Dread Island: A Classics Mutilated Tale Convention Edition

by Joe R. Lansdale, Menton J. Matthews III

Limited to remaining stock on hand! This "Monster Lit" mash-up novella from modern horror master Joe R. Lansdale, a highlight from the recent Classics Mutilated anthology, combines Lovecraft and Mark Twain in a way that can only be described as brilliant. Or, as Lansdale.

Genres: Horror, Lovecraftian

84 pages, Paperback

First published July 1, 2010

About the author

Champion Mojo Storyteller Joe R. Lansdale is the author of over forty novels and numerous short stories. His work has appeared in national anthologies, magazines, and collections, as well as numerous foreign publications. He has written for comics, television, film, newspapers, and Internet sites. His work has been collected in more than two dozen short-story collections, and he has edited or co-edited over a dozen anthologies. He has received the Edgar Award, eight Bram Stoker Awards, the Horror Writers Association Lifetime Achievement Award, the British Fantasy Award, the Grinzani Cavour Prize for Literature, the Herodotus Historical Fiction Award, the Inkpot Award for Contributions to Science Fiction and Fantasy, and many others. His novella Bubba Ho-Tep was adapted to film by Don Coscarelli, starring Bruce Campbell and Ossie Davis. His story "Incident On and Off a Mountain Road" was adapted to film for Showtime's "Masters of Horror," and he adapted his short story "Christmas with the Dead" to film hisownself. The film adaptation of his novel Cold in July was nominated for the Grand Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival, and the Sundance Channel has adapted his Hap & Leonard novels for television.

He is currently co-producing several films, among them The Bottoms, based on his Edgar Award-winning novel, with Bill Paxton and Brad Wyman, and The Drive-In, with Greg Nicotero. He is Writer In Residence at Stephen F. Austin State University, and is the founder of the martial arts system Shen Chuan: Martial Science and its affiliate, Shen Chuan Family System. He is a member of both the United States and International Martial Arts Halls of Fame. He lives in Nacogdoches, Texas with his wife, dog, and two cats.

Reviews

[mark monday · Rating 3 out of 5]

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+ a horrific version of



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+ a little bit of



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= this story

Dread Island is entertaining, exceedingly original, and - despite its bizarrely disparate parts - surprisingly smooth going down. Joe Lansdale shows off his writing chops in a witty and piquant mash-up that seems like it was a lot of fun to write. it sure was fun to read.

[Laurel · Rating 4 out of 5]

I love when authors go out on a limb - experiment with a new genre or shake up their style. What made this great was that Lansdale was given free reign to play around with a old classic. He creates great atmosphere, does a beautiful job of mixing humor with creepy horror, and expands upon two of the greatest characters in classic American literature. If you're looking for something unique and fun, give Dread Island a try. I don't think you'll be disappointed!

[Thomas · Rating 3 out of 5]

Dread Island is a story Joe Lansdale wrote for an anthology called Classics Mutilated. In it, the authors take classic stories and mash them together with other genres to see what comes out at the other end. In Dread Island, Lansdale mashes up Huck Finn, Uncle Remus, and the Cthulhu Mythos (along with a dash of Peter Pan) to create what can only be described as some super-mojo storytelling, as one would expect from Lansdale.

Lansdale captures the voice of Mark Twain well, which is no surprise since his East Texas style lends itself to that voice. The themes of his fiction are also parallelled with Twain's, since they both look at racial injustice in the South. Of all the writers to write like Mark Twain, Lansdale is the best choice; of all the writers to mix in Uncle Remus and Cthulhu into Mark Twain's style, Lansdale is probably the only choice.

Like a lot of Lansdale's short stories and novellas, Dread Island is intended for Lansdale's most hardcore fans. Fans of his Hap and Leonard stories, or his East Texas mysteries like Sunset and Sawdust or A Fine Dark Line, might not be prepared for this much of an oddity, especially if they haven't read, say, "Bob the Dinosaur Goes to Disneyland" or "Dog, Cat, and Baby". Lansdale's delving into his weird oeuvre here, which is much weirder than his standard fiction.

[Nick · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5

[Charles Bodenheimer · Rating 3 out of 5]

Take 1 part Huck Finn, 1 Part Br'er Rabbit and 1 part HP Lovecraft, and put it in a bag and shake it up. empty contents into pot and simmer. That's Dread Island. The story flowed along nicely, and Mojo Joe really embodied the voice of the classic characters. A great novella and highly recommended.

[Canavan · Rating 3 out of 5]

✭✭✭

[Ami Morrison · Rating 5 out of 5]

Full review is on the book blog Creature From the Book Lagoon.

Dread Island is an EPIC story. I’ve never been a huge fan of Huck and Tom, but you throw in crazy other worldly black magic and giant tentacle creatures from other dimensions and a whole bunch of other crazy shit and you have one hell of a river adventure I can get on board with!

Heavily inspired with Lovecraft’s creepiness, which is really obvious. I don’t know much about Uncle Remus. I’m from the south, and I know I’ve heard the stories of Br’er Rabbit and the Tar-Baby and probably others. But it’s been a very, veeeeeery long time and I don’t recall much of them. There is a lot of Uncle Remus inspiration within Dread Island. Br’er Rabbit, Br’er Fox, the tar baby… they all show up and play major roles in this novella.

Dread Island was a very clever mash up of all these different classics. And it was so entertainingly creepy. I was very sad when it was over! Definitely makes me want to read the whole anthology. I’m really glad that I sat down and finally read this story. It had been on my TBR shelf for waaaaaay too long!

[Geoff · Rating 4 out of 5]

This story by Lansdale is a mash-up. The central character is Huckleberry Finn and it uses Lovecraft and Uncle Remus influences to create the tale. As mentioned Huck is the central character and along with his friend Jim he is asked to hunt down his buddy Tom Sawyer from Dread Island. Now Dread Island is an island that mysteriously appears in the middle of the Mississippi River on the first day of the Full Moon for each month. Tom has gone off and is missing so Huck and Jim track him down.

*** minor spoilers ***
What happens is we enter a world that has Brer Rabbit and his briar patch, and where Uncle Remus was also a visitor on this island. What we find out is Brer Fox wants to bring Cut Through You (say really fast) through a hole in the sky so he can take over the world, and Huck and Jim get caught up in this craziness as they try and rescue Tom.

This was an enjoyable read; the references to Uncle Remus, Mark Twain and H. P. Lovecraft were all welcome and made for one interesting mash-up story. This was well put together and I thoroughly enjoyed this book.

[Tony Petry · Rating 3 out of 5]

The book my friend let me borrow had more pages in it and it was called Required Reading Remixed, same cover and everything. I only liked a few of the short stories in here.