Diversity in Horror Fiction

This Thing is Starving Isobel Aislin

 

This Thing is Starving by Isobel Aislin. Highly Recommended. Read if you like Linghun, The Road to Hell by Terry Benton-Walker

Formats: Print, digital

Publisher: Independently Published

Genre: Ghosts/Haunting, Historic Horror

Audience: Adult/Mature

Diversity: Asexual main character, trans man character, lesbian character

Takes Place in: Pennsylvania

Content Warnings (Highlight to view): Alcohol Abuse, Child Abuse, Child Death, Death, Drug Use/Abuse, Forced Captivity, Gaslighting, Homophobia, Medical Procedure, Mental Illness, Pedophilia, Rape/Sexual Assault, Self-Harm, Sexism, Slurs, Slut-Shaming, Suicide, Transphobia, Victim Blaming, Violence

Blurb

It’s just a house, right? Houses can’t hurt. Houses can’t bleed.

But this house wants you to.

When the Waite family moves into their new home, they don’t bargain on being unwanted guests. But this house has deep-rooted, blood soaked history, and it’s angry. This Thing is Starving is an unflinchingly feminist love letter to the abused, bursting with feminine rage and told from the perspective of a haunted house.

Warning, this review discusses abuse, rape, and the sexual abuse of minors.

The house on 4377 N. Oscar St is haunted. But this is not your typical haunted house story. This story is told from the house’s point of view as it witnesses the tragedies that befall its owners throughout the year. The house is haunted by four women and one trans boy. The first, and oldest, is Lillian. She lived in the house with her husband in the 1920s and is the most unstable of the five ghosts. Jason was a teenaged, closeted trans boy from the 1950s. Lila was a lesbian from 1975 who hated her queerness. In 2002 the house was owned by a woman named Karissa, a child abuse survivor who struggles with low self-esteem. The final ghost is Kay, a teenaged girl who died in the house after it was abandoned by Karissa in the early 2000s. All the ghosts are victims of abuse, sexual assault, or other forms of violence at the hands of men, and they all met with tragic ends either by their own hand or at the hands of others.

Veronica Waite and her family are the house’s most recent inhabitants. Her mother, Louise, moved them there after escaping an abusive partner and is doing her best to start over. The house immediately takes a disliking to the family, with its wild and grubby children and Louise who it immediately labels a “bad mother” due to her love of wine, parentification of Veronica, and inability to keep track of all her children. The only exception to the house’s ire is Veronica, whom the house feels strangely drawn to. It views her as “a splotch of brightness amongst the gloom” and tries its best to communicate with the eldest Waite child. Veronica certainly seems happy in the beginning. She finds a new friend quickly, makes the cheerleading team, and even lands a hot, football playing boyfriend. She creates beautiful art to hang in her attic room. But then things start to unravel for the family, and the house can do little to stop it. As Veronica struggles with her asexuality and trying to take care of her siblings, she slowly learns how cruel the world can be to women and girls.

Most of the men in this story are horrible, even an old man whose obituary Louise is editing. I’m sure the “not all men” crowd will object to the fact that almost all the cisgender men (and boys) in the story are awful human beings (admittedly sometimes to the point of feeling like caricatures), but I believe this is intentional. The story is being told from the point of view of the house, and the house hates men. Because the house can only witness what happens within its walls, or the lives of the unhappy ghosts who haunt it, the house rarely gets to see the good parts of humanity. Statistically, the majority or murders and rapes are committed by men, so of course the ghosts are more likely to be victims of male violence, leading to the house believing  that all men are inherently bad. Toward the end of the book, a character named Owen shows up who is devoid of the toxic traits shown by most of the other male characters. While he clearly has a crush on his female coworker, he respects her boundaries, supports her decisions, and keeps his desire to protect her in check. But of course, the house can’t recognize that he’s a good man like the audience can, and immediately hates Owen.

Ironically, the house is reinforcing harmful gender stereotypes because it doesn’t understand the complexities and nuances of abuse. It can only see people as innocent victims (women, girls, and AFAB people) or evil perpetrators (cisgender men and boys). But characterizing men as inherently evil gives them permission to behave horribly, as it rejects the notion that they have control over their actions. Essentially, it’s a more insidious form of “boys will be boys.”  But men can, and need to, do better. The house also conveniently ignores the fact that women can not only support the harmful actions of men, but can be perpetrators themselves, and that men can be victims, but Aislin does not. Lillian is abused by her serial killer husband, but when she finally snaps and kills him, she doesn’t free the women he has chained in the basement. Instead, she replaces her husband as the predator in the house and kills them. She even slut shames her husband’s victims, justifying their rapes and murders to herself. Veronica’s younger twin brothers, Charlie and Sawyer, are also revealed to be victims of their father’s abuse (especially Sawyer). Sadly, like Lillian, Sawyer becomes an abuser himself, acting out what he experienced at the hands of his father on his little sister Leslie. The house makes an exception for Jason, a trans man, another victim of male violence, but not for the twins. I suspect that’s because the house is mildly transphobic, and sees Jason as a woman, even though he’s clearly a man and his ghost has a male-presenting form.

While the house feels a fierce protectiveness of Veronica and her baby sister, it shows a cold indifference to their brothers. Interestingly, Louise was also abused by her husband, yet the house doesn’t group her in with other victims. Instead, it views her with scorn for “failing” to protect her girls (but not the boys). This is another sign that the house is not entirely free from its own sexist bias and doesn’t fully understand how abuse works. The house’s hatred of Louise is understandable, with its strong desire to protect, it cannot comprehend a mother “failing” to do so. The problem is that the house expects her to be perfect just because she’s a mom, even though Louise is a victim herself and doing the best she can under the circumstances. She loves her children, and tries her best to protect them, even when the police fail to.

Sadly, judging mothers who are being abused is not an uncommon occurrence. In an interview with NPR, Mother Jones reporter Samantha Michaels explains “It’s basically sexism. Most of the legal experts that I talked with said that it comes down to a cultural expectation that women are responsible for what happens in the home. There’s an expectation that they should be the moral center of the family, that they should reign in the man’s worst impulses, and that they should do whatever they can to protect their child, even if it means, you know, sacrificing themselves.” Mothers can have their children taken from them, and are even sent to prison due to Draconian “failure to protect” laws. Kerry King is one such mother, who is serving a 30-year sentence in prison for not protecting her daughter from their abuser, John Purdy, who is only serving 18 years for abusing King and her daughter. On October 26, 2004 in the case of Nicholson v. Williams the New York Court of Appeals ruled that children who witnessed abuse were wrongfully removed from their mother’s care, and that their non-abusive mothers had not been “neglectful” simply because they were unable to protect their children from witnessing domestic abuse.

This Thing is Starving starts with statistics about the rape, exploitation, and abuse of women and girls. Aislin states that the story is dedicated to the women who never get justice and whose stories are never heard. The book reminds me of rape revenge films without the sensationalism/exploitation common for the genre, similar to Promising Young Woman and Revenge (both films notably have female directors). Except, in this story, most of the victims don’t get revenge. Revenge against an abuser may be satisfying in fiction, but it rarely happens in real life where men often get away with hurting women. This makes the book feel more realistic. And when the house, full of pain and rage, lashes out and tries to hurt abusers and rapists, it usually hurts the innocent as well.

For example, when the house violently kills the teen boys who attempt to rape Kay, she also gets caught in the crossfire and is killed. Hate and anger rarely hurt just the intended target, but others as well. As Maddie Oatman so eloquently puts in her rape revenge article for Mother Jones “These stories offer a retributive vision of justice, the violence of the man mirrored back onto him. Traditional gender roles are flipped—the woman is the predator, and the man is the prey—but the basic shape of the conventional revenge story is unchanged. Witnessing women take revenge in film and fiction may offer a cathartic thrill, but the trope can also function as a trap; vengeance replicates the same power structure the avenger wishes to hold accountable.” She further goes on to explain “But justice can and should mean something other than the balancing of harms, as prison and police abolitionists and other activists have argued. In resisting the carceral approach to punishment, they advocate a politics of structural change, of experimentation and openness to new social forms. These ideas demand a radical artistic approach to match, a breaking free of the traps of the revenge plot. A couple of recent works give us a sense of this. Call it the reparative mode.”

Aislin shows us that there are other, healthier ways to heal from trauma than hunting down and killing your rapist (something victims are sadly arrested for in real life). And honestly, I really appreciate that Aislin presents more realistic ways that survivors can heal from trauma, like leaning on others they trust for support and opening up about what happened.  Instead of perpetuating the cycle of violence like the house does, the survivors heal by breaking free of it. This Thing is Starving is certainly a difficult and heart-wrenching read that contains abortion, rape, revenge porn, conversion therapy, drug addiction, suicidal thoughts, an infant’s death, pedophilia, trauma, a minor doing sex work, and transphobia. But Aislin doesan amazing job handling the difficult topics of abuse, sexual assault, and trauma without making the story feel like trauma porn.

Tags: Adult, Asexual, Book Review, Ghosts/Haunting, Highly Recommended, Historic Horror, Lesbian, LGBTQIA, Queer, Trans
Feeding Lucy by Mo Medusa

Feeding Lucy by Mo Medusa

Formats: Print, digital

Publisher: Crooked Foot Press

Genre: Occult

Audience: Adult/Mature

Diversity: Lesbian main character, queer, non-binary author

Content Warnings (Highlight to view): Alcohol Abuse, Animal Death, Cannibalism, Death, Gore, Gaslighting, Gore, Sexism Verbal/Emotional Abuse, Violence, Vomit 

Blurb

Frankie left home ten years ago, abandoning the tall mountains of her small hometown for the tall buildings of the big city. Desperate for a new life, she was happy to escape her overly-critical mother and the Polish-American customs of her past.

But after a strange caller informs her of her mother’s sudden death, she’s reluctantly drawn back to the mountains for the first time in a decade.

Arriving days before the Scandinavian tradition of Sankta Lucia, the town is aglow with holiday lights and cheer—and the townspeople can’t stop talking about the annual Feast of St. Lucy.

When an unexpected blizzard rolls through, revealing the true nature of the feast—and the evil that resides in the mountains—the darkness of her mother’s past is brought to light once again.

Caught between tradition and terror, Frankie quickly learns that her mother’s overbearing influence won’t be stopped by her death alone.

Taking elements from The Night of the Witches in Polish folklore, and the real tradition of Sankta Lucia, Feeding Lucy is a story of grief, tradition, and the darkness that lives inside of us all.

I received this product for free in return for providing an honest and unbiased review. I received no other compensation. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255: Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.

Frankie, or Franciska, as her mother calls her, is suffering through an awkward holiday party at her job when she gets the call that her mother has died. Frankie had a complex relationship with her volatile mother, Lucja. The two lived together in an old farmhouse in the middle of nowhere along with Lucja’s ancient, cranky cat, Zula. Growing up, Frankie felt like her mother loved that old cat more than her. She doesn’t expect affection from her mother because it is so rarely given, and eventually stops expecting everything at all. Lucja is both overbearing and withholding as a mother, obsessing over everything her daughter does one moment, then punishing her with the silent treatment the next. Frankie fears disappointing her mother above all else, yet always seems to do so. Lucja judges everything her daughter does, what she wears, and even what she displays in her room. She grows to hate Lucja, and gets away from her the first chance she gets. Frankie moves to the city, gets a job at a magazine, and joins the local queer scene. She goes no contact with her mother and forgets all about her until she gets the call. Frankie has no interest in her mother’s body, or returning to their small town, but the coroner promises her that Lucja left her a “pretty penny” and she’ll need to come back to her hometown if she wants to collect the insurance money.

Franciska is from Kolbe, a town built by immigrants all from the same small village in Poland, whose descendants are determined to keep their traditions alive. To Franciska, it seems more like they can’t let go of the past. One of their most important traditions is Sankta Lucia (Saint Lucy’s Day) a Catholic feast day commemorating the Sicilian saint who was martyred during the Diocletianic Persecution by the Roman Empire. Saint Lucy’s Day is held on December 13th and is viewed as a precursor of Christmas Day. Because the name Lucia is derived from the Latin “lux,” meaning “light,” and her feast day is celebrated during the darkest time of year, Saint Lucy’s Day is considered a “festival of light” meant to drive away the darkness, similar to Diwali or Hannukah. Young girls dress up as Saint Lucy, in a white robe with a red sash and a wreath of candles on their heads. Songs are sung and saffron buns eaten.

A drawing of a girl with long blond hair and brown eyes wearing a white dress with a red sash. Oh her head is crown of green leaves, red berries, and six white candles. She is holding a seventh candle and it's casting shadows on her face. The picture has a dark blue background with a gold border and holly leaves surrounding the image.

An example of what girls wear for Saint Lucia

Interestingly, Lucia shares her holiday with another Lucy, the Scandinavian Lussi. Lussinatta, or Lussi’s Night is similar to the legend of the Wild Hunt, where Lussi and her band of trolls, witches, and undead spirits would spend the darkest night of the year searching for unsuspecting humans who had stayed out too late or not finished their chores. Those who had not finished spinning yarn or threshing could expect to have their chimneys smashed. Those who were especially unfortunate would be whisked away by Lussi, never to be seen again.

And wouldn’t you know it, Frankie has arrived in Kolbe just in time for the annual Saint Lucy’s feast her mother always organized and the town’s people are very invested in making sure Lucja’s estranged daughter attends the feast (red flag number one). But Frankie just wants to get her inheritance and go back to the city. That is, until she runs into her long-lost love, Stella, working at the coroner’s office. Frankie is so smitten with her former girlfriend that she immediately agrees to stay for Sankta Lucia despite her initial hesitation, and gives Stella a pass for her strange, mercurial behavior (red flag number two). She only briefly wonders how it’s possible that Zula, who was already an old cat when Frankie was a child, is still alive (red flag number three). Even the disturbing visions Frankie starts having during the day, and the horrible nightmares when she sleeps, don’t clue her in to the fact that something is deeply wrong in Kolbe.

I appreciated the depiction of Lucja and Frankie’s dysfunctional relationship. The more we learn, the clearer it becomes that Lucja is emotionally abusive to her daughter, but as is often the case when there’s no physical component, the abuse is not immediately obvious. Lucja uses guilt to manipulate and control her daughter, alternating between coldness and gentle affection. Her love is conditional and young Frankie feels like she has to earn it.

An estranged adult child returning to their small town only to discover the town’s dark secret is one of my favorite horror tropes (seen in such films as Salem’s Lot and Dead Silence), so this was right up my alley. The story has a witchy vibe and a dark, moody atmosphere that makes reading it feel like the calm before the storm (or blizzard in this case). This slow burn horror is perfect for a dark winter’s night.

Tags: Adult, Book Review, Lesbian, LGBTQIA, Non-binary, Occult, Queer
The Eyes Are the Best Part by Monika Kim

The Eyes Are the Best Part by Monika Kim

Formats: Print, audio, digital

Publisher: Erewhon Books

Genre: Psychological Horror

Audience: Adult/Mature

Diversity: Korean-American author, main character, and side characters, Black side character

Takes Place in: LA, California

Content Warnings (Highlight to view): Alcohol Abuse, Cannibalism, Death, Forced Captivity, Gaslighting, Gore, Medical Procedures, Mental Illness, Racism, Sexism, Slurs, Slut-Shaming, Violence, Vomit, Xenophobia

Blurb

Ji-won’s life tumbles into disarray in the wake of her Appa’s extramarital affair and subsequent departure. Her mother, distraught. Her younger sister, hurt and confused. Her college freshman grades, failing. Her dreams, horrifying… yet enticing.

In them, Ji-won walks through bloody rooms full of eyes. Succulent blue eyes. Salivatingly blue eyes. Eyes the same shape and shade as George’s, who is Umma’s obnoxious new boyfriend. George has already overstayed his welcome in her family’s claustrophobic apartment. He brags about his puffed-up consulting job, ogles Asian waitresses while dining out, and acts condescending toward Ji-won and her sister as if he deserves all of Umma’s fawning adoration. No, George doesn’t deserve anything from her family. Ji-won will make sure of that.

For no matter how many victims accumulate around her campus or how many people she must deceive and manipulate, Ji-won’s hunger and her rage deserve to be sated.

A brilliantly inventive, subversive novel about a young woman unraveling, Monika Kim’s The Eyes Are the Best Part is a story of a family falling apart and trying to find their way back to each other, marking a bold new voice in horror that will leave readers mesmerized and craving more.

Out of all the types of trauma and injuries the human body can suffer, eye trauma makes me the most squeamish. They’re so soft and vulnerable; whenever I know an eye injury is about to happen in a horror movie, I watch the scene through my fingers. The infamous eye scene in Zombi 2 still makes me squirm. So, I knew a story that centered around ripping out eyes and consuming them would be especially horrific. Interestingly, the book isn’t especially violent. There are only two scenes with any significant amount of blood, though ironically the stabbing and bludgeoning is less disturbing than the scenes of eye trauma and cannibalism (which have comparatively little gore).

After Ji-won Lim’s Appa (Korean for dad) abandons his wife and two daughters their Umma (the Korean word for mom) is completely inconsolable. Despite being a faithful and devoted wife, he still leaves her for another woman. She haunts the entrance to their apartment, hoping he will come back and saying she wants to die without him. It’s at that moment Ji-won realizes their roles are reversed. She has become the mother and Umma the daughter; it’s now Ji-won’s responsibility to take care of her little family.

When Umma was little, her parents left their children to search for work. Her other siblings decided to follow, afraid they would starve to death before their parents returned. But Umma refused to leave their home and instead waited for her parents to return, living off bark and snow throughout the harsh winter. When her family finally returned the following summer, they found her skeletal and delirious. Her older brother mistook her for a ghost.

To Ji-won, her mother’s decision to remain behind seems foolish and naive. She feels frustrated by what she sees as Umma’s stupidity and thinks she’s pathetic for spending her life making herself small and inconspicuous to men. But she also pities how every part of Umma’s life is characterized by suffering and relates to the fact that her mother is always alone. Ji-won is feeling abandoned, not just by her Appa but also her high school friends who all got into Berkeley when she didn’t.  Their loneliness makes both women particularly vulnerable to predatory men. Umma begins dating George, a white man with striking blue eyes. He says he speaks Korean, but is terrible at it and his pronunciation is awful. He clearly fetishizes Asian women as is clear when he leers at a Chinese waitress and later at Ji-won’s chest, makes gross sexual comments to Ji-won and her younger, underage sister Ji-hyun, and goes on trips to Thailand to sleep with the women there.

He also gets mad when they have a white waitress at a Chinese restaurant because he wants to experience “culture,” even though the restaurant is anything but authentic (it’s called Wok and Roll for crying out loud). George has a truck with a bumper sticker that says “I’m a Republican because we can’t all be on welfare,” complains loudly about how kids these days are “too soft” and “easily offended,” and reminiscences about “the good old days.” Essentially, he’s a loud, mediocre, abrasive white man who is thoroughly convinced of his own superiority. Understandably, the sisters can’t stand George, and they both resent Umma for bringing him into their lives, but the conflict averse Ji-won refuses to say anything about it.

Meanwhile, Ji-won befriends a boy in her class who seems like George’s polar opposite. Geoffrey presents himself as an ally. He takes women’s studies, wears “Nevertheless she Persisted” and Ruth Bader Ginsburg t-shirts, reads Ngozi Adichie’s We Should All be Feminists, and is horrified when a group of frat bros at their school say disgusting things about Asian women in front of Ji-won. Ji-won immediately likes Geoffrey and really wants to be his friend. She’s impressed by his intellect and his knowledge of the world. She believes they “get” each other and she doesn’t need her old friends anymore because she has Geoffrey now. But slowly red flags start to pop up. Geoffrey gets extremely jealous when Ji-won spends any time with her new friend (and possible crush) Alexis. At first Ji-won excuses this, thinking he’s just insecure and possessive of his friends like she is. Even when he snatches her phone out of her pocket to get her phone number, acts clingy, or pushes her to do things even after she’s said no, Ji-won continues to ignore his toxic behavior. She doesn’t realize Geoffrey is arrogant, loud, self-absorbed, and rude, just like George. His quips about feminism are just showing off, trying to make himself seem better than other men. He claims he’s an ally because he’s read about oppression, yet still gives Ji-won a thoughtless, racist gift for Christmas. George and Geoffrey are merely two sides of the same coin.

After Appa’s abandonment, the frat boys at her school saying disgusting about Asian women, George invading their life and being horrible, and Geoffrey’s face heel turn, Ji-won is boiling over with barely suppressed rage. Things come to a head when George wakes her from a nightmare and she quickly turns her anger on him and starts cussing him out. She apologizes for Umma’s sake, but the outburst has awoken something in Ji-won. Up until this point Ji-hyun has been begging her Unni (Korean for older sister, an honorific used by younger women to refer to older women) to do something about George and is frustrated by her inaction. Now Ji-hyun notices something is off about Ji-won and starts to worry about her, despite her sister’s insistence that she’s fine. Ji-won is a well-crafted, sympathetic anti-villain who focuses her anger on the toxic men who have wronged her. She cares deeply for her little sister, Ji-hyun, and her Umma, while still finding them frustrating (something I’m sure many daughters will relate to).

She’s also incredibly manipulative, cowardly, jealous, and unable to deal with her emotions in a healthy and mature way. Feeling betrayed that her friends are all going to Berkley, Ji-won hides an heirloom ring then blames one of her friends for stealing it. She continues to try and sabotage their relationships by sending texts pretending to be her other friends or their crushes because she’s upset that they’re “abandoning” her. When her friends finally figure out what she’s doing and try to have a calm conversation about how she hurt them, Ji-won shuts them down and leaves abruptly because she feels like she can’t face what she did. She doesn’t interact with them again for the rest of the story.

Later, Ji-won fucks with George the same way she did with her friends. Because he’s so convinced of his own self-importance and superiority, he’s easily manipulated by a “Oriental girl” he sees as beneath him. She starts by stealing money from his wallet, hiding his keys, and putting his driver’s license down the garbage disposal. Her “pranks” escalate and she destroys his most prized possession, the expensive Rolex his father gave him, and even gets him fired from his job, all why playing innocent. I love that she’s imperfect and gets to do bad things. I’ve mentioned it before, but imperfect, morally gray, sometimes villainous characters are my favorite! There’s too much of a push for protagonists to be perfect and heroic, but too often it leads to dull characters, in my humble opinion, at least. As horrified as I am at some of Ji-won’s behavior, I still love her as a character, and it thrills me that she gets to live out her (and I imagine many other Asian women’s) revenge fantasy.

I’ve touched before on how white men tend to fetishize Asian women and how harmful it is. As Nancy Wang Yuen, a sociologist and author of “Reel Inequality” told USA Today “The idea that Asian women are desirable and exotic and passive isn’t just an innocent stereotype or a desirable trait to envy. The shadowed side of that is they then become targets of hate, sexual violence and physical violence when they aren’t perceived as fully human and deserving of rights to be safe.” Media representation unfortunately only reenforces harmful hypersexualization of Asian women.

Top: Cio-Cio-San from a 2019 production of Madama Butterfly at the San Carlo Theater in Naples. Second row: (left) Gigi from the musical Miss Saigon (right), Fook Mi and Fook Yu from Austin Powers. Third row: (left) a Vietnamese sex worker propositioning Joker and Rafterman from the film Full Metal Jacket (right), Trang Pak hooking up with Coach Carr from film Mean Girls. Fourth Row: a series of sexy costumes loosely inspired by Chinese and Japanese clothing modeled by white women in “yellow face.”

 

One of the editors for this book, and my personal friend, Diana Pho, wrote this piece about being fetishized and harassed as a Vietnamese-American woman during an interview at New York Comic Con back in 2013. Diana was there to host a panel on representation in comics and had donned one of her Asian inspired steampunk outfits and was carrying a parasol. She was approached by a group of white men asking her to do an interview for a “TV show”. Though hesitant, Diana agreed. The interviewer (who she would later learn was Mike Babchik from the now defunct Man Banter) immediately started making sexist and racist comments (you can read a full account of the incident here).

Mike Babchik: So, if I were walking in the rain, could I pay you to walk next to me with your umbrella?

Diana Pho: Pay me?

Mike: If I paid you?

Diana: Then, buy your own umbrella.

Mike: No, I want to buy an umbrella with an Asian girl.

Diana: Then no.

It got even grosser from there.

Mike: Well in my experience, girls who stand next to me longer than 20 seconds get a cream pie.

Diana: I would give you a slap in the face.

Mike: (backing away) Really? Would you?

He then scurried off. As white men tend to do, Man Banter had completely underestimated Diana. They were expecting a weak, submissive, Asian girl who would giggle at their crude remarks, but what they got was a fight from a woman who wasn’t about to put up with their racism and sexual harassment. She told her story, and it wasn’t long before outlets like The Daily Dot, 18 Million Rising, and The Mary Sue all picked up the story. A petition was started to have Mike Babchik’s employer hold him responsible for the harassment. One of the employees from Man Banter sent Diana an apology on Tumblr, and promised to delete the so-called interview and agreed not to return to NYCC (though it sounds like the con was planning to ban them after Diana reported the incident to them). Diana mentioned that while she was angry that this happened to her, she was even more upset that this could be potentially happening to young women and underage girls who didn’t have the same resources, support, or confidence to call them out (I know I certainly wouldn’t have felt comfortable standing up to an adult when I was a teenager). For every Diana there are thousands of other Asian women who don’t get to tell their story. Women whose valid concerns are dismissed as “overreacting,” are shamed into believing it’s their fault, and that they should keep quiet about their experiences.

Diana Pho at New York Comic Con in 2013

The Eyes Are the Best Part is a slow-burn psychological horror story. I was half way through the book and wondering if perhaps I had picked up a thriller by mistake, when things started to get bloody and wild. It’s a suspenseful read, made even more tense by Ji-won’s deteriorating mental state and fraught relationships. The atmosphere is oppressive and claustrophobic, with the tiny, cramped apartment the family shares emphasizing Ji-won’s feeling of being trapped. Kim’s writing is as precise as a surgeon’s blade, gradually becoming more chaotic as Ji-won’s mind begins to unravel. There isn’t a page or paragraph wasted on filler or pointless details. Every line of the book carries meaning and weight.

Tags: Adult, African American, Asian American, BIPOC, Black, Book Review, Highly Recommended, Korean, Psychological Horror
American Ghoul by Michelle McGill-Vargas

American Ghoul by Michelle McGill-Vargas

Formats: Print, audio, digital

Publisher: Blackstone Publishing, Inc

Genre: Historic Horror, Vampire

Audience: Adult/Mature

Diversity: Black main character, Black side characters, Black/Native side character, Black author

Takes Place in: Georgia and Indiana

Content Warnings (Highlight to view): Alcohol Abuse, Child Abuse, Child Death, Death, Drug Use/Abuse, Forced Captivity, Oppression, Pedophilia, Police Harassment, Physical Abuse, Racism, Self-Harm, Slurs, Suicide, Verbal/Emotional Abuse, Violence, Vomit, Xenophobia

Blurb

You can’t kill someone already dead.

That’s what Lavinia keeps telling her jailer after—allegedly—killing her mistress, Simone Arceaneau. But how could Simone be dead when she was taking callers just a few minutes before? And why was her house always so dark?

Lavinia, a recently freed slave, met Simone, a recently undead vampire, on a plantation in post-Civil War Georgia. With nothing remaining for either woman in the South, the two form a fast friendship and head north. However, Lavinia quickly learns that teaming up with this white woman may be more than she bargained for.

Simone is reckless and impulsive—which would’ve been bad enough on its own, but when combined with her particular diet Lavinia finds herself in way over her head. As she is forced to repeatedly compromise her morals and struggle to make lasting human connections, Lavinia begins to wonder if is she truly free or if has she merely exchanged one form of enslavement for another. As bodies pile up in the small Indiana town they’ve settled in, people start to take a second look at the two newcomers, and Simone and Lavinia’s relationship is stretched to its breaking point…

I received this product for free in return for providing an honest and unbiased review. I received no other compensation. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255: Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.

American Ghoul is a unique historical novel with dark humor sprinkled throughout about a free Black woman, her white vampire companion, and all the trouble they get into. Lavinia, the forementioned free woman, hardly feels free after being released from her enslavement after the Civil War. With limited options and too afraid to leave the only home she’s ever known, Lavinia stays at the plantation where she was enslaved, helping her former mistress, Miss Tillie, run it as a brothel. It’s unpleasant work, but Lavina doesn’t dare hope for something better. That is, until she meets a strange white girl named Simone whom she rescues from burning up in the sun. Later she finds Simone drinking the blood of one of the brothel regulars.

Lavinia is an interesting character, as she’s an unlikeable victim who defies the mistaken belief that a victim must also be a good person. What happened to her both during and after her enslavement is horrific, and she’s certainly sympathetic, but Lavinia also does terrible things without feeling particularly guilty about it. She justifies what she does by saying she never killed anyone herself: she just helped Simone do it (which is hardly better). Personally, I love that she’s such a complicated character and gets to be an anti-villain. It’s clear she doesn’t think what she’s doing is that bad, as Lavinia does try to choose immoral people for her vampire friend to bleed dry. But other times, she just picks victims who have things she needs, like a new pair of boots. Lavinia is brave, no-nonsense, and blunt, and doesn’t have a lot of patience for Simone’s nonsense. While Simone is well-educated, Lavinia is clearly the smarter and more practical of the two, and it’s a miracle Simone even managed to survive a year on her own.

With the exception of Lavinia’s love interest, King, and a little girl that Simone murders, very few of the characters are fully good or bad. Take Miss Tillie, Lavinia’s former mistress, for example. She never beat Lavinia, gave her a new dress for Christmas, and speaks to her rather than at her, which causes Lavinia a small pang of guilt when Simone kills her. But while Miss Tillie is a far cry from Simon Legree, she was still complicit in the enslavement other human beings, an unforgiveable sin definitely worthy of making her a vampire’s dinner.

Simone is similar in that she’s not a good person and thinks that helping Lavinia makes up for the fact that she’s also controlling and doesn’t seem to care about anyone but herself (although she claims to love Lavinia). While you can’t help but feel bad for Simone for being turned into a monster against her will, it doesn’t justify the way she treats Lavinia. She wants her friend all to herself, gets extremely jealous if Lavinia spends time with anyone else, and will read her mind without consent to figure out what she’s been doing and where she’s been. Their relationship is toxic at best, and abusive at worst. With Simone’s possessiveness and their shared mental link, Lavinia eventually realizes their connection is almost as bad as the one that tethered her to Miss Tillie.

And of course, there’s the fact a vampire will kill anyone, even children, for food, especially if she’s hungry. Simone’s recklessness when it comes to food often leaves a mess for Lavinia to clean up and gets them both in trouble on numerous occasions. Simone is a spoiled white girl who claims she’s less racist than other white people, but as we learn more about her past it’s revealed that she’s not the white savior she claims to be. This is hinted at early on when Simone refers to Lavinia as her “chocolate savior” (ew), is completely unaware of how dangerous it is to be a Black woman walking around a white town on her own, and laughs when Lavinia doesn’t know how to read a globe. Because Simone also had a troubled past, she thinks she and Lavinia are similar, not realizing her white girl problems are nothing compared to being enslaved. Sometimes it feels like Lavinia is sacrificing everything for a white woman because of some misplaced sense of loyalty.

While the two women make their way to Chicago (a popular destination for formerly enslaved people) Lavinia meets a Romanian couple named Valerica and Victor Radut who own a store where she sells the belongings of Simone’s victims.  The couple recognize Simone as a vampire immediately, and believe Lavinia can protect them from her, since Simone (sort of) does what she says. They believe that in order to kill a vampire you must cut off the head, burn the heart, then drink the ashes for protection (like they did to the body of poor Mercy Brown in 1892). Despite claiming Valerica as a friend, Lavinia is ultimately unmoved by the unfortunate fate that befalls the Raduts because, as she puts it, “Simone was my priority. Maybe the only friend I needed.” Other people who make the mistake of getting close to Lavinia suffer similar fates. It’s hard to decide whether you want the them to face justice or not, or if you want them to get away with all the horrible things they’ve done.

Tags: Adult, African American, BIPOC, Black, Book Review, Historic Horror, vampire
Splinter by Jasper Hyde

Splinter by Jasper Hyde

Formats: Print, digital

Publisher: The Magnificent Engine

Genre: Folk Horror, Killer/Slasher, Occult, Myth and Folklore, Romance

Audience: Adult/Mature

Diversity: Black main character and author, Filipino British main character, asexual (demisexual) main character and author, bisexual main character, main character with ADHD, Trans masc/Non-binary author

Takes Place in: Sleepy Hollow, NY

Content Warnings (Highlight to view): Ableism, Bullying, Death, Drug Use/Abuse, Medical Procedures, Mental Illness, Police Harassment, Racism, Torture 

Blurb

In a small town hidden behind the hills of New York, things are far from ordinary. As Sleepy Hollow’s youngest Medical Examiner, the pressure intensifies for Dr. Drusilla Van Tassel when the headless bodies of her sister Katrina’s friends start surfacing. Meanwhile, Drusilla’s ex-lover Ichabod Crane returns to town, dredging up feelings better left buried.

Things take a turn for the worst when Drusilla comes face-to-face with the Headless Horseman, who is back to settle old scores – and she and her sister are the perfect targets. Drusilla can repel the horseman with an unknown power, but her sister isn’t so lucky, and she goes missing.

However, when Drusilla discovers Ichabod is a monster hunter, she has no other choice but to turn to him for help. Even if that means working with a man she feels an inexplicable attraction to. Will they find Katrina and banish the headless horseman once and for all?

I received this product for free in return for providing an honest and unbiased review. I received no other compensation. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255: Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.

If you decide to read Splinter, keep in mind that this story comes from a small, indie publisher and didn’t benefit from a professional editor. There are quite a few grammar errors sprinkled throughout. I didn’t find them particularly distracting, and the quality of the writing was still good, but I know this will bother some readers. I would encourage them to give Splinter a chance anyway, as it really is an enjoyable story and I hope my review will encourage you to check it out.

Dr. Drusilla Van Tassel is our main character, and I kind of love her. She’s an introverted, bisexual, horror fan who just wants to do her job as a medical examiner, and I can relate to that. Her sister Katrina, on the other hand, is outgoing, popular, and prefers her rich, white friends over her own sister. But Drusilla is just as hostile to Katrina, so it’s not your stereotypical mean girl situation. I found it interesting how Drusilla can relax and use AAVE in front of her Black assistant (and former lover) Kyndall, but codeswitches with Katrina like she does around white people. It underlines how “other” Katrina is from her and how uncomfortable Drusilla feels in her own sister’s presence. Although, she does feel guilty for not doing more to support Katrina when her husband Brom died under mysterious circumstances.

One night Drusilla is called in to deal with a murder, and the victim is no other than Denis Carter, Katrina’s close friend. Poor Drusilla just can’t catch a break! At the crime scene, we see firsthand the racism and sexism Drusilla faces on a regular basis from the law enforcement officials she has to work alongside when one rookie cop tries to stop her from entering the crime scene. Despite having graduated Magna Cum Laude from Cornell she still gets treated as a “Black girl playing dress up.”

Then Katrina’s former friend and lover, Ichabod Crane (who I like to imagine looks like Piolo Pascual), shows up out of the blue and starts pestering her for details of the strange murder. Because they ended things badly, she isn’t exactly thrilled to see him. But when another murder takes place, the two are forced to set aside their differences and work together. What follows is a fun, supernatural mystery with a great sex scene. This was the first time in a story I’ve seen someone on the asexual spectrum have sex. Not only are asexual character underrepresented in fiction, but they’re often stereotyped as always being completely sex adverse, which just isn’t true, especially in the case of people who are demisexual like this particular character.

I really appreciate that Hyde not only put the effort into getting Filipino sensitivity readers, but also included their email in the beginning of the story for anyone to reach out to them if they made any mistakes in representation. I wish more authors would do that!

If you were a fan of the Fox tv series Sleepy Hollow that aired from 2013-2017, but hated the way they treated Nicole Beharie and her character, this book is for you. It feels like a remedy to the show without being a fix-it fanfiction. Instead, Splinter gets to be its own thing. It’s a quick, compelling read that sucks you in, helped in no small part by its compelling and complex characters.

Tags: ADHD, Adult, African American, Asexual, BIPOC, Bisexual, Black, Book Review, Disability, Filipino, Folk Horror, Killer/Slasher, LGBTQIA, Myths and Folklore, Non-binary, Occult, Own Voices, Recommended, Romance, Southeast Asian, Trans
Another Elizabeth by Elle Mitchell

Another Elizabeth by Elle Mitchell

Formats: Print, audio, digital

Publisher: Little Key Press

Genre: Killer/Slasher

Audience: Adult/Mature

Diversity: Main character and authors with hypermobile Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome (hEDS), bisexual main character

Takes Place in: Oregon

Content Warnings (Highlight to view): Ableism, Animal Abuse, Animal Death, Body Shaming, Imagined Cannibalism, Imagined Child Abuse, Imagined Child Death, Death, Forced Captivity, Gaslighting, Mental Illness, Pedophilia, Physical Abuse, Police Harassment, Self-Harm, Slurs, Sexism, Suicide, Verbal/Emotional Abuse, Violence

Blurb

Another Elizabeth is a gripping literary psychological crip horror novel that readers will sink their teeth into. Fans of dark humor and challenging fiction will be thrilled to delve into the mind of a deeply flawed disabled woman with a desire to kill.

Elizabeth’s life is taking a turn.
She has three jobs, a boyfriend that loves her too much, and a recent diagnosis of Hypermobile Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome. She’s coming apart at the seams. Now all she cares about is keeping her promise to her younger self before her body fails her—kill without getting caught.

Will she physically be able to satisfy her urge while maintaining her carefully built façade of normalcy? And if so, will she be able to stop with just one victim?

I received this product for free in return for providing an honest and unbiased review. I received no other compensation. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255: Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.

Inspiration porn is a real problem when it comes depicting people with disabilities. The term was originally coined by disability activist and comedian Stella Young. As Young puts it in her 2014 TED talk in Sydney, “We’re not real people. We are there to inspire.” She explains that we have been sold the lie that disability is a bad thing, and therefore living with a disability makes you exceptional. One of the reasons I love Another Elizabeth is because I thought of inspiration porn while I was reading it and what the reactions of able-bodied people might be. Elizabeth has Hypermobile Ehlers-Danlos syndrome (hEDS), which, if you’re not familiar, is a genetic condition that causes connective tissue to weaken resulting in hypermobility in the joints and chronic pain. She works at a grocery store called Juno Foods with her boyfriend, teaches ESL classes, and kills people who piss her off.  That’s right, Elizabeth “overcomes” her invisible disability despite struggling with pain and weakness to become a serial killer! How inspirational!

A drawing of Elizabeth wearing a gray T-shirt and jeans and leaning on a purple cane. In her other hand she holds a bloody knife. Her clothing is covered in blood. Behind her is a black, blood spattered background with bloody red lettering that reads "the only disability in life is a bad attitude."

All joking aside, I loved reading a book where the main character has  disability, written by someone with a disability (and not some well-meaning ally) that isn’t meant to inspire non-disabled people or demonize people with disabilities. Elizabeth is a great character. She shows hints of being a sociopath, is an expert manipulator, and often fantasizes about hurting others. When her doctor suggests she start using a cane, Elizabeth immediately wonders if she’ll use it for anything other than bashing people’s brains in. Even innocent things bring out the darkness in Elizabeth. When she sees babies, she imagines how easy it would be to break their fingers, and when she makes candy, she fantasizes about putting poison in it.

Yet she still seems to care about her friend, her ESL students, and her himbo boyfriend on some level, so she’s not completely heartless. Or at least Elizabeth admits she wouldn’t murder any of them. Awwwwww. In fact, she only kills people who she believes deserve it, like an ableist woman who abandoned her family after her husband became paralyzed, an obnoxious coworker, and maybe the odd pedestrian here and there. The fact that she happens to like their teeth is just a bonus. In her free time Elizabeth watches forensics shows and reads true crime novels for inspiration. This means she is meticulous about covering her tracks. I found myself greatly appreciating Elizabeth’s hyper-competence when it came to crime, carefully planning each murder down to the very last detail. Elizabeth is also someone who is usually good at whatever she tries, despite putting little effort into it, and this seems to apply to being a serial killer. Because she can’t physically overpower her victims, Elizabeth gets very creative finding ways to make her murders more accessible.

Villains with disabilities in fiction are often portrayed in a problematic way, at least when written by the non-disabled. They are the monstrous “other,” whose moral corruption manifests physically as disability. Jan Grue, is a Norwegian academic, author and actor (best known for role as Ivar Salvesen in Occupied) who uses a wheelchair. In his Guardian article The Disabled Villain: Why Sensitivity Reading Can’t Kill Off This Ugly Trope Grue writes “This particular trope, wherein a character’s moral and physiological natures mirror each other, is as universal as it is ancient. It is reflected in the philosophy of Plato, in commonplace phrases like ‘a healthy mind in a healthy body,’ and in the foundational texts of the cultural canon. In Buddhist tradition, too, disability has been construed as an impediment to understanding and enlightenment – and even, for some, as a punishment for actions in a past life.”

The Take’s video Why the “Disabled Villain” Trope is So Offensive, explains that disability is “used as a metaphor for villainy or moral failing.” In an interview with Den of Geek after the release of Skyfall, producer Michael G. Wilson explains, “It’s very much a Fleming device that he uses throughout the stories – the idea that physical deformity and personality deformity go hand in hand in some of these villains. Sometimes it’s a motivating factor in their life, and what makes them the way they are.” In other words, those with disabilities are assumed to despise their condition because being disabled is undesirable, and they seek to harm the able bodied. Unfortunately, this metaphor can cause real-life harm, as it reinforces the idea that having a disability is “bad” and difference is “scary.” Horror is especially notorious for using the “Evil Cripple” trope, with famous villains like Freddy, Jason, and Leatherface all sporting physical disfigurements. Other famous examples of disabled villains are the Phantom from The Phantom of the Opera, multiple James Bond antagonists, Mr. Glass in Unbreakable, Mason Verger from Hannibal, Captain Hook from Peter Pan, Mr. Potter from It’s a Wonderful Life, and Darth Vader from Star Wars.

 

Mr. Glass from Unbreakable (top left), The Phantom from the Phantom of the Opera (top right), Captain Hook from Hook, Raoul Silva from Skyfall, Freddy Krueger from Nightmare on Elm Street (bottom left), and Mason Verger from Hannibal (bottom right). None of the characters pictured here are portrayed by disabled or disfigured actors.

lizabeth is a villain protagonist with a disability, she’s an incredibly well written, well-rounded character. She’s an evil (or at least morally gray) character who also has a disability, rather than a character who is evil because of a disability. Most importantly, Elizabeth is written in such a way that the audience is rooting for her sociopath self and able to relate to her. (Or at least I was. Who among us hasn’t fantasized about killing awful people?) Usually, villains with disabilities are written in such a way that they feel alien and are frightening in their strangeness, and this is accentuated by their disability or disfigurement.  Instead of seeming scary because of her disability, Elizabeth finds the opposite to be true. People assume she’s helpless: something she uses to her advantage. When suspicion falls on her, Elizabeth plays up her disability, relying on other people’s ableism so they think she’s innocent. It also helps that the author has hEDS herself, so the book is Own Voices and Elizabeth’s character just hits differently.

Because the narration is first person, we get to see Elizabeth’s detached way of looking at the world and her twisted way of thinking. We get an intimate look at her struggles, both keeping her “other life” a secret and trying to kill victims when she’s not as strong as an able-bodied male killer. And of course, we get to learn about her frustration when dealing with her chronic pain and her boyfriend’s annoying abundance of concern for her. He’s convinced that she’s too fragile to function, yet doesn’t have the same concern for her comfort during sex. Side note, I love that Elizabeth gets to have hot sex scenes with her boyfriend. People with disabilities almost never get to have sex in fiction. In fact, outside of Mat Fraser in American Horror Story, George Robinson in Sex Education, and Peter Dinklage in Game of Thrones, I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone with a disability have sex in popular media (and of course those examples are all white, cisgendered men with conventionally attractive faces).

Another Elizabeth is a fascinating look into a twisted mind with a character that you can’t help but root for despite the fact she’s a serial killer who manipulates others. The story is the perfect length, not so long that it drags but not so short that it feels rushed. The second half of the book is especially exciting and the story is interspersed with bits of dark humor.

Tags: Adult, Book Review, Cane user, Chronic Illness, Disability, Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome, Killer/Slasher, Own Voices, Physical Disability, Recommended
The Only Safe Place Left is the Dark by Warren Wagner

The Only Safe Place Left is the Dark by Warren Wagner

Formats: Print, digital

Publisher: Ghoulish Books

Genre: Apocalypse/Disaster, Zombie

Audience: Adult/Mature

Diversity: Gay man author and main characters, main characters with AIDS

Content Warnings (Highlight to view): Animal Death, Child Death, Death, Drug Use/Abuse, Homophobia, Illness, Medical Procedure, Slurs, Suicide

Blurb

In The Only Safe Place Left is the Dark, an HIV positive gay man must leave the relative safety of his cabin in the woods to brave the zombie apocalypse and find the medication he needs to stay alive.

I received this product for free in return for providing an honest and unbiased review. I received no other compensation. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255: Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.

I was born during the beginning of the AIDS outbreak, during which my mom lost many of her gay friends. I remember the deep-rooted fear of AIDS that existed during my childhood. In grade school, we attended assemblies about the dangers of AIDS and how it was spread. There were public service ads about AIDS on every TV station. Parents wore red ribbons. As a queer teen I mourned the loss of an entire generation of gay and bisexual men.

One of the doctors I work with through my hospital, a gay man in his eighties who was one of the first physicians to treat AIDS patients, told me about the weekly funerals he attended. No one cared that gay men were dying of a mysterious illness during the conservative Regan administration. Little research was done on the epidemic. This doctor was one of the few who treated AIDS patients back then, using his knowledge of pharmacology to create a treatment regimen through off-label uses of already existing drugs. Of course, he couldn’t openly advertise his services due to the stigma in the medical community, so his patients found him through a whisper network and would visit him under the guise of getting a routine physical.

The Only Safe Place Left is the Dark is a unique zombie apocalypse novella about the AIDS epidemic. The cover of book is meant to invoke the iconic Silence=Death AIDS design from the late 1980s (a poster Quinton keeps in his Cabin). The title of the story comes from a quote in the play The Destiny of Me by writer and activist Larry Kramer, who is best known for co-founding the grassroots political group the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power (ACT UP).  In the first chapter of the book, Wagner references a New York Times article from July 3, 1981 entitled Rare Cancer Seen in 41 Homosexuals. The article discusses an outbreak of Kaposi’s Sarcoma in New York and San Francisco, a form of cancer that can form lesions on the skin and in the mouth. It wasn’t yet known, but this sub-type of KS was caused by the immune suppression from some of the first HIV cases in the country.

A black poster with a pink triangle on it. Underneath is white font that says "Silence = Death"

Wagner’s zombie virus (if it even is a virus) is particularly terrifying because its victims, referred to as “The Afflicted,” are still awake and aware of what’s happening to them and powerless to stop it. They can feel themselves rotting and falling apart, even being eaten by flies. The zombies don’t want to hurt anyone but are completely unable to control their hunger, so they’ll scream warnings to their victims and plead for forgiveness as they tear them apart. Most disturbingly, they’ll beg uninfected humans to kill them. I suspect the Wagner’s zombies are loosely based on AIDS victims, as zombies are often an allegory for infectious disease. In her journal article Attack of the Living Dead Virus: The Metaphor of Contagious Disease in Zombie Movies English professor Cecilia Petretto explains that, “Much of our fear lies within the nature of disease itself… Disease, ugly as death, has its association with evil stemming back to the Black Plague.” What was known about AIDS was largely based on misconception, and AIDS victims were shunned and regarded as dangerous, much like the Hollywood zombies. In 1986, an article published in the Journal of the American Medical Association about AIDS was entitled Night of the Living Dead II: Slow Virus Encephalopathies and AIDS. Dr. Arthur Fournier, who encountered his first AIDS patient in 1979 while working with Miami’s Haitian community, compared the virus to “the zombie curse.” Before the advent of active antiretroviral therapy (ART), an AIDS diagnosis was often a death sentence. In that way AIDS patients were like the living dead, dying but not truly dead as their bodies were slowly destroyed and they wasted away. Wagner even describes them as “Waiting for a cure. Waiting for the end. They weren’t dead yet, but they weren’t alive either. They were zombies.”

A group advocating AIDS research marches down Fifth Avenue during the 14th annual Lesbian and Gay Pride parade in New York, June 27, 1983. This year’s parade is dedicated to victims of the incurable disease AIDS which primarily afflicts homosexual men. (AP Photo/Mario Suriani)

A group advocating AIDS research marches down Fifth Avenue during the 14th annual Lesbian and Gay Pride parade in New York, June 27, 1983. This year’s parade is dedicated to victims of the incurable disease AIDS which primarily afflicts homosexual men. (AP Photo/Mario Suriani)

Kept alive for 26 years by his antiretroviral medication, Quinton is one of the few humans who survived the zombie apocalypse–survived being the operative word, as he’s not really living, just surviving. He’s all but given up on love and compassion or anything ever getting better. His love for his deceased boyfriend, Frankie, brought him so much pain he’s now become a gruff loner. It’s safe to say Quinton may also be suffering from survivor’s guilt, as both he and his boyfriend were HIV positive but he survived while Frankie died. Worse, Frankie died when Quinton wasn’t there. The story switches between Quinton’s memories of Frankie’s last days and the present.

While out scavenging for more antiretroviral, Quinton meets Billy, a fellow gay man who’s managed to survive the apocalypse and is also HIV positive. But while Quinton has become cold, Billy still openly cares for others, which Quinton sees as a liability. Billy also believes in working together and the importance of community, while Quinton prefers to avoid other people. We learn that one of the reasons Billy has stayed alive so long is because those who are HIV positive are immune to the zombie virus. I thought this was an interesting twist, as outside of The Last of Us, Cooties, and Blood Quantum I’ve never seen a human with a natural immunity to Zombies in media. AIDS ravages the immune system, yet for some reason protects Quinton and Billy from turning into Afflicted. Being the kind of person who reads science articles about theoretical zombie biology, I did want to know how it all worked, but honestly an explanation isn’t important to the narrative.  

I had a few nitpicks when it came to Billy, a Black character. While he was written well, “Black” was not capitalized when describing him. When referring to race, Black should always be capitalized. Billy was also described as having dreadlocks. As far as I know Billy was not a Rastafarian, therefore his hairstyle should be referred to as locs, not dreadlocks. While these examples are relatively minor issues, it does highlight the importance of doing your research and using sensitivity readers when writing about groups different than your own.

Wagner’s writing is very spartan; there are no grandiloquent descriptions or deep introspections. Instead, he gets his point across without the need for flowery adjectives or metaphors. The only part where this proved an issue for me was when it came to Quinton and Billy’s relationship, which felt very rushed. Otherwise, I appreciated Wagner’s straight-to-the-point style. It’s not often we get a new take on Zombies, but Wagner’s Afflicted managed to add a whole new level of horror to the undead. The history of AIDS is seamlessly interwoven, never forced, throughout the narrative. Wagner uses horror fiction to not only educate readers in a way that feels natural and respectful, but to capture the feelings of despair no doubt felt by many during the AIDS epidemic. The message is clear. Having AIDS may feel bleak, and every day is a fight for survival, but even amongst all the horror there is always love and hope.

Tags: AIDS, Apocalypse/Disaster, Book Review, Chronic Illness, Gay, LGBTQIA, Recommended, Zombies
Portrait of Lysbeth : A Gothic Novella by Rama Santa Mansa

Portrait of Lysbeth : A Gothic Novella by Rama Santa Mansa

Formats: digital

Publisher: Lingeer Press

Genre: Demon, Gothic, Historic Horror

Audience: Adult/Mature

Diversity: Black (African American) main character and author, minor gay character

Takes Place in: Sleepy Hollow, NY

Content Warnings (Highlight to view): Antisemitism, Child Abuse, Child Sexual Abuse, Childbirth, Death, Forced Captivity, Homophobia, Kidnapping, Medical Procedures, Oppression, Pedophilia, Physical Abuse, Racism, Rape/Sexual Assault, Sexism, Sexual Abuse, Slurs, Slut-Shaming, Verbal/Emotional Abuse, Xenophobia

Blurb

The year is 1676. We meet Lysbeth Luanda, a second-generation African freedwoman in New York, the former Dutch colony seized by the English, who, in a mere decade, have passed more cruel and oppressive restrictions on the free African community already living in the colony.After being orphaned at age 13, Lysbeth is forced to restart life all on her own––while working as a tavern waitress in Dutch and German-owned taverns along the banks of the Delaware and Hudson rivers. In this multinational milieu, she learns cosmopolitan skills and street philosophy from lovable lowlifes, brash buccaneers, African dreamers, indigenous heroines, and globetrotting Scandinavians. Lysbeth eventually finds a mentor in a Sephardi Jewish medical doctor from Curaçao, under whom she studies surgery and anatomy.

As the gloomy autumn season begins in 1676, the gruesome murders of three European women, by an unknown assailant in the isolated village of Sleepy Hollow, shocks the whole of New York.

Lysbeth’s mentor convinces the New York High Sheriff to appoint Lysbeth to go investigate the victims’ inexplicable cause of death and bring back a written coroner’s report. After an initial frosty reception by the villagers of Sleepy Hollow, Lysbeth gains new allies who assist her in her investigation

I received this product for free in return for providing an honest and unbiased review. I received no other compensation. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255: Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.

The Portrait of Lysbeth is set in Sleepy Hollow, but don’t expect mentions of the Headless Horseman or Ichabod Crane in this book. This story takes place about 100 years before the Revolutionary War and centers around Lysbeth, a free born Black woman, sent to investigate a serial killer (although that term wasn’t coined until the 20th century) in Sleepy Hollow, New York.

Lisbeth Anthonijsen, was a real person born around 1650 into the free Black community of New Amsterdam (what is now New York City). She started working as a servant for white colonists at a young age. In June 1661 she was accused of stealing wampum from the house where she was employed and the court ordered her to be beaten with a rod as punishment. In the winter of 1663, Lisbeth was spotted running away from a housefire at the Cregier household where she was employed. She was blamed for starting the fire and the court sentenced her to be enslaved by the Cregier family. Young Lisbeth was never given a chance. Mansa’s mission, as she puts it, was to get justice for Lisbeth by writing The Portrait of Lysbeth. She did a ton of research for this book, and it really adds to the story. I appreciate the time and effort Mansa put in to creating the setting and her main character, Lysbeth.

The fictional Lysbeth Luanda is an educated freed woman who becomes an indentured servant at the age of 13, after the death or her parents. She’s forced to work as a tavern waitress for the next 22 years, where she learns about the world from her diverse clientele.  Eventually, Lysbeth makes her way back to New Amsterdam where she apprentices for a Sephardic Jewish doctor, who sends her to Sleepy Hollow to act as coroner.

Some parts of the book are written in third person present perfect tense, which I felt was an interesting, if uncommon, choice. It’s fine, it just took a little while to get used to. It also jumps around quite a bit, from Lysbeth’s childhood to her time studying under the physician then back to the murder investigation. It can get a little confusing. But once I got used to it, the story flowed much more smoothly. I found the more fanciful elements genuinely creepy, like when a maid becomes possessed and chases Lysbeth through the house. The entire murder investigation has an eerie feeling, and not just because of the way the townsfolk stare at her. There seem to be things lurking in the woods, things Lysbeth, as a woman of science, refuses to believe in.

 I appreciated how Mansa not only avoids common racist literary tropes but makes a point to subvert them. In the beginning of the book, Mansa describes an unpleasant white man’s complexion as “milk cream.” I was amused to see, for the first time, a white person’s skin compared to food, something that routinely happens to Black characters written by white authors. It was also a nice change of pace to not have the color black associated with evil, but with spiritual strength and protection from evil. This is seen both is Lysbeth’s horse and the spirit wolf that protects her. Instead, Lysbeth believes that it is white animals that are to feared as they lack the spiritual protection of blackness. I also liked that the enslaved Africans were referred to as “enslaved,” rather than “slaves.” A seemingly small change, but to me a powerful one. By calling someone a slave, their identity is reduced to their circumstance. It dehumanizes them. An enslaved person is a person first, who has had slavery forced upon them.

In the book, both Native and African characters were referred to by their nations and not all lumped into the same group. For example, Lisbeth’s father is Kongolese, a people originally found in what is modern day northern Angola. The man who gave Lysbeth her witch gun is Mbundu. It was also refreshing to see Native history, which is often erased, acknowledged in the story, such as the Wampanoag leader Metacom (also known by the English name King Philip) defending his lands from the Puritans and the Moravian massacre. However, the Native representation did leave me questioning some of the author’s choices. There’s a rather brutal description of the 1643 Pavonia massacre, where the Dutch invaded what is now called Manhattan and massacred scores of Lenape people. I appreciate that it’s made clear that the settlers are living on stolen land (Lenapehoking) and that attention is brought to Native history, however, I felt weird about having a non-Native author write about Native trauma. If this were a white author doing it, it would be a more clear-cut example of exploitation of a marginalized group’s suffering. White people have been stealing from and exploiting Natives for hundreds of years, even though it’s not always done maliciously. As Debbie Reese, a Nambé Owingeh Pueblo scholar and educator, explains on her blog American Indians in Children’s Literature:

“…the history of White people taking from Native people is also filled with White people who befriend us because they have found themselves living in or near our communities.

Of that latter group, I wish they could form those friendships without saying “look at me and my Native friend.” Or, “look at the good I do for my Native friends!” Or, “I worked with them and they asked me to write this story about them.” Or, “I taught their kids and I learned from them and so, I am able to write books about them that you should buy because I know what I’m talking about.” Or, “Look! My book has a note inside from my Native friend or colleague. You can trust what you read in my book.”

They mean well. But I wish they could see past their good intentions. What they’re doing is exploitation.”

But Rama Santa Mansa isn’t white. She is a Black woman who wants to use her book to honor the untold stories of marginalized groups in what is now called the United States, but is that enough to give her a pass? Does her race make the story less problematic? It’s clear that Mansa did her best to portray the Lenape’s plight with respect, and wanted to include them as the first inhabitants of what is now called New York. There’s no colonialism being enforced, as Mansa is a Black author. She also did a significant amount of research for her book, but it left me wondering if she had reached out to Lenape or other Native scholars when writing it. There are certainly no Native books listed in her bibliography, no Native professors that she thanks in the acknowledgement, not even a reference to Indian 101 for writers.

I feel like at the very least a Native sensitivity reader would have been warranted. As Debbie Reese writes in her criticism of Justina Ireland’s book Dread Nation (another historic novel by a Black author), “It became clear to me that the reason her book fails in its representations of Native peoples is because she relied heavily on archival research. The “primary sources” she used are items in government archives–that are heavily biased.” This underlines the importance of using Native sources when discussing Native issues in addition to actually speaking to Native people. It’s also serves as a good reminder that just because a writer belongs to one marginalized group, it doesn’t mean they are qualified to write about another.

Despite the issues mentioned above I found the book overall enjoyable, with a highly detailed and well-researched setting and a strong Black woman protagonist. 

Tags: African American, American Indian, Black, Book Review, Demon, Gay, Gothic, Historic Horror, LGBTQIA, Own Voices, Recommended
Spectrum: An Autistic Horror Anthology edited by Aquino Loayza

Spectrum: An Autistic Horror Anthology edited by Aquino Loayza

Formats: Print, digital

Publisher: Third Estate Books

Genre: Body Horror, Folk Horror, Myth and Folklore, Psychological Horror, Sci-Fi Horror, Slahser/Killer

Audience: Adult/Mature

Diversity: Autistic characters and authors, trans, two-spirit, agender and non-binary characters and authors, gay characters, asexual author and characters, Mexican American author and character, Latinx authors, biracial Filipino and Taiwanese author, Afro-Indigenous author

Content Warnings (Highlight to view): Ableism, Alcohol Abuse, Animal Death, Bullying, Cannibalism, Child Abuse, Eating Disorder, Gaslighting, Gore, Illness, Medical Torture/Abuse, Mental Illness, Physical Abuse,  Rape/Sexual Assault, Self-Harm, Suicide, Torture, Transphobia, Verbal/Emotional Abuse, Violence

Blurb

Deep in the recesses of our minds are twisted realities that so closely mirror our own. In these pages, our nightmares are laid bare, made to manifest. There is no waking up; there is no going back once you fall into the tapestry of terrors that await. Are you ready? From courteous neighbors gone awry to the burning brightness of everlasting daylight comes Spectrum: An Autistic Horror Anthology reflective of the vast array of neurodivergent artists in our community and the things that keep them up in the night, the things they can’t look away from.

Don’t Blink.

I received this product for free in return for providing an honest and unbiased review. I received no other compensation. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255: Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.

Unfortunately, to review this, I do have to address some of the drama surrounding it. Anyone in the horror book sphere has probably heard it and it might turn some folks off this amazing anthology. However, you may not have heard about how Third Estate Books addressed it, and you shouldn’t pass on this book just because of a few bad apples.

One of the anthology’s original authors, Zach Rosenberg, was revealed to have a history of harassing and bullying women and femme identifying people. Writer and editor Evelyn Freeling details the harassment she received from Zach Rosenberg here. After Rosenberg posted a non-apology the next day Mattie Lewis shared her own negative experience with the author. Shortly afterward it was revealed that one of the editors of the anthology, Freydis Moon, had been impersonating a Latine person to sell their books and bullying others online. You can find details of the Freydis Moon controversy here. Third Estate Books released statements that both Moon and Rosenberg had been removed from Spectrum and that they would have no place on any other projects moving forward. Therefore, I would still recommend this book, as the publisher has taken steps to ensure the safety of everyone involved and removed anyone problematic. Now, on to the review!

I was happy to see that many of the authors and characters in the book were trans, agender, or non-binary (not surprising since trans and gender diverse folks are up to six times more likely to be autistic). There was also some BIPOC representation with Asian, Latine, and Afro-Indigenous authors, though I would have liked to have seen more. The stories were a very interesting mix. Some were straightforward and followed a classic story structure, while others felt more like stream of consciousness writing and focused more on  the poetic words used than forming a coherent plot (Survive Lot 666, Neighborly, and Discourses of the Seven Headed Monkey come to mind). But both styles worked well. A few of my favorites were Freedom was a Flaying by Onyx Osiris, Curse the Darkness by Die Booth, and The Sun Approaches Every Summer by Akis Linardos. The first of these stories was a violent revenge story where the bullies get violently massacred by the Aztec flayed god, Xipe Totec. I love revenge stories, and this one was particularly satisfying and twisted with a nice nod to the author’s heritage. Booth’s story was more of a “be careful what you wish for” tale, a genre of story I also greatly enjoy. The Sun Approaches Every Summer was particularly unique where a man with magical abilities slowly watches the town he lives in die because the sun is getting too close. As the townspeople fear witches, he’s forced to mask, hiding both his autism and his magical abilities. It reminded me of the Twilight episode The Midnight Sun, except in this story the protagonist is the only one immune to the heat due to his magic and is eventually the only one left alive.

The last story in the anthology, Different by Ashley Lezak, is one of only two in which autism is central to the story. In it, a little autistic girl named Abigail is “cured” by her parents who want a “normal” child.  One of ASAN’s (the Autistic Self Advocacy Network) core beliefs is that “autism cannot and should not be cured.” One thing many allistic and non-disabled people don’t seem to grasp is that Autism is part of who a person is and eliminating that would fundamentally change who they are. As Andrew Pulrang explained in an article for Forbes entitled What Do Disabled People Mean When We Say We Don’t Want A Cure? ,”Life without disabilities may at times have its attractions. It’s something that can be interesting, even fun to speculate about. But since it would often fundamentally change who we are, it’s not always a 100% attractive prospect.” The desire to “cure” autism is similar to the appeal of gay conversion therapy. Parents who can’t love their children as they are try to change them to be more “normal,” someone they can accept. This is what makes Lezak’s short story so frightening: the idea that not only can parents not love and accept their child as they are, but that they would fundamentally change her as a person without her consent. And while the procedure Ashley undergoes is fictional, it’s not too far removed from the lobotomies performed on unwilling patients until the 1970s to change their personalities and even sexual orientation.

The other one is Safe Food by Xochilt Avila, in which a teen named Cedar struggles with their avoidant and restrictive food intake disorder (unfortunately many autistic people also have eating disorders) and an abusive father. What their father doesn’t understand is that it’s not that Cedar doesn’t want to eat, it’s that they have such severe sensory issues around taste there are only certain foods they can palate, none of which their father ever gives them. This story is another example of how badly parents can treat their autistic children (although in Cedar’s case their dad probably would have been abusive even if they were neurotypical). Unfortunately, it isn’t uncommon for autistic individuals to be abused, and their abuse is often blamed on their “challenging behaviors” rather than society’s ableism. Often the media will portray the abuser with sympathy as they were “burdened” with having an autistic child.

But those were the only two stories that felt like they made autism and autistic issues major plot points. The others chose to focus more on undead creatures, migraines, curses, abandoned buildings with dead whales, monkey gods, music, haunted houses and a head in a box. And honestly, I like that. While autism is part of someone’s identity, it’s only one part and Spectrum allows its authors to be their full selves rather than just focusing on their autism. I also really enjoyed seeing how differently autism manifested in each of the fictional characters, underlying how autism really is a broad spectrum. Some had severe sensory issues requiring soft clothing and ear protectors, others didn’t. Some struggled socially, others did not. Some characters had trouble with eye contact while others didn’t. Some were single, while others in committed relationships (there seems to be a myth that autistic people don’t date or have sex, which is patently untrue). There was no “one size fits all.” Autism is just one aspect of their personalities instead of all it, like is often the case when neurodiverse characters are written by neurotypicals. But their autism also wasn’t downplayed like it didn’t matter at all. They got to be multidimensional people.

Tags: Adult, Anthology, Autism, Body Horror, Book Review, Disability, Filipino, Folk Horror, Latine/Latino, LGBTQIA, Mexican, Myths and Folklore, Neurodiversity, Non-binary, Own Voices, Recommended, Taiwanese, Trans
Green Fuse Burning by Tiffany Morris

Green Fuse Burning by Tiffany Morris

Formats: Print, digital

Publisher: Stelliform Press

Genre: Body Horror, Eco-Horror

Audience: Adult/Mature

Diversity: Mi’kmaw author and main character, queer main character, bisexual author

Content Warnings (Highlight to view): Animal Death, Death, Gore, Medical Procedures, Suicide, Verbal/Emotional Abuse

Blurb

The debut novella from the Elgin Award winning author of Elegies of Rotting Stars. After the death of her estranged father, artist Rita struggles with grief and regret. There was so much she wanted to ask him-about his childhood, their family, and the Mi’kmaq language and culture from which Rita feels disconnected. But when Rita’s girlfriend Molly forges an artist’s residency application on her behalf, winning Rita a week to paint at an isolated cabin, Rita is both furious and intrigued. The residency is located where her father grew up. On the first night at the cabin, Rita wakes to strange sounds. Was that a body being dragged through the woods? When she questions the locals about the cabin’s history, they are suspicious and unhelpful. Ignoring her unease, Rita gives in to dark visions that emanate from the forest’s lake and the surrounding swamp. She feels its pull, channeling that energy into art like she’s never painted before. But the uncanny visions become more insistent, more intrusive, and Rita discovers that in the swamp’s decay the end of one life is sometimes the beginning of another.

This is a book about grief, nature, and how death transforms. And when you’re finished, you’ll love wetlands and never look at fungi the same way again.

Despite being a landscape artist who relies on nature to make a living, Rita is very separated from it. She’s a germaphobe (due to her mother) who lives in the city with her white girlfriend Maddie. Rita also incorporates inspiration from her cultural heritage, despite being disconnected from that too. She’s barely in contact with the Mi’kmaw family. She only remembers bits of the Mi’kmaw her father taught her, and while she can recognize Gomgwejui’gasit (Suckerfish script), she can’t read it. This makes it difficult for her to talk to other family members when her father dies or receive the same level of community support as her half-brother, who lives on the reservation with the rest of their family. Rita feels alone in her grief because she’s so isolated from her family, with Maddie offering little support. Rita is not able to say goodbye to her father in his home, like she traditionally would, but in a hospital hooked up to machines, which traumatizes her. Rita’s grief over losing her father is so severe that she has PTSD. Morris describes her grief as a devouring green, a chlorophyll feeding and transforming Rita. She feels guilt (not uncommon for someone who’s grieving), afraid she’s not mourning “correctly” and that it’s selfish and impersonal.

Part of Rita’s alienation from nature also means she is not connected to the natural process of death and rebirth, despite feeling like she and the land are both dying, “flailing fish on a drying shore”. Mi’kmaw artist Alan Syliboy, who created an art exhibit that will focus on Mi’kmaw traditions around death, told CBC “…in Mi’kmaw society, death is not covered or hidden. When you’re a child, you’re aware [of it].” Rita, however, is surrounded by Euro-American culture, which rarely interacts with death outside the funeral industrial complex. One of the tenets of the death positivity movement is that hiding death behind closed doors and surrounding it with a  culture of silence  does more harm than good. Another tenet is that death should be handled in a way that “does not do great harm to the environment” and encourages green burials. Historically, both things would have been practiced in most cultures, but the invention of the toxic embalming process took death customs out of the home and created a for-profit industry. If you’re interested in learning more about the history of embalming and the birth of the funeral industry, my sister has made a great video about it here. Today, standard funeral practices such as embalming and cremation are devastating the environment, poisoning the land and air.

The theme of environmental devastation is present throughout the book. It’s the Frog Croaking Moon, Squoljikus (around May), but the heat from climate change makes the loons think it’s summer and Rita can hear their mating calls. The Mi’kmaw names for the months, like the Trees Fully Leafed Moon, no longer match seasonal changes. She describes the heat as “unbearable” and feels like she’s being smothered by it. A history of colonial violence is inexorably linked to the current environmental crisis. Colonizers brought with them industrialization and capitalism, treating nature and its resources as something to be exploited. Indigenous environmental justice addresses both the injustices suffered by Indigenous people and the current climate crisis. Kānaka Maoli (Native Hawaiian) organizer Kaniela Ing wrote “Indigenous communities are disproportionately impacted by the climate crisis because we maintain the closest ties to our natural environment.” He also wrote “Any climate solution would be incomplete without justice at its core. Kānaka Maoli, Native Hawaiians, should be central to the rebuilding and recovery efforts. We should have the authority to manage our lands and resources.”

The water protectors of the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation are probably the best known example of Indigenous environmental justice. There’s also Shiela Watt-Cloutier, an Inuit Indigenous rights activist, and author of the book “Right to be Cold.” In it she writes about how global warming is destroying her home by melting the permafrost and ice caps, and causing unpredictable weather patterns. Dario Kopenawa, a Yanomami leader, combats illegal gold mining and deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon. And Rick O’Rourke, fire and fuels manager of the Yurok Cultural Fire Management Council, uses traditional Yurok knowledge of controlled burns to prevent forest fires in the Klamath mountains of northern California.

Throughout the book nature is described in a way that makes it seem violent and alien, and Rita is shown to be fearful of it (she’s even terrified of harmless moths), with a good dose of body horror mixed in to represent her fear. But as time passes, and Rita feels her body being reclaimed by nature her fear slowly morphs into acceptance. She even considers walking into the forest and disappearing. Morris’ descriptions of Rita’s strong emotions and fears feels like a frenzied fever dream, with the environment becoming a character itself. Her descriptions of grief are powerful and moved me to tears as I remembered my own experiences with grieving. With Green Fuse Burning Morris has created a beautiful, deeply personal story that flows like poetry. 

Tags: Adult, American Indian, Bisexual, Body Horror, Book Review, Eco Horror, First Nations, Highly Recommended, LGBTQIA, Mi'kmaw, Own Voices

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This Thing is Starving Isobel Aislin

 

This Thing is Starving by Isobel Aislin. Highly Recommended. Read if you like Linghun, The Road to Hell by Terry Benton-Walker

Formats: Print, digital

Publisher: Independently Published

Genre: Ghosts/Haunting, Historic Horror

Audience: Adult/Mature

Diversity: Asexual main character, trans man character, lesbian character

Takes Place in: Pennsylvania

Content Warnings (Highlight to view): Alcohol Abuse, Child Abuse, Child Death, Death, Drug Use/Abuse, Forced Captivity, Gaslighting, Homophobia, Medical Procedure, Mental Illness, Pedophilia, Rape/Sexual Assault, Self-Harm, Sexism, Slurs, Slut-Shaming, Suicide, Transphobia, Victim Blaming, Violence

Blurb

It’s just a house, right? Houses can’t hurt. Houses can’t bleed.

But this house wants you to.

When the Waite family moves into their new home, they don’t bargain on being unwanted guests. But this house has deep-rooted, blood soaked history, and it’s angry. This Thing is Starving is an unflinchingly feminist love letter to the abused, bursting with feminine rage and told from the perspective of a haunted house.

Warning, this review discusses abuse, rape, and the sexual abuse of minors.

The house on 4377 N. Oscar St is haunted. But this is not your typical haunted house story. This story is told from the house’s point of view as it witnesses the tragedies that befall its owners throughout the year. The house is haunted by four women and one trans boy. The first, and oldest, is Lillian. She lived in the house with her husband in the 1920s and is the most unstable of the five ghosts. Jason was a teenaged, closeted trans boy from the 1950s. Lila was a lesbian from 1975 who hated her queerness. In 2002 the house was owned by a woman named Karissa, a child abuse survivor who struggles with low self-esteem. The final ghost is Kay, a teenaged girl who died in the house after it was abandoned by Karissa in the early 2000s. All the ghosts are victims of abuse, sexual assault, or other forms of violence at the hands of men, and they all met with tragic ends either by their own hand or at the hands of others.

Veronica Waite and her family are the house’s most recent inhabitants. Her mother, Louise, moved them there after escaping an abusive partner and is doing her best to start over. The house immediately takes a disliking to the family, with its wild and grubby children and Louise who it immediately labels a “bad mother” due to her love of wine, parentification of Veronica, and inability to keep track of all her children. The only exception to the house’s ire is Veronica, whom the house feels strangely drawn to. It views her as “a splotch of brightness amongst the gloom” and tries its best to communicate with the eldest Waite child. Veronica certainly seems happy in the beginning. She finds a new friend quickly, makes the cheerleading team, and even lands a hot, football playing boyfriend. She creates beautiful art to hang in her attic room. But then things start to unravel for the family, and the house can do little to stop it. As Veronica struggles with her asexuality and trying to take care of her siblings, she slowly learns how cruel the world can be to women and girls.

Most of the men in this story are horrible, even an old man whose obituary Louise is editing. I’m sure the “not all men” crowd will object to the fact that almost all the cisgender men (and boys) in the story are awful human beings (admittedly sometimes to the point of feeling like caricatures), but I believe this is intentional. The story is being told from the point of view of the house, and the house hates men. Because the house can only witness what happens within its walls, or the lives of the unhappy ghosts who haunt it, the house rarely gets to see the good parts of humanity. Statistically, the majority or murders and rapes are committed by men, so of course the ghosts are more likely to be victims of male violence, leading to the house believing  that all men are inherently bad. Toward the end of the book, a character named Owen shows up who is devoid of the toxic traits shown by most of the other male characters. While he clearly has a crush on his female coworker, he respects her boundaries, supports her decisions, and keeps his desire to protect her in check. But of course, the house can’t recognize that he’s a good man like the audience can, and immediately hates Owen.

Ironically, the house is reinforcing harmful gender stereotypes because it doesn’t understand the complexities and nuances of abuse. It can only see people as innocent victims (women, girls, and AFAB people) or evil perpetrators (cisgender men and boys). But characterizing men as inherently evil gives them permission to behave horribly, as it rejects the notion that they have control over their actions. Essentially, it’s a more insidious form of “boys will be boys.”  But men can, and need to, do better. The house also conveniently ignores the fact that women can not only support the harmful actions of men, but can be perpetrators themselves, and that men can be victims, but Aislin does not. Lillian is abused by her serial killer husband, but when she finally snaps and kills him, she doesn’t free the women he has chained in the basement. Instead, she replaces her husband as the predator in the house and kills them. She even slut shames her husband’s victims, justifying their rapes and murders to herself. Veronica’s younger twin brothers, Charlie and Sawyer, are also revealed to be victims of their father’s abuse (especially Sawyer). Sadly, like Lillian, Sawyer becomes an abuser himself, acting out what he experienced at the hands of his father on his little sister Leslie. The house makes an exception for Jason, a trans man, another victim of male violence, but not for the twins. I suspect that’s because the house is mildly transphobic, and sees Jason as a woman, even though he’s clearly a man and his ghost has a male-presenting form.

While the house feels a fierce protectiveness of Veronica and her baby sister, it shows a cold indifference to their brothers. Interestingly, Louise was also abused by her husband, yet the house doesn’t group her in with other victims. Instead, it views her with scorn for “failing” to protect her girls (but not the boys). This is another sign that the house is not entirely free from its own sexist bias and doesn’t fully understand how abuse works. The house’s hatred of Louise is understandable, with its strong desire to protect, it cannot comprehend a mother “failing” to do so. The problem is that the house expects her to be perfect just because she’s a mom, even though Louise is a victim herself and doing the best she can under the circumstances. She loves her children, and tries her best to protect them, even when the police fail to.

Sadly, judging mothers who are being abused is not an uncommon occurrence. In an interview with NPR, Mother Jones reporter Samantha Michaels explains “It’s basically sexism. Most of the legal experts that I talked with said that it comes down to a cultural expectation that women are responsible for what happens in the home. There’s an expectation that they should be the moral center of the family, that they should reign in the man’s worst impulses, and that they should do whatever they can to protect their child, even if it means, you know, sacrificing themselves.” Mothers can have their children taken from them, and are even sent to prison due to Draconian “failure to protect” laws. Kerry King is one such mother, who is serving a 30-year sentence in prison for not protecting her daughter from their abuser, John Purdy, who is only serving 18 years for abusing King and her daughter. On October 26, 2004 in the case of Nicholson v. Williams the New York Court of Appeals ruled that children who witnessed abuse were wrongfully removed from their mother’s care, and that their non-abusive mothers had not been “neglectful” simply because they were unable to protect their children from witnessing domestic abuse.

This Thing is Starving starts with statistics about the rape, exploitation, and abuse of women and girls. Aislin states that the story is dedicated to the women who never get justice and whose stories are never heard. The book reminds me of rape revenge films without the sensationalism/exploitation common for the genre, similar to Promising Young Woman and Revenge (both films notably have female directors). Except, in this story, most of the victims don’t get revenge. Revenge against an abuser may be satisfying in fiction, but it rarely happens in real life where men often get away with hurting women. This makes the book feel more realistic. And when the house, full of pain and rage, lashes out and tries to hurt abusers and rapists, it usually hurts the innocent as well.

For example, when the house violently kills the teen boys who attempt to rape Kay, she also gets caught in the crossfire and is killed. Hate and anger rarely hurt just the intended target, but others as well. As Maddie Oatman so eloquently puts in her rape revenge article for Mother Jones “These stories offer a retributive vision of justice, the violence of the man mirrored back onto him. Traditional gender roles are flipped—the woman is the predator, and the man is the prey—but the basic shape of the conventional revenge story is unchanged. Witnessing women take revenge in film and fiction may offer a cathartic thrill, but the trope can also function as a trap; vengeance replicates the same power structure the avenger wishes to hold accountable.” She further goes on to explain “But justice can and should mean something other than the balancing of harms, as prison and police abolitionists and other activists have argued. In resisting the carceral approach to punishment, they advocate a politics of structural change, of experimentation and openness to new social forms. These ideas demand a radical artistic approach to match, a breaking free of the traps of the revenge plot. A couple of recent works give us a sense of this. Call it the reparative mode.”

Aislin shows us that there are other, healthier ways to heal from trauma than hunting down and killing your rapist (something victims are sadly arrested for in real life). And honestly, I really appreciate that Aislin presents more realistic ways that survivors can heal from trauma, like leaning on others they trust for support and opening up about what happened.  Instead of perpetuating the cycle of violence like the house does, the survivors heal by breaking free of it. This Thing is Starving is certainly a difficult and heart-wrenching read that contains abortion, rape, revenge porn, conversion therapy, drug addiction, suicidal thoughts, an infant’s death, pedophilia, trauma, a minor doing sex work, and transphobia. But Aislin doesan amazing job handling the difficult topics of abuse, sexual assault, and trauma without making the story feel like trauma porn.

Tags: Adult, Asexual, Book Review, Ghosts/Haunting, Highly Recommended, Historic Horror, Lesbian, LGBTQIA, Queer, Trans
Feeding Lucy by Mo Medusa

Feeding Lucy by Mo Medusa

Formats: Print, digital

Publisher: Crooked Foot Press

Genre: Occult

Audience: Adult/Mature

Diversity: Lesbian main character, queer, non-binary author

Content Warnings (Highlight to view): Alcohol Abuse, Animal Death, Cannibalism, Death, Gore, Gaslighting, Gore, Sexism Verbal/Emotional Abuse, Violence, Vomit 

Blurb

Frankie left home ten years ago, abandoning the tall mountains of her small hometown for the tall buildings of the big city. Desperate for a new life, she was happy to escape her overly-critical mother and the Polish-American customs of her past.

But after a strange caller informs her of her mother’s sudden death, she’s reluctantly drawn back to the mountains for the first time in a decade.

Arriving days before the Scandinavian tradition of Sankta Lucia, the town is aglow with holiday lights and cheer—and the townspeople can’t stop talking about the annual Feast of St. Lucy.

When an unexpected blizzard rolls through, revealing the true nature of the feast—and the evil that resides in the mountains—the darkness of her mother’s past is brought to light once again.

Caught between tradition and terror, Frankie quickly learns that her mother’s overbearing influence won’t be stopped by her death alone.

Taking elements from The Night of the Witches in Polish folklore, and the real tradition of Sankta Lucia, Feeding Lucy is a story of grief, tradition, and the darkness that lives inside of us all.

I received this product for free in return for providing an honest and unbiased review. I received no other compensation. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255: Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.

Frankie, or Franciska, as her mother calls her, is suffering through an awkward holiday party at her job when she gets the call that her mother has died. Frankie had a complex relationship with her volatile mother, Lucja. The two lived together in an old farmhouse in the middle of nowhere along with Lucja’s ancient, cranky cat, Zula. Growing up, Frankie felt like her mother loved that old cat more than her. She doesn’t expect affection from her mother because it is so rarely given, and eventually stops expecting everything at all. Lucja is both overbearing and withholding as a mother, obsessing over everything her daughter does one moment, then punishing her with the silent treatment the next. Frankie fears disappointing her mother above all else, yet always seems to do so. Lucja judges everything her daughter does, what she wears, and even what she displays in her room. She grows to hate Lucja, and gets away from her the first chance she gets. Frankie moves to the city, gets a job at a magazine, and joins the local queer scene. She goes no contact with her mother and forgets all about her until she gets the call. Frankie has no interest in her mother’s body, or returning to their small town, but the coroner promises her that Lucja left her a “pretty penny” and she’ll need to come back to her hometown if she wants to collect the insurance money.

Franciska is from Kolbe, a town built by immigrants all from the same small village in Poland, whose descendants are determined to keep their traditions alive. To Franciska, it seems more like they can’t let go of the past. One of their most important traditions is Sankta Lucia (Saint Lucy’s Day) a Catholic feast day commemorating the Sicilian saint who was martyred during the Diocletianic Persecution by the Roman Empire. Saint Lucy’s Day is held on December 13th and is viewed as a precursor of Christmas Day. Because the name Lucia is derived from the Latin “lux,” meaning “light,” and her feast day is celebrated during the darkest time of year, Saint Lucy’s Day is considered a “festival of light” meant to drive away the darkness, similar to Diwali or Hannukah. Young girls dress up as Saint Lucy, in a white robe with a red sash and a wreath of candles on their heads. Songs are sung and saffron buns eaten.

A drawing of a girl with long blond hair and brown eyes wearing a white dress with a red sash. Oh her head is crown of green leaves, red berries, and six white candles. She is holding a seventh candle and it's casting shadows on her face. The picture has a dark blue background with a gold border and holly leaves surrounding the image.

An example of what girls wear for Saint Lucia

Interestingly, Lucia shares her holiday with another Lucy, the Scandinavian Lussi. Lussinatta, or Lussi’s Night is similar to the legend of the Wild Hunt, where Lussi and her band of trolls, witches, and undead spirits would spend the darkest night of the year searching for unsuspecting humans who had stayed out too late or not finished their chores. Those who had not finished spinning yarn or threshing could expect to have their chimneys smashed. Those who were especially unfortunate would be whisked away by Lussi, never to be seen again.

And wouldn’t you know it, Frankie has arrived in Kolbe just in time for the annual Saint Lucy’s feast her mother always organized and the town’s people are very invested in making sure Lucja’s estranged daughter attends the feast (red flag number one). But Frankie just wants to get her inheritance and go back to the city. That is, until she runs into her long-lost love, Stella, working at the coroner’s office. Frankie is so smitten with her former girlfriend that she immediately agrees to stay for Sankta Lucia despite her initial hesitation, and gives Stella a pass for her strange, mercurial behavior (red flag number two). She only briefly wonders how it’s possible that Zula, who was already an old cat when Frankie was a child, is still alive (red flag number three). Even the disturbing visions Frankie starts having during the day, and the horrible nightmares when she sleeps, don’t clue her in to the fact that something is deeply wrong in Kolbe.

I appreciated the depiction of Lucja and Frankie’s dysfunctional relationship. The more we learn, the clearer it becomes that Lucja is emotionally abusive to her daughter, but as is often the case when there’s no physical component, the abuse is not immediately obvious. Lucja uses guilt to manipulate and control her daughter, alternating between coldness and gentle affection. Her love is conditional and young Frankie feels like she has to earn it.

An estranged adult child returning to their small town only to discover the town’s dark secret is one of my favorite horror tropes (seen in such films as Salem’s Lot and Dead Silence), so this was right up my alley. The story has a witchy vibe and a dark, moody atmosphere that makes reading it feel like the calm before the storm (or blizzard in this case). This slow burn horror is perfect for a dark winter’s night.

Tags: Adult, Book Review, Lesbian, LGBTQIA, Non-binary, Occult, Queer
The Eyes Are the Best Part by Monika Kim

The Eyes Are the Best Part by Monika Kim

Formats: Print, audio, digital

Publisher: Erewhon Books

Genre: Psychological Horror

Audience: Adult/Mature

Diversity: Korean-American author, main character, and side characters, Black side character

Takes Place in: LA, California

Content Warnings (Highlight to view): Alcohol Abuse, Cannibalism, Death, Forced Captivity, Gaslighting, Gore, Medical Procedures, Mental Illness, Racism, Sexism, Slurs, Slut-Shaming, Violence, Vomit, Xenophobia

Blurb

Ji-won’s life tumbles into disarray in the wake of her Appa’s extramarital affair and subsequent departure. Her mother, distraught. Her younger sister, hurt and confused. Her college freshman grades, failing. Her dreams, horrifying… yet enticing.

In them, Ji-won walks through bloody rooms full of eyes. Succulent blue eyes. Salivatingly blue eyes. Eyes the same shape and shade as George’s, who is Umma’s obnoxious new boyfriend. George has already overstayed his welcome in her family’s claustrophobic apartment. He brags about his puffed-up consulting job, ogles Asian waitresses while dining out, and acts condescending toward Ji-won and her sister as if he deserves all of Umma’s fawning adoration. No, George doesn’t deserve anything from her family. Ji-won will make sure of that.

For no matter how many victims accumulate around her campus or how many people she must deceive and manipulate, Ji-won’s hunger and her rage deserve to be sated.

A brilliantly inventive, subversive novel about a young woman unraveling, Monika Kim’s The Eyes Are the Best Part is a story of a family falling apart and trying to find their way back to each other, marking a bold new voice in horror that will leave readers mesmerized and craving more.

Out of all the types of trauma and injuries the human body can suffer, eye trauma makes me the most squeamish. They’re so soft and vulnerable; whenever I know an eye injury is about to happen in a horror movie, I watch the scene through my fingers. The infamous eye scene in Zombi 2 still makes me squirm. So, I knew a story that centered around ripping out eyes and consuming them would be especially horrific. Interestingly, the book isn’t especially violent. There are only two scenes with any significant amount of blood, though ironically the stabbing and bludgeoning is less disturbing than the scenes of eye trauma and cannibalism (which have comparatively little gore).

After Ji-won Lim’s Appa (Korean for dad) abandons his wife and two daughters their Umma (the Korean word for mom) is completely inconsolable. Despite being a faithful and devoted wife, he still leaves her for another woman. She haunts the entrance to their apartment, hoping he will come back and saying she wants to die without him. It’s at that moment Ji-won realizes their roles are reversed. She has become the mother and Umma the daughter; it’s now Ji-won’s responsibility to take care of her little family.

When Umma was little, her parents left their children to search for work. Her other siblings decided to follow, afraid they would starve to death before their parents returned. But Umma refused to leave their home and instead waited for her parents to return, living off bark and snow throughout the harsh winter. When her family finally returned the following summer, they found her skeletal and delirious. Her older brother mistook her for a ghost.

To Ji-won, her mother’s decision to remain behind seems foolish and naive. She feels frustrated by what she sees as Umma’s stupidity and thinks she’s pathetic for spending her life making herself small and inconspicuous to men. But she also pities how every part of Umma’s life is characterized by suffering and relates to the fact that her mother is always alone. Ji-won is feeling abandoned, not just by her Appa but also her high school friends who all got into Berkeley when she didn’t.  Their loneliness makes both women particularly vulnerable to predatory men. Umma begins dating George, a white man with striking blue eyes. He says he speaks Korean, but is terrible at it and his pronunciation is awful. He clearly fetishizes Asian women as is clear when he leers at a Chinese waitress and later at Ji-won’s chest, makes gross sexual comments to Ji-won and her younger, underage sister Ji-hyun, and goes on trips to Thailand to sleep with the women there.

He also gets mad when they have a white waitress at a Chinese restaurant because he wants to experience “culture,” even though the restaurant is anything but authentic (it’s called Wok and Roll for crying out loud). George has a truck with a bumper sticker that says “I’m a Republican because we can’t all be on welfare,” complains loudly about how kids these days are “too soft” and “easily offended,” and reminiscences about “the good old days.” Essentially, he’s a loud, mediocre, abrasive white man who is thoroughly convinced of his own superiority. Understandably, the sisters can’t stand George, and they both resent Umma for bringing him into their lives, but the conflict averse Ji-won refuses to say anything about it.

Meanwhile, Ji-won befriends a boy in her class who seems like George’s polar opposite. Geoffrey presents himself as an ally. He takes women’s studies, wears “Nevertheless she Persisted” and Ruth Bader Ginsburg t-shirts, reads Ngozi Adichie’s We Should All be Feminists, and is horrified when a group of frat bros at their school say disgusting things about Asian women in front of Ji-won. Ji-won immediately likes Geoffrey and really wants to be his friend. She’s impressed by his intellect and his knowledge of the world. She believes they “get” each other and she doesn’t need her old friends anymore because she has Geoffrey now. But slowly red flags start to pop up. Geoffrey gets extremely jealous when Ji-won spends any time with her new friend (and possible crush) Alexis. At first Ji-won excuses this, thinking he’s just insecure and possessive of his friends like she is. Even when he snatches her phone out of her pocket to get her phone number, acts clingy, or pushes her to do things even after she’s said no, Ji-won continues to ignore his toxic behavior. She doesn’t realize Geoffrey is arrogant, loud, self-absorbed, and rude, just like George. His quips about feminism are just showing off, trying to make himself seem better than other men. He claims he’s an ally because he’s read about oppression, yet still gives Ji-won a thoughtless, racist gift for Christmas. George and Geoffrey are merely two sides of the same coin.

After Appa’s abandonment, the frat boys at her school saying disgusting about Asian women, George invading their life and being horrible, and Geoffrey’s face heel turn, Ji-won is boiling over with barely suppressed rage. Things come to a head when George wakes her from a nightmare and she quickly turns her anger on him and starts cussing him out. She apologizes for Umma’s sake, but the outburst has awoken something in Ji-won. Up until this point Ji-hyun has been begging her Unni (Korean for older sister, an honorific used by younger women to refer to older women) to do something about George and is frustrated by her inaction. Now Ji-hyun notices something is off about Ji-won and starts to worry about her, despite her sister’s insistence that she’s fine. Ji-won is a well-crafted, sympathetic anti-villain who focuses her anger on the toxic men who have wronged her. She cares deeply for her little sister, Ji-hyun, and her Umma, while still finding them frustrating (something I’m sure many daughters will relate to).

She’s also incredibly manipulative, cowardly, jealous, and unable to deal with her emotions in a healthy and mature way. Feeling betrayed that her friends are all going to Berkley, Ji-won hides an heirloom ring then blames one of her friends for stealing it. She continues to try and sabotage their relationships by sending texts pretending to be her other friends or their crushes because she’s upset that they’re “abandoning” her. When her friends finally figure out what she’s doing and try to have a calm conversation about how she hurt them, Ji-won shuts them down and leaves abruptly because she feels like she can’t face what she did. She doesn’t interact with them again for the rest of the story.

Later, Ji-won fucks with George the same way she did with her friends. Because he’s so convinced of his own self-importance and superiority, he’s easily manipulated by a “Oriental girl” he sees as beneath him. She starts by stealing money from his wallet, hiding his keys, and putting his driver’s license down the garbage disposal. Her “pranks” escalate and she destroys his most prized possession, the expensive Rolex his father gave him, and even gets him fired from his job, all why playing innocent. I love that she’s imperfect and gets to do bad things. I’ve mentioned it before, but imperfect, morally gray, sometimes villainous characters are my favorite! There’s too much of a push for protagonists to be perfect and heroic, but too often it leads to dull characters, in my humble opinion, at least. As horrified as I am at some of Ji-won’s behavior, I still love her as a character, and it thrills me that she gets to live out her (and I imagine many other Asian women’s) revenge fantasy.

I’ve touched before on how white men tend to fetishize Asian women and how harmful it is. As Nancy Wang Yuen, a sociologist and author of “Reel Inequality” told USA Today “The idea that Asian women are desirable and exotic and passive isn’t just an innocent stereotype or a desirable trait to envy. The shadowed side of that is they then become targets of hate, sexual violence and physical violence when they aren’t perceived as fully human and deserving of rights to be safe.” Media representation unfortunately only reenforces harmful hypersexualization of Asian women.

Top: Cio-Cio-San from a 2019 production of Madama Butterfly at the San Carlo Theater in Naples. Second row: (left) Gigi from the musical Miss Saigon (right), Fook Mi and Fook Yu from Austin Powers. Third row: (left) a Vietnamese sex worker propositioning Joker and Rafterman from the film Full Metal Jacket (right), Trang Pak hooking up with Coach Carr from film Mean Girls. Fourth Row: a series of sexy costumes loosely inspired by Chinese and Japanese clothing modeled by white women in “yellow face.”

 

One of the editors for this book, and my personal friend, Diana Pho, wrote this piece about being fetishized and harassed as a Vietnamese-American woman during an interview at New York Comic Con back in 2013. Diana was there to host a panel on representation in comics and had donned one of her Asian inspired steampunk outfits and was carrying a parasol. She was approached by a group of white men asking her to do an interview for a “TV show”. Though hesitant, Diana agreed. The interviewer (who she would later learn was Mike Babchik from the now defunct Man Banter) immediately started making sexist and racist comments (you can read a full account of the incident here).

Mike Babchik: So, if I were walking in the rain, could I pay you to walk next to me with your umbrella?

Diana Pho: Pay me?

Mike: If I paid you?

Diana: Then, buy your own umbrella.

Mike: No, I want to buy an umbrella with an Asian girl.

Diana: Then no.

It got even grosser from there.

Mike: Well in my experience, girls who stand next to me longer than 20 seconds get a cream pie.

Diana: I would give you a slap in the face.

Mike: (backing away) Really? Would you?

He then scurried off. As white men tend to do, Man Banter had completely underestimated Diana. They were expecting a weak, submissive, Asian girl who would giggle at their crude remarks, but what they got was a fight from a woman who wasn’t about to put up with their racism and sexual harassment. She told her story, and it wasn’t long before outlets like The Daily Dot, 18 Million Rising, and The Mary Sue all picked up the story. A petition was started to have Mike Babchik’s employer hold him responsible for the harassment. One of the employees from Man Banter sent Diana an apology on Tumblr, and promised to delete the so-called interview and agreed not to return to NYCC (though it sounds like the con was planning to ban them after Diana reported the incident to them). Diana mentioned that while she was angry that this happened to her, she was even more upset that this could be potentially happening to young women and underage girls who didn’t have the same resources, support, or confidence to call them out (I know I certainly wouldn’t have felt comfortable standing up to an adult when I was a teenager). For every Diana there are thousands of other Asian women who don’t get to tell their story. Women whose valid concerns are dismissed as “overreacting,” are shamed into believing it’s their fault, and that they should keep quiet about their experiences.

Diana Pho at New York Comic Con in 2013

The Eyes Are the Best Part is a slow-burn psychological horror story. I was half way through the book and wondering if perhaps I had picked up a thriller by mistake, when things started to get bloody and wild. It’s a suspenseful read, made even more tense by Ji-won’s deteriorating mental state and fraught relationships. The atmosphere is oppressive and claustrophobic, with the tiny, cramped apartment the family shares emphasizing Ji-won’s feeling of being trapped. Kim’s writing is as precise as a surgeon’s blade, gradually becoming more chaotic as Ji-won’s mind begins to unravel. There isn’t a page or paragraph wasted on filler or pointless details. Every line of the book carries meaning and weight.

Tags: Adult, African American, Asian American, BIPOC, Black, Book Review, Highly Recommended, Korean, Psychological Horror
American Ghoul by Michelle McGill-Vargas

American Ghoul by Michelle McGill-Vargas

Formats: Print, audio, digital

Publisher: Blackstone Publishing, Inc

Genre: Historic Horror, Vampire

Audience: Adult/Mature

Diversity: Black main character, Black side characters, Black/Native side character, Black author

Takes Place in: Georgia and Indiana

Content Warnings (Highlight to view): Alcohol Abuse, Child Abuse, Child Death, Death, Drug Use/Abuse, Forced Captivity, Oppression, Pedophilia, Police Harassment, Physical Abuse, Racism, Self-Harm, Slurs, Suicide, Verbal/Emotional Abuse, Violence, Vomit, Xenophobia

Blurb

You can’t kill someone already dead.

That’s what Lavinia keeps telling her jailer after—allegedly—killing her mistress, Simone Arceaneau. But how could Simone be dead when she was taking callers just a few minutes before? And why was her house always so dark?

Lavinia, a recently freed slave, met Simone, a recently undead vampire, on a plantation in post-Civil War Georgia. With nothing remaining for either woman in the South, the two form a fast friendship and head north. However, Lavinia quickly learns that teaming up with this white woman may be more than she bargained for.

Simone is reckless and impulsive—which would’ve been bad enough on its own, but when combined with her particular diet Lavinia finds herself in way over her head. As she is forced to repeatedly compromise her morals and struggle to make lasting human connections, Lavinia begins to wonder if is she truly free or if has she merely exchanged one form of enslavement for another. As bodies pile up in the small Indiana town they’ve settled in, people start to take a second look at the two newcomers, and Simone and Lavinia’s relationship is stretched to its breaking point…

I received this product for free in return for providing an honest and unbiased review. I received no other compensation. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255: Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.

American Ghoul is a unique historical novel with dark humor sprinkled throughout about a free Black woman, her white vampire companion, and all the trouble they get into. Lavinia, the forementioned free woman, hardly feels free after being released from her enslavement after the Civil War. With limited options and too afraid to leave the only home she’s ever known, Lavinia stays at the plantation where she was enslaved, helping her former mistress, Miss Tillie, run it as a brothel. It’s unpleasant work, but Lavina doesn’t dare hope for something better. That is, until she meets a strange white girl named Simone whom she rescues from burning up in the sun. Later she finds Simone drinking the blood of one of the brothel regulars.

Lavinia is an interesting character, as she’s an unlikeable victim who defies the mistaken belief that a victim must also be a good person. What happened to her both during and after her enslavement is horrific, and she’s certainly sympathetic, but Lavinia also does terrible things without feeling particularly guilty about it. She justifies what she does by saying she never killed anyone herself: she just helped Simone do it (which is hardly better). Personally, I love that she’s such a complicated character and gets to be an anti-villain. It’s clear she doesn’t think what she’s doing is that bad, as Lavinia does try to choose immoral people for her vampire friend to bleed dry. But other times, she just picks victims who have things she needs, like a new pair of boots. Lavinia is brave, no-nonsense, and blunt, and doesn’t have a lot of patience for Simone’s nonsense. While Simone is well-educated, Lavinia is clearly the smarter and more practical of the two, and it’s a miracle Simone even managed to survive a year on her own.

With the exception of Lavinia’s love interest, King, and a little girl that Simone murders, very few of the characters are fully good or bad. Take Miss Tillie, Lavinia’s former mistress, for example. She never beat Lavinia, gave her a new dress for Christmas, and speaks to her rather than at her, which causes Lavinia a small pang of guilt when Simone kills her. But while Miss Tillie is a far cry from Simon Legree, she was still complicit in the enslavement other human beings, an unforgiveable sin definitely worthy of making her a vampire’s dinner.

Simone is similar in that she’s not a good person and thinks that helping Lavinia makes up for the fact that she’s also controlling and doesn’t seem to care about anyone but herself (although she claims to love Lavinia). While you can’t help but feel bad for Simone for being turned into a monster against her will, it doesn’t justify the way she treats Lavinia. She wants her friend all to herself, gets extremely jealous if Lavinia spends time with anyone else, and will read her mind without consent to figure out what she’s been doing and where she’s been. Their relationship is toxic at best, and abusive at worst. With Simone’s possessiveness and their shared mental link, Lavinia eventually realizes their connection is almost as bad as the one that tethered her to Miss Tillie.

And of course, there’s the fact a vampire will kill anyone, even children, for food, especially if she’s hungry. Simone’s recklessness when it comes to food often leaves a mess for Lavinia to clean up and gets them both in trouble on numerous occasions. Simone is a spoiled white girl who claims she’s less racist than other white people, but as we learn more about her past it’s revealed that she’s not the white savior she claims to be. This is hinted at early on when Simone refers to Lavinia as her “chocolate savior” (ew), is completely unaware of how dangerous it is to be a Black woman walking around a white town on her own, and laughs when Lavinia doesn’t know how to read a globe. Because Simone also had a troubled past, she thinks she and Lavinia are similar, not realizing her white girl problems are nothing compared to being enslaved. Sometimes it feels like Lavinia is sacrificing everything for a white woman because of some misplaced sense of loyalty.

While the two women make their way to Chicago (a popular destination for formerly enslaved people) Lavinia meets a Romanian couple named Valerica and Victor Radut who own a store where she sells the belongings of Simone’s victims.  The couple recognize Simone as a vampire immediately, and believe Lavinia can protect them from her, since Simone (sort of) does what she says. They believe that in order to kill a vampire you must cut off the head, burn the heart, then drink the ashes for protection (like they did to the body of poor Mercy Brown in 1892). Despite claiming Valerica as a friend, Lavinia is ultimately unmoved by the unfortunate fate that befalls the Raduts because, as she puts it, “Simone was my priority. Maybe the only friend I needed.” Other people who make the mistake of getting close to Lavinia suffer similar fates. It’s hard to decide whether you want the them to face justice or not, or if you want them to get away with all the horrible things they’ve done.

Tags: Adult, African American, BIPOC, Black, Book Review, Historic Horror, vampire
Splinter by Jasper Hyde

Splinter by Jasper Hyde

Formats: Print, digital

Publisher: The Magnificent Engine

Genre: Folk Horror, Killer/Slasher, Occult, Myth and Folklore, Romance

Audience: Adult/Mature

Diversity: Black main character and author, Filipino British main character, asexual (demisexual) main character and author, bisexual main character, main character with ADHD, Trans masc/Non-binary author

Takes Place in: Sleepy Hollow, NY

Content Warnings (Highlight to view): Ableism, Bullying, Death, Drug Use/Abuse, Medical Procedures, Mental Illness, Police Harassment, Racism, Torture 

Blurb

In a small town hidden behind the hills of New York, things are far from ordinary. As Sleepy Hollow’s youngest Medical Examiner, the pressure intensifies for Dr. Drusilla Van Tassel when the headless bodies of her sister Katrina’s friends start surfacing. Meanwhile, Drusilla’s ex-lover Ichabod Crane returns to town, dredging up feelings better left buried.

Things take a turn for the worst when Drusilla comes face-to-face with the Headless Horseman, who is back to settle old scores – and she and her sister are the perfect targets. Drusilla can repel the horseman with an unknown power, but her sister isn’t so lucky, and she goes missing.

However, when Drusilla discovers Ichabod is a monster hunter, she has no other choice but to turn to him for help. Even if that means working with a man she feels an inexplicable attraction to. Will they find Katrina and banish the headless horseman once and for all?

I received this product for free in return for providing an honest and unbiased review. I received no other compensation. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255: Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.

If you decide to read Splinter, keep in mind that this story comes from a small, indie publisher and didn’t benefit from a professional editor. There are quite a few grammar errors sprinkled throughout. I didn’t find them particularly distracting, and the quality of the writing was still good, but I know this will bother some readers. I would encourage them to give Splinter a chance anyway, as it really is an enjoyable story and I hope my review will encourage you to check it out.

Dr. Drusilla Van Tassel is our main character, and I kind of love her. She’s an introverted, bisexual, horror fan who just wants to do her job as a medical examiner, and I can relate to that. Her sister Katrina, on the other hand, is outgoing, popular, and prefers her rich, white friends over her own sister. But Drusilla is just as hostile to Katrina, so it’s not your stereotypical mean girl situation. I found it interesting how Drusilla can relax and use AAVE in front of her Black assistant (and former lover) Kyndall, but codeswitches with Katrina like she does around white people. It underlines how “other” Katrina is from her and how uncomfortable Drusilla feels in her own sister’s presence. Although, she does feel guilty for not doing more to support Katrina when her husband Brom died under mysterious circumstances.

One night Drusilla is called in to deal with a murder, and the victim is no other than Denis Carter, Katrina’s close friend. Poor Drusilla just can’t catch a break! At the crime scene, we see firsthand the racism and sexism Drusilla faces on a regular basis from the law enforcement officials she has to work alongside when one rookie cop tries to stop her from entering the crime scene. Despite having graduated Magna Cum Laude from Cornell she still gets treated as a “Black girl playing dress up.”

Then Katrina’s former friend and lover, Ichabod Crane (who I like to imagine looks like Piolo Pascual), shows up out of the blue and starts pestering her for details of the strange murder. Because they ended things badly, she isn’t exactly thrilled to see him. But when another murder takes place, the two are forced to set aside their differences and work together. What follows is a fun, supernatural mystery with a great sex scene. This was the first time in a story I’ve seen someone on the asexual spectrum have sex. Not only are asexual character underrepresented in fiction, but they’re often stereotyped as always being completely sex adverse, which just isn’t true, especially in the case of people who are demisexual like this particular character.

I really appreciate that Hyde not only put the effort into getting Filipino sensitivity readers, but also included their email in the beginning of the story for anyone to reach out to them if they made any mistakes in representation. I wish more authors would do that!

If you were a fan of the Fox tv series Sleepy Hollow that aired from 2013-2017, but hated the way they treated Nicole Beharie and her character, this book is for you. It feels like a remedy to the show without being a fix-it fanfiction. Instead, Splinter gets to be its own thing. It’s a quick, compelling read that sucks you in, helped in no small part by its compelling and complex characters.

Tags: ADHD, Adult, African American, Asexual, BIPOC, Bisexual, Black, Book Review, Disability, Filipino, Folk Horror, Killer/Slasher, LGBTQIA, Myths and Folklore, Non-binary, Occult, Own Voices, Recommended, Romance, Southeast Asian, Trans
Another Elizabeth by Elle Mitchell

Another Elizabeth by Elle Mitchell

Formats: Print, audio, digital

Publisher: Little Key Press

Genre: Killer/Slasher

Audience: Adult/Mature

Diversity: Main character and authors with hypermobile Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome (hEDS), bisexual main character

Takes Place in: Oregon

Content Warnings (Highlight to view): Ableism, Animal Abuse, Animal Death, Body Shaming, Imagined Cannibalism, Imagined Child Abuse, Imagined Child Death, Death, Forced Captivity, Gaslighting, Mental Illness, Pedophilia, Physical Abuse, Police Harassment, Self-Harm, Slurs, Sexism, Suicide, Verbal/Emotional Abuse, Violence

Blurb

Another Elizabeth is a gripping literary psychological crip horror novel that readers will sink their teeth into. Fans of dark humor and challenging fiction will be thrilled to delve into the mind of a deeply flawed disabled woman with a desire to kill.

Elizabeth’s life is taking a turn.
She has three jobs, a boyfriend that loves her too much, and a recent diagnosis of Hypermobile Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome. She’s coming apart at the seams. Now all she cares about is keeping her promise to her younger self before her body fails her—kill without getting caught.

Will she physically be able to satisfy her urge while maintaining her carefully built façade of normalcy? And if so, will she be able to stop with just one victim?

I received this product for free in return for providing an honest and unbiased review. I received no other compensation. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255: Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.

Inspiration porn is a real problem when it comes depicting people with disabilities. The term was originally coined by disability activist and comedian Stella Young. As Young puts it in her 2014 TED talk in Sydney, “We’re not real people. We are there to inspire.” She explains that we have been sold the lie that disability is a bad thing, and therefore living with a disability makes you exceptional. One of the reasons I love Another Elizabeth is because I thought of inspiration porn while I was reading it and what the reactions of able-bodied people might be. Elizabeth has Hypermobile Ehlers-Danlos syndrome (hEDS), which, if you’re not familiar, is a genetic condition that causes connective tissue to weaken resulting in hypermobility in the joints and chronic pain. She works at a grocery store called Juno Foods with her boyfriend, teaches ESL classes, and kills people who piss her off.  That’s right, Elizabeth “overcomes” her invisible disability despite struggling with pain and weakness to become a serial killer! How inspirational!

A drawing of Elizabeth wearing a gray T-shirt and jeans and leaning on a purple cane. In her other hand she holds a bloody knife. Her clothing is covered in blood. Behind her is a black, blood spattered background with bloody red lettering that reads "the only disability in life is a bad attitude."

All joking aside, I loved reading a book where the main character has  disability, written by someone with a disability (and not some well-meaning ally) that isn’t meant to inspire non-disabled people or demonize people with disabilities. Elizabeth is a great character. She shows hints of being a sociopath, is an expert manipulator, and often fantasizes about hurting others. When her doctor suggests she start using a cane, Elizabeth immediately wonders if she’ll use it for anything other than bashing people’s brains in. Even innocent things bring out the darkness in Elizabeth. When she sees babies, she imagines how easy it would be to break their fingers, and when she makes candy, she fantasizes about putting poison in it.

Yet she still seems to care about her friend, her ESL students, and her himbo boyfriend on some level, so she’s not completely heartless. Or at least Elizabeth admits she wouldn’t murder any of them. Awwwwww. In fact, she only kills people who she believes deserve it, like an ableist woman who abandoned her family after her husband became paralyzed, an obnoxious coworker, and maybe the odd pedestrian here and there. The fact that she happens to like their teeth is just a bonus. In her free time Elizabeth watches forensics shows and reads true crime novels for inspiration. This means she is meticulous about covering her tracks. I found myself greatly appreciating Elizabeth’s hyper-competence when it came to crime, carefully planning each murder down to the very last detail. Elizabeth is also someone who is usually good at whatever she tries, despite putting little effort into it, and this seems to apply to being a serial killer. Because she can’t physically overpower her victims, Elizabeth gets very creative finding ways to make her murders more accessible.

Villains with disabilities in fiction are often portrayed in a problematic way, at least when written by the non-disabled. They are the monstrous “other,” whose moral corruption manifests physically as disability. Jan Grue, is a Norwegian academic, author and actor (best known for role as Ivar Salvesen in Occupied) who uses a wheelchair. In his Guardian article The Disabled Villain: Why Sensitivity Reading Can’t Kill Off This Ugly Trope Grue writes “This particular trope, wherein a character’s moral and physiological natures mirror each other, is as universal as it is ancient. It is reflected in the philosophy of Plato, in commonplace phrases like ‘a healthy mind in a healthy body,’ and in the foundational texts of the cultural canon. In Buddhist tradition, too, disability has been construed as an impediment to understanding and enlightenment – and even, for some, as a punishment for actions in a past life.”

The Take’s video Why the “Disabled Villain” Trope is So Offensive, explains that disability is “used as a metaphor for villainy or moral failing.” In an interview with Den of Geek after the release of Skyfall, producer Michael G. Wilson explains, “It’s very much a Fleming device that he uses throughout the stories – the idea that physical deformity and personality deformity go hand in hand in some of these villains. Sometimes it’s a motivating factor in their life, and what makes them the way they are.” In other words, those with disabilities are assumed to despise their condition because being disabled is undesirable, and they seek to harm the able bodied. Unfortunately, this metaphor can cause real-life harm, as it reinforces the idea that having a disability is “bad” and difference is “scary.” Horror is especially notorious for using the “Evil Cripple” trope, with famous villains like Freddy, Jason, and Leatherface all sporting physical disfigurements. Other famous examples of disabled villains are the Phantom from The Phantom of the Opera, multiple James Bond antagonists, Mr. Glass in Unbreakable, Mason Verger from Hannibal, Captain Hook from Peter Pan, Mr. Potter from It’s a Wonderful Life, and Darth Vader from Star Wars.

 

Mr. Glass from Unbreakable (top left), The Phantom from the Phantom of the Opera (top right), Captain Hook from Hook, Raoul Silva from Skyfall, Freddy Krueger from Nightmare on Elm Street (bottom left), and Mason Verger from Hannibal (bottom right). None of the characters pictured here are portrayed by disabled or disfigured actors.

lizabeth is a villain protagonist with a disability, she’s an incredibly well written, well-rounded character. She’s an evil (or at least morally gray) character who also has a disability, rather than a character who is evil because of a disability. Most importantly, Elizabeth is written in such a way that the audience is rooting for her sociopath self and able to relate to her. (Or at least I was. Who among us hasn’t fantasized about killing awful people?) Usually, villains with disabilities are written in such a way that they feel alien and are frightening in their strangeness, and this is accentuated by their disability or disfigurement.  Instead of seeming scary because of her disability, Elizabeth finds the opposite to be true. People assume she’s helpless: something she uses to her advantage. When suspicion falls on her, Elizabeth plays up her disability, relying on other people’s ableism so they think she’s innocent. It also helps that the author has hEDS herself, so the book is Own Voices and Elizabeth’s character just hits differently.

Because the narration is first person, we get to see Elizabeth’s detached way of looking at the world and her twisted way of thinking. We get an intimate look at her struggles, both keeping her “other life” a secret and trying to kill victims when she’s not as strong as an able-bodied male killer. And of course, we get to learn about her frustration when dealing with her chronic pain and her boyfriend’s annoying abundance of concern for her. He’s convinced that she’s too fragile to function, yet doesn’t have the same concern for her comfort during sex. Side note, I love that Elizabeth gets to have hot sex scenes with her boyfriend. People with disabilities almost never get to have sex in fiction. In fact, outside of Mat Fraser in American Horror Story, George Robinson in Sex Education, and Peter Dinklage in Game of Thrones, I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone with a disability have sex in popular media (and of course those examples are all white, cisgendered men with conventionally attractive faces).

Another Elizabeth is a fascinating look into a twisted mind with a character that you can’t help but root for despite the fact she’s a serial killer who manipulates others. The story is the perfect length, not so long that it drags but not so short that it feels rushed. The second half of the book is especially exciting and the story is interspersed with bits of dark humor.

Tags: Adult, Book Review, Cane user, Chronic Illness, Disability, Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome, Killer/Slasher, Own Voices, Physical Disability, Recommended
The Only Safe Place Left is the Dark by Warren Wagner

The Only Safe Place Left is the Dark by Warren Wagner

Formats: Print, digital

Publisher: Ghoulish Books

Genre: Apocalypse/Disaster, Zombie

Audience: Adult/Mature

Diversity: Gay man author and main characters, main characters with AIDS

Content Warnings (Highlight to view): Animal Death, Child Death, Death, Drug Use/Abuse, Homophobia, Illness, Medical Procedure, Slurs, Suicide

Blurb

In The Only Safe Place Left is the Dark, an HIV positive gay man must leave the relative safety of his cabin in the woods to brave the zombie apocalypse and find the medication he needs to stay alive.

I received this product for free in return for providing an honest and unbiased review. I received no other compensation. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255: Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.

I was born during the beginning of the AIDS outbreak, during which my mom lost many of her gay friends. I remember the deep-rooted fear of AIDS that existed during my childhood. In grade school, we attended assemblies about the dangers of AIDS and how it was spread. There were public service ads about AIDS on every TV station. Parents wore red ribbons. As a queer teen I mourned the loss of an entire generation of gay and bisexual men.

One of the doctors I work with through my hospital, a gay man in his eighties who was one of the first physicians to treat AIDS patients, told me about the weekly funerals he attended. No one cared that gay men were dying of a mysterious illness during the conservative Regan administration. Little research was done on the epidemic. This doctor was one of the few who treated AIDS patients back then, using his knowledge of pharmacology to create a treatment regimen through off-label uses of already existing drugs. Of course, he couldn’t openly advertise his services due to the stigma in the medical community, so his patients found him through a whisper network and would visit him under the guise of getting a routine physical.

The Only Safe Place Left is the Dark is a unique zombie apocalypse novella about the AIDS epidemic. The cover of book is meant to invoke the iconic Silence=Death AIDS design from the late 1980s (a poster Quinton keeps in his Cabin). The title of the story comes from a quote in the play The Destiny of Me by writer and activist Larry Kramer, who is best known for co-founding the grassroots political group the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power (ACT UP).  In the first chapter of the book, Wagner references a New York Times article from July 3, 1981 entitled Rare Cancer Seen in 41 Homosexuals. The article discusses an outbreak of Kaposi’s Sarcoma in New York and San Francisco, a form of cancer that can form lesions on the skin and in the mouth. It wasn’t yet known, but this sub-type of KS was caused by the immune suppression from some of the first HIV cases in the country.

A black poster with a pink triangle on it. Underneath is white font that says "Silence = Death"

Wagner’s zombie virus (if it even is a virus) is particularly terrifying because its victims, referred to as “The Afflicted,” are still awake and aware of what’s happening to them and powerless to stop it. They can feel themselves rotting and falling apart, even being eaten by flies. The zombies don’t want to hurt anyone but are completely unable to control their hunger, so they’ll scream warnings to their victims and plead for forgiveness as they tear them apart. Most disturbingly, they’ll beg uninfected humans to kill them. I suspect the Wagner’s zombies are loosely based on AIDS victims, as zombies are often an allegory for infectious disease. In her journal article Attack of the Living Dead Virus: The Metaphor of Contagious Disease in Zombie Movies English professor Cecilia Petretto explains that, “Much of our fear lies within the nature of disease itself… Disease, ugly as death, has its association with evil stemming back to the Black Plague.” What was known about AIDS was largely based on misconception, and AIDS victims were shunned and regarded as dangerous, much like the Hollywood zombies. In 1986, an article published in the Journal of the American Medical Association about AIDS was entitled Night of the Living Dead II: Slow Virus Encephalopathies and AIDS. Dr. Arthur Fournier, who encountered his first AIDS patient in 1979 while working with Miami’s Haitian community, compared the virus to “the zombie curse.” Before the advent of active antiretroviral therapy (ART), an AIDS diagnosis was often a death sentence. In that way AIDS patients were like the living dead, dying but not truly dead as their bodies were slowly destroyed and they wasted away. Wagner even describes them as “Waiting for a cure. Waiting for the end. They weren’t dead yet, but they weren’t alive either. They were zombies.”

A group advocating AIDS research marches down Fifth Avenue during the 14th annual Lesbian and Gay Pride parade in New York, June 27, 1983. This year’s parade is dedicated to victims of the incurable disease AIDS which primarily afflicts homosexual men. (AP Photo/Mario Suriani)

A group advocating AIDS research marches down Fifth Avenue during the 14th annual Lesbian and Gay Pride parade in New York, June 27, 1983. This year’s parade is dedicated to victims of the incurable disease AIDS which primarily afflicts homosexual men. (AP Photo/Mario Suriani)

Kept alive for 26 years by his antiretroviral medication, Quinton is one of the few humans who survived the zombie apocalypse–survived being the operative word, as he’s not really living, just surviving. He’s all but given up on love and compassion or anything ever getting better. His love for his deceased boyfriend, Frankie, brought him so much pain he’s now become a gruff loner. It’s safe to say Quinton may also be suffering from survivor’s guilt, as both he and his boyfriend were HIV positive but he survived while Frankie died. Worse, Frankie died when Quinton wasn’t there. The story switches between Quinton’s memories of Frankie’s last days and the present.

While out scavenging for more antiretroviral, Quinton meets Billy, a fellow gay man who’s managed to survive the apocalypse and is also HIV positive. But while Quinton has become cold, Billy still openly cares for others, which Quinton sees as a liability. Billy also believes in working together and the importance of community, while Quinton prefers to avoid other people. We learn that one of the reasons Billy has stayed alive so long is because those who are HIV positive are immune to the zombie virus. I thought this was an interesting twist, as outside of The Last of Us, Cooties, and Blood Quantum I’ve never seen a human with a natural immunity to Zombies in media. AIDS ravages the immune system, yet for some reason protects Quinton and Billy from turning into Afflicted. Being the kind of person who reads science articles about theoretical zombie biology, I did want to know how it all worked, but honestly an explanation isn’t important to the narrative.  

I had a few nitpicks when it came to Billy, a Black character. While he was written well, “Black” was not capitalized when describing him. When referring to race, Black should always be capitalized. Billy was also described as having dreadlocks. As far as I know Billy was not a Rastafarian, therefore his hairstyle should be referred to as locs, not dreadlocks. While these examples are relatively minor issues, it does highlight the importance of doing your research and using sensitivity readers when writing about groups different than your own.

Wagner’s writing is very spartan; there are no grandiloquent descriptions or deep introspections. Instead, he gets his point across without the need for flowery adjectives or metaphors. The only part where this proved an issue for me was when it came to Quinton and Billy’s relationship, which felt very rushed. Otherwise, I appreciated Wagner’s straight-to-the-point style. It’s not often we get a new take on Zombies, but Wagner’s Afflicted managed to add a whole new level of horror to the undead. The history of AIDS is seamlessly interwoven, never forced, throughout the narrative. Wagner uses horror fiction to not only educate readers in a way that feels natural and respectful, but to capture the feelings of despair no doubt felt by many during the AIDS epidemic. The message is clear. Having AIDS may feel bleak, and every day is a fight for survival, but even amongst all the horror there is always love and hope.

Tags: AIDS, Apocalypse/Disaster, Book Review, Chronic Illness, Gay, LGBTQIA, Recommended, Zombies
Portrait of Lysbeth : A Gothic Novella by Rama Santa Mansa

Portrait of Lysbeth : A Gothic Novella by Rama Santa Mansa

Formats: digital

Publisher: Lingeer Press

Genre: Demon, Gothic, Historic Horror

Audience: Adult/Mature

Diversity: Black (African American) main character and author, minor gay character

Takes Place in: Sleepy Hollow, NY

Content Warnings (Highlight to view): Antisemitism, Child Abuse, Child Sexual Abuse, Childbirth, Death, Forced Captivity, Homophobia, Kidnapping, Medical Procedures, Oppression, Pedophilia, Physical Abuse, Racism, Rape/Sexual Assault, Sexism, Sexual Abuse, Slurs, Slut-Shaming, Verbal/Emotional Abuse, Xenophobia

Blurb

The year is 1676. We meet Lysbeth Luanda, a second-generation African freedwoman in New York, the former Dutch colony seized by the English, who, in a mere decade, have passed more cruel and oppressive restrictions on the free African community already living in the colony.After being orphaned at age 13, Lysbeth is forced to restart life all on her own––while working as a tavern waitress in Dutch and German-owned taverns along the banks of the Delaware and Hudson rivers. In this multinational milieu, she learns cosmopolitan skills and street philosophy from lovable lowlifes, brash buccaneers, African dreamers, indigenous heroines, and globetrotting Scandinavians. Lysbeth eventually finds a mentor in a Sephardi Jewish medical doctor from Curaçao, under whom she studies surgery and anatomy.

As the gloomy autumn season begins in 1676, the gruesome murders of three European women, by an unknown assailant in the isolated village of Sleepy Hollow, shocks the whole of New York.

Lysbeth’s mentor convinces the New York High Sheriff to appoint Lysbeth to go investigate the victims’ inexplicable cause of death and bring back a written coroner’s report. After an initial frosty reception by the villagers of Sleepy Hollow, Lysbeth gains new allies who assist her in her investigation

I received this product for free in return for providing an honest and unbiased review. I received no other compensation. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255: Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.

The Portrait of Lysbeth is set in Sleepy Hollow, but don’t expect mentions of the Headless Horseman or Ichabod Crane in this book. This story takes place about 100 years before the Revolutionary War and centers around Lysbeth, a free born Black woman, sent to investigate a serial killer (although that term wasn’t coined until the 20th century) in Sleepy Hollow, New York.

Lisbeth Anthonijsen, was a real person born around 1650 into the free Black community of New Amsterdam (what is now New York City). She started working as a servant for white colonists at a young age. In June 1661 she was accused of stealing wampum from the house where she was employed and the court ordered her to be beaten with a rod as punishment. In the winter of 1663, Lisbeth was spotted running away from a housefire at the Cregier household where she was employed. She was blamed for starting the fire and the court sentenced her to be enslaved by the Cregier family. Young Lisbeth was never given a chance. Mansa’s mission, as she puts it, was to get justice for Lisbeth by writing The Portrait of Lysbeth. She did a ton of research for this book, and it really adds to the story. I appreciate the time and effort Mansa put in to creating the setting and her main character, Lysbeth.

The fictional Lysbeth Luanda is an educated freed woman who becomes an indentured servant at the age of 13, after the death or her parents. She’s forced to work as a tavern waitress for the next 22 years, where she learns about the world from her diverse clientele.  Eventually, Lysbeth makes her way back to New Amsterdam where she apprentices for a Sephardic Jewish doctor, who sends her to Sleepy Hollow to act as coroner.

Some parts of the book are written in third person present perfect tense, which I felt was an interesting, if uncommon, choice. It’s fine, it just took a little while to get used to. It also jumps around quite a bit, from Lysbeth’s childhood to her time studying under the physician then back to the murder investigation. It can get a little confusing. But once I got used to it, the story flowed much more smoothly. I found the more fanciful elements genuinely creepy, like when a maid becomes possessed and chases Lysbeth through the house. The entire murder investigation has an eerie feeling, and not just because of the way the townsfolk stare at her. There seem to be things lurking in the woods, things Lysbeth, as a woman of science, refuses to believe in.

 I appreciated how Mansa not only avoids common racist literary tropes but makes a point to subvert them. In the beginning of the book, Mansa describes an unpleasant white man’s complexion as “milk cream.” I was amused to see, for the first time, a white person’s skin compared to food, something that routinely happens to Black characters written by white authors. It was also a nice change of pace to not have the color black associated with evil, but with spiritual strength and protection from evil. This is seen both is Lysbeth’s horse and the spirit wolf that protects her. Instead, Lysbeth believes that it is white animals that are to feared as they lack the spiritual protection of blackness. I also liked that the enslaved Africans were referred to as “enslaved,” rather than “slaves.” A seemingly small change, but to me a powerful one. By calling someone a slave, their identity is reduced to their circumstance. It dehumanizes them. An enslaved person is a person first, who has had slavery forced upon them.

In the book, both Native and African characters were referred to by their nations and not all lumped into the same group. For example, Lisbeth’s father is Kongolese, a people originally found in what is modern day northern Angola. The man who gave Lysbeth her witch gun is Mbundu. It was also refreshing to see Native history, which is often erased, acknowledged in the story, such as the Wampanoag leader Metacom (also known by the English name King Philip) defending his lands from the Puritans and the Moravian massacre. However, the Native representation did leave me questioning some of the author’s choices. There’s a rather brutal description of the 1643 Pavonia massacre, where the Dutch invaded what is now called Manhattan and massacred scores of Lenape people. I appreciate that it’s made clear that the settlers are living on stolen land (Lenapehoking) and that attention is brought to Native history, however, I felt weird about having a non-Native author write about Native trauma. If this were a white author doing it, it would be a more clear-cut example of exploitation of a marginalized group’s suffering. White people have been stealing from and exploiting Natives for hundreds of years, even though it’s not always done maliciously. As Debbie Reese, a Nambé Owingeh Pueblo scholar and educator, explains on her blog American Indians in Children’s Literature:

“…the history of White people taking from Native people is also filled with White people who befriend us because they have found themselves living in or near our communities.

Of that latter group, I wish they could form those friendships without saying “look at me and my Native friend.” Or, “look at the good I do for my Native friends!” Or, “I worked with them and they asked me to write this story about them.” Or, “I taught their kids and I learned from them and so, I am able to write books about them that you should buy because I know what I’m talking about.” Or, “Look! My book has a note inside from my Native friend or colleague. You can trust what you read in my book.”

They mean well. But I wish they could see past their good intentions. What they’re doing is exploitation.”

But Rama Santa Mansa isn’t white. She is a Black woman who wants to use her book to honor the untold stories of marginalized groups in what is now called the United States, but is that enough to give her a pass? Does her race make the story less problematic? It’s clear that Mansa did her best to portray the Lenape’s plight with respect, and wanted to include them as the first inhabitants of what is now called New York. There’s no colonialism being enforced, as Mansa is a Black author. She also did a significant amount of research for her book, but it left me wondering if she had reached out to Lenape or other Native scholars when writing it. There are certainly no Native books listed in her bibliography, no Native professors that she thanks in the acknowledgement, not even a reference to Indian 101 for writers.

I feel like at the very least a Native sensitivity reader would have been warranted. As Debbie Reese writes in her criticism of Justina Ireland’s book Dread Nation (another historic novel by a Black author), “It became clear to me that the reason her book fails in its representations of Native peoples is because she relied heavily on archival research. The “primary sources” she used are items in government archives–that are heavily biased.” This underlines the importance of using Native sources when discussing Native issues in addition to actually speaking to Native people. It’s also serves as a good reminder that just because a writer belongs to one marginalized group, it doesn’t mean they are qualified to write about another.

Despite the issues mentioned above I found the book overall enjoyable, with a highly detailed and well-researched setting and a strong Black woman protagonist. 

Tags: African American, American Indian, Black, Book Review, Demon, Gay, Gothic, Historic Horror, LGBTQIA, Own Voices, Recommended
Spectrum: An Autistic Horror Anthology edited by Aquino Loayza

Spectrum: An Autistic Horror Anthology edited by Aquino Loayza

Formats: Print, digital

Publisher: Third Estate Books

Genre: Body Horror, Folk Horror, Myth and Folklore, Psychological Horror, Sci-Fi Horror, Slahser/Killer

Audience: Adult/Mature

Diversity: Autistic characters and authors, trans, two-spirit, agender and non-binary characters and authors, gay characters, asexual author and characters, Mexican American author and character, Latinx authors, biracial Filipino and Taiwanese author, Afro-Indigenous author

Content Warnings (Highlight to view): Ableism, Alcohol Abuse, Animal Death, Bullying, Cannibalism, Child Abuse, Eating Disorder, Gaslighting, Gore, Illness, Medical Torture/Abuse, Mental Illness, Physical Abuse,  Rape/Sexual Assault, Self-Harm, Suicide, Torture, Transphobia, Verbal/Emotional Abuse, Violence

Blurb

Deep in the recesses of our minds are twisted realities that so closely mirror our own. In these pages, our nightmares are laid bare, made to manifest. There is no waking up; there is no going back once you fall into the tapestry of terrors that await. Are you ready? From courteous neighbors gone awry to the burning brightness of everlasting daylight comes Spectrum: An Autistic Horror Anthology reflective of the vast array of neurodivergent artists in our community and the things that keep them up in the night, the things they can’t look away from.

Don’t Blink.

I received this product for free in return for providing an honest and unbiased review. I received no other compensation. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255: Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.

Unfortunately, to review this, I do have to address some of the drama surrounding it. Anyone in the horror book sphere has probably heard it and it might turn some folks off this amazing anthology. However, you may not have heard about how Third Estate Books addressed it, and you shouldn’t pass on this book just because of a few bad apples.

One of the anthology’s original authors, Zach Rosenberg, was revealed to have a history of harassing and bullying women and femme identifying people. Writer and editor Evelyn Freeling details the harassment she received from Zach Rosenberg here. After Rosenberg posted a non-apology the next day Mattie Lewis shared her own negative experience with the author. Shortly afterward it was revealed that one of the editors of the anthology, Freydis Moon, had been impersonating a Latine person to sell their books and bullying others online. You can find details of the Freydis Moon controversy here. Third Estate Books released statements that both Moon and Rosenberg had been removed from Spectrum and that they would have no place on any other projects moving forward. Therefore, I would still recommend this book, as the publisher has taken steps to ensure the safety of everyone involved and removed anyone problematic. Now, on to the review!

I was happy to see that many of the authors and characters in the book were trans, agender, or non-binary (not surprising since trans and gender diverse folks are up to six times more likely to be autistic). There was also some BIPOC representation with Asian, Latine, and Afro-Indigenous authors, though I would have liked to have seen more. The stories were a very interesting mix. Some were straightforward and followed a classic story structure, while others felt more like stream of consciousness writing and focused more on  the poetic words used than forming a coherent plot (Survive Lot 666, Neighborly, and Discourses of the Seven Headed Monkey come to mind). But both styles worked well. A few of my favorites were Freedom was a Flaying by Onyx Osiris, Curse the Darkness by Die Booth, and The Sun Approaches Every Summer by Akis Linardos. The first of these stories was a violent revenge story where the bullies get violently massacred by the Aztec flayed god, Xipe Totec. I love revenge stories, and this one was particularly satisfying and twisted with a nice nod to the author’s heritage. Booth’s story was more of a “be careful what you wish for” tale, a genre of story I also greatly enjoy. The Sun Approaches Every Summer was particularly unique where a man with magical abilities slowly watches the town he lives in die because the sun is getting too close. As the townspeople fear witches, he’s forced to mask, hiding both his autism and his magical abilities. It reminded me of the Twilight episode The Midnight Sun, except in this story the protagonist is the only one immune to the heat due to his magic and is eventually the only one left alive.

The last story in the anthology, Different by Ashley Lezak, is one of only two in which autism is central to the story. In it, a little autistic girl named Abigail is “cured” by her parents who want a “normal” child.  One of ASAN’s (the Autistic Self Advocacy Network) core beliefs is that “autism cannot and should not be cured.” One thing many allistic and non-disabled people don’t seem to grasp is that Autism is part of who a person is and eliminating that would fundamentally change who they are. As Andrew Pulrang explained in an article for Forbes entitled What Do Disabled People Mean When We Say We Don’t Want A Cure? ,”Life without disabilities may at times have its attractions. It’s something that can be interesting, even fun to speculate about. But since it would often fundamentally change who we are, it’s not always a 100% attractive prospect.” The desire to “cure” autism is similar to the appeal of gay conversion therapy. Parents who can’t love their children as they are try to change them to be more “normal,” someone they can accept. This is what makes Lezak’s short story so frightening: the idea that not only can parents not love and accept their child as they are, but that they would fundamentally change her as a person without her consent. And while the procedure Ashley undergoes is fictional, it’s not too far removed from the lobotomies performed on unwilling patients until the 1970s to change their personalities and even sexual orientation.

The other one is Safe Food by Xochilt Avila, in which a teen named Cedar struggles with their avoidant and restrictive food intake disorder (unfortunately many autistic people also have eating disorders) and an abusive father. What their father doesn’t understand is that it’s not that Cedar doesn’t want to eat, it’s that they have such severe sensory issues around taste there are only certain foods they can palate, none of which their father ever gives them. This story is another example of how badly parents can treat their autistic children (although in Cedar’s case their dad probably would have been abusive even if they were neurotypical). Unfortunately, it isn’t uncommon for autistic individuals to be abused, and their abuse is often blamed on their “challenging behaviors” rather than society’s ableism. Often the media will portray the abuser with sympathy as they were “burdened” with having an autistic child.

But those were the only two stories that felt like they made autism and autistic issues major plot points. The others chose to focus more on undead creatures, migraines, curses, abandoned buildings with dead whales, monkey gods, music, haunted houses and a head in a box. And honestly, I like that. While autism is part of someone’s identity, it’s only one part and Spectrum allows its authors to be their full selves rather than just focusing on their autism. I also really enjoyed seeing how differently autism manifested in each of the fictional characters, underlying how autism really is a broad spectrum. Some had severe sensory issues requiring soft clothing and ear protectors, others didn’t. Some struggled socially, others did not. Some characters had trouble with eye contact while others didn’t. Some were single, while others in committed relationships (there seems to be a myth that autistic people don’t date or have sex, which is patently untrue). There was no “one size fits all.” Autism is just one aspect of their personalities instead of all it, like is often the case when neurodiverse characters are written by neurotypicals. But their autism also wasn’t downplayed like it didn’t matter at all. They got to be multidimensional people.

Tags: Adult, Anthology, Autism, Body Horror, Book Review, Disability, Filipino, Folk Horror, Latine/Latino, LGBTQIA, Mexican, Myths and Folklore, Neurodiversity, Non-binary, Own Voices, Recommended, Taiwanese, Trans
Green Fuse Burning by Tiffany Morris

Green Fuse Burning by Tiffany Morris

Formats: Print, digital

Publisher: Stelliform Press

Genre: Body Horror, Eco-Horror

Audience: Adult/Mature

Diversity: Mi’kmaw author and main character, queer main character, bisexual author

Content Warnings (Highlight to view): Animal Death, Death, Gore, Medical Procedures, Suicide, Verbal/Emotional Abuse

Blurb

The debut novella from the Elgin Award winning author of Elegies of Rotting Stars. After the death of her estranged father, artist Rita struggles with grief and regret. There was so much she wanted to ask him-about his childhood, their family, and the Mi’kmaq language and culture from which Rita feels disconnected. But when Rita’s girlfriend Molly forges an artist’s residency application on her behalf, winning Rita a week to paint at an isolated cabin, Rita is both furious and intrigued. The residency is located where her father grew up. On the first night at the cabin, Rita wakes to strange sounds. Was that a body being dragged through the woods? When she questions the locals about the cabin’s history, they are suspicious and unhelpful. Ignoring her unease, Rita gives in to dark visions that emanate from the forest’s lake and the surrounding swamp. She feels its pull, channeling that energy into art like she’s never painted before. But the uncanny visions become more insistent, more intrusive, and Rita discovers that in the swamp’s decay the end of one life is sometimes the beginning of another.

This is a book about grief, nature, and how death transforms. And when you’re finished, you’ll love wetlands and never look at fungi the same way again.

Despite being a landscape artist who relies on nature to make a living, Rita is very separated from it. She’s a germaphobe (due to her mother) who lives in the city with her white girlfriend Maddie. Rita also incorporates inspiration from her cultural heritage, despite being disconnected from that too. She’s barely in contact with the Mi’kmaw family. She only remembers bits of the Mi’kmaw her father taught her, and while she can recognize Gomgwejui’gasit (Suckerfish script), she can’t read it. This makes it difficult for her to talk to other family members when her father dies or receive the same level of community support as her half-brother, who lives on the reservation with the rest of their family. Rita feels alone in her grief because she’s so isolated from her family, with Maddie offering little support. Rita is not able to say goodbye to her father in his home, like she traditionally would, but in a hospital hooked up to machines, which traumatizes her. Rita’s grief over losing her father is so severe that she has PTSD. Morris describes her grief as a devouring green, a chlorophyll feeding and transforming Rita. She feels guilt (not uncommon for someone who’s grieving), afraid she’s not mourning “correctly” and that it’s selfish and impersonal.

Part of Rita’s alienation from nature also means she is not connected to the natural process of death and rebirth, despite feeling like she and the land are both dying, “flailing fish on a drying shore”. Mi’kmaw artist Alan Syliboy, who created an art exhibit that will focus on Mi’kmaw traditions around death, told CBC “…in Mi’kmaw society, death is not covered or hidden. When you’re a child, you’re aware [of it].” Rita, however, is surrounded by Euro-American culture, which rarely interacts with death outside the funeral industrial complex. One of the tenets of the death positivity movement is that hiding death behind closed doors and surrounding it with a  culture of silence  does more harm than good. Another tenet is that death should be handled in a way that “does not do great harm to the environment” and encourages green burials. Historically, both things would have been practiced in most cultures, but the invention of the toxic embalming process took death customs out of the home and created a for-profit industry. If you’re interested in learning more about the history of embalming and the birth of the funeral industry, my sister has made a great video about it here. Today, standard funeral practices such as embalming and cremation are devastating the environment, poisoning the land and air.

The theme of environmental devastation is present throughout the book. It’s the Frog Croaking Moon, Squoljikus (around May), but the heat from climate change makes the loons think it’s summer and Rita can hear their mating calls. The Mi’kmaw names for the months, like the Trees Fully Leafed Moon, no longer match seasonal changes. She describes the heat as “unbearable” and feels like she’s being smothered by it. A history of colonial violence is inexorably linked to the current environmental crisis. Colonizers brought with them industrialization and capitalism, treating nature and its resources as something to be exploited. Indigenous environmental justice addresses both the injustices suffered by Indigenous people and the current climate crisis. Kānaka Maoli (Native Hawaiian) organizer Kaniela Ing wrote “Indigenous communities are disproportionately impacted by the climate crisis because we maintain the closest ties to our natural environment.” He also wrote “Any climate solution would be incomplete without justice at its core. Kānaka Maoli, Native Hawaiians, should be central to the rebuilding and recovery efforts. We should have the authority to manage our lands and resources.”

The water protectors of the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation are probably the best known example of Indigenous environmental justice. There’s also Shiela Watt-Cloutier, an Inuit Indigenous rights activist, and author of the book “Right to be Cold.” In it she writes about how global warming is destroying her home by melting the permafrost and ice caps, and causing unpredictable weather patterns. Dario Kopenawa, a Yanomami leader, combats illegal gold mining and deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon. And Rick O’Rourke, fire and fuels manager of the Yurok Cultural Fire Management Council, uses traditional Yurok knowledge of controlled burns to prevent forest fires in the Klamath mountains of northern California.

Throughout the book nature is described in a way that makes it seem violent and alien, and Rita is shown to be fearful of it (she’s even terrified of harmless moths), with a good dose of body horror mixed in to represent her fear. But as time passes, and Rita feels her body being reclaimed by nature her fear slowly morphs into acceptance. She even considers walking into the forest and disappearing. Morris’ descriptions of Rita’s strong emotions and fears feels like a frenzied fever dream, with the environment becoming a character itself. Her descriptions of grief are powerful and moved me to tears as I remembered my own experiences with grieving. With Green Fuse Burning Morris has created a beautiful, deeply personal story that flows like poetry. 

Tags: Adult, American Indian, Bisexual, Body Horror, Book Review, Eco Horror, First Nations, Highly Recommended, LGBTQIA, Mi'kmaw, Own Voices

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