Customer Reviews

Zod Wallop

5 star:		(17)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

I read William Browning Spencer's "Resume with Monsters" and was quite impressed. Here is an author who knows how to combine quirky plots, horrific elements, and great character development into a seamless blend of grand entertainment. Why this guy is not sitting on the bestseller's list is a mystery of the highest order. Several of his books are not even in print anymore, another crime that needs a remedy as quickly as possible. Fortunately, public libraries often save the day when one looks for out of print material. His books are magical in that once read, they stay with you forever. This may be due in part to Spencer's habit of pouring himself into his stories. The familiarity shown in both "Zod Wallop" and "Resume with Monsters" with psychological problems and the difficulties of coping in modern society give hints into the author's knowledge about such unpleasant incidents.

Harry Gainesborough wrote a book called Zod Wallop after the death of his daughter Amy. The tragedy of his daughter's demise sent Harry into a tailspin, requiring a short stay in a mental asylum. A psychologist in the institution recommended Harry continue writing as a means of therapy, so Harry continued to work on Zod Wallop during his hospital stay. But the book he wrote while incarcerated took on a much grimmer, more dangerous tone than your everyday children's story. The characters in the land of Zod Wallop began to resemble some of the other patients and doctors in the ward. There are characters that bear a striking resemblance to Harry's literary agent. The problem comes when there are real life people who resemble the evil characters in the book because Zod Wallop is more than a book; it has the potential to become reality.

Harry is now out of the hospital and living alone in an isolated cabin. Amy's death still troubles him greatly, but he manages to get through each day until a triumvirate of patients from the mental institution arrives on his doorstep. Led by the over exuberant Raymond Story, this gang of miscreants includes Rene, a troubled but beautiful young girl; Emily, Raymond's new wife and a total invalid; and Allan, a man plagued with fits of violent rage. Joined by Lord Arbus, a monkey, the group tries to involve Harry in their quest to go to Florida where a showdown with the evil Lord Draining awaits. As Harry and his literary agent take part in Raymond's seemingly delusional odyssey, reality starts to warp on an increasingly disturbing level.

There is a perfectly (well, maybe) rational explanation for the strange encounters endured by Harry and his friends. Two executives from rival pharmaceutical companies take a significant interest in these escaped asylum inmates. The reasons are best left unsaid here, but it is safe to say that it involves something both men want very badly for research and development. As it turns out, Harry and his friends shared something special, albeit slightly sinister, during their residence at the hospital. As the executives take up the hunt, they too end up becoming a part of the fantasy of Zod Wallop.

I enjoy how Spencer deftly blended reality with the looming world of Zod Wallop. The reader never knows what is coming down the pipeline in this book. One minute everything seems to be going great, the next minute brings an attack by a Ralewing. A mundane trip to a convenience store turns into a mind-blowing experience with the full force of Harry's past. The conclusion of the story witnesses startling revelations, total immersion in the world of Zod Wallop, and closure for Harry and his ex-wife.

Spencer's book is a real hoot. This guy has a phenomenal imagination along with the ability to write engaging prose. Again, it is difficult to imagine why he is not considered a preeminent author. Both "Resume with Monsters" and "Zod Wallop" is enough to place Spencer head and shoulders above most of the drivel passed off on the public today. For those seeking a whimsical romp through the realms of unreality, Spencer is the man.

This book is one of the few that has made me cry - it happens every time I pick it up and come to those last few pages. Call it a ride through Harry Gainesborough's broken soul, if you will, still wounded from the death of his daughter... you can feel his pain as vividly as if it were your own. William Browning Spencer has crafted a masterwork - a novel that penetrates through to the heart. As an aside, I've had three copies of this book 'permanently borrowed' by friends - everyone that I've exposed to the world of Zod Wallop has been affected by the power of it.

Having read and loved Spencer's previous novel, the critically acclaimed Resume with Monsters, I thought he'd be hard pressed to match that effort. I can happily report that I was wrong--his follow-up, entitled Zod Wallop, is a thoroughly engaging, very wise dark fantasy, reminiscent of such modern classics as Jonathon Carroll's Land of Laughs.

The tragic death of his daughter Amy sends Harry Gainesborough, the author of several popular children's books, into a depression so deep it destroys his marriage. Gainesborough is so despondent that his agent, Helen Kurtis, has him committed to Harwood Psychiatric. There, Gainesborough is instructed to deal with his feelings by writing. The product of this therapy is a very dark book called Zod Wallop, where, contrary to tradition, evil triumphs over good.

The original manuscript is stolen and presumably destroyed by Raymond Story, a fellow patient and rabid fan of Gainesborough's work, who finds the book too disturbing for general consumption. At first outraged by the theft, Gainesborough eventually accedes to Raymond's fervent pleas to rewrite the book. The second version is less morbid, and later becomes a huge best seller. Raymond embraces this version, eventually coming to believe the events recorded inside actually occurred.

Gainesborough finishes his treatment, and retires to his country estate, desiring only to be left alone. His solitude is disturbed, however, by Raymond and a ragtag bunch of inmates who have just escaped from Harwood. Raymond seeks "Lord" Gainesborough's assistance in protecting the "Ice Princess" (in reality, Raymond's wife, Emily, who is catatonic) from the evil Lord Draining.

Gainesborough's initial reaction is to humor Raymond until he can be returned to Harwood. But suddenly, the landscape of his reality starts to shift--people start saying things right out of his book, and he encounters strange creatures who only exist in the world he created. Puzzled, he decides to accompany Raymond in search of answers, unaware that he and his new companions are being tracked by Roald Peake, doppleganger to Lord Draining. Peake wants to capture and study the group, who all received illegal doses of Ecknazine, an experimental drug which might be causing reality to warp.

Zod Wallop is a well written, thoughtful book, full of surprises. Spencer is careful to provide several possible reasons for the impossible events he describes. Is Raymond a mutant? Did Gainesborough's extreme grief give his creations life? Did the Ecknazine create some kind of mass delusion so powerful it is now affecting even those who didn't take it? Whichever reason you choose, it will not diminish your enjoyment of the book. The "reasons" behind the events of the story are ultimately unimportant--they exist only to launch an enthralling flight of fantasy nicely suited to more modern, cynical tastes. Spencer is an excellent storyteller. Listen to what he has to say.

Harry Gainesborough's life is more depressing than a country-western song. His daughter has died, his wife has divorced him, and he's spent a stint in a psychiatric institute as a result of a botched suicide attempt. Now, he just wants to be left alone. Only, the monster that's just eaten the paint off his car has other ideas. . . This book is for anyone who likes dark fantasy, particularly fans of Jonathan Carroll. "Zod Wallop" is "Bones of the Moon" on illegal substances. The line between fantasy and reality constantly wavers, and frequently disappears, as Harry Gainesborough and his . . . friends? abductors? careen across America on a voyage of madness, mayhem, and monsters . . . with, just possibly, the chance to change the world at the end

There's plenty of darkness and tense action that the characters must stumble through before they reach the light, but even in the most horrific situations, there is an elusive sense of joy infusing every scene. Whether the joy comes from Spencer's word play and humor, or from manic personality of Raymond Story, the bottom line is that it's the most enjoyable new story I've read in the last decade. I'll leave it at that; there's no need for me to repeat plot details that you can pick up from other reviews.

Harry Gainesborough was a successful writer of children's books until the death of his daughter. Now an obsessed fan who is convinced the worlds Harry created are real has gotten hold of his last novel, and attempts to enlist Harry's help in saving the world. So begins a hallucinatory journey that turns quest fiction on its head.
Not quite as good as 'Resume with Monsters', 'Zod Wallop' is still a fascinating read. Spencer has a great writing style, one I would compare to Neil Gaiman's. I just think the plot could have been a little tighter.

Bill Spencer wrote his novel with masterful zeal. I read Resume with Monsters, enjoying the humor, the darkness, and the theme of having to work in a grueling office environment, being that I work in this type of gruel. But Zod Wallop is different. It's a poetic attempt to reveal that each of us are lunatics living in a delusional group in the face of howling chaos. Enjoy this novel. I'm telling you.

The inevitable comparison that Zod Wallop brings to mind is to Jonathan Carroll's The Land of Laughs. Both novels revolve around a children's book that is directly affecting the lives of the other characters. The approach that the two authors take to the subject is quite different--Carroll, even in his first novel, drifts around the fantastic, never quite making it real, preferring to define his characters by the world of which we know. Spencer embraces the fantastic, so much so that it is hard sometimes to tell where the "real" world and the fantastic world come together. If one thinks of this balance between the real and the fantastic as a see-saw, in Carroll's world the heavier child is the real world, and vice versa in Spencer.

Harry Gainsborough wrote books for his daughter, Amy. His books were so good that they were published and became well-loved children's books across the world. But when his daughter drowns in a freak accident, he enters into a depression so severe that his agent checks him into a psychiatric ward. In the hospital, the therapist suggests that he write another book--hoping that the creative process will lift him out of despair. Instead, the book that he writes, Zod Wallop, is a bleak, dark novel--the kind of children's book that the Wicked Witch of the West would have written.

Zod Wallop is also Harry Gainsborough's most popular novel, more popular even than Bocky and the Moon Weasels or The Bathtub Wars. Children the world over love Zod Wallop, but none more so than Raymond Story, who read it while a patient at the Harwood Psychiatric Hospital. Raymond, who almost drowned when he was 8, sees his near-death experience as a link to the author of Zod Wallop. Raymond, who when he came across the first draft of Zod Wallop, destroyed the dark, original version that Harry had written. Or had he just hidden the book?

Lastly, William Browning Spencer's Zod Wallop is about the drug, Ecknazine, administered by Marlin Tate to a group of patients at the Harwood Psychiatric who had extremely rich imaginative lives. The goal of Tate's experiment was to enable telepathic communication, but the drug did something else, something much more strange than telepathy. The drug enabled Zod Wallop to come to life.

Spencer's novel is a complex knot of these three stories, moving at a reckless pace towards the conclusion. Zod Wallop is not a predictable book--it steadfastly refuses to toe the line of any one genre, going through thriller, fantasy, horror, science fiction, and mainstream in the course of its pages. I would not call it slipstream either, because it doesn't have a singular consistency of vision. The point is that it works, and in straight comparison to The Land of Laughs, it works better, because it works towards a resolution--one much more rewarding than Carroll's first effort. Spencer still has some honing before his prose is as sharp as Carroll's, specifically the Carroll of Bones of the Moon or After Silence, but Zod Wallop shows that he has the imagination and skills to be in the same league.

A virtuoso novel studded with phrases & images will shine and sting in the mind's eye for weeks. Zod Wallop kicked a hole in the roof of my head to let the starlight in. The most important book I've read in five years. It will no doubt be compared to Carroll's Land of Laughs, but is something both darker and more joyful. Even better than the author's superb Resume with Monsters (itself a must-read). To quote the book itself (reviewing the eponymous children's story) "an instant classic."

Muscular, vibrant, luminous prose. I read it in a single afternoon, unable to put it down. I actually laughed out loud in 3 taxis and found myself crying in a cafe waiting for friends. As soon as I finished it I started reading it again and found it even better the second time. And better still the third. Spencer deserves some kind of medal for the unerring precision of his ear, the scope of his reveries and his ability to articulate the inarticulable.

Practically an owner's manual for human courage and superhuman imagination. The characters are lovingly drawn and continually surprising. The book is several stories in one: the pursuit of a grieving children's author and a group of mental patients by unscrupulous pharmaceutical warlords, a fantasy about the rupture and leakage between the "real" world and a literary creation, a loving glimpse at the intricate clockwork of sadness and creativity and miracles, a painful catalog of lunacy and its lures, a faithful documentary of very real ways that people escape tragedy and emerge from it greater than the puzzle of their pieces.

You will be richer for having read it, so much richer you will be afraid of robbers. If you don't buy this book immediately for yourself and everyone you know, you deserve your fate

I've loved ZOD WALLOP for years, ever since I first heard of William Browning Spencer. It's gratifying that this book, one of his best IMO, is seeing a re-release in a new format.

ZOD WALLOP is a beautiful example of how Lovecraftian* ideas can be put to use outside of Arkham, Mass, and without rubbery-faced gods and monsters. The story of Harry Gainsborough is heart-rending, and it's only right that the anguish experienced by a father who's lost his only daughter should be able to change the world. The array of dual-identity characters is colorful and vivid, and in the hands of a lesser writer, this story would be a mess. An absolute bag of snakes.

Mr. Spencer takes up the massive story and complicated cast and makes it all work in such a way that I'm amazed I ever thought it wouldn't.

* - It's not a Mythos book by any stretch of the imagination. My invocation of old HPL here is purely in the way Mr. Spencer has taken a book--a children's book, no less--and made it a doorway into another world where things beyond our ken exist. Like the ideas behind the Dreamlands stories and "From Beyond," ZOD WALLOP takes a look past what our own, poor, fleshy eyes can see and gives us a view into other realms.