Review of Tony Monchinski’s “Eden: Crusade”
Eden: Crusade is the sequel to Tony Monchinski’s first novel, Eden, which was essentially a murder mystery set in the community of Eden, a walled and barricaded sanctuary in New York City during the zombie apocalypse. The saga continues in book two with several of the key characters who survived Eden, and the primary story in Crusade is of their journey north, out of the city, toward a place that promises to be a safe haven for them. We are also introduced to a sizable group of other survivors who end up connecting with the characters from the first book toward the end of this story. The novel is book ended by chapters that take place in the future, where Bear, one of the key characters of both book one and two, taking it upon himself to start a crusade to destroy every last one of the undead in existence.
Overall, the storytelling style of Crusade is similar to the first book. The author is unapologetic of what happens to his characters, taking them in whatever direction serves his story rather than parceling out mercy or softening his touch anywhere along the way. He gives each character, minor or major, tremendous depth, which is impressive given the volume of people the reader is presented with in between these pages. We gain new insights into the old characters from the first book, but newer characters like Steve, Eva, and Sonya are also fully formed and felt very real and vital to me. Tony Monchinski has the knack of creating characters that revel in their shades of gray. What I mean by this is that it appears that almost anyone is capable of doing anything good or evil, given the means and motivation, and Tony is willing to explore that, no matter how sentimental the readers may be about a character they have gotten to know. That may be tough to swallow at some points in this story, but it is something I respect a great deal, because it shows a willingness to push and keep pushing as far as is necessary to get the storytelling job done.
As I try to do with my reviews, I bring up what I felt didn’t work for me along with what did. With Crusade, surprisingly, what didn’t work for me was in the first chapter. The book begins with a massive and lopsided battle pitting two characters against a mob of the undead that numbers in the thousands. I felt that it went on longer than was necessary, with an extensive description of all the weapons used, every tactic examined. I think it had a visceral appeal to it, but after a few pages, it felt repetitive to me. It could have been condensed and had the same impact on the story in my humble opinion. I thought it was certainly a powerful opening, but again, could have been shortened and still worked quite well.
With that one minor gripe out of the way, I consider this book an excellent sequel to Tony’s impressive debut. Again, I say that this writer has a talent for developing characters that are fully formed and razor sharp. He also gives his stories a gritty realism that is unapologetic. I am excited to see what the third book of the Eden trilogy holds, and look forward to reading it with great anticipation.
Eden: Crusade can be found on Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Crusade-Eden-Book-Tony-Monchinski/dp/1934861332/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1282884119&sr=1-1
As time goes on….
I haven’t really posted something that was just my thoughts on writing since this whole process of the book actually being publish began a few weeks ago. At this stage in the game, it seems to be all about promoting my work more than anything else, so I really haven’t talked about what is going on with my writing efforts nowadays (except for short stories that are being released now, or very soon). So I thought I would take a few moments and actually contemplate where things are at the present moment.
I have given some thought to posting some of the extra “stuff” that I wrote for the three novels that start with Comes The Dark here on my blog. Stuff that helped me develop the story and give it some background-stories about the characters that didn’t make the final cut. Since there was so much of that, it might make sense to provide a few blog entries on the story of George and Jason, or Megan, as well as some of the other things that took place ‘behind the scenes’ as it were. In time, when the book has been out there for a while, I may start doing that, although not on any specific schedule. I will have to see what comes of things. What really makes me think that it may be worthwhile to do this is the fact that one of these ‘stories’ has been accepted as a stand alone short story for an anthology called Eye Witness Zombie, being published by May December Publishers, and are tales of the zombocalypse told from a first person perspective. I had to do some modifications to make it first person, but after that was done, the story worked well as a stand alone. It has ties with the second novel in my trilogy, which will be released early next year, but not enough that it actually reveals any (or much) of the plot of my novel. I remembered originally writing this story in one fevered pitch-I pumped out about 16,000 words in one night, most of which was unintelligible garbage at the time. It was a total tangent-loosely related to the novel, but off on its own, with a character who appears nowhere else as the central focus. He had a very vague connection to two characters in the books though and that led me to write it that night. The unintelligible garbage got reworked and inserted into the novel, then I realized it was a massive amount of words that took the reader on a journey that was off the primary path of the story, even if i felt it was a good story to tell. So finding it a home after I cut it from the final novel made me extremely happy. I really believe it is a story worth telling. Now if only the other ones I have in mind are as well. They will be more closely related to the novels with main characters at the heart of them, so it will be much more difficult to promote them as stand alone short stories, but giving them a home here on the blog may be the idea place for them.
In other news, as I have been doing since I started this blog, I have been writing a lot of short stories. I am probably not the most prolific writer, but I do try to hit as many submission calls that my publisher has, as well as some others out there from other houses that look interesting. I wish I had specific release dates on some of the ones that have been accepted, but whether they are coming out this year or next, I am pretty excited about all of them (as most writers would be about their babies). I am currently trying my hand at a bit of erotic horror, which is much like bizarro for me in that I have never written anything in this particular genre before, and doubt it will ever become my forte. Then again, my bizarro story made the cut in an anthology, so if my erotica tale does as well, who knows? I don’t know much, but what I have learned so far is not to pigeon hole myself as a writer. I am keeping all doors open, especially as I help my son write his YA zombie/vampire/werewolf story. The boy has no boundaries when it comes to ideas, so it is always a trip to hear him talk about it.
As I continue promoting my novel and work on getting the second one ready to go for my publisher (the first round of edits are already complete and I have turned in my revisions, so that process is going great), I also need to start working on my next book, which I have been saying to myself as well as anyone else who will listen, that I have already started on it. Given that it is outlined and I like the outline a great deal, the time is probably ripe for me to start pounding it out on the keyboard. Outlines for me are guides that can be adjusted and modified as needed for as many sudden changes that need to take place in a book or story. Many writers I know find outlines to be restricting and binding to the point that they hate them. I guess I am not that type of writer, because while I love to have as many sudden inspirations that change everything as much as the next person, I need a skeleton, even a weirdly shaped one, to start pinning stuff to, which is why I outline so much. So I build a blue print, which for others may be the equivalent of actually starting to write the story, since my outlines often take on a rather deep complexity, with minute details in them that sort of defies the idea of it being only an ‘outline’. But since I don’t consider it writing until I start putting it into the actual MS word document, the term outline will have to due for whatever it is I have already done for novel number 4.
I guess that is enough rambling for now. Tomorrow is another day for me to keep attacking this new erotic story and to beat myself up a bit more about the next novel, and to think about all the formatting stuff I need to do for the second novel…and some of the other submission calls and what their due dates are, because I don’t want to miss them.
Review of Tim Long and Jonathan Moon’s “The Apocalypse and Satan’s Glory Hole”
Dip yourself in whatever numbing agent is your preference, strap yourself in tightly, put on some welding goggles, and then perhaps you might be able to absorb this little slice of delightful insanity, brought to you by two authors who apparently have a strong fetish with glory holes, demons with, shall we say, impressive dangly bits, some very odd and phallically shaped bugs, feces, LSD, the “F” word, and anything else you can think of that might disrupt the sensitive minds of virtually everyone on the planet.
The apocalypse is here, and everything is screwed up. God the father has decided to take a hike to another universe and start all over, while the angels and demons are waiting to get the party started. Jesus is tired of being taken advantage of, the four horsemen of the apocalypse are mostly all around incompetents, the Antichrist is a no show, and Satan…well, Satan is rising out the desert, ass first. And none of them hold a candle to the main characters in this truly freaked out story.
We have an assortment of people who are all trying to sort things out during the apocalypse, whether they are trying to prevent it or get the party started, including a General who strives to find new and fun ways to curse like a madman, a Sheriff and one of his deputies who just came from the orgy to end all orgies and are dressed appropriately in a g-string and ball gag, a man who can best be described a narcissistic, delusional, drug addled blogger who has a one armed, heroin addicted ape for a pet named Phil, an employee of a sex shop whose beverages have been spiked with so much LSD that he can only speak in what can be described as porno-linguistics, and a militant lesbian who seems to be the most sane person amongst them. Oh, and we can’t forget Goatboy…the half man, half goat who speaks with a British accent and can’t stop telling dirty jokes.
This book is a riot of psychotropic incidents and disturbing imagery…and yes, plenty of glory holes. For me, the most visually intriguing scene had to be the battle between the angels of heaven and the half man/half demon that occurs in the sex shop. It was also one of those rare moments when I am reading where I virtually laughed my butt off. I couldn’t help myself. But to say that this particular scene came even close to being the most outrageous, the most jaw-droppingly absurd in the book would be stretching it quite a bit.
Do not read this book if you do not a) have a strong stomach b) a mind willing to be twisted into little pretzel shapes, then allowing the salt on said pretzel shapes to be licked off by goats and various farm animals with questionable morals, and c) don’t have a great fascination with feces and the sexual practices of demons. You have been warned. Everyone else, come on board for a strangely compelling mind-F of the highest magnitude.
The Apocalypse and Satan’s Glory Hole can be found on Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Apocalypse-Satans-Glory-Hole/dp/1452862036/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1279596785&sr=1-1
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