Book Review: Creepers by David Morrell

I’ve always been fascinated by the idea of urban exploration. I think because I am a photographer and a history/anthropology student and these things culminate in wanting to find places where time has stood still and document them. I’m told the urban exploration scene in Perth is quite active, but I doubt I’ll ever be involved as it’s too hard to find a babysitter and too dangerous to risk not coming back to pick up my kids. Urban exploration will always be just a dream at the back of my mind, a dream I satiate with books like this.

I read Creepers last night. From cover to cover. It’s such an easy read, despite it’s gruesome bits (think razor wire and beheading). It starts off with a history professor and his three ex-students who invite a journalist on their annual exploration, this time heading through storm drains into an abandoned hotel with a strange history. The night seems easy enough, even with malformed albino cats and blind rats dogging them in the tunnels and the smell of decaying wood everywhere, but the group climb higher and higher up the stairs they find macabre remnants of the guests that used to occupy the hotel. A dead monkey. A room full of booze. A mysterious safe filled with gold coins. Perhaps the professor hasn’t told them everything about this hotel.

After an accident renders the professor helpless, the group discover they are not alone in the hotel. There are other who want the gold and will stop at nothing to get it. But then the safe is opened there is a woman amongst the gold, and the thieves are not the only ones with violent intentions – someone never left the hotel.

It’s an edge of your seat story which descends into a hell of gore and insanity and explosions and swirling floodwater. Who is the psychopathic Ronnie and what is his connection to the hotel? Is it just coincidence that Balenger took this story on this particular night or is he looking for something? Or someone? Every truth uncovered reveals another dozen questions and Morrell keeps a reader enthralled right to the very last page. While I’m not fond of gore, this book is fairly matter of fact about it, neither dwelling on it too long or skipping over it completely. The characters are realistic enough – jealousy, attraction, greed, cowardice and stupidity all appear, even in the ‘good’ characters which makes everyone seem more human. Sometimes the conversation is a little wordy and the timeline a little disjointed, but for the man part this book consists of good, solid writing, an amazing plot with unguessable twists and characters who you root for even when their failings are more than apparent.

Book Review: The Art of Eating In by Cathy Erway

The adventures of a girl who only eats home made food for two years while living in New York. It sounds so promising and the first chapter about the history of restaurants and how NY became the ‘eating out’ capital of world is amazing. Unfortunately after that, there is not enough cooking and a lot of ‘discovering oneself’ and honestly, reading a book filled with every day anecdotes about random people doesn’t interest me. When Cathy DOES talk about cooking (and I mean the nitty gritty of cooking, not just ingredient lists and recipes, I mean how you can juggle cooking dinner and desert at the same time and how you can add these leftovers to this meal to make it better and how bone in cooking creates more flavour) it’s really interesting and the writing flows along. But when she’s telling stories which involve several people you’re not sure if she has already introduced in the book or if they just appeared now and the timeline is a little fragmented (WHEN DID SHE PICK UP THE MEAT FROM THE BUTCHER? WHEN??) and the writing weaves knots that suddenly tighten and choke the story without actually getting anywhere.

Somehow I think this concept made a much better blog.

Anyway, the book cycles through Cathy’s initial romance with her boyfriend, their moving in together and eventual break up, followed by her quest for romance which doesn’t involve restaurant dinners. It also shows how hard it is to spend time out with friends and family without eating out. I found that the book gives a good list of things Cathy found hard, from avoiding vending machine snacks to finding the line between eating out and buying pre-prepared food. But the answers are rather enigmatic. This is either because I’m not good at reading between lines (I feel there should be no ‘hidden’ meaning in books. What’s the point in adding meaning if 60% of the readers aren’t going to pick up on it?) or because Cathy didn’t actually come up with any answers during her 2 year quest.

In the end, this book is a long slog which introduces the reader to some interesting concepts and theories, but doesn’t actually elaborate on much. Cathy explores dumpster diving, foraging and low waste eating, but doesn’t actually stick with any long enough to give a detailed analysis. Basically if you want a how to manual about not eating out or alternatives to eating out, this is not a good book. If you want a story about how an average girl spent two years figuring out her life while not eating out, then it is. I was expecting much more practical advice and was a little disappointed.

Book Review: This is not a drill by Paul Carter

I haven’t read Carter’s first book (Don’t tell mum I work on the rigs, she’s thinks I’m a piano player in a whorehouse – a title which always makes me wonder if he does actually know how to play piano), but that didn’t make my enjoyment of this sequel any less. Carter explodes into the book, immediately diving into the life or death situation that gives the book it’s name. From then until the very end the book is a whirlwind ride of dangerous and comical situations, crazy characters, giant crabs and excessive amounts of alcohol, love and heartbreak.

Carter flies around the word, from Russia to Japan to Afghanistan and back to Australia to see his long suffering girlfriend (now wife) Clare. He reconnects with his Dad and a few of his Dad’s war buddies over single malt scotch, barbecues toes during a storm, discovers the best way to sneak a ciggie on a non-smoking rig and nearly gets blown up researching mercenaries in the Middle East.

Carter’s writing is pretty damn eloquent, given that he’s been a self-professed rigrat for most of his adult life. Sure, there’s some very colourful phrases throughout, but on the whole, the style comes across like an editorial – well researched and factual, but still personal and emotive. Sometimes I found Carter gets a little verbose when he starts talking about causes and issues close to him, which doesn’t quite fit with the rest of the book, but forgive him that and this is a rollicking read which carries itself well into the early hours of the morning.

Book Review – Johannes Cabal and the Fear Institute by Jonathon L Howard.

This book filled one of my weaker “I need to buy a book RIGHT NOW” moments over the Christmas holidays while I was moving house (I know, I know, I’m an idiot) and everything was packed. I read a chapter and thought it was pretentious and overdone. Then I read another chapter and got all hooked and was constantly thinking about what Cabal was going to do next and then I’d read in bed until 2am and never once did I actually manage to predict what would happen (twist ending? oh yes!) and then about 3 chapters from the end it got all pretentious and overdone again and lost the interestingness.

Johannes Cabal is a necromancer. I’ve never read any of the past books in the series, but coming in at book three doesn’t really matter until you get to the end and there’s this terrible cliffhanger ending which makes you mutter for days cursing authors and publishers and schedules and things. Anyway, he is a necromancer and he has a dry wit and a superior intellect and a chaos god who likes to play with him. His services are secured by a society (one with an impractical handshake) whom require him to travel to the Dreamlands and kill the phobic animus – the source of all fear in this world.

So into the Dreamlands goes Cabal, with Mr Bose, Mr Shadrach and Mr Corde of the Fear Institute tagging somewhat reluctantly along with him. But Cabal disagrees with the fundamental structures (or lack of them) of the Dreamlands and it turns out the Dreamlands disagree with Cabal. And there’s a strange and rather helpful ghoul who keeps following them around (ok, I admit, THAT twist I did get quite early on). And in the end, it’s not clear if Cabal has accomplished his task, someone else’s task or any task at all.

The language is clever (overly so – if I have to read with a thesaurus next to me then the author is just showing off) and the pace quick moving and there are cats. Sometimes you might not catch something and go back a few pages, re-read it and still not catch it or be sure there was anything to catch in the first place, but don’t be alarmed – I’m pretty sure it’s meant to be like that. And you’ll want to dress in all black once you finish reading it – if you don’t already – and encourage pixies with teeth to live at the bottom of your garden.

Can’t wait for the next one. I’m going to hate the first two chapters, but it’s worth it.

Fragment I

When I was younger, I believed a red fox lived in between my mattress and the enamelled railing at the end of my bed. I was scared to put my feet all the way down, even under the blankets, because I was terrified it would crawl out and nibble my toes. Mum would attempt to check under the bed and I’d think “what the hell? It’s not UNDER the bed, it’s squished between the mattress and the bed end. Looking under there is not going to do any good!” As a result of sleeping for years as close to the bedhead as possibly, I now can’t sleep unless I’m propped up on a pillow with my knees curled up to my body.

Book Review – Songbird by Walter Zacharius

This is a rather risque, unusual take on a WWII female espionage agent. Mia is a Polish Jew living with her upper class family when the German occupation begins. Too late to escape, the family ends up in the Ghetto, slowly dying despite the fortune in diamonds they carry.
When the diamonds only bring them betrayal and a train ride to Treblinka*, Mia ecapes and amkes her way to Warsaw, posing as an aryan and surviving by selling cigarettes and running dangerous errands for an underground Jewish gang. Eventually, Mia escapes to America and stays with relatives in Manhattan. But she can’t forget those she has lost – her family now in Auschwitz, her would-be husband Wolf dead on the shores of Switzerland, her teenage crush back in Paris. Determined to at least find out what has happened to her family, Mia leaves her new boyfriend and head back to Europe, first training in England and then being air dropped into France. But the life of a spy is not what Mia has anticipated – forced to work in a S&M brothel and seduce the german officers she despises, Mia find herself losing track of what is real and what is a lie.

Eventually the German forces are driven back, but Mia has been a german consort too long and is nearly killed by a mob of starving locals who overrun the brothel. Snatched away from the boyfriend who is coming to rescue her and left to wander a broken Europe, Mia ends up in Palestine where she lives with the constant echoes of the war.

As you can see, it’s not the typical war memoir. Mia is left broken and desolate – she can’t bare to go back to claim the home she originally fled, refuses to see her aunt and uncle in America and believes the ‘love of her life’ Vinnie is dead. It’s a tragic tale of a young woman who is forced into prostitution, believing that she is helping the war effort and ends up despised by not only those around her, but also by the Allied commanders who put her in that position. It’s a story of desperation, cruelty and death and not one that can be read lightly in an afternoon.

The biggest problem I had with the book (beside the graphic violence. Which isn’t really that graphic, but I’m a wimp when it comes to that kind of thing) is that I felt you could tell it was written by a man. For the first half, when Mia is lamenting her lost life in Paris and hating her parents for being Jewish, the masculine slant doesn’t matter so much. It’s only later on when Mia starts playing piano for german officers before beating them with paddles that the story completely falls into a bondage fantasy – complete with a lesbian snuff scene. The writing carries little emotion with it and given that the story is so desperate and tragic, that Mia is completely cut off from any real feelings rings a little false.

The story also jumps around a lot – this is partially a form to divide the story into three sections (the occupation, life in America and being a spy), but it ends up looking like a stop gap by an author who had run out of credible things to write about. The books ends abruptly, the prelude and epilogue add almost nothing to the story (besides more sex scenes) and what i would have found interesting (what mia did after the war, how she ended up in Palestine, did she get any compensation for the trauma during the war, how did she deal with the memories herself, etc.) is severely lacking. What could have been a very moving story about the lengths a girl is forced to in order to survive the german occupation becomes a rather unrealistic story of murder and sex. There is shock value, especially when Mia is in the ghetto, but I feel this book adds little to the memory of the holocaust.

*Which wasn’t actually built yet in 1940. It’s confusing as to if this is an inaccuracy or if the author has made more time pass in the ghetto than is apparent.

Book Review: Dreaming Water by Gail Tsukiyama

This book had me absolutely hypnotised and staying up way past my bedtime on the two nights it took me to read it (working full time is really cutting into my reading habits!). I’m going to have to find a copy of the Samurai’s Garden by the same author just to see if it’s as well written.

The story is about Hana, who suffers from Werner’s syndrome and is growing old before her time. It’s also about her mother, Cate, who is terrified of having to let her beloved daughter go. It’s also about Josephine, the daughter of Hana’s childhood friend, who isn’t sure where she fits into the world anymore. The begins alternating from Hana to Cate, sharing small, intimate details of their lives and histories. The story is slow and delicate, almost as fragile as Hana herself and is beautifully woven and poignant. Eventually Josephine takes up the tale and you can see she is an angry young girl who is just trying to keep the threads of her live from unraveling any further. It’s a stark contrast to the sorrowful but strong Cate and the accepting and wistful Hana.

What I found most beautiful about this book is the simple, pure love between mother and child. Cate is unwavering in her devotion to Hana. It’s strange that Hana appears older than her mother and yet in Cate’s eyes, she is still a little girl, long-legged and laughing on the beach. And Hana loves Cate equally – she knows what Cate has given up to care for her and she knows that some day she is going to die and leave Cate alone and the thought terrifies her.
And there is much more love in the book – Max, Hana’s deceased father, features in nearly all the memories that Hana and Cate relate. Laura loves Josephine and Camille with the fierce protectiveness of a lioness. Even Dr Truman is secretly in love with Cate and longs to help Hana live longer.

This book is soft and quiet and sweet and beautiful and the echoes of all the love in it will follow you for long after you’ve finished. This is a short review because you should just go and read it for yourself – it’s a little slow to start, but well worth the build up.