#gary fry

Gary L. A. Fry, Field and Laboratory Exercises in Ecology

http://www.dlsreviews.com/the-rage-of-cthulhu.php

Vox Satanae – Episode #420 Vox Satanae - Episode 420 - 197 Minutes - Week of December 24 2018 This week we hear Anonymous and traditional works as well as works by Giovanni da Palestrina, Tomás Luis de Victoria, Johann Schelle, Johann Agricola, Jean Sibelius, Marcel Dupré, Jiří Ropek, John Rutter, Gary Fry, Vince Guaraldi, and Johann Sebastian Bach with performances by The Benedictine Monks of Santo Domingo de Silos, Pro Cantione Antiqua, The Medieval Wind Ensemble, Mark Brown, Chicago A Cappella, Jonathan Miller, Ensemble Plus Ultra, Michael Noone, Monika Mauch, Georg Poplutz, The Kölner Akademie, Michael Alexander Willens, Berit Solset, Nicholas Mulroy, Matthias Vieweg, Suvi Väyrynen, Jan Lehtola, Tong-Soon Kwak, The Prague Philharmonic Chorus and Chamber Orchestra, Jan Kalfus, Pavel Kühn, Polyphony, The City of London Sinfonia, Stephen Layton, The Dallas Symphony Chorus and Orchestra, David R. Davidson, Bryn Terfel, The Nidus Children's Choir, Côrdydd, The Orchestra of the Welsh National Opera, Tecwyn Evans, and John Muratore.

Let me get this out of the way here at the outset - the first half of this novel is about as boring as can be. The second half, once the plot starts snapping into focus, makes up for the tedium and left me pretty well satisfied. Siren of Depravity is a book about familial secrets, abuse, torture, and Lovecraftian creatures of sex and destruction. For the most part, this is pretty good stuff, and after a rather lengthy and laborious build-up, author Gary Fry manages to inject a pretty high creep factor and plenty of disquieting grotesqueness.  My main issue comes down to one of pacing and an odd fixation on describing modern technology as if it were something new and alien to most readers. In 2016, I'd think it's pretty safe to say that the majority of readers are familiar with things like e-mail and text messaging. Rather than let readers know that central character Harry Keyes has an e-mail, our first person narrator via Fry, must always let us know that he has to open up a connection to the Internet, log into his e-mail account, and discover by way of modern technology that, lo and behold, he has an e-mail! When he receives a text, rather than simply say, "I got a text," Keyes tells us he receives a text, not an e-mail, because he would have to be logged into his e-mail account on his phone to receive an e-mail there, and since he wasn't logged in, it could not have been e-mail, and thus it was a text. I can't help but wonder if this book was written a the turn of the century when text messages were less ubiquitous than now and given a soft update for the years and character's ages. Either that, or it was an issue of Fry hitting a specific word count. This type of stuff could have been left out and quickened the pace considerably.  As far as the book's first half goes, while dull, there's actually a lot of stuff in there that pays off tremendously in the second half. Fry must have outlined the heck out of this work, and, techie issues aside, there's a thoughtfulness to the story's execution that I respect and admire. While I trudged through a lot of those early details about Keyes and his family life demanding that Fry just get on with it already, the vast majority of it feeds into what comes later with a sort of inevitability, and it's really impressive to see all the various story threads come together in the climax. Details that initially felt small and somewhat meandering take on supreme significance and a much broader scope by book's end.  Siren of Depravity is a book that starts off tiny and meek, but builds up a wonderful sense of dread as it progresses toward a big finish. Still, I would have liked a bit more impetus in the first half, which read a little too dry for my tastes. [Note: I am a member of the DarkFuse Readers Group and received an advanced copy of this title from the publisher for review via NetGalley.]

Survey of HORROR!!! was originally published on I.A.M. Musing About…

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