Category — Book

Daughter Of Hounds (2007) is a captivating horror novel by Caitlin Kiernan set in the darkly fantastic world of the Benefit Street ghouls, a familiar setting to readers of Kiernan’s Low Red Moon (2003). Kiernan has followed the same cast of characters, more or less through several books, including Threshold (2001). Daughter Of Hounds focuses on Emma Silvey, the child of Deacon Silvey and Chance Matthews who were major characters in previous books. Emma is precocious and dauntless and believably child-like as she wends her way through the twisting shocks of the story, through dreams within dreams that turn out to be no dreams at all. Her narrative double is Soldier, a tough and brutally practical young woman who is a “child of the Cuckoo,” one of those children stolen by the ghouls and raised in their dank underground warrens. The stories of Emma and Soldier strangely intertwine crossing again and again to the very end of the book. Another character familiar to readers of Kiernan’s fiction is The Bailiff and personally, I was glad to see this character shown from a few more perspectives. It’s too much to hope for, I suppose to expect a lengthy work entirely about him.

Daughter Of Hounds is a delicious mixture of supernatural horror with splashes of everyday gore. It is intelligent and literary while remaining eminently readable. Kiernan has been called the literary grand-daughter of H.P. Lovecraft, though I find her work actually more compelling than that master of eldritch horror. Her descriptions of magick seem more believable; her depictions of that ineffable, nameless wonder/horror are more effective. Kiernan is an established Mistress of short fiction, whose stories frequently are selected as the best horror of the year, and with Daughter Of Hounds a particularly well-conceived and well-executed work, she is clearly hitting her stride with the book-length format. Read them all if you can, but treat yourself to Daughter Of Hounds in the least.

— the grim gnome

(The Grim Gnome) I don’t like vampires, generally speaking. The whole rule-bound / old-world / invitation-only aspects make them about as scary as a supernatural Certified Public Accountant. Except for the ones in “30 Days of Night.” If you haven’t heard of this series you either have been moldering away in a casket or you’re metaphysically immune to the effects of horror-culture. A few years back, writer Steve Niles and artist Ben Templesmith wove together a freshly twisted premise with spattery exuberant artwork and pumped life back into the genre of the horror comic. The fresh twist on the vampire rules that gets “30 Days of Night” rolling is obvious from the title; if vampires hate sunlight, then what if they attacked a place that didn’t have much of it, say, a city located near the Arctic circle? What if a whole ragtag clan of vampires threw a party of sorts during the month of darkness and attacked the whole town. Add human hero. Stir well. Garnish with a nasty skewer at the end and, heck that’s what started the juggernaut. I really have to recommend it. Quite highly.

A sequel picked up the storyline and propelled it forward, again ending with a sickening little twist. And a third, completing a classical trilogy, right? If I understand the chronology correctly, the movie started development around this time and the comics kept coming. A collection of tales appeared, including a rather dumb one about vampires in space. Some of these feature artists other than Templesmith and honestly, I feel cheated with those issues, especially cheated when the artist is attempting to make work that sort of / kind of / almost resembles Templesmith’s art. So though I can’t highly recommend them all — one reason I can’t is because they’re STILL making new ones — I still have to confess I’ve bought and savored every one of them.

Niles’s other comics are nothing to ignore… but for the moment I WILL ignore them, or to be more exact I’ll postpone looking at them until another post. Who knew that comics would work so well for horror? I sure didn’t. I thought the EC’s Crypt Keeper was just weird and, OK, so I was afraid of “The Tomb of Dracula” but I was kid back then. I even thought “Dark Shadows” was scary.

And then there’s the “30 Days of Night” movie. I admit that I felt an actual quiver of excitement when I first heard Sam (”Army of Darkness”) Raimi’s name connected with the project. Alas, it was only as a producer. There are parts of the movie that are very good. For instance, some of the shots are very haunting, like an aerial tracking shot that shows the carnage of the initial attack. And throughout the movies human faces seem to have unusually de-saturated color which makes everyone look cold .. and then also makes the blood really pop out. And I really appreciated that at least a couple times when humans were standing outside in sub-zero temperatures that there were clouds of condensation when they breathed or spoke. As curmudgeonly northerner, I can’t STAND fake winters on screen. My comments don’t sound like a love-fest, though do they? Perhaps I’m grumpy for paying good money to see the movie in the theatre. I’m a stingy curmudgeon. But furthermore, I can’t help but thinking that the comic book was scarier. There was a LOT of back story in the comic book that was simply removed for the movie, so much that there doesn’t seem to be much possibility for a sequel. I was honestly pretty shocked that so much editing was required because I don’t usually consider comics to be that dense when it comes to story line.

“30 Days of Night” - the movie - comes out on video this week. Though I don’t feel unusually COMPELLED to see the movie again when it comes out on video, if I’m honest with myself, I’m pretty sure I will. If for no other reason than it will remind me of how much I loved the original comic.

The premise sounds like the stuff of particularly trippy fan fiction: Jack Kerouac squares off against Cthulu but Nick Mamatos pulls off an enjoyable first novel based around this theme. Move Under Ground (2006) is a breezy read, perfect for summer, without the labored prose of Lovecraft and with only a nod at the self-indulgent excesses of Beat literature. Mamatos’ work is a loving pastiche, including appearances by various authors such as Nelson Algren, Allen Ginsberg and William Burroughs who appears in a blaze of gunfire. I confess that I’m more a fan of the Beats than Lovecraft and more a fan of Burroughs than Kerouac so I was particularly delighted when <slight spoiler> Burrough’s “cut-up” technique was used late in the novel to speed their progress across the country. The text is peppered with with quite delightful allusions to other works and to the later lives of the characters/authors.

I know I should say something critical just to appear intelligent but, heck, taken for what it is, this book is a charmer. The novel can’t really be faulted for not having a taut plot; neither Lovecraft nor Kerouac were particularly tight. Characterization is always tricky when dealing with real-life figures but Beat literature didn’t dwell on psychological characterization so much as a delicious stream of interiority and anyone who’s read On the Road is familiar with Kerouac’s stream. (Someone stop me now–I’m starting to sound like an English professor!) I suppose the only thing that could be said that it isn’t exactly a horror novel but even that isn’t a damning criticism. While not exactly terrifying, I found the long tour of the nightmare landscape quite captivating. Perhaps it wouldn’t be so interesting for some one unfamiliar with Beat literature or the Cthulu mythos but heck, do many American youths escape adolescence without delving into either of those schools of literature?