Home » Posts tagged "horror book reviews" (Page 20)

Book Review: Fettered and Other Tales of Terror by Greye La Spina, edited by Michael J. Phillips Jr.

Fettered and Other Tales of Terror by Greye La Spina, edited by Michael J. Phillips Jr.

From Beyond Press, 2023

ISBN-13: 979-8987574331

Available: Paperback, Kindle edition

Buy: Bookshop.org | Amazon.com

 

 

 

Greye La Spina (1880-1969) was a prolific American writer, who published in various genre magazines (e.g. Weird Tales) more than one hundred dark short stories and novelettes, most of which, sadly, have been lost.

 

During her lifetime she was extremely popular, more than HP Lovecraft (who, incidentally, had a low opinion of her fictional work).

 

Tracing her stories is indeed a hard task nowadays, so praise to From Beyond Press for making available again to the public some of her production.

 

The present volume collects four stories and a novella, providing to today’s readers a pleasant, small  taste of her body of work.

 

“Fettered” is a dark novella dealing with the theme of vampirism, certainly a bit outdated today, but addressed by La Spina with a vivid and disquieting approach, able to unsettle even the readers well-used to this particular topic.

 

“The Last Cigarette” is a very short but effective story featuring a suicidal man whose plans are ruined by an unexpected occurrence.

 

“The Remorse of Professor Panebianco”, despite its unlikely pseudoscientific basis, is a powerful, intriguing story able to fascinate and disturb.

 

In the tense, dramatic “The Scarf of the Beloved”, a grave robber has to face a terrible truth, while in the engrossing “Wolf of the Steppes” a dangerous werewolf is finally discovered and defeated.

 

The themes addressed in the included stories are traditional enough, but I have the feeling that this is the very reason why these specific tales have survived or have been saved throughout the years.

 

Reviewed by Mario Guslandi

Posted on October 26, 2023 by , Reply

Book Review: Hares in the Hedgerow (The Gardening Guidebooks Trilogy #2) by Jessica McHugh

Hares in the Hedgerow (The Gardening Guidebooks Trilogy #2) by Jessica McHugh

Ghoulish Books, 2022

ISBN: 9781943720767

Available: Paperback, Kindle edition

Buy:  Bookshop.org

 

Little did readers of Rabbits in the Garden, the first book to introduce Avery and her crazy mother Faye in The Gardening Guidebooks Trilogy, realize the full extent of the horror to come. As Avery tries to face her demons in the next book, Rabbits in the Hedgerow, by beating them out of her willing counselor while raising her sister’s daughter (Sophie), she slowly learns her mother Faye’s backstory as leader of a demented cult devoted to St. Agnes.

 

The central character in the new narrative, Sophie, is in terrible danger because she has been the victim of her boyfriend Liam’s machinations to bring her into the cult as its central figure. Sophie is blinded by her love for Liam as well as what she believes are her mother’s past crimes. Luckily, however, Sophie is smart enough to sort fact from fiction in time to make important decisions before Faye, her grandmother, leads everyone to their doom. 

 

In Hares in the Hedgerow, McHugh drives us full force into the psychological twists and turns of a cult’s sickness and the damaged minds of its victims. There is no shortage of physical violence in this book. We see the devastation of human lives up close, and it is unrelenting. The plot is a carefully layered history of three generations of women who have been their own worst enemies as well as destroyers of the people around them. Anything can happen, but none of it is going to be good.

 

Just as in the first book in the trilogy, the second is fast-paced with past and present events illuminating our understanding of the characters and leading to yet another explosive ending. But, just as compelling as the momentum is the way McHugh makes us believe we are looking into the minds of real people, the type that would have followed someone like Charles Manson. There is the fear we feel for the characters but also the fear we feel for ourselves knowing that fanaticism and a skewed perception can, in fact, exist side by side in the real world and that everyday people sometimes create horror and then willingly enter into it in senselessly appalling ways. 

 

Reviewed by Nova Hadley

Posted on October 18, 2023 by , Reply

Book Review: Gods of Kiranis (Kiranis #1) by Ronald A. Geobey

Gods of Kiranis (Kiranis #1) by Ronald A. Geobey 

Temple Dark Books, 2021

ISBN: 9781838259419

Available: Paperback, Kindle edition

Buy: Amazon.com

 

Gods of Kiranis isn’t just a sci-fi novel.  It’s an achievement, and a very notable one.  The book has an unbelievably dense and complex plot, on the level of the Game of Thrones novels, and it’s impressive with the scope and imagination of the science fiction elements used..    Most importantly, it provides entertainment and leaves you wanting more.  Readers looking for a truly unique novel in terms of universe building and scope won’t want to miss this one.  It’s probably a bit much for readers who just like straightforward sci-fi, a la Buck Rogers.  

 

The book begins with a large metal cage suddenly arriving from space and being placed around Earth, and ends with a large battle (among other things) near the planet Kiranis in another part of the galaxy. It all connects to a genetic cross-breed experiment performed centuries before on humans and Garrans, one of the alien races involved.  Between those two events is a multi-layered story of lies, backstabbing, and shifting alliances between mankind and various alien races, as each race tries to come out on top, or just survive.

 

The story format is unique, and gives the book its unusual flavor, but it also may make it off-putting to some readers.  The four sections of the book essentially cover the same events in the same time period, but each is done from the point of view of one of the four species: human, Jaevisk, Garran, and Kwaios.  During the first and second sections, many elements are inserted into the story with no background, so the reader doesn’t know how they relate to the story, or why they are present.  Context is provided later in the other sections, but it can be confusing at times.  There is a LOT going on in this book: it’s one of the most layered stories I’ve ever read.  Almost everything makes sense in the end, but the journey getting there can be difficult at times.  The book would have been helped by adding a simple “cast of characters” appendix to keep all of the names straight.    

 

Worth noting is the outstanding job the author did of world building, particularly with the Garran homelands.  It doesn’t go into every little detail, but it’s enough to make you feel like it’s an actual place, not just a figment of the author’s imagination.  All the science fiction elements (the cage, space vortexes, etc.) are used well, but the author avoids going the “hard science” route of Kim Stanley Robinson or Neal Stephenson.  The main focus is the characters, not the science or the devices.  Did I mention this book has dragons in it as well?  That’s not an element normally found in sci-fi!

 

Bottom line: it’s an amazing story, both in terms of interest level, creation, and complexity.  There are plenty of unanswered questions at the end, but considering this is the first of a planned seven books, there’s plenty of time for answers.  It will be interesting to see where it goes: we just might be looking at the science fiction equivalent of Jordan’s Wheel of Time series.

 

Recommended, highly so, for lovers of elaborate stories.

 

Reviewed by Murray Samuelson

 

Posted on September 15, 2023 by , Reply
First « 1819202122 » Last