Nikolas P. Robinson's Blog, page 47

Burn the Rabbit by Joe Chianakas

I’m copying over some reviews of titles I’d written up in 2018 and earlier, just in case these titles are new for other people.

I had high hopes when I started reading Burn the Rabbit by Joe Chianakas, because Rabbit In Red was just such a fun and engaging story. It could be due to the higher expectations going in, but I don’t feel like Burn the Rabbit was anywhere near as good as the first book.
The stakes are higher, the story is decent enough, and the characters are largely consistent with what we would expect to see in the same people a matter of months after the events of Rabbit In Red…but something remains lacking. Something about this second installment of the trilogy just didn’t grab me the way the first book managed to.
Maybe it’s the altogether too predictable connection between JB and Jaime (as well as her sister and mother, of course) which is no more subtle than if Stephenie Meyer had written it. Unless something way out of left field pops up in the third book and that predictable “twist” turns out to be a red herring, it felt like the reader was being hit over the head with “clues” to the point that it underestimates the intellect of the audience.
It could be the fact that I ran across more copy editing errors than I see in many self-published novels, but I doubt that’s it because those things happen in even the most well-respected authors’ books and I tend to dismiss them.
It could be the fact that it felt like the narrative was rushed, wedging more time elapsed and many more actual events into not much more writing, and a great deal got glossed over in the process.
Honestly, I don’t know what it was about this book that left me feeling unsatisfied in comparison to how I felt after finishing Rabbit In Red…but I will still be looking forward to the third installment.

As of today, I have yet to read the third installment of the Rabbit In Red trilogy. All three books are collected in a single volume, and I would recommend purchasing the collected edition vs. the individual volumes…for the best overall value.

Rabbit In Red by Joe Chianakas

I’m copying over some reviews of titles I’d written up in 2018 and earlier, just in case these titles are new for other people.

Rabbit In Red by Joe Chianakas was essentially for horror what Ready Player One was for 70s and 80s geek nostalgia. Needless to say, I loved it.
This was a book written by someone who shares my same obsessive love of all things horror, film and literature…writing out the sort of fantasy experience I think many of us wish we could enjoy.
It’s a small book, more of a novella than a novel, and it races by quickly as you get thoroughly drawn into the story as it unfolds. The shame is that it isn’t longer, thankfully there is a sequel already available and a third volume to be released in the relatively near future.
Were it not for my subscription to Horror Block I more than likely never would have read this book nor even known that it exists. Clearly, I am quite grateful that they opted to include this in last month’s box.

The Inheritance Trilogy by N.K. Jemisin

I’m copying over some reviews of titles I’d written up in 2018 and earlier, just in case these titles are new for other people.

The Inheritance Trilogy by N.K. Jemisin was one of the most interesting and original fantasy series I’ve had the pleasure of reading, and I’ve read a great many fantasy series over the years. These books have more in common with Greek, Roman, and Norse mythology than with anything written by Tolkien.
This author manages to do something that few others succeed in doing, weaving philosophy and political theory into the narrative without it ever feeling heavy-handed or taking away from the story.
Each of the three novels and the additional novella included in this anthology are very different tales, fully developing entirely different central characters with perspectives that never feel like they run together, while gradually fleshing out secondary characters that appear and reappear through all four pieces until the cast of characters all feel more like three dimensional beings than simply set pieces or plot devices.
The theology incorporated into the universe created by Jemisin is similar to one I had tossed around as a background for a book of my own, and I don’t think I could do it better.

Night Worms Pack: February 2021

I decided to give the Night Worms subscription box a shot, because it’s appealed to me for quite some time and I couldn’t think of a good reason not to try it out.
Unfortunately, one of the worries I had in signing up came to fruition. I am now the proud owner of a second copy of Jessica Leonard’s Antioch (complete with a signed bookplate). I’m sure I will be able to find her terrific book a good home, though. This was always going to be a very real concern, with the sheer number of books I own and the regularity with which I purchase new additions to my library.
The other two books are new to my collection, which is certainly nice. I was sort of concerned that everything contained in the Night Worms pack would be things I already had, now that I’d opted to try it out. Murphy’s Law is something that can’t be disregarded.
The milk chocolate and cinnamon hot cocoa mix seems like it will be promising.
The bookmarks will come in handy…around here, they always do.
The little voodoo doll sticker is adorable.

https://nightworms.com/

Synchronic (2020)

Though Synchronic is not the eagerly anticipated follow-up to Resolution and The Endless that I’ve been hoping for from the writing/directing duo of Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead, there’s absolutely no way to consider this movie a disappointment as a fan of their previous work.
It’s refreshing to see this movie was shot and edited with the same blend of hyperreal cinematography and surreal ambiance one might expect from previous work like Spring, Resolution, and The Endless. The ever-improving technical skills and artistic flourishes of Benson/Moorhead and the crews they assemble are readily on display.
Telling the strangely coherent tale of a designer drug that has the capability of transporting users through points in time through influence on the pineal gland could hardly be considered a simple task, but Benson and Moorhead have never shied away from challenging stories and non-linear progressions in the past. Their risk has paid off once again, sharing a story that’s as much a dizzying science fiction narrative as it is an intimate portrait of a man coming to terms with death, the different paths one’s life might take, the lengths one might go to in order to save a friend, and the strain extreme circumstances can take on all types of relationship (specifically friendship, romantic, and working). In short, this movie (like any of their work in the past) succeeds in being simultaneously a perfect combination of its components and more than the sum of its own parts.
This movie nails every conceivable element I could hope for; complete with fantastic performances by Anthony Mackie, Ramiz Monsef, Ally Ioannides, and Jamie Dornan, beautiful choices for filming locations, and a terrific score that reinforces but doesn’t overpower.
The only thing I might have changed is in the writing. I don’t know that I could have avoided shoehorning in just one extra pill for Mackie’s character Steve…because of Hawking.

Red Station by Kenzie Jennings

While Red Station by Kenzie Jennings lacks something of the authentic tone of pulp westerns Christine Morgan’s The Night Silver River Run Red captured with such surprising grace, it never feels inauthentic in its period depiction.
We join four travelers in a stagecoach, crossing countless miles of prairie as they arrive to find shelter and sustenance for the night in an isolated manor serving as a waystation. Unfortunately for the passengers, the family residing in this waystation is more sinister and unsettling than they seem, harboring awful, bloody secrets. They aren’t the only ones with a secret, however. As these various mysteries unfold within the story, we bear witness to increasingly violent confrontations and satisfying moments of surprising action.
To call Red Station a thrilling read is a bit of an understatement. It’s suspenseful, action-packed, and populated with fascinating characters…a must-read for anyone looking for bloodshed and cruelty in the untamed American West, with a delightful dose of vengeance.

Red Station–Splatter Western #7

Black Planet: Books 1-4 by Nikki Noir

Nikki Noir’s Black Planet: Books 1-4 collects together in one volume a sequence of novellas and short stories introducing us to a handful of residents of a Northern Arizona town and the sinister events corrupting and controlling those people, brought about by a mysterious, otherworldly object and the black goo that seems to be spreading through the North Woods.
Alternating between perverse sexual depravity, brooding cosmic horror, occult fanaticism, murder, and family drama, Noir manages to avoid missing a beat as she weaves a tale that keeps the reader begging for more…and then the final page arrives, and you can only hope for more to come.
She paints a portrait with the delicacy of a scalpel while utilizing a pallet produced by a hammer blow to the head and the arterial flow of a severed penis as she draws you into this world she’s created. If that description doesn’t make you want to read this book, I really don’t know what else I can say. Spoiling this particular story would be virtually impossible without dragging you, kicking and screaming all the way through the narrative itself, it’s such a feverish and surreal experience.
Keep in mind, as you read…the owls are not what they seem, a statement somehow more true in this novel than in Twin Peaks.

https://www.bloodgutsandstory.com/product-page/black-planet

On Reading & Re-Reading

This post was written in response to a number of posts I’ve seen within a specific community surrounding the writing of one fairly popular (though still independent) author. I’m not going to mention the name or anything, but it is an author I happen to enjoy…though seemingly not to the same extent as others.

I love books.

I have loved books since I was a little kid, a love further nurtured by certain members of my family. My mother had a pretty sizeable collection of paperbacks available for me to pilfer and my father had a nice assortment as well. Horror and mystery were my first loves, to some extent because those were the things most readily available to me and most likely to capture my interest.

It started simpler than that, of course. Book fairs at my elementary school always left me disappointed, because there were always more books that I wanted but that we couldn’t afford. I, at a more naive time, honestly believed that it was reasonable to expect that I could collect all of the books from The Hardy Boys series as a child.

It grew and expanded from there.

I was devouring books by Dean Koontz and Stephen King with regularity before I’d even reached middle school.

Hell, I received multiple personal pan pizzas from Pizza Hut just by reading The Stand (unabridged) when I was in 6th grade, and that was only one of many books I read that year.

In 8th grade, I was introduced to H.P. Lovecraft by a friend who was also on the football team with me. It was that same year when I started reading the fantasy novels from Terry Brooks. Not much later than that, I read Frank Herbert’s Dune, inspired by recollections of seeing the movie when I was much younger.

I guess I mostly just wanted to point out that reading has always been one of my greatest joys. It was important to get that part out of the way.

That being established, I cannot wrap my head around seeing literally dozens of people talking about reading the same series of books for the third or fourth time (or being on their third or fourth listen to the audiobooks of the same series). That’s almost cult-like to me, when that is time I could spend reading a new and different book (or listening to the same). No one author has written anything so spectacular that I would read the same book from them multiple times within a four or five year period. Most books I can’t even bring myself to read a second time at all.

Am I the weird one here?

Is it normal to just devote oneself to a particular series of books and repeatedly immerse yourself into those books at the exclusion of others?

Even as an author, I actively promote and encourage the reading of other authors I enjoy and admire. I wouldn’t want people sitting around and reading my books over and over again when they could be exploring other stories, maybe even stories that I found a great deal of pleasure in reading.

I guess I just don’t get it.

I can’t understand it at all.

There are movies and television series that I’ve watched numerous times, but most of those later viewings are just to have something on that I enjoy for background noise while I work on something else (often reading a book)…or to share the experience with someone else who hasn’t previously experienced the same pleasure I have, and I’m hoping to capture some of that initial joy vicariously through their experience. There is also the fact that a movie only eats up a chunk of a couple hours while (at least for me) reading even a moderately-sized book can take four times that long.

It feels weird to me, interacting with members of a literary appreciation community who repeatedly brag about being on this number of read-throughs and so on. I feel like I’m losing the capacity to relate to these folks beyond a very limited scope.

Extinction Peak by Lucas Mangum

Lucas Mangum’s Extinction Peak borrows heavily from themes familiar to fans of Jurassic Park/World franchise, Dino Crisis, and Land Of The Lost while painting a dizzying portrait of an apocalypse no one could have seen coming (except for those who made it happen, but that’s a bit of a spoiler, so I’ll leave it at that).
We’re first introduced to Deandra and her brother, Johnny, as they plan to leave the basement they’ve been sheltering in as the world outside descends into a carnage-filled nightmare Michael Crichton wouldn’t have dared explore, even in writing. Children of a deceased drug lord, neither Deandra nor Johnny are well adjusted or particularly sympathetic characters, particularly Johnny. I found myself wanting both of them to be devoured by dinosaurs almost immediately but knowing there wouldn’t be much of a story to tell if that were how it played out.
As we follow those two (and other characters we encounter along the way, many of them equally flawed and broken), we see far more detail of just how terrible and dangerous the world has become as these beasts emerged, seemingly from Hell, through the sinkholes around the world. As with most monster-themed horror, we soon find that the worst monsters aren’t the obvious ones, that it’s other people we really need to worry about. Fueled by greed, contempt derived from old world biases, and sadistic impulses that shouldn’t surprise any of us (but somehow always do), the story continues its fast-paced and character-driven journey through an increasingly unreal end to the world as we know it.
In all honesty, I would love to see Mangum explore this particular apocalypse in greater depth and detail, through the struggles of other people in other places, but this book is so detailed as to make it simple to close our eyes and imagine precisely what it might be like for others, even ourselves when the holes in the Earth begin opening up.
This book is filled with graphic violence, gruesome deaths, and subject matter that absolutely nudges it into splatterpunk territory…be warned that this is not a book for your dinosaur-loving children…unless you parent the way I would…and did.

Extinction Peak

The Land: Swarm: Chaos Seeds Book V by Aleron Kong

This installment is primarily focused on Richter deciding to be more actively involved in the day-to-day life of the mist village. This book is largely dedicated to self-improvement and the development of skills and abilities. There are some major events included, just the same, and the battle that concludes the story is intense and well-written.
As with all of the other books in the series, I’ve listened to this on Audible. The narration is terrific and it flows perfectly with the story being shared. The first three books have been my favorites in the series, but this book and the fourth are still well-worth listening to or reading.