Cemetery Dance Novella Series
Brian Freeman, Novella #14: Blue November Storms (Cemetery Dance Publications, 2005)
T.M. Wright, Novella #15: The Eyes of the Carp (Cemetery Dance Publications, 2005)
Geoff Cooper, Novella #16: Retribution, Inc. (Cemetery Dance Publications, 2005)
Two years after the last installment, Rick Hautala's Cold River, the Cemetery Dance Novella Series finally continues with a trio of entries from some lesser known names than usual. In fact, I had only read one book and one story from one author, and nothing from the others. That said, it was a mixed bag this time around, and it's a good thing there are three to choose from, because not all of them will please.
Twenty years ago, when they were 18, The Lightning Five did something that the residents of the small Pennsylvania town of Beacon Point still talk about to this day. A young girl died, yet the event was touted as heroic. Tonight is a reunion of sorts: Steven, Harry, Joe, and Matt -- together with Adam, who has been long thought dead -- are going back to The Summer Place on Beacon Point Lake one more time. But there's a meteor storm on the horizon, and when Mother Nature goes awry, The Lightning Five will be changing their name . . . one by one.
Brian Freeman can write. I know he can. His novel Black Fire (written under the pseudonym James Kidman and nominated for the Bram Stoker Award for First Novel) was my favorite book of 2004, and his story "Answering the Call" was a highlight of From the Borderlands (aka Borderlands 5). So I know he can write -- and write well.
I would not know this if all I had to go on was Blue November Storms. This novella shows a lot of the style that makes his work a pleasure, but none of the plotting skill. It is highly readable; unfortunately, it is also highly ridiculous. Freeman had me from the beginning with the 20-year friends' reunion. The feelings ran high and true, and I was really enjoying myself, looking forward to a hearty, fast-paced read with emotional depth.
Then the meteor hit. And it hypnotized every living forest creature in its vicinity, turning them into crazed killing machines: bears that plan, squirrels that "sabotage." It was all I could do to keep from laughing (my fellow commuters tend to frown on such behavior), or throwing the book across the train car (ditto, only more so). I wish more focus had been paid to the "heroic" event and its effect on the Five (perhaps with a reenactment), because when that finally came to the fore, I felt none of its expected emotional weight.
It's also unfortunate that Jill Bauman's illustrations aren't very effective. I'm sure she did her best, but it's difficult to convey the intensity of the bright blue glow of a meteor when you're drawing in black and white -- for a successful take, see Alan Clark's beautiful cover -- also, her image of an attacking bear more closely resembles a teddy with teeth.
Freeman obviously took his time setting up the characters, their thoughts and feelings, and their histories, but then he dropped them into a silly potboiler that is not worthy of them, killing them off with almost unfeeling speed. (If they were only created to die, then why bother making them so real?) Blue November Storms is terrific exposition wasted by a story that doesn't respect it.
T.M. Wright is renowned for his facility in revising the ghost story for modern readers. He continues this pattern with The Eyes of the Carp. Kevin lives with ghosts that come in the form of phantoms that walk his house and engage him in conversation, or of memories of his past -- his father, his childhood, his marriage to Janet. He relates these experiences in journal form and Wright uses these to illustrate the episodic nature of Kevin's memory -- and the deterioration of his sanity, such as it is.
Kevin is not the most reliable of narrators, making this novella a challenging read, to say the least. It is never less than absolutely compelling, however. There is a strange logic that permeates The Eyes of the Carp, ensuring that even the most peculiar events or statements make complete sense in this context. (I quickly stopped trying to divine the pattern behind the journal headings; but even when the headings devolved into many significant digits of π, there was a formula, as far from my own thought processes as it may have been.)
It's not a traditional narrative by any means, and, in fact, any sense of linear progression is completely thrown out the window by the end, when memories mix with fantasies and hallucinations in a buffet of confusion (with a side order of word salad). With The Eyes of the Carp, Wright confidently adds to the "crazy guy tells his life story" genre.
When their guitarist Ronnie leaves the band to go to music recording school, the two remaining members of Retribution, Inc., are left scrambling for a new axeman in time for their highest profile concert yet: opening for Your Kid's On Fire -- a band with an actual recording contract -- at The Electra Complex. The only other guitarist they know whose playing they respect is Joey, an egotistical bastard who is in the midst of recording sessions with his own band. It looks like an open audition is the only option left.
Enter Ernie, a geek with the wrong look and the wrong guitar. But he plays their brand of angry rock with feeling and almost unbelievable skill, having learned all the lead parts in four days from a cassette. Ernie's other drawbacks are his fingers: they bleed profusely whenever he plays -- but since it doesn't affect the quality, they let it go and give Ernie the job. When Joey becomes available again, the other two disagree on the correct course of action, eventually leading to tension, then violence, and an unnecessary death.
Taking place in his fictional burg of Brackard's Point, Geoff Cooper's Retribution, Inc. is a terrific portrait of a band under pressure, with all the backstabbing, manipulation, and ego-stroking that entails. Cooper is obviously familiar with rock group dynamics and he has a laidback prose style that makes for a quick, easy read. So much so, that it is relatively easy to forgive the novella's flaccid ending that seems meant only to shock, not arising organically from the plot and characters at all. Still, this is the only drawback of what is definitely the best of these three works.
The novella is the ideal format for these stories: they haven't been butchered to fit a predetermined short-story length, nor have they been unnecessarily padded out to novel length. All three are right around 100 pages, ideal for finishing in a single sitting in order to fully absorb the sense and atmosphere that they offer. Having produced sixteen offerings of this sort, one can assume that the Novella Series has been a success. I hope that Cemetery Dance continues to produce these quality books of a more manageable size at a (relatively speaking) reasonable price -- even if they don't all suit my taste.
Find out more about the Cemetery Dance Novella Series here.
