Michael Patrick Hicks's Blog, page 21

Review: The Terminal by Amber Fallon

The Terminal

By Amber Fallon






My rating: 3 of 5 stars


Dirk and his boyfriend Dylan are heading home for the Christmas holiday when their travel plans are interrupted by an alien attack on O'Hare. Meteors crash down, exploding airplanes on the runway and pulverizing the terminal, only to reveal a handful of muscular, extraterrestrial Schwarzenegger-like killers. Before the TSA can cop a quick feel of the would-be travelers, heads are flying, literally, as the passengers find themselves under siege. Separated from Dylan in the attack, Dirk is forced to fend for himself and repeatedly test his own wits in a nightmarish life-or-death struggle.

The Terminal is a welcome dose of pulpy fun, and the pacing is pretty rapid-fire straight from the get-go. There are no chapters and only one scene break in its 112 pages -- this novella is designed to be read in a single sitting, with the reader catapulted head over heels straight through the mayhem. This works, for the most part, and by not giving the reader time to pause to collect themselves, they're not afforded a chance to recognize the inherit silliness and some of the bumpier aspects of the plot straight away. This book is a race from beginning to end, the kind you strap yourself in for and enjoy. But, once the ride is over you start to notice some of the more dissatisfying aspects.

Although Dirk isn't the most likable protagonist with his instant hate toward several of his fellow holiday travelers (granted, I'm sure we've all been there, though, so that's at least realistic) and constant pop culture references (when the action gets going, he imagines himself being like John McClane, and the aliens rip out human spines like they're performing a Mortal Kombat fatality), he's fairly sympathetic and thrust into a situation way over his head. He's also a bit of a nincompoop, with zero knowledge of guns (apparently his video game tastes never stretched toward Call of Duty) and little in the way of survival skills. While he comes across as a bit too much of a blank slate at times, he does develop some nice, if often short-lived, relationships with the few survivors he encounters.

Frankly, I could have done with more human elements throughout. Even with the mass casualties resulting from this very random alien incursion, O'Hare felt oddly desolate. While Dirk does stumble across a handful of survivors, I couldn't help but feel like there should have been more signs of life, or at least more glimpses of ill-fated travelers. Maybe Dirk just has some exceptionally narrow tunnel vision, a prognosis that certainly feels in tune with the man. When he does have reason to connect to one of the survivors, a military man recently returned home from war in the Middle East, we're robbed of the emotional and possibly physical payoffs the story had been nurturing. The built-in conflict between these two characters should have given The Terminal are more propulsive finale, but instead we're rushed through an ending and a sudden finish to the book.

The Terminal has its weaknesses, but it also has its strength. Amber Fallon writes some good gory material here, and the book's premise is wonderful. In some ways, this novella reminded me a fair amount of Dawn of the Dead. Swap out a mall for an airport, trade in the zombies for aliens, and take a bit of inspiration from another Christmas classic, Die Hard 2: Die Harder, and you've got yourself an exciting bit of action-horror.

This work left me wanting more, and in this case I consider that a positive sign. While not all of the elements gel perfectly, I would definitely take another trip through these terminals should Fallon ever write an expanded version or offer a follow-up or companion novel. The Terminal is not a bad first publication from Amber Fallon, and it certainly shows enough signs of promise that I'll be checking out more of her work in the future. In fact, I've already got her sophomore effort, The Warblers, loaded up on my Kindle.



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Review: Welcome to Paradise by Glenn Rolfe

Welcome to Paradise: A Short Story of Brutal Love

By Glenn Rolfe






My rating: 4 of 5 stars


Readers looking for some Christmas cheer free of saccharine sweetness or holiday frivolity might want to give this one a go. WELCOME TO PARADISE is a XXX-Mas treat chock full of sex and violence stretching across its brief page count.

Originally published in Dec. 2016 for The Gal in the Blue Mask blog, Rolfe gives his story the stand-alone treatment with this new digital edition. Right from the outset, Rolfe gets his groove on with some wonderful descriptions to set the scene, giving us a brightly vivid and crystal-clear image of Veronica, a punk rock femme fatale, and her killing jar of a room at The Lucky Lounge motel.

Veronica is in New Jersey to celebrate Christmas the best way she knows how - enjoy the snow, pick up a dude, and then fuck and kill the ever loving shit out of him. Ho ho ho!

WELCOME TO PARADISE is a fun and nasty read, and a rapid fire shot of alt-seasons greetings.

[Note: I received a review copy of this story direct from the author.]



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Review: Tom Clancy Commander In Chief by Mark Greaney

Tom Clancy Commander in Chief (A Jack Ryan Novel)

By Mark Greaney






My rating: 3 of 5 stars


Long-time fans of Tom Clancy will, by now, have a good idea of what to expect with this Jack Ryan doorstopper. The Russian president, Valeri Volodin, is concocting a get rich quick scheme that will put the world on notice as he covertly manipulates the globe's oil supply and prices. Naturally Ryan, former CIA analyst turned President of the United States, knows what's up and attempts to use his powers as leader of the free world to stop the former Soviet KGB agent from upending the whole planet. Mark Greaney takes this plot and complicates it six ways to Sunday with a dozen subplots and twice as many characters, setting the men of The Campus (and, sadly, it is largely still a boy's club with nary a strong woman in sight...) toward their targets all around the world and hitting a broad macro view of what a modern war with Russia would look like. There's secret agents, assassin siblings, money laundering, kidnapping, diplomacy and, when that fails, warfare by land, sea, and air.

The strange part is, for all that appears to be going on, this book often feels like nothing is happening for long stretches. Commander-in-Chief is a slog to read. Although I continue to be an advocate for Greaney's work in this particular franchise, this entry is the weakest of the bunch. So much of the page count is spent building toward the inevitable war everybody knows is coming, but by the time the war actually rolls around in the book's climax it's nothing terribly grand. A fair amount of hay is made over an advanced Russian sub armed with nukes staking out the American coastline, only to disappear from both US tracking satellite's and the novel's narrative. The kidnapping subplot drags on for longer than it should, and then gets resolved in a single page. Despite some solid action scenes and accounts of thrilling military heroics, the various subplots lose their steam fast and fizzle out in a number of unsatisfying ways.

I am still curious to see where these characters are heading, particularly John Clark, knowing that Greaney's tenure with the Tom Clancy brand has since passed (I'm a few years late and a handful of books behind with the Jack Ryan Universe). Clark, now pushing 70, is clearly ready for retirement if this book is any indication. One thing that made me smile, though, was Clark, during a morning shooting range training, thinking about how reasonable people can cope with disagreement. I couldn't help but think of Mitch Rapp, the assassin hero of Vince Flynn's series, who damn near has an apoplectic fit anytime somebody disagrees with him and threatens to murder everyone for not drinking his Kool-Aid. I like the Rapp series, mind you, but it's nice to see trained killers like Clark actually behaving and thinking like professional adults rather than bratty children with guns. It's this kind of characterization of our nation's government workers and servicemen that has always put Clancy at the forefront, in my mind.



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Review: Fury of the Orcas by Hunter Shea

Fury Of The Orcas

By Hunter Shea






My rating: 4 of 5 stars


All across the world, killer whales are suddenly going berserk. In marine parks and aquariums, orcas are leaping out their pools and tearing apart their trainers. In the Atlantic, pods are attacking ships with cunning, predatory ruthlessness. Orca trainers Chet and Rosario (who are also romantically involved) are thrust into the middle of it all, and are bound and determined to get to the bottom of why these orcas are freaking out in such meticulous and coordinated ways.

Their race against time takes them on a globe-hopping whirlwind of violence peppered with a heady dose of conspiracy. Hunter Shea packs in a fair deal of plot points in only 150 pages, taking a bonkers idea and complicating it even further with some X-Files-like shenanigans. As with his previous sea-terror novel, Megalodon In Paradise, Shea ties in some of these elements with his ghost shark novel, They Rise. I still haven't read They Rise, but the gist of it is laid out well enough here that newcomers shouldn't feel too lost in the weeds.

As is typical of Shea, the horror elements are well done and frenetically paced. When it comes to high-octane, pulp-styled, B-rated creature features, few do it as consistently well as Hunter Shea. You can count on this author to deliver whacky stories rife with mayhem and loads of fun. For pure entertainment value, Shea's a tough one to beat. Now that I've sank my teeth into a couple of his Severed Press aquatic horror themed books, and with They Rise moving up the Kindle docket a few more notches, I'm digging this unofficial series that particular book kicked off. And given how Fury of the Orcas ends, I'm keeping my fingers crossed for at least one more wonderfully cataclysmic entry.



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Best Books of 2017

I'll spare you the commentary in favor of a straight-up pretty gallery cum list of what I felt were the best books of 2017. I read a lot of horror, far more than any other genre, and the majority of the 125 titles (thus far) I read over the course of 2017 were horror. As such, my list tilts heavily toward that genre, and if you've been following me for any length of time that's probably as should be expected. There may be a few surprises here though! 

Some notes:

1. Click on the image to be magically transported to my amazing review and Amazon Affiliate purchase links.

2. Please do not e-mail, message or @ me, as some have in the past, to badger, yell at, or insult me for including a book that I loved and you hated. This should be a no-brainer, and yet...

OK, here we go!

#10

 

 

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#1

Review: Nanoshock by K.C. Alexander (SINless #2)

Nanoshock (SINless)

By K C Alexander






My rating: 3 of 5 stars


Nanoshock, the second in K.C. Alexander's SINless series, finds foul-mouthed Riko on the outs with both her corporate sponsor and her street-level gang of killers, her credibility shattered (likely beyond repair) for the murder of her teammate and lover, and an enemy operating in the shadows with the express purpose of killing her.

Alexander kicks things off in grand fashion with what might be the best opening line of 2017, and perhaps ever, with Riko musing, “You haven’t lived until you’ve fisted a nun under the cheap light of a neon Jesus.” It's the kind of wonderfully sacrilegious moment that makes my heart flutter, and lets readers know right off the bat what kind of book they're in store for. Yes, Nanoshock is irreverent, highly sexualized, and packed to the rim with over-the-top violence. Riko's particular brand of murder has her placed as a splatter specialist, the kind of job description that lets you know there won't be any clean, quiet kills to come. The action here is big and loud, much like Riko's mouth.

Frankly, though, Riko's mouth wears thin after a while. She's antisocial, presents more than her fair share of psychological and emotional disorders, makes a number of rash (and oftentimes poor) decisions, and if she's not busy killing would-be allies she's going out of her way to alienate everyone she comes into contact with in the most vulgar terms she can manage. I don't need my antiheroes to be all soft and cuddly, but Riko's shtick gets awfully tiresome awfully quick. While Alexander gives us a few moments of insight, digging beneath her character's rock-hard hide to show flashes of her softer side, they're few and far between. Most of the attention is on Riko being the biggest, the baddest, and the most hot-headed, hurting everyone she comes into contact with. She's unsympathetic to the max, and I found myself wondering why anybody in her world wants anything at all to do with her.

The attitude that defines and encapsulates Riko makes the book a bit of a slog to get through, and that's even before we get to the muddled narrative. Although the plot is fairly one-note, there's a load of back-and-forth violence to muddy the waters and give it the appearance of being more complex than it actually is.

As with Necrotech, solid answers to the Why of it all are sparse, but the climax is a well constructed and violent tour-de-force. In addition to staging some terrific action sequences and moments of wonderful gruesomeness (the infectious cybernetic blight of necrotech itself is a marvelous invention, and Alexander gives us plenty of gory details about it over these two novels, I'm still left wanting more), the author has constructed a beautifully dreary cyberpunk world. The dark and grimy streets Riko inhabits are well realized, the city itself so heavily polluted post-climate change that sunlight can't make it through the ever-present smog. In fact, it's a setting that is a perfect metaphor for Riko herself. Personally, I wouldn't mind a little bit more light getting through come book number three.

[Note: I received an advanced copy of this title from the publisher via NetGalley.]



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Review: Zero Day (The Hatching #3) by Ezekiel Boone

Zero Day: A Novel (The Hatching Series)



$26.00



By Ezekiel Boone






My rating: 3 of 5 stars


Ezekiel Boone draws his globe-trotting spider apocalypse trilogy to a close with Zero Day, wrapping things up with pyrotechnic flair. In the aftermath of The Spanish Protocol, large portions of the USA are wrecked beyond repair and the last-ditch effort to halt Spidergeddon have failed. Between the President, a team of scientists and engineers, and soldiers on the front-lines, the threat of these ancient, man-eating arachnids is sketched in with a few extra layers and a couple more wrinkles, but the focus is keenly on the people and a lot of their people problems. This, sadly, was my greatest hindrance in enjoying the book more. And don't get me wrong, I liked Zero Day, but I had higher expectations than this book could deliver.

While some of the trouble Boone's large cast runs into are certainly interesting, such as a military coup early on, others are less so. In one instance, we see a military unit stuck in traffic as they try to get their VIP engineers to a Radio Shack (because apparently there are still Radio Shacks around), and then make a stop for frozen yogurt. I kept waiting for a massive wave of spiders to wreck havoc with the vanilla custard and sprinkles, but sadly that never happened. And that, for me, is the biggest deficit in Zero Day - where the heck are the spiders? We hear a lot about the spiders, but we don't often get to see them. We're reminded pretty frequently about what a massive threat they are, but we rarely get to see the dangers they pose.

In book one, The Hatching, we got all kinds of spider mayhem and it was terrific. Skitter put a pause on the action and shoved the spiders into the background while the stage was set set for Zero Day. And along comes Zero Day, but the spiders are still mostly an afterthought. I wanted a massive arachnid apocalypse, with spiders and gore and mayhem galore. I wanted my Kindle to be dripping ichor! What I got were a lot of talking heads before a small spider attack lands around the 50% mark, and then all goes quiet again. Boone teases us with these horrors in small, glimmering fragments, but never fully delivers. By the time we get some serious action, the book is 80% done with.

I'll tell you what, though - that scene that kicks off the book's short shrifted and too easily resolved climax? Holy crap, is it ever a beautiful, creepy, crazy crawly sequence. That chapter right there, that's what I had wanted this whole book to be. It was fantastic. It was also, by then, a bit too little, too late. For the third book in a series about the spider apocalypse, I wanted more than teases to this whole sordid affair. I wanted way more spider attacks than could be delivered in, what amounted to, less than the book's final quarter. Where were all the spiders, damnit?! After the quiet interlude of Skitter, this sucker should have been wall-to-wall spider mayhem.

And yet, despite the large absence of arachnid horror, Boone still manages to create a compulsive page-turner, even if it promises far more than it delivers. The writing is crisp and propulsive, the pacing rapid-fire, which ultimately makes Zero Day an engaging read. The military coup is well done and interesting and the brief segments of spider attacks are fantastic. And even if the large cast of characters are not all well-served in this title, Boone at least gives the survivors a nice send-off by book's end. Zero Day, mostly, is a sweet, tidy finish to an otherwise fairly uneven trilogy.

[Note: I received an advanced copy of this title from the publisher via NetGalley.]



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Review: The Murders of Molly Southbourne by Tade Thompson

The Murders of Molly Southbourne



$8.60



By Tade Thompson






My rating: 5 of 5 stars


Every time Molly Southbourne bleeds, a new molly is born. With every opening of her flesh or her monthly period, a hole forms in the ground and a mysterious, murderous, doppelganger appears.

It's a fresh and bizarre concept played wonderfully straight by Tade Thompson, who delivers a smattering of scares and genuine creepiness alongside some soft sci-fi mojo in the book's latter half. But what really impressed me was the character of Molly herself.

Molly is a psychologically complex figure, and she left me thinking a lot about nature versus nurture. Because of her condition and the pseudo hemophiliac-like countermeasures of her life (furniture with no corners, for instance), as well as the rules she must live by (If you see yourself, run. Don't bleed. Blot, burn, bleach.), I couldn't help but wonder how much of Molly's behavior and quirks was a direct result of her odd condition and the fashion in which her parents were forced to nurture her, and how much was her natural state simply being given an outlet. Having to confront her evil twins on a routine basis, she is allowed to explore certain dark impulses that she might have otherwise repressed. Although Thompson doesn't delve deeply into such an exploration, it's still leaves me curious, and the mannerisms of several of the other mollys leaves it as a nagging question, a sort of mental puzzle box to explore without authorial hand-holding.

Equally impressive was the writing itself. Thompson runs a tight ship and infuses this novella with a startling amount of depth in such a short span of time, yet keeps the story moving fast. He pulls off character development and spectacle with equal aplomb, accomplishing so much with both in so few pages. This book is expert-level stuff all the way through. Although I have a few questions, and plenty of suspicions, about Molly, the biggest question is how the hell haven't I heard of Tade Thompson before, and how quickly can I buy more of his work?

[Note: I received an advanced copy of this title from the publisher via NetGalley.]



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Review: Into the Drowning Deep by Mira Grant

Into the Drowning Deep



$17.72



By Mira Grant






My rating: 4 of 5 stars


Set roughly a decade after the ill-fated research sojourn of the Atargartis (depicted in the novella Rolling in the Deep), the Imagine Entertainment network has once again set its eyes on the mermaid prize, assembling a new crew to set sail aboard the Melusine. Acting as right-hand man to the CEO of Imagine, Theo Blackwell has put together a crew of the world's foremost marine scientists, including Victoria (Tory) Stewart, sister to Anne, an Imagine corespondent whose life was claimed aboard the Atargartis; his ex-wife, Dr. Jillian Toth, the world's foremost expert on mermaid mythology and one of the few believers in the legitimacy of the Atargartis footage; and new Imagine correspondent, Olivia Sanderson, an autistic Olivia Munn-like figure who explores her world through the safety net of cosplay, a videocamera and constant reportage.

Into the Drowning Deep is both a sequel to, and a minor reboot of, Rolling in the Deep, and oftentimes feels like a deeper, expanded edition of that former novella. This is by no means a bad thing, though. While I enjoyed Rolling in the Deep a great deal, I also felt it was too short; it sped by too quickly and the characters didn't get a lot of attention before they were torn apart. In a lot of ways, this novel corrects some of the issues I had with Rolling in the Deep and is a better work for it.

At over four hundred pages, this is a pretty thick novel. Mira Grant spends plenty of time developing her large cast, providing us with plenty of richly diverse heroines to root for, and a few unsavories to cheer toward their demise. Equally rich, perhaps even richer, is the science itself. Grant has a terrific knack for taking the mermaids of mythological legend and giving them an incredibly strong scientific foundation and a real-world basis to exist. These creatures come across as a realistic and terrifying threat, and once the action heats up in the close quarters of the Melusine, there's a thick Jaws meets Aliens vibe that I flat-out loved. Few authors combine scientific realism with horrifying madness as well as Mira Grant. People looking for a natural successor to Michael Crichton would do well to read Grant's work immediately, and I suspect she'll be doing for mermaids what Crichton did for dinosaurs.

My only complaint is that the ending gets a bit rushed and some of the threats presented do not get the payoff they deserve. However, I'm weighing this against the implicit promise of the book's epilogue, and this novel's billing as the first book in what looks to be a new series (with Rolling in the Deep listed as a 0.5), that we'll be getting at least one more dose of mermaid mayhem somewhere down the pike. I'll be keeping my fingers crossed that such a release comes soon because, frankly, I need that sequel right freaking now.

[Note: I received an advanced copy of this title from the publisher via NetGalley.]



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Review: Rolling in the Deep by Mira Grant

Rolling in the Deep







By Mira Grant






My rating: 4 of 5 stars


Rolling in the Deep is, essentially, a found-footage horror movie committed to print. The Imagine Network, best-known for its chintzy monster movies and sci-fi programming, is taking a hit in the ratings. Faster than you can say Sharknado, they decide to break into the "hyper-reality" game with a documentary that's every bit as fictional as it is factual. Loaded up with a team of scientists, interns, and a mermaid performance troupe, the Atargatis cruises to the Mariana Trench to debunk or confirm the world's most enduring sea tale - are mermaid's real?

The story is broken down into five sections, each prefaced with a transcript from a documentary about the Atargatis and its missing crew, warning viewers about the footage they are about see...err, read. Whatever. Roughly the first three-quarters of the book are devoted to the various passengers, mostly the ship's captain, the documentary film crew, and the scientists. This is a quick, breezy read, paced well enough to hit the approximate run-time of a longer found-footage flick.

The downside to this, though, is that readers are not given much time to really get to know the people aboard the Atargatis or to really get into anybody's head. Thanks to the rules of found footage stories and the various documentarian notes coming up at regular intermissions, we know perfectly well that the fate of these men and women are sealed. Unfortunately, we're not given an opportunity to really get attached to any of these people, despite the slow burn toward the big finish. But that finish itself? Oh boy, does it ever get going; the mayhem really kicks things up a notch.

Besides the violent, frenetic climax, the thing I most appreciated about Rolling in the Deep was Mira Grant's focus on the science. She's an author who can take mythological premises like mermaids, or horror staples like zombies in her Newsflesh series, and give them enough scientific credibility to make it plausible. Here, we get plenty of discussion of how mermaids would be evolutionarily credible in light of things we already know about deep sea life (the use of bioluminescence and symbiosis in attracting prey, for instance). Personally, I love Grant's knack for taking what might otherwise be little more than a riff on B-movie horror tropes and elevating them with scientific rigor, grounding all that face-ripping, throat-tearing goodness in a measured bit of reality. By the time the monsters make their grand entrance, we're all but primed to accept their existence and welcome them into the world with arms spread wide.



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