rachelmanija (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
rachelmanija) wrote2022-07-20 10:08 am
rachelmanija) wrote2022-07-20 10:08 am
Darkfall, by Dean Koontz
ANOTHER bait-and-switch! Though this time, not the author's fault. My edition has this on the back cover:
Winter gripped the city. Terror gripped it, too. In a city paralyzed by a blizzard, something watches, something stalks.
There's plenty of watching and stalking, but I would not have even registered that it was snowing if the back cover hadn't told me; the only times the weather comes into play is when there's spooky cold drafts. I was expecting winter survival horror, and that is not an element.
It is, in fact, a mostly terrible horror novel about voodoo. (Almost all horror novels about voodoo are mostly or entirely terrible). If I'd known there was voodoo, I would not have picked this up.
(Spelling used to indicate the trashy horror use, not the actual religion.)
Members of the Mafia are found bitten to death in locked rooms; two cops investigate and find a trail leading to a bocor with a grudge. There's a houngan who helps the cops. You can tell Koontz is vaguely gesturing in the direction of sensitivity but it doesn't really help. I skimmed rather than DNF'd, which meant that I got to the ending where the hero hurls holy water into a pit, then closes it with his own blood which is holy because he's a good guy, yes really.
The best part is the first chapter, in which the hero's daughter hears a creepy noise in her bedroom at night. I kept reading way past when I should have given up on the strength of that first chapter. I'm not saying it's well-written, or even good, really. But it's got that grabby, compelling quality that makes you read on.
That first chapter shows the power of two techniques: having something that's scary but unknown and unseen (once we see the voodoo critters, they're no longer scary), and moment-to-moment writing. The latter is something used a lot in horror and also in romance - two genres which depend largely on evoking emotion. You follow the character in real time, getting every moment, every detail, every thought, every feeling. It's extremely granular. You might spend a paragraph describing them reaching for a light switch: every fumble, every texture, every worry that it won't turn on.
This can be done badly, but it's incredibly effective when done well. You can wring more suspense out of someone trying to reach a glass of water with their hands tied than from fifty giant explosions. Dick Francis and Stephen King are masters of this technique. And this one chapter in a pretty crummy book, in which a girl hears rustling noises and pokes at them with a plastic baseball bat, is an example of how effective it can be even when it's nowhere near that level.
If you want to take a look, here's the link to the Kindle edition which has a Look Inside: Darkfall: A remorselessly terrifying and powerful thriller
Winter gripped the city. Terror gripped it, too. In a city paralyzed by a blizzard, something watches, something stalks.
There's plenty of watching and stalking, but I would not have even registered that it was snowing if the back cover hadn't told me; the only times the weather comes into play is when there's spooky cold drafts. I was expecting winter survival horror, and that is not an element.
It is, in fact, a mostly terrible horror novel about voodoo. (Almost all horror novels about voodoo are mostly or entirely terrible). If I'd known there was voodoo, I would not have picked this up.
(Spelling used to indicate the trashy horror use, not the actual religion.)
Members of the Mafia are found bitten to death in locked rooms; two cops investigate and find a trail leading to a bocor with a grudge. There's a houngan who helps the cops. You can tell Koontz is vaguely gesturing in the direction of sensitivity but it doesn't really help. I skimmed rather than DNF'd, which meant that I got to the ending where the hero hurls holy water into a pit, then closes it with his own blood which is holy because he's a good guy, yes really.
The best part is the first chapter, in which the hero's daughter hears a creepy noise in her bedroom at night. I kept reading way past when I should have given up on the strength of that first chapter. I'm not saying it's well-written, or even good, really. But it's got that grabby, compelling quality that makes you read on.
That first chapter shows the power of two techniques: having something that's scary but unknown and unseen (once we see the voodoo critters, they're no longer scary), and moment-to-moment writing. The latter is something used a lot in horror and also in romance - two genres which depend largely on evoking emotion. You follow the character in real time, getting every moment, every detail, every thought, every feeling. It's extremely granular. You might spend a paragraph describing them reaching for a light switch: every fumble, every texture, every worry that it won't turn on.
This can be done badly, but it's incredibly effective when done well. You can wring more suspense out of someone trying to reach a glass of water with their hands tied than from fifty giant explosions. Dick Francis and Stephen King are masters of this technique. And this one chapter in a pretty crummy book, in which a girl hears rustling noises and pokes at them with a plastic baseball bat, is an example of how effective it can be even when it's nowhere near that level.
If you want to take a look, here's the link to the Kindle edition which has a Look Inside: Darkfall: A remorselessly terrifying and powerful thriller
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The Drawing of the Dark has multiple examples of this but my favorite is a sequence where a character has to dispose of a pound of cocaine taped to his chest while locked inside an airplane bathroom.
Forfeit, by Dick Francis, for a sequence in which the hero has to transport his disabled wife and her breathing equipment down a flight of stairs while drunk as the villain made him chug a glass of whiskey.
All of those are also great examples of giving characters a difficult task and then paying attention to the details that make it even more difficult in unexpected ways - the tape is hard to remove, a pigeon attacks the guy on the ledge, etc.
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This is obviously a different Drawing of the Dark than the one about the sixteenth-century beer.
Forfeit, by Dick Francis, for a sequence in which the hero has to transport his disabled wife and her breathing equipment down a flight of stairs while drunk as the villain made him chug a glass of whiskey.
I haven't read that one in ages! Now I know which Dick Francis I am reading next.
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I went on a Dick Francis kick a couple of years ago and read a bunch of them, including Forfeit. But there were a lot I didn't get to, and the one you mentioned above, I don't think I've read at all.
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Look, the mental image for a minute really confused me!
And I agree with Rachel that it's fantastically well done. I can rarely start that book without reading the entire first half in one go.
If it's all that kind of suspense, I don't see how you could not.
But there were a lot I didn't get to, and the one you mentioned above, I don't think I've read at all.
I can recommend assorted Dick Francis at unnecessary length if desired!
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Feel free to ignore any recommendations which you have already read or bounced off. In publishing order, because that was easiest to pull off the internet, novels by Dick Francis which I especially enjoy include—
For Kicks (1965). I have never been able to persuade myself to believe the romance and the ending escalates slightly too far into wish-fulfillment for me not to find it unintentionally funny, but I really enjoy the conceit of the protagonist having to camouflage his natural courage and competence in order to go successfully undercover at a stable that only hires dodgy, disgraced, desperate types, so that much of the tension comes not just from the twists and turns of the detection but the fact that it is really very difficult to do things badly if you have been practiced to do them well.
Smokescreen (1972). Described above. The film stuff is also well-handled and I can totally see the movie the protagonist is supposed to be making as an actual product of the early '70's.
Whip Hand (1979). Francis wrote almost no series characters except for Sid Halley, who featured in four novels; this is the second. It benefits from being read after Odds Against (1965), but I return to it more often than its predecessor because it is so much about aftermath—Sid was permanently disabled in the course of the first novel and is now living with the reality of his disability, which he's just about got worked out physically as the second novel opens and psychologically is nowhere near reconciled to. The problem doesn't have a facile solution, but the last line is a beauty. It took me years to notice that the central mystery is elegantly on-theme.
Reflex (1980). I have been known to call this one my favorite Dick Francis. The thriller plot and the emotional plot are especially well-aligned in that the protagonist who was taught by his uncertain childhood to accept whatever came his way and make the best of it now finds himself in more than one situation which will require him to consider the possibility that actually he wants things and then figure out what he's going to do about it. I like him as a character as well as an arc and I like how his photography is written. I like the love interest who works in publishing and is unpretentiously accustomed to being the smartest person in the room. I like the second male lead who works as a solicitor and is somewhat more disguisedly accustomed to being the smartest person in the room. I understand that for whatever reason the quantity of Dick Francis on AO3 is tragically small, but I remain disappointed that no one to my knowledge has ever written fic for this novel, since I can't read these people as anything other than an OT3—the solicitor functions narratively as the damsel in distress—and I would have cheerfully read as many novels about them as Francis actually wrote about Sid Halley.
Proof (1984). On the one hand, I can never remember what happens in this one; on the other, I always remember that it makes me care about wine.
Hot Money (1987). While not strictly a comedy, the plot of this novel requires the protagonist to investigate his dysfunctional kazillion half-siblings from the multiple marriages and affairs of his serially virile father and with all apologies to the seriousness of the denouement, that's hilarious.
The Edge (1988). All you really need to know about this one is that it's set on a cross-Canada train where the protagonist is working as a waiter for a murder mystery show; there is a racing connection, but there is a lot more dinner theater, and it's delightful.
Straight (1989). In terms of the moment-to-moment technique that started this conversation, it is relevant that the protagonist spends the entire novel on crutches and it accurately affects not just the action scenes but the daily minutiae of his life. The plot is a more or less literal treasure hunt involving a lot of late-'80's technology and is fondly fixed in my memory despite my near-total inability to remember the particulars of any of the tech.
To the Hilt (1996). I have no explanation for this novel except the combined id of Richard and Mary Francis, even more so than usual. The protagonist is baroquely tortured and the character who reads most naturally as the love interest is a fabulously competent cross-dressing PI whom even the protagonist's sort-of-ex-wife ships with him. The protagonist also paints golf scenes. There's a museum feud. Perhaps unsurprisingly, when last I checked it was the one novel out of the Francis oeuvre that had actually attracted an AO3 fandom. Personally I await the kdrama.
I am sure I have forgotten something and will return to this thread when it returns to me.
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Oh, same. It's a lot easier to describe them as "the one where the hero is a toymaker" or "the one set in the USSR." (That is slightly cheating because the one set in the USSR is one of the few where the title is actually meaningful to the plot, but the one where the hero is a toymaker really isn't.)
but I'm sure that at least some of these are new to me and others I haven't read in a while, so I'm looking forward to this!
Hooray! Enjoy!
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Proof was my first Francis. I was living in Japan and mainlining the local vintage of yaoi (and it was the 90s when yaoi had gone professionally published, so it was more 'drowning in'). And I got to the end of Proof when protag had saved the other guy from a hideous death and the guys kind of looked at each other and got in their cars and drove away in best British fashion. And I was all What? That's it? This is when you go off and screw, people!
Yeah, Francis was a big disappointment on the gay front. But subtext is what slash is for, after all.
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A legitimate response!
Yeah, Francis was a big disappointment on the gay front. But subtext is what slash is for, after all.
Have you written any that I might read?
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I never was a slash writer, I'm afraid. And book fandoms are so much harder to do than live action, because you have to get the style right. Francis should be easier because of the first person narrative: you only have to get one character's voice right, not the characters and the author's. But all Francis' characters feel so completely straight to me, I don't think I could even work with the opportunities presented in To the Hilt and The Edge.
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Lol, and this exchange just happened in my head:
Wait, your favorite is Bonecrack in good part because one of the characters reminds you of Denethor. That doesn't mean it'll work for other people. Reconsider recommending.
...Wait, this is grayswandir, the other Denethor fan!
:'D
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At the same time, that whole thread reinforces my impression that if I ever want to go back to writing/rewriting the Denethor fanfic that I started many years ago but never finished, I should probably go get a degree in history first. >_>
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On the other hand, I haven't taken a history class since high school, and just by talking to