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Book Review: Interface by Scott Britz-Cunningham

Interface by Scott Britz-Cunningham

Keylight Books, Nov 1, 2022

ISBN: 9781684428816

Available: Hardcover, paperback, Kindle edition

Interface is a good old-fashioned thriller with a sci-fi bent to it. If your idea of horror is what people have become due to cell phones and information/social media overload,, this is perfect for you. Author Cunningham has put together a rollicking, fun ride in the possible future, with some pretty profound insights about the dumbing down of society thanks to the Internet, mixed in. This is good stuff, and it’ll make you think.

It is the near future, and everyone over the age of 14, by law, is connected to the Interface. Imagine everything your cell phone can do hard-wired into your brain through a tiny implant. You can do anything online through the power of thought. Instant news feeds, file shares, non-verbal communication: all without pressing a button. Trouble strikes when isolated cases of individuals going mad and killing people start., Detective Yara Avril suspects that the Interface implants may be the cause. The rest of the book is a madcap run as Yara, and sleazy yet intrepid reporter Jericho Jones, pursue the truth and try to prevent further deaths, while every power of what’s left of the government opposes them.

There’s really nothing to find fault with in the book. The pacing is fast, and the characters do an excellent job representing their factions, while blurring the lines between good and evil. Egon Graf is the head guy for the government, which needs the Interface to stay in power. Opposed to him is his brother Taiki, who is bent on taking down the Interface, which he created years before. The story does a nice job playing on the axiom “the ends justify the means”, when it comes to how much murder can be justified to prevent the future idiocy of humanity. The author’s vision of the future is scary: it’s a future ruled through human emotion, not logic. Why have politicians debate and vote when the public can just vote online, regardless of whether they understand anything? No need for criminal trials, just throw up a quick infomercial online detailing the case, and let the people decide their fate. It’s a scary thought, and maybe not that different from where we are today..

It’s worth noting that for a thriller, there is some pretty deep thought in the dialogue sections. The insights into social media and being “connected” are well thought out, the kind of material you can ponder on your own long after you finish the book. I wound up bookmarking five or six different pages along the way to go back to and re-read, it’s that well done. People will enjoy this book for the ride, but it’ll linger with them long after the ride’s over.

Bottom line: don’t miss this one. Recommended

Reviewed by Murray Samuelson

Posted on November 9, 2022 by Kirsten, Reply

Musings: Clown in a Cornfield by Adam Cesare

( Bookshop.org | Amazon.com )

Clown in a Cornfield by Adam Cesare

HarperTeen, 2020

ISBN-13 : 978-0062854599

Available: Hardcover, Kindle edition, audiobook

Clown in a Cornfield has the cover art, title, and pacing I’d expect from a pulp paperback from the 1970s-1980s, but a very contemporary feel. It takes place in a small, rural town in Missouri. Quinn Maybrook has just moved from Philadelphia to Kettle Springs, where her father has taken over the town doctor’s practice to give both of them a fresh start after her mother died by drug overdose. A year prior to the events of the book, Cole Hill and his friends livestreamed a prank for their YouTube channel that led to the accidental death of Cole’s younger sister, and shortly before the story begins, Cole attempted to burn down an abandoned factory owned by his father’s company, Baypen. Baypen’s mascot is a clown, Frendo, and it might as well be Kettle Springs’ mascot, as well.

Quinn’s first day at school gets a rocky start when she is caught in the crossfire between Cole and his friends and the science teacher as he angrily ejects them from his classroom, but she soon finds herself included in the group. Quinn discovers that almost everything they do is to get an on-camera reaction. A dangerous prank at the town’s Founder’s Day parade causes a lot of anger in the community, especially from the sheriff, who holds a lot of power and is a very convincing man.

The teens have planned a party in a barn in the middle of a cornfield on the farm of a family who has left on vacation, and despite the damage, a huge crowd arrives to drink and dance. That’s when Frendo, the clown, shows up, and events quickly escalate into a large-scale, fast-paced, violent, and bloody massacre.

Small, rural towns in mid-America tend to be very conservative, very white, and attached to traditional values. They are mostly financially depressed, mainly because nearby manufacturing has failed and family farming isn’t very profitable. Gun ownership, especially for hunting, is common. And communities are usually small enough that their identities center on high school sports, including the mascots. I’ve worked in a really small, rural town, and every day when I got off the highway exit I drove past miles and miles of corn. Cesare really captures the character of these communities, and while some characters are relatively stock, such as the sheriff, others are well-fleshed out. I especially was impressed with the portrayal of Rust, who could easily have been a cariacature of a gun-happy redneck but instead was a nuanced, thoughtful, and resourceful character. There’s also positive representation of gay characters, and an interesting Asian “mean girl”.

My daughter didn’t feel that the motivation for the massacre was believable, but having watched the events of the past week play out, I can now fully believe that clowns could turn in a violent and deadly way on people they feel alienated from if they believe there is a threat to their way of life. Clown in a Cornfield moves along quickly and may appeal to reluctant readers. Slasher fans and teens looking for a terrifying, gory story will find it here. Highly recommended for grades 9+.

Contains: extreme violence, gore, murder, body horror

Posted on January 14, 2021 by Kirsten, Reply

Musings: The Cruelty Is The Point: The Burning by Laura Bates

The Burning by Laura Bates

Sourcebooks Fire, 2019

ISBN-13: 978-1728206738

Available: Hardcover, Kindle edition

Reading Laura Bates’ The Burning was like a dizzying fall down a rabbit hole to hell. Anna, the main character, has moved to a new town and a new school to escape a scandal at her old school, only to find that the perpetrator has established social media profiles for her, posting provocative statements and photos that portray her in a very negative light to classmates who already were incredibly nasty to each other, giving them the excuse they’ve been looking for to bully her (there is a parallel storyline about her visions during a search for information about a woman also unfairly turned on by her community who was burned for witchcraft in the 1650s). After attempts to deal with the cyberbullying on her own, Anna eventually speaks up and even uses social media to reclaim her image, but even after the uproar finally dies down, she can’t really escape what’s out there. Once you’re on the Internet, you don’t easily get your privacy back. I don’t know how common it is for cyberbullying to swing that far out of control, but it is terrifying.

Last year’s The Ghost Hunter’s Daughter by Caroline Flarity (review here) didn’t go quite as far wirh cyberbullying: the main character (also named Anna) has a reputation for being odd, and she is bullied, but she’s a stronger character and much of the mockery she faces is due to her reputation as the spooky daughter of an eccentric ghost-hunter (if you have gone to school with the same kids your whole life, you’ll know how hard it is to change the way they look at you). This Anna faces personal and physical threats in a different way (a bully obsessed with her sets her house on fire) as well as ostracism due to social media (a boy she likes tries to convince her to take off her shirt, and later shows video he took to their classmates) but the cyberbullying doesn’t go nearly as far as The Burning in tearing her down. Unlike Anna in The Burning, who is just trying to make it, and reclaim her identity, with her situation central to the story, Anna in The Ghost Hunter’s Daughter also has to fight a supernatural force and save the day.

Foul is Fair by Hannah Capin (reviewed here), also from last year, is a revenge tale based on Macbeth, where four girls conspire to eliminate the athletes who raped one of them. The girls use the Internet to track down and identify the boys, and erase Elle’s presence in social media (this seems unlikely, but certainly the plot wouldn’t work without this). Changing her name to Jade, and altering her appearance, she transfers to the school the team attends, and manipulates the team members and the girls they’re involved with until one of the boys starts killing off the others. It’s interesting that a lot depends on who has a a cellphone and where it is. Not only is it horrifying to know these boys were either participants or complicit, but the way Elle is able to manipulate them into turning on each other demonstrates vividly the poor judgment, intense emotion, and peer pressure teens experience.

These girls go through some horrific events, and the cruelty and fear of the teens in these stories is what I find really frightening. The Burning caused me to have conversations with both my middle schoolers about their experiences at school. They don’t have much access to social media, so they wouldn’t be exposed to some of the more appalling incidents, but it doesn’t mean it couldn’t happen. My daughter, who was bullied in elementary school asked what the motivation is for someone to act as maliciously as some of the kids in The Burning. That’s the real horror for me as a parent: for some, there is no reason, or sometimes the cruelty is the point.

A final note: Laura Bates is an English feminist activist and writer who founded the Everyday Sexism Project. At the end of The Burning she offers a list of websites for organizations who offer information and support to girls dealing with issues that appear in the book, and many others,

The Burning contains: cyberbullying, bullying, descriptions of pornographic images, references to abortion, rape, torture, and death.

Posted on April 25, 2020 by Kirsten, Reply