Abaddon books is an exciting genre imprint dedicated to publishing the best in high-action Science-Fiction, Horror and Fantasy.
After a bit of unconventional exploration in the town’s local graveyard, Kenneth and Corrie Tyler discover that their bootlegging father wasn’t actually buried in the casket that they had paid for. Fuelled by curiosity, the siblings subsequently learn that their father wasn’t the only victim of the local undertaker, Fenton Breece as the rest of the town’s dead are also either missing, their caskets containing weighty amounts of garbage, or they have been significantly altered in death from what they had been in life. Judging by the grotesquely manipulated corpses, ranging from eunuchs to in-afterlife-only couples, laid to rest forever in some morbid display of demented perversion, the fate of the missing can only be shuddered at.
Hell bent on revenge and personal financial gain, Corrie convinces Kenneth that the photographic evidence they now have in their possession should be used to bribe the grisly undertaker for a good deal of money, instead of being handed over to the local police that have a reputation for corruptness. With Corrie convinced that the rich undertaker would manage to wriggle away from justice with only a suspended license and a quick stint in a psychiatric ward, she persuades Kenneth that they may as well get something out of it – a new life in the city.
Inevitably, Corrie’s plan backfires when Breece hires renowned maniac, Granville Sutter to retrieve the photographs for him instead of coughing up the cash. With a murdered sister to fuel his conviction, Kenneth Tyler must first outrun Sutter in a twisted game of cat and mouse through the eerie Harrikin forests, in order to reach the law-abiding law enforcement in the next town.
An old mining location, the Harrikin is rife with perils from rusted machinery in sinister states of decay to overgrown mining shafts, all long abandoned and left remaining as homage to past industrial glory. And only those who can’t move on from those lost times dwell in its depths, a sprinkling of characters detached from modern society. With only a broken shotgun for a companion, Kenneth must navigate his way through the tangled woods and encounter its unconventional inhabitants of whom some will aid him and some will hinder him as he tries to outrun and outsmart the blood-crazed Sutter.
I was shopping with a friend when I first picked up Twilight from the “New Releases” stand in Waterstones. After quickly perusing the book’s covers and discovering the authors photo, her first comment was “he looks like he’s got a good story in him”. With the hard-set, life-lined face and ragged hair of William Gay starring out at me, I couldn’t have agreed more. This fellow certainly looked like he could weave a darkly constructed tale rooted in America’s deep south with haunting sincerity. Despite not usually being one for horror or anything of a flesh desecrating nature, the copy’s promise of a Southern gothic fairytale with eccentric squatters, old men and witches, coupled with Gay’s “good storyteller” looks had me enticed.
After completing Twilight, I’ll deduce that William Gay did have a good story in him but it wasn’t quite the one I was expecting. It’s definitely southern and definitely gothic but fairytale and witches were certainly misleading descriptions, with the overall effect strictly dark humoured thriller. For me, the first half of the book is more prominent than the second, where Kenneth enters the Harrikin with Sutter hot on his trail. It was at this point I was expecting the fairytale element to kick in and an array of dazzlingly peculiar characters to explode off the pages. Though the inhabitants of the Harrikin are typically deep south and detached from modern American society I felt slightly let down by their lack of mythical qualities and major involvement in the plot. This may have been because I was expecting something more along the lines of Terry Gilliams “Tidelands” than what is fundamentally a good old scary woods chase between Tyler and Sutter. This is by no means to say the story is a disappointment on the whole though, just not what I was personally expecting – those with a preference for thrillers over folklore and the supernatural will not be disappointed.
It’s also not as gruesome as I’d thought it would be. Sure, the word painted images of Fenton Breece holding polite dinner conversation with a girl he’s stuffed and embalmed are disturbing but Gay injects just enough humour in the prose to take the edge off any revulsion that may be congealing in your stomach. Instead of portraying Breece as a sinister character, it’s only his actions that are; the man himself is rather pathetic and pitiful, removing any glamorisation and mystery so often associated with characters in this subject matter.
Whatever personal faults or let downs I found with the story itself cannot be mirrored in Gay’s writing ability. Gay is a wordsmith of the highest order and writes with such fluidity and controlled prose it is nigh on impossible to find anything to criticise. As a master of metaphor and simile, Gay’s narrative is astoundingly imaginative, almost poetic in its form, yet always accessible and not contrived.
One point of contention I have with Twilight is the formatting, or more appropriately, the lack of. Gay has a peculiar aversion to speech marks which makes it hard to distinguish between narrative and dialogue. Not only do I find this bordering on pretension but also mildly irritating. Granted you get use to it after a while but it doesn't exactly help the flow when you are constantly double taking to check if a sentence has come out of a character's mouth or the author's. Along with inverted commas, Gay also appears to have a dislike for chapters. I'd settle for chapter-less if I was at least provided with some page breaks, but alas, they also seem to be on Gay's hit list. Not as annoying as the camouflaged dialogue but unless you are particularly organised with book marks finding your place again can prove irksome.
I would recommend Twilight for Gay’s writing style alone (ignoring the formatting) but there is also plenty to be admired in the story itself. Despite being disappointed in the characters of the Harrikin, this is not to say the others are not of substance. Sutter is frighteningly convincing as the hired heavyweight with a demented and unaffected disposition and Fenton Breece is also complex in his conflicting personality traits and pastimes. Overall an original thriller, but don’t be mislead by the copy on the cover.
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I, Zombie is Part of Abaddon Books, Tomes of The Dead series, which aims to showcase some of the "very best eyeball popping, gut munching, zombie fiction around".
Written by Al Ewing author of "El Sombra" and a contributor to cult UK comic 2000AD (Most famous for fascist future cop Judge Dread). I, zombie follows the exploits of John Doe, a man desperate to just fit in with the rest of us. Only its not quite as easy as John would like, what with his deathly cold skin, lack of heartbeat and a rather disturbing hunger for ... brains.
At the start of the novel we find John working as a London based hit-man for hire. His past is hazy as he remembers nothing further back than 10 years. Things are going OK for him he has the trendy flat, alphabetically ordered DVD collection and a selection of the "right" books on his shelf. That is until he goes to meet an associate only to be confronted by something more deadly than himself. Nine foot of hair covered muscle in the form of a werewolf, and its hungry for icy cold flesh. After that things go from bad to worse for john who finds himself the prisoner of a mysterious ex-boxer and even more mysterious telepathic freak who inform him he is destined to end the world. From that point on things start to unravel for John and then finally everything goes berserk. The second half of the book pretty much turns I, Zombie into the novel of the greatest B movie never filmed.
Unashamedly modern pulp fiction I, Zombie is packed with pop culture references particularly those of a filmic nature. Al Ewing seems to really understand the way his probably sub 40 audience will take its imaginative cues from the films they have watched and he plays on this throughout the novel. Also he has a rather impressive talent for bait and switch when it comes to cliches which should keep the reader constantly surprised and entertained. This is the kind of fiction you would probably only find in a graphic novel, especially with the constant barrage of action. For this type of writing the authors experience of writing for a medium which demands interest levels be kept high at all times has really paid off. Though the obligatory Lovecraft references are there, this is pulp in far more in the vain of Robert E. Howard, rapid paced, visually descriptive and brutal.
If you fancy reading some apocalyptic zombie fiction (and if you don't whats wrong with you?) I, Zombie really is great fun.
When Theo finds his dead uncle’s manuscript locked away in a safe housed by possibly the most bizarre bank in San Francisco, he thinks it’s the beginnings of a fantasy novel. The descriptions of fantastical like creatures in a faerie world with sky scrapers and horse-faced cab drivers is certainly apt to that genre, but it seems a little strange that his uncle choose to write it in diary style, but perhaps more bizarrely, so convincingly.
However fanciful his uncle’s imagination seems to be, it’s a welcome release from his mundane and somewhat depressing life. Struggling to ever form a bond with his parents, his father is long dead and his mother has recently succumbed to the same route. Matters are made worse when his girlfriend miscarries his baby then subsequently dumps him. His career as a struggling musician has also taken a turn for the worse when he walks out on his much younger and more pretentious band after a series of falling outs. Thinking things couldn’t get any worse Theo seeks solitude in a remote country lodge and whiles away the time reading his uncles diary. When a foot-high sprite named Applecore, complete with an Irish accent and a foul mouth, appears out of nowhere to rescue him from something that looks mostly dead attempting to break through the lodge window, Theo realises his troubles are only just beginning.
Dragged out of his own world and into the land of Faerie, Theo realises that his uncle’s diary wasn’t so fictional after all. Faerie is a cruel world that is nothing like folklore describes it. For one thing Faerie society evolves in very much in the same way as human society does. Despite a few geographical eccentricities, such as places having an irksome tendency to move around, things are not too dissimilar to the world Theo grew up in. The Faerie city is a sprawling metropolis with many of things you would associate with a human city; trains stations, school buses, and even an aristocracy of Flower Lord Families that rule above the common folk. Perhaps one of the most noticeable differences is that Faerie technology isn’t powered by electricity like our own, but with the life blood of its own citizens, the common folk used as battery-like sacrifices for the comfort and prosperity of the Flower Lords.
To make matters worse, a large proportion of the Faerie community isn’t all that keen on mortals, namely most of the Flower Lords who unfortunately happen to rule the roost. With a swearing, winged midget as his only friend, Theo must seek out those few Flower Lords that seek to live in harmony with humans and can therefore help him to return home. But little does Theo realise that home may not be where it first appears, and maybe his uncle isn’t so dead after all.
If nothing else, The War of the Flowers is certainly original. Despite having a tendency to lean towards meaty trilogies, I found this to be an immensely satisfying read that contains enough depth of detail and scope of imagination to be engrossing. The Characters are imaginatively eccentric and highly likeable, especially the foul mouthed Applecore. Williams’ writing style is immediately accessible and the story flows fluidly with a good balance of narrative description, character development and plot. The finale contains a twist that may be mildly predictable for the more acute reader but is still written with enough flair to be entertaining regardless.
I would highly recommend this to those of you looking for a quick fix of highly imaginative fantasy fun.
I was looking at my bookshelf and all the books gathering dust. It funny the way we hoard stuff for the sake of it, as once read I never pick these books up again. I figured I would start re-visiting some of the books I have read over the years. The other night I got my copy of Herbert Simmons Corner Boy down and started to read it.
Corner Boy was Herbert Simmons first novel and won the prestigious 1957 Houghton Mifflen Literary Fellowship. I would imagine a novel that encompassed drugs, poverty, racism and race mixing written by a then only 26 year old black man was a fairly controversial choice for the time. 5 years later Simmons second novel Man Walking on Eggshells was released to critical acclaim unfortunately influential people in both the power elite and amongst the black community managed to put pressure on the publisher and “upstart” Simmons found his second novel effectively buried. Aged just 31 and having written two “Great American novels”, Simmons never published another. In the 1960’s he became involved in the Watts writers workshop and in the mid 1990’s he retired from a teaching post at California State University Northridge.
Set in an unknown US city, although I suspect heavily influenced by Simmons experiences growing up in St. Lois Missouri. Corner Boy tells of the rise and fall of Jake Adams. Jake is the former president of notorious teen gang “The Termites” known as the “T’s”, who rumbles with the “Ratz” a teen gang from across the tracks on the other side of town are the stuff of legend. Now out of the gang and just 18 he finds himself pushing dope for the Organization. Jake's smart car, fancy clothes and luck with the women make him the envy of his peers and elders alike. As Jake whiles away his time hanging with his hustler friends in the Jazz drenched pool rooms and music halls of the 1940’s life is good, until one day he is stopped by the local police with a white girl in his car …
I imagine some people will look at the description and think this should be written off as crime glamorising “Ghetto” fiction. Simmons book how ever is much deeper, much more skillful and much more powerful in its study of what it means to fight for the American dream with one arm tied behind your back. While the characters and setting is almost entirely one of a black American (African American, if you prefer) it’s not such a world away from the experience of living in poverty for any other race including the poor white experience.
Jake (Black): ‘Yeh, but you know what? I bet there ain’t much difference in our worlds. I bet you got corner boys, gash hounds, and everything else, in fact I know you have. Well you got a dividing line that gives you more opportunities, but that’s about all. I mean everybody loves and hates and has babies and pulls creeps …”
Georgia (White):’Creeps?’
Jake: ‘Yeh sneaks in the back door when the ole man goes out the front. And everybody gets bills and go to church and don’t believe in it, and drinks whisky or shoots themselves with the plunger, and everybody lives and dies, don’t they?’
Georgia:’ But don’t you think those opportunities mean a whole lot?’
Jake: ‘Yeah they make a difference, whatever difference there is.’
In fact the world Simmons evokes around his young characters reminded me heavily of the world S.E. Hinton’s novels for young adults, The Outsiders and partially Rumble Fish portray. Jake Adams could almost be one of the sharp black pool players Rusty James encounters when he and Steve travel across town with the Motor cycle boy. Simmons prose is fantastic the way he infuses the slang, the music, and the feel of the 1940’s almost leaves you able to see, hear and almost even smell the scene. The characters are so three dimensional as he evokes their dreams, their failings, their troubles and their joy’s. His characters internal and external thoughts and turmoil is laid bare before you. For those capable of a thought pattern deeper than just good and bad, wrong and right, black and white you really get to thinking about just how many shades of grey there really are.
Picking up corner boy again after all this time I had forgotten its true content and settled down for a thriller following the rise and fall of a small time gangster. What I found myself immersed in was a thought provoking tale that covers almost the full range of human emotions and experience. bravado, love, success, failure, Joy, tragedy, Prejudice, snobbery, hatred, belief and many more find themselves rapped up in a thought provoking package and set to prose that almost matches the rhythm of the Jazz soundtrack Simmons evokes.
Maybe the greatest and at the same time saddest thing about Corner boy, is that it reminded me that no matter how much things seem to change, just how much really stays the same in the human condition.
