Book Review | Sherlock Holmes and the Servants of Hell by Paul Kane

Late 1895. Sherlock Holmes and his faithful companion Dr John Watson are called upon to investigate a missing persons case. On the face of it, this seems like a mystery that Holmes might relish, as the person in question vanished from a locked room. But this is just the start of an investigation that will draw the pair into contact with a shadowy organisation talked about in whispers, known only as the Order of the Gash.

As more people go missing in a similar fashion, the clues point to a sinister asylum in France and to the underworld of London. However, it is an altogether different underworld that Holmes will soon discover—as he comes face to face not only with those followers who do the Order’s bidding on Earth, but those who serve it in Hell: the Cenobites.

***

The great detective applies his inimitable intellect to a murder mystery like none other in Sherlock Holmes and the Servants of Hell, a surprisingly credible commingling of Arthur Conan Doyle's classic characters and the soul-shredding subjects of The Scarlet Gospels. That's right, readers: Clive Barker's Cenobites are back—and they may actually have met their match.

Holmes himself has seen better days, I dare say. In the wake of the great hiatus, during which period he disappeared to mess with his nemesis, he's alive and relatively well, but without the dastardly Moriarty to match wits with, he's grown a bit bored. And as Dr Watson warns:

When Holmes grew bored, it was usually only a matter of time before he took up his old habit of drug use [...] however his penchant for his seven-percent solution of cocaine, administered via a needle he kept locked away in a polished Morocco box, was the least of my concerns after he returned, it transpired.

The black dog of Holmes' habit is troubling, to be sure, but still more worrisome to Watson is the fact that his closest acquaintance's "malaise was gaining momentum." Said detective is dismissing fascinating cases with no explanation and plying his elementary trade in plague-ridden areas. "If these were in fact efforts to feel something, to feel alive," Watson worries, "then they might well kill the man instead."

It's a relief, then, that "this dangerous road he was heading down: this terrible testing of himself" seems to cease when a couple come knocking on the door of 221B Baker Street. Laurence Cotton's brother Francis has gone missing, is the thing, and the police aren't taking his disappearance seriously—despite the screams the housekeeper heard emerge from the loft he was last seen locking.

At the scene of the could-be crime, our chums uncover a void in the decades-old dust that suggests the involvement of a small box, and soon scent "an odd smell of vanilla" masking an undercurrent of what must be blood. From just this, Holmes is convinced that Francis has fallen victim to some dark deed indeed, but the mechanics of his murder are mysterious—as is the motive of the killer or killers—and that comes to fascinate a fellow famed for his ability to explain anything.

Book Review | Symbiont by Mira Grant

The SymboGen-designed parasites were created to relieve humanity of disease and sickness. But the implants in the majority of the world's population began attacking their hosts, turning them into a ravenous horde.

Panic spreads as these predators begin to take over the streets. In the chaos, Sal and her companions must discover how the parasites are taking over their hosts, what their eventual goal is—and how they can be stopped.

***

On the back of the unsightly excitement of Parasite, something like rigor sets in as the second half of what was a duology turns into the middle volume of a tolerance-testing trilogy. Symbiont isn't a bad book by any means—it's accessible, action-packed, and its premise remains appallingly plausible—but absent the ambiguity that made its predecessor so unsettling, it's  lamentable for its length and lack of direction.

The first part of Parasitology chronicled the apocalyptic consequences of SymboGen's latest and greatest innovation: the ubiquitous Intestinal Bodyguard—a magic pill meant to protect against allergy, illness and infection—was a worm which, in time, turned; a symbiotic organism supposed to support its host yet set, instead, on supplanting said. Before long, of course, this conflict of interests turned the population of San Francisco and its suburbs into zombies of a sort—sleepwalkers, as Mira Grant would have it.

The transition went differently for a few folks, though. After a catastrophic car crash, and at the cost of her every memory, Sally Mitchell's parasite saved her life... or so she thought.

Book Review | The Troop by Nick Cutter

It begins like a campfire story: five boys and a grownup went into the woods...

It will end in madness and murder. And worse...

Once a year, scoutmaster Tim Riggs leads a troop of boys into the Canadian wilderness for a three-day camping trip—a tradition as comforting and reliable as a good ghost story and a roaring bonfire. But when an unexpected intruder stumbles upon their campsite—shockingly thin, disturbingly pale, and voraciously hungry—Tim and the boys are exposed to something far more frightening than any tale of terror. The human carrier of a bioengineered nightmare. An inexplicable horror that spreads faster than fear. A harrowing struggle for survival that will pit the troop against the elements, the infected... and one another.

Part Lord of the Flies, part 28 Days Later—and all-consuming—this tightly written, edge-of-your-seat thriller will take readers deep into the heart of darkness and close to the edge of sanity.

***

Imagine how different the world would look if a real diet pill existed; if losing weight was a simple sugar solution away. Think for a minute about how dramatically that would change the day to day. It'd be revolutionary, in truth. And it would make certain people very rich indeed.

Dr. Clive Edgerton, for one, isn't in it for the money. It's the science that interests him: the science, in this instance, of adapting a hydatid for use in human hosts. Awful as the thought is, a tapeworm which could be introduced to our systems with one pill and passed after another—once it had done its dirty work—would be a great breakthrough... one the determined doctor is on the very precipice of making.

He's ready, if you can credit it, to start testing Thestomax in earnest: a fascinating narrative strand that The Troop simply isn't interested in. Instead, Nick Cutter—"a pseudonym for an acclaimed [Canadian] author of novels and short stories," per the press release I received—dubs Edgerton "Dr. Death" and treats his quest as the premise for an absorbing, albeit appalling body horror novel that reads like The Lord of the Flies meets Mira Grant's Parasite.

Book Review | Parasite by Mira Grant

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A decade in the future, humanity thrives in the absence of sickness and disease.

We owe our good health to a humble parasite: a genetically engineered tapeworm developed by the pioneering SymboGen Corporation. When implanted, the tapeworm protects us from illness, boosts our immune system — even secretes designer drugs. It's been successful beyond the scientists' wildest dreams. Now, years on, almost every human being has a SymboGen tapeworm living within them.

But these parasites are getting restless. They want their own lives... and will do anything to get them.

***

The other side of Seanan McGuire — author of the ongoing affairs of faerie misfit October Daye — Mira Grant got off to a great start with the Newsflesh books. The first of the three, Feed, was ostensibly about bloggers during the zombie apocalypse, and whilst it won none, it was nominated for any number of awards, including the Hugo. I enjoyed it an awful lot.

Feed, however, felt complete to me, so when Deadline was released the next year, I didn't know quite what to make of it. I read it regardless, and found it... fine. Entertaining enough, but not notably so, not innovative in way its predecessor was, and certainly not necessary. In the end, my nonplussedness was such that I never bothered with Blackout beyond the first few chapters: though it bears saying that the Best Novel nominations kept on coming, for book two of Newsflesh and the conclusion, overall, the series seemed to me to define diminishing returns.

But it's a new dawn, a new day, a new time, and I'm feeling good about the future. Parasite marks the beginning of a brand new duology, and I'm pleased to report that I've got my Mira Grant groove back. Indeed, I've rarely been so keen to read a sequel, in part because Parasite doesn't so much stop as pause at a pivotal point, but also because it's a bloody good book.

So have you heard of the hygiene hypothesis? I hadn't, so let's do as I did and Wiki it quickly. Apparently, it has that "a lack of early childhood exposure to infectious agents, symbiotic microorganisms [...] and parasites increases susceptibility to allergic diseases by suppressing natural development of the immune system." Which makes a certain amount of sense, yes?

Well, in the near future of Mira Grant's new novel, the bulk of which takes place in San Francisco in 2027, a medical corporation called SymboGen have made their millions on the back of a parasite genetically engineered to stop short these potential problems. It's pretty much a magic pill in practice — the Intestinal Bodyguard™ even secretes designer drugs — and everyone who's anyone has one. That said, Sally Mitchell's is the first to single-handedly save a life... at a cost, of course:

I have to remind myself of that whenever things get too ridiculous: I am alive because of a genetically engineered tapeworm. Not a miracle; God was not involved in my survival. They can call it an "implant" or an "Intestinal Bodyguard," with or without that damn trademark, but the fact remains that we're talking about a tapeworm. A big, ugly, blind, parasitic invertebrate that lives in my small intestine, where it naturally secretes a variety of useful chemicals, including — as it turns out — some that both stimulate brain activity and clean toxic byproducts out of blood. (p.23)

Declared brain-dead after a car crash six years before the book begins, Sally's parasite somehow brought her back — with no memory, however. Indeed, she had to learn how to walk and talk again, and has since developed a significantly different personality than she had before the accident. Now she's got a part-time job and an awesome boyfriend; little by little, she's getting to grips with who she is... she just isn't who she was.

Everyone who knew me before the accident — who knew Sally, I mean, since I don't even feel like I can legitimately claim to be her — says I'm much nicer now. I have a personality, which was a worry for a little while, since they thought there might be brain damage. It's just not the same one. I don't stress about the missing memories anymore. I stress about the thought that someday, if I'm not careful, they might come back. (p.94)

There are, alas, bigger problems on the horizon. An outbreak of what people are calling sleeping sickness has hit the city in recent weeks. Sal and her parasitologist partner Nathan see one individual fall victim to it firsthand while walking in the park one afternoon, and are so surprised when it's not on the news that they begin to suspect shenanigans. Nathan goes fishing for figures and finds out that "worldwide infections were probably somewhere in the vicinity of ten thousand, and climbing — which just made the lack of major media coverage more alarming. Someone, somewhere, was spending a lot to bury this." (p.180)

The more time Sal spends at SymboCorp, where she's required to present herself for regular tests, the more she suspects that they have something to do with this conspiracy. But why? What could they possibly have to hide? And why is one of the company's fallen founders demanding a chat with our protagonist? Excepting the obvious, what's so special about Sal in any event?

That's for me to know and you to find out, I'm afraid, though I wholeheartedly recommend you do so as soon as possible. Parasite isn't perfect by any stretch: it's paced strangely, like a vast first act, incredibly exposition-heavy and, as I said earlier, entirely absent an ending. To top it all off, the big ol' twist which stands in for that latter is telegraphed too transparently for it to have much in the manner of impact. You'll see it coming a mile off, I imagine... yet you'll still need to know what happens next; how Sal handles the ostensible revelation with which Grants bids us a ghastly goodbye.

Largely, that's thanks to a very convincing, not to mention naturalistic cast of characters, the majority of whom are everymen, though there are a few colourful supporting folks too — like Tansy, a miniature monster who reminded me of Borderlands 2's Tiny Tina, and SymboGen's butter-wouldn't-melt head honcho Stephen Banks, who we get to know through the excerpted interviews Grant appends to each chapter of Parasite. All this is underpinned by a sympathetic protagonist who, despite being six years old in a sense, is witty, wily and remarkably well-rounded, such that her first-person perspective is a particular pleasure.

In premise Parasite is less exceptional, but in execution — aside the decision to divide what is clearly a single story down the middle, and the consequences we noted a moment ago — Grant's new book makes for a legitimately gripping ride into early Cronenberg territory, by which I mostly mean Shivers. There's not actually a whole lot of that film's visceral horror herein; the safe money says the worst effects of the so-called sleeping sickness are yet ahead. But the trademark tension that everything's about to go horribly wrong — that the human body is good and ready to rebel — is there from the first, and resoundingly realised before the frustrating break that is Parasite's primary problem.

Otherwise, it's a whole lot of awesome; I enjoyed it more even than Feed, and I'm certainly much more inclined to keep reading the series than I was the novels of the Newsflesh.

***

Parasite
by Mira Grant

UK & US Publication: October 2013, Orbit

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Book Review | Raven Girl by Audrey Niffenegger

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"Once there was a Postman who fell in love with a Raven."

So begins the tale of a postman who encounters a fledgling raven while on the edge of his route and decides to take her home. The unlikely couple falls in love and conceives a child - an extraordinary raven girl trapped in a human body. The raven girl feels imprisoned by her arms and legs and covets wings and the ability to fly. Betwixt and between, she reluctantly grows into a young woman, until one day she meets an unorthodox doctor who is willing to change her.

One of the world's most beloved storytellers has created a dark fairytale full of wonderment and longing. Illustrated with Audrey Niffenegger's bewitching etchings and paintings, Raven Girl explores the bounds of transformation and possibility.

***

As oddly modern as Audrey Niffenegger's third novel-in-pictures is in many respects, the story at its core is as old as the 17th century aquatint technique she uses to illustrate it. Older, even. In the beginning, boy meets girl. They become friends... their relationship strengthens... and in due course, a strange babe is made. 

I say strange because it so happens that the girl the boy falls for is a bird: a fledgling raven who has fallen out of the nest. Seeing her, a caring mailman worries that she's broken, so he takes her home, cares for her as best he can. What develops between them then seems straight out of a wonderfully weird take on Aesop's Fables. 

“The postman was amazed by the intelligence and grace of the Raven. As she grew and lived in his house and watched him, she began to perform little tasks for him; she might stir the soup, or finish a jigsaw puzzle; she could find his keys (or hide them, for the fun of watching him hunt for them). She was like a wife to him, solicitous of his moods, patient with his stories of postal triump and tragedy. She grew large and sleek, and he wondered how he would live without her when the time came for her to fly away.” (pp.18-19) 

But when the time comes, the raven remains. As a matter of fact, she was hardly hurt in the first place; she stayed with the lonely postman for her own reasons. 

Time passes. Magic happens. 

In short, a child is born: a young human woman with the heart of a bird. Her parents love her utterly, give her everything they're able. Still, she longs to share her life with others like her. But there are none... she's the only Raven Girl in whole wide world! 

"The Raven Girl went to school, but she never quite fit in with the other children. Instead of speaking, she wrote notes; when she laughed she made a harsh sound that startled even the teachers. The games the children played did not make sense to her, and no one wanted to play at flying or nest building or road kill for very long.  

"Years passed, and the Raven Girl grew. Her parents worried about her; no boys asked her out, she had no friends." (p.36) 

So far, so fairy tale. But Niffenegger does ultimately capitalise on the aspects of the uncanny at the heart of her narrative. Later in life, the Raven Girl goes to university and learns about chimeras from a visiting lecturer, who says the very thing she's needed to hear for years. "We have the power to improve ourselves, if we wish to do so. We can become anything we wish to be. Behold [...] a man with a forked lizard tongue. A woman with horns. A man with long claws," (p.43) and so on. It only takes a little leap for us to foresee a girl with working wings. 

And so Raven Girl goes: right down the rabbit hole of body horror. 

It's a somewhat discomfiting turn for the tale to take, but soon one senses this is what the author hopes to explore: the book's beatific beginnings are just a way of getting there. Thus, they feel slightly superfluous—an assertion evidenced by the lack of artwork illustrating the opening act. At 80 pages, Raven Girl is the longest of the three picture books Niffenegger has created to date, but not out of narrative necessity. 

When Raven Girl finally takes flight, half its length has elapsed, but the half ahead is certainly superb. This may not be a fable for the faint-hearted, yet it stands a strangely beautiful tale all the same... of light glimpsed in the night, of hope when all looks to be lost. As the author attests:

"Fairy tales have their own remorseless logic and their own rules. Raven Girl, like many much older tales, is about the education and transformation of a young girl. It also concerns unlikely lovers, metamorphoses, dark justice, and a prince, as well as the modern magic of technology and medicine." (p.78) 

It is this last which sets off the plot of Niffenegger’s new novel-in-pictures: the idea of science as supernatural after a fashion. Together with the muted elements of the macabre aforementioned, Raven Girl feels like kid-friendly Cronenberg, and the artist’s moody aquatints very much feed into this reading. 

No doubt Audrey Niffenegger is most known as the mind behind The Time Traveler's Wife, but her latest emerges instead from the manifest imagination of the artist who produced The Three Incestuous Sisters, for instance. Like that dark objet d'art, Raven Girl is an insidious intermingling of words and pictures to be treasured: a beautifully produced, lavishly, lovingly illustrated fairy tale for the modern day—and very much of it, also.

***

The Raven Girl
by Audrey Niffenegger

UK Publication: May 2013, Jonathan Cape
US Publication: May 2013, Abrams ComicArts

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