Doctor Sleep; Does it shine...?

DOCTOR SLEEP

By Stephen King

[2013]

Does it shine...?

Although Stephen King will always be known as a horror author, and although The Shining is indeed a contemporary horror classic, this sequel doesn’t feel much like a horror novel. It has horror themes such as telekinetic powers, ghosts, child-murder, and psychic vampires, but there’s barely a hint of proper toe-curling horror here; in fact it’s very much by the numbers for King, and, I suspect, will disappoint his hard-core horror readership.

The ideas and plot are good, and about a third into the book, they’re looking great; Danny Torrance has grown up, and has managed to mostly escape the ghosts of his past. The spooky ghosts, that is. But it is the ghost of his father, of his genes, that haunts Dan in adulthood; like his father, he has turned to alcohol in a big way, has a temper, and is constantly on the move, never seeming to be able to settle, and avoiding the mountain areas which still hold terror for him. 

Eventually he rocks up in New Hampshire, where, again eventually, he finds himself working as an orderly in a hospice, using his psychic talents to comfort the residents in their passing. While here, he connects up psychically with a young girl, Abra Stone, a kid who, like Dan, has grown up with the shining talent, although hers is especially powerful. Over time, Abra becomes aware of a thread of missing children, each with some shining of their own, and is led to the reason why; The True Knot is a long-lived band of wrinklies who move around America in motorhomes and caravans, tracking and killing psychic kids, to inhale their ‘steam’. And now, Abra realises, as they slowly weaken due to disease, they have their sights set on her, the biggest steamhead they have ever known. Naturally, it’s up to her, Abra, and her new friend Dan Torrance, to deal with this band of psychic vampires...

Pretty good plot, and the characters of Dan and Abra are well drawn and interesting to read. However, most of the other characters didn’t seem as real to me, but just supporting characters. Especially disappointing here was the treatment of Rose the Hat, the leader of the True Knot and the main ‘Big Bad’ here; she came across as a bit comedic, a bit ridiculous, rather than scary. The other bad guys, the rest of the Knot, were mostly interchangeable, with little of King’s usually-excellent character work, instead just giving easy names like Crow Daddy, Barry the Chink, Grampa Flick etc... but it wasn’t just the bad guys; I had trouble with most of the supporting characters here.

The narrative itself was strange. Sometimes in a book, people talk about ‘the boring middle bit’, but with DOCTOR SLEEP, I found the middle bit to be about the best, with the plot strands growing together and Abra Stone’s character being revealed. The beginning [after a few good pages of wrap-up from The Shining] seemed to flounder and took a while to get going, and then the ending felt like a damb squib; I found the last 50 pages or so a bit of a [sometimes confusing] slog to a very weak climax, and found myself closing the book thinking ‘Meh!’

This is a bit of a negative review, but it’s negative, only because I was quite disappointed in the book. There are some good things in it, some good observations, and it’s interesting to know a bit more about others who shine. But whereas The Shining indeed shone, Doctor Sleep merely slumbers on, Stephen King on autopilot, in the long shadow of it’s parent classic.   6/10  

Review; The Giant Book Of Best New Horror

THE GIANT BOOK OF BEST NEW HORROR

Edited by Stephen Jones and Ramsey Campbell

1993, Magpie Books, 619pp

This giant horror collection has been on my shelf for 20 years. Over that time I’ve read bits and pieces from it, but this year thought it was time to give it a good cover-to-cover re-read.

The book collects Jones and Campbells’ selections of the ‘very best’ from the first three volumes of their BEST NEW HORROR series, published in the late 80’s and early 90’s. It is indeed a huge collection, containing 41 stories, ranging in length from about 2000 words [4 pages] to around 18,000 [32pp] words, and from an eclectic range of authors.

The collection gives a needle-sharp reflection of the state of horror at the time. Mostly supernatural horror, or dark fantasy, fills the pages, and there is a certain amount of gory, cinematic action-horror that often typified the era. There is a handful of stories set in more exotic locales [meaning neither the UK or USA], a number of stories using various literary techniques like intertextuality and unreliable narrators, and a set of tales still haunted by the shadow of Vietnam. Each reader will like or dislike different selections, but here are mine.

My favourite story in the book, though difficult to choose, is from an author I had not encountered before; Ian Macleod’s ‘1/72^nd Scale’ is an excellent story telling of a boy trying to heal the pain of his family after the death of his brother, by building his brother’s unmade Airfix model plane. He becomes close to his brother’s spirit and memory while building the model, and sets in motion a chain of supernatural and weird events. A delightful easy-to-read and compelling story, this is very evocative of childhood, and anyone who grew up in England in the 70’s or 80’s will find much to empathise on.

Around a quarter of the stories I would consider excellent or very good. Thomas Ligotti’s ‘The Last Feast Of Harlequin’ and Gene Wolfe’s ‘Lord Of The Land’ are great in different ways, both with a hint of Lovecraftiness. Wolfe’s story tells of a guy collecting mythic stories of the ‘soul-sucker’, while Ligotti’s scholarly story has a narrator investigating pierrot or sad-clown figures in a strange Winter festival in an unusual town. Both tales suggest that reality is just a thin veneer which hides something alien and horrific.

Ghosts and hauntings are frequent here; Thomas Tessier’s ‘Blanca’ tells, in measured and impeccable prose, about a bland holiday, night-time visions, and a missing friend. ‘Ma Qui’ by Alan Brennert, which won the Nebula Award, is an inventive and excellent story of ghosts, demons and of belief, and how American G.I.’s that die in the Vietnamese jungles face an afterlife of a different culture. ‘True Love’ by K.W. Jeter is both devastating and memorable with a woman abducting small boys and taking them home to her dying father. This simple plotline very effectively mixes true horror with the supernatural.

‘The Man Who Drew Cats’ was Michael Marshall Smith’s first published story and tells of a mysterious pavement artist. ‘Pelts’ by F. Paul Wilson was nominated for the Bram Stoker Award and is a straight 80’s style horror fest, concerned with the animal fur trade, but delivering delicious horror splat.

There were also good [but perhaps not outstanding] enjoyable stories here;

‘No Sharks In The Med’ by Brian Lumley is a well-written version of WOLF CREEK set in Greece, and is only slightly overlong.

‘The Horn’ by Stephen Gallagher tells of a supernatural menace in a snowstorm. There is good humour and good writing here, in this tale which I found very indicative of the 1980’s.

‘The Last Day Of Miss Dorinda Molyneux’ by Robert Westall is a good ghost story about a shambling corpse released into the vaults of an abandoned church. It has a slightly slow build-up, but builds to an atmospheric ending.

‘Snow Cancellations’ by Donald R. Burleson is an old favourite of mine. Again, set in a snowstorm, this has at its core an obvious yet genius idea.

‘Those Of Rhenea’ by David Sutton, and ‘The Same In Any Language’ by Ramsey Campbell are both enjoyable ghost-stories set in and around the Mediterranean. Campbell’s story particularly lingers in the memory.

‘The Braille Encyclopedia’ by Grant Morrison, ‘Where Flies Are Born’ by Douglas Clegg’, and ‘The Eye Of The Ayatollah’ by Ian Watson have original but macabre ideas behind them. All three are enjoyable and memorable tales.

I enjoyed ‘Impermanent Mercies’ by Kathe Koja, even though it is perhaps the most bizarre in the book. It is very well written and tells the strange story of a dog’s head in a box, ordering people to carry out its evil bidding.

Poppy Z. Brite’s ‘His Mouth Will Taste Of Wormwood’ is an elegant and decadant story of thrill-seeking grave-robbers. Occasionally unpleasant, there is flair and style in the prose.

Jonathan Carroll’s story ‘The Dead Love You’ is highly readable, about stalkers and being stalked, with some great lines. Carroll likes playing with the readers expectations; take this paragraph half way through;

“Are you confused? Good! Stick with me a while longer and you’ll know everything. I could have held all this till the end. But I want you frowning now, knowing something is very wrong with your parachute, even before actually pulling the cord and praying it opens.

P.S. It won’t.”

‘Chui Chai’ by S.P.Somtow tells of Frankenstein-like experiments on the streets of Bangkok, while ‘Inside The Walled City’ by Garry Kilworth describes an expedition in a vast soon-to-be-demolished collection of slums in Hong Kong.

There are other ok to average stories by Gahan Wilson, Harlan Ellison, Richard Laymon, Nicholas Royle, Karl Edward Wagner, J.L. Comeau, Steve Rasnic Tem, Chet Williamson and Robert R. McCammon.

Alas, there are always stories that miss the mark, and everyone’s will be a different set. Personally, here, I wasn’t so keen on the work of Peter Straub [unusually], Cherry Wilder, D.F.Lewis, Elizabeth Hand, David J.Schow, Charles L. Grant, Joel Lane, Jean Daniel-Breque, or Dennis Etchison. Neither did I much like ‘The Original Dr.Shade’, a novella by Kim Newman; this won the 1991 Science Fiction Award for Best Short Story, so quite clearly, that shows how much I know.

In summation, this is a huge collection which explores many and most of the popular themes in the horror genre, and contains plenty of great reading and clever ideas. There is more than just splat and gore here; there is atmosphere, excellent prose, mystique and wonder, and above all, there is heart; there should always be heart in good horror. Quite simply, anyone with an interest in the genre will find much to like here. 8/10

   

Brian Lumley:- Cthulhu Mythos Reviews

BRIAN LUMLEY - SOME CTHULHU MYTHOS TALES REVIEWS

I’ve had a Brian Lumley splurge on Amazon. I’ve bought RETURN OF THE DEEP ONES AND OTHER MYTHOS NOVELLAS, which I read from the library as a teenager. I also got two of his story collections, DAGON’S BELL AND OTHER DISCORDS and THE SECOND WISH AND OTHER EXHALATIONS. Lumley is a regular author of short stories, and I’ve enjoyed them in the past. But the main coursed of my Lumley feast was a copy of his [previously a bit impossible to find] MYTHOS OMNIBUS VOLUME ONE containing the first three novels in his six-book-long Titus Crow saga. I’ve had VOLUME TWO on my bookshelf for years but have never read it, not wanting to jump in at Book 4.

Anyway, over the last month or so I’ve read through all 655 pages of it, enjoying it very much. They are horror/fantasy/science-fiction novels, pitting occult investigator Titus Crow and his allies against the very real threat of the Cthulhu Cycle Deities. Anyway, here’s my reviews of the books, if you’re interested. If you’re not, then I’ve put some pretty pictures in to cheer up your day.

Oh, and the prolific Brian Lumley [around 60 novels or collections] was born in Horden, County Durham, England, which to those who are crap at geography is near Sunderland. There aren’t that many famous people from County Durham so you have to big-up every one of them.

THE BURROWERS BENEATH (1974)

I actually read some of Lumleys Cthulhu-mythos fiction [THE RETURN OF THE DEEP ONES, BENEATH THE MOORS] before I discovered and read Lovecrafts original stories. Of these teenage forays into Lumley, my notes record ‘don’t like style’; here lies irony! Anyway, I’ve read quite a few short stories since then, ranging from Ok to Very Good, but since ‘DEEP ONES’ this is my first [and Lumley’s first] novel.

Also it's a bit of a fix-up from previously published stories; “Cement Surroundings” and “The Night Sea-Maid Went Down” were short [good] early Cthulhu Mythos stories. In THE BURROWERS BENEATH, Lumley has linked the stories together and extended their scope, though the novel is largely an expansion of “Cement Surroundings”, concerning the exploits of Shudde-M’ell, a huge octopoid burrowing creature, a Great Old One, and his similar children. When these creatures move around under the surface of the Earth, they produce tremors and earthquakes, and can be tracked with siesomological devices. Lumley’s idea is that these creatures are responsible for many earthquakes and tremors throughout history; originally prisoned by the Elder Gods beneath Africa, they have now broken free and are reproducing and massing.

The main characters here are from some of Lumley’s earlier stories; Titus Crow is a psychic scholar of the Occult, and his friend and coleage, Henri de Marigny. Together, they become more convinced and involved in Shudde-M’ell’s exploits across England, and later are recruited by the Wilmarth Foundation, an organisation emanating from Miskatonic University to identify, track down and destroy [where possible] the wide plethora of Cthulhu Cycle Deities that are still extant and active on Earth. The idea is that these entities [Shudde-M’ell, Cthulhu, Hastur, Azathoth, Ithaqua, etc] and their minions [shoggoths, Deep Ones, Mi-Go, etc] once imprisoned by the Elder Gods, are now breaking free and causing havoc, while the Wilmarth Foundation attempt to hold them at bay and cover-up the whole thing.

Like many writers before him, Lumley has taken the concepts of Lovecrafts Cthulhu Mythos as a centrepiece for his Titus Crow stories, but has taken the ideas in his own, more modern, direction. Lovecrafts protagonists were usually weak, ineffectual, passive, and more likely to faint or ‘not find adequate words to describe the horror’. Lumley’s characters have more of the modern age about them, and fight back; Lovecrafts guys would never have created the Wilmarth Foundation. Lumley’s interpretation of the Mythos is more physical, more real; he has solidified Cthulhu, filled in the jigsaw that Lovecraft, and later Derleth began, and brought a bit of Order to Chaos. Lumley’s interpretation was original and modern but was disliked by many traditional Mythos fans. Personally, I find this new [in the 1970’s] approach to be refreshing; I enjoy very much traditional tales [as does Lumley], but I don’t believe that Lumley should be disparaged because of an innovative approach.

THE BURROWERS BENEATH uses a traditional Lovecraftian device of letters and journals, and though this seems to increase the pace and veracity of the book, there is always a slight detachment to the action, especially in the final chapters which cover an extended period of time in a short space. As a novel, it wobbles a little, it doesn’t seem quite even somehow, but is packed with great ideas and observations on the Mythos [eg, Azathoth is The Big Bang, while Nyarlathotep is telepathy, a close anagram], and is infused with an obvious love for Lovecrafts original stories, many of which he weaves into the narrative.  On a more personal note, large parts of the book are set in the North of England, where both Lumley and myself were born, and it’s fun to see local [slightly changed] place names.

Really this novel is the first in a long sequence of six, telling the story of Titus Crow and the Wilmarth Foundation. In addition to that there are a number of short stories telling of more, earlier, exploits of the character. THE BURROWERS BENEATH is a fast, engaging read, ending on a cliffhanger; I look forward to reading more.

NOTE; Though THE BURROWERS BENEATH has never been filmed, I believe that it has been an uncredited inspiration on several films, most notably BEHEMOTH [2011] in which a vast tentacled underground ‘God’ is responsible for tremors and earthquakes, and at the end pops out of the top of a mountain. There are also similarities in the films MONGOLIAN DEATH WORM [2010], THE BURROWERS [2008], and in the popular TREMORS series.

Rating:- 7/10

THE TRANSITION OF TITUS CROW (1975)

I usually jump about a lot in my reading matter, flipping from author to author. It’s rare that I will read a series or even a sequel to a book straight after the first one, so it’s a testament to Brian Lumley, that I began THE TRANSITION OF TITUS CROW just days after reading the first in this Cthulhu Mythos series, THE BURROWERS BENEATH.

Where BURROWERS was a monstrous horror story, TRANSITION is very much science-fiction, or perhaps science fantasy. The end of BURROWERS left occult investigator Titus Crow and his companion De Marigny fleeing from monstrous worm creatures in an old grandfather clock that can traverse space and time, from Lovecraft’s story, ‘Through The Gates Of The Silver Key’. TRANSITION begins with de Marigny being found ten years later, but having no memory of the intervening time. During his convalescence, he is [and the reader is] filled in on the activities of the Wilmarth Foundation in keeping at bay the Cthulhu Cycle Deities. Some months later de Marigny is contacted psychically by Crow and is ‘moored in’ through time and space. The rest of the book [3/4 of it] is taken up with Crow’s story of where he has been for ten years; and what a story.

Using the time-space clock [that’s bigger on the inside than the outside!] Crow has hurtled through all time and space, persued by the dreadful Hounds Of Tindalos. He visits black-holes and other universes, strange suns and galaxies, and travels into the far future and the distant past. He finds himself stranded in Cretacious times, fending off hungry pteradons and trying to find his sunken vessel. Then he crashes into a planet at hideous speed where his body is smashed; a helpful robot from the future rebuilds him with artificial components. He races through Earth’s history, the Roman Empire, Atlantis, and the far future of the universe to meet with the Great Race who are chronicling everything in the cosmos. And finally he meets, in a different plane of existence, the Elder God Kthanid, and his future-love Tiania, on the planet of Elysia, to which he is called back at the end of the book, leaving de Marigny with the clock and the option of following him into the universe...

Parts of this book are staggering in scope and imagination; Lumley has taken a diverse pic’n’mix from the tales of Lovecraft and other weird writers and assembled a huge awesome whole. The descriptions of Crow undergoing his actual TRANSITION and popping all over the universe are very good fun, and high in imaginative talent; the pages fly by. If it has any flaws, it is simply its construction; it is more episodic rather than a solid novel, and ends on a quiet but portentous note, leading up to Book Three in the series, THE CLOCK OF DREAMS. Some traditional Lovecraftians may not care for the series because of all the defining of once-mysterious events and entities, and of the familiation of Cthulhu and his brethren; the monsters are real, and are related to each other in complicated ways. But I loved this book, enjoyed the awesomeness of it; much of it was like reading Golden Age Science-Fiction, and I would recommend it to any fan of the fantastic. I look forward eagerly to the next in the series. 8/10

 THE CLOCK OF DREAMS (1978)

This is the third volume in Lumley’s Titus Crow sequence, again using Lovecraft’s original stories and themes as a springboard for his own imagination. With THE BURROWERS BENEATH having a horror template, and TRANSITION being more science-fiction, this novel owes its ideas to Lovecrafts fantasy stories, his Dunsanian tales like “Celephais”, “The Doom That Came To Sarnath”, “The Cats Of Ulthar”, and the novel “The Dream-Quest Of Unknown Kadath”, set in the Dreamlands.

            At the end of the last book, Titus Crow was called back to Elysia, a far-distant planet; it seems that the entire cosmos is embedded in an aeons-long battle with the Cthulhu Cycle Deities, the Great Old Ones, and now it has become apparent that Cthulhu and his minions are still managing to send out messages in dream, and to exert their influence in the waking world through mesmerised dreamers. Titus, an occult-investigator with a mighty robotic body and a coffin-shaped grandfather clock that can traverse time and space, is sent on a mission to inlfiltrate mankinds Dreamland and to try and stop Cthulhu from completing his nefarious  plots. However, Titus, and his alien love, have gone missing in Dreamland, so it’s up to de Marigny, Titus’ friend and companion, to enter into Dreamland, find his allies, and stop Cthulhu.

            Thus, this is essentially a fantasy tale, full of grotesque monsters and villainous evil-doers, gugs, ghasts, night-gaunts, flying beaked worm horrors, horned and mysterious pirates, a Fly-The-Light creature and much more. Here are episodic adventures in Dreamland, watched over by a grotesque and thoroughly Lovecraftian eye. The book took me a short while to fully get into [Lovecrafts Dreamland tales are not my particular favourites], but once the pace caught and I got the gist, it was again a compelling, imaginative and exciting read, in the imaginative style of say Moorcock, Fritz Leiber or Robert E Howard; this is Wierd Tales-type fantasy with an action bent, not Lovecrafts often-impotent descriptive phantasies. THE CLOCK OF DREAMS finishes on a better conclusion than the preceding three volumes, even though there are still three to go. All in all, I found CLOCK perhaps the patchiest of the three books, but put together in a large omnibus, these three novels comprise [the first half of] a richly dark and imaginative sci-fi fantasy festival celebrating and updating Lovecraft’s monstrous pantheon of horrors. 7/10

                                        RETURN OF THE DEEP ONES

By Brian Lumley, 1984

[Included in ‘Return Of The Deep Ones And Other Mythos Tales”]

This is another short-ish Cthulhu Mythos novel by the prolific Lumley. Set on England’s North East coast [around Seaham], the story is told in classic Mythos style, as a first person narrative, as by John Vollister, a noted marine biologist. When he receives a strange seashell from America, he starts to investigate its origins and his life suddenly becomes complicated and seemingly threatened. He uncovers that the members of an isolated boat club are in fact denizens of the deep, members of Lovecraft’s submarine race The Deep Ones, and that they have some nefarious and very fishy plans. These amphibious creatures, servants and worsippers of Father Dagon and Great Cthulhu, are a mixture of fully developed Deep Ones, human half-breeds slowly becoming changelings, and many things inbetween. Here, too are the ultimate Lovecraftian horror, the shoggoths, the guardian and muscle of the Deep One race.

Although these days it is fairly standard stuff, RETURN OF THE DEEP ONES, is a well-told and enjoyable story, complete with all the usual oceanic flotsam as well as the well-trodden dreams of monolithic undersea cities, and dubious and mysterious ancestries. I personally liked the idea of a shoggoth, a kind of shapeless hulking mass of blubber and oil, keeping guard at a lonely spot on the North East coast, as well as the chapter dealing with another peripheral character “Haggopian”, who kindles an unhealthy obsession with ocean parasites [this chapter was released as a self-contained short story].    

DEEP ONES is an enjoyable yarn, although seasoned readers in the genre may find it occasionally trite. Nevertheless, Lumley has written a fair handful of Deep One stories, and this one, like most of his work, has some evocative moments and, pleasingly, characters who don’t always faint on seeing a cold fish. 6/10

  

  

BENEATH THE MOORS

By Brian Lumley

[Included in “Return Of The Deep Ones And Other Mythos Tales”

1974,

BENEATH THE MOORS is a short novel in the Cthulhu Mythos style but set, not in Arkham or the Miskatonic Valley of Massachusetts, but in Lumley’s homeground of the North East coast, and the North York Moors of England.

The story, in the first person, though by different narrators, tells of Professor Ewart Masters who, after a car accident, is convalescing by the North East coast [Harden, the fictional town here, is a thin veil for the real Horden, where Lumley was born] when he comes across a mysterious antiquity in a museum, a miniature sculpture of an ancient reptilian god. Masters becomes fascinated by this discovery and sets out on detailed his research into the thing, including a trip to the area of the North York Moors where the thing was found. Most of the rest of the narrative comprises what happens to Masters when he disappears on these moors; he describes, in what he believes to be an elaborate dream, how he finds himself underground in a vast cave system and, befriended by a reptilian creature similar to the sculpture, he discovers amazing evidence of a strange and ancient subterreanean city, having many imaginative adventures within.

There is much more flesh on the story than this bare-bones summary suggests, and the short [120pp] but compelling novel is highly visual and full of imaginative description. While not strictly a work of the Cthulhu Mythos, the story references many things within the mythos and from other wierd fictions, and in detail it has more to do with Lovecraft’s Dunsanian-type fantasies, particularly “The Doom That Came To Sarnath”. This was among Lumley’s first novels, and although the structure is occasionally a little jumpy, and the surprises a bit obvious for a seasoned weird-reader, there is much to like here, and, having been potholing in a few North Yorkshire caves myself, it is easy to imagine the wonderful fantasies that Lumley has created. The novel incorporates Lumley’s story ‘The Sister City’, which works well on its own, but better within the context of the novel.

As a final note, I first read this when I was about sixteen, before reading Lovecraft and lots of other weird writings. I enjoyed it then but missed most of it’s references and the huge history behind it, so while having some reading experience in the genre would undoubtedly add to the book, it would also work as a stand-alone with no previous knowledge of the strange stuff. 7/10 

    Final Note to self:- Seemingly, despite reading it, and attempting to write it, and typing it at least once a day, I clearly still can't spell wierd.

Review:- Joyland by Stephen KIng

Joyland

By Stephen King

2013, Hard Case Crime Paperback, 285pp

This novel, which is somewhere around Stephen King’s fiftieth, rather than being released by his normal publishing house, has gone out as one of the Hard Case Crime series [No. 112] by [in the Uk] Titan Books. So it was with a little trepidation that I decided to read this; I expected something hard case, hard boiled, noir, but generally different to the usual King ride. I got no such thing.

JOYLAND could easily have been published as regular King. A quick plot; set in the early 1970’s,  Devin Jones, a 21 year old college boy, takes a summer out to work in Joyland, a North Carolina amusement park. There he makes new [lifelong] friends, learns the Talk and Ways of the carny-folk, becomes reknowned for his skills in performing as Howie the Hound Dog, the park’s mascot, and gets highly interested in a girl who was murdered inside the Horror House ride. As college beckons, and his friends head for school, Devin stays around, cultivating a relationship with local Annie Ross, and her young disabled kid, Mike, who is slowly dying of muscular dystrophy. All the strands of the plot come together towards the end; Devin has worked out that The Carny Killer murdered much more than just one girl, and also that they might be closer to him that he had ever realised.

JOYLAND is a good novel, enjoyable, with some well-drawn and interesting characters. I found it very much to be instantly recognisable as a Stephen King story; his trademarks of style are here, as well as trademarks of plot. In some ways, with a new carny setting, it seems like a distillation and continuation of some of King’s past themes, especially so with the disabled kid Mike [well realised, great character] who has some uncanny touches of intuition. In fact, far from being a hard crime novel, this is very much typical and highly enjoyable Stephen King, with a serial killer, some ghosts and some characters with psyhcic abilities [King never mentions the Sh- word, so neither will I]. I easily found myself believing in the main characters, enjoying the mystery, and being excited in finding out who the villain was. I was slightly disappointed with the resolution of the mystery, and with the ending to the plot, although the book itself ends on a thoughtful and slightly melancholic note.

In summary, this is good stuff; unusually, I found the middle third to be the strongest and most compelling, but the whole is an engaging crime and ghost story, and regular King readers who enjoy the horror should not be disinclined to read this because of the heavily indicated crime aspect. JOYLAND continues to demonstrate that each new Stephen King work that appears is certainly something to be enjoyed and celebrated. 8/10

Godzilla: The Return Of The King

                                    GODZILLA [2014]

THE RETURN OF THE KING

It’s great to see the King Of The Monsters back on the big-screen, and it was a no-brainer that I was gonna go and see it. I’ve had a couple of weeks since seeing it now, a couple of weeks to think it over, think it through and get over my initial slight disappointment and grumpiness at all the plot holes. On coming out of the cinema, I was a bit unhappy; why wasn’t it perfect, dammit! However, after a couple of weeks to calm down, let’s have a more balanced little look. Apologies for the lack of flow.

First of all, the good stuff. At least he looks like Godzilla! It sounds D’oh! But the Emmerich 1998 version got it wrong. There veteran creature designer Patrick Tatopoulos [also Broderick’s surname in the film] was given instruction to ‘redesign, update’ Godzilla for a modern audience. Well, Tatopoulos did create a pretty cool reptilian monster but it just so plainly wasn’t Godzilla. The Big G is stompy, not speedy!  That 1998 film is kind of derided nowadays but I’m fond of it, it’s a good monster movie, just with the wrong title. Anyway, the 2014 version of Godzilla is spot-on. This part of the film couldn’t be better; Godzilla  is a force of nature, a huge and awesome behemoth of angry scales and grumpy stompy feet. His design, with bleeding-edge special effects, is fantastic; proper old school King Of The Monsters. Also, in his manner and expression I got the idea of him being an old monster, hundreds or thousands of years old, the last of his race, proud and honourable; director Edwards has described him as being like an old samauri warrior, and I think that comes across, especially towards the end. Godzilla is not undefeatable, he is fallible, he needs a breather and a lie down now and then. The tantalising glimpses of him swimming about underwater or whatever were, for me, a highlight of the first hour, leading up to the big reveal.

More good stuff; the other monsters, the MUTO’s [Massive Unidentified Terrestrial Organisms] are pretty good, again, as you’d expect, with excellent CGI. While I would perhaps have preferred something a bit more old school and kaiju, these creatures nevertheless are welcome to the film. To my mind, the things [which are slightly different, male and female] are a bit like Bagorah the bat-monster, with a head like Gyaos’, and in some ways are similar to the Cloverfield creature. It’s all good stuff, bring on the monsters, and they cause plenty of carnage and causing buses to be late. The climactic battle is great, very well done, I didn’t want to blink to miss any action [whereas I ran off to the toilet in the first half [shouldn’t have had my pre-cinema pints]] This was perhaps my favourite part of the movie, along with the nostalgic scenes of Godzilla’s huge feet smashing through the streets, and seeing his spine spikes whiten as he prepares his heat ray. My wife didn’t know about his heat-ray, and my mother must have forgotten, but all three of us gave suitably appreciative “Oooohhh”s at this point. Basically, Godzilla is awesome!

This brings me to my bad points, and I’m gonna really try not to go on for ages. Mainly, THERE SIMPLY WASN’T ENOUGH OF GODZILLA!! It takes around an hour [half the film] for him to be properly revealed, and I reckon he’s only on screen altogether for about 25 minutes. It’s an awesome 20 minutes, with some proper bridge-smashing, train-eating monster-in-the-city carnage going on, but more please!  I could have done with less of the army boys running around in confusing fashion, trying to deliver a bomb, a plot point which ultimately goes nowhere. And while the basic story is good [check anywhere else online for a detailed plot] the film sometimes disappoints and is slightly confusing; sometimes certain scenes don’t follow on properly and don’t seem to make sense, and the details of the plot are often left unexplained leaving the viewer to just go along with the plot as a whole. I got the feeling that sometimes the film gave the illusion it was making sense, but actually wasn’t in some parts. I was often left a bit unsure of exactly what the intricacies of all the military action was all about; the viewer kind of gets the idea of it all, but sometimes the film skips a bit of explanation. I also thought that it was curiously cut, with things or concepts built up to and then just left in favour of something else. These two points are demonstrated in the climactic scenes with the nuclear bomb; much is made of the bomb, many minutes are spent moving it about and setting up plans for it, yet ultimately, at the end of the film not much comes of the bomb at all, and now that Godzilla has dealt with the threat, the bomb is surplus to requirements and forgotten about..
Basically there was too much screentime [often confusing] with the military. The first hour was good set-up, and Bryan Cranston a sympathetic and engaging character, but as he moves off-screen in the second half, the plot and characterisation fall a bit flat. It’s a good job there’s giant monsters to boost up the interest.

A few last quick words; the opening credits are fun and clever, Bryan Cranston plays about the best character in the film, the final scene is really cool, comic-booky, but a bit twee, and the film suffered only a tiny bit from not having a giant mechanical monkey in it.
It was an okay, a good film, but it was excellent to see Godzilla at the cinema again [I’ve only actually seen the 1998 version at the cinema, and that wasn’t really him], and to have his image in the media again and on the sides of buses and stuff. I’m pleased me and the family went to see it, to support it, and I’ll be buying the DVD when it comes out in December [or asking for it as a Christmas pressie! – Does my wife read this blog?] to likewise support it. I believe a sequel has been announced already, which is great. My thoughts for the sequel;  let’s have a bit more work on the consistency of the story, a couple of decent human characters to get behind, an enemy monster from the vast kaiju stable [Guiron or Speiga, but your best bet is Ghidorah theThree-Headed!], and most importantly, a bit more of the title monster please.And possibly a giant mechanical monkey!
 











                               SPECIAL NOTE TO MY WIFE: That Godzilla T-Shirt's pretty cool, innit?

A Swan Can Break A Man's Arm, You Know: A Short Appreciation of Sue Townsend

A SWAN CAN BREAK A MANS ARM, YOU KNOW?

A SHORT APPRECIATION OF SUE TOWNSEND

Wednesday April 2nd

I am thirty-five today.I am officially middle-aged. It is all downhill from now. A pathetic slide towards gum disease, wheelchair ramps and death.

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Sunday May 5^th

Trinity Sunday

Bowels – blocked.

Penis – unresponsive to stimuli.

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Saturday November 16^th

I am still without ntl. The engineer refused to get out of his van because Gielgud and the other swans were walking around the car park, looking as though they owned the place. Before he drove away he said, “A swan can break a man’s arm, you know.”

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Sue Townsend, after a decade and more of ill health, died on April 2014, aged just 68. She was among my very favourite writers, perhaps at the very top of the list. THE SECRET DIArY OF ADRIAN MOLE AGE 13 ¾ was one of the first ‘grown up’ books I read, and I myself was around that age, or just a tad younger. I loved the book, having picked it up in a charity shop, and I remember saving my money and rushing to W H Smith’s to buy the sequel, THE GROWING PAINS OF ADRIAN MOLE. I’ve read them half a dozen times or more. At 12 or 13 I loved reading about Adrian and his chaotic family, their mishaps, and really funny incidents like the school trip to London which Adrian doggedly documents. Much of it went over my head; I was too young. I didn’t know who Dostoevsky was, or what The Female Eunuch was all about. At each subsequent reading, a little older each time, new things sprang out at me; new insights into character, new jokes, new humour. I have followed Adrian Mole through eight volumes into his 40’s, up to the cliff-hanger in THE PROSTRATE YEARS [none of Mole’s friends or family can pronounce ‘prostate’ properly] where his fate remains unclear after a battle with prostate cancer. Sue Townsend was working on another volume, Pandora’s Box, when she died. So while it is clear that Adrian Mole has survived his brush with death, it is unclear whether this book was anywhere near publishable, so Townsend’s thousands of fans may never get to read it.

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Sunday July 18th

My father announced at breakfast that he is going to have a vasectomy. I pushed my sausages away untouched.

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Sue Townsend was born into working-class poverty, a lifelong character in most of her books. She was a single parent for years, and wrote in secret, until her first Adrian Mole book became a huge success, being one of the most bestselling books of the 1980’s. Over four decades she has become widely recognised as Britain’s best-loved comedy writer, but there is far more to her work than just humour. Underpinning almost everything is a sense of the working-class, the normal man in the street, and hardship, poverty and the difficulties of life. Pervading through all this is perhaps one key message, one thing that makes the world a better place, no matter if you’re the Queen or an unemployed storage-heater salesman; simple kindness. Her writing is laugh-out-loud funny, but also humane, tragic and bittersweet. She has a brilliant sense of timing, an eye for off-beat but completely believable characters, and a quiet fondness for quiet and clever comedy. Her books mirror society; Thatcher and unemployment in ther 80’s, Facebook and celebrities in the ‘00’s.

Sue wasn’t all just about Adrian Mole. She wrote six other books, and six plays, winning great accolade and awards. My favourite of these is The Queen And I, a fantastically funny and moving novel, about the Queen and her family stripped of their royalty and estates and treated like anyone else, sent to live on a rough housing estate in the Midlands. Here, Prince Charles has an affair with a woman down the road, Prince Phillip goes a bit mental, and Harris, the Queen’s corgi, becomes the leader of a tough street-pack of homeless dogs. The Queen meanwhile is portrayed as a kind but sad character; she often has to borrow money to put in the gas meter, or go to the benefits office for a crisis loan, but when called upon to help her neighbours she repeatedly stands up to the plate, helping to deliver a baby in a poverty-stricken house, and cleaning up the messes left by her family. The point here is that no-matter who you are, rich or poor, everyone is the same, we all have our failings, we all have a heart.

Sue Townsend was, and will continue to be, onme of my favourite writers. I am sad that no new books will dance out of her pen. But I will continue to re-read her excellent books; she left us with some proper crackers.

Monday December 13^th

Queenie’s Funeral

My mother and father sat together in the chapel, briefly united. Me and Pandora sat either side of Bert. He said he wanted to have ‘young ‘uns’ around him.

Then, while the organ played sad music, the coffin started sliding towards purple curtains around the altar. When the coffin reached the curtains Pandora whispered, “God, how perfectly barbaric.”

I watched with horror as the coffin disappeared. Bert said, “Tara old girl” and then Queenie was burnt in the oven.

I was so shocked, I could hardly walk up the aisle. Pandora and I both looked up when we got outside. Smoke was pouring out of the chimney, and was carried away by the wind. Queenie always said she wanted to fly.

R.I.P Sue Townsend. 1946 - 2014

The Shining = Revisting The Overlook Hotel

THE SHINING

Stephen King

(1977) 

I first read THE SHINING 17 years ago, when I was nineteen, and

it was among the first of King’s works that I read. Recently, and with its belated sequel DOCTOR SLEEP sitting by my bed, I picked it up for a revisit, to check back into The Overlook Hotel.

THE SHINING is among King’s most famous and iconic works; if you’re reading this, you’ll know what its about. Everything shines; six-year-old Danny shines, he is psychic, and gets visions from his imaginary friend, he can get hints of the future, or of possible futures, he can see dead things, things from long ago that linger. His parents, Jack and Wendy, like many characters in the book, also shine, but to a much lesser extent. King postulates that THE SHINING is a clairvoyance, a psychic sixth-sense that is latent in everyone, but not active; many people shine to a greater or lesser extent; some people have just a touch – intuition – but a few really shine on, doc, much like Danny Torrance here, and the Hotel’s cook, Halloran, who also has it big.  

The Overlook is a huge luxury hotel, high in the Colorado mountains, with a long, dark, history: it too shines, like a beacon, it shines it’s past to sensitive folk, the hotel is alive, it is The Overlook, it watches. When it gets a hint of the raw shining power in young Danny, it wants him, it lures him, casts its trap, and uses the old ghosts within Jack, ghosts of failure, and alcoholism, of despair and guilt, to make its catch. Jack, and Wendy, are haunted themselves, long before they get to the hotel, and once the Overlook has got its claws in, and the snows have closed around them, in their freezing isolation, the hotel strikes; through Jack’s ambition to succeed, it uses him, plays him like a marionette, to get what it wants. Had the hotel been successful, only King’s imagination knows how terrible the Overlook could have become.

So, then, THE SHINING, King’s 3^rd novel, is a ghost-story with as many floors as the Overlook itself. It is largely about character, and about Jack’s journey from a problematic but loving husband and father, to a psychotic puppet of evil. Jack’s descent into madness is described at length; for me, some of it worked, and some didn’t quite, but I believed totally in Jack’s alcoholism, and family background, his character. Character is King’s best attribute; had he been writing successfully for 40 years in a genre other than horror, he would long ago have been widely recognised for his skills with character.

The story is a classic one, a gem of a story, iconic; the isolation, the background, the hedge animals, the shining, all great stuff, skilfully put together. I thought generally the writing was good here, although not as time-polished as some other novels, and occasionally I lost the pace in a few places. Conversely, though, in some places the writing shines. I loved the moment when Jack, locked in a bolted pantry by his wife, has been pounding on the metal door for hours; it is definitely locked, he is secure. Then Jack begins to talk to the hotel, to an ex-caretaker on the other side of the door, a ghost that slides along the bolt...   Prose-wise, and particularly, I loved this bit, some fine evocative writing:

Danny was still awake long after his parents’ false sleep had become the real thing. He rolled in his bed, twisting the sheets, grappling with a problem years too big for him, awake in the night like a single sentinel on picket. And sometime after midnight, he slept too and then only the wind was awake, prying at the hotel and hooting in its gables under the bright gimlet gaze of the stars.

The novel has pace, increasingly so, and I waited until I had a spare two hours to read the final quarter or so in one sitting. If you have only ever seen the film [ok but different] or the miniseries [more faithful], and you like that sort of thing, then you certainly should read, or re-read, THE SHINING. It is a fabulous idea, fabulous story, well-written, but for me personally doesn’t quite top some later works like THE DEAD ZONE, DOLORES CLAIBORNE, THE GREEN MILE, or DIFFERENT SEASONS. 8/10

This book cover above [right] makes the book look like a Barbara Cartland type family saga. There is more blog to follow, my waffling about the film and the miniseries versions, and later DOCTOR SLEEP. But for now, I leave you with Toy Shining below. What a long shadow the Overlook has left...