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Entry tags:
Fiction
Daryl Gregory, We Are All Completely Fine: You don’t see many novellas written in first person plural, that’s for sure. This one features a group of survivors of supernatural events in a therapy group—the rest of the world doesn’t believe in the supernatural features of their trauma, and they largely don’t trust each other, but slowly they start revealing their histories. And it develops that they may be more connected than they expected. Not conventional horror, but plays with the tropes thereof—I liked it a lot.
Elliott Kay, Rich Man’s War: I discovered that Kay’s unofficial title for this series is Well, That Escalated Quickly: The Tanner Malone Story, which is just about right. Tanner remains my favorite space Boy Scout of recent years, as his enlistment continues, his home system of Archangel’s troubles grow, and his battles on the ground and in space multiply. The space battles are bigger now as the bad corporation choking Tanner and his fellows with debt sends a large force to take down Archangel; also, the pirate Tanner captured in the first book is now working for Archangel, but he’s still carrying a grudge. Good times!
Rich Larson, Datafall: Collected Speculative Fiction: Short collection of good old-fashioned cyberpunk-type sf, with a bit of steampunk thrown in at the end. Many of the stories ended so abruptly to give them punch that I could’ve done with a bit more, but if you still remember Mirrorshades fondly, this might be for you.
Stephen King, Finders Keepers: With several characters from Mr. Mercedes, King returns to the well of the writer and the too-fanatical fan, this time a fan who kills a writer who’s a mashup of Salinger (isolated, refused to publish for decades) and Roth (wrote the Great American Novels about an archetypical white American man), supposedly for the cash the man has on hand but really because he’s mad at the writer for having his main character grow up. As it turns out, there are many notebooks telling the further story of this archetype, along with a lot of cash, but our villain gets sent to prison on an unrelated charge before he can do anything with them. Thirty years later, a young boy finds the stash. Eventually, their paths cross again, with violent effects. It’s typical Stephen King, with a fair amount of discussion of prison rape (not in a leering/ha-ha way, but not as an avoidable thing either). The villain’s downfall struck me as kinder to the protagonists than King often is. Though there is plenty of blood at the end, ultimately the writer-based part of the message is that, while words are magic, magic can be very dangerous.
Lauren Beukes, Broken Monsters: Another serial killer with a supernatural connection from Beukes, though a very different supernatural connection than her The Shining Girls. Here, rather than misogyny, the killer is driven by a visitation/possession that makes him want to open the doors of perception and transform his victims (so there’s a lot of Hannibal-type display described); he does not know right from wrong, and the central tension is about how far he’ll get before he’s caught since he’s disorganized enough to be easily caught. Or would be, if he weren’t working in Detroit, where the city is falling apart; the story also follows a police officer on the case, her daughter (who has troubles of her own that intersect with the case), and a predatory journalist whose motivations are pathetic, fully human, and awful. It was really well written, but I don’t think I much like the supernatural serial killer genre Beukes has wrested away from Jack the Ripper retellings.
Ben Aaronovich, Foxglove Summer: It’s out to the country as Peter investigates the disappearance of two young girls, mixing police procedure and magic. Also, his relationship with river spirit Beverly Brook intensifies, and the partner who betrayed him keeps texting him. This seemed a slighter entry than previous volumes, though he does learn more about the varieties of magic, and maybe I’m just reacting to the momentous events of the previous book.
Elliott Kay, Rich Man’s War: I discovered that Kay’s unofficial title for this series is Well, That Escalated Quickly: The Tanner Malone Story, which is just about right. Tanner remains my favorite space Boy Scout of recent years, as his enlistment continues, his home system of Archangel’s troubles grow, and his battles on the ground and in space multiply. The space battles are bigger now as the bad corporation choking Tanner and his fellows with debt sends a large force to take down Archangel; also, the pirate Tanner captured in the first book is now working for Archangel, but he’s still carrying a grudge. Good times!
Rich Larson, Datafall: Collected Speculative Fiction: Short collection of good old-fashioned cyberpunk-type sf, with a bit of steampunk thrown in at the end. Many of the stories ended so abruptly to give them punch that I could’ve done with a bit more, but if you still remember Mirrorshades fondly, this might be for you.
Stephen King, Finders Keepers: With several characters from Mr. Mercedes, King returns to the well of the writer and the too-fanatical fan, this time a fan who kills a writer who’s a mashup of Salinger (isolated, refused to publish for decades) and Roth (wrote the Great American Novels about an archetypical white American man), supposedly for the cash the man has on hand but really because he’s mad at the writer for having his main character grow up. As it turns out, there are many notebooks telling the further story of this archetype, along with a lot of cash, but our villain gets sent to prison on an unrelated charge before he can do anything with them. Thirty years later, a young boy finds the stash. Eventually, their paths cross again, with violent effects. It’s typical Stephen King, with a fair amount of discussion of prison rape (not in a leering/ha-ha way, but not as an avoidable thing either). The villain’s downfall struck me as kinder to the protagonists than King often is. Though there is plenty of blood at the end, ultimately the writer-based part of the message is that, while words are magic, magic can be very dangerous.
Lauren Beukes, Broken Monsters: Another serial killer with a supernatural connection from Beukes, though a very different supernatural connection than her The Shining Girls. Here, rather than misogyny, the killer is driven by a visitation/possession that makes him want to open the doors of perception and transform his victims (so there’s a lot of Hannibal-type display described); he does not know right from wrong, and the central tension is about how far he’ll get before he’s caught since he’s disorganized enough to be easily caught. Or would be, if he weren’t working in Detroit, where the city is falling apart; the story also follows a police officer on the case, her daughter (who has troubles of her own that intersect with the case), and a predatory journalist whose motivations are pathetic, fully human, and awful. It was really well written, but I don’t think I much like the supernatural serial killer genre Beukes has wrested away from Jack the Ripper retellings.
Ben Aaronovich, Foxglove Summer: It’s out to the country as Peter investigates the disappearance of two young girls, mixing police procedure and magic. Also, his relationship with river spirit Beverly Brook intensifies, and the partner who betrayed him keeps texting him. This seemed a slighter entry than previous volumes, though he does learn more about the varieties of magic, and maybe I’m just reacting to the momentous events of the previous book.
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Thanks for these. Of all of them, I think I will read the first one first and then maybe the Stephen King.
The Daryl Gregory has an intriguing title and unconventionality I think will be fun to see how the horror is treated there.
Stephen King: I have pretty much always figured that he holds a lot of information about things and uses it to his advantage in his writing. The prison rape stuff will be one that holds a certain interest to me. And the writing/magic/danger theme too.