psychological | Diversity in Horror Fiction

Things Have Gotten Worse Since We Last Spoke by Eric LaRocca

Formats: Print, audio, digital

Genre: Body Horror, Psychological Horror, Romance

Audience: Adult/Mature

Diversity: Gay author, lesbian main characters

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

Blurb

Sadomasochism. Obsession. Death.

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

What have you done today to deserve your eyes?

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

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

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

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

Aftercare is important.

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

Tags: Adult, Body Horror, Book Review, Highly Recommended, Lesbian, LGBTQIA, Psychological Horror, Romance

Testament by Jose Nateras

Formats: Print, digital

Publisher: NineStar Press

Genre: Ghosts/Haunting, Psychological Horror

Audience: Adult/Mature

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

Takes Place in: Chicago, IL, USA

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

Blurb

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

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

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

Comic-style illustration of woman holding head and saying

Mind. Blown.

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

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

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

**end of trigger warning **

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

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

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

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

Tags: Adult, Asian American, BIPOC, Bisexual, Black, Book Review, Gay, Ghosts/Haunting, Latine/Latino, LGBTQIA, Mexican, Psychological Horror, Recommended

The Luminous Dead by Caitlin Starling

Formats: Print, audio, digital

Publisher: Harper Voyager

Genre: Psychological Horror, Sci-Fi Horror, Thriller

Audience: Adult/Mature

Diversity: Lesbian/queer characters and author, Biracial Black character

Takes Place in: another planet

Content Warnings (Highlight to view): Death, Drug Use/Abuse, Forced Captivity, Gaslighting, Medical Torture/Abuse, Medical Procedures, Mental Illness, Self-Harm, Attempted Suicide, Verbal/Emotional Abuse

Blurb

“This claustrophobic, horror-leaning tour de force is highly recommended for fans of Jeff VanderMeer’s Annihilation and Andy Weir’s The Martian.” — Publishers Weekly (starred review)

***

A thrilling, atmospheric debut with the intensive drive of The Martian and Gravity and the creeping dread of Annihilation, in which a caver on a foreign planet finds herself on a terrifying psychological and emotional journey for survival.

When Gyre Price lied her way into this expedition, she thought she’d be mapping mineral deposits, and that her biggest problems would be cave collapses and gear malfunctions. She also thought that the fat paycheck—enough to get her off-planet and on the trail of her mother—meant she’d get a skilled surface team, monitoring her suit and environment, keeping her safe. Keeping her sane.

Instead, she got Em.

Em sees nothing wrong with controlling Gyre’s body with drugs or withholding critical information to “ensure the smooth operation” of her expedition. Em knows all about Gyre’s falsified credentials, and has no qualms using them as a leash—and a lash. And Em has secrets, too . . .

As Gyre descends, little inconsistencies—missing supplies, unexpected changes in the route, and, worst of all, shifts in Em’s motivations—drive her out of her depths. Lost and disoriented, Gyre finds her sense of control giving way to paranoia and anger. On her own in this mysterious, deadly place, surrounded by darkness and the unknown, Gyre must overcome more than just the dangerous terrain and the Tunneler which calls underground its home if she wants to make it out alive—she must confront the ghosts in her own head.

But how come she can’t shake the feeling she’s being followed?

The Luminous Dead is a survival horror story with only two characters, one location, and no antagonist. It’s also one of the most stressful horror stories I’ve ever read. Starling is a master of playing with the reader’s paranoia, building up the suspense and atmosphere until you’re jumping at every sound and shadow. Ironically, The Luminous Dead also managed to calm me down considerably when I was dealing with my own stressful situation (horror is great for anxiety): spending the night in the ER awaiting an emergency cholecystectomy (after my wife told me it was nothing and we weren’t spending $4,000 at the ER just because I had stomach cramps that were probably just from drinking milk, and why hadn’t I just taken the Lactaid tablets she bought me). After managing to survive a severely infected gallbladder, I assumed that 2020 could only be uphill from there. Poor, naïve past me.

In the first panel I'm lying in a hospital bed looking worn out. "Well at least 2020 can't be any worse than 2019." I say. In the second panel I'm sleeping peacfully, when suddenly I'm woken up in the third panel by evil laughter. In the 4th panel the demonic laughing continues while I hide under the blankets and ask "Where is that laughing coming from?"

Well at least none of my organs exploded in 2020, so there’s that…

In the future, humanity has spread out across the stars, but sadly it’s not the socialist utopia dreamed of in Star Trek. Gyre lives on a barren, back-water mining planet where poverty is rampant and the only escape is to take a job as a caver for wealthy mining companies. It’s not a pleasant job. On top of spending days or even weeks in a self-contained suit with little human interaction, breathing recycled air, and being fed through a stomach stoma, these subterranean explorers have to contend with falls, cave-ins, and underground flooding. Worst of all are the Tunnelers – giant alien worms that burrow through solid stone. Not many cavers survive, but those who do can expect a huge payout. In Gyre’s case, it’s enough to get her off-world to find the mother who abandoned her as a child. Desperate, uncertified, and inexperienced, she accepts an especially sketchy caving job that doesn’t ask too many questions. It’s not until Gyre has already begun her descent into the subterranean labyrinth she’s been hired to explore that she discovers she may have made a grave mistake. Instead of having an entire team topside to monitor her vitals, feed her info, and watch her while she sleeps, which is the standard, she has only one woman, Em. Cold, efficient, controlling, and stingy with details, Em is not above obfuscating data and manipulating her cavers to get the job done. Not exactly someone you want to trust with your life. Em seems to genuinely want to protect Gyre even if her methods are questionable, but that hardly excuses the lying and manipulation which only serve to exacerbate the young caver’s trust issues. Not that Gyre is much better. Her desperation means she’s willing to make some morally questionable decisions, and her stubbornness leads to her making bad ones.

A drawing of Gyre in her suit. She's in the cave and is looking at two skulls on the ground, horrified. Em is on the intercom saying "Don't worry Gyre, it's perfectly safe. Trust me!"

The background is from a cave in the Dominican Republic I visited back in February 2020. There weren’t any skulls in it though. *sigh* I miss travel.

As if paranoia, isolation, and giant monsters aren’t scary enough, Starling adds another twist: there may or may not be something sinister going on in the cave as Gyre’s senses start to play tricks on her. Maybe it’s another one of Em’s deceptions. For most of the book, you’re genuinely unsure of where the biggest threat is coming from: the cave, Em, or Gyre’s own mindknowing she’s all alone in the dark unknown (or is she?) with only one less-than-trustworthy guide. Although Gyre never fully trusts Em, the two begin to form a distrustful, dysfunctional relationship over time as they reveal and struggle with past traumas. And yes, their trauma bond is just as maladjusted as it sounds. It’s both fascinating and horrifying to watch these two deeply flawed, fucked up people grow closer. Part of me was rooting for Gyre and Em because, when everything is awful, people deserve every bit of happiness they can get. But the more rational part of me was horrified. Shared suffering does not mean two people will be compatible and without trust issues, and on top of Em’s willingness to put Gyre in danger, there are the hallmarks of a toxic relationship. To Starling’s credit, she doesn’t try to create an idealized romance, or even imply that their bond is healthy like certain romance books that will remain nameless tend to do *cough*Twilight*cough*. Instead she aims to create two realistic, flawed characters who are doing their best in a bad situation. I’m a huge fan of antiheroes and morally gray characters in fiction (in real life they’re just assholes) because they’re rarely bland or boring, and Gyre and Em are anything but dull. Watching a caver with trust issues put her life in the hands of a woman who lies just makes the story all the more suspenseful.

Part of the reason Gyre acts the way she does is because she grew up in survival mode. Living in a barren, capitalist hellhole will do that to a person. Like any good work of science fiction, The Luminous Dead uses fictional characters in a fictional setting to draw attention to some very real-world ethical dilemmas. In this case, it’s the exploitation of the poor and vulnerable in a Capitalist society. Dubbed 3K jobs in Japan (kitanai, kiken, kitsui or dirty, dangerous, and difficult in English) this sort of work has traditionally been given to immigrants, migrant workers, and other vulnerable populations who have few options available to earn a living and are less likely to complain about unsafe working environments. Dangerous jobs that require specialized skills and training, such as construction and steel working jobs, pay better salaries and are more likely to be OSHA compliant, but rarely pay enough to offset the risk. Sex work can be a 3K job that pays well, but leaves sex workers open to arrest, abuse, and disease without legal protections in place. While workers aren’t being forced into these jobs per se (as opposed to victims of trafficking, domestic servitude, debt bondage, and other forms of slavery) they’re not usually done by people who have other options available. In The Luminous Dead, caver jobs are only ever taken by those in poverty (the wealthy would never risk their lives doing such dangerous work) and no one continues caving after they’ve made enough to escape. So is it really a choice when you’re between Scylla and Charybdis?

A drawing of Odysseus' ship passing between Scylla (a monstrous woman with six dog's heads around her waist and six serpents head's with shark's teeth coming out of her back) and Charybdis (a giant whirlpool). Someone on the ship is saying "FML".

Scylla wasn’t that big but she’s also not real so I can draw her however I want lol

I can’t describe much more of the plot, as spoilers would ruin the suspense Starling worked so hard to create, but suffice it to say that The Luminous Dead is, at its core, about the trauma of losing a mother, whether from abandonment or death, and how anger and grief can destroy you. If you love isolation horror, definitely pick up a copy of your own.

Tags: Adult, BIPOC, Biracial, Black, Book Review, Lesbian, LGBTQIA, Monster, Own Voices, Psychological Horror, Recommended, SciFi, Thriller

The Between by Tananarive Due

Formats: Print, digital

Publisher: Harper Collins

Genre: Psychological, Thriller

Audience: Adult/Mature

Diversity: Black Characters (African American and Ghanaian) and author, Hispanic/Latino character (Puerto Rican), Character with possible Mental Illness

Takes Place in: Miami, Florida, USA

Content Warnings (Highlight to view): Animal Abuse, Animal Death, Child Abuse, Child Death, Death, Drug Use/Abuse, Gaslighting, Homophobia, Mental Illness, Racism, Rape/Sexual Assault mentioned, Stalking, Slurs, Suicidal thoughts, Verbal/Emotional Abuse

Blurb

When Hilton was just a boy, his grandmother sacrificed her life to save him from drowning. Thirty years later, he begins to suspect that he was never meant to survive that accident, and that dark forces are working to rectify that mistake.

When Hilton’s wife, the only elected African-American judge in Dade County, FL, begins to receive racist hate mail, he becomes obsessed with protecting his family. Soon, however, he begins to have horrible nightmares, more intense and disturbing than any he has ever experienced. Are the strange dreams trying to tell him something? His sense of reality begins to slip away as he battles both the psychotic threatening to destroy his family and the even more terrifying enemy stalking his sleep.

Chilling and utterly convincing, The Between follows the struggles of a man desperately trying to hold on to the people and life he loves, but may have already lost. The compelling plot holds readers in suspense until the final, profound moment of resolution.

I admit, I’m a huge Tananarive Due fan. I love her books, I love her academic work, I love reading her tweets, and I especially love how she’s always willing to share her wisdom and encourage other writers. When I was watching Black horror films for my Horror Noire timeline and Morbidly Beautiful review Due was kind enough to engage with me on Twitter and offer movie recommendations, insights, and feedback for my articles. Here was this amazing author who I admired so much not only chatting with me about our shared love of horror, but taking the time to help me out! If I ever get the chance to meet her in person, I’d probably faint. Needless to say, trying to pick a book to review by one of the most influential Black horror authors out there was a daunting task. Should I write about one of her best-known novels, My Soul to Keep from the popular African Immortals series? Or should I review my personal favorite, The Good House (which I’ve been known to throw at random friends and family members, insisting they read it)? After much back and forth, I finally decided I should start at the beginning and shine the spotlight on her very first novel which doesn’t get nearly as much recognition as it deserves: The Between. This award-winning psychological thriller stars family man Hilton as he loses his grasp on reality while watching his perfect life fall apart after his wife, Dede, receives a racist death threat at her job. In addition to being a truly creepy piece of speculative fiction, it’s also nice to see such a strong, loving, successful Black family dealing with issues like code-switching in a mostly white neighborhood, the Black community’s views on homosexuality and mental illness, and the differences in culture between Africans and Black Americans.

Before diving into the plot of Due’s very first novel, let’s have a quick physics lesson because I can’t review a sci-fi story without at least a little bit of science. Many of you may already be familiar with the many-worlds theory: an interpretation of quantum physics which essentially states that everything that could have possibly happened, but did not, has occurred in a different, alternate timeline, creating a vast multiverse where universes branch into more universes with each possible outcome. For example, flipping a coin would create two separate universes, one where it lands on heads and another where it lands on tails. Some of these universes would be nearly identical to our own, like the two timelines seen in the movie Sliding Doors, while others would hardly be recognizable, like the alternate history in The Man in the High Castle by Philip K Dick where the allies lose WWII, or the two-dimensional world from Edwin Abbott Abbott’s satirical novella, Flatland. However, we are only capable of perceiving the universe that we’re currently in. That’s the main, overly simplified, gist of it anyway. Here’s a great video that further explains this complex concept in an easy to understand way. Now you can impress your friends with your physics knowledge!

The many-worlds theory is especially popular with science and speculative fiction writers and shows up in everything from novels (Mid-World from Stephen King’s Dark Tower series) and comics (the Bizarro World in Superman) to films (Spider-Man into the Spider-Verse) and TV shows (Star Trek‘s Mirror Universe). The Between differs from most of these examples because, in true Schrödinger’s cat fashion, a multiverse may or may not play an important role in the book, and it all starts when Hilton’s grandmother dies the first time. Seven-year old Hilton James discovers his Nana’s cold, dead body on the kitchen floor and runs to get help, only to return and discover she’s alive and well. Her second, and final, death occurs when she drowns trying to save him. Struggling with survivor’s guilt, Hilton becomes obsessed with saving everyone and grows up to run a rehab clinic for low-income people suffering from drug addiction. While a noble calling, spending his every waking moment helping the less fortunate at the expense of him family puts a serious strain on Hilton’s relationship with his wife, Dede, whose jealousy causes her to suspect the worst. Worse still, Hilton is plagued by morbid nightmares in which a voice asks him “How many times do you think you can die?” Believing “we’re always closest to death when we sleep” the nightmares result in somniphobia and severe insomnia. Marriage counseling improves his relationship with his wife, and hypnotherapy helps Hilton sleep, but his nightmares soon resurface with a vengeance after Dede receives a racist, threatening letter shortly after being elected as a judge. Seemingly prophetic dreams full of his Nana’s decaying corpse, his children dying, and his own, mutilated body telling him he’s running out of time plague Hilton until he starts staying up all night, wandering the house, rather than returning to his cadaver-filled dream land. Unsurprisingly, Hilton’s mental health takes a turn for the worse.

Seemingly unsatisfied with simply haunting Hilton’s nightmares, portents of death start appearing to him during the day. After waking up with a sense of dread, Hilton insists the family go to church, only to be met with a new preacher ranting about the water of life from Revelations and meeting Jesus when you face eternity. Cheerful! The day gets worse when his young son, Jamil, is traumatized after witnessing some older boys kill a duckling. Then, Hilton accidentally rear-ends a hearse because the universe is not fucking around with the foreboding omens. A few days later, his adolescent daughter, Kaya, has her first period which Hilton’s commemorates by taking her to the hospital to meet one of his clients, Antoinette, a teenage girl dying of AIDS. I know I’m not a parent, but I feel like reminding your child of their own impending mortality is probably not the best way to celebrate their menarche. And just to make sure Hilton really gets it, because Death doesn’t do subtle, they’re stopped by a funeral procession on their way back from seeing Antoinette. Did I mention it’s raining? Of course it’s raining. I’m surprised a murder of crows didn’t fly overhead and blot out the sun while chanting “doooooooom”. No wonder Hilton becomes convinced Death is stalking him. The symbolism may seem heavy handed, and in the hands of a less talented writer would’ve come off as cheesy, but in Due’s case it works incredibly well to emphasize the depths of Hilton’s paranoia and his loosening grip on reality and set up two equally creepy explanations for what’s happening.

Death, represented by a skeleton wearing a dark robe, is hiding behind a tree in a park so they can spy on Hilton. Death is snickering. Hilton, a middle-aged Black man wearing a brightly colored 90’s shirt, is in the foreground looking nervous and shuddering. He doesn’t see Death, but he senses them.

What I imagined Death doing throughout the book

It’s implied that Hilton is a “traveler”, someone with the ability to escape death and bad decisions by traveling through “doorways” from his current reality to one with a more favorable outcome. It’s how he brought Nana back to life and survived drowning as a child. He does it again when he rear-ends the hearse to save his family. Of course, not every timeline he jumps into is exactly identical. Hilton begins to notice more and more inconsistencies in his everyday life, from events that repeat themselves to encounters that seemingly never occurred no matter how clearly he remembers them and even visions of deaths that never happened. On top of this, you can only cheat the system for so long before you get caught. Some unknown force, sensing that Hilton isn’t supposed to be alive, is making subtle alterations to the timeline to “correct” this. Between his menacing nightmares and threatening letters that continue to arrive at Dede’s office, and eventually their home, Hilton’s concern for his family’s safety warps into full blown paranoia. Even after putting his children under lockdown, buying a rifle, security lighting, and a guard dog, Hilton continues to see danger around every corner, thanks in no small part to his lack of sleep. He goes from his normal calm and sensitive self to a scared, angry man who lashes out at his family and friends.

Hilton may see signs that Death is lurking around every corner, but the rest of his family isn’t making the same connection between a dead duckling and their patriarch’s distracted driving. Maybe something supernatural is going on and the universe is trying to send the poor man a warning about abusing the natural order of things, but there’s also a strong argument to be made that Hilton is merely suffering from Apophenia, assigning meaning to unrelated coincidences. Apophenia is also a major symptom of paranoid schizophrenia, along with a fear that someone or something is out to get you, an inability to tell what is and isn’t real, a voice (or voices) in your head, and major changes to mood and sleeping habits, all of which Hilton has started to display. Those prone to schizophrenia can have a psychotic episode triggered by a stressful life event, like, say, having a racist stalker sending threatening letters to your wife.

Hilton is crouched behind a cement and barbed wire barrier, surrounded by security cameras and “Keep Out” signs. He’s wearing an army helmet and holding a rifle, ready to shoot any intruders. His teenage daughter stands behind him looking concerned, and asks “Dad, don’t you think you’re being a little paranoid?”

The Between is set in the 90’s, but all my memories of that particular decade seem to be either Pokémon or Harry Potter related and I don’t really remember what we were wearing back then. So I just put Hilton and his daughter in 90’s sitcom clothes and called it a day.

As we watch Hilton’s mind unravel as he desperately tries to prevent some horrible, unknown disaster he’s convinced will happen, there’s a strong sense of urgency and dread. However, it’s unclear if supernatural forces are at work and Hilton is the only person who can see the truth, or if he really is just paranoid and his visions are a result of his fears made manifest by mental illness. Are his lapses in memory and reoccurring nightmares a result of a mental illness combined with guilt, or some sort of supernatural force? Is the racist stalker leaving poison pen letters for his wife the only thing threatening Hilton’s family, or is Death playing a drawn out game of Final Destination? Will he lose everything due to a curse, or his own actions? With the line between dreams and the real world becoming more and more blurred, it’s difficult for the reader to determine how much of what happens is in Hilton’s head, and whose version of reality is the truth until the very end. Hilton is not the most reliable of narrators, making it difficult to determine whether or not something supernatural is going on, but like The Turn of the Screw, not knowing if it’s the narrator’s sanity slippage or the work of spirits is part of the appeal and both possibilities are equally terrifying. Due hit the ground running with her very first novel and her fiction has only gotten better from there.

Tags: African, African American, BIPOC, Black, Book Review, Highly Recommended, Latine/Latino, Own Voices, Psychological Horror, Thriller

The Mine by Arnab Ray

Formats: Print, digital

Publisher: Westland (Indian publisher now owned by Amazon)

Genre: Blood & Guts (Gorn), Psychological Horror, Occult

Audience: Adult/Mature

Diversity: South Asian/Desi/Indian, Disabled character (uses a wheelchair due to partial paralysis, mute/Aphonia)

Takes Place in: Thar Desert, Rajasthan, India

Content Warnings (Highlight to view): Abelism, Bullying, Cannibalism, Child Abuse, Child Death, Child Endangerment, Death, Drug Use/Abuse, Forced Captivity, Illness, Gaslighting, Gore, Kidnapping, Medical Torture/Abuse, Medical Procedures, Mental Illness, Self-Harm, Rape/Sexual Assault, Sexism, Slurs, Slut-Shaming, Stalking, Suicide, Torture, Violence, Xenophobia

Blurb

At a secret mining facility somewhere in the deserts of Rajasthan, an ancient place of worship, with disturbing carvings on its dome, is discovered buried deep inside the earth. Soon the miners find themselves in the grip of terrifying waking nightmares. One tries to mutilate himself. Worse follows.

Five experts are called in to investigate these strange occurrences. Sucked into a nightmare deep underground, they embark on a perilous journey; a journey that will change them forever, bringing them face-to-face with the most shattering truth of them all…

The greatest evil lies deep inside.

Imagine combining Event Horizon with Agatha Christie’s And Then There Were None then mixing in the criminally underrated film Below. Set it in a mine deep below the Great Indian Desert and you’ll get an idea of what you’re in for in Arnab Ray’s horrifying, claustrophobic, sex-filled gore-fest of a novel about five adults and one little girl trapped underground with their guilt.

The Mine starts out with Samar, a rich recluse specializing in industrial security, wallowing in his grief after the disappearance of his daughter and the death of his wife. Yeah, Samar has shit luck. A mysterious man named Arnold Paul (whose name I kept reading as Arnold Palmer) finally bribes convinces Samar to drag his depressed butt out of bed by offering him a large sum of money to go with him and do a sketchy job, the details of which Paul/Palmer won’t reveal. Samar is apparently used to this sort of thing due to his work as a security expert/spy for secret government ops, and figures he wasn’t doing anything important anyway (except moping and sleeping) so he begrudgingly accepts the offer and heads off for the titular mine. As it turns out, greed is a great motivator because Mr. Paul/Palmer has also convinced four other experts to go to the middle of nowhere with a complete stranger, no questions asked.

Joining Samar are Dr. Karan Singh Rathore, a diplomatic and laid back older gentleman who specializes in infectious diseases; Dr. Anjali Menon, a widowed archeologist who brought her disabled daughter, Anya, along; Dr. Akshay More, an arrogant and obnoxious assistant professor in forensic toxicology; and Dr. Preeti Singh, a short-tempered psychologist with a surprising lack of people skills. The group has been brought together to give their expert opinion on a series of deadly accidents that seem to have been caused by the discovery of an ancient, creepy temple the miners are too afraid to go near. A temple that also happens to be covered in explicit carvings of naked women being tortured and killed, because whomever created the damn thing is sexist and gross. If that wasn’t ominous enough, the director of the mine is named Lilith Adams. While it’s fully possible her parents were just uncreative goths from the early 00’s, it’s far more likely that Ms. Adams just picked the most obvious evil pseudonym since Alucard and Lou C. Pher.

At this point, most people would’ve noped the fuck out of there, but Samar and the scientists have clearly never seen a horror movie in their lives and are too wrapped up in their own issues to notice the whole situation has more red flags than a May Day parade in Moscow. The mine could not be more obviously evil if it had “Gateway to Hell” in big florescent lights over the entrance, ominous music playing in the background, and a bunch of demons chilling in the conference room. Then again, these are people who willingly followed a creepy stranger into the middle of nowhere to visit his sketchy underground dungeon (literally, the workers are all criminals and aren’t allowed to leave until their contracts are up) because Paul/Palmer promised them candy/money. Little kids have more street smarts than this group, so I shouldn’t be surprised they’re completely oblivious to danger.

Illustration of a blood-spattered van bearing the name FREE CANDY and a South Asian man thinking

I mean, even I figured out the candy van was a trap after the first 9 or 10 times.

Akshay and Anjali explore the torture-porn temple and discover it depicts ironic punishments attributed to specific sins. Meanwhile, Karan and Preeti talk to the survivors, who share stories that would make Rob Zombie squeamish. Akshay makes light of the situation and acts like a jackass, Anjali does her best to ignore everyone and just do her job, Karan remains calm and reasonable, and Preeti is hostile and short-tempered. Samar checks the security and continues to have no fucks to give beyond a kind of creepy obsession with Anya, who reminds him of his dead daughter. The general consensus among the workers is that they’ve somehow opened a portal to hell and everyone in the mine is going to die horribly as a result of their dark pasts. Needless to say, company morale isn’t great. At this point, everyone finally agrees this place is super creepy and they want to collect their paychecks and GTFO. Alas, in a twist that should come as a surprise to exactly no one, Lilith turns out to be evil, and sets off an explosion that kills all the mine workers and traps the six survivors (Samar, the scientists, and Anjali’s daughter) inside while she laughs manically about the mine’s real resource being fear. Worst. Job. Ever.

Illustration of laughing woman surrounded by a man and woman. The man says

Her name is Lilith, what did you guys expect?

The explosions cause the security systems to engage, sealing the group inside with a series of death traps. Because why wouldn’t you want death traps in an already dangerous mine? On top of everything, an experimental gas that causes super human strength and insanity is being pumped through the A/C, which frankly, feels like overkill to me, but hey, they can run their portal to hell however they want. After their initial panic, presumably followed by the realization that they really should have seen all of this coming, the survivors formulate a plan to navigate the traps and make it to the surface. They’re slightly hindered by the fact they have to trust each other and work together to make it out, and most of them are deceitful, suspicious, assholes, not to mention all the stupid puzzle traps that were apparently inspired by 80s video games. One such puzzle involves trying to obtain acid vials while avoiding motion activated laser and an electrified floor, and if you succeed you’ll be rewarded with a chainsaw, which may be useful later. Unfortunately in this “game” their are no save points or extra lives.

What follows is about what you’d expect for a book about trying to escape from a possibly haunted mine with a bunch of jerks, but the predictability doesn’t make the story any less suspenseful or gripping. But face it, if you’re reading this book, you’re looking for creative deaths, not creative storytellin, and boy, does Ray deliver there. Besides, the true mystery doesn’t lie in their Aeneas-like journey through the mine, but in each character’s backstory, all of which are slowly revealed as they try to escape the subterranean deathtrap. Each of the adults has done something criminal and escaped punishment, and have been struggling with their guilt ever since. The quality of the backstories varies, with some characters (like Akshay and Preeti) getting plenty of focus, while Anjali gets very little characterization beyond “the aloof mom”. So too do their sins seem to be of differing severity. Some of the survivors have committed crimes so awful as to make them irredeemable, while others are more sympathetic and their sins, while still terrible, are still at least partly understandable. This disparity seems a little unfair as it means at least some of the group will potentially suffer a gruesome death (at least according to the carvings in the temple) over something that would normally earn them less than 15 years in prison (at least in the US, not sure about the Indian judicial system). It’s not that their crimes aren’t bad, they just don’t seem to merit a sentence of being reduced to a puddle of bloody viscera.

We never really learn if the mine is truly being controlled by a demonic entity or if the group’s guilt and paranoia (fueled by the hallucinogenic gas) is causing them to attribute bad luck to malicious forces and see things that aren’t there. Samar even suggests that the whole thing is an unethical experiment by the government to test their new gas on subjects no one will miss, as there are far too many coincidences for mere random chance, and the temple may be a fake created to amp up their fear levels. Since none of the characters are able to trust their own senses, making them unreliable narrators, arguments could be made for either scenario, making the story even more spooky and disturbing. Monsters are scary, but they’re even scarier when you can’t even tell if they’re real or simply the imaginary scapegoats of guilt-ridden, paranoid people. Even more frightening, Ray argues, are the depths of human cruelty and depravity, which are explored in each character’s backstory. Though that may just be an excuse to squeeze more gore out of the story.

The Mine does an excellent job balancing itself between psychological horror and splatterpunk. The true scares lie in the book’s creepy atmosphere, suspense, and the characters slowly succumbing to madness; the over-the-top gore is simply dessert. Unfortunately, this otherwise perfect blend of horror comes with as huge helping of misogyny. Yuck. Look, I’m fully willing to admit I’m part of the lowest common denominator who just wants to see heads exploding like overripe cherries and attractive people boning, but that doesn’t mean I like sexism. Unfortunately, more often than not, the three seem to go hand in hand, much to the frustration of female horror fans, and other, more enlightened individuals who just happen to like hot sex and lots of blood. Ray isn’t as bad some other authors out there, the violence is pretty evenly split between the genders and there aren’t any scenes of knife-wielding killers chasing half naked women. He even manages to handle the subject of sexual assault fairly well, choosing to focus more on the problematic culture of victim-blaming and men who feel entitled to women’s bodies rather than the rape itself. But he struggles with creating believable female characters, defining them by their relationships with men, and them victimizing them. Both of the female scientists have backstories that involve abuse and mistreatment at the hands of men, and instead of being written as strong, survivors, they both come off as bitter, man-haters. Apparently Ray subscribes to the theory that in order to be “strong” a woman must act rude, aloof, aggressive, and despise an entire gender, with the exception of that one special man who tames her with his magical penis. Which is why both Anjali and Pretti act like complete jerks, with Pretti especially flying off the handle at every perceived slight (she must be a great psychologist), and basically being awful to everyone except, ironically, Akshay whom she latches onto almost immediately (despite the fact that he’s literally just the worst). Despite all her bluster, Pretti still falls quickly into the role of helpless victim in need of a man’s protection at the first sign of danger. It’s really embarrassing. I guess she can’t help it because she’s an emotional female with a hysterical uterus or some such nonsense. The women in the story are all described as being gorgeous, but only one male character is described as being very attractive, the wholly unlikable Akshay, and that’s only because his appearance is supposed to reinforce how vain and materialistic he is. Many of the women are also incredibly horny, even minor characters, like Tanya the gold-digging nurse, and Ray paradoxically has no problem slut-shaming them for it (apparently enjoying sex is sinful enough to get you murdered by the mine), even though he later demonizes other characters for doing the same thing. Maybe the mine is just super slut shame-y. The unearthed temple certainly implies that someone behind the scenes hates women.

The women in the story seem less like real people and more like a weird combination of straw-feminists and male masturbatory material, with Ray putting way too much emphasis on their appearance, sex drives, and relationships with men. Then of course we have Anya, who, while thankfully not a sex object, is still treated as an object nonetheless. She barely gets any characterization, and doesn’t communicate even through sign language or writing, she’s just a blank slate for Samar to project his weird daughter obsession onto. It’s doubly problematic since Samar seems to use Anya’s disability as an excuse to treat her like a life-sized doll he can love, protect, and turn into his replacement daughter. Because she’s mute he assumes she has nothing to say, and because she doesn’t walk he thinks she’s completely helpless. We don’t even get to learn what she’s thinking, or how she feels about Samar treating her as some sort of second chance, because, unlike the other characters who all get their turn in the spotlight of the limited, third-person narrative, Anya is completely ignored. At least she gets a little bit of a role later on (which I won’t spoil). Miraculously, Lilith Adams is the only female character who is neither a victim, nor a sex fantasy, and is described only as being terrifying, intense, and very much in charge, much like her namesake.

A man kneels in front of a woman in a wheelchair. The man says

This definitely feels like a stranger danger situation.

So the female characters are about as well written as you’d expect from a male author who doesn’t know how women work, and the whole “helpless, sick wheelchair girl” trope is super problematic. It’s not the worst treatment of women I’ve seen in splatterpunk, but I’d still prefer to enjoy my blood and guts without the side of sexism. I mean, I don’t think it’s an unreasonable request. The writing is still pretty good, and it’s definitely the scariest book I’ve read so far this year. The Mine is also one of only a few Indian horror novels I’ve been able to find in English. Whether that’s enough to overshadow the book’s problem areas, however, is up to the individual reader.

Tags: Adult, Asian, BIPOC, Blood & Guts, Book Review, Disability, Eldritch, Indian, Occult, Own Voices, Physical Disability, Psychological Horror, Recommended, South Asian, Speech Disorder

The Loney by Andrew Michael Hurley

Formats: Print, audio, digital

Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Genre: Gothic, Folk Horror, Psychological Horror, Mystery

Audience: Adult/Mature

Diversity: Disability (Speech Disorder – muteness, Cognitive/Learning Disability, PTSD)

Takes Place in: Lancashire, UK

Content Warnings (Highlight to view): Abelism, Alcohol Abuse, Animal Death, Bullying, Child Abuse, Child Death, Child Endangerment, Death, Racism, Forced Captivity, Gaslighting, Gore, Homophobia, Illness, Medical Torture/Abuse, Medical Procedures, Mental Illness, Physical Abuse, Racism, Slurs, Suicide, Verbal/Emotional Abuse, Violence

Blurb

When the remains of a young child are discovered during a winter storm on a stretch of the bleak Lancashire coastline known as the Loney, a man named Smith is forced to confront the terrifying and mysterious events that occurred forty years earlier when he visited the place as a boy. At that time, his devoutly Catholic mother was determined to find healing for Hanny, his disabled older brother. And so the family, along with members of their parish, embarked on an Easter pilgrimage to an ancient shrine.

But not all of the locals were pleased to see visitors in the area. And when the two brothers found their lives entangling with a glamorous couple staying at a nearby house, they became involved in more troubling rites. Smith feels he is the only one to know the truth, and he must bear the burden of his knowledge, no matter what the cost. Proclaimed a “modern classic” by the Sunday Telegraph (UK), The Loney marks the arrival of an important new voice in fiction.

Autumn is normally considered the season for all things horror, due to holidays like Samhain, All Hallows’ Eve/Halloween, and the Day of the Dead in Europe and the Americas, but the other seasons have their own share of scary stories and traditions. Summer is perfect for slasher flicks, spooky stories by the campfire, and the Ghost Festival is celebrated in East and Southeast Asia. The long, dark nights of winter inspired the Victorians to tell ghost stories and Algonquin-speaking people associated the season with the cannibalistic monsters. But spring, generally associated with new life, rebirth, flowers, and cute baby animals in the Northern Hemisphere, is the odd one out. Other than Bram Stoker’s famous short story, Dracula’s Guest, which takes place on Walpurgis Night, The Loney is the probably the only scary story I’ve ever read set during the Spring.

The first image is of a Jack-o-Lantern on a bed of autumn leaves, surrounded by candles, marigolds, soul cakes, and a sugar skull. It says “creepy”. Next is a snowy night in a pine forest, with a full moon and a wendigo that says “scary”. The third says “spooky” and depicts an offering of oranges, joss paper, incense and red candles, with little ghost is surrounded by Hitodama. The final image is of two birds snuggling on a spring day with butterflies and cherry blossoms. It says, “Not really that scary.”

I mean, I guess if you’re scared of flowers and baby animals Spring might be scary….

The Loney was written by an English Teacher, and boy does it show. It’s overflowing with symbolism, deeply complicated characters, religious imagery, and all the other stuff that gets pretentious professors all hot and bothered. This is the kind of book that lends itself well to long, dry, dissertations about death and rebirth, or some other equally clichéd thesis, like how everything is a metaphor for sex. Not that any of this is bad, mind you, just don’t expect a classic horror story so much as a coming-of-age character exploration set in a gloomy, shit hole town that leaves you feeling creeped out and disturbed. There’s a lot more focus on the environment and characters than there is on the actual story (or lack thereof). It reminds me of one of those artsy games with no plot or clear goals where you just wander around and explore the gorgeous environment, like The Path (the game, not the TV series). Which, again, isn’t a bad thing if you’re into walking simulators, but I miss having a three act story structure, and a build up of suspense. So my reaction to The Loney was along the lines of “bored, bored, bored, do something already, wow that’s creepy, damn these people are messed up, bored, bored, is something going to happen now or what, so borrrreeed, stop talking for fuck’s sake, bored, HOLY SHIT WTF OMG, oh, well I guess that’s the end.” And then I was left wondering what the fuck I had just read.

While the pointless milling about can get tedious (really, REALLY tedious), it’s still an entertaining and creepy book. I wouldn’t exactly call it horror, since The Loney isn’t scary per se, but it is definitely disturbing. There are still a few of the standard horror “shock value” scenes you’d expect, y’know, the kind where any person with common sense would take it as an obvious sign to turn the fuck around because it’s clear they just stumbled into some Blair Witch, demonic serial killer, Eldritch abomination crap? But most of the creepiness comes from the irrational religious fervor of the adults (except, ironically, the priest), and their disturbing obsession with “curing” the unnamed protagonist’s disabled brother, Hanny. Not for his own benefit, since he seems perfectly happy as is, and could probably function on his own just fine if given a chance, but as part of some selfish desire to see a miracle and be closer to God.

Now here’s the thing about being a disabled person in horror fiction, you can come in one of three flavors. You can either be a victim (Audrey Hepburn in Wait Until Dark, the mute woman in The Tingler, Mark from Friday the 13th Part 2), the “psycho” (pretty much every movie killer ever, because mental illness apparently makes you evil), or some sort of disabled version of the “magical negro” trope (the little girl from the Langoliers, “Duddits” from Dreamcatcher, Tom Cullen from The Stand, and every other disabled person in a Steven King novel). But Hanny doesn’t seem to fall into any of these groups. He’s certainly not helpless, a monster, or “magical”, despite what those around him may think. For example, late in the book Hanny manages to uncover and successfully load a rifle (despite having little to no experience doing so), sneak out of the house by muffling his foot steps on a blanket and bribing the dog with treats, then find his way across dangerous terrain in the middle of the night. And when the narrator tries to follow him? He ends up almost drowning, and Hanny has to save his pathetic butt. Hell, I can barely find the bathroom in my own house without turning the light on, much less load a gun in the dark and go for a night hike in the English equivalent of Lovecraft country. But despite being able to do things military personnel take months to learn, Hanny is still considered “helpless” by those around him because he has a learning disability and doesn’t communicate in a way anyone else has bothered to learn. And he CAN communicate. Hanny is clearly shown using hand gestures and objects to try and communicate his emotions and desires, but is mostly ignored by everyone, save his brother, who apparently can’t wrap their brains around the concept of non-verbal communication. The priest, probably the only moral, well adjusted adult in the whole story, is also the only person to question if Hanny even wants to be cured. Like, he would literally have been fine if someone had just thought to equip him with an Alternative and Augmentative Commination system. But no, they want a miracle, they want Hanny to give it to them, screw what he wants or needs. And that’s pretty much how everything goes to shit. Because most of the characters in the story can’t seem to comprehend that anyone outside their narrow view of normal could possible be happy. The narrator describes how determined his mother and her church buddies are to reject anyone different, like a fundamentalist Catholic version of Mean Girls.

An older, WASP-y woman in a houndstooth jacket is talking to her son (Hanny), who is wearing a sweater-vest and holding up a sign that says, “This place is evil and we need to leave NOW”. His mother is smiling indulgently and says, “I’m so sorry dear, I just don’t understand what you’re trying to tell me.” Hanny looks annoyed and is rolling his eyes.

Hanny has to put up with so much crap from his neurotypical family

So often in fiction “curing” a disability is automatically seen as a good thing, because it’s just assumed that being able-bodied and neurotypical is the only way to have a happy, fulfilling life. And if a disabled person does seem happy? Then they’re considered some sort of inspirational martyr for the able-bodied to admire. Obviously this attitude is really freaking ableist and arrogant, as numerous disability advocates have pointed out. If a person with a disability would prefer to be rid of it, that’s an extremely personal decision, and not one intended to serve as a happy ending for the able-bodied and neurotypical. Basically, assuming everyone with a disability feels the same way about it is pretty shitty, as is acting like they can’t make their own decisions. And that’s what makes The Loney different, it’s not a typical “oh, the poor disabled person was cured by a miracle, now they can be happy!” fairy tail. Instead it’s a gothic horror story about how fucked up that attitude is, and how trying to “fix” someone without their knowledge or consent so they can serve as an inspirational story is seriously messed up. Of course, in this case it’s taken to an extreme where the parent’s misguided stubbornness results in the death, misery, and despair of a lot of people. Hanny makes it out more or less okay (albeit now suffering from some serious guilt he doesn’t understand), with his oblivious parents none the wiser, but the narrator becomes an unstable wreck with PTSD who stalks his brother until Hanny forces him in therapy. Essentially, The Loney is the antithesis of inspiration porn (yes, the link is safe for work, chill).

Two women are in a night club. A white woman in a glittery gold dress and blonde hair dyed pink at the bottom, is bending over to speak to an Asian woman in a motorized wheel chair. The woman in the wheel chair has goth makeup, a large tattoo of a red rose on her right arm, and is wearing a sexy red dress. The woman in gold tells the woman in red “Oh my gawwwwd? You’re, like, soooo brave and inspirtational!” The woman in red looks confused and asks “For getting drunk at a club? Do I know you?”

It’s actually because she ate two jumbo orders of nachos by herself, now that is truly inspirational. I should point out I have no idea what people wear at clubs, so one of them is a semi-goth chick, and the other looks like Jem.

The plot still drags though. Like, a lot. And Hurley uses the word “said” too much. Replied, snapped, exclaimed, responded, mused, just pick a different freaking word! Seriously, you’re an English teacher, use your thesaurus. But while it wasn’t quite my cup of tea, I can still recommend it to people looking for a rich, gloomy story full of atmosphere and some truly messed up characters.

Tags: Book Review, Cognitive/Learning Disability, Disability, Folk Horror, Gothic, Mystery, Psychological Horror, PTSD, Recommended, Speech Disorder

Ten by Gretchen McNeil

Formats: Print, audio, digital

Publisher: Harper Collins

Genre: Mystery, Psychological Horror, Killer/Slasher

Audience: Y/A

Diversity: African American character, Japanese American character, Asian American character, Samoan character, Bipolar character

Takes Place in: Seattle, USA

Content Warnings (Highlight to view): Sexist Language, Abelist Language, Racist Language, Sexism, Mental Illness, Drug Use, Violence, Death

Blurb

SHHHH!
Don’t spread the word!
Three-day weekend. Party at White Rock House on Henry Island.
You do NOT want to miss it.

It was supposed to be the weekend of their lives—an exclusive house party on Henry Island. Best friends Meg and Minnie each have their reasons for being there (which involve T.J., the school’s most eligible bachelor) and look forward to three glorious days of boys, booze and fun-filled luxury.

But what they expect is definitely not what they get, and what starts out as fun turns dark and twisted after the discovery of a DVD with a sinister message: Vengeance is mine.

Suddenly people are dying, and with a storm raging, the teens are cut off from the outside world. No electricity, no phones, no internet, and a ferry that isn’t scheduled to return for two days. As the deaths become more violent and the teens turn on each other, can Meg find the killer before more people die? Or is the killer closer to her than she could ever imagine?

Ten is inspired by Agatha Christie’s bestselling mystery thriller, And Then There Were None, a tale of ten strangers with dark secrets trapped on an island with a killer who terminates them in ironic ways and publicly marks the deaths one by one. McNeil takes Christie’s original concept, sets it in modern times, changes the terrible, unlikeable adults into a bunch of terrible, unlikeable teens, does away with racism, xenophobia, and anti-Semitism, and replaces it with a diverse cast.

Like the original Christie novel, Ten starts off with ten (get it!?!) people gathering on a remote island under false pretenses only to discover that it was all a trick by the killer, who has kindly left them a Ringu-esque DVD (a gramophone record in the original) to inform the victims of their inevitable demises and remind them how shitty they all are (in case you started feeling bad for any of them). At first, no one believes the sketchy murder announcement is legit, at least until they start dropping like flies, and then all hell breaks loose. Both books involve distrust, everyone accusing each other, the fear of knowing there’s a wolf (or possibly wolves) hiding among the sheep, and of course, a party with a body count. Why do so many parties in these kind of stories end up with a bunch of dead guests? Does the Red Death just go around gate crashing every party in the horror genre? Why does every gathering of three or more people that involves alcohol inevitably end in someone’s demise? Being an introverted nerd who would rather gnaw off my own hand than attend most social gatherings, I honestly have no idea what happens at parties, so I’m just going to assume that it’s pretty standard for them to end in either mass murder or demon summoning (and now I wish I went to more parties).

I’m walking with a red-headed friend who cheerfully asks “So, you’re coming to my party tonight, right? Everyone is going to be there!” Apprehensive, I respond “Oh uh…” then plunge a knife into my stomach. Holding my wound and trying to smile through the pain, I respond to my shocked friend “I can’t make it because I have to go to the ER and get stiches, heh.” Irritated, she asks “Wait, were you just carrying that knife around the whole time?” Bleeding profusely, I mutter “Oh God, I think I nicked my liver.”

A liver laceration is a small price to pay to avoid social interaction.

Last, but not least, is the diversity, which pretty much only applies to Ten since Agatha Christie was a racist asshole, so it’s pretty obvious who the winner is here, but let’s go over it anyway. Ten features a fairly diverse cast, with about half the characters being POC, in addition to a character with a fairly realistic depiction of bipolar disorder. Of course, most of the characters don’t get enough of a chance to develop anything close to a personality before they get offed, so they’re all pretty one-dimensional characters. There’s also a “rebellious” East-Asian girl with a rebellious blue streak in her hair, so Ten isn’t completely free of stereotypes either. But at least the diversity is there, even if it sometimes leans more towards “early 90’s kid show” diversity.

A drawing of the members of the “Burger King Kid’s Club”, a multi-ethnic group of fictional children from the 90’s. Their names are written next to them. In the front row are the dog, J.D., and a white boy in a wheel chair named “Wheels.” The second row (from left to right) shows a butch red-headed girl in sports-wear named Boomer, a femme blonde girl named “Snaps”, and a short, white boy named I/Q. The back row depicts JaWs, a black kid, a Hispanic boy named Lingo, and another white boy named “Kid Vid”.

I can just imagine Wheels being like “My name is Jordan, you insensitive, ableist jerks.” Well, at least it’s better than JaWs, his names looks like a typo. Why do none of these children have normal names?! Is their mom Gwyneth Paltrow? And how come the white kids get to be in the front?

So how does the re-imagining stand up to the original classic? In terms of writing, McNeil is a decent-ish author, but there’s just no competing with Agatha “The Queen of Crime” Christie. I mean, Agatha is the world’s best-selling mystery writer (that’s not an exaggeration, she’s actually in the Guinness Book of World Records), while Ten contains the line “The whole thing had been a perfect storm of not awesome.” So yeah…any comparison between the two would be downright unfair. However, it seems like McNeil realizes this, and isn’t trying to outdo her inspiration. Plot-wise, both books have a good mystery, although the original is unbelievably difficult to solve, and requires an extensive epilogue to explain what the hell just happened because the clues are so vague. Even knowing who the killer was on subsequent readings of And Then There Were None, I couldn’t pick up on any hints as to their identity. In fact, I’m not entirely convinced Christie didn’t just randomly pull the ending out of her ass at the last minute, but whatever, at least I couldn’t guess the culprit after a few chapters. Meanwhile Ten gives the reader enough clues to figure out the ending without being super obvious. That is, unless you’ve already read And Then There Were None in which case you’re probably going figure out the killer (or killers) almost instantly. So yeaaaaaaah, sorry about that. The scary parts of Ten are done well, but the rest of the story (especially the beginning) feel forced. All the dialogue is generic teen bickering and cookie cutter conversations about crushes, school, and beer and it only exists as a quick set up before the murder spree starts.

While Christie’s novel is a psychological thriller that focuses heavily on the characters, McNeil’s work leans more towards the classic horror genre, specifically the teenage slasher/cabin in the woods kind. The characters in both stories are awful human beings, which works fine for And Then There Were None, where they’re at least complex and interesting, and we’re more interested in solving the mystery than anyone surviving. The closest thing we have to a primary cast in Christie’s book are Vera the governess, Philip Lombard the solider, Armstrong the doctor, and Blore the private investigator. And it’s still really ambiguous if any of them are the killer until the end. Christie switches the point of view frequently, so her reader becomes just familiar enough with each character to get a basic understanding of their personality, but not so much as to clue them in to the killer’s identity. In Ten we’re given a clear and likeable protagonist to root for, the shy Meg, along with her best friend, Minnie, and their shared love interest, T.J. (ugh, love triangles). This lends itself better to a slasher story where we need at least one character whose safety we fear for, and then a bunch of cannon fodder characters to satisfy the reader’s bloodlust. (Let’s face it, if you’re reading a book like this you’re looking for a body count.) The rest of the cast is one dimensional and just needs to hurry up and die. However, this does add a wrinkle to the whole revenge thing, you can’t very well root for a main character that did something terrible, so we know the killer/killers are either overreacting or there’s been a terrible misunderstanding. It also means we can rule out Meg as the killer (and assume it’s probably not Minnie either), but there are still enough potential killers left over to fuel plenty of paranoia.

Having most of the characters know each other in Ten adds an extra layer of creepiness because no one wants to believe their friend is a murderer, and the killer is quite literally backstabbing people who trusted them. In Christie’s setup, you don’t really care who gets the ax (literally and figuratively) because everyone is awful. Lombard’s an arrogant chauvinist who left a bunch of natives to die because he barely saw them as people, Blore is an overconfident idiot who falsifies evidence, and Dr. Armstrong is a spineless alcoholic who cares more about recognition and his reputation than the patient he killed while he was drunk. The only character who is sort of sympathetic is General MacArthur, and that’s only because his victim was a world class jerk who slept with the guy’s wife, and MacArthur feels genuinely remorseful about sending him on a death mission. And that’s not even including the minor characters and all the reasons they suck. The mystery and the identity of the killer are really the only things that matter in And Then There Were None (okay, and maybe whether or not Vera survives, she’s slightly more likable than her companions), which makes it a captivating read, but not particularly scary.

Because Ten is aimed at teens, McNeil threw in a completely unnecessary love triangle (as is apparently required for any book in Y/A section) because apparently a murder spree wasn’t dramatic enough. To her credit, McNeil makes the clichéd romance slightly less terrible by actually giving Meg a legitimate reason for not wanting to upset Minnie by going after their mutual crush. Minnie suffers from bipolar disorder, and even though she’s finally getting treatment, she’s still prone to making bad decisions while manic, including turning into someone Meg didn’t recognize and lashing out when she found out her best friend was also interested in T.J. Because she’s been friends with Minnie for so long, and the mental illness is a more recent development, Meg still hasn’t quite figured out a balance between an overprotective enabler and a supportive friend when Minnie is having a depressive or manic episode. Because Minnie is still in serious denial about her Bipolar Disorder and tends to minimize the severity of her symptoms Meg also feels responsible for her best friend’s wellbeing and acts like a mother hen. It also doesn’t help that Minnie’s dad has asked Meg to “take care of his daughter” and placed an unfair burden on her unqualified shoulders. As a result, the two girls have developed a toxic, codependent relationship with Meg treating Minnie like she’s some sort of fragile doll who will shatter at the slightest hardship. Honestly their dysfunctional relationship was about 100 times more interesting than their stupid crush on T.J.

It’s still about five hundred times better than the Christie’s original novel (not that that’s saying much), which, by the way, wasn’t originally called And Then There Were None. The actual title of the novel was considered too racist for American publication, 25 years prior to the Civil Rights Act. That’s right, a country where racial segregation was totally legal was like “Whoa, Agatha, that title’s pretty offensive, don’t you think?” So she can’t even use the “oh well, attitudes were different back then” excuse, (which is a bad excuse anyway) because it was still considered fucking offensive at the time it was published. Mark Twain’s used racial slurs in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn to make a point about the evils and ugliness of slavery, but the racism, anti-Semitism, and xenophobia in And Then There Were None have literally no reason to be there. Christie, like Lovecraft (who I complain about in detail here), is one of those writers whose obvious talent is often marred by her bigotry, which sucks because her work is otherwise really enjoyable. Of course, that’s like saying “This ice cream sundae is pretty enjoyable, except there’s a dead rat in it.” I mean, you could probably eat around it, but the experience is still going to be severely tainted by a rodent carcass.

A beautiful ice-cream sundae with strawberry, chocolate, and vanilla scoops of ice-cream, fresh sliced strawberries, three different sauce toppings, and bits of nuts and sprinkles sits in a glass dish. Lying on the ice-cream, drizzled with fudge sauce, and topped with whipped cream and a cherry, is a dead rat. The rat is lying on its back, with its little pink feet in the air, its tongue hanging out, and little red “X’s” over its eyes.

I mean, I’d probably still eat it… but I have problems.

These days, there are editions of Christie’s book that have been edited to varying degrees to make the work less jarringly racist (and before anyone starts screaming about censorship, the original, unedited version is still in print too, so you’re free to read whichever version you want), but it’s still super uncomfortable. Even in the edited versions that aren’t dropping the N-word every few pages, the ugly attitude still hangs heavy in the air throughout the story, and it’s difficult to immerse yourself in the mystery with that hanging over you. Plus, none of the anti-Semitism was edited out in the audiobook version I listened to, so I still got to “enjoy” hearing that in the first chapter. Fun! Of course, how many problematic elements you’re willing to put up with before the book becomes irredeemable depends on the individual. I liked… aspects of Christie’s book well enough, but I can understand if someone has zero desire subject themselves to 272 pages (or in my case 6 hours) of bigotry.

So, which book is better? Ten preserves some of the spirit of the original story, but does away with the blatant racism, although it leans more towards slasher horror than suspense. But And Then There Were None is considered a classic for a reason. The quality of the writing is obvious, Christie does an excellent job building the suspense, and the characters are unique and interesting (you could probably write an entire English paper on each of them). Ten isn’t a bad book, but it’s never going to be a literary classic. So, which would I recommend? Well, it really depends what you’re looking for: a fun horror story, or a classic murder mystery (and whether or not you want to deal with Christie’s racism). From a literary perspective, yes, And Then There Were None is the better work (no surprise there). But in terms of straight horror? You’ll probably get a lot more scares from reading Ten. You could always read both, like I did, just make sure to read McNeil’s book first to avoid spoilers.

Tags: African American, Asian, Asian American, BIPOC, Black, Book Review, Disability, Killer/Slasher, Mental Illness, Mystery, Pacific Islander, Psychological Horror, Recommended, Young Adult

After the People Lights Have Gone Off by Stephen Graham Jones

Formats: Print, audio, digital

Publisher: Dark House Press

Genre: Monster, Paranormal, Demon, Werewolf, Zombie, Killer/Slasher, Romance, Ghosts/Haunting, Sci-Fi Horror, Psychological Horror, Vampire

Audience: Adult/Mature

Diversity: American Indian (Blackfoot/Niitsitapi), Queer (Gay Men), Disability (Paraplegic)

Takes Place in: USA

Content Warnings (Highlight to view): Animal Death, Child Endangerment, Child Death, Gore, Violence, Death, Torture, Homophobia, Self-Harm, Implied Sexual Assault

Blurb

The fifteen stories in After the People Lights Have Gone Off by Stephen Graham Jones explore the horrors and fears of the supernatural and the everyday. Included are two original stories, several rarities and out of print narratives, as well as a few “best of the year” inclusions. In “Thirteen,” horrors lurk behind the flickering images on the big screen. “Welcome to the Reptile House” reveals the secrets that hide in our flesh. In “The Black Sleeve of Destiny,” a single sweatshirt leads to unexpectedly dark adventures. And the title story, “After the People Lights Have Gone Off,” is anything but your typical haunted house story.

With an introduction by Edgar Award winner Joe R. Lansdale, and featuring fifteen full-page illustrations by Luke Spooner, After the People Lights Have Gone Off gets under your skin and stays there.

For Native American Heritage Month I’d thought I’d review a collection of short stories by one of horror’s greatest writers, Stephen Graham Jones.

Do you ever find yourself reading this awesome, interesting book, but then you get to the last chapter and go “What the fuck did I just read?” I’m not talking stories with ambiguous endings where it’s left open to interpretation, like in Inception where it’s unclear whether Cobb is still in a dream or not (and then you spend hours arguing about it on the internet), but the ending still makes sense. No, I’m referring to endings that are downright obfuscating (yay, I have a thesaurus!). Endings where you have to skip back to check if you missed some really obvious clue, only to find that no, the story really does end like that, and then you’re left wondering if you’re just not smart (or high) enough to “get it”. For example, 2001: A Space Odyssey. I know it’s this amazing, classic film, but what the hell was up with that giant space baby!?! Did the really obvious metaphor for the birth of humanity just fly over my head or did Kubrick just drop a bunch of LSD? Or both? Seriously WTF? Am I the only person who doesn’t get it?

In the first panel a TV is showing a scene from 2001: A Space Odyssey with a giant, human fetus/star child floating in the void and looking at the planet earth. The second panel reveals me watching the film, bewildered, and asking “The hell is even happening right now?”

In retrospect, I probably shouldn’t have tried watching this movie at 3 AM.

Well, Stephen Graham Jones is a master of the WTF ending. In some ways this works to his advantage, like when it highlights the confusion and mental instability of the narrator, or preys on the reader’s fear of the unknown. Subtle scares can be terrifying when done right, and when Jones gets it right, it works SO WELL, like with Second Chances where the final sentence of the story hits you like a punch in the gut. But Jones makes things too subtle you’re left scratching your head and wondering what you’re supposed to be scared of. It’s like when the creepy music starts playing in a film, you know you’re supposed to feel uneasy because something bad is about to happen, but then, when the final dissonant chord is struck, everything just sort of ends without the payoff of a monster jumping out or even a terrified scream to imply something horrible just happened. Which is, unfortunately, really not that scary. After the People Lights Have Gone Off (the short story, not the book), Uncle, Xebico and Brush Monster all have this problem. Did someone die? Was there a monster? Is the narrator hallucinating? Did anything bad even happen? Am I just not smart enough to get it? It’s especially frustrating when the rest of the story makes sense, like in Xebico, but then the ending just kind of goes off the rails.

A sad, melting snow man with ear muffs, a whale with a bowtie shooting rainbows out of its blowhole, and a rabbit with a flower in its mouth, wearing a top hat and sunglasses are floating in midair and surrounded by sparkles. Looking uncomfortable, I ask, “Ummmm, so what am I supposed to be scared of? Is it the rabbit?”

I’m pretty sure it’s the sketchy looking rabbit.

Of course, none of this makes Jones a bad writer. He’s actually incredibly talented, aside from the whole confusing ending thing which is probably due more to me being obtuse than a lack of skill on Jones’ part. Like King, Jones has a real flair for making the mundane fucking terrifying. For example, The Black Sleeve of Destiny, which is about a Lovecraftian hoodie. That’s right, a hoodie. Well, that and some poor kid’s mild kleptomania spinning out of control until it becomes a full blown obsession, but mostly the evil hoodie that seems to act as a pocket dimension with a mind of its own. There’s also The Spider Box (such a creepy title) about a cardboard fruit box that resurrects the dead. Somehow Jones managers to cover all the horror staples in his book (demons, ghosts, werewolves, vampires, killers, and zombies) while still making his stories seem fresh and unique. A great example of this is Welcome to the Reptile House, one of the most distinct and creative vampire stories I’ve ever read. In fact, I didn’t even know it was a vampire story when I started reading it, so, uh, sorry for the spoiler.

Septa Unella from Game of Thrones is ringing her bell and chanting “shame, shame, shame”. Annoyed, I snap “Oh my God, it was one spoiler!”

Septa Unella shows up any time someone reveals a spoiler. Or at least, she SHOULD.

But not all the stories in this collection are your traditional tales of horror, some could even be considered love stories. Albeit, really messed up, creepy love stories, but love stories nonetheless. One story is even called This is Love. Jones explores different kinds of relationships in his novel, from lovers and devoted spouses, to childhood crushes, to familial love between siblings, parents and children, and even extended family. Snow Monsters is a heartwarming tale about what a parent will sacrifice for their child, but with a supernatural twist. Doc’s Story, explores the bonds of a struggling family, and is one of the most human stories in the collection, ironic since it’s about werewolves. In After the People Lights Have Gone Off (again, the short story, not the collection) and The Dead are Not we see examples of the complete devotion married couples have for each other, even when things get difficult and terrifying. Of course, there are also inversions, like Uncle, which is about a couple that has fallen out of love, and the husband’s feelings of guilt for not mourning his wife’s death.

Oh, and a little tip, before picking this book up I strongly recommend checking out Stephen King’s short story The Man in the Black Suit and H. F. Arnold’s The Night Wire (both of which you should read regardless because they’re awesome). Why? Well The Spindly Man is a horror story about a book group discussing King’s famous horror story (how’s that for Inception?), while Xebico is about adapting The Night Wire to the stage. And as cheesy as having a scary short story about another scary short story sounds, they’re both pretty awesome, yet another indicator of Jones’ talent.

Overall, After the People Lights Have Gone Off (this time I am referring to the book) is an amazing anthology by a talented author, as long as you’re okay with stream of consciousness writing and not always understanding what the hell you just read. Or maybe it’s just me, and the rest of you will have some deeper understanding of the stories. Jones’ work definitely makes me feel like I’m the only one at the party not getting the joke.

Tags: Adult, American Indian, Anthology, BIPOC, Blackfoot, Book Review, Disability, Highly Recommended, LGBTQIA, Own Voices, Plains Native Nations, Romance, vampire

Bleeding Earth by Kaitlin Ward

Formats: Print, digital

Publisher: Adaptive Studios

Genre: Blood & Guts, Apocalypse/Disaster, Psychological Horror, Romance

Audience: Y/A

Diversity: Lesbian characters, Hispanic/Latine character

Takes Place in: New Hampshire, USA

Content Warnings (Highlight to view): Alcohol Abuse, Bullying, Child Abuse, Child Death, Child Endangerment, Death, Forced Captivity, Gore, Homophobia, Mental Illness, Racism, Suicide, Verbal/Emotional Abuse, Violence

Blurb

Between Mother Nature and human nature, disasters are inevitable.

Lea was in a cemetery when the earth started bleeding. Within twenty-four hours, the blood made international news. All over the world, blood oozed out of the ground, even through the concrete, even in the water. Then the earth started growing hair and bones.

Lea wishes she could ignore the blood. She wishes she could spend time with her new girlfriend, Aracely, in public, if only Aracely wasn’t so afraid of her father. Lea wants to be a regular teen again, but the blood has made her a prisoner in her own home. Fear for her social life turns into fear for her sanity, and Lea must save herself and her girlfriend however she can.

Happy Pride month! Here’s something fun for queer horror fans, after Netflix accidently featured the Australian indie horror film, The Babadook, on their LGBT movie page, the titular creature has quickly become a Pride meme and it’s wonderful. If you haven’t seen the film, it’s awesome, go watch it.

A tall, dark, creepy creature with long fingers and a white face is wearing a top hat with a rainbow button, rainbow suspenders, a purple feather boa, sparkly pink flamingo glasses, and a belly shirt that says “Get Ready to be Babashook.”

Artwork by Muffin Pines at http://muffinpines.tumblr.com/

For June I’ll be reviewing two horror stories with queer characters, the first of which is Bleeding Earth. And oh man, did this book mess me up good. I was expecting a gory, end of the world sort of book, and instead I got a heartbreaking survival story about love, family, and humanity (yes I know how cheesy that sounds, shut up). It gave me so much anxiety, and so many emotions, and I’m still trying to process what the hell I just read. But I know it was good. It was really freaking good. And there was so much blood. Blood, and bones, and hair. I love blood. And bones. Not wads of hair though, I have my limits.

In the first caption I’m wearing a light pink dress and covered in blood. I’m clearly enjoying the blood dripping through my hair and down my shoulders because I’m smearing it on my ecstatic face while sighing “Mmmmmm, So much blood.” In the next panel I’m screaming “OH GROSS, HAIR!” in disgust and pulling away from a wad of bloody hair I’ve just noticed.

I was going for a “Carrie at the Prom” kind of look.

Lea, the novel’s protagonist and narrator, is enjoying the blossoming relationship she shares with her girlfriend, Aracely, when the blood first appears. Now, normally teen romances in dystopias and apocalyptic fiction seems tacked on and out of place. I mean, who worries about crushes when their life is on the line? But in Bleeding Earth, it works beautifully. Surrounded by chaos and despair, Lea wants to hold onto one of the few good things she has left to keep her going, because no one knows how long they have left. The girls are still in their honeymoon phase, so everything still feels wonderful and new, a sharp contrast to the reality around them. When Lea starts experiencing night terrors and hallucinations from stress and isolation, talking to her girlfriend on the phone is the only thing that helps her. And when she wants to give up, it’s Aracely that keeps her going. And I just can’t bring myself to begrudge her that one little bit of happiness. Who wouldn’t want to spend time with someone who makes you feel safe and lets you forget your problems for a while? It gave my cold, little heart all the feels.The scariest thing about Bleeding Earth isn’t the blood, hair, and bones seeping up from the ground. It’s the feeling of isolation, uncertainty, and powerlessness. At least with zombies, aliens, and diseases there’s always something you can do, a safe zone to flee to, a cure, an end in sight. But with the blood there’s nowhere to escape, no way to fight back, and no stopping the blood. No one knows what’s causing it, or if it will ever end. There are no answers or explanations to soothe the scared populace. And while I normally hate it when a story doesn’t give me an explanation, here it actually works. It’s so much more frightening when you don’t know what’s happening, and there’s literally nothing you can do about it. Will things get better? Is this the end of the world? Did humanity piss off the earth so much it’s finally rejecting them? Even at the start of the bleeding, when everyone is still doing their best to “keep calm and carry on,” fear is already causing people to take desperate actions. Lea’s mom obsessively measures their water and screams at her friends when they drink some, her father nails boards over all the windows so they’re in complete darkness, a man attacks Aracely with a bone over a breathing mask, and some jerks at an Apocalypse party try to get an inebriated girl to drink the blood. It starts with fights over tampons in the grocery store, then looting Home Depot, to violence and riots, and it only gets worse from there. Much, MUCH worse.Now, I know poor decision making seems to be a staple of Y/A fiction (one that annoys me to no end), but here, it makes sense. Everyone is absolutely terrified, struggling with isolation and the horror of what’s happening around them, while still trying their damnedest to pretend like everything is going to be fine. And scared, stressed people do not behave in a rational manner. At various points the teenagers in the story become so desperate for normalcy and human contact they’re willing to brave the blood and all its dangers just to be together. Is this a good idea? No, absolutely not. But is it understandable? Completely. Humans are social creatures, so much so that isolation can actually be deadly. And here’s the original research to back it up. I’m an introvert who prefers a quiet night at home, and even I felt stressed and nauseous when poor Lea described being trapped in her boarded up home for weeks on end, with little to no outside communication. Honestly, if I had to go through a bloodpocalypse, I probably would’ve snapped after a few hours indoors and gone blood hydroplaning (hemiaplaning?) in a stolen car while throwing human skulls at pedestrians. And that’s speaking as someone who willingly goes for days without human contact, I can’t imagine what a non-homebody extrovert would go through. So kudos to Lea for keeping it together as long as she did! If you’re probably going to die anyway, it’s better to die among friends and go out with a bang.

A close up of me driving a car through blood while leaning out the window. I’m holding a human skull out the window while waves of blood are being splashed up by the car. I’m dressed like one of the War Boys from Mad Max: Fury Road, with corpse pain covering my face. I gleefully shout “Oh what a day… What a lovely day!”

I showed this drawing to my wife, and now I’m not allowed to drive her car.

While I really enjoyed Bleeding Earth, it did have some problems that got to me, and kept me from giving it the full five stars. Like Lea’s dad. He learns that the mom has become unhinged, and Lea fears for their safety, but instead of going to help his wife and child, he tells his frightened daughter to get her unstable mom, slip through the looters and people willing to kill for water, and come to him. So of course a ton of horrible things happen because Lea can’t get her sick mother to leave the house, and her dad is apparently too lazy to drive the 40 minutes to help her. Like, I get they need everyone they can get to keep the power going, but for fuck’s sake man, you can take an hour to go rescue your wife and daughter. He’s just so frustratingly blasé about the whole thing. And then there were a bunch of weird little plot points that didn’t go anywhere. Like Lea’s hallucinations. Ingesting the blood is discovered to cause hallucinations, night terrors, lost time, and mental breaks. Lea starts to have horrible nightmares, imagining blood in the house, but it’s unclear if it’s an effect from the blood or the isolation. While she does spend part of the book questioning her sanity, and it’s definitely stressful and unsettling, it doesn’t really go anywhere. Was she infected by the blood? Yeah, we never get an answer for that one either.

A frightened teen is on the phone with her dad. “Hey, dad? Looters keep trying to get in the house, I haven’t seen the sun in over a week, and I think mom’s gone off the deep end and she’s possibly planning to kill someone. Could you come get us?” Her dad is seen doing Sudoku in his office and tells her “That’s nice honey, but I’m just swamped at work right now, can I call you back later? Tell your mom I said “Hi”. “Dad are you even listening!? Screw your work and get your ass back here!”

Hey, Sudoku IS work!

The lack of explanations will be a major turn off for a lot of readers, and I can understand that. But honestly, I didn’t feel like it was needed, because that really isn’t the point of the story. This isn’t a sci-fi novel with an omniscient narrator about a world-wide disaster. This is Lea’s story. It’s about her fears, her loneliness, her confusion, and her crush on Aracely. She’s terrified and frustrated because she doesn’t know what will happen, her parents can’t reassure her, and she just wants to be able to take comfort in something. It’s a sweet, sad story of survival, isolation, and just trying to enjoy a simple teen crush in a world that’s gone to hell.

Tags: Apocalypse/Disaster, BIPOC, Blood & Guts, Body Horror, Book Review, Eco Horror, Latine/Latino, Lesbian, LGBTQIA, Own Voices, Psychological Horror, Recommended, Romance, Young Adult

The Drowning Girl by Caitlín R. Kiernan

Formats: Print, audio, digital

Publisher: Penguin

Genre: Monster, Werewolf, Romance, Ghosts/Haunting, Psychological Horror, Mystery

Audience: Adult/Mature

Diversity: Lesbian characters, trans character, mentally ill character

Takes Place in: Northeastern USA

Content Warnings (Highlight to view): Mental Illness, Self-Harm, Mentions of Transphobia, Suicide, Emotional Abuse

Please note, I found out recently that Caitlín R. Kiernan has expressed racist views on Twitter, detailed here. – 5/10/24

The Drowning Girl is a beautifully written, psychological horror novel about a young woman, Imp, whose schizophrenia is making it difficult for her to determine the nature of the mysterious woman haunting her. Is she a siren using her charm to lure Imp to disaster? A werewolf? A human stalker who can blur the lines of reality? Imp struggles to sort out the truth before she loses herself. Queer romance, myths, and art combine to create this award winning novel.

So did I like it? Well……. Sort of?

In theory I should have loved it. It takes place on my home turf of New England, the main character is a queer artist (like me!), she’s dating an incredibly well written trans character, the story has a creepy mystery, gorgeous imagery, and one of the best representations of mental illness I’ve ever read. But I struggled to get through the Drowning Girl. I’d pick it up, read a chapter, and then forget about it for a month. I don’t know why I didn’t devour this book as quickly as I do others, there wasn’t really anything I disliked about it, and it wasn’t boring, but it just didn’t seem to capture my attention. It reminded me of one of those award winning art films that critics love and you have to sit through in college film classes. There’s nothing bad about it per se, but you’d still rather be watching Bad Boys II, or some other equally ridiculous action flick.

In the first panel I'm in the hallway of a movie theater looking at a poster for "The English Patient" and saying "Oooh, I heard this was a great film!" In the next panel I'm in the theater looking completely disinterested, and repeating "bored, bored, bored, bored" over and over as I suffer through the movie.

Ugh, I should’ve just watched Sharknado again.

Maybe I’m just not sophisticated enough to appreciate the non-linear, stream of conciseness (i.e. all over the place) writing, or perhaps I’m too clueless to fully comprehend the subtly and symbolism of the story. But I found it really jarring to have Imp describe her girlfriend, Abalyn, play Kingdom Hearts one minute, and then have a poetic, jumbled passage full of fairy tale metaphors the next. And I get it, the writing style is intended to represent Imp’s mental illness by showing the disorganization of her thought process, the random associations she makes where none exist, and her difficulty remembering what’s real and what’s imagined. But that doesn’t always make for an enjoyable read.

I guess I’m just incredibly picky when it comes to “artsy” prose and magical realism. When it works, it works well, but when it doesn’t, it just becomes a confusing, irritating erratic mess, and with the Drowning Girl it was kind of a crap shoot.

I'm floating upside down in blue space, surrounded by dreamlike imagery of a crow wearing a cloak, a close-up of a crescent moon, a wolf's skull, pills, a crab, and a mermaid with pale, corpse-like skin. The mermaid's human half is intact but her fish half is nothing but bone. Her organs hang out of her human torso. I look confused and mutter

WTF is going on? Did I take expired cold medicine again?

Since I’m starting to feel bad for picking on this book so much (and it’s by no means a bad book), I want to address one of the things I did really like about the story, how Imp’s mental illness was treated. It wasn’t romanticized, it was just a part of her that could make her life more challenging, but not horrible. Medication made her illness manageable, but didn’t make it disappear entirely, and she was able to continue working, date, hang out with friends, pursue hobbies, and lived on her own. She would go through rough patches, some she could handle on her own, and some she couldn’t. Her therapist was supportive, without telling Imp what to do. Overall, I felt like it was a very realistic depiction of a woman with a mental illness, which is rather uncommon in fiction where the mentally ill are usually written as either asylum inmates, criminals, or manic pixie dream girls.

Overall, I really, really wanted to love this one. It had all the right ingredients, rave reviews, a talented author, but the final result was disappointing, at least for me. It wasn’t bad, but I just couldn’t bring myself to give it a “highly recommended”. That doesn’t mean other people won’t find this book amazing, and I strongly encourage others, especially those with more sophisticated taste than mine, to give it a read. Because you may love it. Or you may find it “meh”, but at least you won’t regret reading it.

Tags: Adult, Book Review, Disability, Ghosts/Haunting, Lesbian, LGBTQIA, Mental Illness, Monster, Mystery, Own Voices, Psychological Horror, Recommended, Romance, Trans, Werebeast

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Things Have Gotten Worse Since We Last Spoke by Eric LaRocca

Formats: Print, audio, digital

Publisher: Weirdpunk Books

Genre: Body Horror, Psychological Horror, Romance

Audience: Adult/Mature

Diversity: Gay author, lesbian main characters

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

Blurb

Sadomasochism. Obsession. Death.

What have you done today to deserve your eyes?

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

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

Aftercare is important.

Tags: Adult, Body Horror, Book Review, Highly Recommended, Lesbian, LGBTQIA, Psychological Horror, Romance

Testament by Jose Nateras

Formats: Print, digital

Publisher: NineStar Press

Genre: Ghosts/Haunting, Psychological Horror

Audience: Adult/Mature

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

Takes Place in: Chicago, IL, USA

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

Blurb

Mind. Blown.

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

**end of trigger warning **

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

Tags: Adult, Asian American, BIPOC, Bisexual, Black, Book Review, Gay, Ghosts/Haunting, Latine/Latino, LGBTQIA, Mexican, Psychological Horror, Recommended

The Luminous Dead by Caitlin Starling

Formats: Print, audio, digital

Publisher: Harper Voyager

Genre: Psychological Horror, Sci-Fi Horror, Thriller

Audience: Adult/Mature

Diversity: Lesbian/queer characters and author, Biracial Black character

Takes Place in: another planet

Blurb

“This claustrophobic, horror-leaning tour de force is highly recommended for fans of Jeff VanderMeer’s Annihilation and Andy Weir’s The Martian.” — Publishers Weekly (starred review)

***

Instead, she got Em.

But how come she can’t shake the feeling she’s being followed?

Well at least none of my organs exploded in 2020, so there’s that…

The background is from a cave in the Dominican Republic I visited back in February 2020. There weren’t any skulls in it though. *sigh* I miss travel.

Scylla wasn’t that big but she’s also not real so I can draw her however I want lol

Tags: Adult, BIPOC, Biracial, Black, Book Review, Lesbian, LGBTQIA, Monster, Own Voices, Psychological Horror, Recommended, SciFi, Thriller

The Between by Tananarive Due

Formats: Print, digital

Publisher: Harper Collins

Genre: Psychological, Thriller

Audience: Adult/Mature

Diversity: Black Characters (African American and Ghanaian) and author, Hispanic/Latino character (Puerto Rican), Character with possible Mental Illness

Takes Place in: Miami, Florida, USA

Blurb

What I imagined Death doing throughout the book

Tags: African, African American, BIPOC, Black, Book Review, Highly Recommended, Latine/Latino, Own Voices, Psychological Horror, Thriller

The Mine by Arnab Ray

Formats: Print, digital

Publisher: Westland (Indian publisher now owned by Amazon)

Genre: Blood & Guts (Gorn), Psychological Horror, Occult

Audience: Adult/Mature

Diversity: South Asian/Desi/Indian, Disabled character (uses a wheelchair due to partial paralysis, mute/Aphonia)

Takes Place in: Thar Desert, Rajasthan, India

Blurb

The greatest evil lies deep inside.

I mean, even I figured out the candy van was a trap after the first 9 or 10 times.

Her name is Lilith, what did you guys expect?

This definitely feels like a stranger danger situation.

Tags: Adult, Asian, BIPOC, Blood & Guts, Book Review, Disability, Eldritch, Indian, Occult, Own Voices, Physical Disability, Psychological Horror, Recommended, South Asian, Speech Disorder

The Loney by Andrew Michael Hurley

Formats: Print, audio, digital

Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Genre: Gothic, Folk Horror, Psychological Horror, Mystery

Audience: Adult/Mature

Diversity: Disability (Speech Disorder – muteness, Cognitive/Learning Disability, PTSD)

Takes Place in: Lancashire, UK

Blurb

I mean, I guess if you’re scared of flowers and baby animals Spring might be scary….

Hanny has to put up with so much crap from his neurotypical family

Tags: Book Review, Cognitive/Learning Disability, Disability, Folk Horror, Gothic, Mystery, Psychological Horror, PTSD, Recommended, Speech Disorder

Ten by Gretchen McNeil

Formats: Print, audio, digital

Publisher: Harper Collins

Genre: Mystery, Psychological Horror, Killer/Slasher

Audience: Y/A

Diversity: African American character, Japanese American character, Asian American character, Samoan character, Bipolar character

Takes Place in: Seattle, USA

Content Warnings (Highlight to view): Sexist Language, Abelist Language, Racist Language, Sexism, Mental Illness, Drug Use, Violence, Death

Blurb

SHHHH!
Don’t spread the word!
Three-day weekend. Party at White Rock House on Henry Island.
You do NOT want to miss it.

A liver laceration is a small price to pay to avoid social interaction.

I mean, I’d probably still eat it… but I have problems.

Tags: African American, Asian, Asian American, BIPOC, Black, Book Review, Disability, Killer/Slasher, Mental Illness, Mystery, Pacific Islander, Psychological Horror, Recommended, Young Adult

After the People Lights Have Gone Off by Stephen Graham Jones

Formats: Print, audio, digital

Publisher: Dark House Press

Genre: Monster, Paranormal, Demon, Werewolf, Zombie, Killer/Slasher, Romance, Ghosts/Haunting, Sci-Fi Horror, Psychological Horror, Vampire

Audience: Adult/Mature

Diversity: American Indian (Blackfoot/Niitsitapi), Queer (Gay Men), Disability (Paraplegic)

Takes Place in: USA

Content Warnings (Highlight to view): Animal Death, Child Endangerment, Child Death, Gore, Violence, Death, Torture, Homophobia, Self-Harm, Implied Sexual Assault