Monsters of Horror Book Group (Hackensack) - 2007 Books Read Thread

[Phil]

This is the Thread for Books Read by the Monsters of Horror Book Group in 2007:


DEAD & DATELESS, Lil 2.........................Kimberly Raye..........................11/01/07
UNSHAPELY THINGS, Grey 1...................Mark Del Franco.......................10/04/07
BUSTIN'...............................................Minda Webber..........................09/06/07
POWERS OF DETECTION.........................Dana Stabenow........................08/02/07
WATCHERS IN THE NIGHT......................Jenna Black..............................07/05/07
HAGS, SIRENS & OTHER BAD...................Denise Little............................06/07/07
I'M THE VAMPIRE, THAT'S WHY..............Michele Bardsley.....................05/03/07
THE WAVE.............................................Walter Mosley..........................04/05/07
JUST ONE SIP, Anthology.........................Uncredited..............................03/01/07
UNDEAD & UNRETURNABLE, Betsy 4.......MaryJanice Davidson.................02/01/07
HORRORWEEN.......................................Al Sarrantonio.........................01/04/07

[Phil]

The following accounts are reprinted with permission from THE STARSHIP EXPRESS Copyright 2007 Philip J De Parto.


DEAD & DATELESS
D&D is the second book in a series begun in DEAD END DATING. The heroine is Lil Marchette, a vampire who runs a dating service which includes some discriminating clients. She is faced with two problems in this book: securing 27 tall, dark and handsome men to mate with a group of female werewolves on short notice, and clearing herself from a murder charge.

The author has some nice ideas--werewolves only ovulate during a lunar eclipse and only macho men excite them; most vampires are "made" (turned by biting) but some are "born" (they cross over upon their first sexual encounter) and look down on those who are made. However, the conventions of the paranormal romance have Ms Raye leave these ideas in the background while she concentrates on resolving the coupling of the aristocratic born vampire with the hunky blue collar made vampire. It's an okay read, but nothing special.

UNSHAPELY THINGS
The book is a present day urban fantasy noir set in Boston. Seventy years ago a rift in the multiverse shifted a large number of faerie tale creatures in our reality, and both sides have been struggling to adjust ever since. The hero is Connor Grey, a druid whose magical abilities were crippled following a battle with a terrorist elf. He now works as a consultant for the Boston Police Department.

The series owes a lot to the popularity of Jim Butcher’s The Dresden Files, among others. One thing which helps make this book distinctive is that although the hero has a great deal of magical knowledge, his actual power is very weak. During the course of the book, he slowly realizes that he was a real jerk when he was a powerful mage and has not gotten much better since his accident. He decides he must do better. This is a good read and I plan to give the pending sequel a try.

BUSTIN'
BUSTIN' is a paranormal romance by the author of THE RELUCTANT MISS VAN HELSING which we read and enjoyed earlier in the year. Although not up to the level of that book, BUSTIN' is a pleasant enough representative of its sort. In this case, the romance is between the heads of two rival ghost-, zombie-, whatever-bustin' agencies.

The author has a lot of fun with puns and other lighthearted wordplay, but the book actually works best when it operates as a straight dark fantasy work. The scenes of two mixed teams of busters', vampires, and werewolves hunting a nigh-unkillable Gorgon in abandoned subway tunnels were the highlights of the novel.

POWERS OF DETECTION
Phil, Wanda and Pam read the book and considered it a better than average collection. Fully half of the stories got three thumbs up and only one received zero thumbs. Two of the stories, “The Nightside, Needless to Say” and “Fairy Dust,” were by favorites of group. The Simon Green story focuses on a minor character, Larry Oblivion, who hasn’t let being dead deter him from running his detective agency. “Fairy Dust” by Charlaine Harris is a Sookie Stackhouse tale. The mind reading bar maid is hired by her fairie godmother, Claudine, to discover the killer of Claudine’s sister. Although it’s a Sookie yarn, most of the action deals with the fairies. We all liked both stories.

The other three thumbers were “The Death of Clickclickwhistle” by Mike Doogan, “The Sorcerer’s Assassin” by Sharon Shinn, “Cold Spell” by Donna Andrews, and “The Price” by Anne Bishop.

“Clickclickwhistle” is the volume’s lone science fiction tale and reads like an old ASTOUNDING yarn by someone like Eric Frank Russell with its clever humans, weird aliens, and corny humor. Think “Alamalagoosa” crossed with “ST: Journey to Babel.”

“The Sorcerer’s Assassin” features a crotchety old headmistress of a school for magic taught by a number of disliked mages. It’s only a wonder that someone didn’t start trying to kill them sooner.

A sneezing wizard and his assistant are called upon to solve a locked room murder in “Cold Spell.” Like “Whistle” and “Assassin,” the murder investigation is leavened with humor.

“The Price” presented us with a bit of a dilemma. It had its faults as a mystery, but the background of the society the author created was so gripping that we all want to go out and buy her novels to find out more about this world. Thus, three thumbs up. As I said, it was a good book.

WATCHERS IN THE NIGHT
The book posits an posits a society of two types of undead. The Killers are the traditional vampires, cold, powerful, merciless and viewing humans as prey. They are opposed by the Guardians, humans drained by Killers but who have not surrendered to the Hunger by acquiring an addiction to human blood. They are not individually as powerful as the Killers, but can work as a team to dispatch the Killers, who are sociopathic individuals.

I found the supporting character, Drake, to be the book's most interesting cast member. Drake is a Killer, but he is warily tolerated by the Guardians because he has aided them in the past, and because of his choice of victims. Late in the book (page 289) he explains:

"It's like this, Gray--you can only control what you can control. I can't control my need to kill. I can control WHO I kill, and to a certain extent how often. Montgomery couldn't control his need to kill either. But he could have controlled his choice of victim, and he could have controlled the way he went about it. He didn't have to rape them. He didn't have to drive stakes through Guardian hearts. He didn't have to try to destroy the Guardians from within. And he certainly didn't have to try to create more Killers.

"If I could live on lamb's blood and milk, then I would. But I can't, and I refuse to wallow in guilt over something I can't control. Perhaps that's a lesson you should look toward learning."

HAGS, SIRENS & OTHER BAD GIRLS OF FANTASY
There were not many name authors in the 20 story collection although two of them -- C S Friedman and Rosemary Edghill -- are past guests of the club. The Bad Grils include Lilith, Medea, Pandora, Isis, Hera, sirens, harpies, a valkerie, and a wicked stepmother, and most of them -- "Black Annie" by Jean Rabe being the obvious exception -- are not so much wicked as misunderstood or suffering bad press.

I read aloud the two stories I most enjoyed. The first was Christine York's "Sharper than a Serpent's Tooth," the true story of what happened in that Fairie Tale by Cinderella's evil step mother. The other was "Mother of Monsters" by Greg Beatty about Hades' punishment of Echidna, the mother of Cerberus, Chimera, the Hydra and other creatures of Greek myth. I also read a passage of Peter Orullian's "Lilith." The stories were well received.

I'M THE VAMPIRE, THAT'S WHY
The book is a mixed bag--it has some really cool ideas, but the story never really grabs you. The heroine is single mom Jessica Matthews, one of ten women who were slain by a vampire in a single night in the dying town of Broken Heart, Oklahoma. Only 10% of a vampire's victims normally rise, but 9 out of 10 of these ladies successfully survive the Turning. This is because the vampire in question is an escaped patient of the Consortium, a group of good vampires and humans who have been trying to cure the Taint, a blood disease which is ravaging the vampire community.

There are lots of interesting ideas here: tying vampires into Celtic myth, the slow death of the lycanthrope community because so few pups survive childbirth, and putting humans on special diets before feeding time so that a vampire can still indulge her taste for chocolate, for example. There are also some nicely constructed scenes like Jessica and a friend talking about cheating exes on the back porch, or her daughter's afterward, or "Jessica's Glossary: Stuff No One Told Me So I Figured It Out On My Own, Damn You All."

There are enough good things heer to give it a mildly favorable review, but I just wish the writing was more involving.

THE WAVE
The book is mystery writer Walter Mosely's third science fiction effort in recent years, joining genre works BLUE LIGHT and FUTURELAND. Phil and Moira had read the book and had widely different opinions on its merits.

Phil admired the writing and characterization, but disliked the plot, stating that "where the book was good, it was not science fiction, and where it was science fiction, it was not good." Moira strongly disagreed. She felt that the genre tropes were handled well, and particularly enjoyed it as a very strong embodiment of a philosophical/theological concept of dealing with resurrection.

JUST ONE SIP, Anthology
The collection consisted of "Viva Las Vampires" by Jennifer Ashley, "Bring Out Your Dead" by Katie Mc Alister, and "Lucy and the Crypt Casanova" by Minda Webber.

The best of the trio is the Minda Webber yarn. This is a stand alone tale by the author of THE RELUCTANT MISS VAN HELSING, a book the group enjoyed last year. The setting is New Orleans; the heroine is Lucy Campbell, host of the TWILIGHT ZONE, a Jerry Springeresque cable show focusing on the antics of vampires, werewolves, and other supernatural types. But Lucy knows that she is destined for greater things, after all, she was a weather girl at a Texas television news show before coming to the Big Easy. Hijinks ensue when she begins to investigate a series of murders, a case her hunky ex-boyfriend, a vampire and a detective, is already pursuing.

UNDEAD & UNRETURNABLE, Betsy 4
Although this is not the author's best book, the series continues to be entertaining and leaving us wanting more.

HORRORWEEN
This is the third book of a series set in the town of Orangefield, New York featuring the demonic menace, Samhain, but is pretty much a stand alone. Several sections had appeared as short stories and did not really mesh as an integrated novel.