Tongue-in-cheek literary amendments, all done without ridicule or a pretense of improving the beloved original.
Laidlaw (400 Boys and 50 More, 2016, etc.) revamps Shelley’s horror classic to include a bevy of monsters throughout the entire narrative.
Laidlaw presents readers with an ambitious Minimum Monster Guarantee—“At Least One Monster Per Paragraph,” he claims. He further promises that Shelley’s original text is intact, with all the new material merely additions. While the novel is in the mashup style of Stephen Grahame-Smith’s Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, Laidlaw changes very little of the Frankenstein story. Many references to creatures are superficial, albeit amusing. For example, Victor Frankenstein notes that his love Elizabeth’s illness puts her “in the greatest danger it was possible to be in without a vampire feeding upon her or an alien chest-burster actually shooting out of her breast while she lay abed.” Still, the expanded tale is often humorous, and some of the modifications are outright shocking, including young Felix, who has an affinity for torturing animals. Laidlaw, meanwhile, effectively fuses his voice with Shelley’s. Accordingly, his contribution to the opening of Chapter 10 genuinely sounds like Victor’s woeful narration: “After a morning spent screaming in horror, I spent the following day roaming through the valley.” Monsters don’t make it into every paragraph; readers on occasion will have to suffice with lurid adjectives like “hideous” or the blunter “monstrous.” In the same vein, there are myriad horror films and TV shows cited, which reaches a crescendo in gleeful absurdity when Victor describes a castle as “something out of a Dracula or Frankenstein movie.” This likewise allows for an encyclopedia of horror icons mentioned, from literary (H.P. Lovecraft’s Cthulhu) to cinematic (Godzilla and the Xenomorph aliens). Nevertheless, it’s hard to miss a few inconsistencies. Movie character Freddy Krueger’s name is spelled three different ways, and a pledge to avoid “random obscenities” is contradicted by preceding and subsequent expletives.
Tongue-in-cheek literary amendments, all done without ridicule or a pretense of improving the beloved original.Pub Date: Dec. 7, 2017
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 249
Publisher: Freestyle Press
Review Posted Online: Jan. 29, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.
Are we not men? We are—well, ask Bigfoot, as Brooks does in this delightful yarn, following on his bestseller World War Z(2006).
A zombie apocalypse is one thing. A volcanic eruption is quite another, for, as the journalist who does a framing voice-over narration for Brooks’ latest puts it, when Mount Rainier popped its cork, “it was the psychological aspect, the hyperbole-fueled hysteria that had ended up killing the most people.” Maybe, but the sasquatches whom the volcano displaced contributed to the statistics, too, if only out of self-defense. Brooks places the epicenter of the Bigfoot war in a high-tech hideaway populated by the kind of people you might find in a Jurassic Park franchise: the schmo who doesn’t know how to do much of anything but tries anyway, the well-intentioned bleeding heart, the know-it-all intellectual who turns out to know the wrong things, the immigrant with a tough backstory and an instinct for survival. Indeed, the novel does double duty as a survival manual, packed full of good advice—for instance, try not to get wounded, for “injury turns you from a giver to a taker. Taking up our resources, our time to care for you.” Brooks presents a case for making room for Bigfoot in the world while peppering his narrative with timely social criticism about bad behavior on the human side of the conflict: The explosion of Rainier might have been better forecast had the president not slashed the budget of the U.S. Geological Survey, leading to “immediate suspension of the National Volcano Early Warning System,” and there’s always someone around looking to monetize the natural disaster and the sasquatch-y onslaught that follows. Brooks is a pro at building suspense even if it plays out in some rather spectacularly yucky episodes, one involving a short spear that takes its name from “the sucking sound of pulling it out of the dead man’s heart and lungs.” Grossness aside, it puts you right there on the scene.
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.Pub Date: June 16, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9848-2678-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Feb. 9, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
The emotions run high, the conversations run deep, and the relationships ebb and flow with grace.
When tragedy strikes, a mother and daughter forge a new life.
Morgan felt obligated to marry her high school sweetheart, Chris, when she got pregnant with their daughter, Clara. But she secretly got along much better with Chris’ thoughtful best friend, Jonah, who was dating her sister, Jenny. Now her life as a stay-at-home parent has left her feeling empty but not ungrateful for what she has. Jonah and Jenny eventually broke up, but years later they had a one-night stand and Jenny got pregnant with their son, Elijah. Now Jonah is back in town, engaged to Jenny, and working at the local high school as Clara’s teacher. Clara dreams of being an actress and has a crush on Miller, who plans to go to film school, but her father doesn't approve. It doesn’t help that Miller already has a jealous girlfriend who stalks him via text from college. But Clara and Morgan’s home life changes radically when Chris and Jenny are killed in an accident, revealing long-buried secrets and forcing Morgan to reevaluate the life she chose when early motherhood forced her hand. Feeling betrayed by the adults in her life, Clara marches forward, acting both responsible and rebellious as she navigates her teenage years without her father and her aunt, while Jonah and Morgan's relationship evolves in the wake of the accident. Front-loaded with drama, the story leaves plenty of room for the mother and daughter to unpack their feelings and decide what’s next.
The emotions run high, the conversations run deep, and the relationships ebb and flow with grace.Pub Date: Dec. 10, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-5420-1642-1
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Montlake Romance
Review Posted Online: Oct. 13, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2019
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
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