Book Review: Volk: A Novel of Radiant Abomination by David Nickle

Pros: interesting setting, fascinating story, complex depictions of and around black and gay characters

Cons: not particularly scary

Jason Thorn (aka Thistledown) flew planes over the trenches in WWI. After some bad times, he’s landed a job flying post in Africa. But the flight there is diverted to Bavaria, Germany, where an experiment has gone wrong. An experiment with a creature Jason has faced - and survived - in the past.

This is a direct continuation of Eutopia: A Novel of Terrible Optimism, picking up 20 or so years after that one ends. All of the survivors show up and play major roles in the book. It’s interesting seeing how their lives have progressed, but also sad, as some of them don’t recover from their ordeal as well as others.

It’s very interesting learning more about the jukes and their parasitic nature. Unlike with the first book, when you knew when the characters were under the creature’s influence, in this book characters often reexamine their memories to discover they’ve forgotten things or were completely unaware of them. It make most of them unreliable narrators, but imparts their feelings of confusion and hesitancy very well.

The plot is pretty interesting, trying to figure out what happened to Jason, who and what Orlok is, and whether the Nazi’s will get their ubermensch.

Several of the newly introduced characters are gay, which was handled well considering the location and period the book takes place (Germany and France in the 1930s). One of the gay characters considered it a disease and was looking for a cure, while others were more comfortable with who they were. For the most part the principle characters around them were supportive or, at least, not derogatory regarding them.

Race, obviously comes up given Doctor Waggoner is black and married to a white woman. Again, I was impressed with how that was handled, especially entering Germany. The introduction of the jazz band and the treatment of its members was well done, showing racism in a more individualistic rather than stereotypical manner.

I didn’t find the book particularly terrifying (unlike with the eugenics of the first one) despite the presence of Nazis and some horrible things going on. There are some uncomfortable scenes and the ending was unsettling.

It is a good sequel. It answers a lot of questions raised in the previous book and shows what happens to everyone. It also shows that however much you run, sometimes you can’t escape your past.

Book Review: The 'Geisters by David Nickle

Pros: creepy premise, well written

Cons: uncomfortable and potentially triggering subject matter

Anne LeSage is getting married, and while she often has trouble distinguishing between the feelings of fear and love, she's sure this is love.  But when things start to go wrong around her new husband, she's afraid the poltergeist that has haunted her all her life, and which she finally trapped as a teen after a terrible accident, has broken loose.  It doesn't want to go back in its box however.  And her husband's acquaintances don't want it to either, because they've got their own plans for her 'insect'.

This is a difficult book to review.  As a horror novel it definitely succeeds.  I found parts of the book, particularly Anne's early revelation that she can't distinguish between fear and love, terrifying.  Especially given how things turn out.

So what's the problem?  The plot revolves around a group of men trying to use poltergeists for... sexual purposes.  There are no real descriptions of abuse, but you know that abuse is happening, and that makes for an uncomfortable read.

The ending left me feeling somewhat ambiguous.  It fit the story, but I'm still not sure I liked it.  

In several ways this felt like a Stephen King novel, with great characterization and some chilling scares, without many details.  The fear is often in what you're not told.  Or not told explicitly.  And Nickle's good at leaving things to the reader's immagination.

David Nickle recently appeared on John Scalzi's Whatever talking about the book if you'd like more information about the book. 

New Author Spotlight: David Nickle

New Author Spotlight is a series designed to introduce authors with 3 books or less in the different SF/F subgenres.

Today's spotlight shines on David Nickle.

David Nickle's books include:

• The Claus Effect by Karl Schroeder & David Nickle (Tesseract Books)
• Monstrous Affections by David Nickle (ChiZine Publications)
• Eutopia: A Novel of Terrible Optimism by David Nickle (ChiZine Publications)

Here's the cover copy for Eutopia: A Novel of Terrible Optimism:

The year is 1911. In Cold Spring Harbour, New York, the newly formed Eugenics Records Office is sending its agents to catalogue the infirm, the insane, and the criminal - with an eye to a cull, for the betterment of all. Near Cracked Wheel, Montana, a terrible illness leaves Jason Thistledown an orphan, stranded in his dead mother''s cabin until the spring thaw shows him the true meaning of devastation - and the barest thread of hope. At the edge of the utopian mill town of Eliada, Idaho, Doctor Andrew Waggoner faces a Klansman''s noose and glimpses wonder in the twisting face of the patient known only as Mister Juke. And deep in a mountain lake overlooking that town, something stirs, and thinks, in its way: Things are looking up.

Eutopia follows Jason and Andrew as together and alone, they delve into the secrets of Eliada - industrialist Garrison Harper''s attempt to incubate a perfect community on the edge of the dark woods and mountains of northern Idaho. What they find reveals the true, terrible cost of perfection - the cruelty of the surgeon''s knife - the folly of the cull - and a monstrous pact with beings that use perfection as a weapon, and faith as a trap.

If you like historical fiction with a paranormal twist, you might also like:

• The Tomb (Repairman Jack) by F. Paul Wilson (Tor Books)
• Mr. Shivers by Robert Jackson Bennett (Orbit)
• The Terror: A Novel by Dan Simmons (Back Bay Books)

Author Interview: David Nickle

Novels: 

Eutopia: A Novel of Terrible Optimism

Monstrous Affections (collection of short stories)

The Claus Effect (with Karl Schroeder)

+ numerous short stories

Website: sites.google.com/site/davidnickle/mainpage

>What's Eutopia: A Novel of Terrible Optimism about?

Eutopia is a story set around the time that the eugenics movement was getting going in the United States - by odd co-incidence, exactly 100 years back from the time of the book's release. It's the story of two men - Andrew Waggoner, a black physician who finds himself working in Eliada, a mill town built on Utopian principles in northern Idaho; and Jason Thistledown, a young man who is the only survivor of a mysterious plague that wiped out his community in rural Montana. Jason arrives in Eliada, accompanying his aunt who rescued him from the plague town. Germain Frost is an early eugenicist, who's traveling America looking to catalog the weak, insane and criminal. Jason and Andrew uncover some very sinister goings-on in and around Eliada - monsters both human and otherwise.  In the end, they find things that could have near-apocalyptic implications. 

> Eutopia deals with some heavy subject matter, eugenics and racism.  Was it a difficult book to write?

It was difficult to write, as any novel is - but not because of the heaviness of the subject matter. I've always found eugenics to be a fascinating science - in part, because it really isn't a science. Its fundamental premise - that the fact that we can and do breed for certain traits in plants and animals means that we ought to be able to better our own species by doing the same with humans - is deeply flawed, and also deeply alluring. Who wouldn't want to make things better for us, the same way we make things better for cows? 

Of course, when we breed cows to be bigger and fatter and more docile, we're not making it better for the cows - we're making things better for we who eat the flesh and drink the milk.

We can breed cows and get away with it because they're a commodity. The idea that we can treat human beings as domesticated animals and do better that way marks a fundamental misreading of Darwinism - and it represents an even more fundamental moral blindness. I found this fascinating from the get-go, as I did the racism that really went hand-in-hand with the eugenics movement.

The racism was tough, but only inasmuch as I had to face the fact that if I was going to write about racism, I was going to have to write racist characters. Which meant employing some pretty ugly language. So far, nobody's complained -- but still, I flinch at that kind of talk. 

> What's the appeal of writing horror? 

I have been asked this question before, believe it or not. My stock answer is that horror's not - or shouldn't be - a genre; it should be an emotion that we invoke, when we write stories that are otherwise about people and the drama of their interactions in the world. So the real question is, why do I like invoking the emotion of horror in my stories about people and the world and so forth. And I think it's because horror is such a deliciously complex emotion; it's more than just being frightened at a shadow, or a tableau of gore.  It's a profound unease -- a sense that the world that we know is slipping away -- and something else is there underneath. And in experiencing that sense, I think that we open ourselves up to insights and epiphanies, that otherwise wouldn't be apparent.  

> Why do most of your stories take place in rural locales?

The thing about rural locales is, they can be dark. They're places where electricity is even now scarce; where smaller populations make things a lot simpler. And also - I just find the woods spooky, in a way that built-up areas aren't. They seem to be a place where dark, still magic comes to the surface. 

> Beyond the matter of length, do you find it easier to write short stories or novels? 

I find short stories easier, because I can understand how they work; and if they're not working, it's easier to see why. Novels are complexities layered on complexities. They're rewarding because of that, but once you get tangled up, it's a devil of a job getting untangled. 

> How is collaborating with another author different from writing stories on your own?

I've collaborated seriously with two writers - sf writer Karl Schroeder and horror scribe Edo van Belkom. Both collaborations were successful; my story with Edo, "Rat Food", won the Bram Stoker award the year it was published, and my story "The Toy Mill", written with Karl, won an Aurora Award and became the basis of a novel, The Claus Effect. So the big difference is that with the right collaborator, I can write award-winning stories - something I haven't replicated on my own.

But I think the biggest difference is that writer's block is harder to sustain with a collaborator. When you hit a tough spot in a plot all on your own, it's really just you against the blank screen. With a collaborator, you can brainstorm around a block until you're past it.

It's also really a pleasure, working with the right collaborator. You gain different insights into a story -- and the story itself gains the capacity to surprise you as a reader as well as an author.

> Does reporting on municipal politics influence your writing?

Generally I keep a church-and-state separation between my reporting work and my fiction work. During the day, I cover Toronto City Hall for the Toronto Community News group of newspapers; by night, I write terrifying stories about betrayal, hypocrisy and monstrosities... 

There are some who might say there's not much difference between those two things, come to think of it. And I did write one story (barely 500 words) called "The Mayor Will Make A Brief Statement and Then Take Questions", which was directly influenced by my love of city politics; another story, years back, "Extispicy", that mingled land-use planning with entrail-reading.

So it's all grist. 

> What made you want to be a writer?

I've wanted to be a writer from toddler-age on. My mom used to take dictation and write up my Captain Scarlet fan-fiction when I was tiny, in little books made from drawing-pad paper and string. So really, I've wanted to be a writer literally as long as I can remember. What made me want to be a one? Some trauma in the crib, is my best guess... 

> If you could, would you change places with any of your characters?

Have you _seen_ what happens to my characters? No. No. Just no.

> What was the hardest scene for you to write?

There is a hideous moment in the middle [of Eutopia] when Andrew Waggoner is faced with having to perform some serious back-woods gynaecological work. Without getting into spoilers, the chapter involved some detailed descriptions of a fairly nasty bit of surgery. I kind of freaked myself out.   

> Do you have any advice for hopeful authors?

There are the two obvious admonitions: first, read widely. Get a sense of the kind of story you love, and think about how the best of those stories work. Then put bum in chair, fingers on keyboard, and start writing, and then finish writing.

The next bit is based on my own experience. Find a writing workshop, with good writers not far off from your own level of expertise. Show those stories you've written to the workshop, and read the work of the other writers there. You'll be amazed how clarifying that process is, and how quickly you improve. It certainly worked for me, when I joined the Cecil Street Irregulars writing workshop, literally decades ago.

You must also, of course, send the story out to an editor with some hope of publication. But that goes without saying - doesn't it?

> How do you discipline yourself to write? 

Poorly. I tend to do better deep in project when I've got my eye on the end. Otherwise -- I'm as distractible as the next guy. 

REVIEW: Eutopia: A Novel of Terrible Optimism by David Nickle

Pros: excellent writing, courageous, tight ending

Cons: the supernatural aspect isn't as scary as the historically accurate parts

Eutopia takes place in the early 1900's when the eugenics movement was becoming popular with a certain type of people.  Mrs Frost, an agent of the Eugenics Records Office finds her nephew is the sole survivor of a plague ravaged frontier town.  She brings him with her to Eilada, Idaho, where an industrialist has started what he intends to be a utopic community.

But not everything's rosy in paradise.  The town's black doctor, Andrew Waggoner, has had a run in with the Ku Klux Klan and discovered that his colleague, Dr. Bergstrom has been keeping a 'Mr. Juke' in quarantine.  The more Dr. Waggoner learns of Dr. Bergstrom's actions and who, or what, Mr. Juke is, the more imperiled his life becomes.

Because Mr. Juke's family is coming to get him back.

For a novel that has such a horrifying supernatural creature at the heart of it, the true terror of the book was contained in the historically accurate parts.  It's hard to be afraid of made up monsters when the Klan and practicing eugenicists show up.  Indeed, when you see the unrepentant Mrs. Frost and delusional Dr. Bergstrom own up to their crimes, no fictional monster could possibly stand up to the horrors humans are willing to perpetrate on each other.

I call this novel courageous because Mr. Nickle focuses on a period of history most people pretend didn't exist.  The eugenics movement died after the holocaust showed the end result of such thinking.  But denying that sterilization happened in other nations (including Canada and the U.S.), as painful as it is to admit, denies the injustices done to people in the past due to racism and elitist thinking.  And allows the possibility of repeating such things.  Fiction allows us to examine issues we'd rather not, in the safety of the present, when we hope such occurrences will never be allowed to happen again.  In this way it reminds me of Blonde Roots, by Bernardine Evaristo, which flips history so Europeans are enslaved by Afrikaans.  It shows how racism can go both ways and only the conquerors decide what is right and who are the elite.

People will find reading this book uncomfortable, for the subject matter and the liberal use of the 'n' word.  We have whitewashed our history and no longer want to acknowledge the attitudes and language of the past.  Even the subtle put downs black men faced, like using Dr. Waggoner's Christian name when addressing him, rather than his title, are accurately represented in this book.

The ending is tight, bringing all three plot lines together in surprising ways.  It's an ending that is both satisfying, and thought provoking.

(Disclaimer: David Nickle is a regular at the bookstore where I work and provided my review copy.  Having said that, the book was so good and the topic so fascinating (in a horrifying way) that I read the 600 page history book the author researched while writing Eutopia, War Against the Weak by Edwin Black.  I highly recommend reading it.  It will open your eyes about racism and the holocaust in, well, rather unpleasant ways.)

Chiaroscuro Event: Cory Doctorow Comes To Town

The Chiaroscuro Reading Series' event consisted of authors David Nickle and Cory Doctorow.  Ken Schroeder was supposed to read as well, but was ill and couldn't make it.  The readings were great, followed by short Q&A sessions.  I particularly liked Cory Doctorow's response to a question about why so much science fiction written nowadays is focused on near future rather than far future.  He said something along the lines of science fiction being less about predicting the future and more about explaining the fears of the people of the period the books were written.  And we're certainly afraid of technological abuses on one hand and curtailed freedoms on the other (dystopian fiction anyone?).

All in all, it was a fun evening.

Their next event, The Robs Take Toronto, is Tuesday April 12th.

Book Review: Monstrous Affections by David Nickle

Pros: variety of stories, different lengths and wildly different subject matters, though provoking, unsettling

Cons: several stories require some thought to understand, with one being beyond my comprehension

This is a great collection of horror stories.  There's variety in length and subject matter, with most having horrifying twist endings of some sort that make you rethink what you believed was happening in the story.  Mr. Nickle brings in different mythologies, which was fun.  And they all deal with affection in one way or another, most regarding family and a few with other topics.

There were only two stories I didn't like and in one case that was because I didn't quite understand the ending.  With a few other stories it took some thought to realize their brilliance, which I did like.

Mr. Nickle uses your natural assumptions against you.  For example, you assume Janie in "Janie and the Wind" is a victim.  Turns out that's not entirely the case. 

My review code for short stories is ^^ for 2 thumbs, ^ thumbs up, v thumb down)

^^ "The Sloan Men" - Judith visits her boyfriend's parents and discovers the man she loves is not WHAT she remembers him as. A very unsettling story.

^ "Janie and the Wind" - Janie's husband gives her a beating and leaves her stranded without food on a small island in Georgian Bay.  A storm's coming and she's hungry.  I found it a little long and rather strange.  Great twist ending.

^^ "Night of the Tar Baby" - A father recently released from prison takes his two kids out to make a tar baby.  He uses the creature to teach those around him about anger management.  Another unsettling story, told from the young daughter's POV.

^ "Other People's Kids" - A rest stop lunch break turns weird when 13 year old Sam spots a kid with really sharp teeth.  A strange tale about growing up and leaving childhood behind.  Sam makes some interesting choices.

^^ "The Mayor Will Make a Brief Statement and Then Take Questions" - The mayor speaks of the city's grief over the murder of a young boy.  Surprisingly short and deeply profound - after a bit of thought.

^ "The Pit-Heads" - Four painters make a terrifying deal to improve their craft.  An interesting take on vampires.  Mr. Nickle's father, a painter, has done some paintings for the story.  You can read the story with the paintings online (under a creative commons license).  I managed to see the paintings just before reading this story, and they do make it come to life.

v "The Slide Trombone" - Three musicians at a cottage wonder how they knew to pick up the 4th, a trombone player whom none of them had met before.  I found this story confusing.

^^ "The Inevitability of Earth" - A man tries to find his grandfather to learn the secret of human flight.  Unsettling with a very creepy ending.

^ "Swamp With and the Tea-drinking Man" - A swamp witch is in for a very bad day, filled with regrets.  Another story that took some thought to figure out.

v "The Delilah Party" - An autistic teen accompanies some internet friends to a small party.  Deeply unsettling.

^^ "Fly in Your Eye" - Discusses a rather creepy medical condition.  Another very short and extremely creepy story.

^ "Polyphemus' Cave" - A man returning home for his estranged father's funeral sees a cyclops and hears an odd circus tale.  Originally published in Queer Fear 2, this is another unsettling story, about what horrifying things can happen in families when one person doesn't act the way other members would like them to.

^ "The Webley" - Two boys make up after a fight to deal with a threatening dog.  A look at how children act and their cruelties to one another.

It's a strong collection of thought provoking horror stories.  I look forward to reading his novel, Eutopia, out this May.

And if you want to get a feel for his storytelling, here's a video of the author reading "The Mayor Will Make a Brief Statement and Then Take Questions" from the book launch for Monstrous Affections held at Bakka-Phoenix Books in Toronto, November 2009.  The story intro starts at 1:30.