Sway through the crowd to an empty space

Got a new computer. Got Baulders Gate III, sank over an hour of gametime into it last night and it went by in the blink of an eye ....

( The First Draft Character )

What Stalks Among Us
Sarah Hollowell

One of the reading challenges I am doing this year requires reading a young adult horror novel.  I used What Stalks Among Us by Sarah Hollowell to check off that box.  To be honest I probably would have read this one anyway because of the haunted/mysterious corn maze, kind of punny title (corn has stalks …get it?) and time loops, well all those things check off internal “this is going to be good” checkboxes for me.

The plot of the novel is that besties Sadie and Logan decide to ditch a field trip to an amusement park (for valid reasons but I did have a moment of “a school trip to an amusement park and your passing it by!?  What?”) and end up choosing instead to explore this random corn maze they come across.  This is a horror novel so that is a choice that drives the narrative, even if so obviously a wrong choice.  Never go into the creepy seemingly abandoned corn maze! And Saddie and Logan very quickly learn why, in this instance, it would have been best to leave the corn maze alone.  Because they find bodies in the corn maze - their bodies, they have stumbled into a time loop and someone/something is in the maze with them and it's killing them.  Over and over.  And over …

Special shout out to the lead characters that the author has crafted, both Sadie and Logan are great, both are dealing with the trauma of the maze and trauma from other things that have happened in their life.  Sadie is our point-of-view character and as a person who plays video games, I appreciated her thinking of the maze as a kind of video game and applying some video game logic to it all.  I also enjoyed how she would think about different dialogue options, just like you’d get in a video game.

This is a horror novel, and beyond the fact that there are deaths (a lot of repeating deaths) they aren’t that graphic for the most part.  It’s upsetting, but for me, the way the the book also deals with toxic relationships is what was most upsetting, and perhaps the most triggering.  It’s handled well - this is about monsters that are made of corn, and time loops and also about how toxic controlling people can hurt your soul.

This book is widely imaginative and atmospheric.  I love a good time loop, but this is the first time I’ve read one where the characters encounter remnants of their previous loops, so gold star to the author for that.  The corn maze is pretty obviously operating under different rules of time and space and so there are different “rooms” for the characters to explore, populated with various … things.  Things of varying levels of creepy and unsettling.    Yes, sometimes it got a bit much for me, I applaud the super creepy but there were times when it was just - a lot.  Like atmosphere overload, and some of the ideas the book was playing around with didn’t feel entirely fleshed out … but that makes me want to go back and re-read it.  Loop around again if you will and see what I pick up this time on my trip through the maze.

CBR 16 link

Butcher of the Forest
Premee Mohamed

I don’t really like the wild woods. Give me a nice trail I can run on, bike on, or walk my dog on and I’m good. But take me off the path into the woods – nah. In the woods, there is a potential for monsters, or so the many scary books I have read have taught me, haha. (Disclaimer: I have only respect for people who can safely hike and adventure in the woods. You are a different breed than I am, and good for you.). Butcher of the Forest by Premee Mohamed is a fantasy novella set in a universe world that is not here but it has a forest in it, and that forest has monsters. The kind of forest that you’d want to avoid if you had a choice...

( Into the forest we go. )

This Wretched Valley
Jenny Kiefer

As this is a horror novel I wanted to start with some content warnings. The book contains a lot of gore, blood, and some body horror. There are instances of animal death(s) and, well, people deaths. Lots of deaths! I did not check content warnings before reading (that is on me) and was surprised by the level of body horror.

This is the story of four adults (and one dog) who venture into the Kentucky woods to climb a previously undiscovered cliff face and conduct research about the area. Each has their reasons for heading into the woods.  Dylan, a climber, wants to be the first to ascend the cliff and make more of a name for herself.  She brings along her boyfriend Luke who will be providing support during the climb.  They also bring along with them Luke’s dog Slade. Clay, who has organized this trip, is a graduate student, has discovered the undiscovered spot using technology and this is the driving force of his thesis. Lastly, Sylvia, another graduate student, joins the expedition to assist Clay and conduct research on the area's flora and fauna.

( Into the Woods We Go )

 

Jaws

Peter Benchley 

Stop me if you’ve heard this one before - there is this village on Long Island, and it's summer 1974, and there's this shark and it's killing people. Which is a problem. It’s a problem because a) dead people and b) this coastal village’s livelihood is based on tourism, namely summer tourism and now the tourists could end up as shark food. So, there is a kind of willful ignorance and pretending everything is fine on behalf of village officials because they need that summer people's money. They need them to come and not be worried about ending up shark food. Then there are more shark attacks, and it gets to the point where something has to be done about the shark. So, the local sheriff ends up teaming up with a visiting Marine Biologist and a salty sea Captain whose feelings towards the shark are very Captain Ahab-like. And they go shark hunting.

( And so it goes )

Jaws, I’ve never before read the book that started the whole thing. I was worried that because I know the movie so well, I wouldn’t be able to appreciate the book on its own. Oddly, I haven’t read this before. Typically, my first stop when I board the hyper-fixation train is to read the source material if it exists. And yet… So I decided that here in February 2024, the 50th anniversary of the book's publication, I would give it a whirl.

I will not list all the differences between the book and movie; they share the same DNA but the characters are not the same. The plot hits some of the same points but the book has subplots that got tossed for the movie version. For better or for worse. (I think for better…)

I found Jaws to be a mean novel. Our 'heroes' are not especially heroic, and I’m not saying that I’m rooting for the shark, but - the characters are unlikeable. Sure, this is not a shining moment for any of them. It is a high-stress situation where tourists are getting snacked on by a shark, but the characters come off as jerks. That made me want to rush a bit through the book just so I could say, 'Okay, done with these people.' Even the characters that just sort of drift through the narrative are often irritating distractions. As a reader, I found myself eager to get back to the shark.

Minor spoiler, but the why of the shark's behaviour is speculated on; we don’t get a clear answer. At one point in the novel, Hooper (the shark specialist brought in to try and help) discusses how something in the environment could have changed, causing a ripple effect. He gives examples of fish in unusual areas. Keeping in mind that this was written in the 1970s, I still found it very relevant. It serves as a reminder that meddling with nature can lead to chaos for humanity. It also reflects what was happening in Amity; we get a few asides of how the townspeople are coping now that their summer revenue is drying up. The shark has caused a change in their environment, and everyone is being impacted.

The shark has a huge impact on the events of the novel, but there is a lot more going on than just a vicious great white. It felt like maybe a bit too much, honestly. There's class conflict between summer people vs. the winter (all year round) people, a whole subplot with the mafia, marital drama, and through this sea of chaos swims the shark. It was a lot! I like books that have a lot of plot, but I felt like I was encountering subplots from all sides when I had originally come for the man vs. shark story.

The version of the book I read had two articles written by Peter Benchley. In these articles, he discussed what we thought we knew about great whites in 1974 compared to what we knew in 2020. He then added what we knew in 2005. It is made very clear that the actions of the shark in the novel are very fictionalized. Fictional license exists for a reason, and I did find the actions of the fictional shark the most interesting parts of the book and could have done without a lot of the drama the human characters engaged in.

Midnight on Beacon Street
Emily Ruth Verona

It is October 1993, just after midnight, and six-year-old Ben Mazinski is in the kitchen; there is blood and there is a dead body. So, exactly how did we get here? That is the story that Midnight on Beacon Street sets out to tell. It covers what happened in the lead-up to midnight to Amy (the babysitter) and her two charges, Ben and his older sister, Mira. It doesn’t do this linearly, but rather jumps around in time, revisiting moments from multiple points of view.

I may have been closer in age to Mira than to Amy when 1993 rolled around, but when I was Amy’s age, I was an avid babysitter. I know full well the terror—both of what might be lurking outside those dark patio doors in a house that is not yours and the terror of feeling sometimes like a child who is in charge of other children—that babysitting can bring. This book leans on both things—I mean, right off the bat, a dead body, so you know something outside the norm is happening, and Amy, one of our main characters, struggles with anxiety.

The story manages to rack up the tension as it speeds towards midnight. There are some creepy goings-on (Ben thinks there is a ghost, for starters), and it is not clear what is related to the body in the kitchen and what is not. Additionally, you have characters popping in and out of the narrative. As a reader, you know someone’s body is going to end up in the kitchen, but you don’t know which of these characters it might be.

I initially picked up this book because it was described to me as a love letter to 80’s and 90’s horror movies, and it is! Amy is a movie buff, a very big fan of horror movies in fact, and she drops some movie trivia as the book goes along. The narrative also includes some other 90’s kid easter eggs that were fun to spy. It reminded me of the Fear Street books, but in a slightly more elevated way (no shade to Fear Street; those books are a foundation of my love for horror novels). This novel is a throwback in the best way possible but also has a modern sensibility, as it highlights Amy’s struggle with anxiety in a way that no books from my childhood did. I appreciated that, as a woman who has anxiety and also loves horror movies and novels, even if they freak me out a bit and sometimes add to my anxiety.

Cannonball Read Post: cannonballread.com/2024/02/midnight-on-beacon-street-dreadpiratekel/

Star Wars: Doctor Aphra Vol. 1 - Aphra
Kieron Gillen

When I think of Star Wars, I think of space, lightsabers, and Darth Vader. I know some of the various versions of the Star Wars universe have dealt with the history of said universe, but I think of Star Wars as the future (even if it was in a galaxy a long time ago). This is why it was fun to read about Doctor Aphra in the first volume (collecting issues #1-6) of the graphic novel series that bears her name. She is a Star Wars universe character but an archaeologist. She is dealing with the past of this galaxy that is far, far away.

( The Rest! )

Mark Each Year in Books: Thoughts on Reading Traditions, Molly Templeton @ tor.com

You can also do this on your birthday. The primary activity of any birthday can, or could be, doing precisely what you want to and nothing else; if what you want to do is read, to be waited on while you turn pages and nibble petit fours or grapes or Skittles or whatever, that can be a tradition. I did this a couple of years in a row with Expanse books, but now I’m out of those and will have to come up with something different. (Those books really do lend themselves to sitting down and reading in giant, tasty chunks, though.)

A bit against my will I found myself doing this this birthday. At the time I was annoyed - I had wanted to go out and shop, and restaurant food but ... in retrospect the weather was crap and laying on my bed and having the dog sleep next to me while I read was ... really nice. I am going to try not just make this a Birthday thing but try and carve a day out a month or every second month to just sit and read through a book. Not feel guilty about anything else just read.