Customer Reviews

Attack of the Jazz Giants: and Other Stories

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Each of Nebula, Hugo, Tiptree, International Horror Guild, and World Fantasy Award finalist Gregory Frost's outstanding tales of fantasy is enhanced by the illustrations of Jason Van Hollander in Attack Of The Jazz Giants And Other Stories, a compendium of imaginative and entertaining short stories. Readers are treated to stories of an apocalyptic being that hides in a Ukrainian village; a horror that dwells in Jack the Ripper's pocket watch; a crossroads in which the Castle of Otranto connects with the Depression Era South, and more. Featuring a foreword by bestselling author Karen Joy Fowler and an afterword to each individual tale by award-winning author John Kessel, Attack Of The Jazz Giants And Other Stories is a dazzling compilation that takes the reader on a dizzying journey through fractured time and space.

Frost has a gift for hooking you by the collar and dragging you into quirky worlds made believable, then turning you to gaze from there back into the accepted world as through a wavery two-way mirror. Thus you find yourself looking with tilted head at the homeless, or the use of religion to exploit workers, or the over-worked, ever-dissolving family, and perhaps, finally, seeing them in ways that resonate in the day-to-day. His stories are odd, quirky, angry and amusing. And they echo. Well worth the read.

As a regular reader of speculative fiction, particularly of the progressive and surreal variety, somehow I have remained ignorant of Gregory Frost's unique work. Well, better late than never. Frost examines the dark side of the human condition with a sly surrealism that is so subtle that it becomes creepy and disarming. Even in his occasional comedy tales - like this volume's sly opener "The Girlfriends of Dorian Gray." This collection is a multi-genre powerhouse of Frost's best work, but keep in mind that genre exercises such as supernatural creatures, science fiction gadgets, and fantasy settings are just window dressing for Frost's main phenomena of interest. Great examples are "A Day in the Life of Justin Argento Morrel" in a which a stereotypical sci-fi spaceship is the setting for an incisive tale of madness and betrayal, "Collecting Dust" which looks at the disintegration of the American family via a family that is literally disintegrating, and "The Bus" which uses a rather cheeky evil vehicle to examine how society feeds off the unfortunate. Frost also deserves props for his unique takes on historical fiction, like "In the Sunken Museum" in which Edgar Allan Poe is driven to real madness in a museum based on own his tales of madness, and "From Hell Again" which is an offbeat look at the old mystery of Jack the Ripper. And finally, the apotheosis of Frost's mastery is the stupendous "Madonna of the Maquiladora" - a devastating critique of human suffering and exploitation - which combines science fiction, religion, and social commentary more effectively than any short story I've ever seen. [~doomsdayer520~]

Gregory Frost's riveting collection of short stories, Attack of the Jazz Giants, is one of those books that makes you feel like your're sneaking around in the shadowy little rooms inside the haunted house of his brain. Stories rage from darkly funny to darkly jolting, and along the way you get to wander down some extremely strange side-corridors (such as in the title story) and you wind up in wildly unexpected places.

It's the kind of book where you do one story at a time, rather than gallop cover to cover, because you want to chew the bark off these tales to get to the real heart of each one. They stay with you, and they work on you.

Frost is a great novelist, but he's a master of the short story.

There's never a dull moment in Attack of the Jazz Giants. No weak entries, no experimental drivel, nothing derivative, just good stories from start to finish.

The collection begins well with "The Girlfriends of Dorian Gray," the humorous story of a glutton who passes on the cost of sins to his dates, moves on to biting social satire and commentary with "The Madonna of the Maquiladora", "Collecting Dust" and "The Bus", segues into science fiction with "A Day in the Life of Justin Argento Morrel" and "Divertimento" before moving back into (admittedly black) humor in the title story "Attack of the Jazz Giants" at its midpoint.

The second half begins with three dark tales ("Some Things are Better Left", "Lizaveta", "In the Sunken Museum"), veers towards sarcasm on its way to slapstick comedy (the darkly funny "Touring Jesusworld" followed by the Hope-Crosby homage "The Road to Recovery"), briefly dips its toes into the murky waters of the Thames (with a Jack the Ripper story called "From Hell Again"), and ends with a fable ("How Meersh the Bedeviler Lost His Toes"). Throughout, Frost shows a mastery of the short form that other writers can only envy and readers can't help but enjoy.

Reviewing the story information at the very beginning of this volume is instructive, if only because it demonstrates to those sampling his short work for the first time that Gregory Frost has been quietly penning funny, tragic, thoughtful, and vividly imagined short stories and novellas for a quarter of a century. Further research indicates that he's written several novels and some three-dozen short stories during that period. Noting that there are only fourteen examples of his work contained in Attack, you're left wanting more.

Looking at that information also proves that the decision an editor or author makes regarding story arrangement is crucial. For instance, it would have been easy to merely present the stories in chronological order. Doing it that way would have been interesting if only to chart Frost's development as a writer. The collection, however, seems purposely designed to let you laugh a bit before making you think or giving you a chill; that decision proved very wise, as it adds to the reader's overall enjoyment of these stories, proving that, at least in this case, the whole can be more than just the mere sum of its parts. Enhance the stories with wonderful cover and interior art by the talented Jason Van Hollander, and you get a package which is sure to garner some well-deserved attention from the fantasy, science fiction, and horror communities.

Okay, I'm biased -- I've met him, and he's intelligent, funny, and socially engaged. This collection of stories has something for everyone: SF, fantasy, horror, comedy, and every possible combination of those elements. His wide range might not satisfy someone who wants a collection of stories restricted to only one universe, whether
Tolkein's or Frank Herbert's, but it insure that there's something for everyone, written in uniformly high quality. I'm going to read anything else he publishes.

I purchased the Kindle version of this book because Amazon files it as science fiction (which I am fond of) and the idea about those "jazz giants" sounded interesting. The sample wasn't too bad and I was curious about how the story would turn out. And besides, its title says "and other stories", so I figured the price was OK for a whole collection of stories.

But what a disappointment! The "jazz giants" story doesn't have anything to do with science fiction at all, it just ends without explanation and left me really dissatisfied. And what's more, in the Kindle version the whole book was just this one crappy short story, so it felt like a rip-off to me, too. For just one story it was much too expensive.

If you want some imaginative science fiction, I strongly recommend Philip K. Dick. It is always exciting and surprising to figure out which of the things he comes up with are part of the reality of his story and which don't even belong into those settings.

(So, this edition is supposed to be the book with more than just the title story. Maybe the other stories are not as bad. I would have preferred to review the Kindle version but it seems Amazon took it out of the shelf, and I decided not to let it be.)