Tag: Book Review

Categories
Archives Book Reviews Posts

Book Review: At The Cemetery Gates

At the Cemetery Gates: Year One, by John Brhel and Joseph Sullivan

I remember going to sleepovers as a kid, and staying up into the wee hours of the morning trading scary stories and urban legends in hushed tones with my friends. We’d swear up and down that we knew someone who knew someone who knew the girl whose boyfriend was murdered by the hook hand killer. We’d retell local legends, and stories we’d read in Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark.The tales were short and sweet, getting to the good stuff quickly and allowing for the storyteller to embellish for maximum effect. It spawned an entire generation of horror fans, including authors John Brhel and Joseph Sullivan, who paid homage to the Scary Stories collections with their newest book, At the Cemetery Gates: Year One.

The following aren’t short stories so much as they are digestible suburban fables.

Cemetery Gates Media presents a collection of fourteen twisted tales clocking in at 168 pages of consumable bites of horror and dark fiction, written in the very style that made Alvin Schwarz’s tales so popular two decades ago. Rather than setting everything up neatly like a regular short story, Brhel and Sullivan condense their stories into compact vignettes that are ready for retelling around a campfire, or in a bedroom late at night.

Favorites include:

Passion’s Paroxysm, a quick glimpse into a day in the life of a mistreated husband. The surprise ending make this tale destined to be an urban legend

The Girl With The Crooked Tooth, a thoroughly eerie homage to Edgar Allen Poe, complete with a creepy dude with an odd obsession with a woman. I don’t like dental stuff, so this one really got under my skin. The beautiful prose and unsettling imagery stuck with me.

New Year’s Eve, What A Gas!, about a simple mistake leading to catastrophic consequences. If you like the stories that play on fears of being killed at random, for no good reason, this is sure to titillate.

Considering that I couldn’t find a bad thing to say about this collection and found it to be even more enjoyable than their last anthology, I give this book the full 5 stars. Many of these stories are trope-heavy, but that’s how good lore works. It follows a basic template, and works as a means of expressing universal fears in American society. Anonymous murderers, poison in our food, and systematic conspiracies that affect the marginalized are all things that many of us worry about.  Urban legends synthesize those apprehensions into morsels of dread that serve to remind us that death awaits us everywhere, at all times. I’d heartily recommend At The Cemetery Gates to readers who want a little something to nibble on before bed each night, and to young horror fans who want something juicy to regale to their friends between classes. Find it on Amazon.

Categories
Archives Book Reviews

Nightmares: Book Review

nightmares-cover

Ellen Datlow is a master curator of fiction, and though she calls herself a “horror enthusiast,” I don’t think it’s a stretch to say she is also one of the guiding hands of the genre. Her Best Horror of the Year anthologies are a snapshot of current trends in horror, offering readers a sampling of new and established authors in one volume. Nightmares expands on those best-of collections and represents Datlow’s favorite short fiction from the years spanning 2005 to 2015.

Every story in the collection is exceptional. This surprised me. Usually, anthologies contain a tale or two that made me wonder how it made the cut, but not this one. There were a few stories that I’d read before and was delighted to read again. Sometimes, a story brought up personal terrors and was hard to read, but isn’t that what horror is supposed to do?

It took me several weeks to read all 24 stories because I had to think about what I’d just read. I spent a few nights staring at the ceiling trying to chase the afterimages out of my brain so I could sleep.

Here are the stories that kept me awake:

“Closet Dreams” by Lisa Tuttle left me with fear scrabbling at the inside of my ribcage. A survivor of an ordeal at the hands of a depraved child molester can’t let go of the past. Her abductor had forced her into a closet during the day so no one would hear her if she screamed for help. After her escape, and years of therapy, the dreams of the closet still haunt her. She tries to glean clues from her dreams – something that can give the police a means to find her captor – but all she can see is the dark, and the room beyond the crack under the door.

“Interstate Love Song (Murder Ballad No. 8)” by Caitlín R. Kiernan made me read it twice. Twin sisters cruise across a landscape of blood, depravity and blind, obsessive love. They mark their map and memories by the bodies in their wake. To me, they may be escaping hell or hurtling toward it, or perhaps they’re already there.

The story that challenged me the most was “Omphalos” by Livia Llewellyn. It’s transgressive and brutal, pushing the boundaries of parental cruelty into a nightmare of a vacation. Their love is abusive and drives their daughter June into territory that only she can see on the map. Her father wants her to take him with her, but she alone knows the way to the center where chaos and darkness lies.

There are so many more. This is the best anthology I’ve read all year and a must-have for any horror fan’s bookshelf.

Categories
Archives Book Reviews

America’s Most Haunted Hotels: Book Review

America’s Most Haunted Hotels: Checking in with Uninvited Guests
By Jaime Davis Whitmer with Robert Whitmer

Ghost stories are a staple of the horror genre, and they always have a little sharper edge when the magic words, “based on a true story” appear under the title. Ghost hunting has taken on its own genre, as either pure entertainment or amateur scientific research, sometimes a combination of both. I readily admit my deep affection for a good haint tale, and this book delivers spooky real-life accounts as well as practical information about haunted tourism. If you’re a writer, having a solid nonfiction reference like this is handy.

Jamie Whitmer is an author, ghost hunter and traveler. Her book Haunted Asylums, Prisons and Sanatoriums was published in 2013, and this could be considered a sequel of sorts. She opens the book with practical information on what it takes to do a full paranormal investigation at sites like old prisons and hospitals. These are expensive and time-consuming since the entire building must be rented to do an investigation.

However, haunted hotels can be investigated for the price of a room, and many offer ghost tours for those who just want to visit. If you’re an avid spirit-seeker without a big budget, this is much more affordable. The Whitmers were able to use the tools of the trade in their room, or within hotel common rooms with permission from the manager. (It never hurts to ask.)

In the introduction, the author shares her experiences with spirits of the dead and her ideas of how and why these hauntings occur. Her husband, Robert, also shares his views. He’s a practical man and says he is “open to the possibility that things exist that I cannot see…I go into this endeavor with an open but cautious mind.”

The author researched the hotels featured in the book. She opens each chapter with the history of the original owner(s), photographs of the hotel, notable events in town, the natural landscape and features, and tales of famous deaths, hauntings and other sightings that gave these hotels their notoriety. Some of those stories are apocryphal and don’t stand up to the author’s historic scrutiny. She and Bob both write separate first-person accounts of what they did—or didn’t—experience during their stay at each place.

Occasionally, the couple is delighted with their stay in the hotel but disappointed that they experienced nothing more than a great night’s sleep. Of course, ghosts aren’t on the payroll and don’t always show up when people want them to! On other stays, Ms. Whitmer writes of doors mysteriously opening, corner-of-the-eye glimpses of people who weren’t there when she turned her head, and an emotional experience that left her shaken.

It’s hard to resist the charm of these old hotels. If you enjoy “ghost tourism” and are looking for a firsthand guide to the top 10 haunted hotels, you should read this first before planning your trip. The people who led their tours were engaging and knowledgeable and clearly enjoyed their jobs. While room and tour prices will change, the authors do their best to help you plan your trip accordingly.

I’m scheduled for a stay on the Queen Mary in a few months, and eager to tour and see the places that the authors described so beautifully. While I doubt I’ll see a ghost, I will know a bit more about the history of this great ship-turned-hotel, and the Whitmer’s account of their stay will have me keeping watch out of the corner of my eye.

Categories
Archives Book Reviews

The Uncommitted: Book Review

goss-uncommitted

I was given a PDF edition of The Uncommitted by Margaret Goss for review. The cover art is eye-catching; so are a few inconsistencies. Perhaps I notice them more than others because of my years in publishing. I do have to admit they did little to distract from the story itself…only the overall presentation of the book.

The book opens with Josephine Reilly taking a plane ride to care for her mother who is dying from cancer. I went through this very experience in 2015 and want to mention how well the author portrays the difficulties and emotional turmoil. It was very well done.

Josie Reilly has paranormal experiences since childhood, though they change throughout her life cycle and are inherited through her mother’s bloodline.  After mother’s death, her abilities are heightened. Despite the disapproval of her stuffy husband, she decides to explore her abilities to channel the deceased.

She gets much more than she bargained for.  What follows is an emotional rollercoaster of spiritual bombardment, unpleasant entities threatening her children and questioning of herself as a mother and a wife.  Josie seeks help and finds none in what she believed would be traditional routes.  She, as well as others around her, fear she’s lost her sanity and moral fortitude. Her marriage is also threatened.

Josie faces her fears, renews her faith, resists mortal temptations with supernatural origins and discovers the truth of her past lives and that of a mysterious man with healing powers. She finds strength in the living and the dead.

I did not realize this book is Christian Fiction until I finished reading it. I am a Christian but not Catholic so a few references to Catholic elements of faith were lost on me without having to stop and look them up. Enough was familiar to me to make the story plot and timeline intriguing and interesting. I won’t spoil it for you but the ending certainly took a different turn than I expected. I honestly don’ t know if this story would appeal to someone who is not religious or spiritual. I certainly enjoyed it. I’m interested to see where Ms. Goss takes Josie in future books. I’d love to see what the future holds for a woman with these paranormal gifts.

ISBN: 978-1-59598-428-9
E-ISBN: 978-5-59598-429-6

Categories
Archives Book Reviews

Book Review: Deadraiser (Part 1: The Horror In Jordan’s Bank)

Deadraiser Horror Book Review
Big fish in a small town. Necromancy. Human sacrifice. Conspiracy. If you like these things, you’ll get a kick out of Deadraiser Part 1: The Horror In Jordan’s Bank). From the Goodreads summary:
DEADRAISER is the tale of a present-day practitioner who achieves what others have been unable to do for centuries — to raise the dead. The problem is that he must sacrifice innocent victims in order to maintain his power. Enter Fanchon (Frankie) Manning, daughter of the late movie star Erika Manning. She is the ideal sacrificial lamb for the Necromancer’s perverse desires. The only thing that stands between the Necromancer and the girl is Christopher McGuire, a lost soul who long ago has ceased believing in anything. In order to save the child, he must somehow rediscover his faith and summon the courage to take on the darkest, most sinister being imaginable.

 

 

I’m going to start off by saying that the story is outstanding. Authors Stephanie C. Lyons-Keeley and Wayne J. Keeley really captured the feel of the small town and the townspeople within. The book is a bit tongue-in-cheek, totally aware of how stereotypical the small-town characters are (the bumbling sheriff suspicious of the newcomer, the ne’er do well kids, the vulturistic journalist, etc.) and chuckling with the reader over it. Everyone was distinctive and developed; every action and line of dialogue was something only that character would have done or said. I especially liked Damon the caretaker; he creeped me out from the beginning.The book effortlessly jumps from character to character and back and forth in time, but I was never confused. It all felt natural, and the narrative flowed well. The authors nailed the tone and atmosphere, which made the dream scenes and death scenes effectively scary. I gobbled this book up whole chapters at a time, and looked forward to getting my next chance to read some more. I may or may not have put my toddler to bed a half hour early in order to finish this book; I won’t confirm or deny. Don’t judge me.

I wanted to give this book 5 stars, but I’m frustrated over the ending: the authors unnecessarily ended the story on a cliffhanger. In so many of our favorite series, there is an overarching conflict that spans the entire series. Smaller conflicts are put forth that the protagonist has to weather. Katniss has to survive the Hunger Games, but President Snow is still looming and a rebellion is brewing. Harry Potter makes it through his first year at Hogwarts and defeats Professor Quirrel, but Voldemort is back and gaining power. Eventually, the protagonist has to address that overarching conflict in later books, but satisfies the reader by completing the smaller arc in each preceding book. This doesn’t happen in Deadraiser. The overarching conflict is unresolved, and so are most smaller conflicts (one is resolved by the death of a character, but nothing the protagonist actively contributed to). So the ending feels abrupt and unsatisfying, like the authors are trying to stretch out the story for more money. If they are, it’s a smart move, business-wise, but it left me feeling resentful enough to make a whole thing out of it in the review.

In the end, I still recommend this book to old-school horror fans and lovers of the Occult, and look forward to devouring Part 2.