Conrad Williams (1)Besprekingen

Exceptionally well written capturing the claustrophobia of urban decay - similar to Joel Lane and a bit of Adam Nevill - with characters full of human traits developed even in such short affairs. Trouble is the stories for me, are either too ambiguous or don't seem to go anywhere.
A couple of the unpleasant endings though have stayed with me.½

I'm not sure what to make of this.

I'm no stranger to apocalyptic fiction, and this one was a new path to venture down. It's gritty, unforgiving and brutal. What a nightmare.

But it isn't complete, I don't think. I understand that our 'hero' doesn't know what happened to cause the apocalypse, therefore we the reader don't know either, but there's more to it than that. We find out who the biggest threats are, and we're told how they came into being and what they're about. We're told what a struggle it is for humans to function and what makes things difficult to survive. We're even told how the rats have somehow thrived and taken on a new mantle of bold and fearless hive mentality. But there is a bit of cloak and dagger going on with the mysterious people with white scarfs and tattoo's and six fingers that seem to be lurking in the background. Who are they? Where did they come from? Are they good or bad? Why? What is their story? Should I pay them more attention. It's just doesn't add up.

At the conclusion I'm left wondering what actually happened. I sometimes like a bit of ambiguity at the end of a story, where you wonder if it will all come right in the end, beyond the final page - but with this tale I'm actually wondering what happened DURING the final pages. Was it the human survivors that ran to the rescue? Or the mysterious white scarfs? Or a combination? Seriously, if you know, please let me in on it because it's annoying the hell out of me.

So, in summary......I liked it enough to keep turning pages but I'd have liked it more if I wasn't asked to guess certain element's significance and role in the story.

Read it, it's quite good. But then come back and fill me in on all the missing bits. Please.

The Fox is the third installment in a new, quarterly series of premium, signed, chapbooks from the UK website This Is Horror. The website is a great source of info for fans of both Horror writing and films and I figured I'd take a chance on a charter subscription and I'm glad I did. I've been more than pleased with each of the first three stories in the series, plus I've been exposed to some authors I've not read before.

The first two chapbooks were Joe & Me by David Moody, Thin Men with Yellow Faces by Gary McMahon and Simon Bestwick.

This time it's Conrad Williams, who's the author of seven novels, four novellas and a slew of short stories, and yet I'd never read any of his work before.

In The Fox, we find the protagonist and his family on a "staycation." Too busy for a real getaway, the father, his wife and two young daughters are camping out on a nearby farm where a series of events, involving a fox, lead to a genuinely scary moment. The moment, in some way related to something the father did in his youth.

I know, that's very vague, but any more and I'd likely give it all away. The ending was like a punch in the face you don't see coming and made the whole story well worth the read.

There actually may be a few subscriptions left, you can get all the details at the This is Horror website. Just Google "This Is Horror."

"One" by Conrad Williams has a post-apocalyptic (due to gamma ray bursts) England as its backdrop. It is the story of a father (our protagonist, Richard Jane) who has survived the cataclysm in the opening chapter for being 600 feet deep in the ocean, a diver repairing pipes on an offshore oil platform. The opening chapter is brilliantly written. While I was reading it, I wondered why I haven't heard about this book being one of the best of the decade in the sub-genre alongside "The Road" by Cormac McCarthy, "Oryx & Crake" by Margaret Atwood amongst others. But as I read further, it dawned on me that the reason behind it was that the first few chapters were the only upside of the book.

We follow Richard Jane who is on the quest to find and reunite with his son Stanley, in London, who Richard hoped against hope might have somehow survived the catastrophe. The book is mainly divided into two parts. The second part is 10 years further into the future than the first one and the most unbearable in my opinion. And Richard having frequent hallucinations (more frequently in the second part)about his son doesn't help much. Oh, and there is a tiger, in London, on the streets.

On the upside, the writing is very good although it might cure insomnia because of the lack of plot especially after the first part. And yeah, the book cover looks good too.

2.5 stars.

An Oil rig worker who's underwater comes up and realizes that an apocalyptic even has happened. Throughout much of the book (half or more?) you're not clued in on what wenton (nuclear war?). The second half of the book you suddenly find out--and the story quickly changes directions/tone. While I still liked the second 1/2 of the book--- I liked the first part (the main character's journey through a dessimated countryside) a lot better. Still... the second part of the book is very engaging and a page turner as you want to learn the fate of the main characters. Very enjoyable read despite the twist/radical change in direction in the middle.

The middle of this book dragged a bit, but as the story progressed I was really engrossed in this England that the author portrayed.

I loved this novel. I've just finished it and I think I need to re-read it just to explore some of the hidden depths within it. Definitely a recommended read

An ugly train wreck of a book, riddled with non sequiturs and gratuitous weirdness that does nothing to help the plot, making me unsure if it was horror or fantasy. Mixing the two would be fine, but he doesn’t do the heavy lifting in setting up the perceived mysticism so that the reader can accept it. There are rules even describing a post apocalyptic world. In fact, after about a hundred pages I remember thinking, ‘If this turns out to be a bad dream on the part of the protagonist, it’s going into my collection of Books I Hated.’

Most bad books, and this is a bad book because it was delivered to the bookstores before it was really done, don’t have any gushing blurbs from periodicals or even ‘zines on their covers. Usually they have ‘author of’ reviews- fulsome accolades given by other writers to one of their own. This book had neither, but it was covered-front, back and the first inside pages- with praise for the author’s first book, ‘The Unblemished.’ I think that, based on the success of the earlier book, One was rushed to print before it got the editing and rewrites it needed to make it more effortlessly entertaining. Williams writes well, but the story needs major tweeking.

One more thing, the obsessive search of the protagonist, Richard Jane, for his son, as well as the descriptions of the of physical closeness between the two and the wedge their love for each other drove into his marriage is a little…eepycray.

One deserves three stars, but I’m giving it two because it pissed me off.

See me review here: http://bookchickcity.blogspot.com/2009/07/review-one-by-conrad-williams.html