*Lisey's Story* is one of Stephen King's favourite novels. That's no guarantee of qualYou can watch my video review here: https://youtu.be/94aI-UR2L0A
*Lisey's Story* is one of Stephen King's favourite novels. That's no guarantee of quality: great writers have been partial to their own imperfect works before. Indeed, *Lisey's Story* is such a read, flawed in its overindulgence even as it delivers the signature King thrills and shivers.
King's novel is about a Maine writer, Scott Landon, and his wife, Lisey. Scott died two years ago, but his absence is felt more keenly by Lisey than ever before as she prepares to clean out his study. Events in the present bring the past to bear in horrifying new ways, ways which force Lisey to face things she has chosen to forget. These inevitably have to do with Scott, his tragic origins, and the secret behind his writing craft.
There's plenty to recall, plenty to relive--and Lisey goes chasing down the past with some urgency because her life is at risk. An argument with a local scholar eager to get his hands on Scott's personal archives leads to a far more dangerous situation. Lisey receives a phone call from "Zack McCool," a violent and dangerous stalker whose initial desire to get Mrs. Landon to give up her husband's archive reveals something altogether darker.
Bloodcurdling displays of violence and fresh personal tragedies force several layers of past events to come crashing down on Lisey in the present in what makes for excellent, emotionally resonant reading. It's difficult not to read the relationship as a tribute and a love letter to King's marriage and wife, respectively. The author has spoken of the inspiration for this novel being his return to his study after hospitalisation, wherein his wife Tabby had cleaned out and reorganised the writer's work-space. "This is what it would look like if I died. I felt like a ghost," King said about entering the reorganised study for the first time. This inspiration, the fictional Scott Landon's success, the relationship, the Maine setting, quite possibly the - these all invite a little more of an autobiographical read to the novel than the usual King story does, excluding fantastical elements. It's a dangerous road to go down on: it's good to keep in mind that likenesses or not, this is fictive.
That said, some of these elements feel indulgent exactly because of the likeness between King's life and the novel's narrative. The romp in Lisey's mind - because this novel spends so much more time inside the head of a character than do any of King's novels - is riveting, the kind of literary trek I couldn't look away from. But even for me, there was a feeling of bloat, of perhaps the need for an editor who would've insisted on a fifty-page cut, or even a hundred pages.
King always captures the sound and logic of spoken conversation. *Lisey's Story* displays his skill in this as many of his other pieces do; more than others, it also shows the way in which devout couples engender a language all their own, one I enjoyed learning as I read on.
Then, there're the elements of the uncanny. Because much like King's best works, *Lisey's Story*, too, gradually builds up a smörgåsbord of supernatural horrors, some real "bad-gunky", as Scott and the rest of his family would say. The worst of the lot is the Long Boy, an ineffable, unknowable creature living in a world entirely removed from this one, and the kind of nightmarish presence that haunts dreams and madhouses. The Long Boy is the cherry on a really botched up cake, and that cake begins with Scott Landon's mess of a family. It's great to read about, if you enjoy brutal horror nastiness.
You'll enjoy *Lisey's Story* if: - You're a Stephen King fan; - You enjoy psychological horror and don't mind the occasional venture into brutal violence; - You want to take preventive measures about your growing and unhealthy obsessions with fandom - this novel illustrates the dangers of just such obsession! - And more! Prob'ly....more
The City and the City lives and breathes across liminal spaces, somewhere opposite doublethink. China Mieville’s noir creates one of the most unique locales in fiction, a city that is two cities, Besźel and Ul Qoma. The citizens of one learn to unsee the citizens, the buildings, and all that happens within the other. That’s why a comparison to doublethink is an easy one: where Orwell’s idea demands the embrace of two different notions, Mieville’s unseeing is an act of wilful omission. It is a skill learned throughout childhood, cultivated through puberty, to be mastered by adulthood. To see, to act knowingly towards anything going on in the city you’re not a part of, is the worst offense, the act of breaching. Once you do it, once you’ve breached, they come for you–the boogeymen of both cities, the clandestine organization known as Breach. Shadows that peer from every corner, unstoppable and answerable to no one, Breach are an organization even the governments of each city fear…and with good reason.
Protagonist Tyador Borlú, Police Inspector at the Extreme Crime Squad, is no different. Tyador is just the kind of hard-boiled detective you’re imagining, a descendant of a long line of detectives whose inner humanity serves as motivation to dig deep into the foulest, most inhumane crimes. A moral compass is not an easy thing to have in Besźel, and even more difficult to navigate in Ul Qoma. The murder Borlú investigates leads down one impossible mystery after another, inviting speculation, talk of conspiracy, and the best detective duos since Kitsuragi and Du Bois. Okay, yeah, Disco Elysium came out ten years after this novel, but I just read it now so you’ll have to forgive me for crossing the timelines. The greatest difficulty comes from the city itself, from its rules. Crosshatched, alter, and total areas make navigating first Besźel and then Ul Qoma a difficult, but fulfilling task for the reader. Mieville’s introduction, deployment, and mastery over the complex ideas juggled to create these two unique city-states is the stuff of inspiration. His ideas are the kind of ideas I at once wish to play with and fear that I would be unable to do anything with, not outside the realm of blandest impersonation.
Because, beyond the imaginative strength of this novel rests a metaphor that makes the idea of unseeing so accomplished; this ability to unsee a whole other city beneath the city you live in, it reflects reality. We all unsee what we refuse to be witnesses of, gazes averted, thoughts turned away from extreme poverty, homelessness, acts of pettiness and suffering and even violence…if we are lucky enough to have the choice. Mieville’s work is a study in perception, in how far the human mind might go if it is taught from early on to place all its imaginative power, all its volition, to the task of seeing one half of what’s before you while unseeing the other. It’s a potent work, and among the most deserving works of all the accolades it has earned–among them the Hugo, Arthur C. Clarke, Locus, and World Fantasy Awards. And, in a moment of pure serendipity…I got a brand new copy, now destroyed by annotations, at half-price!
The written review will appear as soon as I have the time to breathe and theThe review of Veniss Underground is now live: https://youtu.be/zb24IRxQYzU
The written review will appear as soon as I have the time to breathe and the energy to type it out properly. But here's a wee something to forecast both what's above and what shall come below:
Jeff VanderMeer's first novel, Veniss Underground, is a fascinating if somewhat flawed work. A lot happens across these two-hundred-and-fifty pages: a heartbreaking tale of separation and rediscovery, a descent into the underworld, a Biblical struggle between man and cruel god--all of it written with prose at once substantial and with dreamlike quality. ...more
Whatever you say about Jonathan Franzen (and there’s plenty to say, no small amount of itOriginally published over at my blog, The Grimoire Reliquary.
Whatever you say about Jonathan Franzen (and there’s plenty to say, no small amount of it critical), you can’t deny the man his insight. He’s a fine writer, as this collection of republished essays proves; though they all originate in the 90s and very early 2000s, few come across as dated; the topics Franzen addresses continue toi bear relevance, twenty, thirty years on. Most of them, anyway.
Like most essay collections, How To Be Alone is a mixed bag. Some of the essays, I couldn’t stand–“Control Units” in particular, committed the sin of boring me, despite an interest in the way the American prison-industrial complex works. The tedium of it exhausted me physically. Similiarly, I read the last essay, “Inauguration Day, January 2001,” two days ago and I already can’t recall what it was about.
The essays I found touching were personal in their scope–“My Father’s Brain,” a story about Franzen’s personal experiences with the Alzheimer’s that dismantled his father piece by piece, over several years. “Meet Me In St. Louis,” the second to last essay, helps frame this collection, being about Franzen’s revisiting of his home neighbourhood after his mother’s death. This latter essay is also about his troubled time as an Oprah author, which was…amusing, in part.
Franzen’s take on the commodification of sex in “Books In Bed” is on point; “Lost in Mail,” which ponders the fate of the Chicago Postal service, might’ve been good if I remembered it; “Why Bother,” the famous “Harper’s Essay” with an updated ending, I found to be thoroughly uninspiring; the essay itself is more haughty than anything else.
Did this collection of essays teach me how to be alone? Not really, no. If you’d like to learn more about loneliness from a collection of essays, read Rachel Cusk’s brilliant Canterbury. You’ll get far better value for the time you invest than you’ll get from this. And, I would argue, better rhetoric, too.
Ah, well. It was a fine first taste of Franzen....more
Another one of The Ciaphas Cain series of Warhammer 40k novels has been translated to audiobook format aOriginally published over at The Fantasy Hive.
Another one of The Ciaphas Cain series of Warhammer 40k novels has been translated to audiobook format and after enjoying For the Emperor to no end, I just knew I had to get it. Once more narrated by Stephen Perring, with additional work done by Penelope Rawlins and Emma Gregory, the series about the not at all courageous hero of the Imperium continues to be a source of entertainment, despite it lacking as memorable a climax as the first novel in the series.
As far as blurbs go, that of Caves of Ice is certainly among the more frugal ones I’ve read: “Still attached to the Valhallans, Commissar Ciaphas Cain fights orcs and necrons on the ice world of Frigidia.” It’s a short novel, and I suppose if you’re familiar with the Empire’s most selfish—yet competent–Commisar, you need little more in the way of convincing.
The strongest selling point of this series is that unlike the vast majority of Warhammer 40k novels out there, it is hardly grimdark. Yes, monstrous creatures, brutish hordes of orcs, metallic horrors beneath the depths of the earth are all to be found in Mitchell’s Caves of Ice, but the tone the novel embraces, a humour only slightly less dry than in For the Emperor, makes of the grim future of the 40th millennium something with a little more joie de vivre. With orcs and metallic hordes that shoot laser beams which melt organic flesh, granted, but it still counts for something!
Everything Ciaphas Cain does is calculated to increase his chances of survival. As a Commissar, that is saying a lot—the members of the Commissariat are not particularly popular with the rank and file, and have a tendency of getting shot in the back when a situation gets heated…and with the Imperial Guard, any given situation getting heated is just a matter of time. How does Cain make sure he doesn’t share in the fate of so many other Imperials of his rank? He’s friendly with the troops, and does his best to sell the illusion that he cares for them. Whether he actually does is for the reader to decide; his own words point to the contrary, but his actions…well, Cain is a mystery. One wrapped in self-deprecating humour, and always looking out for his best survival. The fact that his instinct for self-preservation leads Cain into danger time and again shouldn’t convince you of his heroism. It’s all measured in such a way as to avoid greater peril to his person – though whether it succeeds, that’s another question entirely.
The cast of Mitchell’s first Cain novel returns in this one, and they’re as clueless about the good Commissar’s self-described true nature as ever; whatever the man does, they lap it up with barely a question. Colonel Castine, the boisterous General Sulla and her small sections of purple prose, several others – Amusing as always is Cain’s man-servant, Jurgen. Cain calls him aide, I think, but let’s not kid ourselves, I know a man-servant when I hear one, and you can smell it on Jurgen from a mile away.*
Perring continues to do impressive work with Cain’s internal monologue—the book is told in the first-person, and the narrator always delivers on the irony so rich in Sandy Mitchell’s text, and I would argue, his performance elevates the story, injects a little extra something to the narrative that I’m not certain I would’ve found otherwise. This is true about many of the Black Library narrators; Games Workshop has a fine track record with the folks they get to read Penelope Rawlins is, similarly, brilliant as Inquisitor Amberly Veil, whose footnotes are a great way to inject both humour and interesting information outside of Cain’s very self-centred perspective.
Caves of Ice is a fun book – it lacks something of a climax, or rather, doesn’t take the time necessary to develop it in full. Pity – there’s always a little something that keeps me from giving this particular chapter in the darling Commissar’s journey my full recommendation.
As it is, this will scratch a certain itch, if that itch has anything to do with pulpy space adventures with a helping of humour, or with a protagonist whose desire to live outweighs all else. Or, the God-Emperor forbid, with the slaughter of many thousands of orcs.
*For those who have neither read nor listened to any of the Ciaphas Cain books, Jurgen’s odor is the topic of many a paragraph in Sandy Mitchell’s novels....more
Another brutal Jack Reacher adventure, once again done justice by Jeff Harding's brilliant narration.Another brutal Jack Reacher adventure, once again done justice by Jeff Harding's brilliant narration....more
Child rarely goes back all the way to Reacher’s military career but this one tackles a pair of decisive moments for everyone’s favourite army policemaChild rarely goes back all the way to Reacher’s military career but this one tackles a pair of decisive moments for everyone’s favourite army policeman, one personal and the other one professional, both coinciding and intertwining in ways that change Reacher forever.
The Enemy sees Major Jack Reacher of the US Army welcoming the New Year posted in a military point in the middle of some rural state in the vastness of the States. A call comes through notifying him of the death of a two-star general at a motel nearby. Reacher has never seen a dead two-star before, he’s curious. Besides, you got a general dead thirty minutes away from a military base, you want to make sure nothing’s rotten.
But it’s a Jack Reacher novel, isn’t it, which means of course something isn’t right. Two-star looks like he had himself a bit of fun before the old ticker blew up. Seems a likely enough explanation – a general is as virtuous as the next soldier and often enough he’s plenty worse. Only, this general was heading to a conference and his briefcase is missing. In that briefcase? The agenda of the conference. Only, none of the other would-be attendants admit to this document’s existence. That’s when Reacher knows something is fishy…because if there’s one thing the army loves, it’s tightly-planned agendas.
What follows is an investigation that disillusions Reacher and changes his views on the one organisation that’s always been home to him – the U.S. army. The way this case develops, I’d be disillusioned too in his place – and I ain’t nowhere near as tough as that tall bastard.
On the personal front, we’ve got Reacher and his brother facing down a life without their mother, one hell of a tough French lady dying from late-stage cancer that’s eating I loved everything about this part of the plot – some fantastic revelations which shake the character of Reacher to the core at the worst possible time. Makes for great drama.
Lee Child’s unique brand of noir prose, solid supporting characters, fine antagonists and one hell of a mistery — what more can you want from a Reacher novel?
And do I even have to get into the narrator? When I read Reacher, I hear Jeff Harding’s voice in my head – his voice embodies the tough as nails military cop, if that makes any sense. He is brilliant! 5/5! 10/10! A hundred percent badassery!...more
High-tension opening that immediately got me invested into reading further. Reacher comes in, guns blOriginally posted over at The Grimoire Reliquary.
High-tension opening that immediately got me invested into reading further. Reacher comes in, guns blazing, and finds himself in one of the most tense, life-threatening situations he’s ever been in. Before long, Jack’s at the beck and call of a drug dealer, forced to play a dangerous game to survive.
I didn’t just like this one, I loved it. Jack is at his best when he’s cornered and working multiple angles, with a clock ticking down and spelling trouble for him; and the fact is, this is one of those first-person Reacher novels, which I love to death. Child does wonderful work whenever he shares in Reacher’s headspace completely – the prose, short, concise and brutal; the way Jack thinks, assaulting any and every problem without pause, dealing with his enemies with deadly efficiency.
With a cast of compelling side characters and several looming antagonists, as well as a series of flashback sequences, Persuader is a fantastic read for newcomers and veteran readers of Child’s alike. Jeff Harding’s narration embodies the essence of the character perfectly, and he does fantastic job with the remainder of the cast, too. My score for this is a 5/5.
Pre-Review Blabber: Reading and listening to Jack Reacher novels has been a drug to me since I was a teenager, and this one, narrated by Jeff Harding, is nothing short of amazing....more