I was very saddened to hear of Karen Lansdale’s passing. Wrote a little bit about it here. Just a tremendous loss, and words don’t really do it justice. I don’t know how they could.
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Got the first draft of my speech for the Splatterpunk Awards written. I’ll deliver it this Saturday night at KillerCon. Here’s the final ballot, in case you want to see what’s nominated. As for the convention, I’ll be there all day Saturday. Some of you have asked about signing books. I haven’t set up any official signing times or panels or readings, but if you bring books from home, I am happy to sign them for you. Just track me down. It’s a small convention so you can do that easily enough.
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Each and every day, we are adding new auctions to the Vortex Books & Comics eBay page. Check them out. And the online store is booming, too.
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Women In Horror Year: Day 135
Red Shadows by Yvonne Navarro
Out Of Print
It was the worst catastrophe the people of Earth had ever endured. In the summer of 2000, fragments of a rogue planet slammed into Earth. Billions were killed. The impact ravaged Earth, stopping its rotation. Now, twenty-one years later, the remnants of humanity face total extinction. They live a primitive existence in a land divided into perpetual daylight, eternal twilight, and endless night. From each of these worlds comes a threat that could destroy the fragile civilization that has survived....
A young man seeks his mother in the lawless terrors of the Darkzone, only to find horrors far worse than he could have imagined. A weary wanderer returns to a haven from his past, unwittingly leading a murderer to its unsuspecting people. And an impetuous explorer searches for treasures in a long-dead city, only to bring back an even more implacable killer: a plague called the Red Shadows...
Yesterday, we revisited Final Impact by Yvonne Navarro, so it only makes sense to take a look at the sequel to that novel today. While Final Impact (which I described as Deep Impact meets The Stand) the setting was apocalyptic, and the horrors 99.9% human, Red Shadows, set twenty-one years after the first novel, takes place in a decidedly post-apocalyptic setting. It’s Swan Song meets Dark Advent (with a return to those The Stand-esque elements in the second half, in the form of a disease that might wipe out the remaining population), and while the horror elements are still very much of the human variety, their impact is more unsettling and brutal on the reader than before. Once again, that is due to Yvonne’s greatest strength — realistic characterization. Despite the dark, dystopian setting, these are real people with real motivations and emotions. We know them from our daily lives. We may, in fact, be some of them. And that further invests us, the readers, in their plight.
Like its predecessor, Red Shadows is sadly out of print, but it is also widely available for cover price or a little above on the secondary market. This pair are forgotten gems amongst the apocalyptic fiction set. Highly recommended.
