Devon Trevarrow Flaherty's Blog, page 17

I read Androne by Dwain Worrel as an ARC but not really an ARC. It was a copy sent to me by the publisher, but it is not advanced (as in it is not not-yet-published). It came out on September 1st. So almost. The second book of the series, Alliance, is expected in 2024.

I enjoyed this book. It was interesting enough to keep me turning the pages, sometimes after I should have been asleep, even though it isn’t the sort of thing I would normally get into. The plot is full of twists. You’re in the protagonist’s head. There’s always, always a question about what is going on and what is going to happen next. Some people will be able to figure things out long before they probably should, but there is still plenty of tension about how things are going to go down and the stakes are really high for multiple characters. What I would call this book: an action movie in book form. In my memory, it’s almost like I watched a movie.

In the not-so-distant future, there is one moment in time when a full third (or is it more? I forget) of the worlds’ military is destroyed. And no one can figure out who did it and why. All countries are damaged. It’s not AI. It’s not aliens. No one knows! And people enter a new reality where questions about violence and instability live just under the surface of their questions in the communal psyche. Paxton is in the military and comes from a military family. He sustained losses in the attack and has been called back to serve with a bipedal drone program, the only way that humans are going near the vast tracts of earth that have been destroyed by the attack. Paxton leaves behind a pregnant girlfriend he’s not really sure how he feels about and immediately falls in with a few characters, some alluring and some trouble—though which ones are which? With a godfather in power, Paxton decides he wants to use his expected child as motivation to move up in the ranks, but the questions he asks cause him to stumble over some truths he might not be ready to handle.

I’m not going to sell you on this book being great literature, and yet I started out impressed with the writing quality, especially for the type of book that it is (which is sci-fi action thriller). The writing is, at times, beautiful, descriptive, and interesting and yet it tells an actual story with the normal arc. (There is some suspense at the end—leading us to the next book, I presume.) And while this is all still true, I started to notice things that made me feel like Worrell might be trying too hard, like the phrase “illiterate infrastructure.” Uh, what? (That’s just a random example.) And he’s really, really big on reusing five-dollar words, often on the same page, which is a pet peeve of mine. (I’m not saying I don’t inadvertently do it, but still a pet peeve.) And then, somewhere along the line, I noticed he was also breaking some conventional grammar rules, most notably serial commas. And now I am going to go off on a tangent for a sec, on something that you might not even notice if you read the book:

I can understand the mood that would make a modern person think they would want to omit serial commas and otherwise buck traditional grammar rules. But, um… it doesn’t work. Take for example the first sentence of the second chapter: “Round mustardy hills and yellow dried shrubs colored the I-45 vista.” Since there were no serial commas to tip my mind effortlessly into the image, I tried to read it as ‘round, like around. Then when I got to the verb, I was like Wait, that doesn’t make sense and tried to turn that into another adjective (because “colored” can go either way), and soon I was lost and having to go back and re-read the sentence, trying to parse it out. If the sentence had used proper grammar and read, “Round, mustardy hills and yellow, dried shrubs colored the I-45 vista,” there would have been no problem, no distraction. I would have slipped right over it with those withered plants and canary hills stretching to my imagination’s horizon. The thing about breaking grammar rules is that confusion can ensue because the words suddenly make no sense or they say something else, the something else being what I encountered in this particular case. I was going around a Seussian hill and hit “colored” like a smack to the face when a couple of serial commas would have avoided the whole thing.

And back to where I left off in the actual review. The book is definitely a movie-like book that will appeal to a particular reader. However, I have discovered from reading other reviews that if you are military, you might find the book’s setting silly as heck (meaning it is a very unrigorous environment that lacks accountability). But if you just watch and enjoy military movies… you might be fine with the setup, not even notice. It wasn’t something that was too hard for me to suspend my belief about. For me, it was harder to accept Paxton’s motivations. They felt forced, though this is partly because I can see the same selling-issue in my own current character’s motivations. So maybe I’m being sensitive? Funnily enough, I really enjoyed where Paxton’s rando motivations landed him in the end, which is unconventional in a wonderful way. But how he got there… How a lot of characters explain their actions… I’m not the only one not feeling the flow, the believability. Also, I did figure out the big twist before page 18, but it turns out that there are more twists to wait for. Either way, I would recommend not reading spoilers or too much about this book before starting.

If you are interested in the genre, in sci-fi action movies, or in easy-to-read, fast-paced novels with twists and turns and a military feel, then by all means grab a copy of this book and then maybe the next one in the series. I’m wondering if my son, who loves mechs, would like this (even though drones are not mechs, they are kinda close). Also, my husband might like it because of a reason that I can’t share because it would be a spoiler. At any rate, if you are willing to just go with it and forgive some motivations and details and causes just like you would watching a sci-fi action thriller Blockbuster movie, then this is an otherwise well-written book that will for sure keep you turning the pages.

“Amid the diaper changes and bottle feeds, something sinister had occurred, a sapping of one generation by the other, and Paxton felt it too now, that slight snag at the seam of his youth” (p13).

“He evaporated to body odor—like a vapor, like an out-of-body drift…” (p38).

Since The Jungle Book by Rudyard Kipling is in the public domain, I thought that I would include a poem from it as a Read Me. One of my favorite moments in the book is the “Seal Song” that begins “The White Seal” short story.

Oh! hush thee, my baby, the night is behind us,

And black are the waters that sparkled so green.

The moon, o’er the combers, looks downward to find us

At rest in the hollows that rustle between.

Where billow meets billow, there soft be thy pillow;

Ah, weary wee flipperling, curl at thy ease!

The storm shall not wake thee, nor shark overtake thee,

Asleep in the arms of the slow-swinging seas.

Image from Amazon.com

Rudyard Kipling’s The Jungle Book—sometimes titled The Jungle Books—is perhaps not what you think it is. It is a collection of short stories. Not all of them are about the jungle. They are all about animals, but some from a human perspective. They are mostly about children, but one is about an adult. Except for the Mowgli stories, no characters or even setting cross story-lines. All but one take place in British-occupied India. Only three of them are about Mowgli. Three! By far, these three are the best stories in the short book, so I can see why they became cultural icons and classic movies (though I also remember a cartoon version of “Rikki-Tikki-Tavi” from my childhood). All of the are also quite outdated, though Mowgli’s thread remains the most universal. Honestly, most modern readers might want to skip straight to Neil Gaiman’s The Graveyard Book for a much more modern and relevant retelling (of just the Mowgli part). Or watch the movies and maybe read the Mowgli stories to your kids.

The Jungle Book is a collection of Rudyard Kipling’s short stories. Between each story sits a related poem. The first three stories tell of the life and times of Mowgli, a little Indian boy who is raised by wolves when he runs off after a tiger attacks his parents’ camp. That tiger becomes the through-line of these three stories, for he vows to kill the man-cub when he grows up and his shadow remains spectral at every turn. Mowgli has various adventures in the jungle under the tutelage of Baloo the bear and the watchful eye of Bagheera the panther. He has run-ins with snakes, kites (a predatory bird), and monkeys, and eventually is expelled to the man village where he must decide where he really belongs. The other stories include that of the solitary, white seal looking for a safe place where his colony can hunt and raise their young; the mongoose who is adopted by a family and is just being himself when he saves them from a garden of cobras; a little boy raised as an elephant tamer; a man who hides after a stampede in military camp and becomes privy to the conversation of the various military animals.

The main thing I would warn modern parents about is corporal punishment; though it is framed within nature and tradition, it is perpetrated on Mowgli. Also, some of the stories go nature-show violent on us, especially “The White Seal.” The best part is stepping into the mind of a little boy and also contemplating what it’s like to be an animal. These are things little kids love and have kept the stories around for more than a century. Maybe that’s why, though, people seem to ignore the non-Mowgli stories in the book. Like seriously, the introduction in the version I have doesn’t even mention them, with the exception of “Rikki-Tikki-Tavi.” Yet there they all are, and there are probably some kids, even still, who would prefer this book over more candy-coated, sleek stuff. Though the story-telling is a little old-fashioned, it is also poetic—sometimes like a song—and is honest down to the grit of real life in the jungle. Like Roald Dahl in his English towns, kids are meant to come face to face with both the magic and the harshness of real life and to consider feelings and thoughts outside their own head.

The Jungle Book is a classic, and for sure the three Mowgli stories are ones you should read on an afternoon. The rest of the stories are also classics, but ones that seem to be fading with time. For kids and adults who like the older stuff, sure, pick the book up and read the whole thing. Perhaps your kids will really enjoy them; who’s to say with kids. But some modern parents will find this stuff too gritty and too wild. Which is sort of the point. Kids need a little wildness, a little risk, in their life and Kipling brought it into the nursery (as did other authors, like Dahl and Barrie). While I wasn’t sitting around with my copy lost in enjoyment, mostly these stories weren’t meant for me. Still, there is a sweet and tangy tone to the Mowgli stories that swept me away, a little bit.

“Let them fall, Mowgli. They are only tears” (p31).

“Oppress not the cubs of the stranger, but hail them as Sister and Brother, / For though they are little and fubsy, it may be the Bear is their mother” (p34).

“See, O Bagheera, they never thank their teacher. Not one small wolfling has ever come back to thank old Baloo for his teachings” (p37).

“…‘it is true what Hathi the Wise Elephant says, “To each his own fear”’” (p47).

“If you can imagine a lance, or a battering ram, or a hammer weighing nearly half a ton driven by a cool, quiet mind living in the handle of it, you can roughly imagine what Kaa [a python] was like when he fought” (p62).

“Baloo did not wish to bring Mowgli into any more trouble, but he could not tamper with the Law, so he mumbled, ‘Sorrow never stays punishment…’” (p69).

“One of the beauties of Jungle Law is that punishment settles scores. There is no nagging afterwards” (p70).

“’Now, don’t be angry after you’ve been afraid. That’s the worst kind of cowardice,’ said the troop-horse. ‘Anybody can be forgiven for being scared in the night, I think, if they see things they don’t understand” (p197, “Her Majesty’s Servants”).

“I know just enough to be uncomfortable, and not enough to go on in spite of it” (p205, “Her Majesty’s Servants”).

Image from Disney Movies

The 1967 animated, Disney version of The Jungle Book would have been what most people (Americans, anyway) thought of in the past decades—like between 1970 and 2000—if someone said “The Jungle Book.” It’s still what many people think of. And this is probably where Mowgli was cleaved off from the other short stories in the book, because this version contains only the three Mowgli stories made into one continuous narrative in vignettes. Fairly accurate to the stories, it was part of a series of these old, animated Disney films based on the classic, children’s stories like Alice in Wonderland and Peter Pan. (There were also all the fairy tales, of course, like Cinderella and Snow White.) It is a classic. It feels pretty old when you watch it now, but it’s that mid-century animation that translates fine into a soft, calm afternoon with infants or toddlers, even now. I haven’t watched it in a very long time.

Image from Disney Shows

Talespin was apparently a Jungle Book spin-off that aired in the nineties and actually was one of my very favorite cartoons. I was aware that Baloo was involved, but I didn’t quite understand how it connected to the old movie and even now I’m going to have to look it up because it’s not super apparent… So, there was a deadline and some people pitched the idea to use Baloo in an afternoon cartoon series. They took away Mowgli and replaced him with the anthropomorphic Kit whose mother was based on Cheers’ Rebecca (and named after her). The characters ran an air cargo company in the jungle (but where exactly? Not sure). Louie and Shere Khan were the only other character crossovers. So: a super strange mashup of ideas using just a Disneyfied Jungle Book character and a misfit-paternal dynamic with a kid who isn’t his. (There would be others of these weird crossovers that I loved, growing up, like DuckTales and Chip ‘n’ Dale’s Rescue Rangers. They all had an extremely similar feel.)

Image from Disney Movies

I have not seen Rudyard Kipling’s The Jungle Book (1994). Well, that I can recall. It looks like a totally classic 1990s epic movie, complete with big actors, romance, action-adventure (swashbuckling) and lots of white people. The animals are there in the beginning, as actual animals, but then Mowgli grows up and starts to encounter people, some who want him dead and at least one who wants to kiss him. (Some of this might be based on The Second Jungle Book by Kipling, but from what I can tell the romance is completely new.) I am a little mystified that Mowgli is played by an American actor of Chinese-Hawaiian descent and every person he encounters appears to be British occupants of India. The stories in the books have him end up at times in an Indian village with Indian people. Ah, well. It kinda looks good because, let’s face it, I grew up with a steady diet of movies like Indiana Jones, The Goonies, and Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves and this looks exactly along those lines. Maybe I’ll watch it tonight.

Image from Disney Movies

And then in 2016 Disney did what it was in the middle of doing and made the old, animated The Jungle Book into a live-action film in 2016. (Some of the other movies that had made the transition around that time were Cruella, The Little Mermaid, Cinderella, Mulan, Maleficent, Beauty and the Beast, The Lion King, Dumbo, Pinocchio, Aladdin, Alice in Wonderland, and Peter Pan and Wendy.) Featuring impressive CG and an adorable Mowgli, it’s pretty dramatic and updates a lot of the plot, but it’s also a little closer to the original book than even the old, animated version. (Certainly it’s much closer than that 1994 thing.) I don’t think I did a review for it here on The Starving Artist (and can’t find it, anyhow), but I remember liking it to an extent. It’s really meant to be for kids, but I would have to re-watch it to tell you anything interesting. I remember a lot of fire.

It took me a year to read Bram Stoker’s Dracula. I started it last October and got really bored and then the season passed. This year, I finished it, but not without some pushing. Dracula is a classic of Gothic horror, an original in many senses and the bulwark of the vampire genre. I thought I knew what to expect, and though some things regarding vampire tradition have changed since the original, I was surprised to find much of what I have absorbed from culture about vampires to be right there in Dracula. There were really good parts full of tension and surprise. There were way more times when I had to remind myself that the original readers of Dracula didn’t have the internet, social media, movies, TV, or much to do of an evening around the fire. Keeping them on the edge of their seat through long-winded, repetitive speeches was a thing. Not so much for me, now.

Dracula is essentially about a group of Victorian elite in and around London. When we begin, two couples are engaged and one of the men is on his way to Transylvania to do some paperwork for his firm with a man who is looking to relocate to London. It ends up being a raw deal, as the man in question is the vampire, Count Dracula. Of course, the guy doesn’t know this—doesn’t suspect that there is anything in the world like it. And the original readers would have been creeped out as they waited for the details of this strange man to unfurl slowly and terrifyingly. An epistolary novel, we also hear from the man’s finance back in England as her story unfolds with her best friend. Eventually, everyone is in England and at least nine characters write letters, reports, notes, etc. that weave together the stories of the two women, Dracula, an insane asylum patient, and five men who literally all play the hero as their reality and their very souls are threatened by an insidious menace they are only beginning to understand.

So, here’s what happened. As I said, I started reading Dracula last year, for Halloween. I actually hate vampire stories, but I have tolerated a few for keeping-up-with-the-Joneses reasons, specifically where there is not so much gore or slasher-iness or pure evil. I figured that Dracula, since it was pretty old, would not be too descriptive or freaky. I was right about this, though there is quite a bit implied and two scenes that had me actually queasy (though that was not till this year). When I got bored and put the book down, I wasn’t sure if I would ever finish it. Then, as this Halloween approached and it popped up again on my TBR, I had the brilliant idea of listening to the book! I am also not a fan of audiobooks except in very specific circumstances, but I thought this might be the only way to endure the Victorian wordiness: to trap myself on the carpool drive twice a day. And it worked. I was sick of the audiobook in the latter half of the middle, for sure, but it was easy just to turn it on and suck it up. There is some picking up of the pace now and again, but many thanks to Mike Bennett for his reading of the unabridged and complete Dracula. I know he wasn’t looking forward to reading all Van Helsing’s speeches (letters) and I was seriously annoyed by them, but now we are through!

Full disclosure: I have some PTSD surrounding blood which has strangely gotten worse as I’ve gotten older. It’s one of the reasons I don’t normally do vampires or slasher horror. Though the original Dracula didn’t detail a ton of blood, there is one disturbing and bloody scene which also involved suffocation—which is one of my biggest phobias—and also a repeat scene involving Victorian-era blood transfusions. These were too much for me. Thankfully, I wasn’t watching them on a screen so they won’t necessarily sit in my visual recall for decades, but I was profoundly uncomfortable during them in a way I wasn’t for anything in, for example, the Twilight saga.

Okay, so my issues with Dracula ended up not being all about scares or longwindedness. Trigger warning: most of these characters are entitled, patronizing douche bags but they are written as honorable, noble heroes. Some of this is definitely because of the time period. And yet other authors managed to write literature from this time period in which I didn’t feel livid having to listen to men pontificate and gloat and strut around pitying women for their frailty and lower-functioning brains. In order to survive the second half of the book, I had to break out my hearty, posh, Victorian guffaw and use it whenever I was getting overwhelmed by, well, usually Van Helsing. The characters couldn’t be more patronizing and, at many times, utterly unintelligent. They never learn from anything, but darned if the poor women didn’t get a) sent to bed, repeatedly b) patted on the head and thanked for their work which was surprisingly good, and c) told that their smart brains were almost like a man’s. As for any other plebe that encountered the main, “honorable,” gentleman characters? They were flayed with insincere smiles and treated like children (speaking of children, they were only referred to as “it”s), and then laughed about later. (“What?? He called a new, cold storage facility a new, fancypants factory?! Hahahahahah!”) Foreigners? If Van Helsing referred to Dracula as having a “child brain” one. more. time. I was going to throw the book that wasn’t in my hand across the car. Dracula is, quite frankly, antifeminist to the extreme, and I can’t help but wonder if that’s not part of what Stoker was exploring? Though I also wonder if my wondering that is just wishful thinking.

On the other hand, the story is really imaginative. And it was ahead of its time with innuendo, though Stoker apparently felt limited to the word “voluptuous” to express women’s sexuality. And we’re talking small steps, here, often in the wrong direction. Was the story as imaginative as it seems? Vampires were a thing of myth, especially in Eastern Europe, long, long before Dracula. There’s a Time article that claims Stoker said Dracula was factual, some names changed, but then was forced to remove a lot and change the ending for the general populace. Still, so they say, he said it was true. Whether or not this is accurate, Stoker didn’t get the character of Dracula from Vlad the Impaler or a dream, from what I can tell, so maybe was just retelling some history and myth and experiences of his friends. The supposed first vampire story published—Dr. John Polidori’s “The Vampyre” (originally credited to Lord Byron and began from a kernel of an idea from Byron during the famous ghost story competition which Mary Shelley won hands-down)–preceded Dracula by nearly a century. Through the 1800s, vampire stories were en vogue to an extent, and Carmilla (a teen girl vampire!) added some of what looked like originality to me in Stoker’s version (including the “sexiness”). Then along came Dracula, which whether totally original or not, is the big show when it comes to vampire stories. From there, there is like everything.

So Dracula was slow. There were way too many words, way too much conversation, and suspense just stretched on and on and on until I almost didn’t even care anymore. I wonder what vampire fans think of this old book when they read it, nowadays. Reviews remain quite high, though people do complain about the same things I did, now and again. Mostly they complain about the pacing. There are abridged versions available, which would help with that and also with cutting down on the repetitiveness. But even an abridged version can’t do away with the insanely stupid decisions that are made on a regular basis by the characters, decisions made with very strange reasons, and decisions made ignoring the reality of the day before (like classic horror-movie let’s go hide in the basement or split up kind of decisions).

In the end, I had come to hate most of the characters, which may have been in part due to the tedium of the writing and in part due to their Victorian stuffiness. These characters felt horrible in a way Austen’s or Dickens’ characters never do. They are insufferable. Yet I wanted to know what happened (and was surprised, because I wouldn’t have guessed that based on what I’ve seen of the modern Dracula traditions, though it sorta sounds like the ending was not what Stoker had originally wrote and changed it Little Shop of Horrors-style (director’s cut of that being a far better story)). I mean, there’s no love lost between me and vampire stories, as it is, but I do like a lot of the Victorian classics and fair amount of the Gothic ones. I will definitely not be re-reading Dracula and I can’t say I really recommend it unless you are into vampires and are curious about the origin of Dracula, Van Helsing, Mina, Renfield, Jonathan Harker, etc. Or are reading your way through either vampire classics or horror classics. In that case, I would probably point you to an abridged edition. Unless you are hard core…

“…and now is the chance that we may live and learn” (ch21).

“I suppose that nature works on such a hopeful basis that we believe against ourselves that things will be as they ought to be, not as we should know that they will be” (ch25).

Which I will not be watching, for blood and vampire reasons. I can handle Hotel Transylvania, which I like.

Dracula (1931, with Bela Lugosi)Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1992, updated by Francis Ford Coppola)Nosferatu (1922, super old and supposedly terrifying)Shadow of the Vampire (2000, mockumentary about making of Dracula movie gone wrong)Dracula (2020, mellower and more classical)Dracula (1979, cinematic?)Dracula: Prince of Darkness (1966, continuing a series with a Dracula reincarnation)Nosferatu: Phantom of the Night (1979, Werner Herzog)Renfield (2023, comedy horror with Nicholas Cage)The Last Voyage of the Demeter is out at the theaters, right now.Van Helsing, (2016-2021 TV series based on one character)

Vampire classics and the best of modern books.

“The Vampyre,” John PolidoriThe Dead Woman in Love, Theophile GautierJames Malcolm Rymer’s Varney the VampyreDracula, Bram StokerCarmilla, Joseph Sheridan le FanuI Am Legend, Richard MathesonSalem’s Lot, Stephen KingInterview with the Vampire, Anne RiceThe Vampire Huntress, L. A. BanksFevre Dream, George R. R. MartinTwilight saga, Stephenie MeyersThe Vampire Diaries series, L. J. SmithAnno Dracula, Kim NewmanFledgling, Octavia ButlerNOS4A2, Joe HillCertain Dark Things, Silvia Moreno-GarciaThe Deathless Girls, Kiran Millwood Hargrave

If you like easy, breezy reading in a specific genre that includes monster mash-ups and mysteries, then look no further than Christian Klaver and his The Classified Dossier series. Filled with characters from Victorian, gothic literature/classic horror stories, the novel is both a throw-back to old-style mysteries and a very modern style of storytelling that involves fast-paced plot, simple and yet enjoyable characters, and cultural and literary references galore. Klaver doesn’t exactly nail the originals, but that is part of the point as he tells the stories from the monsters’ perspectives and—since theirs is the truth—brings Sherlock in to exact justice where only myth has reigned for so long.

In Volume 2: Sherlock Holmes & Mr. Hyde, Watson tells us about Sherlock’s most recent case from the latter part of his career when the classified X-files started taking over his work and life. When a man shows up in Holmes’ and Watson’s sitting room the morning after Jack the Ripper seems to have reappeared, it’s him the police are looking for. But he has something to show Sherlock that will bring him to his defense and further challenge Sherlock’s view of the world and rock his logical foundation. Not that Volume I: Sherlock Holmes & Dracula didn’t already do enough of that. And could this finally be the moment Sherlock finally apprehends Jack the Ripper?

I keep approaching these ARCs with trepidation, because I want to love all of them and give them each a rave review. (Disclosure: I was given a free copy of this book for an honest review.) But I am honest, sometimes to a fault. I suppose I can focus on the positives, instead of ripping books a new one (like the Land of Stories series, which, not by coincidence, is one of my most-read reviews). Not that this book needs my protection, so much. I guess that in some ways Sherlock & Hyde isn’t what I would call my cup of tea, being as it lacks word-smithing or literary acrobatics. Poetry. And sometimes I found my ADHD buzzing as I read because the language wasn’t that kind of smooth that draws me in and helps me stay focused. But there was nothing wrong with the language, and I feel like readers who are looking for what this book is offering will be satisfied and even want to read the other books in the series. Including the new one that’s out next year.

The Classified Dossier series, so far:

Sherlock Holmes & Count DraculaSherlock Holmes & Mr. HydeSherlock Holmes & Dorian Gray (March, 2024)

The truth is, many—most?—readers don’t mind a little chunky writing nor a rewriting of the classics. So while I was busy getting distracted, most people will enjoy a fun ride full of digestible tropes. Also, I found the characters to be endearing, even with—or perhaps for—their foibles. It’s easy reading, with easy-to-follow language, plot, character arches, intrigue. And I don’t think it matters one whit to most people that many of these situations or conversations wouldn’t have happened in honest-to-goodness Victorian times. Nor that the real grit was sanded off of the classic characters, most notably Sherlock Holmes. In Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s writing, Sherlock is actually problematic at times. In Klaver’s, Sherlock is more of a twinkle in his own eye and certainly isn’t as rigorous, logically. But does that matter? I mean, without giving too much away by telling you exactly who shows up in volume two, throw Sherlock, Watson, Dr. Jekyll, Mr. Hyde, and a half-dozen other Victorian horror characters into one Jack the Ripper mystery complete with scientific magic, a weeklong sleepover, and The Da Vinci Code-level secret society dealings, and you have a set-up that will appeal to a lot of people. Especially at Halloween-time. A fall break read.

Here’s something that would be worth knowing before reading this book: the classic books like Dracula, Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, “The Call of Cthulhu,” The Invisible Man (Wells), The Picture of Dorian Gray, Frankenstein (I can only assume, eventually… The Turn of the Screw? The Phantom of the Opera?) etc. are a part of this Classified Dossier universe. In this world, the books have been written and people have read them but don’t realize that the stories were actually biographies, biographies where the biographers got it all wrong. Not only are the monsters involved real, but they have been, in most cases, slandered and given alternate endings in the books by Stoker, Stevenson, Wells, etc. Though frequently even these stories were told more by their narrator, so Van Helsing and Jonathan Harker had a vested interest in skewing the story of Count Dracula in their favor and they, too, are part of this Classified Dossier universe (though authors aren’t more than referenced). I happened to be reading Dracula at the same time, and for a while I thought I had ruined some plot points for myself, but it turns out that Klaver takes many liberties with the original stories (and perhaps borrows from tradition) and justifies it with the set-up of the universe.

The other thing you might want to know: it’s a monster mash-up. Which yes, I said. But wasn’t super evident to me on reading the cover copy. I thought it was just going to be a typical Sherlock Holmes case (which is the packaging of it, yes) that involved Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. But it is much more of a new universe where all these characters interact and their story is told through a Doyle-style, Watson article.  Which means, among other things, that if you are well-versed in the classic monsters and Victorian/Gothic/early twenty-first century horror, you will cotton on to things much more quickly and probably enjoy it all much more. I purposely read Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde before I read Sherlock & Hyde, though watching the movies or being tuned into this culture might give you just as much of a leg-up. I was a little lost on the Cthulhu stuff, but then not; you wouldn’t have to read or watch any of it to understand what is going on, just to be on the inside of the references. You also don’t have to have read the first book in the series to read the second.

At the end of the day, Sherlock Holmes & Mr. Hyde is a quick-paced novel, full of twists and even some actually good characters, but very light-handed/hearted and not in line with the original work (and definitely works, but we established this is on purpose). Most people will breeze through it, they just need to have a small tolerance for horror and a love of the Gothic, perhaps a fantasy of living in Victorian London and meeting all their favorite (or feared) characters of the era. Like I said, a fall break read.

Image from Amazon.com

Ready Player One by Ernest Cline arced brilliantly over the book world when it was published in 2010, not long after Cline’s first screenplay, Fanboys, went to screen. Ready Player One was full of fresh and exciting concepts, was as close to home as sci-fi gets, and was saturated with geeky references to 1980s pop culture and video game history. People went wild for it, for a hot minute, before some of them started to question Cline’s use of the 80s as a sort of high point of culture and patronization (I don’t really see it this way—it’s fantastical in concept, lighten up peeps) and accused Cline of talking way too much to his own self. Me, I got bored. Speculative fiction should keep most of the world-building in the background, so to speak, and Cline is proud of every word that he spends telling us about some pop culture factoid or about the components of his futuristic gamer rig. In the end, this yammering on about the world detracted from both the story (especially pace) and the development of the characters (the main one whom we have to hate after awhile because of all the obsessiveness and how much time we spend with just him in his head).

In a galaxy not so far away—in Ohio in 2045, in fact—a boy is growing up in the dangerous, poverty-riddled Stacks with his abusive aunt. His school—his entire life, in fact—is virtual and takes place in the worldwide, VR OASIS which is the only place to be for a humanity thrown into chaos and suffering. For five years, the isolated Wade has been trying to find the Easter egg that was hidden by the OASIS’s creator and released upon his death with the promise that the entire OASIS would be inherited by the winner of the contest. Wade is smart and is very knowledgeable about the creator’s life in the 80s and work as a game innovator, but Wade’s not quite ready for the day he stumbles upon the first clue and sets the world on fire with the hunt, especially now that the dominating IOI corporation has its sights trained on him. In a place where you don’t truly know your friends, where secrets are currency, where everyone is willing to cheat, where Wade’s only chance at love and life are online, will he even survive his attempt to box IOI out of world domination? Can he possibly win it all?

Have you seen the movie? You might already know about this book even if you haven’t read it, because the movie was pretty popular, too. There are some really major plot differences, but over all you get the idea if you remember the movie or watch the trailer. The book is much deeper into the 80s pop culture thing, but the premise is the same. My husband read the book before I did. I had it sitting on the shelf because I am currently revising a fantasy novel with a character who is into video gaming and so it plays a role in the story. I am not a gamer, myself, though I live with two. I thought Ready Player One would educate me a little. Well, Kevin really liked the book. And since he had just read it, I decided it was time for me to read it, now, too.

I was pretty starry-eyed at the beginning. Not only had Kevin liked it and I liked the premise of the book, but it does feel pretty fresh and exciting from page one. But let me tell you folks, I really struggled reading through the middle of this book. It was long, and it was filled not with plot or character development, but world-building details that should have stayed in the story bible file. For reals. I have already said this in the review synopsis, but I was overwhelmed by pages and pages of details about Pac Man game cabinets and artifact capabilities and every nuance and line of some Monty Python movie. Funnily enough, I love the eighties and I should have been the first person to enjoy all the allusions here while learning more about the video game side. But I did not ask to read reference material. I asked to read a story. Thankfully, we do return to a faster pace and the actual plot as the story goes on, but by then I was annoyed with the book and really didn’t like Wade—who is kind of the only actual character in the book.

Yeah, I’m givin’ Wade (or, as his gamer name, Parzival) a big thumbs down. In the beginning, he’s set up to be pity-worthy, which is a good, yet also brilliant. Classic. And he’s resilient. We’re all set. But the more time the reader spends with Wade, the more it’s clear that there is nothing underneath the intelligence, knowledge, and grinding intention to keep moving toward a goal. His heart is missing. Giving him a nice-old-lady neighbor who he kinda liked and mentions two or three times in the story does not give this character a relatable heart. He’s consumed by the OASIS and the competition and is completely incapable of normal relationships and even a healthy view of himself and life. I don’t blame him: his world made him. But I don’t like him, and I’m really only pulling for him because I don’t want the worse guy to win and I’m also concerned there might be some real humans behind some of his online “friends.” But I don’t really know. Because one of things this book does right is to keep us guessing. Not about the ultimate outcome, exactly, but about the identities of the players in the OASIS, including those Parzival is “closest” to. I kept waffling back and forth about who I thought they might be, which is a nice trick since on the internet we don’t know who we are dealing with, even if we’ve spent plenty of online time with them. But with both the good and the bad, I can’t really believe this isn’t going to end in tragedy (the moral lessons of Wade’s lifestyle and living on the internet are not really learned, btw).

And one other thing that really slowed me down for the bulky middle of the book: there is simply not enough time in a life nor enough memory in a brain to do and hold what this kid is supposed to have done and kept. He’d have to be a crazy savant to remember half the stuff he does, but that aside (because we can imagine it), if he said he watched an entire series of TV shows seventeen times one more time, I was going to throw the book across the room. I’m a modern person, yo. I know what it’s like to try to fit in too much to life and to want to see all the movies, shows, and read the books that are out there calling to me. I don’t care if Wade spent every waking hour doing these things, there is just not enough time in five years (plus, later) to do a small fraction of what Wade claims to have done. Author error. While Cline was so busy creating this super neat concept and believable, future world, perhaps he should have invested in an alternative way for poor Wade to consume information at an increased rate, or something. Because I am not buying it, Cline. You lost me. And since this is sci-fi, it takes quite a lot to lose me.

Though it may not sound like it, I didn’t hate this novel, not at all. I really enjoyed parts of it and liked it overall, but there were some really big problems for me that not only weighed down the center but then removed me from my investment in the conclusion. Most people still rate this sucker high, and I can understand why. It’s pretty impressive. And we want to like it. And there’s good in it as a compelling, sci-fi story with some neat bells and whistles, apparently really relatable to Gen-X geeks most of all. But then you have those one-star reviewers who just plow on in with their truth. If you are more likely to remain starry-eyed and buy the story/believe in Wade as a lovely human despite being annoyed with the book and dubious about his sense of right and wrong, then you probably will. If you are going to roll around in the gaming and 80s references without feeling like you’ve lost precious minutes of real life that you can never get back, then you will surely rate this book top-notch. It’s a sort of modern classic and it is worth a read. Unless you are the lone one-star guy calling into the void. Then it’s totally not.

Image from IMDB.com

I thought I had seen the movie (Steven Spielberg, 2018) before, but I’m wondering if I watched it in the background while I was making dinner or something and my son was watching it? I don’t know. I sorta recognized it, but definitely felt like I’d never seen most of it. It could have just been unmemorable, which I think is the bottom line for this movie, yet I couldn’t really tell you why. It seems like people would have liked it and the premise is still good. (The ratings are good too, actually.) The plot is changed quite a bit, but I honestly think for the better (at least for translation). The whole middle of the book is cut out and the quest had to be simplified, as well, for time, but they ended up making Wade a much more appealing kid and giving him more time with his buddies. Definitely a lot of the eighties references—the sheer obsession—is missing, but again that might be okay. It feels more futuristic than looking back. And, perhaps for trademark issues?, they went with different references, including a whole scene that takes place in The Shining. I was cool about all these changes, but the one thing that really freaked me out while watching was how the players transitioned from real life to the game and how many times the players were seen moving in real life in the same way/space as in the game! This doesn’t make any flipping sense. The OASIS does not correspond to the spaces of Ohio or whatever, so you wouldn’t, for example, walk up to the door of your OASIS car by heading to your real work console. You’d walk up to it once in your console. This kind of thing happened over and over and while I understand the visual appeal of this, it was just stupid. Also, the moral of the story was turned on its head, which felt bizarre to me. (Instead of learning to work together to beat the bad guy despite very real issues with trust and isolation, working together is a given from early on.) And it bothers many people that the obsession with 80s, pop culture is replaced by a date that didn’t go so well for ol’ OASIS creator (which, personally, I saw as more of a metaphor). Other than those stupidities, though, I thought it was a decent movie with amazing visual effects that was done and over in less than two hours. (And yes, like the book, it’s confused about its audience, but with the 80s references and teen characters, it was always bound to be.)