...the Soul of Wit - Short Reviews

Hey everyone!

I'm back, my friends - I'm tired, and have a lot to process, and a lot of stories to tell, and a lot of sleeping to do, but I'm finally and a little belatedly back at home and will slowly catch up with the blog and my books and movies. Before I do, though, I will focus on the Fantasy Film Fest and try to see as many of the movies as I can and my budget allows because after almost a month of traveling, I'm quite broke. Which is OK, it was worth it.

So here are the short reviews that I already more or less reviewed on goodreads, maybe just a little modified. I'm publishing them here too for those who are not on GR, but there are a few longer reviews on the way too.

I hope you had a good time too in the meantime and hope you enjoy!

Burn You the Fuck Alive by B.R. Yeager 

It's funny how you feel the need to apologize when a book by an author whose work you previously loved and praised just doesn't hit the mark. I'll try not to do that but, dayum! I loved Negative Space so much, it was even in my top 5 books the year it was first published, and was actually really psyched about Burn You the Fuck Alive, I mean, that title alone... And it didn't hit that mark, sorry.

Still, in this first collection of short stories by the author, I found crumbs here of what mesmerized me in Yeager's former work – vulnerable characters, a menacing atmosphere, beautiful writing. Only, they were just crumbs and if I have to be honest, I didn't know how to place these stories, what to make of them, let alone enjoy them. This whole book feels like a soup, a mushroom soup.

So, not really burnt the fuck alive, but that's OK. Next time maybe.

It's Me, Charlie by C.M. Guidroz

So, we're following Charlie, a handyman who is insecure about the way he looks and has never really known love, becoming obsessed with self-published erotica author Jessie. He reads all her stuff, knows her work and even talks to her on a regular basis disguised as a woman on some social media book platform like goodreads or bookstagram. He then decides to just take Jessie and does that. Reading her stuff carefully, he confuses fiction and reality and feels confident he can satisfy her sexual needs by just (wrongly) interpreting her writing. And of course, it turns out to be a catastrophe.

I actually liked Charlie in the beginning, until he turned misogynistic and deserved everything Jessie did to him in the end. You can see, it doesn't end well for him... In stories about stalkers, I usually wonder what if those guys had maybe openly and honestly talked to the woman they like instead of playing games and schemes, if these problems might have been avoided from the beginning. Ultimately I think he even might have had a chance since they were getting along so well online, but this story turns really disgusting and Charlie ruins everything with his plan. The book even has an extreme horror warning, though I wouldn't place it there. I really gagged at some things Charlie did, but it was so exaggerated I laughed too, so...

I read this with a reading group I didn't know before, the "extreme horror" group and reading it in a group really helped me, as I think I would have neither chosen nor finished this book. The people there invited me to join another group - the newly opened "Extreme Gore Whores", and I swear it was peer pressure that led me to accept. Let's see what books will come my way in this group, I'm curious.

Sacculina by Philip Fracassi 

It’s like the ocean farted something wicked, and we’re sitting right on her asshole.

A guy, freshly out of prison, wants to go fishing with his father, his brother and his best friend, but things turn sour. Proper aquatic horror, good building of suspense, short and condensed, has nice monsters, if they ever are monsters rather than yet another biological species trying to spread and survive.

As a non-native speaker, I had some trouble retaining the generic names of the characters (Jim, Jack, Peter and Chris) and distinguishing them, which is something a novella can’t really afford to do. Because by the time I actually “knew” them, the book was already halfway over. Still, it was a good read and I'd definitely recommend it.

This also is the tenth, the last book of my summer horror challenge, I made it, yay!

Sardines (In the Dark): A Brutal Story by Judith Sonnet

The cover description goes:

"A youth group decides to play a late-night game of hide-and-seek...
...someone else decides to join them...
Someone big... and mean... and VIOLENT!"

Stupid me, had I read the cover description and didn't concentrate on the word "sardines", I might have realized it's not about sardines the fish. I thought sardines come out of water to attack humans. They're not. It is apparently a game you play in the dark, don't be fooled like me.

I kind of liked this, though the critique on religion could have been somewhat sharper and could have been highlighted in the end, the commentary doesn't really come through. Still some interesting violence scenes.

Burn the Negative by Josh Winning

A reasonably good mystery where the curse of the 90s horror cult classic "The Guest House" returns during the making of the remake and the star of the show is sent to the set unwillingly in her new role as a journalist.

As you probably know, I'm a little surprise-and-twist-stupid and usually don't see twists coming. But if I do, as was in this case, it is safe to say that book is predictable. I also struggled to develop an interest in the characters, all of them.

There are better ways to pass your time, but definitely worse ones too, so I'd place this book somewhere in the middle ground.

Howls from the Wreckage: An Anthology of Disaster Horror ed. by Christopher O'Halloran

That anthologies are inconsistent mishmashes is a given, unless edited by masters of the trade in which case the overall quality is usually a level higher than your usual collection. An original concept does not always guarantee a good anthology and brilliant anthologies can emerge from the most banal premises; you never know. It also highly depends on your subjective expectations as an individual reader. Reviewing anthologies is accordingly subjective, as, to a certain degree the review to every book is, but all the more in this case. My personal verdict in the case of Howls From the Wreckage: An Anthology of Disaster Horror is accordingly and unfortunately an unfavorable one, even though I highly appreciate the Howl Society, a discord based book club, and their contributions to horror.

Not sure, but maybe it is the premise of writing about “disasters” that is something which compulsorily pulls a writing into rather “action” territory rather than horror and that was my impression for the majority of the short stories in this anthology. Result – they didn’t hit me hard enough. BUT I did find a handful of favorites that I think could interpret the theme in quite unsettling, even horrific ways. I wish they were more.

Heavy Rain by TJ Price revolves around a person whose partner has killed himself and he sees in the emerging disaster, human body parts raining from the sky, the chance to realize a Frankenstein-esque plan. The image of eyeballs, feet, torsos et all falling from the sky is nauseating enough in itself, but I also found the parts of the main character grieving for his lover, very authentic and beautifully written, affect me.

In Systemic Infection writer Michelle Tang ingeniously puts curses into disaster when a group of nurses mess with the wrong patient.

Unzipped by Bridget D. Brave deals with a kid stuck under rubble after an earthquake and the people trying to save her. Are they trying to save her, though, or is it all a psychedelic nightmare?

I will try and read more by authors highlighted here, and hope to be able to read more of HOWL authors’ work in the future, which I hope will work better for me.

From this point on I need to read as many anthologies as possible in order to be able to populate my end of the year list and I very much hope that some will meet my expectations.