Young Adult Spotlight: "Never Slow Dance with a Zombie" by E. Van Lowe (Tor)

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Never Slow Dance with a Zombie
E. Van Lowe
256 pp. Tor Teen. $8.99
Pub. Date: 8/18/2009
ISBN-13: 978-0765320407

Reviewed by Paul Stotts

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Never slow dance with a zombie. Sounds like good advice. The kind of good advice you’d get from the Dear Abby of the supernatural set. Undeniably wise words to live by. Right up there with never put a campfire out with your face. (Or as a teacher once told me: never put a campfire out with your face. Again.)

Try slow dancing with a zombie—particularly a hungry one with an icky drool face and plump maggots squirming out of its nose—and you might find yourself missing a body part afterwards. A face, an arm, maybe even a big toe. Please dear lord, anything but the big toe. No dance is worth an amputation. Even the Macarena.

This is because—as everyone knows—zombies are fearsome and brutal. They eat people like Cheetos, minus the obnoxious cheesy mouth. A good day for a zombie is ripping into some guy’s chest cavity and snacking on the entrails; the last zombie in getting the colon. It might not be pretty, but it’s a raison d’être that zombies can call their own.

Unless the zombies are in E. Van Lowe’s Never Slow Dance with a Zombie, in which case they are essentially non-threatening, non-violent and about as fearsome as a pissed off butterfly. Sure, this is a novel aimed at a young adult audience, but it doesn’t mean the zombies can’t have a little bite to them. Teens know that zombies snack on faces; in fact, they expect it.

Zombies are the unstoppable killing machine of the monster world, the Great White shark of bogeymen minus the killer John Williams’ soundtrack, so toning down their violence and eliminating their bloodletting is an odd choice. Using them for a novel in which they have to be toned down is an even odder choice. Like writing a YA book about a serial killer, who never kills anyone.

Lowe takes a different approach in Never Slow Dance with a Zombie, mining the zombies for comedic gold, turning them into a harmless joke. But in making them non-threatening, he eliminates any possibility of dramatic tension in the novel. The main characters Margot and Sybil, who must co-exist with an entire high school filled with zombie classmates, never feel in peril in the book. Never feel like the zombies are a real foil for them. The zombies are just too easily overcome, outsmarted at every turn. Sure outsmarting zombies is difficult, but their overwhelming numbers should balance this equation somewhat.

There is a nice message about the perils of wanting to be popular and its consequences, but Lowe belabors it, addressing it repetitively, repeating it over and over (get the point!) making the book seem like one of those not-very-special After School Specials. Instead of making kids think and challenging them to broaden their perspective, Lowe’s constant reiteration of his message most likely will eventually turn them off, causing them to feel as if they are being lectured to.

Despite these issues, the story still has its entertaining moments, and there are a few places where its goofy charm shines through. Most of the characters are clichés in the book: the popular girl, the girl who will do anything to be popular, the selfless best friend, and the science club geeks. None of these caricatures are offensive, but neither are they something you haven’t seen before. And there is really no reason you’d need to experience them here.

So wallflowers rejoice, Never Slow Dance with a Zombie is one slow dance you can miss.

Final Grade: 57 out of 100

"Sandman Slim" by Richard Kadrey (Eos)

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Sandman Slim
Richard Kadrey
400 pp. Eos. $22.99
Pub. Date: 7/21/2009
ISBN-13: 978-0061714306

Reviewed by Paul Stotts

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One of the greatest problems in the urban fantasy genre is that it really lacks unique voices. Ones that resonate, that cut through the garbage in the genre like a band saw through Butter Pecan ice cream. Ones that grab you by the lapels—whether you are wearing lapels or not—slap you around, while calling you every dirty name in three languages; in rare cases, spittle may be involved. Voices that ring out, making you take notice. Demanding you take notice. Like a double amputee stripper riding a John Deere tractor; it’s incredibly hard to turn away, to ignore it.

Richard Kadrey has one of those voices. In a genre where cliché and formulaic is king, and common sense is the court jester, Richard Kadrey’s Sandman Slim is a fat, heaping spoonful of regicide. The jagged knife across the powdered royal throat and the New Rock boots upon the kingly keister. While it’s good to be the king, it’s even better to be the traitorous Sandman Slim. Why? Because Kadrey’s novel is absolutely superb.

Looking for a supernatural love triangle—that’s the next shelf over. This isn’t Match.com for vampires, werewolves and mummies. It’s not a love story that’s as creepy as a drunken fraternity brother with pocketful of Flunitrazepam. Unlike most urban fantasies which are nothing more than costume jewelry for romance novels, Sandman Slim isn’t focused on characters looking for love. Unless it’s a love of mayhem and chaos. And abrupt and brutal death.

No, Hell’s most feared hitman is looking for something else on his return to Los Angeles after eleven long years stuck in the underworld cracking craniums. Revenge. A bloody, ugly, grab a sharp implement freak-out kind of revenge. Now, revenge may not be as powerful of an emotion as love, but the body count is definitely higher. And Kadrey’s protagonist James Stark doesn’t disappoint in this department, acting like a ravenous wolf at a lamb tea party.

An important aspect in urban fantasy is getting the setting right, particularly if it is a real place. You know, taking that urban part of urban fantasy seriously. Sandman Slim isn’t just set in L.A; Kadrey has made the City of Angels a real and intensely believable character in the novel. It’s like a diseased and dying animal prettified by blue skies and glossy sunshine; it’s a glitzy neon sign flashing above a homeless man eating three-day-old scraps out of a dumpster. It’s an ugliness even a shopping spree in Sephora couldn’t hide. What Charlie Huston’s Joe Pitt series did for New York, Kadrey does for Los Angeles here, exposing the city you’d see on the evening news. Showing you the city’s true face, the one behind the mask.

The pacing is incredibly tight, and the action never stops moving. The novel is relentless. Like a two ton boulder rolling down a steep hill, momentum constantly increasing, inexorable. Get out of its way, or be crushed. Kadrey doesn’t give the reader a chance to breathe, a chance to put the book down. It sweeps you up, bashes you around, amuses the hell out of you, and spits you out, shivering and awed by the overall experience. And totally exhilarated. Like whitewater rafting in a rollicking puddle of supernatural slime.

Fans of hard-edged gritty urban fantasy, particularly those who love Charlie Huston, will absolutely adore Sandman Slim. It’s a reading experience that’s not to be missed.

Final Grade: 84 out of 100

"Prospero Lost" by L. Jagi Lamplighter (Tor)

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Prospero Lost
L. Jagi Lamplighter
352 pp. Tor. $24.99
Pub. Date: 8/4/2009
ISBN-13: 978-0765319296

Reviewed by Paul Stotts

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William Shakespeare. Poet and playwright. And the number one pick in every English Lit major’s fantasy league. (I mean, really, who can match his numbers. We’re talking first ballot Hall of Fame material here.) A writer, incomparable; the master of all things couplet, and a deft hand with the puns. Not to mention, a man of the people. Got to write a comedy centered around a case of mistaken identity? The Bard is your man. Clearly.

But Shakespeare the historian? That aspect of his writing often gets overlooked, like the tag on the end of a mattress. It’s there, you just don’t think about it. Sure, Will famously wrote tragedies about some heavy-hitting historical figures—a lesson he learned well from the ancient Greek playwrights—but no one takes these accounts as historical dogma, no college history professors pore over his plays. His work is more like fanciful re-imaginings; an exercise of literary license. With only a tinge of historical truth.

His comedies, on the other hand, are pure fiction.

Or are they?

Could there be some historical basis for them? Could, let’s say, The Tempest have a kernel of truth at its comedic heart? Could Miranda and Prospero truly exist? What would their lives have been like after leaving the island?

Enter L. Jagi Lamplighter’s Prospero Lost, which continues the story of Miranda and Prospero from Shakespeare’s The Tempest five hundred years after they left the island. (Both Caliban and Hervé Villechaize are, unfortunately, left beyond.) While it is a rather sly idea by Lamplighter, the execution is lacking, and the pacing is like a snail coated in honey, stuck in molasses.

Foremost, the book suffers from a lack of identity, like a young adult not knowing what they wish to be when they grow up, so they try to be everything. And in trying to become everything, they really become nothing. Prospero Lost tries to be a noir-themed mystery, a mythological fantasy, a historical fantasy, an English Literature in-joke, and an eschatology. But it’s not effective in accomplishing any of these.

Instead, the novel feels more like sitting in on a series of family counseling sessions, the family’s dysfunctional nature increasingly revealed like layers peeled off of an onion. Miranda is tasked early in the novel with alerting her brothers and sisters to an imminent danger, one which may be responsible for the disappearance of their father, Prospero. The biggest problem for her: she doesn’t know where most of her siblings are. Even the ones she thought she was close to. What evolves throughout the novel then is a snapshot of how a once close family has drifted apart, many of them becoming more estranged from each other in the process. Unfortunately, this isn’t very interesting. It’s just sad. Like looking at an old picture of a happy, smiling family, love beaming from their faces, and knowing they are no longer together. Like that happy family was just a dream.

Because of the book’s lack of identity, the story greatly suffers, meandering between uninteresting events, which mostly are Miranda’s various meetings with her siblings. There is a lack of action and a surplus of exposition as Miranda and her quest buddies reflect on what they know, what they think they know, and what it all means. And they do this incessantly. Lamplighter often uses this opportunity to fill in the five hundred years worth of back story. But it doesn’t make Prospero Lost feel more informative or magical, it makes it feel more unfocused. There is just too much going on, and these nostalgic remembrances don’t add anything to the book. The narrative would have been much cleaner and intriguing if some of the subplots had been abandoned and the focus narrowed.

To make matters worse, the ending of Prospero Lost is not an ending; it is a stopping point—a rest stop only—on the highway to a complete story. It is the end of Part One with Part Two being the continuation novel, Prospero in Hell. This wouldn’t be as much of a problem if Prospero Lost wasn’t less than 350 pages. There could have been a complete story here, especially with a greater emphasis on editing which could have focused the story and accelerated the pacing. Instead, the reader must now wait for the Prospero in Hell to get their questions answered. Unfortunately, the questions Prospero Lost raises aren’t intriguing enough to warrant giving the second volume a chance.

Final Grade: 56 out of 100

"Wolfbreed" by S.A. Swann (Spectra)

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Wolfbreed
S.A. Swann
383 pp. Spectra. $15.00
Pub. Date: 8/25/2009
ISBN-13: 978-0553807387

Reviewed by Paul Stotts

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Werewolves. They are like the annoying little brother of the monster family, a me-too, tag-along, smearing their mustard encrusted corndog over your new iPod type of annoyance. They try to act cool, all slouched posture and affected sneer, conspiratorially smoking in the Boy’s Room with the bigger boys like zombies and vampires, hoping coolness can be transferred by association. But in the end werewolves are strictly second-tier in the realm of scary critters, the Lon Chaney Jr. to the more accomplished Lon Chaney Sr. They’re lamer than a three-legged horse prowling the water troughs at Pimlico, naying forlornly, one hoof away from the dog food factory.

Seriously, how many awesome werewolf-themed books have you read? How many incredible werewolf films have you seen? When was the last time a werewolf changed your life? You could probably count the number of werewolf-flavored multimedia funnery that you’ve experienced in your life on one shop teacher’s hand. With fingers left over. The pickings are that slim. Like Christian Bale in The Machinist slim. Positively gaunt; meatless bones with the marrow already sucked out.

It’s a pity, too, because werewolves have the one important aspect every good monster needs: symbolism. It might not be on par with the symbolism in George Romero’s zombie movies, but still man’s struggle with his inner beast and with his primal nature is a meaty topic. But even the man/beast dichotomy isn’t enough to save werewolves from the monster doldrums. Because no amount of symbolism can hide the fact that werewolves are essentially overgrown poochies with silver bullet allergies. Who bark at the moon.

Which means that any author taking on the werewolf mythos has a Sisyphean task ahead of them, namely rolling that furry werewolf butt up the mountain of coolness, avoiding pitfalls, careful not to get stuck below the tree line with reruns of Full House and Blossom. Most fail, miserably. Like an IT geek’s restraint in a Best Buy store.

But not S.A. Swann. Swann might not make the summit with Wolfbreed, but he’s definitely showing some Sherpa blood, elevating the werewolf mythology. Making them—dare I say it—cool.

Wolfbreed succeeds by transforming werewolves from weapons of random opportunity into weapons of mass destruction, from a four-legged killing spree into a furry, fangs glistening apocalypse. From uncontrollable beasts into focused killing machines, killers with purpose, killing on the orders of others. Swann’s wolfbreed can be controlled, aimed, unleashed on the unsuspecting and the innocent. And like other weapons, there is guiding hand resting on the trigger, a puppetmaster pulling the strings of this cadre of furry killers.

Because in Wolfbreed, werewolves are mainly seen as a tool, a very lethal tool, but still a tool. They are the means and not the end. They are the stick and not the hand. And it is this aspect—Swann’s absolute refusal to rest on clichés—that elevates the novel. That raises it above a monster-of-the-week kind of entry, giving the reader something fresh, something indelible.

Forget what you know about werewolves. Wolfbreed is not about some unfortunate soul who is bitten by a werewolf and on the next full moon decides to fur out and cause some random havoc. There is nothing random about the havoc here, it all has a purpose. It all has meaning; there is a cause, and there is an effect. And there is a rationale. And, most importantly, there are consequences. Consequences that go beyond just the unfortunate individual and his growing tick problem.

Werewolves are typically isolated, individualistic; the dramatic tension of their stories often revolves around their battle with their inner demons, with their struggle with the evil that lives within them. The beast is evil, but the man is innocent, the victim of terrible circumstance. Swann writes a different portrayal. The beast isn’t evil; it is man who is evil. The man who is controlling and vicious. The man who is brutal and heartless. The werewolf is really just the victim, the corpse discovered in the first two minutes of every Law and Order episode.

By reshaping werewolves and giving them purpose, Swann has imbued them with a greater identity. He’s made them more relatable to us, made their thoughts, hopes, fears, and loves more understandable, more poignant, and much less like a slavering, mindless beast with a one-tract killing mind. And because this approach is so engaging, so fascinating, and so new, Wolfbreed accomplished the impossible for me. It made me think werewolves were cool.

Little brother, you’ve made it.

Final Grade: 81 out of 100