The Boy Who Drew Monsters - Keith Donohue (Book Review)

Title - The Boy Who Drew Monsters

Author - Keith Donohue

Source - Net Galley

Summary -

Three years ago Jack Peter Keenan and his friend Nick nearly drowned in the ocean by his home. Since then Jack Peter, called Jip by his father, has never been the same. Jip was already diagnosed with Aspergers, but after the incident he became even more withdrawn and anti-social. He hated to be touched and if startled would lash out, even blackening his mother's eye. His was a high functioning disease, but for his mother and father, dealing with Jack Peter was destroying them. But what they didn't know was that the world Jip retreated to in his mind was even more terrifying to him than the world on the outside.

"...The boy was not sure if it was a house in which dreams came true or if the house itself had been made our of dreams. Once upon a time, the name had made him happy, but on ice cold nights like these, the dreams turned into nightmares, and monsters under the bed stirred in the bump of the night..."

Jack Peter finds an outlet for the world trapped within his mind. He draws and he draws all the time. He draws everything he thinks of, only lately he thinks of monsters. Creatures that rise out of the sea and great massive dogs. He listens to the conversations around him and from there he draws, turning comments and thoughts into nightmares. But once they are on paper, the scenes begin to come to life. And out on the shore his father sees a shambling form of a man, a creature that wanders nude in the freezing snow. Lately, he can even hear something moving inside the house at night. Something that leaves the floor cold and the doors like ice.

Jack Peter knows what the thing is and he knows its real. He draws it to keep it away and he draws other things to keep them near. The line between the world's reality and Jip's mind has cracked and soon all the monsters will begin to flood in.

Review -

Keith Donohue writes creepy stories. Not the bloody slasher type, but the old black and white Twilight Zone kind that sort of cause the hairs on the back of your neck to stand. It is the old instincts within us. The one that says there is something darker and far more evil nearby. A predator. A sense that for a moment, the story could be more real than we want it to be.

Little Jack Peter is not a likable kid. The difficulty his parents have in managing him is well written. Though you know it's because of the Autism, still you find it difficult to imagine having to work that hard just to communicate with your child. Slowly, Donohue unravels the secrets behind this family and you begin to understand that in some way they have laid all their troubles at the feet of the child. Blaming him for all that is wrong in their lives and their marriage. For Jack Peter's part, he is just trapped in his world with his monsters.

Donohue builds the suspense slowly, taking his time to develop the characters and the story until midway through you are re-examining your feelings about each individual one. The secrets unfold and there is something of a sense of retribution forthcoming in the appearance of Jack Peter's nightmares. These monsters are not only here to terrorize but perhaps to also take some recompense for the wrongs of the past.

In the end, the power of Jack Peter's drawings goes far beyond the creatures he calls forth. In the end, Jack Peter is drawing for their very lives.

A good read.

Krampus The Yule Lord - Brom (Book Review)

Title - Krampus The Yule Lord

Author - Brom

Summary -

One Christmas Eve in the small town of Boone County, West Virginia, failed musician and drug runner Jesse sees an amazing sight. Seven devilish figures chasing a fat man in a red suit and eight flying reindeer. When the reindeer fly upward the devils attack the man in the red suit and they battle on board the enormous sleigh. In the screams and blood that follow a large sack falls to the ground.

It is a magic sack that can grant Jesse anything he can envision. Only the man in the red suit is going to want it back and so do the devils that attacked him. And someone else. Someone who has been forgotten.

"...Santa Claus, my dear friend, you are a thief, a traitor, a slanderer, a murderer, a liar, but worst of all you are a mockery of everything for which I stood.
You have sung your last ho, ho, ho for I am coming for your head. For Odin, Loki, and all the fallen gods, for your treachery, for chaining me in this pit for five hundred years. But most of all I am coming to take back what is mine, to take back Yuletide. And with my foot upon your throat, I shall speak your name, your true name, and with death staring back at you, you will no longer be able to hide from your dark deeds, from the faces of all those you betrayed.
I, Krampus, Lord of Yule, son of Hel, bloodline of the great Loki, swear to cut your lying tongue from your mouth, your thieving hands from your wrists, and you jolly head from your neck..."

Jesse quickly becomes the hunted. From the drug dealers he works for who believe he's betrayed them. From the local Police Chief whose taken Jesse's wife and child to be his own. From his own failed ambitions. From the jolly old man in the red suit who doesn't look like the Santa he's come to know. Not when Santa looks really pissed off and carrying a broadsword. From the devils who are hunting the sack for their awakening Yule Lord. To Krampus himself. The forgotten god from another time.

But the Yule Lord finds more than Santa in his way to reclaim what was once his. He finds mankind itself may be his greatest adversary.

"...Mankind has lost its connection to the land, to the earth, to the beasts and spirits. They gather their food not from the forests and fields, but from plastic bins and ice boxes. Their lives are no longer tied to the cycles of the seasons and the harvest, no longer do they need the Yule Lord to chase away the winter darkness and usher in the light of spring. Man has only himself to fear now...he has become his own worst devil..."

Jesse finds himself in service to the returning Yule Lord, as the only means to protect his wife and daughter. But first, before he can help them, he must help Krampus kill Santa Claus.

Review -

Krampus the Yule Lord is a big, bad, bloody kick ass of a book. You will never look at Christmas, Santa, mistletoe and the flying reindeer quit the same way again. Brom does an excellent job of tracing these Christmas traditions back to their roots in Norse mythology and with incredible wit and outrage develops the tale of an ancient God; revived to see how these traditions have been bastardized by today's religions.

Krampus is an ancient bitter God, betrayed by the one who would become Santa Claus. A son of Odin who was befriended by Krampus out of pity and then betrayed and trapped the Yule Lord. Taking the traditions of Yule and making them his own in service to the coming of the one God. The new religion of the Christ child. To keep himself alive and strong in the new religion, the God that would become Santa Claus betrays all the old values to become the neutered servant of Christianity. A betrayal Krampus looks to reverse. But to do it, he must win back humanity.

The research Brom has done to craft his tale and make it believable is delivered with pain and suffering from the fallen Krampus. You will actually be wanting him to win back his place, and see the head of dear old Santa stain the snow red with blood.

A fun and enjoyable tale.

Countdown City - Ben H Winters (Book Review)

Title - Countdown City (The Last Policeman #2)

Author - Ben H. Winters

Summary -

In seventy-seven days, the asteroid 2011GV1 is going to slam into the planet Earth and destroy all life on it. It will be a catastrophe on par with the impact that ended the reign of the dinosaurs. All humanity knows it is coming and they know just as well that there is nothing they can do about it. Many have chosen to deal with this impending doom in different ways. Some have decided to end their own lives rather than wait out the day. Others have gone on extensive trips, fulfilling bucket lists they had put off to another time and now there is no more time.

But for forcibly retired Police Detective Henry Palace, he does the only thing he can. The only thing he knows to do. He stays on the job and today, seventy-seven days away from the apocalypse, he has a new case to work.

Martha Milano babysat Henry and his sister Nico when they were kids. Now they are all grown up and Martha's husband Brett has gone missing. Martha is sure there is more to it than Brett running away in the face of the end of times. She is positive he wouldn't do that. No something else has happened and she needs Henry to look into to it. To find and bring her husband back home. The police will be no help. They have been replaced with young kids who simply are there to provide a presence. No one investigates. Henry is sure that the databases are even working. But still he agrees to find Brett.

"...My missing person was a man dying to leave, in a fever to leave, but who knew that leaving was wrong. He made a compromise with himself, struck a moral balance, did what he had to, to make arrangements for the woman he'd be leaving behind..."

Henry follows Brett to a pizza parlor and through the dark street to a hideout for one of the few remaining criminal enterprises. All the while knowing that Brett had left Martha. But why? Brett was an ex-cop and what Henry was sensing was that Brett wasn't running from something, he was running to something.

The mystery deepens as Henry must work through the remaining camps of humanity that live outside the city. Survivalists and communes. Both thinking that the government is lying to them all and that there is no end of the world. Conspiracy nuts who are sure this is all a Government cover-up. All to find one missing man and bring him home. So that he can die with his wife, when the seventy-seventh die finally arrives.

Review -

Countdown City is an excellent sequel to The Last Policeman. Henry Palace is such a well written character that his drive to do the right thing in the face of such over whelming helplessness just endears him the readers even more.

The story is well plotted and though it is a desperate situation, the novel never gets bogged down in the setting and hopelessness. Even besides the impending doom, there is a real mystery here. Where is Brett? Why did he leave? What is he doing and are the rants and ravings of the communes and conspiracy nuts hold any validity? What is Henry going to tell Brett when he finds him? Excuse me but your wife would like you to come home now so you can die together.

Countdown City is well written mystery and if Henry Palace is the Last Policeman then perhaps there is some hope left. At least until the asteroid hits and the planet overheats and everything dies and then well it all kind of sucks after that. But until then, it looks like there is one more book coming with Henry Palace to be read!

A very good read!