Customer Reviews

VEINS

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

FROM THE FUNKY WEREPIG

I must admit I had never heard of Lawrence C Connolly before. Not any fault of his, Lord knows his list of accomplishments is impressive. Stories published in all the best magazines and critical praise from Bram Stoker winners. Still, I didn't know what to expect when I began reading his novel.

The story is of four desperate losers who think they have the perfect heist planned out. We've seen this before and we know how it always ends. They mess it up, they turn on each other and it gets people killed. But this is where the familiar territory ends.

VEINS takes you on a completely unpredictable ride. There are forces at play here older than history itself and Connolly is slick in pulling back the camera little by little to give us a wider perspective on the true story. One of the crooks, Axle, has an ancestral connection to some rather powerful spirits that have plans of their own. Connolly's stereotypical crime story turns into a dark and heavy time-skipping chess game.

Now hard core horror fans might not enjoy this book as much. There are no gore filled chapters with terrifying undead creatures who devour your spleen. There is no `End of the World' mutated threat. But what readers will find is a book that moves fast and is rich with characters. Connolly has the gift of pacing and never wastes words. In the most basic overview, VEINS is like a film thriller that hooks the audience for the full 90 minutes.

Then he throws in the ghosts. The specters. The angels. Whatever the hell you want to call them. And you realize Connolly isn't going to play fair.

VEINS becomes spiritual and ancient and downright creepy. A character wrecks his car and is hanging off a cliff. The reader is sweating along with the poor guy. Finally he makes it and everything is okay. Man, what a wild chapter. Then the character looks up and a winged Earth spirit is silently crouched down in the woods watching him the whole time. It flies off. The dude freaks out. And so do we.

This book doesn't make you scream. It makes you look over your shoulder and seek out a room filled with other people. Connolly is a truly original storyteller and a smooth writer. And when I closed the book after the last page, I wanted more. I fully admit I had never heard of Lawrence C Connolly before I received this book for review. But I can guarantee you I know him now. I will pick up anything this man writes. And if you like your horror old school, fast paced and tight, you should too.

Mr. Connolly has a way with language. Veins, set in the rural parts of Pennsylvania near my hometown, is vivid in its language and description. Yet the plot can be brutal in its directness and simplicity. The gift of Mr. Connolly is in bringing the language and plot together.

It is not perfect - the occassional bit of brutality breaks the lyricism, an occassional turn of phrase is just a little too flowery - but the ultimate effect is one of disquiet. And this, I believe, is exactly what Mr. Connolly was going for.

While an accessible read, this book quietly leaves small thoughts and concepts that will come back and worry you hours and days later.

And the hazard sign on the cover is a stroke of illustrative genius.

Larry Connolly's horror novel pulls you in fast and never lets up, in its tale of a heist that goes terribly wrong, ending with the perpetrators hunted by both human and supernatural forces when they end up in an abandoned strip mine. Good local color, if you know anything about SW PA. Plus you identify with the characters, even though they're what snobs call "trailer trash." (Apologies to friends who live in trailer parks.) The Native American spirit forces are convincing-- no New Age slop here.

Yes, as soon as I started reading I was hooked.I became so involved with the characters and action I could feel their adrenaline pumping through my veins(no pun intended). I was sorry to be at the end of the book and am anxiously awaiting the arrival of the next book Vipers which I have already ordered. This book would make an awesome movie or TV series.

Darkly brooding and at times baffling, Veins by Lawrence C. Connolly lands in a unique genre somewhere between rural fantasy and legend. There's no use trying to categorize this one; readers can only open the novel and read it. And then read it again, fascinated by the twisting plot that curves and folds like the road on which it's set.

A trio of thieves in need of a driver recruit Axle, a down-on-his-luck body shop owner with a restored Mustang. A few thousand dollars will rescue Axle's business and the crime they've planned is so smooth, it shouldn't land any of them in trouble, much less jail. But of course the gentleman named Murphy intervenes, as well as a legendary creature known as Kwetis, the nightflyer. Now they've got the cash, but Axle is pushing his muscle car through the back roads of western Pennsylvania, with a V10 Viper on their tail and a tattooed, maniacal Native American wannabe shooting at them

Being a local boy, Axle knows all the back roads. He cuts through a trailer park into the perfect hiding place--an old, abandoned strip mine. It used to be a mountain; now it's a crater, and his father, killed before his birth in a mining accident, still rests there. Only the most drastic emergency can force Axle to the crater. Things happened there years ago, frightening and confusing him, things he's convinced himself didn't happen.

But Kwetis knows they did. Described as "part ancestral memory and part nightmare," Kwetis intends to recruit Axle to a path chosen for him by the spirits of the Earth, a path called the oohaate. All of them--Axle, his partners in crime, their pursuers, and the Earth itself--have ordained roles to play along that twisting path, with their lives and their deaths.

In constructing Veins, Connolly made use of intertwining time lines (Star Trek couldn't have done it better) and multiple story levels. The result is a convoluted plot that folds back onto itself, and onto the realistic but not necessarily likeable characters.

Connolly's writing is elegant and mesmerizing, a suitable vehicle for the plotline. Occasional touches of poetry in the descriptions ("A gibbous moon lay in the tree's branches, glowing through brittle leaves, mottling the forest floor with silver light") provide a graceful counterpoint for the punchy action exposition ("Axle downshifted as he hit the bend, burning rubber through a sideways skid, putting the bend between them and the Viper").

All in all, Veins is a powerful and hypnotic ride, best saved for a long, uninterrupted weekend, as there's no convenient pause point throughout the entire story. This reviewer read it in one hit.

And for the aficionado, the publisher also offers a T-shirt and soundtrack.

Have you ever watched a movie or tv show, where a specific event was being told from different perspectives? You know... each of the characters had seen the same thing, but had different point of views. That was how this book was written, several perspectives woven together for a much larger purpose...Destiny.

In the beginning, I found the prologue to be a bit confusing, but as the story went on, I began to see threads of its reasoning. A heist was planned by a motley group (Spinelli, Tejay, and Reddy), but they needed a fast driver with a reliable muscle car. Axle needed the money to save his business and get his head above the financial waters. It seemed like a quick and easy job for the money. But, you know what is said about something being too good to be true or about the best laid of plans...The job goes fatally wrong and in that moment, everything changes. Axle began to remember his great-grandmother's teachings and soon realized, his destiny had already been mapped out by his powerful ancestrial spirits, who had thier own agendas.

The characters were richly developed, with crediable personalites and believable circumstances. But, I didn't feel a personal connection. In truth, I felt like I was being told the tale instead of experiencing the journey. Although, I confess, there was a brief moment, when I could relate to Tejay, a woman pissed off and scorned and all that...

I felt the premise was brilliant. The author created a parallel world very much like our own. And like our world, something that should have been simple... wasn't. Isn't that the way it usually is? Some of the characters had to deal with the consequences of thier choices and actions, while others came to the haunting realization, they were nothing more than pawns for a higher purpose. I love that the author provoked the imagination with spiritual and psychological elements. The idea of not controlling one's own destiny, but being the pawn of something larger was something to ponder.

Overall, this book will intrigue the mind and stimulate the imagination. The supernatual is subtle, the suspense is thrilling, and the action is explosive. Unfortunately, while the charcters were wonderfully written, I felt disconnected from them somehow. There was no personal connection for me to make them more engaging. This was the first book in the Vein Cycle series and could be read as a stand-alone. However, it gave the impression that this book represented a small moment in a much larger picture. I hope to learn more about that larger picture and perhaps connected with the characters in the next installment, Vipers.

I bought this book because it was the right thing to do, supporting a small publishing house and all. I didn't expect to really get into it; it wasn't my kind of book. I'm not into horror (though I like dark fantasy), I don't like supernatural Native American premises, I don't like crime stories. This was a purchase for karma, nothing more.

That said, I give this book four stars.

Perhaps I'm not as clear on the current literary definition of horror, but I didn't find the gory wallowing I usually associate with the genre. Instead, Connolly blends supernatural and mundane explanations for the book's events and, while unpleasant accidents do happen, keeps the narrative focused on the plot.

Characterization is good. Though I roundly despised most everyone we met, they were real enough that I did despise them, rather than feeling indifferent.

The end did not quite satisfy me, but that may be because of one of my existing biases, mentioned above. Fans of the genres may feel otherwise.

All in all, this was surprisingly enjoyable for a "good deed" purchase, and I recommend others consider it as well.

Mr. Connelly and Will Horner (editor) have put together another surprising morsel. Though I wanted to punch the character with the sumbitch mouth, I found myself really realating. A great character study. I wonder if there will be a follow up? Long live the small press and particularly Fantasist Enterprises.