Michele Lee

ISBN: 1934069

One snowy night Lauren Kemper, the only doctor in a small ski town, is called out to a building leased by a team of scientists doing research in the frozen hills. What she finds there is one of the scientists, sick, collapsed with her stomach bulging and squirming as if she was pregnant. But not ten minutes ago Marianne was in good health, with a stomach as flat as a board. It’s what Lauren finds inside, what Marianne’s corpse gives birth to in Lauren’s clinic and what escapes to terrorize a small ski town, that sets off this horror story.

Hosts reminds me a lot of Dean Koontz’s Phantoms, boiled down to all the action. It lands more on the mainstream side of horror, that with wide reader appeal, than with the more esoteric books available. The characters are developed enough, but remain typical, ordinary people. The danger is threatening enough to maintain suspense without losing readers with fuzzy logic, or horrendously bad science. It’s also not a completely insurmountable danger, so as not to drown readers in hopelessness and fear.

Hosts is a solid, if not short, and enjoyable read that’s probably best for readers who enjoy books by King and Koontz rather than Edward Lee. It’s a great time killer with few overt problems. A stronger touch from an editor could have helped some to strengthen the story itself, but rather than making a dismal book good it would have only made a good book better.

ISBN: 9781906584115

Murky Depths stands out among the offerings of the small press, largely because it contains graphic strips and illustrations, as well as the mix of dark genre work that I find simply tantalizing.

Issue 7 features a large number of dark science fiction tales, each one excellent examples of the genre.

“Scratch” by Jason Palmer is half mystery and half psychological science fiction where people wear their obsessions and addictions on their arms, or legs, or tongues, and the battle to resist self destructive tendencies overshadows the battles of good and survival and everything else.

The first graphic offering, “A Brief History of Dogfighting” by James Johnson is a silent film, of sorts, with a deeply ironic tone and a fast pace. Following it and backing up the silent film feel, is a behind the scenes feature which chronicles the evolution of the storyline and the story as a piece of art.

“The Longest Road in the Universe” by CS MacCath is an incredibly emotion piece, easily the kind one might find in a larger publication, following a member of a species bred and genetically manipulated to love and serve a “higher species”. But when their parental figures who used and abused them vanish a whole race has to face their own abuse, with varying, and in this story almost lovingly detailed, results. This is definitely one not to miss.

The immediate follow up, “A Healthy Outlook” by Bill Ward, is a short, tight piece that shows the same sort of mental turmoil, from the point of view someone so die-hard-determined not to be a victim that the farce reaches a morbidly funny point.

“Viewer’s Choice” by Willie Meikle keeps to the themes of obsession while softening the science fiction focus. Here the lead can’t break away from his television, to the point that all the major memories in his life have a direct link to a television event. A situational story, it nonetheless clearly comments on our favorite societal past time.

“Bite the Bullet” also by James Johnson, is a fantastic romp through the limits of future technology, exploring how technology affects us, for good or ill.

“Psong” by Ian Rogers has less focus. A story about a futuristic assassin, the reader is loaded down with personality and detail without much context. Of course since the lead is a telepath and an object reader this adds more strength to the point of view of the assassin, but readers still have a very limited view of why this story is taking place at all.

“Survivalist” by Kevin Brown is one of the best vampire stories I’ve read lately, bringing the old Gothic critter into the modern world without turning it into a sex idol.

“Bait” by Paul Milliken follows the vampire story with its natural counterpart, a shape shifter story. This one follows the more traditional formula of an ordinary person whose life intersects with a monster. But this monster comes from the sea and remains more of a mystery than readers might like.

Luke Cooper’s “Flashback” adds another tale to the collection surrounding his gritty detective neck deep in the war between Heaven and Hell. In this addition to a potentially interesting plot, readers learn how Goulding got sucked into the Big War in the first place, but his role in it still remains a mystery.

Finally comes “Haruspex” by William Douglas Goodman, a second place finisher to the earlier “The Long Road Home” which brings the issue back around to tales of twisted mentality. In this story a boy finds that he’s gained the ability to get visions from dead animals, which has interesting results when your father is a trophy hunter.

All together here’s another fine issue that shows the people behind Murky Depths have their head on straight. I look forward to more.

ISBN: 9780061625121

From the back cover of Amberville one might expect a cross between Sesame Street and The Sopranos. Eric Bear, years after leaving behind a life of drugs and a job as a runner for a mafia king, opens his apartment door to find his former boss, the mafia head Nicholas Dove visiting with a request—take Dove’s name off the infamous Death List (literally a list of those slated to disappear from the world) or he will have his gorillas tear apart Eric’s beloved wife, Emma Rabbit.

This kicks off the reforming of Eric’s small gang, Tom-Tom Crow, Sam Gazelle and Snake Marek, who have all moved on from their criminal pasts in their own ways, and a desperate hunt for the society’s biggest secret, the Death List and its writer.

But after finishing Amberville readers will find it to be a very peculiar book. Somewhere between a mafia mystery and a higher-brow literary work addressing the nature of good and evil in the world, Amberville balances a deep mystery and action with deep, soulful contemplations (by mad men, or mad bears as the case may be). In fact the literary, contemplative sections which can, at times come off as lagging bits in the pacing of the plot, genuinely serve to distract and set up the reader, a sign of some truly clever writing.

Yes, the characters really are stuffed animals, living in a world where many things are very clearly defined for them (such as the good areas of town literally being painted different colors from the bad ones). And that analogy doesn’t go very far, in that the type of animal a character is doesn’t necessarily define who they are. And there aren’t really any musing on the nature of man versus beast. But each animal is a full, fleshy—or stuffed—whole with a parallel personality type in our world.

Amberville is the kind of book you wouldn’t think about reading, or you’d expect to not like, only to discover it has a lot more to offer than can be explained on the book jacket. It absolutely keeps you guessing, up to the last sentence, and asks questions but never presumes to offer answers, making it a very good read indeed.