Original Poetry: Lincoln Park Zoo in Late August

During the uncertainty—
      the lull compressed
between chemo bouts
      and stem-cell harvesting,
my brother had
      a good day.

His eyes were tracking
      marmoset acrobatics
and green swamp monkeys
      flinging themselves
from leafless branch
      to man-made vine.

Pressed nose to glass,
      his emaciated face
seemed to curl
      an unthinkably big smile;
his eyes –
      wonderment-wide.

My brother was once
      himself a monkey
climbing, leaping
      each ledge and tree.
But not now;
      and never was I.

Earlier, when basking,
      resting the walking stick
and his neuropathic hobble,
      our small talk
was ruptured
      by seagull screeching

emanating from a fist-faced
      young girl, her eyes
and fists squeezed white
      in deliberate mimicry.
Gulls responded and resumed
      scavenging the patio’s periphery.

If asked about those tall
      days of August waiting,
my story
      will be the seagull-girl
with steady eyes, arms
      outstretched collecting the wind.
 
 
[This poem was published by The Eunoia Review in April 2015.]
 
 
 
[Check out other original poems here.]

Short Story Review: “The Beast of Glamis” by William Meikle

2 of 5 stars.

A bleak Scottish countryside castle is a near perfect setting for a Victorian ghost story. Why what is clearly a ghost appearing as either a human shade or small mist-like emanation is called a beast is less clear, even in the retelling.

The tale itself introduces a different sort of spirit delving into Elizabethan alchemy implying a spirit adrift from time as much as anything else.

Unfortunately, the story is filtered through a series of characters. The narrator was never at the castle. He attended a dinner party for one who was. The host of the dinner party relates what the laird of the castle had related to have been his experience . . . The distance from the immediacy of the tale lessens it.

A nice touch is the use of Scottish dialect, Elizabethan expressions [in written form], and an accurate depiction of Victorian stodgy mannerisms.

This tale appears in Weird Detectives: Recent Investigations edited by Paula Guran.

 
 
 
[Check out my other reviews here.]

Short Story Review: “Defining Shadows” by Carrie Vaughn

3 of 5 stars.

Peripheral to, but emerging from the world of Vaughn’s Kitty Norville series about a detective werewolf in the Denver area, this short story mentions but never sees Kitty. The tale follows police detective Jessi Hardin of the Denver PD. She’s not supernatural, but those are the crimes she investigates–not unlike Karrin Murphy of Jim Butcher’s Dresden series about an investigative wizard in Chicago.

This short tale takes a look at a neighborhood with a mix of cultures including immigrant Filipinos and the Caucasians that don’t understand them [and cannot tell them apart from Mexicans]. The case revolves around the bottom half of a body found standing up in a backyard shed. The top half is missing. The rotting flesh has been sprinkled with salt . . .

What’s most interesting here, is that like an episode of Supernatural, the investigation delves into folk beliefs from other cultures.

This tale appears in Weird Detectives: Recent Investigations edited by Paula Guran. I’ve previously read Vaughn’s “Amaryllis“ and “Fishwife”, both of which were excellent.

 
 
 
[Check out my other reviews here.]

Graphic Novel Review: Dry Spell by Ken Krekeler

Dry Spell by Ken Krekeler
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Addiction, Recovery and Relapse resonate throughout this graphic novel depicting a world of superheroes and supervillains. One man walked away from it all: the fame, the rush. Tom’s become a pencil pusher taking it one day at a time. Not even his girlfriend knows of his storied past. The public never knew what it took for him to perform–LCD. Anything to remove the self-doubts.

Then his HR rep, Walter, recognizes him for who he was. mire of Walter, too, dabbles in the world of Super hidden beneath a mundane facade. He takes Tom to a group of underperforming Supers. Tom’s not interested in unleashing his great potential again. He was too strong, too able. But Walter laces Tom’s drink to unlock the dormant Super . . .

The art is compelling, adeptly circumventing the mire of exposition and lengthier dialogues. Key images explode off the page with restrained use of color until necessary and with beautiful choreography of silhouette and drama.

However, it is the story that makes this highly recommended. Tom’s brooding and interactions with family members, friends, lovers, and potential colleagues feel real. Surrounded by well-meaning people, he’s alone.

I received this title directly from the artist when we met at Chicago’s C2E2 convention of comic and graphic novel artists.
 
 
 
[Check out my other reviews here.]

Novella Review: The Uprising by Kachi Ugo

The Uprising by Kachi Ugo
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

There’s an ethical conundrum that asks: If you could travel through time and go back to when Hitler was an innocent baby, would you/could you kill him? This novella seems to revolve around this very question. And then lets the question linger.

Two elemental magic users representing the most powerful coalition of elementals travel back in time about 60 years to collect a baby that will grow up to be an awful, awful person. A Voldemort, perhaps. Never is a single atrocity, or crime cited and linked to the baby keeping that important aspect of the story cloaked, or just underdeveloped.

Interestingly, some characters appear in both time lines. Better yet, their positions in the government and in their relationship to the baby or to the kidnapping can oppose their other self. This is a clever contradiction worth exploring but left curiously quiet.

Rather, the book focuses on the mother [Sarah] of the kidnapped child. She’s a flawed elemental with anger issues stemming from being the mother scorned. Her husband is high up in the organization that likely took her child which puts her at odds within her own household. I call her flawed due to her lack of a moral compass. By the start of the book, she has started an uprising gathering over one thousand followers in opposition to the elemental government. She knowingly sets them all up for slaughter for a single siege to perhaps gather a single clue or tool in the drive to reclaim her stolen baby. What type of person would kill 1000 supporters just to open a door that they know their baby is not behind? She’s been wronged, but she’s also an awful person. And the story does not do enough to support this position.

The tale is also full of contradictions other than the purposeful time-bending ones. In the beginning of the tale, Sarah’s husband calls her to talk her out of the action she’s about to do. He knows what she’s doing and cites details. The government knows too, he says, and is expecting her. Much later in the book, he claims to her that he did not know that it was her that did what she did. [Except that he was also on the phone with her while she was doing it and well aware at that point.]

I received my copy of this novel directly from the author through bookreviewdirectory.wordpress.com. I previously read and reviewed this author’s The Great Hunt.
 
 
 
[Check out my other reviews here.]

Novel Review: The Alpha Plague 5 by Michael Robertson

The Alpha Plague 5 by Michael Robertson
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

The Alpha Plague is a British rage-style zombie pandemic. The zombies aren’t dead, merely afflicted, and they aren’t dying off due to their hunting prowess and willingness to eat any animal they can get their hands on. Not that zombie tales are about the zombies–they aren’t. They’re almost always about the societies and relationships between people amidst a horrific backdrop that could turn anybody you love into the “other.”

This episode of the series can be read alone or after just the 4th in the series. The initial trilogy was largely self-contained as it documented the initial 48 hours of the pandemic showing the luck, wherewithal, and canniness necessary in such desperate a situation. The immediate predecessor of this installment jumped a full ten years allowing 6-year old Flynn to become a hormonal–but not annoyingly so–teenager. His perspective is unique in that he doesn’t remember nor understand how society used to work. He essentially knows nobody but his parents and Vicky, the lone survivors of the first trilogy. The ten years pass with them not finding anybody as they hid away in a remote location.

A radio broadcast from other survivors launched an epic journey in book 4 to find Home. Along the way, other groups were discovered. And not unlike in The Walking Dead, most of those groups are disturbed in one manner or another. Slavery. Cannibalism.

This book depicts the cushy life inside of Home. The group lives underground with electricity thanks to a solar panel field they maintain. They have alarms and cameras. Clean water, showers and gyms. They even have an underground farm for raising plant crops. Under Hugh’s leadership and sometimes heavy hand, Home supports about 100 people in a little Utopia. And yet Vicky and Flynn cannot relax.

There’s a strictness to Home, in the name of security. Signs of “plague” or mental illness are dealt with in the harshest possible ways . . . Also, the internal farm is starting to fail with its depleted soil.

The entire series is recommended.

I’ve previously read this author’s:
     The Alpha Plague–5 stars
     The Alpha Plague 2–4 stars
     The Alpha Plague 3–5 stars
     The Alpha Plague 4–4 stars
     “The Arena” (The Shadow Order)–5 stars
     The Black Hole (The Shadow Order, #1)–2 stars
     Crash (Crash, #1)–4 stars
     New Reality: Truth (New Reality, #1)–3 stars
     New Reality 2: Justice (New Reality, #2)–4 stars
     New Reality 3: Fear (New Reality, #3)–3 stars

Graphic Novel Heaven

C2E2 has come to Chicago again bringing some of my favorite graphic novels and graphic novel artists and writers back to the Windy City. This is especially good since some major publishers seemed to have skipped out this year. [Tor, I’m looking at you]. The third major element to the convention is cosplay, and it’s not my thing . . . unless it happens to be a character from my favorite graphic series of the last few years. This cosplayer really sold it:

This is Gwendolyn from the Saga series written by Brain K Vaughan, art by Fiona Staples. The series covers a range of subjects: war, race, racism, sacrifice, class. All set against a galactic backdrop of diverse aliens. And it’s brilliant. Highly, highly recommended.
     Saga, Volume 1–5 stars
     Saga, Volume 2–5 stars
     Saga, Volume 3–5 stars
     Saga, Volume 4–4 stars
     Saga, Volume 5–5 stars
     Saga, Volume 6–5 stars
     Saga, Volume 7–4 stars

It was also nice to reconnect with the creation teams behind Liberty: Deception who put out some stunning images in their dystopian space series in which humans are making a mess of themselves and each other without need of aliens.

The great news from them is that their next issue is ready to go to print and they’ve prepared a Histories book for their world.
     [w/ Casey Bailey] Liberty: Deception, Issue 0–4 stars
     [w/ Raymund Bermudez] Liberty: Deception, Volume 1–4 stars
     Liberty: Fringe Iconography Guide–4 stars

Finally, the creative team behind Twisted Dark, Volume 1 is here. They’ve really been productive and have 6 volumes out.
Twisted Dark, Volume 1

Now, I’m looking forward to discovering new stories and art as I wander back down to C2E2 again tomorrow.

Novel Review: The Apostates, Book 3: Lake of Fire by Lars Teeney

Lake of Fire by Lars Teeney
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

The Apostates trilogy [plus 1 prequel short story] concludes with this installment. The grammatical errors and editorial missteps that plagued the trilogy opener pick back up here creating a confused if not painful read.

Taking place in North America, a dystopian government has come and gone after a nuclear apocalypse and environmental breakdown ended the United States. While speculative, the series tweaks history, too, creating a parallel universe to ours. The dystopian government, a cyber-backed theocracy under the long-lived rule of President Shrubb, and its ultimate undoing were the plot of the early books. But it makes reappearances here in scattered scenes throughout the book that usually lack indicators clarifying the chronology. They do little to aid this installment and much to pull the reader from the current storyline.

President Shrubb is a clear reference to President George W Bush and his anti-science, religiously inspired leadership. But from there, previous installments took an Orwellian development in layering society with acronyms of a doublespeak nature. It was clever and effective–then. Now in the wake of the theocracy, new governments have emerged in city-states across the continent to try to undo the damage. However, they’re still using the former system’s acronyms which places them out of context. The series also doubles down on the references to current politics veering the tale toward a Mad Magazine style spoof. Haliburton becomes Halibut. Google becomes Boooogie!. Rahm Emmanuel [current mayor of Chicago] becomes Ram Manual. It’s too much. And unnecessary. And all taking place in the throwback scenes not aiding the plot.

Other missteps doom the immersive quality of this tale. 1) Too many chapters starting with a couple long paragraphs that refuse to name the subject character, instead repeating “he/she” as if the subject should be a mystery. 2) Repeatedly defining terms which have been established. [“Pinging” is communicating via neural implant. So, always saying “pinging via neural implant” is redundant.] 3) Repeatedly comparing landmarks to current American ones, thereby not believing in its own overlay. ie Saying what a city or park used to be called. 4) The throwaway, sexist handling of crowd scenes with sweeping general terms. [The men did “x.” Women screamed. Children cried. Over and over again.]

Finally, the book has an epilogue. And shouldn’t. The scene has no bearing and I suggest not reading it. It’s akin to the final episode of the television series “Lost”, reveling in itself but opening new, unexplained topics.

I received my copy of this novel directly from the author through bookreviewdirectory.wordpress.com. I previously read and reviewed the other books in this series:
     New Megiddo Rising (Apostates, #0)–4 stars
     The Apostates (Apostates, #1)–2 stars
     The Apostates: Remnants (Apostates, #2)–4 stars
 
 
 
[Check out my other reviews here.]

Short Story Review: “Deal Breaker” by Justin Gustainis

2 of 5 stars.

The mark of a good detective is agile thinking and an ability to elicit the proper response, whether action or words, from others. Not every case requires the flatfoot to hoof it–the investigator just needs to understand the situation differently from the client perplexed by it.

This tale sits between a vignette and a parable [much shorter and shallower than a short story] as the detective never leaves his office to solve/resolve the client’s dilemma. It’s the sort of thing that might happen between the pages of a longer story and then complement the bigger cases. Here, it’s left hanging on its own: a well-to-do client comes in hours before his ten-year deal with the devil comes due. He wants to avoid the hell-hounds despite his demon-contract.

The detective merely parses out the details of the contract and gathers intel on the supernatural deal-maker to sort things out. Throw in a bottle of bourbon and the noir scenario is complete. While this vignette logics out fine, the ending begs for more of the world of the detective than this gives. Sometimes one wants to see more of the detective than his sheltered office . . .

This tale appears in Weird Detectives: Recent Investigations edited by Paula Guran.

 
 
 
[Check out my other reviews here.]

Short Story Review: “The Case of the Stalking Shadows” by Joe R. Lansdale

The Case of the Stalking Shadow by Joe R. Lansdale
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

Despite the title of the tale and its inclusion in a supernatural detective anthology, this isn’t a detective story. It’s a supernatural ghost story with elements of Lovecraft in its default to unspeakable horror at its heart. I tend not to be moved by “unspeakable horror” since little tends to make it to the page to suggest horror. I find it akin to someone opening a box without letting you peek and then saying, “It’s the most wonderful thing I’ve ever seen. Don’t you agree?” I wouldn’t know, you aren’t showing me what’s in the box . . .

Horror works best with immediacy–something at stake with an unsure outcome. The stakes are raised if the hero might possibly not make it out of the situation. The horror is diffused a level if the narrator is telling the story after the fact. [Let me guess, you survived the room full of knife-wielding clowns long enough to tell me this story . . .] It’s diffused even more when the tale is not even told by the person who experienced it. [So, your neighbor went on vacation and saw a shark . . . ok.] This tale follows option 3.

An allegedly ghost-skeptical narrator was at a book club where a person recounted a spirit encounter from decades earlier. This is multiple degrees from immediacy. And despite the narrator’s affirmation that the tale he heard made him a believer, little to the story is compelling in the re-retelling of a vague unspeakable horror.

This tale appears in Weird Detectives: Recent Investigations edited by Paula Guran. I’ve previously reviewed this author’s:
     “Godzilla’s Twelve-Step Program”–4 stars
     “On the Far Side of the Cadillac Desert with Dead Folks”–2 stars
     “Torn Away”–2 stars
 
 
 
[Check out my other reviews here.]