Do you have a book you read in school that you swore was the worst book ever? Have you ever thought that maybe your teachers weren't out to torture you, and there may have been a method to their madness after all? Then the July Challenge is for you!

Details on the challenge can be found here...check it out, and join us!

44. Tithe Holly Black (4/5)

This was a re-read, but since I want to read Ironside and Valiant in the near future, I thought I'd re-read Tithe first. As I noticed the first time, it definitely feels like a first novel; there's a certain self-consciousness to parts of the book, particularly Black's tendency to name-drop favorite singers and authors, and the interactions between the characters are sometimes a little stiff. But she gets the amoral (and sometimes malevolent) nature of Faerie down very well, and it's a fun, fast read.

45. Fables: Sons of Empire Bill Willingham et al (4/5)

This Fables volume is mainly a bunch of short one or two-issue arcs, setting things up for the next major plot development. This doesn't make it any less entertaining to read, but it did make me impatient for the next volume.

46. Hellboy: The Troll Witch and Others Mike Mignola, with Richard Corben & P. Craig Russell (4/5)

This isn't my favorite Hellboy collection, but I was pleasantly surprised by how much I enjoyed the stories illustrated by Richard Corben and P. Craig Russell. I'm a big fan of both of these artists, but in general I find Mignola's style so distinctive and so enjoyable that frequently I get impatient when other artists illustrate his stories. Not so in this case, however.

47. Promises to Keep Charles de Lint (3/5)

On the jacket copy, Charles de Lint mentions that this short novel began as a short story and grew into a novel. This is very obvious in reading the novel, unfortunately. Despite its reliance on de Lint's stock characters (Jilly Coppercorn, Geordie Riddel, etc.), this would have been a pretty strong short story. Instead, it's padded out with still more flashbacks to Jilly's terrible early life, and in general feels repetitive and overly long. Also, not to be totally nitpicky, but some of it doesn't quite mesh with the early Newford stories. In all, this was diverting for a couple hours, but I probably won't re-read it, and I definitely am glad I didn't pay the $35 Subterranean Press price tag.

48. The World Below Paul Chadwick (2/5)

Ugh, this was just awful. I haven't read any Chadwick, but I'd heard his Concrete books were excellent, so when I saw he'd done a pulpy "Journey to the Center of the Earth"-esque series of comics, I figured the collection was worth checking out. Sadly, the plots are stupid and pointless, and not just in a pulp-stupid way, they're quite simply directionless and frequently bizarre for the sake of being bizarre. The artwork was also sub par. For one, the anatomy of the creatures that the travellers encounter doesn't make any sense, which really bothered me (probably more than it should have) -- there were all these grotesque creatures that were misshapen in nonsensical ways. The action scenes feel weirdly static, and the way the frames were constructed tended to obscure rather than explain what was actually supposed to be going on. Big disappointment.

Book 1: Darker Than You Think
Author: Jack Williamson, 1948
Genre: Early Urban Fantasy/Science Fiction/Horror.
Other details: 266pp, published in 2003 as part of Fantasy Masterworks collection Gollancz.

2003 cover art

Darker Than You Think by noted science fiction writer Jack Williamson first appeared as a short story in Unknown magazine in 1940 and was then expanded to novel length in 1948. It combines elements of science fiction, horror and fantasy proposing intriguing ideas about the nature of lycanthropy and witchcraft. Given its urban setting and dark tone it certainly must be considered an early example of urban fantasy, which has aged well while retaining a strong late 1940s flavour.

The novel opens with reporter Will Barbee being assigned to cover the arrival of Professor Mondrick from a two-year expedition to Mongolia. He also has a personal interest in the expedition as he been one of Professor Mondrick's leading anthropology students but had been inexplicably excluded from his select team of post-graduate students. His three closest friends were all part of the expedition. As Barbee waits he is approached by a beautiful red-haired woman who identifies herself as April Bell, a cub reporter for another newspaper. He is immediately drawn to her and provides her (and us) with plenty of background on the Professor and his research despite the fact that they are technically rivals. He also finds something vaguely unsettling about her interest in the Professor and the mysterious box he has brought back with him.

1969 cover art

Mondrick calls a press conference at the airport terminal and he speaks of the coming of the Child of Night, a dark Messiah who will threaten all mankind. Before he can complete his statement he suffers some kind of acute asthma attack and dies on the podium. Barbee learns that the Professor had an extreme allergy to cats and wonders about the kitten that April had with her earlier. She claimed she was watching it for her Aunt shopping nearby and left briefly to return it before the Professor arrived. Still Barbee begins to wonder if the kitten was somehow responsible for the Professor's attack; especially when he finds disturbing evidence that April was lying about her Aunt having collected it.

From her introduction on the first page April is clearly a femme fatale with Barbee as her foil. In contrast to her sleek sophistication he is a naive, damaged man drifting through his life without purpose. It is a classic set-up and you just know that he's going to ignore all the warning signs and get embroiled with her. It's pure pulp fiction but a cracking read and certainly a seminal fictional work on werewolves and shape-changers (lycanthropes).

While I was back at ye olde Alma Mater a couple of weekends ago for the big croquet game against the Naval Academy, a friend of mine pressed a book into my hand and told me it was an early birthday present.

And so it was that I read The Spider Master of Men! City of Flaming Shadows.

It was about as silly as it sounds. It's volume 4 of a pulp fiction series from the thirties, so I can't tell you exactly HOW The Spider became the Master of Men, or how he met and wed Ms. Nita Van Sloane (of the blue eyes of mystery and red red lips), but I can tell you that, basically, he's Zorro, minus a few Mexicans.

Our hero is a master of disguise, a billionare playboy (actually probably only a millionaire, since it's the '30s) and, somehow or another, he ends up chasing after this violent bank-robbing mastermind called The Tarantula. The Tarantula's favorite pastime is hanging people from the ceiling so that their toes just barely touch the floor and they slowly strangle to death. Not the most fun guy. The Spider, like Batman in his earlier years, spends most of the time being frustrated because the cops think he's evil and/or in league with the Tarantula. He has a habit of stamping a little red spider picture wherever he thinks he's done something clever, but he's not the best at proving that the guy he killed was ACTUALLY the bad guy. Eventually The Tarantula manages to figure out The Spider's Uber Top-Secret Identity and kidnaps the Lovely Ms. Nita Van Sloane (of the blue eyes of mystery) and hangs her from the ceiling a lot.

The Spider is not terribly pleased about this.

Anyway, it's a very silly book and full of people being shot with machine guns and asides about Nita's eyes. It's also full of what my mother would call "found poems", long bits that, if read out loud, have a really neat rhyme and rhythm to them, though I didn't notice them much when reading to myself.

(The one I remember in particular was "Months had passed since last he had donned the mask.")

21/50