Review by Ida Vega-Landow

Sure, and if it isn’t another fine book by that fine Irish laddie, Patrick Thomas! This one is about another of the regulars at Bullfinch’s Bar, a forgotten Sumerian fire god who goes by the name Negral. He’s the chief of Hell’s secret police, 666th Precinct, who channels Humphrey Bogart. I kid you not; Negral is such a big Bogie fan that he manifests himself as a tall, dark man in a suit wearing a trench coat and a fedora. He talks tough like Bogie too, and doesn’t bother to tell his suspects their Miranda Rights. That’s because most of them are the damned souls who inhabit Hell, or the demons who own them. Satan thinks so highly of him that he gave him the right to investigate and interrogate any resident of Hell, answering only to His Satanic Majesty.

Despite his tough guy persona, Negral is really a nice guy at heart. When the devil isn’t looking, he performs random acts of kindness for any stray soul that deserves it. In this slim volume, whose front cover is colorfully illustrated by Patrick himself, you’ll find six stories of Hell’s Detective walking his beat in Hell and on Earth, rounding up the escaped demons and damned souls who are the rightful property of Satan, or helping the innocent souls escape from his clutches, making sure that the devil gets his due in return for refuge from wherever it is that forgotten gods go when they no longer have worshippers.

Patrick Thomas gives us a funny and touching account of life in Hell, consistent with Christian theology as well as some ancient folklore that has managed to survive to this day, along with Negral. Nobody escapes roasting in Patrick Thomas’ version of Hell; lawyers, politicians, bureaucracy, even supposedly sacred institutions like marriage. Speaking of which, wait till you meet the demon named Nupchuel, who specializes in punishing vow breakers, married people who cheat on their spouses. His realm looks like a ghastly Los Vegas wedding chapel, all the souls who end up there, male and female alike, are forced to marry him (they wear black, Nupchuel wears white) and promise to “honor, respect, and obey him without question or complaint”; the vows are enforced by a cursed wedding ring that can “electrocute, deep fry, freeze, and dismember among other things,” if the wearer is the least bit disobedient or tries to run away. While Nupchuel promises to “punish, torment, abuse, cheat, and otherwise make his spouse’s afterlife miserable”, starting with the wedding night. According to Negral, he’s been known to “line up his spouses twenty deep and perform his husbandly duties working his way from the outside in,” with a manhood—I mean a demonhood that’s “a combination piranha, chainsaw and jackhammer”. Ouch! Well, like Negral says, “Hell isn’t supposed to be pretty”.

If you think that’s bad, pray that you never end up as a contestant on Hell’s highest-rated reality show, No Survivors, where all the contestants are damned souls that are killed off one by one in various sadistic and painful ways for the amusement of the demonic audience. Oh, did I mention that there’s no death or unconsciousness in Hell? You can be raped, tortured, and killed in over a million ways, but you won’t stay dead or unconscious for long. Your wounds always heal, your missing body parts always grow back, and there’s always another demon waiting to take its turn tormenting you.

A small sample of stories from Negral’s casebook:

“Dysenfranchised” is about Negral’s search for a newly damned soul who has the power to put demon lords into a coma, earning herself the title of the Comanator.

“Dysembodied” is part two of a story from “Empty Graves”, Patrick’s collection of zombie stories, about a body-snatching demon that turns his victims into zombies so he can prey on the living. In this one, Negral gets help from two of New York’s Finest tracking down the living dead serial killer.

“Dysenchanted” tells how Negral helps out a hard-boiled dame with a body that won’t quit, a beautiful succubus named Bambi who wants him to find her lost virginity. If you think that’s weird, wait till you meet Balchain, the Lord of the Dance, a pink tutu-wearing demon who loves ballet.

Not to mention Myrth, a demon lord who looks like a clown and runs his Hellish realm like an amusement park, the sort that only the Addams family would love. (Imagine a merry-go-round with beautifully carved horses and other fantastic animals, but with the naked bodies of the damned impaled on the poles while the animals chew on them.) This clown prince of darkness appears in another story entitled “Dysconnected”, where he helps Negral track down The Great Betrayer, Judas Iscariot, Satan’s greatest prize, after the deceitful disciple is stolen from him. Not only does Negral find Judas, he helps him escape from Hell long enough to see Jesus and beg His forgiveness for the act of betrayal that resulted in His crucifixion. Does Jesus forgive him? Sorry, sweetheart, you’ll have to read the book to find out. Go ahead, buy “Lore and Dysorder” and get to know Hell’s Detective. It’ll be the beginning of a beautiful friendship.

Review by Ida Vega-Landow

While wandering through the dealers’ room at this year’s Fest for Beatles Fans at the Parsippany Hilton in March, I met a charming lady named Aviva Rothschild. She was selling copies of a book she had written, a privately published fanfic about the Beatles, along with homemade soap. I got two pieces of soap, shaped like a cat and an octopus, for free by buying the book, which was a big, pink tome. I wasn’t expecting anything other than your average piece of fanfic about my favorite British rock group, stretched to epic size. What I got was a lively romp that made “Magical Mystery Tour” look like an Afterschool Special. The author started this magnum opus 29 years ago and finally published it last year. I found it poignant that the story begins on April 11, 1980, eight months before John Lennon’s death in the real world. In this alternate universe of Ms. Rothschild’s, the Beatles are reunited on an alien world by a group of alien Beatle fans, who enjoy their music so much they want to thank them by giving them the gift of an adventure.

The adventure begins on the above date at 3:00 a.m. London time, with Paul McCartney sleeping peacefully with his wife Linda, while dreaming of sheep grazing in a pink field. But soon a giant hand brushes away the field and deposits Paul into a living room with a couple of comfy overstuffed chairs, a table full of snacks, and a wide-screen TV, which turns on as soon as he sits down and begins showing him scenes from various movies of men having adventures; cowboys and Indians, knights in armor, spacemen and so forth. This gets boring after a while, but there’s no remote, so Paul just has to put up with it until a shadowy humanoid figure materializes in the other chair and asks him how he likes the movie. After a short discussion about adventures, the alien gets Paul’s consent for him and his friends to send him on an adventure, and he proceeds to do so, after telling a stunned Paul that this is not a dream, but a “hypnagogic telepathic contact. It’s a lot less scary and intrusive when the subject is not used to telepathy…”

Shortly afterwards, Paul McCartney and John Lennon wake up on a grassy plain as younger versions of themselves, dressed in generic jeans and tee shirts, freshly shaven and shorn with their original Beatle haircuts, minus their wedding rings. Each of them suspects the other of having set him up in this bizarre scenario for a laugh; the ensuing dialog is painfully accurate, reflecting the hostility between the real John and Paul at the time. “This was one of Yoko’s little ‘instructions’, right?” an angry Paul says to John. “Don’t you have better sense than to do every daft thing she says? You take me home right bloody now or I’ll hit you with the biggest lawsuit you ever saw!” Poor John is as confused as he is. By the time the younger editions of George and Ringo join them (Ringo having been snatched from the set of “Caveman”, the movie he was making back then in Mexico, while George, newly converted to Hinduism, is convinced that he’s been sent on a mission by Krishna), it has finally sunken in that they are here, wherever here is, and they have to make the best of it. So all four of our lads from Liverpool, together again for the first time, go forth to explore this brave new world, which surely isn’t Earth.

It doesn’t take long for our lads to discover that the planet they’re on is called C’hou (pronounced cuh-HOW), where magic is as common as talent, and just as unequally distributed. The ruling class is a bunch of parasitic fascists who invaded and conquered the country years ago and now oppress the people with their phony religion because the symbol of the true religion, called the Vasyn, has been stolen by the local gods, disassembled and relocated in areas impossible to reach for ordinary mortals. That’s where our lads come in. One by one, they are given extraordinary magic powers—sometimes without even asking for them!—and gradually they learn what their mission is on this world: to recover the missing pieces of the Vasyn and put them back together.

Of course the lads like having magic powers, at first. But when it starts to sink in on them that their new talents could be quite a hindrance when they get back to their own world and their normal lives, well, that’s when disillusionment starts to set in, and their grand quest to save the world doesn’t seem so grand anymore. Sometimes they’re so busy fighting among themselves that they’re in more danger of beating each other up than they are of being beaten by the bad guys. It’s only when the bad guys start coming at them fast and furious to prevent them from recovering the Vasyn that the lads “come together” and start acting more like the Fab Four they used to be, one for all and all for one against the authority figures trying to keep them down.

Little do our lads know that their extraterrestrial fans are really a group of college students using them as subjects for their psych project, without their professors’ knowledge. After one timorous fan bows out because he’s a Goodie Two Shoes who can’t take the pressure of acting covertly, the remaining aliens, Varx and Shag (she’s a girl, but they’re both the same species, which seems to be part lizard and part bird), are forced to recruit an exchange student from another galaxy (who, from the brief description, seems to resemble a white slug) to help them continue their project. This geek(and I do mean geek, he makes Bill Gates look like a party animal)turns out to be a dedicated gamer, who decides to change the rules of the experiment behind the fans’ backs and put our lads into a perilous sword and sorcery adventure, starring one of his own most popular characters. Just when our lads have finally gotten the hang of their newfound powers, they find them being put to the test in the company of the most obnoxious swordsman you ever saw outside of Conan the Barbarian.

Dedicated Beatles fans everywhere will appreciate Aviva’s jaundiced view of gaming and the role of heroism in the modern world, as well as her realistic view of the Fab Four and how they would interact with each other after their split-up. Remember, despite their much vaunted musical talents, they were just four working class lads from Liverpool who got a lucky break when their music took off. That means they’re not quite as reverent toward traditional sword and sorcery tales as today’s generation. The Beatles were much too pragmatic to be swayed by mysticism—except for George, who became a Hindu because he craved spiritual values that he couldn’t find in Western religion. But even George was basically the same sensible, working class lad from Liverpool as the others, whose attitude toward their appointed task is more in the manner of “Let’s get this daft thing over with so we can go home” rather than “We must save these people to prove our moral superiority over the villains”. So they’re more anti-heroes than heroes. And they’re funny, too, even when they’re being stubborn, snotty, or downright stupid. In other words, our lads act like real people, not idealized heroes out of epic tales like “Lord of The Rings” or “Star Wars”.

This has got to be the best book of Beatles fiction I’ve read since “Paul Is Undead: The British Zombie Invasion” by Alan Goldsher, which I reviewed last year. Now that was a riot, the Beatles as zombies. Granted, most of the humor was dark, to the point of being gross at times, but a splendid time was had by all in the novel. I’d have to say the same for Aviva’s book. In fact, I’m looking forward to her latest reissue, in which she promises to include illustrations of the lads along with her original characters as well. To get a copy of this big, pink tome, just go to: www.rationalmagic.com/Strings/Strings.html
There you can either buy the book or read the half that’s online. Oh, by the way, the author is already working on a sequel. Let’s hope she has more luck publishing this one. And I hope you have as much fun reading “With Strings Attached” as I did. When you’ve finished the book, look her up on her Facebook fan page and let her know how much you liked it.

Review by Ida Vega-Landow

This has got to be the most whimsical fantasy/horror novel I’ve read since I discovered Murphy’s Lore. The protagonist claims to be the oldest man in the world and calls himself Adam; he may or may not be “the” Adam, the father of us all, but he’s certainly quite a character. According to him, “My earliest memory is something along the lines of fire good, ice bad, so I think I predate written history. . .I like to brag that I’ve been there from the beginning, and while this may very well be true, I generally say it just to pick up girls.”

There’s no doubt that Gene Doucette has come up with a modern version of Mel Brooks’ 2,000 Year Old Man, but with a more laidback attitude, as well as a strong sense of survival. First of all, he has a Swiss bank account and seven passports, so he can pull up stakes and move on whenever he gets tired of staying someplace, or if he’s already stayed there long for people to notice that he’s not aging. Secondly, he’s a party dude who loves to drink, talk and screw, usually with young people of collage age. He looks barely thirty himself, so he usually fits right in. (And he always pays for the drinks, which makes him very popular.) Thirdly, he has the ability to change his skin and hair color so he can look like the predominant racial group of whatever region he’s in. He’s also multilingual and can speak all the major languages of Europe as well as North and South America.

He’s very chummy with vampires, as they’re the only other immortals he knows (with one exception) who never age. He’s also familiar with cute magical beings like pixies, as well as not-so-cute ones like demons. But to Adam, the most unforgettable immortal being, as well as the most elusive, is the beautiful red-haired woman he keeps getting glimpses of throughout his long life. She never says anything, just looks at him with her haunting blue eyes. But the moment he takes his eyes off of her, she disappears. She’s been doing this for ten thousand years now and he’s become obsessed with her, but he can never get close enough to her to start a conversation.

But everything changes for Adam the morning he wakes up in Boston after crashing a college kegger party. While recovering from his hangover, he gets to know his hosts, two college boys named Gary and Nate. He crashes with them long enough to become friends with them (as long as he’s paying for the booze), then one evening he goes out for a walk, meets a vampire hooker named Brenda and spends the night with her. While he’s out, Gary and Nate are murdered by a demon that’s been sent to find Adam and bring him back alive. But who hired the demon and why does he want to find Adam so badly? And why are all these human bounty hunters suddenly turning up wherever he goes, all trying to capture “the immortal man” and bring him in alive for a generous reward?

Even Adam’s little Ifrit friend Jerry, who also turns up at Gary and Nate’s apartment to tell him about the latest sighting of the mysterious red-haired woman, eventually turns on him and helps a bounty hunter trap him. Of course Adam doesn’t stay caught for very long, but it’s still very annoying having to elude or escape from all these jerks while trying to discover who had his young friends killed and why do they want him so badly. With the help of a young lady named Clara, who’s a member of an underground fan club that follows “the immortal” from city to city, he eventually tracks down the fellow who so desperate to get his hands on him.

Turns out it’s an amoral millionaire who’s desperate to be immortal too, and thinks his pet scientists will find a way to synthesize Adam’s immortality for him, as well as for whoever else is willing to pay the price. Adam has no desire to become somebody’s science project, but since the millionaire bad guy in question has the mysterious red-haired woman Adam loves as his prisoner, as well as his new friend Clara, Adam has no choice but to cooperate. But only until he comes up with a plan to free himself and the ladies, which involves another new friend of his, a pixie named Iza, as well as an old friend that the bad guy is also holding prisoner. He doesn’t know about Adam’s connection to this person, but when he does, he’s going to regret the day he ever laid eyes on them both. Regret it in a very big way.

If you like modern fantasy with a touch of realism, similar to my home boy Patrick Thomas and his “Murphy’s Law” series, I definitely recommend “Immortal” by Gene Doucette, a native of Cambridge, MA who, from his description of NYC, sounds as if he’s spent a lot of time here. He may also be familiar with Mel Brooks and his 2,000 Year Old Man, as well as with the aforementioned Patrick Thomas. But whoever he gets his inspiration from, the result is one seriously funny book.

Review by Ida Vega-Landow

Fans of “The X Files” will be happy to know that there is a worthy literary equivalent in Patrick Thomas’ Agent Karver, a former serial killer who works for the Department of Mystic Affairs. They are the government agency run by Uncle Sam himself, in charge of protecting America from all supernatural threats. Their slogan is “When darkness falls, the DMA picks up the pieces”. Agent Karver has quite a history. He was once possessed by a demon who forced him to go on a killing rampage, until the DMA caught up to him. After exorcising the demon, they pretended to execute him, even allowing the families of his victims to witness his “death” so that they could have closure. They then spirited him away, gave him a new face courtesy of their resident fleshsmith (that’s a mage who can reshape the human body without surgical instruments), then inducted him into the DMA under a new name.

Actually it’s a variation of his old name, at least the one he went by when he was on his killing spree; then he was known as The Carver, a sexual sadist who cut his victims to pieces, sometimes eating them as well. When he became an agent, he insisted upon calling himself Karver with a K, so that he would never forget what he had done and what he had to atone for. Even though he was only an unwilling passenger in his own body, his consciousness held hostage and forced to watch while the demon used his body to commit all kinds of atrocities against men, women, and children, he still feels the burden of these deaths upon his soul. He hopes for redemption someday, but the question is, how many good deeds are necessary to make amends for all the bad deeds you’ve done?

Karver’s partner, Mandi Cobb, is a pretty blonde lady and an empath, able to sense the emotions of those around her. She can also project her own emotions onto people, which comes in handy for calming belligerent suspects and unruly crowds. She co-stars with him in these stories, eleven in all, nine of which were written by my homeboy Patrick Thomas of Murphy’s Lore fame. Two of them were co-written by Patrick and a couple of collaborators well-known to the sci-fi community, C.J. Henderson and John L. French. Not wanting to spoil anything for future readers, all I can do is recommend a few of my favorites.

The most poignant is “Zombie and Spice”, already included in a couple of Patrick’s other anthologies. “Zombie and Spice” is about a creepy stalker courting a woman by sending her dead animals that have been made into zombies. Agents Karver and Cobb are assigned to the case at Karver’s request because the woman, Lucy Paxton, was the mother of one of The Carver’s victims, a little girl named Winnie. He’s still trying to make amends for the evil he’s done in any way he can. But when Winnie Paxton turns up as a zombie while Karver and Cobb are staking out her mother’s house, Karver has to confront his past when he sees one of his own dead walking. The stalker turns out to be an extremely disturbed fellow who uses a magic talisman, a knife that can turn living things into zombies when you stab them with it. What’s even more disturbing is that once Karver gets the talisman away from the suspect, he can use it to control the zombie child as easily as the creep can, but Mandi can’t, for a simple but tragic reason; the only person who has more power over a zombie than the mage that raised it is the person who killed it.

The second most poignant tale is “Ask Not”, which is about the ghost of President Kennedy. Apparently his restless spirit needs to be exorcised every few years by the oldest DMA agent, a charming fellow named Sarge who’s had an enchanted gem embedded in his chest since World War I that makes him as powerful as a tank. He’s also Karver’s mentor, who helps the younger agent over the rough patches in their cases. Sarge is a pragmatic fellow, the kind who does what he has to do to defend his country and its citizens from evil, natural and supernatural, without compromising his values or his humanity in the process. Or, as he explains to Karver, “We do what we can to make sure the bad guys don’t win and try not to become the bad guys in the process.”

Those of you who are conspiracy buffs will not be surprised to learn that Oswald wasn’t the only one involved in Kennedy’s assassination, but apparently the real truth is so awful that even the Warren Commission didn’t dare print it, for fear that it would destroy our country. Everything you’ve read in the Warren Commission’s report was censored for public consumption. According to Sarge, an uncensored version was hidden in the Texas School Book Depository for the sake of posterity. If you can find it, you’ll discover who really killed JFK and why. But of course if you do, the DMA will have to kill you. No, not really, they’ll just make you disappear. If you’re lucky, you’ll reappear in another part of the country with a new identity and a new memory, with no recollection of your former life. If you’re not lucky, you’ll find yourself a permanent guest of the U.S. Government, in a maximum security facility.

Going from the sublime to the ridiculous, the silliest tale is “Get A Room”, about a cheap motel in Tennessee that’s a “hot spot” for evil. Bad things and bad people seem to be attracted to the Harvest Moon Motel like flies to horse manure, because it’s a nexus for evil, like Sunnydale, home of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. When Agents Karver and Cobb report for duty there, they spend the whole day running around from one room to the other, trying to stop two ritual sacrifices and a summoning intended to open a wormhole into another dimension, as well as stumbling on a sado-masochistic orgy. This is after they take out the giant lizard in the pool that’s noshing on guests. Some days it just doesn’t pay to get out of bed.

There are other evil things and people in this book that will keep you glued to the pages. A fairy kidnapper who abducts baby boys, a sickening story of child pornographers who star in their own movies because they’re all adults cursed with eternal youth, a heartless mage whose hidden heart provides vengeance for a jealous husband and drives a lonely, abused little boy to the edge of tragedy, a Chinese psychic whose talent makes Mandi’s look like a cheap carnival trick, but who lives like a recluse because she is so sickened by the evil that lurks in the hearts of men, which she can both see and feel thanks to her gift, or curse. The last story, “The Tall Man Cometh”, is an apocalyptic one about a mysterious stranger who comes to a small town in Colorado and drives all its residents mad, just to amuse himself until Doomsday, which is likely to come sooner than everyone thought, on account of who the stranger really is. Patrick Thomas tells all these tales with his usual mix of solemnity and humor, keeping everything light enough to avoid scaring you too much, yet serious enough to make you believe everything he says. He’s so believable it’s unbelievable. Check out his website, www.patthomas.net, to order a copy of this book, or go to www.padwolf.com for your copy of “Dead to Rites”. Yes, the truth is out there, but people seldom believe it because it’s so much stranger than fiction. This is why hard truths are so often told in fictional form, to make it easier for regular folks like us to believe them.

Review copy provided by publisher

Review by Ida Vega-Landow

This is your standard coffee table book; that is, an oversized volume full of colorful pictures meant to amuse guests while they wait for you to make coffee or finish getting dressed. But if your guests are real horror fans or just totally into Hammer films, you may end up spending the night at home going through the pages of this humongous book, admiring all the brightly colored old movie posters and going, “Oh, I remember that one! Scared the hell out of me when I was a kid!” or “Yeah, what a stinker that one was. The poster sure had me fooled.”

With a brief introduction by the author in teeny-weeny print, the majority of the book’s pages are lovingly devoted to faithful reproductions of Hammer Film’s vintage movie posters, the same ones you remember seeing in the lobby of your local movie theater while you were growing up. Some of these posters are so old, they had to be copied from someone’s private collection. Sadly, the posters are usually the first thing to go when a feature changes. Smart theater employees usually save at least one copy for themselves, or to sell or pass on to someone else who loved the movie.

The poster designs vary depending upon which country the film was released in (the movies were released in France, Belgium, Italy and Spain, as well as in their native England). The titles weren’t always translated word for word either; I got a chuckle out of seeing how some of my childhood horror favorites were translated into Spanish and Italian. I still remember enough of my high school French to marvel at the transliteration of “The Mummy”, released in 1959, to “La Malediction Des Pharaons.” The Italians got even sillier when they translated “Quatermas 2″ aka “Enemy from Space” (U.S. title, 1957) into “Vampiri dello Spazio.” At least the French came close when they retitled “Curse of The Werewolf” (1961); it became “La Nuit Du Loup-Garou” (The Night of The Werewolf).

The popular British movie studio was renowned for its horror films back in the day; what day depends upon which era you grew up in. The table of contents lists every era from the 50’s to the 80’s, so no matter what era you grew up in, you’re sure to find a few of your old favorite movies listed in this book. I was surprised to see that Hammer Studios made comedies as well, though I don’t remember seeing any of them in the United States. I guess they just weren’t as popular here as the horror movies. But who could forget the cinematic classics that made Christopher Lee famous as Dracula, and Peter Cushing as his nemesis Van Helsing. Not to mention the sensuous and sexy Ingrid Pitt, recently deceased, whose role as Carmilla/Mircalla in “The Vampire Lovers” (1970) was an inspiration to lovers of vampires everywhere, especially lovers of girl-on-girl action.

Of course no good horror movie can be released without some controversy, otherwise known as free publicity. Both official and self-appointed censors and protectors of public morals in all the aforementioned countries were quick to denounce Hammer Films for “their vulgarity and corrupting influence.” They also denounced the posters for their lurid content, especially the Women In Peril themed ones showing beautiful girls (often anonymous models with only the vaguest resemblance to the heroine, or anyone else in the movie) shrinking away from the monster, when they weren’t unconscious and being carried away in its arms or paws. The most controversial poster was the one for “The Camp on Blood Island” (1958), which was about the brutal mistreatment of allied prisoners in a Japanese POW camp during World War II; the film was severely criticized for its racist depiction of the Japanese. The original poster, showing a menacing Japanese soldier waving a samurai sword, was even banned in London and replaced with a new one commissioned by the studio, showing only the bottom half of the soldier with his hands clutching a sword.

All in all, “The Art of Hammer” is a refreshing piece of nostalgia for all lovers of classic horror films released by the venerable Hammer Studios. Collectors of classic films and their related memorabilia should find this an invaluable guide to the authenticity of any posters they dig up at a horror con or an antique shop. The only thing that would have made the book better, in my opinion, would have been a brief description of what each movie was about beneath each poster. It would have to be in the same teeny-weeny type as the introduction, but hey, we’re talking about posterity here! The present generation may not be as familiar with these beloved monsters as we are, and it would help to be able to tell Junior and Sis exactly what that lady in the picture is screaming about and why that man looks like a vampire, or werewolf, or zombie, etc. Or just give the kids the book and let them go through it on their own while you’re channel-surfing for something good to watch on some dark and dreary night. The kids might even end up urging you to rent or buy the movie in question so they can see it for themselves. And who could possibly object to exposing kids to popular culture, except the same official and self-appointed guardians of public morals who dissed these films when they were new?

Review by Ginger Mayerson

This is the first of two books and CDs to teach pre-school to grammar school to read music, or at least introduce them to western music notation. There are some nice illustrations of Freddie the Frog’s home terrain, which is shaped like a treble cleft and staff lines. Each line of the staff has a place of interest in the story: F above middle C is Freddie’s home; A is for a bank of azaleas; C is for crocodile river, and so on. The story has a little suspense – a frog is swallowed by a crocodile but gets coughed up – I suppose most children would enjoy it. The storytelling on the CD was pleasant, although I found Freddie’s voice a little irritating, it didn’t make me turn the CD off. I think this is a very sweet book, but I do wonder how this book can teach kids much about music other than the look of the cleft and the names of some of the notes. There’s a disconnect here between the name of the note and the sound of the note. Written music means nothing if it’s not heard, whether in the ear or in the mind. No where that I could find in this book was the note tone ever played or sung or aurally presented as special in any way I was aware of. To me, that’s the map without the territory. I think if there had been a catchy little tune played enough for the kid to remember it and then at the end the tune was notated and the kid was asked to sing along, that would have make me a lot happier with the book. On the plus side, I that it does introduce the look of music, so the first time the music teacher puts a piece of written music in front of them, the kids are likely to feel at home with it already. That would be good, but I don’t think it will shave any time off ear training and sight singing practice. The other thing that bothered me was that this book didn’t cover the entire treble cleft: it left out G, B, and D. I realize these notes weren’t part of the story, but I think they should at least have been included on the staff at the end of the book.

Freddie the Frog and the Bass Cleft Monster
2nd Adventure: Bass Cleft Monster
by Sharon Burch
Illustrated by Tiffany Harris
Published by Mystic Publishing
ISBN 0-9747454-8-0
Review copy provided by publisher

Review by Ginger Mayerson

I was happier with the second book in the Freddie the Frog series. All the notes in the bass (or F) cleft were memorably covered in a wacky story with a scary moment at the end that turns out to be a dream. It’s nicely done: the pages for the notes have the note on a smaller piece of paper that is lifted or folded back to reveal the note character or icon. Such as Annie the Ant for A below middle C. I still think they needed a catchy little tune for the kids to learn and then associate with the written music. I’m not sure why there was a Reggae version of the alphabet song on the end of the CD, but there was. There were a few other sing-along types songs as the end of the CD. Singing is always good, but these songs aren’t connected to anything in the book and I didn’t feel they advanced the learning experience. There are also outtakes at the end of the CD that were just goofy and unnecessary and I have no idea why they were included.

After the holidays, I’m going to seek out someone with a little kid and see if their kid gets more out of this than I did. I always find the kid point of view so fascinating. Until then my opinion is that these are nicely produced and illustrated books that don’t teach as much music or teach it as well as I think they should or could, but might be amusing for a child in the target age group.

Website: www.freddiethefrogbooks.com

Review by Pet Leopard

Interesting perspective on the time period and very original. From the point of view of Anne Boleyn, the author stayed faithful to first person perspective. In such a way, we were able to see the world as she saw it.

The quite ‘accidental’ messing with history seemed like only a footnote. The hanging of the Queen was used as an effective plot device, whose falsity did not get in the way of the main story.

The process of transformation of the Queen from human to vampire is one item of contention. The message was put forth that by simply having doubts in one’s faith at the moment of death is enough to transform a good Christian woman into a fiendish she-devil creature. One moment of renunciation of faith under circumstances of complete hopelessness is enough to wipe out a whole life of good? That is the one item in the story that I have trouble with.

I could get by that particular ‘chink in the armor’ by realizing one fact that was true to history. The human version of Anne did a great many things to hurt and backstab countless numbers of other people in order to get to the position that she achieved. The author’s one point of unbelievability was that Anne never really wanted to be the Queen.

Indeed, if I were to avoid the issue of good deeds being alleviated by an executionary renunciation of faith, I am given to believe that some of that evil that finally changed Anne had, indeed, quite possibly existed before she died. The evil that was within her was changed to a more powerful form, no doubt, after she was transformed. However, the devil does not have the power to create evil from goodness. He can only build on the evil that is already there. Enough said about that…

It is true that Henry was the true villain of the story. However, history tells us that his court of advisors was just as guilty. The issue of producing a male heir became paramount to cementing the power of the Lancastrian Tudor family. The house of York needed to be kept down. If the male Tudor line ended with Henry VIII, the shift of power could swing dangerously backwards. So, clearly corruption and evil were already in place in Henry’s court, even before Anne came on the scene.

The fact that she was wronged is an issue that nobody would question. Her mission in the afterlife, however, was somewhat one-sided. Granted, that she had legitimate cause to kill the people who wronged her, she did not have much of a plan beyond that.

I don’t believe that there was enough of an effort on her part to further her daughter Elizabeth to get to the throne. Nor did it occur to her that by killing, controlling and manifesting her undead power, she might be thought of as a witch. Hence, Elizabeth’s position as Anne’s daughter would be threatened in the matter of her possible ascension to Queen.

That having been said, the power behind the throne was just not there after Jane’s death. Jane herself escaped the evil by dying young. Probably that was true enough. Anne’s revenge was properly not geared toward her.

Reading about how the officials of Henry’s court go down, one by one, was like watching a stack of dominoes go down, one after the other. A certain sense of justice was put into motion, which made the story more a case of cause and effect, rather than a historical shift of power. Very effectively done, may I add…

The reader gets to know the good qualities of Anne, which most likely existed while she was young and innocent. It is very much a possibility that she became evil as a product of the way that she was brought up, trained and her placement in society. Indeed, just surviving in Henry’s court was a matter of having an edge over everybody else. Clearly, Anne never achieved that edge.

She never quite realized though, that everything that happened to her was beyond her control. No matter how many people that she avenged herself upon, it just created more evil, more innocent victims and made it more difficult for her to achieve her ultimate goal.

The re-creation of Anne at the end of the story as she was killed a second time was marvelously done. She was purged of whatever evil was within her. Just by letting go of her anger and letting history take its course, she was able to achieve what she truly wanted.

She finally was able to embrace true inner peace and reconciliation with her family. History took its course and all of Henry’s evil with its poisonous effects were gradually reversed. Elizabeth became one of England’s most powerful queens, one who truly embraced the best qualities of her mother, Anne Boleyn.

Good work by the author, in bringing the story roundabout from the supernatural to history as we know it.

Overall Grade: “B”

Review by Ida Vega-Landow

Horror and sci-fi have been combined in an unholy and hilarious alliance by Kevin David Anderson and Sam Stall, both admitted “lifelong science fiction geeks and proud of it”. Inspired by George Romero and Gene Roddenberry, these fanboys have created the ultimate no-win scenario, one that makes the Kobayashi Maru look like deciding between Coke and Pepsi.

Demonstrating a droll insiders’ sense of humor, as well as a tribute to the well-known and well-loved characters of Classic Trek, the novel’s protagonist is named Jim Pike (a combination of Jim Kirk and Christopher Pike, both captains of the U.S.S. ENTERPRISE in Classic Trek). He’s a veteran of two tours of duty in Afghanistan, courtesy of the U.S. Army; now an assistant manager at the Botany Bay Hotel and Conference Center in downtown Houston, Texas. Actually he’s little more than a glorified bellhop, whose six-foot, two-inch, 220 pound body allows him to motivate employees to do their jobs properly, like the creepy pool guy who keeps leering at female guests, until Jim ‘motivates’ him never to do it again. Once a major Star Trek fan, after losing a couple of his men in an ambush in Asadabad, Jim lost faith in himself and in humanity. He now regards Star Trek as cynically as any mundane with a so-called life.

That all changes on a hot, sultry August weekend when the Fifth Annual Star Trek GulfCon is held at the hotel. Hundreds of costumed Star Trek fans show up, while dozens of hotel employees start calling in sick, or leaving work early on account of injuries that won’t stop bleeding. Not only that, but people start going missing; Trekkies and hotel employees alike keep going out for a smoke or on an errand and not coming back. By a strange coincidence, the nearby Johnson Space Flight Center has been locked down after a gas leak, which was really a terrible accident involving experimental test subjects from space that have broken loose. Turns out that exposure to these E.T.’s causes people to become zombies.

Then our hero’s only sister, Rayna, arrives with her boyfriend Matthew Stockard aboard a RV tricked out to look like a rolling version of the U.S.S. ENTERPRISE (named the U.S.S. STOCKARD after its obnoxious owner), a cute Vulcan science officer named T’Poc, and a fat, lumpy nerd named Gary who’s got “red shirt” written all over him. Before the weekend is over, three out of four of these people will be dead, the Botany Bay Hotel will be filled with zombies, and Jim Pike, as the only one with real military experience, will be forced into the hero’s role as he tries to lead a motley crew of fanboys and fangirls out of the zombie-infested hotel to the dubious safety of the highway leading to the next town, before the Men In Black at the former space center nuke the whole Houston area to cover up their mistake.

In addition to our hero and the hapless crew of the U.S.S. STOCKARD, there are also extras to fill the obligatory roles in your standard sci-fi/zombie movie. A beautiful six-foot model dressed as Princess Leia Organa in a gold metal bikini plays the love interest; Jim finds her chained to a bed in a hotel room while doing a reconnaissance on a zombie-infested floor, after her photographer friend went outside to see what was making all the commotion in the hallway and didn’t come back. There’s also a Klingon named Martock played by a professional weapons dealer who’s forced to use one of his own bat’liths to defend himself after his assistant goes zombie on him. The part of the brilliant scientist is played by Dr. Sandoval, an exobiologist from Harvard University who was supposed to be the keynote speaker at the con, and who also happens to bear an uncanny resemblance to VOYAGER’s holographic doctor. And of course we have the obligatory red shirt played by Ensign Willy Makit, who also happens to be the only surviving member of the West Texas Red Tunic Club, which he describes as “A once-proud organization formerly boasting a membership of eight.” Six of them croak without ever meeting a zombie, thanks to a series of ill-timed accidents. One of them actually went down to the lobby to see what was going on—alone, of course—and presumably met the crowd of living dead Trekkies who managed to persuade the hotel’s manager into letting them in through the barricaded Plexiglas fire doors. Oh yes, it seems that the zombies, or at least the extraterrestrial inhabitants of their bodies, are able to use mind control to trick people into helping them.

Horror and humor and Star Trek trivia abound in this literary tribute to two of the most popular genres in fandom. It’s a quick read, but a satisfying one, if you don’t get grossed out easily by blood and brains. The zombies our hero and his party encounter all meet with satisfyingly violent ends, thanks to a combination of guns, Tasers, and homemade bat’liths and lirpas. There’s also a way to kill them that doesn’t require damaging the host body, any more than it’s already been damaged by the zombie who was noshing on it before it transformed, anyway. But rest assured, you’ll enjoy “Night of the Living Trekkies” as much as a blooper reel at your favorite Star Trek convention. It’s that good. Or that bad, depending on how big a purist you are. If you’re a Trekkie who’s easily offended by irreverence toward your favorite fandom, don’t buy this book. But if you’re a more laidback Trekker who can take a joke, take this book with you on the long ride to your next con. Or just have it on hand for the next three-day weekend in case your local TV station doesn’t have a Star Trek marathon scheduled. In either event, may you laugh long and prosper.

Review by James Mowery

The back copy on Ian Sansom’s “mystery” novel, “The Case of the Missing Books,” claims that its protagonist, Israel Armstrong, is “one of literature’s most unlikely detectives.” The sneer quotes here are intentional, though not meant to be especially sneering – consider, instead, that they may simply be telling.

The plot, such as it is, centers around Israel’s arrival in the grim, seaside northern Irish town of Tumdrum, where (he thinks) he has been given a plum job as the head library of the Tumdrum and District Library. It turns out, however, that he is, in fact, the Head Learning Facilitator of the Tumdrum and District Mobile Learning Center – a mobile library, the van for which is, at the time of his arrival, being used a chicken coop. He finds, then, that the room that has been arranged for him is also a chicken coop, on a dysfunctional farm not far from Tumdrum itself.

Then Israel discovers that the entire collection has disappeared.

The story moves with a certain lackadaisical, ramshackle charm, dealing in stereotypes kindly applied. Certainly, the residents of Tumdrum are stereotypes, but so is Israel himself: He is a proud holding of a B.A. (Hons) in English and American Studies, and he flaunts it gloriously, self-consciously name-dropping the greats of twentieth-century literature. His antics, and his scrapes against local culture, form the bulk of the narrative.

In fact, the greatest flaw in “The Case of the Missing Books” is not really a flaw of the book itself at all: It’s a flaw in the packaging. Israel Armstrong, vegetarian librarian and unlikely detective, scarcely does a thing to solve the case. It doesn’t really matter, though: Sansom’s style and characterization are winning enough on their own.

About the author: James Mowery is a computer geek that writes about technology and related topics. To read more blog posts by him, go to led tv.

Review by Ida Vega-Landow

And so we come to the tenth book in the Southern Vampire series. I don’t think it’s jumped the shark yet (a cultural reference to the popular TV sitcom “Happy Days” and the episode where Fonzie jumped over a penned shark–on a surf board, not his beloved motorcycle–in the final season), but it’s getting closer and closer. You can see the fin on the distant horizon. The time is rapidly approaching when Ms. Harris will no longer have anything to say about or do with these characters. This will be a pity, because I love ‘em all.

Don’t get me wrong, I still enjoy the series. I love seeing what Sookie gets into next and how her creator reinterprets traditional monsters into the monsters of today. You have to admit, it’s certainly innovative using Felipe De Castro and his evil cohort Vincent Madden, the vamps from Vegas who took over Queen Sophie’s territory of Louisiana by slaughtering her and all her supporters, to symbolize ruthless corporate takeovers. Vampires definitely have the killer instinct to survive and thrive in today’s corporate world. But I think Ms. Harris is running out of steam. Since she killed the fairies in the last book, among them Claudine, Sookie’s beloved “fairy godmother” as well as her cousin, it just hasn’t been the same.

Even Sookie admits to being at loose ends at the beginning pf the book as she says goodbye to her housemate Amelia, the witch from New Orleans, when she goes back to the Big Easy to face judgment from her coven for turning her boyfriend into a cat. Her brother Jason has gotten over the death of his were panther wife enough to start dating again, an ordinary gal who doesn’t change into anything but finds it sexy that he does. Still recovering from the wounds she received in the Fae War from Neave and Lochlan, those two crazy fairies who kidnapped and tortured her, Sookie finds herself leaning on her vampire boyfriend Eric Northman for emotional support. The problem is that vampires don’t do emotion very well. When they do, it’s usually very intense, the kind that goes with hunting, fighting, and sex. Ever since the Vegas Takeover, Eric’s been having to watch his back lest his new boss find an excuse to take him out and replace him as sheriff with one of his own people. This doesn’t give him much time to be as supportive as Sookie would like.

Just when Sookie is feeling really low, her fairy cousin Claude Crane (and I mean fairy in every sense of the word!) shows up, baggage in hand. He says he’s lonely living in that big old house by himself since his sisters died (he was one third of a set of fairy triplets, one of them Claudine) and he asks if he can stay with her for a while. Well, Sookie doesn’t have much family and she cherishes the few relatives she does have left, so she lets Claude move in so she can have family around, as well as for Claudine’s sake. Then she gets a call from another cousin, the husband of her late cousin Hadley, asking if she can take care of his and Hadley’s little boy Hunter overnight while Daddy goes to a funeral. In addition to being her late cousin’s son, little Hunter also shares Sookie’s gift of mind reading, which he needs help learning how to use, to keep from embarrassing Daddy and endangering himself. So Sookie welcomes her little cousin, whom she encourages to call her aunt. She, Hunter, and Claude then spend a peaceful day together, which helps her regain some emotional balance.

Just when Sookie’s starting to have fun with family, Eric’s family shows up as well. Unfortunately, his relatives aren’t as much fun as hers. It seems Eric’s maker is in town. Not the one on the TV show; he’s an ancient Roman vampire named Appius Livius Ocella, who’s been alive since the time of Christ, but doesn’t have much use for His philosophy. And he’s brought along his latest “child”, a fourteen-year-old Russian prince who was supposed to have died during the Russian Revolution. That’s right, folks, Eric’s dad turned Alexei Romanov, the son of Tsar Nicholas and Tsarina Alexandra! And it seems that due to the trauma of being brutally murdered and seeing his family murdered as well (No, his sister Anastasia did not survive, never mind all the movies), poor Alexei isn’t wrapped too tight. So between her own family problems and Eric’s, Sookie’s plate is pretty full.

Oh, did I mention that there’s still one fairy left in the mortal world who’d like to kill her? Not to mention a nosy FBI agent who keeps showing up when he’s least wanted, trying to prove that Sookie’s not human. I believe it has something to do with the recent coming out of the weres, or two-natured, whom she also hangs with. Seems that regular folks are so scared of them that they’re trying to pass a law forcing them to register, as if they were aliens. Oh, and one of those weres also killed and hid a human body on Sookie’s property, after she was nice enough to give the local werewolf pack permission to hold their monthly moonlight gathering on her land. But at least she found out where another body was buried as well; Debbie Pack, that catty ex-girlfriend of Alcide Herveaux, the sexy werewolf who helped her find Bill after his maker kidnapped him. Remember how Sookie had to kill the bitch after finding her lying in wait in her own house? Eric was good enough to dispose of the body for her, but since he was suffering from amnesia at the time, he could never remember where it was. Well, Debbie’s remains turn up just before the new body does. I must say that despite getting near to jumping the shark, Ms. Stackhouse’s life is still full of surprises.

Let’s hope the surprises keep coming frequently enough to keep this series consistently interesting. I, for one, enjoy dividing my time between the books and the TV show, where the scriptwriters seem to enjoy amping up the violence every week, a lot more than Charlaine does in her books, I believe. There is a bloody and violent resolution at the end, where both Eric’s family problem and Sookie’s fairy stalker problem are solved at the same time. I love it when plot complications come together in the end, but the book still has an unfinished feeling to it. I guess that’s the author’s way of making sure we stay tuned in until the next sequel.

Reviewed By: Lauren Lapinski

Picking up almost one year after The Hunger Games, Catching Fire brings us right back into the life of Katniss Everdeen, who updates us on all that has happened since the end of the first book. We see how many things have changed for her since winning the Games and the perils she now faces. Containing less violence and fighting action than The Hunger Games, Book 2 picks up the slack with political intrigue as Katniss faces the consequences of her actions against The Capitol and President Snow.

Her victory tour allows the readers a glimpse of each different District and how they have been affected by the Games. We also see the first signs of rebellion as citizens and politicians begin questioning President Snow.

Collins still manages to take us on a non-stop, page-turning adventure with just as much power as Book 1 and an ending that will leave you simultaneously cursing and praising the author as you bite your nails in wait of the final installment. Catching Fire is a must-read for fans of YA fiction. Give it a try and be sure to pre-order the third book of the trilogy, Mockingjay, due out August 24, 2010.

Review by Ida Vega-Landow

This book has everything for the reader who loves horror, romance and historic fiction. It’s about Anne Boleyn, King Henry VIII’s second wife, for whom he created a whole new church just so he could divorce his faithful first wife, Katherine of Aragon, to marry her. The author supposes that when Henry got tired of Anne and had her convicted on a slew of made-up charges, among them witchcraft, she was not beheaded like a noblewoman, but hanged like a commoner. Or, as the blurb on the back cover of this fascinating book states, “The slightest tweak in history makes all the difference in the outcome…”

One of the ways of creating a vampire is for a person to die a sudden, violent death. Another is for the dying person to deny God with his or her last breath. So when Anne curses God and denounces Him on the scaffold just moments before the trapdoor opens beneath her feet, it allows her to come back as a vampire. And what a vampire! When she rises from her unmarked grave on the grounds of the Chapel of St. Peter ad Vincula, in the shadow of the Tower of London where she was executed, she looks like Lilly Munster; her long, black hair is streaked with white, to go with her pale skin and blood-red eyes. She finds a silver urn on her grave filled with week-old dead flowers from her lover, Thomas Wyatt, the man she would have married if Henry hadn’t fallen in lust with her. After reading the tender poem Thomas left tucked inside the urn, she decides to pay him a visit and walks all the way to his home, Allington Castle, with unnatural speed, which is only natural for someone in her condition, “for the dead travel fast”.

It doesn’t take long for Anne to make Thomas her first victim, after which, with his help, she raises the beheaded bodies of her brother George and her favorite musician, Mark Smeaton, both of whom were accused of committing adultery with her. George comes back as a zombie and Mark as a ghost; she sends Smeaton to play his ghostly violin in the halls of Whitehall Palace, the King’s resident, while she and her zombie brother visit their father at Hever Castle. After paying back Daddy Dearest, who wouldn’t defend her against the king’s false charges, by driving him mad with fear, she lays George to rest again, and then she and Smeaton proceed to haunt Whitehall Palace while Henry prepares to marry his third wife, Jane Seymour.

Anne has a good old time discovering her vampiric powers as she torments Henry by leaving daffodils, her favorite flower, all over the castle, usually spattered with blood, turning crucifixes and portraits of the king upside down, and attacking his favorites, like his chancellor, Thomas Cromwell, and Charles Brandon, the Duke of Suffolk. The only people she spares from torment are her sister Mary, who is taking care of her daughter Elizabeth (destined to become one of England’s greatest queens), and the new queen, Jane Seymour, after Mary tells her how Jane is trying to get Elizabeth restored to her place at court, along with the king’s eldest daughter Mary. But everyone else at court is fair game for Anne Boleyn, Tudor Vampire—especially her former husband, King Henry VIII.

This story is short, but intense. Horror is laden upon horror, like layers of fruit filling in a heavily iced, dark chocolate cake. The author displays a good knowledge of history and life during the Tudor period, though she does tend to lapse into anachronisms from time to time. Like when Anne discovers she is able to make drawbridges rise by mentally commanding it and comments that she was able to enter her father’s castle this way “without hassle”. There were also a couple of references to having sex as “getting your jollies”. Not very Tudorian, but quite droll. I suppose if Anne knows that she’s telling this story to a modern audience, her use of modern slang is understandable.

The author also displays a familiarity with instruments of torture that made me feel very uncomfortable, especially those intended for use on women, like the pear of anguish, the breast ripper, and the Judas Cradle. I haven’t been so grossed out since I toured the dungeon at the New York Renaissance Faire and saw the methods and instruments of torture they used back then, demonstrated on dummies. Disturbingly realistic dummies. But at least I had the satisfaction of seeing old Cromwell get his, which I didn’t get from reading any of Philippa Gregory’s Tudorian novels. Then again, this is made-up history, not the real thing, so anything goes, from raising your beheaded brother to calling up an army of zombies to lynch your worst enemy in his own backyard. I never saw Anne Boleyn so happy before in a fictionalized account of her life; as the late Vincent Price would say, “She’s so amusing.”

But all good things come to an end, as do all good books. And this one ends much too soon for me, just as Anne appears to Henry for the last time to take her bloody vengeance, only to be foiled by one whom she considered her ally from the beginning of her reign of terror. Having her reawaken in the present as a ghost was a nice touch, but was it really necessary to have a Boleyn family reunion, including the relatives who had wronged her? It would have been so much more poignant for Anne to haunt the halls of Whitehall Palace and/or Henry’s tomb for eternity. Not just Henry’s tomb, either; think how thrilling it would be for visitors to hear her spirit weeping over Queen Elizabeth’s tomb. My biggest beef with this book is the title; it should be “Anne Boleyn-Tudor Vampire”, so people will know right away exactly which Tudor is meant. (Remember “The Other Boleyn Girl”, her sister Mary, whom Henry also slept with?) I hope that the author will consider this minor change in future reprints. For now, any complaints or compliments should be directed to her website, which is: http://BloodTouch.Webs.com Long live the queen!