The Golden Compass

The Golden Compass (His Dark Materials Vol. I)

By Philip Pullman

(I am keeping it short because I've got house guests this week and don't want to appear as antisocial as I actually am. This blog post is intentionally incomplete in anticipation of the second and third in the series, in which I will flesh out some of the ideas I'm vomited onto this post).

So what is becoming of me? The self-professed fantasy hater goes right ahead and loves yet another fantasy novel? Oh noes!

For those (like me) who have either lived under or on a rock for past couple of decades, The Golden Compass (or Northern Lights, depending on where you live) is the first novel in Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials series. It is a series that has been pressed on me for a few years now and the weight of the recommendations finally crushed my will to resist. I'm glad I caved.

The novel follows the adventures of Lyra, a semi-feral child living on the Oxford campus in some sort of alternate reality version of Earth where everything is distinctly recognizable but fundamentally different in every way. The Christian Church, for example exists, but there doesn't seem to have been a schism and they are infinitely powerful. Lyra, like every other human on the planet has a daemon that is psychologically attached to her being. The daemon exists in the form of a shape-shifting animal for children until it settles into a single animal form when a child reaches puberty. Lyra's father, Asriel, is some sort of strange cross between a scientist and wizard who works with (or against) the Church in trying to uncover the secret behind some sort of mystical matter that falls from the sky, known as Dust. It may or may not have something to do with the aurora borealis. Oh, and there are baddies trying to severe daemons from children (causing them to die) and armored polar bears and some really interesting global politics that involve Tartars, witches and a powerful kingdom on the island of Svalbard.

OK, when I put it like that, it doesn't sound nearly as cool as it really is but if you haven't read the series you'll have to trust me that the above elements come together in a coherent and decidedly awesome way.

What struck me was how dark The Golden Compass is. I'm guessing that it was intended for younger readers but the themes are so philosophically heavy. In setting up the novel, Pullman makes the Christian theology far more tangible. The daemon is a physical representation of the soul. Dust is some sort of physical representation of God or the holy spirit or something infinite. It seems to be the catalyst for the infinite multiverse that Pullman concocts (and here, His Dark Materials reminded me somewhat of Diane Wynne Jones's novel The Homeward Bounders).

Medieval theologians obsessed over whether a human soul had mass. Hundreds of experiments were carried out in dimly lit 12th century churches whereby theologians and physicians tried to measure the weight of a man immediately before and immediately after death to determine the differential, which would, logically, be the soul. They failed. Every time. Had they succeeded and proven that there was corporeal evidence for the existence of the soul (and therefore the existence of the Christian God), history would have taken a far different path, I'm sure. Pullman supposes that something to that effect indeed happened sometime in the past. By making the intangible elements of Christianity absolutely tangible, Pullman is free to express their absolute purpose and experiment with what it would mean to alter the fundamental laws of his version of the Christian Church. Is God a omnipotent and omnipresent entity that is full of love for His creation, or is He a manifestation of some non-sentient but all-pervasive matter? Such ideas give the novel a decidedly anti-Christian bias (which I will certainly discuss as I make my way through the series but not yet as I don't feel like I've got a handle on Pullman's ideas just yet) but the fantasy elements mask the full effect. All this brings me to the best part of this novel.

Unlike so many young adult novels (and a good many adult novels) this book not only encourages a significant amount of critical thinking on the part of the reader, it practically necessitates it. While other fantasy novels that involve children as protagonists (and here I'm thinking specifically of Harry Potter, but most others apply) place them solidly within socially acceptable parameters i.e. they attend school, behave in a manner that is considered appropriate for their age and social status, Lyra is semi-feral, patchily educated (there is no mention of any sort of education system in Pullman's world) and unpredictable. The children in the series either run around in gangs and fight wars or else they have a job. In that sense The Golden Compass seems to break the mold in terms of how children are written into modern young adult fiction. Pullman does not coddle Lyra and doesn't ask the reader to feel any sympathy for her either. In fact, while Lyra and her daemon were indeed the central characters in the novel, I never found that I developed any significant feelings for or against them throughout. The story drove this novel rather than the characters, and that was fine. The story had the strength to endure the weak character study.

Anyway, I'm going to save the meat and potatoes of these talking points for books two and three and get back to attending to my houseguest, wife and daughter. But before I wrap up this admittedly inchoate blog post I'd like to make a formal statement:

I like fantasy.

There. I admit it. Never again will you see me write about how much I hate the genre. I've read far too much good fantasy over the past three years to say that with a straight face any longer.

Them Or Us

Them Or Us

By David Moody

Enough about having kids. Let's talk zombies! (Some mild spoilers ahead. Nothing serious though).

I'm not sure whether David Moody began writing Them Or Us that he expressly attempted to write a book bleaker and more hopeless than The Road by Cormac McCarthy. If this was his aim, he has succeeded. While he may not have McCarthy's gift of poignant prose (who does?), Moody sure does have the ability to suck every ounce of hope out of a book in a right hurry. While this isn't necessarily a bad thing in the zombie genre, it takes a strong will to muscle through this series. Casual zombie fans, beware, this is heavy-duty nerd territory.

Them Or Us is the third in the Hater Series (for the others in the series see Hater and Dog Blood), and the bleakest of the lot of them. Considering that each novel ends on a low note, that's saying something. What started out as a kick-ass spin on the traditional zombie tradition (Hater) quickly descends into chaos (Dog Blood) and finally a dissertation on the apocalyptic end game.

The Hater series follows the life of Danny McCoyne, a mild-mannered municipal government employee who , along with a substantial portion of the British population, seem to randomly develop something called: The Hate. It is a disease (or whatever) of unknown origin that compels those afflicted to kill those unaffected in the most violent and cruel ways possible. the result is an all-out disintegration of modern society in a matter of weeks. The world descends into utter and complete chaos. It's an interesting spin on the traditional zombie tradition in that it gives the "zombies" a form of sentience and therefore allows the protagonist to be a "zombie" himself without having to resort to pages and pages of: "uhhhnnngh.... nnnnnggggghhhh!"

While the first novel left me elated and keen to read the rest of the series, both Dog Blood and (especially) Them or Us left me asking "What was the point?" Once it becomes established that non-Haters have lost the war and those with the Hate are in control of the world, it's like reading a zombie novel for zombies by zombies about being a zombie in a zombie world. Where am I supposed to place my allegiances? Now, I'm  pretty sure that exactly the reaction Moody was going for since there is never any explanation as to what the Hate is or where it comes from. In Moody's world, things happen far too fast for anyone to stop and consider the scientific origins of human devolution. But by the end of the series when there is obviously nothing left (not even hope) one must ask: "No, seriously... what WAS the point?"

Well, obviously, the metaphor.

Most zombie culture tends to focus on the initial rise of the undead and the chaotic first hours and days of the apocalypse as a metaphor for our own wicked ways. David Moody (as well as Joan Frances Turner in her excellent novel, Dust) is far more interested in how things play out once the apocalypse is upon us and in its denouement. With the added bonus of sentient zombies, we get an all-out war that includes the dropping of several nuclear warheads on the already scarred English landscape. Them or Us follows the final days of Danny McCoyne as he tries to maneuver himself through a politicized zombie world where non-zombies (almost) cease to exist and the rest seem to be out to destroy each other as best they can. As with so much other zombie canon, it's an unsubtle metaphor for our own over-comsuption. And while I love me a good metaphor, I don't want to be bludgeoned with it.

But even the bleakest of all zombie culture (or Cormac McCarthy novels) seem to leave an ounce of hope at the end. something the reader or viewer can take with them, an open-ended conclusion to which we can all ascribe a semblance of hope. Not here, my friends. If you are looking for a pick-me-up novel to wash away the doldrums or a nice light summer read, steer clear, my friends. But ifs you are in the mood for all out human disintegration on virtually every level (familial, societal, emotional and biological) then David Moody is your man.

Not to put too much of an academic spin on this, but I got the impression that Moody took Richard Dawkins book The Selfish Gene to it's illogical extreme and posited what would happen if we became that selfish gene and lives our lives for there express purpose of eliminating all other competition (while simultaneously NOT procreating). I wonder whether Moody has read about E.O. Wilson's controversial new Theory of Social Evolution that supposes that human altruism is an evolutionary necessity rather than simply the notion of procreating and protecting our own. Okay, it's not the best metaphor, but anytime I can through Dawkins and Wilson into a post about zombies, I have to take my chances.

All this is not to say I didn't enjoy the series. I did. Very much. Especially the first book (WOW!). But the series certainly had its flaws. There were all sorts of points where I questioned Danny McCoyne's judgment. Why would a sentient zombie who has lost his entire family, nearly died in a nuclear blast, currently riddled with cancer while being used by political factions on all sides agree to help another sentiment zombie leader after the literary equivalent of "C'mon.... just do it! I'll be your friend!" But of course, I don't have the Hate so I cannot comment on how those that do have it make their judgments. But all that is worth overlooking since Moody is exploring territory that few zombies writers (George Romero included) have not: The End of Times via Zombie. If you are a fan of the dystopian apocalyptic genre, this is certainly not a series that you can overlook.

Casual fans should stick to Max Brooks.

Zombie haters? There's always Twilight.

Shout Out

One of my favorite blogs to visit is The Boston Bibliophile. I've taken more than one recommendation from her and she is still batting 1.000.

Dog Blood

Dog Blood

By David Moody

True to my new year's resolution, I have finally read the second book in one of the series I have started over the past three years. Believe me, I'm feeling pretty emboldened right about now. So much so that I also installed a towel rack in the bathroom and walked the dogs. I'm getting shit done today! Don't even try and slow me down!

...

So, anyway, yeah....

Dog Blood is the second book in the Hater series by David Moody. I read the first book, Hater, last year and enjoyed the hell out of it. I think Moody's approach to the widening modern zombie canon is both refreshing and innovative in that he broadens the scope enough to see out the entire arc of the zombie apocalypse by making his zombies rational, thinking killers rather than the classic brain-eating drone. The result is a novel that is so relentless, so uncompromising that I actually finished it in one sitting... a rare feat. For a longer and more in depth take on the first book in Moody's neo-zombie trilogy go check out my blog post on Hater.

Dog Blood wasn't quit so relentless. It couldn't possibly be. Whereas Hater chronicles the first days of the war between the Haters and the Unchanged, Dog Blood takes us into the endless war of attrition that has settled over the planet. That sense of panic that Moody portrayed so well in the first book is replaced by an all-pervasive fear. A remorseless fear of what may (or may not) be coming. The first half of the novel is a bit slow (plodding at times). Characters drift in and out of the narrative as they interact with Danny, the main character (and Hater) who, by nature, has very little affinity for anyone or anything aside from killing and finding his five-year old daughter. But the slower bits at the front end lull the reader into the false sense of security that everything is going to even out. Right before Moody blows everything out of the water once again.

Once things pick up about two thirds of the way through the novel, Dog Blood is every bit and graphic and gory as Hater, often more so. Moody has a wonderfully sick and twisted mind, especially when it comes to his portrayal of children. There are some scenes in this novel that will spawn nightmares for me over the next few weeks and most of them will involved kids. Yikes!

I would have liked to see some more inventing murder scenes. I mean, if you are committed to writing such a graphic novel, It would be cool to see Moody get imaginative the ways Danny and Ellie kill people. Alas, it's a small complaint. with or without novel kill scenes, the smell of rotten viscera practically emanates from the last pages of the book. Definitely not for the faint of heart.

The reason for the onset of the Hate, as it is called, is still not explained, but that's okay. Given that the entire book is a chronicle of the utter chaos unleashed on humanity one doesn't expect to get clinical answers as to why. The characters don't know (and at this point will never know) and so the readers are left i the dark as well. As it should be with zombie stories. In a true catastrophe nobody would have time to find the answers. Nobody would even bother asking. It's simple all action, all the time.

While I usually demand interesting characters, with zombie literature I don't, mainly because character studies and zombies don't mix. Zombies don't have character and they spend their time killing the people that do, so best not get attached to any particular character. In Dog Blood the characters are as two-dimensional as they need to be given that the world is a place where life means less than a truck full of dead rats. Who's got time for character study when you know they'll be dead in a paragraph or two anyway.

In fact, life is so cheap in Moody's world that the entire trilogy thus far feels like a prequel to Cormac McCarthy's The Road. McCarthy never explains how the world in his novel because such a bleak, unforgiving landscape of torment and death, but one doesn't have to look further than Moody for a possibility (I know, I know... there's no way that The Road involved zombies in any sort of incarnation, and comparing the two books feels kind of funny, but the mood definitely exists). There is a real feeling of impending desolation and hopelessness in the series and I can't imagine Moody is setting us up for a happy ending and I'd be disappointed if he somehow provided one. One can almost see the end of the trilogy: Danny desperately walking along the road toward the ocean with his little girl. The parallels are creepy.

While not quite as good as the Hater, Dog Blood is the necessary sequel and does exactly what is needed to bridge the gap between the the onset of the neo-zombie apocalypse and its conclusion. Some questions have been answered but not nearly enough to satisfy the reader and there's enough gore pack in there to make George Romero uneasy and Moody finishes Dog Blood in absolutely spectacular fashion (one wonders if he takes lessons from Steig Larsson). Like the weight of the pulsing zombie horde, it will be virtually impossible to hold off reading the third book for very long.

Since I'm already motivated, I'm gonna go board up the windows, and start the final novel. This dude needs some closure.

My Year in Books

My Year in Books

Holy cow, it's 2012! How did that happen? I was still writing 2010 on deposit slips and stuff well into November and now I've got to remember to write 2012. Actually, it only occured to me the other day that the 1990s are over a decade ago now... insanity. Years fly by.

It still seems like only a few weeks ago that I started this blog but it has already been over a year. I have somehow managed to write something (sometimes only just) about every single book I read. I didn't think I would have very much to say after the first few books but I found that I was already crafting many of my blog posts in my head somewhere in the middle of most books I read. It has become part of my reading routine, which I think is worthwhile.

Not all of the books were fun to write about, mind you. There were some real clunkers on my reading list this year and since I always finish what I start, writing about some of these books was far more difficult than I would have expected. It's hard to muster the ambition to write about a book you barely finished, didn't like and would sooner forget. It is even harder to make it interesting. I suspect I failed on more than a few posts over the course of this year.

I started this blog as a bit of a reference experiment, really. I read so much that I often forget about a lot of books I read. I pick books up that I have read and forgotten about and it takes me dozens of pages for me to realize what's happening. This actually happened this year when I picked up How to be Good by Nick Hornby and realized about 30 pages in that I read it a few years ago. It obviously hadn't made an impact.

I wanted a place where I could record my thoughts, snide comments and theories about everything I read and maybe spark up a discussion or two along the way (and I won't lie, I'm more than narcissistic enough to enjoy knowing that people are reading what I write and I love comments). In that respect, this blog has been a huge success for me and I look forward to writing it (almost) every time I finish a book.

Moving forward, I am going to try carrying a notebook with me while I read. I found that I often had great ideas about a book only to forget about the idea when it came time to post a blog. This lack of planning made many of my blog posts feel rushed and superficial. I want to be a bit more astute in the coming year.

That being said, I didn't take any notes on this post and I'm writing it with a New Year's hangover. Even so, I'm going to try and divide my year in reading into a few year-end lists, with some superficial comments to go along with them. I provided the links to the actual posts, some of which aren't terrible. All of these are in no particular order.

Best Fiction of the Year

1. Hater by David Moody

I cannot wait to read the second in this series. What a great take on the zombie mythology.

2. The Stone Diaries by Carol Shields

This book surprised the hell out of me. I expected to hate it and it blew me away.

3. Game of Thrones by George R.R. Martin

Who knew that fantasy could be so riveting. Another first in a series that I expect to continue in 2012.

4. Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro

Absolutely sublime. One of the best books I have read in a decade.

5. Middlesex by Jeffery Eugenides

If not for Never Let Me Go, this would have been the best book I read this year. It is such a masterful piece of fiction.

Best Non-Fiction of the Year

1. Where Men Win Glory by Jon Krakauer

2. Sweet Soul Music: Rhythm and Blues and the Southern Dream of Freedom by Peter Guralnick

3. Consider the Lobster by David Foster Wallace

4. Consumed: How Markets Corrupt Children, Infantilize Adults, and Swallow Citizens Whole by Benjamin R. Barber

5. Moneyball: The Art of Winning An Unfair Game by Michael Lewis

(I read so much good non-fiction this year that I could have had five more here and I wouldn't have felt I left anything off.)

Worst Books of the Year

1. I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell by Tucker Max

Blogs don't make good books (My Life in Books: The Movie!). Besides, college humor is so 2000.

2. Henry's Sisters by Cathy Lamb

This book is quite probably the worst book I have ever read. If anyone brings this book up in conversation I still go off on insane rants.

3. The Kin of Ata Are Waiting for You by Dorothy Bryant

New age hokum.

4. Endymion Spring by Matthew Skelton

Harry Potter without an ounce of fun.

5. Pygmy by Chuck Palahniuk

Dumb. Dumb. Dumb.

Anyway. Hope everyone had a great New Years (I did) and I look forward to continuing the blog into 2011... I mean 2012. As a parting gift, here is the complete list of my reading this year...

1. I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell – Tucker Max
2. Smoke Screen – Sandra Brown
3. The Mirror Crack’d – Agatha Christie
4. The Stone Diaries – Carol Shields
5. Peter Pan – J.M. Barrie
6. Life – Keith Richards
7. Blue World – Robert McCammon
8. Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores The Hidden State of Everything – Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner
9. Welcome Home: Travels in Smalltown Canada – Stuart McLean
10. The Unbearable Lightness of Being – Milan Kundera
11. Pillars of the Earth – Ken Follet
12. The Walking Dead Vol. 13: Too Far Gone – Robert Kirkman
13. The Power of Myth – Joseph Campbell
14. Stanley Park – Timothy Taylor
15. The Face of Battle – John Keegan
16. A History of Violence – John Wagner
17. Three Day Road – Joseph Boyden
18. Angela’s Ashes – Frank McCourt
19. Never Let Me Go – Kazuo Ishiguro
20. The Cider House Rules – John Irving
21. Black Ajax – George MacDonald Fraser
22. In a Free State – V.S. Naipaul
23. Clara Callan – Richard B. Wright
24. Cutting For Stone – Abraham Verghese
25. The Great Mortality: An Intimate History of the Black Death, The Most Devastating Plague of All Time – John Kelly
26. The Rolling Stones Interviews – Jann S. Wenner
27. The Butcher’s Boy – Thomas Perry
28. Henry’s Sisters – Cathy Lamb
29. Flashman – George MacDonald Fraser
30. 6 x H – Robert A. Heinlein
31. Scar Tissue – Anthony Keidis
32. Every Man Dies Alone – Hans Fallada
33. Just So Stories – Rudyard Kipling
34. Dead Famous – Ben Elton
35. People of the Book – Geraldine Brooks
36. Hater – David Moody
37. Think of a Number – John Verdon
38. Thinner – Stephen King
39. Drowning Ruth – Christina Schwarz
40. The Stranger – Albert Camus
41. The Phantom Tollbooth – Norton Juster
42. A Spy in the House of Love – Anais Nin
43. The Yiddish Policemen’s Union – Michael Chabon
44. Sweet Soul Music: Rhythm and Blues and the Southern Dream of Freedom – Peter Guralnick
45. The Kin of Ata Are Waiting For You – Dorothy Bryant
46. The Book of Laughter and Forgetting – Milan Kundera
47. I Am Ozzy – Ozzy Osbourne
48. A Long Way Down – Nick Hornby
49. Where Men Win Glory – Jon Krakauer
50. Endymion Spring – Matthew Skelton
51. The Lovely Bones – Alice Sebold
52. Atonement – Ian McEwan
53. Eleanor Rigby – Douglas Coupland
54. Fifth Business – Robertson Davies
55. Formosan Odyssey: Taiwan Past and Present – John Ross
56. Captain Corelli’s Mandolin – Louis de Berniere
57. Helmet For My Pillow – Robert Leckie
58. Why China Will Never Rule The World: Travels in the Two Chinas – Troy Parfitt
59. A Game of Thrones: Book One A Song of Fire and Ice – George R.R. Martin
60. Middlesex – Jeffery Eugenides
61. Snow Crash – Neal Stephenson
62. Pygmy – Chuck Palahniuk
63. Consider the Lobster – David Foster Wallace
64. My Life as an Experiment: One Man’s Humble Quest to Improve Himself – A.J. Jacobs
65. The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian – Sherman Alexie
66. Everything is Illuminated – Jonathan Safran Foer
67. Consumed: How Markets Corrupt Children, Infantilize Adults, and Swallow Citizens Whole – Benjamin R. Barber
68. Dust – Joan Frances Turner
69. Formosa: Licensed Revolution and the Home Rule Movement, 1895-1945 – George Kerr
70. That’s Me In The Middle – Donald Jack
71. The Education of Little Tree – Forrest Carter
72. Sabriel – Garth Nix
73. Let The Great World Spin – Colum McCann
74. Moneyball: The Art of Winning An Unfair Game – Michael Lewis
75. The Help – Kathryn Stockett
76. The Eyre Affair – Jasper Fforde

The Eyre Affair

The Eyre Affair

By Jasper Fforde

I actually finished this novel a few days ago but I got a strange acting gig on a Taiwanese television program that had me on the set for 15 hours a day for a couple of days. No worries... if I ever had any delusions about being a television or film actor, they are officially gone. I have the utmost respect for those working in the industry, but the hours of tedium were too much for me to handle, even with a good book.

Anyway...

Speaking of tedium, I really have to start reading the second books in the series' I start lest they begin to overwhelm me and reading becomes more of a chore and less of a pastime. Don't get me wrong, I've loved many of these books but I haven't finished a series since The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo this time last year and I've started five series this calendar year. The Eyre Affair, book one of the Tuesday Next novels, marks the sixth series this year and eighth series overall that I have begun without finishing. The others, in no particular order are:

1. The Bandy Papers (read book one)

2. The Hater Series (read book one)

3. Sabriel (read book one)

4. Endymion Spring (read book one)

5. Game of Thrones (read book one)

6. Sea of Poppies (read book one)

7. Twilight (read book one)

Aside for Endymion Spring and Twilight (which I wouldn't finish ever if you put me on a salary to do so), I intend to finish all of these series. Therefore, in true New Year's spirit, I resolve to read at least six book twos in 2012 (that is, if the world doesn't end). I already have the next Bandy Papers book and the second Sabriel book on my shelf and I've got an Amazon gift certificate set aside for the second Game of Thrones and Dog Blood, so this seems like a reasonable goal. Yay for reading goals!

As for The Eyre Affair is a solid piece of alternate-history science fiction that is part Doctor Who and part Monty Python... That is to say it's legit sci-fi with all sorts of tongue-in-cheek humor for sci-fi fans, history geeks and literary types alike. The story is full of sly winks to those in the know from character names to historical figures. But you'd better pack a calculator, a pencil and a protractor before venturing too far into this book because, like all good time travel novels, the chronology will make your head hurt. If there's a test later, you're screwed (probably because you already took it two weeks ago in the future).

The protagonist is Tuesday Next, a plays-by-her-own-rules SpecOp agent working for something called SO-27 (LiteraTec). While the novel doesn't expand on exactly what her job entails, she is responsible for any thing that has to do with literature, and in this world, literature is a far more dicey issue than in our own.

Jasper Fforde has supposed a very detailed world in which vampires and werewolves exist and are a nuisance for law enforcement, literature supplants television and music as the most pop of all cultures and technology exists whereby not only is time travel possible but also travel into actual novels where villains can alter story lines, characters can be assassinated or interested parties can simply wander around for weeks as a tourist (for a price though... and only in Japan). Awesome.

Which got me to thinking...

If there was a single book in which I would like to visit, what would it be? Not to alter the story line, mind you, just to wander around in the world imagined by the author. I'm sure that upon further reflection I will change my answer, but my immediate inclination is to say Island by Aldous Huxley. It's hard to pass up the chance to visit utopia as perceived by the author of one of the greatest dystopian novels ever written. Actually, I'd probably get a kick out of a visit into Brave New World as well. Or maybe Jitterbug Perfume. Wait... how about Replay or... or, or... or...

Ahem. Where was I?

Oh yeah...

As for the second question... If there was a character in a book that you would love to eliminate, who would it be?

I'll have to think about that one before things get out of hand.

Dust

Dust

By Joan Frances Turner

(Warning: Nerdiness ahead...)

The modern-day zombie mythology has evolved from George Romero's 1968 film Night of the Living Dead. Since then, countless writers, directors and producers have expanded on Romero's original idea, exploding the mythology in all sorts of direction from the purely canonical work of Max Brooks (World War Z), Robert Kirkman (The Walking Dead) and Romero himself to the deconstructionist, first... um... zombie accounts by Marc Price (Colin) and Andrew Parkman (I, Zombie) to the non-traditional accounts that break significantly from Romero's original mythos that include the work of Francis Laurence (I Am Legend) and David Moody (Hater). For a genre that has often been derided for its limitations, creators and proponents of the zombie-verse have reinvented themselves in all sorts of new and interesting ways.

Then along comes Joan Frances Turner, a graduate of Harvard Law School and obviously a zombie aficionado. In her first novel, Dust, Turner has taken a large bite out of the zombie genre, chewed it up and spit it out. Dust is a highly disturbing and powerful novel set in the heartland of the zombie-verse (the American Midwest) and follows the wanderings of Jessie, a former 14 year-old vegetarian who, upon perishing in a family car accident, has dug herself up from the grave and roams the Indiana countryside with her gang of the walking undead.

Dust is not for the faint of heart. At once compassionate and brutally honest, it is also gory beyond compare. Turner pulls no punches in her description of the brutal, painful life (unlife?) of a zombie. The undead deal with memories of their past life, wrestle with the all-consuming hunger that dogs them incessantly all while trying to survive in a world where continued existence is at once never-ending and seemingly without purpose.

She supposes the existence of an entire zombie culture complete with a method of telepathic communication, social hierarchies and various groups of competing zombies including those who consume human flesh and those that don't. Although even George Romero has hinted at a more profound version of the zombie in Day of the Dead, it is Turner that has added a complexity to the otherwise one-dimensional shuffling ghouls we have come to expect since the days of Johnny and Barbara (and Turner does a wonderful job of sneaking cheeky references to zombie films into the narrative. Don't think I didn't enjoy that!).

If that was Turner's only aim in writing Dust, it would have been more than enough to have added significant meat to the genre's aching bones. But Turner takes things a whole lot further. What starts out as a from-the-zombie's-perspective style deconstruction of the personal and social wonderfully devolves into uncharted waters as a third player is introduced. No longer is the world divided among the living and the dead. In a terrifying twist, the genre is split wide open. Here's why...

While most of those responsible for creating and perpetuating the zombie genre have concentrated on the early days of the apocalypse (Dawn of the Dead) or perhaps take up the story in the midst of the hordes (The Walking Dead, Diary of the Dead) very few, if any, writers tackle the endgame... the end of the zombies. Perhaps it is because zombies themselves have always signified an end of sorts or perhaps it is because humans would most likely not be around to witness the end of zombies. Either way, the end of the zombie invasion has never truly been discussed before Turner. By creating a third mutation, Turner has opened up the concept of total consumption and Dust becomes not only a superior novel but also a philosophical tract on the topics of death, starvation and annihilation. A veritable necrological compendium of misery.

I have been waiting a long time for someone to treat the zombie genre with the literary care that Turner exhibits here. While I take nothing away from the work of Max Brooks and David Moody, both of whom I enjoy, it is Joan Frances Turner that has raised the bar on why a zombie book can be and elevated the genre from mere sideshow anomaly to a seriousness it has always deserved.

Hater

Hater

By David Moody

These days, it is rare that I finish a book in a single sitting. The conditions required for such an event (readable book + large, uninterrupted chunks of time) are not easy to come by. I'm a busier man and a more jaded reader than I was when I read Johnny Got His Gun in a single six hour sitting at the age of sixteen (or A Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy hours before a final exam in first year university). In fact, I haven't read many books in a single sitting. This probably has a lot to do with why I can't sit still for movies, either.

As it turns out the conditions necessary for a single-day read were ideal yesterday. We were having some screen doors and windows installed at our house and, in true Taiwanese fashion, the workers told us they would come by sometimes between 8am and 4pm. Typical.

I cleared my Monday schedule (Monday is actually a light day for me, anyhow) in anticipation for the long wait and picked up Hater by David Moody. It's been on my shelf for a few months. It was given to my by a friend who never really endorsed it or recommended it, just handed it over and told me I might like it. I didn't much like the cover and I hadn't bothered to find anything out about it so I always managed to pick something else up in the meantime. By yesterday it had become a festering sore on my bookshelf. It had been there so long it was actually offending me. So I opened the damned thing figuring I could read it and get it on its way.

Little did I know.

Oh boy, was this book right up my alley. By page 25 I knew I was in for one of those days. Everything was going to come second. Lunch? It could wait. Walk the dogs? They don't really need it. Let the workers in? OK, I did that... at 3pm. On any other day I would have been livid, but since I was neck deep in Hater, I barely noticed. In fact I barely noticed when the workers left and my teaching hours were approaching. I was almost late for work, not that it mattered, I was going to find a way to continue reading at work, anyway. Nothing, but nothing was going to stand in the way of me and the last page of this book, which i reached by 10pm, following my usual Monday teaching schedule.

What, by god, could this book be about that would send a grown man diving for sofas and scuttling into corners in order to read a couple more pages? Essentially, Hater follows the classic storyline of a burgeoning zombie apocalypse. Unassuming man with crappy life starts to vaguely notice strange occurances happening all around him, most of which involve gorily inventive deaths of random strangers. Soon, these arbitrary attacks are happening with more frequency and they begin to close themselves in around the central character. People seem to be transforming from mild-mannered citizens into blood-thirsty killers at a rate far too rapid for authorities to handle. The situation declines at an exponential rate. The attacks are all over the news, while the news continues to broadcast, and what was, at first, a breaking news story has transformed itself into total societal collapse. Awesome!

But it's not zombies.

This is where Hater takes the twist it desperately needed to take. Had this been yet another book about the zombie hordes, it would have taken a miracle for it to follow through. As much as I like the zombie genre, its scope is limited and there are only so many directions you can go with mindless, fleash-eating drones. Max Brooks did a stellar job of re-inventing the genre a few years back with World War Z but David Moody was taking us zombie freaks on a ride in an entirely new, and more intelligent direction.

Zombies, by nature, are interesting insofar as they take the world by surprise and in large numbers. But once the collapse of the establisment is complete and the zombies cease to be a surprise to those who remain living, it is hard to maintain story momentum. Ask Robert Kirkman, the creator of The Walking Dead. Trying to write a serial comic about a post-apocalyptic world over-run by zombies can get difficult and writers are forced to rely heavily on human relationships under stress, since deconstructing the zombie mind would be an exercise in hilarious futility.

The genre has been in need of a major overhaul for years and David Moody has taken the zombie theme in an interesting new direction that enables him to transcend the authoratarian style and write within the post-apocalyptic world with a lot more freedom than traditional zombie writers. He will be able to move from one side to the other with ease and expand on the ideas and theories he has brought to life in Hater.

I can't really say much more than that without ruining the book and the overall storyline going into book two. It is, after all, the first in a trilogy and going ahead and spoiling the first reveal would be a literary crime. Rest assured that this long-time zombie fan and sci-fi freak spent every page of this book riveted. Moody maintains the suspense right up to the last sentence, reveals enough to leave the reader satisfied but leaves enough questions unanswered to ensure I read the next book. Naturally, that's the aim of writing the first novel in a trilogy, but it's surprising how may authors are incapable of pulling that off.

Must make a mental note to add Dog Blood, the second book in the trilogy to my Amazon wish-list. If it is even half what Hater was, I will be losing another day in the coming months.