Stephen Theaker's Blog, page 5

The Accident Season by Moïra Fowley-Doyle (Kathy Dawson Books) | review by Douglas J. Ogurek

Young adult novel hides sexual and physical abuse within a bubble gum wrapper of tarot cards, costume parties, kissing and witches.

The Accident Season focuses on a trio of Irish teens: seventeen-year-old narrator Cara Morris, her best friend Bea (a witch — not the supernatural kind), and Cara’s ex-stepbrother Sam whose crush on Cara is abundantly clear.

Every October is “accident season” for the Morrises due to the inordinate number of negative happenings: cuts, broken bones, severed relationships, and worse. This accident season, according to Bea’s tarot cards, is going to be awful. 

The trio undertakes a quest to find classmate Elsie, an outcast who keeps cropping up in Cara’s photos. Elsie has no friends, and yet people know her as the girl who oversees the school library’s “secrets booth.” Here students type out their secrets and give them to Elsie to keep safe. After her father died, Cara was friends with Elsie, who is fading into the shadows – Cara can’t even remember the semi-doppelganger’s last name.

The novel also explores the somewhat forbidden attraction between Cara and Sam – his father Christopher was married to Cara’s artist mother, but he left abruptly. The mother has assumed guardianship of Sam. Then there’s Cara’s sister Alice, dating a handsome and manipulative older vocalist from a band. 

The Accident Season contains lots of talk about masks and hiding one’s true feelings. The Cara/Bea/Sam trio isn’t very popular, but it hosts the Black Cat and Whiskey Moon Masquerade Ball, the point of which is that attendees will take off their figurative human masks to show what they really are. And they’re gaining popularity because of it.

The tension escalates as things come to the surface near the end, but until then, it’s a rather dull read. One can take only so much hanging out and smoking and drinking and tarot cards and writing poetry.—Douglas J. Ogurek***

Suckers by J.A. Konrath and Jeff Strand (independently published) | review by Douglas J. Ogurek

Stupid. Ridiculous. Brilliant.

This collection alternates stories between comedy horror masters J.A. Konrath and Jeff Strand, then culminates with “Suckers,” a cowritten longer piece in which their recurring characters Harry McGlade (Konrath) and Andrew Mayhem (Strand) meet and undertake an absurd caper. 

Though each author’s work is distinctive, what unites them is playfulness with language, an avoidance of pompous prose, a comedian’s recognition of everyday absurdities, and often, a deliberate imbecility. “The pain was painful,” observes Konrath’s detective, while Strand’s protagonist, more of a sharp albeit regular guy playing at detective work, questions “fun size” Halloween candy – if it was fun, it would be enormous. Throughout the collection, the action moves quickly, and the dialogue stays tight and rapid fire. 

McGlade is the ultimate jerk. He’s also highly amusing. He’ll check out a woman’s legs while she’s crying or insult someone at their first meeting. He makes fun of others, whether they’re wearing too much makeup or have a face resembling a percussion instrument. He’s a chauvinist and a womanizer, and he doesn’t pay attention to others. At one point, he even admits to lying to the reader. 

Mayhem, on the other hand, is analytical and talky. He points out contradictions in things people say to make them look foolish. He’s also inventive when it comes to defending himself, whether that means using a hardcover copy of Stephen King’s The Stand or a box of grape juice. And Mayhem is more of a family man… but he’s not beyond showing his young son a movie called Blood Blood Blood. 

The differences between the two authors surface in the first two stories. Konrath’s “Whelp Wanted,” in which McGlade is tasked with finding a missing dog, takes place over multiple days. He does shoddy research and makes several mistakes. “Poor Career Choice” by Strand is a dialogue-heavy but by no means dull exchange between Mayhem and a would-be assassin who shows up at his home. The action takes place in real time.

McGlade gets more entertaining as the collection progresses. “Taken to the Cleaners” introduces another incompetent hitman. An attractive young woman who is the wife of a chicken king wants McGlade to kill the man her husband hired to kill the man she hired to kill him. 

In “A Bit of Halloween Mayhem,” Strand’s protagonist and a friend decide to explore a supposedly haunted house. Strand demonstrates the silliness of two grown men doing something kids are more likely to do. 

Next up is Konrath’s “The Necro File,” a magnum opus of humour, disgustingness, and authorial mischief. Client Norma Cauldridge, to whom McGlade repeatedly refers as “Drawbridge” (not to be funny but rather because he’s sloppy), wants him to follow her necromancer husband. This is Richard Laymon level stuff topped with a hearty portion of urine, barf, and poop. Moreover, the story exemplifies that going off on tangents isn’t always ineffective. McGlade, for instance, rambles on about the unappetizing look of hot dogs before eating three of them. 

“The Lost (For a Good Reason) Adventure of Andrew Mayhem” recounts how the protagonist met his friend Roger in school detention at age thirteen. They get into trouble when they discover a naked neighbour thrusting around a butcher knife while talking to himself. 

In “Suckers,” the two characters inadvertently meet when Mayhem, running an errand involving spaghetti sauce and mushrooms, confronts McGlade intent on rooting out some “pires” (aka vampires). The reader gets the best of both worlds with the witty Mayhem and the not-as-smart-but-still-absorbing McGlade, who often bends the truth to make him seem more heroic than he is. 

The story takes a giddy sidetrack when it introduces email communications between the protagonists and their editor Chad. Mayhem begins commenting on the falsity of McGlade’s version of events. When the story resumes, McGlade mocks his coauthor by engaging Mayhem in over-the-top actions inspired by his email comments.

The book ends with Strand interviewing Jack Kilborn (Konrath’s pen name) via email about a forthcoming novel. The exchange has them poking fun at each other and getting silly.

Both authors brought their A game to this collection, whose adventurousness and friskiness enthral the reader’s inner child. Douglas J. Ogurek *****

McSweeney's Mammoth Treasury of Thrilling Tales | review by Rafe McGregor

McSweeney’s Mammoth Treasury of Thrilling Tales by Michael Chabon (editor)McSweeney’s #10, Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, paperback, £4.10 (used), 1 March 2003, ISBN 9781400033393

 

TimothyMcSweeney’s Quarterly Concern is an award-winning American literary journalthat was founded by award-winning and bestselling author Dave Eggers in SanFrancisco in 1998. Eggers has a long and varied bibliography, but is probablybest known for A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, a memoirpublished in 2000. More important than any of this is the fact that McSweeney’swas StephenTheaker’s inspiration for TQF, which he launched with John Greenwood in Birminghamin 2004. As regular readers of TQF (but probably not McSweeney’s) will know,Stephen’s secondary goal (after keep it going)was to catch McSweeny’s up, which he achievedin 2011. At the moment, TQF is in the lead – but only just – with seven-sevenissues to McSweeney’s seventy-six. The next issue of McSweeney’s,which is due in February, will see a new editor, novelist and academic RitaBullwinkel, take the helm. One of the features that distinguishes McSweeney’sfrom other literary journals is Eggers’ novel approach to editing andproduction:

McSweeney’s Quarterly Concerncontinues to publish on a roughly quarterly schedule, and each issue ismarkedly different from its predecessors in terms of design and editorialfocus. Some are in boxes, others come with a CD, still others are bound with agiant rubber band, and perhaps someday an issue will be made of glass.

Why the hell not!

The inspiration for TQF is not just any old McSweeney’s,but issue ten, McSweeney’s Mammoth Treasury of Thrilling Tales, which wasguest edited by champion of genre fiction Michael Chabon and published in February2003 (a little over a year before the launch of TQF). It is easy to see why…froma garish cover borrowed from the October 1940 issue of Red Star Mystery Magazineto Chabon himself as editor to four hundred and eighty pages’ worth of twenty stories,some great illustrations, and contributors that include: Michael Crichton,Harlan Ellison, Neil Gaiman, Nick Hornby, Stephen King, Elmore Leonard, and MichaelMoorcock. I’ve no idea how deep McSweeney’s pockets are, but one wouldbe hard-pressed to compile this kind of lineup with literally unlimitedresources. Most of the tales don’t disappoint regardless of the stature oftheir authors and I agree with Stephen that this is one of – if not the –best collections of short fiction ever published for pulp fiction fans.

My favourite tale is the first, Jim Shephard’s ‘Tedford andthe Megalodon’. As a sharkstory enthusiast, I wondered how much of the visual horror and signaturesuspense would be retained in the short story format (on which note the illustration,by Howard Chaykin, is a perfect accompaniment, breathtaking without being a spoiler).Simply stated, neither the horror nor the suspense are lost and the lastsentence is one of the most chilling conclusions to a narrative I’ve ever read,all the more remarkable because it is not unexpected. Honourable mentions aboveand beyond Shephard’s illustrious peers go to Hornby, for ‘Otherwise Pandemonium’;Kelly Link, one of the pioneersof the New Weird, for ‘Catskin’; and Moorcock, for ‘The Case of the NaziCanary’. Moorcock’s contribution is an outing for his occult detective, SirSeaton Begg, AKA the other Baker Street detective, Sexton Blake. King’scontribution, ‘The Tale of Gray Dick’ features Roland Deschain, protagonist of TheDark Tower series, although as I’ve only read the first two books, I’m notsure where it fits chronologically (he is already missing some fingers, if thathelps anyone work it out). I was only disappointed twice: Eggers’ contributionis, to my mind, out of sync with the rest, too slow and too long, and I foundEllison’s contribution insubstantial and just not very funny (assuming the aimwas comedy). McSweeney’s #10 is now out of print (along with the rest ofthe first thirteen issues), but used copies remain available from the usualvendors and are, at the time of writing, still relatively cheap (the upper endof the range I saw was £20, postage excluded).

Having set such an incredibly high bar, has TQF ever comeclose? No doubt I’m biased because it featured one of my RoderickLangham stories, but I don’t think TQF#50,which was published in January 2015, was too far off. Aside from the elevenstories in three hundred and twenty-four pages, which include a few of mypersonal favourites, I very much enjoyed its showcasing of so many of themagazine’s regular contributors, including several whose collaboration withStephen and John predates my own (which began with a single and somewhat scantreview in TQF#23in 2008). That said, I have particularly high hopes for TQF#80, which is dueshortly. The last page of McSweeney’s #10, the source of my quote above,states that (only) fifty-six issues were planned. When McSweeney’s #56 waspublished in 2019, the (true) goal was revealed as one hundred and fifty-six. Perhapswhen that issue is published, it will be two hundred and fifty-six. Let’s hopethat day comes and that, as Stephen puts it, both McSweeney’s and TQF keep going.

The Gingerbread Girl by Stephen King (Simon & Schuster Audio) | review by Douglas J. Ogurek

Novella mixes grieving mother with giddy maniac and turns up the heat.

Emily, whose relationship with her husband has soured after the loss of a child, travels to her father’s beachside residence on the fictitious island of Vermillion Key, Florida. She takes up running – a near obsession that will play into the story later – with hopes of healing. Soon, however, a murderous brute will engage Em in an extended cat and mouse chase.

Em first learns about villain Jim Pickering from a friend of her father’s. Each year, she is informed, the wealthy tech guy arrives in his red Mercedes and brings a young, attractive “niece” (eyeroll) to his place. At the end of their stay, they leave via boat. 

Because The Gingerbread Girl is a novella, King acts quickly. Thus, this isn’t the typical scenario in which a gullible female falls for a dapper gent who eventually turns on her. Pickering is bad news from the start. Thus, Em gets drawn into the villain’s clutches not through his charm but rather by witnessing something he doesn’t want her to see. The story then sprints along at an exhilarating pace. Survival for Em means leveraging her strengths and her pursuer’s weaknesses. 

Mare Winningham’s audiobook narration endows Pickering with a cheerful bordering on giddy – listen for the yapping laugh – disposition. He finds unpleasant things funny, talks to himself, and has zero concern for Em.

Despite his story’s fairy tale-inspired title and straightforward narrative, King manages to inject depth into the work. Yes, Em is fleeing a madman, but she’s also trying to run away from her pain. Perhaps Pickering is even an embodiment of that pain, a pain that must be confronted to be overcome. Will the Gingerbread Girl crumble? Or will she prove herself a tough cookie? Douglas J. Ogurek****

Vampire Hunter D by Hideyuki Kikuchi (DH Press) | review by Stephen Theaker

This review originally appeared in TQF73 (April 2023).

Far in our future, long after a nuclear apocalypse, the effects of which were leavened by the intercession of vampires (who then ruled us for millennia), a seventeen-year-old girl, Doris, finds herself at the centre of attention. Count Magnus Lee, an ancient vampire, wants to make her his wife, to his own daughter's dismay. The mayor's oafish son also wants to marry Doris. And Rei-Ginsei, the boomerang-wielding leader of a bandit troupe, takes a fancy to Doris too.

Fortunately she has a brave little brother she can rely on, and her own farm with decent defences, and she is able to engage the services of a wandering vampire hunter, known only as D. He's a cool dude, but seems to be well on the way to being a vampire himself. If he had one letter less he would be a classic man with no name, getting into trouble, helping strangers, and only talking about his past in rare unguarded moments.

If I say that this is one of the worst novels I have ever read, you might think I'm exaggerating. But it is, honestly. It is what is known in Japan as a "light novel", which seems to mean a pulpy genre book with a handful of pictures (in this case by Yoshitaka Amano: they were the best thing about it). Some reviewers have called it a terrible translation, while those who have read it in Japanese say the translator, Kevin Leahy, has actually produced a very good translation of a badly written book.

I suspect the latter view is correct, and honestly would always prefer a translator to give us all the information from the original, but it makes for horribly overloaded sentences in English. Sentences like "a massive ashen citadel towering quietly atop a hillock loomed menacingly overhead" reminded me of primary school writing, where kids are encouraged to cram in adjectives and adverbs to score the top grades.

At first the awfulness was quite charming. Like an R.L. Fanthorpe book, it is exuberant, full of energy and a sense that anything goes. I also liked its unusual future history, and its sometimes admirable efforts to transfer typical manga tropes into prose form. It featured some entertainingly creepy monsters, and the fight scenes were full of drama. It was unpredictable: I rarely had any idea what was about to happen, other than that D would survive to subsequent volumes.

But the book is too long to get away with being so bad, and the longer it dragged on the more tiresome it became, and I began to admire those curious individuals who can abandon a book part-read. About halfway through, I resorted to using the name-swap option in my ebook app, to replace Doris's name with that of my wife. That way there was at least one character I cared about. What a relief to reach 85% and realise that the rest of the book was a preview.

That something so poor was published by Dark Horse seems incredible, given the track record of that publisher, but there are 28 further volumes available, so perhaps it gets better. And I think Dark Horse's manga readers probably appreciated the series being available in English at all, regardless of quality. It had some fun moments: how many novels have you read where the hero is killed, and then given magical CPR by his own severed hand? Stephen Theaker **

Doctor Who: The Eye of Torment, by Scott Gray, Martin Geraghty, et al. (Panini) | review by Stephen Theaker

This little review originally appeared on Goodreads in February 2023, but is otherwise previously unpublished.

The twelfth Doctor has epic adventures on the sun and on the ice. The story where the Doctor teams up with Nazis had a slightly odd "aren't we all as bad as each other?" vibe, but overall this was good fun. Felt very glamorous and big budget with its bright colours, top-notch artwork and full-bleed printing, plus an actual tv companion. It was nice reading it to know I had another four Capaldi books to go. As ever, the commentary at the back makes working on the strip sound like a fairly miserable experience, all wasted work and impossible deadlines, due to the need to work around the show and not duplicate or anticipate its storylines. It also left me wondering who one chap was talking about here: "There are plenty of men in the media spotlight who are oh-so keen to display their feminist credentials at every possible opportunity, but get them behind closed doors and they're as sexist as Alan Partridge on a stag weekend." Stephen Theaker ***

Watch the Signs! Watch the Signs! by Arthur Chappell (Shoreline of Infinity) | review by Stephen Theaker

This review was originally written in October 2019 for a previous iteration of the British Fantasy Society website.

Subtitled “Pub signs relating to science fiction, fantasy and horror”, this is a book that seeks to inform the reader from the very beginning. It was fascinating to read how the Romans used bushes to indicate the best places to get beer, and how pub signs, when they were introduced in the 14th century, were actually a form of licensing. Pubs would have their beer tested by men who sat in the beer, we are told, to see if it was sticky. If it was, all was well. If it wasn’t, someone was watering it down. Later we learn that the entire Wetherspoons chain was inspired to some extent by George Orwell’s essay “The Moon Under Water”.

After that introduction to pubs in general and their signs in particular, the book moves on to those of fantastical interest. We learn for example that there have been many pubs named The Vulcan, in honour of that god, usually located close to steelworks, and the sign shown here includes the god, the plane and the science officer of the USS Enterprise. It’s fair to say that most other signs in the book are of more tangential relevance to science fiction and fantasy, with more being drawn from myths and legends than literature or film, but it’s a surprise to find that there is even one pub called The Hobbit, let alone several.

There’s the occasional infelicity of spelling or punctuation, but this is a book where it’s the pictures and the information that count, not the style, and there’s plenty of both. Not all of the pictures are of print quality, and there’s a lot of white space in the book that might have allowed the photographs to be a little larger, but the publisher does give owners of the paperback the opportunity to buy a half-price copy of the ebook, which includes colour versions of the photographs.

Given the interest many BFS members have in beer – its provision was the primary concern of at least one of the British Fantasy Society's AGMs, and one FantasyCon saw its members drink the bar dry – I imagine that this book will find an appreciative audience among them. Even those of us who grew up around pubs not unlike those in An American Werewolf in London, and thus retain a wariness of the places, will find it of interest. Readers who find the subject particularly compelling are directed to the Inn Sign Society, which you may be surprised to learn is about the same size as our British Fantasy Society. Stephen Theaker ***

Sole Survivor (Bantam) by Dean Koontz

An entertaining read… if you can survive the onslaught of details.

A year after his wife and two daughters are killed in an airplane crash, LA crime reporter Joe Carpenter has all but given up. But then, while visiting the cemetery on the one-year anniversary of their deaths, he encounters a mysterious woman who claims to have survived that flight. She then disappears. 

After a series of strange events, Carpenter sets out to find this Dr Rose Turner, who seems to have some knowledge that will help him (and quite possibly change the course of the world). But others with more malicious intents are after her as well. 

Carpenter begins to question things: Was the crash due to a mechanical error? Or were there deeper, more nefarious forces at work? The danger intensifies as he gets closer to an answer. He will encounter beachfront cultists, a potential suicide craze, a tech geek who’s also a thug, and a powerful tech company. 

Koontz doesn’t skimp on details. The reader must endure ridiculous similes, philosophical ramblings, character descriptions including everything but blood type, and sundry plot deviations. One can take only so much about breezes, flowers, the ocean and the sky. 

When Koontz is on, however, the reader gets some phenomenal stuff. Men betting on a dying roach in a beachside restroom. A boy referring to couple of young ladies in bikinis as “bitches”. A guy with “sensuous lips” and an alcohol-ravaged nose stabbing at pieces of gouda with a switchblade while calmly and relishingly threatening someone’s family members (including an unborn child) with detailed descriptions of physical and psychological torture. Koontz also touches on Carpenter’s backstory, including how something that happened to his father instilled a sense of fight that propels the protagonist as he unrelentingly pursues answers related to the flight.

Koontz also has a knack for jacking up tension, for instance in one scene where a pivotal character is about to reveal something critical while pursuers close in. Douglas J. Ogurek ****

The Last Mimzy | review by Stephen Theaker

This review originally appeared in TQF17 (June 2007).

I didn’t really enjoy The X-Files until the second season (though later I went back and enjoyed that first one as well). It was because the first episode treated alien contact very seriously, and so I took that to be the premise of the show: there has been alien contact. But then, in following weeks, we found that everything else that anyone ever imagined on a dark and stormy night also existed – telepathy, bigfoot, ghosts, vampires – but with no linking rationale, other than that they always existed, which I found intensely frustrating, both as a science fiction fan and as a rationalist. Soon, though, I came to see the program had much more to do with horror than science fiction, and was able to enjoy it again, and enjoy it thoroughly. Different rules apply in horror: its goal is not to help us make sense of the world around us, or speculate about the future, but just to frighten our socks off, and The X-Files did that in spades.

The Last Mimzy, a new movie for children, at first seemed to me to be falling into that same trap. Two children discover a mysterious artefact on the beach, and began to display unusual abilities and intelligence after playing with it. It’s Chocky, in short. Anyway, so far, so good, though derivative, but I felt my hackles raising as palmistry was shown to be a valuable means of gauging a child's potential, not to mention the discovery of the scientific significance of Buddhist mandalas, the usefulness of oneiromancy, and a science teacher explaining to his pupils that DNA can be affected by “cultural contaminants”.

I laughed out loud at the portentousness of a shot of a bus that pulled out to show how none of the children on a school bus talked to each other, but rather fiddled with their Nintendo handhelds and mobile phones, and laughed even harder at a scene where the children run across the beach (thanks to the Mimzy’s influence), as if for the first time, and the boy slumps to the ground in exhausted happiness, saying with surprise, “That feels good!” (My daughter and I were the only people watching this film in the cinema, else I would have been more circumspect about laughing so loudly, although even she gave me something of a glare.)

I was ready to dismiss the film then, as a hippy-ish piece of “let’s put down the computer games and talk to each other again!” nonsense. But at some point it turned me around. It had something of an M. Night Shyamalan quality, an eerie calmness of the camera, and indeed might well have benefited from being aimed at adults rather than children. The pace, for example, is almost meticulously slow. If it had been a film for adults, though, the happy ending would not have been shown in the very first scene, since it removes any real tension from the film, as do the constant reassurances that the Mimzy’s motives are good.

However, anyone, regardless of age, will enjoy the way it builds to a satisfying conclusion as the kids take matters into their own hands, using their new-found abilities, a conclusion that brought back fond memories of the Witch Mountain films.

All through the movie my daughter (three years old) was shuffling around, intrigued by the novelty of the cinema’s folding seats, and I thought she had been thoroughly bored, but the movie kept at least one surprise to the end. During the movie’s final scenes she burst into floods of tears, to my astonishment. I asked her what was up, and she explained, weeping still (and she would be for another ten minutes yet): “I really loved watching that film, but it’s finished now.” That probably says more about the film's appeal to children that a ten thousand-word review could. Stephen Theaker ***

Harrow County, Vol. 1: Countless Haints, by Cullen Bunn and Tyler Crook (Dark Horse) | review by Stephen Theaker

This short review previously appeared in TQF67 (July 2020).

Teenage Emmy lives on a farm, close to the tree where the townsfolk killed a baby-killing witch, eighteen years ago. The newborn calves aren’t right, Emmy has awful dreams of a burning tree, and sometimes thinks she sees ghosts when she wakes up. Her father tries to ignore the signs, but after she meets the skinless boy the truth becomes undeniable. Collecting only the first four issues, this still tells a complete story. Tyler Crook uses watercolours to striking and atmospheric effect. Stephen Theaker ****