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Book Review: Ash House by Angharad Walker, illustrations by Corey Brickley

The Ash House by Angharad Walker

The Ash House by Angharad Walker, illustrations by Corey Brickely

Chicken House, 2021

ISBN:  978-1338636314

Available: Hardcover, audiobook, kindle

 

A chilling and impressive debut.

 

Angharad Walker’s debut novel The Ash House is a strong middle grade horror tale about a group of abandoned children. Stranded at an unusual orphanage, the residents seem to have internalized the strict moralistic ideology of their captors. With newly dubbed names like Freedom and Wisdom, each child acts within prescribed roles and duties to maintain upkeep of the property. They watch recordings instead of attending school and have limited memories of the world outside the smoky mansion. Ash House’s residents complete their chores with single-mindedness and nearly religious obsession, performing “nicenesses” and avoiding “nastiness.” This creates a rigid framework against which the newcomer, renamed Solitude (nicknamed Sol) rebels. As Sol questions the mindset, he also discovers alliances, potential dangers, and the secrets of the house. When the much-feared, cruel Doctor reappears to “help” Sol, the revelations are slow, winding like ivy up a manor, and the payoffs are worth the patience. Brickley’s bleak black and white illustrations and smoke-swirled chapter headings offer exquisite visuals to Walker’s foreboding, atmospheric descriptions.

 

Abandoned children, a missing headmaster, an arrogant and brutal doctor conducting torturous medical experiments, monitored by bird-like drones, hunted by strange beasts in the woods: Ash House is not for the faint of heart, but this immersive world and carefully crafted plot provides a steady study of how friendship, trust, and cooperation clashes with hyper-rule orientation and authoritarianism.  Readers who enjoyed Ransom Riggs’ Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children or who are ready to step into a more speculative world than Snicket’s Series of Unfortunate Events or Golding’s 1954 Lord of the Flies will find much to enjoy in The Ash House. Recommended for ages 8-12.

 

Contains violence, medical torture.

 

 

Reviewed by E.F. Schraeder

 

Posted on June 30, 2021 by , Reply

Book Review: Bent Heavens by Daniel Kraus

cover art for Bent Heavens by Daniel Kraus

Bent Heavens by Daniel Kraus

Henry Holt & Co., 2020

ISBN-13 : 978-1250151674

Available: Hardcover, paperback, Kindle edition, audiobook (  Bookshop.org | Amazon.com )

 

Liv’s father disappeared for four days and returned with vague memories of alien abduction. Becoming more and more erratic, he lost his job and retreated to the shed in his backyard where he built weapons and vicious traps around his house in case the aliens returned. Liv’s childhood friend Doug, neglected by his own parents and ostracized by other kids, adopted Liv’s father as a mentor, helping him with designing and building the traps, with Liv reluctantly along for the ride.  After Liv’s father disappears a second time, Liv and Doug make a ritual out of testing the traps every Sunday to make sure they still work. And at the beginning of her senior year of high school, Liv finds an alien in one of the traps, and she and Doug are determined to find out from the alien what happened to her dad.

Liv has worked to distance herself from her father’s bizarre behavior, making new friends and the cross-country team, but she is a hot mess, with grief and anger balled up inside her without a healthy outlet. Doug has no one holding him back. Having the alien in their power, hidden in the shed, leads to violence, and, as Liv begins to have doubts, complicity. There are explicit scenes of body horror and torture in the book. Seeing her inability to escape participation once it has begun is horrifying.

This is a painful book to read. Kraus shows how human monsters are made in visceral and grotesque detail. Kraus refers to a CIA report on “enhanced interrogation techniques” at the end that I am sure informed the events of the book. The book is made even more painful and heartbreaking by the reveals at the end.

While Kraus does a superior job with the plot focused on Liv, Doug, and the alien, other parts aren’t as strong. The book takes awhile to get going, secondary characters’ motivations are unclear, and parts of the plot don’t make sense.  Still, he has written a powerful and deeply disturbing horror story and condemnation of government secrecy, torture, and complicity.

 

Contains: explicit body horror and torture, violence, sex, alcohol abuse, bullying

 

Reviewed by Kirsten Kowalewski

Editor’s note: Bent Heavens is a nominee on the final ballot for this year’s Bram Stoker Awards in the category of Superior Achievement in a Young Adult Novel. 

Posted on May 11, 2021 by , Reply

Book Review: Lakewood: A Novel by Megan Giddings

cover art for Lakewood by Megan Giddings

( Bookshop.org | Amazon.com)

Lakewood  by Megan Giddings

Amistad, 2020

ISBN-13 : 978-0062913197

Available: Hardcover, audiobook, Kindle edition

 

After her grandmother dies, college student Lena discovers her disabled, neurologically impaired mother is unable to pay her bills or afford the medication she needs to manage her disability. So when she is recruited for a research study on memory for a substantial sum of money she pushes her reservations to the side, signs an NDA and paperwork stating her agreement to any procedure the study may require, drops out of school, and tells her mother and friends she has a new, well-paid job in the small town of Lakewood as an employee at a warehouse. Bizarre psychological testing, vaccines, pills, induced isolation, and hallucinations become normalized as different test subjects come and go. Realizing that something must be very wrong, Lena attempts to question observers and participants in the study and to find information online, but is blocked at every turn, until finally she discovers that unethical government experimentation on Black people has historical precedent. Despite her unsettling findings, Lena continues to participate in the study so her mother can keep her health insurance and pay the bills.

Obviously inspired by the Tuskegee experiment and other research studies that exploited Black people in the United States, as well as the Flint water crisis, Lakewood carries that legacy forward into the present, through generations of trauma. Ir is timely in its exploration of scientific racism, the drastic actions family members will take to help ill and disabled family members afford healthcare, and government gaslighting and neglect of the study participants and their own health.

Told from Lena’s point of view, this history metamorphoses into a personalized, hallucinatory, and terrifying situation that will appall, disturb, and shock the reader as the layers peel away. Highly recommended.

 

Contains: body horror, mutilation, murder, gore, violence, medical experimentation

 

Posted on January 23, 2021 by , Reply
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