My Two Cents (Book Review): THE VANISHING by Bentley Little

Call me naive, but when a book has a quote from Stephen King on the cover proclaiming the author is "the poet laureate of horror," I kind of expect the book to be good. Especially if the book cover also touts the author as a Bram Stoker Award Winner. Those sorts of accolades should instill some confidence in me as a consumer that, if I purchase this book from among the thousands of choices in my local bookstore, it's going to be a well-written, original, and enjoyable read.

Nope.

"The Vanishing" by Bentley Little reads like someone dumped every scenario and trope from successful horror books and movies together and then added in some gratuitously unnecessary -- and unnecessarily weird -- sex scenes in and stood back, waiting to see what resulted.

Eco horror a la The Ruins or Annihilation? Check. Dead animals coming back to life like in Pet Sematary? Check, check. Deranged lunatics viciously hunting down and slaughtering their families a la The Shining? Got 'em. Mutated children with animal faces a la The Island of Dr. Moreau? You betcha! And hell, just for variety, let's throw in some random historical flashbacks while we're at it!

"The Vanishing" reminded me of that TV series from a few years back, Grotesquerie, and not just because Grotesquerie seems to have ripped off a scene from this book where women are kept like cattle hooked up to milking machines to harvest breast milk. Grotesquerie has an interesting premise, at least from the synopsis, and some clever and gruesome kill scenes, but otherwise devolves into a mess of slip-shoddy storytelling with each passing episode. "The Vanishing" suffers from the same.

Too many characters vie for the reader's attention, and Little takes the liberty of introducing us to each and every one of them from their own viewpoint, chapter by chapter, regardless of whether or not they're actually useful in advancing the plot. There's an old cooking adage that warns of too many cooks ruining the soup, and the same is true of characters in a story. By the time we meet the two "main" characters, we've already met so many other potential candidates, it's hard to distinguish who's who, and by the time the pair come together, it's about 3/4 of the way through the book.

Of course, of those two MCs, we have the plucky social worker who obviously isn't based on anyone who has ever actually worked in social work, because she has plenty of time and so few cases, she can run around on a whim to visit with select clients, or travel to posh fundraising activities (for which she just happens to have a red evening gown that -- boohoo! -- fits so snugly now around her ass because "she's put on a little weight" -- like all women just keep these things around in our closet, especially on a social worker's salary).

The other MC is a plucky reporter with the LA Times newspaper, and he reads like every stereotypical reporter you have ever seen in the pages of a Spider-Man or Superman comic book. Yes, he's idealistic, earnest, brave of heart, and true, dedicated to finding the truth behind a series of grisly murders carried out by a bunch of deranged millionaires -- one of whom may or may not include his father. Who, ironically, isn't a millionaire, but is still deranged apparently.

From there, let the cavalcade of trope characters begin! From the Obi-Wan Kenobi, our interpret reporter's more world-wise and wizened mentor whose predictable if not completely unnecessary fate serves to galvanize the reporter to further action, to the platoon of stock mercenaries straight out of the movies, Doom, Predator, or Aliens, this book has them all. It's like a sideshow carnival collection of all your favorite over-done, overused, badly developed character archetypes, all in one complete gift set!

And the amount of -- and emphasis on -- sex in this book is just unreal. I'm not a prude by anyone's stretch of the imagination, but Jesus Christ, everyone in this book from the MCs to the most incidental of secondary characters not only wants to get it on at the drop of a hat, but is into kink, too, which mostly just seems to be for the sake of trying to shock the reader. Unfortunately, kinky sex in a story is kind of like Chanel No. 9 perfume: a little dab will do you, and too much is annoying.

This book was published by Berkley, and I can't help but think their editorial staff sat around creaming their collective jeans, all excited as they read this manuscript, thinking "Oooo! how 'dark' and 'edgy!'" It's dark in places, sure, but there's too much going on, with too many people involved, for readers to ultimately give a crap. Or at least, I didn't. It was nearly a DNF for me, but I pushed myself through somehow if only to see if there was any hint of the "poet laureate of horror" hiding in there that Stephen King promised me.

I sure as hell didn't see any. And considering I've read some fantastic independent horror authors lately, whose books far surpass this in terms of quality, characterization, and story, it makes me both sad and angry that this is the crap that makes it onto bookstore shelves and bestseller lists when there are so many who are so much more deserving -- who write stories that reallly ARE dark and edgy -- who never get that chance.

So if you come across this stinker at your local bookstore, save your money and spend it instead on an indie author. I guarantee they're a better read.