Book Report: SUBSTITUTE CREATURE

My name is Wallace McBride, and I am not the target audience for SUBSTITUTE CREATURE.

This problem might not be the fault of the story, which is the fourth installment in Quirk Books' TALES FROM LOVECRAFT MIDDLE SCHOOL young adult series. The concept of the "young adult" novel is something that baffles me as a reader, and adding a  horror element only makes the idea even more dubious. YA books exist in a literary twilight zone that provides uncomplicated, quasi-adult stories to younger readers who aren't quite ready to go full Cormac McCarthy. It's "literature" in the same way that Disney Channel programming is "drama."

At least, that was my understanding of YA books before cracking the spine of SUBSTITUTE CREATURE. For better or worse, my opinion of YA books hadn't changed when I'd finished the story later that same day. Anyone with the comprehension skills needed to read this book should kick off the training wheels and grab the first Neil Gaiman book they find.

To its credit, my ignorance of the first three novels wasn't much of an obstacle in understanding SUBSTITUTE CREATURE. The book does an admirable job of bringing you up to speed on the characters and their relationships, filling in the gaps organically as the story progresses. By this point in the series, the book's central characters have grown accustomed to the weird happenings at Lovecraft Middle School. Monsters, spirits, sorcerers and other assorted beasties are part of the daily curriculum at the troubled school. The series follows the adventures of a bland protagonist named Robert Arthur, who keeps among his circle of confidants the ghost of a 13-year-old girl, a former bully and a two-headed rat. And that's as apt a metaphor for middle school as I've ever seen.

When a freak snowstorm dumps several feet of snow exclusively on the school's hometown of Dunwich, Mass., Robert and his pals find themselves trapped at the school with a shady substitute teacher and a legion of monsters roaming the grounds. It's an unsophisticated story with an unsophisticated narrative, but moves along at such a brisk clip that it might not matter to the kids expected to read this kind of book. It's more fantasy than horror, and not likely to haunt the dreams of many children. 

The book suffers from many of the same problems as J.K. Rowling's superior HARRY POTTER series: Child protagonists with wisdom and language skills far beyond their years, who keep secrets from adults for no other reason that to keep the story moving forward. These "secrets" are also a little troubling, but for reasons hopefully not intended by author Charles Gilman. A common problem in adventure stories featuring young protagonists is the challenge of keeping adults out of the mix. Authority figures will rightfully attempt to solve the story's conflict as a means to keep children out of danger, robbing young heroes of a complete narrative arc. The trick is to keep adults at bay without making them look stupid ... and without making the kids look like liars.

SUBSTITUTE CREATURE doesn't exactly stick the landing, in this regard. There's no obvious reason why the book's young heroes hide the truth about the school from authority figures, and the message here is troubling: If it's OK for kids to lie to their parents about an otherworldly wizard trying to murder them (and a lot of other people), what else is OK to lie about? Verbal abuse? Physical abuse? Sexual abuse? There's something unintentionally gross about the situations presented in SUBSTITUTE CREATURE, and none of them have to do with magic and monsters.

Again, SUBSTITUTE CREATURE wasn't intended for me. It's possible, even probable, that I'm comparing apples to oranges by expecting adult melodrama from a book aimed at children. Am I missing the point here? Does it even matter?

Book Report: Stephen King's JOYLAND

Like it or not, STEPHEN KING is America's greatest-living author. Feel free to dispute that in the comments, but you'll be wrong. No other author in the last 50 years has had the impact on literature (not to mention to culture of literature) that King has had. He's a master of the short story, a role model for authors all over the world, and is capable of writing a 1,000-page best-seller while out of his mind on cocaine and booze. King's talent is not a gift as much as it is an affliction.

Which is why the announcement of a new STEPHEN KING novel remains a dubious pleasure. He's declared his retirement from writing on more than one occasion, only to punctuate those declarations with several new novels. Sometimes those books are ready for primetime ... other times they're not.

As a writer, he's a master craftsman, someone who can write prose that positively sings with emotion. As a storyteller? He's got issues. It's a long-standing trope that King has problems sticking the landing, but it's a reputation that's well earned. It's probably not as chronic a problem as some would like to believe; it's that his final-act blunders happen to be especially memorable.

So, STEPHEN KING has a new novel out? That's great, as long as we're getting fully developed material and not one of his rough drafts wrapped in a book jacket. While I'm happy to say that JOYLAND sticks the landing, as a story it's actually over developed. It would have made a pleasant enough diversion as a short story, but the novella just doesn't justify its page count.

Here's how the publisher summarizes JOYLAND:

"Set in a small-town North Carolina amusement park in 1973, JOYLAND tells the story of the summer in which college student Devin Jones comes to work as a carny and confronts the legacy of a vicious murder, the fate of a dying child, and the ways both will change his life forever."

I'd say that's a fair assessment of the novel, which is much more restrained than the spooky story suggested by GLEN ORBIK's pulpy cover art. JOYLAND finds King feeling nostalgic. Even though it's part of the HARD CASE CRIME series, a smallish imprint of "hardboiled crime" novels that's been around since 2004, few would ever mistake JOYLAND as a JAMES ELLROY book. It's got much more in common with THE BODY, King's coming of age tale about the death of childhood innocence famously adapted in 1986 as STAND BY ME.

Nostalgia can be fertile ground, but King's lead in JOYLAND leaves much to be desired. The hero is aspiring writer (yes, again) Devin Jones, a young man who takes some time off from college to work at a North Carolina amusement park in 1973. His heartache, feelings of isolation and tendencies toward self absorption rings true in a way that made me actually feel uncomfortable. JOYLAND is a story of fading youth written for men approaching middle age. That's just an observation, not criticism. I'm certainly the book's target audience.

Unfortunately, the JOYLAND's youthful ennui is forgotten early in the story, leaving us with a protagonist who is the definition of a MARY SUE. Devin has no real character flaws and has hardly any impact on his own story. This wouldn't be such a bad thing if JOYLAND was interested in creating tension, but even the novel's central mystery has no urgency to it. The murder that sets off the mystery takes place several years before the start of the book and is peripheral to Devin's tale. King makes few token gestures to remind us that a killer is probably wandering around the story's pages, but these gestures only remind us how inconsequential it all is. If the murder remained unsolved, it would affect its characters not at all.

Much like the HARRY POTTER novels, Devin's friends do all the narrative work, pushing our not-that-bright hero toward a climax that still manages to leave him sitting on his ass as the story resolves itself. (Note: I'm not sure if Devin's friends, Erin Cook and Tom Kennedy, were intentionally lifted from HARRY POTTER's Hermione Granger and Ron Weasley, but there's a definite connection.) Also, there's a lot of padding in JOYLAND, which sometimes reads like a dumping ground for the writer's research into carny life. These kind of details usually help to create believable worlds, but mostly feel forced here.

What works? Besides the emotionally devastating opening, King's commentary on our complicit relationship with illusion is sorta interesting. It's probably the dominant theme of the novel, and not just because it plays into how a murderer manages to go unnoticed for several years. JOYLAND's hero is a man experiencing the slow fade of his own youthful innocence, one that's mirrored by the fading appeal of amusement parks. Innocence (and faith) function in ways not unlike amusement parks: through willful surrender. More than one character in the novel comments on how otherwise bright, intelligent people will wander into an amusement park and willingly part with their money by competing in rigged games and artificial thrills. One of the book's lead characters is the daughter of a prominent evangelist who has become quite successful by applying these kinds of principles to the same effect, and is among the book's many manipulative illusionists.

But, some of those artificial thrills happen to produce real responses, and some of the book's illusions aren't illusions at all. Joyland's "Tunnel of Terror" attraction is actually haunted, though not in a fashion I'd describe as "spectacular." And, many of the artificial thrills offered by the amusement rides prove to be real enough to transcend the pain of a few of its characters. The novel's cynical attitudes toward entertainment have a hopeful streak, but it's a little unclear what King is trying to say with all of this. Is it a commentary on storytelling? Is it commentary on faith? I have no idea.

As with most STEPHEN KING novels, JOYLAND was published in June to the usual praise and condemnations. As a novel, it's heart is in the right place, even if its telling is overwrought. It's just not a book I can especially recommend to people.

Book Report: WOLF MOON RISING

By WALLACE McBRIDE

Get it from AMAZON.COM.

I'm not sure that I've ever read anything quite like LARA PARKER's new DARK SHADOWS novel, WOLF MOON RISING. Opening with a brief abstract illustrating the star-crossed relationships of its major players, the novel feels like a relic from the past. Not because of its period setting, but because it embraces the kind of fanatical pursuit of ideas that has fallen out of fashion in modern literature. The story is told with the unbridled, slightly unhinged energy of a writer who doesn't believe she's got the luxury of a do-over in her next book.

Even though WOLF MOON RISING would qualify as a gothic romance by anyone's definition, I was constantly reminded of PHILIP K. DICK throughout. Summarizing this novel is going to be a nightmare for critics, because there are no fewer than four stories humming along concurrently, each one of them laced with social and political satire that ranges from subtle to horrendously violent. There's a ton of backstory involved, not only from Parker's previous novel, but from the television series, as well. And GRAYSON HALL fans are probably going to be pissed.

In other words, there’s a lot happening in the book. Possibly enough to fill a year's worth of stories in the original series.

Minor spoilers follow. 

Picking up a few weeks after the conclusion of THE SALEM BRANCH, we’re introduced to a new status quo at Collinwood. Barnabas Collins is again a vampire, as is Dr. Julia Hoffman. As you might expect, Barnabas isn't entirely happy with the situation. He not only hates what he’s (again) become, but despises Hoffman’s submissive new role. The more she tries to please him, the more he resents her, leading to a shockingly cruel resolution to this conflict in the book’s early pages.

If that wasn’t enough, Barnabas decides to follow through on his plan to sabotage the happiness of Quentin Collins by destroying the magical painting that keeps his werewolf curse at bay, and provides him a unique form of immortality. Meanwhile, a man claiming to be the relative of Nicholas Blair arrives at Collinwood in search of a vampire, while David Collins and his haunted companion, Jackie Harpignies, take an expected trip back to Collinwood’s heyday in the Roaring Twenties.

While it all sounds simple enough, the level of absurd mayhem in WOLF MOON RISING is sometimes astonishing. While Parker has literary goals, she never lets go of the bizarre elements that made DARK SHADOWS special. The book can be quiet and lean when it wants to be, such as in Jackie’s increasingly lonely encounters with school bullies. But it can also go full CHAN-WOOK PARK, sometimes to its own detriment. The “1920s Flashback” doesn’t so much climax as it cascades, as bootleggers, organized crime and the Ku Klux Klan leave permanent scars on Collinwood in quick order. With DARK SHADOWS, it’s always hard to tell when too much is too much, and this leg of the story might actually bend credulity past its breaking point.

Then again, it might all have been worth it for the moment of a young Elizabeth (not-yet-Stoddard) Collins riding the sideboard of a luxury car, blasting away at mobsters with a revolver.

The novel also touches on some of the favorite themes of the original television series. While the daytime program had to abide by the nebulous standards of network censors, Parker's under no such restraints. As it turns out, Louis Edmonds' famous "incestors" blooper had some basis in fact. Yeah, the relationship between Barnabas and Carolyn (not to mention his relationship with Victoria Winters, since we were lead to believe she was also a Collins) was always icky. In WOLF MOON RISING, though, Parker calls it what it is. Jameson Collins, played in the 1897 story by a young DAVID HENESY, is a grown man in the 1920s flashback, and is furious by the previously unrevealed affair between his daughter, Elizabeth, and his immortal uncle, Quentin. The "I" word is used, and it's not not pretty.

And it's not even the biggest WTF?! moment in the novel.

The flashback sequence plays like a loose sequel to the 1897 story and is the novel's centerpiece. I suspect it's also going to be the most troublesome section for some readers. There are moments that contradict exiting canon, but the continuity of DARK SHADOWS got messier and messier in the years leading to its cancellation. Edith Collins, for example, died twice on the show. Her second death was either a product of editorial oversight, or was collateral damage created by the show's many timeslips.

The continuity errors present in WOLF MOON RISING suggest a third possibility: Parker had something she wanted to say with the characters and valued her story more than she did fan service.

As an author, Parker gets DARK SHADOWS better than anyone who's been allowed a crack at the material since it left the airwaves in 1971. She gets it better than Tim Burton, who loves the show without really understanding how it works. She gets it better than the various writers who have worked on the tie-in novels, comics and audio dramas over the years, even though some of those products have had moments of brilliance. And, I dare say, Parker gets it better the show's original mastermind, DAN CURTIS, who arguably began to misunderstand the appeal of his own show before it was even cancelled.

WOLF MOON RISING has some continuity issues, which a few fans of the show will unironically take issue with.  It can be a little unfocused at times as its ensemble cast fights among each other for prominence in the story. And it’s got a nightmarish sense of reality and structure that wouldn’t be out of place in a DAVID LYNCH movie. These elements might be a problem other novel, but only made it feel more like DARK SHADOWS to me.

Related stories:
A READERS GUIDE TO WOLF MOON RISING
THE WOLF MOON RISING BOOK TOUR
LARA PARKER DISCUSSES HER NON-DARK SHADOWS ROLES

Book Report: DARK SHADOWS by Marilyn Ross

A word of warning: I'm about to spoil the plot of a 46-year-old book.

As you might know, I'm presently revisiting the early days of DARK SHADOWS, and thought it was a good time to take another look at the early Marilyn Ross novels. Published a few months after the launch of the television show in 1966 (and running until after the cancellation of DARK SHADOWS in 1971), fans of the program have an uneasy relationship these books. They kinda-sorta feel like the DARK SHADOWS we know and love, but suffer from a manic sense of continuity and arbitrary deviations from the television's story. The original series produced some of the wildest, craziest programming to ever be broadcast on television, but the books felt like the daytime show's heavily medicated sibling. Once in a while the books forget to take their meds (resulting in stories like the batshit insane BARNABAS, QUENTIN AND THE BODY SNATCHERS) but too often they're a snooze.

Part of the problem of the first book in this series, simply titled DARK SHADOWS, is that it's tired ground. Victoria Winters arriving at Collinwood and discovering it's mysterious inhabitants? Been there. Done that. Can we just get to Barnabas Collins already?

As is the case with the other Marilyn Ross books in this series, the novel reads like the second-generation retread that it is. Ross lived in Canada and didn't get to watch the television show, so the books have the uneven desperation of a bad liar. The usual cast of characters is present and accounted for, only their literary  interpretations are significantly muted. David Collins suffers the most, and is downgraded from juvenile sociopath to a milquetoast brat. Burke Devlin gets mentioned for reasons that are anybody's guess (he plays no role in the story) while a few new characters are added to the mix to serve as exposition machines.

Inhabiting the spooky halls of Collins House (I know) are Elizabeth Stoddard, her daughter Carolyn, her brother Roger and his son, David, and Ernest Collins. Yes, Ernest Collins. He's a professional violinist and some kind of cousin to Elizabeth and Roger, though it's never quite explained how he's related to the central family. I pictured him as the mutant offspring of Ted McGinley and Robbie Rist.

The other details are mostly the same as the television show. Victoria is invited by the Collins family to become the governess for David. The mystery of her past is touched on once or twice, but the suspense in this book is tepid and unfocused. Victoria mostly just wanders from scene to scene as the "plot" unfolds.

Upon her arrival at Collins House (ugh) Victoria strikes up a seriously inappropriate relationship with Ernest Collins. Bad shit tends to happen around cousin Ernest. His first wife, Elaine, was killed in a car crash. A girlfriend jumped off Widow's Hill. Another girlfriend got her face smashed in by someone with a grudge and a length of chain. It should come as no surprise that similarly bad shit starts to happen to/around Victoria, though with a much lower rate of success. Someone knocks her unconscious while exploring the west wing, her car suffers mechanical failure and crashes on the way into town, someone breaks into her bedroom and vandalizes it, etc. She survives these attempts on her life through her wits, and is constantly one step ahead of ... nevermind. That's Clarice Starling I'm thinking of. The literary Victoria Winters survives these attempts on her life through blind luck and having an especially thick skull.

As in it's television counterpart, Liz is protective of something hidden in the cellar. Unlike the TV show, though, Liz doesn't believe she's hiding the body of her dead husband. Instead, the family is keeping Ernest's first wife locked up. She not only survived the car crash that "killed" her, but she came out of the accident stark-raving insane, too. Rather than putting her in a medical institution where she could receive proper healthcare, the Collins family opted to keep her locked in the basement of Collins House (ugh.) And by "locked," I mean she pretty much comes and goes as she pleases. All the bad shit that happened to Ernest's other ladies was the work of this lunatic.

The end of the book coincidentally resembles the final episode of the TV series. Elaine walks Victoria at knifepoint to a terrace at the top of Collins House (sigh) where she plans to make the governess leap to her death. Because this is a Marilyn Ross book, Ernest shows up at the last minute and saves the day. Nobody much gives a shit. Skip this one and move directly to #6 in the series, BARNABAS COLLINS.