Totally Biased Review #7: Flowers for the Sea by Zin E. Rocklyn

Zin E. Rocklyn's novella Flowers for the Sea is a great debut. It's short enough to be read in one sitting, which is exactly what I did. It's not the kind of book one wants to put down once they've started reading it. 

In this novella, the survivors of a sunken kingdom inhabit a large boat. It has been years since they've seen land, their crops and livestock are dead and dying, and they are nightly plagued by giant, carnivorous birds. On top of all that, there have been no successful births since the kingdom sank. Enter our protagonist, Iraxi, an outcast who has been wronged by many if not all who are aboard, and who is very far along in her pregnancy, further than anyone else. All their hopes lie on her, and so she begins the story confined to quarters. 

Ostracization, vengeance, and fate are key themes woven into the text. The epigraph reads, "To Courtney, for teaching me that my anger is a gift." And there is anger in this novella. A bit of sorrow and much anger. Told from the first person, the prose is stylized enough to draw you into the world without annoying or alienating the reader. The most prominent example of this is the use of "mine" in place of "my." The atmosphere Rocklyn conjures is claustrophobic and oppressive, perfect for the story of a woman alone against the remains of the world. 

As a reader, I love revenge and giant monsters. I also love body horror, and Rocklyn mines the changes a person's body goes through during pregnancy for delightfully uncomfortable effect. Basically, this is my kind of book, and chances are if you're reading this review then it will be your kind of book, too. Don't put off reading Flowers for the Sea. 

Get it here: https://bookshop.org/books/flowers-for-the-sea/9781250804037

Totally Biased Review #6: Memento Mori: The Fathomless Shadows by Brian Hauser

I had a lot of fun reading Brian Hauser’s debut novel, Memento Mori. It is explicitly a King in Yellow story, but it also fits into the “lost film” subgenre. I’ve been thinking of it as a kind of cousin to Gemma Files’s excellent Experimental Film and the Pine Arch Collective stories by Michael Wehunt. If you like Robert Chambers’s mythos, Maya Deren, and the underground/punk scene of late 1970s New York City, then this book will be for you.

This novel is presented as a series of found documents, the bulk of which is a memoir by the character C.C. Waites about her time with underground horror filmmaker Tina Mori (hence the title of both the novel and the memoir). The memoir details how she and Tina met as freshmen in college, how Tina discovered the power of cinema, their adventures together, and how The Yellow Sign hangs over their lives. The other elements are an introduction and afterword by the academic identified only as BRH (a stand-in for the author, I assume, as they share initials), the unpublished fifth issue of a zine by a teenage girl who went missing in the nineties, and a letter from Tina Mori, all of which forms a frame for the memoir and provides a chilling conclusion to the novel.

There is a line towards the end of BRH’s introduction that goes, “There is a nameless fear pressed into these pages, something that threatens to unleash itself with each reading.” This is one of my favorite tropes, the idea of the book is dangerous to those who read it (see also Mister B. Gone and House of Leaves). This trope always primes my spine for shivers. Of course, this also parallels what the play “The King in Yellow” does to characters who read it in the world of the story.

Another aspect about this novel I like is how the reader can imagine it as an artifact from a parallel reality (I suppose I should say, for clarity's sake, that it is not that; this book is the product of the author's fertile and vibrant imagination). The text itself invites such play, as it touches not just on dim Carcosa but also on the idea of parallel realities. BRH certainly stands for Brian R. Hauser, but it is not this world’s Brian Hauser. There may not be a SUNY Red Stone here, but there is certainly one in the world of the story, and who’s to say there isn’t one elsewhere?

To reiterate, this is an entertaining read and if anything above seems intriguing then you should definitely check it out. Pairs well with Robert Chambers's collection The King in Yellow, the anthology Lost Video edited by Max Booth III and Laurie Michelle, the novel Experimental Film by Gemma Files, and the film The Driller Killer (dir. Abel Ferrara, 1979).

Get it directly from Word Horde!

Totally Biased Review #5: Underworld Dreams by Daniel Braum

Most people have things they regret, things done and not done, failures, losses. Regret is the unifying theme of Daniel Braum’s third story collection, Underworld Dreams. The characters in these stories yearn for second chances, but no one gets them.

Two stories in this collection are set in Australia, three in the Americas south of the U.S. border, and the rest in New York. At least three are set in prior decades, two explicitly in the eighties. Most of these stories are first-person, and I remember most being in present tense. Stories that particularly stood out for me are “The Monkey Coat,” “Rebbe Yetse’s Shadow,” “Between Our Earth and Their Moon,” “Underworld Dreams,” and “Rum Punch is Going Down.”

In “The Monkey Coat” plays with a favorite trope of mine: the cursed object. When a woman, whose husband has abandoned her and their young adult daughter, checks what may be left in their storage unit, she finds a monkey-hair coat that belonged to her grandmother. She puts it on and soon she finds herself losing time as those around tell her she’s acting unlike herself, and it seems she never takes off the coat. Like several other stories in this collection whether or not anything supernatural is happening is left ambiguous.

“Between Our Earth and Their Moon” is a fantasy detective story and functions both as a stand-alone and as a sequel to “Across the Darién Gap,” a story in Braum’s first collection The Night Marchers. The narrator, Nate, regrets the death of a character in that prior story, but otherwise the plot of “Between Our Earth and Their Moon” is unrelated. In the story the narrator is hired “under the table” to banish some gremlins plaguing the construction new subway tunnels, one of which, he is told, leads to the moon. I really enjoyed this story. The concept alone is a winning one, and of course Braum executes it well. I’m a sucker for occult detectives, but I think Nate could easily join the ranks of Harry d’Amour or Dr. John Silence if he has any further adventures.

Another theme running through these stories to which I am partial is that of doubles or shadow-selves. Doubling is perhaps at its most dramatic in the title story, “Underworld Dreams,” where time itself—or perhaps just the protagonist’s experience of it—seems to split at a particular “crossroads moment” during a trip to Panama. As time loops backwards and forwards so does the prose, and though I am usually put off by repetition Braum keeps it engaging. As the title piece this story is the collection’s anchor, a job it does well as it brings the themes of regret and doubles seen throughout the collection to the fore while remaining an engaging read.

These are well-written stories of strangeness and magic. If you like strange tales (in Aickman’s sense of the term), magical realism, the fantastic, and the ambiguously supernatural, then you should read this collection. You can get it directly from the publisher here.

Totally Biased Review #4: The All-Consuming World by Cassandra Khaw

Cassandra Khaw’s The All-Consuming World is an exciting, violent, and wonderfully horrific sci-fi novel set in a far future world that, much like our own, is full of pain. In the novel the remnants of The Dirty Dozen, a band of queer clone/cyborg outlaws, must rescue a long-lost friend they thought dead before she is destroyed by the ominous, nearly omniscient sapient AIs called Minds. Though this brief summary may capture what happens, it doesn’t really tell you what the book is about. In this novel the plot felt less important than the characters and the setting.

The novel is mostly experienced through the character Maya, a cybernetically enhanced mercenary inhabiting clone body number who-knows-anymore. She is fond of the word “fuck,” is prone to violence, and thinks of herself as a living gun to be aimed and used by the sociopathic leader of The Dirty Dozen, Rita, who has chemically altered Maya to be devoted to her. Maya’s salty, down-in-the-dirt perspective is a terrific way to experience the flawed, damaged and damaging world Khaw has created.

The prose they use to evoke the universe of the story is delightfully dense and even poetic, a mix of anachronistic slang, violent rage and technical detail. I frequently put the book down to look up words I was unfamiliar with (attosecond, for example). Some readers may balk at the notion of regularly referring to a dictionary, but I enjoyed it. Though the prose isn’t what many would call easy to read, I still went through the novel at a good clip; it was very compelling.

I suppose I should take some space to warn away readers who are offended by profanity. As noted above, Maya likes to curse, and she’s not the only character who does. If swear words turn your stomach or make you blush, this is not the novel for you.

Though as with any novel there are a number of themes a reader can pick up on, the one that most hooked me was the exploration of what it means to be human in a post-human world. What is the effective difference between a digitized human consciousness and an artificially created one? In a world where clone bodies are viewed as disposable, where genetics can be tweaked to give a person a row of extra mouths down their throat and limbs can be easily replaced with cybernetic prostheses, how does a person’s physical body tie into their identity? When does one stop being human, or even become a monster? If you find these kinds of questions intriguing, then The All-Consuming World is worth reading.

If anything I’ve written seems interesting or if you just like far-future space stories and you’re willing to invest a little effort, then Khaw’s novel is an excellent choice. If you’re already a fan of their short stories, as I am, then you already know that their debut novel is something you want. The All-Consuming World will be published by Erewhon Books on September 7th, but you can pre-order it now. Pre-ordering is a great way to support authors whose work you love and admire, and this is a book will make a great addition to any spec-lit fan’s library.

-Ross

Totally Biased Review #3: As Summer's Mask Slips and Other Disruptions

The deep, dark woods have always been a source of fear, a place where the all the wonder and terror of nature lurks. In Gordon B. White’s debut collection, As Summer’s Mask Slips and Other Disruptions, characters who go out into the woods (or some other isolated place in the natural world, such as a field or lake) experience how strange and, often, dangerous nature can be. Not all of the stories occur in the wilderness--”The Lure of the Lollipop Tree,” “Open Fight Night at the Dirtbag Casino,” “Mise En Abyme,” and “The Meatbag Variations” are all urban horrors. “The Rising Son,” “Mise En Abyme,” and “Eight Affirmations for the Revolting Body, Confiscated from the Prisoners of Bunk 17” take place in post-apocalyptic, or at least dystopian, settings. But the major impression I had after reading this collection was of deep shadows between looming trees.

The collection is dedicated to Gordon’s father, which is very fitting as another major thread running through these stories is that of fatherhood, and particularly the relationship between father and child. In “The Lure of the Lollipop Tree,” the protagonist Jim is consumed with the idea of becoming a father. In “The Rising Son,” a father pins all his hopes on his newborn son. “The Buchanan Boys Ride Again” finds a father and son, their relationship strained after the father’s divorce, forced to fend off a siege by deadly monsters. In “As Summer’s Mask Slips,” Sarah returns to the isolated home of her recently deceased father, where she reminisces on all he taught her about the surrounding woods. “Birds of Passage,” which may be my favorite story in the collection, is narrated by a man thinking about that time when he was ten years old and his father took him canoeing down a river. All of the stories just listed explore fatherhood from different angles, though the fathers in “Buchanan Boys,” “Summer’s Mask” and “Birds of Passage” seem very closely related—all three are divorced, live in a rural area or have a close relationship with nature, and bring their children out into the wilderness.

White’s prose is elegant and evocative—in other words, literary (“in the most complimentary sense of the word” as John Foster says in his introduction). As a reader, prose style is a crucial component in my enjoyment of fiction, and the language in these fifteen stories is strong enough to even carry me through the two that I didn’t connect with. Through the magic of ink on paper he transports the reader to varied locations, from deep woodlands to city streets to and subterranean houses, and conjures real emotional attachment.

Thinking back over this collection, there are several stories that really struck me. “Hair Shirt Drag” for kicking off the collection with a middle finger raised to ‘normal’ society. “We Eat Dirt and Sleep and Wait” for its surreal central image and its frame narrative structure. “The Buchanan Boys Ride Again” for being a fun B-movie of a short story, where a father and son have to fight off hirsute slug monsters. “As Summer’s Mask Slips” for being the creepiest of the bunch (the behavior of the figure in the woods made my flesh crawl). Finally, the closing story, “Birds of Passage,” for being serene, unsettling, and beautiful.

If you haven’t read one of Gordon B. White’s stories, then you have much to look forward to. As Summer’s Mask Slips is a book you’ll be glad to have on your shelf.

-Ross

Totally Biased Review #2: Luminous Body

Brooke Warra’s Luminous Body is a novellette preoccupied with grief and motherhood. One of the first things we learn about our narrator, Melissa, is that her mother died of cancer. Melissa’s only living relative is her grandmother Gertie, who helped raise her and is also her boss at the local diner. She keeps the ashes of her high school science teacher, whom she euphemistically refers to as her first boyfriend, in a plastic baggie. Melissa narrates the story to an unnamed “you,” detailing how she may have been impregnated by a cosmic event and everything that followed.

This is a beautifully written novella, and reads like a piece of literary realism with a speculative undercurrent. There are no tentacled monsters from beyond the stars or lunatic cultists; the darkness of Luminous Body is more grounded and familiar, the horrors of poverty, of loneliness, of disease, of family. These are intimate, internal conflicts, and excellent sources from which the Weird grows.

Once you start reading this story you won’t put it down until it has finished and left you with a quiet ache. It’s win of the 2019 Shirley Jackson Award for Best Novelette is well-deserved. As of this writing the second edition of Luminous Body is still available from Dim Shores, so make sure you pick up a copy.

-Ross

Totally Biased Review #1: Weird Horror Spring 2021

The second issue of Weird Horror is full of monsters. Some are unseen, some bare themselves to our scrutiny, and some serve as our narrators.

This issue’s gleefully macabre cover art is provided by the great Nick Gucker, while black-and-white interior art was done by Wesley Edwards. The issue opens with non-fiction. First, Simon Strantzas muses on what distinguishes Horror from Fantasy and Science Fiction, and then Orrin Grey gives us a brief overview of the Hollow Earth in fiction, film and D&D.

There are nine pieces of fiction in this issue. “Unmaskings” by Marc Joan tells about a masquerade through two intercut timelines, one in present tense about what happens at the party, one in past tense recounting a character’s experience immediately before the party begins. In “Feral” by Catherine MacLeod the narrator ruminates on her relationship with her off-the-grid survivalist father and how she left him. “Adventurous” by Stephen Volk puts a light-hearted, adult spin on a Narnia-esque portal fantasy. “A Mouthful of Dirt” by Maria Abrams is an interview transcript in which a woman recounts a camping trip that went monstrously awry. “Things Found in Richard Pickman’s Basement, and Things Left There” by Mary Berman is a thoroughly enjoyable response to “Pickman’s Model.” In “Bonemilk” by Rob Francis a wealthy landowner learns what it means to truly give something back. “Scratching” by Alys Key is a ghost story set specifically during the COVID-19 lockdown in London. “Eyes Like Pistils” by Evan James Sheldon chronicles the floral transformation of a drifter lost in the woods who consumes a seed given to him by a strange priest. In “The Dreadful and Specific Monster of Starosibirsk” by Kristina Ten, after the river which serves as the source of their livelihood is polluted and destroyed, the citizens of Starosibirsk decide to create a monster to lure tourists back.

The issue ends with book reviews by Lysette Stevenson and movie reviews by Tom Goldstein.

Though for me none of the stories hit the creepy, surreal heights of last issue’s “Children of the Rotting Straw” by Steve Toase, they are still well worth your time. A strong thematic thread of the mysteries and dangers of nature, and our relationship to the natural world, runs through most of these stories. As with any anthology or magazine some stories will affect you more than others, but in thinking back over this issue, I remember finding the stories “Feral,” “Things Found in Richard Pickman’s Basement, and Things Left There,” “Bonemilk,” “Eyes Like Pistils” and “The Dreadful and Specific Monster of Starosibirsk” to be particularly striking. If this is the new pulp, then I am down for it. Bring on issue three!