...the Soul of Wit - Short Reviews

With everything going on, I feel like my reading rhythm is a little disrupted right now and I'm a little slower, but it is the way it is. I hope you can still find some enjoyment in the short reviews.

Looking Glass Sound by Catriona Ward

What starts as three young friends finding some dead body under water during their summer vacation, turns into some kind of fever dream which in turn becomes a chaotic, blurry identity swap between creator and created, author and character, artist and artwork. Catriona Ward turns everything upside down and after a certain point I lost track of who is who. I can't say I disliked it.

Although I adored some work of this author, Rawblood showed me that she can blow hot or cold for me and though this one was interesting, it's not one of my favorites. Not this time.

Also, it wasn't really horror or horror adjacent but more of a mystery. 

Sleep Alone by J.A.W. McCarthy

Ronnie is a succubus who, out of her wish to have companions and not be lonely, turns a complete rock band into her kind and starts touring with them perpetually. Like always, they never ever stop or rest or pause and live the full deal with vomiting, drugs, alcohol, pizza, sleeping in vans and cheap motel rooms, the whole nine yards. She takes on the role of the merch seller, but her actual intention is to satisfy her never ending hunger, and of course, all of them are usually hungry for human memories. One day she finds Helene, who is just like her and is hunting to feed also, so she tags along. But her joining the band marks a kind of change and when the guys start getting a mysterious illness, doubts come to Ronnie whether turning the guys ever has been a good idea at all.

Sleep Alone follows the not yet washed out concept of succubae, although in my head I imagined them as some sort of rock star vampires and the difference to vampires wasn’t really that obvious. The whole story was ultimately a little draggy and didn’t really satisfy me in the way that Ronnie never feels completely full either. Huh, maybe I was more influenced by this main character than I thought after all.

I don't know if I missed it, but scanned the book a second time for the name of the band and couldn't find it. I wish the band had a name.

The Best Horror of the Year, Volume Fourteen, ed. by Ellen Datlow

Some years the winter lasts way too long. Some days I pass on coffee and feel like tea. Sporadically the dish in your regular restaurant won’t just taste the same. And sometimes Ellen Datlow’s iconic The Best Horror of the Year somehow doesn't cut it for me. It happens.

Nevertheless, my four highlights amongst the 24 featured stories are as follows:

Dancing Sober in the Dust by Steve Toase

What an absolutely sick premise!

"Dancing Sober" rotates between two narratives – first, the interaction between a dance museum curator and an academic researcher on choreographic history and second, the description of the costumes an artist pair, the now dead Schiedlers, used in their performances.

The latter consist of the name of the costume, date performed, and the material it is made of. The Schiedlers were a kind of, ahem, interesting and original artists who strived for a certain effect during their dance performances enhanced by the costumes, which were made from unconventional materials ranging from rusty nails, glass, wire, concrete, house paint, razorblades, to velvet curtains, to meat hooks and worse. Their performances gradually gain in extremeness, finding their peak in an eleventh dance, of which the costume is unknown.

The first time I finished this story I immediately returned to the beginning to re-read it and let the breathtaking dread work. I am left speechless, in the best way possible.

Anne Gare’s Rare and Import Video Catalogue October 2022 by Jonathan Raab

Descriptions of found video tapes on sale for thousands of dollars which feature utterly strange and disturbing scenes. This short story was good, but waaay too short and definitely leaves you wanting more. I even wished that these short descriptions would appear between each story as a kind of recurring cameo.

Stolen Property by Sarah Lamparelli

A man on a hike with another man, a moment of confrontation of all stolen “properties” creeping up closer and closer throughout the snowy hike. I loved the ending which was so in-your-face shocking and unexpected.

Poor Butcher-Bird by Gemma Files

What starts as an apparent initiation ceremony into a gory cult, a kind of competition between two girls to enter a group which will shelter them from the world outside turns into some kind of magnificent dark fantasy with baller world building and an almost touching story between a warrior familiar and her creature.

I’m really happy to have read this, this is Gemma Files at her best; the main character just enough salty to be relatable and interesting, impressive gory fight scenes, super twists, and as mentioned above, wonderful world building within a limited number of pages. In my humble opinion, this was the best story of this anthology.

Thriller time again!

Death of a Bookseller by Alice Slater

I'm back at reading more mysteries, so here I chose this gorgeous cover, I love the colors very much.

Londoner true crime addict and bookseller Roach believes she found her counterpart in life when Laura starts working at the same bookstore, and she becomes quickly obsessed when she finds out that Laura’s mother was killed by a serial killer. She believes it is fate, that this is her own personal true crime case. But Laura wants nothing to do with the younger woman and keeps her distance. Does she have something to hide or is Roach a deranged stalker after all?

A slow and repetitive thriller who, unfortunately, does not thrill much. What kept me reading was my initial sympathy for Roach and her ways, even though she lost my understanding later on. I appreciate the reflection on the morality of reading or writing true crime and the discussions revolving around it. As a person who doesn’t enjoy or read that genre I was unaware of controversies like making entertainment out of someone’s pain or that it’s apparently often about cases in which women are victims and there are sickos who get off on that. I’m still not interested in the genre and this was maybe a nice pastime but not much more.

The Writing Retreat by Julia Bartz

The Writing Retreat might be the most over the top and absurd mystery I have ever read and I love it! I know I shouldn’t be on the side of the baddies but I’m powerless in the hands of what evil genius is revealed in this book, lol.

Look, I know you hate me right now. And you should!

I absolutely adored the character of Countess Báthory Roza Vallo, who, like any dutiful Hungarian citizen, lives in a Gothic castle… What a spectacular woman, I kept grinning while reading her scenes, and still do while writing this. The authors invited to her estate for the titular writing retreat think they hit the jackpot, but is that so???

To me this was a refreshing read, just don't take it that serious and be entertained.