Mr Lector, Welcome to Twin Peaks!

Joshua Williamson & Mike Henderson “Nailbiter Vol. 1: There Will Be Blood” (Image, 2014)

Did it all start with Silence of the Lambs and Hannibal Lector? I’m not sure, but at some point if you had a cop, then you had to have a serial killer.  Based on our popular entertainment, you’d think that America is a nation of serial killers & future victims.

So what happened?  Why are our fictions overrun with sadists with genius level IQs? There’s a sense that Nailbiter is engaging with that question, at least obliquely.  Buckaroo Oregon is the home of 16 of the weirdest serial killers on record.  Of course they all have crazy gimmicks, like 80s WWF wrestlers, because that’s how serial killers roll (see basically every TV police procedural for evidence).  Nicholas Finch shows up in town because his friend and lawman Eliot Carroll calls & says he’s figured it all out.  Of course Carroll has now disappeared (shades of Twin Peaks!).  But Sheriff Shannon Crane is on hand to help search for him.

Their search leads them to murders, bodies, and buckets of gore.  

By the end of this volume I didn’t have all my questions answered.  In fact, I had more than at the start.  But I had been entertained and found myself deeper on the hook than before.  What is with Buckaroo?  I need to know more…

 

The Duality of the Southern Thang

Jason Aaron & Jason Latour “Southern Bastards Vol. 1: Here Was A Man” (Image, 2014)

When I first read the description of this book I thought, “great, a Walking Tall knock-off”.  A guy comes back to his home town, finds out that it’s been corrupted and starts knocking heads.  I suppose in a sense that that’s still true.  But it sells Southern Bastards short, because the book is so much more than that. 

The Jasons have planted their flag firmly in the camp of Southern Gothic.  This little Alabama town is full of broken and misshapen people who are scraping by.  Well, except for the Coach.  He’s a grotesque in another way, an example of excess and indulgence.  The irony is that he seems to be ultimately uninterested in anything but his football team.  His control of the town is purely for the ends of running his team properly.

What makes this exceptional is that there is a clear sense of love for the material.  Despite the violence brutality and perversions, underlying all of it is a sense of understanding and love.  And if you’re not from the South, you may not understand.  But they aren’t mocking the people of Alabama.  Ultimately there’s a sense of acceptance even as there’s frustration and at times hatred.

Southern Bastards is a violent nasty piece of work.  It’s also utterly compelling and I can’t wait to find out how the story continues.

 

Weekly Update Vol 1

If you haven’t figured it out, the past few months have been kicking my ass.  It turns out that having a newborn around sucks all the available time out of the world.  It seems that suddenly my free time is limited to under 15 minute increments.  Not to mention the fact that exhaustion is your new best friend.

So my blogging has fallen off, close to dead.  Hopefully I’ll be able to get back up & about sooner rather than later.  Inspired by Easy Ed over at No Depression, I’m starting to do a short weekly update.  It will be relatively unfocused, and hopefully it will allow me to get back in the habit of writing.

So where am I at this week?  

Excited about the return of fall TV.  The new season of Doctor Who has been phenomenal.  I’ve loved every episode so far, and I’m starting to wonder if this will be the best season since its revival. Peter Capaldi had me believing that he is the doctor after a single episode.  Sleepy Hollow and Agents of SHIELD are both back & doing what they do.  I probably enjoy both more than they deserve, but damn if I don’t have a good time watching them.  

On the music front, there seems to be so much good stuff released in the last couple of months.  I’m struggling to process it.  Great bluegrass from The Earls of Leicester, Rob McCoury & Roland White. More rock oriented releases from Ty Segall & Hiss Golden Messenger.  And I’m still processing some excellent releases from earlier in the summer.  And to think that soon I’ll have to start planning my Christmas CDs!  Yikes!

Death is for the Weak

Robert Jackson Bennett “City of Stairs” (Broadway Books, 2014)

Every once in a while you come across a book that seems to touch on so many pieces of the zeitgeist that it’s actually shocking.  

I don’t want to spend time talking about the plot for City of Stairs.  It’s not that the plot is uninteresting.  To the contrary, I found myself deeply invested in the plot as it chugged rapidly along.  It’s just that there’s always a ton of plot discussion.  And quite frankly in some way that’s the least interesting part of this book.

There’s a school of thought that says that SF is always in dialogue with itself.  Books are having a lengthy meta-conversation.  Haldeman is answering Heinlein.  I’m sure that you’ve heard this view.  City of Stairs is listening and commenting on a bunch of conversations at once.  It’s a fantasy that ignores Western European settings.  Its primary characters are people of color, with a woman at the center.  It’s concerned with colonialism, religion and spirituality, with family and heritage.  There’s just so much going on.

And if you’re one of those people who aren’t interested in any of that (and there are some), know that there’s plenty of action.  There’s big bad magic and characters that are willing to go after gods themselves.  There are artifacts and spells.  There’s an elaborate history to the world.

Sold yet?  I hope so.  I thought that Bennett’s last book was one of the best of the year, and City of Stairs is even better.  With every book he’s growing more assured.  This is an exciting book.  Do yourself a favor:  stop reading reviews & go on & read this one already.