The Chosen by John G. Hartness
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

The Chosen is a fun little book that reads very quickly. As self-published ebooks go, it's well formatted and has only a couple of typos. Written from the point of view of Adam (yes, the biblical Adam) it takes place in the modern day south. It's written with a lot of tongue-in-cheek dry hyperbole, which suits me fine - Adam makes many of the same observations about the world and the personalities in as I do, with much the same sense of snide superiority. There were several LOL moments, and the whole book has a lighthearted levity to it.

The cast of characters is small, but involves some heavyweights from the christian tradition. Eve is hardly the pushover described in the old testament, and has styled herself as a barbrawling stripper with an acerbic tongue. She's the most interesting character in the book, IMHO, and seems to be more like the traditional Lilith than the western conception of Eve. Cain is unfortunately underdeveloped, and he exists mostly as a counterpoint to the argument du jour, swaying the plot one or the other as the plot requires. Lucifer, of course, makes several appearances and, as is typical in this sort of story, he's the character I would like to see get a lion's share of "screentime". The archangel Michael is the distillation of everything that everyone complains about in organized religion; he's clearly a sock puppet and punching bag for every inequity foisted upon the western world at the hands of organized religion.

The mortals involved in the journey include Myrna, Adam's most recent lover, who fortunately does more than just decorate the plot. Myrna and Adam's daughter Emily occupies a role much like Cain, though she gets a lot more dialogue. Sydney, a street preacher from Nashville, has a pivotal role in the story, but after his late appearance he's another sock pupppet - he dutifully trots out the right lines at the right places, but he feels like a cardboard shadow next to Adam, Eve and Lucifer.

This book has two main parts. The first is getting Adam, Myrna and their daughter Emily together with Eve and Cain. The archangel Michael is chaperoning this adventure, and hilarity and tears often ensue as the immortals find ways to overcome the resentments that have been burning inside them for eons. This part of the book explores human relationships, and it's where the author's ability to casually drop LOL observations into every other sentence really shine through. Once the party is assembled, they leave New Orleans for Nashville to collect Sydney and the second part of the book.

Once Sydney is gathered into the band of merry christian pillars, Michael explains he is to make a Choice that will affect humanity for generations - cue the Garden of Gethsemane "oh why me" chorus - though thankfully it's cut short with a minimum amount of navel gazing. Adam will need to make a Choice as well, of the same order of magnitude as Eve eating the forbidden fruit. The party rolls north to Washington, DC for the final choice. This part of the book has a slightly different tone; there's not a lot of character development, but plenty of dialogue where the ideas of 'free will', 'sacrifice', 'true love' and 'commitment' get hashed out again. Unfortunately, despite the interesting characters the author has to work with, no conclusions are drawn that haven't been drawn a million times before.

The final scene, ironically, felt predetermined despite the couple of hundred of escreens discussing free will before it. By the time the final confrontation between Lucifer and Michael takes place, it really does feel like these characters are going through motions they've been rehearsing since page one. It was a bit anticlimactic, really, and lowered my opinion of the book. I feel that if an author is going to draw from the roots of the christian canon for their material, they should either have something new to say or be prepared to go somewhere nobody has gone before.

As an entertaining book filled with funny and snide commentaries on human nature, this book wins. But as a story that asks important questions and answers them in thoughtful ways, it falls a bit flat. I would recommend this to anyone who likes to read skeptical interpretations of christian mythology, and/or lightweight familial dramas with a humorous tone.

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Jason Dark - Ghost Hunter: Demon's Night by Guido Henkel
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This was a fun little quick read. It reminded me of books from my childhood, like "The Three Investigators" and "Encyclopedia Brown" that follow the formula: situation happens, hero finds out about it, hero investigates, big showdown at the end. The focus of the story is strictly on the mystery, and there really aren't any subtexts or plot complications not directly related to the main plot.

The hero Jason Dark is a wealthy gentleman descended from a long line of ghosthunters who amuses himself in Victorian London by getting involved in paranormal mysteries. In this first book, he doesn't really have a lot of different contacts; this is not a story driven by dialogue but rather a punctuated chase through London.

It's also very short, only 100 ereader screens long. I'm not sure how many pages that is, but it only took about an hour read it. It reads like a comic book without pictures. The detail in the setting is very nicely done, enough detail is provided to excite the senses without bogging down in over explanations. Thanks to the short format, character development isn't a big part of the book, but Jason and his new sideckin Siu Lin are both interesting and have enough humanity to be relatable.

I'm not usually a fan of the Victorian setting, but Guido made this work for me by drawing attention away from the social inequities of the day and creating a lead character who is clearly lightyears more progressive than his contemporaries.

I recommend this book to anyone who is a fan of pulp horror and the short story format. I will definitely be reading the rest of the series.

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Woken Furies by Richard K. Morgan
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Altered Carbon

Broken Angels

The third and final installment in the Takeshi Kovacs trilogy Woken Furies was a bittersweet read for me. On the one hand, Takeshi is probably the best protagonist I've come across in years. I sincerely want to be him when I grow up, and I feel a special kinship to him. Richard Morgan is a fantastic storyteller with an incredible command of the language, making his books a joy to read. Unfortunately, this is the last planned book featuring Takeshi. I tried to draw it out and savor every moment - but I got so involved in the story I finished it in just a couple of days. I'm looking forward to rereading the series again to revisit these characters and worlds that have become part of my mental landscape.

And that's a major theme of this book - when people live long enough to see history repeat itself, does it mean they have new choices about how they'll take part or does it mean they are just that much more prepared to do it all over again? How much freewill does someone have, when the same machinations of politics and capital force the same crucibles every few generations? In Woken Furies, the Trotskyist dogma gets marched out front and center, and Takeshi is constantly forced to evaluate how personal he wants to make the political. When we meet Takeshi at the beginning of the story, he's back on his homeworld, exacting revenge against a politically powerful cult of misogynistic theists (think Sharia law). While he's still an incredibly potent warrior and force to be reckoned with on any number of planets, his life has dwindled to a molten ember of hate fueled by revenge. We see Takeshi's personality stripped down to his essence, a tightly coiled spring that only comes to life in violent spurts. His cynicism has ceased to be just a glib way of brushing people off and has taken a life of it's own, and his capacity to care for anyone or anything else seems to have been replaced with a self-destructive urge that is more than slightly remniscent of Case at the beginning of William Gibson's "Neuromancer".

However, the similiarities to other stories end there. I do not intend in any way to imply that Woken Furies is derivative. It's as fresh and innovative as the rest of the series, and while the tone is dark and the protagonist is in the angriest and loneliest mental space of his long life, it is constantly fresh and surprising - no mean feat for the third book in a series. The story follows Takeshi as he's forced to evaluate how much he's willing to sacrifice to maintain his cold aloofness. Several times in the book, he's given the opportunity to join a cause larger than himself, and each time he involves himself just enough to get what he wants out of it - always with the argument that it doesn't matter what he does now, the march of history will trample all their dreams just like it has before. What he really means is that his dreams have been trampled, and he's too hurt and bitter to move on. His former Envoy commander calls him out on it, telling him point blank it doesn't matter how many people he kills, the woman he loved is going to stay dead. Takeshi's response is to tell her that at least killing the people who created the situation that led to his love's death gives him a momentary sense of relief. Unfortunately, like any drug, it takes more and more to get any reaction and through the latter half of the book Takeshi is floundering in his resentment, searching for something to lash out at.

His former Envoy commander isn't the only ghost from his past. The woman he was with in the first chapter of Altered Carbon is a driving force in the plot, as are his former Envoy comrades, gangsters he ran with as a young thug, and even a younger copy of his personality. This latter complication could easily fall into farcical nonsense, but Richard treats it with dilegence and care, and eventually the Takeshi of the timeline we know has to face the younger Takeshi who hasn't experienced the last century. As I've often said, "If I met my younger self, I'd kick his mouthy ass", and Takeshi(1) feels much the same. The scene where they finally meet may be one of the most powerful scenes in the entire series. Without giving away any spoilers, I'll just say that Takeshi(1) drives home one of the most important themes of the series: "Live my life for a hundred years and see how well you handle it, if you can make any better choices than I have".

Despite all this, the book ultimately ends on a hopeful note that I won't give away here. Like the other two books, Takeshi's efforts to make himself rich and forget his past lead him and his companions to some technology that's a "game changer" and may yet provide a way for "the little guys" to take on the powers that be. Takeshi's last thoughts as the last chapter close show he's begun living for something, hope, rather than spending his life fighting against everything.

This is another absolutely brilliant book by Richard K. Morgan, and I wholeheartedly recommend it to anyone vaguely interested in scifi. Unfortunately, it may be hard to get into for people not accustomed to the genre thanks to Richard's liberal use of new terms and technologies that he never specifically defines for the benefit of the reader. I am looking forward to rereading the whole series many times during the rest of my life.

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13 Bullets by David Wellington
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I started the first 20% 13 Bullets a few weeks ago but had to put it down for a while. I picked it back up and finished it in a couple of hours. It's a great horror/thriller in the classic "old warrior/new recruit" vein.

Special Agent Jameson Arkeley (shades of Arkham Asylum show up all over this book, and not just in the alliterative sense) is America's foremost expert on the discovery and eradication of vampires. The vampires in this story are not the classically romantic, emo twinged rockstars of the Anne Rice vein, nor are they ageless humans with a penchant for drama and blood like the traditional Stoker types. Wellington's vampires are former humans, infected with "pure evil" turning them into malignancies that make them more demonic than human. They are immensely strong, ugly, sensitive to light and have rudimentary but effective psionic powers. These vampires are to normal humans what cats must seem like to mice - utterly effective predators against which luck and good timing are your best defenses.

Fortunately for humans, in this fictional world they are not common. According to Arkeley, there are only a handful of vampires on the planet at a time, and most of them are in a blood deprived comatose state trying to lure weak willed humans into bringing them more blood. The few active vampires are descending down a path that starts at wanton bloodlust and inevitably leads to a complete breakdown of the willingness or ability to function with humans. The vampires use their psionic abilities to control thralls, humans that are only partially transformed, to interact with humans and assist with their procurement of meals.

Arkeley tells most of this to his protoge, Pennsylvania State Trooper Laura Caxton, at the beginning of the book. While this book does not read like a mystery, there are many layers to the story and they are not all apparent until the final pages. For reasons not immediately understood to her or the reader, James takes her under his wing and uses the weight of his badge to have her assigned as his special assistant for the duration of the investigation of a new outbreak of vampiric killings in contemporary Pennsylvania.

There's nothing terribly remarkable about the story - it follows a tried and true arc - but I will give David Wellington huge kudos for hiding the final twist from me - I pride myself on being able to suss out the "surprise" in horror stories, but I was genuinely surprised at the turn this story took, and I wholeheartedly approve. Throughout the story there is a palpable sense of fear and oppressive stress; Laura always feels like a mouse trying to cross an open room, knowing there are cats on the prowl looking for her. Nowhere is safe, and every moment Laura and James expect to receive bulletins on their phones advising them of another grisly slaughter they weren't able to prevent - or predict.

The characters are multidimensional and relatable, even if they are stuck in roles I've seen a million times before. James is the gruff, aging, world weary "job before family" cop obsessed with his vendetta against the one that got away. Laura Caxton is the dedicated, smart, tougher than she thinks she is, wants to do good but inexperienced junior partner. Laura's partner is the slacker who can't help but be the crack in the armor James and Laura try to put up around their lives. More huge kudos to David for showing a non-straight couple in an unprurient, mature and realistic manner. The world needs more books where couples can just be couples without the nature of their genitals being the object of special attention.

The strength of this book is in the action. The fight scenes are well thought out, plausible, fast moving and really take this book from the ranks of "good horror" into the realm of "definitely should be read by any fan of the genre". Even the scenes that aren't violent use dialogue and especially action to very good effect; I read the whole book with a sense of urgent immediacy. I think fans of the thriller and action/adventure genres would enjoy reading this book as well, though the supernatural nature of the vampires may be a bit offputting to readers who like a material basis for all their plot complications. The horror isn't especially explicit, but David does an excellent job of involving each of the reader's senses into the picture, forcing the reader's imagination to make the broadly drawn pictures of death, dismemberment and decay seem more vivid than the mere words on the page would indicate.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book, and I recommend it to any horror or action/thriller fan. It's a quick read, but the unique angle on the vampire myth and some of the action sequences will stay with me for quite a while. I am looking forward to reading the rest of the series.

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