Julia and Brian have manage to escape detection so far, but we all knew that their luck couldn’t hold out forever….

****

Before them was a major intersection of three lane roads, and smack in the middle of it, taking up all the lanes except for one going in each direction, was what could only be described as a military outpost. There was a large green tent, and arranged around it were various vehicles. People in uniforms milled around it, most looking bored, some looking important, some with steaming mugs of coffee looking like they needed more sleep. She wondered if they were the night curfew watch and if they would be going off duty soon or if they were working longer shifts.

Examining the outpost allowed her to stall for time.  They slowed to a crawl as if  they were out for a  leisurely stroll rather than purposefully headed somewhere, which allowed her to observe and examine the workings of the outpost.   Unfortunately there just wasn’t enough time to learn much.  The only other couple who had approached it were greeted, and passed through without any problems. However, there were no zombies in their party and that probably sped them along. She couldn’t tell how closely the officer had looked at the couple either, from as far back as she was, so there was no way of telling if they were paying attention to details or just letting anyone who wasn’t trying to eat brains, through.

“Damnit,” she said quietly under her breath. She wished there was another way through, an alley or a side street, maybe.   Despite their leisurely pace, however, they’d drawn too close and had probably been spotted; there was no way to turn back without looking suspicious. They were commited, now, for better or for worse. The only thing going for them was that Brian hardly seemed like a zombie at all, except for the whole decomposing part.

Just to be sure, she glanced over at Brian, walking steadily by her side. His stride was even and measured, with only a slight stiffness, as if he was walking with a back ache. His baseball cap covered his head and concealed his eyes in shadow, but anyone looking directly at his face would immediately assume him to be extremely sick, or dead. His pallor was anything but the rosy hue of health; he was pale and bluish-green around the edges, and while his muscle tone had improved with regular meals, the first five days without food had taken a toll on him, and skin sagged off of his frame.

They were close enough to the tent for Julia to smell coffee now. There was a slight rustling of paper from behind a canvas wall, and the faint sound of voices conversing in important sounding tones. The only other sounds were a few birds chirping, and the soft rustle of wind as it ran through the trees that lined the streets, green leaves glowing in the early morning sun like millions of emeralds.

Julia tried her hardest not to seem nervous and to act like she walked through the checkpoint every day. “You’re allowed to be here,” she told herself, and reached out instinctively to grab Brian’s hand. He squeezed lightly, in support, perhaps? She wondered if he was scared, too.

They approached the soldier standing near the edge of the sidewalk, and Julia made brief eye contact, smiling kindly. He smiled back, as she continued to approach but made no move to stop them in their path.

“Morning, folks.” he said as they drew abreast of his position.

“Morning,” she replied, slowing only slightly, but continuing on her way.

She counted her steps as they walked past, hope growing in her chest, butterflies multiplying in her stomach as the numbers in her mind ascended.   Eight, nine, ten…

Then a voice behind her called out, “Hold up!” and her hopes crashed so swiftly, she was left feeling faint.

Despite her heart slamming in her chest and feeling like she was going to throw up, she plastered a smile on her face and turned to face the approaching soldier. “Yes, sir?” she asked respectfully, walking towards him to close the gap and leaving Brian where he was, hoping the distance would be enough to deter an examination.

She knew she looked like hell, knew she was rumpled and unwashed and that her golden blond hair was tangled and dirty, but she was still a woman, and maybe she could make that work for her. She gave him the smile that suggested she found him desirable, as she approached. “What can I do for you?” she practically purred, and had to restrain herself from touching his arm, feeling instinctively that that would be crossing the line.

He blinked, and swallowed heavily. He was a young man, probably barely over twenty, and that could have worked to her advantage, if he had been alone. However, he glanced over his shoulder at the presence of higher authority and duty reasserted itself, his gaze hardening as he visually shook himself of any effect she may have had over him.

“Oh, nothing but routine, ma’am,” he answered, glancing at Brian standing patiently. “We just don’t have a record of your being in this area, your picture hasn’t been recorded.” He gestured over his shoulder towards the tent, and sure enough, there were two cork boards filled with Polaroid pictures, with names and details written neatly on the bottom of each picture. “Anyone coming through the area needs to be identified, for security, ma’am. I’m sure you understand.”

Another of my favorite works of cyberpunk fiction is Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson. Originally published in 1992 Stephenson envisions a 21st century that where the government of the United States has finally ceded all authority to capitalism and the country is now ruled by massive corporations. People live in ‘burbclaves, gated and guarded suburban towns run by corporations that hold their own sovereignty, such as ‘Mr. Lee’s Greater Hong Kong’. Everything, right down to the roads, are run by the corporations that constantly compete for consumers. The US government has been reduced to nothing but a worthless bureaucracy shuffling papers around and wallowing in their own outdated processes.

The novel starts as we meet our main character, the stunningly aptly named Hiro Protagonist, freelance hacker, pizza delivery driver for one of the Mafia run pizza chains, part-time secret agent, and self-proclaimed best swordsman in the universe. Hiro is one of the original programmers of the Metaverse, a virtual reality system that has supplanted the Internet in the future. People jack in and can live out fantasy lives in rendered reality, you can be anything you want to be in the Metaverse as long as you have the money.

Our secondary main character is a streetwise skateboard courier named Y.T. (you don’t find out till well into the book what this stands for and I’m always a little let down that it wasn’t something cooler). Using an electromagnetic harpoon she attaches herself to cars and surfs the traffic to make her deliveries on time.

Together they stumble on a sinister new street drug that is usable both in real life and in the Metaverse called ‘Snow Crash’. Not only just a drug but a computer virus that can infect a persons brain that’s being distributed by a church, franchise of The Reverend Wayne’s Pearly Gates of course. Behind this stands one of the most powerful men on earth, L. Ron Rife (his name a dig at L. Ron Hubbard who also started a crazy religion). This is where it all starts to get a little weird and existential. The drug is a mimetic/biolinguistic virus created by the Sumerian goddess Asherah and defeated by an ancient neuro-linguistic hacker named Enki. Rife has discovered this virus, and it’s antidote, and is using it to his own ends to control humanity. Hiro is contacted by an ex-girlfriend who’s now deep in Rife’s organization to help stop him. Along the way we meet many interesting characters and Stephenson introduces us to many strange and thought provoking concepts.

Snow Crash, like all of Stephenson’s books can be a bit of a daunting read and you really have to read it a couple of times to get what’s going on. There’s a lot of deep and complex theories about the history of language and the idea of neuro-linguistic hacking and the ability to program the human brain like a computer. As a full-time computer programmer the ideas presented are intriguing, but if you’re not a technical person it could take some time to really get though this book. None the less it is a fun ride and a look at what the future could become if we let the corporations have too much power.

***

Snow Crash

Dune is a book that leaves you wanting more and Frank Hurbert understood this but it still took him four years after Dune’s publication to release the first sequel in what would become a trilogy, Dune Messiah.

Dune Messiah opens twelve years after the thrilling conclusion to Dune and Paul is now emperor of the galaxy and the jihad he saw before him in the first book has come to pass. His Fremen warriors have rampaged across the galaxy imposing their Fremen religion on all the worlds of the empire and proclaimed Maud’dib a living god. While Paul is the greatest power in the galaxy he is unable to stop what has been done in his name and sixy-one billion have perished at the hands of his regime.

Meanwhile, Alia has grown to the edge of adulthood and leads the church from atop her massive palace in the heart of Arakeen. Behind all this a conspiracy is growing with the Bene Gesseret plotting with the Spacing Guild to assassinate Paul and wrest control of the spice away from him. With the help of a Tleilaxu face dancer and the revived body of Duncan Idaho, how a gohla named ‘Hayt’, they launch a plot against him.

Dune Messiah is very much like The Empire Strikes Back, it’s a series of down notes. Paul is trapped into a future he knows with utter perfection, and hates, but is unable to change it. Throughout the story he loses everyone close to him and ultimately himself. His government is corrupt, the Fremen are getting water-fat and rich off the back of a vicious jihad that has reached a fevered pitch and there’s no end in sight. At the end of the novel we get the one bright spot, the birth of Paul’s children (although even this is surrounded by sorrow) and the hope for a new future of the empire.

This novel takes a lot of flack for being too much of a downer, but I think it works as a good counter-point to Dune, in that book we saw the glorious rise of Paul and in this one we see the shame of a foundation that that rise was built upon, he’s not the supreme being we thought he was he can merely see the future he’s trapped into. At only half the length of Dune this is a quick read but still quite satisfying. It’s a great bridge into the next novel in the original trilogy Children of Dune.

Pick it up, enjoy it.

***

Dune Messiah

While I’m away on vacation I thought you deserved a little action….

****

She awoke to find herself marginally more comfortable than when she had fallen asleep, and discovered it was because Brian had sat down beside her, at some point, and pillowed her head on his lap.   She was slightly surprised to find that it didn’t bother her; if it wasn’t for the putrid smell of his body, it would have felt completely normal.   If she closed her eyes and breathed through her mouth, she could pretend they were back at home and none of this had happened.

She sighed and moved to sit up so she could try to figure out what they would be doing next.   Brian, however seemed to have other plans and held her down with one hand when she moved to rise.  For a moment she was frightened that he had decided that now was the perfect opportunity to add some more intimacy to their relationship.   Her stomach turned at the idea of how close her head was to his decaying crotch and she tried to rise again, this time more forcefully, but he just held her tighter.

She tried to speak, to protest that she just wasn’t ready for what he wanted, but he covered her mouth with his ragged hand, holding tightly so not a sound could escape.   That was when she realized that he wasn’t getting fresh with her, he was hiding her.   She froze and was instantly aware of the atmosphere around her.   The tunnel was still as dark and apparently empty as it was when they had discovered it, however something was wrong.

At first it was just a feeling that they weren’t alone, but then she realized there was as sound.    It was as soft as a whisper, like skin sliding against skin, but it wasn’t continuous.  It stopped and started in a rhythmic pattern.   It was confusing, she had never heard anything in her life like it before,  yet it was oddly familiar.  It seemed to be too quiet to be something large or dangerous, yet too rhythmic to be a small animal like a rat.  No matter what her opinions were,  it clearly bothered Brian, and she trusted his supernatural instincts.

Gently, he moved his hand away from her mouth and lifted her up from her prone position.   He held her shoulders tightly for a moment, pressing her back against the wall, and then touched her mouth again, in silent admonition.  She nodded her head slightly in understanding, though she didn’t know if he could see her.  Then she watched as Brian slowly, painfully and eerily quietly rose to his feet and placed himself defensively in front of her.

He stood, unmoving, as the minutes ticked by, apparently listening to the rhythmic whisper move slowly closer to them.   Julia couldn’t guess how close the sound was.  The tunnel made the sound seem to come from all sides, and if she hadn’t known  to listen for it, she wouldn’t have known it was there at all, much less moving towards her.

Suddenly a dark shape appeared in front of a dim puddle of light, it was silhouetted black so all she could see was that it was human shaped.  It moved slowly and carefully, and though it appeared slightly off kilter, it barely moved the dirt beneath its feet.   The rhythmic sound was the rubbing together of its legs, wearing ragged and torn corduroy pants.

At first Julia thought that it hadn’t noticed them hiding in the shadows.  It  continued on its straight path down the side of the tunnel.  It got close enough that a wave of putrid stench of decay preceded it and it was all Julia could do to not clench her nose shut with her hand; she had to struggle to keep the meager contents of her stomach where they belonged.

Maybe she made an involuntary movement, she didn’t know, but the figure before them froze in its tracks for half a second and then, as if not even making the decision, continued on in the same ragged pace right towards their hiding spot.

Brian grew rigid.  He crouched, slightly, animal like, and prepared himself for an attack, but the zombie coming toward them made no aggressive move towards Brian, only shuffled determinately towards Julia, a wet groan that Julia remembered from Brian’s first days beginning to emanate from his throat.   It was obvious that it didn’t see Brian as a threat and saw Julia as food.   When Brian couldn’t get the zombie to engage him, he attacked.

He moved with speed that Julia didn’t know was possible and the zombie ahead of him was bowled completely off of his feet.   Julia blinked.  The zombie, now on the ground, was still making no attempt to fight Brian off.  It tried to rise, brainlessly, its hands still seeking Julia’s warm flesh.   Brian stood above him, and without hesitation reached down, grabbed the zombie’s head in both hands and with what appeared to be minimal effort, ripped it from the neck with an audible snap and wet ripping followed by a gush of dark congealed blood.

She breathed a sigh of relief as Brian dropped the decapitated head at his feet.  He just stood there, looking at the broken body laying on the ground with surprisingly little blood beneath it.  She wondered if he was contemplating his own zombie existence, or if he felt guilt over the destruction of one of his own kind.

She made a move to walk towards him, hoping to give him any comfort that he may need, when a grip, hard as steel fastened itself around her neck.  Her scream of terror was cut off as the hand tightened, cutting off her air supply.   Although she struggled with all her might to get away from the decaying body behind her that by all rights should not have such strength left in it, her struggles were useless and she felt her body grow tingly from the lack of oxygen, her eyesight beginning to tunnel.    If she didn’t do something quickly she would pass out, but at the sound of the wet, hungry groaning growing closer to her ear, that was the least of her problems.

As her vision began to grow dim, she saw Brian still standing over the body of the zombie, watching her with contemplation.   She had only a moment to wonder if he was deciding if he should let her become a zombie, before she felt the cold wet pressure of teeth against the base of her neck and she lost consciousness.

She awoke crashing to the ground.  Her knee impacted painfully with a piece of gravel, and she would have gasped in pain if she wasn’t so busy gasping simply to feel air in her lungs again.   Her neck burned and throbbed with blood flow returned, and her hand instinctively rose to hold where she was sure to find a bite mark as evidence to her inevitable future.  When she found nothing, however she gazed around her, dazed, trying to regain her bearings.

Brian stood where she had been, only a few feet away, and with one hand he was holding upthe zombie who had come so close to ending it all for her.   Strangely, she found that she wasn’t scared anymore.  Perhaps she had just become used to being scared and was now desensitized to it.   However, she realized, as she regained her feet,  it was more likely that she was just tired of it all and she wasn’t going to take it anymore.

She walked up to Brian and stood beside him, looking at the zombie contemplatively.   He had been hanging in Brian’s grasp relatively without complaint, with the exception of the occasionally futile kick, that seemed more as if he couldn’t figure out why there was no support under him, than any real attempt at violence towards Brian.    It wasn’t until Julia approached that the zombie made any desire to extricate himself from his circumstances, reaching towards her, his mouth moving mechanically.

She looked from him to Brian, who’s expression she hadn’t really been able to read in weeks, and wondered what he was thinking.  It didn’t matter, it was time to get moving.  “Kill it,” she said and then walked away, back down the tunnel towards the platform.   Two seconds and a wet ripping sound later, Brian followed after her.

*****

After discussing Willow, last Monday, I got to thinking about my most favorite movie and it’s novel.    I am a lot more familiar with the movie, having watched it enough times to have most of the lines memorized, but I’ve only read the novel once.  Does this mean that I’ve finally found a book where I actually prefer the movie?   Perhaps.

The fact is that this movie has garnered a huge cult following, mainly because of it’s wit and one liners, but also because of it’s incredible characters and the actors that portrayed them.   There is a divide in the fan community, however, between those that prefer the novel and those that prefer the movie.   Novel lovers tend to look down on movie lovers, in some sort of elitist way, as if those who have only seen the movie haven’t been let in on the whole story.

The truth is that the movie follows the plot of the book so perfectly, that nothing is lost there – there are no missed plot lines or unmentioned background, like there was between the Willow movie and novel.   The one biggest difference between the movie and the novel is the style of narration.   I’m particularly fond of the movie’s convention of having the grandfather read the story to his sick grandson.  Fred Savage provides an excellent counterpart of the kid who finds romance and kissing disgusting, but it won over in the end.

The book on the other hand, claims to be originally written by S. Morgenstern, and abridged and commented on by William Goldman.  This is, however a fiction in itself.  Similiar to the fictional author of Memoirs of a Geisha, S. Morgenstern doesn’t exist. The abridgment is a rather clever part of the novel, a way for the author  comment on and internally narrate his own work.   I enjoyed this aspect of the novel, it was clever in a ‘pop up video’ kind of way, but it did get distracting from time to time, and occasionally got in the way of the story.

The William Goodman is so good at fiction that even his author biography is fictional, as are references to a deleted scene and a sequel, supposedly called Buttercups Baby.   He is so successful in his deception, that many of the susceptible are deceived into believing that S. Morgenstern actually existed, a fact that many of the die hard novelists love gloating over.

What really matters, however, is not which medium is the better way to experience the story, or who is smarter for appreciating its different forms, it’s the fact that the story transfered into movie so effectively as to have such a devoted following.

“No more rhyming now, I mean it!”  ”Anybody want a peanut?”

Get the movie here:  The Princess Bride (1987)

and the novel here:  The Princess Bride

Ahh….this brings me back.   I think I was 18 when I first read this book; the age when you feel so old, but you’re really so young.   This book is sentimental favorite of mine, because it came into my life just when I was rediscovering myself, and creating an identity separate from my home and family.   I was on my own and independent and responsible for my own ideas and beliefs.   I think I even felt a little rebellious.

So I first picked up this book not very far into my new found Pagan faith.   I had been interested in witches since high school and discovered Wicca and Paganism in university, going so far as to head the Goddess 2000 group in my area and create the Society of Pagan Fellowship student group on campus.    I know, it all sounds so fruity  (I can hear my huband’s eyes rolling in their sockets”) but it was my identity then; it was newborn, bright, gleaming and proud.

This book took the classic Arthurian legend and turned it on his head.   It took the story away from the male-centric myth that everyone knows and made it about the Goddess and her Priestesses and Druids and the mystical, magical Avalon struggling to exist in a world of new faith.    It was like the novel was speaking to my own transformation – trying to exist as Pagan in a Christian world (campus).    What was amazing to me was the pagan rituals, festivals and rites written as if they actually happened, and how they were slowly extinguished by the Roman legions and the modernization of Britain, through kings.    The book was read so many times that I’m surprised it’s held together.   I can’t speak now about how good the writing was, (though I do know the mini series was horribly cheesy) but I will say that the images are still strong in my mind.

The sequels and other historical fiction that came after this book I can imagine as  representations of my own growth and maturity in my beliefs and even in life.   Each book that emerged became more sophisticated and learned more away from magic and myth and attempted to recreate history from a feminine point of view.  I read them all, always eager for the next in the series, but none of them affected me like the first book did.  Maybe it’s just my mind trying to cling to those young fresh years.

I read The Firebrand last year and it did a wonderful job of demonstrating the roll women could have had in history, as it tells the story of the fall of Troy from Kassandra’s perspective.   It almost seemed to me to be the culminating story of my own beliefs – the history of Troy, it’s cultures and peoples are all examined from a probable point of view, with just a little bit of old school mysticism on the side.

Everyone once in a while, though, it’s nice to go back to your roots.  So, go here to find The Mists of Avalon.

I’m not too sure where this story came from. It just popped into my head, I swear I’m not an environmentalist…

—-

Moving Day

****

The portals opened about a week before Moving Day. They were small at first, strange glowing circles of light that just hung in the air. Most were outside the cities and some, like the one near my home, showed up right in the middle of downtown between the skyscrapers throwing off that strange light day and night. They made the electronics around them wonky, and they buzzed something awful.

The police came first and cordoned off the area, pushing people back and displacing us from our homes and offices. The containment zones grew and grew as the portals got bigger; the whole of downtown was evacuated a couple days before they came. The army moved in and scientists came to try and figure out what they were. The portals were as tall as buildings and as wide as a city block by then. Massive blocks of light that lit up the sky for miles around. They were all over the world the reports said, on every continent.

They came on Moving Day, without ceremony they began pouring out of the portals. Short fleshy round things tottering on skinny legs, strange bags of meat that looked more alien then I ever imagined anything could look. Big bulbous heads that swiveled impossibly to push their two little eyes this way and that, slack too-wet mouth holes gaping open in their faces filled with a multitude of awful looking teeth. From this nauseous hole poured screeching, chattering sounds that they used to communicate with each other.

Some were clothed in rags, others in finery that I could call opulent if it weren’t so alien. Everyone carried something, strange boxes that seemed to hold their possessions, all they had in the world. They poured from the openings into our world. They came on foot, if you could call what was on the ends of their legs feet; they came in machines the likes of which we’d never even dreamed of. Strange craft that flew by unknown means drifted out and hovered over the crowds entering our world.

They seemed as surprised to see us as we were to see them but that didn’t stop them from coming. They poured in day and night for three days, first hundreds, then thousands, then millions they came and trudged away from the portals into our world. We told them to stop, they didn’t understand us any better than we understood them, we shot at them but the flying machines they brought with them rained a cold white fire down upon our armies that obliterated everything it touched. Our finest weapons of war were swatted from the sky like flies at a picnic. Even many of the ones on the ground carried weapons, strange handheld guns that spit flame at us and tore our bodies to ribbons.

Finally, the fleshy beasts stopped coming though the portals but before they evaporated into nothingness vast machines rolled out on treads to follow the groups moving away. I saw one with my own eyes, it was a thousand feet long and two hundred high, nothing could stand in its way. It ploughed though buildings as if they weren’t there and left a path of destruction in its wake as it moved away with the aliens. I watched on the news as the aliens made their way to secluded areas of our world, the deserts, the arctic, the forests, it didn’t matter they moved away from us and their massive machines finally came to a stop. When they did something amazing happened. The big machine seemed to fall apart into thousands of smaller machines. All moving like a hive they swarmed the ground and started building. Skyscrapers rose, roads rolled out and whole cities were built almost overnight. Industry sprung up and started belching black smoke into the sky as more and more machines were built. They spread like a plague over the land harvesting everything they could find to build their city. Massive open pit mines pried minerals from our soil, huge derricks pumped the oil from deep underground at a furious rate. When it was done massive gleaming landscapes of sky scrapers dotted our world, filled to the brim with the round discolored beasts that had invaded us.

They go about their lives, ignoring us. Taking what they want from our land. Their industry is constantly spewing incalculable toxins into our air; our scientists say it’s the greatest global environmental catastrophe since the industrial revolution. We’ve tried diplomacy, but they ignore us. We’ve tried war but they destroy us without even noticing. They go about their strange lives, ever consuming.

Some have ventured out of their cities in recent years. They haven’t learned our languages but we’ve learned some of theirs. We’ve talked to some of them, they say they came from their world, five hundred million of them but just a small fraction of the billions they had, when they have finally exhausted all their own resources. Their world is dead now and all they left behind is gone, they say they’re not leaving here that we have to just put up with them. They are unapologetic. We asked them where their world was, they point at the night sky, at the edge of the bright galactic span and say:

“There, it was called Earth but its dead now.”

Hey there, loyal readers, all seven of you.   Just a quick note to let you know that I am officially on vacation from this evening (Friday, August 20) until Sunday, August 29th.  I will be away in the wilderness, relaxing lakeside with my family.   Unfortunately, neither the forest nor the lake have internet, (I know!  It’s horrible!) so I will be almost completely out of touch.

Do not despair!!  My hubby and I have slaved the last two days to ensure that you do not have to go without reviews, and assuming all goes without a hitch, a new review will be posted automatically, daily.    Any comment approval will have to wait until I return, however.

See you in nine days!

I’m not normally a reader of short stories.   There have been three specific exceptions to this: a zombie anthology, an apocalypse anthology and Stephen King’s Hearts in Atlantis. So, when Jeremy C. Shipp put out on Twitter that he was looking for reviewers for something “dark with heart” and I immediately jumped up and down like the kid at the front of the class with their hand up in the air, pleading “Oh! Me! memememe!!”  I didn’t know that I was offering to read short stories.

Being extremely unobservant and completely missing the intro pages on my first walk through,  I had no idea what to expect beyond “dark with heart”.   I sat down for a quick preview read, cuz I was still reading ‘The Year of the Flood’, and was instantly swept away into a marvelous dream landscape.  It sucked me in so deep that I couldn’t stop reading; I forgot about dinner cooking, about my kids screaming at each other, and even that I was reading anything else.   Then I got to the end of a page and turned it, expecting a new chapter, and it was over!  “No!” I actually cried out, causing my kid to yell from the other room, “what, mom?!”

The stories in Fungus of the Heart illustrate exactly why I don’t like to read short stories.   They’re just too good to be confined to a handful of pages.   There was so much more that could have been expanded and expounded on, that many of the the individual stories it would have made excellent novels.  ‘The Sun Never Rises in the Big City’ had a film noir kinda feel to it,  almost a combination between Dark City and Sin City.   There’s so many possibilities around this story that I could even see it as a screen play.    I really would have loved to read more about the universe, have the characters and backgrounds explained, and really would have enjoyed seeing Frank as the anti-hero, shaking up the pyramid.

The talent doesn’t stop there, either.  Each story in this collection has that dark, film noir, dreamscape/nightmare feel to it, but they also have their own voice. ‘ Fungus of the Heart’ almost feels part fantasy, built around Protectors and Sentinals, magic and fortresses, while ‘The Boy in the Cabinet’ turns your perceptions upside down while building a truly unique universe, creating images in the mind reminiscent of Pan’s Labyrinth.  ‘Just Another Vampire Story’ is a short glimpse of love lost nightmare creating images of black and white, with splashes of red.

The collection is unlike anything I’ve read before and thats where its appeal was, for me.  Each story was unique and the prose is so well done, the words perfectly manipulated to flow almost like poetry.   I was incredibly impressed that such disjointed images could be captured and relayed so well, through the written word.

I am glad that I went into this collection with my mind open and willing.  Despite my disappointment in short bursts of pleasure, instead of the drawn out luxury of a good novel, I am happy to say that this is a collection that is worth reading.  This would be the perfect book for the casual reader and fan of dark and weird, who only has time for a quick story.  I would definitely recommend it.   My thanks and appreciation go out to the author for allowing me to read it, before it’s release.

You can pre-order this collection here:  Fungus of the Heart

I’ve mentioned before, in my post of favorite Canadian authors, that I really enjoy Margaret Atwood’s work.  So, when I saw this book on the shelf, (it instantly caught my attention by the cover) I very nearly bought it right then, before remembering I have an ereader and rushing home to buy it on the computer.

The synopsis given on the back, and that Kobo books gives it, just doesn’t do the novel justice.   On the surface The Year of the Flood is the stories of two women as they live the final years up to and beyond the destruction of man kind, in a religious-environmental cult called God’s Gardeners, who have predicted the end of mankind in a ‘waterless flood’.

Ren’s story, told in first person, covers her childhood growing up with the gardners and how she ends up working for Scales and Tales, a sexclub run by Seksmart, where she dances and works the trapeze.   Toby’s story, told in third person, starts with the death of her mother and suicide of her father, and her subsequent flight from the compound and disappearance into the exfernal world, where she works for Secretburger (the secret is what meat is in the burger). She is physically and sexually abused by the manager, a violent monster with high connections, before being rescued by the gardeners.  Their stories intersect when Toby becomes a teacher for the gardeners children, including Ren.

Most of the novel is spent on the women’s past stories, but the chapters jump back and forth between current events in Year 25 (of the Gardeners), and the years that have past until the women meet up again.  At this point the story moves forward as the two women travel together, through a post apocalyptic world,  and meet up with people they knew from their days with the Gardeners.

Beyond the story, Atwood creates a marvelously descriptive and complex religious structure for the Gardeners, based around chapters of sermons given by Adam One, the leader, and songs from the ‘oral hymbook’.   In the beginning of the novel, these sections seem quaint, but not significant to the story, so it was tempting just to skim through the sermon and skip the songs.  However, as time goes on, these sermons reveal the life of the Gardners and their hardships, including sermons after they are persecuted and forced to flee their garden.  The sermons after the Flood are particularity poignant as the reader is shown that most of the Gardeners have died in their flight.  In the end, Adam One has little hope of their survival, however maintains his beatific devotion to God and God’s purpose.   These segments beg the question of if this book is actually a religious commentary on the state of the world, where it is headed and the power we have to change a possibly bleak future.

I was so surprised and disappointed when this novel ended that I had to go back (remember I’m on an ereader that doesn’t tell me how many pages are left) and make sure that I hadn’t hit a wrong button and missed entire chapters some how.    The ending was left hanging in such a way that it begs for a sequel.   I want to know what happens to Toby, Amanda, Ren and Jimmy.  I want to see what happens with the new world.

Desperate for answers I went to Amazon looking for any word of sequels, only to find that The Year of the Food is the sequel; sort of.  According to  Margaret Atwood’s own words on the novel, she wrote this novel because so many people asked her what happened after her previous novel, Oryx and Crake, the story of Jimmy and Glen at the end of the world.  Well, now I have to go read that one!

The reason that this novel is so good is because it seems so simple, but is amazingly heartfelt and complex.  The societal and economical structure of the world, along with varying beliefs and morals create an incredible mixture of culture under the surface of ordinary lives of seemingly simple yet extraordinary characters.  It was a pleasure to read.

You can find it here:   The Year of the Flood