This review originally appeared at Grimdark Magazine on April 10, 2024.

The Angel of Indian Lake

By Stephen Graham Jones – S&S/Saga Press – March 26, 2024

Review by Robin Marx

Four years have passed since the events of Don’t Fear the Reaper, the second volume in Stephen Graham Jones’ Indian Lake Trilogy. As The Angel of Indian Lake opens, Halloween is coming to Proofrock, Idaho, but—still scarred by the Independence Day Massacre of eight years ago and the bloody rampage of serial killer Dark Mill South’s so-called “reunion tour” of four years past—the picturesque lake town is doing everything it can to downplay the spooky season. Fresh out of prison for a parole violation, Proofrock’s perennial scapegoat Jade Daniels is likewise keeping a low profile. Back in the only home she knows, as flawed and unwelcoming as it is, she ekes out a quiet life as the local high school’s history teacher. Proofrock is one town where the crimes of the past refused to stay buried, however. When a sheriff’s vehicle lost in the mountains during Dark Mill South’s killing spree is rediscovered, a high school student’s quad-copter drone footage also reveals a number of fresh corpses in the immediate vicinity, including students of Jade’s. Try as she might to avoid becoming sucked in to the bloody affair, a subsequent daylight murder on the high school’s doorstep demands Jade’s immediate attention. Chaos erupts, bodies fall, and the legendary Angel of Indian Lake from Proofrock’s frontier days lurks around the periphery.

Much like Don’t Fear the Reaper, The Angel of Indian Lake takes place in an extremely compressed span of time: immediately before, during, and after Halloween. The pacing is similarly relentless, but the stakes are higher than ever. Not only is Proofrock itself facing an existential threat, Jade must put herself in harm’s way to to protect the few surviving residents of Proofrock that hardened and traumatized Jade has allowed herself to love. While she has become somewhat (understandably) ambivalent to horror movies after being immersed in so much real-life carnage over the past eight years, once again Jade puts her encyclopedic knowledge of slasher flicks and their tropes to work in an effort to live to see another day.

As with the first two books in the Indian Lake Trilogy, Jade remains the wounded but defiant heart of the narrative in The Angel of Indian Lake. Each of the books depends heavily on their nuanced portrayals of a misunderstood and neglected misfit that has a tendency to vehemently reject the few helping hands extended in her direction out of fear of betrayal. Misanthropic characters are difficult to get right, and are always at risk of being found frustrating or unlikable by readers, but Jade has always been rendered with such aching empathy that the audience can’t help but share her fears and see past the bulletproof shell she has constructed around herself. Jones describes her as the girl whose heart is too big for her body, and the success of the books (and popularity of “Jade Daniels is my Final Girl” T-shirts) has made it clear that she resonates with many readers. At her core, Jade remains the same complicated character that won over readers with her first appearance in My Heart is a Chainsaw, but she has matured and grown. She’s still as rebellious as ever, but time, therapy, and the support of her chosen family have rounded off some of her edges, creating a more polished and even-tempered version of herself. And where previously readers were only provided occasional glimpses directly into Jade’s mind via horror film-related essays submitted to her high school high school teacher, The Angel of Indian Lake shifts from the third person to a first-person perspective, with Jade herself as the narrator. Constantly under pressure as she struggles for her life, Jade’s mind runs a mile a minute, thoughts swirling with movie trivia, hopes, fears, assumptions, misinterpretations, and jumped-to conclusions. Her stream-of-consciousness perspective is sometimes a challenging one, as it’s occasionally difficult for the reader to distinguish actual events from flights of fancy, but the intimacy of her perspective enhances the experience. Jade and her horror-drenched worldview are the highlight of these books, making the move to first person perspective a wise storytelling choice.

While it was certainly present in the previous volumes, Jones’ masterful and empathetic characterization of supporting characters is particularly noticeable in The Angel of Indian Lake. Like Jade, her best friend Letha and her husband Sheriff Banner have also grown into themselves while doing their best to cope with Proofrock’s numerous tragedies. While the characters’ dialogue is by turns moving, wry, or devastating, Jones also manages to communicate so much through understatement, words left unsaid, and subtle body language.

In the Acknowledgments section of the book, Jones frankly discusses the challenges he faced writing The Angel of Indian Lake. While it must have been an intimidating task attempting to live up to the fan expectations accumulated with the first two books, it was surprising to see how little material he had prepared ahead of time. None of this blank space was obvious while reading the book, the ease with which Jones picked up plot threads from the first two volumes and interwove them with new events made it seem like he had everything exhaustively planned from the start. Minor characters have surprising destinies and seemingly throwaway elements receive unexpected payoffs. Jones makes executing a satisfying horror trilogy look easy, in a way that very few authors to date have managed.

With The Angel of Indian Lake, Jade Daniels’ story gets the ending it deserves. Expect award nominations to follow.

#ReviewArchive #BookReview #Horror #TheAngelOfIndianLake #StephenGrahamJones #IndianLakeTrilogy #GrimdarkMagazine #GdM

This review originally appeared at Spiral Tower Press on September 2, 2023.

Looking Glass Sound

By Catriona Ward – Tor Nightfire – August 2023.

Review by Robin Marx

“If you don’t bring up those lonely parts This could be a good time” -Interpol, “Leif Erikson”

Since the 2015 release of her debut novel Rawblood, Catriona Ward has established herself as a writer to be watched. Subsequent novels have been unleashed in rapid succession, bringing her numerous accolades. She is the three-time winner of the August Derleth Award for Best Horror Novel, for example, an achievement unmatched by any other woman writer. Her 2021 novel The Last House on Needless Street is still enjoying a great deal of buzz among readers and critics, and new release Looking Glass Sound seems destined to keep Ward’s name at the vanguard of the horror fiction community.

When his father inherits a cottage in coastal Maine, 16-year-old Wilder Harlow finds himself caught up in a summer that will forever alter the course of his life. Socially awkward and painfully sensitive, Wilder nevertheless finds himself swiftly drawn into an intense friendship with two local teens, Nat and Harper. Abandoned by his mother, fisherman’s son Nat spends his days outdoors, seemingly reluctant to spend time at home. Harper plays at witchcraft—perhaps to exert more control over her troubled family life—and has already developed a thirst for alcohol that goes beyond her friends’ youthful experimentation with drink. The three lonely friends discover the companionship that they so desperately need in each other, vowing to meet again in future summers. Despite their optimistic oath, the triad is short-lived, however. People have been quietly disappearing from Whistler Bay for years, and threatening Polaroid photos of a knife held to the throats of sleeping children have turned up on multiple occasions. When a shocking link between the teens and the so-called Dagger Man of Whistler Bay is revealed the following summer, the friendship is torn asunder. Even after going their separate ways, the events of Whistler Bay follow the trio for the rest of their lives.

Looking Glass Sound involves a great deal of literary experimentation. Unreliable narration in particular plays a prominent role. Wilder becomes a writer, his entire career fixated upon the summers in Whistler Bay and their aftermath, and much of the text is presented as chapters from his unpublished memoir. Perspectives shift throughout the book, and there’s also a recurring thematic emphasis on storytelling. When Wilder asks Nat about a quirk of Harper’s, he casually responds that it’s “not my story to tell.” It’s a brief passage, presented without any obvious significance, but the concept of ownership of stories—who has the “right” to tell them—is one Ward returns to again and again within the book.

While the puzzle-like construction and misdirection of Looking Glass Sound are clever, I found myself more struck by the emotional dimension of the book. The way the characters interact with each other feels brutally real and raw, and because the book follows them over the course of decades, the reader sees Wilder and friends change and grow. The explosive, white-hot infatuations and arguments of their younger years give way in adulthood to frustrated longing and smoldering grudges. Looking Glass Sound has an intimate cast of characters—one could even call it crowded, even claustrophobic—and their separations and reunions over the years result in a melancholy mélange of missed opportunities, interrupted romances, regrets, and awkwardness. The circumstances surrounding the Dagger Man tragedy leave each of the characters laden with trauma and grief, but they find themselves not just haunted by the dead, but each other. Words unspoken, kisses unstolen, and disagreements unresolved all take on weight as years accumulate in the story.

The initial premise of Looking Glass Sound feels a bit like it could have been taken from a scrap filched from Stephen King’s desk, and some readers have expressed frustration with how Ward blurs the line between actual and imagined events. However, despite Ward’s trickiness, attentive readers should be able to navigate the layers and twists. My central complaint would be that the book tends to neglect the horror half of literary horror. Apart from infrequent moments of supernatural peril (which do include an excellent climax, to Ward’s credit), this book left me more sad than frightened. That being said, the empathy and authenticity with which Ward’s walking wounded characters are rendered is thoroughly engrossing. It’s never stated in so many words, but “we haunt each other” is the core message I took away from the book.

#ReviewArchive #BookReview #Horror #LookingGlassSound #CatrionaWard #SpiralTowerPress

This interview originally appeared in Grimdark Magazine Issue #36 on September 27, 2023. It later appeared online at Grimdark Magazine on October 8, 2023.

An Interview with Stephen Graham Jones

Interview by Robin Marx

It’s a truism in the entertainment world that it takes twenty years to become an overnight success. Since the 2000 release of Stephen Graham Jones’ debut novel, The Fast Red Road: A Plainsong, he has released a string of critically well-received novels and novellas. However, it was not until the 2020 release of The Only Good Indians—which masterfully blended a sensitive meditation on the Native American experience with visceral, folklore-inspired chills—that Jones was catapulted to the forefront of horror stardom.

Jones has followed up The Only Good Indians with a new longform fiction project, the Indian Lake Trilogy. The first installment, My Heart is a Chainsaw, won the 2021 Bram Stoker Award for Superior Achievement in a Novel, the 2022 Shirley Jackson Award, and the 2022 Locus Award for Best Horror Novel. Its sequel, Don’t Fear the Reaper, was released as a hardcover on February 23, 2023. We spoke with Jones ahead of the release of the paperback edition of Don’t Fear the Reaper about his fan-favorite heroine, “elevated horror,” and recent slasher flicks.

[GdM] Your prickly, slasher-obsessed heroine Jade Daniels became an instant hit after her first appearance in My Heart is a Chainsaw. Her return in Don’t Fear the Reaper was highly anticipated, as demonstrated by the multitude of online selfies of fans sporting “Jade Daniels is my Final Girl” t-shirts. Why do you think Jade resonates so much with readers?

[SGJ] We all root for the underdog, don’t we? I think that might be part of it. And, that’s built right into horror. You always design your antagonist as bigger and badder than the hero, such that when and if they best that baddie, then it’s an upset—that underdog shouldn’t win. Neither should Jade. But heart and stubbornness count for a lot. Jade’s got heaps of both.

[GdM] In both fiction and horror cinema, creators often struggle with the middle installments of trilogies. How did you tackle this challenge with Don’t Fear the Reaper?

[SGJ] First, I knew about that middle-of-the-trilogy slump, so was intent on avoiding it. Second, I had revisit two of my favorite middle instalments, The Two Towers and The Empire Strikes Back, to get the tone and angle of approach close to right. The trick with a middle instalment of a trilogy is that you’ve got to both “win” the dramatic line while also not yet concluding the narrative arc. The Fellowship bests Saruman, say, and that’s great and wonderful, but, too . . . Frodo’s in a pretty bad place, and Sauron’s still simmering over there on the horizon, portending all the sacrifices that are going to need to happen to vanquish him and restore Middle Earth. Or, Luke fights Vader to a near-standstill, which is to say, his Jedi training’s working out, but, too, not only does he lose his hand, but he finds out Vader’s his dad. To add onto the “down” of Empire, Han’s in carbonite, too. So, taking both of those as templates, as leads, as bars to rise to, in Reaper, Jade had to face off against all the badness in Proofrock this time around—including her own demons—but, first, in spite of that, the novel needed to end sort of “down,” and, second, it couldn’t complete her trilogy-long arc.

[GdM] Even when describing Dark Mill South’s bloody killing spree in Don’t Fear the Reaper, your work has a pronounced literary streak. How do you feel about the term “elevated horror”?

[SGJ] Not in favor of it. I feel like it’s just people’s way of saying that they don’t really like horror, but they like this horror because it’s not like the rest. But “elevated horror” or “literary horror” always feels like an insult to all the stuff not included in that category. To me, “literary” means “that which can be returned to again and again, for more and more.” As opposed to “pulp,” I guess, which are one-reads—you leave the book on the train when you’re done, as you’ve milked it for all it had. Both of those are great, though, that’s the thing. It’s not hierarchy, it’s just different modes, different intents. And readers gravitate to whichever fits their tastes. Or they gravitate to whichever fits their tastes right then. Some days you want pulp, some days want to read a thing for the third or fourth time. And, another hesitancy I have with “literary horror” is that right now it’s kind of taken as a compliment—while also being an insult to the rest of that shelf—but I can suspect a day a few years down the road where “literary” shades into a meaning more like what we hear in movie write-ups, where the code-word is “deliberate,” which always means “super slow.” I can see a day where “literary” starts to be that kind of insult. Then? Then, the pulp stuff will be the mode actually concerned with pulling the reader through by the face. Me, I’m always aiming for pulp. I long to learn to do it better.

[GdM] Do you mainly write for yourself, or do you have a certain ideal reader in mind that you strive to entertain? Is it important to you to also reach people who don’t consider themselves horror fans?

[SGJ] The crowd I write first for is the horror crowd. But yeah, I do try to, say, walk the non-initiates into the land of werewolves or whatever. I don’t want to be exclusive and form some kind of in-group where only those who’ve read all these other werewolf things can play. I think of genres as fields, with fences between them. I try to write my stuff such that the stories have legs long enough to step over those fields.

[GdM] Many readers’ first encounter with your novels is through the Indian Lake Trilogy and The Only Good Indians, but you have an extensive body of earlier work. With Angel of Indian Lake scheduled for March 2024, where would you direct readers in the meantime, after they devour Don’t Fear the Reaper?

[SGJ] Mongrels, maybe? Or the audiobook The Babysitter Lives. Or my two recent novellas, Night of the Mannequins and Mapping the Interior. Or my comic book Earthdivers, if they read comics. These are all very different from each other, too.

[GdM] You recently appeared in Outland Entertainment’s Swords in the Shadows: A Swords & Sorcery Horror Anthology with the entertainingly gruesome short story “The Dog in the Corner.” You also have the digital short Conan: Lord of the Mount coming soon from Titan Books. Can we expect more Sword & Sorcery or grimdark fantasy fiction from you soon? What is motivating this apparent new push into dark fantasy?

[SGJ] For me, it’s just opportunity in the form of invitations. I’ve always wanted to write something Conan, as he’s kind of what I cut my reader-teeth on, and I read a lot of fantasy, too. Reason I never write it? Worldbuilding. I tend to discover places and worlds as my characters walk through them. You can write a fantasy thing like that, of course, but it’ll take a while, I bet. Still? I might have to give it a go.

[GdM] For story reasons, Jade’s knowledge of recent horror releases is spotty. What newer films would she be obsessed with? Given her love of slasher flicks I suspect she’d be a Blumhouse Productions fan, but would she enjoy A24’s output? Do her preferences echo your own, or would there be some debate when choosing what to watch for a movie night?

[SGJ] Yeah, her taste is very similar to mine, surprise. Meaning Happy Death Day and Freaky would be favorites. But I think she’d also dig the indie-stuff, like Last Girl Standing, The Mooring. And talking A24, yeah, I think Jade goes for Bodies Bodies Bodies. Really? I think she goes for any slasher she can see herself fighting her way through. Slashers are models for us all. That’s how Jade uses them.

[GdM] Thank you for sharing your time!

#ArticleArchive #Interview #Horror #DontFearTheReaper #StephenGrahamJones #IndianLakeTrilogy #GrimdarkMagazine #GdM

This review originally appeared at Grimdark Magazine on September 10, 2023.

The Graveyard Shift

By Maria Lewis – Datura Books – September 12, 2023

Review by Robin Marx

Tinsel Munroe is the host of “The Graveyard Shift,” an overnight horror-themed radio show on 102.8 HitsFM, Melbourne’s hottest station. Despite her best efforts she finds herself mostly treading water in her career, trapped in a dead-end time slot playing for a devoted but small following. Her life is upended on Halloween, however, when an audience member is viciously murdered during a broadcast phone call. New listeners flock to the show with ghoulish hopes for another on-air killing, and ominous messages reveal to Tinsel that she herself is a target. As the police investigation founders and the body count rises, Tinsel realizes that her continued survival depends on her ability—with assistance from her true crime blogger sister Pandora and the handsome detective Vic James—to uncover the hidden connection between herself and the unseen assailant.

The Graveyard Shift is billed as an “homage” to the slasher movies of the 1990s, and elements of the Scream series are certainly present and accounted for. While Halloween, A Nightmare on Elm Street, Child’s Play and various other slasher franchises are name-checked throughout the book, potential readers should be aware that The Graveyard Shift is more of a thriller with light mystery and romance elements than a horror novel. The supernatural is not a factor, and Maria Lewis does not devote much effort to building and sustaining an unsettling or frightening atmosphere. That being said, the murder scenes are tense and exciting and deliver the sort of gore one would expect from I Know What You Did Last Summer or similar slashers.

The Graveyard Shift’s greatest strength is its characters. Tinsel is a likable, smart, and resourceful heroine. True crime blogger Pandora and police detective Vic James are likewise appealing, and even the minor supporting characters come across as distinctive, well-rendered individuals. While it feels a little convenient that Tinsel’s sister happens to be a serial killer expert with police connections and a ready supply of murder factoids, Pandora is given enough fleshing-out to make her more than just a convenient plot device. Dreamy, stubbled protector Detective James also seems more like a Hollywood cop than somebody one would encounter on a real world police force, but he is given enough depth to transcend his primary function as hunky daydream fodder for readers. The characters are fun, and it’s enjoyable spending time with them.

In The Graveyard Shift, Lewis writes in a breezy, thoroughly modern voice. The book is fast-paced and engaging, but I struggled a bit with the tone. At no point in this book does someone narrowly escape from a knife-wielding maniac and then brush it off with a quippy “Well, that happened,” but if a scene like that HAD been present it would not have been out of place with the rest of the book. Plucky bravery is one thing, but Tinsel comes off as remarkably unflappable for someone being actively stalked by a serial killer. She shows occasional moments of fright or doubt, but is otherwise largely able to go about her life in good spirits, mostly covering her regular shift at work and putting in appearances at social functions. The constantly shifting tone threw me off, but it feels significant that a main character is a true crime enthusiast. True crime podcasts and blogs are often accused of trivializing real world brutality and murder for the sake of salacious thrills, and similarly the fictional crimes depicted here aren’t always handled with the utmost gravity. Tinsel is appropriately devastated when people she knows are attacked, but at times it feels like the deaths of unacquainted victims are treated more like a fun puzzle to be solved by Tinsel and Pandora: Taskforce Laurie Strode.

The Graveyard Shift is an energetic and stimulating thriller. Readers hoping for grit and angst are better off looking elsewhere, but this book serves well as a refreshing palate cleanser after finishing weightier fare.

#ReviewArchive #BookReview #Horror #Thriller #Mystery #TheGraveyardShift #MariaLewis #GrimdarkMagazine #GdM

This review originally appeared at Grimdark Magazine on July 4, 2023.

Boys in the Valley

By Philip Fracassi – Tor Nightfire – July 11, 2023

Review by Robin Marx

Boys in the Valley immerses the reader in the harsh, prison-like environs of St. Vincent’s Orphanage, deep in the hills of rural Pennsylvania, 1905. Here Peter Barlow and 31 other boys spend monotonous days working the fields and participating in church services under the watchful gaze of a handful of Catholic priests. Any perceived infraction or impiety is met with withheld meals, corporal punishment, or a trip to the dreaded “hole”: a subterranean cell dug into the grounds outside the dormitory. The boys’ already grueling situation goes from bad to worse with the midnight arrival of the local sheriff and his deputies with a grievously wounded suspect in tow. The injured man is combative and raving, with the sheriff evasive about the circumstances of his arrest. Former military medic Father Poole attempts to provide treatment, but what begins as first aid soon devolves into a harrowing exorcism that the wounded man does not survive. After the man’s death and interment in the orphanage grounds Peter notices an unsettling change come over a number of his fellows, beginning with one just returning from an overnight stay in the hole. Formerly cheerful boys have become inexplicably malicious and conspiratorial. They huddle together, darkly plotting and recruiting others, while the priests refuse to acknowledge that anything unusual is occurring. Violence seems imminent, and as the oldest boy with a strong sense of responsibility it’s up to Peter to protect his comrades. Assuming, that is, he can distinguish friend from demonic foe.

Like Fracassi’s previous novel, Gothic, Boys in the Valley involves devil-worship and demonic possession. The publisher’s pithy tagline describes Boys in the Valley as “The Exorcist meets Lord of the Flies, by way of Midnight Mass.” Similarities to The Exorcist are obvious, and both the absence of effective adult supervision and the pervasive child-on-child brutality certainly bring to mind Lord of the Flies. But despite being—at its heart—a religious horror novel, I would also recommend it to fans of John Carpenter’s The Thing (1982). Isolated and snow-bound, the orphanage may as well be as remote as an Antarctic research station, and its immediately clear that no outside help is forthcoming. Unlike many horror stories, where a singular devil flits from one host to the next in serial fashion, possession is treated here almost like an infection. Some demonic hosts are more insidiously subtle than others, engendering a heavy atmosphere of paranoia as alliances shift and former friends become lethal enemies.

Despite the claustrophobic setting of Boys in the Valley, Fracassi effectively manages a large cast of characters. The various boys are all named and given evocative quirks. The lion’s share of characterization is given to the oldest two boys, the noble aspiring priest Peter and his cynical counterpart David, but through brief passages and conversations Fracassi manages to communicate each boy’s essential nature with surprising economy of words. With the end goal, of course, of making the reader really feel the blow whenever a particular boy meets a savage end at the hands of his fellows.

The pacing is another highlight of Boys in the Valley. Many authors would be tempted to prolong the first third of the novel, after the first boys start to change. Those authors would drip-feed the reader a series of unsettling events over several more chapters before the first murder takes place. Fracassi’s demons are impatient and ready to get to the carnage, however, with the whole sequence of events escalating very quickly. I appreciated the apparent confidence Fracassi had in the strength of his basic premise and his scene-setting ability. Rather than dragging things out unnecessarily, all hell breaks loose within the orphanage soon after Peter uncovers the demonic threat.

Previously published in 2001 as a 500 copy limited edition by Earthling Publications, Boys in the Valley is now being released by Tor Nightfire. Hopefully this mass market edition from a major publisher will introduce Fracassi to a wider audience of readers. After reading both Gothic and Boys in the Valley I am firmly convinced that Philip Fracassi is a name worthy of being included alongside other contemporary horror greats like Paul Tremblay, Nick Cutter, and Stephen Graham Jones. Boys in the Valley is a tense page-turner, absolutely gripping.

#ReviewArchive #BookReview #Horror #BoysInTheValley #PhilipFracassi #GrimdarkMagazine #GdM

This review originally appeared at Grimdark Magazine on June 21, 2023.

The Vessel

By Adam Nevill – Ritual Limited – October 31, 2022

Review by Robin Marx

The Vessel opens with protagonist Jess McMachen in a desperate situation. Having separated from her violent husband, she supports herself on meager wages earned weekly as a caregiver for the elderly. Her primary school-aged daughter Izzy is mercilessly bullied by her classmates, but Jess’ irregular work schedule prevents her from being as available for her daughter as she would like. Her ex-husband is also constantly lurking around the periphery, paying surprise visits to their daughter that violate the terms of their divorce agreement. A new job opportunity offers a chance to escape this tenuous situation, however. If Jess can stick with it, avoiding a repeat of the vaguely hinted-at disaster that spoiled her previous posting, she could earn enough to move into a new house in the countryside, far from her ex-husband, where her daughter can play outside and get a fresh start at a new school.

Upon accepting the new job, however, the situation quickly goes from bad to worse. Her client, Flo Gardner, is in the late stages of dementia. She lives in Nerthus House, a once beautiful mansion that (mirroring its owner) has deteriorated over the decades, dimmed by unreplaced burnt-out light bulbs and crammed with a lifetime of clutter. Jess soon discovers that—during those fleeting moments when Flo isn’t completely catatonic—she’s verbally abusive without provocation and unpredictably violent. Flo also proves surprisingly mobile for a supposedly frail wheelchair user, appearing in unexpected places in the dead of night. Jess keeps discovering strange shrines in neglected corners of the house. Birds act strangely in the surrounding woods, and ominous shapes move in the overgrown garden at night. There is a sense that both Nerthus House and its resident are awaiting something. The eerie events Jess experiences escalate even further when, after her babysitting arrangements fall through, she finds herself with no choice but to bring her daughter into Nerthus House and into contact with Flo.

Much like Nevill’s The Ritual and No One Gets Out Alive, The Vessel deals with an isolated protagonist trapped in a simultaneously miserable and threatening predicament. “Why don’t they just leave?” is a question that horror writers and filmmakers frequently have to grapple with, and Nevill always has a ready and convincing response. He combines empathetic character portrayals with a singularly claustrophobic atmosphere, effectively immersing the reader in his beleaguered protagonists’ shoes.

Apart from its sudden and intense finale, The Vessel is more about inevitability than surprises. Rather than blindside the reader with twists and unexpected reveals, the events of the story seem to follow an inexorable, perhaps even preordained sequence. The reader is kept one step ahead of Jess throughout the story, enhancing the feel of dread.

Only slightly longer than a novella, The Vessel is a short novel intended by the author to be read in one or two sittings. While I appreciated that it wasted no time getting to the exciting supernatural bits, it also felt like the novel would have been perhaps even more effective with some more meat on its bones, so to speak. In the book’s enlightening back matter, Nevill reveals that the narrative’s leanness and almost stage-like presentation were an intentional experiment on his part. Ultimately, whether that experiment was successful will depend on the perspective of each individual reader, and I will refrain from spoiling Nevill’s stated goal for the book.

The Vessel is a taut little exercise in folk horror. Reader’s familiar with Nevill’s other work will find his strengths on display, and newcomers with a taste for folk horror in the tradition of Arthur Machen (slyly referenced in Nevill’s heroine’s surname: McMachen) and The Wicker Man are sure to enjoy this tale. The old gods of Britain may have faded from sight, but that doesn’t mean they have disappeared.

#ReviewArchive #BookReview #Horror #TheVessel #AdamNevill #AdamLGNevill #GrimdarkMagazine #GdM

This review originally appeared at Grimdark Magazine on June 9, 2023.

Maeve Fly

By CJ Leede – Tor Nightfire – June 6, 2023

Review by Robin Marx

With Maeve Fly, debut novelist CJ Leede wants to introduce readers to a new breed of serial killer.

Maeve Fly, the eponymous protagonist (not to be confused with “heroine”), is living her best life. She resides rent-free in a palatial mansion owned by her grandmother Tallulah, a former actress from the Golden Age of Hollywood. She has a job that she loves, working as a costumed princess at the Happiest Place on Earth. She has a best friend, Kate, who is literally the Anna to her Elsa. She amuses herself watching VHS pornography and inciting online hate mobs. Oh, and she indulges in a little murder sometimes, as a treat.

But, as she is intensely aware, cracks are beginning to appear in Maeve’s cushy lifestyle. The grandmother that Maeve idolizes has been comatose for some time, and is receiving in-home hospice care. Her aspiring actress friend, Kate, is one successful audition away from stardom and an inevitable separation from Maeve. And despite their popularity with amusement park visitors, both Maeve and Kate are being subjected to increasing scrutiny by their employer. If all that weren’t enough, an unpredictable new element has arrived on the scene: Kate’s handsome and cocksure brother. A professional hockey player, Gideon both attracts and repels Maeve in equal measure. At any moment her house of cards could collapse, leaving Maeve rootless and adrift. And when Maeve Fly feels threatened, people die.

Written in the first person predatory perspective and peppered with pop culture references, American Psycho is the most obvious point of comparison for Maeve Fly, but there’s a fair amount tonally of Fight Club in here, too. Both Bret Easton Ellis and Chuck Palahniuk are directly referenced within the narrative, name-dropped alongside a number of outre authors, perhaps a self-aware bit of judo intended to disarm critics. Maeve herself has read the books her story is likely to be compared to, and she even glances at a copy of American Psycho before embarking on her final killing spree. But there’s more of interest to be found within this slick serial killer story than a simple gender swap. While habitual murderers are commonly portrayed as aloof, Maeve is anything but detached. She needs the grounding and stability that her grandmother and best friend provide. While she constantly strives to hide her murderous compulsion, at the same time she has a powerful desire to be understood and accepted. Ironically, to be seen. The way that ambivalence is handled is what distinguishes Maeve Fly from other serial killer stories.

With its uncompromising tone and unsettling main character, Maeve Fly is destined to be a divisive book. The violence is graphic, and Leede does not shy away from depictions of sexual assault or animal abuse. Maeve is a forceful and liberated woman, but she’s simultaneously a black hole of need and dependence. She’s a fascinating character, but also an unrepentant monster. There’s no inciting incident from her past that turned Maeve into a killer, she’s a monster with no origin story. The people she kills and mutilates generally aren’t deserving of their fates. They don’t “have it coming.” There’s some sparse and under-cooked commentary about misogyny and gendered violence, but it’s undermined by the fact that Maeve acts more savagely towards women than any of the male characters in the book, and her brutality has a relentlessly sexual component. Maeve is not the subversive feminist icon some prospective readers may be looking for.

Maeve Fly is a pitch black character study. Leede promises a monstrous woman and she delivers with gusto. While full-on splatterpunk horror fans might be let down (Maeve tends to describe in detail the torments she’s about to unleash on her victims, with the actual execution taking place between chapters), the level of gore still feels a few notches above the mainstream horror novel average. With its strong characterization and compelling exploration of dark themes, Maeve Fly is an uncommonly aggressive and confident debut novel, and CJ Leede is an author to watch.

#ReviewArchive #BookReview #Horror #MaeveFly #CJLeede #GrimdarkMagazine #GdM

This review originally appeared at Grimdark Magazine on May 13, 2023.

Killer

By Peter Tonkin – Valancourt Books – February 7, 2023

Review by Robin Marx

After Peter Benchley’s Jaws was published in 1974, its massive success and that of the 1975 film adaptation inspired a wave of authors and filmmakers hoping to hit the commercial jackpot with their own lurid tales of aquatic creatures terrorizing those poor fools who thought it was safe to go back into the water. Books and films about piranhas and giant octopi followed, and Guy N. Smith even memorably wrote a series of novels about killer crustaceans, beginning with Night of the Crabs in 1976. Larger and more intelligent than Jaws’ iconic great white shark, killer whales also enjoyed a brief moment in the spotlight. Produced by Dino De Laurentiis and starring Richard Harris and Charlotte Rampling, Orca: The Killer Whale was released to theaters in 1977, to poor reviews and middling box office results. Peter Tonkin’s 1979 novel Killer, however, fared much better. Lean and tightly plotted, Killer emphasized the orca’s formidable physicality and intelligence in prose in a way that Orca: The Killer Whale failed to accomplish on the silver screen. While successful in both the United Kingdom—the author’s home country—and in the United States, Tonkin struggled to produce subsequent novels. The aquatic horror boom faded with time, and Killer inevitably fell out of print.

Now, more than four decades since the book’s debut, Killer is back. It received glowing coverage in Grady Hendrix’s Paperbacks from Hell: The Twisted History of ‘70s and ‘80s Horror Fiction (2017) retrospective, and now the novel itself is a part of Valancourt Books’ companion PAPERBACKS FROM HELL line of cult classic horror novels curated by Hendrix and Too Much Horror Fiction blogger Will Errickson. The Valancourt Books release is available in both digital and nostalgia-inspiring mass market paperback format, with Ken Barr’s vintage cover artwork and a new introduction by Hendrix.

The titular Killer is a massive orca raised in captivity as a part of a US Navy experiment. Trained dolphins were used during the Vietnam War to detect enemy divers attempting to sabotage moored ships, and the novel envisions an evolved version of the real-life Marine Mammal Program, one in which an orca—more powerful and more intelligent than a dolphin—is conditioned not just to find suspicious swimmers, but to terminate them as well. The killer whale takes to its training all too well and, inevitably for this type of horror story, a moment of human error leads to disaster. The orca kills one of its captors and escapes its enclosure, fleeing to the deep sea with a taste for human flesh.

Some time later, promising young scientist Kate Warren sets out for an Arctic research camp, hoping to form a closer relationship with her brilliant but (both physically and emotionally) distant marine botanist father. Their brief reunion is cruelly interrupted when their plane crashes en route to the research facility, leaving father and daughter trapped on an aimlessly drifting ice floe with four other survivors. Resources are meagre and tempers quickly grow strained, as the group of survivors includes both arrogant camp director Simon Quick and Colin Ross, the taciturn scarred man Simon holds responsible for the death of his loved ones after a disastrous Antarctic expedition. The situation deteriorates even further when the stranded party comes to the attention of the escaped killer whale, now dominating an entire pod of two dozen wild orcas. The killer’s training kicks in and he becomes fixated on the humans, intent on both devouring them and teaching the pleasures of human meat to his fellow cetaceans.

Killer is a taut story of survival. Where Benchley’s Jaws filled pages with meandering subplots involving the Mafia and Police Chief Brody’s wife’s infidelity (wisely excised from the film adaptation by Steven Spielberg), Tonkin wastes no time getting to the good stuff. The six stranded individuals are rarely given time to catch their breath, and neither is the reader. Killer is also clearly a horror novel, rather than a simple wilderness adventure. Whenever the killer whales fall upon their prey (be it human, whale, polar bear, or walrus), the violence is almost triumphantly graphic. Where the shark in Jaws is a solitary, almost machine-like predator, Tonkin uses the orcas’ pack tactics and malicious cunning to great effect. The survivors are always on the defensive, struggling to deal with the killer whales’ organized ambush attacks while supplies dwindle and their ice floe gradually, inexorably disintegrates around them.

While tension—punctuated with bursts of gory violence—dominates Killer, Tonkin also deftly captures the emotional dimension of the story. Even before the killer whales arrive on the scene, the gripping plane crash sequence effectively reveals each character’s inner world, sliding from perspective to perspective as each of them confronts their own mortality. Some react with grim resignation, others turn to religious faith (fascinating supporting character Job wavers between Methodist Christianity and the Arctic gods of his Inuit heritage), while others reveal cowardice and contempt for their fellow man. The tendencies and weaknesses displayed during the crash scene become more and more pronounced on the ice floe as the survivors’ situation grows more desperate.

Does Tonkin succeed in his original goal of outdoing Benchley’s Jaws? Killer perhaps holds together better as a novel; Jaws is a rare example of the movie adaptation being better than the original book. On the other hand, the orca’s superior size and intelligence aside, on a primal level there’s something deeply terrifying about great white sharks that orcas can’t quite match. Killer is an easy recommendation for enthusiasts of “animal attack” horror novels, but the vastly uneven odds and interpersonal conflict among the survivors is likely to appeal to fans of zombie novels as well. With Peter Tonkin’s Killer, the PAPERBACKS FROM HELL reprint line has resurfaced another winner.

#ReviewArchive #BookReview #Horror #Killer #PeterTonkin #PaperbacksFromHell #GrimdarkMagazine #GdM

This review originally appeared at Grimdark Magazine on March 6, 2023.

Don't Fear the Reaper

By Stephen Graham Jones – S&S/Saga Press – February 7, 2023

Review by Robin Marx

Proofrock, Idaho, is a small town marred by tragedy. The Independence Day Massacre that concluded My Heart is a Chainsaw, the first novel of Jones’s Indian Lake Trilogy, claimed more than a dozen lives. Eyewitness accounts of the chaos differed dramatically, but misfit high school senior Jennifer “Jade” Daniels found herself saddled with at least some of the blame. Volume 2 of the trilogy, Don’t Fear the Reaper begins four years after the bloodbath. Released from prison after a mistrial, Jennifer returns to the only home she’s ever known. While deep in her heart she knows that the nightmare isn’t over, that a legendary threat remains at large, she yearns to put the past behind her. But small towns have long memories, and everywhere she turns she finds herself confronted by the scarred and the grieving. Complicating matters even further is that her slouching return coincides with the blizzard-aided escape of Dark Mill South, an enigmatic serial killer hoping to add a few more bodies to his count.

Winner of the Bram Stoker Award for Superior Achievement in a Novel, My Heart is a Chainsaw introduced readers to Jade Daniels, an angry and rebellious half-Indian girl with an encyclopedic knowledge of slasher movies. While much of the first book centered on her use of horror flick trivia to recognize and deal with a lethal menace in her hometown, it was also an achingly empathetic portrait of a deeply hurt and isolated young woman trying to make her way in an insular community that didn’t seem to have any place for her. She is, as Jones aptly sums up, a girl whose feelings are too big for her body. Don’t Fear the Reaper presents a slightly matured version of Jones’ Final Girl. She prefers to be called Jennifer now, not Jade. And after living through a very real nightmare, scary movies have lost their luster. Despite her attempts to move on, however, to the citizens of Proofrock she’s still the same old Jade. Circumstances also conspire to mire her in the past, as once again she finds herself in a real-life horror movie where knowing the tropes and rules of the game can mean the difference between living to see another day and joining the rapidly expanding ranks of the dead. Burying the past is a luxury she may not have.

Not only does Jennifer remain a captivating heroine, Jones extends his empathy to the surrounding cast of characters as well. Where the first book dealt with one traumatized girl, Don’t Fear the Reaper shows us a traumatized community. Horror movies usually end with the monster’s death, we’re spared the aftermath. But Proofrock is a small town. The loss of so many during the Independence Day Massacre is still keenly felt years later, and to each other the survivors are living reminders of the tragedy. The former sheriff now relies on a walker. The town beauty struggles with an ongoing regimen of prescription medications and reconstructive surgeries. Not all of the characters whose minds we’re invited into are sympathetic, some are fairly reprehensible, but Jones doesn’t play favorites. He makes us understand their motives, their regrets, their aspirations. (And then has them murdered in graphic, inventive ways worthy of the best slasher films.) For this reader, the humanity with which the characters are portrayed was the highlight of the book.

Both volumes share masterful characterization, but Don’t Fear the Reaper differs significantly from its predecessor in terms of pacing. Much of My Heart is a Chainsaw is a slow burn, but this follow-up volume is remarkably compressed. Excluding flashbacks, postscripts, and other asides, the heart of the book takes place in a matter of hours. The struggle for survival is absolutely relentless. Where before Dark Mill South’s killings may have been serial in nature—with victims separated by time and geography—when he arrives in Proofrock he launches an all-out spree. Cut off from the outside world by inclement weather, with power and phone lines failing, the residents of town find themselves immersed in a new massacre, one that many are fatally oblivious that is even occurring.

While Dark Mill South displays a degree of fortitude worthy of movie slashers Jason Voorhees and Michael Myers, as in My Heart is a Chainsaw many of the supernatural elements mentioned in Don’t Fear the Reaper remain tantalizing, more often hinted at than foregrounded. Not all of our narrators are reliable, and quite frequently these witnesses are amped up on adrenaline or mortally wounded during their brushes the otherworldly. During these passages, Jones switches to a more gauzy, impressionistic style that requires one to read between the lines. It seems that there are phantasmal elements in play even beyond the legendary Lake Witch described in the first volume. Questions remain unanswered, but the dots the reader are given to connect have begun taking on an intriguing shape.

Like Pulitzer Prize winner Michael Chabon, Stephen Graham Jones balances serious literary chops with an unashamed love of genre fiction. Both My Heart is a Chainsaw and earlier stand-alone novel The Only Good Indians (2020) have attracted accolades both within and outside the horror fiction community, and Don’t Fear the Reaper seems destined to enjoy the same recognition. It’s a satisfying follow-up that leaves one exhilarated and excited for the trilogy’s conclusion. Part of me wonders if three volumes is enough, however. As any scary movie fan can tell you, the best franchises have a habit of outgrowing trilogies.

#ReviewArchive #BookReview #Horror #DontFearTheReaper #StephenGrahamJones #IndianLakeTrilogy #GrimdarkMagazine #GdM

This review originally appeared at Grimdark Magazine on February 1, 2023.

Gothic

By Philip Fracassi – Cemetery Dance Publications – February 3, 2023

Review by Robin Marx

Philip Fracassi’s new horror novel Gothic opens with its protagonist Tyson Parks trapped in an untenable situation. Twenty years ago he was a New York Times bestselling horror author, hailed as Stephen King’s heir apparent. But times have changed and his more recent books have been commercial and critical failures. His smug Manhattan agent—lounging in the posh corner office Tyson’s labor and talent financed—berates him like a child for falling out of step with the fickle tastes of the fiction market. Tyson’s latest manuscript is both late and diverges significantly from the book he pitched to his anxious publisher. The creative well is running dry and his business partners are growing impatient while his debts mercilessly compound.

Tyson’s fortunes change, however, when his supportive partner Sarah buys him an ornate Victorian Gothic writing desk as a present for his 59th birthday. A smoothly polished stone slab supported by decadently engraved rosewood, the monumental antique is intended to reignite Tyson’s creative spark. And it works, beyond Sarah’s wildest hopes. From the moment Tyson sets fingertips to keyboard, he is drawn into a fugue state in which the words flow easily and the hours slip by, leaving him pages of disturbingly compelling tales of witchcraft and human sacrifice. Publishable pages. But while his writing career makes a dramatic recovery, his personal life takes a drastic turn for the worse. After receiving the desk, loyal family man Tyson finds himself growing distant and dismissive towards his friends and loved ones, even gradually becoming paranoid and outright violent. A new, malignant Muse is his constant companion. If that wasn’t enough, in addition to the desk’s dark influence, Tyson finds himself targeted by Diana, the mysterious and ruthless last scion of the aristocrat who originally owned the artifact. For the desk is, in reality, a repurposed altar dedicated to blasphemous occult rituals.

The clever conceit at the heart of Gothic is that it is an unabashedly old school horror novel about an old school horror novelist. It’s a book that the reader can easily envision Tyson Parks writing himself at the height of his popularity. Tyson may be struggling because he’s behind the times, but Gothic celebrates the era when writers like him were most successful, when names like Stephen King, Dean R. Koontz, and Peter Straub adorned every drugstore paperback spinner rack. Fracassi wisely avoids directly aping King’s voice and tics, but King in particular is referenced multiple times in the book. The writer’s descent into madness immediately brings to mind The Shining, and the seductive, haunted artifact that gives with one hand while exacting a terrible price with the other reminds the reader of a certain cursed possessed car. In fact, this parallel is amusingly lampshaded by Tyson’s best friend, Billy: “Can you believe it Tyson? It’s like Christine…but wood!”

While Gothic is clever and occasionally referential, it doesn’t go overboard on postmodernism or irony. It takes a somewhat silly premise—haunted furniture—and combines it with familiar (some might even say played-out) gothic horror elements like warlocks, moonlit ritual sacrifice, and devil worship, and then proceeds to deliver a serious, straight-faced horror story. Fracassi uses these well worn tropes not to mock them from the smirking perspective of an “evolved” 21st century horror writer, but because they are still COOL.

Gothic, as they say, goes hard. The book limits itself to an intimate cast of characters and imbues them with a great degree of interiority, making their insecurities, fears, and struggles relatable to the reader. Fracassi then tightens the screws, subjecting each of them to an inexorably escalating sequence of horrors. Moments of outright violence are infrequent, but are graphically and squirm- inducingly described. While it is handled with what I felt to be appropriate gravity, there is one scene of sexual assault that may be too intense for some readers. Gothic is a novel that draws the reader in and makes them care about the characters before absolutely devastating them. As demonstrated in the shocking climax, no one who comes into contact with the demonic desk survives completely unscathed. Gothic concludes with an extended denouement that hints at even grimmer implications for the world at large.

While plot and characterization are generally quite strong, the character of Diana was the weakest aspect of the book. Her ancestry and its entanglement with the desk’s origins are important to the narrative, but despite the cold-hearted tenacity she displays throughout most of the book, she appears uncharacteristically careless at a crucial moment. Gothic has an uncommonly strong cast of characters, however, and this one false note does little to tarnish the book as a whole.

The horror genre is currently blessed with an abundance of talented authors all pushing in different directions, innovating and deconstructing and elevating, but it’s gratifying to see one newer writer recognize that the classic tropes became classic for a reason. Sometimes an old-fashioned spooky story about possession and devil worship just hits the spot. Gothic is an immensely satisfying love- letter to the golden age of paperback horror.

#ReviewArchive #BookReview #Horror #Gothic #PhilipFracassi #GrimdarkMagazine #GdM