In the midst of all the writing I do, I also endeavored to read 52 books in 2022. Here are my thoughts on the last batch of 13 books I read this year:
FROZEN HELL / WHO GOES THERE? by John W. Campbell Jr.
Author John W. Campbell Jr. believed that most stories start too early – and he felt that he had started his own sci-fi horror story Frozen Hell three chapters too early. So he ended up cutting out those chapters and publishing his story under the title Who Goes There? In 1938. By the time that version of the story starts, a group of American researchers stationed in Antarctica have already unearthed the long-frozen body of an alien lifeform from the snow and ice near their outpost, accidentally destroying the UFO that brought the creature to Earth in the process. They take the body back to their outpost, where it thaws out and starts assimilating people, perfectly replicating their appearance and passing itself off as human. The remaining humans have to figure out who among them has been assimilated before they get assimilated as well… and if the humans fail to do this, the alien lifeform could reach civilization and wipe out of the planet.
Who Goes There? had already inspired multiple films, most directly The Thing from Another World, The Thing (1982), and The Thing (2011), by the time the original Frozen Hell manuscript was unearthed a few years ago. Now if you want to read about the unearthing of the alien, those chapters are finally available, more than eighty years after Campbell took them out. They’re not necessary, as the author would have told you, but they’re interesting to see nonetheless, bringing more of a slow build aspect to the brilliant story.
GIANT MONSTER FARMARNA by Constantine Furman
Constantine Furman is a big fan of the giant monster (kaiju) movies from Japan, which comes through very clearly in Giant Monster Farmarna. Created by Furman, this monster called Farmarna is a little bit Godzilla, a little bit Gamera, and causes a lot of trouble for the people of the world, smashing up locations like Rio de Janeiro and Seattle after a North Korean nuclear missile wakes it from a long slumber at the bottom of the sea. Scientists and military strategists scramble to figure out how to handle this threat… and some believe the answer may lie in a new warship that has been put together at Area 51, using alien technology.
Very reminiscent of the original 1954 Godzilla movie and the 1984 franchise reboot The Return of Godzilla, Giant Monster Farmarna is a fun read. You might not expect a giant monster’s destruction of a city to be as entertaining to read about as it is to watch on the screen, but Furman’s writing makes it work. If you enjoy the Godzilla movies and other films about kaiju wreaking havoc, you’ll probably have a good time reading Giant Monster Farmarna as well.
A SPECTER TALE CONTINUES by Constantine Furman
The supernatural killer Natali Stretesky, better known by some as the Layford Specter, is an odd character. She seems to spend most of her undead days just hanging out and wandering around the town of Layford, Nebraska – invisible to some people, visible to others. She sits on park benches, goes to bars, get snow cones. And every once in a while she’ll use her supernatural powers to kill someone for no discernible reason. In A Specter Tale Continues, the third entry in author Constantine Furman’s Layford Specter series (following A Specter Tale and Another Specter Tale), Natali decides to befriend a little girl, becoming the kid’s invisible friend. But news of her continuing killing spree has caught the attention of A Specter Tale heroine Moira Sanders, who returns to Layford on a mission to destroy Natali. Again. For good this time.
The Specter Tale books have left me interested in learning more about Natali’s back story, particularly the days when she started killing people. Before she was caught, before she was murdered by a mob of vigilantes. A Specter Tale Continues does give more information on Natali’s human days, but the story still hasn’t gone back far enough to satisfy my curiosity. In this story, we learn about the harrowing time she spent in a mental institution, right in between the killings and her own death. But why did Natali start killing people in the first place? There’s still another book in this series to go, and I’m hoping to find the answers in that one.
A Specter Tale was reminiscent of A Nightmare on Elm Street and Another Specter Tale had elements of A Nightmare on Elm Street Part 2: Freddy’s Revenge to it. There’s definitely some of A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors to A Specter Tale Continues, along with a bit of the fifth Elm Street movie (The Dream Child) and even a sequence right out of Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers.
WHERE THE CRAWDADS SING by Delia Owens
Delia Owens’ Where the Crawdads Sing was a major bestseller and spawned a film adaptation that got a lot of attention. It’s easy to see why, as Owens crafted a deep dive character study of someone who is very interesting to learn about. That’s a young woman called Kya, whose family gradually ditches her one-by-one over her early years until she’s left alone at their isolated home in the wilderness. With no education and no friends, Kya is forced to fend for herself… and Owen shows us how she’s not only able to survive but start thriving, achieving greater success than anyone would have imagined for her. The novel would have been gripping enough if it were only about Kya’s life, but it’s also about someone’s death: between chapters that follow Kya’s journey, Owens jumps ahead some years to show glimpses of a murder investigation being conducted in Kya’s hometown. An investigation that she becomes involved with when her part of the story catches up with that part of it. This keeps the reader turning the pages, eager to see where it’s all going.
A MAN CALLED OVE by Fredrik Backman
Originally written in Swedish, Fredrik Backman’s A Man Called Ove is about a grumpy, cynical old man who had a rough life before he met his wife Sonia. They had some tumultuous but happy decades together, but now Sonia has passed away and Ove’s life is rough once again. He’s finding it so difficult to move on without Sonia, he tries to kill himself several times over the course of the story. But when a family moves into his neighborhood and keeps finding ways to get involved with Ove, and he has to reluctantly take a cat into his care, and other acquaintances clearly need his assistance, you know he’s going to find a reason to stick around and get enjoyment out of his days again. A Man Called Ove deals with some very dark subject material, but it does so in a matter-of-fact way, so it never feels too heavy. The book is actually a heartwarming comedy that will also tug on your heartstrings while warming them up. It’s the kind of story that’s just crying out to be given a film adaptation that racks up awards nominations, and it makes for a pleasant, amusing, touching read.
FARMARNA’S MONSTER MARTIAL LAW by Constantine Furman
The giant monster Farmarna has been trapped inside a rocket and fired off into space. That’s a great way to deal with a kaiju threat, and it left me wondering: how was Constantine Furman going to get Farmarna back to Earth to cause more destruction in this, the second entry in the Farmarna series? I imagined Farmarna somehow busting out of the rocket while in space and just flying his way back to Earth… But I was putting way too much importance on our home planet. Farmarna doesn’t even need to be on Earth to cause destruction.
Farmarna’s Monster Martial Law begins with the rocket being sucked into a wormhole and spit out somewhere in the far reaches of space, where it crash lands on a planet called Upent. A place that is very much like Earth. The inhabitants seem to be the same as Earth humans, they speak English, they have the same sort of military weapons, including nukes. There are even countries that are very similar to certain countries we're familiar with. So now Farmarna is loose in a world that is basically ours but with a different name. Giant monster mayhem ensues all over again, with Farmarna smashing through Upent cities – and trying to fix an issue with the thermonuclear ray that blasts out of his mouth. It’s weaker these days. All he’s able to send out his mouth are little atomic smoke rings, like Godzilla’s kid.
Like the previous book, Giant Monster Farmarna, Farmarna’s Monster Martial Law is a fun tribute to the kaiju movie classics, complete with psychic connections, other worlds, and references to the fact that Upent has dealt with giant monsters before Farmarna arrived. There’s also a special treat for kaiju fans in the last few pages of the book. As I said after reading the first book in the series, if you love Godzilla and the other giant monsters he has crossed paths with, you’ll find entertainment in the pages of these Farmarna books.
A SPECTER TALE CONCLUDES: REQUIEM MASS FOR NATALI by Constantine Furman
All this time, I’ve been reading the books in the A Specter Tale series under the impression that the fourth book (following A Specter Tale, Another Specter Tale, and A Specter Tale Continues) would be the final entry. With a title like A Specter Tale Concludes: Requiem Mass for Natali, it sure sounds like the end. But as a horror fan who has seen multiple Final Chapters come and go without actually ending the franchises they were in, I should have known A Specter Tale Concludes wouldn’t really close the door on the story of Natali Stretesky, the Layford Specter. So even though A Specter Tale Concludes doesn’t provide the answers I’ve been waiting for, and as the book wrapped up I could agree with a character who tells Natali “we don’t know why you are the way you are”, I can’t fault it for that because there’s obviously more to come.
Constantine Furman has drawn inspiration from a lot of genre classics while crafting these books, but in this one what really shines through is his appreciation for the TV show Supernatural. A Specter Tale Concludes basically reads like a piece of Supernatural fan fiction, because the ghost hunting brothers that come to Layford, Nebraska in this story to take down the Layford Specter once and for all are very reminiscent of Supernatural’s Sam and Dean Winchester. Their names are Paul and Todd Hill and they ride around in a DeLorean instead of an Impala, but it’s clear who Furman was thinking of while writing them. I’m a Supernatural fan, so this actually made me connect to their characters more, and caused me to be more concerned for their well-being. Furman might not kill off Sam and Dean Winchester, but he might kill off Paul and Todd Hill… And since she was battling Sam and Dean stand-ins, I also disliked Natali more than ever while reading through this latter chapters of this book. Despite the fact that she has a dramatic “jilted lover” storyline in A Specter Tale Concludes that’s seemingly meant to draw some sympathy her way.
A Specter Tale Concludes was a very quick and fun read, and I’ll be sticking around for future installments, waiting to hear the details on Natali’s back story.
DRAGORA, THE MONSTER GODDESS by Constantine Furman
Author Constantine Furman’s kaiju tribute series continues with this third entry in the Farmarna series (following Giant Monster Farmarna and Farmarna’s Monster Martial Law). After being rudely awakened from a nap at the bottom of the ocean when a meteorite smashes into the sea, Furman’s creation Farmarna, who comes off as Godzilla mixed with a bit of Gamera, heads off to cause more trouble on the Earth-like planet of Upent. Soon he crosses paths with two other giant monsters that he just can’t seem to get along with: the dragonfly goddess Dragora and the bigger, badder dragonfly creature Bateriasid.
The kaiju that were newly added into the mix this time around were obviously inspired by Godzilla’s popular acquaintance Mothra and her counterpart Battra. Dragora, The Monster Goddess draws heavily from the only film Battra ever appeared in, 1992’s Godzilla vs. Mothra, or Godzilla and Mothra: The Battle for Earth. If you know that movie, some things in this book will seem quite familiar to you. But who can complain when a book has so much action packed into it? Most of the pages are filled with giant monster battles and smash-ups, and I enjoyed reading my way through it, even with visions of Mothra and Battra swooping through my mind.
WHERE THE FOREST MEETS THE STARS by Glendy Vanderah
Avian biologist Glendy Vanderah made a solid fiction-writing debut with this novel, which centers on a character who is researching nesting birds in the Illinois countryside. A good of example of someone writing what they know, just like Stephen King is always writing about authors. The bird-researching character is Jo, who comes into contact with a barefoot little girl wandering through the wilderness. This highly intelligent little girl claims to be an alien from a planet in the vicinity of the Ursa Major constellation, which is why she takes on the name Ursa. She says she is visiting Earth in the body of a deceased child, and will only remain for as long as it takes for her to witness five miracles.
Jo suspects that Ursa is actually an abused runaway, but comes to care for her so much that she’s reluctant to turn her over to the authorities. She also manages to rope a local egg salesman named Gabriel into her Ursa-caring duties… and over the book’s pages, Jo and Gabriel also start falling for each other while watching this little kid. Much of the book is devoted to Ursa’s interactions with the adults around her, but it’s also a character study of those adults. Jo and Gabriel are both damaged people. Jo has lost her mother to cancer, and is self-conscious about her own body after undergoing a double mastectomy to save herself from cancer. Gabriel suffers from depression and social anxiety, and also has a troubled family history. They’re interesting characters to spend time with, and we’re given plenty of time to get to know them and care about them. Then Vanderah takes the story in an unexpected direction.
Where the Forest Meets the Stars was a good book, and left me open to reading more by Vanderah.
MAKING FRIDAY THE 13TH: THE LEGEND OF CAMP BLOOD by David Grove
Friday the 13th is my favorite franchise, every movie that makes up that series is cinematic comfort food to me. So of course I have appreciation for David Grove’s book Making Friday the 13th, which digs into the making of every Friday movie that had been released up to that time. The book was first published in 2005, so it’s only missing a chapter on the 2009 movie. Featuring interviews with cast members and people who worked behind the scenes, it’s a great source of information. But it also be a frustrating read for the very audience it was written for, the devoted Friday franchise fan. That’s because Grove expresses negative opinions on nearly every film in the franchise. It’s clear that the first movie is far and away his favorite of the bunch, and he only seems to tolerate the sequels. He claims most fans don’t like Friday the 13th Part 2, which definitely doesn’t match up with the opinions I’ve seen about that film on Friday fan boards, says Part III features some of the worst acting in film history, etc. He even goes so far as call Jason Voorhees himself “a clunking bore”. There’s so much negativity directed toward the overall franchise, it makes you wonder why Grove bothered to cover the sequels at all, when it’s clear he mainly only cares about the first movie. Fittingly, he did go on to write a book that was entirely dedicated to the first movie, one called On Location In Blairstown: The Making of Friday the 13th.
CARIOCA FLETCH by Gregory Mcdonald
Carioca Fletch was the seventh novel Gregory Mcdonald wrote about investigative journalist I.M. Fletcher, but the story takes place in between the first and second books in the series (Fletch and Confess, Fletch). The first book ended with Fletch flying off to Brazil, and in Carioca Fletch we finally find out what he did while he was in the country. Mcdonald took so long to circle back to the “Fletch in Brazil” story because he wanted to spend time in Brazil himself and get to know what the country was like before writing about it. And in the pages of this book, it’s very clear that Mcdonald fell in love with the country while he was spending time there – which, as an American who spends a lot of time in Brazil, I fully understand.
Carioca Fletch is not a very popular entry in the franchise, because Fletch isn’t working as a journalist in it and he doesn’t do much investigating. For the most part, he’s just hanging out and drinking guarana soda. There are hints of mystery here and there – Joan Stanwyck, who was widowed by the events of Fletch, also travels to Brazil and goes missing, and some locals Fletch runs into think he’s the reincarnation of a man who was murdered 47 years ago, so he ends up searching for Joan and trying to solve this old murder case… but the mysteries aren’t much of a driving force from page to page. As many readers have said, Carioca Fletch mainly reads like a travelogue, with Mcdonald trying to pack in references to everything he learned about while spending time in Brazil. Feijoada, Globo, macumba, Carnaval, Christ the Redeemer, Copacabana, churrasco, capoeira, you’ll hear about it all in the pages of this book. It’s entertaining, because it’s Mcdonald writing about Fletch again and the setting is my beloved Brazil, but it is a very atypical Fletch book.
THE MIDNIGHT LIBRARY by Matt Haig
After racking up thirty-five years of regrets, Nora Seed attempts suicide… and then finds herself in a library that exists between life and death, where every book gives her a chance to visit different versions of her life, where she can see what could have happened to her and those around her if she had made different choices at key points. If she finds a life she’s content with, she will have the chance to branch off and live in that existence instead of dying or returning to the disappointing life she has been living. And Nora certainly had a lot of options and interests. In one life she’s a glaciologist in the Arctic. In another she’s a successful musician, playing a gig in Brazil. In another she’s an Olympic swimmer. But in every life she visits, she finds some reason not to stick around. A reason to return to the library and look into another book.
Haig follows Nora through a lot of lives over the course of this book, and somehow knew exactly when to shift gears. Just when I was getting tired of going through all these different realities, he sped up the pace and started hurtling toward the conclusion. Which is an ending that most readers can probably predict from the start, but the journey getting there is interesting. Haig also has a writing style that I really appreciated, as he packed The Midnight Library with a long list of very quick-to-read chapters.
CRYSTAL LAKE MEMORIES: THE COMPLETE HISTORY OF FRIDAY THE 13TH by Peter M. Bracke
My copy of Peter M. Bracke’s hardcover coffee table book Crystal Lake Memories is one of my most prized possessions, as I have taken every opportunity over the last seventeen years to fill its pages with autographs from actors, directors, stuntmen, and effects artists who have been involved with the Friday the 13th franchise. The title page features signatures from Betsy Palmer, who played Mrs. Voorhees in the original film, and the primary Jason Voorhees performers from each of the films – even Derek Mears, whose 2009 Friday the 13th film isn’t covered in this book, since it was published in 2005. Crystal Lake Memories was the perfect book to put all of these signatures in because it is a wonderful celebration of the Friday the 13th franchise, covering the making of each film with extensive interviews with writers, directors, cast members, producers, etc. The book lays out the facts with no editorializing from the author. While the people involved with the making of each film will make it clear what they thought of the movie they worked on, Bracke keeps his rankings to himself. Instead of sharing his opinion, he delivers a great deal of information, making Crystal Lake Memories the best source of Friday the 13th knowledge fans have ever received.
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