Monthly Archives: May 2012

Op-Ed – Horror as Hero: Setting the Wrong Things Right

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This article is an opinion editorial. Views expressed are solely those of the individual author and not necessarily those of Thirteen O’Clock, its Contributing Editors, or its contributors. Thirteen O’Clock welcomes interaction – please feel free to discuss this piece in the comments section. If you’d like to write an op-ed for Thirteen O’Clock, please pitch your article to the editors via the Contact page.

At much-loved writer and friend Paul Haines’ memorial earlier this year, Cat Sparks gave a speech, during which she said: “True horror is the fact that we’re all standing here today when Paul is gone.” I agree, so strongly. We all deal with real horror in our daily lives, of countless different kinds – horror’s name is Legion. People say “I don’t like horror”, and whilst I understand the sentiment, I think to myself that’s like saying you don’t like breathing. Too bad if you don’t like it. It’s part of life. You’re living horror. I’m living horror. Ignoring and rejecting it makes it sordid, and it doesn’t have to be. It can be beautiful, albeit painful. We can explore it, probe it, know it, and thus, paradoxically, find a framework within which to de-scarify everything around us. Humanity has always lusted to light up the darkness; it is why we needed to discover fire. But you can’t illuminate the shadows without accepting and understanding what lurks within them. Horror is important, and leads us to the light, by holding our hand and allowing us to safely confront the dark.

I, like so many of us, have experienced a great deal of real horror in my life. Humour me, if you will, while I share just a little of it with you for the purpose of context. I’m not going to tell you everything, but I’ll tell you enough to, hopefully, show you why horror is my hero. I have no hesitation in sharing my stories with others; any shame therein is that of others, not my own. So please, don’t feel uncomfortable about reading. It’s safe. Horror is holding our hands. We will not be lost in the night.

My childhood was riddled with extreme familial and parental dysfunction, and as a result I was a very isolated, introverted child, who preferred her own company and found solace in literature from a very early age (I’m talking, like, 6 – I read early, and I read all the time). I read widely, but I always loved horror best of all. I believe there was a reason for my choice of genre, which is the point of this Op Ed, and I’ll get to that in a moment. For now: back to establishing context.

Horror gifted me with reading and writing as power; my superhero skill.

My parents divorced when I was very young, and I think that was a good thing, ultimately, though it meant I spent the following years caught in that boringly traumatic push-pull between them that so many children of divorce experience. Later, the emotional and psychological dysfunction I lived with every day turned into full-blown domestic violence, when my mother remarried an alcoholic psychopath who regularly beat her to a pulp and on more than one occasion actively attempted to murder her. I became intimately acquainted with women’s shelters, halfway houses, and police stations. I attended five primary schools in six years; three high schools in just one month (that was during a period when my stepfather was particularly energetic in his efforts to kill my mother…we moved a lot). As I grew older, I vowed never to be a helpless victim, always to go down fighting, to hit first, to hurt first (not necessarily a healthy thought process in every situation, but one that has saved me many times). Later, when an ill-chosen boyfriend choked and punched me, I knocked him out and dragged his unconscious body outside into the freezing Hobart night (and broke up with him, obviously). Not for me the abused woman role. Never. Ever. Again. I couldn’t save my mother, but I could save myself.

Horror taught me to fight.

My mother died when I was 22. After having survived so many things, including several brain aneurysms, she died alone, of pneumonia. Nobody even knew she was sick. I didn’t know she was dead until days later when my estranged brothers called me to tell me, after one of mum’s neighbours became worried, called the police, and they broke down her door and found her dead on her couch. It was a type of suicide. Actually…no, it wasn’t a type of suicide, it simply was suicide. Even now, it’s incredibly hard for me to accept that…I want to delete the statement because it can’t be true, right? My mother was lonely – having finally left my stepfather, and with me having left the state a year earlier to go be young, flighty, selfish and rebellious in Melbourne (and oh, the guilt!) - destitute, and, I believe, mentally unwell, as she had been for most of her very rough life. She got sick – very, very sick – and rather than seek treatment, I think she saw it as an escape.She kept it secret, like a magical key, and used it to unlock the door out of this life that had always been so harsh with its treatment of her. I remember visiting her house the day of her funeral, finding everything just as it had been when the police broke the door down. Blood-and-mucous-stained handkerchiefs everywhere. Blood liberally soaking her pillow and the sheet around it. (So there was no way, no way, she didn’t know she was seriously ill. No way it was quick. And can you imagine how that weighs on a daughter’s mind?) No real food in the place, but it was clean and tidy – my mother was house proud. Her box of tobacco lay tumbled on its side on the couch where she’d knocked it over when she died next to it – yes, smoking, whilst dying of pneumonia. I remember throwing up in her toilet at the horror of it all. She hadn’t told me any of it, not about being sick, not about being in financial strife, not about anything. We’d chatted on the phone numerous times before her death, and they’d been hopeful, loving, positive, redemptive conversations. I’d called her several times the day she died and thought it unusual, though not alarming, that her phone rang out, unanswered. She would have been dead on her couch right next to the phone while I was calling.

Horror. Real, savage, stark, inescapable horror. Reading and writing it helps me live through it.

Whilst mine pales into insignificance compared to, say, the horror experienced by men, women and children struggling for their very survival in the face of unfathomable violence, starvation and disease in war-torn countries; it is horror, it is real, and it is mine. I live with it every day, and it’s hard not to buckle under its weight. Often, I do buckle. My knees give out from under me and I fall in a heap and I am useless for days, sometimes weeks. In addition to the loving care of my husband and friends, books save me, every time, as they always have. Horror books. Like cures like.

On June 2nd, 2012 (next Saturday), it will be the ten year anniversary of my mother’s horrible, horrible, horrible death. I’ll travel to Tasmania to visit her plaque and be with the memories, good and bad. I loved my mother so dearly. I saw myself as merely an extension of her, we were so tightly connected. Us against the world. Her loss almost killed me – still has the power to bring me to the brink. That’s some of the real horror I’ve experienced. I know I’m not alone – we each have our unique horrors to deal with.

On the ‘plane on my way home to be with my mother’s ten year old ghost, I’ll be reading a horror book. It will keep me company. It will look after me.

Through all the things I’ve outlined above, the professionals who got me through the horrors in my life weren’t doctors, they were horror writers. Stephen King was a better father than my own and remains so to this day. I might’ve had to listen to my stepfather beating my mother through thin walls, but hey, the world was dying from a plague and the apocalypse was looming, man! Jack Torrance’s demons were far worse and more powerful than mine, Carrie fucked people’s shit up when they messed with her, and Rose Madder exacted the revenge on her abusive husband that I wanted to exact on my stepfather. There were bigger worries than mine in those books, so I escaped and found relief and reassurance there; and there were solutions. The victims fought. They got revenge. They got justice. Even when they lost, there was rhyme and reason. There is an order to things in horror, a savage, merciless order (as in life), and I love it. It comforted a little girl living amid blood and tears and violence, and it comforts me still as an adult.

It’s why I have always read horror, and it’s why, now, I write it. To not only be able to escape to those words, but to have the power to shape and craft them myself! Oh, bliss! What a privilege!

To put the wrong things right. To remind myself that I may have seen a monster ten feet fall, but that there are monsters thousands of feet tall out there, so it’s not so bad, really – I can survive. To get justice. To escape. To reassure myself I’m not weird and others have danced in the abyss with monsters too. To confront death and destruction and know I can accept it, even if I can’t defeat it. To face insanity and know I’m already insane – we all are, we all float down here - and so there’s nothing to fear, because the worst is already here with us. To fight. To fight. To have the power and strength to go back in time and no longer be a powerless little girl, to be an arse-kicking huricane who can devour my evil stepfather and visit pain and destruction on everyone else who ever hurt anyone.

I write and read horror to set the wrong things right. Horror is my hero.

How about you?

Book Review: Grants Pass, edited by Jennifer Brozek and Amanda Pillar

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Morrigan Books, 2009

I was first sent a review copy of Grants Pass when it was published in 2009. In the time it took for me to get around to reading and reviewing it three years later (like, er, y’know, now), it picked up the 2010 Australian Shadows Award for edited publication - and,now that I’ve finally had the pleasure of devouring the book for myself, I can see why.

Like many good things, Grants Pass was a long time in the making. The concept originated from a blog post by Jennifer Brozek in 2004, a “thought exercise” positing the notion that, when the world ends, everyone should meet in a pre-destined place to pick up the pieces and carry on. The responses Brozek received led her to the idea of the Grants Pass anthology, which, after much pitching and reworking, came to fruition in partnership with her co-editor Amanda Pillar and publisher Morrigan Books. Brozek’s original blog post was used as inspiration for a journal entry by Kayley Allard which kicks off the anthology, and provides the central point (and a sort of meta-character-contributing-author) around which the entire book revolves: “when the end of the world comes, meet me in Grants Pass, Oregon”.

The end of the world does indeed come, thanks to three plagues released by terrorists (why, who, how, and to what end other than total annihilation of the planet is not explained), and a wave of very nasty natural disasters. Eighteen stories nestle between the covers of Grants Pass, detailing what comes next for survivors of the apocalypse. Each of the stories are never anything less than very good. Some are superb.

The standout piece for me was definitely Animal Husbandry by Seanan McGuire. A bleak, blunt story with an ethically curious core, this one stayed with me long after I put the book down. Touching on themes of euthanasia and humans as “domesticated animals” (I particularly enjoyed that perspective), and pulling no punches, this is an important, expertly told story. I remain perplexed as to where I stand on the protagonist’s actions. A very clever unexpected tale.

Several other stories were also striking (well, they all were, in their own unique ways – and that’s astonishingly rare in an anthology - but I’ve decided not to cover every story in this review, so will stick to the few that really leapt off the page at me). The disturbingly poetic Hell’s Bells by Cherie Priest was told from the point of view of a troubled young child with a morbid fascination with death and the bells that toll for it, and very little regard for human beings in general. Ascension by Martin Livings was probably the most original take on the end of the world theme, told from outside the planet looking in, and involving a stroll through space that truly chilled and moved me. Black Heart, White Mourning by Jay Lake introduced a frightening and unlikable mentally ill protagonist who I found myself nonetheless sympathising with due to Lake placing me squarely inside the character’s head – an impressive feat of authentic dialogue.

Grants Pass is vaguely reminiscent of Stephen King’s The Stand, what with the whole “illness wiping the world out and survivors being their own worst enemies” thing, though there is no religious apocalypse or any supernatural elements at all in the anthology – all the tales are very human indeed, and centred in a gritty, realistic future dystopia, told from various points around (and in one instance, outside) the globe. The horror in Grants Pass stems from these truths: people we love die and we can’t stop it, life is fragile, people can be terrible, loneliness can bring madness, and survival is something almost all of us have never really had to fight for before – and would be ill-prepared to do so if forced to.

I think the ultimate strong point of Grants Pass is its cohesiveness – the shared character (Kayley) and theme (Kayley’s blog post urging survivors towards Grants Pass) work to provide a united suite of stories and an immersive reading experience, which in turn forms an irresistible emotional connection between reader and words. Post apocalyptic fiction needs to make us care, or it just falls flat. Grants Pass made me care, and broke my heart more than a few times over.

Grants Pass has few weak points, and really I’m only pointing them out here for the sake of pure objectivity, so as not to write a review that is in fact just gushing praise (which is what I really want to do). One or two stories, whilst beautifully rendered, felt somewhat more like settings than fully developed narratives, but I enjoyed them nonetheless. The very cohesiveness that works so well for the collection can also bring a feeling of “sameness” and repetition; I liked that feeling, but some readers may need to take a break before diving back into the book to truly appreciate it. A few stories were harder for me to connect to because their locations and language were so far removed from anything I’ve personally experienced – but that in itself is a blessing, an educational journey within print – and I liked that not every story was set in the same geographical location.

Quite simply, I didn’t want this book to end. Highly recommended. Morrigan Books regularly release stylish, top-quality literature, and Grants Pass is no exception. It’s 2012; there’s no better time to read about the end of the world, and few better places to read about it than Grants Pass.

Midnight Echo #6 – reviewed by Andrew Kliem

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DISCLAIMER: Thirteen O’Clock is managed by Alan Baxter, Felicity Dowker and Andrew McKiernan as Contributing Editors. While the Contributing Editors’ roles at Thirteen O’Clock are editorial and critique, all three are primarily writers. It is inevitable that their own work will form part of the Australian and international dark fiction publications which are Thirteen O’Clock’s focus, and as such it is also inevitable that their work will be reviewed at Thirteen O’Clock (to prohibit this would not only be unfortunate for Baxter, Dowker, and McKiernan themselves, but for their hardworking editors and publishers).

Thirteen O’Clock will always have a third party contributor review the Contributing Editors’ work. Such reviews will be unedited (aside from standard corrections to typos and grammar), posted in full (be they negative or positive), and will always be accompanied by full disclosure of Baxter, Dowker, and McKiernan’s place at Thirteen O’Clock. At no point will Baxter, Dowker or McKiernan review their own work.

Review by Andrew Kliem

Like Greg Chapman before me (who recently reviewed Cemetery Dance Issue 65), I’m new to the world of literary journals. They’re just underground enough to fly under the average person’s radar. But I have recently begun delving into the back catalogues of several prominent speculative fiction magazines and I’m amazed at what I’ve found.
For this review I’ll be looking at the latest issue of Midnight Echo, which is the official magazine of the Australia Horror Writers Association. It’s a quarterly publication packed full of fantastic horror fiction, as well as a smattering of interviews and local art. If you buy the e-book version it will only set you back two dollars, which is a ridiculously good buy given the quality and quantity of its contents.

This particular issue is dedicated to fiction that marries the genres of science fiction and horror, which leads to some truly wonderful and creepy tales. I’ve always felt those two genres go hand in hand; the future often seems bleak and a lot of sci-fi tends to venture into darker territory anyway. There’s something for everyone here, from dystopian futures to hard sci-fi to Lovecraftian mythology. I’ve decided to elaborate on a couple of my favourites and then touch on the rest.

The magazine opens strongly with Earthworms by Cody Goodfellow. Set in a desolate future where the world is on the brink of collapse it tells the tale of a man who is picked up by the aliens he always believed would come, only to have a terrible truth revealed. The language is beautiful and evocative and the story simple, yet scarily plausible.

Possibly my favourite piece is Joanne Anderton’s Out Hunting for Teeth. It’s inventive yet also deeply personal. Wype is a spell cast by The Witch to scavenge scrap metal and human remains from the bowels of a derelict space craft, but one day on a routine hunt, he discovers information that could change everything. It’s a touching story, despite the subject matter. You can’t help but become attached to the cybernetic main character and the boy’s mind he carries around inside him.

One thing that became clear when reading this issue is that Midnight Echo isn’t afraid to tackle confronting material if it’s handled intelligently, and Mark Farrugia’s Seeds is a perfect example of this. It explores a dystopian world where women are no longer born and the supplies of female seeds are beginning to run dry. Many men have turned to homosexuality, but Australia has become a brutal theocracy in all but name and crossing the church is a dangerous prospect. We follow two men, Royce and Grant, who are desperately trying to scrape together enough cash to buy some seeds and start a family, but both their methods and lifestyle go against everything the church stands for. It’s a gripping story, from the arresting opening scene to the chilling climax.

The other particularly confronting piece in this issue is Stephen Dedman’s More Matter, Less Art, which casts its lens into the mind of a paedophile and the tenuous balance he’s achieved.

In Cat Sparks’ Dead Low (which was recently nominated for an Aurealis Award), Clancy and her crew are scavenging for lost treasure in the depths of space, but they find more than they bargained for and nobody’s motivations are what they seem.

Surgeon Scalpelfingers by Helen Stubbs is short but terrifying story of a genderless protagonist who wakes up in pieces on a laboratory floor, while Graveyard Orbit by Shane Jiraiya Cummings tells the tale of a space crew on the edges of the known universe who stumble upon something inexplicable.

There are also two stories from Thirteen O’Clock staff members in this issue. Trawling The Void by Alan Baxter explores the depths of space paranoia and evokes a fantastic Event Horizon vibe. Meanwhile Andrew J. McKiernan’s The Wanderer in the Darkness is an excellent piece of Lovecraftian fiction with hints of hard sci-fi.

There’s one poem in the mix, Silver-Clean by Jenny Blackford. It’s an evocative, ominous little piece, and it’s accompanied by some very creepy art.

Rounding out the fiction are the two winners from the 2011 Australian Horror Writers Association Flash and Short Story Competition. In Duncan Checks Out by Nicholas Stella, a simple checkout worker, begins to learn some troubling secrets, while Winds of Nzambi by David Conyers and David Kernot is a unique and rather dark tale of Portuguese colonisation and gods brought to life.

The magazine also has two excellent interviews. The first is with Scottish author Charles Stross, whose latest novel, Rule 34, was recently nominated for the Arthur C. Clarke award. He discusses growing up under the threat of nuclear war and the way he has melded that persistent paranoia with a love of crime fiction and Lovecraftian mythology.

The second interview is with renowned Science Fiction artist Chris Moore, who has drawn covers for such classics as Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep and We Can Build You. Covers are an often overlooked part of publishing and it’s great to hear the process a designer goes through. It’s particularly interesting to note that Chris says he has little contact with the actual author the majority of the time.

The thing I found most disappointing about the issue was the art, but I think this may be simply due to reading it in e-book form. I found that on my screen, the majority of it came across as pixelated and lacking clarity, but perhaps the printed issue would rectify this.

Still, that is a small blemish on an otherwise amazing publication. All in all I can’t recommend this issue of Midnight Echo enough. I think you’d be hard pressed to find a better way to spend two dollars (and even the printed version is a steal at ten dollars). I have a feeling a subscription may be finding its way onto my credit card sometime soon.

Midnight Echo magazine is available in both print and e-book editions from http://midnightechomagazine.com/

Andrew Kliem is a journalist and freelance writer with a penchant for all things dark and speculative. When he’s not trying to carve the perfect sentence, he’s playing poker and consuming more coffee than a man should. He can be found lurking at his website http://www.andy-kay.com, where he posts a variety of rambles, reviews and miscellaneous thoughts.

Book Review: Deadlocked, by Charlaine Harris

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The Sookie Stackhouse Series, Book 12

Gollancz, 2012

Sookie’s back. Again.

Deadlocked is the penultimate book in Charlaine Harris’ Sookie Stackhouse series (the novels that spawned Alan Ball’s hit HBO TV series True Blood), and, huge fan though I was/am, I can’t help but breathe a sigh of relief at that news. What started out as an immensely enjoyable series has become a bit of a tired old beast at this point, and Harris is dancing very close to ruining a good thing. No doubt she’s aware of that fact, and perhaps is as happy as I am to finally hop off the Sookie train, fun though the ride has been.

Deadlocked finds Sookie involved in a murder mystery (again) when random were Kym Rowe is found dead on the lawn of Sookie’s vampire lover Eric Northman’s home after a bloodsucker shindig. To further complicate matters, Sookie is mixed up in fae politics (again) among her fairy kin, and all is not well in Sookie’s relationship with Eric. There’s the usual smattering of elves, demons, were-creatures, and humans-with-extras thrown into the mix, as well as the lure of the powerful fae artefact, the Cluviel Dor, left to Sookie by her grandmother.

Many of the things I love about the Sookie series are still present in Deadlocked. There’s that feeling of coming home upon opening the book and sinking back into the down-South heat of Bon Temps with a familiar and much-loved cast of characters. Harris’ writing remains accessible and consistent – even when I’m not bowled over by the book, it’s never anything less than a page-turner; I read it quickly. The shameless escapism is intact (reading the first-person accounts of Sookie’s irresistibility to all males is delightful wish-fulfillment-by-proxy), and the supernatural excitement still permeates the series…but only just.

However, there’s nothing new left under Sookie’s sun, and that’s where this series has now worn thin. It’s all been done, or so it seems. There’s nothing unplumbed in the supernatural politics and machinations of the world Harris has built. This makes Deadlocked feel like a retelling of several earlier Sookie books, cobbled together without even concealing the author’s own weariness; even Sookie seems to just be over it all. Its plot is ho-hum, the motivations of the key characters barely make sense (when the plot involving Kym Rowe’s death is explained, it’s just…silly), and I just don’t much care anymore. Also, not enough sex (or even sexiness) and vampires. The sizzling sensuality of Sookie’s previous interactions with Bill and Eric are gone, as are Bill and Eric for much of Deadlocked, and the book suffers for it. The things which always bugged me about the Sookie books – for instance, Harris’ penchant for spending large chunks of text detailing Sookie brushing her hair, washing dishes, waiting tables, peeling vegetables, running errands, etc – are still there and they’re a major issue now, because the story and vibe aren’t strong enough to compensate this time.

Overall, I did enjoy Deadlocked, because I am a fan of the Sookie series and I do love the world and characters, but I also found the novel to be one of the more disappointing ones in the series, and I’m glad it’s ending before it’s run into the ground. I’ve high hopes that the final instalment will be truly special and Sookie can go out with a bang.

Honestly, I don’t think Deadlocked‘s ultimate shortcomings can really be laid at Harris’ feet. I think she’s doing the best she can with something that maybe should’ve ended a couple of books ago. The inside back cover of Deadlocked bears the legend: “All Sookie’d Out?” and then suggests trying some of Harris’ other novels outside the world of Bon Temps. Yes, I think I just might be all Sookie’d out; but I’m not all Harris’d out. I’ll be hunting for her other books once Sookie is laid to rest. I look forward to it.

Movie Review: Dark Shadows (2012)

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Directed by Tim Burton

Screenplay by Seth Grahame-Smith

Starring Johnny Depp, Michelle Pfeiffer, Eva Green, Helena Bonham-Carter, Jackie Earle Haley, Johnny Lee Miller, Chloe Grace Moretz, Bella Heathcote

Dark Shadows is a movie adaptation of the 1966-1971 American television series of the same name. It’s another Burton/Depp collaboration (like 2005’s Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and 2007’s Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street), and as Burton/Depp collaborations tend to do, it features Burton’s muse and real-life partner, Helena Bonham Carter. As a big fan of this gothic trio, I went into Dark Shadows with great expectations that were, for the most part, sadly unfulfilled.

Dark Shadows sees Depp playing Barnabas Collins, once a well-to-do New England businessman, now a 200 year old vampire cursed and buried alive for much of his undead existence by spurned witch Angelique Bouchard (Eva Green). Barnabas is dug up in 1972, and returns to the home he once knew, where his descendants now live. There he finds things are not as prosperous or harmonious as they once were, his long-lost love Josette du Pres (Bella Heathcote) may yet live (sort of), and Angelique still plays a large part in the Collins family’s ongoing troubles.

Dark Shadows has been flagged as horror comedy, but there’s no real horror here, except perhaps in the incoherency of the story-telling. There are some decent laughs, and there is Burton’s usual gaudy gothic flair, but there’s little else going for the movie, apart from an excellent cast who are completely wasted. Readers may remember Jackie Earle Haley’s riveting nihilistic performance as Rorschach in 2009’s Watchmen; in Dark Shadows, Haley plays a redundant bit-part as the Collins family’s drunken caretaker. Similarly, Michelle Pfeiffer’s delivery of Elizabeth Collins Stoddard, the family matriarch, is immaculate; yet utterly boring, because the character herself is boring. Chloe Grace Moretz, who shocked and delighted as Hit Girl in 2010’s Kick-Ass, is barely present as Carolyn Stoddard, a character who seems to exist solely to pout and appear in the finale in a “twist” that is as meaningless as it is ridiculous. I can’t comment much on Bella Heathcote’s contribution as Barnabas’ so-called love interest Josette (or her modern incarnation) because she’s simply absent in every meaningful way for pretty much the entire film. Depp and Bonham-Carter give their usual flawless performances, and Eva Green’s sultry malice is arguably a highlight of the film, but nothing can bring true gravitas to this fluffy muddle.

Perhaps I’m being a tad harsh. This is not a terrible film. The vivid visual aesthetic and surreal vibe that we’ve come to expect from Burton are still present in Dark Shadows, though not as expertly handled and delivered as in Burton’s other works. The funny parts are quite funny. There’s some real depth (at times) to the character of Angelique, particularly in the climax of the film. There’s fun to be had here – it’s a Tim Burton film, after all! – but it’s of the shallow, vaguely bewildering kind.

If you’re in the mood for some light entertainment, you could do worse than Dark Shadows. It’s not without its charm. I’d suggest you wait for the DVD, though. And maybe get drunk first.

The List by Bedford, Pop, Bonin – review

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The ListThe List is a graphic novel written by Paul Bedford and illustrated by Henry Pop (pencils) and Tom Bonin (inks). It has lived through many incarnations, originally released in serial form and now available as a self-published single-volume graphic novel. It’s interesting to note that this edition was financed through crowd-funding with a successful Pozible campaign.

The List tells the story of a young man with a deep obsession. He has a list tattooed on his stomach, given to him by an angel. His father has already completed his list and reached “enlightenment” and the son must now work through as his father did. The angel drives him on, the ghost of his father lambasts his mistakes and the reader is never really sure if any of it is real or just extensive psychosis on the part of the son, Matthew.

This is the key idea behind the narrative style. Very little is given away and there’s a lot of room for interpretation, which is generally a good thing in any story. The tale is violent and powerful and does little to protect the reader from the depths of insanity surely gripping Matthew. Clearly this book has a lot of fans (given the crowd-funding success and many positive reviews) but I have to admit that I found the whole thing rather two-dimensional.

The art style is bold and stark, which works in many ways, but the consistent lack of backgrounds and the constant use of solid black or solid white in panels made the book seem stangely flat. This helps to focus on the story, but it does detract from the immersive experience you’d expect from a graphic novel. There are several pages with very little text and panel after panel of story told purely with pictures, reminiscent of the cinematic style in books like Lone Wolf And Cub, and this works well, but still suffers from that lack of secondary detail.

The same can be said of the story. There’s really nothing else going on except Matthew and his list. The writing and story idea are servicable though not outstanding, but the focus is so tightly on the primary idea that we’re left with no nuance of world or place, or character history. I suspect this is deliberate, but it does leave the overall experience feeling somewhat empty and isolated in time and place.

However, having said all that, the tale is strangely compelling and I had no trouble reading the book in a single sitting. Several comments about the work try to draw attention to its no-holds-barred approach and unflinching horror and depravity, but it’s really nothing new in that respect. In fact, compared to something like Garth Ennis’s The Boys or Howard Chaykin’s Black Kiss, it’s positively tame. But I was pleased that the story was explored to its full depth and not sanitised. I would have liked more from both the story and the art, but I still found it to be a satisfying read. It’s something a bit different and a good effort from a team working in isolation and supported only by their passion and hard-earned fans. This is definitely worth a look for something unusual if you like your horror of the psychological and mysteriously supernatural kind.

See the dedicated website at: http://the-list.com.au/enlightenment/

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Win Season 2 of Haven on DVD

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Haven S2You lucky people! We have three copies of Season 2 of Haven to giveaway, to anyone who wants them.

Haven, Maine appears to be just another lively, New England seaside town, complete with quaint shops, scenic beaches and a busy harbor. But when FBI Agent Audrey Parker (Emily Rose) first arrived on a routine case, she encountered the mysterious underside of Haven. Her investigation lead her to discover that Haven has a secret: it’s home to a number of people suffering from supernatural afflictions.

Audrey found that she is uniquely qualified to handle these supernatural events – referred to in local legend as “the Troubles” – and after discovering that Haven might hold clues about her own mysterious past, she chooses to stay in the town to do so.

Haven, based on the Stephen King novella “The Colorado Kid”, is the story of Audrey’s entry into this seemingly normal town. Across the seasons, Audrey’s quest to understand herself and the great mysteries of Haven will drive her ever deeper down the rabbit hole.

Do you want a copy? If so, just leave a comment and tell us you want in and we’ll randomly pick three winners in a week or two. We’ll have a full review of Season 2 up here soon.

PLESE NOTE! This offer is only open to Australian residents.

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