Darkbound

Splatterpunk Takes the A Train - Sometime you order a book for your ereader (a NOOK in my case) selling for .99 or 1.99. Sometimes they're not worth the pixels you paid for but sometimes...you get a gorgeous, blood spattered gem like Darkbound.
I'm not a big splatterpunk fan - my reading tends more in the direction of M. R. James - but this one kept me reading until I was too tired, then back at it as soon as I had a moment.
One element I very much liked was the (***SPOILER****) a touch, as I kept reading, of the 1972 movie Tales from the Crypt directed by Freddie. Maybe it's that element, meshed with the gore, that made this such a great read.

I haven’t read a splatterpunk novel in a good while. I used to read splatterpunk all the time in the late ‘80s and early ‘90s, stuff from Clive Barker and Poppy Z. Brite especially. The sub-genre didn’t end in the 1990s, of course, and there’s undoubtedly plenty of great “splatterpunk” fiction that’s still being produced today. I personally just haven’t read any in a long while. Until I read DARKBOUND.

It’s my understanding that David Schow coined the term, possibly as a joke, to describe the kind of ultra-violent, ultra-gory horror fiction that he and others were writing. No haunted houses, delicate explorations of the human psyche, or mere hints of the supernatural here. Splatterpunk is visceral and in your face (as show more the “-punk”) would imply, and as a literary sub-genre I don’t think it ever got the respect it deserved. It became, I think, one of the primary inspirations for what eventually came to be called “body horror,” about graphic destruction and monstrous transformations of the human body. Sure, it’s scary to think about someone being frightened or psychologically scarred, or witnessing some terrible event, but in a lot of ways that really matter, isn’t it even worse when terrible things are inflicted not on one’s mind but on one’s body? That’s a deeply personal kind of violation I think we can all sympathize with, and let’s be honest: it certainly provides great fodder for horror fiction. Michaelbrent Collings has provided a great example of contemporary splatterpunk in DARKBOUND.

Mild plot spoilers follow.

DARKBOUND opens with six strangers on a New York City subway platform. They each seem to be something other than ordinary passengers as they board the same subway car of a train. Jim, the viewpoint character, seems to be an ordinary husband and father who just wants to get home to his family, but it’s clear that we don’t know everything there is to know about him from the start. His traveling companions are an old Latina grandmother; a creepy guy who looks like a prototypical child molester; an attractive, well-dressed female lawyer or Wall Street executive; a gangbanger; and a giant of a man from Eastern Europe. All strangers to each other, all trapped in a nightmarish subway ride. I don’t want to ruin the story, or its twists and turns, so I’ll refrain from being too specific about the characters or plot. Suffice it to say that this is a subway ride none of them will ever forget.

I should also note that this is a case of a classic unreliable narrator, and, reading between the lines, that should be clear from the outset of the novel. I hesitate to reveal anything substantive about the backgrounds of the main characters, as that is an important set of revelations throughout the novel. I will only say that, while generally effectively presented, I wasn’t shocked by what we saw of the characters; it was all telegraphed pretty clearly. That didn’t diminish the horror of what I was reading, but it meant that some of the plot twists weren’t as shocking, per se, as they might have been.

DARKBOUND is fast-paced, brutal, and gruesome. Collings never shies away from clearly depicting horrible events in detail. This is not a horror novel for shrinking violets. Ultimately it is also not a novel that depicts blood and gore for its own sake, though that only becomes apparent later in the novel. The things that happen to these characters…well, they aren’t exactly unwarranted.

I certainly recommend DARKBOUND as a fun, fast-moving horror/thriller novel. It’s a very quick read that I devoured in just a couple sittings. It’s not for the faint of heart, but if you appreciate the value of some gore in your horror fiction, you should check out DARKBOUND.

Review copyright © 2013 J. Andrew Byers show less

Darkbound by Michaelbrent Collings: Jim boards the last car of a New York Subway System train expecting an uneventful ride to his usual destination. He is joined by six other passengers who, like Jim, just wanted to sit and stare, or sleep, until their stop. However, this subway ride turned into a macabre nightmare of inexplicable violence and death for the passengers. This horror novel presents almost nonstop violence against the seven passengers who band together to try to survive. However, the odds of survival are not good when ghouls are involved. I enjoyed this riveting and entertaining novel.

ABR's original Darkbound audiobook review and many others can be found at Audiobook Reviewer.

Warning: this is a horror novel with some gore and mentioning of rape.

For a horror genre the settings of the novel are real, it’s a normal subway station in the early morning hours.

In the early morning, there are six people waiting in the subway to ride the Metro. The problem is that the Metro isn’t taking them to where they want to go or even where they should go. Instead this Metro goes where their fear is . . . We see Jim, a family man, describing the other passengers by stereotypes so we have a sweet old grandma, a ganger, a rapist, a rich lawyer, and a pedophile. You know the normal people you see every day, yet moving with the chapters show more of the story we realize how the characters are much more complex than their simple stereotypes. The author really focused on the inner psychology of each character in their behavior, speech, and reactions. There were reality aspects to each of these characters, but I didn’t find them likable.

The events had a very visual aspect told from Jim’s point of view, but he wasn’t the narrator here. The plot was fast going; we see an incident after another in very quick session, with the degree of horror intensity climbing up a notch with each incident. As is common in the horror genre this had a very climatic ending, but was it predictable? For me some aspects were clear, I knew the jest of what was happening, but I will say there were some very good plot twists here.

Steve Marvel did a great job here as his voice was calm but chilling in describing the horror and even the gory parts. He really gave each character its own voice and accent depending on the background of each of them. He delivered the emotion in each moment making the reader feel as if they are there watching what is happening.

A psychological note: since I’m a psychologist, I couldn’t pass by without saying, there is a character whom we are told is a sociopath. I have to say this isn’t quite accurate, a sociopath wouldn’t feel anxious, afraid, or despair, a sociopath feel so little or mostly nothing.

Audiobook provided for review by the author. show less

Ich fahre NIE MEHR im letzten Wagen einer U-Bahn.
o_O

Love it!

Jim hätte auf sein Gefühl hören sollen, als er an diesem Tag am Bahnsteig stand und trotz der Umstände, die ihn umgaben, in den Zug einstieg.
Nun findet er sich mit fünf weiteren Gestalten in einem Abteil wieder. Da wäre der Perverse, der seine Vorlieben mit jeder Faser seines Körpers ausstrahlt, oder der andere Irre, der überall am Körper mit Gang-Tattoos verziert ist, geschweige von dem bulligen Kerl, der den Eindruck erweckt, dass man sich besser nicht mit ihm anlegen sollte. Und dann wäre da noch die distanzierte Schönheit, die in einer ganz anderen Liga spielt. Nur die alte Dame neben Jim scheint die einzig Normale zu sein.
Doch der Zug in dem sie sitzen, zeigt sein wahres Ich, kaum dass sie aus dem Bahnhof ausrollten. Er show more rast dahin auf den Schienen ohne Halt und Ziel. Und je weiter sie fahren, desto mehr wird den Fahrgästen klar, dass es aus dieser Hölle kein Entkommen gibt.

Allein das Setting löst in dem Leser schon ein beklemmendes Gefühl aus. Zumindest unter denen, die frühmorgendlich oder spät abends an einem U-Bahnsteig stehen und die das Gefühl beschleicht, hinter jeder Ecke lauert das Böse und die vereinzelten Menschen, die mit einem warten, warten nur auf die passende Gelegenheit, dir den Garaus zu machen. Auch die Protagonisten dieses Buches finden sich an einem solchen Bahnsteig wieder und werden durch klemmende U-Bahntüren gezwungen, in den selben Waggon zu steigen. Und hier wird das Ganze erst recht beklemmend. Die Lichter erlöschen und völlige Dunkelheit umgibt sie. Niemand traut dem anderen und was dann passiert und die Gruppe von einem Waggon zum nächsten treibt ist grausam, brutal und ziemlich beängstigend.
Das Buch folgt einem klaren Konzept. Der Autor wirft zu Beginn sechs Protagonisten ins Rennen und je Abschnitt reduziert sich die Gruppe um einen Teilnehmer. Doch allzu viel Mitleid braucht man mit den Menschen in diesem Zug nicht zu haben, denn je näher man die Figuren kennen lernt, umso mehr bekommt man das Gefühl, dass sie durchaus verdient haben, was ihnen dort passiert. Oder ist man einfach froh, nicht mit ihnen in diesem verdammten Zug zu sitzen?

Beklemmendes Setting, beklemmende Ereignisse und das Gefühl, dass die Gefahr durchaus nicht nur außerhalb des Zuges lauert, sondern das die Protagonisten selbst vielleicht die größere Gefahr für sich selbst und gegenseitig sind.
Michaelbrent Collings war mir bis hierin ein unbekannter Autor, aber durchaus einer, den man im Auge behalten sollte. Denn er nimmt den Leser mit auf eine U-Bahnfahrt, die man so schnell nicht vergisst.
Und am Ende bleibt der schale Nachgeschmack der eigenen Gedanken, denn: Wer auf dieser Welt ist ohne Sünde? show less