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Blastedhellscape posted:I'm about a quarter of the way through Negative Space by B.R. Yeager, and what a wild, bleak ride, psychedelic ride. drat! Quite so, I read it entirely in one day (yesterday!) I'm definitely going to have to re-read it at some point, I found myself flipping back to check things as other things were revealed. It's not an easy read but it is a fast one.
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Mar 30, 2022 18:07
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Chas McGill posted:Nice, it looks extremely dark. Yeah I really liked Between Two Fires. BTW if you really liked Between Two Fires check out The Son of the Morning by Mark Alder. It's not horror but it is angels and demons in the 100 years war. Also English class satire? Opopanax posted:I'm most of the way through North American Lake Monsters and drat. I'm not sure I fully get all of these but they're so beautifully written that I don't mind. I read Wounds and liked it a lot, but some of these NALM stories just seem to end without any kind of resolution or closure. Specifically the werewolf one, the nazi horse killer one, and the Antarctica one I don't need to have everything explained or tied up neatly, but it feels like some of these stories are missing a couple of pages, so abrupt is the ending.
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Apr 11, 2022 18:45
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Well I could do with some drat less metaphors and some more pirate feasts in the broken open skull of a colossal dead angel!!!
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Apr 11, 2022 21:07
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Count Thrashula posted:I recently finished Stolen Tongues by Felix Blackwell , and it was pretty excellent. It does indigenous horror very well, and the epilogue includes a short essay written by the author on what it means to write indigenous horror as a non-indigenous person, and how to do that responsibly. So, I really respect that. zoux posted:BTW if you really liked Between Two Fires check out The Son of the Morning by Mark Alder. It's not horror but it is angels and demons in the 100 years war. Also English class satire?
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Apr 21, 2022 16:40
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MockingQuantum posted:Since we're on the subject, which Koontz books are actually worth reading if you're not already a Koontz fan? My in-laws really pushed me to read some Koontz a few years back since they knew I was a big King fan and I only read one, but it was dumb enough that I had very little desire to read any more. I'm sure there are some that are probably worth reading though, right? Lightning, but also I wasn't allowed to read it because it had cusses in it so that may have contributed to my enjoyment as a teenager. Nazis invent time travel but you can't go backwards in time at all due to paradoxes, so they can only go to the future. Basically it's a reverse-Terminator situation, with a lone Allied commando protecting a woman from Nazis from the past.
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May 18, 2022 16:38
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Ceramic Shot posted:I also enjoyed it a lot. I have, and I enjoyed them all. But mostly they are nothing like Between Two Fires. All are set in the 20th century. Those Across the River is kind of Southern gothic, set just after WW1 in deep south Georgia where something fishy is going on in this small and weird town... Lesser Dead and Suicide Motorcycle Club take place in the same world, the first in the early 80s the latter in the 60's. They involve underground vampire societies. I liked Lesser Dead more than SMC but they're both good. The Necromancer's House is pretty good, though I think the world it's built on is a bit thin. Modern magic battles. I only started Blacktongue Thief, and was enjoying it, but I'm gonna shelve it until the series is done because I hate reading incomplete series. I will say that while there is some humor in all of his stuff, it was dialed way up in Blacktongue Thief. (Of those I think only Lesser Dead is 1st person) If you want something like Between Two Fires, that is to say, set in the 100 years war, Catholicism is real, angels, devils, and demons all exist and fulfil their roles, check out Son of the Morning by Mark Alder. It's not horror, rather more of an English class satire, so if you enjoyed BTF strictly because of its horror elements, it may not fit the bill. But if what you liked was a "realistic" look at how medieval religious dogma and worldview would play out if they actually existed and historical fiction set in that era then it's a strong recommend. And if it was the historical aspects you enjoyed above all, then I'd recommend Bernard Cornwell's Grail trilogy (Archer/Vagabond/Heretic) that follows an English archer through the major battles of the first half of the 100 years war. Any supernatural stuff in these are ambiguous so you don't know if something was divine intervention and not just serendipity. It's straight historical fiction, so don't expect any horror elements that aren't thriller-adjacent. zoux fucked around with this message at 18:56 on May 24, 2022 |
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May 24, 2022 18:51
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FPyat posted:I'm on the hunt for body horror in the mode of The Thing. Strange body plans, twisted appendages, surreal appearances, different creatures being morphed together, the works. Both people being mutated into weird forms and monsters that are just naturally that way are of interest to me. The Stars are Legion by Kameron Hurley
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May 27, 2022 16:18
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anilEhilated posted:Not really, it's a (central horror element spoilers) werewolf story. The topic of slavery is addressed but IIRC it isn't too egregious. I mean the main antagonists are slaves turned into werewolves by their evil werewolf slaveowner. That doesn't really get revealed to the end but "slave ghosts" isn't too far off. But it's also set in the 1920s and the slave stuff is kind of a twist you find out about at the end. It's a good book though, mostly about a WWI veteran slowly going mad because of a combination of PTSD and the hosed up secret horrors going on in the town.
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Jun 21, 2022 19:50
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What about the horror genre lends itself to shorter forms over longer ones? Sci fi used to be the realm of short stories, but now everything is a 6 part doorstopper series. Not to say that there aren't horror doorstoppers, the most famous horror writer of all time churns them out, but it seems like the best stuff - or at least the most recommended stuff- are short story collections. Do y'all think that's because of the rules and style of the genre itself or is it to do with marketing and other business-side aspects of publishing?
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Aug 5, 2022 16:19
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Well, that's an outstanding answer.
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Aug 5, 2022 18:26
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SSJ_naruto_2003 posted:I'd never read The Passage by Justin Cronin and now I'm trying to fall asleep at 1am after realizing I just spent five hours straight reading the first third of the book The first book is extraordinarily ambitious and I think largely accomplishes what it sets out to do very well. But by the third book I was constantly checking how many pages I had left and rolling my eyes at the introduction of huge new characters halfway into the final book of a trilogy and in the end I just gave up and read a summary. Your mileage may vary.
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Aug 12, 2022 16:51
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Matt Holness has written a couple of legit horror short stories so he's not a neophyte to the world of letters
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Aug 18, 2022 19:39
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PsychedelicWarlord posted:I'm honestly not sure. I've heard mixed things about TATR, which is his first novel, but I love Southern Gothics enough to want to give it a try. BTF is definitely a masterpiece. TATR is Southern Gothic as all hell. I've liked everything I've read of Buehlman's : which is everything. Between Two Fires is in a genre by itself, or at least if that genre has a name I'd like to know it so I can read everything in it. So it stands out sui generis in a way that his other, more typical horror books do not.
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Aug 25, 2022 17:24
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Not really horror, more of a class satire but if you like Christian-cosmology-is-real-during-the-100-years-war, Son of the Morning by Mark Alder is very enjoyable.
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Mar 21, 2023 15:46
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Sloth Life posted:Hi, I was hoping for some recommendations in the haunted house vein? The Elementals by Michael McDowell
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Mar 23, 2023 03:34
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C2C - 2.0 posted:I just started reading Between Two Fires late last night after seeing the glowing praise here (and having never heard of it previously). I recommend sitting between two fires.
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Mar 24, 2023 23:17
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DurianGray posted:Last night I finished reading Leech by Hiron Ennes. It's a sort of gothic horror, fantasy, sci-fi, post-post-apocalypse. The point of view character is a sort of parasite hivemind that lives in human hosts, and the world itself is an interesting far-future climate-wrecked France (there's occasional use of weird speculative future French that I thought was a neat touch). The main character is a doctor who is sent to take care of an ailing baron who rules over a far-north mountain mining town as well as find out what/who killed its previous host body that was stationed there. Crossposting from the scifi thread because I ended up reading and quite enjoying this, excellent prose and dialog, strange setting and characters, and very interesting perspective. This book is written in first person from a body-snatching hivemind, and it got me thinking, what are some other good books from the perspective from the monster? Grendel, though that's not really horror, Interview with the Vampire and others in that series, Lesser Dead is vampire POV, what else?
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Apr 11, 2023 15:37
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Do you guys ever get actually scared by literature? I was thinking about this, I'm not sure that I've ever been scared by a book in the same way I have been by scary movies, in that "I'm a grown rear end man but I don't feel comfortable going to bed tonight with my closet door open" sense. I certainly find horror compelling, thrilling, interesting, disturbing, and other such reactions, and I feel anxiety or fear for characters in these stories, but idk why books just don't scare me. If you have been really spooked by a book or story, what was it?
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Apr 19, 2023 17:04
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General Battuta posted:Neuropath made me actually disgusted and I threw it in the trash, if that counts. Terrifying prose style doesn't count, no. anilEhilated posted:Honestly, I mostly read horror for the fantasy that just isn't present in the horribly conventional fantasy genre. Ha! I'd say I read it for the same reasons mostly.
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Apr 19, 2023 18:04
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I did read a book one time that promised a monster at the end...but I was too scared to go on
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Apr 20, 2023 15:19
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Halfway through Library of Mount Char - which fuckin owns - and would you guys call that urban fantasy or horror
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Apr 20, 2023 20:06
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General Battuta posted:Okay I thought of a good answer. Smear by Brian Evanson really freaks me out. It's not hide in my room under my covers scared but it makes me intensely uncomfortable. It's short, give it a read. Oh, that's what happens during a jaunt.
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Apr 25, 2023 15:02
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Count Thrashula posted:Are there's any vampire books out there that still have the regal aloof distinguished feeling of Dracula but with more blood and guts and zombies and stuff like that? The President’s Vampire series E; to be clear, it’s ridiculous, but the titular character is regal and aloof af and he fights zombies in book 1. In book 2…  It isn’t tongue in cheek at all and its competently written airport-tier fiction. I wouldn’t represent it as literary but neither would I WH There’s also the Empire of the Vampire series which takes place in like an alt history ancien regime steampunk France in which vampires are a oligarchy of nobles over humanity. It’s allegedly a nyt best seller but I didn’t get very far into it because of his tortured pseudogothic prose and too cute worldbuilding. I mean it’s titled Empire of the Vampire, it’s that kind of book. But if you like Carsteins, well they got em zoux fucked around with this message at 06:03 on May 18, 2023 |
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May 18, 2023 05:49
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The Terror is real good
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May 22, 2023 14:54
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9/11 really hosed up a lot of dude's heads.
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May 22, 2023 15:31
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Isn't it loaded with weird sex stuff though
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Jun 13, 2023 16:18
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DurianGray posted:If almost 400 pages counts as "longer" (I am realizing most of the horror I've been reading lately is novellas), I recently read and really liked The Gone World by Tom Sweterlisch. It's sort of a thriller at its bones, but the meat is sci-fi/horror (sort of Event Horizon with time travel). This is great, very True Detective S1
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Jun 15, 2023 18:33
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I think the first half of the Stand is much better than when they get to Kansas It was def. the first King I'd read and possibly the first post-apocalyptic novel and the beginning sequence with the world collapsing utterly grabbed me.
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Jun 15, 2023 20:59
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DurianGray posted:Yeah, that framing thing with the spooky museum curator(?) introducing each story is a bit cheesy. I didn't hate it, but I didn't feel like it needed to be there either. The Cryptkeeper?
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Jun 30, 2023 15:37
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General Battuta posted:I managed to scare myself recently (as opposed to the ordinary anxieties of, yknow, living in our world) when I was falling asleep after reading a bunch of the recent UFO gossip. I read that stuff because I love it, not because I'm invested in it being true or untrue. One of the running themes in the UFO lore is that it's all being kept secret because there's some horrible truth to it which makes presidents cry, would disrupt society, etc etc. And I thought you said you didn't like Paradise 1
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Jul 10, 2023 22:09
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King has since said that The Tommyknockers was not a good book, that it was the last book he wrote before he cleaned up his act, and that his writing generally suffered during his period of substance abuse. So, exactly when was this period because it came out in ‘87, the same year he put out Misery, a year after he wrote It, and three after he wrote Pet Semetary. Or at least published them, I guess, was he just turning in old manuscripts?
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Jul 21, 2023 04:02
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Hang on, your introduction to Chuck Tingle was Camp Damascus? You didn't know who he was before?
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Nov 29, 2023 20:45
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I'm glad you didn't because that was one of the most fun little interactions I've seen in a while.
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Nov 30, 2023 22:24
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It is so insanely cold though. Never has a book made me feel colder.
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Dec 5, 2023 05:46
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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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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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UwUnabomber posted:Stephen King's The Jaunt is horror about vast expanses of time. It's also very brief and creepy. It’s longer than you think
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Feb 2, 2024 03:21
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Declare is a cold war spy novel with some sorcery, it's one of my favorite books but I'm not sure it fits that vibe. I'd recommend American Elsewhere by RJ Bennett, I don't know if it's intentionally a Stephen King pastiche but it's very much in that vein with a woman inherits a house in a weirdo small town in New Mexico where not everything is as it seems...
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Feb 16, 2024 22:26
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Ravus Ursus posted:There are, just not in the same medium. Well?
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Mar 26, 2024 20:34
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Trainee PornStar posted:I've not got round to reading it yet but Son Of The Morning by Mark Alder looks to have the same vibe. I've actually stopped recommending it because I didn't want to become "the Son of the Morning" guy, but while they have similar plots and framing devices, the vibes could not be more different. Alder's book is more of a class satire. Though it does have angels and demons as real entities during the 100 Years War. e: that's not to say it isn't good! But it absolutely isn't horror. zoux fucked around with this message at 21:49 on Mar 26, 2024 |
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Mar 26, 2024 21:45
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