Tag: horror

The Gremlin’s Library: The Death of Jane Lawrence

October 27th, 2022

Trigger warnings for the review: some minor gore discussion
Trigger warnings for the book: gore, surgical/body horror, ghosts, unreality/reality shifting shenanigans, period-typical misogyny (period is, like, Regency/Victorian-ish?)

The Death of Jane Lawrence is a book I’ve once again deliberately stepped into while knowing very little about, and I’m very pleased to report that whether by luck or fate, this is absolutely, absolutely my shit. To be fair, I’ve already read – and adored – The Luminous Dead by the same author. So when I saw that Caitlin Starling had a gothic horror/ghost story coming out, I put that on my TBR faster than you can say “Daphne du Maurier”.

Still, it took me a while to get around to it, and new books are always a bit of a gamble. Jane Lawrence is mysterious from the start, with a main character who’s so uncanny about her own prospects and so organized that I was wondering (honestly dreading) that the reveal might be that she was a murderer. (Small spoilers: it’s not. Thankfully.) Jane Shoringfield is setting about finding herself the most suitable possible husband, now that her benefactors/employers are moving and not taking her with them. She wants a husband where there’ll be as little romance as possible, where she can make herself useful, and where there won’t be any fussing around about courtship or anything like that. After reviewing all the potential candidates, she makes her first choice Augustine Lawrence, reclusive doctor… who’s very surprised to hear about this. Especially since she has it all figured out ahead of time. (Having a wedding proposed To You like a job offer must be a bizarre experience. I truly, truly adore Jane as a character.)

After Jane helps him in his clinic, he accepts on one condition – she must never spend the night at Lindridge Hall, his crumbling family manor outside of town, where he has to spend every night. She’ll spend the nights at the clinic; he’ll sleep out there. Given Jane’s disinterest in sex/romance (at first, anyway – more on that) she’s fine with this. More concerning is the case she helps him with — where there is something growing in a man’s stomach. And despite their best efforts, despite a successful surgery, the man’s bowel turns necrotic during the night and he dies. An overheard conversation tips off Jane that there’s something more involved here; dark magic and meddling in the occult.

Of course, the nature of these stories means that obviously Jane ends up at Lindridge Hall. The story does some absolutely fantastic work with setting the tone and mood, and the dark magic and ghosts at work are both evocative of the long tradition Starling is working within and original enough to keep tripping up every prediction I made. The character work, however, is where I think I’m the most impressed. Jane Lawrence herself is a take on a particular archetype within older work (cf. Austen, the Brontes) and occasionally more modern literature, of the passed-over, overly-practical Plain Jane sibling/spinster/what have you. Charlotte Lucas in Pride and Prejudice is likely the most famous example, or at least the most instantly recognizable. But instead of entering into a loveless marriage and being punished for it, simply “making peace” with her lot, or just falling in love with Augustine with no other questions or demands, Jane is an active, questioning and flawed protagonist. Augustine, who in other books would be elevated or heroized, is both noble and pathetic, making choices that don’t feel like just “bad choices for plot” but the kind of squirrelly bad decisions that come naturally from his characterization. (And I have so much to say about the ending, but it’s best experienced without spoilers, truly.)

My one gripe with the book is ultimately a minor one, and one that only exists in context with the literary world as a whole. It was, I’ll admit, a bit disappointing when I realized about a quarter of the way into the book that Jane was falling in love with Augustine. I expected it; certainly I wasn’t disappointed with the narrative once I readjusted. But part of me enjoyed the set-up of a marriage of convenience with someone who came off as completely disinterested in sex/romance, but who could easily get embroiled in someone’s personal issues anyway. Ultimately, this isn’t that book, and I wouldn’t ask it to be any other book than it is, but it does make me a little sad that those characters still don’t exist as much as they could.

Otherwise, it’s a great read. Nothing jumped out at me in terms of bigotry, although I did wait a while before writing the review; the main thing is the misogyny inherent in the premise, and even that isn’t too bad. If you’re sensitive to gore, I’d give this one a miss. But if you like Mexican Gothic, Crimson Peak, Jane Eyre or Rebecca (the latter two of which I’m fairly certain are explicit influences) definitely pick up a copy.

The Death of Jane Lawrence is available through Barnes & Noble – or find it at your local indie store here!
The Gremlin’s Library: Certain Dark Things by Silvia Moreno-Garcia

January 4th, 2022

TWs for Certain Dark Things, and to a lesser degree this review, include violence, cartels/drug wars, and a particular character who threatens a lot of sexual violence but never thankfully gets around to it.

I’ve been falling more and more in love with Silvia Moreno-Garcia’s writing for a few years now, starting with Gods of Jade and Shadow in 2019, Mexican Gothic in 2020, and reading both Signal to Noise and Untamed Shore after that. Her books are consistent in the perfect way; they’re all massively different from each other in terms of setting and aesthetic, but all hold similar cores, similar character and romance elements, things that draw me back to the concept of a ‘Moreno-Garcia book’ over and over again. Certain Dark Things is no exception, with the added draw that it’s been out of print for years! Originally published in 2016, CDT became popular enough as a cult novel of sorts that it’s now been republished by Tor Nightfire – which is how I’ve finally gotten my hands on it.

So, to start; Certain Dark Things, like most of Moreno-Garcia’s books, is a period piece. Unlike the others, however, it doesn’t have a specific time period that it’s set in (MG is the 50s, GoJaS is the 20s, StN is the 80s, US is the 70s). Instead, CDT is a neo-noir/cyberpunk novel that creates a bizarre, alternate-history version of Mexico City that on some points, feels like it’s from the eighties or nineties (there are no computers, and cellphones appear but aren’t overly fancy), but on other points has near-future technology (ex. Cualli the genetically modified Doberman). The main point of divergence for the setting is that vampires aren’t just real – they’re everywhere. There are several subspecies of vampires, with their own politics, families and interspecies conflicts; none of them are allowed within the walls of Mexico City, which is proudly and determinedly vampire-free. Enter Domingo, 17-year-old garbage collector and homeless kid, who stumbles upon the very hungry, very alone, very desperate Atl and her dog Cualli on the subway. Atl is a Tlāhuihpochtli, an Aztec vampire, who can only drink the blood of the young and who is running from the Necros, a clan who have already killed off most of her family.

It’s hard to pin down what exactly makes CDT work for me where so many vampire books don’t. It’s not even that I’m not into vampires – they’re just so samey after a while! But I think that’s part of what makes CDT so gripping. It’s a vampire book, sure; but it’s also a crime novel, a thriller about cartels and narcos and drug kingpins, who just happen to also be vampires; and it’s also a love story with a bittersweet but ultimately happy-enough ending. (Those who have followed my frustration with romance discourse will know exactly why this hits so well for me.) Domingo in particular is a wonderful break from the usual human everyman character, in that he’s even more of the everyman; his naivete and youth is never downplayed or turned into some sort of Special Signifier of Humanity. He’s just genuinely a very sweet, very innocent person; which comes with just as much awkwardness and choking overfamiliarity as it does the feeling of being seen. I found myself identifying a lot with Atl in this book, particularly with her struggle to not get attached to Domingo because she knows that he will get hurt; not because she’s putting herself down, but because he doesn’t have the life experience to know what he’s signing up for.

More than anything, I just wish this book was longer. The narrative pacing is excellent and doesn’t need any padding; but I’m dying to learn about more of the different vampire species, or the politics in other parts of Mexico, or if Atl is in fact the last of the Tlāhuihpochtin. Still, I don’t know if Silvia Moreno-Garcia has any plans to make any sequels, so we’ll see what the future holds. A fantastic read, and I can’t wait to read more from her. (Next is Velvet Was The Night!)

Certain Dark Things is available through Chapters and MacMillan.
The Gremlin’s Library: The Luminous Dead by Caitlin Starling

December 15th, 2020

TW: This book and review deals heavily with mental illness, hallucinations/delusions, and the claustrophobia of deep cave exploration.

It’s part of the nature of the literary world, at this point, that I will hear something About a book and how it’s good and still know very little about it. Perhaps, like with Every Heart a Doorway, the only thing I actually know going in is the vague premise and that it has ace rep. Perhaps I know even less than that – Magic for Liars took me so off guard because I knew almost nothing, and I went into Gingerbread and White is for Witching entirely blind. Rarely, I actually know something about the setup of the book, like with Ninth House or Mexican Gothic – but I like being surprised.

The Luminous Dead is a book I heard from ‘best-of’ lists and recommendations from people I hold in high esteem, but I was still nervous to go in. All I knew about it was that it was science fiction-horror, and that there was something about caves. So I am extremely glad to report that one, it is queer; two, it is one of the most terrifying books I’ve ever read; and three, it’s one of the books in the latter half of this year breaking a very, very disappointing streak in which I would pick up a highly-recced book, hit major ableism or something similar a while in, and put it down quite miserably.

So, the basics. Somewhere in the far future, in a setting with terra-formed (but not too terra-formed) planets and colonies, Cassandra-V is a particularly miserable place to live. The mines twisting through the planet offer wonderful resources, but the mines themselves are incredibly deep and dangerous, necessitating months-long expeditions by solo divers to avoid attracting the local wildlife. Gyre Price is particularly keen to get away from Casssandra-V, so she lies about her credentials, and takes on an incredibly dangerous diving job that she’s sure she can pull off. Probably. Downside: Solo cavers are supposed to have a full team of techs helping run their high-tech suit; the suit that feeds them, drugs them, keeps them safe from whatever’s in the air or the water, and holds all their supplies. Gyre, instead, has a single woman on the comms with her – Em, the financier of this peculiar job. As it turns out, Em is not quite stable. Luckily, neither is Gyre.

A lot of books with this premise would have gone for the easy chills; ‘stuck with the psycho’ feelings, tired tropes about mental health, insults about narcissism or psychopathy that would have had me throwing the book (metaphorically; it was on Kindle) across the room. But what makes The Luminous Dead so bloody excellent is that for all that Em and Gyre are both crazy, it’s a sympathetic narrative to both of them. It’s a book written about insanity that doesn’t treat insanity as a spectacle for able-minded people to goggle and stare at; it’s horror that treats mental illness as the most terrifying for those inside of it. I cannot and will not make any judgements or statements about Starling, but I’m deeply impressed to find a horror writer that doesn’t seem more preoccupied with creating a ‘horror movie villain’ than tapping into the psyche of her characters. As a result, the cave, Gyre’s body, and the unravelling mental states of both Em and Gyre all reflect each other. Gyre gets more and more injured and less and less sane as the book goes on, mind and body influencing each other, and the deeper she goes into the caves, the deeper she falls into irrationality. I’m also struck by the commentary on co-dependence – it’s hard not to feel for both Em and Gyre as they’re attracted to each other, while being brutally aware that the attraction isn’t healthy. Will it last outside of a situation where they are each other’s lifelines? It’s unclear – and that lack of clarity is part of the whole book. Are you going up or down? Is this real or false? Is the person you trust lying to you or not? Are you sick or are you insane? Are you dying or are you surviving?

I’ve tried to avoid outright spoilers, but I don’t think I can recommend this book any more highly. I kept waiting for a punchline, almost; something that would show Em clearly as a Crazy Villain and Gyre as an Innocent Victim. Instead, at every turn, I was surprised for the better, and yet, never quite thrown off by something out of left turn. Highly recommend, and kind of wishing I had something higher than a 5/5 to give.

The Luminous Dead is available in most places, including Google Play Books and directly through HarperCollins.
The Gremlin’s Library: Annihilation by Jeff Vandermeer

September 3rd, 2020

Read my First Chapter Thoughts on Annihilation here!

When I first read some of Annihilation (in the Nebula 2014 collection), I wasn’t impressed. But now that I’ve read the whole thing, in its incandescently weird glory, I’m looking back at 2016 me and whispering, you silly prat. In my defense, Annihilation starts off slowly; it’s almost deliberately stereotypical at first, invoking old 50s and 60s military sci fi. Then it starts dropping clues that things are a little stranger than you think – for example, the whole cast are women, and the book doesn’t particularly care, but the fact that the book doesn’t care that much is exciting enough on its own.

The premise of Annihilation is this: an all-women squad of scientists are sent into a strange place known as Area X, a slowly-expanding area closed to the public that has something happening to it. Several expeditions have disappeared into it; any of them that have emerged have died shortly after, whether by suicide, cancer, or other means. The team is made up of a biologist (our narrator), an anthropologist, a surveyor, and a psychologist; there was originally a linguist who disappeared at the border. The biologist narrates as they explore a tower that seems to plunge into the earth – and upon inhaling some strange spores, she realizes that the psychologist has been hypnotizing them, and that she is now immune to the hypnotic suggestions.

This is the third of Vandermeer’s novels I’ve read; Borne and Dead Astronauts are both significantly stranger than Annihilation in that they wear the fascination with Weird Biology on their sleeve. Borne has a giant flying bear destroying a city and a starfish morph… thing, and Dead Astronauts is, um, well, Dead Astronauts. (Where do you start with that book? The duck? The person made of salamanders? The time-travelling lichen lady?) In comparison, Annihilation is slow to build up to its true weirdness, but that’s also part of its strength; the biologist is discovering the weirdness, rather than the reader being plunged straight into it. Both are very different reading experiences, and Annihilation also has a very personal element to it that Borne and DA don’t quite have; perhaps because it at least pretends to be set in our world, and because of the biologist’s first person narration.

Ultimately, I think my favourite part of Annihilation is exactly that – the personal, emotional element. It’s understated, especially if you’re used to narrators with strong, vivid emotions, but that’s exactly what makes the unnamed biologist so interesting; she’s not somebody with strong emotions about other people, or who opens up easily. She’s quiet, internal, calculating, happy with her own company, and not the kind of character who usually gets to drive a story by herself or tell her own story.

I highly recommend Annihilation to fans of Vandermeer’s other work, Wilder Girls by Rory Power and/or Nalo Hopkinson’s Midnight Robber – and of course, the inverse is also true, especially if you like weird biology and plants that are trying to eat you.

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The Gremlin’s Library: The Northern Caves by Nostalgebraist

August 25th, 2020

This is an interesting entry in my book review series, because The Northern Caves is, not strictly speaking, a book! Instead, The Northern Caves is one of those oddities on Archive of Our Own; original fiction that still taps into ‘fannish culture’ enough to be featured on AO3. There’s plenty of these, but The Northern Caves also occupies a special corner in that it’s OF that has gotten a small but dedicated cult following of its own. Ironically enough, considering its plot.

Heads up; due to some of my specific complaints, this is NOT a spoiler-free review.

Trigger warnings for this review and TNC include: suicide, implied suicide baiting, religious delusions, dissociation, non-consensual drugging, ADHD misrepresentation/myths, and cultish behaviour.

So, about The Northern Caves. TNC is a surrealist horror piece centered around the (fictional) works of one Leonard Salby and his Chesscourt series. Chesscourt, or at least the pieces of it we get, is deliberately evocative of the works of Madeleine L’Engle, The Wizard of Oz and other strange old kidlit. Unlike these, however, it is even more preoccupied with morality – which is what leads to its forum following. At the beginning of the story, we are told only that something terrible happened at an event called ‘Spelunk 04!’ – the rest unfolds as one member of the forum tries to write up the terrible events, honestly and as truthfully as he can manage.

The result is a mindbending, dissociation-inducing moral/cosmic-horror as Paul/GlassWave details the lead-up to Spelunk 04!. It all began when the forum began to set about analyzing Salby’s final, unpublished and incoherent Chesscourt novel, which is several hundred pages of apparent inconsistency, typos, and disconnected moments. The book, The Northern Caves, is usually untouched by this particular forum group, even coining a phrase of its own – ‘don’t go into the caves’ – but Aaron, moderator and brave soul, decides he wants to try anyway. The first three Spelunks, then, are normal forum threads, and even formatted in forum style, for that good old throwback energy.

The writing of these parts is phenomenal. Every character has a distinct voice, and even the subtle tension of the forum fights between Aaron and Marsh, so dreaded by Paul, is all the more appreciated by people who have been in those fandom-meta discussions gone sour. TNC isn’t just about a book, it’s about fandom in all of its strange nature, and is both a response to the Homestuck fandom and House of Leaves.

Where the book falls apart, unfortunately, is at Spelunk 04! itself. One of the hardest tricks to pull in a book like this one is making the ‘cosmic horror/terrible event’ actually measure up to the suspense and hype you’ve purposefully built around it. Nostalgebraist gets… most of the way there. Spelunk 04! is, unlike the other events, an in-person meetup to read through some of Salby’s old letters and writings that had fallen unexpectedly into one member’s hands. The moral texture and delusion-adjacent ramblings that ensue are, to be clear, incredible. The below is a quote from one of Salby’s letters;

We have always been asking what to make of our moral sentiments since we’ve clearly had them since dawn of time. Many attempts to theorize and reduce (Moses Jesus Buddha Confucius et al) which have led so very very many astray. Often we take a stab and get “Golden Rule” = “treat others how you would want to be treated” which doesn’t cover it bc MUNDUM IS BIGGER THAN DESIRE. We have been feeling this forever and Golden Rule evades it as does more modern, degraded theories e.g. Mill and other similar morons.

As somebody who experiences both religious delusions and has more than one personality disorder knocking around in my head, this spoke to me on a – frankly kind of dangerous level. An obsession with moral rightness seems good on the outset, but as the rest of the story shows, it can go very, very badly.

However, around the time that Aaron breaks down and starts taking Xanax, halfway threatening suicide, the story begins to pull back, possibly afraid of its own consequences. I don’t blame it; it’s heavy stuff, and there’s even an incredible portion that describes dissociation in more detail than I’ve ever seen it described. But from there on, it slides into almost-cheesy territory. There are drugs involved, but Aaron doses all of them with Adderall, acting like it’s cocaine or meth – despite common beliefs, by the way, Adderall will not act like cocaine. At the very least, you have to take a CONSIDERABLY higher amount, and you have to not have ADHD – which, given the common makeups of nerd populations, seems incredibly unlikely for the group of seven at Marsh’s house.

Additionally, the terrible event is not nearly as terrible as promised. Ultimately, what appears to have happened is that Aaron, high on Adderall and losing his shit in a clinical sense, said something to three people at a restaurant that later caused them to commit suicide. The connection here is never explored, nor is the immediate sense of guilt that Aaron is then saddled with – like a weird person with religious delusions is the only thing that had ever happened to those people!

However, one thing about the climax and ending of The Northern Caves really sticks out. Paul stays to comfort Aaron after they hear about the suicides, and it’s implied about as clearly as possible that they had sex – they flirt, kiss and talk about it. There is no homoerotic implication about any of the main characters prior to this, and it makes me deeply curious about the feeling of Nostalgebraist barreling towards one planned ending and then rapidly changing their mind. The earlier chapters certainly hint at something far more “depraved” and deadly than three probably-unconnected suicides and all of the actual members of Spelunk! 04 surviving untouched.

The Northern Caves is a fascinating work, with much in common with Middlegame by Seanan McGuire, Annihilation by Jeff Vandermeer, and of course, House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski. Despite a bold beginning and a format full of promise and intriguing detail, it “chickens out” on its ending – which leaves all the more questions to be asked.

Another torturous thing about the ending is a lack of resolution; there’s resolution to Spelunk! 04 to some degree, but not to Chesscourt, or to Leonard Salby. This is a matter of preference, of course, but it really does feel like a larger story was hinted at and then ultimately abandoned.

The Northern Caves can be read (for free!) in its entirety here: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3659997/chapters/8088522

Tag: horror

The Gremlin’s Library: The Death of Jane Lawrence

The Gremlin’s Library: Certain Dark Things by Silvia Moreno-Garcia

The Gremlin’s Library: The Luminous Dead by Caitlin Starling

The Gremlin’s Library: Annihilation by Jeff Vandermeer

The Gremlin’s Library: The Northern Caves by Nostalgebraist