Book Reviews

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The Old Man and the Sea – Ernest Hemingway

"It is better to be lucky. But I would rather be exact."

The old man, the aged form of a monster of a man who was once deadlocked in an arm wrestling contest for days and won, is poor and alone with a breaking-down body, and with the scant acquaintance of a small boy who occasionally provides company and speaks kindly to him. He has spent 84 consecutive days fishing without a catch; everyone considers him bad luck and the boy’s parents do not want him spending any time with the man. But he is doggedly persistent, has an idea of where he wants to fish that day and sets out alone to cover a great distance and try again. Out of sight of anything other than water he encounters the mother of all fish and is locked into a monumental battle of wit, patience and determination as he battles nature and himself.

Hemingway’s immortal, Pulitzer Prize-winning work is not what I was expecting, and though I’ve read all of his short stories this was my first novel of his. I’ve often found an initial sense of disconnect when looking at reading older, classic works… an inertia that needs to be overcome before the book disappears from my shelf and appears magically in my hand. And quite often the hesitation is a mistake, as it was here.

The Old Man and the Sea is a very short work and a lightning read, it's as fraught with tension as any thriller, and speaks to the (best) nature of mankind through the story with the simple effectiveness of a master. This was a heck of a fight and an outstanding piece of fiction.

"But man is not made for defeat," he said. "A man can be destroyed but not defeated."

5 stars

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Somewhere in Time (aka Bid Time Return) - Richard Matheson

15 years ago I came across the film Somewhere in Time and the romantic in me rejoiced as the inner philosopher pored over this particular idea of time. And now I’ve read what may be the best time-travel story ever written.

Richard Collier, recently diagnosed with a terminal brain tumor and given a few months to live, decides to pack up and spend the rest of his days traveling. On a whim he flips a penny to give him direction, and ends up at the Coronado Hotel in San Diego, a “monument to the past” and “the last of the extravagantly conceived seaside hotels.”

During his stay he notices the striking image of a 19th century actress who’s stayed and performed here a century ago, and he is inexplicably drawn to her. This grows into obsession and he begins researching everything he can about the actress, falling deeply into his construction of her. He conceives of a plan, based in part on modern philosophy, to embrace the period of the hotel, remove from his presence any reference to the modern world (1971), and join her in the past.

At its core the book is a romance, a tragedy, but it also contains no small element of science fiction and even a bit of horror. How far would you go for the one you love?

One of the greatest novels I’ve read.

“Sure, it’s possible. Who am I to deny anything at this point?”

5 stars

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[mhatchett]

My favorite Jane Seymour film lol. I like the Novel, But i like Jack Finney's Time and Again better.
"Come back to me."

[Martin]

Somewhere in Time (aka Bid Time Return) - Richard Matheson

15 years ago I came across the film Somewhere in Time and the romantic in me rejoiced as the inner philosopher pored over this particular idea of time. And now I’ve read what may be the best time-travel story ever written.

Richard Collier, recently diagnosed with a terminal brain tumor and given a few months to live, decides to pack up and spend the rest of his days traveling. On a whim he flips a penny to give him direction, and ends up at the Coronado Hotel in San Diego, a “monument to the past” and “the last of the extravagantly conceived seaside hotels.”

During his stay he notices the striking image of a 19th century actress who’s stayed and performed here a century ago, and he is inexplicably drawn to her. This grows into obsession and he begins researching everything he can about the actress, falling deeply into his construction of her. He conceives of a plan, based in part on modern philosophy, to embrace the period of the hotel, remove from his presence any reference to the modern world (1971), and join her in the past.

At its core the book is a romance, a tragedy, but it also contains no small element of science fiction and even a bit of horror. How far would you go for the one you love?

One of the greatest novels I’ve read.

“Sure, it’s possible. Who am I to deny anything at this point?”

5 stars

That is one of my wife's favorite movies. I have tried to get her to read the story even going so far to explain that it is the same person who wrote Stir of Echoes, another movie she really likes, though not as much. So far she hasn't bit but I think she will pick it up eventually.

[Dave1442397]

My favorite Jane Seymour film lol. I like the Novel, But i like Jack Finney's Time and Again better.
"Come back to me."

I can't even remember how many times I've read Time and Again. One of the best time travel books ever.

[bugen]

Thank you guys for pointing out Finney's book. I just picked it up.

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“Two’s Company” - Joe Abercrombie

“Are you two idiots really going to fight over where you fight?”

Two female traveling companions, both fighters, are engrossed in a conversation about the more ridiculous aspects of mens’ anatomies when they come across an extended bridge with the other end obscured by mist. They begin to cross, but in the middle are met by a group of male fighters traveling in the opposite direction.

Introductions are made, chests are puffed, and each party demands the other step aside to make passage.

What follows is a hilarious, escalating battle, filled with great action and a few instances of Lord Grimdark’s trademark wit and wisdom. This story does not carry the traditional weight of Abercrombie tales, and while it’s still got some grit it’s the most lighthearted I’ve yet seen from him.

It’s a short story of about 7,000 words and anyone interested can read it for free online at the following link:

http://www.tor.com/2016/01/12/twos-c...e-abercrombie/

4- stars

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Indian Summer – Rick Hautala

“What?” Billy was flabbergasted and started thinking maybe he couldn’t handle all of this “adult world” stuff. Maybe he should go find his friends and just be a kid.

I wouldn’t be surprised to find that Mr. Hautala never had a pretentious thought in his life. He didn’t seem to be trying to impress anyone, he just wrote a lot of true fiction. And if his story wanted to tell you that Joe ran, he wouldn’t waste the next 350 words flowering up the prose with his thesaurus; he’d just tell you that the sumbitch ran. In a storytelling environment where language is often more important than storytelling I can’t tell you how much I respect that.

In this novella a young boy named Billy hears town’s fire alarm and investigates the source in the surrounding woods along with his friends, despite knowing the trouble he’ll get in with his folks. Locals are already fighting the fire and hand out some gear to the kids, and in order to get the better of the fire and become a hero, at first opportunity Billy heads into the woods to come at it from the other direction.

Lost in the woods, Billy happens upon the house of the mysterious Ellie, who’s traumatized by a gruesome murder from her past. Billy becomes a kind of reluctant fried to Ellie and begins to learn the nature of the recent forest fires and the danger that may be present in the woods as he balances his old friends, his new friend and his parents while trying to do the right thing and be a grown-up.

This is a good story, but not quite on the level of some of his other shorter works, many which I hold in the highest regard. I have his career retrospective of short stories (Glimpses) on the shelf in the direct company of Harlan Ellison, Richard Matheson and Charles Beaumont, and if I could compliment the guy any higher than that I don’t know how.

Mr. Hautala was one hell of a writer, and Indian Summer is a quick and enjoyable read.

3 stars

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Summer of Night - Dan Simmons

“Nothing was as simple as stupid people assumed it to be.”

When it’s all stripped away, are there stories we like more than coming-of-age? I’m considering my favorite books, most of which are not of this type, and still having a hard time answering the question. These stories, well done, resonate with us because we partially believe. We’re no longer children susceptible to monsters and boogymen, but we never really forgot the magic of childhood. Not all the way.

Mr. Simmons didn’t forget either. He captures this so perfectly that you become lost in your own childhood while reading about his characters’ lives. Very few authors can move from rip-roaring adventure to sickening dread, to full-blown terror, and then leave you fighting back tears all within a few pages. This is rich, intelligent storytelling at its finest, and I’m saddened to have finished the book. A comparison to Stephen King’s IT can be made, not because it’s the same story, but because it’s also a coming-of-age monster tale, it’s also a humdinger in length, and it’s also about a good as a story can get.

A small-town group of kids is forced to confront an unspeakable evil. The plot. The plot of many coming-of-age books in the genre. Except it’s not. Is it ever when holding real quality?

"There had to be many intellectual puzzles that could not be solved by a visit-or many visits-to a good library, but Duane McBride hadn't found one yet."

5 stars

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The Bestiary - Ann VanderMeer (Ed.), various authors

“All the same, it may be maintained that since, at the time of Creation, the Creator was altogether lacking in prior experience in this sort of thing, all kinds of errors, actually, were made. And these went unnoticed until the work was finished, as is so often the case. Ask any writer.”
-Michael Cisco, “Figmae”

I’d heard about The Bestiary quite a while back and had been following with much interest, thinking it would be a modernized compendium put together by Weird royalty and play out as a highly researched, ultra-cool version of the Dungeons and Dragons Monstrous Manual.

Except that’s not the case. This book makes no attempt to document any strange creatures of myth or magic from history or fable, instead asking its authors to create entirely new creatures of their own design with an assigned letter of the alphabet beginning its name. Artwork is heavily featured throughout the relatively small book, with a new illustration for almost every entry. Results vary greatly, but this assembled talent bent toward the purpose of creating new life has done exactly that.

One of my favorites was “Bartleby’s Typewriter,” a story by Corey Redekop about a creature that changes its physical shape, including bone structure, to blend with its environment. “Daydreamer by Proxy” by Dexter Palmer and “The Vanda” by Rikki Ducornet I also found as standouts, as well as “Ible” by Brian Evenson and “Orsinus Liborum” by Catherynne M. Valente, but Michael Cisco knocks it out of the park with his “Figmae,” a creature that folds into our universe perfectly.

Another feature of each of the sections is small piece at the end of each, where the author creates another creature in a paragraph or so, often humorous, and usually a variation on the author’s name. For instance, after detailing her new creature, “The Karmantid” Karen Heuler concludes with: “The Heulertwit is a bird with a nattering squawk and an exact number of feathers which never seem to be the exactly the feathers she thought she had.”

In spite of the positive elements the book presents a challenge in that its creatures and ideas are so far out there. It’s very difficult to read the book story to story because each is so abstract, requiring a new mental gear with every new creature. It’s got a nice spot reserved on my shelf; this is exactly the book you reach for when blocked, or when you think you’ve seen everything already and need concrete evidence that the boundaries can be pushed further still. Having arrived at the conclusion this was the proper place (for me) for this book, I skipped the last 4 creatures (X, Y, Z and The) in order to be able to pull this book off the shelf for something new in the future.

It’s a very different collection, but has its place.

3- stars

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[TacomaDiver]

Thanks for that review. I was hoping that it would be like the old Monster Manual so to find out it's not, my need for this book has gone down quite a bit.

[bugen]

Happy to help! I really, really wanted that updated Monstrous Manual. Hit points and everything I still have my old one on the shelf and poke around in it here and there for some interesting monster stats.

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Boy’s Life – Robert McCammon

The years of a boy’s life pass so fast, Cory.” She smiled faintly. “Boys want to hurry up and be men, and then comes a day they wish they could be boys again. But I’ll tell you secret, Cory. Want to hear it?”
I nodded.
“No one,” Mrs. Neville whispered, “ever grows up.”

In the tiny town of Zephyr, mid-1960, Corey and his father witness a body being dumped in the lake of a bottomless quarry. Since no perpetrator can be identified, the body cannot be recovered and no one seems to be missing, the crime is shelved and life continues in town. But Corey and his father have not forgotten.

Our narrator is the 11-year-old Cory Mackenson, but large portions of this book might as well be narrated by us, telling our young lives back to ourselves. Much of this reads as slice-of-life, not necessarily an adventure story, and it’s these sections many folks will most strongly identify with. Mr. McCammon strikes the chord of youth and holds it throughout, and while many parts are the somber, life-lesson variety, it’s much more often an uproarious whirlwind of activity, imagination and fancy in a towering coming-of-age novel.

You’ll be hard pressed to recall a book that makes you laugh as long, as hard and as frequently as this one does–bellowing, stomach-cramping laughter. And it’ll make you cry, too, once you find that one particular experience that meshes with your own boyhood, bringing something back with it. It’s an emotionally charged novel all the way through.

The book’s tremendous humor works at least partially because the boy is narrating events with a straight face, just telling us what happened without even a glint in his eye. Because we know what we do about life the situational absurdity gets ratcheted up to another level. It works because Cory doesn’t yet know how funny it is and how his experiences will ring when he’s acquired adulthood. But we know. How could we forget?

SubPress has an excellent synopsis on their website, and in it are the three perfect words for the book. Combined with the title, what you really need to know is:

Magic, and astonishingly moving.

5 stars

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The Mammoth Book of Dark Magic – Mike Ashley (Ed.)

“Insanity is not what you see, but what you admit to seeing. … Craziness is the compulsion to explain.”
-Esther M. Friesner, “In the Realm of Dragons”

This one’s big, as the more astute may have gleaned from the title. Clocking in at nearly 200,000 words this book had one story drop into the ‘poor’ territory, had two instances of average or slightly above average stories, and most of the rest range from ‘good’ to ‘excellent.’ There are two masterful stories here, Ursula K. Le Guin’s “The Bones of the Earth,” marking the first time I’d read the author and she receives the award for best story, and David Sandner’s “The Wizard of Ashes and Rain,” marking the first time I’d ever heard of the author, as the runner up. I’ll be improving my familiarity with both authors.

Many of these tales are of the sword and sorcery type, not necessarily evil magic, so the British title for the book is, as usual, the more apt. But horror exists here as well as fantasy, as might not be better represented than by Tim Lebbon’s tale, “Forever.” Jesus.

The quality of the authors and range of the stories within the theme is superb. Ursula K. Le Guin and Tim Lebbon as mentioned, Steve Rasnic Tem, Tom Holt, Tim Pratt, Clark Ashton Smith, Michael Moorcock, Robert Weinberg, Darrel Schweitzer, my first Ralph Adams Cram (awesome), Mike Resnick and Peter Crowther, among many others stuffing the book full with 23 stories of sorcerers, witches, dragons, gods and monsters. Mr. Ashley provides some insight prior to each story, explaining a little about the author and why the tale was included.

It took a long time for me to complete the book, probably over a year, but there is a ton of great material here. The Mammoth Book of Dark Magic is absolutely recommended for that occasional pickup and a slow progression through the dark.

4 stars

*Please note the U.S. version had its title changed from Dark Magic to Black Magic.
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[Theli]

Sounds like a killer anthology!