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Ellen Datlow's 2000 Reviews
Word Made Flesh by Jack O'Connell (HarperCollins/Flamingo)
is this talented author's darkest and most complex novel. The grisly
opening scene brutally lays out the stakes in a mystery that engulfs an
ex-cop in the strange, fictional New England factory town of
Quinsigamond. The ex-cop's former lover works for one of the most
vicious crime lords in town while she pursues her obsession with
Wormland, an experimental farm, and its creator—a man who went mad
during the process and who slaughtered his family a century before. The
story of the monstrous destruction of an eastern European ghetto runs
throughout the book, told by a man being driven mad by his own memory
and guilt. The book is an elegant and savage story of atrocity and
remembrance—the power of stories to preserve the past.
Perdido Street Station by China Miéville (Macmillan U.K.) is the second novel by this talented Briton. Although King Rat was good, it hardly prepared the reader for the brilliance of the author's lovingly rendered imaginary city of New Crobuzon in the world of Bas-Lag and its denizens. A rogue scientist is hired by a Garuda, a humanoid with wings, who has had his wings sawn off by his own people in punishment for the commission of a terrible crime. The Garuda wants the scientist, to help him to fly again. In order to research flight, the scientist puts out a call for any kind of winged creatures, eggs, or pupae. He is given a stolen pupa, which becomes a terrifying creature that mesmerizes then sucks its victims dry, leaving gibbering idiots. The creature is just one of four brought into the city by a crime boss, who milks them for a drug that they manufacture. The novel is overtly but not intrusively political, and so jammed full of sights and sounds that occasionally they overwhelm. But this combination of fantasy, dark fantasy, science fiction, and horror provides a fine ride into the fantastic. Run by Douglas E. Winter (Alfred A. Knopf) is a speeding first novel of suspense with the unique voice of gunrunner who works for a gun supplier and its owner, who has been almost like a father to him. But what seems to be a simple job turns into a complicated maze of conspiracy and betrayal. Its non-stop action makes the book compulsively readable. Saving Elijah by Fran Dorf (Putnam) is an unnerving story about coping with the illness and death of a child. A child psychologist waits outside the hospital ward where her five-year-old son lies in a mysterious coma. When she follows the music she hears she encounters a swaggering, guitar-playing ghost/demon who claims he can save her son. The price—her occasional possession by the phantom. When Ethe boy miraculously recovers the mother feels that she owes the demon, allowing her family and work to deteriorate as others question her sanity. Although the supernatural is a presence in the novel it takes a back seat to the drama of the family. Indigo by Graham Joyce (Pocket Books) is less obviously supernatural than the author's previous works but no less effective.A man is called upon to handle the aftermath of his rarely seen father' s unexpected death. The father was charming, rich, powerful, and had a way with women. He was also obsessed with searching for the color indigo, which supposedly could promote invisibility in the true believer. His quest signifies "Mystery" and the "Unknown." The son is a former policeman, so he is perfectly chosen to execute his father's wishes. House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski (Pantheon) is a fascinating puzzle of a first novel. A disaffected young man discovers a hulking, unshaped manuscript in a dead blind man's apartment and takes it upon himself to read and annotate it. The ms chronicles a family' s move to a house in Virginia and what they find there. Undeniably a horror story about a haunted house and about the telling of the tale about a haunted house, what could be a clichéd tale is transmuted into meta fiction with footnotes, letters from mad mothers, architectural drawings. The germ of the novel is that haunted house, and it is genuinely frightening. Demolition Angel by Robert Crais (Doubleday) is a departure from the author's Elvis Cole novels. This one is about a former bomb squad technician with the L.A. Police whose life has been shattered by the bomb that killed her lover/partner three years earlier and almost finished her off. Now she' s caught up in the search for an arrogant and very efficient bomber who seems to be out to snuff out the best bomb technicians in the country. This is a fascinating study of some of those who make bombs—their personalities, their obsessions. The Indifference of Heaven by Gary A. Braunbeck (Obsidian Press) is this respected short story writer's first novel and it's a good one. A rising newscaster' s life is torn apart when his pregnant wife dies of complications from premature labor. He is driven to despair by grief and guilt and from there the novel moves into Jonathan Carroll territory, albeit even darker. Darwin's Blade by Dan Simmons (Morrow) is a lively mystery about an accident investigator who is drawn into vicious chicanery by a widespread insurance scam in California. The best parts of the novel are the investigators' gleeful and gruesome descriptions of "accidents". They are terrific at gleaning clues in Sherlockian fashion from the aftermath of huge car smash-ups. |