Month: February 2021

Death’s End by Liu Cixin

/ MeltdownMessiah / Leave a comment

I’m copying over some reviews of titles I’d written up in 2018 and earlier, just in case these titles are new for other people.

Liu Cixin really tackles a lot of heavy material with Death’s End, starting approximately when The Dark Forest did in our near future and running billions of years into the future…jumping forward sporadically as the protagonist is awakened from hibernation to participate in or witness universe shaping events.
Human nature, sociology, game theory, and dimensional physics all play a major role in shaping a narrative that delves far deeper into this possible future for the human race than the previous two novels in the trilogy. What’s most surprising is just how deftly it’s all woven together, and that is even more surprising when taking into consideration that it was translated into English while maintaining coherence and literary quality.
While at times almost disorienting, this book was an absolutely necessary conclusion to the trilogy that began with The Three-Body Problem.

Gutted: Beautiful Horror Stories edited by Doug Murano & D. Alexander Ward

/ MeltdownMessiah / Leave a comment

I’m copying over some reviews of titles I’d written up in 2018 and earlier, just in case these titles are new for other people.

Gutted: Beautiful Horror Stories is a fascinating anthology of short fiction from a variety of diverse authors…providing an assortment that varies in both style and substance to a huge extent.
I don’t know that a lot of these stories are “horror” in the sense that some of you might expect, but they are quite deeply unsettling as a whole. Many of what you’ll find are examples of the horror that we carry within us or manifest internally, like in the unexpected choose-your-own-adventure tale ‘A Haunted House Is a Wheel Upon Which Some Are Broken’ provided by Paul Tremblay or the devastating ‘Arbeit Macht Frei’ by Lisa Mannetti.
Clive Barker’s ‘Coming To Grief’ was my personal favorite, and a more subtle tale than a lot of his short fiction. Strangely enough, because I normally love his short fiction, my least favorite story was ‘The Problem of Susan’ by Neil Gaiman, a dark and perverse take on the world of Narnia…it wasn’t necessarily a bad story in any way, but it felt like the weakest inclusion.
I definitely recommend this book, especially if you’re looking to discover new authors you might not have already been familiar with.

Burn the Rabbit by Joe Chianakas

/ MeltdownMessiah / Leave a comment

I’m copying over some reviews of titles I’d written up in 2018 and earlier, just in case these titles are new for other people.

I had high hopes when I started reading Burn the Rabbit by Joe Chianakas, because Rabbit In Red was just such a fun and engaging story. It could be due to the higher expectations going in, but I don’t feel like Burn the Rabbit was anywhere near as good as the first book.
The stakes are higher, the story is decent enough, and the characters are largely consistent with what we would expect to see in the same people a matter of months after the events of Rabbit In Red…but something remains lacking. Something about this second installment of the trilogy just didn’t grab me the way the first book managed to.
Maybe it’s the altogether too predictable connection between JB and Jaime (as well as her sister and mother, of course) which is no more subtle than if Stephenie Meyer had written it. Unless something way out of left field pops up in the third book and that predictable “twist” turns out to be a red herring, it felt like the reader was being hit over the head with “clues” to the point that it underestimates the intellect of the audience.
It could be the fact that I ran across more copy editing errors than I see in many self-published novels, but I doubt that’s it because those things happen in even the most well-respected authors’ books and I tend to dismiss them.
It could be the fact that it felt like the narrative was rushed, wedging more time elapsed and many more actual events into not much more writing, and a great deal got glossed over in the process.
Honestly, I don’t know what it was about this book that left me feeling unsatisfied in comparison to how I felt after finishing Rabbit In Red…but I will still be looking forward to the third installment.

As of today, I have yet to read the third installment of the Rabbit In Red trilogy. All three books are collected in a single volume, and I would recommend purchasing the collected edition vs. the individual volumes…for the best overall value.

Rabbit In Red by Joe Chianakas

/ MeltdownMessiah / 1 Comment

I’m copying over some reviews of titles I’d written up in 2018 and earlier, just in case these titles are new for other people.

Rabbit In Red by Joe Chianakas was essentially for horror what Ready Player One was for 70s and 80s geek nostalgia. Needless to say, I loved it.
This was a book written by someone who shares my same obsessive love of all things horror, film and literature…writing out the sort of fantasy experience I think many of us wish we could enjoy.
It’s a small book, more of a novella than a novel, and it races by quickly as you get thoroughly drawn into the story as it unfolds. The shame is that it isn’t longer, thankfully there is a sequel already available and a third volume to be released in the relatively near future.
Were it not for my subscription to Horror Block I more than likely never would have read this book nor even known that it exists. Clearly, I am quite grateful that they opted to include this in last month’s box.

The Inheritance Trilogy by N.K. Jemisin

/ MeltdownMessiah / Leave a comment

I’m copying over some reviews of titles I’d written up in 2018 and earlier, just in case these titles are new for other people.

The Inheritance Trilogy by N.K. Jemisin was one of the most interesting and original fantasy series I’ve had the pleasure of reading, and I’ve read a great many fantasy series over the years. These books have more in common with Greek, Roman, and Norse mythology than with anything written by Tolkien.
This author manages to do something that few others succeed in doing, weaving philosophy and political theory into the narrative without it ever feeling heavy-handed or taking away from the story.
Each of the three novels and the additional novella included in this anthology are very different tales, fully developing entirely different central characters with perspectives that never feel like they run together, while gradually fleshing out secondary characters that appear and reappear through all four pieces until the cast of characters all feel more like three dimensional beings than simply set pieces or plot devices.
The theology incorporated into the universe created by Jemisin is similar to one I had tossed around as a background for a book of my own, and I don’t think I could do it better.

Roadside Picnic by Arkady & Boris Strugastky

/ MeltdownMessiah / 1 Comment

I’m copying over some reviews of titles I’d written up in 2018 and earlier, just in case these titles are new for other people.

I’m glad that we have a solid English translation of Arkady and Boris Strugatsky’s Roadside Picnic. This is a book that people really should be reading, if only because there’s a perspective to it that we rarely see in science fiction or literature in general.
While this may be a science fiction novel, taking place a number of years after first contact that involved no contact at all, the narrative is more akin to horror than anything else.
Aliens arrived on Earth, landing in a handful of seemingly random locations and then left shortly thereafter without any attempt to interact with us. What they left behind in their landing locations were bizarre, hazardous, and toxic zones where people like our protagonist would illegally venture with the purpose of risking their lives to collect items of alien manufacture that could be sold to scientific institutes for study or private collectors for bragging rights. The odds of surviving these trips into the zone were slim and anyone who made it out was changed by the experience.
This is where the novel begins, the context surrounding a story that is equal parts inspirational and terrifying, disorienting and straightforward. This book should be considered not only a fantastic sample of Cold War era Russian science fiction but also an example of surreal horror at its finest.

Detritus In Love by Mercedes M. Yardley & John Boden

/ MeltdownMessiah / Leave a comment

I’m copying over some reviews of titles I’d written up in 2018 and earlier, just in case these titles are new for other people.

For a novella of only 50+ pages, Detritus In Love by Mercedes M. Yardley and John Boden is still somehow a huge story.
With eloquence and elegance of language from the authors we follow the sad life of Detritus, a young man who befriends dead people and falls in love with a dead girl, who sees the decay and corruption in the cruel world around him through his third eye, and who lives with the dread that The Opposite is coming for him.
It’s a story that is equal parts disorienting and captivating, fantastic and horrifying, as it builds up to a conclusion that is anything but cheerful.

The Fireman by Joe Hill

/ MeltdownMessiah / Leave a comment

I’m copying over some reviews of titles I’d written up in 2018 and earlier, just in case these titles are new for other people.

The Fireman is, in my opinion, the best book Joe Hill has written. I positively loved Horns and Heart-Shaped Box, and NOS4A2 had a great dark fantasy element to it that made it stand out even though it was my least favorite of his works.
This book takes elements of The Road by Cormac McCarthy and mingles it with a bit of King’s The Stand to create a gripping, devastating, original piece of fiction that falls somewhere between horror and straightforward dramatic literature.
It’s a story about people pushed to the limits of psychological and physical endurance, a world in flames, and paranoia brought on by pandemic conditions. It’s a love story and a story about forging family from ash.
The titular Fireman may be one of the more captivating figures I’ve encountered in a while, and a truly well-developed one for a man who really isn’t the focus of the story at all but rather the vastly important secondary role that helps to bind the narrative together into something fantastic.
At the end of the novel it indicates that Joe Hill spent close to four years writing this book and those were four years well spent.

What the Hell Did I Just Read by David Wong

/ MeltdownMessiah / Leave a comment

I’m copying over some reviews of titles I’d written up in 2018 and earlier, just in case these titles are new for other people.

This book, along with the two previous installments in the series, was handed to me by this beaten up concrete snowman I’ve always had. It only has one arm and it’s covered in bird droppings, but it occasionally has excellent suggestions as far as reading material is concerned.
This was one of those times, not the others.
This book felt more mature, in a sense, than the previous two in the series…the personal relationships between the characters felt more visceral and true to life, and there was a miasma of despair that sort of flowed through the whole narrative in a way that led to everything coming across as more real even though this story was just as full of surrealism and insanity as the previous two.
I will be sorely disappointed if there aren’t further adventures of Dave, John, and Amy…now featuring not Joy Park.

Unwanted Richard: Life Coaching for the Modern Age

/ MeltdownMessiah / Leave a comment

I had a brief conversation with an old friend of mine yesterday evening, revolving around the topic of unsolicited dick pics and determining what suitable responses might be. This blog post is emerging from that bit of conversation. The trigger was a suggestion that the recipient reply with a text saying, “That looks like a child’s penis. I’m reporting this.”

A few years back, when my 16-year-old daughter was around 12 or 13, the topic of boys sending pictures of their dicks came up in the car. I don’t recall precisely how the subject was broached, but there’s a fair-to-middling chance that I’d randomly tossed the topic out there for no apparent reason and with nothing that could be interpreted as an antecedent. Anyone who has known me for any length of time probably isn’t terribly surprised by that.

Perhaps to the chagrin of my adolescent daughter–and also my girlfriend, who was in the car with us–I began spouting off things I considered appropriate responses, if (and more likely when) she received her first unsolicited dick pic. It’s an unpleasant thought, knowing that the odds are high that my daughter(s) are subject to that sort of tacky, uncouth, and disgusting behavior from boys or even adult men (since we clearly seem to be incapable of growing up beyond a certain point in many cases)…but I sincerely believe it’s a conversation a parent probably needs to be having with their children.

These suggested responses are mostly geared toward young girls who receive unsolicited dick pics, but some of them are certainly appropriate for adult women as well (including transwomen, as a dear friend of mine has seen a massive uptick in men sliding into her DMs since she began transitioning). I felt it was my responsibility to share these suggestions with any other parents who might end up reading this blog.

Here’s a short list:

“My dad says you might want to have that checked out by a doctor.” — This one is lovely, in part because it implies the recipient shared the offending picture with her father and that the father felt like there was something wrong with the penis in question. It’s both emasculating and potentially paranoia-inducing.

“Why did you just send me a picture of an overcooked hot dog.” — Because it’s just objectively funny.

“I just showed that picture to my mom, and now she won’t stop laughing. I don’t know what’s so funny.” — This one is predicated on the assumption that the individual sending the pictures is perhaps suffering from a bit of fragile masculinity. The thought of being laughed at by an adult female, and the mother of the recipient, should be suitably discouraging.

“That is way smaller than mine.” — I suspect there’s a bit of latent homophobia lurking not far from the surface inside of anyone who’s inclined to send unsolicited dick pics. It’s an assumption, but I’m willing to stand by that assumption.

“Hey! I know this penis! I saw this one on that gay porn site.” — Again, assuming a certain amount of homophobia that accompanies that sort of toxic masculinity.

“My dad took my phone after I showed him the picture, and he just finally gave it back. He’s all flushed and sweaty and he changed clothes.” — This one plays on both the emasculation of the recipient’s father seeing the image and also on the suspected latent homophobia.

“That sort of looks like a penis, just really tiny. Is it a scale model?” — There is no harm in body shaming someone who’s sending you unsolicited dick pics. Die mad about it!

“Hey! That reminds me of giving my baby brother a bath.” — Again, there’s no harm in body shaming the penis of someone with that sort of toxic masculinity.

“Did you just send me a picture of your dog’s penis?” — Red Rocket! Red Rocket! Oh, come on…that’s just funny.

I think it’s important to force some humor and amusement into these sorts of situations, by whatever means necessary. Riff off of these suggestions, or find your own. Whether you’re a pre-teen or middle-aged, there’s a greater than 0 chance you’ve received an unsolicited dick pic…you may as well have some fun with it. Save screen caps and laugh about it with your friends (or even your family, if they’re not too uncomfortable with the subject).