Whether it's Fiction or Non-Fiction, Romance or Fantasy, Horror or Mystery, Science Fiction or a Day in the Life, all things literary are welcome here!
This is a space where we can
- Chat about books, likes and dislikes!
- Drop reviews or ask questions.
- Share faves, and share titles on the TBR!
- Leave recommendations for next-reads!
Also, feel very free to drop me suggestions too for books that you'd like to see in the Library! What new books should we have on the shelves?
It's the Season for ghosts and ghoulies and things that go bump in the night!
What are some of your favourite spooky stories to get into the shivery mood! Classics like Poe, or Stoker's Dracula or Shelly's Frankenstein? Or more modern horrors, hmm??
Two Haunted fright-faves of mine are -
The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson, and Hell House by Richard Matheson! Both similar in that they involve a team investigating some famously haunted houses… But what they find, and the revelations that await are very deferent (and both bring plenty of nightmares!).
Share some of your goosebump go-to's!
George RR Martin! For most now, this name means Games and Thrones and Dragons!
But he actually has another series that has been running since 1987! The Wild Cards series! Edited, overseen and mostly masterminded by Martin, this series explores an America hit by an alien virus in 1946 - killing most, twisting and mutating many (jokers), and… granting super-powers to a few (aces). It's a very different history, with real super-heroes and real super-villains at large! And let me tell you, it's not all justice league fun and avengers games - this is a gritty, violent, and intense series.
Full House is book 30 in the Wild Cards series and it's very good - but these disclaimers for the unwary:
1. This book is NOT the usual Wild Cards "mosaic novel" - it's an anthology.
2. This book is NOT new-reader friendly.
So, in turn -
1. "Full House" is a collection of ten separate short stories set within the Wild Cards continuity. In the scheme of the series, this book is numbered as volume 30, but that's a bit deceptive. Originally appearing on the publisher's website (torpublishinggroup.com) between 2012 and 2019, the stories in this book key into the various coinciding WC volumes to greater and lessor degrees, from 2009's Suicide Kings to 2016's High Stakes. This is the second WC story-collection, after 2002's Deuces Down, and like that volume, all these stories are complete within themselves and stand alone - they don't weave together, there is no over-all narrative.
The ten stories are all very good, are all solidly told, strike different tones and in just about every case give deeper insight into supporting characters (in the case of the final story, even introduce a new character). Croyd Crenson, an old fave, and Rusty Gunderson, a more recent fave, make strong appearances in two each of the ten tales, much to my happiness. I enjoyed each story, no weak points among the ten, and enjoyed the different moods and directions, from mystery, horror, humor, and emotional slice of life.
2. Full House is, in a way, a retrospective. The stories comprising the book were current to the moment when they originally appeared (2012-2019), but collected now, they reflect backwards over the past ten years of the WC series. They deal with characters and events current then, fresh then, new then. And because they are, after all, short stories, they move quickly, tell their tale and are done. Meaning - there's no catch-up for a brand new reader, no who's-who, no "Previously in the Wild Cards" recap to get everybody up to speed - you either know what's going on and what events characters are referencing, or you don't. If you don't, you will be lost. Sorry. (There are several fan websites and wikis that can get you up to speed and fill in any gaps.)
Adding to the above, oddly, the stories are not presented here in chronological order, so things are jumbled about even more continuity-wise (in one story, the character Drummer Boy suffers a serious, life-altering tragedy, and in the next, he's out on the road with his band). This particularly strikes me as a weird publishing decision - why the random shuffle, guys? Wouldn't it have made more sense and been just as easy to stack the deck in order? It wouldn't have done a lot, but it might have done a little, to help new readers have a little consistency.
In summation - Full House gives us ten really good Wild Cards stories, and makes these ten available in print-form for the first time (there are plenty more, something like 23 WC stories have graced the Tor website, so more books like this one will likely follow). Each story takes us a little bit deeper into the lives of aces and jokers from the past ten years, and illuminates some corners of the Wild Cards world. For those in the know, a nice addition. But tricky as a starting point…
Have you read this book? Get it here in the Library! Do you agree with the review above, or disagree? Share your thoughts!
Studio cheapie AIP knocked out the movie "How To Make a Monster" back in 1958, about a murderous makeup artist using chemically-treated masks and hypnosis to turn two teens into killer creatures and take his revenge on those who'd rejected him. Sound a little familiar? The author here is of an age where, like me, he could have caught this flick on a midnight "Creature Feature" TV show growing up. Now, I'm not saying he swiped the plot from this old film- there's so little plot to Horror Story, that even if he'd tried, he came away empty-handed.
What we have with this novel is a one-punchline shaggy-dog story, moving at the pace of a dragged cinderblock with no real character development, no plot to really speak of, and no real point to the story. It feels like the author was doing whatever he wanted, whenever he wanted and grinning at himself for being so hip and sooo meta: People with a conveniently "cursed mask" use it create a vengeance golem by making a movie about people with a conveniently "cursed mask" using it to create a vengeance golem (that goes stab-happy at one teen party and then turns on its creators, woohoo).
The novel is half first-person narration, half movie script, cutting back and forth and paralleling each other. The narrated portion is apparently an audiobook spoken by the original 1993 movie's last surviving cast/crew member (who portrayed the Thin Kid who becomes the "monster" in the film), ruminating on making the movie then, the weird things that happened, and reflecting on the current reboot. Except it's not really. Maybe it's just an internal monologue - I mean, how likely is it you're going to be recording your process of killing and eating a guy while you are killing and eating a guy? I know-I know, unreliable narrator... But you have to have some grounding to depart from or all you end up with is meaningless game-playing. Oh wait, that is all we end up with here...
I'm not clear oh how this script is to be factored in to the overall work because it's not a part of the "audiobook" even as it cuts in and out of the text and interrupts the narrative flow of the book more and more. Internal clues suggest it to be the script version posted online by character Valentina in 2008, just before TK narrates in his "audiobook" how she cuts off his pinky (again), how he then assists her in her suicide (for which admission he would likely face legal action), and then tells us how he swallows his severed digit (again). So this script is rendered "unreliable" too. Once more, if the idea was to produce the worst kind of first-year film student pretentious, over-written and meaningless pablum - mission accomplished. And may I point out - having the script itself and the characters say several times "This movie is not for everyone", and "Oh, I know this sounds pretentious", does not let the book off the hook.
So what have we got? Not characters, not plot, not meaning. We do have ideas, sure, all just kind of swirling around but failing to coalesce into anything tangible. We have a minor mystery involving how the rest of the original cast/crew died since we know ol' TK is the only one still living… But this never really pays off, because without meaningful characterization, there's no sense of tragedy or loss when these cutouts die. We have a last ten-pages reveal that just had me blinking and going “eeeh…”
I want to close with some positives and the first is about the cover - the front cover is pretty neat; good visual appeal, creepy vibe, got me to pick the book up. The second is - Horror Movie could probably work pretty well as an actual movie; in the style of a documentary about this lost film, with cut-ins of the original scenes and footage. Everything that falls flat in text would probably work in a visual medium. Lastly - some recommendations for similar novels that work this kind of material more effectively: A Child Across the Sky by Jonathan Carroll, Night Film by Marisha Pessl, and The Final Girl Support Group by Grady Hendrix.
Have you read this book? Get it here in the Library! Do you agree with the review above, or disagree? Share your thoughts!
Check out some recent Graphic Novels added to our Popular Reading/New Arrivals collection!
Do you think graphic novels count as Literature? Do these kinds of books belong in a library? Share your thoughts why yes or why no.
(Personally, I'm a big fan, but that's just me. I like the way the words and the pictures work together to communicate the story in a unique and dynamic way.)
