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WitchWhen I was a kid, my dad would tell me stories while I would play on my swing-set. Most of his stories were funny, but I remember some were scary—I recall in particular one about a vampire that he told me at sunset one evening. Our house was across the street from a cemetery, and my dad took full advantage of this fact for his tale.

Reading The Witch Under the Mountain, by the incomparable Noah Goats and his daughters writing as “Audrey N. Allison,” brought back those happy memories. It’s about two young girls and their father, who tells them a tale of an evil witch buried under Temple Mountain—which just happens to be where they are going camping the next night.

The two girls—delightfully named Audball and Ally-cat—are both excited and nervous about the trip, but as more and more elements of their father’s story are verified before their eyes, their fear grows, even while their father remains stubbornly oblivious to all of it.

Soon, it becomes clear that he has fallen under the spell of the evil witch, and it’s up to Audball and Allycat to save him—even if it means confronting dangers like ghosts, bears and walking skeletons.

The Witch Under the Mountain is, of course, a book for children; so the horror is kept at a level acceptable to an eight-to-twelve year old. Even so, it’s effective. There’s no setting I like more than a desert at night with hints of supernatural presences, and that’s exactly what this story delivers. There’s even a scene where the trio is trapped in an old abandoned cabin at night. I love things like that. 

There’s something about scary stories aimed at children—they never completely lose their punch. I think it’s because fear is an unusual kind of emotion that unlike say, love, doesn’t evolve as we get older. The dark is always scary, whether you’re five years old or five hundred, because you don’t know what’s in it. 

A good way to find the essence of something is to imagine explaining it to a child, and that’s why horror tales for children and about children work so well. Even in this tale, which is told with a generous side of Goats-ian humor, the classic tropes of curses and monsters in the night still make for a good atmosphere. My favorite scary stories usually have an element of fun to them—people like to be scared. I’m not sure precisely what biological or evolutionary reason there is for this trait, but it’s undeniable.

The real star of this book, though, is the illustrations. They are simple, black-and-white drawings that look sort of like charcoal sketches. They are simple, but effective and atmospheric. The cover gives you a good idea of the style—it’s stark and memorable. My only complaint was that there weren’t more of these illustrations—that’s how much I enjoyed them!

If you have young children, or if you just want to entertain the young child that lives in all of us, this book is perfect for the Halloween season.

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VanderImagine this: a story about a brilliant scientist in Albuquerque who is mad at the world, and uses his intelligence to get back at it.

Yeah, yeah, I know; you’re probably thinking, “That’s an outline of the show Breaking Bad.” And yes, that is true. It’s also the outline of Vander’s Magic Carpet, which my great blogger friend Pat Prescott wrote in the late 1980s, almost 20 years before Walter White ever appeared on television.  

Not that I mean to say they are the same thing, because there are some very significant differences. Notably, Eugene Vanders is a considerably more likable character than White. And his method of “making the system pay” as he puts it, turns out to be very novel indeed. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

Prof. Vanders is working away at an idea one evening when his home is raided by police in a drug raid. When they find no evidence to convict him, they plant some of their own, as part of an ongoing program of framing people that is being conducted by corrupt officers.

Vanders’ wife and daughter are traumatized by the attack, and eventually both die as a consequence—his daughter by suicide, his wife at the hands of another corrupt member of the justice system. 

Vanders finds that he is not the only victim of this perversion of the justice system: he’s in prison with two other men framed in the same way. Together, they begin working on a plan to expose the men who put them there—and to revolutionize society while they’re at it.

Prof. Vanders has come up with a plan to build flying cars. Once out of prison, he begins selling his technology to government agencies, along with the help of his released fellow inmates. And gradually, he also buys, threatens, and persuades his way into avenging his family, all while building his empire and starting a new family, as well.

And yes, he makes the system pay. He makes a good on the threat he makes to the judge who sentences him near the beginning of the book that he will “make Billy the Kid look like a boy scout,” too. And the way he does it is very clever. But I won’t spoil it here.

I love the themes of this book—a genius scientist out to settle old scores, corrupt government officials harming those they are meant to protect, and in the background, explorations of ideas about society, morality, and economics. 

My favorite character is probably Stanley Wade, the former High School teacher framed in the same way as Vanders, who ends up serving as his right-hand man while he builds his company. He had been a history teacher, and as such is always suggesting historical parallels. You know I love that.

Now, there are some technical issues in terms of typos with this book—understandably, given how hard editing and version control must have been back when it was first written. It was Pat’s first novel, and first novels are almost always technically rough. Plus, it’s just hard to edit your own work. (I should know–just the other day I found a typo in one of my books that I’d already read over about a hundred times.) 

Also, there were a few sequences that, while quite good, seemed to go by too quickly. For instance, at one point a certain character from someone’s past returns to threaten their new life. This is a great concept, but the whole sequence passes so quickly I felt like there wasn’t time for the tension to adequately build.

But these issues aside, I really enjoyed the themes of this book, and I liked how the political and economic ideas were interwoven with the plot.

And to follow up on my earlier point, I think if any entertainment people out there are reading this, there’s great material here for a film or series. I don’t know if Pat’s willing to sell the adaptation rights, but if he is, someone should approach him about it.

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Mark Paxson has a great post about the challenges indie authors face when it comes to attracting readers. (Side note: that new Kevin Brennan book that Mark references sounds like a good one. I reviewed Brennan’s Fascination earlier this year and will certainly read this one at some point.)

I hope to write more about this topic soon, but I don’t have time at the moment. So just go read Mark’s post. And maybe pick up Eternity Began Tomorrow. And also some of Mark’s books while you’re there. (If you’re not sure where to start, go for The Marfa Lights.)

 

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Hasuga's GardenHasuga’s Garden is a strange and dream-like fantasy novel. It follows a woman named Alanee, who is taken from her small village to the sprawling and mysterious “Consensual City,” the seat of the government, ruled by the mysterious “High Council,” which includes the enigmatic Lady Ellar, the lecherous Sire Portis, and the telepathic seer, Sire Cassix, among others.

Alanee explores the bizarre city, discovering its festivals and rituals, guided by a young woman named Sala, who introduces her to many of the fantastic sights and sensations the place has to offer. Alanee also develops affection for a pilot named Dag Swenner, though he soon goes MIA during a cataclysmic event in some remote part of the world.

Slowly, Alanee discovers the truth of how the city really works. At the center of government, out-ranking even the councilors, is a seemingly-omniscient child-like being named Hasuga, who governs everything with his mind. The council allegedly shapes his wishes to some extent, but it is his will the reverberates across the world

Hasuga has, for as long as anyone can remember, been a five-year old child, but recent events have compelled the council to advance his age. Now he is entering puberty, and experiencing the accompanying desires. Alanee is brought to him, apparently to “assist” with this. Hasuga sends his mother away, much to the woman’s chagrin, and begins to spend time with Alanee, who is a bit fascinated, but mostly repulsed by this being. (Personally, I kept picturing him as the Nihilanth from Half-Life, which probably made Hasuga more frightening than he was supposed to be.)

Things get weirder from there. There are political machinations, apocalyptic prophecies, sex, war, romance, and ultimately an eerie meditation on the nature of reality itself.

That’s about all I can do as far as summarizing this book, because it really is just so far out there that it defies description. It’s a fantasy, broadly speaking, but with many other elements. You could quote different portions and make the book sound alternately like an Orwellian dystopia, (some of it seems like a satire of central planning, in fact) a poetic allegory, post-apocalyptic horror, or an erotic romance. 

At times, it does seem to cry out for an analysis from the perspective of Freudian/Jungian symbolism. I’m generally not a fan of symbolist interpretations, but when you consider that major elements of the tale involve a boy—if you can call Hasuga that—losing interest in his “mother” and becoming obsessed with another woman, and ties this to themes of civilizational decay and rebirth, what else can you think? Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar, and sometimes a Freudian allegory is just a Freudian allegory.

I’m going to talk more about that shortly, but first, I have to talk about the prose in this book. It’s gorgeous. Haunting and lyrical, with descriptions of the most minor things being given in lavish detail. Some readers might find it slow, but personally, and perhaps surprisingly, I loved it.

The story is told in the present tense, which I found odd at first—it created a certain distance between me and the characters. (Which is counter-intuitive—you’d think it would make it seem more immediate.) I got used to this as I read, and it ultimately added to the surreal atmosphere. 

There are a handful of typos and glitches, but overall, I thought the writing was excellent. There were a few times when characters would speak in plainer language–commonplace slang words, which seemed a little jarring. This may have been the intent, however; since usually when this happened, the character was supposed to be speaking in a shockingly blunt or even crude fashion. It just seemed strange to read modern slang, because otherwise the language seems foreign and distant.

The entire universe of this book, in fact, seems foreign and distant. It’s not clear exactly when or where it takes place, although there is a hint in some of the book titles mentioned fairly late in the story. 

If I had one major complaint about the book, it’s the way the character of Hasuga’s mother is handled. She’s introduced well, and we learn a little about her, and then she’s largely out of sight, out of mind for the remainder, save for one brief, rather troubling scene close to the end. I felt that the character was under-used, which was a real pity. I may be in the minority here, but I like to read about female characters who are something other than beautiful young heroines with some grand destiny. I don’t mind the latter per se, and Alanee is certainly a fine character, but there are so many other female characters in Hasuga’s Garden who are complex and interesting, especially Lady Ellar, and I kind of want to read more about them than about the naïve beautiful young girl in an exotic city.

But then again, that may be the point. After all, events at the end of the book reveal that the structure of this world and its people are far from normal, and it may be that it’s all meant to be a reflection of the God-child’s own warped personality. Like I said, there are some serious existential puzzles at the heart of this story. It’s different, it’s weird, at times it’s downright disturbing—but it’s also well-crafted, thought-provoking and gorgeously written. I recommend it. And once you read it, feel free to come back here and comment, because it’s one of those books that it’s best to talk about with someone else.

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Available on Kindle for $0.99

This is a book I’ve wanted to write for a long time, and yet even now it’s hard for me to say what genre it is. It’s intended to be humorous in places, but I wouldn’t call it a pure comedy. There are some scenes and concepts that are a bit scary, but it’s not horror. It has a love story, of sorts, but I don’t think of it as a romance.

The best way I can describe it is to say it’s my love letter to the Gothic horror stories I’ve been reading ever since I was a kid, as well as a light-hearted satire of the same. I’ve always had an affection for stories about big country estates, forbidden texts, and ancient mysteries. All of these tropes are so well-worn they’re not truly scary anymore, but they are fun, at least to me.

If I had to explain the “tone” of this book, I’d say it’s supposed to be roughly the same as that of my favorite Gilbert and Sullivan show, Ruddigore, which I listened to repeatedly while writing this. Ruddigore is, like most G&S, fundamentally a comedy poking fun at the conventions of drama and society generally, but the reason I love it so much is that in addition, it has some genuinely creepy and emotionally-powerful moments. That’s what I’m shooting for here, and I thought the best way to do it would be to juxtapose some classic Gothic tropes with the life of a modern-day office worker. 

The other fun challenge was writing the first-person narration by a female protagonist. I’ve seen a lot of people caution against authors writing characters of a different gender, but I decided to give it a go anyway. Certainly, I’ve read plenty of great books by female authors written from the perspective of a male character. One of the points readers raised about The Directorate was that Theresa Gannon didn’t seem distinctively female. Part of that was just who the character as I envisioned her is, but it was something I tried to take into account while writing this. I’m eager to hear what you think.

The other motivation for the female protagonist was that I initially wrote a rough draft of this story from the perspective of the main male character. And it was terrible. I am quite certain that switching the protagonist made the story immensely better—indeed, it was that change that opened the floodgates and allowed me to finally finish it.

Thank you to all my readers, and to all the wonderful people in the indie book community who never fail to inspire me with their great work. 

Finally, special thanks to the wise and powerful Mark Paxson for his help and guidance on this project. His suggestions made this story much better, and for that I am extremely grateful.  For those who don’t already know: Mark is a terrific writer, and you should check out his books. I am incredibly fortunate to have the benefit of his advice, on everything from how characters should behave to proper punctuation.

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Virtually-Yours-Take-Two-200x300I don’t typically read romances. But this short story is a romance between videogamers. There aren’t enough books about the world of gaming, and as a veteran gamer, the unique concept attracted me.

It’s a short, light read. As is always the case with romantic comedies, the central dramatic challenge is how to keep two characters who are meant for each other emotionally separated for a while. And the solution Norse finds is a creative one. It might seem strange to non-gamers, but I would guess most people familiar with narrative-driven games are also familiar with the concept of having a crush on a video game character. Just a hunch, though. 

Also, the two main characters have the surnames “Link” and “Shepard”—which I think have to be Zelda and Mass Effect references. I suspect there are even more game references I may not have noticed on the first read.

Virtually Yours is a fun read if you like light romance or if, like me, you enjoy stories about gamer culture. Plus, I am a big fan of short fiction. I appreciate that Norse didn’t feel pressured, as authors sometimes do, to pad this story out with filler. It’s a fun, quick tale that lasts just as long as it needs to.

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mother adelliThis is a dark book, about flawed psyches, crises of faith, and unhappy families. It tells the story of a nun, Mary Agnes Adelli, who teaches at a Catholic boarding school in Illinois. One of the students under her charge is a rebellious girl named Helene, who feels abandoned by her father, a doctor who is traveling in Europe.

Helene repeatedly and flagrantly violates the rules of the school, coming into conflict with other students and Mother Adelli herself. Mother Adelli is soft-hearted by nature, and so is ill-suited to manage the student’s behavior, and given little support from her superiors. 

Problems escalate, ultimately to the level of tragedy, and this brings Mother Adelli to confront her beliefs, as well as unexamined pain from her own troubled childhood. 

The prose is beautiful, with gorgeous descriptions of bleak Midwestern landscapes in what seems to be a world of eternal autumn and winter. The characters struggle with complicated emotions, and for the most part, their inner thoughts are complex and believable. 

Technically, there is almost nothing to complain about with this book. One or two very minor typos (well below the average number for an indie book) and a few times, the POV shifted a bit suddenly, but besides that, it was about as beautifully-written a work of literary fiction as I can imagine.

Now, I know I mentioned it already, but I want to hammer the point home: this book is very gloomy. Not only in subject matter, but in tone, in style, in pretty much every way a book can be. It felt as if events were rigged by the cosmos themselves to maximize anguish for the characters. 

I haven’t read a book like this for a long time, but The Calling of Mother Adelli reminded me of the time I read a bunch of Thomas Hardy novels, one after another. Mother Adelli is like a later Hardy novel—think Tess of the D’Urbervilles or especially Jude the Obscure. Beautiful descriptions of bleak landscapes, characters struggling with trauma, grief, and the expectations family, society, and religion have placed upon them—all the things that make a novel Hardy-esque are here.

And some of the same problems I had with Hardy are present as well: in such a grim atmosphere, it was hard for me to find any character to root for. Adelli is sympathetic, but in a way that made me pity her for the misfortune caused by her lapses in judgment, rather than truly wish for her to “succeed” at anything. Every other character was, to a greater or lesser extent, unlikable in some way.   

To be clear, I wouldn’t say it should have been written differently. I think the point of the book is that all human beings have their flaws, and that sometimes these flaws interact with one another in a way that inevitably produces a violent disaster.  (Reconciling this point with the existence of an omniscient, benevolent Creator is another matter, one which the characters also struggle with in the course of the book.)

This is probably not a book for everyone—it’s not a light read, it’s driven by characters rather than plot, and it touches on a number of controversial issues. I don’t want to give away too much, but let me say that while early on I began to expect the tragedy that ultimately occurs about halfway through, it was still quite disturbing to read.

But with all that said, it is certainly a worthwhile book. I made the comparison to Jude the Obscure for more than one reason, because like that novel, The Calling of Mother Adelli has many elements that make for a classic of literary fiction. The writing is gorgeous, and the author clearly took great pains to craft every scene vividly.

This book was brought to my attention by Mark Paxson. On his blog, he cataloged how he aided Keithley’s efforts to get the book independently published after no publisher would take it. And this is why I recommend that you consider reading it: because this book is clearly the labor of someone who spent a great deal of time honing her skill as a writer—a story we would not have the chance to read, if the decision were left solely to publishing companies.  It may not be for everyone, but better that we each have the choice to decide for ourselves, because it is most definitely for some of us.

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PFHTI heard about this short story thanks to Lydia Schoch’s review. I encourage you to read her take as well, because she’s much better at writing these things without spoilers than I am. But I’m going to try anyway, because I enjoyed this tale quite a lot.

As Lydia notes, there are few stories that mention menstruation. Which is odd if you think about it, because it’s a normal part of life for 50% of the population. But apparently it’s a topic people prefer not to talk about—and demons too, as Terazael, the bloodthirsty-but-rather-helpless monster summoned in this story demonstrates. (You know, I never realized until just now that “demonstrate” has the word “demon” in it.)

Anyway, I can’t tell you much about this story without spoiling it, other than to say that it’s a delightful comedy about a woman who summons a demon while she’s on her period, and the comical antics and misunderstandings that follow. Now, if that’s not an original and intriguing enough concept to catch your attention, I don’t know what is.

Pads For His Throne is very short, but don’t let that stop you from picking it up. It’s not the size of the book that matters; it’s the size of the laughs you get from the story, and there are some big ones in here. 

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Image via IMDb

A couple weeks ago, Pat Prescott blogged about this film. It’s his go-to escapism movie. I’d heard of it, but prior to Pat’s post had never known much about it. Then I saw it was directed by the same guy who made the science-fiction adventure Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets, which I enjoyed, and Lucy, which was at least decent. Honestly, I was surprised I hadn’t seen this already, because it sounded like exactly the sort of film I’d enjoy.

And I did. I thought it was better than Valerian. It’s almost impossible to summarize–it starts in Egypt in 1914, when aliens land at an archeological dig site and reveal that they have devised a weapon to combat an ancient evil when it arises every 5,000 years. It requires earth, wind, water, fire and a mysterious “fifth element.” They take this fifth element–which looks like an Egyptian sarcophagus– aboard their ship, telling the human priest who guards it to pass the key on to his successors for when the evil is due to rise again in 300 years.

Fast forward 300 years, and the evil has indeed arisen in the form of a giant, growing orb in space, gradually increasing in size and engulfing everything in its way. From there, the film is a wild ride featuring the fifth element herself (Milla Jovovich), who turns out to be a woman named Leeloo who possesses unnatural strength, an ex-soldier-turned-flying-taxi-driver named Korben Dallas (Bruce Willis), who helps her in her fight against evil, an over-the-top DJ (Chris Tucker) who I initially found incredibly annoying, but by the end thought was funny as hell.

There’s also a blue-skinned opera singer, a race of bloodthirsty shapeshifting monsters,  Dallas’ nagging mother, and best of all, the main antagonist, Jean-Baptiste Emmanuel Zorg (Gary Oldman), an evil businessman who seems like a cross between Ming the Merciless and Jerry Jones.

All these characters find themselves battling to find the stones that symbolize the other four elements, beginning with a flying car-chase and culminating in a huge shootout inside a glitzy space resort. And of course, along the way, Leeloo and Korben wind up falling in love.

It’s a good old fashioned, light-hearted sci-fi adventure romp with plenty of humor, excitement, and memorable characters. I loved the futuristic, cyberpunk-ish sets, costumes, and art design. And (because I’m sure you all just have to know) the weapon props were excellent, from the Mauser pistol used in the opening scene to the all-in-one super-gun manufactured by Zorg.

Now it’s true that the computer-generated effects look pretty weak to the modern viewer. But remember, this was 1997, and for the time, they weren’t bad. The gunfight in the resort was especially good. It looked downright gritty.

The Fifth Element (1997)
Does this look kinda silly? Sure; but it’s also unique and stylish. (via IMDb)

Is it a deep, thought-provoking tale, rich with allegory, complex characters, and biting social commentary? No, it isn’t. But so what? Not every film should be that–sometimes you just want a fun little story with likable heroes, bad guys you love to hate, memorable scenes, and plenty of funny lines. The Fifth Element definitely has all that. I’m so glad Pat posted about; otherwise I might never have seen it.

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thekitchenbrigade_ecoverI admit to suffering from dystopia fatigue. I love the classics of the genre, like Nineteen Eighty-Four, but the last decade has seen so many bleak future/post-apocalyptic/totalitarian government-type stories that it takes a lot for me to pick one up. But after reading Lydia Schoch’s interview of Laurie Boris, I had to give The Kitchen Brigade a shot. And within pages, it won me over.

The Kitchen Brigade is set in 2049, in the remnants of a United States torn by civil war and occupied by Russian forces. Valerie, the daughter of the former U.S. Secretary of State, has been captured by the Russians and forced to work in a kitchen, serving a Russian general and his officers. 

All the women serving in the kitchen are assigned numbers instead of names. Valerie is Three. Gradually, she gets to know the other women, all of whom came there by different routes, and who have different perspectives on the situation; from the foul-mouthed but good-natured Four to the aggressively unpleasant Two, who resents Three and sees her as a threat to her relationship with the main chef, the tough-but-fair Svetlana.

As Valerie gains the respect of Svetlana and the brigade (with the exception of Two) she also begins to realize that the situation is far less stable than it appears, and soon discovers that there are multiple factions jockeying for power, among both the Americans and the Russians, and, as in any good thriller, almost everyone has a hidden agenda.

The prose is clean and the dialogue witty—especially Four, who I think deserves her own spin-off story. Her scenes were a real highlight.

I also loved how Boris gradually tells us the backstory of how the United States collapsed—it’s done in bits and pieces; scraps of information picked up here and there, but at a certain point, it becomes very clear not only what happened, but just how disturbingly plausible the seemingly-unthinkable scenario really is. It’s an all-too-believable vision of how a cyberwar could work.

A few minor gripes: there were a few times when it was hard for me to keep track of where all the characters were during the climactic sequence. It was effective, don’t get me wrong, but I still felt a little confused. It’s a not a big flaw, though; and it could just be that I haven’t read enough thrillers to get the hang of it.

Also–and I’ll be vague here rather than risk giving too much away–there’s one scene where people are oddly reluctant to kill a particularly vile character. Boris did a really good job making this character unlikable, and provided realistic motivation for why the character behaves the way that they do, so major props for that. But this person is so unrelentingly hostile, it’s hard to feel any sympathy, although some characters do anyway.

All in all, this was a very well-crafted dystopia. And Boris has a real knack for describing the elegant dishes the brigade prepares over the course of the book. I probably haven’t given the food preparation scenes their due in this review, because I’m not much of a gourmet myself, but even I could tell they were well-done. (No pun intended.)

Earlier this year, I reviewed the novella Number Seven and the Life Left Behind, by Mayumi Hirtzel. This is another tale of espionage, intrigue, nefarious Russian agents, and people with numbers instead of names. As a fan of old Cold War spy stories like Secret Agent, it’s pretty exciting to me that people are telling stories like this again. If you liked Number Seven, I predict you will also enjoy the Kitchen Brigade. And if, like I was, you’re reluctant to check out another dystopian story, just know that this doesn’t feel like a random tyrant has been inexplicably installed, as is so often the case in dystopian fiction, but is carefully thought-out and well-described. Give it a try.