Diversity in Horror Fiction

Brutal Hearts by Cassie Daley

Brutal Hearts by Cassie Daley

Formats: Print

Publisher: Self Published

Genre: Killer/Slasher, Monster

Audience: Y/A

Diversity: Autistic character, author is queer and autistic

Takes Place in: type here

Content Warnings (Highlight to view): Cannibalism, Child Death, Death, Gore, Violence

Blurb

It’s 1997 and Leah just can’t seem to catch a break.

A year has passed since her fiancé went missing while hiking alone on a mountain, and she can’t shake the unanswered questions and nightmares Simon left behind.

On the anniversary of his disappearance, Leah and her new girlfriend Josie return to the trail where Simon disappeared with two of their best friends. Armed with incense, tarot cards, crystals, and snacks, the girls have everything they need to complete the Ritual of Closure to help Leah finally say goodbye to Simon, once and for all.

But the trails are hiding something sinister, and it’s been waiting. As night falls around them, the girls find themselves in a deadly game against something vicious and wild that’s made a home for itself on the mountain.

It’s time to find out what really happened to Simon.

The year is 1996: Scream has just been released in theaters, the Macarena is the hottest new dance craze, and seventeen-year-old Leah is deeply in love with her high school sweetheart, Simon. The two have plans to marry after graduation, but that dream is destroyed when Simon goes missing after a hike in the nearby mountains. Volunteers scour the woods for any trace of the missing boy, but it’s like Simon has vanished without a trace.

A year later, Leah is still struggling with her grief and guilt. Her girlfriend, Josie, is doing her best to help Leah through the nightmares and sobbing fits, but nothing seems to help. In a last-ditch effort to give the poor girl some closure, Josie suggests they hike Simon and Leah’s favorite trail to say a final goodbye. Along with Leah’s two best friends, sisters Charlotte and May, the girls set off to perform a Wiccan inspired goodbye ceremony for him. But their beautiful day quickly goes south when something in the woods starts stalking them.

Brutal Hearts is short but gripping story, switching back and froth between the girls being stalked through the woods and the mystery surrounding Simon’s disappearance. I ended up finishing it in one sitting, something I never do even with novellas (ADHD makes it hard for me to focus on a book for too long unless I’m really engaged). I loved all the little nods to 90s aesthetics, from the clothing, to May’s Tamagotchi and the girls’ obsession with all things Wicca. (From Sabrina Spellman to Nancy Downs witches were huge in the 90s, inspiring a renewed interest in Wicca from teenage girls.) Although, it is hard to accept that the 90s were thirty years ago and are now officially nostalgic. Wasn’t it literally just 2000? I think Y2K caused my brain to crash and stop perceiving the passage of time.

I especially liked the addition of the playlists for each character in the back of the book. Leah’s music playlist revolves around being hurt by love. Josie likes grunge. May’s playlist is full of bubblegum pop while the more traditionally pretty and popular Charlotte prefers mainstream music. A fun flashback to 90s teen horror like Fear Street and the works of Christopher Pike (appropriate since Daley also runs the PikeCast) with a healthy dose of urban legends and campfire stories. A perfect read for a hot summer night. 

Tags: Autism, Killer/Slasher, Monster, Own Voices, Recommended, Young Adult
Manhunt by Gretchen Felker-Martin

Manhunt by Gretchen Felker-Martin

Formats: Print, audio, digital

Publisher: Tor Nightfire

Genre: Apocalypse/Disaster, Monster

Audience: Adult/Mature

Diversity: Trans author and characters, queer characters, Native character

Takes Place in: northeastern USA

Content Warnings (Highlight to view): Animal Death, Body Shaming, Cannibalism,  Child Death, Childbirth, Death, Drug Use/Abuse, Eating Disorder, Forced Captivity, Gore, Illness, Kidnapping, Medical Procedures, Oppression, Rape/Sexual Assault, Self-Harm, Slurs, Torture, Transphobia, Verbal/Emotional Abuse, Violence

Blurb

Y: The Last Man meets The Girl With All the Gifts in Gretchen Felker-Martin’s Manhunt, an explosive post-apocalyptic novel that follows trans women and men on a grotesque journey of survival.

Beth and Fran spend their days traveling the ravaged New England coast, hunting feral men and harvesting their organs in a gruesome effort to ensure they’ll never face the same fate.

Robbie lives by his gun and one hard-learned motto: other people aren’t safe.

After a brutal accident entwines the three of them, this found family of survivors must navigate murderous TERFs, a sociopathic billionaire bunker brat, and awkward relationship dynamics―all while outrunning packs of feral men, and their own demons.

Manhunt is a timely, powerful response to every gender-based apocalypse story that failed to consider the existence of transgender and non-binary people, from a powerful new voice in horror.

 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.

Have you ever wondered what happens to trans people in sex-based apocalypses like those in Y: The Last Man or Ōoku: The Inner Chambers? Gretchen Felker-Martin sets out to answer exactly that in her post-apocalypse splatterpunk novel Manhunt.

The T-rex virus transforms anyone with high levels of testosterone—mostly cis-men—into cannibalistic, sex-crazed monsters. Emboldened by the end of the world, a group of TERFs (trans-exclusionary radical “feminists”) have formed their own militia where they hunt and kill any trans women they find. It may seem like a group of militant TERFs is an exaggeration, but it feels like less of a stretch when you consider there’s already a high rate of violence against trans people. In 2021 alone, at least 56 trans and gender non-conforming people were murdered in the US. Transphobic hate crimes have quadrupled over the last five years in the UK. These fake feminists are also more fascist adjacent than they’d like to admit. As Judith Butler accurately pointed out, TERFs “have allied with rightwing attacks on gender” and “The anti-gender ideology is one of the dominant strains of fascism in our times. So, the TERFs will not be part of the contemporary struggle against fascism.” TERFs Lily Cade and Bev Jo Von Dohre have even called for the death of trans women. The fact that trans women in Manhunt can transform into monsters if they don’t have access to anti-androgen medication gives the TERFs exactly the excuse they’ve been waiting for to go from hateful rhetoric to actually destroying that which they hate most (never mind that cis-women with PCOS or congenital adrenal hyperplasia can also transform into feral beasts).

Not only do trans women have to avoid getting killed by the monstrous men, but also running into the militant TERFs who have seized control of most of the northeast. Fran and Beth are two such transwomen trying to survive in the new world, catching feral men and harvesting their testicles for their friend Indy to extract estradiol from. After running afoul of a militant group of TERFs and almost being killed by men, Fran and Beth meet a sharp-shooting trans man named Robbie, who they take on their journey with them. The trio return to Indy’s house with their testicle trophies where they learn she’s been offered a job by a spoiled rich girl who controls a luxurious bunker. But the promises of comfort the bunker offers may hide a deadly truth.

While I personally enjoyed this book, it won’t be for everyone. It is splatterpunk, after all. That means there’s lots of brutal violence (including a cis woman having her uterus cut out of her), gross content (testicle eating), and graphic sex. Everyone in Manhunt is super horny, sometimes at wildly inappropriate times, so Beth, Fran, Indy, and Robbie do a lot of fucking. The sex is hot, sometimes gross, and other times both hot and gross, much like real sex. It was nice to have sex scenes centered around trans pleasure rather than the cis-male gaze. Of course, the graphic description of genitalia might be triggering for some people who experience gender dysphoria, so be aware of that. Speaking of hot sex, a captain in the TERF army named Ramona is sleeping with a non-binary prostitute named Feather. One reviewer claimed this is unrealistic but I have to disagree. A lot of chasers are happy to sleep with trans people but won’t do anything to defend their rights or even stand up for them. Too many people with trans partners see their relationship as a shameful secret to be kept, and Ramona is no different. She’s too much of a coward to do the right thing and just goes along with the TERF army because it’s what’s easy.

Splatterpunk is very hit or miss for me, as many extreme horror books can cross over into misogynistic violence. Manhunt manages to avoid this trap, even though most of the book’s violence is against women (as all the characters, aside from Robbie, are women). Perhaps because it’s other women committing the violence, but I didn’t get that gross feeling I usually do when reading splatterpunk authored by cis men. Even the sexual assault scene didn’t feel gratuitous and was handled well. I also loved how flawed the protagonists are. Some people mistakenly assume LGBTQIA+ characters need to be perfect for it to be considered a “good” portrayal. I believe realistic is preferable to perfect, and I like my queer characters to have character flaws who sometimes do and say problematic things. Both Beth and Fran feel very human. Beth is reckless and insecure; Fran has both passing and class privilege and can sometimes be selfish. Neither of them are bad people, just realistically flawed.

My only complaint about the book (and granted, it’s minor) is that there are so many descriptions of Indi’s fat body. The way she’s described isn’t quite fatphobic, but it did make me feel uncomfortable that there was so much focus on it. I can understand that Indy is dealing with a lot of internalized fatphobia and insecurity, so it makes sense that her character would spend a lot of time focusing on her size and the limitations that come with it. When the story is told from a third-person point of view, there’s no reason for Indy’s weight to be described in such detail, especially since no one else’s body gets that much description or scrutiny. At least she’s never described as gross or unattractive, and Indi even gets to be sexually desirable, which is rare for fat characters outside of fetish porn. It was refreshing to see fat people having passionate sex scenes just like their skinny counterparts. Like I said, it’s a minor complaint and could absolutely be my own hypersensitivity.

Reading this book is like having your brain put in a blender. It’s wild, gross, horny, disgusting, tragic, and hilarious all whipped together into an extreme horror smoothie. In other words, I LOVED it. You have to be at least somewhat familiar with trans culture to fully appreciate the story, which I thought was awesome. There’s also just something extremely satisfying about trans women killing fascist TERFs: not something I’d advocate in real life, but it’s fun and cathartic in fiction. Unsurprisingly, this made a bunch of real-life TERFs very angry. They didn’t like being portrayed as bigoted assholes just because of their bigoted asshole-ish behavior and tried to review bomb Manhunt…which should just make you want to read it more.

Tags: Adult, American Indian, Apocalypse/Disaster, BIPOC, Book Review, Highly Recommended, LGBTQIA, Trans, Zombies
Conquer by Edward M. Erdelac

Conquer by Edward M. Erdelac

Formats: Print, audio, digital

Publisher: Self Published 

Genre: Historic Horror, Monster, Mystery, Myth and Folklore, Occult, Vampire

Audience: Adult/Mature

Diversity: Black/African-American, Hispanic, Trans, Gay

Takes Place in: Harlem, New York, USA

Content Warnings (Highlight to view): Animal Death, Body Shaming, Child Abuse, Death, Drug Use/Abuse, Forced Captivity, Gore, Homophobia, Kidnapping, Necrophilia, Oppression, Pedophilia, Physical Abuse, Police Harassment, Racism, Rape/Sexual Assault, Sexual Abuse, Slurs, Transphobia

Blurb

In 1976 Harlem, JOHN CONQUER, P.I. is the cat you call when your hair stands up…the supernatural brother like no other. From the pages of Occult Detective Quarterly, he’s calm, he’s cool, and now he’s collected in CONQUER.

From Hoodoo doctors and Voodoo Queens,
The cat they call Conquer’s down on the scene!
With a dime on his shin and a pocket of tricks,
A gun in his coat and an eye for the chicks.
Uptown and Downton, Harlem to Brooklyn,
Wherever the brothers find trouble is brewin,’
If you’re swept with a broom, or your tracks have been crossed,
If your mojo is failin’ and all hope is lost,
Call the dude on St. Marks with the shelf fulla books,
‘Cause ain’t no haint or spirit, or evil-eye looks,
Conjured by devils, JAMF’s, or The Man,
Can stop the black magic Big John’s got on hand!

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.

Conquer is the story of a Black mystical detective named John Conquer (a reference to John the Conqueror) and a homage to 70’s detective fiction and Blaxploitation films. It’s fun, well written, and full of creepiness, including a fetus monster haunting an abandoned subway station and a man shrunk down and boiled alive in a lava lamp. I greatly enjoyed the book, but like most Blaxploitation, it wasn’t without its problems.

It’s important to point out that Erdelac is a White author writing a Black story (something not uncommon in Blaxploitation). I usually prefer to promote “own voices” books, and stories by cishet White men are a rarity on this blog. After all, folks with privilege do not have the best track record when it comes to writing marginalized groups. As Irish author Kit de Waal said, “Don’t dip your pen in someone else’s blood”. Take American Dirt by Jeanine Cummins and The Help by Kathryn Stockett. They’re both terrible for numerous reasons including, but not limited to: not doing enough research, using the White Savior trope, watering down their narratives to make them palatable for White audiences, cultural appropriation, speaking over marginalized voices, etc. That’s not to say White authors shouldn’t write BIPOC characters at all. Not having any diversity in your story can be equally problematic. It just needs to be done carefully and respectfully. Very, very carefully. Yes, I know that can be a fine line to walk, but if an author can research what kind of crops people were growing in 1429 to make their book more accurate, they can research American Indians and people of color. Besides, that’s what hiring sensitivity readers and using resources like Writing with Color is for. Of course, there’s also the problem of White voices being given preferential treatment by publishers and audiences over BIPOC trying to tell their own stories.

To his credit, Erdelac has done an impressive amount of research to make his book feel authentic. John Conquer wears a dime around his ankle for protection and a mojo hand (another name for a mojo bag) for luck. His name is a reference to High John de Conqueror, a Black folk hero with magical abilities. Conquer also has one of the most accurate representations of Vodou I’ve ever seen in fiction. Hollywood “voo doo” is a pet peeve of mine, so I appreciate Erdelac’s dedication to portraying the religion and loa/lwa (the powerful spirits Vodou practitioners worship and serve) accurately. He also doesn’t try to portray an idealized version of 1970s NYC. There’s racism, anti-Semitism, homophobia, and cops and criminals spewing slurs. And while it’s jarring, it does make the story feel more authentic. The police are racist and homophobic and there’s tension between the many communities that make up 1970s New York. John Conquer’s Uncle Silas was disowned by his family for being gay, and when John is asked to solve his murder, he has to confront his own homophobia and transphobia. That doesn’t mean it always works, though. There were definitely a few times I side-eyed and wondered if a certain line really needed to be in there.

My favorite part of the book is Eldelac’s excellent world building. White vampires go up in smoke when exposed to sunlight, while vampires with more melanin are protected from the sun’s rays. Vampirism also halts a corpse’s decay, but all that rot catches up to them when they’re finally killed. Each culture has their own magical practices with distinct rules, and magic doesn’t cross cultural lines. For example, only Vodou practitioners can become zombies, and non-Christian vampires are immune to crosses. Conquer is especially powerful because he’s learned many different traditions and practices, but the catch is that this opens him to a wider variety of spiritual attacks. Street gangs utilize black magic to wage wars with each other. His work is clever, original, and something I could really get into. But…having White authors tell BIPOC stories still feels problematic to me when White authors are still so heavily favored by the publishing industry. I’ve reviewed books by White authors before, but because Conquer is based heavily on Blaxploitation it feels, well, more exploitative than those I’ve reviewed in the past. I’m still going to go ahead and recommend Eldelac’s work because—in the end—it is well written and interesting, but I can also completely understand if some of you want to skip this one.

Tags: Adult, African American, Black, Book Review, Gay, Historic Horror, Latine/Latino, LGBTQIA, Monster, Mystery, Myths and Folklore, Occult, Recommended, Trans, vampire
Grievers by Adrienne Maree Brown

Grievers by Adrienne Maree Brown

Formats: Print, digital

Publisher: AK Press

Genre: Apocalypse/Disaster

Audience: Adult/Mature

Diversity: Black/African-American, Lesbian

Takes Place in: Detroit, MI, USA

Content Warnings (Highlight to view): Death, Drug Use/Abuse, Illness, Medical Procedures

Blurb

Dune’s mother is patient zero of a mysterious illness that stops people in their tracks—in mid-sentence, mid-action, mid-life—casting them into a nonresponsive state from which no one recovers. Dune must navigate poverty and the loss of her mother as Detroit’s hospitals, morgues, and graveyards begin to overflow. As the quarantined city slowly empties of life, she investigates what caused the plague, and what might end it, following in the footsteps of her late researcher father, who has a physical model of Detroit’s history and losses set up in their basement. She dusts it off and begins tracking the sick and dying, discovering patterns, finding comrades in curiosity, conspiracies for the fertile ground of the city, and the unexpected magic that emerges when the debt of grief is cleared.

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.

“Grief was an amalgamation of absence narratives layered over each other”

Death positivity is the philosophy that death and grief should be spoken of openly and that treating the subject as taboo does more harm than good. It encourages people to learn about end-of-life care, make plans for their own deaths, be involved in the care of their dead loved ones, and explore their curiosity and feelings surrounding death. In a way, Grievers is a death-positive book. The story explores what it’s like to lose the people you love, care for the dying, prepare for death, and the mourning process. Most horror skims over the death of its characters, their lives nothing more than cheap fodder for the reader’s entertainment. But in Grievers, you feel the weight of every death.

A mysterious illness is sweeping Detroit and killing its Black population. Dubbed “H8”, it leaves its victims frozen in place with grief-stricken faces. A social justice activist named Kama is the first to contract the disease. Unable to afford a hospital, Dune, Kama’s only child, cares for her mother at home by feeding her, changing her, and keeping her as comfortable as she can. Dune, distrustful of the system that failed them, decides to cremate her mother herself when Kama finally passes. Dune’s act of cremating her own mother (although not something I would recommend as it’s neither safe nor legal) is described as “sacred work,” a ritual that allows her to be close to her mother one last time.

Death rituals, whether religious or secular, perform a necessary function in the grieving process. In his research on grieving rituals Michael I. Norton, a professor at Harvard Business School, discovered the following:

“Despite the variance in the form that rituals take… a common psychological mechanism underlies their effectiveness: a restoration of feelings of control that losses impair. Indeed, people who suffer losses often report feeling out of control and actively try to regain control when they feel it slipping away; feeling in control, in turn, is associated with increased well-being, physical health, and coping ability.” [1]

In the story, a group of traditional Chinese medicine practitioners perform grieving rituals believing that this will protect them from H8, a disease, they theorize, that targets the lungs where grief is held. Dune performs grief rituals to help overcome the immense sense of loss she’s experiencing. The first is cremating her mother in her backyard. The second is “telling” her dead father that her mother has passed. The third, and most important, is creating a record of everyone who has fallen ill and marking their locations with pins on her father’s model of Detroit. The last project gives her something to do, a way of combatting her sense of helplessness as the world falls apart around her. After slipping into a deep depression and shutting herself away, collecting data on the infected gives Dune a new sense of purpose and feeling of control. She organizes her data onto index cards and files them away, creating order out of chaos.

The way Brown represents grief is both beautiful and heartbreaking. Dune isolates herself from the world, too depressed to even plan a memorial service for her mother. She physically carries the weight of her grief as she gains weight during her depression. Eventually, Dune finds ways to cope with her grief. In addition to the rituals providing her with a sense of control, Dune also focuses on survival and caring for her elderly grandmother, Mama Vivian. She harvests produce from community gardens and cans them for the winter. She changes, feeds, and sings to her grandmother. She eventually reaches out to one of her mother’s activist friends for emotional support. It’s not always easy. Dune blows up at a volunteer food distributor without really knowing why, other than just needing someone to lash out at. She dips back into a depression when other people she cares about die. But she keeps surviving, and slowly things start to improve. Brown describes the feeling of slowly emerging from a deep depression perfectly: “Dune was beginning to feel aware of her own aliveness again – not quite a desire to live, just a growing, surprising awareness that she was not dead.” While this may not sound like much, it’s still a step forward in Dune’s path to healing and an improvement from the beginning of the story when “the detritus of grief became Dune’s comfort.” As someone who suffers from clinical depression themselves, I can say that just feeling alive again is such a huge step forward. At the same time, her father’s model, now thick with markers, is starting to sprout little green shoots: new life that has started to grow in the basement against all odds.

A year defined by a pandemic and protests, 2020 was especially difficult for Black Americans. Black communities were hit especially hard by Covid-19, and our anger and frustration with a racist system reached a boiling point with the murder of George Floyd by a White police officer. Grievers may be fiction, but it captures the very real feelings of pain and loss the Black community has been feeling recently. The H8 virus is a metaphor for both Covid and the pain caused by racism. “Hate” is literally killing Black people by destroying them emotionally and no one seems to be able to quell the spread of the disease. Like Covid, everyone knows someone who died from the virus. The city seems to shut down overnight as the wealthy flee and hospitals are overwhelmed.

Grievers does not follow a standard three arch story structure. There’s no antagonist to overcome, no climax, or satisfying resolution. If you’re looking for traditional storytelling, then this book isn’t for you. If you want a beautiful, heartbreaking, death-positive horror story that focuses on one woman’s battle with grief and just trying to survive a pandemic that feels all too familiar, I highly recommend Grievers.

[1] From the Journal of Experimental Psychology

Tags: Adult, African American, Apocalypse/Disaster, BIPOC, Black, Book Review, Highly Recommended, Lesbian, LGBTQIA, Own Voices
Transmuted by Eve Harms

Transmuted by Eve Harms

Formats: Print, digital

Publisher: Unerving

Genre: Body Horror

Audience: Adult/Mature

Diversity: Trans main character and side character, queer main characters, Japanese-American side character

Takes Place in: Los Angeles, California, USA

Content Warnings (Highlight to view):  Body Shaming, Forced Captivity, Gore, Medical Torture/Abuse, Medical Procedures, Transphobia

Blurb

Her doctor is giving her the body of his dreams… and her nightmares. Isa is a micro-celebrity who rarely shows her face, and can’t wait to have it expertly ripped off and rearranged to look more feminine. When a successful fundraiser makes her gender affirming surgery possible, she’s overjoyed—until she has to give up all her money to save her dying father.

Crushed by gender dysphoria and the pressure of disappointing her fans who paid for a new face, she answers a sketchy ad seeking transgender women for a free, experimental feminization treatment. The grotesquely flawless Dr. Skurm has gruesome methods, but he gets unbelievable results, and Isa is finally feeling comfortable in her skin. She even gains the courage to ask out her crush: an alluring and disfigured alchemy-obsessed artist named Rayna.

But Isa’s body won’t stop changing, and she’s going from super model to super mutant. She has to discover the secret behind her metamorphosis—before the changes are irreversible, and she’s an unwanted freak forever.

Transmuted is an outrageous and unapologetically queer body horror tale that will leave you gasping, giggling, and gagging for more.

Harm excels at taking the everyday horror of living trapped in a body you don’t recognize as your own, dials it up to a hundred, then soaks it in blood, sex, and mad science.

Isa is a trans woman who struggles both with her weight and gender dysphoria. Her hormone replacement therapy (HRT) helps, but what she’d really love is to get facial feminization surgery (FFS) and it appears that her wish will soon become a reality. By raising money through her Twitch channel and charity streams, Isa has finally saved up enough to have the procedure. Everything is looking up. That is until her sister calls and all but demands the money for their shitty dad’s cancer treatment. Frankly I think the cancer is Karma for constantly misgendering his daughter and being all-around shitty to her, but despite my yelling at the pages to “not give that bastard a cent” Isa didn’t take my advice and caves under the guilt and familial pressure. Now that all the money everyone helped her raise is gone, Isa is just distraught and desperate enough to respond to a sketchy internet ad promising free and miraculous feminization treatments for trans women. As you can probably guess, this is not the wisest of decisions. as most things that sound too good to be true usually are. What follows is a bizarre and twisted journey of body horror and alchemy as Isa’s body transforms in ways she never expected.

If you’re someone who’s bugged by discussions of gender dysphoria and find the concept of passing problematic, you probably won’t enjoy this book. This is not a body positive story where the protagonist discovers her true beauty and learns to love herself. This is a book that explores what it’s like to feel disconnected from your body, like it’s some alien thing instead of part of you, and takes it to its extreme. Which honestly? I’m fine with. Body positivity is fucking hard guys. I totally support it and I’m happy for people who have learned to love their body and how they look, but for me that goal feels unattainable and it’s just too much pressure. I’m more a fan of body neutrality, which means you don’t have to love, or even like your appearance to feel good about yourself and appreciate what your body can do. We don’t live in a bubble and there’s constant pressure to appear thin, White, and cis to be considered attractive and accepted by society. Even if you understand intellectually that it’s transphobic to expect trans women to appear feminine and pass as cis and that beauty standards for women are inherently racist, sexist, and fatphobic it still wears on your self-esteem. I appreciate how Transmuted doesn’t pull any punches when examining gender dysphoria. Isa’s hatred of her appearance is painfully familiar and honest, as is her desperation to “fix” her face so she can stand to look in the mirror. It also reminds me of how one trans person, Luna, described her feelings of dysphoria “Gender dysphoria is something that is painful. It hurts. It’s… looking in the mirror and thinking, “Holy heck. Who is that person? Who am I looking at? Is that- Is that someone that’s come into my house?” And then realizing, no, that’s just- that’s just me in the mirror.”

It’s impossible to “think positive” all the time and that’s okay. Negative emotions and feelings are valid.

Despite how horribly wrong things go for Isa, this is not a warning about seeking gender affirming surgery or a lesson about being happy with what you have. It’s a horror story about unethical medical practitioners who prey on trans people, like surgeons who completely botch the surgery on their trans patients (trigger warning, graphic description of medical procedures at link), and illicit online pharmacies. Note that very few trans people regret getting gender confirmation surgery —only around 2%, compared to the 65% of people who regret getting cosmetic surgery — and most surgeries in the US are preformed by skilled surgeons who specialize in trans medicine. But there aren’t many of them, and the waiting list for their services can often be up to two hundred patients at a time. It’s incredibly difficult for trans people to access healthcare. According to LGBTQ taskforce nearly one-in-five trans people reported being denied needed health care outright because of their gender identity, 28% of trans and gender non-conforming people avoid seeking healthcare due to discrimination, and over 50% had to teach their providers about trans care. On top of the difficulty of trying to access healthcare, many trans people can’t afford it: 20% of trans people are uninsured and they’re nearly twice as likely to be living in poverty than the rest of the population. 

ALCHEMY – TREE OF THE MOON – HERMAPHRODITE Engraving from Johann Daniel Mylius, Philosophia Reformata, 1622. The presence of the Tree of the Moon, or the Arbor Argentum, along with the fact that the hermaphrodite stands on a crescent Moon, indicates that this stage is the alchemical process marking the perfection of the First Silver. The hermaphroditic merging of the King and Queen indicates that the process is not yet complete, as integration has not taken place. 

Isa’s situation is exaggerated for the purpose of making the story more horrifying, but her struggle to find healthcare isn’t. Both Isa and her best friend are part of the 10% of trans people forced to turn to the grey market for their HRT, so it’s clear that accessing trans-friendly healthcare is already a challenge for them. This is the scariest part of Transmuted to me, not the mad doctor and his twisted experiments or the bizarre mutations Isa goes through, but the knowledge that the remedy to her mental anguish is so simple, yet impossible to obtain like Tantalus reaching for the fruit tree in Tartarus, and the horror of knowing thousands of real trans people are in her situation every day.

Tags: Adult, Asian, Asian American, BIPOC, Body Horror, Book Review, Japanese, LGBTQIA, Own Voices, Recommended, Trans
The Taking of Jake Livingston by Ryan Douglass

The Taking of Jake Livingston by Ryan Douglass

Formats: Print, audio, digital

Publisher: Penguin Random House

Genre: Ghosts/Haunting

Audience: Y/A

Diversity: Gay, Black main character, Black side and major characters

Takes Place in: somewhere in the USA

Content Warnings (Highlight to view):  Alcohol Abuse, Bullying, Child Abuse, Child Death, Child Endangerment, Death, Drug Use/Abuse, Gaslighting, Homophobia, Incest, Oppression, Mental Illness, Physical Abuse, Racism, Rape/Sexual Assault, Slurs, Suicide, Verbal/Emotional Abuse, Violence

Blurb

Jake Livingston is one of the only Black kids at St. Clair Prep, one of the others being his infinitely more popular older brother. It’s hard enough fitting in but to make matters worse and definitely more complicated, Jake can see the dead. In fact he sees the dead around him all the time. Most are harmless. Stuck in their death loops as they relive their deaths over and over again, they don’t interact often with people. But then Jake meets Sawyer. A troubled teen who shot and killed six kids at a local high school last year before taking his own life. Now a powerful, vengeful ghost, he has plans for his afterlife–plans that include Jake. Suddenly, everything Jake knows about ghosts and the rules to life itself go out the window as Sawyer begins haunting him and bodies turn up in his neighborhood. High school soon becomes a survival game–one Jake is not sure he’s going to win.

Being the only gay Black kid in a preppy, White private school sucks and I would know. Ryan Douglass does a perfect job capturing my high school experience in The Taking of Jake Livingston.  Teachers are racist and assume everyone is straight. There are never any Black characters (besides slaves) in the books read for English class, and slavery gets glossed over in history. Black history isn’t mentioned at all except for maybe a day or two in February so the school can look woke. The whole thing feels like a scene from Get Out. I relate to Jake Livingston quite a lot. Except for the gender difference, he’s basically teenage me. He’s so paralyzed by anxiety and the thought of getting in trouble that Jake never lets himself have any fun, take risks, or even learn to drive. His low self-esteem means he doesn’t even recognize when a hunk named Alastor starts hitting on him. In fact, Alastor has to explicitly state that he’s interested and even then, Jake doesn’t seem entirely convinced. Reminds me of when my now-wife first asked me out on a date and I didn’t realize that it was a date because there was no way that tall, smart, hot chick could possibly be interested. 

But hey, at least I never had to deal with seeing ghosts. Poor Jake sees the dead everywhere. Normally it’s just like watching a recording of someone’s final moments stuck in an endless loop, but occasionally the ghosts are sentient. Even more rarely, they can interact with the world. As you can probably guess, this makes life even harder for Jake who’s already living with the “weird kid” label. Jake was fine (or at least surviving) just keeping his head down, avoiding confrontations, and doing everything he could to stay out of trouble and avoid the school bully, Chad. That is until the ghost of Sawyer, a malicious ghost with a troubled past who seems to have it in for Jake, shows up. Sawyer is, or rather was, a school shooter. He died by suicide after bringing a gun to school and killing his classmates. Apparently that wasn’t enough death for him because Sawyer is hell bent on terrorizing Jake and increasing his body count. 

There’s an interesting contrast between Sawyer and Jake. Both boys were abused by men in their lives, bullied by classmates, in the closet, and were introverts who felt alone in the world. But only one of them became a school shooter. Despite being put through a very similar hell, Jake never resorts to violence except once, and even then it’s fairly minor and honestly kind of justified (Chad was being a racist jerk and totally deserved it in my humble opinion). Jake fights back, Sawyer murders innocent people who had nothing to do with his abuse. So why the difference? 

The majority of mass shooters are White men. According to Statista over the past 40 years 66% of mass shooters are White, nearly three times higher than the number of Black mass shooters. A study on school shootings by Joshua R Gregory states: 

“Popular theories suggest that gun availability, mental illness, and bullying bear some relationship to school shootings; however, levels of gun availability, mental illness prevalence, and bullying victimization do not differ substantially between whites and non-whites, indicating that these factors might account for school shootings within, but not between, races.”

One theory is that men often lack the support networks needed to cope with loss, tragedy, and low self-esteem. Sawyer is alone and struggling with his mental health. His largely absent mother is more concerned with the perception of having a “weird” son than actually getting her son any help. She unfortunately buys into the common belief that having a mental health condition is somehow shameful for a man. As a result, Sawyer never gets help for his violent tendencies outside a handful of visits to a therapist who barely listens to him. He feels alone and unable to reach out. In contrast, Jake does develop a support network of family, friends, and even the ghosts of his ancestors to help him out when things are looking bleak. But that still doesn’t explain why White men are more likely to be school shooters than Black men. Is it because most White terrorists are racist extremists? In 2020 they were responsible for almost 70% of all domestic terrorism plots. But Sawyer doesn’t give any indication of being racist at any point. Or it could just be that he had access to a gun, as White men are 50% more likely to own a gun than Black men and most school shootings were carried out with legally purchased firearms. To be honest, I don’t know the answer. 

For dealing with such a sensitive topic I think the book did rather well. Even though Douglass gave Sawyer a tragic backstory, it was never used as a justification for his actions. Trauma was also handled well and appropriately. Of course, the book was not without its flaws. The world-building felt undeveloped and I was unclear on the rules of “Dead World.” Why could some ghosts interact with Jake and others couldn’t? I really enjoyed the idea of Jake’s ancestors supporting him, to the point I was moved to tears, but it also left me puzzled. Were they ghosts too? Why hadn’t Jake noticed them before? It’s unfortunate, but I felt that the ghosts were the weakest part of the book. I found myself much more invested in Alastor and Jake’s adorable, developing relationship than anything that had to do with specters. Which is pretty weird for me, usually I hate romantic subplots and just want the story to focus on the scary parts. A lot of the story just felt confusing and messy, which hindered it from being a four-star book no matter how much I loved the characters. Despite its flaws, The Taking of Jake Livingston is still a good book, especially for queer Black kids, and worth checking out.

Tags: African American, BIPOC, Black, Book Review, Gay, Ghosts/Haunting, LGBTQIA, Recommended, Young Adult
Things Have Gotten Worse Since We Last Spoke by Eric LaRocca

Things Have Gotten Worse Since We Last Spoke by Eric LaRocca

Formats: Print, audio, digital

Publisher: Weirdpunk Books

Genre: Body Horror, Psychological Horror, Romance

Audience: Adult/Mature

Diversity: Gay author, lesbian main characters

Content Warnings (Highlight to view): Animal Death, Death, Mental Illness, Gaslighting, Homophobia, Suicide, Verbal/Emotional Abuse

Blurb

Sadomasochism. Obsession. Death.

A whirlpool of darkness churns at the heart of a macabre ballet between two lonely young women in an internet chat room in the early 2000s—a darkness that threatens to forever transform them once they finally succumb to their most horrific desires.

What have you done today to deserve your eyes?

Holy shit…this book. Definitely shouldn’t have read it at 1 am.

This epistolary novella starts out innocently enough. It’s the early 2000s and a young woman named Agnes is selling her antique apple peeler on a LGBTQ+ message board. Another young woman, Zoe, offers to buy the apple peeler. The two email back and forth and start up a friendship. Agnes is having a really tough time and Zoe does something incredibly kind and generous to help her out. Awwww. It also turns out both women are gay and developing feelings for each other. Sounds like a sappy Hallmark Christmas movie doesn’t it (if Hallmark ever aired anything that wasn’t incredibly heteronormative)? Except then things start getting kind of weird (so more like a Lifetime Christmas movie). Agnes, who’s life honestly kind of sucks, is beholden of her “guardian angel” and a little too willing to please her. Zoe wants to push Agnes out of her comfort zone and asks her “What have you done today to deserve your eyes?” Super creepy, although nothing necessarily sinister yet. Still, relationship red flags are starting to pop up. As the two grow ever closer, Zoe suggests they enter a BDSM/sugar mama relationship which Agnes immediately agrees to. Zoe will email tasks which Agnes must complete to please her “sponsor” (Kudos to LaRocca for using sponsor/drudge instead of master/slave which can have racist connotations). Things start going downhill rapidly as both women prove how emotionally unstable they really are.

Twitter User @daveaddey noticed something interesting about Hallmark Christmas movie posters. Namely that they all look like they’ll eat your soul.

BDSM is not inherently harmful. Even when it’s meant to cause pain and discomfort, it shouldn’t result in any permanent physical, emotional, or mental harm; every act should be consensual, not coerced and when I say consensual, I mean enthusiastic consent, not the lack of a “no” or safeword. But like with all things, there are people who take it too far. Doms are supposed to prioritize the safety and well-being of their submissive, but Zoe is more interested in seeing how far she can push her new toy before it breaks. She doesn’t listen when Agnes tells her she’s uncomfortable and ignores the fact that a desperately lonely Agnes in not in the right headspace to make informed decisions. Zoe even makes her perform acts that threaten Agnes’ ability to function in everyday life and takes control of her finances (which is a big red flag). That’s when things start to get really disturbing. Yes, it gets even worse. I won’t reveal any spoilers, suffice it to say this book is not for the squeamish or anyone triggered by depictions of psychologically abusive relationships.

Aftercare is important.

Things Have Gotten Worse Since We Last Spoke is one of the most uncomfortable and disturbing books I’ve read all year. I spent the final third of the novella squirming and distressed, muttering “Oh no, oh no, oh no” to myself. Watching an abusive relationship develop as a lonely young woman’s mental health declines is incredibly upsetting. The warning signs in the relationship are subtle and easily missed if you don’t know what to look for, at least until it’s too late.  And the body horror pairs perfectly with the psychological horror, making the story even more unsettling. This novella may only take an hour to read, but the dread will stay with you for days. So, what have you done today to deserve your eyes?

Tags: Adult, Body Horror, Book Review, Highly Recommended, Lesbian, LGBTQIA, Psychological Horror, Romance
Testament by Jose Nateras

Testament by Jose Nateras

Formats: Print, digital

Publisher: NineStar Press

Genre: Ghosts/Haunting, Psychological Horror

Audience: Adult/Mature

Diversity: Gay Main character and side characters, Bisexual side character, Hispanic/Latinx (Mexican American) Main Character, Asian-American side character, Black side character

Takes Place in: Chicago, IL, USA

Content Warnings (Highlight to view): Gaslighting, Homophobia, Mental Illness, Racism, Rape/Sexual Assault, Self-Harm, Suicide

Blurb

Gabe Espinosa, is trying to dig himself out of the darkness. Struggling with the emotional fallout of a breakup with his ex-boyfriend, Gabe returns to his job at The Rosebriar Room; the fine dining restaurant at the historic Sentinel Club Chicago Hotel. Already haunted by the ghosts of his severed relationship, he’s drastically unprepared for the ghosts of The Sentinel Club to focus their attentions on him as well.

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.

Once upon a time during a LGBTQ+ group therapy session, someone dropped one of those truth bombs that totally changed my perspective on things. “If you’re a minority in American you have trauma. You may not even be aware of it, but it’s there.” Holy. Shit. Suddenly the fact that I always felt stressed, anxious, and depressed made sense. I realized the headaches, stomach problems, chronic fatigue, and back and neck pain (for which I’d spent thousands of dollars seeing specialists only to be told they didn’t know what was wrong with me) were all due to minority stress. Well fuck.

Comic-style illustration of woman holding head and saying

Mind. Blown.

Testament is a horror story about trauma and minority stress, and the protagonist Gabe’s struggles were achingly familiar.  He worries about how to let new people know he’s gay in a way that feels natural, finding a boyfriend who doesn’t see him as “exotic” or call him “papi,” and working around a bunch of rich White people. And poor Gabe works in rich douche central, a swanky hotel that once functioned as a members-only men’s club called The Sentinel Club. As if working around so many White folk isn’t unnerving enough, the hotel also seems to be home to something supernatural and sinister. Something that has its attentions turned on Gabe.

**trigger warning: discussion of suicide and mental health**

Reeling from a suicide attempt after a bad breakup Gabe is not in the best place mentally. He’s incredibly hard on himself, constantly calling himself “worthless” and “pathetic.” He pushes people away assuming they don’t care and refuses to ask for help. As someone who has had their own battles with depression, this also felt achingly familiar. It was also incredibly well done. Writers tend to portray depression as someone staying in bed for days in a state of ennui and despair, unable to move and refusing to eat. But that kind of severe depressive episode is hardly commonplace. Most folks suffering from depression are still (at least partially) functional and go to great lengths to hide their illness in front of others, which is why it’s so difficult to recognize when someone’s actually depressed. Gabe gets dressed, goes to work and forces himself to smile and act like everything is fine while his brain screams insults at him and everything reminds him of his ex. 

**end of trigger warning **

What’s especially brilliant is how Nateras uses Gabe’s haunting to mimic his mental state. Gabe is trapped both by his past and the entity that latches on to him and follows him everywhere. It will seemingly disappear before suddenly and violently announcing its presence, much like his depression and PTSD. In fact, most of the horror in the story comes from Gabe wrestling with his inner demons rather than the outer ones. It’s not quite gothic fiction, but I’d definitely call it gothic-adjacent with its slow burn horror and tumultuous emotions. Of course, if you dislike the slower pace of gothic horror and its focus on the characters rather than the haunting, you may not enjoy Testament. Fortunately, it’s a quick read, so even if you get bored quickly like I do you’ll probably be fine. 

There’s a lot of discussion about the evils of privilege, power, and money. And they are evil. They corrupt and hurt those without. And while no, not all White people are evil, there’s no way of telling the good from the bad with a glance, and a lifetime of negative experiences sets off every alarm bell in my head. There’s nothing quite like the fear you experience when you realize you’re the only person of color in a sea of privileged White folk, even if they’re the “nice” liberal kind. Such situations immediately make me uncomfortable and anxious, even as a White-passing Black person. I jokingly call it that Get Out feeling. There’s a particular scene in the book I found especially frightening when Gabe gets on a subway car, discovers he’s the only non-White person there, and he’s surrounded by wealthy-looking men. It’s terrifying. Nateras knows it and uses the scene to make the book even scarier. He does it so well I want to shove Testament into White people’s faces and yell “See? This. This is how I feel all the time.”

Sadly not the worst date he’s been on with a White guy

I could go on and on about how the book uses minority stress to create horror and how the haunting is a metaphor for privileged White men who hurt BIPOC, but it would get into spoiler territory and I really want you to read this book. So, I’ll end it here with a warning, beware of White gentleman’s clubs because you never know what kind of evil lurks there.

Tags: Adult, Asian American, BIPOC, Bisexual, Black, Book Review, Gay, Ghosts/Haunting, Latine/Latino, LGBTQIA, Mexican, Psychological Horror, Recommended
Children of Chicago by Cynthia Pelayo

Children of Chicago by Cynthia Pelayo

Formats: Print, audio, digital

Publisher: Agora

Genre: Dark Fantasy, Demon, Killer/Slasher, Myth and Folklore, Thriller

Audience: Adult/Mature

Diversity: Bisexual main character, Puerto Rican main character and author, Latine characters

Takes Place in: Chicago, IL, USA

Content Warnings (Highlight to view): Alcohol Abuse, Child Death, Death, Forced Captivity, Gaslighting, Illness, Kidnapping, Mental Illness, Physical Abuse, Police Harassment, Suicide, Violence

Blurb

This horrifying retelling of the Pied Piper fairytale set in present-day Chicago is an edge of your seat, chills up the spine, thrill ride. ‪ When Detective Lauren Medina sees the calling card at a murder scene in Chicago’s Humboldt Park neighborhood, she knows the Pied Piper has returned. When another teenager is brutally murdered at the same lagoon where her sister’s body was found floating years before, she is certain that the Pied Piper is not just back, he’s looking for payment he’s owed from her. Lauren’s torn between protecting the city she has sworn to keep safe, and keeping a promise she made long ago with her sister’s murderer. She may have to ruin her life by exposing her secrets and lies to stop the Pied Piper before he collects.

And I chiefly use my charm
On creatures that do people harm,
The mole and toad and newt and viper;
And people call me the Pied Piper.
– The Pied Piper of Hamelin by Robert Browning (1812-1889)

“The Pied Piper of Hamelin”by Augustin von Mörsperg, 1592

My dad was born and raised on the Southside Chicago and will tell anyone who will listen that his birthplace is the best city in the world. My wife, on the other hand, firmly believes Chicago is akin to LA in the ‘90s. When I did finally manage to lure her there with the promise of deep-dish pizza and the Museum of Science and Industry she did admit the Windy City was a pretty cool place and not at scary as she was expecting (even after we stumbled onto an illegal street race). Although the crime rate there is higher than the national average, Chicago is hardly the crime and drug filled dystopia my wife and other outsiders seem to believe it is. In fact, its violent crime rates are far lower than those of Anchorage, Wichita, and Milwaukee. The dangerous reputation may have come from Chicago’s fascinating history of crime, gangsters, and serial killers or even the many tragedies that have befallen the White City in the past. Modern-day boogiemen like the Lipstick Killer, John Wayne Gacy, the Ripper Crew, and Richard Speck all called Chicago their home. The Blue Beard-esque H. H. Holmes built his murder castle in Englewood. The city’s most notorious gangster, Al Capone, has morphed into something of a folk hero and tragedies like the Great Chicago Fire and the Haymarket affair have taken on almost a legendary status. Dark rumors surround the abandoned Edgewater Medical Center. Stories like these have shaped Chicago’s history and how it’s perceived by the rest of the country: a gothic city haunted by the past. But darkness and death aren’t all the city has to offer.

Fairy tales, at least the original versions and not the Disney-fied ones, are often a child’s first introduction to the world of horror. Beautiful and sinister stories full of threats of death and assault, mutilation, hungry wolves, and dark forests have been used to frighten children for generations. Fairy tales are beautiful roses and sharp thorns, poisonous treats, beauty and blood. They also share many of the same elements as gothic fiction. Sometime in the distant past, a helpless woman is placed in a dark and dangerous setting (now a castle instead of a forest), where she is threatened by supernatural forces until rescued by the hero. Orphans and peasant girls are made to suffer before finally coming into riches. Animals no longer speak, but still bring portents of doom. Nature is wild, dangerous, and unpredictable. Both have themes of revenge, isolation, rags to riches, abuse, and women who are under constant threat as the men in her life fight over her body. Bluebeard, and other versions of the Aarne–Thompson type 312 tale, are the perfect example of a gothic fairy tale. In the story a woman leaves her family to marry a mysterious stranger and goes to live in his isolated and lonely castle. But locked away in a castle is a dark and dangerous secret. The wife can go in any room, but one, which contains the bodies of the stranger’s previous, murdered wives.

In the original version of Cinderella, the Little Mermaid, and Sleeping Beauty, the step sisters cut off parts of their feet and birds pecked out their eyes, the mermaid’s tongue was cut out and every step she took on land was agony, and Sleeping Beauty was raped and impregnated with twins by a married king while she slept.

Cynthia Pelayo draws on the city’s history to create her gothic urban fairy tale, Children of Chicago. The city stands in for the dark forest, a vaguely supernatural setting where unwary children disappear and gang members prowl the street like big bad wolves. The book follows recently orphaned Lauren Medina, a deeply troubled police detective hunting a serial killer known only as The Pied Piper– a shadowy boogeyman who preys on children then vanishes into the night. It’s rumored he can be summoned by burning a black candle and speaking a spell in front of a mirror. Throughout the story, Lauren is unstable and brimming over with barely-contained emotion, a staple of any good Gothic tale, as she wrestles with her missing memories of her sister’s death. Lauren breaks the typical female fairy tale mold where women were relegated to witches, wise women, virginal damsels, and evil stepmothers. She’s not exactly evil, but she isn’t pure and heroic either, instead she’s but a rare example of a female Byronic hero intentionally written to be tragic, unlikeable, morally gray, and hiding a dark past, much like the heroes found in gothic horror. In fact, few of the women in the story fall into any of the aforementioned roles. Stepmothers aren’t necessarily evil, even if their angry stepdaughters perceive them as such. Damsels in distress may possess more agency than they seem to, and villainous women can also be victims. I genuinely enjoyed seeing a female character (who wasn’t intended to be liked) embrace her darkness and struggle with her morality. Just as much horror came from Lauren’s psychological trauma and instability as it did from the threat of the supernatural.

While Lauren initially came across as “the young female cop with a dark past and something to prove” trope (aka Jodie Foster in Silence of the Lambs), it soon became clear that unlike Clarice Starling, we’re not necessarily supposed to root for her. And unlike every maverick detective in an ‘80s buddy-cop comedy, Lauren’s flagrant disregard for the rules in order to get her guy aren’t justified, but instead dangerous and unjust. Though, much like police in the real world, she’s able to get away with it. I appreciate that Pelayo avoided turning her crime drama into “copaganda” by making Lauren a protagonist, but not a hero. I admit I used to enjoy shows like Brooklyn 99, Lucifer, and Law & Order SVU (yes, I’m old) even though I recognized how incredibly problematic they were. But ever since 2020 I’ve more or less lost my taste for any media that portrays a corrupt system as a heroic force for good, justified in flouting the law. It no longer feels like harmless fantasy when you realize how many people actually believe that cop shows reflect real life and officers only target “bad guys” as oppose to anyone they don’t like (mostly BIPOC, the poor, and the mentally ill). So, reading a crime story where the police weren’t heroes was a relief. In fact, Lauren’s only redeeming quality is that she has a soft spot for troubled teens, ever since the mysterious death of her own sister.

Brimming with references to Chicago’s history, it’s clear that Pelayo loves her home while still recognizing its flaws. In fact, the novel feels just as much a crime story as it does a guide to the dark and fantastical parts of the Windy City. She holds a Master of Fine Arts in Writing from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago and it shows in her writing. Throughout Children of Chicago Pelayo references the original, dark versions of famous and not-so famous fairytales, from Cinderella to the Singing Bone, adding to her own story’s dark atmosphere balancing on the edge of reality and fantasy. Pelayo’s novel is full of missing mothers, an unjust society where the most vulnerable suffer, magic mirrors, plenty of gore, spells, and a moral message. But overall, it’s a subversion of the classic fairy tale formula where the good are rewarded, the evil are punished, and morality is clearly defined. In Children of Chicago the “heroes” are neither pure-hearted nor moral, evil escapes justice while the innocent suffer, and no one is getting a happy ending.

It’s unfortunate that the darkest parts of Chicago’s history have shaped so much of its reputation when the Windy City has so much to offer. As my wife soon discovered on her first visit, the city is full or art, beauty, and wonder. Pelayo doesn’t just show the city’s dark side, she shows its magic as well. “Fairy tales are in our blood as Chicagoans” one of the books characters explains. Walt Disney, L. Frank Baum, Ray Bradbury, and Gwnedolyn Brooks were all inspired by the city to create their own fairy tales. Colleen Moore created her famous Fairy Castle and donated it to The Chicago Museum of Science and Industry. Children gathered pennies to create the Rock-a-Bye Lady from Eugene Field’s poem. The haunting beauty of the SheddAquarium feels like you’ve stepped into another world. The city even has a secret Little Mermaid inspired bar! It’s this beauty, contrasted with the allure of danger, that makes Chicago as wonderous as any fairytale.

Tags: Adult, BIPOC, Bisexual, Book Review, Dark Fantasy, Demon, Killer/Slasher, Latine/Latino, LGBTQIA, Myths and Folklore, Own Voices, Puerto Rican, Recommended, Thriller, Young Adult
Anoka by Shane Hawk

Anoka by Shane Hawk

Formats: Print, audio, digital

Publisher: Self-Published

Genre: Body Horror, Folk Horror, Monster, Myth and Folklore, Occult, Werewolf

Audience: Adult/Mature

Diversity: Biracial Cheyenne author, Dakota characters, non-binary character

Takes Place in: Anoka, Minnesota, USA

Content Warnings (Highlight to view): Alcohol Abuse, Cannibalism, Child Death, Death, Drug Use/Abuse, Gore, Racism, Rape/Sexual Assault, Self-Harm, Sexual Abuse, Slurs, Suicide, Verbal/Emotional Abuse, Violence

Blurb

Welcome to Anoka, Minnesota, a small city just outside of the Twin Cities dubbed “The Halloween Capital of the World” since 1937. Here before you lie several tales involving bone collectors, pagan witches, werewolves, skeletal bison, and cloned children. It is up to you to decipher between fact and fiction as the author has woven historical facts into his narratives. With his debut horror collection, Cheyenne & Arapaho author Shane Hawk explores themes of family, grief, loneliness, and identity through the lens of indigenous life.

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.

Apparently Anoka, Minnesota is the “Halloween Capital of the World” because they’ve been having giant Halloween parades since 1920. Out of civic pride, I want to argue that Salem is the Halloween Capital and our town is better because we have real witches and Salem Horror Fest and the oldest candy company in America. On the other hand, I would also like tourists to stop blocking the traffic, drunkenly climbing on the witch statue, and crowding my favorite restaurants every October (that’s my job), so maybe it would be better if they all headed to Anoka instead. I don’t think anyone will want to go anywhere near the Minnesota city after reading Shane Hawk’s Indigenous horror anthology of the same name, though. The stories in Anoka are loosely tied together by their location in an alternative version of the town where dark magic and monsters lurk. An evil tome known simply as “the book” and strange green swirls also make multiple appearances throughout the anthology.

A comic of a person hanging off a statue of a witch saying

Hawk gives a different and unique voice to each of his characters so every story feels different from the others. His writing reminded me of a talented artist who can draw in multiple styles and shift easily from realism to the simple lines of a cartoon. My favorite thing about his book is how so many of the stories felt like pre-comics code horror anthology comics like Eerie, Black Cat, and The Haunt of Fear or modern-day creepypastas with terrifying twists. Some stories were fun and weird, others tragic reflections of human nature. But all of them were creepy, the kind of creepy that makes you aware of how many noises an old house makes at night or has you shouting out loud at the characters not to go into the room where the monster is waiting.

American Indians tragically have the highest infant mortality rate in the U.S. (again due to trauma, poverty and a lack of adequate healthcare), so much of Hawk’s anthology touches on themes of child death and the trauma that goes with such a great loss. In two stories, Orange and Wounded, the death of a child in the past moves the main characters to do something terrible. Soilborne is a metaphor for the loss of the child-parent connection and how devastating that can be. In Imitate, the protagonist has to rush to save his son, Tate, from an unknown horror that’s taken his form. There’s no way of knowing if Tate is even still alive, and the whole story is exceedingly stressful to read. Honestly, Imitate would have worked just fine as microfiction and Hawk could have easily ended it after the first page or so. But instead, he decides to pile on even more terror by turning it into a suspenseful short story where we’re forced to watch a father slowly lose his mind. It’s definitely one of the anthology’s stronger and spookier tales.

My absolute favorite story in the collection is Dead America about a writer named Chaska whose family is followed by death. This is sadly not uncommon for Native families as generational trauma, poverty, and a lack of adequate healthcare has lead to poor health and high death rates from heart disease, diabetes, and suicide. The story gets its name from Chaska’s hobo nickel which depicts the skull of a dead Indian chief in full headdress on one side and Columbus’ three ships on the other. “When betting a coin offers someone a fifty-fifty chance of winning and losing. The nickel was a metaphor for the predicament of Indian existence: fucked no matter which side the coin landed on” the author explains. He’s about to find out how right he is when Asibikaashi the Spider Woman decides to make the Dakota author suffer for his sins.

This story is SCARY. All of my notes for Dead America consist of “nope, nope, nopeity-nope nope, fuck this, nope.” I’m not someone who’s usually bothered by spiders under normal circumstances. I think they’re kind of cute and I love that they eat any bugs that get into the house, but Chaska’s punishment left me terrified of arachnids. If you have any form of arachnophobia, I can guarantee you’ll be in for some nasty nightmares and might want to skip this story entirely. But if you’re feeling brave, it’s one of the strongest stories in the collection and worth checking out. The story also touches on themes of profiting off the personal stories of others, very similar to how Ward Churchill, Asa Earl Carter, Mary Summer Rain and others pretended to be Native for fame and money.

It’s important to note that in Ojibwe stories Asibikaashi, aka Grandmother Spider, is a benevolent deity and helper of humanity whose spiderweb charms, popularly known as “Dream Catchers“, were woven by women as a form of protection for infants. I couldn’t find any references to her punishing the wicked (of course I couldn’t find many references to her at all that weren’t written by White new agers).

Hawk’s final story, Transformation, is about a non-binary werewolf who hunts for her community and runs into trouble at Anoka’s annual Halloween parade. Having a trans werewolf feels perfect because werewolves are the ideal metaphor for someone with a fluid identity. Sometimes you’re a wolf, others a human, and occasionally you’re something in between, but you’re always a werewolf regardless of what form you take that day. Just because I’m femme one day, it doesn’t negate the fact that I’m non-binary; I’m still an enby when I’m feeling more trans-masculine. Like the story title, werewolves can also represent transition. The wolf can be seen as the true self, hidden under a dull human skin that’s forced to conform to society’s rigid standards. Becoming the wolves gives you the opportunity to experience freedom. If that transformation is unwanted, it can be compared to a menstrual cycle that causes dysphoria each month or unwanted body hair. “Jenny” a transwoman who identifies with werewolves is quoted on the queer horror blog, Gender Terror: “The titanic proportion of my body and the hair that I continually fight back terrify me, and makes me the target of many suspicious onlookers. And just like werewolves, I have no control over what my body does. Feeling like a prisoner to how your body changes is a special torment I think a lot of transgender people share with werewolves.” So is it any wonder writers like Hal Schrieve, Allison Moon, Suzanne Walker,  Ashlynn Barker, and numerous self-published erotic authors like Noah Harris have all explored the idea of a trans werewolf? Heck “were-woman” is slang for someone who “transforms” into a woman at night (though this terminology can be problematic). Hawk’s non-binary werewolf character seemed so cool I was disappointed that their story wasn’t longer. There was so much going on in Transformation it felt like it would’ve worked much better as a novella rather than a short story. Honestly, I’d read a full novel about the nostalgic werewolf, Halloween parades, and Wendigo. That’s my one major complaint about Anoka: it’s too short! The concept was so cool I was disappointed we didn’t get to explore more of Hawk’s alternate universe. I wanted to learn more about The Book and the creepy town filled with dark magic and monsters.

A comic-style illustration of a werewolf wearing underwear made from the trans flag colors.

What impressed me the most about the story collection is how Hawk was able to handle the subjects of child loss, sexual assault, substance abuse and missing and murdered Indigenous women, especially in his story Wounded, in a way that felt respectful rather than exploitative. Anoka is a fun, frightening ride that draws attention to many of the issues plaguing American Indians today, and I hope we’ll get to hear even more stories from the spooky little town in Hawk’s future books.

Tags: Adult, American Indian, Anthology, BIPOC, Body Horror, Book Review, Folk Horror, LGBTQIA, Monster, Myths and Folklore, Non-binary, Occult, Own Voices, Plains Native Nations, Recommended, Werebeast

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Brutal Hearts by Cassie Daley

Brutal Hearts by Cassie Daley

Formats: Print

Publisher: Self Published

Genre: Killer/Slasher, Monster

Audience: Y/A

Diversity: Autistic character, author is queer and autistic

Takes Place in: type here

Content Warnings (Highlight to view): Cannibalism, Child Death, Death, Gore, Violence

Blurb

It’s 1997 and Leah just can’t seem to catch a break.

A year has passed since her fiancé went missing while hiking alone on a mountain, and she can’t shake the unanswered questions and nightmares Simon left behind.

On the anniversary of his disappearance, Leah and her new girlfriend Josie return to the trail where Simon disappeared with two of their best friends. Armed with incense, tarot cards, crystals, and snacks, the girls have everything they need to complete the Ritual of Closure to help Leah finally say goodbye to Simon, once and for all.

But the trails are hiding something sinister, and it’s been waiting. As night falls around them, the girls find themselves in a deadly game against something vicious and wild that’s made a home for itself on the mountain.

It’s time to find out what really happened to Simon.

The year is 1996: Scream has just been released in theaters, the Macarena is the hottest new dance craze, and seventeen-year-old Leah is deeply in love with her high school sweetheart, Simon. The two have plans to marry after graduation, but that dream is destroyed when Simon goes missing after a hike in the nearby mountains. Volunteers scour the woods for any trace of the missing boy, but it’s like Simon has vanished without a trace.

A year later, Leah is still struggling with her grief and guilt. Her girlfriend, Josie, is doing her best to help Leah through the nightmares and sobbing fits, but nothing seems to help. In a last-ditch effort to give the poor girl some closure, Josie suggests they hike Simon and Leah’s favorite trail to say a final goodbye. Along with Leah’s two best friends, sisters Charlotte and May, the girls set off to perform a Wiccan inspired goodbye ceremony for him. But their beautiful day quickly goes south when something in the woods starts stalking them.

Brutal Hearts is short but gripping story, switching back and froth between the girls being stalked through the woods and the mystery surrounding Simon’s disappearance. I ended up finishing it in one sitting, something I never do even with novellas (ADHD makes it hard for me to focus on a book for too long unless I’m really engaged). I loved all the little nods to 90s aesthetics, from the clothing, to May’s Tamagotchi and the girls’ obsession with all things Wicca. (From Sabrina Spellman to Nancy Downs witches were huge in the 90s, inspiring a renewed interest in Wicca from teenage girls.) Although, it is hard to accept that the 90s were thirty years ago and are now officially nostalgic. Wasn’t it literally just 2000? I think Y2K caused my brain to crash and stop perceiving the passage of time.

I especially liked the addition of the playlists for each character in the back of the book. Leah’s music playlist revolves around being hurt by love. Josie likes grunge. May’s playlist is full of bubblegum pop while the more traditionally pretty and popular Charlotte prefers mainstream music. A fun flashback to 90s teen horror like Fear Street and the works of Christopher Pike (appropriate since Daley also runs the PikeCast) with a healthy dose of urban legends and campfire stories. A perfect read for a hot summer night. 

Tags: Autism, Killer/Slasher, Monster, Own Voices, Recommended, Young Adult
Manhunt by Gretchen Felker-Martin

Manhunt by Gretchen Felker-Martin

Formats: Print, audio, digital

Publisher: Tor Nightfire

Genre: Apocalypse/Disaster, Monster

Audience: Adult/Mature

Diversity: Trans author and characters, queer characters, Native character

Takes Place in: northeastern USA

Content Warnings (Highlight to view): Animal Death, Body Shaming, Cannibalism,  Child Death, Childbirth, Death, Drug Use/Abuse, Eating Disorder, Forced Captivity, Gore, Illness, Kidnapping, Medical Procedures, Oppression, Rape/Sexual Assault, Self-Harm, Slurs, Torture, Transphobia, Verbal/Emotional Abuse, Violence

Blurb

Y: The Last Man meets The Girl With All the Gifts in Gretchen Felker-Martin’s Manhunt, an explosive post-apocalyptic novel that follows trans women and men on a grotesque journey of survival.

Beth and Fran spend their days traveling the ravaged New England coast, hunting feral men and harvesting their organs in a gruesome effort to ensure they’ll never face the same fate.

Robbie lives by his gun and one hard-learned motto: other people aren’t safe.

After a brutal accident entwines the three of them, this found family of survivors must navigate murderous TERFs, a sociopathic billionaire bunker brat, and awkward relationship dynamics―all while outrunning packs of feral men, and their own demons.

Manhunt is a timely, powerful response to every gender-based apocalypse story that failed to consider the existence of transgender and non-binary people, from a powerful new voice in horror.

 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.

Have you ever wondered what happens to trans people in sex-based apocalypses like those in Y: The Last Man or Ōoku: The Inner Chambers? Gretchen Felker-Martin sets out to answer exactly that in her post-apocalypse splatterpunk novel Manhunt.

The T-rex virus transforms anyone with high levels of testosterone—mostly cis-men—into cannibalistic, sex-crazed monsters. Emboldened by the end of the world, a group of TERFs (trans-exclusionary radical “feminists”) have formed their own militia where they hunt and kill any trans women they find. It may seem like a group of militant TERFs is an exaggeration, but it feels like less of a stretch when you consider there’s already a high rate of violence against trans people. In 2021 alone, at least 56 trans and gender non-conforming people were murdered in the US. Transphobic hate crimes have quadrupled over the last five years in the UK. These fake feminists are also more fascist adjacent than they’d like to admit. As Judith Butler accurately pointed out, TERFs “have allied with rightwing attacks on gender” and “The anti-gender ideology is one of the dominant strains of fascism in our times. So, the TERFs will not be part of the contemporary struggle against fascism.” TERFs Lily Cade and Bev Jo Von Dohre have even called for the death of trans women. The fact that trans women in Manhunt can transform into monsters if they don’t have access to anti-androgen medication gives the TERFs exactly the excuse they’ve been waiting for to go from hateful rhetoric to actually destroying that which they hate most (never mind that cis-women with PCOS or congenital adrenal hyperplasia can also transform into feral beasts).

Not only do trans women have to avoid getting killed by the monstrous men, but also running into the militant TERFs who have seized control of most of the northeast. Fran and Beth are two such transwomen trying to survive in the new world, catching feral men and harvesting their testicles for their friend Indy to extract estradiol from. After running afoul of a militant group of TERFs and almost being killed by men, Fran and Beth meet a sharp-shooting trans man named Robbie, who they take on their journey with them. The trio return to Indy’s house with their testicle trophies where they learn she’s been offered a job by a spoiled rich girl who controls a luxurious bunker. But the promises of comfort the bunker offers may hide a deadly truth.

While I personally enjoyed this book, it won’t be for everyone. It is splatterpunk, after all. That means there’s lots of brutal violence (including a cis woman having her uterus cut out of her), gross content (testicle eating), and graphic sex. Everyone in Manhunt is super horny, sometimes at wildly inappropriate times, so Beth, Fran, Indy, and Robbie do a lot of fucking. The sex is hot, sometimes gross, and other times both hot and gross, much like real sex. It was nice to have sex scenes centered around trans pleasure rather than the cis-male gaze. Of course, the graphic description of genitalia might be triggering for some people who experience gender dysphoria, so be aware of that. Speaking of hot sex, a captain in the TERF army named Ramona is sleeping with a non-binary prostitute named Feather. One reviewer claimed this is unrealistic but I have to disagree. A lot of chasers are happy to sleep with trans people but won’t do anything to defend their rights or even stand up for them. Too many people with trans partners see their relationship as a shameful secret to be kept, and Ramona is no different. She’s too much of a coward to do the right thing and just goes along with the TERF army because it’s what’s easy.

Splatterpunk is very hit or miss for me, as many extreme horror books can cross over into misogynistic violence. Manhunt manages to avoid this trap, even though most of the book’s violence is against women (as all the characters, aside from Robbie, are women). Perhaps because it’s other women committing the violence, but I didn’t get that gross feeling I usually do when reading splatterpunk authored by cis men. Even the sexual assault scene didn’t feel gratuitous and was handled well. I also loved how flawed the protagonists are. Some people mistakenly assume LGBTQIA+ characters need to be perfect for it to be considered a “good” portrayal. I believe realistic is preferable to perfect, and I like my queer characters to have character flaws who sometimes do and say problematic things. Both Beth and Fran feel very human. Beth is reckless and insecure; Fran has both passing and class privilege and can sometimes be selfish. Neither of them are bad people, just realistically flawed.

My only complaint about the book (and granted, it’s minor) is that there are so many descriptions of Indi’s fat body. The way she’s described isn’t quite fatphobic, but it did make me feel uncomfortable that there was so much focus on it. I can understand that Indy is dealing with a lot of internalized fatphobia and insecurity, so it makes sense that her character would spend a lot of time focusing on her size and the limitations that come with it. When the story is told from a third-person point of view, there’s no reason for Indy’s weight to be described in such detail, especially since no one else’s body gets that much description or scrutiny. At least she’s never described as gross or unattractive, and Indi even gets to be sexually desirable, which is rare for fat characters outside of fetish porn. It was refreshing to see fat people having passionate sex scenes just like their skinny counterparts. Like I said, it’s a minor complaint and could absolutely be my own hypersensitivity.

Reading this book is like having your brain put in a blender. It’s wild, gross, horny, disgusting, tragic, and hilarious all whipped together into an extreme horror smoothie. In other words, I LOVED it. You have to be at least somewhat familiar with trans culture to fully appreciate the story, which I thought was awesome. There’s also just something extremely satisfying about trans women killing fascist TERFs: not something I’d advocate in real life, but it’s fun and cathartic in fiction. Unsurprisingly, this made a bunch of real-life TERFs very angry. They didn’t like being portrayed as bigoted assholes just because of their bigoted asshole-ish behavior and tried to review bomb Manhunt…which should just make you want to read it more.

Tags: Adult, American Indian, Apocalypse/Disaster, BIPOC, Book Review, Highly Recommended, LGBTQIA, Trans, Zombies
Conquer by Edward M. Erdelac

Conquer by Edward M. Erdelac

Formats: Print, audio, digital

Publisher: Self Published 

Genre: Historic Horror, Monster, Mystery, Myth and Folklore, Occult, Vampire

Audience: Adult/Mature

Diversity: Black/African-American, Hispanic, Trans, Gay

Takes Place in: Harlem, New York, USA

Content Warnings (Highlight to view): Animal Death, Body Shaming, Child Abuse, Death, Drug Use/Abuse, Forced Captivity, Gore, Homophobia, Kidnapping, Necrophilia, Oppression, Pedophilia, Physical Abuse, Police Harassment, Racism, Rape/Sexual Assault, Sexual Abuse, Slurs, Transphobia

Blurb

In 1976 Harlem, JOHN CONQUER, P.I. is the cat you call when your hair stands up…the supernatural brother like no other. From the pages of Occult Detective Quarterly, he’s calm, he’s cool, and now he’s collected in CONQUER.

From Hoodoo doctors and Voodoo Queens,
The cat they call Conquer’s down on the scene!
With a dime on his shin and a pocket of tricks,
A gun in his coat and an eye for the chicks.
Uptown and Downton, Harlem to Brooklyn,
Wherever the brothers find trouble is brewin,’
If you’re swept with a broom, or your tracks have been crossed,
If your mojo is failin’ and all hope is lost,
Call the dude on St. Marks with the shelf fulla books,
‘Cause ain’t no haint or spirit, or evil-eye looks,
Conjured by devils, JAMF’s, or The Man,
Can stop the black magic Big John’s got on hand!

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.

Conquer is the story of a Black mystical detective named John Conquer (a reference to John the Conqueror) and a homage to 70’s detective fiction and Blaxploitation films. It’s fun, well written, and full of creepiness, including a fetus monster haunting an abandoned subway station and a man shrunk down and boiled alive in a lava lamp. I greatly enjoyed the book, but like most Blaxploitation, it wasn’t without its problems.

It’s important to point out that Erdelac is a White author writing a Black story (something not uncommon in Blaxploitation). I usually prefer to promote “own voices” books, and stories by cishet White men are a rarity on this blog. After all, folks with privilege do not have the best track record when it comes to writing marginalized groups. As Irish author Kit de Waal said, “Don’t dip your pen in someone else’s blood”. Take American Dirt by Jeanine Cummins and The Help by Kathryn Stockett. They’re both terrible for numerous reasons including, but not limited to: not doing enough research, using the White Savior trope, watering down their narratives to make them palatable for White audiences, cultural appropriation, speaking over marginalized voices, etc. That’s not to say White authors shouldn’t write BIPOC characters at all. Not having any diversity in your story can be equally problematic. It just needs to be done carefully and respectfully. Very, very carefully. Yes, I know that can be a fine line to walk, but if an author can research what kind of crops people were growing in 1429 to make their book more accurate, they can research American Indians and people of color. Besides, that’s what hiring sensitivity readers and using resources like Writing with Color is for. Of course, there’s also the problem of White voices being given preferential treatment by publishers and audiences over BIPOC trying to tell their own stories.

To his credit, Erdelac has done an impressive amount of research to make his book feel authentic. John Conquer wears a dime around his ankle for protection and a mojo hand (another name for a mojo bag) for luck. His name is a reference to High John de Conqueror, a Black folk hero with magical abilities. Conquer also has one of the most accurate representations of Vodou I’ve ever seen in fiction. Hollywood “voo doo” is a pet peeve of mine, so I appreciate Erdelac’s dedication to portraying the religion and loa/lwa (the powerful spirits Vodou practitioners worship and serve) accurately. He also doesn’t try to portray an idealized version of 1970s NYC. There’s racism, anti-Semitism, homophobia, and cops and criminals spewing slurs. And while it’s jarring, it does make the story feel more authentic. The police are racist and homophobic and there’s tension between the many communities that make up 1970s New York. John Conquer’s Uncle Silas was disowned by his family for being gay, and when John is asked to solve his murder, he has to confront his own homophobia and transphobia. That doesn’t mean it always works, though. There were definitely a few times I side-eyed and wondered if a certain line really needed to be in there.

My favorite part of the book is Eldelac’s excellent world building. White vampires go up in smoke when exposed to sunlight, while vampires with more melanin are protected from the sun’s rays. Vampirism also halts a corpse’s decay, but all that rot catches up to them when they’re finally killed. Each culture has their own magical practices with distinct rules, and magic doesn’t cross cultural lines. For example, only Vodou practitioners can become zombies, and non-Christian vampires are immune to crosses. Conquer is especially powerful because he’s learned many different traditions and practices, but the catch is that this opens him to a wider variety of spiritual attacks. Street gangs utilize black magic to wage wars with each other. His work is clever, original, and something I could really get into. But…having White authors tell BIPOC stories still feels problematic to me when White authors are still so heavily favored by the publishing industry. I’ve reviewed books by White authors before, but because Conquer is based heavily on Blaxploitation it feels, well, more exploitative than those I’ve reviewed in the past. I’m still going to go ahead and recommend Eldelac’s work because—in the end—it is well written and interesting, but I can also completely understand if some of you want to skip this one.

Tags: Adult, African American, Black, Book Review, Gay, Historic Horror, Latine/Latino, LGBTQIA, Monster, Mystery, Myths and Folklore, Occult, Recommended, Trans, vampire
Grievers by Adrienne Maree Brown

Grievers by Adrienne Maree Brown

Formats: Print, digital

Publisher: AK Press

Genre: Apocalypse/Disaster

Audience: Adult/Mature

Diversity: Black/African-American, Lesbian

Takes Place in: Detroit, MI, USA

Content Warnings (Highlight to view): Death, Drug Use/Abuse, Illness, Medical Procedures

Blurb

Dune’s mother is patient zero of a mysterious illness that stops people in their tracks—in mid-sentence, mid-action, mid-life—casting them into a nonresponsive state from which no one recovers. Dune must navigate poverty and the loss of her mother as Detroit’s hospitals, morgues, and graveyards begin to overflow. As the quarantined city slowly empties of life, she investigates what caused the plague, and what might end it, following in the footsteps of her late researcher father, who has a physical model of Detroit’s history and losses set up in their basement. She dusts it off and begins tracking the sick and dying, discovering patterns, finding comrades in curiosity, conspiracies for the fertile ground of the city, and the unexpected magic that emerges when the debt of grief is cleared.

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.

“Grief was an amalgamation of absence narratives layered over each other”

Death positivity is the philosophy that death and grief should be spoken of openly and that treating the subject as taboo does more harm than good. It encourages people to learn about end-of-life care, make plans for their own deaths, be involved in the care of their dead loved ones, and explore their curiosity and feelings surrounding death. In a way, Grievers is a death-positive book. The story explores what it’s like to lose the people you love, care for the dying, prepare for death, and the mourning process. Most horror skims over the death of its characters, their lives nothing more than cheap fodder for the reader’s entertainment. But in Grievers, you feel the weight of every death.

A mysterious illness is sweeping Detroit and killing its Black population. Dubbed “H8”, it leaves its victims frozen in place with grief-stricken faces. A social justice activist named Kama is the first to contract the disease. Unable to afford a hospital, Dune, Kama’s only child, cares for her mother at home by feeding her, changing her, and keeping her as comfortable as she can. Dune, distrustful of the system that failed them, decides to cremate her mother herself when Kama finally passes. Dune’s act of cremating her own mother (although not something I would recommend as it’s neither safe nor legal) is described as “sacred work,” a ritual that allows her to be close to her mother one last time.

Death rituals, whether religious or secular, perform a necessary function in the grieving process. In his research on grieving rituals Michael I. Norton, a professor at Harvard Business School, discovered the following:

“Despite the variance in the form that rituals take… a common psychological mechanism underlies their effectiveness: a restoration of feelings of control that losses impair. Indeed, people who suffer losses often report feeling out of control and actively try to regain control when they feel it slipping away; feeling in control, in turn, is associated with increased well-being, physical health, and coping ability.” [1]

In the story, a group of traditional Chinese medicine practitioners perform grieving rituals believing that this will protect them from H8, a disease, they theorize, that targets the lungs where grief is held. Dune performs grief rituals to help overcome the immense sense of loss she’s experiencing. The first is cremating her mother in her backyard. The second is “telling” her dead father that her mother has passed. The third, and most important, is creating a record of everyone who has fallen ill and marking their locations with pins on her father’s model of Detroit. The last project gives her something to do, a way of combatting her sense of helplessness as the world falls apart around her. After slipping into a deep depression and shutting herself away, collecting data on the infected gives Dune a new sense of purpose and feeling of control. She organizes her data onto index cards and files them away, creating order out of chaos.

The way Brown represents grief is both beautiful and heartbreaking. Dune isolates herself from the world, too depressed to even plan a memorial service for her mother. She physically carries the weight of her grief as she gains weight during her depression. Eventually, Dune finds ways to cope with her grief. In addition to the rituals providing her with a sense of control, Dune also focuses on survival and caring for her elderly grandmother, Mama Vivian. She harvests produce from community gardens and cans them for the winter. She changes, feeds, and sings to her grandmother. She eventually reaches out to one of her mother’s activist friends for emotional support. It’s not always easy. Dune blows up at a volunteer food distributor without really knowing why, other than just needing someone to lash out at. She dips back into a depression when other people she cares about die. But she keeps surviving, and slowly things start to improve. Brown describes the feeling of slowly emerging from a deep depression perfectly: “Dune was beginning to feel aware of her own aliveness again – not quite a desire to live, just a growing, surprising awareness that she was not dead.” While this may not sound like much, it’s still a step forward in Dune’s path to healing and an improvement from the beginning of the story when “the detritus of grief became Dune’s comfort.” As someone who suffers from clinical depression themselves, I can say that just feeling alive again is such a huge step forward. At the same time, her father’s model, now thick with markers, is starting to sprout little green shoots: new life that has started to grow in the basement against all odds.

A year defined by a pandemic and protests, 2020 was especially difficult for Black Americans. Black communities were hit especially hard by Covid-19, and our anger and frustration with a racist system reached a boiling point with the murder of George Floyd by a White police officer. Grievers may be fiction, but it captures the very real feelings of pain and loss the Black community has been feeling recently. The H8 virus is a metaphor for both Covid and the pain caused by racism. “Hate” is literally killing Black people by destroying them emotionally and no one seems to be able to quell the spread of the disease. Like Covid, everyone knows someone who died from the virus. The city seems to shut down overnight as the wealthy flee and hospitals are overwhelmed.

Grievers does not follow a standard three arch story structure. There’s no antagonist to overcome, no climax, or satisfying resolution. If you’re looking for traditional storytelling, then this book isn’t for you. If you want a beautiful, heartbreaking, death-positive horror story that focuses on one woman’s battle with grief and just trying to survive a pandemic that feels all too familiar, I highly recommend Grievers.

[1] From the Journal of Experimental Psychology

Tags: Adult, African American, Apocalypse/Disaster, BIPOC, Black, Book Review, Highly Recommended, Lesbian, LGBTQIA, Own Voices
Transmuted by Eve Harms

Transmuted by Eve Harms

Formats: Print, digital

Publisher: Unerving

Genre: Body Horror

Audience: Adult/Mature

Diversity: Trans main character and side character, queer main characters, Japanese-American side character

Takes Place in: Los Angeles, California, USA

Content Warnings (Highlight to view):  Body Shaming, Forced Captivity, Gore, Medical Torture/Abuse, Medical Procedures, Transphobia

Blurb

Her doctor is giving her the body of his dreams… and her nightmares. Isa is a micro-celebrity who rarely shows her face, and can’t wait to have it expertly ripped off and rearranged to look more feminine. When a successful fundraiser makes her gender affirming surgery possible, she’s overjoyed—until she has to give up all her money to save her dying father.

Crushed by gender dysphoria and the pressure of disappointing her fans who paid for a new face, she answers a sketchy ad seeking transgender women for a free, experimental feminization treatment. The grotesquely flawless Dr. Skurm has gruesome methods, but he gets unbelievable results, and Isa is finally feeling comfortable in her skin. She even gains the courage to ask out her crush: an alluring and disfigured alchemy-obsessed artist named Rayna.

But Isa’s body won’t stop changing, and she’s going from super model to super mutant. She has to discover the secret behind her metamorphosis—before the changes are irreversible, and she’s an unwanted freak forever.

Transmuted is an outrageous and unapologetically queer body horror tale that will leave you gasping, giggling, and gagging for more.

Harm excels at taking the everyday horror of living trapped in a body you don’t recognize as your own, dials it up to a hundred, then soaks it in blood, sex, and mad science.

Isa is a trans woman who struggles both with her weight and gender dysphoria. Her hormone replacement therapy (HRT) helps, but what she’d really love is to get facial feminization surgery (FFS) and it appears that her wish will soon become a reality. By raising money through her Twitch channel and charity streams, Isa has finally saved up enough to have the procedure. Everything is looking up. That is until her sister calls and all but demands the money for their shitty dad’s cancer treatment. Frankly I think the cancer is Karma for constantly misgendering his daughter and being all-around shitty to her, but despite my yelling at the pages to “not give that bastard a cent” Isa didn’t take my advice and caves under the guilt and familial pressure. Now that all the money everyone helped her raise is gone, Isa is just distraught and desperate enough to respond to a sketchy internet ad promising free and miraculous feminization treatments for trans women. As you can probably guess, this is not the wisest of decisions. as most things that sound too good to be true usually are. What follows is a bizarre and twisted journey of body horror and alchemy as Isa’s body transforms in ways she never expected.

If you’re someone who’s bugged by discussions of gender dysphoria and find the concept of passing problematic, you probably won’t enjoy this book. This is not a body positive story where the protagonist discovers her true beauty and learns to love herself. This is a book that explores what it’s like to feel disconnected from your body, like it’s some alien thing instead of part of you, and takes it to its extreme. Which honestly? I’m fine with. Body positivity is fucking hard guys. I totally support it and I’m happy for people who have learned to love their body and how they look, but for me that goal feels unattainable and it’s just too much pressure. I’m more a fan of body neutrality, which means you don’t have to love, or even like your appearance to feel good about yourself and appreciate what your body can do. We don’t live in a bubble and there’s constant pressure to appear thin, White, and cis to be considered attractive and accepted by society. Even if you understand intellectually that it’s transphobic to expect trans women to appear feminine and pass as cis and that beauty standards for women are inherently racist, sexist, and fatphobic it still wears on your self-esteem. I appreciate how Transmuted doesn’t pull any punches when examining gender dysphoria. Isa’s hatred of her appearance is painfully familiar and honest, as is her desperation to “fix” her face so she can stand to look in the mirror. It also reminds me of how one trans person, Luna, described her feelings of dysphoria “Gender dysphoria is something that is painful. It hurts. It’s… looking in the mirror and thinking, “Holy heck. Who is that person? Who am I looking at? Is that- Is that someone that’s come into my house?” And then realizing, no, that’s just- that’s just me in the mirror.”

It’s impossible to “think positive” all the time and that’s okay. Negative emotions and feelings are valid.

Despite how horribly wrong things go for Isa, this is not a warning about seeking gender affirming surgery or a lesson about being happy with what you have. It’s a horror story about unethical medical practitioners who prey on trans people, like surgeons who completely botch the surgery on their trans patients (trigger warning, graphic description of medical procedures at link), and illicit online pharmacies. Note that very few trans people regret getting gender confirmation surgery —only around 2%, compared to the 65% of people who regret getting cosmetic surgery — and most surgeries in the US are preformed by skilled surgeons who specialize in trans medicine. But there aren’t many of them, and the waiting list for their services can often be up to two hundred patients at a time. It’s incredibly difficult for trans people to access healthcare. According to LGBTQ taskforce nearly one-in-five trans people reported being denied needed health care outright because of their gender identity, 28% of trans and gender non-conforming people avoid seeking healthcare due to discrimination, and over 50% had to teach their providers about trans care. On top of the difficulty of trying to access healthcare, many trans people can’t afford it: 20% of trans people are uninsured and they’re nearly twice as likely to be living in poverty than the rest of the population. 

ALCHEMY – TREE OF THE MOON – HERMAPHRODITE Engraving from Johann Daniel Mylius, Philosophia Reformata, 1622. The presence of the Tree of the Moon, or the Arbor Argentum, along with the fact that the hermaphrodite stands on a crescent Moon, indicates that this stage is the alchemical process marking the perfection of the First Silver. The hermaphroditic merging of the King and Queen indicates that the process is not yet complete, as integration has not taken place. 

Isa’s situation is exaggerated for the purpose of making the story more horrifying, but her struggle to find healthcare isn’t. Both Isa and her best friend are part of the 10% of trans people forced to turn to the grey market for their HRT, so it’s clear that accessing trans-friendly healthcare is already a challenge for them. This is the scariest part of Transmuted to me, not the mad doctor and his twisted experiments or the bizarre mutations Isa goes through, but the knowledge that the remedy to her mental anguish is so simple, yet impossible to obtain like Tantalus reaching for the fruit tree in Tartarus, and the horror of knowing thousands of real trans people are in her situation every day.

Tags: Adult, Asian, Asian American, BIPOC, Body Horror, Book Review, Japanese, LGBTQIA, Own Voices, Recommended, Trans
The Taking of Jake Livingston by Ryan Douglass

The Taking of Jake Livingston by Ryan Douglass

Formats: Print, audio, digital

Publisher: Penguin Random House

Genre: Ghosts/Haunting

Audience: Y/A

Diversity: Gay, Black main character, Black side and major characters

Takes Place in: somewhere in the USA

Content Warnings (Highlight to view):  Alcohol Abuse, Bullying, Child Abuse, Child Death, Child Endangerment, Death, Drug Use/Abuse, Gaslighting, Homophobia, Incest, Oppression, Mental Illness, Physical Abuse, Racism, Rape/Sexual Assault, Slurs, Suicide, Verbal/Emotional Abuse, Violence

Blurb

Jake Livingston is one of the only Black kids at St. Clair Prep, one of the others being his infinitely more popular older brother. It’s hard enough fitting in but to make matters worse and definitely more complicated, Jake can see the dead. In fact he sees the dead around him all the time. Most are harmless. Stuck in their death loops as they relive their deaths over and over again, they don’t interact often with people. But then Jake meets Sawyer. A troubled teen who shot and killed six kids at a local high school last year before taking his own life. Now a powerful, vengeful ghost, he has plans for his afterlife–plans that include Jake. Suddenly, everything Jake knows about ghosts and the rules to life itself go out the window as Sawyer begins haunting him and bodies turn up in his neighborhood. High school soon becomes a survival game–one Jake is not sure he’s going to win.

Being the only gay Black kid in a preppy, White private school sucks and I would know. Ryan Douglass does a perfect job capturing my high school experience in The Taking of Jake Livingston.  Teachers are racist and assume everyone is straight. There are never any Black characters (besides slaves) in the books read for English class, and slavery gets glossed over in history. Black history isn’t mentioned at all except for maybe a day or two in February so the school can look woke. The whole thing feels like a scene from Get Out. I relate to Jake Livingston quite a lot. Except for the gender difference, he’s basically teenage me. He’s so paralyzed by anxiety and the thought of getting in trouble that Jake never lets himself have any fun, take risks, or even learn to drive. His low self-esteem means he doesn’t even recognize when a hunk named Alastor starts hitting on him. In fact, Alastor has to explicitly state that he’s interested and even then, Jake doesn’t seem entirely convinced. Reminds me of when my now-wife first asked me out on a date and I didn’t realize that it was a date because there was no way that tall, smart, hot chick could possibly be interested. 

But hey, at least I never had to deal with seeing ghosts. Poor Jake sees the dead everywhere. Normally it’s just like watching a recording of someone’s final moments stuck in an endless loop, but occasionally the ghosts are sentient. Even more rarely, they can interact with the world. As you can probably guess, this makes life even harder for Jake who’s already living with the “weird kid” label. Jake was fine (or at least surviving) just keeping his head down, avoiding confrontations, and doing everything he could to stay out of trouble and avoid the school bully, Chad. That is until the ghost of Sawyer, a malicious ghost with a troubled past who seems to have it in for Jake, shows up. Sawyer is, or rather was, a school shooter. He died by suicide after bringing a gun to school and killing his classmates. Apparently that wasn’t enough death for him because Sawyer is hell bent on terrorizing Jake and increasing his body count. 

There’s an interesting contrast between Sawyer and Jake. Both boys were abused by men in their lives, bullied by classmates, in the closet, and were introverts who felt alone in the world. But only one of them became a school shooter. Despite being put through a very similar hell, Jake never resorts to violence except once, and even then it’s fairly minor and honestly kind of justified (Chad was being a racist jerk and totally deserved it in my humble opinion). Jake fights back, Sawyer murders innocent people who had nothing to do with his abuse. So why the difference? 

The majority of mass shooters are White men. According to Statista over the past 40 years 66% of mass shooters are White, nearly three times higher than the number of Black mass shooters. A study on school shootings by Joshua R Gregory states: 

“Popular theories suggest that gun availability, mental illness, and bullying bear some relationship to school shootings; however, levels of gun availability, mental illness prevalence, and bullying victimization do not differ substantially between whites and non-whites, indicating that these factors might account for school shootings within, but not between, races.”

One theory is that men often lack the support networks needed to cope with loss, tragedy, and low self-esteem. Sawyer is alone and struggling with his mental health. His largely absent mother is more concerned with the perception of having a “weird” son than actually getting her son any help. She unfortunately buys into the common belief that having a mental health condition is somehow shameful for a man. As a result, Sawyer never gets help for his violent tendencies outside a handful of visits to a therapist who barely listens to him. He feels alone and unable to reach out. In contrast, Jake does develop a support network of family, friends, and even the ghosts of his ancestors to help him out when things are looking bleak. But that still doesn’t explain why White men are more likely to be school shooters than Black men. Is it because most White terrorists are racist extremists? In 2020 they were responsible for almost 70% of all domestic terrorism plots. But Sawyer doesn’t give any indication of being racist at any point. Or it could just be that he had access to a gun, as White men are 50% more likely to own a gun than Black men and most school shootings were carried out with legally purchased firearms. To be honest, I don’t know the answer. 

For dealing with such a sensitive topic I think the book did rather well. Even though Douglass gave Sawyer a tragic backstory, it was never used as a justification for his actions. Trauma was also handled well and appropriately. Of course, the book was not without its flaws. The world-building felt undeveloped and I was unclear on the rules of “Dead World.” Why could some ghosts interact with Jake and others couldn’t? I really enjoyed the idea of Jake’s ancestors supporting him, to the point I was moved to tears, but it also left me puzzled. Were they ghosts too? Why hadn’t Jake noticed them before? It’s unfortunate, but I felt that the ghosts were the weakest part of the book. I found myself much more invested in Alastor and Jake’s adorable, developing relationship than anything that had to do with specters. Which is pretty weird for me, usually I hate romantic subplots and just want the story to focus on the scary parts. A lot of the story just felt confusing and messy, which hindered it from being a four-star book no matter how much I loved the characters. Despite its flaws, The Taking of Jake Livingston is still a good book, especially for queer Black kids, and worth checking out.

Tags: African American, BIPOC, Black, Book Review, Gay, Ghosts/Haunting, LGBTQIA, Recommended, Young Adult
Things Have Gotten Worse Since We Last Spoke by Eric LaRocca

Things Have Gotten Worse Since We Last Spoke by Eric LaRocca

Formats: Print, audio, digital

Publisher: Weirdpunk Books

Genre: Body Horror, Psychological Horror, Romance

Audience: Adult/Mature

Diversity: Gay author, lesbian main characters

Content Warnings (Highlight to view): Animal Death, Death, Mental Illness, Gaslighting, Homophobia, Suicide, Verbal/Emotional Abuse

Blurb

Sadomasochism. Obsession. Death.

A whirlpool of darkness churns at the heart of a macabre ballet between two lonely young women in an internet chat room in the early 2000s—a darkness that threatens to forever transform them once they finally succumb to their most horrific desires.

What have you done today to deserve your eyes?

Holy shit…this book. Definitely shouldn’t have read it at 1 am.

This epistolary novella starts out innocently enough. It’s the early 2000s and a young woman named Agnes is selling her antique apple peeler on a LGBTQ+ message board. Another young woman, Zoe, offers to buy the apple peeler. The two email back and forth and start up a friendship. Agnes is having a really tough time and Zoe does something incredibly kind and generous to help her out. Awwww. It also turns out both women are gay and developing feelings for each other. Sounds like a sappy Hallmark Christmas movie doesn’t it (if Hallmark ever aired anything that wasn’t incredibly heteronormative)? Except then things start getting kind of weird (so more like a Lifetime Christmas movie). Agnes, who’s life honestly kind of sucks, is beholden of her “guardian angel” and a little too willing to please her. Zoe wants to push Agnes out of her comfort zone and asks her “What have you done today to deserve your eyes?” Super creepy, although nothing necessarily sinister yet. Still, relationship red flags are starting to pop up. As the two grow ever closer, Zoe suggests they enter a BDSM/sugar mama relationship which Agnes immediately agrees to. Zoe will email tasks which Agnes must complete to please her “sponsor” (Kudos to LaRocca for using sponsor/drudge instead of master/slave which can have racist connotations). Things start going downhill rapidly as both women prove how emotionally unstable they really are.

Twitter User @daveaddey noticed something interesting about Hallmark Christmas movie posters. Namely that they all look like they’ll eat your soul.

BDSM is not inherently harmful. Even when it’s meant to cause pain and discomfort, it shouldn’t result in any permanent physical, emotional, or mental harm; every act should be consensual, not coerced and when I say consensual, I mean enthusiastic consent, not the lack of a “no” or safeword. But like with all things, there are people who take it too far. Doms are supposed to prioritize the safety and well-being of their submissive, but Zoe is more interested in seeing how far she can push her new toy before it breaks. She doesn’t listen when Agnes tells her she’s uncomfortable and ignores the fact that a desperately lonely Agnes in not in the right headspace to make informed decisions. Zoe even makes her perform acts that threaten Agnes’ ability to function in everyday life and takes control of her finances (which is a big red flag). That’s when things start to get really disturbing. Yes, it gets even worse. I won’t reveal any spoilers, suffice it to say this book is not for the squeamish or anyone triggered by depictions of psychologically abusive relationships.

Aftercare is important.

Things Have Gotten Worse Since We Last Spoke is one of the most uncomfortable and disturbing books I’ve read all year. I spent the final third of the novella squirming and distressed, muttering “Oh no, oh no, oh no” to myself. Watching an abusive relationship develop as a lonely young woman’s mental health declines is incredibly upsetting. The warning signs in the relationship are subtle and easily missed if you don’t know what to look for, at least until it’s too late.  And the body horror pairs perfectly with the psychological horror, making the story even more unsettling. This novella may only take an hour to read, but the dread will stay with you for days. So, what have you done today to deserve your eyes?

Tags: Adult, Body Horror, Book Review, Highly Recommended, Lesbian, LGBTQIA, Psychological Horror, Romance
Testament by Jose Nateras

Testament by Jose Nateras

Formats: Print, digital

Publisher: NineStar Press

Genre: Ghosts/Haunting, Psychological Horror

Audience: Adult/Mature

Diversity: Gay Main character and side characters, Bisexual side character, Hispanic/Latinx (Mexican American) Main Character, Asian-American side character, Black side character

Takes Place in: Chicago, IL, USA

Content Warnings (Highlight to view): Gaslighting, Homophobia, Mental Illness, Racism, Rape/Sexual Assault, Self-Harm, Suicide

Blurb

Gabe Espinosa, is trying to dig himself out of the darkness. Struggling with the emotional fallout of a breakup with his ex-boyfriend, Gabe returns to his job at The Rosebriar Room; the fine dining restaurant at the historic Sentinel Club Chicago Hotel. Already haunted by the ghosts of his severed relationship, he’s drastically unprepared for the ghosts of The Sentinel Club to focus their attentions on him as well.

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.

Once upon a time during a LGBTQ+ group therapy session, someone dropped one of those truth bombs that totally changed my perspective on things. “If you’re a minority in American you have trauma. You may not even be aware of it, but it’s there.” Holy. Shit. Suddenly the fact that I always felt stressed, anxious, and depressed made sense. I realized the headaches, stomach problems, chronic fatigue, and back and neck pain (for which I’d spent thousands of dollars seeing specialists only to be told they didn’t know what was wrong with me) were all due to minority stress. Well fuck.

Comic-style illustration of woman holding head and saying

Mind. Blown.

Testament is a horror story about trauma and minority stress, and the protagonist Gabe’s struggles were achingly familiar.  He worries about how to let new people know he’s gay in a way that feels natural, finding a boyfriend who doesn’t see him as “exotic” or call him “papi,” and working around a bunch of rich White people. And poor Gabe works in rich douche central, a swanky hotel that once functioned as a members-only men’s club called The Sentinel Club. As if working around so many White folk isn’t unnerving enough, the hotel also seems to be home to something supernatural and sinister. Something that has its attentions turned on Gabe.

**trigger warning: discussion of suicide and mental health**

Reeling from a suicide attempt after a bad breakup Gabe is not in the best place mentally. He’s incredibly hard on himself, constantly calling himself “worthless” and “pathetic.” He pushes people away assuming they don’t care and refuses to ask for help. As someone who has had their own battles with depression, this also felt achingly familiar. It was also incredibly well done. Writers tend to portray depression as someone staying in bed for days in a state of ennui and despair, unable to move and refusing to eat. But that kind of severe depressive episode is hardly commonplace. Most folks suffering from depression are still (at least partially) functional and go to great lengths to hide their illness in front of others, which is why it’s so difficult to recognize when someone’s actually depressed. Gabe gets dressed, goes to work and forces himself to smile and act like everything is fine while his brain screams insults at him and everything reminds him of his ex. 

**end of trigger warning **

What’s especially brilliant is how Nateras uses Gabe’s haunting to mimic his mental state. Gabe is trapped both by his past and the entity that latches on to him and follows him everywhere. It will seemingly disappear before suddenly and violently announcing its presence, much like his depression and PTSD. In fact, most of the horror in the story comes from Gabe wrestling with his inner demons rather than the outer ones. It’s not quite gothic fiction, but I’d definitely call it gothic-adjacent with its slow burn horror and tumultuous emotions. Of course, if you dislike the slower pace of gothic horror and its focus on the characters rather than the haunting, you may not enjoy Testament. Fortunately, it’s a quick read, so even if you get bored quickly like I do you’ll probably be fine. 

There’s a lot of discussion about the evils of privilege, power, and money. And they are evil. They corrupt and hurt those without. And while no, not all White people are evil, there’s no way of telling the good from the bad with a glance, and a lifetime of negative experiences sets off every alarm bell in my head. There’s nothing quite like the fear you experience when you realize you’re the only person of color in a sea of privileged White folk, even if they’re the “nice” liberal kind. Such situations immediately make me uncomfortable and anxious, even as a White-passing Black person. I jokingly call it that Get Out feeling. There’s a particular scene in the book I found especially frightening when Gabe gets on a subway car, discovers he’s the only non-White person there, and he’s surrounded by wealthy-looking men. It’s terrifying. Nateras knows it and uses the scene to make the book even scarier. He does it so well I want to shove Testament into White people’s faces and yell “See? This. This is how I feel all the time.”

Sadly not the worst date he’s been on with a White guy

I could go on and on about how the book uses minority stress to create horror and how the haunting is a metaphor for privileged White men who hurt BIPOC, but it would get into spoiler territory and I really want you to read this book. So, I’ll end it here with a warning, beware of White gentleman’s clubs because you never know what kind of evil lurks there.

Tags: Adult, Asian American, BIPOC, Bisexual, Black, Book Review, Gay, Ghosts/Haunting, Latine/Latino, LGBTQIA, Mexican, Psychological Horror, Recommended
Children of Chicago by Cynthia Pelayo

Children of Chicago by Cynthia Pelayo

Formats: Print, audio, digital

Publisher: Agora

Genre: Dark Fantasy, Demon, Killer/Slasher, Myth and Folklore, Thriller

Audience: Adult/Mature

Diversity: Bisexual main character, Puerto Rican main character and author, Latine characters

Takes Place in: Chicago, IL, USA

Content Warnings (Highlight to view): Alcohol Abuse, Child Death, Death, Forced Captivity, Gaslighting, Illness, Kidnapping, Mental Illness, Physical Abuse, Police Harassment, Suicide, Violence

Blurb

This horrifying retelling of the Pied Piper fairytale set in present-day Chicago is an edge of your seat, chills up the spine, thrill ride. ‪ When Detective Lauren Medina sees the calling card at a murder scene in Chicago’s Humboldt Park neighborhood, she knows the Pied Piper has returned. When another teenager is brutally murdered at the same lagoon where her sister’s body was found floating years before, she is certain that the Pied Piper is not just back, he’s looking for payment he’s owed from her. Lauren’s torn between protecting the city she has sworn to keep safe, and keeping a promise she made long ago with her sister’s murderer. She may have to ruin her life by exposing her secrets and lies to stop the Pied Piper before he collects.

And I chiefly use my charm
On creatures that do people harm,
The mole and toad and newt and viper;
And people call me the Pied Piper.
– The Pied Piper of Hamelin by Robert Browning (1812-1889)

“The Pied Piper of Hamelin”by Augustin von Mörsperg, 1592

My dad was born and raised on the Southside Chicago and will tell anyone who will listen that his birthplace is the best city in the world. My wife, on the other hand, firmly believes Chicago is akin to LA in the ‘90s. When I did finally manage to lure her there with the promise of deep-dish pizza and the Museum of Science and Industry she did admit the Windy City was a pretty cool place and not at scary as she was expecting (even after we stumbled onto an illegal street race). Although the crime rate there is higher than the national average, Chicago is hardly the crime and drug filled dystopia my wife and other outsiders seem to believe it is. In fact, its violent crime rates are far lower than those of Anchorage, Wichita, and Milwaukee. The dangerous reputation may have come from Chicago’s fascinating history of crime, gangsters, and serial killers or even the many tragedies that have befallen the White City in the past. Modern-day boogiemen like the Lipstick Killer, John Wayne Gacy, the Ripper Crew, and Richard Speck all called Chicago their home. The Blue Beard-esque H. H. Holmes built his murder castle in Englewood. The city’s most notorious gangster, Al Capone, has morphed into something of a folk hero and tragedies like the Great Chicago Fire and the Haymarket affair have taken on almost a legendary status. Dark rumors surround the abandoned Edgewater Medical Center. Stories like these have shaped Chicago’s history and how it’s perceived by the rest of the country: a gothic city haunted by the past. But darkness and death aren’t all the city has to offer.

Fairy tales, at least the original versions and not the Disney-fied ones, are often a child’s first introduction to the world of horror. Beautiful and sinister stories full of threats of death and assault, mutilation, hungry wolves, and dark forests have been used to frighten children for generations. Fairy tales are beautiful roses and sharp thorns, poisonous treats, beauty and blood. They also share many of the same elements as gothic fiction. Sometime in the distant past, a helpless woman is placed in a dark and dangerous setting (now a castle instead of a forest), where she is threatened by supernatural forces until rescued by the hero. Orphans and peasant girls are made to suffer before finally coming into riches. Animals no longer speak, but still bring portents of doom. Nature is wild, dangerous, and unpredictable. Both have themes of revenge, isolation, rags to riches, abuse, and women who are under constant threat as the men in her life fight over her body. Bluebeard, and other versions of the Aarne–Thompson type 312 tale, are the perfect example of a gothic fairy tale. In the story a woman leaves her family to marry a mysterious stranger and goes to live in his isolated and lonely castle. But locked away in a castle is a dark and dangerous secret. The wife can go in any room, but one, which contains the bodies of the stranger’s previous, murdered wives.

In the original version of Cinderella, the Little Mermaid, and Sleeping Beauty, the step sisters cut off parts of their feet and birds pecked out their eyes, the mermaid’s tongue was cut out and every step she took on land was agony, and Sleeping Beauty was raped and impregnated with twins by a married king while she slept.

Cynthia Pelayo draws on the city’s history to create her gothic urban fairy tale, Children of Chicago. The city stands in for the dark forest, a vaguely supernatural setting where unwary children disappear and gang members prowl the street like big bad wolves. The book follows recently orphaned Lauren Medina, a deeply troubled police detective hunting a serial killer known only as The Pied Piper– a shadowy boogeyman who preys on children then vanishes into the night. It’s rumored he can be summoned by burning a black candle and speaking a spell in front of a mirror. Throughout the story, Lauren is unstable and brimming over with barely-contained emotion, a staple of any good Gothic tale, as she wrestles with her missing memories of her sister’s death. Lauren breaks the typical female fairy tale mold where women were relegated to witches, wise women, virginal damsels, and evil stepmothers. She’s not exactly evil, but she isn’t pure and heroic either, instead she’s but a rare example of a female Byronic hero intentionally written to be tragic, unlikeable, morally gray, and hiding a dark past, much like the heroes found in gothic horror. In fact, few of the women in the story fall into any of the aforementioned roles. Stepmothers aren’t necessarily evil, even if their angry stepdaughters perceive them as such. Damsels in distress may possess more agency than they seem to, and villainous women can also be victims. I genuinely enjoyed seeing a female character (who wasn’t intended to be liked) embrace her darkness and struggle with her morality. Just as much horror came from Lauren’s psychological trauma and instability as it did from the threat of the supernatural.

While Lauren initially came across as “the young female cop with a dark past and something to prove” trope (aka Jodie Foster in Silence of the Lambs), it soon became clear that unlike Clarice Starling, we’re not necessarily supposed to root for her. And unlike every maverick detective in an ‘80s buddy-cop comedy, Lauren’s flagrant disregard for the rules in order to get her guy aren’t justified, but instead dangerous and unjust. Though, much like police in the real world, she’s able to get away with it. I appreciate that Pelayo avoided turning her crime drama into “copaganda” by making Lauren a protagonist, but not a hero. I admit I used to enjoy shows like Brooklyn 99, Lucifer, and Law & Order SVU (yes, I’m old) even though I recognized how incredibly problematic they were. But ever since 2020 I’ve more or less lost my taste for any media that portrays a corrupt system as a heroic force for good, justified in flouting the law. It no longer feels like harmless fantasy when you realize how many people actually believe that cop shows reflect real life and officers only target “bad guys” as oppose to anyone they don’t like (mostly BIPOC, the poor, and the mentally ill). So, reading a crime story where the police weren’t heroes was a relief. In fact, Lauren’s only redeeming quality is that she has a soft spot for troubled teens, ever since the mysterious death of her own sister.

Brimming with references to Chicago’s history, it’s clear that Pelayo loves her home while still recognizing its flaws. In fact, the novel feels just as much a crime story as it does a guide to the dark and fantastical parts of the Windy City. She holds a Master of Fine Arts in Writing from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago and it shows in her writing. Throughout Children of Chicago Pelayo references the original, dark versions of famous and not-so famous fairytales, from Cinderella to the Singing Bone, adding to her own story’s dark atmosphere balancing on the edge of reality and fantasy. Pelayo’s novel is full of missing mothers, an unjust society where the most vulnerable suffer, magic mirrors, plenty of gore, spells, and a moral message. But overall, it’s a subversion of the classic fairy tale formula where the good are rewarded, the evil are punished, and morality is clearly defined. In Children of Chicago the “heroes” are neither pure-hearted nor moral, evil escapes justice while the innocent suffer, and no one is getting a happy ending.

It’s unfortunate that the darkest parts of Chicago’s history have shaped so much of its reputation when the Windy City has so much to offer. As my wife soon discovered on her first visit, the city is full or art, beauty, and wonder. Pelayo doesn’t just show the city’s dark side, she shows its magic as well. “Fairy tales are in our blood as Chicagoans” one of the books characters explains. Walt Disney, L. Frank Baum, Ray Bradbury, and Gwnedolyn Brooks were all inspired by the city to create their own fairy tales. Colleen Moore created her famous Fairy Castle and donated it to The Chicago Museum of Science and Industry. Children gathered pennies to create the Rock-a-Bye Lady from Eugene Field’s poem. The haunting beauty of the SheddAquarium feels like you’ve stepped into another world. The city even has a secret Little Mermaid inspired bar! It’s this beauty, contrasted with the allure of danger, that makes Chicago as wonderous as any fairytale.

Tags: Adult, BIPOC, Bisexual, Book Review, Dark Fantasy, Demon, Killer/Slasher, Latine/Latino, LGBTQIA, Myths and Folklore, Own Voices, Puerto Rican, Recommended, Thriller, Young Adult
Anoka by Shane Hawk

Anoka by Shane Hawk

Formats: Print, audio, digital

Publisher: Self-Published

Genre: Body Horror, Folk Horror, Monster, Myth and Folklore, Occult, Werewolf

Audience: Adult/Mature

Diversity: Biracial Cheyenne author, Dakota characters, non-binary character

Takes Place in: Anoka, Minnesota, USA

Content Warnings (Highlight to view): Alcohol Abuse, Cannibalism, Child Death, Death, Drug Use/Abuse, Gore, Racism, Rape/Sexual Assault, Self-Harm, Sexual Abuse, Slurs, Suicide, Verbal/Emotional Abuse, Violence

Blurb

Welcome to Anoka, Minnesota, a small city just outside of the Twin Cities dubbed “The Halloween Capital of the World” since 1937. Here before you lie several tales involving bone collectors, pagan witches, werewolves, skeletal bison, and cloned children. It is up to you to decipher between fact and fiction as the author has woven historical facts into his narratives. With his debut horror collection, Cheyenne & Arapaho author Shane Hawk explores themes of family, grief, loneliness, and identity through the lens of indigenous life.

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.

Apparently Anoka, Minnesota is the “Halloween Capital of the World” because they’ve been having giant Halloween parades since 1920. Out of civic pride, I want to argue that Salem is the Halloween Capital and our town is better because we have real witches and Salem Horror Fest and the oldest candy company in America. On the other hand, I would also like tourists to stop blocking the traffic, drunkenly climbing on the witch statue, and crowding my favorite restaurants every October (that’s my job), so maybe it would be better if they all headed to Anoka instead. I don’t think anyone will want to go anywhere near the Minnesota city after reading Shane Hawk’s Indigenous horror anthology of the same name, though. The stories in Anoka are loosely tied together by their location in an alternative version of the town where dark magic and monsters lurk. An evil tome known simply as “the book” and strange green swirls also make multiple appearances throughout the anthology.

A comic of a person hanging off a statue of a witch saying

Hawk gives a different and unique voice to each of his characters so every story feels different from the others. His writing reminded me of a talented artist who can draw in multiple styles and shift easily from realism to the simple lines of a cartoon. My favorite thing about his book is how so many of the stories felt like pre-comics code horror anthology comics like Eerie, Black Cat, and The Haunt of Fear or modern-day creepypastas with terrifying twists. Some stories were fun and weird, others tragic reflections of human nature. But all of them were creepy, the kind of creepy that makes you aware of how many noises an old house makes at night or has you shouting out loud at the characters not to go into the room where the monster is waiting.

American Indians tragically have the highest infant mortality rate in the U.S. (again due to trauma, poverty and a lack of adequate healthcare), so much of Hawk’s anthology touches on themes of child death and the trauma that goes with such a great loss. In two stories, Orange and Wounded, the death of a child in the past moves the main characters to do something terrible. Soilborne is a metaphor for the loss of the child-parent connection and how devastating that can be. In Imitate, the protagonist has to rush to save his son, Tate, from an unknown horror that’s taken his form. There’s no way of knowing if Tate is even still alive, and the whole story is exceedingly stressful to read. Honestly, Imitate would have worked just fine as microfiction and Hawk could have easily ended it after the first page or so. But instead, he decides to pile on even more terror by turning it into a suspenseful short story where we’re forced to watch a father slowly lose his mind. It’s definitely one of the anthology’s stronger and spookier tales.

My absolute favorite story in the collection is Dead America about a writer named Chaska whose family is followed by death. This is sadly not uncommon for Native families as generational trauma, poverty, and a lack of adequate healthcare has lead to poor health and high death rates from heart disease, diabetes, and suicide. The story gets its name from Chaska’s hobo nickel which depicts the skull of a dead Indian chief in full headdress on one side and Columbus’ three ships on the other. “When betting a coin offers someone a fifty-fifty chance of winning and losing. The nickel was a metaphor for the predicament of Indian existence: fucked no matter which side the coin landed on” the author explains. He’s about to find out how right he is when Asibikaashi the Spider Woman decides to make the Dakota author suffer for his sins.

This story is SCARY. All of my notes for Dead America consist of “nope, nope, nopeity-nope nope, fuck this, nope.” I’m not someone who’s usually bothered by spiders under normal circumstances. I think they’re kind of cute and I love that they eat any bugs that get into the house, but Chaska’s punishment left me terrified of arachnids. If you have any form of arachnophobia, I can guarantee you’ll be in for some nasty nightmares and might want to skip this story entirely. But if you’re feeling brave, it’s one of the strongest stories in the collection and worth checking out. The story also touches on themes of profiting off the personal stories of others, very similar to how Ward Churchill, Asa Earl Carter, Mary Summer Rain and others pretended to be Native for fame and money.

It’s important to note that in Ojibwe stories Asibikaashi, aka Grandmother Spider, is a benevolent deity and helper of humanity whose spiderweb charms, popularly known as “Dream Catchers“, were woven by women as a form of protection for infants. I couldn’t find any references to her punishing the wicked (of course I couldn’t find many references to her at all that weren’t written by White new agers).

Hawk’s final story, Transformation, is about a non-binary werewolf who hunts for her community and runs into trouble at Anoka’s annual Halloween parade. Having a trans werewolf feels perfect because werewolves are the ideal metaphor for someone with a fluid identity. Sometimes you’re a wolf, others a human, and occasionally you’re something in between, but you’re always a werewolf regardless of what form you take that day. Just because I’m femme one day, it doesn’t negate the fact that I’m non-binary; I’m still an enby when I’m feeling more trans-masculine. Like the story title, werewolves can also represent transition. The wolf can be seen as the true self, hidden under a dull human skin that’s forced to conform to society’s rigid standards. Becoming the wolves gives you the opportunity to experience freedom. If that transformation is unwanted, it can be compared to a menstrual cycle that causes dysphoria each month or unwanted body hair. “Jenny” a transwoman who identifies with werewolves is quoted on the queer horror blog, Gender Terror: “The titanic proportion of my body and the hair that I continually fight back terrify me, and makes me the target of many suspicious onlookers. And just like werewolves, I have no control over what my body does. Feeling like a prisoner to how your body changes is a special torment I think a lot of transgender people share with werewolves.” So is it any wonder writers like Hal Schrieve, Allison Moon, Suzanne Walker,  Ashlynn Barker, and numerous self-published erotic authors like Noah Harris have all explored the idea of a trans werewolf? Heck “were-woman” is slang for someone who “transforms” into a woman at night (though this terminology can be problematic). Hawk’s non-binary werewolf character seemed so cool I was disappointed that their story wasn’t longer. There was so much going on in Transformation it felt like it would’ve worked much better as a novella rather than a short story. Honestly, I’d read a full novel about the nostalgic werewolf, Halloween parades, and Wendigo. That’s my one major complaint about Anoka: it’s too short! The concept was so cool I was disappointed we didn’t get to explore more of Hawk’s alternate universe. I wanted to learn more about The Book and the creepy town filled with dark magic and monsters.

A comic-style illustration of a werewolf wearing underwear made from the trans flag colors.

What impressed me the most about the story collection is how Hawk was able to handle the subjects of child loss, sexual assault, substance abuse and missing and murdered Indigenous women, especially in his story Wounded, in a way that felt respectful rather than exploitative. Anoka is a fun, frightening ride that draws attention to many of the issues plaguing American Indians today, and I hope we’ll get to hear even more stories from the spooky little town in Hawk’s future books.

Tags: Adult, American Indian, Anthology, BIPOC, Body Horror, Book Review, Folk Horror, LGBTQIA, Monster, Myths and Folklore, Non-binary, Occult, Own Voices, Plains Native Nations, Recommended, Werebeast

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