Raising Stony Mayhall by Daryl Gregory

Synopsis From Back Cover:

In 1968, after the first zombie outbreak, Wanda Mayhall and her three young daughters discover the body of a teenage mother during a snowstorm.  Wrapped in the woman's arms is a baby, stone-cold, not breathing, and without a pulse.  But then his eyes open and look up at Wanda - and he begins to move.

The family hides the child - whom they name Stony - rather than turn him over to the authorities that would destroy him.  Against all scientific reason, the undead boy begins to grow.  For years his adoptive mother and sisters manage to keep his existence a secret - until one terrifying night when Stony is forced to run and he learns he is not the only living dead boy left in the world.

If I were to list my five favorite authors of all time I have a sneaky suspicion that Daryl Gregory would make that list.  He has, so far, only 3 books to his name, but every single one of them blows me away.  He has a knack for combing his limitless imagination with American pop culture in such a way that sometimes it's a little hard to tell where that boundary lies.  Like his previous books, Pandemonium and The Devil's Alphabet, that manipulation is on display for all to revel in it's glory.

I'm going to be honest, I'm about as burnt out on zombies as I was on vampires.  They are great for a while, but there is only so much that can be done with them.  In Raising Stony Mayhall, I felt as if I discovered zombies for the very first time. Imagine something for a minute.  What would society be like if George A. Romero's Night of the Living Dead was a documentary instead of a horror movie.  What if instead of a crashed, contaminated satellite causing the outbreak, there was something the government didn't want you to know.  What if they knew the early stages of of the infection resemble those the documentary filmmaker captured, but the later stages resemble something more akin to the life we are all familiar with.  What if those who survived the government's response to the initial outbreak have bee living in hiding, waiting for the day they can fight back.

This is the world that Stony Mayhall had to grow up in.  A young man, who really wasn't alive but his body still grew despite its deadness.  He is forced to remain in hiding, thinking that he was the only one, a freak of nature.  He is well loved by his mother and three sisters.  And they have even befriended a neighboring family who for whatever reason agree to keep their secrets.  When Stony's life is tore away from him one night, a night of mistakes built on top of mistakes, he is forced into the great outer world.  What he discovers is a that he isn't alone, that there are other living dead people out there.

But even in this world, Stony is still alone.  He is the only one to have "grown up" the rest are stuck the way they were when they became infected.  Stony is advised to not divulge the secret, lest he be pressed into service by those who need their own Messiah.  The living dead are not sitting idly by while the government slaughters them.  They are starting to unite, though not all of them are on the same page.  Some wan to initiate a plan that will wipe out the entire human race and replace them with more of their own.  Others want to recruit those who willingly joint their ranks.  Regardless of their approach, they all are scared of one thing though, extinction.  They are threatened when a species is threatened with annihilation, they get dangerous.

It's within these political waters that Stony must learn how to swim, a lesson he learns over a period of many years.  A period of time where is mother is jailed for hiding him, he himself is captured and studies, he loses one maybe two of his sisters.  It's not a period that ends well for anyone involved.  There is no happy ending for Stony, though there is some closure for him.  His final decisions all lead up to an event that will change the course of human and undead life.

A Few Interesting Links I Want To Share

I normally don't do these type of posts but I have come across some rather interesting things on the Internet that I feel compelled to share with you.  They have occupied quite a bit of my time and hopefully they will do the same for you.  This may turn into a semi regular thing as I find items that excite me so much that I have to share them.

I have Sheila over at Book Journey to blame for the first item I want to share with you.  She reviewed an audio book of Dracula by Bram Stoker and it reminded me of my favorite version of it.  I have always loved The Mercury Theater on the Air version that Orson Wells produced back in the 1930s.  I own it on CD but I figured I could find it online for others to listen to as well.  I eventually found it as part of a free podcast on iTunes.  It's called The Horror! (Old Time Radio).  You can subscribe to get a new podcast downloaded to your iTunes account every week.  If you don't have iTunes go to RelicRadio.com and you can not only find The Horror station but many others as well.  I've been listening for days now to old time radio shows that most times are more entertaining than television.  They knew how to tell stories back then.  Today's scribes could learn a lesson from them.  If you want to listen to Dracula go to this page and it's listed along with some other great shows.

I'm a big fan of public radio and one of the shows I listen to quite often is The Diane Rehm Show.  She is an excellent interviewer and can readily discuss politics, economics, defense, movies, literature, and social policy at any given time.  I found two book discussions to be very interesting.  On 3/21/11 she talked with Robert Lane Greene, author of "You Are What You Speak: Grammar Grouches, Language Laws, and the Politics of Identity".  It was an entertaining look at language and the way people use it, most times without thinking about it.  On 3/10/11 she talked with David Brooks, the author of "The Social Animal:  The Hidden Sources of Love, Character and Achievement."  I've since seen him on various shows discussing his book, which I really want to read.  If you click on the titles of the books it will take you to the corresponding episode of the show.

I think most of you know that I'm a huge fan of Daryl Gregory, the author of Pandemonium and The Devil's Alphabet.  He has a new book, titled Raising Stony Mayhall, slated to come out in June.  I can't wait to get my hands on it, but in the meantime the author generously put the prologue and first chapter on his site for everyone to read.  After reading it, I was even more excited to get hold of the book.

The last item I want to leave you with is a gorgeous song from Chris Botti.  It features Gladys Knight on vocals.  So please enjoy their rendition of "Lover Man".

The Devil's Alphabet by Daryl Greogry

Synopsis From Back Cover:

Switchcreek was a normal town in eastern Tennessee until a mysterious disease killed a third of it's residents and mutates most of the rest into monstrous oddities. Then, as quickly and inexplicably as it had struck, the disease-dubbed Transcription Divergence Syndrome (TDS)-vanished, leaving behind a population divided into three new branches of humanity: giant gray-skinned argos, hairless seal-like betas, and grotesquely obese charlies.

Paxton Abel Martin was fourteen when TDS stuck, killing his mother, transforming his preach father into a charlie, and changing one of his best friend, Jo Lynn, into a beta. But Pax was one of the few who didn't change. He remained as normal as ever. At least on the outside.

Having fled shortly after the pandemic, Pax returns to Switchcreek fifteen year later, following the suicide of Jo Lynn, looking for answers. What he finds is a town seething with secrets, among which murder may well be numbered. But there are even darker-and far weirder-mysteries hiding below the surface that will threaten not only Pax's future but the future of the whole human race.

Like his first novel, Pandemonium, The Devil's Alphabet has a strong, unique voice that does not fail to live up to it's potential. Daryl Gregory is one of those authors that is able to create a realistic alternate reality that the reader will not question. He is able to, in minute detail, map out a world that is so like our own that when he throws in a unknown cause of genetic mutations that completely change a town's inhabitant, you don't question the realism of it. You will really think, for the time you are reading the book, that this actually happened and could happen again.

He delves into every aspect of lives of these 3 new "races". From their reproductive needs to their moral imperatives, every thing changed for these people and those changes are even more evident in the lives of the first generation of children actually born into these clades (the author's word not mine). These changes are explored in depth and make the story even more realistic.

Pax was an interesting character to me. He was a teenager when the change happened and his whole adult life has been defined by those events in ways he doesn't realize. He is a drifter who lives life without really connecting with anyone on a truly emotional level. He will tell you himself, that he rarely finds himself attracted to women or men and when he does it only lasts for a few hour. That the few men and women who stuck around long enough to want something more from him than a quick fling, find themselves dealing with a emotionally closed off person who can't or won't deal with them. When he comes back to his hometown for the funeral of his childhood friend he doesn't even want to walk into the church during the service. He is so scared by what happened that it takes the death of someone he did care about to force him to deal with others on a emotional level. He reconnects with the father he thought didn't love him anymore, though do to certain circumstances, this is not a healthy bonding for him. He goes from not wanting to connect to being unable to disconnect from theemotional ties to his father. He becomes an addict, in more ways than one.

Even the way he relates to Jo Lynn's two daughters is an interesting incite into the man. These are children he thought could have been his at one point in time until it was discovered that beta women reproduce without sex. When he first comes back to town he tries to talk to them but doesn't get very far. By the end up the book he looks at these two girls in an almost paternal way and protects them when he discovers the truth about what happened to their mother.

This was a interesting take on a coming of age story. It was the story of a young man who loses himself due to horrific events then years later has to go home again in order to find himself and become the man he needs to be.

Pandemonium by Daryl Gregory

I first read this Crawford Fantasy Award winning book back in February for the SciFi/Fantasy board on the Barnes & Noble book club site. I instantly fell in love with it but was not able to give it the complete attention that it deserved. I finished reading it then but I knew my mind wasn't focused on it so I was missing quite a few gems. I just now finished reading it for the second time and boy am I glad I did.

This book blew me away. It is a combination of urban fantasy, post apocalyptic, SciFi, and psychological thriller peppered with pop culture references galore. The result is a fantastic mosaic artfully put together by this fist time novelist.

In a nutshell the basic plot line is this, in the 1950's demons started possessing people sometimes with fatal results. The "demons" fit into personality archetypes found throughout pop culture.

The story follows Del Pierce who as a boy was possessed by the demon known as the "Hellion" think Dennis the Menace to the nth degree. The Hellion was exorcised, or so everyone thought. As a adult Del ends up going back home to his family to recuperate after a serious car accident and realizes he may not be alone after all. What follows is a rather touching and surprising journey to heal himself and become "whole".

I don't want to give away the ending to much but I will say about half way through the book you should start getting an idea of what is about to come. What Del/Hellion slowly discovers will surprise you but the further along you go the more you realize that this was really the only way the story could go. That everything you had read before led up to this moment of self discovery and acceptance.

Along the way the reader will be treated to an appearance by author Philip K. Dick, a priestess who will remind you of a Irish songstress, and encounters with many pop culture icons (think Captain America).

This is the blurb from the back cover:

It is a world like our own in every respect...save on. In the 1950's, random acts of possession begin to occur. Ordinary men, women, and children are the targets of entities that seem to spring from the depths of the collective unconscious, pop-cultural avatars some call demons. There's the Truth, implacable avenger of falsehood. The Captain, brave and self-sacrificing soldier. The Little Angel, whose kiss brings death, whether desired or not. And a string of other, ranging from the bizarre to the benign to the horrific.

As a boy, Del Pierce is possessed by the Hellion, and entity whose mischief-making can be deadly. With the help of Del's family and a caring psychiatrist, the demon is exorcised...or is it? years later, following a car accident, the Hellion is back, trapped inside Del's head and clamoring to get out.

Del's quest for help leads him to Valis, an entity possessing the science fiction writer formerly knows as Philip K. Dick: To Mother Mariette, a nun who inspires decidedly unchaste feelings: and to the Human League, a secret society devoted to the extermination of demons. All believe that Del holds the key to the plague of possession-and it's solution. But for Del, the cure may be worse than the disease.