Vampire horror story blended with a revenge fantasy and fast-paced action thriller.
It is part of the same world as the Lesser Dead (there’s a brief rVampire horror story blended with a revenge fantasy and fast-paced action thriller.
It is part of the same world as the Lesser Dead (there’s a brief reference to one of the characters from that book) so the same vampire “rules� apply.
Set in the late sixties, this is also historical fiction. The vampires in the title “club� seem inspired by the Manson family and the Stuntman from Tarentino's film, Death Proof.
Quite an adrenaline booster. Recommended if you like fast-moving, fun horror books. ...more
Story told from the vampire’s POV, like Interview with the Vampire, or even better, The Vampire Lestat. The narrator, Joey, is a vampire (like Lestat)Story told from the vampire’s POV, like Interview with the Vampire, or even better, The Vampire Lestat. The narrator, Joey, is a vampire (like Lestat) that enjoys being one. He and his gang take advantage of the humans in myriad ways in the 70s-disco-era New York City. It’s grittier and less romanticized than the Rice series.
Joey’s ADHD-fueled narration tells the story of how he was turned and gives the scoop on what vampires can do and what can harm them. How they survive and keep hidden from humans. And how they make sure other vampires follow the “rules� and don’t expose them to the human herd of New Yorkers. It’s in a conversational tone, as though he were talking to the reader directly.
The Lesser Dead is a book that starts out by just daring you to read it:
“I’m going to take you someplace dark and damp where good people don’t go. I’m going to introduce you to monsters. Real ones. I’m going to tell you stories about hurting people, and if you like those stories, it means you’re bad.�
The A-plot addresses the question of what happens when monsters meet worse monsters? The answer is nasty and dark things but a thrilling time for the “bad� reader.
I’ll be on the lookout for more of Buehlman’s books....more
There was some bad news and good news for me with The Brothers Cabal. The bad news: there’s not a lot of Johannes in this book. The good news: Horst iThere was some bad news and good news for me with The Brothers Cabal. The bad news: there’s not a lot of Johannes in this book. The good news: Horst is back and the first three quarters of the story revolves around him.
It was great fun to see the story from Horst’s point of view. It’s an omniscient POV as the meta-narrative points out, but we get Horst’s thoughts, see his insecurities and inner conflict with his vampiric nature, instead of him just playing a contrast to Johannes. In Johannes Cabal the Necromancer, we learned that he is attractive and charming enough to incite Johannes' envy, and empathetic and caring enough to conflict with Johannes' cold and pragmatic nature.
In The Brothers Cabal, Horst gets a handle on what it means to be a vampire. He struggles with the way he sees himself and the supporting characters who view him, whether friend or foe, as a monster. He also fights with an “inner voice� telling him to be a vicious predator(you know like, an actual vampire). Johannes, in contrast, holds himself apart from most people and could care less how they see him.
All of Horst’s inner turmoil is occurring alongside lots of action; The Brothers Cabal might be the most fast-paced of the series thus far. He allies himself with a monster/supernatural hunting society and an all-female flying circus. There are several chase scenes and monster battle scenes with were-creatures and cosmic horrors. Eventually this all leads to Horst getting Johannes involved.
I had mixed feelings about the brother's nemesis. I like that she’s a call back to Johannes Cabal the Detective, but from what we saw of her, I’m not convinced of her transformation to a worthy opponent in such a short time. Maybe tragedy can focus the mind, but the spoiled and vacuous person we saw would have had a long way to go.
As always, the Johannes Cabal series has a lot of humor and homage/reference to other pop culture, but there was one moment in here that especially tickled me: “It’s in the trees! It’s coming�
Probably a reference to the British 1957 horror film Night of the Demon but I’m choosing to think it also refers to the intro to Kate Bush’s song, "The Hounds of Love," which samples the line from the movie.
It’s the little things.
The Johannes Cabal series continues to be my new favorite escapist entertainment....more
Let’s start with the title character, Cabal himself. Not exactly likeable or relatable--but so much fun. First of all,Witty and fun Steampunk fantasy.
Let’s start with the title character, Cabal himself. Not exactly likeable or relatable--but so much fun. First of all, he’s very cold, superior, manipulative. As the plot takes off I wasn’t actually sure if I wanted to root for this guy to win or see him fall on his face. Of course his nemesis was the devil himself, so as unpleasant and badass as Cabal may be, he’s still the underdog in the competition. Howard absolutely brings this guy to life. I can imagine his appearance, voice, facial expressions. He carries himself with such gravity that when incidents occur to thwart him or even just humiliate him, it creates a lot of humor. For Discworld fans, (like myself) he brought to mind both Vetinari and Moist; an odd combination but it works.
I enjoyed the story too. Cabal had forfeited his soul to the Devil but finds he needs it back for professional rather than spiritual reasons. His deal with the devil--to get one hundred souls to replace his own--is off and running. Cabal goes after his goal mercilessly as you’d expect, and this is the point where I wondered if I really wanted to see him succeed. A plot that offers a little conflict in the reader is a fine thing. The other characters that balance Cabal (his brother, the retired police chief) give the book a moral center. Ironically, his undead vampire brother has a lot more warmth than Cabal. He at least didn’t want Cabal to win at the expense of the innocent.
I had a little trouble getting oriented to the time the story took place. It felt sort of Victorian, but then the styles, technology, culture, and so on were more advanced. It’s definitely a fantasy world where necromancers, demons, and so on exist. It has a pulp adventure type of vibe. Steampunk-pulp-fantasy is a good way to describe Cabal’s world. (The follow-up book, Johannes Cabal, Detective solidifies the Steampunk vibe for me.)
There were a lot of influences present from other classic works. Lovecraft, Through the Looking Glass, Faust, and Something Wicked This Way Comes all come to mind along with a nice dose of Discworld-style humor. Not to say I don’t think this is original; all those allusions and resonances of other stories made this even more enticing.
“Cabal dimly recalled that the musical genius who'd decided to put on Necronomicon: The Musical had got everything he deserved: money, fame, and torn to pieces by an invisible monster.�
Johannes Cabal is one of my favorite finds of the year and I anticipate with pleasure reading the rest of the series....more
Entertaining and fast read with many disturbing, chilling and creepy moments. There were some good aspects and bad aspects of this book but it actuallEntertaining and fast read with many disturbing, chilling and creepy moments. There were some good aspects and bad aspects of this book but it actually got better as it went along.
It was also surprisingly funny with quirky bits of dialogue:
“I am not sure what the appropriate gesture is to make toward the family of the woman who bit off your ear, but if you felt absolutely compelled, I certainly wouldn’t take food.�
The title to me implied that a book club would be working together to fight vampires. That’s not what happened. Instead, most of the book is about gaslighting Patricia. Patricia is a character to empathize with and root for in her struggle to free her family and town of their evil neighbor. Her fellow book-clubbers unfortunately put their fears of their husbands, fears for their personal security, and fear of public opinion in front of protecting the children of their town. Things went bad for Patricia, but it kept me reading, hoping she was going to be vindicated.
Now the not so good things.
The Messages about the wrongs of Racism, Sexism, and Classism from the book were far from subtle. Hendrix doesn’t trust the reader to be smart enough to come to any conclusions on their own. There is evil in putting your own financial and social standing above all else, while allowing disadvantaged people to be exploited and destroyed. Unfortunately, it’s not left for the reader to think about these evils in the character's actions. Instead, it is overtly said, words stating the obvious put right into the characters mouths:
“Then again, I moved here because you people are all so stupid,� he said. “You’ll take anyone at face value as long as he’s white and has money.�
I also thought the stupidity and egotism of the Husbands Who Don’t Listen was weak. The worst of them cheat and abuse their wives either physically or emotionally and the best of them are shallow and clueless. Not one book club member is in a good marriage, and to me it feels like a device used to make the men jackasses in order to elevate the women. Hendrix is yet another writer who doesn't trust that a female character can be written as resourceful, brave, and layered without also diminishing the men.
This book was fun and exciting but could have been so much more if Hendrix had faith in the intelligence of his audience....more
King’s classic vampire tale is a big story about a small town, and the small town is really the main character. All the townBetter than I remembered.
King’s classic vampire tale is a big story about a small town, and the small town is really the main character. All the townspeople are part of its wider personality, the teacher, the doctor, the gravedigger, the owner of the local boarding house and so on. It is not an idealized place, there are problems. People with problems. Child abuse. Infidelity. Alcoholism. Financial corruption. There are people who want to leave for the big city (Susan) and people who are returning to confront their childhood memories (Ben).
“The town knew about darkness. It knew about the darkness that comes on the land when rotation hides the land from the sun, and about the darkness of the human soul. The town is an accumulation of three parts which, in sum, are greater than the sections. The town is the people who live there, the buildings which they have erected to den or do business in, and it is the land.�
Because the town overall is the focus, there is a distant, objective feeling to the story rather than a down-and-dirty subjective point of view. There are certain scenes and characters I really like, but overall I never got terribly emotional about it.
I suspect if the town was friendly and ideal, with people caring for each other and helping each other throughout the community, I would not have enjoyed what happens when Barlow and Straker show up. If I was in love with the town, I would want a different ending, the kind that doesn’t happen too often with a scary story.
Straker and Barlow bring evil to this unsuspecting, unprepared, and presented as relatively normal for the times place. Their evil can easily terrorize a town where modern thinking is not prepared to deal with vampires. There are not weird spiritualists, superstitious types, or overly-imaginative adults who can conceive of what becomes reality.
“I think it's relatively easy for people to accept something like telepathy or precognition or teleplasm because their willingness to believe doesn't cost them anything. It doesn't keep them awake nights. But the idea that the evil that men do lives after them is unsettling.�
A kid, Mark, is best equipped to deal with events in ’Salem’s Lot because he’s a weird kid, an imaginative kid. Echos of Something Wicked This Way Comes.
A big theme of the novel is kids and how they handle fear.
“There is no group therapy or psychiatry or community social services for the child who must cope with the thing under the bed or in the cellar every night, the thing which leers and capers and threatens just beyond the point where vision will reach. The same lonely battle must be fought night after night and the only cure is the eventual ossification of the imaginary faculties, and this is called adulthood.�
King always writes about kids in a way that seems believable. (At least to me, but then again I’ve been an adult for a while.) He points out their isolation and estrangement from adults.
“The essential and defining characteristic of childhood is not the effortless merging of dream and reality, but only alienation. There are no words for childhood's dark turns and exhalations. A wise child recognizes it and submits to the necessary consequences. A child who counts the cost is a child no longer.�
One of the things ’Salem’s Lot does very well is getting a kid and the adult “believers� to work together in a credible way.
If I’m reading a horror story, I do want some scary/disturbing scenes. King provided them in moments like (view spoiler)[Dr. Cody’s horrific death and reanimation of Mrs.Glick at the morgue. (hide spoiler)] He also created some scary yet funny scenes such as the moving men in the Marsten house and the (view spoiler)[vampiric kiddies who get back at fascist bus driver Charlie Rhodes. (hide spoiler)] (I laughed out loud at that scene.)
There were other moments I would expect to be terrifying or tense where there would be no real urgency to the scene. Possibly due to the objectivity and my detached feeling of watching the characters from an emotional distance.
It occurs to me the set up for this one is a lot like that in Needful Things. Small town. Troubled citizens. Evil guy opens an antique store. Needful Things puts the blame on the weakness of each character, and the villain exploits it.
In ’Salem’s Lot, I think Barlow is possibly reflecting or magnifying evil that already exists, perhaps in the history of the Marsten house. Many of the early victims are kids and what better way to terrorize and demoralize than begin with the relatively innocent?
Where Needful Things is loud, flashy, and has a great build up to the final confrontation, ’Salem’s Lot is subtle, sophisticated, and a bit cool. I admit I prefer the loud and flashy but ’Salem’s Lot was worth the reread....more
One of my favorites of the Discworld Witches subseries. In no small part because it revolves around Anges, my favorite young witch and introduces my tOne of my favorites of the Discworld Witches subseries. In no small part because it revolves around Anges, my favorite young witch and introduces my two favorite races, the Nac MacFeegles and Igors. Great story with fun humor. Pratchett loves taking on these pop culture phenomenons, and this was published during the run of Buffy, the Vampire Slayer. I love it when Discworld puts their characters up against classic horror monsters, phantom of the opera, vampires, werewolves and so on.
Among the themes of the book, this one is directly stated: Evil begins when you treat people as things. This has an anti-corporate message, as in corporations using the masses to drain their money, for cheap labor, etc. Other themes are the idea of being reborn (the phoenix, Granny Weatherwax returning, the life cycle of the vampire, the notion of what faith is (all conversations with Granny and Oats) and duality or contradiction of mind (Agnes vs. Perdita and Oats knowledge of what he's supposed to believe in vs. what he actually thinks).
Though Granny remains the problem solver, the story is observed through the younger characters, Agnes and Mightily Oats. Granny Weatherwax spends some time dealing with fears of being obsolete, with there technically being four witches in Lancre these days.
Carpe Jugulum's biggest conflict comes out in favor of a traditional approach, which is unusual for the series that generally favors not sticking to tradition. For instance, main villain County Magpyr took a “modern� approach of contracting with his victims, making them into docile farm animals instead of the traditional monstrous approach of hiding in the shadows and coming to his victims at night. Verence’s attempts to be a "modern" king and improve the kingdom were largely ignored by the Lancrastrians, who take what they see as a sensible approach at all times.
Perhaps even Pratchett was not immune to being in a contradictory state of mind.
It's a real pleasure to read and reread this series and get more from it each time. ...more
One of the best horror books I've read in awhile. The real-life fears of bullying, alcoholism, pedophilia, loneliness, and poverty juxtaposed with theOne of the best horror books I've read in awhile. The real-life fears of bullying, alcoholism, pedophilia, loneliness, and poverty juxtaposed with the supernatural terror of vampirism.
It is genuinely chilling and emotionally moving.
I was invested in all of the characters, including feeling empathy for the "villains."
The ending was amazing, a little bit open-ended but also satisfying. ...more
Loading...
