queer fiction – 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.

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.

Cinderwich: a Review

I guess Cherie Priest is known for steampunk but I haven’t read any of those books. This is the second horror novel of hers I’ve read, though, and I enjoyed both of them quite a bit. (I’ve read Cinderwich and The Toll. I read The Toll before I started this blog but maybe someday I’ll tell you about it.) Priest is great at creating quirky and engaging characters and setting them in delightfully haunted spots in the swamps and hollers of the American south. Cinderwich is very gothic and also very southern gothic, which I like.

Cinderwich is a short one, almost a novella at around 160 pages, and the story it tells is pretty straightforward. Ellen Thrush is named after her aunt Ellen, who disappeared before she was even born. It’s kind of awkward being constantly compared (both favorably and not) to an aunt she never knew, so she usually goes by her middle name, Kate.

Aunt Ellen’s disappearance was quite the mystery and no one was affected more than Ellen’s girlfriend at the time, Dr. Judith Kane. Decades after the disappearance, when Kate ended up in grad school where Judith worked, they bonded for a while over Ellen’s life and possible death. Judith would share memories and Kate got to know a different side of her namesake. Eventually Kate left grad school and the two drifted apart, but Judith never entirely quit trying to solve the mystery of Ellen’s disappearance.

Years later, Judith invites Kate to visit Cinderwich, Tennessee, where for years someone has been writing “Who put Ellen in the blackgum tree?” on walls and such. The name is right, the timing sort of fits, and Judith wants to follow this one last lead before giving up the search for good. Kate isn’t hoping for much but she agrees to meet in Cinderwich and help Judith investigate.

Ghostly things happen almost immediately, and they keep happening until the story’s dramatic ending. They meet probably most of the people left in this tiny ghost of a town, including three of the girls who originally found “Ellen” in the tree. The girls have since grown up into a kickass trio of very spooky, very gothy ladies who all seem to be kind of psychic. They and their house are awesome and Kate secretly wishes she could move in with them. So do I, frankly. They seem cool and they stock a wide variety of loose leaf tea at all times, it seems. It sounds lovely.

You might notice this story is chock full of women. It’s not a story about women exploring their womanhood, it’s not part of the town’s mystery or anything, but almost every single character is a woman of some kind. It’s just a cool ghost story centered around a bunch of women and their various lives and goals and perspectives. It gives the book a particular flavor I enjoyed.

This book isn’t gory at all, in spite of the dead body in the tree, and it’s not particularly frightening. It is, however, very spooky and magical and this town is haunted by mysterious (and sometimes malevolent) forces. I love a gothic tale with a really pervasive atmosphere and this delivers. The atmosphere is great and the mystery is satisfying, while Kate and Judith feel real and I’m rooting for them to solve Ellen’s mystery and get home safe. I highly recommend this as a quick cozy read. It’s a perfect ghost story for a long winter night.

As always, embrace the darkness with us here or on Substack.