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All I can say is... WOW!!! (Actually, I can say a lot more than that--and I will--but I'm starting with WOW!)
I owe JE Gurley an apology. I've known him casually from authors' conventions for a few years. He's always very upbeat and intensely supporti...more
All I can say is... WOW!!! (Actually, I can say a lot more than that--and I will--but I'm starting with WOW!)
I owe JE Gurley an apology. I've known him casually from authors' conventions for a few years. He's always very upbeat and intensely supportive of other writers. But I never knew he was an author himself. Oh, I knew he FANCIED himself an author but, at those events, maybe a quarter of the attendees are wanna-bes who have The Great American Novel lurking somewhere inside. In my arrogance, I simply assumed that Gurley was more of a fan-type than an actual author.a year Even when he kindly gave me a copy of HELL RIG awhile ago, I accepted it graciously and promptly tossed it on the shelf, wrongly assuming it was another of those semi-self published messes that people are always giving to authors to read.
Ye gods, was I WRONG!!!!! Gurley can WRITE!!!
HELL RIG is a beautifully crafted old-fashioned horror novel that just sings from beginning to end. Yes, there are some minor problems with it, which I'll get to in a moment, but largely the book is one damned fine spooky tale.
Briefly, the plot concerns an oil rig which was wiped out by a combination of Hurricane Katrina and a rig-worker turned mass murderer. A clean up crew is sent out to renovate the structure in the time period between Katrina and the hurricane that hit roughly a month later. Once there, the chills start to mount as the body count rises and the clean-up crew begins to realize that there may be a non-human horror lurking aboard the rig.
I read this book and was amazed at the fluidity of the writing and the power of the story telling. There's a literary quality to the work, an intelligence to the language that is not at all flowery or pretentious. Gurley simply refuses to "write down" to his audience or to over-explain as so many authors do; instead, he assumes his readers are intelligent as well. What truly impressed me is that, without any overt exposition, Gurley managed to subtly make me familiar with the workings of the oil rig--and trust me, I have NO interest whatsoever in oil rigs!!! By doing so, he manages to create an atmosphere of menace in the story's environment in a way that I haven't seen since THE SHINING. One often hears of a place within a novel being referred to as one of the "characters" and it is usually not true. HELL RIG is the exception.
Unfortunately, there's nothing in HELL RIG that will mark it as a horror classic. While it is very much a work full of original ideas, none of them are earth-shatteringly original. But, it IS the kind of novel you'll read, enjoy, put on the shelf and then, when enough time has passed to blur the details, you'll pick it up and enjoy it all over again. It's the perfect book to curl up with in front of a fireplace on a stormy night for a few literary thrills.
Now,the negatives which kept me from assigning HELL RIG that final star...
Gurley's weakness is in his character work. There are a LOT of characters in HELL RIG and while the author distinguishes them by description, he is not quite able to give each of them a distinctive voice in terms of the dialogue such that the reader can easily tell them apart. One must keep flipping back to the two or three pages where the crew is introduced to the reader in order to remember who's who. In addition, though each character has distinct traits, few of them seem truly organic and, as a result, it is difficult for the reader to truly care about what's happening to them. That's not to say we're not interested, fascinated even, but the emotional impact on the reader is lacking.
A prime example of this lack of depth is the love story element in HELL RIG. The two characters meet, share an attraction, find some common ground and undergo a horrific experience together. While that may be enough to START something romantic, it's hardly enough to produce a True Love such that one would be willing to risk death for the other.
Plot-wise, there is a convention throughout HELL RIG that is rather disturbing until you get used to it. Frankly, I'm not sure whether or not this convention was intentional. If it was, it's pretty brilliant. If not, it's an example of bad writing that, nevertheless, worked out in the author's favor. Here's what I mean: With almost every murder, the murder occurs, the body is often discovered, the reader gets to read the consequences... and THEN Gurley takes us back a few moments before the murder so we can share the victim's point of view. It's an odd literary structure, one I've not seen done quite this way before and, until you get used to it, it's mildly disconcerting.
And, finally, the voodoo aspects of the plot, while certainly set-up early enough, then disappear until very late in the book. This is problematic as since Gurley's "monsters" are absent throughout much of the story, when they finally appear, the foreshadowing is long in the past and it's as if they cropped up out of nowhere. I suspect that Gurley wanted to write a "Voodoo Story" but got so caught up in the STORY elements that he needed to "get back" to the voodoo at the end.
Frankly, I think HELL RIG works beautifully without the voodoo elements. I think the mistake that Gurley makes is that he felt the necessity of wrapping things up neatly with a precisely defined "monster" that explains the why and wherefore of what has happened in his fictional world. However, I think this book would have been fine without that "explanation" and, truthfully, I think it may have added as element to HELL RIG that would not have been unwelcome.
But, these are minor quibbles on my part. HELL RIG is a truly impressive work of horror fiction and, I hope, it is a harbinger of what's to come from the extraordinarily talented JE Gurley.(less)
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The Void
by
Brett J. Talley (Goodreads Author)
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I was given an advance reader's copy of THE VOID at the 2011 World Horror Convention in Salt Lake City. As a great fan of some of Talley's earlier work, I was thrilled to get it. But then I read it.
THE VOID is more of a science fiction book than a ho...more
I was given an advance reader's copy of THE VOID at the 2011 World Horror Convention in Salt Lake City. As a great fan of some of Talley's earlier work, I was thrilled to get it. But then I read it.
THE VOID is more of a science fiction book than a horror novel although it contains strong elements of each. Undeniably, it is an extremely well written book; I would expect no less from Talley. The problem for me is that THE VOID works best when the horror elements come to the fore. As a science fiction work, everything in it seems to have been done before -- and done equally well, if not better.
At times, the plot is strongly reminiscent of SOLARIS though fortunately, Talley does not share author Lem's obsession with endless and superfluous description. THE VOID is also very strongly evocative of both EVENT HORIZON and SPHERE. Had Talley been writing prior to those other three works, THE VOID would be a work of brilliance. Instead, however, Talley's skill as a wordsmith (which is undeniable) can't save this book from being far too similar to three major works we've read before. To be fair, there are some minor points of originality--and they are mostly insofar as the horror elements are concerned--but they mechanisms at best and insufficient to create anything truly new.
On the positive side, Talley is able to conjure a lovely sense of eerie doom with which he surrounds his characters. The inevitability of the impending disaster they may face is almost palpable. Insofar as the craft of writing is concerned, Talley's a master and he's able to create and sustain wonderful sense of foreboding as the book nears the climax.
On the negative side, the climax (such as it is) is far more of a whimper than a bang. It would have taken a great deal of unique creativity to create an ending with enough power to make amends for the too obviously derivative nature of the rest of the book.
Had Talley intended THE VOID as an homage to the earlier books I mentioned, I think THE VOID could have worked quite well. Alternatively, he could have taken Lem's psychological explorations of characters a step further, had he wished to do so. To simplify (perhaps to over-simplify) the premise of this book, Talley posits that during long range space travel people must be put into an artificial sleep within which horrible nightmares occur.
From the beginning, those of us who have read Lem can see what's coming. The dreams, even before the morph into possible realities, are interesting. But Talley does nothing with them. There's little effort to explore character via the nightmares. They're undeniably cool ideas, but they fizzle as a dramatic device.
Worse, when reading THE VOID, I had the sense that the author intends the reader to take the book very seriously. Yet I think, in order for this book to succeed, there needed to be something about it that made it (for lack of a better word) fun to read. It's certainly not a chore to slog through; Talley's too talented a writer for that. But it was "interesting" rather than "enjoyable" and, as far as I was concerned, merely being interesting wasn't enough to carry the weight of the book in its entirety.
So, in case it's not already evident, I didn't care for THE VOID very much. However, that's not to say that those who enjoyed SOLARIS and SPHERE and books of that ilk won't enjoy it immensely. I suspect that sci fi readers will get far more out of it than us horror folk will.(less)
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This is possibly one of the best anthologies I've ever read. True, there are some few selections which are not up to the outstanding level of the rest, but even those few would stand out amongst less skilled company. Unlike in many other anthologies...more
This is possibly one of the best anthologies I've ever read. True, there are some few selections which are not up to the outstanding level of the rest, but even those few would stand out amongst less skilled company. Unlike in many other anthologies where the editors may sacrifice theme in favor of an individual author's name value, Liaguno and Helder almost universally stick to their theme. The one exception is a lovely story by Sarah Langan which, while extraordinary, does not quite fit into the anthology's overall theme and seems more of a sci fi/fantasy piece than a work of traditional horror.
The stand out story for me was clearly "Epistle of the Sleeping Beauty" by Vander Laenen, quite possibly the most brilliant horror short story I have ever read. If for no other reason, reading this story is worth picking up a copy of the anthology. Yes, it's that good.
"Portico Angel", however, was in a very close second place and, in my opinion, it is the story that most begs to be expanded into a full length novel. Other standouts included "The Bloomsbury Nudes" and Rick Reed's extraordinarily chilling "Sublet".
On the negative side, some of the lesbian offerings were a little too feminist in tone for my taste, but that flaws lies with me and not with the work itself. On the whole though, you will emphatically NOT be sorry to have read this anthology. It's a truly remarkable collection of works.(less)
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When deciding on how many stars to give a book, I try to strike a balance between the quality of the work and my personal taste. I have very few gripes with the craft and skill in WHERE SHADOWS LIE: BAY CITY, it simply wasn't my cup of tea.
The writin...more
When deciding on how many stars to give a book, I try to strike a balance between the quality of the work and my personal taste. I have very few gripes with the craft and skill in WHERE SHADOWS LIE: BAY CITY, it simply wasn't my cup of tea.
The writing is good, bordering on excellent at times. The fundamental idea behind the book, which I think is the quest of three supernatural creatures to find meaning in their lives, is an intriguing one and ripe with possibilities, many of which author J.E. Cammon begins to explore. But the tone of the book is too literary for me, and the style is too esoteric. While I greatly enjoy novels that make me think, I prefer them to force my brain to consider new possibilities or approaches to things or novel ideas, I don't want to have to expend great effort merely to understand what's going on.
I was strongly reminded of the late Paul Monette's work (THE GOLDDIGGERS)which, while brilliant, is very difficult to get through. Cammon shares many of the same qualities. I found myself interested in this book while still not understanding it. Normally, I would take Cammon to task as I believe writing is a form or communication and one of the main tasks of an author is to effectively communicate to his/her readers. Cammon's plot is confusing at best; his characters are too "deep" to be easily read or understood; even his language seems designed to approach in a sort of sideways fashion rather than directly describing its subject.
Yet there is no question that Cammon IS saying something. The theme is an important one, with many levels and one which Cammon has evidently thought about deeply. I just have no idea what it was!
For those of a more literary bent, this book may be just what they're looking for. For those who don't mind "working" to read a novel--and working pretty hard--this book will be a treat. But for those who prefer clear and crisp story-telling, characters one can relate to and a more casual experience, skip this one entirely.(less)
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I've been reading a lot of JournalStone's authors recently and, by and large, I've been impressed. So far, I've really liked every title I've read and J.G. Faherty's CEMETERY CLUB is no exception.
I'm not going to go to great lengths to type out a plo...more
I've been reading a lot of JournalStone's authors recently and, by and large, I've been impressed. So far, I've really liked every title I've read and J.G. Faherty's CEMETERY CLUB is no exception.
I'm not going to go to great lengths to type out a plot synopsis. Read the back-of-cover sell copy to get a better idea of what the book's about. I'll just briefly mention this novel follows in the footsteps of Stephen King's IT, Brian Keene's GHOUL, Gord Rollo's CRIMSON, Mary San Giovanni's THE HOLLOWER and similar books where a group of young people inadvertently wake a sleeping menace and must confront it, sometimes years later, to defeat it and save their hometown from a murderous rampage. As such, it holds few surprises except for Faherty's particular (and fairly unique)"take" on what kind of monster has been roused.
I've read dozens of novels with this same basic plot and, frankly, many of them blur together. Plot-wise, CEMETERY CLUB is no exception, although it's in good company. However, where Faherty excels, and where his novel stands out above many of the others, is in his characters. Too often a lesser author (certainly not the ones I mentioned above!) would rely on stock characters and trust in what they consider an "innovative" monster to carry the thrust of the book. Faherty doesn't do that.
His characters are not only real but also have a rare quality; they're interesting. In fact, there were times when I wanted MORE detail and more exposition about these people so I could know them better. Even when it comes to the two characters who have suffered from unrequited attraction to each other for most of their lives until they finally culminate it, the author manages to make this often hackneyed and overdone plot mechanism seem somehow different and, above all, interesting.
Moreover, this author doesn't make the mistake--as so many writers in this sub-genre have done-- of trying to make the book an "epic". The monster is a local one and not, fortunately, one which globally threatens the fiber of the universe. (A recent book of this type which I read did just that -- and it came off as completely ridiculous.) This is an effective story of the main characters' individual triumphs and failings which I find much more compelling than those books with "save the world" protagonists.
CEMETERY CLUB is not an earth-shattering, life changing book that will stay with you and have resonating emotional impact on you across the years. It's just a damned fine read and well worth picking up. While never brilliant, it's universally very well done across the board. The only reason I didn't give it a full five stars is that there are two deus ex machina's plot-wise which struck me as rather glaring, especially since I think Faherty's a good enough author that he could have easily fixed them had they been drawn to his attention.
In the end, I think CEMETERY CLUB is limited by the fact that it's a young-people-wake-the-monsters book. While that's certainly a valid trope to work with, it's obvious that Faherty is far more talented that the limitations of this particular novel allow to show. However, CEMETERY CLUB made me want to read more of Faherty's work--which is a good thing!--and I look forward to getting my hands on one of his novels with a more unique plot.(less)
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My first encounter with JournalStone was about a year ago while I was reading several of their books for Bram Stoker Award consideration. With very few exceptions, I've been universally impressed by what I've read of their catalog so far. The novels...more
My first encounter with JournalStone was about a year ago while I was reading several of their books for Bram Stoker Award consideration. With very few exceptions, I've been universally impressed by what I've read of their catalog so far. The novels that JournalStone publishes seem, at least to this reader, to be slightly off-beat versions of what one can term "traditional" horror.
"90 Minutes to Live" is a highly enjoyable, if offbeat, collection of shorts which does not limit itself merely to the horror genre. There are a couple of nicely executed science fiction and semi-fantasy pieces in here as well.
The conceit of the required elements in each story -- the ninety minutes, the lock of hair, etc. -- never seems contrived. And, although some of the stories are less effective than others, a few of the horror contributions strike chords of genuine creepiness. The stand out piece, to my mind, was an intriguing riff on the traditional haunted house/only one can escape trope.
Given that this is a short story collection, as opposed to a novel, it's difficult to recommend that you rush out and buy a copy; generally anthologies don't lend themselves to that kind of gushing praise. But, if you are fond of the short story format and looking for some universally good writing in an out-of-the-norm volume, you should definitely check this one out.(less)
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The trouble with most anthologies today is that they're uneven. Two or three amazing stories are bundled in with a majority of mediocre stories with one or two complete stinkers thrown in for good measure. Worse, it seems like a lot of anthology edit...more
The trouble with most anthologies today is that they're uneven. Two or three amazing stories are bundled in with a majority of mediocre stories with one or two complete stinkers thrown in for good measure. Worse, it seems like a lot of anthology editors are too quick to abandon the theme of the collection in favor of including a "name" author. The book might very well include a previously unpublished story by someone like Robert Bloch or Peter Straub, but if I buy an anthology entitled "Demon Zombie Rabbits" I expect the stories in it to be about misbehaving undead rodents! If a story is off-topic, no matter who it's by, I get a trifle miffed.
John Joseph Adams, however, has chosen which stories to include in this volume with great care. Every story is universally "good" with none of them being truly "great" and, as far as I'm concerned, that's just fine. I'd rather read a whole volume of "good" than have to suffer through a bunch of yuck to get to the scant choice morsels. Even those few stories which were not "my cup of tea", as it were, are suitably Holmesian and, in general, make for a pretty snappy read.
There's nothing outrageously spectacular in this collection, nothing to make the reader cry out, "Wow!" Nevertheless, each individual author managed to keep my interest and there were some clever little gems scattered throughout. And, if you're a fan of the genre, you'll find a ton of insider references and jokes relating to the original Holmes stories.
Each contributor obviously bears a great affection for Doyle's detective and, by and large, every piece in the book remains true to the style of the original. For those who've never read the Victorian masterpieces, a lot of this collection might seem a tad obscure. But, if you've previously read and enjoyed Holmes, Watson, Moriarty, LeStrade and the others of Arthur Conan Doyle's creations, you're certain to enjoy this volume as well.(less)
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Pinkerton's "Rough Cut" was easily one of the half dozen best novels I read last year. The premise is as clever as it is absurdly simple. A has-been film director stumbles across an amazing new film, contacts the movie's unknown director, makes a dea...more
Pinkerton's "Rough Cut" was easily one of the half dozen best novels I read last year. The premise is as clever as it is absurdly simple. A has-been film director stumbles across an amazing new film, contacts the movie's unknown director, makes a deal to take credit for the film himself, revitalizes his career, and ends up suffering terrible consequences due to his fraud.
One could talk about the novel's strongly drawn characters or the crispness of the plot,or the author's clear familiarity with the movie business and his evident love/hate relationship with it. But the most affecting attribute of this book is the sense of inevitable doom, the sense of hopelessness and of circumstances beyond our control, which we share with the protagonist as his situation worsens and spirals ever downward.
Rarely does one read a book which can put you "on the edge of your seat" as movies so often do, yet this novel does precisely that. Pinkerton's prose does a masterful job of creating a sense of situational claustrophobia and forces us to empathize with the main character on a visceral level as he fruitlessly hunts for some way to escape the traps he's inadvertently set for himself.
Even better, the book is not without humor. Some of the pot shots the author takes at the Movie Biz incite smiles, if not outright giggles. There are times when we share the protagonist's amused frustration at the insanity of the entertainment industry and of Hollywood in particular.
"Rough Cut" is much more of a thriller than a horror novel, yet there are elements of both within it. This is the kind of novel that gives rise to the desire to "curl up with a good book" and it certainly delivers on the promise!(less)
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3.70 avg rating — 33 ratings
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published
2005
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2 editions
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