{"id":144,"date":"2007-07-09T12:53:42","date_gmt":"2007-07-09T17:53:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lstr.net\/blog\/?p=144"},"modified":"2007-07-09T13:10:40","modified_gmt":"2007-07-09T18:10:40","slug":"quick-review-dead-mans-song-and-a-bit-of-ghost-road-blues","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lstr.net\/blog\/2007\/07\/09\/quick-review-dead-mans-song-and-a-bit-of-ghost-road-blues\/","title":{"rendered":"Quick Review: Dead Man&#8217;s Song (and a bit of Ghost Road Blues)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Technically, I still have a few pages left of Dead Man&#8217;s Song, but it is my lunch break, so I thought I&#8217;d throw in a quick review.<\/p>\n<p>Ahem. In essence, damn you <a href=\"http:\/\/www.jonathanmaberry.com\/\" target=\"_blank\">Jonathan Maberry<\/a>, you did it to me again.<\/p>\n<p>I read his first book, <em>Ghost Road Blues,<\/em> after paneling with him last <a href=\"https:\/\/www.lstr.net\/blog\/?p=65\">November at Philcon<\/a>, which I never really wrote about.  I picked it up because Maberry was a genuinely nice guy at the panel and because it takes place in Bucks County, Pa., just around the corner, really.<\/p>\n<p><iframe src=\"http:\/\/rcm.amazon.com\/e\/cm?t=lstrblg-20&amp;o=1&amp;p=8&amp;l=as1&amp;asins=078601816X&amp;fc1=000000&amp;IS1=1&amp;lt1=_blank&amp;lc1=0000FF&amp;bc1=FFFFFF&amp;bg1=FFFFFF&amp;f=ifr&amp;npa=1\" style=\"width: 120px; height: 240px\" marginwidth=\"0\" marginheight=\"0\" align=\"right\" frameborder=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p><em>Ghost Road Blues <\/em>pissed me off about halfway through, because it dawned on me that he was setting me up for a sequel. There was a satisfying climax, of course, but I realized that I wouldn&#8217;t get the complete story in one book.<\/p>\n<p>Of course, the same thing happened halfway through <em>Dead Man&#8217;s Song<\/em>, but I wasn&#8217;t so upset this time around. Maberry has me hooked, the bastard.  (I would have known this was a trilogy if I had bothered to <a href=\"http:\/\/www.jonathanmaberry.com\/\">read his site before<\/a>, but that&#8217;s doesn&#8217;t ease the hurt. *sniff*)<\/p>\n<p>To summarize both books, 30 years ago something horrible happened in Pine Deep, a fictional BucksCo borough. The Bone Man, an intinerent blues man in the spirit (ha!) of <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Robert_Johnson_%28musician%29\" target=\"_blank\">Robert Johnson<\/a>, killed the devil, but he didn&#8217;t finish the job and was lynched for his effort. He&#8217;s back, but so is this particular monster &#8212; and this monster has friends, lots of them.<\/p>\n<p><iframe src=\"http:\/\/rcm.amazon.com\/e\/cm?t=lstrblg-20&amp;o=1&amp;p=8&amp;l=as1&amp;asins=0786018151&amp;fc1=000000&amp;IS1=1&amp;lt1=_blank&amp;lc1=0000FF&amp;bc1=FFFFFF&amp;bg1=FFFFFF&amp;f=ifr&amp;npa=1\" style=\"width: 120px; height: 240px\" marginwidth=\"0\" marginheight=\"0\" align=\"right\" frameborder=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p><em>Ghost Road Blues<\/em> was the setup and <em>Dead Man&#8217;s Song<\/em> draws us in further.  At times, a bit densely plotted, both books are very well written and full of great characters (good and bad) that you just want to keep reading.\u00c2\u00a0 If anything, there is almost &#8212; <em>almost <\/em>&#8212; too much going on in these books.\u00c2\u00a0 Everything stays on pace, but even though I just read the first one seven months ago, it took a while for everything to click back into place as I got into <em>Dead Man&#8217;s Song &#8212; <\/em>which made it so much the sweeter when it did click. There&#8217;s a lot going on, but not so much that it will bog you down.<\/p>\n<p>I bought <em>Dead Man&#8217;s Song<\/em> on Thursday and haven&#8217;t been able to put it down. If I didn&#8217;t have obligations, parental or work, I would have finished it Friday morning.<\/p>\n<p>Zombie enthusiasm aside, I&#8217;ve never been a huge  horror fan. I read a few second hand King books that I enjoyed but didn&#8217;t love. I read a Koontz novel once. Once.<\/p>\n<p>Inevitablly, reviewers compare Maberry to King, which is fine, but Maberry writes with many of King&#8217;s better attributes (ability to conjure a lingering dread and characterization, among them) and does without a few of Kings worse ones (the King bloat, mainly).<\/p>\n<p>Above all, Maberry has shown himself to be a great storyteller.  At the end of <em>Ghost Road Blues<\/em>, I sincerely didn&#8217;t know where he was going with all of this. In my world, that&#8217;s much higher praise than it sounds. He manages to wring the dreck out of some tired old tropes to rejuvinate them. By the end of <em>Dead Man&#8217;s Song<\/em>, I have an inkling of wear he&#8217;s going&#8230;and it creeps me the hell out.<\/p>\n<p>My biggest regret is that I didn&#8217;t save this book for the beach.  I love being creeped out by the seaside.<\/p>\n<p>The quick verdict: Go out and buy <em>Ghost Road Blues<\/em> and <em>Dead Man&#8217;s Song&#8230;<\/em>just don&#8217;t read them right away, since you&#8217;ll have to wait until next summer for the final novel in the trilogy.<\/p>\n<p><strong>UPDATE:  <\/strong>Finished the last five pages. Crap. I really look forward to <em>Bad Moon Rising<\/em>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Technically, I still have a few pages left of Dead Man&#8217;s Song, but it is my lunch break, so I thought I&#8217;d throw in a quick review. Ahem. In essence, damn you Jonathan Maberry, you did it to me again. I read his first book, Ghost Road Blues, after paneling with him last November at [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-144","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","post-preview"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7V2xo-2k","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lstr.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/144","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lstr.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lstr.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lstr.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lstr.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=144"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lstr.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/144\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lstr.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=144"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lstr.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=144"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lstr.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=144"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}