Reading in June

I haven't since July posted one of my supposedly monthly reading recaps, with the books being discussed being from way back in May, and, while they're far from the blog's centerpiece as far as content/insight go, I do miss them a tad. Wandering about the delightfully cluttered "Hat Rack" section of my hard drive I noticed I'd actually written a summary of my reading in June but never posted it, so I decided it was high time for a jump back to the halcyon days of summer, the distant days of June...

Leviathan Wakes, the creation of Daniel Abraham and Ty Franck, is a Science Fiction novel manages to be a gripping mixture of Space Opera awe and a horror-derived, maybe even noirish, sense of claustrophobia. In the midst of all that, the book's fast paced, fun, and stars two excellently portrayed characters.

I'll admit to some measure of disappointment with The Blonde on the Street Corner. This is the third novel of Goodis's I've read – coming after The Wounded and theSlain and Black Friday – and both of those were downbeat tales of the low and the lonely, each depressive and captivating in its way. The Blonde on the Street Corner has the majority of the formula down. Our protagonists are deadbeats in the depression, bumming off their families with no prospects whatsoever. So the theme's there, and Goodis's prose is dotted with the same flares of poetic sorrow that I've come to expect. But what's missing is anything to grab the reader. This is a book that simply meanders along, but, unlike The Wounded and the Slain, we're never really presented with a reason to care. Though this certainly isn't a bad read, it's nowhere near the level that Goodis is capable of operating on.

The Hour of the Dragon is the only full length novel of Conan the Barbarian that Robert E. Howard ever penned. It's filled with all the hallmarks that are associated with the character – or, perhaps I should stress, those hallmarks that come from the creator's tales and not the lobotomized cinematic or otherwise later versions. This story is filled with adventure, intrigue, and tension, and though Howard manages to drag Conan through almost every aspect of his former life – pirate and thief and so on – it never feels like a rehash or like there's an author up above the pages dragging the characters this way and that without giving them any say. As for the writing, it's Howard's usual, which is to say that it's equal parts painfully exuberant excess and vivid mastery. If you're a fan of the character, this is a necessary read.

The full version of Thomas Ligotti and Brandon Trenz's screenplay Crampton – the earlier, abridged, and derivative version of which I read earlier this year – is a fascinating read for any Ligotti fan. The expected themes – the ephemeral and illusory nature of the world, the hollowness of all existence, and so forth – are present, but the author's hypnotic prose is absent, replaced by tightly written dialogue, bits of banter, and even expletives. Crampton moves at a fast and enjoyable clip, and the finishing anticlimax is powerfully done, but I still do have to say that, overall, the depressive and vivid ecstasy that Ligotti's writing normally brings is, by necessity, absent here. This is an interesting item to be sure, but it's most certainly just for the diehard collector, and not just because of the forbidding price tag.

George R.R. Martin's as adept at short stories as he is at doorstopper epics, and almost every one of the tales in this collection shows his mastery of the form. Reviewed here.

Fevre Dream, Martin's novel of Vampires and steamboats, has lost nothing with time, and it wasn't diminished on reread either. This is a novel rich in characterization and atmosphere, something not to be missed by any fan of Martin's work. Reviewed here.

In many ways, All the Pretty Horses is an inversion of the author's landmark Blood Meridian. John Grady Cole, our protagonist here, is a romantic and a dreamer trespassing on the brutal and unforgiving Wild West that McCarthy's become so justly famous for, and the results are at once heart breaking and even, at times, beautiful. Though I can't say that this novel's as revelatory as Blood Meridian, it's still an excellent read.

The third collection of horror writer Reggie Oliver, Masques of Satan is a volume of subtle ghost stories woven into theater backdrops. My reaction to Oliver is very similar to my reaction to the M.R. James stories I've read, and I mean that both in the positive ways that Oliver's adherents cite and also in the negatives that those Weird Tales-devotees would most certainly not agree to. Like James, Oliver writes in a formal but inviting style, and his words draw you in and make you feel like a part of the conversation. Also like James, his mastery of his subject area is obvious from every word he speaks, but – due to the aforementioned welcoming tone – the knowledge imparted is interesting rather than onerous. Oliver's ghosts, however, are – like James – the least interesting parts of his stories by far, little twists of the supernatural that aren't particularly memorable in and of themselves. I enjoyed this collection a fair bit, but I'd hesitate to recommend it at the forty or fifty dollars you're likely to find it for, and I certainly was not enamored enough with the stories here to spend the several hundred needed to read the author's first and second collections.

I'll admit it: I'm just bewildered here. Boneshaker was a forgettable read packed with problems and a few good ideas that weren't even taken advantage of. How, again, did this ever get near a Hugo? Reviewed here.

Reading in May

I've mentioned my love of Daniel Abraham a fair few times on this blog, and reviewed his short story collection from Subterranean Press, and so I dove into The Dragon's Path as soon as it crossed my doorstep. I can't quite say that the novel possesses as much depth or power as The Long Price at its height, but The Dragon's Path is an interesting and enjoyable book that serves to set up many an interesting thread for future volumes. Review coming.

 The White Luck Warrior, the second volume in the second of Bakker's three connected trilogies, can be easily compared to the middle volume of the first trilogy, The Warrior Prophet. As there, here we focus on an army on the move dealing with supply problems, and so on – but this book lacks the galloping pace of actions and revelations that made that first trilogy such an unforgettable experience. This is not, however, a weak book by any stretch of the imagination. Though I wish more ground had been covered, and less retread, the writing here is powerful and resplendent with metaphors and hidden meanings, and the thematic and philosophical ideas explored are as insightful as the standard that Bakker has set for himself.

Though I enjoyed many of the stories in The Martian Chronicles, I'll admit that, come the collection's end, I still wasn't convinced that Bradbury deserved his legendary status. Now, having read Something Wicked This Way Comes, I'll gladly admit that I was wrong: Bradbury most certainly deserves his praise. Something Wicked This Way Comes is a story about danger and change, but it's also – and most of all – a story about childhood. The exuberance of its characters and the skill of its prose is mesmerizing, and, though the novel does occasionally verge on the saccharine, there are six moments of awe and majesty for every half stumble. This is required reading for anyone interested in our genre's greats.

 Spurred on by my Breaking New Ground challenge, I began Moon Called and found a fast paced and enjoyable Urban Fantasy book with well drawn characters and a generally quietly believable approach to world building. Though Briggs has yet to show herself exceptional in any way, Moon Called is still an enjoyable novel that promises better things ahead.

 Like Hard Man, Savage Night is crime so bleak and brutal it's impossible to react to with anything but a terrified, strangled laugh. Guthrie reacts to the borders of sanity and general taste like most of us view finish lines, and his characters are slammed together so hard and fast that the gruesome mess that's left is likely to leave you as sick as you are satisfied. This is a roller coaster ride of cleverness and tension, but, like all the best four hundred foot drops, it's best to brace yourself before going in.

 Dashiell Hammett's debut is noir writ large, a single amoral detective pitted against an immoral city. Like Savage Night, this isn't a novel that will win any points for restraint, but the laconic honesty of its telling and force of its words is impossible to ignore. Review here.

 Kiernan's Subterranean Press collection, The Ammonite Violin & Others, weaved nightmarish and erotic tapestries out of lush language and surreal descriptions. The Red Tree mesmerizes the audience in a way as different as can be. Here, Kiernan's speech is unadorned and honest, crude and raw and vulnerable. And the image that she paints is both vivid and disorientating, at once horrific and run through with desire.

 I think it's rather well established that I liked Nevill's first two novels, Banquet for the Damned and Apartment 16 a fair bit. I even interviewed the man here.  After all that, I went into The Ritual with damn high expectations – and the book's first half blew even those away. Here Nevill displays excellence in atmosphere and character, creating a taut and terrifying adventure that rivaled anything in Nevill's first two books. And then, alas, the book's second section began, and the characters were gone, and the pacing was gone, and the atmosphere was gone. Review coming.

As I read the first hundred pages of Stone, I was deeply in love. Roberts writes with all the penetrating honesty of a confession and the intricacy of a carefully considered narrative, and his ideas are fresh and riveting. Alas, soon after the imprisoned protagonist wins his freedom, narrative momentum grates to a meandering halt and never returns in force. Still, the ideas that Roberts explores are interesting, and the prose fantastic throughout. I'll be reading more of Roberts in the future for sure, though I hope that his other novels maintain a more even pace throughout.

Reading in April

Yes, I'm aware that this is a tad late. As is probably fairly obvious, I've been quite busy lately, but, on the upside, my summer's shaping up to be filled with nothing but hot air and writing, redundant as the combo might prove to be. Future articles might - might - be a shade more on the timely side. In the meantime, let's bust out a time machine and figure out what I was reading two months ago.

Tau Zero boasts shallow characters, lax pacing, and a hard Science Fiction core so incredible that I'm still shaken a week after reading it. For the first time, I understand Hard Science Fiction. As it happens, there really are ideas strong enough to carry novels entirely on their own.

There's no denying that Aickman is a masterful writer. His prose is elegant, his atmospheres pervasive, his ideas fascinating. And yet I'm not sure that we're always on the same wavelength, to speak (as Robert Aickman certainly would not) in clichés. The Model felt like one of the lesser stories in Cold Hand in Mine. Masterfully done and subtle, certainly, but composed of a subtlety too urbane to bother with meaning or gratification.

Classics are always an odd experience. The light jokes of the time are, when looked at from six decades' distance and through a classic's deific airs, bizarre. The Martian Chronicles feels dated in parts, and some of the stories felt too reliant on unbelievable actions to me. That being said, there's no denying the brilliance of several of Bradbury's pieces here, including There Will Come Soft Rains, Usher II, and The Million-Year Picnic. This was my first Bradbury, but I'll be reading more for sure.

Crass, rude, and absurd, Exponential Apocalypse is a hilarious read. Review here.

Daniel Kraus's YA horror novel is equal parts grave robbing and coming of age, and both are pulled off with skill and wit. There are a few discolorations here and there, but they do little to damage the whole. Review here.

Death Poems is one of Ligotti's rarest works and getting it probably serves as a good road sign of the purchaser's loss of sanity. So, is Death Poems worth the exorbitant price (while I won't quote what I paid, I will say that most editions go for over a dollar a page)? In an objective sense, no, it's probably not. Death Poems is interesting and often highly amusing, but it is not Teatro Grottesco. This is the kind of work that's enjoyable, perhaps even thought provoking, but is certainly not life changing. And, for that price, life changing would be a fair expectation. Then again, if you're at the point where you're even considering such an insane purchase, I can almost guarantee that you'll find yourself sliding into it, wise decision or not. Ligotti becomes a bit of an obsession like that.

Like most Ligotti, I read Death Poems twice.

Kafka on the Shore has talking cats, jobs in the library, murderous corporate icons, teen runaways, and gateways to isolated dimensions, and it’s all painted in Murakami’s beautiful but understated prose. This book feels like the fulfillment of much of the man’s style, complete with the bizarre ordinary world of After Dark and the questions of identity and humanity filling Hard Boiled Wonderland. If I can ever wrap my mind around this properly, there will be a review. In the meantime: highly, highly recommended.

Black Halo improved on many of Tome of the Undergates’ flaws and proves a damn entertaining read. Review here.

Valente writes with imagery so thick it would be suffocating if it weren’t so deftly handled. Almost every paragraph here is filled with wonders, but Deathless is not just great prose. Valente manages to create a gripping plot of bizarre creatures and circumstances out of folklore and dreams. This is the rare book than can – and should – be called magical in every sense of that word.

Simply written but awesomely imaginative, Scott Westerfeld's YA steampunk novel is an engrossing read. The ending is rather abrupt, but Westerfeld twists world war one into a shape both amusing and fascinating. Recommended.

The Picture of Dorian Gray’s an interesting horror-style concept wrapped around a book of witty dialogue and fascinating ideas. There’s the occasional moment that drags – such as the seemingly endless chapter describing the minutia of our dubious protagonist’s life – but Wilde proves equally adept at making the reader laugh and think.

I won't be reviewing Historical Lovecraft due to the whole being in it thing, but I will say that it's filled with excellent stories, including Tobler's If Only to Taste Her Again, Meikle's Inquisitor, Reiss's The Chronicle of Aliyat Son of Aliyat, Joshua Reynolds' the Far Deep, and Tanzer's The Infernal History of the Ivybridge Twins among others. You know you're interested...

Reading in April

April was a rather slight month for me when it comes to quantity. In part, that's due to the length of some of the books, but, more, it's the result of me reading a large number of magazines (Weird Tales, Asimov's, Analog, and Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine) in the middle. In an attempt to make my short story coverage more sensible, I'm no longer going to keep track of the magazines so much as the stories themselves, something that's taking far longer to do than I thought and will have to wait till next month to debut. But enough about things that nobody besides I and my I-should-be-using-Excel word documents care about. Let's get to some books…

Cold Hand in Mine was my first experience with cult horror author Robert Aickman, and it wasn't a disappointment. Aickman writes understated but magical stories, tales that aren't horrific in the slightest but are, instead, unsettling and profound from start to finish. Review coming up.

Great Expectations surprised me. Though I've often heard Di-ckens described as a clever writer, I was still expecting a dry "classics" read. Instead, I got prose that sang with wit, even if it was often bogged down. I found that the middle dragged fiercely, but the book was still quite enjoyable over all.

This is the conclusion to the Malazan series, a series that – as longtime readers know – I have quite an affinity for. I would not say that The Crippled God is my favorite volume, nor would I even say it is particularly close to that honor, but I did find it a quite satisfactory conclusion, filled with the grandeur, tension, awe, and depth that I expect when I begin one of Erikson's tomes. If there were to be no more Malazan novels, I would be sad but would not feel cheated. I will be rereading Malazan in the future, and will be covering it in some fashion, though I'm unsure exactly what shape that coverage will take.

Kiernan's writing is dark, lurid, and vivid. Her stories are composites of desire, lust, and decay, and they're filled with lush imagery that begs to be savored. Review coming.

The Wise Man's Fear functions in much the same way as The Name of the Wind. The prose is lyrical and fantastic, the story is as involving as could be, and the plot stutters and staggers over little ground. Review coming.

As always, Scalzi is amusing here. The novel is a mixture of wit, pulse pounding action, intrigue, and insightful social commentary. All that being said, there's still something holding me back from fully loving Scalzi, and I don't think it's a quantifiable thing. His writing and ideas are slick and enjoyable, but they're not something that I can fall for unreservedly. Still, this is recommended and, I think, highly unlikely to disappoint.

The Other is a powerfully written and involving horror novel. The characters and setting come to life through Tryon's prose. The reveal in the third act, and the climax, are breathtaking, though the tension before that does, perhaps, rise too slowly to be wholly effective. Still, this is an interesting and powerful read that's well worth checking out if it sounds interesting to you.

Reading in February

Abercrombie's latest is blood soaked, grit under your nails fun – the kind of fun that's had watching two big groups of men smash into each other for three days and watching their honor, morale, and bodies fall to pieces, all described in starkly modern and sarcastic prose. The book's structure was interesting, and it will certainly be enjoyed by fans of Abercrombie's prior work, though I don't think that he's yet managed to reclaim the revelatory power of The First Law.

 Reading an established author's debut is often an interesting experience, as well as a somewhat worrisome one. Are you going to get to see an unfettered and fresh version of the brilliance you've grown to expect or will it be a sodden, meandering mess? In the case of Consider Phlebas, it's a bit of both. Review coming.

The Face that Must Die is a deeply unpleasant novel, a nightmarish trudge through a deranged and hateful mind, a novel filled with innocents who seem unable or unwilling to save themselves and predators that are twisted, loathsome, and, above all, human. It is, in other words, damn fine horror. Review coming.

 As I said after finishing the first Sandman collection (Preludes & Nocturnes), I simply don't understand how the early issues can be immature compared to the later ones. The Doll's House more than the first collection shows signs of relative immaturity, and there were some weaker moments, but if the rest of the series truly does put the beginning volumes to shame it will have to be quite mind blowing indeed. Review coming when I finish the series.

I've had a fairly mixed experience with Hamilton. He's written scenes and arcs that I've loved, and scenes and arcs that I've hated, and so far I've yet to read a book he's written without at least one of each. This, his debut, is a rather different beast. It's far more focused than his later works, though fans of the author's imagination will probably not be disappointed by it here, even if his creations are a tad reigned in. Still, I'm so far unconvinced that the Greg Mandel novels are capable of the same highs as the Night's Dawn trilogy. I suppose Hamilton's still got two books to prove me wrong. Review coming when I finish the trilogy.

 Noctuary is a quieter, subtler work than Songs of a Dead Dreamer was, though it's not quite as refined as Teatro Grottesco. Perhaps the most interesting part of the collection was the final part of three, a collection of a good deal of Ligotti's flash fiction. Besides those miniature tales, Conversations in a Dead Language proved to be my favorite of the collection, a devastatingly sad tale that's fairly unique in Ligotti's catalog. Review coming.

 I think it's pretty well established by now that I read Ligotti's work twice, and Noctuary was no exception. On second read, slower building tales like The Medusa and The Tsalal came into their own.

City of Ruin reads like a supercharged version of Nights of Villjamur, expanding on the strengths of that first novel and patching up many of its weaknesses – though that is not to say that it fixes all of the debut's problems. Review coming.

 This is the kind of book where you finish and then have to mull over what you've read for hours, reveling in the spell woven on you. Palmer's writing is excellent, and his story's deliciously bittersweet. Though it had some pacing problems, The Dream of Perpetual Motion is an excellent read. Highly recommended, just don't expect anything even approaching typical.

 To make sure that, after my rather scathing review of Frankenstein, I hadn't simply lost all affinity for classic horror, I went back and reread a dozen or so of Poe's finer tales and  found them just as fine the second time around (though, to be fair, it's closer to the fourth or fifth for a few). While I can't say that I'm as devout a follower of Poe as I am of Lovecraft, his mastery is undeniable.  The Masque of the Red Death, in particular, is pitch perfect, a bare handful of pages that couldn't be improved by a collaboration of the genre's top artists given a decade to improve as much as a single image.

 I was excited going into Frankenstein. No, really, I wasn't setting out to spear the classics. I was expecting a stunning read, a book that showed the origins of one of my favorite genres, a book that scared me, a book that made me think. Instead, I ended up bitterly disappointed. Review here.

Catherynne M. Valente's prose is versatile and opulent, and her writing is a tide of images that bears hapless readers to distant, often beautiful and often traumatizing, shores. Ventriloquism is a spellbinding collection, and, since much of its contents can be found online, there's no reason at all to not go immerse yourself in some of Valente's short fiction. Review coming.