BOOK REVIEW: Laidenn The Dark Elf

Laidenn The Dark Elf is a story of unimaginable proportions. You see, Santa has a little more up his sleeve then just plain old Christmas magic and the North Pole has a lot more to offer than just candy canes and Christmas presents. Just what the fuck am I talking about? Laidenn. The Dark Elf. That’s what.

In this story, there are two kinds of magic, the light and the dark. There are only a select few skilled and trained enough to harness the power of the dark (side) magic. Enter: Laidenn: The Dark Elf. He’s one B.A.M.F. Not only does he know the power of dark magic but he uses it. Frequently. To battle vampire elves. AND vampire snowmen.

TRUE STORY!

The North Pole is nothing like you’ve read in your stories and seen in your movies. This is a terrible place. And only Santa and Laidenn are aware of it. There is a place where evil lives in the North Pole and all hell is about to break loose THIS Christmas. The evil vampire snowmen attack Santa’s workshop and it’s up to Laidenn to set everything right.

“The pitchforks were placed by the chimney with care, in hopes that no vamp elves would appear there!” (I just made that up! Pretty awesome, huh?)

This is a children’s book.

Not kidding. This book is written and targeted for the young horror reader. New Bloods. So if you have a niece or nephew that LOVES horror movies then you need to get them this book. It’s right up their alley.

The way its written is perfect too. My feeble brain was able to follow it and comprehend it so I think any young reader would as well. The author, Lyle Perez-Tinics, does a pretty good job of keeping the writing….I don’t want to say this but it’s all I can think of right now…dumbed down. (That sounds terrible…it’s really a good thing). This keeps the action and the “scenes” moving quickly so any young reader reading this won’t be able to stop. Honestly, when I was a kid I fucking hated reading. It was like punishment. So in reality this book is perfect for kids who were like me, just dreaded reading. It’ll go quickly for them and there’s enough going on at any given point that they couldn’t possibly get bored.

And it’s only like 125 pages long, each chapter is like 3-5 pages long so there really isn’t much there that seems like a chore to read.

The story itself is pretty awesome. Lots of magic and killing. But most of it (like 90%) isn’t very gory. Instead of blood there’s red snow, etc. But there’s some decapitations and eating of the flesh. Oh right, there’s zombie elves in this story too. Forgot about that. And it makes for a pretty interesting battle in the end.

If I had to knock anything, I’d have to say that the ending felt a bit rushed. I don’t hate the ending, I actually really enjoyed the way that it ended BUT it just read like how I tend to write things. I get to a point where I just HAVE to finish the damn story so I just push it out as fast as I can and it ends up being kinda crappy. This is kinda like that, a tad rushed, not awful, but it could have been handled a little slower. But that’s me.

So in short, support your local independent writers and check out this book. It’ll make a great Christmas present for your sons, daughters, nieces, nephews, or that kid down the street! You can find it here or you can look up Lyle at his website or on his facebook page. He’s got a few other projects going on including a free zombie book and his anthology book “The Undead That Saved Christmas.” Which I’m sure you’ve already bought by now. Riiiggghhhttt???

And look for Laidenn: The Dark Elf 2 and The Undead That Saved Christmas Vol. 2 & TUTSC: Vampire edition (submissions are open now!) next year.

BOOK REVIEW: Darkfall (1984) by Dean Koontz

 

I am what I like to call…a novice reader. I am so far behind on reading that I doubt I’ll ever catch up. Up until a few years ago I hated reading. It was a chore, it was boring, it was stupid. But then I discovered there was a whole section of Star Trek novels at the bookstore. And then I began to read.

What does this have to do with Dean Koontz? Nothing. But what does matter is that I am a new fan of the Koontz. I recently read his novel, By the Light of the Moon and I really loved it. I thought it was well written, well organized, and one hell of a story. The ending left me wanting more but overall I loved it. So from now on, I am a fan.

So I went back to the bookstore looking for more Koontz. I’ve seen the movie Watchers, based off Koontz, and was kind of looking forward to reading that (cuz I’ve heard that the movie butchered the shit out of the book) but instead I found Darkfall. What drew me to the book was this simple synopsis:

"A blizzard brings a city to a standstill - and ushers in an evil that defies imagination."

Hell yes! I love snow, I love evil, and I love defying the imagination. Let’s do this.

I typed "defy the imagination" into Google and this is the result. Sorry everybody.

So the prologue had me shitting my pants. I’m not even into this thing 5 pages and I’m scared shitless. It’s like 3 in the afternoon and my pants are full of mud. That’s awesome Koontz, thank you. The prologue is full of terror and gore. It’s basically about some little creatures in the shadows with silvery eyes mutilating gangsters. And it is amazing.

From there the story goes into detective mode. As a lot of great horror stories do. Two cops are investigating the murders from the prologue. Turns out there have been a few of these murders recently…all connected to known criminals. That’s pretty cool I thought. Some creatures in the night offing bad guys. Sweet! A “good” kind of evil.

The evil creatures make there appearance known here and there throughout the book. They murder a few more bad guys and then the central focus shifts from the unknown to partially known. Voodoo. This book is about voodoo. Yes, you’ve read that right. Fucking voodoo. Thank you Koontz, this is fucking AWESOME.

There’s a period in the book where Dean Koontz gives us (the audience) a deep lesson on voodoo. He teaches us all about the herbs and spices necessary to contact whatever god you want. He teaches us all about certain types of gods, their names and their purposes. We learn all about the good voodoo and the bad voodoo. It is kind of interesting but at the same time it sidetracks from the kick ass killing. But whatever, it draws you a little further into the story. I just thought it could have been a little less.

Somewhere around the first third of the book we meet the main villain. One bad voodoo dude. If you haven’t read the book I don’t want to spoil the motives of this man’s actions. He is pretty evil and I did like him but towards the end he turns into a big pussy.

Oddly enough, this is how the bad guy is described in this book.

Oh also it’s snowing. It’s snowing through the entire story. And unlike this paragraph, Koontz describes it very well. I don’t know how many times I could describe it snowing outside but Koontz found several hundred ways to describe it. Snowing. And there’s a love story thrown in there too. Not that it matters or anyone really cares but it’s there nevertheless.

The thing I loved most about this book is how it played in my head. I could just imagine this being turned into a movie…and how absolutely bat shit insane it would be. The “horror” of all of it would really look like shit on the big screen. It would be laughably bad. Don’t get me wrong, the book is well written and the story doesn’t come off bad but there’s just so many scenes that would just look so stupid on screen. Words describe it so much better than film ever would.

The reason I say that it would be a great bad movie is basically because of the little monsters. I thought I had them figured out from the beginning. But once they were finally revealed to the audience they were completely different than what I thought they’d be. It wasn’t just one kind of monster, it was several different kinds. And I could just about imagine what they would look like on the screen. *snicker*

The central focus with this novel seems to be Good vs Evil. (please for the love of everything click that link, you won't be disappointed) There are lots of stories out there (all of them) that use this as their foundation but Darkfall uses it to an extent that I have never seen before. (fucking voodoo man!) I really liked how the “good” and the “evil” came to a head at the end. I won’t give away the ending (Good wins, you know it does, it always does) but it was pretty sweet. And gory.

The book is really good and I would suggest it to anyone looking for a cool story involving voodoo, little monsters from hell, and a nonsense love story. I thought the first book I read from Koontz was better than this one (that's strange huh? Usually the later novels in a author's career turn into crap but he's actually getting better!) but I thoroughly enjoyed Darkfall. It’s short, approx 375 pages, so it’s a pretty quick read for anyone who’s not me. I’m a horribly slow reader. Just, just so terribly slow.

You can buy it on Amazon…or just go to a used bookstore like I did, I’m sure there’s several copies sitting on the shelf. It's a pretty old book, over 20 years old now so there's several different versions to find.

BOOK REVIEW: House (2006) by Ted Dekker & Frank Peretti

House is a poorly written, horrible piece of fiction. I really hate being critical towards an artist and I really do like to give people the benefit of the doubt… “Dammit, they tried! They deserve a little credit,” but I just can’t bring myself to do that here. When it takes two, that’s right TWO, established writers to write a piece of shit like this, then I can’t in good conscience be nice about it.

House follows the story of a man and woman traveling back roads USA on their way to a marriage counseler. The characters have names but it really doesn’t fucking matter so they’ll remain nameless…for their safety. Anyway, they’re cruising along and they decide to take a shortcut to get back to the interstate at the suggestion of a local police officer. Low and behold they hit a spike strip and are forced to shack up in an old Inn out in the middle of nowhere. Once there, they meet up with another couple THAT HAD THE EXACT SAME THING HAPPEN…and nobody seems to care. They meet the family of this house and then shit hits the fan. Some of the story progresses lazily, they venture into the forbidden basement, that’s really just a complex maze, they meet some metaphors of themselves, some freaky shit happens, and then it ends. Kind of.

There’s just so much I can’t stand about the book that I don’t even know where to begin. I can’t believe I put in all the effort just to read the whole thing. I knew around page 40 that it wasn’t going to be very good. But nevertheless, being the bad story kind of guy that I am, I pressed on.

I think I’ll start with….hhmmmm…the authors. Ted Dekker and Frank Peretti. The cover of the books states, “Their collaboration is as big of a deal as Tom Clancy and Clive Cussler getting together to co-author a spy novel.” OF SHIT! Trust me, I looked them up before I began to read this thing and I was impressed with their work. They both had a dozen or more novels under their belt, lots of them getting made into movies (including this one, I’ll get into that in a moment), so I figured eh, this can’t be so bad. It was TERRIBLE. I later found out that this book was written by CHRISTIAN HORROR authors. Wow, such a thing exists. I can’t believe it. I don’t really think there’s too much “Christian” about horror. They just call it that because the characters don’t swear. At all. They just say stuff like, “He tried the door. It was locked. He cursed,” to get past actually swearing. I guess it sells books doesn’t it? Plus there aren’t any graphic deaths. Cuz that’s exactly why horror readers are reading…purely for story. Where’s the eye gouging, House? WHERE!?

From my understanding, their solo works are pretty good. I have a couple books from them sitting in the hopper that I haven’t read yet but I will be checking them out soon just to make sure this book was a fluke. I just don’t know if they couldn’t decide on a writing style for this book, so they invented one that sucked or what the fuck. Here, I’ll just pull out a random excerpt for you…

He tried the potatoes, a little mealy.
“Stewart, don’t encourage him,” said Betty, a wad of food in her mouth.
Pete pointed at Leslie, “I want her.”
Randy cut in, eyeing Stewart. “Speaking of catches, where do you suppose those spikes in the road came from."
Stewart sniffed.
“Jack,” said Betty, “why don’t you tell us about your wife? Leslie told us about Randall.”

In this scene, all the characters are sitting around a table conversing with one another. Seriously, what is going on there? Apparently everyone is talking but no one is listening. Pete points straight at Randy’s girl and declares that he wants to bone her. Randy is all concerned about the spike strips in the road and all he can get is a sniff from Stewart. Apparently Jack and Stephanie, the other couple, could give a shit about how THEIR car ran over spike strips too. And Betty has a severe case of dyslexia, jumping back and forth asking questions but not waiting around for answers. COME ON MAN! One at a time please.

This happens constantly throughout the book. It’s actually quite laughable. Which, oddly enough, did make it a little more enjoyable for me. But come on, I need a little consistency. Everything that’s going on is just so confusing. Everyone’s always talking to no one. It’s crazy. OH! When they start meeting up with clones of themselves, just you TRY to keep up with those conversations. Holy shit. Honestly, this reads like something that I wrote. The characters are really flat, they appear to be pulled from other stories and just forced to exist with one another in this story. I was really hoping for quicker, bloodier, and more brutal deaths. BUT being a CHRISTIAN HORROR novel, no one really died until the end. And even then, they really weren’t all dead. Lame.

Instead of reading this book, here’s what you do. Go watch the first half of the movie Vacancy. Then watch the second half of the movie The Hills Have Eyes. That’s more or less what’s going on here, only this sucks and that doesn’t. I’m pretty sure they all came out at around the same time so I’m sure they all collaborated together to make sure they banked off each other’s success. Except House. House got fucked over hard. Cuz it sucks.

And can you believe they made a movie out of this thing? I will be watching it soon just because the events in the book are so outlandish and crazy that I just HAVE to see how they converted it to film. It’s gonna be nuts. I’m actually pumped to see it. I know they always ruin the book making movies and since this blows already, the movie is gonna blow even harder. And it will be the most amazing thing I’ve watched all month. I’m gonna go out on a limb here and call it right now.

Ok House, I’ve ragged on you enough buddy. You’ve got a couple things going for you. The evil dude…The Tin Man. He’s pretty rad. I’ll give you that. He’s basically the Gunslinger from Stephen King’s The Dark Tower…except he wears a tin mask. He’s a pretty evil dude. I’ll let you have one other thing House, you got me. You got me good. I saw the cover, thought it looked cool. I read the mini-synopsis, thought it sounded cool. And I bought the shit out of you. Which turned out to be not very cool.  You sir are one hell of a swindler, lemme tell you.

If I had to recommend this to anyone…I wouldn’t. Unless you like punishing yourself. Or need a quick read, I'm a really slow reader and I finished it in a week. I would, however, give my used copy to someone I hate so they’d be forced to endure it. House is a sub-par story with sub-par characters. There isn’t much here that hasn’t been done before. If I were you, I’d just rent the movie. You’ll probably get everything you need out of there. I know I will.

One final thought, when I, MR. FUCKING GABLE, says its bad. It’s bad. Good job House, you’ve outdone yourself. Time to put you back in the quarter bin on the corner with all the other used up hookers. I mean books.