Rachel Smith's Blog: Guinea Pigs and Books, page 13

Kathy does get ditched at the festival, but not in a disorienting “we’re preparing you as a sacrifice today” kind of way.

64. Come to Castlemoor – Beatrice Parker

Ruins, secret ceremonies, a brother who studies exactly that kind of thing and dies in an unfortunate “walking on the moors” kind of accident… exactly the kind of thing that inspires a very beautiful sister to travel north and decide she’s going to finish the book her brother started because that was very important to him. Even if there are “ghosts” around and the family next door in the castle is very weird and the dudes from said castle are ignoring everyone but her, Kathy will succeed. She does have a very sassy romance-minded maid after all. And gumption.

Kathy, of course, becomes trapped between the two dudes who live at Castlemoor and enveloped in a bit of a mystery about who is really dead and who might be just locked in a dungeon, who is wearing those white ghosty outfits, and what exactly is happening in those ruins that seem to be rather haunted. Kathy’s main questions end up being how involved in whatever’s going on is the broody dude versus how involved is the one who can’t stop collecting folk songs – are either of them actually marriage material when she pretends she doesn’t want to even date either of them, but secretly wants to date both of them? Unfortunately, there is more to that part than the whole “secret ceremonies and ancient rites” part, which is the part I was keen on, but this is a fun story nonetheless. There’s even a festival scene. Every folk horror adjacent work needs a town festival scene.

 

Wisting just asked Dagmar if she wants to hear his folk song collection. She’s reeling in disinterest.

“Pot’s a misdemeanor. Decapitation seems a bit severe.”

12. Salt Blood – T.C. Parker

A prison on a Scottish island for people who did something that caused outrage, regardless of context, and all of that is directed by an algorithm, not any of the past methods of finding and conviction, and one thing AI does not understand ever is context. When Robin first gets there, context is the important word that gets repeated about everybody’s crimes, including Robin’s. She meets one of the most notorious prisoners and they have a good connection, much to the chagrin of Carol, prison welcome wagon/total busy body. And the island is closed off by a giant dome that’s also a Faraday cage, the whole thing, including where the persons native to that island are located. They do not seem like happy campers and do seem very good with horses.

There’s also something else on the island, something ancient and trapped. So even when it seems like you only have to do six months, you might not live through those because of an agreement with an ancient beast who is really just being greedy. The algorithm benefits the ancient beast, but no one else, really. And the corporate entity that owns the island, the algorithm that puts people in prison, and lots and lots of other things, well, they’re only in it for the avoidance of bad press and doing whatever they need to so they still make money. Feeding the beast as metaphor has never been so accurate or literal.

 

Merricat is waiting for her tribute as guinea pigs are ancient beasts which require them in the form of lettuces and other veggies.

 

From the archives of intimidating children’s television…

125. Knock Knock, Open Wide – Neil Sharpson

Irish folklore, but make it a conspiracy involving a creepy sounding children’s program with a box that only opens if someone makes the little goat Puckeen inside mad. But he’s not really just a goat, clearly. And that’s not the only part of the folklore making an appearance because they also have a very off-putting situation with a corpse that is also part of the conspiracy and poor soul Etain, who just got engaged with a very unique ring, is going to get to find the corpse, which has been nibbled on by angry dogs. So instead of leaving the corpse where it is for an inevitable investigation and finding a phone to call the Gardai and just mention to them it’s been nibbled on, she puts the corpse in the back of her mom’s car and drives it to the nearest house, a not good place to be. This action essentially ruins her life for the years to come.

Her children, one of whom goes missing as a child and has done a school visit at the very TV show with the boxed goat, are also not having a good time. Not at all really. Her daughter who didn’t disappear was not the one Etain liked and so she grows up to be part of the drama society at her university. That’s not the worst of it, she mostly thinks she’s utterly unlovable because that’s the message she’s received from her mother her entire life and then she loves ’em and leaves ’em until she finds Betty, who she simply cannot leave even though she tries really hard to be awful about it.

It’s a good story overall, read very quickly for me, and I’m not entirely sure about the resolution still. I was a little surprised there wasn’t another chapter or some more information about the missing journalist, who was quite the character, before it was all over and tidied. I guess that’s changelings for you.

 

Murderface and Belvedere know whether or not Belvedere’s a changeling. I know he never went missing as a child because for most of his actual piggy childhood we all lived in the same room.

 

“To be deceived is a woman’s crime.”

71. In the Shadow of the Cat – Wendy England

This has a startled looking Siamese cat on the cover, which, does not appear in the book. The “cat” in the book is a rock outcropping on the moors that looks like a cat’s head. There’s a dog in the story though, it meets an unfortunate end, so beware. Also, this is set on the week of Halloween through Guy Fawkes Day in Yorkshire and they do actually have a bonfire, which was more unpleasant than it needed to be.

In the Shadow of the Cat is an occult gothic in the shape of a horror novel. That startled cat and the witchcraft angle seems really horrory, but it’s sort of more of a Kathren is fated to marry into witchcraft because of family secrets her mother failed to share with her and now she’s having a bad case of deaths in the family and her childhood sweetheart is still on her mind while her fiancee is trying to be all chaste with her, which was weirdly forced. Will her wedding remain postponed? Does that have anything to do with being initiated into the witch side of the family? Would they keep mentioning the wedding’s timing if it didn’t? I have to say, I didn’t care if she got married.

Anyway, Kathren finds some information while smoking and reading (she’s constantly smoking) and making promises she won’t keep to her Aunt Matty (dies), her brother (she should have kept that one and saved herself some kidnapping), and her nanny (hanged), which may save her from living for the devil. She could have just stayed in her room and smoked some more and she would have figured out who the murderer was, like me, who figured it out without any smoking at all very early on in the narrative because I am not oblivious or thinking only of whether or not all these deaths should postpone the wedding. They should have, that’s just sensible.

 

Dagmar and Camille are kind of interested in getting out of their little alcove; well, Dagmar is, but they’re just fine staying there if it means getting out of a wedding.

Sometimes murderers are popular.

7. Pine – Francine Toon

Being from the US, we have Halloween without a “party piece,” just pure give and take in the serious pursuit of anyone who gives out full size candy bars, so it was entertaining to me that anyone had to sing or tell a Bazooka Joe level joke to get their essentially real food like toffee apples and not just brightly colored commercial candy glory. The way they do it in this little village near the Highlands would make it way easier to poison or razorblade somebody.

Anyway, Lauren lives with her dad in what is clearly quite a small village and basically only guises for Halloween treats on one street. Her mother has left the family for reasons unknown and her dad does not want to talk about her mother and is essentially an alcoholic with some moments of clarity. Lauren’s survival methods at school and at home when she’s basically neglected are sad but understandable and she does see her mother even though she doesn’t really know it’s her, which is part of the story that gives it an actual trajectory instead of just meandering around this town (which I got worried was going to be all of the story, just a character/location study which can be so tiring when you want a story resolution). Lauren sees her and so do other people, but nobody remembers seeing her except Lauren and this one older lady who Lauren learns was her mother’s friend and into older traditions and witchy sorts of things.

Lauren doesn’t really know who she’s seeing because of her dad’s lack of interest in telling her about her mom and thankfully Lauren’s babysitter Ann Marie and the older lady Vairi give her some information and show her photos. It’s very sad that her dad just cannot get his shit together in any way. Lauren is resilient and a bit wistful and obviously she’s getting bullied at school because some children are terrible humans.

After a very weird night where Lauren’s drunk father catches Ann Marie at the Spar and he thinks she’s just buying liquor underage and then he drunkenly scares the crap out of her giving her a ride almost all the way home, Ann Marie ends up missing. The reader doesn’t find out that this situation and the resolution will give context and resolution to other aspects of Lauren and her dad’s life that have been nudged about while we’re learning how their lives go and about the town and it was really great to have an actual story here. It’s a story that lures in the lit fic “atmospheric” fans but actually goes somewhere satisfying.

 

In Snuffy’s village of one witch-hat cardboard house, she has only these felt crows to hear her party piece and find missing persons.

I think these kids would like the “trick or treat” concept quite a lot.

50. Deadtime Story – Margaret Bingley

The evil children have a gang. But Carlo, most eligible bachelor of Lower Ditton, says they are just misunderstood. They keep murdering various parents and have a really specific target in mind that they for some reason did not take out first, but they are just misunderstood. And possessed. By some other dead children who, like Carlo, did not have a safe and comfortable upbringing. A lack of a safe and comfortable upbringing does not always lead to murder, in fact sometimes being brought up in a loving home leads to murder, but this is not explored because this is an evil children in a village story. Carlo, who is technically not the main character, thinks the children walk on water and Amy, who is kind of interested in dating Carlo because he’s very attractive and this is a small village, and she’s certainly not going to marry her murdered sister’s ex-husband, is trying to navigate how to not acquiesce completely to children who are a total threat when they decide someone is “bad.”

 

Camille’s innocent face comes easily, Dagmar’s does not, and yet they are but innocent young ladypiglets on a pumpkin.

“Fastest transition in the world: from human to corpse. It doesn’t do to get the two confused, or you’ll never be successful.”

33. Carnosaur – Harry Adam Knight

Before the novel Jurassic Park existed, genetically engineered dinosaurs created from a combination of not quite fossilized DNA and chicken cells (Dr. Alan Grant would be happy about that, I think, as opposed to the gender switching frog DNA) wreaked havoc upon Warchester, Cambridgeshire. They ate a number of dogs and a pony and several misogynistic assholes and one suddenly-misogynist-in-a-crisis against the love of his life reporter was on to it all. Carnosaur is very 80s and very full of jerks to women, but if you can ignore that it’s a rollicking read. To be fair, I’m not sure being rude or having weird expectations of women has changed that much in dinosaur movies, Ellie Sattler in original Jurassic Park not withstanding. I remember seeing some running away from a dinosaur in heels, which is not a pleasant idea. One thing that’s present in Carnosaur that was actually fun was the entire lack of experts present. Very few people escaped or knew what to do because, well, they’re citizens and farmers and reporters, so why would they know what to do? Get ripped to shreds or eaten, that’s the thing to do.

We’ve seen other events, like that time in Ohio when there were big cats on the highway, where private zoos go bad. Even if someone has enough money and land to take care of wild animals for their own amusement, they probably shouldn’t have them. Because, to be fair, wild animals do not exist solely for our amusement and they’re not domesticated for good reason. And if that person with enough money is also completely insane and thinks dinosaurs should be allowed to repopulate the earth and get their “real chance” because being hit by a cataclysmic asteroid wasn’t like, a real extinction, well, that’s when you get things like Carnosaur. Dude’s museum of skeletons sounded cool though. And that kid with the baby Brachiosaur was also sweet, but, he didn’t get to keep it.

 

Salem is good at camouflage and staying very still. No weird newly born dinosaur would ever find him in that coffin shaped loaf pan.

 

Creeping in Cornwall

120. The House of Whispers – Laura Purcell

Esther Stevens flees to Cornwall to become Hester Why and serve as lady’s maid to the frail and palsied Miss Louise Pinecroft and her ward Rosewyn. Miss Pinecroft is really, really serious about keeping her china sorted and nice. You see, bad things happen when you don’t and Miss Pinecroft knows a lot about bad things happening just like the hazy Esther/Hester does. The bad things they’re both stuck in from their pasts go alongside all the weird superstitious practices the household follows, as well as the creaking and flickering and humming that permeate the house, and it all comes together to make The House of Whispers a resounding Gothic by the merciless sea.

 

Hen Wen is thinking of fleeing to Cornwall from this pumpkin photoshoot. Thinking about it.

 

“Don’t burn the witch – the ways of Hell aren’t wrong”

63. Maggie’s Grave – David Sodergren

Sodergren makes it clear at the end, with photo, that there is an actual Maggie Wall whose grave says she was “burned as a witch” instead of buried as in this novel in 1657. That’s just a bit after the “Great Scottish Witch Hunt of 1649-50,” which was way after North Berwick and apparently the worst of the major Scottish witch hunts according to my minimal research. So Maggie Wall is kind of on her own, in a field. That leaves a lot of room for interpretation.

Sodergren moved her to the top of a hill, stole her baby, and started the legend that she made a nice herby soup when she was alive. However, in death, she’s a twiggy unstoppable nightmare force who is quite tall and spends a lot of time pushing herself upwards through other people in quite the mockery of birth. It’s pretty cool, honestly, and also super disgusting.

The small Highland town of Auchenmullan is dying and it’s totally bumming out the few teenagers left. So when they run into a hitchhiking American in the bowling alley who seems to slag it off because what else was she going to do in the dark unfortunate bowling alley, Maggie Wall’s grave and cabin come up and then teens do what teens do – ruin the peace and wake up the sleeping witch for her revenge. It’s a classic idea and it works really well here, I didn’t necessarily find terminator Maggie as scary as the betrayals that happened throughout the end (geez), but it’s a solid horror story with a lot of gore, decent characters, and a very quick read too.

 

Pammy posing for her monument, a giant pumpkin with a guinea pig on it would look great in any field.

 

Dennis Wheatley found this to be a very useful book.

36. The Witch and the Priest – Hilda Lewis

Samuel Fleming, the priest, has been part of the group sentencing Joan Flower and her daughters to death for their crimes of witchcraft. Joan, in fact, does not make the noose, dying in prison just like Demdike of the Pendle Witches. Fleming has a lot of guilt about that trial and the death of Joan and her daughters, but mostly Joan because he thought she was hot. And Joan had some reservations about the last spells she did with her daughters and also how her daughter Margaret ended up, therefore, she does not get to go to hell when she dies in prison, Joan’s stuck in limbo.

To Fleming this means she’s a soul to be won even though he’s dying and can’t really argue too much with her. He can slightly pish-posh about how fun she says sabbats are and cringe about how cold she says the Master is, unless he wants you to have his child. So Fleming mostly listens while her ghost tells him about what she did and why she did it. A lot of important things are said about lacking opportunities when you’re poor. Also, a lot of things about what happens at those sabbats in the woods and how spells are done.

 

Peregrine already knows how spells are done, so does Ozma, and they’re not telling any priests, even to get each other in trouble.