Audiocast: Best Novels of the Year

Author/Critic David Agranoff and myself put together this look at our top ten books of the year. It is about an hour long as we interview each other about our favorites reads of 2017. Hope you enjoy it.

The perils of high school

We Came Back

Patrick Lacey

Sinister Grin Press 

April 15, 2017

4 stars

 

 Some people see high school as the best years of their lives. Other see it as the horror they do not want to go back to. I'm in the latter group. Maybe it's why I liked We Came Back so much because the demons of my high school would have felt at home in the old haunts of Patrick Lacey's Lynwood High School.

Melvin Brown is one of those kids for which high school was hell. At the bottom of the food chain and ignored by even the teachers, he takes a gun to himself in the cafeteria and kills himself. The creatures he drew endlessly in his notebook may or may not have had anything to do with it. Ten years later, The now abandoned old Lynwood High seems to be calling the best and the brightest and now they are dressing Goth and calling their "club" the Lynwood Vampires.

To be sure, the monsters of We Came Back seem more demonic than vampiric to me. Yet they are at the heart of this novel which makes some interesting twists on the theme of teen cliches and angst. Also at the center of this book is Frank, a high school teacher who was present at Melvin's death and is now attempting to protect his daughter Alyssia from the evils of the world. Needless to say, Alyssia is led straight to the allures of the Lynwood Vamps.

Patrick Lacy's tale has some very scary moments and is quite entertaining as a straight horror story. The perspectives of the teens and one teen's parent is at the heart of this book and, despite a good amount of gore, I think the young adult crowd would enjoy it. Melvin, or more precisely what he becomes, is a first class terror which feels like a cross between a Lovecraft monster and a vampire. There are a few problems that crop up. For instance, the late introduction of a weapon to fight the monsters that comes out of left field and challenges one's ability to accept the farfetched. However there isn't anything that takes away from the fun. Others might want to know why it is The popular students and the jocks that are initially drawn to the strange cult but for those who remember high school in a darker light, we know that many of those students are one step from the demonic to begin with.

OK, so I read my own baggage into this a bit. I think others will too. We Came Back is a good horror tale but its setting and its character are likely to take you back to your own school experiences and that is part of the fun. This is straight horror and a very entertaining read at that.

Best novels of 2017 and more

As usually at the end of the year, I present my  list of the ten best novels of 2017. It was a very rich year for novels. There are also a few honorable mentions and "best of" categories.

1. Final Girls - Riley Sager
2. In the Valley of the Sun - Andy Davidson
3. Nails - M. P. Johnson
4. Liquid Status - Bradley Sands
5. Bone White - Ronald Malfi
6, Agents of Dreamland - Caitlin R. Kiernan
7. Flesh Trade - David Arganoff & Edward Morris
8. The Fourth Monkey -  JD Barker
9. Secrets of the Weird - Chad Stroup
10. The Boy on the Bridge - M. R. Carey

Honorable Mentions (all other novels this year receiving five stars from me in no particular order)
Kind Nepenthe - Matthew V. Brockmeyer
Home is Where the Horror is - CV Hunt
Cavern of the Damned - Russell R. James
Rusty Puppy - Joe R. Lansdale
Doll House - John Hunt
Mad Black Wheel - Josh Malerman

And the rest...

Best single author collection: Men Without Women - Haruki Murakami
Best multiple authors collection: Nights of the Living Dead - Jonathan Maberry & George Romero
Best non-fiction: Paperbacks from Hell - Grady Hendrix

Best YA novel: Turtles all the Way Down - John Green
Best WTF Novel: The Fetishists - AS Coomer
Best 2016 novel I read in 2017 - The Nightly Disease - Max Booth III
 Happy holidays to all my readers!

Lunar shenanigans

Artemis

Andy Weir

Crown

November 14, 2017

3 stars

 

Andy Weir's follow-up to his bestseller The Martian again takes place in the hopefully near future. But instead of barely surviving on Mars, we have an established city colony on the moon. It comes complete with all the class struggles and daily problems we earthlings have except it's a lot more compact. Artemis is both the name of the book and the city. Weir's structuring of the city and city life is in fact the best part of his novel. We see it through the eyes of Jazz Bashara, a Saudi woman who spent her entire life on the lunar city. Her father is a welder and she has the ability to either take her father's occupation or do even better. But instead, partially due to her conflicts with her father and some bad life choices, she is a struggling porter with a smuggling operation on the size. But a rich friend offers her a challenge, illegal of course, that will make her rich or get her deported or possibly killed.

Those who enjoyed The Martian will see the same things about this book that thrilled them in the first. Both main characters are basically smart and resilient but underdogs in the environments. It is the thrill of watching Jazz fight through the odds that is mostly entertaining. It is not just the odds when she is on the unforgiving surface of the moon but also the unforgiving economic and class struggles of the city. It is what works best in the book. Weir structures well and writes some tight passages especially in the action scenes.

That is why, like his first book, it will be a bestseller. however, as a lover of science fiction, color me a little cynical. Weir writes well but, and forgive me for the slaughtering of the English language, he doesn't write good. Weir has all the Moon stuff, the science, the technology, and the physics down pat. But it just didn't have the spark for me that crisply realized science fiction has. Jazz Bashara is a marginally likeable character but she is also selfish and greedy whose bad judgement never quite gels with her perceived smarts.. The next step to empathy never quite made it. Yes, we root for her but we never root with her.

Artemis is a science fiction story with emphasis on the mainstream. Good science fiction challenge. Artemis placates. There are a number of bestselling authors who write in their selected genre but never really transcends into what the genre at its best can be. Dan Brown, John Grisham, Dean Koontz, James Patterson. Good writers all and writers that know how to sell their wares. But they are not the names that the true lover of their genre will recite as the best. I hope I'm wrong but Andy Weir with two books already seems to be writing himself into that kind of niche with science fiction.

But maybe I'm being too cynical. Artemis is a good novel, maybe a better thriller that a science fiction book. Either way, it plays a bit too much by the numbers. Yet, if you like an easy to handle and entertaining book then it will meet your needs...until the next bestseller comes along.

A Young Adult novel that speaks to adults

Turtles All the Way Down

John Green

 

 Dutton Books for Young Reader

October 10, 2017

Five Stars

John Green"s first novel that is explicitly labeled "Young Adult" starts with an interesting but ultimately deceptive premise. At least it does, if you read and believe promo and dust jacket descriptions. Teenager Asa and her best friend Daisy decides to investigate the mysterious disappearance of the shady billionaire Russell Pickett. The catalyst for this investigation is the reward of one hundred thousand dollars for any information that leads to finding the man. That starting premise is not deceptive in itself for it is indeed the motivation for what eventually transpires in this fascinating introvert of a novel. But it really isn't what the book is about. To use an old Hitchcockian term, the billionaire's disappearance is a McGuffin. it could well have been missing goldfish, or a tuatara which actually is something that is related to the story. But it doesn't really matter that much because the author has bigger fish to fry and...Boy! Does he elevate the entree!

Turtles All the Way Down is primarily about Asa. It is Asa who is our first person narrator and it is her complex thought processes and insecurities that the story is really about. Asa has Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. She sees a psychiatristt and is prescribed medication that she doesn't take. She has only one real friend, Daisy, who has her own issues and writes fan fiction that in some ways seems to mirror how she feels about Asa. When they decide to go for the reward Daisy convinces Asa to contact Pickett's son Davis who she had a past acquaintance with. The relationship that develop challenges Daisy in ways that adds on to what she describe as her "spirals."

And this is where Turtles All the Way Down becomes so uniquely satisfying. Asa is real and she is flawed. But despite the gimmick of the investigation as a motive for her involvement, she is as typical as any teenager dealing with the runaway thought and emotions that comes with the territories of a mental illness. What we discover is that this territory is not much different from the problems of most teens. All of the teens in John Greene's novel, has crises and they all must deal with them for better or worse. Davis finds himself having to take on the role of big brother/father to his sibling and not being prepared for it. Daisy has her own lack of brakes and uses her fan fiction to deal with what she should be addressing in real life. This is a YA novel that eschews the usual trappings of fantasy, Sci-Fi, and suspense It gets right down to the reality and emotional conflict of modern adolescent life. In fact, I would say the only thing really YA about this book is the fact that the main characters are teenagers. The book will speak to adults just as eloquently.

The plot in Turtles All the Way Downis a thin one but it makes everything else work. It gives us a bait when the actual hook is the emotions we have in our own life. Maybe the reader cannot identify personally with OCD or Asa's imaginary but real illness . Yet the conflict, the fears, and the insecurities still speaks to us. John Green's little book may be for teenagers but it will resonate far beyond that.

The wild west and wilder werewolves

The Wolves of El Diablo

Eric Red

 

Short, Scary Tales Publications

August 1, 2017

4 stars

Tucker, Fix and Bodie are three 19th century American outlaws in the desert and mountains of Mexico. They have already fought a gang of werewolves to save a small village for little profit. So they are about to rob a train to make up for that loss of profit margin. It looks like an easy job but they are unaware that there is a troop of Mexican Federales abroad guarding a shitload of silver. On top of that, the sister of the leader of the werewolves they killed is hunting them down for revenge. Outlaws, soldiers, werewolves and silver is not the kind of mix that will ends in any way but terror and violence.

Eric Red's The Wolves of El Diablo is a sequel to The Guns of Santa Sangre where the outlaws meet The Men Who Walk Like Wolves for the first time. I have not read the first book and there may be some back story in it that might help in this one. However not reading it didn't lessen my enjoyment of the second book. The author gives enough background so you can understand what took place previously and whiz through this enjoying every minute. If your idea of a novel is action packed and full throttle adventure then that is exactly what you will do. There is a very cinematic feel throughout the book which makes sense considering the author's day job as screenwriter. The action scenes are as descriptive and tight as one would want. But what I like is how, mixed in with the endless action, we get some actual character development. The three outlaws are about as three-way bromance buddies as you can get. There is a tough but honorable captain who is out of his element when confronted with the supernatural. There is even a bit of a romance with Tucker and a girl from the village, However that girl is definitely not the weeping willow type and holds her own through all the shooting and attacking. But the real star of the novel is Azul, the she-wolf. We get an lot of back story for her that explains her obsession and viciousness. This is all top notch pulp adventure. The author keeps you interested in what will happen and makes you care about what will happen later to the main characters. For while the novel does have a satisfactory ending, there will definitely be a third one. I'm looking forward to it.

Eric Red writes tight horror and tight suspense. The Wolves of El Diablo has both. It is basically a western in wolves' clothing. Red writes visually. He envisions each scene and communicates it so well that you can see it too. For this type of novel it is what makes it works. But when a writer writes like this you don't need to ask if they can write and ask for their credentials. You just enjoy it. . He don't need any stinkin' badges.

Weirder than weird

This Town Needs a Monster

Andersen Prunty

Grindhouse Press

May 16, 2017

4 out of 5 stars

When super weird author Lance Carbuncle says a writer are weirder than he is. You gotta pay attention!

In Andersen Prunty"s very weird and borderline pornographic / erotic horror work, we find unambitious in-a-rut 40ish Brad Renfield (interesting last name reference by the way) talking to his often suicidal and only friend Travis, both residents of Gethsemane, Ohio. Remind me never to go there. In a early flashback, they are discussing a rash of suicides that happened in Gethsemane decades ago. It woke the town up but afterwards the residents went back to their dull sometime hateful routine to which Travis responds, "This town needs a monster".

In This Town Needs a Monster, Brad finds one is a beautiful young sociopathic girl named Dawn. Brad is quickly trapped in a world of violence and sexual deviancy that is above anything he ever imagine. He even tries to leave but Dawn's hold goes beyond blackmail. There is a dark hold she has on him and that is what ignites the story.

I'm not sure how to put this. The novel has levels of extreme violence and sex that even shocks me and that is saying a lot. It is also quite strange since Prunty's last novel, Squirm With Me was a more subtle work that was surprising in its quiet mundane style. This new novel is a step back into Andersen's more horrific works. But a regular theme youfind in many of his books is the older person who is snatched out of his aimless life into something that is both horrifying and exhilarating. It leads one to wonder if the real monster is the horror of the unfathomable or the aimless meaningless regular life.

In some ways, the violence and brutal sex is too much. I think he did it better in Sociopaths in Love and I sort of miss the quiet mundane horror of Squirm with Me which brought it closer to what we see as reality. But there is no one who writes like Andersen Prunty and it is impossible to maintain a neutral stance when bombarded by this new novel. I wouldn't necessarily make this my first Prunty read but those who know what to expect from him should definitely dive into the muck.