ahintofoctober

[ahintofoctober]

Review of Hungers as Old as This Land (Zachary Rosenberg)

(Also on Goodreads)

(I received an advance review copy for free, and I am leaving this review voluntarily.)

For many of us who perused bookstores in the pre-internet days, especially lovers of genre fiction, we took what we could get. In the town where I lived, we had 2.5 bookstores (the half was mostly kitsch and Hallmark figurines with some books shoved into the back corner), and only one with a dedicated horror section. King, Koontz, Saul, Barker, McCammon, Lumley: that was what was in the horror section, so that's what I read. And don't get me wrong, the books were good. I still read those authors today.

But selection was limited.

The current resurgence of horror popularity is not only MUCH appreciated by this child of monsters and mayhem - it is also no longer a McDonalds menu of familiar choices. The internet, indie publishers, a new generation of writers willing to push the boundaries of the genre and often break right through: horror is, for the moment, a feast even Hannibal Lecter could not deride as inferior. A lot of brains at this table!

And one of my FAVORITE new trends in the horror genre is taking the creeping fingers of dread, the soft touch of something down the back of one's neck, and saying, "Yeah, yeah, this would be terrifying, but what if it ALSO TOOK PLACE IN -"

1340s England, 1980s New York, 1600s Ottoman Greece, 3000BC Egypt, or - in this case - 1880s western America.

Rosenberg has taken things that are often still viewed with suspicion or even outright derision in 2023 - LGBTQ, the mixed race or racial minorities, religions that are not comfortably WASP - and tossed them into a world in which all of the above are rarely mentioned, much less given a chance to helm the narrative. Western classics tend to focus on white male characters, with perhaps a few Native American or black men on the side, and women an afterthought unless clucking wives left behind at the homestead or possibly a sassy prostitute or two who will pop in and just as quickly back out.

Jews in the Wild West? Lesbians? Biracial characters who are not defined solely by that?

Rare.

Here, we get them all. Rolled up into one feisty package of Esther Foxman and her significant other, Siobhan O'Clery, we have two women who, by every rule of "normal" Westerns, cannot exist - I'm not sure even Gene Autrey or Roy Rogers would be able to Happy Trails their way into a campfire song to cover these two!

Esther's father, Abraham Foxman, fought alongside one Cyril Redstone in the US Civil War, but the paths the two men have taken after the war are, despite what seems to be the setup presented at the start, less predictable than many stories with a similar origin of camaraderie and unspoken debts owed. Without spoiling the central conflict, I was thoroughly surprised by the direction the story went with regards to the two men - just as Esther and Siobhan are not your typical Western protagonists, nor is the story going to lead you along familiar paths from beginning to end.

Not everyone comes out of conflict with any morality they ever had intact, and even more so this would have been true in the wilderness of the Western US in the late 1800s. Rosenberg deftly takes the setup, gives it a spin, and waits for the reader to catch up.

Esther and Siobhan are interesting characters, and there were several others I wish we had had more time to get to know, but perhaps that is a deliberate choice here: we don't always get what we want. That is key here within and without!

One of my favorite things in the story, which works perfectly alongside "you may not get what you expect or what you want," is that the mystery of what lives in the Hungers, the mountains just outside the settlement of Grey's Bluffs, is stretched and stretched across the narrative. Anything the characters do not know, neither will the reader. Bits and pieces of SOME creatures existing in the mountains, of pacts made and promises honored, of glimpses of claws and the sounds of wet hunger: the reader has no way to know what these things are. Horror has long been dominated by the familiar ghoulies of the genre: the vampires, the werewolves, the ghosts and demons and spirits.

It is unusual, these days, to read a horror novel with the same uncertainty that must have met readers of Carmilla or Dracula, of The Turn of the Screw or Frankenstein: what IS the monster here, and how might it have been defeated? The need for answers can pull the reader along just as effectively as Van Helsing dragged a bunch of British young people (and one American) across England to fight a vampire, and here, we are absolutely willing to let Rosenberg convince us to come along.

Saying too much about either the plot or the "monsters" would risk spoiling the whole: this one is short and sharp, and absolutely best read with very, very little idea of what the reader is in for. So trust me: it works.

If I have any criticism here, it would be one of my own personal enemies in writing: Stephen King rails frequently against adverbs? I will probably spend the rest of my life doing the same about epithets! Someone or something may be described by what they are or how they look on initial meeting or if their name is not known, but beyond that, epithets should be dropped. I don't look at my cats and think of them as "the black one" or "the calico." The same is true of my own girlfriend, or my family. Yes, my brother has brown hair, but I think of him by his name, not as "the brown-haired man." I find it very distracting and narrative-breaking, though I know there are some who aren't bothered at all by this. So as with anything in entertainment, to each their own!

Overall, I had never considered how perfectly a "wild" or "unknown" land could parallel people who are unusual, especially in the time and place in which they live, but it is impeccably done here: Esther, as a woman who is both Jewish and half-Native, and Siobhan, as a woman of Irish descent and inclination to be raring for a fight at any time, and both of them as women in love with each other and clearly still working out how much the rest of the world will accept this, fit into the larger fractured oddities of life in newly-settled lands and with newly-discovered threats. These may not be the things a reader expects to find in a Western, but isn't that precisely why this works? Grey's Bluffs, the mountains called the Hungers, the denizens of those mountains, Abraham Foxman, Cyril Redstone - none of them fit comfortably into what is expected, and the characters and relationship of Esther and Siobhan reflect that perfectly.

I would have loved more development of all the characters AND the Hungers themselves, but as it is, the drips and drabs of information may be very intentionally given. This is a quick, scurrying read, and it would be very hard not to finish in one go - so maybe it's best it can be read in an evening! Horror-Westerns are a hot commodity right now, Hungers as Old as This Land is a perfect appetizer before plunging into a greater feast if the genre collaboration proves appealing. Give it a taste -

Bon appetit!

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Always fun, even if it took awhile for my copy of This Vile Thing We Created to come in! Though I mentioned to the author that it arriving on Mother's Day weekend (in the US, I know date varies) seems appropriate!

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Review of The Cabin at the End of the World (Paul Tremblay)

Also on Goodreads

(No spoilers!)

With most of Tremblay's books, I enjoy the journey, but do not always feel satisfied, at first reading, with the destination. In some cases, if I reread, I can better understand what was being set up, and thus appreciate the ambiguity of the ending. A Head Full of Ghosts and Disappearance at Devil's Rock were both in this category, and, particularly with the former, I found the reread, knowing the end, much more enjoyable.

Unfortunately, I do not think this will be the case if I were to reread The Cabin at the End of the World. In this book, it felt as if the ambiguity and uncertainty were allowed too much of a hold on the narrative, leaving the reader, at the end, not just trying to decide what they think "the truth" might be, but - at least in this reader's case - wholly unsatisfied by ending with MULTIPLE unanswered questions.

I did enjoy the book - very much so! The premise was set up immediately as a strange, off-putting scenario, and it reflected nicely the whole "cabin in the woods" setup, but in this instance, the cabin was not some decrepit hut stumbled upon by teenagers with all the intelligence and forethought of a puppy released in a Milkbone factory, but rather, a cabin rented, and enjoyed, by an established, normal, stable family having a summer holiday away from the city. It makes sense that their cell phones don't work, that they cannot just hop in a car and leave, and that everything feels, initially, calm and controlled and comfortable.

The characters are also well-developed, and Tremblay, in all his books, has a superb talent for creating family dynamics that feel organic - parents and children who love each other, but, particularly as more and more uncertainty is piled atop their safe little bubble, also struggle as cracks begin to spread beneath the weight. Eric, Andrew, and Wen are likable, interesting, and most of all, believable as a family unit. I particularly enjoyed that, sprinkled through in particular at the beginning, we get glimpses of Wen caught between "this is my family," but also "why do some people think my family is wrong?" At seven, it makes sense that she is beginning to question that which has always been her normal, but is also old enough to begin to understand that she (as someone adopted from China, born with a cleft palate, different in these small, formerly-insignificant ways) and her parents (two dads) are always going to be a little off-kilter to many others, and is trying to nose around her own thoughts. She's very defensive in Leonard asking about the scar on her face, and in asking him - almost, it seems, as a challenge - if he thinks there's anything wrong with having two dads. Eric and Andrew are living their own happy, happily-ever-after existence, but Wen is just beginning to grasp that everyone has to decide for themselves what "family" really means.

And so, as usual, we are presented with a family that hits believable notes. We are also then given the "monsters" of the story, and they, too, are interesting, especially as they contrast with Wen, in particular: she has just begun to question her own situation and place in the world. In Leonard and the others who arrive, we have, instead, a group that is resolutely trying NOT to question their new place - and what it seemingly requires them to do.

The first 2/3 or so of the story worked well, and for those reasons. Even the home invaders are set up as very different people with different personalities, viewpoints, beliefs, and - maybe, just maybe - ideas about the purpose of what they claim they have been asked to do.

Or rather, what they have to ask Andrew, Eric, and Wen to do.

Where the story begin to totter, I felt, was when it became clear we were going to get almost NO definitive answers. Not about what was happening, or WHY it was happening, or what it ultimately meant. Too much ambiguity left me feeling unsatisfied before the crux of the story was even reached. Ambiguity should still offer enough crumbs to piece together, even if it takes rereading, what you personally think has happened and is happening. Not necessarily right or wrong - just a solid opinion.

This book, unfortunately, did not feel to me as if it offered enough to do that, and so was somewhat unsatisfying. I think I would have LOVED the ending... if there hadn't already been far too much ambiguity. More background on all the characters aside from Wen would have been great, even if only explored late in the narrative. Why do Leonard and the others accept so readily what they are doing? DID they have a choice? What in their own background might have made them believe or choose what they did? And, without spoiling the book, was one particular character actually who the others began to believe, or not?

Too many unanswered questions swerves too far from "ambiguous," to "unsatsifying," and unfortunately, The Cabin at the End of the World very much swerved that way for me. But I'm not every reader, and there are plenty who clearly loved this book, and so, as always, your own satisfaction with the way the story is laid out, and how it proceeds, may be very different from mine. If you've enjoyed Tremblay's other works and the ambiguous endings felt solid, you may find much more in this one than I did!

My other major criticism is the change in perspectives and POV towards the end. I can absolutely understand what was being attempted, and WHY, but at least for myself, it ultimately seemed more distracting than emblematic of mental crumbling and fracturing. It is a rare writer who would be able to make such a thing work well, and unfortunately, it did not work well here. It pulled me repeatedly from the story and into considering just that - how it might have worked better.

Regardless of some overall dissatisfaction with both the development and the ending, I do think the very end was solid. It just needed more to flesh out the build-up and, for the reader, additional hints to piece together what was (or was not) actually happening. And I absolutely agree with Tremblay and many others regarding the movie: the book ending was more appropriate and less overlayed with some very nasty implications when applied to gay men and queer history.

Overall, the book was enjoyable, and there were parts that very much stood out as believable within the context - Wen realizing she had left the lid on and reacting hysterically. Eric and Andrew's tension with one another, eventually surpassing the tension from the invasion, even as their LOVE for one another fights back against it. The borderline frantic reaction to possibly putting a past incident with the present - all of these things were disturbing and discomfiting in a way that aided the narrative as a whole.

All in all, I think I would have enjoyed the whole more if (1) more development time had been given to all the characters, but in particular the invaders, and (2) less ambiguity was offered and never resolved before the same was allowed yet again at the end.

I have not yet seen the movie (though I did look up the way it changed the ending), but in even less space and time to offer development, I don't know that it would do any more to make me feel satisfied with the story as a whole. Unfortunately, it seems as if Tremblay is, since the success of A Head Full of Ghosts, dedicated to working ambiguity into his books, and this one is an example of it becoming too much of a good thing - a reread here does not seem likely to give enough clues to leave the reader satisified at what THEY, at least, believe to have really happened. The ambiguity gimmick threatens here, and could very possibly do the same in future, to become too much of a given and expected element, and overshadow the reader's enjoyment of everything else Tremblay is attempting to do. As M. Night Shyamalan - ironically, considering he made the movie! - has shown in the decades since the release of The Sixth Sense, while it can be tempting to attempt to recreate the unusual element that first brought acclaim and attention to a work, it can also eventually leave an audience waiting half-annoyed for what they know is coming and hope this time will at least prove satisfying. Here, an ambiguous ending, unfortunately, did veer into gimmick territory, and at the expense of the story as a whole.

For the initial setup and characters, I'd happily offer 4 stars - but the plot, particularly the ending, and the lack of any material to create a solid idea of what was truly happening, would scrape by with 2 stars, unfortunately. As a whole, 3 seems a solid middle ground. Hopefully in future works, Tremblay can use his talents for character and family development, and tendency to present situations that could be wholly supernatural OR wholly mundane, as better story crutches to lean on, rather than doing so with ambiguity that overwhelms the whole.

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I swear, I'll find time to work on some stories soon. Life is insane recently.

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Profondo Rosso!

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This is hilarious. 🤷‍♀️

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AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH

Pins are not officially available until the final volume releases on the 28th, but they slipped us some. ALSO LOOK AT THE AWESOME-AS-FUCK COVERS.

ALSO IT'S BLACKWATER.

(And no, that isn't a bruise on my hand, just bad lighting. 🤣)

[ahintofoctober]

[ahintofoctober]

Review of Coldbrook (Tim Lebbon)

Also on Goodreads

(No spoilers!)

A novel concept that deftly straddles the lines between science fiction and horror, and between quantum possibilities and, of all things, a Crisis on Infinite Earths-esque meeting of worlds, Coldbrook is not like any zombie story I'd read before. What if, instead of superheroes, a portal from our reality to another is first passed through by, of all things, the walking dead? (Always a bother, things like that, but what can you do???)

In the case of Coldbrook, where an Appalachian underground laboratory on "our" earth has just opened a portal to another, we see three different "what can you do?" scenarios played out by those employed by the lab: Jonah, the Welsh head of the lab after the suicide of its founder (and his friend) Bill Coldbrook, attempts to prevent further disaster by remaining in and monitoring the situation from the lab itself. Holly, in the room where the breach was opened, and where lockdown is quickly initiated after someone (or something. Some... zombie... thing) comes through, escapes through the breach into the alternate world even as the command meant to lockdown the area called Control is overriden by another panicking member of the team. Finally, there is Vic (who I couldn't help but want to call "Vic the d***" for almost every selfish action he took, which ran the gamut from having an affair with Holly to allowing the beginning of a zombie apocalypse), who opts to escape through a duct to the surface... allowing the newly-zombified inhabitants of Coldbrook to begin to escape as well. These three, plus a young woman named Jayne who has a rare, debilitating illness that seems to leave her immune to the zombie "virus," are our main narrators as chaos spreads, civilization begins to crumble, and the few people still alive and sane search desperately for a solution before the crumble becomes a complete collapse.

I loved the way a breach through space-time was introduced, especially when it came to understanding more about the multiverse and how different worlds were (or might have been) attacked by the same zombies (also called "furies") and either fought to survive or fell apart completely. Honestly, I would love to have a companion volume of short stories/histories of the levels of civilizations and tech/weapon development across worlds, and how those differences might have helped, hindered, or completely eradicated the viral-controlled hordes of walking dead. I do love good worldbuilding! There are hints of it throughout, including some earths where it appears human evolution took different paths to our own, and, history nerd that I am, I ate those parts up (unlike this version of zombies, who are not stereotypically keen to eat braaaaaains). I also appreciated that the placement of characters not only shows different approaches to containing the chaos, but also different views of a newly-crumbling world. Jonah in the lab, Holly in the breached world, Vic in his desperate chase for freedom and protection for his family, and Jayne faced with both her physical problems and the terror of being unable to protect herself (either on the ground or, later, in the air), offers the reader glimpses of how quickly and vastly the zombie plague spreads, especially when a virology expert named Marc gets involved and begins to theorize on how the spread will only grow and grow. The idea as a whole is different from anything I'd read before, and I loved the idea of it not being one world under attack, but potentially infinite worlds.

My other favorite aspect (removing my historian cap and putting on my epidemiological one) was "Churu," the disease which Jayne has dealt with her whole life. It seems to be musculoskeletal degenerative, but also has a neural involvement that causes frequent and uncontrollable loss of consciousness. But what I love about it is the likelihood that "Churu" is derived from "Kuru" - to avoid spoiling anything, if you aren't familiar with Kuru, I highly recommend looking it up after reading the book, because it's an utterly brilliant way to bring in... well... Okay, just trust me: look it up after you read!

While there was not time in the book to establish characters and setting as much as I personally prefer, this is not an across-the-board criticism, because in genre fiction, whether horror or romance or sci-fi/fantasy, there are those who live for detailed information on the world, the characters, and the pre-disaster developments, but also those who want to dive right into the action (and skin-chomping) with both feet and swim frantically through the chaos. If you're of the latter persuasion, know that the action starts quickly, and never lets up. You're galloping through the apocalypse with several front-row seats. Hang on tight!

If I did have one real criticism, it would be the British English terminology from American characters. It made complete sense for Jonah (being Welsh), but it was jarring when American characters thought of or referred to "windscreens," "pushchairs," "torches," or "bonnets." Having lived in the UK for several years, as well as getting my first degree there and thus having a lot of practice switching between British and American English (my own Vic - yep, that was his name! - was a professor who on the first day of class told me he would take points off essays if I got British spellings or phraseology wrong - I was the only non-Brit in my course! 🙄), it may be that this stood out to me more than it would to most, but I did find it distracting. I doubt many Americans would even understand "tea" used for the evening meal, so seeing it said by an American motorcyclist was awkward and out of place. As a whole, it was more amusing than anything, but perhaps asking a native speaker of the English variant being used would help in future. I know I'd need help if I wanted to write in, say, Australian English! Especially since 99% of the Australian English I know is from Round the Twist, which is probably a bit dated now!

On the whole, this was a really fun book, with a different take on zombies than I'd ever read before, and characters with both believable flaws and moments of heroism for all. I'd have loved to know more about how things played out at the end on each of the primary worlds involved (without spoiling details there! 😜), but that's no criticism: being eager for more speaks highly of both the writing and the lorebuilding. If you want to be thrown right into the bloody action, and hold on as you careen after the characters as disasters begin to build one atop the other until foundations collapse, this one is a wonderful thrill ride of a horror novel. With so many zombie properties chewing up viewers' brains these last few years, Coldbrook offers a refreshing and delicious take on the genre.

Bon appetit!

[ahintofoctober]

Most recent acquisitions. Also waiting on a couple more shipments of books.

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Finally finished Coldbrook (Tim Lebbon) - the start of the year has been a little crazy. I'll get a review up tomorrow, since my brain's pretty blitzed tonight. It will be both here and on Goodreads (I'll put in the link), so you can choose the preferable format.

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https://twitter.com/todd_keisling/status/1620554100051185665?t=Tqu7vmH_S77luE3vtQOdgQ&s=19

Good.

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My rather messy collection. In my defense, we're moving soon, so buying more shelves would just mean more to move.

Missing some stuff I couldn't take when I first came here, notably multiple volumes of the Pan Books of Horror Stories I'll likely never get back. C'est la vie.

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MAJOR spoilers here (and some speculation) about Coldbrook:

If "churu" is a play on "kuru" and lends resistance to a disease that keeps your brain alive (i.e., prevents zombie-ism), that may be the most brilliant wordplay I've ever come across in horror. And I love it. I've only just gotten to the part where Jayne is bitten by one of the zombies, but appears to be resistant or immune to changing as a result. I'd noted mentally as soon as it came up that I didn't think churu was a real disease, but when I read that part, it was a very 😯🤯 moment. "Kuru!" It's "kuru!'

(For context, if you don't know the term, "kuru" is a prion disease that popped up in Papua New Guinea mid-twentieth century because people in the Fore tribe traditionally ate loved ones [including the brains] after they died. It is speculated that someone in the tribe had CJD or variant-CJD, and infected the others when eaten. Prion diseases cause a misfolding of proteins that then "infects" other proteins and causes them to misfold, as well. This eventually results in myriad symptoms, including loss of muscle control, decreasing brain function, difficulty speaking and swallowing, and, ultimately, death. Prion diseases are incurable, and include CJD [Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease], BSE [bovine spongiform encephalopathy, more commonly known as "Mad Cow Disease"], CWD [Chronic Wasting Disease, also called "zombie deer disease"], and Scrapie [in sheep/goats]. Another form in humans is called Fatal Familial Insomnia [an inherited form] or Sporadic Fatal Insomnia [a randomly occurring form], during which, besides the usual degeneration due to prions, people also become completely incapable of sleeping, eventually resulting in death. It's very rare, though. Very rare. You almost certainly won't get it. So... sleep tight! 😁

More info)

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Everything the Darkness Eats (by malevolent queer Eric LaRocca) and the reissue of Devil's Creek (by Todd Keisling) were both already on my to-buy list, but these all look amazing!

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Coldbrook update: Vic the Dick deserves whatever bad things happen to him. 🤣 Man, I do not like him. Sleeping around behind his wife's back, running as soon as the alarm is raised, not sealing off the way out, and therefore responsible for Zombies on Infinite Earths...

I will not cry if a zombie bites you on the ass, my dude. I just hope you're like the guy in the desert just a foot away from an oasis when the sun finally gets you. No brains for Zom-Vic!

Meanwhile... Holly, honey, if one zombie-thing crawled through your breach, maybe you should expect more on the other side? (Though I still quite like her. Jonah's okay. The characters I most wanted to have give thoughts on the zombies - Melinda and Estelle - sadly were Hot Pockets.)

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I got rather behind with starting my 52 books for the year, due to some crazy life nonsense, but finally got started with Coldbrook (Tim Lebbon) a few days ago.

It's enjoyable thus far - a bit lacking in character development, but that may be a deliberate choice and will be rectified later. At the moment, I don't like two out of three of what seem to be the main characters, but I don't have to like characters to find a book enjoyable. If anything, I can always hope they get comeuppance. Win-win. 🤷‍♀️

The premise is interesting: it's a group of scientists who managed to open a portal to another world, and whaddayaknow, zombies came out. I like it! That's B-movie scary fun. It feels a bit like Stranger Things meets The Passage, and I love both, so all good there!

The only real criticism I have thus far is the use of epithets. In case anyone here doesn't know me from my own writing, I go a bit killer zombie myself about epithets. If a character knows someone's name, they think of them by the name! I don't think of my cat as "the fluffy one," I think of her as Nina! (Though she probably thinks of me as "the one with magical can-opening powers.")

Aside from that minor complaint, it's a lot of fun thus far, and will get even more fun when both zombies and reader break out of the science facility and watch the world start to burn (or shuffle around and moan and bite people). I do hope we get deeper character development, but it's also early enough in the story that different characters (with more development) may take center stage. Of the three that seem like leads thus far - Jonah, Holly, and Vic - Jonah and Vic have gotten a bit of backstory, while Holly has not, so I kind of suspect she'll get gnawed on soon. We'll see! (I'm also intrigued that we've gotten almost nothing yet about Bill Coldbrook. I'm verrrrry intrigued by that!)