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Book Review: Dead Souls by J. Lincoln Fenn

Dead Souls by J. Lincoln Fenn

Gallery Books, 2016

ISBN-13: 978-1501110931

Available: Pre-order, paperback and Kindle edition

 

Fiona Quinn is having a bad day. She’s soaking wet, freezing cold, barefoot, locked out of her apartment without her wallet, and she just saw her boyfriend, Justin, take off in a taxi with another woman. It’s hard to believe that anyone would give her a drink, but her background in marketing makes her very convincing, and she’s busy downing mojitos when a man walks up to her, offers to buy her a sandwich and a drink, and asks her what it would take to convince her to sell her soul. Being an atheist, she says she’d trade it for the power of invisibility… but apparently lack of belief doesn’t invalidate the deal, and suddenly she owes the Devil, now called Scratch, a favor of his choosing– one that’s likely to be horrifying, graphic, and newsworthy.

As a damned soul, Fiona can identify others, and she meets Alejandro, who traded his soul to become a famous photographer. He  introduces her to a support group for those who have traded their souls and are now waiting for their favor to be called in, and lends her a book compiled over time by other damned souls seeking a way out.  Having traded her soul for invisibility so she can spy on her boyfriend, she then learns that, rather than cheating, he actually was planning to propose before he developed pancreatic cancer, and is leaving his estate to her. Feeling guilty, and wanting to restore him to health, she tries to figure out a way to change her deal with the devil to save Justin. Alejandro warns her that the devil is always a few steps ahead of what any of his dead souls may be planning, but Fiona is sure she can successfully double deal with the devil, escape her fate, and change Justin’s.

Much like the devil, J. Lincoln Fenn managed to keep a few steps ahead of me all through the book, with a twisty plot that somehow managed to tie together the beginning of the story with the end in a manner that is both ironic and truly gruesome. The favors Scratch calls in are turned against Fiona and her fellow dead souls, as he forces them to use the gift they bargained for in warped, grotesque, and graphically portrayed ways, both against humanity in general and each other.  Social media, photography, and marketing strategies all take prominent roles in the way the story plays out: Alejandro uses his images to capture souls, and Fiona uses her marketing talents to manipulate others, using her marketing trinity of novelty, misery, and desire.

Fenn’s writing is a trap: it starts out slowly, and the first quarter of the book creates unease, but there is no indication of the stomach-churning events to come. While I don’t think Fenn is aiming to be extreme, this is not a book for the squeamish. Some of the favors called in create images and visceral reactions that I won’t be able to let go of easily. Dead Souls is a well-crafted tale that, in addition to provoking unforgettable reactions in the reader, also provides food for thought, and it will disturb your thoughts next time you turn on the news. I won’t be surprised if it makes the shortlist for the Stoker this year. Highly recommended for public library collections. Reader’s advisory note: try recommending Dead Souls to readers who enjoyed Fenn’s debut novel, Poe, or Lauren Beukes’ Broken Monsters.

 

Contains: Graphic violence and gore, suicide, implied cannibalism, suicide, torture, mutilation, and descriptions and imagery depicting mass killings.

Posted on August 29, 2016 by , Reply

Book Review: The Ferryman Institute by Colin Gigl

The Ferryman Institute  by Colin Gigl

Gallery Books, 2016

ISBN-13: 978-1501125324

Available: Pre-order, paperback and Kindle editions

 

Charlie Dawson is a Ferryman– an immortal whose job is to coax the spirits of the newly dead through a doorway into the “light”. Watching people dying on a daily basis would take a toll on anyone, and after 250 years of it, he is burned out and reckless. One day he receives an assignment to guide Alice Siegel, who is about to commit suicide. When he opens the envelope with his assignment inside and removes the instructions, he reads, “Be a Ferryman or save the girl”. In saving Alice, he breaks a cardinal rule of the Ferryman Institute by revealing himself as a Ferryman, which threatens the existence of the secretive organization. Upon Charlie’s return to the Institute, Inspector Javrouche of Internal Affairs, who bears a grudge against Charlie, uses his rule breaking as an opportunity to prosecute him. Charlie escapes to the scene of his last assignment– Alice’s bedroom– and takes an unwilling and irate Alice along with him on an outrageous adventure,  on the run from Javrouche and the Institute’s security forces.

I love the world-building in this book. Gigl does a great job of fully realizing a bureaucratic organization responsible for making sure that the spirits of the dead are guided to the light. Giving Charlie the choice to save the woman he is assigned to is a creative way to set up the story and reveal characters’ motivations. Employees of the Ferryman Institute are well-drawn, even the minor ones. The persistent and vengeful Inspector Javrouche and the mysterious Cartwright are especially interesting. The background to Javrouche’s character, and his enmity towards Charlie, help to build suspense and distrust that shape the story and keep the reader off-kilter and engaged in the action. I can easily see the Ferryman Institute as a setting for a new paranormal series, which could be especially interesting if the storyline continues to include Javrouche and Cartwright.

However, I feel like Gigl couldn’t quite decide what genre to write. The beginning of the book suggests that it will be urban fantasy or contemporary paranormal fiction, but the relationship between Charlie and Alice is central to the book, and somewhere after Charlie escapes Javrouche and kidnaps Alice, it veers into romance novel territory. What’s problematic about this is that both characters are incredibly self-involved and unsympathetic, so it’s hard for the reader to root for a successful romantic relationship. Additionally, the relationship feels very forced. In their first interaction, Alice shoots him in the head, and just a few pages before she first kisses him, she calls him self-centered, in a very uncomplimentary fashion. It’s just not believable that these two people could sustain a successful love affair when they can barely sustain themselves. Because a romance novel requires a happy ending, the resolution of Charlie’s dilemma also feels forced. Given two unsatisfactory but interesting choices as possibilities for a retired Ferryman, a third option conveniently becomes available that resolves all his conflicts and allows him to have a normal, romantic relationship with Alice, as a mortal, so they can have their happy ending. It ties up most of the loose ends, but it is an uncomfortable fit, and I don’t think most romance readers would be satisfied. The Ferryman Institute may appeal more to urban fantasy readers. While the relationship between Charlie and Alice isn’t compelling, there’s plenty of action, the secondary characters are great, and they will enjoy the unique world Gigl has created. While not essential to a collection in this genre, The Ferryman Institute is an interesting choice for voracious readers and libraries building large urban fantasy collections.

Contains: graphic descriptions of dismemberment and violent death, attempted suicide.


Posted on August 27, 2016 by , Reply

Book Review: The Snake and the Ghost by Tim Jackson

The Snake and the Ghost by Tim Jackson

HaggusArts Publications, 2016

ISBN-13: 978-0-9968544-0-5

Available: Hardcover, Kindle edition

 

The Snake and the Ghost is a self-published picture book about Haggus, a snake who takes a bully’s dare to visit a “haunted” house. The reality is that the “ghosts” are the human residents of the house, who scream and swat at him with a broom. Looking in a mirror, he is terrified by his own reflection, realizes that the “ghosts” must be afraid of him, and decides to try talking to them. He then encounters an actual ghost– the grandmother of the little boy who lives in the house– and she can understand him, and confides in him. Haggus then slips away and paints a picture of the grandmother and the little boy, using his tail. Then he is engulfed in darkness and disappears, as the boy’s father scoops him into a sack. The author ends by reassuring the reader that Haggus does eventually return to his family.

Jackson wrote with the intent of creating a spooky tale of a snake wanting an adventure, and the atmospheric, black and white illustrations, done in charcoal, evoke the immediate reaction from the reader that this is going to be creepy (some of these unfortunately lost some of their impact for me, as Haggus is cartoonishly depicted in comparison to the otherwise muted images). However, the central and most essential part of the story is the conversation between the ghost and the snake. Despite my own quibble with the ability of a snake and a ghost to communicate with each other in spoken English, this is the most genuine and heartfelt part of the book, with the grandmother explaining the humans’ fear of both snakes and ghosts, and sharing her grief with Haggus in a way that makes him look past his own wants to help her reconnect with her grandson. While Jackson may have been aiming for a dark and spooky  adventure story, the way he portrays grief and love in this part of the story is what really touches the reader, and the darkness and shading of the images really bring that out. The adventure is incidental.

While the book has a professional look and terrific illustrations, the author really needed a copy editor. The biggest issue is that there are awkward changes in verb tense, and there are also occasional errors in spelling, punctuation, and grammar. While most of these won’t impair understanding for the reader, they bothered me, and the lack of copy editing in a book that otherwise was clearly designed with care is really surprising.

Jackson strikes me as an author with potential, who needs the help of an editor to tighten and present his story. If he puts as much effort into his writing as he does into design and illustration, he’ll do great things. In the meantime, The Snake and the Ghost , with its focus on grief and love, has an immediate use as bibliotherapy for older children and adults dealing with grief, particularly over the death of a family member. It very much reached my own daughter, and I highly recommend it for this purpose. Beyond this audience, at its existing price point as a hardcover (and the Kindle edition can’t possibly reproduce the illustrations with the same impact), this book will mainly have appeal to individuals and libraries in his area, as part of a collection of local authors. With Halloween approaching, local libraries in the Louisville area may want to track down the author for a reading. Appropriate for ages 9 and up.

Highly recommended for bibliotherapy collections on grief.

 

 


Posted on August 25, 2016 by , Reply
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