REVIEW: Imaginary Friends by Darren Pillsbury

PLOT

Jeff Tanner is trying his best to be a good father to his two young sons after the death of his wife. But it's not easy. His youngest son, Davey, is a mischievous smart-aleck. Older son Brian has withdrawn altogether, focusing only on his drawing. And Jeff himself is both lonely and uncertain how to move on.

But now things have gotten even worse. Jeff has started seeing strange, freaky creatures wherever he goes. Strange, freaky creatures that are becoming increasingly upset. And Jeff had better figure out why, because that agitation is turning into outright hostility. Towards Jeff. And they may be little, but they're everywhere.

MY TAKE

There are no big surprises in Imaginary Friends. From the moment young Davey makes a Christmas wish that his father could see all of Davey's imaginary friends, we know that wish is going to come true. We know that the imaginary friends will cause chaos, but that, ultimately, they will help Jeff recognize what's important in life. We know that, as part of this process, Jeff will learn how to honor his wife's memory while also moving on, and that this lesson will revitalize both his relationship with his children and his career. Imaginary Friends is a story of holiday redemption; as such, there's only one place for the story to go.

But that's OK, because even if we know the eventual destination, the journey is a lot of fun. Pillsbury displays a flair for both big, comic set-pieces and quieter moments of loss and melancholy, and Jeff and his family and friends are charming, likable protagonists. Some characters, like precociously cute youngest son Davey and Jeff's spunky live-in mother-in-law, feel a bit too much like standard television sitcom archetypes. But others, like Jeff himself and introverted son Brian, keep the novel grounded; they're real people, with real flaws and problems that resist instantaneous resolution. Even the "imaginary friends" themselves, rather than being strictly cute 'n' cuddly, are appropriately menacing when riled.

As a result, although Imaginary Friends as a whole displays an appealing tenderness, it never descends into treacly holiday pap. Rather, there is enough bitterness mixed with the sweet to keep the reader involved, and this vitality easily compensates for the lack of narrative surprises. After all, we may know already know that the Grinch is going to learn to love Christmas; but that doesn't mean we can't still appreciate the real emotion underlying the tale.

AVAILABILITY

Imaginary Friends is available for $12.95 from Amazon. You can read the first 80 pages of the novel for free at the book's website; further material, including the beginning pages of a webcomic adaptation of the novel (as drawn by Pillsbury himself), is also available here.

Incidentally, and unfortunately, the latest blog entry on the webcomic site illustrates how difficult it is for even a well-reviewed POD book to achieve much success. If you look at the nine (to date) customer reviews on Amazon, you'll see that Imaginary Friends has been widely praised, not just by the usual friends and family, but also by an Amazon top-100 reviewer, two top-50 reviewers and a top-10 reviewer. I'm aware of the debate about the worth of some of Amazon's top reviewers; nonetheless, one might think that having so many positive reviews would count for something.

But Pillsbury's blog reveals that "sales of the book have stunk," well below the (fairly minimal) 200-300 books he hoped to sell. The problem, of course, is that favorable reviews on Amazon can only sway readers who have already found the book. As always, the problem is getting the potential customer's attention in the first place. And as always, even for the worthy titles, there is, unfortunately, no easy solution.

BONUS RECOMMENDATION

Glen and the Sunshine Gang are a fun, quirky power-pop band that sing about fun, quirky topics like Jackie Chan ("Jackie Chan"), Jason Voorhees ("Friday the 13th"), and Billy Blanks ("Winners Anthem," which also has a nifty video).

Oh, and unicorns. Following their adventures in Imaginary Friends, I can perfectly imagine Jeff and his family singing along to the rousing chorus of "I Believe in Unicorns." I have a bit more difficulty picturing the family singing along with the ugly, death-metalesque bridge two-thirds of the way through, but even that aspect of the song is thematically consistent with the novel: just as Jeff's preliminary mistakes and failures make his ultimate growth all the more compelling, so too does the ugliness of the song's bridge make the final chorus that much sweeter.

All of Glen and the Sunshine Gang's songs are available DRM free for $0.89 each through Snocap on the band's MySpace page (where the band's two videos can be seen as well).

REVIEWS: Strange Sleuths: Three Novels about Peculiar P.I.s

Mickey Spillane's Mike Hammer. Raymond Chandler's Philip Marlowe. Robert Parker's Spenser. Hard-boiled detective thrillers are a venerable and beloved staple of American literature. To be honest, I have never been a tremendous fan of the traditional crime novel. But that is not an issue with any of the three novels below, each of which takes the detective novel is a wholly unconventional direction.

Wildclown Hijacked by G. Wells Taylor is the most straightforward of the bunch, which is really saying something given that the novel chronicles the adventures of a spirit, in the quasi-post-apocalyptic world of the Change (in which the dead have arisen to resume their old lives), who possesses the body of an alcoholic private investigator who, in turn, wears clownface greasepaint in order to hide his face -- and thus his past -- from his own gaze.

Wildclown Hijacked is the sequel to When Graveyards Yawn, a novel I absolutely adore, and, perhaps unfairly, the new installment suffers a little bit in comparison. The problem is not with the writing; Taylor's prose continues to be absolutely top-notch. Wildclown's gritty, down-to-earth narration perfectly counterpoints the nightmarish phantasmagoria of life after the Change, and Taylor captures the mystery, violence and horror of this new world beautifully.

Rather, it is the plot that falters. To anyone already familiar with Wildclown's world (or even who has just read the above paragraphs), the title of this novel explicitly gives away exactly what is going to happen. Moreover, beyond the titular event, not much else occurs. As a result, there is very little surprise as events unfold. The details of the journey are everything. The strength of Taylor's writing is such that it is nearly enough. But in the end, Wildclown Hijacked was a little bit too predictable, even with its completely over-the-top finale.

(Wildclown Hijacked is available as a $9.94 paperback when ordered from Lulu through a special link at the book's web page -- go to wildclown.com and click on the Wildclown Hijacked cover there.)

On the surface, Robert Barry Kaplan's The Useless Detective appears much more conventional. Our narrator, a small time P.I. so lackadaisical that he doesn't even get a name, has managed to rouse himself to attend a twenty-year college reunion party at an isolated country estate. Before the night is over, one party goer has been murdered and a sudden storm has cut off all contact with the outside world. No one has any faith that our narrator can solve the crime before the killer strikes again. This, it would seem, would be the perfect opportunity for our hapless "hero" to prove his worth.

But we humans don't always rise to meet the opportunities presented to us. Sometimes, when given the chance to shine, we just stay in our ruts. And so it is with our useless detective, who, in fulfillment of his classmates' expectations, utterly fails to rise to the challenge. And so The Useless Detective proceeds like the novelization of a nonexistent Luis Buñuel film, as ennui conquers all and the partygoers resign themselves to day after day of ever more stagnant food, sex, and ultimate slaughter by the unknown killer.

So if The Useless Detective is just a big existential joke, the question becomes whether it at least is a good joke. On the positive side, Kaplan is a polished writer, and the humor, while bone dry, is very real. But once the narrative settles down into its endless cycle of dreary days and nights, I found myself waiting in vain through for something new to happen. Which, of course, is exactly how I'm supposed to feel. I genuinely respect that effect on an intellectual level. In the final analyis, however, this is a novel that is easy to admire but harder to really enjoy. And I wonder whether that's not fine with Kaplan.

(The Useless Detective is available as a $15.95 paperback from iUniverse, Barnes and Noble or Amazon. Kaplan's homepage is here, and he also writes a drolly amusing blog.)

Chuck Rosenthal's The Heart of Mars is the most out-there of the three novels, both in terms of setting and style. It is four hundred years after mankind was rescued from ecological disaster by benevolent extraterrestrials. Much has changed. There are few pure humans left. There are no machines -- everything is biological, alive. And there is no more writing, or storytelling. It's just not how things are done.

The Heart of Mars is poetic, almost psychedelic. The loose plot, involving half-human Marl's investigation into the hijacking to Mars of a ship full of fish, is only there to give the wispiest of structure to an elliptical journey that involves all manner of strange places and even stranger creatures with still stranger dispositions. The novel is a bit like an Alice in Wonderland in space, except that Marl, unlike Alice, is an intrinsic part of the strange world he inhabits.

In the end, the plot essentially falls away. As Marl gets closer to solving the mystery, the mystery itself becomes less and less relevant, until all that remains is the importance of telling the story. The Heart of Mars may ultimately be too oblique for readers looking for a straight-forward narrative, and, to be honest, I'm not sure I understand it all. But the sustained otherness of the journey is enthralling.

(The Heart of Mars is available in hardcover from Hollyridge Press, Barnes and Noble, Amazon, and other online retailers for $23.95.)

FreeBooks #8: Deadolescence by Robert Devereaux

Robert Devereaux's Deadolescence (A Tale of Love and Sacrifice) is a slippery customer. The story is set in the Demented States of America, where violence is a way of life and decent people live in threesomes (so long as the threesomes are mixed-gender; after all, same-sex threesomes are just wrong). To prepare them for the rigors of adulthood, high school seniors undergo a deadly prom night rite of passage: one couple is picked at random to be slaughtered by a designated slasher, chosen from the ranks of the high school faculty. This year, however, something has gone very wrong at Corundum High. And a lot more than one couple's blood is going to be spilled. . . .

At first, everything about Deadolescence seems too blunt. The satire is obvious: the President of the Demented States of America is a literal puppet, for goodness' sake. The violence (and there is a lot of it) is graphic, gory and extreme. So is the sex; there is stuff going on with piercings and zippers that I really don't want to think about any more. Be warned: this book is not for the squeamish.

But once I acclimated to the excess (more or less; the finale takes it up another notch and truly made me squirm), I was able to appreciate the novel's considerable strengths as well. The story as a whole is smartly paced and plotted, with an effective conclusion that thoughtfully, if gruesomely, caps all that came before. There are also tinges of subtlety and humor amidst the novel's extremes, whether in the amusing portrayal of anti-government crusaders or in the more quiet moments of genuine fear, such as when a young girl must hide in a closet while unspeakable things go on outside.

Perhaps the most surprising -- and ultimately telling -- aspect of Deadolescence is how much we come to empathize with, or at least understand, the students, teachers and parents of Corundum High. Violence and the infliction of pain are fundamental parts of life in the Demented States of America. The characters who inhabit that world, naturally enough, largely tolerate (and even endorse) the society in which they have always lived. As a result, they accept and do things that we, as readers in the United States of America, might (and hopefully do) find barbarous. Yet even if we don't always agree with their worldview, we can at least begin to understand it, given the context in which it developed. Despite our profound differences in values, we can even relate a little bit, as we wonder how we would behave if we grew up in their world.

I don't mean to make too much out of Deadolescence. It is, in essence, a slasher film in novel form. But as such things go, it is an especially fine and intelligent slasher film. It is filled with effective gore, real frights, and good characters, is thoughtful enough to have real substance, and is great fun to boot.

As of this writing, Deadolescence is available for free at the author's website. Grab it while you can; Devereaux has promised to try to bring the book to print, either from a traditional publisher or, if necessary, POD. (And I must say, in the event that you don't read this until after the novel is no longer available for free: if you can stomach extreme horror, Deadolesence is well worth paying for). For more graphic violence-and-sex fun, this time set in a world where Santa Claus and fairy tales are real, check out Devereaux's equally extreme Santa Steps Out, published by Leisure Books and available used on Amazon.

FreeBooks #7: A Dancing Bear by Mark Osher

Poor Fenton Bland. His life at college is rapidly spiraling out of control. It's bad enough that he's stuck in the class of Professor Ivan Lego, whose theory of socioliterology -- the concept that any writing is wrongfully oppressive because "it owes its very existence to a foundational act of suppression, namely, the suppression of non-language" -- is taking the academic world by storm. It's even worse that he's inadvertently given Pamela, a student activist with whom Fenton shares a deep, dark shame, the idea to strike a blow for the disenfranchised by campaigning for the release of a notorious serial killer. Still worse, Fenton's relationship with his lesbian faux-vegetarian deadbeat housemates is worse than ever (not least because of the dead cat). But worst of all is that the student Maoist group that Fenton joined solely for the purpose of getting close to the beautiful Charmaine is singularly focused on announcing itself by assassinating someone, and Fenton is stuck right in the middle of the plot.

Don't worry if you don't have a good sense of what "Maoists" are. Neither do I. Nor, for that matter, do the members of the Maoist group. And that, in a nutshell, is what makes Mark Osher's delightful A Dancing Bear such a spot-on primer to the college experience. It's all there: the students whose big plans and grand statements are undermined by their own lack of understanding (and ability). The academics whose outré theories are driven by self-promotion rather than genuine relevance. The everyman stuck in the middle, trying to do what is right but restrained by his own passivity. And, of course, the university public bathrooms:

No gent in his right mind had ever employed this door more than twice, in very quick succession: once on his uninformed way in; and once more, about two seconds after that, to effect an appalled and lifelong departure. For behind this door lay the most deplorable block of toilets on campus. Clearly, something had gone badly wrong in there. It was as though at some point the facility had been officially forgotten, had slipped outside the purview of whatever body or agency was meant to stand between such places and anarchy. Maybe during an administrative restructure it had vanished into the grey area between two spheres of responsibility. Maybe every cleaner in the university just assumed some other cleaner was cleaning it. In any case, it was beyond redemption now. The cubicle doors swung crookedly from busted hinges, like wounded soldiers being helped along a trail. The lights buzzed and flickered like dying flies. . . .

And the stench … the stench was the stench of the jungle. No man who smelled it could possibly retain any of those frayed illusions concerning the supremacy, or even the adequacy, of his gender. But the really alarming thing about this reek was this: it kept getting worse. Which could only mean one thing. People kept contributing to it. Somewhere on campus there existed men who were still prepared to use this facility – men who thought it a fit venue in which to bare the most intimate parts of their flesh. Who were they, these men? Chillingly, they had to be out there in the general population, blending in, walking past you every day without your knowing it. Maybe they were your friends, your tutors. The guy with the mysterious grin who ran the bakery. The shuffling first-year with the bad skin and the walkman. Elderly professors who wore sneakers with their slacks and accused your essays of being “prolix,” hardy old campaigners who probably took broadsheet newspapers in there and settled in for the long haul. The insane. The incontinent. Fugitives from justice. The damned.

A Dancing Bear is consistently hilarious, combining effective satire of academic, political and individual pomposity with regular moments of slapstick, laugh-out-loud humor. However, equally impressive is the novel's philosophical heart. For all of its worthwhile silliness, A Dancing Bear also is concerned with deeper questions that confront all collegians, and, for that matter, all thinking people. Can I steer my life where I want it to go? Or am I locked in to a path set by outside forces or simple inertia? What would it take to change my life? A Dancing Bear seamlessly works these weighty themes into its rollicking tale, ultimately proving satisfying on many levels.

All told, A Dancing Bear is a brilliant success and is highly recommended. It is available for free at the official website (which is very amusing in its own right), either as chapter-by-chapter webpages or as a printer-friendly RTF file of the complete novel. The novel is also available as a free downloadable audiobook. As the website notes, "the world is fast running out of excuses not to read this book."

Freebooks #6: How and Why Lisa's Dad Got To Be Famous by Michael Allen

How and Why Lisa's Dad Got To Be Famous by Michael Allen (aka the Grumpy Old Bookman) is a quiet little book with a salacious-sounding plot: a reality show producer stages a show wherein Harry, the eponymous dad and an HIV positive man, must find a woman willing to sleep with him notwithstanding his condition. Despite a frank attitude towards sex and some rather explicit images (the climactic moment of the show is to be captured from within the woman on a pre-inserted miniature camera), the story is actually rather low-key and the satire rather benign (if only because the reality of reality television these days is already so extreme). If the novel (like the almost too salt-of-the earth, plainspoken Harry) lacks something in conflict and excitement, Allen nonetheless maintains a consistently congenial atmosphere that keeps the reader pleasantly interested and involved throughout the tale.

Lisa's Dad . . . is available as a pdf download here.

FreeBooks #5: The Flesh Remembers & Dark Terrains by Richard Wright

In late 2005, Richard Wright released The Flesh Remembers as a free pdf on his website. (A paperback is also available through Lulu or Amazon.) The Flesh Remembers is a terrific, genuinely creepy novella about Dexter Lomax, a tabloid reporter who, investigating a series of small, mysterious craters, stumbles across a nasty secret involving flayed bodies (living and dead), an unconventional videotape, and some rather unpleasant Lovecraftian things. Lomax's first-person narration builds perfectly to capture both Lomax's terror and his pity as he doggedly uncovers the truth, rendering The Flesh Remembers worthwhile for any horror fan.

In late 2006, Wright released Dark Terrains, a collection of short stories, also as a free pdf on his website. (And again, a paperback is available through Lulu or Amazon for those who so prefer.) Although the compilation as a whole was released a year after The Flesh Remembers, the collected stories reflect some of Wright's earlier work, and most if not all of the individual tales predate the novel. As a result, Dark Terrains unsurprisingly is somewhat inconsistent, and does not reach the heights of The Flesh Remembers. Nonetheless, many of the stories are quite compelling, including "The Jealous Dead," which perfectly lampoons (in a very serious way) the attention lavished on Princess Diana's passing; "Feedback," a quirky story about an unfortunate day in the life of a man who doesn't realize that he's an empath; and "The Ghosts of Christmas Presents," a story about love and murdered kittens that is almost heartwarming. Almost.

More information on both of the above works is available at Wright's website, along with information on some of Wright's other books that are available for purchase.

REVIEW: Chion by Darryl Sloan

PLOT

The end of the world doesn't come with a bang. It sneaks up, as quiet and beautiful as the falling snow.

Seven-hundred students are trapped at Clounagh Junior High School. Among them are Jamie Metcalfe and Tara Morton, the girl Jamie secretly loves. No one is coming to rescue them. No one can.

Jamie has secrets of his own. But he's determined to do whatever it takes to save Tara. Even if it means venturing outside. Into the snow.

MY TAKE

Good literature can captivate a reader of any age, and a young adult novel can fully entertain an adult audience. I didn't read Shade's Children by Garth Nix until well past my teen years, but, although labeled a "young adult" novel, it remains one of my favorite works of post-apocalyptic fiction. The Fire-Us Trilogy, set in a world where a plague has wiped out the entire adult population, also starts spectacularly, although it peters out at the end with a too-easy resolution.

I similarly enjoyed Chion, a young adult apocalyptic novel, for almost all of its length. The story starts strong and quick. The scenario is convincingly nightmarish and fiendishly clever. The narration is intimate and natural (although a shift in focus halfway through from one character to another jars a bit). The school setting is fresh even in the face of the standard apocalypse tropes (escalating panic, violence, and hopelessness), and Jamie's secret adds an intriguing twist. And Jamie's plan of escape is clever and plays fair, leaving the reader excited to follow wherever Sloan leads.

Unfortunately, Sloan doesn't lead as far as I wanted to go. Part of this is just wanting more. Chion is quite short, closer to a novella than a full length novel. The book and Sloan's writing are compelling enough that I hoped to spend more time with Jamie and Tara.

But even apart from its brevity, Chion's end is too abrupt. The story just kind of stops, as though Sloan couldn't think of anywhere else to go. Even worse, the conclusion seems to backpedal from much of what previously made the story compelling. I understand the character arc that Chion is trying for, and, in its modest way, it succeeds. But so much of the novel is so good, I wish Sloan could have carried his vision through to a grander place.

AVAILABILITY

Chion is available through Darryl Sloan's website as a $7.99 paperback ($12.99 including shipping from the U.K.). Sloan's website also features an entertaining blog and free short films, while Darryl's Library (linked at right) provides book reviews (including some reviews of POD books).

BONUS RECOMMENDATION

Comics used to be considered a juvenile art form, although that perception has largely faded. As with novels, a good comic can captivate a reader of any age. One online comic that I enjoy is the Post-Nuke Comic, a harrowing series (divided into several online "issues" and still ongoing) about life in a post-nuclear winter. The most frustrating thing about the Post-Nuke Comic is the long gap between pages being posted; I'm constantly chomping at the bit for the next installment.