Lincoln Crisler

Dr. Kim Paffenroth is one of many authors whose been on my virtual ‘need to read’ shelf for a few years now. During my recent signing at Eerie Books, I was assaulted tri-dimensionally by an irresistible whirlwind of small-press and mass-market fiction. As much as I enjoy supporting independent horror and bookstores in general, I was reduced by my unearthly compulsion to eat more than just Top Ramen for a month to purchasing only a few books. The result of one of my selections is a surprise that is both forthcoming and secret; the other two were Kim Paffenroth’s debut novel, Dying to Live, and his editorial fiction debut, History is Dead, both of which were published by Permuted Press.

I read the anthology first. I’ve wanted to read this since it first came out; in fact, I should probably mention, in the interest of full disclosure, that I was invited to submit to this anthology and was rejected. The rejected story went on to be published three times (in electric, print and audio versions) and the anthology was (if memory serves me right) nominated for the Bram Stoker Award, so I think it’s safe to say everything worked out for the best. What I do remember about my pink slip from the professor is Dr. Paffenroth’s keen insight and personal comments. I firmly believe that the best anthologies are edited by the sort of editor that works more as a collaborator than a critic, and History is Dead is the sort of anthology I can hold up in support of my belief. It is a collection of zombie tales set during various historical periods. The zombies between these covers are no mere mindless flesh-eaters; they grieve for their still-living lovers, crave earthly revenge and inspire art, novels and plays. As you might expect, some stories interested me more than others. Just about all of my favorite stories were contained in the first half of the book, but even the stories I considered to be ‘alright’ could probably be another reader’s standouts.

Christine Morgan’s The Barrow Maid (a Viking piece) and Carole Lanham’s The Moribund Room (Tudor England, I believe) are two of the best in the book; also, Theatre is Dead by Raoul Wainscotting gets special mention because I laughed repeatedly at the audience’s ignorance. John Maberry’s Pegleg and Paddy Save the World, which tells the “true story” of the Chicago fire, could have been written especially for me, with my love of whiskey and my Celtic heritage. All in all an easy 4.5/5.

Dying to Live is the first of a series of novels set in the aftermath of a zombie apocalypse; the second novel has been available for some time, and the third is due out next spring. The story is told through the eyes of Jonah Caine as he kills a few zombies in brutal solo action before being rescued by members of a community of survivors. From there, the story progresses in a straight-forward, logical manner; each major chunk of the book is a direct result of what came before, etc. In this, the book differs from the typical novel format (conflict, climax, resolution) and would have made a distinctly unsatisfying standalone book. Since it isn’t one, though, I’m eagerly looking forward to reading the next installments.

This book is obviously written by a scholar and philosopher (the man has a doctorate in theology from Notre Dame, is affiliated with over a half-dozen theological associations and has a list of academic publications I can’t cover with both hands, despite the small font his university biography page uses) and is filled with references to the Bible and classic literature (though you’ll get no complaints from the guy that read encyclopedias cover to cover when he was ten), but don’t let me give you the impression that D2L is a dry, emotionless dissertation; it’s also packed with action and great characterization. The only point at which I think Dr. Paffenroth went a touch overboard was in the main character’s name (a little too over the top, really, and complete with analysis by another of the characters). Overall, I can’t wait to visit these characters and this setting again. 4/5.

Dubaku is a short (40-someodd pages), fast-paced horror story set on a 1790′s slave ship. The protagonist, for whom the book is named, surrenders himself willingly to slavers in the hope of rejoining his wife, who had been sold into slavery by her own people as punishment for her marriage to Dubaku. A couple weeks packed into the ship’s hold with hundreds of sick, malnourished, abused and dying slaves awakens him to a harsh reality: none of them are likely to survive, and his chances of rejoining his beloved are slim to none. He is spurred to action, either by spirits or his own twisted sense of justice, and the horrfying results aren’t all that great for the ship’s crew, or the slaves for that matter.

Erdelac’s novella is expertly written, but for one small infodump near the beginning that probably could have been spread out a bit over the first half of the book. He does an excellent job of describing the misery of the slaves, the cruelty of the ship’s crew and the greed of the ship’s captain. The various indignities visited upon the slaves and Dubaku in particular are recorded in detail; I give Erdelac a lot of credit for choosing such an emotionally-charged setting and not shying away from the grim facts of one of mankind’s darkest hours. The crown jewel of the book is Dubaku himself, a powerful African shaman from a family steeped in magic. At the beginning of the book he stands tall and proud, assured of his mission’s success. He rapidly devolves into a man awakened to the truth of his situation, and he makes some dark choices that make it hard to consider him a hero by any stretch of the imagination. Whatever you think of Dubaku (the man) after reading Dubaku (the book), you can’t argue with the logic behind his decisions: the slaves were doomed from the start, and those bastard slavers definitely had it coming.

4.5/5. I already have Erdelac’s next work in queue and can’t wait to get to it.

I’ll lead this review off with the comment I left on Ms. Priest’s blog post on the TOR website immediately after receiving Boneshaker in the mail:

Got my copy in the mail today!! SQUEEEE! And I’m totally blowing off everything in my TBR pile after finishing the one review I’ve obligated myself to. SQUEEEEE!!

Oh, and before I forget…

SQUEE.  

The easiest way to describe Boneshaker is to say that I read it in less than three days. I usually save my reading for work or the bus ride there and back, but I read this one during my downtime as well. I didn’t remember to download the new episodes of Dexter and Heroes until Wednesday. And the squee never stopped.

Boneshaker is set in an alternate version of Seattle around 1880. The Civil War is still dragging out back East, and the western frontier is more heavily populated than during our history due to the Klondike gold rush happening sooner. A twisted scientist is hired to create a machine to break through the Alaskan ice for gold, and things go awry, devastating Seattle and releasing a poisonous, zombie-creating gas from beneath the Earth’s surface.

Enter Briar Wilkes, the widow of the aforementioned mad doctor, and their teenage son, Ezekiel. Sixteen years after the disaster that ended in two square miles of zombie-infested Seattle being walled off, Zeke figures he can prove his father’s innocence by crawling under the wall and into the city his parents used to call home. Briar chases after, resulting in a nonstop adventure garnished with lavish imagery, clever inventions, steampunk technology, airships, pirates and the living dead.

I fell in absolute LUST with Boneshaker a month before it’s release, at http://theclockworkcentury.com/. You can read a short story set in Priest’s steampunk universe, an excerpt from Boneshaker, and catch news and updates on related projects, to include the upcoming novella, Clementine, and the sequel to Boneshaker, Dreadnought.

5,000,123,890/10. There’s still a couple months to go, but this might be the best book I’ve read in 2009.

Rot tells an entirely different sort of zombie tale. There’s no zombie apocalypse, and the streets aren’t awash with the flesh and blood of humanity. Instead, the type of society Lee describes kind of makes you wish it would be consumed: people raise their dead loved ones because they can’t stand the thought of them being dead, and then foist them off on what’s basically a nursing home for the undead. Dean, hired by the company that runs the nursing home to re-kill zombies when they inevitably lapse into savagery, falls in love with one of the residents, a zombie lass named Amy. Another zombie, a dead gay man named Patrick resurrected by his parents in order to save his soul from Hell, also has a special place in his heart for Amy. When she goes missing, Dean and Patrick team up to find her, and in the process uncover a hideous plot that further condemns the already damned and unwanted living dead.

I was really enthusiastic about Michele’s approach when I first heard about the book; I’m a big fan of Brian Keene, so I already have my zombie apocalypse fix covered. Instead, she uses the classic monster to tell a different type of story. My biggest gripe about Rot is that it’s too short; I definitely think Michele could have delved deeper into the various pits of depravity created when mankind raises it’s dead to live among them again. She only scratches the surface slightly with an offhand mention of a woman brought back to life to provide milk for the baby she died birthing and the merest hint of the horrors of a zombie escort service. I definitely think she should shoot for a novel-length adaptation of Rot; the small taste she gives us with the novella is executed so well, it’s hard to be satisfied with fifty pages knowing the untapped potential that’s out there. I also wish there had been more of the relationship between Amy and Dean; yeah, falling in love with a zombie is kinda disgusting, but the way Michele describes her it doesn’t sound outside the realm of possibility.

Bottom line: pick up a copy of Rot and then hound Michele en masse to finish what she started. And tell her Lincoln sent you. 8.5/10

I’ve done a good bit of reading over the last couple weeks… my duties have involved playing several hours of the oh-so-entertaining waiting game. To play catch-up, here’s a group of several rapid-fire reviews, with ratings out of five, five being superb.

Who Can Save Us Now? is a great collection of short fiction exploring a wide-range of the effects superpowers can have on humanity in general, but also on heroes, villains, sidekicks and bystanders. I’m a huge superhero fan, a comics reader for over a decade and creator of a comic of my own that should see publication by year’s end if I play my cards right. This book scratches an itch I oftentimes find no cure for; superheroes dealt with in a mature and innovative manner. I still read comics but my tastes run towards either the older superhero stuff or Vertigo and Avatar titles. Editors Owen King and John McNally assembled a great superteam of fiction that I shared with a friend as soon as I finished the last page. 4.5/5

Just After Sunset is Stephen King’s latest collection of short work and I’d been looking forward to it for quite some time. King’s written some of my favorite short horror fiction. This book broke that mold. The scares are few and far between; the much-lauded N. wasn’t as big of a deal as I would have hoped and the Cat From Hell just plain sucked. The main appeal of this book to me was in seeing more of King’s growth as a writer and a person. You can see a definite change in the direction his work is taking. He’s in his sixties now, coming to grips with his own mortality moreso than ever (even more than after his accident, I’d say) and it shows in this book, largely populated by characters either dealing with death or near the end of their lives. There are several great pieces to be found in Sunset, but they’re more of a literary bent than a horror one. Overall, this one’s 4/5. From a horror perspective, 1/5.

Jake’s Wake by John Skipp and Cody Goodfellow is a delightful slasher-romp featuring a shady televangelist who comes back from the dead after being killed by a sexual conquest’s boyfriend. Lots of grisly murder, a bit of black humor and a completely unexpected ending that fit perfectly. I’ve never read either of these authors before, but I’m eagerly awaiting the next release by either of them. The action is fast-paced and nonstop and the characters were well-written and realistic. Mass-market, escapist horror doesn’t get much better than this. 4.7/5.

I’ve been reading this series since the beginning and I have every issue. Kirkman isn’t shy about killing off characters, even the ones he makes the readers care about, but this issue… is the most fucking brutal issue yet. There was one page I looked at for a long time (and went back to after I finished the issue) because it was thathard-hitting.

Check it out here and if this is your kind of material, feel free to leave your thoughts in the comments box. For more info on The Walking Dead, visit The Walking Dead on Wikipedia.