Book Reviews

The Synergy of Avintia

As a sometime fantasy writer myself, I find it troubling when an author decides to use a made-up word (a place or a character name) in the title of a book. Katherine Kurtz's "Deryni" books. The Silmarillion. Kushiel's Dart. Odds are, the average reader won't know what it means, or sometimes even how to pronounce it. I attended a reading by Terry Brooks not too long ago, only to learn that everyone I know has been pronouncing "Shanarra" wrong all these years.

Which is why the first thought to go through my head when I picked up The Synergy of Avintia was to wonder how well the title would sell this book. Not only did it have a made-up world place name, but I wondered how many casual readers even really know what 'synergy' means.

The story itself is a dimension-crossing fantasy in which layers of different realities are created and maintained by strongly-gifted magicians. One such layer, at the core of everything and known as Base, is our own present-day Earth. Here, Jacqualine Argaus is a graduate student. But in another layer, Avintia, she is a royal heir and destined to take over the magical maintenance of that entire reality.

When Jacqualine is needed at home, she is summoned back to Avintia by the Guardians, an order of mystics and teachers. They accidentally appear to her in front of her professor and a couple of other grad students, and wind up taking everyone along for the ride.

And, of course, there's a prophecy linking Jacqualine to the dashing and sexy Ashcroft Bitar. The two of them, rivals but potential mates, are thrown together when other factors and schemes threaten their realm.

The native Avintians, especially the Guardians and the peasant who discovers that he possesses the same magic as the royals, are the most interesting. I had a hard time empathizing with Jacqualine, the main character, both as ditzy grad student who got by on her looks and as arrogant and uncaring princesa of Avintia … and the transition from one to the other was like snapping fingers.

I wanted more having to do with the reactions of the professor and other grad students. Suddenly whisked away to a fantasy world where magic is real, suddenly told that all of reality does not work the way they've always believed, and being refused transportation home, they accept it awfully meekly and without any of the questions that I would have expected characters to ask. Then again, as a gamer, I was looking at it through those eyes, and knowing what would go on if I sprung something like that on my PCs.

I found Ms. Mills' writing to be skillfully handled, and her world cleverly imagined. I did feel that it wasn't fleshed out enough, that much more could have been done with the bones of the story. For a first book, it's certainly promising, and creates a world that has a lot to offer.

To Wake the Dead

Hardcover books. I usually only allow myself to lay out that kind of cash for Stephen King and Dean Koontz, and everyone else has to wait for paperback. That's been my habit for many years.

Until Richard Laymon's latest offering. I never gave it a second thought, just typed in my order from Leisure Books, and champed at the bit until the package arrived. Took it to work that night, read it in under four hours.

Laymon is phenomenal. There's just something about his style - raw, gritty, dark and dirty horror - that speaks to me on a profoundly deep and probably worrisome level. His books are packed with weird sex and weirder violence. And for some reason, I lap it up like ice cream.

Wake the Dead, therefore, was another winner. It struck me as being two main stories sort of zippered together, with other storylines branching in and out. Very strange book, but eminently enjoyable.

The main plot revolves around an Egyptian mummy bequeathed to the care of a museum after the grisly death of a collector and one-time explorer. The mummy, stripped of all jewels and windings by previous tomb robbers, is known as Amara. Wizened, eyeless, leathery, and with a flowing mane of red hair, Amara is believed to be cursed, or evil, or both.

The reader isn't surprised by what happens when the seals on Amara's sarcophagus are broken - she rises, and goes on a vicious killing spree. On her trail are a single-mom museum curator and a cop with woman problems of his own (he's being stalked by a hooker so gross she makes Amara look good).

The other story that braids in with this one involves a bunch of young people - Ed Lake is the quintessential Laymon character, the ever-horny and guilty-feeling adolescent - who are abducted, held in cages, and subjected to humiliation, torture, deviant sex, mutilation, and finally murder.

Other elements include a lonesome blind woman desperate for companionship, and a trio of runaways consisting of a would-be actress, her boyfriend, and her kid sister. Until the book nears its conclusion, the reader has got to be wondering - I know I was - how in the heck Laymon was going to bring all these disparate factors together. But he comes through with flying colors, even if the ending is too abrupt.

Laymon truly is a masterful writer. I cannot say that often enough or strongly enough. I'm amazed and chagrined that I've spent so many years as a horror fan without having encountered his work before.

The Policy

His early books strike me as being fairly standard horror fare, but lately, Bentley Little has really found his niche. In books such as The Store and The Association, he established himself as the ultimate writer of contemporary middle-class American horror fiction. He continues in this stride with The Policy, once more reminding us that we live in a scary, scary world.

After all, don't we all secretly believe, deep down or maybe not so deep down, that there's something inherently evil about gated community homeowner's associations, or faceless juggernaut chain stores like Wal-Mart? Would it really surprise anyone to learn that they were controlled by inhuman, even demonic forces?

In The Policy, the subject is insurance. A good thing, right? Until the insurance agents start calling and coming to your house, offering policies that you don't want. Until you turn them down, only to find that a few days later, something horrible happens to you that would have been covered … if only you'd bought the policy.

Don't want the supplemental dental coverage? Oops, then what a shame that your dentist drugged you, yanked all your teeth, and replaced them with steel dentures. Fix the damage? Sorry … your policy doesn't cover that.

And what happens when the offers venture into things that normal insurance doesn't cover? If you refuse to buy insurance against being falsely accused of crimes, you might be in jail the next day. If you do buy insurance to protect you from noisy, obnoxious neighbors, why, their house burns down in the night.

Bentley Little's fiction is not at all character-driven. His protagonists are all basically the same American Everyman, named Bill or Ben or Bob. They are interchangeable, ordinary people who eat fast food, go to the mall, and surf the Internet. That is, until they get sucked into these extraordinary situations.

What's scariest, therefore, about these books is that they are so close to home. It doesn't take much suspension of disbelief at all to think that these horrible, hideous things really could happen. We live in a society of comfort and convenience that none of us actually entirely trust, and that is the overwhelming strength of Bentley Little's books. They'll scare us, because they seem so very, very plausible.

The Policy, I think, is the best one yet. Maybe because it's the one I can identify with the most. I never have (and now certainly never plan to!) live in a gated community, but I have insurance. Medical, dental, auto, life, etc. I worry about what I'd do if something happened to me and I wasn't covered.

And even before I read this book, I've always felt uneasy about telemarketer phone calls trying to solicit something I don't need or want. When said calls come from organizations such as police or firefighter charity benefits, I keep imagining that, after refusing to buy tickets or contribute, or whatever, my name and address goes on some red-flagged list and they won't respond as quickly if ever I need to dial 911. When it's a home security company, I always wonder if the call is legit or if it's a burglar doing a telephone case-job to find out if I have an alarm system.

So, if you want a scare that's all-too-real in this modern world, I heartily recommend The Policy, as well as Little's other work.

review by Christine Morgan