SEPTEMBER 17-23, 2014: Whew! It’s been a busy couple of weeks, and this release week roundup is more than a week late. But! I can’t do my usual trick of combining two weeks into one roundup, because there’s just too many great titles coming out here as summer turns to fall. This week: a full review of John Darnielle’s affecting Wolf in White Van, along with picks from YA (Scott Westerfeld’s Afterworlds) and horror (Lauren Oliver’s adult debut Rooms and Grady Hendrix’s bizarre and aptly-published-by-Quirk-Books Horrorstör), and Terry Pratchett’s essay collection A Slip of the Keyboard. Also out this week: an omnibus edition of Ellen Kushner’s Riverside novels, Robin Cook’s groundbreaking medical thriller Coma, Benjamin Whitmer’s Cry Father, Will Wiles’ The Way Inn, a US release for Audible’s original dramatic production The Child, and a pair of shorts: Roberto Trotta’s The Edge of the Sky: All You Need to Know about the All-There-Is (read by Bronson Pinchot) and Robertson Dean’s narration of Washington Irving’s classic The Legend of Sleepy Hollow. Meanwhile in podcast land, part two of the Baen audio drama “Islands” debuted on the Baen Free Radio Hour, and! episode one of Mur Lafferty’s Ghost Train to New Orleans, a free podcast of her second “Shambling Guides” novel, published by Hachette Audio in March. In “seen but not hear” a few which really catch my eye, including Jenna Black’s “Game of Thrones meets House of Cards” contemporary urban fantasy The Gifted Dead and Greer Gilman’s Small Beer Press-published Exit, Pursued By a Bear. Enjoy!

PICKS OF THE WEEK:

[Review of Wolf in White Van reprinted with slight adaptations from its appearance in bullspec.com.]

John Darnielle’s brilliant lyricism is no secret to fans of his internationally-acclaimed band The Mountain Goats. Fewer have, however, taken the plunge (or perhaps known about) his more lengthily literary side, expressed most publicly (until now) as a novella in Continuum’s 33 1/3 series, Black Sabbath: Master of Reality, a 100-page examination of the classic heavy metal album from the perspective of a 15-year-old psychiatric patient. His first full-length novel, Wolf in White Van, was published by FSG Originals, and concerns itself with similarly heady (and dark) themes, and within days of publication the novel was named to the long-list for the National Book Awards for Fiction.

“Welcome to Trace Italian, a game of strategy and survival! You may now make your first move.Isolated by a disfiguring injury since the age of seventeen, Sean Phillips crafts imaginary worlds for strangers to play in. From his small apartment in southern California, he orchestrates fantastic adventures where possibilities, both dark and bright, open in the boundaries between the real and the imagined. As the creator of Trace Italian—a text-based, role-playing game played through the mail—Sean guides players from around the world through his intricately imagined terrain, which they navigate and explore, turn by turn, seeking sanctuary in a ravaged, savage future America. Lance and Carrie are high school students from Florida, explorers of the Trace. But when they take their play into the real world, disaster strikes, and Sean is called to account for it. In the process, he is pulled back through time, tunneling toward the moment of his own self-inflicted departure from the world in which most people live. Brilliantly constructed, Wolf in White Van unfolds in reverse until we arrive at both the beginning and the climax: the event that has shaped so much of Sean’s life. Beautifully written and unexpectedly moving, John Darnielle’s audacious and gripping debut novel is a marvel of storytelling brio and genuine literary delicacy.”

In some ways, Wolf in White Van acts a s kind of anti-thesis for Darnielle’s recent work with The Mountain Goats. The band’s 2012 album, Transcendental Youth, has its more somber edges at times but (I would argue) if not a more ecstatic through-line, an encouragement both direct and indirect to get up, go out, and do/be/create, at least some destination of if not acceptance then catharsis. In Wolf in White Van, we encounter mostly aftermaths — of a 17-year-old’s reasonless actions and of a later, different pair of teenager’s foolish decisions — and how these together make anything resembling meaning, or not, where even catharsis is in short supply. Of the dangers of both going out to do, in joy and curiosity, and also of staying in and delving too deeply into your own dark fantasies. In this short, emotionally packed and affecting novel, even the multiple universes which branch out from every decision are weighed against reality as something perhaps to mourn. In this spiraling, reflecting, inverted narrative, the power of Darnielle’s lyricism in prose to affect you is emotionally and even physically staggering. There’s not even much of a fleeting glimpse of the romanticism of melancholy: we get neither “depression” nor “psychosis” just what happened.

No book can be for everyone. Perhaps my take on it is overly grim — I do not mean here to frighten anyone away with the idea that you will be relentlessly battered with emptiness. There are moments of beauty and even wonder, here. Of living a moral, empathetic, honest life after disfigurement. Of imagination and stuggle. Of insight into what it means to be human and alive, yet also fragile, unpredictable. Of the balance of tenderness and anger of parents confronted by the unspeakable and inexplicable. Of the everyday and the rare. All this in not too much over 200 pages, a one-sitting hardcover treasure. But my reaction to it is personal, both as someone who wrote and played “roll your own” roleplaying games at middle school lunch tables, whose family history includes suicide by rifle, and who as a parent aches at the violent rages that can overtake a child’s mind and body and refuse to let go. Who grew up with Conan and Krull and Fritz Leiber and late-night weird broadcasts and all the rest.

The novel’s construction is a first person account, perhaps a diary or private deposition to be filed away, forever, in the dark recesses of a specifically gray metal filing cabinet, in a weird sort of chronology, spiraling in and back on itself — like the maze/labyrinth on its cover — around some key details that slowly emerge more definitively, obscured, restrained, unleashed. It’s told in a detached way, but not sociopathic. It’s a more clinical assessment, an historic record. Listening to the audiobook, read by Darnielle, there are few points of inflection, two of which come to mind and bookend the novel. The first is the opening, a quote from Robert E. Howard’s The Thing on the Roof: “‘And the treasure?’ I broke in eagerly.” conveyed with genuinely naive hope. The last is the final word, spat with an almost rising fury: “door.”

That hope is immediately mocked, and later revisited only briefly in fantasties both private — Sean’s childhood imaginings of being Howard’s Conan on a stone throne — and public, in the pages of his play-by-mail “choose your own adventure” style roleplaying game, Trace Italian. Or, not so much the pages themselves, but in the near-manic, excited “turns” that come in by mail.

That fury is as unexpected as it is powerful, transformative, giving one final note, one final color for the rearguard view that all novels become once we’ve closed the last page. Providing a missing weight that shows the lack of it all the more. Like the book itself does, to stand as testament to the other roads our lives could take. We are grateful that we live this fragile, often inexplicable life, while we can. A reset button to expectations and the technicolor possibilities of life. As Darnielle writes, as Sean: Welcome to Trace Italian, a game of strategy and survival! You may now make your first move.

You can hear an excerpt of Darnielle’s narration of the audiobook, out from Macmillan Audio — unfortunately the excerpt doesn’t capture the fantastic intro, outtro, interstitial, and underlying musical score which Darnielle composed and performed for the book, distorted pings that add atmosphere and empty space to create an immersive experience like few others. Get: [Downpour | Audible]

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Scott Westerfeld came to prominence a decade ago with his award-winning and best-selling dystopian young adult series “Uglies”, then set his sights on a middle grade alternate history of Steampunk “Clankers” and gene-splicing “Darwinists” for his “Leviathan” series, a fantastically-illustrated (and narrated, by Alan Cumming) adventure-romp through WW1-era Europe by diesel-powered mech walkers, modified whale airships, and (perhaps) even stranger methods. It’s been 3 years since Goliath concluded that series, and this week Westerfeld’s new young adult/new adult novel Afterworlds launched from Simon Pulse. Afterworlds is about “Darcy Patel, a young writer who bangs out a novel in her senior year of high school, has it published for a ton of money, and moves to New York City to revise it, write a sequel, and hang out with the NYC YA crowd.” And! “Interspersed with Darcy’s story is the entirety of her novel, also called Afterworlds, about Lizzie Scofield, a young girl who escapes a terrorist attack by playing dead, but then discovers that she has played too well . . .” You can get a feel of what’s going on here via the book trailer, or dig into some excerpts (PulseIt, B&N, and the longest at Overdrive). The audiobook is narrated by Sheetal Sheth and Heather Lind for Simon & Schuster Audio. More: an interview by Mur Lafferty. Get: [Downpour | Audible]

Rooms by Lauren Oliver (Ecco, Sep 23) is the adult debut from this best-selling YA author of the Delirium trilogy, in the vein of The Ocean at the End of the Lane, narrated by Orlagh Cassidy, Barbara Caruso,Elizabeth Evans, Noah Galvin, and Cynthia Darlow for Harper Audio: “Estranged patriarch Richard Walker has died, leaving behind a country house full of rooms packed with the detritus of a lifetime. His alienated family – bitter ex-wife Caroline, troubled teenage son Trenton, and unforgiving daughter Minna – have arrived for their inheritance. But the Walkers are not alone. Alice and Sandra, two long-dead and restless ghosts, linger within the house’s claustrophobic walls, bound eternally to its physical structure. Jostling for space and memory, they observe the family, trading barbs and reminiscences about their past lives. Though their voices cannot be heard, Alice and Sandra speak through the house itself – in the hiss of the radiator, a creak in the stairs, the dimming of a light bulb. The living and dead are haunted by painful truths that surface with explosive force. When a new ghost appears, and Trenton begins to communicate with her, the spirit and human worlds collide – with cataclysmic results. Elegantly constructed and brilliantly paced, Rooms is an enticing and imaginative ghost story and a searing family drama that is as haunting as it is resonant.” Get: [Downpour | Audible]

Horrorstör by Grady Hendrix, narrated by Tai Sammons and Bronson Pinchot for Blackstone Audio (Quirk Books, Sep 23) — “Something strange is happening at the Orsk furniture superstore in Cleveland. Every morning, employees arrive to find broken Kjerring wardrobes, shattered Brooka glassware, and vandalized Liripip sofa beds – clearly someone, or something, is up to no good. To unravel the mystery, five young employees volunteer for a long dusk-till-dawn shift and encounter horrors that defy imagination. Along the way, author Grady Hendrix infuses sly social commentary on the nature of work in the new twenty-first-century economy. A traditional haunted house story in a contemporary setting, and full of current fears, Horrorstör delivers a high-concept premise in a unique style.” Get: [Downpour | Audible]

A Slip of the Keyboard: Collected Nonfiction by Terry Pratchett, with a foreword by Neil Gaiman, narrated by Michael Fenton-Stevens for Random House Audio is “A collection of essays and other nonfiction from Terry Pratchett, spanning the whole of his writing career from his early years to the present day. Terry Pratchett has earned a place in the hearts of listeners the world over with his best-selling Discworld series – but in recent years he has become equally well-known and respected as an outspoken campaigner for causes including Alzheimer’s research and animal rights. A Slip of the Keyboardbrings together for the first time the finest examples of Pratchett’s nonfiction writing, both serious and surreal: from musings on mushrooms to what it means to be a writer (and why banana daiquiris are so important); from memories of Granny Pratchett to speculation about Gandalf’s love life, and passionate defences of the causes dear to him. With all the humour and humanity that have made his novels so enduringly popular, this collection brings Pratchett out from behind the scenes of the Discworld to speak for himself – man and boy, bibliophile and computer geek, champion of hats, orangutans and Dignity in Dying. Snuff was the best-selling adult hardcover novel of 2011. A Blink of the Screen, Terry’s short fiction collection, was also one of the best-selling hardcovers of 2012.” Gaiman’s essay on Pratchett’s anger was shared widely last week, and is part of his introduction to the book. Fenton-Stevens has narrated the Long Earth series, The Science of Discworld, and The Folklore of Discworld, so it’s quite comfortable to hear him as the voice of Pratchett’s non-fiction. Get: [Downpour | Audible]

ALSO OUT THIS WEEK:

SEEN BUT NOT HEARD:

COMING SOON:

OCTOBER 2014:

NOVEMBER and DECEMBER 2014:

UNDATED or 2015: