50books_poc | Entries tagged with horror

kyuuketsukirui.livejournal.com

Title: Skeleton Man
Author: Joseph Bruchac
Number of Pages: 114 pages
My Rating: 5/5

Summary: When Molly's parents don't return after a trip, she is placed in the care of a mysterious "great uncle" who's appeared out of nowhere. Everyone else believes his story, but Molly knows something isn't right. Soon she becomes convinced that he is the Skeleton Man, a monster from one of the old Mohawk stories her dad used to tell her. With the help of a rabbit who guides her in her dreams, she begins to make plans to escape and rescue her parents.

Review: This is a super short book, but I really enjoyed it. The story is pretty creepy (both the retold tale of the Skeleton Man that Molly relates as well as what happens to her in the present) and I really liked Molly. I also liked how matter-of-factly Mohawk culture was treated.

Title: Shizuko's Daughter
Author: Kyoko Mori
Number of Pages: 214 pages
My Rating: 5/5

Jacket Summary: "Your mother would be very proud..." Yuki Okuda heard these words when she was achieving in school, excelling in sports, even when she became president of the student council. And she could always imagine the unexpressed thought that followed: "...if your mother hadn't killed herself." But Shizuko Okuda did commit suicide, and Yuki had to learn how to live with a father who didn't seem to love her and a stepmother who treated her badly. Most important, she had to learn how to live with herself: a twelve-year-old girl growing up alone, trying to make sense of a tragedy that made no sense at all...

Review: I liked this a lot. I kept feeling surprised at it for some reason and finally I realised why. It felt very normal in a way I am not sure I've ever seen in a book about Japan written in English (as in, not translated from Japanese). Even when the author isn't white, if they're writing for an English-speaking audience, there's often a tinge of exoticism (sometimes more than a tinge), but there wasn't any of that here at all. Sadly, the cover illustration tries to make up for that by showing a girl in kimono, despite the fact that the book is set in the '70s and the only people ever mentioned wearing kimono are Yuki's grandparents, and her father and stepmother at their wedding ceremony.

One thing that bugged me was that there was this chapter where she seems to totally have a crush on this girl and I thought that's where the story was going, especially since later she still has no interest in guys and this is pointed out several times. But then later it turns out that she was just ~damaged~ from her father's betrayal and didn't want to fall in love, and then she does and is happily heterosexual.

tala-tale.livejournal.com

The Ancestors, a collection of three novellas by L.A. Banks, Tananarive Due, and Brandon Massey.

I was seriously underwhelmed by this collection. I couldn't even manage to finish the stories by Banks or Massey. ( Slightly spoilery review behind the cut. )

The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Díaz.

This one is definitely worth reading. It wasn't really what I expected, at all, and I confess that I would've been happier had the ending been more... a resolution of the central issue in the story... but I'm learning that that desire for tidy closure is very much a product of growing up on European fairy tales and their ilk, so I'm trying to outgrow it. The book is full of intriguing characters, really pushed me to the limits of my comprehension of Spanish (I spent a lot of time with my dictionary!), was both spare and lyrical at the same time somehow, and was absolutely memorable. I highly recommend it.

(Edited to include ( tags ).)

tala-tale.livejournal.com

The Good House by Tananarive Due.

I'd give this one a B or B-. ( Slightly spoilerific details below the cut. )

wordsofastory.livejournal.com

Sarwat Chadda, Devil's Kiss

The Knights Templar are still present in modern-day London (though there's not many of them left), and they have a secret mission to fight the forces of evil: vampires, ghouls, ghosts, and so forth. Billi's dad, Arthur (a white British Christian), is the head of the Knights Templar, and ever since her mom (a Pakistani Muslim) died as a result of the Templar's work, he's been cold and closed off to her, focused only on the mission. Billi feels pressured to follow in his footsteps and join the Templars, but she wants her own life, her own friends, and for her dad to pay attention to her.

I really liked this book; it's fast-paced, with an exciting plot (involving the Ten Plagues of Exodus), and interesting characters (including appearances by the Angel of Death and Lucifer), and some genuinely scary moments. I was a bit confused by the fact that everyone in the Templar has a name from the Arthurian legends, some of which are names you would expect to see in modern London (Arthur, Kay) and some which you wouldn't (Gawain, Percival). But this patten is never mentioned in the book, and Arthurian legends have nothing to do with the plot, so I didn't understand what was up with that. There's a sequel that's just come out that I haven't read yet, so maybe it plays a part in the next book.

My favorite parts were moments when the characters dealt with issues regarding Knights Templar in the modern world. For instance, there a long-running argument between Arthur and Gwaine on emphasizing the "demon fighting" aspect of their mission over the "killing people of other religions" part of it. It's mentioned that Billi was raised as a Muslim, but had to convert to Christianity to join the Templars. This isn't a major part of the book, but for me, it made the whole thing feel much more real. I would have liked more exploration of how the Templars have changed and adjusted to the present, actually. Again: maybe in the sequel!

A fun read, and one I recommend.

kyuuketsukirui.livejournal.com

Damn it, I keep forgetting to crosspost my reviews.

Title: Kindaichi Shounen no Jikenbo 4: Onibijima Satsujin Jiken
Author: Amagi Seimaru
Number of Pages: 318 pages
My Rating: 5/5

Jacket Summary: A murderer witnessed through a keyhole who disappears without a trace when the door is opened. An approaching tornado. And snow in the middle of summer... The stage for this tragedy is a cursed island that people call Onibijima...Will-o'-Wisp Island.

Review: I think my love for Kindaichi mysteries is pretty well established, and I don't really have much of anything new or different to say here. I love Kindaichi so I loved this book. :p It's not just that they're good mysteries (though they are), but I really love how the killer always has this heart-wrenching tale of why they had to kill all these people. No one kills for greed or just because they're a psychotic killer. They're always motivated by revenge against the people who wronged them or their friends/family and there's always this big heart-felt apology at the end. idk, I like the ~drama~. (Sadly, these novels and even most of the manga are only available in Japanese, though some of the manga was released in English and I highly recommend those as well.)

Title: The Icarus Girl
Author: Helen Oyeyemi
Number of Pages: 338 pages
My Rating: 4/5

Jacket Summary: Jessamy "Jess" Harrison, age eight, is the child of an English father and a Nigerian mother. Possessed of an extraordinary imagination, she has a hard time fitting in at school. It is only when she visits Nigeria for the first time that she makes a friend who understands her: a ragged little girl named TillyTilly. But soon TillyTilly's visits become more disturbing, until Jess realizes she doesn't actually know who her friend is at all.

Review: I really enjoyed this a lot. I took it with me the other day to my doctor's appointment and ended up reading two-thirds of it on the bus and while waiting. It was definitely a good choice for being stuck out for a long time with no other options. It sucked me in right away and I found it hard to put down.

Apparently the author wrote this while still at school, and it does show, but it's still overall really well-written. The biggest annoyance to me was POV slippage here and there and stuff like how the entire book is from Jess's POV except for one random paragraph from her friend's POV, and then the last two chapters are her parents' POV (that choice at least has a good reason; the paragraph in the friend's POV was unnecessary and tell-y).

I have another of her books on my wishlist and I'm looking forward to reading it.

Title: Naming Nature: The Clash Between Instinct and Science
Author: Carol Kaesuk Yoon
Number of Pages: 344 pages
My Rating: 4/5

Jacket Summary: In Naming Nature, Yoon takes us on a guided tour of science's brilliant, if sometimes misguided, attempts to order and name the overwhelming diversity of earth's living things. We follow a trail of scattered clues that reveals taxonomy's real origins in humanity's distant past. Yoon's journey brings us from New Guinea tribesmen who call a giant bird a mammal to the trials and tribulations of patients with a curious form of brain damage that causes them to be unable to distinguish among living things. Finally, Yoon shows us how the reclaiming of taxonomy will rekindle humanity's dwindling connection with wild nature.

Review: I did not previously have any interest in taxonomy before picking this up, or really much interest in nature at all. But I happened to see it on the shelf at the library and it sounded interesting, so I decided to give it a go. I'm glad I did, because it really is interesting and written in a very engaging way. One thing that bugged me, though, was that she went on and on and on about how wonderful Carl Linneaus was and I would have liked for her to at least touch on the fact that not only did he order plants and animals, but also humans (with whites at the top, natch).

rachelmanija.livejournal.com

According to his bio, Chadda was raised Muslim and married a vicar’s daughter, with whom he had two daughters, and he wrote this book for them so they could read about a bad-ass, biracial heroine from a Muslim-Christian marriage.

Billi SanGreal, daughter of a white and unenthusiastically Christian father and a Pakistani Muslim woman who died protecting the young Billi from ghuls, is now the only girl in the modern version of the Knights Templar. The Templars protect the world from supernatural evil; though only Christians can officially be knights, they have a number of active allies from other religions. Billi’s group is down to nine Templars, and they train and fight like maniacs to make up for their small numbers. But Billi is tired of constantly training under her distant father’s harsh supervision, and wants to have a normal life. Good luck with that!

What I liked best about this book was the treatment of religion and religious myth. Though Christianity is central to the Templars, Jewish and Muslim myth, culture, and characters play significant roles that aren’t just window-dressing. The religious and racial diversity is handled in a matter-of-fact way, which I appreciated.

I liked Billi a lot — despite carrying a lot of weight on her shoulders, she mostly avoids whining, and she’s both pleasingly kick-ass and believably prone to making mistakes and getting beat-down by fallen angels. And I liked the grubby, believable London setting.

What I did not like was the prose, which varied from passable to absolutely terrible. Billi describes her own eyes as “black orbs” at least twice, giving me flashbacks to “The Eye of Argon.” And that’s not the only turn of phrase which is Argon-esque. (I should note that Billi never describes how pretty she is - it's all stuff like "My black orbs met my father's blue ones as I gasped in horror.")

Recommended if you like the premise and can tolerate some seriously bad prose and a lot of gross horror imagery. Also note that though there's some humor, the story is more dark and less fluffy than it sounds. (No sexual abuse or assault - it's dark in other ways, including but not limited to endangered children.)

Devil's Kiss

firecat

The audio version of Joplin's Ghost is published by Griot Audio, which specializes in contemporary African-American fiction. Well narrated by Lizan Mitchell. Joplin's Ghost is part well-researched historical novel (following Scott Joplin's life) and part modern novel (following the character of Phoenix Smalls, an up and coming R&B star).

I really admired the research. I liked the way the plots were woven together. The writing was smooth. Some of the characters and their interactions are satisfyingly complex.

Most musical styles owe a lot to music that came before, and the best musicians honor their influences and musical ancestry. That's one of the primary themes of this book and I really enjoyed those parts of the book. Another theme is the difficulty of living a musician's / performer's life, and Due does a great job comparing/contrasting Joplin's struggles with those of Phoenix.

And oh yeah, it's a ghost story. I didn't really warm up to the ghost story part of the novel; I kept arguing with what was happening. That might be due to my relative inexperience with the ghost story genre.

(X-posted to my journal)

annwfyn.livejournal.com

Two quite quick reviews.

First of all, 'Twisted Tales' by Brandon Massey. Massey is a horror writer in the vein of Dean Koontz and Stephen King. I'd not come across him before, but then I'm not a big horror reader, and was a little suspicious when my housemate brought this book home from the library. I still don't think I'm a horror reader - I enjoyed 'Twisted Tales', but I think that was because the format (a collection of short stories) meant that I could dip in and out of it, and also kept some of the things that tend to put me off horror (mostly excess gore) in check.

'Twisted Tales' is well written, and has a wonderful range of tales. Massey is a very talented writer, who writes strong PoC characters, who are very clearly and unapologetically coded as such, which I liked. I loved the variety as well; although some of the stories didn't work for me (I cringed rather at the Succubus story), others were wonderful (with the werewolf story being my favourite).

I'm not sure if it's sold me on Massey as a writer - I suspect I'd struggle through a full novel, in much the same way as I struggle with most horror novels - but for someone who just wants to 'taste test' the genre, it was a really good read.

Secondly, 'The Mephisto Club' by Tess Gerritson. I don't think it matters what I say in this review, really. The fact of the matter is that I walked home from work whilst reading this book, and spent ten minutes standing on the side of the road, not wanting to take my nose out of it to check for traffic, despite the freezing temperative in London today. So, I think we can safely say it grabbed me.

It isn't high literature, I must admit. To me, it felt like a far more intelligent Dan Brown. It is another of Gerritsen's Rizzoli and Isles series, but this novel took an odd and occult turn, with the pair getting involved with a series of killings linked to a strange group called 'The Mephisto Society'. There is conspiracy, suggestions of the supernatural, ancient and hidden 'histories', and a twist in the tale that I actually wasn't expecting. I suspect that a proper theologian, or anthropologist, may well weep bitter tears at this, but I really enjoyed it.

As ever, I also loved Jane Rizzoli. I love her messy, complicated, unglamourous life - her parents are divorcing, she's trying to cope with a new baby, and she's still a kick ass cop.

Overall, a very fun read. But then it's Tess Gerritsen. She's always good.

Current Mood: bouncy

wordsofastory.livejournal.com

46. Terence Taylor, Bite Marks: A Vampire Testament

On Christmas Eve, in Times Square in the mid 1980s, a hooker named Nina is violently murdered by a vampire. Just before she dies, she manages to turn her small infant into a vampire itself to give it a chance to survive. Now everyone's trying to find that baby: the Veil, a secret government of vampires in charge of making sure humans never find out about them; Adam, the vampire who killed Nina, who wants to kill the baby before he gets in trouble with the Veil; Jim, Nina's brother, who wants to save the baby and get revenge; Steven and Lori, a couple working on a book about true stories of vampires; among others. And then the zombies show up!

I can't say this book is anything particularly deep, but it's a lot of fun. I love books set in NYC, and Taylor clearly knows it well. I like his diversity of characters- black and white and Asian and Arabic, rich gallery owners and street kids and junkies and donaters to the Met. The writing, on a sentence to sentence level, is nothing special, but the plot is fast and enjoyable. Originally I thought the idea of a 'vampire baby' was a bit cheesy, but it turns out to actually a creepy concept. Overall, recommended, and a great read for right now, since the entire book takes place in the few days between Christmas Eve and the first few days of January.

Current Mood: cheerful
Current Music: The Simpsons on TV

whereweather.livejournal.com

#23. Bayou, Vol. 1, Jeremy Love (writer, illustrator) with Patrick Morgan (colors)
2009, Gettosake and ZudaComics.com (online), D.C. Comics (print version)

A shoutout to

chipmunk_planet for posting about this book back in June. This is the first -- and, I know, not the last -- book I've discovered via this comm that I would have overlooked otherwise, and which I found absolutely amazing

Bayou is an incredibly creepy, graphically startling work of deepest [Black] Southern Gothic, set in rural Mississippi in the 1930s and featuring as hero the courageous young daughter of a sharecropper.

All by itself, that premise would make it kind of remarkable: heroic little girls are in markedly short supply in the comics, much less poor, ragged black ones. The ambition and underlying coherence of this comic's vision, and the graphic aplomb with which it is executed, make it downright astonishing. I am really impressed by Bayou. My only serious complaint about the print version is that this "Volume 1" is really not complete; the story is published serially online, at ZudaComics.com (under the aegis of D.C. Comics), and although this book collection heralds itself as "the first four chapters of the critically acclaimed webcomic series," it doesn't end with much closure -- the author was clearly not planning these chapters to be a self-contained story arc. (That said, it just drove me online to see What Happened Next. :) You can read it online, too (if you have a fast enough connection...)

( More about the story... )

kethlenda.livejournal.com

Helen Oyeyemi's first novel, The Icarus Girl was recommended in this community, and I ordered it about five minutes after reading the review! Then, I unfortunately let it languish in my TBR pile. When I got the chance to read her latest book, White Is for Witching, I decided to read WIfW first, since it's "hot off the presses." I very much liked it, and I'll definitely get to The Icarus Girl before too long!

White Is for Witching blends gothic horror, racial politics, and the older, bloodier sort of fairy tales into a deeply unsettling novel. The story opens with a passage intentionally reminiscent of "Snow White," describing the mysterious imprisonment? disappearance? death? of the heroine, Miranda Silver. From there, we move backward in time, to the point when the events leading to Miranda's fate began.

The story is told from several points of view, all of them seeing events from different perspectives, all of them possibly unreliable narrators. Miranda herself, her brother Eliot, her lover Ore, and her ancestral home all have their own versions to tell as the plot unfolds.

The house looms as the center of Miranda's tale. Menacing and xenophobic, it desires control over the people it considers its own, and means harm toward those it sees as foreign. The house and its ghosts want to make Miranda a vessel for their hatred. Miranda struggles against the house's domination, a battle that threatens to destroy her mental health and possibly her life.

Oyeyemi's prose is haunting and poetic. I hesitate to use the word "beautiful," as that might give a false impression of "pleasantness." Oyeyemi depicts nightmares, not pretty dreams. She has a knack for describing ordinary things in a way that makes them suddenly horrific, and when she describes horrific things, she does it in a subtle, oblique way that feels like you're looking at something so unspeakable that you can only look with your peripheral vision.

White Is for Witching works as a novel of the supernatural, and it also works as an allegory. I hesitate to even mention the A-word, for fear of driving away readers who've been burned by preachy authors. Oyeyemi doesn't preach, however. There's a message, but it never overshadows the plot and characters. It's just that you can see an extra dimension to the story if you look through the lens of allegory.

chipmunk-planet.livejournal.com

( This is no children's story, despite the cover. )

It's a weird but interesting tale. I have volume two on pre-order right now, can't wait to see what happens. Recommended.

Current Mood: intrigued

teaotter.livejournal.com

Reviews #6-#9, cut to save your fl.

Light on the Sound, Somtow Sucharitkul ( Read more... )

Darker Angels, Somtow Sucharitkul (writing as S.P. Somtow) ( Read more... )

My Soul to Keep, Tananarive Due ( Read more... )

Teach Yourself Visually: Sock Knitting, Laura Chau ( Read more... )

cyphomandra.livejournal.com

I put off reading this for ages because I thought it was about vampires (I really enjoyed Octavia Butler’s Fledgling, which I read before this challenge, but otherwise I am pretty much vampire-free after previous over-exposure), and was therefore quite pleased to discover that although one of the leads turns out to be a 400-year old Ethiopian who gained eternal life by drinking blood, he does not skulk around after dark looking for necks to bite on and going on about his immortal angst. Instead, David works from home as a translator and looks after his daughter Kira, while his wife Jessica, who is unaware of her husband's true nature, is an investigative journalist. Although everything appears to be perfect at the beginning, Jessica’s work starts to bring her into contact with David’s hidden past, and David’s actions to protect his family become increasingly problematic.

( Spoilers. )

Overall, I liked the book, but I didn’t feel that the horror part of the story (the I’m married to a monster! track) always ran smoothly with the hidden cult with special powers, with David/Dawit the slightly uneasy fulcrum between them. But there are a lot of really nice moments in there, especially the glimpses of different times and different worldviews - I've read Due's The Black Rose, which is historical/autobiography, and that plus the bits in here make me wish she would get back into historical fiction again at some stage.

kateorman.livejournal.com

In the Miso Soup is a short thriller set in Tokyo's red light district. It's mostly psychological: when the gore does arrive, it's plentiful, but rather than releasing the building tension it actually manages to make it worse. Inevitably, there's sexualised violence, although not nearly as much as I expected; Murakami will set up horrible scenarios, then twist off in another direction. I was compelled by the story, but also fascinated by Murakami's brooding observations of Japanese culture.

firecat

This post is based on a post I made in my own journal, edited to remove stuff off topic for this group.

I have been meaning to write about Futureland by Walter Mosley, which is a collection of nine short stories all set in the same near future cyberpunk world. (The subtitle is either "Nine Stories of an Imminent World" or Nine Stories of an Imminent Future.") The stories are arranged in chronological order and some of the characters recur, and there's some general movement in the shape of the world and its players, but there isn't really what you would call a plot holding the whole thing together.
( Read more... )

technocracygirl.livejournal.com

The blurbs on the back of this copy are mostly from horror authors, and this definitely fits the horror tropes much more than sf/f ones, hence the classification.

This is the book that reminded me that I don't particularly *like* horror. I get too swept up in the emotions of a piece, and, even as fast as I read, I can't read fast enough to get through the horror and out the other side in one sitting. Which leaves me asking my husband if he wouldn't mind leaving the bedroom door open just a bit, because I don't want to go to sleep in a completely dark room.

Interestingly, though, we don't get to the horror-story tropes until a good long way into the book, maybe a third or more of the way in. There is horror early on, but it's a "mundane" horror.

The protagonist, Angela, is definitely a woman who is trying to have it all (or at least all of it that she wants) and isn't really succeeding. Her son thinks she's a harridan, her husband isn't the best of husbands, and she has a really hard time connecting to people well enough to have friends that she can consider real friends. She's very real, and oh, I identified with her.

The flashbacks and flashforwards work very well. It's nicely-constructed. I think that people who read a lot of horror might find it...not derivative, but I could see that much of it followed certain tropes. That said, just because you follow a well-trod storyline doesn't mean that you can't do it well, which I think Ms. Due does.

I enjoyed it, and might even re-read it again, just to watch Angela and Cory again.

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Writers of Color 50 Books Challenge

Entries tagged with horror

Kyoko Mori & Joseph Bruchac

Books 26-27

Book 24

12. Sarwat Chadda, Devil's Kiss

Carol Kaesuk Yoon, Helen Oyeyemi, Amagi Seimaru

Devil's Kiss, by Sarwat Chadda

Joplin's Ghost by Tananarive Due

'Twisted Tales' by Brandon Massey/'The Mephisto Club' by Tess Gerritsen.

Terence Taylor, Bite Marks: A Vampire Testament

#23. Bayou, Volume 1, by Jeremy Love with Patrick Morgan

3. White Is for Witching, Helen Oyeyemi

#17 - Bayou Volume One by Jeremy Love

Somtow Sucharitkul, Tananarive Due, Laura Chau

My soul to keep, Tananarive Due, 2/50

"In the Miso Soup", by Ryu Murakami (1997)

Walter Mosley, Futureland

#1 - The Good House, by Tananarive Due