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Hunger by Melvin Burgess – review

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00002227-266x411Hunger

By Melvin Burgess

Published by Hammer

ISBN: 978-0099576648

You may remember that recently Halinka Orszulok reviewed the first of the new Hammer novellas, The Daylight Gate by Jeanette Winterson. Hunger by Melvin Burgess is another in the same series. It’s a fine artefact of a book, hardcovered and dust-jacketed. From the blurb it sounds intriguing. A shame then, that it’s actually rubbish.

I don’t know Melvin Burgess’s work but he has a good reputation of writing YA fiction where the characters do controversial things like have sex and take drugs. Which is great, because that’s exactly what young people do and I’m glad Burgess tackles those things and it sounds like he does a great job of it. But he does a terrible job of horror.

The book annoyed me from the outset. It starts with a Prologue of about a page and half. Then Chapter 1 follows exactly after the events of the prologue – there’s not even a scene break. Why the hell is that a prologue? It’s the first page and a half of Chapter 1.

So a pointless prologue had me off-side, but it was a cool idea of young Beth waking up covered in dirt with no recollection of where she had been or why she was so grubby. It’s a really cool opening premise in which Burgess really ramps up the tension. The trouble is, it seems like all he really had was that great opening idea and he just phones in the rest of the story from there on.

There is some great writing, but so much of the book is like a first draft. It feels rushed, like Burgess was working to a terrible deadline and all the editors were on holiday. There are several jarring switches of point of view in mid-page, where we jump from one character’s head to another, sometimes mid-paragraph. Then there are dodgy omniscient narrator moments, where the flow is broken by the author jumping in and out with things the characters couldn’t know. This is just simple bad writing. It could all have been tidied up with good editing.

Without giving away too much of the story (though I don’t recommend you read this anyway) Beth’s troubles stem from her connection to a particularly nasty demon and his ghoulish assistants, who come and go through the book. There are some great ideas at work here, but they’re ruined by some ridiculous, almost comical, action scenes. And if they’re not comical, they’re non-sensical. Like the bit where the kids are thoroughly beaten by the demon and his monster – the beast is literally sitting on top of Beth – then they run away for no reason, leaving Beth and her friends to fight on another day.

Then there are moments when mad, slavering beasts are running around and jumping on cars in broad daylight, but luckily no one seems to be around to notice. Seriously, you could be forgiven for thinking that Beth and her friends live in a world where there are no people whatsoever except for themselves and a handful of secondary characters vaguely relevant to the story.

There’s no talk of missed uni classes or explanations of strange absences. For that matter, there’s no real continuation of fear. These kids are literally being hunted by a demon and his various beasts, and they act scared for a moment here and there, then they sit around and have a laugh and a joke with pizza and a movie. At one point they all go out and get pissed just for a laugh. And that in itself leads to another absurd encounter in one of the few scenes where other people are plainly evident, right up until there’s something weird they might spot. Then no one is around. Anywhere. At all.

So, sadly, after a great opening and a really good build of initial tension, utter nonsense ensues for nearly 300 pages.

There’s even a bit towards the end where one big beastie (who has been in the fray since nearly the beginning) is all rabid and deadly in the final scene, then suddenly in the ground and immobilised and we’ve had no mention at all of how he was beaten. None at all.

I really wanted to like this book and it could have been far more interesting if it had been better written and better edited, but by the two thirds mark I was only ploughing through to the end for a sense of closure, and because it’s quite short anyway.

Rubbish.

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Dark Rite by Alan Baxter and David Wood – Review by Damien Smith

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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.

Dark Rite webDark Rite by Alan Baxter and David Wood

ISBN: 978-1940095004

Gryphonwood Press

Dark Rite is the inaugural collaboration between Thrillercast co-hosts Alan Baxter and David Wood. It sits on the cusp between a long novella and a short novel (just over 40,000 words for the pedantic) which means, whilst difficult for award judges to classify, it is able to deliver a novel’s worth of story and action in a package that’s easy to digest in an afternoon.

We open with our protagonist, Grant Shipman, heading to the tiny Appalachian hamlet of Wallen’s Gap to deal with the deceased estate of his father. Dumped remotely by his girlfriend of three years and no longer tied down to anyone or anything he seriously considers joining the seemingly friendly community permanently.

However, such thoughts are short-lived as he begins to unearth some disturbing facts about the town, its people and history. As a result, he quickly manages to inadvertently scare off Cassie, the only normal-seeming local, and have some disturbing run-ins with the resident banjo-wielding heavies.

With Cassie’s help, he begins to piece together an increasingly horrifying history of Wallen’s Gap and its occupants despite being stone-walled at every turn. Throw in a brutal public murder in broad daylight for good measure and Grant and Cassie realise they’re stuck firmly in the middle of a small town conspiracy of Hot Fuzzian proportions.

It becomes increasingly clear that there was more to the death of Grant’s father and the conspiracy enwrapping them is more than two people can handle. Dark cults, magic, brutal violence, witches and warlocks crash together and spiral towards a bloody and catastrophic conclusion with the unstopability of a demonic freight train.

Although I’ve not had the pleasure of reading David Wood’s works to date (something I plan to rectify shortly) I have read many of Alan Baxter’s works and whilst the dark cult was no shock, the main protagonist surprised me somewhat. Rather than being some heroic skull-cracking anti-hero, Grant Shipman is nothing more than an ordinary man. A young, fit, no-nonsense man for sure, but still with all the familiar problems and frailties of anyone else in the world and therefore easy to relate to.

Whilst nothing else particularly caught me off guard as the story played out, it was nonetheless a rollercoaster ride that kept me turning the pages until I was almost late for work. This story ticks all the boxes of a rollicking action / cult mystery, including the obligatory hook at the end, and would make a fantastic movie should that option ever arise. Wood and Baxter have managed to construct an engaging, punchy story that is dark enough to sate the bloody-minded but not too dark to keep the rest of us up at night, and for less than the price of the coffee, this is definitely worth the investment of an afternoon.

Damien Smith has heard that to be a great writer, one must read a lot and write a lot. While the former is covered off in spades, he reserves the latter for when he can actually imagine something stranger than his young family and the world around them can throw at him. If you’d met his family, the frequency of his writing may surprise you and give you some insight into his mind. Occasionally his stories even get published.

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The Awakening by Brett McBean – Reviewed by Greg Chapman

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awakeningThe Awakening by Brett McBean
Publisher: The Asylum Projects/Tasmaniac Publications; First Edition edition (2012)
Paperback: 432 pages
ISBN: 978-0-9871-9492-3

The Awakening, by Melbourne horror author Brett McBean is a novel that proves the value of horror fiction as a story.
For horror to work it has to have heart, not only in its characters, but also in what the story is trying to say and McBean lays the “heart” on thick in this tale.
And at its heart, The Awakening is a tale about a boy growing up, but it’s also an intricate exploration of prejudice, retribution and forgiveness.
The basic premise of the story centres on young Toby, a boy on the cusp of adulthood and his curiosities about life after grade school, girls, alcohol – and the strange old man across the street – Mr Joseph, a black man, who many in the town regard as a freak.
McBean takes his time in the first half of the book, moulding Toby, Toby’s parents and friends and creating an air of mystery around Mr Joseph, but when another stranger arrives in town, an apparent acquaintance of Mr. Joseph’s, the story goes into overdrive.
After Toby and his friend are brutally attacked on their way to an after school party, Toby is set on a path where he gets to know Mr Joseph on a very personal level and we discover the old man’s origins and a dark past that takes us back to Haiti and zombis!
Through the course of their interaction, Mr Joseph teaches Toby about the real world, but at the same time the old man learns a lot from the boy, especially about letting go of the past.
With an overload of zombie fiction, involving viruses or plagues, it was a joy to have McBean take the zombis back to their Haitian roots. The author, in my humble opinion, made the monsters worthy again.
And with great skill McBean manages to weave everything together for an edge of your seat climax where many mysteries are solved and the characters we’ve cared for are actually “re-awakened”.
The Awakening reminded me a lot of the film Stand By Me, based upon a story by Stephen King, yet it stands on its own as a new classic in not just the horror genre, but fiction as a whole.
I should also congratulate Tasmaniac Publications for creating the wonderful hardback edition of McBean’s book, including Erin Wells’ interior art and Ray Garton’s inspired introduction. The end product speaks very loudly to the fact that an e-book just can’t shine a light to a proper paper book made with love.
Although the limited edition hardback has sold out, rumour has it that a paperback edition will be released in the near future.
Highly recommended.
Review by Greg Chapman (http://www.darkscrybe.blogspot.com/)

The Bone Chime Song and other stories by Joanne Anderton – Review

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17557764The Bone Chime Song and other stories by Joanne Anderton

FableCroft Publishing

ISBN – 0980777097 (ISBN13: 9780980777093)

The Bone Chime Song and other stories is the debut collection from Australian short story writer and novelist, Joanne Anderton. Anderton’s science fantasy novels from Angry Robot Books (published as Jo Anderton), Debris and Suited, have been brilliantly received and garnered a slew of award nominations. Her short fiction has been equally well received and has also gathered a lot of award attention. In fact, one of the stories in this collection, Sanaa’s Army, is currently a finalist for both fantasy short story and horror short story in the Aurealis Awards and Best Short Story in the Ditmar Awards. The title story from this collection, The Bone Chime Song, is also a finalist for Best Short Story in the Ditmar Awards this year. So there’s no doubt that Anderton’s short fiction is the kind of work that demands attention.

This collection concentrates on Anderton’s horror stories, with most being science-fiction and post-apocalyptic horror. There’s a smattering of contemporary horror, in stories like Always A Price and Shadow of Drought. But for me, Anderton is at her absolute best when she plays with future tech and the breakdown of society, as she always manages to approach it from a completely human perspective, no matter how far out her settings and situations.

And they are often far out. Anderton’s work delves into the truly surreal and her exploration of that surreality is utterly convincing. She expertly sets up an environment with such confidence, and so little backstory and development required, that we simply accept it without question and are immediately invested in the trials of her characters.

Those characters are usually focused on the maintenance of family and individuality in the face of apocalypse, the saving of loved ones against the tide of technology gone feral. Her stories are all about family, all against authority, constantly finding the humanity in the face of the apocalypse. Always in her work, despite the horror, there is hope. But that hope isn’t always rewarded.

Anderton is a writer with a deft touch, creating something we can see, feel and even smell, and then she gently twists it into something weird and disturbing. Every story is like this to one extent or another. There isn’t a bad story in this collection – it’s one of the strongest single-author collections to come out for a long time – but it’s impossible not to have favourites. The beauty of the variety here is that everyone is likely to have different favourites. For me, the stand-out stories are Out Hunting for Teeth, Sanaa’s Army and Mah Song (one of two originals in the collection – the other original being Fence Lines.) But those three are almost arbitrarily picked, because every story is great. Tomorrow, in a slightly different mood, I might pick three different ones.

The Bone Chime Song and other stories is a powerful and compelling debut collection from an author who is barely started on her journey and already producing work of incredible quality. I can’t wait to see where she goes from here.

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Horror! Under the Tombstone, selected by David A Sutton – review by Mario Guslandi

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under-the-tombstoneHorror! Under the Tombstone

Selected by David A Sutton

Trade Paperback , 333 pages

Publisher: Shadow Publishing , UK 2013

The ‘70s  were mythical years for the British horror scene, as regards both books and movies, but , with a few exceptions, the names of the authors of supernatural fiction of that long gone era  are now mostly forgotten.

Reprinting a bunch of stories that previously appeared in the anthologies New Writings in Horror and the Supernatural vol 1 & 2 (1971 and 1972) is an interesting venture not only as a mere tribute to nostalgia, but also as a way to document the canons and the style of a dark fiction born and developed in a different age.

Predictably, a good amount of the stories  sound a bit outdated, even naïve, when read some forty years later. Only great literature survives the passing of times and fashions, and this is certainly not the case for the majority of the tales included in the present volume, even when the authors are the likes of Ramsey Campbell, Rosemary Timperley, David A Sutton, Robert P Holdstock and so on.

Some of the tales, however, do maintain their strength and are still able to entertain and disquiet the reader just as if written today.

Among those tales I’ll mention, first of all, “Goat” by David Campton, a solid piece of supernatural fiction portraying the uncanny, lethal powers of an old man using witchcraft to terrify and kill, and “The Hollow Where” by Michael G Coney, an odd tale where two couples of farmers keep shifting roles, due to  the paranormal influence of a haunted area on the hill nearby.

Bryn Fortney’s “Shrewhampton North-East” is a very fine example of Kafkaesque nightmare, served with a touch of black humour, about a group of passengers indefinitely stuck in an unknown train station.

“The Inglorious Rise of the Catsmeat Man” by Robyn Smyth is a very enjoyable, although not quite original story revolving around a delicious catsmeat of disreputable origin while “Infra-Man” by Roger Parkes  is a bizarre yet powerful story where a husband who shouldn’t be there appears in infrared pictures, much to the dismay of his displeased wife.

In the claustrophobic “Under the Tombstone” by Kenneth Bulmer, inhuman creatures lurk under a tombstone in an ancient, now deconsecrated church, while in the pleasurable “A Bottle of Spirits” by David A Riley a young man manages to get hired as the assistant to a stage magician and to discover the secret of his supernatural powers.

In short a pleasant and interesting  journey into the horror and supernatural fiction of a  not too distant time when the world was less sophisticated and our fears were perhaps more simple.

- Mario Guslandi

Review: Fragments of a Broken Land: Valarl Undead

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Fragments of a Broken Land: Valarl Undead
By Robert Hood
Publisher: Borgo Press/Wildside Press
Paperback: 432 pages
ISBN: 978-1-4344-4589-6

Blurb: In a place where no stars appear in the night sky, a group of strangers whose ancestries reach back to an earlier apocalyptic disaster are brought together to track down a resurrected corpse that might hold the key to the End of the World. Described by science fiction legend Jack Dann as “one of the strangest and most interesting visions to come out of the modern horror/fantasy genres,” acclaimed author Robert Hood’s Fragments of a Broken Land: Valarl Undead is an epic tale of greed, dying magic, strange monsters, and a motley group of heroes, with a strange and breathless climax you won’t easily forget.

When I think of Fantasy as a genre, I don’t often get the modern Epic Fantasy image of Dwarves and Orcs and Elves questing through majestic forests in my mind. I’ve always been more drawn to the works of Clark Ashton Smith, Fritz Leiber, William Hope Hodgson, Robert E Howard, Jack Vance, M. John Harrison and Michael Moorcock. Their fantasies were always so much more ‘otherworldly’ than the faux-Europes and other earth-analogues of modern Epic Fantasy. Their worlds were far-distant not only in ‘place’ from our own, but often also far-distant in ‘time’. Long past or far, far in the future, they were as foreign and exotic to the reader as if they really had just stepped into another country and culture.

Fragments of a Broken Land: Valarl Undead, the debut adult-novel¹ from Robert Hood, has this Otherworldliness in spades. The ‘world’ of Tharenweyr is as strange and exotic a place as has ever existed in fantasy fiction. Indeed, it is not even a world but a solid firmament (or a ‘seed-like emanation’ as Hood puts it on his website) that exists separate from space and time as we know it. It has no sun or moon or stars. Not even the infinite void of space to stare into. Instead, Tharenweyr is locked within its firmament, a mysterious wave of energy that washes from the ‘Worldly Gods’ of the north to the ‘Dark Gods’ of the south and creating the semblance night and day.

The novel begins with Remis, a young and newly graduated spellbinder interested in starting her own magical artifacts business, who is being pressured (threatened, intimidated) into working for a powerful Merchant House. She’s also having horrible nightmares in which she finds herself trapped inside the body of a hideous corpse-like being. And then there’s Tashnark, the bastard son of a commercial slaver. He’s having dreams that he is the powerful warrior Bellaroth, questing across some strange otherworld that exists on the shoulders of a vast cosmic monster.

It is the chance meeting of Remis and Tashnark – their respective dreams unknown to each other – that sets the course of lifting Fragments of a Broken Land.. out of individual nightmares and into a fantasy who’s cosmic scope rivals anything by Lovecraft or William Hope Hodgson. Gods battling Gods. Ancient artifacts and the prophesised return of catalysmic events that will wipe Tharenweyr out of existence. And, as always, Gods using normal people as their pawns.

In the hands of Robert Hood Fragments of a Broken Land… becomes so much more than just a Fantasy or Sword & Sorcery adventure though. The philosophical and spiritual underpinnings Hood has evoked for the world and its people almost demand a denser tale. In this sense, Hood certainly delivers. At times Fragments of a Broken Land… can be a hard read. You need to concentrate a bit. Divest some of your attention in the book. But believe me, the effort is worth it; Fragments of a Broken Land… will have your brain spinning in Gnostically-induced circles.

One thing that really did stand out for me is Tharenweyr’s main city of Ko’erpel-Na. The characters of Fragments of a Broken Land… all have a wonderful depth — their sense of humour, of justice, the way they try and interpret their world and the way they react to it — but the city is just as much a character too. It reminded me of Fritz Leiber’s Lankhmar or M. John Harrison’s Viriconium. It’s dirty, it’s crowded and full of disease and poverty, but there is also a feel to Ko’erpel-Na that speaks of age and so many lives lived within its walls. The impression I got of the city and its people was quite vivid, quite ‘real’. It seems a place just begging for a million more tales to be told.

Overall, Fragments of a Broken Land: Valarl Undead is a brilliant fantasy novel of the type we seldom get to read these days. Dense and exotic and full of ideas. It’s also full of sword & sorcery action too, and the type of cosmic horror that leaves you paranoid about your own reality. Really, what more could you ask for in a book?

Don’t believe me? Want to check it out for yourself? Mr Hood has three other Tharenweyr ‘Fragment’ stories to read for free on his website [http://fragmentsnovel.undeadbackbrain.com/]. Definitely worth checking out as a teaser and to get a feel for the world before tackling the very worthy Fragments of a Broken Land: Valarl Undead.

Oh, and the cover by Bob Eggleton? It is brilliant!

Footnote:
1. Robert Hood is the author of 5 previous Young Adult Novels, 15 Children’s books, published 3 collections of his own work, and edited a further 5 anthologies.

Black Feathers: The Black Dawn, Volume One by Joseph D’Lacey – review

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BlackFeathersBlack Feathers: The Black Dawn, Volume One
by Joseph D’Lacey
Published by Angry Robot Books
UK ISBN – 978-0-85766-345-0
US ISBN – 978-0-85766-344-3

Black Feathers is the first volume in a new horror series by Joseph D’Lacey. The story follows two main threads simultaneously. We have young Gordon Black, a thirteen year old boy living in a slightly alternate version of our own modern day. In Gordon’s England, the world is sinking into economic collapse and being ravaged by various naturally destructive phenomena like solar flares and earthquakes. The land is ruled with an iron fist by The Ward, a combination of brutally right wing political party and zealous corporate conglomerate, driven by a greed for money and power. The people of most countries have voted The Ward into control globally after the successful lobbying of the party to convince the populace that only The Ward can protect the people against the swift descent into Armageddon facing them all.

Concurrent with this story is the tale of Megan Maurice, a young girl living far in the future, in a green and pleasant post-apocalyptic land where people have returned to living with the Earth, putting back as much as they take out and revering the Great Spirit and The Earth Mother. Megan is approached by Mr Keeper, a very revered holy man among the people, and he tells her that it is her destiny to walk the Black Feathered Path. This is a path of Shamanic learning, where she puts herself in the path of the stories of the Crowman, for someone must keep the tales alive in order to never lose the knowledge.

By now I’m sure you’re getting the feel for where this book is going. Gordon’s family are abducted by The Ward, but Gordon escapes and goes on the run. He is told he must find The Crowman, a terrifying creature of modern legend who some say is pure evil and others say is a force for good. As Gordon runs, the world descends quickly into its destructive cycle as the Earth Mother shakes off the scourge of humanity and The Ward are desperately hunting Gordon, as he is prophesied to usher in the end times, which is something they can’t allow if they are to maintain their grip on power and profit.

It should be quite clear by now that this is a book with a very clear and unashamed agenda. D’Lacey has an affinity for the Native American mythology of the Earth and it manifests throughout this narrative. The thing is, D’Lacey is a brilliant writer and while the message is something of a sledgehammer throughout, the story, the characterisation and the sheer beauty of the prose make that okay. This is an excellent story, very well told.

The juxtaposition of Megan’s life with Gordon’s is adroitly handled, giving the reader a huge and encompassing view of everything while maintaining a personal and powerful focus on these two very difficult journeys.

There’s an almost YA feel to the book at times, as both the key protagonists are young teenagers. But this is most definitely not a YA book, as the horror of Gordon’s world is laid bare time and again. I was pleased that D’Lacey didn’t shy away from the depravity in the hearts of humanity when it’s pushed to the edge. The threat to Gordon as he seeks is constant and very real, and The Ward is only one of many enemies on his quest.

Megan’s journey is one of discovery, a strange mix of vision quest and genuine, physical seeking. Sometimes the two are blurred together and D’Lacey does a great job of letting us in on enough of the story while still keeping Megan’s discoveries fresh and engrossing.

The anti-corporate, love-the-Earth message is a little heavy-handed at times, particularly at the very end of the book. By then it was at a point where it really didn’t need reinforcing and the final pages could have been much tighter without that repetition. But that’s a small complaint. The end, however, is far from the end. There’s no real Book One resolution here – we are most definitely only at a stopping point in a far longer narrative. Certain things come to a head – things the reader has been sure of for most of the book, only unsure how they will manifest, but that is the nature of this kind of story.

The Crowman mythology here is excellent, especially for all fans of corvids. The crows, ravens, rooks, magpies and others play central roles in the growth of Gordon as he runs and the weaving together of modern and ancient myth is brilliantly developed. The Crowman himself is a wonderful invention.

You need to go into this book knowing that its message is central to its existence. If you accept that, you will enjoy a superbly written dark fantasy with some truly original ideas and a very clever culture-crossing hero’s journey. I’ll certainly be looking out for further volumes to see how D’Lacey develops this story and where it might ultimately lead.

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