Zombies. In some ways they are my least favorite among the multitude of supernatural creatures—they don’t tend to have terribly interesting personalities, and the new trend of zombie romance is just far more disturbing than the classic vampire love stories. Nonetheless, zombies can be very interesting in what they represent. While vampires embody our complicated yearning for immortality and power, zombies represent our fear of death at a downright primitive level—the finality of death and decay, the simple meaninglessness of it, the shift from human to inhuman, and the loss of the self. Meanwhile the survivors of zombie pandemics fight for meaning, and humanity, and for living one more day. My latest read captures this struggle on an epic global scale: World War Z by Max Brooks. Continue reading World War Z–An Epic Zombie Tale
Category: Horror
Nightfall Review and Giveaway!
You know the drill–whispered tales of dark creatures that live in the forest and only come out at night. Only in this world, night lasts for 14 years…
Nightfall, a young adult novel blending horror and fantasy, is a joint effort written by Jake Halpern and Peter Kujawinski, best known for their epic fantasy Dormia series. Nightfall comes out in just over two weeks, on September 22, but I managed to pick up a couple of Advanced Reader Copies at Book Expo America this year so I could give you a sneak peek of the harrowing horror that is headed your way. You can preorder the book now from Peter Kujawinski’s website or Amazon–OR you can ENTER A GIVEAWAY to win a FREE ADVANCED READER’S COPY by the end of this week! Read through to the bottom for instructions on how to enter the giveaway. Continue reading Nightfall Review and Giveaway!
Gothic Tropes: The Unreliable Narrator
This is one of my favorite gothic tropes. Often used in horror or mystery, an unreliable narrator is a first-person narrator of a story whose words the reader is not meant to take at face value. The narrator may be deliberately lying or their words may be influenced by unconscious bias or delusions. In the case of gothic fiction, it is most often this last reason that causes many narrators to be considered unreliable. Continue reading Gothic Tropes: The Unreliable Narrator