Dont Stop Believing

 I'm hesitant to title this review with a Journey song, but sometimes it just fits the narrative.

 Grady Hendrix again, this time with his awesomely packaged We Sold Our Souls.

Which is more proof Grady Hendrix gets the best cover designs.

This one is a bit unusual as we get two characters the narrative is focused on. One, Kris Pulaski, is by far the major one, although Melanie Gutierrez is no less interesting for her role in the proceedings. 

The back of the book and the title give away the basics, that Kris was Lead Guitar for a Metal act named Dürt Würk, and the lead singer sold the souls of his band mates for fame and fortune. While that's valid, it really doesn't fill out the novel contained within. See, when we meet Kris, she's working night audit at a Best Western outside Allentown, PA. She hasn't played guitar since the band broke up, and as far as anyone, including her, knows, Kris was to blame for the break up due to a drunk driving accident. 

However, not long after her brother tells her that she needs to find a place to live, Terry (AKA The Blind King, AKA the former lead singer of Dürt Würk, AKA now singer for the less a band and more a brand Koffin) announces his retirement tour, with a few dates on the West Coast, that ends up being expanded into Hellstock '19 outside Las Vegas.

Kris, annoyed at how bad her life is compared to his, starts looking up former band mates, feeling Terry owes her something for how he built his career off their pain. The first one, Scottie Rocket, ends up shooting himself in front of her, after telling her that the album Dürt Würk had just recorded prior to the break up (Troglodyte) was a real situation, that Terry has Hundred Handed Eyes of Black Iron Mountain spying on everyone, and the only way to beat him is to play the album to the end. Mind you, after Scottie dies, UPS shows up and kills his family.

Melanie, in the meanwhile, is busting her ass as a waitress at a Hooter's style restaurant in West Virginia, encouraged by an online friend to come out for the Koffin Farewell Tour. Her boyfriend keeps spending what money he makes on video games. We get glimpses of her life between Kris's journeys, which revolve around finding out which of her former friends are in Terry's pockets, the real truth of the break up, and being held captive at a rehab facility. Eventually Kris and Melanie meet, not long after Dürt Würk's original drummer (now a crazy Viking) get to Roswell. Melanie give Kris a ride to Vegas, which leads to one of the best conversations between metalheads ever. 

Anyway, in the end, the narratives diverge at Hellstock, and we finally get to see the final track of Troglodyte play out in "One Life, One Bullet".

By far one of the biggest joys in here is when Kris is playing, and remembering what it is to perform and be lost in the moment with the music, where the screaming 440,000 cease to exist in that space. It's an awesome feeling when it happens. 

It's more horrific elements are well written, including an escape through a narrow tunnel Kris has to worm crawl through. I'm not particularly claustrophobic, but reading that section gave me pause. 

While I was concerned the plot would be a rehash of the Satanic Panic, it really isn't as much as it is about the power of creation fighting against stagnation, which is a much better moral to a story.

If you're a metal fan, you'll love it. If you're a horror fan, you'll enjoy it. If you enjoy occasional scenes of people arguing about cultural minutia, you'll laugh a lot. Well worth it.

Your mother cuts socks in hell!

 For those who didn't know, I'm becoming a fan of Grady Hendrix's novels, after finding out he had books other than Horrorstör and Paperbacks From Hell. And I mean, it's hard to resist cover art like this:

Which is the book I'm here to review today. 

My Best Friend's Exorcism centers on the friendship between Abby and Gretchen, two fairly well off white girls from Charleston, South Carolina.  Well, at least at the beginning they are. We first meet Abby, as she invites her entire class to her ET themed birthday party at the roller rink, which only Gretchen shows up for, since one of the other girls decides to host a horseback riding party the same day just to be evil. We find out Gretchen's parents are at once very religious, and as the book goes on, we find that they're also social climbers. Abby makes sure Gretchen gets exposed to the pop culture her parents forbid.

This friendship continues on into High School, even as Abby's father has gotten fired, laid off, until he's nothing more than a guy who lacklusterly repairs lawn mowers in the front yard and Abby's mom has gone back into nursing to pay the bills. This fall from economic grace also means Abby is working at TCBY, paying for a used car, and at the private school Gretchen also attends on scholarship. 

As it happens, Gretchen and Abby are among a clique of 4 girls who are both in the top 10 of the class  and the most popular. They all play Volleyball. They gather to go boating at one of the girls' lake house. 

There comes a night when they try LSD for the first time. Three claim it doesn't work for them, Gretchen goes full Reefer Madness, describing how she feels like someone is always touching her and talking to her. This is after she vanishes into the woods overnight after the acid. 

 Abby spends most of the rest of the book trying to help her friend, whop gets sicker and sicker, believing that Gretchen got attacked by one of the other girls' boyfriends in the woods that night. Then Gretchen suddenly snaps out of it, cuts Abby off, and starts "helping" her other friends. (Little things like giving one girl tape worm eggs to help her lose weight, helping another think the school's chaplain wants her as a wife.) Things happen, like a fetus disappearing on a field trip to the medical science building. Then Geraldo Rivera's special that either set off or at least amplified the Satanic Panic of the 80's is broadcast, coupled with body building evangelists coming to the school to get the kids to Jesus. 

 In the end, we finally get answers as to what's going on, and some resolution. 

 Some of the cover blurbs refer to this as a cross between Beaches and The Exorcist, I personally found it more to be the latter crossed with the pop culture minutiae  of say, Tarentino or Kevin Smith, with the actual advertised exorcism feeling at first like the one Mandy Moore performs in Saved!

And, while none of my friends were ever possessed by Pazuzu in High School, I found I understood where Abby was coming from as old friendships seem to break apart for no apparent reason. 

While I felt the ending lacked something, the book was overall pretty good. Well worth reading.

The Start of it All

 Mercedes Lackey's Heralds of Valdemar, a very long running series, got its start with Arrows of the Queen. Which opens on 13 year old Talia,living on the border with her people, the Holderkin, who have bigamist marriages in their holdings, and the men have the authority. Talia, who loves reading adventures, much to the amusement of the older women of the hold, dreams of being one of the heroes of the tales she reads. However, as she turns 13, she's informed that it's time for her to either be married off, or sent to the Convent. This causes Talia to rebel and run away from the council of wives. 

As she sits in her hiding place among some ruins, one of the white horses of Valdemar, a Companion greets her, and she rides him back to Haven, not really grasping that she has just been Chosen, let alone being Chosen as Queen's Own. (Since it gets explained in this trilogy more than anywhere else in the series, the position is advisor to the Monarch, Chosen by a Grove Born Companion, always a Stallion. It's heavily implied the Herald Gifts work towards that advice, as well as divine guidance on how to advise.) Talia is taking over after her predecessor was murdered, and as the queen is dealing with the current Heir, who can't become monarch due to not being Chosen.

Most of the book is set up to give us a look at the current governance of the Kingdom, as well as players in what is the Modern Setting of the series. (Books written later in the series tend to tell tales from much earlier in the time line, or continue the story in the modern timeline after this series ends. The modern timeline seems to have ended, in terms of new stories, after Darien's Tale, since the next few series were all set several centuries earlier, and the newest one, set to start later this summer, involves the founding.)

Anyway, this means we meet later players, like Skif (who started life as a thief) and Dirk, as well as Albrecht, who we eventually find out was Chosen from longtime enemy nation Karse due to his gifts.We mostly see Talia as she trains and blossoms into a young woman. (I read these last a long time ago. As I recall, the next book concerns Talia getting promoted to Full Herald and learning to control her Empathy gift, while the final book sets up the War with Hardorn that gets the Mage Winds trilogy rolling.) 

As a starting point, it's not quite what the series becomes as it evolves and gets fleshed out, however, it does show the core of the series was there at the beginning. Worth reading, and a good place to start.

Love in the Sanitorium

 So, Morgan Brice wrote a shared universe story in another shared universe, and the result was the fairly short read that is Haven. 

We open on Austin, a private detective out of Albany, New York, who is in Saranac Lake near the Adirondacks investigating the closing of the Havenwood Sanitorium on behalf of his grandmother. Seems his great uncle was shipped there as a teen, and Grandma wants to know what happened to him. Austin also has very vague glimpses of the future on occasion, and keeps seeing a man in danger in his visions.

Jaime, who winds up being the man from his visions, lives in the area, working as a temporary head of the local historical society. Jaime can see ghosts, although he can't particularly communicate with them.

The two meet up as the investigations heat up, and Austin finds the Magic Emporium, a strange shop that appears to those in need. In this case, he gets a sheet of paper with a series of numbers on it. (That Jaime's ghosts scratch the word "safe" on a wall will let astute readers know what the numbers are for, although it takes the new lovers time to figure that out on their own.) 

Mind you, some of the locals aren't exactly happy people digging around in the past, leading to investigations of the Sanitorium being marred with rifle shots. We also see contacts between our central characters here and characters from the author's Deadly Curiosities and Badlands series. (Evidentially, Magic Emporium is a shared world thing, where numerous other authors use the ship as a plot device to tell their own stories.)

Anyway, since it is M/M Paranormal romance, it ends on a positive note, with everyone except the bad guys getting a happy ending having resolved the mystery. 

Fun little read.

The stakes are high

 I'm quickly becoming enamored of Grady Hendrix's writing, since everything of his I've read has amused me. The Southern Book Club's Guide to Slaying Vampires is no exception, even if it does have an ugly reminder wound around some of the narrative.

We're in suburban Charleston, South Carolina, starting in the early 90's, with a 3 year time jump halfway through. We open on Patricia Campbell, a stay at home mom of two, who left her nursing career when she married her husband Carter the psychiatrist. When we start, she's joined a women's book club, focused on getting the members to read the classics. As it's her night to host and lead the discussion, Patricia is in trouble due to the fact she's made it all of maybe 2 pages into Cry, the Beloved Country. As it turns out, more than a few of the ladies had similar issues getting into it, much to the displeasure of the leader of the club. This does cause a schism, but a new, unnamed club forms among the ladies who didn't feel like reading about South Africa, but instead prefer reading far more interesting books about things like True Crime. 

As things go on, we meet first Miss Mary, Patricia's mother-in-law, who winds up moving in with Patricia de to her dementia and lack of siblings willing to care for her; Mrs Greene, an African-American lady who comes to help take care of Miss Mary; and new in the neighborhood, James Harris, the nephew of the neighborhood old battle ax. 

We first meet Mr. Harris not long after said battle ax shows up in Patricia's side yard eating trash and biting off Patricia's earlobe. We find he has a skin condition that won't let him stay long in sunlight, and he has a bunch of cash that Patricia helps him invest. We also find out Miss Mary thinks he's the same gent from her childhood who lead to the ruin of several men in her hometown selling rat spit whiskey.  

We also find out that children have started vanishing, committing suicide, etc from Six Mile, the area of town where Mrs. Greene lives. 

Eventually, this leads Patricia to believe that James is a drug dealer, and the ladies of the club go on under that assumption, which leads to their husbands shutting them down. Indeed, Carter puts Patricia on Prozac, which she eventually tries to commit suicide with. 

This leads to the three year time jump, as the nameless book club now includes James and the husbands, and the books have shifted to things like Tom Clancy. James has lead the men into investing in a new condo development in what was Six Mile, and encourages them to take on new roles for more money in their professional lives. (Carter winds up going into private practice and is now doing lectures and selling new psychiatric medications.) 

As time passes on, Patricia figures out (with help from the ghost of Miss Mary and some extra help from Mrs. Greene) that James isn't what he seems, and the book proceeds from there, as we try to figure out what the ladies are going to do about it. 

The book is equal parts humor (like when the unnamed book club has a debate on whether or not the male lead in The Bridges of Madison County is really a serial killer), social commentary (the ladies don't really care about the poor black kids problems, but do start caring when it happens in their back yard [the police are also guilty of this, although some of that is due to the men]), and horror (the title alone should give that away.) It also carries a moral about not messing with certain women who know how to get blood stains out of white carpet. 

A good vampire yarn with some intriguing twists.

Dulak

 It took some time, but I finished Tracy Hickman and Margaret Weis's The Annotated Legends, which for a while was their last DragonLance book. (Sort of. The Annotated version was released after their return, but the three books annotated in here were the last they wrote in the setting for several years.)

I'll be honest, while I enjoy this trilogy, it doesn't change the fact the themes tend to hold a mirror up to things I'd rather not ponder half the time. 

The trilogy is focused on the relationship between the twins Raistlin and Caramon, who were very prominent in the Chronicles. As Raistlin took on the black robes of evil and became "The Master of Past and Present"at the end of that trilogy, the twins have drifted apart by the start of these, which start roughly two years after, as Caramon, the big warrior has fallen to alcoholism. In the meantime, Raistlin is busy manipulating Crysania, a Cleric of Paladine (who's likely to take over the church when Elistan dies.) Mind you, the twin's half-sister, Kitiara, is busy plotting her own war, which ends up getting the plot going. 

You see, Raistlin's entire plan in this is to take Cryania back 500 or so years to the Cataclysm, then jump her ahead 100 years to a point where she'll be the only cleric in the world. Thus the Queen of Darkness will be weak enough for Raistlin to defeat and take her place as a god. (The trick being the portal to the Plane of the Abyss can only be opened by a powerful mage of evil and a powerful cleric of good.) 

Crysania believes she can redeem Raistlin, which leads her into some of the most hubristic acts a good character can make. And she pays for it, and eventually sees her faults, but it takes 3 books. Caramon spends 3 books getting sober, getting in shape, and eventually becoming his own person. Raistlin spends 3 books reaching the zenith of his power, and then finding out exactly how empty his desire is. Kitiara spends 3 books plotting to help the winner. And Tasslehoff, who ends up back in time against all proscriptions against created races going back, spends 3 books being comic relief, even if he is the force that ends up grounding the rather lofty nature of everyone else's Hero Journeys. (Races created by chaos are not supposed to be allowed to go back in time, since they allow time to be changed. Although, had Tas not gone back, the series would have ended at the end of book 2, since that's when the mountain Zhaman exploded with Raistlin's mentor in it.)(Yes, time travel and paradox play a large role, particularly in the second volume. The third volume shows us first the results of Raistlin's victory, then shows us how they shift it to a more optimal timeline. It's like Back to the Future, without a DeLorean.) 

But yes, the focus on everyone's hubris and personality flaws is painful all the way around, even with a "happy ending". In terms of the Annotations, Ms. Weis doesn't say as much in the book as she did in the Chronicles, while Mr. Hickman expands quite a bit on Campbell and his view of the characters, and how all of this sets up the further revealed cosmology in the next trilogy after the horrible book. Still worth reading.