Name Forthcoming: Icky October Book Haul

*BOOM*

Told you this one'd be big, didn't I? Here it is then: The Massive October Book Haul!

You'll notice that it is (almost) a nice mix between books and comics this time, and that pretty much all of it is horror except for a few fantasy titles and the obligatory Judge Dredd comic book.

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Let's start from the top, which is also immediately the book I'm reading right now: Chuck Palahniuk's Haunted, which is technically a collection of (or at least, the back-blurb says these are going to be) 23 short stories connected by an overarching narrative in which 18 or so wannabe writers answer an ad to go to an exclusive writer's retreat and who are then surprisingly locked in a building for three months. They're being treated alright, actually, but most of them wish that the situation was a bit more harrowing, and so pretty much all of them start to sabotage the group's supplies and their surroundings and, as a result, the situation quickly begins to become more dire than anticipated. Or at least I think so. I've only read a fourth of the book at this point.

Palahniuk might be familiar to some of you. His big mainstream success came when his novel Fight Club got adapted by David Fincher. I watched the movie, became obsessed by it and eventually got around to also giving the novel a go. And honestly it was okay but on the whole I just preferred the movie. Palahniuk's writing style is one of those that goes in one ear and out the other, so to speak; nothing much sticks at the end except the idea that this is one man who doesn't like society much.

And he's right of course, but that doesn't mean I want to read about it. Palahniuk's stories are infused with grime, with the baser elements of life and sex, and on the whole frequently comes off as mean-spirited. It's good for an outraged chuckle or two, but I still don't believe this is the type of literature that'll stand the test of time. Yuppie-infused capitalist nonsense of yesteryear. Kind of like American Psycho. And realizing that immediately makes me think that I might just be wrong about Palahniuk's books not withstanding the test of time.

At least the cover is glow in the dark, which is something.

I bought this one finally because I had it listed somewhere on the books I'd like to give to a friend, purely on hearsay, as the novel frequently tops best of lists in the horror category. So far it's been both hilarious and annoying, but no scares as of yet. Or even anything that one would constitute as horror reading, though I guess it does have a certain queasiness factor going for it.

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Next up, an overpriced novella, which I had to pay import taxes on for more than half the price of the book itself. 20 euros for 'formalities' on top of the 3.50 or so of actual income-tax... Modern Highway Robbery I tells you.

This one'd better be good, is all I'm saying.

Don't know much about it except what the blurb told me, and that a writer who I still have an entire unread trilogy of lying around was the one who wrote it.

So, a venture of about 50 euros for a huge big question mark of a story, written by an author you don't know anything about, Levi, what possessed you to do such a thing?

Well, snooty reader, have a look at the blurb of the thing.

ENTER THE EXECRATION,

WHERE THE DAMNED AND THE DESPERATE

COME TO PRAY TO THE MAD GOD…

It is two hundred years since the deity known as the Absolved went mad and destroyed the Kingdom of Alnachim, transforming it into the Execration, a blasted wasteland filled with nameless terrors. For decades, desperate souls have made pilgrimage to the centre of this cursed land to seek the Mad God’s favour, their fate always unknown.

Now a veteran warrior known only as Pilgrim, armed with a fabled blade inhabited by the soul of a taunting demon, must join with six others to make the last journey to the heart of the Execration. Allied with a youthful priest, a beast-charmer, a duplicitous scholar, an effete actor and two exiled lovers, Pilgrim must survive madness, malevolent spirits, unnatural monsters and the ever-present risk of treachery, all so that the Mad God might hear his prayer and, perhaps, grant redemption. But can sins such as his ever be forgiven?

Set in a world where demons and gods walk the earth, A Pilgrimage of Swords is a dark and exciting fantasy adventure from the New York Times bestselling author of the Raven’s Shadow and Draconis Memoria trilogies.

Yeah, exactly.

I don't know about you, but I got some serious Hyperion-vibes from that.

Mad Gods, a pilgrimage-type quest, demons, religion, darkness... Sounds bloody awesome!

And to be fair to the book's price tag: It does look quite nice. And it's limited too!

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Yes, in the Book-Pile photo at the top you'll see that there's a few more books in there than I'm actually giving attention to, which in every case is because those individual books and comic books all have already had their time to shine in another of this month's posts. To whit: after I had read The Light is The Darkness, by Laird Barron, And which is in the picture up above, I immediately went ahead and ordered the short story collection I really should've picked up ages ago by now: The Imago Sequence.

It arrived pretty quickly too, and I have begun reading it already, as I had a bit of waiting time at the doctor's today. It's immediately become clear that Barron's work is more inter-connected than I thought. Bare pages in, there are already organizations and names intimately connected with some of the elements in The Light is the Darkness novella. His protagonists also come across as pretty bad-ass, which is very much to my liking. Apparently this is called Hard-boiled.

The book itself is actually the winner of the 2007 Shirley Jackson Awards for Best Short Story Collection, so, you know, that sounds pretty cool. Even though I'm not one to put much stock in popular opinions, or jury-based decisions of any kind.

What an odd thing to say, no?

Almost as if there's more to say there...

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Next up; the latest Michael Fletcher novel.

I haven't read anything by him since Beyond Redemption, though I compulsively buy everything he puts out.

I've said it before, and I'll say it again. I'm a compulsive reader, and a slow reader.

Which means that if the story isn't finished by the time I've read the first book in the series, I'm very likely to be side-tracked by other stuff, and in the end I usually don't go back to the series at all.

Reading takes a lot of time for me. Which is why I just purchase the stuff I know I'll like when it comes out, and then wait for the series to be finished before I dive in.

It's a problematic and selfish position to take maybe. But I've been burned a few times too many to look further than my own capabilities on this one.

The one idea that informs all of my thinking on this is that there is so much good stuff to read still, and 95 percent of which has been finished decades ago, if not generations ago, and it's whole and complete and guaranteed to satisfy.

Read the world's classics, for God's sake people. Stop diving into the very next buzz-worthy thing. Half the stuff you're reading right now will not last a decade. There's too many writers out there right now, and most of them don't add much to the art.

But if you find one you really like, you should stick with them.

Michael Fletcher is my one thing.

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So then, on to comics!

First up is the latest Junji Ito manga hardback, which now completes my Junji ito Horror Library.

Though I guess I could still buy the Dissolving Class Room manga, if I really crave some horror manga, but it isn't likely.

Manga is very miss with me, and barring Berserk and 2 of Ito's stories, almost never a hit.

I loved Uzumaki, or at least the concept of the thing itself, but there were elements that just couldn't help coming across as silly, the whirlwind-flyers for one (boy, was that stupid...), but there is a certain draw to these things anyway. And I'm of the opinion that one should probably go and explore the top of each art form one comes across. And the top in Horror Manga is Junji Ito.

But if I'm very honest, I'm happy that I can close this particular chapter of Manga exploration quite soon. It might just not be my thing entirely.

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Here's the last Hellboy trade ever.

Hopefully.

What can I say about this one that won't drip with annoyance and ill will?

Hellboy was such a great character and had some really damn good stories, and it all went to shit when the BPRD went and became their own thing. Storylines that would've worked fine in the hands of Mignola himself went to other writers and artists, and it almost never worked. This is my opinion of course. I'm sure most people love the BPRD storylines but I have come to actively loathe them.

And here then, in Ragna Rok, is the story that's supposed to end 25 years of storytelling, and a whole universe worth of comics and properties. And it just sucks.

It's all so rushed that it actively pissed me off.

What's bizarre though is that it does get really really good there at the end, you know, when Mignola's the one doing the drawing. And even I have to admit that it's really one hell of a way to end the series. I'm not sure if I've ever seen anything done like this before.

But does it work though?

I really liked those 5 final pages. But when they were done, I felt just kind of deflated, and disinterested. Some of these characters got such a raw deal, and the landscape is just unrecognizable.

I suppose the name of the game is that this really has become an almost alien world now, and that humanity's day has drawn to a close. And my beef isn't that 'I can't identify with this' or something, no. Hell no. Fuck humanity, kill them all.

No, I loved the fact that this was an unstoppable apocalypse and all. But it felt just so hollow, so rushed and poorly executed. You gave the annoying plague of Frogs 14 trade paperbacks of story, Hell on Earth got 15, and the Apocalypse itself only gets 3 trades, and when Hellboy shows up to finally do the thing he's been having to do since issue 1 and then you don't even make him feel like Hellboy?

No. My guess is that somebody got tired of the whole thing, and it all needed to be wrapped up as soon as possible.

The problem with this is that there's no desire for pre-quels or spin-offs either. I was reading Crimson Lotus and I was wondering why I was doing so. There was build up here for the grand finale, and it annoyed me, because the grand finale itself ultimately had proved itself to be disappointing. It was all pointless. Ugh.

Man, I have a lot of annoyance and anger on this one. Might eventually come back to it, but on the whole, I'd rather just forget about Hellboy right now.

Moving on.

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Here is one I am very much curious about.

There's something abstract about these covers, something that teases without even showing anything.

There's black, blue and 3 spots of red in a scene that just screams that there's something going on here, but because we're so far away there's also a sense of peace and quiet about it. Some sort of hidden darkness.

And then the highly suggestive title, somehow connected with that pitch black warehouse door... this one looks very, very enticing.

Somehow I've been able to keep completely spoiler-free on this one. I solely picked it up based on the name of the comic itself, the writer associated with it and the kind of art-style that the cover has. There's no guarantee that this one'll be good, but at the very least the whole series, 12 issues in total, has been collected between these two trades.

I'm itching to dive in.

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Here it is finally.

Terminal Diagnosis.

This is likely Harry Absalom's final outing.

He'll likely die here, though I hope not, but if he can give a good poke in the eye of the powers that be I'll be more than happy either way. Hopefully there'll also be some more hints to Gordon Rennie's Cabbalistics universe, which there was a playful reference to in one of the earlier Absalom volumes.

The story's one that the groundwork's been laid for in the previous Absalom stories:

To keep him in line, the forces of Hell have kidnapped and imprisoned Harry's grandchildren and put them in 'The Mills', and now, with Harry's final days approaching as his much-stalled cancer is taking the last chunks out of his system, he's putting a team together to get his grandchildren back.

I'm gonna miss the old bugger.

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Another one from the pages of 2000AD.

Tales of Telguuth collects the comic adaptations of Steve Moore's Telguuth short stories, and as I've read about a third of it now I can already say that I'm going to go and get the Tales of Telguuth collection from Strange Attractor Press as well. These tales are dark, and nasty, and pretty unique as well. Sorcery, Gods and monsters, and some tits thrown in for good measure. The artwork is gorgeous and pretty similar across all the tales in here, which is perfect for someone like me who can't stand it if the art veers between too different styles.

Now, I've read a bunch of sword and sorcery stuff but there's a very strange taste to these stories, and I can very well understand why the most often used adjective to describe them is 'perverse'. It isn't exactly that but the word does seem to sum it up best, as they all seem to end badly for their main characters, and pretty much every time there's a sick delight in watching this unfold.

I recommend you pick this one up.

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Dreddy's number 24 outing.

It's been pretty good. Not much to say though.

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I do have a lot to say about this one.

Note the paws?

I've already read three chapters, and though the edition featured above is gorgeous of course, and quite hefty, though not heavy, I was a bit on the fence about recommending the Top Shelf edition of From Hell as I thought there wasn't any introduction or explanatory piece in here, but last night I discovered the appendices at the back of the book and: ehh... maybe there's not even a need for an introduction?

Well, let me put it this way.

There's this bit in BBC's Luther where a girl is reading a comic book, and Luther asks her what she's doing, and she responds with, "I'm reading a Graphic Novel", and Luther scoffs and says, "Call it what is, it is a comic book, I don't know why the youth always have to pretend that things are bigger than what they are. Go read a real book, might do you some good", or something. There's a lot of disdain there for this idea of wanting to call comic books graphic novels, as if that can 'legitimize' an art form that's pretty much just dumb entertainment to the people that love reading actual novels.

This pretty much was my position as well, for the longest time, and when I began reading comics I always called them comics, but From Hell has made me realize that you just can't call this thing a comic book; In some ways it IS a novel, and if you go into this one expecting to breeze through it you're gonna fall flat on your face. And the funny thing is that when I tried to think of other comic books one should be calling graphic novels the only ones I could come up with (and that I'd read) were those that had also been written by Alan Moore: V for Vendetta, Providence (though not Neonomicon), and From Hell.

So what's the difference, why are some of these 'higher' than others?

I guess it's about what's in it, behind it, what brought the thing about.

Anyone can tell a story (though not really), but what I'm trying to say is that this one is of a different class than anything else in comics. When I look at it, I just can't understand that anyone crafted it. It is whole and complete, exactingly pre-determined and then meticulously executed. It's laborious and perfect. There's so much that's in it, that it can not have done anything other than consume the artists working on it, and From Hell did do that of course. Moore came out of this one a changed man.

Anyway There's over 40 pages of notes in here, indicating which elements have been fictionalized and which elements came about by research and speculation, and it's dense and quite heavy to read. And it almost obviates the need for an introduction.

Here's the girl that those paws belong to.

Saffy's got a good home, let me tell you, and she knows.