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Musings: Fear the Reaper by David Simms


Fear the Reaper by David Simms

Macabre Ink, 2018

ISBN-13: 978-1948929790

Available: Paperback, Kindle edition

Fear the Reaper was released in June, and it is frighteningly timely. I read it just after finishing coursework in special education, which included the effects of eugenics on public education, and right at the time that the family separation of immigrants seeking asylum started to receive intense media attention. I have heard many people say “this isn’t the American way”.  This is a historical novel grounded solidly in fact, and it hits home that this isn’t the first time the American way has included dehumanizing and forcibly separating “inferior” or “weak” populations.

It’s 1933, and psychologist Sam Taylor, designer of a test that can separate the “feebleminded” from the general population, has been hired to evaluate patients at a sanitarium in rural Virginia that has a solid commitment to practicing eugenics. Eugenics is a philosophy that grew from the conviction that only healthy, able, intelligent, heterosexual, attractive white people should be allowed to contribute to human genetic evolution. Many people not fitting that description, including homosexuals, foreigners, the disabled, mentally ill, and cognitively impaired, and African-Americans, were sterilized(or worse) so they wouldn’t be able to pass on their genes.

The superintendent of the sanitarium, Joseph Dejarnette, was a real person, the sanitarium in the book is very similar to the one he ran, and many of the scenes in the book are based on primary sources. While there is a mild supernatural aspect to this, it’s not the ghost haunting the main character that is horrific– it’s the things people do to each other, or are complicit in. And it’s not that it’s only one person– Dejarnette is just a representative of an entire movement, well-funded by corporate donors, committed to “improving” and “purifying” the human race, that is systematically eliminating anyone who gets in the way. Even knowing a little about the eugenics movement, as I was reading this, I thought “is all of this really real?” It is so outrageous and appalling in places that it’s easy to think that the author got carried away by his topic– it is fiction, after all– but having spoken to him, I can tell you that yes, people really believed and acted this way, dehumanizing the patients and practicing brutal treatments on them.

If you are looking to have your faith in humanity revitalized, this is probably not your best choice. It is a terrifying, eye-opening look at the eugenics movement, and how people become complicit in reinforcing and participating in evil. Simms does an effective job with character development; even brief interactions with minor characters make you feel you know them well enough that when they are caught in the events that occur it’s even more heartbreaking and awful. The ghost didn’t contribute much to the story, nor did the romance (the protagonist is not a likable guy), but the overall sweep of the story carried me past that. It’s an excellent piece of fiction documenting a rarely mentioned part of our history that will creep in, and stay in your mind, long after you finish it.

Editor’s note: David Simms is a personal friend and reviewer for Monster Librarian.

Book Review: Assimilation Protocol by Brian F.H. Clement

Assimilation Protocol by Brian F.H. Clement

Damnation Books, 2017

ISBN: 978-0-9950790-2-1

Available: Multiformat ebook, via Smashwords

 

Assimilation Protocol is the sequel to Brian Clement’s novel The Final Transmission (Damnation Books, 2013). The Final Transmission was reviewed and recommended by The Monster Librarian in 2015. Clement weaves elements of crime mystery, post-apocalyptic science fiction, and horror into both novels.  Although Assimilation Protocol can be read alone, it is best read together with the first novel.  Some of its characters continue from the first novel, and the plot of the second book is best understood as the struggle between the forces revealed at the end of the first novel.

 

In Clement’s first novel, set in the 13th century, a French knight returns from the Crusade and stumbles across an orgy.  Mistaking the celebrants’ sexual frenzy as part of a heretical religion, he slaughters all the men and women.   In reality, the victims are members of the Children of the Ninth Darkness.  With incantations and human sacrifice, the cult summons an extraterrestrial force that they call the Olog’lahai’kuhul.  Its purpose is to seed the universe with microscopic organisms called zooids.  On Earth, zooids infect humans, melding together human, animal and plant cells.  The resulting mutants are chimeras that mix the appearance and capabilities of the organisms.  The knight and his followers form another clandestine group called the Ordo Sanctus.  Its members seek to destroy the Children and use the zooids to gain power for themselves.

 

Eight hundred years later, an introverted police detective in Toronto and his research assistant discover that a series of disappearances and murders are human sacrifices by the Children of the Ninth Darkness.  The sacrifices create deadly mutants that can rapidly self-replicate.  Meanwhile, the Ordo Sanctus has developed into a worldwide cabal that controls biotech and pharmaceutical companies and private armies, and has infiltrated the Toronto police.  Their most powerful weapon is an indestructible cyborg, called the Cleaner.  The Cleaner stalks and eliminates members of the Children and other threats to the Ordo’s plan.  The Ordo succeeds in almost eradicating the Children in Toronto, and  creates its own zooids, which generate mutants or kill humans.  The Ordo plans to disperse these zooids in aerial canisters, stored in a warehouse. The detective inadvertently causes a warehouse explosion that spreads zooids throughout the city.  Much of Toronto burns, and many of its inhabitants are either incinerated, killed by the Ordo’s mutants, or transformed into mutants themselves.

 

In Clement’s second novel, the Ordo Sanctus’ plan is almost complete.  Worldwide, cities are ruined after 20 years of civil war and famine.  Survivors form groups of humans and mutants, most of whom struggle to survive in crumbling sections of the cities. The Ordo is now the Ordex.  It controls most of Toronto’s infrastructure, business and government.  The Ordex’s power and control reside in the city center, in a massive, sentient computer made of organic tissue and electronics.  The Ordex’s biotech company has developed cybernetic brain implants that allow humans and mutants to communicate almost telepathically with each other and with the computer network.  The Ordex’s hive-brain surveils these communications.

 

Thomas is the last resident of an orphanage in the Toronto suburbs.  He was brought there as a child 20 years ago, by a small splinter group of Ordo Sanctus members who secretly oppose the Ordex’s plan for world domination.  Thomas is not a mutant, but has a special ability to intuit other peoples’ intentions.  The orphanage is closing, and for the first time, Thomas must seek shelter and work outside. He wanders through the suburbs and meets gangs of humans and a menagerie of mutants with varying degrees of sentience and language.  Thomas’ bag of belongings contains a copy of the Encyclopedia Nefastus, a book of forbidden knowledge transcribed from the writings of the Children of the Ninth Darkness by the crazed French knight who slaughtered  them.  Unknown to Thomas, he and the Encyclopedia are sought by the Ordex, the Children of the Ninth Darkness, and the Ordex splinter group who hope to use Thomas and the book to achieve their goals.

 

Thomas meets Ren, a human-salamander chimera, who has martial arts abilities.  Together they travel through dangerous enclaves of mutants and outlaw gangs of humans, through a toxic zone where Ordex has dumped chemical wastes, and underground warrens of mutants and humans live in abandoned subway and sewer tunnels.  The Ordo Sanctus’ Cleaner survived the explosion, and is buried in a graveyard.  Resurrected, it continues its last mission to track down Thomas and the Encyclopedia.  The Ordex sends murderous mutants, including a walking, poisonous, giant fungus and a cyborg bio-unit with a myriad of powerful tentacles hidden in a biohazard suit, to track down Thomas and his book.  Thomas, Ren and members of the splinter group must somehow defeat everyone and everything hunting them, infiltrate the city center, and destroy the hive-brain.

 

Although Clement has several plot lines that interweave throughout the two books, they are fast-paced, coherent and move toward a satisfying finale.  The characters are well-drawn, clearly displaying qualities of bravery, loyalty, determination, greed, cunning, viciousness or bloodthirstiness.  Some characters are in both novels, but main characters that are only in one novel have connections that are not revealed until the denouement.  Clement was a filmmaker and screenwriter before becoming an author.  His ability to create vivid and dramatic scenes reflects this experience. Highly recommended

Contains: gore, violence

Reviewed by Robert D. Yee

Book Review: Lady of the Tarot by Juli D. Revezzo

Lady of the Tarot (Reign of Tarot, Book 2) by Juli D. Revezzo
Createspace, 2016
ISBN-13: 978-1537434148
Available: Paperback, Kindle edition, audiobook

 

Lady of the Tarot is a historical Gothic novel set during the French Revolution. I reviewed the audiobook version of the book. Although Lady of the Tarot is the second in a series, it stands alone just fine. I didn’t read the first one and don’t feel like there was any parts that were confusing. Book one might enhance it, but it didn’t feel necessary.

Strangely, this relates to the last book I read:  The Sandcastle Empire. The plots were very different, but the aspect of falling from high status was a theme in both. I feel that this book addressed it a lot better, and that was refreshing. Where Emilie came from, and her current status, is constantly on her mind, and I think this would be true in both stories.

The romance didn’t interest me, but it seemed to follow a classic triangle formula. Emilie had to choose between the “right” choice and the one she actually loved. Normally, love triangles really irritate me, but this one was fine, since she wasn’t waffling about her feelings, just trying to figure out if she could somehow be with one she really wanted instead of who she should be with.

The horror is of the lurking type, always in the background, and does not come to the fore until the final act. I wish it were more present throughout. There were vast stretches of the story that only dealt with the mundane horror of losing status, and not the supernatural horror that Emilie ultimately has to battle. I did like the small horrors that showed up from time to time, but I would have liked to see more of them.

Despite the shortcomings it was a fun read.

Reviewed by Nathaniel Olsen