BOOK REVIEW:

‘Blood and Spurs: Book One: The Blood Rider’ By Mark Tarrant (2007)

Review by Scott Lefebvre

     It began with an e-mail.

     Mark Tarrant sent an e-mail to Rob G at Icons of Fright asking about submitting his book for review.   Rob redirected the author in my direction as the resident book reviewer at Icons and I appreciate that.   It’s nice to know you work with people that respect and appreciate what you’re doing.

     I received an e-mail from Mark Tarrant in which he humbly asked if I would be kind enough to review his book.   A humility that is unusual in authors, but the author openly admits that this is his first book, his first shot out of the barrel, and he is understandably uncertain about where the strange journey will take him.

     I wasn’t unaware of the author and his book.   At the Fangoria Weekend of Horrors where I started talking with Joe Sena from Fearwerx about working his booth at conventions, Mark Tarrant had the next booth over and it was difficult not to notice the author, a stocky, genial, pitbull of a man in a black cowboy hat boldly promoting the book which he had created.   I remembered the author and his book which seemed like it was a cross-genre experiment combining vampires and cowboys.   Not a bad idea, but one that could be executed for good or for awful depending on the skill of the author.

     So Mark and I had a quick back and forth where I gave him my mailing address.   Then there was the week of waiting till one sunshiny day I received the book a week later in a padded manila envelope.   With the book was a letter on “Blood and Spurs” letterhead.   I have to admit it was kind of cool.   The letter was touching in the way that it waxed apologetic and promotional in turns.

     “What’s funny is guys who review, like you, are so much better at English than I am, and they know how to write.”   Well, Mark, I don’t know how to say this, but it’s all guesswork at a keyboard.   We hunt and peck and figure it out one word at a time just like you do.   Your humble approach is touching, but I’m sure that I’m not the first to tell you that you should be goddamned proud of what you’ve accomplished.   It’s not everyone that can write a book, much less three.   To paraphrase Henry Rollins paraphrasing Ernest Hemingway, most reviewers are like people that watch a battle from a safe distance then come in and finish off the wounded.   You’ve fought the good fight, returning from the trenches with stories to tell, and you’ve got a right to enjoy the pride of accomplishment.   Especially since you’ve written something worth reading.

     “I just hope you like Ezekiel as a character and see what I was trying to do, make a fun horror western adventure like Conan stories or The Spider from the 40s.”   I did like Ezekiel as a character.   So much so that I want to know who you’ve got in mind to write the prequel to your series, because if you aren’t saving that special opportunity for yourself, I’d love to throw my black leather cowboy hat in the ring.   I got what you were trying to do, and your books are a worthy addition to the legacy of pulp adventure novels.   A legacy often ignored as dated or exhausted by contemporary authors.   By striving to define themselves and seeking their own voice, they forget their heritage and the wealth of creativity and the unlimited possibility offered by the creation and introduction of an iconic character.

     But enough about Mark and I.   What about the book?

     I brought the book along with me when I went to get the head liner of my car re-upholstered.   I read the book in its entirety that day.   Although I brought the book along with a couple others as a combination of killing time and fulfilling a commitment, I was quickly swept up by the story.

     The character of Ezekiel is indeed iconic.   Imagine Stephen King’s Roland from The Dark Tower series as a vampire and you get an idea of what the character is like.   The kind of confident, capable, rugged, sturdy, manly, archetype like Clint Eastwood in Sergio Leone’s Man with No Name trilogy, or Toshiro Mifune in the Samurai swordsman films which inspired Leone.   The same mold that the Marvel Comics characters Wolverine and The Punisher were cast from.   And for my money, I’d rather spend my time with The Blood Rider instead of The Ghost Rider.   I know that’s a bold statement, but I’ve put it out there and I’m standing by it.

     The author begins the first of his three novel series with the origin of Ezekiel.   A religious young man in a religious family making their way westward with the earnest intentions of establishing a church to save the sinners populating the wild west.   The family is beset upon by a group of mercilessly desperate bandits and left to die in the barren wilderness, but Ezekiel becomes the fast repast of an anonymous vampire whose darkly sardonic outlook inspires the vampire to bestow the immortality of vampirism upon the young pious Ezekiel.   This is the crux that defines the character.   A man who is fervently faithful becomes ironically, contrastingly, blessed and cursed with the power and burden of vampirism and immortality.   It’s so simple, it’s elegant, and where a lesser author may have taken a less interesting direction from this point of departure, Mark Tarrant infuses the character with a sense of conflict and pathos and anger and sadness that I found myself eager to know how Ezekiel would come to terms with the dualism inherent in the origin of his character.   But that’s a story for another time.

     The story picks up in the third chapter, twenty years later.   A man named William Hamilton, a frontier era Ichabod Crane archetype, a school teacher from New York is searching for his brother who went missing in the wasteland of the wild west.   To aid him in his search, he is seeking ‘El Diablo Blanco’.

     ‘El Diablo Blanco’ is what Ezekiel has become.   The intervening years have been filled with his coming to terms with his conflicting religious and vampiric characteristics and bringing those who cold-bloodedly murdered his family to justice, although these intervening years are only alluded to in this installment.

     Ezekiel has established a comfortable life for himself as the dark angelic protector of a small Mexican town where prostitutes and gambling are close at hand and the bandits have learned that the town is off limits to their predation lest they incur the wrath of ‘the white devil’.

     Ezekiel’s comfort is disrupted by the arrival of William Hamilton whose earnest appeals overcome Ezekiel’s resistance.   Ezekiel decides to take a vacation from his eternal dissolution to aid the school teacher who would otherwise be easy prey for the rugged residents of the wild west.

     I’d love to tell you more.   But instead I recommend that you read it for yourself.

     It’s not fancy.   But neither was Ernest Hemingway.    Or Charles Bukowski.

     The writing is clean enough that the book is safe for the PG-13 crowd, but interesting enough to capture the attention of adults as well.   At the very least I proudly admit the book to be more than just a guilty pleasure and if I had children that were awesome like I was when I was a kid, when I couldn’t read enough Stephen King novels, then I’d give them this first novel and buy the next two so I could have a couple nice surprises for them down the line when they hinted that they wanted them.

     Let me put it this way.   I’ve read all of J. K. Rowling’s Harry Potter books, well, up until the Order of the Phoenix, and after the fourth or fifth one, the characters began to wear on me.   They seemed priggish and overly self-involved.   After reading a couple thousand pages I just didn’t care if Harry and Hermione would ever get together or if the Weasleys would ever stop being so redundantly destitute.   Voldemort is the best part of the books and he only gets about a thirtieth of the page count.   At least Tarrant gives us the good, the bad, and the ugly all in one book and it’s not just foreplay with the possible promise of fooling around if we buy the next book.   Instead The Blood Rider is like a hot first date that leaves you looking forward to the next installment.

     The story arc, following the characters as they try to solve the mystery of the disappearance of the school teacher’s brother plays out a bit like a Nancy Drew mystery at times.   But the attraction of this novel is not so much the strength of the story as it is the journey of the characters.   At its most basic it is the story of two men who are evolving as a result of their interactions.   It’s the same kind of energy that made Batman and Robin such a successful duo, but it avoids the latent homosexual subtext that plagued the caped crusaders.   The dark knight and the young student.   I came to know and like the characters enough that when the book drew to a close, I wish that they would hang around a little longer.

     This brings me to the excerpt from the second book, “Blood and Spurs: Book Two: Fort Doom”.

     From what I can tell, it seems that the author has chosen to continue to follow Ezekiel and William Hamilton in their adventures across the wild west.

     I’m interested.   I liked the characters and I would like to read more about them.

     Even if the third book is more of the same I would be pleased to read that one too.

     In short, I’m a fan.

     But more than anything else, I want to know more about the vampire that created Ezekiel and the intervening years which passed between the origin of Ezekiel and where the story of the first book picks up.   I want to know about those years of blood and gunsmoke when Ezekiel ran with a pack of vampire bandits, slaking their thirst for human blood on the moonlit frontier.   I want to know where and when and how Ezekiel executed the bitter justice against the group of bandits who prematurely ended the lives of his family and his wife.   I want to know about the character’s heartache and fury, his sadness and anger when it was burning most intensely.   Because it seems that when we rejoin Ezekiel, he has become a creature whose fire has burned down to glowing embers and ash.   He has come to terms with the precarious relationship he must maintain with the rest of humanity and it takes the introduction of William Hamilton to break Ezekiel out of the comfortable consistency that he has created for himself.

     I want to know about it so badly that I want to write it.

     I want to know so badly that I’m already imagining it.

     The opportunity to have a hand in the development of such an iconic character only happens once or twice in a lifetime.

     So if you’re out there, Mark Tarrant, and you read this, call me.

     Because if you don’t finish what you’ve started and tell me the tale that I so badly want to hear I’m going to have to do it myself.

     You’ve got a gift.

     I’m a fan.

     Don’t leave me hanging.

     Let’s ride.

More on the internet:

Mark Tarrant: www.thesmilingviking.com or

The Blood Rider: www.thebloodrider.com or http://www.myspace.com/thebloodrider

About the author:

     Mark Tarrant is a creative powerhouse who knew he wanted to write from his first encounter with Star Wars. Born in Lansing, Michigan, Tarrant grew up loving books about monsters and the unknown. A big fan of comics − especially those of Robert E. Howard’s Conan character − his reading eventually included the master of horror, Stephen King. His storytelling is also influenced by his passion for Western movies, particularly The Good, The Bad & The Ugly.

     His artistic talents have received recognition in The Boston Globe, USA Today, The Valley Advocate, The Republican, The Herald and The Buzz.

     With the debut of his Blood & Spurs series, Tarrant introduces us to an intriguing character − the Blood Rider, a vampire in the Wild West. Once a man of God, the Blood Rider now roams the West dispensing his own brand of justice. Lovers of a good story with a fantasy twist will find a compelling new hero from the very first volume, The Blood Rider.

     Tarrant’s personal life is a sharp contrast to the fantasy world that captivates his readers. He lives in Western Massachusetts, loves history and pop culture, and gets especially excited during NFL season. Tarrant has recently discovered another creative passion: parenting his daughter Haley. Being a new father has given him another platform for storytelling.

About the reviewer:

     Scott Lefebvre has had reviews and articles published by a variety of print and online media.   All of his horror/paranormal reviews can be found on Icons of Fright.   He is the author of ‘Spooky Creepy Long Island’ available from Schiffer Books [ www.schifferbooks.com ] and is working on another regional paranormal book about Buffalo, New York for Schiffer Books.

     Scott Lefebvre is a program assistant for The Arkham Film Society [ ] and will be touring the country as the 2008 National Convention Manager for Fearwerx [ www.fearwerx.com ] and is eager to use the opportunity to further his goal of world domination.

     Scott Lefebvre would be pleased to read your book if you’re interested in sending him a copy.   He can be contacted at: Scott_Lefebvre@hotmail.com

     Or you can lurk his MySpace at: myspace.com/scott_gun_flu

Posted by Rob G at 12:25 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

REVIEW: 'Monster Island Three' Edited by Billy Mavreas

(2007 Conundrum Press) www.conundrumpress.com

Review by Scott Lefebvre

     One of the wonderful things about attending the Fantasia Film Festival in Montreal, Quebec, Canada, is the hospitality of the Canadians.   Possibly the most well-intentioned, polite, and friendly people I've ever met.

     While smoking a cigarette on the back deck of The Irish Embassy, I found myself in a conversation with Rupert Bottenberg.   Rupert invited me to join him and his friends at their tale and I spent the better part of the night in the company of my new friends.

   Rupert Bottenberg works for the Fantasia Film Festival in some capacity that I must admit I forgot the particular details of, but it's got something to do with writing the content for, or designing the program, and something to do with hospitality, as far as I can surmise.

     When he asked why I was at the Fantasia Film Festival and I gave him the shortest possible synopsis of all of the ventures I was involved in, I mentioned that I review books.   At this point, Rupert produced a book that he had been a contributor to.  Monster Island Three.

     Flipping through the book at first, I didn't know what to make of it.   There was text and pictures, and the style changed every three pages, like flipping channels while flipping through a book.

     What I was experiencing was a Canadian anthology of art and writing with a very loosely defined "Monster" theme.

     When I was a teenager, my mother sent a letter into Marvel Age stating that I was a raging comic book fan and asking if there was anything cool out there she could get me into.   Two awesome things resulted from that letter.
     One was a Marvel Universe poster that was the coolest thing ever, but sadly succumbed to nicotine yellowing when I started smoking in college, and the wear and tear of my perpetual change of residence.
     The other was that I was invited to join an Amateur Press Association or an A.P.A.
     The zine went out under the banner 'Nuff Said and I'll always remember the wonder that I experienced as a member.
     There were 25 or so members from all over the world.   Each member would produce an 8 X 10 format zine, and mail 25 copies to the Central Mailer, who would collate the disparate zines, bind them with plastic ring-binding and mail a copy of the assembled incredibleness out to the members.
     This may seem insane in these days of internet fan groups and MySpace, but remember that this was when the internet was primarily a text only phenomenon, and sites like Timothy Leary's attempt to immortalize himself on the worldwide web were amazing.
     Reading Monster Island Three reminded me of the joy I experienced while thumbing through each issue of 'Nuff Said.

     The shining star of the anthology, in my opinion, is the essay on Jack Kirby's "Captain Victory and the Galactic Rangers" by Andy Brown.   This essay is representative of the type of fan journalism that I aspire to.   Fastidiously researched and complete, yet pleasurably readable.
     Another essay, "Trans-Atlantic Pulps of the 20s and 30s: Monstrous Images of Africa?" by Patrick R. Burger, was just as well researched, but the presentation of the material was difficult to follow which decreased the enthusiasm I had when approaching the article.

     In conclusion, I am very happy to have Monster Island Three.   It's an excellent book to leaf through on a lazy sunday and makes a great short-attention span distraction for the living room coffee table or the back of the toilet bathroom book.   At $15, the price is not prohibitive, considering the incredible assortment of art and excellent writing contained within.

Online at: www.conundrumpress.com

Posted by Rob G at 12:23 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

REVIEW: Raw Dog Screaming Press

‘Last Burn in Hell: Director’s Cut’ (2006) by John Edward Lawson

‘Vacation’ (2007) by Jeremy C. Shipp

     Horrorfind 7 in August of 2007.

     I managed to get a gig selling t-shirts for Fearwerx.   I spent most of the weekend behind the table selling shirts hand over fist.   I brought two of my best friends along to help work the table in exchange for a little bit of money and a free trip to the convention.   My friends offered to relieve me any time I wanted to walk around the con and see the sights, but since this was my first gig for Fearwerx and I’d been to about a dozen conventions I felt a commitment to giving my best effort for Fearwerx who paid for my presence at the show.

     The man behind Fearwerx asked that I take a walk around the vendor room and take some pictures.   Pictures of the Fearwerx booth so he could see how we set the booth up with the s.u.v. full of components he sent us out with.   Pictures of the other t-shirt booths to see how our booth looked in comparison and to get an idea of the designs that everyone else was selling.   And pictures of the traffic in the vendor room, so he could determine whether or not to pay for the privilege of attending the next Horrorfind.   The profit to cost ratio is a useful indicator which influences the decision of whether or not to return to a convention, but it doesn’t give a real sense of what attending and working the convention is like.

     While I was doing my walk through, the Raw Dog Screaming Press table caught my eye.   The books were set up in a rack, displaying the cover designs of the books the table was offering.   The covers were well-designed, and since they stopped me in my tracks for a moment, the man behind the table did his duty as a vendor and struck up a conversation with me.   The man behind the table was John Edward Lawson, an author and editor and Editor-in-chief of Raw Dog Screaming Press.

     At most of the conventions I had attended I made it a point to stop by any tables manned by authors or publishers.   I review books for a few media sources and stopping by a booth is a great way to get new books for review.   The positive side of this is that it makes authors and publishers aware of the magazines and websites that publish my reviews, and when the reviews are published, it provides free advertisement for, and raises public awareness of, the authors and publishers that provide their books for review.  The negative side is that since I get so many complimentary books for review I’m unlikely to pay for a book unless it’s something that I already know and love, so a conversation with me results in an immediate loss to the authors or publishers in exchange for advertisement which will hopefully lead to a long-term gain.

     Allow me to state that my intention in conversing with John Edward Lawson was not to acquire books for review.   I had come to the convention to sell shirts and have a good time and I had turned the book reviewer switch off.   But old habits die hard.

     The conversation started innocuously enough.   I told John that I was impressed with the cover design of the Raw Dog Screaming Press books.   From my side of the conversation I mentioned that I review books for a few media sources.   This led us into a conversation about horror genre books and authors and publishing.   I said that I wasn’t very impressed with your average black-bound horror paperback which populates the horror section of most of the major bookstores.   They read like horror-themed Harlequin novels.   The horror genre equivalent of bodice-rippers.   So few of them are really scary or horrifying or manage to raise the small hairs on the back of my neck.

     The conversation of course diverged into the requisite name-dropping.   Stephen King and Clive Barker.   Edgar Allan Poe and H. P. Lovecraft.   Then with the big names out of the way, I expressed my enthusiasm for Richard Matheson and how I thought that Jack Ketchum was a promising author who rises above the expectations for the black-bound paperback publishers.   Finally I was closing by saying that I thought that the two best horror novels I had read were by authors who were primarily non-horror authors.   Chuck Plahniuk’s ‘Haunted’ and Bret Easton Ellis’s ‘Lunar Park’.   I wasn’t trying to solicit books for review, but the mention of the last two authors kindled a gleam in John’s eyes.   He said he had two books that he wanted me to have.   ‘Vacation’ by Jeremy C. Shipp and ‘Last Burn in Hell: Director’s Cut’ by John Edward Lawson, which he opened up and signed for me.

     This is the end of the story of how I sometimes accidentally get books for review.

     Now let’s roll on to the reviews.

     I read ‘Vacation’ first because it was the smaller of the two, but I’m going to review ‘Last Burn In Hell’ first, because although I enjoyed both books for different reasons, I found ‘Last Burn in Hell’ the more enjoyable of the two.]

     ‘Last Burn in Hell’ is an exceptional creature as far as books go.   The format seems to have been crafted in the style of a novelization of a film.   This device seemed a bit superfluous and did little to add to or detract from the impact of the book.   The book’s protagonist is a prison guard.   But he’s not a prison guard.   He’s more of a whore.   He “services” women that are on death row, as a special consideration.   Kind of like a last lay to follow-up their last meal.   But he’s just doing a service.   Except when the execution of a particular woman keeps getting postponed.   He gets personally involved and decides to devise a plan so that she can avoid execution and they can live happily ever after.   As interesting as the book was setting up the initial scenario, things get a lot more interesting while they’re on the run.   Identity and sexuality blur and the inter-group alliances and dynamics become unhinged.   Mexican gangs and federal agencies and a Latin Madonna play pivotal roles in this story.   One thing that is certain, his mother is not quite right, and the protagonist is one of a pair of triplets who may or may not be the result of an alien abduction.   I’d like to say “you get the idea”, but I’m fairly certain you don’t, and reading is believing, so you should.   Both of the books I was given mention William Burroughs in the back-cover blurbs.   I don’t think Burroughs is quite the right comparison.   Rather, I think that Burroughs serves as a common cultural touchstone which serves to give potential readers a sense of the tone of the book within.   Lawson reads more like Palahniuk.   Some times comparing one author to another is for classification not for accolades.   If I read another blurb touting an author as “the next Stephen King” I just don’t know what I’m going to do.   Wait.  I know what I’m not going to do.   I’m not going to read their book.   Because all of King’s potential heirs fall short of the high water mark set by the King.   Lawson is an exception to the business of comparison in that his voice is a worthwhile addition to the chorus of authors following the trend most prominently presented in Palahniuk’s body of work.   An earnest, but wry honesty in writing, exploring the paradoxes of our contemporary American society.   In ten years, these books may seem dated, with their pop-cultural references and their reaction to the disillusioned sardonicism of our generation, but I’d rather read something contemporary than another book which safely stays within the prescribed boundaries of the black-bound horror-genre novel.

     The other book I was given from Raw Dog Screaming Press was ‘Vacation’ by Jeremy C. Shipp.   The plot for vacation is difficult to discuss.   It begins as a post-modern tale of a privileged member of the higher echelon of academic society.   Inside, he feels that he does not deserve his rank and privilege, and his discontent inspires him to take a ‘Vacation’.   This is not a vacation in the traditional sense.   In this post-modern world, ‘Vacation’ is a governmentally regulated program that grants every citizen a one-year trip around the world to exotic locales for exciting adventures.   This would have been an interesting premise to explore, but the author takes the tale in a surreal direction.   This is where the Burroughsian comparison is apt.   The protagonist finds himself abducted and entangled in a factional dispute, the guidelines of which are unclear and ever-changing.   The setting for this dispute is the tropical area outside of the area prescribed and protected for the ‘vacationers’.   The relationships between the characters become a bit to Jungian archetypal for my liking, with the formation and disruption of pseudo-familial relationships.   The premise through its many permutations stays fresh and disorienting, crossing back and forth between the permeable boundaries between the conscious and the unconscious thus becomes another discourse on phenomenology.   This flexibility and changeability accompanied by the tropical setting may be what conjured the comparisons to the work of William S. Burroughs, but Burroughs might still be the cultural touchstone that reviewers select when reviewing books that explore post-modernity in this style.   Perhaps a closer comparison would be to Paul Auster in his book ‘City of Glass’ which is another book that explores the themes of uncertainty and alienation, which are also fundamental concepts for existentialism and existentialists, whose work ‘Vacation’ is a welcome addition to.   Readers looking for light horror genre reading may be disappointed at the effort and attention required to explore this brief, yet dense book, but those who accept the challenge will be rewarded with an engrossing ‘vacation’ into the world of post-modern, phenomenological, existential, but nonetheless truly enjoyable fiction.

More Online:

www.rawdogscreaming.com

www.johnlawson.org

Posted by Rob G at 12:14 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)