Page to Screen: The Bad Seed

Page to Screen is a series of blog posts where I read a book or story and then watch a movie based on said book or story. It will be intermittent, I’m sure, like most of my “regular” features.

Because I am obsessed with “trade dress” book series, I bought all of the titles in Vintage Books’ Vintage Movie Classics series several years ago, with the intent to read each one and then watch the movie based on the book. I read/watched and reviewed The Bitter Tea of General Yen by Grace Zaring-Stone (movie directed by Frank Capra) and then sort of got distracted by other things. So here, finally, is the second entry in that series (and the third entry in my Page-to-Screen series overall, following Evening Primrose). WARNING: HERE THERE BE SPOILERS (can’t discuss the differences between the book and the movie without spoiling).

BOOK REVIEW

TITLE: The Bad Seed

AUTHOR: William March

205 of pages, Vintage Books, ISBN 9781101872659 (paperback)

DESCRIPTION: (from back cover): There’s something special about eight-year-old Rhoda Penmark. With her carefully plaited hair and her sweet cotton dresses, she’s the very picture of old-fashioned innocence. But when the neighborhood suffers a series of terrible accidents, her mother begins to wonder: Why do bad things seem to happen when little Rhoda is around? Originally published in 1954, William March’s final novel was an instant bestseller and National Book Award finalist before it was adapted for the stage and made into the 1956 film.

MY RATING: 4 out of 5 stars

MY THOUGHTS: William March’s final novel isn’t perfect by any means, and in fact may be a bit problematic as it trades so heavily on stereotypes of women and black characters. But it gave us one of the most chilling, creepiest child villains ever written. Rhoda Penmark is, in my opinion, the gold standard by which all other child villains in horror fiction should be judged. She is truly sociopathic, and none of her evil can be blamed on a supernatural aspect. Blamed on genetics, sure, as March explicates late in the book. But this is pure human evil distilled into an innocent-looking (and usually innocent-acting) eight-year-old.

Of course, if this were just 200+ pages of evil actions by a kid, the book would probably get boring pretty quickly. What makes the book work for me is that we as the reader are never really in Rhoda’s head. We hear her “rationale” (if it can even be called that) for killing her classmate Claude Daigle, and we see the series of interactions with Leroy Jessup that lead to the penultimate scene in the book. Most of what we see is filtered through the eyes of Rhoda’s mother Christine. With her husband away in South America on business and her parents deceased (and her husband’s family emotionally distant), Christine is functioning as a single mother albeit surrounded by older folks who adore Rhoda and want to help. Christine’s character arc – from a mother concerned about her too-perfect daughter’s socialization skills to a mother in denial that her daughter is a murderer to a woman torn between her forgotten past and an uncertain future – is a compelling read. March may handle most of the women in this book as stereotypes, but he gives Christine much more depth. And it is Christine’s research into serial killers (prompted by a dinner party conversation with a friend of a friend) to understand her daughter that leads to the reveal of her repressed memories about her own past. The hints leading up to the reveal are well-placed in dreams and half-asides, but the actual reveal is a bit awkwardly staged, just about the only time in the book where a flashback through Christine’s point-of-view fails to be effective.

As mentioned, the other female characters are barely more than stereotypes: Monica Breedlove is a blowhard who must be the center of attention in all things (starting with her officious gifting to Rhoda of a pendant). Hortense Daigle never really rises above the stereotype of braying alcoholic – I wanted to feel more for the woman whose only son is killed by Rhoda simply for the “crime” of winning an award Rhoda thought she deserved more. Rhoda and Claude’s school is run by a trio of spinsters called the Sisters Fern – and while each is given her own first name and role at the school, I’m hard-pressed now to remember what those names are or what their official jobs were at the school that bears their name. And the male characters fare mostly worse: Christine’s husband is off-screen until the very final pages of the book, Christine’s famous reporter father is only mentioned in flashback, Monica’s brother Emory is a drunken flirt, and Emory’s friend Reginald Trasker is a mere plot device, existing only to provide Christine with the research he’s developed on his favorite subject (in general, serial killers, and in specific, one Bessie Denker). Even Leroy Jessup, Rhoda’s primary foil for much of the book, never really rises to the level of fully realized character. Leroy is the apartment complex handyman and the only other adult who sees through Rhoda’s prim-and-polite exterior, but he’s mostly stereotype: he’s the lazy black working class guy who is horny for women (especially Christine), hates anyone who thinks they are better than him (Monica and Emory) and has a big chip on his shoulder. The scenes between Rhoda and Leroy are tense and build the drama of the book overall (when is little Rhoda going to turn on him?) but Leroy’s inner monologues and home-life scenes read like March is just ticking boxes in writing a “standard Negro character.”

Despite the stereotype-ridden supporting cast, the book is a great read for the characters of Rhoda and Christine, and for an ending that must have shocked readers when the book first came out: the heroine of the story (Christine) attempts a murder-suicide – but only the suicide part is successful. The troubled but basically good mother dies while the evil child survives idea is now a trope of horror movies, but it had to be a surprise at the time. For my money, it’s a perfect ending to the book.

MOVIE REVIEW

TITLE: The Bad Seed

DIRECTOR: Mervyn Leroy

CAST: Nancy Kelly (Christine), Patty McCormack (Rhoda), Evelyn Varden (Monica), Eileen Heckart (Hortense), Henry Jones (Leroy), Paul Fix (Richard Bravo)

2 hours and 9 minutes, black and white, 1956, Warner Brothers

DESCRIPTION: (from IMDb): Christine Penmark seems to have it all: a lovely home, a loving husband, and the most "perfect" daughter in the world. But since childhood, Christine has suffered from the most terrible recurring nightmare. And her "perfect" daughter's accomplishments include lying, theft and possibly much, much worse. Only Christine knows the truth about her daughter and only Christine's father knows the truth about her nightmare.

MY RATING: 4 out of 5 stars

MY THOUGHTS: The journey from novel to movie took a side-step into the world of live theatre, and it’s really the stage play that Mervyn Leroy adapts for this classic film. With a couple of exceptions, he sticks to the Broadway staging, which in places can feel a bit stilted and staged as it forces almost all of the action to take place in Christine and Rhoda Penmark’s living room. There are a few cut-away scenes (to the streets outside the apartment building, the lake where Claude Daigle dies (although we don’t see the death), the apartment’s backyard, and to the hospital) which are very effective when used, but they are few and far between.

The staging being somewhat static, it’s the performances that carry the film. Most of the actors carried over from the Broadway production. Patty McCormack had had plenty of time to hone her performance as Rhoda and it’s pretty much perfect. Her ability to go from innocently polite to cloyingly sweet to angrily psychotic within seconds is impressive. Nancy Kelly is wonderful as Christine, but the character lacks the excellent progression of the novel: Christine looks harried and afraid of her daughter from the very first scene rather than having that fear develop as the story goes on. Still, Kelly is a strong presence on screen and she makes you believe every moment of her performance. Interestingly, Eileen Heckart’s portrayal of Hortense Daigle rises above the base stereotype of the novel. You can hear Hortense’s heartbreak and despondency in every slurred line of dialogue, see it in every misstep and in her slouched posture. Heckart’s performance is one of the standouts of the supporting cast, alongside Henry Jones as Leroy Jessup. The Broadway show (and thus, the movie) changed Leroy from a black man to a white guy. I’m not sure why, but Jones’ performance is pitch perfect. He’s lascivious when leering after Christine, angry when dealing with Monica, and insincerely apologetic to both. But the scenes between Jones and McCormack, especially the one in the backyard arbor, match the tension of the novel. You’re just waiting for Rhoda to crack and when she does Jones plays Leroy’s fear as the very potent thing it is. This is a man who realizes, even more than he does in the novel, that he just brought the full attention of a predator to bear on him, and he has only himself to blame for it.

The change of Leroy from a black character to a white one (leaving the movie with absolutely no people of color, even in background scenes) and setting most of the action in the Penmark living room are not the only difference from book to movie. Some of the other changes are basically inconsequential to the story (instead of being a businessman, Mister Penmark now works for the military and has been called to Washington DC; instead of three Fern Sisters, there is only one), but two are pretty substantial. The first is that Christine’s father, reporter Richard Bravo, is alive and comes for a visit. This was a change made for the stage play, and allows the reveal of Christine’s past to happen via dialogue instead of monologue – which makes it much more effective and gives Nancy Kelly some of her finest moments in the movie, opposite the understated Paul Fix as her father. The love these two share is palpable in every moment of their screen time together, and Fix really drives home how much it hearts Richard to reveal a past to Christine that he hoped she’d never have to be burdened with. I really wish March had given us this in the novel as well.

The other major change is to the ending of the story. The play retained the partially “successful” murder-suicide shock ending, but that wouldn’t fly in Code-era Hollywood. So Christine and Rhoda both survive the murder-suicide – but Rhoda is killed in a cheesily-staged final scene where she makes a midnight, thunderstorm-covered trip back to the lake where she killed Mark and is struck by lightning while standing on the pier. In one respect, it’s nice to see Rhoda get the comeuppance she deserves, but it robs the ending of all the power it has in the book (despite the director’s attempt to draw out the suspense of who lived and died via the scenes in the hospital). It’s the only part of the movie I really didn’t like.

One other weird bit of business. The closing credits are staged as they would be on Broadway, with each actor taking a bow. Nancy Kelly is the last one, and after her bow she looks off-camera and says “and as for you…” and then walks over to the living room sofa, pulls McCormack over her lap and proceeds to jokingly “spank” her, with McCormack laughing the whole while. Almost like the studio felt they needed to give the audience one more reminder that these were just actors in a movie and that McCormack wasn’t really an evil psychotic murderer.

The Bad Seed has been adapted to film twice more, for television. The 1985 version on ABC, which I have vague memories of seeing the commercials for but not of actually watching, started Blair Brown as Christine, Lynn Redgrave as Monica, David Carradine as Leroy, and David Ogden Stiers as Emory, with Carrie Wells as Rachel (Rhoda) and Chad Allen as Mark (Claude) Daigle. I plan to watch it soon and probably write a review. In 2018, Lifetime aired a version with Rob Lowe as the distraught parent and pretty much all of the names changed. This version is apparently not on DVD (I haven’t searched for it on streaming because honestly it sounds pretty bad).

Series Saturday: Universal's Frankenstein movies

This is a series about … well, series. I do so love stories that continue across volumes, in whatever form: linked short stories, novels, novellas, television, movies. I’ve already got a list of series I’ve recently read, re-read, watched, or re-watched that I plan to blog about. I might even, down the line, open myself up to letting other people suggest titles I should read/watch and then comment on.

I’ve been a fan of the original Universal Studios Monsters franchise for as long as I can remember, but it’s been quite a while since I’ve done any kind of intentional rewatch of most of them. This year I thought, being in the midst of a pandemic and all, that maybe I’d have time to revisit most of the rest, via the Legacy Collection DVDs I’ve had for ages. For various reasons, I only got through the Frankenstein movies.

There are eight movies in the original Universal Frankenstein series (or seven, if you’re one of those folks who discounts Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein):

·         Frankenstein (1931)

·         The Bride of Frankenstein (1935)

·         Son of Frankenstein (1939)

·         Ghost of Frankenstein (1942)

·         Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man (1943)

·         House of Frankenstein (1944)

·         House of Dracula (1945)

·         Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein (1948)

The Universal Monsters “universe” was perhaps the earliest cinematic universe in terms of characters overlapping, but the attention to continuity wasn’t like it is today with the Marvel Cinematic Universe and such fare. The Frankenstein movies as a whole hold together better than some of the other sub-franchises in the UMU (I’m looking at you, sequels to Dracula!). Still, there are lots of discrepancies: in Frankenstein, Henry Frankenstein’s tower lab is some distance from Manor Frankenstein and the town it is a part of; in Bride, the tower is a lot closer, and in Son, the tower is right next door to what is now Castle Frankenstein, which overlooks the village. The interior sets of the Manor change quite a bit between Frankenstein and Bride, as well. Sometimes the same character is played by different actors across the franchise, and sometimes the same actors show up as multiple characters. I doubt many audience members at the time cared, as long as they got a good story, but I don’t think it would fly today.

For the most part, we do get solid stories with compelling characters. Although not very similar to the novel on which it is based, Frankenstein gives us Colin Clive’s brilliant performance as the obsessed and conflicted Henry Frankenstein and Boris Karloff’s poignant confused and lost Monster, supported by the always-eerie Dwight Frye as the hunchbacked assistant Fritz and the understated Edward Van Sloan as Doctor Waldman. The only weak point in the main cast, to me, is Mae Clarke as Elizabeth; her performance is a bit too “stagey” as compared to the rest of the cast (and perhaps is the reason the role was recast for Bride?). As unlike the source material as it may be, it’s still a tightly-told and well-acted tale directed by James Whale with great mood and tension throughout.

Karloff and Clive return as the Monster and his creator in The Bride of Frankenstein under Whale’s continued direction, with Elsa Lancaster as both Mary Shelley and the Bride. Valerie Hobson replaces Mae Clarke as Elizabeth. I love this movie almost as much as the original and Son, but man is the tone just all over the place. Whale can’t seem to decide if he’s making a pathos-filled character piece or a slapstick comedy. Una O’Connor’s Minnie (maid to Elizabeth? Housekeeper? I’m still unsure after multiple viewings exactly what her job is) takes up way more screen-time than comic relief should in a film like this, and O’Connor’s shrill over-the-top delivery makes almost every scene she’s in hard to watch. The scene where Doctor Pretorius (Ernest Thesiger) produces his Homunculi also feels out of place, between the bawdy comedy between the Homunculi and the fact that Homunculi are never seen or mentioned again. Karloff is at his best as the Monster here, learning to talk and feel, and Clive matches him turn-for-turn as Henry grows desperate to just be done with creating life and return to his wife. If not for the Una O’Connor scenes and the Homunculi bit, Bride would be pretty perfect and perhaps even better than the original.

Son of Frankenstein, directed by Rowland V. Lee, was Karloff’s last turn as the Monster. Karloff does more acting here with his eyes than most actors do with their whole bodies, but he feels wasted. The Monster’s ability to talk is inexplicably gone. He’s not given much to do other than rampaging. Basil Rathbone takes over the lead spot as Henry’s son Wolf and does a great job as a man conflicted between forging his own path and following in his father’s footsteps. Bela Lugosi is brilliant, and almost unrecognizable, as the hunchback Ygor, stealing every scene he’s in.  Lionel Atwill makes his first appearance in the franchise as the one-armed Col. Krogh (in a scene that gets sent-up expertly by Mel Brooks in Young Frankenstein). There are still some awkward humorous moments, mostly involving Wolf and Elsa (Josephine Hutchinson)’s toddler son Peter (Donnie Dunagan), but they’re not as prevalent or as distracting as the Minnie scenes in Bride. Had the franchise ended as a trilogy, it might rank as one of the best horror trilogies ever.

Ghost of Frankenstein moves the action from the town of Frankenstein to the town of Vasaria (where it will remain for pretty much the rest of the franchise). Lugosi returns as Ygor, Lon Chaney Jr. takes over as the Monster (not much more than a weapon of destruction, although in the early scenes there’s an attempt at emotion as the Monster once again bonds with a little girl and the crowd reacts out of fear for her safety), Sir Cedric Hardwicke plays both Ludwig Frankenstein (younger son of Henry) and Henry’s ghost, Evelyn Ankers appears as Ludwig’s daughter Elsa (not to be confused with Wolf’s wife), and Lionel Atwill plays his second character in the franchise, the not-so-nice Doctor Boehmer. It’s a solid movie, building tension as the various non-Monster leads jockey for whose brain they’re going to transplant into the Monster. There’s even a bit of a return to the Monster as he was in Bride, able to speak towards the end of the movie. But it almost feels like director Erle C. Kenton and the writers are trying too hard to be surprising and sneaky. I still love it, just not as much as the previous three.

Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man puts Lon Chaney Jr. back where he’s best (in hair and fangs), and puts Bela Lugosi in the Monster’s make-up. A sensible move given Ygor’s brain ends up in the Monster at the end of Ghost, except that behind-the-scenes machinations removed any scene where the Monster actually speaks, so Lugosi is as wasted as Karloff felt in Son (perhaps even more so). Elsa Frankenstein is now played by Ilona Massey (with an accent the previous Elsa didn’t have), and dialogue lets us know this is Ludwig’s daughter and not Wolf’s wife. She’s the first Frankenstein featured in the franchise who isn’t a scientist and really has nothing to do with the Monster. Lionel Atwill is back as his third character in the franchise, the Mayor of Vasaria. This is far more of a Wolf Man movie than it is a Frankenstein. Sans dialogue, the Monster is a weapon of mass destruction to be unleashed and defeated.

House of Frankenstein and House of Dracula are “everything and the kitchen sink” approaches to combining several of the Universal Monsters. To this day, I’m not sure why the Mummy and the Invisible Man weren’t invited to the parties. Both movies are pretty disjointed, especially in integrating Dracula into the rest of the action. Concentrating on just the Frankenstein elements: In House of Frankenstein, Glenn Strange takes over as The Monster; Lionel Atwill plays yet another character, Inspector Arnz; there’s a new hunchback played by J. Carrol Naish; and Boris Karloff returns to the franchise as a very different mad scientist, Doctor Neimann. Karloff is brilliant and Naish is excellent, but the Monster himself just lumbers and kills and is “killed.” In House of Dracula, Strange continues as the Monster; Lionel Atwill plays character #5 in the franchise, Police Inspector Holtz; the hunchbacked assistant is a woman (Jane Adams); and the mad scientist is now Doctor Edelmann, played by Onslow Stevens (the closest the Universal Monsters franchise ever really gets to incorporated a version of Doctor Jekyll and Mister Hyde, at least until the Abbott and Costello movies). House of Dracula is again far more of a Wolf Man (and perhaps a Jekyll/Hyde or even Dracula) movie than it is a Frankenstein movie. The Monster is mostly there for mayhem, but at least the Wolf Man gets a happy ending.

There are a lot of people who don’t consider Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein as a valid part of the Frankenstein (or larger Universal Monsters) franchise. I am most emphatically not one of them. While I’m not sure where it should fit in the overall sequence (since I like to think that Larry Talbot gets to keep his Happy Ending from House of Dracula), I think it treats the monsters who appear (Bela Lugosi back as Dracula, Glenn Strange as the Monster, Lon Chaney Jr. as the Wolf Man, Lenore Aubert as the requisite “mad scientist,” and a cameo by Vincent Price as The Invisible Man) with great respect. They’re played as the serious monsters they are, not for laughs. The comedy that comes from Abbott and Costello’s reactions to the Monsters fits much better than that provided by Minnie in Bride or Peter Frankenstein in Son. And Glenn Strange actually gets to speak as the Monster! The only thing that would have made this movie more perfect would have been if Lionel Atwill had still been alive to play one more random police officer or mad scientist. Unfortunately, he’d passed away in 1946. Still, it’s a fitting end-cap to the franchise.

Except…

For my own part, I also include Mel Brooks’ Young Frankenstein as a coda or grace note to the franchise. I included it in this rewatch, even though it’s not in the Legacy DVDs because it was released by a different studio. Brooks and Wilder’s love for the original movies is so evident in every frame of their film. They poke fun at the original movies’ inconsistencies and quirks, while still keeping the tone and using some of the original set pieces. There’s even a theory (espoused by my good friend Chuck Loridans among others) that “Froederick” Frankenstein is actually … Peter Frederick Frankenstein, Wolf’s son! (Who would have be a bit amnesiac to not remember meeting the original Monster and a one-armed policeman as a boy, but the blond hair, the expressive eyes, the sense of wonder… it fits!)

Page To Screen: Evening Primrose

Page to Screen is a series of blog posts where I read a book or story and then watch a movie based on said book or story. It will be intermittent, I’m sure, like most of my “regular” features. The first, unofficial Page to Screen entry was my review of The Bitter Tea of General Yen and the classic movie adapted from it.

Okay, so this one is technically a little backwards from the intent, because I first saw the television musical version of Evening Primrose at the Museum of Television Arts in New York City back in the late 90s. I had not seen it since then. When I discovered that the episode was on DVD and that the short story it was based on was available in print, I decided it was time to read the original story and rewatch the movie. WARNING: HERE THERE BE SPOILERS, FOR BOTH THE STORY AND THE TELEVISION EPISODE. I can’t talk about the differences between the two without spoiling stuff.

STORY REVIEW

“Evening Primrose” by John Collier is a brief twelve pages, an “accidentally found manuscript” type of story. The story purports to have been found scribbled in a pad of Highlife Bond paper bought by a customer at Bracey’s Giant Emporium. What the purchaser of the notepad (a Miss Sadie Brodribb) thinks of the tale she’s accidentally purchased, we never learn. As is the nature of people, she probably thought it was some kind of practical joke by the store employees (akin to finding a “help, I’m being held prisoner in a fortune cookie factory” note in your fortune cookie). The story itself is the first person account of Mr. Charles Snell, a poet who decides the real world is no longer for him and that he’ll live in Bracey’s. He’ll hide during the day, and eat/drink/write poetry at night, deftly avoiding the store’s night watchman. He quickly discovers he’s not alone in living in the store, that this is a thing people do in stores large and small all across the city – people who for one reason or another have eschewed normal society. The community in Bracey’s has a hierarchy, at the top of which sits the regal Mrs. Vanderpant, and at the bottom of which sits a teen serving girl named Ella. Charles is warned that people who betray the community are sentenced to removal by the Dark Men, who turn the offendees into mannequins. Charles falls in love with the servant girl, who is in love with the night watchman (who remains oblivious to the community living around him). Charles decides to respect Ella’s love for another man and to help them meet and escape. Only in his emotional despair over Ella not loving him, he spills the beans to a community member he trusts. The story ends with Ella trussed up for the Dark Men and Charles determined to find the night watchman and rescue her. Charles’ final lines indicate his plan to leave his notes where a customer might find them, in case his plan to rescue Ella results in himself and the watchman also being killed. 

It’s a tightly-told story, and Collier builds the mystery of the community and threat of the Dark Men smoothly throughout the story – but the ending feels just a bit too abrupt. Charles declares his love, gets rebuffed, accidentally betrays Ella, and sets his plan to rescue her all within the final two pages of the story. I wish Collier had built the suspense of what would happen to Ella and Charles just a little bit more before the end. Regardless, I enjoyed the concept, the mood, the reveal of Charles’ character, the development of the Bracey’s community (and their relationship to communities in other stores) and eerie threat of the Dark Men.

“MOVIE” REVIEW

The television episode “Evening Primrose” first aired on November 16, 1966 as a part of the ABC Stage 67 anthology series. I would have been a whole three months old. I have no clue whether my parents watched it. Given their love of television and my father’s love of musicals, I’m going to guess they did. It starred the perfectly cast Anthony Perkins as misanthropic poet Charles Snell and Charmaine Carr as innocent, uneducated Ella Harkness, with Dorothy Stickney as more dotty-than-regal Mrs. Monday (a renamed Mrs. Vanderpant).

It’s a musical, with music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim and book by James Goldman and directed by Paul Bogart. The creators and cast do a wonderful job translating the mood of the story to the screen – all the “free but still sort of trapped” sensibility, the rigidness of the Paul Stern (renamed from Bracey’s) store community, the threat of the Dark Men is there in the staging, dialogue, lyrics and instrumental music – and hey fix the pacing issue I had with the story, giving the romantic relationship more time to develop and giving space to the real threat of the Dark Men at the end. The songs start out character-centric and then become plot-propelling. Charles’ song “If You Can Find Me I’m Here” is one of the best misanthropic “you don’t like my art, screw you” songs ever written, while Ella’s “I Remember Sky” is a wistfully beautiful piece. The duet “When” moves their relationship along and incorporates their fears of being found out, while the duet “Take Me to the World” is the point at which the plot turns towards the big denouement.  

There are a couple of significant changes to the story, as often happens in page-to-screen adaptations. Ella is now an adult (to remove the ickiness of a poet in his late twenties falling in love with a sixteen-year-old, I assume) and her mistreatment at the hands of the older community members is made more explicit (including that they have never taught her to read, write, or do math, and force her to live in the store basement). Instead of unrequited love, Ella falls as much in love with Charles as he does with her. And in what I think is a very sensible change that heightens the drama of the last act, the couple is found out not through Charles intentionally revealing his feelings to his ‘trusted friend’ Roscoe, but because Charles accidentally turns on the store’s speaker system while they are singing “Take Me To The World” and unknowingly lets the entire store community know what they are planning (the night watchman hears too, thus revealing that there are people living in the store even if he can’t manage to find them, which puts him in danger without having to work in the awkward love triangle).

The final act is a wonderful game of cat-and-mouse through the store as Mrs. Monday and Roscoe try to delay Charles and Ella long enough for the Dark Men to catch them. The fate of the characters implied by the structure of Collier’s story is made explicit in the final scenes of the episode. I always thought it was a delightfully dark ending, and I’m glad Goldman and Sondheim didn’t decide to change it for television.

Interesting trivia: while the television episode originally aired in color, the only print remaining is in black and white. And I actually think that adds to the mood and thus effectiveness of the production. I’m kind of glad the color print isn’t available (the DVD has some test footage of Anthony Perkins in Stern Brothers and it just feels too bright for the story being told).

FINAL COMPARISON

While I liked Collier’s story well enough and I want to read more of his short stories, I think I prefer the musical in this instance.

The Collier story can be found in his collection Fancies and Goodnights. The Sondheim-Goldman musical is available on DVD and Prime Video.

Reading Round-Up: October 2020

Continuing the monthly summaries of what I’ve been reading and listening to.

BOOKS

To keep my numbers consistent with what I have listed on Goodreads, I count completed magazine issues as “books.” I read or listened to 9 books in October: 7 in print, 1 in e-book format, and 1 in audio format. They were:

1.       Lightspeed Magazine #125 (October, 2020 issue), edited by John Joseph Adams. The usual fine assortment of sf and fantasy short stories. This month’s favorites for me were Todd McAulty’s “The Ambient Intelligence,” Ken Liu’s “Byzantine Empathy,” PH Lee’s “The Vampire of Kovácspéter,” and Minsoo Kang’s “The Virtue of Unfaithful Translations.”

2.       Battle Ground (The Dresden Files #17) by Jim Butcher. The second Dresden Files release this year continues the story from Peace Talks, and is pedal-to-the-metal action from start to finish as Harry and company fight to save Chicago from utter devastation at the hands of the Fomor and a mad Titan. Very few quiet moments, but this is a game-changer for Harry as much as Changes was.

3.       Ring Shout by P. Djèlí Clark. A masterful alternate history in which the filming of Birth of a Nation allowed entry to Earth by Lovecraftian horrors who disguise themselves as Ku Klux Klanners. The main characters are strong black women in 1920s Macon Georgia who fight to Kluxxers and their masters. FULL REVIEW HERE.

4.       Dagon Rising by William Meikle. The first entry in Crystal Lake’s Vs. series reprints Lovecraft’s short story “Dagon” and then gives us Meikle’s short story response “Dagon Rising.” FULL REVIEW HERE.

5.       Surviving Tomorrow: A Charity Anthology to Fight Covid-19 edited by Bryan Thomas Schmidt. I had the pleasure of proofreading/copyediting this several months ago. The stories mostly focus on surviving changes in technology and how humanity adapts to adversity. Many of the stories are post-apocalyptic, but not all.

6.       Dying with Her Cheer Pants On: Stories of the Fighting Pumpkins by Seanan McGuire. This book collects all six of McGuire’s previously published short stories about the Fighting Pumpkins cheerleading squad, who are tasked with protecting their town from supernatural menaces, and adds four brand new stories to the mix that flesh out the squad’s history. FULL REVIEW HERE.

7.       The Bad Seed by William March. This classic about an eight-year-old girl who murders a classmate to get what she wants and the mother who can’t decide what to do about it was adapted into a stage play and a movie. Full review forthcoming.

8.       The Sandman (Sandman Audible Original #1) by Neil Gaiman and others. I am a long-time fan of Neil Gaiman and collaborators’ Sandman comics series (like many folks, I read them as they came out and also bought the trade paperback collections). I was skeptical about an audiobook production – the few other graphic novel audioplays I’ve listened to haven’t quite worked for me – but I was happily surprised. I think what makes it really work is the use of Neil Gaiman (and one assumes, his original script notes) as Narrator, describing what we’d otherwise be seeing as the graphic part of a graphic novel. The cast is fantastic from top to bottom, especially James McAvoy as Morpheus and Kat Dennings as Death.

9.       A Night in the Lonesome October by Roger Zelazny. My annual re-read of this classic. Certain people are drawn to a certain location in years where the full moon falls on Halloween, to fight over opening or closing a gate for the Elder Gods to come to Earth. It’s funny, it’s poignant, and there’s one chapter for every day in the month so it’s a month-long reread during which I always notice something I’d never noticed before (or had forgotten).

STORIES

I have a goal of reading 366 short stories (1 per day, essentially, although it doesn’t always work out that way) this year (366 because it’s a Leap Year). Here’s what I read this month and where you can find them if you’re interested in reading them too. If no source is noted, the story is from the same magazine or book as the story(ies) that precede(s) it.

1.       “The Ambient Intelligence” by Todd McAulty, from Lightspeed Magazine #125 (October 2020 issue), edited by John Joseph Adams.

2.       “Everything and Nothing” by Jenny Rae Rappaport

3.       “Byzantine Empathy” by Ken Liu

4.       “Forty Acres and a Mule” by Stephanie Malia Morris

5.       “The Vampire of Kovácspéter” by PH Lee

6.       “The Virtue of Unfaithful Translations” by Minsoo Kang

7.       “Everquest” by Naomi Kanaka

8.        “Poor Fancy’s Followers” by Seanan McGuire, on the author’s Patreon page.

9.       “Dagon” by H.P. Lovecraft, reprinted in Dagon Rising, edited by Monique Snyman.

10.   “Dagon Rising” by William Meikle.

11.   “Evening Primrose” by John Collier, from Fancies and Goodnights.

12.   “Last Bus to North Red Lake” by Martin L. Shoemaker, from Surviving Tomorrow, edited by Bryan Thomas Schmidt

13.   “Windstream” by Andrew Mayne & Roshni “Rush” Bhatia

14.   “When Sysadmins Ruled The Earth” by Cory Doctorow

15.   “Call It Only” by Chelsea Quinn Yarbro

16.   “Face Your Furs” by Seanan McGuire

17.   “Dale & Mabel” by Scott Sigler

18.   “Flinch” by K.D. McIntire

19.   “Carousel” by Orson Scott Card

20.   “The Monsters Underneath His Bed” by Ken Scholes

21.   “Lord of Time” by Livia Blackburne

22.   “Evacuation” by Alan Dean Foster

23.   “Pure Silver” by A.C. Crispin & Kathleen O’Malley

24.   “Writing on the Wall” by Jody Lynn Nye

25.   “Back to Black” by Jonathan Maberry and Bryan Thomas Schmidt

26.   “We Can Get Them For You Wholesale” by Neil Gaiman

27.   “Hopium Den” by John Skipp

28.   “The Ultimate Wager” by Raymund Eich

29.   “Bitter Honey” by Julie Frost

30.   “Voracious Black” by Mercedes M. Yardley

31.   “A Love Monstrously Grateful” by C. Stuart Hardwick

32.   “The Sweetness of Bitter” by Beth Cato

33.   “Six Lil’ Reapers (A Grim Days Mystery)” by J. Kent Holloway

34.   “Impact Mitigation” by Jay Werkheiser

35.   “Fair Play” by Claire Ashgrove

36.   “In Their Garden” by Brenda Cooper

37.   “Empty Nest” by Tori Eldridge

38.   “Shotgun Wedding” by Peter J. Wacks

39.   “Once on the Blue Moon” by Kristine Kathryn Rusch

40.   “This is the Road” by Robert Silverberg

41.   “Dying with Her Cheer Pants On” by Seanan McGuire, from Dying with Her Cheer Pants On: Stories of the Fighting Pumpkins

42.   “Tryouts” by Seanan McGuire

43.   “Trial by Fire” by Seanan McGuire

44.   “Gimme A “Z”!” by Seanan McGuire

45.   “Turn the Year Around” by Seanan McGuire

46.   “Fiber” by Seanan McGuire

47.   “Switchblade Smile” by Seanan McGuire

48.   “School Colors” by Seanan McGuire

49.   “Compete Me” by Seanan McGuire

50.   “Away Game” by Seanan McGuire

So that’s 50 short stories in October. Looks like a bit more than “1 per day,” but in reality I read the Surviving Tomorrow stories when I proofread the manuscript months ago. Still, they count for the year total, which I’m now ahead of again. (October 31st was the 305th day of 2020.)

Summary of Reading Challenges:

“To Be Read” Challenge: This month: 1 read; YTD: 4 of 14 read.

366 Short Stories Challenge: This month:  50 read; YTD: 319 of 366 read.

Graphic Novels Challenge:  This month: 1 read; YTD: 20 of 52 read.

Goodreads Challenge: This month: 8 read; YTD: 106 of 125 read.

Non-Fiction Challenge: This month: 2 read; YTD: 9 of 24 read.

Read the Book / Watch the Movie Challenge: This month: 0; YTD: 0 read/watched.

Complete the Series Challenge: This month: 0 books read; YTD: 6 of 16 read.

                                                                Series fully completed: 0 of 3 planned

Monthly Special Challenge: October’s mini-challenge was “horror, horror, horror!” I didn’t read (or watch) anywhere near as much horror as I’d intended to, but didn’t completely blow it, either. Ring Shout, Dagon Rising, The Bad Seed, A Night in the Lonesome October and The Sandman all land firmly in the horror genre, and Dying with Her Cheer Pants On is an urban fantasy – horror hybrid. Some of the short stories in Surviving Tomorrow are more horror than SF as well.

November’s usual mini-challenge is “Noirvember,” which means for me a mix of crime, mystery, and thriller tales.

Review of DYING WITH HER CHEER PANTS ON

TITLE: Dying with Her Cheer Pants On: Stories of the Fighting Pumpkins

AUTHOR: Seanan McGuire

304 pages, Subterranean Press, ISBN 9781596069978 (deluxe hardcover; also available as ebook)

DESCRIPTION: (from the back cover): Despite its humble origins, there is no more challenging or physically dangerous sport in the world than cheerleading. Cheerleaders are seriously injured and even killed at a higher rate than other high school sports. Their stunts are performed in skimpy uniforms without the benefit of proper safety equipment … and yet they love them, glittery eyeshadow, spirit bows, and all. And then there are the Fighting Pumpkins, who take that injury rate as a challenge. Students of Johnson’s Crossing High School, they answer to a higher calling than the pyramid and basket toss, pursuing the pep rally that is rising up against mysteries and monsters, kicking gods with the pointed toes of professional athletes chasing a collegiate career. Meet Jude, the half-vampire squad leader; Laurie, who can compel anyone to do as she asks; Heather, occasionally recreationally dead; Marti, strong enough to provide a foundation for any stunt; Colleen, who knows the rule book so well she may as well have written it; and Steph, who may or may not be the goddess of the harvest. The rest of the squad is ready to support them, and braced for the chaos of the big game, which may or may not have a big body count. Prepare to jump high, yell loud, and look pretty with the Fighting Pumpkins, those glorious girls in the orange and green, whose high kicks could still be enough to save the world. And if they’re not, it isn’t going to be for lack of trying.

MY RATING: Five stars out of five

MY THOUGHTS: Although the book is already available in ebook format and Subterranean Press has started shipping the deluxe hardcover, this review was written off of a print Advance Review Copy provided by the publisher.

The Fighting Pumpkins are not as well-known as most of Seanan McGuire’s on-going urban fantasy series (the October Daye and InCryptid books, most notably). But I have hopes that the release of this collection, which includes six previously-published stories and four new adventures, will begin to change that. This is a world and characters that deserve more attention. I’m not advocating for a Fighting Pumpkins novel, mind you – I think this concept works wonderfully at short story to novella length, as the collection shows. I just think there should be more FP stories. A lot more.

Seanan’s original concept for the Fighting Pumpkins was as a “horror movie comedy sendup, with the entire squad dying at the end of the adventure, only to be replaced by a new squad who has no memory of the previous one.” By her own admission, that plan quickly fell to the wayside as the current squad (Jude, Colleen, Marti, Heather, and Laurie) seem to have taken up space in Seanan’s heart and brain and don’t want to shuffle off the page just yet. It’s been 10 years since the first FP story saw print (featuring the ill-fated previous squad) and 9 years since the first story featuring the current squad – so I’d say most of the current group is safe for the time being, as Seanan builds towards these girls fighting whatever Big Bad there ultimately is. (I say “most,” because this is Seanan and you never know when she’s going to surprise you and murder one of her darlings.)

I remember reading that first story, “Dying with Her Cheer Pants On,” and thinking “wow, that’s a morbid ending. Everybody dies … but at least they go out on their own terms and pretty heroically.” And then, because I sometimes am not good about picking up every single anthology Seanan has stories in, several years went by before I came across “Fiber” on Tor.com and thought “wait, didn’t they all die?” Then came “School Colors” in 2017 (in the anthology Little Green Men – Attack!) and “Away Game” in 2019 (in the anthology A Secret Guide to Fighting Elder Gods). With each story, my interest in the characters and setting, and my intrigue about how all these stories fit together chronologically, and my questions about how these later stories dovetailed with the first one, grew exponentially. I discovered I had missed “Gimme A ‘Z!’” and “Turn the Year Around,” but hadn’t gotten around to tracking down the anthologies they were in (Zombiesque and Harvest Season, respectively) when Subterranean Press announced this collected edition with the intent to include four new stories.

The four new stories (“Tryouts,” “Trial by Fire,” “Switchblade Smile,” and “Compete Me”) go a long way towards fleshing out the current squad’s connection to both the squad that preceded them and much earlier squads, as well as filling in some of the gaps in the current squad’s history. All of the stories are presented in character-chronological order (new stories interspersed with the reprints), with the exception of “Switchblade Smile” which flashes back to an earlier squad and is positioned at a point where learning that earlier story answers some questions other stories have raised.

The style of the stories varies from light-hearted (my internal eternally-13-year-old loved that the action of “Fringe” hinges on impending stomach distress and potty humor) to poignant (the denouement of “Compete Me”), the threats range from earthy (“Turn the Year Around”) to extraterrestrial (“School Colors”). Some stories are narrated in first person by a particular member of the squad (“Gimme A “Z”!” among them) and some by a more omniscient narrator. In other hands, I’d be worried that the shifting of tone and narrators’ voice would make the collection feel disjointed. But one of Seanan McGuire’s many talents is making disparate elements (like physical comedy and emotional drama) work together.

Taken together, it strikes me that these stories are very much about dealing with loss and finding ways to move forward. Jude knows that a squad has been lost, even if no-one can remember who that squad was or how they died. Heather copes with being dead (for a while at least), Steph with the absence of memory or any real sense of self. Marti … well, Marti’s loss is such a vital part of “Compete Me” that I don’t even want to talk about it; it’s a stunningly beautiful reveal that had me in tears. Jude’s mother, the vampire, is one of very few previous squad captains to have survived beyond high school and it weighs on her but doesn’t stop her from raising her daughter. The Fighting Pumpkins’ history is one of loss and being forgotten, but that doesn’t stop Jude and her team from living every moment and hoping for a better future (or any future at all).

There are so many aspects of this world that Seanan has yet to reveal. We get hints about why the Fighting Pumpkins are tasked with saving their town from supernatural (and extraterrestrial) threats both large and small. We get glimpses at the squad’s history and its place in a much larger networks of cheer squads and little league teams and retirement home sewing circles. And for now, at least, we get to hope that Jude’s team will be the team that survives past high school and goes on to happy adults lives. I’m very hopeful that Seanan will get to reveal much more of this world in the near future.

The deluxe hardcover is not yet sold out on the publisher’s website, and the ebook is available from all the usual suspects. Check it out if you like urban fantasy, strong teen female characters, and a bit of comedy thrown into your metaphysical threats.

Reading Round-Up: September 2020

Continuing the monthly summaries of what I’ve been reading and listening to.

BOOKS

To keep my numbers consistent with what I have listed on Goodreads, I count completed magazine issues as “books.” I read or listened to 8 books in September: 7 in print, 1 in e-book format, and 0 in audio format. They were:

1.       Lightspeed Magazine #124 (September, 2020 issue), edited by John Joseph Adams. The usual fine assortment of sf and fantasy short stories. This month’s favorites for me were Caroline M. Yoachim’s “Shadow Prisons of the Mind,” Sunny Moraine’s “Note to Self,” Moses Lewis’s “Moses,” and Bonnie Jo Stufflebeam’s “Entanglement.”

2.       Tarzan: Battle for Pellucidar by Win Scott Eckert. The second new canonical ERB Universe novel brings the Jungle Lord back to the Hollow Earth alongside his granddaughter, Jason Gridley and family, and a few other surprises. There’s also a bonus novella by Mike Wolfer featuring Victory Harben in the Land That Time Forgot.  FULL REVIEW HERE.

3.       Greatheart Silver and Other Pulp Heroes by Philip Jose Farmer. Meteor House’s hardcover reissue of Farmer’s three pulp adventure pastiches featuring Greatheart Silver includes two other classic Farmer pulp-inspired tales: “Savage Shadow” and “Skinburn.”

4.       Middlegame by Seanan McGuire. The new stand-alone (so far) science fiction novel from Seanan is amazing, full of deep characterization and a really unique take on the feature known in gaming circles as “save points.” Twins separated at birth Roger and Dodger were created to enable their “father” to rule the world. But they might have other plans.

5.       Over The Woodward Wall by A. Deborah Baker. At the heart of McGuire’s Middlegame is a series of children’s books written by an alchemist named A. Deborah Baker. So of course, McGuire had to write the book she’d be quoting from. It’s a wonderful portal fantasy, and you don’t have to have read Middlegame to enjoy it (although if you have, you’ll see the parallels and connections.) FULL REVIEW HERE.

6.       Halloween Season by Lucy A. Snyder. Another great short story collection from Snyder, mostly horror and a bit of comedy focused on Halloween. But of course Christmas can’t resist getting in on the act a little early. FULL REVIEW HERE.

7.       The Shadow Diaries by Shadow, with help from his “daddy” Joseph Pittman. A really cute journal by a dog learning about his new home and fathers. Originally appeared as a series of weekly posts on Pittman’s Facebook page. Kids will love it.

8.       Hawkman Vol 3: The Darkness Within by Robert Venditti, Pat Oliffe, Tom Palmer and others. I was afraid this volume would be derailed by its connection to one of DC’s all too frequent line-wide crossovers, but Venditti and company manage to retain everything I’ve come to love about the series even in the crossover episodes.

STORIES

I have a goal of reading 366 short stories (1 per day, essentially, although it doesn’t always work out that way) this year (366 because it’s a Leap Year). Here’s what I read this month and where you can find them if you’re interested in reading them too. If no source is noted, the story is from the same magazine or book as the story(ies) that precede(s) it.

1.       “The Author’s Wife Vs. The Giant Robot” by Adam-Troy Castro, from Lightspeed Magazine #124 (September 2020 issue), edited by John Joseph Adams.

2.       “Note To Self” by Sunny Moraine

3.       “Machine Learning” by Hugh Howey

4.       “Moses” by L.D. Lewis

5.       “Destinations of Waiting” by Alexander Weinstein

6.       “Persephone of the Crows” by Karen Joy Fowler

7.       “Entanglement” by Bonnie Jo Stufflebeam

8.        “Believe” by Seanan McGuire, on the author’s Patreon page.

9.       “Wait For Night” by Stephen Graham Jones, from Tor.Com website.

10.   “Savage Shadow” by Philip Jose Farmer, from Greatheart Silver and Other Pulp Heroes

11.   “Skinburn” by Philip Jose Farmer

12.   “Hazelnuts and Yummy Mummies” by Lucy A. Snyder, from Halloween Season

13.   “Cosmic Cola” by Lucy A. Snyder

14.   “Visions of the Dream Witch” by Lucy A. Snyder

15.   “What Dwells Within” by Lucy A. Snyder

16.   “The Porcupine Boy” by Lucy A. Snyder

17.   “In The Family” by Lucy A. Snyder

18.   “The Kind Detective” by Lucy A. Snyder

19.   “A Preference For Silence” by Lucy A. Snyder

20.   “Wake Up Naked Monkey You’re Going To Die” by Lucy A. Snyder

21.   “The Great VuDu Teen Linux Zombine Masacree” by Lucy A. Snyder

22.   “The House That Couldn’t Clean Itself” by Lucy A. Snyder

23.   “The Toymaker’s Joy”’ by Lucy A. Snyder

24.   “The Tingling Madness” by Lucy A. Snyder

So that’s 24 short stories in September. Not quite “1 per day,” but pretty close and keeping me only slightly short for the year-to-date. (September 30th was the 274th day of 2020.)

Summary of Reading Challenges:

“To Be Read” Challenge: This month: 1 read; YTD: 4 of 14 read.

366 Short Stories Challenge: This month:  24 read; YTD: 269 of 366 read.

Graphic Novels Challenge:  This month: 1 read; YTD: 20 of 52 read.

Goodreads Challenge: This month: 8 read; YTD: 106 of 125 read.

Non-Fiction Challenge: This month: 2 read; YTD: 9 of 24 read.

Read the Book / Watch the Movie Challenge: This month: 0; YTD: 0 read/watched.

Complete the Series Challenge: This month: 0 books read; YTD: 6 of 16 read.

                                                                Series fully completed: 0 of 3 planned

Monthly Special Challenge: I didn’t set a monthly mini-challenge for September.

October’s usual mini-challenge is Horror, Horror, Horror!

Sunday Shorts: Meikle vs. Lovecraft

Sunday Shorts is a series where I blog about short fiction – from flash to novellas. For the time being, I’m sticking to prose, although it’s been suggested I could expand this feature to include single episodes of anthology television series like The Twilight Zone or individual stories/issues of anthology comics (like the 1970s DC horror or war anthology titles). So anything is possible. But for now, the focus is on short stories.

In 2019, Crystal Lake Publishing began a series called “Crystal Classics,” reissues of out-of-print classic horror novellas and novelettes. I bought all three initial releases … and then they sat, as so many things do, on Mount ToBeRead. I’m hoping to get to The Great God Pan by Arthur Machen and The Willows by Algernon Blackwood by the end of this very seasonal (in NJ) October, but today I finally read Dagon Rising by William Meikle.

Those familiar with Meikle’s work know that he’s a current, rather than long-out-of-print, master of the macabre. So why is he in the “Crystal Classics” series? Because within the CC line, Crystal Lake intended to have the “Vs.” line – a series of books in which a classic horror short story is challenged by a modern writer (much in the way Victor LaValle’s The Ballad of Black Tom challenges, or as some would say “is in conversation with,” Lovecraft’s “The Horror At Red Hook”). So what we have in Dagon Rising is actually two short stories: a reprint of Lovecraft’s “Dagon” followed by Meikle’s titular take on the story. I love this approach, and hope that despite the issues Covid-19 has caused the small press publishing world Crystal Lake will continue both the Crystal Classics and Vs. lines.

I think this was the first time I’ve read “Dagon” since high school (a statement that is true of a lot of the Lovecraft I’ve read; unlike Poe and Stoker and King, I don’t find myself drawn back to rereading Lovecraft very often despite how much I love the “cosmic horror” genre). And I have to admit: I don’t find “Dagon” particularly memorable. It’s a decent enough first-person “man on the cusp of insanity wonders if he saw what he saw – oh wait this is Lovecraft of course he did” tale. An American POW escapes from the German ship that captured him, and while adrift along the Equator wakes to find himself in a muddy nightmare land. Eventually he escapes, and finds himself some time later safe in a San Francisco hospital questioning his own sanity.  I can imagine reading this over a campfire to a group of fellow campers and relishing performing the slow deterioration of the narrator’s mind (the same reason I love reading Poe’s “Tell-Tale Heart” out loud). But “Dagon” isn’t particularly scary, although if performed well there is one sort of jump-scare moment. The “twist” at the end is obvious from the beginning, so there isn’t even really a sense of building tension. It just doesn’t stand out from the crowd in any way to me. I’m not sorry I read it, but I can’t find anything to overly compliment about it either. (To be fair, maybe it didn’t seem so trope-y when it was first published. Then again, it also didn’t leave an impression on me when I last read it in the early 1980s, so maybe I’m not being too harsh?)

“Dagon Rising,” on the other hand, is really, really good at both building tension and surprising the reader. Meikle doesn’t retell the original story but rather builds off of it, asking what the rescuers and doctors of the story’s nameless narrator would think in response to his ravings. Told in diary form over the course of a year by the doctor who heads up “John Doe’s” care, the story builds tension specifically by not revealing exactly what “John” may have said during his ravings, and by introducing a secondary mystery that the reader knows is connected long before the narrator does. There were at least two moments of such perfect “will the evil become apparent now or not” tension that I held my breath getting to the end of the paragraph. I will not reveal which moments or how they surprised me with their resolutions, but I’m sure anyone who has read the story will know which moments I’m talking about. The way the end of “Dagon Rising” ties the two stories together is also pitch-perfect.

I do have to say this: “Dagon Rising” may have had more of an effect on my because of when I read it. It’s October 2020, we’re roughly 9 months into a pandemic that spreads as much through human contact as is does through human lack-of-belief in it, and in which it’s not always obvious who is sick. This story encapsulates so much of the anxiety and fear associated with Covid-19, even though it was written well before this virus was on anyone’s radar.

(Also, can I just say that I love the “trade dress” cover design on the Crystal Classics books, as seen below?)

Review of RING SHOUT

TITLE: Ring Shout

AUTHOR: P. Djèlí Clark

192 pages, Tordotcom, ISBN 9781250767028 (hardcover, e-book, audio)

DESCRIPTION: (from Goodreads): IN AMERICA, DEMONS WEAR WHITE HOODS.
In 1915, The Birth of a Nation cast a spell across America, swelling the Klan's ranks and drinking deep from the darkest thoughts of white folk. All across the nation they ride, spreading fear and violence among the vulnerable. They plan to bring Hell to Earth. But even Ku Kluxes can die.

Standing in their way is Maryse Boudreaux and her fellow resistance fighters, a foul-mouthed sharpshooter and a Harlem Hellfighter. Armed with blade, bullet, and bomb, they hunt their hunters and send the Klan's demons straight to Hell. But something awful's brewing in Macon, and the war on Hell is about to heat up.

Can Maryse stop the Klan before it ends the world?

MY RATING: 5 out of 5 stars

MY THOUGHTS: P. Djèlí Clark has become an author I just trust will deliver great supernatural alternate-history narratives. The Black God’s Drums, The Haunting of Tram Car 015 and “A Dead Djinn in Cairo” all blew me away with strong characters, intriguing magic systems, recognizable locations (New Orleans and Cairo) and high stakes. I’m very much looking forward to A Master of Djinn (forthcoming in 2021), which continues the adventures of characters from Haunting and “Dead Djinn.” In the meantime, we have Clark’s latest novella, Ring Shout.

In Ring Shout, Clark gives us a new magical alternate-history setting.  The year is 1915, the place is Macon, Georgia. The story starts with action: Marlyse Boudreux and her compatriots Chef (the Harlem Hellfighter) and Sadie (she of the foul mouth and the perfect aim) take down a trio of Ku Kluxes – demonic beings in human form who move among humans fomenting hatred and discord. Ring Shout is not a non-stop action ride. There are plenty of quiet, thoughtful scenes interspersed. But this opening sets the tone: very little is at is appears and the threat is everywhere albeit hidden to most eyes.

That threat is about as Lovecraftian as one can get: unknowable beings from another dimension send minions to infiltrate and influence a human cult to bring about their own ascension on the Earthly plane. That the cult in question is the historical Ku Klux Klan is no accident but rather a pitch-perfect rendering of H.P. Lovecraft’s often blatant racism into this fictional world. Clark also takes Lovecraft’s penchant of making black characters nameless stereotypes and applies it to the people in this story that Lovecraft would have identified with. I don’t think we learn the name of a single human Klan member in the entire story, and most of them are described with as little detail as possible. The human Klan members are nameless, featureless tools of the cult leader, Butcher Clyde. We get a lot of detail about him as the main protagonist, but he’s as inhuman as the feral Ku Kluxes he controls on behalf of his masters. Clark also makes it clear that while this threat is supernatural, the supernatural is not responsible for the historical atrocities of the Ku Klux Klan. There are multiple mentions that Butcher Clyde and the Ku Kluxes are simply feeding off an irrational hate for non-whites that the human Klan members already harbor. It’s that hate that allows the Ku Kluxes entry into the human world, and that hate that allows their presence to go unnoticed by the people they are using.

It's apropos that the threat is generically Lovecraftian while the powers that fight against the threat are specifically culled from across the African Diaspora. The magic Maryse and her partners access is drawn from music, from storytelling, from the shared history of slavery and pain. The “ring shout” tradition that gives the book its title in front-and-center in the narrative, more than just a historical allusion. In fact, the chapters are bookended by descriptions of various “shouts” translated from the Gullah dialect into modern English by one of the few characters in the book who is white (which mirrors the way slave and sharecropper folk music was gathered by white musicologists in our world), explicating how the songs are also stories.

Marlyse possesses a magic sword gifted to her by three otherworldly “Aunties” (who, I must admit, reminded me of Mrs. Whatsit, Who and Which from A Wrinkle in Time, but who I’m sure have a much more culturally African basis of which I’m ashamed I’m unaware). But she also carries power of her own, in the memories of her brother and the Brer Rabbit storybook he gave her. Clark takes something white people are aware of via stereotype (in this case, the Walt Disney film Song of the South) and gives the power of those stories back to the people who first told them. The oral storytelling tradition among slaves also introduces the book’s possible secondary threat, the Night Doctors, who here are not just white slaveowners dressed up to scare their slaves into accepting their lot. (This is another part of the slave experience I’m embarrassed to admit I was unaware of before reading Ring Shout.)

The power of storytelling works both ways, and it’s an important story point that the Klan’s power is drawn largely from the way D.W. Griffith’s film The Birth of a Nation (and the books it was adapted from) galvanized disaffected white people into the Klan movement. Clark never downplays the power of words and pictures to motivate people both positively and negatively. In our current climate this is more obvious than ever. It’s not new to the internet age just more quickly spread.

While magic powers the proceedings, it is the characters that pulled me in and kept me invested. Marlyse’s first-person narration is melodic, by turns soothing and energizing, as befits the narrator of a book whose action so hinges on the power of storytelling. Chef and Sadie are equally as important to the story and equally as well-developed because of their proximity to Marlyse. Each brings something different to the narrative in terms of personality, especially in how they handle past trauma and current danger. Elderly Nana Jean, scientist Molly and even the three otherworldly “Aunties” are distinct personalities who bring different ways of viewing the world to the table, and I hope to see more of all of them if Clark ever gives us a sequel to Ring Shout. I also hope we’ll see more of the men in the group as this world develops. There were hints of personality for Michael George, Lester, and Uncle Will, but a novella only has so much space and these characters were not as important to this particular story.

Reading Ring Shout is one of those experiences that operates on multiple levels: it’s an adventure, a horror, an educational, and social commentary all wrapped together, and I cannot recommend it highly enough.

I received an e-ARC of this book for review through NetGalley.

review of HALLOWEEN SEASON

TITLE: Halloween Season

AUTHOR: Lucy A. Snyder

168 pages, Raw Dog Screaming Press, ISBN 9781947879218 (paperback, e-book)

DESCRIPTION: (from Goodreads): Halloween is the most wonderful part of the year for many of us. For dedicated fans, the season begins when the leaves start turning autumn colors and doesn't finish until Hallowtide ends in November. With it comes a whole lot of fun: scary movies and stories, haunted houses, seasonal sweets, spooky decorations, costume parties, and of course trick or treat. But Halloween is also a deeply spiritual time for some; it's an opportunity to remember and honor loved ones who have passed on. Master storyteller Lucy A. Snyder has filled her cauldron with everything that Halloween means to her and distilled it into a spell-binding volume of stories. Within these pages you'll find thrills and chills, hilarity and horrors, the sweet and the naughty. One of the best things about Halloween is you don't have to be yourself. So go ahead and try on a new mask or two ... you may discover hidden talents as a witch, a pirate, a space voyager, a zombie fighter, or even an elf. This is the perfect collection to celebrate the season of the dead or to summon those heady autumn vibes whenever you like. You may even find a couple of tales that evoke a certain winter holiday that keeps trying to crowd in on the fun. In the worlds within this book, every day is Halloween!

MY RATING: 5 out of 5 stars

MY THOUGHTS: To a lot of people, Winter is the ‘deadest’ time of the year by natural standards (at least in the eyes of most people). But Autumn, and especially October and Halloween, seem to be when our minds fixate on loss, death and, consciously or not, to the possibility of the supernatural encroaching on our lives. While a new Lucy A. Snyder short story collection is welcome any time of year, her latest, Halloween Season, is perfectly timed to remind us how well she understands the overlapping emotions of the season at hand. A number of the stories included here center on loss (emotional, physical or both) or the intrusion (subtle or obvious) of the supernatural into the mundane world and how easy it is for most people to ignore signs that should be blatant. But Halloween also comes with a certain humorous aspect – the “trick or treat” aspect of the holiday – and this collection, like the season itself, has a fair amount of comedy (some broad, some nuanced) interwoven.

The set-up of “Hazelnuts and Yummy Mummies” is pure comedy: insecure author at a convention accidentally gets fed cookies laced with hallucinogens. On a sitcom, hilarity would ensue. And in Snyder’s hands it does, for a moment, before the main character enters something of a Halloween twist on A Christmas Carol, seeing images of her past losses (father, stepfather, mother), her distant family’s present, and her own near future – not necessarily in that order. The sense of grief is palpable, as is the main character’s personal insecurities. And I love how Snyder subtly makes it clear whether this is an actual supernatural encounter or all in the main character’s head.

“Cosmic Cola” starts out with a feeling of loss: the tween-age main character has been uprooted by her mother and stepfather to move to a new town in New England that she’s sure she’s going to hate, until she finds out the town goes all out for Halloween and she’s invited to a limited-access party the entire town talks about. Things are, of course, not what they seem. The Lovecraftian horror element slowly suffuse the story, but the real emotional meat of the story are the scenes between the main character and her overwhelmed mother, which grow more fraught as the story continues.

“Visions of the Dream Witch” is one of the stories in this collection that I read when it was originally published, a jaunt into the bayous as a character seeks help for herself and her injured cousin after an encounter with a particularly powerful Lovecraftian witch and her minions. The loss and grief here are of the impending kind – if help isn’t available, the cousin will die – but the danger, from both the titular witch and another source, drive the story. It’s a trippy, water-drenched story I was happy to revisit.

I have to admit to not being as familiar with Snyder’s Jessie Shimmer character as I should be. I haven’t read any of the novels. So “What Dwells Within” feels like a good introduction to the character and her world, with enough backstory sprinkled in so I didn’t feel lost but still felt intrigued to learn more.

In “The Porcupine Boy,” a young man with a troubled past is trying to build his future by being a home-health aide to an elderly woman. He runs into complications when the woman’s primary doctor is replaced due to retirement. That indictment of the health insurance/private practitioner field is just the set-up of a story that gets wonderfully weird and dark, with a glint or two of karma-based humor along the way.

If any of Snyder’s stories were going to used as an actor monologue, “In the Family” is the best candidate. The narrator is talking to the recently-found child of her sister, years after the child had been put up for adoption. The sense that something is wrong builds slowly, through what the narrator chooses to say and how she chooses to say it, and the payoff at the end is pitch-perfect creepy.

Snyder is absolutely one of the best authors working in Lovecraftian cosmic horror, by making it personal. “The Kind Detective” proves this. The main character decides to investigate a rash of tree disappearances (yes. Trees. Disappearing.) that seem to be driving the people who witness them to insanity or suicide. It’s a dark story from the start and just gets darker, with the conclusion being perfectly in character for the titular detective.

“A Preference for Silence” is a neat bit of sf-horror-comedy aboard a colony ship with only two crewmembers awake and running things. Actually, this is another one that would make a great monologue for an actor.

“Wake Up Monkey You’re About to Die” is one of two Christmas-themed stories in the book and is the more horrific/bizarro of the two. I can’t say I was every completely sure what the background/worldbuilding was, but it was internally consistent and the story is full of great one-liners and comedic timing down to the last sentence.

Likewise, “The House That Couldn’t Clean Itself” is more near-future-sf/comedy featuring classic sloppy roommates and an attempt at a robotic solution to the problem that goes horribly awry. I giggled a lot (and hopefully that was Snyder’s intent).

The final two stories in the collection are preceded by a short poem pointing out that they’re “rated R.” They’re not erotic, and they’re more funny that horrific – and they’re two of my favorite pieces in the book. I’ve read “The Toymaker’s Joy” before. It’s the second Christmas-themed story in the collection, focused on an Elf who might not be cut out for the job she currently has but may be perfect for a spot I Santa’s “toys for adults” division. “The Tingling Madness” brings erotic sensations to the Lovecraft Mythos via local access television channels devoted to Cthulhu cults and … Chuck Tingle? You have to read it to see the connection. It made me laugh out loud at least twice.

Halloween Season hit the sweet spot for me. It has just enough stories to show the diversity in Snyder’s work without being too long as a whole, it shows off the author’s sense of humor as well as her horror chops, and it even comments on our current consumer culture that allows Christmas decorations to go up alongside (and sometimes even before) Halloween decorations. Definitely worth seeking out ASAP!

I received an Advance Review Copy from the publisher.

Review of OVER THE WOODWARD WALL

TITLE: Over the Woodward Wall

AUTHOR: A. Deborah Baker

204 pages, TorDotCom, ISBN 9780765399274 (hardcover)

DESCRIPTION: (from the back cover): Avery is an exceptional child. Everything he does is precise, from the way he washes his face in the morning, to the way he completes his homework – without complaint, without fuss, without prompt. Zib is also an exceptional child, because all children are, in their own ways. But where everything Avery does and is can be measured, nothing Zib does can possibly be predicted, except for the fact that she can always be relied upon to be unpredictable. They live on the same street. They live in different worlds. On an unplanned detour from home to school one morning, Avery and Zib find themselves climbing over a stone wall into the Up-and-Under – an impossible land filled with mystery, adventure, and the strangest creatures. And they must find themselves and each other if they are to also find their way out and back to their own lives.

MY RATING: Five stars out of five

MY THOUGHTS: Thinking back, I’m amazed at how few portal fantasies I read as a kid. I have vague memories of reading the first Oz book and parts of Alice in Wonderland and the first two Narnia books, but really I was more familiar with Oz and Wonderland from the movies than the books themselves. So I may not be the best judge of how Seanan McGuire (writing as A. Deborah Baker)’s new middle-grade novel compares to those seminal works. What I do know is that I loved every page of this, and plan to give copies at the holidays to the fantasy-loving middle-grade readers I know. And maybe several of the fantasy-loving young adults and adults and elders I know, as well.

As befits a book aimed at younger readers, Over the Woodward Wall doesn’t spend overlong on set-up, and doesn’t linger overlong at any point in the story. The first chapter introduces us to prim, fussy Avery (please, don’t try and call him anything shorter than that) and messy, free-spirited Zib (short for “Hepzibah,” but please don’t call her that), explains why they live on the same street but have never met, and gets them to and over the mysterious Wall of the title – and from there, there’s no looking back. Avery and Zib keep moving from adventure to adventure. They have a goal: follow the Improbable Road to the Impossible City, and ask the Queen of Wands to help them get home. But the Improbable Road isn’t a straight line by any means, and the circuitous route enables the author to introduce us to a large swath of the realm of the Up-and-Under. (“How can a place be both Up and Under,” Avery asks at one point. “Up a tree’s still under the sky,” the Crow Girl answers. A perfectly logical and perfectly magical way of thinking, in my opinion.) It’s a wondrous place full of talking animals, boulders who become men, girls made of crows and of water, and a set of kings and queens who are by turns malevolent and kind, and by the end of this book we haven’t seen near all of it. (Never fear, the sequel has already been contracted for by the publisher – and McGuire hopes to write at least four books in all.)

Portal fantasies, I believe, are about self-discovery. The children who come home from a portal adventure are not the same as when they started. They may not have “grown up,” but they have grown. Avery and Zib’s adventures definitely change them: Avery slowly becomes less certain that everything he knows is true, while Zib starts to realize that adventures and total freedom aren’t always as wonderful as they sound. Avery becomes less stolid while Zib becomes more thoughtful. They learn about each other, with hints of how each one’s home life might not have been as happy as they make it out to be. Each does something to hurt the other in the process of making themselves feel better, and those actions have repercussions. But they also move from traveling together because they need each other (as their only reminders of home) to actual friendship.

And they make other friends as well, with the addition of the Crow Girl and Niamh (the watery girl). These girls have their own mysteries hinted at and their presence has an effect on Avery and Zib that only becomes noticeable near the end of the book: the loners aren’t so alone anymore. McGuire has always excelled at building found families out of very disparate personality types, and the way she builds this group is perfectly paced within such a fast-moving narrative.

Fast moving … and fun, as such books should be. There are, as I mentioned, boulders who turn into men and owls who talk and impart wisdom. There are also thrilling mudslides and fruit that tastes like anything the eater loves (sort of like Wonka’s berry-flavored wallpaper or Bertie Bott’s Every Flavor Beans without the limitations or the bad tastes) and magic swords. There are thrilling fight scenes and literal flights from danger.

Every portal fantasy needs a villain. We’re told early on that the realms of the Queen of Swords and the King of Cups are dangerous places, and of course the kids end up there (not quite of their own doing but through their own lack of understanding of the world around them and their easily-trusting natures). Both realms hold their own challenges for Avery and Zib to overcome – but both monarchs also seem distant and almost secondary to the narrative, just another pair of challenges to overcome. Although the possibility is set up for either one to be the Big Bad of the book/series, I don’t think either is. Because neither one scared me as much as the Page of Frozen Waters. If we’re looking for a Wicked Witch/White Witch/Red Queen analog, I think it’s the Page; she’s not royalty but her actions put the kids at more risk and she doesn’t seem to care if anyone dies as long as she gets her way. I will not be surprised to see her play a larger role in the sequel(s).

In addition to local friends to guide and enemies to overcome, another trope of portal fantasy seems to be the absent or absent-minded benevolent force. The King of Coins and Queen of Wands are mentioned, and meeting the Queen is as much Avery and Zib’s goal as meeting the Wizard was Dorothy’s or meeting Aslan the Pevensie kids’. But benevolent adults are always at a premium in portal lands because the kids ultimately have to learn how to deal with change and challenge on their own. Learning is part of the experience, and if learning comes with danger and injury, well, to quote my favorite band Paradise Fears, “to not have some battle scars is to never have lived.” I’m sure we’ll eventually meet these other two monarchs (however helpful or ineffectual they may be) but that’s not the focus of this book. I also think it’s an important point that the Kings are of Cups and Coins – passive symbols – while the Queens are of Swords and Wands – aggressive symbols. That has to come to play more as the series continues.

It also is not lost on me that our main characters’ names are Avery and Zib: A and Z, alpha and zeta, the start and end of the alphabet – and perhaps the start and end of knowledge? Each thinks they know the way the world is supposed to work while the truth is somewhere between them. They’ll have to work together to get through the adventure.

Lessons must be learned before a portal fantasy can end. Avery and Zib do learn quite a bit in these pages, but they haven’t learned everything they need to. I for one am glad their time in the Up-and-Under is not over yet.

(Note: for those wondering why the pen name for such an established author, “Over the Woodward Wall” is a book every character in McGuire’s novel Middlegame has read as a child, and the book has much significance to the world-building. In Middlegame, “Over the Woodward Wall” was written by Asphodel Deborah Baker.)

I received an e-ARC of this book to review through NetGalley.