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Book Review: Death’s Dreams by Darryl Dawson

Death’s Dreams by Darryl Dawson

Darryl Dawson Books, 2019

ISBN: 978-1-7331921-4-9

Available: Paperback, Kindle edition

 

Death’s Dreams is the wildest, most original collection of short stories to come barreling down the pike in a long, long time.  If you’re looking for stories that are seriously OUT THERE, with a decent touch of blood splashed around the pages, this book is the place to be.  Why this wasn’t nominated for a Stoker award is beyond me, as it is certainly good enough to justify a nomination.

The collection is loosely held together by the idea that ol’ Death, the Grim Reaper himself, is losing it.  All the horrors he’s seen over the years while riding his figurative pale horse have started to get to him, so he finds a shrink to talk to and unload all his stories on.  Those stories make up the basis of this collection.  Make no mistake, what he’s seen in these stories would be enough to put any rational person in a padded room.   “New Identity” is a hellish look at what happens when one bad person makes a mistake and winds up the prisoner of a person who is a lot worse.  It’s a common plot device, but this story is truly terrifying.  “Night Train” may be the most original one, as it contains an actual phantom (or not?) train running in the storm drains beneath the city, that promises possible escape to those who need it.  Simply open the door to one of the train cars, and step into another dimension.  “There Really Are No Accidents” is a viciously ironic story concerning one woman’s attempt to take a brutal revenge on her scummer of a husband, and what befalls her.  This one also showcases author Dawson’s twisted sense of humor. The end of the story might well make you laugh, despite its nastiness.  Written with only dialogue, “The Claim” concerns a camera that causes the death of everyone it takes a picture of.  The author’s choice of format for this story makes it stand out from the others, as it can be a tough format to work with, but Dawson does it with ease.  “The Champion of Suffering” is a fantastic revenge story, as the evil killer starts the story already executed through lethal injection, and in Hell.  The protagonist has to decide if he is willing to sacrifice and condemn himself to Hell, just to go after the killer and inflict more punishment.  Is the death penalty enough?  How much is vengeance  worth to him?  This is an outstanding story that also raises some good questions about the nature of retribution.

The overall quality of all the stories is extremely high; there isn’t a bad one in the collection.  Some are better than others, but they all do a good job showcasing the author’s fertile imagination and skill.  The only drawback is the lack of dialogue between Death and the psychiatrist.  The first chapter was an excellent setup between the two of them, but that thread never really got explored to its potential, as they barely show up for the rest of the book.  If the interaction between Death and the doctor had been fleshed out more, this could have been an outstanding novel, instead of an outstanding collection of short stories.  Despite that minor quibble, Death’s Dreams is a book not to be missed.  Keep an eye out for this author in the future. Highly recommended.

 

Contains: violence, gore, profanity, sex

 

Reviewed by Murray Samuelson

 

 

 

 

Posted on March 4, 2020 by , Reply

Book Review: Peter Green and the Unliving Academy: This Book is Full of Dead People (The Unliving Chronicles #1) by Angelina Allsop

Peter Green and the Unliving Academy: This Book is Full of Dead People (The Unliving Chronicles #1) by Angelina Allsop

TCK Publishing, 2018

ISBN-13: 978-1631610646

Available: Paperback, Kindle edition, audiobook

Fourteen year old Peter Green wakes up on the floor of a hotel lobby wearing only pajamas and a silk tie, and discovers he is dead, has no memories of his life, and is stuck in Purgatory without them until he is 18, or family claims him. After navigating the bueracracy of Purgatory (and of course Purgatory has bueracracy) he is sent to a boarding school for other “orphans” or unclaimed children. Scoot, an action-oriented redhead who carries her head under her arm, and Charlie, a flamboyant dresser who can’t keep a secret, orient him to the school and get him to his first classes. Peter soon learns that the school isn’t just for the unliving– it’s also the home of monsters, most of whom are part of the staff. He quickly gets on the wrong side of the school bully, Shelly Grant, causing a number of mishaps, and is then invited to join BASA, a special club that trains students in the skills they need to become spies and assassins in the “community”.  As he adapts to school and throws himself into his training for BASA, he can’t let go of a feeling that he needs to help his family, and with the help of his friends, steals the file containing his memories.

The world building in this is nicely done, and I liked Peter’s friends– especially Charlie– and some of the other characters Allsop got into in depth, such as Katerina the witch. As a magical boarding school book, it’s pretty well done, and while there are some similarities to Harry Potter, it’s mostly not noticeable (the werewolf professor, the giant snake roaming the hallways, the special Halloween visit to town). Allsop also manages to make what could be a pretty grim and scary topic genuinely entertaining and even humorous at times . It’s Peter himself whose character and story are thin. Perhaps some of this is because he doesn’t have memories (and thus not much of a personality) for much of the book, but while individual adventures and incidents get exciting, the suspense of whether he’ll be able to get back to his family is just not there, until suddenly, it’s a time sensitive emergency.  I hoped that we’d see more of the school in a future book, as this appears to be the first in a series, but the ending of the book makes that unlikely.

Despite Peter’s age being set at 14, the book feels like it’s targeted at middle-grade readers rather than teenagers. Kids looking for a “magical boarding school book” should enjoy this one, and hopefully, now that Peter has his memories back, there will be further character development to make him more interesting in the next book. Recommended.

 

Posted on June 30, 2019 by , Reply

Musings: What Money Can’t Buy: The Moral Limits of Markets by Michael J. Sandel

What Money Can’t Buy: The Moral Limits of Markets by Michael J. Sandel

Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2013 (reprint)

ISBN-13: 978-0374533656

Available: Hardcover, paperback, Kindle edition, Audible

 

I’m straying from horror fiction here, but What Money Can’t Buy goes into some really gruesome and horrifying topics, the kind that made my skin crawl, and certainly not what I expected in a book about market-based economics (I know, the topic of economics is already gruesome and horrifying to some people), and I really wanted to share my reaction with you. In the book, Michael Sandel poses a question to the reader that he never really answers: are there some things that should never be for sale? A lot of economists would answer “no”. Selling or trading out of self-interest, according to them, is the most efficient way for people who want things to get them. Seems logical, right? The devil is in the details.

Maybe you shrug your shoulders at the idea of lobbyists paying people to stand in line for them and hold places at Congressional hearings, preventing ordinary citizens from getting in (unethical and unfair, but not actually gruesome), but what about selling babies to the highest bidder? If it means people who can pay for it get what they want in the most efficient way possible, many economists would be okay with that, even if it seems creepy or unethical. Sandel presents two kinds of arguments that can be used to counter this. The first is fairness– it’s not fair for some people to be able to pay to have access to Congress at the expense of others– and the second is corruption– it degrades democracy to limit access to those who can pay. Even if, on an individual level, we are okay with this, is it moral and healthy for us as a society to sell access to Congress, or children to the highest bidder? (I am certain neither democracy nor children should be for sale, but you probably guessed that).

Here’s the part that I found viscerally gruesome and horrifying, though. Once everything is for sale, life and death become commodities, too. Did you know employers like Wal-Mart take out life insurance policies on their employees that have huge payouts to the company when the person dies? That person’s family may not collect anything, while the company gets hundreds of thousands of dollars. Apparently there are a lot of companies that do this. Has yours invested in a payout for them on your life? Because that’s creepy and seems really unfair, as well.   Did you know about viatical insurance? That’s where a terminally ill person with maybe a year left to live sells the value of their life insurance policy at a discount to an investor so they can pay for medical care. If the ill person dies, the investor collects the life insurance policy. If the person doesn’t die within a year, the investor loses the money. While most people don’t make this investment with the specific goal of profiting off death, the investor has to hope the ill person dies.  How awful is that? Hoping someone will die so you can cash in on it? When AIDS drugs to extend patients’ lifespan became available, some particularly unpleasant investors actually harassed the ill person– and it’s the investors who described the longer life spans as “horror stories”.  A state legislator actually voted against programs to help AIDS victims and then invested in viatical insurance for AIDS patients. That is not human nature at its best.

I should not be surprised at the existence of death pools–  a game where players make bets on what celebrities will die in a particular year. 2016 must have been a bonanza for them. There’s not actually a huge amount of money in play– it’s just really, really morbid. It’s even been the topic of a movie, with celebrities getting mysteriously knocked off. If there isn’t a horror novel out there that has used this yet, it’s just waiting to happen.

For me, THE most disturbing thing, though, was discovering that there was a proposed market in terrorism futures, suggested by our own Department of Defense on the theory that if the traders were backing their trades with their own money, they would use the abilities and research skills they used to trade futures in other markets to successfully predict assassinations and terrorist attacks. Congress, thankfully, shot this idea down. But this is the question Sandel poses us: does the end justify the means? If terminally ill patients can get the treatment they need, does it matter that an investor profits off their eventual death? If we can predict and prevent a terrorist attack, does it matter that it leaves a dark mark on the investors’ morals? Economists would say the moral issues are irrelevant, but are they really if they corrupt us? It’s not something that ends up affecting just one indivdual, but the way we all experience the meaning of life and death. I am really distressed at the idea of life and death being treated as commodities, although it probably happens in smaller ways every day.

Sandel covers other issues as well. Also included in the chapter on markets in death, he described bundled life insurance policies sold to banks being packaged into tradable securities that would generate income as the holders of the policies died, and could be sold to pension funds– pretty grim stuff. Other areas he mentions include paying to jump the line in a number of contexts, from Congressional hearings and national parks campsites to airports and amusement parks; providing incentives in areas as varied as paying kids for grades, carbon offsets, and selling the right to immigrate; naming rights and commercialization in contexts including nature trails, sports stadiums, jails, and schools; and the way markets can degrade or demean human relationships, volunteerism, and civic pride. My sense is that Sandel is counting on us to recognize that, while the efficiency of markets is beneficial in some contexts, the “better angels of our nature” cannot be bought. Yet. If we don’t examine the way commericalization and trade are affecting our society, though, those markets in life and death, and in so much else, will become more and more troubling, and we will see a great deal more of unfairness and corruption infecting our world. This is excellent, if disturbing, food for thought, as we navigate through today’s political, financial, and civic structures and issues.


Posted on March 1, 2017 by , Reply
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