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.

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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.

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