Here are the new short reviews! Unluckily, this time it is all about books that I would rate as average except for Negative Space and Crossroads which are very solid stories.
I don't know, maybe it's the lockdown winter or maybe it really is the books, but this time I found it hard to feel much excitement for the books I've read. I still hope you enjoy them.
In Lumley's take on the Cthulhu universe, we are introduced to Titus Crow, a Sherlock-like figure whose sole purpose in life is to solve the mysteries and, behold, fight Lovecraft's Great Old Ones. On his quest to combat the supreme regent of the Cthonians, the worm-god with the refreshingly pronounceable name for a lovecraftian abomination, Shudde M'ell, he is supported by his right hand man Henry-Laurent de Marigny and, of course, the Wilmarth Foundation. But Shudde-M’ell too is not without help; it lives deep beneath the earth and waits for the stars to be right to summon other star-born abominations.
The
Burrowers Beneath (1974) includes Lumley's short story "Cement Surroundings" which
was first published in 1969 and
which explains the awakening of the Cthonians by the Indiana
Jones-inspired character of Sir Amery Wendy-Scott who then has a cameo appearance in Crow's own story. It is surprising, if not refreshing to see courageous characters that try to hold out against good old Howard's unimaginably fearsome monsters, which certainly is the main asset that The Burrowers Beneath has to offer. It can also be read as "Cthulhu for Beginners", since Lumley takes on himself the monumental and ambitious task of recapitulating ALL the Cthulhu myth in mere 224 pages AND brings interesting new approaches, such as assuming the Cthulhu mythos actually, prehistorically real. Alas, despite all its charm, everything about the myth is overexplained which causes pacing problems and too long conversations really do spoil the flow
of the story. Still, I somehow like it.
Oufff... I really don't know how to describe You Are Invited, or if I even would recommend it at all. It is a ghost story, for sure; it is set in an old monastery in Romania, has ghosts and "ruthless journalist" type of influencers, to make it a little timelier. These social media stars have a stay at this old and creepy monastery and their every moment is being live-streamed to millions of people. The real catch is that they give their patrons a chance at interactivity by letting them decide what the group ought to do, if they offer the right sum. Meanwhile spooky things start happening, and maybe they do it on purpose, or maybe not?
Lead girl Cath, to be fair she is the most likeable one out of the bunch, suffers from schizophrenia and is downright petrified when the ghost steals her drugs. Was it a ghost, though? I usually don't mind genre clichés but this was a little too formulaic even for me. You Are Invited doesn't really do anything new or original with those clichés, except for placing them in a timelier environment, and that might be exactly your kind of thing - not mine though. However, I
personally quite liked Cath. She has a few traits apart from her schizophrenia that are not very typical for a main character and I liked the author choosing such an unlikely figure as her lead.
Lullabies for Suffering - Tales of Addiction Horror
The junkie limbo. The junkie limbo in Danny Boyle's 1996 movie Trainspotting is exactly what I expect well-made "addiction horror" to be. If you now think I am setting the bar quite high, you may be right. Still, I think the subject offers great potential for which this anthology unfortunately remains untapped. Which doesn't mean I don't like some of the stories, I indeed do, but most of them revolve around people who are drug addicted, but the plot isn't really about the horror of addiction itself. So most of the stories really miss the point, in my opinion.
Before the slamming really starts, let's face the hard facts of this collection which comprises three novellas and three novelettes; "Sometimes They See Me" by Kealan Patrick Burke, "Monsters" by Caroline Hepnes, "Lizard" by Mark Matthews, "The Melting Point of Flesh" by John F.D. Taff, "Beyond the Reef" by Gabino Iglesias and finally "Love is a Crematorium" by Mercedes Yardley.
First off, except for John F.D. Taff's piece, an extremely... extreme and great story about pain addiction, the whole anthology is about drugs and people affected by drug addiction. Why? There is a full range of addictions that could have been taken into consideration, like, maybe food, smartphones, shopping, plastic surgery, sex or even tanning addiction are just some I can think of from the top of my head. I'm pretty sure there is much space for horror in other areas too, am I not right?
Second, I hate hate hate it, when an overdose (pun unintended) of drama is made to be horror. Like the type of horror when a character is being crushed, oppressed, bullied and suffers melodramatically. I like characters that have agency, I like horrors you can put up and fight with and would have loved a story that treats addiction as such. In Lullabies for Suffering, there were two stories that even resorted to tear-jerking, which doesn't work for me at all.
And finally, that cover... I will not even say anything about it.
So, "The Melting Point of Flesh" by John F.D. Taff is definitely the winner of this anthology (and I liked "Lizard" by Mark Matthews too) that, alas, neither visually nor contentwise lived up to my expectations. A pity.
Children of the Dark by Jonathan Janz
This book came unexpectedly to me as a present from a friend and I was really pleasantly surprised, as I probably wouldn't have picked up a YA horror on my own.
Being a teenager is hard. It is harder even if you are Will who was abandoned by his father, has to deal with his mother's drug addiction (and here we go again) and needs to take care of his six-year-old sister. On top of it all Mia, the girl he likes, is dating his nemesis, a
sadistic bully. There is more to come though; the notorious
Moonlight Killer has escaped from prison and is lurking around in Will’s hometown. And that's not even the worst what's lurking around! Some ancient evil is getting ever closer and soon enough there will be monsters everywhere.
This is a nice, smooth read that reminded me a lot of early King books, an IT kind of story where a group of very young people dealing with life's ills need to face mayhem and murder and this type of story always goes, really. Plus, I think the monsters are awesome.
"The
most important thing anyone can know is this: just by existing, by
inhabiting this planet and space, we are put into communion with
entities we cannot begin to understand, in manners we cannot begin to
understand. We float on the surface of an unfathomable ocean, and though
we may stick our hands, our feet, our faces beneath, we can never go
much further without drowning."
The -arguably- oldest
and strongest of tropes finds a very particular and a very dark place in B.R.
Yeager’s “Negative Space”. Yet, it is hard to categorize this book as mere
weird fiction, because while it is exactly that, it is at the same time a
different kettle of fish entirely – very intriguing and hard to describe.
Story and setting start
off unspectacularly - we are following four no-future teenagers’ drug
and depression fueled lives in a New England small town which experiences an
epidemic of teenage suicides. Soon the storyline traverses into
more muddy waters with the excessive use of a hallucinogen called WHORL that enables
body swap experiences, altered states of consciousness and the passage into a
reality that is not necessarily benign, building toward an unscrupulously devastating
finale. Negative Space is as
gorgeously written as it is unsettling and hopeless. Yeager does not only inject
a good portion of cosmic horror into your average US American teenage story; he
also does it with unparalleled gloom as well as a staggeringly intense
profundity and originality that is hard to encounter in often formulaic modern-day
horror literature.
The Woman in the Window by A.J. Finn
The plot of Woman in the Window is very familiar to horror consumers: Agoraphobic and alcoholic recluse Anna Fox lives alone in her New York City home, watches movies, drinks her wine and jazzes her days up by spying on her neighbors. Her special interest goes to the Russells, who just recently moved into the house across. Of course, one night, she sees something she shouldn’t, and after that everything goes ransacked in her life.
This
is the book of the much much anticipated and constantly due-to-COVID19-delayed movie of the same name and I'm pretty sure it's a better watch than a read, even though normally the books are better than the movies. That's because the book isn't THAT good, it's a good enough read. I appreciate the allusions and parallels to Hitchcock's works and the sheer mass of twists and turns that continually leaves you guessing and waiting for the unexpected, sustaining your attention at all times. Despite those twists I unfortunately saw the end coming from a mile, so there was no surprise for me by the end; even though I am guessing that it was written with that exact intention.
Anyway, I will definitely watch the movie, if only to compare it to the book.
Laurel Hightower has been hauled by booktubers and bloggers as the new shooting star in the skies of horror literature for quite some time now and reading Crossroads has shown me why. The story of Chris, a woman whose son has died in a car crash and who unknowingly discovers a way to bring him temporarily back by giving a blood sacrifice to this grave, is so gripping, her writing so to-the-point that she truly deserves that title and more. It is a novella and not a novel; so it might rather be for people who like it short and sweet. Most importantly though, it is written for people with a strong stomach because this is definitely not for the squeamish! I personally quite like the type of horror which tests the limits humans can go no matter for what reason, be it for their own comfort, as a sacrifice for their loved ones or mere survival. When I first saw the premise of Crossroads I immediately thought of a short story by Stephen King which does that very successfully. I’m of course talking about “Survivor Type” in which a drug smuggler is stranded on a rock island with his contraband and a broken leg, the latter preventing him from hunting for food. So as a result of the circumstances he starts drugging, cutting off pieces of himself and thus filling his belly to survive – I think you can find it in his short story collection Skeleton Crew. Crossroad’s initial premise reminded me very strongly of that story although Hightower is not as bold in how far she can push the limits of our comforts as Stephen King, who does not shy away from getting ugly. Instead, the involvement of supernatural forces takes that edge away, which both is a shame and not at the same time. Shame, because I would have loved the story of a woman who sacrificed almost all her body parts for a tragic cause and in the grand finale visits her son’s grave only in the shape of a hand, because there isn’t anything of her left anymore. Not shame because admittedly, that would be silly. Fortunately, it is all of our luck that Hightower is much more inventive and elegant than I, so get ready for a superbly written, emotional, wonderful little book that will keep you enthralled.
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