Omni Review the First: THE FALL, BOSSYPANTS, THE WIND THROUGH THE KEYHOLD and WILDCATTER

All my writing time lately has been taken up by a new project I’m working on. Fortunately my reading time is still unsullied. So I’ve got all these books that demand reviewing but no time to do it. The solution? An Omni-Review.

THE FALL by Guillermo Del Toro and Chuck Hogan (Book 2 of The Strain Trilogy)

Surprisingly not full of suck.  The first book in the series was bogged down by seemingly endless pages of unnecessary exposition and convoluted setups. Thankfully, the second book tosses all that mind numbing research aside and just concentrates on telling readers a good story. There are a couple genuine WTF moments that I really enjoyed and on the whole this book feels like a beach read hopped up on speed. This series officially stands at 1:1 in the win:loss ratios.

BOSSYPANTS by Tina Fey

After a couple chapters Tina Fey’s dogged determination to turn everything in this book into a knee slapper began to undermine my attraction in the story she was telling. I don’t know if she’s afraid to tell a story straight up or just incapable of it. But after endless nudges in the ribs, bald innuendos and blatant double entendres I just got bored with the whole thing. Which is unfortunate, because underneath the endless layers of jokes I got the sense there was a really interesting story hidden inside. I picked up BOSSYPANTS because I wanted to know more about a comedian and writer who is funny, talented and unlike anyone else working in the biz. In the end I put it down, worn about by her inability to know when it was time to switch gears.

THE WIND THROUGH THE KEYHOLE by Stephen King

KEYHOLE is set inside King’s Dark Tower world, which is always a personal favourite of mine. This book is actually a story, within in a story, within a story. It’s almost Shakespearean. Once you take into account that the core story of the book actually deals with one man murdering his friend so he can marry his wife and take over his business the Shakespeare reference starts to seem more and more apt. KEYHOLE doesn’t really add anything new to the Tower mythos, rather it sort of fills in the blanks around some of the series’ smaller mysteries. But it’s still nice to check in Roland, Susannah, Eddie and Jake nonetheless. If you like King, you’ll like this book. If you like the Dark Tower, then you’ll be thrilled to know there’s more story to tell.

WILDCATTER by Dave Duncan

Stop. Go back and reread any review on this site I’ve ever written about Dave Duncan’s work. Then erase the title and replace it with WILDCATTER. Exploring new worlds and new civilizations is probably best left up to the big corporations. After all they’re the ones best set up to do the job. But what happens when the little guy decides to get into deep space exploration? How do they compete against the Goliaths of the game? Duncan does his typical top notch work here, delivering a ripping yarn in his trademark understated manner. It was nice to see him dabbling in sci-fi again.

Book Review: 11\22\63 by Stephen King

When high school teacher Jake Epping receives a call from Al Templeton, the owner of his favourite greasy spoon diner, he’s more than a little confused. After all Jake isn’t particularly close to Al.

When he meets up with the restaurateur, Jake finds the normally hearty man decimated and apparently dying of lung cancer, with only days to live. Al shows Jake a secret hiding in his restaurant pantry, an invisible time portal that connects to 1958.

With practically his dying breath, Al fills Jake in on his impossible plan to go back in time and prevent the assassination of JFK. Jake, divorced, alone and with seemingly nothing to lose, agrees to take on the mission in Al’s stead and travels back in time over 50 years to save a president’s life, change the fate of a nation and giving meaning to a world gone mad.

A lot can happen in five years and while Jake awaits his chance to stop Lee Harvey Oswald from pulling the trigger he is startled to find himself falling in love with Sadie Dunhill, a statuesque librarian fleeing her murderous ex-husband. But by being with Sadie, Jake could be powerless to stop events from running their course.

The past might not be set in stone, but it will do anything in its power to protect itself.

I hold Stephen King up as sort of the Baby Bear of modern popular fiction, skirting that elusive boundary between too hot and too cold. His writing maintains an even keel in even the choppiest of weather, rarely stooping to shop-worn clichés and sometimes gifting readers with real depth and insight into the characters he writes.

And to those who propose that King is a bad writer I’d suggest in 2011 he’s simply an overly familiar one. After all, with over 50 books and countless short stories to his name, it’s hard to find anything new or fresh about the author’s works. His writerly tics and authorial voice are so distinct that even his new books can feel like something we’ve read previously.

Maybe that’s why I can’t get rid of the nagging feeling of dissatisfaction I’m carrying around with me after finishing up this book.

11\22\63 is ostensibly a period love tale bookended by the trappings of a traditional King pot boiler. While King lures you in with the promise of time travel and alternate futures he spends far more time charting the star crossed romance of Sadie and Jake than he does working through some of the more interesting aspects of his genre setup.

Which is fine, I can roll with that. There’s nothing wrong with an author stretching their legs and exploring some of the untrodden real estate of their craft. I suspect my sense of disappointment stems from the unrealistic expectations I brought with me to the book. I expected hard sci-fi and got QUANTUM LEAP* instead. That’s no one’s fault but my own.

But if I’m being really honest here King shouldn’t get off entirely scot-free. He’s made the classic mistake of falling into the trap that many well researched period books stumble into. King has become so enamoured with his extensive investigation of the JFK assassination and America in the 50’s and 60’s that he spends far too much time setting the scene for his audience and not enough getting on with moving the story forward.

It’s obviously important to King that he is as accurate as possible when recounting Oswald’s life leading up to JFK’s death. But his unwavering pursuit of faithfully recreating a period in American history robs the book of any sense of urgency or drive. Instead readers meander through overly detailed descriptions of mid-century USA punctuated by brief flurries of action before retreating back to explore the book’s romantic subplot once again.

It’s hard to become emotionally or intellectually engaged in this book with such a passive lead character. Jake Epping is essentially a glorified Peeping Tom throughout the bulk of the story, watching history unfolding around him but unable or unwilling to do anything to change it. He’s so busy absorbing the details and waxing romantic about the world around him that he fails to do anything with his incredible opportunity except hunker down and wait out five years until he can make up for his inaction in one incredible go. Jake’s motivation for stopping the JFK assassination is kind of shaky. Sure, we’ve all sat around with friends** and talked about how we’d change the world if we could go back in time. But Jake’s mission was researched, reconnoitred and then dropped wholesale into his lap, without him having to lift a single finger. His immediate and unquestioning acceptance of this outlandish proposition makes for a less than compelling character motivation.

Part of the problem with 11\22\63 is King’s decision to set the exit to his time portal 5 years before the actual assassination attempt. Now I assume he made that decision in part so he could tie the book into the larger Dark Tower universe, by taking readers back to Derry and poking through some of the fallout from his classic horror tale, IT. And it does also doesn’t hurt that having such a long buildup to the main event gave King plenty of time to properly develop and grow the relationship between Jake and Sadie. But in reality with such a long buildup I never got a sense of what was at stake through the book.

One of the themes in the book that King brings up repeatedly is the idea that the past tries to protect itself from being saved. This means that any time Jake tries to make significant alterations to the timeline unbelievable coincidences start to pile up to prevent him from doing anything. Unfortunately for readers the past only fights back at the exact moment the event is about to be changed. It doesn’t seem to believe in pre-emptive strikes. So with a five year head start before Jake has to do anything of substance, besides watch Oswald’s comings and goings from behind window curtains, it never really feels like he’s at risk of not accomplishing his goal.

Oh sure, King tries to spice things up by upping the stakes of his romantic subplot, but that only serves as minor distraction at best. We all know that Jake is going to have his opportunity to stop Oswald. I mean, you don’t write a story about the JFK assassination and then cut it short just because your girlfriend’s ex shows up on the scene. What I would have like to have seen out of the book is a more active representation of the past trying to protect itself. An entity that physically tries to stop Jake or derail his plans long before we get to Dallas.

If you like Stephen King there’s nothing about 11\22\63 that will scare you off. But I will caveat you up the ying-yang. This is not a bad story, it just seems so far removed from the style that King built his reputation on.

What you'll get is a gentler, more mature book that cares less about the things that go bump in the night and more about understanding the people that populate the story. His musings on what life was like in the past are so rose-coloured and syrupy I could hardly believe it was the same unflinching author who wrote stark tales like RAGE or CARRIE. King’s descriptions were so cloying at times, and so unwilling to speak harshly of the era of his youth, that it seemed like he was ignoring the reality of the world he was writing about.

It’s actually pretty logical when you think about it. King is a middle aged author now, who doesn’t have to prove anything to anyone but himself. (A far cry from the booze and drug fuelled angry young author of his earlier books.) It’s only natural that as King grows up his writings will lose some of their reactionary fury.

I’d rather have mellow Stephen King, than no Stephen King at all. But that doesn't stop me from pining a little bit for the return of the writer who wasn't afraid to go places others were to scared to write about.

*Not to run down QUANTUM LEAP. I love the shit out of that show. But QUANTUM LEAP is science fiction for romantics and soap opera fanatics.

**Okay, maybe that was just me.

Book Review: MILE 81 – by Stephen King

Actually, that’s misleading. It should say short story review or novella review or something like that. It’s 94 or 79 pages on my iPad (depending on what font size you use) but I have no idea how that translates into actual pages a la physical bookage.

What MILE 81 really is…is a giant teaser for King’s upcoming full length novel, 11\22\63, about a time traveler who tries to prevent JFK’s assassination. Simply by ponying up 2.99 for the MILE 81 ebook and you get a free chapter from 11\22\63. Kind of like the authorial way of a dealer telling you the first taste is (nearly) free. Regardless, it sounded like pretty good value for dollars to me, especially on a Labour Day weekend where I’d just run through all my reading material.

MILE 81 is about a mysterious car that breaks down at the side of an abandoned highway rest stop. Only the car isn’t really a car at all (is it ever?). The car has no driver, doesn’t seem to be a make or model anyone can recognize and it’s completely caked in mud, which is strange because it hasn’t rained in these parts in quite some time. A string of good Samaritans pull over to offer assistance, only to be eviscerated by the other worldly vehicle. As abandoned cars start to pile up on the side of the road it seems like no one can stop this ravenous roadster from wreaking havoc on wayward drivers.

This story is pretty much King just doing his thing. If you like his style and his subject matter than there’s nothing here that will drive you away. If the man isn’t for you, then you aren’t missing a heck of a lot.

I don’t think King has tackled a story with a car as the baddie since CHRISTINE, a point he cheekily references within the pages of MILE 81.

(I can’t think of any other author who actually has ‘Car as bad guy’ as a specific sub genre of their work. To my recollection King has three stories written in this vein, TRUCKS, the basis for the 80’s cinematic turkey MAXIMUM OVERDRIVE, CHRISTINE and now MILE 81. I think this officially means he has the field genre sewn up)

MILE 81 is slightly underwritten, although that’s a result of the length restrictions of the medium. Although King is brandishing his regular toolbox of writerly tricks and personal flourishes, there’s only so much even he can do in under a 100 pages.

As a result, the setup is flimsy, the build-up relies on a string of far-fetched coincidences that strain credulity and the final showdown between hell on wheels and our noble hearted protagonist is weak and doesn’t hold up too much scrutiny.

Although I was left with wanting more from the book, to be honest, that’s probably an unrealistic expectation on my part. Short stories are meant to be gobbled up quickly, rather than savoured slowly, and MILE 81 was the perfect pop culture morsel for the last weekend of the summer. And I find even King’s lesser lights to be more entertaining than the bulk of stuff out there.

First Reads: The Gunslinger (The Dark Tower #1) - Stephen King

It's that time again. With me caught up to the most recent WHEEL OF TIME book, the "First Reads" category here at Iceberg Ink is once again vacant. If you don't know this is the category here where I review books in series that have been written and read by many long ago and I'm only getting to them now. So, without further adieu I give you the new "First Reads" series of THE DARK TOWER, and here we have the first book THE GUNSLINGER. Note: I will be (after I finish the book series) be reading the graphic Novel prequels as well. So let's get started.

I’ll freely admit to two things here:

1)   I had tried two other times to read the first Dark Tower book. Once as a youth and it was kind of over my head, and then again as an adult when Chris told me to read it and I faltered due to dialogue early on turning me off.

2)   The thing that drew me back to try again (other than the forthcoming Ron Howard/Brian Grazer produced film trilogy possibly starring Javier Bardem in the lead) is the incredible art of the prequel Graphic Novels by Jae Lee and Richard Isanove.

So it was that I tried again. And this time I succeeded and actually really quite enjoyed the story. I read the forward/author’s note that he wrote years later about why he wrote it and the mindset he had when he did.

I should also offer up that I don’t like Stephen King’s novels. His horror/thriller ones that is. I’ve read a fair number of them and I always found I didn’t like his style on those books. I have openly made fun of Chris for his slavish, fanboy devotion to King’s pantheon of books. When we co-habitated as roommates, the bookshelves that dominated our main common living space had more than one full shelf of slightly ragged hardcover copies.

This time I realized that THE GUNSLINGER begins a different type of novel from King showcasing a slightly different style of writing and that difference is what made this book so readable. I’ll be honest, I read this one in about two sittings and had no trouble getting through it. I found the characters, especially that of main Gunslinger Roland, to be written with a decent flair and skill, especially for how young King was when he wrote it. The Man in Black comes across as a bad taste in your mouth…and he’s meant to. Jake comes across well, though I will admit to being endlessly curious how he ended up in this world from what I can only surmise is OUR world. The back story that Roland relates at intervals throughout the book about his childhood and training to be a Gunslinger is both interesting and clever. I would also say that secondary characters like trainer Cort, Alain, and Cuthbert ect. and even David the falcon are well done for the small screen time they have. On top of that I am ENDLESSLY curious about those people, not to mention who else inhabits the current world that Roland does, since this book is consumed by his quest to catch the Man in Black. I can see the potential here for a very interesting series and I look forward to continuing it. I can’t say I was bored at any point in this book. It is tightly written without any of the extraneous stuff that might slow it down. I love the whole lone gunslinger wandering samurai with pistols thing. Just solid imagery.

My complaints only come two-fold. I found that at times things got a tad too philosophical and internal, but this was not overbearing so I wasn’t too upset by it. The ending comes off a bit too existential for my tastes, BUT there are nuggets of really interesting ideas nestled within that overly verbose section and so I come away with a happy disposition.

So, as it happens, I actually enjoyed THE GUNSLINGER a lot, and fully plan to move onto the next book in the series and see where things go. This is quite unique I realize, as King has written a long fantasy series that intermingles with our world somehow and also stars a western as its setting. I’m actually impressed by that alone. Full marks to a writer I used to swear I didn’t like. Looks like I’ll have to modify that statement now.