Bite-Sized Bad Books

These days it seems that for every good book I read, I have to start, and abandon, at least one dud. I can't be bothered to do full reviews of every turkey I come across, so here are three mini-reviews of two books I gave up on, and one that I ended up skim-reading. Consider yourself warned.

Carter & Lovecraft (2015) by Jonathan L. Howard

You wouldn't hire a bespoke tailor to run you up a pair of board shorts and a T-shirt, so why was Howard, the author of the excellent series of Johannes Cabal novels (my review), commissioned to write this tie-in novel for an upcoming TV series? The premise is that a descendant of horror writer H.P. Lovecraft teams up with an ex-NYPD cop to fight supernatural baddies of the Lovecraftian variety. Howard is an excellent writer with an amazing ability to meld steampunk, horror and humour, and he does so with fluid, smart prose and a lot of originality. In Carter & Lovecraft, Howard takes all of his strengths as a writer and tosses them out in favour of a narrative voice that's supposed to sound American, but comes across as second-rate Lee Child. The story is slow, the American setting is poorly realized (Howard is a Brit), the dialogue and banter between the main characters is awkward, and the horror, by the time I abandoned the book at the one-third mark, consisted of one mildly unpleasant death. I hope they paid Howard well, but he should have used a pen name. He has a reputation to protect.

The Color of Smoke (1975) by Menyhert Lakatos

The first English translation of this "epic novel of the Roma" came out in August of this year, and I was intrigued because I've never read anything fictional about the Roma, let alone a novel written by a Roma author. Turns out Lakatos has nothing good to say about his own people. The novel is set just before World War Two in Hungary in a rural community of Roma. Lakatos is unsparing, even savage, in describing the backwardness and brutality of life in this world. In fact, by the halfway point it seemed the book's only purpose was to take vicious swings at the Roma. Lakatos is a good writer but I could only stomach so many descriptions of rural poverty and the abuse of women.





The Road to Little Dribbling (2015) by Bill Bryson

I'll take it on faith that Bill Bryson actually went to the places he describes in this rambling tour around Great Britain. On the other hand it's entirely possible that he sat down in front of his laptop and created this travel book entirely through the generous use of Wikipedia, Google Earth, the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, and Tripadvisor. And he does, in fact, frequently quote from these sources. Here's the book's formula: Bill travels to a British town or point of interest (Stonehenge, the South Downs, etc.) and lists the local shops, tours a museum and describes its contents, throws in a bit of history culled from the internet, complains about litter/rudeness/various bureaucratic inefficiencies, makes a humorous observation or two, throws in some invented comic dialogue between himself and a local, and then ambles off to his next destination. And he even steals a gag from one of Eddie Izzard's routines. I skim-read my way through this one, marveling that apparently the most successful authors are now allowed to plagiarize their books from the web. It's cheaper than hiring a ghost writer, I suppose.

Book Review: The House on the Borderland (1908) by William Hope Hodgson

For the most rabid fans of supernatural/horror fiction, utter and complete weirdness counts for a lot; it's a spice that lifts otherwise straightforward genre material into an exalted realm of deliriously entertaining oddness. H.P Lovecraft is the poster boy in the field of determined weirdness. His work isn't brilliantly written or exceptionally scary, but his single-minded focus on describing horrors that are so hideous, so cosmic, that they can't, well, be described adequately except by screaming hysterically, has given him an enduring cult status amongst horror mavens. On a more exalted literary level there's Mervyn Peake, whose sublimely unusual novels Titus Groan and Gormenghast defy categorization, although they're often shelved in the fantasy section of libraries and bookstores.

The House on the Borderland is a book Lovecraft praised often, and it's easy to see the influence it had on him. The story starts off in traditional late-Victorian style with the discovery, in deepest, darkest, rural Ireland, of a manuscript written by an unnamed man who wished to record the events he experienced in his stately home. The site where the home once stood is now an overgrown ruin next to a massive pit into which a river flows and then disappears underground. The story revealed in the manuscript is of a house under siege by demonic creatures that are half-swine, half-human. But that's not all, not by a long shot. The house also appears to be a portal or stargate to another house on another planet (?) in another dimension (?), perhaps even in a separate universe. The alternate house is a duplicate of the Irish one, except for the notable addition of a surrounding mountain range of Himalayan proportions peopled by hideous gods, all of them staring down at the house. And now for the strangest part of the story. In the last third of the novel our hero witnesses the speeding up of time and the aging and destruction of our solar system and the universe. Yes, things get that crazy.

Published in 1908, Borderland is very much supernatural fiction for the 20th century. Up until then the genre had revolved around ghosts, more ghosts, vampires, werewolves, and the occasional ghoul or church grim. In short, supernatural fiction was largely based on familiar creatures and characters from folktales that had been around since forever. Hodgson imagined a new world of terrors. His swine creatures aren't just terrestrial monsters, but, it would appear, emissaries of something vastly more powerful and evil. The final third of the story, with its unprecedented journey to the end of Time, is a triumph of imagination. The only way to adequately describe it is to try and imagine what a Stephen Hawking fever dream might be like. It's more than worth the price of admission, and it's hard to imagine how a sequence such as this could be described better. Borderland might also represent the first time a supernatural story has used the Is This Real Or Is It The Ravings Of A Madman? gambit. If you pay close attention to the actions of the narrator's sister (the only other occupant of the house) you begin to realize that the entire story could be taking place in the narrator's mind.

The House on the Borderland is very entertaining, always surprising, and has more than a few shivery moments. I first read it as a teenager, and the intervening years have been very kind to it. The only knock against it might be that the final section of the story almost feels like an add-on rather than a part of the whole. Hodgson wrote a few other novels and some excellent short stories, all of which are worth reading. The only exception is The Night Land, an even stranger (if that's possible) novel that's fatally flawed by being written in an intentionally archaic style. There's something ironic in the fact that Hodgson wrote his tales of cosmic terror only a few years before the real life horrors of World War I. Hodgson joined the British Army and was blown apart by an artillery shell in April 1918 at Ypres. One can only wonder at what he might have written had he survived the war; even his singular imagination might not have been prepared for what he saw on the Western Front.

Related posts:

Book Review: Titus Groan (1946) and Gormenghast (1950)

Book Review: Johannes Cabal the Fear Institute (2011) by Jonathan L. Howard

In the two previous Johannes Cabal novels (my reviews here and here) author Jonathan L. Howard tried his hand at a steampunk adventure and a tale about a demonic circus which combined elements from Terry Pratchett and M.R. James. In his latest novel Howard goes the full eldritch and worships at the unholy temple of H.P. Lovecraft. He does it brilliantly; in fact, better than H.P. ever did.

The story this time out has necromancer Cabal hired by the Fear Institute, a secret organization sworn to eliminate fear from the hearts of men. How to do this? By journeying to the Dreamlands, where dreams come to life, and slaying the Phobic Animus, the begetter of fear. The members of the Fear Institute believe a new Golden Age can be achieved if Man is no longer shackled by fear. Cabal accepts the job, and he and three members of the Institute go to the Dreamlands and, naturally enough, discover all manner of horrors and terrors. What fun!

I won't bother with plot details, but suffice to say that Howard constructs a fascinating, entertaining story that always maintains a very high level of imagination, excitement and invention. Howard is simply a great storyteller and a clever writer, and his talent would shine out in any genre, but he shines even brighter in the fantasy/horror world, a place that seems to have more than its fair share of hacks. It's also praiseworthy that Howard sets out to create a homage to Lovecraft but doesn't let that get in the way of his storytelling. When writers decide to write a homage or pastiche it's usually a way of papering over their own lack of originality. The horror/fantasy genre is stuffed with writers who've been "inspired" by Lovecraft, Pratchett and, of course, Tolkien, and they produce a lot of second-rate material. Howard succeeds in his homage because he uses Lovecraft as a flavouring rather than as the main ingredient.

Lovecraft was famous for his firm yet repulsive handshake.

The appeal of Lovecraft (1890-1937) for horror writers is understandable because he was the popularizer of a new kind of horror story. The vast majority of pre-Lovecraft horror stories were about ghosts, with the occasional werewolf or vampire thrown in for variety. Lovecraft created a literary world of cosmic terrors, hideous gods and creatures who weren't satisfied with merely killing you; they wanted to extract your soul, play with it, nibble on it, use it as a ping-pong ball, shred it into confetti, and then lather, rinse, repeat with it. Lovecraft had a feverish imagination and writing style that's entertaining in small doses. The problem with Lovecraft is that he really only knew how to write one kind of story, but at least he did it with a lot of energy and colour.

I say that Lovecraft was a popularizer because the real father of cosmic horror was William Hope Hodgson (1877-1918), an English writer who Lovecraft cited as an influence. Hodgson's life and writing career was cut short by an artillery shell during WW I, but prior to the war he produced short stories and novels that redefined what a horror story was. His finest novel is The House on the Borderland, which is virtually a template for much of Lovecraft's fiction. Hodgson also wrote some great short stories, including a whole series about Carnaki, a Sherlockian sleuth of the supernatural. Carnaki's name is ridiculous, making him sound like a  second-class magician operating on Brighton Pier, but his adventures are wonderfully strange.

The only problem I have with the Cabal books is Cabal himself. He's a more black-hearted version of Blackadder, and that's amusing up to a point, but towards the end of each novel I keep hoping/expecting there will be some change in his character. It never happens. Cabal is entertaining, but his misanthropic sarcasm has become a one-note joke after three books. More variety, please.

Film Review: The Cabin In the Woods (2012)

The slasher/horror genre, like zombies and vampires, just goes on and on and on, and it produces almost as many spoofs and variations on the theme as it does straight horror films. The Cabin In the Woods is the latest attempt to add a twist to the slasher film and it succeeds, but only to a degree. The variation in this case is that the college kids who make the unwise decision to visit a lonely, spooky cabin in the wilderness for a weekend of booze and sex have actually been lured there by some governmental(?) organization that needs warm bodies for a ritual sacrifice. Below the Earth, it seems, lie ancient, evil gods who wish to ravage humankind; the only thing that holds them back is a yearly sacrifice of five young people. The gods find that a sacrifice that takes the form of the plot of a horror movie is very pleasing. This means that the world's nations covertly run real-life horror movie scenarios in an effort placate the gods.

High concept doesn't come much higher than this, and bits and pieces of Cabin succeed, but overall it's just an OK film. The scenes set in the control centre where the ghouls and kids are manipulated by geeky techies are clever and fun and give the film its originality. Unfortunately the third or so of the film that's all-slasher is all-dull. The slasher genre is almost completely played out (hence the existence of this film), and even in this case, a deconstructed slasher film, the chasing, screaming and killing is strictly paint-by-numbers. The longer the film goes on the more you want to get away from the cabin and see what's going on at the control centre.

Of course the main inspiration for this film comes courtesy of H.P. Lovecraft, whose horror short stories often featured unnamed ancient gods who were constantly threatening to break through into our world. Lovecraft had a feverish, if limited, imagination, and the same could be said of Cabin. The horror movie command centre, complete with its stable of ghosts, killers and monsters, is a great idea that deserves it's own movie. Mind you, more time in the command centre would be require filling in some of the enormous plot holes. The story doesn't have an ounce of internal logic, but its energy and humour papers over that problem more or less successfully. Cabin is half good, half meh, but the good half is a lot of fun.

Book Review: Johannes Cabal, the Detective (2010) by Jonathan L. Howard

Saying that this is a steampunk novel is an almost useless definition. So many literary mash-ups fly the flag of steampunk that it should be a requirement that they come with flowcharts that explain the various influences and homages that make them up. In this case we have a story set in a mostly alternate reality Europe in which the usual eastern European countries are replaced by states called Mirkarvia, Senza, and Katamenia. The time period is, roughly speaking, Edwardian, and the technology features airships (of course) and entomopters, a dragonfly-inspired aircraft. The literary influences include Agatha Christie, H.P. Lovecraft, and boys adventure magazines like Chums. In sum, the usual DNA of a steampunk adventure.

What sets Cabal apart from the common herd of blood and thunder Victoriana steampunk fiction is that Howard clearly set out with a strong story idea before adding in the steampunk elements. And it doesn't hurt that he's a fine writer. Johannes Cabal, the Detective is the second in a series and it manages to mix together a locked room mystery with a spy action-thriller as well as a taste of supernatural horror. It's to Howard's credit that none of these elements feel forced or awkward. Other steampunk writers I've read tend to clutter up the foreground with steampunk set dressing, as it were, and leave the story behind. This novel would work well even if it wasn't set in an alternate historical reality. Really, the steampunk stuff is just a bonus.

This adventure finds Cabal, a necromancer, fleeing Mirkarvia after raising the country's king from the dead (temporarily). He flees to Senza aboard an airship under a false name and then the fun begins. One of the passengers is murdered and Cabal reluctantly takes the case. Much action and intrigue ensues, and the finale features a spectacular airship crash. As action-y as the story is, it's first and foremost a comic novel, with a comic style influenced heavily by Blackadder. Like Blackadder, Cabal is self-centred, vicious, and mostly concerned with saving his own skin. He does have a glimmer of humanity, and it's brought out by Leonie Barrow, his sidekick in this adventure who, I'm guessing, was introduced in the previous book.

There aren't many writers who can mix comedy and adventure this well, and Howard is definitely one of them. He even manages to provide a clever epilogue to the story that works beautifully as a standalone tale of supernatural horror. My only reservation about the novel is that Cabal's resolute nihilism might make him less interesting to follow in successive stories. But I'll take that chance.