Book #197 of 2022: The Hole by Hye-Young Pyun A bitter little novella about a Korean man who’s bedridden and initially only able to communicate by blinking, having been severely disabled by the car accident that also killed his wife. Lacking any other family to take him in, he’s looked after by his mother-in-law, who …
Tag Archives: horror
Book Review: Dead Silence by S. A. Barnes
Book #196 of 2022: Dead Silence by S. A. Barnes A thrillingly creepy sci-fi horror novel in the same general vein as movies like Event Horizon, Alien, or Sunshine, where human/corporate greed may be the true enemy (for anyone who can survive the crazed assault of its previous victims). Out on the far vestiges of …
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Book Review: Paperbacks from Hell: The Twisted History of ’70s and ’80s Horror Fiction by Grady Hendrix
Book #180 of 2022: Paperbacks from Hell: The Twisted History of ’70s and ’80s Horror Fiction by Grady Hendrix A whirlwind tour of decades of English-language horror publishing, spanning from Rosemary’s Baby in 1967 through the middle-grade era of R. L. Stine and Christopher Pike in the mid-90s, and quite a lot in between. While …
Book Review: Such Sharp Teeth by Rachel Harrison
Book #170 of 2022: Such Sharp Teeth by Rachel Harrison This title is too straightforward for too long, telling the story of a woman getting bit by a werewolf with little to distinguish it from any other iteration of that plot. It’s all competent, but somewhat unremarkable, and as I read along, I kept impatiently …
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Book Review: Dracula by Bram Stoker
Book #168 of 2022: Dracula by Bram Stoker First published in 1897, this gothic horror novel remains an influential classic. Its characters like Van Helsing and the bloodsucking Count himself are now household names, and so many of our cultural ideas about vampires that subsequent stories have either reiterated or consciously pushed back against can …
Book Review: Road of Bones by Christopher Golden
Book #162 of 2022: Road of Bones by Christopher Golden [Disclaimer: I am Facebook friends with this author.] The atmosphere of this horror novel draws a reader in immediately, well before any hint of the supernatural appears. Set in the far north of Siberia, one of the coldest places on earth that’s nevertheless inhabited, it …
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Book Review: What Moves the Dead by T. Kingfisher
Book #139 of 2022: What Moves the Dead by T. Kingfisher This creepy little novella is a retelling of Poe’s The Fall of the House of Usher by way of Mexican Gothic or The Girl with All the Gifts — which is to say, it posits that a rare breed of mushroom colony at the …
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Book Review: Woman, Eating by Claire Kohda
Book #122 of 2022: Woman, Eating by Claire Kohda A neat little character study of a modern “vegan” vampire — her own term, although she actually means that she drinks pigs’ blood to avoid feeding on humans — who despite her unique circumstances is as overwhelmed and directionless as any other 23-year-old unpaid intern. I …
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Book Review: The Vampire Lestat by Anne Rice
Book #115 of 2022: The Vampire Lestat by Anne Rice (The Vampire Chronicles #2) 1976’s Interview with the Vampire is a modern classic of the gothic horror genre, popularizing a new variety of sympathetic bloodsucker with its brooding and homoerotic immortals. Following in 1985, this first sequel isn’t nearly so good, but it still has …
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Book Review: The Jewish Book of Horror edited by Josh Schlossberg
Book #114 of 2022: The Jewish Book of Horror edited by Josh Schlossberg As usual for a genre anthology, some of these stories strike me as stronger than others, but they are collectively rather great, presenting a uniquely Jewish chorus of voices interpreting and exploring horror in that particular context. Here we find beings of …
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The Lesser Joke: book reviews and more 