myth & folklore | Diversity in Horror Fiction

Moonflow by Bitter Karella

Formats: Print, audio, digital

Publisher: Run for It

Genre: Blood & Guts (Gorn), Eco Horror, Eldritch Horror, Myth and Folklore

Audience: Adult

Diversity: Trans main character and author, queer/lesbian major characters

Takes Place in: California

Content Warnings (Highlight to view): Animal Abuse, Child Abuse, Child Death, Child Endangerment, Childbirth, Death, Drug Use/Abuse, Gore, Incest, Medical Torture/Abuse, Mental Illness, Physical Abuse, Police Harassment, Racism, Rape/Sexual Assault, Sexism, Sexual Abuse, Slurs, Slut-Shaming, Transphobia, Violence, Vomit

Blurb

I see something out there, in the woods. It does not have a face. They call it the King’s Breakfast. One bite and you can understand the full scope of the universe; one bite and you can commune with forgotten gods beyond human comprehension. And it only grows deep in the Pamogo forest, where the trees crowd so tight that the forest floor is pitch black day and night, where rumors of strange cults and disappearing hikers abound. Sarah makes her living growing mushrooms. When a bad harvest leaves her in a desperate fix, the lure of the King’s Breakfast has her journeying into those vast uncharted woods. Her only guide is the most annoying man in the world, and he’s convinced there’s no danger. But as they descend deeper, they realize they’re not alone. Something is luring them into the heart of the forest, and they must answer its call.

Wow, this book… just wow.

How do I even begin to describe this fucked up, queer, psychedelic, gross, erotic, satirical, disturbing, fungal horror story that I sped through because I couldn’t put it down? Every free minute I had was dedicated to reading Moonflow. And I have ADHD; I can never focus on one thing for long unless I’m super interested. But I hyper-fixated on Karella’s weird ass masterpiece of a novel. As a splatterpunk story, the writing is intentionally over the top and there’s a ton of weird, gross stuff going on. There’s lots of violence and fucking and it’s crude and funny as hell, but also deeply tragic. I personally loved it, but I know splatterpunk is not everyone’s cup of tea and some readers are going to be off put by the sex and violence. I love how trans the book is; eggs, muffing, dead names, TERFs, and chasers are all mentioned. The main character, Sarah, reminded me a lot of myself. She’s fat, trans, and a science nerd who could use a boost of self-confidence and went on three dates with her girlfriend before realizing they were dates. She also really loves her cat, Herman, and most of her desire to earn more money is so she can afford nice things for him, like the wet food he likes.

Sarah was forced to drop out of college due to depression and dysphoria, but at least she can still put the mycology skills she learned there to good use. Sarah grows psychedelic mushrooms for Madeline, a hot trans woman who delas drugs at house parties and is always surrounded by admirers. Madeline invites Sarah to another one of her sordid house parties where Sarah offers her a batch of freshly grown Fire Imps (all the mushrooms in the book are fictional). Unfortunately, Madeline isn’t interested, claiming they’re “last season” and “gauche.” She tells Sarah about a mushroom called The King’s Breakfast that she wants instead. Despite lacking the blue coloration that indicates a high concentration of psilocybin, the King’s Breakfast is strong and (even better) it’s impossible to have a bad trip on it. Even Sarah, who hates getting high around other people, enjoys her experience with the King’s Breakfast, hallucinating a beautiful nature goddess. Madeline asks Sarah to go into the Pamogo forest to collect some spores to grow. Desperate for money, Sarah agrees. Madeline has “a very old and dear and trusted friend” who will act as her guide in theforest.

It turns out the “trusted friend” is Andy, and Sarah immediately pegs him as a doofus. He’s the kind of guy who describes himself as “an ally,” despite it being a term others bestow upon you and not something you can claim. He complains about her selling mushrooms–a free natural resource– because of Capitalism, while ignoring the fact that Sarah is in desperate need of money and how, as a trans college dropout, she can’t just “get a job.” Despite his objections, Andy still guides Sarah through the Pamago forest, using the dead bodies of hikers lost in the forest as morbid trail markers (as everything else in the forest seems to move). Andy always has some sort of logical explanation for the weird things that happen in the Pamogo. Compasses don’t work because of electromagnetic storms. Raccoon bones end up in piles because the trees create a wind tunnel. The mushrooms move as if alive due to acidity in the soil.

Meanwhile, in a town near the Pamogo forest, two women named Skillet and the Hell Slut are watching an innocent looking girl enter the only bar in town. The Hell Slut correctly guesses that she’s a runaway escaping her pimp and saves her from a frat boy harasser outside the bar. After the Hell Slut kicks the guy’s ass, Skillet convinces the girl to go with them to meet their leader “Mother Moonflow.” If you think that sounds like the name of a cult leader, you’d be 100% correct.

Skillet and the Hell Slut belong to a lesbian separatist cult nested in the heart of the Pamogo forest, living off the land. They worship the Green Lady, a nature goddess who resides in Pamogo forest. She was formerly the consort of the Lord of the Forest, a male fertility and nature God with antlers, who she now protects her followers from (or so Mother Moonflow says). Both deities are reminiscent of the Wiccan Mother Goddess and the Horned God. The followers of the Green Lady seem to have similar (though less extreme) beliefs as women who practice Dianic Wicca. The founder of Dianic Wicca, Zsuzsanna Budapest, is also a huge TERF who, despite claiming to be a radical feminist, reduces women to their reproductive organs. Mother Moonflow is similarly obsessed with genitals, she and her group call anyone with a penis a phallic Alec. There are also vaginas painted on everything.

I liked the book’s criticism of a certain type of radical feminism, the kind practiced by TERFs like Z. Budapest. By claiming men (and anyone else with a penis because they reduce gender to genitals) are inherently violent, it means they don’t think men can change this part of their nature. This is an issue because it lets men off the hook for their actions.They can’t help raping/abusing/murdering because they’re men. It’s the same sexist attitude as “boys will be boys,” a sort of twisted, reverse victim blaming. These are also the kind of people who will brush aside sexual assault and violence committed by women. Even though Andy is an idiot, he is right about one thing. Trying to get rid of either the masculine or feminine throws off the balance of nature. Mushrooms are a perfect example of this, as most are hermaphroditic. In other words they contain both “male” and “female” sexual traits, capable of both fertilizing and being fertilized (some mushrooms also have thousands of different sexes).

There’s a lot of focus on Sarah and the Hell Slut being fat and their large bodies are frequently described, more so than the non-fat bodies of other characters, with the exception of Mother Moonflow’s comically large tits. Skillet is clearly a chubby chaser, she loves fondling the Hell Slut’s tummy folds and asks Sarah how much she weighs. She does get called out on it, thank God, but it still felt like Skillet gets away with being very gross. I’m guessing all the focus on Sarah and the Hell Slut’s bodies is because fat people are so often uncomfortable with their bodies (and make other people uncomfortable) from living in a fatphobic society. I loved that two of the main characters were fat women, but as a fatty myself, I felt like all the focus on their bodies was too much, and it admittedly made me uncomfortable.

Each chapter begins with either a quote from Lazarus Sloane’s diary (a man who tried and failed to build a sawmill in the Pamago forest) or Sarah’s mushroom guidebook for the Pamago by a man named T. F. Greengarb. Each gets increasingly unhinged as the story progresses. Sloane is clearly losing his grip on reality as more and more of his workmen start to disappear. Greengarb’s mushroom descriptions also start getting really weird. Early on, he writes about mushrooms like the Candy Cap, said to taste like maple syrup, but later in the book he describes the oily black Fox Candle that tastes like “children’s fear.” I thought this was a nice, creepy touch.

This was a weird read, which usually I’m not a fan of. In this case, I felt it worked well.

Tags: Adult, Blood & Guts, Book Review, Eco Horror, Eldritch, Lesbian, LGBTQIA, Myths and Folklore, Own Voices, Queer, Trans

These Bodies Ain’t Broken Edited by Madeline Dyer

Formats: Print, digital

Publisher: Page Street Publishing

Genre: Body Horror, Demon, Historic Horror, Monster, Myths and Folklore, Romance, Vampire

Audience: Young Adult

Diversity: Authors and characters with disabilities including ADHD, anxiety, agoraphobia, Autism, celiac disease, chronic pain, Crohn’s disease, diabetes, Down syndrome, Ehlers-Danlos syndrome, Fibromyalgia, mast cell activation syndrome (MCAS), neurofibromatosis, postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome (POTS), PTSD, and substance use disorder. Non-binary main character and author, agender main character, biracial Haitian side character, bisexual main character.

Content Warnings (Highlight to view): Ableism, Amputation, Animal Death, Body Shaming, Bullying, Cannibalism, Child Abuse, Child Death, Classism, Death, Drug Use/Abuse, Forced Captivity, Gore, Homophobia, Illness, Kidnapping, Medical Procedures, Oppression, Mental Illness, Physical Abuse, Self-Harm, Sexism, Slurs, Suicide, Verbal/Emotional Abuse, Victim Blaming, Violence

Blurb

A monstrous transformation within your own body.
A sacrificial imprisonment.
A fight to the death against an ancient evil.

These stories showcase disabled characters winning against all odds.

Outsmarting deadly video games, hunting the predatory monster in the woods, rooting out evil within their community, finding love and revenge with their newly turned vampire friend—this anthology upends expectations of the roles disabled people can play in horror. With visibly and invisibly disabled characters whose illnesses include Ehlers-Danlos syndrome, Crohn’s disease, diabetes, PTSD, and more, each entry also includes a short essay from the author about the conditions portrayed in their stories to further contextualize their characters’ perspectives. From breaking ancient curses to defying death itself, these 13 horror stories cast disabled characters as heroes we can all root for.

Contributors include bestselling and award-winning as well as emerging authors: Dana Mele, Lillie Lainoff, Soumi Roy, Anandi, Fin Leary, S.E. Anderson, K. Ancrum, Pintip Dunn, Lily Meade, Mo Netz, P.H. Low, and Carly Nugent.

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.

Horror isn’t exactly known for having good disability rep, so it was great having an anthology written by authors with disabilities because there was so much variety in representation. There was everything from Crohn’s disease to Ehlers-Danlos syndrome to PTSD. In some stories, a character’s disability played a huge role (Baby Teeth, Within the Walls, The Worst of It), and it’s only mentioned in passing in others (When the Night Calls, Kissed by Death). At the end of each story, the author would write about how they chose to represent disability in their work, and some even shared their experiences with their own disabilities and how they related to their stories.

I loved that both invisible and visible disabilities were featured. I have invisible disabilities myself (ADHD and mental illness), but for a long time I didn’t consider myself disabled because, like many people, I thought the only disabilities that existed were visible. This caused me a great deal of stress because I was always trying to compare myself to neurotypical people. It never occurred to me to ask for accommodations because I thought I should be able to “power through” any challenges on willpower alone. Engaging with the disability community online helped me be more accepting of my own disability. I learned that I wasn’t “broken,” the difficulties I had were not moral failings, and having a disability is not a “bad” thing. I discovered that the things I struggled with due to ADHD and mental illness were not my fault, it was just a difference in brain chemistry that I was born with. Accepting my disability meant I also accepted help and learned to function with my disability instead of always fighting against it. It was empowering. So, reading stories about ADHD and mental health in a disability anthology felt incredibly validating. Not only that, but these characters with disabilities got to be the heroes. It was awesome reading about a woman with ADHD get revenge on the men who wronged her and a non-binary person whose mental illness was not the source of horror in the story. Another great thing about These Bodies Ain’t Broken is the amount of intersectionality. There were queer characters, non-binary characters, Asian characters, etc.

This review would be unreasonably long if I examined every story in the collection I will focus on a few that stood out to me. When the Night Calls by Soumi Roy takes place in 19th century Bengal. Charu is a newly married 16-year-old girl whose best friend Malati, an educated city girl who is fiercely independent, has disappeared without a trace. Malati’s cold husband claims that his wife was lured into the forest and taken by the Nishi Daak for being so willful. He says it was Malati’s own fault she was taken, but Charu isn’t sure what to believe. Malati always told her the Nishi Daak was just a story told to keep women in line. Although Charu does her best to be an obedient wife and daughter-in-law her curiosity gets the better of her and she stumbles across the terrible secret kept by the village men; the reason women and girls of the village keep disappearing. This bloody story of feminine vengeance and Bengali monsters was an extremely satisfying read. I also enjoyed it as Charu and I share a disability, ADHD (although it’s not named it the story the author reveals that Charu is neurodiverse). I related to the frustration of making mistakes, even when you’re trying your hardest, and how painful it is when people around you attribute this to laziness or “just not paying attention.”

The first line of Thy Creature by Lillie Lainoff draws you in immediately. “The hardest thing about coming back to life is remembering how to breathe.” Told in the second person, this Frankenstein inspired tale tells the story of a girl brought back to life by her college boyfriend, Cal, after she dies in a hiking accident. Despite being a mediocre boyfriend at best, the protagonist seems perfectly happy to settle and set her expectations low when it comes to Cal, especially since she now owes him for bringing her back to life. The story reminded me so much of all the straight women who settle for awful men because they don’t think they deserve better. Hey, there’s a reason single women are happier.

Dating while disabled comes with its own set of challenges especially when dating someone without a disability. The non-disabled person may only date someone with a disability out of pity or because they fetishize their disability. This also applies to anyone who isn’t skinny, white, cisgender, etc. (aka has their own category on Pornhub), so heaven help you if you belong to more than one of those marginalized groups (intersectionality). Then there’s all the misconceptions, like the assumption that people with disabilities aren’t sexual (obviously Ace people with disabilities exist, but that’s a sexual orientation, and has nothing to do with their disabilities). As Lainoff’s protagonist slowly builds confidence, she also learns she doesn’t have to settle just because she has a disability and that maybe her boyfriend isn’t all that great.

In Ravenous by Carly Nugent, the protagonist, Linden, is struggling with depression and passive suicidal ideation. She refuses to monitor her blood sugar or manage her diabetes which has already landed her in the ER once. Linden has decided she’s just going not to accept her diabetes, forcing her mother to help her manage most of it, and she’d rather die from it than live with it. I like that Nugent wrote about the difficulty someone with a chronic illness goes through when they’re first diagnosed. Linden is still in the denial and depression stages of her grief after learning her life will never be the same. But over the course of the story, she learns to accept that she has diabetes, and it doesn’t mean her life is over. I love that the author didn’t portray disability in a negative light while also acknowledging that yes, finding out that you’re going to have to manage a chronic illness for the rest of your life can really suck.

Another story I really liked was House of Hades by Dana Mele. House of Hades is a virtual world filled with gamers and virtual replicas of the dead. The tech was originally funded by some billionaire who wanted to live forever. But when he learned that you can’t really become an immortal machine, he sold the program, which was used it to create House of Hades. They call the digital clones “ghosts,” which include historical figures like Shakespeare and Marie Antoinette. The game is so realistic that if you die in the game you can die in real life (so Matrix rules) unless you “wake up,” which is why the game requires a buddy system. The voice command “wake up” triggers the exit protocol. Unfortunately, you need someone else to trigger it for you, you can’t exit yourself, which seems like a serious design flaw.

Ode and Era are two gamers who like to hang out in House of Hades. Ode is currently grounded, and isn’t supposed to be playing the game because they’ve been abusing pills and recently had an overdose on a drug called V (aka Viper, the story’s fictional drug). Their parents recently got divorced and they’re struggling with it. When they go back to Hades with Era, Ode is shocked to discover they’ve been separated. Now Ode is all alone in a dark little town, seemingly empty, but something is watching them. They are forced to solve puzzles and play the town’s strange game to try and find Era and a way out.

I thought the setting was very creative, and I like that the protagonist was non-binary like me. In the story notes Mele explains how she didn’t like the way horror villains were always portrayed as mentally ill. As someone with my own mental illness and who has spent time inpatient at mental health hospitals (or as I like to call it “a grippy sock vacation”) it hurts when I hear people talk about the “dangerous crazies” in the psych ward or explain away a person’s terrible behavior (racism, violence, abuse, etc.) by saying “they’re crazy.” They’re not mentally ill, they’re just awful people! And mentally ill people are more likely to be the victims of violent crime than commit it. Only a very small percent of violent crimes (around 5%) are committed by people with mental illness. Yet the myth of the “crazed killer” prevails in horror. So, I appreciate that Mele made her protagonist mentally ill.

One of my favorite stories in the collection was The Weepers and Washer-Women of Lake Lomond by Madeline Dyer (the editor of the anthology), though I think the story would have worked better if it was a full-length novel. It was like I was being served this amazing meal, but I had to shove it in my mouth in five minutes when I really wanted to savor it. It didn’t necessarily feel rushed, I just think I would have enjoyed it more if I had had more time with the characters, the setting, and the lore because it was all so great! In the story the protagonist, Bianca, who has multiple disabilities including Ehlers-Danlos, POTS, and MCAS, is pretending to be her twin sister, Remi, so she can take part in the World Kickboxing Championship on the island of Loch Lomond. Bianca is convinced the island had something to do with the death or their cousin, Mari, who competed on Loch Lomond a ten years prior. Remi’s boyfriend, Blake, does not think this is a good idea, but Bianca, who hates being treated like she’s “broken,” is determined. She’s thought of everything; Remi faked an injury months ago to explain away Bianca’s crutches. The competition takes place in pitch dark, the organizers claiming that it’s to make it more fair for blind and low-vision competitors (a blind girl won the championship last time), so no one will see Bianca using a mobility aid. And she only needs to stay in the competition long enough to find out what happened to Mari, so Bianca doesn’t necessarily have to win her first match.

I can understand Blake’s hesitation to help Bianca go through with her plan, because at first, I thought Bianca was foolish to try and pretend to be her sister. While both sister’s have Ehlers-Danlos, Remi only got stretchy joints, while Bianca got the whole shebang that can come with the condition. How would Bianca be able to compete in such a physically demanding competition? And immediately after arriving on the island,things start to go wrong. There’s no food that Bianca can safely eat, and the training masters confiscate her medication and medical drinks claiming it will give her an “unfair advantage.” Dizzy with fatigue and illness she tries to bow out of the championship, but is forced to compete. And when she enters the dark arena, the training master takes Bianca’s crutches. Worst of all, her opponent doesn’t seem quite human. I thought she was guaranteed to be monster chow. But then her disability ends up being the reason she survives. *spoiler* Because Bianca’s crutches (presumably made of durable steel, which contains iron) can hurt her adversaries. As Bianca says at the end of the story “I’m Bianca. And that’s how I’m alive. Because I’m disabled. Because I need mobility aids. Because I fought with my crutch.” *spoiler ends* I absolutely love this twist. Disabilities are often to assumed to be a “weakness” but it ends up being Bianca’s strength.

Three of the stories used the second person point of view, which is when the story addresses the reader directly using the pronoun “you” when describing the protagonists’ actions (i.e. you shook in fear when faced with the monster from your dreams). This is a tricky to do, and doesn’t always work well, as you’re basically telling the reader what they’re doing and feeling. But it’s also more intimate and the reader gets a greater feel for what the protagonist is going through. I liked that some of the authors used this for their storytelling. It gives you more of a feel for what it’s was like living with a specific disability.

While not all the stories in the collection were as strong as others, I think this is a solid anthology. It was great to both see myself in characters and learn about different types of disabilities, as there’s so much variation. I also love that the stories defied stereotypes like disabled people not being worthy of love, or mentally ill people being dangerous. The only thing that surprised me was that there were no stories by authors who were blind, low vision, or Deaf/deaf, and there was only one story with a character who used a wheelchair. Perhaps Madeline Dyer wanted to focus on disabilities which don’t get as much media attention or she simply wasn’t able to get authors to represent those disabilities. This isn’t really a criticism, just something that surprised me. Perhaps I just need to reexamine my own biases when it comes to disabilities.

Tags: ADHD, Agender, agoraphobia, Anthology, Anxiety Disorder, Autism, BIPOC, Biracial, Bisexual, Body Horror, Book Review, Cane user, Celiac Disease, Chronic Pain, Crohn’s disease, Demon, diabetes, Disability, Down syndrome, Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome, Fibromyalgia, Haitian, Historic Horror, LGBTQIA, MCAS, Monster, Myths and Folklore, Neurodiversity, neurofibromatosis, Non-binary, Own Voices, POTS, PTSD, Romance, Substance Use Disorder, Trans, vampire, Wheelchair user, Young Adult

The Scald Crow by Grace Daly

Formats: Print, digital

Publisher: Creature Publishing

Genre: Myth and Folklore

Audience: Adult

Diversity: Bisexual main character with chronic pain, author with chronic pain, Black Lesbian side character

Takes Place in: Illinois

Content Warnings (Highlight to view): Ableism, Child Abuse, Forced Captivity, Gaslighting, Illness, Medical Procedures, Mental Illness, Racism, Slut-Shaming, Stalking, Verbal/Emotional Abuse, Victim Blaming, Violence

Blurb

Shot through with gallows humor and speaking in the voice of a trusted best friend, this self-deprecating horror novel explores medical trauma through Irish folklore, asking “Can a sick woman ever be trusted?”

Brigid—that’s the Irish Breej, not “Bridge-id,” though it’s not like she’d correct you—has had a rough go of it. Her mother abused her when she was little, her best friend (and secret crush) is too busy chasing some blonde to answer Brigid’s calls, and she lost her job thanks to chronic pelvic pain with no identifiable cause. As a self-doubting, disabled adult, she’s certain that everything that has happened to her is her fault.

When her mother goes missing and Brigid’s only option is to move back into her childhood home in the idyllic Midwestern town of St. Charles, Illinois, the uncanny begins: A particular crow that once harassed her reappears, following her everywhere. A painting of Jesus keeps coming back, no matter how many times she throws it away. Frozen body parts show up in places rubber band balls and door stoppers ought to be. Every night she dreams that her real mother is dead and decaying in the closet, and the identical mother who raised her is not her mother. But it’s all in Brigid’s head. It’s all her fault. It must be. What other explanation could there be?

To survive, she’ll need to ignore what her mother and her chronic-pain doctors have always told her: that her perception of reality can’t be trusted.

Brigid (who uses the Irish pronunciation “Breej” rather than Anglicized “Bridge-id”) struggles with chronic pelvic pain coupled with IBS that makes it incredibly difficult for her to perform everyday tasks. Due to her chronic pain, Brigid can no longer work, and her disability payments are barely covering the cost of living. She’s on the verge of losing her apartment and becoming homeless (of the hundreds of thousands of Americans who experience homelessness roughly half of them have some form of disability). So, when her abusive mother mysteriously disappears and leaves Brigid her childhood home, she thinks her luck might finally be turning around. Unfortunately, returning to the house not only brings up bad memories for Brigid, but it begins to make her question her sanity as well. Things seem to move around the apartment. Objects she thought she threw out reappear making Brigid question her memory. She finds mysterious meat in the fridge and what, from her description, appears to be a phalange in the garbage disposal.

One day she wakes up to discover garbage spread across the floor and the mysterious piece of meat hanging from the ceiling. Brigid tries to tell the police about the apparent vandalism, but they’re unsurprisingly useless. Strangest of all, a scald crow appears to be following Brigid and spying on her. Scald crows, more commonly known as hooded crows, are found in the UK, so what one is doing in Illinois is anyone’s guess. In Irish folklore the hooded crow, or Badb in Irish, represents the Morrígan, a terrifying goddess of war, sovereignty, and fate. Like the Greek goddess Hecate, the Morrigan is often depicted as a tripartite goddess, three sisters named Badb, Macha, and Nemain. The hooded crow also appears at the death of the demigod Cú Chulainn. Brigid is fascinated by Irish mythology; she remembers reading it with her father before he disappeared, it still brings her comfort on her bad pain days, and she begins to wonder if the crow is more than just a crow. Of course, no one believes her.

Brigid is used to being gaslit, both by her abusive mother and medical providers who question her mysterious pelvic pain. So, when things start getting weird at the house, Bridgid believes it’s all in her head. She also thinks her pain is “all in her head,” even though any decent healthcare provider would tell her that psychosomatic pain doesn’t mean the pain is made up or fake. Unfortunately, as anyone with a chronic condition will tell you, there are a LOT of terrible healthcare providers who treat chronic pain as imaginary. It’s not like on medical TV shows where doctors fight to find a diagnosis and treat the patient no matter what. In the real would, if providers can’t easily diagnose you, they decide you’re no longer their problem or you’re making it up.

My father, a gastroenterologist, often sees patients who have spent years trying to find a diagnosis for their digestive issues before they end up in his office. Most of these patients have seen multiple other specialists who simply gave up on them after discovering they weren’t easy to diagnose. A patient of his told me she spent 10 years looking for a cause of her digestive issues before my dad diagnosed her as having a zoonotic disease from working with swine, something no one else had bothered to test for. Judging by this Reddit thread this is not an uncommon experience for people with chronic illnesses. Brigid has already had one exploratory surgery that came up with nothing, and has pretty much given up any hope of finding a cure for her chronic pain.

Keep in mind people with disabilities are not a monolith, and every individual has a different relationship with their disability. Not every person with a disability wants a cure and assuming all disabilities should be “cured” (i.e. assuming a disability is a defect that keeps someone from being “normal”) is ableist. For example, most autistic people don’t want a cure as autism is not a disease. Many Deaf people feel the same way. Accommodations and addressing ableism are what they want, not a cure. But again, everyone feels differently. Some people may want certain aspects or comorbidities of their disability to go away, but not others. For example, an Autistic friend of mine is perfectly fine with his autism, but hates his anxiety disorder and takes medication to mitigate it. He would be thrilled if his anxiety was cured. But some people with disabilities DO want a cure, and that’s also okay. Brigid’s disability causes her to physically suffer a great deal, and accommodations can’t really mitigate her pain, so she doesn’t like it and wants it gone.

Like many folks with a chronic illness and/or pain, Brigid has a limited amount of energy to get things done and must plan her whole life around her pain flares. She is often too tired by the end of the day to cook anything healthy for dinner and usually just gets a microwave pizza or burrito because that’s all she can handle when her pain gets bad. She must plan her days carefully around her pain, which makes unpacking and cleaning her mother’s house difficult. Spoon theory is a metaphor created by Christine Miserandino to describe the amount of energy a person with a chronic illness has for every day tasks. Each activity costs a certain amount of “spoons.” Simple things like brushing your teeth or watching TV “cost” less spoons while more complex tasks like going to school or work, cleaning the house, or exercising require more spoons. The number of spoons someone has on any given day can vary, so activities need to be planned around the number of spoons available. People with chronic illnesses, pain, depression, etc. have less spoons that someone who is able-bodied and neurotypical,so they need to be especially careful about how they plan their days. They may only have a few spoons on especially bad days, so they need to get as much done as possible on good days. When Brigid’s pain is less severe, she tries to get as much cleaning and unpacking done as possible, even though it will make her pain worse later.

Brigid doesn’t just have physical symptoms to contend with. She also struggles with trauma from the emotional abuse she endured from her mother for years. Brigid thinks she’s unlovable and deserves the abuse from Mammy because she was a “difficult” child. This has left her with a lot of shame and self-hatred. Her friend, Emma, points out that, in truth, Brigid is too agreeable and will go along with anything, even if it hurts her. Brigid’s people pleasing along with her lack of self-compassion are both common in abuse survivors. Brigid doesn’t recognize what happened to her as abuse, however, since it was never physical.

Brigid often dreams that an evil mother came and killed her “real” mother, who used to be kind and loving. There’s a Freudian theory that a child can’t comprehend her previously loving and kind mother becoming cruel and abusive, so she thinks her mother has been replaced somehow. In Bruno Bettelheim’s The Uses of Enchantment: The Meaning and Importance of Fairy Tales the author argues that children separate their mother into their “good” mother (when she’s kind and nurturing) and “bad” mother (when she punishes them or doesn’t give them what they want). This is represented in Grimm’s Fairy Tales by the usually deceased good mother, and the wicked stepmother, who provides a transference object for the child’s hate.

Brigid’s mother being replaced by a bad version also brings to mind the story of changelings. In European folklore, a changeling is supernatural substitute that was left by fairies, demons, elves, or trolls in place of a human, usually a child. In Ireland, the belief in changelings continued to endure at least as late as 1895, when Bridget Cleary, who worked as a dressmaker, was murdered by her husband, Michael Cleary. At his trial Michael claimed that his wife had been replaced by a fairy and he had to burn the changeling alive to get his wife back. If you’re a fan of Aaron Mahnke, episode 11 of his podcast, Lore, tells the story of Bridget Cleary (I highly recommend it).

There’s a modern theory proposed by such scholars as D. L. Ashliman, Lorna Wing, and Davids Potter that the changeling myth arose as a way to explain neurodivergence or other disabilities in children. Unfortunately, this could lead to abuse and even infanticide as parents believed the child was not their own. In 1826, again in Ireland, Ann Roche drowned her four-year-old grandson, Michael Leahy, believing him to be a changeling because he could neither speak or stand. Roche believed that holding him under water would cast out the fairy which would allow her grandson to act like a “normal” child. Sadly, even today, children with disabilities are at least three times more likely to be victims of abuse or neglect than children without disabilities (and the number may actually be higher due to many children with disabilities being unable to directly report). When children with disabilities are murdered by their caregivers people will often excuse the murder and paint the murderers as victims because their child was a burden. Moral philosopher and terrible human being Peter Singer argued in his book Practical Ethics (1979), that it is morally justified to kill babies with disabilities. He also claims that it’s totally okay to kill a baby with a disability if the parents replace them with a non-disabled baby.

“When the death of a disabled infant will lead to the birth of another infant with better prospects of a happy life, the total amount of happiness will be greater if the disabled infant is killed. The loss of happy life for the first infant is outweighed by the gain of a happier life for the second.”

Gross. Sadly, Brigid has internalized the belief that her disability makes her “a burden,” despite what her therapist and best friend tell her.

I liked that Brigid’s Black best friend and crush, Emma, was not relegated to the role of “just there to support the white girl with no needs of her own.” When Brigid was relying too much on her for emotional support Emma was quick to set a boundary and tell her BFF (not unkindly) that this was probably something better discussed with her therapist, Carol. Emma makes time for Brigid, but isn’t always available when she calls, as Emma is busy with her own life which includes romantic turmoil, pottery class, dealing with the rich white parents she nannies for, and her beloved cats. She will even call Brigid for support when she’s struggling with her love life, so the friendship doesn’t feel one-sided (even if Brigid, in her insecurity, worries that it is).

I also appreciated that although Emma works as a nanny for rich white people, she does so without falling into the harmful Black mammy (not to be confused with what Brigid calls her mother) trope. She does the work because she’s paid well (very well) by wealthy parents, but still recognizes the inherent racism in liberal white parents hiring a Black nanny so their kids will respect other races while also expecting her to do the work they consider below them. Emma is a curvy woman, but not desexualized at all. In fact, Brigid often remarks on how stylish and sexy she is. Again, Daly could have made Emma little more than a trope, this time the Jezebel, but manages to avoid it by making Emma a well-rounded character. She is more likely to speak her mind than Brigid, but isn’t “loud and sassy,” and struggles with her own insecurities. Although Emma doesn’t appear often in the book, she still gets her own romantic storyline, and even some character development when she recognizes she’s being biphobic by refusing to date women who have only dated men before. I’m also happy to report that “Black” was always capitalized when talking about race.

I loved Daly’s dark sense of humor because sometimes all you can do is laugh about it when things are terrible, as Brigid often does to deflect. I also loved Brigid’s character, felt strongly for her, and wanted so badly for her to have a happy ending, even though I know those are rare in real life. The pacing is a little slow in the beginning compared to the end, but that’s really the only criticism I have. This story is not for the squeamish, as Brigid suffers from both gastrointestinal distress and difficult periods and both are described in painful detail. Honestly, I appreciated that Daly did not shy away from talking about poop and menstrual blood as it let the reader see the full extent of what Brigid goes through on a daily basis. As someone with my own pelvic and digestive problems (that are thankfully nowhere near as severe or painful as Brigid’s) it was refreshing to see symptoms I’ve experienced myself described without shame. Scald Crow was one of those books that managed to made me laugh out loud, choke back tears, and shiver with apprehension. Definitely a fun and spooky read.

Tags: Adult, Bisexual, Book Review, Chronic Illness, Chronic Pain, Disability, LGBTQIA, Myths and Folklore, Own Voices

Antenora by Dori Lumpkin

Antenora by Dori Lumpkin. Highly Recommended. Read if you like relgious horror.

Formats: Print, digital

Publisher: Creature Publishing

Genre: Myth and Folklore, Psychological Horror

Audience: Young Adult

Diversity: Non-binary author, queer women main characters

Takes Place in: Alabama

Content Warnings (Highlight to view): Animal Death, Death, Gore, Illness, Suicide, Relgious Abuse, Slut-Shaming Verbal/Emotional Abuse

Blurb

Antenora: Dante’s ninth circle of hell reserved for traitors to their country. What really happened to Nora Willet? The religious community of Bethel, Alabama can’t agree on the truth. They always said she was trouble. Later, they said she was possessed. Maybe she lost her mind, killing three people and injuring many others. In a part confessional, part plea for Nora to come home, Nora’s childhood friend Abigail Barnes tells of another girl’s gruesome eighteenth birthday, of the time Nora may have fully revived a snake, of the intimacy of their private encounters at the lakeside, of Nora’s deliverance ceremony. Where, Abigail wonders, is Nora now? In this tender and horrific debut, religious dogmatism sniffs out two girls whose innocent affections threaten an entire town and way of life, making one a traitor to a homeland in which only Abigail and Nora know the bittersweet truth. A homeland in which Nora can only say, “There’s a snake speaking to me, Abby-girl.”

Nora and Abigail are best friends who live in the small town of Bethel, an insular religious community in Alabama surrounded by mountains. The girls have been inseparable since they were seven, despite their differences. Abigial is a “good girl,” quiet, Godly, and submissive like the town expects women to behave. But Nora is the opposite–opinionated, strong, and brave–which angers the people of Bethel and the town leader, pastor David. But what makes the rest of the town hate her is what draws Abigail to Nora, and the reason she’s secretly in love with her.

The two are attending the 18th birthday party for their classmate Leah, who is displeased Nora is there. Turning 18 is a big deal for girls in Bethel because it’s the age they’re allowed to get married, and most girls find a husband shortly after high school graduation. Nora knows Leah doesn’t like her, so when Leah is seated at the head of the table being presented with her birthday cake, Nora grabs a fistful of Leah’s hair and slams her face-first into the table, ripping the hair from her scalp and breaking Leah’s nose. While Nora feigns remorse, Abigail can tell it’s just for show.

Later, Nora releases a baby copperhead in church. While copperhead venom isn’t particularly potent and rarely fatal, somehow both the bite victims die quickly and painfully. When the baby copperhead returns to a grinning Nora who kisses it on its snout., that’s the moment the church decides she’s possessed by a demon.

The whole story is steeped in symbolism. The title of the book is taken from Dante Alighieri’s The Divine Comedy, a famous Italian poem written in the early 1300s. The Divine Comedy is a first-person narrative told from Dante’s perspective about his journey through the realms of Hell (Inferno), Purgatory (Purgatorio), and Heaven (Paradiso). The first, and perhaps most famous part of the poem, is dedicated to the nine circles of Hell where Dante is guided by the ancient Roman poet Virgil. Located in the Ninth Circle is the Cocytus, a large frozen lake filled with sinners guilty of treachery. The lake is divided into four concentric rings, or rounds, with the further rings reserved for the most serious betrayals. The second ring, Antenora, is dedicated to traitors of their country. This ring gets its name from Antenor, a Trojan elder who betrayed the Troy to the Greeks. With the exception of Abigail, the citizens of Bethel see Nora as a traitor to their town. But Nora sees the town as her prison, like the frozen Cocytus.

An balck and white engraving by Gustave Dore. Dante is holding the head of Bocca degli Abati, a traitorous Guelph of Florence who is frozen in the Cocytus. The Roman poet Virgil watches on next to Dante. They are standing on a frozen lake in which various people are frozen up to their necks. Their is a pile of frozen bodies next to the two men.

Antenora, located in the ninth circle of hell, is the second section of the lake of Cocytus where traitors to their homeland are punished. Artwork by Gustave Doré (1832-1883), Illustration 32 of the Divine Comedy.

Snake imagery comes up multiple times in Antenora. When Nora gets a bad idea in her head, she’ll tell Abigail “There’s a snake speaking to me, Abby-girl.” One of the few times Nora cries is when she and Abigail find a dead baby copperhead in the woods which then miraculously comes back to life in her hands (implied to be the one Nora releases in the church). And of course, there are the snakes that David’s brother Caleb handles as part of their Sunday church service. Snake handling is a religious rite practiced by some rural Pentecostals which was popularized by George Hensely in early 20th century Appalachia and continues to this day. Hensley believed that snake handling was commanded by God due to the following bible passage: “And these signs shall follow them that believe; In my name shall they cast out devils; they shall speak with new tongues; They shall take up serpents…” (Mark 16:17-18 KJV) Unsurprisingly Hensely died of a snake bite in 1955 at the age of 74 after refusing to seek medical treatment. The most famous snake in the Abrahamic religions is the one from the creation myth that lived in the Garden of Eden. The snake tempts Eve, who later offers the fruit to Adam, to eat fruit from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil and is subsequently punished by God who curses it to crawl on its belly.

A black and white photo of two dark-haired white men holding a large snake in the air. Both men are wearing white button down shirts and dark pants. One of the men has only a right arm, the sleeve for his left arm is tucked into his pants. A crowd watches on and plays the cymbals. They are all inside s small building.

Photo taken in 1946 by Russell Lee at the Church of God with Signs Following in Harlan County, Kentucky.

A serpent is also used to represent the dragon in the Book of Revelation who battles the Archangel Michael. The snake in Eden is similar to Nora’s idea that a snake is speaking to her before she does something “sinful.” But, not all snakes in the bible are evil. God turns Moses’ staff into a serpent to prove he’s been chosen to lead his people out of slavery. Later, in his journey though the desert with those he has freed, Moses mounts a bronze serpent on a pole to act a cure against the bite of the “burning serpents” sent by God as punishment. Like Moses’ bronze snake charms has similarities to the Rod of Asclepius, a staff entwined by a snake wielded by Asclepius, the Greek god of healing and medicine. The symbol is still used to this day as a symbol of Medicine, and can be seen on the flag for the World Health Organization. Snakes can also represent rebirth due to their ability to shed their skin, as is seen with Nora’s baby copperhead. This is perhaps best represented by the ouroboros devouring its own tail. Other examples of snakes in word mythology include Níðhöggr, a serpent/dragon in Norse myth who resides in Niflheim and gnaws on the roots of Yggdrasil, the World Tree and the Vision Serpent, an important figure in early Mayan mythology who connected the spiritual and earthly planes that was also associated with a World Tree.

Ningishzida is a Mesopotamian serpent deity of vegetation and the underworld. Rainbow snake is a creator god in the Aboriginal Australian religion. Similarly, Damballa the sky father and creator of all life in Vodou is often depicted as a white or rainbow serpent. His mate, Ayida-Weddo, is a rainbow snake who represents fertility. Vasuki is the king of the nagas in Hinduism and is often depicted coiled around the neck of Shiva, one of the major Hindu deities and god of destruction and creation. As seen in these examples, snakes can be a destructive force like Níðhöggr, a creator like Damballa, or both, like the god Shiva. Nora is seen as a destructive force by her community, like the serpent in revelations, which leads David to the decision that she must be “delivered” a.k.a exorcised.

A Renaissance painting of Eve from the creation story in the Bible. Behind her lies a deer. Eve is surrounded by foliage including a stray branch covering her vulva. Eve is holding the branch of a fruit tree above her head. In her other hand she holds a piece of fruit with a bite taken from it. Above her the snake is coiled around a branch watching her.

Eve by Lucas Cranach the Elder from the Art Institute of Chicago

While it’s unclear whether Nora is a victim of demons (the snake that speaks to her) or merely a mentally unwell girl with behavioral issues who needs actual help rather than religious abuse, Abigail is inclined to lean towards the latter. Abigial states “Possession is a funny thing, right, because technically, it is a mental health issue that can be diagnosed. Your mind has been damaged far past the Lord’s control, and the demons have been let in. Whether you are or aren’t actually possessed, you at the very least have to believe that you are, and therein lies the problem.” While exorcisms are fun in fiction, in real life they’re usually being used in the place of medical treatment for those struggling with mental health or behavioral issues and can lead to tragic results.

Children seem to be the most common victims of exorcisms gone wrong. (Content Warning: Discussion of child abuse and murders) Police had to use stun guns to subdue Ronald Marquez after he was found strangling his young granddaughter in an attempted exorcism. He was later pronounced dead in the hospital. While the girl survived, other children weren’t so lucky. A similar case occurred at a small Pentecostal church is San Jose California. The grandfather of the girl, Rene Trigueros-Hernandez, attempted an exorcism on her at her mother’s request which resulted in 3-year-old Arely Naomi Proctor dying of asphyxiation. In 2003, an 8-year-old boy in Milwaukee, whose autism was blamed on demonic possession, was killed during an exorcism where he was wrapped tightly in sheets. Almost a decade later, Eder Guzman-Rodriguez beat his 2-year-old daughter to death in an attempted exorcism. Most recently a 6-year-old Florida boy was found dead by authorities after his mother tried to perform an exorcism. (End of content warning) It’s no wonder Nora fears her deliverance.

I’ve always found horror that explores the corruption of fundamentalist Christianity to be especially creepy. Maybe it’s because of the rampant abuse that can be found in extreme religious groups that demand obedience and conformity. There are so many stories online of Child abuse (“sparing the rod”), sexual abuse (purity culture is rape culture), emotional abuse, etc. from survivors dealing with lasting trauma. There’s also the fact that something that’s supposed to bring comfort, religion, can be twisted and perverted until it becomes something that hurts rather than heals. Or maybe it’s the horror of witnessing what the extreme Christian right is doing to our country right now.

It’s unclear when the story takes place. It could be a modern story with no mention of technology, or it take place in the early 20^th century when snake handling first rose to popularity. The only hint we get is the church air conditioning (with the portable window unit invented in 1931). I like the vague setting, as it makes the story feel timeless while also emphasizing how the town of Bethel is trapped in time, cut off from the outside (secular) world.

In the story, Abigail mentions how girls are expected to “keep sweet.” If you’ve never heard the expression before “Keep sweet, pray, and obey,” was originally coined by Rulon Jeffs, the 5th president of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. It’s meant to describe how women in the church are expected to behave. The motto because popularized by the Netflix series of the same name, a four-part docuseries released in 2022 about the survivors of the FLDS church. It’s current leader, Warren S. Jeffs is serving a life sense in Texas for child sexual assault and marrying underage girls. While girls in Bethel aren’t allowed to get married until they turn 18 (the age was 16 until the state got involved) they’re still expected to submit to David’s will and not complain or express negative emotions. It’s incredibly creepy, much more so than the random acts of violence committed throughout the book. Probably because religious abuse is still so prevalent in the US.

Elise Heerde, a counsellor who specializes in religious trauma wrote the following on the blog, Tears of Eden

“For as long as I can remember, obedience was the measure of my worth. To be good, to be faithful, to be worthy of love. These were tied to how well I conformed, how much I suppressed, and how seamlessly I fit within the rigid structures of evangelical Christianity. But that obedience came at a cost. It wasn’t just about following rules; it was about erasing myself.”

Antenora is, at its heart, a tragic love story between two girls who never got to fully explore their feelings for one another because of the repressive religious community they’re trapped in. We see how girls, especially girls who don’t conform, are mistreated by conservative religious communities.

Tags: Book Review, Highly Recommended, Lesbian, LGBTQIA, Myths and Folklore, Non-binary, Psychological Horror, Queer, Young Adult

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

Splinter by Jasper Hyde

Formats: Print, digital

Publisher: The Magnificent Engine

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

Audience: Adult/Mature

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

Takes Place in: Sleepy Hollow, NY

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

Blurb

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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 who she helps adjust 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

Spectrum: An Autistic Horror Anthology edited by Aquino Loayza

Formats: Print, digital

Publisher: Third Estate Books

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

Audience: Adult/Mature

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

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

Blurb

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

Don’t Blink.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A Haunting in Hialeah Gardens by Raul Palma

Formats: Print, audio, digital

Publisher: Dutton

Genre: Demon, Ghosts/Haunting, Myth and Folklore

Audience: Adult/Mature

Diversity: Cuban characters and author, Bolivian character

Takes Place in: Miami, Florida

Content Warnings (Highlight to view): Alcohol Abuse, Animal Death, Child Abuse, Child Death, Child Endangerment, Death, Illness, Medical Procedures, Oppression, Mental Illness, Racism, Suicide, Violence, Xenophobia

Blurb

A genre-bending debut with a fiercely political heart, A Haunting in Hialeah Gardens explores the weight of the devil’s bargain, following the lengths one man will go to for the promise of freedom.

Hugo Contreras’s world in Miami has shrunk. Since his wife died, Hugo’s debt from her medical bills has become insurmountable. He shuffles between his efficiency apartment, La Carreta (his favorite place for a cafecito), and a botanica in a strip mall where he works as the resident babaláwo.

One day, Hugo’s nemesis calls. Alexi Ramirez is a debt collector who has been hounding Hugo for years, and Hugo assumes this call is just more of the same. Except this time Alexi is calling because he needs spiritual help. His house is haunted. Alexi proposes a deal: If Hugo can successfully cleanse his home before Noche Buena, Alexi will forgive Hugo’s debt. Hugo reluctantly accepts, but there’s one issue: Despite being a babaláwo, he doesn’t believe in spirits.

Hugo plans to do what he’s done with dozens of clients before: use sleight of hand and amateur psychology to convince Alexi the spirits have departed. But when the job turns out to be more than Hugo bargained for, Hugo’s old tricks don’t work. Memories of his past—his childhood in the Bolivian silver mines and a fraught crossing into the United States as a boy—collide with Alexi’s demons in an explosive climax.

Equal parts hilarious and heartbreaking, A Haunting in Hialeah Gardens explores questions of visibility, migration, and what we owe—to ourselves, our families, and our histories.

It’s Christmas time in Miami and Hugo is anything but merry. His wife, Meli, recently passed away and Hugo wasn’t even able to pay for her funeral. Like most Americans he’s been drowning in debt most of his adult life, and Meli’s medical bills have only added to that. His indebtedness feels like a physical weight, crushing the life out of him, following him wherever he goes. Debt collectors hound him every day and garnish his wages. Hugo may not be a perfect person but he doesn’t deserve the hand he’s been dealt. All of Hugo’s life has been hard. He never knew his father, a white Spainard, and his mother abandoned them when he was young. During his childhood in Bolivia, Hugo and his brother worked in the mines after school. His brother would pray and offer sacrifices to El Tío, the god of the mountain, but the mountain still took his life. Hugo was always a non-believer, but his brother’s death shook his faith even further. Ironically, Hugo now works at a Botanica and is a practicing Babalawo. Although he has great respect for Lourdes, his boss, and even has a knack for knowing what people need, he still thinks it’s all hokum. He is especially talented at ridding people’s homes of ghosts, using both psychology and showmanship to make them believe their specters have vanished. Hugo may not believe in what he does, but the result is the same: his customers are happy and the “hauntings” end.

The attorney in charge of Hugo’s debt, Alexi, calls out of the blue and asks for his help. At first, Hugo is hesitant to help the devil who’s made his life miserable, but when Alexi promises to clear his debt, he acquiesces. We learn that Alexi, the son of Cuban immigrant parents (part of the Cuban exodus when affluent Cubans were fleeing Castro), is obsessed with money. Instead of following his passion of becoming a painter he chose a field that would make him wealthy because money is more important to him. He loves to show off his wealth, but as Hugo notes, he lacks taste and his choices in home décor are gaudy. Alexi is also a racist, as is evident by the “All Lives Matter” sign in his yard and the way he speaks about his Haitian laborers. Hugo is conflicted about helping the awful man, but the promise of being debt-free is too good to pass up. Of course, Hugo is hardly perfect himself, and we learn of the many mistakes he’s made that still haunt him. With each chapter, the mystery of Hugo’s life is revealed, and the reader gains an increased understanding of the deeply flawed protagonist. Hugo is a well-developed, complicated character. He isn’t perfect and makes lots of mistakes, but he loves his wife and does his best, making him relatable. I couldn’t help but be drawn to Hugo. I just felt sorry for the poor guy. Even as I was horrified by some of the things he did, I still wanted him to win.

A Haunting in Hialeah Gardens is a unique take on ghosts and haunting. While Alexi seems to be plagued by a literal ghost, Hugo is haunted by the ghosts of his past and his debt which keep him from happiness and living his life. As the story unfolds, we learn that Hugo is also indebted in ways that aren’t financial that have haunted him since childhood. Underneath the ghost story is a horror tale about Capitalism and its exploitative nature. While the ways in which it hurts Hugo are obvious, Alexi’s unchecked greed has caused him to give up on his dreams because he was raised to belief happiness can only be earned through the accumulation of wealth.

Palma’s descriptions of Miami make the city feel like its own character, a place filled with both beauty and pain and even a little bit of magic. While the story is filled with grief and suffering, it does end on a hopeful note. It reminds me of the Latin phrase “dum spiro spero,” or “while I breathe, I hope.” It may be too late for his wife and brother, but as long as Hugo is still alive there’s always the chance for things to get better for him, even when things are at their worse. While it’s not your typical horror story, the descriptions of hopelessness and grief still left me with a sense of dread. Overall, A Haunting in Hialeah is a strong debut from a talented new horror author.

Tags: Adult, Book Review, Demon, Ghosts/Haunting, Latine/Latino, Myths and Folklore, Recommended

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

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Moonflow by Bitter Karella

Formats: Print, audio, digital

Publisher: Run for It

Genre: Blood & Guts (Gorn), Eco Horror, Eldritch Horror, Myth and Folklore

Audience: Adult

Diversity: Trans main character and author, queer/lesbian major characters

Takes Place in: California

Blurb

Wow, this book… just wow.

This was a weird read, which usually I’m not a fan of. In this case, I felt it worked well.

Tags: Adult, Blood & Guts, Book Review, Eco Horror, Eldritch, Lesbian, LGBTQIA, Myths and Folklore, Own Voices, Queer, Trans

These Bodies Ain’t Broken Edited by Madeline Dyer

Formats: Print, digital

Publisher: Page Street Publishing

Genre: Body Horror, Demon, Historic Horror, Monster, Myths and Folklore, Romance, Vampire

Audience: Young Adult

Blurb

A monstrous transformation within your own body.
A sacrificial imprisonment.
A fight to the death against an ancient evil.

These stories showcase disabled characters winning against all odds.

The Scald Crow by Grace Daly

Formats: Print, digital

Publisher: Creature Publishing

Genre: Myth and Folklore

Audience: Adult

Diversity: Bisexual main character with chronic pain, author with chronic pain, Black Lesbian side character

Takes Place in: Illinois

Blurb

To survive, she’ll need to ignore what her mother and her chronic-pain doctors have always told her: that her perception of reality can’t be trusted.

Gross. Sadly, Brigid has internalized the belief that her disability makes her “a burden,” despite what her therapist and best friend tell her.

Tags: Adult, Bisexual, Book Review, Chronic Illness, Chronic Pain, Disability, LGBTQIA, Myths and Folklore, Own Voices

Antenora by Dori Lumpkin

Antenora by Dori Lumpkin. Highly Recommended. Read if you like relgious horror.

Formats: Print, digital

Publisher: Creature Publishing

Genre: Myth and Folklore, Psychological Horror

Audience: Young Adult

Diversity: Non-binary author, queer women main characters

Takes Place in: Alabama

Content Warnings (Highlight to view): Animal Death, Death, Gore, Illness, Suicide, Relgious Abuse, Slut-Shaming Verbal/Emotional Abuse

Blurb

Photo taken in 1946 by Russell Lee at the Church of God with Signs Following in Harlan County, Kentucky.

Eve by Lucas Cranach the Elder from the Art Institute of Chicago

Elise Heerde, a counsellor who specializes in religious trauma wrote the following on the blog, Tears of Eden

Tags: Book Review, Highly Recommended, Lesbian, LGBTQIA, Myths and Folklore, Non-binary, Psychological Horror, Queer, Young Adult

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

Splinter by Jasper Hyde

Formats: Print, digital

Publisher: The Magnificent Engine

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

Audience: Adult/Mature

Takes Place in: Sleepy Hollow, NY

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

Blurb

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

Spectrum: An Autistic Horror Anthology edited by Aquino Loayza

Formats: Print, digital

Publisher: Third Estate Books

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

Audience: Adult/Mature

Blurb

Don’t Blink.

A Haunting in Hialeah Gardens by Raul Palma

Formats: Print, audio, digital

Publisher: Dutton

Genre: Demon, Ghosts/Haunting, Myth and Folklore

Audience: Adult/Mature

Diversity: Cuban characters and author, Bolivian character

Takes Place in: Miami, Florida

Blurb

Equal parts hilarious and heartbreaking, A Haunting in Hialeah Gardens explores questions of visibility, migration, and what we owe—to ourselves, our families, and our histories.

Tags: Adult, Book Review, Demon, Ghosts/Haunting, Latine/Latino, Myths and Folklore, Recommended

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

« Older Entries

Navigation

Diverse Book List

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Search by Tags

To learn more about the Age Group, Diversity, and Genre tags, click here.