Michael Patrick Hicks's Blog, page 32

Inauguration Day (And Beyond!) Reading Suggestions

I will not be watching today's inauguration of our forty-fifth president, a thin-skinned nutjob with authoritarian ambition, and instead will be reading and writing. I'll catch the follow-ups on his inauguration speech (which I suspect will be ridiculously self-congratulatory, filled with crackpot lies and plenty of gloating, with a big side of ranting about all the "losers" and traitors that didn't vote for him, before he takes the weekend off) in The New York Times and The Washington Post.

If you, too, are hoping to avoid the spectacle of Cheeto Hitler, and are looking for some works to help keep you fired up and fighting against the kleptocracy and the theocratic kooks in Congress, here's some books you can enjoy today, as well as over the next four years (or until he's, hopefully, impeached).

Some of these titles I've read, and some I haven't but they are on my radar and I plan on checking them out in an effort to maintain some kind of sanity throughout this national nightmare.

Transmetropolitan by Warren Ellis (author) and Darick Robertson (illustrator). 

From Book 1: DC's new editions of TRANSMETROPOLITAN begin here, with this volume collecting issues #1-6 of the acclaimed Vertigo series from writer Warren Ellis and artist Darick Robertson! After years of selfimposed exile from a civilization rife with degradation and indecency, cynical journalist Spider Jerusalem is forced to return to a job he hates and a city he loathes. Working as an investigative reporter for the newspaper The Word, Spider attacks the injustices of his surreal 23rd century surroundings. 

In this first volume, Spider ventures into the dangerous Angels 8 district, home of the Transients — humans who have decided to become aliens through cosmetic surgery. But Spider's interview with the Transients' leader gets him a scoop he didn't bargain for. And don't miss Spider's first confrontation with the President of the United States . . . in a men's room.

[Amazon]

Insane Clown President by Matt Taibbi

Dispatches from the 2016 election that provide an eerily prescient take on our democracy’s uncertain future, by the country’s most perceptive and fearless political journalist.

The 2016 presidential contest as told by Matt Taibbi, from its tragicomic beginnings to its apocalyptic conclusion, is in fact the story of Western civilization’s very own train wreck. Years before the clown car of candidates was fully loaded, Taibbi grasped the essential themes of the story: the power of spectacle over substance, or even truth; the absence of a shared reality; the nihilistic rebellion of the white working class; the death of the political establishment; and the emergence of a new, explicit form of white nationalism that would destroy what was left of the Kingian dream of a successful pluralistic society.

Taibbi captures, with dead-on, real-time analysis, the failures of the right and the left, from the thwarted Bernie Sanders insurgency to the flawed and aimless Hillary Clinton campaign; the rise of the “dangerously bright” alt-right with its wall-loving identity politics and its rapturous view of the “Racial Holy War” to come; and the giant fail of a flailing, reactive political media that fed a ravenous news cycle not with reporting on political ideology, but with undigested propaganda served straight from the campaign bubble. At the center of it all stands Donald J. Trump, leading a historic revolt against his own party, “bloviating and farting his way” through the campaign, “saying outrageous things, acting like Hitler one minute and Andrew Dice Clay the next.” For Taibbi, the stunning rise of Trump marks the apotheosis of the new postfactual movement.

Taibbi frames the reporting with original essays that explore the seismic shift in how we perceive our national institutions, the democratic process, and the future of the country. Insane Clown President is not just a postmortem on the collapse and failure of American democracy. It offers the riveting, surreal, unique, and essential experience of seeing the future in hindsight.

Praise for Matt Taibbi

“Matt Taibbi is one of the few journalists in America who speaks truth to power.”—Senator Bernie Sanders

[Amazon]

The President's Brain Is MIssing by John Scalzi

The question is, how can you tell the President's brain is missing? And are we sure we need it back?

[Amazon]

Fighting Back the Right by David Niose

The political scene is changing rapidly in America. The religious right is on the defensive, acceptance of gay rights is at an all-time high, social conservatives are struggling for relevance, and more Americans than ever identify as nonreligious. What does this mean for the country and the future? With these demographic shifts, can truly progressive, reason-based public policy finally gain traction? Or will America continue to carry a reputation as anti-intellectual and plutocratic, eager to cater to large corporate interests but reluctant to provide universal health care to all its citizens? Fighting Back the Right reveals a new alliance in the making, a progressive coalition committed to fighting for rational public policy in America and reversing the damage inflicted by decades of conservative dominance. David Niose, Legal Director of the American Humanist Association (AHA), examines this exciting new dynamic, covering not only the rapidly evolving culture wars but also the twists and turns of American history and politics that led to this point, and why this new alliance could potentially move the country in a direction of sanity, fairness, and human-centered public policy.

[Amazon]

American Fascists by Chris Hedges

Twenty-five years ago, when Pat Robertson and other radio and televangelists first spoke of the United States becoming a Christian nation that would build a global Christian empire, it was hard to take such hyperbolic rhetoric seriously. Today, such language no longer sounds like hyperbole but poses, instead, a very real threat to our freedom and our way of life. In American Fascists, Chris Hedges, veteran journalist and author of the National Book Award finalist War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning, challenges the Christian Right's religious legitimacy and argues that at its core it is a mass movement fueled by unbridled nationalism and a hatred for the open society. 

Hedges, who grew up in rural parishes in upstate New York where his father was a Presbyterian pastor, attacks the movement as someone steeped in the Bible and Christian tradition. He points to the hundreds of senators and members of Congress who have earned between 80 and 100 percent approval ratings from the three most influential Christian Right advocacy groups as one of many signs that the movement is burrowing deep inside the American government to subvert it. The movement's call to dismantle the wall between church and state and the intolerance it preaches against all who do not conform to its warped vision of a Christian America are pumped into tens of millions of American homes through Christian television and radio stations, as well as reinforced through the curriculum in Christian schools. The movement's yearning for apocalyptic violence and its assault on dispassionate, intellectual inquiry are laying the foundation for a new, frightening America. 

American Fascists, which includes interviews and coverage of events such as pro-life rallies and weeklong classes on conversion techniques, examines the movement's origins, its driving motivations and its dark ideological underpinnings. Hedges argues that the movement currently resembles the young fascist movements in Italy and Germany in the 1920s and '30s, movements that often masked the full extent of their drive for totalitarianism and were willing to make concessions until they achieved unrivaled power. The Christian Right, like these early fascist movements, does not openly call for dictatorship, nor does it use physical violence to suppress opposition. In short, the movement is not yet revolutionary. But the ideological architecture of a Christian fascism is being cemented in place. The movement has roused its followers to a fever pitch of despair and fury. All it will take, Hedges writes, is one more national crisis on the order of September 11 for the Christian Right to make a concerted drive to destroy American democracy. The movement awaits a crisis. At that moment they will reveal themselves for what they truly are -- the American heirs to fascism. Hedges issues a potent, impassioned warning. We face an imminent threat. His book reminds us of the dangers liberal, democratic societies face when they tolerate the intolerant.

[Amazon]

American War by Omar El Akkad

An audacious and powerful debut novel: a second American Civil War, a devastating plague, and one family caught deep in the middle—a story that asks what might happen if America were to turn its most devastating policies and deadly weapons upon itself.

Sarat Chestnut, born in Louisiana, is only six when the Second American Civil War breaks out in 2074. But even she knows that oil is outlawed, that Louisiana is half underwater, and that unmanned drones fill the sky. When her father is killed and her family is forced into Camp Patience for displaced persons, she begins to grow up shaped by her particular time and place. But not everyone at Camp Patience is who they claim to be. Eventually Sarat is befriended by a mysterious functionary, under whose influence she is turned into a deadly instrument of war. The decisions that she makes will have tremendous consequences not just for Sarat but for her family and her country, rippling through generations of strangers and kin alike.

Release date: April 4, 2017

[Amazon]

Tropic of Kansas by Christopher Brown

“Futurist as provocateur! The world is sheer batshit genius . . . a truly hallucinatorily envisioned environment.”—William Gibson, New York Times bestselling and award-winning author

“Timely, dark, and ultimately hopeful: it might not ‘make America great again,’ but then again, it just might.”—Cory Doctorow, New York Times bestselling and award winning author of Homeland

Acclaimed short story writer and editor of the World Fantasy Award-nominee Three Messages and a Warning eerily envisions an American society unraveling and our borders closed off—from the other side—in this haunting and provocative novel that combines Max Barry’s Jennifer Government, Philip K. Dick’s classic Man in the High Castle, and China Mieville’s The City & the City

The United States of America is no more. Broken into warring territories, its center has become a wasteland DMZ known as “the Tropic of Kansas.” Though this gaping geographic hole has no clear boundaries, everyone knows it's out there—that once-bountiful part of the heartland, broken by greed and exploitation, where neglect now breeds unrest. Two travelers appear in this arid American wilderness: Sig, the fugitive orphan of political dissidents, and his foster sister Tania, a government investigator whose search for Sig leads her into her own past—and towards an unexpected future.

Sig promised those he loves that he would make it to the revolutionary redoubt of occupied New Orleans. But first he must survive the wild edgelands of a barren mid-America policed by citizen militias and autonomous drones, where one wrong move can mean capture . . . or death. One step behind, undercover in the underground, is Tania. Her infiltration of clandestine networks made of old technology and new politics soon transforms her into the hunted one, and gives her a shot at being the agent of real change—if she is willing to give up the explosive government secrets she has sworn to protect.

As brother and sister traverse these vast and dangerous badlands, their paths will eventually intersect on the front lines of a revolution whose fuse they are about to light.

Release date: July 11, 2017

[Amazon]

Infomacracy (The Centenal Cycle) by Malka Older

Read Infomocracy, the first book in Malka Older's groundbreaking cyberpunk political thriller series The Centenal Cycle and the novel NPR called "Kinetic and gripping."

• The book The Huffington Post called "one of the greatest literary debuts in recent history"
• One of Kirkus' "Best Fiction of 2016"
• One of The Washington Post's "Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of 2016"
• One of Book Riot's "Best Books of 2016 So Far"

It's been twenty years and two election cycles since Information, a powerful search engine monopoly, pioneered the switch from warring nation-states to global micro-democracy. The corporate coalition party Heritage has won the last two elections. With another election on the horizon, the Supermajority is in tight contention, and everything's on the line.

With power comes corruption. For Ken, this is his chance to do right by the idealistic Policy1st party and get a steady job in the big leagues. For Domaine, the election represents another staging ground in his ongoing struggle against the pax democratica. For Mishima, a dangerous Information operative, the whole situation is a puzzle: how do you keep the wheels running on the biggest political experiment of all time, when so many have so much to gain?

Infomocracy is Malka Older's debut novel.

PRAISE FOR INFOMOCRACY

“A fast-paced, post-cyberpunk political thriller... If you always wanted to put The West Wing in a particle accelerator with Snow Crash to see what would happen, read this book.” —Max Gladstone, author of Last First Snow

"Smart, ambitious, bursting with provocative extrapolations, Infomocracy is the big-data-big-ideas-techno-analytical-microdemoglobal-post-everything political thriller we've been waiting for." —Ken Liu, author of The Grace of Kings

"In the mid-21st century, your biggest threat isn’t Artificial Intelligence—it’s other people. Yet the passionate, partisan, political and ultimately fallible men and women fighting for their beliefs are also Infomocracy’s greatest hope. An inspiring book about what we frail humans could still achieve, if we learn to work together." —Karl Schroeder, author of Lockstep and the Virga saga

[Amazon]

Null States (The Centenal Cycle) by Malka Older

"Kinetic and gripping" ―NPR on Infomocracy

Null States continues the Centenal Cycle, the series beginning with Infomocracy

• The book The Huffington Post called "one of the greatest literary debuts in recent history"
• One of The Washington Post's "Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of 2016"
• One of Kirkus' "Best Fiction of 2016"
• One of Book Riot's "Best Books of 2016"

The future of democracy is about to implode.

After the last controversial global election, the global infomocracy that has ensured thirty years of world peace is fraying at the edges. As the new Supermajority government struggles to establish its legitimacy, agents of Information across the globe strive to keep the peace and maintain the flows of data that feed the new world order.

In the newly-incorporated DarFur, a governor dies in a fiery explosion. In Geneva, a superpower hatches plans to bring microdemocracy to its knees. In Central Asia, a sprawling war among archaic states threatens to explode into a global crisis. And across the world, a shadowy plot is growing, threatening to strangle Information with the reins of power.

Release date: Sept. 19, 2017

[Amazon]

What books do you plan on reading to help you survive and keep your brain in check?

Review: Highwayman by Craig Saunders

Highwayman by Craig Saunders

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


Highwayman, the latest DarkFuse release from Craig Saunders, is a cool bit of folklore horror that draws on plenty of English history and interconnects with some mythological touchstones present in a few of Saunders' other titles (although this, as well as Saunders' other works, is a stand-alone title and functions perfectly well independently).

Here, we're introduced to Karl and Bethany Goodman, who lost their daughter to a savage killer some years earlier. Their marriage is in the dumps, and Karl has taken a posting in Malaysia. After a plane accident, he finds his physical body comatose and near death, while his spirit wanders through Fog-World - where his daughter's killer lurks.

Saunders fills up his story with plenty of spiritual fantasy, providing a landscape for second chances and the possibility of justice. We also get a number of fascinating characters and dynamics. I really appreciated the relationship between the Goodman's and the way each recognizes how they have moved on, and struggle to reconnect, even if only briefly, in the wake of Karl's accident. The killer, the titular Highwayman, is not as present as I would have liked, coming in fairly late in the story, but when he does show up, it's some really potent stuff.

Saunders has a knack for putting a lot of detail and development into a pretty brief page count. Highwayman feels like a much larger book than it really is, and I mean this in the best possible way! It's nicely dense and there's plenty of meat on the plot's bones. He's also a heck of a writer, painting several vivid scenes that will stick with me for a while (I found the finale to the Goodman's story is especially touching, and the way the scene was crafted and framed in my mind's eye is a lovely bit of Gothic horror).

Note: As a member of the DarkFuse Readers Group, I received an advanced copy of this title from the publisher via NetGalley.



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Buy Highwayman At The DarkFuse Magazine Shop

Review: Trackers: A Post-Apocalyptic EMP Thriller by Nicholas Sansbury Smith

Trackers: A Post-Apocalyptic EMP Thriller by Nicholas Sansbury Smith

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


After spending quite a lot of time battling monsters in post-apocalyptic settings in the Extinction Cycle series and the recent Hell Divers, Nicholas Sansbury Smith takes a more grounded, and worryingly realistic, approach to the end of the world as we know it.

Smith's latest action thriller, Trackers, kicks off with a black ops rescue mission in North Korea, sparking a savage retaliation by the Supreme Leader against the United States of America. After a series of nuclear missiles are detonated high above the US, the resulting electromagnetic pulse stops the country dead in its tracks. Cars stall out in the middle of the highway, and the nation's power grid grinds to a halt.

While there's plenty of political action on the flip-side of this story, the main thrust of the narrative surrounds the hunt for a serial killer in Estes Park, CO, after the abduction of several children. Readers of Smith's prior works already know he's a solid action writer who can really keep a story moving, and Trackers is no exception. While there's plenty of action, Smith does well in focusing on characters, putting family dynamics front and center in this post-apocalyptic entry.

Perhaps the one aspect I appreciated most was the incorporation of Native American mythology thanks to one of Smith's primary protagonists, a Cherokee serviceman nicknamed Raven. While there are no supernatural elements in Trackers, the incorporation of Native American beliefs into the spine of the story and its characters was very well done. In fact, I'm looking forward to book two largely to see what other, if any, Native American elements Smith draws upon.

Trackers is a solid first entry into a new series, and I'm looking forward to seeing how these groups of characters move forward and adapt to the altered landscape they find themselves in.

[Note: I received an advanced reader's copy of this title from the author.]



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Buy Trackers At Amazon

Review: Godbomb! by Kit Power [audiobook]

GodBomb! by Kit Power

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


This one's a toughie for me to review. I guess I'll point out that three stars is a good rating, and according to Goodreads metrics it indicates that I liked the book, which is true enough, but I was also slightly let down in the end, which prevents me from going any higher than three stars. Little of this disappointment, though, has to do with the material or Kit Power, who proves himself to be a very capable author and one I plan on reading more of in the future. Rather, I think some of the disappointment stems from my own expectations and mood, and both of these issues are entirely on me. Your mileage may vary, certainly.

So, what does GodBomb! have to offer? A heck of lot of wonderfully realized characters with strong backgrounds, plenty of powerful and violent moments, a fair share of surprises, and a madman in a suicide vest. And while the mad bomber has taken over a church revival, demanding God to prove his existence, Power is blessedly not the religiously preachy sort (or at least not in print; I have no way of knowing his religious inclinations in real life, of course). If you're worried about this book being akin to those annoying folk pounding on your door in the early weekend hours trying to save your soul before you've even gotten in your first cup of coffee, fear not. Power isn't hear to tell you how awesome god is or isn't, but he is here to tell a kick-ass story that often feels like a sucker punch.

Kit Power has a strong authorial voice, and in this audiobook his words are made all the more powerful by Scottish narrator Chris Barnes. This is my first outing with both of these gentlemen, and I'm already eager to see what other works they have. Barnes has a thick, charming brogue that serves this story well, set in the UK circa 1995 before pesky cell phones were everywhere, and listening to him was a delight. There's a wonderful synchronicity at work between author and narrator here, with the words lulling you in before delivering some mighty powerful action sequences. I might have to give this another listen over a pint or two, because, under Barnes' narration, it just seems like that kind of audiobook.

Any complaints I have about the material are purely subjective and largely emotional, so take this with a grain of salt. GodBomb! is dark; like, seriously dark. There's a lot of misery going on in this book and when those few moments of hopefulness shine through, Power stuffs it in a burlap sack and beats the ever living shit out of it. I certainly have no problem with dark fiction, but because of personal reasons I also was not perhaps in the best mindset to explore this work. I needed a sliver of goodness and maybe even a dash of sunshine and hope after all the real-life darkness, and I wasn't able to find that here. Power puts his characters through plenty of nasty trials and tribulations, which is fine but I needed something a little less gloomy and chaotic. Again, purely subjective and all on me.

I just wasn't in the right frame of mind for this book. Wrong place, wrong time sort of stuff (a predicament the characters within this book can relate to, I'm sure, albeit with far less sympathy for me than I had for them). I certainly understand why it's gotten so much praise from various corners, and it is definitely a powerful work of fiction. But, at the moment, it feels like a "it's not you, it's me" kind of book. I do believe, though, that this is a work I need to return to in the future, with expectations firmly in check and my head set bit more rightly than it currently is. Again, possibly, with a pint or two...

I received a complimentary copy of this audiobook from the author, who is sponsoring the January 2017 promotional group read/listen over at Horror Aficionados.



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Buy Godbomb! At Amazon

Review: The Stars Are Legion by Kameron Hurley

The Stars Are Legion by Kameron Hurley

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


In order their save their world (big W), Zan and her wife, Jayd, need a metal arm and an object known as the world (small W). Only problem is, Zan has no memory, their plan has been tried several times previously and resulted in failure, and their dying world ain't the only one in the Legion, which provides plenty of spark for conflict.

Kameron Hurley's The Stars Are Legion is a thick piece of science fiction with a hefty dose of fantasy swirled in. I'm not typically big on the fantasy genre, so it's not much of a surprise that I was more drawn in by the sci-fi elements of space-based shenangians and inter-world politicking. The story is divvied up between the two central women, with chapters alternating their first-person narrations as the plot drives them apart. For me, the story began to drag once Zan was thrust into the underworld of her planet and the book took on plenty of fantasy-genre overtones, becoming a Lord of the Rings-styled walking tour through the world's various domains. More intriguing were Jayd's experiences with a brutal Lord on a rival planet. The Bhavaja Lord is even more manipulative than Jayd (certainly no slouch in manipulation her own self), and their dodge-and-parry dynamic is some of the more interesting elements in this book.

Zan, though, is certainly a cool character in her own regard. Her memory loss and slow recovery make for captivating reading, particularly as she begins to understand who she was and what she could become, thanks to her interactions with a motley crew of monster- and mutant-fighting bottomworlders who make up her quest party. Hurley gives her plenty of time to shine and does a great job formulating Zan as a character. Zan's arc, in fact, was a strong highlight of the book for me, and the finale packs an emotional wallop thanks to the strong character development of both Zan and Jayd.

The world-building, though, is where The Stars Are Legion really shines. Hurley takes the literary technique of world-building up a notch by making actual world building a strong element of the plot itself. We have dying organic world-ships, populated entirely by females -- in fact there's not a single man in existence; this is a space epic in which women rule entirely and completely, an awesome feat in its own right! -- who the world uses to birth whatever the world needs - spare parts, children, and even, yes, new worlds.

It's a wonderfully feminist view, written by a wonderful female author, with strong women galore at every inch of these worlds. The women here are life-bearers, engineers, warriors, and rulers, each of them carrying the responsibility of their society, and their world as a whole, on their backs and deep within themselves. They live, they fight, they die. And through it all, Hurley brings to table plenty of solid action, a nice bit of gore, and some intriguing Big Ideas.

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



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Buy The Stars Are Legion At Amazon

2016 Goodreads Reading Challenge Roundup!

I typically do a pretty big round-up post every year, but I think I'll cut this one a bit short. Frankly, I'm just not in the mood to go through an analytical examination of the Year That Was and count up books per genre, page counts, and all the rest. It feels overly complicated at the moment, and I'd rather be watching Netflix. 

Besides which, 2016 was a shit year and for plenty of reasons, chiefly due to my mother's sudden passing, a number of high-profile celebrity deaths, and Trump's (presumably apocalyptic) presidential victory. This is the kind of year that I just don't particularly want to look back on and reflect upon, and doing so is only likely to depress me and piss me off. Thankfully, my wife, son, and books were still there for me and provided a much-needed escape route from the grim grind of day-to-day life. And due to Trump's victory and his stockpiling of white supremacists, kooks, crazies, and ne'er-do-wells within the White House, books will be even more critical over the next four years to help provide some sanity-saving escapism. Well, presuming, in our race to the bottom, that we don't start burning books en masse, anyway. Yeah, again, 2016 was shit and has soured my attitude pretty throughly. Anyway. I've already begun formulating my list of titles for the first few weeks of the New Year, and I hope that 2017 is just as book-friendly as 2016. I will be taking part in the annual Goodreads Reading Challenge, and will likely set my aim a bit higher than my standard 50-book challenge. One hundred books certainly seems doable! 

2015 was a high-water mark in terms of titles read (118!). 2016, while still a very strong year for me, came in just a little bit below that mark. I still found more time to read than I had expected to, especially given that this was my first full-year as a father, but my hope to out-do last year's results fell short. So, let's dig in.

THE STATSNumber of books read: 112Number of pages read: 21,020 Longest Book read: The Fireman by Joe Hill Shortest book read: The Approach by Chris Holm Audiobooks listened to: 21 THE RATINGS5-star reads: 334-star reads: 54 3-star reads: 16 2-star reads: 7 1-star reads: 1 Did Not Finish (DNF): 1

A note on those ratings: some of these reads were borderline and would have garnered a lower half-star rating. Since Goodreads doesn't provide a metric for half-star ratings, I rounded up. So, some of those 5- and 4-star reads should more accurately be reflected as 4.5 and 3.5, respectively. Ditto the lower ratings, as well. But, again, Goodreads does not make such allowances and I typically erred on the side of generosity. 

OUTLOOK

Keeping within my typical reading habits, horror and science fiction were the most-read genres this year. Audiobooks have become a regular fixture in my story consumption diet, as well, and I was surprised to find I had listened to so many! 

Audiobooks will certainly be front-and-center in 2017. I've had a long-standing reading resolution for several years now to incorporate more non-fiction titles into my active reading pile. Thus far, I have not been remarkably successful in this effort... Yet, I will continue to persist in this challenge and am planning on streghtening the resolution as follows: In 2017, I will read and/or listen to at least 12 non-fiction titles. That's one per month, if you're calendar savvy. I did manage to consume three non-fiction titles in 2016, all on audio, and I have plenty more already downloaded to my Audible app, with even more non-fiction ebooks on my Kindle. Really, I don't have any excuse to not follow this plan, and making it the focus of my audiobook listening should make this entirely achievable.  

And speaking of that active reading pile... One of my plans for 2017, and this may be more difficult for me to achieve, is to focus more on the unread books I already own. I need to cut back on ARC titles and lessen my use of NetGalley, as awesome a service as it is, and really go after the books piling up in both the digital and physical realms. I'm way behind on series reads, like Lee Child, Michael Connelly, and Tom Clancy titles, and I want to get back into those author's realms for a little bit. I'd be foolish to think ARCs will not continue to be a staple of my reading habits (in fact, I expect the first two months of 2017 to consist almost entirely of ebook ARCs, starting off with Kameron Hurley's upcoming The Stars Are Legion), but I at least have to try and catch up a little bit. I also need to make greater use of my local library (a terrific resources we probably all need to embrace quite a bit more), and I have a list of titles to check out as we get a bit deeper into the New Year. Some of which are even non-fiction! Huzzah! 

So that's the plan for 2017. More non-fiction, less ARCs, and make headway into titles already bought and paid for. What are your reading resolutions? 

Review: Little Heaven by Nick Cutter

Little Heaven by Nick Cutter

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


If Stephen King's Under the Dome felt like a Greatest Hits rehash of of his own earlier, better books, then Nick Cutter's Little Heaven is a tribute cover band rendition of several of King's biggest moments.

They say imitation is flattery, and if that's the case, ol' Stevie has to be wearing a big, walloping grin on his face. Cutter has clearly, to say the least, been influenced by the King of Horror, and Little Heaven borrows liberally from titles like IT and The Gunslinger saga. The climax alone features several reminders from these books - an antagonist who challenges a member of Cutter's band of gunslinger mercenaries to a game of riddles, while others move their way through a deep cavern to square off against the ancient, and perhaps, timeless Big Bad just as elemental devastation begins to loom outside.

Before we get there, though, Cutter divvies his antihero protagonists' stories across the time stream, jumping back and forth between 1980 and 1966. After Micah's daughter is lured away from home by a demonic Pied Piped, he hurries to put the band back together, reuniting with fellow gunslingers Ebenezer and Minerva. Flashback to 1966 and how these three troublesome killers met-up, and then banded together as hired guns sent into a secretive religious compound, Little Heaven, to rescue a young boy from Bible thumping crackpots. Tucked away in the forest, our intrepid fighters learn there are savage monstrosities hidden in the woods.

Over the course of the book, Cutter weaves the two timelines together, a la IT, invoking evils both human and otherwise, telling a story that is pretty good but also fairly unoriginal. It's almost as if Cutter sat down and decided to write an honest-to-goodness Stephen King book, mimicking the sense of scope of King's biggest door-stoppers as they careen toward an apocalyptic finale. And while I found Little Heaven to be an engaging read, one that I was eager to return to over the course of a week, I was also quite cognizant that what I was reading was pure mimicry. Cutter has enough original ideas to play with, and he does so effectively, but so much of it feels drenched in knowing inspiration, and then we hit a finale practically straight out of Derry, ME.

I'm fairly conflicted over how to rate Little Heaven. I liked it quite a bit, and I suspect if I hadn't read several of King's biggest and best first I would have absolutely loved this book. But I'm also a bit troubled by a pattern that appears to be emerging in Cutter's works. The Deep got by on sheer entertainment value, and I was willing to give it as pass for its knowing tributes to movies like Event Horizon, The Thing, and The Abyss. Now that I'm examining Little Heaven, a book that is surely entertaining but lifts quite a lot of its material from King's cannon, I'm growing a bit leery of Cutter's ability to create original works of horror wholecloth. Yes, he writes some damn impressive, and gory, scare scenes, but the framing of these scenes feels far too...let's say, familiar.

Little Heaven has a few stand-out moments, and the reveal of the Big Bad is effectively chilling, but if you're well-versed in the works of Stephen King a lot of these elements will feel like a retread at the least, and like an altered xerox at the worst.

[Note: I received an advanced copy of this title from the author.]



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Buy Little Heaven At Amazon

#GoreWars Round 3!

Round 2 of GoreWars was a toughie, and fellow competitor Timothy P. Flynn  and I went back and forth on the high score a few times. We were even tied at one point! It was a very close competition right up to the end, but DarkFuse Magazine readers ultimately picked my story, Sinner, and I got to progress to the next round.

I'm now squaring off against Renee Miller, a truly depraved sicko. Seriously. If you haven't already, check out her current and past entries at the GoreWars competition page.

This is the last bracket before the big finals. It's up to the voters to determine who moves onto the finish, and who will be the GoreWars King or Queen. So, go check out the Final Four entires and cast your ballot. 

My latest entry is a cheerful, heart-warming bit of Yuletide merriment and Christmas festivities. Happy Holidays!

Review: Lagoon by Nnedi Okorafor

Lagoon by Nnedi Okorafor

My rating: 2 of 5 stars


Lagoon is a love letter to the Nigerian city of Lagos and its inhabitants, both good and bad. Through the lens of an alien first-contact story, Nnedi Okorafor gives us an unflinching look at a broad swath of Lagos's population and their reactions to discovering they are not alone. While the concept and locale was intriguing enough to draw me in, the execution was not and I was ultimately left fairly ambivalent about the work as a whole. Rating-wise, I'm hovering somewhere between two and three stars, but per the Goodreads metric, I'm going with two simply because, in the end, I felt this book was merely "ok."

While Lagoon has a fair amount of promise, the story choices Okorafor made just did not work for me. I completely dug the idea of the shape-shifting aliens making first-contact with the aquatic life and helping those sea creatures evolve, before approaching the city's human inhabitants on a mission of peace. But because humans, particularly when confronted with the unknown, are typically a scared, cowardly lot, things quickly go awry.

When the alien ambassador dubbed Ayodele makes her presence known, the sense of wonder is quickly overcome with one of two reactions by the population at large. The first reaction is how the alien can be used and manipulated for profit (one armed gang wants to kidnap her and hold her for ransom; another unarmed gang of Christian faithful led by Father Oke wants to bring her into Christ's salvation so that the BMW driving prosperity preacher can use Ayodele in his plans to extort the community), and the second is to meet her with violence. Aside from Ayodele's three human cohorts - a marine biologist, a rap star, and a disgraced soldier - much of the story reflects on humanity's pettiness and selfishness. The story here, though, is not one of hopelessness - indeed, there's a thick veneer of hope and betterment throughout - but it is remarkably, and thankfully, honest.

One thing I greatly appreciated here was the depiction of Father Oke. Too often, popular fiction represents Church leaders as the Best of the Best, and they're an instrument to help turn the central characters (particularly disbelieving central characters) into Born Again crusaders (check out The Blood Gospel co-written by James Rollins and Rebecca Cantrell for one of the most egregious examples in pop-lit - an atheist archaeologist discovers vampires are real, has the hots for a priest, and then totally abandons all reason and scientific method to decide that if vamps are real and a priest can be so hot, there absolutely has to be an invisible man with magic powers living in the sky. Because naturally.). Okorafor represents Oke as a selfish, greedy bastard who uses his "divine" authority to smack women, steal money from the sheep that blindly follow him, and label anybody who doesn't lay down for his BS as a witch. Africa, in the 21st Century, thanks to the meddling of the Christian Church and insane demagogues like Scott Lively, still believes in witches, and this conceit is used by those in power to expand their power further by murdering anybody that gets in their way and mentally enslaving everyone else. Anybody familiar with the Salem Witch Trials can tell you just how effective this is, and Oke uses it to similar effect as he stomps around Lagos. If he can't use Ayodele to extort the populace, he'll simply turn his flock against this witch and kill her.

As I said, there are elements in this book that work quite well for me. I also greatly appreciated Okorafor's representation of Lagos and the city's rich mythology and history. At the same time, I felt some of that mythos got too much in the way. There are times where Okorafor strays too far into fantasy, which disrupts the narrative and fails to sit well with the rest of the book. For instance, at one point we get a single chapter about a highway monster called the Bone Collector. We also get segments from the point of view of a mythological spider. I felt these were odd inclusions, and to suddenly have such a strong supernatural component thrust into the story, and for so briefly, was quite jarring.

Overall, Lagoon didn't quite work for me, although it had its fair share of elements that resounded with me. I appreciated the ecological aspects, and the author's inclusion of diversity throughout, and I feel like I have a greater sense of Lagos thanks to Okorafor's story. Unfortunately, the book itself is a bit too plodding and leans too heavily on mythological fantasy, making for an uneasy bedfellow with its progressive science fiction themes.



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#GoreWars Round 2!

Thanks to all the wonderful sickos who voted in the first round of GoreWars over at DarkFuse Magazine, Pucker Up was one of the winning stories and I am now in round two with a fresh story called Sinner. I'll be squaring off against dark poet Timothy P. Flynn, who was one of the top vote-getters in round one, so I'm expecting some stiff competition here (Update: After being tied half-way through day one, Timothy squeaked out a bit of a lead. Things are heating up! The score is currently 355-308, and this is looking like the match to watch.)

The GoreWars rules are simple - participants have 50 words to gross out, shock, and/or disturb readers. So dear readers, if you've got a strong stomach, head on over to the GoreWars page. Because of graphic content, the stories are accessible only to subscribers. You can either purchase a paid account, or you can sign up for a 72-hour trial subscription and cast your vote.

DarkFuse has announced that 3 voters will be picked at random from the ballots cast in round 2 and will receive gift boxes full of limited edition books (a value of $150 or more in each box)! I have several DarkFuse limiteds in my own library, and these books are quite lovely. All I can say is, if you're one of the three winning voters, you're in for a treat. I'll also be kinda jealous... 

Now, I present to you my GoreWars Round Two entry, Sinner. Go check out the entries and be sure to vote for your favorites!