Week 12: Snow

I’m not sure about all of you, but it seems fitting that this week the book in question is Snow by Ronald Malfi—I haven’t been warm in a week and I’m still in denial over the first snow of the season. I finished the book under piles of blankets with a fleece zipped up to my chin, and I still couldn't get warm. The reading material didn’t help the cause.

I know I've mentioned in past blog posts that I’m not a fan of snow, or winter, or being cold in general. I’d rather be too hot than too cold any day. Snow was the third piece this term that was set in an extremely cold setting—first 30 Days of Night set the stage in Alaska, followed by The Thing in Antarctica, before finishing up in Woodson, Minnesota with Snow. 

The setting of Snow pulled double duty in this week’s book, and this was the first and only of the term that’s done so. Not only is the setting enough to make your skin crawl (literally, goose bumps abound) but the setting is the monster. Snow itself is the beastie that goes bump in the night.

If I didn't have enough issues with the cold…

It all starts with Todd traveling cross-country to visit his son. However, all flights are cancelled due to a freakishly intense snow storm. Todd decides to rent a car anyway and drive the rest of the way to his son. At this point, it was like watching a bad horror movie when screaming, “DON'T GO IN THERE!” at the TV starts. One of the worst snow storms in history and we’re going to drive in it. Insert face palm here.

But how else are the hero and the people he picks up at the airport going to encounter the monsters? It’s clear something strange is afoot after picking up a hitchhiker with vertical slashes over his shoulder blades. Turns out he's been possessed by the Snow. The Snow, or skin-suits as they’re later called, are these near-formless beings that need a host to become solid and feed. They attach and insert themselves through the shoulder of their hosts by means of scythe-like limbs in place of hands. Any trace of the host is gone. Even though the bodies can be destroyed, the Snow will only be damaged. Fire is their only vulnerability, as the heat gives them solid form and strips them of defense.

The most unsettling thing about the Snow is what they do to children. For whatever reason, the Snow can't inhabit a child-host without erasing all facial features. It’s like “The Idiot's Lantern,” the episode of Doctor Who when Rose loses her face. There's no explanation as to where the Snow came from, but it's implied they're aliens. 

While I did find the faceless children both disturbing and sad, I was underwhelmed with these monsters. Aliens have popped up now three times this semester, and so many of the monsters this term were reliant on a host. The hosts in Snow become zombie-like, and I'm starting to tire of zombies. While the book was a fast read and I enjoyed aspects of it, these monsters did nothing for me. It was three hundred pages of the main characters running away from the Snow. Yes the Snow were active monsters, which I enjoy, but there was a profound lack of backstory for them. Lack of backstory isn't always a bad thing, but they weren't the most interesting monsters I've read about. I had a hard time getting invested in the quest to defeat the Snow.

Also, the end of the Snow was predictable. It was made clear around the middle of the book that they could be defeated by fire, so it felt like a long while before a big enough explosion came about to wipe them out. Yet the ending is left open. It's revealed that Woodson wasn't the only city plagued by the Snow, so the beastie-alien are free to run around the country looking for a bad enough snow storm to ride in on. 

What I enjoyed about this book was the dialogue and the setting. The dialogue was fast paced and read how people talk. I appreciate a well-placed juicy expletive because it’s real (or maybe my perception is warped because I work with a bunch of sailor-mouths), and let’s face it. If someone’s running away from the Snow with its scythe-hands of doom, “Oh fudge” probably isn’t what would come out of most mouths.

I also liked that the setting was both a setting and a monster. I've read books where the setting absolutely contributed to the scare-level, but I liked that Malfi took this a step further and had the snow become a perversion of nature. I think it had more of an impact because it’s so cold right now. Might not have thought about what’s riding on the cold wind so much if it was a balmy 80 degrees out.

Let's just say, this book didn't change my opinion about snow, but I’m not sure if that's a good or bad thing.

Week Eleven: Relic

This week it’s out of the cold and into the museum in the novel Relic by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child.

First, let’s talk about the monster. The bad beastie in this novel is called Mbwun, which translates into “He Who Walks On All Fours.” The name itself is an indication of the rich history Preston and Child gave their monster, which I don’t always need, but almost always enjoy when it’s given to me. Mbwun is an ancient creature. The son of a demon who’s the South American equivalent of the Devil. Part primate, part lizard, all intelligent killer. A clear image of Mbwun is never given, which reminds me of how the audience isn’t given much of a chance to look at the Alien.

Flash forward (or backward) to the nineties, and an artifact bearing Mbwun’s image in a crate full of egg-like pods and unusual plant fibers is sent from the Amazon Basin to the New York Museum of Natural History. But no one expected the stowaway….

Dear Mbwun hitched a ride with the crate to the museum, and he has an addiction to hypothalamus glands in human brains. He is able to live quietly for years eating the plant fibers in the crate, because these fibers have a genetic makeup that mimics hypothalamus glands. But once his access to the plant fibers is cut-off, our monster must find sustenance elsewhere.

With this, the brutal killings start.

Overall, I liked Mbwun as a monster. He’s not merely a killing force of nature who only acts on instinct. He is highly intelligent in an almost human way. He knows to remain out of sight and only started the killings after his plant source ran out, which I think is interesting. He’s practically indestructible with a thick hide that bullets can’t penetrate, but his weakness is a bit cliché: the eyes. Ah well.

What I didn’t like was how this particular monster came into being. Throughout the entire book, everyone keeps focusing on the egg-like seed pods, which left me assuming they weren’t seeds at all. There were a couple mentions of Whittlesey—the head of the exhibition that went to South America and brought back Mbwun—disappearing, but it doesn’t seem too far-fetched because there’s a monster on the loose. Yet in the epilogue it’s revealed that Whittlesey became Mbwun by eating the plant fiber. I had to read the explanation a couple times before resigning myself to an “Okaaayyy…” It bothered me that I’d been led through this book to believe that Mbwun had hatched, when on the last couple of pages the rug was pulled out from under me. I now have some trust issues with this book.

Anyway, another thing I enjoyed was the setting. I love museums, and some of the exhibits lend themselves to letting imaginations run wild. Not only are there plenty of places in the museum itself for the monster to hide, but the museum is built over an elaborate tunnel system. And while the museum is large, it becomes a prison if locked with Mbwun sneaking around inside looking for tasty morsels.

Now, even though there were aspects of the book I liked, I had an issue with pacing. The probably impacted my perception of the pacing, but for whatever reason, this almost 500 page book was 959 pages on my Nook. One flip of a “page” might have counted for three pages, but there’s no denying parts of this book were slow. A lot of time was focused on the technology used to analyze what Mbwun was, and these parts dragged. Even though the search to find out more about the museum monster was a constant throughout the entire story, I felt there was a lot of down time between when I got to see the monster in action.

Overall, not my most favorite book, but parts of it I enjoyed. Not sure if I enjoyed it enough to want to see the movie, though. But I might just be more careful of the shadows next time I go to the museum.

Week Ten: The Thing

This week it’s back to alien horror goodness in the 1982 movie The Thing directed by John Carpenter.

I’d like to preface by saying I’m not easily grossed out or disturbed. I’m the person who tells everyone it’s okay to look when a particularly graphic, gory scene is over or laughs when the Alien bursts out of Kane’s stomach. However, I lost count the number of times I asked myself “What the f*ck am I watching?” during The Thing, and asking myself that question is a first for me.

The Thing was the first monster I had a hard time watching do its bad beastie routine. I wasn't sure what to expect from this movie, which might have contributed to reaction of the monster. I had nothing in mind, and my imagination likes to run rampant when filling in details. Let’s start with the setting. The movie opens with a shot of a flying saucer headed towards earth, which immediately brought Alien to mind. But the setting for this movie was isolated Antarctica rather than deep space. I've got issues with being trapped in the cold, which is a huge reason I found 30 Days of Night to be off-putting. It’s isolated, and there’s the very real chance of freezing to death. Turns out, the flying saucer in the opening scene crashed in Antarctica 100,000 years before the story takes place. The ship and its inhabitant are buried beneath layers of ice and are frozen in a sort of suspended animation.

Fast forward to 1982, and a group of Norwegians are trying to shoot down a dog belonging to the American research team. It didn't take long for me to figure out something was up with the dog, but the bad taste was already in my mouth. While I’m the person with the iron stomach when it comes to gore, I’m also the person who gets upset when the dog dies. However, I supposed the Norwegians had a good reason to go after the dog.

The alien Thing is a shape shifter who can perfectly mimic any living organism after a short period of isolated time with them. The American research team finds the burnt figure of a creature that appears to be a conglomeration of multiple animals, yet the dog the Norwegians were after is the first victim the audience is allowed to see change. The only word I have to describe the dog transformation scene is ewwwww. Eloquent, I know. What makes the transformations so disturbing is that animal characteristics are easily recognized, but it doesn't look like any particular animal. Parts of it might be dog-like, others spider-like, still others almost human.

 

As a monster, The Thing takes the prize this term for freaking me out. It also takes the prize for causing the most psychological turmoil within the characters. I find the most successful monsters to be the ones who are constantly on the minds of their prey, but the Thing takes it a step further. Not only is it constantly on the minds of the research team, but it could be anyone on the team. No one can trust anyone. At least the other monsters throughout the term so far were distinct entities, and the people fighting them knew what they were after. The monsters were obviously monsters. Yet the Thing can mimic the face of anyone—it’s only easily recognized when it’s between forms. Not only is there the fear of the Thing itself, there’s also the fear that it could literally be anyone. I think that’s more disturbing than the fear that the monster could be anywhere.

If given the chance, the Thing could eventually assimilate to every person in the world. Worldwide trust issues? That's almost as frightening as the Thing itself. This distrust seeps into the audience, because the ending is unclear whose face the Thing was wearing last. The open ending forces audiences to wonder if the Thing was actually killed or it survived as one of the remaining crew members to freeze to death. It leaves the audience wondering if the monster was truly defeated or if it will eventually become dormant under the ice, just like it was in the beginning.

Despite every squirm and every expletive uttered while watching this movie, I enjoyed it because it made me uncomfortable. That doesn't mean it’s on my list of favorite movies. All I ask is that we never talk about the spider head…. Nightmare fuel, that is.

P.S. Happy Halloween!

Week Nine: The Wolfman

For this week’s reading, we’re leaving the alien future for the Victorian past in Jonathan Mayberry’s novelization of the movie The Wolfman. I saw the movie back when it came out in 2010 with high hopes. But the movie left me feeling rather… meh. I’ve seen worse, but I've seen far better, and I expected more. When I saw the book on the reading list, my first thought was that the movie was based on the book. After discovering this wasn't the case, I was hesitant. The movie wasn't anything to write home about, and the novelization would be the movie in paper form.

I was pleasantly proved wrong. Author Jonathan Mayberry fleshed out the somewhat flat story of The Wolfman and made it an enjoyable read. Yes, the plot of the book exactly followed the plot of the movie, but isn't that the point of a novelization?

Werewolves are some of the classic bad beasties, but recently—like pretty much all monsters—they've turned into brooding heartthrobs with washboard abs who aren't evil, just misunderstood. I don’t mind a sexy werewolf every now and then (and there are some sexy times thrown into the book), but it’s refreshing to get back to basics. Werewolves represent the most base, primal, violent urges of mankind that (hopefully) lay dormant in most, but are exaggerated and acted upon when in the wolf state. They don’t represent, well, puppies.

Lawrence Talbot, the Wolfman, is a true werewolf, and unlike the movie, I was better able to get inside his head. While I watched Benicio Del Toro who played Talbot turn into the Wolfman on screen, I felt Talbot turn into the monster on the page, and it was a cringe-worthy experience. Every bone in the body broken to be reshaped, every tooth pushed free by a fresh set of fangs.

Ouch is an understatement.

The Wolfman is his own creature, with no hint of the man he used to be. Mayberry makes a clear distinction between Lawrence and the Wolfman by giving them their own POVs and not using their names interchangeably. While I found myself looking at the monster in the movie to try to figure out how they did the makeup, I was right there when it was completely lost to instinct and went on its killing spree when I read the same scene.

I watched the horror of realization spread over Del Toro’s face when Talbot understands he’s the monster, but I experienced the horror of this realization with him as I read. I’ve always been a fan of werewolves, but never really thought about how terrifying it would be to completely lose control and commit horrible acts, then later comprehend the extent of what happened because of that loss of control. Not to mention the fear of what would happen if control was loss again, but in the presence of a loved one.

I loved this full access into the monster’s head that I didn't get while watching the movie. It isn't a werewolf reinvented, but a werewolf examined as a monster rather than a tortured soul. There is some tortured soul action, but from Lawrence’s point of view instead of the Wolfman's. And the reactions to being a werewolf are compared and contrasted between Lawrence who hates what he is and his maker who fully embraces the monster within.

Overall, the novelization took the story to the next level, which the movie failed to achieve. Instead of being just another monster story, The Wolfman novelization helped the reader to participate in what it could be like to be a werewolf by engaging the imagination, which isn’t the most glamorous way to portray these monsters in most books on the shelves. But this was the first time I've cringed during a werewolf transformation, book or otherwise, and there’s nothing wrong with that. 

Week Eight: Alien

This week, we’re leaving the earth-dwelling zombies behind and looking upward to the stars in the 1979 Ridley Scott movie Alien.

This was my first time watching Alien, and I honestly wasn’t sure what to think going into it. I have a bad track record with horror movies—either I laugh at parts I should be cringing at, or I can’t suspend my disbelief. The former typically happens with older horror movies, the latter with more recent releases. Now I will readily admit to laughing at an inappropriate part of this movie because something must be wrong with me, but I was able to suspend my disbelief. Maybe the sci-fi setting helped me to do so, but no matter the reason, I truly enjoyed this movie.

The plot is a basic predator hunts prey story. A crew of seven on the mining ship Nostromo is on its way home from a routine ore mining trip, when the main computer, Mother, detects an alien signal. By law, the crew is required to respond. They land on the alien planet and damage Nostromo in the process. While the ship undergoes repairs, some of the crew explore their new surroundings, and it all goes downhill after that. I’m sure just about everyone has already seen this movie, or at least know enough about it to guess the rest. If not, go watch it.

Since this is a class on monsters, let’s look at the monster itself. The Alien is a creature unhindered by a conscious that can adapt to almost any climate and has many natural defenses from egg to adult. In order to develop, it must become a parasite and latch on to a host via a facehugger. This is the second instance in this class where the fear of pregnancy and birth is explored. It’s ‘born’ by ripping free from one of the crew member's abdomens, and its birth kills it’s host. The violent birth and parasite/host relationship between the crew member and the Alien reminded me of Breeding Ground. This birth sets the tone for the Alien for the rest of the movie by introducing it through violence and good old fashioned ick factor.

Much of the movie after the Alien’s birth is spent trying to determine where it is and how to kill it as it slowly picks off the crew one by one. While the Alien is monstrous in the sense that it acts upon its desire to kill, it’s generally off-screen during the movie. Most of the fear comes from the dread of anticipation the Alien causes. However, it’s not a passive monster, like the monsters from the beginning of the class. Even though the Alien isn’t in every scene, it’s always on the crewmembers’ minds, which I liked. How monstrous is a monster when no one’s scared of it?

Overall, I’m glad I saw this movie. It’s been on my to-watch list for a while, and while aspects of it are a little corny because the special effects are outdated, I understand why it’s a cult classic. The Alien invokes fear from its victims before it attacks, and it’s this fear and the anticipation of the next attack the drives the film. For me, that’s absolutely necessary for a monster to be frightening, whether it’s on the screen or on the page.

On a side note, I love how all the Alien seems to want is some quality time with the cat. Maybe my cat-lady bias is clouding my judgment, but I a part of me just wanted to see what the Alien would do when left alone with Jones. I’d like to think after a stressful day of human hunting, Alien would have come home to snuggle the cat.

Week Seven: World War Z

With all the hype over zombies recently, it was only inevitable they’d pop up in my readings. This week, the zombies are courtesy of Max Brooks’ novel World War Z. You might have heard of it. It was recently the inspiration for a movie starring some guy called Brad Pitt. It only grossed over $500 million and a sequel’s in the works. No big deal. I haven't seen it.

Anyway…

The book was on my to-read list for a while. One of my coworkers is nearly obsessed with it he loves it so much. I was excited to read it because of how much said coworker loves it—we have similar taste in movies and video games, so I thought maybe we have similar taste in books too.

I might’ve broken his heart when I told him I wasn’t a big fan of the novel.

I really wanted to like this book. I've always found the idea of zombies interesting, and like so many people, thanks to the impending 2012 zombie apocalypse that never happened, I had a plan on how to survive the outbreak (hide out in Cabela's with all the weapons and ammo. Walmart is next door for all everyday essentials Cabela's doesn't have and a state police barracks is across the street for additional weapon supplies).

But when I read this book shortly after watching the first two seasons of The Walking Dead on Netflix, my reactions to the monsters wasn't anything to write home about. They’re brainless, just acting on survival instinct. Yes, they’re practically indestructible, but most monsters are. At first, I thought the main reason people were so scared of them or fascinated by them was the possibility of being bitten and “dying.” Again, that’s true of most, if not all, monsters—death is typically the outcome when dealing with beasties.

If nothing else, World War Z helped me realize that people are more afraid of the mass fear, chaos, and anarchy a zombie outbreak would bring rather than the zombies themselves. Yes, zombies kill people, but that’s their job and their only driving force. They don’t have the ability to be cold, calculating killers. I personally find a monster who plots more frightening than one who acts solely on instinct.

No matter my personal preference, the driving force of World War Z is the question of how would the world react to a global zombie outbreak. Brooks did a solid job mapping out the events of the zombie war and linking them. He explored the what-if? factor of a world flung out of its comfort zone forced to react to a debilitating horror and rebuild once the threat was controlled. I give him full marks for that. The amount of planning Brooks had to do to create an entire war shows, and the book wouldn't have been half as successful if he wasn't a thorough planner. Details that never crossed my mind, like how dogs could aid in the detection of zombies, he included.

The novel’s structure is also unique. The story of the zombie war is told through interviews with people throughout the world. On one hand, using the interview structure was a clever way for Brooks to show how widespread his zombie war truly was, and how any person no matter their sex, race, or creed was affected.

On the other hand, this structure didn’t work for me at all. I need a character or two to connect with while I’m reading. They could be the scum of the earth, but just so long as I empathize with them, I want to know what happens to them. Because of the interview style, I never had a chance to truly care about any character. I couldn’t remember their names at the end of their sections. So while almost every interview was packed with information that made me think, “Whoa, okay, that’s intense,” I still felt detached. It was sterile, like reading a newspaper, which seems like an easy problem to have when using the interview style.

As for the zombies themselves, they weren’t reinvented in World War Z. They were infected and could pass the virus onto a healthy person via a bite or any bodily fluid making its way into the uninfected. They were fast if they had their legs, for all intents and purposes dead, and the only way to kill them was to destroy the brain. These zombies were able to survive just about anything, including total and prolonged submersion in salt water. They were bad-ass for their near-indestructibility.

But I don’t think the zombies were the true monster in the story. Like I said before, this book helped me to see that the underlying fear of a zombie apocalypse goes beyond the superficial fear of the zombies themselves. The zombie war caused daily life to change. Most household technology was rendered useless. There was no more gas to run cars. Those with desk jobs no longer had desks to work at and had to learn trades. Also like I've said before, Brooks is thorough with his details. I read the fear of change on a global scale and the subsequent chaos to be the true monster of the story. Humans can be adaptable when they need to be, so the monster is vanquished when the zombies are controlled and there’s global rebuilding to accommodate a world where the dead walk.

While World War Z was successful in some ways, it didn't resonate with me. I’m no more afraid of a possible zombie apocalypse than I was before I started reading. A part of me is curious to see how the book translates on film. Maybe one of these days I’ll watch it. If nothing else, I hope Cabela's never closes so my zombie survival plan isn't rendered moot. Just in case. 

Week Six: The Yattering and Jack

I was excited to read more of Clive Barker this week after how much I enjoyed reading “Rawhead Rex.” Instead of baby-eating bogeymen, Barker’s short story “The Yattering and Jack” from the collection Books of Blood Volumes One to Three centers on my all-time favorite monsters: demons.

My reaction to finding out the story was about demons

As soon as it was clear the monster of the story was a demon, and even more specifically a demon based on Christian tradition, I pretty much fan-girled. I was raised Catholic, and even though my job doesn’t always allow for me to go to church and say hi to Jesus, all the catechism, dogmas, and traditions stuck, or are at least floating around somewhere in my brain. One of these many traditions that always scared me was demon possession. The first and so far only horror movie that truly scared me was The Exorcism of Emily Rose because it was based on a true story. I’m still freaked out by 3 a.m. because of it. Even though demons scare me, they fascinate me.

But before I completely get off track with all my fan-girling (I can feel it coming on), let’s swing back around to the Yattering. It’s a minor demon, a grunt, the bottom of the totem pole. I love that there’s a hierarchy in Barker’s Hell—it’s a parody of the angelic hierarchy in Heaven. As a minor demon, the Yattering is sent by one of its superiors to collect the soul of gherkin importer Jack J. Polo.

There’s nothing remarkable about Jack. He is the living, breathing definition of unflappable to the point of being boring. His mantra is Que sera, sera, and he likes to mutter it to himself often. I caught myself wondering if he liked to sing the song to himself, too.

Yet as ordinary as he might be, his mother promised his soul to Hell. She never upheld her end of the deal. As a result, Jack is to be punished for his mother’s sins.

This is where the Yattering comes in. In order to collect Jack’s soul, it must push Jack into a state of pure fury. But there are laws the Yattering must follow. I read these laws as the Hellish parody of the Ten Commandments. One of the most important laws the Yattering must follow is never touch a victim. Because of this, the Yattering must resort to actions most often associated with poltergeists. It also can’t leave the house, or else it will be bound “to the mercy of humanity” (Barker, 46). After months of causing household mischief, Jack is as unflappable as ever. The Yattering eventually does get a bit of a reaction from Jack, but not the one it wanted. Jack knows he has a demon in the house and he’s knows the demonic laws. He lures the Yattering out of the house and earns the demon as a slave because it broke the law.

Now, I wouldn’t call the Yattering scary. Of all the monsters I’ve read about so far this term, it’s the most endearing. Just like he did in “Rawhead Rex,” Barker head hops between characters, but most of the story is told from the Yattering’s point of view. The reader clearly sees it’s frustration at not being able to crack Jack, its fear of its superior, and its childlike excitement when it finally says the word “Heaven.” If anything, the Yattering is almost like a petulant child who just wants its way, but doesn’t get it because it misbehaved, or in this case broke the demonic law (I love the irony of there being laws in Hell).

Even though the monster in this story wasn’t as terrifying as some others, what made the Yattering work as a monster was the details. I loved the details of Barker's Hell, such as the hierarchy and the law. How the Yattering behaves by wrecking Jack's house made me wonder if maybe I don't have my own Yattering floating around--weird sounds come out of my kitchen, and my overactive imagination jumps to the conclusion that my apartment's haunted. Even the Yattering’s name implies something annoying: to yatter is to chatter incessantly, and having a demon chatter in my ear is not high on the things I want to experience. To top it off, a turkey launching itself out of the oven for no apparent reason would be terrifying. 

Maybe the Yattering isn’t as monstrous as some monsters, but it does have the creep factor working for it. Hands down, it's one of my new favorite beasties.

Works Cited

Barker, Clive. “The Yattering and Jack.” Books of Blood Volumes One to Three. New York: Berkley, 1998.

Week Five: 30 Days of Night

 

This week we’re back to vampires, courtesy of Steve Niles and Ben Templesmith in the graphic novel 30 Days of Night.

I remember when the movie came out back in 2007, and all the girls were excited about seeing Josh Hartnett. My friends who saw it because they didn’t care about Hartnett and wanted to see the movie for its own merit all said the same thing: it wasn’t good.

 

Sorry, Josh, but at least you're pretty.

I knew it was based on a graphic novel, but I’ve never been a big reader of comics and forgot about it until finding out I had to read it for class. I wasn’t sure what to think because of what I’d heard of the movie, but no matter whether the novel was better than the movie, I knew the vampires wouldn’t sparkle. They’d be monsters instead of brooding heartthrobs.

A huge factor in the monster endeavor was the setting. The story takes place in Barrow, Alaska, where temperatures are on average below zero and the area is plunged into a thirty day stretch when the sun doesn’t rise. The setting immediately made me uncomfortable. I hate being cold. I only have so many blankets and my heater only works so well. I hate snow. The first snow of the season is pretty, but afterwards it’s annoying with its need to be cleared. I hate winters in the Northeast. They’re cold, gray, and dark. The sun sets around 4 p.m., and I always wish I could hibernate until spring. So reading about these freezing, dark days in Barrow, Alaska made me cringe.

Because of these thirty days of darkness, vampires can roam freely and feed. They massacre Barrow, and they don’t look good doing it. Now while a part of me misses a monstrous vampire, I admit to enjoying a well-written sexy vampire (that doesn’t sparkle). But I’m not reading a book with those kinds of vampires to be scared or even made a little uneasy.

Niles vamps are creepy, with rows of pointed teeth, long claws, and black eyes. Even their text bubbles are ragged and aesthetically unpleasing, just like the monsters saying the words are. They’re out to satiate their bloodlust, and the splashes of red from their kills mark many of the pages. Unlike the vamps in I Am Legend, Niles vampires are active. Rather than lurk quietly in the background while the hero works out a solution to end them like the I Am Legend vampires, the 30 Days of Night vampires are just around the corner waiting to feed. And it’s pitch black out. And it’s below zero. Oh, and all forms of communication to the outside world have been cut off. Also, no weapon can kill them—only vampires can kill vampires.

Once the hero of the story, Eben, figures this out, he freely chooses to become a vampire so he can kill the big bad head vampire who has come to Barrow to cover up the killing spree so the media doesn’t get wind that vampires exist. Eben driving force isn’t just to protect the town, but to protect his wife’s Stella. Again, the theme of the power of women creeps into the readings. Eben acts out of love and protectiveness when he elects to turn vampire, and just like in I Am Legend, Breeding Ground, and “Rawhead Rex,” the influence of women is key to keeping the story moving.

Stella points out after the fact that the sun was about to rise in a day or so. I couldn’t help but wonder if the remaining townspeople couldn’t ride out the killing spree another day, then they’d have about nine months to focus on an alternative plan to kill vampires should the monsters come back.

Wonderings aside, Eben’s killing of the alpha I found hard to believe. I’ve read books were young vampires are stronger than the old ones, but I never fully bought it. It makes more sense to me that the older vampires would have the upper hand because they’d had more time to hone their skills. Maybe I’m supposed to extend my disbelief that Eben is able to kill the alpha because he’s a sheriff.

Up until that point, I was completely with Niles and his vampires. I found them warped and fascinating, and I wanted to read more up until the end when Eben punched the head vampire through the face. But I can almost overlook this because these vampires worked so well in the classic bloodthirsty way. If nothing else, I have one more reason to stay inside this winter.

Week Four: "Rawhead Rex"

The reading for this week is spider-free, which is a plus for me because I haven’t been able to look at the spider that lives outside my window the same since reading Breeding Ground (fun fact, I've name said spider Sarah Pinborough). While the setting of this week’s story keeps me in small-town England, Clive Barker's short story Rawhead Rex deals with baby-eating giants rather than nightmare-inducing beasties.   

And Rawhead Rex was the first monster I've truly liked this term.

Rex was the first monster who was wholly present throughout the entire story. He didn't remain passively in the background the way the vampires did in I Am Legend or the Widows in Breeding Ground. I feel like the potential both monsters had was wasted, especially the Widows. Both are explained, they’re terrifying, but then they don’t do anything. Neville is too busy with his science and Matt is too busy with his women to really pay attention to the monsters in their lives.

But Rex demands to be remembered. He’s Barker's take on the Boogeyman, the monster that's under the bed or in the shadows waiting to eat small children. Some might know him as Bloody Bones, others might view him as a symbol for the Devil. Either way, he’s been lurking in minds for centuries.

The story opens with Thomas Garrow clearing a plot of land for farming. The land hasn't been touched in years, and Garrow doesn't know why. He just wants to plant some hops, or maybe a nice orchard, but there’s a giant slab of rock in the middle of the field that has to be moved before he can plant anything. Garrow manages to dislodge the rock, and inadvertently frees the boogeyman. Enter Rawhead Rex, all nine-feet of him. Rex crawls out of his prison-grave where he’s been trapped since the Middle Ages and is hungry for some children.

From his first appearance, I read Rex as having a rock star vibe. He’s called “The King” throughout the piece--rex is Latin for king. He takes what he wants when he wants it, and he gets a kick out of doing it. Before he was trapped underground, he and his brothers owned the earth, which indicates that Rex is something primordial. “Just because [the people] had tamed the wilderness for a while didn't mean they owned the earth. It was his, and nobody would take it from him” (Books of Blood: Volumes One to Three, 371). He even has a modern-day minion in Declan Ewan, the town Verger who finds pleasure in letting Rex piss on him. (If that's not twisted devotion, I don't know what is.)

Rex is also the most concretely described monster so far this term. Aside from his physical appearance, the explanation of his origin is peppered throughout the story. Barker gives just enough of Rex’s back story to satisfy the reader. What I needed to know is how or if Rex could be destroyed. And just like every good monster, Rex has his Kryptonite: fertile women. Not improbable science that has to make up its own rules to explain itself.

When Rex goes on his first killing spree, he doesn't kill the menstruating Gwen because her monthly blood disgusts him. He's killed by a statue of a fertile woman. “To him the stone was the thing he feared most: the bleeding woman, her gaping hole eating seed and spitting children. It was life, that hole, that woman, it was endless fecundity. It terrified him” (406). His fear slows him down enough that the villagers overpower him and bash in his skull with the statue.

Rex’s fear is primal. Even though only women can carry and birth the children he desperately craves, they have the power of life which contradicts his power of death. Rex is almost a caricature of maleness, from his huge size to his strength to him marking his minion with urine. He lives to kill the innocent, while women are designed to give life to the innocent. Rex took his revenge on women in the Middle Ages by raping them—he knew they couldn't survive the pregnancy because they were physically incapable of carrying his children to term. Yet no matter how much he hates women, he can't survive in a world without them. He might physically overpower them for a time, but ultimately women overpower him because they produce life while all he can do is end life. Even when he created life by impregnating women, he knew neither the women nor his children would survive.

Gynophobia, anyone? There's something great about the monster who only desires to be feared having a fear itself.

I can forgive Barker the constant head-hopping because he created a monster I can understand, partially because I've been familiar with the idea of the boogeyman all my life and partially because his fear of feminine isn't so far reaching that it falls short of suspending my disbelief. Rex is big and bad—he always has been and he always will be. He's violent and dangerous, and Barker doesn't coddle the reader from this. He's what every monster should be: something worth fearing.

Works Cited

Barker, Clive. "Rawhead Rex." 1984. Books of Blood: Vols 1-3. New York: Berkley, 1998. 362-407. Print.

Week Three: Breeding Ground

I don't scare easily, but I do have a list of things that terrify me. Relatively high on that list is spiders. It was only after being trapped in a car with one, almost swerving into oncoming traffic, and making pathetic, animal-like whimpers that made me realize my fear of spiders might be more akin to a phobia.

Far lower on my list of fears are pregnancy and giving birth. So many women say it’s wonderful experiencing the miracle of life. Maybe it’s because I watched my mother have a rough time being pregnant, maybe I’ve seen too many episodes of Call the Midwife, but I’m not anxious to conceive and carry a child to term. I find the entire business of being pregnant and giving birth unsettling.

So what does Sarah Pinborough do in her novel Breeding Ground? Combine two of my fears into one convenient package: women become pregnant with mutant spiders which then rip free from the living women’s body.

What fun.

The first third of the book made me uncomfortable. The symptoms of the freak-spider pregnancies are wonderfully disgusting and so very disturbing if you fear both spiders and pregnancies. I haven’t read much that’s truly grossed me out the way Breeding Ground did. Other than that, though, I have major problems with this book.

First is with the treatment of women throughout the story. This surprised me coming from a woman author. All the female characters are flat and one-dimensional. Chloe, the first female character the reader meets, serves one purpose: to host to a parasitic mutant spider, or Widows as they’re called. The narrator Matt, Chloe’s boyfriend, tells the reader that she used to be a lovely girl. Yet all the reader really sees of Chloe is her complaining about how much weight she’s gained before the spider takes over her brain and gives her telepathy and the ability to physically immobilize Matt.

This is the same pattern with most of the female characters throughout the book. At first I thought it was Pinborough’s way of illustrating how women are merely incubators for the Widows and serve no other purpose to them. Yet there are three female characters who aren't immediately living incubators: Katie, Jane, and Rebecca. But they’re not given much personality either.

Jane is a child, and besides showing how the mutant spider pandemic has warped the mind of a male survivor Nigel and being eaten by a Widow, she doesn't do much. She more or less just takes up space on the page. Her older sister Katie also doesn't serve much purpose than to be Matt’s new fling. She becomes impregnated with one a Widow and chooses to kill herself rather than be eaten from the inside out. Finally, there’s Rebecca. She’s deaf, and since she’s deaf her blood is like acid to the Widows (more on that later). She’s another one of Matt’s flings.

Which brings me to my next issue: Matt. I found him to be more of a pig than Robert Neville from I Am Legend. Matt tells the reader in the prologue that the events of his story happened last year. In this time, Matt begins with his girlfriend Chloe. He’s happily living with her and awaiting the birth of their first child when the book opens. She’s taken over and eaten by Widows, but Matt doesn't stay long enough to see her death. He doesn't seem too remorseful—the entire time Chloe’s been pregnant, he’s been disgusted by the weight she’s gained.

Matt leaves town and meets up with other surviving men, all of whom have lost the women in their lives to the Widow pandemic. Two surviving and Widow-free females join the group, Katie and her little sister Jane. From the moment Katie joins the group, Matt is sexually attracted to her. They consummate their relationship, because what’s an apocalypse without sex? Matt acknowledges that he and Katie start their relationship pretty soon after Chloe, but it’s a purely sexual relationship. I understand that grief manifests in many ways, including the all-consuming need to be as close to another person as possible. But Matt’s justification of his relationship with Katie so soon after Chloe makes him seem sex-obsessed. In fact, Chloe pretty much drifts off to the back of Matt’s mind rather quickly after he leaves her.

Not long after Matt and Katie have sex, Katie becomes pregnant with a Widow, but doesn't live long enough to let it kill her. About thirty pages later, Matt is sleeping with Rebecca. She too becomes pregnant. But because her blood is acidic to the Widows, there’s hope that her baby is actually a baby and not a Widow. In less than a year, Matt has gotten three different women pregnant.

I feel like other things should be in the forefront of the mind during an apocalypse instead of sex, but that’s just me.

Which brings me to my final gripe with this novel: Pinborough’s explanation of the origin of the Widows. For some reason, I thought the widows were aliens. I was completely wrong about that, they’re the result of genetically spliced food and animal genes….

Wait, what?

I must have read the explanation about five times to make sure I didn’t misunderstand. Pinborough’s explanation for the Widows was genetic experiments gone wrong, and these experiments carried away on the breeze….

I like my original alien spider theory.

For a while, I was convinced Matt was some kind of Widow carrier. After all, two of the three girls he impregnated conceived Widows along with babies. How men became carriers of the male Widows was never explained, and neither was why the blood of deaf Rebecca and a deaf dog were toxic to the spiders. I feel like Pinborough either needed to explain her monsters better or not explain them at all and leave them completely shrouded in mystery. The rushed, incomplete explanation Pinborough used felt like a cop out. I felt gypped, like Pinborough ran out of steam and just slapped an ending together, which is extremely frustrating after dedicating the time to read any book.

I wanted a better apocalypse, spiders or not.

(Preferably not.)