Translating Untcigahunk by Rick Hautala

Translating Untcigahunk and enjoying it!

I've recently read, and am currently translating, Untcigahunk: The Complete Little Brothers by Rick Hautala. The book consists of the horror novel Little Brothers and of several stories set in the same world -- which would be our own, except that the creatures from the American Indian mythology, such as the "little brothers", truly exist there. And are quite nasty and hungry.

Here's the description of the novel you can usually find on the Internet:
It has been five years since Kip Howard saw his mother killed horribly by a blur of ""little brown things"." Five years of nightmares and a terror of dark places. Five years of struggling to overcome what must have been just his imagination...But the 'untcigahumk', the Indian word for ""little brothers"," are no one's imagination. hideous forest creatures who feed every five years on human flesh, the little brothers are about to emerge from underground once again.Only this time, there will be no escape for the young boy who witnessed their last feast.

And here's what I think of the book, as a reader: I enjoyed it.

If I look at it as a horror novel, it works quite well, with the nasty little monsters trying to eat the protagonist and a few other people. It has a bunch of the usual horror elements, nasty monsters, teenagers who have sex and get killed after it, the kid who saw something but nobody believes him, the town drunk who can be so much more... What adds to the value of the novel is that it would've worked just fine even without the monsters. If the mother from the beginning of the description died by some more common accident while her seven-year-old son watched, if there were no hungry little creatures, the novel would have still worked as a compelling family drama and a coming-of-age story. The two boys who lost their mother, the man who lost his beloved wife and is trying to keep the family going, the older son who is becoming increasingly like the town teen bully while the younger one is seeing a psychotherapist on regular basis... The younger boy meets an unlikely friend who helps him overcome his troubles... It would be quite a compelling story even without the "little brothers" wishing to eat a bunch of people and perhaps some cattle, too. Although, it is more fun with the little buggers.

After the novel, you get to enjoy three "mythological" stories, about the creation of the untcigahunk, and then some other stories about human encounters with the "little brothers", with the usual entertainment of the unreasonable, stubborn trouble-makers or the folks who stand and watch instead of running for their lives getting eaten by the monsters.

Now, I would've preferred a shorter novel, but that's just me; I've seen people say they enjoyed the length, because that way they got to know the characters better, and they liked their company. What annoyed me a little bit was Kip occasionally turning from a likable boy whose fears and trauma we understood to a sulking little brat. However, it didn't really spoil the book, it's just a detail which could have been better.

What can I say, it was fun reading this book, and it's quite fun translating it.

The Books I've Read In 2011

I tried to read 100 books in 2011, and failed; I only got to 78. Translating all day and recovering after the work is done seem to take their toll. Still, I did manage to read some really good books, and below are the seven that meant most to me, in no particular order. If I've written a review of the book, there's a link to it.

Let the Right One In by John Ajvide Lindquist.

Zoo City by Lauren Beukes. If you wish for a book with a strong African female protagonist, this one would be a great choice.

The Woman In the Dunes by Kobo Abe. A surreal Japanese novel about the erosion of the mind and the spirit and the morality, an unusual love story, and a story of an unexpected enlightenment.

Dreamsongs: A Retrospective by G.R.R. Martin. A retrospective of a famous writer, starting with his early, not-so-good works, and following his career. A huge book mostly filled with compelling stories. After reading it, I came to the conclusion that his A Song For Lya is still one of the most beautiful stories ever, and that, as much as I find A Song of Ice and Fire fun, his science fiction Sandkings are much, much better.

Master of the Day of Judgement by Leo Perutz. This novel is from 1923, and on the surface, it's your typical murder-in-the-locked-room story, with fantastical elements thrown in. It's also a masterfully written novel, with the flawless rhythm and the fantastical images which stay with you long after you've finished it.

Dying Inside, by Robert Silverberg.

Old Masters by Thomas Benrhard. The old misanthrope at his best -- and with the ending which will make you roar in laughter.

Overall, I did read some great books in the last year, I just hope I'll be able to read even more.

Have you read something great?

A Book and a Story

A book and a story on the same day!

I received my copies of the translation of the Cassandra Clare's City of Glass today. It still feels great being able to hold my translations in my hands!

Also, it's Friday today, meaning Flash Fiction Friday's at Karen Wojcik Berner's blog -- and this Friday, my story Golden Eyes made it there. It's a Nightmare month over there, so if you're in the mood for it, go check it out!

My Review Helped a Book!

My review helped a book!

I've received wonderful news yesterday: Kosingas - The Order of the Dragon by Aleksandar Tesic will be bought by a Polish publishing house and translated into Polish. And my review helped that happen.

My story with the Kosingas trilogy (an epic fantasy trilogy with a flavor of Slavic mythology) began a few years ago, when I found the first book of the trilogy, the only one published at the time, in a local library. I've read it, enjoyed it, and wrote a favorable review at a website I was working for at the time.

When the second book in the trilogy came out, the publisher contacted me. It turned out they loved my review (it seems that, at the time, other reviewers of the book focused on some aspects of the book, and that nobody wrote just a review, an article telling people what the book was about, the good, the bad, the interesting... They just insisted on this or that aspect of the book, and some were quite overdoing it), and they gave me the second book in the trilogy. A book for free, yay! The book was good, and I wrote another favorable review.

By the time the third book came out, the website I was working for no longer published book reviews. Books, who needs them? Celebrities, women's issues, teens, love&sex, that's what they wanted, not book reviews. The publisher gave me the third book anyway, because we worked so well in the past.

The first book in the trilogy was translated into English. When I started to write for Suite101, I wrote the review of the book, this time in English, adapted for foreign readers. A Polish editor happened to read it, and less than a month from the review being published, he found me on Facebook and asked for the contact with the author and/or publisher of the English edition. He was interested to read the book, and perhaps to buy it for his publishing house. I gave him all the contacts I had. I contacted the author and told him about it, and he was very happy to hear about it.

A bit more than a week passed. Nothing. Maybe the editor wasn't interested, after all? Maybe those things didn't work so fast? I didn't know, but I wanted to hope for the best.

As I said, I've got great news yesterday. The first book of the Kosingas trilogy will be translated into Polish and published in Poland. And I helped it happen.

I'm still wondering if it's really true. I'm still not certain that my review could have had such an impact. Of course, it wasn't just the doing of my review, Mr. Tesic had written about 1500 pages of the trilogy (it really ended with the third book!), and good pages at that, but still. My review helped.

It's a great feeling. Even though I'm still a bit dazzled.

Saving Creativity? What Creativity?

The Golden City - Serbian Edition

This morning, I've finished reading The Golden City by John Twelve Hawks. It's the last book in the Fourth Realm trilogy. The trilogy itself resembles, among the other things, the Matrix movies, people trying to free themselves from those who want to keep them in a virtual prison and control them completely, and the one visionary trying to find a way to do it. Visionaries and creative people are the natural enemies of those, of course. The first two books were fun to read, there was a lot of action, and also some interesting culture-jamming stuff, like the free runners. But the third one...

Maybe I've read too much. Maybe I've seen too much. But the third book was way too predictable. While it is completely normal for a book to follow a certain pattern, there should also be something creative in it. Especially if the author is going to preach (yes, this one preaches) about the necessity of visionaries, of Travelers, of creativity. If I see nothing creative in that sort of book, I ask: Err, what creativity am I supposed to fight for?

The characters are the same ones who were in the first two books, with an addition of some small roles of the new ones. Some of the main characters grow, and that is good. But they grow in a predictable way. The events are predictable. The ending is quite predictable.

Boring, and even worse, completely missing the point of the trilogy.

*yawns*

Weird Sunday Ramblings

Today we moved clocks. They stole an hour from us. In the autumn, the forces of dark give us an hour; in the spring, the forces of light take an hour from us. Darn thieves.

The weather is weird. It's almost April, but in the morning it was almost as cold as the February, while in the February it was as warm as the April. Now, in the afternoon, it's getting warm, but it's hard to tell for how long. It's seems that the spring can't make her mind whether she's coming or not.

The eggs were weird this morning, too. Just look at the picture -- I didn't do anything unusual to them, promise.

The eggs were weird this morning.

The taste was pretty much the normal one, though. Am I weird for actually eating something that looks like that?

I was thinking about writing another book review today, but decided I needed to rest at least once in a while. So, there's the review I wrote yesterday, of Richard Matheson's Hell House. Written forty years ago, it still has its charm, and it's still haunting, just as a haunted house novel should be.

So, today I'm having some rest and reading a book (scroll a few posts down to see which one).