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Previous Readings 2007

December 2007

Bloodwish is a novella by McBride that is a scary modern fairy tale. It tells the story of a little boy who is out to fix the sadness his mother is feeling after the death of his father, by finding the magic well in the woods his mother told him about. There are little mutilated supernatural children helping him out that were previous victims of something and they ask the boy for help. So the boy is out to help both parties.

This was a great story. I loved the Grimm Fairy Tale feel to the story, and McBride made me feel compassion for the boy and his mother. The author did a good job, and it was a good book.

30 Days of Night is a novel adaptation of a movie by Lebbon. It has the atmosphere of John Carpenters The Thing, where the town is at the northernmost point of Alaska, and they are being haunted by a supernatural killer. Or in this case a bunch of vampires who came north to be able to live in the dark for 30 days. This is more a fun story than scary, in my opinion, just because of the atmosphere. The Alaskan setting is a lot of fun. The book also ended up with a little twist that I wasn't expecting. And the book just runs along like an adventure story, fast and fun. So Lebbon gives us a pretty good piece here, I enjoyed it.

Exquisite Corpse is a very detailed book about murder, homosexuality and necrophilia. I would assume the average reader would be turned off by the subject matter very quickly, and in fact I wasn't too keen on reading about sexual encounters between men. But nevertheless I thought it would be an interesting diversion from my usual readings, so I gave it a shot. Besides the shock effect of the subject matter there is a pretty decent story in here. It follows the lives of two serial killers who kill young men, and how they eventually hook up, and what happens after. And it contains a third thread about the primary victim. All-in-all this book wasn’t that great, but I did like the end as it wasn't what I was expecting.

The Rising is a zombie movie, oh I mean book. Although it reads like a movie, tense scenes seem more cinematic than emotional, and there are always the one-liners throughout the book that you expect Bruce Willis or some other action movie star to be saying the line. Is this bad? Yes and no. Yes in the fact it comes across juvenile, no in the fact that’s its fun to read. Also Keene has created a mythology to go along with this book, and they are not just zombies, they are demons that have escaped God’s barrier and are able to inhabit bodies once the soul has left. So he juices up the zombie story to make it entertaining, as you want to know more about these things. Also it’s just good storytelling, the reader is interested in going along for the ride. I give it a thumb up.

An older book by King (Bachman) that tells the story of the collapse of a man who cannot mentally deal with the fact the city has decided to build a freeway through his home and job. This is an excellent story, and very believable. The main protagonist has decided that he doesn’t want to move from his home, nor does he want to move his job into a new building. So the man makes a stand. The scariest thing about this book is how King tells the story of a man driven to do crazy things, but the protagonist doesn’t quite feel that he has gone crazy. King really explains how easy it could be for someone to slip from normal to crazy without the person being aware of the change. I really liked this book, a lot.

Finally I read Nolan's Logan Run, and I can now see why it's a favorite among readers. It's typical Nolan, with not a lot of character generation, and you are sped through the story. Where it shines is the story idea, atmosphere and story telling. It's just a cool idea, taking earth's biggest problem overpopulation and coming up with a fictional future based off what "could happen".

The atmosphere comes from reading about areas that have undergone transformation, like Washington D.C. is now unpopulated and taken over by wildlife. They were very fun to visualize. And as usual with Nolan he adds a little twist to the story, as he has to inject a little mystery storytelling into the book.

This is not a difficult book, nor will it win any literary awards, but it has the sense of wonder along with good storytelling that attracts the reader. Good world building by Nolan with this one.

Bumper Crop is a collection of shorter works by Lansdale. Lansdale has done two short story collections through Golden Gryphon, and which he considers both books to be his best stories. The first work, High Cotton is the longer works, while Bumper Crop is the shorter works.

As such, a lot of the stories don’t have a lot of meat, as I prefer the longer short stories. But these were still very good. You get the classic God of the Razor, which is fantastic along with some other greats like Fish Night and Duck Hunt. There were only a few duds, if at all in this collection. This is classic Lansdale, and it’s good Lansdale. I can easily recommend this book.

This is a sexual horror story about a man who no longer can find excitement in sex with his wife. So he meets some swingers on-line and tricks his wife into accompanying them on a camping trip. It seems like it would be your typical slasher story, which it was but it went supernatural rather than just bad people. Not bad, and it was fun to read, but the story is too short to really say much. So this story was just held entertainment value.

This is an eclectic set of stories by Gary Braunbeck with The Big Hollow, a novel sized story written with Alan M. Clark, taking up about 80 percent of the book. Unfortunately The Big Hollow wasn’t that great of a story, it tells of a group of dead people tied in purgatory to a local cemetery. It’s basic character building throughout the story, and honestly their stories are not that exciting. Nevertheless it starts to get stronger toward the end and ties up nicely. So I ended up finishing with a pleasant feeling.

The best story of the bunch is called Mr. Hands, this novella story has been fleshed out into a novel sized story in 2007. But here is its inception, a chilling tale of a woman whose child was killed and she brings out a horror to take vengeance. It all goes wrong, though, and you end up taking sides with the child killers. It’s a very intelligently written story. Another story was a murder mystery that I must admit must not have hit me at all as it’s not memorable in the slightest. But the last major novella was called The Circus of Central Motion, a sad but hilarious tale told in first-person and poetical segments. It’s a real fun story to read and I was surprise to see Gary do some humor because he can be so somber at times.

This is some early writing for Braunbeck, as well as a collaboration. As a result this collection is a hit or miss, some very good stuff like Mr., Hands, and some average stuff as in The Big Hollow. Alan Clark fully illustrates this book and it makes for a wonderful piece of publishing. Overall I was pleased with the read even though uneven.

The Keep is a very atmospheric piece. It tells of struggle between good and evil in a mountain pass in Romania during WWII. The Germans have come into Romania and are setting up an outpost at an abandoned keep. The two main protagonists happen to be Jewish and are the leading authorities of the keep, and the reason why the Germans decide to recruit their help. This is a fantastic horror tale, along with the WWII and Nazi's backdrop this makes for a very interesting scenario.

And F. Paul Wilson doesn’t disappoint. It takes a little while to build the back story, but once it kicks in its full steam ahead. The Germans are taking over the keep because they need a strategic outpost, but they have uncovered an ancient evil reminiscent of a vampire. The story is not as simple as that, but without giving anything away that’s pretty much the premise of the story. The complications are the interactions between the Iron Guard of Germany, the newly created SS Nazi troops, the Jewish couple, and the uncovered evil. Is there a way to stop the Jewish death camps, is there a way to stop Hitler. Can this uncovered evil be twisted to do good? Wilson really builds of a believable scenario with some frightening possibilities. His created mythology for this book has glaring holes, but since it is so interesting, who cares?

A really good book, very atmospheric, creepy, a decent mythology and a great setting in WWII Romania, and great storytelling make this a very memorable book. Thumbs up!

November 2007

A chapbook by Wolfe that tries to tell a lot in a little time. In the beginning it's hard to see where the voice is coming from as Wolfe jumps around different characters points of view, but there was little character development, and he doesn't state who the character is describing the story until you are halfway through that section. After the confusion, you end up getting a pretty neat story.

In the snowed in Christmas Inn, it's slow this year but the owners family is visited by an unusual set of guests who grant them all a couple of gifts that are bad and good, and then give them a choice of what they want to do about it. There's also the mystery of who these mysterious guests are? A good little story, but one that needs a reread to understand it better.

This is an illustrated chapbook of the story My Dead Dog, Bobby. It's more about the illustrations than the text itself, where the text is the usual warped sense of humor from Lansdale. The illustrations are nice, and it's a beautiful little book. As a result, it's a fun little read.

Sci-Fi, Horror, and a Drive-In make up this story, which for Lansdale is just another typical story. It tells of a meteor that somehow takes the whole of a Texas Drive-In and places it in some sort of alternate dimension with no escape. What happens is a Lord of the Flies scenario where humans eventually degrade into animals. Everything though is tinged with the absurdity of horror movies and the drive-in. The great monster is called the Popcorn King and he feeds his flock by puking out popcorn. Sounds sick? Yea, but it's also the comical aspect of this that allows you not to take this seriously.

This was a classic Lansdale tale with all his wackiness and horror, that had a good story wrapping it together. A fun read!

This is a Cthulhu Mythos book. It tells the story of a man trying to find out what happened when his uncle disappeared for a year, came back and was a certified lunatic. The uncle's story is he found an ancient underground civilization under the Yorkshire Moors, where he was was free to wander the underground tunnels and caves at will, where he found all sorts of horrors. It is written in style as Lovecraft but just not as exciting. There were a few situations that were interesting, but for the most part the horrors were not as interesting as lovecraft created. Nevertheless it was still an entertaining read. I give it a C grade.

I really liked this story, which first appeared in the anthology Borderlands 5, and was excited that is was also offered in a audio version. Ron McLarty read the book as he did with Blaze. So it took a little to adjust and realize this was a new character he was reading. Also the story does start off a little slow, so it was a little rough at first. But once the story got deeper I starting remembering why I liked it so much. It is really a original story. It's not really a horror story. there is fear, but you eventually come to understand that it is misplaced fear. It's just a good fictional literary piece. Ron does a good job reading and it was fun listening to this story once again.

This is a large promotional chapbook of two short stories by de Lint. Riding Shotgun the first one is pretty long and is a novella in length. It tells of a man who has lived life in despair after killing his brother in a car accident when he was drunk. After his father dies he comes back home and is able to relive that incident where he killed his brother. He is able to change the outcome, but finds out that other events occur that are worse than before. This is a pretty intelligent piece of writing by de Lint. Even though de Lint does a lot of Young Adult stories, and tends to get into ruts where he sometimes tells the same story, there are stories like this that reassure me that de Lint is one of the best writers out there. A great story.

The second story was done for a Hellboy anthology and uses that character but placed into de Lint's fictional world of Newford. Nothing serious here, in fact it utilizes humor in the story. I'll admit I was entertained but this story was nothing special, nor was it supposed to be. Because of the fact I was entertained and the first story was just fantastic, this collection of two stories was a great read. Very happy I was able to pick up this promotional chapbook.

This is a promotional chapbook that contains the two mentioned short stories. Where's Bobo is acomical horror piece, that unfortunetly was very perdictable. Glory Hole happened to contain a little substance, it was a hole in a bathroom that led to another horrific dimension. This story had some atmosphere. Although, both of these stroies were short and can't be considered quality, but I will say they were fun to read.

There are three large audio books of stories from Everything's Eventual, and this is the main one. It has some great stories here along with the two Dark Tower related stories in Everything's Eventual and The Little Sister's of Eluria. Both of these stories were great listens. The first was done very well the reader, and was entertaining to reread this title. The second was the highlight, a three disc telling of the story. I haven't read The Little Sister's of Eluria in quite a few years and it was a blast to revisit such a great story.

All the others were also good. The best thing about this collection is there were different authors for each story including Judith Ivet reading Luckey Quarter. Also after seeing Autopsy Room Four on the television series Nightmares & Dreamscapes I became disenchanted with the story. Hearing it here reminded me what a great story it was. Overall this was a fun listen while revisiting some great stories from the collection Everything's Eventual

This short story collection starts of with a bang in "The White". The is a very cinematic story detailing a group of people huddled up in a snowed-in house while the earth was dying off by a plague. But these people were in for a different ending because the white creatures have targeted these people for extermination. It's a fun action ride that ends with no hope. The imagery from this story is top notch and I still think about this story a couple of weeks after I read it.

The other stories all follow along the same path, ruin, death, and no hope. One story was out of place in this collection "Mannequin Man and the Plastic Bitch", but it didn't matter as this was great fun, and I felt like I was in a Blade Runner movie. And there was one bad story, because the plot was very weak in "The First Law",but the atmosphere of the story was still fun so it wasn't a total waste.

I can say without question, though, this is a great read. There were some pretty original ideas in this collection, and all of the stories are very memorable. Thumbs up!

This is a chapbook of a section that was removed from Bev Vincent's The Road to the Dark Tower. Cemetery Dance released this as a promotional chapbook. This section is about characters in the Dark Tower story. These are the side characters that are either good, bad, or ugly. Calvin Tower is an example here. A pretty prominent character I think but he was left out of the original book. Anyway, this chapbook deals with eight secondary characters and tells their story that they played in the series. Not too much here, but it was nice to read as a complement to The Road to the Dark Tower and read the cut content.

I wanted to listen to this audio version instead of a reread before I started into the second book of this series to catch up on what went before, and I'm glad I did. At first I was angry that the reader was male considering the story's main character in female. But after a while I got used to it. He never really excelled in the female voice but considering all her companions and everyone she meets is almost 100 percent male he did a great job with those voices. He also did the Haruchi perfectly. So in the end I enjoyed this narrator.

Now the story I didn’t care that much for the first time I read through it, only the ending got me juiced up, as it really is just setting up the story that will continue for four books. When listening to the audio version I gained a better appreciation of the book. Some of the smaller parts in this book became more relevant, and I understood their positioning within the story, whereas I might have not thought much of them the first time through. So it opened me up to a lot of things that were going on with this book that I might have just skimmed over while reading it the first time. So after the read and the audio listen I now have a better appreciation for this book, and there’s one hell of a lot going on! This book was way more complex than any of his previous Thomas Covenant books, and I have now grasped this. It’s a great read and listen!

This was a nice little story. It's a young adult story about how a young girl gets recruited for the space academy that she never applied for. While everyone else wants to get into the academy, she doesn't, and this story is about her attempt to get out of the academy believing they made a huge mistake. Well, all ends well and we get a happy ending to the story. Nothing major here, but it was a fun read.

October 2007

This was a pretty large book dealing with all things about The Dark Tower. The first half of the book dedicates a chapter to each story in the series. Usually I enjoy recaps, but with this book I found it dull to half to read 300 pages summarizing the seven Dark Tower books. The length is what got to me, as there were too many books to recap to keep my interest.

The second half of the book deals with everything else, how the other books are connected to The Dark Tower books, where King got his influences, and what the meaning of the books were, a section detailing the linguistics of the High Speech, and of course Robert Browning poem “Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came”. This was the beefy stuff; this was where I learned a good deal about the books that I missed while reading through the stories, and this was the part I liked. The only fault is extrapolation. Bev Vincent tries to summarize what King was thinking when writing a certain section of text by inserting his views on what King was meaning to say. So I didn't buy into all of it, but that’s what this book is; in essence it's a critical review, and the reader can choose to share or not share the beliefs of the author.

All-in-all since I am a Dark Tower fan I enjoyed this book. But I must be honest in saying a lot of this book was very dry, especially the individual book summarizations. I hope Robin Furth's book is better, which is coming out soon from Cemetery Dance and deals with the same subject matter.

This is a short chapbook with illustrations by Charles Vess. This story is like a fable, it tells the story of a angry storm that has crashed Spanish ships on the shores of Ireland. A woman watches it all and is visited by a mysterious stranger who seems to enchant her somewhat, and she beds the man who is gone in the morning. It ends with a poem, which explains what the man was who greeted her in the storm. It was a pretty interesting story, but it was short and didn't have enough substance to really grab me. But it was still good.

Masks is an interesting story of lust, old archeological magic, and of course masks. It tells of a historian who falls for a eccentric billionaire who collects ages old artifacts, and old tribal masks are one of his fetishes. The story flows along with sex scene after sex scene where the two wear the masks and are transformed into these masks. But at the end the story ends sadly for the woman but provides an interesting twist. I liked it, I thought it was an interesting concept.

This magazine is actually stocked full of good stories. Joe Hill, Jack McDevitt, Robert Silverberg, and Charles de Lint all contribute. I've already read the Hill and Silverberg stories, which were excellent, and dove into the stories by de Lint and McDevitt. And both were stories. De Lint's tale is not that exciting, but is an interesting story, and it's a little different than his usual fare, so I enjoyed it. The McDevitt story was pretty cool, it is similar in vein to Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451, but instead of book burning a computer wizard is making authors unnecessary. Taking all four stories from this magazine as a whole, it's excellent!

Imprint was a pretty interesting title. It's the third book in the chapbook series, but these chapbooks run at a hundred pages so in reality it's a novella. Anyway, we start out with a man who has imprisoned himself so he could get revenge on the killer of his wife. At the start of this story we are introduced to the inmate after he has killed his wife’s killer. As we go along we find out more and more that the situation is not as simple as it seems. So after a few twists we end with another twist, all the revelations were a lot of fun. This was a pretty intelligent book, I liked it!

This is a collection of short stories that are fantastical in nature, but more along the line of a Neil Gaiman, which means they were fantastical in nature, but were not your standard fantasy fare. This was a decent collection, not great but not bad. The title story was a fun one, as was the Exo-Skeleton Town. And then there were some intelligent stories such as Malthusian's Zombie. I guess as a whole the collection is pretty good, where the later half of the stories were great, but it took me a while to get interested in the first half of the book.

This is one of the two series of comics that Neil did for the character Death, that came from his Sandman comics. In my opinion I did not find this to be one of Neil's stronger works. Both of his series with Death haven't been that exciting. And it kinda peeved me off that someone has to sacrifice themselves for another who makes a selfish bargain with Death. To me this seemed stupid, and was not very believable. And what happens, at least in my opinion is I disliked the two main characters because of their selfishness. Anyway, it was still Gaiman, and it was a decent story. But it wasn't that exciting.

This is a chapbook produced by the artist Keith Minnion. So it has some lovely artwork to go along with the story. The story itself wasn't a great one by Braunbeck, although it was still entertaining. It tells of a broken man who has lost everything and he goes to the old tree house that was built with his best friends when they were children. Here he looks for help when he's at the end of his rope, and life. The story held some supernatural aspects that were used to recreate his friends, but other than that it is a story about a broken man, and what he is experiencing. Not a bad read, but Braunbeck has done better.

Well after hearing everyone clamor about how good these BBC dramatizations of The Hobbit and The lord of the rings were, I decided to try one. At the beginning it was hard to take as the background music sounds like something from an Apple II fantasy video game, and Bilbo interjects all these funny little lines behind the scenes of the story that were not included in the book. But after listening a while and realizing this is a dramatization of The Hobbit, it is not the story. It is more like a script created from the book, and it is acted out from this script, which is the case.

But the script is faithful to the book for the most part, as we get all the important parts of the story. So after gelling into the audio version of the book I started to like it. I'll admit it's very cheesy as the BBC incorporates a lot of comedy into the story, but it was a nice alternative to the book. I was glad to hear it once, but if I want to listen to an audio version of The Hobbit again, I'll find an unabridged telling of the story over this dramatization.

The Elves of Cintra was a lot better than the first book in this series. Whereas the first book focused on a group of kids known as the ghosts, here it starts to broaden. We get the tales of the last two Knights of the Word, one is helping the ghosts, and the other is helping the elves. The setting is still northwest America, but with the elves in the picture we start to get a feeling of the Shannara books over the Word and a Void books that dominated the first book in this series. For a Brooks book this one is pretty brutal, two side likable characters get killed, and both Knights of the Word are in questionable shape as to if they'll survive by the end of the book. This was probably the best Brooks book he’s done since his The Voyage Of The Jerle Shannara series.

This chapbook is a secondary release, it was originally released in the collection 20th Century Ghosts. I've read the collection but saved this story knowing this chapbook was being released. I'm glad I did, as this was a very colorful book and the illustrations added to the atmosphere of the story. And it helped tremendously that this is a great story. It's a weird one, but also a tear jerker. Only Joe Hill could bring you to tears over a plastic balloon boy. lol. Anyway this story is another showcase of Joe's amazing writing skills, this is a solid story, and it was a joy to read!

I've read the graphic version of Stardust which omits some of the text found in the novel Stardust. So I decided to reread this story by listening to the audio version which is read by Neil himself. Neil does a great job reading, and comes up with different character voices for each character, and he gets the emotion where is should be enunciated. Add to the fact that this book is a fun fairy tale, which I already knew, and the combination proves to be an enjoyable listen. This audio book is much recommended!

Tinder Box Blues was a pleasant surprise. It was a free chapbook by an unknown author, and I didn’t have high expectations. And I was glad I decided to read it, as it was well worth it. It tells of a soldier in the civil war heading back to his home after being injured, and he comes across a home looking for food and shelter. The home belongs to a black woman, who he assumes is a witch because blacks do not own property at this time in history. Well she leads him to a tree where a cave runs underneath and she wants him to get her tinderbox, and he can keep all the gold and silver that also lies beneath. What happens in this story is we get a combination of the civil war, Greek mythology and a little old fashioned horror. This was a pleasant little story that I liked a lot, very cool!

R is for Rocket is about all things space, with a just a couple of stories that don’t fit that mold. Frost and Fire is an excellent novella length story in this collection that I found to be outstanding, one of his best, in my opinion. And the rest are all old Bradbury stories that are either new or taken from the previous collections The Illustrated Man or Dark Carnival. So basically this book is good old school Ray Bradbury stories, and it was excellent reading. I liked this collection quite a bit, and gave me a fix of some old school sci-fi stories that were a lot of fun.

September 2007

This is a promotional chapbook the Brian decided to release because it was an early story that eventually made it into his full length novel Black Fire. So it’s education in this sense. But it also stands alone as a pretty good short story.

It tells of a crippled man who has found out there has been a break out at the mental institution where his wife was residing after she tried to kill him and their daughter. The story focuses of the fathers fear and helplessness that he encounters when the wife comes home to try and kill him and their child. It was good, not great, but still pretty good. I liked it!

The Night They Missed the Horror Show is one screwed up story, it’s weird, violent, contains racism and is funny. Can one find humor in such a sick story? Well only Lansdale could do it. The story starts off with a couple of drunk racist white trash pieces of crap who decide to stop on the side of the road and tie up a dog to their bumper that had been driven over by a truck, for fun. Yes, for fun. This is enough to show how warped this story is, and it just gets weirder, and eventually, after a disturbing series of events, the two pieces of white trash get what they deserve.

I’ve read this story before, but this version is a stand alone chapbook with an audio cd with Joe Lansdale reading the story. Joe’s from Texas and has a southern drawl. So he does a pretty decent job of reading the story. My only faults are he reads to fast, and doesn’t emphasize certain emotions in the story. But with his southern drawl, and the fact that the weird screwed up story is actually very good, I'll still give it a thumb up.

This book starts off with a very depressing way a couple copes with their daughter’s death. The wife daily works on a tattoo of their daughter exploding out of a nuclear mushroom, and each day the father practices his ti-kwan-do to rip open the new tattoo stitches and the daughter eyes cry blood. What it evolves into is a post-apocalyptic story where the father is blamed for the daughter’s death because his job was working on nuclear bombs, which have desecrated the earth, and obviously killing their daughter who was at college.

This obviously is a psychological story, but along the way he does some world building with what earth would be like in the aftermath of a nuclear war. Overall this was another good story by Lansdale.

As usual the quality of writing is excellent with the “Little Books” series. Elizabeth Massie submits an excellent selection of stories for this volume. They are all mostly weird tales. A man and his jealous pig would summarize the first story, where the pig gets angry that it isn’t allowed to ‘Stud’ and takes revenge on his master. Another is an apocalyptic setting where everyone who dies rises up from the dead and a crazed mother decides that she wants kids between her dead son and her living daughter-in-law. So as you can see there were some weird stories here, and they were great fun to read. A real original set of stories that I highly recommend.

Black Sunday is the first chapbook by Dead Letters Press I’ve tried, and I hoping for good things because they have a lot of older and rare stories that are related in style to vampire stories, and I’ve bought a bunch since I find these older stories invaluable. Black Sunday is actually a title of an Italian black and white vampire movie that was released in 1960 and is considered one of the greats in Italian movie industry. And it’s inspiration was the 1835 Russian story “Viy” by Nikolai Gogol.

This was an educational read, as it talked about the education system of the time, and what the city of Keiv might have been like in the early 1800’s. It also was a pretty darn good story with a very weird mix of supernatural, with a witch, whom is an early form of a vampire type, and a god of gnomes. Not the fuzzy little lawn gnomes, but a horror that was made of the earth. This was truly a warped tale and a pleasure to read. I give a big thumb up for Dead Letter Press.

Blaze is a rejected book by King that he tried to publish before Carrie was released. Hence the reason as to why it’s under the Bachman title. King brought it out of the basement and cleaned it up for a new release. The book is not a horror novel, but a mix between Of Mice and Men and a crime novel. And it tells the story of an idiot who after following smart people through a life of crime is finally on his own, and he tries to do a child kidnapping, by himself. Since he’s an idiot all goes wrong, but along the way you start to feel compassion for the guy, as he’s a victim as much as the criminal.

The book was pretty good. Not great, but it was a fun story nevertheless. The reading, done by Ron McLarty was good. He didn’t have the idiot down so well, but the supplemental characters such as George were done very well, and as a whole he really fit the book well. So the audio was pretty good as well as the story, which made for a good twosome.

As Dead As Leaves is Canigila’s art book. It has an introduction and lines of poetry infused throughout the book. It’s a limited release and came with a couple of extra art prints, in which one was inscribed to myself. The whole package was very beautiful, and the artwork is very good. And this is a large book so there was a lot of artwork to go through and look at. I like this book quite a lot!

In the Midnight Museum is a pretty original story by Braunbeck. It starts with a man who is trying to commit suicide; he survives, and is administered into the mental heath ward of the local hospital. He gets caught up in a little struggle between good and evil, and must save the day. The original parts come from the evil is a disease, and the good people are artistic people who help shape the world, like painters and writers. Braunbeck creates a good mythological backdrop for this story, and it was a very well done.

This book is also set in his Cedar Hill settings, which made it fun. And overall this was an excellent book. He is revising this book for an Australian release; I can’t wait to see what he’s doing with this book.

13 Phantasms is my first Blaylock story. It’s a chapbook and tells of a man who finds all these old boxes in an attic that are filled with "Amazing Stories" magazines back from the 1940’s and 1950’s. The man decides to complete a subscription form in one of the magazines and send it out. Well it is received but back in time when the magazine was released, so we get a fun little story of correspondence between the present and the past. And that’s about all it was a fun little story, nothing too major here, but it’s an introduction into Blaylock’s work, and I can say I like his writing style.

Mare Winningham is the reader of this story and does an amazing job. She perfected the fathers voice, and must of had six different voices, for her sisters, husband, etcetera. So the quality of the audio was excellent and made it entertaining to listen to.

The story itself reminds me of Insomnia. A long drawn-out character development story where the plot only encompassed about 20 percent of the book. The same holds here, although there were two plots. The apparent one is the crazy stalker who attacks Lisey to get at her deceased husband notes and unfinished works as an author. The less apparent story is Lisey's search through her husbands past and finds out a lot more about the man than she knew when he was alive. The second plot, while not apparent, was the real one, and the stalker was a trigger that got Lisey moving in the right direction to discovering more about her husband.

As with Insomnia some people will hate this book because it doesn't have a lot of action while most of the story is character development, and there'll be others who love the book and appreciate the depth and believable characters that King makes. A on-the-fence fan I think will appreciate this book more than a old King fan. Me, I appreciated the work that went into the book. While slow, it was all worth it as King created a deep character in Lisey, and it was entertaining to see King work at the best of his abilities. And as mentioned Mare Winningham did a great job, so it was great all-around experience!

This is a story told by man in the presence of the Caliph of Baghdad, back in medieval times. It is a time travel story and how, even though one can travel back and forth in time, they are unable to change history. The will of Allah will happen no matter what the individual tries to change. So the book tried to tell a moral lesson.

This was an interesting tale. It was set in an interesting setting, and had an unusual theme considering the time period. I wasn't blown away by this story, but it was well written and fun to read.

Red Range is a long graphic novel that deals with the old west and African Americans. But here they're referred to as niggers and the white’s in the story are in the KKK. Red Range though is the hero and he is an African American. He saves a boy from the klan, although the boys family is killed, and runs from the remaining members of the klan. Red Range manages to kill pretty much all of them, but ends up, with the boy, getting swept away in a riverbed and getting deposited in some alien land that has prehistoric life forms. The story ends with Red Range and the boy getting away safely, but they are trapped in this alien world. It is set up for a sequel.

At first I was thrown off by the vulgar topic of racism, but I realized this is a timepiece, and not meant to offend, besides the hero is black. And with that out of the way I ended up enjoying the story quite a bit. Joe did a pretty good job I was surprised.

Excitable Boys is just a ridiculous book. I should have known as the description of the book was for the authors to try to come of with the grosses story they could think of. As expected the butt and feces were common themes in almost all the stories. After reading the first two stories I said “ok, this is just ridiculous”, and I decided to only finish reading the authors that I like, so I left this book incomplete, and glad I did. I bought it because it has some authors I read like Brian Keene and Geoff Cooper. But even these guys’ stories couldn't prevent me from losing brain cells by reading this immature garbage.

The Steel Valentine is a short story packaged into a booklet form by Pulphouse. It is a story of a man who has taken captive another man that was planning on running away with his wife. The man means to kill the other but does it in a sporting way. He ties the captive with a steel chain to a crazed Doberman, and lets them fight it out. It quickly becomes a story of ‘The Hunter Gets Captured by The Game’. I'm pretty sure this story won the Stoker award for short story. And it was a fun read. It would make for a great little television episode for the Masters of Horror or some such series. It has that feel, like you were watching a movie.

The Halloween Mouse is a children's story by Richard Laymon that was released after his death. I would assume it was one of the last pieces that he was working on. In that context and the fact that it is a children's story make it an interesting read.

It’s a story of a mouse that lives in the library and he reads about all these fascinating adventures and wants one himself, but he is too scared to leave the library. When he finally finds a day that is perfect for him, it happens to be on Halloween. And the story tells of his adventurous day, and what befalls him. Usually what most children's stories come out as are “cute”, and though this does have this feature its strong point is, it’s a well written story. And it has some length. Laymon takes some time to describe his story instead of just having a paragraph a page like most children's books do. Alan Clark beautifully illustrates this book and makes for a great one-two punch. I found this to be a successful children's book for Laymon, I liked it!

August 2007

This book was from the POV of children, and the supernatural horror they find in the local cemetery. I believe this was Keene's first attempt as using children as the main characters, and it comes off as having a Ray Bradbury style to the book. It was set in the nineteen-eighties and the kids were fans of comic books and 80’s style cartoons, whereas in Bradbury novels they were collectors of baseball cards and loved listening to the radio. They are set in different time periods, but the children behave the same way Bradbury would have adapted them.

Anyway, this is obviously about a ghoul that has been trapped under the cemetery for centuries and has now been loosened. The children are the only one’s who believe it’s there, and they must do battle with it because no one else believes their stories. This was a character building story, with the first half of the books describing the children and what their daily lives are like. Keen portrays two of the three in a very dark light, I must note. This is not something Bradbury would have done. And the first part of the book took a while to get through because it contained little action. But the second half of the book picks up and you realize the first half added a lot of texture to what was happening to the children, so it paid off. Overall I liked the story, and it was a change of pace from Keene's normal apocalyptic books, so this gets high marks because of this. But Keene's done better. I rate this as slightly above average for Keene.

This was an interesting book by Cooper. This was promoted as a horror novel, but there were no horror aspects until the ending 4 pages or so. It’s just a story of two bandmates who need a new guitarist, and one is a geek and the other is full of it. One member likes one and dislikes the other, and this story is their struggle between the two and the struggle that happens between them. The ending, as well as the mystery behind the geek's fingers bleeding when he plays, adds a supernatural aspect to the story. Overall I've read better by Cooper, but it still was a pretty decent book

H.P. Lovecraft in space. Lovecraft's friend in Clark Ashton Smith has a couple of previously released stories about Captain Volmar, an outline for a future book, and a lost book in the Red World of Polaris, that has never been previously published, that encompass this collection. It's funny that he uses some of the same descriptions as Lovecraft in 'cyclopean'. I've never heard this descriptive term by anyone but Smith and Lovecraft. Anyway, this was a fun read. The stories of Captain Volmar that were previously released take on a horrorific tone. They are interesting in that way, and give a sense of atmosphere, but are not great works. Although I find Red World of Polaris to be an intellectual story of another race that has survived when their species was on the brink of extinction. This has some meaty text and was a very interesting story. Overall this collection was great, even the lessor works still provided a great sense of atmosphere. I was very happy to come across this collection.

Grave Tales, Issue four has three stories, with two of them illustrated in comic form. Ray Garton’s tale is the one not illustrated. There is nothing heavy here, just some short stories. Ray Garton’s was a fun little story of a couple looking at buying a house that sits on the gates of hell. Gary Raisor’s story is a little heavy on the moral side of a couple of brothers were one is a real bad egg. I love this type of stuff, and its fun to read. Too bad Cemetery Dance has only released four issues in 5 years.

This is a western written by an Englishman. Tim tries a take at the western and succeeds. He revives a character from his first novel Mesmer, and uses the character in an old west North Dakota town of Deadwood at the turn of the century. The character is Temple, and he’s a demon who’s one bad ass. The story is of a man who has been hunting down Temple forever, and the man loses every time, and gains a new scar each time. The local store keep in deadwood somehow gets caught up in this battle, and is witness to the fight in deadwood, in fact taking part in it.

This is just a novella, so there wasn’t much more story than that, but it was entertaining with a lot of atmosphere. This was a very good effort at a horror/western by Mr. Lebbon.

Wild Galaxy tries to collect all of Nolan’s sci-fi stories into one collection. You get the serious sci-fi, and well as the goofy sci-fi. This is what hurt the book the goofy, is just that, and it wasn’t written at a high level of literature. One piece was so repetitive I just had to stop reading it, and I couldn’t imagine anyone reading the whole story all the way through.

Now onto the good; the serious stories were highly entertaining. This collection was a quick read because the stories were interesting and fun to read. Again, even with the serious stuff, there is nothing highly complex here, but it is good storytelling. The good outweighed the bad, as well as outnumbering the bad, and I give this collection a big thumb up. I really enjoyed this collection.

Pickman’s Motel is a small collection of stories with a theme around the Pickman’s Hotel. Also it is heavily themed as a parody of H.P. Lovecraft. Mark writes horror settings in a humorous way, and you have to give a chuckle every once in a while. Also since I am a Lovecraft fan it was fun to see him base a lot of his characters, story and jokes off of Lovecraft. Now even though this collection can not be considered heavy reading material, it still had a strong background of storytelling in it. The last story is strong evidence of this. I was engaged throughout. My biggest complaint was the fact a lot of his jokes are male oriented, and I could not see a single female enjoying this type of book. This is where I felt he was immature. Regardless, I enjoyed this book, being male, and I give it a slightly above average rating.

M is for Magic is Neil recycling a lot of his stories and adding in a few recent ones, with one new story. And the new story is probably a chapter of his upcoming children’s book. There are stories like “The Price” that have been published multiple times in multiple formats, and were not worth reading yet again. So why publish this book? Neil wanted to put out a children’s themed illustrated collection, in the vein of Ray Bradbury’s R is for Rocket. To me this still was not a good enough excuse. Although there were about 6 or so stories I have not read yet, and they were pretty decent. But I would say none of them were as good as some of his earlier short stories.

Since I pretty much like everything Neil puts out, and I still enjoyed this collection, but it was unwarranted, and receives a low grade from myself.

Here I read the last four issues of the Gunslinger Born. As expected all this does is complete the first series, which mimics the fourth book in the Dark Tower, Wizard and Glass. After reading Wizard and Glass multiple times, this was an uninspired comic and rather boring, although the artwork by Lee and Isanove was excellent. But the artwork was not enough to interest me in this comic. The best thing about this comic series was the explanations of some of the mythology, geography, or characters in the Dark Tower cannon. These I enjoyed reading over the story. As it stands I have to give this series a thumb down.

I think this book was really elevated by listening to the audio version of this book. The reader was just great. He had an English accent and was able to do the slang perfectly. And this book is written in mostly slang, and it was enhanced by having a reader vocalize this style of book perfectly.

Also, it’s a fun an interesting book. It tells of a fictional society that has been run over by the youth. The youths terrorize, rob, rapes, and kills pretty much at will after the sun goes down. Alex, the main character is the leader of one such youth gang, who enjoys doing all these things. But eventually everything goes south and he is imprisoned. Then he is the first subject of a government to take away the choice of doing good or bad, and forcing the subject to only do good. It works, but it brings up a debate because it takes away the choice of the subject, which advocates for the freedom of choice, along with religion that disapproves of taking away choice from the subject. So you hit on some heavy moral values, but ends up with the protagonist Alex, just growing up. So, it was a simple ending to a complex story. As I mentioned earlier, this was great listening to this in audio format, it was great.

A collection of sci-fi novellas by Simmons. All are pretty good, and Dan does some lengthy introductions for each novella. This was where it was lacking. I always enjoy reading author introductions into stories, but then the can be as long as 12 pages, well then it can get boring. But the stories themselves were top notch. There was one Hyperion novellas called "Orphans of the Helix", which was a fun read, as was the opening story "Looking for Kelly Dahl", which was an original idea. Really all the books were really good, and they were varied. One was a pure sci-fi story set in space, another was a fictional take on the Russian space program. There was a good variety of stories that kept me entertained. I give it a thumbs up!

A pretty good book about the partying and night life of Long Island and New York in the 1920's. The main character Gatsby has it all, it seems, and loved to throw magnificent parties, where he is the most talked about person in West Egg village. A dry normal man rents the house next to Gatsby and gets caught up with his charades. And he sets up Gatsby with a married woman whom he is close friends with. Now this all seems like a little lightweight, but what happens toward the end makes this a very serious book, and explains to the reader that you can't go back in life, nor can you be obsessed with it. At the end Gatsby fails in his ambitions, and is found to be not that great at all, but just a normal man with problems like everyone else. I like the statement the book portrays, it's a pretty heavy hitter, and will keep you thinking about it for a while.

A chapbook, that is really the size of a novella from Delirium books. It is a story of a necromancer who uses three kids to try and gain magical power. The kids are lured by really good weed, and asked to perform a sexual act inside a pentagon. As expected not all goes well for the kids. It's a sexual, and horrific book. Personally I don't prefer these types of books, but it wasn't bad. I guess the necromancer parts kept me interested, as to why I enjoyed it.

Sissey Spacek reads this book twenty or so years after staring in the hit film Carrie. She is just excellent! Having the same voice that did the movie read the book is just perfect because I was trained to think Carrie sounded like this after seeing the movie so many times. No extras with music, but it doesn't matter Sissey does a good job with other characters and male voices.

The book is a good one, it's nice that it's interspersed with quotes from books, radio broadcasts, and from different persons perspectives. So the book runs from A to Z, but it's shown through a lot of different viewpoints (at least 10). King never really duplicated this style in his later works, so it's unusual. I'll admit it's a little ragged, and he obviously was latter able to write better, but still the premise and story of this book is top notch. It's a tear jerker at times because you know that person who always got picked on at school, and you really feel for Carrie. A great listen!

A Chapbook by de Lint about a story old Old Man Crow who has been human so long he has forgotten his crow heritage. There is a side story of a woman finding a new love, but is irrelevant, and the story of old man crow himself is too small to really leave a lasting impression. And the character development was just too thin. I liked that it told a separate story on it's own. In other words there were no Newford references, and as usual with de Lint he always makes a pleasant read. But this chapbook was not a strong one by de Lint, it was way too thin on a plot and character development, and left the reader not caring about the outcome of the story.

First off I read each issue separately, and then I read the hardcover extra stuff that was not in the comics. Even though the Eternals are supposed to be outside the Marvel Universe and be their own entities rather than super heroes, this graphic novel just reminds me of a standard superhero comic. Meaning all that is good about comics and super heroes is tied up into this one series. All of the Neil Gaiman comics that I've read they have all been outside the genre, every once in a while a superhero makes an appearance. But this series of comics was a superhero comic book, with each Eternal having its own super power, and was very different than what I was accustomed to. Neil did Marvel 1602, which has all the super heroes, but I haven't read that one yet.

So this was my first dive into super powers, and I loved it. This was a very strong Neil Gaiman series, it was a lot better than some others I read. The story was good and kept me interested throughout. I really liked this set of comics. I have no idea if Neil plans on continuing with this series, but I hope so.

This is a collection of essays from various people in the horror business, mostly authors who give their take on their favorite horror movie. This book is from the UK and features UK authors, of which quite a few I read. All-in-all this wasn't anything special. Books like these have been done countless times, but people keep buying them. The reason being its cool to see someone else remark on a movie that you really liked, like Alien, Something Wicked This Way Comes, or The Thing. So them movies I was familiar with were fun to read, whereas the movies I was not familiar with,it didn't interest me as much. This isn't a great book, but it was a nice diversion book, where I was able to read something different for a while. This is what made it for me, it wasn't something I usually read.

July 2007

Eric Roberts reads this short story by King, and does a pretty good job. He has different voices for each of the characters and is gentle with his female voice. Which in turn makes this a pretty fun listen, because the story is a great story from king and one of the more memorable stories that he has done. The sure fire way to get a person to quit smoking is by fear,and this is what the story is about. This was a good production, I liked it!

Well it was bound to happen, one of the 'Little Books' by Borderland Press was going to stink. So far all of the ones I have read have just been superb. This is the exception, and the reason being, it's not a collection of short stories, nor does it have anything to do with Full Metal Fiction, and a clip of bullets foil stamped on the cover. It has two short stories, called dreams, as they were set up that way, and then the rest of the book is cut chapter from an old novel ‘Run’ and deleted chapters from an upcoming novel ‘Hide’. As one would expect the cut chapters are excerpts in a larger story and have no conclusion of their own. Now the writing is good, and the stories do raise some interest, but as a short story collection it does not work at all. Unfortunately this was the worst book of the 'Little Books' series, and I struggled with finishing it.

This is an novella and audio CD. I read the story first, and then the audio cd. It's an interesting ghost story about a couple and their old best friend. The wife of the couple has been in a funk ever since her mother died and is visiting Long Beach in her memory way too much for the husband. The friend comes into town and the wife decides she wants to show their friend The Long Beach Pier, where her father used to let her play on the carousel, while he played a gambling game. So we see what it used to look like, and even her father. It ends with a revelation about what they did to their old friend, and I have to say it's a downer. This story was told well, was a great listen, but it's not a very happy story, lol. Anyway, it's of high quality!

The second and third installment of The Gunslinger Born. It takes the young gunslinger into Hambry, where he encounters Susan Delgado, and a corrupt mayor with his evil posse of deputies. There was nothing new here, just a reference to the Crimson King and The Good Man Farson, both about a page each was the only deviations from the original story. So it wasn't that exciting. What was exciting is the extra content provided by Robin Furth at the end of each comic giving us some mythology/history of The Dark Tower cannon. How the guns and gunslingers came to be, and how the twelve balls of Meryln's Rainbow were created. This stuff is pretty much all new content and just adds to the mythology of The Dark Tower, and is great to read.

The third installment of Erikson's ‘A Tale of Bauchelain and Korbal Broach’, but it falls chronologically as the second book. In a new omnibus of the first three books this is the second story, so I read it after the first novella. This was a funnier story than the first, and it seems to be what Erikson is trying to do. Whereas his novel series within Malazan it is serious, and in this novella series of Malazan he is able to let loose and have some fun. Which is what I, as the reader was put through, a fun story.

Bauchelain and Korbal Broach have taken passage with a ship and within the mystic waters of The Lees of Laughter's End, they try to raise a lich. Well, that's not all that got raised, a god also decides to make an appearance. And the hapless crew pretty much all get slaughtered, except the one poor fool who has an ear chopped off, then the second ear, then his nose, and finally his toes. It was funny to see what body part he was going to lose next. Black comedy for sure, but Erikson weaves a fun little black story with our two favorite necromancers, Bauchelain and Korbal Broach. A fun read.

This chapbook and audio CD are taken from The Rolling Darkness Review 2005 speaking tour, where a bunch of authors tour together. It is spearheaded by Dennis Etchison and Glen Hirshberg. That's where I got these goodies. The chapbook is longer and contains stories by six authors including the award winning American Morons by Glen Hirshberg. In fact all the stories here are pretty good. Peter Atkins The Cubist's Attorney is excellent as is Robert Morrish's Junkyard of the Damned. Overall this was a good mix of psychological thriller or horror stories.

The audio cd is shorter, and only contains three stories, the one by Peter Atkins, the one by Glen Hirshberg and a story not in the chapbook, One of Us by Dennis Etchison. Dennis Etchison unfortunately is a bad reader, it was a good story but was given no emotion because of his bland telling. Atkins and Hirshberg deliver, though. Both do a good job of speaking, and since they both have excellent stories it was a great read. Also this CD had interludes with a speaker trying to tie the stories together, as well as a two musicians adding some ambiance. Overall this made for a pretty professional audio CD. I was very happy with this product!

Another audio book by Neil Gaiman. This time it's two cd's read by Neil taken from the short story collection Angels & Visitations. As always it's the best when read by the author, and Neil does a good job. This also was a good collection because it contains some of Neil's darker works. It was fun to revisit these stories, but this time by having them read to me by Neil. A thumbs up!

An illustrated children's book with Charles Vess. It uses the same characters found in Seven Wild Sisters, so a lot of the book was familiar territory. As one would expect with a children's story there's not much depth. Regardless this was a nice little story, that was fun to read and illustrated beautifully by Charles Vess. I liked it!

Neil Gaiman wrote the scripts to these two plays which are presented here in audio format, and produced by The Sci-Fi Channel. It is fully dramatized and stars Brian Dennehy in Murder Mysteries. I've read both these stories and have even read the play for Snow Glass Apples, and it was nice to hear these stories performed with a full cast. Both of these are strong stories from Neil's cannon, and they are performed very well. this was an enjoyable listen.

Well, about time, I finally finished King's fantasy series The Dark Tower. This is the seventh, longest, and last book in the series. I started reading the Gunslinger back when it was first released in a trade edition back in 1987. It took King about 30 years to write, and me about 20 years to read. Heck I've read The Gunslinger three times, and the first four books at the minimum twice each, but I took my time before finishing this series, even though this book has been out a few years. But I wanted to read every book that was related to the series before I finished with the last two books. I gave up with Heart's in Atlantis as the only Dark Tower referenced book I haven't read, because I couldn't wait any longer. Regardless of Hearts in Atlantis, it was fun seeing all the references or characters that appeared in the final books. So it was worth the wait.

Now on to the story, I think this is the second best book in the series. The Wastelands is my favorite. But this book is a mix of The Wastelands along with the very first book The Gunslinger, as well as Song of Susannah. And it captures the best of each book. We have a creepy race through the underground of an old city reminiscent of the Gunslinger and the railway with the Mutants. When they took on the Breakers, it was similar in style to Lud, where the technology was reminiscent of Lud, and the long march to the tower brought back memories of Roland's march through the desert in the Gunslinger. And it starts off finishing up stories that were brought about in Song of Susannah.

The book was very interesting, exciting, and one of the fastest books I've read that is over 800 pages. It was that exciting. One problem was the epilogue, and Susannah in New York. These were the last two sections in the book. I was entirely pleased with the ending as it was, I really had no desire to know what The Dark Tower was, it was the adventure and trip that was the point. King decided to close up some strings, reminiscent of The Lord of the Rings. Why we need this "after book" to close off threads is beyond me. Anyway, I'm not that angry, the book was still excellent, and one of King's best, and one of the best Dark Tower books. It rocked!

Groon is a poem read by Bradbury. It's an interesting poem and a little lengthy to make it at least acceptable for the only recording on a cd, but the recording was horrible. There seems to be a buzzing throughout the recording. The poem is decent, and it is nice to hear Bradbury read something, but that's the only redeeming qualities

Dark Carnival was a Q&A interview about all the stories in Gauntlet's Limited Edition version of Dark Carnival. Again the sound quality was poor, but at least better than Groon. Whereas Groon was mostly worthless, this was interesting. Bradbury gave all his takes on each story, how they came to be, were they based off a real life experience, et cetera. This was an enjoyable cd to listen to, and I know I'll listen to it again some time.

This is the audio cd of Bag of Bones read by Stephen King. When this book was released, I wasn't really big into books, and as a result I read about 75% of the book but never finished it. And this is really odd, because I really liked it, but at the time I just didn't have the time to read. Anyway I decided to try out the audio book version and I was able to complete the book.

First off king is a great reader. He has different voices for the women, children, and secondary characters, so it's very engrossing when he reads a book. Second off, as I noticed before this is a great book. It tells the story of loss with a spouse dying, how one copes with it, and it becomes a ghost story with a great mythology put together by King about a small Maine town. I really cared about all the characters, and the book reached, touched, and hurt a lot of emotions within me. This was just a great ghost story book. Stephen King's son did a great job, with a ghost story called Heart Shaped Box that was very good, but his father shows why he is the master. not many authors create such a detailed and believable backdrop, characters one gets emotionally tied up with, and brings in the supernatural of a ghost or two and makes it believable. This was just great stuff! This is one of King's best books.

This is Ray Bradbury's first ever published book, it was released in 1947. Most of this work was updated and published again in The October Country, and since The October Country was more popular, Dark Carnival never saw a reissue. In 2001 Gauntlet Press reissued this book as a Limited Edition, and adding a bunch of unreleased stories written back in the 1940's. So we are able to read many of these stories in their original form and, some that didn't make The October Country, along with a bunch of unreleased stories. This made for a very large collection by Bradbury.

And there were some great stories here. This book is primarily horror, with a lot of vampire stories. Also a lot of these short stories were long in length. Bradbury has shortened his short stories in later works, but here some are the size of novellas. Overall some of the work here is rough, but then again this is a dark book, and a delight to read, because of the dark subject matter. The Crowd, is an interesting piece. And the vampire story The Homecoming is great, in fact all the vampire stories are related, and they all are enjoyable. Overall this isn't the best Bradbury book, but it was enjoyable,and along with the unreleased stories, this was a valuable Bradbury read. Really a tons of stuff here that was great!

Yet another "Little Book", and why not? as all of these collections have been great. And this book is no exception. I really liked ‘Bookmobile’, a story about a interstellar library that is a spaceship, and accidentally lands on Earth to give out all it's information to an unknowing reader. And ‘Secrecy’ was a funny take on Roswell and the alien that is supposed to be there. Turns out the alien is mentally insane. lol. Since I'm a sci-fi fan, this was a nice collection of sci-fi stories,and I liked it!

June 2007

This is the comic book to the movie of the same name. Illustrations are by Bernie Wrightson. Since I have seen the movie so many times, this comic book didn't really offer anything new. But it was still fun to read these stories in a different medium, than what I was accustomed to, which was the movie. "The Crate" is a really good story. But it's the only one here that is worthy of a great King story.

A novella about two best friends who buried an angel as kids and it has been haunting them ever since. One has been admitted to a psychiatric ward, while the other comes to visit. This book basically is the two lifetime friends trying to come to grips with, bury the past. Unfortunately it's not so easy. This book, while horror, reads like a mystery, which isn't surprising, since Piccirilli dabs into the horror and mystery fields. The ending was a little predictable, but there were a few surprises toward the end, and there still were questions left unanswered after the end of the book. I liked this book, it was fun and interesting read.

A literary critique on Stephen King's "The Stand". This was a pretty large group of people dissecting King's novel, and they dissected everything about the novel, from religion, politics, rationalism, and free will. As usual these books are just opinions on what King has written and what they feel King is trying to say in his works. Most of it is obvious, and some of it is far fetched. But it was very good to go back to this novel, which I've read multiple times, but it has been at least 10 years since the last reading. So it was fun to get reacquainted with the characters and setting and see what others thought about the book. I liked it because I think "The Stand" is probably King's best novel, but I wouldn't say this was essential reading.

Joe Hill's first published book is a collection of short stories that he had amassed in the previous six years or so. As with any collection there were some good and some bad stories. Although he has a couple of good stories that are really good. Last Breath and Voluntary Committal are two great examples of some really great work. Last Breath, was a really original idea, too.

There were also two stories that were part of an abandoned first novel called "Giant". The second of these stories was included in a bonus section, for those who purchased the Deluxe Edition. These were interesting, and made me kinda sad that the book never panned out. And I left one story for later reading, as Subterranean Press is doing a Limited Edition chapbook of the story ‘Pop Art’. I'll read it with the new illustrations that come with the chapbook. I think this book really showcases Joe Hill a lot more than his first novel Heart Shaped Box, as not all of these stories are horror, there is some great regular fiction stories in here, like Better Than Home. So, this collection turned out to be a pretty good one, I liked it a lot!

A chapbook and audio CD put out by Borderlands Press. This is a pretty good story, about a fat school teacher who has some psychological problems, originating from the no love she received from her mother. This woman has preserved herself by believing she was one with nature. And she has a love/hate relationship with the children. For the most part she hates them, but she will find one that she loves, and that's not good.

This was a very complex story, jumping between her current timeline with the teaching, her past with her mother and her mother's friend, and her exploration into her delusions, where she is a princess or one with nature. The complexity of the story itself makes it a joy to read. After reading the story I listened to the audio CD, read by Straub. And I have to say he's horrible. It was painful to sit through Straub having the same emotions for all his characters. So the audio portion has very bad, but the story was a fantastic read. So the package gets a 50%.

A novella originally published in 1991 makes its first appearance in hardback. It is a simple detective story. The detective, though, is a paranormal detective, and somehow gets lulled into doing a standard 'find this girl' job. Although it takes on a horror and supernatural form as the story progresses. This was a fun read, and a interesting story. Even though there is nothing intellectual challenging with this book, it was still a good read.

A audio book collection of three stories; Lunch at the Gotham Café, 1408, and In the Deathroom. All read by Stephen King. Initially these stories were only released on audio book, but they eventually showed up on Everything's Eventual, which I have read. But it was nice to listen to these stories again. Lunch at the Gotham Café was really improved upon in audio version. And 1408 is an excellent story that was nice to listen to. This was a good bunch of stories, and enjoyable to listen to.

This was a great collection of four novellas, one by each author. The theme was on a Horseman of the Apocalypse. Brian Keene's story was on Pestilence, and Brian Knight's on Death, Tim Lebbon's on Famine, and Geoff Copper's on War. All of these stories were good, let's get this out of the way, this was a great book. Brian Keene's story, was about a government spilling an infectious disease on a small town, Copper's was about a marine sent on a death mission in WWII, Brian Knight's story was about a meteor smashed to earth and raised everyone like zombies, and Lebbon's was about England where a horseman drove through each town and spoiled all food and water and people became cannibals. I liked Tim Lebbon's story the best. At first it seemed like the movie 28 Days Later, but even though it was a familiar story, it still spooked me out. This one stood in my head for a couple of days. This was a great collection of stories, with top notch horror writing!

Another ‘Little Book’ collection of short stories. This one was based on weird fiction, one story was a headhunting job to the planet of Elvis, another was about a man finding an old theater that was so real he became part of the musical. All-in-all these were some pretty good stories. I was very entertained! Once again, the ‘Little Book’ series produces a good collection of stories.

The sixth of seven books in the Dark Tower series is more a book on giving the reader information, rather than containing story. It is a transition piece to lead into book seven. Whereas book five, and four were their own stories in themselves. So this made for an uncomfortable read. This book, along with the second book in the series, are the low periods in the series. That's not to say they are bad, they just are not as fulfilling as the others.

As mentioned it is a transition book, and the point of this book is to set up seven. I haven't read it yet, but I know this to be the case by the storytelling. We start to get a lot more mythology of the Dark Tower setting thrown at us in this book, and questions are being answered. And that is the focus of the book, we find out about Susannah's child, we find out more about the Crimson King, and we find out who the Crimson King's followers are. So we are given information, but no real story. Susannah doesn't even have her baby, and she left book five to go have her birth. I felt we would at least get a closure on that, but I guess not.

I think this book suffers from King looking toward book seven, and not really giving book six a plot and story for itself. Other than that it was a knowledgeable book that was valuable to understand what was going on in the series.

This is an audio book of children's stories read by Neil Gaiman. It includes the two published Children's Books; The Day I swapped my Dad for two Goldfish, and The Wolves in the Walls. It also includes Cinnamon, which has not been published on paper, and the previously unreleased poem Crazy Hair. It also includes a short Q&A session with his daughter Maddie, at the end.

Since it's children's stories, what else can you say, but they were cute and funny. I liked the Dad swapped for two goldfish the best. Also the Q&A was interesting. Obviously, because of the subject matter this was not intellectually stimulating, but it was entertaining.

Neil Gaiman helped Alice Cooper on a concept album, which he then wrote as a graphic novel. It is a horror story about Alice Cooper who plays a showman for children, and it's called ‘The Theatre of Real’. Cooper is preying on the fears of little children who don't want to grow up in the real world.

It's kinda cool to read a story about a rock star, and the images are perfect, and display Alice Cooper as you you expect. Overall the story was pretty good, too. This wasn't a great story, but it was good and kept me entertained. I liked it.

This is an audio book taken from a reading in England. It is a sort story found in two collections by King, that I have previously read. But King reading this story brought it more to life. The beginning was a lot funnier, it seemed to go on longer than I remembered, which in turn, turned out to be more memorial, and the end was more heart wrenching than I remember. This was the second audio book I've listened to, and while the first wasn't great I thought listening to it in the car for my commute to work would allow myself to absorb the story better. And I was right. This was a good story and very entertaining to hear King read it himself. I liked it a lot.

May 2007

A chapbook of two short stories, with the theme of the old liquor Absinthe. The first ‘Papa’ by Ketchum is about a man in a bar confuses another patron as being Ernest Hemingway. The patron amused the guy and heads back to his place for a drink of Absinthe, which produces hallucinations, and the story gets weird. the second story ‘Bleeding Things’ by Lebbon is about a allied spy, in Germany, who has lost his memory because of some shrapnel in his head. His salvation is a jewish woman prisoner who is kept alive because she bleeds gold, when under the influence of absinthe. This was the better of the two stories, but both were of very good quality. this was a good read!

A companion hardcover chapbook to the lettered edition of The Cat's Pajamas: Stories + 5. This is a very creative story by Bradbury, where he describes a quaint countryside suddenly taken over by the rapid building of these huge Samurai / Kabuki metal warriors reaching all the way up to the clouds. Well the warriors are electrical towers, and Bradbury sets up a fantastical story about the warriors, nature and the people living in the country. I thought this was a great story.

A very odd and dark graphic novel. It tells the story of a child spending the summer with his grandparents. The grandfather owns a rundown arcade on a beach that has carnival types of things like a mermaid, and of course the Punch & Judy show, which is a puppet show about Mr. Punch who kills everyone including the devil. A very dark puppet show meant for children, lol. Anyway, the real story is the child and what how he comes across adult emotions from his grandfather and the Punch & Judy professor. The child sees fear, violence and despair from these men, and while the child does not yet understand these things, he clings to the shows of Punch & Judy. It is a book of reflection when the child is older and knows he has to throw away his thoughts of Punch & Judy to continue on with his life with hopefully a more brighter future than his grandfather had with the failing arcade. This was really good, and I found this to be better than his works with the Sandman.

This is an award winning novella of horror by Martin done back in 1987 before he went 100% fantasy. It is a pretty creepy story. At first you don't expect much except that a mentally handicapped pear-shaped man is stalking a young woman who moves into an apartment complex with some friends. The girl starts freaking out, and becomes scared of the man. Nothing over the top at this point, until she tries to confront the man. this is where the surprise comes, and makes this a very worthwhile story. It was very believable, and scary. A good story by Martin!

The first book of the Discworld series by Terry Pratchett, which runs over 30 books at by now. Because it is a long series by the author, and it is a comical book set in a fantasy setting, it is easy to compare this series to Piers Anthony's Xanth series. In fact it is scary with the similarities. But, Terry Pratchett seems to be the better author, and his series thrives to this day while Anthony's flounders.

Even though Pratchett seems to be the better author, this first book was very rough. One can tell it is his first book. Nevertheless it was fun to start with the first book as we learn exactly what Discworld is and how it functions. So this was valuable. Other than that it is a funny story of Ricewind the failed wizard, whom I can expect to see a lot more of in future books, and his adventures with a traveler and his luggage. This book is actually split up into four sections and seem to be four separate novellas. I would guess Terry tried sending these of to magazines before he got his big break. And because these are four novellas, there isn't a closure at the end. Although, I liked this aspect as we have no idea what will happen to Ricewind. Anyway, overall I give this book a C, it was fun to read, but not a lot of substance. But the potential is there and I plan on reading more in the Discworld series.

A new collection of Ray Bradbury short stories. About half of the stories are older stories from the 50's or wherever, but the other half, and the bulk of the bonus stories are from the 2000's. they are new stories and they are fresh. Bradbury's older works are still his best, but it was still very refreshing to see how the master can still write great work even at his age. This is a Limited Edition which had an additional five stories, which are almost all new, and all were a great addition to the book. This is not a great collection of stories by Bradbury, but nevertheless they are still pretty strong. Bradbury not at his best is still pretty good, and there were a few classics in this book. I enjoyed reading this book and the newer Bradbury work was very welcome.

A novella about The Rapture, and Keene's take on it. There is not a lot of substance here, but nevertheless it is interesting storytelling. There is a lot of character development with the main character that takes place in a short time. In fact, the story is the main character, and his walk from an accident on the freeway to his home 30 miles away. The Rapture has started with the trumpet blown and God taking away the chosen, whisking them out of existence, which causes many car wrecks at rush hour, planes crashing, et cetera. So it starts with a lot of blood and guts, but then it evolves into some strong storytelling without the gimmicks. There is not a strong resolution at the end, but it is still satisfying. And it's nice to get a writer who mixes religion and horror into some interesting fiction. I liked this book a lot!

A large collection of Monteleone stories. This is basically a career spanning collection, disregarding his early sci-fi career. It was a little slow starting, this collection, but then it just kept getting better and better. It took me about a month to get through the first third of the book, and a week for the second third. Monteleone's short fiction is just great, and I just kept reading and reading these wonderful stories. This was arguably one of the best short story collections I've read. I was very pleased with the work, it had variety in prose and themes, and they were all entertaining. this was a great collection!

The only reason why I purchased this magazine was to read a new short story by Charles de Lint. It is the first in a series of stories that are based on a a piece of Charles Vess artwork. This is a standard story by de Lint, one that has been done over and over again. The one problem with de Lint it seems, is he's reached his limit when it comes to originality. The most chances he took where when he was younger, and now he seems to keep churning out the same story, over and over again. But, I will give de Lint a little slack, as he was pigeonholed into a standard piece of fairy artwork, so de Lint was forced to do his same standard story. In the end it wasn't a bad story, so I enjoyed it, but it offered nothing new.

This novel was similar in style to The Colorado Kid. The whole of the novel was telling a story of the mysterious Buick 8. There wasn't much character generation in this book, as the character in this book was the Buick 8. As in The Colorado Kid there really isn't any conclusion to the story. We realize that the Buick 8 is a gateway to another dimension, but we never get to that other dimension What we are left with is the idea if you leave it alone it will eventually decompose and die. It was a decent conclusion, but it wasn't satisfying. This wasn't one of King's better works, and even though I was interested in the mystery, it took me a while to really get into this book. I liked the later half of the book as it picked up, but overall this was a sub par effort by King.

This is the first volume of early released short stories by Charles de Lint. These short stories are when he was starting to write, and a few have never been published before. de Lint writes of urban fantasy, but these stories are when he was still writing classic fantasy stories, with druids, wizards, and such. None of these stories are anywhere near the level of writing that de Lint developed later in his career, but they are still interesting and fun to read.

The first part is six stories about the female warrior Aynber, and these were the worst of the bunch, you can tell de Lint is still a kid when writing these stories. The next section tells a complete tale in four stories, where one is a full length novella, about Colum mac Donal. This was a fun and interesting set of stories, and were of the best quality in this book. The last two sections are really just two stories each of Damon, a demon warrior in the vein of Elric by Moorcock, and Liavek, a Bard. Damon is interesting because it is of a dark hero. I like when de Lint gets dark in his writing. And Liavek is the first instance where de Lint mixes music within his stories, so that is interesting in itself.

Overall this is really only for a de Lint fan, as the writing isn't great, as they are his first works as a writer. But for a de Lint fan, like myself, this was a great opportunity to read his early works that have never made it into book form before. It's a invaluable part of my de Lint collection.

April 2007

It's been a while, but I am back to the "Little Books" series by Borderlands Press, this time with the owner of the press. This is a short collection of stories by Montelleone, including one new story ‘The Changing of the Guard’. It starts of with a bang, the first story was very weird and stays within the theme of Bizarre. The new story was also weird, a man dreams that he is the old god Thor and he is being replaced by the new guard, which is Jesus; A very entertaining tale. All the stories in this collection were excellent. If you like short stories Thomas F. Monteleone is really good at them. I liked this book quite a bit.

This book tries to show every Stephen King Collectible that is out in the market. All the books, proofs, UK editions, and Limited Editions. It also encompasses magazines, anthologies, and merchandise. It's an entertaining read because I am a Stephen King Collector, but the prices are way outdated, since this is a 2000 release. Also there are a lot of items not covered, such as multiple proofs for a particular book. And as expected I would prefer more images. But nevertheless it is more detailed than any other book out there. This was a good read, but I would not say it's a definite book, nor was I hugely impressed by it. Overlook Connection Press is also doing a book somewhat similar, which will be released in the future, hopefully it is better than this book.

A collection of three long comics by Neil Gaiman and Dave McKean. It is a story of the super hero Black Orchid who gets murdered at the beginning of the story. This in itself was interesting, but there was an outlet. Since Black Orchid is a plant, she had offspring, who took over her memories, but was still as innocent as a newborn child. The story is about Black Orchid finding her new self, and closing off threads from her old life. This was the usual dark graphic novel from Gaiman, but the topic wasn't very interesting. I won't say this was a bad series, because it was well written, but the story wasn't of much interest to me. I've liked Gaiman's other works better.

A collection of early Neil Gaiman stories. This book is hard to review because half of the book contains stories published in Angels & Visitations, which was a Limited Edition at the time of this release. Besides that, I have also read some of the other stories elsewhere. This is a problem with Gaiman as he reprints his short stories in many places. So this large collection of stories ended up only being about 8 stories, which were all very good. Gaiman is a lot darker in his early years and more experimental. Plus we get a healthy dose of poetry, for which I would love to see more from Neil. From what I've read in Angels & Visitations, and the new stories I read within this book, it's a safe bet to say this ranks up there with one of his best collections in print.

A novelette where a man buys an old house, and moves in, and it's haunted. Sound original? Anyway, the book has a very old Lovecraft feel to it, and that was his intention, or a least give it a early 1900's ghost story feel. There were no ghosts, more like ghouls, but it did have the old school feel, where it lead the reader on madness, rather than fear. This wasn't as good as some old school ghost stories or Lovecraft, but it was still an interesting read, and it was refreshing to see a current writer try his take at something old school. It was a fun and creepy story.

Two stories about Babylon and a old man who seeks to preserve Babylon. John Urbancik's story is first, and takes a man from present time back to Babylon. The old man brings him back so he can preserve Babylon. This was a pretty interesting story, and was the better of the two. Brian Keene's story takes place in the Iraqi war, and the old man is torturing US soldiers to bring back a djinn. Keene's story brings a closure to the old man. I felt the two stories, as different as they were, managed to be complementary to the other and tell a single story. Keene wasn't great in this endeavor, but the two stories hold up well, and it was a good read.

This is one of two (so far) young adult novels by de Lint. It was written back in 1990, and really shows. This book is kinda the first Newford novel, as it states two roads that appear in the Newford world and Upper Foxville I believe merges into The Tombs in later novels. I'm not sure if Upper Foxville stays in the Newford cannon. But it is the idea which de Lint uses so much in the Newford novels, The Tombs is a part of town that is deserted and the homeless. Otherwise this books reads as a standalone world which mimics the Moonheart realm more than Newford, which is understandable since Moonheart and it's following novellas were written around the same time.

Anyway, the book is a pretty cool idea. I like it when de Lint focuses on Native American culture, and there is aplenty here. One girl has been promised to the earth goddess by a couple of hippies in the sixties, not realizing the girl would indeed be claimed years later. This tells of her struggling to find her totem, and her cousins attempt to save her from sacrifice. And as a result it turned into a redemption story for the cousin. Nothing real special here, it was just classic de Lint, no surprises, but good storytelling. I liked the book.

This books chronicles all four Beatle members solo album releases on Apple Records, which was functional up to 1975. The book is really for collectors, as it focuses only on the vinyl releases, and all the different options the album came out on vinyl, including promotional discs. This was of no use to me, and I wish they had the updated bonus songs, et cetera, that have since come out on compact disc release. Regardless, the author did describe what each and every song was, and give his opinions, on each song for every album. This was the interesting part for me, to learn about each song of the albums, and singles. Also it was very helpful in pointing out uncredited musicians on some albums, or whereas some of the CD releases do not mention some artists, they were very detailed in this book. This also was extremely helpful. So this book had three parts to it, and two were interesting to me, so all-in-all I found this to be an informative and enjoyable book, even though it's aimed at the vinyl collector.

March 2007

A story about two related families meeting together in the summer at a legendary Gull Island in the south. The protagonist is a child Beau, and tells of the stories kids play when they are young. And the stories are realistic and mean; killing rats, stealing, swearing, smoking and drinking a beer. These are all things many of us have done when we were kids, stealing a cigarette from your parents, et cetera, but they are not usually described in books. So this made for a believable story as the children get into trouble in their fort called Neverland, and spearheaded by the kid Sumter.

Not only are the kids believable, so is the setting. Douglas really comes up with a good believable background to Gull Island, and brings in a local character Julianne who is a Gullah. I have no idea if a Gullah is real or not but I believed it, and her background which is similar to a New Orleans' type of background. Supposedly they know voodoo.. Anyway, considering these strong setting and believable characters I thought it started off a little slow, but when the supernatural elements started kicking in, and especially the last 150 or so pages, I started turning the pages faster and faster as the book went along. Overall I've read better Clegg books, but this was still a real good book. Spooky..

This is one of Charles de Lint's dark novels, which was originally written under a pen name. It was about a serial killer, and the investigation by the police, and a photographer who somehow got involved and the victim. So there are three storylines throughout the book, and we hear about each and how they end of meeting together in the climax of the book. One can easily see the familiar styles of de Lint in this book, but it is a murder mystery with the supernatural. So even though the writing is similar in style it is a graphic novel, with death, sex, and vile language. Is that wrong? No, it is a great adult thriller. After reading so many urban fantasies by de Lint it was very refreshing to read such a mature book, as a change of pace. I thought it was well written and was a great novel. In fact while I was reading this novel, I though what a great horror movie this would make. And it would, it's a great book. I hope de Lint tries his hand at horror/thriller again in the future.

I read the first two offerings from Marvel for the new graphic series of Stephen King's “The Gunslinger”. The Sketchbook is a display of artwork, and how the process goes from a sketch to the final colored product. For someone like myself who is ignorant of the process, it was a nice learning session.

The Gunslinger Born's first issue retells a story we are already familiar with: Roland wining hi