When Stephen King books appear, that’s a good day for me. When I can see everything he’s paying homage to, as I could in Cell, that just gives me a whole added level of appreciation. I mean, sure, he makes his dedication to Romero and Matheson in the first place, which does twitch the old notice-meter a little bit, but on top of that I’ve actually read I Am Legend since I started doing all this, and Night of the Living Dead has been one of my favorite movies for a long time indeed. Take a story that crosses them together and on top of that was written by my personal favorite storyteller, and you have a book that does not suck.

The premise could not be simpler. At 3 in the afternoon of October 1st, somebody injects a signal into the cellular satellite network, and whoever listens to a connected cellphone call from that moment forward is instantly and perhaps irrevocably changed into something… well, something violently rampaging and decidedly not human, whatever other conclusions may be drawn. The only thing remaining to do for people who managed to avoid the phones long enough to realize the cause of the instant societal breakdown is to stay off the network and to try to survive. And perhaps, to fight back.

Oh, right, so it’s also an end of the world novel. Shocking, really, that I liked it at all. King, cool references, zombie analogs, societal collapse. Things I really just can’t stand, obviously. My point is, this has been a good week, and the only reason it took so long to get through is that I’ve been savoring it, like a thing that connoisseurs of that type of thing would linger over for maximum enjoyment. The man has a big library, no mistake, but this is still easily one of his best works. Both the story and the horror of it grabbed me from the first few moments, and I never let go. …well, until I got to the last page, because it was time to read something else. But if there had been more pages, I can assure you I would be reading them. Probably later tonight rather than right now, but that’s really beside the point, don’t you think?

The time came to find out what was going on with Rap and Inos in Dave Duncan’s A Man of His Word series, so I broke out Perilous Seas and set myself about finding out. I am pleased to say that the third book has once again improved itself. Where the first book introduced a cool world and fun characters, and the second book pulled together the magic system and politics, this one takes all that information and starts pushing the high adventure and romance into the forefront again.

Aside from a cliffhanger that will have me reading the finale very soon indeed, my favorite bit was our heroes growing and the world getting a little smaller and less mysterious as a result (in the good way, like Robert Jordan used to be good at). Inos is busy making difficult, queen-based and woman-based decisions that it would have been impossible to guess she’d be up to in the beginning, and Rap has learned that the only person who’s going to help him save the day for Queen and country is himself, and sets about accomplishing exactly that. I know, character growth is exactly the kind of thing you expect to see in a book, but apparently it happens rarely enough to leave me overly gratified when I actually find it in this context.

Also: oy, the cliffhanger, even worse than the one at the end of The Magic Casement. So, yeah, soon. Next month at the latest.

As promised, I spent a few days reading Michael Crichton’s latest thriller, Why the Environmental Movement Is a Big Fake Lie. Seriously. This was not a good book. Now, I’m going to try to stay out of the politics of it, because probably most of the factual bits of the book were well-researched, or even accurate. Leaving that aside, it had more problems than you can shake a pointed stick at.

First of all, the opening segment reminded me of Snoopy’s novel. For about 50 pages, there was a string of seemingly unrelated incidents, scattered all around the world and involving all different characters. Was there, in fact, a dark and stormy night? Okay, maybe not, but that’s the only true divergence from the formula. After that, he went straight into a Terry Goodkind novel. That is, the plot was a thin, semi-transparent cover for a series of polemics. Which were themselves irritating above and beyond the fact of them, because they were presented in a smug, know-it-all voice (that I may be reacting to more negatively than I should, because it reminds me of a guy I used to game with) to correct the conveniently naive assumptions of first our heroes and later some Hollywood caricatures. Well, okay, now I’m being unfair, as I’m quite sure they were totally believable Hollywood types and not caricatures at all. But the point is, if you need to write this kind of thing, just write a scientific book. Oh, but wait, that wouldn’t let you trick a lot of people into hearing what you wanted to say.

The very worst part, though, is that Crichton has on occasion written a lot better than this. So if he was this invested in the message he was trying to get out, I feel like maybe it wouldn’t have killed him to be a little more subtle and apply a bit more actual talent to the topic. Because I’d probably be a lot more comfortable with his message if I weren’t so pissed at being talked to like a six year old.

Yesterday, a book was thrust into my hands. Despite the company I tend to keep and my own reading habits, this doesn’t happen as often as you might imagine. I thought the claim that I could read it in an hour and a half was probably a joke at first, but it turned out to be pretty close to true (two hours, maybe two-five?). Cleverly, Blankets is a graphic novel, though since that terminology is taken by bound comic collections, it is named on the cover an illustrated novel.

And, y’know, wow. Probably moreso for me than for the general case, but maybe not. It’s a coming-of-age story, which essentially says nothing at all, although I can conceive of it as common knowledge that this kind of thing is my bread and butter. I’m not sure precisely what it says about me that I so frequently revisit that period in my entertainment, yet have huge gaping holes in my memory about things that happened, and only the broadest brush strokes about things I can remember; and I don’t even know that I’d have the wherewithal to consider that unusual, if I didn’t know so many people who can recount events that long ago so vividly. Kind of like Craig Thompson recounting his own story in Blankets.

It’s a story about the foundations of first faith and first love, and how solid they seem, and it’s a story about how illusory and ready to crumble they really are. And also, about how similar they are. This stuff, I identify with on a visceral level. It’s possible, by which I mean probable, that it says something more about me that a lot of the things that I do remember, and as vividly as so many people seem to remember everything, revolve around these seminal events in my own life. My story has a lot less drama than his did, but the key elements are in there, and it was very moving to hear and see his story, probably the moreso for getting it all over the course of a morning. Now, I’ll spend the rest of the day in a melancholy, pleasant haze, I expect. Until I start rotting my brain right out of my head on this Crichton novel sitting on the back of the chair.

Also, I should point out that Blankets has a strong visual and thematic motif revolving around blankets. No lie.

I snagged another one of those Anita Blake novels, since the first one was okay. My initial verdict on The Laughing Corpse: still not hardcore porn yet. This time, a rampaging zombie and an unscrupulous rich, old man form the backdrop against which we learn a little more about Anita’s world. The plot twists were a little transparent, mainly because I’m not sure that our author has ever heard of a red herring. Despite that, I continue to enjoy Anita as the narrator, plus the thing where there’s still someone left with something interesting and, dare I say it, somewhat new to say on the subject of the literary vampire. In this case, she fleshed out the whole animator schtick that brings in Anita’s paychecks (that is, she raises corpses long enough to get them to answer questions, then puts them back in the ground; but there’s more to it than that, hence the fleshing) and the concept of a vampire’s human servant. Not that the idea is anything new in the genre, but she’s applying rules to it, and the inner RPG geek inside me appreciates that kind of thing.

As far as the porn thing: well, this one wasn’t, but it clearly had slipped a step in that direction. I speculate that the next one will be safe as well, but after that, I dunno. Only time will tell. Also: the title meant essentially nothing to me. I guess I ought to try to apply it to themes or plot elements, but I’m failing to, and as far as the literal name it shares with an in-book comedy club, well, that also had nothing to do with the book. So. I am mystified. Also, I am done rambling.