Unseemly by Jason Parent

Corpus Press, 2016

ISBN: 9781523980307

Available: Paperback, Kindle edition  ( Bookshop.org | Amazon.com )

Unseemly is a nice little story that uses creatures rarely seen in horror stories as its backbone: fairies.  In a quick 59 pages, the authors crams in the story of a group of academics/grave robbers out to find fairy gold, and the bloody disaster that befalls them.  It’s a fast read, and perfect for a rainy Saturday afternoon of horror escapism.

The first nineteen pages quickly set up the characters, their backstories, and the story objective.  Peter Callum is a down-on-his-luck archaeologist with a mountain of debt.  He partners with a sleazy grave robber named Dervish and a folklore professor named McCoy to find out if fairies and their legendary gold inhabit a sparely populated, remote Scottish island.  The author does a nice job in the few pages allotted creating a perfectly serviceable explanation for why the legends might be true, as well as adding some mystery that concerns the lone village on the island.  The group sets off one fateful evening, and they get much more than they expected, as the fairies aren’t the cutesy type you find in Disney films.  The story quickly wraps up with a violent, unexpected ending.

Unseemly does what a good short story or novella is supposed to do: hook the readers with a quick setup, dose them with excitement, and end it with a twist or two.  There’s just enough story to assist the reader in forming opinions about the main characters, the ending is unexpected enough to not be predictable, and the story moves quickly, leaving out overly-detailed explanations.  The one place a bit more elaboration would have helped is the fairies-to-monsters part, which was a little hard to visualize from a reader’s perspective with the amount of description provided.

Overall, a good, quick story, good enough to easily justify the paperback price of $5.50.

Contains: violence, mild gore, profanity

Reviewed by Murray Samuelson