Michael Patrick Hicks's Blog, page 6

RETURN OF THE KING

How's that for an ostentatious, bloviated headline?! But, alas, it's just me.

First off, happy holidays! I hope everyone enjoys these next couple weeks and has a safe, healthy, and happy New Year!

Those of you who have been following me around the interwebs these past few years may recall a previous iteration of this blog over on Substack. I pulled the plug on my site over there a while ago over concerns of the rise of white supremacist voices proliferating across that platform. I then quit Twitter soon after Elon Musk's takeover for similar reasons.

Along the way, I kinda-sorta quit writing, although I continued to regularly review fiction over on Goodreads. I let my website go dark and the subscription to keep it running lapse. I went back to Facebook, then joined BlueSky, but something always felt like it was missing.

I wanted my own space again. A site that didn't exist solely at the whim of some rich, racist, douchebag techbro looking to buy the US government out from under us wholesale and sell it off for scrap under the rule of an authoritarian despot. Somewhere where I wasn't at the behest of a faceless corporation that ruled with a draconian fist and enforced its labyrinthian terms of services in the vaguest of ways and provided nothing in the way of arbitration, let alone information, or human interaction. A place where I wouldn't have my account flagged for review for sharing memes that ran contrary to right-wing and Christofascist groupthink, or locked down for using scientific, historical, or factual terminology that the oligarchs in political opposition to me find "offensive."

Not that I’m a particularly controversial figure. Or, hell, even a known writer of some remit or merit outside of an incredibly small, and likely ever-shrinking, circle. Yet, over the course of the last two years, I’ve been banned from posting reviews on Amazon due to my apparent outspokenness against fascism and authoritarianism as exhibited in my critiques of Eric Raglin’s horror anthology, ANTIFA SPLATTERPUNK and counter-terrorism expert, Malcolm W. Nance’s They Want to Kill Americans, and stripped of my Amazon Associates account. [Cue all the feigned shock and outrage from online commentators that Jeff Bezos would cozy up with Donald Trump at Mar-A-Lago, as if it’s actually a surprise.] Somehow, my reviews have remained largely unscathed at Amazon-owned Goodreads, although there was a period where I had some twit reporting every review I posted, apparently in the hopes of getting me banned from there, too, and a few outraged right-wingers who got angita while clutching all their pearls over my inclusion of a center-left political viewpoint in response to, of all things, political thriller novels.

Between Amazon banning my reviewer account, Twitter becoming a toxic wasteland and Facebook not too far behind it, the online spaces we inhabit and feel a degree of claimancy towards as “our” online spaces is growing ever murkier and lesser. I expect this to get even worse as we march into 2025 and at least the next four years.

So, I decided after some deliberation that it was time to reactivate my own site once again. I’ll be posting my reviews here, and perhaps random other thoughts as things progress, rather than relying solely on other platforms. And if you’re receiving this in your email inbox, that’s because you subscribed to either my previous Substack platform or a prior iteration of my irregular newsletter. If you feel like unsubscribing, you are, of course, free to do so. But hopefully you’ll stick around. I’m certainly planning on it for the foreseeable future, at least.

Blog Post Title One

It all begins with an idea. Maybe you want to launch a business. Maybe you want to turn a hobby into something more. Or maybe you have a creative project to share with the world. Whatever it is, the way you tell your story online can make all the difference.

Don’t worry about sounding professional. Sound like you. There are over 1.5 billion websites out there, but your story is what’s going to separate this one from the rest. If you read the words back and don’t hear your own voice in your head, that’s a good sign you still have more work to do.

Be clear, be confident and don’t overthink it. The beauty of your story is that it’s going to continue to evolve and your site can evolve with it. Your goal should be to make it feel right for right now. Later will take care of itself. It always does.

Blog Post Title Two

It all begins with an idea. Maybe you want to launch a business. Maybe you want to turn a hobby into something more. Or maybe you have a creative project to share with the world. Whatever it is, the way you tell your story online can make all the difference.

Don’t worry about sounding professional. Sound like you. There are over 1.5 billion websites out there, but your story is what’s going to separate this one from the rest. If you read the words back and don’t hear your own voice in your head, that’s a good sign you still have more work to do.

Be clear, be confident and don’t overthink it. The beauty of your story is that it’s going to continue to evolve and your site can evolve with it. Your goal should be to make it feel right for right now. Later will take care of itself. It always does.

Blog Post Title Three

It all begins with an idea. Maybe you want to launch a business. Maybe you want to turn a hobby into something more. Or maybe you have a creative project to share with the world. Whatever it is, the way you tell your story online can make all the difference.

Don’t worry about sounding professional. Sound like you. There are over 1.5 billion websites out there, but your story is what’s going to separate this one from the rest. If you read the words back and don’t hear your own voice in your head, that’s a good sign you still have more work to do.

Be clear, be confident and don’t overthink it. The beauty of your story is that it’s going to continue to evolve and your site can evolve with it. Your goal should be to make it feel right for right now. Later will take care of itself. It always does.

Blog Post Title Four

It all begins with an idea. Maybe you want to launch a business. Maybe you want to turn a hobby into something more. Or maybe you have a creative project to share with the world. Whatever it is, the way you tell your story online can make all the difference.

Don’t worry about sounding professional. Sound like you. There are over 1.5 billion websites out there, but your story is what’s going to separate this one from the rest. If you read the words back and don’t hear your own voice in your head, that’s a good sign you still have more work to do.

Be clear, be confident and don’t overthink it. The beauty of your story is that it’s going to continue to evolve and your site can evolve with it. Your goal should be to make it feel right for right now. Later will take care of itself. It always does.

New Website Launching Soon!

Over the course of December, things are going to be slowing way down at this blog. In fact, I fully expect this post to be the last entry in this blog.

Here’s what’s happening:

In January, I’ll be launching a brand-new website, High Fever Books, devoted solely to reviewing genre fiction, with a particular focus on horror, science fiction, and crime/mystery/thriller releases. I have a couple of contributors lined up that will be helping me keep that site running with fresh content and regular updates, so it won’t just be me shouting into the void. Instead, I’ll be yelling into the void alongside a few others.

If you’ve been a regular reader to this blog because of the review content I’ve been publishing here, first of all thank you! You’ll definitely want to bookmark High Fever Books. Although that site officially launches in January, I’ll be peppering in a few updates there between now and then, taking a sort-of soft launch approach to it. Make sure you subscribe to that blog’s newsletter, as well, so you can get weekly updates on the books we’re talking about delivered straight to your in-box.

Although I have a couple of contributors lined up for High Fever Books, I’m always looking for more! I want a plurality of voices talking smartly and sensibly about books and reviewing genre fiction, and the more diverse the better! If you’re a book reviewer in need of a home for your scribblings, e-mail editor@highfeverbooks.com. [Note: I hate to say this, but as with most team-run book review sites, contributors are unpaid beyond being given a platform, and it’s highly, highly, highly unlikely the website will ever turn a profit, so please be aware of this!]

As far as this site, well, it’s going to become what it was always intended to be, and that’s simply my author website. This site isn’t going away anytime soon, and its singular focus will be to help promote my own books and stories. MichaelPatrickHicks.com is going to be solely for Michael Patrick Hicks books. Reviews and promotions for other authors will all be happening at the new review blog. All those reviews, guest posts, etc. that were posted here will be going dark, but will not be disappearing entirely. All of those past reviews I published here will still be accessible via my Goodreads page.

If you’re interested in staying up to date on my works, make sure you subscribe to my newsletter! As 2019 progresses, I’ll have updates to share on the release of three brand-new books, and just maybe a few other things as we go along. And be sure to check back on this site’s homepage every now and then, too, for updates as they come along.

Want to stay on top of absolutely everything? Here’s what you need to do:

Bookmark High Fever Books

Subscribe to the High Fever Books newsletter and get updates delivered straight to your in-box

Bookmark MichaelPatrickHicks.com

Subscribe to my newsletter to receive updates

In the meantime, watch out for updates on the High Fever Books website, because they’ll be coming very, very soon!

Review: Coyote Songs by Gabino Iglesias

Coyote Songs

By Gabino Iglesias






My rating: 5 of 5 stars


On an island in the New York Harbor, a French woman stands tall, proud even. Time and ocean have covered her body in a green patina, but her torch and all that she stands for still shine. A handful of words epitomize the sum of her ideals, and those of her country:

Give me your tired, your poor

Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free

More than two thousand miles away, migrant children, babies, women, and men fleeing violence in their home country of Honduras are tear gassed as the US Border Patrol fires across the US-Mexico border. The tear gas is banned in warfare, and yet American police routinely and liberally use it against American citizens protesting various causes and politics, an authoritarian reminder from the state to its citizens on who has the bigger dick. Now, despite the Geneva Convention, we turn a potent chemical upon the unarmed, the weak, and the helpless. Political asylum seekers awaiting their turn to apply are identified by the numbers marked upon their wrists, an image that recalls the Nazi persecution of Holocaust victims in World War II. Elsewhere along the border, children are torn away from their family, many seemingly never to be returned despite US court orders, housed in newly erected concentration camps.

This is America.

This is a young country that has, over time, built its own mythology, full of righteousness and idealism. It is a myth that has been sold to its own citizens and the rest of the world in turn, predicated upon these inalienable rights that we hold to be self-evident, a simple and common truth that all men are created equal and endowed with the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. We then, in turn, elect to represent us an embarrassing cadre of racists, sexists, and the moronic, people who on a daily basis remind us that the American myth is merely that. We elect to the highest office in our land a man who calls white supremacists very fine people and decries all Mexicans as little more than rapists and thieves. The Christian evangelicals among us demand that we, in turn, speak of these politicians with deference and civility.

This is America. A country built by immigrants, its borders drawn upon murder and bloodshed and theft. A melting pot of immigrants and the descendants of immigrants who, in turn, vilify immigrants and condemn immigration. Myth versus reality.

The tension of myth running headlong into reality is at the beating and bloody heart of Coyote Songs, a mosaic novel set along the US-Mexican border. Through a handful of characters, Gabino Iglesias presents to us the life of those living along la frontera, characters who are driven by the myths and beliefs of their forebears and who have internalized the myth of America and want in on a piece of the action, hoping to flee the impoverishment and violence of their barrios and succeeding only in finding themselves ensnared in an old and familiar cycle of violence and impoverishment elsewhere. We have sold them a promise, and with it a false bill of goods.

Pedrito's father speaks more English than Spanish, believing a fluidity in his adopted language will make their eventual escape into America easier, opening for his family the doors of opportunity. Alma, a multicultural, bilingual black Puerto Rican in Texas, believes she'll make it big as an artist, until she runs headlong into the realization that she's little more than a puppet for the rich and entitled whites, like Mr. Wilson, who offers her a free venue in order to capitalize upon her performance, and hopefully, later, her body. The coyote runs kids across the border because he believes that such is his mission in life. We never learn his name, but have no need of it; he is a man defined by his job - he is the coyote, nothing more or nothing less. He is a servant of La Virgencita, and saving the children by helping them flee into America, the land of so much promise, is his sole purpose. And then, in the desert, there is the ghost of Inmaculada, thirsting for revenge.

Coyote Songs is ugly at times, necessarily and honestly so. It's a dusty noir told with a dry desert rasp, and it's all the more powerful for it. Gabino Iglesias is one hell of a writer, his voice authentic and predicated upon lived experience, observation, and honesty. I don't know anything about Iglesias's background or his personal history, but I know from reading Coyote Songs that he writes with authority and sincerity. There's no sugar coating his characters, and each come across with a natural rawness. Even those with idealism are shaded with the expectation of violence, of having to fight for what they believe in, knowing full well that they will be handed nothing nor given any quarter because of the color of their skin and the language on their tongue.

Iglesias spins a compact yet wickedly strong narrative through a revolving door of voices, cycling between his characters to share with us the darkness of their lives, and the minor bits of light that momentarily befall them. Not a word is wasted, his sentences punchy and pointed, driven into the reader with the practiced smoothness of a skilled craftsman.

Most important, though, is its fundamental honesty. Iglesias forgoes any kind of romanticizing of la frontera life, and he refrains from gilding the American promise in our time of political upheaval and turmoil. For those along the border, there is no escaping the threat of the orange idiot and the corrupt ICE who kidnap children to sell them to gangs and cartels. This book is raw and honest, and written so smoothly the pages turn themselves. Iglesias has plenty to say, and when he throws a punch, always properly justified here, it lands hard. There's a balletic grace to the violence, a poetic refinement to the writing, and a constant truth that sounds throughout. Coyote Songs is a book of and for our times, its author a vital voice we would do well to pay attention to.



View all my reviews

Review: Joe Ledger: The Missing Files by Jonathan Maberry [audiobook]

Joe Ledger: The Missing Files

By Jonathan Maberry






My rating: 3 of 5 stars


Joe Ledger: The Missing Files presents five short stories that exist in and around the events of Jonathan Maberry's first three Joe Ledger novels. As I've come to expect of Maberry, each story is competently written, filled with plenty of action and smart-ass wit, and the audiobook's narration by Ray Porter is, also as expected, a top-notch delivery.

The main sticking point here, though, is that the first few stories feel pretty disposable. Kicking off this collection is "Countdown," a wholly unnecessary prequel to the first book, Patient Zero. I'm not sure who this story is ultimately aimed at, frankly... If you read the first Joe Ledger book than you already know this story, which involves the raid on a Baltimore warehouse that ultimately earns Joe the attention of Mr. Church. If you haven't read Patient Zero, I'm not sure there's enough meat on this short story's bones to compel you to latch onto and stick around for the main course. Mostly, this story feels like stuff that was edited out of an earlier draft of Patient Zero and was re-purposed as a very short short story.

Zero Tolerance follows on the heels of Patient Zero, with Joe and his DMS squadron tracking down one of that book's surviving terrorists. It's a sharp little story, but, like "Countdown," it's not exactly indispensable. Ditto "Deep Dark," which has Ledger and his crew squaring off against terrorists in an underground vault. It's a neat story involving transgenic modification of human test subjects, written as a precursor to help tease The Dragon Factory. While I can't say it's redundant, and Maberry does enough things differently in this short story, "Deep Dark" also feels almost exactly like a particular encounter that occurs in The Dragon Factory.

It's not until the last two stories that we get to the really good stuff, and they present some original concepts as Maberry finds his feet with Ledger and company existing in short-form narratives. "Material Witness" sees our band of DMS operators taking a trip to Pine Deep, the setting of another Maberry series. I haven't read the Pine Deep trilogy yet, but there's enough teases of information in "Material Witness" and Church's presentation of the official cover story to pique my interest and move those books further up my To Be Read pile. This story is just flat-out cool, involving an author whose cutting edge thrillers have made him a wanted man by various terrorist factions. Maberry shades "Material Witness" with plenty of The X-Files inspired intrigue, enough so that I could practically hear Mark Snow's theme playing as the story's final denouement plays out. That's no bad thing at all, mind you.

"Dog Days" was my main reason for checking out The Missing Files, and it delivered exactly what I had hoped for. Ledger's second novel-length outing, The Dragon Factory, ended on a bit of a cliffhanger. I was immediately disappointed to discover all those loose ends wrapped up before book three, The Plague Factory, even started, and with Ledger suddenly having a canine partner to wage war alongside of. Well, all that connective material is told in this short story, which introduces Joe's new partner, Ghost, and puts him on the hunt for The Dragon Factory's escaped assassin. Maberry does a fantastic job condensing all of the fun interpersonal dramatics between Ledger and his comrades into this short, before launching into all the action. Given the way the second book ended, Joe is in a bit of a dark place; it has some necessarily sad overtones, but thankfully revenge is sweet and Maberry writes one hell of an action-packed finale.

Joe Ledger: The Missing Files is not an indispensable read, at times coming across more like deleted scenes from the core body of work, but it does tie up a few loose ends here and there, even if it sometimes feels repetitive of particular plot points covered in the full-length novels. "Material Witness" and "Dog Days" are the clear stand-outs here, providing enough story to satisfy. The rest are largely ancillary, recommended only for Ledger completionists.



View all my reviews

Review: Everything is Horrible Now by Edward Lorn

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


After reading and naming Edward Lorn's The Sound of Broken Ribs my number one read of 2017, it was high time I got around to reading more of the dude's stuff, his Bay's End books in particular. Over the course of 2018, I've been able to catch up on this series, with the exclusion of Fog Warning, and one thing that's immediately noticeable is just how much Lorn has grown as an author since Bay's End.

Everything is Horrible Now, the penultimate chapter in this All Things Lead to the End cycle, is his most adeptly written, and most complicated, work to date. If, as one character explains here, time is like a pretzel, then traveling through Bay's End is like peeling an onion. There are layers and layers of complexity here, and the further you dig beneath the skin the more things start to sting (and yes, over the course of this series as a whole, sometimes there are plenty of tears).

Right from the opening paragraph, you can sense that Everything is Horrible Now is something of a departure from previous Bay's End books. Through a highly omniscient third-person perspective, we get a rough inkling that there's a grandiosity to Lorn's scope here. Even while the previous two books have dabbled in varying degrees with cosmic horror, it's immediately clear that this particular element will have a significantly larger role to play in these here narrative underpinnings. And, hot damn, does it ever.

It starts off simply enough, if such a thing can be said of the Bay's End bishop, Father George, murdering his family before taking his own life. What follows, though, is a densely plotted narrative that twists its way through a large contingent of well-developed characters (some familiar), meditations on the nature of god and religion and the irreligious and the evil that religious fundamentalism can foment, and the structure of time itself. It's a doozy, simply put.

There's a lot going on here, and Lorn navigates the highways and byways of Bay's End with aplomb. I good and truly dug the exploration of one homosexual character's relationships and forced conversion therapy treatments, which reminded me a bit of the old British TV series The Prisoner. As an added bonus, for all all the goofballs out there still complaining that a gay character's sexuality must somehow be integral to the plot (despite this never being an issue with straight character's sexuality), well, Lorn sees you, has heard your silly complaints, and will now proceed to make your head explode.

Lorn gets a metric ton of stuff right in Everything is Horrible Now, and the book maintains a steady pace, giving up a narrative that is impossible to shake loose and escape from. Not everything is perfect, though, and a few elements feel slightly half-baked, such as a rape survivor and a ghost baby that never quite mesh, particularly in light of how the overarching narrative resolves itself. The book's ending itself is both an intellectual curiosity and a point of contention, one that I'm not quite able to fully resolve at this time.

As with the finale to The Bedding of Boys, Lorn has constructed one hell of a lead-in to the 2019 series finale in No Home for Boys that has me itching to see how this all wraps up. It puts some particular pieces on the game board that will no doubt have an incredible impact on what comes next, and what has come before, and I'm damn excited to see how it shakes out. On the other hand, without spoiling the particulars, it's also the type of ending I don't typically enjoy on the surface. It's not emotionally satisfying, but it is intellectually and philosophically intriguing and has me chomping at the bit to see what comes next.

I feel like I might not be able to adequately square away the finale to Everything is Horrible Now until we've reached the end of Bay's End proper. It's also a bit of a monkey wrench of an ending, in that I have absolutely no friggin' idea where Lorn's taking all this. Literally anything can happen at this point, which is certainly exciting, and I'm damn well gonna be here for it.

[Note: Although I purchased the signed/limited edition Thunderstorm hardcover of Everything is Horrible Now, this review is based on an electronic ARC of the forthcoming retail edition provided by the author.]



View all my reviews

Review: Hellhole: An Anthology of Subterranean Terror, edited by Lee Murray

Hellhole: An Anthology of Subterranean Terror

By Jonathan Maberry, Rena Mason, Michael McBride, Jake Bible, Sean Ellis, Kirsten Cross, Paul Mannering, S.D. Perry






My rating: 4 of 5 stars


Subterranean adventures are one of my favorite, must-read horror sub-genres (arctic terror is #1 and if anybody knows of any anthologies in this vein, or is planning on curating one, hit me up because I want to read the hell out of that!), so when New Zealand author Lee Murray announced she was editing Hellhole: An Anthology of Subterranean Terror and David Wood over at Adrenaline Press (and author of the Dane Maddock adventures) offered me an ARC, I immediately jumped at the opportunity to read this bad boy. A quick glance at the list of contributing authors lets you know straight away that you're in good, capable hands.

As Christian Bentulan's cover art suggests, Hellhole is a militaristic anthology, and the stories collected within follow similar beats of a military unit or similar such government agency finding their way into the bowels of the earth and encountering things they previously only could have imagined.

Jonathan Maberry kicks off Hellhole with a brand-new Joe Ledger novella set in the aftermath of his latest release, Deep Silence. I'm a late-comer to the Ledger series, but what I've read of it so far has made me a very quick convert and it's become a fast favorite of mine. "All The Devils Are Here" sets a damn high bar for the authors that follow and it's the perfect opener to this anthology (however, if, like me, you're not entirely caught up on Ledger's main book series, there is at least one big spoiler regarding a significant plot point from Deep Silence, so fair warning).

Blessedly, the writers tasked with the unfortunate challenge of following in Maberry's footsteps are wholly up to the task. Michael McBride, a favorite of mine going back to his DarkFuse days with his two Snowblind novellas and, more recently, his Unit 51 series for Kensington, delivers a top-notch bio-thriller with his "A Plague of Locusts." I can always count on McBride to deliver the goods, and his weird science run amok story here is no exception. It's a Crichton-esque horror story that reaches back to the US’s biological and chemical weapons research during WWII, and it has a good bit of environmental commentary, too, as all that crap dumped into the earth wreaks havoc in the present day.

Hellhole serves up a pretty wide variety of locales with the stories globe-hopping all over the place. J.H. Moncrieff takes us to Russia in "The Offspring," a short story nicely steeped in speculation over the Dyatlov legend, an incident that also served as inspiration for her Return to Dyatlov Pass creature-feature novel earlier this year. Aaron Sterns takes us into an underground Australian drug lab in "Black Lung," before Jake Bible takes us into the heart of the Amazon to fight a Ginormous Hell Snake. Paul Mannering's "Where The Sun Does Not Shine" provides a nice break from the book's predominately Earthly exploits by venturing into a hostile foreign world. It's not exactly a groundbreaking story (ha ha) with its highly familiar and obvious Aliens meets Tremors-inspired mashup, and is perhaps a bit too straight-forward of a run and gun adventure, but it sure is fun.

And fun is the name of the game here! Lee Murray did a bang-up job assembling a broad range of talents well-known for their prowess in crafting smart, highly entertaining military horror thrillers and lets them off the hook to dig some deep, dark, dank holes to explore. The end result provides plenty of action, mayhem, and more than a few interesting creatures and speculative terrors. Hellhole is a remarkably strong anthology that hits the (under)ground running and doesn't let up.

[Note: I received an advance reading copy of this title from the publisher, Adrenaline Press.]



View all my reviews