This review originally appeared on Goodreads on June 25, 2022.

Junkyard Leopard

By Oliver Brackenbury – Brackenbooks – November 26, 2018

Review by Robin Marx

This violent tale tells the story of Mary, an awkward and lonely girl who works scrapping cars at a junkyard. By night she dresses in a faceless leopard print costume, murdering the corrupt and venal capitalists of the city’s financial district by the dozens. Where Mary is insecure and shy, her alter ego The Figure is driven and fearless. While Mary navigates daily life as a member of the working poor, even falling in love along the way, The Figure works to hunt down Gerald Byrne, a ruthless financier who barely survived a previous attack.

Despite the Amazon categorization, there’s nothing particularly comedic about the book. It felt like splatterpunk-lite to me; there’s moments of extremely graphic violence, but it always felt like the author took a step back before going full splatterpunk and really reveling in the gore. The tech level seemed about five years or so more advanced than our own, adding some subtle cyberpunk overtones, but urban horror seems the most natural home for the novel.

Tonally, the book reminded me a bit of Chuck Palahniuk’s Fight Club. Perhaps I’m reading too much into it, but the book feels borne out of an Elder Millennial author’s tremendous frustration and disappointment with the current state of the world. The social contract has been broken. Working hard is no longer a guarantee of a comfortable and secure life, and traditional paths to success like university education and full-time careers are increasingly unattainable. The middle class is shrinking, and everyday we suffer a constant media barrage of suffering and fear. Late stage capitalism is abusive and unsustainable.

And rather than just attributing it to some vague societal malaise, it’s often quite easy to identify the specific companies, executives, and politicians that are taking an active hand in increasing the misery of the world so as to enrich themselves to ever more obscene levels. We know who these people are. And this book offers the cathartic fantasy of being able to take direct action and strike back at our tormentors. To make them feel the same desperation and insecurity they inflict on so many. To fuck up some billionaires with a customized claw hammer.

This is a brisk read. The sympathetic characters are well-rendered, and Mary’s romance subplot is handled in a charming and relatable way. The antagonists, on the other hand, tend towards caricature. They’re irredeemable comic book villains. Certain sections of the book are written from their perspectives, but they’re not leavened with any kind of sympathetic traits. I chalked this up to them being more symbols than characters. Elsewhere in the book Brackenbury demonstrates he can handle nuance, with the antagonists he chooses not to.

Recommended for fans of Fight Club and The Punisher.

★★★★☆

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This review originally appeared on Goodreads on July 13, 2017.

Substance: Inside New Order

By Peter Hook – Dey Street Books – January 31, 2017

Review by Robin Marx

The third book written by ex-Joy Division and New Order bassist Peter “Hooky” Hook, this is also his best. While over 700 pages long, this was a gripping read that was simultaneously both expansive and incredibly detailed.

Joy Division and New Order are bands surrounded by a lot of mystique and mythology, a great deal of it cultivated by the band themselves. They avoided the press and only grudgingly promoted their own albums. I hoped lead singer Bernard Sumner's Chapter and Verse: New Order, Joy Division and Me would shed some more light on the inner working of the band, but I was left disappointed. Much as he did with his previous Joy Division memoir, Hooky stepped up to deliver the nitty gritty details—the Substance, so to speak—that Sumner's book lacked.

Hooky covers the story of the band both on-stage and off-, and he refuses to shy away from painting himself and the others in an unflattering light with tales of their intoxicated revels, property destruction, womanizing, and other rock star antics. There's also a great deal of information provided about the music-making process, the evolution of the equipment used, and set lists for individual gigs.

The core of the book, however, is the deteriorating friendship between Sumner and Hooky. Both were childhood friends and the first members of Joy Division, but it's clear that life in the music industry changed both of them. Hooky has always come off as combative and competitive, and he paints a picture of Sumner as becoming gradually more controlling and diva-like in his interactions with the rest of the band. I suspect that both members are equally to blame for the falling out. Now sober for ten years, Hooky speaks frankly about his damaging addictions to cocaine and alcohol, and it appears that Sumner was equally prone to substance abuse, and perhaps still is. Hooky chalks up the cause of much of his own bad behavior to his struggle with drugs, but seems curiously unwilling to extend the benefit of the doubt to his former best friend.

Regardless of how the blame for Hook's departure from the band should be best assigned, rather than simple hate Hook seems more hurt and wounded by how things have turned out than anything else. New Order fans who read this book might end up learning too much about their favorite band, seeing how fractured the internal dynamics were and how petty the members could be, but even provided by a biased storyteller I found this deeper understanding adds an extra layer of appreciation when listening to New Order's iconic music.

★★★★☆

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This review originally appeared on Goodreads on January 28, 2020.

Before You Sleep: Three Horrors

By Adam L.G. Nevill – RITUAL LIMITED – August 23, 2016

Review by Robin Marx

This free sampler contains three short horror stories from Adam Nevill's first collection, Some Will Not Sleep: Selected Horrors. I enjoyed Nevill's novel The Ritual (recently adapted as a Netflix movie), and the stories collected here have a similar ominous feel.

The first story, “Where Angels Come In,” is very effectively creepy. It involves two boys exploring an abandoned building, only to find it occupied by a variety of terrifying creatures. The ghostly inhabitants are very imaginatively described, and the impressionistic touch given the violence in the story makes it even more disturbing. I was impressed by how well executed this story was despite the somewhat well-worn premise.

The second installment, “Ancestors,” was well done, but not quite as engaging. In this story, a young girl finds herself living in an old home secretly inhabited by animated toys and a snuggly girl of a similar age who is, to the reader, blatantly a ghost. While the premise is intriguing, there were a few storytelling choices made that ended up hurting the story in my opinion. One was the vague touch with description. While the blurry lens worked in the first story, it obscured events just a little too much this time. I also felt the decision to make the family Japanese was a little baffling. The setting of the story didn't seem tied to a particular locale; the way the house was described (e.g., with several fireplaces) didn't sound particularly Japanese in terms of architecture, and no specific folklore appeared to be drawn on apart from the fairly familiar Sadako/Kayako-style ghost girl. I'm not saying all stories about Japanese people have to go all-in on cultural references, but this story would have been much the same had it been about an English family in Nevill's native England.

The third and final story, “Florrie,” was the weakest one in the bunch for me. A young man buys a house that an elderly woman had died in, and finds himself increasingly influenced by her ghost. The writing was fine, but it happened to be the third haunted house story in a row, and the effects of said ghost struck me as more comical than creepy.

While it felt like the book ended off on a bit of a weak note, it fulfilled its purpose of introducing me to the short fiction of Adam Nevill. I liked what I saw, and I plan to read more by this author.

★★★☆☆

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This review originally appeared on Goodreads on September 25, 2020.

Record Play Pause

By Stephen Morris – Constable – February 7, 2019

Review by Robin Marx

This book made an interesting contrast to the memoirs by Peter Hook and Bernard Sumner. It was more entertaining than I thought it would be, but a bit lacking in other respects.

As the drummer of Joy Division, Stephen Morris was generally silent and stuck in the back. As a result it was difficult to know what to expect from this book. While not as entertaining a storyteller as Hooky, this memoir has a wry, self-deprecating sense of humor throughout that caught me off guard. While Hooky and Sumner more or less grew up together, Morris was a later addition to the band who joined through Ian Curtis, giving him a slightly different perspective on events. Both Hooky and Sumner’s memoirs are largely about how they related to Ian Curtis and secondly how they related to each other, so insight into Morris himself was also in short supply in the previous books. Hooky portrayed him as semi-autistic and Sumner didn’t mention him much at all. Morris relates his own story in a humorous and engaging fashion.

Morris offers his own perspective on Curtis, humanizing this much mythologized figure of post punk music. He also shares his experiences with manager Rob Gretton, Factory Records co-founder Tony Wilson, and record producer Martin Hannett. The frustrating thing about this book is that Morris’ living band mates remain mostly ciphers. Apart from some amusing anecdotes about drug-fueled pranks, he fails to portray Hooky and Sumner in the same depth as his deceased musical collaborators, and some more detail about the band’s internal dynamic would have been greatly appreciated. Perhaps we’ll get more of that in the soon to be released follow-up volume, covering the New Order era.

★★★★☆

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This review originally appeared on Goodreads on August 8, 2022.

Clown in a Cornfield

By Adam Cesare – HarperCollins – August 25, 2020

Review by Robin Marx

Uprooted from Philadelphia after the death of her mother, Quinn Maybrook and her father move to the rural town of Kettle Springs, Missouri, for a change of scenery. She attempts to befriend her high school classmates, but quickly realizes that the personal relationships surrounding her are more complicated than they appear, and the town as a whole harbors a collective trauma simmering just under the surface. Looming over it all is Frendo, an ominous clown mascot emblazoned on the town's burned-out corn processing plant.

This fast-paced book is a throwback to the lurid spinner-rack paperbacks and 80-minute straight-to-VHS horror flicks of the 80s. The title is a good example of truth in advertising. You want a murderous clown in a cornfield? Here you go.

While I enjoyed the book, I couldn't help thinking that it was also a victim of its own pacing. The violence ramps up pretty quickly and remains pretty constant through the end of the book. The results are action-packed, but the horror side could have benefited from more page count devoted to setting up a menacing atmosphere, hinting more at the wrongness of Kettle Springs, and building some more audience affection for the teenagers before slaughtering them.

Published by HarperTeen, this is apparently a Young Adult book. The violence is pretty graphic, and apart from the focus on teenaged characters there don't appear to be many concessions to the younger audience. It reminded me a bit of the old Christopher Pike YA horror novels, which could be similarly gory.

While it appears that a follow-up volume, Clown in a Cornfield 2: Frendo Lives, is forthcoming, I'm not sure I'm in a rush to read it. I feel like my cornfield clown needs have been satisfied. The itch has been scratched. That being said, I'd happily read other work by author Adam Cesare.

Recommended for killer clown fans and readers who don't mind a heavier emphasis on the action- part of action-horror.

★★★☆☆

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This review originally appeared at This review originally appeared on Goodreads on August 25, 2021.

The Infernal Bargain and Other Stories

Edited by D.M. Ritzlin – DMR Books – January 1, 2019

Review by Robin Marx

Available free to mailing list subscribers, this promotional collection offers a sampling of the works by authors published by DMR Books. Most of the stories fall firmly in the sword & sorcery sub-genre of pulp fantasy. While not all of the stories left a strong impression on me, there were a number of standouts.

The books starts off strong with the title story by publisher D.M. Ritzlin himself. A muscular wanderer named Avok encounters a treacherous sorcerer and, but for his strength and wits, nearly finds himself the prey of a demon. A pretty traditional S&S tale, but an enjoyable one.

“Thannhausefeer's Guest” is another strong story. In this Viking-themed tale, a shipwrecked man finds himself drawn into a gladiatorial competition to entertain a giant cannibal. While a bit on the dour side, the story is vividly written and atmospheric.

“Into the Dawn of Storms” is more of a vignette than a self-contained story, but the situation it presents—an Elizabethan ship captain named Caleb Blackthorne receiving ominous portents from famous occultist Doctor John Dee—is intriguing enough to tempt me to seek out the complete book.

“The Gift of the Ob-Men” by Schuyler Hernstrom is a nicely weird sword & sorcery tale, also serving as the source of the title for Hernstrom's solo collection, The Eye of Sounnu. This story is one of the highlights of both books, seamlessly blending science fiction and fantasy.

Much like “The Infernal Bargain,” “Adventure in Lemuria” is another fairly traditional sword & sorcery adventure, this time complete with a strange cult, human sacrifice, and an evil temptress. The protagonist is ostensibly from Crete, but historical and cultural details are fairly light, seemingly more for spice than to ground the story in our world.

The book concludes with “The Heaviest Sword,” a horror story set in feudal Japan. This story is quite brief and vaguely sketched, but the Japanese flavor set it apart from the many Eurocentric stories in the book. I'd happily read more Japan-themed stories by Geoff Blackwell, but so far his output seems rather sparse and his Internet presence minimal.

Overall, this book offers a solid look at the kind of stories offered by DMR Books. It has encouraged me to research some of the authors further, but the anthology itself is harmed a bit by the presence of a couple novel excerpts that don't work particularly well independently. Most of the stories are by modern writers, so the inclusion of “The Sapphire Goddess” (1934) and “The Thief of Forthe” (1937) from the pages of Weird Tales also strike a bit of an odd note. That being said, this collection succeeds as a free sampler of DMR Books' output and is worth a read for sword & sorcery fans.

★★★☆☆

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This review originally appeared on Goodreads on February 27, 2018.

Life on a Mediaeval Barony: A Picture of a Typical Feudal Community in the Thirteenth Century

By William Stearns Davis – Harper & Brothers – 1923

Review by Robin Marx

Although published in 1923, this book is an engaging and eminently readable survey of various aspects of life in medieval France. Davis handles the text like a cinematographer wields his camera, panning over expansive scenery before zooming in closely to various scenes of interest.

While the barony and its inhabitants described are fictional, serving as a sort of amalgamation of typical elements from the time period, numerous footnotes compare and contrast aspects with specific named holdings and personages from history. The result is an entertaining and enlightening presentation of the “gist” of life in this era, rather than a potentially dry summation of events and lineages and so forth.

Highly recommended to both history students and fans of fantasy fiction hoping to learn a bit more about how things were in the real world.

★★★★☆

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This review originally appeared on Goodreads on October 29, 2017.

The Guiding Nose of Ulfant Banderoz

By Dan Simmons – Subterranean Press – June 30, 2013

Review by Robin Marx

With the death of archmagician Ulfant Banderoz, the Dying Earth seems closer to destruction than ever. Shrue the diabolist decides to make the dangerous journey to Banderoz’s Ultimate Library and Final Compendium of Thaumaturgical Lore and acquire the mystic knowledge housed within.

This charming novella evokes the color and vibrancy of Jack Vance’s classic Dying Earth cycle without attempting the fool’s errand of parroting the style of Vance himself. The end result is a story that feels at home in the setting (pelgranes, deodands, and the Excellent Prismatic Spray are all present and accounted for), but with a milder dose of Vance’s world-weary cynicism. There’s even some optimism mixed in here. That seems like a strange choice for a Dying Earth story, but somehow it works. An absolute gem of a story.

★★★★☆

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This review originally appeared on Goodreads on July 14, 2012.

Wizardry and Wild Romance: A Study of Epic Fantasy

By Michael Moorcock – UNKNO – March 16, 2004

Review by Robin Marx

This is an interesting and erudite overview of epic fantasy by one of the genre's living masters. The breadth of Moorcock's knowledge is impressive, particularly when it comes to pre-Tolkien fantasy and it's roots in gothic literature. It's also incredibly opinionated; there's something in here to irritate any serious fantasy fan. I delighted in his notorious portrayal of Lord of the Rings as safe and bland “Epic Pooh,” but I thought he gave Robert E. Howard short shrift in places, especially since he appeared to be working from one of the inferior products resulting from L. Sprague de Camp and Lin Carter's tampering. For the most part everything is well-argued, however. This is a worthwhile read for serious fantasy fans.

★★★★☆

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This review originally appeared on Goodreads on February 9, 2015.

Eight Skilled Gentlemen

By Barry Hughart – Foundation/Doubleday – January 1, 1991

Review by Robin Marx

While still a pleasure to read, Eight Skilled Gentlemen hews disappointingly close to The Story of the Stone's formula. As with the last book, there's a barrage of digressions, false starts, betrayals, and red herrings. While individual scenes are invariably entertaining—one where Number Ten Ox and Master Li have to dispose of a corpse was stomach-churningly hilarious—I felt they didn't quite come together to form a single cohesive book.

That being said, Master Li and Number Ten Ox have earned a place in my heart as two of my favorite characters, and it seems a great loss that there won't be any more adventures starring them.

★★★☆☆

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