More books
For those of you who didn't know, I spent the first half of this month in the UP. For those non-Michiganders, the UP is the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. A land of trees and lakes and, well... little else. So, I had time to read a bunch of books I've been meaning to get off my TBR pile.
Return to Rainbow Country - William Davidson
This was a YA boys adventure book. Billy and his Indian friend Pete set off on an adventure into the Canadian wilderness. Some of the PCness annoyed me. I'm not a big fan of the PC attitude that actually shows an underlying bigotry. This is the sense that I got. Making a point of how PC a person is reminds me of the famous Shakespeare quote (as it is often bastardized from the original line in Hamlet), "Methinks he doth protest too much." This also brings up the scene with the evil builders dumping waste into the river. We didn't need a scene where the boys mess with the ignorant construction workers. It was glaringly unneeded, and pulled the reader out of the story so hard I wanted to throw it across the room. It had nothing to do with the plot whatsoever. The writing on a whole was very amateurish.
Billy's search for his father brings him to a hippy/back to our roots commune of sorts. It is there that Billy learns a little about the Bearwalk (and the entire reason that I read this book). The bearwalk figured into the frame of a court case, which the Indian was aquitted of. Some interesting points about the differences between US and Canadian handling of Indian cases. The entire thing was wrapped up very nicely, which is to be expected for the type of book.
Moon of the Wolf - Leslie H. Whitten
More werewolves, of course. This is a fairly standard Hollywood werewolf type of story. The main character was a Marine in WWI, and is now a deputy in a small Mississippi town. It does get into the relations of white and black cultures of the area a little bit. The main black family of the novel is Hatian. It is interesting to see how they are in and out of both sides of the town. I liked how the Hatian voodoo mixes with the French-creole loup-garou legends. I didn't like how much time was spent on the chase. This is one of the type of werewolf stories I'm not a big fan of. I want to see the werewolf, even be the werewolf. It was a fairly well written book, but it didn't really move me. It was too much of the same old thing for me.
Four Dark Nights- Bentley Little, Douglas Clegg, Christopher Golden, Tom Piccirilli
This is a collection of four novellas. All are superb. Little's "The Circle" is a few shorts that are loosely related, and come full circle. All are very wierd, and enjoyable. A wierd-fiction Lovecraftian, in modern times, idea. Golden's "Pyre," was a great novella about a haunted Viking pyre on the Atlantic coast. Very atmospheric, and creepy. The actual island with the pyre reminded me of Blackwood's stories. Pic's "Jonah Arose" explored some of the same area that we see in his novel Choir of Ill Children. We see the grotesque freek show circuit, and a den of ultimate freekishness. Pic's prose style creeps like Spanish Moss. It is infectious. Mix Southern-Gothic with a Splatter-punk mind, you've got one hell of a ride.
Clegg's "Words" hit me hard. This piece is about two social outcasts. The narrator is your everyboy kind of character, a little on the dorky side. His friend is into the dark arts. This reminds me of the various Lovecraft stories about calling to Cthulhu or some other elder god. Spooky as hell. Clegg made such a thing real, immediate. I felt like I could have known, or even have been, these kids.
This is one must-buy book. Leisure did a great thing by packaging these four together. Novellas are a hard mmp sell. This way fans of any one of these writers might find three other writers to read.
Watcher - Charles L. Grant
This was a White Wolf licensed book in an rpg world. That siad, Grant does a really good job. A werewolf hunter is sent by the council to kill off a rogue werewolf that could expose them all. (Sound familiar?) There are some questions about who is actually sending him, and what the real purpose is. It is a tale of intrigue, mixed with a good dose of horror, all around ChattaCon. It felt like a quick read. Don't write this one off because it is a tie-in, it is still a Charles L. Grant. If you are a werewolf fan, hunt this one down.
Moon Dance- S.P. Somtow
How did I miss this one? This was also my first Somtow. I was very impressed. This one-upped McGammons' The Wolf's Hour. The scale of this thing is epic. I like the frame, but like even more how we spend more time in the past. We are looking into the fratured mind of a murderer, and a werewolf. The layers are pulled away to reveal a story more involved than I had expected. There is an Indian tribe who is on the same land that the European werewolves want to set up as theirs. There is only room for one group of werewolves, so of course a fight ensues. The web of the story weaves tighter and tighter as we make our way toward the end, and see more and more personalities in our werewolf's mind. A very nice mix of a psychological condition and the supernatural. Don't let the length of this tome put you off, this is a must-read for werewolf fans. I hate the "Does for werewolves what Anne Rice did for Vampires" thing that adorns many werewolf books; but this book actually deserves it.
Time flies, and it's back to my own novel of werewolfy horror. The deadline approacheth.
Return to Rainbow Country - William Davidson
This was a YA boys adventure book. Billy and his Indian friend Pete set off on an adventure into the Canadian wilderness. Some of the PCness annoyed me. I'm not a big fan of the PC attitude that actually shows an underlying bigotry. This is the sense that I got. Making a point of how PC a person is reminds me of the famous Shakespeare quote (as it is often bastardized from the original line in Hamlet), "Methinks he doth protest too much." This also brings up the scene with the evil builders dumping waste into the river. We didn't need a scene where the boys mess with the ignorant construction workers. It was glaringly unneeded, and pulled the reader out of the story so hard I wanted to throw it across the room. It had nothing to do with the plot whatsoever. The writing on a whole was very amateurish.
Billy's search for his father brings him to a hippy/back to our roots commune of sorts. It is there that Billy learns a little about the Bearwalk (and the entire reason that I read this book). The bearwalk figured into the frame of a court case, which the Indian was aquitted of. Some interesting points about the differences between US and Canadian handling of Indian cases. The entire thing was wrapped up very nicely, which is to be expected for the type of book.
Moon of the Wolf - Leslie H. Whitten
More werewolves, of course. This is a fairly standard Hollywood werewolf type of story. The main character was a Marine in WWI, and is now a deputy in a small Mississippi town. It does get into the relations of white and black cultures of the area a little bit. The main black family of the novel is Hatian. It is interesting to see how they are in and out of both sides of the town. I liked how the Hatian voodoo mixes with the French-creole loup-garou legends. I didn't like how much time was spent on the chase. This is one of the type of werewolf stories I'm not a big fan of. I want to see the werewolf, even be the werewolf. It was a fairly well written book, but it didn't really move me. It was too much of the same old thing for me.
Four Dark Nights- Bentley Little, Douglas Clegg, Christopher Golden, Tom Piccirilli
This is a collection of four novellas. All are superb. Little's "The Circle" is a few shorts that are loosely related, and come full circle. All are very wierd, and enjoyable. A wierd-fiction Lovecraftian, in modern times, idea. Golden's "Pyre," was a great novella about a haunted Viking pyre on the Atlantic coast. Very atmospheric, and creepy. The actual island with the pyre reminded me of Blackwood's stories. Pic's "Jonah Arose" explored some of the same area that we see in his novel Choir of Ill Children. We see the grotesque freek show circuit, and a den of ultimate freekishness. Pic's prose style creeps like Spanish Moss. It is infectious. Mix Southern-Gothic with a Splatter-punk mind, you've got one hell of a ride.
Clegg's "Words" hit me hard. This piece is about two social outcasts. The narrator is your everyboy kind of character, a little on the dorky side. His friend is into the dark arts. This reminds me of the various Lovecraft stories about calling to Cthulhu or some other elder god. Spooky as hell. Clegg made such a thing real, immediate. I felt like I could have known, or even have been, these kids.
This is one must-buy book. Leisure did a great thing by packaging these four together. Novellas are a hard mmp sell. This way fans of any one of these writers might find three other writers to read.
Watcher - Charles L. Grant
This was a White Wolf licensed book in an rpg world. That siad, Grant does a really good job. A werewolf hunter is sent by the council to kill off a rogue werewolf that could expose them all. (Sound familiar?) There are some questions about who is actually sending him, and what the real purpose is. It is a tale of intrigue, mixed with a good dose of horror, all around ChattaCon. It felt like a quick read. Don't write this one off because it is a tie-in, it is still a Charles L. Grant. If you are a werewolf fan, hunt this one down.
Moon Dance- S.P. Somtow
How did I miss this one? This was also my first Somtow. I was very impressed. This one-upped McGammons' The Wolf's Hour. The scale of this thing is epic. I like the frame, but like even more how we spend more time in the past. We are looking into the fratured mind of a murderer, and a werewolf. The layers are pulled away to reveal a story more involved than I had expected. There is an Indian tribe who is on the same land that the European werewolves want to set up as theirs. There is only room for one group of werewolves, so of course a fight ensues. The web of the story weaves tighter and tighter as we make our way toward the end, and see more and more personalities in our werewolf's mind. A very nice mix of a psychological condition and the supernatural. Don't let the length of this tome put you off, this is a must-read for werewolf fans. I hate the "Does for werewolves what Anne Rice did for Vampires" thing that adorns many werewolf books; but this book actually deserves it.
Time flies, and it's back to my own novel of werewolfy horror. The deadline approacheth.