books – Darker Books

The Works of Vermin: a Review

What’s the book? The Works of Vermin by Hiron Ennes

How dark is it? Um, it’s hard to say. On the one hand, people are dying in droves and every character’s life is a horrorshow. On the other hand, none of this is told in a dark way at all so . . . maybe that makes it even darker? Technically, darkest of dark. Drenched in blood and sap. But I was personally more fascinated than horrified.

How good is it? On a scale of 1 to 10 pests. 9/10 pests. But it’s also very weird and not for everyone. Read a few pages in the store before you decide.

This book is a glorious chaos. From beginning to end, I was just barely hanging on as I followed the various characters on their adventures through this splendidly horrific fantasy city. I’m still not sure I understood it all because no one ever explains anything in this book, but I think I loved it. Yeah, I’m pretty sure I loved it.

Tiliard is a city tunneled into an impossibly large tree stump straddling a river. At the top of the stump are the rich, obsessive about their opera and perfumes and fashions. They’re also, it seems, always caught up in deadly political drama. We’re following the Laurel Chancellor and his right hand man, the Marshall Revenant, as they attempt to defend their positions against any and all upstarts. We’re also following the Marshall’s head perfumer, Aster, as she befriends an exciting newcomer to town. Who is this new guy, this Mallory vant Passand? Is he part of the latest group of starving artists trying to overthrow the Chancellor? Is he angling to meet Olaf Aufhocker, the reclusive author of this era’s most popular operas? Is he just really into Aster? Who knows?

While that drama unfolds, we’re also following denizens of the city’s underbelly, who literally live on catwalks and bungalows hanging from the giant stump’s underside. Guylag is a humble exterminator, doing his best to look out for his little sister Tyro and willing to do literally anything to give her a better life than he has. Since this entire city is built in a rotting stump, there are always new and exciting vermin to smoke out and extermination is a booming but dangerous business to be in. Guylag (Guy for short) and his partner Dawn answer a particularly tricky call that results in a nasty sting for Guy and a whole new species of pest for his team to hunt down. Pretty soon the hunt for this particular pest becomes all-out war between the various extermination companies of the undercity, and Guy and Dawn are on the front lines.

It’s clear that the rulers on top of the city must somehow connect with our plucky undercity exterminators, but it’s not at all clear why or when or how. Since the book hurtles ahead at full speed and never explains anything ever, I was utterly surprised when these questions were answered. I can’t remember exactly what page it was, but I was well over halfway through and still confused (though increasingly delighted) when everything snapped into focus. Suddenly it all made sense. Or, well, nothing in this book quite makes sense but it all came together in the most satisfying way. I read a whole lot of books and it’s become hard to surprise me, but I did not see this twist coming. That made me love this book all the more.

This book is part horror, part fantasy, part I-don’t-know-what. You need a strong vocabulary and a high tolerance for confusing experimental vibes to enjoy this book, but if you can get past that it’s a unique brand of excitement and fun. It’s always on the verge of becoming nonsense but Hiron Ennes manages to keep it just barely together, and amid the chaos I found myself really attached to most of the characters, hero and villain alike.

Now for a slight spoiler.

Stop here if you hate spoilers.

Okay.

Ready?

Mallory vant Passand is a trans gentleman. Or possibly genderfluid. Or nonbinary? Mallory is beyond labels. This is clear from very early on and seems of zero importance to any of the characters, including Mallory. Tilliard is a very accepting tree stump city, possibly because everyone’s so distracted by all the operas and murder. Eventually, as Mallory’s history is revealed, it becomes key to the plot in a way I should have caught onto sooner. In my defense, I was distracted by the many assassination attempts and the exterminator war unfolding. I mention it at all because I was thoroughly excited by Mallory as a bold adventuring character. As the book progresses Mallory’s loose relationship with gender becomes a very cool part of the adventure and I can’t review this book without mentioning how much I love how it plays out. It felt like an inspiring call to transcend our hang-ups around gender and sex and just live freely, without ever actually saying anything like this at all. Because, as I’ve said before, this book never explains anything ever. It doesn’t have time; it’s too busy living its best life.

An Education in Malice: a Review

What’s the Book? An Education in Malice by S. T. Gibson

How dark is it? Eh, not that dark. Lot of sex, very little murder.

Is it good? On a scale from 1 to 10 vampire kisses. 2/10 vampire kisses. Did not love.

Man, I wanted to like this way better than I did. I love the vibes of Dark Academia and I was excited to read this mashup of Carmilla (lesbian vampire classic) and The Secret History (elite New England college, charismatic professor teaching a hypercompetitive literature class). I’d seen this in all the stores and heard a lot of good buzz, but I was deeply bored and disappointed once I actually got to reading. The book felt like a rough draft that was rushed to publication way before it was ready.

Laura is a shy Southern girl away from home for the first time. She wants to become a priest, but also secretly longs to be a dominatrix. Carmilla is a rich jaded Austrian whose parents gave her everything but love, who came to this school specifically to study with their charismatic poetry professor, Doctor Delafontaine. Delafontaine is a vampire searching for her lost lover while grooming Carmilla to be her . . . her thrall? Acolyte? Replacement lover? Probably all of the above.

Laura and Carmilla totally get together, of course, but not before Delafontaine turns Carmilla into a vampire. This happens as Delafontaine reawakens her own sire, Isis, hoping they can get back together. (Delafontaine clearly has her own dramatic relationship history that is hinted at but barely explored.) Isis, however, turns out to be more of a bloodthirsty monster than the average vampire and this causes some exciting problems for our trio.

The bits with Isis are pretty bloody and exciting, but there aren’t many of them. This is mostly a romantasy with fairly typical tropes and moderately steamy sex scenes between Laura and Carmilla. If you’re a big fan of romance and really only care about steamy sex scenes then sure, read this book. If you want more than that–coherent characters, good pacing, and a solid storyline to your romance–this book will come up short.

Carmilla is a pretty undeveloped character, and since she’s underdeveloped the weird relationship she has with her vampire professor feels awkward and forced, especially since Delafontaine’s character is also underdeveloped. She’s a predator who has clearly groomed Carmilla in some deeply inappropriate ways, and it’s implied that Delafontaine’s sire maybe did the same to her so . . . something something generational trauma? There could be something interesting there but it’s not well explored and in the end *Spoiler Alert* Delafontaine seems to sensibly feel bad about what she’s done to Carmilla and leaves, setting up Carmilla and Laura for a happy future without her. It’s unbelievably sensible and empathetic behavior for a predator. And I mean that I literally don’t believe it would happen that way. It feels cheap and anticlimactic.

Laura’s character is explored more but not enough. She’s deeply religious yet unashamed of her lesbian dominatrix urges yet terrified for anyone to know yet confident enough to have public sex yet deeply insecure about her body yet . . . you get the idea. With careful handling, Laura could be a complex woman struggling with desires that don’t fit together easily, but instead of being explored and struggled with these contradictions are just thrown out there and then ignored when they become inconvenient.

I was also a bit frustrated that despite the heavy fantasies both girls have about domination and submission, this part of the plot doesn’t really come together. There are several explicit sex scenes and some of them sort of have these overtones but they feel quite tame. I mean, the tameness would be realistic for actual new lovers who don’t have much experience but nothing else about this book is realistic or nuanced, so it’s odd that the author pulled her punches so hard here.

Next to all that my last complaint might seem kind of petty but I’m going to add it anyway. This book is set in 1968, and to establish this the author throws in every random thing from the 1960s she can think of, along with a few things that definitely didn’t happen until the 1970s and ‘80s. My best guess is the late ’60s vibe was supposed to enhance the themes of sexual liberation but it felt so forced that it detracted instead.

Yeah, like I said. Decent for a rough draft. Lots of good ideas that just don’t come together. Needs a lot more work to become an actually good book. Honestly, I expect this kind of sloppy writing from a cheap romance, which is why I don’t generally read them anymore. At this age I’m looking for something more. But this isn’t marketed as a cheap romance so it caught me off guard. Money wasted. Lesson learned.

Moonflow

What’s the book? Moonflow by Bitter Karella

How dark is it? It’s pretty dark. Slasher movie levels of gore and some of it involves children. There’s also a lot of graphic sex but that’s generally between consenting adults.

How good is it? On a scale from one to ten poisonous mushrooms, I give it a seven. 7/10 poisonous mushrooms.

The description on the back of Moonflow talks about the King’s Breakfast, a magic mushroom that creates truly transcendent experiences. The cover art is super psychedelic. This book is obviously about drugs but somehow I did not make this connection when I bought it. I feel a bit silly and hopelessly uncool for missing this.

This book also comes with a content warning, as a lot of books do these days. I don’t pay much attention to these, as a rule. When I pick up a horror novel I expect, even want, to read disturbing material. Most of the time the actual novel isn’t nearly as disturbing as the content notes warn/promise. This novel, however, was even more graphic than the content note suggested, and I can’t say I wasn’t warned. Literally. On the first page. I was also warned about the heavy drug use depicted, though I really should have known that already.

We follow Sarah, a trans woman. She’s a grower and seller of magic mushrooms on a bizarre journey of weirdness and discovery. She is, indeed, looking for the King’s Breakfast so she can cultivate and sell it. This most magic of magic mushrooms grows only in the mysterious Pamogo forest way up in northern California. Her guide is Andy, who works in the State Park visitor’s center near the forest no one seems to ever visit. Only a few hours into their little forest jaunt we begin to see why there are so few visitors. It’s one of those dark and creepy forests where the landmarks seem to shift when you’re not looking. There are weird piles of racoon bones and Andy seems to navigate using dead hikers as landmarks. If you’re looking for a pleasant day hike, maybe a beautiful vista or two, the Pamogo will disappoint. This forest is more about mushrooms and mayhem.

The only people who seem to live in the Pamogo are a cult of mushroom-fueled radical feminists with nicknames like Skillet and Hell Slut and Mother Moonflow. Mother Moonflow is their visionary leader and their paragon of feminine power. She’s also constantly high and maybe not the most stable and grounded of people. The Moonflow cult seem to be on a quest to birth an avatar of the Green Lady, a spirit of pure plant-based feminine energy. There are a lot of psychedelics and female orgasms involved. Also murder. There’s lots of murder involved.

When Sarah and Andy meet this cult they’re not sure at all what to think. The cult, likewise, isn’t sure what to think about Sarah and Andy. They’re all lesbians for political reasons, so Andy’s pretty useless to them, but they’re split on Sarah. Mother Moonflow agrees that trans women are women and it’s cool to have Sarah there but some of the other cult members aren’t so sure. Sarah and Andy would be happy to leave, only they’re hopelessly lost by the time they meet the cult so they’re pretty sure they’ll die in the woods if they can’t get directions from one of these women. Plus, Sarah figures out pretty quick that Mother Moonflow has access to the King’s Breakfast. Maybe they can get along with these women long enough to get hold of some.

That’s the basic story but none of that explains how fast-paced, weird, and at times gruesome this story is. Maybe get really high and read this while fighting your way through a few hallucinations? (No, wait, don’t do that. I’m not recommending that to anyone.) What you should maybe do is go watch Andrei Tarkovsky’s cult classic Stalker. Andy, as he leads Sarah into the freakiness of the Pamogo, starts telling Sarah about Stalker, surprised she hasn’t seen it. I dutifully looked it up on YouTube (it’s free there) to see what the hell it had to do with anything and a)Stalker is also about a creepy dangerous forest where landmarks seem to shift when you’re not looking and b)both places seem to confront wanderers with the deepest truths about themselves.

Many of Sarah’s deepest truths, and many of the cult members’ deepest truths, involve their complex feelings about humanity and femininity. Sarah, in particular, becomes ever more entranced by thoughts of the Green Lady and the cosmic femininity she embodies. She’s really not sure the cult has the answers she seeks but maybe the King’s Breakfast could show her a transcendant thing or two.

This book is funny and gross and horrific but it’s also deeply beautiful and visionary in parts. I don’t want to add details because the summary wouldn’t capture the book’s essence anyway, but Sarah really does find a kind of transcendence in the Pamogo.

If you like fast pacing and weird twists and turns, and if you have a strong stomach and aren’t easily traumatized by books, you should give this one a try. It reads like gory splatterpunk fun but there’s a lot under the surface that will stick with you long after the bloodstains fade.

Girl Dinner: a Review

What’s the book? Girl Dinner by Olivie Blake

How dark is it? Barely. The darkness is implied and discussed but rarely seen.

How good is it? On a scale from 1 to 10 murder weapons of choice? Pretty low. Maybe 3 knives. At best.

It’s called Girl Dinner and there’s a bloody fork on the cover, so I hope I’m not spoiling anything when I say it’s about cannibals. Cannibals who are also sorority girls. Sounds great, right? Girl Dinner is very much billed as a satire making fun of the dog eat dog world of elite colleges and the pressure women feel to be perfect and successful in every way at all times. Unfortunately, this book is about 97% college stuff and 3% cannibalism, at best. I wanted more cannibalism. Also more actual humor. This satire didn’t work for me.

We alternate chapters between Nina Kaur and Doctor Sloane Hartley. Nina is desperate to get into The House, the best sorority with the most beautiful classmates and successful alumnae on campus. Sloane is sought after by one of those alumnae, who hopes Soane will become the sorority’s new faculty adviser. Nina is desperate to fit in and be validated by the most exclusive set of girls on campus. Sloane is desperate to avoid the disappointing “mommy track” to nowhere as she gets back into teaching after having her first child. Both are drawn deep into The House’s sisterhood even as hints appear that something darker is at the heart of it.

Both our heroines are basically just bundles of feminist buzzwords and endless anxiety spirals. It’s a constant barrage of both. “Nina . . . didn’t care what a bunch of frat guys thought of her. She also understood that many of these disgusting frat guys would be competing with her for the same law schools and that, eventually, whether she liked it or not, their acceptance would determine her success in the workplace and in life.” “‘I’m glad she’s in daycare now,’ the pediatrician said, implying heavily that any given stranger would be much better for Isla [Sloane’s baby] than Sloane, a decorated academic who nonetheless could not nurture her only child to save either of their lives.” “Sloane looked up, noticing that Max was now gesturing broadly with his hands. She caught Alex’s eye, and there was a moment–a little slip of pretense–where Sloane became aware that Alex was performing attentiveness.” “Nina could finally rewrite the story, reorienting herself on the path. In six weeks, she’d wear the . . . letters like a badge of honor. Like a brand on her blessed, anointed chest.”

It’s all like that all the time. Every single thought receives endless attention and analysis. There’s so much of it that there’s really not much room for the plot and there’s very little to the characters beyond the endless self-analysis. I’m pretty sure the characters are supposed to be flat, so full of education and expectations and anxieties that there’s barely room left for individuality, but that makes them pretty boring and annoying and kind of hard to sympathize with. I often felt like the book was trying so hard to Say Something that it didn’t end up saying anything much at all.

To be totally fair and honest, some of this is just me. Blake’s style reminds me heavily of Don DeLillo, meant to recreate a certain kind of inner landscape and emotional tone. DeLillo is a genius or whatever but his writing doesn’t speak to me at all, so Blake’s knock-off version speaks to me even less than that. If you’re a DeLillo fan, though, this book might speak to your soul.

Everything about this book bored and annoyed me except the ending, which was the only sad and horrific thing about this book (and the twist ending was definitely Saying Something. Finally. After more than three hundred pages of statements that didn’t add up to much.) I don’t want to spoil the twist but if you like Blake’s writing style at all, you’ll probably dig the ending.

I recommend you find this book in person, open it to any random page, and read that page right in the middle of the bookstore. If that page bores or annoys you this book is not worth your time, even for the twist ending. If you find that random page funny and interesting, you’ll like the whole book. Also, you’ll probably love Don DeLillo. Support your local bookshop by picking up White Noise or something while you’re there.

Mirrored Heavens: a Review

Spoiler alert: Mirrored Heavens is the third book in Rebecca Roanhorse’s Between the Earth and the Sky series and I can’t discuss this one without spoiling the first two. If you haven’t read Black Sun and Fevered Star (review here), go do that. The third book makes no sense if you haven’t read the first two. In fact, it only sort of makes sense even if you did read the first two.

I’m gonna be up front with you. I found this book kind of disappointing. By far the weakest of the three. The second book sets a lot of events in motion and the third book tries to bring them all together in grand fashion but, for me, it’s not a success.

We start in a world on the brink of war. Serapio, avatar of the Crow god, and Naranpa, avatar of the Sun god, were supposed to fight to the death in the first book but missed each other due to unforeseen circumstances. They put off their fight to the end of the second book but their hearts weren’t in it. Instead of an epic battle, the second book ends with an uneasy truce between Serapio and Naranpa. It was a crazy twist. As the third book begins, Naranpa has departed for the northern wilderness to learn more about the gods and their dealings, leaving Serapio in charge of preparing Tova for war with the many nations conspiring against it. Naranpa feels that Serapio’s the best chance of uniting Tova’s clans and defending the city from the forces combining to attack it.

This book is setting us up for an epic clash between the Gods as the avatars of several deities each follow their own paths to Tova. Balam, the Jaguar acolyte, is leading an army to conquer the city. Xiala, now the avatar of the ocean goddess, crosses the ocean to avenge her people and aid Serapio. Serapio himself is caught between his own commitment to save Tova and his Crow god’s desire for an epic confrontation with the Sun god. Naranpa, avatar of the Sun, feels inexorably pulled toward that same confrontation, but Naranpa also has her eye on Balam.

Complicated, right? As we’d expect from the third book in an epic fantasy trilogy. I’m fine with a series sprawling a bit, but this one never really comes back together and there are so many unanswered questions and story arcs that either fizzle or veer off course.

We follow Naranpa as she prepares for her epic spiritual battles, we keep following as she wanders off to rescue her friend Iktan, and we wish we hadn’t when she arrives in Tova ready for war and instead (huge spoiler!) just razes a huge chunk of the city without actually contronting either the Jaguar dude or Serapio. This pointless destruction is especially disappointing because it doesn’t fit with anything we’ve learned about Naranpa or the Sun she serves in the last three books. It makes no sense at all.

Xiala’s arc is slightly better. We follow her as she tries to rescue and avenge her people after one of the Cuecolan lords tried to conquer their islands. Parts of this plot feel forced and hamfisted but there’s some exciting action and it’s cool to see Xiala finally connect with the Sea goddess and become truly badass. She does manage to finally reconnect with Serapio as well, so that’s nice.

Serapio spends most of the book waiting for the other gods to show up and fight his god. To keep him occupied, the Coyote god throws him a bizarre multi-part prophecy to fulfill. It all feels a bit forced and random but at least it keeps Serapio busy? He does end up facing the Jaguar avatar (but not Naranpa or the Sun) and it turns out his true battle is against the Crow god within him as he fights for his independence from his destiny. This part is actually pretty underdone. This is an interesting conflict and it’s handled a bit too quickly compared to even the arcs of a few minor characters.

As this series went on the pacing got more and more choppy, and by the end of this book things just felt too disjointed to really enjoy. The trilogy started tight, opened out until it involved everyone on the map, and though it tried valiantly to bring all those threads back together and tie them up neatly, mostly it felt muddled and disappointing.

Still, right up to the end I loved the world building and cosmology of these books. Meroamerican history and mythology feel like fresh and exciting sources for fantasy world building and Roanhorse does great things with them. Even though the series petered out in a way I found deeply unsatisfying, I give her credit for amazing world building and detail. I would love to see what other fantasy authors could do with these influences.

New reviews every Friday. Embrace the darkness and read more books!

Fevered Star: a Review

Spoiler alert: Fevered Star is the second book in the Between the Earth and the Sky series and I can’t discuss this one without spoiling the first one. You can read that review here. If you haven’t read Black Sun and don’t want it ruined, go read it now. I’ll wait . . .

Okay. In Black Sun, Serapio (avatar of the Crow god) sets out to kill the Sun Priest (named Naranpa) and all the priests who follow her. He crashes their winter solstice ceremony, the moment when the sun is at its weakest and the shadowy Crow god is strongest. Everything goes according to plan for the Crow god, except that mere days before, Naranpa had been assassinated and replaced by a sort of puppet Sun Priest. The Crow god can tell the difference–all that killing and the Sun is not defeated.

Which means Naranpa must not be entirely dead; somewhere, she must be alive and still holding the Sun’s power within her.

Which means Serapio s mission is still unfulfilled. He was supposed to crash the Solstice ceremony, kill everyone on behalf of the Crow god, then die. His little crow friends sacrificed themselves to save Serapio but the Crow god isn’t too thrilled with the defeat and Serapio was not prepared at all for life after that battle. The Crow clan, who he thought would embrace him as family, has decidedly mixed feelings about their god walking amongst them. Some of them worship him as the Odo Sedoh, the Crow Grandfather, but many of their leaders wish their god had never returned. He’s upset the balance of power and the Crow Clan’s matron is afraid of reprisals from the city’s other clans.

While Serapio navigates life as a living god (but also a nice young man), Naranpa is back in Coyote’s Maw, revived by her estranged brother and his witch friend. Once Naranpa is revived, she begins to realize she’s become more than just a priest of the Sun. She seems now to be the sun’s vessel on earth. Instead of escaping certain death, she’s still on a collision course with the Crow god.

The book rocks back and forth between three stories this time. We follow Serapio’s story as he forms an uneasy relationship with Okoa, brother of the Crow Clan’s leader. We follow Naranpa as she attempts to find allies in Coyote’s Maw. We also follow Xiala, Serapio’s Teek friend, as she travels with Iktan, another surviving priest (an assassin, the Priest of Knives) to distant Hokaia. In Hokaia, the Eagle clan conspires with Hokaia’s spear maidens, a band of Teek warriors, and a couple of Cuecolan merchant lords (one of whom was briefly Xiala s boss in the first book. Small world.) Together, they make plans to attack Tova now that the Watchers are dead and the city is in confusion. Well, all those other people want to attack the city; Xiala just wants to find Serapio and help him out if she can. She misses her weird crow-loving friend. They really bonded in the first book and now that she knows Serapio survived his big revenge mission, Xiala desperately wants to see him again.

As epic fantasies tend to do, this one sprawls a bit. There are a lot more moving parts than the first book had, and a lot more secondary characters. We still have the central conflict between the Crow and the Sun, represented by Serapio and Naranpa respectively. Along with that, we now have impending war, with representatives of several nations planning to invade a fractured and weakened Tova. One of the Cuecolan lords, Balam, is also trying to master the magic of dream walking in order to defeat Tova and ultimately become the avatar of his own god, the Jaguar. As all this is brewing, Xiala’s mother is head of the Teek contingent and none too happy to see her daughter. Xiala is, in fact, sent packing back to Teek against her wishes, only to find Teek has become a shell of itself while she’s been gone.

This book is messier than the first, not as tight or touching, but there are some interesting twists and turns, and the ending really surprised me. It ends, as the first does, with a confrontation between the Sun and the Crow, but this one turns out much differently than either of the avatars expect. In some ways it’s a much weaker ending but I respect it for going in a direction I did not see coming. At the end of this I was immediately itching to start the third book and see how Roanhorse was going to bring all this back together.

You’ll find out how that went next week. Until then, embrace the darkness and read more books.

Black Sun: a Review

Technically Black Sun (by Rebecca Roanhorse) is epic fantasy instead of horror and I actually didn’t pick it up for the blog at all. I was talking to a friend about the upswing in indigenous horror writers and she said she was reading this fantasy series set in the ancient Americas. It sounded cool so I got myself a copy and started reading. (I didn’t do this on purpose, but my copies of all three books are signed by the author because she’s got New Mexico connections. So that’s neat.)

The first chapter features a mother doing some very bloody ritual magic on her son, attempting to turn him into a vessel for the Crow God, and then throwing herself off a cliff as a sacrifice to complete the ritual.

It was intense. It was dark. I loved it. I read the whole trilogy and now I’m gonna review it for you, one book a week, for the rest of the month.

Black Sun is set in a fantasy world inspired by various Mesoamerican cultures. There’s no one-to-one correspondence, just a fantasy mix of ancient fashions, hairstyles, beliefs and cultures. I found these inspirations refreshing and fun, and I enjoyed the truly polytheistic perspective Roanorse creates in this world. As the series progresses, more gods, through their various avatars, try to work their will in this world. She sets up an epic battle between spiritual forces without any of them being clearly good or evil. This first book was especially successful at that.

The book alternates between Serapio (the Crow God’s intended vessel but also quite a nice young man) and Naranpa, the Sun Priest Serapio is divinely mandated to overthrow. While Serapio sails from the Cuecolan coast toward the holy city of Tova (don’t worry, there’s a map in the front of the book), Naranpa is trying to revitalize the city’s priesthood and battling politics between the city’s four great clans and the poor clanless folks of Coyote’s Maw (don’t worry, there’s a map for this, too).

As we follow both of them, we’re given tantalizing bits of the events that set both Serapio and Naranpa on their current paths. We learn about the Watchers, the priestly hierarchy Naranpa rules, that were created a few hundred years ago after a great war between several nations and their various gods. We learn that much more recently, a generation ago at most, the Watchers led a raid against the Crow clan. In attempting to stamp out worship of the Crow God with bloody finality, they drove one rebellious Crow to find a way to bring back her god in human form and exact revenge on the Watchers. Serapio, of course, is that vessel, born for revenge. This is mostly local politics but since Tova is officially the spiritual center for several nations, fights between Tovan factions can have much broader ripples.

Serapio knows this. About the Crow Clan and the revenge, I mean. Not about international relations. He was born and raised for revenge on the Sun Priest and educated in war and pain and dedication by his mother’s allies. He embraces his destiny. But he’s also barely an adult and this boat ride to destiny is the first chance he’s ever had to get out of the house and meet people. He becomes friendly with Xiala, the boat captain in charge of delivering him to Tova. She’s a Teek, a sort of Siren or mermaid from a small reclusive island nation. She tells him stories and he keeps her company as she guides the boat through the starlit night. For the first time in his life, Serapio finds a friend and for the first time in a long time, Xiala finds someone who just likes her instead of being fascinated or repelled by her Teek heritage. (There are a lot of superstitions about Teeks. They can speak to the sea and calm its waters so everyone wants one on their boat, but the minute things go wrong guess who they blame?) It’s a beautiful little relationship that deeply affects them both.

Meanwhile, Naranpa is dodging assassination attempts while trying to revitalize her city’s faith. Naranpa is originally from that poor clanless Coyote’s Maw, while pretty much everyone else in the priesthood are honored members of the four major clans. She’s the Sun Priest, the head of the whole council, supposedly the greatest power in Tova and owed allegiance by most of the surrounding nations as well. Ever since that raid on the Crows, though, the Watchers’ reputation in the city is tarnished and to make things worse, the Clan leaders look down on Naranpa herself for her background. She’s got a tough road ahead if she wants to reform the city.

I won’t spoil the inevitable confrontation but I will say it’s spectacular. The book takes its time, letting us really get to know our lead characters and several supporting characters, but this battle is always looming ahead of them. What I loved most is that I couldn’t decide who I was rooting for. Serapio is so sad and endearing, Naranpa is so idealistic and embattled. I loved them both but by the end I also understood there could be no agreement between these two. This made for a moving and complex ending I thoroughly enjoyed.

New reviews every Friday. Embrace the darkness and read more books!

Strange Pictures

I got Strange Pictures in Tucson, at Antigone Books. It’s mostly a feminist/social justice bookstore, which means its horror section is tiny (even tinier than it is in most bookstores) but also very dedicated to minority authors, which made for interesting browsing.

Anyway, I picked up Strange Pictures by Uketsu mostly because the author’s name was Japanese. My family lived in Japan when I was in high school and even though I don’t speak the language, I’ve read a lot of Japanese novels in translation. Mostly literary stuff but also authors like Yoko Ogawa and Ryu Murakami who write horror and speculative fiction.

Since I don’t speak Japanese, I didn’t realize Uketsu’s mysteries were famous on YouTube until after I bought the book. The cover calls him a “mystery-horror sensation” and he may do horror tales on his channel but Strange Pictures is pretty much straight mysteries. There are several shortish mysteries, each one with its own solution, and they all nest together to solve a larger mystery.

This book was a quick read and very focused on logical puzzles and following clues. It had a very well done “Sherlock Holmes” vibe, where clues are clearly laid out and everything fits neatly together by the end. There’s not much exploration into psychology or deep emotions but the characters are pleasant and usually relatable. There are definitely some dramatic moments and a few surprises. Also, the “strange pictures” of the title are actually pictures that are printed in the book so you can try to solve the puzzles yourself if you want.

On the one hand, this book has almost none of the weirdness and complexity that I look for in a darker book so it’s not gonna stick with me the way my favorites do. On the other hand, it’s so logical and neatly resolved that I was quite charmed and satisfied with the experience of reading it. I fully plan to find the sequel, Strange Houses, at some point. There are still several murders in this book so it might sound odd to say, but I think of this as light reading.

Embrace the darkness and read more books. As always, follow us here or on Substack.

This is My Body

Let’s talk about This is my Body by Lindsay King-Miller. More specifically, let’s talk about how much I loved it because man, this book got to me. It’s got a possessed kid who levitates and eats the local birds and squirrels, but that’s not what haunts me. What haunts me is how relatable all the religious guilt and family dysfunction is.

Books about generational trauma seem all the rage right now and most of them don’t really do it for me. The trauma is so big and abstract, it’s hard to really connect to it on a personal level. This book, though, is a look at that trauma up close. Ridiculous amounts of repressed guilt and anxiety. Imprenetrable emotional armor and narcissism. Everybody blaming everyone else for their pain and everybody being at least a little bit at fault. If you pull back far enough you can see the epically oppressive institutions pouring pain down through the generations, but on the daily human level it usually doesn’t feel sweeping. It feels like a big painful mess that no one quite knows how to deal with.

So. Back to the possessed kid. Or actually, we should start with the possessed kid’s mom, Brigid. Brigid has so much Catholic guilt. Like, as much Catholic guilt as you can fit into one person. When she was little, she and her mom (her single mom who was never married to her dad) had to move in with Uncle Angus, a domineering priest who always kept the curtains closed and wouldn’t let her watch TV or read books that weren’t the Bible. This already sucked, but when Brigid fell in love in middle school, Angus got even worse. Mostly (entirely) because Brigid’s crush was her best friend, Alexandra. I’m pretty sure a straight crush would have still bothered Angus but this gay crush was soooooo much worse. Angus rained down the wrath of his god and Brigid’s mom was pretty much on his side. It was bad.

Eventually Brigid grew up, officially came out of the closet, opened an occult bookstore, and cut Angus and her mom completely out of her life. If only she could cut the secret guilt and shame out that easily. Still, she’s tried hard to keep all that from her daughter, Dylan. Dylan’s gonna grow up pampered and protected and connected to a mother who really sees and understands her. History will not repeat itself, dammit! (Honestly, this is what most of us strive for with our kids. Sad thing is, when we don’t repeat our parents’ mistakes we usually make new and different mistakes instead.)

And then Dylan gets possessed. At first we’re not sure that’s what’s happening. Dylan’s a middle schooler and they can act pretty weird, especially when they’re going through some stuff. Dylan’s fighting with her former best friend, Kai, and when she punches him and then later actually bites him she gets in big trouble with the school. Dylan doesn’t want to talk about it and Brigid is freaking out, wondering where she went wrong as a mother. And on top of all this drama, Brigid is trying to reconnect with that old school crush of hers, Alexandra, who’s even more awesome as an adult than she was in middle school. Connecting with Alexandra (Zandy for short) is good but the timing really sucks.

Especially when, right before their first date, Brigid discovers all the dead animals in Dylan’s closet. A few pages later we’ve all decided Dylan is definitely possessed. It’s bloody and there’s levitation involved. The only person Brigid knows who’s ever exorcised someone is her shitty Uncle Angus. In the absence of better ideas, she heads to his house in Denver to beg for his help.

This turns out to be a terrible idea. He’s just as awful as she remembers, only now he’s being all fake nice to Dylan, who is totally falling for it because she’s so delighted to suddenly have a grandpa. Brigid never told her why she didn’t talk to her family. Then Zandy calls; she googled Angus and found out he was actually defrocked in the 1980s for running a cable access show where he “exorcised” people on screen. Was the exorcism Brigid witnessed fake? But she saw it with her own eyes!

And things get even worse when Brigid finds an old journal her mother made before her suicide. It’s full of clear evidence that her mother never forgave her for being gay, but also full of news clippings of people who committed heinous crimes after being on Angus’s exorcism show.

It’s all just crazy and Brigid has no idea what to do now. If Angus can’t actually exorcise her daughter, who even can? She has to save her daughter somehow but Brigid almost feels possessed herself, filled with panic and shame and a growing desire to just smash Angus’s face in.

I’m not gonna tell you how it all ends. I’ll just say it gets worse and weirder before it gets better. This is a quick read full of drama and horror and I loved following all the mysterious little threads weaving together as the book progressed.

What I loved most, though, was how real and complex all the relationships felt. Angus is a hateable villain but we also get glimpses of where it all comes from. Brigid’s mom is incredibly frustrating and grossly unfair to her daughter but we also get glimpses into her own personal torture. She feels all too familiar to those of us who grew up in conservative religious families. Brigid and Dylan are sympathetic and relatable, while also being flawed and human.

I didn’t grow up Catholic but my background is close enough that this book was all sorts of familiar. I grew up during the Satanic Panic, around people who tried to “pray the gay away” and wouldn’t watch R-rated movies because they’d “drive the spirit away.” This book captures the spiderweb of complex emotions and relationships that culture tends to weave around you, while also being an exciting horror novel. If you like possession stories (which I do) and/or carry residual religious guilt (which I do) go read this book. Go read it right now.

Embrace the darkness and read more books. As always, follow us here or on Substack.

What Stalks the Deep

What Stalks the Deep is the third in T. Kingfisher’s “sworn soldier” series featuring Alex Easton. I highly recommend all three and they do relate to each other, but each of Alex’s adventures is complete in itself, so you don’t absolutely have to read the first two to enjoy this one. All you need to know going in is that Alex has been invited to America to help a friend, Doctor Denton, who was instrumental in defeating the mysterious evil Alex encountered in the first book. The way the invitation is worded, Alex is pretty sure Denton has encountered some new mysterious evil and Alex is not one to abandon a friend or shy away from battle. So off to America it is!

If you haven’t read any of these, “sworn soldier” is pretty much its own gender identity in Alex’s home country of Gallacia. Alex was born female but took on this new identity and pronouns (ka and kan) when ka became a career soldier. In Europe, this is generally accepted as “one of those quirky Gallacian things” and people are curious but not alarmed about it. Fellow soldiers tend to recognize one of their own breed in Alex. Americans, of course, know jack-all about this tiny European country so mostly Alex just poses as a man instead of trying to explain Gallacian language and culture. None of this is vital to any of the stories, I just find the whole thing (and Alex’s wry comments on Gallacia) interesting and amusing. I also think it’s a cool way to present the unique life experience and bond soldiers often have. Gender aside, it is its own thing, you know?

The real meat of this story is that Denton’s cousin has disappeared while exploring an abandoned mine his family owns, and there’s reason to think strange things are afoot. Finding out requires exploring the mine itself, and in the process Alex has to constantly remind themself (kanself? Kaself? I don’t speak Gallacian) that ka is a badass soldier who is absolutely not claustrophobic or scared of being deep underground. Nope. Nosiree, Alex isn’t scared one little bit and ka’ll die before ka’ll say otherwise. I love Alex.

As they explore the mine and nearby town, the friends do indeed find something mysterious and maybe evil. I don’t want to give anything away, but the “sworn soldier” series (and a lot of Kingfisher’s weird tales) generally lives in that muddy area between natural and supernatural and this book definitely lives in that area. Kingfisher takes a lot of inspiration from classic authors of weird tales, like Edgar Allan Poe and Arthur Machen, and this particular one draws inspiration from Lovecraft and his stories of ancient gods and buried mysteries. I enjoyed, as I usually do, the updated and creative spin she put on the classic theme.

I haven’t reviewed a Kingfisher book for you yet so you couldn’t possibly know this, but I love her work. I can always count on her for engaging characters and solid storytelling, and though she leans more toward haunting and fairytales than gore, she’s great at creating a spooky atmosphere and has a real knack for creative and disturbing imagery. I haven’t read a book of hers yet that I didn’t enjoy, and I find Alex Easton’s adventures especially delightful. Plus the cover art is awesome. I listened to the first two books on audio* but someday I’ll have to go buy physical copies because the artwork is just that good.

*I don’t listen to a lot of audiobooks but I recommend these if you’re into that sort of thing. All the books are written in first person as if Alex is telling us the story, and Avi Roque does a great job conveying Alex’s sense of humor and soldierly stoicism while preserving ka’s unique identity.

Until next time . . . as always, embrace the darkness and read more books.