...the Soul of Wit - New Short Reviews

The new year started so busy that I almost forgot about publishing the short reviews. Luckily, because of that, there are quite a few now since they added up. In the meantime I discovered a new favorite author, Drew Huff, I fell in love with The Divine Flesh, the way it was written and the subject matter was totally up my alley, so I have been stocking  up on Huff's books (because I'm totally expecting to do nothing and sit on my couch and read books as long as the snow piles up outside, the way it does now). I also really want to focus on short stories this year, and to put a dent in my TBR by finishing all the horror anthologies I collected over the years, and I started doing that. Hope you enjoy my short reviews, have a great winter time! 

The Divine Flesh by Drew Huff

A psychedelic fever dream set among self-destructive, broken, damaged trailer park folks in rural Idaho, following a duo/trio consisting of Jennifer, her ex-husband Daryl, and Divine Flesh, an eldritch deity which is either bored, psychotically happy, or bending flesh and who shares Jennifer’s body – a hopefully suitable description for Drew Huff’s The Divine Flesh.

This is a story that can get easily extreme, tiring, and jarring, and yet at the same time it entertains, grosses out, disgusts, make you feel anything but a moment of peace for awareness of the deeply deranged state its characters are in - no wonder for an exploration of trauma, addiction and mental illness, as the author states in her final note. And yet, among all the frenzied shifts between the villain and the protagonist, all the graphic imagery (which, in all honesty, is really hard to use without coming across forced, and Huff passes that test with flying colors), and lunacy, I kind of liked contemplating everything going on and didn’t feel bored for a minute. I even felt attached to Divine Flesh, that pesty little thing.

I already got my second Drew Huff book and it’s waiting in line, new favorite author added!

Isolation: The Horror Anthology, ed. by Dan Coxon

It is a delightful feature of the artistic mind to be able to reflect the everyday life experience into art in a meaningful way. In that sense, it is not surprising that editor Dan Coxon called at the height of the COVID19 pandemic for an anthology about isolation, and twenty authors responded with their stories of generally high quality and fun to read – unusual for an anthology to have so consistently engaging stories.

As a person who is the epitome of solitude, I don’t dread isolation and see no horror in it, and yet I have to admit that some of these stories sent a shiver down my spine. Take, for instance, Brian Evenson’s patient stuck in a hospital with faceless nurses in Under Care. Or those many stories set in snow and ice, which so easily bring isolation along, like that of a woman whose cat is killed by her neighbor in Marian Womack’s Ready or Not. Or a universe, eerily similar to our present, in which technologies invented to beat isolation are being criminalized by oppressive governments in Jaunt by Ken Liu and finally the hair-raising reality about AI packed in a powerful story of an oracle predicting a war and the unbearable loneliness of the impending apocalypse in Lisa Tuttle’s Fire Above, Fire Below.

It’s good to know that there are anthologies like these that are more than just mixed bags that the editor threw together, writings that he actually curated with care. I’ll be seeking more books by Coxon.

Sour Cherry by Natalia Theodoridou

If you leave, you die. But if you die, you stay.

Natalia Theodoridou's English debut is a re-telling of the European folktale of Bluebeard, a wealthy man who murders his wives. All of them.

Turning the story into a kind of ghost or a haunted house story, Theodoridou lets the killed wives have their turn of speech, by putting them into a Greek chorus that has its own chapters. The violence in the book follows a cyclic pattern, thus might give semblance to repetition, and indeed, I felt like this story gained momentum a little late into the book and the first half drags somewhat.

Also, I listened to the audiobook version, and I didn’t really click with the narrator’s voice/narration style – she later makes various accents/voices and that worked better for me than the main narration.

That being said the second half makes up for all of that. The book has been criticized that it puts Bluebeard in a favorable light by trying to go to the bottom of his violence against women. I see that, but it does not really hold weight, as the author also has a female main character who very consciously looks away and doesn’t hold the murderer accountable, but is very aware of what’s happening and how that would look if it came to light. So it's like everybody who looks away is a little responsible. All in all, the book may have been somewhat shorter, but I still liked the way it went.

Clowns vs. Spiders by Jeff Strand

A group of funny clowns is fired from the circus because they're just not popular anymore, and they eventually take a job in a haunted attraction, as horror clowns, zombie clowns, demon clowns, creepy doll clowns. But when on opening night millions of oversized spiders emerge from a cave they need to step up as the heroes the world needs.

This is exactly what the title says it is. I needed a break from real-life clowns who are scary in contrast to these sweet clowns here (one of them is called "Depravo", lol). Jeff Strand is a great and hilarious author, he always makes me laugh, and his writings are usually very cinematic, very visual. I'm not sure if he writes any scripts, but he definitely should write horror comedy films, and a lot of them.

The Valancourt Book of World Horror Stories, Volume 1, ed. by James D. Jenkins, Ryan Cagle

As I'm consistently taking part in the Mount TBR challenge to read my older books, in that frame I finally go to finish this gem that was waiting for me in my shelf. This is the first book of the dual series of horror short stories from all around the world, edited by James D. Jenkins. The anthology comprises 21 short stories from 19 countries and gives a little explanation before each short story as to the status of horror in that particular country or some info about the author.

I ended up giving this anthology a three out of five as I think it starts strong but sort of fizzles out. The work of the editors should not be taken lightly, I know from our own Science Fiction anthology last year how difficult it is to research and find these stories in countries where speculative genres aren't as popular as others. Since I have read some of the authors before, their short stories were familiar to me, such as the Musolino, Veres and Esquinca stories, which also were the strongest stories here, and I have already reviewed them on this blog. I also liked Menopause by Flore Hazoumé from the Ivory Coast, Twin Shadows by Ariana Gélinas from Quebec, and Danish author Lars Ahn's Donation.  

Humboldt Cut by Allison Mick

Humboldt Cut is the story of two siblings, Jasmine and James, who return to their hometown for the funeral of their godmother. In this town their grandfather, lumberjack William Whipple, ended up being lynched because of acts of eco-terrorism. The woods are said to be haunted, there are little tree-monsters lurking around, and James gets lost in these exact woods... And the search begins.

I was first very excited when I saw this book was compared to Jeff Vandermeer's Annihilation, and accordingly I was bitterly disappointed... Please, marketing people, stop doing this, these comparisons are unfair to ALL sides involved and they set up expectations impossible to meet... No need to say Humboldt Cut has only marginally common elements with Annihilation, and if that was the reason for you to grab this book, you will be disappointed too.

I did like the way this book starts, the introduction was almost impeccably written, eerie, atmospheric, nice prose. The book later falls into more average story telling patterns, borders on young adult, and uses too many dialogues? (I didn't even know that I'm bothered by that, but after that prologue I think I wanted more of that nice writing.) The plus side is that I love reading eco-thrillers and I do think the premise is really good, woods can actually be quite scary when alone, and are living beings.

Clay's Ark (Patternist #3 ) by Octavia E. Butler

Last but not least, yet another book I'm reading for my Mount TBR challenge. I actually have all four of Octavia Butlers' Patternist books in one big omnibus edition titled Seed to Harvest, and with Clay's Ark, I have finished the third in the series.

We're in an alternate, much more hostile America. Blake Maslin is  a physician and father of twins traveling with his teenage daughters and their car is ambushed by inhumanely strong and strange people. It turns out that the kidnappers all carry a highly contagious alien disease that has mutated their DNA and want to infect others to make the disease live on. 

This was easily the most accessible book in the Patternist series for me - the high tension created by the kidnapping, the utmost interesting and intriguing element of an alien disease, the way it came to Earth, the way it affects its subjects and the options each of the different characters have before them... All this made for an insane pacing and tied me to the audiobook for hours. I understand it's a sort of prequel for the upcoming final book, Patternmaster. Can't wait for that.