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Wait gently caress, I meant to ask earlier before Hanukkah started and christmas ramped up the busyness. Since it's the end of the year, does anyone else want to share some Top Ten of 2023 or Best Book I've Read in 2023 recs? I've been meaning to type something up but eh, life happens. It could be podcasts or audio books if anyone's too busy for a book. edit this was suppsoed to be an edit sorry woops.
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Dec 10, 2023 19:45
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value-brand cereal posted:Wait gently caress, I meant to ask earlier before Hanukkah started and christmas ramped up the busyness. Since it's the end of the year, does anyone else want to share some Top Ten of 2023 or Best Book I've Read in 2023 recs? I've been meaning to type something up but eh, life happens. It could be podcasts or audio books if anyone's too busy for a book. My top 10 list is not going to include a whole lot of horror on it, I don't think. I branched out this year. But I will do a short writeup if people are interested. I am finishing up The Hacienda by Isabel Canas - it's about a haunted house, circa 1850s Mexico. It's not groundbreaking or anything, but I'll be damned if the prose isn't fantastic and the story is intriguing.
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Dec 10, 2023 21:08
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escape artist posted:My top 10 list is not going to include a whole lot of horror on it, I don't think. I branched out this year. But I will do a short writeup if people are interested. I mean, genre is a suggestion imo. I'd say 'Watch The Girls' by Jennifer Wolfe to be horror even though it's marketed as a psychological thriller and there's no paranormal or supernatural elements at all. But there's enough imagery often used in the horror genre that it comes across as a horror novel. Hell, I'd put it in the same bookshelf as Pessl's 'Night Film'. Also the huge amounts of horrifying [plot spoiler] explicit csa, rape, sexual abuse, and grooming of children. So yeah, horror adjacent might be fine, even as honorary mentions. And tbh a lot of people read things besides horror. It's not like there's a dedicated thread to top ten / faves of 2023 anyways.
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Dec 11, 2023 01:51
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Best books I've read this year were HEX and Hard to be a God. The latter in particular is a new favourite of mine that I'm sure I'll read again in a bit
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Dec 11, 2023 16:46
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HEX is really good, yeah.
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Dec 12, 2023 09:51
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Ok, I've now finished Hex and would like to amend my previous opinion. Hex is rather like a Stephen King novel, in that it chronicles supernatural goings-on in a small American town with a dark secret. It's also rather like a Stephen King novel, in that it has an excellent beginning, a workmanlike middle and a dogshit ending. It's a great concept for a horror novel, but is clumsily and ultimately frustratingly implemented.
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Dec 14, 2023 10:25
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oh man i loved the ending of Hex, felt like it went full operatic in a glorious spectacle to me
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Dec 14, 2023 11:24
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Thanks for the rec of Aching God. I was reading it thinking “this is like one of those basically-horror Pathfinder campaigns mixed with Darkest Dungeon”, and Lo and Behold, the author also turned out to have written a lot of those pathfinder campaigns. Edit: lol he introduced a swarm of mini-Deskaras(?) - the insect-scythe demon thing from WOTR - to the poor bastards in Aching God book 3, as if things weren’t bad enough. The whole thing feels like a darker version of Rise of the Runelords. Still very fun. Beefeater1980 fucked around with this message at 07:42 on Dec 19, 2023 |
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Dec 16, 2023 01:15
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Anyone heard of The Reformatory by Tananarive Due? It takes place in Jim Crow Florida... sounds pretty amazing honestly. Very brief synopsis, not very spoilery: A gripping novel set in Jim Crow Florida that follows Robert Stephens Jr. as he’s sent to a segregated reform school that is a chamber of terrors where he sees the horrors of racism and injustice, for the living, and the dead.
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Dec 16, 2023 01:18
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escape artist posted:Anyone heard of The Reformatory by Tananarive Due? It takes place in Jim Crow Florida... sounds pretty amazing honestly. I’ve heard good things about this novel, and actually have it in my to read list. I appreciate the Gollitok recommendation from here, as it really scratched all my Eastern European/apocalypse/the horror of the mundane society/Kafka buttons. The prose was great too, very dry but somehow made it more compelling in the same way Lapvona by Ottessa Moshfeg described her spiraling Bosch-Ian horror.
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Dec 22, 2023 21:10
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Think it might have been a post in this thread that put me onto Between Two Fires, and much obliged to whoever that poster was. Top-tier medieval horror, taking full advantage of the mundane apocalypse and religious iconography of its time. Highly recommended whether you're looking for horror or a period piece garnished with angels. Bonafide chills from "And the Lord made answer."
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Dec 23, 2023 13:10
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escape artist posted:I am finishing up The Hacienda by Isabel Canas - it's about a haunted house, circa 1850s Mexico. It's not groundbreaking or anything, but I'll be damned if the prose isn't fantastic and the story is intriguing. I was surprised by how much I liked both Cañas books, if only because the sort of stuff that gets picked for Book of the Month usually leans less horror-y and more mainstream (not that horror isn’t, but you know what I mean—it’s like heavily BookTok or whatever). I tend to avoid historical fiction but I enjoyed the settings of both and even the romances~~
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Dec 23, 2023 18:26
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I'd recommend Mexican Gothic if you're looking for that style, too
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Dec 23, 2023 18:35
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Also liked that one, yes :-)
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Dec 23, 2023 18:37
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Camp Damascus ebook is 2.99 on all platforms today only if you haven't snapped it up yet
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Dec 23, 2023 18:46
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adnam posted:I’ve heard good things about this novel, and actually have it in my to read list. I appreciate the Gollitok recommendation from here, as it really scratched all my Eastern European/apocalypse/the horror of the mundane society/Kafka buttons. The prose was great too, very dry but somehow made it more compelling in the same way Lapvona by Ottessa Moshfeg described her spiraling Bosch-Ian horror. Badass! I love to hear that! Maybe this book would be up your alley too? It's not horror. More dystopian dark scifi kinda genre. It's certainly european and hopeless. And has political intrigue featuring a cog in the machine! The Grand Dark by Richard Kadrey quote:The Great War is over. The city of Lower Proszawa celebrates the peace with a decadence and carefree spirit as intense as the war’s horrifying despair. But this newfound hedonism—drugs and sex and endless parties—distracts from strange realities of everyday life: Intelligent automata taking jobs. Genetically engineered creatures that serve as pets and beasts of war. A theater where gruesome murders happen twice a day. And a new plague that even the ceaseless euphoria can’t mask. Unfortunately my Euro Dystopia book shelve is a bit small. The only other book I can think of is Leech by Hiron Ennes, and that's not really, specifically european. Definitely dystopian and hopeless. That ending still hurts to think about.
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Dec 23, 2023 19:36
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Ok I’m putting this in a separate post as it’s kinda long. Also we're going to pretend I didn't say let's collectively make 2023 recs and then not post my own lmao So! It's advertised as fantasy scifi genres, but maybe it'll scratch someone's western (horror?) itch. The anthology,. The Good, the Bad, and the Uncanny edited by Jonathan Maberry quote:Gunslingers. Lawmen. Snake-oil Salesmen. Cowboys. Mad Scientists. And a few monsters. Malerman is a horror author, but I’m not so sure of the others. Heavy Oceans by Tyler Jones. quote:From Tyler Jones, author of MIDAS and BURN THE PLANS, one of Esquire's Best Horror Books of 2022, comes a story of deep sea terror and cosmic horror. Here's a different book I did meander through. I don't recommend if, but it's been advertised as horror. I'm posting here if anyone else has come across it and thinks it appealing. The Daughters of Block Island by Christa Carmen quote:In this ingenious and subversive twist on the classic gothic novel, the mysterious past of an island mansion lures two sisters into a spiderweb of scandal, secrets, and murder. It's not a bad book, I enjoyed it. But I feel it should not have been advertised with the genres of 'horror' or 'gothic'. I would've enjoyed it better if it was sold to me as a plain mystery on a isolated island. I'm posting these spoilers because I'm kinda mad how the book is summarized. Minor content warning spoilers hey there's rape in this. It's kinda the main plot point. It's not explicit on scene, but it is recounted non explicitly by the survivors of rape. Minor vague plot spoilers The ghost doesn't appear very much. It's not so much horror as it is a mystery with references to Gothic literature. Major plot spoilers There is no ghost or paranormal plot lines. The house has a bunch of secret passage ways that lets the rapist(s) wander around the house. Semi related nonfiction, non horror rec. A long time ago I recommended White Tears by Hari Kunzru. Here's the summary for a refresher. White Tears by Hari Kunzru. quote:Two twenty-something New Yorkers. Seth is awkward and shy. Carter is the glamorous heir to one of America's great fortunes. They have one thing in common: an obsession with music. Seth is desperate to reach for the future. Carter is slipping back into the past. When Seth accidentally records an unknown singer in a park, Carter sends it out over the Internet, claiming it's a long lost 1920s blues recording by a musician called Charlie Shaw. I'd like to recommend the nonfiction book, Biography of a Phantom: A Robert Johnson Blues Odyssey by Robert Mack McCormick, edited by John W. Troutman. The summary. quote:The drama of In Cold Blood meets the stylings of a Coen brothers film in this long-lost manuscript from musicologist Robert "Mack" McCormick, whose research on blues icon Robert Johnson's mysterious life and death became as much of a myth as the musician himself OK I'll admit to a lot of ignorance. Robert Johnson I have heard of, but not particularly in depth as this book lays out. While White Tears is not pseudo biographical for Johnson, there are distinctive similarities to his life and how white people exploited his life and the art he made. I'm not saying what Kunzru did with his book is anything like that but I does make me question how much of the book is further exploitation in the same vein. As far as I know, Kunzru is a non Black man of color. It's certainly a choice for a British person to write about this topic. It's not that people should never write about things outside their life experience, but I think it should be done with tact and care for the lives and cultures and others. (why yes it's about ethics in literature). Well anyways, Biography of a Phantom was a pretty good book. I'd like to track down Brother Robert: Growing Up with Robert Johnson by Mrs. Annye Anderson & Preston Lauterbach. They were women who knew Johnson personally. If you read or heard of White Tears and wanted to know the nonfiction inspiration, I'd say this is a good starting point. Anyways I'm going to complain about a book for a moment. Everything in the spoiler tags is a major plot spoiler. But first let's take a look at the summary from the publisher. Glass House by Paul Jessup quote:Meet the family Glass. They just bought the home of their dreams, and are about to embark on a new stage in their life. Oh look at that delicious summary. It sounds so interesting, doesn't it. Grits teeth, DOESN’T. IT. ▪ Also thanks to Darin Bradley for editing the hell out of this and getting into shape before publication,... I dont like you Darin. You saw this and chose to be a part of it. You could have stopped this. You could have gone home!!! [/spec ops the line voice] Again, full plot spoilers. The children sound like adults with a twee quirky white person flavor. At least the child with ptsd kinda has symptoms of that. Actually you know those tweets some parents make where the child says something uber deep and mature and if you think about it it's probably made up to get likes or retweets? They sound like that. It also feels like they're sleep walking through the plot of a haunted house and trying to hit every trope without putting in the work to cohesive. The past murders, overrun garden, mysterious statues, a loving crypt with bodies, the house of leaves interior architecture without any of the HoL charm. Actually it feels like a rip off of that late [final?] season Magnus Archives architecture horror. No spoilers here for that. You got super mysterious hippie dippie suicide cult magic which sounds like tarot card inspired rather than the tired occult, but no particular lore. It feels like someone explaining the magic system of a fantasy video game you've barely heard of, which requires either playing or 100s of hours of reading through thick dnd esque manuals to understand any of it. [aka what Dark Souls / Bloodborne lore sounds like to me] Inexplicably the ghost women monsters have catholic names. Either they're a separate monster group or for some reason the hippie cult is made up of catholics. OK. Actually now that I finished the book I can honestly say no it’s not related to the hippie cult. They just got Latin names because it sounds cool. Idk if you’re going for a hippie nature cult, maybe rip off the names of pagan gods rather than colonizer gods. At least you can maintain the claim of returning to nature and poo poo. The prose is standard, passable. It gets the job done, I guess. It's on par with novelization of movies, or the old star wars extended universe novels. (yeah I read them as a kid. Tenel ka my beloved) This book is very slightly the Ready Player One of haunted house books. It’s got the references to every plot point someone else did and better that you’d want. The prose desperately wants to be Deep. It'll randomly capitalize Words for Importance and it just reminds me of dnd or homestuck with nothing to prop it up with. quote:▪ “I guess,” and Lily sighed and put her chin against her sister’s head. “But. Well. My powers are gone now, completely and utterly. It feels lonesome without them. Like there is a great silence all around me now that wasn’t there before.” This is the Carol Anne Poltergheist movie character, btw, if you didn't immediately get the reference. There is so much telling like this and not enough subtextual showing. I think that annoys me the most. That my hand is held throughout every step of the book. Maybe other people like that, but I don't. Honestly it reads like that Omnipotent readers view. Whatever that book is called. ORV? That book wherein the book sets up a plot point and the Mc basically explains exactly what to do and then does that, eliminating any tension or concern for the characters. It keeps telling me there's something scary and interesting in this book and I'm not seeing it. [disclaimer if that book gets better, I wouldn't know. I quit at the apartment landlord fight. My moon pls reader app said it was about 600 hours long and I didn't not feel invested for that trip.] Oh also there's ghosts. The usual dead tortured kid, scary lady in white, and Charles Manson minus the white supremacy. No really, the Dead cult leader is buried in the crypt and comes back to fight monsters. OK helsing junior. All in all. Not for me. The plot is well tread and uninteresting. I don't expect every book to be unique and thrilling. I enjoy a mediocre Darcy Coates, I do. Calibre says I’ve read 15 of her books so far. But this was so uninspired. Something something vapes mimicking big tough gruff Father's and their tobacco pipes. You know what I mean. And I think that bothers me enough to make an entire Post about it. It had potential. It's like those CYOA games from whoever made Until Dawn. They sound great on paper and in adverts, but once you play them, they're don't quite live up to their own hype. At least imo, anyways. If you read and liked this book, sorry for trashing it. I wish I liked it as much as you did, but that was not in the cards for me. Also sorry for trashing the ORV novel a little. If that book does get better, please tell me the chapter. Because nearly five million chapters is a lot to suffer through if it doesn't get better. As much as I disliked the ableist horror points in Adam Nevill's 'House of Small Shadows', this book made me wish I was reading that instead. At least that did a culty haunted house a lot better. Well I think that's it. Maybe I'll actually post that 2023 recs before the year is over. Lmao!
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Dec 23, 2023 19:47
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I finished up Alex Grecian's Red Rabbit and I have to say it was just okay.
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Dec 23, 2023 23:02
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escape artist posted:I finished up Alex Grecian's Red Rabbit and I have to say it was just okay. Pretty much how I felt about it too.
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Dec 24, 2023 16:02
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Made it through The Terror. The ending was definitely a choice but I didn't hate it as much as other people seem to. Certainly didn't need to be 1500 pages though, we probably could have use fewer role calls or entire chapters devoted to what different kinds of boats looked like, but overall I found it pretty engaging and enjoyed it.
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Dec 26, 2023 16:30
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Just read The Obsecration by Matthew Bartlett. Another fun one set in Leeds, but with little WXXT this time. One Goodreads reviewer put it like this, "Felt a lot like Hyperion; seven locals wash up at a shady diner, and the bulk of the book is each person having a long flashback about what drew them here. Then the Leeds Shrike rolls through and fucks everyone's day up."
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Dec 29, 2023 05:27
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Bilirubin posted:Just read The Obsecration by Matthew Bartlett. Another fun one set in Leeds, but with little WXXT this time. One Goodreads reviewer put it like this, "Felt a lot like Hyperion; seven locals wash up at a shady diner, and the bulk of the book is each person having a long flashback about what drew them here. Then the Leeds Shrike rolls through and fucks everyone's day up." I have been nagging my library to order this and When Night Cowers. Thanks for the review. loving love Bartlett's work, even though I've been priced out of a lot of his writing the way he releases it. I am about 80% of the way through The Reformatory by Tananarive Due. I am blown away by how good it is. I am actually savoring parts of it and going back and re-reading it. It's about a reformatory, a "school for boys", in a segregated Jim Crow 1950s Florida town. I'm learning history. I am marveling at the storytelling and feeling refreshed. I'm convinced it's gonna stick the landing - I'll be back with more information once I finish it.
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Dec 29, 2023 06:28
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I'm about halfway through Adam Nevill's Last Days and I'm digging it so far, love some evil cult business. My only hangup, not even sure if it's a spoiler but oh well: Professionals using the members' corny rear end demon names instead of their real ones is insanely goofy to me. I cannot possibly imagine a grizzled old southern cop constantly call a dude "Moloch" but maybe that will make sense later, I have no idea where the second half might go. I planned to start with House of Small Shadows but switched gears when folks here mentioned Last Days
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Jan 4, 2024 05:30
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R.L. Stine posted:I'm about halfway through Adam Nevill's Last Days and I'm digging it so far, love some evil cult business. My only hangup, not even sure if it's a spoiler but oh well: Professionals using the members' corny rear end demon names instead of their real ones is insanely goofy to me. I cannot possibly imagine a grizzled old southern cop constantly call a dude "Moloch" but maybe that will make sense later, I have no idea where the second half might go. I was confused because I thought you were talking about Brian Evenson's Last Days, which is a really fun short read about an amputation cult.
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Jan 4, 2024 14:48
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escape artist posted:I have been nagging my library to order this and When Night Cowers. Thanks for the review. loving love Bartlett's work, even though I've been priced out of a lot of his writing the way he releases it. I ended up finishing The Reformatory in an insomnia-driven drive from 1-5 am the day before new years and wow, yes, it is an amazing book. I also second the fact that I'm learning history. It's worth it to stick past to the author's acknowledgements about additional reading wrt race-based issues still present in modern society. While the ending really neatly wraps everything up in a nice 'they got their just desserts' sort of way, the author mentions this is based on a family relative whose bones were just unearthed and examined in 2015, and actually never made it off the boys 'reformatory' school he was sent to back in the 20s-30s. The fact that his remains weren't evaluated until just 2015 is mind-bogglingly sad. value-brand cereal posted:Badass! I love to hear that! Maybe this book would be up your alley too? It's not horror. More dystopian dark scifi kinda genre. It's certainly european and hopeless. And has political intrigue featuring a cog in the machine! Thank you! Having lived in a Western democracy, but having the chance growing up to visit my parents' country where rampant corruption/class disparity is still sprawling makes this genre appeal to me. I suppose it's like Kafka meets Lovecraft, and that scratches some nostalgic memories I suppose
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Jan 4, 2024 18:56
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Dark Matter was pretty fun. Poor dude was so down bad for that blond guy. Anyway, I recall reading The Puppet King and Other Atonements and We Are Here To Hurt Each Other based on recommendations from this thread ages ago, and those were very good. I should probably read Ligotti since I think both of those were big inspirations for those books, but is there anything else with the same feeling of extreme pessimism that both of those have?
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Jan 6, 2024 02:50
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I finished Hex and really liked it a lot, thanks for whoever recommended it in the OP. I always dig witch/occult stuff and I haven’t read anything with a premise quite like this one before. It didn’t seem especially scary at first, but it ended up getting under my skin in a way I didn’t expect. Like, I found myself flipping on the light in the hall on my way to the bathroom at night, just in case there was a centuries-old witch with her eyes sewn shut lurking in the corner, lol. It’s been a long while since that happened. I can see why some people didn’t like the ending - he certainly goes big and throws all subtlety out the window. Very much a “gently caress around and find out” ending, and I liked it.
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Jan 6, 2024 18:57
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Whirling posted:Dark Matter was pretty fun. Poor dude was so down bad for that blond guy. The Immeasurable Corpse of Nature by Cristopher Slatsky is very good and Ligotti-like in its pessimism
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Jan 8, 2024 23:34
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elpaganoescapa posted:The Immeasurable Corpse of Nature by Cristopher Slatsky is very good and Ligotti-like in its pessimism That's one book that blew me away. Definitely recommend it to Ligotti fans. I think I read the whole thing in one or two sittings because I just couldn't believe how good the prose was.
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Jan 8, 2024 23:51
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His first collection is really good as well but the Ligotti influences in that are more obvious, some stories are almost pastiches
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Jan 9, 2024 02:36
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Whirling posted:Dark Matter was pretty fun. Poor dude was so down bad for that blond guy. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/59068683-we-are-happy-we-are-doomed Also nthing Slatsky
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Jan 11, 2024 03:46
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Been reading this hilarious but terrible manly man tom clancy adjacent horror novel and quote:The snapped ends of very white bone stood from lawnmower-like gashes. Body cavities gaped empty. Some fingers were crooked, some missing at the root. Bitten off? A woman's head had been crushed to a thick, panlike sac. Even her hair was anonymous with gore, but the pubis was blond. She was, poor creature, thank God, not Kora. Gaydies and guys, be honest. If your girlfriend / boyfriend / whomever was mashed into a paste, would you recognize them by their pubes? #TrueLove ? It's a shame it's so racist because it teeters the line of decently written with an interesting plot and 'oh boy you made the one black character a rape-y former slave that's also kinda still enslaved to the military because it's that or be a prisoner that'll definitely be killed in prisons because he's been transformed into a inhuman monster via insane amounts of torture by, perhaps, The Devil??' To say nothing of the sexism. I've been reading this off and on for two years now. Maybe I'll finish it. I don't know, it usually doesn't take me this long.
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Jan 15, 2024 18:29
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Woof, that sounds rough. If I'm gonna read gross-out horror with somewhat problematic elements, I'll stick to rereading the Infected trilogy.
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Jan 15, 2024 18:54
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The Necromancer's House by Christopher Buehlman is on sale, and I was curious since I loved Between Two Fires. Has anyone read this one? I'm not expecting a similar tone to Between Two Fires, but is it generally the same caliber of writing?
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Jan 17, 2024 15:17
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MeatwadIsGod posted:The Necromancer's House by Christopher Buehlman is on sale, and I was curious since I loved Between Two Fires. Has anyone read this one? I'm not expecting a similar tone to Between Two Fires, but is it generally the same caliber of writing?
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Jan 17, 2024 15:21
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MeatwadIsGod posted:The Necromancer's House by Christopher Buehlman is on sale, and I was curious since I loved Between Two Fires. Has anyone read this one? I'm not expecting a similar tone to Between Two Fires, but is it generally the same caliber of writing? Nothing at all like BtF, and I'd agree that it's the weakest of his horror offerings. It's not bad, merely average. Lesser Dead/Suicide Motor Club are better.
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Jan 17, 2024 17:40
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Thanks, guys. I'll skip it for now.
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Jan 17, 2024 18:58
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value-brand cereal posted:Badass! I love to hear that! Maybe this book would be up your alley too? It's not horror. More dystopian dark scifi kinda genre. It's certainly european and hopeless. And has political intrigue featuring a cog in the machine! Following up on this, about 80% thru this book and really liking it. I especially liked the (no spoilers) early world-building that really helped flesh out the characters and intrigue, as well as the parallels to modern society. zoux posted:Nothing at all like BtF, and I'd agree that it's the weakest of his horror offerings. It's not bad, merely average. Lesser Dead/Suicide Motor Club are better. I will still maintain it's not a bad read, but it definitely is more of a slow-burn character study more than the stellar horrific medieval setting with hints of supernatural flair that BtF was. I liked the interplay of mythology. I really should take more notes because aside from that it's not as memorable a read compared to BtF definitely. I'd also rec the suicide motor club/lesser dead as better novels in his ouevre.
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Jan 17, 2024 22:33
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I mean, BttF is so insanely good and unique that it's kind of unfair to compare them to his earlier stuff. Really caught lightning in a bottle with that.
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Jan 17, 2024 23:31
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fSo I've been reading stuff. Hey speaking of euro dystopia fuckery! The Bone Mother by David Demchuk [white gay american man. Maybe some european ancestry? idk I'm not scouring the internet for #validness or whatever] quote:Three neighboring villages on the Ukrainian/Romanian border are the final refuge for the last of the mythical creatures of Eastern Europe. Now, on the eve of the war that may eradicate their kind—and with the ruthless Night Police descending upon their sanctuary—they tell their stories and confront their destinies. This wasn't so much a anthology of short stories, as it is a rotating one off cast of characters sharing a single experience of their lives. I thought it was an interesting set up and I liked the variety. Most of it was about historical occurrence, but there's some modern day setting. I suppose it falls under European Dystopia / Disco Elysium levels of apathetic misery. Major content warning for explicit incest, child sexual abuse, war crimes including rape, genocide, antisemitism, anti Romani sentiment, xenophobia, and so forth], sexual abuse, rape, child abuse, domestic abuse. This is an incomplete list but that's most of the explicit ones. I mean, it's a novel about secret police and war crimes. You can guess what that involves. It's not terrble explicit or romanticized but it leaves no question what happens. Note for trans women reading this. Skip the story about 'Green Girls'. It's basically the transmisogynistic trope of amab cis(?) boys being forced to dress / grow up as girls because childbirth rates are low and there are few female children or something. The Dreamer's Canvas by Caleb R. Marsh [white american man] quote:PERCEPTION IS REALITY. This is a debut novel from someone with, for once, an interesting bio. Check it out. quote:Caleb R. Marsh was discovered staggering down a desert road, naked and ranting in a language unknown to man. When the authorities picked him up and were unable to find any records of his existence, he was placed in a intensive rehabilitation program to assimilate him into normal society. Kinda goofy kinda silly but I enjoy it. It's certainly different than the usual bland 'I'm person with a college qualification / hobby / etc and live with my X/Y/Z. Author is represented by Publisher. Anyways, about the book. This is Cosmic Horror and not borrowed Lovecraft maybe with the serial numbers filed off. Not that there's anything bad about that, but I can appreciate a author trying to create an original myth. See also Hailey Piper, John Langan. It wasn't as original as Piper's lore from 'No Gods For Drowning'. Honestly it felt slightly stale? Like ok, you got the Unborn Mother that's oddly gendered even though it's a big ol mind melting blob? It felt a bit standard and I wouldnt be surprised if there was a male equivalent. Not to be all trans about it, but man, the whole gendering the genderless cosmic horror eldritch blobs feels ridiculous at this point. But I'll digress here. The action was decent and I liked the plot twist of the cult's involvement. It was pretty heartfelt. I also appreciated the attempt to include some female characters so it wasn't a total frat party. By the way, if you want Art Horror with Eldritch Horror, check out this one. I've mentioned it before ITT but it's worth repeating. It Rides a Pale Horse by Andy Marino quote:From a new star in horror fiction comes a terrifying novel of obsession, greed, and the shocking actions we’ll take to protect those we love, all set in a small town filled with dark secrets. We Ate the Dark by Mallory Pearson quote:Four women investigating the haunting murder of their friend discover more than they ever imagined in a terrifying novel about good and evil, love and death, and the spaces between. Ok I ain't doing the stupid thing of 'the female version of male author' but I feel this is very up there and equatable to John Langan's 'The Fisherman'. Weird house, big on family ties, cosmic edritch fuckery, bad deals that gently caress over everyone, excellent prose. I'm not saying they're exact or similar copies of each other, please don't go in expecting that. But man, the creepy monster, the cast of characters being mainly women, the creepy 'is it haunted or?' house, the small town locale. I'm putting this on my forever rec list. Also I have a little bone to pick re lgbt content, specifically lesbian and trans. Major spoilers. Yes it's about lesbian and maybe bisexual relationships, but it's never quite fulfilled, always bashful, teenaged, in the background, past wishes and occurences. The closest we get to actual present lesbian relationship is at the very end. I say 'maybe bisexual' because apparently bisexual is a filthy word and authors rarely if ever say it. [or maybe I read the wrong books. Sure.] Yes one teenage girl tries to have a relationship with a boy her age. Apparently she's either trying to make herself be heterosexual or bisexual but only dating men because it's safer in a small town like hers. Who knows the reason, if there is one at all. I don't think it's q slur baiting but it does feel like blueballing. Personally I was expecting some declarations of lesbianism to others but that didn't really happen. Which I understand, there's a whole lot of hosed up poo poo happening in the middle of multi-year mourning for a dead sister / friend. Anyways. Eye of a Little God by A. J. Steiger [white american woman] quote:The Painted Man is here. I feel him in the darkness. He says, "If you let me in, I'll make the pain stop." God help me, I want to let him.After losing his delivery job – the last thing binding him to an empty life - Eddie Luther, veteran and drifter, drives into the snowy woods with a bottle of sleeping pills. But instead of eternal silence, Eddie hears a whisper inside his damaged ear. Oh I know a lot of people wax poetic about grief as horror and I won't do that here. But man, this was great. Weird mystery, strange journal, magic, some body horror, the MC isn't a resident evil esque buff tuff guy who knows combat despite being in the Vietnam war, there's multiple women characters that are not incompetent or dress setting. Also this isn't the usual 'sad man looking for missing woman'. I mean yes it is but I think the twist is uncommon enough for a person to go 'ah, that was kinda nice and not a stale sexist trope about resuing damsels who automatically fall in love with the hero for no drat reason beyond pussy is reward for hero man'. This Wretched Valley by Jenny Kiefer [white american woman] quote:Take only pictures. Leave only bones. This is some great forest horror / location horror. I don't want to spoil too much not mentioned in the summary, but if you liked Briardark by S A Harian and some gruesome horror, you'd probably like this one. [Unfortunately, imo, this doesn't rank as high as, nor is too similar to Briardark. Please don't expect too much similarities.] If you seen this elsewhere, you might've noticed the comparison to the infamous creepypasta type, true crime before there was a big true crime boom. The dyatlov pass incident . Uhhh not really. I'd say that's more of a hook rather than anything accurate to the story. The most similarities I see is yes people died in mysterious circumstances in a isolated location. That's all. Also a one off rec. Horror Hill podcast, Season 2 Episode 7. It's All the Same Road in the End By Brian Hodge. First published in The Mammoth Book of Cthulhu [not sure which edition, sorry. Apparently 2016 version?] quote:"Two brothers set out in the rural midwest to discover the fate of their grandfather who went missing fifty years prior, leaving behind only an enigmatic 'song' and a photo of an unidentified woman. " It's reminiscent of White Tears in that the missing grandfather was looking to record obscure folk songs, and went missing trying to find one bizarre Swedish(?) cattle call song which, OMG!, may not have been a call to cattle but, perhaps, something darker.... However it's about white people, not Black people, or the appropriation thereof. The podcast does a decent job of narration but if you prefer the written word, it's in the Mammoth Book compilation. Well that's all.
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Jan 20, 2024 20:41
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