Review: The Last Child, by John Hart

John Hart's latest novel, The Last Child, centers around a child named Johnny Merrimon, whose sister disappeared a year earlier, and whose father vanished not long after. Far from the idyllic life he once had, Johnny and his mother now live in a rundown house owned by the violent town bigwig who now controls their lives. His mother rarely gets out of bed, and Johnny spends his days on his bike, combing neighborhoods and tracking known pedophiles in a dogged attempt to find his sister rather than attending school. When Johnny witnesses a murder, and is himself briefly grabbed by a stranger in the woods, the story of what really has happened in the town begins to unravel.

There's a lot about this story that's a rerun of other novels: the despairing mother who falls apart and turns to the violent man who abuses her child but turns a blind eye, the rebel child who rises to adult level and takes on the role of caretaker, the cop who is obsessed with the case and also, of course, is in love with the distraught mother, the lurking uber-religious mentally handicapped well-meaning felon. However, the plot itself moves along fairly quickly once it gets going, and the questions are interesting. What really did happen? Will Johnny's father return? Who killed the motorcyclist, and what does the man in the forest have to do with anything?

Hunt does a good job of concealing the answers to most of these questions until the end of the story. I was honestly surprised at some of the revelations. While this is one of those stories where you know that things are going to work out in the end for everyone, it was nice to not know exactly how it was all going to wind up until the proper time.

The use of mysticism and historical tie-ins with Johnny's ancestors was somewhat interesting, if a little heavy-handed towards the end of the story. The story's flow stutters a bit entering into the climax events because of it; while there was some foreshadowing as to its importance, it wasn't integrated into the story enough previously for there to be a seamless transition to a more mystical resolution.

Rating: three stars: Tired character stereotypes, sometimes difficult to buy into, but interesting plot

Review: Abraham Lincoln, Vampire Hunter, by Seth Grahame-Smith

Do you hate history? Does nonfiction leave you sleepy? Are you bored to tears with hearing the same tired stories about our sixteenth president? Author Seth Grahame-Smith, author of Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, has a cure for you, as he once again visits the world of historical horror fiction with his newest work, Abraham Lincoln, Vampire Hunter.

Smith takes a different tack with his newest work, creating something entirely original rather than choosing a previously published work to embellish. He addresses Lincoln's entire life, dividing the work into three sections - boyhood, manhood, and president - and lays the basis of Lincoln's interactions with the hungry undead early on. It turns out that Lincoln's grandfather, beloved mother, and other relatives died not from common malaise but from exposure to the blood of vampires, who attacked their family in retribution for an outstanding debt Lincoln's father owed to a bloodthirsty banker. This, it becomes clear, is the source of the animosity between Lincoln and his father, and is the beginning of Lincoln's career as a vampire hunter. Once begun, his journey brings him into the company of a vampire turncoat who advises him which of his kind need to die. Their relationship, and the alliances formed because of it, bring Abe to the highest office in the land. There, he battles slavery not only as a human evil, but for its underlying truth; southern vampires use the slave trade for food, and mean to take over all of humanity.

ALVH is does not have the dry wit of Prejudice, but does possess its own dark character that grows increasingly absorbing with each chapter. Smith strays from the action of the main story occasionally, and some sections are a bit dry, but on the whole the tale is well worth reading. At times, the tale seems a bit Ann Rice-y, but the addition of the vampires to Lincoln's life, especially in the political realm, seems fairly organic. The characters themselves are well-written, and the idea of slavery being in reality a massive food supply chain for the undead is genius. Abe's personal tragedies have always seemed almost unrealistic in their scale even in their actual fact, so the weaving in of vampires as a common thread of explanation for the long trail of sorrow almost makes more sense than the real stories behind them. The forward, which slyly mirrors one that would be seen in an actual work, sets the tone of a serious work of nonfiction, which Smith maintains throughout the story. The ending, though, has really captured my imagination. I finished this book about two weeks ago, and am still thinking about it, imagining what would come next.

It did take me a few chapters to actually get into the story, and occasionally the tale was a bit slower than I would have liked, but overall, ALVH is another success for Smith. I was impressed previously with his talent for seamlessly weaving zombies into a classic, and am glad to see that he possesses the dexterity to create his own original works as well. I look forward to reading whatever he comes out with next.

Rating: four out of five stars. Very imaginative, with intriguing characterizations.

Review: Flood, by Stephen Baxter

In Stephen Baxter's Flood, a group of four scientists and military members from around the world emerges from a years-long hostage situation to find the world around them rapidly changing. Waters around the world are rising, not because of anything humankind has done but rather because of natural circumstances; the earth's plates have been hiding subterranean oceans that are finally bursting free, flooding London even as the hostages are being freed. Billionaire entrepreneur Nathan Lammockson, who had a hand in the hostage's discovery and release, entreats the former hostages to help him in his quest to conquer the new challenges humanity faces. Fraught with socio-political strife and greed, Flood tells the tale of humanity's last stand on Earth, of our final forty years on dry land.

Unfortunately, while the premise, and potential, of this concept is fascinating, Baxter's execution is not up to the task. The characters are flat, predictable caricatures of what they could be. The story alternates between dragging and flashing forward, skipping years and important character developments. The entire undertaking begins to feel like a made-for-TV movie, where there are snippets of interesting events, but really nothing to keep you from heading for the kitchen for a snack or answering the phone.

I wanted to like this book. I really did. The concept was so interesting! I stuck with it to the end, hoping for more, but the whole thing just unraveled more as time passed. I know there's a sequel, which I have to admit piques my interest just enough that I might check it out, because again, the idea had so much potential, that even if the end result wasn't what I hoped for, I at least had fodder for my own imaginings of what the world would be like and how I could have done it differently than the author, and that's worth something. Besides, even with the worst of the Lifetime movies, the action scenes can still be worth tuning in to gawk at.

Rating: two stars. Cool idea, interesting action scenes, but little more than TV-movie quality.