Rachel Smith's Blog: Guinea Pigs and Books, page 29

Despite being quite a short novel, Nightmare Child is aptly titled.

117. Nightmare Child – Daniel Ransom

Nightmare Child starts off with a punch in the brain. Jeff and Mindy are driving with Mindy’s little sister Jenny in a box in the trunk. She was alive, Jeff for some reason thinks she will still be alive when they get to the spot they’ve chosen to bury her alive (I guess), but Mindy knows Jenny has probably already suffocated…and she has. Are they a Ken and Barbie killers redux situation? Nope. Mindy and Jeff have already gone through Mindy’s part of her and Jenny’s inheritance and they need Jenny’s part, so Jenny must disappear. And she does, but then she comes back.

When Jenny comes back to her neighborhood, at first I thought she would be an apparition. But she’s not, she can be hugged by her neighbor Diane, who has missed her and isn’t an awful piece of shit like Mindy and Jeff. Speaking of shit, once Jenny does go back home to Mindy and Jeff, it’s smeared all over the walls. Weird things keep happening, like Jeff running into the street naked in the middle of a winter night and subsequently jumping in water, and Diane and her police chief boyfriend are trying to get to the bottom of what’s happening, which leads to both Diane and the police chief at different times encountering the entire inside of Mindy and Jeff’s house smeared with feces. When the interior feces and blood-based decor is described, I was not a happy reader. Especially when the police chief puts his hand on the wall because it’s dark and then knows that he just smeared his fingers in feces. Jeebus.

It does get grosser than a house smeared with feces and blood and chunks of pets, somehow…and Jenny and what’s going on with Jenny pushes the boundaries of what revenge on your killers really could be even in the supernatural realm. They certainly didn’t use the justice system, despite the police chief being an important supporting character.

 

Oh, Horace, I will never let any children get you again, dead or alive, possessed or not possessed, and definitely not sticky ones.

“That story is totally incredible and decidedly improper!”

109. Broomstick in the Hall – Jane Blackmore

Camilla fled England after her relationship with her stepbrother Adrian didn’t work out…only to get the message that her younger sister, Julie, will now be marrying their stepbrother Adrian to cover up her pregnancy by the town vicar’s son. Writing that out, well, it makes no sense as anything but a 1970s Gothic. Somehow, Camilla’s New York City therapist does not point out to her that her stepbrother is maybe not a good choice to have a relationship with, considering the sheer number of menfolk who are not her stepbrother in the world. And to be honest, I didn’t realize Adrian was her stepbrother until his father died, who I did know was her stepfather. So that weirdness is not really at the forefront.

Also, the witch element, despite being a big part of the kind of story the title is projecting, is misdirection. The torch bearing townfolk leave without much issue, for instance. The blame on Camilla for being a witch is based on her writing fiction about a witch as well, which is unreasonable, and then it’s just coincidence that she’s in any place to be fake-blamed and if the shop lady is really scared Camilla is a witch, why does she invite her over for cake to talk about the town’s suspicions? Wouldn’t she just be cowering or looking away whenever she sees Camilla?

There’s also a character who maybe is Julie and Camilla’s stepsister named Felicity who is not present at Julie’s “Camilla has to return from the US” wedding, but is brought up a couple times, and I do not know why she didn’t have to come to the wedding and why is she in the story at all? Is she dead? Did she die because she didn’t want to marry her stepbrother/maybe her brother? Did she even say she was going out for a pack of cigarettes before she never came back? Did the oddly petty and vengeful Julie do something to her? I want to know why a short book with super petty sibling rivalry and witchcraft between two of them over their stepbrother needs some random sister who is never seen again. I didn’t know that was a trope.

The one thing that did not confuse me was Camilla’s serious grief over the death of her dog, King. It’s one thing to give her envious spinster sibling rivalry vibes that make her feel like it’s super not fun to be at the wedding of her ex/stepbrother and her sister, which is somewhat relatable and it can be super isolating to be the not fun single person who still has to go to these events. But! It’s way more relatable to me that when she returned home and saw the spot where her best friend and companion who didn’t let her down or accuse her of witchcraft died in a horrible way, it made her feel way worse than the whole wedding thing. There really isn’t enough depiction of how important animals are and how their deaths affect us in fiction and how that can influence other aspects of our lives. Somebody needs to be reliable and in Camilla’s world that somebody is her former dog and then Adrian’s current dog who is a descendant of her dog and also didn’t think Camilla was a witch or judge her for not being keen on the whole coming home thing.

 

That fake owl just accused Hen Wen of being a witch and look what happened to it.

 

Somewhere after midnight

12. Goth – Otsuichi

A series of vignettes about Morino Yoru, or is it Yuu, and the pack of weirdos she attracts by not really interacting with most of the people around her (familiar). These were all connected by the presence of Morino and the one dude she does talk to, who remains nameless until the last story, and by the twisty nature of the endings. The “Dog” one in particular got me, but I can say that every single story in this grouping, or every chapter if you want to call them that, was disturbing. Every single one. There wasn’t a lighthearted tale in the bunch. There was no comic relief, either. I did find that I had to sort of ration this book out along with reading something else just to take the edges off and because I already work a job that can strain one’s compassion for disturbing situations, so I don’t need a super dark book to make that worse. However, what is also helpful in the edition of the book I bought and read were two essays from the author about how he didn’t realize he actually won an award and what he was trying to do…and how he realizes it’s not really all that Goth in the lifestyle sense. Nope. It’s not.

 

I hear you’re holding out for a weirdo? Thorfy’s ready.

“You’ve obviously done your homework, which is of course the reason you have to die.”

105. Experimental Film – Gemma Files

When isn’t something a woman was doing academically ruined by some rich dude who thinks his money makes him better? When? Okay, there’s an example in this book in that the lady who is being researched as potentially Canada’s first female filmmaker, Iris Whitcomb, had a husband who was rich who supported her and didn’t try to take all the credit for her films himself. However, Wrob, yes, “Wrob,” is not that kind of guy. He wants all the credit and he will ruin lives and buildings and films and be lurking in the background like a creeper while Lois Cairns tries to get to the bottom of the films and the legend of Lady Midday and Iris Whitcomb herself.

Lois, meanwhile, without all the money in the universe, is trying to raise her autistic son Clark with her own decent man human husband Simon and also trying to do her work. She’s a former film teacher and once she gets an idea of how important to films of Mrs. Whitcomb are, she would like to be able to do her work and figure it out. The exact kind of project that will not only lead her to the brink of her health and puts her in that position where people who would like her to be more of a mother and not a working mother are totally judging her and acting like one role in a woman’s life is enough as long as that role is mother…like you can’t care about more than one thing at a time if you have a child.

This book really had a lot of suspensefully creepy parts. It took me a while to get into it, in part because the concept of academic competition really turns my stomach so Wrob and Lois being rivals bothered me, and in part because it’s kind of densely packed at the beginning. However, once it started creeping me out and Lois and her assistant Safie were on their way to ruin trying to figure things out, I was along for the ride.

Murderface is not afraid of any rivals. She protected her children from all entities and annoying academics.

 

There’s a total The Whip and the Body vibe in here.

13. Lord Satan – Louisa Bronte

Adrienne has lost her whole family and home situation and has been told by Lord Vincent Stanton that he will take her in as they are related on his mother’s side. Quite regularly it is mentioned that Adrienne is very small and blonde and angelic and the carriage rides are a lot for her, so when she gets to the castle, Castle Caudill, and eventually realizes that the noises in the basement are a black mass and the temperamental flashing green eyes of Vincent, who keeps referring to her as a child while also giving her nice presents, belong to an actual half-devil she’s very overwhelmed. She keeps getting fevers and having to basically be knocked out for weeks at a time because she is in a Satanic Gothic and Lord Satan, as Vincent is known, is totally going to marry her. She even has to be knocked out for her wedding because…it’s not in a church.

However, also because this is a Gothic, taming the devil half of Vincent is more possible. He’s also half-human. Sure, he seems to be constantly laughing with arrogance, but he can be nice to his tenants and teach them more things about farming. He can send little Billy to school and he can learn that being able to set people on fire is not the best conflict resolution method. This is good, because there are also murders happening on the moors around them. Murders that look exactly like what Vincent does with magic at home during black mass, which doesn’t kill anyone, apparently. Adrienne, tiny fairy of good, will use all her goodness negotiation powers to save Vincent from being convicted of the murders and making life better for his tenants and their baby, who can also make fire happen.

 

Ozma and Finny are less than interested in any kind of worship or tenant farming or setting anyone on fire with their minds. They could though.

 

“Do we really want to provide a genocide with elevator music?”

27. Blackout – Mira Grant

This may be one of the first series I read where I was not into something that was a major aspect at all – in this case the characters’ blogging. However, unlike podcasting and its way more niche annoyance factor in books I’ve read more recently, the Newsflesh series is also interesting in that blogging was a major focus for informing the populous purposes. The blog serves get the word out on who is lying to everyone, how the disease is going, journalism fu as Joe Bob Briggs would say, and then in Blackout (appropriately with that title), right when they are way deeper into the CDC and actual informative places with weird motives and creepy politicians and all that kind of maelstrom of information they’d want to put out – the blog posts are being listed as “unpublished.” That kind of takes the wind out of their mission. As does Georgia being stuck in a room for a good portion. And so does the repetition that seems to plague Grant’s books. One place in a series where you can ignore that the story should also work as a standalone is the end, so why repeat structural world building information? The repeated descriptions of how KA progresses can really go away by the last book; there should be nothing but action and wrap up for the characters who are supposed to be endeared to the reader or that they want to see fall so the endearing ones succeed. I can’t say that’s how Blackout read for me.

 

Duncan sniffs for a sensible ending.

The dark, both figurative and literal, and cold are palpable in this book.

2. After She’s Gone – Camilla Grebe

The second in the Hanne Lagerlind-Schon series, of two, it seems. After She’s Gone involves the investigation of a cold case which quickly becomes more in small town Ormberg, Sweden. The story is told through multiple perspectives, however, the series protagonist in Hanne who is a profiler with early onset dementia. She requires her notebook to survive because she really doesn’t want anyone to know she has dementia and she makes a lot of notes while she’s consulting on the cold case of a murdered girl alongside her on again off again partner, who then goes missing while Hanne ends up being led out of the forest by a local teenager, who totally keeps her notebook. Not helpful, Jake, even if he had his reasons (small town bullshit) to keep what he was doing when he found Hanne to himself.

Actually helpful is newer police officer Malin Brundin, who is not only from Ormberg, she also is the person who originally found the young girl in the cairn that is the subject of the cold case they’re all investigating and was able to join the task force. Malin knows the small town bullshit of the area well, including how the refugees and asylum seekers who were re-homed to the area are being received by the locals, an uninspired reception from many that is also a part of the cold case. The stories of Malin, Jake, and Hanne do come together well and After She’s Gone was a quick and solid mystery. A lot of the Scandinavian crime novels that are translated seem to be set mainly in major cities and this one was not, which added to a lot to the story. It was more personal for two of the narrators, in particular Malin, who both want to escape the insular mindset and needs to use what she knows about it to solve the cold case.

 

Twiglet and Pammy demonstrate their strategy for getting through any cold winter in a small place.

“Any good encyclopedia will give you all the nonsense you want to know about witchcraft.”

2. Candlemas Eve – Jeffrey Sackett

Abigail Williams strikes again! Sort of. In Candlemas Eve what Abigail Williams really demonstrated is an unwillingness to let go of a teenage crush thwarted by…her own accusations of witchcraft. She never found out John Proctor never loved her, she just assumed he did because her unfinished teenage brain told her if she just got his wife killed as a witch, he would love her forever. She really didn’t know much about relationships and she still doesn’t when she comes back from hell to join descendant Simon Proctor’s band so she can have John Proctor as a money-grubbing musician/fake warlock. Oh, Abigail. Sure, she’s murderous and vile and sworn to Satan, but she’s also still basically a naive teen from Salem circa 1692. Simon really uses her to his own advantage, just like his ancestor.

This makes it sound like Abigail or her new form Gwendolyn is sympathetic, but she isn’t in this story, she’s just as super terrible and selfish and enraged and drags her friends into her messy leftover drama from the streets of Salem to the streets of Boston to Hell to New Hampshire. I do wish she’d had a door to slam back in Salem so she didn’t set off a witch hunt. But she didn’t, so here we are on Candlemas Eve waiting for her to wreak bloody (it’s extremely bloody, quite a bit of this book is) vengeance instead of for the groundhog to tell us about the upcoming weather and maybe take a chunk out of the listening guy in a top hat (slightly less bloody than this book, slightly).

 

Ozymandias knows what to do when the other kind of rodent predicts cold weather continuing, or when a teenage witch goes on a rampage 300 years late, hide in a blanket.

Gilly was extremely thoroughly warned at the beginning.

11. The Sorcerers – Dorian Winslow

Gilly is being left behind by her husband, who decided he’s in love with her best friend and won’t stop telling Gilly what her best friend said about how he and Gilly should handle their divorce. Thanks, John. Gilly immediately leaves the only home with another person she felt comfortable in and goes right into the hands of witches. Sort of. It’s listed as a job caring for an invalid who doesn’t need medical care, exactly, she’s apparently suffering from hysteria and needs a companion with no ties to the outside world who will also maybe help lead her away from witchcraft.

Mason Walker, husband to the invalid, reminded me of Christopher Lee in the The House that Dripped Blood where he’s trying to keep his daughter away from witchcraft for good reasons he won’t explain to the new hire, but her kindly new nanny unwittingly helps her get right back to it. Gilly does the same thing with Caretha, except that Caretha’s assistant is already in the house and has the coolest dog, a Pekingese named Miss Ming who stares and is always present and taps around the house following people and intimidating them and also cuddles. She’s great.

Anyway, Caretha has hysteria and shock – forever, apparently – after getting through several tragedies in a row that seem pointed. Gerard loves Caretha, so he must be disfigured so she won’t want to marry him and will be available for Mason Walker. A fire kills her parents and burns down her cottage so of course now she and her sister and brother and Miss Ming must marry into the Walker family and move to their giant awesome house. Mason Walker doesn’t seem to like her all that much, so, a love for a love must be sacrificed and now Caretha just messes around with dolls and accessory to murder.

 

Hen Wen would have left based on Miss Ming’s presence alone. You can’t have two total queens in the same house and Hen has business elsewhere, besides, she was warned.

 

“We keep odd hours.”

26. The Suicide Motor Club – Christopher Buehlman

A tearing down the road story of Route 66 in the 60s, a tale of vengeance, a vampire book that’s like Near Dark with more bloody ridiculousness and way better vehicles… The Suicide Motor Club has a lot to offer the horror enthusiast. It reads quickly and reminds anyone who is a little tired of the super talky vampire type why vampire stories are worth trying.

 

“Vengeance and ridiculousness?” Snuffy’s ready to roll; she and Thorfy have kept vampire hours with me on many nights as it is.