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Book Review: The Plumbers by Terry M. West

A note from the editor: It is now December and Monster Librarian still needs to raise the funds to pay for our hosting fees and postage in 2021. If you like what we’re doing, please take a moment to click on that red “Contribute” button in the sidebar to the right, to help us keep going!  Even five dollars will get us closer to the $45 we still need to keep going at the most basic level. We have never accepted paid advertising so you can be guaranteed that our reviews are objective. We’ve been reviewing and supporting the horror community for 15 years now, help us make it another year! Thank you! And now our review of The Plumbers by Terry M. West.

cover art for The Plumbers by Terry M. West

The Plumbers by Terry M. West  ( Bookshop.org | Amazon.com  )

Pleasant Storm Entertainment, 2020

ISBN: 9781916084520

Available: Paperback (October 2020), Kindle edition (available now)

 

Once again, it’s ANOTHER story with zombies as the main monsters!  Thankfully, Terry M. West’s The Plumbers takes the road less traveled; this isn’t another story with the world fully decimated and a small group of plucky survivors trying to survive a zombie apocalypse.  West’s approach is more reminiscent of George A. Romero’s take on walking corpses in the film Land of the Dead.  It’s a fun, 110 page novella, perfect for a couple of hours of escapism.

 

The story concerns Liam and Pierce, two “average Joe” plumbers.  The undead (called ‘plauguers’) are scattered throughout the country, and people survive in three different zones based on risk of zombie attack: green, orange, and red.  The whole book is just one day in the life of  these two wrench jockeys, as they deal with traffic jams, irritable customers, blown water service connections, trying to order pizza, and undead mayhem, among other things.  It’s a quick snapshot of what life might be like for those that survive and try to carry on as normal in an abnormal world.

 

The story is a nice blend of action and character development, although it does lean a bit heavy towards the conversation between the characters.  That’s as close as there is to a flaw in the story.  A bit more actual plumbing would have brushed up the characters a bit, there isn’t a whole lot of pipework.  When action does happen, it’s entertaining enough, whether it’s Pierce bashing zombies in the head with his favorite hammer (dubbed ‘Uncle Fran’) or tossing pipe bombs out the vehicle window to decimate the hoards pursuing them.  The climax of the story is solid enough: it’s not edge of your seat excitement, but it’s enough to keep the reader turning pages.   There are moments of occasional wry humor, usually provided by Pierce.  He’s probably the only person who can be trapped in a room with zombies outside the door, and calmly read a book and fall asleep.  There’s not much in the way of backstory for the cause of the zombies, and in a short story like this, it isn’t needed.  It’s enjoyable to read a narrative that doesn’t bother trying to explain everything, but just tells what is happening at the current time, with any further explanation is happily tossed off to the side.  The gore in this story is kept fairly minimal, although there’s the occasional person torn apart or body part amputated.  This is one zombie story that concentrates on driving a simple theme along instead of splashing figurative blood all over the pages, a la Jack Ketchum.

 

The Plumbers is a nice, slightly different from the average, story to breeze through for a quick zombie fix.  Considering that novellas usually only cost around $10 for an actual paperback, it’s worth the minimal investment for an evening of entertainment.

 

Contains: violence, gore, profanity

 

Reviewed by Murray Samuelson

Posted on December 1, 2020 by , Reply

Book Review: Into The Forest And All The Way Through by Cynthia Pelayo

A note from the editor:

It is the end of November and Monster Librarian still needs to raise the funds to pay for our hosting fees and postage in 2021. If you like what we’re doing, please take a moment to click on that red “Contribute” button in the sidebar to the right, to help us keep going!  Even five dollars will get us closer to the $45 we still need to keep going at the most basic level. We have never accepted paid advertising so you can be guaranteed that our reviews are objective. We’ve been reviewing and supporting the horror community for 15 years now, help us make it another year! Thank you! And now our review of  Into The Forest And All The Way Through by Cynthia Pelayo.

 

cover art for Into the Forest and All The Way Through

Into The Forest And All The Way Through by Cynthia Pelayo ( Bookshop.org | Amazon.com )

Burial Day Books, 2020

ISBN: 9781735693613

Available:  Paperback, Kindle edition

 

Through a collection of terrifying portraits, Cynthia Pelayo creates a true crime portfolio in her provocative book of poems Into the Forest and All the Way Through. Each poem memorializes a particular child or woman who was murdered or simply vanished never to be seen again. Some of the poems describe the victim and some the scene of the murder. Others give us a snapshot of tragic moments in time or suggest the final minutes of agony and fear that these people suffered.

 

Pelayo’s choice of genre lends itself well to revealing the random clues left behind pointing to abduction, the details of clothing collected from people trying hard to remember something that might prove useful to an investigation, and the cataloguing of the victim’s habits, interests, and favorite places. All of these fragments paint a picture in the reader’s mind of the terror of those whose lives have been taken and of those left behind to deal with either the finality of death or the suffering of never knowing what really happened or why. There are also some poems in the collection that depict the murderers: their brutality, lack of human emotion, and even glee in frustrating the efforts of loved ones wanting to find a body to bury.

 

The most bone-chilling poems are those that describe the things that scare us the most – what we can’t see and what we can’t stop. There is the woman “found stuffed in a chimney” where different people had lived for years without knowing she was there or the man who worked at a home for the disabled and took the life of “a sweet young woman” “like a child, innocent.” The abducted “island girls” whose pictures have been discovered in the ground are “singing their mourning songs” “pleading come find / Me.” The poems in this book forcibly call us to be aware of the thousands of “forgotten and ignored women,” the dangers that still exist, and the problems that have gone unsolved, just as their murders and disappearances have to this day. Recommended.

 

Reviewed by Nova Hadley

Posted on November 30, 2020 by , Reply

Book Review: Cemetery Boys by Aiden Thomas

cover art for Cemetery Boys by Aiden Thomas

Cemetery Boys by Aiden Thomas ( Bookshop.org  |  Amazon.com )

Swoon Reads, 2020

ISBN-13 : 978-1250250469

Available:  Hardcover, Kindle edition, audiobook

 

Yadriel is a Latinx trans boy whose community lives in the cemetery and serves Lady Death. When they are fifteen, boys are presented to Lady Death for a blessing to become a brujo and receive a portaje, a dagger that allows them to draw blood to direct their magic so they can cut the ties between spirits and this world to send them to the afterlife before they become malevolent. At the same age, girls who go through the ceremony and receive the blessing become brujas and are presented with a rosary as their portaje, that allows them to heal using blood.  As a trans boy, Yadriel did not go through the girls’ ceremony as he was expected to do, but was not allowed to go through the boys’ ceremony to become a brujo because the community does not accept that he is a boy. Impatient to prove himself, Yadriel secretly goes through the ceremony to become a brujo.

When his cousin Miguel goes missing and is suspected dead, Yadriel searches for him in an old church on the cemetery property. Finding a necklace with a medallion, Yadriel makes a guess that it might be a way to summon Miguel’s spirit. Instead, he accidentally summons a teenage troublemaker from his high school, Julian, who refuses to move on to the afterlife until he knows if his friends are okay. Yadriel has to resolve things quickly and quietly, before his father finds out and Dia de los Muertos begins. There is something much more sinister and terrifying going on than the limited blood magic practiced by the brujx community.

Thomas interweaves issues and messages related to and positive representations of trans, gay, and lesbian characters in general and specifically in Latinx communities. Lady Death and the mythology of Yadriel’s community is not limited to one nationality– immigrants from many countries in the Latinx diaspora participate, and issues related to immigration (like whether the individuals are documented) curtail the options of the members in seeking help from the police, and this is all well-integrated into a unique storyline. There’s also a sweet love story of the kind that LGBTQ+ teens deserve to see more of. The only disorienting moment is near the end when there is a sudden switch in point of view from Yadriel to Julian, but that’s a minor quibble in a high-quality story that can sweep you out of the everyday with its magic. Highly recommended.

 

Contains: Violence, blood, attempted murder

 

Posted on November 29, 2020 by , Reply
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