monsters | Diversity in Horror Fiction

Fever Dreams of a Parasite by Pedro Íñiguez

Formats: Print, digital

Genre: Body Horror, Eco Horror, Eldritch Horror, Folk Horror, Ghosts/Haunting, Historic Horror, Killer/Slasher, Monster, Sci-Fi Horror, Zombie

Audience: Adult

Diversity: Mexican American author and characters, Mexican characters

Takes Place in: Mainly Mexico and California

Content Warnings (Highlight to view): Ableism, Alcohol Abuse, Amputation, Animal Abuse, Animal Death, Body Shaming, Cannibalism, Child Death, Child Endangerment, Childbirth, Death, Drug Use/Abuse, Gore, Kidnapping, Miscarriage, Mental Illness, Physical Abuse, Racism, Rape/Sexual Assault, Sexism, Stalking, Suicide, Torture, Verbal/Emotional Abuse, Violence, Xenophobia

Blurb

Íñiguez weaves haunting tales that traverse worlds both familiar and alien in Fever Dreams of a Parasite. Paying homage to Lovecraft, Ligotti, and Langan, these cosmic horror, weird fiction, and folk-inspired stories explore tales of outsiders, killers, and tormented souls as they struggle to survive the lurking terrors of a cold and cruel universe. With symbolism and metaphor pulled from his Latino roots, Iniguez cuts deep into the political undercurrent to expose an America rarely presented in fiction. Whether it’s the desperation of poverty, the fear of deportation or the countless daily slights endured by immigrants, every story is precisely rendered, often with a twist that allows us to see the mundane with fresh eyes.

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.

Most of the stories in this anthology fall in the cosmic horror genre, but each story is entirely unique. There are, however, a few repeated themes; families, poverty and classism, people down on their luck, and those who take advantage of them. Monsters are a staple throughout the book, though most of the stories don’t really explain what the monster is. Are the dog-creatures werewolves? Is the blood sucking child a vampire? What in the world are those maggot monsters in Midnight Frequencies? What the hell is the old man with the fangs? Who knows! I can guess, but sometimes it’s scarier not to know. Even with all the different strange creatures, there’s often a human enabling it, once again proving that humans are the worst monsters of all. The anthology explores various themes and contemporary issues like the California wildfires, environmental destruction, addiction, the damage done by both the cartel and the US in the poverty-stricken areas of Mexico, how desperate immigrants are exploited, predatory landlords, and even increasingly adversarial political TV commentators.

The first story, titled Nightmare of a Million Faces, is about Anastasia Mendez, an unemployed porn star who just left an abusive relationship with her ex-boyfriend/manager/fellow porn star, Robert. Even without the monster appearing at the end the story is already disturbing as it focuses on how women’s bodies are often controlled. In Anastasia’s case, Robert decides(as her manager) who she has sex with and what roles she takes, and as her boyfriend, he coerces her into having an abortion she doesn’t want when he gets her pregnant. Even though the story is short, much of it focuses on fleshing out Anastasia’s character so you feel invested in her survival by the end of it.

I liked that Nightmare of a Million Faces focused on the flaws in the mainstream porn industry without condemning sex work itself. And while Robert was controlling, Anastasia chose to work in porn before she met him, and even after they broke up, sex work wasn’t something she was forced to do. It’s also very pro-choice, despite focusing on an abortion Anastasia didn’t want. People with uteruses shouldn’t be forced to abort any more than they should be forced to give birth. Women of color like Anastasia are at especially high risk of reproductive coercion.

Birthday Boy is one of my favorite stories in the collection. It’s about a child whose fantasies shield him from the horrors around him and the atrocities committed about his father. The story is quite short, but effective, and the ending feels like a gut punch. Many of the characters are either parents or about to become parents, and there’s a certain horror in knowing they must protect their children from the monsters. Some are men whose wives have left them and taken their children, like in Midnight Shoeshine. Others, like the father in Postcards from Saguaroland, have left on their own to try and secure a better life for their families. Then, there’s Frank from Roots in Kon Tum, who abandoned the woman he impregnated in Vietnam and started a new family in the US. Effigies of Monstrous Things is about a single father trying to raise his daughters after his wife’s disappearance. Shantytown and Caravan are both stories about single mothers living in poverty struggling to take care of their only child, and The Body Booth is about an expectant mother who has chosen to raise her child alone. The House of Laments is one of the few stories with a happily married couple in which Rodrigo and Julia are expecting a baby after suffering multiple miscarriages. Some of the stories are focused on other types of familial relationships, like the grieving siblings in The Cellar and the seal hunting uncle and nephew in Skins.

The story from which the anthology gets its title is written like a magazine profile on an elderly fashion designer named Alberto Madrigal, whose designs are based on traditional Mexican fashion. When he first immigrated to the United States, before he became famous, other designers called him a “parasite” and accused him of stealing jobs. But now he’s hired by famous celebrities, like heavy metal star Kane Krieger, who has just had his directorial debut. His horror film, called Fever Dreams of a Parasite, is about a man tormented by dreams that may come from another world and slowly drive him to madness. The critics have panned Krieger’s film at advanced screenings, and he wants to wear something to the premiere that will be a big “fuck you” to the critics. Madrigal struggles to create a suit until he’s inspired by a nightmare and the fleas on his dog’s back. I liked the unique epistolary style of this story. Postcards from Saguaroland is another notable example of Íñiguez deviating from his typical story structure, with a non-linear story that starts with the reveal of the monster.

There was one story I had a few issues with, The Savage Night. When I first started reading it I thought it was about an unnamed Indigenous tribe, because the main character was referred to as the tribe’s medicine man, in which case many of the tropes used in the story and the title would have been problematic. Fortunately, it turned out to be about Paleolithic humans in which case a writer has a lot more creative freedom. Still, I would have used a different term for the tribes’ spiritual healer as “medicine man” seems to be specific to American Indians.

The Last Train out of Calico is much better in terms of representation. Although Lakota train robber Warren Blackhawk has hints of “the stoic Indian” it’s nice to see a morally gray American Indian character. American Indians are usually painted as either the “noble savage” or someone on horseback whooping and killing cowboys. So, it’s nice to see a sympathetic character who’s just a guy who robs trains with his friends.

Other things I liked: Black was capitalized when referring to race and the Spanish wasn’t italicized. A woman with substance use disorder was portrayed sympathetically as a struggling mom who loves her child but is also battling a disease, rather than a weak and immoral person.

The anthology felt like Lovecraft meets the Twilight Zone, which I loved. It’s full of fun, bite-size horror stories full of tragic characters struggling against an uncaring world, whose desperation and hopelessness you can really feel. Íñiguez’s collection is bleak with a strange, dream-like quality to it, full of the weird and grotesque.

Tags: Adult, Anthology, BIPOC, Body Horror, Book Review, Eco Horror, Eldritch, Hispanic/Latinx, Historic Horror, Mexican, Mexican American, Monster, Own Voices, Sci-Fi, Vampires

Malicia by Steven dos Santos

Formats: Print, audio, digital

Publisher: Page Street Publishing

Genre: Blood & Guts, Demon, Monster, Mystery, Myth and Folklore, Occult

Audience: Young Adult

Diversity: Gay and bisexual man characters, Dominican Americans, character with anxiety disorder

Takes Place in: The Dominican Republic

Content Warnings (Highlight to view): Ableism, Child Death, Death, Forced Captivity, Gaslighting, Gore, Medical Torture/Abuse, Mental Illness, Suicide, Torture, Verbal/Emotional Abuse, Violence, Vomit

Blurb

Four friends, three days, two lovers, and one very haunted theme park.

On a stormy Halloween weekend, Ray enlists his best friends Joaquin, Sofia, and Isabella to help him make a documentary of Malicia, the abandoned theme park off the coast of the Dominican Republic where his mother and brother died in a mass killing thirteen years ago.

But what should be an easy weekend trip quickly turns into something darker because all four friends have come to Malicia for their own.

Ray has come to Malicia to find out the truth of the massacre that destroyed his family. Isabella has come to make art out of Ray’s tragedy for her own personal gain. Sofia has come to support her friends in one last adventure before she goes to med school. Joaquin already knows the truth of the Malicia Massacre and he has come to betray his crush Ray to the evil that made the park possible.

With an impending hurricane and horrors around every corner, they all struggle to face the deadly storm and their own inner demons. But the deadliest evil of all is the ancient malignant presence on the island.

The story is told through alternating first-person perspectives between the four main characters; Raymundo, Joaquin, Sofia, and Isabella. The friends are traveling to spend Halloween weekend in Raymundo’s family’s abandoned, horror-themed amusement park, Malicia. The park was closed after a mysterious mass murder took place, claiming the lives of Raymundo’s mother and brother. The island on which Malicia was built is only accessible by boat, and there’s a massive hurricane headed right toward them, so good luck trying to escape if anything goes wrong. You may question the teens’ decision to go to what is very obviously a cursed murder island during a hurricane, but each of the four have their own reason for being there. Raymundo wants to try and summon his brother’s spirit, Isabella wants to film a documentary about the island, and Joaquin wants to sacrifice Raymundo because the cult he belongs to told him to. (Don’t worry, that’s revealed early in the story, so it’s hardly a spoiler.) Sofia is there because her friends are, and because she very firmly doesn’t believe in the supernatural or scare easily.

I think the characters were somewhat underdeveloped and one-note, and the exposition felt awkward at times. But honestly, the characters were just an excuse to explore the super cool setting. I mean, an abandoned, horror-themed, cursed, amusement park? Could there be a more perfect location for a horror story? And Santos clearly put a lot of thought into describing Malicia in loving detail. There’s an entire map in the beginning of the book (and I’m a sucker for maps) showing the different areas of the park, like Serial Springs, Paranormal Place, and Creature Canyon. I also liked the ride descriptions, which all sounded like tons of fun.

Malicia strongly reminded meof the island setting in Umineko When They Cry, where the characters are trapped by a typhoon on a remote island that is slowly overtaken by the supernatural (and everyone there dies horrible deaths). As both stories progress, the scares move from strange shadows and murders that could’ve been committed by a human to horror that’s clearly the work of demonic forces.

I enjoyed how the author not only used Spanish frequently throughout the book (which I appreciate that the publisher did not italicize) but words and phrases specific to the Dominican. The friends name their little group the Quisqueya Club, a word of Taíno origin that refers to the inhabitants of Hispaniola. Raymundo and Joaquin refer to each other as pana and tiguere, the friends informally greet each other with “Qué lo que” (what’s up?), Raymundo calls his parents Mai and Pai, and he admits to himself that he’s a Jablador (liar). Many of the monsters are also specific to the Dominican like Los Biembiens and La Jupia. The four friends also prepare Dominican food like mangú and yaniqueques.

Malicia an incrediblya spooky, gory, fun read. Even though it’s a 300+ page book, it felt like a quick read because the chapters are short and the suspense was able to grab my attention, although, admittedly, the story did drag a bit in the middle. The shifting viewpoints throughout the book helped build the suspense as the characters all started to become suspicious of each other. Because it was written for teens, it felt like a PG-13 horror movie with R-rated violence, which, of course, you can get away with in a book. The descriptions of mutilated bodies and rotting flesh are very graphic so this one is definitely not for the squeamish horror fan.

Tags: Anxiety Disorder, BIPOC, Bisexual, Blood & Guts, Book Review, Demon, Disability, Dominican, Gay, Latine/Latino, LGBTQIA, Monster, Mystery, Myths and Folklore, Occult, Own Voices, Young Adult

The White Guy Dies First: 13 Scary Stories of Fear and Power edited by Terry J. Benton-Walker

Formats: Print, audio, digital

Publisher: Tor Teen

Genre: Apocalypse/Disaster, Dark Fantasy, Eco Horror, Killer/Slasher, Monster, Mystery, Myth and Folklore, Romance

Audience: Young Adult

Diversity: Black characters and authors, characters of Chinese descent and Chinese New Zealander author, Indigenous characters and author (Seminole), Korean American characters and author, Bisexual characters, Queer women characters, Non-binary character and authors, Ace Spectrum author, MENA character, Bangladeshi-Irish author, Iranian-American author, Latinx characters and author

Content Warnings (Highlight to view): Alcohol Abuse, Amputation, Bullying, Cannibalism, Child Abuse, Child Death, Child Endangerment, Death, Drug Use/Abuse, Forced Captivity, Gaslighting, Gore, Mental Illness, Racism, Rape/Sexual Assault, Suicide, Verbal/Emotional Abuse, Violence, Vomit

Blurb

13 SCARY STORIES. 13 AUTHORS OF COLOR.
13 TIMES WE SURVIVED THE FIRST KILL.

The White Guy Dies First includes thirteen scary stories by all-star contributors and this time, the white guy dies first.

Killer clowns, a hungry hedge maze, and rich kids who got bored. Friendly cannibals, impossible slashers, and the dead who don’t stay dead….

A museum curator who despises “diasporic inaccuracies.” A sweet girl and her diary of happy thoughts. An old house that just wants friends forever….

These stories are filled with ancient terrors and modern villains, but go ahead, go into the basement, step onto the old plantation, and open the magician’s mystery box because this time, the white guy dies first.

This is a book that is going to make racists people mad, and I’m here for it. Consider yourself forewarned: if you’re white, this book is not written for you and you’re going to need a thick skin to read it. White people are so used to having positive representation in media that a book where white people make everything worse and always end up dead is going to rub the more sensitive white folks the wrong way, even those who might consider themselves allies. But for the rest of us? It’s awesome and a much-needed subversion of the “Black Guy Dies First” trope. Now, just because the white guy dies first in these stories does not make the BIPOC immune from horrific deaths. Hedge and The Protégé both have Black teens who meet violent ends. A Native person in Best Served Cold is tortured. They’re just not the first to die and get to be main characters.

Many (but not all) of the stories focus on the racism characters face and how often bad things happen to BIPOC people because of the actions of white people. Farz-joon from Break Through Our Skin by Naseem Jamnia is a non-binary, Iranian high school student who desperately wants a Smithosian internship. In order to secure one, they agree to volunteer at the University of Chicago’s Oriental Institute (thankfully, the problematic name was changed to the Institute for the Study of Ancient Culture in 2023) working under a condescending, racist, and transphobic old white professor named Dr. Hudson who thinks he knows more about Iran than Farz does because he’s studied it, speaks Farsi, and actually visited Iran, which Farz has not. He also objects to the Institute’s name change because the original name has “history” and “meaning.” Farz tolerates his boorish behavior so they can fulfill their dream of becoming an archeologist and challenge the idea that gender can be determined from a skeleton alone, but of course Dr. Hudson criticizes their “modern” ideas about gender stating “political correctness has no place in ancient history”, despite historical evidence of gender non-conforming people existing in ancient Iran and bioarchaeologist’s more recent views on sex and gender. Unsurprisingly, it turns out he only hired Farz to give the exhibits a “layer of authenticity” and he’s willing to jeopardize Farz’s future by withholding his recommendation.

Wasps by Mark Oshiro focuses on how gentrification hurts immigrant communities, while Hedge by Kalynn Brown has a topiary garden created by wealthy whites in the 1970s where anyone who enters winds up dead, including the main character’s father. In Grave Grove by Alexis Henderson, a Black teen named Rumi befriends a white Northerner named Kaitlin and she helpsadjust to life in the Southern US. The two even start a podcast together entitled Girls and Ghosts. Their newest episode is about Kyle Adams, a racist who went missing in the eighties after chasing a Black teen, William Jones, into an abandoned plantation. Unfortunately, we quickly learn that Kaitlin is not a good friend to Rumi. She ignores her at school in favor of hanging out with white girls, makes Rumi do all the grunt work for their podcast, and is actually pretty racist for someone who probably considers themselves liberal. She excuses Kyle’s racism because it happened in the past (the 1980s) and “everyone was racist back then.” She thinks William is a “drug dealer” who belongs in prison because he was caught with marijuana, despite smoking weed herself. She views Kyle as the victim, not William. She doesn’t want to talk about the racist history of the plantation or consider the slaves who died there, just the missing white boy. She even mentions her sister’s best friend got married at the plantation, a favorite location for Southern brides (gross). Side note, but I loved that Kaitlin believed in the supernatural while Rumi was the skeptic, since BIPOC are so often cast as superstitious and foolish compared to logical white people. I’m a skeptic myself so it was nice to see a character like me in both Grave Grove and Hell is Other Demons, where the Black main character is an atheist.

Best Served Cold by H. E. Edgmon and The Protégé by Lamar Giles both have the BIPOC main characters get into trouble specifically because they choose to trust a white person. In the former, our protagonist, EJ, makes the mistake of accepting a white man who befriended their brother. EJ struggled with internalized racism throughout their childhood, doing things like using cheap, unsafe contacts from the mall to change their eye color from brown to green. Kai, their brother, tells EJ that those are their ancestor’s eyes, and that their appearance connects them to their ancestry and they should be proud of them. Kai works to reclaim a past that was stolen by colonization (like learning traditional farming and hunting), and teaches EJ about ancestral trauma. EJ realizes the reason they feel angry and frustrated is because they are “playing a game whose rules have never been designed for me to win.” Their mother claims to be white because she passes, even though her grandfather was sent to a residential school in Oklahoma. She denies her heritage. EJ and Kai’s parents grew up together on a reservation in Florida, but moved to Chicago as adults. They told their children they’d left the Rez to give them a better life. Kai brings his white friend (possibly boyfriend) Isaac, who has intense green eyes, to a Pow Wow where the other Natives give him side eye. Clearly, they see something Kai doesn’t (there are other white people there but they don’t face the same level of scrutiny). One of the community leaders talks about MMIWC (Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Children) which serves as foreshadowing. It’s implied that the antagonist in the story is a certain evil spirit from Algonquian mythology (one who’s associated with winter and cannibalism). Edgmon is Seminole, not one of the Algonquian tribes, but he writes with respect, never breaking the taboo of using the spirits name which is said to summon it. This particular creature is also a perfect representation of colonialism with its insatiable hunger and destructive nature. Kai and EJ do everything they can to fight colonialism but still fall victim to the evil spirit.

The Protégé by Lamar Giles, like Best Served Cold, is a particularly tragic story with the main character, Troy’s, life ruined by his best friend, in this case an older, white gentleman named Jack Meridian. Jack is a retired magician who’s been mentoring Troy in the art of card tricks and illusions, and one of the young teen’s only friends. Troy so admires the older man that he immediately agrees to do him a favor, accepting a package while Jack runs errands downtown. Simple enough, right? While Troy’s older brother Darius is having a party with his friends, Troy sees that the news is reporting a mass killing at the mall where Jack was heading. He tries to contact his magician mentor but the person who killed him answers the phone and threatens Troy if he doesn’t give them the package he received. The killer is revealed to be Danford Dread, a magician who “perverts” the art and performs dark and gory magic that “plays to the worst in people.” And now he’s after Troy and his brother. Even though the white guy in this story is a “good guy” he still ruins a Black boy’s life by bringing him into his world and putting him directly into danger.

In Hell is Other Demons by Karen Strong, the main character is killed (she spends most of the story as a ghost) because her crush’s white boyfriend starts meddling with the supernatural and summons a demon. The other stories of dating a white boy don’t end with dead young women, but they do highlight the perils of interracial dating, namely that white men often fetishize non-white women. I mean, just look how BIPOC women have their own categories on porn sites (gross). Obviously not all mixed-race relationships are problematic; my parents are a mixed-race couple, my sister has an amazing Chilean fiancé (who is himself biracial), and I’m friends with happily married couples in mixed relationships. Unfortunately, there are always bad apples.

In both the Golden Dragon by Kendare Blake and Docile Girls by Chloe Gong, Korean-American Sophie and Chinese-I-think-American-but-possibly-New-Zealander Adelaid are dumped by their white boyfriends (and subsequently lose all the white people they thought were their friends) who fetishized them but don’t view them as committed relationship material. As Sophie’s sister puts it, they’re an exotic bang to mark off their “international bang bingo card.” Even after she gets dumped, Adelaid’s ex sees her as too weak and docile to be the killer who’s been stalking the teens, an assumption that proves fatal for him. This is unfortunately common, as all the East Asian-American women I know I can attest to. When they’re sexually harassed, it almost always has racist undertones. They’ve been propositioned by white men looking for “submissive waifus,” had “me so horny” shouted at them, asked if they have sideways vaginas, or “complimented” on their “exotic” beauty. White men have long fetishized East Asian women, with examples dating as far back as 1898 with the book Madame Butterfly. A Columbia University study from 2007 showed that in online dating, White men seemed to have a strong preference for Asian women when it came to hookups, but when they wanted a committed relationship, they preferred white women. Meanwhile, Black women, especially those with dark skin, are considered less desirable than women of other races.

In All Eyes on Me by Faridah Àbíké-Íyímídé main character Helen deals with a white boyfriend, Asher, who is constantly committing microaggressions. He mocks her kinky hair, and implies she can’t be an actress because she’s Black and not a “bombshell.” Yet Helen still feels guilty about wanting to break up with Asher because everyone else considers him the perfect, all-American boy. And as a Black girl she’s supposed to be grateful that a white boy wants her, even though being tied down to him and trapped in their small town forever sounds like a nightmare. Fortunately for all three girls, they end their stories without being tied down by their racist exes.

Not all the stories in the collection are focused on race and racism, however. The Road to Hell by Terry Benton-Walker has a very original set up, exploring an abusive relationship between a haunted house and a family living it with the house as the abuser. Everything’s Coming Up Roses by Tiffany D. Jackson is about a mentally unwell girl named Leesa who is obsessed with gardening and documents her daily life in her journal. Leesa is an unreliable narrator and the true horror is slowly revealed over the course of the story. Like most anthologies, the quality of the stories varies, but none that I would have rated below three out of five stars. Some were good, others, like Everything’s Coming Up Roses, Gray Grove, and Best Served Cold, were great. It’s also worth noting that many of the stories are VERY gory, which may be too much for younger teens who aren’t big horror fans. Of course, since most horror fans were reading Stephen King when they were eight, I don’t foresee this being an issue for anyone who decides to read this book.

Tags: American Indian, Anthology, Asexual, Asian, Bangladeshi, BIPOC, Bisexual, Black, Body Diversity, Book Review, Chinese, Iranian, Korean, Latine/Latino, Lesbian, LGBTQIA, Own Voices, Young Adult

Bury Your Gays: An Anthology of Tragic Queer Horror edited by Sofia Ajram

Formats: Print, digital

Publisher: Ghoulish Books

Genre: Anthology, Body Horror, Ghosts/Haunting, Killer/Slasher, Monster, Romance

Audience: Adult/Mature

Diversity: Queer and trans authors and characters

Content Warnings (Highlight to view): Alcohol Abuse, Body Shaming, Bullying, Death, Drug Use/Abuse, Eating Disorder, Homophobia, Medical Torture/Abuse, Medical Procedures, Necrophilia, Police Harassment, Rape/Sexual Assault, Slurs, Suicide, Torture, Transphobia, Violence

Blurb

A manifestation of ecstasy, heartache, horror and suffering rendered in feverish lyrical prose. Inside are sixteen new stories by some of the genre’s most visionary queer writers. Young lovers find themselves deliriously lost in an expanding garden labyrinth. The porter of a sentient hotel is haunted within a liminal time loop. A soldier and his abusive commanding officer escape a war in the trenches but discover themselves in an even greater nightmare. Parasites chase each other across time-space in hungry desperation to never be apart. A graduate student with violent tendencies falls into step with a seemingly walking corpse. Featuring stories from Cassandra Khaw, Joe Koch, Gretchen Felker-Martin, Robbie Banfitch, August Clarke, Son M., Jonathan Louis Duckworth, M.V. Pine, Ed Kurtz, LC Von Hessen, Matteo L. Cerilli, November Rush, Meredith Rose, Charlene Adhiambo, Violet, and Thomas Kearnes.

An exquisite anthology of queer horror that boasts such talented authors as Cassandra Khaw, August Clarke, and Gretchen Felker-Martin, this collection contains something for everyone. In its pages, you’ll find alien fungi, body horror, dark fairytales, undead lovers, and lonely ghosts. Named for the common trope where gay characters often meet with untimely ends in mainstream media, this anthology subverts the trope by putting it in the hands of queer writers.

In Your Honor, I’d Like to Put You in the Shoes of One of Dr. Morehouse’s Thirty Proven Clients by M. V. Pine, a trans woman (although she’s never referred to as such) struggles to find gender-affirming care. It’s the 1970s and she’s been dishonorably discharged from the army for “mental health” reasons. Her family doesn’t support her. She refers to her genitals as “a tumor.” A tumor that’s benign (hence, no doctor will remove it for her) but still mortifying. Because she’d do anything to be rid of it, she becomes an easy mark for Dr. Morehouse, who performs dangerous back-alley vaginoplasties on trans women. His surgical room is dirty and he runs out of anesthesia halfway through the procedure. He doesn’t provide antibiotics or pain medication. But the woman would rather die than go another day living with her “tumor.”

This is a story is about what happens when people don’t have access to safe, gender-affirming care. In 2017 a trans woman known only as “Jane Doe” underwent a back-alley orchiectomy which caused her to lose large amounts of blood. Police arrested James Lowell Pennington, who had performed the procedure without a medical license. Doe defended Pennington stating “Arranging a back-alley surgery was out of pure desperation due to a system that failed me.” Why would someone risk their life for what seems like an elective procedure? A study published in JAMA that followed trans and non-binary youths ages 13 to 20 showed 60% reduction of depression and 73% reduction of suicidality in participants who had initiated puberty blockers and gender-affirming hormones compared to those who had not. Another study published in JAMA on gender-affirming surgeries among 27,715 trans and gender diverse adults showed a 42% reduction in psychological distress and a 44% reduction in suicidal ideation among those who were able to receive gender-affirming surgery compared to those who wanted to but could not. There are many such studies that show similar results. Access to safe, gender-affirming care is quite literally lifesaving and immensely improves quality of life for trans and gender diverse people.

Another story that touches on the desperation many trans people feel just to have access to gender-affirming care is Worth the Dying Shame by Matteo L. Cerilli. In it, trans men are being infected by tainted, counterfiet testosterone with a disease that causes their bodies to decay as if dead (a clear parallel to AIDS). They hide their Body Rot under heavy clothing, dark glasses, and face masks. This causes an already unaccepting public to further turn on trans men. With jobs drying up, friends abandoning them, and doctors no longer willing to prescribe testosterone, the men who are able togo back in the closet. Others are forced to buy their T on the black market since doctors are no longer willing to prescribe the real stuff, which carries an even greater risk of infection. The story follows two trans men who have become infected, Dimeshine and Rictus. Rictus chose to detransition because he can still pass for a girl, but Dimeshine continues to inject T despite the risk of decaying faster. Both turn to the dark web to try and slow their Body Rot, trusting the community more than they do hospitals (understandable considering how often healthcare fails trans people). The two argue over whether Dimeshine’s little brother, Ratty, who is still early in his transition, should use testosterone or not. Dimeshine is firmly against it, worried Ratty might become infected like he was, but Rictus argues that he can’t blame Ratty for wanting to die for something they both would have killed for. These stories are a solemn reminder of what happens when the healthcare system fails LGBTQIA+ patients. As someone who works in healthcare, I held both stories especially heartbreaking.

Surprisingly for a horror anthology, many of the stories were love stories. Editor Sofia Ajram states the collection “was created out of a desire to read stories about tragic queer love. Love that is broken, love that is toxic, and obsessive, and ill-fated. Love that is thwarted, as viewed through the lens of authors who are queer-identifying themselves.” Abusive relationships are too often played off as romantic (think Twilight and Hush Hush), so it’s nice to see those sorts of relationships being shown for what they are, even when the characters themselves can’t recognize it. While horrific in real life, villain protagonists and toxic relationships can be fascinating studies in fiction. I also enjoyed having imperfect, even villainous queer characters whose character faults aren’t tied to their sexuality.

In American Gothic by LC von Hessen, villain protagonist John Smith is a serial killer (although he’d never refer to himself as such since “those guys are losers”) who has an unfortunate habit of murdering his dates. It’s not premeditated, it just seems to happen. But one day, one of his victims, who he dubs “L,” comes back to life. Or rather, he reanimates, as he’s still technically dead. L has no memory of his time alive, so John weaves an ever changing, fictional history of their romance. As L slowly rots away, John falls deeper in love with him. As shown with his past crushes, John is more in love with the fantasy he conjures then the men themselves. L allows him to project his ideal partner on to a blank slate he can fall in love with, like some sort of twisted Pygmalion, whereas living men would frequently reject him for being unemotional or creepy. John is a selfish lover, viewing his partners only by what they can do for him rather than their needs. He stalks and harasses one of his exes to the point they delete all their social media, but John still views himself as the victim and wonders why he didn’t kill his ex. John wants L to live, not for L’s sake, but for his own. He even tells him, “I won’t let you die. You’re not allowed to die unless I want you to die.” His selfishness and obsessiveness reminded me of male stalkers who feel they’re owed something by the object of their affection and can’t understand the word “no.”

This Body is Not Your Home by Son M., Love Like Ours by C M Violet, and Fortune Favors Grief by Cassandra Khaw are also stories of men who kill their lovers. Domestic violence against men is rarely examined. Even though 1 in 10 men will experience intimate partner violence or stalking in their lifetime, DV is usually thought of as a women’s issue only. Research on domestic violence among LGBTQIA+ people is even more sparse, even though gay men experience higher rates of physical violence then straight men. So, it’s refreshing to see stories that focus on intimate partner violence in gay relationships. Some of the stories focus more on mental and emotional abuse rather than physical. Both Sardines by Gretchen Felker-Martin and Zero Tolerance by M. F. Rose deal with queer teenage girls who are bullied. The former is a body horror story about a fat girl struggling with her sexuality and the latter is about cyber bullying. In this case, it’s their non-romantic relationships that are toxic.

Cleodora by August Clarke is a more lighthearted tale that follows the romance between a beautiful sea monster and a sea captain. The Captain discovers the monster and claims her as her bride, naming her Cleodora after a prophetic river nymph (The Captain seems to conflate the nymph Cleodroa with Andromeda, a princess who was offered as a sacrifice to a sea monster and rescued by the Greek hero Perseus). She sees Cleodora as helpless, which may explain why the Captain has no qualms about marrying a monster, happily feeding her new bride live eels and listening to her stories of drowning men. Cleodora feels equally unthreatened, stating “It’s fortunate my true love is a woman, because women do not hurt each other.” Ironic, considering how the story ends. The story feels like the original, darker version of a German fairytale, with hints of selkie wife folklore and siren myths.

Not all the romances involve toxic relationships or unrequited love. Bad Axe by Ed Kurtz is a tragic love story wherein John loses his lover, Eric, to the lake at Bad Axe in Minnesota. They’re never able to recover the body, so John goes back to Bad Axe to drown himself so he can be with Eric again. A touching yet morbid story it shares similarities with the myth of Hero and Leander. Hero, a priestess of Aphrodite, throws herself out of her tower after her lover, Leander, drowns trying to swim to her. The tragedy in Bad Axe is that John and Eric have a beautiful relationship that was tragically taken from them and now John must try and navigate the world through his immense grief. Black Hole, a sci-fi story by November Rush, also centers around a beautiful relationship that’s torn apart, but this time it’s between two parasitic, sentient fungi. Despite not being human, their love is no less pure and real. Lost and Found by Charlene Adhiambo also deals with lovers being united in death, but in this case they didn’t know each other before they died.

It’s an intense read– many of the stories handle dark themes like transphobic healthcare systems, bullying, drug abuse, suicide and AIDS analogies–but a beautiful one, full of romance and tragedy. Remarkably, each one of the stories in Bury Your Gays is as strong as the last, and I’d be hard pressed to pick a favorite. Some broke my heart, others chilled me to the bone, and yet others were touching in a bittersweet way. But all left a lasting impression.

Tags: Adult, Anthology, Body Horror, Book Review, Gay, Ghosts/Haunting, Highly Recommended, Killer/Slasher, Lesbian, LGBTQIA, Monster, Own Voices, Romance, Trans

Hammers on Bone by Cassandra Khaw

Formats: Print, digital

Publisher: Tor

Genre: Body Horror, Eldritch, Monster, Occult, Psychological Horror, Sci-Fi Horror

Audience: Young Adult

Diversity: Queer character (Gay woman), POC characters (Black, Creole woman, unknown POC character), Bisexual author, Malaysian author

Takes Place in: London

Content Warnings (Highlight to view): Alcohol Abuse, Body-Shaming, Bullying, Child Abuse, Child Endangerment, Death, Gore, Pedophilia, Physical Abuse, Racism, Rape/Sexual Assault, Sexism, Sexual Abuse, Slurs, Slut-Shaming, Verbal/Emotional Abuse, Violence

Blurb

John Persons is a private investigator with a distasteful job from an unlikely client. He’s been hired by a ten-year-old to kill the kid’s stepdad, McKinsey. The man in question is abusive, abrasive, and abominable.

He’s also a monster, which makes Persons the perfect thing to hunt him. Over the course of his ancient, arcane existence, he’s hunted gods and demons, and broken them in his teeth.

As Persons investigates the horrible McKinsey, he realizes that he carries something far darker. He’s infected with an alien presence, and he’s spreading that monstrosity far and wide. Luckily Persons is no stranger to the occult, being an ancient and magical intelligence himself. The question is whether the private dick can take down the abusive stepdad without releasing the holds on his own horrifying potential.

During one of my late-night explorations of the internet (when I should have been sleeping but was instead googling all the random thoughts that pop into my head at 2 AM) I stumbled upon the work of Malaysian author Cassandra Khaw, a nerdy, queer woman who writes video games and short horror stories. Instantly intrigued, I purchased one of her novellas, Hammers on Bone, and I have to say, I fell absolutely, head-over-heels in love with Khaw’s writing. Her beautifully crafted stories are full of wonderful words like “penumbra” and “ululation” (one of my favorite Latin derived words), deliciously grotesque descriptions, and unique characters. English is Khaw’s third language, yet she uses it with a mastery that puts even native English speakers to shame. Her writing has a lot of range, too. These Deathless Bones is a feminist fairy tale about a witch getting sweet revenge on her wicked stepson. Rupert Wong, Cannibal Chef is a comedic splatterpunk series, as hilarious as it is gory, about the misadventures of the titular chef who prepares decadent meals of human flesh for gods and ghouls and gets wrapped up in international deity politics. Khaw has even dabbled in chick-lit (while also managing to poke fun at the more problematic elements of the genre) with her book, Bearly a Lady, about a bisexual, plus size wear-bear that works at a faerie-run fashion magazine. Then there’s her Persona Non Grata series. Much like Victor LaValle’s The Ballad of Black Tom, Khaw’s novellas take place in a Lovecraft inspired universe, but she flips the famously racist HP the bird by putting people of color at the forefront and using his creations to address social issues like racism, poverty, and abuse. Both stories feature the private investigator, John Persons, one of the most interesting characters I’ve come across in horror fiction. It’s the first of Person’s two novellas, Hammers on Bone, that I’ll be reviewing here.

Persons speaks and acts like the “hardboiled detective” characters from 1930s pulp magazines, complete with dated American vernacular and machismo, despite living in modern day London. This makes John seem incredibly out of place and occasionally downright ridiculous, like when he describes a little boy running into his arms for a hug as “crashing into me like a Russian gangster’s scarred-over fist.” When he’s not working as a PI, John spends his time saving the world from destruction by Star Spawn and Elder-Things. He’s adept at using magic, smokes cigarettes to dull his inhumanly strong sense of smell, enjoys the cold, and can pick up memories from objects and people through physical contact. He also happens to be a Dead One (though not one of the Great Old Ones, Persons is quick to explain), an otherworldly creature whose true, terrifying form comfortably possesses resides in a human body which he shares with the ghost of its previous inhabitant. I bet that’s why he has the most unimaginative, made-up sounding name ever; it was probably the first thing that popped into his head when he started inhabiting his meat suit.

Persons and his human body have an interesting relationship, more commensal than parasitic. While other Star-Spawn and Elder Things simply take what they want, invading human flesh like a disease and eventually destroying their hosts, Persons tries to minimize damage to his meat suit (he may be immortal and resilient, but his human form still suffers from wear and tear, and he feels pain when it’s damaged), and gives his phantasmal passenger a say in certain decisions. Even though he’s in the driver’s seat, John’s body will still react to its original owner’s thoughts and feelings, independent of him. In one scene, the meat suit becomes aroused by the proximity of a beautiful woman. Persons is aware of “his” body’s quickening pulse and rising temperature (among “other” rising things, heh), and states that the sensation is “not unpleasant”, but he describes the physical reaction with the detached interest of scientist observing a cell under a microscope. He is, after all, still an alien being.

Not much is known about the man whose skin he now wears, except that he’s an older person of color who lived during the interwar period, and gave John his body willingly after being asked. The whole Philip Marlowe / Sam Spade persona Persons adopts to appear more human is as an homage to his meat suit’s original owner. I guess it’s kind of sweet that he does that, in a very weird way, but unfortunately his stubborn refusal to update his dated vocabulary and attitudes, or venture into any genre that isn’t detective noir makes John come off as pretty sexist. He refers to women as “skirts,” “broads,” “dames,” and “birds”, and divides them into victims and femme fatales. This attitude backfires on him spectacularly since, of course, the real world isn’t like his detective novels, and John keeps misjudging the women he interacts with.

What sets the monstrous PI apart from his fellow cosmic entities, besides seeking consent from his body’s original owner, is his fondness for humanity, his dedication to following the law and maintaining order, and his desire for earth to remain more or less the way it is, i.e. not a barren hell-scape inhabited by Eldritch abominations. Most of the monsters he fights are chaotic evil, infecting and destroying whenever they go, but John Persons is closer to lawful neutral, occasionally leaning towards good. He’s not exactly heroic since, in his words, “Good karma don’t pay the bills,” but Persons does have a strong set of morals. As previously mentioned he’s big on consent and describes the act of possessing a willing host’s body as “better than anything else I’d ever experienced” and feels incredibly guilty when he accidentally reads a woman’s mind after touching her arm. When she becomes understandably angry at the violation, screaming “You don’t take what you’re not given!” John doesn’t try to minimize, excuse, or defend his behavior (even though the intrusion was an accident), he simply apologizes, mortified by what he’s done. He can even show compassion at times, but how much of his altruistic behavior is due to the remaining sentience of his body’s former inhabitant acting as his ghostly conscience is unclear.

It’s his spectral companion who convinces John to take the case of a young boy named Abel, who wants Persons to kill his abusive stepfather. While initially hesitant about committing murder, John is convinced once the boy reveals that his stepfather is a monster, both literally and figuratively, and both Abel and his little brother’s lives are in danger. He might not be a hero, but Persons does seem to genuinely want to help the two boys, even if he claims it’s just because they’re clients. It may be simply because he wants the ghost with whom he cohabitates to stop nagging him, as John is usually pretty indifferent to human suffering on his own, or perhaps it’s because an Old One is involved, and he’d really prefer it not destroy the world. Regardless of the reason, he agrees to help.

In his eagerness to play white knight (or his meat suit’s eagerness) Persons often fails to realize that the “helpless victims” he seeks to rescue are often perfectly able to take care of themselves, like the waitress whose mind he reads. He’s also quick to victim blame the boys’ mother for not leaving, clearly unable to understand the psychological element of abuse or how dangerous it is for a person to try and leave an abusive partner, just making her feel worse than she already does. John struggles when it comes to comforting victims or dealing with their emotions. He claims his lack of skill when it comes to words and feelings is due to being a “man” (or at least inhabiting the body of one), though it’s just as likely it’s because he’s an eldritch abomination, and he’s just been using sexism to avoid learning the nuances of human emotion. While Persons is better at managing his desire to destroy and devour than the other monsters and is able to maintain a detached control over his meat suit’s emotions and baser instincts, he’s not immune to the effects of his human body’s testosterone or his own toxic misogyny. When the PI is feeling especially aggressive his true form starts to writhe beneath his human skin, straining to break free from his epidermis and rip apart the object of his ire. Even his thoughts start to degrade into a sort of violent, inhuman, babble when he gets too riled up. John actually has to fight to keep control of his monstrous body when he first encounters the abusive stepfather, he’s so desperate to disembowel and devour him. His true nature is a stark contrast to the cool and logical detective persona Persons has adopted. I won’t lie, I did enjoy seeing him act all protective of Abel and his little brother. There’s something amusing about what is essentially an immortal abomination that can effortlessly rip a grown man in two, doing something as mundane and sweet as escorting his young client home while carrying the child’s kid brother on his hip. It’s also heartbreaking when you realize the two boys are safer with a literal monster than their step dad, McKinsey (even before he was possessed).

The step-father is a real piece or work, and throughout the story I desperately wanted John to give in to his monstrous instincts and tear the bastard apart, limb by limb. But being a man/monster of the law, Persons won’t do much more than saber-rattle until he has solid proof of McKinsey’s wrong doing, much to Abel’s frustration. The kid would much rather the PI solve things with his fists (teeth, tentacles, claws, and other miscellaneous alien appendages) than waste time talking to witnesses, and I’d certainly be annoyed too if the monster I hired to kill someone wasted time playing detective instead of just eating his target. But Persons did warn Abel that he’s not a killer for hire and wants to do things “by the book”. Unfortunately, like most real monsters, McKinsey excels at hiding his wrong doing and camouflaging his true nature which makes it difficult for John to find a solid lead. People like McKinsey and describe him as a “loving family-man”. Those who haven’t been completely conned by his act either don’t care he’s a monster (like his boss) or are too terrified to do anything (like his fiancée). None of the adults in the boys’ lives are fulfilling their duty of protecting two vulnerable children. This is where the real horror lies in Khaw’s story– not the eldritch abominations like Shub-Niggurath, or the threats of world destruction, but the all too painful reminder that we so often fail abuse victims. Khaw is tasteful when describing what the two boys go through, and it isn’t played for titillation or described in explicit detail. She only reveals enough to lets us know the two boys in the story are going through something no child should ever have to suffer. I also liked her choice to make the victims male. Far too often male survivors are overlooked, erased, or mocked because society tells us males can’t be victims, even though the CDC states that “More than 1 in 4 men in the United States have experienced rape, physical violence, and/or stalking by an intimate partner in their lifetime” and a study published in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine found that 1 in 6 boys will be sexually abused before the age of 18. As depressing as these statistics are, the situation isn’t completely hopeless, because monsters aren’t invulnerable, even the kind that have been infected by Elder Things. As Person muses towards the end of the book “I don’t remember who said it, but there’s an author out there who once wrote that we don’t need to kill our children’s monsters. Instead, what we need to do is show them that they can be killed.” For those of us who can’t go out an hire a eldritch abomination PI, at least we have RAINN (Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network) and their recommended resources for cases of abuse and sexual assault.

Tags: Asian, BIPOC, Bisexual, Black, Body Horror, Creole, Eldritch, Highly Recommended, Lesbian, LGBTQIA, Malaysian, Occult, Psychological Horror, Queer, SciFi, Southeast Asian

Never Whistle at Night edited by Shane Hawk and Theodore C. Van Alst Jr.

Formats: Print, audio, digital

Publisher: Vintage

Genre: Ghosts/Haunting, Historic Horror, Killer/Slasher, Monster, Myth and Folklore, Occult, Psychological Horror

Audience: Adult/Mature

Diversity: Indigenous American (Alaskan Native, Pueblo, Comanche, White Earth Nation, Cree, Georgian Bay Metis, Mohawk, Cheyenne-Arapaho, Hidatsa Mi’kmaw, Cherokee, Tłı̨chǫ Dene, Hidasta, Mandan, Sosore, Sioux Penobscot, Chickasaw, Choctaw, Sicangu Lakota, Edisto Natchez-Kusso, Lipan Apache, Anishinaabe)

Content Warnings (Highlight to view): Alcohol Abuse, Animal Death, Child Abuse, Child Endangerment, Death, Drug Use/Abuse, Forced Captivity, Gaslighting, Gore, Illness, Oppression, Mental Illness, Pedophilia, Racism, Rape/Sexual Assault, Sexual Abuse, Slurs, Torture, Verbal/Emotional Abuse, Violence

Blurb

Many Indigenous people believe that one should never whistle at night. This belief takes many forms: for instance, Native Hawaiians believe it summons the Hukai’po, the spirits of ancient warriors, and Native Mexicans say it calls Lechuza, a witch that can transform into an owl. But what all these legends hold in common is the certainty that whistling at night can cause evil spirits to appear—and even follow you home.

These wholly original and shiver-inducing tales introduce readers to ghosts, curses, hauntings, monstrous creatures, complex family legacies, desperate deeds, and chilling acts of revenge. Introduced and contextualized by bestselling author Stephen Graham Jones, these stories are a celebration of Indigenous peoples’ survival and imagination, and a glorious reveling in all the things an ill-advised whistle might summon.

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.

There are many recognizable names in this collection: Rebecca Roanhorse, Richard Van Camp, Cherie Dimaline, Mona Susan Power, Darcie Little Badger, and Waubgeshig Rice. There’s even a foreword by Stephen Graham Jones. But I was especially excited to be introduced to some new (to me) Indigenous authors.

The stories in the anthology vary from fun campfire stories about werewolves (Night Moves by Andrea L. Rogers) and ghosts (Night in the Chrysalis by Tiffany Morris) to more serious and disturbing tales about residential school sexual abuse (Sundays by David Heska Wanbli Weiden), mental health (The Prepper by Morgan Talty), stolen land (Limbs by Waubgeshig Rice), and missing and murdered Indigenous women (The Ones who Killed Us by Brandon Hobson). There were bits of Native languages sprinkled throughout the various stories, for example I learned Uguku is “owl” in Cherokee, Kwe’ is “hello” in Mi’kmaq, and Mahsi’ cho is “thank you” in Gwich’in. This felt especially nice to see since so many Native languages are endangered. I can’t possible review all the amazing stories within the collection (and they are all amazing), so I’ll focus on a few of my favorites.

Kushtuka by Mathilda Zeller is about an Alaskan Native woman named Tapeesa. Recently an obnoxious White man named Hank Ferryman and his son Buck have moved to the area to build a monstrous lodge full of stolen Native artifacts. Tapessa is sent to the lodge cook for one of Hank’s parties and on the way the grotesque man asks her to tell him a “Native story.” Tapeesa warns that telling stories after dark could catch the attention of a spirit, but Hank laughs this off as silly superstition. She tells him the story of the Kushtuka, a shape-shifter that can take human form and tries to lure people away. As predicted, the story summons a Kushtuka which attacks Hank’s lodge. We also see this idea of attracting the attention of evil spirits in Before I Go by Norris Black, where a woman’s grieving causes the Night Mother to appear and offer to bring back her dead husband (it doesn’t end well).

One of the things I related to in Kushtuka was Tapessa being called “basically White” by Hank because her dad is White. As a biracial person myself, having others (especially White people) try and tell you your identity isa pet peeve of mine. Historically, I would’ve been considered Black since my father is Black (due to the “one-drop” rule which I discuss below), despite having light skin. Yet these days most White people label me White because I’m White-passing. In both cases, White people choose my identity for me without listening to what I have to say, much like Hank does for Tapessa.

In White Hills by Rebecca Roanhorse, a White woman named Marissa is judged for having “too much” Native blood by her White in-laws. Marissa is your typical rich, White woman. She’s married to a wealthy business man named Andrew, is very concerned with her appearance, and lives in an HOA neighborhood in a big house. After going to the country club to announce her pregnancy to her husband, Marrissa makes the mistake of mentioning she’s a small percentage of Native (in reference to not being offended by a racist mascot) and her husband becomes visibly upset. The next day Elayne, Andrew’s mother, takes Marissa to a “specialist” who has racist phrenology drawings on the wall. Elayne explains that she doesn’t want a “mutt” grandbaby who may be dark skinned and “savage” (despite Marissa being white). The way in which Elayne views Marissa’s child is very reminiscent of the “one drop” rule. The one-drop rule was a legal principle based on a form of hypodescent, the assignment of a mixed-race child to the ethnic group considered “lower status.” In other words, anyone with Black ancestry (no matter how far back) was considered Black. There were strict classifications for mixed-race individuals that were given offensive names like “Mulatto” and “octoroon,” I discuss more about how this racist system allowed the US to hold up White supremacy here. I mentioned above how annoying it is when other people (especially White people) decide my identity for me, butit’s even worse when the government does it.

And this leads me to blood quantum. Blood quantum is highly controversial and personal, and since I’m not Indigenous and therefore shouldn’t weigh in on such a heated debate I will tread carefully and stick to the facts as best I can. If you’re not familiar, Blood Quantum laws were enacted by the United States government to determine if someone was considered Native or not dependent on their degree of Native ancestry. The first “Indian Blood law” was originally created in 1705 when the Virginia government wanted to limit the civil rights of Native people and people of Native descent. Some Native tribes continue to use blood quantum to determine who can enroll for tribal membership, others do not. Leah Myers, a member of the Jamestown S’Klallam tribe, gives an example of the importance of tribal enrollment in her Atlantic essay:

“Tribal citizenship is more than symbolic. It determines eligibility for educational assistance, medical care, and other social benefits. Plus, only members can attend citizen meetings and vote in tribal elections. If my future children don’t meet the blood requirements for my tribe, they could still participate in events, cultivate plants in the traditional-foods garden, and take Klallam-language courses. But no matter how much they served the community in love and time, they would be deemed a ‘descendant’ and marked as separate.”

Here’s a guide to Blood Quantum that gives both the arguments for and against blood quantum (full transparency, most Native sources I looked up were against these laws). Basically, blood quantum proponents argue that getting rid of blood quantum rules will make scarce resources even scarcer due to population growth and that it will allow disconnected outsiders and pretendians to join the tribe, which will erode their culture. Opponents of blood quantum argue that statistically it will eradicate Native nations, and point to the law’s racist origins which were intended to control and erase Indigenous people. It also makes relationships complicated, as Indigenous people must calculate their potential children’s percentage of Native blood and if they can enroll or not, which can put a strain on families. Blood quantum also conflicts with traditional Indigenous ideas about kinship and has“no basis in Native American traditions.” Essentially, both proponents and opponents disagree on the best way to preserve their tribal nations.

This idea is explored more fully in the story Quantum by Nick Medina. A woman named Amber is so obsessed with blood quantum and getting her children on the tribal roll that she favors her son Grayson, who’s 5/16 Native, while ignoring his brother Sam, who is only 1/8 Native, to the point where Sam is practically feral. She even tries to steal blood from a deceased Native man from their tribe so she can inject it into Sam.

Another story I enjoyed is Collections by Amber Blaeser-Wardzala, an incredibly creepy story about collecting human remains. Professor Smith, a liberal White woman, collects the heads of all the students she’s helped. She’s very proud of her collection: she has all the sexualities and genders, all the religions, and almost all the races. An Indigenous head would be her “white whale.” Megis (called Meg by the White professor) is understandably horrified by the collection, as is one of her Black classmates, but none of her white classmates seem to be. Professor Smith implies she wants to help Megis so she can have her head for her collection. Megis, the first person in her family to go to college, is desperate to stay on Professor Smith’s good side so she can maintain her scholarship and get a good job, and therefore doesn’t have much choice but to stay in the house of horrors. While an extreme example, the story underlines how troubling it is when museums collect human remains without consent and how academics will treat bodies as mere curiosities.

“When [Native American artifacts and human remains] were acquired, collectors weren’t thinking of Indigenous peoples as human beings. People were resources, and human remains were to be preserved alongside pots” says Jacquetta Swift, the repatriation manager for the National Museum of the American Indian and member of the Comanche and Fort Sill Apache tribes. It’s the unfortunate reality that most human remains on display and in private collections, are unethically sourced from BIPOCs against their wishes.

This theme is also lightly touched on in Navajos Don’t Wear Elk Teeth by Conley Lyons where a Native man named Joe has a summer fling with White man named Cam. Cam collects teeth, some of which turn out to be human (he claims his last boyfriend was a Navajo man who gave him an elk tooth for “good luck” which Joe is dubious about). One of Joe’s friends refers to this as “bad medicine” and suggest Joe get an elder to sage his house.

Not all the stories are quite so dark, however. Snakes are Born in the Dark by D. H. Trujillo felt like a Goosebumps book or a fun story kids tell to scare each other, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. In the story, an Alaskan Native boy named Peter goes hiking in the woods with his white cousin Maddie and her rude boyfriend Adam. They come across Native petroglyphs in the Four Corners desert which Maddie and Adam both immediately touch. Peter warns them not to touch the carvings but Adam continues to do so while mocking him. Unsurprisingly both Maddie and Adam suffer unpleasant (though non-lethal and impermanent) fates which results in a humorous ending. It’s a fun twist on the classic “Indian curse” where we (and Peter) are rooting for the White people to get their comeuppance.

I could go on and on about the stories in the anthology, like Hunger by Phoenix Boudreau where two Cree college girls, Summer and Rain, outsmart a Wehtigo. Or Scariest. Story. Ever. By Richard Van Camp that touches on who gets to tell Native stories and how to share culture without stealing it. They’re all great. I also felt like I learned a lot while reading the anthology.

Tags: Adult, Alaskan Native, American Indian, Anthology, Book Review, Ghosts/Haunting, Highly Recommended, Historic Horror, Killer/Slasher, Monster, Myths and Folklore, Occult, Psychological Horror

Crescentville Haunting by M.N. Bennet

Formats: digital

Publisher: Self published

Genre: Ghosts/Haunting, Monster, Occult, Romance, Vampire, Werewolf, Zombie

Audience: Y/A

Diversity: Bisexual main character, non-binary minor character, Black major character

Takes Place in: LA, California

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

Blurb

Determined to pass junior year, Logan won’t let Henry distract him—much. Logan’s focusing on all things human, which means his swoony vampire ex-boyfriend will have to file his own fangs for a change. When he goes to the school bonfire and runs into Henry, wandering into the woods seems like a great escape. Until he’s bitten by a wicked Crone with some twisted magical munchies.

Logan is certain his ex-free human future is done when he’s dragged off to a scientific institution for study. There, he’s presented with an opportunity to keep his life, family, and future. All he has to do is stick to human ideology, since all things paranormal are illegal. But complications arise when the Crone begins to haunt him and Logan realizes that if he wants to get his life back, he has to navigate his lingering feelings for Henry.

With the Crone set on devouring him and the institution ready to obliterate him for any missteps, Logan must decide between pursuing the human future his family wants—one that he thought he wanted too—or the chance to embrace Henry, even if the world isn’t ready.

Logan just wants a safe, normal, drama-free junior year, and that means avoiding his vampire ex, Henry, at all costs. Which is easier said than done. Logan may be shy and awkward, but Henry is his complete opposite: confident, outgoing, and suave. When his best friend Kiera (a phantom) drags him to a bonfire party that’s supposed to help Logan relax, he discovers that trouble has a way of following him. Not only is Henry there, but Logan is attacked (for the second time since he first started dating Henry) by a powerful creature, this time a monstrous witch known as the “Crone.” After sustaining a bite from the Crone, Henry’s life changes forever.

Henry and Kiera are known as Vices, a group of monsters including phantoms, witches, vampires, trolls, sirens, and werewolves that are forced to live in the shadows due to public fear and draconian laws. The Crone is a sin, a powerful Vice that feeds on other Vices and can turn humans into undead monstrosities called Hauntings (think zombies and ghouls) with a single bite. After Henry’s attack he’s whisked away by SPU agents (the special police force in charge of catching and neutralizing Sins) to a secure facility designed to treat Hauntings, but to everyone’s surprise he doesn’t transform into a Haunting. It turns out Henry is a rare form of Vice, known as a Viceling, more human than Vice. The lore of Crescentville Haunting can get confusing in places, and there’s a lot of backstory. So much so that I actually checked to see if there was a prequel I had missed. But it’s no worse that any other fantasy novel with rich world building. If you can remember the rules of Quidditch, you can remember the magical classification system Bennet has created.

The characters are relatable and their voices sound authentic. The romance is steamy without being explicit and felt age appropriate for younger teens. It should be noted that while the book contains a paranormal romance, it’s not the central theme of the story. Instead, we focus on Logan’s struggles with his new identity and trying to fit into a human-centric world– an analogy for trying to fit into a heteronormative society when you’re LGBTQIA+. In Monsters in the closet: Homosexuality and the Horror Film Harry M. Benshoff writes “monster is to ‘normality’ as homosexual is to heterosexual.” LGBTQIA+ scholars have long equated queerness with fictional monsters and stories like Crescentville Haunting reclaim the “monstrous queer.” In Bennett’s story, the “homosexual vampire” is the hero rather than the villain, with the humans representing an oppressive heteronormative society and the facility attempting to “cure” Logan of his monstrousness a metaphor for conversion therapy. In addition to romance, the book also has plenty of horror, violence, and suspense, all courtesy of the Crone who continues to haunt Logan after the initial attack.

Overall, this was a fun read with a good world building, a cute relationship, and teens who actually sounded and acted like teens.

Tags: Bisexual, Book Review, Ghosts/Haunting, LGBTQIA, Monster, Occult, Own Voices, Recommended, Romance, vampire, Werebeast, Zombies

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

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.

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

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!

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

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Fever Dreams of a Parasite by Pedro Íñiguez

Formats: Print, digital

Publisher: Raw Dog Screaming Press

Genre: Body Horror, Eco Horror, Eldritch Horror, Folk Horror, Ghosts/Haunting, Historic Horror, Killer/Slasher, Monster, Sci-Fi Horror, Zombie

Audience: Adult

Diversity: Mexican American author and characters, Mexican characters

Takes Place in: Mainly Mexico and California

Blurb

Tags: Adult, Anthology, BIPOC, Body Horror, Book Review, Eco Horror, Eldritch, Hispanic/Latinx, Historic Horror, Mexican, Mexican American, Monster, Own Voices, Sci-Fi, Vampires

Malicia by Steven dos Santos

Formats: Print, audio, digital

Publisher: Page Street Publishing

Genre: Blood & Guts, Demon, Monster, Mystery, Myth and Folklore, Occult

Audience: Young Adult

Diversity: Gay and bisexual man characters, Dominican Americans, character with anxiety disorder

Takes Place in: The Dominican Republic

Blurb

Four friends, three days, two lovers, and one very haunted theme park.

But what should be an easy weekend trip quickly turns into something darker because all four friends have come to Malicia for their own.

Tags: Anxiety Disorder, BIPOC, Bisexual, Blood & Guts, Book Review, Demon, Disability, Dominican, Gay, Latine/Latino, LGBTQIA, Monster, Mystery, Myths and Folklore, Occult, Own Voices, Young Adult

The White Guy Dies First: 13 Scary Stories of Fear and Power edited by Terry J. Benton-Walker

Formats: Print, audio, digital

Publisher: Tor Teen

Genre: Apocalypse/Disaster, Dark Fantasy, Eco Horror, Killer/Slasher, Monster, Mystery, Myth and Folklore, Romance

Audience: Young Adult

Blurb

13 SCARY STORIES. 13 AUTHORS OF COLOR.
13 TIMES WE SURVIVED THE FIRST KILL.

Tags: American Indian, Anthology, Asexual, Asian, Bangladeshi, BIPOC, Bisexual, Black, Body Diversity, Book Review, Chinese, Iranian, Korean, Latine/Latino, Lesbian, LGBTQIA, Own Voices, Young Adult

Bury Your Gays: An Anthology of Tragic Queer Horror edited by Sofia Ajram

Formats: Print, digital

Publisher: Ghoulish Books

Genre: Anthology, Body Horror, Ghosts/Haunting, Killer/Slasher, Monster, Romance

Audience: Adult/Mature

Diversity: Queer and trans authors and characters

Blurb

Tags: Adult, Anthology, Body Horror, Book Review, Gay, Ghosts/Haunting, Highly Recommended, Killer/Slasher, Lesbian, LGBTQIA, Monster, Own Voices, Romance, Trans

Hammers on Bone by Cassandra Khaw

Formats: Print, digital

Publisher: Tor

Genre: Body Horror, Eldritch, Monster, Occult, Psychological Horror, Sci-Fi Horror

Audience: Young Adult

Diversity: Queer character (Gay woman), POC characters (Black, Creole woman, unknown POC character), Bisexual author, Malaysian author

Takes Place in: London

Blurb

Tags: Asian, BIPOC, Bisexual, Black, Body Horror, Creole, Eldritch, Highly Recommended, Lesbian, LGBTQIA, Malaysian, Occult, Psychological Horror, Queer, SciFi, Southeast Asian

Never Whistle at Night edited by Shane Hawk and Theodore C. Van Alst Jr.

Formats: Print, audio, digital

Publisher: Vintage

Genre: Ghosts/Haunting, Historic Horror, Killer/Slasher, Monster, Myth and Folklore, Occult, Psychological Horror

Audience: Adult/Mature

Blurb

Tags: Adult, Alaskan Native, American Indian, Anthology, Book Review, Ghosts/Haunting, Highly Recommended, Historic Horror, Killer/Slasher, Monster, Myths and Folklore, Occult, Psychological Horror

Crescentville Haunting by M.N. Bennet

Formats: digital

Publisher: Self published

Genre: Ghosts/Haunting, Monster, Occult, Romance, Vampire, Werewolf, Zombie

Audience: Y/A

Diversity: Bisexual main character, non-binary minor character, Black major character

Takes Place in: LA, California

Blurb

Overall, this was a fun read with a good world building, a cute relationship, and teens who actually sounded and acted like teens.

Tags: Bisexual, Book Review, Ghosts/Haunting, LGBTQIA, Monster, Occult, Own Voices, Recommended, Romance, vampire, Werebeast, Zombies

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.

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

Tags: Autism, Killer/Slasher, Monster, Own Voices, Recommended, Young Adult

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

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.

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.