Review: Author Jack Ketchum

Hi all!

I've spent a happy few hours reading two books by Jack Ketchum, an author I'd heard much about but never read before.

The books are: Off Season and The Girl Next Door. Both are horror. Neither are for the faint of heart or weak of stomach. By the way, the version of Off Season is not the neutered one that Ballantine Books produced in the 1980s but the revised and partially recovered one that Ketchum produced much later. So if you've read the earlier version (apparently) the later one is much, much nastier.

Unlike Twilight, which I guess most people have read by now, Ketchum might be a new name. I suppose not many have read his works. So I will try very hard to avoid spoilers.

Off Season

This is certainly one of the goriest, most violent works I have ever read. And yet, none of the gore and violence is gratuitous. It's there because it needs to be. Written in 3rd person limited POV, that shifts often (sometimes confusingly), it's a story that offers scant rays of hope and goodness. The predominant feeling is bleak, savage and dark. From a kick-ass start, it maintains a fast-paced writing style, flowing natural dialogue, good characterization, frequent dizzying blows to our expectations throughout, and ends in a chilling and thrilling climax. This book kept me going non-stop. It gives several nods to other icons of horror such as Romero's Night of the Living Dead, and is similar in style, perhaps, to some of James Herbert's more misanthropic works, but its style - I have come to discover - is uniquely Ketchum's own.

I give it an unhesitating 4 stars.

The Girl Next Door

This is in many ways totally diferent to Off Season. We start with an idyllic country scene, young boy in the 1950's playing in a stream, hunting crayfish. Reminiscent of Stephen King in IT.

Told throughout from the point of view of this twelve-year-old, the story takes us through a gradually intensifying maelstrom of horror, made much worse by the sheer prosaicness of the setting. We join in the creeping paralysis and helplessness that besets our protagonist; unwilling yet fascinated voyeurs with him in the flow of events. Reminiscent perhaps of A Simple Plan in its portrayal of the banality and lack of imagination shown by evil.

This one disturbed me more, because it could happen to the girl next door (if there were a girl next door).

Another 4 stars.

Similarities

Neither book has the slightest trace of the supernatural or paranormal in it. Both portray, unflinchingly, the evil that man can do to fellow man.

But the greatest similarity is this: both books depict creatures of human shape, human DNA, human ancestry that walk among us, yet are stranger and more alien than the amoeba. Human they look, but they do not share anything in common with us apart from physical shape - no emotion, no compassion, no fellow feeling. They aren't humane beings, and they barely deserve the title of human beings.

All done without recourse to magic, soul-stealing or any other typical mechanism of much horror fare.

These are both books I'll read again. And probably again.

Book Review - Twilight by Stephenie Meyer

OK, I was the last person on the planet to read Twilight. I hadn't read any of the other three books in the Edward/Bella series. I haven't seen the films, or even trailers for the films.

How? Just lucky, I guess.

All I knew about Twilight was that young girls raved over it, anyone over the age of thirty hated it, those blessed (or cursed) with even minimal amounts of testosterone became nauseous in its presence, and vampire afficionados spat garlic and holy water when any mention was made of sparkly vampires.

So, last weekend, since my daughter has the complete set, I read Twilight with a relatively open mind.

Possible spoilers
Let me start on a positive note. I liked Stephenie Meyer's style of writing - fast, easy, page-turning stuff. But then I also like Dan Brown's writing style for the same reasons. And James Patterson. All three have accessible, smooth prose and, generally speaking, fairly natural and believable dialogue.

Back to Stephenie.

So, I liked the style. I'm afraid that's almost it for the good points.

Now for the rest.

Content
Our main character is a teenage girl (Bella). Shallow, self-obsessed and totally absorbed in trivia. Never mind global famine or war in Afghanistan. She worries about what her new friends will think of her, and does that green go with her eyes.

Oh, and she falls like so totally in love with a vampire in the space of two weeks or so.

This vampire has nothing going for him except for being inhumanly beautiful, amazingly fast, unbelievably strong, rich and, presumably, never belching or farting. Well, he doesn't eat, does he? Oh, and he saves her life three times.

See? The girl is shallow, like I said. Nothing about his personality, mind, world view or plans for the future. In fact, all the characters are shallow, veering from furious to placid in the space of two sentences - which is always the sign of poor characterization. Real people, and real vampires, hold grudges. They harbour festering resentments. They are slow to change their opinions. Not in teen-girl world, obviously.

No, wait - Edward Vampire is a tortured soul. We know he's tortured, because both he and the author tell us so, constantly. He is in torment, torn between killing the annoying whiny teenager and falling in love with her. He writhes on a knife edge. He oscillates between love and thirst.

Hmmm. Vampires aren't supposed to have a soul, are they?

Most of the vampires in this book have the same moral dilemma. Humans - frail, slow, blundering, short-lived, pathetic - friends or food? Social circle or herd? No wonder people, including our heroine, want to become vampires. Where's the downside?

The vampires - yes, plural. There is a family of these demi-gods going to school with our heroine. This school is set in Washington State. The cloudiest, wettest, most cloud-bound, fog-shrouded part of Washington State. Echoes of Thirty Days of Night.

Why there?

Because our vampires sparkle in the sunlight. It's the place in the USA with the least amount of sunlight per year. The author explains this sparkling as a mechanism to entice their prey closer.

OK, you can catch fish with something shiny. So if their prey (us, remember?) has the IQ of a mackerel, that's plausible. Oh, wait, teenage girls - yes, fair enough.

These vampires also play baseball. Score one for irony. No problem there.

Oh, and they don't hunt humans any more, because they've all sworn to be good vampires. Sometimes they slip, but not often. Well, yes... I suppose I could just about accept that.

When Bella first thinks Edward is a vampire, and then has it confirmed, her reaction is: 'OK, yeah, so, like nobody's perfect, yah? Look how handsome he is.' Where was the emotional trauma about falling in love with a blood-sucking creature of the night? An undead creature of limitless evil? Oh, sorry, I forgot, these are good vampires. They don't even have bad breath.

The trouble with the book, is that in five hundred pages, nothing much actually happens.

She falls in love, he saves her life, but it's all negligible in terms of visceral action or excitement. Even when a rival clan of 'bad' vampires hunts her, we have no real action. There is a hunt, the excitement builds, she is separated from her vamp protectors, she sacrifices herself for the sake of others. Yes! Action at last!

Er, sadly, no. The climax of the book, from my point of view, is totally missed because our protagonist passes out before most of the action occurs. I felt cheated.

And, if I had to read one more occurrence of ' crooked grin', 'sculpted chest', 'burning eyes' or 'compelling gaze' I was going to vomit.

The biggest problem of all?

Plot structure. There isn't one. There is no nemesis. A baddie is brought in 75% through the book, but he's an incidental plot mechanism enabling the author to further elaborate on the implausibly sudden, unbelievably intense love of girl and vamp. You can discount the Indian boy who also wants Bella, and is a werewolf, because he won't be revealed until Book Two or Three. Because there is no nemesis, we can have no major action. It's all Act One - set up stuff.

Of course, for commercial reasons, that may have been the intention all along. How many people bought the book only to find that, in order to gain satisfaction, they had to buy two or three more books afterwards?

So, my verdict?

If you're a teenage girl worried about surface appearances, peer pressure, the allure of 'bad boys' and very little else - 5 stars.

If you belong to the real human race - 2 stars.

But I do think that Stephenie identified and hit her target market perfectly. I have nothing but admiration for that. She can write well. She just needs a decent plot and some believable characters to bring out the best in her.

7th Son: Descent by J C Hutchins

Just a quick reminder: I don't give 5 stars (well maybe once or twice a decade). I'm stingy. I'm mean.

So, on with the review.














7th Son: Descent by J. C. Hutchins

Now, I haven't read all of this book. I've only read the first 33 pages. So I can make no comments about the book's overall structure, or character arcs, or sub-plots.

What I can comment about is the quality of the writing.

It is superb.

From a real kick-ass opening, unexpected metaphors and unusual word formations flow with assurance. Characters are introduced with almost dizzying rapidity, yet each establishes his individuality, his own personality, rapidly and with great economy of prose.

The dialogue is believable, snappy; the internal thought processes consistent with the character thinking them. Vignettes of their various normal lives are pointed enough to let us get an idea of what they were like before something happens to them.

Something unexpected. Something horrifying.

The action sequences - and yes, there is plenty of action, from the prologue on - are well executed and realistic.

The basic premise of the book is excellent.

All I can say is that I'm going to order a copy this week - the print version comes out on the 27th - and if the rest is as good as the start, I'll write another review, this one going up, perhaps to that fabled 5 star realm where only the literary giants dwell.

OK, hyperbole, but this book is really very, very good.

So, Mr. Hutchins, or Chris if you prefer, excellent beginning. I was hooked from the first page.

I'm happy to give it 4 stars.

PS - I bear no relationship or affiliation with the author, and have not been offered any inducement of any nature to write this review, apart from a simple request that I do so. I don't know if it's a requirement to make that statement yet, but I thought I'd make it clear anyway.

Previews and the first episode of the book can be seen at

http://jchutchins.net/site/about-7th-son/7th-son-descent/

The book details are: ISBN 978- 0- 312- 38437- 1

and it is available to order online from:

Amazon
Barnes & Noble
Borders
Books-A-Million
Powell’s
Macmillan
Indiebound