Book 19. The Unnamed by Joshua Ferris

Have you ever been surprised by an artist? The one who immediately comes to mind is Danny Boyle. If you were to look over his canon of work, you’d be mindblown. From drug epic, to children’s film, to Bollywood spectacle, to unexpected sci-fi, the man changes spots every season. Such was the shock of The Unnamed. I went in expecting something funny and maudlin and brackish like And Then We Came To The End. And instead, I received a heartcrushing punch to the sternum. The Unnamed is a very different book, a total diversion from his other work, completed unexpected, and absolutely soul-smashingly wistful. It’s like expecting a ghost story and having someone go into great and morose detail describing the death of a parent by withering cancer. Only that someone is James Earl Jones, and his voice melts your brain.

The Unnamed is a horror story and a love story. A man suffers from a disease that’s unexplainable, a disease so ludicrous that he can’t logically explain it to anyone because it doesn’t exist. It causes him to wander aimlessly. It’s a simple disease, and yet devastating. And it totally unravels the man’s life.

We watch how it erodes his family, his lawyer career, his relationship with his daughter, and his marriage. It’s the battle of wills between Tim and Jane that keeps you reading the novel. It’s dealing with a disease so stupid and unthinkable, something that might even be fake, that the novel hinges on, but it’s watching it destroy Tim and Jane, tear them apart like two caramel stuck apples. A lot of people will not like this book, because they can’t imagine what it’s like to watch someone you love go away.

On the surface, it is a pretty stupid conceit. A man wanders, endlessly, going mad with a madness that may or may not be real, shredding a life and love that are true and real. The third act is truly insane, almost as if Ferris himself wandered crazily from his own life and watched his novel tear off like an unleashed dog.

However, I chose to read the novel as if Tim’s unexplainable disease were faked. I read it like his disease was actually the restlessness most of us feel in our current lives: a displeasure with our careers or situations and an unquenchable need to simply wander off. Have you never felt compelled to just walk out of your job, leave your career, leave your entire life behind, and go somewhere else? That’s how I chose to read Ferris’s novel and it broke my heart.

Book 18. A Feast for Crows by George R.R. Martin (A Song of Ice and Fire, Book 4)

Well, now I join the leagues of fans eagerly awaiting A Dance with Dragons, the eternally delayed Book 5 of A Song of Ice and Fire. But unlike most, who’ve been bombarding Martin with demands and threats and general bullying, I say, fuck it. Take all the fucking time in the world you want, Georgey Boy. Sure, you thought it’d be done in 2005, and probably had most of it written, but it’s not ready? It hasn’t cut the mustard? Still wrestling with that Gordian Knot? Then keep cranking away until it’s perfect. And you know why I won’t push the man?

Two words. Stephen King.

We used to have to wait seven years between books in the Dark Tower series. And they were glorious. Remember the Oz like glory, mashed up with Roland’s past and Randall Flagg’s menace in Wizard and Glass? And how we waited and waited. And then King got clocked by a car. And my immediate thought was, “Oh, God. I’ll never get to read the rest of the Dark Tower!” Despite the clues he dropped in Bag of Bones, that he had all the novels completed in a safety deposit box in a Post Office or something or other. We still all shuddered.

Then. He actually fired off those half cooked eggs for our reading pleasure. Faster than ever we received King’s massive sprawling epic. Can you imagine what those books would have been like if he had worked the full seven years on each novel? What he would have done with it? What might have been? What epic floors on the tower we might have traversed? Instead, we got the slapdash crapoff of the last three novels. And for the remainder of his career, he’s been pooping out more and more works like the real Stephen King got lost in his own fucking tower and all that remains is a Sheemie-tard version that crawled in from another UR.

So, George, my friend. I know you’ve threatened to pull a Robert Jordan on us. You’ve joked about just not doing it out of spite. And I say, good on you. Take all the fucking time in the world. I’ll wait, faithfully, determinedly. I got plenty of other books to read on my Kindle. I’ve got miles to go. And so must you. So watch the superbowl. Talk about the movies you saw. Write blurbs for other authors. Have that second bowl of cereal. You do what you have to do to get this one right. And I’ll gladly wait to find out what happened with the second half of my favorite characters. And sure, it’ll be bittersweet when I realize that there are only two more left, that we’re on the sunset side of the series. But goddamn, sir. You write a hell of a book.

By the way, I’ve hooked more people to this than the boys slinging in Hamsterdam. If you haven’t read it by now, after all my exhortations and glorious spouting, there’s nothing I can do for you. Book 4 marks Martin splitting his massive sprawling adventure in twain and following only half of the storylines. And Jesus Wept, it’s astounding. Even with the fact that we hear nothing from my favorite character, and I won’t tell you who has lived and who has died, it’s still blown my mind. Martin is unflinching in his ability to simply murder off characters and destroy lives. What he has put these people through, knowing that they still have three more tomes to get their brains battered, that this world is still torn asunder and may never come back together, that greater threats loom, I’m all the more excited for Martin to put his blessing on Book 5. Rumor has it due later this year, round the time Book 13 of the Wheel of Time and quite possibly the second book in Pat Rothfuss’ trilogy.

I’m waiting, George. And fuck anyone who doesn’t know quality takes time.

Book 17: Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters by Jane Austen and Ben H. Winters

So, if you do a quickie scan of the ol’ Amazon these days, you’re going to notice an entire trend of classics being B-movied for our appreciation. The Wizard of Oz — with zombies. Huckleberry Finn — with zombies. I like zombies, but c’mon. So You Think You Can America’s Got Zombies. Let the trend end. Pride and Prejudice and Zombies wasn’t even that fucking great. What I can best say about Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters is that at least it’s not more fucking zombies. Aside from that….yeah, bring on Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter. At least that seems a little original.

I like what Winters did with the overall mythology. Essentially, the world’s been flooded and all the aquatic creatures have become bloodthirsty and violent. Not just squids and giant sharks, but actually guppies and catfish and such. So all of Britain has actually become a series of islands, menaced by carnivorous sealife. I don’t know if it’s extended to outside Britain or if it’s just a curse layered against them for colonization. It’s actually a great premise, but it’s a punchline that wears thin, just like with P&P&Z. Like Austen but let’s cram as many fish references as we can.

Instead of being too old to be a worthy mate as in the original, in this one, they’ve made Colonel Brandon into some sort of squid faced monstrosity. It’s really weak, the weakest change of the novel, particularly since they’ve modified it so that during all the many conversations, they’re constantly peppering the novel with references to how people can barely stand to look at him and he makes them sick. And Brandon’s in the novel quite a bit, so it just gets to be too much. Willoughby fares better, being represented as some sort of treasure hunter.

Not all of the changes are bad. Sir John and his wife and crazy mother and law undergo wonderful modifications which are great additions to the story. Sir John’s been turned into some sort of bizarre adventurer, and his wife and mother-in-law are actually captured savages from a village they ransacked. They were stuffed into burlap sacks and forced to marry. Charlotte Palmer also becomes a savage, and it works so well in the story. Even funnier is what he chooses to do with Margaret, the third sister. I kept forgetting she was in the story, since most of the focus is on Elinor and Marianne. Margaret becomes obsessed with a tribe of Cthlulu worshippers who are insisting that the protectors will rise up from the sea and save everyone. It’s hilarious, and actually does a great job explaining Margaret’s absence throughout the story. Lucy Steele and her sister get foisted off on another modification that is decidedly less wonderful.

Overall, the changes Winters makes are pretty good, but much like the Pride and Prejudice and Zombies inspiration, the joke just can’t hold out for the entire novel. It’s like, HA! Sea Monsters! Cool! Violence and bloodshed in classic Austen! Then it just gets less funny. And then you’re wondering when the story will be over. And in an Austen novel I already felt was overlong in the original, it seems to be interminable. I was mildly curious about the Oz and Finn mashups, but now I just want them to stop. I don’t want to see an entire generation of authors who make their bucks taking summer reading projects and peppering them with zombies or mummies or whatever the hell else they think of.

But I am still curious about Seth Grahame-Smith’s Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter, if only because it seems like he actually did some clever crafting. He started the joke, so it’s his fault that this is happening, but maybe he can shift it in a better direction.

Book 16: Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen

Ah, once again I get an opportunity to irritate the hell out of the Austenites with my boorish thoughts on Jane Austen, having only been read to prepare myself for some dude making scratch by jamming a B-movie theme in there. Yes, I fired through Sense and Sensibility just to prep myself for Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters, which is the next review I’m gonna be scribbling.

Last time I twisted a few knickers by blaming Sex and the City on Jane Austen. Well, now you can blame Twilight on her too. That’s right. Twilight is inspired by Jane Austen. It’s not Jane Austen’s fault. You see, I think most of these awful pop culture trends are the result of people who read Jane Austen and totally missed the jokes. Just like you can blame torture porn on Stephen King. You can see where Stephanie Meyer read Jane Austen as a girl and only saw the pining romance and the overblown, over the top bemoaning of Sense and Sensibility and took that as her framework for Bella’s mooning and depression. In Sense and Sensibility, Marianne gets so obsessed with young Willoughby and so unbearably heartbroken that she literally can’t eat or sleep. At one point, she actually gets violently ill pining for Willoughby. And I remember Bella from New Moon, and think Jesus, here’s where the Stormin’ Mormom got her inspiration.

But anyone with half a fucking brain can see that Austen is being satirical. I mean, she’s making Marianne so over-the-top in her melancholy to prove the point of how ridiculous Marianne’s mooning is. It’s FUCKING SATIRE. You’re not supposed to emulate Marianne. You’re supposed to see what a stupid twat she’s being. That’s what MARIANNE fucking figures out — she was being ridiculous. GET IT?! So when I blame Jane Austen for these idiotic authors and writers being inspired by her — I fully recognize that it’s entirely not her fault. So lay off me.

I didn’t care too much for Sense and Sensibility in the long run, just because I felt like the book made its point really fast and got twisted to all hell by the end. The complications got really convoluted by the end. It was a comedy of errors relationship story that shuffled everything WAY too much. It seemed like a play with a sixth unnecessary act. I much preferred Pride and Prejudice.

Book 15: Dark Hollow by John Connolly (Charlie Parker Series)

I dig the Charlie Parker series, a combination of hardboiled detective noir with gruesome supernaturalish fiction, but this book was sort of a misstep. It’s not a perfect series, but of the ones I picked up from the Cannonball Read requests, it was among my favorites. I prefer it to the Repairman Jack and Jack Reacher works, but I wasn’t as huge a fan of this particular story.

Dark Hollow is basically Charlie Parker tracking down a serial killer. It shirks the supernatural, and falls into the realm that irritated the fuck out of me with some of Peter Straub’s works. The killer was pretty damn good, and Connolly does an interesting job with the actual mystery, but the novel feels overlong because he spends so much time doing what I like to refer to as “campfiring”. When someone tells a ghost story, and they want it to seem all creepy and mysterious, so they spend most their time trying to set up with “oohs” and “aahs” and “boos”. I get that it’s a horror novel, and that you like to leer on the side of the macabre, but Jesus, Connolly, you don’t have to try to spook us if your killer really is creepy.

However, it’s still a badass novel. And when it finally gets down to doing the detectiving, the mystery is pretty horrifying. Connolly isn’t averse to murdering up children, and in disturbing ways. He also infuses the story with some grimly graphic forensic descriptors. Considering this is a guy who had his lead character find his daughter and wife tied to chairs in his own house with their faces torn off, we know he isn’t going to fuck around. Since I’m only two books in, I don’t know if Connolly’s going to make it his thing that Parker stalks kiddie-killers, but it would add that creepy edge that would give him a vicious dog in the hunt.

Parker’s a great character — a flawed manhunter with tons of demons to tackle. He’s part monster himself. I’m still not going to shake the series, but it’s on the same notice as Repairman Jack.

Book 14: First Lord’s Fury by Jim Butcher (Codex Alera Series)

Well, it’s over.

This was the very last in Jim Butcher’s kinda-side fantasy project that he started pimping at the end of all the Harry Dresden novels. Figuring, well, I like fantasy, and I like Jim Butcher’s writing, how can I go wrong? And the answer is…you can’t.

It was spectacular series that incorporated magic, spellcasting, epic battles, mystical creatures, spirituality, and all sorts of goodies. I’m glad to finally have an author who started a series and finished it, though much like the wonderful Percy Jackson series, it was bittersweet. It was building up to a mighty clash, and it finally subsided. Characters died, the war was incredible, and it while it was mildly safe, it ended well.

If you haven’t been reading the series, get on it, but from here on out, it can get relatively SPOILERY. And if you dig fantasy — especially for those of you who enjoy the Avatar: The Last Airbender series — you will love the hell out of this. With the elemental based magics mixed in with massive sprawling battles and smartass dialogue, it’s a wonderful series that more people should check out.

Gaius has basically sacrificed himself to hold off the impending advance of the Vord Horde. Tavi and the surviving Canim are sailing from Canea on giant iceships to help finish off the war. The Marat, the remaining Citizens, and all the remaining Alerans have joined forces to fight back. Essentially this boils down to one big fucking throwdown. The final book is basically just one big extended campaign. Throughout the series, Butcher’s been basically creating massive sieges and interspersing it with wonderfully touching exchanges between the characters. The characters are amazingly crafted, and beyond even the dazzling furycraft, you genuinely care about them.

The final fight is pretty astounding, both clever, enormous, and satisfying. Every character gets a chance to shine, where I find most fantasy series to go all Jesus complex — one mighty chosen one dueling the final baddie one-on-one in a no-holds barred lightning/fire duel. Tavi has remained foibled all throughout the series, and this final fight is no less revealing.

It does kind of leave the opportunity for Butcher to create a new series, whether he chooses to reuse these same characters or not remains to be seen. I’m hoping he will. While there’s still literally miles to go on the Dresden Files, Butcher seems like the playful type who’d get a kick out of revisiting this somewhere down the road. It was an experiment at first, just a lark based on his own love of fantasy, and it’s been wildly successful. So I remain hopeful.

Book 13: The Terror by Dan Simmons

TK may not have introduced me to Dan Simmons, but he certainly what drove me over the edge. When we went to SXSW, TK came toting the massive paperback for Simmons’ The Terror. I had recently heard great things about Drood and decided then and there that I had to snag a copy of one of his books.

Simmons writes this devastating combination of history and supernatural fiction. The historical is incredibly detailed, impeccably researched, and massively technical. It adds an extra layer to the story that makes it almost feel as if you’re reading a non-fiction tome. Except for the hideous supernatural beings that constantly torment the protagonists.

The Terror tells the tale of an ill-fated arctic exploration to breach the Northwest Passage during the 1840’s. Sir John Franklin’s exploits are real – there was in fact a sea journey that failed killing everyone involved. What Simmons does is propose that the murderous mission was hunted by a mythic ice demon born from Esquimaux curses. Due to Franklin’s demand to stick to the mission, he doomed both The Terror and her sister ship to a frozen three year death trap where if not ravaged by scurvy or frostbite, the sailors were set upon and butchered by an invisible monster that stalks them in the wintery night.

The novel itself is like an iceberg, creeping forward at an arduous and interminable pace. It’s such a massive, massive story. It takes it’s time in the telling, almost too much time, delving deeply and with great detail into the history and the backstory of the different sailors. It’d be like watching Ghost Ship interspersed with a three hour docudrama about Shackleton done by PBS. But if I did as much research as Simmons, I’d be anxious to make sure everyone got every damn drop I could fit.

Simmons does a splendid job of building tension, by jumping right into the middle of the action. He jumps around, doing a time shift in the beginning as we leap between narrators at different points during the expedition. He kind of has to at the rate he kills off characters. The body count is high, messy, and fucking crunchy. Even when the monster isn’t slaying people, the elements are, and it’s just as disturbing if not moreso. Anyone can get their head bitten into like a candy apple, but hearing in great detail the ravages of scurvy and frostbite are pretty gruesome.

My only complaint is that story is so incredibly drawn out and huge that it seems to outstay it’s welcome. It was an ordeal getting through the entire story, but it’s well worth it. It’s a clever twist on the usual, and it’s gotten me reading Simmons other works. Just be prepared for the long haul.

Book 12: Worst Case by James Patterson and Michael Ledwidge

Full disclosure: An advanced reader’s copy of this book was furnished to me by the wonderful people at the Hachette Book Group.

This series has not just shit the bed, but it’s been rolling around in it and painting the ceiling brown. Michael Bennett already was in for trouble. They turned out a series that combines the hamfisted antics of a poor Alex Cross doppleganger — like Stan’s retarded double or the copy of a copy in Multiplicity — with the sap-crap of Suzanne’s Diary for Nicholas. I don’t blame Patterson the marketing maven for essentially McFranchising his series and combining the two bland flavors of two popular series into a big old oatmeally lump, but he’s completely fucked the series.

Michael Bennett is a negotiator for the NYPD. He’s also a widow — his wife dies in the first book of the series and I don’t spoil that as it’s extolled on the cover. It gets worse, she leaves him with TEN children. They aren’t Mormon, or even more staunchly committed to the Irish Catholicism practiced throughout, but rather they’ve ADOPTED these ten children. Of all different races and ages. The Commish was cute and all, but even Chiklis realized he’s better shaved and crunching skulls.

I let that go, because the series was pretty good when they stopped bending it like Benetton ads. The bad guy is worse than Humpty Dumpty from the old fucking Adam West Batmans. He starts off interesting, kidnapping rich kids and interrogating them before murdering them for failing. It’s a neat premise that quickly goes violently Glenn Beck as the madman gets overcome and starts weeping crazily. In fact, that’s kind of the baddie’s thing — he gets so emotionally unbalanced, he cries for the people he whacks. By the time the books comes stumbling erratically into it’s finale, you just want the entire five boroughs to go up in flames so we can start over with new Indians and new beads.

Even worse is the tragically weak love story attempted to be crammed in like a fat club kid ungreased attempting leather pants. If they painted PURDY on the FBI agent’s back and gave her a big flashing button that said “Do Me!” they couldn’t have made a more obvious, unnecessary or awful attempt at trying to add a slap dash of sex. It’s bad. But not nearly as bad as the finale result of all Bennett’s macking. If Robin came out and decided he wanted to start straightening the Riddler’s questionmark, it couldn’t have been a worse resolution.

The Worst Case is that this book will sky rocket to the top of the bestsellers list, and even people like me who loathe the series now will buy more. We’re compelled. There’s actually a subliminal message in ever staticy four page chapter that forces you to stay fat and stay tuned.

Now bring me a donut.

Book 11: I, Alex Cross by James Patterson

Full disclosure: I was furnished with an advanced reader’s copy of this book by the wonderful people of the Hachette Book Group. However, I was so impatient to read it, I foolishly purchased it from Amazon before my copy came in the male. Mea culpa.

At this point, I think the Alex Cross series is the only series Patterson is doing right. He’s become this sort of McCopdrama, farming out his name brand to anyone who can cobble together something formulaic. He’s completely fucked the Women’s Murder Club into this shaggy ass The View sewn to a bitch-ass version of Law and Order. The Michael Bennett series — well, I’ll get to that with the next review.

But Alex Cross has been steadily decent, even when it got a little middling before righting itself. Starting with Big Bad Wolf, the series has been pretty intense and wonderful, right up until Cross and Cross Country, which were both magnificent. This one takes us back to Washington, and back to what Cross does best — solve murders.

It’s a damn fine case: Cross’s estranged niece is found in a plastic bag in the back of the car of a missing stooge for the mob. When I say in a plastic bag, I mean that in chunks and goo — she was chopped up in a wood chipper. They discover that she was a high-priced call girl operating out of a speciality brothel in Virginia.

If this wasn’t brutal enough, this is coupled with a through-line that effects one of the people in Cross’s tight-knit family. Knowing that Patterson is not afraid of killing off major characters (besides his main one), it makes for a nice sense of tension.

It’s not nearly as intense as Cross Country, and truly kind of peters out in the grand finale, but this is one of the few series that Patterson is still doing right. It’s as reliable as watching The Simpsons — even a bad episode is still better than most. The ultimate, ultimate bad guy is more inherent on the “what a twist” than the usual maniac slavering demons he populates his books with.

POTENTIAL SPOILERS FOR PEOPLE NOT FOLLOWING THE SERIES THIS FAR

What bothers me is that Patterson abandoned a premise that was what made his last few books great. He usually has an overarching bad guy lurking constantly in the shadows. A lot of times, he was working with one or two different bad guys at a time. I don’t know if people felt this was a little too Batmandibular, or if he just ran out of a quality of psychopath across the three thriller series and stand alone books he’s been putting out. A cross over would be interesting, like most of the other authors I enjoy do. I long for the return of Kyle Craig or someone like the Big Bad Wolf. I mean, they’re lurking out there, bring them back.

I’ve been steadily more disgusted with Patterson’s other series as they take these increasingly more sitcomy turns for the worse, but then again, he’s writing them for the same people that typically make Old Dogs #1 at the box office. It’s not about quality anymore, it’s about quantity, and Patterson brands out at least one new book every six months, if not four months at this point. And goddammit, I’ll keep reading them.

Book 10: Ask the Dust by John Fante

When I announced that I was following my ragged dreams out to the West Coast, I threw a going away party. And at that party I was given Ask the Dust by my good friend Corbin. He had signed it with “Keep writing!” This was in 2006. It has sat on a shelf for three years, until finally this year, I decided that I had to read it. And I’m incredibly glad I did.

John Fante was a screenwriter and token hero for most of the Beats like Burroughs and Kerouac. He created the character of Arturo Bandini, a shifty nervous arrogant Italian scrounging a life for himself out in Los Angeles. Bandini is a less repulsive version of Ignatius Reilly, an almost pathetic anti-hero. Bandini is cruel, snide, and pompous, but in such an endearing and cowardly way. Whenever he makes money, he spends it, extravagantly and then begs people for more. He’s a chiseler who cannot abide being chiseled.

Ask the Dust tells the story of Bandini finding success with his writing. His rambling prose is recognized as brilliance, and he’s an overnight success. Which means that people still don’t care who he is, despite him proclaiming that he is the epic Arturo Bandini! As he is emerging as an artist, he’s also developing one of the most fascinating literary relationships with a young bar server named Camilla. They taunt and insult each other. When Bandini opens his mouth to say I love you, it comes out as a fuck you. And he walks away proud that he destroyed her. Ask the Dust is about seriously unbalanced people, but done from the perspective of a seriously unbalanced narrator. And the writing style is lyrical and conversational and fantastic.

Los Angeles tried to kill me, and I’ve been fighting back ever since. I came out here with a dream, only to have it deferred. I haven’t been writing like I should. So after reading about Bandini and watching my friends succeed — like my dear Rebecca Makkai who got published in the Best of 2009 guide which you should own and be lavishing praise upon — I decided enough was enough.

I realized that I hadn’t been writing so much because I had been writing so much. I constantly do reviews, for Pajiba or the Cannonball. So I was doing writing but not the right kind. So I need to get back on track. And it was amazing, reading about a man who had to beg his mother for money, who was lying to himself about whether he would be a success, this idiot, this buffoon, suddenly becoming rich. And like every other time, I realized how much I wanted that. I remembered who that kid was who packed a Ford Focus three years ago and tore ass across the country to destroy the world. I remembered Corbin writing that note to me, but I forgot to listen. But I hear him now. And I know what I have to do.

Ask the Dust has been called one of the quintessential LA books. A plot that involves earthquakes, desperate scrambles to become famous, and the interweaving of multi-ethnic stories, it’s really locked down on what’s it’s like to watch the sun set on your coast. Like Bandini, I just need to be filled with madness enough to make my mark. Hopefully, without sending those I love to the madhouse.