If there’s one piece of advice you need to survive a YA horror novel, it’s this: Stay home on prom night. Stephen King can probably be credited with kicking off the trope of blood-soaked proms in his 1974 debut novel Carrie, which famously ends with a massacre when a gory prom prank drives a bullied teenager to unleash her psychic powers upon her classmates and the surrounding town. In The Weight of Blood, which came out back in November, Tiffany D. Jackson takes the bones of Stephen King’s Carrie and reimagines the story for the twenty-first century, updating its themes for a modern audience. Continue reading Review of The Weight of Blood—A Modern Homage to Carrie
Tag: horror
Spooky Stories to Consume Like Candy
Looking for some quick scares to get you in the mindset for Halloween? I’ve already written a post on ghost stories that you can read to get into the spirit of the season, but shades of the deceased aren’t the only things that will send shivers down your spine. Here are a few of my favorite stories featuring all sorts of other things that go bump in the night. These stories are all available online and perfect for giving yourself a quick horror fix before you go out to celebrate All Hallow’s Eve tonight:
Review of The Lost Son—Gothic Audio Drama
A man’s frantic breathing is suddenly interrupted by a low, ominous growl… Before the words of the story even begin, these sounds paint a picture at the beginning of The Lost Son. Sound has a peculiar ability to immerse you in dread and terror in a way that I find harder to accomplish through the other senses. Perhaps that is why we’re seeing such a boom right now of horror stories being produced through audio fiction. These days, I devour audio fiction at a rate about five times faster than any other format. I started reading audiobooks around the same time I launched this blog and then reluctantly branched out into fiction podcasts. But I’ve been delighted over the past couple of years to see a rise in a new kind of audio fiction: the audio drama mini series. Often hosted on podcast platforms, these stories blend the best of both audiobooks and podcasts, with a bit of a throwback to old radio dramas, as well. They are self-contained stories, limited to a small number of episodes, and they revel in the audio format through the use of sound effects, background music, and talented voice actors. I’ve been venturing into this format through the shows produced by Realm, such as Beatrix Greene. And now there’s a new show coming out by a small group of independent creators that seems especially created for my tastes: The Lost Son. Continue reading Review of The Lost Son—Gothic Audio Drama
Review of Yellow Jessamine—Poisons and Possessions
When you’re a woman alone in a patriarchal world, you claw your way to power by any means necessary. This is the philosophy of Lady Evelyn Perdanu in Caitlin Starling’s 2020 fantasy novella Yellow Jessamine. Continue reading Review of Yellow Jessamine—Poisons and Possessions
Review of Lacrimore—A Monstrous Mansion
“It feeds on the horrors we commit….” A malevolent, sentient house serves as the lively setting of Lacrimore, a debut Gothic novella by S. J. Costello. The book came out in 2020 and was a winner of the Independent Publishers Book Awards. Continue reading Review of Lacrimore—A Monstrous Mansion
Review of Ring Shout—Making Monsters
White supremacy can make people into monsters. This is as true today as it was during the heyday of Jim Crow laws and burning crosses. P. Djèlí Clark literalizes this metaphor in his celebrated novella Ring Shout, which came out in 2020. Continue reading Review of Ring Shout—Making Monsters
Review of And Then I Woke Up—Existential Zombies
“…And then I woke up.” These are the words that nearly every reader dreads to hear at the end of a story, suggesting as they do that the characters and situations the reader has just gotten attached to have been nothing more than a dream. But how about at the start of the story? Malcolm Devlin’s latest horror novel, And Then I Woke Up, explores the struggles of characters who have just awakened from an imagined reality and must reckon with their new understanding of the world and the consequences of actions they committed while living under a lie. The book, which came out last month, is the most unique take on a zombie apocalypse I have ever read and has a particularly poignant message for our times. Continue reading Review of And Then I Woke Up—Existential Zombies
Review of Dark Stars: New Tales of Darkest Horror
Horror has really been having a moment lately! This was part of the thought 
process of editor John F. D. Taff when he decided to compile the short story anthology that became Dark Stars: New Tales of Darkest Horror. This collection, which came out last month, was created in the spirit of the seminal 1980s horror anthology Dark Forces, edited by Kirby McCauley, and is meant to do for our current moment of horror what Dark Forces did in the ’80s. Continue reading Review of Dark Stars: New Tales of Darkest Horror
Review of Manhunt—Sex & Gender in the Apocalypse
Men are monsters. This sentiment is literalized to a terrifying degree in Gretchen Felker-Martin’s post-apocalyptic horror novel Manhunt, which came out just last week. This book is gruesomely violent and goes to a lot of dark places, so it won’t be for everyone. But it gives a unique take on a gendered apocalypse from a transgender perspective. Continue reading Review of Manhunt—Sex & Gender in the Apocalypse
Review of My Heart Is a Chainsaw
What if your life suddenly turned into a slasher movie? For most of us, that idea is fodder for our most terrifying nightmares, but Jade Daniels is thrilled by the prospect in Stephen Graham Jones’s My Heart Is a Chainsaw. From the moment I read The Only Good Indians just over a year ago, I knew that Stephen Graham Jones was one of the horror writers to be watching right now. Reading his latest novel has only confirmed that assessment. My Heart Is a Chainsaw came out in August of 2021 and is a brilliant self-aware homage to the horror genre. Continue reading Review of My Heart Is a Chainsaw