Carlos

Having ruined the life of a previously wealthy Englishman, vampire Sebastian Newcastle makes his way to India, drawn by a mysterious urge. Here he seeks the Thuggee, believed to have been wiped out by the British only a short while ago, with plans to bring them to a new glory. Reginald Callender, the men whose life Sebastian ruined, comes looking for him, seeking to revenge himself on Sebastian. Both will soon find that India has more in store than either can expect.

No Blood's premise of vampire meets Thuggee is what attracted me to this novel, and it did not fail to live up to it. The vampire Sebastian is quite compelling; Daniels manages to make him both sinister and sympathetic. Calcutta becomes, as in Simmons' “Song of Kali,” a location which evokes the old-time Gothic dread while incorporating an element of the exotic, and the encounters between the British and the Thuggee recall Masters' “The Deceivers,” but Daniel's has less of a colonial mindset than Masters or Simmons. Overall, an enjoyable vampire novel with a unique twist.

A thought-provoking look at Ghana and Ivory Coast, which produce about two-thirds of the world's supply of cocoa beans, and the contributions, both good and bad, that the cocoa industry makes to the lives of the people of those countries. Ryan goes beyond superficial impressions to show how the cocoa trade developed in these countries and how a lack of government accountability and investment have prevented the producers from reaping all the benefits from their role in the chocolate industry.

Joyce Carol Oates has reimagined the final days of five important American authors: Poe, Dickinson, Twain, Henry James and Hemingway. The stories of Twain, James and Hemingway are the ones that stick closer to the historical record, while those of Poe and Dickinson take flight into the fantastic.

“Poe, Posthomous” imagines that Poe spent his final days not in Baltimore but in an isolated lighthouse off the coast of Chile, hoping that the solitude would allow him to produce an important philosophical treatise. As with most of the stories, Oates mimics the writing style of the author in question, and the story is very reminiscent of those Poe tales where the protagonist succumbs to madness, yet there are several elements, including the setting and the final development, that suggest Oates is channeling not Poe but Lovecraft. “EDickinsonRepiluxe” tells not so much about Emily Dickinson's last days, as of her 21st century resurrection as a sort of robotic family member/pet, purchased by a childless middle-aged couple to fill a void in their lives. Intriguing, but aside from its Twilight Zone-like premise, it felt like a familiar story of middle-age disappointment and estrangement.

The Twain, James and Hemingway are closer to what you'd expect given these authors final days. Twain is a broken man after the death of his wife and beloved daughter, resentful of the public persona he has to play. He seeks solace in the company of girls, younger than 16, mostly innocent but with somewhat creepy undertones. James volunteers in a veteran's hospital during WWI, where the suffering of young men affects him deeply. Hemingway struggles with his poor mental and physical health as he obsesses over bringing his life to an end. There's an interesting dichotomy between the first two stories, with their fantastic concepts, and the final three, which feel so much more grounded that it's hard to know when the truth ends and Oates' extrapolations begin.

Colin Wilson's The Mind Parasites is a science fiction novel set in what was once the future (the late '90s as seen from the late '60s) and inspired loosely by H.P. Lovecraft. The novel is narrated by an archeologist who while on a dig discovers ancient and cyclopean structures miles beneath the earth. Further investigation of these leads him to realize that mankind is under some form of attack by invisible psychic entities which draw from people's vital energies and leave them feeling depressed, frustrated and confused. All of mankind has been suffering to some extent or other from these parasites since the 1800s. The narrator decides to fight back and begins to recruit allies in this great psychic struggle, but the parasites will not go gently into the night...

As Wilson states in the introduction, this novel was inspired by a response he received for his criticism of H.P. Lovecraft; August Derleth had challenged Wilson to try his own hand at writing Lovecraftian fiction. Wilson certainly seems to have grasped the way that Lovecraft's fiction could serve as a potent metaphor for his worldview, for while there is quite a bit of speculative fiction in The Mind Parasites, it also seems to reflect much of Wilson's own philosophy. I won't attempt to rate Wilson's ideas, but I'm sorry to say he's pretty mediocre as a writer of weird fiction.

The concept of psychic parasites and the struggle against them is intriguing enough, but unfortunately Wilson falls prey to that great pitfall of speculative fiction: exposition. I appreciate the book doesn't waste much time on world-buidling, instead being written as if it was meant for a contemporary, so it never bogs down with details of this alternate future/past. However, he does spend considerable time with the description of and theories about these invisible, insubstantial parasites. A more skilled writer might have been able to make that material compelling, but I generally found it pretty dull. Here, I think Wilson's background as philosopher does him a disservice, as much of this ends up coming across as some alternate form of Scientology. Though Wilson clearly doesn't believe in mind parasites, the premise does reflect much of his own thinking, and so he often proceeds with the didactic sincerity of an amateur philosopher. The novel does have moments of tension, but it tends to drag, especially at the beginning, and also feels rather dated.

A quick note (and SPOILER WARNING) on the Lovecraft connection: the discovery of the cyclopean city, which is this novel's most Lovecraftian aspect, turns out to be something of a red herring. It felt like a bit of a bait and switch and, considering the introduction, made me wonder if Wilson had started with the idea of the discovery of a R'lyeh-like ancient city and then, grown bored with it, shifted the emphasis over to the mind parasites, where he could indulge in more of his own interests.

To Live is the story of Fugui, an old man whom the unnamed narrator encounters while travelling around the countryside studying the folk songs and tales of the area. As a young man, Fugui came from a relatively wealthy family, but he managed to lose all of his family's property through gambling and carousing. Having brought his family down, he decides to devote himself to being a good husband and father. However, fate intervenes, first in the case of the war between the Communists and the Nationalists, into which he is conscripted. Having survived that, he returns home only to see the upheaval caused by the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution. Yet, despite all this and the tragedies within his own family, he perseveres. It's a poignant account of one man's life in upheaval, which also has the feel of a Taoist parable about facing hardships.

This book consists of two short novels/novellas by Argentine author Enrique Anderson Imbert. The first, Vigilia (Vigil), is narrated by Beltran, the teenage son of immigrant parents. The story chronicles his adventures with his small band of friends, his romantic longings for a neighborhood girl, his struggles over identity and politics, and his literary ambitions. The novel in some ways feels like a cross between Joyce's Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man and Arlt's The Mad Toy, with the sensitive young man trying to find his voice while navigating daily street life in Argentina. It's an intriguing premise, which sometimes pays off, such as a section where Beltran laments how dull his friends are and how he wishes they'd partake of the sort of witty repartee one might find in an Oscar Wilde play. The contrast between the funny, vulgar conversation of his friends, and the contrived-sounding dialog Beltran imagines is pretty comic. However, Beltran often feels too stuck in his own head, and by the end I had lost much interest in his musings and obsessions, which occupy much of the narrative. There's also an odd twist near the end of the novel. It seems to come out of nowhere, ending the novel on a rather perplexing note. This story, published in 1934, was Anderson Imbert's first novel, which may account for its sometimes frustrating aspects.

The second novel, Fuga (Fugue), covers some of the same thematic ground as Vigilia, though more compellingly. In this story, the protagonist is, Miguel Sullivan, a young man of Irish descent who moves from Tucuman to Buenos Aires to pursue a career as a journalist at a left-wing newspaper. Somewhat unsatisfied with the work he is producing, he enrolls in classes at the university to further his understanding of the world. At the university, Miguel meets two people who will have a strong impact on him. The story covers some of the same thematic ground as Vigilia–realism vs. fantasy in art, the finding of a literary voice, romantic passion–but also brings in some interesting Gothic themes, such as the doppelgänger and the ghostly lover, to liven things up a little. While I had to force myself to finish Vigilia, once I got into Fuga, I found it very fascinating.

When selecting books from LibraryThing's Early Reviewer's program, I usually try to avoid later books in a series, since this will mean hunting down and reading other books just so I can give the ARC a fair shake. I did not take such care with this novel, which is in fact the second in a series, following Jane Bites Back. The premise of the series is that Jane Eyre was converted to vampirism by an undead Lord Byron. She is living–at least as much as a vampire can–in a small town and upstate New York (where Byron also resides), managing a book store and trying to establish a literary career under her current alias of Jane Fairfax. Also, she seems to have picked up vampire Charlotte Brönte as a rival along the way. In this book, Jane is struggling with writing her second book while also dealing with a convention of romance readers and the upcoming visit of her boyfriend's mother.

Though I'm neither a fan of Austen-inspired novels or supernatural romance, I thought the book sounded like it might be kooky good fun. It's possible the book would have been more enjoyable had I started with Bites Back, but considering the books weaknesses, I rather doubt that. And the weaknesses here start with the basic premise: vampire Jane Austen. It sounds like a winning, if campy, concept, but the delivery leaves much to be desired. To start with, the novel's concept of vampirism is pretty weak; they are not affected by sunlight, do not look or feel different, can eat food and their hunger for blood is largely just an inconvenience. Without much of a sense of moral peril, the whole concept of vampirism seems largely defanged and bloodless. (Sorry.)

The other problem is Jane herself. I haven't read enough about Ms. Austen to have a firm grasp on her as a person, but what I get from her novels is that she was a keen observer of the social realm around her and well-attuned to its foibles and absurdities, which she was able to express with a dry, sophisticated wit. Now imagine such a character living for two hundred years. Well, stop imagining because that's not the Jane in this novel, who sometimes comes off as a bit of a blank. She is a likable chick lit heroine with a wit adequate for that role, but she falls short of being Jane Eyre. It's a little grating how inconsistently she's written. Jane allegedly hung out with F. Scott Fitzgerald and Josephine Baker in the '20s and then was in one of the original theatrical productions of The Rocky Horror Show in the '70s, yet she's utterly clueless about baseball. She mentions how Emma was adapted into Clueless, yet she's shocked that the film adaptation of her first Jane Fairfax novel involves changing the era. She doesn't come off as overwhelmed by modern life as just incurious about the world around her, which just seemed sort of pathetic. The book does attempt some social satire, with its second-hand observations about Jewish mothers and Hollywood vanity, but the author is no Jane Austen.

I will admit, the novel was often amusing, and if I preferred my vampires and Regency authors as bland and inoffensive as possible, I might have enjoyed it more. Bottom line, while the book has some merit as “fast-food fiction,” it's not really my cup of tea.

A collection of approximately three hundred poems from the T'ang Dynasty. Some very beautiful poetry, with themes including the beauty of nature, the joy of friendship, the sorrow of being separated from one's loved ones, romantic love, and growing old. My only lament is that since I don't read Chinese, I'm unable to really experience the way the poems were originally meant to sound.

Teatro Grottesco is the latest collection of Thomas Ligotti short stories and represents the mature phase of his fiction. In this mature phase, Ligotti's style has shed much of the baroqueness of his earlier style, which made him seem an obvious heir to Poe and Lovecraft. However, Ligotti's sparser style, which often emphasizes the banality of places and people, is probably even more potent in capturing the sense of existence as nightmare, which is one of the main cruxes of the Ligottian tale. If, as appears quite possible, Ligotti does not return to writing fiction, this collection will serve as a brilliant summing up of his thematic and narrative interests.

Gutierrez' account of the life of the gaucho Guillermo Hoyo (known as Hormiga Negra) has some of the same charm as his Juan Moreira in its account of 19th Century Argentine life, though it lacks the sense of near-cinematic tragedy that made Moreira so moving. Hormiga Negra starts his life as an outlaw early, when he has to sneak his beloved away from her mother, which leads to various adventures, mostly on the wrong side of the law. Despite eventually settling down, he returns to drinking and making trouble, which eventually lead to new troubles just as he is trying to go straight. Where Moreira was a good man reduced to banditry through injustice, Hormiga is a more ambiguous figure, his courage offset by his impetuousness.

If on a winter's night a traveler explores the experience of reading, and the place of the reader, author, text and rest of the world in said endeavor. The Reader (who is a character in the novel) finds his attempts to read the novel frustrated by incomplete texts, interrupted narrations, false translations, and other diversions, so that the novel is made up of the beginning of ten different novels as well as the Reader's own adventures with another reader and with the truth of the novel. Delightful, witty and inventive.

This is a good introduction to Aikido philosophy, covering the basic principals as well as some of Ueshiba's life. What the book lacks in depth it makes up for in breadth, exploring the connections between Aikido and other spiritual traditions and disciplines, as well as the importance of real life applications.

Though I wouldn't recommend it as an intro to HPL (due to the inclusion of lesser stories, such as “The Shunned House” and “The Horror at Red Hook”), as a longtime Lovecraft fan I found it to be a real treat. Joshua and Cannon's notes help bring out the use of historical and literary allusions as well as the intertextuality of Lovecraft's tales. Includes such gems as “The Picture in the House,” “Pickman's Model,” and “The Call of Cthulhu.”

A modern reimagining of 1001 Arabian Nights wherein an outcast young woman relates a series of tales over several nights. Valente's prose echoes that of a transcribed oral tradition, with its parallelisms and colorful metaphors, for an oft engrossing series of adult fairy tales. Feminist in perspective, though never heavy handed. Simply delightful.

Though his tales are packed with philosophical ruminations, Borges is first of all an inveterate story teller, whether it's a simple tale of revenge or the history of the hidden face of God. His stories often feature a sense of uncertainty which lends them a certain immediacy, as if they were ancient legends, now distorted by time, or police reports, with caveats where the teller bumps up against the limits of knowledge–but the best of these combine a sense of both, linking the mythic to the procedural, the infinite to the particular.

The book struck me as a sort of cross between The Eyre Affair and House of Leaves, combining the sort of inventive alternate realities of Fforde with the pomo typographical play of Danielewski. As with most X meets Y formulations, this one does not really do the book justice. Despite Hall's invetive metatextual world of word sharks, un-spaces, thought virus tycoons and conceptual boats the emotional core of the story is the protagonist's attempts to come to grips with the past and his own grief, guilt, memory. (A comparison with the movie Memento might also be apt, though Shark is more hopeful, less nihilistic.) An engaging, playful, but also very moving book.

An interesting collection of short stories, some so brief as to count as flash fiction. Sometimes incorporating supernatural elements or a subtle surrealism, though one story goes all the way into tall tale by recounting the story of a giant who rode with Quiroga and then carved out what would become a series of lakes in service to the Devil before finding salvation. Some pretty strong tales, often with a fair helping of dread as in the tale of trains for the dead or the man who has to survive when his home and yard are mysteriously set adrift on the ocean.

The novel imagines what sorts of dreams Einstein might have had while working on the theory of general relativity. In these dreams, time takes on varied and fantastic forms. In some, time runs backwards: in others, it depends on a person's perception, location or mood. Highly inventive and reminiscent of Borges' and Cortazar's surreal short stories, these stories trace the way that our lives and interactions are shaped by our perception of time.

This is a collection of horror stories that Derleth wrote for Weird Tales in the '40s. Fairly high quality pulp horror, though Derleth does have the unfortunate habit of recycling plots, with tales of posthomous revenge making up at least half the stories in this collection. Another prevalent element is that of loneliness, often that of a child who has lost an important parental figure. Derleth paints this quite skillfuly, so the air of sadness it lends to those stories feels more like a personal touch than a recylced trope. Only a story or two really achieve something novel enough to place them above quality pulp horror.

Juan Moreira was a renegade gaucho of Buenos Aires province in the 19th century. Gutierrez' work is a novelization (originally serialized) of his life and escapades. Though Gutierrez claims he researched the Moreira and spoke with many witnesses, I'm still a little dubious about the novel's historical veracity. However, even taken with a grain of salt, there is something captivating about the short life of this outlaw. The Moreira of the novel is an upstanding, moral man who runs afoul of the law because of a local administrator's desire for Moreira's wife. He gets his vengance on the administrator, but is then on the run from the law. The narrative is a little repetitious at times, with knife fight after knife fight. Moreira may be portrayed as a noble figure, yet there's something quite ugly about all the death he leaves in his wake. Yet, over the course of the story, I found myself becoming more sympathetic to his plight. If Moreira isn't quite an existentialist hero, there is something tragically noble about him, a man cut off from society but still living by a code, though he knows full well the best he can expect is to die a good death. I wouldn't call it a classic, but definitely a worthwhile example of the gaucho genre.

Popular Hits of the Showa Era is the story of surreal conflict between two groups of the marginalized in the Japan of the late '80s. It starts as the tale of a group of dissolute young men, who have taken to gathering together once a week for what might charitably called parties, at which they interact very little yet still feel some sense of camaraderie. A chance encounter on the streets leads to a conflict with another group of outcasts. These are six women in the thirties, all divorcees, who also experience life with some detachment. As the conflict escalates, both sides resort to ever more extreme tools of destruction. Greatest Hits is a fairly bizarre, darkly humorous tale of the marginalized finding some connection to life through rather extreme acts. Not for the faint hearted.

“The Fall of the House of Usher” is arguably one of Poe's most Gothic stories, a tale of hereditary doom that might be tricky for the reader to get into but also quite likely to haunt the imagination thereafter. McCammon takes a risk in crafting a story so obviously inspired by Poe's classic story but he succeeds in crafting a contemporary Gothic tale with strong horror elements.

The first chapter of the novel starts things on a strong note, presenting a fascinatingly sinister picture of one of the Usher clan as he confronts Edgar Allan Poe over his writing of a story about the family. Poe swears he thought it was purely fiction, that perhaps he heard about them second-hand and subconsciously worked the family into a story he thought he had dreamed up.

It sets the tone well, making it clear that while connected to Poe's story, McCammon intends to make Usher's Passing his own story and to update the old Gothic theme of the doomed family line. From there, events leap forward to the present day. Rix Usher is called back to the family home near Asheville, North Carolina, by his father, Walen, who is dying from a hereditary terminal illness which enhances the senses of its victims. The Usher family has prospered in the years since that encounter with Mr. Poe, growing incredibly wealthy off of the business of manufacturing weapons. They now possess a large estate in the mountains of North Carolina, dominated by a large, though unused, mansion they call The Lodge. The estate has its own Gothic reputation, and the locals tell stories about The Pumpkin Man, who snatches up children, and his monstrous feline companion, Greediguts.

At home, Rix has to contend with his mother Margaret, who is in denial regarding her husband's impending demise; his arrogant brother Boone and his fading Southern Belle of a wife; and his sister Katt, whose glamorous lifestyle conceals dark secrets. Rix's latest novel has been rejected by his publisher, and his return inspires thoughts about writing the Usher family history. While delving into the old documents in the library, he begins to uncover secrets and mysteries of the family.

McCammon's handling of the story's connection with its inspiration is well done. Poe's presence is certainly felt, from little story details to the climax of the book, but done with a light enough touch that it doesn't feel smothered by allusion. McCammon captures the traditional Gothic feeling of the doomed family and their imposing ancestral home, whose ominous presence reflects the family's own history. He gives these elements a very contemporary and Southern twist, giving the Usher's the Faulknerian feel of a family whose riches based off of the blood of others, but who have gained a certain measure of respectability thanks to their wealth and endurance. As the events of the novel unfold, the depths of the Usher family's crimes become explicit, and the judgment that falls across their house in the climax is worthy of Poe's original tale.

The Painted Darkness is my first encounter with the work of Brian James Freeman, who if the blurbs on the outside and the glowing introduction by Brian Keene are any indication, may be something of a rising star in the horror field.

The book centers on its protagonist, Henry, in two different times. In the present day, Henry is struggling with a creative block which is interfering with his painting, which is his trade. As he attempts to break through it, he begins to remember the day as a boy when he saw something terrible, an experience he has blocked out. As he is struggling with these memories, Henry has to deal with the old heater in his renovated house. The story flips back and forth between, the present day, where Henry's travails with the heater take a dark twist, and the day in his childhood that he has repressed for so long.

Though clearly meant to be a horror story, I have to admit most of the real spookiness is concentrated in the middle section of the book, where Henry (much like the reader) is at his most disoriented. Once the action reaches its climax, the supernatural nature of the events became too fantastic for me to find scary. I'm no stranger to supernatural elements, especially in horror fiction, but Henry never felt fleshed out enough for me to let the danger to him get too far under my skin. The tale does retain a certain dark fairy-tale quality, and I would still recommend it.

(Note: I received The Painted Darkness through Library Thing's Early Reviewer's program.)

Many a writer, particularly in the field of horror, has borrowed from H.P. Lovecraft, adopting and adapting the themes, settings, monsters and even sometimes characters that have appeared in his fiction. With this novel, Rick Dakan has taken the more original approach of basing a story on Lovecraft's philosophy.

The story takes place in Sarasota, Florida, where the narrator, Rick, and his best friend, Conrad, have lived most of their lives. Another childhood friend, Shelby, comes to town after having been chased out over an orgy gone awry. He brings with him an exotic girlfriend and vague but oddly sounding plans related to H.P. Lovecraft, for which he enlists the aid of the two friends.

As the two learn more about Shelby's plans, their questions only begin to multiply. How are he and his girlfriend funding the purchase of property and rare documents? Is Shelby really the materialist he claims or has he crossed over into believing in HPL's Great Old Ones? Is Shelby calling the shots or is the mysterious Kym he met in Providence? When a fourth childhood friend falls into the hands of the cult, Conrad and Rick decide to finally penetrate the cult's secrets.

The Cthulhu Cult is an entertaining and thought-provoking journey into paranoia, philosophy and how things can spin out of control. I can't say whether a non-Lovecraft fan would enjoy it to the same extent, but Dakan's novel of Lovecraftian obsession brings a unique approach to the realms of fiction inspired by the Old Gent.

This is a story about two Colombians, a mother and a son, who are visiting Buenos Aires. The mother is an ex-Trostkyite who lived in Buenos Aires for several years during the Dirty War, where she fell in love with and married the man who became the boy's father. After the son's birth, the fear of being hauled away proves too great and the family flees back to Colombia. There the marriage fell apart, and the couple separated. The boy grew up without the father, and so they have come back to Argentina to find him.

It's a potentially rich concept, and the execution provides some very interesting themes and moments, but it has its flaws. On the positive side, it's an interesting look at the way narrative is part of how we make sense of our lives. The mother spends a good part of the time telling the boy the story of how he and his father met, fell in love, then came apart. This provides opportunity for a degree of back and forth between them on how the story is told, what facts are important, how is the narrative being dressed up, etc.

However, the novel sometimes feels a little false. The son, in particular, spoke in a way that didn't seem very plausible for an 18-year-old. Also, Restrepo sometimes attempts to underline her themes in ways that felt heavy-handed. One of the back cover blurbs compares the novel to Kiss of the Spider Woman or Waiting for Godot, but it lacks either of those works' confidence in letting the dialogue speak for itself without having to lay everything out for us.