Books: Dark Waters By Katherine Arden (2021)

“Until next time. That was chilling promise made to Ollie, Coco and Brian after they outsmarted the smiling man at Mount Hemlock Resort. And as the trio knows, the smiling man always keeps his promises. So when the lights flicker on and off at Brian's family's inn and a boom sounds at the door, there's just one visitor it could be. Only, there's no one there, just a cryptic note left outside signed simply as --S.

“The smiling man loves his games and it seems a new one is under way. But first, the three friends will have to survive a group trip to Lake Champlain where it's said Vermont's very own Loch Ness monster lives. Brian is thrilled. He hasn't sailed since visiting his family in Jamaica and even the looming threat of the smiling man can't put a damper on what is guaranteed to finally be a day of fun--even if it is awkward being stuck on a boat with both his old best friend, Phil and his new best friends, Coco and Ollie. But when a misstep from Phil causes a tragedy onboard and leaves them shipwrecked on an island haunted by a monster on both land and sea, Brian's survival instincts kick in and it's up to him to help everyone work together and find a way to escape.

“One thing is for sure, the smiling man is back and he wants a rematch. And this time Brian is ready to play.”

What I once thought as a trilogy now appears to be quadrilogy, based on simply on the idea that book one, Small Spaces took place in the fall, book two, Dead Voices took place in the winter, and this book taking place in the spring. So a fourth one should be set in the summer.

But Dark Waters continues author Katherine Arden’s wonderfully creepy, atmospheric, and spine-tingly universe where kids must battle the smiling man –an unknown evil that lurks in the Northeastern Vermont. This time a boat trip on Lake Champlain turns into a battle for survival when Coco, Ollie, and Brian, along with Ollie’s Dad and Coco’s mother, and another fellow student, Phil, who also experienced the menace of the smiling man, but chooses to pretend it didn’t happen, become stranded on a mysterious island on the lake that appears through the mist, or doorway, to the universe of the smiling man.

Here they must keep Ollie’s dad alive –Roger was bitten by a silver-snake like creature- and other things that make noise in the creepy forest. They do soon discover they are not alone on the island, that a axe wielding man who may be a ghost, is trying to protect his house and the bones of his shipmate from whatever the snake-like thing truly is.

But it’s Ollie –who basically takes a backseat in the third book- who decides the ultimate fate of the group. One that leads to a major cliffhanger.

Arden adds a lot of myths and history into Dark Waters, as Lake Champlain really does exist, as does the idea that it contains a Loch Ness monster-like creature called Champ: "The indigenous people that have long lived and hunted near Lake Champlain, the Abenaki and the Iroquois, have their own legends about a large creature inhabiting the lake, which looked like a large, horned serpent or giant snake. The Abenaki term for this creature is Gitaskog. Early in the 18th century, Abenakis warned French explorers about disturbing the waters of the lake, so as not to disturb the serpent. Samuel de Champlain, whom the lake is named after, is often erroneously credited with being the first European to sight Champ, but readings of his accounts show that he saw something near the St. Lawrence River. Nevertheless, his account of his sighting is of interest to anyone with an interest in lake monsters!” 

I’m unsure if Captain William Sheehan and the Wreck of the Goblin is made up, or just a composite of people and wrecks on Lake Champlain that took place back in the 19^th Century. It be fun though to know if any of that is based in fact.

Much like the previous books, the situations are just enough scary, and just enough fun to keep the adults happy. I’ve really enjoyed these books, and find Arden a very good at creating believable kids and adults (though Coco’s Mom sometimes comes off as oafish in thinking these kids are just making up stories. It’s a trope that could’ve been left behind). While this book was more action than the last, I was still entranced with prose. I do highly recommend this series!

Books: Billy Summers By Stephen King (2021)

"Billy Summers is a man in a room with a gun. He’s a killer for hire and the best in the business. But he’ll do the job only if the target is a truly bad guy. And now Billy wants out. But first there is one last hit. Billy is among the best snipers in the world, a decorated Iraq war vet, a Houdini when it comes to vanishing after the job is done. So what could possibly go wrong?

How about everything."

In a few ways, Billy Summers could be a cousin to Richard Stark’s Parker character. They are both somewhat complicated people, who have difficulty with being with people. While they obviously share different lives (Westlake/Stark never really explored Parker’s youth) and pasts, seemly they do have similar, yet different moral codes when it comes to killing people. Of course, Parker never has regrets –he will eliminate people with little remorse, where Billy Summers seems to carry some of those kills with him –which is probably why he starts writing about them (exercising demons?), or more about his time in Iraq, while tooling away waiting for this last take down to take place (which often reminded me of time traveler Jake Epping from 11/22/63, who spends a significant amount of that book waiting to catch up to history, the Kennedy assassination). Billy, like Parker, goes by several names, has money stashed in various places, and has own version of Joe Sheer, a man named Bucky who is Summers connection when a job needs to be done. But one thing they do share is the dislike of being screwed out of money owed. Yes, there is no honor among thieves, but for some strange reason, both hate the idea of being screwed. And hell hath no fury. It’s also fairly obvious that Billy suffers from PTSD, but can function fairly high on in that spectrum.

This helps in characterization a lot, especially in the first quarter of the book, when Billy has to become David Lockbridge, who takes up residence in a small neighborhood. As with 11/22/63, there is a prosaic pacing here, but this is where King has always excelled at as writer, which sets him a few steps above other writers in horror genre. We get cook-outs, endless games of Monopoly with the neighbors’ kids, even a little casual sex with a worker in the office complex where Billy is set up waiting for his shot, so to speak. It’s another look at King’s idealized America of his youth –one that seemly no longer exists (at least in his mind). But he likes creating these little worlds, with non-essential characters with detailed backgrounds and sometimes difficult lives. And while it can come off as bit pedestrian, it makes his books fuller, more realistic. Also, while some of Billy’s stories of his youth seem anachronistically set in the 1950s or early 1960s instead of the 1990’s, the book is clearly set in 2019 (in an NPR interview in April 2020, he discussed having to change the story from taking place in 2020 to 2019 due to the COVID-19 pandemic). It's a bit distracting, because I'm almost sure what went down then has changed.

But the book does take left turn –though not an unexpected one, especially for readers familiar with Westlake’s work. However, his chance encounter with a young woman named Alice, who was dumped on a road side after being roofied and raped, complicates Billy’s revenge plans. Now he needs to take care of stranger, plus find out how he got screwed of his money, and discover what a media mogul has do with what should've been a simple job -even if the $2 million seemed a bit hinkey for assassination of a very bad person.

Much like King’s earlier mystery trilogy series featuring Bill Hodges (Mr. Mercedes, Finders Keepers, End of Watch) there is a hint of the supernatural here. Bucky lives in the mountains of Colorado, near the valley where the Overlook Hotel used to be. In a small cabin on the land, where Billy is working out his terrors of Falluja, he notices a painting of topiary animals that he swears move around. It doesn’t lead to anything, but just a fun Easter Egg for his Constant Readers.

Books: The House In the Cerulean Sea by TJ Klune (2020)

“Linus Baker leads a quiet, solitary life. At forty, he lives in a tiny house with a devious cat and his old records. As a Case Worker at the Department in Charge Of Magical Youth, he spends his days overseeing the well-being of children in government-sanctioned orphanages. When Linus is unexpectedly summoned by Extremely Upper Management he's given a curious and highly classified assignment: travel to Marsyas Island Orphanage, where six dangerous children reside: a gnome, a sprite, a wyvern, an unidentifiable green blob, a were-Pomeranian, and the Antichrist. Linus must set aside his fears and determine whether or not they’re likely to bring about the end of days.But the children aren’t the only secret the island keeps. Their caretaker is the charming and enigmatic Arthur Parnassus, who will do anything to keep his wards safe. As Arthur and Linus grow closer, long-held secrets are exposed, and Linus must make a choice: destroy a home or watch the world burn.”

Perhaps one of the most hopeful fantasy novels I’ve read in a long time. The House in the Cerulean Sea is charming, funny, and above all, well written. But, like most books I post here, I always do some research; get the temperature of people’s feelings on the tale. And that's where the trouble begins.

So, one reviewer on Goodreads noted that author TJ Klune has said this novel was inspired by The Sixties Scoop, “a term coined by Patrick Johnston, author of the 1983 report Native Children and the Child Welfare System. It refers to the mass removal of Aboriginal children from their families into the child welfare system, in most cases without the consent of their families or bands.” And so, a few reviewers have taken him to task for trivializing and sugarcoating things, even though the book is not really about those horrible events (some which have recently come to light) that took place in Canada and other areas. And yes, this sort of brought me down on the high I had with this book, because it now feels like just another white dude using BIPOC trauma as a springboard for a their fiction.

So now it’s a problematical book and I don’t know how to feel about it. I mean, I enjoyed it. I loved the gloomy, 1984 feel it had, I loved the off-kilter Douglas Adams inspired humor; I loved Lucy (AKA, Lucifer, the son of Satan), and I thought it was a fresh take on the magical children trope. But we all know what has been happening in Canada over the last few months, with the discovery of unmarked graves of hundreds of Native and Aboriginal children in orphanages run by the Catholic Church (also what was done to the Natives here in the United States and Australia). It’s a horrible stain on our moral conscious that children should never be abused and killed for being who they were and not what we want them to be. Kids died because they would not give up their heritage. So while conservative whites rail against the notion that America is not a racist nation, the past –as Stephen King always notes- does not stay in the past. But we refuse to acknowledge it, we refuse pay the reparations that is so needed.

While I highly suggest reading this book, also take the time –as I will try- to make amends for what as a nation, a country (be it the US or Canada), our ancestors did to those Native and Aboriginal children. And while most of those events stretch back to the late 19^th Century, also understand some of these events continued well into closing years of the 20^th Century.

Books: Doctor Who: Festival of Death By Jonathan Morris (2000)

 

"The Beautiful Death. The ultimate theme-park ride. For twenty galactic credits, you can find out what it's like to be dead. But something has gone wrong. Visitors expecting a sightseeing tour of the afterlife have been transformed into mindless zombies, set on a killing rampage. The TARDIS arrives in the aftermath of the disaster and, then to the Fourth Doctor’s baffled delight, he is immediately congratulated for saving the population from certain and terrible destruction. The only problem is, he hasn't actually done it yet. Aided and abetted by a drug-addled hippie lizard, a hard-hitting investigative reporter and a suicidal ship's computer, the Doctor has no choice but to travel back in time and discover exactly how he became a hero. And then he finds out. He did it by sacrificing his life."

While Festival of Death was released in 2000, it features many hallmarks to Steven Moffat’s era as show runner during Matt Smith’s time as the Doctor. It’s a complex tale of mixed up wibbly-wobbly time-travel shenanigans, dark humor and spot on characterizations of the Doctor, Romana, and K9 (this tale seemly set just after the events of City of Death, in season 17 of the Classic Series). It’s a fairly marvelous idea, intricately detailed and often very funny, with its witty dialogue, a bunch of running gags, and some wry observations. Author Jonathan Morris combines the gallows humor, the sort of Gothic style horror from producer Philip Hinchcliff’s era of Tom Baker reign as the Doctor (season 12 through 14) with the silly humor that would become prevalent during Graham Williams years (15 through 17). Some of best parts deal with ERIC the depressed computer, which any reader of Douglas Adams will realize is homage to Marvin the Paranoid Robot.

But ultimately, this novel reaches a certain peak level of greatness that a lot of the New Adventures and Missing Adventures sometimes failed do during the 1990s and early 2000’s (this was, btw, the last MA published).