Zod Wallop

Rating:
Summary: Blinding. Stupefying. Cruel and beautiful...
Review: A virtuoso novel studded with phrases & images will shine and sting in the mind's eye for weeks. Zod Wallop kicked a hole in the roof of my head to let the starlight in. The most important book I've read in five years. It will no doubt be compared to Carroll's Land of Laughs, but is something both darker and more joyful. Even better than the author's superb Resume with Monsters (itself a must-read). To quote the book itself (reviewing the eponymous children's story) "an instant classic."

Muscular, vibrant, luminous prose. I read it in a single afternoon, unable to put it down. I actually laughed out loud in 3 taxis and found myself crying in a cafe waiting for friends. As soon as I finished it I started reading it again and found it even better the second time. And better still the third. Spencer deserves some kind of medal for the unerring precision of his ear, the scope of his reveries and his ability to articulate the inarticulable.

Practically an owner's manual for human courage and superhuman imagination. The characters are lovingly drawn and continually surprising. The book is several stories in one: the pursuit of a grieving children's author and a group of mental patients by unscrupulous pharmaceutical warlords, a fantasy about the rupture and leakage between the "real" world and a literary creation, a loving glimpse at the intricate clockwork of sadness and creativity and miracles, a painful catalog of lunacy and its lures, a faithful documentary of very real ways that people escape tragedy and emerge from it greater than the puzzle of their pieces.

You will be richer for having read it, so much richer you will be afraid of robbers. If you don't buy this book immediately for yourself and everyone you know, you deserve your fate

Rating:
Summary: Un-freaking-believable
Review: I don't know what book "a reader" in Austin was reading, but this is easily one of the best novels I've ever read. The insight and understanding of the characters is no less than stellar, the imagery is wonderful, and the way everything comes together in the end is extraordinary. This is a book you can't put down and I only wish I could give it more than 5 stars.

Rating:
Summary: Spencer's Sinister Fantasy World
Review: I read William Browning Spencer's "Resume with Monsters" and was quite impressed. Here is an author who knows how to combine quirky plots, horrific elements, and great character development into a seamless blend of grand entertainment. Why this guy is not sitting on the bestseller's list is a mystery of the highest order. Several of his books are not even in print anymore, another crime that needs a remedy as quickly as possible. Fortunately, public libraries often save the day when one looks for out of print material. His books are magical in that once read, they stay with you forever. This may be due in part to Spencer's habit of pouring himself into his stories. The familiarity shown in both "Zod Wallop" and "Resume with Monsters" with psychological problems and the difficulties of coping in modern society give hints into the author's knowledge about such unpleasant incidents.

Harry Gainesborough wrote a book called Zod Wallop after the death of his daughter Amy. The tragedy of his daughter's demise sent Harry into a tailspin, requiring a short stay in a mental asylum. A psychologist in the institution recommended Harry continue writing as a means of therapy, so Harry continued to work on Zod Wallop during his hospital stay. But the book he wrote while incarcerated took on a much grimmer, more dangerous tone than your everyday children's story. The characters in the land of Zod Wallop began to resemble some of the other patients and doctors in the ward. There are characters that bear a striking resemblance to Harry's literary agent. The problem comes when there are real life people who resemble the evil characters in the book because Zod Wallop is more than a book; it has the potential to become reality.

Harry is now out of the hospital and living alone in an isolated cabin. Amy's death still troubles him greatly, but he manages to get through each day until a triumvirate of patients from the mental institution arrives on his doorstep. Led by the over exuberant Raymond Story, this gang of miscreants includes Rene, a troubled but beautiful young girl; Emily, Raymond's new wife and a total invalid; and Allan, a man plagued with fits of violent rage. Joined by Lord Arbus, a monkey, the group tries to involve Harry in their quest to go to Florida where a showdown with the evil Lord Draining awaits. As Harry and his literary agent take part in Raymond's seemingly delusional odyssey, reality starts to warp on an increasingly disturbing level.

There is a perfectly (well, maybe) rational explanation for the strange encounters endured by Harry and his friends. Two executives from rival pharmaceutical companies take a significant interest in these escaped asylum inmates. The reasons are best left unsaid here, but it is safe to say that it involves something both men want very badly for research and development. As it turns out, Harry and his friends shared something special, albeit slightly sinister, during their residence at the hospital. As the executives take up the hunt, they too end up becoming a part of the fantasy of Zod Wallop.

I enjoy how Spencer deftly blended reality with the looming world of Zod Wallop. The reader never knows what is coming down the pipeline in this book. One minute everything seems to be going great, the next minute brings an attack by a Ralewing. A mundane trip to a convenience store turns into a mind-blowing experience with the full force of Harry's past. The conclusion of the story witnesses startling revelations, total immersion in the world of Zod Wallop, and closure for Harry and his ex-wife.

Spencer's book is a real hoot. This guy has a phenomenal imagination along with the ability to write engaging prose. Again, it is difficult to imagine why he is not considered a preeminent author. Both "Resume with Monsters" and "Zod Wallop" is enough to place Spencer head and shoulders above most of the drivel passed off on the public today. For those seeking a whimsical romp through the realms of unreality, Spencer is the man.

Rating:
Summary: Whats real whats not.
Review: Im going to make this short and sweet. This is a fantastic book! If your looking for a new auther to try out, give this book a try. I have passed this book on to 7 different friends and they all loved it. Give this and his other books a try. If you enjoy this, check out some books by Philip Jose Farmer.

Rating:
Summary: Ostonishing!!!!!....THE BEST BOOK EVER WRITEN!!!
Review: The descriptions in this book shame every poet. In fact i would go so fare as to say every poem writen is just a lazy attempt at a Zod Wallop! Some pepole have said that the charcters in this book are under developed, but if they would take a closer look at the writeing style it's self they would find each word Spencer uses to describe the charcters are not only acurate, but the condentations to how the words where put together are worth a million words from any other writer. Spencer is a genuise of the highest order!! I'll stake my life on that one. Also there is a lot of comparing Zod Wallop to Mr. Carolls The Land Of Luaghs. Both are great achivements in thier own right. How ever I must say : bare none Zod wallop demotes the Land Of Luaghs to little more then drivel. Where the Land Of luaghs focused more on charcter development, (becuase caroll is not advancesd as Spencer this took up a lot of time, & room)- Zod wallop focused mostly on creativity, and something actualy happening.

Rating:
Summary: Effective and imaginative
Review: The inevitable comparison that Zod Wallop brings to mind is to Jonathan Carroll's The Land of Laughs. Both novels revolve around a children's book that is directly affecting the lives of the other characters. The approach that the two authors take to the subject is quite different--Carroll, even in his first novel, drifts around the fantastic, never quite making it real, preferring to define his characters by the world of which we know. Spencer embraces the fantastic, so much so that it is hard sometimes to tell where the "real" world and the fantastic world come together. If one thinks of this balance between the real and the fantastic as a see-saw, in Carroll's world the heavier child is the real world, and vice versa in Spencer.

Harry Gainsborough wrote books for his daughter, Amy. His books were so good that they were published and became well-loved children's books across the world. But when his daughter drowns in a freak accident, he enters into a depression so severe that his agent checks him into a psychiatric ward. In the hospital, the therapist suggests that he write another book--hoping that the creative process will lift him out of despair. Instead, the book that he writes, Zod Wallop, is a bleak, dark novel--the kind of children's book that the Wicked Witch of the West would have written.

Zod Wallop is also Harry Gainsborough's most popular novel, more popular even than Bocky and the Moon Weasels or The Bathtub Wars. Children the world over love Zod Wallop, but none more so than Raymond Story, who read it while a patient at the Harwood Psychiatric Hospital. Raymond, who almost drowned when he was 8, sees his near-death experience as a link to the author of Zod Wallop. Raymond, who when he came across the first draft of Zod Wallop, destroyed the dark, original version that Harry had written. Or had he just hidden the book?

Lastly, William Browning Spencer's Zod Wallop is about the drug, Ecknazine, administered by Marlin Tate to a group of patients at the Harwood Psychiatric who had extremely rich imaginative lives. The goal of Tate's experiment was to enable telepathic communication, but the drug did something else, something much more strange than telepathy. The drug enabled Zod Wallop to come to life.

Spencer's novel is a complex knot of these three stories, moving at a reckless pace towards the conclusion. Zod Wallop is not a predictable book--it steadfastly refuses to toe the line of any one genre, going through thriller, fantasy, horror, science fiction, and mainstream in the course of its pages. I would not call it slipstream either, because it doesn't have a singular consistency of vision. The point is that it works, and in straight comparison to The Land of Laughs, it works better, because it works towards a resolution--one much more rewarding than Carroll's first effort. Spencer still has some honing before his prose is as sharp as Carroll's, specifically the Carroll of Bones of the Moon or After Silence, but Zod Wallop shows that he has the imagination and skills to be in the same league.

Rating:
Summary: his worst
Review: There's plenty of darkness and tense action that the characters must stumble through before they reach the light, but even in the most horrific situations, there is an elusive sense of joy infusing every scene. Whether the joy comes from Spencer's word play and humor, or from manic personality of Raymond Story, the bottom line is that it's the most enjoyable new story I've read in the last decade. I'll leave it at that; there's no need for me to repeat plot details that you can pick up from other reviews.

Rating:
Summary: Zod Takes a Wallop
Review: This is the third time in a little over a year that I am reviewing a book by William Browning Spencer. This time the book in question is THE RETURN OF COUNT ELECTRIC. This volume is a collection of short stories. During their original publication these stories prompted Roger Zelazny to declare Spencer the premier short story writer of the decade.

While Zelazny may have been right that Spencer's stories are very well crafted and written, his earlier books left me unprepared for this collection. What really threw me about this collection was that I made it from cover to cover without encountering any elements of science fiction or fantasy. I did, however, encounter madness. As evidenced in his novels, Spencer has a knack for getting into the minds of the deranged and obsessed. In one amusing story we are treated to the rantings of a man convinced that his wife is having an affair with Stephen King and feeding him plots.

So, while this book cannot technically be called science fiction or fantasy and resembles horror only in the most tenuous ways I was still a very appealing book. Despite the lack of SF trappings, Spencer's writing still remains as captivating as in RESUME WITH MONSTERS or ZOD WALLOP. So if you enjoyed either of those books, then you might want to take a gander at this one.

Rating:
Summary: Zod Takes a Wallop
Review: This is the third time in a little over a year that I am reviewing a book by William Browning Spencer. This time the book in question is THE RETURN OF COUNT ELECTRIC. This volume is a collection of short stories. During their original publication these stories prompted Roger Zelazny to declare Spencer the premier short story writer of the decade.

While Zelazny may have been right that Spencer's stories are very well crafted and written, his earlier books left me unprepared for this collection. What really threw me about this collection was that I made it from cover to cover without encountering any elements of science fiction or fantasy. I did, however, encounter madness. As evidenced in his novels, Spencer has a knack for getting into the minds of the deranged and obsessed. In one amusing story we are treated to the rantings of a man convinced that his wife is having an affair with Stephen King and feeding him plots.

So, while this book cannot technically be called science fiction or fantasy and resembles horror only in the most tenuous ways I was still a very appealing book. Despite the lack of SF trappings, Spencer's writing still remains as captivating as in RESUME WITH MONSTERS or ZOD WALLOP. So if you enjoyed either of those books, then you might want to take a gander at this one.

Rating:
Summary: Good, but not great
Review: Zod Wallop is a book of considerable imagination that I highly recommend, but it falls short of five star status. Spencer has crafted the beginnings of a classic, but in the end, weak characterization of some of the minor players and too many unresolved loose threads left me a little disappointed when all was said and done. Still, the book is a quick, enjoyable read, and does contain many thought-provoking ideas and concepts.