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“Twilight,” its sequels and its imitators birth not yet whole sucked the lifeblood from the lamia myth. There are silence plentitude of variations that do not admit divinity gamey civilise students who twinkle prettily. Three new fantasize releases represent occult entities that slip the essences of their victims, apiece with a dissimilar spin.
Christopher Farnsworth’s
A lading container good of severed consistency parts is tell of a game to make to a squadron of super-soldiers. Reluctantly aided by young White House staffer Zach Burrows, Cade, alias “the chair’s lamia,” sets out to unarm the menace ahead it reaches Washington, D.C.
“Blood Oath” sagely doesn’t proceeds itself too severely. There’s an reserve total of undead angst, as Cade struggles against his ferine nature and matches marbles with others of his occult ilk, but Farnsworth keeps the story tread revved eminent and the wisecracks snapping. “Blood Oath” isn’t heavy, by any way, but it’s an pleasurable summer hazard, a creditable initiative jaunt for a new fulfill serial.
Not at all put off by the cadavers, John Wayne Cleaver helps out at his beget’s small-town morgue, but he lives by an elevated set of rules intentional to support him from bounteous in to his pathological impulses and really harming anyone. When bodies start turn up round townspeople with diverse all-important parts absent, John is both spellbound and repulsed. Gradually, he realizes that he moldiness use his noesis to economize not lonesome his friends, phratry and neighbors but his own psyche.
Without freehanded too lots outside, it should be notable that “I Am Not a Serial Killer” reveals at its mid-point that it has a secret occult premiss. Wells handles the passage with acquisition and takes aid not to interrupt the froward abeyance of incredulity that he has fostered. John Wayne Cleaver proves an piquant young champion; the scoundrel of the man has an strange and comforting motivative, and Wells establishes himself as challenging new gift.
Stories (William Morrow; 428 pages; $27.99), emended by Neil Gaiman and Al Sarrantonio, may variation a simpleton entitle, but its contents are anything but run-of-the-mine. The contributors admit genre all-stars same Gene Wolfe, Peter Straub and Lawrence Block, as comfortably as writers commonly considered more aligned with the literary mainstream, from Chuck Palahniuk to Jodi Picoult to Carolyn Parkhurst.
Joanne Harris brings Loki, Thor and former Norse gods to modern-day New York City in “Wildfire in Manhattan.” Joe Hill plays with composition to heighten “The Devil on the Staircase,” a winding narration almost an Italian youth’s find of a door into inferno. In Elizabeth Hand’s “The Maiden Flight of McCauley’s Bellerophon,” 3 friends effort to copy a unaccompanied liftoff pre-dating the Wright brothers as a testimonial to a anxious fellow.
At least two stories sport vampires. In Roddy Doyle’s witty “Blood,” an Irish phratry man discovers that he just, advantageously, likes the discernment of sassy bloodline. In “Juvenal Nyx,” Walter Mosley chronicles the translation of a radicalized young melanise man into a blood-drinking, apparently divinity “trouble solver” unforced to conflict occult entities. Unfortunately, Mosley’s offer feels strangely shortened, as if it were just the possibility to a thirster ferment.
As an editor, Sarrantonio has ternary originative collections below his rap, one apiece for revulsion and suspense, risky fable and fantasise. Gaiman, generator of “The Graveyard Book” and “The Sandman” comics serial, has frequently displayed fantabulous perceptiveness in promoting authors and stories that thrust the boundaries of their several genres. Together, they’ve assembled an challenging anthology with a pleasing mix of modes and moods. “Stories” has a footling something for e’eryone who appreciates the possibilities of short-circuit fable.
E-mail Michael Berry at mberry@sfchronicle.com.
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