Posts filed under 'Book Reviews'
David Moody’s been following his own path for several years now. Via his Infected Books, he self-published to relative acclaim, and impressive sales, whilst developing a deservedly healthy fan base. He’s arguably best known for his Autumn series - across five books, Moody involved the reader in a darkly raw and realistic, very British zombie apocalypse, (a zombie apocalypse with a difference, but that’s another review). During those independent years Moody published several other titles, includingHater, which has now been picked up by Gollancz in the UK, and in the US by Thomas Dunne Books.
In Hater, Moody has tweaked the apocalyptic virus trope in a very simple way. And it is an utterly devastating tweak. Seemingly normal people suddenly turn into killers. There is no warning, no time to think as the pure urge to kill the person in front of them overwhelms the affected, (infected?). As the violence spreads, the media coin a term for those who succumb to these mysterious violent urges: Haters.
Moody is a master at involving the reader in the minutiae of everyday decision-making. This isn’t as tedious as it might sound given the scenario in which he places Hater’s protagonist Danny McCoyne. Danny is a straightforward family man, married to Lizzie, with three kids and a father-in-law who doesn’t like him; they live in a cramped flat with no spare cash. Danny works in a meaningless administrative job in a nameless city. His days follow the predictable path of boredom as he goes about his pointless work tasks; and of exhausted frustration, as he laments his loss of freedom now that he has kids. Danny is ensnared in that work/life balance juggling act most of us are familiar with.
In the first-half of Hater, Moody shows us just how trapped we’ve become within this rut of system and routine. He worries about his next pay-check and how his boss has got it in for him. Lizzie wants Danny to stay at home with her and the kids, but he thinks he should continue to go to work, despite the surrounding chaos, the chance of being attacked, and the impending martial law. Think about it: what if there was a serious outbreak of avian influenza in London? Would you go to work, or stay at home? Does the money matter more than your health? It’s not as easy a decision as you might think, especially when you’ve got a family to feed.
Interspersed with Danny’s ruminations are depictions of some of the random attacks. Within these two or three page ‘interludes’ Moody provides enough context and detail to allow the reader to empathise with the Haters and their victims. As the killings spread into the streets and across the country, society divides into two, behaviour changes and a new prejudice emerges, replacing all the old bigotry of religion and race. You either hate or you don’t. People fend for themselves and attacks on others are ignored. It’s too dangerous to get angry – you might be mistaken for a Hater. Cracks appear as the authorities struggle to come to terms with this new social structure.
With the seamless and dramatic precision of a turning victim, Moody completely reverses the perspective of the narrative as the virus of violence comes knocking at Danny’s door. This is less of a twist and more an expected development, and allows Hater to evolve into a survival story of a very different nature.
With no obvious vector of transmission, conspiracy theories abound and the government does itself no favours with its lack of communication with the general public – not something that feels so outlandish these days at all. And, as with Romero’s zombie films, and the more hate-fuelled 28 Days and WeeksLater, Moody only has to suggest some top secret security-type shenanigans for us to be satisfied, and get on with rooting for Danny in his fight for survival. I would have liked Moody to take subsequent events further – but maybe he will in the near future…
Moody is most definitely a man with a plan. A plan that has recently come to fruition, given this deal with Gollancz, and the fact that Guillermo del Toro’s picked up the film rights to Hater. He’s also secured a deal with Thomas Dunne Books for the Autumn zombie sequence, (which has already spawned an independently produced film, due in 2009). A sequel to Hater, Dog Bloodwill be published in 2010.
Hater is a simple story, powerfully told, and if David Moody’s this good part-time, how good’s he going to be, given his well-deserved freedom to focus upon his apocalyptic formulae on a full-time basis?
Mathew F. Riley
[Mathew's book reviews can also be found at Bookgeeks, and his film reviews at Quiet Earth].
January 13th, 2009
I am intrigued and impressed in equal measure by this book. It’s a literary hoax, purporting to be the autobiography of a non-existent book forger, a literary hoaxer himself, a serious wine buff, and, oh yes, someone who can see demons. That Gollancz have dressed it in a faux-antique jacket and presented it as an autobiography (complete with blog for the author) suggests they are going along with this conceit because it enhances the reader’s enjoyment, and to be fair I would say this is true. The author is Graham Joyce, in point of fact, and in the US it will be published under his own name, with the title How to Make Friends With Demons. All this frivolity must not distract from the fact that this is an excellent, literate, compelling novel which could easily pass for literary fiction in the mould of The Gargoyle or similar.
William Heaney, our narrator, works for an unspecified youth organisation, something which brings him in to contact with government and funds a comfortable middle-class lifestyle, including a passion for fine wines. As well as his day job, Heaney is writing deliberately bad poetry for a friend to pass off as his own to an arts establishment that can’t seem to get enough of it, and working on scamming substantial sums of money out of impressionable book collectors by faking up first editions of 19th century masterworks. The proceeds for this go not on special vino but on supporting a drop-in centre for the homeless. Yes, quite the enigma, Mr Heaney, even before we get to the business of the demons.
William Heaney says he can see demons - the embodiments of people’s weaknesses, their vices, their failings and their self-deceptions. It’s a lovely idea well realised, a constant thread throughout the book, but it’s not central to the plot - rather, it’s a way of making Heaney stand apart from the other characters. The arrival of an invite to the launch of a book by an old university acquaintance triggers a series of flashbacks that explain why Heaney is something of an emotional cripple and pinpoints the time when the ability to see demons manifested itself.
The story of Heaney facing (literally) his and other people’s demons is woven in with a burgeoning love affair, to which William is at first resistant; the unearthing of old memories triggered by the book launch invite; and the fate of an old Gulf War veteran with potent demons of his own. It’s a very well structured and compelling tale, which ties up all these strands very effectively, and I enjoyed it a great deal. At the close, the question of whether William Heaney really can see demons, is mentally ill or is just winding us up because he can is left hanging, another layer of deceit and artifice, maybe a hoax to go with Heaney’s many others - and possibly the most successful one of all, because I, for one, really want to believe him.
Guest Review by Simon Appleby of Bookgeeks
December 4th, 2008
Joseph and I have agreed that we will rarely, if ever, write book reviews for Horror Reanimated. We’ll leave such back breaking labour to Mathew. From my point of view, the decision is because I would feel uncomfortable writing reviews of books whose authors I might meet up with at a convention or on a panel in the not too distant future. I’m just cowardly that way! That said, I have felt compelled to tap out a little piece about a book I have just finished. Put simply, it is possibly the best children’s ghost story I have ever read. Actually, let’s not be mealy-mouthed: it is one of the best children’s stories I have ever read full stop.
I’ve been reading quite a bit of YA (Young Adult) fiction over the past few months. I’ve gobbled down all of Darren Shan’s Demonata series (great fun and bloody scary in places - check out the family torture scene in Lord Loss. Reads like Saw for kids!); Anthony Horowitz’s Power of Five saga (Book One - Ravens Gate - reminded me a lot of that brilliant BBC Children’s TV series Century Falls crossed with Dennis Wheatley); Linda Buckley-Archer’s Gideon the Cutpurse and FE Higgins’ The Black Book of Secrets. All of these have shown the remarkable imagination and skill on display in modern children’s fiction. By far the best of the crop, however, has been Breathe: a ghost story by Cliff McNish.
Briefly, Breathe is about Jack, a young asthmatic boy grieving over the death of his father. Hoping to help her son come to terms with the loss, Jack’s mother moves them to an old house full of memories. Jack is what is known in the dark fiction trade as a touch-know: someone who can pick up on the vibrations of the past by touch. As Jack and his mother arrive at the house they are watched by the ghost children who have been trapped here for years. Soon Jack will encounter their captor - a tortured figure known only as the Ghost Mother.
This is creepy stuff. McNish has written one of the purest ghost stories I have ever read. In a sense, this is MR James for kids - spellbinding, ethereal, with a pitch-black tone. There really has been nothing like it for years. In those YA novels I mentioned earlier, the horror of demons and Lovecraftian gods is fantastical but, in a sense, tangible. What Jack encounters in Breathe is a menace made all the more frightening by the fact that it can’t really be seen or touched. Also impressive is the fact that, by turns, we find ourselves sympathising with, and then abhorring, the villain of the piece. One moment she is tugging at our heartstrings, the next we are terrified by her inhumanity. Such complex characterisation in a children’s book is a rare and wonderful thing.
I’m not going to say much more. I don’t want to spoil this for you. But, oh, the Ghost Mother’s kiss! And the horror of the Nightmare Passage! Breathe is not only a cracking story, with brilliantly inventive and realised fantasy concepts, but a book that has real heart. Buy it and enjoy.
November 24th, 2008
October can’t come around quick enough sometimes.
Stephen Jones‘ 19th annual selection of some of the most accessible and harrowing genre fiction out there is the foremost reason for me, (as is the onset of what will hopefully be a glorious autumn, a time when we lovers of the spook can anticipate those long nights settling in again…)
2007 was a fruitful year in horror, as Jones’ painstaking dissection of all-that-is-dark related activity shows. Personally I would like to see more of his comment and opinion in this introductory section, which is a relatively comprehensive list of books, comics, television, DVD, film, stage, merchandise and other related genre releases, (although Jones does comment on much of the genre television in the US and the UK). It would, of course, be impossible for Jones to keep track of everything published over the course of twelve months, but this section is a very useful primer for the fan who might have missed something along the way.
Jones does give us some insight into the trials and tribulations the committee, of which he was a member, experienced whilst organising the 2007 World Horror Convention, which was held outside the US for the first time, much to the chagrin of some horror fans and aspiring writers, who voiced their disgruntled opinions on some of the many online forums, available to anyone these days. Hence the boundaries between being a professional writer, genuinely aspiring and ill-considered wannabe is a grey area in some people’s minds, according to Jones, who argues that a well-managed Convention with invited professional speakers and writers’ contributions as part of a structured schedule is a good thing for the genre, and preferable to a loose free-for-all of wild and woolly opinions and debatable writing quality from those who have few, if any, publishing credentials, which would be to the detriment of all.
Within The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror Jones has collected some truly intriguing and spooky stories from such diverse sources as the World Horror Convention’s Souvenir Book, Travellers in Darkness; Peter Crowther’s consistently challenging Postscripts magazine; The Ghost Story Society’s high-quality At Ease with the Dead anthology; Tartarus Press‘ equally good collection, Strange Tales Volume 11; as well as a Gothic Press chapbook, Estronomicon’s online and print Halloween special, and Comma Press‘ Phobic: Modern Horror Stories anthology, among others.
The Things He Said, Michael Marshall Smith’s extreme survivalist take on the aftermath of what must have been a zombie apocalypse is sparingly eloquent and backwoods-bitingly effective. Steve Erikson’s This Rich Evil Sound evokes a sad atmosphere of the implications of age and isolation across the unspoilt snow-shrouded landscape of a National Park. Man, You Gotta See This! by Tony Richards is at first a simple story of paintings imbued with hypnotic qualities, but it gradually pushes the reader along the path to the beginnings of a bizarre apocalypse; as does Christopher Harman’s eerie Behind the Clouds: In Front of the Sun, wherein a shady antiques dealer buys a globe with something inside it, something that scratches to get out…
Mark Samuels‘ A Gentleman from Mexico takes us to the shadowy community that is Mexico City’s Distrito Federal, a place where a holidaying editor is introduced to a writer with a style and manner very much like a certain H.P. Lovecraft. Such introductions always have a price. Calico Black, Calico Blue by Joel Knight is a very, very dark urban tale set in two adjoining flats with two very, very different occupants. Loss, by the enigmatic Tom Piccirilli, is about a haunted building where the occupants are as equally troubled by their distant flirtations with fame as they are by the evil that is spreading around the corridors of their apartment block. Tim Pratt’s From Around Here is an inventive tale of a neighbourhood blighted by an insidious and hidden evil, and a little-known, travelling God who is the only one who can see it, and wants to get rid of it, as he /she/it is considering settling down there.
13 O’Clock by Mike O’Driscoll, (a columnist for Black Static), and The Fisherman by David A. Sutton bring us seaside chills, of the spiritual kind in the first instance, and something like guilt, rotten and swimming in the surf, in the second, as does The Admiral’s House by Marc Lecard – a bit of both in fact.
The Church on the Island by Simon Kurt Unsworth, from At Ease with the Dead, demonstrates the ghost story at its most sublime, as a tourist cannot deny her instinct to explore, whilst the same urge betrays the arguing friends in Simon Strantzas‘ The Other Village. Reggie Oliver’s The Children of Monte Rosa, is a more traditional tourist tale of the supernatural, descriptive of the period, and, (not necessarily a bad thing), a little predictable for that detail.
Ghostly themes are continued in a very different style with Joe R. Lansdale’s awesome round-the-campfire take on The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, Deadman’s Road. You guessed it, a haunted road and some folks have to follow it after midnight;but this road’s not cursed with a headless rider and horse from hell, rather a bee-stung redneck with a vicious vendetta. Another ghost story, this time from Nicholas Royle, the last two lines from Lancashire, detailing a family’s encounter with a childless couple, actually made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up. Tight Wrappers by Conrad Williams is a stand-out too, a ghost and possibly a monster tale, he lends London a darkness like no other writer at the moment. Joel Lane, a regular fiction contributor to Black Static, gives us another spectrally damp atmosphere in the ambiguous revenge short of Still Water.
The volume finishes on a particularly enjoyable, though not necessarily horrific note, with Kim Newman’s Cold Snap, a short story extracted from The Secret Files of the Diogenes Club, the sequel collection to The Man from the Diogenes Club. Here, the members of the Diogenes Club, ‘a cover for a body charged with handling delicate and often supernatural matters of state,’ get together in the summer of 1976 to battle The Cold, the strange intelligence that is, well, cold, and threatening to chill the entire planet, once it freezes Somerset that is. Newman’s Diogenes stories are a wonderfully amusing and densely-referenced mixture of a retro X-Files, the League of Extraordinary Gentleman and Life on Mars, and I urge you to purchase the two afore-mentioned collections.
Authors whose contributions can almost always be guaranteed, and hence need not be reviewed, include Christopher Fowler, Ramsey Campbell, Gary McMahon, Glen Hirschberg and Joe Hill. The only story I couldn’t bring myself to read is Neil Gaiman’s The Witch’s Headstone, as this is apparently chapter four of the forthcoming and hugely anticipated, (on my part), The Graveyard Book, and I don’t want to dilute the anticipation, or the actual read, so this is definitely not a negative.
I cannot recommend The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror highly enough as, despite my having read possibly 50% of the stories in their original places of publication, there is enough dripping dark stuff here, in the form of ghost stories, weird tales and menacingly fantastic fables, to satisfy the appetite of the fattest and hungriest horror geek.
Roll on next October, my stomach’s always rumbling.
Reviewed by Mathew F. Riley
[Mathew's book reviews can also be found at Bookgeeks, and his film reviews at Quiet Earth].
October 14th, 2008
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