I'm like anyone else who likes to go on vacation, get out in the sun a bit, and try and have a relaxing time--but the problem with me is, I never relax. I like a bit of stress and discomfort to keep my alcohol-thinned blood pulsating through my cholesterol-thickened arteries. That's why, instead of choosing romances and such for my lighter summer reading, I like to read books with monsters and vampires and the odd Apocalypse, and things like that. After all, most romance novels are far too unbelievable. I've gotten part of my summer-reading done this week, and I'd like to share my "recommends". (I'm listing them in the order I got them, not necessarily in any sort of ratings-system. )
The first I'm recommending is Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter, by Seth Grahame-Smith, who is listed on the book cover as "New York Times Bestselling Author of Pride and Prejudice and Zombies." Although I know that book exists, I haven't picked it up yet, not being all that big on Jane Austen or zombies. Well, that's not entirely true. I liked what little of Northanger Abbey I read and generally approve of costume drama films, and I do like mindless dumb zombie movies of the "They get nourishment from the noorons of the human brain" type. The mash-up just didn't appeal to me on the right level, though, in quite the way that the idea of Honest Abe as a Slayer does.
(I will say, though, that I liked Grahame-Smith's writing at Huffington Post. His snark about McCain/Palin was pretty right on.)
The conceit of this book is that a secret journal reveals the sixteenth president's deep, dark secret: due to the death of his own mother, and a few other harrowing events, at the hands of vampires, the young Abe became a hardened warrior in the struggle to free America from their undead, greedy fingers. It's written in the same slightly gilded language we're accustomed to from Civil War documentaries, and props have to be given to Stephanie Isaacson, who is listed in the Acknowledgements for creating the creepy Photoshopped images that might just start to make the reader wonder if antebellum vampires aren't just a bit plausible. (I'd totally like to see someone make a movie of this in a Ken Burns style, actually.)
If you like history, and the kind of vampires that expressly aren't sparkly, this is pretty neat. The way the thirst and demands of vampires tie in with the other reasons for the Civil War are kind of ingenious as well as the way Grahame-Smith weaves them into Lincoln's real biographical details. It's fun, but makes you go, "Hmm."
Next up is China Mieville's Kraken. At five hundred-something pages, it's not exactly a "light read", but it is a brilliantly accessible story--something of a "shaggy squid" tale. We are presented with a crime scene: someone has David Blaine'd a massive dead Architeuthis Dux right out from the display case at the natural History Museum, and it seems quite possible that some outre cultists of the tentacular deep old ones are looking to immanentize the eschaton with it.
No, really. From the imagination of Mieville, with his great dialogue, smart details, and truly weird turns--this is actually a fun story about the trip a few regular people end up making through a sidereal London that is full of truly side streets and out of the out of the way places, knacky bastards whose B&E's might involve OOBE's or even tesseracts, and streetlights that actually do sometimes beat fatalistic warnings, and my own favorite side-story, the idea of familiars being organized, and even striking. (It's a lot to take in, and probably worth a few reads--it makes me wonder if he isn't planning on revisiting this world with another shaggy shoggoth tale.)
Oh, and lots of apocalyptic death-cultists of various stripes. Can't forget them.
It's a weird combination of fantasy that doesn't rely as much on Lovecraft et als as one might think, and crime drama, complete with hard-boiled cops who have even seen this sort of thing before. Sort of.
(Side note: I am a fan of squid myself. It's not really a sure thing why, but I kind of understand a squid cult. It's hard to make out what the squid pro quo is in worshiping the coming of an ubersquid. That he eats you last? First? Tooling about the Internet, I found a picture and story about the actual Archie. I link this because it provides detail for imagining a squid of immense size being broken out of a water-tight really big tank, and because the details of the preservation of such a specimen are really cool.)
Last but not least, there's Charles Stross' The Fuller Memorandum; A Laundry Files Novel. I think it might maybe be useful if you've already read The Atrocity Archives and The Jennifer Morgue, but it isn't obligatory. It's just that my introduction to Stross' work was On Her Majesty's Occult Service via SFBC, and I fell madly in love with the universe he's created of a world where the works of Turing and Crowley are equally valid, and where the hypotheticals of Lovecraft's fiction unfold in Reimannian space, told in a way that is very amusing and has really interesting side jokes about technology. And I'd be madly in love with the protagonist: hacker, slacker, technomagus and secret agent Bob Howard, if I wasn't afraid of his significant other, Dr. Dominique O'Brien (who doesn't have to be in my dimension or even real to probably kick my ass or play her scary violin at me.)
The tale involves more potential immanentizing of echatons and the temporary disappearance of the "Laundry's" (the UK secret paranormal spooks') head spook in charge--Angleton, who is possibly weirder and older than we've been given to suppose before. If you're computer savvy and know a little high magick, this shit is funny as all heck. Even if you don't, it's a good tale. I recommend it a lot.
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