2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
This book is a great introduction to Thomas, October 20, 2008
This is an eclectic collection, as it has everything except the kitchen sink thrown it. You have vignettes, short stories and novellas all thrown together. The meat of the collection is the novellas and they are the most satisfying. Close Enough is a disturbing tale of a photographer who must take photos of the disturbing scenes he's seeing. The Mask Play is an interesting tale set in Korea, where masks and murder follow an American who is temporally situated here waiting for his vista. It has a nice twist at the end. Monsters is from his Punktown setting, and an interesting take on a doctor with morals which apply to something as disgusting as the patient he's working on. The Burning House is from his Hades setting and is a pretty cool story about an angel that won't give up on his son who is condemned to Hades. The last story I wasn't thrilled with Door 7. It moved pretty slowly, and the payoff wasn't that great. But I really enjoyed everything else in this collection, and it was a joy to read. If you want to get acquainted with Jeffrey Thomas and his worlds that he created, this collection is the best place to start. Recommended!
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Thirteen twists and turns from horror to surrealism, August 30, 2008
'Thirteen Specimens' is an eclectic collection of short stories, poems, and ideas from the brilliant mind of Jeffrey Thomas. He revisits some favorite places in this collection, from Punktown to Boneland, and the universe created in 'Letters From Hades'.
Table Of Contents:
· These Are The Exhibits (a tour)
· Titles Of Poems Not Written (a poem)
· Close Enough (a photograph)
· Sympathetic Identity Disorder (a diagnosis)
· American Cchinnamasta (a goddess)
· Six Hundred And Sixty Six Women (a list)
· Monsters (an alien)
· October 32nd (a ride)
· The Mask Play Of Hanhoe Byeolsin Exorcism (a travelogue)
· Scared Shitless (a t-shirt design)
· The Burning House (an afterlife)
· On Making Clam Chowder (a recipe)
· Door 7 (an ending)
Here's a quick peek at some of my favorites. In 'Close Enough', a soldier named Candle documents the war with Vietnam, recording the appalling and vicious conduct of his fellow soldiers on an organic camera. Thomas makes use of the "Guests" (aliens) and the biomechanical machines dreamed up for his novel 'Boneland'.
In 'Sympathetic Identity Disorder', an unnamed scientist studies cases of children, whose mothers died in childbirth, morphing into their mothers. This short jewel was originally written as an entry for 'The Thackery T. Lambshed Pocket Guide To Eccentric And Discredited Diseases', edited by Jeff VanderMeer. While it didn't make it into the book, Thomas does have three other entries in VanderMeer's book.
In 'American Cchinnamasta', A young half-Indian girl obsesses over her full blood sister, but how far will she go to be like, to absorb, her sister's full blood status.
In 'Monsters', (my absolute favorite) we return to Punktown, in a hospital emergency room. A strange being is brought in, bleeding from ghastly wounds to her body inflicted by her family. How far can Dr. Fleck go to protect her?
In 'The Burning House' we visit He||, the same landscape Thomas wrote about in 'Letters From Hades'. Meet Michael and his wife Dawn, they are dead and live in heaven, while their eight year old son Mark has gone to hell for setting fire to their house. In hell, Roger, once captures by a group of Apsaras, meets Davina, who once lived in the city of Tartarus as a breeder. Roger and Davina have adopted Mark, but Michael descends from heaven to seek out his son. He must deal with demons, some that look like giant ticks, to find Mark in the bleakest of places.
In 'Door 7', there's a bleak and barren landscape occupied by a bleak and broken man. Told in first person by a nameless protagonist, he wanders the dead landscape of the ruined Odyllic factory complex, pushing a sesame street stuffed toy around in his dead son's stroller. I loved the line "Politicians and Corporations, which are really co-joined twins anyway, loping around horrible and multi-limbed in their beautiful three piece suits". This is a despairing story of a life without purpose.
'Thirteen Specimens' contains many aspects of Thomas' other works, and also points out the genius of the mind behind the writing with idea formats like 'Titles', 'Six Hundred Sixty Six Women', and 'On Making Clam Chowder'. 'Scared Shirtless' is a story behind a real, available t-shirt at cafepress.com/scaredshirtless. You can also see the author's own comments on this book at jeffreyethomas.com/blog/?p=125. This is a great book to introduce yourself to Thomas, along with his first collection called 'Punktown'. I highly recommend this book. Enjoy!
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
13 Fantastic Oddities, November 18, 2009
I really enjoyed THIRTEEN SPECIMENS by Jeffrey Thomas. Great concept, with the 13 stories representing a wild assortment of wonderfully strange things you might find in a mad professor's laboratory. For me, the two novellas in the collection stood above all others: "The Mask Play of Hahoe Byeolsin Exorcism" and "Door 7." Great storytelling in both cases. The writing is sharp and precise and the characterizations are fleshed out and deeply human.
I love the exotic Asian locale where "Mask Play" is set and the way the protagonist, Brian Ford, is lusting to get into, rather than out of, Vietnam. Ford is forced to stay in Korea until his visa problem is worked out, forcing him to delay his meeting with his Internet Vietnamese girlfriend. To me, Ford's frustrations at the delayed tryst with his An could represent the unfulfilled dreams and fantasies all of us have. While stuck in Korea, Ford witnesses what he believes is the murder of a Korean girl he sees ironing every night in a window in a building across the street. This part of the author's plotting and description reminded me of Alfred Hitchcock's style of suspense and pacing. Also, Thomas's description of the masks and the history behind them really grabbed me. And then, at the end, Ford wonders if maybe he hadn't murdered his An or threatened her the short time he was in Nam, and maybe that was the real reason behind his deportation from Vietnam. Nice twist! And then, finally, at the very end, when Ford is on the plane, he feels "the" mask in his carry-on bag, the one with the molded spike in the forehead . . . beautiful . . . I felt shivers creep up my spine. Very well done. I also loved the author's social commentary on the differences between American and Asian women, and the services that banks provide.
"Door 7" is another haunted tale that really captured my imagination. It reminds me of the very best of the old black-and-white Twilight Zone episodes. Very effective, the way Thomas wrote this one in first person. The story has much more immediacy and emotion as told from a first-person viewpoint. I love the way the author expresses the narrator's grief and sorrow over his dead son, Logan. It's really quite a visual shock to see a man wheeling an empty children's stroller around (well, okay, not completely empty as he does have Logan's stuffed doll, Grover, tucked in, which only makes it creepier). As the guy tries to figure out what is going on behind the closed doors of Odyllic, the old toy company turned plastic manufacturer, things start getting more and more weird. The way Thomas has the guy proceeding through numbered doors, discovering different oddities, gives the piece a nice sense of suspenseful pacing. Each door reveals a new piece of the puzzle. And then he meets the woman with her dog out on the road, and the woman warns him about the dangers lurking about. Then later, he sees the corpses of the woman and her dog behind one of the doors. Instant paranoia! This is a wonderful tour-de-force about the perils of big corporate manufacturing contamination, but done in an entertaining way I've never before seen. I thought I knew where this one was going, with the narrator figuring the cancer that ended the lives of his relatives who had worked at the plant over the years being the direct result of the manufacturing plant's contaminants. But no, there's no way that Jeffrey Thomas is going to end a story on a predictable note. Instead the protagonist gives birth to his reincarnated son, Logan, through the tumor growing in his head, of all things. Or is this really what happened? Maybe he died and the last scene is his vision of heaven as he is reintroduced to his son, Logan. The fun is in the possibilities. This one had me thinking for days afterward. With all the stories that I devour, this kind of thought-provoking ending doesn't occur often. My compliments to the author! I love unpredictability in fiction.
I highly recommend this unique collection. Go ahead and pick up a copy. You'll be glad you did. Jeffrey Thomas has been writing extremely weird and entertaining short stories and novels for years, and this collection shows this prolific author to be at the top of his game.
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