...the Soul of Wit - Short Reviews

Enjoy the latest short reviews!

 

Bored Gay Werewolf by Tony Santorella

Bored Gay Werewolf is exactly what the title says it is – the story of a bored gay werewolf. Unfortunately it left me a little bored too, as there's really not much werewolf action and it's more about a sort of club, even a sort of fight club, that a group of werewolves decide to create, and a bossy, toxic alpha wolf who wants to turn it into a pyramid scheme with social media and all. They eventually fall apart with protagonist Brian, and if the story until now didn't scare you off, then the ending won't either.

I feel like the teenager me would have loved this even though it's not tagged as young adult or new adult, but then again, it's the grown-ass me who chose to read a book with the daring title Bored Gay Werewolf, so I have only myself to blame.

Dark Stars: New Tales of Darkest Horror, ed. by J.D. Taff

As it is normal for anthologies, Dark Stars too is a mixed bag with a few gems inside. I decided to read this as it was mentioned in and one short story first published here was selected for The Best Horror of the Year Volume Fifteen, and a friend of mine recommended it.

To start the collection with Caroline Kepnes' The Attentionist was a clever move of the editor as the short story has that striking quality an opener needs, it was also my favorite one. The story of a young girl being literally pushed into the arms of her much older stalker by her family touches on interesting issues. It's something quite toxic that girls are being taught from a young age that if a guy isn't calling, texting or writing back, it's because he's too shy or busy, or is scared of you because you're so great. Never are we told that probably he's just not that into you and that's OK. Kepnes creates such a starting situation where two sisters with different approaches to this issue are confronted with a danger, and lets the story go towards an unexpected end. Very enjoyable piece of writing.

I'm very intrigued by Livia Llewellyn as an author, this is the second story by her I've read within a week, and both times the weirdness in her writing stuck out for me. Both her stories created an atmosphere which was almost hypnotic in nature, pulling me inside, letting me forget anything else. In Volcano we follow a university student who starts a curtain sewing job for the duration of the summer, but things turn... strange.

Alma Katsu's The Familiar's Assistant revolves around a drug addict recruited by the familiar of a vampire. The premise may sound funny or silly, but this was actually pretty serious and one of the best vampire depictions/descriptions I have read – I like them monstrous, animal-like, and not elegant.

Challawa by Usman T. Malik, is folk horror which goes after the ruinous trail British colonialism left in India, in the form of a match fabric and a realization surrounding it, all the while focusing on a personal pain main character Karima goes through. Loved this, it was genuinely unsettling.

There were some more good stories, but these are my highlights. I'd recommend this anthology to lovers of short stories, most of them are good.

You Like It Darker by Stephen King

Although the relish of sinking into a good old tome by King is undeniable, for me, there’s no doubt his short stories are his strong suit and every new short story collection by him makes my heart sing. So it was with You Like It Darker too – And yes! Yes, we do like it darker and find plenty of that darkness here.

That being said, nothing will ever scare me like King stories in my teenage years, not even King himself. That’s a fact I have to accept. I’m not the scared child anymore but still, some of these stories here were able to remind me of that past fear and came close to unsettling me in a way I forgot – especially the unexpected, potent chills in body snatch horror Willie the Weirdo, or The Dreamers which revolves around human experiments and of course Rattlesnakes (My god, how creepy was that?) were to die for! Rattlesnakes ties to a very old King story and you’ll be delighted to find the connection here!

But, if you prefer his slightly melancholy, slightly hopeful “feel-good” stories, you can still find your heart’s desire in stories like the nicely emotional Two Talented Bastids, The Answer Man or Laurie, the story of an old man and his dog. I’m very sure Laurie the dog is based on King’s real-life dog Molly, aka The Thing of Evil, lol.

There’s human depravity in The Fifth Step, On Slide In Road and especially Danny Coughlin's Bad Dream, an almost novella reminiscent of The Outsider, which shows how some horrors are just hidden in the way people treat each other.

As you see, there’s something for everyone in this new King collection, and even though it will never be like reading King for the first time, he knows that we actually do like it darker and he delivers.

Schrader's Chord by Scott Leeds

Take the first two sentences of this book's synopsis...

“After his estranged father’s mysterious death, Charlie Remick returns to Seattle to help with the funeral. There, he discovers his father left him two parting the keys to the family record store and a strange black case containing four antique records that, according to legend, can open a gate to the land of the dead. “

...and stretch it over 150 pages. See how thin it gets?

Unfortunately, the introductory part to Schrader's Chord was waaay waaaay too long and stretched, and I'm using the word “unfortunately” because had that been a little shorter and had the characters a little more appeal, this story could have reached Joe Hill-level compulsively readability, but it takes its time to get there.

Also I'd say this is YA or NA horror, even though it's tagged Adult; the characters are fairly young and act it – It has that American obsession with older people and any book that can feature a sentence beginning with “Like every baby boomer…” isn’t really as adult as it claims to be.

What I did like were the depictions of the dead people appearing here and there, because they weren't the Zombie kind of “returned from the dead” but rather ghosts, but ghosts who reminded me of Pascow from King's Pet Sematary, one of my all time favorite characters, like mostly friendly but not always.

When a certain point in the story is reached, it is really hard to put down and the author can rock a good ending, so this was in the end a worthwhile read. Considering it's a debut, I think I wouldn't be averse to reading more by the author.