Black Creek by Gregory Lamberson vs. Ageless by Paul Inman :: Battle of the 2016 Books, Bracket One, First Round, Battle 5 of 8

We continue the first round of Bracket One of the Battle of the 2016 Books. The bottom half of the draw begins with Black Creek by Gregory Lamberson doing battle with Ageless by Paul Inman. The winner will be the book I (Aaron) most want to continue reading after 25 pages.

Black Creek: Medallion trade paperback, 351 pages, March 2016, cover design by Arturo Delgado. Gregory Lamberson is a three-time Stoker Award nominee, who competed in the Battle of the 2015 Books, where he had the misfortune to go up against Ferrett Steinmetz in the first round.

Black Creek is set in western New York's Black Creek Village, formerly known as Love Canal, the site of an infamous case of toxic contamination in the 1970's. The place is finally being resettled after nearly 40 years. The cover of the book suggests that residents of Love Canal who refused to leave in the 70's have changed in the intervening years, but we have yet to see them 34 pages in. (I read past 25 pages again. Protests may be filed with the Fantastic Reviews home office in Overland Park, Kansas.) What we have seen is a remarkably large hornet, which our main characters—residents of Cayuga Island, just next to Black Creek Village—speculate may be a mutant. At the end of Chapter Two, one of those characters, Paul, spots a seven-foot hornets' nest clinging to the side of his house. He tells his son not to mention this to his mother, and says, "I need to buy some wasp spray. A lot of it." What could possibly go wrong?

Ageless: Inkshares trade paperback, 266 pages, May 2016, cover design by Marc Cohen. Ageless, Paul Inman's first novel, was a winner in Inkshares' Sword & Laser contest, although the book does not appear under the Sword & Laser imprint.

Ageless begins in Italy in 1943, where a young girl named Alessandra watches the Axis scientists who have been abusing her pack up to flee the advancing Allied forces. We jump ahead to 2022, where Mark Richards, an intelligence operative, pursues an assassin through the streets of Washington, DC. Then to 2005 Florida, where an irresponsible gamer named Grey Chapman meets a fascinating young woman called Alessandra. He spots a scrape on her arm, which soon after has healed completely, which is our only hint so far that this is the same Alessandra we already met, who apparently does not age. Alessandra confides in Grey that she just escaped a man who is trying to kill her.

The Battle: Through 25 (actually 34) pages, both Black Creek and Ageless are reluctant to reveal what the story is actually about. Black Creek has a long infodump about the Love Canal toxic waste incident, courtesy of Helen (Paul the hornet master's wife) lecturing her impressively attentive high school students, but no sign so far of the savage and/or mutant Love Canal survivors. Ageless has given us a couple hints that Alessandra has survived some 70 years yet still appears to be a young woman. But she has not confessed as much, and we have no idea what she has been doing or who might be after her.

Holding back the essence of the story is usually a good way to drop out of the Battle of the Books quickly. Since here both authors are doing it, I have to ask, which novel has nevertheless given me enough to catch my interest and keep me turning pages?

Starting with Black Creek, the story begins with some fairly inane dialogue, but I gather that's Lamberson creating a normal-seeming middle American setting, before everything goes to hell. The first hint of hell approaching is the huge hornets' nest. Paul's decision to take that out himself is beyond foolish, reminiscent of the stupid teenagers who split up to explore the haunted house in a bad horror movie. Luckily for Lamberson, I love bad horror movies!

Meanwhile, Ageless has not given me much to keep me going. The two characters we've spent the most time with so far are Mark, a very bland government operative, and Grey, a highly annoying twentysomething who sponges off his parents to get by then fails to show up to work when he finally gets a job. I'm hoping Alessandra herself will be a more engaging character, but so far I don't know that. Add to this slow opening a major stumble out of the starting blocks: there is a ten-page scene in which Mark chases an assassin, which (based on what we know so far) has nothing to do with the plot of this book. As far as we know, it does not matter at all if the guy gets away; this is just here to show us how Mark spends his days. But then only a few pages later, we see Alessandra, who is upset because a killer has been chasing her. But that chase scene happened entirely offstage.

The rules of the Battle of the Books are inflexible. Perhaps Ageless gets stronger as the novel continues. But unfortunately, opening your novel with a long chase scene I have no reason to care about, while telling me about—but not showing—a chase scene that I would care about, that is a quick path to the BotB exit.

THE WINNER: Black Creek by Gregory Lamberson

Black Creek advances to the second round, to take on either Roses and Rot by Kat Howard or Hex by Thomas Olde Heuvelt.

To see the whole bracket, click here.

The High Mountains of Portugal by Yann Martel vs. Borderline by Mishell Baker :: Battle of the 2016 Books, Bracket One, First Round, Battle 4 of 8

Our fourth match-up of the Battle of the 2016 Books has The High Mountains of Portugal by Yann Martel going against Borderline by Mishell Baker. The winner will be the book I (Aaron) most want to continue reading after 25 pages.

The High Mountains of Portugal: Spiegel & Grau hardcover, 332 pages, November 2016, cover design by CS Richardson & Barb Dunn. The High Mountains of Portugal is the most recent effort from Yann Martel, author of the hugely successful Life of Pi. The book jacket leads us to believe that, like Life of Pi, The High Mountains of Portugal includes fantastic story elements, describing the book as "part quest, part ghost story, part contemporary fable." But through 30 pages (I read a little extra this week — protests may be filed with the Fantastic Reviews home office in Nome, Alaska), those elements have yet to make an appearance.

Rather, the story so far is about Tomás, a Portuguese museum curator searching in 1904 for an artifact, which he believes is a magnificent crucifix, described in a strange 17th Century journal Tomás has discovered. Tracing the object to a monastery in the mountains of Portugal, Tomás borrows an automobile from his wealthy uncle to continue the search. We are not sure yet why Tomás is so obsessed with this lost object, but we sense it relates somehow to the terrible personal losses he has suffered. A few years earlier, Tomás lost his lover, his son, and his father to a disease within a single week. The jacket tells us that Tomás is the first of three characters whose stories make up The High Mountains of Portugal.

Borderline: Saga hardcover, 390 pages, March 2016, cover photo by Jill Wachter. Borderline was Mishell Baker's first novel and is the first volume of her Arcadia Project series, which has continued with Phantom Pains and Impostor Syndrome. Borderline was nominated for the Nebula, World Fantasy, and James Tipree, Jr. Memorial Awards for best novel of 2016.

We first meet Millicent (Millie) Roper, the first-person protagonist of Borderline, languishing in a psychiatric center. Millie has two prosthetic legs, earned in a failed suicide attempt while she was studying filmmaking at UCLA. A peculiar woman named Caryl Vallo visits Millie and offers her a job with the Arcadia Project. She won't say exactly what that entails, but it seems the Arcadia Project needs creative people who have borderline personality disorders but have chosen to manage that condition without psychoactive drugs. The dust jacket suggests the job will bring Millie into contact with bizarre creatures from a parallel reality. Millie follows Caryl to an oddly decorated mansion that instantly feels like home.

The Battle: Through 30 pages, both The High Mountains of Portugal and Borderline have given few hints as to what the main storyline will involve. Rather, both authors have successfully pulled me into their narratives by focusing on their damaged but sympathetic protagonists.

In The High Mountains of Portugal, Yann Martel brilliantly shows us Tomás's internal distress, simply by depicting Tomás walking through the streets of Lisbon:

People stare at him as he walks. Some make a comment, a few in jest but most with helpful intent. "Be careful, you might trip!" calls a concerned woman. He is used to this public attention; beyond a smiling nod to those who mean well, he ignores it.

One step at a time he makes his way to Lapa, his stride free and easy, each foot lifted high, then dropped with aplomb. It is a graceful gait.

He steps on an orange peel but does not slip.

He does not notice a sleeping dog, but his heel lands just short of its tail.

He misses a step as he is going down some curving stairs, but he is holding on to the railing and he regains his footing easily.

And other such minor mishaps.

After a few pages, the reader realizes why Tomás is having these mishaps: he is walking through Lisbon backwards. Tomás literally cannot face a world that deprived him of the three people he loved most all at once.

In Borderline, Millie Roper is a character who similarly finds it difficult to confront the world, with the added element that she blames herself for everything she has been through. Here, for instance, Millie tells her kindly psychiatrist (described as resembling Snow White) that she has decided to leave the psychiatric center (after meeting Caryl Vallo). The doctor asks if she is going back to school:

I set my teeth against a familiar sharp throb of pain, like an old war wound. "Of course not."

"Why 'of course' not?"

"You're not a film person, so you don't get it. Getting into UCLA was a huge deal."

"But you did get in?"

I felt my blood pressure rising. I hated optimism; it served only to remind me how inconceivable the depth of my failure was to normal people.

"Yes, I got in, and then I blew it. Even if they would take me back — which they would not — he's still there.

"Who is?" She frowned. "Are we talking about the nameless professor?"

"He has a name. Just because I won't tell it to you, that doesn't mean I'm making him up."

"Millie, if he's real, and he assaulted you, someone needs to—"

"Stop." I held up a warning hand; I could feel something ugly threatening to open up just under my solar plexus, like a door to a spider-infested crypt. "I am not talking about this."

"If not with me, you need to tell someone. Let the authorities decide the appropri—"

"I said stop it!" I grabbed the box of tissues from the table between us and flung it at the wall. Not helping my case for being functional. My heart was racing; my jaw was locked; my breath was coming fast and loud through my nose. The woman across from me was no longer Snow White but an old hag hawking apples.

This is a young woman who has painted herself into a corner with toxic black paint. After only 30 pages, the reader is desperate to see her offered a glimmer of hope, and the Arcadia Project may be just that.

And for me, that's what this battle comes down to. I find the simple depiction of Tomás's pain moving and the prose of The High Mountains of Portugal quite elegant. But I have not yet been given any reason to care about his quest for a lost crucifix. Meanwhile, I know that the Arcadia Project relates somehow to Millie's personality disorder. It offers a hope that Millie may yet come to better understand her own psyche and to make positive use of her talents as a filmmaker and a person. And that makes me want to keep reading.

THE WINNER: Borderline by Mishell Baker

Borderline advances to the second round to face Company Town by Madeline Ashby.

To see the whole bracket, click here.