...the Soul of Wit - Latest Short Reviews

The time for shorties has come again! I have actually tried to read a little more experimentally this past month - two short story collections, two first-time reads by authors, Ruth Ware and Matt Shaw, who are both madly popular in their respective fields mystery and extreme horror, two short novellas and finally a collection of BBC dramatizations of Agatha Christie's work revolving around her most sassy and fabulous inspector, Hercule Poirot. I did have a lot of fun, especially with the latter, so I hope you do too. Enjoy!

Parallel Hells by Leon Craig

"Horror is not dissimilar to love, in that all time gets folded in to meet it."

This was one of the horror collections I most anticipated this year, and a pity, pity, pity that I was just a tiny bit disappointed - it just didn't quite live up to my expectations. We have here thirteen dark short stories packed nevertheless with lots of dusted off usual horror tropes blended with very eerie encounters, complicated interpersonal relationships, curses, folk horror, queerness, friendship, cults, you name it. The problem I ended up having with this collection was probably more that of an arrangement rather than the stories themselves. I loved the stories in the beginning, up to maybe the middle mark, but then felt like the characters and settings started feeling all the same to me, so much that I started confusing them between the times I picked the book up to read.

So, my highlights were accordingly almost all stories in the first half; "Suckers" an unusual vampire story packed with women rivalry and pandemic anxiety; "Unfinished and Unformed", a seriously supreme story, gives an unusual but very effective point of view; and finally "Raw Pork and Opium" nice one again, about friends having a good time in a sort of deserted place and the last few pages, which are simultaneously told from two different points of view, are genuinely a treat.

Flowers for the Sea by Zin E. Rocklyn

Pregnant Iraxi lives on a boat, a boat surrounded by extremely frightening creatures in the sea, lurking. The people on this boat are survivors of a flooded kingdom in which Iraxi's people were despised and oppressed because of their ancient heritage.

"The way she speaks. As if each word is carefully planned, deliberately feasted upon before easing from her tiny, puckered lips like elegant vomit."

Yikes, creepy baby alarm! It's not only the baby - there are creatures in Flowers for the Sea that will chill your blood and a very discouraging birth scene which might make you lose all enthusiasm for motherhood, so not recommended at all if you're expecting! All the more interesting it is that Iraxi finds the empowerment she needs to satiate her rage right there, in this ghoulish baby.
Besides the awesome sea monster baby, another highlight of this merely a hundred pages long novella is Rocklyn's writing which is just perfect - the graveness of the voice, artful descriptions as well as the dystopic undertones to explore the isolation and rage of a Black woman remind me very much of Octavia Butler's writing.

Alright then; it is short, it is beautifully written and it has a good message – no excuse not to grab Flowers for the Sea by a very talented author of whom we'll hopefully read more in the future.

The Vegan Revolution ... with Zombies by David Agranoff

Thanks to "Stress Free Food", animal suffering is a thing of the past. Or is it not? Just so you can enjoy your bacon without guilt, animals are fed this new miracle drug and don't feel a thing as they are led to the slaughter.

It turns out though that it also turns people into brain eating zombies and that's basically the story of how a handful of vegans (not even vegetarians or freegans are safe) in Portland, Oregon, are the only ones left to kill the roaming undead and set up a new world order. But will they have it in themselves to kill living creatures, even if they're dead?

I loved reading this, it was super fun and also clever! It did, however, have quite a few typos and you may actually want to turn vegan after reading this!

Valley of the Scarecrow by Gord Rollo

It's been almost a century since the “elders” of the little Iowa town Miller's Grove decided to take their reverend down by crucifying him in his own church, after which they left the place all together. Today, after finding out that besides Reverend Joshua Miller, there is also a valuable treasure hiding in the former town, a group of greedy teenagers set off to find Miller's Grove and get rich. Unfortunately, they awake something that had better been left sleeping...

I would have enjoyed this book much more in the form of a B movie. The characters were rather flat and not necessarily people you want to take the time to get invested in, their motives were questionable, their actions were questionable and sometimes not very logical. Take, for example, Malcolm Tucker, the grandpa of one of the teenagers mentioned above - he tells his granddaughter there's a lot of money buried out there, but begs her not to go looking for it, he tries to stop her from going but then accepts the facts that she's young and young people have every reason to go treasure hunting. Later he regrets to have let her go and decides to go to Miller's Grove himself to save her. Please, just make up your mind.

The non-linear narration leaves you in the dark as to what exactly the reverend did to earn his fate, but I was glad it was all explained in the last chapter.
All in all, an OK pastime, nd good for the autumn too, but nothing too spectacular.

The Island of Dr. Moreau by H.G. Wells

1896... It is, in a sense, only logical that The Island of Dr. Moreau was published in the aftermath of Charles Darwin. How scandalous such a book must have been for a Victorian society that was only recently informed and needed to recover from the knowledge of their biological origins to face a book in which a crazy scientist with an advanced case of god complex, experimenting and creating all sorts of animal/human cross-breeds on his own remote island. We have here science fiction laced with Gothic elements which may be even a little ahead of its time, one of the first works to treat genetic engineering. Like every good SF book, The Island too takes an allegorical turn, displaying wonderful examples but at the same time sharply criticizing the exploitative class society as well as “science without conscience”, only to slam into the faces of its readers who the real monster is.

[...] I had before me the whole balance of human life in miniature. The whole interplay of instinct, reason and faith in its simplest form.

It wasn't shocking for me personally to read this classic, since I feel like I have known this story forever. Before starting it, I was pretty sure that not even close would I feel anything like the fascination I felt when I first saw the 1996 movie. Still, I was delighted. It does start slow, I won't lie, but when all the “beast folk” were introduced and described in detail, it had me fully absorbed.

Little Sister Death by William Gay

Little Sister Death was the last pick of the Otherland Speculative Fiction Book Club before the pandemic and lockdowns kicked in and we could never read it together. This year I am trying to really clear up my shelves by reading all the "old" stuff that has been sitting there forever and this one was part of that action. I need to say, though, despite having its freaky moments, I didn't really like to read this book about a struggling author moving into a haunted house, a story inspired by the apparently famous 19th Century Bell Witch haunting of Tennessee. Highly autobiographical, but in the end, not very interesting.

On the other hand, the foreword and tribute written by author and Gay's friend Tom Franklin was possibly the most interesting writing in this book. According to that introduction Gay was in poor health when he wrote this his last novel, which gives way to speculations that had he lived to see its publication, he may have done a few adjustments. A decent read ultimately.

Hell Hath No Sorrow like a Woman Haunted by RJ Joseph

These stories go right under the skin!!!

Twenty-four horror shorties which rest on the same footing of horror through the lens of a Black mother/woman in the USA, but offer very varied, very different kinds of scares – from slavery to Dorian Gray re-interpreted, to the blood-sucking, flesh-consuming reality of motherhood, to domestic violence, relationship problems solved in blood and bitterness, to cursed jewelry, monsters, monster-people, magic, demon-slayers and even aliens... There were so many stories here that I wanted to continue - these bite-sized stories absolutely make hungry for more.

My personal favorites are “House of Haints” which offers a different approach in dealing with haunted places; “Keep on Trucking” because I can't emphasize enough how much I enjoy trucker horror – isolation, police and hidden night creatures on the highway; “I Will Only Love You Better After Death” the story of the tragic love between two enslaved women and finally “'Til Death Do Us Part” - a vow that takes on a menacing meaning here.
Hell Hath No Sorrow Like a Woman Haunted is possibly one of the best short story collections I have read this year, definitely highly recommended.

Roe V. Wade: An Extreme Horror by Matt Shaw

My first Matt Shaw!
Even though I was expecting a work of very very extreme horror (it comes with a warning on its cover), I think this was rather a solid dystopia, which takes today's sociopolitical developments in the USA, mainly the overturning of the landmark case Roe v. Wade, but also racism, poverty and gun violence, and inflates them into extreme dimensions.

The year is 2032 and abortion is illegal in ALL US states - even expressing doubts while pregnant prompts the state to arrest and keep you under surveillance, force-feeding and drugging you until the baby is born. We follow two couples from different social backgrounds who both are expecting. While their approaches to pregnancy and to the prospect of another baby vary, their fate seems equally bitter and devastating.

This was much more political than I expected it to be and within the last ten pages the story takes a very unexpected turn which was a very interesting direction but so pleasantly surprising that I actually wish it had been worked into the story sooner. I think the story was a little hasty and too short in general and it could have been absolutely awesome with about two or three hundred more pages to let the story ripen a bit.

As someone who is not from the US I appreciated the introduction explaining the history of the titular case and the author's foreword.
I will definitely read more books by the author.

Thriller time!

The It-Girl by Ruth Ware

I'm excited to finally have read my first Ruth Ware, who is one of the undisputed queens of the mystery genre. And honestly I can see what the fuss is all about, but maybe this book wasn't the perfect choice for a first time read.

April Coutts-Cliveden, the bubbly, edgy, ultimate It girl, and main character Hannah Jones met at Oxford and quickly became inseparable. But by the end of the second term, April was dead, killed by the porter John Neville. A decade later Hannah is expecting her first child and is perturbed when a journalist comes out of nowhere, planting doubts in her head that maybe Neville wasn't the real killer? So Hannah starts snooping around and reconnects with old friends to find out what exactly happened back then, and somehow most of them act suspicious.

Although very gripping and exciting, this book is very long and detailed and drags just a little. Generally, all characters, but especially Hannah, were well fleshed out, so well in fact that she became flesh. After having listened to the audiobook for a few hours I felt like knowing Hannah’s thoughts and feelings better than I know my own. Recommended if you have time on your hands.

Poirot's Finest Cases by Agatha Christie

An audiobook of different sorts - a collection of eight BBC Radio 4 full-cast dramatizations of Poirot's professional highlights with the brilliant John Moffatt giving life to the Belgian detective.

Includes: The ABC Murders, After the Funeral, Death on the Nile, Peril at End House, The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, Murder on the Orient Express, Three Act Tragedy and The Mysterious Affair at Styles.

I don't know how many hours I spent listening, but this audiobook certainly takes you to a different time and makes you forget your reality. Although I have already read most of them (I think I hadn't read After the Funeral, Peril at End House and The Mysterious Affair at Styles) I enjoyed this insanely. Luckily there's a second part that's available in the Berlin library stock - but before you do, I'll go get it first!