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Book Review: Hellbender by Josh Craven

Hellbender by Josh Craven

Raygun Books, 2019

ISBN-13: 9781951494018

Available:  Paperback

It is the summer of 1946. Veterans are returning from the War. Bobby Graywood loves baseball, his job as batboy for the local team the Green Sox, and Addie Vogel, even though she doesn’t know it. He’s an ordinary, awkward teenager, other than his Affliction. Whenever he makes skin-to-skin contact with anyone, he experiences their memories, past or future. As a result, he wears his gloves as often as he can to avoid touching anyone. One fateful day, the new pastor in town, Newton Hellbender, asks that he helps with the laying on of hands, complete with speaking in tongues. He requests that Bobby remove his gloves to better aid in the blessing. He does so reluctantly, and accidentally makes contact with an elderly woman whose memory reveals Hellbender’s true nature. Suffice it to say he is not the Servant of the Lord he purports to be. There is plenty of voodoo, small town politics, intrigue, and baseball games that drive this story to its end.

I do need to make potential readers aware of sensitive topics that require a content warning. This also requires a spoiler warning, as some of this will give key parts of the plot away. Randall Goode, Hellbender’s assistant, is a child molester. We see this through Bobby’s Affliction, which is disturbing on multiple levels. Bobby experiences all of the things in his visions as the person he touches. In one case, he is inside Randall’s mind as he is violating a young boy. I very nearly stopped reading at this point. I had to put it away for a few days before I could pick it up again. Later, Bobby almost falls victim to this abhorrent character. Racism is another sensitive topic regarding Jubal Moss, a Cajun veteran who makes the Green Sox roster. Jubal speaks with a Louisiana Creole dialect, and faces bigots on and off the baseball team. I became frustrated when he, the central Black character, is killed by Hellbender. Another victim of rape in the story is Bobby’s unrequited love, Addie. We do not see her rape occur, but it is implied.

All that being said, it is not a bad story. It is fast-paced, and there is so much going on that keeps the reader interested. However, be warned if you pick this up.

Contains: body horror, child molestation, racial slurs, racism, rape

 

Reviewed by Lizzy Walker

Book Review: The Deep by Rivers Solomon

 

The Deep by Rivers Solomon

Saga Press, 2019

ISBN-13: 978-1534439863

Available: Hardcover, paperback, Kindle edition, audiobook, audio CD

 

Yetu is the historian for the wajniru, underwater beings created when slave traders threw pregnant African women overboard into the Atlantic Ocean. Although the women drowned, their children, born in the deep of the ocean, were transformed and have founded their own underwater society. As historian, Yetu carries the memories of all the trauma the mothers of the wajniru and the succeeding generations alone, to protect the others, and has done so for sixteen years, suffering tremendously from taking the burden alone. Once a year, she gets a three day respite from the memories when the wajniru hold a Rememberance ceremony. At that time, she carefully lets the memories wash back into the entire population so they can feel it collectively. The experience is physically as well as emotionally traumatic– author Rivers Solomon describes it as a seizure– but all the wajniru go through it together, and once they have absorbed the memories and can take no more, Yetu takes them back. Carrying all the history, violence, and trauma of her people has emotionally, mentally, and physically damaged and weakened Yetu, and since she has been carrying these memories since she was a teenager, they have overwhelmed her ability to establish her own identity. This time, after giving the wajinru’s memories back to them, Yetu decides to escape so she does not have to take on their pain again and can have an opportunity to discover who she really is.

Swimming to the surface of the ocean, away from her kind, Yetu is injured and washed into a tide pool. Thanks to nearby humans, and especially the prickly Oori, she begins to heal. An awkward friendship develops between Oori and Yetu, out of discussions about the ocean, family, and the past. Oori, the last of her people, does not know her history, and the fact that Yetu gave hers up is upsetting to her and causes Yetu to rethink whether she can really develop an identity without any knowledge of her history. It becomes clear to her that the increasingly stormy weather is probably due to the wajinru’s group anguish and that she must return to them to retrieve their history.

This story powerfully brings the point home about the physical, mental, and emotional effects of generational trauma that many Black people still experience, even generations after the end of slavery. The situation that created the wajinru is also not the only negative impact the “two-legs” have on them, even down in the deep of the ocean, as drilling for oil not only has a negative impact on the environment but causes the violent deaths of enough of the wajinru that they rise up to wash it away in a tidal wave.  The Deep is not fast paced, as for much of it Yetu is trapped in a tide pool, but it is a story that can be felt deep in the gut.

The Deep is the third iteration of storytelling based on the premise of an aquatic people born from drowned pregnant African women kidnapped to be enslaved(although each version can stand on its own).  A musical duo called Drexciya first imagined it, and their music created a mythology for an underwater utopia born from this terrible oppression. The hip-hop group clipping then wrote their own musical version, “The Deep”, a haunting song about underwater beings who rise as a collective against the “two-legs” after they begin drilling for oil, leading to dramatic climate change and destruction of the oceans, that won a Hugo Award for best dramatic performance. This novella takes the repeated line “y’all remember” from clipping’s song and focuses on the effects of history and collective memory that follow the uprising, While I’m not familiar with Drexciya, both clipping’s song and Solomon’s novella tell powerful, complementary stories about the violence and horror caused by white supremacy and enviromental destruction. Recommended.

I received this as a complimentary ARC from Saga Press through NetGalley.

Book Review: 21st Century Demon Hunter by Charles D. Lincoln

21st Century Demon Hunter by Charles D. Lincoln

Burning Bulb Publishing, 2019

ISBN: 978-1-948278-17-1

Available: Paperback, Kindle edition

 

With main character Juliette Johannes, first time author Charles D. Lincoln may have created the most entertaining antihero the horror genre has ever seen.  By day (when she isn’t too hung over) she’s one of many faceless bicycle delivery people pedaling their way through New York City.  At night, she spends her time swilling, stoning, snorting, and screwing her way through the Manhattan nightclub scene.  Waking up in a strange bed with no memory next to a strange guy (or girl) is a weekly occurrence for her.  Due to family lineage, she’s also an on-call destroyer of demons that hide on Earth and occasionally decide to stir up trouble.  In this story, monsters exist all over the place, but only a small group of humans are aware of them, and have dedicated their time to keeping the rest of humanity safe.  When the demons start stirring up more trouble than usual, Juliette and her two sisters, Samantha and Persephone, get pulled into a web of murder and deceit that wrecks various sections of New York City. It’s a 400-page odyssey of mayhem and hilarity that is completely over the top, and works in every possible way.

Two things elevate this book above the competition: the originality of the plot and the unconventional but highly amusing characters.  God and humans against Satan and his minions  is a trope that has been used frequently, but author Lincoln wisely throws out the conventions that usually come with such a story.  Instead of “good vs. evil”, the conflict is set up as the forces of order against the forces of chaos, with neither side being truly good or bad.  Rather than a single “spirit realm”, Lincoln  has created nine different realms populated with all sorts of demons of varying strength.   This helps prevent the story from becoming predictable: it allows for a lot more variety in the types of fiends that appear in the book, as well as plot flexibility.  Some creatures are almost harmless and actually cute (the killer demon koalas come to mind) and some are as tough and nasty as anything since Lovecraft’s Cthulhu demons first graced the printed page.  21st Century Demon Hunter is a perfect example of how to take an old idea and reinvent it into something truly original.

The plot is excellent, but the true strength is in the characters.  It’s almost impossible not to find them interesting, because they are so unconventional.  Juliette is a prime example.  She shows up to exorcisms drunk,  treats powerful demons like annoying children that need a good spanking, and berates them for their lack of imagination in scaring people. When a demon vomits on her, she pukes right back on him.  It’s why she’s so entertaining; she’s unlike any other exorcist ever created.  The other characters are just as off the wall.  For instance, Christopher and Serenity are a brother-sister vampire team, who happen to talk like Cockneys and are usually more into watching the stock market then draining humans of blood.  With the characters in the book, abnormal is the normal, and it holds the reader’s interest all the way to the end.

Horror and humor are two sides of the same coin, and 21st Century Demon Hunter strikes the absolute perfect balance between the two.  The excitement will have you flipping the pages as fast as possible, while laughing out loud at the same time.  An unusual, original work not to be missed.

 

Contains: graphic violence, graphic sex, drug use, profanity, racial slurs and stereotypes

 

Reviewed by Murray Samuelson

Editor’s note: 21st Century Demon Hunter is also a streaming series on Amazon Prime Video.