Book Review: The Chrysalids

A side project I've been working on in 2018 is catching up on readings books that have been sitting on my to-read shelf for years, and this year that meant getting back into John Wyndham.

I had read a number of his books during my teen years (Midwich Cuckoos, The Kraken Wakes, The Day of the Triffids, etc.) but as Wyndham wrote books from the 30s through to the 70s, I had never got to them all.

The Chrysalids (1955) follows a young man in a post-apocalyptic era wherein society has fallen back into agrarian levels. His community, a close-knit, heavily religious one, focuses on the purity of mankind and deplores any who are different. 

David, our main character, is the son of a local leader, and has a pretty big secret - he's telepathic. This allows him to pass as human, but if anyone were to ever find out, it would certainly mean his death, and likely that of his family as well.

Having now read through Wyndham's earlier work (and some of it has some pretty big problems), part of what I think really works in the novel is the use of David as a our first person narrator, rather than simply have him as the protagonist - seeing the world through David's eyes as a child and becoming a young man made the book much more immersive for me and I think kept the writer much more on task.

A great read and a wonderful introduction into science fiction if you happen to be looking.

Book Review: Dark Matter

Last month I read Blake Crouch's Dark Matter for one of my book clubs, as a selection by my friend Ron. The novel (which I really enjoyed), follows Jason Desson, a college physics professor, who, after being kidnapped, wakes up in a strange new world, one where he is not married, not a father, and is instead a world renowned physicist. He's wealthy, well regarded and lives in an amazing version of his old home, and somehow, he's managed to create a door (spoilers follow) between worlds.

The book follows Jason as he attempts to reconcile his new life with his old and eventually, tries to leave it all together. As a story it follows an action/science fiction plot, and I imagine that if I hadn't seen a number of dimension-hopping stories before (Sliders, Ring Around the Sun, etc.), it may have took me a little longer to see where the novel was headed.

The book is quite engrossing, keeping up a really great pace and if you are not as familiar with this sub-genre of science fiction, it could be a gateway novel to a lot of really fun reads. It had a number of set pieces that worked extremely well (including the climax) and definitely has me interested in reading more from the author.

Book Review: We Sold Our Souls

So back in 2016 I happened across a copy of Grady Hendrix's My Best Friend's Exorcism in my local book store and after reading it was delighted to find a new voice in the horror genre that felt like a bridge between YA horror and the adult stuff.

A few months later I tried his first book Horrorstor and although I didn't like it as much, I loved the layout and design of the book and there were some really great bits in it that I saw coming more together with My Best Friend's Exorcism.

Finally, last year I read his non-fiction work Paperbacks from Hell and I have to say it ranks quite high in my favourite non-fiction about the horror genre.

So last weekend when a copy of his latest, We Sold Our Souls came into my local library I was thrilled to dig right in. And three days and 330 pages later - I absolutely loved it.

The book follows a has-been heavy metal guitarist named Kris who begins the book in a dead-end job in a small town, and on a quick side-note, I was thrilled the lead of this story was a woman in her mid-forties, rather than a nineteen year old kid - I'm always happy to read coming of age stories, but shake it up a little people!

The story moves from small town nightmare to the truly epic and does it with a great love of the music it glorifies. It bounces from humour to terror to gross-out horror and back again, and honestly, I simply couldn't put it down.

Book Review: The Sand Reckoner

The next-to-last book on my survey of Ancient Greece through historical fiction was Gillian Bradshaw's The Sand Reckoner (2000). The novel tells the story of Archimedes of Syracuse, the inventor most famous these days for the whole water displacement discovery (Eureka!).

The book begins with a young Archimedes returning home from Alexandria to Syracuse which is in a war with Rome. A mathematical genius, Archimedes hopes to find work as an engineer for the city and perhaps help out his family, and very quickly his value to the city becomes apparent to its current tyrant, Hiero, a surprisingly positive example of the type of leader we classify as a tyrant today.

The story parallels it's main narrative with that of Marcus, Archimedes personal slave, and for me, the much more engaging character in the story. Archimedes is interesting, but so in-his-own-head, it can sometimes be frustrating to watch him. Marcus, on the other hand, is much more aware of the world around him, both in terms of the city itself and the larger world.

I had never read Gillian Bradsahw before and honestly just loved this book, it reminded me a little of L. Sprague de Camp's The Arrows of Hercules (1965), but I found it much more engaging.

I'm really looking forward to next month when i complete my list and get to do it with another of Bradshaw's books!

Book Review: Ararat

Having read my way through all the Bram Stoker Award winners for Best Novel a few years ago, I look forward to the new winner each year as a way to see what's going on with the Horror genre lately, and the 2018 winner; Christopher Golden's Ararat was a pretty intense story of survival and mountain climbing, mixed with some aspects of both The Exorcist and The Thing.

The novel follows two adventurers Adam and Meryam, who together have made a business of archeological discoveries and adventure tourism over the years on what might be their greatest discovery yet, the discovery of an ancient ship entombed in Mount Ararat in Turkey, the biblical end point of the story of Noah's Ark.

Without going into too many spoilers, the novel nicely mixes aspects of mountain climbing with sheer survivalist horror tropes as the adventurers and their guides end up exploring the ruins with two other teams and end up finding more than they had bargained for.

Although I felt the story was a little too long and had a much bigger cast of characters than was necessary for my tastes, it was a thrilling story that seemed to care about the secondary characters and didn't rely too much on jump scares.

A fun read!

Archie Horror: Post Eight: Chillinng Adventures of Sabrina

At the end of a month of reading through Archie Horror, I ended with the new (almost a week old as of this post) Netflix series, Chilling Adventures of Sabrina created by Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa and starring Kiernan Shipka.

The series, following in the footsteps of the CW's Riverdale, continues to expand the Archie Universe, and although I've only seen the first four episodes (sorry - I was finishing reading Vampironica and I'm not a great TV show-binger!), it has been a pretty fun watch so far...

First of all, for the fans of the original comic book series (also created by Aguirre-Sacasa), the television series ditches the sixties setting (although it keeps much of the look), and hasn't (so far) gotten quite as dark as the comic series either.

In many ways I'm really enjoying the balance the show is doing, working to appeal to fans of Riverdale while at the same time acknowledging that for a lot of people, Sabrina Spellman is either the character from the comics or the character from the 90s TV series.  Is it edgier than I expected?  Absolutely!

For the record, my favourite characters to date are Sabrina's aunts Hilda and Zelda (but that may just be they are closer in age to me than the leads) and the freakiest moment to date was in episode four when the human world storyline got incredibly dark (probably darker than they intended), although I don't want to spoil it for those who haven't seen it yet.

A fun, well acted and intriguing look at how we balance our home lives and personal lives, the show (although definitely not for children), is well worth the watch.

So there you have it, a month seeing what Archie Comics could do with the Horror genre, and you know what? They've done a pretty great job!

Archie Horror: Post Seven: Vampironica

Earlier this year, after the successes of Afterlife with Archie, Chilling Adventures of Sabrina, and Jughead: The Hunger, the good folks at Archie Horror introduced a new title to the imprint.

Vampironica

Created by Greg and Megan Smallwood, Vampironica follows Veronica Lodge in a Riverdale not quite like the one we know, as she is attacked by a client of her father's, and turned into a Vampire.

Part what what I've always found tricky about the rivals in Archie comics (both Veronica and Reggie) is how easy it is to simply write them off as necessary foils for good guys Archie Andrews and Better Cooper, but in turning Ronnie into a vampire herself, the character is actually able to shine in a way I have seldom seen her; as a no nonsense young woman intent on changing her world to one in which she sees value.

To be honest I wasn't really expecting much out of this title, but found it to be a fun read and one I'd happily recommend to others.

As the title is still fairly new (issue four comes out later this week), I don't want to go into too many details, but I have read that the creators cited by An American Werewolf in London and Fright Night as inspirations, so I think it's safe to say the title is a little closer to Shaun of the Dead than Dawn of the Dead on the Horror/Comedy meter.