Some Book Reviews

Happy to see that Tanith Lee is popular, and not just because I can link to an old review

I love Tanith Lee. I’ve loved Tanith Lee since I read Heart Beast back when Abyss Books was heavily promoting itself as the new fresh horror imprint with Lee and Poppy Z. Brite (whose Lost Souls I’m still getting around to reviewing, partially because it’s a great book but also because it’s an ARC and I want to send it to him so he can sign it and resell it). I’ve read most of her books, some twice or three times. I definitely love The Flat Earth Series (even if I disagree with that now viral post about Sandman being a plagiarized version).

So in the interest of chasing the algorithm and riding the wave of Tanith Lee love, here’s my review of her first book, which is a strange outlier as far as Lee was concerned. It’s whimsical. Tanith Lee does not do whimsy. I am reading Disturbed by Her Song and the first story is a first person tale of a woman who joins a staff in a weird hotel and gets haunted by a strange woman wandering the halls. By contrast, this is a funny book about dragons and incompetent witches.

Next, we have reviews of books I read over a Jewish holiday. In a recent review of a story that I published with BADASS HORROR, I noted that Splatterpunk was a reaction to the popular “quiet horror” of Charles Grant and the like. I refrained from saying that based on Grant’s writing alone, I fucking hate quiet horror. I get that he’s trying to slowly build up a horror story based on the characters and the reality of the situation, but that doesn’t fucking work if your characters are boring. The entire book is the protagonist declaring his love of the one woman repeatedly as people keep disappearing. I kept thinking Zombies? Vampires? What does the woman have to do with it? Because she keeps showing off to not answer his questions and take off her clothes whenever he presses the issue. Turns out that she’s the monster and get this, she’s old and ugly. Seriously, fuck this book.

The other books in this article I mostly liked, or I didn’t hate them as much.

In December, I wrote about how genre and literary books are both fine. They have some things in common but only when they are bad, do you notice why they are bad.

Since Tanith Lee is being compared favorably to Neil Gaiman, who made a reputation as the nice guy, the charming guy, the British sweetheart of fandom, which could only backfire when he gets outed as a sex predator, I did have an article on Neil Gaiman. Actually, I used the shortest chapter of the Book of Job (and my continuing discussion of the book, chapter by chapter) to talk about his career - why he was so exciting in the 1990s and how he has been disappointing.

I had been planning about writing about him in this chapter since I saw the shitty way he handled The Book of Job in Good Omens. It’s Bildad’s last chapter and he wrote a convoluted happy ending to the book with Crowley pretending to be Bildad. I had been planning on writing something about how I don’t approve but you know, it’s Gaiman so fine whatever, he has some good points.

I am resisting the urge to go “he always sucked” because the parasocial relationships he had with his fans has soured and he’s exposed for all the world to see, but I have to be honest and note that I have been giving him the benefit of the doubt for years solely because of how much I liked his work in the 90s. Remove the benefit of the doubt, and I get to happily admit that I fucking hate all of his short stories and most of his post-American Gods work.

Just think how much worse Cormac McCarthy’s sexual relationship with a 17 year old girl that he befriended when she was particularly vulnerable would have been for his reputation had he not been a weird recluse who wrote about serial killers. Yes, it helps that she has good memories of him and credits him with saving from a dangerous situation. But honestly, had he been doing a Neil Gaiman his reputation would be fucked. Instead, we are all just relieved that he didn’t have a freezer full of dead bodies on his ranch.

Anyhow, money is tight so if you like me enough to help out, please get a paid subscription or donate to my Gofundme.

Holy fuck, I didn’t know that Tanith Lee wrote more Flat Earth stories!!!!

Since I mentioned Splatterpunk, I did publish Michael Boatman’s classic short story collection God Laughs When You Die. So buy it before I start reviewing it story by story here.