Saturday, January 7, 2012

Pulp of the Week - Bonus! The Lucid Dreaming


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Stoker Award winning writer Lisa Morton has written a disturbing and fantastic novella about the breakdown of humanity as told through the eyes of  young woman named Ashley. As it turns out, Ashley, in addition to despising her name also spends her days at a state mental facilty. It seems she is a violent schizophrenic that calls herself Spike, partly because she likes it and partly because everyone else calls her that.

I won't go to much into the specifics of the story because as a novella, every word counts and everything is critical. What I will say is that some kind of plague has hit the world and it turns everyone into stark razing psychopathic murderers. 

Spike is on her meds, so she finds herself alone in a world where everyone wants to kill everyone else, and by the time she breaks out of the hospital, the world has gone bad.

The cross country adventure that Spike has reminded me just a little of Harlan Ellison's A Boy and His Dog. Probably the bleakness and stark prose.

I liked The Lucid Dreaming a lot (I'll give it a 9 out of 10) and will pick up  more of Lisa Morton's books. The Lucid Dreaming was published by Bad Moon Books. More information about Lisa Morton can be found here. The cover painting is by Zach McCain. His work can be found here.


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