Charlie Huston - No Dominion

This will be a pretty quick post. I just finished up No Dominion, which is the sequel to Already Dead (see my review below). I really enjoyed Already Dead, so I was waiting for the mailman to deliver the follow-up.

No Dominion picks up after the events of the first novel. I'll try to keep things spoiler-free, but I think that in the early parts of the book Huston was torn about how much to explain to the reader. He spent some time recapping the events of the first book, but not enough to actually set an adequate stage for people who hadn't read it. The same goes for the general workings of his world (how the Vampyres feed, who the major Clans are, etc.). And for people who have read the first book, it feels a little tedious and comes off as somewhat aimless. Thus, an unsatisfying middle ground.

Luckily, the book moves with almost the same pace as the first in the series (a third book is due out in December). Where the first book dealt with a story both personal and political, the second book deals more with the political side of things. It's still got the intrigue and discover of a good mystery, but the events of the book revolve around power struggles and uncovered conspiracies. I personally enjoyed that aspect a bit more than the first book, which got a little too complex at times.

One of my complaints about the first book was that all of the fictional elements were integral to the story; nothing was there for atmosphere or flavor. The same can be said of No Dominion, but for some reason it didn't bother me as much this time. Maybe that's because I was more familiar with the book's version of Manhattan and was focused on the story more. That makes sense, but actually I think it was because the story, once it got going, was more engaging for me than Already Dead's.

I was sad to see that Huston didn't do a ton to further develop the main character's love story, but knowing that there's a third book on the way gives me hope. Overall, I would say that No Dominion is just as good as its predecessor, though in different ways. I heartily recommend both books.

Rating: 4/5 Stars

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Charlie Huston - Already Dead

Hello, Occasional Reader. It's been a while. Partly that's because I'm lazy but mostly it's because I haven't gotten terribly excited about any books, movies or albums lately. Plus I've gotten into the habit of instantly blabbing about anything good to my friends, who happen to be the only people who read this site. Which makes typing it up on the interweb seem fairly meaningless. But I'm back, and I might even do a short post later this week with some mini-reviews of other recent purchases.

Anyway.

I just finished Already Dead, by Charlie Huston. I started it yesterday and probably would have finished it last night if my attention span was longer, but I can't stay focused on one thing for too long; I waited for BioShock with bated breath for years and could still only manage to play it for 2-3 hours a night.

God, this is turning into a personal blog. Sorry about that.

Anyway (again).

Already Dead is set in modern day New York City. A New York City where vampires (or, as the book calls them, "Vampyres") exist. As do zombies. Stay with me, though; this isn't some schlocky pulp horror novel. It's equal parts noir detective story, Gibson-esque alternate culture and flat-out page-turning mystery. The story follows Joe Pitt, a lone wolf Vampyre, on his search for answers in an underworld populated by mysterious figures and complex alliances. We get to know Joe early on, and Huston's version of a Vampyre's life is a fresh take on the traditional Dracula version of things.

Employing a sparse first-person present tense style, Huston gets the story moving from page one. It's not quite as spartan as Cormac McCarthy's prose, but it's close. Given the general noir/hard-boiled feel, the terse verbiage is an asset to the book. In the best Gibson/Stephenson fashion, Already Dead is wild and zany when it comes to its characters. Here we've got everything from a peace-loving hippie generation bloodsucker to a former drug dealer-turned-internet porn producer who's almost as wide as he is tall.

But while the characters are entertaining in their extremes, the realities of the setting are quite practical. The day to day routine (or should that be the night to night routine?) of a Vampyre is described in simple terms that make it seem as normal as could be. Huston also dispels some of the myth surrounding the creatures, which are infected with a virus (actually, of course, "the Vyrus") and not some supernatural power. In the first few pages the protagonist, Joe Pitt, orders pizza at his local slice shop and opts for broccoli pizza, not the tomato & garlic:

I could eat the tomato and garlic if I wanted to. It's not like the garlic would hurt me or anything. I just don't like the shit.

The politics, alliances and underground movements of Huston's version of New York City are well-realized and described in detail, including a map of the different Clans' territory, but my only major gripe with the book stems from that fact. At first it seems as if Huston has simply envisioned a rich fictional universe, but as the plot moves forward it becomes apparent that every character, faction or bit of history ties back to the mystery in an integral way. None of it is there simply for flavor or to enrich the world.

When reading about an alternate version of familiar settings, I prefer some things to be hinted at and then left to the imagination. I'm re-reading the Dark Tower books, for example, and they're full of one-off references to pieces of the world that are never mentioned again. It can be a bit frustrating at times, but it also helps make it feel like the characters are part of a much larger universe. The inclusion of every bit of world fiction in the events of Already Dead makes the elements feel more transparently like puzzle pieces concocted by a writer for a detective story.

But that gripe aside, I thoroughly enjoyed the book and was unable to put it down (at least in terms relative to my mild media-related ADD). I was engaged and curious every step of the way, and halfway through it I had already ordered a handful of Huston's other books online. If you're looking for an entertaining, fast read, I wholeheartedly recommend Already Dead.

Rating: 4/5 Stars

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Cormac McCarthy - The Road

I'd never read any of Cormac McCarthy's books before tackling The Road, but I decided to pick it up after seeing it mentioned in 3 or 4 different places as the newest and arguably best work of one of America's greatest living authors. I don't read a ton of high-quality literary fiction, to be frank. I generally read books for shameless entertainment, for edification, or to give in to my fair share of intellectual peer pressure. The premise of the book (a father and son's long trek across an apocalyptic wasteland) and the provocative title were enough to get me to order it from Amazon, though, and with great curiosity I dove into the work of a new writer.

The Road is a short book, clocking in at 241 pages; I read it cover to cover in one day while traveling. In addition to being short, however, the book also has an ultra-stark and minimalist writing style. McCarthy eschews quotation marks altogether and sometimes ditches the apostrophes in contractions as well, but those are merely formatting anti-flourishes; the more jarring and arresting characteristics of the writing are its utter simplicity and immediacy. To illustrate, here's a brief passage from the first chapter of the book:

With the first gray light he rose and left the boy sleeping and walked out to the road and squatted and studied the country to the south. Barren, silent, godless. He thought the month was October but he wasnt sure. He hadnt kept a calendar for years. They were moving south. There'd be no surviving another winter here.

The story itself is just as immediate as the writing style, which gives the entire book a distinct unity of effect. While the narrative brushes over a few uneventful days here and there, it's essentially the chronicle of a few weeks of a father and son's journey across the dead post-apocalyptic wasteland of an unknown country. There's very little in-depth description of....anything, really, but McCarthy is neither lazy nor unimaginative; he's just smart enough to trust his readers to fill in the blanks. The sparseness of the writing also underscores the sparseness of the nuclear wasteland in a very real way.

The source of the devastating apocalypse is discussed only briefly as "a long shear of light and then a series of low concussions" glimpsed through a window, and the backgrounds of the characters receive only slightly more coverage. Again, the lack of superfluous detail serves to highlight what's immediately important in the tragically small family's life: What are we eating today? Will we make it through this frigid night, unable to light a fire for fear of being spotted and attacked by someone who would kill us for a can of beans? Are bands of marauders following our tracks? Will the next person we meet on the road greet us kindly or try to murder and eat us?

The book uses nothing but a few carriage returns between scenes instead of breaking the events up into traditional chapters, which further lets the events blend into one long dirge on survival. The reader can almost hear the lone reverb-drenched twang of a single dying guitar. If this isn't the world that the music of Godspeed You Black Emperor describes then I don't know what is; the opening monologue from 'The Dead Flag Blues' would be right at home in The Road:

The car's on fire. And there's no driver at the wheel. And the sewers are all muddied with a thousand lonely suicides. And a dark wind blows.

Cue lonely 6-string.

The bleakness of the setting and the situations in which the characters find themselves set the stage for a few bright moments, however, mainly through the stark contrast; after reading 30 pages about such a miserable, ash-covered world the reader feels a genuine swell of joy when even the smallest ray of light shines down on the father and his son. Not that they've actually seen the sun in years, mind you.

The father and son, whose names are never revealed, meet relatively few other humans in the course of their journey, but their interactions with the other near-extinct humans reveal volumes about them. The father's unconditional, unquestioning, unbreakable love for his son is made manifest time and again in the least uncertain terms possible, while his son's mixture of childlike innocence and heartbreaking weariness reveals all too much about the terrible state of the world around them. Ultimately this is a small story set in a huge, mean world, and by the time the duo reaches the end of their journey the reader is left as weary as the characters, a credit to McCarthy's writing and his ability to convey a great deal with a few words.

Rating: 4/5 Stars

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