protean depravity

Time for new reads, enjoy! Children of Chicago by Cynthia Pelayo Children of Chicago borrows from the Grimm tale "Pied Piper" or "Der Rattenfänger von Hameln" to twist and bend into the horrific teenager killings taking place i n Chicago’s Humboldt Park neighborhood , signed with the graffiti "Pay the Piper". Detective Lauren Medina who is in charge of the case has many demons of her own and one of them just might have to do with what happened at Humboldt Park. Following her through the investigations, slowly unfolding the mysteries of that unfortunate night, doubts will unfold if she really is the right person to treat this case. Pelayo's crime/mystery/horror mash-up should be a real treat for especially German horror readers because it doesn't only borrow its main storyline from Pied Piper, there are also tons and tons of talk about fairy tales in general, and the Grimm brothers in special, and how terrifying they actually are! Incidentally, th...

The very first review here on Protean Depravity was about Alan Baxter's tongue-in-cheek slasher/creature feature The Roo , the story of a kangaroo going amok in the Australian Outback killing people in super inventive ways - that fucken roo... In his latest, The Gulp , Baxter returns to "serious" horror; small town terror divided into five short stories set in the fictional Australian seaside town Gulpepper, or The Gulp, as everybody calls it; a place travelers should definitely stay well clear of.

If you have subscribed to this blog to receive notifications, you probably noticed that they haven't been active for the last few weeks. Sorry for the inconvenience! It's just that Feedburner stopped offering email services and I'm working on a new subscription system, which should be solved within the week! Stay safe and healthy!

Here are some new short reviews for you to enjoy! Mapping the Interior by Stephen Graham Jones I have first read Mapping the Interior a couple of years ago but didn't give it much credit, mostly because I had the feeling that I didn't understand it. Now, for yet another group read I re-read it and was lucky enough that I had people to discuss it with and explain things to me. These discussions having cleared the question marks in my mind, I think that I finally can give this book the appreciation it deserves. This is the story of Junior, an American Indigenous kid whose mother has left the reservation after the death of his father, taking him and his brother Dino to live in a sort of modular container house. Their life is marked by poverty, watching TV and the bullying of Dino, who has a sort of nervous disability. On the cusp of adolescence, Junior starts seeing the ghost of his father at nights. Having never properly known his father, he appears to the boy in the splendid t...

Demon-possessed, blood drenched teenage girls aimlessly running in the woods… Cursed heavy metal songs with the best lyrics since the invention of heavy metal and a music festival to end the world… A warehouse full of haunted ready-to-assemble and ready-to-kill furniture… Sexy vampires kindling the struggle of the sexes in US suburbia… The battle of tropes breaking loose when a group of final girls is confronted with a timelier horror trope… Over the past decade Grady Hendrix has been gradually working his way upwards from class clown of horror literature to seriously credible writer who, with each new work, manages to reinvent a new subgenre of horror. Now you may or may not like his style, you may say he’s not hard enough for a horror writer, but there is one thing in particular that you can never say about Hendrix; that he is not a feminist. Each and every one of his books displays the story of yet another woman otherwise overlooked and erased, brought into the spotlight by Hendrix....

Last month was a pretty crazy reading month. I joined many reading groups where I read books out of my comfort zone I wouldn't normally have chosen, but also re-read books from years ago I had almost forgotten about. But in the end it feels good to stray from the plan every now and then and rediscover old stuff. Enjoy the wrap up!

My quest of reading and reviewing the complete “Rewind or Die” series for the Otherland Newsletter proceeds; a sum total of 23 retro-horror paperbacks (I recently realized that the series isn't even complete yet, so it's still counting!) inspired by 70s, 80s and 90s horror movies. Ever since I first found out about this series I am dreaming about these colorful little books with amazing cover art and extremely over the top storylines. Tongue-in-cheek, bizarro, absurd, gore-splatter, wild ride or pulpy are terms that come to mind describing this incredibly fun series that I will happily read and discuss for you guys in the near future.  

Let's talk about horror awards! There are so many books to read and so little time... And despite the pandemic and the lockdown, TBR-lists are growing and growing to never-ending proportions. So awards really come in handy for the despairing and a little lazy reader, who wants to read all the good books and lose no time with the less good ones. In other words, very proficient readers doing the work for you; reading a bunch of books, narrowing their selection to four or five chosen ones, from which in turn, they select a winner - unless, of course, they are readers' choice awards. So, besides the list of most-anticipated reads of the year and the season's readings on Christmas and Halloween, it is a popular project of thousands of genre readers to devour this top-of-the-crops-selection. And if you happen to have more time on your hands, you just go through past award-winners.

 Folks, I almost missed my blog's first birthday, which was last week! Photo by Angèle Kamp  I can't believe it has been a year already - my lockdown project became a full-  blown blog with lots and lots of books, books, books, author interviews and even one piece of original fiction! I really do hope that you're enjoying the blog as much as I sure do. I am so grateful and thankful for everybody who contributed and for everybody who is reading! Happy birthday to us! Let's celebrate our geekdom and hope for many more years to come!