Full Dark, No Stars

Until now, all I knew of Stephen King were his writings about, well, writing. Specifically, On Writing. Even of that book, I have read only excerpts. So, what I knew about Stephen King was limited to what advice I wanted about my own craft. 'Life's too short,' I thought. But no, it isn't. Life is very long, years long, and 'if not, why not' (a saying I use often because it is technically meaningless but pithy).

First I picked up Full Dark, No Stars. (Well, I opened it on my Kindle app on my phone.) Short stories, for my short attention span. There are four (not so short) stories in the book. What I expected from Mr King was knife-like suspense, punch-like action and trite morals. What I received was mostly dusty foreshadowing, fleshy characters and some of my own, justified anger. You know me, this is neither here nor there (another of my beloved and lovely statements).

For his next birthday, I am going to send Mr King a sock filled with coins. The sock will have a tag saying 'Foreshadowing' and the instructions will say to use it next time he is setting up his stories for us. Then he can spend the remaining 4% of his effort in surprising us. Maybe horror stories aren't meant to be surprising. Maybe the joy of reading a Stephen King is the closure. But no, horror is meant to be surprising. Like when Dracula lives - unlives - even after Buffy stakes him three times.

The first story '1922' reminded me of Freud's Rat Man. This man was tortured by something most people don't think about, until some movie or story prompts them to, and they talk about it over coffee or beer, and then they forget about it while hunting for change to pay for parking. He was obsessed with the idea that something he did or thought would have ramifications for the people he loved. He obsessed over a stone in the road, because it could be the stone that broke the wheel of the wagon his love was travelling in. But if he moved it, he could actually be ensuring that that was what it was. He was stuck between seemingly irrelevant choices, which all seemed fateful.

The man's pseudonym came from his primary obsession: that his family would suffer a torture involving rats in a cage  attached somewhere on your body, which would obviously eat their way through you to get out. Obviously. He worried that just thinking it would cause the torture to be inflicted on the ones he loved. The notion itself seems fairly normal to me, folks, especially if you consider 'positive thinking' and 'send this email to 10 people or you will be cursed' messages. Or is truth relative, in which case my point still holds.

The crazy is in the obsession, right? (The thought-provoking torture method aside.) In nit picking every choice in your life, even the innocuous ones. Picking up a stone in the road, to save your loved one, in fact causing their death. Free will versus reality versus morality and intention. I dunno. To me, crazy is in not thinking about this at all.

As I write, my bunny is refashioning my jersey and pants into a shelter, occasionally nipping me in the process. Darnit, she's so cute, I can't stop her. Death, free will, resignation. I call that Sunday lunch.

This theme rings through each of the four stories. In '1922', a man premeditatively kills his wife with the aid of their son. He is haunted not by her but by the rats that are the last thing he sees when he fills in her resting place. 'Big Driver' is about a woman who is raped and left for dead (go, girl). 'Fair Extension' is what I associate with Stephen King: a man 'steals' his best friend's success through voodoo. 'A Good Marriage' is about what a wife does when she finds her husband's guilty pastime.

They are all about choice.

They are also filled with rats. Rats being the foreshadowing - literally, in the first story - like the sock filled with coins. The choices (and choice) are laid out in the first few paragraphs, and if you read between the lines (har!), that's it. That's the story. These characters aren't considering their options, choosing how to shake the hand of fate, choosing what they will be wearing, how they will smile, where they will be. They are justifying a decision they made at the very beginning of the story, asking you to be their alibi.

If I say to you now, oh no, I can hear the rats skittering behind me, literally and metaphorically, what do you think is going to happen? Are we going to play My Little Ponies or are they going to chew through my arm simply to stop me from typing? And if I post it once an hour for three days (with my other arm) on Facebook? That, my friends, is a Stephen King story.

As usual, I didn't hate these stories. The premises were interesting and the moral ambiguities more interesting. But I do not like to be manipulated, especially if I can see the hands moving the strings. Mr King's biggest strength is the empathicness of his characters. Whether or not I like the character or their choices, I understand them. I can even see how those types of choices are ingrained in our natures: survival of the fittest, schadenfreude, vanity, revenge.

Mr King posts signs at every exit, but they are lies - none of them really go anywhere. Our characters have made their choices. The rest of the stories are just the kind of posturing your best friend's new boyfriend or girlfriend makes when meeting you for the first time. They want your vote when it comes down to them or your best friend's ex. Even if they're pulling out that person's hair and groping for a murder weapon.

I am bitter, but I am also reading Salem's Lot. I wrote this post to convince myself something unexpected is going to happen. But no, it's vampires, isn't it? Not a bunch of marrow-sucking pygmies, real-estate agents or radioactive cows? Please be radioactive cows.

The Dresden Files: #7 Dead Beat

The internet is not to be trusted. Not just because it is a Cold-War invention designed to decentralise information, a bit like a guerrilla cell, but because anyone can ‘publish’ anything, like a top five list of their favourite sandwich toppings (cheese (which is assumed as a fundamental ingredient in all food), egg, avo, cucumber and mayo, and chocolate spread) and Google might proclaim them expert in the culinary arts. (This blog does not appear on any search engine lists FYI. Perhaps Google doesn’t like my choice of sandwiches. Perhaps because you should visit my blog more often. #justsaying)

Anyway, when I wanted a light read, and had already read five Terry Pratchett’s in a (chronological) row, I typed in ‘top 10 supernatural apocalyptic horror’ to a search engine that has enough publicity already. Some of the lists were weighted by coming-of-age stories that encourage all sorts of abuse, and fantasies of death – you know what I am talking about. Most of the others I had read. I had to be selective and so I jotted down only the titles of books that appeared in the same lists as the The Road; while lists that included Stranger in a Strange Land and excluded Margaret Atwood were dismissed with a click.

One title I had never heard of reappeared, making it a hit by Google standards. Dead Beat by Jim Butcher, part of the Dresden Files. This title is number 7 in the series (I will get to my opinion of series in general, if not now, then in a post built entirely for it). A site devoted to science fiction (obviously this site will have the answers I am looking for, and none of them are sandwiches) called this particular book ‘a kitchen sink book; Butcher manages to cram in werewolves, wizards, vampires, fairies, demons and zombies, without making it feel crowded’. She forgot the T-Rex.

I can hear you, shifting the cursor indecisively toward the cross at the top of the screen. That would have been my reaction. Until the improbable happened: the security post to my suspension of disbelief malfunctioned. Yep, I read a story about the fleshy ghost of a T-Rex ridden by a wizard without a pointy hat and with a staff, and I believed it (as in I believed this could happen in that fantasy Earth, not now, here, in front of me. Just to clarify). That dinosaur was maybe the coolest character in any story I have recently read, except for Commander Vimes of the Nightswatch.

Again, hear me out. Google Analytics also records how long you spend reading my blog, and have I mentioned I am broke-ass writer, whose career may begin or end with your reading? I finished reading Dead Beat in a couple of hours, including some moonlit hours, and then decided to read the series in order. (I am on Book 3.) Because it was an erudite essay on human nature? Because it made me examine my sacred cows (hock included. I love that word. Hock)? Because it used the supernatural to comment on the ordinary? Kinda, kinda and kinda.

This is not a great book, but it is a very good book. So are books 1 and 2. And not because in number 4 a T-Rex that cuts a swathe of carnage through San Francisco, but because Book 2 includes four different types of werewolf (‘werewolf’ being an ambiguous term, as Mr Butcher shows us), also cutting a swathe of carnage. The most terrifying and rabid of the four is the loup-garou, a man whose family was cursed to turn on full moon. Sounds ordinary but no. This creature is, again, terrifying. It is huge and filled with a blood lust that shreds the man’s conscience when he wakes up.

You may have notice there are no Native Americans pacing in denim shorts. Jim Butcher obviously does a wealth of research, drawing deeply on various myths before painting them with his imagination. When he describes a T-Rex romping down a boulevard, he has contemplated the dimensions of beast and environment, and how one would go about riding it (see, a T-Rex leans forward when moving and leans back but not entirely vertical when standing, so he places the wizard near the neck of the creature, which is also far from the teeth).

The book earns its ‘very’ because it is two tsp detective novel to one tsp supernatural thriller, just without the make-up plastered, body-hugging dress wearing, purring femme fatale. In fact his range of female characters is more balanced than is usual in fantasy literature, which is not to say that he and his wizard don’t like a beautiful woman, because they do. They definitely do. The books are formulaic but in the way that Stephen King’s writing is good. It works. Because they are not predictable. Which seems obvious when the cast includes four type of werewolf, an energy vampire and a dinosaur. But it isn’t. Trust me, I’m an editor.

Harry Dresden is our private investigator and wizard, like in the pointy hat sense but without the pointy hat. (He does however possess a staff covered in runes, a talking skull and a cat.) He investigates the paranormal; he has a legitimate ad in the yellow pages that says ‘wizard’ although most people think he is a charlatan – including to some extent himself. He is employed by a branch of the police department, which thinks he is a charlatan too as well as a scape goat.

Can you focus, please? In Book 7 (I can hear you bleating about reading the books in order, but then please explain Star Wars), three sets of warlocks (or something) want to call on the brutish but sinister Elfking to chomp his way through the human race, making them kings and queens (or something). Of course, this can only happen at a specific time and place, because otherwise it would be difficult to get everyone together and string a plot across between them. Have I mentioned the zombies yet?

If you have reached this point and are thinking, ‘I don’t like science fiction’, I do not know why you are still reading. Either peg your disbelief over a clothesline or go away. You are breaking my train of thought.

Dresden is a more likeable Sherlock Holmes, with the wit of the Holmes (Robert Downey Jnr (who, FYI, I disliked in that role very much)) of the modern retellings. The wizard surprises even himself when he says something that isn’t sarcastic – some comments making me laugh loudly enough to frighten myself, the cats and my bunny. Like any good likeable hero, he tends to trip face-down into dangerous situations, stopping mid-step to (sometimes accidentally) smite someone.

But essentially our guy is ordinary. Apart from his magical powers – that make electrical items of any sort explode – a staff and a cat. But otherwise ordinary – except for the regular appearance of demons, fairies, vampires and zombies. Dresden is the good guy that we can all relate to. The guy trying to make a difference. Trying to live his life, without being impaled, scalped or set on fire over a misunderstanding.  

According to the head honchos of wizards and a chorus of supernatural beings, Dresden’s fatal flaw is his attachment to humanity. An attachment to people being and (this part’s important) staying alive. An attachment so strong he is always shielding people from supernatural crazies. He is always trying to keep carnage down a minimum, but that means the rules have to bend to his will. Terrible, just terrible, right? No. His real flaw is giving other people benefit of the doubt that he often doesn’t give himself. He is strong, in most ways except physically, but not impervious to pain (Book 2 was a close one).  

Another site devoted to the fans of science fiction says, ‘If it ain't broke, don't fix it, and Butcher has had half a dozen books to figure out his formula is working for him. Yet he's deft enough to avoid repeating himself. He allows each volume to add a little something to the mythology that's been built up.’ You needn’t have read my waffle because this sums all My Point in a paragraph. Still, read it anyway.

In conclusion, this is a list of and recipes to make myfavourite sandwiches. *Psych* for those who skipped to the end – I even heaped on a trite introductory phrase for you. Do you still need a reason to read The Dresden Files? Here’s one for dorks like me: the books are also available as comics and audio books read by – wait for it – James Marsters aka Spike of Buffy and Spike. Indeed, fellow dorks. Indeed. 

Long past time

Folks, it has been some time since I have posted. It's not you, it's me. I have a condition more serious than treating books as people but less serious than, well, war. The chemicals in my brain are like married couples in sitcoms: forever bickering but hand-in-hand in a comfort zone. Yes, my brain is Married with Children and the chemicals are Al and Bundy, just with less filth.

I recognise that few people would consciously subject themselves to the maskless workings of my brain, so this remains my book blog, where musings on my emotional turmoil are sidenotes. So the seething of my soul has its own home where said musings . Be warned: I am not exaggerating about the seething or turmoil.