Review: Perfections

By Kirstyn McDermott, Twelfth Planet Press, 2014 (2012)

Reviewed by Kyla Lee Ward

"She keeps writing, ignoring the sparks of pain in her hand, the winch-tight ache across her shoulders from sitting curled over for so long. Knowing that most of it has to be rubbish, the words no better than ashes and dust, because nothing that comes this easily can possibly be good – can it? can it? – but writing anyway, compelled to get everything out and onto the page."

With only a slight shift of perspective, this could be a razor-edged depiction of the worst month in the lives of two sisters. The month one ends a four-year relationship. The month their mother dies. It could be that story; only then readers like me wouldn't touch it. Readers like me need the gloss, the promise of something beyond. And that is exactly where the horror of Perfections lies.

Jacqueline is the elder, the responsible, clear-thinking one with the degree and the job in the gallery. Antoinette is the impulsive, passionate one, who works as a waitress to support her lover as he finishes his novel. They perform their ritualistic dance, of mutual comfort and contempt, in contemporary Melbourne, attempting to avoid all but equally ritualistic contact with their eccentric mother, who lives like a hermit out in the Dandenongs.

Neither sister creates. Although both are drawn, in their separate ways, to acts of imagination, neither imagines she can perform them. Until Antoinette, without really meaning to, crosses the line. Until the night she is left alone with a bottle of vodka and an empty notebook, and then, of course, all hell breaks loose.

Read the complete review here.

Review: Path of Night

By Dirk Flinthart, Fablecroft, 2013

Reviewed by Kyla Lee Ward

Ten

This is a by-the-numbers thriller, so you can expect certain things. An easy-going Everyman who stumbles into something he shouldn't – in this case, illegal biological research. A spunky lady cop, following the fallout and determined to get to the bottom of things. An ice-cold assassin who's already there. Sparks of sexual tension, and rapidly escalating violence. And it's not too much of a spoiler to suggest that, at the end, there's going to be one hell of a –

Nine

But it's also got vampires in it. Night beasts. Now, you could call these monsters old school – the path leads back to ancient Mesopotamia – except that old school vampires aren't generally this well-equipped. Flinthart takes the sensible approach that, even if the Night Beast virus creates bloodthirsty, super-powered psychopaths, they aren't going to survive the millennia without getting properly organised. There's even a treaty in place, to prevent all-out war between them and an ancient order of vampire hunters. Of course, the unprecedented changes occurring to our hero could defenestrate everything.

Eight

What you look for in a romp like this is deft handling of the tropes. Flinthart delivers a thoughtful and entertaining take on his material. Mike's condition brings on moral quandaries, that lend the emotional action the same kind of crunch that the convincing details of hardware and procedure grant the more militaristic sequences. The operations of the Hunter, Hellyer, are pleasingly plausible, as are the machinations of the villainous, yet intelligent, Lutterell, "the Seigneur's Seneschal".

Seven...

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