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juushika2024 horror wrap-up vol. 3? of 2340234.
Title: Everything the Darkness Eats
Author: Eric LaRocca
Narrator André Santana
Published: Dreamscape Media, 2023
Rating: 1 of 5
Page Count: 225
Total Page Count: 513,595
Text Number: 1857
Read Because: reading the author, audiobook borrowed from the Multnomah County Library
Review: The rating on this one made me expect that other readers get didn't get LaRocca's queer exploitation horror; I should have actually read the reviews, because we're all picking this up for the same reasons (Things Have Gotten Worse Since We Last Spoke was so silly; reader, I still think about it all the time), but this is simply that bad. It's a first draft with an ISBN, laden with clumsy, sometimes competing metaphors and overwrought interior views, following two disconnected narratives which unite only in the final pages, one going Lovecraftian cult, the other going hate crimes and on-page sexual violence. And the thing is, I get it. These anxieties, about disability and disfigurement, sexuality and social isolation, rape and God and the bonds & violence that exist within/around the queer community, are compelling, are discomforting, and could be refined into ... something. But they're not, here. Exploitation is as exploitation does, I don't really have an issue with what's depicted (except the ableism, which is straight-up Bad); it's just, to what purpose? Shock, yes; gestures at pretension or depth, but somehow with even less refinement that LaRocca's usual, signifying a "you tried, kind of," which in a published book is approximately nothing.
Title: The Haunted Dollhouse
Author: Terry Berger, David Berger, & Karen Coshof
Published: Workman Publishing, 1982
Rating: 4.5 of 5
Page Count: 90
Total Page Count: 513,920
Text Number: 1860
Read Because: this Tumblr post
Review: A most unusual picture book, this is illustrated in black and white photographs (apparently Berger's shtick) and comes in at more than twice the usual length. And then the content, which is a dreamy, layered horror fantasy: a girl's longed-for dollhouse arrives as a surprise gift; she enters into it, a place she knows by heart, but all the usual occupants are unexpectedly absent. The tone can lean campy (especially in the final pages), but more often it has an affected, naïve tone of horror-by-implication which is playful and morbid and wondrous.
I'm intrigued by modern picture books that don't quite feel like they were written for children, that lack moralizing and are particularly dark or weird; but, rest assured, those were written in the 1980s, too! I can only envy what it might have been like to grow up with this - I'm sure it would have lodged in my subconscious and become half my personality. It's now incredibly out of print, which is unsurprising but regretful, although digging up a long-lost copy has a secret pleasure that suits such a strange little book.
Title: A House with Good Bones
Author: T. Kingfisher aka Ursula Vernon
Published: Tor, 2023
Rating: 2 of 5
Page Count: 250
Total Page Count: 514,250
Text Number: 1862
Read Because: reading the author, ebook borrowed from the Multnomah County Library
Review: Our protagonist comes to stay with her mother to find the house & her mother changed, as if repossessed by her deceased grandmother's spirit. This is really quite silly, with an aggressive escalation of events* that makes for striking imagery but failed entirely to get under my skin. I keep striking out with Kingfisher books, despite how much I liked The Hollow Places; I can see the formula of quirky protagonist and humorous voice and handful of cobbled-together striking images too clearly.
* I have a lot of thoughts about where this book lands on the spectrum of genre awareness/character incredulity & subsequent relationship with the supernatural. I like the pivotal relationship between Sam & Gail; and I can appreciate that, in the aftermath, the book is happy to throw subtlety to the wind. But! The escalation from probable to unequivocal to truly ridiculous renders that whole surprisingly tender internal debate retroactively meaningless. Two great tastes that taste bland together.
Title: Everything the Darkness Eats
Author: Eric LaRocca
Narrator André Santana
Published: Dreamscape Media, 2023
Rating: 1 of 5
Page Count: 225
Total Page Count: 513,595
Text Number: 1857
Read Because: reading the author, audiobook borrowed from the Multnomah County Library
Review: The rating on this one made me expect that other readers get didn't get LaRocca's queer exploitation horror; I should have actually read the reviews, because we're all picking this up for the same reasons (Things Have Gotten Worse Since We Last Spoke was so silly; reader, I still think about it all the time), but this is simply that bad. It's a first draft with an ISBN, laden with clumsy, sometimes competing metaphors and overwrought interior views, following two disconnected narratives which unite only in the final pages, one going Lovecraftian cult, the other going hate crimes and on-page sexual violence. And the thing is, I get it. These anxieties, about disability and disfigurement, sexuality and social isolation, rape and God and the bonds & violence that exist within/around the queer community, are compelling, are discomforting, and could be refined into ... something. But they're not, here. Exploitation is as exploitation does, I don't really have an issue with what's depicted (except the ableism, which is straight-up Bad); it's just, to what purpose? Shock, yes; gestures at pretension or depth, but somehow with even less refinement that LaRocca's usual, signifying a "you tried, kind of," which in a published book is approximately nothing.
Title: The Haunted Dollhouse
Author: Terry Berger, David Berger, & Karen Coshof
Published: Workman Publishing, 1982
Rating: 4.5 of 5
Page Count: 90
Total Page Count: 513,920
Text Number: 1860
Read Because: this Tumblr post
Review: A most unusual picture book, this is illustrated in black and white photographs (apparently Berger's shtick) and comes in at more than twice the usual length. And then the content, which is a dreamy, layered horror fantasy: a girl's longed-for dollhouse arrives as a surprise gift; she enters into it, a place she knows by heart, but all the usual occupants are unexpectedly absent. The tone can lean campy (especially in the final pages), but more often it has an affected, naïve tone of horror-by-implication which is playful and morbid and wondrous.
I'm intrigued by modern picture books that don't quite feel like they were written for children, that lack moralizing and are particularly dark or weird; but, rest assured, those were written in the 1980s, too! I can only envy what it might have been like to grow up with this - I'm sure it would have lodged in my subconscious and become half my personality. It's now incredibly out of print, which is unsurprising but regretful, although digging up a long-lost copy has a secret pleasure that suits such a strange little book.
Title: A House with Good Bones
Author: T. Kingfisher aka Ursula Vernon
Published: Tor, 2023
Rating: 2 of 5
Page Count: 250
Total Page Count: 514,250
Text Number: 1862
Read Because: reading the author, ebook borrowed from the Multnomah County Library
Review: Our protagonist comes to stay with her mother to find the house & her mother changed, as if repossessed by her deceased grandmother's spirit. This is really quite silly, with an aggressive escalation of events* that makes for striking imagery but failed entirely to get under my skin. I keep striking out with Kingfisher books, despite how much I liked The Hollow Places; I can see the formula of quirky protagonist and humorous voice and handful of cobbled-together striking images too clearly.
* I have a lot of thoughts about where this book lands on the spectrum of genre awareness/character incredulity & subsequent relationship with the supernatural. I like the pivotal relationship between Sam & Gail; and I can appreciate that, in the aftermath, the book is happy to throw subtlety to the wind. But! The escalation from probable to unequivocal to truly ridiculous renders that whole surprisingly tender internal debate retroactively meaningless. Two great tastes that taste bland together.
