Zombie Stories Edited by J.M. Lassen

This short story compilation offers up an eclectic mix of zombilicious tales featuring teen protagonists dealing with the world of the walking dead. Although I found most of the stories to be fairly entertaining, I was a bit disappointed that none of them scored high on my personal chill-factor rating scale…On a scale of 1 to 10 (1=slightly unsettling and 10=insanely horrifying), the creepiest story, The Barrow Maid - a Viking saga done zombie-style, just barely scores a 5.

In fact, a few of the stories actually made me pity rather than fear the zombies. This is a huge pet peeve of mine when it comes to reading horror or watching scary movies…I want to be scared of the monster not feel sorry for it! In the story The Days of Flaming Motorcycles, the zombies are sad and kiss each other! What the heck!!! In The Dead Kid, a defenseless little zombie boy that bleats like a goat is kept in a pit where he is tortured and harassed by a group of mean ol’ living teen bullies. Zombies are supposed to be soulless, fear-inducing reanimated corpses with just one thing on their minds…an intense, painful need for human flesh and brains! I still remember being annoyed by the pity that I felt after watching episode 1/season 1 of the Walking Dead when Rick comes across the poor zombie lady who has been cut or bit in half and is doing her best to pull her way through the park with her frail, mangled zombie lady arms.

That said, there are two stories that I did find to be particularly disturbing. The Third Dead Body is about a teen prostitute who rises from the grave with an intense desire to find the man who murdered her. Seven Brains, Ten Minutes is a stomach-churning tale about a live teen boy who is forced to pose as a zombie in a brain-eating contest in order to save the girl of his dreams. Both stories showcase how the cruelty of living human beings can be even more horrific than zombies.

The stories in this book do feature some nice first lines. I’ll end this entry by offering my favorites…

Benny Imura couldn’t hold a job, so he took to killing. – Family Business by Jonathan Maberry

All of this happened because a boy I once knew named Miles Sperry decided to go into the resurrectionist business and dig up the grave of his girlfriend, Bethany Baldwin, who had been dead for not quite a year. – The Wrong Grave by Kelly Link

Daddy said them that eat human flesh will suffer under Hell. – You’ll Never Walk Alone by Scott Nicholson

The brain was in front of me, pink-gray and pulsing in the sun. – Seven Brains, Ten Minutes by Marie Atkins

We're Back! And Holly Black!

It's been several months since we went silent on this blog. We're back and ready to talk about books again! So I'm going to get the ball rolling with a short story collection that I just finished up reading.

The Poison Eaters and Other Stories by Holly Black

I wrote a pretty detailed review on my personal Goodreads page, so I copied most of it for here. (I just don't want you all to think I'm copying somebody else's review!) I'm also removing all the spoilers from that review!

I was reviewing a short story collection right when I started reading this book. I started writing about how much I enjoyed one story in the collection when WHAM! I remembered it was in The Poison Eaters and not the other short story collection. I felt horribly bad for the other book when reading just one of Holly Black's short stories erases all the other short stories in my mind. That's how good she is.


Most of these stories are found in other anthologies, but it doesn't matter because having a whole book of Black's stories makes all the difference. It made me wonder how was she going to make another story as good as the last? The crazy thing is, I don't really like reading short stories all that much. They tend to be forgettable stories to me. When I'm vested in characters already, such as Harry Potter, then I'm happy to have one more story about the characters, but if I'm not already vested I typically wonder why I should care. I didn't feel this way with this collection. So I'll break down some of the stories found in this collection.


The Coldest Girl in Cold Town: I finished this one and I wanted to read a novel set in this world. I wanted to see the fighting between vamps and humans before cold town existed. I wanted to see the 88 days the infected human had to suffer to become human again. I wanted it all. Innovative and gritty. Side note, I started to mention this story in a teen program earlier this month and one of the teens immediately piped up that this was sooooo good! Holly Black, if you're listening--I really really really want a novel about this world you created in this short story!!!


Reversal of Fortune: Selling the soul to the devil and then tricking him in a eating contest. Bizarrely effective. I don't think I would have expected anyone to ever have a supernatural eating contest in a story.


The Night Market: I loved the foreign setting. Different for Black's work to be set in a foreign place and not a city at that, but still had the grittiness expected of Black.


The Dog King: One of the stories that debuts in this collection. I liked where she took the story and the nice twists in it.


In Vodka Veritas: Bizarre. That's all I can say. Just bizarre.


Paper Cut Scissors: I loved this one. Granted it stars a library science student cataloging a library in which the characters come out of their books at night for cocktails. How could I not love it? But it has some fabulous quotes in it too. Justin is the type of reader who reads the last page first to make sure the endings happy. He can't handle bad things happening to the characters. "Books were something that happened to readers. Readers were the victims of books." How could you not like this writing!?


The Land of Heart's Desire: Another new one. This one takes place after Tithe Valiant and Ironside so read with caution if you haven't read those titles. But I will say it made me want to read those books all over again!


The Poison Eaters: Ahh, court corruption and the three sisters who can kill with a kiss. Perfect way to end a great collection of short stories.

Sideshow

I absolutely devoured the first two short story collections edited by Deborah Noyes. To this day, Gothic: Ten Original Dark Tales remains one of my favorite anthologies of unnerving stories. I recommend it all the time. I also enjoyed and blogged about The Restless Dead: Ten Original Stories of the Supernatural. So when Sideshow: Ten Orignal Tales of Freaks, Illusionists, and Other Matters Odd and Magical came out, I could barely contain my glee.

I read it all in one sitting last night. Of the three anthologies it is probably the least strong but there were a few stories that really made the whole volume for me. The most memorable for me was "The Bread Box" by Cecil Castellucci. I'm still turning over that story in my mind today. Definitely, my favorite of the bunch. Very unsettling. "When God Came to Kathleen's Garden" by David Almond was also very satisfying, though it felt quite different from the others in the volume. Variety is the spice of life. "Jargo" a graphic tale pleased me quite a bit too. And any collection that includes Aimee Bender gets my immediate seal of approval, even if her story ended a bit too abruptly for me. What can I say? I don't want Aimee Bender stories to end. By the way, I meant "graphic" story in the sense of a graphic novel, not violently graphic. None of the stories are bloody, just unsettling. In total, there are three graphic stories in the collection, and I enjoyed their inclusion.

If you like creepy carnivals and creepy short stories, give this one a try. Then read Gothic, while you're at it too.

Raise your hand if you're a geek

Lately, there's been a push on geeky literature. Whether you're a gaming geek, a music geek, a science geek, a fantasy geek, or a comic book geek (that's me), there are books out there celebrating your fandom. The newest is a short story collection edited by Holly Black and Cecil Castellucci called Geektastic: Stories from the Nerd Herd. The idea came to the editors while attending Comic-Con 2007. Exploring the world of geeks --all types of geeks--each short story is unique. Want to know if a klingon and a jedi could ever fall in love, there's a story for it. How about meeting someone from an online gaming, or dealing with quiz bowl relations, or playing a LARP (live action role playing) game--there's a story for it!


I really wanted to love this collection. But with any short story collection there are stronger stories than others in it. I'm not geeky enough for a few of them since I'm not into those particular geekdoms. In between each of the stories are fun comics by Hope Larson and Bryan Lee O'Malley. The authors compiled into this collection are some of the best teen literature authors today. Unfortunately, our library's catalog doesn't let you know that they are in here! So here's the author list:

M.T. Anderson Holly Black Libba Bray Cecil Castellucci

Cassandra Clare John Green Bryan Lee O'Malley Tracy Lynn

Hope Larson David Levithan Kelly Link Barry Lyga

Wendy Mass Garth Nix Cynthia and Greg Leitich Smith

Scott Westerfeld Lisa Yee Sara Zarr

So if you want to get your geek on or if you want to just explore some of the short stories by some great teen lit authors, then this is the book for you!

Blood Roses

I absolutely love Francesca Lia Block. Every time a new book is set to come out, I await it with the greatest of anticipation. The moment it's in my hot little hands, I devour the new book within a matter of hours, and often re-read it several times. I just love being in the world FLB (as I like to call her) has created. FLB is all about magical realism--stories set in the "real world" with fantastic or magical elements imbuing them. Combining the beautiful and the fantastic, FLB also writes of heartbreak and loss (often the death of a loved one, very often the loss of a love). Her stories are mixtures of elation and despair, usually set in L.A. and featuring kids who aren't mainstream but tend to favor bright pink hair, combat boots, and lace. In 2005 FLB won the Margaret A. Edwards Award from the American Library Association for lifetime contribution to young adult literature. I can't say enough good things about her work.

Her newest book is Blood Roses, a slim collection of nine very short, very beautifully written stories. At first I was dismayed to see the shortness of the collection, knowing I would inhale it in an hour or less. (This proved to be true.) But FLB does so much with so few pages. These stories, several featuring characters that appear in more than one tale, are all about transformation. In fact, FLB has dedicated Blood Roses "for all of you. . .willing to transform." My favorite story was "Skin Art" about a girl who falls in love with an older tattoo artist and wakes up one day to find herself mysteriously tattooed, visual evidence of her passion for the artist. In another story, a girl discovers an angel with his wings ripped off, takes him home, and becomes dependent on him as a fixture in her life.

What was clear about FLB's most current book is how much metaphor magical realism contains. Some readers won't get this. I think you either love FLB or you don't get her at all. Her new collection is full of subtleties, the lines between reality and fantasy blurring all the time. I had to read "My Haunted House" twice before I understood that a death in the narrator's family had occurred, and that when she speaks of "my" haunted house, she means not just the doll house in her bedroom but her full-sized house, her home, her family. This loss, the haunting feeling that death leaves in its wake manifests itself as a haunting in the narrator's childhood dollhouse. But FLB is telling more than a straight-forward ghost story; she is talking about the ramifications of loss on an entire family. In another, a girl's mother is a "vampire." But how literal is this? What exactly happens in this story--and in several--are a matter of interpretation. It will bug some readers that the stories appear to end abruptly and aren't always black and white. I loved it. It gave me room to think about what FLB was saying and to imagine beyond the story.

Read for yourself and see. Enter the beautiful, poignant, and hopeful world of FLB. This collection is a good place to start.

Magic in the Mirrorstone

Short story collections can be hit or miss. Happily my latest read, Magic in the Mirrorstone, was a hit. I enjoyed all fifteen stories in the collection, with only one standing out as “not so great” and only one as really “lukewarm.” The others were a pleasure to read, each so different in tone, style and plot that it was like enjoying a bunch of different dishes at a gourmet dinner. According to the subtitle these are “tales of fantasy.” Fantasy definitely pervades the collection, but the stories can also be considered horror, humor, and science fiction. I think the editor uses the term “fantasy” in the most general of terms. Don’t expect wizards and dragons, at least not in every story. Do expect to be dazzled.

My favorites of the collection were “Have You Ever Seen a Shoggoth” and “Out of Her Element,” and they couldn’t possibly have been more different from the other. In the first, the author pays homage to H.P. Lovecraft as she tells the tale of a frog-like high school loner whose interest in the Outer Gods may help him eke out his revenge on the school bullies. In “Out of Her Element,” set in the nineteenth century, our story’s heroine must make a moral decision when an alchemist suspects he has found the cure for her terminal tuberculosis—though it means the death of another.

I also quite liked “The Jewel of Abandon” by Nina Kiriki Hoffman. This is the first piece of her writing I have ever read and it compels me to try more. Imagine you had a magic ring that showed you what anyone was doing at any time. Great, right? Not if it only showed you dark things, or it if twisted reality to seem sinister. And not great if it turned out that the urge to look in the ring was truly addictive. Other stories that won my respect were: “Veronica Brown,”by Sean Manseau, which I found absolutely hilarious, and “Blackwater Baby,” by Tiffany Trent, told from the point of view of a priest who works to keep the fey from taking over our world. I loved this one and intend to read more of the author as soon as possible. (That won’t be overly soon considering the looming stack of books that await my attention.) In fact, I think I need to tie “Blackwater Baby” with my other two favorites of the collection.

Another great read was “The Amulet of Winter” (not to be confused with “The Jewel of Abandon”) about a thief who is sent to steal an amulet and finds himself temporarily thwarted by. . . a librarian! Of course I loved that. Surprisingly the only short story that disappointed me in this collection was the one that had inspired me to pick up the book in the first place, and that was the Holly Black story. I love Holly Black’s books, and I'd expected to love the story. It was well-written, featuring the types of characters I enjoy seeing her depict, but either I didn’t quite get this one or it just didn’t gel for me somehow. That said, it was still a beautiful read. I don’t count it as the lukewarm or the not-so-good, just disappointing.

Despite a few let downs, I’d highly recommend this book, to both teens and adults. It’s been awhile since I have enjoyed a short story collection so much or found so many stories of such high quality.

Spooky Reads

I love horror stories. Probably even more than horror novels. There's just something perfectly satisfying about the compact form of a truly eerie short story. Recently two new horror story collections for teens came out, and several months back I scarfed down the offerings in Prom Dates from Hell, an anthology that tantalized the reader with stories from Stephenie Meyer, Meg Cabot, and Kim Harrison, among others.

Of the three collections, I most enjoyed Prom Nights from Hell. Each story was well written with good characters, a variety of conflict, and each centered on the various ways in which prom night can go horribly wrong.

You know---bad date, bad dress, vampire infestation, demonic attack. . .

The second collection was The Restless Dead, edited by Deborah Noyes. There are several very good stories in this one. I don't normally go gaga for Kelly Link's short stories, but the one featured in this book, "The Wrong Grave" was pretty satisfying. It's about a teenage boy whose love interest dies young. He puts some poems he's written in her coffin and a few months later regrets the impulse. What is a young poet to do but dig up his dead girlfriend's grave and reclaim his verse? Of course, when one digs up a grave, one should be sure to dig up the right grave. . . Another story I liked particularly was Annette Curtis Klause's "Kissing Dead Boys." Beware the scary vampire bars in town. . . I was most looking forward to the M.T. Anderson story in the book. This is because I was absolutely blown away by his story in Gothic: Ten Dark Tales and I couldn't wait to see what he'd written now. (His novel Thirsty is one of my favorite vampire novels.) I am sorry to report that my socks were not knocked off. Oh well. I had such high aspirations perhaps Mr. Anderson could simply not live up to them. Carrying on. . .

Lastly, I read 666: The Number of the Beast. Creepy cover, controversial Satanist-sounding title, spooky theme---what's not to like? The stories are what's not to like, that's what. I am going to be harsh but truthful. Most of the stories in this collection were a major disappointment. Several of the plots seemed to just peter out, or there were leaps in logic that defied reason, or the conclusions left me feeling completley ripped off. With the exception of the stories "Incident Report" and "Wolfsbane," I found very little to write home about (or blog about.) And the more I look at the cover, the sillier I think I find it. If you've read this book and you think I'm dead wrong in my assessment, let me know about it. It won't change my mind but at least we can enjoy a spirited discussion.

Anyway, it's Halloween month (as well as Teen Read Week) so you should get in the spirit by reading some dark tales.

All Hallows' Eve: 13 Stories

All Hallows' Eve by Vivian Vande Velde features a collection of macabre short stories that are similar in that they all take place on Halloween. While I would not describe this book as an absolute bone-chiller, several of the stories do offer unexpected twists that were just interesting enough to make me want to keep reading.

My favorite story in the collection, Morgan Roehmar’s Boys, presents a particularly creepy scenario in which Ashley, a teenage girl working as part of the scare staff for a haunted hayride event, ends up getting a bit of a scare herself...and more. The hayride takes place on a farm where years before, several young boys met their deaths at the hands of a serial killer. This fact does not bother Ashley until a storm suddenly hits, the lights go out, and she finds herself alone in a dark barn…with a dead boy.

Other highlights include tales of a cemetery field trip gone awry, a possessed car, and a disturbing visit to a backwoods psychic.