Duma Key

I haven't searched for it yet, but I think I may be the only person who saw the pun in the title of Stephen King's latest book, DUMA KEY. If you think about it phonetically it could be seen as doom aqui or doom here. Thinking about it this way, one would hope that the protagonist stayed away from that place. However being a horror novel, no such thing could happen.

I didn't actually read this novel. Instead I picked up the audio version from my library. Audio books can be a mixed proposition. They allow you to "read" the story while doing other tasks - walking the dog, driving to work, or working out. But I sometimes found my resumptions to be somewhat jarring because I didn't leave off in a convenient place or could not remember the action. Written works allow for easier back tracking and restarting in most cases. Also I could not go back to a specific page to reread a section as well. That was not a problem with this book because there is good narrative drive and sufficient recapping and foreshadowing to keep the story moving forward. The other problem with audio books is length. It always seems like it takes longer to listen to than to read, but that is probably because the listener cannot skip passages like the reader does. All in all, I like audio books - especially ones as well produced as this. I have a nice stack on my iPod for when an opening presents.

John Slattery is the narrator and does an excellent job. I had no trouble discerning the characters and he didn't overreach in his performance (no stabs at fake Minnesota accents, etc). I truly enjoyed the audio and would recommend this version to anyone.

Now onto the story...DUMA KEY tells the tale of how Edgar Freemantle was disabled and came back to live a new life albeit probably not the one he would have chosen. This is not a new story. King has written about the isolated artist in the past (see THE SHINING). He's written about the ancient evil (see IT). He's written about brain-injured psychics (see THE DEAD ZONE), and so forth. All of this did not keep me from enjoying this novel. I haven't read as much King as I did in my teen years (This is only the second novel I picked up in ten years.), but I still recognize him as an important voice in American literature. King knows how to write and how to deliver the story. And most importantly, he knows how to entertain. DUMA KEY does entertain and even surprises. For people who don't read King because they don't like horror, they don't know what they are missing.

DUMA KEY is also a nominee for the 2009 Stoker Award for best novel. Right now it is my favorite. I'm still reading COFFIN COUNTY and now have JOHNNY GRUESOME. We'll see how they compare.

On Guard

Time for another little break from Stoker reading. I was looking for books for my daughter on cricket and fencing and came across this at the library. (No good cricket books though.) ON GUARD is a juvenile novel about Mikey, a young boy who is looking for a way to make his mark. He wants to stand out in school and at home but has no idea what to do. On a school field trip, he sees a fencing exhibition and falls in love with the sport.

There is some silliness in this book as well as some outdated fencing conventions, but it is fun. It reminded me of why I loved fencing and how I got into the sport, but doesn't spend nearly enough time on the strip. My only concern is that the fencer on the left side of the book looks to be holding the blade completely wrong, but it may be bad shading. Maybe when my daughter is old enough we'll check it out again.

Long Lost

Here I am interrupting my Stoker reading for the new Harlan Coben novel LONG LOST. As usual, I put aside my other books to get through a timely library loan that probably will not be renewable when the time comes. And besides, these books read fast.

LONG LOST is a sort of return to form for Coben. He brings back his long-time series character, Myron Bolitar. Myron was a basketball star who had to leave the game and became a sports agent. With his best friends Win and Esperanza, he solves crimes and battles the bad guys. But unlike the previous books, this has few connections to the sports realm and is probably his most ambitious plot to date. Myron is way over his head and pretty much stays there. I can't quite say where this fits on the Myron Bolitar spectrum. It is better than the last book PROMISE ME, but isn't up to the standards of ONE FALSE MOVE. I was better able to piece together the plot elements but Coben had a couple of twists that kept me guessing.

I'll keep reading Coben's books because they are fun, but I would still plug ONE FALSE MOVE, GONE FOR GOOD and TELL NO ONE as his best.

The Reach

In reading my second favorite website SF Signal, I came across the announcements for this year's Bram Stoker awards. Having never really followed these, I decided to read the best novel nominees. I picked up Stephen King's DUMA KEY in audio format and am liking it well enough about a fifth of the way in. CARRION COUNTY is available from my local library and is on its way to my hold queue. JOHNNY GRUESOME is available through order and if I had a nice local independent shop nearby, I would order it through them, but I am far away from any store other than Borders and Barnes and Noble and thus will order it through them. And THE REACH was available in store so I picked it up.

This book gave me pause because notionally the Stokers are for horror novels. The King, Braunbeck and Lamberson seem to be straight forward horror and so does this one by the cover copy, but I found it to be more science fictional in nature. The story revolves around genetics, parapsychology, psychology, and other scientific explanations for unexplained phenomena. Other than a few scenes which seemed reminiscent of THE FURY, CARRIE or FIRESTARTER, the book had few references to horror tropes at all. And this made me wonder why psychic phenomena is always classified as horror. After all, the WILD CARDS series is steeped in the expansion of the power of the mind, but is never labeled horror. I think perhaps it may be the linkage to the author's traditional genre or the way said powers are used. In the WILD CARDS books, the users are typical heroes (or as typical as WC can make them) whereas the others mark the psychics as outsiders and misfits. They are the exception and are usually exploited for their gifts. Still, I don't see the horror connection and especially not with this novel.

That said, this is a decent book. Not high on the action or thrills until the climax, but solid enough. I'm curious as to why the committee picked this one as a best novel, but awards are never an explainable process. We'll see how it compares to the others though.

The Coldest Mile

So I looked at my library catalog and saw that THE COLDEST MILE was on the shelves and put a hold on it. Meanwhile, I took my daughter to the regional branch on a Sunday. Regional branches are the large, economy size libraries in our system. They tend to have more books, deeper collections and are open on Sunday. So if we don't make our usual Saturday library appointment at our local branch, we can still go to the regional on Sunday. Our house is kind of equidistant between two regional branches. One tends to have more new kids books for my daughter and the other is more picked over but has the extra large teddy bears she likes to read to. The latter one is also closer to Whole Foods if we need to stop there. This was the case that Sunday. I needed some more sore throat tea for work and so we went that direction. Had we gone to the other one, I could have picked up THE COLDEST MILE right there, but now I had to wait a week until I could go to my local branch to pick up my hold copy. What it really meant was that I would start another book while waiting and probably not finish it before Saturday came around. Of course, this was the case and I still haven't returned to that book.

THE COLDEST MILE continues the story of Chase, the former wheelman for his grandfather's crew of thieves. Chase is acting rather suicidal following the events of THE COLD SPOT and just kind of goes through the motions of staying alive. Like that novel, he is looking to reconnect with his grandfather and speaks to his dead relatives in his dreams. He almost strikes me as a negative version of Frank, the character from the TRANSPORTER movie series. He obsesses with cars, doesn't like guns and will kick your ass if he has to.

Just like THE COLD SPOT, this novel moves in an episodic format - Chase with the mobsters, hooking up with a crew, finding his grandfather and so on. It moves the story along, but still seems kind of choppy. The writing is dynamic enough though to keep the pages turning. And isn't that what we like in our reads - something fun and fast-moving. My reading time is so limited these days that I really do not have time to slog through page after page of exposition or tangential details. It was fun to read and that is the point. However, the ending does lead directly into the next book where we assume Chase and Jonah will have one final go-around. This would be my only complaint as I dislike stories that cannot stand alone from others in the series. This book reads like the middle part of a story and I have no iread when the next one will be out. I expect it will be a year or so. I'll be there when it is ready.

The Cold Spot

A periodic post on the SF Signal blog are the books they receive in the mail. One of the more recent titles was THE COLDEST MILE by Tom Piccirilli. I knew his name from horror circles and didn't recall reading any of his books or stories, so I thought this might be an entertaining read. But the I discovered it was the follow-up to THE COLD SPOT. So I went to my trusty library catalog, found it, put it on hold and subsequently checked it out. Thus I was reading my first Piccirilli novel.

The first thing I found out is that THE COLD SPOT is not horror. Instead it is a crime novel centered around the small-time thieves who live from score to score. Chase is part of a crew - a more formal association of thieves who work together regularly rather than a string who only work on specific jobs - but following the early events of the book leaves to work on his own. He then meets a girl, falls in love, gets married and gets drawn back into the world of crime. Nothing you wouldn't expect from a crime novel.

THE COLD SPOT reads more like a series of interconnected vignettes than a novel. But that is not quite right either because none of the sequences really hold up on their own. It is choppy in that way because Chase is with his crew and then on his own and then courting and then married and then back on his own and so on. The story flows well, but it is very episodic. Piccirilli gives enough details on the outlaw life and Chase's history to make the elements fit together. He also manages to work in some elements of the supernatural through Chase's dreams. These are not your typical horror conceits , but instead are simple ways to look at Chase's motivations. The dead speak just not in a way that overwhelms the crime elements. The ending seems a little rushed, but it works. All in all, the book moves quickly, reads well and kept me entertained.

I have no complaints and recommended it to another crime novel fan. The book also works as a stand alone because you don't need to move on to THE COLDEST MILE if you don't want to. I was in for the ride though because my library got that one into the system just as I finished THE COLD SPOT.