Rachel Smith's Blog: Guinea Pigs and Books, page 8

“Don’t interrupt me while I’m soliloquizing.”

176. Bride of Satan – William Schoell

Hoo boy did this take a long time to get going. I get that the whole idea is a demon appearing over time in different places and no one could put the pieces together until Brian met up with these plucky, determined journalists in the 1980s, but I really would have liked it if the very beginning and the very end were closer together. A lot closer. Also, maybe that origin story could have been longer and the middle stories shorter because the origins of said demon were a little more important to be explained than via a monologue close to the end. It had so much potential.

I love the cover of this one, it’s got a skeleton dressed as a nun with an axe and a very classic horror title, you can’t get more 1980s awesome horror than that. But, even with gruesome murders and poor New York theater people and Hollywood movie making intrigue and cool sounding makeup FX artistry, it was slow for hundreds of pages. If you are willing to wade through Hollywood sagas, it’s pretty cool at the end, but I can’t help thinking that the end could have been more of the book. Like way more. I’m sure the plucky journalists could have had something else to work on to get them to Brian, a haunted train car, and the evil nun castle next to the girls’ school. Like maybe they could have been local? I should not rewrite books from 1986.

 

Thorfinnur has listened to my editing suggestions in several contexts and he likes all of them. That’s my boar.

Bit of a miscarriage of justice in the serving of the sentences here. A bit.

78. Harriet – Elizabeth Jenkins

True crime from the 1870s, with a lot (and I mean A LOT) of commentary about dresses. Who deserves what dresses, Harriet, who isn’t well liked but has enough money for nice dresses, has great dresses. Alice does not. Yet, Alice is not her murderer except indirectly. Harriet, you see, has learning disabilities and really she shouldn’t be alone or left alone with who she was left with. Yes, it was clear that Harriet was disagreeable, and there definitely weren’t as many options for people to understand learning disabilities, but…that doesn’t mean she should be forced to starve to death in her room with her son while her husband pays for it so he can just hang out with his mistress and play house like he’s not married to Harriet.

He very clearly married Harriet to have some more money, she had money, and then he decided she didn’t deserve to live a full life anymore. He did because he was so clever and took her money. What a shitbird. And his brother and his wife were total shitbirds too, keeping Harriet upstairs through starvation and physical abuse with no decent facilities. Harriet deserved to have care and consideration like everyone else and she had enough money to have a decent life regardless of her learning disability, but that was denied to her by scheming shitbirds.

Apparently, Elizabeth Jenkins was biased towards the initial judge who sentenced all four to death, but, in the end the convictions got commuted to life imprisonment and the mistress went off free. Then, the wife who starved Harriet and Harriet’s husband the mastermind were released and that part just does not seem right. Her husband should have stayed and rotted, that’s what he let happen to Harriet.

 

Ozma side eyes the idea that what happened here was justice.

 

“The screams you hear may be your own.”

19. Bone White – Ronald Malfi

This was a great Malfi. It’s cold and dead and isolated and moves along with the mystery and creepy shit at a nice clip. Paul Gallo’s twin brother has been missing and now in the remote Alaska town of Dread’s Hand (great name) they’re finding bodies after an apparently very polite man confesses to murdering them and tells the police where they are. Paul needs to find out what happened to his brother, who was last known to be in Dread’s Hand. And well, the investigation into the confessed serial killer, Paul’s interactions with the town which clearly does not want to talk to him, and the generally cold and desolate atmosphere really make for an uneasy tale before you even get any of the horror elements.

 

Peregrine and Merricat will be hiding in their blankets from the horror elements.

 

It does still involve multiple unlikeable characters.

54.The Last House on Needless Street – Catriona Ward

Somehow I managed to read two books about people with Dissociative Identity Disorder within a two week period without having any intention to. Nightmare by S.K. Epperson is from 1992, though, so DID is not a thing yet, and the people are referred to with the shorthand “multiples.” Anyway, The Last House on Needless Street starts out as a story that seems a little off right from the get go. Getting the perspective of someone’s cat usually does seem off. I did think it was funny that Olivia the cat referred to all people as “teds,” as though everyone is just a different version of her person, Ted.

Then there’s Dee, whose little sister Lulu was kidnapped while she was trying to be a teenager alone at the lake one July. Dee’s family fell apart as a result of that situation and she’s still trying to get it sorted out long after the leads dried up and her mother left and her father died.

Anyway, I led in by mentioning DID, but it doesn’t seem right to ruin the twist when it’s only from 2021. And the main thing reading two books involving DID so close together did was tip me off to one of the twists in The Last House on Needless Street right away. Oh well. Learning. I will say I found this work of Ward’s more interesting and engaging than the other few books of hers I’ve read, even with a microfiche error which I wish I hadn’t read.

 

Finny only really knew me, so if he thought of other people he ran into as “rachels,” I guess it would have made sense.

 

I have since stopped having the regret of reading microfiche errors by just not reading the rest of the book after glaring at said errors once I encounter them. I’ve already endured too many.

“Go on then, turn me into a frog, I dare you.”

30. VenCo – Cherie Dimaline

Lucky St. James has been living with her grandmother or her street smart but generally erratic mother for her life in Toronto and it seems like she’s getting nowhere. Also getting nowhere…until they find the next witch of seven total witches they need to find…a coven in Salem, MA, which is part of VenCo, the global corporation situation trying to take the world back from the patriarchy’s bullshit lies about there being a meritocracy or that “working hard” will lead to a life of financial security.

There is also a dude in the desert who wants to stop the coven from getting together, which he has done previously. He’s killed many witches, is immortal, and likes to play games with people or witches. He’s kind of an exact symbol of who I don’t like having anything to do with.

The witches’ world is well-built and interesting and the way Lucky finds her way in is novel and amusing. I enjoyed the story, at first I thought it would end in a very different place and I still am not sure how I feel about where it ended. And although VenCo is kind of a ruse that builds where the story can take place, it’s an interesting way to include the Mother, Maiden, and Crone and taking things back.

 

Sometimes Salem tries to witch hunt Hen Wen, but, she’s always a step ahead too. Or she doesn’t mind being caught for a cuddle with irony.

Helen seemed incurious at times.

26. The House on the Brink – John Gordon

Is it a bog body? Is it alive and gliding like a slug through the wet marsh towards the English teacher? Is it actually just a log? A really scary log? The kind of log that would not roll down stairs alone or in pairs (just alone) and run over your neighbor’s dog? I mean, the teens insisted on referring to it as a log, but it’s clearly not from Blammo.

Dick Dodds gets scared by the log, or its trail, or something’s trail that involves that creepy log-appearing thing first and then that very sensation leads him to having a girlfriend, Helen, who is also creeped out. They visit an elderly lady who tries to keep them from the plot, but also tells them they both have dowsing skills and obviously some feelings for creepy log sensing as well as water. The elderly lady also is not a fan of Dodds and really wants him to keep away from both his English teacher and her new boyfriend, who’s looking for the treasure that supposedly King John let sink in their bog and then also left a dude to guard.

A lot of this is vague and sort of surreal reading, so when I saw on the back of the book it was in the “M.R. James tradition,” its tone made more sense. It is a lot of a creeping terror more so than a clear and present danger sort of story and even in the end it felt a bit like I wasn’t being let in on something I just hadn’t been able to intuit. For instance, it may just be that I’ve grown up so far from a small village with bog legends, but I would be interested in seeing a potential bog body in all their potential creepiness more so than telling Dodds not to go places that he’s clearly going to go. Why not go along, Helen? You’re a teen – rebel a little and go see that log potentially slowly glide at you for yourself.

 

Belvedere is trying to explain to Pickles that they can definitely defeat a haunted log by gnawing on it. They have really efficient teeth.

“That rest stop was unacceptable!”

88. Go Hunt Me – Kelly deVos

A group of privileged teens make a vampire movie and…it doesn’t get their director Alex into USC, her school of choice. She gets waitlisted. Her boyfriend, Jax, who seems perfect while Alex is experiencing a major change in lifestyle with her sick father and their dwindling money situation, well, Jax re-cut her movie and got into USC. No waitlist for him and he didn’t tell her he re-cut her movie.

When the group of teens gets the chance to re-film the movie in Romania thanks to a divorcing movie star, they take it, with some trepidation. And they shouldn’t have taken it, but then again, Jax shouldn’t have re-cut Alex’s movie either. Teens are going to teen and backstab and lie and run around a very dangerous castle unsupervised. These teens make it clear they needed supervision and no one should have allowed their imaginations (one in particular) to run wild.

 

Maybe Pammy’s vampire movie about vegetables as victims would have been a little derivative, but she would never have let anyone get the chance to re-cut it without her knowledge.

Beware the tinkling in the breeze

141. Wind Chimes – R.R. Walters

This is one of those horror stories that doesn’t have a research scene and has no explanation for what’s going on. I’m not a fan of that. I got this because I thought the title of Wind Chimes would make for an odd horror story, which it did, but not in the way I hoped. The trees and the wind chimes and the imaginary place known as Wunderland and its leader Rosamund are all odd, but they just get to exist with no underlying reason.

A yuppie family has a daughter who becomes a painting prodigy – landscapes only – after they get her these wind chimes she asked for to put by her “special place,” which is a tree grouping with a hole in it big enough to hang yourself in that is also a gateway to another world, Wunderland, no, not like Alice in Wonderland, which is continuously explained. Rosamund is apparently not a ghost or a demon or anything explainable and she tells you how to get to Wunderland, where only kids can live, if she likes you.

Eventually, they run out of people to either bring to Wunderland or kill off, and it seems like the house wasn’t paid off, so I’m confused as to what the end message is with the image of Megan still painting in the yard like she always did. Let children live alone in trees? When is the bank coming? The mailman is the one who sees her, will he report it to CPS? Anybody?

 

Murderface is one of my peegs that truly did not like music noises, she had a specifically discernible dislike of high hat cymbal. I never made her listen to wind chimes, I bet she would hate their little tinkles.

“I was healthy enough a half hour ago or do people look different to you if they are not horizontal?”

91. Sleep Alone – J.A.W. McCarthy

Ronnie the succubus has made herself a band and taken a spot as the merch girl. They feed and move on from town to town until Ronnie finds Helene and things start to go wrong with the boys in the band. They’re hungrier, they’re sloppier, and it seems like things aren’t exactly moving in the direction that Ronnie expected. She’s barely had any introduction to what she is and her world is very upended by finding another of her kind.

This is very short and includes just a shitload of sensory information, lots of smells, lots of tastes that don’t necessarily sound good, and lots of obvious disorientation and leaving people with no energy and missing memories of how they got that way. It’s dark and dirty and intriguing and I really enjoyed seeing Gutter Twins referenced (their show I got to see was one for the ages for me, especially since I had no other opportunity to see so much Lanegan right up close).

I did have a couple issues with the formatting as towards the end the spacing got weird like the font was changing size for no reason and there was a blank page that made me think there was going to be a more abrupt ending than there actually was.

 

Snuffy hunted for food in the fake forest so stealthily that even this fake owl wasn’t disturbed. She would be a good example for any succubus.

Flint, Flour, Dent, Pod, Sweet, Pop, and Waxy

22. The Fields – Erin Young

All right, so, it’s not going to be a surprise that for someone actually from Iowa with a farming family and who has worked adjacent to the investigation of crime this did not read as “authentic.” Bits and pieces did, but the main voice I found in the writing was someone trying so very hard to sound authentic and failing.

For one, this Riley Fisher character should know that Iowa State’s campus is not in downtown Des Moines where she said she was… I feel like it’s quite noticeable in downtown Des Moines that you are not in Ames, or on a college campus, as I have been there several times. And, yes, I know the author may have found her research about agricultural sabotage and the Chinese visit to Iowa in the 1980s very interesting, but, she stuck way too much about hybrid seeds and sabotage in here. Way too much. Once again, my family is in farming and has been for over 100 years and I worked at a farming implement company’s archive where I saw photos from that very same Chinese visit and I can think of several seed company names without having to look them up and I like explaining things like the difference between microfilm and microfiche and I still thought it was too much. I felt it was just stuck in because once you do a ton of research, you don’t want to leave it behind. I understand and I also understand there may not have been an editor who wanted to say, hey, that got boring and tedious and it’s a major plot point so that’s not what you want.

I also found quite a few of the characters to be a bit cardboard and stereotypical and there were so very many of them, which made it a bit difficult. Also, Riley, who is a new sergeant, went rogue to solve the case, then they took her gun and badge, and she’s still going to solve it without backup or decent police resources because that’s really a good way to serve the community now isn’t it? Maybe people who tell other people where they’re going because they’re responsible to the public and know what that means could investigate so the case doesn’t get thrown out once all this investigating is done? I know that’s more responsible and less actiony, but officers with dark pasts and chips on their shoulder can still be actiony and responsible and solve mysteries, that never seems to happen in novels. Maybe the trade was big agriculture conspiracy for making sense in reality in this case. Unfortunate.

 

Mortemer is going rogue on this ear of sweet corn, which is not field corn and not under the same strain of conspiracy. Wink.