figure blacking his path. He saw the waxy face, the cape, the clothes, the lank hair, the twin pools of madness where the eyes should be. And he knew. Here was the master of the house.”

Set in Romania around World War II, this story takes place in a stone keep, traditionally the final stronghold within a castle but in this case its own building. The keep is located in out-of-the-way rural countryside but is considered of strategic importance to the German blitz. An interesting dynamic is provided by way of contrast between the German army and SS soldiers of the Nazi party on its meteoric rise to power, as armies of men from both categories are stationed at the keep but with no love lost between the two.

In exploring the keep one of the soldiers in the German army breaks into a walled-off, hidden cell, and a vampiric entity is released from his prison and goes about dispatching the occupiers at a rate of one corpse per day. The leader of the army, Woermann, and that of the SS, Kaempffer, are enemies of old but must work with each other to try and stop the killings. They conscript an elderly and crippled Jewish scholar along with his daughter to help them survive. The dark spirit gains power and lines are blurred between good and evil as the killings are (mostly) limited to the fighters helping to bring the world under Hitler’s heel while the characters race to uncover the truth.

This was my first F. Paul Wilson work outside of short stories, and he does a mysteriously effective job of inducing fear while keeping his monster hidden in the first sections of the book. Natural conflict abounds between the leader of the ruthless Nazis, the more sympathetic leader of the German army, and the Jewish scholars held against their wills.

Fast, interesting, and mixing in a bit of history with horror this first book in the Adversary Cycle comes highly recommended.

“How can you judge him, Magda? One should be judged by one’s peers. Who is Molasar’s peer?”

4 stars

The Keep.jpg


The Tomb (Rakoshi)

“No rules in this alley, friend. Just you and me. And I’m here to get you.”

The first Repairman Jack novel, The Tomb (as it was originally published in 1984) or Rakoshi (as Dr. Wilson wanted it to be titled before being overruled by the publisher) introduces us to the hard-boiled fixer.

Jack lives under the radar with no social security number, no permanent job or address, and uses his anonymity and skillset to fix issues for others, ever since his first ‘fix,’ avenging the murder of his mother by becoming a killer himself. His vengeance both told him who he was, and more importantly who he wasn’t, as this act served to permanently separate him from normal society.

In this novel Jack runs afoul of an Indian diplomat who is out to fulfill a 125 year old curse by severing the bloodline of a general who had wronged him in the past. The last of this bloodline happens to be the child of Gia, Jack’s former flame, who abandoned him when she learned of his brutal occupation. The diplomat brings demonic forces to bay to assist his revenge, and Jack is faced with his first supernatural challenge.

The book has great pacing, plenty of raw energy, and introduces a strong character who obviously resonates with everyone because there are a ton of Repairman Jack novels. It’s a large part detective story, but has some great action-hero moments as well. Jack employs some of the skills you might expect, but the author leaves most of his secrets intact, as by the end I had the feeling I’d only scratched the surface of what this guy’s about. I literally read right through a California earthquake, with one eye on my desk in case I had to hurl myself underneath it.

“Can a man who lies, cheats, steals, and sometimes does violence to other people be a man of honor?”
Kolabati looked into his eyes. “He can if he lies to liars, cheats cheaters, steals from thieves, and limits his violence to those who are violent.”

4- stars

Rakoshi.jpg


The Touch

"I forgot to say my prayers."
"That's okay, Love," he said soothingly and she went back to sleep immediately.
There's nobody listening anyway.

The third book in the Adversary cycle, and the last of the standalones before the trilogy, this is best so far.

Dr. Alan Bulmer, a general practitioner M.D., comes into physical contact with a certain transient man, and at his touch a jolt of strange electricity is released. The homeless man does not last much longer, but Alan soon learns he’s able to heal patients with just a touch. Soon the circus begins to gather around him, starting with the media, and he’s also becoming aware that the power is affecting him, changing him in some way. At the very least his short-term memory is taking a hit. Ba, the oversized Vietnamese houseman of an acquaintance claims to recognize the power from the Vietnam War.

Dr. Bulmer represents some of the best in humanity and the struggles of this man carry an additional weight because he’s trying so hard to do the right thing, agonizing over his decisions. Dr. Bulmer’s relationship with his wife Ginny suffers a great deal, and opens up the possibility of a relationship with Sylvia, whom Ba serves. In a bit of a surprise, Ba is an extremely compelling character, and though his role is important the character is so strong I wanted to see much more. Mr. Wilson can create supporting characters so full and real no matter how he uses them it’s not enough – there is far more depth to plumb and I love that. I’d read a spin-off about Ba in a heartbeat.

The book’s use of medical terminology is heavy but doesn’t present a barrier to get at the narrative. The opposite, really, as it helps tie the reader to the idea of learned, highly-educated healing.

A ridiculously entertaining and compelling medical thriller with living, breathing characters, some mystical horror elements, great pacing, and a subtext exploration on the nature of helping people... and the costs of doing so.

“How could he tell her or anyone else how he felt? It was as if he were the first astronaut in space, and he had looked down from orbit and seen that the earth was flat.”

5- stars

The Touch.jpg

[Theli]

Love Delano's Hellblazer. Some of my favourite work in comics.

[bugen]

"Antarctica" - Jamie Delano (from Hellblazer vol. 2 - The Devil You Know)

"Hell is a slow, cold dream… a numb descent to absolute zero… a dead-eyed observation of atrocity. It’s where you go to chill out when the horror catches up with you. You can easily die there, and never even care."

Hellblazer is the comic series that inspired the Keanu Reeves film Constantine, and the below is limited to the final two issues of volume 2. Within this volume, among six others, is a two-part story that's some of the best material I've ever read in the format. "Antarctica" (credited as from The Horrorist #1-2) is a self-contained arc and it's absolutely brutal in its depiction of the world.

Constantine is searching for the woman with 'black hole eyes', immortalized by a war photographer in a famous picture taken years earlier. The woman herself is a sad case, exhibiting a kind of stoic misery as the surrounding death toll grows.

The story can seem a bit abstract at times, and is certainly philosophical while still containing fire and brimstone, but it's more. It cuts deeply with its unapologetic depression, and an intensely introspective John Constantine brings his pain to the surface while the writing lashes both character and reader.

If you're in a melancholy mood, I'd recommend against reading this. If in an even darker place for God's sake stay away. But if you're looking for potency, Jamie Delano's "Antarctica" is a spellbinding, emotionally heavy tale that might have you clinging closer to the person next to you in gratitude for being there should you be so lucky.

5 stars

Antarctica.jpg

[bugen]

Holiday Horrors – various authors
“I chuckle to myself to keep from sobbing. It's been over a year since I've seen my children.”
(from "Visitation Rights")

A chapbook from Cemetery Dance containing 4 Christmas-themed short stories, Holiday Horrors is super-fast and is a great read at this time of year. I’ve been waiting to get to it for many months and had no intention of posting a review, but was blindsided by one of the stories and figured I’d briefly share.

In no particular order:

"Stocking Stuffers" by Ray Garton is a bloody tale where a man recounts to a prostitute why he hates Christmas.
3+ stars

"Merry Christmas, Asshole" by Robert Brouhard is tale of revenge as a philanderer’s past exploits have returned to haunt him during the holidays.
3 stars

"The Christmas Creep" by Glen Krisch deals with the daughter of a strung-out mother, the mother herself, the sweet old grandmother and the underlying evil in a decaying town where it’s always Christmas.
3- stars

"Visitation Rights" by Kealan Patrick Burke is a heart-heavy story about a divorced man trying to reconcile with his two daughters over Christmas despite a long absence imposed by an embittered ex-wife. This one opens the book and steals the show.
4+ stars

I believe this chapbook cost me about $4, and mine’s not signed but I’m glad I bought it, glad I waited until now to read it, and quite happy to have liked it as much as I did. They're all good, but don’t miss that Burke story (also found his collection, Dead of Winter).

Merry Christmas, everyone!

SAM_3284.jpg

SAM_3277.jpg

[Theli]

Sounds like I need to track down some of Rich's work and more Harlan Ellison.

[bugen]

Midnight Promises - Richard Chizmar

“I… I thought I was the only one. But… but you’re like me, aren’t you?” she asked.
“Like you and then some.”

Richard Chizmar’s outstanding collection of short stories, Midnight Promises, is another title suggested to me from John R. Little’s favorites list. And an unmistakable pattern has emerged.

The pattern is humanity and empathy, it’s spoken of in the Afterward by Ray Garton, and it permeates most of the stories here to a saturation point very few writers can reach. Midnight Promises consists of hardship, friendship, and companionship, but its power comes from stripping away the friendlier elements and leaving us bare. This collection largely deals with loss.

I had a single 1 star rating given, and one 2 star (fair to good) rating, and every other story in this collection was very good to amazing (3- or higher). I’d like to focus on two of the seventeen stories, both of which hit with excruciating force.

"Heroes" concerns the relationship between an adult man and his dying father, and the lengths to which this man will go to keep his father alive. Fathers and sons have strained relationships these days, though it’s likely been like that throughout history. This particular story deals with a father/son relationship with the strongest of bonds. Some of us can relate, while most of us probably cannot, but all of us can see the reality of such a relationship through this story and our sense of nostalgia and longing is played upon here whether or not our own bonds compare. We at least wish they did, and because of it our hearts can expect some trauma from this story. Even writing this sentence makes me wish my relationship with my father was better than it is, and it hurts. Top quality stuff.

The second is the title story, "Midnight Promises". A woman visits the hospital every waking hour she is allowed, even at the expense of her own health, in order to stay by her dying husband’s side. Cancer is getting in its final blows, and communication is one-sided as the wife gives comfort by displaying old photos from their lives when they were together and happy.

Both of these stories are heartbreaking, and both contain horror though I’m not going to spoil it. But most important is the skill on display in order to tie us inexorably to the characters; Chizmar’s ability to make us empathize with them. When they get hurt, so do we. If they’re emotionally involved in a situation, then so are we. A rare quality.

Everything else in the collection is quite good at the least. Other highlights for me were:

"A Season of Change", about an officer's loss and his revenge.
"Homesick", about going home, even if you're the child of the most powerful man in the world.
"Beachcomber", about a powerful spirit and the sacrifices he makes.
"Devil's Night", about a high-schooler witnessing and investigating a murder around Halloween.
"Only the Strong Survive", about a girl with special powers and her domineering will.

There are many other great tales in this collection, and there is one common thread weaving through them all, portrayed no better than in the stories 'Heroes' and 'Midnight Promises'. Mr. Chizmar can write real, vulnerable characters whom we can instantly attach ourselves to, and this makes the situations they find themselves in far more deeply felt.

He would have spent huge amounts of energy over the years building this company that we love, and we would all miss terribly were Cemetery Dance not around. It must have been an agonizing decision whether to pursue writing or build this company. Either way, we the readers won, and either way, we lost.

I take some consolation in the fact another short story collection by Mr. Chizmar is scheduled to be published by Subterranean Press sometime next year. It cannot arrive quickly enough.

I leave you with my favorite quote from this book, echoing forever:

“Come dance the cemetery dance…”

4 stars

SAM_3271.jpg

SAM_3264.jpg

SAM_3254.jpg

SAM_3245.jpg

SAM_3247.jpg

SAM_3251.jpg

[bugen]

Today marks 6 months of book reviews and I've got to take a large-sized break. There is one more to go, and I hope you'll agree it's appropriate.

Thanks to everyone for reading and writing.

-Andrew

[bugen]

Shatterday – Harlan Ellison

“A world that has grown so complex and uncaring with systems and brutalization of individuals because of the inertia produced by those systems’ perpetuation of self, that merely to live is to be assaulted daily by circumstances.”

Shatterday is another collection favorited by one of the best short story writers I’ve had the privilege to read, and probably the best when it comes to combining horror and emotion, John R. Little. I know I keep mentioning Mr. Little, but it’s for damn good reason. Again, John provided a list of his favorite collections, and this was the second Ellison title on the list. The other was the immortal Deathbird Stories.

This book opens up with the Earth-shattering "Jeffty is Five," and it goes downhill from there. Not because the rest of the collection is somehow mediocre, but because it’s impossible to follow up a story like Jeffty. This story will be present in the upcoming Subterranean Ellison Award-Winners collection, The Top of the Volcano, which is the first thing I checked after I’d finished it. Ellison then goes on to tell a bunch of stories ranging from fair to great, heavily weighted on the ‘great’ side.

But first, in "Jeffty is Five," two five-year old boys are friends and playmates, and after a brief separation of a couple of years are reunited. Our narrator, however, continues to age normally while Jeffty does not. We follow our narrator as he moves away for years, then returns to his hometown as a full-grown man with Jeffty still a 5 year old child. Not just that he hadn’t grown, he was still actually 5 years old with the matching mentality. The world interacts differently with Jeffty, too. When he turns on a radio, it broadcasts stations that were played when they were five. When our narrator does the same on the same device, it’s modern stations. That’s the setup, and the story is a deep examination of self, of childhood vs. adulthood, innocence and loss, and can floor a reader. Be warned.

The book does not reach this height again, but there are no less than 7 ingenious stories remaining out of the next 15 tales, a couple of fair ones, and a handful of really good ones.

Highlights include:

"Flop Sweat" concerns a radio talk show host, her two guests, an unstoppable serial killer, and the end of the world.
"Would You Do It For a Penny?" is about a man with zero scruples hunting for women to seduce.
"The Man Who Was Heavily Into Revenge" is about a contractor screwing over a retiree, and the vengeance taken upon him.
"Count the Clock that Tells the Time" is about not wasting your life, about moving forward.
"In the Fourth Year of the War" concerns a man fiercely battling the other person inside his own head, forcing him to take revenge on those who’ve damaged him in the past.
"The Executioner of the Malformed Children" tells the tale of a boy injured so badly his parents give him up to the only institution that can save him, and who turn him into a warrior against demons from the future.
And in "Shatterday", a man accidently calls his home number from a restaurant and he picks up the phone at home. Battle is joined with himself.

These were all of my favorites, and every one of them is brilliant. Spread throughout the collection are Ellison’s introductions before each story (except Malformed Children, where he says he doesn’t want to talk about it). These intros do a great job of explaining the context of the story and while I generally skip Intros at the beginning of a book if I’m reading it for the first time, I’m glad these were all there in Shatterday and they're all worth reading.

Another amazing collection from Ellison, my only complaint is that the first story is just too good.

“He never lied; it simply wasn’t worth the trouble.”

4 stars

Shatterday.jpg

[bugen]

I haven't read any of Mr. Kelly's work but need to and this looks like it may be a good start. Pitfall has been making the rounds and looks interesting too. I'd love to hear if anyone has a favorite they're sure would make for a great intro to the author.

Nice review, Theli, thanks for posting!

[Theli]

Ronald Kelly - Blood Kin
This was my first novel by Ronald Kelly, though I had read some of his short fiction before. Kelly has a keen eye for pacing, and the novel moves along at a steady clip, never to fast or too slow.

Blood Kin has it's fair share of action and gore (including some truly eye-popping scenes), but also develops interesting and believable characters. Kelly's writing style actually reminds me a bit of a Southern Stephen King, maybe not quite as sophisticated in some ways, but he possesses the same well balanced home-style writing that makes for a quick, enjoyable, and relatable read.

The story centres around a century old former preacher turned vampire (Grandpappy Craven) who is trying to convert his descendents to vampirism. It takes place in a small southern US town called Green Hollow and it's surrounding areas. It's small town feel reminds me again of King, 'Salem's Lot specifically. The story makes for some interesting morality plays, especially with Wendell Craven, a relative of Grandpappy who is also a preacher.

My one complaint of this novel was some of Christian overtones, which I'm sure to many won't matter. Also they do fit the plot and characters, so who the hell am I to complain? I'm just not a big fan of overtly religious stories, this one touches on some religious elements but doesn't go over board. This ain't The Exorcist. With that said though I quite liked Blood Kin and will definitely be reading more Ronald Kelly some time soon. 4/5

[bugen]

Candide – Voltaire
“I have been in several provinces. . . in all, the principal occupation is love, the next is slander, and the third is talking nonsense.”

Candide seems to have mastered one central theme, and the book will pound you over the head with it:

If a man is standing over an open cesspool, breathing in the vapors, he can tell himself, "that’s the sweet aroma of butternut pumpkin pie on a summer morning, perhaps with a hint of maple and notes of nutmeg and gingerbread." He can see the murky surface and say, "that water is the purest cerulean blue, and my reflection shows a man of stature and prominence with the world at my feet." A man can tell himself these things about his life so many times that he actually believes them. He’s still standing over a cesspool.

This is a satire, a comedy, but it can be horrifying in its depiction of our reality. Still, I found myself bellowing laughter probably a dozen times at top volume.

Candide, a young man fresh out of philosophical studies with his master, has learned that ‘Everything is as it should, and must, be. The world is perfect, because even when there are hardships they serve other purposes and lead to unforeseeable circumstances which turn the world positively forward. Therefore, everything is good.'

At the tale’s onset Candide pursues and falls in love with the beautiful Cunegonde. Then his philosophy teacher is imprisoned and hanged setting off a dramatic chain of events which eventually familiarizes Candide with the real world. Cunegonde is stolen from him, circumstances lead to him killing a Baron, and he flees his city to begin adventuring in search for his love. He is bludgeoned by life at every turn yet maintains his positive attitude of ‘everything is good, all is as it should be.’ As his fortunes rise and fall throughout his adventures he encounters all manner of people, most of who take advantage of his naivety and leave him as penniless as possible, often barely with his life.

I hadn’t a clue I was going to love this book like I did. It’s philosophy, and while philosophy can often be rewarding it’s many times too heavy to replace entertainment. Written in 1759, this short novel (or this particular translation – I can’t find the credit) is 100% applicable today and is nearly 100% accessible. It’s quite a marvel, as often classics have an additional language barrier to overcome which affects the rating if reviewing in today’s context for today’s readers.

Candide is a puzzle-box, and I can’t help but feel there are more secrets here. It’s a lively story of optimism and despair, and deserves permanent shelf-space.

"What is this optimism?” said Cacambo.
“Alas!” said Candide, “it is the madness of maintaining that everything is right when it is wrong.”

5 stars

SAM_3268.jpg

SAM_3202.jpg

SAM_3208.jpg

SAM_3212.jpg

SAM_3216.jpg

SAM_3233.jpg

[bugen]

Dust – Hugh Howey
“They ought to have been left on their own, both people and the planet. Mankind had the right to go extinct. That’s what life did: it went extinct. It made room for the next in line.”

Does the end justify the means? The debate on this theme has raged for a long time, and an intelligent person can take up either side of the argument and win. Of course, when an equally intelligent person argues the opposite side, a stalemate results. The same is true with idiots on both sides, which we're much more familiar with. But no matter how you slice it this is an impossible argument unless the terms of battle are unequal in the first place.

With this book the trilogy becomes a study on the theme. While it’s heavily weighted in one direction on the surface, the other side is present as well, and by the time it's over we’re provided with an extra layer of philosophy by asking the question.

I’ve found it difficult and tedious to review the third book in a trilogy without spoiling the story, so I’m going to recap Wool and Shift briefly, touch lightly on Dust, and let your imaginations take you where they will.

In Wool, some of the people buried in the underground silo where they’ve been living and dying for hundreds, or thousands, of years, learn of a conspiracy to alter the truth of the uninhabitable surface world through equipment that’s been tampered with. Still, the toxicity on the surface is immediately deadly, so the story is contained to infighting amongst the massive but packed-to-the-brim silo.

In Shift, we see the origin of the silos, and some of our characters dealing with this new subterranean world while coming from the old, and one of our main characters starts to believe and act on her belief that there are others that may be reached.

In Dust, the conspiracy of the silos is fully uncovered, as many our characters become aware they are not alone with their silo, but there are many other mysterious silos in the vicinity, presumably with many other people. They also learn that there is one silo to rule them all… The read bogs down a bit in the beginning, but then moves forward at a brisk pace it maintains for the rest of the novel.

With compelling characters in dangerous, claustrophobic situations that are not at all far from our imaginations, The Silo Saga almost tells the story of the world we’re in right now, but removes it from today’s context and places it into tomorrow’s where we’ve already destroyed everything. It does, however, maintain hope, and this is no small feat at the end of the world, where the trilogy begins.

“What lasts forever?” she obliged, sure to regret it but sensing that he was waiting for her to ask.
“Our decisions,” he said.

4 stars

SAM_1528.jpg

SAM_1753.jpg

SAM_1765.jpg

SAM_0275.JPG