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6 Public Domain Horror Novels You Can Read for Free Right Now

03 Sunday Sep 2023

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If you’re always chasing the next good scare, then you know what a dent that horror habit can put in your book budget. But it doesn’t always have to! Because we’ve been enchanted with scaring ourselves and each other for millennia, there are plenty of eerie tales out there in the public domain, just waiting to find a new home inside your brain. Read on for a list of legendary spine-chillers that you can find for free online whenever you want.

The Vampyre

Read The Vampyre free through Project Gutenberg

Conceived at the same Lake Geneva retreat where Mary Shelley famously penned Frankenstein, The Vampyre has the distinction of being the first English vampire story ever published — pre-dating Dracula by over 70 years. This tale written by Dr. John Polidori follows the independently wealthy gentleman Aubrey as he becomes acquainted, and travels around Europe, with the mysterious Lord Ruthven. As the nobleman’s debauchery escalates, Aubrey begins to understand that there may be a supernatural predator hiding behind Ruthven’s morose playboy façade.

The Night Land

Read The Night Land free through Project Gutenberg

You are on Earth in the far future. The sun is dead, and the remnants of humanity all live together in a giant metal pyramid. No one can go outside, as that would mean facing the inhuman (in some cases formerly human) monsters that live out there in the dark, waiting for the last of Earth’s volcanic energy to run itself out so that they might claim man’s last bastion for the darkness. This is the setup for William Hope Hodgson’s 1912 novel The Night Land, a work of fantastical horror that H.P. Lovecraft deemed unforgettable (if somewhat verbose) in its dark, macabre imagery. This somber future landscape is so captivating and influential that over a century later, writers are still churning out tales set in Hodgson’s haunting Night Land.

Frankenstein

Read Frankenstein free through Standard Ebooks

One of the most famous novels of the 19th century, Frankenstein was written while western Europe was experiencing a renaissance in the sciences, with new and seemingly groundbreaking discoveries being made practically every day. But what if one of those ambitious doctors decided to take on the ultimate villain: death? That’s the question that Mary Shelley, the mother of science fiction, explores in her heartbreaking and bone-chilling gothic tale of an ambitious medical student who must learn to face the consequences of his curiosity.

The Mysteries of Udolpho

Read The Mysteries of Udolpho free through Global Grey Ebooks

Love a dark romance set in a crumbling castle? How about forbidden love, fallen nobility and grand journeys through picturesque European vistas? If that sounds like your vibe, then Ann Radcliffe’s The Mysteries of Udolpho ticks all the boxes. This genre-defining late 18th century gothic novel follows Emily St. Aubert as she’s forced to move in with her aunt and her aunt’s shifty new husband to a remote castle in Northern Italy. Separated from her true love and fending off unwanted advances from a disgraced count, Emily’s life spirals into terror as she struggles to separate the ghosts that haunt the castle from those haunting her soul.

The Island of Doctor Moreau

Read The Island of Dr. Moreau free through Planet Ebook

You’ve never had a tropical island getaway like this. H.G. Wells explores what it would be like to be stranded in the South Pacific with a mad scientist and his creations in this extraordinarily dark 1896 sci-fi novel. It follows in the footsteps of Shelley, dealing with themes of playing god and what it means to be human, and building on them to probe at the ethical controversies surrounding late 19th century advances in science and medicine. Filled with bizarre monstrous humanoids and a sense of foreboding that settles in almost immediately and slowly builds, this surprisingly short work is a densely-packed grotesquerie that asks the still-timely question: Just because science can, does that mean it should?

The Dead Smile

Read “The Dead Smile” free through Digital Eel

Picture a grin that is so infectious, so evil in its stubborn persistence, that it lives on through generations. That’s the inspiration for “The Dead Smile,” Francis Marion Crawford’s masterful tale of a banshee, a vindictive corpse and a forbidden love. This short work of horror is perfect for the reader who loves poring over gorgeous prose while getting the creeps. Forty-four pages of concentrated poetic dread, this blood-chilling novella is quite potent in its ability to horrify as it delivers repeated gut-punches of shock and fear.

Any of these classics is your perfect companion for a stay at a cabin in the woods, or a dark, stormy night—and they don’t cost a cent. Be sure to light a fire (or turn on a space heater) to warm you while these dark tales chill your soul.

Do you have recommendations for public domain works of horror that aren’t mentioned here? Let me know so I can add them to my list!

Re-Read Review: The Burning (The Fear Street Saga #3) by R.L. Stine

27 Sunday Aug 2023

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This is part three of a three-part review of The Fear Street Saga by R.L. Stine. Click here for part 1, The Betrayal. Or click here for part 2, The Secret.

Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐

The Fear Street Saga 3: The Burning was the first book in this trilogy that made it into my greasy little kid hands. I was in the fourth grade at the time, and that month our teacher assigned us a book report that could be about any book we wanted. I turned in 4 handwritten pages, front and back, that were essentially just a very detailed, bordering on plagiaristic, summary of the whole Hannah and Julia plot arc. It was the most tragic and horrifying thing I’d ever read. I was completely obsessed.

Fun fact: Ever since then, the song “(I Just) Died in Your Arms” by Cutting Crew has reminded me of this book.

The final Fear Street Saga book, The Burning, follows Simon Fear as he debuts in New Orleans with a new name and a new ambition to bring the freshly-christened Fear family back to its former glory. When he sets his sights on the rich and glamorous Angelica Pierce, he knows the only way to win her is to use the terrific powers of his ancestors to remove anyone who stands in his way. Later on, Simon’s daughters Hannah and Julia struggle to come of age in the high society of their new town, Shadyside. But being a teenager isn’t easy when the strings are being pulled by the unseen hands of their family’s curse… Then, Daniel Fear tries to reconnect with long lost family in Shadyside, only to find himself falling in love with Nora Goode. They know that only a marriage between them can unite their families and end the curse. But will Simon Fear allow it?

Some of the tropes in this book:
Gold Digger
Artifact of Doom
Rich Suitor, Poor Suitor
Hereditary Curse
Murder by Mistake
Let the Past Burn
The Cassandra

I loved cracking open this book and immediately jumping into my favorite part of the whole trilogy: The whole plot arc of Simon trying to win over Angelica. Perhaps it’s because it was my introduction to these books, but even reading it now I found it to be the most fun segment out of all three novels. The ballgowns! The Opera! The horrific deaths! I also love Angelica’s glamour and mystique, and wish Stine had done more with her in the latter half of the book.

As mentioned in the intro, the segment with the sisters in the second half of the book blew my preteen mind. I still enjoyed it in this reread, though their “awkward boring sister vs. charming beautiful sister” dynamic didn’t land as well for me this go around. Part of this is because of the characterization of the sisters—like geez, everyone’s thoughts about Julia are so mean!—but I think another part is how it begins from Julia’s point of view, then switches to Hannah for the remainder. I feel I would have preferred it if the viewpoint had either switched back and forth between them more consistently, or just stuck with one sister all the way through.

Also, why don’t we get to find out what happens with Elizabeth Fier from the last book? She’s the POV character for around 1/4 of The Secret, but the only thing we learn about her after that book is that she gave Simon the evil Fear family pendant at some point before he left their home for New Orleans. Please, Jovial Bob, couldn’t we get just one measly paragraph about Elizabeth for continuity?

And another thing: A Fear tries to marry a Goode to break the curse AGAIN?!? That’s three times in three books! In so many generations of Fears, can’t we see one of them come up with a slightly better or at least different idea for breaking the curse?

With all it’s faults, though, The Burning still kills it with the pacing, ambience and action that makes these books so enjoyable. Simon holding his dying daughter in his arms is the image that haunted me the most when I read these as a kid, but others such as the riverboat scene and Simon and Angelica drinking blood together were perhaps even more fun to experience as a grownup.

I still have that original copy of The Burning that I got from the grocery store. The front cover is missing. The spine is unreadable, but still in one piece. Of all the books I’ve lost and donated and “lent” over the years, I’ve never been able to let go of this one.

This is the book that cemented my love of reading late into the night, promising over and over that I’ll go to bed after this next chapter. Of reading something terrifying when I’m alone, something that makes me suspicious of the darkness around me so that I shiver and in a burst of energy get up to turn on all the lights. It’s because of this experience that I went on in my teenage years to seek out incredible horror writers like Anne Rice, Stephen King, Bram Stoker, and so many more.

Four stars for The Burning, and a strong recommend for young people who are just starting to dip their toes into horror. While this trilogy isn’t by any means the best preteen horror out there, it’s a bone-chilling romp that makes a great gateway to the genre.

Did you read The Fear Street Saga as a kid? What were your thoughts then vs. now? I can’t wait to hear what you think, so leave me a comment below!

Re-Read Review: The Secret (The Fear Street Saga #2) by R.L. Stine

20 Sunday Aug 2023

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Rating: ⭐⭐⭐+

The Secret, the second entry in R.L. Stine’s trilogy The Fear Street Saga, continues the origin story of the curse placed on the Fear family. If you read my last post on The Betrayal, then you’ll know that I found this series as a young kid—I was just nine years old, probably a little young for the level of juicy terror and gore peddled by Stine in this series. But I was hooked into the suspense and drama of it all, and age restrictions weren’t going to stop me.

Perhaps being below the intended age bracket is part of the reason this trilogy was so impactful for me. The Secret in particular shook me with its dark imagery and tragic characters. Of course, reading it as an adult has been a completely different experience. Its flaws are much more apparent to me now, but interestingly I enjoyed this one more than The Betrayal this time around, even though previously it was the opposite.

In The Secret, Ezra Fier is hot on the trail of the villainous Goodes when he and his family arrive in a town that’s been gutted by a terrible plague. In a place with so much hate and death, it doesn’t take long for the curse to find them… Jonathan survives Wickham Village and falls in love with Delilah, a preacher’s daughter. If being with her feels so good, then why do bad things happen seemingly from the moment they meet? Then, Elizabeth Fier unearths her ancestors’ mysterious amulet the same day a handsome drifter is welcomed into her family’s home. When she and her sister both catch feelings for the charming Franklin Goode, they have no way of knowing that their fates are already entangled with his.

Some of the tropes found in this book:

Moves Around A Lot
Hereditary Curse
Feuding Families
Artifact of Doom
Sins of Our Fathers
Ghostly Goals
Sibling Triangle
Bewildering Punishment

Right off the bat, The Secret comes in hot against the backdrop of a premium horror setting: a town with corpses as its only remaining inhabitants. Yes, corpse-ridden ghost town, let’s gooooooooo!

I also enjoyed that this book had a character with a longer POV. Even though The Secret is the shortest of the three books, Jonathan is the character we stick with the longest in the whole trilogy, clocking it at a whopping 91 pages from his viewpoint. Unlike other characters up to this point in the series, we see Jonathan survive, learn and grow. The character development in these books, short and fast-paced as they are, is pretty minimal. So it’s nice to have a character who is a little more filled-out.

Another strength this book had over The Betrayal was female characters who actually did interesting things that contributed to the plot. Jonathan’s sister Abigail takes it upon herself to drag her brother to explore the ghost town and lay some of the corpses there to rest, unwittingly unlocking a mystery that will unleash untold horrors on her family. Delilah also ends up being quite a bit more manipulative than she seems at first blush. Chicks in this book are taking charge, and I am here for it.

**SPOLER-RIDDEN RANT WARNING**
Skip the following three paragraphs if you want to remain un-spoiled for The Secret

Unfortunately this novel reaches a premature climax with the ending of part two. The third and final part is more or less a re-skin of the last part of The Betrayal. There are differences, but the moving parts are mostly the same: An unsuspecting family of Fiers, a handsome drifter concealing murderous intent, and a lone survivor to carry on the grudge.

And then there’s the absolutely mystifying way that part two of the book ends: the curse just…stops for 100 years? Apparently all the Fiers needed to do to stop the curse was…get rid of the pendant that literally has the word EVIL engraved on it?? Like, not even destroy it, just hide it really well??? Part 3 starts with a new family of Fiers, Jonathan’s great+ grandchildren, living a prosperous life of blissful curse-ignorance. I get that Stine needed to move the plot forward in time quickly, because it’s a long way from the 1740s to Nora’s framing device in 1900. But there has to be a better way to get there than just hiding the macguffin like a toy from a dog, then rebooting a plot it seemed I’d just read in the previous book.

And last gripe I swear: Where the heck did Franklin “The Last of the Goodes” Goode come from? I feel like Stine could have graced us with at least a page or two of backstory as to what’s been going on with the Goodes for the last 100 years for this dude to still be carrying a grudge when no one else seems to remember what he’s mad about.

**END SPOILER ZONE**
The rest of this article is spoiler-free

Though all that may make it sound like I really disliked the final part of this book, it was…fine. Reading about two sisters competing for the affection of a mysterious newcomer was actually fairly fun. And all together, I do think I enjoyed this book a bit more than The Betrayal. Images like a mother chasing the blue-ribboned hat of her dead daughter, and a knitting needle sticking out of someone’s chest have lived on in my brain since I first read these as a child, and they don’t disappoint today.

Overall, The Secret gets a 3.5 star rating from me. While it suffers from many of the same flaws as the first book, like weak dialogue and characters on mystifying plot rails, I enjoyed the characters in The Secret quite a bit more and actually felt bad when the horrors of the curse befell them. It also does a great job setting things up for the third and final book, The Burning. Number three is the strongest of the trilogy, in my (perhaps somewhat biased) opinion, so keep an eye out for my next review in which I dish all about it.

What did you think of The Secret, or The Fear Street Saga as a whole? Share your thoughts in the comments!

Re-Read Review: The Betrayal (The Fear Street Saga #1) by R.L. Stine + A Reintroduction

13 Sunday Aug 2023

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Before we dig into this Fear Street Saga review, a reintroduction is in order. If you’ve been here before, you may notice some big differences, like the name Adequate Squatch Reads. The old name (Mal Has Bookworms) didn’t really seem to fit anymore (and honestly, was a little bit gross). After a lot of deliberating and weeding out of name ideas that were already taken, I settled on Adequate Squatch because it sounded cool, and because it seems accurate to how I often feel as I move and exist in the world—like I’m a bit of an oddball, but one who’s doing a pretty okay job of blending in.

If this is your first time visiting, hello! I’m Mallory, a food-motivated Gemini who lives in the Midwest and really enjoys a good book or three or seven. I’ll be posting reviews and other book-related content. Check out my Reviews page to learn about my book review standards, and feel free while you’re there to browse my archive of old posts.

If you’re a lover of books, too, then come interact with me about them on social media! Follow @adequate_squatch on Instagram, or click here to be my friend on Goodreads. I can’t wait to talk smack about books with you! ^.^

ANYWAY. On to the reason you probably came here.

A Review of The Betrayal by R.L. Stine

betrayal

Rating: ⭐⭐⭐

I recently came into a lot of Fear Street books.

fear street

Combing through these gems, I was incredibly psyched to get the opportunity to revisit one of my formative reading experiences: R.L. Stine’s The Fear Street Saga.

I read this trilogy out of order the first time around. I was nine years old and already a Goosebumps afficionado, with a few Fear Street books under my belt as well, when I first found a copy of The Burning (Book 3) in the little books and magazines section of the supermarket. It promised to be the origin story of the evil that plagued the citizens of Shadyside. The evil that made 99 Fear Street uninhabitable (for the living, anyway). The same evil that had possessed those cheerleaders! I HAD TO KNOOOOOOOOW!

I took that book home and devoured it. Then I immediately went back to the beginning and read it again. I couldn’t get it out of my head. It had everything I wanted in a story: a generations-spanning curse, forbidden love, fashion, betrayal, witchcraft, and people dying in all sorts of horrific ways. As soon as I could, I found the nearest willing adult to take me to the Tyrone Barnes & Noble to snag the first two books.

Upon finishing the entire trilogy, verily did I become shook. I’d never read something so haunting, violent and all-encompassingly dramatic. It was a shot of Miracle Gro to my budding horror fascination. As horror and its adjacent media genres are basically 60% of my personality today, it’s clear that I owe a lot to these books. Seriously revisiting them as an adult seems like the least I can do.

I had originally planned for this to be a single review for the whole trilogy, but it turns out I have a lot of opinions about these books. So this will be a three-part review, with one post dedicated to each book. Come along with me as I dig into the first book in this series: The Betrayal.

The Fear Street Saga (Subtitle: …where the terror began) was a young-adult horror trilogy by R.L. Stine. In it we meet Nora Goode, the last survivor of the fire that swallowed the Fear mansion. Nora knows of the horrific origins of the Fear family and the curse that has rained misery down upon its descendents. She knows about their legacy of evil and misfortune, and that it won’t stop with death. She knows the story must be told to prevent further tragedy.

The Betrayal tells the story of Susannah Goode, a young 17th century settler who has the misfortune of falling in love with Edward Fier. When Edward’s father Benjamin accuses Susannah and her mother of witchcraft, it sets in motion a chain of events that lead to a horrific curse that the Fiers can never hope to escape. Fleeing town and settling far away on a new farm can only keep the evil at bay for so long. Will Mary Fier be forced to pay the price for her family’s sins?

Note: This trilogy is not to be confused with the Fear Street Sagas, a 16-book series that Stine wrote after The Fear Street Saga. It also tells haunting tales of the Fear family and its curse, but they’re not in chronological order and there is no framing device tying them together.

Some of the tropes found in this book:
How We Got Here
Secret Relationship
Child Marriage Veto
Burn the Witch!
Artifact of Doom
Hereditary Curse
Feuding Families

Re-reading The Betrayal was like squeezing into a favorite old sweater: It’s a little small and out of fashion, but it’s so soft, it smells familiar in a really comforting way, and you remember how good you felt when you used to wear it all the time. In those first few chapters I was immediately sucked into the drama of the mansion on fire, the forbidden love between the rich Magistrate’s son and the poor farmer’s daughter, and the witch trial that seemed so maddeningly unfair.

The plot of The Betrayal is stacked with twists, turns and little cliffhangers that keep you turning the page. Then the witch trial arc ends and you realize that what seemed to be the climax of the story is only the beginning. The plot continues, following the Fiers to where they think they’re safe. You then get a front seat to the heart-pumping action as the curse comes calling. It’s just a whole lot of bloody, horrific fun.

I discovered while reading this, though, that while I love the nostalgia, atmosphere and fast-paced action of these books, like that beloved old sweater it’s just something that’s not meant for me anymore. These are 90s kids’ books and it shows. I found myself frustrated by the stiff dialogue, oversold melodrama, and plot-driven twists that made no sense for the characters—stuff that I didn’t really notice as a preteen, but which really stick out now that I’m (marginally, at least) a more mature reader. Things like the hilariously cartoonish evil of Matthew Fier and the artifically inflated drama of pretty much every scene made it tough to immerse myself in this book as much as I could when I was younger.

The handling of the female characters also bugged me. Two of the three POVs in this book are female, but the primary character trait for each of them is that they’re infatuated with a boy. They don’t have much agency of their own, and seem to primarily exist to be victims of the men’s blood-soaked schemes. As those are the actual juicy parts that move the plot forward, it leaves the women feeling like filler characters, only there to be acted upon for the sake of drama and body count.

All that being said, I truly enjoyed reading this book and there are images in it that may haunt me forever. The story of Susannah Goode as the catalyst for the curse that plagues Fear Street to this day is too good to ever forget. The mayhem that overwhelms the unsuspecting Fiers makes a worthy climax for this chilling introduction to the trilogy.

On re-read, this book earns a three-star rating from me. I understand that these are books for teens, but I also know that books for teens can be done way better than this. I would still recommend this as a really fun read for any teen or preteen who’s just starting to get into horror.

Have you read this book? Share your experience down in the comments. Then make sure you come back next week for my review of the second book in this series: The Secret.

1Q84 by Haruki Murakami

13 Monday Jul 2020

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1q84Haruki Murakami’s epic masterpiece 1Q84 had been on my to-read list for nearly a decade. Now that the ‘rona has me staying home a lot more, I figured there was no better time for me to tackle this behemoth. Clocking in at over 1300 pages in the Kindle edition, it’s now officially the longest novel I’ve read (before now, that title was held by the extended edition of Stephen King’s The Stand). After more than two months, I finally finished it. After all that I can say, while it wasn’t without its flaws and frustrations, I enjoyed this book a lot and am glad I took the time to dive into it.

1Q84 follows Aomame, a fitness instructor-turned-assassin, and Tengo, an unassuming math prodigy and author, as they’re thrown into the bizarro world of 1Q84, which looks almost exactly like their current year of 1984, but with a few noticeable differences. As these two get tangled in the complicated webs spun by a local religious cult and its founding family, they rely on their own intuition, as well as simple fate, to find each other in the big, bustling backdrop of 1980s Tokyo.

As a novel, 1Q84 unfolds like a slow-blooming rose. Alternating back and forth between the two main characters (with a third character added to the rotation in part 3), each chapter gradually builds on the last, slowly adding backstory, dimension, and exposition. A lot of things get rehashed, which gets a little exhausting, but not enough so that I wanted to put the book down. For instance, characters, places, and routines are described over and over–like, I get it, the guy has a misshapen head, I don’t need to hear about it again. But often Murakami does this to add small details that weren’t in the preceding description, thus building rich images of these characters and places without throwing a ton of new information at the reader all at once. It’s a technique that a really appreciate, though it results in a plot that took a long while to get going and really grab my attention.

Another thing I noticed about 1Q84 is how every character is a paragon of their own virtues and talents, unmatched in their respective fields. Their instincts are spot-on, and they are consistently able to deduce much more about these tangled plot webs than the average person might be capable of. This infallible quality of the main characters lends to the sort of storybook-legend feel of the novel.

For the most part, I adored Murakami’s writing style and descriptions. The man is truly a master of prose. However, my main beef was the over-sexualization of the female characters. For instance, how come every time Aomame thinks of her deceased female friends, she thinks about their naked breasts? (Obviously anecdotal, but I’ve got plenty of female friends, and I almost never think of their tits.) Why are women fondling each other every time they end up sharing a bed? How many times do we have to be reminded that the 17 year-old cult leader’s daughter has huge boobs? Granted, this was a minor annoyance in what was overall a really great read (and to be fair, we also got plenty of mentions of Tengo’s penis, even though he never once experimented sexually with his male friends), but I did laugh out loud a couple times at the absurdity of these portrayals.

One more minor gripe: In 1300 pages, you’d think that there would be plenty of room to wrap up all those dangling plot threads. But you would be wrong. While most of the main plot arcs get resolved–and to its credit, 1Q84 does a fantastic job giving most of the main characters satisfying endings–when it was all over, I still had so many questions. Certain plot arcs were touched on but never followed up with an explanation or resolution, and others seemed like they were just about to get somewhere when the book suddenly ended. For my time investment, I do wish that certain elements of the plot had been explained or resolved better.

After spending a long time in the world of 1Q84, I find myself a little sad that it’s over. But I also feel a wonderful sense of achievement having finished this beautiful love story. Four and a half stars is probably the most accurate rating I could give this book. Now I’m off to enjoy a nice, short 300-pager.

The Outsider by Stephen King

07 Thursday May 2020

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50271461._sy475_I’ve read Stephen King since I was a teenager, and to me, starting one of his books is like slipping into an old bathrobe–familiar and comforting, with the knowledge that you’re about to have some satisfying relaxation time. Relaxing with a good horror novel is one of my favorite things in the world, and King rarely fails to disappoint. The Outsider was no exception. Though I had some minor gripes, overall I really enjoyed this one, and I’m sure it’ll make it into my rotation of regular Stephen King rereads.

Primarily set in the fictional town of Flint City, OK, The Outsider follows the investigation of a horrific child murder that rocks the local community. When multiple eyewitnesses come forward to corroborate the extensive DNA and fingerprint evidence found at the scene of the crime, investigators (let by Detective Ralph Anderson) believe they have a slam-dunk case against the accused: Terry Maitland, local little league coach and pillar of the community. But when doubts begin to arise and seasoned P.I. Holly Gibney gets involved, all of that easily-obtained evidence starts to point to something more sinister…and possibly supernatural.

The things that bring me back to Stephen King’s writing again and again are his characters, and his knack for pacing and suspense. These qualities shine through once again in The Outsider. Though this is one book of several I’ve started recently (quarantine restrictions have left me, like so many others, with plenty of time on my hands), this was the one that kept me turning the pages late into the night, long after I should have given up and gone to bed. King is adept at feeding his readers just enough information to make them hungry for more, dangling the prize feast just beyond reach until the perfect climactic moment–and just when you think you’ve had your fill, another tantalizing morsel is there to keep you salivating until the end.

When I say that King’s characters are something that I enjoy in his work, that comes with a qualifier. Sometimes his characters and the way he writes them are just awkward and forced for the sake of getting a message across and/or advancing the plot. For instance, Holly Gibney doesn’t need to have a radiant smile that lights up her whole face every time he wants the POV character to find her endearing. The thing about King’s character writing that draws me in is his tight third-person perspective, the way he’s in each character’s head to help you understand and sympathize with them, even if the character is a vile and terrible person doing awful things. Jack Hoskins was such a character in The Outsider. Though he was pretty obviously a bad person, and very misled, I couldn’t help feeling bad for him and even rooting for him in certain small moments. It’s because, when you’re reading a Stephen King novel, you are that character for a brief moment; you understand them and want them to succeed. Perhaps this is why I gravitate toward his books when I need an escape from my own reality.

This wasn’t a perfect book by any means. Some things happened too perfectly, too cleanly to be believable. Characters sometimes seemed drawn forward by The Plot rather than by their own motivations. But at the end of the day, those things weren’t egregious enough to keep me from truly enjoying The Outsider, which I very much did.

I also want to briefly mention the HBO adaptation, which I watched, and which was the reason I picked up this book in the first place. The show was pretty good, but the book was far better. I couldn’t believe some of the things the show added that I very much expected to have come from the book, or some of the things that were left out. However, both experiences were enjoyable–though I’ll probably re-read the book, but skip re-watching the series.

Anyway, I can’t give The Outsider five stars, because in my opinion it wasn’t King’s best. But it was still very good, and did a great job meeting my expectations as a long-time Stephen King fan. So it gets a strong four stars from me

A Lion Among Men by Gregory Maguire

09 Saturday Jan 2010

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A Lion Among Men by Gregory Maguire

A Lion Among Men by Gregory Maguire

I was rather taken aback when I first saw that Gregory Maguire had written a third book in the Wicked series.  Huge fan of the first book.  It didn’t really need a sequel, but Son of a Witch was decently entertaining.  Maguire could have stopped there.  Or, if he had to continue, why write about the Cowardly Lion?  What could that possibly add to the story?  After a while, I did warm up to the idea of reading it, though I waited until it was released in paperback.

I was optimistic when I first started reading, despite my initial reservations.  Maguire effectively revives his rich, cultured version of Oz, and in the beginning alludes to previous events with the tantalizing promise of new information to come.  Perhaps A Lion Among Men would advance the plot of the first two books, tying up loose ends and closing out the series in a satisfying manner…

A Lion Among Men follows the life and travels of the Cowardly Lion, also known as Brrr, the Lion cub who was saved by Elphaba in Wicked.  Brrr has been commissioned by the Ozian government to collect information about people connected with The Wicked Witch of the West, and to discover the whereabouts of her alleged son, Liir.  His investigation leads him to a convent, and an ancient old woman named Yackle, who will only answer his questions in exchange for the story of Brrr’s life.

Turns out, my first impression of this novel was correct.  In the grand scheme of things, it doesn’t go anywhere.  You learn a lot about the life of the Lion, but he’s not a very interesting character.  His life is nothing but disappointments, and the book depressed me more than anything else.  The only reason I kept reading was because of the allusions to Liir, Candle, and their child, in hopes that they would come in to play later in the story, because clearly they were where the action was.  Maguire let me down.  Oh sure, you do find out a couple interesting bits of information that tie in to the two previous books—the whereabouts of Nor, and the identity of the individual who betrayed Elphaba and Fiyero—but it doesn’t make up for the time I wasted in reading the rest of the book.  I could have been doing something useful, like prying my eyes out with a butter knife.

Perhaps I’m not being fair to Gregory Maguire.  He is a great author, and even in this book, I cherished the opportunity to immerse myself in his Oz.  It’s the lead character in all three novels, and it’s always a pleasure to visit.  I wish, though, that he had stuck to the plot he was spinning with the first two books instead of attempting to get his readers interested in a character who—let’s face it—no one has ever been that interested in.

I hear that he’s in the process of writing a fourth book in the series, and that it will be about Glinda.  That has some potential, I think, seeing as she was a pivotal character in the first two books.  I’d certainly be more interested in reading about her than the Lion.  However, as bad as I feel saying this, I’ll be relieved when Maguire stops beating his dead Ozian horse and brings this series to an end.

Paint it Black by Janet Fitch

06 Wednesday Jan 2010

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Paint It Black by Janet Fitch

Paint It Black by Janet Fitch

Didn’t think I’d ever return, did you?  Truth is, after moving and unpacking all of the old books I haven’t seen in years, I was struck with the urge to re-read a lot of them.  So that’s where my literary energies have been focused for the past few months.  My apologies, to whatever extent they are required—I don’t venture to suppose that anyone missed me too horribly.

At any rate, on to business!  Today I am looking at Paint It Black by Janet Fitch.  This book was not on my agenda; it was lent to me by a young friend of mine, and therefore I was expecting a young adult book.  I found that, while this is probably still the type of thing I would have read at fifteen, I was pretty off the mark on the young adult assumption.  This book was filled with the sex, drugs, and other such debauchery of LA’s 1980s punk scene.  We’ll say I wouldn’t recommend it to my grandma.  However, it wasn’t untastefully done.  I’m actually a little torn about what kind of review to give this book, since I loved its poetic prose and was drawn in by my love/hate for the main character, but on the other hand didn’t feel that I really gained anything from reading it, once all was said and done.

Janet Fitch introduces us to Josie Tyrell, a girl about whom the reader doesn’t learn much in the first chapter, except that she’s a smoker, and her boyfriend has just offed himself.  Devastated by the loss of Michael, Josie’s grief isn’t made any less by the blame and threats brought down on her by his rich and famous mother, Meredith Loewy.  As the novel reveals more about Josie’s character (her troubled past, her dreams, and her lack of inhibitions) and her relationship with Michael, Josie moves tentatively into a closer relationship with Meredith in hopes of tasting the life that Michael once lived and to which he refused to expose her.  Through this, Josie begins to discover that perhaps she never really knew Michael at all.

I appreciated this novel for its clever use of metaphor, and its poetic imagery.  Fitch paints a vivid picture of 80’s Los Angeles, down to the dingy concert venues, the pompousness of its aspiring young citizens, and the sharp divide between the wealthy and the working class.  Overtly graphic while managing not to be overly so, one gets a good feeling for the difficulty of trying to make it in a town of such big dreams with such huge obstacles.

The character of Josie herself really came alive for me.  One thing that stuck out from the book, for me, was how I would forget that it was written in third person, just because everything was squarely from Josie’s viewpoint and it really got you inside her head.  We’ll be clear about one thing:  I didn’t find her to be a likable character.  She was too much of a contradiction, wanting so badly to be a pure, true person, while doing so little to keep herself out of the drugs and glamour of LA life.  However, I felt for her, and I think that that really speaks to Fitch’s ability to effectively develop a character.

Now, while I’ve already confessed to enjoying the metaphor and simile use in Paint It Black, I can still say that I thought it was a bit overdone.  Not everything needs to be personified or compared to another thing or phenomenon.  It drew out the novel a lot, so that where I was waiting for some actual advancement of the plot, all I received was twenty pages of flowery prose.

While we’re on the subject of plot…well, there wasn’t much of one.  Boyfriend dies.  Girl struggles to get over it.  And that’s pretty much the whole book.  By the end, there is no evident change in Josie besides her grief, and you never find out if she moves on, finds a new life, or improves the one she has.  It begs the question:  what is the purpose of telling this story if it ultimately leaves you in the same place you were at the end of the first chapter?  I could have saved myself a lot of reading.

I think that Janet Fitch definitely has talent as a writer.  I hear that her previous novel, White Oleander, was better, so I might give that a shot.  Ultimately, I have to say that Paint It Black is like a merry-go-round:  the ride was fun, but it didn’t take me anywhere.  If you’re into that kind of thing, then I recommend it.