Dark & Twisty

I just finished Bite Me, the latest from Christopher Moore.  The book takes the story arc established in Blood-sucking Fiends and You Suck. It also as best as can be told, ends this arc.  I’m happy it did.  Even though  this story was still outrageously, Moore, and very funny at times.  It didn’t keep up the laughs that I’ve come to expect. The story takes a bit of a darker turn, which is okay with me because I am a writer and reader of darker fictions.

The story does a lot of focusing on Abby Normal.  This is okay.  It follows an order, Jody in the first book, Flood in the second, Abby in the third.  The problem is that you can only read in her voice for so long.  Then you get tired of it.  It’s hard to read her rambling, ultra catchphrase voice. ‘Kayso, now more about the book.

Vampire kitties is all I’m saying.  The world has to be avenged from the attack of the undead cats of San Francisco.  Apparently, Beijing had this problem before, and one crazy old Chinese lady remembers.

The major problem with me and this book is, the clichés.  You can only keep a story arc going for so long before you fall prey to these, and this happens.  Usually Moore builds his humor off of misusing the cliché or twisting it, but this time he gives us the smack talking “my nigga” loving Chinese granny, who only knows offense English phrase.  Give me a break, please.  There was so much more that could have been done for that character than that.

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So, I'm retroactively writing a blog about Offspring by Jack Ketchum.  This was the first book I read by the master of splat and visceral horror.  I read Off Season later. 

This book is good old fashion splatterpunk.  Many people don't like Ketchum's "Off" books because of the amount of gore and canabalism, but every horror writer has to indulge these two topics.  He just started off with them.  He was a good answer to Stephen King, when he was burning up the book lists in the beginning of the 1980's, but back to the story.  It follows the offspring of a clan of flesh eaters who inhabit the rocky coast of Maine.  I have friends from Maine, by the way, and they've never tried to eat me. 

The book deals with teens as the hunters and younger children.  It's more like Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome with recipes for cooking humans.  It's not as enjoyable a story as Off Season but it is still well written.  Ketchum has a way with the gore, and this book proves it.

Posted by Jared at 09:59 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

So I recently picked up a Jack Ketchum novel after about a year of leaving him alone.  It wasn’t a new book by Ketchum but The Lost.  I had taken a break from him after reading The Girl Next Door, which is such an intense text palate cleansing can take up to a year to complete. (I will say that The Girl Next Door is one of those rare books that leaves me with a strong impression long after reading it.  I’ve added it to the list with such works as Night, Dandelion Wine, and The Good Earth.)

The Lost isn’t going to be on my list of linger texts.  It was  a good read with plenty of pay off, but it was a slow build.  There were times when reading it that I couldn’t figure out what was going to happen next. I knew the main character/villain, Ray, was going to do something spectacularly evil, but I wasn’t sure what.

It ends up that this book is about hypocrisy.  Ray is a twenty-something guy in the late sixties who hates all things that the late sixties represented (peace, love, flower power), except drugs and certain rock bands (mainly Mary Jane and The Stones). He despises hippies, but in the end, imitates the most infamous murdering band of hippies ever, the Manson family.

Ketchum also makes a point that all the main characters are seriously flawed.  There’s a reason it’s titled the Lost instead of the Innocent.  No one is unspotted.  Almost everyone is an anti-hero or villainous protagonist. The two cops are an alcoholic who lost his family due to his work habits, and a lecherous older man who is having sex with an 18 year old.  The 18-year-old, Sally, is having the relations with this older man, which is a scandalous thing to do in the late 1960’s.  Most all the young characters are drug addicts or hoods in some fashion, but you feel for them. 

The only innocent character is Gimp the cat.  The whole time reading I knew that Ketchum was going to kill the cat.  I knew it.  In past works, he’s filleted humans and roasted them, hung them from trees to be dressed like a hog, and tortured young teen girls, so why not whack a cat.  He didn’t.  And I was glad of it. 

This book lacks a few things.  One is a satisfying ending.  The carnage is what you expect from Ketchum, bloody, brutal, and always pushing the envelop of bad taste (a Sharon Tate type murder by Ray). At the very end, Ray get convicted of his crime, but we’re left with he’s going to get AIDS and die.  For all the gore tossing at the end and beginning, and the slow suspenseful build up to Ray’s snapping, an allusion to AIDS at the end given to him during stereotypical prison rape, seems like a cop out. 

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