Still reading SF novels for reviews, but also a lot of Stephen Graham Jones. He's a horror writer, and usually I do not like horror, but he's really good. So far I've read these books by him:
(1) Mongrels, which is a werewolf novel about a family (father, brother and sister and the child of another sister) living in isolation -- that is, they don't know any other werewolves -- and trying to figure things out. The lore in this is great, as are the characters. The werewolves are poor/working class, which is not something you usually see. In general, most of Jones's characters are working class and poor, and lots of them are Indians, as is Jones.
(2) Buffalo Hunter Hunter, which is what it says on the tin, a hunter who hunts buffalo hunters during the latter half of the 19th Century. The hunter is an Blackfoot Indian who has watched his people being decimated by white invaders. He's also a vampire. Some great detail and lore here too.
(3) Don't Fear the Reaper. This is the second in a trilogy and I read it first, so it's pretty stand-alone. I have to go find the others now. Anyway, it's a book about a small town on a lake where slasher movies, or rather their plots, keep happening. Like a lot of Jones's work there's some meta-fiction happening here. I like the writing and the characters more than the story, as I am not into slasher movies. But the writing is good enough to keep you reading.
Also recently read:
Margaret Atwood, Book of Lives, a Memoir of Sorts
A sort of a memoir of Atwood's life, this is surprisingly fun, with a lot of droll bits.
I say surprising because I've only read a couple books and stories by Atwood and they were all very bleak. Atwood addresses this in the memoir, referring to herself as a kind of Jekyll and Hyde creature, with dark stories to tell while she has lived cheery life and is (apparently) a cheerful person. Anyway, this is nearly 600 pages long and I enjoyed every page.
Richard Russo, Under the Falls
This is Russo's new book, and of course I read it. I will read anything by Richard Russo. I thought it would be a sequel to Empire Falls, or maybe set in the same universe, but no, it is stand alone. It's okay. A musician name Tyler returns to Stone Mountain, his hometown, which he fled at age 18, to give a benefit concert. He doesn't want to be there, and most of the very small town doesn't want him there. As he's fleeing town after the concert, his limo is run off the road by -- someone. That's the mystery in the plot.
The main flaw, probably, is length. Russo doesn't do well with short fiction, and this is a very short novel. Because it is so short, none of the characters except Tyler really get developed. I don't really believe that some of these characters would do the things they're supposed to be doing, but that's at least partly because the characters are so undeveloped. Tyler is about 30, also. Russo's writing about a kid who is my kid's age, except he's fabulously wealthy, and a rock star. The parts where Tyler is writing music, those work, but Tyler doesn't feel like a 30 year old living in 2025, or whenever this book is supposed to have taken place.
The novel is readable, but it is far from Russo's best novel. That one is Nobody's Fool, which is one of the ten perfect novels in the world. If you've never read Russo, start with that one, not this one.
Lee Smith, Silver Alert
Very short, an easy read, and despite the subject matter not at all depressing. 10/10, even though I wanted it to be longer.
D. E. Stevenson, The Young Clementina
I was delighted to find a Stevenson I had not yet read. This is not her best work, though. Written in the early 1930s, this one has the flaws of its time (casual racism, silliness about measuring people's heads to figure out how evolved they are, 'old maids' of 33) and the entire plot is based on a lie one character tells which destroys (almost destroys) the lives of everyone, including that character. This is not how people behave -- why just believe someone one person says? Why not go talk to one another?
It reminds me of a line in one of Mary Renault's books, where one character, puzzled, says to another, "I think you must have read a lot of silly books, or something."
Anyway, if you want to read Stevenson, this is not the book to start with, as engaging as I found the young Clementina.
Dean Koontz, Going in the Dark
Did not finish.
My kid likes Koontz, so I've been trying to read one of his novels to see why. This one starts very well, with some delightful meta-fictional stuff and a promising plot (the four main characters all have amnesia around some mysterious event in their young adulthood), but I could not get through the first half.
One problem is how Koontz over-writes, taking three pages to tell you someone has blonde hair. The real flaw, though, is that Koontz does not understand people, so he writes people who behave in ways no human being would actually behave. The academic in this book is shown to us through the eyes of her son, who hates her, so I tried to go with the ridiculous portrayal of an academic. Of course she is unrealistically awful, the son hates her. That sort of thing. But even with that, I could not believe this character, or the way her son engages with her. Same for the rest of the characters. Koontz has been reading too much social media or something.
Koontz also lards in his kind of silly political opinions throughout, generally debunked nonsense about renewable energy, for example. I could wince past those if I could have believed the characters, or cared about what was (maybe?) happening to them.
I have another Koontz book on hold at the library. I am giving him ONE MORE CHANCE.
