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REVIEW: Heroic Hearts by Jim Butcher and Kerrie Hughes

Picking up Jim Butcher and Kerrie Hughes’s new story collection Heroic Hearts, you learn that heroism comes in many forms, whether flying, furry or four-legged. Harry Dresden may be a battle-hardened Chicogoan wizard, but Harry would have gotten nowhere if it were not for Toot Toot. Likewise, in Kevin Hearne’s Iron Druid series, we all know that it isn’t Atticus that is the main character but his four-legged Irish Wolfhound Oberon.

Heroic Hearts is an absolute feast of stories for lovers of Urban Fantasy. Many of the biggest names in the sub-genre are a part of the collection. If you are longing for that little bit of extra information about some of your favorite characters, Heroic Hearts does a great job alleviating that desire.

Not every story is a hit; doing that in a short story collection is practically unheard of. You get this many authors together, and not everyone’s writing style is for every reader. However, Heroic Hearts is solid the entire way through; even when the stories did not personally hit me as a reader, they still were all decent stories. There are some notable ones that sung to me as a reader.

Firstly, the story that starts the collection is Jim Butcher’s Little Things, read on the audiobook by James Marsters of Buffy the Vampire fame. Marster’s has done all of the Dresden books, and as a long-time audio listener, I can now not separate the two. The voice of Dresden’s world is James Marsters. Little Things is about the battle of Pixie General Toot Toot, never underestimate the tenacity of creatures in Dresden’s world, whether they big or small. They will surprise you.

When an enemy attacks the defenses and breaches the castle walls, Toot Toot and his army of wee people go to battle. They protect Dresden for once instead of the other way around, and Dresden gets some quiet moments to rest and recuperate after the events of the last novel. It is a truly delightful novel. Toot Toot is as sparkly and lively as Pixies should be while being downright bloodthirsty and unforgiving.

Train to Last Hope by Annie Bellet, read by Maggi-Meg Reed, was excellent as well, but in an entirely different way than Butcher’s story. Train to Lost Hope is about love and loss. Ten years ago, the two women said goodbye to their bright and bubbly daughter and never heard from her again.

Drowning in their grief, one felt that she was dead, and the other thought she was still alive; it tore their love asunder. The wife, who did not believe her daughter had died, gets some new information. She picks up her ex-wife to see if they will have luck getting the townsfolk to talk to them. It is painful. It is the type of story that sticks in your teeth, and you find yourself chewing on it for a few hours after you read it. It also was an excellent counterpoint to the bubbliness of the other stories. Courage and heroism come in all shapes, even if it is the courage to let go.

Fire Hazard by Kevin Hearne is a lovely story where we get to have Oberon, one of my favorite dogs in all of fiction, center stage. A wildfire is burning in the Australian brush, and Atticus and his family (two dogs) go down to the fire to see if they can assist the earth deity in stopping the fires. He gets more than he bargained for. It is so much fun; pretty much any story equating sausage to courage is a solid win for me.

Grave Gambles by R.R. Virdi, read by Travis Baldree. This is a standalone story, but it needs to be a series as soon as possible. It reminded me of a slightly weird supernatural take on Quantum Leap. The protagonist wakes up in the bodies of the dead with a number on his arm. That number is how many hours he has to solve the crime of the person’s death. This often leads to more extensive and more complicated crimes. When the protagonist wakes up with a number 1 tattooed on his arm and in a dumpster smelling of rot. He knows that he needs to work fast. Using some of his detective skills, he can piece together a crime.

Troll Life by Kerrie L. Hughes, read by Sean Patrick Hopkins, is easily my favorite story of this collection. Our protagonist troll works at a train station, has a barghest as a pet and speaks to trains. They respect him. This already had my interest peaked. Trains that communicate telepathically sounds rather cool. He does his job day in and day out, hoping to move up a little in the world. When other supernatural creatures chase some runaway kids onto his platform, his protective tendencies emerge. Trolls aren’t flashy, but they are immune to magic, calm, and loyal. The way this story was written, I had no problem building a mental picture of the troll protagonist in my head.

If you are looking to discover some great new authors or catch up with some old friends from a solid tried and true urban fantasy series, Heroic Hearts is an excellent collection.

Read Heroic Hearts

The post REVIEW: Heroic Hearts by Jim Butcher and Kerrie Hughes appeared first on Grimdark Magazine.

Review: Heroic Hearts by Jim Butcher and Kerrie Hughes

Picking up Jim Butcher and Kerrie Hughes’s new story collection Heroic Hearts, you learn that heroism comes in many forms, whether flying, furry or four-legged. Harry Dresden may be a battle-hardened Chicogoan wizard, but Harry would have gotten nowhere if it were not for Toot Toot. Likewise, in Kevin Hearne’s Iron Druid series, we all know that it isn’t Atticus that is the main character but his four-legged Irish Wolfhound Oberon.

Heroic Hearts is an absolute feast of stories for lovers of Urban Fantasy. Many of the biggest names in the sub-genre are a part of the collection. If you are longing for that little bit of extra information about some of your favorite characters, Heroic Hearts does a great job alleviating that desire.

Not every story is a hit; doing that in a short story collection is practically unheard of. You get this many authors together, and not everyone’s writing style is for every reader. However, Heroic Hearts is solid the entire way through; even when the stories did not personally hit me as a reader, they still were all decent stories. There are some notable ones that sung to me as a reader.

Firstly, the story that starts the collection is Jim Butcher’s Little Things, read on the audiobook by James Marsters of Buffy the Vampire fame. Marster’s has done all of the Dresden books, and as a long-time audio listener, I can now not separate the two. The voice of Dresden’s world is James Marsters. Little Things is about the battle of Pixie General Toot Toot, never underestimate the tenacity of creatures in Dresden’s world, whether they big or small. They will surprise you.

When an enemy attacks the defenses and breaches the castle walls, Toot Toot and his army of wee people go to battle. They protect Dresden for once instead of the other way around, and Dresden gets some quiet moments to rest and recuperate after the events of the last novel. It is a truly delightful novel. Toot Toot is as sparkly and lively as Pixies should be while being downright bloodthirsty and unforgiving.

Train to Last Hope by Annie Bellet, read by Maggi-Meg Reed, was excellent as well, but in an entirely different way than Butcher’s story. Train to Lost Hope is about love and loss. Ten years ago, the two women said goodbye to their bright and bubbly daughter and never heard from her again.

Drowning in their grief, one felt that she was dead, and the other thought she was still alive; it tore their love asunder. The wife, who did not believe her daughter had died, gets some new information. She picks up her ex-wife to see if they will have luck getting the townsfolk to talk to them. It is painful. It is the type of story that sticks in your teeth, and you find yourself chewing on it for a few hours after you read it. It also was an excellent counterpoint to the bubbliness of the other stories. Courage and heroism come in all shapes, even if it is the courage to let go.

Fire Hazard by Kevin Hearne is a lovely story where we get to have Oberon, one of my favorite dogs in all of fiction, center stage. A wildfire is burning in the Australian brush, and Atticus and his family (two dogs) go down to the fire to see if they can assist the earth deity in stopping the fires. He gets more than he bargained for. It is so much fun; pretty much any story equating sausage to courage is a solid win for me.

Grave Gambles by R.R. Virdi, read by Travis Baldree. This is a standalone story, but it needs to be a series as soon as possible. It reminded me of a slightly weird supernatural take on Quantum Leap. The protagonist wakes up in the bodies of the dead with a number on his arm. That number is how many hours he has to solve the crime of the person’s death. This often leads to more extensive and more complicated crimes. When the protagonist wakes up with a number 1 tattooed on his arm and in a dumpster smelling of rot. He knows that he needs to work fast. Using some of his detective skills, he can piece together a crime.

Troll Life by Kerrie L. Hughes, read by Sean Patrick Hopkins, is easily my favorite story of this collection. Our protagonist troll works at a train station, has a barghest as a pet and speaks to trains. They respect him. This already had my interest peaked. Trains that communicate telepathically sounds rather cool. He does his job day in and day out, hoping to move up a little in the world. When other supernatural creatures chase some runaway kids onto his platform, his protective tendencies emerge. Trolls aren’t flashy, but they are immune to magic, calm, and loyal. The way this story was written, I had no problem building a mental picture of the troll protagonist in my head.

If you are looking to discover some great new authors or catch up with some old friends from a solid tried and true urban fantasy series, Heroic Hearts is an excellent collection.

Read Heroic Hearts

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REVIEW: Anatomy of a Heretic by David Mark

I received a review copy of Anatomy of a Heretic in exchange for an honest review. Thank you to David Mark and Head of Zeus.

The prologue in Anatomy of a Heretic takes the crown for the most intense, uncomfortable, and gruesome opening section of a novel that I can remember reading. It had me feeling nauseous and gripped to find out what could follow. It’s a memorable opening and sets the tone perfectly for what follows in Mark’s grim historical standalone book.

The action of Anatomy of a Heretic initially takes place in London and Amsterdam, 1628. The novel is presented in the third person present tense and mainly follows the point of view perspectives of two finely crafted, albeit questionable individuals. First is Nicolaes de Pelgram, gentleman assassin, thief, spy, and vassal of George Villiers (favourite of the King of England). Second – and I am ordering them as per who I enjoyed spending the time reading about most – is Jeronimus Cornelisz, a highly intelligent, extremely scarred apothecary, who has religious ideals that are heretical and motivations that are nefarious. (I viewed him as being reminiscent of The First Law‘s Sand dan Glokta.)

As fate would have it, they are both destined to be on the same ship to the Indies, yet for very different reasons. Anatomy of a Heretic wouldn’t be living up to its full potential if two characters this unalike and well-written didn’t cross paths during a voyage full of mystery, intrigue, and violence, both sharing their unique and very different viewpoints.

Head of Zeus won me over with the novel’s blurb stating “two assassins go head-to-head on the open seas” and likening the novel to Stuart Turton. There are similarities between Anatomy of a Heretic and The Devil and the Dark Water, both are set during the same time period, feature crime, mystery, the happenings of the upper and the lower class on a claustrophobic vessel at the mercy of the open water, with elements of the supernatural.

I think that Anatomy of the Heretic spends too much time introducing the main characters, side players, motivations, and agendas prior to the action moving to the ship (about a third of the book). I found it quite exhausting reading another chapter after chapter, adding a slight extra level of detail or intrigue, when I wanted the action to move to the open seas as the blurb suggested. This is probably down to my prejudgement rather than anything the author does wrong, yet if I can set someone else’s expectations more realistic than mine were, then hopefully they will enjoy the story slightly more.

One other minor criticism I have is that, unfortunately, as I have a lot of time and respect for Head of Zeus books, there were a fair few typos and grammatical errors that even my casual reading gaze picked up which jolted me out of the unfolding events. It surprises me when I see errors in books that are this well-produced.

Mark has crafted a believable, grimy, and dangerous world that his finely crafted characters inhabit. It’s bloody and violent and harsh. However, there are some genuine comedic, warmhearted moments, mainly during Otto and Pelgram’s exchanges which neatly juxtapose the many instances of tragedy. There is a heart and a moral code to some of the characters and the overall story, we have to look deeply through the darkness to find it, and just because goodness is there doesn’t mean it will win the day. Mark’s characters go through a lot in these pages, by the novel’s excellent ending, some may be unrecognisable from who they were when the journey started, if they survive that far.

There are some fine supporting characters too. Stonecutter is as brutal and uncompromising as his name would suggest, Zwaantie is mischievous and manipulative yet likeable, and some well-penned epistolary chapters are present, letters written by upper-class Lucretia who is also on-board the ship. She is writing to her husband who she’ll soon be joining in the Indies. These segments are a nice break from the lion’s share of the action and she is a great character to read the thoughts of and to see how she’s viewed by others too.

Anatomy of a Heretic scores a 7/10 for me yet I think it will be enjoyed by many grimdark fans. There are happenings aplenty that I believe could make hardened GdM fans squeamish. One such moment being “taking clubs and hooks to the rabble of near-tame penguins”.

Seriously though, Anatomy of a Heretic is a brutal and unforgiving grim historical read that features elements of crime, mystery, and the occult.

Read Anatomy of a Heretic by David Mark

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REVIEW: The Martyr by Anthony Ryan

Anthony Ryan’s latest novel is the sequel to last year’s brilliant The Pariah and is the second book in The Covenant of Steel series. The outlaw Alwyn Scribe survived the events of The Pariah and now finds himself on a journey across a land filled with unrest as religion and rebellion lead to bloodshed. Alwyn does his best to keep a dark secret from coming to light as he climbs the ladder from outlaw to spymaster and sworn protector of the Risen Martyr Lady Evadine Courlain.

Hiding the truth of Lady Evadine’s return to life, Alwyn keeps close to the woman called the Risen Martyr by the fawning masses they meet on the road. As in real life, belief and faith are strange things in The Martyr. Being a part of a religion doesn’t always mean having the same views and the lands are divided by arguments regarding faith and the ways in which folk should display their beliefs. The church isn’t too fond of Lady Evadine’s apparent resurrection, preferring their martyrs to remain dead but King Tomas is all too aware of the usefulness of Evadine and the masses who now follow this inspirational figure. The world is grim and dark, and the medieval setting calls for the commoners to be the ones who have to deal with the idiocy and greed of those ruling in power. Alwyn shows his wits and courage once again, working his way into beneficial situations and always looking for escape routes when he inevitably gets into danger. Alwyn’s closeness to Lady Evadine and his unease with the situation created by the secret of her resurrection creates suspense that the reader can feel creeping its way from the pages as another example of Ryan’s masterful storytelling.

Telling the story once again is Alwyn Scribe. There is an element of mystery throughout The Martyr as the memoir-style feeling of the tale opens up the possibility of Alwyn being an unreliable narrator. This personal way of telling the story allows the reader to really get into Alwyn’s head and feel his emotion and the reader’s emotions will often align with Alwyn’s as he writes about people whom he loves and hates and brings his own prejudices and beliefs which sometimes change along the journey. Ryan’s prose continues to be a particular strength and his writing really brings the reader into Alwyn’s mind with the characters and the world feeling like living and breathing entities. There is great depth to the worldbuilding that allows the reader to have that feeling that there are other adventures taking place around the main journey with many subtle lines and actions displaying that there are more things going on around Alwyn. Ryan again proves himself a master at creating a tangible, breathable world in this first-person style and there aren’t many better at it. Fans of Bernard Cornwell (The Saxon Stories) and Matthew Harffy (Bernicia Chronicles, A Time for Swords, A Night of Flames) will love the style and be hooked from the first page to the last.

The Martyr continues the brilliance of The Pariah with more grit and adventure that Anthony Ryan fans and newcomers will devour. An intriguing tale with commentary on the difficulties that face the common man when those in power think only of themselves. With a charismatic lead and a grim world full of interesting characters, this book is destined to be on many readers’ top ten lists by the end of the year!

5 stars

Read The Martyr by Anthony Ryan

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REVIEW: Clementine by Tillie Walden

Clementine by Tillie Walden is a brand new graphic novel set in the universe of The Walking Dead. It is aimed at a YA audience – the characters in Clementine are teens – but can easily be read up. It also stands on its own well enough that readers unfamiliar with The Walking Dead will not suffer from a lack of context. I personally came to this with only the vague knowledge that it is a zombie story and the adaptation is very popular – I’m a huge Tillie Walden fan and was drawn to Clementine through that. I understand that the character of Clementine is one that pops up in the original story, and this is the first graphic novel that features solely on her.

A bleak world post zombie apocalypse, in which our characters are fighting for survival is a good baseline situation for a reader of grimdark. In this instance, this is made even more gruelling by setting most of the story on an isolated mountain top during winter. The story only features five main characters, and large swathes of story have them separate from the rest of the remains of humanity. This makes for a tense story. Clementine’s focus is on the small interactions between these individuals as they try to make it through the winter, work through their personal and interpersonal issues – and fall in love.

Tillie Walden managed to make me, the staunchest of zombie haters fall for this story. As Clementine and her friends fight for their lives and against these creatures, their humanity starkly comes to life. And so it is about growing up in contrast to this, about becoming an adult in a world where it never seemed possible to have a future. I think that’s a sentiment that will resonate with a lot of young readers these days, with people who experience a world broken in many ways, questioning how to find their way in the chaos. While our world doesn’t have quite the amount of destruction Clementine’s world does, there are parallels that can be drawn, and Tillie Walden expertly uses them to connect the worlds.

In this age where we’re all crying out for queer and diverse books, it is wonderful to see a grimdark graphic novel aimed at a younger audience featuring a sapphic relationship and a disabled protagonist. Clementine herself is missing a leg, struggles with her disability at times, and I loved seeing that in a mainstream graphic novel connected to a major franchise. In short, an enthusiastic five stars to Clementine from me and I hope you check this one out.

Read Clementine by Tillie Walden

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REVIEW: Those Above by Daniel Polansky

In Those Above by Daniel Polansky a perfect world for the near immortal god-like creatures and their human slaves sits atop piles of ever increasing human misery below where rebellion flares. In the surrounding countries one of the few men to ever kill one of Those Above in single combat during humankind’s last failed uprising marches to a war created by one of the most fearsome women alive. In book one of The Empty Throne duology–chock full of the vicious, the brutal, the naive, and the furious–Polansky’s abilities are in fifth gear.

In Those Above, Bas God-Killer, a Legatus at the head of 20,000 men, grinds his fellow man into the dirt for his country, but his red path leads him ever toward the Roost, the fortress city where Those Above rule over humankind. Eudokia, First Lady off the Commonwealth, uses her power and influence to lead a nation generally held back by those with title. Calla, a seneschal to Those Above, serves one of the High, and witnesses the wonders of the first rung of the roost, only to discover the horror of existence Those Above built her paradise upon, below. Thistle is an impoverished young miscreant from the fifth rung of the Roost. When a smash and grab goes terribly wrong, a stranger offers him a chance at something greater.

Those Above has been on my radar ever since I finished The Builders. Polansky’s delivery can be beautiful, brutal, and darkly funny all at the same time, and it’s on full show in this book. His use of perspective brings worlds to life in a way few authors can, genuinely, with each character a voice you can pick up almost immediately, even without the context of a name.

The themes of poverty, of power and its misuse, of corruption and manipulation, and of treating people like they aren’t human while those who benefit turn a blind eye really rang out for me. The Roost itself seemed like a blunt metaphor for trickle down economics, with those on the first rung either naively, or purposefully blindly, assuming everyone below had acceptably good lives because of the splendour of the First Rung.

The four main characters were absolutely brilliant and I loved pretty much every moment seeing this world which mixes feelings of the Roman military and the Germanic tribes they fought against, and Mount Olympus and its gods come to life. Bas delivered the old-school military barbarian trope really nicely, with the mixed in Roman Legatus approach adding a nice angle. Calla and Thistle were enjoyable because of their naiveté and how Polansky pulls the wool from over their very, very different perspectives on the Roost. But we definitely have to talk about Eudokia. Eudokia, by far, was the best character to read. She is utterly vicious and calculating, and I loved every word of her chapters. And a tip of the glass has to go to narrator Andrew Wincott; his delivery of her lines is as fierce as the woman he narrates.

Those Above is an absolutely excellent read and I cannot wait to get into Those Below. While the world feels like it deserves more than a duology, I am so excited to be able to read a continent-spanning story in the space of two books. Those Above is a sprawling, brutal, imaginative read, with characters and themes that hit home with the freakish power of the superhuman masters of humankind.

Read Those above by Daniel Polansky

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REVIEW: The Doloriad by Missouri Williams

There’s a febrile, hallucinatory quality to The Doloriad by Missouri Williams. It’s hard to quantify because it is so singularly non-linear, and that it seemingly isn’t actually about anything.

But maybe that’s incorrect. The Doloriad is, perhaps, an experiential exercise. It is, in fact, about experiencing the frenetically feverish narrative. About ingesting the sometimes delightfully, absurdly profound prose. There are, without a doubt, moments of truly inspired wordplay at work within the sometimes claustrophobic confines of The Doloriad’s pages. Moments that are evocative, that do more than simply create any kind of atmosphere but awaken vivid imagery within the mind’s eye that plays upon all the senses. Missouri Williams constructs passages that are equally mystifying and confounding; passages that left me staring after something a million miles in the distance like the titular, moon-eyed figure of Dolores.

For all of that, as inspired as the prose is, it is the wordplay and structure of The Doloriad that are also some of its biggest weaknesses. The perspective, a detached omniscient observer, moves without warning from one point to the next, jumps from one character to the next, without warning. Sometimes in the middle of a single paragraph you’ll find yourself inhabiting the headspace of two or three individuals—which is compounded by the fact that Williams pours everything into long, winding blocks of text that verge on the edge of rambling. Sometimes it almost feels as if The Doloriad is spilling in a heated rush from the mouth of a semi-delusional oracle, struck by inspiration and desperate to vacate their skull of a flood of words they can scarcely contain. It creates a tidal rush that pounds on and on, moving endlessly at a breathless pace that can occasionally be bewildering.

More than that, though, The Doloriad has a distinctly nihilistic lean to it. It exists in a fatalistic world somewhere on the other side of an enigmatic apocalypse that has all but annihilated humanity, leaving behind a handful of survivors to eke out something that could only generously be considered an existence. A cabal of family members who spend their days in the shattered hulk of a city ensconced in a labyrinthine forest who wile away their days in interminable nonsense and melodramas. It is in the observation of this family we discover that The Doloriad is about nothing so much as observing the—at times awful—activities of this family and its members as they crawl and clash and claw their way through an indecipherable stretch of time. Are they truly the last vestiges of mankind? Does it even matter? Are they all, to a one, utterly awful as if with the fall of civilization everything even resembling humanity itself has been obliterated from the survivors? Do they exist in a state of nature bordering on the primal where the only thing that matters is the satiation of urges? Does it even matter?

It doesn’t. In The Doloriad the only thing that matters is moving from the beginning that isn’t really even a beginning to the ending that can hardly be considered an end. The Doloriad is about the experience. A colossal moment built out of lesser moments that congeal to create something more, something less, something ultimately other. It’s not for everyone, not by a long shot, but it sits solidly with three stars as something truly unique that left me wondering about not so much the point of life but whether or not a thing even needs a point to begin with. The Doloriad is the debut novel of Missouri Williams and the breakout of a unique voice that maybe needs to be experienced.

Read The Doloriad by Missouri Williams

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REVIEW: House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski

“Have you heard about that book that’s supposed to drive you insane?” The first time I caught wind of Mark Z. Danielewski’s House of Leaves, I was sitting in a coffee shop with a friend. We were discussing horror novels when she brought up the supposedly sanity-shattering story, and neither of us had read it at the time. Close to ten years passed, but the memory of her question stuck with me and led me to finally pick up a copy of my own. While my mind is disappointingly intact after a readthrough, I still found it to be one of the most unsettling and unconventional haunted house stories ever written.

House of Leaves is a story in layers, each created by a different character. At its core, we have The Navidson Record, a documentary about renowned photojournalist Will Navidson, his girlfriend Karen Green, and their two children moving into a new home. Things take an eerie turn when Navidson discovers that his house is one quarter of an inch larger on the inside than the outside. When the couple finds a new closet in their bedroom, perfectly black and utterly featureless, they start to get scared. The nightmare truly begins, however, when another door appears in their living room and leads to dark, twisting hallways filled with doors and every indication that someone or something dwells there. The majority of the book is written as something like an academic paper on the Navidson Record by the blind recluse Zampanò.

After his death, Zampanò’s mad scrawlings are found by a tattoo shop apprentice named Johnny Truant. Truant compiles his notes into the very book we’re holding in our own hands and submits it to a publisher, adding his own interjections and troubled backstory to the text as he grows more and more obsessed with Will Navidsons’s labyrinthine hallways and the possibility that whatever lived there has caught notice of him too. The most recent edition of the book includes a third narrator, Johnny’s mother, writing to her son from an asylum in The Whalestoe Letters (originally a separate companion book, now added as an appendix).

The story itself, while somewhat tangled, was very eerie and enjoyable. The characters are all very well done, and watching their personalities and relationships as they’re touched, directly and indirectly, by the house is fascinating. As a former war photojournalist, Will Navidson is dealing with the dual nature of his trauma and his inescapable drive to explore and photograph the world’s darkest and most dangerous corners. Karen, by contrast, has to deal with her claustrophobia in ways far worse than she ever thought possible. Even their children are affected by the house, bringing home pages of entirely blackened paper when asked to draw their home at school.

I found Johnny Truant’s part of the narrative a little less compelling at times. While it was cool to see the effect his growing obsession with The Navidson Record had on him, many of his earlier scenes boil down to ‘my friend Lude and I took X drugs and slept with X women.’ The payoff and the culmination of his mania really add to the story, but I did sometimes find myself wanting to get back to Will and Karen at the house and what I considered to be the core of the narrative.

While I normally value printed books and e-books in equal measure, I would recommend that any would-be House of Leaves reader grab a hard copy of this one. One of the things that makes the story so unique and disquieting is its bizarre typography. As Zampanó, for example, gradually loses his grip on sanity, his already tangled footnotes spiral out of control. Sometimes sections are written sideways or upside down, changing mid-page. In The Whalestoe Letters, words are layered over one another and crawl across the page as Johnny’s mother sinks deeper into her own imagined hell. In some places, this text mimics the shifting state of the house, both growing and shrinking. Dense pages of crowded letters go along with scenes of claustrophobia, and nearly blank pages that contain only a single sentence match agoraphobic chapters as the house grows.

By the same token, this book might not appeal to everybody. House of Leaves is, to put it simply, a very weird book. Beyond the pseudo-academic writing style, some sections have to be read in a mirror or with the book flipped odd directions or by only taking the first letter of every word in a paragraph. In addition to that, while some questions about the house and characters are answered, others are not and readers are left with some points of ambiguity by end of the story. If you’re a fairly meat-and-potatoes reader like I am who prefers all their questions answered at the end of a book/movie, the remaining mysteries might bother you too.

As I read House of Leaves, Stephen King’s old taxonomy of fear came to mind more than once. To King, there are three ways books can frighten us: The ‘Gross-out,’ the ‘Horror,’ and finally, simply ‘Terror.’  For the gross-out, think filth and gore—the ultraviolence of 80s slashers and the more recent Saw or Hostel franchises. For horror, imagine the unnatural. This might include demonic forces, corpses that shamble when they should sleep, and a host of other monsters that subvert the order of things in disconcerting ways, like The Ring or Hereditary. Lastly, we have terror, according to King, “the last and worst one… when you come home and notice everything you own had been taken away and replaced with an exact substitute. It’s when the lights go out and you feel something behind you, you hear it, and you feel its breath against your ear, but when you turn around, there’s nothing there.” With this book, I couldn’t help but think that Danielewski achieved that third brand of scariness and wrote something truly unsettling.

House of Leaves is light on gore and monsters, save the one supremely terrifying entity, the “dweller in darkness,” that lives in the empty halls. While it’s difficult to put a book this unusual next to more conventional novels and judge them by the same standards, I would give House of Leaves 4.5/5 stars with the caveat that, while it is innovative writing, not every horror reader will love it. All in all, it’s a story that gets into your head and haunts you in its own way. While I hung onto my sanity, I couldn’t help but feel a chill run down my spine when a library coworker approached me last week, scratching his head and saying that, although he’d worked in the library for years, he’d just found a storage closet inside a storage closet that he’d never been in before. Needless to say, I didn’t go anywhere near it.

Read House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski

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REVIEW: The Hand that Casts the Bone by H.L. Tinsley

HL Tinsley’s The Hand that Casts the Bone is the follow-up to her debut, We Men of Ash and Shadow. Beginning shortly after its predecessor leaves off, Tinsley packs her sequel full of consequences. As her characters learn the hard way: you reap what you sow, but it’s not always you who pays the price. Sometimes, it’s the people you love the most.

The Hand that Casts the Bone finds the city of D’Orsee teetering on the edge of revolt. Causing a further descent into chaos, the death of a prominent aristocrat shifts the balance of power, calling all ruthless and ambitious men to come out and play. Some strike forward to seize control while others must accept the “perks” of acquiring a vigilante status, including the lack of medical assistance and finances. No amount of words nor weapons can be wasted with everything at risk. As the city threatens to burn itself down in flames, hope and chance can only form from its ashes.

Sequels are challenging for me as a reader. More often than not, they can feel too much like “middle books” with the sole purpose of bridging pieces of the overarching story together. This was not the case with The Hand that Casts the Bone. Tinsley builds upon all the elements I enjoyed from We Men of Ash and Shadow while strengthening and adding to the complexity of the story she tells. The connections between the two books are present while being purposeful. The standout aspect of the book comes from Tinsley’s ability to display realistic character dynamics and then relate these relationships to significant themes that directly propel the plot forward. Each character faces conflict with difficult consequences regardless of the choice made. Tinsley executes the fallout well, and the payoff is well earned.

The Hand that Casts the Bone takes traditional grimdark elements like morally-grey characters, ambiguous decisions, and brutal violence and applies them to a Gaslamp atmosphere with Gothic undertones to create something wholly unique. Tinsley’s bleak world sets the stage for the themes of choice, hope, and redemption to play out in varying ways, keeping the reader on their toes at every turn: “Each person has a threshold at which point, when confronted with things they do not want to face, must choose between fight and flight.” Only Tinsley knows what’s in store next, but I’m most assuredly going along for the ride.

Thank you to the author for sending me an ARC of The Hand that Casts the Bone to review.

Read The Hand that Casts the Bone by H.L. Tinsley

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REVIEW: Gun Honey by Charles Ardai and Ang Hor Kheng

Gun Honey, by writer Charles Ardai and breakout artist Ang Hor Kheng, is a new installment for Titan Comics’ Hard Case line of crime comics. And it’s an impressive feat for a number of reasons, not least of which by absolutely nailing down the trifecta of being a stunningly raw delivery of pulpy, grindhouse, exploitation goodness. I can hear the soundtrack (there are wailing synths and horns involved), I can see the film grain and cigarette burns on the celluloid. If Tarantino wrote a comic, trying to encapsulate everything that’s flagrantly awesome about the crime grindhouse subgenre, it would turn out looking like Gun Honey.

A lot of that has to do with the overall aesthetic of the comic, with Ang Hor Keng’s art and designs having an almost timeless feel to them but also being illustratively reminiscent of old school movie posters and pulp dime novel covers. It’s crisp and streamlined and flows so damn well. But more than that, Keng’s compositions in Gun Honey are effortlessly cinematic in a way that makes it easy to envision cuts and transitions, scenes falling and smashing from one to the next while the action never stops moving. Ardai’s written a breathless action thriller that doesn’t try to beat around the bush with any big mysteries or brain warping conspiracies. Gun Honey is burning hot schlock in the best possible way, with an ultra cool heroine in the driver’s seat who kicks all the ass and takes all the names. It’s a crime story and a revenge tale and Ardai even manages to slip in some stuff about family to round things out, but more than anything Gun Honey is about the spectacle. And it achieves that effortlessly.

Because what is pulp? What is grindhouse? It would be easy enough to just point in exasperation at Gun Honey and say, “This. This right here.” And it would be one hundred percent correct, but that’s reductive as hell. More than any kind of central theme, pulp and grindhouse are about using certain aesthetics and elements to create a specific experience. A specific feeling. An experience you feel embroiled in, a feeling that you’re being dragged along by the story and all you can do is hang on for dear life. It’s bare knuckle, it’s bloody and sexy and unapologetic and unflinching. Gun Honey is all of these things; an absolute experience that leaves you a little bit dizzy and breathless, wondering where the hell the time went and how the pages flew by so fast, but make no mistake it’ll leave you with a smile on your face and wanting more.

With Gun Honey we’re given the opening salvo of Joanna Tan’s adventures, a taste of her exhilarating life, a glimpse into the misfortune that shaped her into the hard living, take no prisoners absolute bad ass that she is and we see that she is a woman not to be trifled with. Someone imminently capable, someone with no problem burning the world down to get what she wants out of it. Someone who I cannot wait to read more about. If you’re a fan of crime thrillers, hardwired pulp, and edge of your seat grindhouse action then Gun Honey is a five star experience you can’t miss out on.

Read Gun Honey by Charles Ardai and Ang Hor Kheng

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