In the mood for a grotesque thriller, skin-crawling creeper, or fantastic adventure? James Gabrillo dashes off a literary hit list that’ll satiate your thirst for phantasm

Drood
Authored by Dan Simmons
Half-truth and half-fiction, Drood uses an unfinished Charles Dickens novel, The Mystery of Edwin Drood, as its starting point to create a story like no other. In this big, bad, bulky, opium-charged historical thriller, Dickens forms a strange friendship with a master mesmerist/murderer named Drood. After a brief encounter, the Victorian icon goes around the slums and sewers of London in search of his new acquaintance—allegedly to take part in a conspiracy to build a mystical Egyptian empire right smack in the center of Victorian London. Built by up-against-the-clock suspense, Drood is 772 pages of honest-to-goodness  ridiculousness.

READABILITY   2/5
ENLIGHTENMENT   4/5

Philippine Speculative Fiction IV
Edited by Dean Francis Alfar & Nikki Alfar
This local anthology features 24 stories that are at times quiet and traditional but always involving and inventive. Particularly enthralling are Maryanne Moll’s “Breathing Space,” Joseph Nacino’s “Dreams of the Iron Giant,” and Isabel Yap’s “The Dance of the Storm.” The standout among the bunch is Andrew Drilon’s “The Secret Origin of Spin-man,” a tender, bizarrely vivid, and flat-out inspired story. A kaleidoscopic tapestry of fresh literary talent, the Philippine Speculative Fiction IV is one that’s worth many re-reads.

READABILITY   3/5
ENLIGHTENMENT 5/5

The Anniversary Man
Authored by R.J. Ellory
John Costello’s past is unsettling. Twenty years ago, a serial killer attacked him and his girlfriend Nadia, who was killed by the first blow of the murderer’s hammer. Today, John works as a crime researcher for a major daily. When he hears about a new serial killer terrorizing his hometown, he contemplates on whether to jump into the case or not, wary of scratching old scars. Despite occasionally flat characterizations, The Anniversary Man is written with authentic verve. It’s a chilling narrative that builds to an unforeseen conclusion that will leave you wheezing.

READABILITY   3/5
ENLIGHTENMENT   3/5

Pride and Prejudice and Zombies
Authored by Jane Austen and Seth Grahame-Smith
When every plot’s already been thought of and every genre has been done to death, all that remains is to mix and match. Seth Grahame-Smith takes full poetic license in skewing Austen’s classic saga. In Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, the undead is introduced into an English novel of high snobiety. Austen’s characters are all present, plus a few new ones who—in all likelihood—would rather devour Elizabeth Bennet than hold her hand. Talk about raising the stakes to juice up a classic: the novel’s subtlest moral is that in an era of wunderkind worshipping, the modern literary establishment pays too little respect to its elders.

READABILITY  4/5
ENLIGHTENMENT  2/5

Shutter Island
Authored by Dennis Lehane
From the same man behind Mystic River and Gone, Baby, Gone comes a scalding novel noir that taps into our collective anxiety and fondness for B-movies. It’s 1954 and a multiple murderess has escaped from a mental facility on Shutter Island. U.S. Marshal Teddy Daniels sets out for the chase and ends up losing his grip on reality when he finds out there’s more to the enigma he’s hunting for. Soulful, disturbing, perfect. A film adaptation by Martin Scorsese is set to hit the screens on February 2010.

READABILITY  5/5
ENLIGHTENMENT  4/5