C. J. Daley

Thanks to the author and Savage Realms Press for the eARC! This one sounded like it shared a sinister world with my own novel, so I was super intrigued. I really wanted to review by release day, and I was close, but I had some stuff come up.

Chapter one opens in the past, the kind of set up that may be labeled a prologue in SFF. It shows an event that would stain the town of Cedar Mills for years to come. It immediately feels like a tightly focused creature feature, which is one of my favorite horror subgenres. Then it shifts, giving the reader a mixture of POVs from high school kids to a disgraced detective. It’s a little strange at first, but the author ends up making it work.

This felt like the inverse of my own writing, where I mentioned supernatural but didn’t dive in, this one does it all. It’s a full on supernatural story that steps its toes into crime fiction. It’s a cool take on blending horror subgenres. That’s where this story really shined: the horrors. The creature, known as 43, whose description brought to mind Creature from the Black Lagoon, is a semi-aquatic badass—one that loves stabbing government agents in the head with its claws. And I even liked how the author gives us the full explanation of what it is by the end, spinning into an almost full blown scifi horror.

The trigger happy agents in this reminded me of the supernatural devision from When the Wolf Comes Home by Nat Cassidy. Their no-loose-ends mentality actually causing more trouble by the end. The inclusion of innocent teenagers also added in a well done layer of emotion and heart to the novel. Regardless of any interwoven romance, four teen friends getting thrown into the deep end was an interesting take that felt kind of like its own thing. These weren’t slasher movie teens that feel and even look like adults, these were starry-eyed and screaming kids, grieving and just trying to make it out alive.

Great action, a scary beast, and a beating heart in the background, making this one a solid read!

Huge thanks to Shortwave for a physical copy of this one to review. I have to say, it’s simple, but this is one of my favorite covers from them.

A couple gets a little lost, so when they come across a bar, they figure why not stop for a beer? They’re already a bit behind, and it’s just going to be one, right? What follows will go down as one of their worst nights…ever.

This is a first read for me by the author. I have a hardcover of Boys in the Valley, it was on my desired October TBR, but I just didn’t fit it in. As I enjoyed this, this may actually function as a really nice introduction to the author for people. It’s short, concise, spooky, kooky even. There’s humor and ridiculousness thrown in that makes it something you can laugh at, while also sidestepping all jukeboxes for the foreseeable future.

Some well done eeriness in such few pages, and a bit of revenge thrown in there as well. Kind of reminded me of something you could see on The Twilight Zone or Black Mirror, especially in its almost episodic length. Check this one out, and as ever, support Shortwave Media.

I grabbed the trilogy omnibus, so I figured I’d roll right along after finishing the first book.

Ilanna is back and her world is darker than ever. Still, there is a bright spot. Her torment at the hands of Twelve has given her a child. No matter how dark and traumatic her past has been she’s determined to raise her son with love and light, away from the eyes of the Night Guild. While she squirrels away little visits with him, the city’s defender from all things thievery, Duke Phonnis, continues on his tirade of death and destruction. These deaths, earning cheers from the city’s populace, does nothing but stir the fire within Ilanna as the Duke executes more of her friends. And as she is the one that enraged him by successfully infiltrating his “impenetrable” Black Spire in book one, these deaths feel personal. As she struggles with each new loss, as well as the anxiety of the guild finding out about her son, she looks for a way to buy her freedom. And while the guild accepts and offers terms, the price is exorbitant, leading to yet another unbelievable feat.

As the second book in a trilogy, I think this did well to break from the norm. As the tried and true format is typically a book 2 being all about growth and training (ie., the Empire format) this book actually does away with almost all of the training exercises…at least on the page for the most part. Ilanna has already spent an entire book, and over a decade, doing nothing but pushing herself to peak personal form, therefore, she has the ability and time to focus on her actual goals now. Her targets are rich, even famous, and she is known for being like that of a ghost—entering, stealing, and even leaving without anyone knowing she was ever there to begin with. I loved how the author went into this as it really reminded me of Assassin’s Creed and Ghost of Tsushima, both games I particularly loved for their stealth dynamics.

However if Ilanna wants to pull off this job correctly and live to reap the benefits, she’s going to need help. And a lot of it. While it pains her to let people in, even if she keeps a multitude of secrets from each, she needs a team. This layered in a new dynamic for her character and the story, not only allowing for new faces, but also building in character development that would perhaps have been absent otherwise. She recruits some of the best and brightest from each Guild house, ensuring the odds are at least as tilted in her favor as possible. And with each additional person helping, the chances of Ilanna losing someone else goes up…and House Hawk is dangerously empty already. I particularly liked her relationship with Two/Errik of house Serpent as it allowed the author to show off how she behaved around someone she might actually consider an equal, if not a friend. While she tries to keep him at arms length too, it’s still pretty obvious that she trusts him…and that’s super unique for her. In a way she depends on him, and he her, as he often does what she needs of him without any convincing. Perhaps coming up as tyros together will bond you that way.

The only complaint I have with this book is more of a me thing than anything against the writing. I tend to take quite lengthy breaks from Grimdark in general. The bleakness, the losses, it all begins to add up for me and can become a tad samey. Ilanna has become incredibly jaded in this one (understandably so) so a lot of that lightness and hope from the first that I loved is missing. And while her strength, courage, determination, and perseverance has not diminished for her son’s sake, the losses just stack. And don’t get me wrong—at all—it is not a fault of the author. He has not lost his delivery of these deaths whatsoever, I felt each and every one, it’s just not my typical subgenre. The book’s ending, while most definitely still presenting the most recent loss, is nothing short of heartbreaking—and one that is surely to send you right into book 3 looking for vengeance.

Book Two offers readers a fantasy world heist the likes of Six of Crows meshed with the death-heavy likes of Game of Thrones. This second entry is building up to what I’m sure will end up being an absolutely stellar trilogy.

Thanks so much to Tor Nightfire for the ARC, I really wanted to read this one!

Since I started writing I have wanted to write an old person serial killer. Then this year I saw Samantha Downing’s Too Old For This and thought, aww damn. But then I said, wait has there ever been a final grandma? Which began me brewing new ideas until…well this. That’s not to say I can’t or won’t at some point! But this one mentions the Hudson Valley multiple times, with the main character Rose’s daughter even buying a house there, making me feel like a Philip Fracassi book now lives in the same world as my dark little town in Welcome to Cemetery. It can live right next to Black Spring from Thomas Olde Heuvelt’s Hex (the American version). I mean there’s even a young female detective named Williams…so just maybe.

The Autumn Springs retirement sounds like the place to be! Apartments next to your acquaintances, friends, maybe even love interests. Schedule exercises or classes, meals, movie nights, and of course there’s open visitations, this sounds like a fun-filled place to live. Rose is just one of a phenomenally inventive cast of characters, all filled with so much life and personality. They may have aches and pains, may get sick easily or need special care, but these people have life left to live—and they’re determined to do so to the fullest. That is, of course, until the first accident. An accident that’s followed by several more, some that are growingly suspicious.

I love that Rose and her small group of confidants take on almost amateur sleuthing the continued accidents and deaths. They use their unassuming, and often underestimated, natures to get information from nurses, doctors, and even the police that others just simply would not receive. With multiple Hercule Poirot mentions, an in-world detective named Hastings, and Miss Marple name dropped, this had my Agatha Christie loving heart aglow.

This did a really great job of showcasing the elderly as more than just the feeble or fragile people they so often are portrayed as. There’s life and spunk and continued brains up there—there’s more life to be lived. So while this book does feature death, even having multiple scenes where someone says, “well death must happen here all the time!” it does a great job of subverting that with strong and strong willed characters. The kills are inventive, as well as a killer reveal that still felt real-world enough, and there is enough brutality in that realness to appeal to a wide horror audience. My grandmother is 87 and I’m definitely giving her a copy. She loves mysteries and thrillers.

The ending had a callback I was not expecting, and I loved its ambiguous style allowing you to believe what you want. It’s hardcore and intense, and you know what, they deserved it!

Before this read, I had Boys in the Valley on my TBR, only having read Fracassi’s Shortwave Media release, D7. After finishing this, I’m going to have to get my copy out of storage to bump it way up the physical TBR mountain.

I really wanted to give this a go for its 50th anniversary year, and after loving Pet Sematary, I knew I had to bump this one up. Believe it or not, I’ve been alive for 32 of those 50 years and managed to avoid pretty much all spoilers.

While reading this, which I didn’t know was any form of religious, I also happened to be listening to C.J. Leede’s American Rapture—which is an extreme examination on religion. Both of them start with a kind of deep dive into the bounds in which Catholicism is designed to hold down and punish women simply for existing. While Sophie’s family is simply force feeding her guilt on a biblical scale, Carrie’s mother seems to be well off the deep end. While Sophie is showcased to be so far removed that she truly doesn’t even know how the world itself functions, Carrie is so religiously uneducated in womanhood that she is unaware of menstruation, not even knowing herself. While AR showcases how religious families can be hurtful even within the Bible, Carrie’s mother using god like a hammer. Much more on the side of torture than praising.

I was surprised by how thoroughly this goes into the high school level of bullying. Because she is so sheltered, the other girls view her as weird, because she isn’t allowed to dress normal or use makeup, isn’t super skinny, they consider her ugly. The opening scene of the novel they throw tampons and sanitary napkins at her instead of helping her, solidifying just how other they view her. She is ostracized from her fellow classmates while she can’t even seek solace at home. Kind of similar to Neal Cassidy’s Schroeder that I just finished as well, that level of bullying could be seen as more than enough to push someone over the edge, and yet King’s novel adds an additional layer.

Right from the beginning, the reader understands that Carrie has telekinetic powers. She is not sure how exactly they work, or why she has them, nor are they very strong, but it’s something within her that she can explore. The novel mixes Carrie’s own discoveries with excerpts from scientific research and journals surrounding the phenomenon in a way that almost felt like King was creating his own superpower or mutant gene, even though that is not at all the direction of the novel. And Carrie is anything but a superhero.

And while there are definitely some issues where this is dated—primarily the descriptions of young girls, women in general, and some racial terms—I found it interesting that Chris’ boyfriend is displayed as the quintessential bad guy, his mistreatment of women being the main thing on display. It’s almost a commentary while missing his own mistakes?

And with that being said, Chris is the villain here. As a ringleader from the opening shower scene, she becomes wholeheartedly hellbent of ruining Carrie’s life…mostly because she got in trouble for doing a terrible thing? As the daughter of a lawyer, who is also displayed as an entitled idiot, it’s no surprise that Chris would blame someone else rather than doing some soul searching. This hellbent desire to get back at Carrie is the straw that breaks the camels back. The ending is fast, violent, and gruesome in a way I don’t think I’ve ever read before.