The Haunted Air

I always know I'm in for a good read when I pick up a "Repairman Jack" novel. The Haunted Air by F. Paul Wilson is the 6th in the series about a guy who lives in present day New York City and specializes in fixing things for people, especially things that no one else can fix. Just about any job is doable if approached the right way. Jack lives off the grid: no Social Security Number, no bank accounts, no tax returns, numerous aliases and a great sense of handing out his own brand of justice.

One of the things I love about this series is that it combines several of my favorite genres. These novels are sort of mystery/thriller novels with a good dose of detective sleuthing thrown in and as we go along, more and more horror as well. Each book in the series has a stand-alone situation (or situations) for Jack to help with but there is also an overall arc that ties them all together. The author combines these Repairman Jack novels (of which he has stated there will be 15 in all) with his other works in the "Adversary Cycle" to form an overall "hidden history of the world." Readers certainly need not read all of his works to appreciate each individual novel and, in fact, according to the author's website, even if you did read every word of his numerous works, they have just barely scratched the surface of this hidden history.

This novel continues that bigger story arc in fine style as we really start getting into the back story of "The Otherness". This is the science-fiction/horror aspect of what is happening in the background and is just absolutely fascinating to me. Jack has been told that nothing in his life is coincidence and we really see that played out in this novel. Seemingly unrelated jobs of helping a couple of brothers who run a fake psychic/spiritualist operation to watching another client's brother for three evenings in a row to keep him from harm are, in fact, intimately connected. This novel has everything packed in, from fake spiritualists to real ghosts, from fisticuffs to gunplay, from ritual sacrifices to Jack's girlfriend really getting into the action. And oh yes, she may be pregnant which plays with Jack's conscience...will he be able to continue living off the grid if he is to become a father?

Great characters, great plotting, great mysteries and intrigue, and a killer "universe" make Repairman Jack one of the greatest series I've ever read, especially the further along I travel on this road.

Night Chills

Night Chills by Dean Koontz, was one of the books given to me by a co-worker who knew I "liked to read". As I've mentioned before on this blog, Dean Koontz is mostly a hit-or-miss author for me but I tend to like his earlier works better, probably because they are usually more of a straight forward horror story than his later work.

This novel is a bit dated, having been written in the 1970s and concerns the phenomenon of subliminal advertising, taken to the extreme where it can actually be used for mind control. Three people of varying backgrounds and motivations get together to coordinate an experiment on an isolated "company town" where the small, controlled population is subjected to the experimental technique. If the experiment works, the three stand to become all powerful (and all rich). The title of the book comes from the side effect that the experimentees get: night chills similar to flu-like symptoms.

The book was a quick read, and a page-turner. The bad guys, particularly the main inventor of the mind control technique, were far more developed than the good guys who fight back, making it a bit difficult to root for them. And, I must say, there is some pretty extreme graphic sexual scenes in this novel, mostly having to do with the main inventor abusing his new found power to get back at women for all of the grief he suffered in his youth.

In summary, not a bad Koontz novel, but not ranking at the top either.

Frankenstein's Monster

Imagine if you were given the task of writing the sequel to Frankenstein, one of the all-time great classics. You'd want to do several things to make sure and get it right: 1) you would need to develop a great plot that is loyal to the original and is "necessary" in order for the book to have any value to the reader, 2) you would need to provide the right style of writing, the right "voice" so that it would meld well with the original, sounding much like Mary Shelley's voice, and 3) not have the whole thing sound too classic because you don't want today's readers to be bored...it would still need a fairly quick pace to keep the reader interested. On top of all of that you would still need to do all of the things that make for a good novel; i.e. great multi-dimensional characterization, interesting settings, involved plot, etc etc.

Sound impossible? Perhaps, but Susan Heyboer O'Keefe has done remarkably well in writing Frankenstein's Monster. Especially when one considers this is her first effort for the adult market, having only published children's books before. I took a look at her website and found her to be a real hoot; I suppose you'd have to be in order to tackle this particular novel. Most of the book is told as diary entries from the monster himself. It takes place ten years after the end of the first novel but we learn everything about what happened after the first one ends. There is more than just plot and action here as the monster struggles with his very nature, trying to find his place in the world. He takes quite a journey as he is pursued by Walton who has vowed to his friend Victor Frankenstein to finish off the monster. Along the way he encounters several intriguing new characters and plenty of horrifying and desperate moments.

I felt like I was taking a chance when I began reading this one but feel very happy with the results. Highly recommended.

This novel will be published in the US in October 2010.

The Savage Tales of Solomon Kane

As always, I read a short story between each novel. This time around it's been Robert E. Howard's The Savage Tales of Solomon Kane, a complete collection of all the Solomon Kane stories in one volume. Robert E. Howard, of course, is best known as the creator of Conan, but he was a prolific author during his short life, creating several other notable protagonists.

Del Rey has re-published the works of Robert E. Howard in beautiful trade paperback sets that include his complete works. They leave them un-edited, just as Mr. Howard wrote them and include unpublished story fragments, poems, etc. They are also nicely illustrated and really draw the reader back to the era in which they were first published, the era of the pulp magazines like Weird Tales.

As for Solomon Kane...“He was . . . a strange blending of Puritan and Cavalier, with a touch of the ancient philosopher, and more than a touch of the pagan. . . . A hunger in his soul drove him on and on, an urge to right all wrongs, protect all weaker things. . . . Wayward and restless as the wind, he was consistent in only one respect—he was true to his ideals of justice and right. Such was Solomon Kane.” A great character from the pulp era indeed.

Monster Hunter International

Boy, if you've ever wanted to read an all-out action book, I've found one for you.  Monster Hunter International is about an ordinary guy, an accountant no less, who finds himself having to fight a werewolf on the very first page.  The fact that the werewolf is his condescending boss makes it all the sweeter when he finally defeats him after a bloody battle.  As a result, MHI (Monster Hunter Int'l) recruits our ordinary guy and trains him to go after vampires, ghouls, wights, gargoyles and assorted demons.  There are lots of lengthy, bloody battles here, lots and lots of gunplay, more battles, more guns, and...well, you get the idea.  I found reading this book to be akin to playing a video game or watching a Robert Romero zombie movie.  Pretty cool stuff.  And, believe it or not, the characters were pretty well fleshed out as well.

The only negative thing I have to say about the book is that there a few plot contrivances.  In other words, it almost seemed the author wrote himself into a corner, an impossible situation, and had to resort to a trick to get out of it.  I won't spell it out any more for fear of spoilers but...does anybody remember the first Superman movie with Christopher Reeves?

And, like a video game, the horrific nature of the monsters made them seem impossible to kill...and yet it happened...and then the next monster was even worse...and yet the MHI teams triumphed...etc.  Our hero gets mauled and mangled so badly he couldn't have been much more than a walking road rash and yet there he is fighting hard in the next scene. Good escapist summer reading.  Nothing wrong with that.  The end sets up a sequel or three and I suspect Hollywood and/or computer game design companies are on the move.

Covenant

It's been difficult to fit quality reading time in since I retired from the Air Force last week.  That seems odd...shouldn't I have more time now?  Well...not when you consider my work at launching my on-line book store (which is coming along slowly but is a huge amount of fun) as well as trying to do a real job hunt/interviews, etc...

Nevertheless, I managed to find time to complete Covenant by John Everson, a horror novel and the debut novel from this author.  The cover trumpets this book as a winner of the Bram Stoker Award and after reading it I can see why.  This is a nice taught story, well told, and briskly paced.  It's the story about a young 20-something reporter named Joe Kiernan who has moved from Chicago to the small coastal town of Terrel.  It's not long before he discovers the deep dark secret that is haunting the town: for some reason people are dying (usually leaping to their deaths from the cliffs of Terrel's Peak) once each year on the exact same day.  Joe gladly puts on his investigative reporter persona to escape his usual small town assignments and soon gets in over his head.  He is a pragmatist, certain that there is some sort of serial killer on the loose but eventually he has to embrace the idea of a supernatural nature to the tragedies.

This book, I must say, is not for the squeamish.  Particularly, in the second half of the book, as the supernatural stuff comes more and more into focus, there is lots of blood and gore and sex, sometimes all together.  Everything is on stage and leaves very little to the imagination.  You've been warned.  I compare this book to the works of Richard Laymon although Laymon's plots tend to be more teenage sexual fantasy whereas this is hard core horror. There is a sequel out called, Sacrifice and I'll probably read that as well if it comes across my radar.

I also read another story in The Best Time Travel Short Stories of the 20th Century.  "Time's Arrow" by the great Arthur C. Clark was a good solid entry in this collection, and is a story about some palentologists who are conducting a dig near some dinosaur tracks.  Simultaneously, a team of physicists are at the cusp of discovering a way to look back in time and actually see what transpired at the scene rather than have to judge it by the fossil record.  A great ending on this one...but I won't spoil it for you.  I really like Clark as an author because he brings such solid credentials to his science fiction (degrees in physics and mathematics) allowing convincing science in his stories but not so convoluted that the reader gets lost.

Next up: Beyond the Shadows but Brent Weeks

Under the Dome

I read my first Stephen King book almost 20 years ago when I was going to tech school for the Air Force.  I had avoided him up until then because I was afraid that if I liked him I would have to read about 25 more books that he already had published at that time (I tend to do that for authors I like).  But I took the plunge largely because of my sister in law who is an avid fan and just couldn't understand why I hadn't read him yet.

That was 20 years ago and now, Under the Dome is my 41st Stephen King novel.  Guess you can say that I liked that first one back then.  Some of them have been masterpieces (The Stand, The Green Mile, etc) while others have been downright stinkeroos (The Tommyknockers). I am happy to report that Under the Dome is far closer to the top end than the bottom and in fact I would go so far as to say it is in the top 5 Stephen King novels so far.  He reportedly began writing this novel more than 30 years ago but gave it up due to its complexity and shear scope.  In 2007 he took it up again and charged ahead to completion, resulting in another very successful novel.

The idea is fairly simple: a transparent and completely indestructable dome has appeared over a small town in Maine, allowing nothing to get through either way.  The people inside are trapped while those outside are helpless to provide assistance.  About a week goes by over the course of the novel.  Part of the resulting story deals with the mystery of just what this dome is and how did it get to be there but the far larger aspects of the story deal with how people react when faced with this situation.  I read an interview once where Mr King was asked about his favorite authors and influences and which novel would he have most liked to have written.  He replied, Lord of the Flies by William Golding.  This book, I think, is Stephen King's version of Lord of the Flies.

 Stephen King is at his best with his interacting characters, whether they be smart, religious, rich, poor, or fools.  He has long recognized that the most real horror is the kind of horror that real people inflict upon one another when they are desperate.  There are no monsters or demons in this book except those of the very real human being variety.  As the novel unfolds, the situation gets more and more desperate and the members of the town have to choose sides.  One of the best bad guys Stephen King has ever produced, "Big Jim" Renny, makes his debut here.  He is ultimately just a bully, but he is a smart, far thinking, master manipulator as well.  I just love an intelligent, well written bad guy.

This is a long book though and I will admit to times when I was wishing it was a tad shorter.  Mr King includes a huge cast of characters which can become burdensome if left in less capable hands.  But to his credit, once I had completed the book  I was able to look back at the long list of characters provided at the beginning and know every single one of them.  Even though the point of view character keeps switching all over the place, (including to a family dog!), Mr King has a way of reminding us just who the person is, very subtely, but enough to keep the reader on track.  I also enjoyed they very handy map of the town which really helped keep track of what was going on as the week under the dome unfolded. Marvelous job!

This morning, I completed the second short story in Jeffrey Archer's collection, Cat O'Nine Tales, "Maestro".  This was a straight forward story about an Italian restauranteur who had to serve time in jail for failing to pay all of his taxes.  Once again this was another story based in truth and told to Mr Archer while he, himself, was incarcerated.  The nice twist in this one was the revelation that the protagonist was able to find a new, sneaky way of hiding his income which is still in practice today.  Mr Archer is a story teller first and foremost.  His prose is heavy on the "telling" not the "showing" or the dialogue, thus his short stories tend to be like sitting around a campfire and listening to a story...very enjoyable.

Next up: John Jakes' Savannah: Or a Gift for Mr Lincoln.

The House of Thunder

I've completed my latest audio book. This time it was The House of Thunder, by Dean Koontz. It seems like I am reading a bunch of horror novels lately (not to mention haunted house stories) but that's just the way its worked out. I chose this particular book almost be default. I've been trying a new library that is closer to my work place, making it easier to pick up and drop off but turns out there are very few audio books there that aren't abridged. This was just about the only one I found that was unabridged, and since I've read quite a few Koontz novels before I felt pretty safe in my pick.

Having said that, Dean Koontz can be hit or miss for me. Happily, this one was one of the better Koontz novels I've experienced. I've read enough Koontz to realize that I tend to like his earlier stuff better so perhaps that is why I liked this one. Apparently this was first published in the early 1980's under one of Koontz' pseudonyms. And it's not a haunted house novel in the usual sense at all...more of a haunted hosipital. It has a cool premise and setup for a horror situation. The protagonist, Susan Thornton, wakes up from a coma (from an auto accident) with amnesia. At first her recovery experiences are pretty normal but soon she starts to hallucinate about hospital staff members being bad guys from a murder she witnessed 13 years ago, a murder that resulted in the death of her fiance. That progresses into even more strange happenings, some of a truly horrifying nature and Susan begins to question her own sanity. It's a cool setup for a horror novel because we, the readers, aren't any more sure of what's going on than Susan herself. We can really get into her position and suffer along with her as she tries to sort out fiction from reality. Is she really hallucinating? Is she crazy? Or is something more sinister going on. And because it's a Koontz novel, we can never discount the possibility that supernatural forces are at work here.

The narration was well done on the audio book which always leads to a better experience. They used two people, a male and a female to do the different parts so that helped suspend the disbelief. The resolution was a slight let-down for me as the novel itself changed from a horror novel to more of a spy/thriller story and Koontz does the former better than the later. But the plot was still smooth and the ending was comfortable. All in all an enjoyable "read".

F my next audio book: The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck. No, I've never read it so I figured an audio format might be the only way I ever get this one done. And no, it's not abridged (went back to my old library) so I should get the full impact of one of the great classics.

House of Reckoning

Today I completed the latest Amazon "Vine" program book, House of Reckoning, by John Saul. This is the first John Saul book I have ever read although I had listened to one in audio book format. That one had a great premise but seemed somewhat clumsy in its execution and even boring. The boring nature of it could have been a by-product of the audio book production as that does sometimes happen. So in my never ending search for good horror writing, I thought I'd give him another chance.

House of Reckoning has a fairly standard premise for a horror tale. A 14-year old girl named Sarah is hit by a drunk driver (who happens to be her father) and since her mother has already passed away, she is put into a foster home while her father has to go to jail. Sarah now has a disability and walks with a limp. We learn of her amazing artistic ability and we meet a fellow student of hers, named Nick who hears voices. Then there is Sarah's art teacher who lives alone in an old house that used to be an insane asylum. Of course all of this intertwines and we experience a pretty typical haunted house sort of story. These three characters must come together because everybody else in the town is a one dimensional, sterotypical character who delights in teasing a 14 year old girl with a limp and proclaiming the art teacher who lives in the old house, a "witch".

The story reads easily and the plot is easy to follow. Definitely a quick read. Unfortunately, the novel abounds with problems. Chief among them is the way the characters behave, especially the "bad" characters. Sarah's foster family makes Cinderella's step family look like angels. They treat Sarah like a slave, demanding total obedience in all things while they kick back with their feet up. They proclaim their Christianity and blame Sarah and the devil inside her for everything that goes wrong. How stereotypical can you get? The rest of the town includes the power hungry sheriff, his son who happens to be the school bully, etc. all of which make fun of Sarah the gimp. The concept of the haunted house itself, had potential as a great character in its own right and it does take matters into its own hands, so to speak. I won't provide spoilers but suffice it to say that the great concept that the author begins with never really pans out. When it comes time for the horror to shine through, it's rather dull. Events are wrapped up in a tidy manner, just so conveniently that one wonders if the word count was approaching the limit.

Despite having pointed out all of these negative things, I actually enjoyed reading the novel. I did want to see what happens next, so obviously it wasn't all bad. This is John Saul's 36th novel to date. He sells a lot of books and obviously, prolific authors have hits and misses. My search for good horror writing goes on but I haven't entirely given up on John Saul.

In contrast to this novel, I completed the marvelous short story in Harlan Ellison's The Essential Ellison, "Tired Old Man". This, reportedly, is one of Ellison's favorite among the numerous stories he has written. It's a first person account of a successful writer of mysteries who reluctantly spends time at a boring writer's forum but happily encounters an old man with whom he has a delightful conversation. The old man sees through the front that the protagonist puts up and gets him to see himself in a new light. The plot is simple but the essence of the story and how it conveys that essence to the reader is truly fantastic. It is based on an encounter that Ellison, himself, once had with an old man who he did not know at the time but later discovered was his favorite writer, Cornell Woolrich. I see why Ellison likes this story so much and, no doubt, this story will stay with me as well for a long time to come.

Next up: Galveston, by P.G. Nagle, the third book in the "Civil War in the West" series.

Audrey's Door

Audrey's Door was the second book that I read on my 3-week trip to South Africa. I had just received it as part of Amazon.com's "Vine Voice" program and chose to read it next because it would be completely different than the Diana Gabaldon tome. This is a horror book written by Sarah Langan and is her third book.

I've been looking for a new horror author, having read most of King's work as well as lots of Bentley Little and Richard Laymon. Every time I sample a "new" horror author it seems the result is merely mediocre. But this time, I may have found what I'm looking for. Audrey's Door is the tale of Audrey, a young architect who breaks off her engagement and moves into a unique and suprisingly affordable apartment building in Manhattan's Upper West Side. Turns out bad things have happened there fairly recently which could explain the cheap rates but she moves in anyway. Sounds like a typical setup for a haunted house novel but this one takes a new path. As in any good novel, characterization is key and Ms Langan's characters are anything but predictable one dimensional characters. The other tenants of the building are fascinating and Audrey's interaction with them builds the tension and the horror.

Add to that the character of Audrey herself...she has flaws, and a complicated past that leads the reader to wonder if it might not be Audrey herself that is cracking up, rather than the building causing the craziness. She begins to build a door and it is in discovering what the door's purpose may be or where it leads (or what will come through it) that is the source of the novel's horror. The author does not settle for cliched horror but rather introduces logical sources for the terror and the suspense in the book. After reading the novel, I actually did my own research on some of the ideas found within it, including "chaotic naturalism" just to find out more about it. Not many books lead me to do that!

This is a very readable book and a definite page turner with a satisfying conclusion. I'll be looking for her previously published books as well as new stuff; no doubt Sarah Langan has a long career ahead of her.

Skeleton Crew

Over the weekend I jumped the gun and decided to read the last short story of Stephen King's collection, Skeleton Crew. Regular readers of this blog will know that I usually read one short story between each of my other books but this time I made an exception.

Since I've already blurbed about each of the stories as I read them, and tucked those blurbs in at the end of the other blog entries, I won't go into much detail about the stories themselves. I will mention that the last story in the collection, The Reach, was absolutely fantastic and an excellent choice to round out the collection. It is about an old woman who has lived on a small island off the coast of Maine. She has never crossed over the reach to set foot on the mainland because she never saw a need to do so. She is plagued by what she is sure is stomach cancer though that hasn't been diagnosed and so she knows her time has come. The story becomes almost poetic as she takes a walk and meets aspiritions of several of her relatives and friends, including her husband, that have already passed on. Life is good after death, she learns, so what could have been a very horrifying story becomes a comforting tale. The prose is beautifully written as she accepts what is happening to her and she crosses a different "reach" and dies. I understand Stephen King himself once said during a Today show interview that The Reach would be the story he would like most to be remembered for because it is "The Maine he grew up in and the people he knows." Truly a different sort of story that has elements of horror but nonetheless leaves the reader with a warm feeling at the end.

The overall collection is simply superb. This is the 40th Stephen King book I've read and I still want more. In this collection we get to see King at his eerie best with such stories as The Monkey, Word Processor of the Gods, Gramma, and The Ballad of the Flexible Bullet. Hard core horror shines through in Survivor Type, Cain Rose Up, and of course we get the masterpiece novella, The Mist included in this overall collection as well. These stories demonstrate King's vast talent for story telling, not just delivering bloody, evil horror but also showing us real characters. I love the way that King can get into the characters so well that I recognize people from my own life who are exactly like that.

Almost all of these stories first appeared elsewhere, having been published in one magazine or another and many of them at a time in King's early career when he really needed a paycheck. Perhaps desperation produces truly quality output because there are lots of gems in this collection. Some of King's later works, after his rise to literary stardom, are not nearly so cutting edge and frequently are in need of more editing. But even in those cases, I enjoy reading it because it just hits home so well.

I think my next short story collection will be another section in Harlan Ellison's Essential Ellison. I've read a few sections already but I like to spread it out so I should be able to get in this next one during this year.

Odd Thomas

I was able to drag myself away from the new Sims 3 computer game this weekend long enough to finish up Odd Thomas by Dean Koontz. I used to read quite a bit of Koontz' work, especially after reading what many consider to be his best novel, The Watcher. But then I read several in a row that seemed to fall flat and I sort of lost interest. Compounding that issue is my own "completest" mentality. I tend to want to read everything by "my" authors and if I was going to read much more of Koontz he would become one of "my" authors. So...I let quite a few years go by without picking up another Koontz novel.

I can't even remember right now how I came to possess my copy of Odd Thomas. Nevertheless, it was time for another read in the horror genre and there it was, at the top of my horror "to-be-read" pile. And, quite honestly, I knew Mr Koontz has since written several sequels...I doubt he would do that if they had not been well received. And, the concept intrigued me. Odd Thomas himself, is a 20-year old fry cook in a fictional California town. He has a pretty normal life including a girlfriend, lots of pals, and, oh yeah...he can see ghosts. He can interact minimally with them but they can't talk to him. This is a concept that has been done before but I must say, Koontz really nailed it this time. There is quite a bit of character development here and the reader really gets inside his thinking. We share his hopes and dreams as well as the more frightening aspects of his "talent'. But the book is more than just a "boy can see ghosts and helps the police solve mysteries" story. Largely due to the first person narrative format, we experience some intriguing perspectives on the very nature of good and evil, and of love and loss. The build up to the crime is well paced and brings us along for the ride. And the crime itself is a doozy; more terrorist action than crime per se. We experience the terror and the shock just as Odd Thomas does. And the final 20 pages are as emotionally charged as anything I can remember reading. I've read other opinions of this novel and most agree that Mr Koontz has returned to form with this one.

Next up is my first review under my new status as a "Vine Voice" for Amazon.com. I'm very much looking forward to Top Producer by Nord Vonnegut.

The Mist

As promised, I am making a seperate blog entry for The Mist by Stephen King. This is the first "short story" in his Skeleton Crew collection. It runs about 150 pages or so, making it a novella by definition. And of course there has been a movie adaptation recently released thus sparking a seperate publication of this story in a stand-alone book. I haven't seen the movie but may rent it now that I've read the story.

This story was among the best I've read by Stephen King (and I've read a lot of his work). Many people have said that Mr King occasionally runs long in his descriptions and can sometimes use a good editor. I don't always agree because I just love the way he writes so much that it's hard to get too much of it. Nevertheless, this story is quite the opposite. Some might think that it is simply an extended version of a short story, that he has done it again by padding the actual story to make it longer. I think just the opposite is the case...it is a very tightly woven story, if anything, a novel condensed down to the bare essentials. The characterization is superb; we get to know and understand the main characters in a remarkably short time. The actual time line of the story takes place over just a few days and we live every moment with them. The structure is a rather basic "bunch of people trapped in a single location with the horror element just waiting for them to come out." But the way in which he builds the horror is pure vintage King. Never too many details to bring the horror into focus and thus diminish the impact but rather crafting the unknown in such a way that the character's imaginations fill in the details and increase the horror that much further. I've never been one to love blatent splatter horror at the expense of true suspenseful horror and King does not disappoint. In fact there is no big discovery of just what the horror in the mist really is nor where it came from. Although we do get just enough of the "tentacle", "leathery wings", "horrid smell" stuff to put us in the proper mood.

My only disappointment comes with the brief sex scene in the middle. At the beginning of the story the protagonist is deeply in love with his wife and yet only 36 hours later, not knowing if she is still alive or not, he and another trapped victim have sexual intercourse. I think the point was that they both "needed something" at that point and the future looked bleak but I found it a bit of a stretch.

All in all a great start to this short story collection and I can't wait to get to more between my other novel reading. And speaking of that I've begun Dave Duncan's fantasy novel Paragon Lost, another in his "King's Blades" series.

The Academy

The final book I read on my Spring Break trip (actually only made it half way through before the trip ended so I finished over the weekend) was The Academy by Bentley Little. Mr Little writes in the horror genre and this is perhaps the 8th or 9th book I've read by him. He likes to take ordinary circumstances that most of us have had to to deal with and then put in a horror element that then spirals out of control. Previous topics have included The Store, one of my favorites which turns the local chain box store (Walmart type) into an evil presence in the community. He has written similar things with a house, a university, a town, a home owner's association, etc. My favorite Bentley Little book so far was The Ignored which deals with an adolescent who is shy and so ignored by friends, family, and school that he literally fades out and becomes virtually invisible and discovers there are others like him. It seems like many of us can relate to that. Beware though; if you've never read a Bentley Little novel, they do tend to be very sexual, many times graphically so.

Unfortunately, The Academy will rank among the lower end of the Bentley Little books I've read. I was intrigued by the cover blurb because this time the evil surrounds a charter high school. Since my son attends a charter high school I was curious as to how the evil would manifest. The main plot proceeded in a predictable pattern, probably too predictable. If this was my first book by this author that might not have bothered me too much but it seems like this one was sort of a retread of his other works. I read in the author bio at the end of the book that Mr Little spent at least a little time in his life as a teacher. It sure didn't seem like he knew much about charter schools though; more like he was using talking points put out by the NEA depicting charter schools as "bad". He takes those things on faith and exploits them for the purposes of horror. The problem though is that those talking points are biased opinions put out by an organization that is threatened by the very existence of charter schools. No doubt some charter schools are better than others but Mr Little seems to paint them all with a broad brush here. And it's not a pretty picture.

He also fails to disguise his anti-conservative political views. I really don't care where on the political spectrum my authors dwell, and if a particular character is blatently liberal or blatently conservative that's fine, especially if it pertains to the story. But if you are going to editorialize then at least get the basic principles correct. There are parts in this book that you'd swear were written by Michael Moore.

But what irked me the most was the stupid characters. Not one of them acted like any normal, rational person would act. When confronted by the off-the-wall "requirements" for parents to volunteer their time and money (or else) , the parents thought it odd. I would have found a new school for my child. When a student sees the girls' physical education teacher engage in obvious (and sick) sexual behavior with the entire class, she tells her best friend but that's it. These kinds of incidents, resulting from the growing evil, are numerous and serve only to demonstrate the stupidity of the characters as they fail time and again to do anything about it.

Mr Little does write in a page-turning style which works though. Despite the negative aspects of the plot and characterization it was pretty easy to keep reading. I guess I was hopeful that in the end, when the evil was finally discovered and dealt with, there would be some redemption. Unfortunately, the book fell flat here as well. The evil was known from almost the first page and it was a mercy killing at the end, for the reader. Of course the charter school converted back to a regular public school and all was good again. Disappointing to say the least. I may still read books by Mr Little in hopes for another one like The Ignored but it may be a while.

For my short story reading I selected the collection of Native American myths that has been sitting on my shelf for years. I won't comment on each of the stories this time because they are quite short and I'll be reading 2-3 between each novel. When the book is done, I'll blog about it then.

Next up for novel reading: Telegraph Days by Larry McMurtry

Carrie

This is a book that I can't believe has taken me so long to get around to reading! Carrie, by Stephen King is one of the classics of the horror genre and, indeed, was the one that really launched King's career. I haven't actually owned a copy of the book for very long and when I snagged a copy at the used book store, it quickly rose to the top of the "to-be-read" list (horror category).

I have to say that it was pretty much what I expected, at least plot-wise. This is early Stephen King, and I really like early Stephen King. The book was shorter than I had thought but it was told in a unique way (something I often find with King's works). We see the fairly straight forward plot unfold from a variety of viewpoints, from the protagonist's own eyes, from other characters as the events take place, but more uniquely, from the perspective of newspaper accounts, court testamony, and the autobiography of one of the major charcters in the novel. And all of these perspectives are interwoven to tell the tale. Sounds complicated but it all fits together nicely and keeps the reader turning pages.

The plot itself is a bit dated by today's standards of shock horror. The scenes we see are, indeed, shocking...horrifyingly so and yet for somebody like myself that has read lots of King as well as other horror writers...it seemed less shocking somehow. I have never seen the movie staring Sissy Spacek but I have seen pictures from it showing Carrie at the prom, covered in blood. I had visions of reading the book and being grossed out at how so much blood could come to be but it turns out it is cow's blood dropped on her as a prank. This novel is much less a gore fest novel than a novel of a bullied girl that finally has taken all she can take and snaps...to get revenge. We hear of the destruction of the town, bit by bit but we "see" very little of it. Since this is Stephen King's first published novel, it is easy to compare it to his later works and see how he has grown as a writer.

I rounded out the weekend's reading with the next of the Deaver short stories in More Twisted. This one was called "Double Jeopardy" and was one of the best of the batch so far. I like courtroom drama anyway and they often incur "twists" in the plot so this story had a less contrived twist than the others. And when the twist was done, the story ended promptly. No need for explanations on what we just read. Very enjoyable.

Now that I was done with Carrie, I had a dilemma. Normally, I would read a genre that I haven't read in a while...I like to keep things stirred up by not reading too much of any one genre, style, author, etc. in too short a time span. So I was due to read a Western, a Young Adult, or a straight fiction book next. But since I had just read too fairly fast reads in a row I wanted something a bit longer...something into which I could sink my teeth. And I really really wanted to get to what is being talked about so much on all the fantasy forums I visit...the new sensation Patrick Rothfuss and his debut novel, The Name of the Wind. Boy it sure is starting out great and I'll be looking forward to my next blog entry when I can tell you how it worked out!