Gene O'NeillBesprekingen

From Publisher: Book 1 of 3 (trilogy)

#1, DOUBLE JACK
#2, SHADOW OF THE DARK ANGEL
#3, DEATHFLASH

See more at: http://www.darkmoonbooks.com

REVIEWED: The Burden of Indigo
WRITTEN BY: Gene O'Neill
PUBLISHED: March, 2002

This is a strangely beautiful story set in a dystopian society of an outcast's journey of hope and morality. I say " strangely beautiful," because the protagonist is a convicted pedophile, yet the reader is drawn into empathizing and rooting for someone who, under most any other circumstances, would be found appalling and despicable. In this not-too-distant-future, criminals have their skin dyed according to the severity of their crimes and sent to live in the wilds, outside of society's protection. The book follows Gaetan (now known only as an Indigo Man) in his older years as he discovers that the dye on his skin may finally be beginning to fade, and he contemplates the life he once had and what a new future may bring. Powerful, poignant, and demonstrative, this book is a captivating exploration of a multi-layered world and mindset.

Five out of Five stars

REVIEWED: Rusting Chickens
WRITTEN BY: Gene O'Neill
PUBLISHED: 2011

I read this Gene O'Neill novella right after reading his novel, "The Burden of Indigo," and, had I not known better, would not have known they were written by the same author. That's a good thing. I've read O'Neill's shorter stories as well, and he has a talent for writing in compelling voices that are each unique to the tale being told. In this, a wounded war veteran returns home and questions his sanity as he tries to find his place in civilian life. Tragic, yet also touching, "Rusting Chickens" creates a believable and rounded protagonist centered in a grim mystery.

Four and a Half out of Five stars

Enjoyed the first novella, opening book in the series, loved this second book even more!

Great novella, opening book in a series of 3 (other 2 are full length novels)

Intriguing premise. Starts off promising, but the pace slows and erodes the sense of suspense. The changing of point-of-view could have been handled better. The change in one of those POVs to second-person especially doesn't work well. I also found the overuse of italics annoying. An interesting story that could be something special with some reworking.

I found this book to be a little too brief for me to become invested in the characters. It whipped along so quickly that it was over before I had really taken any of it in. The premise was interesting, if creepy, but did not crystallize for me into a solid read.

Gene O'Neill has an excellent imagination for the unusual story line. Frozen Shadows is a very good story of a man that must deal with an evil entity that snatches souls when he is a child. As an adult, he must face that entity again. Wild Woman was also a good story that began with a lonely, unpopular young girl who meets another young "ugly" girl. When they become separated children begin to disappear in the town and her life becomes truly miserable until they met again as adults. I do believe that he could have had excellent stories if he had fleshed out the characters and scenes a bit more. Sometimes I had to stop and go back to see if I had missed something as there were places where I felt the story had lost me. I would definitely read him again though.

I won this book through Goodreads and agreed to give it an honest review. This is a flip book with two stories in one book, I read Wild Woman by Chris Marr in this Journalstone book VII Series and as time permits will review the next.

Jule is a lonely seven year old with terrible patches of dry skin and oozing sores on her body and her classmates nicknamed her Ghoulie Julie. Julie is the out cast in her family when her beautiful sister is born and her dad dies. She stumbles through the woods to find a giant naked girl with her eyes sewn shut and she raced home to get scizzors to cut the thread. Afterwards the giant and small girl become friends and promise to meet at the cliffs the next day, but Julie gets sick and can't go until she's well, but Yani doesn't return. Then young girls go missing...

I won this book through Goodreads and agreed to give it a honest review. FROZEN SHADOWS is the second flip book and I'm so glad it was read next! Sean O'Donnell went to live with his grandparents after his dad had been killed in the war and his mother's recent death when she was involved in a car crash. At age six, he barely knew them but he soon felt comfortable in the little town of Sutter's Creek. At eight he had a beautiful girl claim he was her boyfriend and he discovered a mysterious man that cast no shadow. Then, young kids suddenly became ill and he and Bell knew that Mr. Black was responsible so with the help of his gramps the three set out to catch the creepy man..

Two really fun books. Not sure how this works, why there were two separate books in one...but I really enjoyed them both. Unique plots, likeable characters...what more could you ask for?

There were two books in this edition. They were both very different and I quite enjoyed them.
Frozen shadows by Gene O'Neill tells the story of Sean and Bell. Twice they encounter an ageless gypsy who steals shadows from children.
WildWoman by Chris Marrs is a story of Julie and her friend Yani, who lives in the woods. I really liked the storytelling in this one. I could totally relate to Ghoulie Julie.

These two novella are presented in a single book. Although very different both are equally good. Well suited to a YA audience.

"Frozen Shadows" by Gene O'Neill is a charming story which starts when a young Sean goes to live with his grandparents following the death of his mother. He and his friends (including future wife Bell) encounter a strange "traveller" who steals children's shadows. Having defeated the stranger once, Bell and Sean are surprised to discover that he has reappeared in another small town. They must save the day before more children die. Entertaining and delightful.

"Wild Woman" By Chris Marrs follows the life of Julie, from her childhood, when she felt ugly, awkward and lonely, to adulthood where she runs away from her feelings through drug and alcohol abuse. The story centres around her life in a small town, where local children (including her sister and later her daughter) go missing, believed abducted. I read this story from start to finish in on hit. It is engaging and a rather sad tale.

I received this book from JournalStone in exchange for a fair and honest review.½

Two books in one! The stories don't intertwine or even relate to one another but both have a bit of a dark side. The first story about a shadowless gypsy that steals children's shadows, which causes them to become lifeless causing the town to believe there is an unknown virus spreading. The second story about a bullied little girl who finds a friend in the woods. The story follows the girl into adulthood and a couple episodes when children go missing, do they really know who is kidnapping them?
I enjoyed both stories and found they would be more suited to YA or even grade school chiller/ thriller goosebump type novel.

This ebook was provided to me through LibraryThing early review for my honest review which I have given here.

Review copy

Frozen Shadows - Wildwoman: JournalStone's DoubleDown Series, Book VIIl is JournalStone's seventh release in their Double Down series This is where JournalStone puts together a single volume featuring two novellas, one from an established writer and another from a relatively new voice in horror. This time, both stories deal with children being abducted and the result is another strong entry in this ongoing series.

Gene O'Neill has five published novels to his credit and more than 140 short stories. The shorter fiction has been published in five collections. He has been on the final ballot for the Bram Stoker Award and has twice taken home the coveted haunted house.

Frozen Shadows begins in Sutter Creek, California and has an opening that pulls the reader right into the heart of the story.

"When I was six years old, I went to live with my grandparents in Sutter Creek. Shortly thereafter, I met a beautiful girl named Bell. Together, Bell and I would confront an evil man who cast no shadow. These three interrelated events would significantly influence the course of my life."

I enjoyed the way O'Neill developed the main characters. Sean O'Donnell, Isabella "Bell" Marconi, and Bobby "Miracle Bob" Mericalli were the best of friends., living a pretty charmed childhood until Mr. Shadrach Black moved to town. Although the premise of the evil that comes to Sutter Creek is of an unbelievable nature, the story is made credible in its telling.

I love a good coming of age story and there's quite a bit of that in Frozen Shadows. It seems that, for once, good triumphs over evil, although not without a terrible cost. Fifty years later and on the other side of the country a story makes the news and...

~

Chris Marrs lives on the West Coast of British Columbia. During the day she tends bar to keep her kids fed, watered, and sheltered and spends her nights writing. To date, several of her short stories have seen publication and in the Fall of 2013, Bad Moon Books published her novella Everything Leads Back To Alice.

WildWoman also features a killer opening line...

"At the age of seven, Ghoulie Julie found a naked girl whose eyes were sewn shut."

The story itself takes place over the course of nearly 30 years. A story of disappearing children, bullying, teenage angst, poor decisions, and redemption.

When Julie was seventeen her younger sister, Clare goes missing, a tragedy which sets her on a path of self-destruction. Seventeen years later, her own daughter, Natalie Jade, goes missing...

~

Two completely different stories of childhood abduction combine for another, largely successful, entry into the DoubleDown series. I'm definitely looking forward to what JournalStone has in stall for us next.

Frozen Shadows - Wildwoman: JournalStone's DoubleDown Series, Book VII is available now in both paperback and e-book formats.

Recommended.

Neither of the novellas did I particularly enjoyed. Most of the time during the second one (Wildwoman) i was getting frustrated but the ending did redeem it for me somewhat. Frozen Shadows did not really impact on me - I did not connect with the characters. Neither of them are particularly difficult to read as the language was easy to follow.

I tore through this book. Easily my favorite of the doubledown books. This reminds me why I'm a Gene O'Neill fan and becoming one of Chris Marrs. Very highly recommended.

I received the book Frozen Shadows by Gene O’Neill through Library Thing in exchange for an honest review. I have to say this book was really really good. I was very surprised that so much was packed into so few pages. This story is complete and a very satisfying read.
The story reminded me of the book Stand by Me in some ways and IT in others, but this Author (Gene O’Neill) was able to complete the story with much less wasted descriptive writing than Stephen King. Translation: I liked it better than Stand By Me by Stephen King.
This is thoughtful, detailed storytelling that will leave you happy that you picked it up. I really enjoyed this and look forward to reading more from Gene in the future.

I will update for Wild Woman once I have completed that book.

10/20-update - Finished Wild Woman and I have to say...WOW! I warn you that if you read this book, you will feel anger, hopelessness, sadness, frustration....if you have ever been bullied, lived with addiction or abuse, this book will affect you deeply. I was so angry while reading this that I had to keep stepping away. But that is because I was able to find myself in so many places in this book. I have been the daughter. I have been both mothers. I have been that strange friend. I have been invisible and I have been bared naked for the world to laugh at. I have walked face first into hell with my eyes wide open. If you have done any of these things, read this book. It was just amazing.

The writing left much to be desired - the protagonist was difficult to attach to and the plot didn't especially make up for it.

This year’s Bram Stoker Award for superior achievement in long fiction went to Gene O’Neill for The Blue Heron. Dark Regions Press originally printed a mere 13 signed copies of the novella-length work, but plans to issue a trade paperback edition this year. A bit of research on the internet also suggests that it was briefly available as an e-book on the author’s own website or Facebook page, but that no longer appears to be the case.

I’m frankly puzzled by the Stoker win. The Blue Heron is a decent mystery/espionage story, but it’s not a horror story, even if one uses a very broad definition of the term “horror” to include thrillers or violent crime stories. In addition, the plot is predictable and the writing has significant problems. This isn’t the first time I’ve disagreed with the members of the Horror Writers Association, which votes on the awards, and it probably won’t be the last.

The premise of The Blue Heron is promising. Six marines were sent to a particular village in Vietnam based on intelligence that it was an ammunition store, with the order that they destroy the ammunition. One of the marines makes a tragic error, and Garcia, another of the men, reacts with religiously fueled anger in his denunciation of the entire unit. The marines complete their mission and return to base with only one of them wounded, and having dealt out a mere two deaths of their own. But Garcia won’t be convinced that the one civilian death was unfortunate but acceptable collateral damage; as far as he’s concerned, it’s murder. Just before the morphine he’s been administered for his wound causes him to lose consciousness, Garcia says that he will make sure that they all pay dearly for what they have done.

Fifty years later, the marines start dying. The only clue to their deaths, which are accomplished with considerable professionalism, is that an origami blue heron is left by each man’s body — a bird that they saw in that village all those years ago. The narrator of the tale is one of the men, now mostly retired from a career with the CIA. He is approached by another of the men, Joey Hotsko, whom he had believed to be dead; but his death was faked so that Hotsko could become a member of an organization that works in even deeper shadows than the CIA does, known only as the Association. Together, they use Hotsko’s connections to try to find Garcia, convinced that he is the one behind the killings.

The story progresses to a solution that any experienced mystery reader will have seen coming from at least halfway through the tale. That doesn’t make the reading less enjoyable, though; the plot is fairly well constructed. But the writing detracts from the storytelling. There are sentence fragments, run-on sentences, changes in verb tense in the middle of a paragraph, clumsy dialogue in which one character tells another what he already knows so that the reader can know it, too, and other errors that a good writer should have fixed and a good editor caught if the writer didn’t.

I do not know if this problem is endemic to the horror field, or particular to small presses, or has some other origin, but this is the second work I’ve read in recent weeks in which the writing distracted me from able plotting. It’s a shame. And it’s something that the field should pay attention to lest the current increased interest in horror evaporate just as it did a few decades ago.

Originally published at http://www.fantasyliterature.com/reviews/horrible-monday-the-blue-heron-by-gene-...½

An intriguing glimpse of a dystopic future where bioengineering is the norm, but it would have been better if set against some novels that fleshed out the world a bit.½

I got this because it won a Bram Stoker Award for Superior Collection. I wanted to read some decent horror and this is set in the Tenderloin which contains some of my favorite areas in San Francisco. In particular I love the theatre district where many theatres rub up against dive bars and strip clubs in an uneasy alliance. There are some cool buildings here and Dashiell Hammett wrote The Maltese Falcon. The Tenderloin is its place, not cleaned up and prettified for the tourists and the yuppies - San Francisco needs more of that, frankly, otherwise it just feels like a big clean amusement park.

The stories in this were just okay for me. There were too many stories that were more or less the same story and I found that irritating. I actually preferred the brief mention of various recurring Tenderloin characters to the actual stories. It was all too predictable for me. Also bothersome were some repeated inaccuracies, mainly that Wild Irish Rose is whiskey. It's not whiskey - it's heavily fortified wine. I know this because it was liquor of choice for many of the hardcore alcoholics that frequented the Walgreen's in the Student Ghetto in Albuquerque. They drank it every day of the week except for Sundays when alcohol wasn't sold and they bought and drank Listerine.

This wasn't terrible, it was just too repetitious for me to really enjoy it, but it has its moments. Not terrible, not great - just okay.

Despite the flavorful title, Gene O' Neill's Taste of Tenderloin doesn't feature eight stories dedicated to culinary tales, but instead it's his ode to the San Francisco Tenderloin District, bent on making the area a vivid, magical place all its own.

The first story, “Lost Patrol”, is not necessarily a traditional story with a beginning, middle and end. Instead it's a character profile, short, but vivid, with a delicate stretch of story surrounding it. Like an appetizer, there's not much here, but enough to get a good taste of what's to come.

Next comes “Magic Words”, an old school urban fantasy tale of dark magic and a mysterious homeless woman who one night, taking only a promise for the future as payment, gives a man the exact words he needed to move forward in his life. Unlike a lot of other stories, this one doesn't try to present a “be careful what you ask for” moral. Instead it just presents itself as it is, adding an element of mysticism to the Tenderloin.

“Tombstones in His Eyes” tackles the overlapping tales of the junkies on the street, using some very interesting symbolism. Again, O' Neill doesn't so much tell a story as present a character and their tale, in the good and bad, for the reader's viewing.

“Bushido” is also lovely, the tale of a man who finds salvation in the streets walking alongside doom. But the imagery and the climax bear a strong resemblance to the previous tale, and so it lessens some of the impact.

“Balance” follows a vet suffering from a disconnect with reality. It's hard to watch Declan's version of getting more control over the world around him, since he can't seem to control his own brain functions. But this story, like the other so far, is present unflinchingly, with little effort to make the reader sympathize with the characters. Instead O' Neill just beckons you to come and listen.

With “The Apotheosis of Nathan McKee” O'Neill ties the people of the Tenderloin and the stories in this collection together firmly, making each minor, barely mentioned character the owner of their own story. Nathan, interchangeable with the attack victim in “Bushido”, discovers a beating has left him not only for with a complete lack of desire for the booze he used to drug himself, but it's given him a unique ability. Only he's not quite sure what to do with it. The first overall positive tale, without a bittersweet touch, it possesses a delicate aspect of intriguing urban fantasy.

In “Bruised Soul” Mickey D, an ex boxer abandoned to the streets by time and suffering from damage taken through the length of his career, hits the streets after a stint in a mental facility, only to discover the good things have gotten that much worse in his absence and the bad things, of course, never change. It's his new neighbor that piques his interest this time around, an exotic woman named Jenna who seems to have a peculiar ability. Threaded just as finely is an end question, what is real and what has Micky D imagined, without the heavy-handedness of other stories.

Finally is “5150”, the first first person story in the collection. Here the lead might not seem like a true member of the Tenderloin, but by the sad, shattering end of this cop's life you can see every character story so far caught up in this one tale.

Readers should be warned that these characters seem fleshy and real, their tales often dark and hopeless. It is easy to get pulled into the hopeless feeling of this collection.

Taste of Tenderloin is a tight network of precise details and emotion presented, but firmly held back from influencing the reader in each story. A delicate balance of realism, surrealism and unique storytelling makes it a compelling read.

Gene O'Neill's vibrant and suspenseful prose journeys through a world that is all too real and yet visionary at the same time. Lost Tribe is a novella about humanity, and a lost past that haunts our collective memory.

(NOTE: THIS REVIEW IS BASED ON THE UPDATED, 2009 LIMITED EDITION FROM BAD MOON BOOKS)

Two detectives, Katy Green and Johnny Cato (dubbed by the media as "The Green Hornet and Cato") are on the trail of a serial killer who slashes his victims' throats then takes a swatch of their pubic (and when he has time, scalp) hair as souvenirs. The killer, Sam, is haunted by a Dark Angel and on occassion, The Light Angel. The Dark Angel gives Sam the ability to hide in the shadows, making him virtually invisible to his victims (even in broad daylight in a public park toward the conclusion). The death scenes are done standard thriller-genre-style, perhaps with a little more sauce than a mainstream novel. There's the expected relationship between Katy and John, and much time is spent in flashbacks that could've been cut down way shorter than they are. The author's main characters come from foster home backgrounds, I guess in an attempt to give them a grittier-feel (?) and most of the "hood language" (which thankfully is used at a minimum) just doesn't work.

Despite the fantastic cover art by John Pierro (which gives this novel a deeper feel than it delivers), SHADOW OF THE DARK ANGEL is a generic serial-killer yarn with an ever-so slight supernatural bend.

While I'm a big fan of the publisher (who usually release top-notch pieces of fiction), I think the $60.00 cover price is quite steep, even for a limited edition hardcover (especially considering this was previously released in 2003 as an affordable paperback from Dominion, which wasn't mentioned on the copyright page).

For by-the-numbers serial killer fans only.