3/1/03
Book
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Flesh and Blood - Graham Masterton
Flesh and Blood begins with a loving but erratic father named Terrence Pearson taking his children, Emily, Lisa, and George, out into a field on a stormy day to save them from a terrible fate by murdering them. The eldest, Emily, manages to escape, and the terror, a being named the Green Traveller that Terrence believes is coming will assuredly have its chance at mayhem. Meanwhile a bill is making the rounds required to become a law that will make it illegal to not only experiment animals but also to raise them and eat them.
This bill directly impacts The Spellman Institute of Genetics where Doctor Mathews is working with the world's largest pig, Captain Black. The work involves transplanting a segment of a child's brain into Captain Black to make him think like a human. The section is being delivered by Doctor Mathew's friend Nathan and Nathan's son David who become embroiled in the events to follow. Throw in a sheriff trying to do the right thing, a beautiful animal rights activist sleeping with the man pushing the bill, and a group of unnatural people tied to the Green Traveller, and the tableau is complete for large scale horror.
This novel has some negatives that stand out to this reviewer at least and deserve the following caveat: I have been editing my own work lately and may be seeing problems that most readers will not even notice. There are some spots in the book where it seems the editor was not doing the best job. There were a couple mistake which could be editing or printing mistakes. There was some language that seemed less polished. To inject a personal note I disagreed with a couple turns of phrases. Finally, some of the story was sort of apparent, some of the twists were telegraphed early. This last comment most of all may be my fault from being in the mental mode to thoroughly look for such problems.
Flesh and Blood though does have a lot of positives. The mix of existing mythos with new material, and the author's own twists is nothing short of amazing in this book. Masterton's usual flair in writing is present in many of the scenes strengthening the material beyond that which an another author would have achieved. There were a couple of really pulse pounding scenes, everything was well- grounded, and the versimilitude high. The settings for the story are greatly visualised, and there is great use of time of day and weather to round out the atmosphere for each scene.
There is no one main character to this story, which works very to advantage in this kind of story. Each character has their own drive and their own part to play in the story. In a nice turn the novel presents one of the usual main character types but does not focus on this character. Overall the characters were a little flatter than Masterton's usual. The best defined to my mind was Captain Black who is portrayed almost toally from the experience viewpoint of the other characters. This was certainly a very deft move and stands out as the high point character-wise. Following close is Sheriff Luke Friendly who was given the perfect touch through his interaction with his family and with his weight problem. All in all a good novel despite the few problems.
(
Thank you for reading my review.
Bob Male)
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