torture | Musings of the Monster Librarian

Book Review: To Dust You Shall Return by Fred Venturini

To Dust You Shall Return by Fred Venturini

Turner Publishing, 2021 (release date June 21)

ISBN: 9781684426348

Availability: Paperback, Kindle ( Bookshop.org | Amazon.com )

If you only have the budget to purchase one book for the entire year, this is the one to buy. To Dust You Shall Return is superior to everything else out there, might as well just hand the author the Stoker award for best horror novel of 2021 and skip the drawn-out nomination process. It’s that good: other authors will be hard pressed to equal it.

Most of the story is set in Harlow, one of those Children of the Corn-type Midwestern towns you could drive through and not know if anyone actually lives there. Curtis Quinn, an aging ex-Mafia hitman with a price on his head, is led there while on the trail of whoever butchered his beloved wife into pieces. He suspects it’s a revenge hit to get to him, but what he finds in Harlow is much more sinister and terrifying than anything the Mafia could have dished out. Harlow residents live in fear of the Mayor, a sadistic madman (or is he?) with inhuman powers. The residents’ only hope is the legend of the Griffin, an outsider who may one day come to deliver the townspeople from the Mayor’s grasp. Could Curtis, a cold-blooded killer, be that man, and is it somehow connected to his wife’s murder?

The story scores unbelievably high on every possible level, but the excitement and originality are the two best points. After a brief prologue, the story shifts into high gear right away, and, in 352 pages, doesn’t let up. There’s never a hint of a slowdown: this is the type of book you will keep reading well into the night, until exhaustion sets in. For originality, Harlow itself is one of the most intriguing fictional towns ever invented; it’s an unusual cross between a communist community and Blake Crouch’s Wayward Pines. Residents are provided for and given jobs, but the cost is never being able to leave the town, exceept for a forays lasting a brief hour or two. The town is surrounded with razor wire and various traps to keep the people in. If they do escape, rangers track them down and return them to Harlow, where they are ritually slaughtered in front of the townspeople in extremely painful and bloody ways. This causes the book’s gore factor to run high at times, but it is always in service to the story, never gratuitous for the shock factor. That said, some of the killings are as hardcore as anything Jack Ketchum ever wrote and will make readers cower in fear, praying to forget what they just read.

The characters and plot also sell themselves by their unpredictability: the story does not go where you would expect. Numerous characters double-cross each other, and the book becomes a guessing game, keeping the story engrossing. The legend of the Griffin also helps drive the story’s unexpected twists and turns, as most stories with a creepy little town rarely use the “savior” angle. It’s just another example of what sets this story apart from all the competition. Bottom line: just buy this one, and prepare to be blown away. You won’t be disappointed. This is beyond highly recommended.

Contains: blood, gore, profanity, cannibalism, ritualistic torture.

Reviewed by Murray Samuelson

Book Review: 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.