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Book Review: Among the Lilies by Daniel Mills

Among the Lilies by Daniel Mills

 

Among the Lilies by Daniel Mills

Undertow Publications 2021 (release date September 14)

ISBN-13: 978-1988964317

Available: Pre-order Paperback, Kindle edition Bookshop.org |Amazon.com)

Author of the excellent novel Revenants, the short story collection The Lord Came at Twilight and various short stories that have appeared in various magazines and anthologies, Daniel Mills is a New England native perfectly at ease with ghosts, hauntings and disturbing presences.

His style is elegant and classic, following the tradition of the masters of the genre but displaying a voice of his own, greatly appreciated and highly praised by readers and reviewers. The present, long awaited collection, includes eleven stories (two of which have never been published before) and a novella (which formerly appeared in print as a chapbook).

As it happens, not all the featured tales worked for me (which is not unusual when dealing with collections and anthologies) but some of the stories are exceptionally good and deserve to be specifically mentioned.

“The Lake” is a beautiful tale about the subtle melancholy of life and of childhood turning into adulthood, and about the terrors buried in the depth of the human soul.

In the dark and atmospheric “The Woman in the Wood” country horrors affect the mind of a young boy.

“Lilies” is a  long, complex story where the power of the past throws its shadow on the inhabitants of an old mansion, while “Dream Children” is an atypical , very dark mystery following the elusive traces of a disappeared woman.

Other readers or reviewers may disagree with my choices and prefer other tales , but certainly this is a book not to be missed by fans of stylish dark fiction.

 

Reviewed by Mario Guslandi

Book Review: The House that fell from the Sky by Patrick Delaney

cover art for The House That Fell from the Sky by Patrick Delaney   Bookshop.orgAmazon.com )

The House that fell from the Sky by Patrick Delaney

Oblivion Publishing, 2020

ISBN-13 : 978-0578660790

Available: Hardcover, Kindle edition, audiobook

 

This book is perfectly placed for those who miss the weird horror of Bradbury and Bentley Little, and are aching for something new. Patrick Delaney has arrived with a strong entry into horror that is tough to classify here; is it weird horror, cosmic horror, or something else? Read on. The journey (quite long at 566 pages) is a wild and rewarding one.

What do you do when a house lands in the middle of town, seemingly dropped from the sky? Well, first off, it’s not quite a house. What it truly is defies logic. Several stories tall, with unknown rooms within, it both petrifies and intrigues the town. In classic horror novels, the townsfolk would run for cover (save for the cliched characters in bad movies). In this case, true to the current unreality that’s taken over our world, everyone treats the unknown entity like a traffic accident that needs to be examined, eschewing any dangers.

Scarlett, Tommy, Jackson, and Hannah meander through life. Scarlett, a recent dropout from college at age 29, is in search of something to connect herself to anything meaningful. She’s the glue that holds the group– and the novel– together. Each major character is drawn in believably flawed design, so that the mixture of the group adds to the intrigue and horror that lead them to enter the house, and elicits true empathy for the characters– not neccesarily a given in horror today.

Of course, corporate America steps in (a nice touch) and offers up a lottery to determine who will be the first visitors/victims to the monstrosity sitting in their city. There is a cash reward for entering, but  exiting could be a bit difficult from this Lovecraftian Hotel California.

When Hannah buys her way in, the others jump in to help save her.

What is the house itself? To save the secrets within and protect readers from spoilers, what lurks within is drawn much differently from any generic haunted house. Delaney borrows from the greats and devises something unique. Refreshingly, his storytelling and plot twists sidestep a number of cliches common to the haunted house subgenre.

Delaney has spun a fun tale that will keep fans of intriguing horror entertained throughout, and produced something that will keep everyone on their toes. Recommended.

 

Reviewed by David Simms

 

Book Review: The Hollow Places by T. Kingfisher

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 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 Hollow Places: A Novel by T. Kingfisher.

 

cover art for The Hollow Places by T. Kingfirsher

The Hollow Places: A Novel by T. Kingfisher (  Bookshop.org | Amazon.com )

Gallery/Saga Press, 2020

ISBN-13 : 978-1534451124

Available: Paperback, Kindle edition, audio CD

T. Kingfisher is the pen name for Ursula Vernon, author of a webcomic and also the middle-grade Danny Dragonbreath books. In The Hollow Places, the author shows she can successfully and satisfyingly navigate from one genre and audience to another.

Recently divorced, Kara has moved into her uncle Earl’s combination museum/curiosity shop/living space and is cataloging his jumbled collection of objects and taxidermy while she figures out what to do with her life. While she’s there, a box of oddities arrives at the museum with a carving labeled “corpse otter” inside. When Earl hurts his knees badly enough that he’ll need major surgery, Kara takes over running the museum in his absence, and a few days later finds a mysterious hole in the drywall in the otter room, which showcases a giant taxidermied Amazonian otter and also displays the corpse otter carving.

Kara asks Simon, the quirky (and very gay) barista at the coffee shop next door, if he can help her patch the drywall. When Kara and Simon look through the hole, they see that it opens into a hallway that shouldn’t exist and decide to explore the hallway to see where it goes… that is, once they’ve packed flashlights, string, a tape measure, and a thermos of coffee. Both of them have seen enough horror movies to know not to split up, but not, apparently to leave locked doors alone, because they open the door at the end of the hallway to somewhere very like the Wood Between the Worlds in the Narnia books, except that instead of a wood filled with pools, it is a water world of islands swamped by willow bushes, each with a door to another world.

I had not read it before I read The Hollow Places, but at the end of the story, T. Kingfisher credits Algernon Blackwood’s The Willows as an inspiration for this book. As much as I could see the influence of C.S. Lewis, it is very clear that The Hollow Places, in setting and atmosphere, owes a great deal to Blackwood’s story. Kingfisher has taken elements from both authors and created something wholly original. Kara and Simon are both well-developed characters. It’s enjoyable to see them interact: they are sometimes snarky, often supportive, and protective of each other. They are funny and resourceful,  and make a great team. The setting is almost a character itself: both the museum and the willow world with its many doors seem to have lives of their own. Without giving away the entire plot, I’ll just say you will never look at taxidermy the same way again.

The sense of creeping dread and the feeling that we are, as Kara puts it, just a pixel away from a hostile, alien dimension, is even more disturbing and compelling in Kingfisher’s book than it is in Blackwood’s story. While the plot doesn’t move along speedily, it has some great action sequences, especially near the end.  Certainly it is worthy of consideration for a Stoker. Highly recommended.