Razor Country by Nicholas Wagner; The Headmasters by Mark Morton; Blackstone Griddle Cookbook/Traeger Grill & Smoker Cookbook: Mouthwatering, Delicious, Healthy and Affordable Recipes with Images and Expert Tips for Griddling, Grilling, and Smoking Success by Dr. Jina
By Julie Sara Porter
Bookworm Reviews
Razor Country by Nicholas Wagner
Spoilers: Razor Country anthology is a tribute to the hard boiled detective genre of the 1920’s-50’s where protagonists walk a thin line between cop and criminal and violence runs rampant. The book could end with the mystery being solved and the detective triumphing over their enemies, but it could just as easily end with death and loss.
Colm Steiner is a private investigator and sometimes assassin who travels from one country to another within the British Empire during the mid-19-teens to the 20’s. He is hired by various clients to find someone or something and is promised money and expenses for payment. He does some interrogation and investigation techniques which often involve him roughing up a few witnesses, bribing a few others, and/or sneaking into forbidden areas to find results. Most of the time he finds what he is looking for. While there are a few complete successes, most of them end with him taking a vow of silence finding his target is in a better place than where they previously were or ends in violence with Steiner or others shedding blood and killing clients, targets, witnesses, and those in their way.
Razor Country never forgets what it is or where its roots lie. It could easily have fit in during the time period that it portrays. Steiner may have been written a whole century behind but he definitely fits in with characters like Dashiell Hammet’s Sam Spade, Raymond Chandler’s Phillip Marlowe, or Mickey Spillane’s Mike Hammer. Like them, Steiner recognizes the dark graphic bloody world around him and acts just as, sometimes darker, more graphic, and bloodier than they are.
I would love to say that because it is set in different countries along the former British Empire, it would be an engaging travelog but it not surprisingly isn't. Nicholas Wagner wanted to show the worst in each country and he did not skimp on the dark details of corruption, slavery, racism, domestic and child abuse, and every other evil imagined in each country. It's like a World Tour sponsored by Hell.
Because the book is arranged in short story format, it doesn’t lend itself to much character development. Some plot points carry over between chapters such as ending on a cliffhanger and one chapter's previous antagonists come back for revenge in other chapters. Steiner gains and loses a few friends and lovers along the way either through death or separation. Even a segue where Steiner takes a break from his investigator career to fight during WWI leaves him battle scarred and more taciturn than before.
Mostly Steiner stays the same dour sardonic character throughout the book. In this context, Steiner is an archetype that fits perfectly within his genre. Within the framework of the noir genre, it works. Someone with such wanderlust and cynicism who has seen much suffering and has his own brand of injustice is bound to be maladjusted.
The stories kind of blend in together for this reason. They are so intrinsic within the noir hard-boiled detective genre that you don't expect characters to fall outside of it. You don't expect things to change much for them because when they do, some things are bound to happen that stifles it. Steiner is the type to never marry or settle down because he can't imagine a world that would let him. He would always be looking for another case to solve and enemy to beat.
There is no world in which Colm Steiner can exist except the dark corrupt world in which he investigates, fights against, and is still a part of.
The Headmasters by Mark Morton
(Note this is just a brief summary and review. The entire review is on LitPick’s site. A link is provided above).
Spoilers: The Headmasters is a provocative and intelligent Science Fiction novel that challenges its readers to think about oppression and domination, what it means to truly resist, and what motivates one to fight against a tyrannical system even when the citizens don't know that they are being tyrannized.
Maple is a member of Blue Ring, a community in what was once Canada after an unexplained global event that left those in Blue Ring among the many survivors. Those in the Blue Ring survived by coupling themselves with those called the Headmasters. They are parasitic aliens fused onto the bodies of humans controlling their thoughts and actions.
Maple begins to share memories and consciousness with the former host body, a woman named Zara, whom Maple had a previous connection with. Some of her memories include life before the Headmaster’s arrival along with knowledge and information that had been repressed and banned. The more that Maple learns from Zara, the more that she questions the world around her.
The description of humans and Headmasters grafted together is deliberately painful and traumatic. The physical and psychological torture of one living being joined with and controlling the other is present. Maple describes it as a continuous feeling that something is watching and monitoring them. If they act contrary to the Headmaster’s commands, they receive electric shocks. However, there are times, such as when the Headmasters shut off during a procedure called the “slackening,” and places where the Headmaster’s hold is weakened, like the Deep (in reality what remains of a Deepak Chopra Center), so they are vulnerable.
What is particularly interesting and upsetting about this parasitic life is that the human characters make little move to protest or take advantage of the Headmaster’s vulnerabilities. True, the shocks are torturous, but there is another subtle reason about why they don’t rebel. They lost the desire to do so. They willingly surrender to a life of apathy and ignorance to creatures that exploit them. There are vague glimpses of rebellion and they aren’t revealed until almost halfway through the book.
Maple herself does not desire to rebel until halfway through the book. In fact her character meanders a bit, providing exposition to the reader until she takes action against her oppressors. When she takes a proactive stance first within the community and then when she is in exile and encounters survivors, does Maple come into her own as a fully fleshed protagonist and heroine.
What helps ignite Maple’s characterization is the awareness of a passage of time within the narrative. Most of the dystopian events often occur over the course of a few months or a year or two from inciting incidents to the denouement.
What makes the Headmasters different from them is approximately seven years go by from when Maple is joined to her Headmaster to the end. This gives Maple an evolution that comes with age and experience but also emphasizes how slow moving changing from small acts of rebellion to a full scale revolution can be.
Maple has to go through that long growth and development before she is able to have the confidence and strength to learn how to manually shut off her Headmaster permanently, walk away from Blue Ring, and lead the community and outsiders in a new world that will emerge and not make the mistakes of the old world that became subservient.
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