PAPER CITIES: AN ANTHOLOGY OF URBAN FANTASY is what you’d expect to find on Tori Amos’ bookshelf. Editor Ekaterina Sedia’s put together an anthology of cityscapes, where the locations are often at the world’s end. Writers are sometimes the main characters, with pretentious titles like “dreamcatcher” or “storyteller” (try claiming that to the IRS and see how quick you catch an audit!). Instead of meeting tomorrow, characters meet “in the morn.” These tales often span innocent, mystical times … and remind me of the reasons why I never liked Shakespeare or Doug Henning.
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Sometimes I wonder where else horror can go, get depressed, and think the genre is tapped. Then something comes down the pipe that gives me hope and spins everything around. The book in question is Brian Keene’s DARK HOLLOW.
The cover blurb promises he’s the new Stephen King, but since King isn’t dead, I’ll withhold judgment.
But I can promise that DARK HOLLOW provides not only an interesting new form of evil, but a shocker of an ending, and maybe the greatest opening line I’ve read this year: ”It was on the first day of spring that Big Steve and I saw Shelly Carpenter giving head to the hairy man.”
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Like many a youth of the ’80s, my introduction to H.P. Lovecraft and most things weird was through a late-night Skinemax viewing of that unheralded classic FROM BEYOND. I beat a path to the library to find more, only to be completely disappointed. Where was the S&M? The twisted body morphing? And where was the horny and sexually depraved Barbara Crampton character? It took me a couple of years to come back to the fold and gain my appreciation.
Elder Signs Press’ HORRORS BEYOND 2, edited by William Jones, reminded me a lot of that early experience. The best encapsulated description I can come up with for this anthology of stories is the use of uncanny technologies beyond the control of humanity.
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We live in wonderful times, my friends. The writers who made a living churning out those venerable DESTROYERs, TRAVELERs and DEATHLANDS books that comprised my geeky youth weren’t under any real obligation to hit a high mark. Actually, those three titles (plus GOR – what the hell happened to GOR?! Did they make a movie and I missed it?) sometimes succeed in spite of themselves. That’s the magic of genre fiction.
But now, we’ve got self-publishing and the small press. You’ve got freedom to write whatever you desire, and if you put enough heart and passion in it, maybe scream loud enough, someone will take note. But here’s the real good part: the stuff that finds its way to BOOKGASM is more about the passion than we have any right to expect. Case in point: DARK RESURRECTION by John A. Karr.
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There’s a reason why I stopped going to the movies and spend my time reading. It’s to be found in CRUSADER GOLD. Written by David Gibbins, it’s everything I hate in a novel: derivative, shallow and probably written with the hope that someone will turn it into a shitty blockbuster film with Nic Cage. I got about halfway through it and gave up.
It’s a bad historical mystery/conspiracy (they were sooooo crafty back then, those people who thought the world was flat!!!) that’s been written several times over before, with nothing unique to say. Then we get notes at the end telling us how it all could have happened, but really didn’t because of history, religion and society.
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