5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Punktown always teems with strange life, but a life of its own?, November 17, 2005
Thomas's Punktown really comes alive in Monstrocity. Literally. On the fantastic world of Oasis is a city called Paxton, locally known as Punktown. An eclectic mix of races live in this squalid city; the native Choom, the Tikkihotto, the Kalian, and a heavy populace of humans who settled in the original Paxton and expanded it into the sprawling metropolis of Punktown.
The first-person protagonist, Christopher Ruby, starts his story by telling us of his new girlfriend Gabrielle, a fun goth-type girl with an open window in her chest to show off the tattoo on her living heart. Gaby has somehow gotten a hold of a copy of a recording from the ancient book The Necronomicon. Gabrielle and Christopher play with the recording, but Gaby's heartlight-tatoo goes out and she estranges herself from Christopher.
Christopher soon finds out how much Gaby has changed, and in tracking down the reasons for Gaby's behavior becomes acquainted with a bookseller named Mr. Dove, who puts him on the path of a horrifying discovery. In his research, Chris meets a beautiful and non-traditional Kalian girl named Saleet, who also happens to be a "Forcer", a type of police inspector. The more Chris uncovers about Gaby's deadly and fatal obsession, the more he realizes that Punktown holds secrets deeper than time itself, secrets of downfallen Gods and the occult.
Jeffrey Thomas's 'Punktown' is one of my all-time favorite fantasy worlds. This world plays a huge part in Thomas's works including 'Punktown' (get the newer, extended version!) and 'Everybody Scream'. I simply cannot get enough of it. Punktown breathes with its own life, steams with its own scent, and pulses with a thousand heartbeats.
Thomas's prose is precise and naturally flowing, managing to hook you from the first page and pull you into Punktown without the slightest whimper of regret. Even his non-Punktown works like 'Boneland' are rich with natural dialogue, fully-fleshed and interesting characters, and worlds built so visually accurate from a written page that you believe in them as much as you believe in the moon over your head at night.
I cannot seem to get enough of this talented author, and I hope that you enjoy his tales as much as I do. Definitely worth a purchase, and worth looking up his other works. Enjoy!
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
Was this review helpful to you? Yes
No
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
A good first novel set in a truly original universe, July 25, 2010
This review is from: Monstrocity (Hardcover)
Jeffrey Thomas' Monstrocity requires a bit of context. To readers already familiar with his Punktown stories, this is his first novel set in that universe. Chronologically, the events in Monstrocity occur a few years before Deadstock and Blue War. It is not necessary to read Monstrocity first however (though you probably should read Deadstock before Blue War).
For those readers unfamiliar with the Punktown universe, Jeffrey Thomas has made his own unique contribution to urban-punk world-building, reminiscent of writers like Samuel Delaney, William Gibson and China Mieville, but with a liberal dose of H.P. Lovecraft worked in for good measure. The center of Thomas' universe is the sprawling metropolis of Paxton - called Punktown by its inhabitants - a city on the colonized world of Oasis where humans now live with other alien races, from the native Chooms to those of other-world origins like the Tikkihotto, the Kalians and others.
A recurring theme in Thomas' work is that actions, whatever their intent, often have unforseen consequences, sometimes of an order of magnitude far beyond what the actors could even have imagined. In Monstrocity, events are set into motion when Christopher Ruby, an ordinary guy who spends his days working as a customer service rep for a net-link provider, indulgingly goes along with his goth-ish girlfriend Gabrielle's attempt to invoke an occult summoning ritual in her apartment. At first nothing seems to happen, but as days pass Ruby discovers that something did in fact happen, that something did come across, something that is consuming Gabrielle and threatens to ultimately consume all of Punktown along with her. In the course of trying to find out just what has happened to Gabrielle and what is behind the strange things he keeps seeing, Ruby ends up meeting a number of unusual characters, from Saleet, a highly attractive but no-nonsense Kalian woman who turns out to be a "forcer" (cop), to Mr. Dove, a strange (even by Punktown standards) dealer in rare occult works where the price one pays is rarely limited to what was agreed on. Ruby must play a deadly cat-and-mouse game with both, needing information from Saleet while concealing from her what he needs it for, and trying to pry the truth from Mr. Dove with the knowledge that the closer he gets to it, the less likely he is to survive the knowledge.
And as in all of the stories set in this universe, the presence of Punktown itself is felt as strongly as that of any of the characters inhabiting it:
"But more than that, I wanted my old Gaby back.
--If she had parents I might appeal to them, but one time as we lay in bed she had told me that her mother had simply disappeared one day when Gabrielle was thirteen. Her father thought she'd been kidnaped and murdered. Gabrielle thought she might have run off with some other man. But Gabrielle told me that deceased friend Maria's theory had been that mom had become lost in the city somewhere, and couldn't find her way back to familliar streets. Trapped forever in the maze. It was ridiculous, of course. She could simply phone home. Stop a forcer to ask for assistance. Ask for directions. But Maria had insisted it happened; people vanished, seemingly into another city superimposed with this city, and couldn't cross back again, couldn't even communicate again with that former place. It sounded like more spiritual bunk to me. Or at least, like she was referring to an alternate dimension, instead of a literal labyrinth within the solid, material city itself.
--Her father had thrown himself off the top of a seventy story building when Gabrielle was sixteen. He'd become alcoholic. For three years he'd sat up alone at night at the kitchen table, muttering to himself, weeping. He missed his wife, whether victim or betrayer. So he'd flung himself into the canyon of the city -- flesh and anguish reduced to an anonymous blot like news ink - like a sacrifice tossed to a volcano god."
One of Thomas' strengths is the level of creative detail he works into his stories, particularly visual images that stick in the mind and add to the unique fabric of the Punktown world, like in this description of his girlfriend where he takes 'goth' to another level:
"Gaby glowed in the dimness of the store, behind the counter as a pale luminescence. Her pallor was contrasted by her black hair -- long, straight, parted in the center -- and black garments. These consisted of shiny black gloves that ended half-way up her sensuous plump arms, a low cut dress with thin shoulder straps, and when I got close to the counter with my purchase I saw the skirt was short, and that she wore black nylons that ended at mid-thigh. Big ugly black boots. Her lips were heavy and purple. Her eyes were dark and narrow. Her figure was lush, full as an overripe fruit ready to spoil. She looked like she should be sprawled nude and languid on a divan for a painter of old. Up close, I saw what the low front of her black dress revealed: between plush breasts she had had her chest opened up, and a clear circular window gave one a view of her pulsing heart. This organ, like an animal viewed in an aquarium, had been embroidered with red neon-glowing thread which spelled out: MOM. Gaby had been very close with her mother. When you looked at Gaby upside-down, like when she lay sprawled on our bed naked and languid as if she posed for me, the tattoo on her her heart read: WOW."
In truth, I find it hard to rate Monstrocity on its own merits because I had read both Deadstock and Blue War before reading it, and as one would expect from a first novel, it is not quite as polished as those two later ones (both of which I rated five stars and highly recommend). That said, however, I did have a problem with the way the novel ends: it reaches an ending for the story you're reading, then unexpectedly picks up with what might ordinarily have been an epilogue, and then ends yet again, with the second ending feeling somewhat tacked on. For those reasons, I would probably rate Monstrocity three and a half stars if it were possible. Since it isn't, I'm going to give it the benefit of the doubt and rate it four, mainly because I want to encourage people unfamiliar with the Punktown universe to discover it. Also, it's worth noting that Monstrocity was nominated for the prestigious Stoker award for Best First Novel, a rare honor for any author.
My only qualifier is that if you read Monstrocity, be sure to continue on and read both Deadstock and Blue War. If you like what you find in Monstrocity at all, then you'll absolutely love his later work. Definitely recommended for anyone who enjoys urban-punk and anyone would like to experience a really good working of Lovecraft's mythos into a sci-fi noirish setting.
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
Was this review helpful to you? Yes
No
