I Am Legend

I don't need to summarize the plot of Richard Matheson's I AM LEGEND (1954), since Karen did it so thoroughly last week. If your only acquaintance with this classic, the prototypical treatment of vampirism as disease, comes from the blockbuster movie, be sure to read the book and get the story the way the author intended. Aside from the influence of the novel on Romero’s NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD, Matheson’s seminal work has been filmed twice before, as THE LAST MAN ON EARTH with Vincent Price and THE OMEGA MAN with Charlton Heston. THE LAST MAN ON EARTH comes closest of all to the original book, since Matheson worked on the screenplay, but because he was displeased with changes that were made (including the ending) he appears in the credits only under a pseudonym. The Will Smith movie also changes the ending, along with many other alterations that deviate from Matheson’s story. In this film, Robert Neville becomes a “legend” by giving his blood to create a cure for the disease, essentially the opposite of why he attains “legend” status at the end of the book.

Unlike the Robert Neville of that movie, a black scientist in an urban setting, Neville in the book is a white, middle-class man barricaded in his house in the ruins of the suburb where he lived before losing his family to the vampire plague. He isn’t a scientist (one change in the movie that may be for the better, since movie Neville’s research into the disease is more believable in view of his role in creating it in the first place). He teaches himself enough bacteriology to identify the disease organism in the blood of the vampires he destroys. The suspected cause of the pandemic is fallout from nuclear weapons tests, so that Matheson’s novel reflects the dominant anxieties of its time (just as the Will Smith movie reflects the dominant anxieties of ours, with zombie-like hordes engendered by biological engineering gone wild). Dust storms spread the vampire bacterium, apparently mutated by radiation from an organism transmitted solely by biting into one whose dormant spores can be carried through the air. Neville figures out the bacteria must be anaerobic; when they come into contact with air, they instantaneously consume their host. That hypothesis explains why stakes kill vampires. The effects of sunlight and garlic are also scientifically justified. Vampires’ reactions to crosses and mirrors, on the other hand, are psychosomatic. Brain-damaged revenants crawling out of their graves expect to suffer the vulnerabilities of vampires as understood in popular culture, so they cower from holy symbols and can’t see their own reflections. Some superstitions are nothing but that, such as the inability to cross running water. The vampires besieging Neville’s house every night mock his experimental attempt to protect himself with running water. Although vampires can’t really change shape, some jump off high places under the delusion of turning into bats. Neville has run into vampire dogs, but they’re just dogs.

To me, the most fascinating dimension of the novel is its detailed rationalization of vampirism in terms of infectious disease, something sadly missing from the film (which retains hardly any vampiric content at all -- the revenants are more like Romero zombies). Emotionally, the strongest sequence consists of Neville’s nightly ordeal as he watches the vampires, some of them his former neighbors, gathered on his lawn, taunting him, waiting for him to break down and surrender. His bitter monologues as he pores over Stoker’s DRACULA and a collection of medical textbooks vividly convey his deterioration from a civilized man into a ruthless survivor. Eventually, as Karen mentioned, he stumbles upon a woman who claims to be another survivor. It turns out she belongs to a group of people whose bodies have achieved symbiosis with a further mutated strain of the disease. Neither dying nor turning feral, they are building a new society. Neville, for them, is the “plague” stalking in the night to kill them one by one. In the final scene, he realizes that as the last “normal” man on Earth, he has become a “legend” for the new race of humanity -- who are now the normal ones and he the monster.

In addition to Theodore Sturgeon’s SOME OF YOUR BLOOD (which I discussed on September 18), I consider I AM LEGEND one of the four classic pre-1970 twentieth-century vampire novels. The other two are DOCTORS WEAR SCARLET (1960), by Simon Raven, and PROGENY OF THE ADDER (1965), by Leslie H. Whitten. I commented on these works and many others in “A Gravedigger’s Dozen of Outstanding Vampire Tales,” an overview (updated to the late 1990s) of what I see as the best vampire novels of all time. The “gravedigger’s dozen” allusion means thirteen, of course, but I cheat on the number:

Vampire Reading List

Margaret L. Carter

Please explore love among the monsters at Carter's Crypt.

Oldies But Goodies {Put This One on Your TBR List} Book Review: I Am Legend by Richard Matheson by Karen S. Wiesner

 

Oldies But Goodies

{Put This One on Your TBR List}

Book Review: I Am Legend by Richard Matheson

by Karen S. Wiesner 

  

Be aware that there may be spoilers in this review. 

I Am Legend by Richard Matheson was published in 1954, a post-apocalyptic horror novel that set the stage for zombie and vampire literature that's flooded in ever since. As with many of these types of stories, the concept of a worldwide apocalypse spreads through disease. In this tale, the vampires that populated what was left of the world more closely resembled zombies, despite what the protagonist called them. 

Robert Neville is the last man on Earth. A terrible plague has either killed mankind or transformed them into vampires...and all they want is Robert's blood. Robert's wife, Virginia, and daughter, Kathy, died from the plague. Kathy's body had been thrown in a fire pit. He hadn't allowed that to be done to his wife--he'd tried to bury her, but she came back, and then he had to kill her as he had the others. 

For the past eight months, since the plague infected the population--a plague he himself is immune to--Robert has been surviving the only way he can while systematically trying to get rid as many of the vampires as he can during daylight. By day, he also tries to repair the damage done to his property during the night attacks. He lives by his watch because, as soon as the sun sets, he must be behind locked doors and boarded windows. The vampires are drawn to him every single night, howling, snarling and trying to break through the barriers he's erected to keep them out. They want his blood; they want to make him as they are. He understands little about them beyond that they stay inside by day, avoid garlic, can be killed by a stake through the heart, fear crosses, and dread mirrors. The creatures are white-fanged and powerful, frequently attacking each other because there's no union among them--their need for blood is their only motivation. 

Robert isn't sure how much longer he can do what he's been doing--little by little trying to reduce their unholy numbers. He has no time to slow down and think, because his struggle is never-ending, but eventually he's driven to test the blood of a vampire and finally isolates a germ--the cause of vampirism. Sunlight kills the germ. It's too late to cure those who have already been infected, but, if there are others like him, how can he cure them? 

Robert finds a dog that seems as whole and intact as he is; later, a young woman, Ruth, who's survived all of this as well. Having believed that his investigation into how to destroy the vampires is worthless and that he has no reason for staying alive, the possibility of a life other than his own, a companion, renews his determination to keep fighting. He's clung to the idea all this time that a human being not infected will come, that he isn't the last person on Earth. But Ruth has a secret that could change everything, all he's known since the plague started, as well as his own views about survival.  

Richard Matheson is a master at creating stories like these, where the descriptions of the chilling settings, scenarios, and characters are so robust and realistic, you become convinced you're huddled in a fortress of a house smothered by shrieking, starving and subsequently ravenous creatures who not only want you dead, but want to eat you for dinner--though, in this case, it'll probably be a last meal. Every ounce of torment and torture this lone character feels day after day, endless night after night, is detailed as if you're sitting right next to the character, experiencing the suffocating burden laid on these weary shoulders. The flicker of hope at the potential of no longer being alone is utterly heart-rending. Even if Robert is a man who's grown rusty and bitter, forced into isolation, the reader can't help but be shattered by every blow he takes as if we're also receiving it. 

Simply put, no one can really top this masterpiece that set countless standards in supernatural, creature horror, end-of-the-world fiction. Fittingly, the Horror Writers Association bestowed on I Am Legend the Vampire Novel of the Century Award in 2012. 

As for the author's inspiration in writing it, Matheson credits Mary Shelley's novel The Last Man, where an immune person survived a plague that destroyed the world. Three films loosely based on I Am Legend were made (some under different titles), but the one I like best is the one that actually took the same name as the book and starred Will Smith (released in 2007), though of course none of the adaptations really follow the book version closely, which is kind of a shame. 

Readers would be remiss not to give this influential story a first or subsequent read or a watch, if you'd prefer a more visual medium that can appropriately be enjoyed in the dark. 

Next week, I'll review another Oldie But Goodie you might find worth another read, too. 

Karen Wiesner is an award-winning, multi-genre author of over 150 titles and 16 series.

Visit her website here: https://karenwiesner.weebly.com/

and https://karenwiesner.weebly.com/karens-quill-blog

Find out more about her books and see her art here: http://www.facebook.com/KarenWiesnerAuthor

Visit her publisher here: https://www.writers-exchange.com/Karen-Wiesner/

The Comforts of Horror

An essay that resonates deeply with me, although many people might consider it shockingly counter-intuitive:

Horror Can Be Comforting

Horror fiction and film allow us to "enjoy being scared. . . . at a safe distance," knowing it isn't real and we can close the book or magazine or turn off the movie anytime. The author, Rami Ungar, divides horror fans into Adrenaline Junkies (thrill seekers), White Knucklers (who "see horror as a challenge to get through"), and Dark Copers (for whom horror is therapeutic). For Dark Copers, "horror serves as an escape from the current problems of the world" and "provides both reassurance and a restoration from life’s difficulties, reminding them that their own life isn’t as bad as it could be and helping with feelings of anxiety and depression."

C. S. Lewis, discussing fiction as "escape," notes that even the most depressing, mundane "slice of life" story can serve that function. Reading about imaginary people's problems, we can escape our own for a while. As Ungar says, for the Dark Coper a horror story provides that kind of refuge.

In Stephen King's nonfiction survey of the field, DANSE MACABRE, he maintains that at its core the purpose of horror is facing our fear of death in the safe space of stories. Mark, a boy character in 'SALEM'S LOT, believes "death is when the monsters get you."

My favorite literary comfort food, traditional supernatural horror (such as many of King's works), often has a numinous quality. It evokes a sense of wonder, even though mingled with fear, by positing phenomena beyond the merely material realm. It explores the possibility of life after death, although maybe a kind of existence most of us wouldn't want. Even H. P. Lovecraft's cosmic horror, based on the premise that the universe is totally indifferent to terrestrial organisms, with "monsters" that take less notice of us than we do of individual ants, expands the mind. Horrifying though it is, it's still cosmic.

On a more human scale, most supernatural horror involves conflict between good and evil. With knowledge, luck, and faith, the good guys can defeat the evil entities. G. K. Chesterton replied to adults who worried about fairy tales scaring children, as paraphrased by Terry Pratchett, “The objection to fairy stories is that they tell children there are dragons. But children have always known there are dragons. Fairy stories tell children that dragons can be killed.”

A list of "cozy horror" books, a phrase that sounds like an oxymoron:

Cozy Horror

I'm puzzled as to how this blogger defines "cozy." Maybe it's equated with "domestic horror" or "family horror"? The three books on the list that I've read, HOW TO SELL A HAUNTED HOUSE, THE VAMPIRES OF EL NORTE, and THE BEWITCHING, don't impress me as one bit cozy, but deeply disturbing. Rami Ungar defines this subgenre as fiction that "aims to give readers a slight thrill while also keeping them at a far distance from the horror of the story, so they don’t become too terrified," for instance by setting it in a remote time or place. In case you're looking for scary novels with an actual "cozy" feel, however, the first that pops to mind for me is one of Barbara Michaels's early ghost stories, AMMIE, COME HOME.

Years ago, when one of our sons spent a few days in a rehab facility, he asked me to bring him some particular books. The staff wouldn't let him have them because they were horror. I was baffled; those novels served as "comfort reads" for me. In his situation at that time, one would especially need reassurance that dragons can be killed!

Margaret L. Carter

Please explore love among the monsters at Carter's Crypt.

Anthropic

I've just spent a very shocking hour looking at names and book titles that are part of the Anthropic suit.

All the authors on this blog are part of the Bartz v Anthropic suit. Almost everyone I knew (and many I didn't) from Dorchester Publishing.

You can look up by author name, or by title, or by publisher, or by ISBN, or by copyright registration.

https://secure.anthropiccopyrightsettlement.com/lookup/results

File a claim here: https://secure.anthropiccopyrightsettlement.com/

Read more here: 

https://www.anthropiccopyrightsettlement.com/documents?_gl=1*vjh6yt*_gcl_au*NzgwMzk4NzY4LjE3NTk2MzM5Mzg.

All the best,

Rowena Cherry 

SPACE SNARK™ 

https://www.spacesnark.com/  

https://www.rowenacherry.com

EPIC Award winner, Friend of ePublishing for Crazy Tuesday   

Summer and Autumn Sampler by Karen Wiesner

 

Summer and Autumn Sampler

by Karen Wiesner 

Happy Fall! In honor of another summer gone past and the beautiful Fall leaves, I'm posting some of the newest, nature artwork I've been doing with initial pencil sketches followed by my colored pencil versions of them. 

Note, all of these are copyrighted by the artist (Karen Wiesner), illegal to download and distribute, and not available for reproduction or use for any purposes. 

Calla Lily Sketch @by Karen Wiesner

Calla Lily Rendered in Colored Pencils @by Karen Wiesner

 

Rosebud Sketch @by Karen Wiesner

  

Rosebud Rendered in Colored Pencils @by Karen Wiesner 

  

Fall Leaves Sketch @by Karen Wiesner

  

Autumn Sampler Rendered in Colored Pencil @by Karen Wiesner

  

Be sure to check out my website and the blog there to remain in the loop of all I'm doing: https://karenwiesner.weebly.com/. 

Karen Wiesner is an award-winning, multi-genre author of over 150 titles and 16 series.

Visit her website here: https://karenwiesner.weebly.com/

and https://karenwiesner.weebly.com/karens-quill-blog

Visit her publisher here: https://www.writers-exchange.com/Karen-Wiesner/ 

Emotional Support Robot

Meet Robin, "an artificial intelligence-powered therapeutic robot programmed to act like a little girl as it provides emotional support at nursing homes and hospital pediatric units while helping combat staffing shortages."

Robot Works to Combat Fear and Loneliness

It/she speaks in the voice of a seven-year-old girl. Her "sleek white triangle-shaped frame" is "designed for hugging." Her "cartoonlike" features put on silly faces or sympathetic expressions as the social context requires. She plays music and games with patients. Unlike most human staff members, she has perfect memory of every person she's previously met.

Here's a page about Robin from her manufacturer, headed "Your Compassionate Teammate," featuring capsule summaries of Robin's functions and abilities, as well as a bunch of video clips:

Meet Robin

News stories about social media chatbots warn of the potential harm their uncontrolled use by tweens and teenagers may unleash. Lonely young people may confide in AI "friends" to the exclusion of live interaction, and chatbots have been known to feed into depressed kids' dark, even suicidal moods. Fortunately, Robin doesn't pose any such danger, being only about 30% autonomous, otherwise controlled by remote operators under the supervision of clinical staff. Long-term plans, however, envision Robin's having the capacity for a wider range of functions, such as taking vital signs and even helping nursing home residents with activities of daily life. The aim isn't replacing human health care staff but "filling in the gaps in the workforce." If Robin grows to fulfill her makers' goal "to take more and more responsibilities," she'll necessarily become more autonomous. What might she evolve into?

I'm reminded of Ray Bradbury's story "I Sing the Body Electric," about a robot grandmother. A synopsis and analysis of it:

I Sing the Body Electric

While the thoroughly anthropomorphic grandmother makes it clear that she's "only a machine," yet she embodies the thoughts and feelings of the many people who contributed to her creation. Robin's personality, too, according to her creator, was shaped "by really taking users into the equation"; in a sense "Robin was designed by users.”

Margaret L. Carter

Please explore love among the monsters at Carter's Crypt.

Oldies But Goodies {Put This One on Your TBR List} Book Review: Survive the Night by Riley Sager by Karen S. Wiesner

 

Oldies But Goodies

{Put This One on Your TBR List}

Book Review: Survive the Night by Riley Sager

by Karen S. Wiesner

  

Survive the Night was published in 2021, written by Riley Sager (pen name of author Todd Ritter). This suspense thriller has an intriguing premise with the "protagonist" realizing she may be sharing a car with a murderer. The basic story is that Charlie is a college student studying film. Her best friend Maddy was recently murdered by the campus serial killer. Par for the course, Charlie has more than a few personal issues, namely being prone to hallucinations whenever she's thrust into an emotional situation. She is also experiencing guilt because, the night of Maddy's murder, Charlie didn't want to stick around the club they were at because her friend was ignoring her. Because she can't handle what's going on, she decides to bail on everything--she's dropping out of the university, leaving behind her boyfriend Robbie, and going home. In one of the most boneheaded moments maybe in the history of fiction, she decides to share a ride with a complete stranger. Um, the college is being stalked by a serial killer. How stupid you gotta be? Seriously? 

I put "protagonist" in quotes in the last paragraph because the very nature of each one of Sager's "unreliable narrator" books defies having good guys and bad guys. Never believe a thing anyone says or thinks, or take their testimony at face value, is the foundation on which these stories are built on. I go into the reading knowing that upfront. Also, having read all but one of his other offerings utilizing this pen name, I also start every new tale by asking what the most insane twist could be on the basis of the scenario presented. My mind went crazy with this one and I thought I'd figured it all out, but even my wildest imaginings didn't prepare me for the windy path Sager led me on. Each time I thought the twist had worked itself out, another harrowing corkscrew was introduced, turning everything I thought I knew previously right on its head. 

Alas, I never really got past the "too stupid to live" introduction, with Charlie getting into the car with a stranger who could very well be the campus serial killer. Even with all the whipsaw action and unexpected surprises, nothing could save the story for me because of the foolishness of the protagonist. Why didn't the author instead have the guy giving Charlie a ride home be someone another friend recommended? At least she would have given the appearance that she wasn't a complete idiot to get in the car of a virtual stranger. Maybe if not for that fatal mistake, I could have really enjoyed all the nail-biting tension to come after it because it's absolutely not what I expected from start to finish. Nothing was as it seemed at any point in the story. 

Survive the Night was definitely not a favorite of his for me, though I usually love "closed setting" horror and mystery tales. If other readers can put aside the shaky premise of Charlie's brainless, initial decision, maybe this hair raiser would live up to the potential it otherwise had. 

Karen Wiesner is an award-winning, multi-genre author of over 150 titles and 16 series.

Visit her website here: https://karenwiesner.weebly.com/

and https://karenwiesner.weebly.com/karens-quill-blog

Find out more about her books and see her art here: http://www.facebook.com/KarenWiesnerAuthor

Visit her publisher here: https://www.writers-exchange.com/Karen-Wiesner/

Blood and Roses

If you want to read a delightful novel that might be described as "Jane Austen meets Bram Stoker," published long before the more recent "mash-up" fad (e.g., books such as PRIDE AND PREJUDICE AND ZOMBIES), pick up BLOOD AND ROSES (1994) by Sharon Bainbridge. This author, a pen name for the writing team of Sharon Farber and Sharon Rose, actually sets the plot in the late Victorian era rather than the Regency, as evidenced by mentions of the American Civil War and the works of Charles Darwin. After the Gothic prologue in which a gullible village girl meets a vampire seducer by moonlight, however, the main action morphs into a comedy of manners almost worthy of Austen.

This novel could appropriately begin, "It is a truth universally acknowledged that an unmarried vampire in possession of a large fortune must be in want of a wife." Mrs. Portland, social-climbing wife of a rich merchant, is determined to marry her younger daughter Guenevere to the mysteriously reclusive Sir Geoffrey Utley. Elaine, Guenevere's sensible older sister, takes an instant dislike to Sir Geoffrey, who appears less like Bingley than Darcy, barely concealing his disdain for the local mothers pushing their daughters at him. Meanwhile, Elaine's cousin Violet, a doctor's daughter with up-to-date medical knowledge and a love of science, becomes acquainted with the progressive Dr. William Praisegood, who has come to High Grimmire to investigate an epidemic of "green sickness" (anemia) among the working-class girls. When a young lady drops dead of that same illness at a ball given by the Portlands, the suspense and horror aspects of the story shift into high gear. Dr. Praisegood explains vampirism as a contagious disease with which he and his physician ancestors have had long experience. Who is the master vampire preying on the girls, and even if he is found and destroyed, can any of the new undead he has created be redeemed from the compulsion to feed on unwilling victims?

While there's ample horror and pathos, the witty dialogue ensures that comic relief is never far away, yet without undercutting the terror of an unknown vampire stalking the village. Elaine's slightly ga-ga great-aunt, her nominal chaperone, matter-of-factly accepts the possible infestation of vampires as just another interesting episode in a lifetime that has seen much worse, such as the Napoleonic wars. She comes out with eccentric remarks at the most inopportune times. Violet reacts to a summary of Polidori's "The Vampyre" with the levelheaded and exasperated remark, "You mean the silly young twit lets an undead monster kill those near and dear to him because he gave his word under trying and falsified pretenses? He deserves to be in a madhouse!" I can't quote the most deliciously funny line in the entire book, because it gives away the main secret of the plot. (It's on page 268; if you decide to read the novel, you'll spot it.)

I guarantee this story will rivet your attention. Every time you're sure you've identified the villain, something else happens to cast doubt on your assumptions. The ending, dramatic but laced with humor, impressed me as totally satisfying. Aside from a few typos, the book seems to me practically perfect except for a glitch in the prologue that I didn't notice until my third or fourth reading. Maudie, the victim seduced by the vampire "lord," doesn't seem to recognize him in that scene, and there's no plausible reason why she wouldn't. The authors can be forgiven for misleading the reader in this minor way, though. Incidentally, don't trust the book's blurb. It's riddled with inaccuracies. The reference to Dracula and Van Helsing has nothing to do with this novel, which is set well before DRACULA, and Van Helsing is mentioned in the text only once in passing (as a young man). Nevertheless, BLOOD AND ROSES does expertly evoke the atmosphere of a classic vampire novel, but as filtered through the self-reflective lens of over a century of genre development.

Margaret L. Carter

Please explore love among the monsters at Carter's Crypt.

Promiscuous Notoriety

The deadly swordsman with rapier wit, Inigo Montoya, in The Princess Bride, eventually became irritated enough with the continual use of "inconceivable" by the "mastermind" of their kidnapping caper to protest"You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means."

This has nothing to do with my Post Title... or perhaps it does, because it is all to do with the right use of vocabulary.

In Germany and in America, an expression of deep indifference is worded: "I could care less" about the subject matter, or "I give a [slightly more vulgar synonym for fecal matter] about the topic or person."

The English use a double negative to express bottomless indifference, as in  "I could NOT care less" about the subject matter, or "I  DON'T give a [slightly more vulgar synonym for fecal matter] about the topic or person."

To my generation, which is admittedly older, "Notoriety" means "Ill-fame". To be notorious is--or was in my day-- to be well known for disreputable deeds, in other words, "famous for something bad".

It seems to me, nowadays, some folks cannot retain more than the first word in a phrase... and for goodness sake, the AI on this blog wants to use an apostrophe to denote a plural of "folks". I overrode it.

In the opposite direction, "promiscuous" almost always these days is taken to mean sexual incontinence (which might not be the dictionary definition... it is for Cambridge, which does not surprise me, but not for Merriam-Webster, which does surprise me.)

Did you know that one can eat "promiscuously"? Indiscriminate, casual, irregular are official synonyms.

Bears and raccoons might be said to eat "promiscuously".

I wonder whether, by now, I have bored the bots that put human moderators out of a job. Assuming so, I will point out that what almost every malicious email has in common (apart from the German ones from dot de) appear to be sent from a gmail address. 

Mostly, they come with a stream of numerals as the subject line, or they allege "Order Confirmation" or "Invoice" or "Thank you for your payment". Some get by the spam filters, some don't. But, what they almost all the names are fake, why is that? Hover your cursor over Pamela, and you will find that is not the name on

the sending account. Ditto for Dean or Teddy or Marilyn or Gladys or Jeffrey or Frank or James or Jonas.

If the wizards behind the curtain can know when a woman is pregnant before she buys her test kit, why don't they know who is behind these email accounts?

Transunion has been breached. So far, they say 4.4 million Americans are affected, with social security numbers, credit cards, and more distributed to the dark web. Google's breach allegedly affected 2.5 billion people, AT&T and Verizon have been breached, also Intel, also dozens of health care databases... so much for HIPPA laws...  With Social Security numbers no longer secret, it seems like the numbers no longer identify anyone or guarantee anything.

They say AI saves time. Maybe in a medical or scientific setting, it might, but look at the impossible amount of time regular people are now expected to spend monitoring statements of all kinds as a result of a stranger checking private emails on a work computer.

Unfortunately, one cannot opt out of databases such as the four credit report bureaus, of which Transunion is one, but either Equifax or Experian was breached a few years ago. One also cannot opt out of data brokers. Freeze your credit. It's free to do. Write to your congress persons to demand that major purchases (home title changes, copyright assignments) must not only be notarized but be apostilled by the Secretary of State.

All the best,

Rowena Cherry

{Put This One on Your TBR List} Book Review: The Gorgon's Fury, Book 1: Tales of Newel & Doren (A Fablehaven Adventure) by Brandon Mull by Karen S. Wiesner

 

{Put This One on Your TBR List}

Book Review: The Gorgon's Fury, Book 1: Tales of Newel & Doren (A Fablehaven Adventure) by Brandon Mull

by Karen S. Wiesner 

 

Beware unintended spoilers! 

Brandon Mull's young adult fantasy Fablehaven Series (and the Dragonwatch spinoff) is one I've spoken of often in the past on the Alien Romances Blog, including in a full review. Find out more here: https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/search?q=Fablehaven. This is one of the few series where, every so often, I go looking for updates to see if there are new installments available. A few months ago, I did that and found out the first in a new Fablehaven spinoff was available, released March 2025. This time, instead of focusing on Seth and Kendra, it features the previous series' comic relief in a pair of satyrs. 

Newel and Doren have been spoiled by modern technology and cushy living on the magical creature preserve, even living in their own cottage. Seth traded batteries with the cousins in order to procure valuable information or help in the original series. The two actually become something of heroes in Dragonwatch. I can't be the only one who sees many similarities between this duo and The Lord of the Ring's Merry and Pippin. While both are impulsive rebels, Newel (like Merry) is the braver of the two and much more straightforward with everything he feels mostly on the surface. Similar to Pippin, Doren is slightly more awkward than his cousin, more of a thinker, more nervous and uncertain, and ends up with more regrets. Without a doubt, both goatmen are trouble, but they're fun and mostly harmless--the very kind of mischief-makers that make a book and series so charming and action-packed. Also, sometimes they end up saving the day, to no one's surprise more than their own.

In the first of the "Tales of Newel & Doren" called The Gorgon's Fury, the Fablehaven satyrs are hosting the annual Satyr Games with such events as Dryad Tag, Clobber Ball, and (the epic finale) the Prank War. Newel and Doren seem to win every single year, almost without trying. Yet this year they've got competition in Barrett and Hoff, who not only tie Newel and Doren for first place, leaving only the Prank War (and a wrestling match, if that doesn't do it) to decide the victors, but the pair also have a smartphone they've recorded their epic prank with. For the most part, Stan and Ruth, the caretakers, don't allow creatures to have modern technology--though not for lack of trying on Newel and Doren's part, of course! So where did their rivals get it? 

Intent on topping Barret and Hoff's prank, our daring duo decide to talk to the ogre farmer they most love to nick vegetables from, only he's been petrified. Later, they find another satyr in the same stoned condition. They rush to Stan, who tasks the pair with consulting with the swamp hag. She directs them to her sister at Florida's magical sanctuary, who in turn sends them to a very creepy Listening Doll, who's said to possess the power to reveal the antidote for any magical malady. In order to do this, Newel and Doren will have to pass through the forbidden Fairy Realm, drive a vehicle, steer a kayak** through hydra-infested waters, and appear in public when necessary as human, thanks to a magical amulet. Since only one of them can wear it at once and no one would buy that the other is an emotional support goat or seeing eye goat (I love those lines in the book!), their task is none too easy, especially considering that Seth and Kendra's cousins Knox and Tess from previous series' will be accompanying them. For their trouble and provided they're successful, Newel and Doren will be rewarded with their own smartphones. Whatever prank they come up with will live forever in recorded cellular memory. 

**While it's hard to know for sure whether it was the author or the illustrator who didn't know the difference between a kayak and a canoe, I believe the author was at fault. A kayak has a closed deck, and that probably wouldn't have worked for the purposes Newel and Doren use it for in the book. What the artist in one of his wonderful illustrations drew was clearly a canoe with the open-top design, which is what I believe the author should have specified instead of a kayak.

 

You absolutely do not need to be a young adult or middle grade reader to adore all of the Fablehaven books, including this one. What's not to love in this whirlwind tale headed by a lovably familiar pair of rogues who describe themselves so hilariously? Essentially, Newel says this: "We're not ants; we don't build, store, or work (God forbid!). We improvise and freeload. We don't care about karma. We live in the moment, reap what we never sowed, eat what we didn't cook, win without practicing." To which Doren hear-hears with "Let's keep doing that!" 

Those who have read the previous series probably remember how large each of the books were. At first sight, The Gorgon's Fury was noticeably smaller. That was by design, according to the author in the acknowledgements included in the back of the book. Mull and his publisher thought shorter books in the new series would lure more young readers into trying it. What a sad commentary on the state of the publishing industry that we're catering to non- or reluctant readers more than to actual readers with our books. Oh, well! I do have to add that I myself was kind of glad this was shorter than all the previous Fablehaven books, most of which were quite the undertaking (but worth it). However, the end of The Gorgon's Fury seemed a little rushed to me.

Good news for lovers of Fablehaven that I have no doubt will resurrect the popular series all over again! A film adaptation was supposed to have started shooting in the summer of 2025, with the movie slated for 2026 release. This series is absolutely made for the screen, so I can hardly wait for it to finally come out. 

No word at the time of this writing (July 2025) when the next in this promising new series will arrive or what it'll be about. Stay tuned. 

Karen Wiesner is an award-winning, multi-genre author of over 150 titles and 16 series.

Visit her website and blog here: https://karenwiesner.weebly.com/

and https://karenwiesner.weebly.com/karens-quill-blog

Visit her publisher here: https://www.writers-exchange.com/Karen-Wiesner/

Some of Your Blood

Classic SF, fantasy, and horror author Theodore Sturgeon’s unique short novel SOME OF YOUR BLOOD (1961) -- perhaps less remembered than it should be -- holds a special place in my heart as one of the earliest horror novels I read while first exploring the field as a teenager. Like Stoker’s DRACULA, SOME OF YOUR BLOOD is narrated in an epistolary format, as a collection of documents. In a provocative twist on this technique, Sturgeon includes a nameless frame narrator who, at the beginning of the book, invites the reader to delve into a psychiatrist’s files and, at the end, to reflect on the case. Thus we're drawn into the story as more than objective observers. How do we think the “vampire” should be treated, and why? “What is he to you?” the frame narrator asks.

An Army psychiatrist receives a referral for an enlisted man who hit an officer with no apparent provocation. The psychiatrist tells the patient to write an autobiography, which he does in third person, calling himself “George.” George, a bright though not highly educated young man from a rural mountain community, is the son of Hungarian immigrants. The autobiography reveals him as an odd loner, abused by his father. Between the lines of George’s life story, however, lurk clues to his dark secret -- he drinks blood. The Army doctor comes across as intelligent and likable, and his case notes as well as a lively exchange of letters with a colleague at another military base let us follow him step by step as he uncovers the truth behind the patient’s façade of quiet cooperation.

Hints of the young man's pathology hide in the cracks of his unpolished yet vivid self-portrait. Through the transcripts of the subsequent therapy sessions, we gradually come to see those details from an entirely new angle. The doctor’s notes include intriguing background materials about historical human blood drinkers, set in a Freudian framework. Young George emerges as a surprisingly sympathetic character for a sociopath. (He isn’t a stereotypical serial killer; he commits his couple of murders almost by accident.) His very brief letter to his girl back home holds a touch of pathos: "Dear Anna, I miss you. I wish I had some of your blood." In another neat touch, Sturgeon pays homage to the genre’s roots with “George’s” real name -- Bela.

By the way, Sturgeon, in addition to his numerous novels and short stories in a variety of subgenres, wrote the groundbreaking STAR TREK episode "Amok Time."

Margaret L. Carter

Please explore love among the monsters at Carter's Crypt.

Who Came First? {Astounding Advances in Electronic Publishing}, Part 4 by Karen S. Wiesner

 

Who Came First? {Astounding Advances in Electronic Publishing}, Part 4

by Karen S. Wiesner 

E-books and e-publishing have really advanced in the last three decades. When I first entered this arena in 1998, e-books were the ugly stepsister of "real books". Fast-forward thirty years, and it's a whole different world now than those early pioneering days in the industry. In the past three weeks, I posted previous sections of an article I wrote in 2003, when e-books and e-publishing still hadn't made much of an impact. Back then, universal acceptance of them always seemed out of reach. Reflecting on changes keeps history relevant. To that end, this week, I'm posting the final part. 

 

WHO CAME FIRST?

by Karen S. Wiesner

© 2003 as featured in ELECTRONIC PUBLISHING The Definitive Guide, 2003 Edition by Karen S. Wiesner, published by Hard Shell Word Factory OOP

 

Another Brick in the Wall…

 

So where are we in e-publishing? The beginning? The middle? What does the future hold?

I asked some of the earliest e-publishers, given that they have such a long view of the medium, to share their thoughts:

Nancy McAllister of C&M Online Media, Inc.: "We had none of the tools years ago available in a practical way for multimedia and other enhancements. Publishers today are doing a wonderful job of using the technology. There is, however, sometimes to overuse a good thing and the book being published can suffer from too much technological attention.

"[What mass market publishers are doing with e-books] doesn’t look right yet. We’ll have to wait and see what the effect is of all that hype and motion on the core concept of online publishing. All we can do now is observe.

"E-publishing is here, not only for academic or informational books, but also for the general commercial publisher who is disciplined, knowledgeable, professionally expert, and patient."

Ray Hoy of The Fiction Works: "I think [the fact that many small press e-publishers are now offering print formats in the form of print-on-demand is] an evolutionary process. I think The Fiction Works is a rare bird because we produce audiobooks, e-books and paperbacks. Many of these little publishers will fall by the wayside. I’m sorry to say that is already beginning to happen.

"[The future of e-publishing is] going to be huge! Right now there’s very little money in e-publishing. We have the advantage of being able to live on our audiobook and paperback sales, so we can continue to pour money into e-book development. But believe me, the e-book business is going to be simply enormous. I think that’s about a year away, but when it starts to move, we’ll be ready and waiting."

Glenn Hauman of Bibliobytes: "I recently got my hands on some numbers from a publisher (not me) showing the sales of a book in hardcover and e-book formats. The hardcover sold in the 20,000 unit range. The e-book hadn’t sold 400. Not surprising to me—the e-book was priced at the same price point as the hardcover—in fact, it was a nickel higher. And being an e-book, there was no discount at the register, as there was for the hardcover. We are now looking at the long-term endurance run in this industry. The sprinters are dropping. The ones who are keeping their burn rates low are staying around for the long haul out of sheer cussedness. They survive the lean times because it’s always been lean times to them. But the big publisher that spends millions on payroll for its e-publishing venture and can’t crack a million in sales for 2000—well, it’s time to update the resume.

"E-publishing works, obviously. Whether or not e-publishing for books works is still up in the air, but for magazines it’s clearly more than arrived. I can’t think of a paper magazine that doesn’t have an online component anymore. I’m beginning to think mandatory licensing for texts may be coming down the pike, much the way radio does with music.

"I don’t think there is an answer which will allow the book industry to survive in anything even closely resembling its current form. And I think that’s why they can’t find a solution. Because most solutions leave them out of the game."

Bob Gunner of Cyber-Pulp Houston/USA: "I dream every day that I will eventually develop a profitable and acceptable way to get the words of writers to readers electronically. I know that having a user-friendly and inexpensive reader device available and manufactured by a company that supports the work of smaller e-publishers is the way to do it."

Michael Hart of Project Gutenberg: "The corporate structures have figured out they can make you buy new copies of the same movie over and over as they plan the obsolescence of format after format [U-Matic, Betamax, VHS, CD, DVD]. I think they will try to do the same thing with books...so they would not think it was a bad thing for such formats not to be used in the decades to come. I am afraid that the only [format] likely to survive the coming decade intact is HTML.

"[Mass market publishers] are like kids fighting in a sandbox, which is appropriate since their corporate ages do make them only kids in that respect, other than Microsoft. They haven’t even reached adolescence yet...while Project Gutenberg moved out of adolescence over 10 years ago. We have been doing Etexts for 30 years now, with no money, but they still argue if it is feasible. If we had all the money they have spent thinking about feasibility, we could have given away a trillion Etexts by now!!!

"There are currently about 16,000 free Etexts to download, and about 22% or 3500 of them are from Project Gutenberg. Ten years ago anyone would have been hard pressed to find more than 16 Etexts on the entire internet, and most, or all, of these would have been Project Gutenberg Etexts—today there are 16,000—1,000 times as many as a decade ago, and still growing at a fantastic rate—a rate, which if it is continued for only another decade will yield 16,000,000 Etexts and the like to download free via the internet. Ten years ago there were only a few million internet users to download these Etexts, today there are hundreds of millions.

"[Speculation on the future of e-publishing]: Big shake outs...some format takes over...then we see about planned obsolescence."

John Galuszka of Serendipity Systems: "With the exception of Martin Eberhard, the designer of the Rocket eBook, most of the mass market publishers’ efforts and related hardware devices are coming from the marketing departments, not the editorial and/or engineering departments. What we have are mostly conventional books copied onto e-devices. We are not seeing manuscripts being written to take advantage of the features of the digital devices. Furthermore, they are pricing e-books as if they were hardcover books. $25 for an e-book file of a bestseller conventional novel? E-publishers don’t have to chop down forests for paper, buy ink by the barrel, or even have to have warehouses and deal with remainders. E-books should be as cheap or cheaper than paperbacks. High prices are alienating our potential customers. Despite all the media hype, a viable market for electronic books does not yet exist. No one is making money with this. We consider it to be a good year when we break even.

"We need better, less expensive, and open-system hardware, and we need lots of it. We were going in that direction with the Rocket eBook. Prices of the device were slowly dropping, memory upgrades were available, and best of all, it was very easy to publish works for the Rocket eBook. If they could have gotten the price under $100 and, for example, put a student’s textbooks into a package, this thing would have sold millions. Instead, Gemstar killed it and substituted a more expensive, closed-system device, the REB1100, with severely limited publishing opportunities.

"On the software side, we are not seeing writers who are adept at taking advantage of the features offered by electronic publishing. Almost everything I see could exist on paper as easily as in electronic form. Where are the Generation-X innovators? We had a brief period of new genre development in the late 1980s. I hope we will have a new wave soon. However, those writers should not be so dazzled by the digital glitz that they lose sight of the fact that they must have a tight plot with believable characters. The media may be digitally interactive hypertext, but we are really still telling stories around the campfire with lurking, mysterious shapes flitting about in the shadows beyond the light’s edge."

 

My thanks to the following e-publishers who contributed to this article:

 

Bob Gunner of Cyber-Pulp Houston/USA, John Cullen of Clocktower Books, Diane Greco of Eastgate Systems, Inc., Ray Hoy of The Fiction Works, Marilyn Nesbitt of DiskUs Publishing, Lorna Tedder of Spilled Candy Books, Stephen Ellerin of The Great American Publishing Society (GR.AM.P.S.), Glenn Hauman of BiblioBytes, Nancy McAllister of C & M Online Media, Inc., Sunny Ross of Mystic-Ink Publishing, John Galuszka of Serendipity Systems, Mary Ann Heathman of LionHearted Publishing, Inc. and Michael S. Hart of Project Gutenberg.

 

Special and a hundred-fold thanks to Jamie Engle for forwarding me almost two years’ worth of archives of eBC’s ePub Market Update.

 

Sources used in this article:

 

ELECTRONIC PUBLISHING The Definitive Guide, 1999 Edition by Karen S. Wiesner, published by Petals of Life OOP

ELECTRONIC PUBLISHING The Definitive Guide, 2000 Edition by Karen S. Wiesner, published by Avid Press, LLC OOP

ELECTRONIC PUBLISHING The Definitive Guide, 2002 Edition by Karen S. Wiesner, published by Avid Press, LLC OOP

ELECTRONIC PUBLISHING The Definitive Guide, 2003 Edition by Karen S. Wiesner, published by Hard Shell Word Factory OOP

eBC’s E-Pub Market Update™, April 10, 1999; eBC’s E-Pub Market Update™, September 13, 1999 Volume 1, Issue No. 8; eBC’s E-Pub Market Update™, November 5, 1999 Volume 1, No. 11; eBC’s E-Pub Market Update™, November 9, 1999 Volume 1, No. 11; eBC’s E-Pub Market Update™, December 08, 1999 Volume 1, No. 16; eBC’s ePUB MARKET UPDATE™, February 20, 2001 Volume 3, No. 02; eBC’s ePUB MARKET UPDATE™, April 5, 2001 Volume 3, No. 03; eBC’s ePUB MARKET UPDATE™, January 19, 2000 Volume 1, No. 19; eBC’s ePUB MARKET UPDATE™, February 20, 2001 Volume 3, No. 02; eBC’s ePUB MARKET UPDATE™, May 22, 2000 Volume 1, No. 26; eBC’s ePUB MARKET UPDATE™, September 20, 2000 Volume 2, No. 07

"The digital future is now: Pocket Books to release KNOCKDOWN in e-Book and on-demand formats prior to publication," July 19, 1999

"STEPHEN KING AND SIMON & SCHUSTER TO PUBLISH NEW STORY EXCLUSIVELY ON EBOOK," New York, March 8, 2000

The Plant Income/Expense Report Through 12/31/00

Books@Random Divisional Information, September 2000

Discover Modern Library eBooks, 2000

AtRandom, About Us, 2000

"TEXTERITY ENTERS INTO eBOOK CONVERSION AGREEMENT WITH PENGUIN PUTNAM," Southborough, MA, and New York, NY, November 15, 2000

"PENGUIN PUTNAM, LIGHTNING SOURCE ENTER INTO STRATEGIC ALLIANCE

Lightning to Provide Digital Fulfillment Services, Ensuring Secure E-Book Delivery," Nashville, TN, and New York, NY, August 22, 2000

"Women.com Networks and Harlequin Launch Site for Romantics," SAN MATEO, Calif., February 14, 2000

"SIMON & SCHUSTER TO PUBLISH FIRST FULL SEASON OF eBOOKS Fall 2000 List Highlights Original and Simultaneous ePublications from Major Authors and Franchises," August 23, 2000

"SIMON & SCHUSTER TO PUBLISH ALL-NEW STAR TREK® NOVELS IN eBOOK ONLY," New York, August 8, 2000

"THOMAS NELSON, INC. BECOMES FIRST CHRISTIAN PUBLISHER TO LAUNCH MAJOR E-BOOK PUBLISHING PROGRAM," October 6, 2000

"Holtzbrinck, Lightning Source Create Global Digital Content Alliance Digital Fulfillment Company to Provide Full Range of Services to Publisher Worldwide," New York, NY, and La Vergne, TN, August 3, 2000

"About iPublish," 2001

"E-Publishing: Threat, Phantom or Menace?" by Glenn Hauman, The Bulletin of the Science Fiction Writers of America, Winter 1999

"E-Publishing: The Drawing of the Long Knives in which we discuss the problems with locking up imaginary things," by Glenn Hauman, The Bulletin of the Science Fiction Writers of America, Summer 2001

"E-Publishing: Freebooting Rebooting in which we discuss press deadlines, precognition, piracy, plunder and profitability," by Glenn Hauman, The Bulletin of the Science Fiction Writers of America, Fall 2000

"HISTORY AND PHILOSOPHY OF PROJECT GUTENBERG," © August 1992

 

For those who believed in this medium right from the beginning, you were ahead of your time, and kudos for your fortitude and contribution to making history! It's a new day. Look how far we've come. 

Karen Wiesner is an award-winning, multi-genre author of over 150 titles and 16 series.

Visit her website here: https://karenwiesner.weebly.com/

and https://karenwiesner.weebly.com/karens-quill-blog

Find out more about her books and see her art here: http://www.facebook.com/KarenWiesnerAuthor 

Visit her publisher here: https://www.writers-exchange.com/Karen-Wiesner/