The Yattering and Jack - Clive Barker

After my last experience with Clive Barker, I wasn't really looking forward to this one.  But I've been surprised before so I took a deep breath, plugged my nose, and just went for it.  And to my relief it tasted good.

The Yattering and Jack is a great comedy horror piece.  The way Barker describes the frustration of the Yattering as it tries so hard to get any kind of response from this completely mellowed out man is hilarious.  One of my favorite parts was when he was desperate enough to call his superiors for help begging to be reassigned.  The entire premise is a great turnaround on guardian angels and an even better reverse on the typical haunted house.  We get to see the "haunting" from the other side of the curtain and the effect great.  We even get an exploded cat.

Only two things didn't really work for me in this story.  One was the way Barker would switch PoVs from the Yattering to Jack.  Several times this happened without preamble of any kind and I had to backtrack to understand who I was with.

The other was how easily duped the Yattering was.  I understand that it was just a low level demon and not ment to be super bright.  But I just felt it was a bit easy.

That said, I loved the interaction with the daughters and the way Jack had to force himself to ignore one just loosing it.  The entire story was good enough that I actually told my wife and in-laws the entire story one night.  I was that excited about it.  This kind of story is right up my alley, and it gave me hope for the third Barker story we have to read.

Cycle of the Werewolf - Stephan King

Coming off of Rawhead Rex, I was a bit eager to sink into something more familiar.  I've only read one other King story (The Shinning from last semester) but I was curious to see what he could do with a traditional monster like werewolves.  He didn't disappoint.

First, the formatting.  This is probably my favorite aspect of the book.  The twelve short chapters following the twelve months.  The artwork.  Even the way he played with moon cycles to line them up with important days of each month were great.  And then there's his writing.  It sucked me in just as effectively in a few pages as it did in a few hundred.  Though he doesn't spend more time with most of his characters than Barker does with his in Rawhead Rex, he does eventually pick one.  Which makes the story infinitely more interesting.  Marty becomes that main character, the one you can get behind and root for.  He's immediately endearing, both in the way he needs the 4th of July and in his pure determination.  The fact that he is handicapped and still manages to fight off the beast is just icing on the cake for me.

But this is a class on monsters.  So how well is the werewolf done?  In the end he is pretty typical.  Slain by a silver bullet, shifting with the moon, all the usual tropes.  The one twist I found that interested me was the way it began to make the Reverend feel.  He didn't want to get rid of it.  Even after he knew what was going on, he made excuses to himself to keep it.  It was God's will after all.  This emotional twist was great.  As was the cause of the change in the first place.

But really this book is about the town, and the way the beast changes them.  Especially Marty.  And in that sense, King did an excellent job.  A really great read.

Rawhead Rex - Clive Barker

I've never read any Clive Barker, nor have I seen any of his movies.  So I didn't know what to expect going into this story.  I think it was partly because of this lack of preconceptions that it was such a roller coaster ride of love and hate for me.  First off, let me focus on the things I loved.

Barker's use of language and particularly description were exceptional.  I definitely felt like I was there with whatever character he was using at the time.  His initial descriptions of Rawhead himself were great and painted a very vivid image in my mind.  I also really enjoyed the entire opening sequence, with the man trying desperately to get this stupid rock out of his field only to awake the ancient evil and succumb to it.  It's a bit of a trope, but it is one I enjoy.

Unfortunately there was probably more about this story I didn't care for than things I enjoyed.  For one, I was just never really scared, or even creaped out by Rawhead.  Well I guess I can't say never.  Initially, I was.  He was a giant elder evil thing.  I had no idea what he knew or what he was capable of but he was obviously violent and hungry.  That was intimidating.  But the longer the story went on, the more I just didn't care about him.  After all, he was just a stupid giant that eats people and can't control his own urges.  There really wasn't anything frightening about that.  Barker seems to confuse disgusting, with horrifying.  And while Rawhead is certainly disgusting, even repulsive, he's really not very terrifying.

Then there is the way Barker brings about his creature's demise.  Burned by the fire that he caused.  And off stage at that.  Sure he's mobbed by people he could easily toss around like pillows before.  And sure he's somehow debilitated by a statue he admits has no real power.  But none of that would happen if he hadn't already, by his own stupidity, burned half his body.  It just wasn't satisfying.  I suppose you could say that his own ignorance of fire did him in the same as his first victim's ignorance, but it doesn't make it any more satisfying as a climax.

There was some good here, a lot of it actually, which caused me to enjoy whole scenes before just sighing my way through others.  For instance, the scene where the little girl screams and you just know its because Rawhead is there.  But wait, no.  He's at the car eating the boy.  I really liked that turn about.  Barker did an excellent job setting that up.  In fact I'd have to say that was my favorite part of the whole story.

Breeding Ground - Sarah Pinborough

     I love giant spiders.  I don't know what it is about them but I've always enjoyed watching movies about them.  Even regular sized spiders actually.  There is just something creepy about the long legs and multiple eyes and sucking the fluids out of people.  Not to mention the webs.  They just make great villains for me.



     So needless to say I was stoked about reading Breeding Grounds right from the moment I saw the cover.  Spiders, score!  And that enthusiasm carried me through most of the book.  I loved how the spiders came about.  Not the explanation of it, which I'll get to that in a bit.  But the way they were birthed out of people.  That was a bit original and suitably gross.  The way Matt was too preoccupied to notice the slow collapse around him was a nice touch that kept things hidden from me until just the right time.  And there were other aspects of the setup that was nice.  The image of Chloe standing in his living room eating raw meat, dribbling the blood down her chest, and "talking to Helena" was great.  I'll never forget that.



     Then we get to what effectively was part two.  Survival.  Scrounging for resources, meeting new friends, typical apocalypse survival stuff.  Again I thought Pinborough did a fine job here.  All of the actions made sense for the characters and their states of mind.  They keep Nigil around which is obviously a bad call but you really can't expect them to abandon him.  And most of all, the creepiness of the spiders just amps up.  They don't rush Katie, they can impede electricity in the vehicles, and they even follow them to wreck the vehicles as they cower inside a building.  They can even read minds!  I'm getting more and more interested.



     Then they all get to Hanstone.  And it all just falls off.  The tension Pinborough developed for over half the book just dies as they enjoy weeks of just hanging out safe behind electric fences.  Sure there's some bickering, but what happened to the awesome spiders!  Aren't they the villains?  Instead we shift gears to developing Nigil as a villain.  It just didn't work for me.  Sure, he's a jerk and I liked it when he finally snapped and the final showdown and all, but I just wanted more of the spiders she spent so many pages making me love.



     There is one other issue that irked me as well.  Questions.  The ones she answered that she shouldn't...  GMOs?  Really?  Deaf blood?  Really?  were bad enough.  But there were a slew that were never answered.  Why did it take so long for Katie to be affected?  If they can impede electricity, why didn’t they do so to the fence?  Why were the spiders so terrified of one dog?  I mean granted it's blood was acid to them but these spiders are smart enough to know to take out vehicles, I'm sure they could find one of their number prepared to sacrifice for the greater good.  And if all the men are erupting into spiders, aren't George and Matt hosed anyway?



    All of these just stole my enjoyment out of the ending and made it flat.  I'm not sure what I was expecting, but it wasn't what I got.  Which really disappointed me because the first half fed my every spider horror desire.  Now I need to watch Eight Legged Freaks to make up for it.