The Frankenstein Papers by Fred Saberhagen
Saberhagen wrote a fun Dracula secret history book- reviewed HERE- so I had high hopes for this Frankenstein secret history book. But this is a misfire. Dracula works as a storyteller because he's charismatic and compelling. Frankenstein's monster is just not that interesting. This is more a sequel to Frankenstein than an alternate perspective. Highlight: the creature travels to the United States to meet with Ben Franklin and discuss electricity and stuff. That was a neat idea, but Frankenstein Unbound did a lot more neat things with this secret-life-of-Frankenstein concept a decade earlier.
One of the most amazing, creative, and funny books I've ever read. This is a very well-written, fast-paced, entertaining organized crime epic that just happens to be about clowns. There are explosive pies, cotton candy cigarettes, homicidal jugglers on unicycles, and guns with bullets that explode into giant pieces of popcorn on impact. And that's just a few of the things you'll find in the first story. And there are six stories in here. All interconnected and building on each other nicely. I was totally blindsided by this book, just shocked senseless at its quality and imagination level. And now I'm over-hyping it to you. Okay. Calm down. Don't get too excited. Temper your expectations, so you can read it and be totally blown away, too!
Fellowship of the Ring by J.R.R. Tolkien
Re-reading it. Just noticed that right near the start, Gandalf tells Frodo "Oh crap! The word is out that one of you Hobbits has this ring! The forces of darkness are closing in on you to get it back!" And then he walks away and Frodo just chills for a few years. Because the only way to deal with this clear and present danger is to relax for a few years.
Reel Terror by Various Authors
I've had this book on my bookshelf forever. Us book people all have books like that. Books that lurk in the darkness that we never quite get around to. Glad I finally got around to it! It's a cool collection of short stories, many lesser-known, that were adapted into famous films. The basis for the films Total Recall, Freaks, Duel, The Golem, The Fly, you name it- they're all in here.
This is one of the most insane and frightening books ever written, full of dark humor and sad-but-true observations about human greed and ignorance. It explains the ridiculous things people were doing behind the scenes that led up to the 2008 financial meltdown. I had to re-read parts of this book multiple times because I couldn't believe it was actually saying what it was saying. But yep. It's saying what it's saying. People are nuts. Humans are doomed.
Takeaways:
-Sometimes the person closest to a situation is the least reliable; they think they know everything about it, so they miss problems that are obvious to a casual observer.
-Most financial transactions are zero-sum; someone is winning and losing and even if you win, there's usually a catch.
-Know that in the world of finance, you're gonna get screwed. Just figure out how and why they're gonna screw you and use that to decide if a transaction is still worth it.
Bethany's Sin by Robert R. McCammon
McCammon is a first-class writer. I mostly love him for his sprawling 1987 pre-, mid-, and post-nuclear holocaust supernatural epic, Swan Song. But his more mainstream thrillers, mysteries, and short stories are also awesome.
But he wasn't always a first-class writer. He openly admits that his first four books aren't very good- Bethany's Sin is his second- and he made the choice to let them go out of print because he didn't want inferior work tarnishing his name. Well- this ain't bad, for a disavowed early-career novel! Ancient savage Amazon women possess the ladies in a small Pennsylvania town and they attack all the menfolk. Rich with detail, cool enough story and thrills, and yeah- it's badly written. Pacing is off, things don't really come to life until halfway through, and the characters aren't very well-drawn. McCammon was learning to write in public with this one, but it's a fun read nonetheless.
I'd say the same thing for McCammon's likewise-disavowed early novel, the 1980 Night Boat. Voodoo Nazi zombies in a submarine taking over a tropical paradise? Nothing wrong with that.
Fundamental Accounting Principles by John Wild
This is the textbook for the accounting class I'm taking. It's a stunning work of art. I'm not surprised the author's name is "Wild" because he seems like a pretty WILD guy!!!
The Merciless by Danielle Vega
Easy summary: Mean Girls meets The Exorcist. A group of popular girls kidnap the local weirdo Goth girl and torture her and attempt to perform an exorcism to "get the demon out of her." But who is truly evil here? There are a couple plot twists late in the game that are unlikely to surprise anyone. I'd be surprised if they surprised you. Oddly- this has the sloppy writing and ridiculous characterizations of most YA supernatural lit, but it's loaded with cuss words and graphic violence. This book has no idea what it's doing.
This is pre-Lovecraft horror here. 1908. And gotta say- I like it more than most of Lovecraft's output. Pros: cool phantasmagoric imagery, neat pig-monsters, lucid writing, thick atmosphere, and- most unlike Lovecraft- a proactive protagonist who blasts the swine creatures with a shotgun rather than cowering in fear. Cons: weak story, weak characterization, and the found-book structure is unnecessary. Overall- a worthwhile horror classic.
Survivor by J.F. Gonzalez
The most disgusting and depressing thing I've ever read. And I have a rich history of reading disgusting and depressing things. It's about snuff movies. It's pretty badly-written, too. Clunky dialogue and repetitive descriptions.
Witch World by Andre Norton
A dude gets whisked away to the Witch World and finds himself caught between two warring tribes and he favors the noble savage one over the authoritarian one. Norton's books are starting to blur together for me. There's always a fish out of water getting involved in tribal warfare in the jungle on an exotic alien planet. Why do all Norton's alien planets have jungles and why do all Norton's aliens look like humans? The witch's magic is treated more like science and it's powered by their virginity. So I guess this is a pro-abstinence story? There are five gazillion sequels to this book. I think I'll pass. She's done some truly great books, but I'm probably gonna take a break from Norton for a while.
Fireworks by James A. Moore
This tale of alien invasion zeroes in on the part where the government arrives and takes control of the spaceship's crash site. The fact that an alien spacecraft lands becomes irrelevant pretty quickly, as the enemy becomes the townspeople turning on each other and the military getting reactionary and cracking down. But it's not didactic. It's very believable and for the most part, people respond to things the way you or I would respond to things.
An interesting, energetic, and flawed first work by an unknown author who I'm pretty sure is writing under a pseudonym. Full of jarring tonal shifts and spanning a variety of genres- horror, humor, fantasy, bizarro, literary fiction. Some of the jokes hit, some miss. It's okay, I guess. BUY IT NOW.
Tales of Known Space by Larry Niven
There's some winners and losers in these hard-SF tales. Props to Niven for building a complete and coherent cosmos, as mankind makes his first tentative moves into space and ends with massive evolution and everyday space travel 10,000 years later. Hate to get all SJW on this book, but Larry Niven has some troublesome views on women and sexual assault that may have been acceptable in the 70's, but come off as really poisonous now. He's very cavalier on those topics in "Cloak of Anarchy" and the ideas he expresses about women are downright despicable in Ringworld, to the point that they took me out of that book. This collection is fun overall, but anyone who thinks science fiction is/was a boy's club will not find anything to contradict them here.
Doctor Who Short Trips: Destination Prague by Various Writers
This is a collection of Doctor Who stories set in Prague. I love Doctor Who and I love Prague, so this could not possibly have been more my jam. They could have phoned this book in with no-name authors, but NOPE. One of my favorite horror writers, Brian Keene, has a story in here. James Moore's in here, too. He wrote Fireworks, a book that I reviewed a few paragraphs ago.
-Phony McFakename
No comments:
Post a Comment