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.