Publisher’s Weekly has a starred review of Peter Straub’s next novel, A Dark Matter. After comparisons (favorable) to Roshaomon, it ends: “Brilliant in its orchestration and provocative in its speculations, this novel ranks as one of the finest tales of modern horror.” I was fortunate to be able to read the book several months ago so I could review it for Cemetery Dance and I agree with the PW review completely. The title, by the way, has more meanings than I could possibly ever list.
Another editing round on the short story under revision. It has crept up from 3500 to 4300 words over the course of the past week or so. I hope to get it back to the editor tomorrow so I can focus on whipping the other short story he wants into shape. The current story was locked in my mind for a long time and now I’ve had to re-evaluate it and re-envision it, which has been a process with a learning curve. It’s hard to un-think the story.
Each season on Survivor it seems that someone emerges from the pack late in the season and it’s like: where did this guy/gal come from? This season, of course, it’s Brett (is that his name?) who has just been a face in the crowd until he became the last surviving member of Galu and all of sudden pulled off two immunity wins in a row to save his ass. I saw lots of eye-rolling among the jury member when they saw who was evicted this week, but I’m not sure if that was a reflection on their opinion of the vote or a reaction to having to share quarters with this particular evicted individual. Only one episode left, and this is where it gets interesting — where a long-standing alliance (although it seems much longer for us, where two days equals a week than for the players, probably) will be forced to make the difficult decisions.
CSI was just plain weird last night. The final shot seemed like a riff on an earlier episode that ended with a silly star-crossed lovers shot, except this time the stars were in a different alignment and the suicide pact had an unexpected outcome. I’m not sure exactly what was wrong with the episode, but it just didn’t work for me. Parts of it felt overly contrived, especially the shootout at the beginning. How many shots were fired before anyone was hit, let alone the dumbo standing in the middle of the crossfire hoping to get shot? It just felt totally off.
The Mentalist was okay. I’m not sure we really learned much about Jane that really helps us to understand him any better. Sure, he was able to use his own childhood experience to put the ball players’ ordeals into context, but it didn’t seem worth all that effort. I’m growing to like the exchanges between Van Pelt and Rigsby even more, especially now that Van Pelt is really starting to step up her game as a cop.
