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Previous Readings 2008

May 2008

This is another Ray Bradbury re-read that has been about 20 years in-between reads. Since this is really a small novel I was able to remember almost the entire book. It was either because of the size or the fact it's such a good book I couldn't forget through the years. It's still an interesting re-read, and I was glad to recap this story.

As universally known, this is a story about the burning of books in a futuristic earth, where reading is illegal. This is the most important issue that is addressed, but Bradbury also throws in a couple of other topics in the story, his distaste for the government, war, and television. All combined make for a hellish future where the human race, at least in America, have become zombies. The government has taken away books to get rid of free thinkers, and anyone who shows signs of free thinking is disposed of. Also televisions have become walls and are interactive with the user, so the wife can sit at home all day and discourse with her television "family" throughout the day. This makes for a society that lives in the television, and has lost touch with reality, as pointed out in the fact Montag, the main character, and his wife cannot remember where they first met. The only disorder that occurs in the society is the constant flying of jets in the sky getting ready for war, which eventually is the end result of this futuristic society.

This is an interesting collection of fantastic and sci-fi stories. All the stories are not great, but only one offended and that was Jack Neck and the Worrybird. It was a little to weird to capture my attention. Great stories in the collection was the final story, The Lunatics by Kim Stanley Robinson, and Tomorrow Town by Kim Newman. And pretty much everything was of good quality. This was a fun collection!

Horn of Plenty is a chapbook and audio book. The story was decent, and it tells of a mysterious saxophone that a band somehow happenstance upon. The weird meeting between the band and the sax take a weird turn, as the new sax makes the horn player a master and the jazz band rises to new fame. But there is also a dark side to this horn. There is nothing special here, but it’s a good written story as always with Monteleone.

The author reads the story, as is the case with this book series, and he does a pretty good job. This is a east coast Caucasian who tries to put on a African American old jazz pianist voice. And he does a pretty good job; he was into character pretty good. The only drawback is the recording had some quick breaks where you could tell they spliced the sound. But overall it doesn’t distract from the overall experience which was good. I like this series!

Why I write about Elves is a non-fiction piece for the Amazon Shorts series. It’s about 14 pages in length and is a discussion arguing the validity of fantasy as fiction. It starts off with the question Terry gets asked all the time “Why do you write fantasy?” This article tries to disprove readers’ thoughts that fantasy is just escapism. This is not a bad read, although I’m not sure this article will sway any ones opinion since all the people reading will be Terry Brooks readers.

This is a book of two parts, the first part is a woman’s struggle to get free of the handcuffs that bound her to a bed, and the second is the reflection on this event and it explains what really happened in this bedroom.

This is not a good piece of work by King. The first uncomfortable situation for the reader is the two very different parts of the book. It does not seem together well and left the reader wishing the story was over after the first story. The second negative thing going for this book is there are only three areas that are explored, the bed, the protagonists (Jessie) study, and reflecting back when she was a little girl. Most of the novel dealt with Jessie captive in the bed, and reading 250 pages of her trying to escape her handcuffs and dying for thirst were extremely boring.

Other than those two glaring faults, it's told well. But the two faults are too big to overcome to recommend this book to anybody. The reader did a great job, nothing over-the-top, but she told the story well and was enjoyable to listen to.

This small collection is two short stories with an afterword by Bradbury and an extensive introduction by William F. Nolan. The Last Circus, the first story, is a tale of a boy in a small town who is overjoyed when the circus comes into town. It describes the circus coming in, setting up, the boy working to get into the circus, and he and his friend enjoying the big tent and everything else. It's a poetic fun story of summer.

The second story, The Electrocution, is about a carnival freak that sits in an electric chair and gets blasted with electricity. This is a cat and mouse tale between the woman who sits in the chair, and her husband who pulls the switch. This is a dark tale with an unsettling conclusion.

Both stories are very nice, and the packaging for this is great, but the most informative piece to this collection is Nolan's lengthy introduction where he talks about Bradbury’s love/hate affair with the Circus. When he writes about The Circus, the stories tend to be fun and joyful events in the summer, and when he writes about The Carnival, they are always dark tales. It's not something I've noticed before, but it is true and very interesting to read. So this whole package is a great book if you are a Bradbury fan.

April 2008

This is a poem written by Gaiman using the letters of the alphabet, although he takes some liberties, as he should, to make it work. Gris Grimly illustrates this into a children’s book. Even though the poem can be interpreted in many ways, as poems usually can be, Grimly creates some wonderful, and creepy, artwork to create a here’s story from this poem. As usual with Gaiman, it is very dark for a children's story, but that is the age range, around 7 or 8.

This was an interesting poem, and wonderfully illustrated by Grimley, which was very interesting to look at, but obviously this is a one and done book, where it'll sit on my shelf, and I only bought it because I am a Gaiman completist.

This is a pretty good collection from Keene, as all of the stories, except for the last, are serious in nature, and I find him to be more enjoyable in this form. Dust is an interesting story written about 9/11 and a woman going back to her dust filled home after the towers fell, it was a ghost type of story and powerful. Another powerful story was Bunnies in August, probably the best short story I've read by Keene. And for a finally we get The Siggusim Who Stole Christmas, a comical look at Ob (from The Rising, etc) who has inhabited Santa Claus. I also enjoyed this one as a good romp. Overall I give it a thumb's up and another great addition to the Little Books series.

This is the second collection of Sandman comics taking us up to issue #40 (of #75). There are a few single issue comics (all good), but for the most part this volume is comprised of two large story arcs. The first is Season of Mists, which I liked a lot and was 7 issues. It told a tale of Lucifer deciding to quit Hell and leave. He kicks everyone out and gives the key to Dream, who then is swamped by all the other gods/entities who now want the key to Hell. Here we also get to see all, except one, of the Endless for the first time, which was cool.

The second half of this volume was taken up by a story arc A Game of You, which were six issues in length. So this story dominated the second half of the volumes, as did Season of Mists with the first half of the volume. This arc actually is exactly what I would expect from The Sandman, it's about a girl's escape into her fantasy land she created as a little girl, which of course The Sandman created, because it was created out of dreams. So this was the first story that really was a believable scenario of Dream, if he existed. The only problem was it was created from childhood dolls on one hand, which were goofy, and on the other hand it was extremely violent. It was a weird mix that just didn't fit together that well. I think this was a story if read from text would have come out superb, but with the goofy graphics it just seemed weird, and didn't come off that well.

I still liked the second volume, even with the second half dragging a bit with A Game of You. And I'll say I liked the first volume in this series better. But this volume was still pretty darn interesting. Easily recommended!

This, as usually with Lansdale is a weird story, and it tells of a post-apocalyptic world where a virus now allows the dead to rise as zombies. A bounty hunter has just captured his bounty and has to take him across the Cadillac desert to Law Town. But things go awry and they are taken captive by a Jesus cult, where the nuns are dressed like whores and fuck to appease Jesus. The story tells the tale from the bounty hunter’s perspective and how he tries to get out of this mess.

This is another story from Lansdale’s classic period, and while considered a classic Lansdale story, I felt there was a little something missing. It’s an average to good story, but not one of Lansdale’s best.

Triple feature, means three stories in a chapbook. The first story was average, and I have most forgotten it already, the second though was a good one. It tells of a headstone removed from the grave of a mass murderer from 1890 by some local kids, and the story of the grave keeper figuring out that the new local killings just might have something to do with it. And the last story was a comical story of a poor couple trying to scam some artwork for cash, and get scammed in return. One out of three stories were good, so this chapbook is not recommended.

This is a deleted chapter from Garton's novel, Sex and Violence in Hollywood, which was expanded into a singular story. It tells of a crazed man who suffers from depression having pie and coffee in a diner. The man reflects on one horrible incident when he considered suicide, while he is also reflecting on how to kill his father. It was a fast moving story that was entertaining to read. Nothing too intellectual here, but nevertheless it was a good story.

This novella has a troubled history, as it took three writers 20 years to write. Nevertheless they finally came up with a cohesive story. It's a sci-fi story of a man who mistakenly comes across an alien race that is hiding, and their subsequent chase to capture the man. Obviously there is a twin involved, and is what gives the story some juice. But the story just isn't that exciting because it isn't fleshed out enough. The humans are not revealed enough, the aliens are not explained enough, and the character development is poor. Normally this wouldn't be a problem with a novella, but it tries to stick too much into one story and it fails. This novella was expanded into a novel, and I expect it to be a lot better because of the reasons noted.

This is classic Lansdale, white trash, using the n-word, and just plain weird. It tells the story of a man who encounters a blind-man who is cutting the yard of a church across from his house with a weed-eater. He tries to help the man and then gets irritated with the blind man. The blind man maneuvers his way into his family and life and somehow screws it all up. The premise and the story is fun to follow along with, but the ending leaves you hanging. It’s complete, but you are left thinking "Hey Joe you can do better". So this ended up being an average story for Joe. It was still enjoyable, but its not one of his better pieces.

We have a book of two stories here. The first book tells about Linden, her son and Thomas Covenant going back in time to access the earthblood. This story is very similar to the Illearth War where Thomas Covenant goes looking for the earthblood, and why not it’s the same setting and same goal, the only difference is the outcome. Also by going back in time we encounter Berek, the first Lord. This I felt was thrown in to appease the fans who have always wanted to know about the old lords. So it seemed forced, and this whole first section of the book was the first time, ever, that I wasn’t enjoying a Thomas Covenant book.

But Linden gets back to the correct time, and we get back on track to what is her real goal; defeating Lord Foul and rescuing her son. This was book two, in my opinion, and it felt like a Thomas Covenant book, so I enjoyed it quite a bit. It has the usual decisions where despair is always figuring into the equation, and we come across some fascinating stuff.

One thing of note, from the first series, through the second and now the third, the power of the protagonist and their enemies just keeps on getting stronger and stronger. The magic used in this book is just beyond anything else used before, and the enemies are just super powerful.

The book ends on another cliff-hanger. Not as exciting as the first book in this series, but nevertheless it was a very interesting outcome. The second half of this book made it for me, so I liked it, but as of now it stands as the least of my liked books in the Thomas Covenant series.

March 2008

The Transformed Mouse is a fun little fable that is brought into the twentieth century. It tells of a wise man who was benefitted a wizard status by the gods in India. A mouse fell from the sky and starts the tale where the man transforms the mouse into a girl, and then in turn must find her a bride when she comes of age. By bringing the story into the twentieth century Ketchum adds some slang to keep the interest of the reader. This was a fun little story, and I liked it.

This is another of the beautiful wood block art books crated by Biting Dog. The presentation is top-notch and a beautiful book to hold. In fact the story is a novelette, so you don’t get much substance, what you are paying for here, is a beautifully crafted book. This book is crafted with the collector in mind.

his is one of de Lint's first collections, and it doesn't have a lot of stories from Newford, but does have the first Jilly story. It mostly is darker edged and horror-like, as was a lot of early de Lint stories. It also has a sprinkling of his poetry, which was taken from his Christmas chapbooks. So this ends up being an unusual and valuable collection of de Lint stories. It's not a strong collection, but it holds a few very good stories that I consider classic de Lint.

This is a little chapbook of a short lived Lansdale newsletter that only lasted two issues. This has an interview with Joe, and two stories. The second story, written with his wife, tells of a man who is a failure and always has been told so by his wife. Well when he decides to end his wife's life he proves just how much of a failure he really is. This is a good dark comedy story. And the other wasn’t bad either. All-in-all this was a fun read.

I haven't read this book since it came out in the 80's. We'll Terry Brooks is going back to this world and putting out a new Landover book in 2009 and their have been some audio book reissues. So it was time to revisit this story, and in audio form.

The reader does a very good job. At the start where there are two characters, there’s not much variety in his voice and I was worried a little. But when Ben makes it into Landover and all these new characters get involved this is where the reader shines. Questor is handles perfectly, as are all the other characters. He did a real professional job with the reading and it was very enjoyable to hear.

The story also is an underrated one for Terry. It's a somewhat original idea, and has a lot of fun, action, and just interesting world building going on in this book. It tells the story of a man who bough a fairy land to become King. Well it turned out to be real (in the book) and he had to unexpectedly prove himself to be the true King which he does. This is a fun story, and the audio was excellently read. I had fun with this story.

King of Souls feels like a story you've read before; meaning it feels like old school horror. It tells of a man who has given in to despair. His child has been missing for three years, and it has dissolved his marriage and life. But he gets a call from his daughter after all this time, and he traces it back to a local junkyard run by a crazy old person.

This is a tale of a heroic feat being performed by a character to reclaim his life and save his child, or is it? It has a nice twist to it that you will like. Also it has some pretty cool action/horror scenes that are pretty memorable. This is a good story by Knight!

City of the Dead continues the story started in The Rising. Where we had no idea what happened to Jim and if he found his son, here you find out, and it picks up from there. What happens is a Skyscraper in NYC has been able to hold off the zombies and it's a last stand for the humans. Jim and his crew get picked up by a helicopter and thrown into the fire with the last of humanity.

This book, along with The Rising, both have controversial endings. Whereas the first book left you hanging, this book has a conclusion. Personally I loved both endings. I didn't feel we needed a sequel after The Rising, but once we had it I felt this book was pretty good. In fact I enjoyed it better than The Rising, which I have a feeling I'm in the minority here. But the book fleshed out what the zombies and their culture was a lot more than in the first book, and this book is more definitive. This is the last of the humans and they are fighting against extinction. You got a little feel of that in The Rising, but here in City of the Dead it slaps you across the face. This was a more complete book, imo. The Rising was revolutionary, whereas I feel City of the Dead is better story telling. Good stuff here!

February 2008

This collection, while not the strongest of Lansdale's certainly holds some of Joe's best know stories that have been reprinted a million times, and put into chapbooks, comics, and audio books. This is just a great collection. The great The Steel Valentine, the screwed up Night They Missed the Horror Show, and the sci-fi classic Tight Little Stitches in a Dead Man's Back are just some of the standout stories in this collection.

Now where the collection falters a little is, for example, with a story like The Windstorm Passes. This story was later incorporated into a novel, and that’s what the story felt like incomplete, or why did we need all the setup just to find the boy at the Magic Wagon at the end? Since this was early Lansdale, there were some experiments here. Another story was incorporated into The Nightrunners. So you get some early experimental pieces with some all-time classic Lansdale pieces which still make this an excellent collection.

A collection of all kinds of stories, horror, erotic horror, and just weird fiction. All the authors have been previously been published by Delirium and donate all these stories for free as a dedication to Delirium Books. Some are throw away pieces as you would guess, but there's a lot of great stuff in here too. Gerard Houarner once again impresses with Bringer of the Dead, a weird sci-fi take on our future where angels are aliens, and rising from the dead is performed by a human agent working for the angels. Good stuff! Weston Ochseputs in a good weird weird tale, Gene O'Neill's take on a futuristic world is pretty darn good, David Whitman creates a funny and dark tale about killing Santa Claus, et cetera. There was a lot of good stuff in this collection and makes it an above average anthology. Recommended!

This is a story about a group of shifters. The pack leader is a wolf who protects the others, but is also cruel. The protagonist can shift into a butterfly and the third person of the pack can shift into a rat. The reason why they formed a pack is shifters can sense out other shifters and some are violent animals which will kill each other. Hence the butterfly and rat stay with the wolf because of his protection. The story is about an incident when a new shifter arrives from China, a dragon shape shifter. Which cause all forms of emotional and physical distress for the butterfly, and this is her tragic story of finding hope.

This is a really good story, as it deals with the physiological themes, while the shifters and horror that occurs are really the undertones and backdrop for what is occurring in Butterfly's head. I recommend it, as it's a fun an intelligent read.

This was an expensive waste of money. It is only available from the Genesis official store and carries a high price tag. Now the book is nicely put together, with two pop-up pages and a pull-out section that houses the book and DVD. The book shows photographs and tells about how the stage for the 2007 Genesis tour was put together, and the DVD is about 10 minutes long that shows the stage show in action. This was as boring as it sounds.

This is a short collection of stories mostly themed on the movie, or the b-movie. The first few stories were not that exciting, and I was struggling with keeping the attention span going, but the collection got better and better with each story, and ending with the title story which was probably the best. This was worth it because of the last few stories, but this was not a great collection.

This is a fun sci-fi pulp story, reminiscent of Robert Silverberg back in the 50’s, but with a lot of humor. The main character is the vampire, and it tells a story of a failed attempt to rescue a shared one. A shared one is a creature with a shared soul with another across the universe. The Vampire, Moonray is also a shared one, and it is with a human boy from earth who also happens to be mentally disabled. But the boy knows who Moonray is. Without going into detail, there is a link between the two and is deteriorating because of the boy and Moonray must figure out a way to fix that problem. At first I was unsure of the parts with the earth boy, but in the end it all worked out and made sense. This was a fun book.

I've read this story, but not this chapbook. Lansdale adds an introduction about the story which is well worth reading, plus it includes a section of artwork by artists with their take on The God of the Razor. All-in-all the complete package of the chapbook is worth owning with the extra features. Plus it’s an excellent wicked little story that is one of Lansdale's most popular stories. I'm glad to have this one in my bookshelf!

This is a chapbook that is to accompany the upcoming limited edition of The Martian Chronicles. It is an essay Bradbury wrote in 1950 after the manuscript was turned in for The Martian Chronicles. It was intended to be published but never was. It’s an interesting take on what he felt at the time the book was released, and how he wanted to approach the book. For Bradbury fanatics this is a very interesting piece to add to your Bradbury collection. But it is only of interest, not essential.

This is a reread, but it's been a long time since I've read this book. And I have to say the quality of this book has not deteriorated over the years. This is a collection of short stories that have been melded into a novel. Some of the stories were created to make the other short stories flow along as if it was one novel. And it’s a huge success, as it reads more like a novel than a collection of stories.

The tales is about a scenario where humans populate Mars, from the first rocket ship landing to the last story that shows what the future of Mars will be. There is a ton of classic Bradbury within this book. Usher 2 is another statement about the freedom of expression in books, like Fahrenheit 451. And There Will Come Soft Rains is in the same style of The Veldt including using a similar nursery. But the main theme about the book is that humans when they move into occupying other planets will bring the same problems with them. Even though humans will be deluded into thinking they can make a new start that will not be the case.

This was the first book I ever read by Bradbury and hooked me forever since, and I have to say I still love the book.

This is a graphic novel of about ten stories by Bradbury adapted by different artists. There were some obscure and some classic stories, which was interesting as I haven't read all the stories. The stories were all adapted from the original stories to fit the graphic format, and they did a good job. It started off a little slow with A Sound of Thunder, because that story has been told many times, in many forms, but it picks up steam and I finished the second half of the book very fast. A fun alternative for Bradbury, and the artwork was all very good. A good combination!

This is an eclectic selection of early Piccirilli stories. The first couple of stories deal with erotica, then a backwoods redneck horror story, then a couple of mystery noirs, and finally a little story about the birth of demons in gruesome details. A few here were pretty good, like Where Swamp Folk Go When the Need Comes, whereas I didn't care for the erotica stuff. So this was an uneven collection but expected as its early work. I still enjoyed it even though he's a much better author nowadays.

Wizards is a themed anthology with a great group of authors. Neil Gaiman starts off with a altered chapter from his upcoming book The Graveyard Book, which I must say was interesting, but rather average for Gaiman. And then some great stuff by Garth Nix, Jeffrey Ford, Gene Wolfe, Tad Williams, and Peter Beagle. Of interest was Elizabeth Hand's Winter's Wife, The Magikkers by Terry Dowling, and the very large novella Stonefather by Orson Scott Card. All these were great stories, and very memorable. In fact this was a great anthology, one of the best I've read.

January 2008

A short story published by itself in 1982. A story I've read before, but it's been ages since I've read it. It's a classic Bradbury story of a sci-fi setting where a family has a house that does everything for them include raising their kids. The nursery is the sore point because it's almost lifelike, and shows a African jungle scene with lions eating a kill. The parents decide the nursery must go and the kids rebel. This little story really asks a lot of questions about society and technology. An intelligent little story, and a joy to read.

A first book by this author, and not a bad one at all. It is a sci-fi setting where the world is at war, and the city has been destroyed by contaminated water that have turned the people into mutants. Everyone else is still living out in the suburbs, but the city is infected. Jett, the main character drives a truck into the city to pick up abandoned cars to use for metal needed in the war. The story starts after Jett returns to work after losing his partner in the city, by the city people. What transpires is Jett gets obsessive over the city people and bringing back his partner from the city.

The book has political undertones, but in it's plot it's pretty simple. The end is also left wide open, so the story is really more about the ride. With the wide open ending I don't think there was enough depth in the novel for a sequel. But it was a fun ride. A pretty good idea for a book, and a pretty decent first offering by Bell.

Westlin Wind takes place in the Moonheart universe, and is a direct sequel to Ascian in Rose. The girl Emma is once again confused and in trouble, and Blue is trying to help her. A new character is introduced, Esmeralda, who is Westlin Wind, and is Emma's sister of sorts. They are bound by magic. Emma has given up and decided to go to the spirit world before her time. Blue hunts down her body in the real world, while Esmeralda looks for Emma in the spirit realm. There is another major character, a Native American Indian who sets up shop in the spirit realm to help others. A lot of made up names and descriptions by de Lint are used here and confuses the story. The story didn't start to get smooth until the second half. So it is not a great de Lint story, but the second half was fun and made up for the poor first half. Add on to the fact I like Blue and the characters of the Moonheart universe, this was an enjoyable read

The Rising Necrophobia is a short anthology of short stories by four authors based off the world of Brian Keene’s The Rising. Keene's story is actually a modification of a chapter of the book that was turned into and published before the book ever came out. So it was an interesting read to see an alternative take on that part of the book. McBean's take was cool because he's Australian and was based in the Outback, and it also was a good story, the best of them all. Urbancik had another interesting take on an isolated group of monks, where the teacher finally died before they found out what was happening to the rest of the world. I liked this one. And finally Oliveri's take was a man trying to preserve his wife, who is paralyzed and in a wheelchair, and the wife thinks she's a burden on his safety. All four stories were good, and it was cool to see other takes of the mythology that Keene has created with The Rising and subsequent related stories.

This is yet another audio book of stories from Everything's Eventual. This time it is four stories, The Man in the Black Suit, All that you Loved will Be Carried Away, The Death of Jack Hamilton, and That Feeling, You Can Only Say What it is in French. The Man in the Black Suit is the main story here, and is one of King's best short stories ever, and was read decently by an older gentleman who was reflecting the story pretty well. The Death of Jack Hamilton was probably the best read, and is a good story. But the last two are weaker King works and That Feeling especially came off very dull in the audio format. So, this was about 50-50 good-bad, but still worth a listen.

The fifth and final book of The Cleric Quintet and the stories about the Deneir worshiping cleric Cadderly. This book is probably the darkest of them all, many, many people get killed off, except the main characters, but a lot of supporting characters bite the dust. Rufo the ever present pest this times decides to swallow the Most Horrible whatever, that is the lethal poison that has been harassing the library for the last five books, and he becomes a super vampire and takes over The Edificant Library. So a holy place has been desecrated and everyone inside for the most part become undead and now rule the library. So as you can guess the library and it's history are gone, and the final story is Cadderly rescuing the church and giving it a rebirth.

It was an enjoyable story, as were all the five books and I'm sad to see Cadderly and his adventures end. Oh well, that means I'm back to Drizzt. Not a bad tradeoff.

This is the second book of the Moonlight Bay series. Unfortunately I read this, the second book first. Even though it gave away enough to realize what happened in the first book it didn't ruin this book. This books starts off immediately with Chris Snow at his friends' house whose child was just abducted, and he goes after her. Initially I thought this was just a warm up scene, but no it was the beginning of the whole thriller chase that is this book, which the plot is to save the child (which soon turns out to be children). This book has to have the shortest character development ever! Even though this annoyed me it didn't take away from the book, which is a fun ride, nothing more, nothing less. The story is a sci-fi tale of a city with an abandoned military base that was doing top-secret work such as time travel, and making animals more intelligent et cetera, and the residue of these experiments are all about the deserted military base where most of this story takes place.

This audio book was read by a wonderful guy. He had two great voices for the lead character Chris, and his sidekick Bobby, and was able to get more voices for the secondary characters. There were emotional moments of fear and crying that the reader did amazingly well. This was a top-notch reader who read the story, and the story was a fun ride. As with Koontz nothing intellectually stimulating here, but it was a fun ride. I liked it and the reader a lot!

This started off as a book of Bradbury poetry, which it is for the first half of the book, but expanded into a 80th birthday celebration for Bradbury. The poetry as always is very good by Bradbury, so the first half of the book was an enjoyable read. The second half is appreciations by friends and peers. This part was a lot of fun to see Ramsey Campbell make an appearance, along with the regulars of Nolan and Matheson, who all say something about what Bradbury means to them. There are also many photos of Bradbury including many childhood pictures acquired from Bradbury himself. This is a nice book.

This comic was put out by Marvel and Robin Furth at the end of The Gunslinger Born to help describe the characters and locals of the story. It's not a comic, but rather a book full of information. And it contains a lot of good information that Robin has expounded upon from Stephen King's writings. This book was more enjoyable than the comics.

The Spiderwick Chronicles is a series of children's stories. Since they are so popular I thought they were good enough to give a try. This is book one, and it reads on the level for a grade school child. Nevertheless it was still a fun story. A family is split up and the mother along with the children take up residence in the Spiderwick Estate, which is a borderline condemned house. The children get into trouble but it's not their fault, but the fault of an angry brownie (faerie) who's home was disturbed by the children.

This was a fun little read. I can see why they are popular books.

A short piece about a man down on his luck that takes a temporary job as a security guard at an old closed down hotel. The hotel is haunted and it tells of the man seeing a card game played by ghosts, who asks "Are You In?". It's a nice little story as you don't really grasp what's going on until you read further. This story wasn't anything special, but it still had an attraction to it that made me like it.

This is the Lettered Edition and it has a second story incorporating the people who purchased the book. It tells the history of the hotel mentioned in the first story. It starts real well, and ends pretty good, but in the middle the story was just stuffing in names to just get them in. I really don't like it when publishers offer this and it just becomes name dropping. It works fine when it's subtle but when the author is just cramming them in it becomes a hindrance, as it did in this book.

A collection of works by Matheson based around the vampire. It contains the novel I am Legend and three short stories that also reference vampires. It also contains the screenplays of multiple works including I am Legend and Bram Stoker's Dracula. It is also peppered with memoirs about Matheson and his vampire works.

This is really a amazing collection of work, but not all of it is essential. I read I am Legend and the three short stories, the Dracula script and all the memoirs. The only thing I did not read was the I am Legend script. It would have been burnout if I tried to read the script so soon after the story and all the memoirs about the story. But another day I'll get to it. And everything I read was great, I am Legend is a great story, as is the short stories. The Dracula Script was nice and differed in some good ways from the book. So everything I read was top notch and a pleasure to read.

Mute is a short story about a man giving confession, twice. It goes back and forth between confession in a church and confession with a deaf-mute whom the man picked up hitchhiking. The protagonist has just learned that his wife has been cheating on him 2 years, and has also been embezzling from her job and is now probably going to get caught. When he picks up the hitchhiker he is finally able to "let it out" and scream about all his anger over his wife because the man can’t hear what he is saying anyway, so it allows the man to say whatever he wants. Well as we find out in the end, the deaf-mute just might have been listening…

This was a pretty lame story for King. It was predictable, as the reader knew what was going to happen at the end, and it was also a well cover topic. A thumbs down on this one.

This is a small collection of two novelettes, one by Piccirilli and one by Houarner. Both stories were good in different way. It was a very enjoyable read.

Piccirilli's story told of a group of loser kids on the very of self imploding, and they do when ferry sinks and dead bodies wash up on the shore where they were having a bonfire. Necrophilia is once again a topic, but it is really death that they are all looking for. This was an average story by Piccirilli, but still not bad.

Houarner’s story was pretty damn cool. He creates a whole mythology in such a little time with this book. It tells the story of a man who has been born into a side of life that we’ve never heard about, who follows a path. And the path is to destroy the current world and set up a new one. But the protagonist is the chosen one, and the chosen one is a rebel, so he chooses his own path. This was a Matrix like story, and very cool.