I found Young Dillon in The Halls of Shamballah (by Derrick Ferguson) hard to follow due to the constant description of minor details of the story. Various characters and locations that have little or no significance to the story were constantly described in detail and I found myself trying to find the end of the description to continue with the story. The descriptions were wonderful and detailed but would have been better if the intricate descriptions were left only for the important locations such as the temple where the Phoenix Council meet, The Andarran Tower where the Sunn Room where the Warmasters meet, Kerenos’ home, Shamballah, and the main characters of the book, except for a few eccentric characters where you would want the imagination to really take you away, introductions and descriptions would have been better off short and sweet because of everything that is going on in the book. With the constant descriptive words, I found my imagination going into overdrive and it was almost impossible to stay connected to the story.
However, I did enjoy how the characters were connected and loyal to each other and their society. Even though some of the characters in the book were skeptical of Dillon, others had faith in him because of who his mother was and the respect they had for his mother. As I read on, I found it heartwarming that so many people wanted to keep Dillon in Shamballah, even though he was an outsider because his mother left Shamballah, he was not born in Shamballah, and his father was not from Shamballah, they wanted to keep him close because his mother meant something to the Warmasters and people of Shamballah. Kerenos’ blind faith and the faith of others in Dillon ultimately paid off as Dillon followed in his mother’s footsteps and became a part of Shamballah.
About halfway into DOMAIN by Mike Baron, I was wondering if maybe Mr. Baron hadn’t gotten two versions of the same novel mashed-up together and mistakenly published them as one. Give me a minute and I’ll explain.
In the first version, we have Kendall Coffin, a moderately successful comic book artist who due to an unexpected financial windfall is able to purchase an extraordinarily lavish and baroque Los Angeles mansion that looks like a cross between 1930’s Art Deco and a Mayan temple. It’s a mansion that was built by an eccentric architect and owned by an even more eccentric Hollywood producer. As in any good haunted house story, the mansion is rumored to have been the location of depraved sexual acts, rampant drug and alcohol abuse, Satanic rituals, pedophilia, necrophilia, and Great Cthulhu himself only knows what all else went on in that joint. That’s why Kendall is able to buy it cheap.
He settles down to his new life, meeting new neighbors, engages in romantic and business relationships and even gets himself a dog. But as he explores his new house and finds new rooms full of Hollywood memorabilia and remnants of the former owner’s depravities it begins working on his conscious and subconscious mind. Are there spirits of the dead infesting the house and subtly influencing Kendall? Maybe even to the point where he is committing murder without being aware of it?
In the second version Kendall Coffin goes to work for a thinly disguised Disney knock-off as a storyboarder. The studio is moving in a new direction and their latest production is an erotic thriller. While the job pays extraordinarily well, the subject matter is distasteful. And it’s in this version that Coffin wryly and cynically observes and muses on pop culture, comic book culture, Hollywood, TV, The Cult of Celebrity that has infected this country, video gaming, religion, the pros and cons of drug use, mortality and The Meaning of Life.
Don’t get me wrong, the two versions co-exist side-by-side and at times I actually found myself wanting to see more of the version with Kendall navigating his way through Hollyweird, wondering if this is truly the life he wants. There are chapters that are nothing more than Kendall going through his day and rather than being boring they do indeed enhance the story, providing characterization and doing something that a lot of horror stories don’t do; remind us that even though horrible things are happening around us, life does indeed go on. We still have to feed the dog, put out the garbage and make a living. We still have to deal with loss and we still want to find love and have sex.
This is the fourth novel of Baron’s I’ve read and as always, I enjoy his freewheeling, don’t-give-a-damn prose. Baron writes as if he’s out to entertain himself first and foremost and it’s a tactic I wish more writers would adapt because if the writer is enjoying himself then it can’t help but translate into an enjoyable reading experience. I also like how he’s not afraid to use brand names, the names of real and made-up rock groups, movie and TV actors, song titles, movie titles. There’s a name for this, y’know. It’s called “The Fleming Effect” named after Ian Fleming, the creator James Bond. A good case could be made for him inventing Product Placement since he name dropped left and right in his James Bond novels. I like it myself. It gives a novel an added layer when I’m reading about characters eating in the same restaurants I do, reading the same books and watching the same TV shows I do.
If you’ve read Mike Baron’s other books then you know what you’re getting and I don’t have to twist your arm. If you haven’t, then I’d recommend you sample “Helmet Head” (which reads like the best John Carpenter movie John Carpenter never made) and “Skorpio” before diving into DOMAIN. But no matter which of his books you decide to start with, you’ll be entertained, trust me. Mike Baron writes in a highly cinematic style that puts me in mind of the best of 1980s grindhouse movies. True, his books have a lot of build-up but it’s there for a reason and the payoff is always worth the wait. Highly Recommended.
{This review was previously posted by the author on another site.)
Truth to tell I’m not much for books about cooking as I’m a fairly basic cook. I’m no Bobby Flay but I can throw together an edible meal that’s reasonably tasty. I’m also not much for books about leadership and teaching you how to be more assertive and focused in life. Self-help books really turn me off. So how did I end up not only reading but reviewing a book entitled Gumbo Warrior: Recipe Of A True Leader which is exactly what it sounds like: a cookbook about the skills and tools of leadership, using the writer’s family recipe for gumbo as the template for acquiring and learning those skills and tools?
Same way I usually end up reading and reviewing a book: it was recommended to me by a friend and my friends usually have good taste and I trust that they wouldn’t recommend a book to me unless they thought for sure there was something in the subject matter that would interest me. And there is a good deal in Gumbo Warrior: Recipe Of A True Leader that did interest me.
Mr. Mayfield’s prose is a bit rough at times and he tends to stray from time to time, zig-zagging from his family reminisces to his career as a Marine to make his point. The effect sometimes gives the impression of a stream-of-consciousness style of writing. But it’s more than that. It didn’t take me long to get into the book to realize that Mr. Mayfield feels intensely about the subject he’s writing about and it truly does come across in his writing. His deep love for his family, his country, his service in The Marine Corps and yes, his cooking is strong enough to overcome the roughness of the prose.
Mr. Mayfield takes the highly unusual notion of adopting his family gumbo recipe that he learned from both his grandmothers to apply the various ingredients of gumbo and how they go together to create one delicious dish to the various ingredients that go into the making of a leader. Mr. Mayfield recounts many incidents from his life as a youth growing up in New Orleans and his time in the Marines to illustrate these ingredients and how they made him the leader and the man he eventually developed into.
It works a whole lot better than my rather clumsy synopsis would lead you to believe. As I said earlier, Mr. Mayfield believes and cares deeply about his subject and he communicates that belief very well indeed. I like how he always uses his own personal history to illustrate the points he’s making. As a result, in reading this book I feel I got to know Mr. Mayfield as a person. At times while reading the book I felt as if we were having a conversation. Not an easy thing to pull off in prose, I assure you. I’ve tried.
Mr. Mayfield has a simple, relatable style of writing that works for him and makes reading his book entertaining. Gumbo Warrior: Recipe Of A True Leader has a lot going for it in terms of being a positively inspiring and uplifting read that will give you a lot to think about if you decide to give it a chance. May make you even think about learning how to make gumbo.
GUMBO WARRIOR: RECIPE OF A TRUE LEADER By Morris Mayfield III 2018 ISBN-13: 987-0-692-07687-3 Johnson’s Publishing Co.
Abby E. Murray published this slim volume (29 pages) of poetry in 2018. You can find it at www.finishinglinepress.com.
The poetry inside is by turns gentle and brutal, not in a physical way, but mentally, in the tension between reality, beliefs, and custom. This book has many moments where the rigid expectations of military culture smash against the poet’s solid beliefs and personal integrity, like waves crashing on recalcitrant boulders.
The poet writes a sharp hook, drawing you into a poem and keeping you there to its end:
By the time we move to a seventh city I am portable as a jug of water,
Another one, I hand it to you like a single potato chip:
To sit in the simulated living space at Ikea is to know what sand knows as it rests inside the oyster.
You must continue where they lead you.
The poet paints in colors muted by time and despair and switches palettes to whimsy and joy.
They paint vignettes, portraits in miniature, and the insides of heads.
Page to page this book surprises you, and that’s the best thing poetry can do.
Abby E. Murray is the 2019-2021 Poet Laureate for the city of Tacoma, Washington. They are the editor-publisher of Collateral, an online journal about violent conflict and military service. Their latest book is Hail and Farewell, published by Perugia Press.
Poetry that haunts me now about the life I lived back then.
With Red Fields, Jason Poudrier displays a mastery for poetry in general, but particularly for war poetry. If the point of poetry is to induce the reader to feel as strongly about something as the poet does themself, Mr. Poudrier succeeded beyond belief.
The night after reading Red Fields and for several nights afterwards, this book gave me nightmares because it took me back to my own experiences with war in the deserts and cities of Iraq. In my night sweat, I came back to things that actually happened, but that I had suppressed in my memory and forgotten long ago.
Though published in 2012, the events of the poetry collection took place in the context of the lead up to and execution of the 2003 Invasion of Iraq. In addition, some of the poems dissect and evaluate the impact of these actions on the participants long after the fighting ceased.
The separation of the book into sections on pre-war, train-up, and conduct of the war resonates well in the psyche of anyone who has done the cycle of notification, pre-deployment preparation, operations, and post-operation activity exceptionally well. The tension builds as the poems stack up to the initiation of the war.
Yet the nightmares, the drudgery, the gore, and the orgasmic release of emotions throughout the work are fueled by the mind of a man who has seen the elephant in all its horror, and is trying to remember a past from before the violence that is simply clouded by blood and death and a passion for peace and a normalcy that may never be again.
Though I do not personally know Jason, his Multiple Launch Rocket System (MLRS) Battery from Fort Sill was attached to the same MLRS Artillery Battalion from Fort Stewart that I served in for the conduct of the invasion. I am intimate with the events, if not all of the people, from which his poems are inspired. He fundamentally captured the reality- the boredom, the bustle, the blood, and the banality that is soldiers at war.
Mongrel Empire Press, Norman Oklahoma, 2012: 81 Pages.
