Book Review: "Fiend," by Alma Katsu

 

    Alma Katsu's new novel Fiend is, to me, a delightful mix of HBO's Succession and Radio Silence's Ready or Not. It's the story of the Berisha family, a massively wealthy and powerful Albanian business empire run by brutal patriarch Zef and two of his children. The presumed successor to Zef, Dardan, might not have what it takes to take his father's place. The middle child, Maris, clearly does, but her father doesn't want a female in his seat. The youngest daughter, Nora, isn't reliable enough to even have working for the company, at least in the eyes of her parents.

    There are rumors of a protector for Zef, maybe more of an enforcer, with whispers of supernatural power. Maris doesn't believe in such a thing, Dardan won't talk about it, and Nora might know more than her family gives her credit for. Katsu's book follows Maris and her desire to take the top spot in the company and family. It's a typical fight against misogynistic corporate structures in some ways, but you'll quickly find that Maris has just as much of a killer instinct as her father. The way she describes her mother, Olga, as a coward, for example, let's you know that Maris has more backbone than Dardan, who is increasingly struggling with his father's legacy and his future with a company that seems to have no qualms about crushing its competitors and adversaries in more physical ways than you might imagine. 

    It's a thrillingly fast-paced book from Katsu, who in the past has generally stuck to what you'd probably describe as historical horror. This book is very of-the-moment, and while I felt like I got a few steps of ahead of some of its eventual reveals, I never had anything other than a great time discovering the truth about the Berishas and the mysterious "protector" at the center of some of the chaos that unfolds. I'm sure anyone familiar with Succession can see where the comparisons to that show come in, but if you were left scratching your head at my Ready or Not mention, that's where the book will hook you the hardest if your brain works like mine does. It's not overtly similar, but anyone who found that movie's reveals concerning its own wealthy, powerful business family's dark secret enjoyable, I think you'll like Katsu's story of the Berisha family and their protector just as much. 

    As with all of Katsu's novels, Fiend is effortlessly digestible and efficiently tells its tale. I'd have been happy to spend another hundred pages with the siblings bickering about the company's treatment of workers in third-world countries or their very concerning handling of whistleblowers, but I can't argue with the lean and mean nature of the novel too much. It's a quick, fun read that's likely only slightly more bloodthirsty than your average corporation in the real world.

 

4/5

Book Review: "Whistle," by Linwood Barclay

     Linwood Barclay enters the world of supernatural horror with his new novel Whistle, but unfortunately it isn't the slam dunk I hoped it would be. While fast-paced and intermittently engaging, its best moments feel like pale imitations of its inspirations, most noticeably Stephen King's Needful Things, which is directly name checked. As one of King's "Constant Readers" and a massive horror fan, I'm very used to novels in the horror space trying to imitate his various works. There are flashes of successful homage here, but Barclay's book never separates itself from those attempts to provide anything new, and the mention of Needful Things frankly made me want to set this one down for a bit to read that instead.

    Whistle is a book with two lightly interlocking stories, one about children's book artist Annie and her son Charlie taking a break from New York City after a tragedy and the other about Harry, a small town sheriff in Vermont growing suspicious of the weird man running the new toy train store that has seemingly appeared out of nowhere. Both of these halves of the tale are given roughly equal time, but I couldn't help but feel as though the earlier set (just after 9/11) cop vs. mysterious stranger chunk should have been a small prologue instead of making up half the book. Much like the toy trains the strange new salesman Edwin Nabler is handing out to the town's denizens, this part of Barclay's novel stays on a track that runs from a generic point A to a predictable and unsatisfying point B. While it does explain some parts of the later set Annie and Charlie story, it is so light on character development on its own that the scares never delivered and the fates of various thinly-drawn townsfolk barely registered with me. 

    Annie, the children's book artist going through turbulent times, is the book's more interesting protagonist, and truthfully I wanted to know more of her past and the way it eventually ties into the strange events when her son Charlie finds a toy train set in the shed of their new rental home. We only get little flashes of her backstory before the death of her husband due to spending so much of the book on rails with the other half of the story. Charlie is definitely assembled in the general mold of a Stephen King-esque child, but oddly we never get any horror elements from his point of view and very little of his experiences with the supernatural events at hand. This, to me, is the book's weakest element and where it truly loses any hope of approaching King territory. King novels like the aforementioned Needful Things or Salem's Lot or Desperation always feel like they give if not equal time than at least equal detail to every character's experiences. Sure, it runs the page count up when every character gets this sort of attention, but it makes you care about what happens to them or at least intrigued as to what their eventual fate will be. In this novel, Linwood Barclay gives vague silhouettes of characters who head in a very easily sussed out straight line. 

    It's by no means a bad novel, and the pages often fly by. I found myself getting excited for the horror and supernatural moments, but ultimately they were underdeveloped and certainly under explained. The antagonist seems to have new powers a few times towards the end that would have been well-utilized earlier on. I wonder if there are much longer earlier drafts of this book and what those might look like. If the King vibe was truly Barclay's goal, a couple hundred extra pages would have helped, not hurt.

2.5/5

Book Review: "Something I Keep Upstairs," by J.D. Barker

 

    J.D. Barker's new mystery/thriller Something I Keep Upstairs is a fast and pleasant read, but one that I found ultimately lacked the focus necessary to elevate it to the next level. It's a story of a group of teenage friends who are spending time at one of their group's newly inherited island home where nothing is as it initially seems. The story's narrator is Billy (perhaps the least interesting of the group, but that I think was a smart decision to ground the tale), a relatively average kid who plays sports and is dating Kira. His best friend, Spivey, learns that his seldom-seen grandmother has passed and left him her estate. The island and the house on it are the stuff of legend; there are tales of discovered skeletons, an old coast guard station, and, most interestingly, the fact that sometimes the house seems to be much newer looking than it should be... or perhaps much older than you thought it was, depending on the character's perspective. 

    Spivey is the book's most compelling character. He's been dealing with leukemia off and on, he's not athletic like his best friend Billy, and he's not the most popular kid around. Having a secluded house away from everyone's parents and various other authority figures seems like a real blessing. But his late grandmother's attorney is always hanging around, and he keeps reminding Spivey that the house and island have a set of very specific rules. Those rules and their origins are the book's most intriguing mystery, of course, but the relatively lengthy novel unfortunately waits until vary late in the game to start dishing out answers, and at that point they come at a rapid clip that really diminishes the sense of joyous revelation that I tend to hope for in stories of this sort. 

    Another issue I found was that the book sidelined Spivey himself more and more in its back half, instead starting to focus on a relatively generic police chief and his investigation. There's a lackluster missing girl element in the mix that never feels as important as one assumes it was supposed to be, giving off major red herring vibes from the moment the concept is introduced. It's clear why Spivey is sidelined in favor of two of the other kids (Alesia and Matty, who have their own ideas for what to do with the island and its secrets) when the book's final outpouring of answers begins, but it lessened the impact of what J.D. Barker was trying to accomplish. There's a handful of twists that aren't effective because the groundwork to set them up was either too rarely implied or was handed out mere pages before the reveal. 

    That being said, Barker's a strong writer, and the pages fly by. There's a bit of an over-reliance on teenage love pains that don't quite ring true, but the suspenseful and more action packed elements and scarier chapters are handled very well. I found myself doing the classic "just one more chapter" routine throughout my time with the book, which should tell you that despite my complaints there's still a lot to recommend. While I personally think another few drafts could have shortened and shaped this into something stronger, I still would recommend any horror and mystery fans give it a shot.

 
3.5/5

Book Review: "Nameless Things," by Ernest Jensen

 

    Ernest Jensen, a pseudonym for Australian (but Scotland-based) author Louise Jensen Duffy, has written a horror novel that unfortunately misses the mark on most levels. The reasons for this are surprisingly widespread, covering everything from unsuccessful comedy, constant lapses in dialect (more on that in a bit), and, perhaps most damning, a complete failure to provide any tension or scares. 

    Nameless Things is a book about two friends, Mike and Wade, who are hiking in a secluded caldera. They see a meteor pass overhead and seemingly crash into the ground somewhere nearby. What the meteor has delivered seems to be an invasion of tiny worms that are quickly spreading through the ground. As Mike and Wade encounter other hikers and start to find out that there's more to these worms than initially meets the eye, they enter a desperate struggle to escape their surroundings and get back to civilization and find help. 

    Mike, the narrator, is supposedly a gay man who has recently broken up with his partner. This is why his longtime friend Wade has brought him on the hiking trip, we're told. That's about all we ever get about either character's backstory. Mike is also, I must point out, an American man. This is important, because in the book he repeatedly refers to flashlights as "torches," says he "can't be assed" to do things, and frequently displays other such oddities of region-specific language. Jensen has apparently done little research work to ground Mike as an actual American male. Mike being such is utterly unimportant to the story being told, too, so it boggles the mind as to why he couldn't simply be Australian or British (as most other characters who pop up throughout the novel are). It's weird, sloppy, and consistently distracting. 

    Also distracting is the level of repetition of words, phrases, and situations. Do you like to see the word "goggle" used for looking at something? Well, you better, because it's done in nearly every chapter. This would be an easy fix and not worth mentioning if it was only a vocabulary issue, but it becomes a detractor in the book's horror elements, too. When people succumb to the invasive worms, they wriggle, itch, scream, and parish -- it's bleak stuff. The problem is it happens multiple times with no variation. This remains true when the threats grow larger. Almost every major horror moment or death happens in the same fashion. The ground moves, something pops out, people scream. There's no escalation and it makes initial scares less interesting because you just encounter them repeatedly. Throw in a random villain in the back half of the novel with no motivation whatsoever and things start to get dire.

    Another issue is with the characters themselves. No one grows, no one changes, no one engages the reader and makes them root for their survival. People show up, are described as looking like a celebrity of some kind, and then they stay the way they are for the rest of their time in the book. That celebrity thing grates in a massive way, and I can't say that I've ever run into it in any other novel. This person looks like Zendaya, this person has Owen Wilson's nose, this person thinks they're a dead ringer for John Boyega... it comes across as though Ernest Jensen doesn't want their readers to have any say in how they picture the people and events of the book together in their minds. It's deeply off-putting. 

    I don't like being negative in reviews, but I believe in being honest when reviewing any and all work. I love horror, I want all horror to succeed, and it bums me out when something fails to live up to expectations. I'd heard early word that this book was reminiscent of the works of Nick Cutter and Stephen King, and I think the publisher doing promotion of that sort is doing their author a disservice. Sure, there are echoes of Cutter's The Troop here (which, in kind, was King-inspired), but that's a masterwork of the genre. Don't put that kind of pressure on an author that's still trying to find their footing. I think Jensen has the potential to deliver a horror novel worth reading, but Nameless Things isn't it. It felt both glacially-paced and somehow rushed, the constant gaffes in word usage stick out, and the generic parasite-of-unknown-but-possibly-alien-origin plot was generic to begin with. This one's a miss. 

1.5/5

Book Review: "Space Brooms," by A.G. Rodriguez

 

    A.G. Rodriguez's Space Brooms! is a fast-paced, pulpy sci-fi comedy with plenty of action and a core group of likeable, well-rounded characters.

    Our narrator is Johnny Gomez, a 37-year-old janitor for Astro-Suds on the space station Kilgore. He is a guy who gave up on his dream of directing films (holofilms, that is -- this is a sci-fi book after all) and moved penniless to this space station to find work and hopefully, one day, some adventure. All he's found, though, is a miserable job for a miserable boss and a whole lot of disappointment. He does have a helpful and friendly roommate, Rygar, who continues to surprise throughout the novel. This augmented fellow might know more about the sort of adventure Johnny is looking for than he has ever let on.

    One day Johnny finds a data chip while cleaning a zero gravity restroom and, on his way back from the job, is jumped by two thugs looking for the chip. He's saved by cousins Hooper and Leilani, smugglers who seem at first to be helping him just for fun. When Johnny is again attacked by a different criminal cartel while trying to turn the chip into the space station's security force, Hooper chimes in unexpectedly on Johnny's communication system to once more help him out of the jam. This time they meet up and head to the station's underbelly (where Rygar, the roommate, seems to hold some sway) and introduce Johnny to Lisette, a fence who can help sell this mysterious data chip. And while Johnny hasn't previously met Lisette, he has seen her around the station many times and incorporated her into his adventurous, film-like daydreams to distract from his custodial work. So this, truly, is the adventure Johnny has been waiting for.

    The group of four, aided at times from afar by Rygar, now have to get to Luna (our moon) to sell the chip, the seemingly unimportant contents of which initially blows Johnny's mind. On the way to Luna they'll run into multiple criminal syndicates, pirates, and police forces, and have all the galactic fights, chases, and potential romances one should expect in a good pulpy sci-fi novel.

    A.G. Rodriguez is a strong writer who keeps the action clear and moving at a brisk pace, and I had a great time getting acquainted with this janitor with big aspirations. As a 30-something guy that has personally abandoned the dreams of my youth for the monotony of the modern work force, it's easy to relate to a character like Johnny. My only real complaint about the book is that it reaches a somewhat unsatisfying conclusion, with some running threads either not being resolved fully or closed in ways that are a little less upbeat than the rest of the book, which is otherwise witty and light-hearted even in stressful story beats.

    But, hey, that's okay! I think we'll get to see Johnny, the space cowboy Hooper, the fierce mechanic Leilani, and the mysterious fence Lisette again in the future. I look forward to it.


4/5

My thanks to NetGalley, A.G. Rodriguez, and Angry Robot for this ARC. Space Brooms! will be available on March 25th.

Book Review: "The Third Rule of Time Travel," by Philip Fracassi

 

    The first Philip Fracassi book I read, The Boys in the Valley, was a terrifying and relentlessly-paced novel of horror set at the turn of the century in a rural Catholic orphanage for boys. It was equal parts Salem's Lot and Lord of the Flies and I tore through it in a single day. 

    Fracassi's newest book, The Third Rule of Time Travel, really couldn't be much more different from that one than it is. It's a sci-fi story, a gripping family drama about motherhood, and a tale of a shady capitalist trying to crush everyone in his path. But, you know what? I tore through this one in a single day, too. Fracassi is just that good. 

    The Third Rule of Time Travel follows Beth, a scientist who, with her late husband, has designed a time machine. Don't think H.G. Wells, though. What this machine actually does is send one's consciousness back to a point in that same person's life to witness it through their own eyes again, and then transmits a recording of that for analysis and review. Oh, and they only get 90 seconds. There are strict rules to follow, rigid guidelines in place to avoid (hopefully) theoretical consequences, and all of the other fun elements of any good time travel story. Things slowly, and inevitably, go wrong. That's why such stories exist, so don't take that as a spoiler of any sort. 

    The key to any good time travel story, I think, is that it sticks to its own rules and makes at least a passing attempt at an acceptable level of scientific "realism" (for what is, of course, a fictional concept). Fracassi absolutely lives up to the challenge here. One of the most exciting elements of this novel is when the reader starts to notice little changes that the book's characters maybe haven't caught yet. An example would be Beth sitting down and taking a drink out of a mug that we know shouldn't be available for her to do so. It's fascinating stuff that kept me turning page after page. 

    If the key to a good time travel story is adherence to its rules, the key to a good work of fiction is something simpler: Interesting characters. Beth is a fantastic protagonist. She's smart, angry when driven to it, laments missing the little moments she could be spending with her daughter as she toils on her science project, and is unfaltering in her devotion to her life's work that was created with her late husband Colson. There's also her coworker in the lab, Tariq, who isn't always as easy to get a read on but reveals himself to be more than just some lab assistant over time. The head honcho funding the project is Jim Langan, and you'll recognize him for what he is with quickly. He might be an archetype, but it's the kind that a story like this needs. Throw in other board members, a journalist pushing people's buttons, and a psychiatrist with motives that aren't always clear and there's precisely enough here to keep the story moving at as rapid a pace as it demands. Fracassi never takes his foot off the gas with this one. 

    There aren't many authors who can effortlessly drift from genre to genre. For every Stephen King there are unfortunately a handful of folks who fail to put the scares in their horror book or the laughs in their satire or the high stakes in their thriller. Luckily for us, Fracassi is proving himself to be one of those rare few walking a similar path as King. Considering the way the time machine in The Third Rule of Time Travel functions, maybe we could call that The Path of the Beam. Just a thought. 

4.5/5

 

 

My thanks to Orbit Books, Philip Fracassi, and NetGalley for the advanced copy of this book. THE THIRD RULE OF TIME TRAVEL will be available on March 18.