THE FREAKSHOW by Bryan Smith (Leisure 2007)

Creatures from a dying dimension are gradually invading and taking over ours, one small town at a time, under the guise of a traveling circus and freakshow. When they come to Pleasant Hills, Mike is one of the few survivors of their initial onslaught; his effort to escape is quickly derailed, though, when he's pressed into the service of a strange intra-freak intrigue. Heather has only come to town to see her ailing mother, and undergoes her own harrowing adventure, which pits her against not only the freaks, but also the boyfriend she breaks up with on the way, whose latent sociopathic tendencies fully bloom amid the chaotic, lawless bloodshed.

That strikes me as a promising scenario for an entertaining read, and Smith attacks it with all the gusto he can muster. He clearly aims to deliver horror in earnest, and his strategy toward that end is to make every scene of violence and sex as fucked-up and hardcore-gruesome as he can imagine. One might well ask, after Heather has been raped by a Cronenberg-esque biomechanical gearshift and then psychically forced to beat another girl's brains out with a tire iron, is it really necessary that she then be forced to eat that other girl's eyeballs? The answer is that, of course it's not "necessary"--it's luxury! Touches like that are the cherry on top--the extra bang Smith is determined to give readers for their buck.

Unfortunately, scenes and details of this sort don't deliver quite the whallop that they should here, because Smith neglects the crucial "infrastructure" of narrative, context, and character. He routinely fills pages and pages with laundry-lists of cruelties heaped on this or that character in rapid-fire sequence, and despite their ostensibly shocking content, they're about as engaging as . . . well, as laundry-lists. One reason for that goes to Jerome Stern's notion of narrative position:

Once readers understand a character's position, they're waiting to see that position change. Since we know Derwig is a lonely kitchen appliance salesman and a heavy drinker, having him careen from bar to bar may change his level of intoxication, but it might not change his position. Whatever happens to Derwig, whatever situations he's in--rude to the bartender, argumentative with other customers, kicked out of the bar, staggering back to his apartment to find some more beer in the fridge--he is still a lonely guy and a heavy drinker. In a certain way, though interesting events have taken place, nothing has happened in the story. His position has been demonstrated and dramatized through various situations, but it remains basically the same. . . .

Readers see changes in position as either good or bad for the character. But once readers see a trend--all is now going well for Derwig--they redefine Derwig's position as improving. That might put him into interesting situations but readers won't feel a drastic change until something threatens him.

One problem with these sequences is that Smith establishes a trend and then runs it on a relentlessly straight line, instead of introducing developments or reversals that would alter the narrative position and make it more interesting.

Also, there's just not enough to his characters to elicit much empathy or outrage. Sure, I can write something like, "Using John's own hunting knife, Sheila carved out his spinal column, and then sat on it, gasping in delight at the feel of every blood-lubricated vertebra as it popped up through her sphincter" (I daresay that's a fair approximation of the perverse scenarios Smith often depicts), but what do you care, because who the fuck are John and Sheila? I never really felt like any of these characters achieved that critical mass where they actually began to matter to me. Lazily thin motivations like this don't help:

Heather said, "What do you get out of this? What's the point of this staged cruelty?"

Miss Monique patted her knee. "Pleasure, dear. Pure, sadistic pleasure. There is no deeper reason. I love to make humans suffer."

One school of thought in horror is that randomness and meaninglessness makes horrible shit more horrible, because that makes it incomprehensible and something that can't be controlled for or negotiated with, and also points to a larger and more disturbing randomness and meaninglessness of life itself. Usually, though, I find that randomness and meaninglessness vitiate the horror because they leave it unconnected from whatever drives emotion in the story. Such is the case with a blue-makeup-wearing chainsaw murderer who has nothing to do with the freakshow. Smith tosses him willy-nilly into the mix, as a kind of curveball, I suppose. Well, I wasn't chilled by how cruelly random and randomly cruel life could be, I just thought, "Huh, that was random."

To end on a positive note, there is fun to be had here. Smith delivers some nicely-designed circus-themed monsters, a few fairly inventive elements I won't spoil here, and occasionally the action does become quite gripping, even breathless. Most importantly, his heart is in the right place. He understands perfectly what this book should do, and he really tries to do it. If only he'd paid more attention to fundamentals of character and storytelling, all the wicked stuff he piles on would have a lot more zing and pizazz. As for my ultimate thumbs-up or-down, I'd say if you're in the mood for splattery horror-action in a circus setting, be prepared to make allowances, but this should scratch the itch.

See also reviews at:

• And Now the Screaming Starts
• Little Miss Zombie
• Bookgasm
• Dread Central