 Hello everybody, Ian here. Welcome back to another book review. Sorry, I've been gone for a week. This is actually the first video that I am recording since, I think, Tuesday. I woke up Wednesday morning in a crippling pain. The video that you saw yesterday Star, the review for Star by Yukio Mishima, that was recorded back on Monday, I think. So I apologize for being away, but I literally couldn't get out of bed. I called my doctor and doctor put me on bed rest and sent in some medication that I've never had before. We looked it up. It's one molecule away from heroin, so that was kind of scary, me being an ex-junkie. I quit back in 2001. So I needed to be away because I didn't know how I would react. I finally used up the last of that stuff on Saturday. It was only three days worth. On Saturday, and then Sunday, yesterday, I went for a four-mile walk just out of the blue. I don't know if I was detoxing or what, but I just got up and I said, I want to go for a walk, and I just kept on walking. I ended up four miles away from the house and had to call my mother to come pick me up. It was kind of funny, actually. She's like, how did you get so far? I just walked. But today we are reviewing those across the river by Christopher Buhlman. I think I'm pronouncing it right. I can't imagine how else you would pronounce it. Buhlman? Buhlman? I don't know. But I first heard about this from Mother Horror, Sadie, who's a good friend of mine. She's on Twitter and Instagram. She runs the Night Worms subscription box. Terrific person. She posted a picture of, I think it was the paperback copy of this book, and it peaked my interest. Just the cover of the way it was written, and I love the title, Those Across the River. It could have been about anything. When I found out that it was about werewolves, it was an autobi, I'm a huge fan of werewolves. But there's not a whole lot of good werewolf fiction. They're far more good werewolf movies. Now, if you think I'm wrong, please leave your recommendations down there in the doobly-doo. But I can almost assure you that I've read everything or tried to read everything. Please don't mention Blood and Rain by Glenn Rolfe or, what's that other one? I couldn't stand. The Jonathan Jans one. I think Wolfland. I couldn't stand either one of those. But especially Blood and Rain was pitched as like Salem's Lot with werewolves. I didn't get that at all. But this one, if you are a fan of Salem's Lot, if you are a fan of the good writing in that book and the character development in that book, this is the one to go with. If you're looking for a Salem's Lot with werewolves type of deal. In fact, there are quite a few allusions. I don't know if it was the author's intention or not, but there are quite a few allusions to Salem's Lot that I will discuss more in the spoiler review at the end of this video. Here in the non-spoilers section of the review, spoilers come after the outro in case you're worried about spoilers. What I like the most about this book is the character development. I really appreciated the time and the detail and everything that was taken with each and every character. Martin Cranmer is my favorite character in the book, hands down. I love that type of character. I've used that type of character several times throughout my own work. It's one of those things that I kind of reuse, like how King reuses the abusive husband. It's just one of those characters that I love to read about. I love that dynamic where they just don't give a shit. They don't care about anything that's going on. They just want to be left the fuck alone. That's Martin's character. I love that character. On the flip side, there's the main character who I enjoyed reading about also, but there is one specific thing that got me. Any of you all know, my wife is African American. She's black. I'm a little more sensitive than maybe the average reader because we get a lot of crap living here in the South as far as us being a mixed couple. The book starts out, and I only preface that because I want you to know that I'm a little over sensitive about the subject. The book starts off, I think, within the first three pages. You have no timeframe for when the book is set. You end up finding out that it's right after the Great War, but, or World War I, I believe it is. I looked it up and that's what it said. If it was World War II, I apologize. I still don't have a good feel for when this novel takes place, but what I'm getting at is in the first three pages he says in the narrative that the affable Negro got out of the truck. I'm like, hold up. When is this? So I ended up going to... I don't read plot descriptions, but I had to. I stopped reading and when it and I looked at the plot description and in the plot description it says, haunted by memories of the Great War. Now, what if my book didn't come with the dust jacket? Let's just throw this out there. If I hadn't known, I likely would have stopped reading because right off the bat the person whose head we are inside considers a black man that gets out of the truck a Negro. So I almost stopped it. Had I not had the description on hand, I would have just put it aside and probably never came back to it. I've done that with some other books. Now, does it fit in the context of the story? Yes, it does, but what I was worried about is usually when authors go down that route, when they do historical fiction, they overdo it. I'm not talking about the N-word thrown around here or there, or I'm not talking about that. That's going to happen. It's realistic. That's the way these people spoke back then. I get that. I understand that. But usually it's a license to overuse it. I call it the Quentin Tarantino effect. Like in Pulp Fiction where he's just saying the N-word over and over and over and over again, it gets tiresome. I don't think it's good dialogue. I don't think it serves a purpose. It doesn't root you in the time frame anymore than, say, describing what kind of cars people are driving. People use that language to this day. People drive old cars to this day. You get what I'm saying? But I was worried about that and there is sprinkle throughout. There is bits and pieces of that. But for the most part, he treats it respectfully. It's very hard to pick out what the author intention is sometimes when it comes to things like that. Are they trying to be accurate or are there some biases on their own side? I would go with they're trying to be accurate to the time frame here. There were some strange things. It being in first person and being inside this character's head, it was kind of hard to root for this character knowing the way he was. But it's not like an HP Lovecraft. He went above and beyond the racist culture of the time. This character was more settled into the fact that this is just the way they spoke back then. That was the only thing that ever made me want to stop reading this book. Like I said, I am oversensitive. The rest of the book is fantastic. I have no complaints whatsoever. In fact, it's going up on my top 20. So those of you out there who are wondering when I'm going to start posting my top 20, I said last week that I was going to do it last week. Of course, I was in bed last week. But it keeps changing every single time. And that's part of the problem with me is my opinions constantly change. I will go and look at that list and go, oh, that book isn't so great. And then I will start thinking about that book and I won't be able to stop thinking about the book. And I end up leaving that book on the list. This one, I don't know what it will replace. I'm leaning more towards, sorry, James, but replacing Jane Newman's animosity on that list. If you want to, you can go to wordpress.edwardlorn.com and check out my E's top 20. You can read that if you want to. It changes constantly. So I don't know where this will land. I think I put it up. I just threw it up there in a place. I'm not sure that I replaced anything I may have. I don't remember. I've been on really, really strong, really strong like synthetic heroin for the past couple days. I'm just now coming. Yesterday was a matter of shaking and itching, which I don't miss at all. And I'm still a little kind of wired today. When you come off that stuff, it's a very, very weird feeling. Like every single nerve in your body is awake, but I'm not hurting right now. So I don't know if it relaxed everything just long enough to settle down the nerves, settle down the muscle tension. I don't know, but I'm doing good. And it was so bad I sat up, got out of bed, and I stood up and it felt like something with claws. Grabbed on to my back meat and just rinsed it and I was down on my knees just screaming. I've rarely ever felt pain like that. And they wanted me to go up to the emergency room and I refused because I don't want to pay for the ambulance ride. But going back to this book, sorry, I'm getting going off on a tangent. Some of you like these more personal, the personal stories and the reviews and whatnot. But I mean, this doesn't really have anything to tie into the book. It's just giving you an update on my life while I'm reviewing it. So if that's a problem, I'm sorry. Anywho, so those across the river, if you liked, if you loved Salem's lot, you will likely love this book. If you're over sensitive about the N word, you're gonna you're gonna read it a couple times in here, probably about a dozen times roughly. There, there are some fantastic scenes in here that will likely stay with me forever. But I will talk about those in the spoiler section. So until next time, I have any you've been you. This has been another book review. I'll talk to you guys later. Bye bye spoilers. Just felt like screaming at you. So hats off hats off spoilers in the air spoilers everywhere. Please, if you have a problem with spoilers, go to fuck away. I don't want to hear from you. You're spoiled the book for me. It's spoilers, spoilers all throughout spoilers for the book. If you're like Angela, and you like spoilers, you know, because they they feel like landmarks while you're reading. That's fine. Hang around and listen. I don't care. There there are couples like I said in the the front matter of this review. There are a couple scenes in here that will that will stay with me forever. There is the illusion to Salem's lot and Salem's lot. Spoiler for Salem's lot. I got to say that to spoiler for Salem's lot. Spoiler for Salem's lot. Please click away. Go away. Whatever. Susan is changed into a vampire in this one. The wife is changed into a vampire, not vampire or werewolf. But as far as I tell you that because I have to describe the scene, there is a scene where he's taking care of his wife and she had where she's kind of she's just started changing and she throws up and it's a child shoe and a bunch of meat or baby shoe, I think. And oh my it fucked me up. There are other books with scenes like that and I can't even mention them now because I brought that up because I don't want to spoil those books for you. But in this one there the scene where he's in the cage in the werewolf camp, there's so much to this book that I enjoyed. There was so much brutality. It's so rare that when you read something like this, it is more on the literary side. You tend to get ambiguous endings. You tend to get wishy washy scenes that they don't go far enough for my liking. It's like they subdue the action because they want to be more literary. I can't stand that shit. You can be literary and still have blood, guts and ass flying everywhere. And that's what this book does. I thought everything about the story was fantastic. One of the creepiest scenes has to do with the little boy the first time he meets the mixed boy out in the woods and he talks about the teeth, the boy's teeth. That was a pretty fantastic scene. There's a couple of, there's more illusions to Salem's lot. The town being completely abandoned or changed or whatever. The gas scene, the mustard gas scene was fantastic. That's just something you don't see in a book. I was worried that once we got out of the werewolf camp and everything, there was still quite a bit, I think 50 pages left. I knew something else was going to happen, but I was worried it was going to be more like the last 50 pages of insomnia kind of thing. Just wrapping up, tying everything together. But they actually go and take care of the werewolves, which I thought was fantastic. To an extent, Salem's lot does the same thing. They try to go and take care of the vampires, but they don't. It just keeps on spreading. The great aspect of this book is that Christopher Buhlman, Buhlman, however you pronounce it, I apologize if you're watching this, he committed. And that's one of the problems that I have with most literary horror is they don't commit. You have your Josh Malerman's, your Paul Tremblay's, all these guys, they're fucking about. It's like they won't commit. I know people love them and it's an unpopular opinion, but they won't commit to an ending. They won't commit to, you know, this is what it is, especially not Tremblay. I haven't finished most of Malerman's stuff, but he's as vague as Peter Straub, so I don't care too much for him. But Paul Tremblay, he refuses to commit to an ending. He refuses. He wants to leave everything open. And that's fine, I guess. But when I'm going to read something that's over 300 pages long, I want a conclusion. And that's what this does. It has a fantastic conclusion. So often you run into the ambiguous bullshit when the rest of the book was perfectly fine, perfectly great. This one is that much better for the ending because it has a terrific conclusion. The, like I said, the mustard gas part that I thought that was it, that that was the, it wasn't even really like the icing on the cake. It was the the whole cake. It made it feel complete, like a complete experience. And that's one of the things that I bring up in my written review is how complete everything felt. Or maybe it was my Instagram post. I can't remember. But it's one of those things that you don't feel like there's any loose ends, but it also doesn't feel like anything is forced. There is nothing there that goes, oh well he's forcing these ties together. It is a complete experience without the forced connections. And it's because it's a very simple story just like Salem's Lot is a very simple story. It's a town overrun by monsters. Now in this one it's those across the river and there's the there's the Martin character who is also a werewolf. And it all ties in, it all ties into you know why they haven't, and all the explanations are perfect why they haven't come over. It's one of the best build-ups. One of the best explanations for why a monster is kept away is the pig ritual. That was perfect. And the reason why they stop it, perfect reasoning. Everything in this book makes sense. And it's so, it's so refreshing to come across something like this. And that's why it's ending up on my top 20. Because he was able to make everything feel realistic and he, the suspension of disbelief was insane. I felt like I was in this place. I felt like werewolves could be real. I felt like you know these people were in danger. And that's something I've been missing from most literary horror. But until next time, I'll talk to you guys later. Bye bye.