Review: Afterglow Dust by Amos Keppler

 

  Janet has fallen. Afterglow will take her place.

  This is a relentless novel. We drop right into the story from the first sentence, and are never released from it. Afterglow has scars, both outside and inside, too numerous to count. She does feel like ashes, or at least dust blowing in the wind. There is nothing soft in her existence anymore. Everything has turned hard, like a blade.

  She does exist, in a way, is still breathing, moving, fighting, killing, reacting to stimuli, reaching for everything eluding her. She imagines it is there, somewhere ahead, a mirage on a desert road, forever in her sight, never in her reach.

  This is an inspired and very different story about a lone and lonely woman searching for something she might never find, a human being not even aware that she is searching for a quality missing from her life. She wanders aimlessly through streets she doesn’t recognize, defending herself against any threat that might come her way, not knowing why, why she keeps rising every time she is struck down. She scares people. Everyone is scared shitless of her…

  Her world, her realm is very similar to our own, with a few crucial differences.

  The story grabs us, and holds on, making us follow Afterglow through dark alleys and backyards, and beyond the veil of the material world. She knows something is coming for her, and so do we. There are forces out there that can even give a mighty sorcerer like Afterglow pause. The story begins with a bang, and works itself up from there.

  There is the same, vibrant storytelling as there is in most of Keppler’s writing.

 

My review of Space by James Michener

   It’s remarkable how downright prophetic this book has shown itself to be. It’s a brick, giving a detailed, partly fictionalized description of the early days of the Space exploration.

  A parallel story, however, explores the evolution of knowledge and science itself, and this is just as important as the main story. Lots of time is given to a typical evangelical, science-denial and plain fact-denial hustler. Seeing how extensive that worldview has grown today, Michener was certainly ahead of his time.

  Even literacy is criticized today for opening people to communism. «My grandfather was illiterate, and he remained anti-communist his entire life».

  Michener chooses a theme or a geographic area or similar, and writes a brick of a story about that, spending years in research, and he does it well. His style may feel a little dry, but it works. His storytelling is detailed without being boring. The paperback version is a brick with over a thousand pages, and even has small fonts. Each page is a story.

  Right wingers will detest the book. Openminded people will find it very interesting.

Review: Forsaken by Amos Keppler

 

 Yes, the book opens in a great way with Janet making a great attempt at drinking herself to death. The ending of Falling, the previous book lingers in her mind like a wound.

  The story moves from there, describing her picking up the pieces of her life, with even rawer emotions ravaging her. She sets out on the journey through the connecting portals across the nine realms, not really caring what happens, if she dies or lives. She does connect with her fellow travelers eventually, drawn into what she can at least imagine to be a fellowship, something reminding her of everything she has lost.

  The first realm is a brutal, uncaring place. The next is worse. They eventually reach Earth, but she finds no more peace there. Her new friend and mentor, Dasek teaches her more about magick and about herself. It brings her no pleasure, nothing but more of the same, unending ravages tearing her apart.

  It’s brutal and riveting. We travel with Janet and her equally disturbed traveling companions. Everything is told straight up. Nothing is softened or concealed. It’s hard to put the book down. Even when I do, by necessity, I feel the urge to pick it up again. This is an urban fantasy, in a somewhat modern setting, but it doesn’t feel like it. It’s too different, too twisted for that. I have certainly never read anything similar.

  That is a great thing. I can already say for certain that The Nine beats all other fantasy series soundly.

  No matter how busy I am, I will find time to read the entire series. I have no idea what will happen, but I am looking so much forward to finding out. The tension and the stakes grow for each new chapter. But, as stated, it’s impossible to know what’s coming.

  And neither has Janet.

 

Review: Fury by John Coyne

   This novel starts off as one thing, and end as something completely different. I love those.

  It’s pretty much advertised as a horror story, but it isn’t, really. I would say it’s one more story not fitting into any genre, which is great. I prefer those.

  Jennifer Winters is a more or less average, no-nonsense modern businesswoman. She is frustrated beneath the polished surface, though, and doesn’t know why. When an old friend makes an attempt to pull her onto a new path, she rejects it out of hand as ridiculous.

  Later and shocking events she cannot ignore forces her out of her comfort zone, pulls her so far off the straight and narrow that she can hardly see the path ahead of her anymore, and there’s no way back to her dull, ordinary existence.

  The story begins right away. Very little of significance has happened before the first line, and there is no explanation, even though the Shirley MacLaine quote gives one possible clue for those of us knowing one crucial fact about her. We need to actually read the story for the explanation. Another good thing. We’re privy to Jennifer’s thoughts, and we experience the events through her, including her growing incredulity and fear as the story progresses. She has no idea what’s truly happening, and we don’t have either.

  The story does progress at an excellent pace. We’re slowly given more information, even though that doesn’t help much at first. The necessary confusion prevails, without the story becoming convoluted. There is a great balance to it. We’re torn between doubt and certainty in just the right way.

  The end is satisfying, and for most people it would feel a little strange, but also right, a natural progression of the story we’ve read. I liked it. I can’t claim to actually be enthusiastic, but the ending was still a great payoff. Everything makes sense to Jennifer, and to us at the end, even though it was far from the ending we expected. It made sense because it wasn’t the ending we expected.

  Recommended.

Review: Your Own Fate by Amos Keppler

   This came to my attention ten years ago, through a review at Amazon. I had read a few of Amos Keppler’s novels, like The Defenseless and Dreams Belong to the Night before that. It was an easy sell. I feared my expectations were too high, that I was bound to be disappointed, but I wasn’t.

  It starts off with a bang, and works itself up from there.

  Jeremy Zahn, a hunter of men and former British policeman, arrives in Los Angeles after a long, exhausting hunt of Timothy Joyce, an international fugitive that has become his archenemy. Zahn is a driven man, obsessive in his zeal, frustrated by his incomprehension of what’s going on, unable to understand the motivation and often baffling actions of his enemy.

  The story begins in Los Angeles, but also in London years before, successfully moving back and forth between the present and the past. Zahn is pretty much a typical, dull lawman during that time in London, one that hasn’t really pondered the hidden depths of the world. He’s forced to do that repeatedly during the three years of the hunt. Joyce seems to be his superior in all important ways, but Zahn refuses to be give up, following the other like a bloodhound never letting go of the scent.

  Who is really the prey and who is the hunter is open to interpretation, though.

  This is Amos Keppler’s shortest novel, but it feels much longer because it’s packed with details. You need to catch every one of them, or you might miss an important clue to what is actually happening. I didn’t realize what that was until the last few pages. It was still a great payoff, or perhaps a great payoff because I didn’t know. But when I read the book for the second time, and knew the basic story, I still loved it.

  It’s a complex story to end all complex stories, a tales of the unexpected to end everything unexpected. I predict you will be as stunned as I was when you’re done reading it.

 

I would rather be dead than come out of the closet, some gays say, but I don’t

   I and my sister heard that a lot in the Christian group and the small community in western Norway we grew up. We also witnessed how several people acted on it. We suffered under the yoke, until we practically ran away to the nearest big city in our late teens, and could finally be ourselves.

  Bergen, the big city measured by Norwegian standards was, is more open, but we keep facing the same prejudice we did in the small community. It’s more concealed, but very much present.

  We were told by our father, the priest that there were two inferior people in the eyes of God. One was women. The other was people performing «beastly acts». We didn’t know what he meant during most of our childhood, but, as stated we found out. He was talking about homosexuals.

  We discovered that the prejudice wasn’t limited to Christians either. We encountered many other seemingly free-spirited people with the same hateful, practically pathological bias. When looking at the current western society, it’s not really strange, I guess, since we still live in a basically patriarchal society, where some both males and females insist that victims of rape share the blame. And don’t even mention transgenders that are really getting trashed lately, also by professed feminists. JK Rowling has led on in that crusade, and she is a hero to many, people not questioning her warped views at all.

  There is something profoundly sick about modern human society. Some of it is remains from less enlightened times and oppressive communities, but there is something more that isn’t necessarily a result of that, but of a general, ongoing, persistent intolerance. People insist, for instance that women and men are equal, now, that there is no more need of feminism, and they’re not kind about it.

  What they’re really saying when they say that is that there was never a need for feminism. Feminism is even blamed for many of the wrongs. We meet such people on the Web often. It’s hilarious every time the perpetrators of rape and prejudice and vicious misogynist acts play the victim, but also very sinister, since many people keep supporting that twisted opinion.

  And there’s something even deeper and twisted, a message repeating itself endlessly in almost all communities: Don’t stand out. If you do, prepare to be taken to the court of public opinion or worse.

  Every time you encounter a male supremacist, a lover of rape, you look incredulous at him, because such crappy human beings exist. But they do. There are loads of them.

 

Review: The Fury by John Farris

  This is another classic horror novel. It made Farris a household name after the release of the Brian de Palma movie in the seventies. That was long before I was born or could read, but it reached me through the grapevine of an eager reader. I searched endlessly for challenging and daring material, and this was one of the earliest I found.

  It starts off as an action-story, but quickly moves away from that, into far more satisfying waters. It isn’t a horror-story, not really a genre story at all, and I quite simply love that, love that, too. John Cassavetes played the sinister highly placed government man in the movie, but he had lots of great original material to work with. It is no hero-story. The reality in the story come off as quite cruel and gritty. In a typical Hollywood story, the boy’s father would have succeeded in his grim mission with flying colors, but he doesn’t. The boy and the girl are the main protagonists, even though it doesn’t look that at first. There is no moral here, or if there is none, it’s far different from the usual boring, mainstream stuff.

  We are presented with a reality beneath the somewhat pleasant daily existence where there are no rules, no mercy. We are drawn into a world of agents and victims, and both casual and deliberate violence. Powerful people want to become even more powerful by exploiting an emerging power, but this power is both beyond their understand and reach. There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio. The before mentioned highly placed government man realizes that to his peril.

Review: Falling by Amos Keppler

  I’ve wanted to read this book for a long time, but haven’t found the time.

  It is, among other subjects, about a society, Arcadia, where bisexuality isn’t even called that, where it is seen as completely normal, and isn’t controversial at all, and not the focus of the story, only one of several exciting parts of it.

  That society still has its shadows. It isn’t a paradise, a heaven, but it has qualities lacking in our world, realm.

  I also loved that he doesn’t put gays on a pedestal. They come off as human beings with good and bad qualities and vulnerabilities. I never could stomach people wanting them to be perfect and invincible.

  Yes, Janet is falling, and she doesn’t know why. She just knows, fears that she is. She finds comfort along the way, on her wretched path, from friends and surroundings, but it is fickle and temporary, even dangerous, lulling her into a fake sense of security. Even when she has been through what she imagines is the worst, the worst is still coming for her.

  Dark secrets lurk beneath the surface in Arcadia, like in any society, but these are a doozy.

The story follows Janet on her path, as she discovers more about herself and her inheritance, and about what is lurking in shadows. It’s a great story, with many facets, many twists and turns, until the explosive, horrifying end.

  This is very much a feminist story, and we are presented for several tribes of amazon warriors during the series. You will love them.

  This is an urban fantasy, even though it’s far from being a typical such. It’s so atypical as it can possibly get, and so very satisfying.

  It is the best and most believable Nine Realm story I’ve read, by far.

Falling is a trilogy, and I’ve already started on book two, Forsaken. It’s also a trilogy of trilogies, so to speak, where the Afterglow trilogy is the next, and I can hardly wait to read that.

Review: Live Girls by Ray Garton

  This is an adult, mature vampire story, in all sense of the words. It contains everything I love, mature themes and execution, good storytelling, dodgy characters, and as a bonus, we get hungry vampires that has no compunction about feeding. Garton is approaching the myth in a serious manner. There is no comic relief here, very little lightening the mood, and that, too, makes me downright upbeat.

  This brothel mama is running a very particular type of brothel. The working girls aren’t just charging money for their services, but blood.

  We are introduced to very human characters, with frailties and faults. The vampires aren’t that bad either. It’s easy to fathom why this hasn’t been filmed. The sensibilities of the usual brainwashed citizen could probably not handle it. That makes it even better in my eyes.

  Good horror stories are like that. Even though most horror films and books are just as mainstream as most other stuff, there is a significant number that it written or made by the daring artist. This is certainly one of them.

  PS: Can you guess how some of the vampires are feeding?

Review: Shadows by Shaun Hutson

   This is one of quite a few hidden gems. I don’t care much for the author’s other novels, but this one is something else. Hutson was a horror writer of some renown, but this novel never gained much attention, for some reason.

  Shadows is diabolical and diabolically funny and well written. It’s the best gallows humor I’ve ever read. People on the train looked at me with anxious eyes when I started cackling in earnest.

  It’s very original and have an approach to the horror genre I’ve not seen anywhere else. I would say this is Hutson’s best book. He wrote quite a few horror novels. I expected him to come back from the dead at some point and prove everything he wrote about to be true, but he still hasn’t.

  The story is about astral projection, including some related themes. It’s very hard to guess what happens next, and those we believe are the villains are shown to be somewhat beneficial, and the other way around. We don’t really know what is truly going on until the last few lines of the book. Remarkable.

  Seemingly unrelated events are woven into a cohesive, explosive whole.

  Among other things, added to the pervasive horror, this is also an exposure of British society that is quite revealing. The horror and the mundane go hand in hand, blood to blood. The author masterly leaves out crucial information later revealed as a natural part of the story. Yes, the suspense is there all the time, even in the first, fairly quiet part of the book. Then, he takes it a step further. I love such authors. It keeps growing more intense, and the ending is a great payoff, discarding the Hollywood ending like wet dirt on the shoes.