 The last time I reviewed a book by William Slater, which was the last universe, I believe, I said that instead of reviewing more William Slater books, and I've reviewed three, that's more than I usually review for any one author, I said that I would do like an overview of William Slater and talk about his work in general. So that's what I'm going to do today. He was an author of young adult fiction, but like so many so-called young adult authors, his books actually addressed some very adult subjects. Particularly the kind of fears that teenagers think about all the time, like the loss of relationships, isolation, peer pressure, those sorts of things. I discovered William Slater when I read House of Stairs. There was a copy of House of Stairs on the bookshelf at my family home. I don't know where it came from. I don't know who bought it or put it there. But it had been there for years. And then one day, about 25 years ago, I decided to read it. And it's one of the best books I've ever read. This was my second book review three years ago. And there was a reason it was second on my list is because, again, it's one of the most memorable and most interesting books that I've ever read. I described it as Lord of the Flies for sixth graders. And I'll stick by that description. If you want something really interesting and unusual and intense for your young teenager to read, start them with this. It's about a 16-year-old orphan boy who finds himself trapped in a world of nothing but infinite staircases with a group of other 16-year-olds. And the kind of things that they have to do to survive and to get out of this situation are really intense and memorable. Let me put it that way. It's good science fiction. The next Slater book that I reviewed was Interstellar Pig, and I don't seem to be able to find my copy of it. I believe I gave it to someone for their kid to read. Here's a picture of it. It's about a kid whose weird neighbors invite him to get involved in a board game that turns out to have the fate of the earth involved, or at least that's what they lead him to believe. It's just a really entertaining, good little science fiction adventure story. I recommend it. The next Slater book that I reviewed was The Last Universe. This is an excellent example of why I like William Slater's work so much. It started out slow, and it gets the story of Schrodinger's cat all wrong, which everybody does, but it has a hell of an ending that I didn't expect at all. And that's what William Slater does. He does what I don't expect. He pretty much always does something new every time I read one of his books. He's one of those authors that... let me see how I can put it. You know when you're reading a book and you're frustrated because you wish the protagonist would do something? You wish the protagonist would do what you would do in that situation, or what you're wishing they would do? William Slater does that. William Slater goes all the way. He does the unexpected. He does what you wish he would do. It's very exciting stuff. Okay, as far as books that I haven't reviewed yet, there's Singularity. This is a very short book. I think some people wouldn't even call it a novel. It's 179 pages. This is a novella, maybe a long short story. This is another example of William Slater's creativity and his penchant for the unexpected. It's about a pair of twin boys who are vacationing at a relative's abandoned house out in the country and they discover there's some kind of time warp or time dilation going on in the outhouse that the guy built in back. And what Slater ends up doing with this story? All the way through it, I was going, yes, yes, yes. That's what I wanted to see. So yeah, pick up Singularity. There's another little, thin little volume called Oddballs. This is nonfiction. This is William Slater talking about his life. If you're interested in William Slater, you should pick this up. Moving on, I had said once before that I had never found a William Slater book that I didn't like well since then I have. Here's a book called Run. This is his first novel. I believe this is his first novel. I got about halfway through it and then quit and then gave up on it. The protagonist is a young tween girl and at first I was having trouble believing her behavior. But then I had to tell myself, okay, we've got a young teenage girl who's left alone in a house in the country. Her parents aren't there. She's terribly afraid of being alone, but she won't admit it. She won't even admit it to herself. So I had to tell myself, yeah, a young teenager in that situation who's desperate to not be alone is not going to behave rationally. It's certainly not going to do what I would do in a situation like that. So I pushed on, but then by the middle of the book other things were happening and I wasn't believing any of it. So I gave up on it. Now, here's a thing called Phantom Limb, which Slater co-wrote with someone named Ann Montacon. Just the title of this book is interesting, but this doesn't read like William Slater. This, it didn't seem to me like his work at all. I suspect it's more influenced by his co-author here. And it didn't make any sense to me. I didn't believe any of the situations that were going on, so I didn't finish this one either. As I was reading Phantom Limb, I recalled another Slater book I had read. I believe it was called Keys about like a haunted piano or a haunted severed hand that was playing a piano. Little bits and pieces came back to me as I was reading Phantom Limb, but I remember not being impressed with it. So there's that. There's a book called Parasite Pig, which is a recent sequel to Interstellar Pig. This book was on my list of worst covers ever. I mean, look at this awful Photoshop hack job. This doesn't do justice to the book at all. This book I have a mixed review on, and I have to give you a warning too. Again, as usual, Slater does a couple of things in this book that I've never seen before that surprised the hell out of me and impressed me. But they were also disgusting. Really disgusting. And a spoiler here, if you care. Boy, I can hardly even say this. There's cannibalism in this book. There's a very lengthy, very vivid scene in this book where these aliens who eat human beings, they have a couple of teenage girls that they kept captive and they've spent time fattening them up and they're very obese. And there's this scene where they drag these two girls into the ovens and they're screaming and saying, no, no, no. And these other kids actually witnessed these girls being pushed in the ovens and cooked. I found it really upsetting. I mean, it upset me so much that I couldn't stop thinking about it that night. So it's an interesting book, not a great book, but interesting in no little part because Slater, again, is doing the unexpected. And in this case, the unexpected was not necessarily welcome, so it's up to you if you want to read this or not. Well, I recommend Slater in general for anybody, especially for young kids who are getting into science fiction. But be careful about parasite pigs, seriously. When you read about him online, you see people comparing him to R.L. Stein who wrote the Goosebumps books. When I first read that, I got a little huffy. I was like, hey, wait a minute. But then I have to admit that I've never read R.L. Stein, so I have no idea what that comparison would mean to me. I just, unfortunately, I just associate Goosebumps with children's TV, and that may be a mistake on my part. Anyway, there you have it. I recommend, wholeheartedly, House of Stairs, The Last Universe, Singularity, Interstellar Pig, and William Slater in general. I haven't read nearly all of his books, and I have more to do. All right, see you next time. Thank you.