Review - The Hatching by Ezekiel Boone (2016)

THE HATCHING by Ezekiel Boone [2016]

It’s not often that I manage to obtain, read and review a book within the same month as its release. Yet I was excited by the sound of THE HATCHING, and after seeing a full page advert for it in a magazine, I just had to get hold of it. I’m a huge fan of the horror sub-genre of Creature-Features, or Animal Horror, or Nature’s Revenge, or whatever you want to call it. I’m a collector of the pulpy books from the 70’s and 80’s, the ‘In the tradition of The Rats...’ books, with titles like SCORPION, DEVIL’S COACH HORSE, SLIME [jellyfish], BLIGHT [moths], LOCUSTS, WORMS, BATS OUT OF HELL and so on. Books where the titular animal emerges from somewhere in their thousands and goes on to eat, suck, dribble, flap or skitter about the country, causing havoc and death, before being neatly wrapped up in 160 pages. They’re formulaic, samey, and sometimes not very well-written, but there is lot of love out there in horror land for these garish old paperbacks. So, when I heard about THE HATCHING, a new heavily-promoted hardback from new writer Ezekiel Boone [a pseudonym for New York writer Alexi Zentner] which has got some great reviews, it was great to hear of a resurgence of interest in swarms of flesh-eating critters.

THE HATCHING has a simple plot. All over the world, at around the same time, an ancient and unknown species of spider is hatching from long-dormant eggs. The creatures are on an incredible speed of evolution, and very, very quickly they lay more eggs [in living hosts] and before you can roll up the newspaper, there are literally millions of the little buggers, fast emerging like flowing rivers in China and India, and eventually worldwide, and presented to the world as short video-clips taken by onlookers and on constant repeat on the news channels. Boone takes us through this experience by introducing a large cast of characters, including the first female president of the USA, military soldiers, doomsday survivalists, FBI agents, graduate students and a science professor who is an expert in all-things eight-legged. The action moves quickly, from viewpoint to viewpoint, and the action creeps up until the whole planet is being menaced by the flesh-eating things. I really don’t like spiders, and some parts of this book gave me the genuine shudders and made me look around the room and jump at bits of fluff and dust moving about the place. Also, because I’m an idiot, I read this book at the beginning of spider-season in the UK, when the female spiders, grown fat and juicy, venture out of their nests to find a mate. Splatter shoes and vacuum cleaner on standby!

THE HATCHING was a really fun book, an arachnaphobic horror thriller and a very quick read, and I finished it in a couple of days. It has a great idea and the writing is spare, lean and to the point, and in general, I just had a good time with this novel and heartily recommend it to others. It’s the sort of quick-paced thriller that will get snapped up by a film company and I wouldn’t be surprised if we saw a film in the next year or two.

This is an enjoyable book and I urge any fan of the sub-genre to read it but I want to highlight a few minor flaws that I felt let it down a little. Firstly, it is a little slow in getting going and Boone introduces a lot of characters, each with deep and complex backgrounds, within about 50 pages, so that sometimes characters don’t quite have enough space to develop and feel like truly real characters [and one character, unfortunately named Fanny, I just couldn’t take seriously at all]. All this is interesting, well-written exposition, but I just felt it was getting in the way of the spider carnage. And as for the spider-carnage, I felt that lots of the action sort of happened off-screen, a little like Gareth Edwards’ recent GODZILLA movie, building up to the action but then cutting away to something else. There’s still plenty of interest and action here, just some of it seems to be told instead of shown, and the book shies away from truly horrific description, making it more of a horror-themed thriller than an out-and-out horror novel. In fact in some places it feels like it’s trying to build a WORLD WAR Z sort of vibe, chronicling a worldwide disaster as it enfolds, but it’s not completely successful. The book’s major flaw was what I thought was an unsatisfying ending; the book comes to a climax of a sort, but it’s just really a lead-in to the forthcoming sequel SKITTER, and I left the book feeling slightly disappointed, while also eagerly waiting for the next book; there isn’t much closure in THE HATCHING.

But, seriously, these things are minor quibbles, and I think some of my disappointment at the ending was simply because I wanted more, which is not such a bad thing.  Some reviewers are calling this ‘the horror book of 2016’, and they may be right, but I personally haven’t read enough new books to bestow that accolade. What I will end with, is THE HATCHING is a fast, enjoyable and just plain fun book, and I’ll be watching Ezekiel Boone’s future career with one eye, while keeping the other firmly fixed on all the dusty places behind the couch and in the brickwork. 8/10  

NOTE - I have festooned this review with a selection of similar Nature's Revenge titles, simply because the paperback covers are so damn good. In the creepy-crawly stakes, I think Richard Lewis wins the web with SPIDERS, THE WEB, DEVIL'S COACH-HORSE, THE BLACK HORDE and probably some others I've forgotten. And I've popped THE RATS in, too, as that was the book that started the whole thing going. And Guy N.Smith's BATS OUT OF HELL. Just 'cos it's cool. 

Book Review -- The Illustrated Man -- Ray Bradbury

BOOK REVIEW --  THE ILLUSTRATED MAN -- RAY BRADBURY

Originally published 1952

I’ve always believed that Ray Bradbury’s lyrical prose is more suited to the short story than the novel and that the many collections of his prolific work available ably demonstrate this. Some collections, like The Golden Apples Of The Sun, are less brilliant, with more varied stories, and more than the average amount of misfires. The Illustrated Man, on the other hand, is the opposite, with more of a definite ‘hit’-rate than could be expected.

Most of the eighteen stories here were originally published from around 1947 – 1951 in popular magazines of the day, with several more original to this collection. Bradbury uses the framing device of a man who has been tattooed with illustrations all over his body by a witch from the future. The illustrations move every night and stories are told in them; these are those stories. This is interesting and creative, but also unnecessary – the stories are not linked, except in theme, and can be read individually or in any combination you could like, including one after the other, from front to back. But as with all short story collections, these tales are not a novel, and are not meant to be read as one, in several [or one] large chunks. Take the time to feel Bradbury’s deft prose, his thoughtfulness of word-choice on every page, the lyrics in the lines; Bradbury is a stylist, and although occasionally that style becomes too much and drowns out the story, the prose is rich and worth reading slowly. Take the tales one at a time, over many days; give them a chance to live.

Unlike some other collections, The Illustrated Man is a showcase of Bradbury’s science-fiction and fantasy pieces, and not horror. There is a hint of horror here, but only in a handful of stories. The theme is simple wonder, often a child’s wonder at the world and at the amazing and wonderful things in it. Bradbury has dreamed these stories, they are him, evocations of a childhood lost in fantasies of rockets, spacemen, the future. Many of the stories have prescient predictions on the future, some of which are of their time [like clockwork robots], but some, far-seeing insights have echoed and grown in accuracy down the years. Some of the ideas here are very familiar to science-fiction fans in the 21^st century, but it must be remembered that Bradbury had these ideas and thoughts many, many years before Star Trek and The Terminator, Gravity and A.I.

Every reader will have their own personal favourite. Mine is The Rocket Man, which I absolutely loved, a brilliant five-star tale and certainly for me on the list of Bradbury’s best. It tells of a ‘rocket man’, an astronaut who lives in two worlds – his home and family life and his work, or rocket missions – but is completely content in neither. While on his rockets, flying about the galaxy, he misses the Earth and his wife and family; while on leave at home, he is dreaming of being back in space, itching to get back to it. His wife regards him as ‘dead’ to her, for she knows he will soon disappear again on dangerous missions, she cannot relax and enjoy his company. His son, too, cannot connect with him, as, even when he is there, he is never really there, but dreaming, pining for his next journey to the stars. I realise I’ve largely told the plot of this story, but it needs to be read to be fully appreciated, the emotions and thoughts of the characters as expressed by Bradbury are much more than a thin description here. It is simply a brilliant story, and lingers long in the mind, and is as relevant now as when it was written, dealing with the pull of ambition and danger, but the bittersweet mediocrity of what is left behind. This is just an excellent story, unreservedly recommended; if you have just half an hour before this book is wrenched forever from your hands, read The Rocket Man and be in awe. If the title is vaguely familiar to you, you might be thinking of the hit song of the same name by Elton John; the lyrics were inspired by this very story.

My next choice would be another very short but excellent story; The City. Unlike the above, the plots of some stories need to be discovered in the reading, for that was the point of their construction. Much like the point behind the construction of the ancient city in this story, on a distant star, and what happens when a ship from Earth sets down upon it, many thousands of years after last contact. An awesome idea, and another excellent story that will leave you with that genuine science-fiction sense of wonder.

                           Sticking with interstellar themes, The Long Rain is an adventure story set on Venus; can a space crew defy the constant hammering of the rain, and find the safety of a sheltered Sun Dome. Read this memorable story to find out. Kaleidoscope massively pre-dates the 2013 film Gravity, telling, in just a few short pages, of an accident during a spacewalk mission; Bradbury’s emotive words focus more on the fate of the crew, as they helplessly drift away from each other into the depths of space.

Marionettes Inc. is as great a masterclass in writing a short-story as I can think of. The theme is robots, robots that look, not like tin cans on wheels, but indistinguishable from human beings. The story is merely 6 pages long, yet Bradbury has foreseen most of the major plots of future blockbuster films and novels, and crammed the basics, along with constantly-changing twists, into this skilful and prescient story. You could study this story, and learn much about how to construct a short tale; equally, you could quickly read it and be amazed.

The Fox And The Forest is a peculiar title, utterly failing to foreshadow it’s hugely enjoyable story of time-travel. While on a holiday to the past, a man and his wife have done a runner from a war-torn future, and are persued by collection agents. The story slowly reveals itself, and at the end the reader is put in mind of a certain huge movie hit of the 1980’s. It is almost as if Bradbury had a time machine himself. Perhaps he did, in his imagination.

                         

The above tales were my particular favourites, but a large part of what remains is also very enjoyable and entertaining. The Fire Balloons is a story of Mars, and the group of clerics who go there to be missionaries to the inhabitants of the planet, only to find that the Chinese-lantern-like entities that live there are beyond sin. The Visitor, also set on Mars, tells of a world filled with outcasts from Earth, people who are dying or suffering from incurable disease. Into their midst comes a visitor, who can comfort the stricken, with lifelike visions and illusions. But his benevolence is desirable, and even outcasts might be driven to violence...

Much-reprinted story The Veldt pre-invents the Holodeck from Star Trek; in a futuristic nursery, virtual African plains come to life...

The Last Night Of The World and The Highway both concern the end of the world. Bradbury focuses on looking at human reactions to the end, and finds them quiet and civilized. In Zero Hour, all the children of the world appear to be playing a game which will help robotic aliens insidiously invade the planet. A man takes his family for the trip of a lifetime in The Rocket using just his contagious imagination.

The majority of the stories here are okay, still enjoyable, and add to the general flavour of the book. There were only two stories out of the eighteen that I didn’t much care for. Perhaps you will like them better.

I’ve read a number of Bradbury’s story collections over the years, and in the science-fiction field, I think this one is among his finest. The tales continually showcase Bradbury’s bright optimism in people, and their hopes and fears and loves, and how people will prevail; emotions and relationships mean more than the technological progress of the future. More important than scientific progress, mankind’s thoughts and feelings and tenderness will temper any possible dark capitalism of future generations. Bradbury, throughout his long life, and never more so than in the stories here, was always a dreamer, a literary dreamer, dreaming dreams of a hopeful and excited ten-year-old boy. To read these stories is to partake, for a while, in these vivid and inventive dreams.  10/10

Some of the stories were adapted into a 1969 portmanteau film.

   

I'm gonna need a bigger blog...!!

Shark Spot - #1 – Why I love shark movies! – Shark Attack [1999]

When I was a kid, probably somewhere between the age of 5 and 10, I stayed up late with my parents to watch JAWS. I was lying on the couch, under my mam’s furry multi-colored coat, my feet nestled in behind my dad at the other end of the couch. This was the mid 80’s and this was an EVENT!!! Nowadays, movies are on demand, streaming, on DVD or even just on the television a year or two after release. In the 80’s, it took years for a film to come out on video, and longer still for it to show up on telly. And crucially for young people of today to understand, if you missed a program, that was it, you’d missed it. There was no +1s, no endless repeats over the next week, or download services. You just missed it. If you were lucky, you had a VHS and could record it, but these were the relatively early days even of home video, at least for the not very well off.

Anyway, a big movie on TV was a huge event; you talked about it the next day at school, at work, in the streets. If you hadn’t seen it, in the street lingo of the day, you were a craphead, so, parents hopefully obliging, you did your best to watch it. And JAWS was amazing; JAWS scared me, right from the beginning, with its sploshing waves, buoys clanging at sea, the dangerous rising music score signposting the entrance of the huge shark. The shots of feet dangling and splashing in the water as an underwater camera circled in, closer, closer. A lone night-swimmer is dragged under the water, reappears, panics, screams, goes under; the shark has got her, and it got me too. It got me big time.

JAWS remains one of my favorite films; I have it on DVD. I have a T-shirt, a mug, a coaster, all bearing the brilliantly iconic image of the shark ready to strike on a helpless swimmer. Loads of scenes electrified me as a kid, and continue to do so to this day. When police chief Martin Brody is chumming the water and the shark looms hugely out of the water behind him; when scores of beachgoers run and swim for shore when the shark alarm goes up; when a severed head drifts by underwater in the sunken boat; when the shark is attacking Hooper in his inadequate-looking shark-cage; when Quint tells his story about the USS Indianapolis, and later when they are harpooning barrels of air into the shark to tire it out, and later still when Quint is crunched in two inside the creature’s giant jaws. The film is excellent, iconic, and my admiration of the film only grows every time I see it.

A couple of years later, a little bigger, I saw JAWS 2; again an event movie, a big deal, and I loved it. A bunch of kids, trapped at sea, by a huge and menacing shark. Great stuff. Every time that Jaws or Jaws 2 was on TV when I was a kid, I tried to watch it – in reality they were probably only on a couple of times each over a number of years, but it seemed to me that it was always an event, always a big thing. I lapped it up; I loved it.

Now, somewhere along the way, as I grew up and got into all kinds of horror movies and creature-features, monsters have always been one of my great loves, particularly, giant animal monsters, particularly, water-going creatures, like fish, snakes, octopi, crocodiles and most definitely sharks. In 1975 Jaws was about alone in the sub-genre; 40 years later, you can’t turn on the horror or syfy channels without coming across some kind of shark be it a Mega, a 3-Headed, a snow, zombie, ghost or avalanche variety, super, swampy, raging, in a tornado, attacking, or versus giant octopi or robotic predators. Sharks are everywhere, and I love ‘em. But, of course, some of the films are actually not really that good. So I’m gonna attempt to look at lots of sharky films and give my own completely-biased opinion on them. This project may take me a few months, or it may take forever. I’m betting on the latter. But one thing is probably certain; I’m gonna need a bigger blog....

Jawsome Shark Movie #1 --- SHARK ATTACK (1999)

Mostly, apart from the wave of JAWS imitators in the late 70’s and 80’s, the killer shark genre has been reasonably quiet until the 21^st century. Just before then, and making a decent claim to be the beginning of low-budget shark-attack films is the Nu-Image TV movie SHARK ATTACK of 1999. The most notable thing about the film now, looking back, is that there is nothing particularly unnatural about the sharks; they are not mega or robotic or half-something-else. They are just normal-sized, albeit more aggressive creatures.  It stars Casper Van Dien, fresh from his star role in STARSHIP TROOPERS as a marine biologist who goes to an African coastal town to investigate the mysterious death of his friend and former colleague. There he meets Jennifer McShane, his friend’s sister and they team up with a local taxi/boat guy to investigate why this little town is having more than its share of ferocious shark kills. Smooth-talking Ernie Hudson [most famously from GHOSTBUSTERS] is on hand as a local authority of some kind and businessman, and Bentley Mitchum is a scientist using the sharks in experiments to find a cure for cancer. The film is decent, although clearly is an evening TV Movie thriller and not at all a horror or monster film. It’s reasonably well-made and has a good story to it, though the script is sometimes a bit fishy, and van Dien’s acting is variable. The sharks themselves pop up quite a bit, there’s a variety of species, and the majority of them are real sharks, although largely made of stock footage or shots filmed somewhere completely different from where the actors were. Early on there’s an obvious studio tank shot where you can just about see the back of the set above the ‘ocean’. In general SHARK ATTACK isn’t bad, fairly tense at a couple of points, with a fair bit of normal-sized shark action. Sadly, it overstays it welcome by about ten minutes, and you’re ready for the cheesy ending and the credits when they come. If you can stand it, watch it on a double feature with its sequel and some beer.

Movie Rating:- 6/10

Shark Score:- 4

[Shark Score is based on several factors and is entirely unscientific and awarded by me. I base it on the amount of screen time the shark(s) has; its jawsomeness and originality; special-effects, and just generally how cool it is for shark-movie freaks like myself. 10 is the highest, 1 the lowest, but any film that gets a 1 cant really qualify as a shark film at all really.]  

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Midwinter Of The Spirit by Phil Rickman --- Book Review

Midwinter Of The Spirit

By Phil Rickman, 1999

Lancashire-born Phil Rickman began his writing career producing thick books, deep with character and intertwined events, revolving around ancient religion and practices, mysticism, New Age matters and old British customs and traditions. An open-minded and dark streak, offered up with titles like Crybbe [later renamed Curfew], December, The Man In The Moss and Candlenight soon placed him within the wide expanses of the horror genre, a label that Rickman was never keen on. I see his point; these books are near to horror, but much quieter, any horrors are much more insidious and slow-burning, or often the horror of what happens when two opposing faiths find themselves against each other. For a publisher they are indeed hard to classify; they have some horror and fantasy themes, but sometimes are nearer to crime fiction, a sort of supernatural thriller, steeped in the old ways of simpler times, and usually set in out-of-the-way corners of central Britain.  

Midwinter Of The Spirit is the second book in Rickman’s Merrily Watkins series, concerning the exploits of a small-town female reverend who gets mixed up in all kinds of old-religion themed trouble. The first book, The Wine Of Angels concerns big families who hide big secrets that span centuries and a religion-based murderer. Rickman must have attached to the character of Merrily Watkins and in Midwinter, Merrily has had an upgrade, so much so, that the first book is almost just a prequel to the fourteen or so that followed. In Midwinter, Merrily has been picked out by the clergy to be a ‘Deliverance minister’, basically a modern euphemism for an appointed and official Exorcist. Any problems of an occult or supernatural nature that arise within her diocese are pointed towards her, and it is her that the Church rely on to do her job, sort things out, but keep them reasonably quiet and out-of-the-way. The trouble is, in Midwinter, Merrily has just finished her brief training, isn’t really sure she wants to take the job, and isn’t entirely sure what she’s doing when she is thrown in at the deep end and asked to look into some difficult and personally-painful events. First there is the case of Denzil Joy, a man who has led an evil life full of unpleasant things. Denzil is on his death-bed in the hospital, but his nurses and carers are scared of him and even near death, he seems to have some kind of supernatural unclean aura around him. The man soon dies, but something of his spirit is passed on to Merrily; his subsequent haunting of the Reverend causes great friction and stress in her life, and she finds it increasingly difficult to deal with the further problems that are thrown her way. Churches are desecrated, a young woman trying to attune with her long-dead ancestors is found dead, and another body is pulled out of the river Wye. All these events have sinister connotations in themselves – on top of this Merrily’s teenage daughter Jane is getting friendly with a clique of people with darker intent than their New Age group would seem to suggest. All of this is cleverly twisted and twined together, while haunted Merrily tries to take it all in and piece it together, often making it up as she goes along. And sometimes it seems that even the Church is not always on her side.

Midwinter Of The Spirit, like all of Rickman’s books is around 500 pages long, thick, and creates a deep sense of character and events. Yet the pages do go by very fast; it doesn’t seem as long as it is. Some people, however, dislike Rickman’s writing style – it is very familiar, chatty, sometimes almost like a stream of consciousness from whichever character he’s writing about at the time. He also jumps around a lot with the events – often within one chapter, two or three plot lines are on the go together. This definitely accelerates the reading – you’ll quickly read bits in order to get back to the character you’ve just left – but is occasionally confusing and a little jarring. Often in a long book, a large cast of characters can also make for confusing reading - with constant flickbacks to find out who Sophie is again, for example, - but here Rickman does a pretty good job of giving characters their own identity, and I felt mostly at ease with around 10 -15 central characters.

There are some ghosts here – and a novel and fun way of categorising them – but this is far from a horror novel; like I said above, I would call it a Supernatural Thriller, although I’d be tempted to say Drama instead of Thriller, because that is more the case here. It’s all very interesting and keeps you reading, but for my taste, it never quite built up the thrills enough to qualify as a thriller; the climax particularly seemed a little low-key to tie up all the 500 pages before it. But before you get the idea that this is a negative review, it is far from it. Rickman has created a deep and rich world with his Merrily Watkins character, a world where the old beliefs still linger, and where ghosts and occult events are commonplace but swept under the carpet by the authorities. I enjoyed the book; it is a rich and deep novel with many subplots skilfully weaved together. The world Rickman has created is no doubt filled in even further with the long list of sequels – and Midwinter has recently been adapted as a three-part ITV series [enjoyable stuff, slightly altered and necessarily condensed from the book, and only slightly confusing if you haven’t read the source material] and hopefully more will follow.

I liked Midwinter Of The Spirit, although I enjoyed The Man In The Moss slightly more because it was nearer to a straight horror story.  Phil Rickman is an interesting writer and I’ll be reading more of his engaging books in the future.  7/10