Bones by Jan Burke

This book has been sitting on my shelf for years, so maybe there were unrealistic expectations.  I was also impressed with the Edgar Award for best mystery this book won, as well.  But I wasn't overly impressed by the end.  It left me underwhelmed.

The first third or half was solid.  Investigators in the mountains; a serial killer with them.  Bodies turn up and you know the killer will get away.

But there were so many missteps after that.  The dialogue is really, really terrible.  Very stilted, very unrealistic.  It talks down to the reader and overexplains really simple things, as if the author didn't think the readers could follow along.

Some scenes just backfired.  When the killer mails to the main character, a reporter, a pair of her own underwear, she and her co-workers break into inexplicable laughter.  The author tries to say that the hilarity is due to extreme tension, but it never comes across that way.  It's just an awkward scene.  There's a lot of those.

An example that blends both of these: a bomb is set up beneath one of the bodies in the mountains, and the killer gets away (after awhile) in the confusion.  The author/narrator (or the first-person main character) asks: How could have known that was going to happen?  I read that and immediately thought, I did.  You will, too, even if you're not a particularly astute reader.  Awkward.

And the end is unrealistic.  The killer, a genius, suddenly comes to her workplace, where there's an armed guard or two, plus co-workers, plus a helicopter that lands on the roof--and he doesn't know any of this, even though he has stalked all of his other victims to the point of knowing their lives better than they do.  The ending is really unfulfilling.  It hinges on the identity of the killer's helper, but you'll figure that out before too long.  You might even see it right away, not too far into the book.

These could be forgiven if the writing was good enough, but it's not.  It's awkward, the dialogue is just plain bad, and it mellows in a sentimentality and, at times, in suddenly jarring religious-speak (the main character suddenly says out loud to someone that they don't have to work on the Lord's day--even more confusing, since the narrator says she's mostly a non-believer)--and, well, the book's an award-winning mess.  I have nothing against a suddenly and unrealistically religious character, or occasionally bad dialogue, or scene and plot missteps--but not all at once in the same book.

This book is the 7th in the series, but you don't have to read any of the previous ones to read this one.  Unfortunately, I have no desire to do so, nor to read any of the next ones.  I see that I have written more negatively of this book than many have, but I don't see any way around it.  If you wish, someone please let me know if the previous ones, or the latter ones, were any better.  I've never seen the show based on these books, but the clips look good, and the show's been successful for some time now.  If you're watching that, please let me know if it's any better than the books.

Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel

Photo: from St. John Mandel's homepage, here.

Like St. John Mandel's other books, Station Eleven is a story told in different weaves of time and space, following a small handful of characters as they meander through each other's lives. Because it's written this way, the reader is able to see how everyone's paths are touched by what some call "The Butterfly Effect," a philosophy (?) which peaked maybe 10 years ago, but is still hanging around.  This is the magic, and sometimes the detriment, of her writing style.  Everything and everybody connects, sometimes a little too tidily so.

More than her other books (of which Last Night in Montreal is her best), Station Eleven threatens to be a little too tidy at the end.  Thankfully, it never quite gets there, and instead remains a great book with interlocking characters and their stories. 

It begins with a heart attack and it ends with a resolution that does not end with finality, since the main character does not stop long enough to end anything.  She just moves on, because in the post-apocalypse, there is no stopping.  You stop, you die, she seems to say.  The characters of The Walking Dead know this.  You stop, something inside you dies.  This is partly what Station Eleven's about.

One thing it's not about is The End of the World As We Know It.  Yes, there's been a very strong flu that wipes out much (but perhaps not most?) of the known world, and certainly there are problems because there aren't enough people alive anymore to take care of things.  (For example, a guy dies because he steps on a rusty nail and can't get antibiotics.)  But these things are not the story as much as they are the background, the props, the scenery. 

This is a good thing, because haven't we been there and done that?  If we want the Apocalypse, we watch TV.  If we want literature, we read.  Good writers get that distinction.  Good writers' writing focuses intensely on one thing and gets it right.  Station Eleven does that.  It gets its people right--so right that it deserves the National Book Award nomination it got.

And there are some images that'll stick with you.  The most memorable to me is the last view a main character gets: watching ships and barges in the distance as they drift away on a quiet sea.  The woman appreciates this, too, as she is also drifting away on a quiet sea.  This book gets moments like those right.  It is also very readable--a feat for such a literary work.  So if you're into the post-Apocalypse--but also especially if you're not--buy this one and give it a read.  For more information and accolades, see St. John Mandel's homepage here.

My HWA Screw-up / Nice Authors

 Photo: HWA's Stoker Award for Specialty Press, won by Gray Friar Press from the UK.

Well, this is embarrassing, but here's my admission:

As a member of the Horror Writers Association of America, I thought I was eligible to vote for the HWA's Stoker Awards, but I'm not.  Unfortunately, I didn't know that until after I'd asked for some review copies of some nominated works.  In other words, I emailed a few writers and asked them for review copies (which voters are supposed to do) so I could consider voting for their works.

Except then I found out I wasn't eligible to vote.

And the books had already come.

So let that be a lesson to you: When you join a club, know its rules.

Immediately I knew I had to email all these writers back, admit my mistake, and ask them if they wanted me to pay for the book, or pay to send it back to them.  Books, especially hardcover books, are not cheap.  I'd received seven books overall.  The least costly: $14.00.  The most: $26.00.  Overall I'd received over $120.00 worth of stuff under incorrect pretenses.

Could this have gotten ugly?  I don't know.  But as a professional writer / novelist wannabe, I certainly didn't want to take that chance.  More importantly, bottom line: I had a writer's property that initially I shouldn't have had.  That's bad in of itself; for a professional writer / novelist wannabe like me, that's really, really bad.

I put off sending out the emails for a few hours, which is very unlike me.  But finally I sent them; each one began, "Well, this is embarrassing, but..."  It took me about seven hours to send out all of the emails.  Each one was painful.  Doing that really, really sucked.  What a professional they must think I am!

The writers were very nice, of course.  Some just asked that I post a review, which I was more than happy to do.  A few didn't ask me to do anything and said not to worry about it.  One of them even said that sending the emails was a classy thing to do.  (Having class is not something I'm often accused of.)

So one of the few good things to come out of this is that I can now review each of these books and collections.  Which I will do.  The voting has been done, too.  The results will be announced this summer during the World Horror Convention in Portland, Oregon.  I read these books and write these reviews now not for the Stoker Award, but for the books and the writers themselves, which I am more than happy to do.

And I'm happy to say that they are all nice people as well.  Each one could have given me a hard time, but didn't.  A few of them even said kind things.  So, here they are, in a list.  Please consider reading their books--the ones I'll review, or any other.

Eric J. Guignard, Editor: After Death... (short story collection)

Jonathan Moore: Redheads ("Part horror, part CSI, part revenge thriller..."--Jay Bonansinga, NYT Bestselling Author)

Michael Knost and Nancy Eden Siegel, Editors: Barbers and Beauties (short story collection)

S.P. Somtow: Bible Stories for Secular Humanists ("Skillfully combines the styles of Stephen King, William Burroughs, and the author of the Revelation to John!"--Robert Bloch, author of Psycho / "He can drive the chill bone deep."--Dean Koontz.)

Anthony Rivera and Sharon Lawson, Editors: Dark Visions, Vols. 1 & 2 (short story collections)

Christopher Rice: The Heavens Rise.  And check out the Internet radio show of this NYT bestselling author, too. 

Voting for the Bram Stoker Award for the HWA: Young Adult Horror Novel

This is the first of a couple of blog entries of my thoughts about the nominees and the nominated works.

I'm in the fortunate position of being able to vote for the upcoming Bram Stoker Awards, a prestigious award given by the Horror Writers Association of America (of which I am a member; so there) in several categories, including "Superior Achievement in A Novel" and "Superior Achievement in A Young Adult Novel" and "Superior Achievement in A Screenplay" and so on.  You get the idea.  Winners are announced at the World Horror Convention in Portland, Oregon on May 11th, 2014. 

Each category has five or six nominations.  I recommend the following writers and their works.  I offer some Honorable Mentions, too.  If you haven't read them, do so.  I will offer relatively decent reasons for each.  In full disclosure, I will point out that I "know" a couple of these folks only in the sense that we have emailed a few times.  But I have read the works of those I recommend as well, so I am not nominating them only because I "know" them.  (I don't know Joe Hill, for example, as an e-friend or otherwise.  I just like his stuff.)  And as e-friends, I do not know them in the sense that we hang out and have dinner and drinks.

Okay?  Ya get it?


1.  Superior Achievement in A Young Adult Novel: Unbreakable by Kami Garcia.

I couldn't say it better than this, from the book's Goodreads page:  

Supernatural meets The Da Vinci Code in this action-packed paranormal thriller, the first book in a new series from New York Times bestselling author Kami Garcia.

I never believed in ghosts. Until one tried to kill me.

"When Kennedy Waters finds her mother dead, her world begins to unravel. She doesn’t know that paranormal forces in a much darker world are the ones pulling the strings..."

[Me, again.]  Isn't that a great line, in italics?  I never believed in ghosts.  Until one tried to kill me.  Now that's a grabber!  Very indicative of why I loved how this book was written, and that's rare coming from me.  But there are so many good, quick, short sentences that really grab you.  Especially good was how Garcia wrote the scene where Kennedy finds her dead mother: really good, to-the-point, minimalistic writing that says just enough to paint a grisly and tragic picture.  Plus, there's a lot of action, and a bit of romance, and it moves, moves, moves.  Teens will love it, and they'll read it lickety-split. 

The book opens with an appropriately chilling graveyard scene, so how can it go wrong?  

If you know a teenager who likes this genre, get it for her, or him.  If you are such a teenager, read it.  At a quick glance, at least 86% of the readers on Goodreads gave it at least 3 stars.  And that's the target audience.  And they're not easy to please, and they'll tell it like they see it.  Impressing them is impressive, in of itself.  From the same Goodreads page:

Kami Garcia is the #1 New York Times, USA Today, Publishers Weekly, Wall Street Journal & international bestselling co-author of the Beautiful Creatures Novels (Beautiful Creatures, Beautiful Darkness, Beautiful Chaos & Beautiful Redemption). Beautiful Creatures has been published in 50 countries and translated in 39 languages. The Beautiful Creatures movie released in theaters on February 14, 2013. 

See the YouTube trailer.  See the author's webpage here.  

Next up:  Superior Achievement in the Novel

Zero Dark Thirty

photo: from the film's Wikipedia page

I'm posting this entry quite a bit after I'd seen the film because I wanted to post the entry for Silver Linings Playbook before Sunday's Academy Awards--as at least Jennifer Lawrence should win something from that very good film--and because I wanted to post an entry about the Awards show itself, leaving a few days in between each entry, to give my readers time to breathe between my entries.  And to not overdo it.  So, anyway, this post is probably happening about a week after I'd seen this film.

This film is not to be missed, and, as with The Hobbit, I'd heard some things about it that made me question whether I'd want to see a two-and-a-half hour film that ended up being disappointing.  But once again, I needn't have worried.  This was a great film and quite an experience in of itself.

That says a lot, because we all knew how this one would end up.  What we didn't know, though, is how it would get there, and for that, the experience of watching this is worth it.  The movie is essentially a director's showcase, although all of the actors deliver solid performances, especially Jessica Chastain--who is very suddenly everywhere, and in every type of movie imaginable--and Jennifer Uhle, whose character plays with your expectations for awhile until suddenly hers, and Chastain's, are good friends.

Jessica Chastain's character changes rather dramatically during the movie; the turning point is when she loses a friend quite close to her.  (This is a situation an astute viewer should see coming, though when it does, the scene still packs a solid punch.)  She's the quiet observer during the interrogation scenes (more on those later), but when she's spoken to by the prisoner, she delivers a solid, professional answer--though her character clearly feels for his plight.  (Viewers should keep in mind, as she did, that he is a professional killer and liar--and would do both again.)  This keeps her humane, yet growing in her job, and shows that she won't back down when others might.

She becomes more haggard, emotionally and psychologically, rather than physically; I didn't see it when another character comments about how she's looking like she's falling to pieces.  Frankly, Jessica Chastain never looks like she's falling to pieces.  If she lost an arm in a battle scene, she'd look beautiful doing it.   

(An aside here.  A friend disagreed with me about this, but it seemed unrealistic to me that not one single male commented to her character about how beautiful she is.  Now, I know that they were all professionals, and I know this is a no-nonsense movie directed by a very talented [and Oscar-winning] no-nonsense female director [Kathryn Bigelow], but it is not conceivable to me that not one single guy, in a male-dominated, stressful, testosterone-laden profession, would comment, lewdly or not, about how incredibly striking she is--especially given that Jessica Chastain is one of the most classically beautiful actresses to come along in quite some time, and also given that a large percentage of the shots of her in this movie are close-ups.  In short, her character did not hide her beauty [except to put on wigs to hide her red hair], and the camera constantly zoomed in to show it.  There, I said it.)

Anyway, though she gets emotionally and psychologically haggard, that seems more to do with the bureaucratic nightmare that is her job, rather than what she has to go through at her job.  This, despite the fact that she almost gets blown up in a restaurant (a very effectively shocking scene) and shot up in her car.  (Surprising that the shooters didn't wait just a few seconds longer for her there.)  But she does change, and not to the dismay, too much, of her (male) superiors.  They constantly comment on her intelligence, by the way (and she is very smart), but never once about...well, never mind.  Anyway, it gets to a point where she's writing in large red figures the number of days that have passed since she, in her opinion, positively proved where Usama bin Laden was (referred to as UBL frequently in the movie--not OBL, for those who called him Osama; keep that in mind when you hear the next Obama / Osama diatribe).  But finally she gets the deployment she's been asking for.

And what a sequence of montages that is, all of them sans Chastain's character, as the elite troops go in there, ostensibly to see what there is to see, as most of the people involved are not 100% sold on the fact that UBL was even there.  (The leader of this troop says he's still willing to go in only because of Chastain's character's bullheaded certainty.)  The scenes of how they (maybe?) did this are intense and gripping--again, despite the fact that you know how it's going to turn out.  This part of the movie alone is worth the price of admission, though it shouldn't be the only reason to see this film.

Now, back to the interrogation scenes.  One of the reasons I was hesitant to see this film is because I'd heard and read that it supposedly okayed the use of the torture that it depicts.  I don't necessarily agree with this.  Firstly, the characters clearly don't like what they're doing (the guy who's "good" at it is so disgusted by it that he leaves the area) and they know that Congressional leaders are talking about them doing it--and they know that they can't be the one caught with one of the instruments in hand.  This shows me that the movie-makers are showing that it was done, that the people didn't necessarily find joy in it (which would've been even more disturbing), and that...well, they got exactly the information they needed because of it.  If not seeing a character make a speech and take a moral stance against it means to you that the film-makers were condoning it, then you would think they were doing just that.  But, really, what they were doing is showing that it was done, and showing that nobody liked it, and showing that they knew they couldn't be caught doing it, and showing that it gave them the information that ultimately led them to bin Laden--all the while showing the reality of that whole situation.  If the movie-makers had taken a moral stance about it in this movie, that would've been completely out-of-line and unrealistic, considering what they were trying to do.  They were trying to show how one woman, and her colleagues, got the information that ultimately led them to bin Laden.  Period.  To see a film about the morality of that type of interrogation, you'll have to go elsewhere.  That particular criticism against this film is unfair and untrue.  They didn't sanitize and condone that type of interrogation.  They depicted it, and that's all.

The second reason I was hesitant to see this film is that James Gandolfini apologized for his portrayal of his character.  As I watched the film, I tried to figure out why, and by the end, I still hadn't figured it out.  I am still confused about this.  He's not in the film long enough to create a standing and unfading characterization, and his character doesn't say or do anything that would come close to needing an apology for.  He's not a weenie; he's not a blowhard; he's not too tough; he's not anything at all that would need an apology.  He questions whether Chastain's team ever agrees about anything, which is reasonable to do, because they don't agree about anything.  He questions whether anyone can concretely prove what they're asserting, which is appropriate, because they can't concretely prove what they're asserting--and they are not all, in fact, asserting the same thing, to the same degree.  He's a political businessman looking at the engineers of this thing, wondering if they're doing the right thing, wondering if he'll be doing the right thing--whether he agrees, as the CIA Director, to sell the plan to the President or not.  And he's clearly appreciating everybody while sort of shaking his head at them all at the same time--which, again, is completely appropriate for his character to do.  I don't know what Gandolfini was apologizing for, unless it was the hairjob, which was indeed terrible.  Other than that, I just don't know.

So that's it.  Sorry for the long review, but there was a lot to say because there was a lot to see.  And there's a whole lot to like, so go see this one.

P.S.--The Academy's snub of Bigelow for Best Director is much harder for me to digest than its snub of Ben Affleck, who also did a great directing job, but with immensely easier material to direct, for a movie that was much more of an actor's showcase, rather than a director's showcase, as Bigelow's film is.  This is one of the best-directed films I've seen in years (and I agree with a critic's announcement that it blows Argo out of the water, and I liked Argo), and is surely one of the best (if not the best) directed films of this year--in a year of many very well-directed films.  (I admittedly haven't seen Life of Pi yet, which is high on my list of things to do--but that film, from what I've read, is heavily CGI.)  This film was a better film, and a better-directed film, than Bigelow's own award-winning Hurt Locker, which I also liked a lot.  She has already won directing awards for this film from the New York's Film Critics Circle, as well as from similar circles from other cities.  (Affleck won the Director's Award.)  I'd have to say that she deserves the Oscar more than anyone nominated, which says a lot, since I love Spielberg's work, and he was brilliant enough to cast me in one of his films.  But this movie was better-directed, and much harder to direct, than Lincoln was.  I can only assume that her snub was due to the unwarranted political firestorm attached to this film.

2013 Academy Awards

photo: The Oscar statuette, or the Academy Award, but actually officially called the Academy Award of Merit, from Oscars.com.

Not too much to say about this award show.  I saw most of the nominated films, including:

Prometheus, which I can't believe I never wrote a blog for.  Look for that blog entry after the next.

Skyfall, which will have an upcoming entry.

Zero Dark Thirty, which will be the subject of my next blog entry.

Lincoln (click the link for the blog entry)

Silver Linings Playbook (click the link for the blog entry)

Django Unchained (click the link for the blog entry)

Argo (click the link for the blog entry)

The Hobbit (click the link for the blog entry)

So I had a pretty good feel, for once, for the show, and who should win.  I haven't seen Life of Pi yet, or Amour, which may be way too depressing for me.  But just about everything else, so--

--Christoph Waltz over Tommy Lee Jones, in Lincoln, or Robert De Niro in Silver Linings Playbook?  Waltz, as I mentioned in the entry for the movie, essentially repeated his Inglorious Bastards role, this time with a conscience.  Jones ate scenery in Lincoln, as he does so often, and he's won twice (I think) before.  But De Niro was very un- De Niro in his role.  Both deserved it more than Waltz, who I like, by the way.  And Waltz has won for the same director, too.  Probably the one who deserved it most was Philip Seymour Hoffman, who did not repeat a role here, or play himself, which Alan Arkin basically did.  Seymour Hoffman played a cult leader, therefore having to act outside himself, but nobody saw this film, and those who did were sort of turned off in general.  Almost every prognosticator I read said he should win, but wouldn't.  Nobody picked Waltz.  This was a surprise.  Ultimately, of course, none of this matters.  Go see the films.

--Apparently, belting "Gold--FIN--GAH!!!" deserves a standing ovation.  Tripping up the stairs did, too.  But Massey and Lawrence handled themselves very well, and I was happy for their happiness.

--It would've been nice to see all the Bonds together, though I doubt Connery would've been willing to show up.  It wasn't quite the Bond celebration I was hoping for, or expecting.

--Hollywood showed its respect, big-time, for Tarantino.  Who's gotten very big, very fast, by the way.  And I'm talking, like, physically.

--I'm okay with Ang Lee winning Best Director, as he's a well-respected guy who's never gotten his due.  It doesn't matter to me because my pick would have been Kathryn Bigelow for Zero Dark Thirty.  The controversy centered around the non-nomination of Ben Affleck, but, as I mentioned in another entry, Bigelow had a much more challenging job with more difficult material to direct.  Probably Lee did, too, though the sheer amount of CGI in this film worries me a little.  But Life of Pi's cinematographer won, too, so maybe there wasn't as much CGI as I thought.  So I guess I'm okay with it, though again I see that Hollywood continues to give Spielberg the finger.

--Jennifer Lawrence's and Daniel Day-Lewis's wins were givens.  The surprise was that Day-Lewis was very amusing when accepting his award.  Lincoln himself may have had much more of a sense of humor than what I thought Day-Lewis had.  Speaking of Lawrence, she was the talk of the town at my job the day after the awards--for tripping up the stairs.

--As there is a separation of Church and State, maybe there should be a separation of Hollywood and State as well.  How starstruck do we want our politicians to be?  I like the Obamas, of course, but I don't know if I want the First Lady giving away the award for Best Picture.  Why couldn't Jack Nicholson have done it?

--Seth McFarlane did a good job when he didn't have the stars themselves in his cross-hairs.  The breast song was amusing, but probably a turn-off to the stars themselves, as was his Ben Affleck / Gigli comment to Affleck himself.  The Clooney joke fell flat to everyone, including Clooney, and I'll bet McFarlane was feeling the heat of those jokes, judging by the number of times he grimaced when he knew he was taking a chance with a joke.  But he was very breezy through most of it, and he gets away with a lot because of his natural demeanor, and smile.  Since the Awards ratings were up 19%, I'm guessing he'll be asked back next year.  But he'll have to lay off the comments at the stars themselves, and I'll bet many of them will not be happy to see him again.

--Argo winning for best picture, without being nominated for any acting or directing awards, smells to me like Hollywood awarding itself, as the movie could've been re-named How Hollywood Saved the Hostages.