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Wednesday reviews round-up for 24th February
Posted by Paul Raven on February 24th, 2010 at 16:20
Yeah, I know, this is a little later than usual… but I’ve had a busy morning. And hey, at least it’s on the right day of the week!
Anyway, blather aside, it’s reviews time here at PS Towers, so let’s see what we’ve got in the virtual mailbag…
First of all, Black Static‘s Peter Tennant tucks in to two recent titles in their latest issue (print only, web-heads!), with high praise for Rick Hautala‘s Reunion:
There are no mixed feelings about this novella [... It’s] pretty much good enough reason to slaughter a metaphorical fatted calf or two. My only problem is that it’s ruddy awkward to review without giving away the main plot twist. I can’t even see a way to touch on the theme of the book, which is so eloquently pinned down by F. Paul Wilson in the afterword (and there’s a reason it’s an after- rather than a foreword), without slipping in a horrendous plot spoiler.
[...]Reunion is perhaps more SF than horror, but it’s a beautifully written story that manages to draw from the deepest wellsprings of human emotion to deliver a tale that is rich with melancholy and sadness for lost opportunities and wasted lives, that manages to be minatory and yet without any real sense of menace, no monster but life itself. It kept me reading to the very end in anticipation of how it would all turn out, even though I felt I already knew. Yes, there is a predictable element to the narrative (perhaps ‘feel of the inevitable’ would be a more accurate description) but that isn’t really a concern, as the tale’s chief value and appeal doesn’t lie in any plot twist, but with the things it enables Hautala to say about the human condition, of how so often in our lives wisdom speaks in a vacuum.
If you haven’t read Hautala before, start here. Start now.
That’s about as unambiguous as it gets, no? Tennant also feels good about Cast A Cold Eye by Murphy and Shunn:
This short novella does many things right. For starters, its setting is immaculately captured on the page, with a real sense of rural Nebraska in 1921 coming over thanks to a wealth of tiny details, such as the ins and outs of photography or a look inside the house of a wealthy widow. There’s a strong emotional grounding too, for both Luke and the society in which he is placed, an aching sense of despair undercut with a feeling that perhaps the worst is past, so people can look to the future with hope, an optimism confirmed in its denouement. Characterisation is spot on, with no-one who can be considered either evil or a criminal, just ordinary men and woman with all the flaws and virtues that implies.
[...]
The supernatural side of the story is suitably understated, so that we believe but also take on board the possibility that the ghosts could only exist inside the hearts and minds of the people who see them. With a subtext suggesting that the spectral world is just another aspect of life, wishing us neither good nor evil, but just there, a case could be made for Luke as the ‘I see ghosts’ boy from Sixth Sense picked up, rather like a reverse Dorothy, and put down in rural Nebraska, but that might be stretching things. In any event, I thoroughly enjoyed this book and recommend it without reservation.
That’s two in the bag, then. Next up, Gnostalgia investigates The Night Cache by Andy Duncan, calling it…
… a diminutive 42-page ghost story that is told from the perspective of a young lesbian woman named Jenny. Jenny is a cashier at “Yarns Ignoble” (Oh come on Andy!) who is looking for love. She meets Destiny Creech, a young geocacher, and the two become a couple.
One does not need to be a prophet to anticipate what will happen to Destiny. I guess that was Destiny’s destiny. After Destiny’s quietus, Jenny is led on a series of geocaches and codes. Is Destiny speaking from the grave?
Nice cerebral ghost story with a cool ending.
Horror Drive-In‘s Andrew Monge seems quite keen, too:
The thing that jumped out at me as I read THE NIGHT CACHE was how well Duncan captured the personalities and voices of the two girls. Destiny is portrayed as a free-spirit, always full of energy and on the lookout for her next adventure, whereas Jenny is left in awe of her new friend and tries her best to keep up as she’s swept along. Despite the girls’ brief time together, their relationship and conversations felt authentic and were enjoyable to read.
The other aspects I liked were the descriptions of geocaching and the various cryptography methods used to find the treasure. At various points in the story, Duncan shows the reader charts, codes, etc to illustrate what the girls are analyzing along the way. These sections get the reader more grounded in the girls’ world, and even allows him or her to take a crack at breaking the codes.
Mass Movement Magazine‘s Jim Dodge Jr., however, could only get beyond the fact that the book features (gasp!) lesbian sex for long enough to describe it as…
… a little bit ghostly, a little bit erotic and quite a bit of fun to read.
Mister Dodge does better with details for less titillating fare, however, with the following tantalising summary of Scott William Carter‘s Web of Black Widows:
A small town sheriff wanders onto a scene where one man is surrounded by two dead bodies and there is blood in the surf. The lone survivor is holding a shotgun. This sounds pretty straight-forward doesn’t it? Well, it’s not. It’s a little bit crazier than that.
Steven Langdon is a tattoo artist running from his grief. When he stops to eat at a diner in the middle of nowhere a pregnant housewife approaches him asking for a tattoo. She’s willing to pay whatever he asks for just one little spider on her belly. He says no. He tells her that he can’t, that he doesn’t do that anymore. She pleads. She begs. Finally he agrees, telling her to disappear when he’s done. Instead…well instead of leaving as she’s asked she becomes one of the three main characters in this sordid tale.
You may ask, who do the dead bodies belong to? Who is left holding the shotgun? Who’s the third person on the beach? You’ll have to read the story Scott William Carter has woven for us. It’s a shame to waste such a well spun yarn.
And he even has a soft spot in his heart that only Scott Edelman‘s zombie stories, as collected in What Will Come After, can truly touch:
The stories collected here are sad. They’re full of tragedy and despair. Though these tales are chock-full of survivors they still manage to be really, completely…well…sad. I can’t say I’ve enjoyed anything zombie-related as much as Scott Edelman’s newest PS Publishing release but I will say I needed to make sure I got some sunshine when I was finished. He really pulled the old heartstrings with this book and I loved every minute of it!
Zombies pulling on your heartstrings… now that’d make for an interesting orchestra. :)
Last but not least, The Mad Hatter joins the chorus of praise for Beth Bernobich‘s Ars Memoriae, calling it…
… a subtle Science Fiction story, which falls into place with an unexpectedly sweet and romantic ending. Adrian’s spy tactics are well thought-out, but the story meanders a little too much during his initial investigations causing a very slow start. Once another pivotal character is introduced the speed bumps even out to a strong and climatic ending. There is a steampunk/dieselpunk aspect, but it is little exploited in this novelette for me to get a grasp on, but there is quite a cool device that turns up at one point.
Fans of Kage Baker and other time twisters should definitely take note of Ars Memoriae and its associated stories.
And that’s all the reviews for this week, I’m afraid, unless there are some that my intertube spymonkeys have failed to inform me of… stupid monkeys. Always gossiping behind my back. Feh.
Remember to click on the cover art to be taken directly to the catalogue page for the book in question, or just pop over to the PS webstore to have a browse.
And don’t forget that we’ve capped our postage rates, and that all pre-orders go postage-free during February – so only four days left!
Have you read a PS Publishing book recently? If so, let us know so we can link you back from here!