So Very Dark

Sharp Teeth by Toby Barlow:

I was quite surprised when I opened this book to discover that it was written as an epic prose poem.  Not what I expected in a contemporary novel about werewolves in Los Angeles.

Then, seeing the format, I expected to struggle through some egotist’s wordy and pretentious all flash/no substance contribution to the literary world.  There were more surprises in store for me, however, when I found that the story was written not only with gorgeous imagery and description, but that the plot was engaging and peopled with characters that I grew strong attachments to.

Sharp teeth is a story about a dog catcher who finds his true love, a damaged girl with baggage that she doesn’t reveal to him…part of which is her lycanthrope nature.  It is a story about three werewolf gangs in Los Angeles building plans and armies, each plotting in their own way how to take the town for their own.  It is a little bit the story of a jaded cop that is getting involved in something he doesn’t understand.  It is the story of loss and war and being human and being a wolf.  Through his unique presentation, Barlow captures the gritty feel of the barrio, the corrupt gloss of the high-stakes bridge circuit, the dust and barbed wire of the desert, and how it feels to be young and poor and hopeless and in love anyway in L.A.  Definitely worthwile.

John Dies at the End by David Wong:

This book was recommended to me by a regular customer at Joseph Beth.  He described it as ‘Jay and Silent Bob hunting demons’.  I don’t think I could have phrased it better.

This story, which started out as a cult followed internet serial, is about John and David, two guys in a crappy small town with no prospects to speak of who, simply by dumb luck, end up involved in some…how shall I put this…I think ‘weird shit’ pretty much covers it…and then end up being sort of in charge of saving the world.  John and David are not Buffy.  They are not Batman.  They make fart jokes, drink a lot of beer, have bad housekeeping skills, minimum wage jobs and no clue what they are doing.  They discover that many inter-dimmentional baddy problems can be solved with a shotgun or a flamethrower.  Or that those methods are at least worth a shot.

It all starts with a floating Jamacian and a weird drug nicknamed ‘soy sauce’ that gives amazing mental clarity to the point of being able to figure out a person’s dreams the past night by reading their facial tics, and figure out Pi to about the 4,000th decimal place without breaking a sweat.  Oh, and the ability to see the interdimentional crap overlapping John and David’s reality with the goal of the obliteration of all humanity.  Most people don’t survive taking it.  David and John do, and since they can see what’s going on, they kind of feel like they should maybe, like…stop it…or something.

This book was kind of awesome and surreal.  Funny as hell.  And hell, in this book, was often pretty funny.  Also surprisingly creepy, though it takes a while to realize that, what with being so amused and all.