Author: Bruce McCandless
Publisher: Ninth Planet
Rating: worthy!
Disclosure: This novel came to me in paperback as a gift via my wife who is a colleague of the wife of the author. As I always do, I'll give it my usual review: if I don't like it I won't hesitate to say so, and I'll tell you why.
So when I started this one I thought, "Oh dear, I am not going to be able to finish this," but as I plowed on, the plowing got easier, so I'm about half-way through it as I start this review, and I am enjoying it! Phew! No un-neighborly feuds in the offing - yet!
So why did I have such a hard time getting started on this? Well McCandless writes a bit like Stephen King, and I don't mean that in a complementary manner! My problem with Stephen King is that he has a character flaw, to whit: he can't introduce a character without giving that character's entire life history back through several generations! I find that abysmally self-indulgent and boring in the extreme. If it doesn't have any real bearing on where your novel is going, I do not care how well you've thought your character through. I really don't. McCandless isn't anywhere near as bad as King, but he does appear anxious to show some of his research even where it isn't relevant to what's going on. Fortunately, this lapses into disuse after a few chapters and the story really kicks into high gear (and he doesn't have a prologue so props for that too!).
Unfortunately (to finish this line of thought!), that's what you get (in King's case) from success: you get people who don't know how to honestly self-edit and you get editors who are too spineless to say no. If anyone but King had turned in some of his door-stop novels, they would have been kicked out on their ear or they would have been literally ordered by the publisher to strip the novel down; you know the old "Don't use two words where one will do". In King's case, it's "Don't use two words where a novelette will do. It was for this reason that I ditched King after The Shining, which was brilliant. I tried to pick him up again with the 'Dark Tower' trilogy - remember that? the trilogy that turned into a hexalogy or a heptalogy or whatever the hell it currently resides at? I think I made it through three volumes of that before I become seriously ill from it.
But I digress - or do I? This is a writing blog as well as a reviewing blog, so it's appropriate to digress, I guess! Anyway, this story begins in 1911 in Texas. I thought it would come through to the present, but it remains in 1911. It begins with some people disappearing, and being found with their throats torn and their corpse mutilated and their body drained of blood! Yes, it's a vampire! Or is it? It's certainly a more realistic take than Charlaine Harris has! But it;s way more than you might think.
A Texas ranger is called in who has his own agenda, and a local doctor is part of the team together with his son, his friend from Harvard medical school (a rare black doctor), and a huge black guy whom the local town people suspect of being responsible for these atrocities. They narrow down their area of search to a local mine, but when they go out there's a posse, they're repelled by gunfire. The plot thickens, just like coagulating blood! But you know they;re not going to leave it at that.
So I've finished this novel and I recommend it. It's really well written, and while you need your tongue firmly in your cheek for the 'true story' aspects of it, particularly parts of the epilogue, I can't take anything way from McCandless. He's done a damned fine job. Do be aware that he doesn't hold anything back in the way of describing gore. If you can handle that, you're in for a treat.
Postscriptum: I actually got to meet Bruce McCandless today and he's a charming guy. I enjoyed meeting him and his family very much, and I was glad I gave him a decent review so that he didn't have to pummel me into the ground (just kidding!). On a serious note, he did pummel me at basketball and dodgeball, but them I'm lousy at both, so maybe that wasn't such a big deal. But he's a great guy and I'm glad I got a chance to talk with him. Go buy his novel! Now!
