Chadzilla ROARS!!!

The Book of Lies - by Brad Meltzer

Cal Harper, a good man with a bad past, has not seen his father since the man was carted off to prison for killing Cal's mother.  When the two are reunited via a bizarre circumstantial tragedy, they undertake a dangerous mission to find the map within the "Book of Lies" to find the answers hidden with the mystery of Cain's killing Abel.

Although this was a selection for the Mystery Book Club I attend, it is not a mystery.  It's just a confusing jumble of poorly thought out ideas and cliched "characters" attempting to be a Da Vinci Code style thriller.  It also makes a hamfisted attempt at being meta just by having the characters mention the book Brad Meltzer is ripping off (wait, I'm sure that this isn't really a rip-off, but a "homage") but just having your characters point out how silly and unoriginal your core concept is doesn't make your book meta, Mr. Meltzer.

The novel is stuffed with generic thriller and pop culture filler - the aforementioned Cain and Abel, the origins of Superman, a ruthless and quite psychotic assassin with a pet dog (did Dean Koontz help with a draft?) some boring family history trauma and Nazis - yet none of it fits together to form a credible tale of suspense.  I was just turning the pages, sometimes by sheer force of will, wondering when these disparate elements would come together to entertain.  They didn't.  The novel just reaches a conclusion that is every bit as unoriginal as the debris I had to sift through to get there.

Although I do think that the grand reveal sequence would make for a fine short story, it is not worth getting the book. 

The Reach - by Nate Kenyon

Psychology student Jess Chambers is given a rather unique assignment by her mentor, the brilliant and enigmatic Professor Jean Shelley.  Shelley is the legal guardian of a ten year old girl named Sarah.  Sarah is suffering from what has been diagnosed as a schizophreniform disorder, and has been institutionalized for almost her entire life because of it.  Kept heavily medicated due to her recent violent outbursts, Sarah has withdrawn from the world.  Shelley wants Jess to begin visiting Sarah, to try to reach and connect with the girl's shattered mind.  It is her hope that a young, fresh and unfamiliar face might lure Sarah out of the fog of her mental illness.

Although Nate Kenyon's The Reach arrived on my doorstep as a selection of Leisure Books's Horror Book Club, and the author has been a finalist for the Bram Stoker Award, his entry into the Psychic Kid Goes Wild sub-genre is not a genuine horror novel.  It does not even qualify for the moniker of Dark Fantasy.  The Reach is nothing more than a good old-fashioned thriller.  One that kept me turning the pages until its action packed and emotionally satisfying conclusion.

The journey to that conclusion is populated with a cast of well developed and, for the most, likable and empathetic characters.  The journey itself is a well constructed thrill ride that bares enough of a resemblance to Stephen King's novel Firestarter to make The Reach qualify as an intelligent homage.  Yes, I remember the humorous irony of hack horror movie director Peter Swan's testy statement, "It's not a rip-off, it's a homage."  In a lesser writer's hands that could very well have proved to be true, but Kenyon is no lesser writer and, to be fair, King was homaging hisowndamnself as well.  Remember Carrie?  Anyone?  Anyone?

Nope, Nate Kenyon is a talented writer with a unique voice that is all his very own.  It's one that I look forward to hearing again.

Fatalis - by Jeff Rovin

A pride of Saber-toothed cats attacks Santa Barbara.  (Do you really need to know any more about the book's plot than that?  I think not.)

Fatalis is author Jeff Rovin's (Tom Clancy's Op-Center series) follow up to his fun and pulpy, not to mention bestselling, killer bats invade New York novel, Vespers.  While Fatalis is every bit as pulpy as Vespers was, it isn't nearly as much fun to read.  The reason for this might be the issue I had with the book's rather questionable moral stance.

Rovin's story is pretty standard stuff, as far as monster novels go.  The template for it is clearly Jaws: the protagonists (Jim Grand, an Anthropologist and widower, and Hannah Hughes, a left leaning newspaper reporter/publisher living off of Daddy's money) and the antagonist (Sheriff Malcolm Gearhart, a tough-as-nails Vietnam veteran that will do anything to protect his city) investigate a series of mysterious, and bloody, disappearances in the Santa Ynez mountains.  The attacks continue, each one showing more of the monster, until a massive attack reveals the saber-toothed cats in all their horrifying glory.  Then the chase is on, with Grand (the Brody) and Hughes (the Hooper) knocking heads with the bloodthirsty Gearhart (the Quint, obviously) over whether or not they should capture the saber-toothed cats or just kill them.  It all culminates in a bloody battle between the cats, Grand, Hughes, Gearhart, the police, and the National Guard at the La Brea Tar Pits. 

The only thing unique about Rovin's story is that he doesn't bestow it with a human villain.  Gearhart, although a power wielding authoritarian, is never cast in a truly negative light.  He just wants to protect his people.  There is a moment at the end that is rather over the top, but it fits the over the edge Quint Character behavior pattern.  Grand and Hughes actions, however, are nowhere near the nobility of protecting innocent civilian life .  The pair fight tooth and nail to have the saber-toothed cats sedated and captured, despite the pride having killed what seems to a hundred or so people.  I lost count by the time the pride hit Los Angeles.  While Grand pondered the "spiritual meaning" of the miraculous resurrection of a pride of freeze dried saber-toothed cats in the 21st century, I could only think that a dangerous animal had been unleashed into an eco-system that it was not meant to be a part of and that the sooner it was destroyed, the better.  Having read more than a few articles about alien species of insect, animal, and even vegetation destroying an eco-system that they were inadvertently set loose upon will do that to you.  I also found the novel's ending to be disturbing rather than uplifting.  Although Rovin tried, he just could not get me dewy eyed over the tragic fate of a pride of vicious carnivores running loose in the Santa Ynez mountains.

Meg: Primal Waters - by Steve Alten

It has been almost twenty years since the giant Megalodon shark named Angel escaped from her pen at the Tanaka Oceanographic Institute.  Jonas Taylor, now in his mid-sixties, is writing his action filled memoirs in the hope that the book sales will help to pay off the Angel sized bills brought upon by the giant shark's money draining absence.  Further irritants for the already far too stressed Jonas are his rebellious seventeen year old daughter, Danielle, as well as the emotional troubles his beloved wife Terry suffers as a result of her battle for survival in the previous Meg adventure, The Trench.

Then TV producer Erik Hollander offers Jonas Taylor what sounds like an easy job, provide color commentary on a reality show called Daredevils.  The lure of lucre is too strong to resist and, with daughter Danielle at his side, Jonas is soon sailing the high seas with a bunch of adrenaline junkies.  What Jonas, and even the TV producers, don't know is that the whole trip is a scam meant to get Jonas Taylor into the mouth of a hungry Megalodon shark...

In MEG: Primal Waters author Steve Alten offers up not one, not two, but three carnage soaked giant shark stories.  I'm guessing that, with the book being the third in the ongoing "Meg" series, and with a fourth novel is already in the works, the number of Megs is some kind of attempt at an in-joke.  Third book, three sharks...get it?  It also gives Alten ample opportunity to cram the adventure with what fans of the series want, lots of Megalodon fueled carnage.  On that level, the book is every bit as much pulse pounding fun as both MEG and The Trench were.  The human drama, as was the case with the previous books, is just one dimensional soap opera stuff meant to fill the pages between the shark attacks.

Not content with an ocean suddenly teaming with sixty plus foot long glow-in-the-dark albino sharks, Alten also hints that there are far worse monsters in the deep than his title creatures.  Undoubtedly those fearsome beasts will make an appearance in the fourth Meg novel.  I'm looking forward to reading it next summer.