Adrian Collins's Blog

REVIEW: Gyfted by D.W. Lewis

Gyfted is the first part in an epic fantasy trilogy from D.W. Lewis. Kal is a mistreated hollowborn, someone without the magical abilities of the gyft, powers that most of the population has. When Kal’s friend Ovet is kidnapped by the Daevan Empire for her strange powers, Kal goes on a path of revenge that turns him from aspiring plucky hero to something a lot more dark and violent.

There’s lots of familiar tropes in Gyfted, ones that are appealing in small doses, but the overall plot, characters, and worldbuilding rely too heavily on these recognizable tropes. Much of what happens in the story is not so different from Star Wars, for example. I can see why this might be appealing: the “familiar but different” approach to fantasy and science fiction can be great when used sparingly. But there’s so many interesting ideas that ultimately don’t go farther than surface-level, and I was disappointed that many of the characters and plot in Gyfted make very obvious clues as to what they’ll do next, making the novel feel predictable.

Lewis relies heavily on action scenes in Gyfted, and I’m glad that this book has them. They’re fast and exciting, with lots of flashy sequences that you can rip right through. Outside of those scenes, however, much of the writing is dry and lacks emotional depth. Kal, as a protagonist, is an orphan swordsman turned rebel fighter, and that’s about as much as the book gives you. His anger issues could be interesting to delve into, but Gyfted only conveys the message that anger only just makes Kal a better killer. I wish that Kal had a bit more depth to him other than that.

Gyfted’s worldbuilding is fascinating at first glance. The world of Eudos is ruled by an Empire that crushes anyone beneath them. They have massive, magical chains and spears that keep the populace in line. However, it doesn’t go much farther than that; there are some interesting tidbits about the origins of the Daevan’s, but again, it only goes so far and feels incomplete.

I wanted to like Gyfted. There’s so much fascinating stuff here that if the layers were peeled back a bit further, I think you could find an interesting novel here. But what exists on the page is recycled and obvious, making for a predictable, shallow book that could have been great.

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INTERVIEW: with authors Mary Robinette Kowal and Sam J. Miller

Powerhouse speculative fiction voices, Mary Robinette Kowal and Sam J. Miller, have teamed up as part of Simon & Schuster’s Saga Doubles. In it, two authors write stories; in this case, Kowal and Miller have written two expertly crafted science fiction crime stories set in the far future. Kowal’s story, Apprehension, is about a grieving mother with an exciting past, and Miller’s story, Red Star Hustle, is a “crisscross of heartbreak, addiction struggles, queer messiness, and resisting evil empires, coming together in a space-hopping fight with the whole damn galaxy.”

In this conversation, Kowal and Miller chat with us about craft, inspiration, and the fun they had writing these two stories.

[GdM] Before we dive into Red Star Hustle and Apprehension, could you introduce yourself to our readers—who you are, what you write, and what drives your storytelling?

[SJM] Hi hi there—I’m Sam J. Miller, I write science fiction and horror that’s very gay and usually pretty angry. Extreme emotions drive my storytelling just like it drives my characters—I write about the things I love passionately (like love, friendship, sex, noodles,

resistance), and the things I hate and wish were different (like the housing crisis, addiction, imperialism). 

[MRK] Hello! My name is Mary Robinette Kowal, (Mary Robinette is a double first-name) and I write science fiction and fantasy, but have been skewing towards the mystery suspense side of the genres. I’m fascinated by relationships and enjoy digging into people who are committed to each other, even while they are miscommunicating. 

[GdM] If you had to distill each novel into a single driving question or idea, what would that be?

How did you come to be the two halves of this Saga Double? It really seems like an opportunity to have fun playing in the proverbial sandbox.

[SJM] Finding a single driving idea is actually harder on Red Star Hustle than it is on many of my other works, where I am writing from a place of anger around, say, gentrification or climate change—with this one, I was just trying to write a fun fast-moving classic pulp science fiction story (albeit one with a lot more mm smut than the classics tended to have)… but ultimately I think that most of the characters ended up orbiting around this question of—how do you balance tackling addiction alongside all the rest of your problems? 

[MRK] For me, Apprehension is about what happens when we let ourselves be defined by fear and how being open about our fears empowers us.

[GdM] How has working on this book, separately or together, differed from your usual writing process (if it has)? Because while the two novels fit together in the same universe, they are also very different stories.

[SJM] Yeah mostly this was just a divine cosmic coincidence, that these two stories ended up side by side and were also so similar,

so it felt natural to build in some Easter egg connections. The real joy has been everything AROUND the writing process—working with someone I admire as much as Mary Robinette and figuring out fun exciting ways to promote and talk about the book(s). 

[MRK] It’s not often that you get to collaborate with another writer in this way. We each wrote our stories separately, but Sam had the amazing idea to include small cameos from each other’s stories. Just that little bit was such fun.

[GdM] This is a queernorm universe, for the most part, that you’ve created, where other differences are also embraced and borders are blended and blurred. Was this a conscious decision you made together and why is it important to have such worlds in literature?

[SJM] Sometimes science fiction is about spotlighting the dark and painful aspects of our present reality, and sometimes it’s about centering the hope and the beauty and the power and the potential and the sense of wonder. Usually it’s a balance of both, but because my natural tendency is toward the ugly and the oppressive, with this book I wanted to uplift a vision of the future where humanity has hope, we can grow past the problematic aspects of the human condition, and while there will still be problems we can also get to a time when white supremacy and patriarchy have been shattered, and queerness and diversity flourish and are safe and celebrated. 

[MRK] It just feels like a natural evolution of the future. I also tend to write toward the futures I want to see.

[GdM] How do you think real-world events influence themes we find in sci-fi? Is there anything you think we’ll start to see more of, or anything you’d like to see less of?

[SJM] For me science fiction is never about the future—it’s about what’s happening right now. And while so much of the world is creeping further and further to the right, and fascism is flourishing

and a toxic white-supremacist Death Cult has taken over the US government, I’m not so sure science fiction will have the stomach to tell that truth. Maybe I am wrong. I hope I am. Same with climate change. As these things become more real and more painful, I fear we’ll lose what limited appetite we currently have for holding a light up to ourselves.

[MRK] Sam and I have the same approach to science-fiction, I think. It’s about things that are important to us now and by including them in fiction, we can tip things to the side to see the interconnecting tissue more. We often look to the past to see patterns for the future because those patterns tend to repeat. We’re going to see more dystopian fiction set in fascist regimes or… or we’ll see stories of hope written by people who are using SF as a thought experiment for different paths.

[GdM] What’s next after Red Star Hustle and Apprehension? What are you two working on?

[SJM] Two words: gay biker werewolves. Oh is that three words? Yeah I’m working on a horror novel about gay biker werewolves. 

[MRK] I’m jokingly describing the story I’m poking at as: Rear Window in space, but Jimmy Stewart is played by a talking cat.

[GdM] Please tell us about Red Star Hustle as a single novel and how it fits against Mary Robinette Kowal’s novel, Apprehension?

[SJM] Red Star Hustle is about a far-future outer-space rent boy framed for murder, who’s trying to clear his name while staying one step ahead of the bad-ass mech pilot bounty hunter who’s on his tail. It’s a great companion to Apprehension because they’re both crime novels set in space, and they’re both fast-paced pulp stories with heart! 

[GdM] Red Star Hustle has a very cool aesthetic. Can you tell us about it? 

[SJM] I really wanted to celebrate classic pulp space opera, with a splash of cyberpunk and a heaping helping of noir. But queer. And spicy. So the end result is this kind of grimy, neon-lit, beautiful tawdry look and feel that smells like spilled whiskey and leather and roses and man. 

[GdM] For readers new to your work, why is Red Star Hustle a great place to jump in?

[SJM] Because it’s fun? I hope? Some of my stories I’m trying very hard to break your heart, and this time around I really just wanted to tell a fun fast-paced story with lots of sex and fighting. Spoiler alert though, it did end up spiraling into heartbreak territory #sorrynotsorry

[GdM] What parts of building this galaxy were the most fun for you?

[SJM] It was lots of fun thinking through the logistics of a future where inexpensive wormhole manufacturing has made instantaneous travel between impossibly distant points effortless and commonplace—but also just exciting to imagine a positive future, where there’s no existential threat to the survival of the human race due to our own general awfulness!

[GdM] Red Star Hustle combines heartbreak, addiction, and trauma with galactic chases, evil empires, and space travel in the vein of fun, pulpy science fiction of the past. How did you balance the rawness and authenticity of those struggles with the fun while paying respect to both?

[SJM] The fun was my priority; the heartbreak and addiction emerged accidentally during the writing process. Turns out I’m not really capable of being JUST fun and light-hearted. 

[GdM] Could you define for me the literal and figurative meanings of “hustle” in the context of this story? It can be taken in various ways.

[SJM] First and foremost, Aran is a hustler—a male sex worker with a primarily male clientele, in a future where sex work has been decriminalized and normalized. There’s also the level of “hustle” meaning “struggle to make money,” because many of these characters have got to hustle to survive. It’s also an homage to fun pulpy action stories like “Kung Fu Hustle” and (I hope) sets up an expectation of an action-packed, fast-moving plot.

[GdM] Can you tell us about Apprehension? How did you come by the idea for the plot?

[MRK] Honestly, I was doing a deep dive on Hitchcock trying to understand how he handled suspense. I was curious to see what it would be like to have that sort of story in space and then it intersected with my own experiences of elder care and grief.

[GdM] I love the idea of an older protagonist; it is not something we usually see in science fiction, and there should be more of it. How much fun did you have creating the emotionally raw grandmother, Bonnyjean, and her very cool backstory?

[MRK] I started working on this shortly after my mother, who was 78 at the time, had to have her hip replaced. She was this amazing woman and got a really bad case of anesthesia induced confusion. She was in the hospital for 10 days due to that. The hip replacement itself was fine. But one of the side effects was that people treated her differently because there was an assumption of frailty after the surgery. I kept thinking about how she had gone from being a woman of a certain age to being “old” over the space of ten days. That said, she would have ENDED anyone who threatened her family.

[GdM] Apprehension has this edge-of-your-seat energy that reminds me of the Liam Neeson movie Taken—that mix of fast pacing, raw emotion, with a dash of “you messed with the wrong family.” Was that kind of action-thriller vibe something you set out to capture from the start, or did it emerge naturally as the story unfolded?

[MRK] Thank you! I would say that I started with these Hitchcockian vibes, but as I moved deeper into the story and discovered more about Bonnyjean’s past as a soldier, the action ramped up. That lead me to drift from suspense thriller to action thriller.

Authors Mary Robinette Kowal and Sam J. Miller

[GdM] Do you map fight/chase scenes visually, or do you prefer to discover them beat by beat through writing them?

[MRK] I have to block my fight scenes because I don’t have a fight background. Or rather… I come out of theater, so theatrical fights are much more my area than actual martial arts. I tend to iterate my fight scenes. I’ll have a loose idea of the blocking, then do the written word version of a “stumble through” then I go back in and refine it based on what I discover.

[GdM] The word “apprehension” holds dual meanings: the act of seizing or understanding, and the state of fear. How does the novel play with that ambiguity?

[MRK] Fun fact, my novel titles don’t translate well because I love playing with these double-meanings. In this novel we have all three forms of the word “apprehension.” There’s multiple types of fear shaping character’s choices, from Bonnyjean’s PTSD to the more active fear for her grandson. Then there’s the act of seizing, in which we have a kidnapping and literally trying to catch a criminal. And finally, there’s apprehension as understanding, in which Bonnyjean thinks she understands people and doesn’t—including herself. 

And also, thank you for noticing the title.

Read Red Star Hustle / Apprehension by Sam J. Miller & Mary Robinette Kowal

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This interview first appears in Grimdark Magazine Issue #44

 

 

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REVIEW: Girl Dinner by Olivie Blake

In Olivie Blake’s new satirical dark feminist release, Girl Dinner, we are forced to ask ourselves: what makes the perfect woman, what sacrifices must be made to achieve this enlightened status, and how much can be stomached in the process?

Historically, every member of The House, the most exclusive sorority on campus, go on to graduate and become successful women who contribute to society unburdened by patriarchal restraints, thus churning out women who seemingly ‘have it all’.  Nina Kaur, a sophomore hoping to reinvent herself after a disastrous freshman season, is desperate to gain entry into The House, and will do anything to be welcomed into the bosom of an exclusive female collective, in order to guarantee safety into the outside world that is often unkind to women like her. Dr. Sloane Hartley is struggling to return to work after 18 months at home with her newborn. Now, as an adjunct professor at her husband’s prestigious university, and as a spousal hire, Sloane is invited into the allure of the sorority as an academic liaison, bringing her into the perfect lives of the alumna, who she enviously admires to the point of investigation. Both women step into the folds of The House, the arcane rituals of sisterhood within it, and the sense of power that envelops them with each step. But at what cost? 

The dual point of views provides a layered understanding of how power is received across different racial and class lines; suggesting that regardless of one’s place in the world, the seduction of more will always entice, even to the point of depravity. The cost of perfection is high, but is it higher than the cost of our humanity? In Girl Dinner, both Sloane and Nina learn that the current sorority sisters and alumna are indulging in a ‘wellness trend’ of sort, which involves the consumption of human flesh.

As such, the title suggests exactly what you’d expect to find in the novel: cannibalism. The ritualistic sacrifice of humans, whilst grimdark as a concept, felt fairly light in discussion throughout the novel. Readers are teased with sumptuous descriptions of various foods, mainly meat-based, throughout the story, which feeds into the apex of the entire novel. The pacing of the book was a problem here. Readers know from the very start what to expect, but we aren’t shown any action until two thirds into the novel. The detailed build up had very little pay off, especially since so much of it was character-based background that wasn’t entirely necessary. 

My main qualm with this book is that it simply could have been a lot more depraved than it was; and it certainly had the bones to do so. We actually learn very little about the cannibalistic rituals as a whole, and instead are just meant to accept that it is a thing that happens. This, however, may simply be the point. The realities of womanhood are not as horrifying as the concept of literal cannibalism. Whilst Girl Dinner isn’t necessarily a horror novel as advertised, it certainly alludes to it in the realities it dissects through Sloane’s and Nina’s descent into The House. For what is scarier than a a collective of empowered young women who will stop at nothing to achieve their ideals of success? Overly absurd, this satirical piece is just subversive enough to sink your teeth into. 

Olivie Blake’s writing is superb, sharp and easy to digest. Whilst this may not become a cult classic, it could certainly be defined as required reading for lovers of feminist literature, or for anyone that is simply looking to taste something new.

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All Systems Grimdark

In a recent episode of Fiction Fans Podcast (it’s not a grimdark focused podcast, dear reader, but hear me out) host Lilly explained her way of categorizing books in their genres by identifying the book’s ‘pillars’. For example, a book can have the setting of a sci-fi novel as one pillar, but the pacing and plotline of a thriller novel, and maybe one last pillar of romance to keep it all together. This has been helpful as a way to think about genre mashups and I promptly stole adopted the concept from her. 

The more I ruminate on Grimdark as a genre, the more I begin to apply the pillar concept to the genre itself. As I’ve mentioned in previous articles, Grimdark has a “I can’t define it but I know it when I see it” vibe that will often catch writers off guard. We don’t know we’re writing Grimdark novels until our readers inform us that we have written a Grimdark novel! But over time, I have definitely, probably, maybe, hopefully started to spot some of the aforementioned pillars that hold up the genre as a whole. 

My hypothesis about why some books were Grimdark even if the authors didn’t know they had written Grimdark comes down to the ‘pillar’ of worldbuilding. More specifically, it comes down to the systems in place that keep our favourite protagonists on their toes. 

In high fantasy staples like Lord of the Rings, the big terrible evil is presented as an anomaly. The world is otherwise more or less good, it’s just that we need to defeat that dude with the big eye in order to restore a status quo of peace and prosperity for our Hobbity heroes. (Yes, I’m aware this is an oversimplification but just stay with me.) The evil, says heroic fantasy, can be stopped. The threat is personified by one person at the head of the big, bad army, and if our heroes topple that threat, our cast is saved from the spreading darkness. 

In Grimdark, the darkness and the evil seem to be more firmly established as the status quo. The focus of the story is less about toppling the One Bad Thing and more about surviving the badness that has permeated all that the protagonists know. They strive less to defeat it and more to get around it somehow, or otherwise bend the status quo to their benefit. In this aspect, Grimdark has a lot in common with Dystopian fiction. I would even argue that they both share a common ‘pillar’: they are built on systems that oppress, commodify, exploit, and otherwise make the human (and/or dwarf and/or elf and/or orc) experience as miserable as possible. 

As our reality seems to have more in common with Grimdark worldbuilding, I find myself more stubbornly drawn to stories within the genre. It’s well established that I love a flawed and fractured hero, even if the term ‘hero’ is loosely applied to Grimdark protagonists. So too do I find comfort in reading about said ‘heroes’ making their way in flawed and fractured worlds. If their existence is the tooth-and-nail variety—that is, they are fighting for every shred of survival with tooth and nail and whatever other weapons are at their disposal—then it’s easier to see myself in the pages with them. Their existence isn’t cozy, and neither is mine. They are doing their best to scrape some measure of comfort from the system that seeks to grind them into so much dust, and so am I. 

If one pillar of Grimdark is that the system is FUBAR, that makes room for the writer to build a story about people defying the broken system to their last breath, and I’ll be damned if that’s not aspirational.

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REVIEW: Toll the Hounds by Steven Erikson

Gloomy, grief-centric, poetic, and bittersweet, Toll the Hounds is the shining onyx gem of Steven Erikson’s Malazan. Never before has there been a novel so beautifully melancholic and exhilaratingly epic. Toll the Hounds is not only the best Malazan novel, nor is it only one of the finest fantasy novels ever penned: this is a crowning achievement and one of the best novels ever written.

“The soul knows no greater anguish than to take a breath that begins with love and ends with grief.”

While the last few Malazan novels have been focused on military endeavors, the Crippled God, and weaving together plot threads that were previously unmarried, Erikson has us pause for a moment. Our setting is mostly in Darujhistan, and the homecoming makes you realize just how much both the characters and the reader have grown along the journey. Toll the Hounds is in some ways a character study about the people who we first met in Gardens of the Moon, how their lives have been changed and impacted by the constant wars and meddling of gods. In other ways, it’s a focus on the Tiste Andii, led by one of Malazan’s coolest characters, Anomander Rake. Ultimately, Toll the Hounds is really about grief and loss. The feelings of lamenting and sorrow never truly leave, but they’re also beautiful in their own way. 

It’s important to note that Erikson’s own father passed during the writing of this novel. You can feel him channeling his feelings into the novel. As a result, Toll the Hounds is the most unique among the ten novels. The pacing is slow, the characters even more introspective and philosophical, and sadness permeates the pages. 

I do have to make a personal note that Toll the Hounds was the book I brought to the hospital when my daughter was born. It’s rather fitting that this was the one I brought: while Toll the Hounds is dark and full of death’s lingering touch, a current of hope and rebirth flows underneath. I’ll always be grateful to Erikson for this novel. 

While the depression and grief is a blanket that covers Toll the Hounds, the action is possibly Erikson’s best. It’s not as epic as the battles and last stands of marines, but it is personal and deeply intimate. If the previous novels had the brutality and blood of the goriest war movie, Toll the Hounds is more like kung-fu or westerns where the violence is primarily between two people or small groups. One of the duels near the ends of this novel is simply jaw-dropping and both the scene and the result of the convergence are mind-blowing. 

From a character perspective, Toll the Hounds again ranks as my personal favorite. In a series this long and with as many genius characters that Erikson has created, there’s no such thing as a wrong pick, but Toll the Hounds is the right pick. Anomander Rake is the obvious stand-out, but the reunion and seeing how the characters have changed and seeing them from other perspectives is also magnificent. 

“There is no struggle too vast, no odds too overwhelming, for even should we fail – should we fall – we will know that we have lived.”

Toll the Hounds is my favorite Malazan novel, but it is a divisive one. Erikson’s philosophizing takes a notable uptick in volume, the pacing is exceedingly slow, and a few of the characters irk certain readers. These aren’t flaws per se, but I can understand why others weren’t as enraptured with it as I was. 

At the end of the day, Toll the Hounds has the aura of a perfect city made of marble where assassins wait in dangerous alleyways, political intrigue plagues the processions, and the cover of night never fades. Grief looms over everything like the moon, but the beauty counterbalances it into something truly majestic. Paired with epic duels and devastating sequences, Toll the Hounds is the greatest of the Malazan novels. 

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REVIEW: Red Star Hustle / Apprehension by Sam J. Miller & Mary Robinette Kowal

This year represents the 10th Anniversary of Saga Press and to celebrate they’ve introduced the Saga Double format. These have two books in one and Red Star Hustle / Apprehension is the third to be published and features two sci-fi crime tales by Sam J. Miller (Black Fish City) and Mary Robinette Kowal (Lady Astronaut Universe), respectively. In a physical copy, you flip the book over to read each story; so, both get their own cover art and the joy of starting a new story from the first page. Very cool.

Red Star Hustle is a multi-POV, far-future story that sees sex worker Aran framed for the murder of a client on the eve of releasing his latest controversial film, exposing corruption across the portalverse. While on the run, Aran meets Resh, a kind-hearted hunk who happens to be the leader of a rebellion in a society that invented programmable matter that he can control with his mind. Meanwhile, Imadi, a former mech fighter pilot turned security operative, has been assigned Aran’s case and intends to capture him no matter what so she can remain in the good graces, and under-the-radar, of her ruthless boss/mother.

Apprehension follows an older protagonist, Bonnyjean, a former soldier-now-neurosurgeon holidaying with her son-in-law and grandson in the wake of her daughter’s death. Bonnyjean’s hopes are that the vacation will bring some spark back into their lives, as they continue to process their grief. That is, until they are hurtled into a political conspiracy that sees six years-old Tristan kidnapped and Bonnyjean forced to confront some difficult history from her life as a prisoner of war. It’s a snappy and engaging story of an older woman doing whatever it takes to protect her family, even with the realities of age and PTSD working against her.

Both Red Star Hustle and Apprehension take a close look at trauma, grief, and how we process these things in different ways. Red Star Hustle focuses on struggles with addiction – drugs, sex, power, love – and how that interacts with the painful realities of grief. Apprehension offers a look at the interplay between trauma and grief; how they complicate and complement each other and cut us off from love and joy.  

Despite the heavier themes, both stories have been told in a way that is fast and punchy, full of action and intrigue. I particularly liked Bonnyjean’s character from Apprehension (gotta love a kickass Grandma), and the near-magic tech that Resh wields in Red Star Hustle. I’d love to see those two elements meshed together! This addition to the Saga Doubles releases on 25th October.

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This review first appear in Grimdark Magazine Issue #44

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REVIEW: The Autumn Springs Retirement Home Massacre by Philip Fracassi

In the meta horror masterpiece movie The Cabin in the Woods—where the cabin itself is designed to stave off the apocalypse by releasing monsters to kill the unknowingly sacrificial twenty year olds and thus appease the ancient gods—the villains explain to the final heroes how they all represent certain horror tropes: the jock, the jester, the virgin, etc. The unifying theme? They’re all young, and it’s not their time to die. That’s what powers a good horror, and even more so a good slasher: young people with everything to live for, cut down brutally. But what if the slasher victims are the elderly, with a decade or so, maybe much less, to live out their life? How does that change the horror rules, and how can a slasher work around that? It’s going to take a great horror author to get this right, and so enter Philip Fracassi, who with The Autumn Springs Retirement Home Massacre, out now, has taken the slasher genre to new places and in the process written a deeply moving, marvellously twisty, and terrifyingly dark tale which gives us one of modern horror’s most triumphant final girls in the indomitable pensioner Rose DuBois.

The aforesaid Rose is in her late seventies and living out her twilight years in the eponymous retirement home Autumn Springs. This is not some depressing parking spot for the nearly dead: its apartments are spacious and sought after, and the fancy community facilities allow for all manner of social activities. Indeed, many of its residents are in fine fettle, having bagged a hard-to-get place in this friendly community in anticipation of future failing health. Rose herself has a nice life; a dapper gentleman friend Miller, who she keeps in the friendzone despite his obvious feelings for her, a daughter who clearly cares for her and a wide circle of friends. But when one of her friends dies, allegedly after a fall in the bath, Rose becomes suspicious as to whether the cause of death is entirely correct, and when others start dying in similarly suspicious ways, Rose begins to suspect there may be a serial killer in their midst. In the face of sceptical authorities, the question becomes: what is she going to do about it?

The first thing that grabbed me in The Autumn Springs Retirement Home Massacre was the masterful way in which Fracassi handles the tone. In his arguably finest work so far, Boys in the Valley, we get a similarly confined space where hell descends on a community home, in that case an orphanage. But where that book is brutal from the start, here the early chapters almost feel like a cosy crime mystery—Richard Osman in the States—as Rose rounds up her gang of friends to investigate the mysterious goings on. But Fracassi is a horror writer first, not a crime writer, and this gentle, heartwarming community feel soon descends into a claustrophobic, nightmarish smorgasbord of paranoia, pain, and endless death, made all the more horrifying by the deceptive start.

Another success of this tale is how Fracassi handles the subject of the elderly. A cynic might ask: why should we fear for these characters whose lives are almost over anyway? Indeed, this is a book that doesn’t shy away from some of the depressing truths of the end of life. Next to the fancy retirement flats is a medical centre where you go when you need round the clock care—the flats there aren’t so nice, and all live in fear of being forced to go there. And for all the community feel, when things go bad the truth of old age is revealed: not everyone’s families care enough to come to the rescue of their endangered elder members. This is a book full of the realisation that life is running out of road, and regrets may be more potent than future plans. But—and it is such an important but—Fracassi also wants to transmit a message of hope and a counter to the prevailing narrative of the elderly as different from the rest of us and somehow less invested in the world. Rose has many things she still wants to do: plans, dreams, maybe even a shot at love. She’s far from done yet, and no one reading this book could get the impression that she has come to Autumn Springs to die. If anything, the ending of this book suggests, she has come here to finally live.

Those chewy themes aside, let’s be clear: The Autumn Springs Retirement Home Massacre is enormously grisly fun; the killer is endlessly inventive and enormously creepy, when the chaos starts it really starts, and Fracassi has handled the slasher reveal perfectly as if he was an author who has been writing slashers all his career—the clues are all there in retrospect but it’s not an obvious one (I came close but no cigar—you got me, Philip) and the red herrings are magisterially done.

 And maybe the most important thing to be said about this book is just what a character for the modern slasher age we have in Rose du Bois. Fearless, indomitable, bowing to no one—but kind and vulnerable and haunted by the secrets in her past, which you definitely won’t see coming. Agism has found a powerful foe in Rose, and the care with which Fracassi has given this character makes this one of his finest horror efforts yet. Oh and one Rose-related moment that came out of nowhere made me cry, the kind of surprised tears where a book takes you somewhere you didn’t see coming. You’ll cry too—this book is as moving a slasher as you’ll ever read.

Overall, The Autumn Springs Retirement Home Massacre is a superbly creepy yet truly moving slasher that rivals Fracassi’s best work. His first trick is to make the elderly the victims, but his second is just as impressive: to make you care so deeply for them amongst the carnage. Age is just a number—in this case, a body count.

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Some Ways of Subverting the “Women as a Victim” Trope

My latest novella, The Cold House – published in October for the spookiest of seasons – features Dr Everly Bainbridge, a writer who’s recently been bereaved and is unsure if she wants to go on. When circumstances push her to choose she finds herself as a sort of final girl in someone else’s game – but they don’t know all there is to know about Everly. 

I’m fond of final girls, but not all final girls are created equal. Some are born final and some have finalness thrust upon them, by which I mean some have a survival instinct and will not be messed with, while others take a little while to figure out that no one is coming to save them. Faced with queries (so many queries), I’ve come up with 5 points on the theme (because my brain works best with bullet points), and that theme is roughly how do I construct my heroines to make them not be victims? These techniques are entirely personal to me, other writers will do it differently, so don’t regard this as a proscriptive list. 

Point #1: No gothic fainting goats.
If you’ve seen the reels on Instagram and TikTok of fainting goats you’ll have a visual of what I mean. Something that irks me no end is the old-fashioned screaming, fainting heroine of yore in gothic novels – and it’s not even just of yore, but also in contemporary horror novels (and films). Here’s the thing: not every woman screams or faints when frightened. Yes, yes, I know it’s a particular staple of horror and I do like to call it the “gothic fainting goat effect”. 

That’s not to say my heroines don’t spend some time unconscious – Everly certainly does – but I try to keep the occurrences down to a reasonable number, and because they’ve been hit on the head or drugged or are unwell – besides, too many bonks on the noggin will lead to brain damage. They certainly don’t faint because a sudden fit of the vapours has rendered them unable to keep their eyes open. 

It also doesn’t mean they’re Terminators who can’t be frightened or stopped either, but if they faint they’re going to be vulnerable. Staying conscious is in their best interests, even if it means seeing something awful; so even the heroines of my gothic novels don’t faint for no reason. And yes, at the end of every novel I do a count of how many times my heroine is rendered unconscious, how and for how long. 

So, what’s critical mass for entering gothic fainting goat territory? My randomly chosen number is four periods of unconsciousness – if I’ve hit four, then that’s one too many.

Point #2: Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee. 

When I’m writing action/fight scenes I try to keep in mind the character’s physicality because no matter the training or fitness level, a female character isn’t likely (not impossible, of course) to be able to overpower a significantly larger male with the same techniques as a man would use. So, she has to be smarter about how she fights and she’s going to have to be sneaky. Only a fool fights fair when your opponent is well-equipped to kick your arse. Unless the character has supernatural strength and powers – unless she can hulk out – you need the fight and its outcome to be believable in order to keep your reader in the story.  

Personally, I also like my heroines to be smart enough to assess the situation they’re getting into, and sometimes that’s going to mean they’ll decide that discretion is the better part of valour and run like hell. Everly does some smart stuff, but also some stupid stuff because she’s angry and loses perspective – and she learns from it. 

So: I try to make my protagonists scrappy. They fight dirty, win believably – or bolt for the sake of fighting (and winning) another day.

Author Angela Slatter Photo by Leah Desborough

Point #3: Curiosity killed the cat.
One of the big issues I’ve always had with female characters in horror (gothic and modern) is that they’re often punished for their curiosity. Indeed, the whole fairy taley “Be bold, be bold but not too bold” is just another way to make us stop seeking answers to our questions. The idea is that if we know too much, we’ll be in danger, that ignorance will protect us – except we’re already in danger and if we remain ignorant, we won’t be prepared for whatever horror is coming down the pipeline. 

So, what I want for my horror heroines is that they live by the motto that knowledge is power. I never want my protagonists to be the sort that bury their heads in the sand and assume everything will be fine, that someone else (a big strong man) will look after them. Everly didn’t do this, but she kind of let her guard down and it bites her in the backside – however, she does start seeking out knowledge very quickly because she knows it’s key to her survival.

One of my favourite lines in anything ever is from Charlotte Bronte’s Villette where Lucy Snow says “self-reliance and exertion were forced upon me by circumstances” and I adore that she recognises this and acts accordingly. Lucy doesn’t have to fight off gothic horrors, but she knows she’s the only person she can rely upon and that knowledge will help her get through life, so she seeks it out, and that’s the attitude I try to infuse into my own final girls.

Point #4: Home, Scary Home.
Everly is in the position where she’s haunted in her own home by memories of her dead husband and daughter, and also by the knowledge that her husband lied about who he was. Her solution is to flee to another home in hope of escaping the familiar environment that keeps reminding her of everything – and things get worse.

Ellen Moers in “Female Gothic: The Monster’s Mother” posits that in gothic stories female characters get to ‘explore’ the domestic sphere the way men get to adventure outside the home. That might sound boring except for the fact that the home (new or old) isn’t always a nice place to be – after all, that’s where the domestic horror occurs. Consequences of bad marriages, dangers of childbearing, the loss of independence (physical, financial, bodily), and also threats that break inside the four walls that are meant to keep you safe, all play out in the home. The domestic sphere – the home, the place where the heart is supposed to be – is what in the best of worlds would be the woman’s safest space, but in horror becomes another locus of danger. And equally heartbreaking whether the story is gothic or contemporary horror, because it’s also often the place where love falls apart or is shown to be false. 

Home is also where things hide sometimes in plain sight, where partners take off their masks and show the monsters beneath – the faces they wouldn’t dare display to coworkers, friends or strangers. It’s the place where a woman’s faith in her partner can be absolutely shredded and with it her confidence because she trusted someone who’s been lying all this time. It’s the place where all the excuses they’ve been making for terrible husbands and boyfriends are laid bare. It can be the place where trust dies – so with my heroines, I try to make sure that the home isn’t some saccharine sweet place of safety – I make safety something they have to fight for, the home they want to be safe is somewhere they have to defend – or escape. 

Point #5: Sword and shield.
Something that’s critical to me as a horror writer is that my female characters aren’t just thinking of saving themselves – this isn’t always the case, sometimes I write protagonists who are very much all about themselves and their own preservation (note: things don’t end well for them), but for the most part they’re not just out for their own survival. They have a loyalty to and a care for those who can’t defend themselves – think Ripley in Aliens, doing everything she can to rescue Newt, a kid she’s only just met. Is she taking chances? Absolutely! Is she being dumb about it? Nope, she takes calculated risks, is strategic, and doesn’t let her own fear get the best of her. Her fear is her fuel, and she defends the vulnerable. That was one of the things that imprinted on my mind even before I was a writer and it’s stuck with me, that loyalty to the defenceless. I hope readers will always believe that my characters will stay and fight rather than run screaming into the night after they’ve thrown someone else into the jaws of death. 

Everly… well, you’ll need to stick around to see what Everly does.

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This article first appeared in Grimdark Magazine Issue #44

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REVIEW: Traumaland by Josh Silver

Traumaland, Josh Silver’s third book, is a psychological thriller that follows seventeen-year-old Eli, who is coming to terms with his near-fatal car accident. Everything he knows about what happened comes to him in fragments and has left him emotionally destitute, seemingly without any recollection in the months following the accident. Desperate to feel something (anything) again, Eli finds himself at an underground club called Traumaland. Here, he joins throngs of other emotionally numb people, all trying to find a ‘cure’ for their numbness. Traumaland is a story of losing your grip on reality, only to have it chucked back in your face by some questionable stranger.

I haven’t read YA in a long while, but this novel had me hooked from the beginning – yes, I’m talking about that horrifying epigraph – I kept turning the pages, thinking to myself, Oh my god, now what? Coupled with the fact that Silver is a certified mental health practitioner, it was entertaining to watch him turn therapy speak on its head. The story begins with a therapy session (of course). Never a good sign, is it? We experience Eli’s mangled memories as he tries to navigate this god awful ‘Incident’ that everyone seems to be reeling from and tiptoeing around. I love that we’re thrown in headfirst, and we’re not sure if we can trust this narrator or not. It begs to question–what is this boy doing here, and what’s wrong with him? Personally, I enjoyed being caught up in someone else’s therapy session. It kept the first chapter from feeling dreary.

Although a little slow burn at first, Traumaland’s suspense heats up as Eli hints at his doubts about his therapist, his family and his own memory. Just the thought of being mentally manipulated by the people closest to you was enough to send shivers down my spine. 

Eli can’t seem to remember the incident, and worse, he feels nothing. His environment completely contrasts the state of his mental psyche – Eli lives in a beautiful suburban house, his father is a politician who’s doing well at work and his family seems to be a unit, working through the terrible traumatic incident. This seemingly perfect, even ideal environment weighs on Eli to be a good, dutiful son and he eventually begins his secret, thrill-seeking ‘experiments’ on his way home from his therapy sessions. I must say, after this point, everything is full speed ahead.

Without giving away too much, Eli’s unwilling new acquaintance, Nisha sends him down a rabbit hole (literally), to an underground club that claims to help you ‘feel alive’. I found the scenes in the club exhilarating because it seems that every night in Traumaland is Halloween, and if you’re a horror fan, this particular turn in the story is where we enter darker territory.

What I enjoyed most about Eli’s interactions from here on out was how he seemed to attract other misfits and the mentally unsound – people who’ve been hurt by the system – I think these interactions made the scenes more chaotic, devastating and ultimately more human, which to me, is the scariest thing of all. 

Ultimately, Traumaland is a story of found family and the power that authority holds on the mentally ill. I think this novel will resonate most with fans of Fight Club and Margaret Atwood’s The Heart Goes Last, and will make a fantastic read this Halloween.

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REVIEW: Bones of Our Stars, Blood of Our World by Cullen Bunn

You probably don’t know Cullen Bunn as the author of the upcoming Bones of Our Stars, Blood of Our World. But he may be familiar to you from his extensive comics writing CV that points to an outstanding work ethic, and fertile imagination.  He has worked for publishers as diverse as Oni Press (The Sixth Gun series was his breakout title), Marvel Comics (Deadpool – we won’t hold that against him, Spider-Man and Captain America credits), plus DC (Superman and Batman titles), before moving on to Dynamite Entertainment, IDW, Dark Horse and Image.

In other words, Bunn is an experienced writer with a huge list of titles to his name.  As he told AIPT in August 2025, ‘I don’t recommend my work schedule to anyone else, but it’s what makes me happy. So, for me, it’s a combination of that I love telling these stories. I usually say I’ve got one speed, and it’s full speed ahead.’

Bunn’s debut novel, the horror shocker Bones of Our Stars, Blood of Our World is published by Gallery Books in November 2025.  In it, the inhabitants of Wilson Island are first terrorised by a masked killer who strikes indiscriminately, harvesting his victim’s organs in service of a voice only he can hear.  It is only when his true mission is exposed does the full terror become apparent.

Bones of Our Stars, Blood of Our World is, being honest, only a fair to middling effort.  Perhaps it was a function of reading it on a Kindle, but the first three quarters of the book felt like a real slog, a shapeless morass with no real momentum.  Wilson Island is sketched out, the inhabitants (the largest bunch of ‘shreddies’ I’ve ever come across in a horror novel) are labouriously introduced, the bland villain of the piece plods through a series of grotesquely gory kills and none of it really coheres.

The heroine of the story is Willa, a plucky young woman who finds herself in the family way at the start of the novel.  Her erstwhile boyfriend Kenny is introduced, as is her friend, Sarah, herself a forthright character who sees herself as matchmaker after Willa and Kenny’s blossoming relationship is abruptly curtailed.

Elsewhere on Wilson Island, a folksy tourist trap if ever I saw one, the town’s Sheriff Buck rules with something of an iron fist, riding herd over a gaggle of otherwise faceless deputies.  It’s an open secret that Willa’s Dad, Wade, is a local gangster of some notoriety.  That situation, sheriff and gangster, is ripe with sadly unfulfilled possibilities, except for a nicely written tense scene between both men in the back half of the book, which otherwise goes nowhere.

Bunn tries very hard to channel several horror storytelling styles – the younger cast and the seemingly supernatural background echo Stranger Things.  There’s a touch of Lovecraft in the overall framing device of what exactly is going on.  The small-town setting and large number of characters evoke Stephen King and to a lesser extent Twin Peaks.  And the visceral kills echo some of the genre’s better splatterpunk authors.  But I struggled to find anything uniquely Bunn-ian in the book, which I found to be something of a shame.

While the first three quarters of the book feel like you’re wading hip deep through treacle, the last section of the book, once the nature and full import of the menace are revealed, is a psychedelic rampage as swarming creatures with too many segmented limbs and gnashing teeth swiftly reduce the population of the island down to a mere handful.

This is where Bones of Our Stars, Blood of Our World comes to life, but it is, I fear, too little and too late.  Not enough was done by Bunn to lift the characters off the page as fully rounded people.  While Willa and Sarah are nicely portrayed, I didn’t really feel their plight as their world collapsed around them.  And while the true horror at the centre of the action is a ghastly creation, the swift collapse that ends the book feels like it comes from an entirely different story to the one Bunn seemingly was setting up from the start.

In its defence, Bones of Our Stars, Blood of Our World is a decent first stab at a horror novel.  You don’t need me to tell you that writing for comics and writing a novel are two different beasts.  Bunn does manage his large cast relatively well, and imbues some of them with character and depth.  But for too much of its page count, Bones of Our Stars, Blood of Our World‘s pacing is glacial.  It is only when the menace reveals itself does the novel hit the accelerator, but by then, for me, the ship had already sailed.

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