Tag: horror

Bat Eater: a Review

What’s the book? Bat Eater and Other Names for Cora Zeng by Kylie Lee Baker

What kind of dark is it? Ghosts, murder, and lots of gore. This book’s got it all, baby!

How good is it? 8/10 hungry ghosts

Apparently China’s spooky month is August and I never knew. I knew a little about hungry ghosts and burning joss paper and Buddhist festivals for the dead but I somehow never noticed it all took place in August. I feel a bit dumb about this. Now that I’ve finished Bat Eater, though, I’ll probably never look at August the same way again.

This book is a ghost story and like so many ghost stories, it’s told in kind of a melancholy and lyrical tone. In fact, for the first few pages I was bored and a little annoyed by how literary and poetic Baker was trying to be. Then Cora’s sister got decapitated by a train and I wasn’t worried about the lyricism anymore.

The lyricism didn’t end. The book is full of poetically broken people and shown entirely through the lens of Cora’s narration, which is moody and introspective and melodramatic as hell. It’s just that on top of that silliness is an intensely gory and disturbing story full of hungry ghosts, crime scene clean-up, and murder. It’s intense and I loved it. Cora’s navel gazing about her OCD and her angst at being caught between cultures (and more specifically between her white Christian aunt on one side and her traditional Chinese aunt on the other) becomes a nice counterweight to the terror and gore she’s suddenly dealing with on a daily basis.

Oh, and this is also happening during the Covid Pandemic, which is both ramping up Cora’s germ phobias and seriously hindering the investigation of the serial murders Cora’s pretty sure are happening all around her. No surprise, the murdered people are all Asian and the killings appear to be hate crimes. With people regularly yelling “bat eater” at Cora on the streets, she’s pretty sure what the bats left at these scenes are supposed to mean.

Cora and her friends do try to investigate the murders but this isn’t a thriller or mystery novel. The emphasis is squarely on the horror, both human and supernatural. A lot of horror novels pull back on the gore in favor of the more subtle aspects of horror but this one smacks us full in the face with the violence of it all. Horror, especially in novels, is often a vehicle to talk about some larger moral or emotional question and it’s easy to get the balance wrong. Too much blood and nobody notices your message; too little and the reader is left bored and wondering why you didn’t just start a Substack instead of pretending to write a horror novel. For me, Baker gets the balance pretty much right, giving us an exciting story that also highlights the issues of identity and racism she wants to discuss.

The anti-racist message is also pretty heavy-handed at times but I’ve definitely seen worse and it’s an interesting perspective on the Pandemic. The messaging never takes over the story entirely and I appreciate the way Baker balances the cartoonishly racist white folks with a variety of Chinese characters, some of whom are also cartoonishly evil as far as we can tell. Sure, there’s a lot of suffering caused by racism but there’s a lot of suffering in general, caused by a lot of things.

That said, parts get a bit silly if you think about them too hard. Even in a pandemic, even with cartoonish levels of racism at play, this story’s murders would have been pinned on somebody way before Cora got involved. Horrific and creative murders done in crowded apartment complexes by multiple not-so-bright copycats? One of them’s getting caught and blamed for everything. The mystery part of this book is dumb. Still, with all the ghosts and poetic brokenness and tragic backstories I had a lot to entertain and enlighten me, even when the mystery fell a bit flat.

How to Survive Camping: a Review

What’s the book? How to Survive Camping: the Man with No Shadow by Bonnie Quinn

What kind of dark is it? Ghosts and goblins and moderate gore

How good is it? 7/10 faerie tricks

It starts with a list of rules, which had me worried. The list was funny, a good mix of sound camping tips (how to space your tents and avoid flooding) and rules for avoiding death at the hands of mysterious beings (apparently the children with no wagon are not to be trusted and the man with no shadow is bad news). The list promised a fun romp in the haunted woods but it also felt a bit gimmicky, so I worried that haunted romp would be thin on character development and lazily plotted, perhaps. I was delighted to find I was mostly wrong. This wasn’t a deep character study or anything but the story that grows from this goofy set of rules is pretty satisfying.

The woman who wrote the rules is Kate, who inherited this campground when her parents died. She was pretty young when they were taken from her, not quite finished with college, so she had a rough start running the place but it’s been several years now and she’s started to really get the hang of the job by now. Or so she thinks.

This piece of land has been in Kate’s family for a few generations now, which is a source of pride and stability but also the source of most of Kate’s problems. Her family has owned the land so long that it’s become Old with a capital ‘O’. The kind that attracts beings of myth and folklore like fairies and shulikun, along with beings that have power but no stories to their names. At least none Kate’s found in the many books on folklore that line her office walls. Kate’s campground is a huge source of income for the nearby town but it’s also understood that Kate’s job is to keep all those beings contained and controlled. Keep the town safe, keep the land in the family. A simple mandate but not always easy to carry out. Lately things have gotten extra difficult. Some of her land’s inhabitants have gotten restless and one in particular, the Man with no Shadow, seems to want a change of leadership.

I like Kate. She doesn’t seem like a very nice person, truth be told, but she’s tough and serious about her duties both mundane and supernatural. I found myself rooting for her as she fought both the Man with No Shadow and a whole lot of her ungrateful neighbors. I started to see her as tough but fair, willing to take each eldritch being on its own merits; if you’re a being (human or supernatural) willing to deal fairly with Kate, she’s willing to deal fairly with you. I found it refreshing to follow someone trying to really wrestle with and live along side the forces of darkness instead of the usual fleeing or fighting we usually get. Though Kate’s not afraid to kick ass when she needs to. The story was a good balance for me between tough kickassery and vulnerable humanity.

It’s also a perfect book for October, the spooky season of ghosts and goblins and darkening skies, because it’s all about learning to live with the things that go bump in the night. Quinn is a newer author and this is the first in what is now a growing series of stories about Kate and her campground. I plan to eventually pick up further installments of Kate’s adventures and if you want a cozy bit of autumn horror this would be a good choice.

The Eyes are the Best Part: a Review

What’s the book? The Eyes are the Best Part by Monika Kim

How dark is it? Not as dark as the eyeball theme promised

How good is it? 3/10 tasty tasty eyeballs

The beginning of this was promising. Ji-won’s dad runs off with another woman and her mom is paralyzed by it. Ji-won’s sister isn’t doing much better. Ji-won herself is starting college but instead of going to her dream school with all her friends, she’s stuck all by herself at the local college here in town. Things only go downhill from there as her mom starts dating George, who’s clearly a creep with a fetish for Asian ladies, and Ji-won herself develops a worrisome obsession with eyeballs. Specifically, she wants to eat eyeballs. Blue eyeballs. George’s blue eyeballs. 

That’s creepy and interesting. We also find out early on that maybe Ji-won’s always been a bit unbalanced. Back when all her friends got into Berkeley and Ji-won didn’t, she went to great lengths to break up the friend group just because she was bitter and envious. When we learn that, Ji-won’s growing obsession and her quest to destroy George make a twisted sort of sense and Ji-won herself becomes intriguing. 

Unfortunately, none of that promise pans out. The intriguing set-up quickly devolves into a weird revenge fantasy involving George and Ji-won’s new college friend Geoffrey, neither of whom have any redeeming qualities whatsoever. George is a cartoonishly gross fetishist with several Asian girlfriends who each think they’re the only one. He takes an actual “business trip” to Thailand that we all know is code for sex tourism. Geoffrey is an overblown parody of a ‘Nice Guy’ who wears feminist t-shirts and spouts feminist quotes while literally stalking Ji-won in a cartoonishly gross way. Yet, in spite of how clearly gross these guys are, they don’t actually do a lot. ‘Ji-won vs the Cardboard Cut-outs’ gets boring pretty fast; it’s hard to excited about her bringing down such useless villains. Of course, if I had gotten invested I would have been even more disappointed at the ending. Ji-won’s revenge ratchets up and up only to largely fizzle out in a fairly unsatisfying way.

The back of this book has a short interview with Monika Kim that says she wants to turn stereotypes about Asian women being passive sex objects on their heads. I get how this book is meant to do that but I’m not sure it actually does much toward that project. Ji-won’s mom and sister are utterly passive, with almost no personality beyond anxiety and spinelessness. Even at the end, when George is in the hospital after literally trying to kill Ji-won, her mom is sneaking off to see him, still hoping this creep will rescue her from her empty life. My best guess is that her utter infuriating helplessness is supposed to highlight Ji-won’s rage-fueled cleverness by contrast but it seems ham-handed and has a “Ji-won’s not like other Asian girls” feel that doesn’t sit well. 

There could have been shades of ‘American Psycho’ here, where Ji-won gets away with multiple murders because no one believes a cute little Asian girl would do such grisly things. If that angle had been played up things might have got intriguing again, but that’s not really where Kim takes it. 

This was a quick read and the eyeball obsession was kind of interesting but by the end I was mostly just bored and annoyed. There was a lot of wasted potential here. The cover is cool, though, and the page edges have creepy eyeballs on them. So that’s something.

Strange Buildings: a Review

What’s the book? Strange Buildings by Uketsu

How dark is it? It’s a little dark. Darker than Uketsu’s first two installments.

How good is it? 6/10 odd houses

This is the third in Uketsu’s series about strange places and mysterious events but once again, it’s not really a sequel. The author/narrator and his friend Kurihara, the true crime enthusiast, appear again but everything else stands alone. 

Strange Houses, the previous installment, was quick and fun with an utterly redonkulous mystery. Strange Buildings is kind of the opposite. The mystery at its heart is less absurd and more interesting in terms of motive and emotional resonance but the pacing drags and the book repeats itself too much. 

Uketsu’s books are always focused on laying out a mystery and then laying out the proposed solution step by step so I was expecting that. The previous books managed to roll along quickly and keep a sense of mild tension as the mysteries unfold but this one, much longer than the previous books, dragged on and repeated itself quite a bit. It’s as if Uketsu’s so afraid we’ll miss a brilliant connection between clues that he’s constantly reminding and recapping things. At the end, when the narrator brings all his bits of evidence to Kurihara and begins to tie them together, they spend pages and pages listing all the bits of evidence I just spent a couple hundred pages reading. It got tedious and I started skimming, which isn’t what I’m looking for at the end of a mystery. 

It’s too bad the book dragged because as I mentioned before, I liked the actual mystery that unfolded. It combines family drama with cults and organized crime in surprising ways. I’ve always enjoyed Uketsu’s books as fun puzzles but this is the first time I really connected with the characters at all and felt bad for their suffering. In spite of its flaws, I have a feeling this is the mystery that will stick with me long after his first two books have faded from memory. 

I know the author is famous originally for YouTube videos and his three translated novels have each been successively longer and more ambitious. Maybe what I’m seeing is the struggle to move beyond cute puzzles into something closer to a real novel with emotional depth. It wasn’t entirely successful on that score but I’m game to see what Uketsu brings us next.

Bored Gay Werewolf

This review was first published on our Substack in 2025.

Let’s talk about Bored Gay Werewolf by Tony Santorella. As you might expect from the title, it’s about a bored gay werewolf and his friends. The gay werewolf’s name is Brian.

I enjoy actual horror and weird tales but I equally enjoy stories that are only technically horror. Stories like this one that feature supernatural creatures and thus land in the horror section, while mostly being comedies or dramas or some other type of tale. This particular one is mostly a coming of age story (or a new adult story?) with a werewolf twist.

Brian knew he was gay from an early age. He tried hard to be conventionally successful and fit in with everyone around him, and when he came out and everyone seemed fine he went right on trying to be conventionally successful and fit in with everyone around him. He did well in high school, worked hard in college. His plans were going well until he was cursed with lycanthropy.

After that his life kind of fell apart. With his conventional dreams seemingly dashed, Brian had no idea what to aim for instead. He dropped out of college, moved to a drab little apartment in the city, and now works a thoroughly uninspiring job as a cafe server.

His coworkers are cool, at least. The bartender, Nik, is an aging punk slowly earning her nursing degree. One of the other servers, Darby, is glittery femby butterfly and struggling artist/musician who makes Brian laugh. Nik and Darby are basically his best friends. They’re just normal humans, though, so he’s afraid to get too close. How do you even come out as a werewolf? Will they be afraid? Think he’s delusional? Would it make things just too awkward? Better to avoid the whole thing and keep to himself.

Then, for the first time, Brian meets another werewolf. An older, richer werewolf who seems to have it all figured out and is eager to share his wisdom and cool life hacks with Brian. In fact, Tyler’s thinking of starting a self help program and online community for werewolves and in return for some help with the social media, Brian can get in early and help Tyler test his ideas for werewolf self-iprovement. Hilarity and eventually violent danger ensues as Brian falls down the self help rabbit hole and falls further into Tyler’s world.

Tyler and his buddies are pretty flat characters, aging frat boys and basic bitches. They’re more the embodiment of Brian’s own muddled expectations for himself than people in their own right. He’s been confused and depressed and full of self-loathing because some big part of him thinks he should want to be like Tyler. Rich, slick, always in control. Especially when the whole werewolf thing makes him feel so out of control, being like Tyler is an alluring fantasy. Maybe Tyler’s program can put Brian back on that safe, socially acceptable path he’d been working toward before all this supernatural stuff happened.

Brian really just needs to figure himself out and grow up a bit and honestly, some of Tyler’s advice really works. Tyler’s meditation program makes Brian’s monthly transformations much calmer and easier. Tyler’s intense workout routine helps Brian focus and take some control over his daily routine. Tyler even convinces Brian to rebuild his relationship with his father, which has been distant and strained since he dropped out of college. Of course, it all comes with a hefty dose of “everything is a competition! Learn to dominate!” that isn’t so helpful. Still, it comes all wrapped up with the good stuff so . . . Brian follows along. It’s better than what he was doing before he met Tyler, isn’t it?

Ultimately, of course, what Brian learns is that he really doesn’t want or need to be some rich frat bro. He needs to work on himself, sure, but he doesn’t need to win at life or dominate other people or embrace his inner lone wolf. What he needs is to open up to his warm and caring friends from the diner, really give them a chance to be there for him. Figure out what he really wants and move toward that. And also, um, protect everyone from Tyler’s terrifying wolfy vengeance when Brian tries to go his own way. Oops.

The whole thing is sweet and fun. Brian and his friends are engaging characters that I enjoyed getting to know. Brian is relatable and Darby and Nik both seem like great friends and super cool people. (Too cool for me, probably.) This is also a very queer book without directly talking about it much. Sometimes the werewolf stuff is symbolic of the more toxic parts of the self-improvement sphere, sometimes it’s symbolic of being queer in a heteronormative world or of wanting any kind of alternative life path in a very conventional world, and sometimes it’s just funny horror stuff. It’s not a deep book but it’s got enough layers to be satisfying beyond the obvious jokes and jump scares, and I enjoyed finding good representation in such a fun and fluffy book.

Bored Gay Werewolf also has a dramatic werewolf-laden ending and a surprise that might be hinting at a sequel, so I’ll keep an eye out for new developments in Brian, Nik, and Darby’s lives. If you like fun stories that are only technically horror, you’ll probably want to keep an eye out, too.

Strange Houses: a Review

What’s the book? Strange Houses by Uketsu

How dark is it? Dark blue like the blueprints for a house

How good is it? 7/10 hidden rooms

Strange Houses is the second book by Uketsu, a mystery-maker who is himself a mystery. I reviewed his first book, Strange Pictures, a while ago. Uketsu is a Japanese YouTuber who always appears in a freaky looking mask, which he also uses in his author photo for his books. (Also, I actually have no idea what Uketsu’s gender is, I’m just making a wild guess based on body shape. Sorry if I guessed wrong.) 

But I digress. On to the book. The first one, Strange Pictures, was a series of separate but interconnected stories; Strange Houses is one long story told through a series of three houses. The writing style is extremely minimalist and straightforward, making it a lightning quick read. The writing style also gives the story a clinical feel, like we’re removed from the emotional impact of the mystery as it unfolds. I don’t think this simplicity is a fault in translation. As far as I can tell, this English translation is a good approximation of the extremely accessible style Uketsu aims for. 

It’s not just the prose that’s straightforward and clinical, it’s the whole telling of the story. The narrator, a freelance writer, and his architect buddy Kurihara start looking at a very unusual floorplan and Kurihara decides it must be a murder house. Things snowball from there, Kurihara’s imagination running wild and the author going along for the ride. The thing is, it quickly becomes clear that Kurihara is pretty much spot on about his theories. The narrator, needing a quick piece for a magazine, writes a story about their murder house theory and ends up meeting someone who knows that house, which leads him to another strange floor plan, and so on. The floor plans are printed in the book so we can puzzle over them, which is fun. 

The whole book is a bit like the end of a Sherlock Holmes novel, where he explains in intricate detail how the crime was done. It’s all very logical and bloodless, which is not for everyone. I appreciated the style, though, because the actual mystery they’re unraveling is beyond redonkulous. I won’t spoil all the details but it involves secret children being trained to murder houseguests, and that’s just the beginning of the madness. Normally, I’m all for diving into the emotional depth and moral complexity of a story but this one is so farfetched that it doesn’t bear thinking about. The very dryness of the narrative keeps all that just slightly in the shadows, like a horror movie that never quite shows you the monster. For me, it works better that way. 

I’m starting to find Uketsu’s books easy reads, light little palate cleansers between more shocking or draining books. They’re still full of murder so I probably shouldn’t say this but I ended this book with a smile on my face, satisfied after a fun little romp through the murder houses. Which, now that I think about it, might be a major flaw in the books. I didn’t find either of them scary at all because none of the characters are fleshed out enough to relate to. For me, they’re fun quick puzzles but if you’re looking to immerse yourself emotionally this is not the author to take you there. 

A Fig for All the Devils: a Review

This review was first posted on our Substack in 2025. We reprint it here for your reading pleasure.

This book lured me in with Baba Yaga. I really don’t know that much Slavic folklore or mythology but I’m fascinated by what I do know about Baba Yaga. In fact, this is the second Baba Yaga themed book I’ve read in the last year. Well, I thought it would be. As it turns out, this book really isn’t about Baba Yaga at all and that was a let down but it was still a pretty good book.

Sonny is 13 years old. He has a shaky relationship with his mom. His father has just killed himself. Sonny sees the Grim Reaper smoking a cigarette in the corner of the hospital room where his father has just died.

Sonny’s mother moves them to Oregon to a trailer on someone else’s property. This is her way of getting them a fresh start but it doesn’t do anything to reset their relationship or improve their grim financial situation. The Grim Reaper reappears in Sonny’s life and eventually makes him an offer. Death is a person who serves as death for one thousand years. Death’s tenure is almost up, he was the man captured by Baba Yaga at the opening of the book. Death is offering Sonny a way out of his miserable life and griefstricken Sonny can’t think of any reason to refuse. The remainder of the book explores the terrifying initiation Sonny must endure to die to himself and become Death.

This is really a novel about grief. Sonny, his mother, his new friend Jess, and Jess’s father are all grieving deeply. Each of them is grieving alone. Fritz’s portrayal of grief is accurate and cutting. The horror of the novel paired with the deep mourning of its characters made me wonder if actually it was all just metaphorical or hallucinations. Maybe the character of the Grim Reaper was actually Sonny feeling suicidal himself. Maybe Jess’s mother’s terrifying contortions were the feelings of wrongness and terror a young girl feels when parenting her own dying mother. Probably not but the emotional state of the characters and the supernatural events match perfectly. Metaphor or not, it all resonates.

This was a short read but a good one. Although it felt YA at times, that seemed appropriate for a book about a middle school boy. Not all horror has to be ultra adult. Not all bad things happen to adults. In fact, life’s hardships come for all ages and “A Fig for All the Devils” explores the unique hell of adolescence colliding with grief.

Rose of Jericho: a Review

What’s the book? Rose of Jericho by Alex Grecian

How dark is it? Like a fairy tale, but one of the original Grimm tales where feet get chopped off and people get burned alive and stuff

How good is it? 7/10 dying roses

This is a sequel of sorts to Red Rabbit, featuring some of the same characters coming together to solve a new problem. Rabbit, a small child in the first book, is all grown up into a young woman now. She’s just moved, with her mother Sadie Grace and her mother’s partner Rose Nettles, to the New England town of Ascension. 

Meanwhile, Moses Burke, a former Union soldier and part of Rabbit’s big childhood adventure, has settled down out west with a wife and a child on the way. Only his wife, Katie, is wasting away from an illness. When she dies, and their child dies just barely after Katie, Moses is so full of grief that he tracks Death down and shoots him. Surprisingly, that doesn’t make Moses feel better. In fact, Moses soon realizes killing and burying Death might have been a very bad idea. It turns out stopping death doesn’t actually stop illness or injury or even bodily decay, it just kind of traps everyone’s souls in their clearly nonfunctioning bodies until they go a little crazy. Oops.

Having no idea how to fix the problem he created, Moses heads east to find Sadie Grace, the most powerful witch he knows of and the only person he knows personally who might have any idea what to do next. While he makes the journey east, things in Ascension are rapidly falling apart. 

Turns out Ascension was already a weird little town, heir to the old-time witch hunting obsession of the Puritans. When folks start walking around who should clearly not be some of the townsfolk don’t take it well. In fact, some of them connect the weirdness to their brand new neighbors on the hill. It’s a pickle. Then, as if Sadie and Rabbit didn’t have their hands full with the witch hunting stuff already, Rose’s undead cousin insists on throwing them a housewarming party. 

This book retains the folkloric feel of the first one but it’s just so much more bloody. There’s less pure evil this time but much more fundamentally wrong with the world. Most of the characters are quite endearing, even the undead ones, so I felt bad for them as the world slumped sideways toward chaos. I enjoyed the ending, which was touching if not exactly happy. 

Humorous charm blended with gut-wrenching horror really works for me. It doesn’t feel real enough to keep me up at night or truly scare me but it has just enough edge to be unpredictable. I really have to fear for the characters and wonder what comes next for them, which keeps me interested. I also love a world that just . . . takes magic and weirdness as a given. The townsfolk might think it’s wrong for Sadie Grace to be a witch but they don’t doubt that she is one. Moses Burke might be crazy to shoot Death but he’s completely sure that’s a thing he can do. I enjoy that magical worldview and I find it surprisingly comforting despite the horror and blood.

Bad Cree: a Review

This review first appeared on our Substack in 2025. The book Trex reviewed “last week” will actually be reprinted here next week.

Trex reviewed a book about grief last week, which reminded me that I also have a couple books about grief waiting to be reviewed. By coincidence, we’d converged on one of the classic themes in horror. To that end . . .

Let’s talk about Bad Cree by Jessica Johns.

There’s a monster in this one, sure, and there are blood and mystery and reality-bending events, but Bad Cree much more about grief and community than monsters and mayhem. Mackenzie has been hiding out in the big city, not dealing with the death of her grandmother (expected) and her sister Sabrina (decidedly unexpected). She feels guilty about leaving everyone to their own grief, never calling or visiting, but she’s just not ready to deal with it all. Then Sabrina starts to haunt her dreams. Sure, the first anniversary of her death is approaching, but these dreams feel like more than just an upsurge of grief as the anniversary nears. These dreams feel urgent and terrifying. They also might be following her into waking life.

Tired and increasingly desperate, Mackenzie finally breaks down and calls her Auntie for advice. She even agrees to fly home for a few days to consult her family about this dream problem.

Most of the story unfolds on this visit home. Her family–sister, mom, cousins, aunties–circle around Mackenzie to help and comfort her. Both their deep grief and their tight bonds are clear from the beginning. What becomes equally clear and compelling is what’s missing for all of them. As tight as they are, as focused on community and heritage as they all are, there’s still so much that’s just not there. While rarely talking about it directly, this story shows how much has been taken from the Cree and how much they struggle to hold on to what’s left of their culture.

You see, Mackenzie’s not the only one with powerful, maybe magical dreams. Most of the women in her family seem to have them but no one ever talks about them. As Mackenzie figures out that her dreams are showing her a wheetigo, a ravenous wintery monster that feeds on greed and grief, her family scrambles to find any scraps of lore their community still has about this creature. I can’t help but think that a couple hundred years ago, in a former time when her ancestors and their culture were thriving, those dreams wouldn’t have been a secret and more people would know what to do about a wheetigo. Mackenzie’s personal grief over her grandma and sister are magnified by this greater loss of culture and community and history, and this understanding is all the more powerful for its subtlety.

As a study in grief, this is an excellent story. Mackenzie’s dreams are bloody and terrifying but they lead her and her family to an important and ultimately healing showdown with the wheetigo. Nothing can erase the larger loss and pain her community has faced (and continues to face) but Mackenzie reconnects with her family and this crisis gets everyone to open up about their dreams and maybe rekindle a tiny part of their culture as they share their spiritual connection more freely.

As a horror tale, Bad Cree is a bit slow and repetitive, spending a lot of time on family scenes that do highlight the larger themes but sometimes bog down the story. Some of it feels like padding as Johns struggles to turn a great short story into a less great novel. The novel starts well, jumping right into Mackenzie’s terrifying dream world, and it ends pretty well as she and her family face the wheetigo, but the middle drags at times and if you’re looking for a tight and exciting read, this won’t satisfy. Still, there’s an emotional resonance here that has stuck with me. If you don’t mind a slower read and like a more emotional aspect to your stories, this is the book for you.

This Skin was Once Mine

What’s the book? This Skin was Once Mine by Eric LaRocca

How dark is it? entirely centered on disturbing abuse and body horror

How good is it? 3/10 open wounds

LaRocca gets compared to Clive Barker, it’s right there on the cover, and I can see why. Last century, when I was young, Stephen King and Dean Koontz were the giants of horror but I always preferred Barker’s sensibility. I loved his short stories and was a big fan of Hellraiser. LaRocca shares a certain love of eroticized body horror with Barker. LaRocca also seems to be building on Barker’s queer sensibility, bringing queerness more openly into their stories. But where Barker brought depth and nuance to, say, Pinhead and the cenobytes, making them compelling and even sympathetic in the midst of their worst excesses, LaRocca can’t seem to bring that same depth to their stories. It’s a shame; I’d love to see a true successor to Barker.

This is a collection of four stories, all built around various images or tableaux: an enormous pyre built of fine furniture, a woman meeting a warped and stunted reflection of herself, a father and son literally exploring their shared wounds, a gleaming shard of glass poking out of someone’s skin, an old man choking a baby with a small stone. These tableaux are exquisitely disturbing and often steeped in eroticized body horror. The images at the heart of these stories pull no punches and they’re brilliant in their bloody way. 

Everything else about these stories is pretty bad, though. LaRocca seems to have no idea what kind of characters would end up in these awful scenarios or how they’d get to and from them, so everything surrounding each tableau is pretty thin and sometimes nonsensical. 

Sometimes the badness is logistical issues that completely pull me out of a story: the story will shift locations with no transition, or a character who can barely walk will suddenly stab the hero and manage to drag her up several flights of stairs and down a ladder. Or a character claims that his stab wounds full of glass never get infected because he carefully removes the glass each night and reinserts it every morning. I’m no doctor but I’m pretty sure that wouldn’t help anything. Also, that same story features a guy walking into the store for a knife to cook with and walking out with a gold-handled jewel-encrusted bit of ridiculousness and nobody ever thinks this is dumb. Have you ever seen a Top Chef whip out a jewel-encrusted knife? Damascus steel, yes, jewels you can’t clean chicken juice off of, no. Without including a bunch more spoilers, there are a lot of dubious and impossible moments for a book this short and many times it was bad enough to detract from the atmosphere if not outright ruin it.

Some of the badness is very thin flat characters. Even when we follow a character’s thoughts we don’t really get any insight into who they are as people beyond the one issue in the story. The best example is the protagonist of the third story, All the Parts of You that Won’t Easily Burn. We spend page after page in this guy’s head but all he ever does is obsess about how erotic it is to cut yourself and put glass in the wounds. There are slight hints that before his marriage he was interested in self-mutilation or some sort of pain play but we never find out why or why he stopped. In fact, in spite of living in his head with him we find out almost nothing about this guy even as he goes from “fine, I’ll try this one little thing” to some fullblown crazy murderous stuff over the course of a couple of days. This flatness is pretty much true of every character. There’s no real rhyme or reason to most of their actions because the characters don’t matter, only the central tableau LaRocca’s rushing to set up. 

Maybe the thin characters and nonsensical details are supposed to add to the surreal and dreamlike atmosphere, but if that’s the case I’d like them even less developed. Go all in on the metaphor and allegory instead of dwelling on the characters and plotting at all. What we get here is the worst of both worlds–the characters aren’t relatable and storytelling is sketchy nonsense but the exquisite horror of the central images doesn’t quite hit that emotional center that a good symbol or metaphor does. None of it quite hits right. 

LaRocca also, in their desire to be evocative and poetic with their language, makes odd and distracting word choices. People keep glaring when they’re not angry or simpering when nobody’s looking, or using phrases like “all too inherent” in ways that don’t make a lot of sense. It feels like they’re plugging in synonyms from a thesaurus with no idea whether they actually fit where they’re putting them. If I were really invested in the stories I would have overlooked this almost unconsciously; it bothered me because I was already having trouble immersing myself in the horror. 

It was all so frustrating because this author does have a gift for evocative imagery and the body horror in this is gutsy and creative, but everything else about these stories is so shitty. This author has written several novels but I’m not sure I could force my way through them. I’ll probably just rummage through used books for Clive Barker’s old stuff.