of power, never mind that Eph’s ex-wife Kelly is turned and stalking their son, and a war is unfolding between Old and New World vampires for control of humanity. Fortunately, Hogan and del Toro have successfully avoided the pitfalls traditionally associated with the dreaded middle act, retaining the same epic scope of the original novel, while focusing even more on the evolution of their protago- nists. In addition, Sardu, the ageless vampire progenitor of the Apocalypse,
is everything a Big Bad should be. His plan for world enslavement is fo- cused and overwhelming, as he expertly moves his various pawns to- ward the unthinkable checkmate that concludes The Fall. While one assumes that veteran author Hogan pulled most of the
weight writing the book, it is undoubtedly del Toro’s imagination smeared over every page. The vampires here are not sexy or in any way romantic. In fact, they are more akin to the Reapers from del Toro’s Blade II. They are monsters, with just enough of their former existence rooted in their rapidly evaporating humanity to covet the lives of their Dear Ones when they set out into the night. The Fall succeeds in not only continuing to effectively re-imagine the
modern vampire mythos, but also in bringing some genuine horror to the bestseller lists. If Hogan and del Toro laid the groundwork for the seminal vampire series of the new decade with The Strain, they only build upon that rock-solid foundation with The Fall, delivering a psychologically devas- tating marathon of suspense, heartache and terror.
JESS PEACOCK HAUNTED LEGENDS Not much compares to the fear that can be heard trembling in someone’s voice as they
recollect a terrifying story. Ghost stories with plenty of oral mileage, urban legends and al- legedly real encounters with unexplained phenomenon are the kinds of tales Ellen Datlow and Clarkesworld magazine editor Nick Mamatas have commissioned for their latest, Haunted Legends. Rooting each haunting tale in local legends and ethnic folklore, the contributing authors
flesh out the urban myths and imbue them with three-dimensional characters, complete with back stories. They toy with the idea that ghosts are supposedly born out of pure tragic human unfulfillment and pain. This idea is posited best in M.K. Hobson’s “Oak Park,” where a woman unknowingly creates a ghost of her depressed childhood self, which splits off and remains behind to haunt an amusement park while she carries on with her life. This unusual sort of astral projection is seen again in Kaaren Warren’s, “That Girl,” where a woman in hospice care slips in and out of a coma to relive the assault and rape she experi- enced in her youth. In these tales, the authors morph more traditional ceme- tery ghosts and hitchhiking ghouls into spirits with a tangible human past. The legends that inspired the book’s twenty fictional narratives are ex-
plained in detail in the concise afterwords provided by each contributor, which elaborate on their interest in the legends and how they adapted them for this book. Many of the shorts can be taken as cautionary, such as Erzebet YellowBoy’s dream-like “Following the Double-Faced Woman,” where crys-
tal meth addiction is personified in a seductive and irresistible succubus. In others, the fear is un- deniably real. In “Face Like a Monkey,” author Carrie Laben examines the 1976 panic surrounding The Big Bird of Texas, a cryptozoological creature allegedly spotted terrorizing farmers and buzzing around houses with a reptilian, or monkey-like, bald head. Laben’s tale is told from the perspective of a young boy, as excited as he is terrified, who wants to witness the devil bird for himself. Also included are contributions from notable names such as Ramsey Campbell, Gary A. Braunbeck
and Caitlín R. Kiernan, making for a finely polished collection that also might have you hunting out some local legends of your own.
JESSA SOBCZUK
purist (or snob) I ultimately find this appropriation more inter- esting than aggravating, which is why after hearing about Hun- gry for Your Love: An Anthology of Zombie Romance (out this month from St. Martins), I immediately sought it out. Obviously vampires and werewolves have long been the
F
stars of paranormal romance novels (a popular subgenre of romance), and that’s easy enough to understand, as those creatures have a certain primal, animalistic sex appeal. But zombies? What exactly is hot about stumbling, decomposing skinbags that can barely communicate and have the motor skills of a dude who’s just pounded back three six-packs? I think zombies would be more prone to having it fall off than to getting it up. So yeah, this anthology had me dead curious. Could they pull it off? Well, kind of. The majority of the authors shy away from populating their
tales with the shambling non-verbal hordes that horror fans like you and I would be most familiar with. Instead, they cast their stories with undeads that retain some, if not much, of their ability to communicate. Many of the writers also manage to avoid the whole rotting co- nundrum, whether it be by using zom- bism to service a body transplant plot, as in Jamie Saare’s “I Heart Brains” (is this even a zombie story?), via some pseudo-scientific fix or by simply fea- turing human couplings framed within a zombie apocalypse scenario. The stories that don’t take one of
these easy routes tend to go in one of two directions: romance over erotic appeal or love as horror. Surprisingly,
both approaches provide some fruitful, if still not sexy, narra- tives. In Jeremy Wagner’s rather touching “Romance Ain’t Dead,” we’re treated to a Voudo ritual that sees a man’s wife brought back to him as a traditional zombie after a fatal boating accident. Then, on the complete opposite end of the spectrum, there’s Brian Keene’s brutal torture/revenge-themed “Captive Hearts,” which is so horrific it barely belongs in this otherwise mostly sentimental book. So what have we learned? While zombies admittedly have
some romantic potential, they’re unlikely to ever compete with vampires as the erotic undead go-to – they’re just not sexy (without serious alteration to the established mythos, at least). That said, this book did bring me to another wholly unexpected realization: despite the fact that zombies have overrun fiction and film for nearly a decade now, there are still fresh tales to tell. Not apocalypse stories, but interpersonal ones. MONICA S. KUEBLER
YOU CAN’T SPELL “EROTICA” WITHOUT “ROT”
or years other genres have utilized all manner of horror tropes and monsters for their own purposes – with mixed results. Since I’ve never been much of a horror
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