Abarat by Clive Barker

• Purchase it here
• Published 2002 (HarperCollins hardcover edition)
• Finished reading it on July 26, 2003
• It is important to know that this book is the start of a massive project of building material geared for children and intended to be distributed via Disney. Not that you'll lower your expectations but so that you can reset them slightly. The sexual tone normally found in a Barker book are not here. And it's not quite as intense as some other of his books. However, it is definitely just as imaginative and weird and fantastic as you would think. The story is about Candy Quackenbush, resident of a small and boring town called Chickentown. Bored and unsatisfied with her life there, Candy cuts school one day and finds a magical passage to the world of Abarat. A world populated by eight headed people, fish that talk and mechanical butterflies. As part of the Hereafter (our world), Candy is special amongst the other residents of Abarat, special enough to attract the attention of Christopher Carrion, a lord who wants more power and a key that Candy possesses. While the journey was fun and the world of Abarat a joy to uncover, I was a bit disappointed in the brevity of the novel. 388 pages doesn't seem too brief but there are many gorgeous illustrations and paintings to accompany the text and those take up space. The illustrations are all beautiful by themselves but they also add significantly to the context of the story. And regarding the story, it seems that Candy's adventure is just starting when the book ends. I'm quite sure it will pick up in the next novel but it does mean more waiting on the reader's side for it to be written and then published. Well, I look forward to its creation and release.

Act of Love by Joe R. Lansdale

• Purchase it here
• Published 1995 (paperback edition)
• Finished reading it on May 19, 2000
• Having read a good amount of stuff by Lansdale, it is easy to see that this is one of his earlier works. Although the copy I read was printed in 1995, the book was copyrighted in 1981. But this is not to say that the book is bad. It's just rough in a few spots compared to the quality of stuff that he is doing now. But that is ok, because even when Lansdale is rough around the edges, his writing is still superior to a lot of other books. The story is about a detective hunting down a serial killer in Houston. And while the clues point very obviously to someone in the front of the book, don't necessarily believe it. I did and was fooled by the events as they unfolded. I do have one minor problem with the novel and that is that the police scenes did not read as being very realistic. That could be though because I just finished Homicide which goes quite extensively in to the details of a homicide investigations and anything else just pales in comparison. Other than that one unfair point, the novel is quite a good read. Not necessarily a starting point for a new Lansdale fan but one to be read after a few of his other books have been gone through first.

After Midnight by Richard Laymon

• Purchase it here
• Published March 2006 (Leisure Books paperback edition)
• Finished reading it on April 21, 2007
• This is a normal Laymon novel in many ways. You can expect his normal excellent writing and interesting characters. You can expect his normal level of sex and violence, probably a bit more than usual. And you can expect his normal level of crazy coincidences to get all the events started. In this case Alice, not here real name, is house-sitting when a strange man emerges from the nearby woods to go swimming naked in the family pool. She ends up answering a wrong number which scares off the stranger but also starts everything by bringing the wrong caller into the picture so that he could be quickly killed. It was an accident but for various reasons Alice needs to hide the body which is when the interesting stuff starts. As I already pointed out, you can expect all the usual Laymon's characteristics which is great if you are a Laymon fan. If instead you opt to be put off by the negative traits exhibited by the majority of the characters, then you'll find more of the same here. After Midnight is not his best but it is still solid entertainment and something I would recommend.

Afterlife by Douglas Clegg

• Purchase it here
• Published 2008 (Cemetery Dance signed limited hardcover edition)
• Finished reading it on April 19, 2010
• It's been a little while since I've read a Douglas Clegg novel. This was a conscious decision on my part because I was having issues with reading some of his early stuff. I couldn't figure out what was happening in some of his books; plus there were flashbacks within flashbacks within flashbacks that were confusing me. His writing technique was well done but it was his style that I wasn't liking. So how did I end up reading Afterlife? I'm a member of the book club at Cemetery Dance and this was one of the "book of the months" that were sent out. Rather than denying the book its purpose of being read (corny but I do feel like that at times), I read it. And I'm very glad that I did. The novel was much better than I expected. Julie Hutchinson has her life taken a sudden turn for the worse when her husband is murdered. She's dealing with the pain and loss while also helping her daughter and stepson cope. Fortunately she has friends and family that want to help. Unfortunately stranger things start happening that they can't help with. Things like her husband's body disappearing from the morgue, realistic and erotic dreams of her husband and a stranger being in and disappearing from within her house. She turns to a TV psychic for some help and he seems to help. But is he really trying to help or do something more? The characters are all fleshed out nicely. The story proceeds at a very quick and suspenseful pace. And I was very pleased with the book. Afterlife has changed my opinion of Douglas Clegg's writing. I'm probably not going hunt down his next book quite yet but I will have positive thoughts going into whatever book of his I end up with next.

Alabaster by Caitlin R. Kiernan

• Purchase it here
• Published August 2006 (Subterranean Press signed numbered hardcover edition)
• Finished reading it on December 9, 2007
• This book is actually a collection of short stories centered around Kiernan's character Dancy Flammarion. The book has five stories but I'm also going to discuss a sixth called "Highway 97" that came as a chapbook when I bought the book. All in all, I was a bit disappointed. The stories are well told and I want to learn more about the characters but that was part of the problem. Each story pretty much follows the same pattern as the other stories. Dancy is sent to some location by an angel so that she can kill the monsters that reside there. Unfortunately nothing more interesting than that occurs. There is very little doubt or thought by the characters that occurs during the story. Everyone but the monsters end the story in the same spot as when it began. The only deviation to that formula was with "Bainbridge." This could be considered Dancy's origin story. Otherwise the stories were mostly boring. Maybe if I had read them one at a time rather than in one chunk it would have made a difference. On the purely positive side, I was blown away by the art by Ted Naifeh. The cover was awesome! All the interior art was amazing! I would love to own some original art by him. Or even a print. A large reproduction of the angel in the road (page 104) would be fantastic.

Alien Nation: Body and Soul by Peter David from a teleplay by Diane Frolov and Andrew Schneider

• Purchase it here
• Published December 1993 (paperback edition)
• Finished reading it on June 9, 1996
• Peter David does an excellent job in all of his novels by making them very easy to picture. While reading the novel, it is incredibly easy to see all the characters acting as they do. And this is not just from being based on a teleplay. I have read other books by David (originals and Star Trek stories) and they all are this great and easy to visualize. He has an excellent knack of getting the characters down quickly and this then pulls you in and gets you interested. Plus he includes things that were not in the TV movie of the book, so you can get additional information. I definitely recommend it. And if you like it also, you might want to seek out some of his other books or even some of the comic books that he writes which are done just as well. "Aquaman" and "Incredible Hulk" are two he writes that I very much recommend.

Alien Sex edited by Ellen Datlow

• Purchase it here
• 19 short stories by such authors as Harlan, Ellison, Pat Murphy, Larry Niven, Lewis Shiner
• Published March 1992 (paperback edition)
• Finished reading it on May 15, 1998
• This is a pretty good mix of stories. All of them are stories about people and beings having sex with an alien of some sort. Not all are aliens from outer space but also just alien-ness of the sex act with new and different partners. There are some real gems here and my favorites are below.

  "How's the Night Life on Cissalda?" by Harlan Ellison - The ultimate in sexual intercourse comes for a visit.

  "Man of Steel, Woman of Kleenex" by Larry Niven - The reality of Superman's sex life.

  "Roadside Rescue" by Pat Cadigan - A weird story that turns out to be sexual.

  "All My Darling Daughters" by Connie Willis - An excellent story that seems to be light-hearted at first but turns out to be VERY intense.

  "Saving The World At The Moon Motel" by Roberta Lannes - A troublesome relationship leads to an incredible result.

  "Love and Sex Among the Invertebrates" by Pat Murphy - The next generation of beings after humans.

All The Rage by F. Paul Wilson

• Purchase it here
• Published October 2001 (paperback edition)
• Finished reading it on November 19, 2002
• I first got introduced to Wilson's work with his Adversary Cycle (The Keep, The Tomb, The Touch, Reborn, Reprisal, Nightworld). And while his other novels are still very good, I think that the Adversary Cycle was still his best. Now growing out from those has been the Repairman Jack stories, the protagonist from The Tomb. In fact, this novel takes place just a month after The Tomb. Anyway Repairman Jack is kind of a fixer; he's a non-descript man who doesn't exist in any government computers and who gets paid to resolve weird problems. Sort of a private eye but more on the fringe. This time he's hired to investigate why a woman's boss is being forced to associate with a known criminal lord. The investigation turns up a mysterious drug that lets its users tap into their primal selves, a complicated revenge plan against the same criminal lord and a mysterious creature that is a dangling plot thread from The Tomb. Wilson does a good job of juggling the various subplots while simultaneously keeping all the characters fascinating and intriguing. Things come together at the end pretty fast but at the same time very realistically. My only regret for the book was that it had been a while since reading the prequel so I wasn't quite up on everything that was current for the story. Was it important and necessary to read it? No, but it would have given more to the story. I definitely recommend this book. And as an aside, if you do like it I further recommend that you try any books by Andrew Vachss; his Burke character is just a hardcore version of Repairman Jack.

All Tomorrow's Parties by William Gibson

• Purchase it here
• Published 1999 (hardcover edition)
• Finished reading it on March 22, 2003
• For some reason I had a real hard time getting into this novel. It's not that it is too large; it's only 277 pages. And it's not Gibson's writing because I like his other novels. Whatever it was, I just took a long time to finish this when it should have been much quicker. The novel is a sequel / continuation from idoru though you don't really have to have read it first. Rei Toei, the idoru, is part of a nodal point that is going to change life as you know it on the planet. Or for those not quite up on their cyber-speak, a virtual woman is one part of many to tie in to an undefined but still significant event that will cause massive changes. And while the story is good and I enjoyed the characterizations, I think that it was the sheer number of characters and the massive lead up before things happened which caused me to keep losing interest. I'm glad that I read the book but I think that it could have had a few less characters. But then it is hardly a nodal point when you have just a couple of people meeting.

All Too Surreal by Tim Waggoner

• Purchase it here
• Published originally in February 01, 2002 (Prime Books paperback edition)
• Finished reading it on March 09, 2005
• This wasn't a bad collection of short stories but it wasn't something that I considered great. All of the stories were extremely well written. They invoke feelings and thoughts and make you consider new ideas. You end up confronting the ending of each story and being moved by it. However as the title of the collection suggests, the stories are all a little too surreal and they also leave you perplexed and wondering exactly what is happening at times. Many of the stories feel like that moment when you first wake up and you remember a very strange dream that you had but the details are fading and you get left with this feeling that something fun or exciting or scary occurred but you are not sure what. It makes the collection a good read but at the same time it becomes harder to pick out favorites. I've picked two below but probably half of the remaining stories would be ranked equally well.

  "Anubis Has Left The Building" - Death proves to be universal for all.

  "The Other Woman" - A man's affair slowly becomes his whole life.

Allhallow's Eve by Richard Laymon

• Purchase it here
• Published June 1998 (Headline Book Publishing paperback edition)
• Finished reading it on April 1, 2007
• This is the type of Richard Laymon novel that I love! Well, I also love most of his later stuff too but this one was firing on all cylinders for me. It had the large cast of characters that left you not exactly sure who the main protagonist is. This means that everybody and anybody is fair game to be killed. The plot was a relatively simple one, focused on revenge and not filled with too many wild coincidences. A party is being thrown on Halloween at a haunted house and no one is sure who the host is. That doesn't stop people from showing up though and having a night they'll never forget. Other than finishing it too quick and wishing for more, there are no issues I have with this book. An extremely fun read!

Already Dead by Charlie Huston

• Purchase it here
• Published December 2005 (Ballantine Books paperback edition)
• Finished reading it on June 27, 2008
• On one level, you might be inclined to group Already Dead into the same group as Laurell K. Hamilton, Charlaine Harris and others. After all, it's an on-going series with the undead involved. (Technically Already Dead is the first book in Huston's series and if I read this when it was first released, I wouldn't have known it was going to be a series. However I read it recently and the sequels were already written, so we'll ignore that timing mishap.) As a (new) fan to Huston would tell you, totally different ball game. Huston fits much better in the heavy pulp noir and mystery section. There's not any romance to really speak of in the book. Vicious killings and violence though are plentiful. Joe Pitt is a vampyre existing in New York City, a section that includes many other undead groups or gangs. There is the Coalition, the Society, the Enclave and others. Each organization has their own quirks and characteristics. Pitt tries to stay outside of it all. However, he finds himself caught between the warring clans when he is hired to find the runaway daughter of a Manhattan socialite. The story that results is fun and gory and humorous and bloody. And what makes all of it even better is that all the characters are rich and three-dimensional. If you are a fan of Tom Piccirilli or just hard hitting noir, then give this a try. You won't be sorry. And then like me, you can buy, borrow or steal No Dominion and the other books in the series.

American Gods by Neil Gaiman

• Purchase it here
• Published May 2002 (Harper Torch paperback edition)
• Finished reading it on March 22, 2003
• This is an excellent novel. It's Gaiman doing what he does best: writing about gods and beliefs and the mythos that surrounds them. The story follows Shadow, an inmate in prison who wants nothing more than to get out and move on with his life. However, as the gods might have it, they have bigger plans for Shadow. He ends up being recruited by the mysterious Mr. Wednesday and begins a journey of legends. The amount of effort and research that Gaiman must have put in to get the story right for all the gods is amazing. There were many that I didn't recognize and I wasn't sure if I had just never heard of them before or if they were made up for the book. Either way, the characters were extremely enjoyable. Overall the book also makes you think to a degree about what God or gods that you worship. Roman gods would demand sacrificing an animal which we can look at as being barbaric but today's gods of Television, Internet, Getting Ahead all demand sacrificing your mind, your interpersonal skills or your personal life. Who's to say which is better? Plus the core of the novel is very true: American are a fickle bunch and we'll quickly move away from old gods and new gods in favor of even newer gods.

Among The Missing by Richard Laymon

• Purchase it here
• Published October 2000 (paperback edition)
• Finished reading it on April 27, 2002
• I don't know if this is indicative of most of Laymon's novels but two of the three of his novels that I read take place in the course of a single day. This is the second like that. Don't get me wrong that this makes the book bad because it doesn't. The novel is still an excellent one and kept me enthralled. It follows a murder that happens in a small town outside of Lake Tahoe. While a simple premise, Laymon's writing keeps you involved by filling the story with real characters that are interesting. And at that point the story becomes more complicated and more than just a simple murder story. If you want to read a good book with solid characters, then this is it.

Anansi Boys by Neil Gaiman

• Purchase it here
• Published October 2006 (HarperTorch paperback edition)
• Finished reading it on July 20, 2008
• In this quasi-sequel to American Gods, Gaiman does his usual wonderful job. He has written a novel that weaves reality with mythology and leaves you wanting for more. Fat Charlie was trying to lead a normal life; a life separate from his father who was a perpetual embarrassment to him. And then his father drops dead in a bar in Florida. Shortly afterwards, Fat Charlie finds out he has a brother. Then when he finds out his father was a god and his brother inherited the powers, Fat Charlie's life gets more complicated. Gaiman's characters are fun to read about and often ones with which you'd like to interact. As Fat Charlie tries to get control of his life and do what he wants to do, we the readers get to like him more and more. And by extension, we enjoy the book more and more. I definitely found it very involving and hard to put down. Something that you'll want to relish every moment.

Angry Candy by Harlan Ellison

• Purchase it here
• Published originally in December 1989
• Finished reading it on January 20, 1997
• I'm pleased to say that I enjoyed this collection of stories by Ellison much more than I did the last one I read. (See my review of Deathbird Stories below.) In a weird paradox, although these stories involved deaths and being angry at being denied the person's presence, I enjoyed them and found several to be pretty positive. Oh, they are still disheartening in sections and they make me extremely thankful of being lucky enough to have not experienced the same amount of loss as Ellison describes in his Introduction. But I also thought that they were enjoyable enough to not be extremely depressed by them. My favorites are below.

  "Escapegoat" - A team of reverse-"Quantum Leap"ers.

  "When Auld's Acquaintance Is Forgot" - Forgetting bad memories is never easy.

  "Broken Glass" - A victim turns the tables.

  "On The Slab" - Mythology gets brought to modern life.

  "Laugh Track" - A comedic rescues his dead aunt's laugh.

  "Stuffing" - The reason to keep voting.

  "The Avenger of Death" - A man creates an interesting circle.

Animals by John Skipp and Craig Spector

• Purchase it here
• Published November 1993 (paperback edition)
• Finished reading it on March 30, 1996
• Awesome novel!! I very much enjoyed it. One of my most favorite in a while. It starts out with a variation of a well-worn cliche; but it's a familiar cliche. One that grabs you from the start and pulls you into the story. From that moment on, you follow Syd, the protagonist, as his life goes through very rapid changes and becomes more than human. As you enter part two, the novel takes a different turn which will make you wonder where the story is going. But then it all comes together and you look back and it's only obvious that the story was heading this way. Everything ties up at the end very well. Overall an extremely gripping novel that excites and gets the pulse pounding. The last 100 pages went by in what seemed a blink of the eye. Highly recommended!

Apocalypse Watch by Robert Ludlum

• Purchase it here
• Published May 1996 (paperback edition)
• Finished reading it on April 20, 1998
• I'm sort of mixed on this novel. I enjoyed the story very much and thought that Ludlum did a fantastic job of weaving a spell of intrigue and mystery while simultaneously keeping a quick pace going and propelling the story forward. The plot contains his usual twists and turns and unexpected events leading to a spectacular conclusion. However (you knew that was coming, didn't you?) I couldn't really build up any emotions for the characters. They were all very flat and boring. They explained themselves too much. They all side-tracked the conversations so that they could reiterate the same point for the 100th time before some other character would basically say "Stop that and let's talk about this neo Nazi who just tried to kill me but first let me tell you how angry I am and that I am motivated by my brother's death to stop this evil plot." As opposed to usually enjoying dialog scenes, I almost always dreaded them. I could literally feel the pace and rhythm screech to a stop at the excess alliteration. Originally I also thought that it was just me, but an airline stewardess told me almost the exact same thing when she saw what I was reading. Although her phrasing was along the lines of "enough with the stupid word descriptions, give me some pictures and action." It makes me yearn for The Chancellor Manuscript (my first Ludlum) or The Bourne Identity.

The Art of Arrow Cutting by Stephen Dedman

• Purchase it here
• Published March 1999 (paperback edition)
• Finished reading it on May 15, 2001
• This is an excellent novel that met and exceeded all my expectations. And considering that I spent a while trying to track it down, my expectations had been built up. The story starts off about a photographer traveling through Canada who is given a magical key by a beautiful woman. When he decides to track her down, he befriends a ninja who helps him fight off attacks from Yakuza thugs and Japanese mythological beings while the photographer learns how to use the key. I know that it sounds pretty off beat and weird but believe me, the story flows really well and makes sense. Besides, it's not classified on the front cover as "a novel of magic-noir suspense" for nothing. The characterization is extremely rich and three dimensional. The dialogue is realistic and different for each character. And while fantastical the story is still believable. The only negative that I have for the book is that some of the Japanese names were too similar to each other. Yea, looking back the names weren't that similar but when you're first being introduced to these characters, it would momentarily throw me off whenever I got to one of those names. Otherwise this is a wonderful book that I can't recommend strong enough. And I eagerly await Dedman's second novel.

The Association by Bentley Little

• Purchase it here
• Published September 2001 (Signet paperback edition)
• Finished reading it on December 14, 2002
• This is the book from Little that I've been waiting for. Not only is it scary and freaked me out at times but, and this is the important part, his ending didn't suck! For some reason I find the endings of Little's books to sort of dissolve into nothing and they leave me frustrated and wanting something more. This time though the ending worked very well. The story is about Barry and Maureen who move from the LA area into their dream house in a remote corner of Utah. (Side note: I don't see how people can think that moving from the big city to a small remote town is going to be perfect. If you enjoyed the big city, then why are you going to enjoy a small town when the two are so opposite in nature? But I digress.) Everything is fine until they discover that they now belong to a homeowners association, one that has a few more rules than most others and that has a more severe method of enforcement. Things like the "no pets" rule is enforced through active poisoning and killing of cats and dogs. Landscape changes are first fined with a pink slip and then if not fixed, the changes are implemented by mysterious parties in the middle of the night. As Barry and Maureen continue living there, the rules change over night and become more and more stringent. This continues until the big finale of Barry facing off against the association. Ok, so maybe the big finale was a bit over the top and ridiculous but at the same time, it's exactly what I wanted as the closure to the book. Yea, Barry and Maureen should have moved out much much sooner and at times I was yelling out them to "Just move!" but if they had moved, then there wouldn't have been much point to the book. What this really plays on is every homeowner's fear of being stuck obeying the rules of an association and the power they can wield. While some of the rules listed in the book were too much, there were many that are really enforced at some locations. Overall, I would definitely recommend this book; it chilled me while also thrilling me.

Asylum by Patrick McGrath

• Purchase it here
• Published March 1998 (paperback edition)
• Finished reading it on December 10, 2001
• Unfortunately McGrath didn't do that much better of a job with Asylum than he did with Spider. It was just as slow and boring. Ok, he did do a better job with Asylum because at least here he made me care enough about the characters to want to know what happens where as before, I had no emotional commitment at all. So this time I skimmed the second half of the book instead of just skipping it. The story involves the wife of a psychiatrist who falls in love with one of the patients at a maximum security mental hospital. I can't really tell you too much more than that without ruining the story; maybe if there wasn't such a long period of nothing happening between events then I could. I hope if you are reading McGrath's works that you like them, and there are plenty of extremely positive comments that I've heard about his work. As for me, two extremely painful and boring books is enough to turn me off from any more stuff by him.

Send comments or your opinions on these books to mike@kazba.com.

Last modified on February 8, 2011