2011 WFA Winner (Novel)

Congratulations to Nnedi Okorafor on winning the World Fantasy Award for Best Novel!

My original predictions on the WFA novel nominees are here, and my full review of Who Fears Death is here.

I did not successfully predict the winning novel, but I did think Who Fears Death ranked in the top half of this year's nominees.  I think it's great to see such creative and original work being rewarded!

Review: Phantom by Thomas Tessier

Phantom by Thomas Tessier

Published: Atheneum, 1982

Awards Nominated: World Fantasy Award

The Book:

“Ned has known about phantoms since he was very young.  You have to hide from them, under your bed covers.  You can’t peek, because then you’ll see that they’re real.  Then there’s no taking it back.

When Ned is almost ten, his parents move him from the city to a small town called Lynnhaven.  Lynnhaven has its own ghosts—stories of people long gone and a ruined, abandoned spa that still remains.  Ned seems to adapt well, befriending several local old-timers and spending his days fishing and playing.  However, he slowly becomes aware that there is something dark waiting for him, and he associates it with the decrepit spa.  He knows that sooner or later he will have to face his phantom…”    ~Allie

Phantom, a novel on the Horror Writer’s Association Reading List,  is my second review for WWEnd’s Month of Horrors.  Phantom, which represents a very different style of horror than Conjure Wife, is a quieter, slower-paced story that focuses more on the kinds of fear that are probably familiar to everyone.  

My Thoughts:

One of the strengths of Phantom as a horror story was the way it was built upon a foundation of realistic fear.  First, it featured the (possibly) baseless terror children often experience while alone at night.   I remember being an overly imaginative child, spending nights where every little sound or shifting shadow filled me with an irrational sense of doom. The actual events of Phantom moved well beyond usual childhood fright, but its basis in this kind of common fear made Ned’s situation much more relatable.  The other, more serious, kinds of fear at the heart of the story were of the rational adult variety—fear of death or of losing someone you love.  While childish fear certainly drove some of the creepier scenes, the mature fears were the ones that truly lent the story weight and made it memorable.

Despite the fact that the story involved both terror and phantoms, it was incredibly slow-paced.  Most of the story involved Ned and his family getting settled in Lynnhaven.  His mother and father both tried to help Ned adjust, in their own ways. For his part, Ned coped with the move by forging a friendship with two elderly men, Peeler and Cloudy.  The relationship between Ned and the two men was absolutely adorable. Peeler and Cloudy took him along to fish or catch bait, and Ned eagerly listened to their old stories about former Lynnhaven residents.  The development of Peeler and Cloudy’s peaceful friendship with Ned, or ‘Mr. Tadpole’ as they called him, and Ned’s relationships with his parents filled a large part of the novel.     

I enjoyed the focus on the characters and their relationships, but I was surprised at how much more emphasis was placed on everyday life than on frightening deviations from it.  If you’re reading the story solely for thrills, I think it might become frustrating.  The breaks between the more disturbing events are filled with pages of parental worries and conversations with Peeler and Cloudy. I don’t mean to say that exciting, creepy things don’t happen—Ned’s experiences with the spa are one example—but the thrills definitely take a back seat to character study and contemplative scenes of daily life.

The writing itself was concise and effective, but I was a little put off by the style of narration.  The story is told from a third person omniscient point of view, and the thoughts and feelings of each person are generally described in every scene.  The narration would hop from the mind of one person to the next between paragraphs, a style that I find personally jarring.  It was never unclear whose thoughts were being related, but I felt that constantly moving from one person’s mind to another disturbed the flow of the story. 

My Rating: 3.5/5

Phantom seems very much what I would expect from traditional horror, except for its slow, contemplative pace.  It has a lot to say on the subject of fear, both the kinds of fears that plague small children and the inevitable fear of mortality with which I think most people eventually struggle.  Rather than focusing on supernatural interference, the story focused more on the roots of a person’s fear and how it affects their lives.  The thrilling, spine-tingling scenes were few and far between, but the bulk of the novel studied the relationships between Ned, his parents, and the elderly townsfolk Peeler and Cloudy.  While it may not be packed full with action and suspense, the story of Ned and his phantom portrays many varieties of fear that will resonate with its readers.

Review: Hull Zero Three by Greg Bear

Hull Zero Three by Greg Bear

Published: Orbit, 2010

Awards Nominated: John W. Campbell Award, Arthur C. Clarke Award

The Book:

“A starship hurtles through the emptiness of space. Its destination - unknown. Its purpose - a mystery.

Now, one man wakes up. Ripped from a dream of a new home - a new planet and the woman he was meant to love in his arms - he finds himself wet, naked, and freezing to death. The dark halls are full of monsters, but trusting other survivors he meets might be the greater danger.

All he has are questions -- Who is he? Where are they going? What happened to the dream of a new life? What happened to Hull 03?

All will be answered, if he can survive the ship. “~barnesandnoble.com

I’ve never actually gotten around to reading any Greg Bear, despite his popularity as an author.  When I saw Hull Zero Three was nominated for the Campbell Award this year, I thought it would be a good time to check out his work.  While I don’t think Hull Zero Three is for everyone, I did rather enjoy it. 

My Thoughts:

I think this is the kind of book that some people are going to love, and others are going to hate. I can see where the narrative style and the structure of the story might be intriguing to some readers but alienating to others. It seemed, to me, like a combination of a Big Dumb Object story, a sci-fi horror story, a cinematic thriller, and an adventure RPG.  While none of these elements seem particularly original, I felt that they melded together to make an entertaining story.

Hull Zero Three is narrated in first person and in present tense, from the mind of the confused, disoriented protagonist called ‘Teacher’.  He doesn’t really know what’s going on when he wakes up, and what few memories he has are jumbled up and disconnected.  The present tense helped to give the situation a sense of immediacy, and the near-blank-slate main character allows the reader to explore and learn alongside the narrator.  Though Teacher is not an incredibly deep character, Bear managed to keep him from seeming too generic or bland. Seeing the story through Teachers mind, as he collected clues, met allies and enemies, and fought or fled from monstrous creatures, felt very much like experiencing a story-based adventure game.

The downside for this type of adventure is that neither the characterization nor the plot has a whole lot of depth. While Teacher and several other characters do have distinct basic personalities, they know almost nothing about themselves and their purpose in the ship.  As a result, it seemed like almost all of the conflict and activity in the story was external and physical.  Even the characters’ personal journeys of self-discovery were externalized, as they gathered clues about their identities and roles in the current desperate situation.

As a result, a lot of the story consists of the characters’ reactions to physical obstacles and dangers.  The writing style is rather plain and terse, and it focuses on the physical and visual aspects of the story—descriptions of the environment, the deadly creatures, and the actions of the characters.  The story moves along quickly, though I felt it lacked the character connection that might have come from a more introspective approach. I think that this style of story would be very suited to a film adaptation.  (Actually, I’ve heard it has similarities to a certain film, Pandorum. I haven’t seen it, though, so I can’t really comment.)

I found myself liking the book more the further I read through it.  I didn’t find the beginning of the story to be very compelling. Since Teacher had no idea what was happening around him, some of the difficulties he struggled through seemed to be random and illogical. Information about Teacher, his companions, and their purpose is given only very gradually, and the story was much more interesting when the larger picture started to come together.  I felt that this started to happen a little too late in the story, though, as there was then little time to explore the ideas about morality and identity that were being raised.  I think I would have preferred to see more time spent on the end of the story than the beginning, though I did appreciate the eventual explanations for Teacher’s journey.

My Rating: 3.5/5

Hull Zero Three seems to be highly influenced by previous science fiction, movies, and video games.  The reader slowly learns about the situation and the characters through the mind and narration of a near-blank-slate protagonist called Teacher, who has just awakened with very little knowledge or memories.  Most of the novel focuses on the physical environment and actions of the characters as they struggle to survive.  The story eventually draws together to an interesting conclusion, but I felt that the explanations came a little too late in the novel.  Altogether, I thought this was an entertaining, but not groundbreaking, novel.