ISBN: 9780425230152)

I bought this book.

Harris’ Harper Connelly series is my favorite from her, far more I’m a little sad to say, than her Sookie books. Grave Secret is the fourth in the series that follows a young woman and her stepbrother (now lover, sounds weird, and it is a little weird, but they aren’t related and often it works well) as they try to find the missing dead (Harper can sense the dead, a gift she got after being struck by lightning).

With Grave Secret Harris dives deep into Harper and Tolliver’s dark childhood. They return to Texas to visit with their half sisters amid a lot of stress and drama (mainly from their aunt and uncle who are very unsure about the effects Harper and Tolliver’s visits have on the younger girls). Then while out with the girls Harper and Tolliver run into the last person they expect to see, Tolliver’s father, now out of jail and looking to reconnect. The past comes flooding back, nearly emotional crippling Harper. But the present won’t be ignored either, as someone who has reason to hate Harper and Tolliver shoots at them through the window of their hotel.

While Harper is functional, the rawness of her traumatic past and her desperate need for Tolliver’s support and understanding is evident in every sentence of this book. Now with him in the hospital and someone still trying to kill her for an unknown reason (not that there are no reasons, there are too many for Harper to be able to commit to just one) Harper has to step up and be the one to save the day.

Where other series flirt with “the traumatic past”, using it as a character shorthand to make more complex characters this series immerses itself in it, using Harper to explore “how does a person build a life after trauma” the way most urban fantasies explore “what if vampires existed”.

I highly recommend this series, as a satisfying mystery series, with compelling characters that readers will be able to truly connect with. Harris’ strength has always been in her character building, but in this one her storytelling skills are in full bloom, packing a powerful, unforgettable punch.

ISBN: 9780007343317

I bought this book.

King Arthur in modern day, gang-ridden Indianapolis, this book promises, and the Arthurian legend is evident in King Maker by Maurice Broaddus. The book opens with the short, dark tale of Luther, gang leader and father to an infant, King James White. Not long after betraying King’s mother with another woman Luther is shot, betrayed by his right hand man.

With that, we’re told in the tone of a Shakespearean tragedy, the story moves on to King, who is in fact the One True King (albeit rather far from England). Except that despite King’s role as the lead he’s actually in the book very little.

In fact that’s where this whole book stalled for me. Broaddus can clearly write circles around other people, but in this book he writes in circles that have hollow middles. Almost all the focus is on character building, tension building and weaving in the minute details of the re-written mythos. But for a large part of the book nothing happens.

Also, Broaddus spends an exorbitant amount of time building up characters who are ultimately side characters. This leads to next to no connection with King himself and a sense of confusion when major events to happen, or major players are killed. Because the emphasis is on everyone being gray (all the bad guys have a reason for their bad, either playing a role or being crushed by a poor life) is so overwhelming that no one comes out as a compelling or valiant hero.

Fate and legend are powerful aspects of the tale, as is the desolation and hopelessness of life way below the poverty line. Not to mention the clever metamorphosis of fiends into zombies and the very interesting use of fae and otherworldly creatures in the most unusual of modern settings. Once Broaddus does get things moving King Maker gets very good, richly thematic and enticingly original.

But in the end this book on its own is too slow for most urban fantasy fans. Luckily readers won’t have to see it end here, and can hope things pick up in book two (King’s Justice due March 2011).

ISBN: 0590032496

I bought this book.

The Witches is one of my favorites, a hold over from my independent reader days. In fact it’s the same copy of Roald Dahl’s classic that I bought as a budding reader that I read to my kids this past October. Don’t be fooled, this is a kid’s book that’s genuinely scary and isn’t going to tack on a happily ever after ending for our valiant heroes.

Imagine a creature that looks like a woman, but is actually an evil paranormal beastie bent on the utter destruction of children. And witches don’t just kill kids (that’s for people who get caught, Dahl assures us) they turn them into animals to be slaughtered for meat, or hex them into painting to live out their natural lives in oils. The Witches is one part absurd and two parts very scary.

After his parents dies tragically our hero lives with his grandmother, who used to be a witch hunter and takes his witch education very seriously. Yet somehow, on vacation, our hero manages to stumble right into the annual meeting of the witches and end up the only living non-witch who has seen the Grand High Witch true face to face. They’ve hatched a plan to turn all the children of England into mice and only a ten year old boy and an eighty year old woman can stop them before it’s too late.

You could say that the whole premise is Dahl’s hatred of women (especially women who don’t want/like kids), but I think that like in his other stories (almost all of which on the kid’s shelves deal with extraordinary kids facing really abusive adults) Dahl taps into one of the universal terrors of the early years. Even cared for and supported childhood is a dangerous time when a person has no real control over their life and where adults try to say there’s no danger when there’s a ton.

In The Witches, like Dahl’s other books, the power is put into the hands of the children characters to either let life crush them, or chase after their dreams any way.

I recommend The Witches for an older audience (eight or so and up) and despite its uncomfortable touches of scary, recommend it as an essential part of a library-in-progress.

Also, there’s a movies version (with a different ending) starring Angelica Huston and filmed with the held of Henson’s Muppet Studio (for effects, not muppets) that’s worth checking out as well.

ISBN: 978-1936383009

I bought this book.

The chances of readers not being familiar with either bizarro fiction or the “flying circus” storytelling form is pretty high. So let’s start there. Bizarro is a pseudo-genre that embraces Absurdism, irony, satire, surrealism and even outright silliness. Think Roald Dahl, Lewis Carroll, Jean-Paul Sarte, Samuel Beckett meets The Twilight Zone, Lovecraft and David Lynch. In fact this book comes out through Eraserhead Press.

The flying circus is an homage to Monty Python. It’s a collection of related (thematically, directly through characters and worlds, or merely grammatically) shorts that come together as a whole. How to Eat Fried Furries supposedly is a pamphlet included in the goodie bags at the American Association of Furry Farmers convention.

Cushing’s shorts start out as silly riffs on religion and genre (alien squirrel invaders led by the Squirrel Pope, readers will get that the stories are absurd, as is the bits of religion they’re reflecting). It disarms the reader with over-the-top stunts then subjects them to some pretty serious shorts that challenge the nature of human status quo and pretentiousness. In these darker pieces Cushing establishes that there are three people in the world: the Flesh, who uphold and define the status quo; the Flayed to reject it to the point of rejecting their own skin; and the neutral who are very screwed indeed.

While the premise might seem silly (and honestly the first mini-tale is quite far gone) Cushing deftly slices apart the reader with a wicked wit and almost playful viciousness. The power packed second act makes Furries an excellent, rattling read and a chance to get in on the ground floor of what will be a stellar career.