Sternbergh maintains that pulpy, dirty, light sci-fi noir that he had going for him in SHOVEL READY and I love it just as much in NEAR ENEMY. Here it Sternbergh maintains that pulpy, dirty, light sci-fi noir that he had going for him in SHOVEL READY and I love it just as much in NEAR ENEMY. Here it was less about setting and more about characters. The first book took care of this destroyed New York, set the tone. NEAR ENEMY focuses on characters, on Spademan and Persephone and Simon, and Mark for a bit, as they all get sucked into this conspiracy that goes well beyond what any of them could imagine.
I liked how New York is still functioning within a bubble. This awful thing happened there but, after a while, the rest of the country kept on living while New York spiraled into its own destruction. But even after its own bubble burst and it closed in on itself what happens in New York will still have an impact worldwide. The beds and the limn isn’t relegated to only New York; it’s just used more than that city as a means of escaping the hell around them. But if this notion, that someone found a way to kill people while in the limn, something that’s always been a non-issue, thought of as impossible, it would ruin everything. Unfortunately that’s the baby step in the grander scheme of this conspiracy.
As Spademan navigates this story, he peels back layers of the rotting onion of this world and it keeps dragging him deeper and deeper into a place where he has no desire to go. In NEAR ENEMY he’s less an anti-hero and more an unwitting hero. Here the story starts immediately. You don’t get to see him do his thing because on the the first job of the book he gets cut off at the knees. He doesn’t get a chance to be the bullet so it gets really easy to forget that he’s a contract killer. Here he’s just a guy protecting his make-shift family that’s been thrust upon him and not getting himself killed in the process. It suits him, this style of story. Not that I had a hard time getting behind him as a protagonist before but it felt more effortless now. Less explanation and convincing and more just going through with the story and getting it done.
I found myself endearing a little more toward Simon as well. I don’t think he’s the greatest character, not really all that fleshed out, but I liked him. He was muscle in the last book and here he’s sort of a family man. Or vaguely trying to be. What he does he does with ease, be it nailing a corpse to a door or rocking his daughter to sleep. His transition is flawless and I admire his character for that (in the thinnest sense of the word).
I liked the ending and where it left off. For the sake of remaining spoiler free I’ll just say the blurb up there is just scratching the surface of what gets uncovered. At the end it starts to toe the line of something closer to horror, or at least damn creepy, kind of in a Freddy Kruger sort of way and that freaks me out. I’m definitely looking forward to the next one just based on that cliffhanger ending.
NEAR ENEMY was an excellent addition to the Spademan series. It continued the world without a hiccup and followed on the road of giving these characters even more life. Some of them had the dirt scraped off of them and thrown back out into the world. Some are dirtier than before. It all adds to the ambiance of the book. I can’t wait to read more.
4.5
I received a copy of this book from the publisher through Blogging for Books in exchange for an honest review....more
This was definitely an interesting one, not just in story but in style. There was very little by way of exposition but Sternbergh did a great job of pThis was definitely an interesting one, not just in story but in style. There was very little by way of exposition but Sternbergh did a great job of portraying the state of New York City around Spademan just through his interactions with the world and with the people. SHOVEL READY didn’t need a ton of scene set-up. You already knew you were in New York. You just needed to see how low it’s tanked and you see that plenty through Spademan.
I always associate the noir genre with a more cartoony feel so when SHOVEL READY keeps getting shelved into that box I want to say no despite the fact that it really does fit. Just without the cartoony feel (no, I’ve never seen Dick Tracey). There are no good people in this book, just people of varying moral degradation and with Spademan you kind of get the least of the evils. Sure, he’s a hit man, but he has scruples. Those include not killing his current target because she’s pregnant (and barely 18 but, accordingly to him, as long as she’s the age of majority it’s a go, he doesn’t discriminate when it comes to sex and kills). That then launches him on this escapade that he really doesn’t want to be in but the situation gives him no choice. He has to wade through this piss-drenched world of a dirty-bombed New York in order to make sure that this girl whom he’s made his charge is safe.
To add another level into this faded New York world is a slight sci-fi element in the limnosphere that people have escaped to in order to get away from the fallout. Depending on how rich you are you can buy yourself a fancy bed and plug into your dreams for as short of a time as you want, or indefinitely. Using this technology the girl’s father, a mega-preacher who’s megally morally deficient creates a “heaven” (hinthint) for people to go to. Insanity ensues.
I think SHOVEL READY is proof that you don’t need to dig deeply into a character or their surroundings in order to really develop them. Spademan’s interactions with people, with things, with his past and the current world around him, reverse-engineered a character that you knew like the back of your hand by the end of this rather short book. His single layer turned into multiple layers and it’s almost kind of shocking because you do get to see him degrade into what he is currently and it makes you question just how bad, or good, he really is. Thus the antihero.
The only thing I didn’t really like, mostly about the layout of the work, was that dialogue wasn’t always clear. It’s all very fluid and reads quickly but in that slip and slide it’s also really easy to lose who’s speaking and when, not only because there aren’t any quotation marks or clear lead-in to the speaking parts but because non-dialogue support is often provided in the preceding line so reading back to make it clear who’s speaking doesn’t always work. What adds into that is the whole story is set up like that, with Spademan’s thoughts sometimes broken out line by line so you become accustomed to reading inner monologue like that and with no segue into dialogue it blends a little too easily.
Outside of that I felt SHOVEL READY was a fast-paced read that didn’t rely solely on ridiculous amounts of action to tell a story. There was a lot of character development without dumping trucks of information about characters. There were a lot of flashbacks (that also got a little confusing because of the style like I mentioned above) to expound on characters and there were a lot of scenes where it was just the plot moving forward. Now that I think about it, there really isn’t a ton of action in SHOVEL READY but it doesn’t feel like that. The read is so quick and there’s so much second-guessing going on that your brain is on edge the whole time.
This would make a good comic, no doubt. Although see above re: lack of action. That may not work so good but you never know. I’d like to keep reading in the series, definitely. It’s not a book that makes you think all that much (I don’t think, anyway) but it gives you a ton to think about afterward if you so choose to think that way. You get these multi-layered characters that are just fun to read in all their broken lives (how sick of me) in a world that’s still incredibly familiar because it’s not set that far in the future but broken down to such an extent that it’s not only believable but you can picture it without having it spelled out for you. I liked it.
4
I received a copy of this book through Blogging for Books in exchange for an honest review....more
I’ve read anthologies edited by Datlow before so I got this one through NetGalley thinking that I’d like what I was reading. Not so much here. I’m notI’ve read anthologies edited by Datlow before so I got this one through NetGalley thinking that I’d like what I was reading. Not so much here. I’m not disappointed that the stories aren’t actually about horror movies or anything like that. They’re all rather creepy in their own right regardless of how cinema is mentioned. I’m just disappointed in the quality of the stories. Aside from the fact that there isn’t a Neil Gaiman story in here, I can really only say I genuine enjoyed three of the stories: Cuts by F Paul Wilson, about a guy getting slowly garroted around his limbs; each thing I show you is a piece of my death, and Illimitable Dominion by Kim Newman, the latter two I can’t even remember what they were about. Shows how big of an impression even the stories I liked left on me.
Most of them were just rather heavy-handed, more interested in being experimental and intelligent than telling a good story. A few were a too abstract for my liking and the couple of poems, well, I’m not big on poems. Neither of them left anything with me. There were more than a couple that really had me struggling to get through and had me constantly checking the page count to see how much farther in the book I had to go. Chalk those up to a combination of odd storytelling and just not being interested in what was going on.
Not to mention my digital copy wasn’t edited very good. It was a file that was mashed together and any illustrated chapter headers were cut off. I had to write down the table of contents before reading because I couldn’t easily access it while reading and I had to reference some kind of title when each story ended. Since I couldn’t see any of them in their rightful places in the book I needed something.
Less than impressed with THE CUTTING ROOM. It’s just not a fit for me as far as anthologies go. This would be something that I’m forced to choke down in a college English class for dissection instead of something I read for fun. There were a few gems in this pile but not nearly enough to render slogging through the rest of the book to get to them.
Well, I’ve read American Nightmares and Cold Wars already so why wouldn’t I tackle the third book in the series? I just couldn’How did we end up here?
Well, I’ve read American Nightmares and Cold Wars already so why wouldn’t I tackle the third book in the series? I just couldn’t leave it hanging like that.
Okay, book. You've got 50 pages. Go!
The voice has always been an immediate hook, not to mention the body count. RED REUNION didn’t let me down in that regard and it was no effort at all to keep reading past the 50 page mark. Never mind the fact that the book is less than 200 pages long. I still enjoyed what I was reading.
What worked . . .
The problem with reviewing a series individually is that you kind of run out of things to say if the status quo is met in each book. The voice was still spectacular and Panush kept the action coming with unique stories that certainly never disappointed. The introduction of Adam was a good twist, as was Chad. The latter humbled Mort a bit and it was nice to see his smart mouth shut a few times as a result.
What didn't work . . .
The editing quality is certainly degrading. I mentioned in my review of COLD WARS that it was noticeably worse. And it’s even worse on RED REUNION except now we’ve crossed the line from typos to grammar errors. The most obvious was the misuse of than vs. then. Really? In a finished copy? And multiple times? I shouldn’t be seeing this. Granted the Curiosity Quills website does say, “Curiosity Quills is a gaggle of literary marauders with a bone to grind and not enough time for revisions.” So I guess just expect sub par editing? I don’t believe in that but okay. If STEIN AND CANDLE weren’t so good I would have ditched the book for the lack of editing. I think I’ve only read one other CQ book that wasn’t Stein and Candle and I didn’t get through it. I have a few more waiting in the wings so we’ll see if this is really common thread. But really this is not okay.
And in the end . . .
RED REUNION is an excellent end to an excellent series of pulpy noir supernatural crime capers that I think would appeal to a ton of people. The book works as either an anthology of similar stand-alone stories or a series of stories loosely strung together over the course of the books. They’re fun, exciting, the characters, even the evil ones, are wonderful even if some of them are rather one-dimensional and it’s just all around a fun read.
Jury’s still out on Curiosity Quills, though. I really think I just got lucky with Stein and Candle and I ended up with the best they had to offer right off the bat. It’s going to be really hard to live up to this series and so far it hasn’t worked out. We’ll see how the rest of the books I have worked out before I make my judgment on the publisher itself....more
See, what happens when someone loves a book very much and there are more books just like it, that person will continue reading How did we end up here?
See, what happens when someone loves a book very much and there are more books just like it, that person will continue reading those similar books either until the series ends or until they’re just not interesting anymore. Thankfully the latter doesn’t apply here. I really don’t think that’s possible with Stein and Candle. I really don’t.
Okay, book. You've got 50 pages. Go!
Is it really much of a surprise that I was sucked into COLD WARS the same as I was AMERICAN NIGHTMARES? It’s Dick Tracy meets Supernatural and while I’m really not a fan of the Dick there’s just something about Panush’s writing that really brings me in and holds on until the book’s over. Like in its predecessor ,COLD WARS is more like a loosely strung together anthology where each story could stand on its own but, you know, it kind of helps to read everything so you know the backstory of the little past snippets that keep being dropped. Between the old timey voice that you would expect to hear in some old school radio story (that tough guy with the unidentifiable albeit probably New York accent) with the super kitsch that drips from the words (the Hawaiian print shirts, OMG Candle in a Hawaiian print shirt? I need a photo of that) and the never-ending smorgasbord of weird that Stein and Candle come in contact with I am never bored and I always have a good time reading Panush’s stuff.
What worked . . .
Check my last paragraph for more details. It’s just an all around fun read and I’m constantly amazed at the diversity of supernatural that Panush dredges up for his stories. Not to mention his ability to set a scene perfectly. I’m convinced he’s really from the 40s and 50s and just discovered the element of time travel. He captured the time period, the noir and any place he set the story in so well that I had a full-fledged 3D head movie going on when I read.
And I LOVED how in the middle of all this crazy, wacky, ridiculous mess that Stein and Candle get into he throws in a story about their past that’s anything but and it really grounds out their relationship. These two might as well be father and son for all they’ve gone through together and the extent to which they’re protective of each other is really heartening. I’ve hardly come across a better duo and I mean that.
What didn't work . . .
Um . . . there were noticeably more typos in this copy and I am almost positive that mine’s a finished product. So that was a little distracting, especially when words were missing. And, you know, I’m okay with it being longer. There’s not enough Stein and Candle as it stands now.
And in the end . . .
COLD WARS is absolutely an era piece and Panush did a bang up job of bringing it all in. There isn’t anything about this book I don’t like. What can I say? It hit me right. I have book three on stand by....more
OMG I loved STEIN & CANDLE so much I can't even tell you. It had the perfect amounts of cheese, campiness and noir all mixed in together. I can't tellOMG I loved STEIN & CANDLE so much I can't even tell you. It had the perfect amounts of cheese, campiness and noir all mixed in together. I can't tell you what it was specifically that I loved about this book but I can say it hit me just right in the cockle area that it made me a little giddy. Seriously, it was wonderful.
I will say the one thing that did irk me a bit was Candle's constant PTSD flashbacks/mentions to his war days. Those became a little much. I understand it was a part of Candle but for the most part I don't believe that's how most veterans go around thinking. For Candle everything reminded him of bullets or explosions or tanks or something. I'd imagine that kind of thinking would drive someone insane because they wouldn't be able to leave the battlefield. And Candle wasn't all that crazy compared so some of his former military buddies he came across in the stories. So I'd have to say that'd be my one complaint.
Everything else? LOVED IT! Weatherby Stein was, of course, my favorite. He is the Brain to Candle's Pinky. Well, no, not really. Candle's actually a pretty smart guy but it's obvious he's the muscle and Weatherby's the smarts. He's just 14 I believe but he has the air or someone that could be his father. You get a look at him in his own story's section when he was little, maybe 8, and he was like that even then. Just far smarter and more mature than his age dictated. But he wasn't annoying about it. He was constantly endearing, especially when it came to one boy he rescued a couple of times. He felt an affinity for him and had a need to constantly protect him (a by-product of not being able to product those around him whom he loved, I would imagine) when he's near. The kid, for the most part, always has his head about him and Candle really relies on him as much as he wants to protect him as his own. He's a great character; possibly one of the best I've come across in my reading ventures.
Candle is another great guy. Like genuinely just a good guy that happens to break some kneecaps if the situation calls for it. He's a bit of a hardass on the outside but since all of the stories are in his POV you get to see just how he feels about things, the soft spot he has for Weatherby and even for some of the people in the cases he works. He's far more intelligent than his outward demeanor would otherwise say and I just loved being in his head. I was never bored and he told a damn good story.
STEIN & CANDLE is a series of individual stories set apart as chapters but loosely linked together through minute mentions of previous stories. For instance mentioning Havana when they come across a couple of the same characters in Las Vegas or Candle's new car when he previous lost it in Vegas. Outside of those small mentions there isn't much stringing the chapters together. They can rightly stand on their own as their own individual stories and, for the most part, they do. The best part about them, though, is their feel. Panush has done a great job of capturing that cusp feel of a society switching from a war-geared gangster-fueled era into one greater led by the Mary Tyler Moores of the world. There's a crime-fighting noir about it reminiscent of Dick Tracy just with vampires and zombies and hoodoo. Loved the hoodoo, by the way. It's not an element seen very often and I just squeal a little every time I do see it.
Anyway, each story had it's particular feel led, of course, by Candle's voice. Aside from the flashback thingy I mentioned earlier, it has a little bit of wise guy attitude fresh off the battle field but without being overly obnoxious. Everywhere they go I can feel the time in which they're in. Havana in the early 50s, pre-revolution. If you know anything about it you'll be able to picture it in your mind. Or a drag race with the devil in a hot ass muscle car in California when cars still had real muscles. Or even the smartly-dressed aristocratic vamps wanting to get their money back. My favorite was Weatherby's story, about what happened to him and his parents in Castle Stein with the Nazis. It was a great departure from the tone of the rest of the stories but one that needed to be told just to give Weatherby some more depth, although he already had plenty.
Seriously, I can't say enough good things about THE STEIN & CANDLE DETECTIVE AGENCY. I'd love to see it as a comic because, well, that would just be epic. It has the feel for it and I really hope that's a possibility in the future. But between the most excellent characters, the settings to vivid you'll see them in your dreams and all of the crazy paranormal shenanigannery Stein and Candle get into, there's not much left to NOT love. It's campy, it's crazy and most of all it's fun. You really can't beat that. It's not to often I find a genuinely fun read; one that riles me up and makes me want to get up and do something. STEIN & CANDLE is a different incarnation of Sam and Dean, when Dean can go all Untouchable to his heart's content. Yeah, I can see it. And I love it....more
Before you even begin the thought of reading this book, check your normal meter at the door and rev your suspension of disbelief as far up as it can gBefore you even begin the thought of reading this book, check your normal meter at the door and rev your suspension of disbelief as far up as it can go. If you go into this one thinking a semi-normal who-dunnit story is going to ensue, you're grossly mistaken. This is Sean Beaudoin remember. He eats mind fucks for breakfast. Hello? Fade to Blue anyone?
Once you get over that, expect nothing and anticipate everything, you'll begin to settle into the story nicely. Of course, you need to get over that slapped-in-the-face-by-a-fish feeling that hits the second you start reading it because everything is just so absurd. But that's the beauty of it. Just go grab a brain condom and hop on for the ride.
Beaudoin has this ability to write the psychotic that makes it come out almost believable. Everything is so absolutely insane and so over the top that no one could make this kind of thing up, right? Not really. But that's how it works. It's like pulp noir and crack had a baby but instead of being this huge ol' mess, it's so well put together that you're almost afraid to touch it. Is it real? Is it delicate? Will it all come crumbling down at the end under the weight of its own insanity?
No, it won't. The story isn't sitting on toothpicks. It's sitting on granite columns. Beaudoin has woven a crazy storyline together so intricately that it actually ends normally. For everything that happened, all the rush rush rush running of the plot, you actually get to walk it off at the end. Take a breather. Let it all sink in. And you're not left disappointed. Nothing's hanging by a thread, any perceived plotholes are firmly closed up and you're left with the greatest happy ending ever. The skeevy "massage parlor" type of happy ending anyway. You might feel a little dirty, maybe a little used and thrown away, but you're done. You're completed and while you can ask questions about the future of the story, there's nothing left to ask about the present. It's finished.
I'm amazed at the writing that Beaudoin does. Despite its insanity, he creates characters that are relatable. You can feel Dalton's frustration at every turn and his ultimate surprise when it creeps up out of nowhere. Every character is a caricature but they're grounded at the same time. They're crazy mirror images of their own selves but you believe them. Everything they say and do, it all makes perfect sense within the context of the story. Just don't walk outside that context. Your head might explode.
If you liked Fade to Blue, you'll certainly like You Killed Wesley Payne. If you haven't read either yet, then what the hell are you waiting for? But like I said, remember to check your common sense at the door. It'll only hinder your reading ability with Beaudoin's work. You need to go into it with a truly open mind. Only then can you enjoy it....more
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