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Book Review: Constance by Matthew Fitzsimmons

cover art for Constance by Matthew Fitzsimmons

Constance by Matthew Fitzsimmons

Thomas & Mercer, 2021 (release date Sept. 1 2021)

ISBN: 9781542014274

Available: Hardcover, paperback, Kindle edition, audiobook ( Bookshop.org | Amazon.com )

 

Constance is an outstanding thriller written in the vein of Michael Crichton.  It’s extremely fast paced and  emotionally deep. Its version of Earth in the future is beautifully detailed, with a lot of thought put in to how technology may evolve in the next 15 years.  This is a “can’t miss” book, and it wouldn’t be surprising to see Hollywood snap it up, it would be perfect material for Christopher Nolan (Interstellar, Inception) to direct.

 

The backbone of the book centers on human cloning, but not for replacement parts.  It’s for cloning replacement human beings in the event of  their untimely deaths.  Anyone with a clone in stasis has to re-download their consciousness into the clone every thirty days.  If a person dies, the clone is activated and the only memory lag should be between the last “refresh” of the clone and their time of death.   The protagonist, Constance D’Arcy, has a clone, a gift from her eccentric and very rich aunt.  When Constance wakes from her latest refresh, she learns she is not Constance, but Constance’s clone, just activated after 18 months of the original Constance being missing.  The clone (called “Con” here to eliminate confusion) is quickly on the run for her life, as various parties want her for… something.  It’s a complex puzzle for Con to learn what Constance was up to in the last 18 months, and how it relates to her being hunted by the various antagonists in the story.

 

Any more would spoil the plot, but it’s enough to say this is an incredible novel.  The characters are perfectly done and filled with depth, the thrills never stop, and the puzzle is a tough one to unravel as you read it.  Also, the science is explained well enough that the average reader won’t get overwhelmed.  Like the movie Inception, there are layers to the story, in terms of clones… and their clones… and the consciousness of some characters cloned into completely new bodies unrelated to the original.  It might be a lot to handle, but the author’s clear style keeps it easy to follow for the reader.  It helps make the story great, as the reader will never know for sure who a character actually is, until the author reveals it.  In the hands of a less talented author this could have been a labyrinthine mess, but Fitzsimmons pulls it off to perfection.

 

Fitzsimmons also does an excellent job painting some of the ethical and political problems of cloning into the story.  Different viewpoints on cloning are expressed through characters that are essential to the story.  The push/pull dynamic between the characters and their viewpoints on cloning adds depth to the story without controlling the narrative, and it is extremely well done.

 

Simply put, anyone who loves a good story has to get this one when it is released.  For a thriller, it doesn’t get any better than this.  Highly recommended.

 

Contains: profanity, mild violence

 

Reviewed by Murray Samuelson

Posted on June 1, 2021 by , Reply

Book Review: Night Terrors and Other Stories by Lisa Morton

cover art for Night Terrors and Other Stories by Lisa Morton

Night Terrors and Other Tales by Lisa Morton

Omnium Gatherum, 2020

ISBN-13 : 978-1949054286

Available: Paperback, Kindle ( Bookshop.org |  Amazon.com )

 

Night Terrors and Other Tales collects twenty of Lisa Morton’s short stories selected by the author. There are so many great stories in this anthology. Morton has separated the sections titled “Monsters,” “The Psych Ward,” “Mad Science,” “Bad Magic,” “and “The Unnamable”.

 

Several tales stand out in each section. From the “Monsters” section, “Joe and Abel in the Field of Rest” presents a unique take on the zombie story. Joe knows loss all too well. He has spent his last few years killing zombies and burying them in a large pit he calls the Field of Rest. One day while he is out near the field, he finds a walker still alive in the pit. The creature doesn’t move to attack Joe, so they become friends of sorts, with Joe feeding him and spending time out at the pit. Another human, Hansen, comes onto Joe’s property, and it is only a matter of time before the human and walker meet. Will Joe and Abel’s friendship survive? Another story, “Sparks Fly Upward” tells of a woman who has to confront the fact that in the Colony, there are limited resources and her second child cannot be born. Doc Freeman has deemed it so. The dead return to spots that meant something to them in their lives. Unfortunately, as she and her escorts arrive at the family planning facility, they find a group of undead pro-life protestors in their way.

 

“The Psych Ward” is the next section of the book. In “The New War,” Mike hates the caretaker Maria in the nursing home. He insists she brings something dark in with her whenever she’s around. Mike’s daughter, Angela, doesn’t believe him. No one believes him. Then, the black thing and where it’s from becomes clear.

 

“Mad Science” contains some deeply disturbing tales. In “The Resurrection Policy,” a wealthy man defaults on his payments to his insurance company. He discovers this after he dies, and his essence is saved in a folder on a server somewhere. After talking with the insurance agent handling his claim, he is finally resurrected into a body that does not meet quality control. He finds that navigating in this new form is more difficult than he ever could have imagined. “Feel the Noise” reveals a new weapon that has the capability to scramble the body’s senses, mixing them up, driving the victim crazy. Jackson Howard was a private in the military when he was hit by this weapon. It takes an outside party and a point in the right direction to get his vengeance on the person responsible for his condition.

 

One of the best stories in “Bad Magic” is “Erasure.” Linda visits her husband’s grave every day, despite the fact he was a terrible person. She meets a young woman in the cemetery who offers Linda a chance to forget.

 

“The Unnamable” is the final section in Night Terrors. In “The Secret Engravings”, set in 1523, Death comes to Hans Holbein with a commission. The entity is so pleased with Holbein’s work that he is commissioned for a second time, which proves to be all too real. “Night Terrors” involved a worldwide pandemic that begins with someone screaming in their sleep. Soon, the night terrors take over the world, one by one.

 

Morton, a well-deserved six-time winner of the Bram Stoker Award, selected some incredibly effective stories in this volume. I recognized a few of the stories I have read elsewhere in other anthologies, and was ecstatic to revisit them. Morton is a polished storyteller. I would recommend this collection to anyone looking for a good short story anthology. I would caution those sensitive to child sexual abuse that “Poppi’s Monster” deals with this topic.

Contains: blood, child sexual abuse, gore, murder, sexual assault, sexual content

Recommended

Reviewed by Lizzy Walker

Posted on May 28, 2021 by , Reply

Book Review: Grotesque: Monster Stories by Lee Murray

cover art for Grotesque: Monster Stories by Lee Murray

Grotesque: Monster Stories by Lee Murray

Things in the Well, 2020

ISBN-13 : 979-8611527153

Available: Paperback, Kindle edition ( Amazon.com )

 

In Grotesque: Monster Stories Lee Murray has written tales in a wide variety of styles and subgenres in the horror genre. The combination of her imaginative twists on familiar tropes and the New Zealand setting and atmosphere creates some great creepy, dread-inducing, and horrifying tales.

 

Interestingly, three of Murray’s stories include mindless, killer creatures. In addition to her zombie story, “The New Breed”, which raises the question of who really is the monster in the story, two very different stories provide unique versions of the golem. “Grotesque” is a horror story about the uncovering of an underground passage between two French chateaux, framing events of 1560 when the sixteen-year-old king of France had to be smuggled out, sealing the passage behind him to contain… something.  “Into the Clouded Sky” revisits a character Murray has written about previously, Taine McKenna. This is a nonstop adventure with supernatural visitors, terrifying sand golems, and natural catastrophe, set in New Zealand, and moves at a breakneck pace. These two stories were original for this collection.

 

Other strong stories include “Edward’s Journal”, a Lovecraftian tale told in epistolary manner, paints a lush, wet, and terrifying portrait of an English soldier with the mission of burning the Maori people’s crops to force them to move of their land, lost and starving in the New Zealand forests in an increasingly surreal and sanity-breaking situation; “Selfie”, a post-apocalyptic story with a disturbing amount of creative and vividly described body horror; and “Dead End Town”, an incredibly grim and difficult story to read even before the supernatural gets involved, as it involves repeated violence towards and sexual abuse of a child.

 

I was excited to see a kaiju story, “Maui’s Hook”. I think these must be difficult to write, especially from the point of view of a person experiencing it,  because it’s hard to appreciate giant monster violence when it’s aimed at an individual human instead of another giant monster. Murray did a great job creating a terrifying, unkillable monster and chronicling its violence in a setting and context that I haven’t seen in kaiju films.

 

I haven’t touched on every story in this review but I found them all compelling. Grotesque: Monster Stories should have something to interest almost everyone. Highly recommended.

 

Reviewed by Kirsten Kowalewski

Editor’s Note: Grotesque: Monster Stories is a nominee on the final ballot for this year’s Stoker Awards in the category of Superior Achievement in a Fiction Collection.

Posted on May 22, 2021 by , Reply
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