Review: In the Mad Mountains: Stories Inspired by H.P. Lovecraft by Joe R. Lansdale

Posted on October 20, 2024 by ghostvillehero

Buy it here:

Tachyon Press, Amazon

Synopsis:

Ten-time Bram Stoker Award-winner Joe R. Lansdale (Bubba Ho-tep) returns with this wicked short story collection of his irreverent Lovecraftian tributes. Lansdale is scarily down-home in these tales, merging his classic gonzo stylings with the eldritch vibes of H. P. Lovecraft. Knowingly skewering Lovecraft’s paranoid mythos, Lansdale embarks upon haunting yet sly explorations of the unknown, capturing the essence of cosmic dread.

A sinister blues recording pressed on vinyl in blood conjures lethal shadows with its unearthly wails. In order to rescue Tom Sawyer, Huck Finn traverses the shifting horrors of the aptly named Dread Island. In the weird Wild West, Reverand Jebidiah Mercer rides into a possessed town to confront the unspeakable in the crawling sky. Legendary detective C. Auguste Dupin uncovers the gruesome secrets of both the blue lightning bug and the Necronomicon.

Exploring the darkest corners of the human psyche, here is a lethally entertaining journey through Joe Lansdale’s twisted landscape, where ancient evils lurk and sanity hangs by a rapidly fraying thread.

Review:

Joe R. Lansdale is a legend that does not need to hear my opinion on his writing. He has won several awards (including ten Bram Stoker Awards), has had his novels and stories adapted into movies and tv episodes, and his Hap and Leonard series of novels became a series that lasted three seasons. After publishing 40 novels and tons of short stories, my opinion is not going to change much. This is why when I look at his collection of Lovecraft inspired short stories, In the Mad Mountains, my opinions should be taken with a grain of salt. 

There are many stories in this collection that did not really do much for me. Lovecraft mythos is not on the top of my list of horror I adore, but I thought that if anyone could make stories that are great additions to the collection of writers who are doing great things with Lovecraft’s world, Joe R. Lansdale would be one of them. Instead many of the stories are not terribly engaging. Lansdale does some interesting things with putting characters into Lovecraft’s world. In “Dread Island”, Huck Finn and Jim have to find Tom Sawyer on an island that only shows in the middle of the Mississippi River on random nights before the island disappears again. “The Gruesome Affair of the Electric Blue Lightning” places Edgar Allan Poe’s detective, C. Auguste Dupin, with the Necronomicon. Two of the stories even bring his own characters from other books into his stories (“The Cast of the Stalking Shadow” and “The Crawling Sky”). 

These stories are good, but there are not really that many great stories. I really enjoy the first story, “The Bleeding Shadow”, about a ex-lover Alma May who wants the main character to find her brother, Tootie, and the final story “In the Mad Mountains,” about a group of people shipwrecked in the ice and weird things start killing them all. The rest of the stories are okay, and many of them have been published in other anthologies, or in the case of “The Tall Grass” adapted into an episode of Love, Death + Robots. These stories might be stronger in these original anthologies, surrounded by a variety of different voices because with this collection, there does not seem to be much variation in voice or structure.  Either way, Joe Lansdale is still a legend, and any book by him is worth reading. This one is just not his strongest.

I received this as an ARC from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. 

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Review: Shock Induction by Chuck Palahniuk

Posted on October 14, 2024 by ghostvillehero

Buy it here:

Amazon, Bookshop

Synopsis:

From the bestselling author of Fight Club comes a dark, satirical parable about a string of mysterious high school disappearances, the seedy underbellies of billionaires, and the tough choices we make in the face of an uncertain future. In Shock Induction, the best and brightest students at a seemingly reputable high school are disappearing. Every day it seems another overachiever is lost to an apparent suicide. But something far more sinister is lurking beneath the surface. These kids have been under surveillance since birth, monitored and measured by an online service called “Greener Pastures.” It’s here, in Greener Pastures, that billionaires observe and recruit the next generation of talent. The highest test scores, the best grades, and the most niche extracurriculars just might land these teenagers an enticing offer at auction. A couple billion dollars in exchange for the remainder of your life and intellectual labor sounds like a pretty fair deal—doesn’t it? In a high school only Chuck Palahniuk could imagine, students must choose between the risk of following their dreams or the security of money and a lifetime of servitude to the world’s wealthiest and most elite—but how much of a choice do they truly have?

Review:

The newest novel by Chuck Palahnuik, Shock Induction, is another of his recent novels that feels like another step away from Fight Club, Choke, Haunted, and the type of novels that brought him fame. The story takes place in 2037, where Samantha Deel is a highschooler, a strong student, and a singer, living with her parents and sex offender uncle. She is the perfect recruit for Greener Pastures, a company that auctions talented kids off to the highest bidder. This is the simplest part of the plot. The rest of the novel is the challenge that Chuck Palahnuik is giving his readers, hoping that he can manipulate them.

Richard Powers in a recent interview says that a book is actually a full circle between the reader, the writer, and the things that the book is trying to say. Palahniuk sees this as the way he is going to write. He is not only telling the story, but he is trying to get a reaction out of the reader, a change in perspective. In this case, it is an attempt at a form of hypnotism that comes from trying to keep track of several different stories swirling around one main story. He also slips into sections of other pieces of classic literature, including The Great Gatsby, Moby Dick, Shakespearian plays, Alice in Wonderland, and David Copperfield. (I am sure that I missed some of the references, but these are ones that I caught.) He writes in the very beginning about ERE poisoning and how the government placed drugs on the pages of classic literature to entice people to read it, and keep reading it. Chuck Palahniuk is trying to explain how he feels while reading all of these classic novels, how the words on the pages are like a drug to him, that quickens his heart rate, makes him feel high, and makes him keep turning the pages. He is trying to show the reader that there is value still in those classic stories, and that literature can be hypnotizing and impactful. He is trying to get his readers to follow him.  

There are many elements to this novel that I am sure that I did not catch the first time through. Shock Induction is not only a love letter to reading and to classic literature, but it is a challenge, almost a dare. He is alienating his casual fans and casual readers in general and is doing his best to step away from the person who wrote Fight Club thirty years ago. He has grown as a writer, and he is forcing his readers to grow with him. His last three novels, The Invention of Sound, Not Forever, But for Now, and now Shock Induction is taking him further and further away from his Fight Club origins, and this is something that I have really enjoyed more than some of his other early fans. Maybe his hypnosis is working.

I received this as an ARC from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

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Review: The Bloodstained Doll by John Everson

Posted on October 8, 2024 by ghostvillehero

Buy it here:

Amazon, Bookshop

Synopsis:

The latest homage to the Italian Giallo film genre by award winning John Everson, with nods to the sensational movies of Dario Argento, Lucio Fulci, Sergio Martino, Luciano Ercoli, Mario Bava and more.

When Allyson’s mom dies unexpectedly, she thinks her world has hit rock bottom. But that’s before she goes to live with her estranged Uncle Otto in Germany. When a child’s empty casket is unearthed in the backyard during a violent storm, suddenly people close to her uncle start turning up dead. Is there a connection? As the noose tightens and murders draw closer to Berger Mansion, Allyson and her new boyfriend Andrew discover a dark truth hidden in the attic. Soon their lives are at stake if they don’t discover why each broken body is decorated with a Bloodstained Doll.

A modern Giallo, building on Everson’s previous homage to the stylish Italian mystery thrillers, Five Deaths for Seven Songbirds.

Review:

When John Everson released Five Deaths For Seven Songbirds, I wrote in my review that it is a pitch perfect tribute to the Giallo genre. His follow up, The Bloodstained Doll, is another example of Italian Giallo films, a different twist on the genre but still under the umbrella of Giallo. While Five Deaths for Seven Songbirds takes place with a girl navigating her way through a music institute as a stranger and people getting killed around her, The Bloodstained Doll starts with Allyson’s mother dying suddenly and her moving from London to Germany to live on an estate with her uncle Otto. The house is fill with dusty rooms, empty wings, and suspicious people, and while Allyson tries to settle in, she is quickly confronted with the fact that she is inadvertently threatening all of the shady dealings of her uncle, her cousin, and everyone else in and out of the mansion. When everyone starts to die around her, with a bloody, broken porcelain doll left on the corpse, Allyson not only feels like the killer is someone inside of the mansion but that she could very possibly be the next victim. Of course she is right.

With more of a gothic setting and tone, The Bloodstained Doll is a much different representation of the Giallo genre than Five Deaths for Seven Songbirds. It is also more of a straightforward telling, not as many red herrings and not really as much of the wildness that is in the previous novel. With more of a subdued tone, Everson has a chance to spend a little more time building the plot, giving the characters some very demented personal flaws and hobbies, and in the end, this does not read as much of a mystery to solve but as a murder novel with trashy rich people doing trashy rich people things. 

I have watched the top Giallo films, and expect for a few, I do not care for them very much. I would much rather read more Giallo novels by John Everson than dive deeper into the film selection. Many of the films have scenes that do not make much sense, that go off in directions that are quickly forgotten, and the real mystery by the end is what even happened. I do not find these same problems in Everson’s novels. His books are much more palatable than many of the movies, and if I am to recommend an introduction to Italian Giallo, I would add The Bloodstained Doll and Five Deaths For Seven Songbirds as great additions to the genre.

I received this as an ARC from Flame Tree Press and NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

Other Review of John Everson books:

Five Deaths for Seven Songbirds

The Night Mother and NightWhere

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Review: Moving the Moon: A Night at the Acropolis Museum by Andrea Marcolongo

Posted on September 27, 2024 by ghostvillehero

Buy it here:

Amazon, Bookshop

Synopsis:

From one of Europe’s most original and brilliant classicists, an inspiring and deeply personal reflection on loss, memory, and what we owe the past and others, inspired by a night spent in Athens’ Acropolis Museum 

One day in late spring, Andrea Marcolongo walks into an outdoor store in Paris to buy a camp bed, a sleeping bag, and a flashlight. Her destination: not a remote forest or mountain peak, but the deserted halls of one of the most famous museums in the world, the Acropolis Museum in Athens, Greece, where she has been invited to spend a night completely alone. 

But it’s hard to be truly alone when you’re surrounded by the scarred beauty of the Parthenon, lit only by the moon and summoning echoes and ghosts from the past. One of the shadows visiting Marcolongo is that of Lord Elgin, the English diplomat who in the early 19th century orchestrated the controversial removal of the Parthenon marbles from Ottoman Greece to London, where they remain today. The other is the memory of Andrea’s father, whose recent death she is still mourning. 

Drawing on a lifetime of engagement with classical culture and its legacy, Marcolongo examines the burning question of the restitution of works of art removed during the age of imperialism, and the broader issue of the role of power and inequality in the history of art. As the night goes by, however, the empty space left by the missing statues—a wound filled with white plaster—starts evoking other, more personal absences. Surrounded and inspired by the ruins and splendor of the classical world, Marcolongo reflects on the ever-changing relationship between present and past, and on the choices and people that make us who we are, even—or perhaps especially—when we have to leave them behind. The result is a powerful and courageous book, one that crosses time and space to remind us that we cannot live in isolation but are continuously connected and indebted to others. 

“Marcolongo is today’s Montaigne…There is wisdom and grace here to last the ages.”—André Aciman, author of Call Me by Your Name 

Review:

In the second book by Andrea Marcolongo translated and released by Europa Editions this year, Moving the Moon: A Night at the Acropolis Museum finds Marcolongo spending the night of May 28, 2022 locked in the Acropolis Museum in Athens. She sets up a cot and has brought one book to read, which happens to be a biography of Lord Elgin, the main villain in the story of how the Parthenon was ravaged of all of its art, sculptures, and tons of marble. As Andrea settles in for the night, she tells the story of how the museum is nearly empty because the art and artifacts have never been returned from being taken and distributed throughout Europe. The marbles that Lord Elgin stole end up in the British Museum, and when the new Acropolis Museum opens, the gaps in the building, the pillars and the art are left empty and open. 

Moving the Moon is a slim history of how conquering countries not only take land but take the culture and history of the defeated countries. Most of this type of pillaging ends up in museums, but in the case of Athens, many of the marble sculptures were broken apart before Lord Elgin arrived and were sold to private families. There could still be sculpted heads and marble pieces that have been in a manor for hundreds of years and the current family members have little clue as to its origins. Many museums are curated with items that were stolen from foreign lands They strip cultures and have little interest in giving anything back. They use the guise of, “If it’s not in this major city, it will no longer be seen if returned to its rightful owner.” Even when the Acropolis Museum was remodeled, those museums who have pieces that should rightfully be returned offered to “loan” them their artwork back. It is a weird aspect of world culture where people feel like they are doing lesser people a service by only giving them the bare minimum, in their best interests. The worldwide museum system is only a small reflection of a universal problem.

Andrea Marcolongo does a good job at writing history books from an interesting perspective, almost like she feels like she does not belong in the middle of this story. She writes as if she is an interloper, and she is relaying a story to the reader like it is the hottest gossip. The truth is that she is very good at telling the story and making it feel this way. If I am asked to to recommend any history book on Greek culture, I will always point to her books first. She writes like a friend telling stories, and these are the best types of history books. 

I received this as an ARC from Europa Editions in exchange for an honest review.

Other Books by Andrea Marcolongo:

The Art of Running: Learning to Run Like a Greek

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Review: Sky Full of Elephants by Cebo Campbell

Posted on September 20, 2024 by ghostvillehero

Buy it here:

Amazon, Bookshop

Synopsis:

In this exquisite speculative novel set in a world where white people no longer exist, college professor Charlie Brunton receives a call from his estranged daughter Sidney, setting off a chain of events as they journey across a truly “post-racial” America in search of answers.

One day, a cataclysmic event occurs: all of the white people in America walk into the nearest body of water. A year later, Charles Brunton is a Black man living in an entirely new world. Having served time in prison for a wrongful conviction, he’s now a professor of electric and solar power systems at Howard University when he receives a call from someone he wasn’t even sure existed: his daughter Sidney, a nineteen-year-old who watched her white mother and step-family drown themselves in the lake behind their house.

Traumatized by the event, and terrified of the outside world, Sidney has spent a year in isolation in Wisconsin. Desperate for help, she turns to the father she never met, a man she has always resented. Sidney and Charlie meet for the first time as they embark on a journey across America headed for Alabama, where Sidney believes she may still have some family left. But neither Sidney or Charlie is prepared for this new world and how they see themselves in it.

When they enter the Kingdom of Alabama, everything Charlie and Sidney thought they knew about themselves, and the world, will be turned upside down. Brimming with heart and humor, Cebo Campbell’s astonishing debut novel is about the power of community and connection, about healing and self-actualization, and a reckoning with what it means to be Black in America, in both their world and ours.

Review:

Sky Full of Elephants starts with a college professor, Charles  Brunton, getting a call from his daughter, whom he had not talked to his entire life. The novel also starts a year earlier when all of the white people in America walk into bodies of water and drown themselves. Since then America has changed, with most parts of the country surviving being the large cities. Charlie’s daughter, Sidney, lives in Wisconsin, alone, in a neighborhood that had pretty much drown themselves. She is angry at her mother, stepfather, and brothers drowning themselves in the lake behind their house, and mad at her father for never being part of her life. When she gets a message taped to the front gate of her house from her white aunt, Agnes, saying that some white people are still alive and in Orange Beach, Alabama, she knows that Charlie is the only person left who can help her get there.

Part road trip novel, part story of family, and part story about learning about one’s own identity, Sky Full of Elephants starts very compelling. The tension in what America is like at this time, how people travel, what areas are more dangerous than others and which areas are just abandoned, really drives the first half of this novel. Not only do we learn about the tensions between Charles and Sidney and the reason why they have no relationship, we are also learning about different ways America has changed. Electricity is still everywhere, but pumping for oil is something that nobody seems interested in doing. Traveling and hospitality have become more about helping one another than gaining a profit. Adding to the struggle of getting out of Wisconsin, Charles and Sidney are also going to Alabama, a place where rumor is that it is ran by a king, and airplanes do not even fly there anymore. This road trip and world building half of the novel keeps the tension high, and we can sense the danger that the two characters travel into. The second half of the book is a different type of good. Most of it is learning about identity and who black people have been in their history in America versus their history in the world. Sidney being half white and raised by white people knows very little about the history of black people in the world, so she really struggles with some of the ideas and feelings that she is shown. She knows that the identity of America has changed, and she does not know where she fits anymore. The changing America has given black people the opportunity to incorporate attitudes from countries where black people have always been in leadership. I do like the feeling of togetherness and community that this brings, the sense that everyone who shows up is welcomed and treated like family. 

I wish there was more world building like in the beginning, with more interesting things that have happened in America since there are no white people left. Also the ending really did not resonate as much as it was trying to resonate, but Sky Full of Elephants is a really interesting book with some interesting concepts. I really enjoyed the first half and wish to visit there again soon. 

I received this as an ARC from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

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Review: Authority (Southern Reach #2) by Jeff VanderMeer

Posted on September 16, 2024 by ghostvillehero

Buy it here:

Amazon Bookshop

Synopsis:

The bone-chilling, hair-raising second installment of the Southern Reach Trilogy

After thirty years, the only human engagement with Area X—a seemingly malevolent landscape surrounded by an invisible border and mysteriously wiped clean of all signs of civilization—has been a series of expeditions overseen by a government agency so secret it has almost been forgotten: the Southern Reach. Following the tumultuous twelfth expedition chronicled in Annihilation, the agency is in complete disarray.

John Rodríguez (aka “Control”) is the Southern Reach’s newly appointed head. Working with a distrustful but desperate team, a series of frustrating interrogations, a cache of hidden notes, and hours of profoundly troubling video footage, Control begins to penetrate the secrets of Area X. But with each discovery he must confront disturbing truths about himself and the agency he’s pledged to serve.

In Authority, the second volume of Jeff VanderMeer’s Southern Reach trilogy, Area X’s most disturbing questions are answered . . . but the answers are far from reassuring.

Review:

I have read Annihilation at least four times, each time with more interest and more understanding to what happened to the twelfth expedition in Area X, a piece of land that has become uninhabitable and devours every team of explorers that enters. Every time I have read Annihilation, I have started Authority, but I have never been able to get through the whole thing. Authority is less about exploring Area X as it is about office politics that shows how poorly the government is running the expeditions to Area X. The novel starts with a new director, John Rodriguez, nicknamed Control, coming to the job on the first day. Two problems face him as soon as he enters the building. The first is the return of the Biologist, the main character in Annihilation, who is found studying an empty lot and brought back for debriefing into the Southern Reach building. The second is the legacy of the director he is replacing, whom is the Psychiatrist in Annihilation, and leader of the twelfth expedition, and who disappeared into Area X. The Biologist might have clues to the mysteries of what happens inside of Area X and what happened to the rest of her expedition, but she is not talking. The whole of this novel is Control trying to figure out what happened to the Psychiatrist, what the Biologist knows, and why all of his coworkers seem to be conspiring against him. 

VanderMeer takes a strange turn in this sequel to Annihilation, moving away from an environmental horror to a novel of office politics, and there are a few moments in this novel where the story is so slow that it is very easy to give up on this novel. I have given up the first three times I tried to read it. The problems that Control inherits and tries to solve grow deeper and deeper into a mystery that it is easier to just not care and stop reading. The truth is that I did not really know if I was going to get through it this time, or if it was going to be worth the effort. Jeff VanderMeer seems to enjoy these office stories (which he returns to in Hummingbird Salamander), but Authority does not have the same intimacy as Annihilation. In the end, I am glad to get to the end, and I do wonder what is going to happen next. This seems like the second in many trilogies, the one that is setting up for a fantastic ending.


Annihilation also stands alone as a great short novel. You do not have to read on in the trilogy if you do not want to, but Authority is a parallel as well as a continuation. The Biologist and Control are both in the same situation in their respective novels. The confusing bureaucracy of the Southern Reach is just as bad as the landscape of Area X. The people who are supposed to be leading the situation are untrustworthy and actually doing their best to manipulate them both into doing things they normally would not do. There are secret areas in both Area X and in the building of the Southern Reach, and both main characters are able to learn more than they are supposed to know. They both end up on the run because they know too much. In the end, the novels are similar to each other, and there are things in both of them that really deepen the mystery of what might happen in the third volume.

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Review: Creation Lake by Rachel Kushner

Posted on September 5, 2024 by ghostvillehero

Buy it here:

Amazon, Bookshop

Synopsis:

From Rachel Kushner, a Booker Prize finalist, two-time National Book Award finalist, and “one of the most gifted authors of her generation” (The New York Times Book Review), comes a new novel about a seductive and cunning American woman who infiltrates an anarchist collective in France—a propulsive page-turner of glittering insights and dark humor. 

Creation Lake is a novel about a secret agent, a thirty-four-year-old American woman of ruthless tactics, bold opinions, and clean beauty, who is sent to do dirty work in France. “Sadie Smith” is how the narrator introduces herself to her lover, to the rural commune of French subversives on whom she is keeping tabs, and to the reader. Sadie has met her love, Lucien, a young and well-born Parisian, by “cold bump”—making him believe the encounter was accidental. Like everyone Sadie targets, Lucien is useful to her and used by her. Sadie operates by strategy and dissimulation, based on what her “contacts”—shadowy figures in business and government—instruct. First, these contacts want her to incite provocation. Then they want more. In this region of centuries-old farms and ancient caves, Sadie becomes entranced by a mysterious figure named Bruno Lacombe, a mentor to the young activists who communicates only by email. Bruno believes that the path to emancipation from what ails modern life is not revolt, but a return to the ancient past. Just as Sadie is certain she’s the seductress and puppet master of those she surveils, Bruno Lacombe is seducing her with his ingenious counter-histories, his artful laments, his own tragic story. Written in short, vaulting sections, Rachel Kushner’s rendition of “noir” is taut and dazzling. Creation Lake is Kushner’s finest achievement yet as a novelist, a work of high art, high comedy, and unforgettable pleasure.

Review:

In Rachel Kushner’s fourth novel, Creation Lake, Sadie Smith is at a place in her life where she is starting to wonder if the work she is doing is worth the risk. After being fired from the US government as a secret agent due to a poor finish to one of her assignments, she starts to work around the world as a private agent. For this assignment, her faceless and nameless bosses have hired her to infiltrate a radical group who have plans to stop developments on French farmland. While doing research she meets Pascal Balmy, the leader of the group, and she is able to guess the password to the email of Bruno Lacombe, the mentor of the group. Bruno is a mystery, someone who lives close but off the grid, rumored to be in a cave in the countryside. He uses his daughter’s computer to write the group emails but most of them are ramblings about Neanderthals, Prometheus, Polynesian sailing, and his life. 

The novel unfolds in strange ways, slowly and mostly off of any actual path. The writing is immersive, and even though it might not feel like it is going anywhere, before long you realized that you are a long way from where you started. The character of Sadie Smith, an alias for this mission that is chosen because it is sort of interesting yet hard to find anything if Googled, is a mixture of hard coldness and soft yearning. She spends so much of her social time keeping all of her stories straight, trying to get everyone in the anarchist group to trust her, that when she is done, back in the house that she is using, she can do nothing but drink beer and enjoy the quiet. The hours where she can turn off her secret agent become a haven of piled up empty bottles of beer and wine and dirty glasses in the kitchen. This turns into something that she likes more than having an agenda and needing to talk to people. Before too long, she becomes wrapped in the curiosities contained in Bruno’s emails, and the chances of looking for a new life after this mission grow more and more appealing.

Creation Lake is a stellar novel that starts a little odd, but the cohesion of the different pieces show a novel that is well written and well crafted. In a general sense, I have very little interest in many of the subjects that come up in this book, the thriller/spy aspect does not have much tension, and the conclusion is a little thin, but there is something about Creation Lake, something about it being more of character study than a secret agent adventure story that makes me feel like it is only done well because Rachel Kushner did it. 

I received this as an ARC from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

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Review: How to Sell a Haunted House by Grady Hendrix

Posted on September 2, 2024 by ghostvillehero

Buy it here:

Amazon, Bookskhop

Synopsis:

Grady Hendrix takes on the haunted house in a thrilling new novel that explores the way your past—and your family—can haunt you like nothing else.

When Louise finds out her parents have died, she dreads going home. She doesn’t want to leave her daughter with her ex and fly to Charleston. She doesn’t want to deal with her family home, stuffed to the rafters with the remnants of her father’s academic career and her mother’s lifelong obsession with puppets and dolls. She doesn’t want to learn how to live without the two people who knew and loved her best in the world.

Most of all, she doesn’t want to deal with her brother, Mark, who never left their hometown, gets fired from one job after another, and resents her success. Unfortunately, she’ll need his help to get the house ready for sale because it’ll take more than some new paint on the walls and clearing out a lifetime of memories to get this place on the market.

But some houses don’t want to be sold, and their home has other plans for both of them…

Review:

In Grady Hendrix’s sixth novel, Louise learns that her parents have died in a car crash, and she has to return to her childhood home in Charleston, SC to help with the funeral and decisions as to what will happen with the house and all of the belongings inside. This includes a huge doll collection and a room filled with homemade puppet from her mother’s Christian ministries. Her brother, Mark, has differing opinions on what they should do with all of the stuff, and how much more he deserves than Louise. After a few days of fighting with Mark and trying to clear out some of her mother’s things, Louise learns that there is much more to her parent’s house than just a bunch of junk. 

I have never had such a visceral reaction to the attitudes and actions of two main characters while reading any other novel. Louise and Mark are the worst. They are two of the most self-centered, selfish, garbage people I have ever read. Both of them are hateful to each other and Louise’s reason for leaving her daughter with her ex in San Francisco for a longer period of time is money. The money is not even that significant amount, and it is obvious from the way that her brother operates that the money is not even guaranteed. Mark is definitely a guy who would double cross his sister to keep all of the money for himself, and feel justified in it. There are no redeeming qualities in either of these characters and when bad things happen to them, they become even more insufferable.  


Grady Hendrix can write, and he does a good job writing horror novels, but I am not sure that his horror novels are the type of horror novels that I like. This is my third novel of his, and The Southern Book Club’s Guide to Slaying Vampires is the only one I have been able to recommend. The other two, The Final Girl Support Group and How to Sell a Haunted House have left a great amount to be desired, and the biggest problem in them is that the characters are so unlikable that I do not care what happens to them. My favorite character in this book, Barb, a woman who buys haunted toys online to purge them of their demons only has one scene. I liked her for the same reason why I liked all of the ladies in The Southern Book Club’s Guide to Slaying Vampires. They are Southern women with lemonade, pot lucks, and “Bless your heart” manners. They are the best characters in any of Grady Hendrix work and maybe all of horror. Unfortunately there is very little of this southern “charm” in this novel, and the rest of the novel is not very entertaining. Grady Hendrix knows how to write, but the characters that he writes are either very endearing or incredibly irritating, and he spends more time on the latter.

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Review: Fathers and Fugitives by S.J. Naude

Posted on August 28, 2024 by ghostvillehero

Buy it here:

Amazon, Bookshop

Synopsis:

An inventive and emotionally charged novel about fatherhood and family, loyalty and betrayal, inheritance and belonging.

Daniel is a worldly and urbane journalist living in London. His relationships appear to be sexually fulfilling but sentimentally meager. He has no relationships outside of sexual ones, and can seem at once callow and, at times, cold to the point of cruel with his lovers. Emotionally distant from his elderly, senile father, Daniel nonetheless returns to South Africa to care for him during his final months. Following his father’s death, Daniel learns of an unusual clause in the old man’s will: he will only inherit his half of his father’s considerable estate once he has spent time with Theon, a cousin whom he hasn’t seen since they were boys, who lives on the old family farm in the Free State. Once there, Daniel discovers that the young son of the woman Theon lives with is seriously ill. With the conditions bearing on Daniel’s inheritance shifting in real time, Theon and Daniel travel with the boy to Japan for an experimental cure and a voyage that will change their lives forever.

S.J. Naudé’s masterful novel is many things at once: a literary page-turner full of vivid, unexpected characters and surprising twists; a loving and at times shockingly raw portrayal of its protagonist’s complex psyche; and a devastatingly subtle look into South Africa’s fraught recent history.

Review:

Fathers and Fugitives, a novel translated from the Afrikaans by Michiel Heyns, is split into five distinct parts, each with their own significant impact on the life of Daniel, a journalist from South Africa living in London. The first section is about a Serbian man whom he meets at an exhibition for an American minimalist painter. He quickly gets entangled with the man and his friend’s financial and legal problems. The second section of the novel is about taking care of his father in the final throes of dementia. The third is about going to South Africa to meet a cousin whom he had only seen once or twice when they were kids. One of his cousin’s staff members has a child that is very sick, and Daniel agrees to help him get medical treatment. The fourth section is Daniel trying to adopt an infant who has lost his mother. The final section has Daniel as an old man, visiting the life and memories that he had lived. 

In each section, Daniel encounters people that need his help and generosity, and he generally does not tell them no. The care that he gives to his friends, his father, his cousin, and acquaintances is a burden to him that he shoulders with grace, and in the end, Daniel comes out as a good person, wanting to do the right thing in every encounter. 

Fathers and Fugitives is a rich and captivating story that does such an incredible job introducing characters and making them such an impactful part of Daniel’s journey. With each new section and each new set of problems, Daniel navigates these situations with grace. He never gets frustrated, and he does what he needs to do to make sure that he does not let down his family. In the end, Daniel can go through his life and the people that he impacted, and he can be confident that he made the best decisions that he could make with the knowledge that he had at the time. This is a novel that really has makes me think a great deal about life and how atypical it is for someone to do his best in every situation to help people, even when there is little to no motivation besides goodness.

I received this ARC from Europa Editions in exchange for an honest review. 

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Review: Crypt of the Moon Spider by Nathan Ballingrud

Posted on August 26, 2024 by ghostvillehero

Buy it here:

Amazon, Bookshop

Synopsis:

Crypt of the Moon Spider is a dark and dreamy tale of horror, corruption, and identity spun into the stickiest of webs.

Years ago, in a cave beneath the dense forests and streams on the surface of the moon, a gargantuan spider once lived. Its silk granted its first worshippers immense faculties of power and awe.

It’s now 1923 and Veronica Brinkley is touching down on the moon for her intake at the Barrowfield Home for Treatment of the Melancholy. A renowned facility, Dr. Barrington Cull’s invasive and highly successful treatments have been lauded by many. And they’re so simple! All it takes is a little spider silk in the amygdala, maybe a strand or two in the prefrontal cortex, and perhaps an inch in the hippocampus for near evisceration of those troublesome thoughts and ideas.

But trouble lurks in many a mind at this facility and although the spider’s been dead for years, its denizens are not. Someone or something is up to no good, and Veronica just might be the cause.

Review:

Everything that Nathan Ballingrud has published is worth reading. From his first book of stories, North American Lake Monsters, to his debut novel The Strange, almost everyone who reads his books becomes a fan. He has not released many books, yet North American Lake Monsters was adapted into the Hulu series Monsterland, and his novella The Visible Filth was filmed in 2019 as Wounds. To write a handful of books but already have two big adaptations shows the quality of the stories he writes. His latest novella, Crypt of the Moon Spider, is the first in the Lunar Gothic Trilogy, and this first volume is the beginning of a story that seems like a mixture of horror, sci-fi, and alternate history.

The novella takes place in 1923 on a moon covered in forests, caverns, and rivers. Veronica Brinkley is brought to the moon to be signed over to the Barrowfield Home for Treatment of the Melancholy, a sanatorium where rich people dump their loved ones for someone else take care of their ails. Veronica quickly meets Dr. Cull and his assistant, whom she names “Grub.” It does not take very long after Veronica meets Dr. Cull that he is experimenting with brain surgeries, cutting out a piece here and there, using moon spider silk as neurotransmitters, and changing his patients into whomever he wants in the name of health and science. 

Crypt of the Moon Spider is short and fast paced. There are many elements that are interesting, and I hope that they are explored in further volumes, but this is the problem with this introduction. For as heavy as it is on history, world building, and Dr. Cull experimenting on patients, Ballingrud does not spend much time getting deep enough into characters that we actually feel sympathy or empathy for them. This is not to say that the story is entertaining and fascinating. Ballingrud has proven beyond any doubts that everything that he writes is compelling even if it more plot driven than character driven. I find myself more interested in the world Ballingrud is building than the people who are being affected by it, mostly because I have been given more of chance to understand the moon spider universe than to feel attached to any of the characters. 

I received this as an ARC from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

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