Tag: Novella

Kate’s Review: “The Salt Grows Heavy”

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Book: “The Salt Grows Heavy” by Cassandra Khaw

Publishing Info: Tor Nightfire, May 2023

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

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

Book Description: From USA Today bestselling author Cassandra Khaw comes The Salt Grows Heavy, a razor-sharp and bewitching fairytale of discovering the darkness in the world, and the darkness within oneself.

You may think you know how the fairytale goes: a mermaid comes to shore and weds the prince. But what the fables forget is that mermaids have teeth. And now, her daughters have devoured the kingdom and burned it to ashes.

On the run, the mermaid is joined by a mysterious plague doctor with a darkness of their own. Deep in the eerie, snow-crusted forest, the pair stumble upon a village of ageless children who thirst for blood, and the three ‘saints’ who control them.

The mermaid and her doctor must embrace the cruelest parts of their true nature if they hope to survive.

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

I know that my Dad took my preschool self to see Disney’s “The Little Mermaid” in the theater, and while it’s not a top tier Disney film for me, I enjoy it enough (fun fact: it’s my Dad’s favorite Disney movie). I never sought out the original Hans Christian Andersen story, but I am kind of familiar with the general concept and how different and how much bleaker it is than the more palatable for children Disney version. I never really thought about what it would be like to make it even bleaker, but author Cassandra Khaw apparently did, because “The Salt Grows Heavy” takes “The Little Mermaid” and turns it into a full on balls to the wall body horror novella. Like, FULL ON BODY HORROR GORE AND VISCERA. WORK, ARIEL.

Pretend that the water is blood and guts and you aren’t even halfway there. (source)

Now this all sounds super promising, and between that and the cover (I LOVE THE COVER) I had high hopes for this novella. Unfortunately it was a bit of a mixed bag.

But first, what I liked! WHAT AN OUT THERE AND FREAKY CONCEPT! I love the way that Khaw has taken the story of “The Little Mermaid” and twisted it into something so visceral, so splatterpunk, so disturbing and gory. Our protagonist mermaid has fled the kingdom she married into with a mysterious Plague Doctor after her children with the prince have destroyed the city and all who live there. The original tale makes a victimized mermaid a lovelorn waif, while Khaw makes her into a vengeful, held against her will and now broken free with much blood behind her heroine. This story is one of the goriest I have ever read, so graphic that when I was reading it in a public place I had to set it down a few times just to swallow back disgust. In a good way! Body horror gets under my skin, and sometimes it puts me off, but even though this was so gross and nasty and relentless, it really worked well for me.

But what didn’t work as well was how flowery and overwrought the language felt at times. It’s a creative choice and I have to respect it, and I do admit that sometimes there were moments where I really did love the beauty of the language and descriptors that were used. But I have always had a very difficult time with very flowery and complex and ornate language in the stories I read for whatever reason. It makes it easier for me to get lost, and easier for me to find my eyes glazing over. I also think that we jumped in at a point that felt a bit more like the middle of a story versus a clear beginning, and because it’s a novella we had to speed through the place where we were at to resolve everything, which meant that there could have been more world building and more detail. And I do wish that we had spent some time with the mermaid and the horrible prince, to really see a full subversion of “The Little Mermaid” instead of a subversion of what felt more like a sequel to the tale that we know.

So while I was a bit disappointed in “The Salt Grows Heavy”, I had a fun time being absolutely disgusted with some of the body horror stuff in this book. If you don’t have the same hang ups with flowery writing styles that I do and love body horror, this book would probably be a good fit!

Rating 6: I loved the concept, and I really liked some of the creative aspects of twisting “The Little Mermaid” into a body horror gore fest. But the purple prose is a bit much, which is, admittedly, more reflective of my personal preferences.

Reader’s Advisory:

“The Salt Grows Heavy” is included on the Goodreads lists “Queer Horror”, and “Horror to Look Forward To In 2023”.

Serena’s Review: “Untethered Sky”

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Book: “Untethered Sky” by Fonda Lee

Publishing Info: Tor, April 2023

Where Did I Get this Book: ARC from the publisher!

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

Book Description: Ester’s family was torn apart when a manticore killed her mother and baby brother, leaving her with nothing but her father’s painful silence and a single, overwhelming need to kill the monsters that took her family.

Ester’s path leads her to the King’s Royal Mews, where the giant rocs of legend are flown to hunt manticores by their brave and dedicated ruhkers. Paired with a fledgling roc named Zahra, Ester finds purpose and acclaim by devoting herself to a calling that demands absolute sacrifice and a creature that will never return her love. The terrifying partnership between woman and roc leads Ester not only on the empire’s most dangerous manticore hunt, but on a journey of perseverance and acceptance.

Review: I really enjoyed Fonda Lee’s “Jade City” trilogy. It was a sprawling, complex, urban fantasy story with an entire host of complicated, troubled characters at its heart. It was truly impressive and left me in no doubt of Lee’s fantasy chops. That said, I was pleased to see that her next book was a stand-alone novella. As much as I’m an epic SFF fan, it’s lovely to be able to break up my reading experience with these shorter, bite-sized looks into new worlds and stories. It also is a unique writing skill, to pare down a story into a compressed number of pages without losing key aspects of the world/characters/etc. I wasn’t concerned that Lee wouldn’t be able to manage; no, I was just excited to see what she had to offer!

Ever since she lost her family to an attack by a manticore, a viscous, cat-like monster that prefers human prey above all else, Ester has pursued one goal: to become one of the rare handlers who work with the giant Rocs that are the only animals capable of hunting and killing manticores. Now, as a young woman, Ester earned her place after successfully training one of these gigantic birds to fly for her. But when a prince of the realm decides that now is the time for the empire to rid itself of the threat of manticores once and for all, Ester and her Roc, Zahra, find themselves on an adventure that may prove perilous to both woman and bird.

I really enjoyed this book! For such a short novel, it really did pack quite a punch, especially on the adventure front. First of all, I really liked the primary concept at the heart of the story: that of a young woman and her journey to train a dangerous, huge bird of prey. For one thing, I was under the misimpression that this was one of those stories where the huge birds are ridden by their handlers. But instead the relationship between rukher and Roc is essentially that of a falconer. Of course, in this situation the “falcon” is the size of an elephant and could kill the handler with one buffet of its wings. But I was incredibly pleased when I discovered this since there have been numerous books released recently about dragon riders or phoenix riders or what have you. So this take felt fresh and new.

I’m not overly familiar with traditional falcon training, so I was also really intrigued by a lot of the details about how Ester forms the relationship with her Roc. Not only is this a bird that could easily kill her, but by the very nature of the relationship, Ester must train a wild bird to willing return to her after each hunt. Unlike riders who maintain direct contact with their mounts at all time, the Roc could essentially choose to fly away at any moment. It made the entire relationship much more complex and interesting.

I also really liked the world-building, as the author had to create some reason to motivate humans to take on the perilous task of training these birds (its established early on that there is a high mortality rate in the effort to train even a single Roc). The manticores are not only terrifying in and of themselves, but it’s a clever conceit to create a threat to human life that can only be managed by domesticating its only natural predator, giant birds.

The human relationships definitely fall to the backburner in a story that is primarily focused on the relationship between Ester and Zhara. But I really liked what we saw with the other rukhers and the ways these relationships wove in and out of Ester and Zhara’s lives. The final third of the book builds to a climatic action scene that pulled in aspects of these human relationships in interesting ways while also highlighting how delicate the balance is between rukher and their Roc.

I will say that while I really enjoyed this read, I did finish it feeling as if the story ended rather suddenly. It took a few surprising turns towards the end, and then finished in a way that left me feeling a bit bereft. I think, on one hand, that was probably the point for a conclusion that was meant to be bittersweet. But I also then looked back on my read and didn’t necessarily feel as if I can away from the book with any real conclusions. Of course, it’s not necessary that every book has some great thesis or “point,” but I think there was just something a bit rushed in the pacing towards the end that left me floundering.

Overall, though, this was still an incredibly fun read for me and I highly recommend this book to all fans of Lee’s work and to fantasy fans in general. There is a lot of great stuff to be found here, and I can’t wait to see what this author has in store for us next!

Rating 8: Fonda Lee strikes again, this time with a poignant novella that captures the wild, bittersweet joy of working alongside powerful creatures and the important relationships that can form between humans and animals.

Reader’s Advisory:

“Untethered Sky” can be found on this Goodreads lists: Upcoming 2023 SFF Books With Female Leads or Co-Leads

Kate’s Review: “Linghun”

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Book: “Linghun” by Ai Jiang

Publishing Info: Dark Matter INK, April 2023

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

Where You Can Get This Book: Amazon | Dark Matter INK

Book Description: WELCOME HOME.

Follow Wenqi, Liam, and Mrs. in this modern gothic ghost story by Chinese-Canadian writer and immigrant, Ai Jiang. LINGHUN is set in the mysterious town of HOME, a place where the dead live again as spirits, conjured by the grief-sick population that refuses to let go.

Review: Thank you to Ai Jiang for sending me an eARC of this novella!

I had been seeing “Linghun” on my social media feeds on and off before it ended up in my inbox, and there was a lot about it that caught my eye. The cover design was one aspect, as was the promise of a Gothic horror story. But it wasn’t until I really dug into the first few pages that I realized that “Linghun” was not only going to be a creepy Gothic horror story, but also a very emotional exploration of grief. I love a story like that, but I also have to steel myself for a story like that. And boy oh boy was it not pulling any punches. I love a ghost story that can take on deeper layers, and this one is less about the ghosts and more about the people who are aching to see those ghosts again.

Man did this one really get to me. It’s not a particularly long book, definitely novella status not even clocking it at one hundred pages, but in those pages Jiang has crafted such a bleak, disturbing, and haunting tale about how grief can drive people to completely upend their lives if there is just ONE chance of getting to reconnect with a dead loved one. This is mostly through the eyes of Wenqi, a Chinese Canadian teenage girl whose family left China after the death of her older brother when he was six and she was three. Her mother, so consumed by her grief, convinces her family to move to HOME, a weird small town where people’s dead loved ones can manifest in one of the much sought out houses (so sought out that other people, called lingerers, camp out in hopes of securing an open home). Wenqi never knew her brother, but at the same time he is all she’s known because her mother has been so unable to process her grief and move on, that Wenqi is just an afterthought. Watching Wenqi have to become even more and more of an afterthought as her brother’s presence appears, and her mother is only interested in trying to keep his presence around, is heartbreaking for Wenqi, and very, very distressing to watch unfold as her mother becomes more and more obsessive and overcome.

And then on the flip side is Liam, a teenage boy in Wenqi’s neighborhood whose family has been a group of lingerers, desperate to get a house in HOME and who have stopped their lives and have resorted to camping out and hoping for a stroke of luck. Liam and Wenqi have similar frustrations of being the ones emotionally left behind while their parents are in deep grief, but it’s interesting seeing Liam on the other side of the coin, as his family is desperate to even have the opportunity, when it is not even a guarantee that they will have success. It was the portrayals of the lingerers that really messed with my head, as Jiang has one scene in particular that shows the lengths that the lingerers will go to try and have the chance to see those they loved again, even when it has all but ruined their lives and the lives of those that they brought with them. BUT AT THE SAME TIME, part of me wonders what I would do should I lose someone I love so fiercely and maybe have that opportunity. How far would I go? It’s a path I don’t want to think about too much. Which means it is SO PERFECT for a horror story.

“Linghun” is an effective and very eerie novella that is up there with other meditations on grief with a horror backdrop. If that kind of not so cheerful premise is your jam, this is a story you definitely need to check out.

Rating 8: A strange and melancholy story about grief and loss and how it can cling to a person until obsession has taken over.

Reader’s Advisory:

“Linghun” isn’t included on any Goodreads lists yet, but I think that similar horror stories about grief like “Pet Sematary”, “Ghost Eaters”, and “Horns” would be good fits.

Kate’s Review: “Bound Feet”

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Book: “Bound Feet” by Kelsea Yu

Publishing Info: Cemetery Gates Media, September 2022

Where Did I Get This Book: I own it.

Where You Can Find This Book: Amazon | Indiebound

Book Description: On the night of the Hungry Ghost Moon, when spirits can briefly return to the living world, Jodi Wu and her best friend sneak into Portland’s Chinese Garden and Ghost Museum. Kneeling before the pond where Jodi’s toddler drowned one year before, they leave food offerings and burn joss paper—and Jodi prays that Ella’s ghost will return for the night.

To distract Jodi from her grief, the two friends tell each other ghost stories as they explore the museum. They stop at the main display, a centuries-old pair of lotus slippers belonging to a woman whose toes were broken and bound during childhood. While reading the woman’s story, Jodi hears her daughter’s voice.

As Jodi desperately searches the garden, it becomes apparent that Ella isn’t the only ghost they’ve awakened. Something ancient with a slow, shuffling step lurks in the shadows…

Review: It has become more and more clear that ever since I became a mom that I have a harder time with stories and movies and what have you that involve endangered or dying children. Or hell, even moments where parents have to grieve or mourn or see the deaths of their older progeny. I cannot watch the opening scene of “Scream” anymore once Casey’s parents arrive home, in the middle of her being murdered. I had to step away from watching “Cujo” when Terror Tuesday had it as the feature, telling my friends I’d return to the keyboard eventually. So maybe me deliberately picking up “Bound Feet” by Kelsea Yu seems like an odd choice, given that right in the description it talks about a mother trying to connect with the ghost of her dead toddler. Well, I never said I was a reasonable person when it comes to exposing myself to this kind of stuff. But “Bound Feet” was a very worthwhile read, even as I was sobbing on and off as well as being VERY freaked out by ghostly imagery.

The story centers around Jodi and her friend Sarah, who have decided to break into the Portland Chinese Garden and Ghost Museum. It is during the Hungry Ghost Festival, when it is said that spirits are more likely to reach out from the spirit world, and Jodi is hoping to connect with her daughter Ella, who drowned in that very garden a year prior. The setting is already fraught and tense, as they are there after dark, illegally, with a deep personal trauma at its center. As Jodi hopes to get closure with Ella, the restlessness of the garden awakens other threats, and Yu really nails the slow tension of the suffocating grief as well as the ghostly imagery of a vengeful spirit. There is lots of built up dread that has a great pay off as the weird turn to the outright horrifying, and the descriptions of the ghosts and the things that they do really got under my skin. I also really liked some of the cultural aspects that Yu brought to the tale, be it the Hungry Ghost Festival itself, the Chinese folklore that the story takes a lot of inspiration from, and the dark realities of what it meant to be a woman in the past and the awful shit they would sometimes have to do to survive.

But the grief aspects were the strongest part of the narrative for me. I went into “Bound Feet” able to emotionally prepare myself for the themes of losing a child, which was good, because even with the preparedness I had it was still a bit of a gut punch. Jodi’s grief and her desire to see her dead child again is a theme that has been tapped into a number of times in horror literature’s past (“Pet Sematary” is the one that comes to mind for me), and Yu does it in the length of a novella while still being able to explore it well and thoroughly in the limited pages. There were moments that just killed me, but they also felt necessary and not overwrought so that we could get into the true motivation of this mother who is making a lot of CRAZY choices that are getting her and her companion into deeper and deeper danger. It’s a more realistic layer of horror that drives our protagonist but also makes her, at least to me, all the more relatable and understandable. Even when there was a very uncomfortable finale that set my teeth on edge, I still, in a basal part of my soul, understood. There is also a very personal Afterword section by the author that I found to be really, really powerful and enlightening. Do not skip that section.

“Bound Feet” is a quick, emotional, and scary read. I definitely recommend it, but steel yourself. It’s not the supernatural that left this story lingering in my head after finishing, but the very real horrors within its pages.

Rating 9: A genuinely terrifying and emotionally gut-wrenching horror novella about grief.

Reader’s Advisory:

“Bound Feet” isn’t included on any relevant Goodreads lists as of now, but it would fit in on “Horror Novellas”.

Kate’s Review: “Parachute”

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Book: “Parachute” by Holly Rae Garcia

Publishing Info: Easton Falls Publishing, May 2022

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

Where You Can Get This Book: Amazon

Book Description: Angela Rodriguez and her friends aren’t sure what they want out of life now that they’ve graduated high school, but they think there is plenty of time to figure it all out. When a trip to an abandoned elementary school leads to a break-in, they discover an old gym parachute.

Raising the fabric above their heads, the group expects it to balloon out around them like it did when they were younger. But instead, the parachute reveals alternate universes and terrifying worlds.

There’s only one rule… DON’T LET GO.

Review: Thank you to Holly Rae Garcia for sending me an eARC of this novella!

Grade school gym class was never a favorite of mine. This is probably not so shocking, given that I was fairly unathletic and very much an outcast, so there would be MANY reasons to pick me last for the various exercises and games that we would be playing. But there was always one gym class theme that I was super excited for, and that was when we’d walk into the gym and there would be the huge parachute all spread out. That usually meant we were just going to be dicking around as opposed to having to be skilled at sports. So when Holly Rae Garcia sent me the summary of her new novella “Parachute”, I immediately was interested (and definitely let her know that I LOVED the parachute in gym class, which I imagine she has probably heard a lot as of late). A horror novella that makes a gym class parachute into a tool of horror is so out of the box and interesting that I just couldn’t pass it up!

“Parachute” is a novella that takes place during the course of one evening where a group of friends, soon leaving high school behind and feeling a bit lost because of it, decide to break into the old elementary school, and find a gym class parachute. Nostalgia is a huge theme in this story, as not only does it take place during the 1990s (and has many quirks and moments that harken back to my youth), it is about young adults who are nostalgic for a dynamic they are leaving behind. As someone who can’t get enough of nostalgia, especially during trying times, I loved all the 90s references and tidbits. Now I more came of age around the Y2K part of the late 90s, so some of this was a little out of my personal experience wheelhouse, but Garcia made it feel realistic with a little bit of camp value for good measure. I felt like she nailed the time and place, and I thought that I got a good sense of the characters, their group dynamic, and their bravado that also hides insecurity. Of course this group would leap at the chance to play with a relic of their childhoods! Even if that relic is in actuality a portal to other places, dimensions, and supernatural dangers!

But what really sells this tale is how imaginative it is, with alternate dimensions, cosmic and inter-dimensional horrors, chaos, and no true answers to be found. Why can this parachute do this? Where are the places that these teens are being taken to? How many people have fallen victim to this? None of it really matters and I hope you don’t want concrete solutions. And that worked for me, because it adds to the chaotic breakdown of this friend group as one by one they are either lost in time and space, or become victims of the creatures they stumble upon. It really makes the reader have to feel the confusion and terror at the breakneck pace that our characters are feeling, and it amps the anxiety levels up in a way that felt super effective to me. And having the catalyst be an honest to goodness gym class parachute? That’s bananas! We run a gamut from generally unsettling moments of the uncanny to straight up gorefests, Garcia utilizes a lot of horror types and they all work pretty well. It was fun seeing what new weird scary thing Angela et al were going to find with each ripple of the parachute!

“Parachute” is a quick and tension filled horror novella that works outside of conventions in wholly unique ways. It both utilizes and weaponizes nostalgia, and it’s weird and funky. Definitely a fun read.

Rating 8: A quick, scary, and super imaginative read, “Parachute” jumps through time, space, and dimensions, and will make you rethink elementary school gym class activities.

Reader’s Advisory:

“Parachute” isn’t on any Goodreads lists as of yet, but I think it would fit in on “Best Reality Warping Fiction”.

Kate’s Review: “Goddess of Filth”


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Book: “Goddess of Filth” by V. Castro

Publishing Info: Creature Publishing, March 2021

Where Did I Get This Book: I own it.

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

Book Description: One hot summer night, best friends Lourdes, Fernanda, Ana, Perla, and Pauline hold a séance. It’s all fun and games at first, but their tipsy laughter turns to terror when the flames burn straight through their prayer candles and Fernanda starts crawling toward her friends and chanting in Nahuatl, the language of their Aztec ancestors.

Over the next few weeks, shy, modest Fernanda starts acting strangely—smearing herself in black makeup, shredding her hands on rose thorns, sucking sin out of the mouths of the guilty. The local priest is convinced it’s a demon, but Lourdes begins to suspect it’s something else—something far more ancient and powerful.

As Father Moreno’s obsession with Fernanda grows, Lourdes enlists the help of her “bruja Craft crew” and a professor, Dr. Camacho, to understand what is happening to her friend in this unholy tale of possession-gone-right.

Review: I will wholeheartedly admit that I was one of those girls in middle and early high school who fancied herself a witchcraft enthusiast, as me and some of my girlfriends held the occasional spell casting after school. Whether it be at the far end of the baseball fields or in the fourth floor computer lab, we would cast spells, call to the directions, and do our best impressions of the characters in “The Craft”. Needless to say, when V. Castro’s novella “Goddess of Filth” opened with five teenage girls doing a spell while reminiscing about “The Craft”, I felt seen. Of course, the worst thing that happened at my spellcasting endeavors was some spilled non alcoholic wine on my backpack, not a possession from an ancient goddess…

Honestly, those were some good memories, stained backpack notwithstanding. (source)

“Goddess of Filth” may be my favorite story from V. Castro, and that is because she has not only hit all the sweet spots in terms of feminist spell casting and/or witch tales, she also subverts the traditional possession tale in ways that I have been aching for for a very long time. The first big win for me was our group of friends, consisting of Lourdes, Fernanda, Ana, Perla, and Pauline. When quiet Fernanda is possessed by an ancient Aztec deity during a seance, it is up to her friends to figure out how to help her. This is a novella, so the pages are limited, but Castro shows the fierce loyalty between this group of friends, and how they all have endured difficulties in their lives due to their race and class in their Texas community. Through flashback moments and action in the present we see how Lourdes and her friends are viewed by the people around them, and how Fernanda has been put on a pedestal that has both buoyed her but also put a significant weight upon her shoulders. They are seen only as Madonnas and Whores, and it hurts all of them, but they always have each other.

But what I loved most about “Goddess of Filth” is how Castro decides to tackle this whole ‘possession’ storyline. Fernanda’s behavior, on the surface, harkens to the classic demonic possession tropes, so much so that her devout mother calls in a priest to try and exorcise her. She becomes wilder, she masturbates, she speaks in Nahuatl, and at first it seems like things have gone terribly wrong. But Castro flips it, and decides to explore this through a lens that is more positive than one might think. Fernanda is now becoming more in tune with her sexuality and her desires. The deity inside of her, Tlazoltéotl, is a ‘Goddess of Filth’, but she is also a cleanser of sins. While Fernanda’s parents and Father Moreno see this as a demon, they are seeing it through a colonized and Western worldview. For Fernanda, Lourdes, and their other friends (as well as a professor of pre-Columbian cultures they seek out), they see Tlazoltéotl not as ‘bad’, per se, but as a necessary, if not sometimes violent, force. One of my favorite lines in this book was when Professor Camacho decides that a better word as opposed to ‘possess’ is ‘inhabit’, as Tlazoltéotl isn’t really doing anything to Fernanda that is oppressive or possessive. Rather, they work together to free people of their sins, whether it be through helping them come to terms with them, or through punishing them if the sins are very, very terrible. This partnership between Fernanda and Tlazoltéotl, as well as the friendships between Fernanda, Lourdes, and everyone else, are so fantastically feminist. And I could rave about the way that the obsessive and dangerous Father Moreno is a representation of violent imperialist religious oppression probably forever. I love how Castro brings in these bits of social commentary and makes them fit seamlessly and without any clunks along the way.

“Goddess of Filth” is an awesome, quick read, and one that fans of witch stories and possession stories absolutely need to look into. If you haven’t picked up anything by V. Castro yet, make this the one. It’s sure to satisfy.

Rating 9: Feminist, fantastical, and witchy to the bone, “Goddess of Filth” deconstructs possession horror in all the ways I’ve ever wanted.

Reader’s Advisory:

“Goddess of Filth” is included on the Goodreads lists “Best Summer Horror Books”, and “Celebrate Horror 2021”.

Kate’s Review: “The Route of Ice and Salt”

Book: “The Route of Ice and Salt” by José Luis Zárate

Publishing Info: Innsmouth Free Press, January 2021 (originally published in 1998)

Where Did I Get This Book: I own it.

Book Description: A reimagining of Dracula’s voyage to England, filled with Gothic imagery and queer desire.

It’s an ordinary assignment, nothing more. The cargo? Fifty boxes filled with Transylvanian soil. The route? From Varna to Whitby. The Demeter has made many trips like this. The captain has handled dozens of crews.

He dreams familiar dreams: to taste the salt on the skin of his men, to run his hands across their chests. He longs for the warmth of a lover he cannot have, fantasizes about flesh and frenzied embraces. All this he’s done before, it’s routine, a constant, like the tides. Yet there’s something different, something wrong. There are odd nightmares, unsettling omens and fear. For there is something in the air, something in the night, someone stalking the ship.

The cult vampire novella by Mexican author José Luis Zárate is available for the first time in English. Translated by David Bowles and with an accompanying essay by noted horror author Poppy Z. Brite, it reveals an unknown corner of Latin American literature.

Review: I think that for a lot of people, if they hear the phrase ‘homoerotic vampire fiction’ they are going to immediately think of Anne Rice (may she rest in peace). After all, “Interview With the Vampire” is at its heart the story of two guy vampire lovers who have a bad marriage and make the mistake of having a baby to try and save it (I am NOT wrong). Louis and Lestat have an undercurrent (and overcurrent) of sexual tension that Rice explores more through Lestat in later books, but it was definitely the formative relationship for gay vampire fiction in modern times. And to be fair, vampire lore is usually pretty charged with sexuality, even going back to Bram Stoker’s grand daddy of vampire tales “Dracula”. That book is horny as hell, something that Francis Ford Coppola took FULL advantage of in his 1990s adaptation. So it’s not really surprising that “The Route of Ice and Salt” by José Luis Zárate takes a mysterious element of “Dracula” and gives it a shot of homoerotic adrenaline, and pulls it off with ease.

I’ll let you decide what that ‘one thing’ is. (source)

“The Route of Ice and Salt” is the story of the Demeter, the ship that transported Count Dracula and his many boxes of Wallachian soil to London, and arrived aport with no crew left and a dead captain, tied to the mast with a rosary in hand. It’s a moment in the original source material that’s really just there to show that Dracula is brutal and has had his fill, so is at full strength when he arrives in England. But Zárate lets us have a look into what happened on the doomed voyage, and creates a story that is both horrifying and absolutely heartbreaking. It’s told through both the Captain’s own thoughts and experiences as well as his ship log, and the first half of the story is a LOT of him fantasizing about the men on his crew, but unwilling to act upon it as he finds his same sex attraction repulsive and monstrous. We slowly find out that he has his reasons to feel that way, as a man he once loved was treated as a monster after being accused of a crime he did not truly commit, which had to do with his sexuality. As the Captain grapples with his attractions, something else, an ACTUAL monster, is stalking the ship, feasting upon the crew in a far more literal and violent way.

Though it took a bit to get there, once we got to the slow progression of crewmen disappearing, while the others slowly realize they are being hunted, I was fully invested not only in how we get to where we end up in the original tale, but how The Captain is going to ultimately make his sacrifice. As well as if he’s going to be able to forgive himself for his perfectly natural attractions (though certainly not at the time; Stoker himself has lots of rumors about his own sexuality that may have subconscious laid out hints within “Dracula”. Like I said, that book is horny as hell). Zárate made the Captain very believable and sympathetic, and once he realizes that he is alone on the boat with a monster, an ACTUAL monster, even though I knew the ending, I still felt a deep attachment to him, in spite of myself. And while MAYBE I thought that I was going into a story that had Count Dracula and the Captain getting it on over and over (please don’t judge me, I will say it again, “DRACULA” IS A SEX FUELED BOOK!!!), what I got was far more satisfying, emotional, and terrifying. The descriptions of the ship at night in the fog, with crewmen’s screams starting and then stopping…. GOD, it set me on edge, and it’s the perfect companion to one of my favorite vampire stories. And not for nothing, this updated version has a FANTASTIC Afterword by Poppy Z. Brite that addresses the transgressive nature of this book, and it gives a lot of great context that I thought was SUPER interesting.

“The Route of Ice and Salt” is sexually charged and scary as hell. It now lives on my shelf next to the source material (all three versions I own), and in my mind it absolutely belongs in the “Dracula” canon.

Rating 8: Haunting and erotic and oh so creepy by the end, “The Route of Ice and Salt” takes the voyage Dracula takes across the sea and turns it into a creepy (and horny) nightmare.

Reader’s Advisory:

“The Route of Ice and Salt” is included on the Goodreads lists “Queer Horror”, and “Books About or Consisting of Vampires”.

Find “The Route of Ice and Salt” at your library using WorldCat, or at a local independent bookstore using IndieBound!

Kate’s Review: “Nothing But Blackened Teeth’

Book: “Nothing But Blackened Teeth” by Cassandra Khaw

Publishing Info: Tor Nightfire, October 2021

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

Book Description: Cassandra Khaw’s Nothing But Blackened Teeth is a gorgeously creepy haunted house tale, steeped in Japanese folklore and full of devastating twists.

A Heian-era mansion stands abandoned, its foundations resting on the bones of a bride and its walls packed with the remains of the girls sacrificed to keep her company. It’s the perfect wedding venue for a group of thrill-seeking friends.

But a night of food, drinks, and games quickly spirals into a nightmare. For lurking in the shadows is the ghost bride with a black smile and a hungry heart.

And she gets lonely down there in the dirt.

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

While I’ve seen and read a fair number of Japanese and Japanese inspired horror things, I know that there are many, MANY stories out there that I haven’t come across as of yet. I don’t have a very vast knowledge of Japanese folklore in general, and therefore I’m definitely game to read anything that would broaden my horizons in that manner. Enter “Nothing But Blackened Teeth” by Cassandra Khaw, a new horror novella that takes place in a rural Heian-Era mansion in Japan that is super, super haunted. I’m no stranger to various Japanese haunted house stories, from “Ju-On” to “Hausu”, but the cover alone of this book caught my attention. And hey, haunted house stories? Absolutely my jam. I held onto “Nothing But the Blackened Teeth” for what was supposed to be a stormy night, and though we didn’t get the rain we were promised I still found myself reading the book at night, which was, perhaps, a mistake. Because it’s SCARY.

“Nothing But Blackened Teeth” is a novella clocking in at around 120 pages, but Khaw has no trouble building a plot, pulling out everything they can from their characters, and leading them to a terrifying ending. It never feels rushed to get to that point, it never feels like we could have learned more about our cast or the house itself, and it is engaging and definitely terrifying. Khaw has a gift for description and atmosphere, as I could see the mansion as it goes from abandoned but docile home to an incredibly disturbing hellscape. While Cat is definitely the character we get to know the best, we still get to know enough about most of her friends and all of the tenuous relationship strings between them to fully buy into the choices they make, from the good to the bad. It feels like a slow burn at first, but the tension starts to build from the get go and when it finally releases it’s SO unnerving and scary.

And a lot of the scares come from the Japanese folklore that the horror elements derive themselves from, namely the Ohaguro-Bettari, a spirit that takes the form of a bride whose facial features are only a mouth filled with black teeth. I know a little bit about Japanese folklore and ghosts, specifically the Onryō, so seeing another yokai (spirit) at the forefront was refreshing and new to me. It made me do some independent reading on more Japanese folklore regarding ghosts and entities, which was really fun for me as a horror fan who likes lore of all kinds. And boy does Khaw really make this the stuff of nightmares. Cat is the first to start seeing this yokai, and given that she has a history of mental problems we get the usual ‘is this really happening or am I going crazy’ questioning that comes with such a history in stories like these. But what I liked is that for the most part Cat isn’t portrayed as hallucinating to the reader, and instead of an unreliable narrator we get a woman who is seeing something VERY wrong, and therein slowly sending shivers up our spines every time she sees something. Until, that is, it goes full gonzo bloodsoaked horror show. Khaw nails every part of the horror here, and the end was so incredibly disturbing that I had to flip back to re-read a few things to make sure that THAT was what had happened. I think that I would have liked even more suspense before we got to the gory ending, and maybe a little more easing into the wrap up, but overall it was enjoyable as hell and a sinister ghost story soaked in viscera and blood. And very easy to read in one sitting (though maybe not late at night, a tip from me to you)!

“Nothing But Blackened Teeth” is an enjoyable novella that set me on edge. Halloween is almost here, and if you haven’t read this one yet you should make it a part of your reading list before the holiday passes us by!

Rating 8: Disturbing, atmospheric, and brimming with Japanese folklore and yokai, “Nothing But Blackened Teeth” is the perfect short read for this Halloween season!

Reader’s Advisory:

“Nothing But Blackened Teeth” is included on the Goodreads lists “Celebrate Horror 2021”, and “Diverse Horror”.

Find “Nothing But Blackened Teeth” at your library using WorldCat, or at a local independent bookstore using IndieBound!

Serena’s Review: “Fireheart Tiger”

Book: “Fireheart Tiger” by Aliette De Bodard

Publishing Info: Tor.com, February 2021

Where Did I get this Book: Edelweiss+

Book Description: Quiet, thoughtful princess Thanh was sent away as a hostage to the powerful faraway country of Ephteria as a child. Now she’s returned to her mother’s imperial court, haunted not only by memories of her first romance, but by worrying magical echoes of a fire that devastated Ephteria’s royal palace.

Thanh’s new role as a diplomat places her once again in the path of her first love, the powerful and magnetic Eldris of Ephteria, who knows exactly what she wants: romance from Thanh and much more from Thanh’s home. Eldris won’t take no for an answer, on either front. But the fire that burned down one palace is tempting Thanh with the possibility of making her own dangerous decisions.

Can Thanh find the freedom to shape her country’s fate—and her own?

Review: I’ll admit that this was another book that pulled me in on the strength of the cover art alone. I mean, that’s just a gorgeous cover, and there’s no second opinion about it! The description comparing it to “Howl’s Moving Castle” and “The Goblin Emperor” couldn’t help but add more intrigue. Plus, it’s a novella, which I haven’t read one of for quite a while. Unfortunately, it didn’t quite live up to all of those expectations!

Life as a political hostage is not easy, but then no one ever expects it to be. More surprising for Thanh, a princess returning home at long last, is that her homecoming proves to have its own set of challenges. Haunted by a first love now thrown back in her path who sees her own path forward, Thanh begins to understand that she will need to evolve. As a passive hostage, her life had been simple. But as princess, wielding great power and responsibility, she has choices, some of which could impact the future of her entire country.

While I can think of several good examples of novellas that I’ve read in the past (Seanan McGuire’s entire “Wayward Children” series, for example), unfortunately, this book highlights much of how to do them wrong. With the strict word count limit imposed on writing a shorter story, the author has to be incredibly efficient with world-building and character development. And even then, you can’t spend too much time on it, necessitating that both the world, story, and character are fairly interesting and compelling on their own from the very start. And in these key areas, this book fails the test.

Particularly, Thanh herself is a fairly paper-thin character. She doesn’t stand out in any bad ways, but she’s also not very interesting and lacks the charisma needed to drive a short story like this. Her lack of a strong voice makes the necessary info-dumping portions of the story stand out more than they should. Beyond that, I found the character to be a bit unlikable, seeming to wallow in self-pity more often than not and easily distracted by her own personal dramas over the larger state of affairs going on around her.

I also was very uninvested in the love interest and romance of this story. We simply aren’t given enough here to care. Ephteria’s attraction is almost entirely contained in the author’s telling rather than showing style. She has blue eyes…that’s about all we get. But Thanh spends pages upon pages obsessing over her, and the readers are stuck there with her, just not understanding why. The thin depiction of this relationship is mirrored in Thanh’s other relationships as well, with her mother, and with another young girl she befriends.

Beyond this, the writing didn’t work for me. I found it often to be jarring and uninspired, pulling out cliches when you’d most expect them and not helping to build any tension as the story worked its way through its plot points. The dialogue was at times particularly egregious, with some of the villains just one mustache-twirl away from being comical.

There may have been a good story here somewhere if the author had had more word-count to work on. But I’m also not convinced that the characters, world, or overall plot could have supported an increased page count. It’s kind of a chicken or the egg thing: did the page count limit the creativity of the characters and flow of the writing, or were these aspects weak on their own and would have just struggled more in a full-length novel?

Rating 6: Pretty disappointing overall. Though the cover is still one of the best I’ve seen in a while.

Reader’s Advisory:

“Fireheart Tiger” is a new title so it isn’t on too many Goodreads list, but it is on Upcoming 2021 SFF Books With Female Leads or Co-Leads.

Find “Fireheart Tiger” at your library using WorldCat!

Kate’s Review: “Night of the Mannequins”

49246963Book: “Night of the Mannequins” by Stephen Graham Jones

Publishing Info: Tor.Com, September 2020

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

Book Description: Stephen Graham Jones returns with Night of the Mannequins, a contemporary horror story where a teen prank goes very wrong and all hell breaks loose: is there a supernatural cause, a psychopath on the loose, or both?

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

While the “Scary Stories To Tell in the Dark” books had many stories that messed me up, the one that scarred me the most was that of “Harold”, in which two farmers create a scarecrow to be a joke of a friend, which then comes to life and wreaks havoc. The idea that an inanimate but human looking object could come to life and kill you really scared me. So doing some research into “Night of the Mannequins” by Stephen Graham Jones (beyond the appropriately vague description) got me pretty hyped for the idea of a mannequin coming to life and killing teens in a friend group. After all, mannequins are a bit creepy enough on their own, right?

giphy-3
And we can buiiiiild this thing together, staaanding strong forever… (source)

Now, it is admittedly going to be hard to talk about this novella in detail without potentially treading towards spoiler territory, and I REALLY don’t want to spoil anything for those who don’t want to be spoiled. So just be warned…. there may be hints of spoilers in this review.

Our protagonist/first person narrator is Sawyer, a teenage boy in a group of friends who like to pull pranks on each other, and who at one time found a department store mannequin that they decided to make into their mascot. They called him Manny, and brought him along on all kinds of adventures. As they grew up, Manny was left behind, but as they are nearing the end of high school Sawyer thinks that one more prank with Manny could be fun. And it is… until Sawyer sees Manny stand up and walk away. What comes next is a story that reads like a slasher movie, with a lot of weird deranged action, a very funny narrative voice, and a lot of ambiguity as to what exactly is happening to Sawyer and his friends, and whether or not a mannequin has come to life with a taste for revenge. There isn’t much dread to be found here, but what you do have is a lot of splatterpunk gore descriptions, action that reads like a movie, and a twisted up perception of what is real and what isn’t.

Sawyer is both incredibly funny to follow as well as authentic in his frenzied teenage voice, his ruminations and planning clearly leaving some logic out of his plans in his hopes to save people from Manny the Mannequin. I found myself laughing out loud, even at moments where it probably wasn’t appropriate to be doing so, but like in a slasher film, part of the entertainment is seeing the crazed and over the top kill scenes. Jones sprinkles a little bit of interesting pathos in every once in awhile, be it hints as to Sawyer’s family life or the lives of his friends, as well the fear of losing your childhood and what comes next. I also have to say that Jones does a really good job of making the reader question almost everything in terms of reliability and reality. By the time I got towards the end I thought that I had everything clear in my mind, but then Jones managed to pull the rug out from under me again! His stories have a bit of a brutality to them, but there is always a bit of wryness to go with it, and I really like that.

“Night of the Mannequins” is strange and filled with splatterpunk themes, but it definitely has some inner machinations that are intriguing to find and explore. Plus, it’s a quick read, the perfect one for a season-appropriate afternoon of horror leisure reading. Discover Stephen Graham Jones if you haven’t, and you could totally start here.

Rating 8: A weird and disturbing (but also fun) slasher kinda story. It’s a hoot as well as a trip, and it’s exactly the kind of entertainment a slasher kinda story should be!

Reader’s Advisory:

“Night of the Mannequins” isn’t on any Goodreads lists yet, but I think that it would fit in on “Haunted Dolls”, and “Indigenous Fiction Books”.

Find “Night of the Mannequins” at your library using WorldCat, or at a local independent bookstore using IndieBound!

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