Book Review: Tooth and Claw by Craig Johnson

Posted on December 21, 2024 by Bev Vincent

The weather has not always been kind to Sheriff Walt Longmire. His home turf of Absaroka County, Wyoming has brutal winters, and he’s been stranded in the desert for days on end as well. Walt has also faced some human monsters in the past, but nothing compares to the beast in Tooth and Claw, a short Longmire novel.

The novel is framed as a flashback story Henry tells former sheriff Lucian Connally while he and Walt join Lucian for a game of chess and an illicit New Years Eve cookout at the Durant Home for Assisted Living. A chess maneuver known as “the Polar Bear System” inspires Henry to relate an adventure that happened in December 1970, shortly after they returned from Vietnam.

Henry had traveled to the North Slope of Alaska, inside the Arctic Circle, to try to bring Walt to his senses. Walt is working as a security officer on an oil rig, drinking too much and avoiding making important decisions about his future, including what to do about his rocky relationship with a young woman named Martha. Henry joins Walt on an outing to escort a US Geological Survey worker who is taking ice core samples looking for ice worms. They are accompanied by several other men and a sniper who mounts a hastily erected metal tower at each stop to protect the workers from polar bears, a task made all the more difficult by the abbreviated daylight hours and an oncoming storm.

There is a political battle over the region, which is protected against drilling, while the oil company wants to exploit the vast resources under the ice. The teams get split up and a massive polar bear starts stalking the workers. The malformed creature is reputed to be a nanurluk, a legendary bear god. It’s invincible, insatiable and kills for pleasure rather than sustenance.

The storm prevents them from leaving, but they fortuitously encounter another legend: a ghost ship that was abandoned four decades earlier. It’s the only place for them to weather the frigid temperatures and extreme conditions, but they’re not the only ones who seek refuge there on the longest night of the year.

The sense of cold and dread is pervasive in this novella. Although survival is the dominant theme of the tale, it’s not without a crime aspect. The pacing is relentless and the adversary is one that Walt and Henry can’t negotiate with. They’re in its territory—it knows all the secret routes and their weapons are mostly ineffective against a creature that stands up to twelve feet tall.

Of course, since the tale is told in flashback, readers know that at least Henry and Walt will survive, but it still makes for a harrowing and literally chilling adventure.

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This is going to take a while

Posted on November 17, 2024 by Bev Vincent

I joined Twitter 15 years ago, about three years after the “microblogging” platform came into existence. In that time, I have tweeted (or retweeted) 326,000 times, liked nearly 300,000 posts, blocked 6700 accounts and muted 600 other. I acquired over 10,000 followers, making it my most successful social media platform by far. Yesterday, I downloaded all of my data from the site (31 MB, including message conversations) and today I started the process of deleting everything. DeleteTweets has been running for well over an hour and it’s only removed 3000* tweets, so, this is going to take a while.

My new primary social is BlueSky, where I’m @bevvincent.bsky.social. I joined that site when it was still invitation-only, but in the past week or so the site has exploded, adding a million new users a day, and my followers list is getting up there. Still only a tenth of my Twitter following, but it’s a work in progress. I’m also on Threads as bev.vincent, but I haven’t figured out how to make that site work yet. If anyone has a newbie orientation video or site, that would be greatly appreciated.

Today it’s raining, and I’m feeling quite smug about it. Why? Because I wanted to do some yard work this weekend in preparation for fall (mulch the leaves on the lawn, for example), and I actually did it yesterday, whereas today it would have been impossible. So, yay me for getting off my ass and getting it done.

Last Friday, I submitted a short story that I’ve been working on for a few weeks, off an on. My ability to focus on writing took a serious hit during late October/early November, and I made several false starts on this story. I knew what it was about, generally, but I didn’t know how to dig it up. I hand-wrote at least three different multi-page sections that I abandoned before finding my way in. Ultimately, I was able to use several pieces of the early efforts, so all was not lost, and I was quite pleased by how it turned out. However, it was a crime story without an identifiable crime. Something nefarious definitely happened, and two characters knew exactly what that was, but the detective didn’t, nor would readers, which the editor didn’t think would work in the anthology. The editor gave me the chance to take another stab at it, but I declined.

Twenty years ago, I would probably have done it, so eager was I to get stories out there. However, in this case, having finally captured the story the way I felt it had to be told, it seemed that I would be untrue to the story to change it in that way. The editor understood when I decided to withdraw, and encouraged me to submit to future anthologies, so all was not lost. And I still have story. Now I just have to figure out what to do with it.

More and more people are learning about the forthcoming anthology (August 2025) called The End of the World as We Know It: New Tales of Stephen King’s The Stand, which involves a few dozen writers contributing stories set in the universe of The Stand. My story is called “Lockdown,” part of the section that takes place during the events of the novel. Some stories are set after the book ends (some long after!). It can’t wait to read everyone else’s contributions.

I made one of my rare trips into Houston last month to meet up with Richard Chizmar and his wife at Under the Volcano before his signing at Murder by the Book, where he was paired with Johnny Compton. The Chizmars and a couple they knew from the area and I also went out to dinner afterward, which was nice. The couple live in the same community I do, and she teaches at the same school my daughter attended back in the 90s—small world. It was nice to see Rich—we have an ongoing dialog by text, but we only get together in person on rare occasions.

I picked up a few books while at the bookstore, including Compton’s Devil’s Kill Devils, which I haven’t started yet, but seems like good fun. I also got Midnight and Blue by Ian Rankin and Death at the Sign of the Rook by Kate Atkinson, both of which I’m currently reading, the latter to my wife. We just finished The Great Hippopotamus Hotel by Alexander McCall Smith (the latest in the No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency series). I also read a galley of The Folly by Gemma Amor and read most of The Waiting by Michael Connelly, while waiting, ironically, for the event I participated in at the River Oaks Theater last month with Daniel Kraus, where we chatted before watching Creepshow. The latter two books are reviewed at the respective hyperlinks.

After watching the documentary Music by John Williams on Disney+, I remembered that I’d never seen E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial. Ever. When it came out, I was an undergrad at Dalhousie and it only played at a theater that was somewhat difficult to get to if you didn’t have a car, even though Halifax had a very good bus system. For some reason, I never got around to watching it subsequently, although I knew the story and have seen countless snippets. I may even have read the novelization. Anyway, we rectified that oversight finally, watching the film on Amazon. It holds up quite well, but seeing those young, young actors…wow! We also watched My Old Ass on Amazon, starring Aubrey Plaza. Terrible name for a movie, but it’s really quite charming. It’s about an 18-year-old girl on the verge of leaving home (a cranberry farm) to go to university in Toronto. High on mushrooms, she encounters her 39-year-old self (Plaza) and they begin a weird kind of dialog over the course of the next several days or weeks. We liked it a lot.

Last night, we watched the final episode of Season 2 of The Diplomat, and all I could say was “holy fuck” after the final twist. I knew something big was coming, but I had no idea what to expect, and I would never ever have guessed that. Highly recommended. I also watched Teacup (Peacock), which is based on the Robert McCammon novel Stinger. It’s a pretty good sci-fi horror series, with some decent shocks and scares, but I was hoping for a better ending rather than a setup for a second season. It’s hard to say that I enjoyed Disclaimer (Apple TV+) because it’s a difficult, unsettling story. Also, it’s told out of sequence, so it takes a while to piece together what’s happening when, and a lot of the story is based on a book written by a character who wasn’t present when the focal incident happened, and wasn’t able to talk to anyone who was there, so the viewer has to separate fact from fiction. It’s Cate Blanchet and Sacha Baron Cohen (who plays her hangdog husband) with Kevin Kline, who is the “villain” of the piece. It’s definitely worth watching, but not if you’re feeling at all depressed—which a lot of us are these days, I fear. A good antidote to it is Season 2 of Shrinking, which is delightful and uplifting even when dealing with some harsh truths. Seeing Harrison Ford do full-on comedy is worth the admission ticket by itself.

*update — in the time it’s taken me to write this, DeleteTweets has deleted another 800 posts. This is definitely going to take a while.

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Book review: The Folly by Gemma Amor

Posted on October 26, 2024 by Bev Vincent

The inciting incident is reminiscent of the Michael Peterson case popularized on the Netflix series The Staircase. A woman falls to her death in the family home when the only other person present was her husband. Was she pushed or was it an accident? A jury convicted Owen of murder. His lone supporter is his daughter, Morgan, who has campaigned relentlessly for his release. Finally, the day comes when she picks him up from prison after he served six years of a fifteen year sentence, exonerated of the crime after an appeal and a second trial.

Morgan, now forty-three, knows that popular opinion remains against her father, and she’s broke, so she sells the family home and finds a position for Owen as caretaker of a multistory tower standing at the edge of a cliff overlooking the Atlantic in Cornwall. The house where her mother died has too much history for them to stay there any longer but their new home has its own baggage: The Folly (a characteristically British term for a building that has little or no practical purpose) has a reputation for people—including a famous writer—either falling or jumping to their deaths.

In the Folly, they will be mostly away from prying, suspicious eyes. Morgan doesn’t mind the isolated location—the entire country has been in lockdown for the past couple of years due to the pandemic, following distancing regulations that are even more drastic than those in America. Many businesses have shuttered and the familiar pub culture has vanished. The man who hires her father to tend to the Folly—the job consists mostly of general upkeep and chasing off death tourists (as the trespassers are called)—arranges for regular food deliveries, so the duo doesn’t need to leave the premises.

It doesn’t help, though, that the Folly’s central feature is a spiral staircase, a constant reminder of the way Morgan’s mother died. Morgan has steadfastly believed in her father’s innocence; however, now that they are forced to live together in close confines, cracks form in their relationship. Complicating matters is the appearance of a mysterious stranger who seems to be channeling her mother’s spirit, provoking her to ask her father difficult questions. Owen is so uncomfortable in this post-pandemic world that he floats the idea of committing another crime so he will be incarcerated again.

This is a brooding, atmospheric and claustrophobic novella, essentially a two-hander with an interloper who threatens to throw their precarious relationship off balance. Morgan’s struggle with the past and the new present is the book’s focus, which Amor handles deftly. As so many other Gothic stories have demonstrated, isolation is not without peril. Long-held secrets have a way of bubbling to the surface when people are trapped in moody, dark places.

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Book review: The Waiting by Michael Connelly

Posted on October 26, 2024 by Bev Vincent

For most detectives, losing their gun, badge and ID would be humiliating, but for Renée Ballard, it could be a career-ending incident. She’s had enough run-ins with powerful people in the LAPD for it to be grounds for dismissal. So, instead of reporting the loss, she sets about attempting to retrieve the items by herself. She soon discovers that the theft, which occurs while she was surfing, is tied to a rash of thefts occurring to other surfers, who leave valuables in their vehicles while catching waves.

Ballard is working for the Open-Unsolved Unit, formerly led by retired detective Harry Bosch, who is undergoing cancer treatments. Her staff consists of volunteers, including retired cops and other specialists who concentrate on cold cases where it is possible that the culprit is still alive. Often, DNA evidence points to new suspects either directly, through a database match, or to a family of potential culprits through genealogy databases.

The hot case in The Waiting—the book’s title is inspired by a Tom Petty song and relates to the fact that investigators often have to wait for forensics results to proceed—involves a series of rapes that ended with a murder. A genetic match leads to a potential suspect with political implications, which means the squad has to proceed cautiously. At the same time, Maddie Bosch, the squad’s newest volunteer, thinks she’s cracked a legendary Los Angeles cold case. Solving this one would be a boost to everyone’s career, but there are political factions involved here, too, and Ballard isn’t the kind of person who treads lightly through these complications.

Tracking down her stolen items leads Ballard from one criminal to another and another. She discovers someone is planning a terrorist plot, which means the FBI gets involved, but because of her precarious situation, she also brings in Harry Bosch to cover her back when dealing with these dangerous individuals. Adding to her emotional load is the fact that her mother is missing, a possible victim of the recent fires in Lahaina. Their relationship has been complicated and is one of the main topics of discussion with her therapist.  

As much as it may pain long-time readers to find Bosch in a diminished role, Connelly is doing a fine job of passing the torch. Maddie seems to be following her father’s trajectory in her rookie career, and Ballard is every bit the lone-wolf detective who’s willing to work around the bureaucracy to get the job done, often at the risk of her career. Unlike Bosch, though, she’s willing to dig deep into her psyche to figure out what issues are driving her.

And as far as plotting and storytelling go, The Waiting is rocket-fueled from the first page without letup, and the multiple, unrelated storylines are threaded together into a sophisticated and satisfying tapestry. Bosch may fading into the background, but Connelly is still at the top of his game.

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River Oaks

Posted on October 18, 2024 by Bev Vincent

Thanks to a referral from an online acquaintance, I was asked to moderate a dialog with bestselling author Daniel Kraus at the newly re-opened River Oaks Theater in Houston. His recent novel, Pay the Piper, is a collaboration with the late horror director George A. Romero. Kraus found the half-finished manuscript among the papers in Romero’s archives in Pittsburgh. He had previously completed Romero’s other novel The Living Dead by invitation of the Romero trust, so he was a natural to complete this one, too.

No one knew Pay the Piper existed. It’s something of a departure for Romero in that it features no zombies. Instead, it is set in a small town in the Louisiana bayou where an ancient evil has decided its time for the descendants of pirates and slave traders to pay the ultimate price for the sins of their ancestors while someone else is intent on buying up all the properties. The novel has a touch of Stephen King’s It, a soupçon of Bradbury by way of a carnival, more than a dash of Lovecraft, and so much more.

I was thrilled by the invitation, especially since the featured film to follow our palaver was Creepshow, which was the first movie I ever rented on VHS after I got a VCR in 1984. (I like to say that the front-loading Panasonic—which weighs a ton, has thirteen push-button channel selectors, each with its own fine-tuning button, and a “remote” that is only somewhat remote in that it is attached by a cable—still works while several of its replacements have come and gone over the years. I never got to see Creepshow on the big screen when it first came out, so this was a treat.

The River Oaks Theater has been around since 1939. It is a historic landmark and a throwback to vintage cinemas, with curtains, a lowering silver screen, golden statuary embedded in the walls, and an overall ambiance that reminds me of the Capitol Theatre in Dalhousie, N.B., where I grew up. Art Deco style, probably. There are three screens—a large one downstairs and two smaller ones upstairs—and the downstairs screen had just been upgraded to a larger one before this event. It’s a dine-in theater, where you can place rather posh food orders from your seat.

Brazos Books co-sponsored the event, providing books for sale and signing at a table in the lobby. When I got there, Artistic Director Rob Saucedo briefed me on the agenda. There was a table on the stage where Kraus and I could sit while we talked. We each also got a can of Pay the Piper branded IPA (from Orono, Maine!) to wet our whistles. Since Kraus was the guest of honor, I did my best to keep the discussion focused on him and his work, as well as his interest in Romero.

I had done my due diligence, researching Kraus enough to be able to ask hopefully intelligent questions (you can see my scribbled notes in the picture above, under the mike), but we also dug into Creepshow since that was what the audience was also there to see.

The movie holds up pretty well for its age—42 years—and it looks great on the big silver screen. The two stories that still work the best, I think, are Something to Tide You Over (despite some laughably ancient A/V tech) and The Crate. The cast is overall excellent, especially pre-Cheers Ted Danson and pre-Airplane Leslie Nielsen. Kraus said he’d heard from Romero that King didn’t like Viveca Lindfors’s performance as Bedelia in Father’s Day but I think it works better than Ed Harris’s odd dance maneuvers! (Whatever happened to Elizabeth Regan, who played Harris’s wife?)

I’d been on the road since before 5 am because I had to take a business trip to Galveston, a 90-mile drive, so I was pretty tired when They’re Creeping Up on You! came on, so I may actually have dozed off a couple of times during that segment. All in all, though, it was a fun evening.

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Review: Caddo Lake

Posted on October 8, 2024 by Bev Vincent

Because I signed up with Max as a reviewer for ‘Salem’s Lot, I was given advanced access to another feature film coming on that streamer on October 10. I’d heard nothing about Caddo Lake prior to that invitation and I decided to go into it cold. Didn’t even watch a trailer. Had no idea what to expect.

There’s this fractured family that lives on the shores of the eponymous lake, which was created by a dam many decades ago as part of the TVA project. The region (near the Texas/Louisiana border) is currently experiencing one of its periodic droughts, so the water level in Caddo Lake is low, making navigation problematic and even dangerous. The cypress trees produce underwater “knees,” which are are now sticking up all over the place (The exteriors were filmed on the real lake), and the dam is crumbling and at risk of collapse.

The story has two central characters: a man named Paris (Dylan O’Brien) who is currently working to remove some of the hazards that have appeared near the water’s surface, and a teenager named Ellie (Eliza Scanlen) who is staying with a friend because she’s always fighting with her caustic mother. Paris’s mother had a seizure that caused their vehicle to go off the bridge into the water, where she died. He’s obsessed about her illness, in part because he may be exhibiting some of the same symptoms. His fixation is his defining—virtually his sole—character trait.

Ellie’s dad disappeared when she was a baby and her mother (Lauren Ambrose) started a new family with Daniel (Eric Lange), who is a patient stepfather. Ellie has an 8-year-old stepsister named Anna, and it is her disappearance that drives much of this movie. When Ellie storms off in another huff after an argument with her mother, her adoring sibling tries to follow, taking a skiff into dangerous waters. A massive, days-long search ensues.

Because I didn’t even watch a trailer, I didn’t know if this was going to be a horror movie, a creature feature (there are strange noises in the muddy, forested swamp around the lake), an eco-horror movie, or a straight-forward domestic/crime drama. The fact that M. Night Shyamalan produced it should have been something of a clue.

HBO doesn’t want reviewers to reveal certain elements of the story, which makes it really hard to talk about the film. I could say “if you liked X” you might like this (and there is an X that I really what to mention, but I can’t!), but that would give it away. The biggest problem is that it takes a long time to get to the point where you go “holy shit!” The first 45 minutes are all setup and there were times when I was ready to tap out. However, after the first time I said “holy shit,” I was all in until the end.

In old text adventure games, there was a point where the computer would inform you: You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all the same, and if you didn’t drop items like breadcrumbs you’d end up hopelessly lost. Caddo Lake is a little like that. You can tie yourself up in knots trying to follow the logic of what’s happening. It does all make sense, trust me, but you might need a pen and paper to figure it out.

There are only the barest bones of characterization in the movie, although the cast is uniformly excellent when given something to chew on. Still, the film feels ponderous at times, confusing at others, and even when it gets really interesting, things come to a grinding halt so some google searches can explain to viewers what is really going on. It’s not a spectacular movie, but it has its rewards if you stick with it.

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It takes a Village (Books)

Posted on September 11, 2024 by Bev Vincent

Last Sunday, I was hosted by Village Books in The Woodlands to celebrate the release of Stephen King: His Life, Work, and Influences (Young Readers’ Edition). It was a beautiful day after a run of really unpleasant weather, so there was a good chance no one would show up because people wanted to take advantage of the nice day. I joked to my wife on the way there that she might end up doubling the audience.

However, we had a good turnout. I rambled on for fifteen or twenty minutes about this, that and the other, and then I took questions, of which there were many. It was a nice discussion.

Afterward I drew the name of the winner of the gift pack (the promised simulated axe from The Shining didn’t arrive because it proved to be too unwieldy to ship so Quarto substituted a FunkoPop Carrie). I felt strangely under pressure to draw a name for someone who was present, but it didn’t turn out that way. Congratulations to the winner! Then I signed books for those in attendance

Later, I signed copies for the mail orders, of which there were many. So many, in fact, that the store ran out of copies and some mail orders will be fulfilled later this week when the new shipment arrives and I can get back there to sign them. By the way, I inquired about orders outside of the US and the shop owner told me she often shipped internationally, so if you’re in Canada or Italy or elsewhere and you’d like a signed book (be prepared for sticker shock on the shipping), contact Village Books via their website and get a quote.

One thing I realized on Sunday morning, several hours before the event, is that the preliminary pages of the book are all printed on black paper. Hmmm, I thought. How on earth am I going to sign on the title page? Then I remembered the Scream Press edition of Skeleton Crew, where King signed in silver. So off I went to the local shop and got a couple of silver Sharpies, which worked a charm.

I also did an interview on Saturday that should be posted in the near future. I’ll be sure to post the link when it’s live. It was predominantly about my short fiction, so being able to talk about my stories was a nice change of pace.

And, finally, we got our flu and new Covid vaccinations on Saturday morning, so my superpowers are back to full strength!

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Publication Day 2024

Posted on September 3, 2024 by Bev Vincent

Today is the day that Stephen King: His Life, Work, and Influences (Young Readers’ Edition) is unleashed upon the world. It’s available in paperback wherever books are sold and there’s also a Kindle edition.

(It’s always nice to get a signal boost from Steve)

As mentioned above, I’ll be appearing at Village Books in The Woodlands on Sunday afternoon, and you can order signed/personalized copies of the book from them for delivery, too. Be sure to specify how you would like the book personalized when you place your order. By ordering online, you’ll also be entered into a drawing for a chance to win a prize bundle consisting of:

  • One of my chapbooks
  • A pair of Pennywise socks
  • A vintage-style keychain to a room at the Overlook Hotel
  • And a foam axe (for getting out of said room)

What are people saying about the book? Very kind things!

An excellent book that will be, in short, catnip for King enthusiasts. — Michael Cart (Booklist)

Fans of Stephen King or those who simply want to learn more about him, will find a treasure chest of information and insights in these pages and that in an engaging way. — Bookworm for Kids

The author does an excellent job not only delving into King’s life but connecting life experiences that sparked ideas and even made their way into various novels over the years. — Sunhusky’s Daisy Reads

I know – without a shadow of a doubt – I would have loved this book even more had I been a young reader looking for a gateway into the world of Stephen King. — David Taylor

Packed full of exclusive photos, the Young Readers’ Edition is the ultimate book for any reader who wants to go past the stories and novels and learn more about Stephen King, which includes King’s latest works up to 2024 and the most recent events in his life, which is a plus for any fan. — Anthony W. Northrup.

This book is a brilliant read and a must-read for Stephen King fans. He is decidedly the king of horror. The book talks about his journey, childhood, struggles, influences, success and works. His story is so well narrated that it’s unputdownable. The pictures are like cherries on the top. — Kruthika P

This may be targeted for younger readers but I think any Stephen King fan would love to add this to their collection. The photos and Stephen King’s history were very enjoyable to read. — Naomi D

If this is not one of the best books written about King and his influences, then I know nothing about storytelling. — Reviewer 1394760

I highly recommend this book for all fans of Stephen King. I also recommend it for readers who think they are not fans of Stephen King as well as they will see that while King is famous for writing horror, there are plenty of non-horror books to choose from; in fact they might serve as the gateway into a new appreciation and love for the Stephen King horror genre! — Christina B

And here’s the publisher’s description:

A thrilling visual companion curated for young adults voraciously reading their way through Stephen King’s colossal corpus of creepy books.

For many young readers, when the last page of Goosebumps is turned, the first chapter of Pet Sematary begins, and a world of terror crafted by Stephen King is revealed. His novels are as fascinating as his life, and in this ultimate illustrated guidebook, young readers explore the cultural phenomenon and legacy of the King of Horror.

From scare-seeking child to impoverished university student to struggling schoolteacher to one of the best-selling—and most recognizable—authors of all time, this engrossing book reveals the evolution and influences of Stephen King’s body of work over his nearly 50-year career, and how the themes of his writing reflect the changing times and events within his life.

With tons of photos, approachable bite-size sections, and gripping details to captivate young readers, the book features:

  • An extensive look into Stephen King’s books, short stories, writings, movies, series, and other adaptations ideal for the young reader to review.
  • Exclusive memorabilia from Stephen King, including personal and professional correspondences, handwritten manuscript pages, book covers, movie stills, and a never-before-seen excerpts from his poems.
  • Personal insights and observations such as real-life settings that inspired King’s writing, the editor who discovered him, his life as a Boston Red Sox fan, and the many awards and honors he has received.
  • Motivating quotes from King from interviews over the decades.

“My childhood was pretty ordinary, except from a very early age I wanted to be scared…there was a radio program at the time called Dimension X, and my mother didn’t want me to listen to that because she felt it was too scary for me, so I would creep out of bed and go to the bedroom door and crack it open. And she loved it, so apparently, I got it from her, but I would listen at the door and then when the program was over, I’d go back to bed and quake.” —Stephen King

Young adults will covet this comprehensive yet accessible reference to their favorite horror author.

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Review: The Bang-Bang Sisters by Rio Youers

Posted on August 10, 2024 by Bev Vincent

They don’t call themselves the Bang-Bang Sisters when they’re playing hard-rocking cover songs in bars and clubs across the country. For those gigs, they operate under a variety of names. They transport their gear in a van: Jessie’s lead guitar, Flo’s bass guitar, and Jessie’s sister Brea’s drums, along with the requisite microphones and amplifiers. 

Their existence as a three-woman band is also a cover, for hidden among their concert gear is an astonishing assortment of weapons: pistols, rifles, blades and martial arts tools that they use for their real paying gig as assassins for hire. As the Bang-Bang Sisters, they’re moral assassins, like Dexter of Billy Summers, the kind that only kill bad people who have escaped arrest or evaded prosecution. They get their assignments from a hacker network on the Dark Web, and they usually investigate their targets fully before executing a precision operation that has them in and out with as little muss and fuss as possible. Of course, everything doesn’t always go as planned and there is the occasional fuss. Or muss.

At the top of their TBA (to-be-assassinated) list is a serial killer who calls himself “the wren,” who operates in Reedsville, Alabama, killing with impunity. Readers are introduced to him in the book’s prologue, an idiosyncratic man who inhales oxygen through a nasal cannula and leaves bodies stuffed with feathers and haikus written in blood at the scenes of his murders. The trio of assassins is just about ready to take a break from the road and call it quits for a while—maybe even permanently—when they get a solid lead to the wren’s location. Their obsession with this killer allows them to be lured into a trap laid by a wealthy and prominent mobster who has a bone to pick with the them. One of their earliest jobs wasn’t a work-for-hire—it was personal, and Chance Kotter wants payback.

The book takes an unexpected change in direction (and it isn’t the only major surprise the novel has on offer) when the trap is sprung. Once Kotter has the women in his grasp, he doesn’t exact immediate revenge. He’s a betting man who likes a good game, so he creates an unthinkable challenge for the “sisters,” forcing them into a deadly contest by kidnapping their loved ones and setting a deadline for them to complete this terrible task. They are released into the wilds of Reedsville and forced to hunt each other until one one is left standing. Kotter invites business colleagues to attend the two-day, winner-take-all contest and place bets on the outcome.

As tight as the three women are, the situation puts them in an untenable situation. The rules are strict and seemingly unbreakable. Their locations are tracked with ankle monitors, as well as by a roving band of observers. They cannot contact the outside world for help, and the head of the local police is Kotter’s sister, so there’s no help there, either. They can’t work together. They can’t even kill themselves to put an end to the terrible contest. If their loved ones are to survive, they must play out the game to the end. And Reedsville, a dismal, impoverished and corrupt town, seems to determined to kill them any way it can. 

However, they’re extremely resourceful, feeling there must be a way to get out of the dilemma and yet willing to do whatever it takes to survive. The book is full of scenes of high-octane action, carefully orchestrated and unflinchingly violent. People are shot, stabbed, pummeled and dispatched in all manner of gory and grueling ways. The sisters—and readers—get little chance to take a breath during the next forty-eight hours of nonstop action.

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Review: Moonbound by Robin Sloan

Posted on August 10, 2024 by Bev Vincent

Eleven thousand years have passed since humanity was conquered by its own creation, a group of Artificial Intelligence entities known as dragons that were sent into the galaxy to see what they could learn, who returned a year later determined to ensure that people never leave the planet again. They took up residence on the moon and masked the sky with dust, obscuring the view from the ground, turning the sky perpetually dark. All subsequent attempts at intergalactic communication are rebuffed, with extreme prejudice.

The residents of a small somewhat feudal (there is tech, though, including at least one airplane) community called Sauvage, ruled by the tyrannical Wizard Malory, believe they are the only people left on the planet. That all changes when a twelve-year-old boy named Ariel, who lives in Castle Sauvage, defies Malory’s plans.

Malory has modeled his realm after the legends of King Arthur. There’s even a sword embedded in a rock that Ariel is supposed to extract, making him the new leader in a battle against the dragons. However, Malory knows of another sword in the hands of Altissa Praxa, a deceased female soldier from the Anth period, entombed for millennia in a crashed escape pod. When he retrieves this weapon, Ariel unknowingly inhales a spec of sentient fungus designed to record human memories. It takes up residence in his psyche. (Those familiar with Sloan’s previous novel, Sourdough, will appreciate this nod to his apparent fascination with animated fungi). This entity becomes the first-person narrator of Moonbound as it gradually integrates with Ariel who, for part of the book, is unaware of its presence.

Malory is infuriated by Ariel’s defiance, so the boy flees Sauvage, venturing beyond the valley into a world completely unknown to him, embarking on a voyage of discovery. As he learns more about the reality of the world, he also grows aware of the intelligence within, which creates Eigengrau, a virtual world where Ariel can retreat to brainstorm with imaginary versions of people he knows. He also learns that a human army has been in suspended animation in outer space since the war with the dragons, awaiting a signal to awaken and rekindle the battle.

The embedded chronicler has much to learn, too. It’s been trapped in the cavern with its previous host for ten thousand years (its last memory is from a millennium in our future) so is unaware of the changes that have happened in the intervening centuries, such as the fact that animals can now talk (but there are no birds) and there aren’t any children…other than Ariel. It can be a little jarring at times to switch from the third-person narrative of Ariel’s adventures—as harrowing and fascinating as in any other quest novel—to the chronicler’s first-person version of events, but it never ceases to be fascinating and compelling.

Eventually, Ariel is joined by Durga, a teenaged female warrior who is the only one who responds to the re-activation signal. She agrees to aide Ariel in his quest if he in turn will join her in battle against the dragons. He is also aided by a network of sentient robots, a group of intelligent beavers, and even a talkative dead person. He travels through marshes, visits other towns, including one where recycled objects are the official currency, and ends up in a place with an organic computer, where debaters have to argue on behalf of the opposing viewpoint, and the answers to Ariel’s most important questions lie at the bottom of a deep pool.

Is Moonbound science fiction, fantasy, adventure, quest or coming of age? Yes to all of these and much more. It is the work of a fertile imagination who is willing to explore the vast possibilities contained in this world and beyond.

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