Home » Posts tagged "historical horror" (Page 7)

Book Review: The Occultists by Polly Schattel

cover art for The Occultists by Polly Schattel Bookshop.org  | Amazon.com )

The Occultists by Polly Schattel

Journalstone, 2020

ISBN-13 : 978-1950305445

Available: Paperback, Kindle edition

 

The Occultists is historical horror fiction involving the occult and spiritualist movements active in the early 20th century. When fifteen year old Max Grahame took a job as a postal boy in his small town in Georgia, he had no idea where it would lead. Carrying a box of dead letters to a storage space, he discovers an occult library. The postmaster and his wife are secretive and eccentric, but they are also kind to Max, and introduce him to their friend, Lillian Hearst, who hires him to work at a spirtualist gathering. When Max’s abusive stepfather learns about it, he forbids Max from attending another meeting of occultists, and when Max attends despite this, his stepfather disrupts the meeting and drags him home. That night, Max’s stepfather is brutally murdered in his living room, with Max an inadvertent witness. When Max learns he is the primary suspect, he escapes to beg the postmaster for help. The postmaster, along with Lillian Hearst and her sisters, offer to hide him by sending him to an academy run by their occult order in an isloated area of Nebraska. With few choices available to him, Max agrees to go to Steppeford.

This is where I expected the story to really take off, but it begins to ramble. Max spends long periods of time by himself, as the limited number of students and staff have been instructed to severely limit their interactions with each other. Schattel devotes pages to describing Max’s slow development of his psychic powers, broken up occasionally with surreptitious conversations with other students and occasional scenes of vivid action and suspense, confrontation, or horror interrupting the longer, drawn out sequences. There are chapters and scenes that seem to be moving the plot in a certain direction, but these aren’t necessarily followed through. Eventually, Max flees Steppeford with Harriet, a girl at the school who grew up inside the Order of Aurora, the occult faction that runs the school and has much larger ambitions. Once again, Schattel seemed to be directing the plot, but in a rambling way. Characters who seemed important to advancing the story and to Max’s character development evaporate.  I was reading an ebook and didn’t have a frame of reference for the length of the book, and this style of writing resulted in the book seeming much longer than 330 pages.

The book ends without tying up a significant loose end: a deal Max made with a spirit for an unspecified favor in the future has not yet been fulfilled. With Max only in his late thirties by the time the book ends, I suspect a sequel is in the making. A note: while our protagonist is a teenager for most of the book, and it could be read by teens, they really don’t seem to be the target audience.

Schattel’s experience as a filmmaker is evident through the way she creates setting and atmosphere. The Hearst mansion, the prairie fire, Manhattan at the turn of the century, all are cinematic in nature. She also has a way with words, and can capture an experience or character very effectively. Her descriptions of being trapped in a locked basement and of creatures like the Moorlander, a woman made up of a swarm of insects, for example, are vivid and take all the senses into account.  The characters she invests in are interesting even when they’re not sympathetic. She can ratchet up suspense and horror effectively, but her uneven pacing and rambling plot make parts of the book really drag. She clearly did research, but I’m wondering if using it too much ended up weighing the story down. In short, Schattel is a talented writer, but this is an uneven work from her. As it is her first novel, I am sure we’ll see more of the good stuff from her in the future.

 

Contains: blood, gore, violence, suicide, ritual murder, body horror, racial slurs

Book List: A Year of Witchy Reads

My library informed me that this year was the Return of the YA Vampire, and indeed we did see a number of YA vampire novels this year, not least of which was Stephenie Meyer’s latest addition to the Twilight saga, Midnight Sun. 

For myself, I discovered I had read a number of very good books focused on witches and witchcraft.

 

A Deadly Education by Naomi Novik was an interesting YA title that followed a teenage witch at a boarding school for witches, who is aggressively beleagured by her powerful talent in black magic that she is trying to avoid using. The school is regularly invaded by monsters who feed on the students and their magic and also surround the school, making survival until graduation and escape afterwards a deadly challenge. This is significantly different from Novik’s previous endeavors in alternate history and fantasy, and presents a unique twist on the “boarding school” genre.

 

 

 

   Gideon the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir is a strange combination of space opera, necromancy, and political maneuvering. In this book, there are nine Houses, each responsible for a different variety of magic. The Ninth House specializes in necromancy. When a competition for a high position working with the Emperor  arises, each House is required to send a magic user with a bodyguard. Gideon, much against her will, reluctantly agrees to accompany Harrow, the powerful and very unpleasant necromancer who heads the Ninth House.  I can’t even try to explain the puzzles, magic, politics, personalities, and relationship dynamics in this book except to say that Gideon and Harrow are a compelling pair, regardless of whether you love, hate, or are exasperated by either or both of them. The sequel, Harrow the Ninth, came out recently as well, and is also mindbending and disturbing.

 

Cemetery Boys  by Aiden Thomas is another  #OwnVoices YA novel that has gotten a lot of press, and a lot of praise. Our main character, a Latinx trans boy, proves he deserves to be accepted in the coming-of-age ceremony for brujos, who can see, control, and banish ghosts.  While not as thoroughly horrific as a genre reader might expect, the conclusion makes up for it, and this is an outstanding book with great representation.

 

 

 The Mercies by Kiran Millwood Hargrave is a terrifying work of historical fiction strongly grounded in fact, about a fishing village of women in an isolated, freezing location are left to manage everything on their own when the men are all swept away during a storm while they are on the water. Once the government steps in, the idea that women could be competent enough to take care of themselves suggests that at least some of them must be witches. I wrote a more extensive review of this book earlier this year and I really suggest that you read it, and then read the book.

 

Conjure Women by Afia Atakora is an #OwnVoices work of historical fiction with threads of horror and the supernatural throughout. It alternates between “slaverytime” and “freedomtime”. The “slaverytime” storyline takes place on an unnamed plantation in the South and follows Miss May Belle, the conjure woman responsible for healing, midwifery, and sometimes, casting curses and spells. The “freedomtime” storyline is told from the point of view of Rue, Miss May Belle’s daughter, who has taken over her responsibilities as conjure woman. The former enslaved people from a burned down plantation have built a hidden village nearby. While they respect Rue at first, after she delivers a baby with a caul over its head and an illness she can’t cure causes children to sicken and die, they turn against her. There’s no way to avoid horror when evoking slavery, and Atakora based a lot of her story on oral accounts and slave narratives. While the pacing was relatively slow and not everyone will appreciate the shifting points of view, I found this a compelling story.

 

The Graces by Laure Eve is a YA novel about a girl who believes she has magic and is looking for others like her. She finds them in the Grace siblings, beautiful and charismatic, who may or may not have magic. The narrator, identifying herself as River, is an unreliable reporter of events, making it a challenge to tell what is actually happening.

 

Cinderella is Dead by Kalynn Bayron is an #OwnVoices YA novel that explores what might happen after the happily ever after of the Cinderella story. If you’ve read any book about a repressive, patriarchal society, from The Handmaid’s Tale to The Grace Year, you’ll be able to guess that the answer is “nothing good”.  200 years after Cinderella married her true love, all teenage girls must know the government-approved version of the story by heart, and be ready to be chosen by an eligble man as his wife. Sophia would rather marry her friend Erin than any man, but she’ll have to take down the patriarchy to do it. I’d spoil the story if I revealed the part the witch takes in this story.

 

 Year of the Witching by Alexis Henderson is a dark tale of witchcraft, wildness, and the dangers of a patriarchal theocracy. Immanuelle is the child of a forbidden affair that led to her parents’ death and her grandparents’ ostracism, and she has been told never to enter the woods because dangerous witches live there and would seduce her into witchcraft. Entering the woods despite the warnings, she discovers her mother’s diary, which contains both evidence of her love for Immanuelle’s father and of a descent into madness. When inexplicable plagues begin to destroy her community, the head of the Church, known as the Prophet, decides they must be due to witchcraft and starts culling possible witches from the women, including Immanuelle. While the plagues send illness, darkness, and blood, the Prophet, his co-leaders, and his most devout followers are also sources of dark and terrible things.

 

 

 Undead Girl Gang by Lily Anderson was a surprise to me! Despite appearing on a list of YA vampire titles (there are no vampires) and a title suggesting a zombie romp, this book actually centers on a fat, Mexican, teenage witch, Mila, who is grieving the sudden death (and probably murder) of her best and only friend, Riley, following the sudden deaths (and probably murders) of Dayton and June, popular mean girls at school, all of which have been chalked up to suicide.  Mila discovers a grimoire with a dark spell that will allow her to bring Riley back from the dead for seven days to help prove and solve her murder, but when she casts it, she accidentally also brings back Dayton and June– and now they’re all connected okay, so maybe it is a little of a zombie romp, but the plot centers on Mila and her witchery). The reunion with Riley isn’t exactly what Mila expects it to be, and both Dayton and June turn out to be a little more three-dimensional than they seemed while they were alive and tormenting Mila. The mystery is pretty predictable– it’s the girls, and especially Mila, who make it fun. Anderson sensitively deals with grief, death, and friendship, with touches of humor.

 

The Once and Future Witches by Alix Harrow was also published this year,  but I haven’t yet had an opportunity to read it. But there are great books of all kinds on witches, for teens and adults, for lovers for horror, fantasy, space opera, dystopia, and historical fiction… If you are looking for a little witchcraft to spice up your holiday season, you might want to check one of these out.

 

Book Review: Owl Manor: Abigail (Book Two of the Owl Manor Trilogy) by Zita Harrison

A note from the editor:

We are now in the month 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 $195 we 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 .Owl Manor: Abigail (Book Two of the Owl Manor Trilogy).

 

cover art for Owl Manor: Abigail by Zita Harrison

Owl Manor: Abigail (Book Two of the Owl Manor Trilogy), by Zita Harrison

Zealous Art Publishing, 2020

ISBN: 979-8675396467

Available: Kindle, Paperback

 

“And I knew this thing was built of all my fears, was empowered by them, and that it would devour me if it could,” says Abigail, the central character in the second book of Zita Harrison’s Owl Manor Trilogy. Inspired by Gothic suspense classics, this fast-paced psychological thriller about a jilted young woman alone in the world after her mother’s murder, is chock full of malevolent supernatural forces. An eerily evocative Colorado mountain setting, an estate-turned-inn where hovering owls have been known to attack, and a series of unexplained murders, are only the beginning. Readers can find out about Abigail’s childhood in the first book of the trilogy, Owl Manor: The Dawning, which takes place during the Gold Rush, but this second volume deftly takes us into Abigail’s present without disruptive recaps.

Unfortunately for Abigail, her mother Eva’s murderer/dead lover, the insane Rafe Bradstone, has possessed his relative Victor and hopes to be reunited with Eva’s spirit through her daughter. Abigail has already been traumatized by knowing that her mother did not want her, by being at the manor when her mother and Rafe died, and by being left by her fiancé on the day of her wedding. Although the staff at Owl Manor care about her, they are finding it difficult to deal with the ghosts and strange houseguests, and are left to handle the violence without the help of the authorities. Abigail had hoped to prove to herself that she could survive on her own, but the past, for which she was not responsible, comes back to haunt her anyway.

An interesting element woven loosely through the two books Harrison has written so far (the third will be Owl Manor: Nightfall) is the attention to the role of women as wives and mothers, attitudes toward unmarried women (including prostitutes), and the life choices women had in the United States during the 1800’s. Eva is portrayed as a sort of feminist who is determined to leave her restrictive family life and make her own money. Eva pays dearly for her choices, and her daughter is her innocent victim. Abigail wonders, “Is the world, in the end, just a reflection of one’s state of mind?” She does get an answer in this creepy, entertaining book. Recommended.

 

Reviewed by Nova Hadley