Talk us through it
Stoner is searching for a meteorite that fell to earth back in 1946. If he can find it then his fortune is made as the space rock is worth millions of dollars to the right people. Our rock hunter has enlisted the aid of Ben and Mylene, two geology students, and Warren for his strong back. Coming along for the ride is Warren's fiancé Gloria, a Paris Hilton in the making. Stoner has a journal that pin points the rock fall to an exact location in the New England backwoods. He has a set time frame as the valley the rock is located in is gradually flooding due to a recently built dam. Arriving at the sort of rural gas station that's likely to have a kid out front screaming "pancakes" our crew load up on final provisions and gas. Naturally an old Indian adds some local colour, and later warns that things should be left well enough alone. Those city folks just don't listen. With the meteorite located and the flood waters rising each of our five rock hunters start to hear voices in their heads. Voices that are calling for bloody mayhem. Can our crew escape the primeval force they have released?
Review"Your life won't crash because you don't run the right voodoo program." - Ben Seems we are having a week of skating to the edge of our remit here at ScaryMinds as yet another review covers something that is at the boundary of our topic matter. Stone Cold Calling is a novella set in the United States and written by the famed English dark fiction writer Simon Clark. Normally ScaryMinds would give this one a miss but the publisher is the excellently named Tasmaniac Productions who, as the name would suggest, are a Tasmanian small press outfit. What's cool about Tasmaniac is that they are doing limited edition novellas, a literary form that you normally only find in anthologies and collected works. So hey Australian publishing house I'm there, let's rock the Kasbah with this one. Simon Clark, a writer I've long admired, has the ability to write in the naturalistic style of Stephen King but with the English influences that call to mind writers such as James Herbert. The first point of interest for mine was whether or not Clark could fleck his literary muscles and pull off an "American" book, something few writers born outside the United States seem able to do. Just as there's a distinct Australian voice in the dark genre, the States has it's own particular nuances and timber. To be honest while steeping Stone Cold Calling in subject matter straight out of the New England forest, the novella still reads very much as English prose. Clark keeps his stiff upper lip to the fore while dealing with colonial matters. Another English writer I dig <<…>> has been hitting a similar beat through a colossal number of books, so I was more than happy with Clark's style in Stone Cold Calling. Sign of the times, I was brought up with the British horror tradition and only later in life was exposed to the U.S influence, so I'm more than happy to groove on down to a Brit horror novel. Simon Clark once again delivers on the prose that we have come to expect from him, crisp, to the point, and paced expertly. Clark tends to drag you into the story, a trait he shares with Stephen King, before unleashing the chaotic forces of horror on your arse. Simon Clark hits the naturalistic style with quite some force, his characters are ordinary people who are placed in dire situation that exposes both their strength of character and less desirable traits. Clark has a two pronged horror attack coming at you in Stone Cold Calling and simply nails both to the heart. The character Scorpion has seemingly consigned the chaotic voices in his head to the meteorite; we later learn these are the insane spirits of his ancestors incensed by what has happened to their land. With the disturbance of the rock the primitive forces are going to be unleashed again with devastating results. I was reminded of Sam Raimi's first couple of Evil Dead movies to be honest, cabin in the woods, possession by demonic forces. Got to love that sort of stuff and someone should immediately get the film rights to Stone Cold Calling, I'll be first in line at the ticket booth. While the majority of the focus of the novella is on the main characters finding the meteorite, the reader always has the lapping of the flood waters in the back of their mind. Clark skilfully keeps reminding us that water levels are rising ever so slowly. When the meteorite is finally found and chaos is unleashed it's no coincidence that a sudden and dramatic thunder storm is also dumping tons of water into the valley with the result that the flood levels are rising at an almost unbelievable rate. Actually it's not that unimaginable for those of us who have been out and about during flash flooding. The reader is left pondering what did try to grab Mylene earlier in the book, and whether or not it was simply fence wire as Ben has convinced himself. Is there something alive and deadly in the rising water? Just when you want to get off a shrinking Island you may not want to meet whatever creature is cruising just below the surface of the rising water. Simon Clark has setup the reader without apology and you are simply going to race through the final chapters to discover how it all turns out. Clark naturally is not going to allow his resolution to match reader expectations, damn, there's a real left field scene coming at you which somehow perfectly fits the tone and direction the novella has been taking up to that point. Naturally there is a sting in the tale, hey it's a dark genre outing, and the final few words are simply dripping with venom. Simply excellent stuff from Simon Clark. Tasmaniac have put together quite the package for those of us in the collecting game, remembering the novella is restricted to 300 soft cover and 26 lettered hard cover copies. Included are Kealan Patrick Burke's introduction covering both the novella form and Simon Clark the writer. And Vince Natale provides not only the cover artwork but has a number of illustrations peppered through out the book as well. Overall then you are getting pretty good value for money with Stone Cold Calling. Sure the paperback comes with a $22.95 AUD price tag but have you checked the prices of trade paperbacks recently at your local Borders? Tasmaniac have thrown together a package that not only includes the novella, but also includes enough extras to have you baying at the moon. The whipped cream on top of this particular mocha is that the paper quality used is far superior to what one would normally expect. Considering there's a very limited supply of copies that's a good deal in anyone's book of counted sorrows. You can get your copy of Stone Cold Calling direct from Tasmaniac themselves, Click Through. Naturally as the novella is released in very limited release it's not available from your high street book seller. Don't even think eBay, people collect these issues.
ScaryMinds Rates this read as ... Outstanding quiet horror novella that is a must not only for Simon Clark's legend of fans but also for
anyone who loves them some dark genre reading. Be quick supplies are extremely limited.
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