Books: The Vesuvius Club By Mark Gatiss (2004)

“Meet Lucifer Box: Lucifer has a charming countenance and rapier wit that make him the guest all hostesses must have. And most do. But few of his conquests know that Lucifer is also His Majesty's most daring secret agent, at home in both London's Imperial grandeur and in its underworld of despicable vice. So when Britain's most prominent scientists begin turning up dead, there is only one man his country can turn to for help. Following a dinnertime assassination, Lucifer is dispatched to uncover the whereabouts of missing agent Jocelyn Poop. Along the way he will give art lessons, be attacked by a poisonous centipede, bed a few choice specimens, and travel to Italy on business and pleasure. Aided by his henchwoman Delilah; the beautiful, mysterious, and Dutch Miss Bella Pok; his boss, a dwarf who takes meetings in a lavatory; grizzled vulcanologist Emmanuel Quibble; and the impertinent, delicious, right-hand-boy Charlie Jackpot, Lucifer Box deduces and seduces his way from his elegant townhouse at Number 9 Downing Street (somebody has to live there) to the ruined city of Pompeii, to infiltrate a highly dangerous secret society that may hold the fate of the world in its clawlike grip.”

Much of this novel by Mark Gatiss’(best known as a member of the comedy team The League of Gentlemen, and has both written for and acted in the TV series Doctor Who and Sherlock) plays out like a mash-up of Sherlock Holmes, Doctor Who, and James Bond. It’s a cheeky send-up of all of them, with outrageous plotting, quips galore and a villain out to destroy Naples via a volcano. Lucifer Box is a decadent Edwardian gentleman, young, handsome, charming, and with a pronounced sardonic sense of humor.

While I enjoyed it somewhat, it is entertaining, but your mileage may vary how much a parody you can handle in this somewhat short novel (the first of three tales). It’s not fully satire, something the British are rather good at, and it reminded me at times of Mike Myers Austin Powers character, and it’s not subtle, but overall, more fun than I hoped for.

Books: A Peculiar Peril By Jeff VanderMeer (2020)

"After Jonathan Lambshead’s elusive grandfather dies, the recently orphaned teenager inherits the family mansion—and its contents. Jonathan soon discovers that the mansion’s basement holds more than just oddities: three doors serve as portals, with one leading to an alt-Earth called Aurora, where magic abounds, history has been re-written, and an occult dictator called Aleister Crowley leads an army pillaging alt-Europe. Jonathan learns of his destiny as a member of The Order, a secret society devoted to keeping our world separate from Aurora, and embarks on an epic quest to protect Earth from Crowley’s dark magic."

Can’t say I actually liked this book. I found it tedious, bloated, even when I found it clever and sometimes funny here and there. Still, I could not get over the ludicrous prose style and its (seemly) drug-fueled hallucinogenic plot that seemly wanted to emulate Charles Dickens worst aspects. By setting it in an alternate universe –the magic door portal trope- of Aurora, VanderMeer’s tale gets odder and weirder, but much of this 600 plus page novel for Young Adults could’ve been trimmed or spread over a trilogy instead of what seems to be a duology. And maybe had it been this way, the books faults would not be so obvious to me.

The verbose style was just too dense for me and it made me wonder how a teenager today, brought up on TikTok, Instagram, and ignoring their parents, would feel about it, because it felt like a real chore to finish it.

The fact it took me nearly a month to get through this book, even skimming through the last 35%, speaks volumes on how I’ll probably not read the second book when its released. This is real problem I have with the fantasy genre of the last two decades or so, where we get super long books for no real reason, where the editors are allowing the writers too much latitude, and then get to the point of that book, only to end it and ask the reader to return a year or so later for another huge tome.

So I'm left wondering, sadly what was the point of it all?

The Mist By Stephen King (1980)

“The morning after a severe thunderstorm left the area without electrical power, an unnaturally thick and straight-edged cloud of mist spreads toward the small town of Bridgton, Maine,  at first looking to be part of the distant white clouds overhead. Local speculation suggests the mist may have originated at a secretive nearby military installation, long rumored to house something called "the Arrowhead Project." Commercial artist David Drayton, along with his young son Billy and neighbor Brent Norton go to the local supermarket for groceries, leaving David's wife Stephanie behind at their home. The mist-edge soon arrives at the supermarket, blotting out the sun, followed by an earthquake-like jolt. Terror mounts as deadly creatures reveal themselves outside, but that may be nothing compared to the threat within, where a zealot calls for a sacrifice.”

This novella, originally released in the Dark Forces (1980) short-story collection and then re-released in an edited form in King’s 1986 short story collection Skeleton Crew, is a creepy story that plays out like an episode of The Twilight Zone (or, as mentioned in the story, Alfred Hitchcock Presents). I read this tale –something I don’t remember doing back in 1986- because I re-watched the 2007 film version by Frank Darabont (it also sort of bookends October, having started the month with ‘Salem’s Lot).

For the most part, the film version and the novella follow very closely, with the exception of the ending. One of few criticisms of King is his in ability to come up with good endings. Darabont’s film ending is darker and more depressing and it works, where the written version sort of peters out without any real explanation of what happened. It’s the end of the world, but is it? I have to say, I do like Darabont’s ending better.

My one criticism of both the novella and the movie is battle caused by Mrs. Carmody, a religious fanatic who believes the mist to be the wrath of God. Marcia Gay Harden, who plays her in the film (and really given much more screen time than the story), shines, but its terrible reminder to me that if the end of world does come, folks like her will rise up to cause all sorts of hell. As King puts it: “When rationality begins to break down, the circuits of the human brain can overload. Axoms grow bright and feverish. Hallucinations turn real: the quicksilver puddle at the point where perspective makes parallel lines seem to intersect is really there; the dead walk and talk; and a rose begin to sing.” King has touched on religious fundamentalism before, so at times Carmody becomes a trope of the genre and her ending is horrible, but is justifiable?

I also have to agree that it was smart of Darabont to drop the affair aspect between David and Amanda. In the novella it comes out of nowhere and seemed pointless and, well seedy. King has evolved a bit since that tale was written and released forty-three years ago,

 

 

Anarchaos By Curt Clark (1967)

“Anarchaos was a planet where anarchy was the only law, where each man protected himself as best he could, and the weak were soon dead. Malone's brother had died that way, and Malone had come to Anarchaos to find the man who had killed him. He knew that he was facing an entire planet of enemies. Or as the guide tells Rolf Malone:  "72% of off-world visitors to Anarchaos in the last ten years disappeared without trace and are presumed to have been murdered. Customs reports you are carrying a surprising assortment of weapons, for which you had no believable explanation. Don't try to beat these people, Malone - you're on their ground, playing by their rules."

"No," Malone said. "There are no rules here.”

Anarchaos is really a revenge or (less so) a crime novel than a science fiction tale, which makes sense once you know that Curt Clark is just another in a long line of pseudonyms for Donald E. Westlake, an author known for his crime novels and various pen names. What makes this tale somewhat interesting is it takes some of the tropes of the sci-fi genre, but dismisses any type of the libertarianism baggage that comes with it; instead, it roundly embraces an anarchist ideology. And for 1967, when this was published, this makes it a surprising and very experimental rarity in the genre. It is also very mean and nasty, resembling the work of Westlake’s other pen name of that era, Richard Stark and the character of Parker.

I enjoyed the beginning of the book, and the rather pat ending, but the middle part, especially his time as a slave, is uneventful and easily glossed over. It’s a revenge novel soaked in blood and death, because its what to expect from Westlake when he allowed those darker, noir aspects out. It’s always striking for to me to realize even by the mid-1960s, when he was starting to write those comic capers he was well known for, he let the dark half of his ID out and went to town. 

Books: The Devil's Alphabet By Daryl Gregory (2009)

“Switchcreek was a normal town in eastern Tennessee until a mysterious disease killed a third of its residents and mutated most of the rest into monstrous oddities. Then, as quickly and inexplicably as it had struck, the disease–dubbed Transcription Divergence Syndrome (TDS)–vanished, leaving behind a population divided into three new branches of humanity: giant gray-skinned argos, hairless seal-like betas, and grotesquely obese charlies. Paxton Abel Martin was fourteen when TDS struck, killing his mother, transforming his preacher father into a charlie, and changing one of his best friends, Jo Lynn, into a beta. But Pax was one of the few who didn’t change. He remained as normal as ever. At least on the outside. Having fled shortly after the pandemic, Pax now returns to Switchcreek fifteen years later, following the suicide of Jo Lynn. What he finds is a town seething with secrets, among which murder may well be numbered. But there are even darker–and far weirder–mysteries hiding below the surface that will threaten not only Pax’s future but the future of the whole human race.”

It seems almost every year –usually around the fall- is where I slow down reading. Part of it may be the shorter days, my everyday depression, new TV season to watch and my general lack of motivation. Also, a book will slow me down as well. I think three of the four hit with Daryl Gregory’s The Devil’s Alphabet – a novel that never really lives up to this promise. There is a lot going here, though: a murder mystery, an estranged father/son relationship, an internal conflict between the different conclaves of non-humans, and the biggest idea, the theory of alternate or parallel universes trying to break through in the prime (?) universe. Nevertheless, it’s these themes and ideas, while interesting in of themselves, give the whole a lack of unity.

Still, all the characters are richly drawn, especially Pax (even if he’s not likable at times) and Deke –two friends with a strange relationship, but no matter what happens to them, they’ll always be friends. But, the guilt he carries about Deke, his girlfriend Donna, and him (who appear to have formed some sort of thruple before he skipped town) is further magnified by his daddy-issues and death of Jo Lynn. But of all the people populating this book, Pax remains the most human.  

But the book has a lot going on and it’s hard, at times, to keep everything straight. And things get even more complicated when a second TDS happens 2,000 miles away in Ecuador…so it all never really comes together in a cohesive state. This was his second book published, though it may have been written before Pandemonium, as it feels a bit “first-time-author-trying-to-prove-something” and it just has way too much going on. As I said, a lot of ideas here, a lot of wonderful ideas for other book here, so I shouldn’t be too judgmental.

I’ve now read eight of his Gregory’s nine books now, with one more waiting in the wings. This was a struggle to get through, so I’m hoping the next one –his third, I believe- won’t be. Still, Gregory does dazzle me with his ideas.