If you're tracing my Year of King journey (and why wouldn't you be?) you'll know that I was a little disappointed in 'Salem's Lot this time. That experience made me very concerned to read The Shining. I wasn't sure I could stand it if The Shining, which I remember being one of King's best books, and one of the few that actually scared me for real, was not as good 30 years later. But crisis averted! The Shining still stands as a true masterpiece of the genre, and one of the best books of the 20th century, in my humble opinion. <BIG SIGH OF RELIEF>

In case you have somehow not read it, or have only watched the Kubrick movie, here's the breakdown. Jack Torrance, his wife Wendy, and their five-year-old son Danny move into the Overlook Hotel in the mountains of Colorado as winter caretakers. Jack, a recovering alcoholic, is fresh off of being fired for physically assaulting a student at the exclusive prep school where he was an English teacher. An old drinking buddy arranges for him to get the job at the Overlook, and the plan is for him to spend the winter doing minor upkeep while finishing a play that he's been writing. No sooner do they arrive to take the tour at the end of the season that the scary begins. Danny, unbeknownst to his parents, has what he comes to call "the shine". He can read people's thoughts, can speak telepathically with other people who "shine", and can sometimes see the future. He can also, unfortunately, see visions of the bad things that have happened in the past, and the Overlook has seen its share of tragic events over the years. Once the snows come and strand them in the hotel, without any communication with the outside world, the malevolent forces in the hotel start to work on Jack and Danny in terrifying ways, culminating in an explosive ending.

If you have only ever seen the Jack Nicholson movie, don't think you know The Shining. Kubrick took the source material and adapted it for the time, including the limitations of the special effects industry of the 1980s. While there are many elements in common-the hotel itself, REDRUM, and Jack's eventual insanity-the book and the movie are different enough that reading it will be worth it. Also, the book is WAY scarier than the movie. Both highlight this idea that the most terrifying monsters are the ones that live within all of us, there are truly terrifying scenes in the book that just aren't done sufficient justice in the film, if they are present at all.

This is the second of King's books where he explores the idea that buildings become repositories for the evil done in them, and that as that evil grows it brings more madness and mayhem to the characters who live/work/visit said building, until the building itself becomes a malevolent force in its own right. In 'Salem's Lot is was the Marsten House, which soaked up the psychic energy of the people who had inhabited it, and reflected that back to anyone who ventured in. King develops this idea further in The Shining, where the hotel itself becomes a character, with an evil spirit that acts of its own will to entrap and destroy Jack and his family.

Like many of King's characters, you can't help but feel sympathetic towards Jack, despite the fact that he ends up being the villain of his family's story. I suspect I found him slightly less sympathetic this time than I did when I read this 30 years ago, because the casual sexism that probably seemed super authentic back then was just irritating now. I hope and pray that there aren't too many people who still hold the same views of marriage and gender roles that Jack does in the novel. But that was a minor annoyance and didn't take anything away from how creepy and scary the plot becomes. King also further develops his "children as heroes" theme, with Danny being the most well-developed child character so far, more so than either Carrie or Mark Petrie from 'Salem's Lot.

Because I'm reading in publication order, I have to jump to the first of the Bachman books next, Rage, which is really only a novella at a slim 149 pages. But after that, it's on to The Stand, my favorite of King's book, the one I consider his magnum opus, the one that I think is highly underrated because book snobs consider it "just" a genre novel. It is almost 1100 pages of tiny print goodness, and I can't wait to read it again! But it's gonna take me a minute!

The Egyptian, Layton Green

Last year I reviewed Layton Green's first novel,  The Summoner.  In it, Green introduces us to Dominic Grey, a former member of the US diplomatic services security.  While stationed in Zimbabwe, Grey is drawn into the mysterious disappearance of a US diplomat, and its connection to a ju-ju priest who seems to be able to do the impossible.  This year I was lucky enough to be asked to review his next book, The Egyptian.

When I reviewed Green's first book, I said that while I thought there were some pacing and exposition issues, I was excited to see where Grey's story went as the series continues.  I was not disappointed.  Green has taken Grey out of the Diplomatic Security Service-which I think allows for more flexibility in storylines over time-and has him working with Professor Viktor Radek investigating cults and mysterious, seemingly magical events around the globe.  In The Egyptian, Radek and Grey are called in by a biomedical company to recover stolen research into a life extension product that could literally make humans almost immortal.  But all is not what it seems-when Grey and an investigative reporter begin to uncover the location of the stolen research, they witness the slaughter of a team of scientists, which leads them to believe that the biotech company is somehow behind the violence.  Drawn by their investigation to Egypt, they discover an ancient cult intent on controlling who is bestowed eternal life.

One of my favorite phrases for someone who seems to be feeling at the top of their game is "in the pocket".  Green has found his groove with this series, and The Egyptian felt much more "in the pocket" that The Summoner.  While there is less about Grey's back story in this book, there is enough to keep you interested in him as a character.  The story moves from America to Europe to a lost oasis in the Sahara, making for a lot of globe-trotting action.  The information about the immortality cult, and the science behind anti-aging, was presented in such a way that I felt like I learned a lot without being lectured at, and it was well-placed in the overall arc of the story.  I am so glad that this series is shaping up the way it is...smart thrillers for people who like their action with some cognitive stimulation!

Thanks for Layton for giving me an advanced preview copy.  You can get it in Kindle or Nook version from his website, www.laytongreen.com.

The End of the World is Hilarious

What do you get when you cross an angel, a demon, a witch hunter, a sixteenth century prognosticator, the Antichrist, and the Four Horsemen on motorcycles?  You get the hilarious end-of-the-world vision of Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett known as Good Omens.

Good Omens opens with the birth of the Antichrist in a rural hospital in England.  The demon in charge of his arrival, Crowley, thinks that all has gone according to plan when he sends a newborn home with a demonic nanny.  His adversary, and friend, the angel Aziraphale, does his level best to convert the boy to the side of good, supplying an angelic gardener to counteract the demonic nanny.  What neither of them realizes however, is that the Satanic nurse present at the birth made a mistake, and sent the real Antichrist home with another family.  They realize their mistake at the boy's eleventh birthday-the date at which the end of the world was supposed to begin.  When they realize their mistake, the search for the real Antichrist (a normal 11 year old named Adam) ensues.  As strange things with an eerie resemblance to the Book of Revelations start happening all over the world, the forces of good and evil start gathering for the war between Heaven and Hell that is to come, unless four children, a witch hunter, and the descendant of the only prognosticator to correctly predict the events to come can head off the ineffable plan of the Almighty.

Gaiman and Pratchett do a fine job of skewering the whole idea of good and evil.  Their basic premise seems to be that good and evil need each other-that the whole point of being good or being evil is to have the opposite side to fight against.  This point of view could be seen as an allegory for all kinds of human institutions-competing religions, political ideologies, classes...In addition, they seem to be making a case for atheism, or at least for the existence of God being irrelevant to the daily lives of humans.  As Crowley and Aziraphale discuss towards the end of the book, what was the point of creating the Tree of Knowledge if God didn't expect his creations to eat from it?  Why give humans free will and the run of an entire planet if you didn't expect them to make their own way?  At one point the ineffable plan is defined as a way for God (a word which is never used for the ultimate creator in the book, by the way) to test his creations to see if they work as he devised them-not in his (or her or its) glory, but the way you would test pilot an airplane after you put it together to make sure it would fly.  In the end, humanity doesn't need angels or demons to create moments of transcendent glory or moments of horrific cruelty.  We do alright on those scores without divine intervention.

You Wicked Little Monkey!

It only took me three weeks, but I finally finished a book!  So I guess you could say I was the wicked little monkey!  I sure felt supremely slackerish in the reading department.  But the title of this post has more to do the the novel, Bad Monkeys, by Matt Ruff, than with my own lack of reading achievement in the month of September.

Bad Monkeys is the story of Jane Charlotte.  Jane has been arrested for murder, and during her interrogation in the psych ward she reveals that she actually works for a super secret organization called Bad Monkeys, whose sole purpose is to track down and stop evildoers by any means necessary.  If all else fails, it is Bad Monkeys' job to assassinate the evildoer.  No one has heard of Bad Monkeys, who have the ability to track our every move.  You know all of those rock posters you had on your wall as a teen-the eyes on the posters were actually spying on you.  The books you read-the spines transit information to the organization.  Even the money you spend tell them where you are and what you are doing.  Trouble is, there is no way to verify Jane's story.  Of course, she says that's because the organization can change any record, erase any tape, falsify any video-basically they can control everything we see and hear.  So, is Jane really an agent of good in the form of a Bad Monkeys assassin, or is she delusional?

This book is quirky and well-paced and fun, despite the sometimes horrific content.  I mean, Jane kills people who are evil-many of the characters are not exactly likeable.  By the end I wanted Bad Monkeys to exist-though the Big Brother aspect of it was pretty frightening.  And I wanted Jane to be good.  Throughout the novel she struggles with her own evil, and in the end that seems to be the message Matt Ruff is trying to get across, at least in part.  All of us have the capacity for good or evil, and it is our choices that determine whether we are on the side of right, or whether we are a bad monkey.

I realized after I finished Bad Monkeys that Ruff had written another novel that I found really quirky and fascinating, Set This House in Order.  It ist he story of Andy Gage, the public face of a mind with multiple personalities.  He is integrated enough to work designing virtual reality environments.  At work he meets Penny, another multiple personality who needs Andy's help.  The novel is engaging right from the start, and while I don't necessarily believe in the multiple personality disorder as a real condition, I do think that MPD as a mechanism for showing the multiple sides of our psyche and the conflicts they can create within us was pretty genius!