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Tag Archives: Kristopher Kelly

The Last Werewolf
The Last Werewolf by Glen Duncan
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Well, damn. Here I was, really enjoying this book, until it just … got old fast. The title sums up the plot accurately enough: Jacob Marlowe is the world’s last werewolf, who is being hunted by an international group dedicated to killing occult creatures, but the joke’s on them, because Jake has a bad case of ennui and plans to kill himself, anyway. Think James Bond if James Bond was a werewolf who wanted to kill himself after too many women, too much booze, and too many years on the prowl. The first few chapters were unique and fun, lots of great lines.

But then … ?

The first moment of disappointment came with the first major love scenes in the story. So many good lines, and yet–too many overwrought ones. And the action and story itself I found far too simple and almost entirely predictable. Also, like Jake I found myself not quite caring about what happened. Maybe that’s the problem with having a character who doesn’t want to live.

Story is a bit like a dessert that you start eating feeling delighted by and end feeling like you should’ve stopped ten forks-worth ago, because now it just seems like the worst thing you ever did, eating that cake.

That said, there were too many sentences I loved to give this book any less that three stars.

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Full Dark, No Stars
Full Dark, No Stars by Stephen King
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Almost a four-star review, but not quite. I enjoyed the stories overall, but I feel like the ideas just weren’t good enough. When I think of the stories in Different Seasons, or Four Past Midnight, or even the Bachman Books, I feel like this collection of four novellas comes up lacking a bit.

The collection start with “1922” — the story of a haunted man and his equally haunted son — begins in unbelievability, wanders into decent horror story territory, and then waddles off into a muttering, clumsy puddle of half-baked plot before whimpering to its conclusion. But hey, some of the details were cool (loved the rats! loved them!), so I wasn’t entirely bored. But I didn’t in the end find much to believe in this one. Might’ve been better as a real short story.

Next comes “Big Driver” — and this one pretty much follows the plot of films like Last House on the Left (itself rented and viewed by the main character) and would have seemed really derivative to me, had it not been for King’s striking ability to write well when the mood suits him. I wound up having a blast with this story, even if I wanted to reject its very premise from the moment I realized what it was going to be about. The conclusion was suspenseful, and if all the stories were as good as this one, I’d probably have given the collection five stars.

“Fair Extension” was absolute garbage, and King should be ashamed of himself for it. This deal-with-the-devil story has the devil go by the name of George Elvid. Yes. That’s right. Elvid. One look at that name, and I wanted to slap King on the wrist.

Finally, “The Good Marriage” continued King’s habit of writing long stories of women alone in a house sifting through their husband’s stuff. This one discovers a nasty secret about her husband. It was interesting, and decent enough, but rather long-winded at times for my taste. Nice ending. Also, though, I feel like this one could have been better as a real short story. There’s a lot of fat on this one.

So I guess I liked half the stories here, barely liked another, and full on mocked another. And yet … it was all so very easy to read and King kept me turning the pages.

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The Ghost Map: The Story of London's Most Terrifying Epidemic--and How It Changed Science, Cities, and the Modern World
The Ghost Map: The Story of London’s Most Terrifying Epidemic–and How It Changed Science, Cities, and the Modern World by Steven Johnson
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Good, fun reading about cholera breaking out in mid-nineteenth century London and the way two men figured out what was really going on. The central character is John Snow, who fights against prevailing superstition and wrong-headed ideas about the nature of disease. The story of Snow’s research is really fascinating, but Johnson loses me a little in his somewhat unfocused ramblings toward the end. The “epilogue” in particular goes on for quite some time about nuclear disarmament. I mean, I get it, but really? I came here for the cholera story, not Johnson’s thoughts on 9/11. Overall, though, this was a great read.

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I Held My Breath as Long as I Could Cover

Cover Art, I Held My Breath as Long as I Could

In the last month, I’ve kept busy and missed precious few days. I’ve written a completely fresh draft of a story called “Radiation,” which I originally wrote in high school (it’s the story that earned me my favorite rejection letter ever, the letter which said, “This story is almost strange enough to like — unfortunately, it makes no sense at all!!!”). I love the revision. Also been working on revisions to some of the stories here, to mixed results. I have these ideas of what I want to do, but sometimes it just doesn’t work the way I think it should. I’ve got one more month until my deadline for new content expires and I go to strict line-editing, but I’ve already gotten the feeling that these are the stories I’m going with, and that I’m going to need all the time I can get to make this heap of sentences work.

There’s so much to do. There are so many words. The idea that people routinely write long novels blows my mind a bit right now.

Tonight, I’m going to read one of the pieces at Black & White here in Manhattan. Hope the audience likes it. I feel a bit nervous, as always, but it’s been too long since my last reading. I’ve been too much in the lab, and I have to make an effort to get out more.

Geek Love
Geek Love by Katherine Dunn
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

One of the best books I have ever read, and the horror novelist in me wants to claim it for my own genre. Here’s the slew of adjectives: dark, funny, disturbing, and beautiful. These are some of the best, most perfectly captured characters I’ve ever had the pleasure to spend time with.

The writing is beautiful without getting in the way of the story itself, which rolls forward at a perfect clip. I found myself underlining passages quickly so I could hurry up and turn the page.

And what a story. A novel hasn’t gotten this far under my skin for a long, long time.

READ THIS BOOK!

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