life's archive... of meaningless reviews and praises and criticisms across the vast landscape of digital, aural, and written media during this brief short span of incredibly dense time.
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SUPERNATURAL SHORT STORIES AND TALES OF MURDER by SIR WALTER SCOTT (REVIEW)
quickly: dark tales from the highlands of scotland (cursed blessings / soldier’s ghosts / debts to dead kings / sins of the mother / fatal friendships / magic mirrors / nightmare rooms / the devil’s daughter / true love’s revenge).
A deliciously dark collection of folk tales from the sooty, blood-soaked, flag-flying Highlands of Scotland. You’ll find no fancy fairies or colorful wizardry in these tales of bitterness, greed, and murder. This is Old World folk horror, full of apparitions in the morning haze, ghosts in cloudy silver mirrors, and premonitions from beyond the veil. Wronged hearts and unavenged deaths cast shadows dark enough to haunt you and keep you awake at night, no fancy demonology needed.
My favorites were The Fortunes of Martin Waldeck (baby brother makes a deal with the Devil and finds himself surprised when the Devil comes to collect)… Wandering Willie’s Tale (a humble peasant picks the wrong time to pay rent and finds himself at death’s crossroads)… The Highland Widow (a mother’s love turns cancerous as her heavy heart overwhelms both herself and her only son with grave consequences)… The Two Drovers (bad business turns a pair of acquaintances into sworn enemies)… The Tapestried Chamber (a haunted bedroom on a rich man’s estate)… and Donnerhugel’s Narrative (the devil makes a deal with a man who can’t keep his word).
quickly: a tragic psychosexual 1950s new york city interracial love/hate story (the negro problem / binge drinking / blind violence / bourbon vs. gin / lost in the sauce / explosive diarrhea / 1950’s homosexuality / 1950’s homophobia / McCarthyism / a fortune-telling monkey / men as apes / negros vs. negras vs. n*gg*** / race relations / sexual frustration / sexual psychosis / shakespeare’s shadow / the harlem trinity).
Jesse Robinson is a washed-up middle-aged black writer whose latest books have been deemed “too much of a protest” for his white publishers to extend him any more support. His answer to the great question “what do we do about the Negro problem” could at one time be found in his writings, but when that dries up, he turns to the whiskey bottle and the beds of white women. Kriss Cummings is a washed-up middle-aged white woman who’s failed marriage has left her feeling discarded from the white race. To spite her promiscuous husband, she opens her bed to any black man who crosses her path while simultaneously embedding herself into the black community through charity work. Two terrible people, holding hands, as they walk themselves towards their own demise.
★ ★ ★ A tough read with tough truths to swallow.
Two sullen stars align one drunken night in their youth, only to separate and meet again years later, when each has become embittered by time and addled by years of heavy drinking. Kriss is excited by the opportunity to reconnect with an old bedmate, and also by the prospect of watching white men turn red and green while watching her be so openly intimate with a “negro”. Jesse’s depression has empowered him to seek pleasure in the power dynamics of switching seamlessly between the two personas of a meek and mild house slave and an overly sexual, overly masculine black brute. Romeo and Juliet in the style of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf, written by Jim Crow. There is no romance in this love story, and it ends in blood and tears.
Jesse and Kris love each other because they hate each other. They love what they represent to each other, and what they represent to each other is what they hate about the world. Difficult to read at times… beyond the subject matter, the deeper you dive, the more you find yourself being flung back and forth through the chaotic minds of a pair of brain damaged drunkards who are determined to drink and fuck the Negro Problem away. Still, as taboo as this story is, it sheds light on a real shadow that exists in the American psyche, which consists of black people being relegated to a dark, violent, and psychosexual corner of the collective subconscious, where to be white is to perceive blackness as being both the root cause and solution to all of life’s problems.
quickly: a witness in a cold-blooded murder case is stalked and hunted by the gunman (1960’s new york city vice patrol / a bigot with a badge / working the night shift / automats and lunch counters / crossing 110th street / crossing the blue line / cats vs. mice / “did he use a silencer or was he silenced” asked oprah / going by way of Fat Sam / double crossing and double-talking / hot head with a hot rod / stairwell chases / parking lot shootouts / man against the world).
Jimmy is a Harlem youngster working nights at a cafeteria factory when a drunken maniac detective is overcome by white psychosis and kills all of his co-workers in cold blood. By a stroke of amazing grace, he survives the attack, but his survival places him in the crosshairs of a certified psycho who is set on eliminating all witnesses.
Don’t pick this up if you aren’t ready to sprint. This one-day read is a fast-paced NYC crime thriller full of race-based angst, socioeconomic division, and catchy 50s and 60s one-liners. Reading between the lines of this action-packed thriller, you’ll find poignant observations on race and interesting opinions on gender. Add a tablespoon of sex, jazz, and liquor, and you’ve got yourself a good time.
“...each person, each human organism, possessed a point of least resistance, a weakest point, this was the famous Achilles' heel, and it was like the law of the pearl: just as in a mollusk the grain of sand that chafes it is neutralized by mother-of-pearl, ultimately forming a jewel that we find valuable, so all the developmental lines of our psyche will arrange themselves around this weakest spot. Each anomaly stimulates a particular mental activity, a particular development, and collects it around itself. We are shaped not by what is strong within us but by the anomaly, by whatever is weak and not accepted.”
quickly: a sickly young engineering student hopes to find healing in a scenic mountain valley village where mysteries abound (gentleman’s houses / noises in the attic / spying eyes / fear of being seen / sex dolls and shrooms / wine at dinner time / men who think women are a different species / obscuring the vision, to see more clearly / long walks around the park / those looked upon by venus and jupiter / the soul as the weakest point / the inferior superiority of men).
The story opens like a Wes Anderson film, set in 1913 Poland, in a valley between two mountain ranges with air that is mythologized to cure the infamous tuberculosis. Before our dear Mieczysław can be cured, the malaise of life at the Gentleman’s House (where men smoke cigars with their weakened lungs, and talk at quite some length about the “lesser” minds of women) becomes a mire of shadows and secrets waiting to be unraveled. As expected, this idyllic 1900s mountain town is more than it appears to be. At night, after many men have imbibed in the psychoactive “schwärmerei”, the landscape seems to stare back at the onlookers. Every fall, men die violent and mysterious deaths, as if the surrounding forest is eating them and spitting them back out. As the summer season ends, Mieczy’s anxious concerns of being ‘seen’ intensifies.
★ ★ ★ ★ Mysteriously seductive.
Slowly, just as calmly as summer gives way to the decaying color bomb of autumn, this slow burn of a “health resort horror story” ends in a flush of fire. What begins as a medical retreat for our anxious and gentle-spirited protagonist evolves into an awakening of sorts upon the discovery of a cure for an ailment Mieczy had long been prepared to disregard as a permanent inconvenience. Mieczy will discover something that no amount of men’s postulations could destroy, and it is fantastic to watch. The astrology tidbits are delicious, and always a delightful discovery to happen upon when reading Olga’s work (as in The Books of Jacob, and Drive Your Plow…). The world of this story is both scenic and seductive… like a carnivorous plant that slowly digests you as you are hypnotized by its beauty.
You walk with Mieczy up the steep incline of a forested mountain, always wondering where the path is taking you, until suddenly you reach the peak and overlook the edge at the marvelous view down below. A soft, then hard, autumnal horror story with an ending that would make J. K. Rowling’s eyes bulge as she combusts and then evaporates.
"Create no images of God.
Accept the images
that God has provided.
They are everywhere,
in everything.
God is Change—
Seed to tree,
tree to forest;
Rain to river,
river to sea;
Grubs to bees,
bees to swarm.
From one, many;
from many, one;
Forever uniting, growing, dissolving— forever Changing.
The universe
is Godʼs self-portrait."
Earthseed: The Books of the Living, Octavia E. Butler
PARABLE OF THE SOWER & TALENTS by OCTAVIA E. BUTLER
quickly: diary of a young woman preparing herself for the collapse of american democracy and discovering a new faith in the process (god is change! / every neighborhood has its walls / r*pe, murder, cannibalism / burn the witch! / narcotics in utero / empathy is a weakness / bad cops / landslides, drought, fire, and famine / eat the rich, then the middle class, then the poor too / fascism dressed as christianity / no one can read, but everyone has a gun / pyromania in pill form / little fires everywhere / waiting for the end to come / survival of the most prepared / slavery sponsored by capitalism (just like old times) / survive, at all costs / heaven is in the stars)
The year is 2024. The climate has finally changed liked they’ve been warning us for years. The trickle-down economy has failed everyone but the rich, like we knew it would. Society has failed everyone but the 1%. Water costs more than gasoline, and food to feed one person for two weeks may cost you thousands of dollars. The government will kick you out of your home, and then arrest you for being homeless. Slavery has been reinvented by venture capitalists, and co-signed by a neo-confederate president. Don’t think about running off to another state or another country. You’ll probably never make it past the highly militarized state borders without being, r*ped, tortured, slain, or eaten.
This is a stark depiction of what happens when humanity collapses under the weight of capitalism… OEB is not shy about the violence of a dying world.
At the center of this story is Lauren Olamina, a young black girl who has taken a critical look at the world she is coming of age in and deduces that The End is near. The religion, philosophy, and morality of her parent’s generations have failed her. She believes our collective destiny as a species was never to be stationed here on Earth forever. We were meant to spread across the Universe. To fulfill that destiny, humanity must undergo the difficult task of maturation. Our petty wars, religious debates, and moral shortcomings are the traits of an immature species. Only a mature species can build the communities and pool the resources necessary to leave a dying Earth and spread beyond our Solar System to build something greater. All Lauren has to do is survive long enough through America’s downfall to be able to convince the rest of the world of Earthseed’s philosophy.
★ ★ ★ ★ ★ An outstanding survival guide, if read as the author intended.
THROUGH THE NIGHT LIKE A SNAKE by VARIOUS AUTHORS (REVIEW)
quickly: a collection of dark and surreal tales from the twistedly creative minds of a handful of latin american writers (carved bone animals portend a family annihilation / serial killer fan clubs / leaked sextape leads to loss / mirage in the mountain mist / parasitic hauntings / alien thoughts / a living man’s dying flesh / giant rabbits / giant vultures / compassion at a price).
A decent collection of stories. My favorites were THAT SUMMER IN THE DARK by MARIANA ENRIQUEZ, author of OUR SHARE OF NIGHT (two serial killer-obsessed girlfriends are stunned when one of their neighbors kills his family), SOROCHE by MÓNICA OJEDA (a woman struggles with crippling shame after her husband leaks their extremely explicit sex tape), and THE HOUSE OF COMPASSION by CAMILA SOSA VILLADA (a gender-defying sex worker becomes entangled with a convent of nuns with a secret). I’d liked to have liked more of them.
quickly: an everlasting mermaid and her undead companion must defeat a village of evil children and the magicians that control them (why do immortals fall in love? / children of the corn / bad things come in threes / grotesquery and gore galore / men and their ignorance of anything not man / the hunt / taming by mutilation / winter ice on scaled skin / what’s in a heart? / unmasking the wizard / remembering forgotten powers / regenerating lost parts / the essence of a man is a ball of shit in his gut).
What a strange, romantic, bloodthirsty fantasy this was. A sea siren is siphoned from the sea by a Prince, stripped of her teeth, her voice, and forced to be a tradwife. Two daughters are born from this inhumane union of land and sea, and their mother watches expectantly as her daughters devour the Prince’s kingdom bite by bite. Walking over the piles of bodies her daughters have made in their hunger, she finds herself at the beginning of a spectacularly bloody journey where she will fully restore herself, including regrowing her teeth and regaining her voice.
A short read jam-packed with $50 baroque vocabulary words that make the short page count feel heavier than it actually is. In the future, I’d like to return to this book and read it very slowly.
THROUGH THE NIGHT LIKE A SNAKE (LATIN AMERICAN HORROR STORIES) by VARIOUS AUTHORS
A FEW RULES FOR PREDICTING THE FUTURE (ESSAY) by OCTAVIA E. BUTLER
PARABLE OF THE TALENTS by OCTAVIA E. BUTLER
THE GATHERING DARK (FOLK HORROR ANTHOLOGY) edited by TORI BOVALINO
THE SALT GROWS HEAVY by CASSANDRA KHAW
BLACK OBSERVATORY (POEMS) by CHRISTOPHER BREAN MURRAY
PARABLE OF THE SOWER (GRAPHIC NOVEL) by OCTAVIA E. BUTLER*
*read Parable of the Sower earlier this year, ★ ★ ★ ★ ★!! The story is even more poignant, now that her predictions have come true. Rereading this in graphic novel form before I move on to the sequel, Parable of the Talents!
quickly: a late 1700’s irish housewife has her humble island life disrupted by a strange and inimitable scientist from afar, dr. victor frankenstein: (anatomy as an art / unexpected arrivals and departures / empty graves and ocean caves / heartbreaking decision making / ghosts are just faded memories / mysteries of midwifery / medical malpractice / overly tall people need love too / ogres, trolls, and monsters on the beach / sad sex with your drunk husband vs. empowering sex with a stranger / secrets in a locked room / stories of abandonment / sea salt and stone / telling your true love goodbye / true grief never dies / waiting on lost lovers by the sea).
Meet the overly tall, overly compassionate Agnes. Her father made her denounce her true love because he was poor. Then her evil stepmother orchestrated her marriage to an old man because ‘no one likes overly tall women’. That is how the young Agnes came to be Mrs. Tulloch, the island housewife of the drunkard idiot Mr. Tulloch, who spends his either time beating and berating Agnes, or trying to spoil her with more children.
Island life is hard. The wind blows cold, so Agnes keeps the hearth fire burning. Meals are often meager, but Agnes keeps the pot full (with four children and an oaf of a husband, mind you). She goes to church on Sunday, and she tends to her pregnant best friend Katie when she has the time. Her skill for keeping houses warm and fed (as well as being the only woman on the island not pregnant or elderly) makes her the prime candidate as a temporary cook for the strange new scientist conducting odd experiments on the island. One bowl of stew leads to another, and soon Mrs. Tulloch is entangled in the dark world of Dr. Frankenstein’s experiments.
★ ★ ★ ★ ★ Delightful!
This was such a DELIGHTFUL well-paced period-piece horror story, at only 174 pages, with overtones of romance, sci-fi, and mystery. It was part fable, part wormhole transporting me to a misty brackish island at a time and place far out of reach. Not to mention, the writing was full of charming 1700's-1800's slang. Agnes, our kind host, is warm and benevolent, reminiscent of the Beloved Piranesi. Unlike Piranesi however, her curtailment by men’s expectations will reach its limits. Her wrath will be the result of an irreversible change in her compassionate nature, and it will lead to irreversible changes to the island community itself.
quickly: a girl accepts a ride home with the man who may have killed her best friend (cinephile meets serial killer / girl snap out of it dammit! / grandma’s got a gun / smells like teen spirit and BS in here / red flag after red flag after red flag / secret code phrases / psychological blackouts / your boyfriend’s back and it’s gonna be trouble / this ain’t hollywood baby).
Charlie is a college girl suffering from PTSD after her dorm mate is brutally murdered by a serial killer. She feels like it’s her fault for leaving her friend alone that night. Unable to cope with the stress of reality, she lapses into delusional hollywood fantasies whenever things get too tough. Despite her best judgments, she accepts a ride from a guy pretending to be a college student. He lures her to his car, and now, paranoid and stressed, she can’t decide which reality she is in, long enough to form an escape plan.
Anytime the story starts with the protagonist pouring a bottle of pills down the drain, you know you’re in for some MESS! The first Riley Sager book I read, THE MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT, was close to a Stephen King style middle america horror. This story was closer to an R. L. Stine Fear Street book. Quick, fun, a little pulpy, and full of cheap but thrilling twists and turns.
quickly: a father tries everything in his earthly and unearthly power to prevent his son from inheriting a legacy of horror (abuse from the one who loves you most / blessed curses and buried secrets / bisexuality so powerful it’s omnisexual and omnipotent / chalk circles and pits of bones / closed doors opening / evil grandparents with old money / haunted houses with locked rooms / like father, like son / Lord of Doors, Signs, and Symbols / missing limbs and missing mothers / people lost in the darkness / something dark in the woods).
This was a book I read in March of 2024 after seeing it on a list from @bloodmaarked!
To Juan’s disappointment, his young son is showing signs of becoming a powerful medium at a young age, making him susceptible to the deplorable whims of The Order. To keep young Gaspar protected, he must also keep Gaspar ignorant to the powerful magic and sorcery flowing through his blood. As so often happens in families filled with trauma and secrets, the repression of Gaspar’s powers will cause him to be an overly sensitive and deeply emotionally wounded child who has a habit of walking backward into the traps his father works ceaselessly to keep him unaware of.
In time, it will be revealed to Gaspar that Juan is a Great and tortured medium; the vessel of a dark, powerful, and ruthless force known by many as The Darkness. The Darkness is an old god, often presenting itself as a massive black cloud of energy, and makes its power known through tragedy, bloodshed, foreknowledge, and the locking and unlocking of doors to other realms. This ‘demented’ and ‘savage’ force blesses whatever it curses and can mark its followers by wounding them with its golden talons. If you were to reach into this black cloud, you’d pull your arm back to find that your hand has been cleanly amputated and cauterized. Eaten. You may also wake up the next day, marked, with the ability to unlock locked things, or sense people before they appear.
Meanwhile, until Juan’s truth is revealed to his son, Gaspar must learn to grow up with two versions of his dad. One version of Juan is the kind, serious, wise teacher. The other Juan, the dark version, is irrational, voracious, bloodthirsty, and almost evil. Though Gaspar has no knowledge of the powerful magic that flows within him and his father, he has an uncanny understanding that there is something lying beneath the surface of the waking world of reality. Sometimes he even finds himself opening doors no one else can open. No one but Juan.
By the time Gaspar reaches adulthood, he grows up to be just like his father… exceptionally powerful, stunningly beautiful, and outrageously unpredictable (maybe even a little bi too). The final phase of Juan’s elaborate plan to destroy The Order is set into motion by his death, leaving it up to fate, Gaspar, and those who love Juan and his son, to hopefully and finally, close the door to evil for good.
This is sophisticated, detailed, high-level horror, with excellent dialogue and conversation about family, community, lineage, capital, sex, grief, despair, power, and action—and by action I mean forming a well thought out plan and doing what it takes to see your plan through.
quickly: a perfect collection of stephen king short stories (men with unearthly talents / madness and murder / stolen lifetimes / psychic dreams and punished deeds / balancing bad luck and good / grandpa’s still got it / an unseen invasion / angels on airplanes / dogs are friends, gators are not / strollers full of rattlesnakes / gentleman scientists / a man with all the answers).
Well yes, Stephen, I *do* like it dark. What a delightful page-turning collection of short horror stories with a wide range of subgenres… detective suspense thrillers… sci-fi alien invasions… and even a couple of heartfelt dramas.
My favorites were Willie the Weirdo (a grandfather and grandson share a suspiciously strange connection), Danny Coughlin’s Bad Dream (a nightmare gives an old man hell in real life), On Slide Inn Road (a family encounters a couple of hoodlums on an abandoned backroad), The Turbulence Expert (a man uses his perception to change fate), Rattlesnakes (a man on vacation grieving the death of his wife becomes entangled with a haunted woman), and The Answer Man (three encounters with a man who knows everything changes one man’s experience of life and time).
I’ll have to admit this is my first King read (and a perfect introduction) though I’ve seen all the movies, shows, and miniseries based on his work. On paper, like on-screen, the stories felt distinctly American™. Like the feeling of eating a double-meat cheeseburger and fries, then washing it down with a ridiculously gigantic can of Coke. Fast, but filling, and oh-what-fun my taste buds had (though my arteries may clog if I overdo it…).
can you tell that it’s spooky season reading list:
A FAMILY OF KILLERS by BRYCE MOORE
SURVIVE THE NIGHT by RILEY SAGER
EYNHALLOW by TIM McGREGOR (not pictured)
THESE SILENT WOODS by KIMI CUNNINGHAM GRANT
YOU LIKE IT DARKER by STEPHEN KING
