Something Wicked This Way Comes (1962) by Ray Bradbury

This review's probably going to make a lot of people mad. I'm sorry if you like this book; really, I am. But I couldn't stand to read any more of it. And yes, I know I'm just some random idiot on a website. Far be it from me to criticize a legendary writer like Ray Bradbury, but I'm going to do it anyway.

Bradbury's writing is so egregiously fat with purple prose that if you had showed me some of these paragraphs and told me that a try-hard high schooler had written them I'd have believed you. Seriously, even I don't try this hard to be artful and profound in my dollar-store-website reviews. I found myself reading some of these lines multiple times just trying to grasp what the fuck was even going on in the damn scene since Bradbury had described it in the most obtuse, impenetrable way—for the sake of no more than making the sentence as amusing and pretty as possible. I can only hear about a tattoo artist described as seated rapturously alongside his ceaseless melancholy, stinging himself with a dagger of bees! so many times before my eyes roll themselves right out of their sockets. In the beginning I was struck by Bradbury's endless, artful adjectives and his rambling nature, considering the book nearly more poetry than prose. By page 100, though, they were beginning to wear me out. And by page 150, they were absolutely unbearable. Maybe there's a decent story in here somewhere, but I couldn't dig my way through the piles of lard to find it.

I realize this is very much up to personal preference. If you like extremely stylized prose then you'll probably love this novel. I didn't hate every second of it, but I do hate it.

⭐

Ligeia (1838) by Edgar Allan Poe

Poe entrances us with a similar story to Morella (which I loved), but to lesser effect. His typical overwriting is present and has a strong effect on our tally of the narrator's sanity (or lack thereof). Portions of the short story are startling beautiful despite their nearly purple nature, and the climax—although good—did not affect me as much as Morella's did.

Still good stuff from Poe.

⭐⭐⭐⭐

The Call of Cthulu and Other Weird Stories (1917-1935) by H.P. Lovecraft (In-Progress)

I can certainly see the appeal of Lovecraft, and I don't have much to say that hasn't already been covered in any random review of one of his short stories you could chance upon. His building of atmosphere is up to par and perhaps even excels past some of the more well-respected literary horror I've been reading, and digging into some of these stories in the '20s must have been an absolute trip. That said, it's tough for me to adequately critique it given my modern biases considering his style has inspired so much genre media since the time when he was writing, be they short stories, novellas, television, film, or even video games.

His prose probably wouldn't be described as tight and I couldn't shake the feeling that some of these short stories could have been produced by one of my high school contemporaries clad in goth garb back in 1999. I can understand the praise for his ability to build atmosphere though I found many of his stories don't give me the claustrophobic sense of mind-altering madness he probably intended. Many of his creepy-crawlies thus far have felt more cartoonish than anything actually inspiring otherworldly awe, visceral revulsion, or knee-jerk, xenophobic odium. I do long for the sense of cosmic foreignness Lovecraft seems dead-set on inspiring.

Maybe I just need a few more reps of Lovecraft to fall into a groove and acquire the taste. I'll push further into this come next Halloween season — there's just too much on my plate right now.

The Gold Bug (1843) by Edgar Allan Poe

19th century writers and ruining their stories by depicting unintelligible dialect phonetically; name a more iconic duo.

Look, I finish almost everything I read. And I really do like Poe. But I just can't do it with this one. There's probably a very good story in here somewhere, but Legrand's African American servant Jupiter's illiterate dialogue is so frustratingly constructed that I simply can't bring myself to continue bludgeoning through it to get to the good stuff. Reading The Gold Bug is a miserable chore and I have much better things to do with my time (and better books to read) than to waste it decoding this nonsense.

"Keeps a syphon wid de figgurs on de slate --de queerest figgurs I ebber did see. Ise gittin to be skeered, I tell you. Hab for to keep mighty tight eye pon him noovers. Todder day he gib me slip fore de sun up and was gone de whole ob de blessed day. I had a big stick ready cut for to gib him d--d good beating when he did come --but Ise sich a fool dat I hadn't de heart arter all --he look so berry poorly."

Pardon my French, but: Fuck this shit, Edgar. You're better than this. It goes past style value. This is bad without even applying the lens of 21st century ethics and criticizing this in a racial fashion. I'm not reading this for literary purposes, but for enjoyment. And this sort of dialogue is such a chore to decipher that it completely destroys my ability to read and enjoy the story.

When it comes to dialect and dialogue, let's have more Twain and less Poe, please.

⭐

A Little Hatred (2019) (The First Law, #8) by Joe Abercrombie

I dislike fantasy. But Joe Abercrombie does two things far better than most fantasy writers:

1) He's very funny. His penchant for gallows humor is nearly unmatched, and the quality of his comedy stands out even more when compared to the humorless, stodgy lot that are contemporary writers of fantasy.

2) He writes incredible characters. In a sub-genre defined by inch-deep cardboard cut-outs given life by unextinguished, unrealized teenage power-fantasies that read as if they're written by 12-year old boys, Abercrombie's deep, interesting, human characters from various, unique demographics are a joy to read.

Neither of these qualities are any less than you'd expect from his newest work, but he does add something I haven't yet seen from him: He builds an incredibly interesting world.

Abercrombie's "Circle of the World" setting has always felt simply like it existed so that he could populate it with interesting characters. It was always rather pedestrian as far as fantasy worlds go—it's not poorly constructed, it's just sort of by-the-book. There are guys with swords here, other guys with swords there, there are some barbarians, there's some magic, etc. Nothing too extraordinary. But with A Little Hatred he's taken this opportunity to progress the technology level of his world into an Industrial Revolution, and the skill and education with which he's done so has made all the difference.

The nobility of Adua reeks of the heights of the Holy Roman Empire, the politicking of which is legendary. Toss in a bit of Dickensian poverty and an uppity, socialistic peasantry torn straight from the French Revolution and you've got the setting for A Little Hatred. The setting became the chief character for me, something that hasn't happened in any of his books thus far. That's not to say that the human characters are lacking, either. They're solid, interesting, and witty, with their own quirks and faults to keep things honest. The easy violence of newcomer Gunnar Broad is particularly my taste, and Savine dan Glokta's gleeful lack of a social conscience made her chapters endlessly entertaining when she begins to experience the events of the story.

Abercrombie surprised me with his quality several times through my reading of A Little Hatred.

Early on, a revolt is presented as a typically socialist Utopian action, with all the rah-rah propagandist one-liners you'd expect. I rolled my eyes at this portion of the plot, wondering if Abercrombie's personal politics had polluted his storytelling—Until it turned out like nearly every other socialist revolution in history has; with the replacement of the old regime (if you will) with starving, rioting, chaos, and eventually a new regime altogether too familiar to what was just toppled. He had deftly set me up and knocked me down, perhaps expecting all the while that I'd have a reaction like I did. Looking back, I admit that I probably should have seen such a development coming, but I'd rather credit Abercrombie's skill as a writer than admit my own gullibility.

Another occurrence was towards the end, featuring a character being an on-the-nose, close-minded nationalistic racist. His depiction as such grew a little too anachronistic and cliche for my tastes, until our perspective changes and another character accurately appraises the first as simply a little too 'provincial' and casually racist.

Abercrombie demonstrates his education and self-awareness in these instances, and it's quite refreshing. His characters are nuanced and they feel like real people because of that nuance. Abercrombie regularly demonstrates the expertise with what motivates human beings that great writers consistently possess, and the world-turning events which take place in his fiction feel like real history, demonstrating an education in such matters that writers of fantasy frequently lack. He doesn't give in to the masturbatory, 'this-is-what-the-world-should-be-like' tendencies that lesser fantasy writers do, and thus doesn't suffer the same penalties to your suspension of disbelief that other fantasy novels do. I've seen readers paint him as a relentless cynic, but you know what they say: 'A cynic is what an idealist calls a realist' and all that.

This book does suffer a bit from first-episode-of-a-trilogy-syndrome. I was so enthralled by Valbeck's social strife that I found myself struggling to care about the conflict in the North beyond revisiting its interesting characters—some of whom we're already well acquainted with from the prior books in the First Law series. It all feels a bit too sprawling, but I would be surprised if this sprawl isn't justified in the events of later books. I guess I've just got to wait and trust for now, something I have no problem doing considering the way this book comes together and ends on a superb note.

I once read someone say that Haruki Murakami 'feels like he writes books just for me'. That's how I feel about Abercrombie. His cynicism, humor, and characters always seem to hit the bulls-eye of what I'm looking for in modern fiction. If you're familiar with Abercrombie then you know what you're going to get: It's pulpy, campy, morbidly hilarious, and oddly relateable. The former two are found—mostly unintentionally—in nearly every fantasy novel penned today. But the latter two are what make Abercrombie special, and his surprisingly improved ability to craft an intriguing, genuine setting has provided a new angle to chew on.

I'm definitely looking forward to next book.

⭐⭐⭐⭐

We Have Always Lived in the Castle (1962) by Shirley Jackson

WARNING: Lots of spoilers in this review! Turn back now if you haven't read We Have Always Lived in the Castle yet!

I've never read a writer capable of crafting such genuinely engrossing mentally unstable characters as Shirley Jackson. I found myself enthralled by Mary Katherine Blackwood, who is a human being so different from myself that she's interesting just for that, without even considering how real and intriguing the character is beyond such differences. It took a few pages for me to get used to her quirks but she was so skillfully crafted that I felt I had come to know her very well by the end of the story.

The conflict which takes place in the story felt a bit manufactured, but it was entertaining nonetheless and I also enjoyed the blunt scumbagitude of Charles Blackwood. For the majority of the story, it feels as though we're observing the Blackwoods far after the climactic, world-shifting event has already occurred. It makes for a bit of a lull in the story's first half as we get to know how dysfunctional and broken daily life has become for this family, but I suppose this period is necessary to fully come to terms with the odd situation we found our protagonist in, in addition to warming to her mental instability, which often presents itself as quirky and cute with a dark streak that bursts forth often out of nowhere and without warning.

By the end of the story I realized that my previous notion of this story occurring after-the-fact might not have be completely accurate. We're past the climax of the grander story, sure. But following the conclusion of this one I began to grasp how the seed of this story grew in Jackson's mind. Not as an aftermath, but as a prelude—We Have Always Lived in the Castle is a story about how the crazy ladies who live in the burned out, overgrown house came to be. You can see the Blackwood house growing into the house of legend that children are afraid of, and the Blackwood sisters themselves being the scary old ladies who steal children and cook them and eat them. And the way the story comes together to form this in its closing pages is absolutely brilliant. It was a subtle 'Aha!' moment that I was allowed to form in my own mind rather than having it foisted on me with a clumsy, contrived plot twist.

Jackson touches on some interesting questions regarding guilt and conscience, too. How it affects people, or doesn't affect them. But the mark those questions have left on me is still fresh and they're something I'll need to consider further as I put some more time between me and finishing this excellent book.

This is a brilliant piece of fiction. Probably more solidly constructed and more polished than The Haunting of Hill House. It's beautifully written and Mary Katherine is one of the most memorable characters I've read. It's subtly off-putting, more than a bit creepy, and it took me completely out of my comfort zone. It posed some questions to me that I haven't considered before and it presented me with a human character populated by thoughts and motivations completely foreign to my own, and I can't possibly ask more from reading a work of fiction.

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

The Black Cat (1840) by Edgar Allan Poe

Poe's prose is pretty wordy by today's standards, but he avoids the same pitfalls Lovecraft dives headfirst into because he's very to-the-point with the actual content of his stories. Poe's lilting style suggests that his perpetually unreliable narrators are not quite in their rightest mind, and it's subtly offputting for that. He's nowhere near as subtle as a Shirley Jackson, but her work frequently reminds me of his—neither are blatant enough leave you bored by another maniacally insane narrator.

The more demonstrably insane a character is, the more boring, one-dimensional, and unrelatable they seem to become. And so depictions of insanity are always way more interesting and when they sprout from a kernel of logic that grows into such otherwise unstable action. It's why we love characters like the Joker, Tyler Durden, or Hannibal Lecter. We've all been in moods that'd see us burn a pile of money, or blow up a credit card company, or eat someone's liver with some nice fava beans and Chianti.

Okay, so maybe not the last one. But you get my point. Dostoyevsky's fond of prattling on about the inherent irrationality of humanity and how it torpedoes our repeated (and inevitably failed) attempts at crafting a Utopian society, and Poe totally gets that. Except rather than axing a landlady in the noggin, he chooses to axe his wife in the noggin. And drink tons of booze and write poetry, too (which sounds like a fuckin' party to me, let's go).

This reminds me a lot of The Tell-Tale Heart —so much so that they could be companion pieces. It's a fantastically morbid work of art that had to be a stunningly realized piece of short fiction when it was produced in Poe's contemporary era. And it leaves me wondering: "How the hell did this guy have any friends?" I mean, if one of my buds wrote something like this, I'd probably be making a concerted effort to avoid them. Or at least to make sure they spent as little time as possible in the same room as my pets.

Poe's brilliant, and I find it interesting that the man himself has been so overridden by the pop culture
persona his work has mutated him into—like a real-life version of Frankenstein's monster. I mean, I own a pair of socks with Edgar Allan Poe's face all over them. And really, can you imagine what he'd have thought about a freaking NFL mascot being named after one of his works? It's completely bizarre, but I find it hard to argue that his work and his persona aren't each so interesting and worthwhile that they're not deserving of the utmost honor that is being completely perverted by modern American corporate interests in order to make a quick buck.

So here's to Poe, whose face adorns my socks and whose stories haunt my mind.

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

The Mystery of Marie Rogêt (1842) (Dupin, #2) by Edgar Allan Poe

I really love Poe, but this is just too damn dry.

Perhaps this much dry detail about a murder may have been intriguing and curiously morbid in a society less permeated with all sorts of depictions of bloody viscera, but for us modern folks steeped in true crime fiction, slasher-horror, and everything in between, there's a distinct lack of humanity and emotion in this story to attach ourselves to.

Poe's knowledge of the science of violence is not trivial considering the contemporary era in which he lived (where 'miasma' was the hot infection theory, and actual germ theory was still just a budding, abstract idea), and it serves him well in much of his other work, but you can see why the storytelling polish present in Conan Doyle's later Holmes stories were a necessary, welcome evolution to the detective-mystery fiction of Poe's Dupin. I wasn't a huge fan of The Murders in the Rue Morgue, but it's still superior to The Mystery of Marie Rogêt.

I assume this isn't skippable if you want to read the (apparently) far superior The Purloined Letter (I haven't read it yet!), otherwise I'd be comfortable urging Poe fans ignore this entry entirely and jump right on to the final—and perhaps most famous—Dupin episode.

⭐

Crime and Punishment (1866) by Fyodor Dostoyevsky

He stood and stared into the distance for a long while; he knew this spot particularly well. While attending university it often happened — a hundred times, perhaps, usually on his way home — that he would pause at precisely this spot, look intently at this truly magnificent panorama and every time be almost amazed by the obscure, irresolvable impression it made on him. An inexplicable chill came over him as he gazed at this magnificence; this gorgeous scene was filled for him by some dumb, deaf spirit... He marvelled every time at this sombre, mysterious impression and, distrusting himself, put off any attempt to explain it. Now, all of a sudden, those old questions of his, that old bewilderment, came back to him sharply, and it was no accident, he felt, that they'd come back now. The simple fact that he'd stopped at the very same spot as before seemed outlandish and bizarre, as if he really had imagined that now he could think the same old thoughts as before, take an interest in the same old subjects and scenes that had interested him... such a short while ago. He almost found it funny, yet his chest felt so tight it hurt. In the depths, down below, somewhere just visible beneath his feet, this old past appeared to him in its entirety, those old thoughts, old problems, old subjects, old impressions, and this whole panorama, and he himself, and everything, everything... It was as if he were flying off somewhere, higher and higher, and everything was vanishing before his eyes... Making an involuntary movement with his hand, he suddenly sensed the twenty-copeck piece in his fist. He unclenched his hand, stared hard at the coin, drew back his arm and hurled the coin into the water; then he turned round and set off home. It felt as if he'd taken a pair of scissors and cut himself off from everyone and everything, there and then.

I once read someone say somewhere that behind the grim and grit of one of the most famous examples of literary realism lies a surprisingly traditional moralist in Fyodor Dostoyevsky.

It must have been so jarring for the 19th century denizens of St. Petersburg to read such a gripping, low, accurate portrayal of their city. Crime and Punishment, for me, hit its hardest through its suffocating, stuffy, and sloppy depictions of the city and its cramped apartments and public houses. Contrary to the cliche'd Russian setting, this novel takes place at the height of Summer. A hundred years before air conditioning would be invented left one of the world's most famously freezing countries a stifling mire, and Dostoyevsky chooses to show us some of its poorest inhabitants. They're riddled with illness, they drink too much, their clothing is falling to tatters. They live in glorified closets and sleep on cots and old couches. I felt myself there with them throughout the book thanks to Dostoyevsky's fantastic scene-setting.

His characters are equal to the quality the setting provides. Raskolnikov is a more fleshed-out, named version of the same man who narrates Notes from Underground . He's deeply flawed and realistically motivated. Dostoyevsky seems to have such a connection to this young, haughty, disillusioned type of person that I assume it could only come from deep within himself. Perhaps Raskolnikov is a young Dostoyevsky; maybe he was changed so significantly by his time in the gulag labor camps that he looked back on his former self in order to craft this novel.

I was surprised to read several reviews praising Raskolnikov, however. He's a fantastic protagonist; a Byronic anti-hero, and he's a joy to read and to examine. But I've constantly heard that this is a novel that makes you 'root for the bad guy', or pull for Raskolnikov to 'win'. I never felt that. Although he's undoubtedly interesting to read, I was almost immediately turned off by his inner monologue. Raskolnikov is a whiny, entitled pissant . His arrogance is unmatched by any other character in the entire novel. He's a young man with nothing; he's poor and subsists on money given to him by others. He's created nothing, he does nothing of value, yet he thinks of himself as a great genius. No reason is given to us for his failure to succeed, despite his having several advantages over the characters who surround him. Marmeladov is crippled with alcoholism, for example. His wife is ill and forced to care for their children. Their daughter is penniless and forced into prostitution as a result. These are characters dealing with severe adversity. What about Raskolnikov? Well, he was a student. He thinks himself clever and intelligent, so he must have been a good student. His education was paid for by his mother and sister, so he doesn't have to worry about that. But when we meet him, he's dropped out, and is not seeking work. Why? His internal monologue rambles on, often suggesting that he's just too good for it all. He's Napoleon, reborn! A great man for a new generation! Yet none of his actions have suggested this. He is a clever talker at times, and a methodical thinker. But none of this is put into any sort of practical success, and I despised him for his seemingly undeserved high opinion of himself. Never once did I root for him to succeed in his titular crime and get away with it. Instead I found myself attached mostly to Porfiry Petrovich and Dunya, the two most intelligent, wily, and likable and respectable characters in the entire thing, and hoping that Raskolnikov would be taken down a peg.

Aside from the evocative descriptions of St. Petersburg in the summer, perhaps my favorite scene in the entire novel is that of the crime itself and the riveting manner in which the criminal escapes the scene of it. I found myself glued to the pages as I read, entranced by Dostoyevsky's masterful weaving of the episode. But although the cat-and-mouse scenes that follow between Raskolnikov and Porfiry Petrovich are similarly suspenseful, I found this narrative too frequently broken up by lengthy discussions of philosophy between the characters. The footnotes present in my Penguin Deluxe edition were extremely helpful in this regard, as it appears that Dostoyevsky is using his characters as mouthpieces in order to debunk some contemporary socioeconomic theories. Perhaps this might be interesting to those reading this novel who might have an interest in such theories, and it certainly must have been a novel inclusion when it was published in its time, but I felt that these portions overstayed their welcome at times and broke up the pace of the main narrative in too jagged and clumsy a manner.

⭐⭐⭐⭐