Home » Posts tagged "horror books" (Page 23)

Book Review: The City Beautiful by Aden Polydoros

The City Beautiful by Aden Polydoros

Inkyard Press, 2021

ISBN-13: ‎978-1335402509

Available: Hardcover, paperback, Kindle edition, audiobook

Buy;   Bookshop.org  |  Amazon.com

 

Wow. Polydoros set out to write a work of historical fantasy about Jews and Judaism not set during the Holocaust, and was inspired by an article about H.H. Holmes to set his story among Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe during the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair.

 

Alter, the main character, was ill as a baby and named to avoid the notice of the Angel of Death, but people around him frequently die. Alter is also gay, but in denial and ashamed. He is in love with his roommate Yakov, who leaves to meet someone and is found drowned the next day, the most recent of several Jewish boys who are dead or missing.

 

Alter, a member of the burial society, is helping immerse Yakov in the mikveh when he thinks he sees Yakov move, and jumps in the mikveh to pull the body out. Instead, he is possessed by Yakov’s dybbuk (a dybbuk is a malicious spirit, usually the dislocated soul of a dead person with unfinished business). Alter’s only choices to save his own soul are either0 to exorcise the dybbuk or to find Yakov’s killer and exact revenge. Luckily, he has the help of Raizel, a unionist working for an anarchist newspaper (the local matchmaker keeps trying to hook them up), and Frankie, an ambitious Russian Jewish teenage criminal and boxer who heads a gang of thieves.

 

This is such a layered, detailed story, both in the integration of the various aspects of Jewish culture and the Eastern European immigrant experience, and the vividness of the Chicago and World’s Fair setting. In addition, it really reveals the viciousness of antisemitism in this country and how it also traveled from overseas. I think people don’t really think about how insidious and common it was. It’s truly a Jewish horror story, and there aren’t too many of those around. I’m so impressed with the research and writing on some very difficult-to-address topics.

 

The City Beautiful won the 2022 Sydney Taylor Award and was a finalist for the 2022 World Fantasy Award for Best Novel, the 2021 Lambda Literary Award, the 2021 National Jewish Book Award, and the preliminary ballot for the Bram Stoker Award for Toung Adult Novels. The attention is well-deserved.

 

Reviewed by Kirsten Kowalewski

Posted on August 29, 2023 by , Reply

Book Review: Jigglyspot and the Zero Intellect by PD Alleva

Jigglyspot and the Zero Intellect by PD Alleva

Chamber Door Publishing, 2023

ISBN: 9781735168630

Available: Preorder hardcover, paperback. Kindle edition

Buy:  Bookshop.org  |  Amazon.com

 

Jigglyspot should be the runaway favorite to win “World’s Weirdest Horror Book” for 2023.  It’s a good read, but it is seriously out there: this is Clive Barker on hallucinogens.  About the only drawback is it could have used another quick edit, there are some syntax mistakes and misused commas throughout the book.

 

It’s not possible to tell much of the plot without spoiling the book, so let’s look at the starting threads.  Jiggly has a number of threads, and the chapters (which are short, each only about 4 to 6 pages) consist of the point of view for one of the main characters, written in the third person, past tense.  Surprisingly, with all the back and forth between viewpoints, it does NOT get confusing, to the credit of the author.  That’s pretty impressive, considering how all over the place the plot is.  The main characters and threads are:

  1.   Jigglyspot, a sadistic, part-warlock carnival clown who enjoys slicing and dicing annoying people with his scalpel, and is having an affair with a lady from another galaxy.  He also enjoys live extraction of hormones (this is written in graphic detail) from the skulls of people, to keep himself young.  A nice guy, he ain’t.  Jiggly makes Pennywise seem like a reasonable choice to babysit your children.
  2. Tyler, a high school student who channels his inner Charles Bronson to execute, vigilante-style, one of his classmates for unpunished crimes.
  3. Lilly, a nice suburban mom, trying to do right by her children after their dad shoots himself.
  4. Cassandra and Sharon: one a peon in a Hollywood talent agency, the other a struggling actress dreaming of the big time.  They soon split into two separate story threads.
  5. FBI agent John Mills, trying to solve a 20 year old cold case.

 

None of these seem related, for the first 200 of the 560 pages, and with the exception of Mills and Jiggly, they aren’t. It’s worth it to keep reading, because then the threads slowly draw together. Author Alleva clearly knows how to tension the plot strings at just the right time.  Even when the stories seem unrelated, it’s interesting enough that readers will want to know what happens to their favorite character next.  

 

Then the gloves come off and it all pulls together in bloody fashion.  Jiggly makes enough of a mess to keep gorehound readers happy, including sadomasochistic sex, cannibalism (complete with the marinating of people) babies killed, Satan and demons, and a bit of an interstellar tie-in.  In other words, the author threw in the kitchen sink, plus every other available appliance.  

 

With so much going on, you’d think this mess would careen off the tracks… but somehow, it doesn’t.  It’s impressive how Alleva manages to keep focused, and makes it understandable to the end.  There are a few parts that could have used a touch more explanation but that was likely the author’s choice, and not a blatant omission.   Readers will actually like and sympathize with the characters, even the not-so-nice ones.  Jiggly, scumbag that he is, does have a strange appeal, and Tyler, the schoolkid executioner, is actually one of the most likable, due to his “screw you” attitude problem, combined with an actual moral backbone.  

 

Bottom line time, folks!  Verdict is: Jigglyspot goes in many directions, yet somehow still works and is worth the read.  Recommended for fans of truly bizarro fiction that can handle some squish n’ splat.

 

Reviewed by Murray Samuelson.

Posted on August 16, 2023 by , Reply

Book Review: Shakespeare Unleashed (Unleashed, #2) edited by James Aquilone

Shakespeare Unleashed (Unleashed, #2) edited by James Aquilone

Monstrous Books, 2023

ISBN: 9781946346193

Available: Hardcover, paperback, Kindle

Buy:   Bookshop.org  |  Amazon.com

 

This is the second book in the Unleashed series, the first being Classic Monsters Unleashed, previokusly reviewed for this website.  Like its predecessor, the stories are re-imaginings, continuations, or inspired by the Bard’s work.  How does it fare?  Pretty well, the book starts slow but gets better throughout, with the real bangers finishing out the book with a flourish.  If you haven’t read Shakespeare since being force-fed it in high school, it really helps to at least read the Wikipedia entries for his most famous works before reading the book.  Otherwise, a sizable portion of the stories might seem confusing.

 

The stories pull from a variety of Shakespeare’s work, with none of them used as a subject more than three times.  The usual suspects, like Macbeth, Romeo and Juliet, and Hamlet are represented, as well as lesser-known ones like A Midsummer Night’s Dream, The Merchant of Venice, and A Winter’s Tale.  Some stories add a prequel or epilogue, or a separate story involving one of the characters.  The best ones tend to be the ‘inspired by’ variety, where the basic concept is used in a different setting.

 

The first quarter of the book may be the weakest, and the hardest to follow, with the story ‘All Hallowed Tides Break Upon These Shores,’ a coda to The Tempest, being a bloody exception.  The story quality becomes better and more consistent the rest of the way.   Lavinia from Titus Andronicus features in a well-written tale of female revenge, “The Body, The Blood, The Woods, The Stage”, and the lecherous Sir John Falstaff gets a darkly comic dose of payback in “The Hungry Wives of Windsor”.The last quarter of the book is full of excitement and good writing.  Standouts are the Macbethian “Case of the Bitter Witch”, the Romeo-esque “Timeless Tragedy,”, and the King Lear inspired “Fortune”: all are outstanding.  They take the basic Shakespeare premise and run off in an entirely new direction, with excellent results.  It’s worth noting that with only an exception or two, the authors did NOT try to emulate the Bard’s writing style, but wisely stuck with their own styles.   The stories do get slick with blood at times, which is fitting, since Shakespeare’s work could be violent at times.  He just didn’t write graphically, which is something modern authors can certainly do!

 

Bottom line?  The book is a mixed bag, but there are enough good stories to justify the purchase.  Just re-acquaint yourself with Sir William ahead of time before getting the book, then watch the curtain rise on some truly twisted tales.

 

Reviewed by Murray Samuelson

 

Posted on August 11, 2023 by , Reply
First « 2122232425 » Last