BOOK REVIEW: Holly by Stephen King

Holly is another entry by Stephen King into the universe in which the Bill Hodges trilogy (Mr. Mercedes, Finders Keepers, End of Watch) was set, although this time Holly Gibney is the primary character. Gibney is also featured  in The Outsider  and one of the four novellas that make up the 2020 collection If It Bleeds.  Even though I am not a fan of the horror genre or supernatural stories in general, I now consider myself a fan of King’s. In the last few years I have read and reviewed Fairy Tale (2023), Billy Summers (2022) and The Institute (2020) I appreciate what an amazing storyteller he is. Even so, I generally restrict myself to his non-supernatural fare, which I enjoy tremendously, and Holly is no exception.

The Bill Hodges trilogy were some of the first books by King that I read, primarily because they are in the mystery/detective/thriller genre. They feature Bill Hodges as a former cop who opens his own private detective agency (called Finders Keepers) and features Holly as his shy but capable assistant who becomes his partner as well as Jerome Robinson, a computer savvy Black teenager who does odd jobs for Bill.  Although Bill was the main character of the series, my favorites were always Jerome and Holly and I hoped that King would return to them in future work, which he has done with the publication of Holly.

Holly is the main character in Holly, which is set in July 2021 smack dab in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic and the Trump era. Holly is mourning the death of her mom (due to COVID after refusing to get vaccinated) when she gets a call at the detective agency from a mother panicked about the disappearance of her adult daughter, Bonnie Dahl, who worked at the library of the local small college in town. Holly, who King himself has described as “obsessive compulsive with a huge inferiority complex,” is very careful about getting COVID and a fair amount of her internal monologue is about masking and her interactions with folks around her and their thoughts about COVID and Trump. This makes Holly a “political book” in the sense that  King (through Holly as his avatar) makes his thoughts about his views on these topics very clear. (Since I share these views I didn't find this aspect distracting or problematic.)

Some reviewers of  Holly question King’s choice to begin a detective mystery novel by revealing that the culprits are a pair of murderous, cannibalistic, septuagenarian professors, Rodney and Ellen Harris, who select their victims from the itinerant human flotsam available to them in the wake of a small town dominated by a prestigious college. But the detective story where the reader knows who did it from the beginning and the suspense is sourced in how and when (not really whether) the protagonist will figure it out (and stop the criminal before they crime again) is a tried and true trope of the genre. (Val McDermid is a Master at this form.) Here, I think this story structure works quite well, and especially when the reader gets first-person perspective from more than one character who is caught in the devilish flytrap of the Professors Harris.

An interesting feature of Holly is that it features not one but two subplots about young writers who are both experiencing their first successful encounters with the publishing industry. King often writes about writers in his books and his enthusiasm for this aspect of the story was palpable.

A surprising feature of Holly is that it features absolutely no supernatural phenomena. The Harrises have a reason for why they are periodically enticing, trapping, and culling people and it is because they believe that eating the human flesh of people significantly younger than they are will improve their health. For a significant fraction of the book King makes it appear as if they may be right, since they do appear to be experiencing  some relief, perhaps supernatural in nature, from their multiple health ailments not unfamiliar to people as old as the Harrises (mind-numbingly painful sciatica for her, and the numbing of the mind of dementia for him). But in the end King (again via his avatar Holly) points out that the bad guys’ evil, false beliefs are trumped [sic] by science: they were experiencing the placebo effect, completely dismantling any imagined rationale they could have posited to justify their murderous actions of killing and eating their neighbors. To me it is clear that King is trying to demonstrate that fact-based reality can be used to explain that people who do awful things (like deny the reality of COVID and the effectiveness of vaccines or vote for Trump or kill and eat fellow humans) are really doing it because they are awful people, despite what they tell themselves the reasons for doing these things are.

Title: Holly
Author: Stephen King.
Format: Kindle.
Length: 464 pages.
Publisher: Scribner.
Date Published: September 5, 2023.
Date Read: December 10, 2023.

GOODREADS RATING: ★★★★★  (5.0/5.0).

OVERALL GRADE: A/A- (3.83/4.0).

PLOT: A-.
IMAGERY: A-.
IMPACT: A.
WRITING: A.

BOOK REVIEW: Fairy Tale by Stephen King

Although I am not a fan of the horror genre I have become a relatively enthusiastic fan of Stephen King after having read some of his books released in the last decade, like Billy Summers (2021), The Institute (2019), The Outsider (2018), 11/22/63 (2011), and of course the Bill Hodges Trilogy (Mr. Mercedes, Finders Keepers, and End of Watch). These books mostly eschewed the horror genre for the ones I typically read: speculative fiction, thriller, mystery, and science fiction. However, even when he's not writing horror, King does often tend to bring in supernatural elements, but in the books of his that I have read and enjoyed this has not been a fatal impediment to completion. 2022’s  Fairy Tale is one of King’s rare forays into epic fantasy which by its very definition allows for supernatural themes.

Fairy Tale has a story that can  be divided into three parts relatively easily. The three parts are very different from each other and  provoked very different reactions in me as a reader. The first part introduces us to the protagonist of the novel, 17-year-old Charlie Reade. Charlie is on the football team and has been raised by his alcoholic father alone since his mother died in a hit-and-run car accident about 10 years before. We also meet Howard Bowditch, an elderly gentleman who lives up the hill from Charlie with his elderly German Shepherd Radar. About 5 years ago Charlie made a promise to God that if his dad stopped drinking then Charlie would owe him a favor, and he thinks taking care of Mr. Bowditch (and Radar) after he suffers a near-fatal fall that leaves him with a broken leg is his way to repay his debt. This first part of Fairy Tale is a heart-warming tale about a teenaged boy falling in love with a dog and selflessly taking care of a senior citizen. It is absolutely delightful to read and an uplifting, enjoyable experience. Five stars.

The second part of Fairy Tale begins with the inevitable death of Mr. Bowditch several months after his recovery from the injury and his revelation to Charlie that the old man had many secrets, the most significant of which is that in his shed contains an underground portal to another land, a mystical and magical place where there is a source of eternal youth. (Bowditch had used the process himself and was well over 120 years old when he died.) Unable to bear the thought of losing Radar to die from old age, Charlie embarks on a mission to take her to the land of Empis to rejuvenate her. When Charlie reaches Empis he encounters several unusual people and places  that are reminiscent of or drawn from classical fairy tales. He also discovers that there is a horrible blight on the land called “the gray” which is afflicting the populace, causing pain and disfigurement to all it touches. However, there is a prophecy that a fair and true prince will come to Empis and restore it to its glory and destroy “the gray” which has been caused by someone called Flight Killer. Charlie succeeds in revitalizing Radar by exposing her to the age-reversal process Bowditch had used at great personal risk to them both. After that deed is done he tries to escape but he is caught (and Radar escapes) by a group of zombies  known as the Night Soldiers. The second part of Fairy Tale is less enjoyable than the first as we learn more about the impacts of the gray and the plot becomes more suspenseful as Charlie races against time to save Radar's life. The people and characters Charlie encounters in Empis range from the outré to the outlandish and odd. Between three and four stars.

The third and final part of Fairy Tale is really difficult to get through. It becomes a story of incarceration, torture, and violence. Charlie is held captive by the Night Soldiers and forced to fight to the death in repeated one-on-one gladiatorial combat sessions against his fellow prisoners  for the amusement of the Flight Killer and his claque of supporters. This section of the book is way too long, and full of death, despair, and disappointment. During this period, Charlie gets in touch with his inner violent self, and, mysteriously his dark hair and dark brown eyes mysteriously starts turning into a blonde, blue-eyed boy. (Part-way through the book I thought that Charlie might be Black or multiracial and that King was doing something interesting with racial assumptions but then this made it clear that Charlie is--and views himself as--a white guy.) Eventually, Charlie leads a successful escape of the few surviving (and strongest) prisoners and destroys most of the Night Soldiers in the process. After reuniting with some of the “good guys” we met in Part 2 (including the revitalized Radar), Charlie and others successfully kill Flight Killer and rid Empis of “the gray” forever. Charlie is gravely injured but manages to make it back to “the real world” with Radar. Through the magic of fairy tales, the time that he spent in Empis converts to only four months in our world, and he is happily reunited with his father in the end. In order to explain his whereabouts (and Radar’s miraculous transformation into a younger dog), Charlie shows his Dad Empis and then they concrete over the entrance to protect both worlds from future contact. The last sections is probably between one and three stars, so probably two stars.

Overall, it’s hard to give a summary evaluation of the Fairy Tale. The book starts off so bright and lovely but gets increasingly dark and difficult as it proceeds. It (amazingly) does end with a happy ending (Radar gets to be young again and Charlie survives), so that probably rounds up the score. It’s a hard book to recommend to others to read, although I would heartily recommend the first 150-200 pages or so to anyone.

Title: Fairy Tale.
Author: Stephen King.
Format: Hardcover.
Length: 600 pages.
Publisher: Scribner.
Date Published: September 6, 2022.
Date Read: February 1, 2023.

GOODREADS RATING: ★★★½☆  (3.5/5.0).

OVERALL GRADE: B+/A- (3.5/4.0).

PLOT: B.
IMAGERY: B+.
IMPACT: A.
WRITING: A-.

BOOK REVIEW: The City of Mirrors (The Passage, #3) by Justin Cronin

The City of Mirrors is the third and final book in Justin Cronin's epic version of an apocalyptic, vampire/zombie horror story which started in The Passage and continued in The Twelve. In my opinion, this trilogy was different from most, where typically the first entry is amazing but the story is not completed so requires further development, which occurs in a second entry, which while engaging almost always never fully recaptures the excitement and excellence of the first entry and then (in the best examples) concludes in a breathless, superlative third and final entry which wraps up all the loose ends not tied up in the first two entries. By contrast, (in my humble opinion) the best book in The Passage trilogy is the second entry, although I would say that there is not a large difference in quality between the three books, but The Twelve was the most effective entry in the trilogy for me.

As the last book in a trilogy which is about the collapse of human civilization and the "reality" of a zombie apocalypse, The City of Mirrors has a lot to do and does it well. The events of the second and third books are set well after the initial collapse of civilization, with a decimated human population trying to cobble together some semblance of society despite the existence of supernatural creatures substantially more powerful and lethal than humans. In the third book we get the complete backstory of the individual responsible for the entire zombie/vampire apocalypse: Tim Fanning a.k.a. Zero, the progenitor of the original Twelve who were the primary nemeses (and slaughterers) of humankind in the first two books. The third book goes back to pre-apocalyptic days and follows Fanning through his entire college career until the events which lead to the apocalypse depicted in The Passage. It's definitely interesting to get another perspective on how The Catastrophe came to pass but ultimately Fanning is not as compelling a character (to me) as other members of the dramatis personae we are introduced to in The Twelve.

Other characters who have been with us since the first book (Peter, Amy, Alicia, Michael, Sara, Hollis) appear in The City of Mirrors and because we have spent so much time with them my interest in their fates was extremely high. It's not really a spoiler in a book with 99% of humanity being wiped out to reveal that not all of our named characters survive. But I was okay with that, and a strong feature of the book is the suspense of not knowing who will make it to the end, and to learn/observe how humans who act/look/think/feel like the reader respond to extraordinary events and circumstances. In my opinion, that's the key reason why apocalyptic fiction is compelling (and is the main reason why I consume it).

One of the things which caused me to mark down both of the first entries in the trilogy was the author's habit of including (long, it appeared to me) asides of supernatural/lyrical scenes which were either reveries/dreams/fantasies of the particular character or simply fantastical interludes. I'm not even sure how to interpret them; generally I viewed them as chaff. Since I read the entire trilogy on Kindle (borrowed eBooks from the library!) I almost always just sped through these sections until the story (i.e. events and circumstances occurring to our named characters) resumed. The key reason why The City of Mirrors is not the best in the series for me (despite the quite amazing stories of survival and slaughter depicted) is that the frequency (and length) of these supernatural asides increased to the level of annoyance and distraction.

However, overall I am very glad I read the entire series. The wisdom of crowds is true: 200,000 readers and raters on Goodreads were not wrong to give each entry in The Passage trilogy (The Passage: 4.0,155K; The Twelve : 4.0,74K; The City of Mirrors: 4.2, 33K) an average score above 4.0, which is quite extraordinary. If you're a reader who likes speculative fiction (i.e. you are willing to suspend disbelief about the reality of depicted events in a story) and you enjoy suspense and human drama then you will probably enjoy The Passage trilogy at least as much as I did, which was quite a lot. Don't let the violent, bloodthirsty superhuman vampires keep you away!

Rating: 4 stars.

Title: The City of Mirrors (The Passage, #3).
Author: Justin Cronin.
Paperback: 602 pages.
Publisher: Ballantine Books.
Date Published: May 24, 2016.
Date Read: June 22, 2018.

GOODREADS RATING: ★★★★☆  (4.0/5.0).

OVERALL GRADE: A- (3.5/4.0).

PLOT: A-.
IMAGERY: A-.
IMPACT: B+.
WRITING: B+.

BOOK REVIEW: The Twelve (The Passage, #2) by Justin Cronin

The Twelve is the second book in Justin Cronin’s The Passage trilogy about a (man-made) zombie apocalypse. The story in this book is primarily set in the post-apocalyptic era when human civilization is slowly recovering and rebuilding almost a century later after the events in the first book (The Passage).  It depicts a world completely transformed and dominated by the existence of superhuman, near-immortal creatures that feed on human blood and can transform regular humans via infectious contact.

The Twelve is both better and worse than the first book The Passage. It’s better in that it’s more suspenseful and full of even more horrifying scenes of death and destruction than those that appear in the fall of civilization (and immediate aftermath) depicted in the first book. This book also spends a fair amount of time depicting the details of the collapse of society(from a different perspective) but then it focuses on the society that replaces the one that fell. It is the portrayal of the replacement society where The Twelve gets even more horrifying because the perpetrators of death, destruction and inhumane behavior are not mindless beings infected with a a virus that turns them into bloodthirsty killing machines but humans who are intentionally and self-interestedly behaving in an inhumane way and setting up an absolutely perverse society. These are all elements of the book which are stronger in the sequel than in the first book.

The parts of The Twelve that are weaker than The Passage are generally related to the writing. It seems a little churlish to complain about realism in a book about superhuman bloodsucking zombies leading to the collapse of  human civilization. But there are multiple scenes and chapters which involve mystical, supernatural powers and several discussions of  spiritual connections between characters that were somewhat impenetrable and incomprehensible to me. I'm a fan of speculative fiction in general but when it veers off into horror or supernatural I'm just not interested.

Overall, I still enjoyed the book quite a bit. Cronin has created a compelling (and terrifying) world and has a knack with suspenseful plotting. His characters are well-drawn and easy for readers to connect to and become worried about which will survive. Although many of the story lines are resolved there are still important plot points left which will presumably be completed in the third book, The City of Mirrors which I intend to read sooner rather than later.

Title: The Twelve (The Passage, #2).
Author: Justin Cronin.
Paperback: 626 pages.
Publisher: Ballantine Books.
Date Published: October 16, 2012.
Date Read: May 20, 2018.

GOODREADS RATING: ★★★★½☆ (4.5/5.0).

OVERALL GRADE: B+ (3.33/4.0).

PLOT: A-.
IMAGERY: A-.
IMPACT: B.
WRITING: B.

BOOK REVIEW: The Passage by Justin Cronin

Justin Cronin's The Passage  is a very impressive and engrossing thriller. It has a fantastic premise, which is well-executed. I didn't know much about the book when I started it except that it had well over 100,000 ratings on GoodReads with an average score above 4.0, which indicates that a LOT of people have read the book and liked it. It should probably make a fantastic movie when it inevitably gets adapted.

One interesting aspect of The Passage to me is that it is really several different kinds of books in one.

It starts as a mysterious science fiction thriller involving a strange military experiment centered around a top secret program that the reader slowly discovers more and more details about as the story unfolds. Is it the development of a human longevity treatment? A virus that turns men into super-weapons for the military? The discovery of a real-life vampire? The answer, in the end, is all of the above.

In addition, there is a section of  the story which is a chase involving an other-worldly child whose name is Amy and who is apparently "special" in some way. Presumably that is why two agents from the top secret quasi military agency are chasing her down in order to include her in the military experiment.

After the truth is revealed and the mass extinction event occurs (i.e. the fecal matter collides with the rotating air circulation device) The Passage  becomes a post-apocalyptic tale about a small village of survivors (called "The Colony") and the social dynamics between key characters as they struggle to survive an untenable situation 75 years after the catastrophic events that concluded the first section of the book.

Then The Passage morphs again as Amy's story intersects with The Colony's. This results in yet another story shift as the book becomes a quest tale as a group of intrepid, but mismatched individuals travel to find the secret of why their world is the way that it is.

Along the way they have some pretty incredible adventures and some members of the small group die, while some are left behind to fend for themselves and some decide they want to leave the group.

As I said before, overall, the story is quite compelling and told in an exciting way. Even though the book IS quite long, because of the rapidly shifting story format, it never seems slow and my interest and concern for the characters never wavered (although I will admit I was interested in some characters more than others).

I do believe I will try to read the follow-up books in the trilogy, The Twelve and The City of Mirrors but I don't feel like I must read them immediately to see how the story continues and concludes. The thrill ride of The Passage  is quite satisfying on its own and well worth your time to read.

Title: The Passage (The Passage, #1)
Author: Justin Cronin.
Paperback: 897 pages.
Publisher: Ballantine Books.
Date Published: June 3, 2010.
Date Read: August16, 2017.

GOODREADS RATING: ★★★★ (4.0/5.0).

OVERALL GRADE: A/A- (3.67/4.0).

PLOT: A+.
IMAGERY: B+.
IMPACT: A-.
WRITING: A-.

Walking Dead Season 2 Finale: A-mah-zing!

Last night was the Season 2 of AMC's The Walking Dead and it did not disappoint. The producers had been leading up to the final episode by killing off major characters in the last two episodes so that the audience was primed for a wholesale massacre of their favorites who have so far survived two season of living in a post-zombie apocalypse America. The producers have made it clear that basically every character in the show can potentially be killed (except for the main star) Rick Grimes played by handsome English actor Andrew Lincoln.

According to Nikke Finke's Deadline Hollywood TV the ratings for the finale were excellent:

Last night’s Season 2 finale of the zombie drama posted 9 million viewers and 6 million adults 18-49, hitting series highs in total viewers and all key demo categories. Vs. the Season 1 finale, The Walking Dead was up a big 51% in total viewers, 50% in adults 18-49 and 50% in adults 25-54 (5.3 million). The series  eclipsed its previous highs, 8.1 million total viewers, 5.4 million in 18-49 and 4.4 million in 25-54 logged by the second season premiere. Those 18-49 and 25-54 deliveries were the highest ever for a basic cable drama series. Now they will be replaced in the record book by last night’s deliveries. The Walking Dead ranks as the No.1 drama series in basic cable history in such key demos as Adults and Men 18-34, Adults and Men 18-49, and Adults and Men 25-54. For season 2, the series averaged 6.9 million viewers, up 32% vs. season one, 4.6 million in adults 18-49 (up 32%) and 4 million in 25-54 (up 32%). 

Creatively, the series also went to new heights, and many fans were thrilled with the introduction of the Michonne character, a samurai-sword-wielding Black female who has two armless zombies attached to her by chains as an undead retinue.

The main tension of the show is in the depiction of a group of people would manage the day-to-day details, travails and decisions of living in a post-apocalyptic world where basically all technology is non-functional, you are surrounded by flesh-eating zombies and it appears as if 99.99% of civilization is dead and gone. (The "walking dead" in the series title refers to the surviving humans, not the shaking, stumbling zombies.) Rick was a sheriff deputy (before the zombie apocalypse arrived) and is a strong alpha-male kind of guy so the group has generally gone with his decisions as Rick has tried to maintain a semblance of humanity and democracy. However, in last night's finale Rick revealed that he had killed someone (another one of the major characters) and that he no longer felt that the group should be run as a democracy, and whoever didn't like that siutation could leave.

It will be interesting to see how the group dynamics develop in Season 3, where apparently we will be introduced to not only the very strong Michonne character, but also one of "the most intimidating villains in recent pop culture history" in The Governor.

I am happy that the producers have not killed off the one Black character in the sea of milky whiteness (Glenn the nerdy Asian guy is hardly a deviation from the decidedly Republican demographic that is over-represented in the cast). It would be great if T-Dog outlived everyone, even Rick.

One quibble I do have with the series, and it's a relatively big one is that the producers are shockingly inconsistent in depicting the physical abilities of the zombies "walkers." Generally, they show most walkers not posing a real physical threat because they basically shamble along at a very slow pace, reacting to the stimulus of sound or light as a potential source of live flesh which presumably is their only source of nourishment. So, most humans can generally out-run and really even out-walk most walkers. But every now and then the producers will show a sudden lightning-quick attack by a walker, usually burying their teeth into the soft flesh of a living character, dispatching them to a horrible death and their undead career.

I understand the tension the producers have, they need to make the walkers threatening enough so that the characters are in constant danger from the walkers, but they can't make the walkers powerful enough so that any close encounter between a live human and a dead walker results in two dead walkers. My main problem is with the unfortunate inconsistency in the portrayal; it comes across as unfair and arbitrary instead of scary and threatening.

With that one caveat, I would still have to say that I am very impressed with  The Walking Dead and I am in no way shape or form a horror fan, I like the show for its depiction of an alternative reality and its focus on the characters and their motivations and interactions.

Walking Dead Season 2 resumes this Sunday!

2 Weeks Until Season 2 Of Walking Dead!

This show was my guilty pleasure last spring when I discovered it, in repeats on AMC. I watched the entire first season in about a week. Hopefully, the second season which starts Sunday October 16th will be just as good.

REVIEW: Octavia Butler's FLEDGLING

Octavia Butler's twelfth (and last) book came out in paperback recently and I got a copy for my birthday in May. Some of you will remember that I knew the author personally and blogged about my encounters with her previously.

fledgling is a brilliant re-imagination of the vampire myth by one of the most creative writers in the genre of "speculative fiction."

The story begins with a young woman who wakes up, bruised and burned in a cave. The woman leaves a cave and discovers a razed village nearby and meets a young man who she bites, feeds on and then has sex with. One of the many unusual aspects of this tale are the details that the young woman appears physically as a pre-pubescent, dark-skinned female while the man is white and in his 20s.

Eventually we learn that the name of the young vampire is Shori Mathews and although she looks like a 10 or 11 year old she is actually 50-60 years old, which is young (but equivalent to an adolescent or teenager) for her kind, the long-lived symbiotic, vampiric species known as The Ina.

Butler weaves a suspenseful plot around these basic story ideas, as we learn more about the unusual nature of Ina culture and society while the book progresses to a pleasing conclusion.

Some of the idea this "genre fiction" novel grapples with are miscegenation, gender-stratified societies, the nature of addiction and racism. As always, in creative and enthralling ways Butler excites and intrigues the reader with her vision and insight of her final book. It's one of the sadnesses in life that we will not have the opportunity to experience any new works by this gifted author, one of the few African American females writing speculative fiction.

GRADE: A.