Perry
I'll always grab something Layman or Guillory do. So this as fun for me, but not nearly so fun as the original. I'll continue it though, because I think it will be worth it. It's just more heisty than I generally like. The art is fine, but Guillory's is superior. I'd start with the original series and then move onto this one. Chew is, like, required reading.
Review to come, but I'll definitely be reading the next one.
Very minor spoilers.
Thank you to Mr Starling for an ARC of his novel for a fair review.
And my review is that I had great good fun reading this book. There was so much strange, small town, folk horror delight in this book. And a bit of a surprise with the monsters. I became invested in the mythology of the novel, and I'm intrigued to find out more about the whys and wherefores of everything.
As for the characters, I actually quite liked Ellen and Aaron Dreyer–especially Ellen. That's not the norm for me. Usually, I'm not the biggest fan of het couples in horror; often, they follow prescribed gender roles. But in this, Ellen has herself together, and she's actually pretty tough. Aaron is the one who falls apart more easily, and he's a stay-at-home dad whilst he looks for a job. They consider the dog to be part of the family. And the dog lives. This is important. Pets rarely live in horror. But Mr Starling guarantees the dogs live. For which I am immensely grateful.
I digress. Anyway, strange things are afoot in the new town to which the Dreyers have moved. People are dying violently, and a strange creature traipses through their yard every night. Their child has nightmares. They lose time. Their dog is disturbed. And then, events become more personal.
There are two monsters here. One is the Night Bastard. I want to know all about the Night Bastard. Because that name! Also, I love villains.
Anyway, I enjoyed this one and am looking forward to the next book.
Thank you to the publishers, William Morrow, for an advanced reader's edition of this book.
I received not that long ago and finished it this morning. At first, I wasn't sure I liked it. The first story didn't grab me, felt a little unfinished. The second story, Scheherazade, got better. And then I discovered that each story got better as I went along. Babalola is at her best when she's doing a contemporary romance with an HEA, rather than something that has an element of speculative fiction. That being said, there is one story in here, “Attem,” that feels more like the folktale from which it was derived, and that one is quite good. But the most complete stories are the modern ones. And her three original stories at the end are chef's kiss. Especially the last one, a simple, beautifully told tale about her parents. That was actually my favorite piece. It is just wonderful. And relatable, since I married not a childhood friend, but a college friend whom I'd known for twenty years and with whom I find myself creating a life. The story of her parents is just perfectly handled. Ugh, so precious!
Anyway, I digress. My only real complaint is honestly purely subjective. It was too het for me. There is one queer story, and I could have used more. But honestly, I'm queer, and that's what I prefer. I'm also not entirely into het love at first sight, but again, that's me.
On the whole, this was a good collection of stories capped off by a perfect, true tale. I'll be excited to see what Babalola does next.
Thank you to Net Galley and the Inkshares for a copy in exchange for an honest review.
3.5 stars rounded up to 4.
I finished this book a couple of days ago and greatly enjoyed it. Smithy is a period piece; it takes place in the 70s and centers on a language study with a chimp. A Yale professor (and serial womanizer) brings together a group of grad students and undergrads from various disciplines to take part in a study that aims to show apes are capable of communication–human communication, of course. One of his grad student assistants helms the study, because he is too busy swanning around getting grants, teaching, and being far too hands-off for such a study. Another grad student films everything. But none of the students are even remotely qualified to be handling a chimp, even one that does love them.
Everything starts out fine. Wanda, the study leader, is officious and strict and has everything carefully planned. Jeff films everything and loves the chimp, named Webster formally and Smithy familiarly, like his own baby. Gail is a freshman from MO who is perky and cute and woefully under-qualified for such a study, because she's never really had much college experience at all, never mind chimp-rearing experience. Tammy and Eric are both older students with knowledge of child development, and Ruby is a clever junior from a Scranton community college. The man who gathered them, Piers, lets Wanda run the show for him. He really only appears in emergencies or when it's convenient for him; in the case of emergencies, he very seldom feels empathy or offers truly constructive ideas, because he's so far removed from everyone. He's the type of person who smokes in front of Smithy the chimp because he wants to, even thought it bothers Smithy.
Obviously, I didn't like Piers. But I digress.
The students are more interesting anyway. We watch them all grow closer together and closer to Smithy. Ruby and Jeff start dating. Eric has fiascos off page with Wanda and Gail. As with any group of people brought into intimacy with one another, drama ensues. But they all adore Smithy. To their detriment. They idealize him far too much for far too long. Yes, he's closely related to humans. Yes, he's highly intelligent. Yes, he actually CAN communicate.
But they don't know how well at first. Nor do they realize they might not be alone in the old house Piers has rented for the study.
When Smithy starts signing woman constantly, they students think he's making a mistake. They don't realize that perhaps he sees something. He begins signing “dark woman.” Even when random fires start, when the strange things start happening, the students take a while to realize something strange is going on.
The haunting is fairly subtle and ambiguous at times. Most of the book details interactions with Smithy, or his strange behavior. One by one, each student begins to have a strange experience. Except for a couple. But more and more strange events pile up until the house starts to fall apart, and Smithy is acting OUT on people.
I'm definitely on Team Eric here. There is almost enough ambiguity with the events of the book to question whether or not something supernatural is going on. But I almost always go for the supernatural explanation, which fits best in Newport, RI.
That being said, I almost could have used more. This book was enjoyable and interesting. So interesting. What we didn't know about animal behavior and intelligence back then! It's fascinating to see how lax things were in some ways, how uncertain humans were of the intelligence of other animals. And how cruelly those animals could be treated by Academia. And how disorganized it could be.
The ending climaxes and that peters out slowly as the house falls apart. It's depressing to watch happen. And the end. The end is actually heartbreaking. We haven't come nearly far enough.
Also, chimps, being one of our nearest relatives, are actually quite scary.
A short, sweet, nasty little novella about the desperation of teen misfits. Derry and Cal are high school stoners who are each other's only friend. One day, in detention, they meet goth Satanist Natalie and become embroiled in her rural, desperate belief system. Only Cal has an even remotely decent home life or a conscience. Natalie is awful, but she's haunted by an event in her past. Derry even has moments of being sympathetic. But together, the kids will do something horrible and bloody.
This book was short, bloody fun. Parts don't age well, but it does take place in the 90s, which were actually awful. I did feel as if the kids are all fairly stereotypical, unfortunately. Natalie was basically Fairuza Balk in The Craft, but without the charm; the feel boys were typical stoner metalheads and horror fans. Not a lot of nuance. Their ultimate crime is awful, with the worst justification. In the story, it actually makes total sense. It's upsetting to read, but I fully believe Natalie would makes the choice she does. But it was still engaging, fast, and fun.
I received this ARC for from BookSirens in exchange for an honest review.
Thank you to Net Galley; Mr VanderMeer; and Firar, Straus and Giroux for an ARC of this book for an honest review.
I love VanderMeer. Really, I do. I gobbled up the Southern Reach trilogy; I bawled over Borne. I have his amazing book on writing. So I fully expected to love this book with every fiber of my being. Yet, I did not.
Essentially, we follow “Jane,” our statuesque, muscular heroine as she goes down the rabbit hole of eco-conspiracy theories. One day, as she's leaving a coffee shop, the barista runs after her with a mysterious note. This note leads her to a taxidermied, extinct hummingbird. And after that, things get really real. She's followed, she's threatened, she's armed. Her life gets topsy-turvy and out of her control completely. And all because of a dead bird. And maybe a salamander, if she can find it.
The focus of her quest is one Silvina Vilcapampa, supposed eco-terrorist and daughter of an evil industrialist who traffics in rare animals. Silvina is supposedly dead when the story starts, but so many things don't add up for Jane. As she hunts down anyone connected to Silvina and the bird, she is further embroiled in a strange conspiracy that has ties to her childhood. And nothing, including what she thought of Silvina, is reliable.
I went into this book so excited for everything in it. But the writing was not up to the standard to which I'm accustomed with Vandermeer. He constructs beautiful sentences into weird, lovely, tragic tales. This had very little of that. It felt like he dialed it in, or rushed to meet a deadline. Jane is never as engaging as Ghost Bird or Borne or Rachel or the Psychologist, or even Control. She's a mess of a person, which is fine. But she just lacks that extra something. And the things that happen don't entirely make sense. I've read two books in which heroes hide in piles of slain animal grue in the last few weeks, and this one just didn't feel as realistically horrifying as the other one (in My Heart is a Chainsaw). Jane engenders a disconnect from the reader. It isn't a case of likeable or unlikeable. It's a case of, “I don't really care about her.”
I kept waiting to love this book, and I kept being disappointed. It felt like a thriller, but weirder. But not as charmingly Weird as Vandermeer's other books. And, at times, it was almost nonsensical, but not in the giant bear fights sentient alien plant way, which is the very best way.
And then the end, Which I realize some people didn't like. But, for me, it kept the book at three stars. The end isn't satisfying; it doesn't need to be. It needs to have impact, which it did. Nothing is what Jane expected, nor what I expected. And the not knowing is tragic and hopeful and beautiful.
So, I'm so backwards here. I've been wanting to check out the Brown Sisters books for a while, but I just kept putting them off. But for some reason, I REALLY wanted to read Eve's book. For some reason, this was the one that wouldn't let me NOT read it. So I bought it at Half Price and read it immediately. And...
It was SO CUTE. So PRECIOUS. So FUNNY.
Eve, the youngest, is basically being cut off from her trust fund because she can't hold down a job. She feels like a failure all the time. In a pique, she runs away from home and ends up in the Lake District, interviewing for a job wildly unprepared, gets insulted and refused by the B&B proprietor interviewing her; and then, after interviewer bestie tells him he's an ass, she runs over the proprietor who is coming to give her a trial run for the job. She runs into him, really, by accident. Because Eve isn't the best driver.
She ends up cooking for the B&B, because the proprietor, Jacob, is injured and desperate for a chef. Which she can do. Which she's really good at doing. And they fall in love.
This is kinda enemies-to-lovers, miscommunication tropiness. It's funny and very sexy and perfectly adorable. Eve is undiagnosed but probably on the spectrum; Jacob, who IS diagnosed, clues her in, once they begin to have a fondness for each other.
I probably shouldn't try to do reviews at work; I realize this is disjointed. But this book was honestly so delightfully adorable, it made me so very happy when I read it, that I cannot wait to read the other two books in the series. And Eve and Jacob are precious, precious babies.
Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for the ARC.
The subject matter of this book is absolutely in my wheelhouse, so you can imagine how excited I was to read this. And how sad I am to give it such a low score. Firstly, it needs major editing. There are run-on sentences galore, dependent clauses modifying subjects incorrectly, and the occasional odd word choice. The author also names Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley as Godstone. Not once, but multiple times. Was this an instance of bad auto correcting? As for the history, most of it is already old hat to anyone interested in vampires and goth subculture. Very little new info is to be found. The discussion of different vampire media is choppy and reads more like a hackneyed encyclopedia of movie summaries with some thoughts in why humans love vampires so much. There are random, sometimes snarky parenthetical asides that offer little to the discussion. I feel as though I just read a paper by a moderately clever fifteen year-old, not a fifty year-old author. The best part, the most relevant to our interests, was the final interview chapter with different, relevant people, either involved in the goth lifestyle or involved in pertinent media. I think the author interviewed Dacre Stoker, but somehow forget to inform the reader when the voice of the interviewee abruptly changed. This needs heavy editing before its published.
This wasn't a great book. It wasn't even a great mystery. It was, however, a fun read. I was never bored with the ridiculous drama of rich, awful people who are painfully heteronormative. This is pretty much the same shtick as The Hunting Party, but the toxic friendship is male this time around. And it's a wedding, obviously. But it all tracks exactly the same, just with different details. I don't really get the love; but at least I was entertained, even though I kinda guessed what was going on way before the end. It was bad but fun, so it gets three stars, rounded up from 2.5 or so.
Yes!
I normally find thrillers absurd, and sometimes I really don't care for the tropes. Like toxic female friendship. I didn't have to worry about that here. It all might seem incomprehensible, but what happens in this book, well, there's historical precedent. It isn't as far-fetched as one would like. It was stressful, mortifying, depressing, even sociologically scary. And it was so good. This is a grade-A thriller.
Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for the advanced copy.
This is the first Jones full-length novel I've read. I read ‘Mapping the Interiors' ages ago and enjoyed it, but keep putting off other works for no good reason. So when I saw this being offered, I jumped at the chance.
This is a book for horror lovers, chock full of references, which was fun. I even watched a movie of which I'd never heard.
Basically, this is the tale of outcast Native American girl Jade, who dyes her hair with shoe polish and food coloring and deals with a drunk father and no friends. Horror is her life. Specifically slashers. She basically eats, sleeps, and breathes them in order to process and deal with life. She basically wants to have a slasher experience. For reasons the reader learns throughout the book.
Enter Terra Nova, the new, richy-rich housing development across Indian Lake from Jade's town of Proofrock, ID. Since the houses aren't done yet, the main family lives off their yacht on the lake, and their gorgeous, brilliant daughter is in Jade's senior class.
Jade becomes convinced this girl, Letha, is her life's Final Girl and proceeds to attempt to educate Letha for her big showdown with the slasher. Which would be delusional, but people ARE actually dying. The book begins with two hapless Dutch students dying.
This book is good fun and heartbreaking. Jade is tough and self-deprecating/self-loathing, thinks she could never be a true Final Girl.
The body counts grows until the climax, which is crazy, chaotic, and fun. There are red herrings all over the place, which is a strength, but also a weakness. Some of the red herrings aren't just red, but they are also where the plot gets a little murky, which I can't discuss without spoilers.
But grue and gore happen, and Jade's tale is potent and tragic, and I totally loved that little punk.
And the end...well, after all the fun feints and horror pontifications, even I was surprised, and I can usually spot something a mile away. So first Jones novel–not perfect, but oh, so worth it. hugs Jade and bundles her off to watch scary movies with kitties and teddy bears
Mild spoiler
Yes, there are flaws here, pointed out very well by other reviewers, regarding how the few women are written; I completely agree with those observations. By the end of the book, we know what Soraya smells like. The main character's mom is basically fridged.
This being said, I still really enjoyed this book. Sometimes, it was funny, but most of the time, I was just staring in horror at the page, at all the crap through which he goes, at what he briefly becomes, and his dark ending. Parts of it are so real. The ending though...is almost a little too optimistic, in a strange way.
Still, a fun time was had by all reading this, with a fine observation of how non-white people are treated. About how white people can be so brutally tone deaf, ignorant, or just plain evil, with serious cognitive dissonance. Despite how wild some of the end is, I don't think it is unrealistic in its assessment of workplace politics, systemic racism, and white retaliation. The only thing at which I might have quirked an eyebrow in the very end was where he finds his freedom. But that would be too much of a spoiler.
Also, I'm a sucker for most anything with found family.
I received this ebook ARC from the publisher and Netgalley for a fair review.
This book had so many things going for it. A fascinating concept, queerness, it's occasional imagery, anger. I really loved the concept, all of it. It's the tale of Vern, a young girl in a cult devoted to the God of Cain. It's ostensibly a Black Power movement, a total excoriation of anything deemed white. They grow their own food, partake of only Black media, and are almost completely insular. The down side is that they are also conservatively, religiously patriarchal. So Vern, being upset about the disappearance of her best friend and first love, and embittered at her forced marriage to the leader of the cult (because she needs a man to help control her deviant proclivities), decides–in her pregnant state–to run away. So she does one night, leaving behind her family and all she's ever known. She gives birth in the woods and is tracked by an unknown person who leaves threatening messages in the form of bloodied baby clothes. Vern spends nearly three years in the woods.
Vern is also albino and very nearly blind. She bears twins, one Black and one albino. Howling and Feral, respectively. She runs off one day and begins an affair with a strange white woman, which will haunt her throughout the novel.
Speaking of hauntings, she has those too. Nearly everyone in the cult has night terrors, but Vern starts seeing things at any given time of day. And some of them, as the book progresses, can see her right back.
Eventually, she tries to hunt down her friend Lucy, and she winds up in the family of Lakota woman Bridget and her niece Gogo, with whom Vern begins a relationship. As things come to a head, Vern learns about who she really is, what the cult really is, and what she will become.
So again, some great elements. Cults, government conspiracy, LGBT+ character representation, Indigenous characters of importance who–spoiler–don't DIE. This book has some great things going for it! Like, really great things.
So why three stars? Because the elements of semi-magical realism don't quite work for me. Nor did Vern, really. Her children are just a little too precocious and advanced for their years. They don't talk like the kids they should be throughout the book. I didn't believe them. And, once Vern is in the woods, I was boggled. This is strangely a book based somewhat in reality, but her years in the woods are like a strange fairy tale. She wasn't so very far from civilization, but she refuses to leave the woods and becomes sort of feral? For three years? I think if the book had had a more dreamy quality that would have worked for me, but it really doesn't. So I spent most of the book not believing the story. Which made me sad, because I wanted to be invested. I wanted to really love it. There are so many awesome things going on with this book, but the execution for me just fell a little flat, a little unfulfilled; the pacing a little unbalanced. Still, some of the things going on are truly cool, and I would have liked more exploration of those things.
I was torn on how many stars to give this one. I'm familiar with cyberpunk works and have enjoyed them in the past. Price is very obviously intelligent, knows his genre, and is excellent at worlds building. The plot is complex, but it isn't so complicated it's difficult to follow. It is the tale of mechanic Mara, who one day wakes up in the wrong body, beside a corpse she is then accused of murdering. She goes on the run, trying to find out what's happened to her.
That's just the beginning of the action. She meets seedy underworld dwellers, an off-the-grid commune, and a wannabe cowboy, who is probably one of my favorite characters.
The beginning is strong, but there came a point in the first third where I began to find Mara a bit tedious, and the story dragged for me. But then she meets the cowboy and then the protein the commune, and I regained interest. The last third was actually quite fun.
So, the strengths are plotting and worlds building. The main drawback for me were the characters. I wasn't as engaged with them as much as I'd have liked, particularly Mara. But I'd like to read more, and I'll certainly look for Price again. 3.5 stars rounded to 4.
I received an ARC for free in exchange for a review.
2.5 stars.
In the Scottish Highlands, policeman Andrew is called to examine a dead body at a newly ripened hunting lodge. And then the body disappears. As the guests and proprietors are snowed in with Andrew, they all slowly begin to disappear, and Andrew must figure out what's happening.
This wasn't amazing. The prose was serviceable, and the characters not incredibly well drawn. But it is a fun enough, quick enough read with some requisite tragic back stories. I'm always a sucker for winter isolation horror with strange disappearances.
Lit. Fic.
I was intrigued by the description and the potential themes explored. But the whole thing just fell flat for me. The white parents were awful and, frankly, dumb. The black couple was actually super nice to them. But it all got so tedious and unexciting and repetitive. And I really didn't care about the white parents. I feel like there were so many points in the narrative for awesome, disturbing decisions, but it seemed like Alam didn't know how to make those decisions. The characters wouldn't have even needed to do much more than what they did, but the narrative itself could have done so much more. And the end...the anti-climactic, vague end. Rose is the only one using her head. We have no REAL idea what's going on, only vague clues; we have NO idea how it will end, because just as things get really real–the book ends. Right where most would have begun. Maybe it's because I actually read horror, but I was so completely underwhelmed by this book, that it all just...didn't work at all for me.
For the completist only. The original manga series is incredible, with beautiful art. The manga of the ridiculous movie is also beautiful. This was fine. I wasn't bored, and I was happy to see Anthy and Utena together again, and the Student Council. But the stories are not all equal. And the art was missing the beautiful detail of the older series. Still and all, it was fun to see how everyone grew up (or didn't), though I would have preferred more focus on Utena and Anthy. Miki probably got my favorite story.
I just love Sarah Langan. I've read her for ages and long awaited a new novel. Though this is technically less horror than her usual work, I still loved it.
An ex-rockstar and ex-beauty queen, both from rough backgrounds, move their family from Brooklyn to a Long Island suburb. At first, things are all right. The family have issues, but they really care about each other. The mother becomes friends with a neighbor, a community college professor who tanked her own career with a predilection for violence and heavy delusion.
This takes place in the near future, the very near future, and climate change has made the earth strange. Sinkholes appear across the country, including in the suburb. When the professor neighbor's daughter falls into the sinkhole, the professor goes off the deep end and begins to blame the rockstar husband. By claiming he molested her child.
And everything spirals from there.
I devoured this book. It tackles issues of class, urban vs. suburban, death and mourning, and human interrelations. Which, in this book, are messy. But there is some hope at the end, despite all the terrible things that happen.