As a whole, though, the book didn’t work for me. Which could be almost as much about me as about the book.

I generally think it’s lame when a review of fiction or film criticizes the unlikeability or lack of empathy with characters, but the funny man was both contemptible and dull in a way I found hard to get past and impossible to root for. Partly this is because the novel’s theme requires both the standard rags/riches/rehab plotline and that the character be largely a cipher, a stand-in for the concept of celebrity with minimal individuality. But I’m also just not very interested in the phenomenon of celebrity. I’ve thought that at a certain level celebrities stop being human by most useful definitions of the word since Warren Zevon’s song “Splendid Isolation” pointed it out to me. I’m often weirded out when real people express opinions about the moral choices of the mysterious people in magazines with only first names in the headlines. So maybe I’m just fundamentally not the right audience for this book.

I have spent quite a bit of time thinking about it, both while reading it and afterwards, so it had that going for it.

And I should mention that even if I didn’t like the book, I enjoyed some of its descriptions, for instance,

The woman is young, like right out of journalism school, and she had that green smell about her. She is tiny and dark, with short hair sculpted into a soft fin across the top of her head. She wears black exclusively. Her ears are small and pointed. She looks like an elf as raised and outfitted by eighties new wave musicians.

needs more demons? kinda.

needs more demons? no.

needs more demons? not really.

It was a strange exercise in cognitive dissonance for me. Many of Card’s selections are terrific — the list of contributors includes several of my personal favorites, like John Crowley, Karen Joy Fowler, Lewis Shiner, Nancy Kress, and John Kessel. But Card’s introductions, with lots of invective directed against cyberpunk and literary fiction, among other targets, seem whiny and tiresome in the aggregate. (He spends an awful lot of time fussing about the state of the speculative fiction genres for someone who, as he states in his preface, has “no idea what has been happening in the field of written science fiction since about 1992.”) I found myself in the odd position of almost wanting to not enjoy the stories, just because Card was recommending them — but generally failing. At the same time, I wasn’t able to just skip Card’s introductions — they had a sort of ghastly fascination people always ascribe to traffic accidents.

The eighties was also the last decade in which I was still naive enough to not perceive how much science fiction was political (or even topical), and also not to notice how many of the writers I’d grown up reading held positions I deeply disagreed with*. And sometimes my adult self is bothered by clumsy or heavy-handed writing to which my younger self was blissfully oblivious. So revisiting the fiction I liked in my childhood and adolescence is always a little fraught with the risk that a treasured memory will be damaged. I was a bit worried about re-reading John Varley’s “Press Enter,” which made an enormous impression on me when I first read it; I thought it held up quite well. To the extent that it advances a political point of view it’s pretty far from mine, but it’s hardly a polemic.

* To be fair, a lot of my own positions flip-flopped back then as long-held but unexamined assumptions were challenged by new information

needs more demons? Overall, a very strong collection.

There’s a lot of metatextual goings-on, but I don’t mean to suggest that the book is thorny or hard to digest. On the contrary, it’s fast-moving and sharply observed. I suspect anyone who’s ever been bullied will find it both easy and a little disquieting to identify with Doug and his revenge fantasies.

Side note: this novel features a reclusive, sardonic, hard-drinking gay vampire named Stephin. With an “i.” Hmmmm…..

needs more demons? no.

Given this, I spent most of time in the book looking for the places where the wool was being drawn over my eyes. When Irving mentioned that the records of a gallery which allegedly purchased some of de Hory’s fakes are no longer extant, it rang the same alarm bells in my head as the clumsy conman trying to derail suspicion by airing first. When a car rolled down a hill and burst into flame, I was tempted to cry aloud, “Aha! Fiction!”

Unfortunately, the meta-textual aspects of the book were perhaps its most consistently compelling. Elmyr de Hory’s story might’ve made a great long article for The New Yorker or Harper’s, but there’s not quite enough there there to sustain a whole book. The catalogue of de Hory arriving in some city, peddling his wares, wearing his welcome out, and moving on is too repetitive, and Irving’s approach — working hard to convince us that this is fact, not fiction — is too flat, too reportorial.

Irving only flirts with concepts that could have given his book weight beyond de Hory’s personal tragedy. He never suggests complicity on the part of any of the gallery owners who bought de Hory’s forgeries — he only provides circumstantial evidence, alleged queries as to whether the “small, private collection” which de Hory is allegedly liquidating might “happen to have” a work matching the interest of a specific potential buyer. And Irving observes but doesn’t analyze (or even judge) the strange climate that briefly allows de Hory to prosper: new money trying to legitimize itself by purchasing works of art it knows nothing about.

Irving doesn’t even go so far as to shoehorn de Hory into one of the classic plot arcs: de Hory rises, but not very far, and falls, but not very far. Irving brings the curtain down on his book before (but not much before) de Hory brings his own curtain down, after several previous botched attempts. Perhaps Irving even has some slight complicity in that, as the notoriety accompanying Irving’s book must have destroyed the only livelihood de Hory had ever known.

I learned about de Hory and Irving watching Orson Welles’ odd, fascinating/infuriating pseudo-documentary F for Fake, and I wonder if Welles’ interest might have been sparkled by this phrase in the book:

One must imagine swift cuts between shots, rapid pans of the camera and certain herky-jerky quality in the movements of the two heroes

Ironically, if sadly predictably, there is now enough interest in de Hory’s forgeries that they themselves are forged.

needs more demons? a bit.

I expected clunky prose, and found plenty of it (with all the ultra-this and super-that occasionally becoming unintentionally humorous) — but I didn’t expect it to be so rough I actually couldn’t tell what was going on. In First Lensman’s mining disaster sequence, Smith mixes wholly invented (I’m sure) miner’s argot with (I think?) some real-world-but-unfamiliar-to-me mining terminology such that I had only a vague idea what the characters were doing.

It was way more bloodthirsty than I was prepared for. I expect space opera to have a high body count as a rule, but I also expect the baddies (colorful evil leaders and direct henchmen aside) to largely be as evil and faceless as Star Wars‘ stormtroopers. Smith’s Lensmen cheerfully toss off remarks like, “In emergencies, it is of course permissible to kill a few dozen innocent bystanders,” which is probably pragmatic, but not exactly heroic or noble. They’re also pretty hard on combatants who are not actually evil or villainous, and may even become staunch allies a chapter or two later. In Triplanetary, Conway Costigan employs tactics against civilians that would be labeled terrorism today.

They were racier than I expected them to be, including descriptions of skimpy outfits, lurid (if unspecific) threats of fates-worse-than-death at the hands of sadists and/or sex-obsessed aliens, an instance of implied bisexuality, and a smidgeon of actual smooching.

But on the other hand:

• I was struck by how un-xenophobic these novels are. Alien races are often described as having “monstrous” appearances, but still worthy of inclusion in the ranks of civilization’s defenders — even, sometimes, if they have decidedly un-human mores.
• You couldn’t by any stretch call these novels “feminist,” but they’re not quite as sexist as I expected — several of Smith’s women are intelligent and self-directed, not just props for men to wrangle over, or insignificant background characters.
• I found it positively eerie to read about First Lensman’s slim poll margins, electoral dirty tricks and counter measures here in the twenty-first century — Smith is almost spookily prophetic.
• It really is astounding how much even modern science fiction draws on Smith’s tropes. I totally buy Lensmen as a key inspiration for Jedi, and Smith’s rays-vs.-shields space battles use the same fundamental rules as everything from Star Trek to Star Wars — and this before the invention of the laser. Star Trek’s plethora of inscrutable super-advanced alien races also seem to owe a debt to Smith’s Arisians.

needs more demons? I wouldn’t presume to say so. But it does help to bring some historical perspective.

The Forest of Hands and Teeth opens in a small village of humans surrounded by a forest filled by the Unconsecrated (better known as zombies). Between them the Sisterhood and the Guardians keep the village under tight strictures. As far as the villagers know, they are all that is left of humanity. The village and the forest comprise their entire world.

But some of the villagers have whispered stories to their children, knowledge not sanctioned by the sisters nor the guardians, about things that once existed — might still exist — beyond the forest. Mary’s mother told her of the ocean, and this vision compels her. Her restless, inquisitive nature inevitably brings her into conflict with the Sisterhood.

Like other writers of supernaturally themed or science fictional young adult fiction, Ryan explores her viewpoint character’s adolescent alienation. But what really set The Forest of Hands and Teeth apart for me is that Mary’s alienation is not literally manifested in some super power/curse or otherworldly heritage — Mary is just fundamentally a different sort of person from virtually all the villagers. Further, it’s remarkably cerebral for a zombie story. There are, ultimately, zombie attacks and some gripping action. But Ryan also establishes a compelling and odd blend of the pastoral and the claustrophobic, with the village tightly bound by the forest, and perhaps even more tightly bound by the Sisterhood. The Forest of Hands and Teeth reminded me much more of The Wicker Man than any zombie flick I’ve seen.

I found it creepy and (grimly) fun, although the dénouement felt a little rushed. Some readers might be impatient for the action to crank up, but that didn’t bother me at all.

needs more demons? no.

• The opening scene is set in a D/s club. It seems to be set there purely for presumed shock value; not only is it irrelevant to the plot, it doesn’t provide any insight into the characters (in fact, I thought it contradicted character development elsewhere).
• The device used to isolate the pool of suspects in this novel is Jones’ affiliation with a theatrical production. This worked much less well for me than the previous novel’s similar device of having Jones present for the unveiling of one of her sculptures at a bank. I think I know at least as much about theatres as I do about investment banking, and the notion that a theatre production would use an up-and-coming sculptor’s mobiles as set dressing was less credible than a young sculptor’s work being installed in a bank lobby. The presumption that suspects must be involved with the production also seemed flimsy.
• The exposition about the theatre’s fly system is unwieldy. It’s obvious Henderson wouldn’t spend as much effort detailing it as she does if it weren’t going to be a plot point. But since it’s mostly crammed into dialogue, it’s a little hard to follow. A diagram or two would have helped. (”Look, I’ll just draw it out for you,” Bez said impatiently, as he reached for a biro. [see Fig. 1]“)
• There are several characters with “H” names, including Hugo, Helen, and Hazel. Hazel plays Helena in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, the play being put on. Henderson also switches freely between referring to characters by their names, and by the roles they are playing. “Dream” is certainly a confusion-suffused play, so maybe this is deliberate — but it doesn’t seem to be applied to any particular thematic purpose.

On the bright side, there are some indications that it may be a transitional novel for Jones’ character. And the book really comes to life for me when Jones talks about the artistic processes involved in her sculptures. She even wonders if she’s compensating for a lack of success in some of her mobiles by making several that are fundamentally similar, so that they impress by quantity if not quality. It’s tempting (although possibly unfair) to read some artistic anxiety on Henderson’s own part into that.

needs more demons? Ayup.

I am Eleanor, and I, like this house, am haunted. I died when I fell from this tower, that window. It is sixty-seven feet from the sill to the stone on which my neck was broken. All a matter of record.

But Five Mile House manages some striking and unusual twists on the theme. Novak uses ghosts as an extended metaphor, mirroring and externalizing internal conflicts. The dominating presence of Five Mile House is not Eleanor, but Leslie Stone, who is haunted by several things, but chiefly by the act of vigilantism that ended her career as a police detective, and estranged her from her family. Stone is initially pretty resistant to the notion that she might also be haunted by a destiny that links her fate with Eleanor’s, perhaps because she doesn’t have room in her life for more haunting.

Whether or not she has room for them, Stone eventually finds herself in some unsettling and unpleasant circumstances. The classic horror fiction trope of the protagonist whom no one will believe arises very organically from the circumstances, as does the threat that motivates her. Stone refreshingly continues to act and think like a cop — if a damaged cop — as the level of weirdness rises around her.

While Stone’s present-day life is unraveling, Novak gradually peels back the century-old mystery of the titular Five Mile House, which turns out to arise from a substantially different mix of jealousy, insanity and revenge than is commonly supposed.

Five Mile House displays some of the weaknesses you might expect in a first novel. Some of the supporting cast are too thinly drawn to avoid cliché and I think there are indications that Novak is still evolving her prose style, but those caveats aside, this is recommended as a nifty, spooky read.

Needs More Demons? Not at all.