Rachel Smith's Blog: Guinea Pigs and Books, page 9

“Oh that’s not nice, I think he’s a sugar plum!”

12. Devil’s Gate – Elizabeth Ergas

Allison used to live in Draconia, New Hampshire, and she left for a cool fun life in New York City…but she will be reeled back in after some obscene phone calls and her aunt having medical issues. Her aunt wants her to stay away because it’s getting weird in Draconia. There’s a new development and a very attractive man is responsible for it, he would be very familiar if anyone had been around for the original saving of the town when the devil showed up during a severe storm and prevented the mill and the very town that used to be called New Hope from being destroyed and becoming a lake. You see, he’s been here before and seduced and killed some young ladies and they tried to stop him but he’s the devil so it didn’t work. And he’s back because the devil is very keen on development deals in the early 1990s.

Allison, as a descendant of a founding family and a happening lady, is marked by the devil for his latest round with his sassy palm kiss. On her way into Draconia, she has a major car accident when she sees some things and is rescued by out of towner Sam, who’s there to work on the development and also to continually call Allison “sweetheart” and keep her safe from her creep ex-husband. And to help her stay away from those “dandy dogs” that smell like spoiled meat. And away from the headless death coach, well it’s being driven by someone headless and led by headless horses too, which caused her car accident in the first place. Quite the image, very weird foes all around, even with the devil’s apparently overpowering sexiness. But, Sam and Allison and some older ladies lead the charge in figuring out how to stop all the sacrificial murdering and bad smells. Draconia has a lot of its own lore and for some reason is super attractive to the devil, he just loves a bargain and cyclical continuity.

 

Peregrine returned to under the coffee table because Horace warned her of an impending development deal up just off the rug, or by the Devil’s bookshelf, as it would also be known in the living room.

Queen Ji-won in another era would have had to return some videotapes.

108. The Eyes are the Best Part – Monika Kim

Ji-won and her sister Ji-hyuhn live with their mother and her grief and tragic past of abandonment in an apartment while Ji-won is attending college on a scholarship. Their father has left their mother for another woman and so now she’s falling apart…until she meets George, a gross dude who fetishizes Asian women (which of course her mother doesn’t realize). George, like Ji-won’s mom, is all in on eating the fish eyes, which are the luckiest part of the fish. Ji-won only recently tried one and found it to be a bit of a revelation for her.

Ji-won also only recently tried making friends at college in the form of Geoffrey, who seems to be everywhere and wearing feminist t-shirts for some reason, and Alexis, who Ji-won really likes. At first, she can stand Geoffrey and needs a shoulder for her George-based woes and so they get along well. Ji-won, you see, has had trouble with friends and manipulative behavior in the past and so it’s all a little tentative with her. However, she definitely hates George and his leering glares and obvious deceptions about his apartment being under maintenance.

Then come all the blue eyes reaching out to Ji-won and essentially asking her to delve into delusions to be satisfied. I really liked this book. It read very quickly and the themes were really working well once they got going. I was wondering where the horror was going to come from and it kind of snuck in like a fog, or like some creep following you around campus.

 

Dagmar says that for escarole, all of it is the best part.

 

“Wild beyond belief!”

40. The Paleontologist – Luke Dumas

I have read several books with dinosaurs in them and several books involving museum workers, but I have not read any books I can think of that involve dinosaur ghosts. I feel like if this book gets extremely popular it’s going to be known as the “dinosaur ghosts book,” which is why I am not leaving that to the reader to be surprised by. I mean, maybe the one true dinosaur ghost book will be the ebook Ghost Raptor Seduction, which I found when googling dinosaur ghost books, but, that is for the over 18s and one reviewer said it doesn’t actually involve what the title promises. If you think that dinosaur ghosts are a ridiculous idea, The Paleontologist might be too much for you, but the whole dino ghost thing also has a resolution that’s a bit sweet.

Dr. Simon Nealy is returning to his childhood hometown and the Hawthorne Museum which haunts him in order to work as the dinosaur guy. The previous dinosaur guy seems to have descended into madness, because of the ghosts presumably, and Simon has more reasons to descend into madness as his sister disappeared in that very museum when they were children. He wants to find her, but first he must get through shoddy preservation methods in a leaky basement, archived dusty diary derangement, fundraising fu and gratuitous Zoom meetings (as Joe Bob might say), as well as being crushed mentally under the weight of his own past since he moved back.

 

Salem is the reason why I was more interested in this dino ghost book, he loved his dinosaurs.

A fine story for when you’re trapped.

38. Sister, Sister – Andrew Neiderman

Alpha and Beta are conjoined twins and they are maybe, just maybe, evil or this wouldn’t be a horror novel. One of them has serious telepathic abilities and of course, they live in a special facility away from other children and anyone who isn’t vetted. Do they want to stay there? Nope. And their new teacher and the psychologist he falls in love with want to rescue them from this contained life of experimentation, but that technically isn’t a good idea due to evil, and also where did they get that idea? Was it from Alpha putting it into their heads? It is different to have conjoined twins instead of separated twins staring creepily at people and using their psychic powers, but this isn’t the most enthralling of horror novels. It is a very functional thriller, though, and I read it where one should read functional thrillers most often, the airport while waiting for a delayed plane.

 

Pickles was never captured so her psychic powers could be studied. She got to be just the one kind of guinea pig.

 

“I’ve DONE everything a mother can do: I’ve locked her in her room, I’ve beat her with the car aerial. Nothing changes her. It’s HARD being a loving mother!”

149. Satan Whispers – Clarissa Ross

Sarah is clearly an evil child. She’s always there when someone around the very tiny lakefront neighborhood drowns or gets murdered. The inspector clearly thinks she’s involved and it’s all Betty can do to not believe it herself and act accordingly. She’s trying to keep Sarah in line, but it’s difficult, and she knows that Sarah is somehow tied up in a story from the past because while Betty was pregnant, she restored a portrait of a girl who looks just like how young Sarah turned out…who also turned out to be a sudden murderess once her family history is revealed.

I really thought that at some point the title was going to come into play and it totally didn’t. Also, I think Betty’s ability to move between art restorer jobs where they let her work at home and give her tons of time off to deal with her evil child sounds awesome. She was really a valued employee in multiple places and was never worried about not being able to pay for things like her housekeeper, even after her divorce. I mean, evil child, but the circumstances are so lucky.

 

Camille’s sleepy from listening to Satan, or herself in a past life, or because she’s lucky enough to have this cute alcove and envelope pillows.

 

Of moose and murder mysteries

61. Hunting Game – Helene Tursten

Embla Nystrom is an interesting departure from Det. Ins. Irene Huss. For one, she’s out in the middle of nowhere and hunts moose, is childless and partner-less, and is part of a smaller unit of police with her boss Goran and Hampus, whose name I quite enjoyed. Of course he ended up having to leave so the secrets of Hampus remain unexplored for now, but there are at least two more books in this series.

This centers around the annual moose hunt, which is clearly a gigantic deal, and the usual suspects are there including a new guy, Peter, who is an IT professional and now owns his family’s property, which he wouldn’t sell to this dude who is the keeper of the meat diaries of who got what once the hunt was over. No one had to use the only information about moose encounters I know, which is that you should have a canoe paddle with you to make yourself look bigger so they leave you alone. Hunting them definitely involves not leaving them alone or them leaving you alone.

Anyway, there’s some age old disappearance that comes up, Peter’s sister, and then some of the dudes who have the nicer cabin turn up missing, then one’s murdered, and it isn’t easy solving murders outside during moose hunting season without also making some unethical decisions which I’m not sure how I feel about. I understood the choices, but I wasn’t really keen on them since trust is important also…but I also wouldn’t have wanted to find out I was trying to date a murderer. That’s like right under liars on a lot of people’s deal breaker lists.

 

In Thorfy’s hunting lodge, no moose are hunted and no murderers exist as his forest is couch-based, but, he’d run a tight ship if they were hunting plants.

“He has the same attitude towards us as we have toward a field of cabbages.”

89. Who Goes There? – John W. Campbell

I am very fond of John Carpenter’s The Thing. Very. It was the first one I thought of for my John Carpenter’s Guinea Pigs parody painting series and the first logo I drew was for The Pig, two years before I finished the rest of the painting. So, finally reading the novella that inspired the movie seemed overdue. However, it really wasn’t.

The original drawings for The Pig parody paintings.

 

And here’s Peregrine, who plays both Fuchs and MacReady with the logo painting and her as Fuchs.

There are many similarities, the radio isn’t working and blood serum explanations, and Blair is totally weird, but, there is far less action in Who Goes There? And the description of the alien is really, well, alien. it’s blue and has worms for hair and three eyes and there’s no questioning that it’s not of this earth at all. Who Goes There? is also very talky, super talky, which sometimes is good but in this case is delivering a lot of scientific explanations, which makes sense as they are all scientists and not as cool as Kurt Russell and his hat, but, it just takes the wind out of the sails a bit – and the dialogue is not as clever as the super talky original movie version, The Thing from Another World (I like that one too, mostly for funny dialogue like the title of this post).

I would say “it is worth to read,” which is a review of my own work from a forum that fits this situation since it is less than efficiently expressing quality. I was really glad the blood testing scene was at least present, although no one is tied to the couch, which leads to my favorite line in the movie also about being tied to the couch, which in my painting would be delivered by Ozma.

If anyone doesn’t want to spend the winter tied to this fucking couch, it’s Ozma (seen here looking at herself with Horace and Peregrine in that scene’s painting).

 

 

This author has a keen interest in caves.

73. The Hungry Dark – Jen Williams

Ashley Whitelam is a practicing psychic; she does shows to connect people with their loved ones which are a total scam. The shows rely on her brother backstage talking into her earpiece and her controlling father setting things up and getting rid of the undesirables who’ve been burned by this particular practice. Skeptics, those sorts.

Ashley stumbled into this scam-based career by seeing figures when she was younger, figures that she’s scared of but are also sort of communicating important things like that something bad is about to happen – in her case she avoided (somehow, she doesn’t remember) being burned to death in a fire that claimed 39 other children on the same “poor kids get to go to a big house” kind of holiday. Since that disaster her father propelled her into the public eye and she’s the family breadwinner.

This year, Ashley’s agreed to go back to where the fire happened and do one of her shows to support her best friend Malory’s charitable organization when they have their annual to-do with psychics featured and card readings and palmistry, called the Moon Market. And it just so happens there have been some child murders in the area that are a little gruesome, so Ashley’s brother and father decided it would help publicity and their bottom line if Ashley as a psychic helps the police find the latest missing kid… and she does, which no one expected.

A fast reading thriller with some folk horror elements just hits the spot sometimes. The Hungry Dark also did some things I haven’t liked in other horror stories, like include someone doing a podcast in a way that wasn’t annoying. And it was an American podcaster in the Lake District of all situations to not be seen as annoying.

 

Danger Crumples doesn’t understand the lack of enthusiasm about his podcast coming from Ozymandias and Pammy. He thought they would at least pretend to care as that would be supportive.

 

“You’re solid gold… I’ll see you in hell.”

33. Available Dark – Elizabeth Hand

The second in the Cass Neary series has Cass evading police questioning about her activities in Generation Loss and heading to Helsinki. She’s looking at other photographs kind of like hers, of the dead, who maybe are actually murder victims? For art? The way the total dickweeds in Murder Party wanted to murder someone for art has nothing on these Finnish dudes. Excelsior.

Anyhoo, Cass sort of figures out some things she shouldn’t and then has to run to… Iceland, which is relatively nearby. I was honestly kind of pissed the story didn’t stay in Finland. However, Cass runs into a record nerd ex-boyfriend in Iceland and they quest to find this super reclusive musician in the black desert and it’s pretty cool. I really do like the level of detail in the characters in this series. Bunch of nerdy weirdos, but about lots of creepy shit mostly. It’s fun, give or take the sheer volume of alcohol and drug use they somehow survive.

 

Thorfy takes a lot of drugs every day, well, four with two multiple times per day, but he has congestive heart failure so it’s not recreational. He’s very metal nonetheless.

 

35. Hard Light (Cass Neary #3)

And now, England. Cass’ former boyfriend/once again boyfriend Quinn wants to wrap up Iceland and then meet Cass in London. Unsurprisingly, that does not go smoothly and Cass ends up at a dive bar waiting for Quinn and meeting wacky characters who are more drunk than she is. Maybe even more high. Maybe not, though. It’s hard to get more drunk or high than Cass Neary. Cass does find their drugs or their possible smuggled art or their ties to musicians of a very psychedelic time who participated in occult rituals and now live at a farm on the moors with a barrow of unusual significance. Along the way, there are murders to consider and then the most unexpected thing of all happens – Cass gives her camera to a child at the suspicious farm. I was taken aback and shocked. Shocked, I tell you.

 

She gave away what? How’s she going to take photos and nerd out about not drugs? Thorfy’s surprised, but not surprised, face of stony silence.

 

36. The Book of Lamps and Banners (Cass Neary #4)

Soooo…. This one. It’s the last in the series thus far and it went a bit too contemporary for me and also some of the problems she deals with here are exhausting. And far too contemporary, just to re-emphasize needlessly. There are topics I didn’t really think would make it into a Cass Neary novel and at least not one that takes place in England and involves searching for a very special book alongside endless pining for Quinn, who clearly sucks, but as a lone wolf she tends not to have anyone to be upfront about telling her that.

That said, I love cursed books. I love stories about people searching for cursed books and the murdery shenanigans that happen along the way preferably while the supernatural forces surrounding the book choose the book hunting nerds to reveal themselves to instead of the rich people hunting the book for power. It’s like the powers that be are thinking, dude, you could never find that on your own so you hired someone worthy of knowing about our cool magic book. The titular book is on the devious side as well, so, perfect for Cass Neary. I mean, it’s bound in human skin.

So, while a lot of this was more of a slog than the others for me and I do wish it wasn’t so current-time based, I still want to know if there will be more of the series and if Cass gets back to serious photography.

 

Thorfy, as exhausted on his first day with me (out of relief, I assume as he is still here more than five years later), as I was on occasion while reading this one.

 

 

The drive-in totals would include: Ice Axe Fu, Bandage Fu, Gratuitous Alpine Choughs, Gratuitous Classic Horror Excerpts, Academy Award Nominations for Ramses

108. Echo – Thomas Olde Heuvelt

I really loved Hex, Thomas Olde Heuvelt’s first book that came out worldwide via English translation, and I was pleasantly surprised by Echo. It’s creepy like Hex and reads rather propulsively once you get into it. I do appreciate that his books are really effectively creepy without being slow. I’m not sure I entirely care for the format of going back and forth and bringing in classic horror literature to mark sections, it’s both epistolary and not, but I got used to it.

Anyway, as Joe Bob would say, “it’s the sensitive story” of a mountaineer who gets an ice axe to the face trying to climb off a damned mountain and the man who loves him and tries to cope with his own unfortunate past and living with a boyfriend possessed who has birds that shoot out of his mouth while finding out what the hell really happened up there on the Maudit. It is kind of sensitive. I mean, Nick’s really sensitive about his bandages and also about what happens whenever he takes them off… And Sam the boyfriend is not the best person to investigate anything, but does make some interesting choices in the process of choosing whether to save his love, himself, or everyone else affected by Nick’s bringing the mountain off the mountain, so to speak.

Also, Nick and Sam have a cat together named Ramses who was very much a cat and therefore an enjoyable bystander. Speaking of nonverbal characters, there are also some very cool mountain death birds that populate the village by the mountain and the mountain itself and at one point come out of Nick’s mouth, Alpine choughs. They do not look as creepy in real life as they seem in Echo. Everything with them in Echo managed to be creepy in some way.

 

They have Ramses, I have Wisting, who is loud enough to cause an avalanche.