...the Soul of Wit - First Short Reviews of the Year

Hello back with the first short reviews in the new year 2026, a year who saw a turbulent start already, but will hopefully be better for us all (later 😭). Enjoy!

Rotten Tommy by David Sodergren

Becky’s mother disappeared over 40 years ago, when she was only a little girl. But now Becky makes a strange discovery that makes her think she might find out what really happened back then: she finds three videotapes hidden in the walls of her home and the truth behind those is something infinitely more complicated than a simple problem; she summons Rotten Tommy, a bizarrely violent creature. It's not the first time they meet, though.

When I look at the reviews for Rotten Tommy, I see many people thought it begins good but loses momentum – Well, the opposite happened for me. I needed my time to warm up to the characters and understand what’s going on and once I got the gist, this was super fun.

I love stories in which TV shows, especially children’s TV shows merge with reality, I think it was Sarah Pinsker who wrote a similar short story and I thought that was great too. I especially enjoyed Rotten Tommy's ending - Disco 2000 is a good song to dance to like nobody is watching and I think Jarvis Cocker would agree.

The Sons of El Rey by Alex Espinoza

Family sagas, if they're well written, are something else entirely and if they're an intimate, genuine account and include lucha libre (Mexican wrestling with awesome masks) like Alex Espinoza's Sons of El Rey does - you can't beat that... 

I love this, it's a different kind of family saga, told from various points of view; grandfather Ernesto in Mexico, who worked his way up from pig farmer to construction worker to finding fame as the luchador “El Rey Coyote”, his wife Elena who fights her own battles, their son Freddy who tells us about life in the suburban streets of 1980s Los Angeles, and finally grandson Julian, who lives as a gay man in the underbelly of West Hollywood.

Once you have all characters settled in your head, it was hard to put down, and the ending is fantastic.

Old Soul by Susan Barker 

Jake and Mariko are two strangers who miss the same flight and spontaneously decide to spend the evening together to pass time until their new flight in the morning. During their conversations they discover that they’ve both lost loved ones who met the same mysterious woman photographer from Germany shortly before their deaths. So Jake decides to follow the traces of this person to find out her secret and what really happened to his friend.

I won't reveal more, because it's a crazy journey that begins after this striking intro, but it's wild and up until the somehow weaker ending, I loved it. 

In a novel that spans over many different timelines, places and characters, I guess it is normal that not every segment will equally intrigue everyone. So, in this book there are so many switches of time and space that it feels like a stringing together of different stories, rendering it sheer impossible to feel consistently anything about all of them. I personally was very invested in the parts set in former East Germany, I think the author did good research, the way people acted and lived rang true to me and I enjoyed the parts set in Budapest as it’s a city I love. The closer the story came to the ending the more it lost its appeal for me and although I’m not a fan of the resolution, this was a very enthralling read all in all.

Crypt of the Moon Spider (Lunar Gothic Trilogy #1) by Nathan Ballingrud

It’s the year 1923 in an alternative universe and people with severe mental disorders and lots of money can get treatment at the "Barrowfield Home for Treatment of the Melancholy" which is set on the Moon. So is Veronica Brinkley who married rich after a miserable childhood on a farm in the Midwest. Barrowfield's methods are unusual, to say the least, and something really very wrong is going on.

“What an unmusical thing, to be a human being.”

Amazing intro to a universe of lunar uprising, psyche-spiders, cultish scholars intending to protect the secret of the moon, and an insane scientist ready to go above and beyond to play god. There are disturbingly, nauseatingly nightmarish scenes in this book which will only enhance your fear of doctors and medical procedures. Eerily atmospheric, beautifully written and original.

I hadn’t read any long-fiction by Ballingrud, but now I can’t wait to read the second book in this series.

Portraits of Decay by Carson Winter

Carson Winter is a name I keep bumping into in many themed horror anthology projects, and so I was very excited about a collection of his short work comprising those short stories from other anthologies and zines as well as original work written for Portraits of Decay.

The stories are assembled under three thematic blocks, "Who We Are", "Who We Wish to Be" and finally "What We Will Become", and I'm not very sure if this division is very helpful or beneficial to the book, as I don't really understand the reason of it.

I have three favorites here. First, there is Canonical Victims, in which an unlikable narrator witnesses the work of a serial killer and develops an obsession with him. In Haskins is a short story I have mentioned before because this tale of a town that celebrates a Mask Festival once a year during which people exchange their masks and welcome a new personality that they will adapt for the next year, is sheer awesome. And finally another story about shifting realities and identities, Lost Futures, Devoured Pasts, which follows a couple who wake up together, but one of them doesn't recognize the other and starts telling in detail another life she was living with someone else. Was it a dream? Is it dementia? Or even manipulation? 

I think I was expecting a little more from this collection and wasn't completely satisfied, though the stories that are a hit are enough for me to keep looking for Winter's further work.

Feed the Wheel by Michael Boularice

As kids, Caleb and Marley accidentally stumble into a sacrificial ritual of the giant grinding wheel and its gods, and afterwords enjoy the benefits of having done so. Their skin and physiques improve, and they become successful and popular, far into their adulthood. But one of them just can't get enough and they must return to their childhood town and confront with what has happened back then.

This was a fun and quick sort of read you can actually finish in one evening. It's nothing spectacular, but it's not the worst novella with a cosmic horror background either, so I guess I would recommend it if you dig that sort of thing. In any case it was original and quick-paced.

Consumed by David Cronenberg

Two nomadic freelance journalists, Naomi and Nathan, thrive on their jobs as well as their very open love relationship. While Naomi investigates the headlines surrounding the philosopher couple Célestine and Aristide Arosteguy, - Célestine has been found dead and mutilated in her apartment while Aristide has disappeared-, Nathan is in Budapest with the unlicensed surgeon and organ trafficker Zoltán Molnár. Nathan contracts a mysterious disease after sleeping with one of Molnár’s patients, and starts researching that disease in Toronto.

"Whatever happened to Celestine's left breast?"

Consumed was in parts very typical Cronenberg and in parts not. Exploring borders of perversity, sexuality, sensuality, thinking not in organs and bodies, but in lumps and bumps and flops and protrusions, his unique mind does its work again. I never know with Cronenberg's stories whether they are some revolutionary metaphor or if he's being literally sick. In any way, this book was more accessible for me than some of his earlier work, but of course carries his signature all over.