dreadpiratekel: iphone case with lightning bolt on it (Default)
What Stalks Among Us
Sarah Hollowell

One of the reading challenges I am doing this year requires reading a young adult horror novel.  I used What Stalks Among Us by Sarah Hollowell to check off that box.  To be honest I probably would have read this one anyway because of the haunted/mysterious corn maze, kind of punny title (corn has stalks …get it?) and time loops, well all those things check off internal “this is going to be good” checkboxes for me.

The plot of the novel is that besties Sadie and Logan decide to ditch a field trip to an amusement park (for valid reasons but I did have a moment of “a school trip to an amusement park and your passing it by!?  What?”) and end up choosing instead to explore this random corn maze they come across.  This is a horror novel so that is a choice that drives the narrative, even if so obviously a wrong choice.  Never go into the creepy seemingly abandoned corn maze! And Saddie and Logan very quickly learn why, in this instance, it would have been best to leave the corn maze alone.  Because they find bodies in the corn maze - their bodies, they have stumbled into a time loop and someone/something is in the maze with them and it's killing them.  Over and over.  And over …

Special shout out to the lead characters that the author has crafted, both Sadie and Logan are great, both are dealing with the trauma of the maze and trauma from other things that have happened in their life.  Sadie is our point-of-view character and as a person who plays video games, I appreciated her thinking of the maze as a kind of video game and applying some video game logic to it all.  I also enjoyed how she would think about different dialogue options, just like you’d get in a video game.

This is a horror novel, and beyond the fact that there are deaths (a lot of repeating deaths) they aren’t that graphic for the most part.  It’s upsetting, but for me, the way the the book also deals with toxic relationships is what was most upsetting, and perhaps the most triggering.  It’s handled well - this is about monsters that are made of corn, and time loops and also about how toxic controlling people can hurt your soul.

This book is widely imaginative and atmospheric.  I love a good time loop, but this is the first time I’ve read one where the characters encounter remnants of their previous loops, so gold star to the author for that.  The corn maze is pretty obviously operating under different rules of time and space and so there are different “rooms” for the characters to explore, populated with various … things.  Things of varying levels of creepy and unsettling.    Yes, sometimes it got a bit much for me, I applaud the super creepy but there were times when it was just - a lot.  Like atmosphere overload, and some of the ideas the book was playing around with didn’t feel entirely fleshed out … but that makes me want to go back and re-read it.  Loop around again if you will and see what I pick up this time on my trip through the maze.

CBR 16 link
dreadpiratekel: sneaker clad feet by a pink chalk flower drown on pavement (flower power)
Lone Women
Victor Lavelle

“On Tuesday, Adelaide Henry had been a farmer. On Wednesday, she became a fugitive.”

This is the story of Adelaide Henry who in 1915 takes off from her home in California in possession of a steamer trunk that has something trapped inside it.  Her parents are dead, and Adelaide is headed to Montana, planning to be a “lone woman” and going to homestead for two years before earning the land she has made viable for herself.  But the something in that trunk is going to make her plans challenging and also impact the people of the community that she ends up settling in.

Is this book, a horror novel?  Or maybe a Western?  A Thriller?  Historical Fiction perhaps?  The answer to all of those is yes.  It is those and a lot more.  I picked this book up because I thought it was a more straightforward horror story.  It is not, but I was not disappointed by its many layers at all.  To be clear, there is horror.  The thing in the steamer trunk is (minor spoiler alert) not really human.  There are ghosts (which may or may not be figments of various characters' minds), and there are villainous people, being villainous for no other reason than because they can.  And oh yes, because of racism.

This story centers on female characters, and in particular female characters of colour, who for various reasons have found themselves trying to eek out a living in Ohio.  Besides battling the elements, they are also at a disadvantage because of their skin, and their “lone” women status (no men in sight).   At first, I was a bit surprised at the lack of … well monsters in the book.  Monsters in the typical, claws and teeth way.  But there are a lot of people who are, well, for lack of a better word monstrous.   

I don’t read many Westerns outside of times Westerns have happened to crossover with horror, or with science fiction so I can’t really speak if the book contains the conventions of that genre.  I can, however, confirm it takes place in the Frontier of Ohio in 1915, and it felt “Western” enough to me that I did start at the inclusion of a car in the plot, and then had to remind myself that this was a little later than the cowboy set movies I have watched.    It does however feature people (women really) versus the elements, various gangs of outlaws, and people fighting to hold on to what is theirs.

Overall it is an amazing mashup of genres, horror, found family, women out there doing it for themselves, the poison that is racism, and the many ways that family can seriously mess you up …. Okay so some of those aren’t genres, so much as themes tackled in this book.   Rarely have I been so pleased to pick up a book that I thought was one thing (horror!) and found it to be so many other wonderful things.

CBR 16 link
dreadpiratekel: neon pink outline of two bats (its bats)
 Dracula
Bram Stoker, Tavia Gilbert (Narrator), J.P. Guimont (Narrator)

The story that Stoker tells, via letters, diary entries, telegrams, and even a few newspaper articles, is about what happens when the undead Count Dracula travels to London and how his activities (mainly bloodsucking and general bad vibes vampire business) interact with the protagonists of the novel.

This isn’t my first encounter with the Count; I read a children’s version as a child and then delved into the actual text during high school. Since then, I’ve consumed numerous other adaptations of this tale. My decision to revisit the story was inspired by reading Reluctant Immortals, which continues the story of Lucy Westenra, one of the Count’s early victims in Stoker’s narrative.

Our main point-of-view characters, whose writings we get to spy upon, are Jonathan Harker, a young English lawyer, Mina his finance, Dr. Seward who oversees a mental institution, and Lucy, Mina’s close friend. Despite being the character mentioned in the title, we don’t get Dracula’s point of view. In fact, upon rereading, I was shocked by the long stretches of the novel where Dracula was off-screen. His machinations could be felt, and we learn about some of his victims, but the Count himself was not physically present for much of it. It’s fair to say that even while being “off-screen” for a lot of the novel, the Count casts a long, dark shadow. I think it’s a testament to Stoker’s writing that he’s able to pull off this trick.

While I do love epistolary novels, there can be a bit of a lack of suspense at times because you know the characters lived long enough to record their impressions, be it in a diary, telegram, letter, or even a phonograph recording in the case of Dr. Seward. However, there is still tension because some of the characters never reveal their inner thoughts, so their fate remains uncertain. There’s always the sense that once a character finishes their writing, they could be in grave danger.

As an aside about the novel’s writing style, I admired the use of letters and telegrams to convey parts of the story. It’s not a major plot point, but I enjoy it when modern epistolary novels include text messages or emails, so the inclusion of telegrams here made me smile.

For a book first published in 1897, I have to say, it holds up! Sure, its age shows from time to time, but the story’s beats remain compelling. It’s a good story! Revisiting it in its original form after consuming so many other versions of the tale was interesting. My biggest quibbles with the book are:

  1. Specifically regarding the audiobook version I listened to, the voice acting for Van Helsing did not work for me at all.
  2. The story just doesn’t stick the landing for me. The tension builds up to a pretty high level, and then it just… ends. The wrap-up afterward didn’t feel satisfying to me.

Overall, I’m glad I re-read the book. It’s been ages, and it was nice to get a reminder of what happened in the book versus what has happened in various adaptations of the source material over the years.

Link to this post on the Cannonball Read Blog
dreadpiratekel: stock photo of a huamn skull (alas poor yorick)
Midnight on Beacon Street
Emily Ruth Verona

It is October 1993, just after midnight, and six-year-old Ben Mazinski is in the kitchen; there is blood and there is a dead body. So, exactly how did we get here? That is the story that Midnight on Beacon Street sets out to tell. It covers what happened in the lead-up to midnight to Amy (the babysitter) and her two charges, Ben and his older sister, Mira. It doesn’t do this linearly, but rather jumps around in time, revisiting moments from multiple points of view.

I may have been closer in age to Mira than to Amy when 1993 rolled around, but when I was Amy’s age, I was an avid babysitter. I know full well the terror—both of what might be lurking outside those dark patio doors in a house that is not yours and the terror of feeling sometimes like a child who is in charge of other children—that babysitting can bring. This book leans on both things—I mean, right off the bat, a dead body, so you know something outside the norm is happening, and Amy, one of our main characters, struggles with anxiety.

The story manages to rack up the tension as it speeds towards midnight. There are some creepy goings-on (Ben thinks there is a ghost, for starters), and it is not clear what is related to the body in the kitchen and what is not. Additionally, you have characters popping in and out of the narrative. As a reader, you know someone’s body is going to end up in the kitchen, but you don’t know which of these characters it might be.

I initially picked up this book because it was described to me as a love letter to 80’s and 90’s horror movies, and it is! Amy is a movie buff, a very big fan of horror movies in fact, and she drops some movie trivia as the book goes along. The narrative also includes some other 90’s kid easter eggs that were fun to spy. It reminded me of the Fear Street books, but in a slightly more elevated way (no shade to Fear Street; those books are a foundation of my love for horror novels). This novel is a throwback in the best way possible but also has a modern sensibility, as it highlights Amy’s struggle with anxiety in a way that no books from my childhood did. I appreciated that, as a woman who has anxiety and also loves horror movies and novels, even if they freak me out a bit and sometimes add to my anxiety.

Cannonball Read Post: cannonballread.com/2024/02/midnight-on-beacon-street-dreadpiratekel/
dreadpiratekel: blue tinted pussywillow (wicked come winter)
Deliberate Cruelty
Truman Capote, the Millionaire's Wife, and the Murder of the Century

By Roseanne Montillo

Content Warning: This book deals with murder, as the title suggests. The book also addresses spousal abuse and suicide. This review mentions the murder but does not touch on the other topics.

The novel opens with a bit of snarky back-and-forth between Truman Capote and the Millionaire’s Wife of the title (Ann Woodward), establishing that the two are not on friendly terms. She allegedly uses a slur about his lifestyle (Truman Capote was openly gay) to describe him, and he calls her “Mrs. Bang Bang” (she shot her husband in 1955). The story then goes back (way back) to tell the story of how Capote and Woodward’s lives became intertwined and brought us to this opening moment in the Swiss Alps.

Read more... )The post at CBR.


dreadpiratekel: blue tinted pussywillow (wicked come winter)
Mark Each Year in Books: Thoughts on Reading Traditions, Molly Templeton @ tor.com

You can also do this on your birthday. The primary activity of any birthday can, or could be, doing precisely what you want to and nothing else; if what you want to do is read, to be waited on while you turn pages and nibble petit fours or grapes or Skittles or whatever, that can be a tradition. I did this a couple of years in a row with Expanse books, but now I’m out of those and will have to come up with something different. (Those books really do lend themselves to sitting down and reading in giant, tasty chunks, though.)

A bit against my will I found myself doing this this birthday. At the time I was annoyed - I had wanted to go out and shop, and restaurant food but ... in retrospect the weather was crap and laying on my bed and having the dog sleep next to me while I read was ... really nice. I am going to try not just make this a Birthday thing but try and carve a day out a month or every second month to just sit and read through a book. Not feel guilty about anything else just read.
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