Monsters of Horror Book Group (Hackensack) - 2010 Books Read Thread

[Phil]

This is the Thread for Books Read by the Monsters of Horror Book Group in 2010:


DEAD & GONE, Sookie 9....................Charlaine Harris......................11/04/10
A GIRL'S GUIDE TO ... MONSTERS.....Hughes & Greenberg...............09/02/10
AUDREY'S DOOR..............................Sarah Langan.........................08/05/10
BITE MARKS Vampire Testament 1.....Terence Taylor........................07/06/10
CTHULHU'S REIGN...........................Darrell Schweitzer..................06/03/10
WORLD WAR Z.................................Max Brooks............................05/06/10
MONSTER........................................A Lee Martinez.......................04/01/10
DEAD & LOVING IT...........................MaryJanice Davidson...............03/04/10
NEVERMORE / Supernatural..............Keith DeCandido.....................02/04/10
VICIOUS CIRCLE, Felix Castor 2..........Mike Carey.............................01/07/10

[Phil]

The following accounts are reprinted with permission from THE STARSHIP EXPRESS Copyright 2010 Philip J De Parto.


DEAD & GONE, Sookie 9
This is the ninth book in the author’s Sookie Stackhouse series and is more plot driven than most. Four important events occur: a couple of supporting characters are killed off, the shapechanger community follows the lead of vampires and make their existence public knowledge, Sookie finds herself betrothed to a vampire, and the world of faerie is sealed off from the mortal realm. Unfortunately, Harris is juggling so many balls that her characters are less engaging than in earlier books.

A GIRL'S GUIDE TO GUNS & MONSTERS
The book is an original anthology of 13 stories edited by Martin Greenberg and Kerrie Hughes. Many of the stories featured new adventures by ongoing characters utilized by the authors. These included two of the best yarns, "No Matter Where You Go" by Tanya Huff and "Elizabeth and Anna's Big Adventure" by Jeanne Stein, as well as the worst, "Jiang Shi" by Elizabeth Vaughan. Also worth mentioning is "Heart of Ash" by Jim Hines.

AUDREY'S DOOR
The novel is a contemporary horror novel set in a haunted building with an odd group of tenants in New York City. The obvious comparisons are ROSEMARY'S BABY by Ira Levin and Shirley Jackson's THE HAUNTING OF HILL HOUSE. While not of the classic status of those two works, the book is a solid piece of writing with intelligent plotting and characters you care about.

BITE MARKS Vampire Testament 1
The novel is set in New York City at the end of 1986 and start of 1987. The code of conduct which has allowed vampires to co-exist with humans has been broken by a rouge vampire who is creating an army of vampire slaves to do his bidding. Unless he is stopped, they will create too much havoc for the more responsible vampires to cover up. But how do you reason with an infant vampire?

CTHULHU'S REIGN
The premise of the work is that the hostile, godlike aliens who ruled the world long before the birth of humankind have returned. Fade to black for the human race. That said, some of the writers have created interesting, imaginative tales of dread and doom.

The collection's first story, Ian Watson's "The Lurker in the Cemetery," is the best. An international collection of tourists are in an Italian cemetery when reality changes and legions of Cthulhus of varying sizes materialize on the Earth. Two things make this a powerful yarn. The first is that the group is clever and resourceful. Unfortunately, they are trapped in a cemetery with a man-sized Cthulhu. Clever and resourceful are not going to get you out of this. The other is how Watson uses the CERN collider, fractals and other bits of science to make his story work. Lovecraft was well grounded in the science of his time, and it's good to see others carry the torch. For example, Richard Lupoff relocates Yuggoth from Pluto to an anti-matter planet at 90 degrees to the solar plane. Will Murray's "What Brings the Void," Darrell Schweitzer's "Ghost Dancing," Brian Stableford's "The Holocaust of Ecstasy" and especially Matt Cardin's wonderfully blasphemous, "The New Pauline Corpus," are all worth mentioning.

WORLD WAR Z
Mel Brooks' son gives a clever account of the war against a worldwide zombie outbreak. The book presents its story as a series of short, first person accounts of the crisis by those who survived, from its outbreak in the hinterlands of China (shades of the Black Plague!) to the American counteroffensive. The speakers include government officials, soldiers, and just plain folks: Americans, Chinese, Russians, Israelis, South Africans, Iranians, and more. One touch I particularly enjoyed was the accidental nuclear war between Iran and Pakistan, a war no one wanted, but which evolved through a series of misunderstandings. War is like that. So is life. This book is strongly recommended.

MONSTER
Monster is both the title of the book and the name of the point of view character, a sloppy working class guy who works in pest control of the supernatural variety. Monster is no villain, but he is not a particularly nice guy, either. His girlfriend is a succubus and his sidekick is an origami inhabited by a visiting consciousness from a higher dimension. He becomes involved in the affairs of a young lady, Judy, who unknowingly carries the fate of the universe in her hands.

The most interesting thing about this fantasy is the explanation of magic. Magic is all around us, but most people are unable to perceive it because the part of the brain active in early childhood which allows us to see enchantment decays as we age. Without this perception mechanism, the subconscious rationalizes any mystical experiences or simply blinds us to the supernatural. Psychics and similar people have a vestigial remnant of this part of the brain, and a few people like Monster and other pest controllers, possess it in its entirety. Not profound, but worth reading.

DEAD & LOVING IT
The collection consists of four paranormal romance tales about werewolves, vampires, and other creatures. The stories are "Santa Claws," "Monster Love," "There's No Such Thing as a Werewolf," and "A Fiend in Need."

The weakest story in the set is the first, "Santa Claws," whose characters are not particularly memorable an whose supernatural element seems almost an afterthought. The contrast between Claws and the next story, "Monster Love," is jolting. "Love" has a sharply drawn vampire and werewolf as its leads. The final two yarns are also good, and "Fiend" introduces a werewolf into the author's Betsy, the Vampire Queen universe. As a fan of the series, I enjoyed seeing the Betsy cast from a different point of view. All in all, not a bad collection once you get past the first story.

NEVERMORE / Supernatural
There are two plot threads in the novel. The first concerns the haunting of members of a very bad heavy metal band by a former groupie. The second is a series of murders by someone reenacting deaths from Edgar Allen Poe stories.

Reviewers slammed this book on Amazon.com, but we enjoyed it. I especially liked the scenes set in the Park in Rear bar where metal fan Dean Winchester not only has to endure listening to an untalented band, but also has to keep a straight face to its adoring groupies.

VICIOUS CIRCLE, Felix Castor 2
This is the second book in the gritty fantasy noir series featuring exorcist Felix Castor. Carey is able to pull off a nice variant on the tough P.I. because of the setting, but a simpler plot would have been more effective.