...the Soul of Wit - Short Reviews

Enjoy the short stories of the last month and have a great day!

This'll Make Things a Little Easier by Attila Veres

Attila Veres' new collection features six short stories of horror or horror adjacency from Hungary. An introductory story about an author who accepts a translation of his book into an unknown language opening the doors of eldritch terrors not only for him, but also a woman who attempts to make the translation of the translation, is followed by two companion pieces which describe a dark world where the exploitation of body and soul is industrialized and opened to profit for a few chosen ones. The following short stories feature a similar undertone of violence, cruelty and apathy, sometimes merging reality and fantasy, sometimes resorting to Lovecraft's Mythos, and always in some way describing reality in fantastic terms. 

If it weren't for Veres' humor these stories would have broken me, as the darkness, the nihilism feels kind of brutal, hopeless, the main character often indifferent, even complicit. His prose is great as usual nevertheless and the collection of course very worth reading.

Pedro the Vast by Simón López Trujillo

Pedro, a poor worker who has to raise his son and his daughter on his own after the death of his wife, takes on a job at a eucalyptus farm, but becomes sick along with the other people working there. It turns out that this is a fungal disease first seen in humans.

Pedro is the only one among the sickened to survive this novel disease, and in the aftermath he becomes the fetish object, a sick prophet to a weirdly religious cult when he starts speaking in riddle-like sentences. 

Meanwhile a mycologist sets off to meet Pedro and to study his condition and Pedro's children Cata and Patricio are left to fend for themselves. All these characters meet in a climax that ends the novel on a very sombre note.

The novella gives a lot to chew on - capitalistic working conditions, eco-horror, poverty... Quite heavy for such a light book. 

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

I'm slowly catching up with my Best Horror of the Year reads.  For some reason I'm not even aware if I missed only the last year or even last couple of years, but have bought Volume 16 and 17 now. I really enjoyed 16 in general and the short stories that stood out for me were truly strong stories, even impressively good. Here they are:

That Maddening Heat by Ray Cluley: This one kind of revolves around secluded community life and isolation, and how vulnerable that isolation may leave you. Seriously creepy in parts.

R is for Remains by Steve Rasnic Tem: Day in the life of a forensic cleaner who can see the victims of the crime scenes he's cleaning.

Lover's Lane by Stephen Graham Jones: A very long short story, I'm wondering if it's not even a novelette... It follows a middle aged stay-at-home-mom who investigates folklore as a hobby, specifically urban legends, and even more specifically the hook-handed-killer. After many research she just might have found out if he really existed and who he was. Maybe. 

Build Your Houses With Their Backs to the Sea by Catlin R. Kiernan: A deliciously fish-smelling Lovecraftian seaside town horror tale of an art journalist tasked to review a very uncanny and strange cinema screening. 

Nábrók by Helent Grant: I'm only going to give you the definition of the title of this short story and leave you with that: a pair of pants made from the skin of a dead human, which are believed in Icelandic witchcraft to be capable of producing an endless supply of money. Ewww!

The Getaway Spar by Tom Over and Matthew Kinlin 

If you enjoy the unlikable unhinged female main character trope that has been flooding horror shelves lately, Tom Over and Matthew Kinlin's The Getaway Spar will do more than scratch that itch for you - it features not one, but two of them. A mother and daughter to be specific, Margaret and Casey, who go on vacation to Greece and make a game out of doing all sorts of depraved, borderline perverted and often criminal stuff to entertain themselves. Slowly the dimensions of the alienation in their relationship, the traumas of the past and a very interesting talent of Casey unveil in chapters told in rotation from the points of view of each.

I am a fan of Tom's writing (but never read Kinlin before) but there are a couple of things here that are my pet peeves – First off, I wasn't a fan of the structure. The games/challenges are fun in the beginning but get jarring the more they go on, and the whole jumping from one adventure to another, like in a computer game, feels somewhat monotonous after a while. Also, everything is told twice from two points of view, which is a neat idea theoretically, but didn't really work for me here. I genuinely believe Casey's secret which gives the story an absurd twist should have come in earlier in the story because after that everything gets crazier by the page and I like that, before that it was just not surreal enough.

But then again, what didn't work for me might be someone else's treasure. I understand it's a book written for shits and giggles, and it provides that fully. A fun romp with a satirical, even critical edge to it.