13 Days of Halloween: Flesh & Bone

by Jonathan Maberry
Simon & Schuster 2012

Benny and his friends continue on their quest to find what's left of civilization before the zombies and death cults get to them first. Third in a (seemingly) endless series.

Why is it so hard for writers, agents, editors and publishers to know when a story has gone on too long and jumped the shark? 

Long-time readers here at the excelsior file might remember how much I loved the first book in this series, Rot & Ruin. In it I thought Maberry had followed the time-honored tradition of using a known genre to explore some aspect of society, to provide a touch of social commentary among the horror. In that particular book I thought he'd touched on an allegory to our own times with zombies acting as a focus of xenophobic fear. There was a sense of "zombies were people, too" that underscored the ignorance of those who would simply choose to fear outsiders and live a life sheltered from the world at large. I thought Rot & Ruin might stand up over time as the beginning of a truly unique series.

The second book, Dust and Decay, was a little more of a hero's journey, the dark passage where Benny would become the merciful zombie silencer all the while working his way through the wilderness on a path toward finding the origins of a jet he once saw, his hope for a rebuilt civilization. In a sort of mash-up of influences there was a bit of a samurai movie that eventually gave way to a Thunderdome-esque ending that threatened to sink the entire story. There was also a hint of a new religion sprouting up from the decay, an apocalyptic death cult that was possibly more organized than Benny and company ever imagined.

Now comes Flesh and Bone, and in the anti-spoiler alert of the year, Benny and his friends don't end up any closer to finding that jet. Perhaps it was something in me that expected the story to come to some conclusion with this third book but it is so clear half way through (and confirmed in the end) that there is a great battle looming in an as-yet-published fourth book that I started feeling bored. How sad, to have felt such great promise in the beginning only to not really care enough by the end of the third book to even want to read the fourth.

I am not against the notion of epic tales, but when I look at a trilogy like Lord of the Rings and see what was accomplished in three books I tend to question whether lengthy series can actually justify their length. I also begin to wonder of the idea of television series, with their seemingly endless storylines, have conditioned readers to amble along until interest drops and then things get hastily wrapped up. Story arcs have multiplied and become so elastic and I don't always think that it serves the best interest of fiction in the end.

So Benny and Nix and Lilah and Chong continue on, with an army of mutated zombies and a war-hungry death cult and  escaped zoo animals all venturing into the wastelands of North America. If any traces of civilization survived that civil world has clearly been outnumbered by the rot and decay to the point where this reader asks "What's the point?"

But if your taste runs towards a small band of heroes facing off against zoms, Flesh and Bone's got your number.

13 Days of Halloween: In a Glass Grimmly

by Adam Gidwitz
Dutton 2012

Jack and Jill (and a Frog) went up a beanstalk to fetch a magic mirror. Along the way they outwit Giants, Goblins, a fire-breathing salamander named Eddie, and their parents. A companion to 2010's A Tale Dark and Grimm.

Lately I've been wondering if we do more harm than good by making childhood too safe. I'm not thinking about car seats or non-toxic flame-retardant materials, but a sort of intellectual safety that prevents curiosity and the development of common sense more than it protects. We would prefer to believe it is more important to teach children to fear strangers than to develop an internal sense of knowing when and whom to fear.

The problem (for those who find it a problem) is that without a hard and fast set of rules we have the dual issue of teaching the difficult (intuition) coupled with an unacknowledged root source (adult responsibility, or lack thereof). The sad thing is that there is a solution, its been with us for hundreds of years, and we take it for granted: storytelling. There's a lot that can be learned in a story, and they don't have to be overly moralistic or didactic, and they can occasionally be quite fun. Horrifying, gory, disagreeable and yet unexplainable good fun.

And the best part is that kids really like it.

For those who haven't gleaned it from the title, In A Glass Grimmly, Adam Gidwitz's "companion" to A Tale Dark and Grimm, takes as its source the folk and fairy tales once told to children back when people lived closer to a world full of inexplicable horror. Lacking medicine, much less the concept of hygiene, there were invisible things far scarier than the shadows that dwell in the nearby woods, ah, but what wonderful stories could be constructed from those shadows. As a result, though these tales were as full of the sort of caution we might dole out to our own kids these days it was done with a great deal of adventure, magic, and humorous absurdity as well.

Gidwitz begins with parallel stories about a pair of children, a boy named Jack who is a bit dim and unpopular with other boys, and Jill who is being reared to be as shallow and cruel as her mother. Actually, no, Gidwitz starts with the story of a frog, a hapless amphibian who falls in love with a vain princess, is gifted with ability to speak, and suffers for believing the princess's promises of friendship in exchange for his assistance. These three stories, variants of "The Frog Prince," "The Emperor's New Clothes," and "Jack and the Beanstalk" – all with quite a bit of modification – bind our trio of adventurers out to learn the harsh cruelties the world has to offer in exchange for obtaining the thing each wants most.

The astute reader can find within this tale any frame of reference they bring with them. Even those who might not recognize the original tales Gidwitz creates within his framework will nonetheless recognize the various hero's journeys found in other tales. There's as much Wizard of Oz as there is Lord of the Rings with all the blood and guts and foolishness of the true fairy tales of old. Meant to shock or call attention to the peril, the violence in these stories can be easy to dismiss as "once upon a time" but the cruelty, the psychological terror and abuse adults inflict on these children (and a hapless frog) are still very much real for many readers. If there can be advantage found in stories that reflect contemporary "issues" then I would argue the same for a carefully constructed epic fairy tale like In A Glass Grimmly.

But here's the biggest draw for me: it's fun to read. It's fun and it breezes by, pages flying with unbelievable twists, recognizing old tales and looking for the moments they diverge from their more traditional tellings. Gidwitz likes to break in occasionally (less than in the previous book, which was too bad, because I enjoyed those digressions) and warn the reader of what's to come. There's a wink and a nod because, as much as he's prepared us, the true horrors have nothing to do with the acts of violence about transpire. He's smart enough to trust the reader will know the purpose of these warnings is to break (or increase) tension and playfully knock the reader off balance. It makes the experience interactive, conspiratorial, and, as I said, a kick to read.

Finally, if there is a sense that readers have of "growing out of" fairy tales, as these stories being for more younger children, I'd like to suggest that the real problem comes from a progressive sanitation of these stories over time. It is easy to grow weary of happy endings that come with no larger lesson. The frog isn't turned into a prince by a kiss in the original, he is flung against the wall by the princess in a deliberate attempt to kill him, and when he is revealed to be a prince the princess is so humiliated she spends the rest of her days in his servitude. I daresay things for Frog are much worse here, though in the end he ends up the hero in a way he never was in any fairy tale previously written. If a teen guy were to give this book a chance they might find that they really do still like fairy tales.

(This review originally appeared over at Guys Lit Wire on October 10, 2012)

Mister Creecher

by Chris Priestley
Bloomsbury 2011

The creature walks the streets of London, with the Artful Dodger, hunting down the mad doctor!  No, Boris Karloff does not make an appearance.

The scene is London, 1918, and there in the darkened, fog-damp streets is Billy, pickpocket and petty thief. Billy starts off in a spot of trouble with the local thugs when is hide is saved by an enormous monster of a man who Billy comes to call Mister Creecher. An odd and uneasy bond develops between them as Mr. C convinces him to come along on a bloody (literally) little trip to the country in search of the true monster, the man who made Mr C what he is, one Doctor Victor Frankenstein. While in the country Billy sees a bucolic side of life, something better than being a street rat, and he pretends to be a poet to win a young lady's affection. Ah, but the good Doctor has his eye set on creating a new creature, a companion for Mr C if you will, and suddenly all paths converge in a way that sends Billy back to the comforts of London's rough and tumble street. It's there that he'll start to go by his grown name of Bill... Bill Sikes.

What? How did Dickens end up in all this?

For a new take on Frankenstein's monster this is an interesting idea, the blending of two fictional characters in one setting. But if you have a familiarity with Frankenstein and Oliver Twist it's hard to see the mash-up without your thoughts getting trapped in a corner of literary logic. How could these two worlds exist at the same time? Worse, I found while reading that I was starting to hear bits of the musical Oliver! play in my mind while scenes played out like an old 1930s movie staring Boris Karloff. Which is to say that Priestley does a good job catching the mood but the mood in this book feels borrowed at every turn. I did like that Creecher was articulate, almost aristocratic in bearing, and he makes an interesting "mentor" if we are to believe that this particular Billy will become, in manner at least, like his Dickensian namesake.

So for the idea in general, I like, but I don't know that it's going to stick with me over time.

Half-Minute Horrors

edited by Susan Rich
HarperCollins 2009

Billed as a "collection of instant frights from the world's most astonishing authors and artists," Half-Minute Horrors lives up to its title by presenting super-short sudden fiction to middle grade readers who like a little creepiness. Just a little, not too much. A set-up, some sort of mystery, and an unsettling cliffhanger of an ending are the norm here, almost all of them short enough to read in the promised half a minute.

And when I say a little creepiness that doesn't mean they can't be somewhat disturbing. There are implications of cannibalism, creatures laying in wait to swallow you whole, disembodied hands that come calling while you sleep... but all stopped right at the moment of impact so that the reader can quickly turn the page if necessary. Because the engagement is so short there isn't enough time to plant too strong a mental picture to disturb. Yeah, if you think about some of these stories long enough they can really delve into truly terrifying territory, but the reader interested in horror is going to feel cheated if the author or the story pulls its punch too much or too quickly. Many of these stories plant their final, fatal twist in the last line for maximum impact so that even the seemingly odd story suddenly can turn on a dime.

There are also some illustrated stories - I hesitate to call them comics, but some do take that format - which perform the graphic equivilent of their narrative counterparts. Perhaps only "Worms" by Lane Smith, a visually retelling of the gory old rhyme "The worms go in, the worms go out..." goes the furthest with its graphic depiction of life pre- and post-humus. Still, all good creepy fun.

One of the things this book reminded me of was a series of books I had as a boy called "One Minute Mysteries" which would set the reader up with a drawing room situation and some details that would allow a reader to guess what had happened. Only I could never guess correctly and instead of enjoying the mystery I found the books frustrating because they made me feel stupid. I suppose the idea of a minute mystery was meant for boys like me who (at the time) were struggling with reading, but that book sent me the wrong direction. Perhaps the lack of character and emotion was the problem, but I never really got into the mystery genre as a result.

There's no similar problem here with Half-Minute Horrors because the stories clearly spell out the (pending) doom, leaving the reader to invest as much emotion as their own fears permit. The various authors are all top-notch – M.T. Anderson, Adam Rex, Sarah Weeks, Holly Black, Jack Gantos, Jon Scieszka, Avi, and Lauren Myracle to name but a scant few –and include some generally regarded as adult writers, like Margaret Atwood and Jonathan Lethem, delivering on a wide variety of themes.

I realize this comes too late to incorporate into Halloween lesson plans, but I would hope that the audience for this kind of thing sees this as more of an evergreen title. I think for the reluctant reader the ability to whiz through dozens of stories at one sitting will make the book feel much shorter than its 130 pages, and for other readers the shortness of these stories can serve as a sort of palate cleanser between much larger books, a sampler platter of ghoulish delights.

Yuk, did I just write that last semi-blurb-worthy sentence?

Anyway, lots of gory fun.

Granny

by Anthony Horowitz
Puffin Books 1994

Really? 1994? Apparently so, though this obvious reprinting is going to benefit from the Alex Rider series in terms of getting marketing and name recognition, there is a side of Horowitz I hadn't expected and rather liked – his inner Roald Dahl.

Joe Warden and his family are on the run. Desperately they rush to the airport and take the first flight they can find that takes them as far away from their comfy British home. What sort of evil could they possibly be escaping? Wizards with designs to take over the world? Genetic mutations that threaten to devour their DNA? Mad scientists? Ghostly apparitions?

Sort of. The unspeakable evil from which they are escaping is Joe's Granny.

From this opening we flash back to the moment when Joe first begins to suspect that his dottering old granny might not exactly be as she appears. She forgets Joe's name, gives him inappropriate gifts, and seems to be losing her marbles. But when Joe's parents take a vacation and leave Joe in Granny's care it becomes clear that it has all been an act, that Granny has been laying the groundwork to extend her life and that of fellow grannies by extracting vital electrolytes... from Joe's cellular structure!

Worse, even when a violent explosion fails to fell Granny she informs that death isn't the worst thing that could happen to her: she promises to come back and haunt Joe for the rest of his days when she dies.

Desperation forces Joe to expose Granny to his parents who come to realize that Granny is, indeed, evil, and thus their frantic escape from their home in the hopes of outwitting Granny and her eventual ghost.

Horowitz runs the story at an appropriately breakneck pace, ratcheting the tension and the horror of Granny at every turn. He has tapped into Dahl's well to extract a world full of uncaring and untrustworthy adults out destroy children one way or another. It's as darkly delicious as it is funny, and exactly the sort of book a middle grade boy would devour.

I understand the appeal of the Alex Rider series for older readers, and his Diamond Brothers mystery series, but I wish he'd write more like this.

The Curse of the Campfire Weenies

and Other Warped and Creepy Tales
by David Lubar
Tom Doherty / 2007

Why have I waited two years to review this book? I think it was because it got lost in one of the many piles of books, later to be hidden during moving. But part of me wonders if I didn't deliberately and subconsciously hide this book away. Because I was embarrassed? Because I was offended? Insulted? None of these.

It's because I was inspired. This was one of a handful of books I've read in the past couple of years that opened up a trap door in my brain that leads directly to the unfiltered twelve year old me. Long packaged away safely as a memory, as a slave to selective revelation, this book seems to know where the the cage is weakest and can be exploited. A few stories in and suddenly I'm back in my sleeping bag at Camp Slauson, BSA, up late at night making up ridiculous stories of monsters and unexplainable phenomena.

Lubar's Weenie series are full of the kind of campfire tall tales and horror stories you might expect if Rod Serling and Bob Hope could be reincarnated as a single being. They are damned odd, amusing, and full of twists that only the mother of a pretzel or a yogi could enjoy.

No, I take that back. They're exactly the kind of story a middle grade boy enjoys, and with a half dozen titles in the series there are dozens of them to jump into.

Tales like the boys who dare each other to grab for mud from the bottom of the "bottomless" lake, only to have one of them discover that the farther down you dive the closer you get to the surface... of another world, full of alien tentacled creatures. Then there's the story of the robot with limited memory who is perpetually faced with cleaning "his" room, being turned off and on only for that purpose, trapped forever in doing what he "knows" needs to be done. Or the story of the maniacal wood chipper with a one track mind once it's had a taste of human blood.

Many of these stories are under five pages long, some are barely two pages. Lubar knows his reader isn't interested in anything but "the good parts" and it makes for quick, enjoyable reading. Lubar might not be a household name the way some authors are, but I bet his books are better circulated and well-worn compared to some.

Grimmoire 40: The Robber Bridegroom

This is one of those titles that feels familiar. A little research and there's a Eudora Welty novel of the same name from 1942 based on the Grimm tale, and a Broadway musical based on the book from the mid 1970's. And the plot summaries are nothing at all like the Grimm tale.

Part campfire story, part Sweeney Todd, the story takes some of the more familiar Grimm elements (good girl, disingenuous suitor, talking birds, trail of food to find one's way home) and puts some grisly twists in for good measure.

A miller has a beautiful daughter whom he intends to marry off to the best suitor he can find. Having found one and agreed on the marriage the wedding date is set. The daughter, with no say in the matter, is skeeved out by the guy, though she nor anyone else can figure out why. She avoids her hubby-to-be as much as possible and with the wedding drawing near he insists she come visit him at his little place in the country.

She leaves a trail of peas and lentils as she makes her way into the woods. Upon finding the house she lets herself in and finds it mostly empty, save for a caged bird that sings out a warning that this is a house of robbers and she should leave. But does she?

A quick aside here: I've noticed that when robbers are mentioned in Grimm tales they tend to be something a little more serious than burglars or the stand-and-deliver highwaymen I tend to associate with stories from this era. When the Brothers Grimm say robber it might be best to substitute and assume the word sociopath or psychopath, depending on the nature of their intent. For our purposes here, the bridegroom may be a bit of both.

Exploring the house further she finds room after empty room until letting herself down into the basement where an old crone is tending a fire. The woman reiterates the bird's warning, that this is a den of robbers, and that if she stays any longer they will be home and will eat her. Too late, the robbers (the girl's future husband among them) return home with another young woman. The girl hides behind a barrel in the corner and stays hidden in fright as the men give their current catch three glasses of wine (one white, one red and one yellow) which has the effect of killing her, making me wonder just exactly what kind of wine they're talking about. Once dead, the men proceed to hack her up and prepare her for the old woman to make into a stew. One of the robbers eyes a ring on the dead girl's finger and, unable to remove it, hacks the finger off with an axe. The finger flies across the room and lands in the lap of the terrified girl behind the barrel. Quickly thinking, the old woman diverts their attention from the finger ("It'll still be there in the morning!") and proceeds to drug them with wine so they pass out. When the coast is clear the old woman helps the girl escape, using this opportunity to finally break whatever servitude she herself had with the robbers.

Back home the daughter tells her father all, which not only shocks him but underscores what a bad judge of character he is. So the wedding goes as planned, with all parties invited and attending. The bridegroom is miffed that she didn't come to his house as arranged, but no matter, they can go there after the wedding. Folks gathered around the table are telling stories and the girl is implored to tell one herself. She tells of a dream, of a house in the forest, with a bird that sings out warnings, and a crone in the basement. The story is very solemn for so happy an occasion and she keeps reassuring her breidegroom "It was only a dream." Except, at the very end, when she gets to the point of the murdered maiden and her finger flying across the room, the girl stands up and like a storyteller around a campfire holds up the finger and says "And here it is!" Cue the locals who surround the robbers and take the to the magistrate for a quick summary execution.

There is an older variant of this story that shows up in Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing and a story called Mr. Fox which covers a lot of the same territory. The story of Perrault's Bluebeard is also mentioned, and it's interesting that there are these stories of murderous louts going back several hundred years. According to a Wikipedia entry on the matter there is an Ozark variant that ends with "the heroine resolved never to marry and never did, because she had concluded men were bad; she just stayed with her own family, who were happy to have her." The cite on this last one comes from Angela Carter, no stranger to the fairy tale or of strong feminist heroines. And I really should get around to reading Margaret Atwood's The Robber Bride sometime to see the scenario flipped.

Again, the most striking aspect of this fairy tale is that these men referred to as robbers are in fact cannibals, that they literally prey on young women and seem to have some guile at culling them from safety. My latest time machine fantasy now includes a stop during Grimm's day to see this story told and get reactions from the children it was told to, assuming it was told to children at all. In the days before television and movies -- and even books during the mid 19th century -- adults would have had to entertain themselves as well.

I'm suddenly finding myself mulling over the mental image of Quintin Tarrantino going back to 1840 in the time machine and seeing him in an inn telling stories to the locals. That's actually a bit scarier than cannibal robbers right now.