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| Do Not Try This at Home |
Awhile back, I read that the new
Lucifer comic book was being written by Holly Black. The name had an oddly familiar ring to me, so I went to see who she was. I discovered, through my vast Wikipedia powers, that she was actually the co-author of a series I have rather fond memories of,
The Spiderwick Chronicles.
I therefore decided to give something else by her a read. Black faced quite a challenge though, I rarely ever read anything written after the year 1970, and find most things written after that time to be lesser in quality, with the noted exceptions of Kevin J. Anderson and Alex Bradley. Did Black join that group, or does she fall by the wayside of dull YA authors?
The book, as could be grasped from the title, is a collection of short stories published by Black from 2004-2010. The stories all fall somewhere in the horror or urban fantasy genres. My individual thoughts on the stories are as follows:
1. "The Coldest Girl in Coldtown": This one had an initially interesting premise. The idea is that vampirism has become fairly widespread with most of the bloodsuckers in America going to live in a closed off community called Coldtown. The culture has become rather obsessed with the phantoms of the night, and many seek to be bitten by vampires to join what they regard as a very romantic lifestyle.
The eponymous Coldest Girl is Matilda, who was bitten by a vampire a few weeks ago from the start of the story. The rules of vampirism in this story is that once you are bitten, you do not change fully into a vampire until you chug some blood. If you wait a number of days, you will eventually revert back to human, but the trick is that you have an intense craving for blood that whole time.
Matilda deals with this by getting completely blitzed. However, her friend, Dante, tells her that his sister and Matilda's boyfriend have gone to Coldtown to get bitten and made into vampires. The questions then become how will Matilda save the two, and will she give into her hunger along the way?
The idea is not a bad one, and some of the world building Black does is interesting. Unfortunately, Matheson Syndrome kicks in about this time. For those who are unaware, Matheson Syndrome is named after author Richard Matheson, my favorite horror author. The effect of the syndrome is that you create an interesting world and have a lot of neat ideas in your story, but it is brought down by having all your characters being fairly unlikeable. Matheson is often able to work around this by having everything else in his stories being so good that you forget about the character, or just being very light in using his characters.
This story, however, does not possess enough of the remedies Matheson often employs to free itself from the disdain I felt towards the main characters, side characters, and peripheral characters. There is, of course, a certain school of literature that believes people should be portrayed as they are, not idealized, and that necessitates making your characters unlikeable. Perhaps this makes the story of greater literary merit, but that doesn't mean I have to like it. I give it a 5/10. The world building stuff is interesting enough to make it fairly average. This story got expanded by Black into a full novel, but it is probably one I shall pass upon.
2. "Reversal of Fortune": I will try to be a bit briefer on this one. This story involves a girl who challenges the devil to an eating contest in order to bring her dead dog back to life. The tale has a few nice moments, such as the devil first suggesting a fiddle contest, and the way the contest ends is rather clever. However, Matheson Syndrome strikes again, bringing the story to a 5/10.
3. "Boy Who Cried Wolf": This one was just sort of boring and didn't have much to offer. It is about a boy who reads a lot and turns into a werewolf and runs away from his family. It is just fantastically unremarkable with very little for or against it. The ending was fairly funny though, so I give it a 4/10.
4. "The Night Market": Tomasa's sister has been cursed by an elf because she refused to fall in love with him. Tomasa, therefore, goes to the elf several times, pleading with him to lift the curse. The story has a neat premise, and I thought the world building was done better here than most of the other stories. Matheson Syndrome also stays its hand this round as the characters, while not particularly likeable or deep, are nevertheless ones we can root for to win. The problem is the ending here. I will not spoil it, but it is really stupid and makes no sense, particularly when there was a much better path the story might have taken. That basically causes the positives and negatives to average out to a 6/10.
5. "The Dog King": Not bad, but the reverse cannot be claimed either. the premise is that there are dog and wolf fights that take place in a mythical kingdom, but there is also a wolf owned by the king, who changes into a boy; and people are getting killed by a wolf. Honestly the whole thing makes little sense, but some of the scenery is nice; and the characters are not annoying, just nondescript. Oh well, I give it a 5/10.
6. "Virgin": The plot and characters were all terrible, but darn there was some good atmosphere. 4/10.
7. "In Vodka Veritas": The story follows a lonely high school student and his friend right before prom. It is the usual teen angst "who am I?" story until the kid, getting slightly drunk on prom night, discovers the Latin Club, tired of being picked upon, has instituted an ancient rite which causes the students and teachers to descend into a festival of Bacchus. I will let you guess what that entails. What is our hero to do? Find out tonight on
Supernatural Angst High. Matheson syndrome strikes again, but there are a few funny moments in the book to elevate it. As someone who took far more Latin then should be allowed under the Geneva Convention, I found it highly bemusing that they were the ones seeking revenge. I give it another 5/10 I fear.
8. "The Coat of Stars": It is a classic fairytale type premise of a tailor who returns to his home and discovers his childhood friend, who has been missing for years, was kidnapped by faeries and therefore makes coats for the fairy queen to get his friend back. I think you all know what degenerative literary disease struck the story and brought it down to a 4/10.
9. "Paper Cuts Scissors": This story involves a guy who is studying library science in grad school, but he is doing it so he can get an internship to work for this old dude who can bring characters out of books. The guy's girlfriend could put things into books, and after an argument, put herself into a Russian romance novel. The guy is hoping the old dude can take out his girlfriend. There follows lots of questions about the human condition and literary characters interacting. This story was complete and shameless pandering to book nerds, so I naturally kind of loved it. The simple joy of seeing Edmond Dantes and Naruto hanging out, and Wolverine asking "Who's John Galt?" brought many a smile to my face. It is the gem of the collection. 8/10.
10. "Going Ironside": This is the shortest story in the bunch. Thank goodness! 2/10.
11. "The Land of Heart's Desire": This one was nice in a very low key way. The premise is that there is a coffee shop catering to faeries. However, the human who runs it, in an effort to increase business, tells of it online. It works, but it makes the fairy king rather displeased. The characters were actually likeable here for a change, and this was just a nice simple story. Overall 6/10.
12. "The Poison Eaters": A tale about three sisters who are deadly to the touch and what their father has planned for them. Not bad, just kind of bland for the most part. 5/10.
As one might have guessed from the individual reviews, I think Black's main problems come from characterization. Her characters are oftentimes just unlikeable, making me not really care if they succeed in their goals or not. Her world building talents are rather impressive, and her prose style is easily readable like most YA authors. However, her stories always left me thinking they could be retooled to be so much better than they were. None of them were terrible with one exception, yet neither were any of them great, with one exception. It seems the curse of literature published past 1970 leaving no impression upon me is to continue for awhile. Overall: 4.83/10
Book #39
Next Book Review:
Homage to Catalonia-George Orwell
-Captain Joshua
