reading material to get excited about
From the category archives:
Pity the poor vampire as he/she (it?) tries to hang onto its dominance as the go-to monster in this age of zombie apocalypses. The vampire has undergone a softening of its original concept, from the homoeroticism of Anne Rice’s novels to the recent romanticized figure of teen and tween literature (if you can call it that).
Tell me: Who thought sparkly vampires was a good idea? When did they become the modern-day Tinkerbells? Anyway …
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Zombies, zombies, everywhere! Long a staple of horror movies, the living dead have recently lumbered their way to prominence on TV, in comics, novels and dozens of story collections. So why then should we pay particular attention to a novel with the innocuous title DEAD OF NIGHT? Because it’s from Jonathan Maberry, one of the most inventive and reliably entertaining authors currently mining the undead trend.
Desdemona “Dez” Fox, and partner JT Hammond, police officers in the small town of Stebbins County, Penn., are called one morning to the grounds of Hartnup’s Transition Estate, a local mortuary, for a suspected break-in. They find two horribly mutilated corpses, and evidence of a third gone missing. As Dez and JT inspect the grounds, the two bodies suddenly come back to life and attack them.
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If you haven’t read THE STRAIN and THE FALL, I’m offering up a spoiler alert here: Spoiler alert!
Jesus, I hate people who complain about spoilers. Anyway, if you have read the above two installments of Guillermo Del Toro and Chuck Hogan’s vampire trilogy, you’ve got to be on board for THE NIGHT ETERNAL, right?
I mean, the end of book two was some pretty hardcore apocalyptic shit. Luckily, the third and final book provides a meaty examination of the new, vampire-dominated Earth, with lots of explanation of how things work now, two years after the events of THE FALL.
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Dark Regions Press is one of those publishers that is hard to pigeonhole. Sure, it publishes dark fiction/horror, but seems to go out of their way to take chances on new or relatively unknown writers and unusual concepts. When I pick up one of their books, I never know what to expect … which is a good thing.
Keep me guessing, and you’ve won half the battle. Hit me with the same old paranormal romance; vampire-as-tragic-romantic figure; or high-concept, end-of-the-world scenario, and I’ll probably sigh and look to see what new, snarky comments are posted on Twitter.
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The old-fashion technology of Victorian-era fiction, especially the “scientific romances” of Jules Verne and H.G. Wells, obviously inspired the various steampunk authors of today. But as editors Jack Dann and Nick Gevers note in the introduction to GHOSTS BY GASLIGHT: STORIES OF STEAMPUNK AND SUPERNATURAL SUSPENSE, another type of fiction was also popular in those times: the ghost story, with all its psychological implications, written by such authors as M.R. James and J. Sheridan Le Fanu. The original stories Dann and Gevers have gathered here pay tribute to both of these enduring influences.
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