EYNHALLOW By TIM McGREGOR (REVIEW) 

reading rainbow library haul:

RUN MAN RUN by CHESTER HIMES

SUPERNATURAL SHORT STORIES by SIR WALTER SCOTT

THE BOOK OF HOURS by RILKE

SAVE OUR SOULS by MATTHEW PEARL

THE LIFE OF HEROD by ZORA NEAL HURSTON

BLACKTOP WASTELAND by S. A. COSBY

RAZORBLADE TEARS by S. A. COSBY

SURVIVE THE NIGHT by RILEY SAGER (REVIEW)

quickly: a girl accepts a ride home with the man who may have killed her best friend (cinephile meets serial killer / girl snap out of it dammit! / grandma’s got a gun / smells like teen spirit and BS in here / red flag after red flag after red flag / secret code phrases / psychological blackouts / your boyfriend’s back and it’s gonna be trouble / this ain’t hollywood baby).

Charlie is a college girl suffering from PTSD after her dorm mate is brutally murdered by a serial killer. She feels like it’s her fault for leaving her friend alone that night. Unable to cope with the stress of reality, she lapses into delusional hollywood fantasies whenever things get too tough. Despite her best judgments, she accepts a ride from a guy pretending to be a college student. He lures her to his car, and now, paranoid and stressed, she can’t decide which reality she is in, long enough to form an escape plan. 

Anytime the story starts with the protagonist pouring a bottle of pills down the drain, you know you’re in for some MESS! The first Riley Sager book I read, THE MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT, was close to a Stephen King style middle america horror. This story was closer to an R. L. Stine Fear Street book. Quick, fun, a little pulpy, and full of cheap but thrilling twists and turns. 

★ ★ ★ 

SIDLE CREEK by JOLENE MCILWAIN (REVIEW)

quickly: stories of heartbreak, hard times, happiness, and folk magic, in the hills of West Pennsylvania (a creek with healing powers / cattle on the loose / child birth and death / grieving with nature / healing through helping / crazy old ladies / a father’s fight club / bad happenings in dark woods / working men / divination by egg shell / shell shock / secret obsessions / stolen babies). 

This book is a small creek-side town, packed into several stories from various lives. These people go to work, and their kids go to school. They stop at the local diner every so often, and they handle public matters privately. Some of the people live in the hills, hunting, trapping, and grieving. Some live in town, where they can gossip and shop. 

The writing is clear and direct, and the focus is always Life. The births, deaths, sicknesses… happiness, grief, and miseries. There is beauty in the perfectly captured mundane. Some of these stories are just moments, flash fiction (some maybe too short), whispers in time. Others are encapsulating and momentous pieces that could be expanded into their own works. Appalachian still-life in literature form.

I loved everything West Pennsylvanian, rural, and small town about this book. My favorites were You Four Are The One (young girls help a grown woman give life), The Loosed (a father is left to raise his sons alone), The Less Said (darkness in the woods), and The Red Boots (the violence of men’s obsessions). 

★ ★ ★ ★

HIDDEN PICTURES by JASON REKULAK (REVIEW)

quickly: a recovering addict gets a new job babysitting a haunted five-year-old. (a young woman trying to live a sober life / a child with a questionable existence / homes that come with guest houses and hidden gardens / disturbed suburbian parents / physical and spiritual battles with sobriety / weird and quirky superstitious neighbors / wickedly beautiful artwork from the spiritual realm / gardeners who make you want to break rules)

not too shabby. not too complex either, honestly. the tone sits firmly in the mystery genre, for me. the ghosts in this story don’t scare or thrill me, but they don’t bore me either. stephen king is quoted on the back cover as saying “the language is straightforward”, and that is absolutely correct. not much poetry or soul to the writing, but it was a full story! it was compelling enough to pull me to the end, but not my favorite ending. it has the kind of ending that you find in most “B” level thrillers (which is no shade, i love b-movies). the ending is a resolution, but it doesn’t take my breath away.

★ ★ ★

more thoughts: SPOILERS!

Some personal context… after a reading sprint that began sometime in March, I spent the past few weeks with THE BOOKS OF JACOB. It is a tome of a book, 900+ pages, and the most time I’ve spent with a book in years. It was an interesting and detailed world to be in, but I couldn’t wait to get back to the thriller/mystery/horror genre, and HIDDEN PICTURES is my return. I read it in less than 24 hours. 

The artwork really pulled me in, and wasn’t as gimmicky as it could have been.

The story opens up with Mallory reflecting on a paid health study she participated in which involved her being blindfolded in front of a group of men. She was instructed to raise her hand if she felt eyes on her, testing her ability to sense the male gaze. She was insanely accurate, telling the instructor that she felt a buzz in her mind whenever she sensed looks. The instructor offers to do more research with her, but Mallory trades her phone for Oxy and the lady is unable to reach her.

After this, we are immediately thrown into the present where Mallory is now sober and has been for 18 months. She is preparing to interview for a babysitting job with The Maxwells, youngish parents living in an affluent suburban enclave. After an awkward and stressful interview that involves her pulling out a piss test to prove her commitment to sobriety, she is hired. Caroline, the Mom, says they believe in giving people second chances, but you learn fast that you can’t believe anything they say.

Soon enough, five-year-old Teddy has formed a close bond with Mallory. The creepy pictures he draws always seem to show an entity hanging around him that no one else can see (but Mallory can sense). Teddy’s mom brushes the pictures off and tells Mallory not to encourage him. After the quirky next-door neighbor tells Mallory about the ghost stories surrounding the guest house where she lives, she eventually convinces herself that her guest house is haunted and the ghost is speaking through Teddy. Half right.

Of course, her pursuit of this tightens the underwear of The Maxwells, and so she begins to investigate under the radar. She enlists the help of The Maxwells’ gardener whom she’s told that she was a local student (and not a recovering person being given a second chance to get her life on track). Fast forwarding past the awkwardness of living with a married couple whose marriage is a thin facade of happiness, the “hauntings”, the creepy photos with the Samura-like girl in them, Mallory trying to confront the super rationalist parents about the supernatural realm, and Mallory trying to make contact to the ghost by ouija board… eventually the ghost jumps into Mallory’s body while she is napping and causes her to draw all over the walls of The Maxwell’s pristine white walls.

The rest is a loud and gory climax with a small scoop of falling action on the side. The parents fire Mallory because of the “artwork”, attributing it to some sort of mental break caused by recovery, and they give her 48 hours to get out. Alex, the gardener, is told about her true background as a recovering addict (but still wants to help her). She miraculously solves the mystery at the last minute and proceeds to do the dumbest thing that characters can do in a mystery/thriller… confront the bad guys with no backup, collateral, witness, or weaponry. The Maxwells reveal their devilry… they are kidnappers who stole a little girl and made her disguise herself as a boy. The child’s real mother, whom Caroline Maxwell killed, is who has been haunting little Teddy.

Caroline Maxwell plans to kill Mallory by drug overdose, but she’s saved by Ted Maxwell who secretly hates his kidnapping murderess wife (but has done nothing but enable her). A delusional Ted is killed by Caroline, in the midst of some pipe dream of him running away to some foreign land with Mallory. A chase ensues, with Mallory running into the woods with Teddy and hiding in a tree. Just as Caroline has hunted them down, the spirit of Teddy’s dead mother possesses her, getting Teddy to kill Caroline with an arrowhead conveniently found earlier in the story. 

That’s how most elements of this story felt. Convenient. The end, while loud and gory, seemed staged. Like I could see the beginning from the end. All the little easter eggs stood out like they had billboards above them pointing out “CLUE HERE”, or “FORESHADOWING”. Yet, I still enjoyed it. Like I would an R.L. Fear Street book. Three stars, but a high three. 

ADDENDUM: seeing from other reviewers how this author's work includes, deceptively, various ideologies used to other and vilify trans children and their parents (which makes me think back to that errant Harry Potter reference). Unfortunate and gross. Knowing makes the work even cheaper than it already was. Keeping my same rating, which was written and determined before I found out. I will definitely be more critical in the future.

PRETTIES by SCOTT WESTERFELD (A REVISIT)

quickly: after being captured and brainwashed by her government, a girl makes a second attempt to free herself physically, mentally, and spiritually (criminal activity is cool / blood cults are lit / designer mansions / animated tattoos / hot air balloon rides / best friends are the worst enemies / social experiments / evil scientists / two pills in a pod / nature as the cure / forest guardians / invisible fences / colonial conquest disguised as scientific exploration / questioning ‘god’).

My re-read of the UGLIES series continues, and so far has not disappointed me.

If you wake up tomorrow and realize you’ve been living in a simulation your whole life, what do you do? Do you continue living within a dream world, or do you wake up and take responsibility for your existence? Hidden in the pages of this dystopian teen sci-fi novel is a beautiful existential exploration of what it means to ‘be’. 

★★★★

OUR SHARE OF NIGHT by MARIANA ENRÍQUEZ (REVIEW)

quickly: a father tries everything in his earthly and unearthly power to prevent his son from inheriting a legacy of horror (abuse from the one who loves you most / blessed curses and buried secrets / bisexuality so powerful it’s omnisexual and omnipotent / chalk circles and pits of bones / closed doors opening / evil grandparents with old money / haunted houses with locked rooms / like father, like son / Lord of Doors, Signs, and Symbols / missing limbs and missing mothers / people lost in the darkness / something dark in the woods).

The story begins with a young Gaspar being spirited away by his migraine-stricken father Juan, and it follows him through his adolescence, as his father tries to keep him safe from their own evil family—by any means necessary. These people are not Disney© evil by the way, these families that include Juan’s in-laws, known as The Order, are vicious, kidnapping, human trafficking plutocrats. They practice a philosophy of magic where darkness begets darkness, and in that darker darkness they reign. They cage children, abduct and torture strangers, and will even spill their own blood to conjure chaos. Unfortunately for The Order however, their ability to render magic from their dark deeds is almost useless without a medium. 

★★★★★ Fantastic horror.

This was a book I read in March of 2024 after seeing it on a list from @bloodmaarked!

To Juan’s disappointment, his young son is showing signs of becoming a powerful medium at a young age, making him susceptible to the deplorable whims of The Order. To keep young Gaspar protected, he must also keep Gaspar ignorant to the powerful magic and sorcery flowing through his blood. As so often happens in families filled with trauma and secrets, the repression of Gaspar’s powers will cause him to be an overly sensitive and deeply emotionally wounded child who has a habit of walking backward into the traps his father works ceaselessly to keep him unaware of.

In time, it will be revealed to Gaspar that Juan is a Great and tortured medium; the vessel of a dark, powerful, and ruthless force known by many as The Darkness. The Darkness is an old god, often presenting itself as a massive black cloud of energy, and makes its power known through tragedy, bloodshed, foreknowledge, and the locking and unlocking of doors to other realms. This ‘demented’ and ‘savage’ force blesses whatever it curses and can mark its followers by wounding them with its golden talons. If you were to reach into this black cloud, you’d pull your arm back to find that your hand has been cleanly amputated and cauterized. Eaten. You may also wake up the next day, marked, with the ability to unlock locked things, or sense people before they appear. 

Meanwhile, until Juan’s truth is revealed to his son, Gaspar must learn to grow up with two versions of his dad. One version of Juan is the kind, serious, wise teacher. The other Juan, the dark version, is irrational, voracious, bloodthirsty, and almost evil. Though Gaspar has no knowledge of the powerful magic that flows within him and his father, he has an uncanny understanding that there is something lying beneath the surface of the waking world of reality. Sometimes he even finds himself opening doors no one else can open. No one but Juan.

By the time Gaspar reaches adulthood, he grows up to be just like his father… exceptionally powerful, stunningly beautiful, and outrageously unpredictable (maybe even a little bi too). The final phase of Juan’s elaborate plan to destroy The Order is set into motion by his death, leaving it up to fate, Gaspar, and those who love Juan and his son, to hopefully and finally, close the door to evil for good.

This is sophisticated, detailed, high-level horror, with excellent dialogue and conversation about family, community, lineage, capital, sex, grief, despair, power, and action—and by action I mean forming a well thought out plan and doing what it takes to see your plan through. 

DRIVE YOUR PLOW OVER THE BONES OF THE DEAD by OLGA TOKARCZUK (REVIEW)

quickly: the death of a woman’s neighbor reveals the fury of mother nature (a ‘crazy old woman’ with ailments and astrology / estranged neighbors / friends who make life easier / blood in the snow / small town gossip / dreams of the dead / the will of man vs. nature).

how much of the natural world can an old, country, polish woman try to save on her own? Mrs. Duszejko doesn’t eat meat and is almost at an age where she can’t survive a hard winter alone. she lives outside of town, with two other neighbors and only a handful of visitors. after one of her neighbors is found dead, she begins to see signs all around that nature is reclaiming its territory. her protests and letters to the local police about her theories often go unheeded or are discarded as the ramblings of an ‘old crone’. after many philosophical wanderings through the forests and hills, Mrs. Duszejko reveals the nature of the truth.

★ ★ ★ ★

more thoughts: SPOILERS!

Some personal context… I read Olga Tokarczuk’s THE BOOKS OF JACOB not too long ago. It was an immersively lengthy and detailed read, but worth it. Drawn to her writing style and choice of subject matter, I was curious to try something more novelistic, from her pen. I’m also back in my thriller/horror bag and was delighted to find out Olga had written something in the genre. 

I was drawn to the murder and the astrology, and I received fulfilling helpings of both.

The story opens and the action immediately begins, which I loved. We are with Olga in the middle of her astrology studies, on a dark winter evening, when her neighbor, Oddball, informs her that their other neighbor, Bigfoot, is dead in his home.On the cold walk to Bigfoot’s home, we learn that our beloved Mrs. Duszejko communes with the forest in some inner spiritual way. She believes the animals and trees and hills are just as alive as any of us, and have their rights too. This is why she believes Bigfoot died choking on a deer bone; he transgressed some law of nature by killing and eating a fawn.  

As they take the time to dress Bigfoot and contort his twisted body into something less humiliating and dishonorable, a sort of religious awakening happens for Mrs. Duszejko. She believes the woodland creatures of the dark winter night are forming a pact with her, assigning her some duty to speak for them. So begins her petitions. She visits the local police station to inform them that the animals are exacting their ‘revenge’, and it was them who were responsible for the death of Bigfoot… as a result of him killing one of their own. 

Fast forward past her being laughed out of the police station and every other public office in town. Her letters, which public officials are required to respond to within 14 days, go without an answer. She tells her theory to anyone that will listen. Including her frequent visitor Dizzy, a friend, who works at the police station and passes along gossip, but translates old poetry, by Blake, with Mrs. Duszejko in his free time. They eat lots of soups. He tells her to keep her theories to herself. Her living neighbor, Oddball, doesn’t say much at all on his infrequent visits. 

In between these visits for tea, and Mrs. Duszejko’s campaigns at public offices and letters to public officials, the bodies are piling up. The police, and the public, are concocting a grand theory of mobsters and poachers and two-timing policemen. Mrs. Duszejko points to the abundance of animal evidence found at the scenes of the crimes, and also to the climate changing, and the imbalances of nature that could cause wildlife to change. Just as importantly, don’t forget the astrology! Not only do the individual birth charts of the victims show they are destined for death caused by an animal, but the current transits of the planets confirm animal madness as well!

As more men are found dead, her fervor grows. She not only theorizes that the animals are killing people, but that we must give them their rights in order for it to cease. She cites legal cases from hundreds of years ago where insects and animals were tried in courts of law. She proclaims we must stop polluting and disturbing the natural lands. We must stop overkilling, poaching, and shooting anything that moves. Because of her proximity to some of the victims, and her reputation, she is even arrested for a day, while her home is searched.

In public, she is getting into physical altercations with soldiers disturbing the forest, and cursing priests who preach about the glories and goodness of hunting. In private, at home, she is dreaming of the dead… people, family, animals, etc. She is a caretaker of empty houses, caretaker of forested lands, caretaker of animal graves and headstones. From the time the story has opened, until the close, Mrs. Duszejko has cried liters and liters of tears. She isn’t sure if it’s her astrology, her ailments, or her nature. (Maybe some of all, if everything is connected.) 

The end of the world comes after Mrs. Duszejko’s reputation as an eco-warrior is fully established. The police return to her during their investigation, this time with cause for arrest. Gossip gets to her first and she is able to hide herself away, down in the basement boiler room with the memories of her deceased mother and grandmother and animals. 

The story ends with Mrs. Duszejko safe from harm, making it past that treacherous Saturn transit. She is ailing, but alive, safe with her astrology, and confident in her knowledge that though she hurts, she is not dying anytime soon.

There’s something about her ecological spirit, her knowledge of the earth, and her use of astrology, that reminds me of Yente (The Goddess) from The Books of Jacob. Both are strange, aged, feminine figures who resist the solar masculine order and uphold the lunar and natural feminine realm. Yente resisting death and time and space. Mrs. Duszejko resisting man and his laws.

I fluctuate between a high 4 and a 5. There were parts that lingered just a beat longer than I’d liked. I would’ve loved just a bit more suspense, but that doesn’t really seem to be Olga’s style. Her writing (of the two books I’ve read so far) lends itself to the freedom of the details of moments in time. Large parts of this book felt like I was sitting with the nice old lady in the neighborhood, talking about nothing. Tea time.

I also feel like, in time, I will re-read this book and be delighted in the little breadcrumbs and apple cores left here and there, that eventually lead up to Mrs. Dusjeko’s grand reveal as a guardian goddess of the forest, divine and unreal, unseeable by most mortals, but known well by all the other blessed creatures. 

THE EMPUSIUM by OLGA TOKARCZUK (REVIEW)

quickly: a sickly young engineering student hopes to find healing in a scenic mountain valley village where mysteries abound (gentleman’s houses / noises in the attic / spying eyes / fear of being seen / sex dolls and shrooms / wine at dinner time / men who think women are a different species / obscuring the vision, to see more clearly / long walks around the park / those looked upon by venus and jupiter / the soul as the weakest point / the inferior superiority of men).

The story opens like a Wes Anderson film, set in 1913 Poland, in a valley between two mountain ranges with air that is mythologized to cure the infamous tuberculosis. Before our dear Mieczysław can be cured, the malaise of life at the Gentleman’s House (where men smoke cigars with their weakened lungs, and talk at quite some length about the “lesser” minds of women) becomes a mire of shadows and secrets waiting to be unraveled. As expected, this idyllic 1900s mountain town is more than it appears to be. At night, after many men have imbibed in the psychoactive “schwärmerei”, the landscape seems to stare back at the onlookers. Every fall, men die violent and mysterious deaths, as if the surrounding forest is eating them and spitting them back out. As the summer season ends, Mieczy’s anxious concerns of being ‘seen’ intensifies.

★ ★ ★ ★ Mysteriously seductive.

Slowly, just as calmly as summer gives way to the decaying color bomb of autumn, this slow burn of a “health resort horror story” ends in a flush of fire. What begins as a medical retreat for our anxious and gentle-spirited protagonist evolves into an awakening of sorts upon the discovery of a cure for an ailment Mieczy had long been prepared to disregard as a permanent inconvenience. Mieczy will discover something that no amount of men’s postulations could destroy, and it is fantastic to watch. The astrology tidbits are delicious, and always a delightful discovery to happen upon when reading Olga’s work (as in The Books of Jacob, and Drive Your Plow…). The world of this story is both scenic and seductive… like a carnivorous plant that slowly digests you as you are hypnotized by its beauty. 

You walk with Mieczy up the steep incline of a forested mountain, always wondering where the path is taking you, until suddenly you reach the peak and overlook the edge at the marvelous view down below. A soft, then hard, autumnal horror story with an ending that would make J. K. Rowling’s eyes bulge as she combusts and then evaporates. 

"One thing seldom asked of those on whom disaster had laid its hand is what their future plans were before the flood. "

John Darnielle, The Devil House

"Everyone in the world was programmed by the place they were born, hemmed in by their beliefs, but you had to at least try to grow your own brain. Otherwise, you might as well be living on a reservation, worshiping a bunch of bogus gods."

Scott Westerfeld, Pretties