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Dark•Matter #1
In Hollow Houses
It's all true. — It's not a nightmare. — It's all possible. An unspeakable evil stirs beneath the nation's capital, the gateway to a world of terror few have seen. The Hoffman Institute may be our only defense . . . but is it part of the solution or part of the problem? Reality and paranoia collide when dark forces converge on a world that seems normal. This is In Hollow Houses, the first novel in a new line of dark, contemporary fantasy fiction.
288 pages, Mass Market Paperback
First published August 1, 2000
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94 people want to read
About the author
Gary A. Braunbeck
224 books232 followersGary A. Braunbeck is a prolific author who writes mysteries, thrillers, science fiction, fantasy, horror, and mainstream literature. He is the author of 19 books; his fiction has been translated into Japanese, French, Italian, Russian and German. Nearly 200 of his short stories have appeared in various publications.
His fiction has received several awards, including the Bram Stoker Award in 2003 for "Duty" and in 2005 for "We Now Pause for Station Identification"; his book Destinations Unknown won a Stoker in 2006. His novella "Kiss of the Mudman" received the International Horror Guild Award in 2005."
His fiction has received several awards, including the Bram Stoker Award in 2003 for "Duty" and in 2005 for "We Now Pause for Station Identification"; his book Destinations Unknown won a Stoker in 2006. His novella "Kiss of the Mudman" received the International Horror Guild Award in 2005."
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Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews
October 12, 2018
Lost interest halfway though.
Read
October 3, 2021As part of my "going crazy inside my house" last year, I bought the few missing books from TSR's last game line, Alternity, a generic science fiction game with several campaign settings; and one of those settings was Dark*Matter, a Conspiracy X/X-Files/Delta Green sort of game, where the PCs were heroes who were uncovering the conspiratorial and weird in our modern world.
This setting was published circa 1999 and is probably going to be hugely important to future historians of the 1990s who want to investigate the zeitgeist. Assuming there are historians in the future--or a future at all.
But I loved it and am looking forward to reading the game books and reviewing them in due time, but first up, the novels: there were four published, a fifth available briefly in PDF ("By Dust Consumed" -- and if anyone has a lead on how to get that, I'd be interested), and maybe a sixth planned; and I was lucky enough to find the four on eBay for a moderate bargain.
So, read in 2021, how does this first book hold up? It is somewhat helped by the fact that it is related to a game that I have read the books for, so the author can kind of gloss over a few things: there are grey aliens, there's the heroes at the Hoffman Institute trying to protect humanity, etc. But that's about the only nice thing I can say about this book: it doesn't explicitly contradict anything in the game.
Or I guess here's another faint praise award: it's very 90's, so everyone talks in the quippy, sarcastic way of the disaffected 90's. The story follows three main protagonists: Jeanne, the strong female arson expert (who honestly read less "strong female" than inadvertently "possibly on the spectrum"); Ngan, the psychic meditator raised by enlightened monks in the mystic East (who might be in touch with aliens, which makes the mystic East a little more palatable to me, a white guy); and... I can't even remember the third guy's name, but he's a dude entrusted with a mission, and he's got a Secret History that he uncovers and that changes everything. (Note: It really doesn't change anything; once or twice we are told that his world is rocked by this truth, everything he thought was a lie, etc., but there's no real there there -- nothing that tells us what that experience might actually be like.) But, getting back to that 90s sense, they all sort of sound alike.
Anyway, they are searching for a little homeless girl whose mother is a junkie and whose dealer is a pedophile, and this little girl has befriended this exiled alien, and there's another alien monster on the loose, and a lot of homeless people living in the subway tunnels (again, and imagine I'm saying this in the same tone as the punchline to the joke "The Aristocrats": the 90s!). And there are men in black who are hunting them (but who also seem so wholly incompetent).
Here's the thing: you can write an entertaining potboiler with archetypal characters (though please, make them archetypal enough so that they sound different when talking), but you have to have a plot that makes sense and that has stakes. Here, we know the alien is good because he befriended a little girl; we never really see the alien monster (except for the prologue) and when we do, we learn quickly that it is on the good side, or at least easily controlled by the good alien; the men in black are again incompetent; but worse than all that, it's never really clear what the good and bad outcomes might be.
And then there's the writing:
The other books in the series are written by other authors, but I have grave doubts about the editor's vision here.
On the other hand, these books were maybe planned by TSR, but eventually published by Wizards of the Coast after the takeover, so who knows what the process was.
This setting was published circa 1999 and is probably going to be hugely important to future historians of the 1990s who want to investigate the zeitgeist. Assuming there are historians in the future--or a future at all.
But I loved it and am looking forward to reading the game books and reviewing them in due time, but first up, the novels: there were four published, a fifth available briefly in PDF ("By Dust Consumed" -- and if anyone has a lead on how to get that, I'd be interested), and maybe a sixth planned; and I was lucky enough to find the four on eBay for a moderate bargain.
So, read in 2021, how does this first book hold up? It is somewhat helped by the fact that it is related to a game that I have read the books for, so the author can kind of gloss over a few things: there are grey aliens, there's the heroes at the Hoffman Institute trying to protect humanity, etc. But that's about the only nice thing I can say about this book: it doesn't explicitly contradict anything in the game.
Or I guess here's another faint praise award: it's very 90's, so everyone talks in the quippy, sarcastic way of the disaffected 90's. The story follows three main protagonists: Jeanne, the strong female arson expert (who honestly read less "strong female" than inadvertently "possibly on the spectrum"); Ngan, the psychic meditator raised by enlightened monks in the mystic East (who might be in touch with aliens, which makes the mystic East a little more palatable to me, a white guy); and... I can't even remember the third guy's name, but he's a dude entrusted with a mission, and he's got a Secret History that he uncovers and that changes everything. (Note: It really doesn't change anything; once or twice we are told that his world is rocked by this truth, everything he thought was a lie, etc., but there's no real there there -- nothing that tells us what that experience might actually be like.) But, getting back to that 90s sense, they all sort of sound alike.
Anyway, they are searching for a little homeless girl whose mother is a junkie and whose dealer is a pedophile, and this little girl has befriended this exiled alien, and there's another alien monster on the loose, and a lot of homeless people living in the subway tunnels (again, and imagine I'm saying this in the same tone as the punchline to the joke "The Aristocrats": the 90s!). And there are men in black who are hunting them (but who also seem so wholly incompetent).
Here's the thing: you can write an entertaining potboiler with archetypal characters (though please, make them archetypal enough so that they sound different when talking), but you have to have a plot that makes sense and that has stakes. Here, we know the alien is good because he befriended a little girl; we never really see the alien monster (except for the prologue) and when we do, we learn quickly that it is on the good side, or at least easily controlled by the good alien; the men in black are again incompetent; but worse than all that, it's never really clear what the good and bad outcomes might be.
And then there's the writing:
It was both terrifying and compelling, a thing beyond All Things, a being above All Beings, beyond love and bliss or their sum, beyond grief and violence of their total, beyond grace and prayer or their cumulative effects on the psyche, beyond even the place in humankind’s unconscious where the monstrous and depraved joined hands with the majestic and beautiful to begin the dance that ended with physical evil and moral goodness forever intwined like the strands of a double helix encoded into the DNA of the universe, and, finally, beyond the capability of Jeanne's mind to comprehend and catalogue its grandeur.
[...]
Its arms and legs gave it a vaguely human form…
The other books in the series are written by other authors, but I have grave doubts about the editor's vision here.
On the other hand, these books were maybe planned by TSR, but eventually published by Wizards of the Coast after the takeover, so who knows what the process was.
March 24, 2011
Based on the WotC RPG Dark Matter it is the first in a series of five books. Though as far as I know the books could stand alone. I have this one and the fourth one. I found myself unable to really get into the story and I don't know why. It had beautifully grotesque descriptions and was very X-Files like. I will eventually read the fourth book, but I am not in a hurry. I have owned this book for many years and now it is finally read. That is kind of a good feeling at least.
October 24, 2007
This is a terrific X-Files-like procedural blended with Braunbeck's excellent ability to draw remarkable yet believable characters. It's a shame it was published in the series format so that it didn't receive the attention and acclaim that it deserved. It's a whole lot of fun!
August 19, 2012
Government conspiracies, men in black, aliens, UFOs, secret histories, and a lot of spiritual mumbo-jumbo. Did I miss anything?
May 24, 2022
(just a note: I'm reviewing the series as a whole, because these books aren't good enough to warrant individual reviews. Sorry if that sounds mean, but I had to read these, and you didn't, so there.)
I get that basing a series of novels on a role-playing game can be fun (especially one where players take on conspiracy theories and shady bureaucratic rabbit-holes), and to be fair, I was really into these when I'd first read them. The problem was, I'd started with books 2 & 3 (those were the only ones I'd found at the time), which is not the way to start a sequential series, no matter what The Teenager's mother might tell you (you can't start on a tv series at season 4, IT DOESN'T WORK THAT WAY), so since then I've been idly wondering how the whole thing started, and how it ended.
Two decades later, I came across the rest of the books in the series, and decided to revisit the whole thing. I'm not sure that was the best idea. I mean, I'm down for an X-Files homage as much as the next person, but these are not good. This isn't even second-rate, this is what second-raters look down their noses at. There's no character development, just trope-y descriptors passed between authors: Fitz is a secret clone of JFK, a fact that never really gets explored; every book just takes great pains to mention that he's a 'natural leader of men', and other than a having a penchant for making truly unfunny witticisms, that's about it. His partner is DEFINITELY NOT Dana Scully, despite the red hair and skepticism - and of course, large heaving breasts. The malevolent force they're investigating (the Dark Tide), is never really fully explored/explained, just a catch-all classification given to anything paranormal or supernatural. Aliens? Dark Tide. Nazi's infiltrating the government? Dark Tide. Holy Grail hunters? Dark Tide. Chaos magick, yetis, ghosts, state buildings hiding vast subterranean tunnels leading god-knows-where? "The Dark Tide is rising!" They even have a wise Tibetan supervisor who either speaks in cryptic riddles or vague platitudes, and is often mystified by our strange western ways. There's never any real resolution to anything they investigate, just shootouts, exploding buildings, and shrugs. I'm just, man, ugh. So disappointed.
(In all fairness: I didn't actually read the fifth and final book, so maybe everything did get wrapped up to everyone's satisfaction. But life's too short to risk wading through this kinda garbage to find out.)
I gotta say: younger me has a lot to answer for. The only good thing about this series is that it gave me something to read on the toilet. 2/10 would not eat here agin, because some weirdo in a fedora would probably interrupt my meal to whisper 'the Dark Tide is rising' before running away with my cutlery.
I get that basing a series of novels on a role-playing game can be fun (especially one where players take on conspiracy theories and shady bureaucratic rabbit-holes), and to be fair, I was really into these when I'd first read them. The problem was, I'd started with books 2 & 3 (those were the only ones I'd found at the time), which is not the way to start a sequential series, no matter what The Teenager's mother might tell you (you can't start on a tv series at season 4, IT DOESN'T WORK THAT WAY), so since then I've been idly wondering how the whole thing started, and how it ended.
Two decades later, I came across the rest of the books in the series, and decided to revisit the whole thing. I'm not sure that was the best idea. I mean, I'm down for an X-Files homage as much as the next person, but these are not good. This isn't even second-rate, this is what second-raters look down their noses at. There's no character development, just trope-y descriptors passed between authors: Fitz is a secret clone of JFK, a fact that never really gets explored; every book just takes great pains to mention that he's a 'natural leader of men', and other than a having a penchant for making truly unfunny witticisms, that's about it. His partner is DEFINITELY NOT Dana Scully, despite the red hair and skepticism - and of course, large heaving breasts. The malevolent force they're investigating (the Dark Tide), is never really fully explored/explained, just a catch-all classification given to anything paranormal or supernatural. Aliens? Dark Tide. Nazi's infiltrating the government? Dark Tide. Holy Grail hunters? Dark Tide. Chaos magick, yetis, ghosts, state buildings hiding vast subterranean tunnels leading god-knows-where? "The Dark Tide is rising!" They even have a wise Tibetan supervisor who either speaks in cryptic riddles or vague platitudes, and is often mystified by our strange western ways. There's never any real resolution to anything they investigate, just shootouts, exploding buildings, and shrugs. I'm just, man, ugh. So disappointed.
(In all fairness: I didn't actually read the fifth and final book, so maybe everything did get wrapped up to everyone's satisfaction. But life's too short to risk wading through this kinda garbage to find out.)
I gotta say: younger me has a lot to answer for. The only good thing about this series is that it gave me something to read on the toilet. 2/10 would not eat here agin, because some weirdo in a fedora would probably interrupt my meal to whisper 'the Dark Tide is rising' before running away with my cutlery.
January 29, 2019
So the first chapter blew me away. Gripping, dark, vivid imagery and fast-paced story telling. The culmination of it really had me excited for more. About half way through the novel I was enjoying the story but the writing wasn't as gripping as it was to start, and I never really felt like there was a solid payoff. It didn't deliver in the sense that I was expecting it to be darker, with more well-crafted writing. Admittedly I lost interest in reading it regularly about two-thirds in, so may not have given it a fair chance (being as easily distracted as I am), but it just wasn't what I was hoping for. The characters were pretty well defined, but not especially likable (other than the two hobos who were just support-characters). Overall I didn't mind reading it, and some of the writing was good enough to inspire me, but I wouldn't specifically recommend it to a friend. I might look into more of the writer's stuff, because he did show a lot of promise, but with as much as I have on my reading list, it's doubtful I'll get around to picking up anything else from him.
April 18, 2021
I liked the setting and some of the characters like Leah, Jimmy, and Merc, but McCain was trying too hard to be sarcastic that it just got annoying. There was also something about the writing, and I can't quite put my finger on what, that just bugged me. It wasn't a difficult read, it was just off.
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews