Grossman's Debut Novel Lacks the Magic

Warp - Lev Grossman

Once a reader has found a new author he or she truly enjoys, a typical next step is to visit that author’s older works.  Clearly, St. Martin’s Press figured that they had a gold mine in their vaults:

with the SyFy channel version of Lev Grossman’s "Magicians" series, they figured fans would be eager to (buy and) read Grossman’s earlier works.

If you’re inclined to do just that by snapping up a copy of his novel Warp, it’s not a good idea…

The aimless, slacker Gen-Xer bit has been done to death. Let’s face it: there are dozens, if not hundreds, of novels out there about the aimless types who’ve now been replaced in the literary world by their own aimless offspring. In the case of Warp, it’s Hollis Kessler, late a graduate of Boston College who – like so many LT¹ types before him – is determined to stay in the town where he had so much fun as an undergrad. Hollis’s problem is that he’s the slackest of his little coterie of slackers – even his ex-girlfriend has yuppified herself and now sashays about a glamorous office.

"The Last One" Effortlessly Marries Reality TV and Post-Apocalyptic Fiction. No Kidding!

The Last One - Alexandra Oliva

Just about anyone who knows me well probably also knows that I have nothing to do with so-called “reality” televisions shows. I’ve never voluntarily watched more than a few seconds of “Survivor,” “Big Brother,” or any other example of the genre. Face facts: I’m really not willing to suspend my disbelief for this particular form of escapism: life’s tough enough for most people without phony challenges and fake contests. So it might come as a surprise to my acquaintances that my most recent literary find is all about a reality television show…

…or maybe they wouldn’t be surprised, since Alexandra Oliva’s debut novel, The Last One, is at the same time a damned fine example of one of my favorite genres: post-apocalyptic fiction. Here: let me tell you about it.

Storey’s Debut Novel Filled with Blood and Tropes

Nothing Short of Dying - Erik Storey

Cliché number 1: Clyde Barr, who left his western Colorado home after a horrendous youth to “see the world,” became a mercenary. Unlike most, he (claims he) chose the good side of his fights, protecting the little guys. Nevertheless, he apparently perfected his skills: Barr’s a stone killer. Just sprung from a Mexican jail, he stops in his home town to reach out to the only one of his three sisters he still talks to, only to find that Jen has been taken by an unnamed “big guy” to help him with some crime, after which she’ll be “discarded like a used needle.”

This John Jordan Prequel Needs Some "Oomph!"

Innocent Blood - Michael Lister

One line from Kurt Vonnegut’s “Welcome to the Monkey House” was running through my head as I read Michael Lister’s Innocent Blood: “The Foxy Grandpa shoehorned himself into the scene…” Never mind that protagonist John Jordan is but a stripling in his late teens instead of a grandpa, Lister still managed to shoehorn the boy into early-‘80s Atlanta, complete with a face-to-face meeting with serial killer Wayne Williams. Give us a break…

The title is the seventh in the John Jordan mystery series – some quick sleuthing reveals that it’s a prequel set well before the first in the series; intended to provide insight into Jordan's formative years. According to reviews of Lister’s other work (all of which have “blood” in the title), Jordan’s a “reluctant detective” type; a minister who keeps having to solve murders. I don’t know that for sure, and I don’t intend to find out… 

Life at the Comic-Con

A Hundred Thousand Worlds - Bob Proehl

Those readers among us who prefer that their fiction have a beginning and an end will not particularly like Bob Proehl’s A Hundred Thousand Worlds. I can’t blame them. Oh, sure, the novel has a beginning (around page 1) and an ending (of sorts, slightly before page 368), but the story and the characters seem somehow to aimlessly wander through the interstices of the pages between those two points.

I will say that Proehl has a way with words, as the saying goes, but that's probably the only reason I managed to slog through this entire book. As for a plot, however, let’s just say that the concept at its core was lost on this particular reader. Of course I get it: the novel recounts the westward journey of Valerie Torrey and her nine-year-old son, Alex, as they return to LA from New York City. Exactly why they’re “returning,” however, and why they left in the first place spin out quite slowly (too slowly?) within the pages of the novel.

Val’s an actor, once the female heroine of a long-since cancelled scifi television series, a show that strikingly resembles “Continuum” (no word on whether Val looks like Rachel Nichols, though). Mother and son's westward migration takes place in three steps as she reprises her character at comics conventions in Cleveland, Chicago and LA; with side trips to see her mother and... "The Woman." The road show's cast of characters is padded out with Brett, a comic artist (who, unbeknownst to anyone but the readers, just broke up with a woman who once babysat Alex) and Gail, a lesbian comic writer. A Greek… errr, geek chorus of women in superhero costumes accompanies the little group on their journey. Enormous swaths of the text are given over to the “wonders” (I use the term sarcastically) of comic books, while little or nothing is given over to the motivations of the characters or even scene setting.