horror

Welcome To Night Vale by Joseph Fink & Jeffrey Cranor

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I’m copying over some reviews of titles I’d written up in 2018 and earlier, just in case these titles are new for other people.

Welcome To Night Vale by Joseph Fink and Jeffrey Cranor is definitely an interesting read, especially if your tastes lean toward the absurd and surreal.
It ranks up there with Douglas Adams (think Dirk Gently rather than Hitchhiker’s Guide) and David Wong, but with a bit less cohesion and rationality behind the narrative and the setting. That sounds like a bad thing, but it really isn’t…it’s refreshing to read something so ridiculous that still manages to be captivating and entertaining, because that is something a great many authors just can’t pull off.
Throughout this novel, none of the absurdity and randomness ends up feeling like it’s there just to be there or simply to categorize the story as being bizarre or strange. Somehow the authors manage to make it all feel like it furthers the plot, and there is one of those…a plot.
Reading this book makes me want to listen to more of the podcast that started it all, maybe from the beginning through the present (which would likely take up more time than I really want to invest). It’s a statement about the quality of the book that I would actually want to spend more time visiting the fictional, semi-lucid nightmare town that is Night Vale and hopefully they will opt to write another novel or two so that I don’t have to immerse myself in the podcast.
As long as I don’t have to visit the library to read them, I’ll be ok.

14 by Peter Clines

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I’m copying over some reviews of titles I’d written up in 2018 and earlier, just in case these titles are new for other people.

Peter Clines wrote a masterpiece with 14. The comparisons to LOST are absolutely spot-on, in that the novel successfully contains a great deal of the same surrealism, mystery, and even a few of the themes from the first couple seasons of that television show and places them inside an old LA apartment building instead of on an unnamed island.
Combine that element of LOST-like intrigue and mystery with some House of Leaves and toss in a healthy dose of H.P. Lovecraft and you’ll start to approach the setting for 14. You hear people describe movies and television shows by stating that this or that (in reference to a location or vessel) is actually a character in its own right, and this book successfully makes the apartment building a pivotal character without imbuing it with thought or anything silly like that…and then Clines stuffs the building full of interesting human characters who display an almost contrived level of diversity without ever coming across as contrived.
References to LOST and Fringe in the dialogue make it clear that the characters realize just how unusual their situation is, and that self-awareness makes them more compelling as far as I’m concerned. The whole story is fascinating, in large part because of how relatable the characters are, most of them at least. The only downside I can think of is that I predicted the ending less than halfway into the story, but maybe that just means I was approaching the book from a similar perspective to the author.
This book undoubtedly falls into the top 5 stand-alone novels I’ve read in as many years. It might even still make my top 10 if I include novels that are part of a series.

Gutted: Beautiful Horror Stories edited by Doug Murano & D. Alexander Ward

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I’m copying over some reviews of titles I’d written up in 2018 and earlier, just in case these titles are new for other people.

Gutted: Beautiful Horror Stories is a fascinating anthology of short fiction from a variety of diverse authors…providing an assortment that varies in both style and substance to a huge extent.
I don’t know that a lot of these stories are “horror” in the sense that some of you might expect, but they are quite deeply unsettling as a whole. Many of what you’ll find are examples of the horror that we carry within us or manifest internally, like in the unexpected choose-your-own-adventure tale ‘A Haunted House Is a Wheel Upon Which Some Are Broken’ provided by Paul Tremblay or the devastating ‘Arbeit Macht Frei’ by Lisa Mannetti.
Clive Barker’s ‘Coming To Grief’ was my personal favorite, and a more subtle tale than a lot of his short fiction. Strangely enough, because I normally love his short fiction, my least favorite story was ‘The Problem of Susan’ by Neil Gaiman, a dark and perverse take on the world of Narnia…it wasn’t necessarily a bad story in any way, but it felt like the weakest inclusion.
I definitely recommend this book, especially if you’re looking to discover new authors you might not have already been familiar with.

Burn the Rabbit by Joe Chianakas

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I’m copying over some reviews of titles I’d written up in 2018 and earlier, just in case these titles are new for other people.

I had high hopes when I started reading Burn the Rabbit by Joe Chianakas, because Rabbit In Red was just such a fun and engaging story. It could be due to the higher expectations going in, but I don’t feel like Burn the Rabbit was anywhere near as good as the first book.
The stakes are higher, the story is decent enough, and the characters are largely consistent with what we would expect to see in the same people a matter of months after the events of Rabbit In Red…but something remains lacking. Something about this second installment of the trilogy just didn’t grab me the way the first book managed to.
Maybe it’s the altogether too predictable connection between JB and Jaime (as well as her sister and mother, of course) which is no more subtle than if Stephenie Meyer had written it. Unless something way out of left field pops up in the third book and that predictable “twist” turns out to be a red herring, it felt like the reader was being hit over the head with “clues” to the point that it underestimates the intellect of the audience.
It could be the fact that I ran across more copy editing errors than I see in many self-published novels, but I doubt that’s it because those things happen in even the most well-respected authors’ books and I tend to dismiss them.
It could be the fact that it felt like the narrative was rushed, wedging more time elapsed and many more actual events into not much more writing, and a great deal got glossed over in the process.
Honestly, I don’t know what it was about this book that left me feeling unsatisfied in comparison to how I felt after finishing Rabbit In Red…but I will still be looking forward to the third installment.

As of today, I have yet to read the third installment of the Rabbit In Red trilogy. All three books are collected in a single volume, and I would recommend purchasing the collected edition vs. the individual volumes…for the best overall value.

Rabbit In Red by Joe Chianakas

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I’m copying over some reviews of titles I’d written up in 2018 and earlier, just in case these titles are new for other people.

Rabbit In Red by Joe Chianakas was essentially for horror what Ready Player One was for 70s and 80s geek nostalgia. Needless to say, I loved it.
This was a book written by someone who shares my same obsessive love of all things horror, film and literature…writing out the sort of fantasy experience I think many of us wish we could enjoy.
It’s a small book, more of a novella than a novel, and it races by quickly as you get thoroughly drawn into the story as it unfolds. The shame is that it isn’t longer, thankfully there is a sequel already available and a third volume to be released in the relatively near future.
Were it not for my subscription to Horror Block I more than likely never would have read this book nor even known that it exists. Clearly, I am quite grateful that they opted to include this in last month’s box.

Roadside Picnic by Arkady & Boris Strugastky

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I’m copying over some reviews of titles I’d written up in 2018 and earlier, just in case these titles are new for other people.

I’m glad that we have a solid English translation of Arkady and Boris Strugatsky’s Roadside Picnic. This is a book that people really should be reading, if only because there’s a perspective to it that we rarely see in science fiction or literature in general.
While this may be a science fiction novel, taking place a number of years after first contact that involved no contact at all, the narrative is more akin to horror than anything else.
Aliens arrived on Earth, landing in a handful of seemingly random locations and then left shortly thereafter without any attempt to interact with us. What they left behind in their landing locations were bizarre, hazardous, and toxic zones where people like our protagonist would illegally venture with the purpose of risking their lives to collect items of alien manufacture that could be sold to scientific institutes for study or private collectors for bragging rights. The odds of surviving these trips into the zone were slim and anyone who made it out was changed by the experience.
This is where the novel begins, the context surrounding a story that is equal parts inspirational and terrifying, disorienting and straightforward. This book should be considered not only a fantastic sample of Cold War era Russian science fiction but also an example of surreal horror at its finest.

Detritus In Love by Mercedes M. Yardley & John Boden

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I’m copying over some reviews of titles I’d written up in 2018 and earlier, just in case these titles are new for other people.

For a novella of only 50+ pages, Detritus In Love by Mercedes M. Yardley and John Boden is still somehow a huge story.
With eloquence and elegance of language from the authors we follow the sad life of Detritus, a young man who befriends dead people and falls in love with a dead girl, who sees the decay and corruption in the cruel world around him through his third eye, and who lives with the dread that The Opposite is coming for him.
It’s a story that is equal parts disorienting and captivating, fantastic and horrifying, as it builds up to a conclusion that is anything but cheerful.

The Fireman by Joe Hill

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I’m copying over some reviews of titles I’d written up in 2018 and earlier, just in case these titles are new for other people.

The Fireman is, in my opinion, the best book Joe Hill has written. I positively loved Horns and Heart-Shaped Box, and NOS4A2 had a great dark fantasy element to it that made it stand out even though it was my least favorite of his works.
This book takes elements of The Road by Cormac McCarthy and mingles it with a bit of King’s The Stand to create a gripping, devastating, original piece of fiction that falls somewhere between horror and straightforward dramatic literature.
It’s a story about people pushed to the limits of psychological and physical endurance, a world in flames, and paranoia brought on by pandemic conditions. It’s a love story and a story about forging family from ash.
The titular Fireman may be one of the more captivating figures I’ve encountered in a while, and a truly well-developed one for a man who really isn’t the focus of the story at all but rather the vastly important secondary role that helps to bind the narrative together into something fantastic.
At the end of the novel it indicates that Joe Hill spent close to four years writing this book and those were four years well spent.

What the Hell Did I Just Read by David Wong

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I’m copying over some reviews of titles I’d written up in 2018 and earlier, just in case these titles are new for other people.

This book, along with the two previous installments in the series, was handed to me by this beaten up concrete snowman I’ve always had. It only has one arm and it’s covered in bird droppings, but it occasionally has excellent suggestions as far as reading material is concerned.
This was one of those times, not the others.
This book felt more mature, in a sense, than the previous two in the series…the personal relationships between the characters felt more visceral and true to life, and there was a miasma of despair that sort of flowed through the whole narrative in a way that led to everything coming across as more real even though this story was just as full of surrealism and insanity as the previous two.
I will be sorely disappointed if there aren’t further adventures of Dave, John, and Amy…now featuring not Joy Park.

Night Worms Pack: February 2021

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I decided to give the Night Worms subscription box a shot, because it’s appealed to me for quite some time and I couldn’t think of a good reason not to try it out.
Unfortunately, one of the worries I had in signing up came to fruition. I am now the proud owner of a second copy of Jessica Leonard’s Antioch (complete with a signed bookplate). I’m sure I will be able to find her terrific book a good home, though. This was always going to be a very real concern, with the sheer number of books I own and the regularity with which I purchase new additions to my library.
The other two books are new to my collection, which is certainly nice. I was sort of concerned that everything contained in the Night Worms pack would be things I already had, now that I’d opted to try it out. Murphy’s Law is something that can’t be disregarded.
The milk chocolate and cinnamon hot cocoa mix seems like it will be promising.
The bookmarks will come in handy…around here, they always do.
The little voodoo doll sticker is adorable.

https://nightworms.com/