Tag: horror

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Book: “The Hacienda” by Isabel Cañas

Publishing Info: Berkley, May 2022

Where Did I Get This Book: I received an eARC from NetGalley.

Where You Can Get This Book: WorldCat | Amazon | Indiebound

Book Description: Mexican Gothic meets Rebecca in this debut supernatural suspense novel, set in the aftermath of the Mexican War of Independence, about a remote house, a sinister haunting, and the woman pulled into their clutches…

In the overthrow of the Mexican government, Beatriz’s father is executed and her home destroyed. When handsome Don Rodolfo Solórzano proposes, Beatriz ignores the rumors surrounding his first wife’s sudden demise, choosing instead to seize the security his estate in the countryside provides. She will have her own home again, no matter the cost. But Hacienda San Isidro is not the sanctuary she imagined.

When Rodolfo returns to work in the capital, visions and voices invade Beatriz’s sleep. The weight of invisible eyes follows her every move. Rodolfo’s sister, Juana, scoffs at Beatriz’s fears—but why does she refuse to enter the house at night? Why does the cook burn copal incense at the edge of the kitchen and mark its doorway with strange symbols? What really happened to the first Doña Solórzano?

Beatriz only knows two things for certain: Something is wrong with the hacienda. And no one there will help her. Desperate for help, she clings to the young priest, Padre Andrés, as an ally. No ordinary priest, Andrés will have to rely on his skills as a witch to fight off the malevolent presence haunting the hacienda and protect the woman for whom he feels a powerful, forbidden attraction. But even he might not be enough to battle the darkness. Far from a refuge, San Isidro may be Beatriz’s doom.

Review: Thank you to NetGalley for providing me with an eARC of this novel!

I am a little embarrassed to admit that Isabel Cañas’s debut Gothic horror novel “The Hacienda” was just sitting on my Kindle for months. I requested it pretty early out from the release date, and I know that when I do that books do tend to just sit. By the time I deemed it right to pick up, the chiding ‘downloaded on ___’ indicator was staring at me and making me fidget. And then when I started it, I felt myself all the more annoyed because holy COW. This book was immediately awesome! With a description that has “Mexican Gothic” meets “Rebecca” I knew it was going to be a treat, but boy howdy was I not ready for the treat that it was. I absolutely LOVED “The Hacienda”.

Right off the top I want to say that the ghost story and Gothic elements are ON POINT. Cañas knows how to set the scene and slowly build the dread, pretty much starting right from Beatríz’s arrival to Hacienda San Isidro when she sees gutted rodents strewn about the courtyard. Cats are the culprits, she is told, though there is tension in the air, and it slowly builds and consumes until the tension is unbearable. There are plenty of haunted house moments applied here, from cold spots to slamming doors, to glowing eyes seen in the darkness for a fleeting second, to skeletons found in hidden places. It soon becomes clear to Beatríz that there is something haunting this estate, and as she tries desperately to get someone to believe her, it’s the servants and the locals who have the most insight. When most Priests scoff at her, one, Padre Andrés, answers her call for an exorcism. I loved Beatríz as a tormented and determined protagonist, as she both fits the bill for a Gothic heroine while also pushing against stereotypes as she refuses to be gaslit over what is happening in the home. And I also really liked Andrés, whose Father Karas-esque test of faith hides the fact that he is, at his heart, a witch whose practices have been hidden and repressed by the colonial culture that has taken root (more on that soon). They make a great horror story team, as they are easy to root for a relate to and make you become very invested very quickly. Which makes the haunting they are dealing with all the scarier. And makes the forbidden attraction between them even more high stakes. And yes, SWOON WORTHY.

But there are also a lot of underpinning themes regarding classism, racism, colonialism, and political upheaval that make “The Hacidenda” all the richer when it comes to the story it aims to tell. The aforementioned priest/witch, Andrés, basically went into the priesthood to hide his witchcraft and folk healing that has been passed down through the generations, as the Inquisition came to Mexico and practicing such would make him a target. The previous mistress, Doña Catalina, was abusive and cruel to her servants, who are of lower social standing and are also mostly mestizo in their heritage, and she sees them as subhuman. Juana, the half sister of Don Rodolfo, is a child of a hacendado but as a woman with a mysterious family background has no social claim to his wealth. And even Beatríz has connections to these political themes, as her father was murdered by Don Rodolfo’s party, and as a woman has few options and sees marriage to him as a way to keep herself safe. It’s when these real life horrors and injustices are applied to the horror tale that it really stands out, bringing in a critique of colonized Mexico and the damage it has done to the people who live there. Cañas has a fantastic authors note at the back of this book that really puts it all into context, and she weaves it in perfectly.

And on top of all that, I really loved Cañas’s writing style. She has the right flow, the most haunting and at times beautiful imagery, and paces everything just right. This is a fantastic debut.

“The Hacienda” is can’t miss horror fiction. Scary and thoughtful and a must read to be sure.

Rating 9: Gothic and creepy with ghosts, witchcraft, and commentary, “The Hacienda” is a great horror novel that can’t be missed!

Reader’s Advisory:

“The Hacienda” is included on the Goodreads lists “Latinix Horror/Fantasy”, and “2022 Gothic”.

This post may contain affiliate links for books we recommend.  Read the full disclosure here.

Book: “The Fervor” by Alma Katsu

Publishing Info: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, April 2022

Where Did I Get This Book: I received an eARC from NetGalley.

Where You Can Get This Book: WorldCat | Amazon | IndieBound

Book Description: From the acclaimed and award-winning author of The Hunger and The Deep comes a new psychological and supernatural twist on the horrors of the Japanese American internment camps in World War II.

1944: As World War II rages on, the threat has come to the home front. In a remote corner of Idaho, Meiko Briggs and her daughter, Aiko, are desperate to return home. Following Meiko’s husband’s enlistment as an air force pilot in the Pacific months prior, Meiko and Aiko were taken from their home in Seattle and sent to one of the internment camps in the Midwest. It didn’t matter that Aiko was American-born: They were Japanese, and therefore considered a threat by the American government.

Mother and daughter attempt to hold on to elements of their old life in the camp when a mysterious disease begins to spread among those interned. What starts as a minor cold quickly becomes spontaneous fits of violence and aggression, even death. And when a disconcerting team of doctors arrive, nearly more threatening than the illness itself, Meiko and her daughter team up with a newspaper reporter and widowed missionary to investigate, and it becomes clear to them that something more sinister is afoot, a demon from the stories of Meiko’s childhood, hell-bent on infiltrating their already strange world.

Inspired by the Japanese yokai and the jorogumo spider demon, The Fervor explores a supernatural threat beyond what anyone saw coming; the danger of demonization, a mysterious contagion, and the search to stop its spread before it’s too late.

Review: Thank you to NetGalley for sending me an eARC of this novel!

I say this a lot on here, but I have a few must read authors and this post is about another one. I have been living for Alma Katsu’s historical horror stories since I picked up “The Hunger” a few years ago, the promise of a horror retelling of the Donner Party too amazing to pass up. We went on to “The Deep” which brought us ghosts and the Titanic. And when I heard about “The Fervor”, and how it was going to be a historical horror story set during Japanese American Internment during World War II, I was both incredibly excited, but also hit by a sense of grief. That’s usually how I feel when I read about the Internment,as I’ve covered on here in a couple of other book reviews. But I was also very excited to see what she was going to do with it. Because Alma Katsu is always unique and surprising with her scares that blend history with horror.

Once again Katsu has created a deeply disturbing horror story steeped in historical events that have their own Earthly horrors to them. “The Fervor” has a few different subgenres that it taps into, from contagion horror to political conspiracy to some fantastic Japanese folklore involving yōkai and demons alike, all within the context of the home front during World War II where America had imprisoned its own citizens because of their Japanese ancestry and heritage. I really liked all of it and how Katsu blends it all together, weaving the supernatural elements with the real world ones. There are strange and dreamy moments of kitsune fox spirits, or visions the jorogumo spider demon dressed as a woman in a red kimono who appears with a swaddled bundle, and usually brings disaster if you get too close. I’m familiar with the kitsune story, but the jorogumo spider demon was new and it was so, SO creepy. I mean, spiders are already not my favorite thing, but it was the imagery of the woman in red and the knowledge that something bad was going to happen when she appeared that really set me on edge.

But let’s be real. The greater horror at the heart of “The Fervor” is the horrors of xenophobia and racism and the oppression of the Japanese American citizens under Executive Order 9066, and how the American Government and society at large justified it. In spite of the fact that Meiko and Aiko obviously have nothing to do with the fighting in the Pacific (there are some distant connections…. but that’s all I will say and I want to reiterate that Meiko and Aiko are innocent, like all those held prisoner during this awful period), they are victims of distrust and racism. And once a mysterious illness starts spreading through Minidoka, and mysterious government agents start arriving and acting shady about said illness, we get a whole new layer of horror that has echoes of some of the things we are seeing today. Katsu draws connections between modern day racism towards the Asian American community (especially right now, given that hate crimes again Asian Americans, especially women, have been on the rise in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic), as well as the ways that our government bodies are willing to Other non-white groups to gain power of various kinds, and to keep the darker realities hidden from the public. I’m really trying not to spoil anything. Just know that it all feels like as the more things change, the more they stay the same. It’s powerful parallels, and it’s the true horror of the novel.

What’s interesting about this historical retelling horror tale that Katsu has become known for is that the Japanese Internment and World War II is still, for some people, in living memory. With the Donner Party and the sinking of the Titanic it’s been so long that living witnesses aren’t really a complicating factor, but Katsu makes sure that the not so distant time period isn’t complicating to the story she is trying to tell. We have a mix of fictional characters like Meiko, Aiko, and Fran, but also characters inspired by real people like Archie Mitchell, the missionary whose wife was killed by a Fu-Go balloon bomb in Oregon (if you haven’t read up on the Fu-Go balloons it’s DEEPLY fascinating and I recommend you do). Katsu explores all the different angles of these characters and how their races, genders, and social standings have placed them where they are in society, and how that in turn ties into the greater themes of the story. For Meiko and Aiko, their race has made them enemies of the government. For Fran, she is a white woman but is also Jewish, and is also trying to make a career for herself in a world where men have the power to stop her dreams for any perceived misstep. And then there’s Archie, a white Christian man who is in deep mourning due to his wife’s death at the hands of a strange bomb that can cannot get any information on from authorities, who is conflicted between his rage and his guilt for past indiscretions, and how this leads him to some very dangerous people. They are all interesting and complex, and I loved following all of them as they all eventually come together to try and solve just what is happening with this mysterious illness, and how it connects to the Fu-Go’s and the Internment camps. It’s stellar characterization.

“The Fervor” is another disturbing and effective horror story from Alma Katsu. She is doing historical horror in ways that are so unique, and this one has a deep pain and anger within its pages that feels incredibly warranted. One of the scariest things it reveals is that America hasn’t learned much from one of its most despicable moments.

Rating 8: A compelling and still too relevant story about racism, Othering, jingoism, and fear, “The Fervor” is another well done historical horror remix of tragic events from Alma Katsu.

Reader’s Advisory:

“The Fervor” is included on the Goodreads lists “Internment Camps in Fiction”, and “2022 Horror Novels Written by Women and Non-Binary Femmes”.

This post may contain affiliate links for books we recommend.  Read the full disclosure here.

Book: “All the White Spaces” by Ally Wilkes

Publishing Info: Atria/Emily Bestler Books, March 2022

Where Did I Get This Book: I received a finished hardcover from the publisher.

Where You Can Get This Book: WorldCat | Amazon | IndieBound

Book Description: Something deadly and mysterious stalks the members of an isolated polar expedition in this haunting and spellbinding historical horror novel, perfect for fans of Dan Simmons’ The Terror and Alma Katsu’s The Hunger.

In the wake of the First World War, Jonathan Morgan stows away on an Antarctic expedition, determined to find his rightful place in the world of men. Aboard the expeditionary ship of his hero, the world-famous explorer James “Australis” Randall, Jonathan may live as his true self—and true gender—and have the adventures he has always been denied. But not all is smooth sailing: the war casts its long shadow over them all, and grief, guilt, and mistrust skulk among the explorers.

When disaster strikes in Antarctica’s frozen Weddell Sea, the men must take to the land and overwinter somewhere which immediately seems both eerie and wrong; a place not marked on any of their part-drawn mapsof the vast white continent. Now completely isolated, Randall’s expedition has no ability to contact the outside world. And no one is coming to rescue them. In the freezing darkness of the Polar night, where the aurora creeps across the sky, something terrible has been waiting to lure them out into its deadly landscape…

As the harsh Antarctic winter descends, this supernatural force will prey on their deepest desires and deepest fears to pick them off one by one. It is up to Jonathan to overcome his own ghosts before he and the expedition are utterly destroyed.

Review: Thank you to Atria Books for sending me a hardcover copy of this book!

This past Halloween season I invited my Terror Tuesday horror movie friends over for a backyard movie night and bonfire. In the group text we were debating on possible movies to watch, and one title we decided on was “The Thing”. You know, the 1980s Sci-Fi horror movie by John Carpenter in which an Antarctic research team is trapped in their research station with an alien that can shapeshift and picks them off one by one. It’s a really fun movie, and it’s one that I kept thinking about as I read “All the White Spaces” by Ally Wilkes. I’m sure that’s by design (given that a couple characters share names with characters in that movie), and the similarities are there, and to make it all the more method I was reading it in Duluth on a night where the windchill was in the negative twenties. Talk about perfect.

But as I was reading it, “Thing” vibes or not, I realized that Wilkes was doing something unique with a story theme we’ve seen before, because our main character, Jonathan Morgan, is a trans man during the World War I era. And I’m going to start with characters and time period because of that uniqueness. I liked the character set up of Jonathan as a trans man, and how he has found himself on an Arctic exploration ship after the death of his older brothers Rufus and Francis in the War. It gives him the perfect motivation, as he felt left behind when they went to war and he had to stay behind because his family and society did not understand his gender. I thought that Wilkes did a really good job of portraying a realistic and in the time trans man who has immense guilt over his older brothers death. His grief makes him want to connect to them in ways that he never did when they were alive, and decides stowing away on an expedition team that they had always been interested in is the way to do it. I also thought that Jonathan’s class privilege still being a blinding factor as well as his general naïveté due to youth and said privilege made him well rounded and complex (and at times very frustrating, which I imagine was the point). His interactions with the other men on the ship as a trans man in hiding was at times tense because of the secret we know Jonathan is keeping, as is the general idea of Antarctic travel during a time when said exploration is dangerous and enthralling. We get to see a little bit into the motivations of the other men, though it adds a bit to the mystery as well. I especially liked the character of Tarlington, an ostracized member of the team due to his scientific role as well as his conscientious objector status in the wake of the First World War. The tidbits of the time period, both in societal themes and characterization, felt well researched.

And Wilkes really does find the horror in both the supernatural as well as the very real dangers of Antarctic exploration during this time period. I can’t even imagine going on this kind of voyage back at the beginning of the 20th Century (I can barely imagine doing this kind of thing right now!), and Wilkes takes the ‘everything that can go wrong WILL go wrong’ approach. Speaking to the realistic stuff first, as that was the stuff that was the scariest for me, there is a glut to pick from. We have the paranoia of being in an isolated place. We have eternal darkness for months on end. We have the VERY real dangers of the cold and what it can do to the body (this was the worst for me; there was one scene in particular that was so gruesome and disturbing I actually put the book down for a bit so I could just decompress). And we have the very understandable fear of a trans person who is hiding his identity from a number of strangers who are becoming more and more unpredictable in dangerous circumstances. It makes for VERY tense reading.

And yes, there is supernatural stuff going on as well, and Wilkes makes it VERY unsettling and creepy, as well as somewhat metaphorical. Which is always good. As Jonathan et al are seeing shadows and beings and other things out of the corners of their eyes or on the horizon, we get to play with potential unreliable narrators (albeit in the third person) who may just be going insane due to their circumstances. But the descriptions of the figures as they slowly make themselves known, oof! I love the weird ambiguity these kinds of reveals can tread on for a good chunk of the narrative at hand, and just thinking of this kind of thing in THIS setting? AUGH!

“All the White Spaces” is some solid and scary arctic horror with a really well done trans perspective that I haven’t seen much of in the horror genre. It feels like that’s changing, which is great. I cannot wait to see what Ally Wilkes brings us next, because this was SO creepy. And it made me so glad that Spring is almost here.

Rating 8: Dark, disturbing, and unique with its perspective, “All the White Spaces” is a must for those who are interested in expeditions of the past, body horror, and “The Thing”.

Reader’s Advisory:

“All the White Spaces” is included on the Goodreads lists “Transgender Horror”, and “2022 Horror Novels Written by Women and Non-Binary Femmes”.