Phantom Effect by Michael Aronovitz vs. Asteroid Made of Dragons by G. Derek Adams :: Battle of the 2016 Books, Bracket One, Second Round, Battle 1 of 4

We begin the second round of Bracket One of the Battle of the 2016 Books with Phantom Effect by Michael Aronovitz going against Asteroid Made of Dragons by G. Derek Adams. The winner will be the book I (Aaron) most want to continue reading after 50 pages.

Phantom Effect: Night Shade, February 2016, 285 pages, cover design by Diana Kolsky. The antihero of Phantom Effect is Johnny Deseranto, who murders women who remind him of his mother. In the opening 25 pages, Johnny had a blowout on the way to dispose of his latest victim's body. When a policeman stopped to investigate, Deseranto also killed him, but then crashed his car fleeing the scene. When he got out of the car, his female victim in the trunk got out too, even though she had been dismembered. Johnny fled into a nearby half-dismantled Motel 6, as one would.

In the next 25 pages, inside the derelict motel, Johnny begins to encounter visions from the past. He sees himself as a child, with a tarantula on his head. We soon learn that Johnny's punishment as a boy for stealing a jar of his mother's homemade marmalade was to be thrown in a hamper with a live tarantula. This helps explain the fellow's mommy issues. His next flashback takes him to when his family was renting the upper floor of a house, and Johnny snuck downstairs to spy on the landlord fooling around with a lady friend. Just as he realized the lady friend was his own mother, he was caught literally with his pants down.

Asteroid Made of Dragons: Sword & Laser, 275 pages, April 2016, cover design by David Drummond. Asteroid Made of Dragons is humorous fantasy in the mode of Terry Pratchett. In the first 25 pages, we met a lady mage, Rime, and her assistant/bodyguard Jonas. Jonas rescued Rime after a robbery gone wrong -- an easily forgivable crime, since she was stealing back her own money. Rime decided to travel to Gilead, and Jonas insisted on accompanying her, even though he was exiled from Gilead for killing his last master.

In the next 25 pages, we learn that Rime is being hunted by an old knight resurrected from the dead, who takes a very dim view of magic and those who use it. Meanwhile, Rime and Jonas are on the ship to Gilead. Jonas confides in Rime about his exile from Gilead, which it turns out resulted because he killed the famous knight for whom he squired (one with a different name, but who knows?), at the exhausted knight's own request.

The Battle: This one is a case study in what it takes to advance through the Battle of the Books. To win your first battle, you need to hook me with a strong opening. Both of these books did that, Phantom Effect with an edge-of-your seat scene where Johnny is pursued by a woman he is sure he already killed, Asteroid Made of Dragons with a fun action scene featuring good humor and solid characterization.

To win your second battle, you need to add a strong new story element, or otherwise find a way to ratchet things up a notch. After 50 pages, I'm still enjoying both of these books, but only one of them met this challenge.

Asteroid Made of Dragons continued with the witty writing. For example, this is how Jonas begins the story of his exile from Gilead:

"My father was a baker. We baked bread mostly—loaves for the common folk—though every so often we'd do special things for feast days. Cupcakes, cookies, cakes, all the . . ."

"NO." Rime nearly exploded. "You cannot start the story this way. Are you going to tell me the entire story of your life? Can't you just skip to the part that matters?"

This made me smile and it tells us something about the characters. Having said that, though, this section doesn't add a great deal to the story. The new story element—someone hunting Rime—is no real surprise, and the one big revelation is a bit of a let-down: turns out Jonas doesn't really have anything to feel guilty about at all. Also, no new hints at all about that asteroid in the title of the book.

Meanwhile, I very much expected the second section of Phantom Effect to be a prolonged chase scene through the corridors of this Motel 6. Instead, Aronovitz takes the story to a different level. We learn that Johnny's victim was a psychic, and she is taking her revenge on him through his mind. She begins a trip through his past that is unpleasant (for him) and sheds some light on how he became the monster he is as an adult. And this section ends with little Johnny being discovered by his adulterous mother with little-little Johnny in hand. If she stuck him with a tarantula for stealing marmalade, what will she do for this? I kind of don't want to know, except I really really do.

In this second section, Aronovitz figured out a way to broaden his story and pull me further into the tale, making me want to keep reading.

THE WINNER: Phantom Effect by Michael Aronovitz

Phantom Effect advances to the semifinals to face either Company Town by Madeline Ashby or Borderline by Mishell Baker.

To see the whole bracket, click here.

Welcome to Deadland by Zachary Tyler Linville vs. Phantom Effect by Michael Aronovitz :: Battle of the 2016 Books, Bracket One, First Round, Battle 1 of 8

Our first match in the first round of Bracket One of the Battle of the 2016 Books features Welcome to Deadland by Zachary Tyler Linville versus Phantom Effect by Michael Aronovitz. The winner will be the book I (Aaron) most want to continue reading after 25 pages.

Welcome to Deadland: Nerdist (Inkshares), August 2016, 398 pages, cover design by David Drummond. Welcome to Deadland is a zombie novel set in the South, the author's home. (New writer Zachary Tyler Linville went to school in Florida and now lives in Atlanta.) After a very brief prologue showing us that someone deliberately spread the plague that turns nice people into disagreeable zombies--no clues offered as to why--the opening 25 pages consist of chapters before and after the apocalypse, from the points of view of young men Asher and Rico. After, Asher wields a baseball bat to defend a girl named Wendy from a zombie. Before, Asher was working at a college café where he met a pretty redhead named Stacey. Stacey invited him to a party, where she had too much to drink. Before, Rico got arrested during a drug-aided hookup in a parked car, to be bailed out by his divorced father, whom Rico deeply resents. After, Rico and a boy named Jayden find shelter in a boat floating just off the coast.

Phantom Effect: Night Shade, February 2016, 285 pages, cover design by Diana Kolsky. Michael Aronovitz has penned two previous novels and two short fiction collections from small publishers. Phantom Effect is a ghost story in which a serial killer is haunted by one of his victims. In the opening 25 pages, our antihero Jonathan Deseranto has just killed and dismembered a young woman, Marissa Madison, but his car has a blowout before he can dispose of the body. When a policeman stops to investigate, Deseranto kills him too, then promptly crashes his car fleeing the scene. As he gets out, the trunk pops open and, impossibly, one of the victims emerges. Deseranto sprints to an abandoned, soon-to-be-demolished Motel 6.

The Battle: We begin the Battle of the 2016 Books with a contest that illustrates what the first round of BotB is all about. To make it through the first round, you need to grab my attention right out of the blocks. Seize my interest with sparkling writing or strong characterization or an intriguing storyline.

Welcome to Deadland may ultimately turn into a satisfying adventure, but the opening 25 pages didn't much grab me. Linville attempts to do that in two ways. First, he shows us the perils of life after the apocalypse, as Asher and Wendy are attacked by a zombie in the opening chapter. It's a decent scene, but doesn't carry much impact, since zombie attacks have become so commonplace in books and media the past several years. I believe that by now it now takes some humor or irony to deliver a line like, "Thank you for bashing his skull in."

Second, Linville tries to draw in his readers by contrasting his dangerous future with the everyday lives our main characters used to live before the apocalypse. But to my tastes, those lives were a little too everyday and a little too similar to each other: Asher and Rico are two young men hanging around parties hoping to get laid. Flipping through the book, I see that Wendy becomes a viewpoint character around page 80. It might have been a good idea to give us her point of view sooner.

Meanwhile, Phantom Effect started to pull me in from the opening line: "I ain't scared, asshole."

The line is spoken by 6' 5" Jonathan Martin Delaware Deseronto, a man who finds satisfaction in killing young women who remind him of his mother. I like Deseronto's tough-guy voice, because it starts to break down almost immediately.

As the book opens, Deseronto ain't scared that a flat tire has interrupted his rainy midnight drive to dispose of the dismembered remains of his latest victim, Marissa Madison. But he starts to feel scared when a police cruiser stops to help. Then he's a little more scared as he crashes his car, now with two victims in the trunk, into a pit at a construction site. Then he's seriously unnerved when he starts hearing noises from the trunk. Could the policeman have survived? And as he scrambles away from the totaled car toward a deserted Motel 6, slipping in the mud, although he doesn't say so, this is the point when the reader knows damn well Deseronto is terrified:

There was a noise, and Deseronto looked back over his shoulder.

Marissa Madison was crawling out of the trunk.

She had already evicted the dead cop, a rumple and twist in the mud, and she was pulling up now, fingers curled around the edge of the lid, the other on the bottom lip, head bent with exertion, long hair hanging in front of her face like a sodden veil. There were hash marks where the body parts had been put back together, and some of them were affixed backward, insectile, sewn with what looked like the fishing line he'd kept in there on a wooden spool, the rough stitching cut off in stingers and barbs. The shoulders flexed and the joints angled in, the spider poised to emerge from the sack.

Deseronto pushed to his feet and turned toward the motel. 

This, dear reader, is a hook.

THE WINNER: Phantom Effect by Michael Aronovitz

Phantom Effect advances to the second round to face either The Life Engineered by J-F. Dubeau or Asteroid Made of Dragons by G. Derek Adams.

To see the whole bracket, click here.