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Book Review: The Occultists by Polly Schattel

cover art for The Occultists by Polly Schattel Bookshop.org  | Amazon.com )

The Occultists by Polly Schattel

Journalstone, 2020

ISBN-13 : 978-1950305445

Available: Paperback, Kindle edition

 

The Occultists is historical horror fiction involving the occult and spiritualist movements active in the early 20th century. When fifteen year old Max Grahame took a job as a postal boy in his small town in Georgia, he had no idea where it would lead. Carrying a box of dead letters to a storage space, he discovers an occult library. The postmaster and his wife are secretive and eccentric, but they are also kind to Max, and introduce him to their friend, Lillian Hearst, who hires him to work at a spirtualist gathering. When Max’s abusive stepfather learns about it, he forbids Max from attending another meeting of occultists, and when Max attends despite this, his stepfather disrupts the meeting and drags him home. That night, Max’s stepfather is brutally murdered in his living room, with Max an inadvertent witness. When Max learns he is the primary suspect, he escapes to beg the postmaster for help. The postmaster, along with Lillian Hearst and her sisters, offer to hide him by sending him to an academy run by their occult order in an isloated area of Nebraska. With few choices available to him, Max agrees to go to Steppeford.

This is where I expected the story to really take off, but it begins to ramble. Max spends long periods of time by himself, as the limited number of students and staff have been instructed to severely limit their interactions with each other. Schattel devotes pages to describing Max’s slow development of his psychic powers, broken up occasionally with surreptitious conversations with other students and occasional scenes of vivid action and suspense, confrontation, or horror interrupting the longer, drawn out sequences. There are chapters and scenes that seem to be moving the plot in a certain direction, but these aren’t necessarily followed through. Eventually, Max flees Steppeford with Harriet, a girl at the school who grew up inside the Order of Aurora, the occult faction that runs the school and has much larger ambitions. Once again, Schattel seemed to be directing the plot, but in a rambling way. Characters who seemed important to advancing the story and to Max’s character development evaporate.  I was reading an ebook and didn’t have a frame of reference for the length of the book, and this style of writing resulted in the book seeming much longer than 330 pages.

The book ends without tying up a significant loose end: a deal Max made with a spirit for an unspecified favor in the future has not yet been fulfilled. With Max only in his late thirties by the time the book ends, I suspect a sequel is in the making. A note: while our protagonist is a teenager for most of the book, and it could be read by teens, they really don’t seem to be the target audience.

Schattel’s experience as a filmmaker is evident through the way she creates setting and atmosphere. The Hearst mansion, the prairie fire, Manhattan at the turn of the century, all are cinematic in nature. She also has a way with words, and can capture an experience or character very effectively. Her descriptions of being trapped in a locked basement and of creatures like the Moorlander, a woman made up of a swarm of insects, for example, are vivid and take all the senses into account.  The characters she invests in are interesting even when they’re not sympathetic. She can ratchet up suspense and horror effectively, but her uneven pacing and rambling plot make parts of the book really drag. She clearly did research, but I’m wondering if using it too much ended up weighing the story down. In short, Schattel is a talented writer, but this is an uneven work from her. As it is her first novel, I am sure we’ll see more of the good stuff from her in the future.

 

Contains: blood, gore, violence, suicide, ritual murder, body horror, racial slurs

Book Review: Big Lizard by Joe R. Lansdale and Keith Lansdale

A note from the editor:

We are midway through 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 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 Big Lizard by Joe R. Lansdale and Keith Lansdale, illustrated by Jok.

 

cover art for Big Lizard by Joe R. Lansdale and Keith Lansdale

Big Lizard by Joe R. Lansdale and Keith Lansdale, illustrations by Jok (Short, Scary Tales Publications)

Short, Scary Tales Publications, 2020

ISBN-13: 9781788580274

Available:  Signed & numbered limited hardcover

 

Thanks to his Aunt June, Buster Nix lands a new job as a security guard at the headquarters of a chain of fast food restaurants called Pick-A-Chicken. It’s not the best job in the world, but it’s something. The company’s owner, Elroy Cuzzins, gives Buster a tour of the facilities, making sure to tell him that he can never, never, ever enter the red storage building out back. Ever. His tour also includes the slaughter area. Customers can pick a live chicken for slaughter, and, for an extra fee, they can kill it themselves with a hatchet supplied by the company. Some of the Pick-A-Chicken customers dole out the extra money to gleefully slaughter their chosen fowl, but Buster is repulsed by the process. The restaurant is thriving, raking in the dough. Buster can’t figure out why or how this is possible. One night when he is making his rounds, he wanders too close to the forbidden building and hears mysterious chanting behind the closed doors. Upon entering, he discovers an unholy ritual taking place with Cuzzins as the leader who is sacrificing chickens over a large pentagram. Now Buster knows how Pick-A-Chicken has been so successful over the decades. As all of those present continue their chanting to something called the Lizard God, Buster accidently runs into a lit brazier containing actual hellfire and disrupts the ceremony, engulfing everything and everyone, including Buster, Cuzzins, and Socks the chicken, who Buster made friends with during his time as security guard.

 

 

The next thing Buster knows he is waking up in the hospital burn unit, covered head to toe in bandages. He discovers that, because of his disruption of the ritual, he can transform into a giant lizard with enhanced physical abilities. The only downsides are that he doesn’t know how to control it, and his clothes are torn to shreds when he transforms. Buster teams up with Socks, the now eyepatch wearing talking chicken who survived the conflagration, and teenage tech wizard Isaac to face off with the nefarious Elroy. He’s hard to miss since he was transformed into a giant chicken driving a flashy red sports car and commits murder, gathering body parts to complete the ceremony. Can Big Lizard and his friends stop…Big Chicken before he can complete the ritual?

 

I loved this book from start to finish. I couldn’t put it down. Both Lansdales are great storytellers. The characters, especially Socks and Buster, are unique. Socks, short for Socrates, wanders around wearing an eyepatch. When electric shocks are administered to his tiny chicken body, he releases his bowels, and can see the future. He’s also a little smart ass. Buster means well, and he is one to help anyone in need, even if he can’t seem to get his own life in order. When he gains his lizard abilities, he uses them for noble pursuits. He just has a good heart.

 

I would recommend this for anyone who enjoys Joe R. Lansdale’s work. The fact that his son has also taken to writing and collaborates with his father on this one just adds to the reasons to pick up Big Lizard. Unfortunately, the ARC didn’t include Jok’s illustrations, but if they are anything like the cover, the interior art will be fantastic

Highly recommended

Reviewed by Lizzy Walker

Book Review: The Boatman’s Daughter by Andy Davidson

cover of The Boatman's Daughter by Andy Davidson

The Boatman’s Daughter by Andy Davidson  ( Bookshop.org |  Amazon.com )

Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2020

ISBN: 978-0-374-53855-2

Available: Kindle, Paperback

 

 

The old witch Iskra knows the secrets of the bayou where Miranda runs her Alumacraft under the cypress trees in the murky, humid gloom. It’s an ugly, decaying place filled with lurking dangers, brutal violence, and the tragic history of its inhabitants. Miranda is linked to Iskra through the murder of her father and a ritual involving a web-fingered baby. In order to find her father’s bones, reunite Littlefish and his clairvoyant sister, and save her own life, Miranda must read the signs that are leading her into a mortal combat against evil forces. Her challenge involves the local constable, a crazy preacher, a dwarf, and a dead wife’s mistakes. No one is safe in The Boatman’s Daughter by Andy Davidson.

 

Davidson ratchets up the tension from the very first chapter and maintains it throughout as Miranda tries to stay one step ahead of her enemies and encounters drug dealers, murderers, and even supernatural forces. These forces have their origin in Russian myths to which Davidson adds a Southern Gothic spin. This makes for a setting that is as terrifying to the younger characters as nightmarish horror stories and yet is so realistically detailed that the reader can feel the saw grass and smell the rotting bodies. It is that very combination that makes the witchcraft believable and turns the events into the stuff of imagination. To Davidson’s credit, it is often difficult to tell where the line is between the two.

 

The plot of The Boatman’s Daughter moves at breakneck speed. Davidson’s characters might spend a few seconds thinking and planning, but the action never stops. The characters are mythological or fairytale figures in terms of good and evil, but they are always truly human which makes the evildoers all the more frightening and the heroine even more amazing. The rich descriptions and Davidson’s talent for keeping the reader entertained with a multi-layered and complicated plot make this an outstanding read that will make you dream of a film version while still being certain nothing can beat the book. Highly recommended.

 

Reviewed by Nova Hadley