Film Review - Christine

Film Review:

Christine

CERTAIN brands, and certain authors with very strong brands, seem inextricably linked to adaptations. Defined by them, sharpened by them. Before the film market became over-saturated with comic book films, Scottish writer Mark Millar couldn't so much as twitch his pen without studios clamouring to buy the rights, and referring to James Bond as originating in novel form feels positively anachronistic at this point.

Surely, this is true of no one else more than it is true of Stephen, King of Horror; Christine went into production before the finished book had even been published!

She's a Beaut

YOUNG Arnie is a shy young nerd lacking in confidence, and suffering under the yoke of overbearing parents. His best friend, superchad and quarterback, Dennis is trying to drag him out of his rut, but alas no can do. Doesn't help that the two of them are targeted by a gang of high school bullies and there's a new girl at school who's a real good looking doll, despite being a total nerd. Dennis is even willing to spurn the advances of the lead cheerleader in pursuit of her.

Then Arnie is struck by love at first sight. A red '58 Plymouth Fury that has seen better days. There's a nice little detail when he first sees her: 'Stop,' he says, 'back up. I want to see her again.' He instantly recognises her gender, and immediately purchases her from her archetypal Ominous Hick Old Man owner. Before long he's full of confidence, dating the new girl Leigh and standing up to his parents. The driving force for this change however, his relationship with the mysterious Christine, turns out to be underpinned by dark obsessions and even the supernatural.

Silliness Abounds

LOOK, we get it, we've all been there. Puberty has set in and the last days of a hot summer have not long faded into autumn. The kids-cum-young-adults are embarking on a new year at high school, so when Arnie and Dennis are talking about getting laid at the start of the film it all makes sense. Their classmates, too, makes sense, as the other boys slaver over the girls and the lead cheerleader makes eyes at star quarter back Dennis. It all becomes rather strange, however, when we are introduced to new girl and love interest Leigh being given a tour of the school by presumably a teacher or even a principal? Whomsoever he is, he recommends the school's marching band; 'a good way to meet boys,' he assures her in a very King manner of inappropriateness. Even the creepy old man who sells them the car seems to be in heat: 'She had the smell of a brand new car. That might be just about the finest smell in the world, except maybe for pussy.'

Aggression seems to be going about too. King seems to have a thing for turning schoolyard bullies, who would normally be portrayed as petty cowards deep down, as violent sociopaths. It takes the generic high school drama bully (who looks 10-15 years older than everyone else) barely thirty seconds to go from stealing our main character's to drawing a switchblade on him. When the teacher saves our plucky heroes he proceeds to violently manhandle the bully. Later, when Arnie takes Christine to be stored and fixed up the garage owner is inappropriately overbearing and threatening to a paying customer. It's a silliness that all feels part and parcel of King's writing, and part of the reason that it is more or less impossible to divorce the creator from the creation.

It's All Character Building

WHEN King is really on his game, King's character work can be really good. Certainly, the ground blocks are there - that we see who Arnie is outside of his home life and then have it contextualised by his home life is a nice touch. It strongly evokes, to my mind, Eddie from It. There's not enough joining dots however - when is transformed by power of love into a teddy boy, it more or less happens off-screen. Scenes where he confronts his parents come well after the transformation has happened, and the scene where he becomes romantically involved with Leigh is used a character beat in Dennis's story. We're told over and over about the obsession, but that we don't see it develop slowly robs it from much of its power.

Dennis is framed oddly within the film. At first, he is positioned as a co-star at worst within proceedings. He interacts with more characters and has more solo lead time than the main character. There's a humility and shyness to him that makes him unusually likable for his character archetype. Then the narrative seems to more or less lose track of him for the midpoint of the movie, as all of the high-school drama elements of the script are left by the wayside. Leigh has no real personality beyond the men in her life - early on one character says she seems smart, and in another scene she is in the library reading a book.

Go Grease Frightning!

For a reasonable amount of the movie's run time, the story eschews traditional horror structure. Were it not for the opening sequence, the audience would have to wait more than half of the movie for the first recognisable horror set-piece to come along. Almost of the plot movements follows beats that are straight out of a high school drama playbook, until they aren't.

Much of the lack of traditional horror drive in the story is the lack of obvious threat on any of the main characters. Aside from one moment when the car makes an early attempt at Leigh, there is very little in the way of overt threat - and when the overt threat happens, it is overwhelmingly targeted at the film's more obvious antagonists. This could have been a subtle and ambiguous, but instead leaves the film feeling muddled and unfocussed. It's a half-eaten bildungsroman, a psychological thriller light on the psychological, a horror without much supernatural threat. 

Prowler

On the flipside, the actual handling of the car, the centre piece of the movie, is absolutely nailed. There's an old adage in horror that you shouldn't show the monster; fear's greatest weapon is the imagination. Christine, by nature of the premise, makes that a tall order, so the movie never tries hide her. Instead, it lets her sit there, not moving. The way she is framed in shots gives them impression of a predator, waiting patiently.

In this inaction, the nature of the threat she poses remains obscure, and as such it suddenly becomes the case that we haven't seen the monster yet. Most of the tension film comes from her silent and unmoving presence, the unspoken idea that she is silently affecting the world around her. Unlike the book, the movie never chooses to really explain much about Christine, meaning that even as she pounces she remains unknowable. In many ways, she's underrated as a classic movie villain.

Style is Substance

Long before JJ Abrams was a lens flair in his father's eyes (although technically he was seventeen at the time), John Carpenter's use of lens flairs coupled with his signature music style that defined 80s horror and action helps to lift Christine. For all my writing of how King's hands define the story, Christine is the child of two auteurs, and many of Carpenter's directorial signatures are to be found in Christine. If the substance of the story has King's fingerprints all over it, the filmic choices made are pure Carpenter.

Carpenter is an interesting director because he so clearly embodies (and in many sense, created) most of the cheesiness found in 80s genre movie. Coupled with a premise so ridiculous as an evil car that a young teenager falls (romantically) in love with, this could have been a recipe for disaster. Carpenter, however, has a flair for being on the right side of cheesy. It's enjoyable and even unironically cool, whilst also being ironically enjoyable. Ultimately, it's the visual and audio storytelling that really elevates this movie.

There's a specific sound synth cue that plays whenever Christine is introduced in the screen that positively makes me tingle. If for no other reason, watch it for that. You'll have a fun time.

Film Review - One Cut of the Dead

Review:

One Cut of the Dead

THERE'S something inherently dangerous about films about film making. It seems like every year there is another Oscar nominated film about how the power of films or show business can save the world - especially whilst Weinstein had his slimy paws all over it. Whilst the power of the media and entertainment in our globalised world is undeniably, it's probably best that the industry doesn't masturbate all over itself in public whilst staring at its own reflection. In that sense, Once Cut of the Dead is a refreshing watch.

A Play Within a Play

ONE can only imagine that when Shakespeare helped codify the meta-textual literary technique of a play within a play, he was imaging that one day in the far future he'd be setting the groundwork for a lighthearted Japanese zombie romp whose playful ambition and attention to detail are a joy throughout. Well rest well big Willy! One Cut of the Dead is finally here to realise that vision.

Something's amiss in the state of A Warehouse Somewhere In Japan: a small crew of filmmakers are making a zombie film. We're introduced within the fictional movie within the movie at first, but One Cut is not interested particularly in this facade, and the curtain is pulled back rather quickly. Before long, however, the cast and crew are beset by a real horror, and the fanatical director sees this as his chance to make the greatest horror ever made. A real life horror story.

Ten Minutes Until the Audience Explodes

THE first ten to fifteen pages of a script are very important - it has to contain the hook that will not only bring readers into the world, but also persuade studios and producers to make the movie in the first place. Some movies show their working very bluntly - Sluaghterhouse Rulez a couple of years ago being a specific example of this done poorly in comedy horror. By contrast One Cut is fluid and natural in the way it establishes the dynamics between characters, the motivations and personalities of those characters and the situation they find themselves in. It's all delivered with a speed and overtness that could very well have been artless and blunt, but a clever script keeps it from ever being those things.

It is not, however, a script that keeps its secrets particularly well. What is going on, and what the next twist is going to be, is not exactly super hard to figure out. This, again, works for One Cut, rather than against it. Proper foreshadowing and use of poetic irony might de-highlight surprise factors, but they allow the contrivances of the movie to feel entirely natural.

Look After the Pennies

IN light of this, the joy of One Cut is not the "what", but rather the "how". If you can see a twist or turn coming, it is the fastidious attention to detail that will take you off guard. Things half-glanced earlier often become important or expounded upon. The clever scripting allows a lot to be done with as little as possible. The nature of the project itself - a single cut movie - demands a certain exactitude, but rather than being their as a necessity, the attention to detail is what allows the story to flourish. Many of the big surprises come from things that you noticed but thought were innocuous that later turn out not be!

Both in premise and in execution, One Cut is a convoluted beast. It would have been the easiest thing in the world for the director to lose grip of the story, or for the audience to become naturally lost. So much of the visual storytelling, and of the specific use of setting within the movie, helps with this too.

As they say the the devil is in the details. Or the zombie. I don't know. Maybe they say that in Japan.

Laugh Until You Cry Die

IT would be trite, perhaps, at this point to the link tragedy and horror have with comedy. Many of the most enduring pieces of comedy have a black heart. In theory, horror and comedy are natural bedfellows, but in practise they're often terrible roommates. Sometimes they're trying to be too funny, sometimes they're not funny or scary, and all too often they disregard character and narrative in favour of lampshading cliches in the least imaginative way possible. Even very good recently examples have struggled to juggle both tones properly - Jordan Peele's ambitious and often impressive Us springs immediately to mind.

Where One Cut distinguishes itself is that at any given moment it really knows what it is and what it wants to do. It's never actually reaching to do anything too out there, for all of the script and filmmaking's ambition and intricacy. The nuts and bolts of the story are simple and filled with heart. This, ultimately, is what will make you laugh and what will linger with you.

One Cut of the Dead is a joy. It's silly and fun, it'll make you laugh and it'll make you feel good, and since we're all dying of the plague and the capitalistic structures of globalisation are collapsing around us, plunging us all into a new dark age, what else could the doctor order? Not medicine certainly. Not since Brexit.

Film Review - Phenomena

Film Review:

Phenomena

ONCE upon a time young Jennifer Connelly was even younger Jennifer Connelly, Before the goofy muppetry of Labyrinth, before the rocky camp sing-a-longs and the eldritch horror of David Bowie's codpiece, there came Phenomena, a fantastical slaser helmed by the Don of Giallo himself, Dario Argento.

And, Dear Readers, it fucking rocks.

Confusing and Distracting Metatextuality

WHEN embarking on a Stephen King novel, or, indeed, one of the uncountable hoards of adaptations that he leaves strewn in his wake, there is a very easy way to tell if Stephen King had writer's block when he set out to write the story. Is it set in Maine? Is the main character a middle aged writer? It creates a weird metatextual blurring that feels entirely unintentional and incidental, yet also distracting. A similar thing can be said for when actors or actresses play parts named after them.

Anyway, in Phenomena Jennifer Connelly plays Jennifer Corvino, daughter of a famous actor who is sent to Switzerland to study at an all-girls boarding school. Not all is well in pretty rural Switzerland, however. Murder's afoot. An unknown assailant is killing young women, the police are lost and only Professor John McGregor (Donald Pleasence rocking a pretty dece' Scottish accent) seems to helping them make headway with their case. 

Soon Jennifer crosses paths with him after incident that involves her sleeping walking, witnessing a bit of a stabbing, falling off a roof, escaping from probably-rapists and meeting a domestic monkey, and they discover that she has an affinity for telepathic communication with insects. Using this power, she may the best hope to discover who the killer is and where the bodies are hidden.

Basically Functional

On a basic level the plot of the movie is very tried and true, even by 1985, on a couple of levels. It's partly a hero's journey - a young hero is possesses a power that will help them defeat a great evil, but first must be guided by a wise old teacher to use those powers. On the other hand it's a potboiler slasher film - gritty murders are happening and using clues the main character has to figure out who, where and why. It's an interesting structural contortion, but done with enough finesse that the film never lacks cohesion.

There's a certain detail orientation to the script concerning it's central motif - insects - that helps make a lot of the exposition feel more atmospheric and less generic. Prof Mc's ominous trailer bait speeches are given a sprinkle of authenticity by the fact they fit so seamlessly and naturally into the context that the characters find themselves in. The dialogue is largely function otherwise, although it is questionable how well forty-five year old Argento knows how young teenage girls speak and act around each other.

Mostly, however, the plot is a solidly functional affair. Dario's writing seems to flourish in during the set pieces - he masterfully evokes a moment, whilst he builds the foundations around it with a workmanlike determination. The scenes establishing the cast of characters and the setting are all fine. There's adequate foreshadowing, if something is going to be important later it will be established earlier. When there's plotting to be done the film never lingers, prioritising economy.

The nuts and bolts of the story all do their job to keep the viewer engaged. It is not, however, where the movie shines.

The Silly as The Serious

WHEN a set-piece in a movie is described as nightmarish, normally it is meant in a more metaphorical sense, but in Phenomena both the denotation and connotations work. There's an abstraction in the events, a distortion of time and place that makes a lot of it feel unreal. On the one hand this does make some of the more tense moments "safer" than they otherwise would be, but a line is towed well enough that it never outright deflates tension.

If the movies keeps an keel pace-wise mostly, whenever the tension is ratcheted up the movie is suddenly not afraid to speed up or slow down as it pleases. Juxtaposed against the everyday reality of the story, this heightens the uncanny in the set-pieces and big horror moments. Not uncommon, of course, in a horror, but yet another sprinkling of unreality.

The music, too, swells from brooding understated synth into overpowering eighties slasher synth. There's even a soundtrack cameo from Motorhead and a couple of spins of - of all things - Flash of the Blade by Iron Maiden. Flash of the Blade!

I could have sworn I was the only person that loves that song.

Adding to the dreamlike feel of the set-pieces is the degree of silliness so many of them are imbued with. As someone who didn't spend my formative years in the eighties I can't say for sure how silly they seemed at the time, but Scream did something specific to the minds of a certain generation that were becoming desensitised to such things. What Phenomena does so successfully, however, is to somehow have its cake and it eat. It commits hundred percent to the ridiculousness on screen - trusting if the audience has gone this far they're staying on the train - whilst dipping at many points into outright absurdity. There's a real glee to be found in some of the rather baffling creative decisions, yet also work to not destroy the tension precisely because of the already established dreamlike tone.

Your Friend Pestilence

It, perhaps, shouldn't be a surprise to find that many of the cliches of modern day teen-scream flicks are occasionally subverted or outright mocked in classic horror movies. Hell, Jackson was doing this in The Haunting of Hill House in 1960. Phenomena, sure enough, is a savvy movie, and Argento is literate enough in horror and crime cinema to throw a few curve-balls and misdirections.

The main inversion, however, present in the movie is perhaps the only part of the movie that feels like it could have been better developed. As one of the base fears of the human psyche, endless horror movies have been dedicated to how scary insects are. In Phenomena, however, Dr Mc posits:

"In ancient Greece the butterfly symbolised the soul, the so-called "psyche". From the Greek for butterfly "psykhē". What is this association between insects and the human soul? Is it because of the multifarious mystery of them both?"

As piece of theme setting, it's a hell of a good start. Films like Phenomena that trade so often on shock value may not seem rich territory for having well developed themes and more cerebral ideas underpinning them, but Phenomena set the table with some nicely before deciding it was too full. Rather a shame too.

It's All Double Dutch Italian to Me

There are certain production things that are rather off - Connelly and Pleasance aside, I'd hazard a guess that the cast most of the cast were Italian and either couldn't speak English or had a tenuous grasp on the language. As a result much of the ADR-ing is distractingly bad, especially with the younger actresses, and considering how bad their dialogue, specifically, was to begin with...

***

In conclusion this movie has an Iron Maiden deep cut so you should watch it.

Film Review - Lords of Chaos

Film Review: Lords of Chaos

This review has to, really, start with a disclaimer - I don't get on well with biopics. There's been plenty of amazing real life stories that when recreated within the lense of a film camera that have seemed to fall flat. Maybe it's the fact that Hollywood biopics present a fictionalised version of a real event within the auspices of it being a real story, whilst also looking and feeling like a fictional story? Structurally, biopics always seem to have an uneven relationship with narrative structure; they want to engage us on a level we're familiar with whilst presenting life in all of its amorphousness.

Jonas Åkerlund's Lords of Chaos suffers from some order of that same structual awkwardness. The movie follows Oystein "Euronymous" Aarseth, founde of the infamous Norweigan black metal band Mayhem. Starting with their inception in the mid-80s, we see Mayhem's gradual rise into a music scene obsessed with a theatrical form of "darkness" - showmanship that evokes satanism and paganism in the form that it is demonised by Christianity. Quickly, however, Euronymous's rhetoric pushes the band into a situation that spirals out of control.

At its outset, Lords of Chaos presents itself as a movie "based on the facts, the fiction...and what really happened", which is a rather neat way of skirting around the fact that it does not, in fact, know exactly wants to be. When we first meet Euronymous, he's goofing around with his friends whilst a chipper indie-comedy style voice narrates the story. In an upbeat tone, he warns us that the story will "end badly".

The core of the movie is predicated on Euronymous's relationship with two other members of the band Per "Dead" Ohlin and Kristian "Varg" Vikernes: Dead in the earlier half of the movie, whilst Varg taking up the bulk of the latter part. In the part focusing on Dead and Euronymous, there's a youthfulness and carefreeness to the story, as well as the choppy structure associated with biopics wherein they try to capture events in a filmic way that don't have a natural narrative structure. In one pivotal scene, Dead demands that Euronymous shoots him in the head whilst they're hunting a cat in the woods. Åkerlund's light touch makes it difficult exactly to parse what is really happening in this scene - is it funny, serious, intense or just really strange? Is Dead playing into his cultivated persona or is he pushing Euronymous or does he genuinely want to be shot? It's ambiguous in the wrong ways.

And yet, it sort of works. In a running motif throughout, we often see characters watching The Evil Dead, specifically many of its most gory moments. In Evil Dead, and such, the cartoonish and garish violence happens after a build-up, with a flourish; not so with early parts of Lord of Chaos. What are ostensibly genuine horror set-pieces are sprung upon you with a lightness and lack of build-up that make them strange and fascinating. Dead himself is a very strange character, lacking any real narrative arc or easy classification within traditional character archetypes. It's a strange and compelling.

In the latter part of the movie Euronymous and Varg take the centre stage, and it feels more like the movie gets a shape and coherent narrative drive. Anyone familiar with the real life story knows exactly where it is heading, and even if you don't the movie isn't interested in playing it as some sort of mystery. Instead, tension is caused by the inevitability of events that play out.

There's still an ambivalence around exactly what the movie is trying to be, but it is less successful because it feels like Åkerlund knows what he wants the movie to be, but doesn't quite get there. Part of the problem is that both Euronymous and Varg are archetypes in the way that Dead never was, and the result is just broadly less interesting.

One of the stranger decisions made is that the broadest theme of the work is friendship - Rory Culkin plays the part of Euronymous with a sensitivity and vulnerability throughout, seemingly at odds with what the script is actually doing; it fits strangely with his role as a cult leader, possessing a strange almost goblin-esque charisma.  Emory Cohen makes a convincing nerdy fan and a far less convincing violent sociopath. Neither Dead nor Varg have relationships that get enough time to breath for us to properly feel invested in them, and yet many of the major character beats Euronymous has later on is predicated on that idea. After a point the prevailing feeling of the movie is that these are just a bunch of geeks and misfits in over their head. The movie never takes what they are doing particularly seriously, and is far more concerned with humanising them in, frankly, one of the less interesting ways.

As mentioned earlier, this movie is a genre blender of sorts. When what are ostensibly horror set-pieces pop up, they are visceral and often enjoyable in an almost cartoonish manner. At the most basic level, Åkerlund delivers a lot of the tropes that are part and parcel of both genres without the film ever collapsing in on itself and just outright not working. It's not an expert tightrope walk, but he never falls off either.

It is perhaps apropos that this review is sort of as confused as the movie - this is an entertaining and interesting movie. At worst, it's an engaging way to introduce yourself to the genuinely interesting real life events. Also the music is dece'.

Top 10 2018 Reads

You guys know how this works:

Honourable mentions:

Choosing 9 and 10 were really difficult, so pretty much any of the honourable mentions could have gone there. Gregory Frost’s Shadowbridge is a good example – epic fantasy set in a very unique location, and beautifully written. The central device of the story is storytelling itself, and it is full of imagination. The setting is similarly important Ana Kavan’s Ice, which is the story of a man chasing a woman as the world is encased in Ice. It struck me as having echoes of Ballard’s The Crystal World (or most likely vice versa) and there’s an unrelenting cruelty to the story that makes the world more than just a blunt metaphor for heroine addiction (which very much influenced Kavan’s writing). The release of the adaptation of Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House compelled me to finally pick up my copy of it, and what a strange trip that was. It managed to confound expectations I didn’t have, and despite hoards critics proclaiming of “the cliches weren’t cliches when she wrote them!” I found the book very much subverts said cliches rather than indulges in them. Finally, Rocanon’s World by Ursula Le Guin, was also a surprise, in that it was essentially a might whitey story – yet written by one of the best and most thoughtful writers of her time on race and gender. Nonetheless, the mix of fantasy and sci-fi was unique and intoxicating, and something that she’d later go on to perfect.

10  The Life and Extraordinary Adventures of Private Ivan Chonkin by Vladimir Voinovich

Voinovich’s comic romp is one hell of a lot of fun: telling the tale of Private Chonkin, who is so useless that the russian army sends him on a mission to a small village in the middle of nowhere to guard a plane just to get rid of him. The humour of this farce has translated very well – in many ways, it has British sensibilities (think 70s-80s humour). At one point Stalin descends from the sky wearing a dress.

9  The Shadow Years by Jefferey Ford

The Shadow Years is a very odd beast – Ford has literally written a fictionalised account of a year in his late childhood. There’s obvious parallels with It (bildungsroman set in rural america, where something hidden and dark is lurking amongst the community), but there’s not a good way to really describe this book. You could talk about the “prowler” that is hunting people in the town; the old man stalking the main character that appears to be satan himself; the fact that the protagonist’s younger sister seems to be able to control the town’s people; the broken family unit with a constantly absent father and drunkard mother. None of these things really do the book justice. If the book is about anything, it’s about the relationship the protagonist has with his older brother as his older brother becomes a teenager and begins to leave his younger brother behind. A confounding book that stays with me still.

8 City of Exile by Ursula Le Guin

Le Guin’s second Hainish novella is, at its core, a really, really well told fantasy story within a sci-fi setting. It is well written, has great characters and a plot that is structured excellently. The trappings of its unique setting really put it a level beyond, but even without that it’s just a damn good story.

7 Omon Ra by Victor Pelevin

Little Omon wants to be a space man – and he’s going to become one, but his journey there will be a strange, at times brutal and always silly one. Pelevin’s debut novel (more novella, really) is sharp and dark and builds to a tremendous conclusion. Pelevin’s at his baldest here with his satire of russian and soviet society, and the effect is searing.

6 The Red Tree by Caitlin R. Kiernan

When a writer moves to a rural house to seek seclusion after the suicide of her recent long-term, you’ve got a set-up that just screams “horror story”. This is very far from your standard horror, however, although it is legitimately pretty frightening at times. No ghosts or monsters here however: the story revolves around a tree in the grounds of the house, and the long and storied history it carries with it. And, it is no happy one either...

5  Pavane by Keith Roberts

Pavane is a very dry book that goes on and on about details that are often only tentatively relevant to the plot.

And yet, when the characters and stories get going, they’re damn good ones. What’s more, Roberts’ fastidious world building allows extra texture for those stories and characters. The world itself becomes a character, in the way that many stories strive for, but few can make work. Not to mention the way fantastical elements are tiptoed around; there’s always a sense that there is more going on just behind the curtains of reality. The coda, too, is little short of brilliant.

4 The Rift by Nina Allen

Nina Allen’s first novel was third on my list last year, I believe, so she’s making this something of a regular occurrence. The Rift is less Priest-y, but no less good (even better, maybe). Steeped in disquiet, The Rift is a story that’s not exactly willing to give easy answers or straightforward conclusions. What it is, is excellently written and very affecting. The depiction of the relationship between the two sisters is full of ambiguous tension, as is the relationship between the real world and that of Tristane. As depictions of alienation go, I’ve read few better.

3  Deathless by Cathrynne M. Valente

Set in St Petersburgh (then Leningrad, then Stalingrad), Deathless is a retelling of the story of The Death of Kuschei the Deathless, with more than a few tweaks. Valente’s brilliant prose evokes an amazing world, and filled with playful imaginings and an undercurrent of biting satire. It’s the characters that steal the show, however, and Valente’s depiction of the relationship between Maria Morevna and Kuschei the Tsar of Death is complexing and involving. Also, her take on Baba Yaga is one of my favourites pretty much ever.

2  Radiance by Cathrynne M. Valente

Radiance, my second Valente book, was a tough one to start with. It’s a cross between golden age hollywood and golden age sci-fi, the story of directory maker (and daughter of the most famous filmmaker of their age) who goes missing under strange circumstances. The story is told through film clips, conversation transcriptions, journal entries, newspaper articles and more. The lack of straightforward narrative makes the story a difficult one to sink into at first, but when you get into the groove, an incredible portrait of a character emerges, spiced with brilliant writing, heavy with imagination and brimming with ambiguity.

(I think I rather like Valente).

1.   The Drowning Girl by Caitlin R. Kiernan

If you’ve talked to me this year, you’ve heard me talk about this book. Unsettling, compelling and intense; Kiernan’s most widely acclaimed book is difficult to put into a single genre, and entirely involving. When I stopped reading The Drowning Girl, it refused to leave my head. Even at work I could feel cold presence of Eva Canning lurking nearby…

Will you, won't you, will you, won't you, will you join the dance?

Book Review - Crackpot Palace by Jeffrey Ford

Jeffrey Ford first came to my attention via the first story in this book. Along with Joyce Carol Oate's Fossil Figures, Polka Dots and Moonbeams was a real standout in Sarrantonio and Gaiman's anthology Stories. An unexpected slice of period piece, Polka Dots and Moonbeams mixes a swift cocktail of love, addiction and existential uncertainty within a backdrop that feels fresh. It's menacing, ambiguous yet strangely beautiful at times too.

Unbeknownst to me at the time, this story appears to be very much in one of the two major veins which Ford writes. In this, he creates a fantasy setting borrowing from periods that aren't necessarily - most commonly doing his own very specific flavour of Dickensian steampunk. Like his earlier trilogy The Well-Built City, they are often concerned with ideas of uncanny science as can be seen in stories like Daltharee and The Dream of Reason. Both of these stories concern that of a mad scientist, and their strange and rather sinister approach to science they contain an eerily convincing quality. The Dream of Reason particularly is another stand-out from the collection. 

Also in the darkly-Dickensian setting are Doctor Lash Remembers and Daddy Longlegs of the Evening. Both are excellent examples of Ford's ability to tread between the uncanny and outright horror - the latter notable for retaining its atmosphere whilst indulging in an enjoyably pulpy tone.

When taking on more conventional genres, Ford's stories are no less unique. Sit the Dead is an excellent vampire romance, and Coral Heart is a very strange take on heroic fantasy. The longest story in the collection is Wish Head, a murder mystery about a beautiful young woman's body that is washed up in a local river. It's melancholic and sinister, and surprisingly one of the fastest reads in the whole book despite being the longest. It's preoccupation with strange symbols is echoed somewhat by Relic, a story about lies and faith.

When he's not writing quasi-period pieces, Ford tends towards a high unique blend of the fantastical and the autobiographical. Down Atsion Road, The Double of My Double Is Not My Double and The War Between and Heaven and Hell Wallpaper are all examples of this. Another real standout from the collection is also in this: Every Richie There Is is almost not fiction at all, by the author's own admission, but it's a haunting snapshot of a life glimpsed out of the corner of your eye. 86 Deathdick Road, meanwhile, is disturbing in a way I've rarely encountered outside of the works of Richard Shearman.

It's not all darkness and melancholia: short stories like The Seventh Expression of the Robot General and After Moreau are playful and funny. 

The final standout in the collection is Ganesha, a story about a young woman and a Hindi deity. The story of faith and self-actualisation exudes pathos, and expresses the core concepts in a highly creative and interesting manner.

Crackpot Palace is an excellent collection, full of great ideas and unique atmosphere. Not every single story lands, but most do. Worth a read, especially if you're a fan of the works of writers like Kelly Link and Michael Swanwick.

Book Review - Pavane by Keith Roberts

Oft cited alongside Lest Darkness Fall and Bring the Jubilee as one of the all-time great alternate histories, Pavane is set in a world where Great Britain is part of the New Roman Empire and the Catholic church has a stranglehold over the West as a whole.

Structurally, Pavane isn't quite a novel nor is it a collection of novellas. It walks a line between both - six interconnected stories that slowly unveil a world both recogniseable and otherwise. Each story is self-contained enough to be enjoyed alone, from small, quiet stories of people living lonely lives to tales of rebellion and civil warfare. Together, they weave a spellbinding tapestry of power, religion, tradition and technology.

Although there are recurring characters in a few of the stories, the through-line is expressed in the world. The smaller stories take place against a world that is changing slowly, and each story exposed different elements of that world. In each story the nature of the setting is important to both the plot and the characters, and as with the best world building they both seem extensions of the world itself, whilst remaining individually interesting.

The tales within Pavane are more in line with historical or period pieces, compared to any sci-fi or fantastical plot lines. All of the speculative elements are not confined to the world however. Traditional folk lore is worked into the story in subtle ways that leave the precise nature of the world ambiguous. They help bring together both the tension of new versus old, whilst also blurring the divisions between the two. It is the foreign powers that is keeping Britain all but feudal, but even more ancient ideas religion and spirituality in Britain remain.

At its heart, however, is the characters and their emotional journeys. The setting and all of its atmosphere are backdrops to stories of lonelines and tragedy. At their best they are bittersweet, with a dash of pathos scattered throughout. The Signaller and The White Lady, specifically, were my favourite of the novellas.

Stylistically, Roberts takes his time. He isn't rushed. The writing is detailed. To get the most out of this novel you have to be ready to sink into a story full of detail and often slow to get going. In most cases that would make the writing too stiff and dry, but Roberts imbues it with a sense of melancholy and wistfulness.

Pavane is a beautifully written and evocative book. Highly, highly recommended.