Kathryn Troy's Blog, page 11

Spooky Fun - Thirteen Ghosts

There's no such thing as a bad William Castle film. 13 Ghosts (1960) is no exception. What else but fun can it possibly be when ghosts pour flour all over the kitchen, then throw a cleaver at your head for good measure?

This film takes the (now tropey) idea of moving into an inherited house full of ghosts and balances the antics of the ghosts with some truly terrifying moments, which is what makes a Castle film a Castle film. There's also some other gothic tropes in the mix here, with an uncle conducting cryptic experiments, a housemaid that doesn't stay after dark, and the charming lawyer who's always around when you need him, and even when you might not. The question of the whether the ghosts are real (I'm not telling) is also handled very well. It's a quite thoughtful plot for a horror movie that you can laugh your way right through.
Loved the way they introduced her - LOVED IT!
The presence of a bona-fide witch was a pleasant surprise. It was a very cheeky way to handle a movie icon like her.
If you're looking for a popcorn film with thrills of all kinds, check this one out - you won't regret it!


K.Rating: 4/5

Curse of the Amber- Available Now

I'm so happy to present to you my latest work, Curse of the Amber, new from City Owl Press!



 Here's the blurb!

Quintus was a dutiful son and soldier. His duty led him to Britannia, to improve his marriage prospects and ensure the Druids never rise again. He never expected to be sacrificed to their sacred bog, trapped forever by the gods below.

Two thousand years later, Asenath Hayes discovers the most well-preserved body in history. The last thing she needs is for him to wake up.

As the young archaeologist delves into Druidic rituals to grasp why Quintus was offered to a Welsh bog and then resurrected, she is forced to complete her research with the "missing" body, dodge her ex-lover and mentor with his own agenda, and keep her gorgeous new house guest under wraps.

But, smitten with her as he seems, Quintus says he wants to go home.

Asenath is drawn to Quintus by the secrets they share, even if it scares her. As Asenath is pulled deeper into the mysteries of the bog, she must risk everything to keep him from hell's cold grasp as she uncovers forbidden rites, awakened deities, and an attraction that transcends the ages.  

Curse of the Amber- Cover Release & ARC'S

I'm so happy to reveal the cover for Curse of the Amber, being released next month by City Owl Press!



Courtesy of the publisher, those interested on ARCS can contact me via email for an advance digital copy. Here's the blurb!

Quintus was a dutiful son and soldier. His duty led him to Britannia, to improve his marriage prospects and ensure the Druids never rise again. He never expected to be sacrificed to their sacred bog, trapped forever by the gods below.

Two thousand years later, Asenath Hayes discovers the most well-preserved body in history. The last thing she needs is for him to wake up.

As the young archaeologist delves into Druidic rituals to grasp why Quintus was offered to a Welsh bog and then resurrected, she is forced to complete her research with the "missing" body, dodge her ex-lover and mentor with his own agenda, and keep her gorgeous new house guest under wraps. 

But, smitten with her as he seems, Quintus says he wants to go home.

Asenath is drawn to Quintus by the secrets they share, even if it scares her. As Asenath is pulled deeper into the mysteries of the bog, she must risk everything to keep him from hell's cold grasp as she uncovers forbidden rites, awakened deities, and an attraction that transcends the ages.  

The Unicorn Book I'd Forgotten I Needed: Dark Whispers

I've wanted to travel to Luster ever since I brought Into the Land of the Unicorns home from the Scholastic Book Fair that came to my middle school. It changed my life. And then...the rest of my life happened, and there was no Book 2 for the Unicorn Chronicles in sight. Until one fine day, when Song of the Wanderer appeared on the fantasy bookshelf. And made its way onto my shelf. But I don't remember being terribly impressed with that title. And so I suppose I stopped looking for unicorns. But then, I saw a third book, Dark Whispers. 

Well. Once again, Bruce Coville has managed to change my life. Dark Whispers is a fantastic tale, which is so refreshing for telling an adventurous story about the most "perfect" beings, unicorns, and making that story deep and dark and bloody. I devoured this book, in which Cara is sent to find a secret torn from the pages of the Unicorn Chronicles that might save Luster, now that their arch-enemy Beloved has an amulet that will help her open a gate from Earth, in which her father Ian, a former unicorn hunter, allies himself with strange characters with even stranger powers to free his wife from the Rainbow Prison, in which the delvers are more than what they seem, and in which the Dimblethum will listen to the nagging voice in his ear, betraying everything he holds dear.

Not exactly writing a kid's series anymore, are you Coville? That urgency I felt as a child is back in all its fury, and there will be a review of the series conclusion, The Last Hunt , on this blog in short order.

Somewhere In Time By the Lighthouse - The Night Mark

I like time travel books- they usually promise fun, and sometimes tragic romance. Somewhere in Time is one of my all-time fave movies that can be watched over and over and still be sad for how far apart the lovers are kept.

The Night Mark  was just such a tale. A widow travels back in time while photographing a lighthouse in the Carolinas, only to find that the keeper of the lighthouse is a dead ringer for her dead husband.

The book started off really strong - you felt an emotional connection to Faye and her grief, and I don't mind admitting I got a lump in my throat. I don't often do that. Not reading books. So I read voraciously. The time travel element was very tight, much like Somewhere in Time, and it was strength of the storytelling to see the connection between past and present in this focused microcosm.

But the actual relationship between Faye and the keeper Carrick was always a bit off-kilter, and leaned very heavily on the tropes of soap operas and melodramas. Faye was now in the body of Faith, who looked just like her but had died in the past, but now she hadn't died because she was possessed by Faye. Carrick looked just like Faye's dead husband Will, but he's not Will, even though he does and says things (and makes love!) just like Will did, and then there's the question of where Faith is, and where Will is, and are they together in heaven now that Carrick and Faye are together in the past? Except Carrick thinks Faith is Faye.....

I could keep going. What felt like such a good setup unraveled in the end, and it left me disappointed. Especially in the chemistry department. Nothing of substance happened between Faye and Carrick on an emotional/psychological level for me to believe them when they professed their love for each other, and not the significant others they had both lost.

Also, it became a bit preachy at the end too, which I never want to see in my romance novels. I totally understand the usefulness of a character who has already time traveled to help unearth the mystery of such a phenomenon, but when it comes down to that character being an ex-priest, extrapolating on God's intention to bend the rules of time (not to be with your husband, but to be with someone who looks like him) - that's weird. And there was too much going back and forth at the end for reasons that didn't feel compelling, so the time-travel element lost its luster.

Ah well. Back to Chris Reeve. (Really, I'd have taken any excuse).

K. Rating: 3.5/5

*swoon*

The Best Horror Movies You Never Saw

Happy St. Patrick's Day! Since my taste in horror cinema tends toward the path less taken, I thought I'd give you some little golden nuggets that you may not have heard of, but are definitely worth watching. In no particular order, here's a list of the very best horror movies you never saw:

Don't Look Now: This macabre mystery with Donald Sutherland has an abundance of 70's charm, and has the look and cinematic feel of a giallo - weird nonlinear storytelling, interesting camera angles, and some genuinely creepy imagery.

Altered: There are few alien abduction movies that I actually take seriously as horror, and this one by Eduardo Sanchez, who brought us The Blair Witch Project, really delivers with this title.

Altered States: This one is truly bizarre, with dark, disturbing imagery and a far-out narrative that makes those effects all the more chilling.

Sheitan : Let's face it - Anything with Vincent Cassel in it is creepy. And this one is one of the best, digging really deep in order to make you squirm about finding yourself in the middle-of-nowhere France, reminiscent of the disturbing family of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.

Nomads  - Pierce Brosnan is fantastic in this existential horror that investigates groups of people on the margins of society, with some powerful and lingering imagery about Inuits and American counterculture. It is genuinely unique in its content and is horrific and thrilling at the same time.

Yokai Monsters : Nobody does bizarre better than Japanese filmmakers. This franchise is no exception, with some off-the-wall physical props for the variety of folk monsters on spectacularly spooky display.

The Psychic : This Lucio Fulci giallo, aka Seven Notes in Black,  is one of the best, with a tight story that's easier to follow than most Italian titles of the same category, with influences of Edgar Allan Poe as a woman has a vision of someone being buried alive inside a wall.

So there you have it! And if you're a rare breed that has seen all the films on this list, drop me a line! We should be besties.

WTF??? Hereditary

I hate it when good horror concepts go bad. I hate it even more when they go bad and bizarre. That's what watching Hereditary was like. I thought I was in for a night of family dysfunction, with a question of extreme insanity. And there were some truly gruesome scenes in there, and I have to give credit where credit is due. There were lots of creepy concepts in this film.


But the major problem was that none of these concepts made sense being in the same film together. So the plot ends up being really loopy as it tries to make sense of all these disparate ideas. Worse than that though - any time something really dramatic happened, like the son causing his sister's head to be decapitated for example, the movie would show the moment, and then quickly cut away to something else. What?!! How do you do that without showing the parent's reaction, without showing how that is going to affect the family dynamic moving forward? How do you NOT tell the story of your characters, and expect the audience to take you seriously? Oh, and then...witches. W. T. F.

I've seen and enjoyed nonlinear storytelling before. I'm in love with Twin Peaks. But here's the difference: even though you never truly know what's going on in that not-so-sleepy little town, you know it's all there for a reason. Even if David Lynch is the only one who knows that reason. But he's a master storyteller, and all the pieces go together. This was just a jumble.

There were maybe about half a dozen good movie concepts all thrown together here, with some really great effects and camerawork, but it was just a hot, hot, bloody mess. Such a disappointment.

K Rating: 2/5 (and those 2 points go to the cinematographers and propmakers)

Compelling Romantic Fantasy - Witchmark

With so much historical fiction focusing on WWII, I was very happy to see Witchmark focus on conjuring a world much like the one after the Great War, with its emergent technologies and innovations - and some magic mixed in, of course.

The romantic tension between Miles and the gorgeous god-like man Tristan who brings a murder mystery to his doorstep was delicious; it was a very clever use of simple physical contact to evoke a deep well of desire, and I bought it hook, line, and sinker. I also really enjoyed the interplay between their personalities, with Miles being more reserved, both in his love life and in his work, vs. the more playful and mischievous Tristan.

The primary plot - the private investigation of a witch's death, which slowly reveals how magic and politics operate in this world (pervasive, but secretive), was very interesting, although I do have to say that even though I came to this book for its historical influences, I don't quite feel that they were used effectively. All of the technologies, with the exception of magic, are of this world. Basically everything operates exactly as it did in Earth's past- just running on ether instead of electricity. It wasn't the most original deviation from historical detail that I've seen, and in many places it felt like a crutch, where the author would have to play catch-up to explain why things are the same in this alternative world, but not. And often that roundabout explanation wasn't sufficient for me. I would have liked more conceptual emphasis dedicated to the world building here that might evoke a sense of the early 20th century, but looked less transparently like the 20th century. It just didn't go far enough away from its source material.

The political/family drama was very safe and expected for fiction that deals in these periods of propriety and knowing one's place in society and in their family. It worked well for the characters, most of whom are unlikeable except for the two males stealing the show, but it wasn't anything I didn't expect once I realized "family drama" was part of the narrative.

As much as I liked following Miles and Tristan around, the second book seems to focus on Miles's sister. First of all, she was one of the most unlikeable characters and I have no interest in sympathizing with her, and second, I don't know if I quite appreciate the duplication of character dynamic - ie, first book male/male romance, second book female/female romance? I'm all for LGBTQ representation in literature, and I devoured this book in short order, but it should be done because it feels right and is organic to the plot, not simply for the sake of it. Which is how the blurb for the second book in the Kingston Cycle struck me, especially with my lackluster impression of Polk's ability to write a super-solid historical fantasy. Is that just me?



K. Rating: 4/5

It would have to be a relationship like this one to get me onboard for  Stormsong

How to Piss Me Off When Reading Romance - Or, How to Flirt with a Naked Werewolf

You know what I don't like? I don't like picking up a supernatural romance (which I don't do that often, even though I like romance and the supernatural, because of the inconsistent quality of the genre as a whole), and discovering that I've picked up yet another book that should have stayed in the slush pile. This time, it was How to Flirt with a Naked Werewolf\


But, I'll be kind where it's due. There was a fine sense of place, and romantic tension (at least for a time) was sufficient.

There. Now I can say how I really feel. The steamy scenes were inconsistent, the love interest Cooper was unlikeable because he was an asshole, and then the main character Mo became unlikeable when she rewarded the asshole for bad behavior! I'm not saying I don't understand that "enemies to lovers" is a thing, or that a couple can't come together after something pulls them apart. But that requires plotting and characterization that makes sense. Here, those interactions are so inorganic that they are contrived. Cooper the werewolf is a jerk when the story calls for it, but when it's time to insert a sex scene, he magically transforms-not into a wolf, but into a different person with a different personality that makes him vulnerable, and therefore perhaps interesting and alluring. There was no connection or emotional/psychological chemistry, or any kind of growth between Cooper and Mo, just the sex, and then an "I love you" that comes from left-field. Call me stupid, but I don't like  shotgun weddings. And I don't really have a whole lot of sympathy for women who don't kick guys like that to the curb. Oh, and also, werewolves don't eat people. They're just cute and cuddly. So, you know, it wasn't my fave.

K Rating: 1/5

Anime at its Craziest - Beserk

Yes, I'm slow to the game. I know Beserk has been around for a long time - the manga, the animated series, the films, and some more recent iterations. But to be fair, I started watching the original show Beserk many years ago, and didn't get to the second episode. It just didn't grab me on the first go-around. But my anime tastes being what they are (that is, very very picky and primarily interested in dark narratives), I came back around. There's only so many times you can watch Vampire Hunter D, after all.

So. I said crazy. And I mean that. It's craziest at the end, of course, when Griffith finally fulfills his destiny to become some kind of bloodthirsty god, but that's not the only crazy. Guts is crazy too - swinging that humongo - sword everywhere, killing 100 men in a single sitting, and making someone cold and calculated like Griffith, whose every move is made for the purpose of ascending the Midland crown in this pseudo-medieval period fantasy, completely lose his shit by walking away from their merry band of men. The story's a whirlwind, and begs to be binged.

What I love about Beserk is how completely unafraid it is to go completely over the top, especially at the conclusion of the series where we finally get more about the significance of the Behelit, the magical amulet Griffith always wears, which protected him from a demon. Very few things actually disturb me to watch on screen, but I gotta tell you, I squirmed. And just when you think things couldn't get any more despicable, they come right back at you again. Kudos to the animators and their sick, sick minds.

The other best aspect of this epic tale is the relationship between Griffith and Guts. They are both so strong and distinct in different ways, and it was so satisfying and interesting to see their dynamic shift over the course of the show as Guts slowly became his own man, and sought for Griffith to see him not just as a soldier or a highly skilled lapdog, but to hope to be equal to him by refusing to obey him, and finally honing not just his sword, but his own sense of will and self-control. It was fantastic, and supremely satisfying to see how much Griffith's men (and woman) idolize Guts. But as much as Guts is a threat to Griffith's own rise, he is under Guts's spell too, which makes for some pretty dramatic twists in the plot that ultimately lead to this crazy, bloody conclusion.

Which is not a conclusion at all. My only regret about this show was how little we got of the cosmic forces at work behind the scenes, with the exception of the last handful of episodes. That kind of fantastical mythicism always gets me up in the morning, and I came away wanting so much more of that, less of the political drama that takes up a good chunk of the middle of the series, and I want a return to the post-demon apocalypse world in which the show begins. That's the show I've gotta see.

K. Rating: 4/5