Bilodeau, Destiny’s Blood (2010)

Marie Bilodeau, Destiny’s Blood. Dragon Moon Press, 2010. Pp. 308. ISBN 978-1-897492-11-6. $19.95.

Reviewed by Regina de Búrca

I was intrigued by the Dragon Moon Press blurb for Marie Bilodeau’s Destiny’s Blood: “To save the withering First Star, will Layela sacrifice her sister... or herself?” Being interested in both female familial relationships and the concept of ‘fate’ in fiction, I had a feeling I would enjoy this book. Happily the novel matched my expectations. At first I was disappointed by the cover art; although beautifully executed, the picture concerned me—I thought it looked like a romance novel. But I am delighted to report that there are no Harlequin novel clichés to be found within its pages!

This book is a highly enjoyable read—it’s compelling and well-written tale of Layela Delamores and her twin Yoma. Layela tries to outrun her difficult past and her nebulous sense of foreboding by moving to the remote planet of Collar to set up a flower shop with Yoma. But when her sister disappears, Layela is determined to find her. Accompanied by Yoma’s friend Josmere, a member of the Berganda ether race, she embarks on an expansive quest to find her sister. In the process she finds both her family’s legacy and her destiny.

The twins’ characters are polar opposites—Layela is sensible and forward-planning, while Yoma enjoys the hand-to-mouth existence of living on the run. Layela tries to build a steady life for herself and her sister but Yoma is not on board. It is a situation familiar to most families: Layela wants to impose what ‘she thinks is best’ on her sister but ultimately fails. I liked the way Bilodeau makes the relationship between the two sisters so easy to relate to; she doesn’t descend into sentimental clichés like some sci-fi writers do. This realist approach to the dynamic between the characters brings the fictional world they inhabit closer to the reader.

One of the twins is fated to save the First Star, but to do so one must die. The sisters embark on a ‘hero’s journey’ to realise the prophecy that is to be their legacy. This plot is well-realised and interesting, and has a different take on the usual quest scenario typical of this genre. The ending is beautifully resolved with a fitting climax.

This novel is feminist in that the female characters are strong and are fighting to shift the androcentric imbalance of power in their world. The concept of the ‘ether’ races struck me as the embodiment of Gaia, the divine feminine. Intuition, vision, nurturing and living in harmony with nature are characteristics of a race that are dying out, due to the ruling military regime. The ether realm is a proliferation of life force, while the military’s world is one of war and death.

The botanical descriptions in Destiny’s Blood are beautiful: Bilodeau creates entire genera of flora and fauna to create an immersive setting. The fine writing makes the fate of the Bergandas—a race of plant people—even more poignant as they are becoming extinct. Forced to wear gloves to limit their powers and forbidden from owning businesses on certain planets in the galaxy, the Berganda are being ethnically cleansed. It is the destiny of the Delamores sisters to try to prevent this from happening.

One criticism I had of this book—and this is certainly not specific to Destiny’s Blood, as it is almost a science fiction convention by now—is the linking of personality traits to races. For example: “For a Berganda, I’m actually quite positive” (33); “Mirialers were stubborn and loyal to their own” (147). I find this convention pigeonholes the races and makes them seem even more different. In an unequal world, this stereotyping separates the races even further. Bilodeau’s writing is so good that I feel she doesn’t need to rely on this outmoded trope to describe her characters.

Nonetheless, this story is well-crafted and often cinematic, at times reminding me of Firefly/Serenity or Star Wars: A New Hope. The story’s pace is fast, with many plot turns. This wouldn’t be the type of story I normally chose to read, as I prefer slower, Ursula K. Le Guin-type meditative narratives, however Bilodeau writes these numerous action scenes so well that I was more than happy to go along for the ride.

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Pirie, Burying Brian (2010)

Steven Pirie, Burying Brian. Immanion Press, 2010. Pp 260. ISBN 978-1-904853-71-8. £12.99.

Reviewed by Carey Gates

Belial has hoodwinked God into going down to earth again—and now God is trapped in Mrs. Tippings head, while Belial starts The Judgment of the World. And it’s up to Brian—and the Gravediggers of Mudcaster, to save mankind dead and alive from hell. Because of course, Belial doesn’t play fair. And everyone is guilty, even if it is sweet old Mrs. Pemberton, whose sin is stepping on a garden snail...

I didn’t know what I was getting into when I asked for the review copy of Burying Brian, Pirie’s second novel from Immanion Press. I’m not a horror book reader, and my daughter thought maybe I’d bitten off more than I could chew. But the back copy is very accurate in calling this a “gentle comedy”, even if a dark one. Sure, there’s Pestilence and his horse, both hacking and coughing their way through the story and covered in weeping sores, but one feels more like they should call the humane society for the creature and make a Calamine bath for the incarnation than to run away screaming.

I started the book without reading the back copy, and felt totally lost. Reading the back copy helped provide a frame for the story and then the pieces fell into place as I read. The setting is so intrinsically English that as someone who’s never been to England the detail is invaluable in painting the picture of an English village, but it also made that much more to keep track of. But that’s just another reason to read the book again.

The book is written with an incredible amount of detail, almost too much detail, it seemed at first. After the first two pages I thought, “There’s no way I can wade through 200+ pages of this”. There are what seem to be incongruously accented words in the first few pages. There are also a few sentences that either are awkwardly structured or have typos that were missed in the proofing/typesetting for the book. As a very grammatical reader this was distracting, having to stop and go back to see what I had “missed” or interpret what the sentence was really saying. As I got used to Pirie’s writing style, this was less distracting. The detail does level out after the first few pages and the word accentuation decreases and seems more appropriate to the story.

I found the book to be a relaxing read, not something one generally associates with apocalyptic Judgment Day tales. In fact, this book was so relaxing to read I had a hard time reading more than 10-12 pages at a time because I would be so relaxed I’d want to go to sleep. This was definitely not because the story was boring, but Pirie’s writing rhythm lulls the reader, much as the citizens of Mudcaster are lulled by the everyday presence of gods who are meter maids and gnomes who open doors to other places and times—and push unwilling parties through them, bridges go under streams, and bingo numbers have the ability to bring the world to an end. And yet it all seems so believable.

The book abounds with satirical metaphors and similies of Biblical and Revelational concepts, interpreted very uniquely. Christ’s Temptation in the Wilderness is replaced with Brian’s Visit to Hell and the Sampling of the 7 Deadly Sins (for how can a Savior relate to sinners unless he’s experienced their sins?). The Four Horsemen romp through the story as well, but Pirie’s horsemen are siblings, and the children of Mr. Grim, the Gravedigger’s Union President.

There are also allusions to the first advent story all through the book, but Pirie makes it very clear that this is not a retelling of the first advent (although he does make one wonder what really happened back then...).

Brian makes an unlikely hero; in fact he’s more of an anti-hero. And he certainly would not have been a hero if the gnome hadn’t pushed him through the outhouse door. And yet, his very reluctance and unsuitableness are exactly what help him succeed, partly because he doesn’t know any better, but also because of his simple belief in the correct order of the universe. This makes Brian a very relatable character because I could picture myself in the same type of situation and feel like I could muddle through just the same.

Pirie has taken two seemingly incompatible concepts—horror and gentleness, and images and themes that could be written in ghastly terms, and wrapped them in the flowers and the aura of a quiet English village. By the time he’s done, it feels like The Judgment is an everyday affair and that escaping it is really quite easy, even accidental. All in all, Burying Brian is a charming and entertaining read.

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Polson, Loathsome, Dark and Deep (2010)

Aaron Polson, Loathsome, Dark and Deep. Belfire Press, 2010. Pp. 204. ISBN 9781926912141. $11.99 print / $3.99 e-book.

Reviewed by Don Campbell

Henry Barlow fought in the Civil War. His wife met her end as the victim of a vicious murder. He hasn’t touched a pistol or a rifle since and has crawled deep into a bottle of bourbon and when we meet him is hiding out at the only brothel in Ecola, Oregon. There, he receives orders from his employer, H & P Lumber, who want him to travel up the Lewis River and investigate why their camp there has gone suddenly silent. With his colleague, the nervous and meek Otto Olson, and a small group of hired men, Henry makes his way up the river toward the silent lumber camp only to find a situation worse than anyone could have imagined.

Loathsome, Dark and Deep is Aaron Polson’s third book and second novel and his first published through Belfire Press, a small house established in 2009 and primarily interested in cross-genre titles. The cover evokes a feeling of being lost in the forest, the trees closing in, a feeling I am personally all too familiar with. Even readers who have not wandered aimlessly through an endless labyrinth of trees for hours on end searching for a way back to civilization may find it to be effective in conveying a sense of isolation at the very least.

The title of this novel is a subverted reference to Robert Frost’s poem ‘Stopping By the Woods on a Snowy Evening’; where Frost speaks of the woods as “lovely, dark and deep”, here we are given an alliterative opposite. Polson weaves a solid narrative using aspects of Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, the basis for the film Apocalypse Now, giving it a dark horror, somewhat steampunk and certainly more American spin. Lumber was far more important in America post-civil war than ivory would ever be. Barlow finds Curt’s camp devastated by greed and ambition, men twisted by Curt’s vision and the work of Curt’s second in command, Dr. Scheller, an engineer and inventor.

This is a relatively easy read that is hampered only, in my opinion, by too much focus on Barlow’s reminisces and not enough on the situation at hand. Edmund Curt himself appears only briefly and Dr. Scheller almost not at all, and one feels there were opportunities missed for some far more grandiose villain scenes than are presented. Our visitation with The Colonel, a man so driven by religious fervor as to be dangerous, is also all too brief. Chalk it up to the first person narrative, but I felt the scope of the story could have been larger, focusing as it does almost solely upon Barlow. That said, however, Polson’s writing itself is quite good, his descriptions vivid. When Barlow meets his colleague, Olson, he states, “Otto Olson had a face that looked like a thin strip had been sliced out of the middle and the remaining halves shoved back together.” A fantastic image deftly composed and indicative of the rest of the story’s style.

Whether Polson meant it to be explicit or not, the book paints a grim picture of technology during the infancy of the Industrial Revolution. It does not necessarily condemn the technology itself outright, but certainly highlights man’s ability to twist it towards dark purposes. Scheller’s devices and machines that begin as a means to make logging more efficient, evolve into engines of horror that almost literally strip the men at the camp of their souls. Even before the team reach the camp, alluding to his past in the Civil War, Barlow states, “By the end of the day, I would once again be under those trees, but this time marked for life and waiting to die in a hell made with the machines of war.”

Man’s inhumanity to man is not new territory for a writer to cover, but Polson does the job well enough. Barlow’s struggle to maintain a semblance of sanity when everything around him is going to hell and Otto Olson’s eventual growth from lily-livered craven to a man with a bit of sand in him are juxtaposed against characters who have fallen so far down the well they can no longer see the daylight. The frontier was a brutal place full of brutal men and many found it difficult to hold onto their values or far too easy simply to try and create new ones. With virtually no law or government comes opportunity to create what one will out of what one has, be it an edifice to horror or a utopian playland. Unfortunately it all too often begins as the latter and rapidly spirals into the former.

Perhaps it was Barlow’s former tragedies that help him move through this landscape of insanity without losing too much of himself. He wears the scars of his past on his face in both a literal and figurative sense and perhaps the parts of him he had thought lost to those events were not so much gone as forgotten. His decisions are certainly informed by a core of, if not morality, then at least a well developed sense of right and wrong. Ethical certainty in the face of moral ambiguity can be difficult at best. Stripped of consequences, more than one person has found it difficult to distinguish the left-hand path from the right-hand path.

Loathsome, Dark and Deep treads a path well worn by books that have come before, but it is a path of adventure and excitement nonetheless. Those looking for more gratuitously visceral fare under a horror label may be slightly disappointed, but if it’s a dark adventure with a strong protagonist you’re looking for, this novel delivers. Reminiscent of, if somewhat less graphic than, early Jack Ketchum (specifically Ketchum’s first novel, the Sawney Bean-inspired Off Season), Loathsome, Dark and Deep is a good piece of historical horror set against the backdrop of the forest, dark and deep.

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Pruden, Immaculate Deception (2010)

Scott B. Pruden, Immaculate Deception. Codorus Press, 2010. Pp. 329. ISBN 978-0-615-34825-4. $19.95.

Reviewed by postmorbid

Immaculate Deception is the debut novel by Scott B. Pruden, a journalist and writer, and also the first novel published by “independent literary collective” Codorus Press. It follows the quests of two men, one dead and trying to become alive again by helping out a confused, all-powerful being, and the other trying to stay alive while learning who killed his father.

“Better off dead” has been going through my head a lot recently. This is not because I am suicidal, and I have also not decided to revisit my teenage phase of being excited by Bad Religion. The line first popped into my head after starting to read Immaculate Deception, and the more I was drawn into the book the more difficult I found it to forget about it.

“But until then: better off dead”

First of all there is the irony of the fate of Jon Templeton, the novel’s main protagonist. One day he finds himself dead, and escorted into heaven by the supreme being. However, instead of rejoicing that he has gone to a better place, Jon only wants to get back to Earth where he left his alcohol intoxicated body in a puddle of vomit after his wife dumped him and he had lost his job.

All is not well in heaven either though. The supreme being fears to be on the brink of losing control over the universe, and so it recruits Jon, a former investigative reporter, to uncover information on something it cannot comprehend. Jon will be sent back to Earth, but only for the duration of the mission—and that explicitly excludes getting in touch with his wife. So neither is the dead Jon Templeton actually better off dead, in Pruden’s novel he also has to face a conflict of interest with an increasingly moody supreme being that has fucked up at being omniscient.

“Better off dead, yeah better off dead,
A smile on the lips, and a hole in the head
And I’ll never make the same mistake
The next time I create the universe I’ll make sure you participate.”

So, what went wrong? And when and where? The story is set in the future, at an undefined date perhaps a couple of decades ahead in a somewhat dystopian South Carolina. Despite a range of new gadgets society still works mostly as we know it, but wars and the breakdown of state control in some areas have taken their toll, as have new social trends. One of the latter is going to play a key role in the novel, a new sect that is increasingly popular as it preaches getting close to god by focussing on enjoying sex as much as possible, especially during church service.

It is this sect that Jon Templeton is asked to infiltrate on a mission he hopes may give him a chance to not only save the universe, but, more importantly to him, save his marriage. He is, however, not the only reluctant hero in Immaculate Deception. There is also Mako Nikura, a surfer dude and unwilling heir to a global company who suddenly finds himself on the trail of a conspiracy that led to his father’s death. His part of the story involves a bizarre mixture of assassins, weapons smuggling, religious terrorists willing to kill night club visitors over their taste in music and a memory stick that eventually makes the paths of Jon and Mako cross at a critical juncture, with the fate of the human race at stake.

“And I’ll never make the same mistake
So if you’re looking for a patsy,
Why not try the entire human race
Just to play it safe?”

Both unlikely heroes are not alone on their quest. They are helped and hindered by an intriguing cast of characters involving armed cross-dressing night club owners, the devil’s minions, gay US Marines, sex-hungry beach beauties, Jesus Christ and the souls of the dead, including an angel-like former prostitute. There is sex, a lot of sex in fact; drugs, quite a few drugs; and perhaps a little less rock’n’roll. Also on offer are a good dosage of action involving breaking into high security buildings and fighting drones and beings from beyond the universe, plus a conspiracy with several surprising plot twists.

To sum up, it all sounds like total trash.

“Better off dead, yeah better than this,
Take it away ‘cause there’s nothing to miss
I’m sorry about the world,
How could I know you’d take it so bad?”

And yet I did not take it bad at all. In fact, it is probably the most enjoyable book I have reviewed in a long time. First of all I enjoy the intriguing concept of a supreme being that has to deal with something it cannot comprehend, sending a mere mortal (well, mere dead) on a mission that is indeed well suited for an investigative reporter. This brings me to the second reason that makes Immaculate Deception so enjoyable: a well constructed story. The introduction, for instance, may appear relatively long, but all the information planted into the reader’s brain is there for good reason. Some of the turns and twists may perhaps seem a little unlikely, but after all there are supernatural forces at work. As long as you accept that premise, the story works.

Pruden also creates a lot of suspense, especially by moving from one story line to the other at critical moments, and (excepting very few minor issues the editor should have tackled) the book reads well. On a few occasions Pruden comes close to doing too much—at first I cringed when Jesus Christ entered the scene, and some of the characters are living the cliché—but the balance is never lost. Only during the big showdown I was not 100% convinced that the timing in the action sequence worked at all moments—but this comes from a reviewer who has spent two decades working hard to ensure that events are properly synchronised in role playing games. The overall build-up of the story is excellent and I soon found myself hooked.

If you like a jolly romp involving supreme beings, conspiracies, a dosage of scifi and much action, and if the thought of an investigation dealing with a sex-focussed sect, a global weapon’s manufacturer and real estate do not put you off, then you will enjoy this. Dead or alive.

“A smile on the lips and a hole in my head,
better off dead, yeah better than this”

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Rauch, Eyeballs growing all over me... again (2010)

Tony Rauch, Eyeballs growing all over me... again. Eraserhead Press, 2010. Pp. 144. ISBN 9781936383337. $10.95.

Reviewed by Kate Onyett

Eyeballs growing all over me... again is a collection of short stories by Tony Rauch. Some are very short: just a paragraph or two. Some are pages long and split into parts. Yet the whole book presents as a carefully staged show of playfulness, and like anything playful, could be read by any age that could deal with the concepts. There are no viscerally grisly moments here, and no bad language. A short search for Rauch himself brings up his webpage, and right there on the title page he asserts he is only full of ‘good things’. He also gives a run-down of other writings, confirming they have all been among the fantastic: ‘surreal [...] fantasy, sci-fi, dream-like pieces [...] absurdist pieces’. His other activities include architecture, art and photography. This is a graphically-minded man with an eye for detail. The press that publishes eyeballs is also not one of your run-of-the-mill presses, specialising in fantastic, weird and what appears to be a large number of zombie fictions. Aligning himself to a genre that goes by the name of ‘Bizarro’; don’t expect the mundane from this guy. I had high hopes of something perky and deliberately off-centre.

When one starts to write reviews, one hopes to come the day when in all honestly one can type ‘and then a true gem comes along’. I started eyeballs on a Sunday evening. Even with two full days of work in between, I was done by Tuesday early evening. I was hooked. I may be a sucker for the fantastical, but most of the time I was laughing; and not at the antics on the page, but at the reflected antics of ‘real life’ as it was stitched up by Rauch.

To begin with, we are met by a series of quotes; normally these are stirring words relevant to the text or as inspiration for the author, and three of the four are Biblical. A verse from the Book of James abjures one to be tested to have one’s mettle proven and one’s patience awoken, making one more perfect. Lines from Romans follow the theme of being tested as a means to improvement; a rather Protestant work ethic whose sternness is mitigated by the idea of just rewards and a sense of fulfilment and love. Finally a well-known quote from Matthew tells us the merciful will be shown mercy. What to make of this before a collection of outlandish and fantastical tales?

Having boggled over these for a short time, I came to the conclusion that Rauch wants us to chill out, stand back, and stop trying to impose our ego on others. Indeed, his first quotation, about true personal freedom coming from removal of cultural and social hang-ups and restraints, seems more in keeping with the hectic games his stories play with reader expectations.

Having finished the collection, I realised that the examples of being able to deal calmly with trials and tribulations, and the surprisingly rewards and small miracles that happen because of this that crop up throughout the collection is exactly what all this is about. It’s all about not getting swept along with a mindless mass, and it is about having your preconceptions tested, your character questioned. A good narrative should do that: it should hold a mirror up to life and make you look again.

But Rauch’s book wants to do this by going out to play with you. Indeed, the reviews on the back jacket cover are all about praising Rauch’s ‘playful style’. The blank pages between sections—sections that really aren’t needed because a collection of short stories are self-contained units as it is—are pauses, moments to take a breath and consider before ploughing ahead. The choice of 1950s and 1960s sci-fi images with robots, aliens, pilots, scientists and sinister-faced men in suits are what one could expect from fantastic tales. But because they are dated, they are a little bit campy; they rubbish just a bit the very ‘serious’ fantastical themes they represent. They are a child’s eye view. These things may seem odd, but not inexplicable if one applies one’s imagination; when of course they become assimilated into the main picture and are completely natural.

The biggest take-away message for me was that all this; content and presentation, as well as choice of non-sequiteur titles for the book and the stories, is intended to shake up ideas of normalcy and rock usual narrative complacency. It would be naive indeed to say that writers do not have intent when they write: personal politics and polemics will inevitably inform their writing, but Rauch is going to have a little fun with this established mode...

Rauch is a self-confessed academic (in an explanatory note that came with the e-book), alive with hyperbolic adjectival usage. He is proud, having clarified this aspect of his life, of his academic achievements, but he says he wanted to make a more actively non-academic-sounding book. And he makes good use of the simplest statement sentences and the unashamedly frank first person. This makes the narrative slide down as easily as if overhearing a conversation or watching a dramatisation; almost as if there is no effort to the reading as it reads just like colloquial English to the ear, as no one really speaks in neat sentences and well-versed paragraphs.

‘I turn my head to where she’s pointing. Sitting there on our couch watching t.v. is a great big hairy beast. He is huge—eight feet tall at least. His thick, shaggy brown hair is matted and snarled. And the stink. Worst stench ever. A crippling fog’ (‘the stench’).

The old trick of using shorter sentences during exciting moments adds to the breathless pace the stories sometimes achieve.

This somewhat over-familiar style of writing actually put me most strongly in mind of the artless frankness of a primary-school child’s reporting-style story-writing: ‘and then I said this, and she said that and we went to there...’ In the first person narrative, read in adult fiction, this then translates to something akin to stream of consciousness. In this way narrative conventions are maintained: the unconventional becomes encapsulated by and ‘excusing’ stylistic factor. But instead of the solemnity and artistic poetry of other stream of consciousness writings, this is very much grounded in the language of day to day:

‘“Desmond steps up to us “There a problem here?” Hinrich looks over to him, “He’s just anxious, that’s all.” I look over to Desmond, then back to Hinrich, “Hey, at least I’m tryin’ here...” (‘send krupac though the portal’).

The choice not to begin a new paragraph when characters report others’ speech means that the words strike the reader on an intimate level. I had not previously considered how the formal positioning of words on the page can make such a profound difference. After all, we do not think in, or recall speech in, neatly arranged paragraphs. Those formal conventions again, arranging words place fictional action firmly beyond the fourth wall for acute observation. Running it all together, playing about with an ‘artistic’ style, monkeying with the conventions, Rauch’s writing read like nothing I have read before.

And I liked it.

It could not have been done by an amateur, or someone who had a less able grip on language. There’s no note or preface to explicate all this in the book itself. But even without the note I received, it is plain that this is someone so familiar and comfortable with all walks of language, he can play with it with impunity and see the quality of his writing suffer not at all.

There’s a rude, unpolished feeling about the whole book that seems entirely on purpose. Some of the stories end with a sudden cut-off, leaving one feeling a bit cheated feeling. A good example is ‘small giants’, where, speaking with a tiny farmer, riding a miniscule tractor through the grass, the child protagonist reports;

‘“You’ll wanna see this. Ha! Trust me!” and with that he puttered off, into the long grass and weeds, disappearing into its shadows and deep textures.’

And that’s it, after a story that is part poetic pondering on the landscape and the sky, and part involved conversation between boy and pixie-sized farmer. I was actually physically looking for the next bit. There wasn’t any.

There is also a somewhat alienating factor. A mild suspicion that at odd impenetrable moments, some jokes and references sound like they could be in-jokes for an American audience. Little details of social mores and familial relationships that did not translate well for this British reader

The biggest gag in the bag is a book where outrageous juxtapositions abound. There are the religious quotations at the start, followed by the idiomatic, individualistic and carefree content of the stories. The youthful protagonists that feature in the greater number of the stories ‘speak’ with the fluency and consideration of degree level adults. The calm, considered and clever speech we wish we’d had as teens, but only learned through living life and started to acquire maybe in our late twenties (‘the new kid’, ‘I discover an army of...’, ‘little giants’ and ‘the eyes’ being the best examples). Secret, inner emotional landscapes and thoughts are laid bare to judging gaze by the virtue of reader omniscience over the first person. The characters are sharing intimately with us, the reader, and by extension, the world, and absolutely no one else. One becomes so involved with these characters, so grabbed by their voices; the irony of this is not lost.

Stylistically, counter-positioning the bald, colloquial statement alongside the flowery, frilly descriptive passages and elongated diatribes occasionally indulged in by characters makes the texture of the writing quirky. A hodgepodge scrap-book of thoughts, feelings and experiences. .

The usual scenario of writers on a mission is to lead the reader down the chosen path of narrative, and oh my, what have we here? A scene or a comment by a character that is actually a pictorial metaphor for a BIG LIFE LESSON the writer wants us to engage in. This can be done with varying degrees of subtly, and at its most extreme, the story becomes hijacked by pamphleteering and saddling up the author’s hobby horse. In eyeballs, the tales vary from snippets to pages long, from daft to the meaningful. But when SOMETHING is going to be SAID, instead of wooing the reader, Rauch dives right in there, and his meaningful stories really hammer it home. The highfalutin conversation of teens in ‘the eyes’ becomes a self-mockery of the ‘deep’ conversations young adults have while discovering life lessons. ‘Activate the mathias’ is a mind-boggling mass of scientific supposition and ‘send krupac through the portal’ is a quick trot through layman’s quantum inter-dimensional theory. The prose is denser, the ideas as discreet as a ten-tonne elephant on your foot, and there is no doubt that this is SOMETHING IMPORTANT being flagged. But, by such blatant flagging, the narrative deflates its own pomposity, and one begins to question the faith modern life puts in psychosocial-babble to explain everything. For many of the characters, things happen without explanation (the couple who lose their roof to a robot in ‘gigantic’, and the night-time stampede in ‘the run’).

Yes, there are themes: ‘the stench’ could be read as an environmental tale, ‘the new kid’ a moral about not fearing the new and different. ‘People have been drifting away lately’ could be read as a warning about the shallow, non-committal nature of modern life and ‘the eyes’ multi-tasks: gently mocking the intellectual naivety of teenagers, while underlining the weirdness and awkwardness of transition from child to adult through the metaphor of strange and random diseases. Rauch himself hopes that we will notice his topics of “longing, discovery, secrets, escape, eeriness, surprises, and strange happenings in everyday life.” Indeed, in keeping with the childishness and innocence of the book, these could be said to be the very preoccupations for growing juvenile minds struggling to grasp an understanding of the world. But, the greatest gift Rauch’s book gives us is that, like the Fool in a King’s court (and there is a large clown puppet from a parade on the cover), he shows us very real truths and relatable experiences and problems, dressed up in foolishness to sweeten the blow.

I wanted strange and wonderful things to happen to me after reading this: Rauch has helped me to believe in the power of fairy-tales, and this book, his book of weirdly cool fairy tales and parables, shakes away the ridiculous and precarious nature of ‘adult’ perception and adult expectations, and the remembrance of things playful gives us the hope mentioned in his opening quotations. The stories test and tease; but we come out the other side feeling hopeful and more light hearted. This is the sort of book I wish I’d had to discuss during literature classes at school: clever, erudite, but funny, too, and very surprising and a damn good read.

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Eskridge, Solitaire (2010)

Kelley Eskridge, Solitaire: a novel. Small Beer Press, 2011. Pp. 352. ISBN 9781931520102. $16.00.

Reviewed by Paul Wilks

Originally released in 2002, Kelley Eskridge’s debut novel Solitaire is now being republished in paperback by Small Beer Press. Set in the near future where the role of global corporations is reminiscent of the all pervasive organisations portrayed in Japanese Manga comics; Solitaire is tangibly similar in feel to the likes of Scarlett Thomas’s Popco or the satire of Max Barry’s Jennifer Government. Solitaire’s protagonist Jackal Segura is employed by such a company named ‘Ko’. The story tells of Jackal’s fall from favour as a high-flying executive, her explorations of self, identity and relationships in addition to her eventual emancipation from psychological problems. Although slow to start, the novel is an ultimately rewarding, innovative and refreshing read.

Solitaire is principally an exploration of identity and self-purpose but also has a bildungsroman element as Jackal develops a psychological maturity as the story progresses. The novel is essentially split into three parts and it might be suggested that each part has its own unique identity. During the first part the reader is introduced to the protagonist, an executive project manager and designated ‘Hope’ by Ko society at her birth. As ‘Hope’, Jackal represents a future ambassador for her organisation on the global stage. The reader is also introduced to her petulant and competitive Mother, in addition to her friends or ‘web’, most notably her partner Snow. Although I think the reader is expected to sympathise with Jackal in this section, there are moments when she comes across as being spoilt and constantly in the state of feeling sorry for herself. Jackal certainly feels the pressure surrounding her as ‘Hope’ and she has to modify her already shaky self-perception when she discovers that her status is fraudulent. However, her continuing issues with identity and self esteem, which in many ways appear to be perpetuated by Snow’s coddling, seem unnecessary and I found myself wishing Jackal would discover some inner gumption of her own.

For dystopia readers this section of the book also lacks in societal detail. One aspect I enjoy about speculative fiction is understanding a little about the society the protagonists exist in. Unfortunately there is scant exploration of this in Solitaire. However, despite the griping Jackal—with whom it is difficult to find sympathy—and a seeming lack of direction in this first part of the book, the redeeming features are twofold. Snow is an incredibly intriguing character, and not only because she is an indefatigable well of psychological support for Jackal. Snow’s character and background is neglected somewhat through the novel, but even early in Solitaire she garners real traction in the reader’s interest and you are left keen to know more about her biography. Secondly, the equality within the society is refreshing. It appears that in Ko society men and women share prominent roles and the same-sex relationship of Jackal and Snow is normative and not exploited for narrative effect. The questions concerning sexual equality and sexuality are not discussed and this invisibility is genuinely innovative and refreshing.

Momentum in both the story and Jackal’s character launch in parts two and three. Imprisoned in a virtual confinement, Jackal must spend eight years alone—albeit merely ten months in real-world incarceration. During this period the narration permits Jackal to explore her psyche and confront her identity and esteem issues. While these issues seemed negligible in the first part of the novel, this exploration gives Jackal much needed grit and resolve. Subsequently her character develops important flavour for the reader and genuine interest and sympathy for her begins here. Jackal’s imprisonment eventually leads to new discoveries about her sense of self in addition to the work of her (now former) employer Ko. This further thickens the plot, and by the end of the second part, the novel hits a plateau of intrigue that makes it difficult to put down.

Part three sees Jackal released from her virtual prison and her attempts to rebuild her life. The determination she developed during confinement is put to good use here and her journey towards making new friends and resolving her identity issues is realised in this part. An interesting note on this part of the book is the author’s use of food in the narration. Jackal, and those around her seem to be eating constantly. As a narrative tool this draws the reader in with the virtual tastes and smells of the characters environment. This helps the reader immerse themselves into the story further and continue to sympathise with Jackal.

The character of Snow also appears in part three and has reconciliation with Jackal. While the passages that explore the relationship between Jackal and Snow are tender and emotive, I thought more could have been explored here—it just didn’t seem enough. Again Snow is the conduit of empathy and sympathy; both in the narrative in the way she interacts with Jackal, but also in the way the character of Snow affects the reader. There would appear to be a varied amount of unwritten history regarding Snow and this neglect, at times, left me feeling a little in the dark and wanting to know more. While Snow’s character is primary to this feeling, other characters also have a hidden narrative that could have been explored further.

None of this however should detract from what is a fascinating and intriguing novel. While there remain a few loose ends, and the biographies of some characters are left unsatisfied, the novel bubbles with action and smart dialogue. Jackal’s internal conflict finds gravitas after an initially weak start and her self-discovery and personal resolutions make interesting analysis. Solitaire is not what you might expect from a typical speculative fiction novel—there is little consideration of the social structure in which Jackal belongs. However, there are strong, well explored themes here, most notably identity, notions of self and love. The three-part construction of the novel is, in many ways, innovative and, although it might be said these sections do not blend as well as they could, there is a freshness about this approach. There is rumour that this novel is to be made into a film and treatment of Jackal’s psychological journey will be interesting to observe in this medium. The story is not perfect but any novel that becomes un-put-down-able, even momentarily, and creates genuinely interesting and beguiling characters as Solitaire does, becomes an essential read, if perhaps not an essential library addition.

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A cappella Zoo #5 (2010)

A cappella Zoo #5, Fall 2010. Pp. 119. ISSN 1945-7480. $4.00.

Reviewed by N.A. Jackson

The vibrant orange and blue cover of this collection of stories and poems is a good reflection of the lively and multifarious contents. There are some beautifully written and powerful pieces of fiction and poems in this issue. According to the website, A cappella Zoo is a magazine of magic realism and slipstream with a strong literary slant that has been running since 2008. Editor Colin Meldrum’s interest in science fiction and mythology comes through strongly. Many of the stories feature animals: some fantastic birds, a herd of pigs, an enigmatic snake, a mute lake creature and an engaging Chilean sea blob. But what is wonderful about many of these stories is how the characters are obsessed with and subtly changed by these animals.

Gardner, Strange Men in Pinstripe Suits (2010)

Cate Gardner, Strange Men in Pinstripe Suits. Strange Publications, 2010. ISBN 9780982026649. $11.99.

Reviewed by Steven Pirie

This is without doubt a most unusual collection of short stories. It’s nice when a writer finds a unique voice, and Cate Gardner has done just that with Strange Men in Pinstripe Suits. The book is a trade paperback edition, just short of 200 pages in length, with a rather monochrome cover that’s nevertheless still pleasing on the eye. Roughly half the stories are previously unpublished. The rest are reprints, but given Gardner’s fiction has graced the likes of Postscripts, Fantasy Magazine, Shock Totem and other professional venues, it’s clear a reprint is not something to sneer upon. I found the book available for purchase on the publisher’s website, and at Amazon.com, but it’s not currently available from Amazon.co.uk. This struck me as odd given that Gardner is an English author; whether this is an oversight, or if there is a reason for the omission, I’m not sure.

Gates/Holt, Rigor Amortis (2010)

Jaym Gates and Erika Holt (eds.), Rigor Amortis. Absolute XPress, 2010. Pp. 148. ISBN 9781894817837. $14.95 print / $2.99 e-book.

Reviewed by Don Campbell

Sex and Death; do any two things more preoccupy the human condition? Sex makes us feel alive, it is instrumental in the creation of life itself. Death is our only certainty, our inevitable decay is only a matter of time and our control over it is miniscule at best. Perhaps we get to pick the where, when and how, but we never get a choice about the if.

In Rigor Amortis we have a book that is not really about sex and death. It’s more about sex and undeath. That crawling hunger we all feel replaced by another kind entirely. The lengths we might go to out of lonely desperation or simply the grief of a lost love, those stories are here too. Sometimes it’s gray-green flesh meeting pink or perhaps some straight-up zombie on zombie action. These are stories of loss, experimentation, and control. Genitals grind, teeth scrape on bone, and sometimes it’s happening all at the same time as strips of flesh slough away or are torn off in a passionate frenzy.

The book began as a Twitter joke by Gates and some of the authors, a commentary on the oversaturation of zombie-related fiction on the market. It took on a life of its own and soon Holt brought the collection to the attention of Absolute XPress, a direct-to-reader publisher known for a focus on genre books. The trip from Twitter to “real book” was a surprisingly short one and an interesting example of how different modern technology has made the writer’s struggle. The book itself is in four sections labeled Romance, Revenge, Risk and Raunch, and coming in at only 134 pages, it is a short and sweet collection of flash fiction. Most of the stories found here are no more than a page or two long making them easily, ahem, digested in a single sitting.

The Romance section contains stories such as ‘Til Death Do Our Parts’ by Kaolin Imago Fire (14) in which a freshly turned couple are intent to spend what little remaining time they have together in fiery passion. It is only a couple of pages but one gets the sense of urgency they both feel at their quickly deteriorating state as simple things become more and more difficult. As well as ‘Surrender’ by Xander Briggs (22), a quick tale of a woman trapped in her home by the ravening hordes and the now nearly mindless man she loved having just enough of his self left in his rotted skull to come looking for her.

Revenge contains stories of a more sinister nature, like ‘Love, Love (And Chains) Will Keep Us Together’ by R. Schuyler Devin (37) in which a man’s dream girl comes literally bursting into his apartment, infected and insane, and he does the only reasonable thing he can think of, hold her prisoner and use her as a squirming sex doll. The Revenge section contains the most examples of the human being the aggressor rather than the victim, and in the case of ‘Syd’s Turn’ by R. E. VanNewkirk (58), a powder procured from a local bokor leads to a new type of BDSM play in which a young couple take turns zombifying each other into sexual submission. Incensed over his treatment during his last zombification, the titular Syd takes his turn at being master too far for too long. As the rotting flesh sloughs off of his beloved it is then that you get the true horror of the situation, and it is a story about how sometimes when we give power over ourselves to others, we may find that they abuse it beyond return.

Risk is the section for experimentation, the section in which Michael Phillips dreams of surrendering to the zombie apocalypse in his prose poem ‘Waking Up Someone Who Isn’t Me’ (77). It is a place where a “Z-curious” girl can make a Craigslist hookup with the undead girl of her dreams (no maggots please) in Sarah Goslee’s ‘My Summer Romance’ (81). From one perspective it could be seen as the tale of a doomed romance, from another it is a cautionary yarn about the dangers of online predators. It is a tale of misguided exploration and restraint that ends as all summer romances must, in horrible bloodshed.

The final section, Raunch, is what its name implies. If you haven’t gotten your fill of squelching zombie genitalia by this point, this is the section for you. Your first stop is an undead sex club for a little gangbang action (don’t forget your penis!) in ‘Urbanites’ by Pete “Patch” Alberti (99). Afterward, make a stop in the restroom to tidy yourself up and maybe have a chance encounter with a beautiful stranger in V. R. Roadifer’s ‘Honey’ (109). We end the section and the anthology with ‘Cloudy With a Chance of Zombie Orgasm’ by Annette Dupree (119). It is a bizarre if somewhat clumsily titled piece about a sexually frustrated gun nut of a girl who finally finds the satisfaction she’s so longed for when an army of zombie lesbians show up at her doorstep wielding the ultimate love toys.

I’m just going to come right out and say it, I loved Rigor Amortis. Beginning to end and front to back. I have absolutely nothing really negative to say about it. The worst that can be said is that it is a book of zombie erotica, which has a certain squick factor that is certainly not for the squeamish, but it is well written squick for all of that.

It’s not just about sex and death, of course, but also about our relationships. It is about a longing to be together beyond the veil and how, given the opportunity, we can be overly cruel even to the ones we love. Especially to the ones we love. Our capacity to love is great, but our capacity to take advantage of even the most deleterious of situations can occlude it easily when we are put into a situation where the old rules no longer apply and the new rules barely exist if at all. Sometimes love is beautiful and sometimes it is rancid and festering and full of pain, but we hold onto it anyway. If these are the sort of stories that interest you, you could do far, far worse than this little anthology.

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Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet #26 (2010)

Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet #26 (December 2010). Pp. 64. $5.00.

Reviewed by Keith Lawrence

Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet, now in its fifteenth year, is just as eccentric a publication as its name suggests; possibly a genre magazine which does not claim to represent any particular genre, possibly a literary magazine without a dogmatic attachment to the trappings of high art. The pieces in LCRW #26 range in length from limericks to full-length short stories, and form a constellation of points somewhere within the square whose corners are SF, Fantasy, Slipstream and Magical Realism.

Rix (ed.), Blind Swimmer (2010)

David Rix (ed.), Blind Swimmer. Eibonvale Press, 2010. Pp. 360. ISBN 9780956214751. £10.00.

Reviewed by Kate Onyett

Creativity in isolation. This, we are told in the forward by editor David Rix, is the theme upon which Blind Swimmer, the new collection from Eibonvale Press, is founded, and the deciding factor when choosing stories for inclusion. It might be well at this point just to consider what he means. Is it possible to be creative in complete isolation? What constitutes “isolation”? When a collection of stories comes from a collection of disparate authors, it can help to consider the whys and hows of the collection’s intent as a means to determining the relativity of the stories. The book is a wide and varied mix of strange, ordinary, fantastic and irreverent stories that seem anything but isolated, filled as they are with the immediacy of their plot and description. Sometimes the characters themselves have only a secondary connection to “creativity” as they stumble towards their denouements.

Roberts (ed.), Zero Gravity (2010)

Alva J. Roberts (ed.), Zero Gravity: Adventures in Deep Space. PillHill Press, 2010. Pp. 266. ISBN 9781617060007. $16.99.

Reviewed by Don Campbell

Zero Gravity: Adventures in Deep Space is an anthology themed around stories firmly rooted in long term space exploration or in futures so advanced that space-faring ships have become the norm. Science vessels, space smugglers, and interstellar churches populate the book alongside alien beasts and creatures from beyond. Beyond the A.I. Singularity, beyond the edge of the solar system, sometimes beyond the light of the furthest stars, they are stories that deal with the future of humanity’s inevitable move to the stars with ideas rooted firmly in our social evolution, or lack thereof. The science in some stories may be farfetched, but how the characters deal with it is not. There will always be crime, there will always be fringe elements that live on the edge of social acceptability and even further, in the places others fear to tread. Human exploration has always been driven by a need to discover a better life, a place where one could live the life one wanted or a place where riches were abundant. Cities of gold, trade routes, lands of freedom. We are always looking for something better: there will always be those willing to take advantage of others if it means an easy score; always those who seek the precious freedom of living on their own terms, even when it means eking out a meager existence on the edge of survival.

The anthology opens with one of the latter, the story ‘Junker’s Fancy’ by Rosemary Jones (1), and it’s a strong opening, quickly pulling the reader into the far reaches of the solar system. It concerns a Junker—one of the space salvage operators who live most of their lives in their ships with minimal systems to extend time between dockings—named Jacie running across a major haul, a big government ship dead in the water. The only problem? One of the crew is still alive, but he doesn’t have long. What to do? Jones sets up her universe rather nicely in just the first few paragraphs so that when events start truly playing out, you feel at ease with the story. Every fantasy world has its own lexicon and hers is easy to grasp and understand quickly, helping drive the story telling forward rather than bogging it down in attempt to pepper her universe with flavor. Jacie is a character who lives most of her life alone in the far reaches, only docking to resupply. It’s an eremitical lifestyle and her unexpected passenger is a disruption, but is it a welcome one?

Also quite good was Kenneth Mark Hoover’s ‘To Stand Among Kings’ (88), which contains in its short span such a wealth of information about its particular universe that it is clear the author must have spent a significant amount of time creating races and political affiliations and seriously considering the evolution of society before beginning to write. This is a universe where the Church has split off so many times it has completely separated from Earth itself. The story is one of political intrigue and trade agreements, betrayal and wars fought over resources and the rights of an indigenous people. The ending was a bit weak, but the journey to that end was, as it always should be, pleasantly satisfying.

‘Tangwen’s Last Heist’ by C.B. Calsing (146) was a story that at first felt a little flat; it started out a bit too generic for my taste but managed to rope me in as I read on. It is the story of a smuggler who gets in over her head trying to go legit, and it is quite possibly my favorite of the book. Tangwen’s contract target turns out to be a little more heavily connected than even her client expects and a snap decision at a critical moment puts her into even hotter water than she had been in before. A bad situation for a girl simply trying to retire. Faced with an impossible situation, Tangwen attempts to do the right thing, only to be met with political corruption that seeks only to punish rather than listen.

All in all there are no singularly bad stories in the collection, but some are flawed. Some are perfectly good except for certain passages which feel weak or rushed. Others simply never quite live up to their subject material, such as Will Morton’s ‘Glacier Castle’ (188), which had some of the least credible dialogue in the book and was generally a mess. ‘Glacier Castle’ is the tale of a wrecked colony ship, woefully off course and stranded on a bitterly cold and inhospitable ice planet. In an effort to keep up morale while the ship’s crew effects repairs, it is decided that those not otherwise occupied would use the building equipment at hand to construct a great ice palace. The dialogue is clunky in places, the timeline difficult to follow. There are moments when I’m not sure how much time has passed or who exactly certain characters are. There is invented slang that never gets defined enough to make it feel natural. It is not a bad story on the whole but felt as though it needed another pass or two by the author to be ready for publication.

As a whole, Zero Gravity is full of stories that seem to understand that humanity is no longer physically evolving in the original sense. We no longer worry about those genetic markers that in the past made a mate unacceptable. Today we evolve through social interaction and technology and this will most likely still be the case as we hurl ourselves outward beyond the stars. On the perimeter of the universe it will be our technology and our ability to co-habitat with our fellows that will serve us and I feel this collection gets that right. It is just plain good reading that should easily please any fan of deep space fiction. It is light, good for afternoons on the porch or, if you’re like me, a quick story to relax a bit before bed.

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