Finishing out the year with Joanne Harris yet again, and far from the only Joanne Harris novella I read after indulging in Honeycomb, Orfeia stuck with me in a biting way. I find with Harris’s work I have a tendency to incorporate it into my understanding of a given mythology. Blue Salt Road is how I always saw selkie stories, isn’t it? Orfeia was unique and beautiful. I absolutely recommend it, her prose style reminding me of George MacDonald or Edgar Rice Burroughs but deeply cemented in a network of fae stories with Harris has been weaving through her many novellas and Honeycomb. Orfeia follows a mother who has lost her adult child and is willing to travel into the land of the dead, through various fae traps, to restore her. It was absolutely lovely.
You Feel it Just Below the Ribs Jeffrey Cranor, Janina Matthewson
Wheewwww I loved it. I struggled with it a bit because it feels at times too unreal and at other times too close to home, which I imagine is exactly the sliver of reality is seeks to exist between. I have realized something very crucial in reading this book; I would follow Jeffrey Cranor into the ocean. Which I imagine would be terrifying for him, but I love the biting realism in this dystopian thriller. Typically, I am not a fan of books told in journal format, it’s just not my preference, but this was excellently written, sci-fi horror. I absolutely recommend it for people who like darker, more realistic portrayals in their fiction.
This book was beautiful; a retelling of the Twa sisters, it follows three siblings through an Arthur-adjacent tale with links both to real history and myths in The Matter of Britain. As an Arthurian nerd (read: everything nerd), I loved seeing a story I wasn’t familiar with, a murder ballad that I was familiar with, an amazing queer representation, and a new take on Merlin. The story manages to do all of it without beating you over the head with its source material, instead guiding through a world that feels totally Holland’s creation. The narrative and characters are remarkably organic and conflicted. I would absolutely recommend it, especially to a queer audience which all too rarely sees representation outside of mundane coming out stories.
I’ll cut to the chase, this was one of my favorite books I read in 2023. Thistlefoot takes place in a world of magic and not, a world where most things are exactly the same as they are in reality but with an important exception —the scars of an event can awaken the spirit of a place.
One of the early mentioned examples of this is a Burger King that grew eyes after a break in.
Thistlefoot, the book’s name sake, is a house that sprouted chicken legs.
The sibling pair at the heart of the story, Bellatine and Issac Yaga, are the inheritors of Thistlefoot and the generational trauma that both makes them who they are and that has been kept from them by their family. They both have their own unusual gifts, which unbeknownst to them are adaptations to that trauma. The book examines disapora in a fascinating way.
The story follows both the Yaga siblings and the history of the house itself in a slow burn reveal of the tragic events that led Thistlefoot to sprout legs and flee.
All while being hunted by a similar oddity, which intends to destroy Thistlefoot.
This book was such a delicate and well constructed handling of generational trauma and particularly genocide. I had gone into it blind and was taken in immediately with the world and characterization.
A copy paste disclaimer! :There are several stories available for free download if you are already subscribed to amazon prime, and I took advantage of that recently and thought I’d spend November telling you about the short stories and novellas I picked up that I liked best and thought was worth the read.
These tend to be stories commissioned by Amazon and put into collections by Amazon
Okay, back to review:
From the first line I knew I would like this one; a horror story wrapped in a failed marriage and the other way around.
At 58 pages, it’s a very quick read. The pacing and characterization is a lovely build to the end of the story; the twists are both obvious and not, telescoped well but always leaving the reader with doubts.
It’s another of those stories that is difficult to talk about without spoiling the whole of it, so very worth the read.
I honestly started to say more but am not sure how to without giving it away haha
The characters are extremely well done and feel organic, even under their bizarre circumstances.
A copy paste ! :There are several stories available for free download if you are already subscribed to amazon prime, and I took advantage of that recently and thought I’d spend November telling you about the short stories and novellas I picked up that I liked best and thought was worth the read.
These tend to be stories commissioned by Amazon and put into collections by Amazon
Okay, back to review:
*Vomit, scream, fall over in vomit* It’s perfect. Professional start, no?
I absolutely adored this story. It checked every mark for me: time travel, time loop, deal with the devil, character development by progressing through trauma, sacrifice motif, clear evil, unclear anachronistic time period. The tone and voice of the story was so clear and strong immediately, the narrative wasting no time to establish the character outside of anything other than a force to be reckoned with through the motif of willpower. I have recommended this short story to so many people at this point that even at 29 pages I’m willing to offer it up as one of my contenders for my favorite book I’ve read this year. It is beautiful, the wording and flow of sentences purposeful and well sculpted. No notes.
There are several stories available for free download if you are already subscribed to amazon prime, and I took advantage of that recently and thought I’d spend November telling you about the short stories and novellas I picked up that I liked best and thought was worth the read.
These tend to be stories commissioned by Amazon and put into collections by Amazon
The Pram is a short story about miscarriage and grief, particularly the grief of the protagonist Willy who feels overshadowed and pressured to resolve grief for his wife Marianne, only to realize he hasn’t resolved anything for himself.
I thought it was an honest treatment of a difficult topic, one I’ve dealt with personally and which I normally immediately stop reading once child or fetus death is involved.
At 57 pages, it’s a quick read and satisfying as a horror short story. Too often horror short stories are so focused on the twist that they fail to embrace the heart of their topic, particularly when they’re commissioned short stories on demand.
I was thinking about what I could do for my last review of the spooky season and I thought “Did I talk about ‘Yellowface’ yet?” I went back and checked. I haven’t. I need to.
Yellowface by RF Kuang is not billed as a horror story exactly.
It is horror, I would argue. The ‘satirical novel’ (read:horror) takes a deep dive into the publishing industry, white privilege, racism, the persecution complex of white authors, the dismissive attitudes toward Asian voices, the tokenism and more in a way that is so educational, so detailed, as to be exhaustive.
It follows a white woman who, deeply jealous and entitled, steals her successful Asian friend’s manuscript after her death and publishes it. It examines the lengths to which this white woman goes, publishing under a misleadingly Asian sounding name, claiming that anyone can write any topic with her own touch of persecution, justifying her theft by claiming her research into being able to edit the novel makes her an expert, having a sensitivity reader fired, dealing with the deceased’s family and friends, destroying evidence, and turning up in Asian cultural centers trying to promote “her” writing.
As it all unravels, the novel is full of suspense and agitation. And I just have to say….have you ever read a novel and thought, ‘The author thinks about this all of the time.’ Not ‘the author thinks about this all of the time because obviously she wrote a book about it’ but ‘the author has had this fear and idea curling in the back of her skull for at least a decade, and it is a privilege I have not to have thought about it’? That’s the tone of Yellowface.
As always when I read any collection of short stories there are particular ones which catch my attention, but I really can’t stress how much I enjoyed ‘Never Whistle at Night’. The collection is extremely well put together, spanning a variety of topics impacting indigenous communities, whether that be indigenous folk lore inspired, inspired by racism, classism, internalized trauma, religious trauma, or all of the above and of course more. The cultural weight of each story has its place in the anthology.
The editors deserve all the credit in the world, it’s a wonderful collection. Please support them.
Goooooood Saturday to you. You’re getting two for the price of one today.
Continuing my ‘October is Spooky’, beginning with Mexican Gothic–I picked up this book very specifically because I heard so many literary agents talking about it. Not only socially, but in pitching horror stories a lot of feedback I got was ‘Is it like Mexican Gothic?’
People love this book and I am a convert.
Mexican Gothic Silver Nitrate by Silvia Moreno-Garcia
Goooooood Saturday to you. You’re getting two for the price of one today.
Continuing my ‘October is Spooky’, beginning with Mexican Gothic–I picked up this book very specifically because I heard so many literary agents talking about it. Not only socially, but in pitching horror stories a lot of feedback I got was ‘Is it like Mexican Gothic?’
People love this book and I am a convert.
Moreno does an amazing job of creating a landscape and atmosphere very similar to many early black and white horror films; I’ve heard her tone directly compared to Del Toro and this novel specifically to Crimson Peak, though very clearly Moreno knows her stuff about the old film industry that inspired Del Toro (more on that in a bit).
Mexican Gothic is so reminiscent of Bride of Frankenstein for me, and I’d honestly hate to spoil anything about the turn in plot where it takes on to become a more modern horror, just please read it.
I came off of the high of Mexican Gothic wanting more Silvia Moreno-Garcia. I even did that thing where I reread specific passages because I liked the wording that much.
Seriously. Read Mexican Gothic.
Luckily, it was right around debut time for Silver Nitrate.
My first take away beginning Silver Nitrate is the care and treatment of old horror films; Moreno Gracia clearly knows not only through her own research but anecdotally a great deal about the golden age of horror. I related, for better or worse, to Montserrat as a character and that compelled me through the book. The examination of the occult in the early 1930s and the impact of different esoteric movements on world culture hit every mark for me. I appreciated the focus, as always, on Mexican culture and Mexican film, reclaiming something that so often is defaulted to American.
It was an excellent book, I’d recommend you to read it and to look out for her other work.
Aliactast 
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