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Final Cuts: New Tales of Hollywood Horror and Other Spectacles edited by Ellen Datlow

Final Cuts anthology cover art edited by Ellen Datlow ( Bookshop.org)

 Final Cuts: New Tales of Hollywood Horror and Other Spectacles edited by Ellen Datlow

Blumhouse Books, 2020

ISBN: 9780525565758

Available: paperback, audiobook, Kindle

 

Final Cuts is a themed collection of horror short stories. In this case, the common thread is the relationship to cinema, and occasionally reality TV.  The stories have original ideas, professionally written, but with ambiguous endings that might not be appealing to readers who prefer closure in a story. The writing quality is strong enough to make it work with these types of stories, though.

These are horror stories, but they are the more cerebral type.  There’s very little hack and slash, the stories usually involve extremely weird things happening to the characters and how they perceive  reality.  Of course, there are exceptions to this, “Snuff in Six Scenes” being a good and very entertaining example.  One can tell that most of these stories were written by skilled veterans of the craft, as the prose flows perfectly, and there is rarely a wasted word.  It strikes a good balance between action and inner thoughts, tending towards the latter.

One potential pitfall to themed anthologies is they can limit the creativity, since a common theme must be followed.  That doesn’t happen here, due to the excellent story ideas.  Some examples of what the reader will encounter:

  1. A bunch of little tiny mouths that run around eating people.
  2. The filming of an occult ceremony where acting becomes reality for nefarious purposes.
  3. A hearing aid used to listen to a theatre movie broadcasts verbiage very different from the film, and it relates to a murder.
  4. A select screening of a rare film causes some people to want to get killed.

The stories that are somewhat standard ghostly tales have some new settings that add to the flavor.  For example, one features an online reality show, where an unexplained apparition sometimes appears.  The real fun is the reality show itself, which stars two drunk college girls talking about science, hence the story title, “Drunk Physics.”  Some of the writing formats are unusual as well.  “Cut Frame” is written in interview transcript format, complete with its own invented Wikipedia entries.   “Altered Beast, Altered Me” is written mainly in email form.

Final Cuts features excellent writing and is creatively very strong. While most readers will enjoy this, it might not work for readers who like all story threads to be resolved by the end.  Many stories are open ended, and a few have endings that don’t seem to relate that much to the main story thread. Overall, though, it scores high in the most important areas, originality and quality of writing.

Contains:  violence, profanity

 

Reviewed by Murray Samuelson

 

Posted on December 16, 2020 by , Reply

Book Review: The Year’s Best Dark Fantasy and Horror: Volume 1 edited by Paula Guran

A note from the editor:

We are getting near the end 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 $45 we still 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 The Year’s Best Dark Fantasy & Horror: Volume 1 edited by Paula Guran.

 

cover art for The Year's Best Dark Fantasy and Horror Volume 1 edited by Paula Guran  ( Amazon.com )

The Year’s Best Dark Fantasy & Horror: Volume 1, edited by Paula Guran, cover design by Jennifer Do

Pyr Books, 2020

ISBN: 9781645060253

Available: Trade paperback, Kindle edition

 

After ten volumes of the series with Prime Books, acclaimed editor Paula Guran has moved to Pyr to continue her relentless search for the best dark fiction published during the previous year (in this case 2019). The present “debut” volume with the new publisher includes 25 short stories that were previously published in various genre anthologies and magazines.

As a confirmed horror fan, it seems to me that this time the balance is a bit too much in favor of fantasy tales, although, admittedly, the boundary between the two genres is often very thin.

Commenting upon such a huge anthology, featuring such a high number of stories, is a difficult task, so I will take advantage of my privilege as a reviewer to pinpoint just my favorite stories.

“The Promise of Saints” by Angela Slatter is a little gem of religious horror featuring a naive girl and  a powerful saint, while “Burrowing Machines” by Sara Saab is an intriguing tale set in the claustrophobic bowels of London, between the Tube and the elusive River Fleet.

In the short but effective “Haunt” by Carmen Maria Machado we meet a ghost who’s not a ghost, and in the disturbing “The Coven of Dead Girls” a group of murdered girls is haunting the house of their serial killer.

To me, the best story is Pat Cadigan’s “About the O’Dells”, a superbly written piece in which a murder from the past casts shadows on the neighborhood and affects the mind of a young girl.

As with any anthology, this one is a mixed bag, but well worth reading. Recommended for adult readers.

 

Reviewed by Mario Guslandi

 

 

Posted on November 24, 2020 by , Reply

Musings: Breaking Out of Your Reading Slump

A note from the editor:

We are now more than midway through October 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! Or, you can purchase titles mentioned in this post through our store at Bookshop.org. Thank you!

Horatio P. Bunnyrabbit with a pumpkin for trick-or-treating

For a list of the books mentioned in this post, check out the Monster Librarian store on Bookshop.org!

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October is the big month for the horror genre, and in hopes of getting up a review every day, I do a lot of reading in hopes that I can do exactly that. The pandemic has killed my ability to focus, though, and especially if I’m reading something long, it seems to take longer to read about it, think about it, and write about it. That’s especially true if I’m reading similar kinds of books– after awhile I just have to stop.

This has been especially aggravated by my library closing down and my kids’ schools going virtual so that I don’t get time in those libraries either. Libraries are my haven and not physically getting to be in that space is so difficult for me! I know I’m not the only person who is dealing with this right now. A dear friend of mine who typically gobbles up anything horror-related has stacks and stacks of books that he just keeps buying but is unable to focus enough to finish anything. So what can you do?

First, it’s okay to put a book down if you just can’t handle it.  I like ebooks for really long books because holding those in my hands gets me thinking on how much there is to read, which sometimes can be intimidating. Is your fiction too close to your current reality?  This month was not the month I needed to start watching The Man in the High Castle.  I also read Leigh Bardugo’s Ninth House, not realizing how intense it was going to be. Reading Goodreads reviews after the fact, I found that readers were providing content warnings to potential future readers. If a book is stressing you out instead of entertaining you, you don’t need to keep going.

Second, mix it up! Short stories are great, and I love them, but if you’re reading several anthologies in a row from cover to cover, it’s no longer a vacation. I just finished the excellent SLAY: Stories of the Vampire Noire, edited by Nicole Givens Kurtz, so I’ll be switching to something different before I start another one. There are plenty of authors who don’t get the kind of attention they should, classic authors you might not have read, and new books coming out all the time. Reading T. Kingfisher’s new book The Hollow Places led me to track down The Willows by Algernon Blackwood. In addition to the HWA’s newly published series of genre classics, if you are short on funds, many classics are available free as ebooks through Project Gutenberg.

There’s some really good horror-related nonfiction out there, such as Lisa Morton’s recently released Calling The Spirits.  Although these can seem long, nonfiction is great because you can read a chapter and put it down for awhile until you’re ready to come back to it. Kit Powers’ My Life in Horror, Volume 1 is a series of standalone personal essays on growing up as a horror fan, easy to pick up and put down until you’re ready for more. You might also consider checking out some poetry. Even if you’re convinced it’s not your thing, Alessandro Manzetti’s Whitechapel Rhapsody might change your mind, although it’s not for the faint of stomach.

This is also a great time to check out some of the titles that tie into current television and movies. The HBO series   Lovecraft County is based on a book of the same name by Matt Ruff, a great book of interconnected stories. Netflix’s The Haunting of Bly Manor riffs on the ghost stories of Henry James, notably The Turn of the Screw.

You don’t have to seek out anything new, though. I’ve reread some old favorites when I needed a break. Looking for something lighter? Maskerade by Terry Pratchett isn’t horror, but it is an entertaining riff on a story that definitely is, The Phantom of the Opera.  Seanan McGuire’s InCryptid series, starting with Discount Armageddon, takes a lighter approach to slayers, monsters, and ghosts than is typical for horror, but it is a lot of fun. Sometimes a thriller is what you need, as long as it’s not too close to life for you. Alyssa Cole, mostly known for her excellent romance novels, has an #OwnVoices thriller out right now on gentrification spiraling out of control titled When No One Is Watching, and David Simms has a supernatural thriller, Fear the Reaper, that reveals the dark history of American eugenics.

Despite protestations that they aren’t “real reading”, graphic novels definitely are, and if too many words on the page is a struggle right now, you might try them. Marjorie Liu’s Monstress has even won awards, Or try a novella. A recent entry into the novella category that I raced through was Stephen Graham Jones’ Night of the Mannequins.  There are a lot of great titles in the middle grade and YA fiction categories as well. No, you are not too old for good middle-grade fiction. If you haven’t read Neil Gaiman’s The Graveyard Book in either its novel or graphic novel formats it is well past time.

If you are a doer or a maker, I don’t personally have the patience for audiobooks or most podcasts, but if you spend a lot of time driving or run long distance, that’s another opportunity. And it’s the perfect time of year to explore Halloween cookbooks and crafts! My son collected and loved these even before he could read them, and a lot of gruesome-looking foods are pretty easy to make. We’ve worn out Ghoulish Goodies!  There is even an unofficial Walking Dead cookbook called The Snacking Dead. 

Third, go outside. It’s a little cool where I am to go outside and sit and read right now, but I went for a long walk yesterday that really cleared my head and got me focused again. All the sitting inside, social media, news, attempting to get along with your family you’ve been stuck inside with for seven months leaves you feeling tired and your brain cloudy. Reading is supposed to be relaxing, but apparently you need to really relax before you can enjoy it.

Clear out your brain, clear space for yourself inside and out, turn off your television, and give yourself permission. It’s the Halloween time of year, so, whatever makes you feel the season, give yourself a treat.

Posted on October 22, 2020 by , Reply
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