News: Dymocks Southland Bestselling Zombie Titles for January 2011

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News: Dymocks Southland Bestselling Dark Fiction Titles for Jan 2011

Paranormal and Horror fiction continued to trade strongly after a bumper Christmas season, following the late-2010 expansion of the display. Vampires and zombies topped the list (as usual) although it's pleasing to notice a jump in sales of certain small-press and independent titles.

1. Sookie Stackhouse (series) - Charlaine Harris
2. Vampire Academy (series) - Richelle Mead
3. Morganville Vampires (series) - Rachel Caine
4. Under Stones - Bob Franklin
5. Dracula in Love - Karen Essex
6. Wicked Appetite - Janet Evanovich
7. Pride & Prejudice & Zombies - Austen / Graeme-Smith
8. Zombie Apocalypse! - ed. Stephen Jones
9. A Hunger Like No Other - Kresley Cole
10. Marvel Zombies #1(graphic novel)  - Kirkman / Phillips

Recent arrivals of interest include the entire range of LegumeMan publications, including Brett McBean's latest collection, Tales of Sin and Madness. 

Review: The Laughing Corpse

The Laughing Corpse
(Anita Blake: Vampire Hunter #2)
by Laurell K. Hamilton

Date Published: 1994
Publisher: Headline
ISBN: 9780755355303
RRP: $22.99

Reviewed by Stephanie Gunn

Back before Anita’s relationships and sex took centre stage in most of the books in the series, the plotlines of the books revolved around Anita’s work as an animator – raising the dead as zombies – and her work on police cases. In this book, someone is killing people – and worse, eating them. Anita immediately suspects that a killer zombie is on the loose and is called by the police to investigate.

She is led to Dominga Salvador, a voodoo queen who has a particular affinity with zombies. Dominga and Anita clash, and Anita finds herself in fear of her own life.

Those who are turned off by the relationship focus of the later books in the series will find this a much more palatable read. The mystery, while not overly complex, is satisfying enough, and there is little talk of Anita’s relationships at all – only Jean Claude is present, and then only on the sidelines.

The issues with Anita becoming almost impossibly powerful begin in this book – for example, she manages to raise a whole graveyard of zombies – but in this case, her powers are balanced by the presence of a foe almost as powerful as herself. There is, however, a lack of dimension to the bad guys in this book – they seem to exist just to be bad, which can make for a frustrating read.

The Laughing Corpse is an enjoyable read for fans of urban fantasy, especially those who are more interested in the mystery side of things. Long-standing fans of the series could also enjoy a return to where things began.

Review: The Force Unleashed

The Force Unleashed
by Sean Williams

Reviewed by Matthew Tait

All in all, there must be literally hundreds (if not thousands), of reviews for The Force Unleashed floating around in the universe since its inception into the world. As a precaution, I have read almost none of them. HorrorScope has always taken its roots in literature – and that is how I approached The Force Unleashed. As a novel written by a South Australian who has been given the opportunity to delve into an elaborate mythology almost unparalleled in its pervasive appeal to the world.

That said, there can be no denying what we are dealing with here: although my awareness of the video-game it’s based upon (I’m a rare Gamer) was haphazard at best, the storyline of Star Wars Episode 3.5 had, of course, trickled into my awareness over time. How could it not? For it seems there is an intrinsic fanboy adoration lurking within the psyche of any person who holds speculative fiction close to their heart. And for those of us who ignore the first two prequels as though they did not occur, an invitation to step into the window of the Dark Times is an invitation not to be ignored. For this is apocalyptical Star Wars; a Star Wars where most childhood fancies have been thrown away and a more serious milieu has engulfed the galaxy far, far away.

And through that window lies the story of Darth Vader’s secret Sith apprentice Starkiller and his whistle stop tours to find and squash the last rudiment fragments of the Jedi pocketed throughout the galaxy. Accompanying him on his journey are his droid PROXY and adept female pilot Juno Eclipse. Both have tender and amnesiac pasts full of betrayal and both are mentally warring within their awareness in relation to duties they perform in the service of the Empire. For gaming fans, I’m sure there is a veritable trove of information pertaining to a character like Juno’s plight … but this adaptation itself is replete with enough empathy where our main characters are concerned.

Ensconced in the Rouge Shadow, the unlikely pair world skip from the festering droid wastelands of Raxus Prime to the lush forests of Felucia and other worlds, encountering hostile natives and inhospitable terrain in order to extinguish the Jedi. Of course, what we have here is very much what is on offer in a video game … but I found myself warming to it. This is non-stop battle and unrelenting action; descriptive graphics spewing from the page in Sean’s deft voice that give rise to an utterly immersive world that will make you blink twice when lifting your head from the page. This is no Disney-esque outing; the Dark Side invades everything here, showing the inner workings of a Sith mind that was denied to us in the prequels.

If the book reinforces anything, it is that Sean Williams is a truly gifted writer. As a person who currently lives without deadlines, I cannot imagine the insurmountable pressure involved to bring another's vision to life, make it coherent, and please a population of people that is without equal in it’s passion for the images. The Force Unleashed is a book that even manages to resonate on an emotional level with a belter of a finale, so I was dubious when hearing that a sequel has been produced.

But knowing that it’s come from the pen of Sean, a reader shouldn’t be discouraged taking another step back into the world of the Dark Times.

Review: On Spec #81 Summer 2010

This issue of Canadian mag On Spec kicks off with a guest editorial by Edmonton writer Thomas Wharton giving some sage advice to aspiring fantasy writers on what makes a good story and includes a recommended reading list to boot.

The first fiction piece is "Still" by Greg Wilson. It's a melancholy yarn of a puppet (that's not a metaphor) taking violin lessons. It's a lovingly crafted work with impressive and left-field attention to detail in the world building - the kind of thing that would make a great basis for a piece of animation by an artist like Jan Svankmajer or the Brothers Quay.

Joel Fishbane is a fan of Rod Serling and this is pretty apparent in "The Spectacular Death of Billy Nichols". It's a story that would have fitted in very well with the Twilight Zone, which is certainly no bad thing in my book. While the idea of corporate exploitation of dreams is not a new idea, he attacks his story with verve.

"Thanks for the Game" by Rob Engen comments slyly on how first contact with aliens might play out if they landed in Canada and took a shine to ice-hockey. It's deceptive in starting out humorously before moving to a melancholy finale. This is the second science fiction story I've read in a matter of months that features the sport. I look forward to future issues featuring lacrosse and curling. In fact, where are the Australian spec fiction takes on cricket?

Marie Brennan's wistful "The Last Wendy" sees Peter Pan returning to modern day London and suffering culture shock as he tries to lure a reluctant descendant of the titular heroine back to Neverland. "The Right Chemistry" is a short one-gag piece about a pair of oxygen atoms going to a party. It's a slim idea but Susan Forest lets it go on just long enough before winding things up with a laugh out loud ending. There are glimpses of an intriguing story hidden in all the detail of "Pharaonic Park" by Shirley Barr but I found it hard going. Corey Brown goes a bit lighter on the information in "The Asheville Road" and the story is all the stronger for it. He describes a plague ravished world where rail travel is powered by human muscle. Devlin is a railman who must escort a woman from his past on a tragic errand.

This issue of On Spec seems balanced between the elegiac and the hilarious, sometimes within the same story. It's available from their website.

Review: Tall, Dark and Hungry

Tall, Dark and Hungry
(Book 4 of The Argeneau Series)
by Lynsay Sands

Date Published: 2004
Publisher: Gollanz
ISBN: 9780575093843
Format: trade paperback
Pages: 372
RRP: $6.99 (UK)

Reviewed by Gillian Polack

This is another title in the Argeneau vampire series.

Like the earlier titles, it's light and has a very low level of horror. Like the others, it has a small list of icons on the back cover letting the reader know what he or she is getting. It's about time this series was evaluated according to the checklist on the back.

1. Gothic: It has a small tick for Gothic. In the case of this volume, in particular, the tick for Gothic could be left off entirely. While many of the characters are vampires, these vampires have few gothic accoutrements. They're modern vampires, living and marrying in New York - not even the actor-vampire is gothic, really.

2. Romantic. The book gives this a big tick and that tick is accurate. Tall, Dark and Hungry is a romantic comedy, with the emphasis on people getting married and falling in love and having daft accidents. It's a light read and a lot of fun, and all the lightness and most of the fun are to do with Bastien Argeneau meeting Terri, Kate’s cousin, when Kate is preparing to marry her dream vampire.

3. Action-packed. A small tick on the back of the cover for this, and I'd agree with it. The action is largely farce and accidental. The tension levels are more of the "Will there be enough tissue paper flowers for the wedding" than life or death issues, but incident follows incident quite rapidly.

4. Funny. Not everyone's sense of humour - Tall, Dark and Hungry is quite a bit farce and a bit less screwball comedy.

5. Sexy. Again, for readers of light paranormal romance, this is about right. While it has the requisite amount of sexiness, the build-up was missing - Sands doesn't allow her characters get to know each other before moving into physical relationships. They're wondering "Why do I like this person" while they're already getting quite physical. The sexiness plot elements, therefore, don't always fit with the plot arc. It's possibly a problem with Sands loving her characters too much. She doesn't want to assign her favourites too much suffering. Most of the accidents and trials fall upon one character, who is left to handle things himself for long sequences (in a penthouse that's foodless), despite his broken leg - he's rather a fall guy, and as is scolded for his bad eating choices when he finally sorts out what he should eat. This wasn't a comfortable situation, but wasn't milked enough to make this a key part of the plot. He simply lived in the shadow of the golden children.

This book has no real baddies. It's a fun read, but there isn't enough contrast between light and dark - in fact, it's surprisingly lacking in darkness at all.

Like the other books in the series, this novel is being marketed as mainly romantic, which is a fair approach. Like the others it has inconsistencies in the small details. The other books, however, had more to them: the stakes (vampire joke!) just aren't enough in this one. The romance is effective, but it's more an office romance than a paranormal one. The plot centres on a nice woman who saves a workaholic.

Review: Single White Vampire

Single White Vampire
(Book 3 of The Argeneau Series)
by Lynsay Sands

Date Published: 2003
Publisher: Gollanz
ISBN: 9780575903836
Format: trade paperback
Pages: 369
RRP: $6.99 (UK)

Reviewed by Gillian Polack

This is another title in the Argeneau vampire series.

Unlike Love Bites, Single White Vampire provides very little suspense. This reduces the contrast in the novel and the pressure falls upon the other components to keep the reader turning pages. It's still very much a paranormal romance and all the paranormal romance boxes can be checked. It's less a story of how the vampire wins the maiden, however, than how they end up happy ever after. The winning of the maiden is, in fact, over a bit early. The tension levels are simply not there for large chunks of the story and the pacing suffers.

While the pacing isn't as good as Love Bites, the story is about a vampire who writes successful vampire romances based on his family's lives, and how that vampire learns to accept publicity and book tours and discovers true love. The tone is one of gentle and loving mockery.

This book has inconsistencies, notably in Luc's knowledge of the stuff of modern life (his full name is 'Lucern' which is supposed to refer to a lake in Switzerland, but makes me think of green stuff in pastures). Sometimes, this is well-explained, and sometimes, not very well done at all. Sometimes, it's simply annoying - Luc didn't know about condom sizing, for instance. As an excuse for a bit of sideshow, the writer bestowed upon him a denseness that doesn't match his personality.

Of greater concern is the use of other characters to highlight that Luc's English is odd and that he has a strange way of expressing himself. Sometimes, this is reflected in dialogue by giving Luc a more formal mode of speaking (not by using archaic words or syntax) but mostly Luc uses the same contemporary dialogue as the other characters. The fact that characters feel impelled to comment on Luc's word use and syntax is troubling simply because Luc is a popular writer in modern English. He has to have the language chops to achieve what he has. He's a wordsmith by trade. While it's a useful trope in vampire novels to have oddness in speech as an indication of the vampire's true age, this is not perhaps the right novel to play so heavily on that trope.

Additionally, the background history used to build Luc's past relies far too heavily on stereotypes of behaviour and on Hollywood costuming to create any deep sense of him having lived hundreds of years. At a ball with a Renaissance theme, Luc might have said, out of politeness that a renaissance dress was correct, but he would not have looked down a modern convention dinner/dance and found it anything other than modern.

These author choices reduce the level of characterisation for a key player and so lowers the overall level of believability of the novel. This is a great shame because the idea of a vampire loose in a crowed of paranormal romance fans is delightful.

Sands has a very easy writing style and manages the flow of events - things keep moving. Because of this and because the novel never takes itself or the publishing industry too seriously, it's an enjoyable book, even if the farce is slapstick and the tropes misused.

Review: Love Bites

Love Bites (Book 2 of The Argeneau Series)
by Lynsay Sands

Date Published: 2004
Publisher: Gollanz
ISBN: 9780575093812
Format: trade paperback
Pages: 373
RRP: $6.99 (UK)

Reviewed by Gillian Polack

Love Bites is straightforward paranormal romance. It's so very straightforward that it's possible to tick a little checklist and to see all the ticks line up and what variants Sands uses to make her story the little bit different that it needs to be to make it a good read.

1 - Tall, dark, handsome stranger who turns out to be a vampire. Check.
Except that this tall dark stranger is actually a blonde (still, a tall, handsome stranger - it works - as long as you ignore the cover art, which has a dark-haired dark-eyed man with a little blood dripping from his mouth - the cover is selling the genre stereotype, not the actual book).

2 - A woman with a career, preferably in some danger. Check to both.

3 - A familiar setting, in this case a coroner's. Check.

4 - A real danger. Check.
The real danger is, in fact, what lifts this volume above the others in the series. Love Bites has some very good tension going on.

5 - Sex scenes. Check.

6 - Good characterisation. Check.
This is one of the furphies about paranormal romance. It only works when the characters come right off the page. It's about people and their lives, even if some of the people are impossible, or impossibly dangerous, or impossibly perfect, or impossibly imperilled. If it doesn't reach back into the reader's life through strong characters and some familiarity of scene, then it doesn't work very well.

7 - Other vampires and humans who need lifemates. Check.
Just like Regency romances, vampire romances often have a world of their own with serial romances each receiving their own novel.

8 - A series name, for branding. Check.
The back cover says it all "An Argeneau vampire novel."

9 - Dialogue. Check.
One of the charming elements about a really good paranormal romance is dialogue that feels natural, and at best, is like something out of a Thin Man movie. The dialogue in Love Bites is good and has a natural feel.

What else does Love Bites have going for it? Lyndsay Sands has a clear prose style and a sense of humour. Her timing isn't always spot on, and the humour doesn't always work the way it's intended, but this isn't a problem in Love Bites as the focus is very clearly on the characters.

The romance is resolved fairly quickly, which lowers the tension – this is a drawback. This is why it's so important the characters face very real danger: it maintains reader interest.

Overall, this is a very entertaining paranormal romance. Not heavy. Not difficult. It has enough shades and contrast, and the humour and sex are handled well enough to keep aficionados of the sub-genre happy. If you haven't read this sub-genre before, it's also not a bad place to test the waters, to see if it suits you or if heavier and darker fare is more to your taste. It's more beach reading than either midnight terror or high literature. This isn't a criticism - it's the sort of novel that's just gorgeous for beach reading: light, fun, well-paced, with just a taste of dark.

Review: Macabre

Macabre: A Journey through Australia's Darkest Fears
Edited by Angela Challis and Dr Marty Young

Date Published: September 2010
Publisher: Brimstone Press
ISBN: 9780980567748
Format: C
Pages: 672
RRP: $44.95

Reviewed by Tony Owens

It's a daunting task to review an anthology that covers so much talent and 170 odd years of writing in Australia. But I shall gird my loins and wade in. Macabre covers a lot of ground in one hefty volume putting Australian horror fiction into some sort of historical context. Dr Marty Young starts things out well with a thoughtful and fascinating discussion of the history of the Australian horror story from its colonial beginnings to its current, chiefly urban configuration. The book is divided into three sections - Classics (1836 -1979), Modern Masters (1980-2000) and The New Era (2000 onwards).

In the Classic era, I was pleasantly surprised to find that the stories were generally quite readable in style. "The Evil Sickness" by Wolfe Herscholt is an eerie tale of the new inhabitant of a small town who wreaks havoc on the local populace. It's marred a little, though, by a seemingly tacked on happy ending. "The White Maniac: A Doctor's Tale" from 1867 is an effective vampire tale with an intriguing set up. The mysterious E. Downs gives us "The Red Cap Spectre of the Robertson: A Tale of the Gilbert Diggings". Though not particularly horrific, this ghost story is enjoyable for the amusing way in which the writer handles the vernacular of the miners in the story. "Blinded They Fly" by Vol Molesworth is a fun Lovecraftian tale of tentacled beasties, exotic locales and interdimensional travel.


Moving into the part two, the strike rate is even higher. Terry Dowling's "The Bullet that Grows in the Gun" plays a straight bat to an outrageous philosophical conceit contained in the story's title. "Rough Trade" by Robert Hood is equal parts chilling and moving dealing with the responsibility that a sculptor has for his creation and the consequences thereof. "Passing the Bone" is an emotional tale of a family curse and a race against time as the recently deceased Billy Owen heads cross country to see his son one last time. It deals practically with the drawbacks of a road trip involving a corpse should you ever find yourself in a similar situation.

And so to the Modern Era. "All the Clowns in Clowntown" makes an interesting contrast to Will Eliot's wonderful novel The Pilo Family Circus. In this case, Andrew J McKiernan makes the clowns the heroes/victims of a wild but compelling dilemma as the circus comes to town with sinister intentions. Let's face it, in genre fiction it's always bad news when the circus comes to town. "Her Collection of Intimacy" first appeared in the late lamented Black: Australian Dark Culture Magazine and has lost none of its sweaty voyeuristic power on subsequent readings. It has an ending that's hard to forget and demonstrates that you don't need to rely on overused tropes to disturb. "Take the Free Tour" by Bob Franklin starts out as an amusing cautionary tale about the dangers of online pornography before taking a decidedly darker turn. Kirstyn McDermott's story of Melbourne goths and a nasty little secret, "Monsters Among Us", has the virtue of sounding like the author had eavesdropped on a real group of people. The dialogue has an exciting verisimiltude that is sometimes lacking in dark fiction. Stephen M. Irwin's "Hive" stands out in a number of respects. Unlike many of the modern entries, it has a rural setting and an indigenous main character. It addresses the issue of child abuse in a refreshingly subtle way.

In a review of this length it's impossible to discuss all the stories. These were the stories that made the greatest impression on me but the variety and scope of the collection is such that there will be something for even the most picky reader. Impressively for an anthology of this length, there are no glaring duds to make up the numbers and what it does demonstrate is that Australia punches above its weight in horror fiction. The author bios are informative and well-written (though in the earlier sections some of the information is repeated from the introduction, which can be a little offputting). It's published by Brimstone Press and is highly recommended.

Review: By Midnight

By Midnight
by Mia James

Date Published: 2010
Publisher: Orion Books
ISBN: 9780575095533
Format: paperback
Pages: 437
RRP: $22.99

Reviewed by Gillian Polack

The Young Adult fiction universe is full of stories about teens forced to move to another city and start at a new school. They then discover that there's something strange about the city, the school, or maybe their parents. At least 50% of these books are vampire books. Very few of them are horror - most are dark fantasy or school stories containing dark fantasy.

Stating it so very bluntly makes the sub-genre sound as if it's skating on thin ice, as if there are too many books about a very limited subject. The truth is, however, that there are many possible and interesting variations on this kind of story (it's not just a matter of shifting school and city) and that the success of the novel depends far less on whether there is a teenager and a school and a paranormal secret than how the tale is told.

Mia James tells her tale well.

April Dunne moves from Edinburgh and her friends to London and a new school. She finds the only room in her new house that has mobile phone reception and claims it as her own. Her new school is the haunt of the super-rich, the super-brilliant and she feels far too ordinary for it. Many novels use this trope. It is tempting to say “insert requisite homesickness at this point in the plot” but James makes April genuinely look out of place and also uses April's change in status as a key plot point. Nothing is wasted. The conceptualisation is tight, even down to the choice of suburb (Highgate) for the new school and the use of that place's history.

All of the major characters are effectively portrayed, and James's prose is smooth. Her pop culture references work, and unlike many, will probably age well.

Some of these strengths fall down in the last part of the book where plot resolution is pressed above character development. James also adds a bunch of material to prepare the reader for the second book in the series. Not all of this material is relevant to the story of By Midnight or to the amount of information essential to interpreting this story. Unfortunately, the extra background, dilutes the tension considerably. This is a shame, because - until that point - this was a distinctly superior specimen of the sub-genre. It's still worth checking out: even the extraneous matter doesn't obscure the fact that James is a good teller-of-tales.

News: 2011 AHWA Flash and Short Story competition now open

This year's Australian Horror Writers Association (AHWA) Flash and Short Story Competition is open for submissions from now until May 31.

The two categories are:

Flash Fiction
Stories up to 1,000 words in length. The winning author will receive paid publication in Midnight Echo, the Magazine of the AHWA, and an engraved plaque.

Short Story
Stories with 1,001 to 8,000 words. The winning author will receive paid publication in Midnight Echo and an engraved plaque.

Entry Fees:

AHWA Members: Free.

Non-AHWA Members: $5 for flash fiction, $10 for short story entries.

Full entry details can be found at the AHWA website.


Source: AHWA

News: Writers rally for Queensland flood victims

The Australian writing community has rallied to raise money for victims of this month's Queensland floods with the following initiatives:

The Queensland Writers' Centre (whose headquarters in the State Library of Queensland was flooded) has created the Writers on Rafts Flood Appeal, which is seeking goods and services from authors to auction.

Similarly, the Authors for Queensland initiative is auctioning books and author services.

WA's FableCroft Publishing has released a limited edition e-book of its coincidentally aptly titled anthology After the Rain to help raise funds. Readers who donate via the FableCroft website will receive the limited edition e-book for their generosity.

Editor Jodi Cleghorn is compiling the charity anthology 100 Stories for Queensland. Authors from all genres are welcome to submit.

Review: The Fledgling Handbook

The Fledgling Handbook
by PC Cast with Kim Doner

Date Published: 2010
Publisher: Atom Books
ISBN: 9781907410703
Format: hardback
Pages: 159
RRP: $24.99

Reviewed by Gillian Polack

This title is a background to The House of Night series by PC Cast. The series explores the vampire school theme, following a girl's path to adulthood. I haven't read the series. This is very important. The Fledgling Handbook is addressed mostly to a theoretical aspirant for vampyre status and so a strong identification with the school and the world of the story is key. The horror element is very low. Vampyres themselves are linked strongly with modern Pagan values or perhaps a nature belief.

The Fledgling's Handbook is mostly a user's guide to the vampyre series, providing to readers the background to the stages a student must progress through and what they can expect to find. There's some very nice art illuminating this. Its best audience are readers who are already fans of the series, although it would be useful as a companion volume to the first novel in the series. It's not a completely fabricated reference book, like some of the Harry Potter ones. It exists half in the world of the vampyre and half in a world marketing the stories told in that world. This won't be a problem for fans of the series, but it might be annoying for readers who have yet to discover it.

What's interesting about this book is the way PC Cast uses the Harry Potter Effect - the demand by readers for the world of their novels to exist in a wider universe. There are certain factors that are important in meeting this demand.

- The most important one is how well the book creates that believability. The Fledgling Handbook doesn't try for a complete illusion. The titles of the novels are clearly advertised, and the book is very clearly written by PC Cast rather than by a character in House of Night's vampyre universe.

- Almost as crucial is the quality of the presentation. A lot of work has gone into making it visually interesting. It's not visually challenging but the art is an integral part of the volume and very important for creating the illusion of reality.

Most of the text is a reinterpretation of history and of school scheduling to explain the universe. Some of this undermines the reality of the universe: the bad Latin, for instance - caritas can mean costly or it can mean affection, but I've never seen it explained as 'chariot'; or the dating system (which uses BCE and AD in a comfortably confused manner); or the way in which a Jewish theological idea (Shekhinah - turned into Shekinah, the High Priestess of Vampyres) was turned into a person. This is not a book for the careful checker-of-facts or for the history buff.

This volume has been designed rather than just put together; however, the content is inconsistent. It's part a handbook and part an explanation of the universe for a reader not in the universe. While this inconsistency in approach means it falls short of DM Cornish's Lamplighter world or Shaun Tan's The Arrival, it's nevertheless good to see a focus on design, and the book itself is enjoyable to explore.

In short, The Fledgling's Handbook is for followers of the series ... it's not aimed at a broader public.

Review: She Lover of Death

She Lover of Death: The Further Adventures of Erast Fandorin
by Boris Akunin (translated by Andrew Bromfield)

Date Published: 2009
Publisher: Weidenfeld & Nicolson
ISBN: 978029785594
Format: trade paperback
Pages: 263
RRP: $12.99 (UK)

Reviewed by Gillian Polack

A series of spectacular suicides rocks Moscow in 1900. As soon as she comes of age, Masha Miranova runs away from Siberia and towards the bright lights. Almost instantly, she leaves her name behind ('Columbine' is so much more interesting), buys a snake, and joins a suicide club where she gladly jeopardises her life and puts her poetry on show.

This is a fascinating book and a delightful one. Certainly not horror, it teeters on the brink of dark fantasy. It borrows strongly from the traditions of nineteenth century penny dreadfuls, of the sort written by LM Alcott and criticised by one of her characters in Little Women. It plays with the shocking and the melodramatic and (most of the time) the writer's tongue is firmly in his cheek. It's flamboyant and fun, but the supernatural is not necessarily a major force, and occasionally, the plot is a bit forced.

It's hard to pin down a precise readership for She Lover of Death. It's not really a Young Adult book, despite the length. Most of the time, it reads as a historical detective novel, painted with a brush dipped in melodrama and humour and the grotesque.

Although the history is very much an invented history, the mania for death and for strange emotions fits neatly in with the 1900 Moscow setting. Columbine is daring in precisely the right ways. She's a very real character, from the boldness and inappropriateness of her dress sense to her incapacity to sort out the difference between the world she lives in and the world she thinks she lives in or between her actual emotions and what she thinks she ought to be feeling as both poet and death-lover.

It's a funny novel, sarcastic and observant. It's not dark or imbued with all-absorbing terror, but it explores logical potential outcomes of macabre situations. It contains everything from derring-do through contemplations of the afterlife to a young girl's coming of age. In fact, a solid example of why this title doesn't fall within the Young Adult genre is that precisely when the girl in question finally sorts through things, the narrative moves its focus away from her and solves the mystery rather than dwelling on her maturation in any depth.

Perhaps the most significant problem with it is that the different points of view all sound similar. The chapter headings and page setup become very important tools for following each character and remind the reader who is speaking or thinking. Also, the transliteration (and the personalty) of the Japanese character reminds me too much of the casual lampooning of Chinese figures in the same penny dreadfuls to which Akunin is paying homage. Both of these issues could be partly due to choices made by the translator, or they could be entirely from the original. The problem with a book in translation is that the reader has no way of telling.

Still, it's a romp of a read, very suited for those who like their humour dark.

News: The Dead Path tops American Library Association's list of horror books

The US version of Stephen M. Irwin's Australian Shadows Award-nominated novel The Dead Path has been named as the best horror novel in the USA's Reference and User Services Association's (RUSA) 2011 Reading List. RUSA is a division of the American Library Association and is the USA's foremost organisation of reference and information professionals.

The RUSA selectors compared The Dead Path to Stephen King's iconic IT and Briane Keene's Dark Hollow, describing the novel as "Childhood nightmares and fairytale motifs combine in this emotionally powerful tale of implacable evil. Arachnophobes beware!"

The Dead Path was selected over a stellar short list comprised of:

• The Caretaker of Lorne Field by David Zeltserman (Overlook)
• The Frenzy Way by Gregory Lamberson (Medallion Press)
• Horns by Joe Hill (William Morrow)
• So Cold the River by Michael Koryta (Little Brown)

The full RUSA 2011 Reading List is here.


Source: American Library Association.

Review: Elements of the Apocalypse

R. Thomas Riley, John Sunseri, Ryan C. Thomas, D. L. Snell, 2010, Permuted Press

Earth, air, fire, water: these elements will be our destruction. Chaos erupts when Mother Earth begins to purge the sickness that is mankind. In a hopeless future, humanity must fight the unseen enemy who has poisoned the very air. Civilisation crumbles as all the water in the world rapidly begins to evaporate. Ashes fill the sky as spontaneous human combustion erupts on a world-wide scale. Four tales drawn from the classic Greek elements show the end of the world in ways you've never imagined.

In Elements of the Apocalypse, Permuted Press and a stable of their regular contributing authors do what they do best - highly entertaining and nihilistic Apocalyptic fiction. There's something here for every genre reader, from the unpleasantly spot-on observation of social collapse in Snell's 'Remains', to the '70s disaster-movie feel of Riley's 'Phrenetic', the Lovecraftian horror of Sunseri's 'Silence in Heaven', and the small scale tragedy vs large-scale disaster of Thomas' 'With a Face of Golden Pleasure'.

Elements of the Apocalypse is a great read overall (minor disappointments include the rather weak ending of 'Phrenetic', and the conclusion to 'Silence in Heaven', which mirrors that of a novel by a certain well-known Scientologist), all four pieces being extremely well-written and engaging, with empathic characters and plenty of suspense and action. I'll additionally single out 'With a Face of Golden Pleasure' as one of the most affecting and unsettlingly credible pieces of Apocalyptic fiction I've read in recent years.

It's a genuine pleasure to see Permuted Press going from strength to strength with each new publication, and this anthology certainly follows that trend. Genre readers really do owe it to themselves to familiarise themselves with Permuted's back-catalogue, which truly represents some of the very best related fiction available today.

Review: Stories For the End of The World

Eric Shapiro, 2010, Permuted Press

'A suburban kid has to choose between spending the apocalypse with his family, or going to see the girl he loves. An aging businessman finds himself in the confines of a drowning skyscraper, thinking about his violent past. A lonely loser purchases a female robot, only to learn that she has a wicked self-destructive streak ... In this collection of three novellas and seven short stories, author Eric Shapiro presents characters well beyond the outer edges of sanity. With primal intensity and head-splitting surrealism, we see worlds collapsing, societies shattering, hearts breaking, and minds getting blown...'

Let me dive straight in here without any of my usual meandering towards The Opinion of the Reviewer: Eric Shapiro is one of a small number of largely small-press authors whose work - based upon almost everything of his I've ever read - I would cross apocalyptic landscapes to get ahold of. He's quite simply a brilliant writer; one of a select few on my radar* who manage to balance with seemingly no effort whatsoever the most wonderfully literary prose with genuinely entertaining narrative. His ability to get inside the head of his protagonists - way past the point that his protagonists themselves are capable of - is nothing short of unsettling, and underpins even his most surreal tales with a foundation of reality.

Readers have a right to expect great things from any 'best of'-type collection, and I hereby give my own personal guarantee that Stories For the End of the World will not disappoint. Highlights here include Shapiro's celebrated novella 'It's Only Temporary', wherein the protagonist voyages cross-country in order to be with the one he loves before the end of the world arrives, a concept that has certainly been explored before, but never before or since in a manner so fresh and affecting. Also, 'Days of Allison', a tale owing more than a little to Phillip K. Dick's Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, yet taken to a whole new level by the intimate exploration of the mind of the central protagonist.

I could rave on at far greater length about the prose of Eric Shapiro, but what it would all boil down to is essentially this: Shapiro is an author who - and I don't say this lightly - absolutely deserves to be read. Stories For the End of the World is as good an encapsulation of the very best that speculative fiction has to offer as you're currently likely to find, and I simply cannot recommend it highly enough. Genre readers do themselves a massive injustice by not immediately buying and devouring this publication.


* This group also includes Paul Haines, Deborah Biancotti, Tony Burgess and Jason Hornsby, to name just a few, and you really must read their work too. 

Review: A Million Versions of Right by Matthew Revert

'Acclimatising to a new reality takes time. The mind is stubborn and won't give up without a fight.' This is a quote from "Meeting Max" one of six stories in this collection of what is subtitled as 'the terribly unusual short fiction of Matthew Revert'. It also serves to encapsulate the difficulty I had with this book. It sits firmly within the absurdist Bizarro camp and sometimes finding your way into the worlds that are described can be difficult.

"A Million Versions of Right" is the tale of a son whose first experience of masturbation is the production of a miniature moustachioed tradesman who proceeds to encase the hapless hero in tiles. "The Bricolage Scrotum" features a teacher obsessed with demonstrating the basic ugliness of the scrotal sac to his students and the violent opposition of pro-scrotum groups. "The Great Headphone Wank" features a set of headphones through which the only sounds that can be heard are the sounds of disembodied, eh, wanking. Meeting Max centres on the introduction of a drug that eradicates menstruation into a city's barbershop district (don't ask). "Power Blink" revolves around the application of a bandaid and three-way marriage. And "The Bookmark That Wouldn't Work" is about, well, a bookmark that wouldn't work. A barebones synopsis like that is likely to scare off most casual readers.

What works? There are certainly lots of interesting ideas buzzing around in this volume. So much so that you wish he would concentrate on one and trim out some of the more gratuitous peripheral details. Despite the oddity of the situations described, they feel internally consistent even if we're not cognisant of the rules of engagement ourselves. But it's hard to feel empathy with characters whose motivations are sometimes opaque or just downright freaky. "The Great Headphone Wank" worked best for me because the central character was as close to normal as you're likely to get in these stories. While finding himself in grotesque situations, he acknowledges them as such and draws the reader into the world.

There are some laugh out loud moments. I particularly enjoyed the permission slip sent home by the Yandish Muff Primary School in "The Bricolage Scrotum". But the constant obsession with genitalia and bodily secretions does become a bit exhausting when the stories are read one after the other. This is an anthology that is best dipped into rather than consumed at one sitting. You may end up with mental indigestion otherwise. If you find the films of David Lynch a bit mundane and obvious, this could be the book for you. A Million Versions of Right is published by LegumeMan Books whose website can be found right here.

News: The 2010 (Genre) Bookselling Year in Review

...or at least one Australian bookseller's take on it.

Follow the link below for a frank review of sales of SF, Fantasy, Horror and Paranormal Romance titles at Dymocks Southland over the past year, as reported by HorrorScope's Chuck McKenzie.

http://chuckmck1.livejournal.com/35428.html

Review: Scenes from the Second Storey (Australian Edition), edited by Amanda Pillar and Pete Kempshall

When I first became aware of the Scenes from the Second Storey anthology (from Morrigan Books), I was sceptical. I believed it would be simply another of those themed anthologies that was so bizarre and narrow in its vision that it possessed little value except as a novelty. How could it be anything else? It's a 'tribute' to the album of the same name from a relatively obscure 90s alternative band (The God Machine). Authors were to write short stories inspired by the album's tracks, and these stories were then presented in the same running order.

Imagine this reviewer's surprise, then, when the first story in Scenes, "Dream Machine" by David Conyers, turned out to be one of the best stories of 2010! "Dream Machine" follows Adamson, a man literally pulling himself back together after countless years of torture in Hell. Satan raises Adamson up as Hell's Assassin and then the fun begins! Adamson's journey to learn his trade shows Conyers at his imaginative best. Not only that, as part of this training, the reader is offered glimpses into scenes from the other stories in the anthology (a literal pun on the anthology's title, particularly given the perspective with which Adamson views these scenes). Conyers prose in "Dream Machine" is much more assured than in his earlier work, and his seamless portrayal of a somewhat unsympathetic protagonist (in light of the reveal at the end) shows his growth as a storyteller. Dark, flawed, but sympathetic protagonists is a theme amongst many of the later stories.

"She Said" by Kirstyn McDermott is another standout, an almost painfully personal sketch of an artist, Josh, and his girlfriend, Mallory. There are strong surrealistic touches in this story, but unlike other, more bizarre tales (such as Warren's "Purity" late in the anthology), "She Said" is held together with well-realised characters and an internally consistent world. As McDermott says in her afterword, this story is about "masochistic muses". There is a thread of need pervading this story, and that neediness feels dirty, both for the characters and the reader. Darkness doesn't get much more personal than this.

Felicity Dowker is a writer who has burst on the scene in the last few years, and one of her hallmarks is her strong use of visual language. The imagery in "The Blind Man" is stunning and nauseating, at times. "The Blind Man", like the stories from Conyers, McDermott, and Hood, is an ugly story about ugly people. That it's also compelling and entertaining is a testament to the skill of the writer. Dowker has woven a satisfying tale of revenge and vampirism (literally and figuratively). Twihards take note of the vampire in this story - he's certainly no Edward Cullen!

Paul Haines chimes in with "I've Seen the Man", which while dark, deviates away from the horror of the previous stories. Like McDermott's story, "I've Seen the Man" feels deeply personal. In this case, it's a reflective of the chemotherapy that the author has endured. The story takes the concept of chemo, fuses it with designer recreational drugs, and creates a weird, futuristic feeling culture of corporate stoners. While intriguing, "I've Seen the Man", isn't as entertaining as the earlier tales, but it is well-written and helps expand the Hainesverse.

"The Desert Song" by Andrew J. McKiernan is a highlight of the anthology. It is the quintessential Australian post-apocalypse story, with Aboriginal mojo, advanced technology, zombies, and Christian demagoguery fused together into a compelling tale. Any story that begins with a man in the desert making coffins and dire predictions of a coming evil is guaranteed to intrigue, but McKiernan throws in a few twists that keep the story rolling along in unexpected directions. The interaction with Reverend Wallace and the Bedouin provides a clash of cultures and theologies, which adds an extra dimension to the menace of the post-apocalypse apocalypse (yes, something evil is stalking an outback town that has survived the end of days). "The Desert Song" is a must read for anyone interested in post-apocalyptic fiction. It offers a thoughtful explanation for the zombie phenomenon with an innovative slant.

Martin Livings has published a couple of stream of consciousness stories lately, with "Home" the latest. It's a fascinating story, tapping into the zeitgeist of the Iraq war. With its cycle of death playing over in endless variations, one could read this as a story of purgatory. Is soldier Jack a murderer or victim? Is he on the operating table, hallucinating the whole thing? It's all very Jacob's Ladder. The cycle continues on and on, and as Livings himself says in his afterword, "home is where the heart is, but where is home when your heart is gone?" A compelling read.

"It's All Over" is by L. J. Hayward, a new writer with promise if this story is anything to go by. A classic ghost story, complete with remote lighthouse and dark and stormy night, "It's All Over" had an initially confusing climax (why would the ghost of Kristen, whom the protagonist James loved so much, want him dead?), but the denouement partly explained the confusion while adding an air of mystery. This story, which had an urban legend kind of feel, had a nice circularity to it.

Certain authors are an acquired taste. Kaaron Warren (reviewed later) is one. Trent Jamieson is another. The short story as a medium can be detrimental to writers who like to luxuriate in their fantastical worlds, and Jamieson's work occasionally suffers for the length. "Temptation", which follows a couple of adventurers attempting the deadly crossing of a bridge, is one such example. The plot is simple: Bolland and Smirker try to cross Victoria Bridge. Opposing them are amorphous body hitchhikers known as Bads, and of course, The Dark. Details of the world are dropped with casual abandon, whizzing past the reader's head. The downside is that the reader can be confused, not really understanding the nuances of the plot. The upside to Jamieson's approach is that the story has a dizzying effect, and the glimpses of the greater world hint at something dark and alluring. "Temptation" is not a brilliant story, but the prose is sparkling and the concepts are dazzling.

Something strange (and some, depending on their tastes, might say wonderful) happens in the last third of the anthology. The gritty, dark, realism tempo shifts dramatically - a full 180 degrees - and the reader is flung into outer space with Stephen Dedman's story, "Out", and the darkness that pervades the earlier stories is shed like a discarded coat. Dedman's "Out" focusses on the human side of generational space travel, tackling the issue from the perspective of a girl raised in zero g who is afraid her special nature will be lost when the ship eventually lands planetside. "Out" is an engrossing story with a neat twist that sends a sinking feeling through the stomach, but everything turns out for the best, which sets the tone for the tail end of the anthology.

Robert Hood brings the nastiness back temporarily with the next story, "Ego", but then the spell is broken. Subsequent stories by Stephanie Campisi, Kaaron Warren, and Cat Sparks end the anthology on a discordant note (compared to what came before). Before discussing that ... Hood's "Ego", like some of the earlier pieces, is that rare beast of a story told from the antagonist's perspective, and so convincing is that telling, I'm beginning to suspect the author himself has trodden a few dark paths in his life. "Ego" is another highlight of the anthology, which is high praise given the unsympathetic nature of the main character. Robert Hood excels at ghost stories, and "Ego" is part ghost story, part psychological autopsy. It's a challenging read but well worth it.

"Seven" by Stephanie Campisi was confusing. That's not to say this reviewer failed to understand the premise. With it's heart set in Russia, this story was a Russian Doll, with layers and characters within layers and characters. It's an admirable piece of technical storytelling. While the speculative element was slight (and largely implied), "Seven" was closer in nature to a romance, albeit it a forlorn love story. Like Siberia or the most acclaimed works of the literary genre, it was cold and bleak, but along the way, the story failed its most basic requirement: it wasn't entertaining or engaging.

Carrying on the theme of non-horror strangeness in the tail end of the anthology, Kaaron Warren's "Purity" tells the story of evangelical healers, dirt, and the cleansing of dirt. There were plenty of metaphors, to be sure, but this story just came across as bizarre. Like some of Warren's other short stories, "Purity" heaps on the strangeness at the expense of a coherent plot, and in this case, the divide between the two was too much for the story to be genuinely enjoyable. Many readers, however, will like the visceral imagery and be content to simply go along for the ride. Despite the blood and filth, it's a surprisingly upbeat story.

Cat Sparks' "The Piano Song" concludes Scenes from the Second Storey. It's a bright, happy, and hopeful story, punctuated with moments of teenage doubt and peer pressure, but even the story's shadows are obliterated by the glare of spotlights in the song-and-dance act at the end of the story. "The Piano Song" is an accomplished story, and despite the young adult subject matter, represents the pinnacle of Sparks' maturity as a writer. However, the story is not horror (or even dark), and it is a significant deviation from the tone of the earlier stories, which given the suggestion of the blood-spattered cover and the grimness of the first two thirds of the anthology, kind of left this reviewer scratching his head.

Publisher Mark S. Deniz should be congratulated for bringing an obscure band back into the light. Since reading the anthology and listening to the songs, I've become fond of The God Machine's music, which is a cross pollination I'm sure Deniz was hoping to achieve. Listening to the album as a soundtrack to the stories is a fascinating experience. Sometimes, the link between story and song is obvious. Sometimes, it's tenuous. Regardless, it's a fabulous insight into the minds of the authors.

[Edit: To listen to several of the songs from the Scenes from the Second Storey album, visit the Myspace tribute page]

Without reservation, this is one of the strongest Australian anthologies of the 2000s. Scenes from the Second Storey (Australian Edition) highlights many of the 2000s' best and brightest authors at the top of their game. The stories by Conyers, McDermott, and McKiernan are among their very best. More importantly, the stories from Hood, Campisi, and Sparks stretch their technical capabilities as writers, demonstrating sides of them that haven't been shown in previous outings. The remaining stories are all uniformly solid. There is genuinely not a weak story in the bunch, although some might find a few of the stories not to their taste.

Editors Amanda Pillar and Pete Kempshall have combined well to publish a polished, entertaining anthology, of which they should be proud. Had the editors applied a stronger editorial hand with the tail end stories to maintain the dark theme, the anthology as a whole would have been close to perfect, but as presented, Scenes from the Second Storey collects some of the best and most significant stories published by Australians in the last few years. It's certainly more than a novelty!

Scenes from the Second Storey can be purchased from Morrigan Books.

News: Aeon Award 2011 launched

Irish speculative fiction magazine Albedo One has announced the launch of the Sixth International International Aeon Award Short Fiction Contest. The Aeon Award is a writing competition, and its goals are to promote writers and writing in the speculative fiction genres.

The contest is open to writers from all nationalities for stories of up to 10,000 words long, that are previously unpublished in English. Grand Prize is €1000 and publication in Albedo One. Second and third place prizes are €200 and €100 euro and publication in Albedo One. The contest is open from January 1st 2011 to the end of November 2011.

An entry fee of 7 euro applies, which can be paid online via PayPal on the Aeon Award contest guidelines page.


Source: Albedo One

News: Dark Prints Press anthologies open to submissions

The submissions period is now open for two forthcoming anthologies from Western Australian publisher Dark Prints Press. Surviving the End is a horror anthology that focuses on human survival (or lack of) in a post-apocalyptic world, whilst The One That Got Away is an anthology that takes a darker stance on crime fiction.

Submissions are open until the end of April 2011, with both publications set to grace bookshelves (and ebook stores) early 2012. Many bestselling authors (such as Lawrence Block, Jonathan Maberry, Jason Nahrung, and Joseph D’Lacey) are already lined up to contribute.

Full submission guidelines are available on the Dark Prints Press website.

News: Dymocks Southland Bestselling Zombie Titles for December 2010

Visit NecroScope to read this item.

http://zombiefictionreview.blogspot.com/2011/01/news-dymocks-southland-bestselling.html

News: Dymocks Southland Bestselling Dark Fiction Titles for December 2010

1. Last Sacrifice (Vampire Academy #6) - Richelle Mead
2. Full Dark, No Stars - Stephen King
3. Pride & Prejudice & Zombies - Austen / Graeme-Smith
4. Torment (Fallen #2) - Lauren Kate
5. Under the Dome - Stephen King
6. American Psycho - Bret Easton Ellis
7. The Passage - Justin Cronin
8. Alone (Chasers #1) - James Phelan
9. Night of the Living Trekkies - Anderson / Stall
10. The Zombie Combat Manual - Roger Ma