Ray Rexer | Book RayViews

I'd like to preface Ray's first "RayViews" column with a little apology to 'ole Rap, and to you guys and gals reading this. As I've explained earlier, this catalog was delayed due to the growth of the Overlook. Because of this, a few of Ray's "RayViews" might seem out of date. Of course if you haven't read a few of these gems, then this will certainly be a new source of inspiration in deciding that next fiction purchase from the Overlook Connection. At any rate, we should have more up-to-date RayViews in the future, but in the meantime see what Rexer her has to say. The man's a hoot so give him a once-over. Thank y'all! [by Dave Hinchberger]

Book RayViews
by
Ray Rexer

On August 21st, 1997, Willie James Bugfarter was found hanging by a typewriter ribbon from the arches of a downtown Denver McDonald's, a dog-eared copy of Roget's Thesaurus crammed into his gaping mouth. On October 6th, 1989, a rural Chicago mailman opened Theodore Terd's rural Chicago mailbox and found the rural Chicago man squashed inside, fresh stamps stuck to his eyeballs, a mailing label plastered aver his mouth. On February 14th, 1990, Shiela Sue Sacks was found in her fashionable East L.A. home slumped over her brand new Brother WP-85 word processor, thirty-six wickedly sharpened pencils driven into her left ear.

What did these ill-fated folks ail have in common? They were all book-reviewers, that's what. Yup. National health and safety statistics confirm that book-reviewing is the most hazardous job in America today. Hard to believe, isn't it? Well it's true. I think it happened sometime during the Reagan administration. Anyway, graveyards these days are full of the poor suckers, mental institutions just crawl with them, their suicide rate is astounding, their divorce rate depressing.

But don't worry about me. I seemed to have beaten the odds, as far as reviewers go. You just go and enjoy the following reviews and don't even think twice about the great risk and sacrifice it took to bring them to you. I'm okay. Really.

I have to go now. It's Jello time. And today we get to play with crayons. Neat, huh? See you next time.

A plague of disastrous proportions...a handful of hardy survivors...a clash between good and evil. Yes, it's the end of the world as we know it and it all sounds kinda familiar, doesn't it? Yeah it does. But wait! Just hold on a minute, okay? Familiar ain't so bad. At least not in this case, I read Dark Advent simply to satisfy my post-apocalyptic hunger while waiting for the unexpurgated Stand to come out. Not the most noble of reasons, I know, but what can I say? I'm an end-of-the-world novel junkie and I needed a fix. So I picked up this book to tide me over. Lucky me. This book is gooooood!

In Dark Advent you get to meet such classic characters as Peter Solomon, who once gently took a dying man's hand in his own, slowly crushed it until the bones splintered like dry twigs and said to the poor guy, "I don't look that strong, do I?" Solomon is the Randall Flagg of this book, evil in the most creative of ways. Balancing him out is Jason Hart, a man whose name even sounds wholesome. Jason Hart, All-American good-guy, right? The Boy Next Door, right? Sickeningly righteous, right? Well...not quite. Jason is a good-guy, don't get me wrong, but he does have his nasty moments. Real nasty. At one point in the book he uses a wooden cane to pulverize a guy's nose. Cartilage rips, bone cracks and Jason decides that the thing on this poor guy's face will never look remotely like a nose again. Good deal.

Other fine characters around in Dark Advent's 448 pages (check out Pit Bull Pearson, for example, a mountain of a man with a molehill of a brain) and Hodge makes them earn their pay as he enrolls them in a crash course of post-apocalyptic problem solving calculated to prepare them for their final test: the classic clash between and good and evil. Be there.

If you liked The Stand, or Swan Song, or Lucifer's Hammer (whattya mean you never read Lucifer's Hammer? well read it!) then you'll enjoy this baby.

Dark Advent, by Brian Hodge. Read it anytime. It's not just for breakfast, anymore.

In the summer of Chris Anderson's 18th year, the summer after he graduated from high school in southern Illinois, life as he knew it turned into a real maggot sandwich.It happened right after he and two buddies discovered Tri-Lakes, a secluded little spot they claimed as their own private beer drinking, bullshitting stomping grounds. A sequestered place of peace, beauty and...(eerie music here) unadulterated evil!

First Chris has a little run-in with a dead guy walking down the road. Dead men tell no tales, right? Guess again, Pancho. This corpse says plenty. Later, Chris gets into a savage fist fight at Tri-Lakes with a big, dumb hunk of beef from out of town named Wendell (remember the fight scene involving the redneck trucker in SK's Nona? Well, this one's just as vicious and every bit as much fun). After this it's a wicked procession of crushed fingers, immoral assaults, nasty visions and...(eerie music again) death!

For the most part Oasis is written in the first person narrative as seen through the eyes of Chris Anderson, the main character. Hodge pulls this off with elegant simplicity. The prose is neat and clean and rings true for all of the book's 312 pages. "We opened beers and the night was ours," Chris says early on in the book as he and his friends kick back at Tri-Lakes. See? Neat and clean. Oasis draws the reader in subtly, with finesse. Before you know it, you're done.

And the characters are drawn to scale, so to speak. True to form. Real. Each one packs a little life of their own. Chris Anderson, like Jason Hart in Dark Advent, is less than perfect - but that only makes him more than fictional. It makes his real,

What evil lurks at Tri-Lakes? Evil enough to orchestrate a particularly ghastly death called the "Blood Eagle" (see page 193). Now that's an owwie!

Oasis, by Brian Hodge. Soft on the outside, chewy in the middle and all together easy to swallow. Read it.

This is a book with real bite, so to speak. Total entertainment in the form of 399 paperback pages. Authorities in southern California are baffled by a series of particularly nasty deaths (we're talkin' total disarmament here), deaths that occur with, well. cause, others scoff at such juvenile poppycock and author Vance, that sly ole dog, hits us with some pretty heavy 'what if' questions to, ah, chew over.

Like WHAT IF they caught this guy and asked his to prove to everyone that he really was a werewolf? Would he do it and leave the skeptics speechless (and armless and legless)? And WHAT IF the put this guy on display for the media to observe while he proved his point? Would he become a star and do the talk-show circuit, or would he blow his big chance at fame by trying to claw his way to the top? Hmm? And WHAT IF all the people involved get trapped with this guy inside a government building that couldn't be opened for, oh, say 30 days - the cycle of the moon? Now that would be a scream, wouldn't it? You bet! And it is.

The Hide Effect, by Steve Vince. Gory, graphic, gruesome and good! Pick it up, kick back, howl at the moon and have some fun.

A certain "persistent and valued critic" from England called Cormier's Fade "absofrigginlutelybleedinbrilliant." And it is. Cormier has written a compelling book here, the story of a young man named Paul Moreaux who discovers, quite by accident, that he has the ability to "fade," to disappear, to vanish at will. This is an inherited trait, Paul learns, and one that is passed down in his family to just a single individual per generation. A genetic lottery, so to speak, to which Paul holds the winning ticket. What a lucky guy, eh? Well, maybe.

Now what would you do if you were a thirteen-year-old boy and you found you could go anywhere you wanted to without being seen? That's right, Hinchberger, you'd go peeking. And young Paul does just that. And oh, the things he sees! What a great educational tool this ability is! But it doesn't come free, no way, no how, and a part of its cost is the price of young Paul's innocence. There are some things best left unseen.

The book takes quite a turn about halfway through its 293 pages. At this junction you'll meet a descendant of Paul's, an interesting young lady who's been left an interesting little riddle to solve. You'll also be introduced to the heir-apparent to the "fade," Paul's nephew Ozzie, a nasty boy with a nasty past who abuses his ability to fade in a fast and furious manner.

The end of the book reminded me somewhat of SK's Carrie, you know, cataclysmic in an artful sort of way. And King does, as a matter of fact, endorse this book in no uncertain terms right on the front cover, calling it "exciting," and "moving," and "enthralling." It's all of those things, for sure. No question about it.

Uh-oh. Something bad has happened at the Jillson Lab in Blue Harbor, Maine. A breach in the integrity of government project "Christian Charity." Not exactly a repeat of the "Arrowhead Project" disaster that struck this fictionally abused State a while back. But close. No, there's no "mist" to contend with but there is a new kind of rabies on the loose and it's got the residents of this idyllic little town just a hopping mad!

It all began some years before and many miles away in southern Pennsylvania. An unusually rabid fox bites "Little Joe" Flowers at an outing near the town of Upper Black Eddy. The fox is killed but its virus kept alive for questionable purposes and transported to the lab in Maine to be studied by government scientists. The unique aspect of this particular rabies virus is its frightening tendency to send its human hosts into a violent state of gnashing frenzy. It makes them bite. And this causes the disease to be passed rapidly from person to person. No one in Blue Harbor is safe to stay...and no one in Blue Harbor is allowed to leave. The city's been quarantined; the National Guard called in. What will you do, what will you do?

I'll tell you what to do. Get on the horn to Hinchberger and order this book! It's 352 pages of quality suspense.

No less an authority on words and what order they should go in than Stephen King calls this book "Extraordinary ...a high-speed horror bullet." He claims it "riveted" him and that it's of "award caliber." Now, who's gonna argue with Stephen King? No one sane, that's who. And certainly not me. At times while reading this gem, I found myself looking up from the page I was on and saying out loud to absolutely no one, "Man, this is great!" I couldn't help it. I'd look around the empty room, hold the book up and shake my head in wonder at Fahy's astonishing ability to make misery so much fun to read. How does he do it? Damned if I know, but readers everywhere should be thankful he does.

The Lyssa Syndrome, by Christopher Fahy. Less than a penny and a half a page.. Whattavalue! Whattabook!

Did you know that if you rearrange the letters in this word Nightblood you can spell out "0 bold thing?" I don't know what that mean, but I thought you'd like you know.

Chris Martindale sent me this book - his first mass-market publication - in an exercise of what he unabashedly called "bald-faced self-promotion." He said he just wanted to let people know that this book is out on the market and he thought a review (whether good or bad) might help accomplish this goal. And I agree with Chris. People should know about this book.

Yes, Nightblood IS a vampire book and yes, there are a lot of vampire books out there. There aren't many this good, however. This book combines elements of They Thirst and Salem's Lot with a smattering of Wolf's Hour and a dash or two of an American Werewolf in London. Honest. There's something here for everybody. I got hooked after reading just the first six pages, the introduction/prologue.

The main man in Nightblood is a Vietnam vet named Chris Stiles. Stiles is a man with a mission, a soldier, a hunter of bad bad things. He has come to Isherwood, Indiana, to kick some undead ass. It is the latest in a series of such missions for him, missions he is directed to by his brother Alex, who acts as an advance scout of sorts, locating the territories in need of Stiles' Rambo-ish talents. Stiles and his brother have a very unique working relationship - something you'll discover within the first few pages of the book.

And Stiles is good at what he does. He knows that in his "business" a slip up could mean death. Or worse. He's a well conditioned fighter (with a penchant for Harlequin romances, by the way). A man dedicated to his cause. A man who really takes an ungodly beating in this book as Isherwood, Indiana, comes alive with the dead.

Nightblood is rife with tense moments and scary scenes. Robert Bloch said it "tingled" his spine and I'm -guessing Block's spine ain't that easy to tingle. But the book's not without a certain amount humor. The main vampire gets quite a kick out of watching a rerun of Gomer Pile on TV one night. "This could get to be a
habit," he says to Stiles, cocking a thumb at the set. Later, another vampire tries to make himself a bit more presentable by washing his face, combing the hair back on his loose scalp and pushing his jagged ribs back into place. Seems even the undead have a certain amount of vanity.

Early on in the book Stiles meets a woman who later becomes his love interest and he tells her he's a horror writer, a popular cover with him during his missions. "Is there any money in that scary stuff?" she asks. He laughs and replies, "I haven't seen any of it. But you never know. Maybe there's a best seller somewhere down the road."

Well maybe there is. And if Chris Martindale keeps on writing, just maybe we'll all find out.

Gauntlet bills itself as a magazine intent on "exploring the limits of free expression." And that it does. Editor Barry Hoffman has collected an impressive cast of contributors who invite the reader on a 112 page exploration through the darkest jungles of censorship. Ray Bradbury, Ray Garton, Rex Miller, Dan Simmons, George Carlin, Issac Asimov, Harlan Ellison, Douglas Winter and Clay Wilson are along the more than thirty authors and artists appearing in this packed premier issue of Gauntlet.

The first thing you'll notice upon picking up a copy of this magazine is the eye-catching cover art by Allen Koszowski. A sharped-nailed hand, complete with grotesquely burrowing worms, is seen reaching for a copy of Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451. Suitable for framing, this cover, and it kinds sets the tone for the rest of the magazine. Inside you'll find more than fifty other illustrations, including a disturbing - yet interesting - look at censored artist Robert Williams' work and a trio of original illustrations done especially for Gauntlet's reprint of the suppressed chapter from Ray Garton's novel, Crucifax.

The heart of the magazine, however, is its nice blend of interesting articles and entertaining fiction. Keep in mind that these items all deal with censorship; that is, after all, Gauntlet's reason for being. Like Skipp & Spector's Book of the Dead, Gauntlet is thematic. You learned of zombies from Skipp & Specter, you'll learn of censorship from Hoffman.

Some personal favs? I enjoyed Nackles a lot. Nackles is a censored Twilight Zone episode written by Harlan Ellison and reprinted here in its original form. It comes complete with comments from Ellison concerning the woes he went through trying to get this gem of a story aired. I thought Dan Simmons' humorous censorship "test" was great (I failed, by the way) and I also liked Bill Munster's article about the problems he encountered as a teacher trying to use Stephen King books in the classroom. Very interesting stuff. Oh yeah, Steve Tem writes a thought provoking piece and..

Well there's lots more. Lots. Pick up Gauntlet and see for yourself. But prepare to be entertained.. and annoyed and offended. And if you find something within its pages that you just can't handle, something that really strikes a nerve or triggers a decency synapse, well, just shut your eyes or shut the book. Or better yet, write to Barry and tell him about it. I'm sure he'd be interested. I know he's already received one negative response calling Gauntlet "filth." The comment was scribbled on a ripped out page from the magazine and sent along with the magazine's partially burnt cover.