“Their minds are howling storms.” Perfect commuting material this, particularly since the alien minds behind Southern trains decided to declare war on their customers and incarcerate humble bibliophiles on their trains and platforms. ‘Defenders’ hits the ground running – literally so, for one character – the first fifty pages veer dangerously close to giving the reader whiplash, switching characters, location and time lines dizzyingly. We join proceedings at a point which took the recent ‘Independence Day: Resurgence’ almost half its run time to arrive at. Aliens have attacked. They can read our minds! But there’s a plan! Then consequences! Then an even worse nightmare! Then a surprise! Sure, it’s a cheeseburger and there are contrivances and there are 11 separate uses of ‘erupted’ (gunfire, mainly) and McIntosh’s sexual adjectives seem to extend no further than ‘banging’ but what the hell, it’s an unpretentious read with a good pulpy sci-fi slant. Wouldn’t mind seeing both the Luytens and the Defenders rendered on screen (although those three legs might have to be rethought) plus, for those who care about such things, key players in the drama are women although McIntosh seems to realise half way through if Dominique had paid more attention to the consequences of what she was doing in the first place his book would be about a third the size. Or, indeed, about the length of his original short story. Still, I can see the likes of HBO turning each part of this novel into the usual ten episode series. It’s probably not self-conciously important enough for them though, not many life lessons to be gleaned beyond how not to mint a brand new life form.
Will McIntosh's Faller had an extraordinary concept, but unfortunately never managed to click with me. While I appreciated the thought that went into it, and absolutely loved some of the scenes (like that initial 'fall'), I just couldn't connect with the characters or immerse myself in the story.
I received this book for free from Pan MacMillan in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.
Overnight they appeared – spheres that granted enhanced properties like straight teeth, intelligence, and strength when a pair were ‘burned’. Some were rarer than others, and so a business grew around hunting these spheres. And that’s how Sully and Hunter met. But no one know if these mysterious spheres are a gift from God or something far worse – after all, they used to say cigarettes were good for you, right?
Sully is known as the kid who lost the Cherry Reds – when he sold them to an insidious collector, they didn’t grant powers but simply reseeded the Earth with more spheres. Sully’s $2.5 million vanished and now he’s back to collecting and selling at the flea market. He teams up with a hunter named Hunter who’s figured out likely places people haven’t looked yet. Together they find the rarest of all, a Gold sphere, and its twin, but they’re faced with being murdered for the Golds or burning them with no idea what will happen.
Sully seemed like a regular kid who just lucked out on the deal of a lifetime. He’s trying to make money buying and selling spheres because he lives alone with his mother who has a crappy job and they might have to move away if they can’t afford rent. Although he’s largely driven by financial motivations, the relationships he develops with Hunter and Mandy, who he met during the novel, and his ongoing relationship with Dom, was really lovely to watch.
Hunter was your typical badass YA female character, ninja-like and almost super-powered, even though she hadn’t burned any spheres. She couldn’t afford to. She was one of those ‘I’m capable and I don’t need a man’ types, which is why I liked it when she fell in love with Sully. Oops. Is that a spoiler? Anyway, it showed her gentle side, but it also re-established that her selfish nature and how when she felt something was for the best she wouldn’t listen to the other characters at all, even though she was supposed to love them. I think this self-reliance was due to her being homeless for a few years and never having anyone to count on.
I loved Dom and Mandy. Dom seemed like a great big brother character and it was cool to see lots of diversity in Mandy, a gay Asian girl who kept her friendship with Sully and Dom despite her distrust of burning spheres. They really were the perfect supporting character, arguing against Sully and Hunter’s more selfish ideas in a realistic way.
I had no idea this was going to lead to where it led and so I was pleasantly surprised with the massive plot twist. It really came out of nowhere and seemed really imaginative. I liked the writing fair enough, I didn’t really see anything wrong with it.
I did feel like the novel was slow to get going because for a long time we didn’t know if the spheres were bad or good or really what they were or even how they were used. Everything was eventually revealed but it took its sweet time and sometimes I was flipping through the pages for the next part and sometimes I was glad to put the book down at the end of the chapter. I will say I did have a big battle of willpower not to check the final pages to see who survived and what the outcome was, boy that was hard to fight but I’m glad I fought it because all was revealed in time.
This novel was just so unexpected. I thought it was going to be about superheroes, not making money looking for the spheres to sell to people for enhanced attributes. I certainly was not expecting where it eventually took us!
THIS FINER SHADOW – It’s an unusual title, often included in the cannon of gay lesbian novels as a definitive pulp classic, by texts such as Truly Pulp and Queer Pulp. Refer to my Goodreads bookshelf for further information on these non-fiction texts. The forward explicitly states that McIntosh was not a homosexual. Although that is debatable, he was frustrated by multiple rejections from agents/ publishers, suffering years of revisions when he committed suicide, in the midst of a full-blow mental breakdown. After he met his death, by plunging from the top of his apartment building, his wife posthumously published the novel. Similarly to another book that I’m reading right now (The Third Sex by Artemis Smith), This Finer Shadow by Harlan Cozad McIntosh draws upon the Freudian/ psychoanalytic theory of homosexuality as ‘inversion’, which was conventional wisdom in the 30’s. The novels (Finer Shadow and Third Sex) draw striking parallels in terms of setting (Manhattan near Washington Square), gender roles, labels: butch/ queen/ femme/ macho/ nelly and explores turmoil these characters faced. In many ways, both books describe a common experience, which feels familiar. In Finer Shadow, the protagonist is a sailor who finds himself in a big city full of confusing possibilities. While it is not a book I would normally read, I appreciate the experience. I will always wonder … what it must have been like ‘in the life’ before Stonewall?
http://chadschimke.blogspot.com/2013/06/gay-pulps.html
http://chadschimke.blogspot.com/2015/08/lesbian-pulps.html
http://chadschimke.blogspot.com/2012/06/pulp-novels.html
http://chadschimke.blogspot.com/search/label/PULPS
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