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Nothing But Blackened Teeth
Cassandra Khaw's Nothing But Blackened Teeth is a gorgeously creepy haunted house tale, steeped in Japanese folklore and full of devastating twists.
A Heian-era mansion stands abandoned, its foundations resting on the bones of a bride and its walls packed with the remains of the girls sacrificed to keep her company.
It’s the perfect wedding venue for a group of thrill-seeking friends.
But a night of food, drinks, and games quickly spirals into a nightmare. For lurking in the shadows is the ghost bride with a black smile and a hungry heart.
And she gets lonely down there in the dirt.
Effortlessly turning the classic haunted house story on its head, Nothing but Blackened Teeth is a sharp and devastating exploration of grief, the parasitic nature of relationships, and the consequences of our actions.
A Heian-era mansion stands abandoned, its foundations resting on the bones of a bride and its walls packed with the remains of the girls sacrificed to keep her company.
It’s the perfect wedding venue for a group of thrill-seeking friends.
But a night of food, drinks, and games quickly spirals into a nightmare. For lurking in the shadows is the ghost bride with a black smile and a hungry heart.
And she gets lonely down there in the dirt.
Effortlessly turning the classic haunted house story on its head, Nothing but Blackened Teeth is a sharp and devastating exploration of grief, the parasitic nature of relationships, and the consequences of our actions.
125 pages, Hardcover
First published October 19, 2021
1133 people are currently reading
66392 people want to read
About the author
Cassandra Khaw
129 books2,772 followersCassandra Khaw is an award-winning game writer.
Their recent novella Nothing but Blackened Teeth was a British
Fantasy, World Fantasy, Shirley Jackson, and Bram Stoker
Award finalist. Their debut collection Breakable Things is now
out.
Their recent novella Nothing but Blackened Teeth was a British
Fantasy, World Fantasy, Shirley Jackson, and Bram Stoker
Award finalist. Their debut collection Breakable Things is now
out.
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June 10, 2025i think this is the first horror novel i’ve ever read where characters say “fuck” an appropriate amount of times
February 23, 2021
Thank you to NetGalley for the ARC. Listen to the full review at: https://bookclubbed.buzzsprout.com/
Horror novels are hard—using words to conjure images to creep you out as you sit on your hammock outside in the sun. But she decided to not even try and instead focus on showing off how clever she is. Being clever is easy—there is nothing behind it, no emotion, no greater truths, no human connection—it is simply a brief blip of intellectual flexing of the bicep or showing off your tanned midriff, and then moving onto the next thing:
We start with a promising premise: a group of twentysomethings stay in a haunted mansion, one tethered to a classic ghost tale, almost wanting to provoke a ghost encounter to get their money’s worth. This group of young adults have all either slept with each other, dated, or at the very least kindled some sexual tension. That, it turns out, is the crux of the novel, their feisty little exchanges going from humorous to exhausting about ten pages in.
True horror requires—as far as I can tell—a building of tension, a careful construction of suspense even if we think we know where it is going. The fear comes not in the eventual breaking of it but in the meticulous build-up. There is no suspense in this novella. Instead, there is petty arguing, emotionally distanced mocking of the characters by the author, and occasional insertions of ghosts whenever the author remembered what genre she was supposedly writing for.
Characters accuse other characters of acting like a protagonist, they casually discuss the tropes of a ghost story, and at one point the writer actually mentions that: “(r)ead a hundred books on horror, and you’ll find that every last one possesses at least one mention of someone’s eyes gone strange, unfocused and unsettling to witness.” It is not clever, not thought-provoking, not grounding us in the scene. It is an ironic reflex, one in which the author is unable to escape, more preoccupied with slapping similes on each character’s reaction than cultivating vulnerability, the slow drip of horror that the best authors of the genre do so well, or, you know, plot.
When we get our first encounter with ghost bride, meant to inspire horror (I think?) we get a long description of how neurons respond in the brain followed by a hacky joke that relies on rearranging where the word “fucking” stands in the sentence. I love a goofy joke like this, but the placement was jarring. This is the author in conversation with herself, a hyper-exaggerated bombardment, closer to a satire of contemporary writing than a real novel.
So, what is this book? A reality show inspired novella? A satire of horror? A mash-up of horror and self-effacing Millennial ennui? What it is, really, is a writing prompt, a clever writer who is quite impressed with how clever she can be, shoving a list of vocabulary words and similes into the distorted form of a story.
Horror novels are hard—using words to conjure images to creep you out as you sit on your hammock outside in the sun. But she decided to not even try and instead focus on showing off how clever she is. Being clever is easy—there is nothing behind it, no emotion, no greater truths, no human connection—it is simply a brief blip of intellectual flexing of the bicep or showing off your tanned midriff, and then moving onto the next thing:
We start with a promising premise: a group of twentysomethings stay in a haunted mansion, one tethered to a classic ghost tale, almost wanting to provoke a ghost encounter to get their money’s worth. This group of young adults have all either slept with each other, dated, or at the very least kindled some sexual tension. That, it turns out, is the crux of the novel, their feisty little exchanges going from humorous to exhausting about ten pages in.
True horror requires—as far as I can tell—a building of tension, a careful construction of suspense even if we think we know where it is going. The fear comes not in the eventual breaking of it but in the meticulous build-up. There is no suspense in this novella. Instead, there is petty arguing, emotionally distanced mocking of the characters by the author, and occasional insertions of ghosts whenever the author remembered what genre she was supposedly writing for.
Characters accuse other characters of acting like a protagonist, they casually discuss the tropes of a ghost story, and at one point the writer actually mentions that: “(r)ead a hundred books on horror, and you’ll find that every last one possesses at least one mention of someone’s eyes gone strange, unfocused and unsettling to witness.” It is not clever, not thought-provoking, not grounding us in the scene. It is an ironic reflex, one in which the author is unable to escape, more preoccupied with slapping similes on each character’s reaction than cultivating vulnerability, the slow drip of horror that the best authors of the genre do so well, or, you know, plot.
When we get our first encounter with ghost bride, meant to inspire horror (I think?) we get a long description of how neurons respond in the brain followed by a hacky joke that relies on rearranging where the word “fucking” stands in the sentence. I love a goofy joke like this, but the placement was jarring. This is the author in conversation with herself, a hyper-exaggerated bombardment, closer to a satire of contemporary writing than a real novel.
So, what is this book? A reality show inspired novella? A satire of horror? A mash-up of horror and self-effacing Millennial ennui? What it is, really, is a writing prompt, a clever writer who is quite impressed with how clever she can be, shoving a list of vocabulary words and similes into the distorted form of a story.
October 5, 2021
Five friends rent out a haunted old Japanese house for a spooky wedding - but turns out them advertised ghosts is real and ghosty is getting revengey!
Cassandra Khaw’s Nothing But Blackened Teeth appealed to me because it’s a haunted house story, which I love, and it’s set in an old Japanese house, which I’ve never seen before, so it’s disappointing to say the book is actually a stinky pile of ectoplasm.
Horror in general is hard to write and really good haunted house stories are few and far between, but Nothing But Blackened Teeth fails especially badly at both attempts. All that happens is that the group run around the old house at night while the ghost possesses one of them and smiles, showing off its blackened teeth. It’s such unimaginative storytelling.
The cast are an unlikeable group of moronic upper-class twonks. Why they’re friends at all in the first place is a mystery as they seem to loathe each other from the beginning. Almost all of the book is these five idiots bickering about their past relationships and vapid love triangles with one another. I didn’t care about any of it or what was going to happen to them.
Khaw seems to think it’s clever to have some of the characters break the fourth wall by talking about “this is the part in the movie/story where this character dies/this thing happens, har har”, which isn’t smart, it’s annoyingly twee and irrelevant. She also throws in Japanese terms to describe the ghost’s appearance - like ohaguro-bettari and shiromuku - without explaining what they are, so you can’t picture what on earth she’s talking about.
Lazy cliches abound - the house happens to have a library that happens to have a book explaining the ghostly situation and how to fight the evil spirit (how convenient!) - and the backstory of the haunting couldn’t be less creative. The ending is contrived rubbish and the “emotional” finale is painfully forced.
This book reads like an amateurish first draft. Thoroughly underwhelming and boring garbage through and through, don’t bother with Cassandra Khaw’s Nothing But Bad Writing!
Cassandra Khaw’s Nothing But Blackened Teeth appealed to me because it’s a haunted house story, which I love, and it’s set in an old Japanese house, which I’ve never seen before, so it’s disappointing to say the book is actually a stinky pile of ectoplasm.
Horror in general is hard to write and really good haunted house stories are few and far between, but Nothing But Blackened Teeth fails especially badly at both attempts. All that happens is that the group run around the old house at night while the ghost possesses one of them and smiles, showing off its blackened teeth. It’s such unimaginative storytelling.
The cast are an unlikeable group of moronic upper-class twonks. Why they’re friends at all in the first place is a mystery as they seem to loathe each other from the beginning. Almost all of the book is these five idiots bickering about their past relationships and vapid love triangles with one another. I didn’t care about any of it or what was going to happen to them.
Khaw seems to think it’s clever to have some of the characters break the fourth wall by talking about “this is the part in the movie/story where this character dies/this thing happens, har har”, which isn’t smart, it’s annoyingly twee and irrelevant. She also throws in Japanese terms to describe the ghost’s appearance - like ohaguro-bettari and shiromuku - without explaining what they are, so you can’t picture what on earth she’s talking about.
Lazy cliches abound - the house happens to have a library that happens to have a book explaining the ghostly situation and how to fight the evil spirit (how convenient!) - and the backstory of the haunting couldn’t be less creative. The ending is contrived rubbish and the “emotional” finale is painfully forced.
This book reads like an amateurish first draft. Thoroughly underwhelming and boring garbage through and through, don’t bother with Cassandra Khaw’s Nothing But Bad Writing!
November 2, 2021
These characters drove me absolutely insane 🤯 They ruined the entire experience for me, and this book premise had SO much potential so I’m big sad that I didn’t like this one 😭
Reading vlog: https://youtu.be/1-Q5QE_faPY
Reading vlog: https://youtu.be/1-Q5QE_faPY
February 11, 2022
Wait a minute! Did I read the blurb correctly? Is this book about a wedding celebration at one of the creepiest, most ominous and terrifying place at Heian- era Japanese mansion built by the resting bones of a bride and remains of girls who sacrificed themselves to accompany her?
What a batshit, mind bending plot line!
After reading the blurb and taking a very long look at the impactful, haunted cover that may give you nightmares for the entire month, I simply screamed: I’m all in!
This is quiet brilliant Japanese folklore waltzes with fables full of metaphors and allegories meet mystery/ thriller genres! A realistic approach to mental illness and fractured friendship patterns.
It was hooking but I wish instead of stuck at the creative author’s mind who presents us lots of metaphors with embellished depictions, I’d like to see more action packed, moving story of the characters. The writing style was unique but it was also too complex and wordy at some parts. You want to focus on the mystery and events instead of philosophical approach between similarities of ghosts and real people’s way of handling things.
But I enjoyed the originality and the criticism of broken friendship and tense atmosphere which push me to read till the end at one seat.
I’m cutting some points because of unbalanced pace ( too slow with long metaphorical elaborations but some parts are too fast to absorb! )
Overall: I think the half star I gave because of this stunning cover and I’m giving my 3.5 starts to be rounded up to 4 heart pounding, claustrophobic, gothic, very disturbing, Japanese stars!
Special thanks to Netgalley and Macmillan -Tor/ Forge for sharing this digital reviewer copy with me in exchange my honest opinions.
What a batshit, mind bending plot line!
After reading the blurb and taking a very long look at the impactful, haunted cover that may give you nightmares for the entire month, I simply screamed: I’m all in!
This is quiet brilliant Japanese folklore waltzes with fables full of metaphors and allegories meet mystery/ thriller genres! A realistic approach to mental illness and fractured friendship patterns.
It was hooking but I wish instead of stuck at the creative author’s mind who presents us lots of metaphors with embellished depictions, I’d like to see more action packed, moving story of the characters. The writing style was unique but it was also too complex and wordy at some parts. You want to focus on the mystery and events instead of philosophical approach between similarities of ghosts and real people’s way of handling things.
But I enjoyed the originality and the criticism of broken friendship and tense atmosphere which push me to read till the end at one seat.
I’m cutting some points because of unbalanced pace ( too slow with long metaphorical elaborations but some parts are too fast to absorb! )
Overall: I think the half star I gave because of this stunning cover and I’m giving my 3.5 starts to be rounded up to 4 heart pounding, claustrophobic, gothic, very disturbing, Japanese stars!
Special thanks to Netgalley and Macmillan -Tor/ Forge for sharing this digital reviewer copy with me in exchange my honest opinions.
October 19, 2021
NOW AVAILABLE!!!
if you like reading horror novels for their rich character development where all your questions about their individual and collective pasts are answered, move along. if you like reading horror novels because you want to be in the same WHAT THE FUCK IS THAT? headspace as the characters for a little while, have a seat—you're gonna love this haunted house story.
a group of five friends reunite in japan for a destination wedding, renting a heian-era mansion where obscenely wealthy golden boy-heir phillip will officiate the sacred union of faiz and talia. it would all be picture-postcard idyllic, except for the fact that the mansion's already got a bride in it—or what's left of one: the bones of a woman whose almost-husband died on the way to their wedding, who had herself buried alive in the foundation to wait for his ghost to come home. and every year after that, another girl was buried alive in the walls, to keep her company.
now, in a typical ghost story, this tragic-wedding backstory would be an unexpected discovery, causing concern and dismay amongst the wedding guests, but here it's a selling point. these particular friends grew up ghosthunting through malaysia together, and blushing bride talia's girlhood dream was to be married in a haunted house. wish = granted.
the dream wedding quickly becomes a nightmare, but not—at first—for the reasons you'd expect. the guests have all brought their own ghosts with them, in the form of old grievances, secrets, flirtations, and conflicts, and none of them seem to like each other very much.
our ingress into the story is cat, a woman whose unspecified mental instability; her 'terminal ennui,' made her suicidal and led to a hospitalization from which she has not really recovered. there's also a particular hostility between her and talia, and with the arrival of lin, a consummate disruptor, the tensions between all of them escalate, fueled by alcohol, creepy games, and, you know, being assailed by a parade of demons.
there's a lot left unsaid here, when it comes to the characters' shared past, and who has beef with whom and why, but when it comes to the horror elements, every disturbing and grotesque situation is laid out in thick chewy prose, even if i couldn't always wrap my head around the visuals, which is a long-standing me-problem.
although wayyyyyy more graphic than shirley jackson, it's very shirley jackson-esque in the way it sets up the seductive nature of a haunting to a character whose fragile mental health empathizes with the loneliness of the restless dead and catches that yearn:
it's a dark and icky story, but lin's frequent "You guys go do protagonist shit" meta-commentaries on horror tropes provide some welcome comic relief through the onslaught.
you're gonna be left with some questions at the end: relationships are messy, mental health is messy, hauntings are messy. there are books that do a better job making you understand and care about the characters, but sometimes you just wanna turn over a rock and watch things squirm.
P.S. i want whoever did the cover art for this book...do the work, karen...samuel araya—DEAR SAMUEL ARAYA, please illustrate some of the...occurrences in this book, specifically dolls and kitsune and tanuki k thx.
P.P.S. my ARC informed me that there is a 'preorder campaign with promotional item' for this book, so i RACED to find out what this item could be.
it is one of these:
i do not have a phone—who has suggestions about how to repurpose one of these things?
preorder link
*******************************************
i want to wallpaper my apartment with this cover.
come to my blog!
if you like reading horror novels for their rich character development where all your questions about their individual and collective pasts are answered, move along. if you like reading horror novels because you want to be in the same WHAT THE FUCK IS THAT? headspace as the characters for a little while, have a seat—you're gonna love this haunted house story.
a group of five friends reunite in japan for a destination wedding, renting a heian-era mansion where obscenely wealthy golden boy-heir phillip will officiate the sacred union of faiz and talia. it would all be picture-postcard idyllic, except for the fact that the mansion's already got a bride in it—or what's left of one: the bones of a woman whose almost-husband died on the way to their wedding, who had herself buried alive in the foundation to wait for his ghost to come home. and every year after that, another girl was buried alive in the walls, to keep her company.
now, in a typical ghost story, this tragic-wedding backstory would be an unexpected discovery, causing concern and dismay amongst the wedding guests, but here it's a selling point. these particular friends grew up ghosthunting through malaysia together, and blushing bride talia's girlhood dream was to be married in a haunted house. wish = granted.
...the interior didn't smell like it'd had people here, not for a long, long time, and smelled instead like such old buildings do: green and damp and dark and hungry, hollow as a stomach that'd forgotten what it was like to eat.
the dream wedding quickly becomes a nightmare, but not—at first—for the reasons you'd expect. the guests have all brought their own ghosts with them, in the form of old grievances, secrets, flirtations, and conflicts, and none of them seem to like each other very much.
our ingress into the story is cat, a woman whose unspecified mental instability; her 'terminal ennui,' made her suicidal and led to a hospitalization from which she has not really recovered. there's also a particular hostility between her and talia, and with the arrival of lin, a consummate disruptor, the tensions between all of them escalate, fueled by alcohol, creepy games, and, you know, being assailed by a parade of demons.
there's a lot left unsaid here, when it comes to the characters' shared past, and who has beef with whom and why, but when it comes to the horror elements, every disturbing and grotesque situation is laid out in thick chewy prose, even if i couldn't always wrap my head around the visuals, which is a long-standing me-problem.
although wayyyyyy more graphic than shirley jackson, it's very shirley jackson-esque in the way it sets up the seductive nature of a haunting to a character whose fragile mental health empathizes with the loneliness of the restless dead and catches that yearn:
You know how poets say sometimes that it feels like the whole world is listening?
It was just like that.
Except with a house instead of an auditorium of academics, collars starched, textbooks like scriptures, each chapter color-coded by importance. The manor inhaled. It felt like church. Like the architecture had dulled its heartbeat so it could hear me better, the wood warping, curling around the room like it was a womb, and I was a new beginning. Dust sighed from the ceiling. Spiderwebs fell in umbilical cords, a drape of silver.
It felt like the house talking to me through the mouths of moths and woodlice, the creak of its foundations, the little black summer ants chewing through what remained of our food like we'd left bodies, not balled-up, slickly gleaming cling wrap. The air smelled of raw meat, lard, and bits of seared protein.
I hoped to hell in that moment that she was listening.
Half because I was tired of being unloved, being pitied like a fawn panting its last handful of breaths into a ditch. Half because I hoped it was all true.
A little bit of magic.
Even if it was hungry.
Even if it was a house with rotting bones and a heart made out of a dead girl's ghost, I'd give it everything it wanted just for scraps. Some unabridged attention, some love.
Even if it was from a corpse with blackened teeth.
Anything to feel alive again right now.
it's a dark and icky story, but lin's frequent "You guys go do protagonist shit" meta-commentaries on horror tropes provide some welcome comic relief through the onslaught.
you're gonna be left with some questions at the end: relationships are messy, mental health is messy, hauntings are messy. there are books that do a better job making you understand and care about the characters, but sometimes you just wanna turn over a rock and watch things squirm.
P.S. i want whoever did the cover art for this book...do the work, karen...samuel araya—DEAR SAMUEL ARAYA, please illustrate some of the...occurrences in this book, specifically dolls and kitsune and tanuki k thx.
P.P.S. my ARC informed me that there is a 'preorder campaign with promotional item' for this book, so i RACED to find out what this item could be.
it is one of these:
i do not have a phone—who has suggestions about how to repurpose one of these things?
preorder link
*******************************************
i want to wallpaper my apartment with this cover.
come to my blog!
April 29, 2024
**3.5-stars rounded up**
Nothing But Blackened Teeth has wormed its way into my mind and it won't go away. I cannot stop thinking about it!
I finished this story early this morning and have slowly raised my rating incrementally as the day has worn on. I started at 3-stars, in 12-hours, I have rounded up to 4-stars. Who knows how high this could go!?
What could be better than a long-abandoned, reportedly-haunted, Heian-era mansion as a intimate destination wedding location?
For Nadia and Faiz, nothing. Nadia has always wanted to get married in a haunted mansion and after their friend, Phillip, buys them all first class tickets to Japan, now is their chance.
The group, made up of Nadia, Faiz, Cat, our narrator, Phillip and Lin, do not all get along. In fact, I wondered frequently why they were traveling together.
Nadia and Cat hate each other, as do Lin and pretty much everyone else, except for Cat. There is tension and messy history; it's a whole thing. As if the haunted mansion wasn't enough, the stress of their interactions raised my heart rate.
As this is an novella, it is pretty clear right from the start that the reportedly haunted mansion, is indeed quite haunted. There's not a lot of filler to get through.
This story revolves around a Ohaguro Bettari, which translated, if I am informed correctly, actually means, nothing but blackened teeth. This is a type of Yokai that I have never come across before and I found it fascinating.
Additionally, I have really only ever read about Yokai in Japanese-inspired Fantasy stories, which of course, is generally Dark Fantasy, but reading about Yokai in the Horror genre was completely new for me. I loved that aspect.
The haunted house vibes and the way that was presented was so engaging. I couldn't stop turning the pages. It was really well imagined.
I think my main issue with this story was in the presentation; the writing style, or the narrative voice. I'm not sure which.
The writing, at first glance, seems overdone. The use of ridiculously obscure vocabulary and nonstop, unnecessarily overwrought prose really rubbed me the wrong way while I was reading it.
The more I think about it though, I don't think this was the author showing that they are the most intelligent person in the room, I think it is the personification of Cat's character.
I could be interpreting this completely wrong, but I feel like Cat's character, who doesn't seem to like herself, had her intelligence as the one thing she could count out. Towards the end, as she was having one of her numerous fights with Nadia, she says how smart she is. I am smart, she exclaims.
Since the entire narrative is pretty much her inner monologue, I started to think about the story in that way, as that being her voice. Her way of seeing the world actually used those big words. That's her crutch and it started to make sense that way.
After I had that realization, I became more forgiving about those aspects of the story that so heavily turned me off initially.
As this is a novella, there's not a lot of build up and it did seem to end rather abruptly. As Horror novellas go, however, I would say this is a really strong one. It will definitely stick in my mind for a long time to come.
Thank you so much to the publisher, Tor Nightfire, for providing me with a copy to read and review.
I would definitely be interested in picking up more from Cassandra Khaw!
Nothing But Blackened Teeth has wormed its way into my mind and it won't go away. I cannot stop thinking about it!
I finished this story early this morning and have slowly raised my rating incrementally as the day has worn on. I started at 3-stars, in 12-hours, I have rounded up to 4-stars. Who knows how high this could go!?
What could be better than a long-abandoned, reportedly-haunted, Heian-era mansion as a intimate destination wedding location?
For Nadia and Faiz, nothing. Nadia has always wanted to get married in a haunted mansion and after their friend, Phillip, buys them all first class tickets to Japan, now is their chance.
The group, made up of Nadia, Faiz, Cat, our narrator, Phillip and Lin, do not all get along. In fact, I wondered frequently why they were traveling together.
Nadia and Cat hate each other, as do Lin and pretty much everyone else, except for Cat. There is tension and messy history; it's a whole thing. As if the haunted mansion wasn't enough, the stress of their interactions raised my heart rate.
As this is an novella, it is pretty clear right from the start that the reportedly haunted mansion, is indeed quite haunted. There's not a lot of filler to get through.
This story revolves around a Ohaguro Bettari, which translated, if I am informed correctly, actually means, nothing but blackened teeth. This is a type of Yokai that I have never come across before and I found it fascinating.
Additionally, I have really only ever read about Yokai in Japanese-inspired Fantasy stories, which of course, is generally Dark Fantasy, but reading about Yokai in the Horror genre was completely new for me. I loved that aspect.
The haunted house vibes and the way that was presented was so engaging. I couldn't stop turning the pages. It was really well imagined.
I think my main issue with this story was in the presentation; the writing style, or the narrative voice. I'm not sure which.
The writing, at first glance, seems overdone. The use of ridiculously obscure vocabulary and nonstop, unnecessarily overwrought prose really rubbed me the wrong way while I was reading it.
The more I think about it though, I don't think this was the author showing that they are the most intelligent person in the room, I think it is the personification of Cat's character.
I could be interpreting this completely wrong, but I feel like Cat's character, who doesn't seem to like herself, had her intelligence as the one thing she could count out. Towards the end, as she was having one of her numerous fights with Nadia, she says how smart she is. I am smart, she exclaims.
Since the entire narrative is pretty much her inner monologue, I started to think about the story in that way, as that being her voice. Her way of seeing the world actually used those big words. That's her crutch and it started to make sense that way.
After I had that realization, I became more forgiving about those aspects of the story that so heavily turned me off initially.
As this is a novella, there's not a lot of build up and it did seem to end rather abruptly. As Horror novellas go, however, I would say this is a really strong one. It will definitely stick in my mind for a long time to come.
Thank you so much to the publisher, Tor Nightfire, for providing me with a copy to read and review.
I would definitely be interested in picking up more from Cassandra Khaw!
October 12, 2021
Be sure to visit Bantering Books to read all my latest reviews.
Oh, my eyes! My eyes!
I don’t think I’ll ever unsee the cover for Nothing But Blackened Teeth. It’s terrifying. The unsettling image of the Japanese ghost bride is the stuff of which nightmares are made, and it will be forever embedded in my mind, gleefully waiting in the wings to haunt me every chance it gets.
Fortunately for my pitifully low fear threshold, the cover was the scariest part of Cassandra Khaw’s Japanese-folklore horror novella. The story creeped me out and grossed me out more than it ever truly scared me.
And I kind of wonder why I liked it so much.
Because Khaw’s prose is over-the-top pretentious and obscure. She uses really big words for the heck of it, words even I do not know, and the story feels annoyingly, eye-rollingly overwritten. Furthermore, Khaw casually tosses about Japanese terminology such as hitobashira, yokai, and gashadokuro but provides neither definitions nor explanatory context for the terms.
Thank goodness for Google. It saved me from drowning in unfamiliar words.
But for all my frustration with the writing, I can’t deny the fact that I enjoyed Khaw’s novella. At only 125 pages in length, Nothing But Blackened Teeth is an extremely quick and compelling read. Khaw skillfully builds suspense slowly, and she does a nice job of creating eerie, ghostly atmosphere. The story is fun, too, in that it’s a little bit meta, while also a touch surreal.
And in true horror-story fashion, the ending is shocking, twisted, and horrendously gory. Fans of the genre will be pleased with it, I think.
If Nothing But Blackened Teeth intrigues you, then by all means give it a try. You may find, as I did, that your like for it outweighs all other irritations.
Keep Google handy, though. You’re gonna need it.
Nothing But Blackened Teeth publishes October 19th, 2021.
My sincerest appreciation to Cassandra Khaw and Nightfire for the physical Advance Review Copy. All opinions included herein are my own.
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Oh, my eyes! My eyes!
I don’t think I’ll ever unsee the cover for Nothing But Blackened Teeth. It’s terrifying. The unsettling image of the Japanese ghost bride is the stuff of which nightmares are made, and it will be forever embedded in my mind, gleefully waiting in the wings to haunt me every chance it gets.
Fortunately for my pitifully low fear threshold, the cover was the scariest part of Cassandra Khaw’s Japanese-folklore horror novella. The story creeped me out and grossed me out more than it ever truly scared me.
And I kind of wonder why I liked it so much.
Because Khaw’s prose is over-the-top pretentious and obscure. She uses really big words for the heck of it, words even I do not know, and the story feels annoyingly, eye-rollingly overwritten. Furthermore, Khaw casually tosses about Japanese terminology such as hitobashira, yokai, and gashadokuro but provides neither definitions nor explanatory context for the terms.
Thank goodness for Google. It saved me from drowning in unfamiliar words.
But for all my frustration with the writing, I can’t deny the fact that I enjoyed Khaw’s novella. At only 125 pages in length, Nothing But Blackened Teeth is an extremely quick and compelling read. Khaw skillfully builds suspense slowly, and she does a nice job of creating eerie, ghostly atmosphere. The story is fun, too, in that it’s a little bit meta, while also a touch surreal.
And in true horror-story fashion, the ending is shocking, twisted, and horrendously gory. Fans of the genre will be pleased with it, I think.
If Nothing But Blackened Teeth intrigues you, then by all means give it a try. You may find, as I did, that your like for it outweighs all other irritations.
Keep Google handy, though. You’re gonna need it.
Nothing But Blackened Teeth publishes October 19th, 2021.
My sincerest appreciation to Cassandra Khaw and Nightfire for the physical Advance Review Copy. All opinions included herein are my own.
Bantering Books
January 29, 2021
Hmm.. I'm not sure how to rate this one. There are A LOT of things I didn't like. There are similes and metaphors in every other sentence and the writing was a bit pretentious. Big words were used for the sole purpose of using big words. The writing and I just didn't connect.
Another thing I could connect with were the characters.. I hated all of them. They all hate each other actually but they're all friends at the same time. I thought this dynamic was poor because it focused a lot on their drama rather than any horror aspects of the book. Keep in mind, this is a novella and most of it was petty drama between the group. We don't really even know why they all hate each other but one thing for sure is that I hate all of them.
Okay, I might be too harsh but I had such high expectations. I mean, look at that cover? That alone gave me promise of a great horror novella but I was disappointed. I just wish we were given more.
Another thing I could connect with were the characters.. I hated all of them. They all hate each other actually but they're all friends at the same time. I thought this dynamic was poor because it focused a lot on their drama rather than any horror aspects of the book. Keep in mind, this is a novella and most of it was petty drama between the group. We don't really even know why they all hate each other but one thing for sure is that I hate all of them.
Okay, I might be too harsh but I had such high expectations. I mean, look at that cover? That alone gave me promise of a great horror novella but I was disappointed. I just wish we were given more.
January 28, 2021
I’d like to preface this by saying that I don’t discourage anyone from reading this book.
In fact, let’s support spec-fic authors of colour and READ THEIR WORK! For all that I didn’t personally enjoy Nothing But Blackened Teeth, I think there will be folks out there who absolutely will, as evidenced by several rave reviews already.
So let’s get right into things. The prose in this novella is ridiculously, outrageously, unapologetically purple.
It is EXCESSIVE, y’all.
Part of me admires Khaw for committing so fully to such overindulgence. But overall, I have to be honest and say that I did not enjoy the writing in this novella. Why? For the very reason purple prose sucks: the flowery adjectives and over-the-top metaphors kept taking me out of the story, detracting more than they contributed.
(For example, I thought that the ohaguro-bettari
at the heart of this story—and plastered across its INCREDIBLE cover—was too metaphorical, amorphous, messy for my tastes, and that goes for her yōkai minions, too. I get that this was probably a deliberate decision on Khaw's part, but it just didn't work for me personally. I'm not really a fan of storylines that devolve into chaos.)
Mind you, these things aren’t bad on their own. I love me an uncommon word, an unconventional turn of phrase. I applaud Khaw’s allergy to cliché; at least, in terms of her actual prose (see discussion of characters below for some qualifications).
But my issue is that it was just too. damn. much. Some of the flowery metaphors and weird words worked beautifully; some of them didn’t—like, at all.
The book thus wavers between 1) a visceral vividness that engages all your senses, and 2) just plain distracting.
I think I could’ve given this 3 stars if I’d felt some degree of connection to the characters, but I just didn’t. Nothing But Blackened Teeth revolves around a friend group defined by their major beef with one another. We are never told explicitly about said beef, however, though it is hammered into you over and over again that they’ve all incestuously been in love or lust with each other at some point in the past, and now they all feel salty about it.
In all, it’s VERY hard to feel in the loop, and even more impossible to care about what basically amounts to petty squabbling between the friends.
Though Khaw’s prose itself wasn’t necessarily cliché, the characters ended up feeling like clichés. The flowery language imbued the book’s characters—and their many messy romantic entanglements—with a sense of canned melodrama more befitting a cringe-worthy soap opera than supernatural horror novella.
The casual rep was great, though. Cat, our narrator, is bisexual and Chinese, raised in Malaysia. Lin is also Chinese. Nadia is part Bengali and part Telegu, Faiz is half-Japanese, and Phillip is white (a fact that the others often rag on, which was pretty freakin’ entertaining).
Indeed, I thought the ending redeemed the novella for me; … That was a nice inversion of tropes.
◻️◻️◻️◻️◻️◻️◻️◻️◻️◻️◻️◻️◻️◻️◻️◻️◻️◻️◻️◻️◻️◻️
Bottom line: Nothing But Blackened Teeth was too decadently purple for me, but I absolutely recommend that you read this creepy story to make that call for yourselves.
Thank you NetGalley and Macmillan-Tor/Forge for this ARC in exchange for an honest review.
In fact, let’s support spec-fic authors of colour and READ THEIR WORK! For all that I didn’t personally enjoy Nothing But Blackened Teeth, I think there will be folks out there who absolutely will, as evidenced by several rave reviews already.
So let’s get right into things. The prose in this novella is ridiculously, outrageously, unapologetically purple.
It is EXCESSIVE, y’all.
Part of me admires Khaw for committing so fully to such overindulgence. But overall, I have to be honest and say that I did not enjoy the writing in this novella. Why? For the very reason purple prose sucks: the flowery adjectives and over-the-top metaphors kept taking me out of the story, detracting more than they contributed.
(For example, I thought that the ohaguro-bettari
at the heart of this story—and plastered across its INCREDIBLE cover—was too metaphorical, amorphous, messy for my tastes, and that goes for her yōkai minions, too. I get that this was probably a deliberate decision on Khaw's part, but it just didn't work for me personally. I'm not really a fan of storylines that devolve into chaos.)
Mind you, these things aren’t bad on their own. I love me an uncommon word, an unconventional turn of phrase. I applaud Khaw’s allergy to cliché; at least, in terms of her actual prose (see discussion of characters below for some qualifications).
But my issue is that it was just too. damn. much. Some of the flowery metaphors and weird words worked beautifully; some of them didn’t—like, at all.
The book thus wavers between 1) a visceral vividness that engages all your senses, and 2) just plain distracting.
I think I could’ve given this 3 stars if I’d felt some degree of connection to the characters, but I just didn’t. Nothing But Blackened Teeth revolves around a friend group defined by their major beef with one another. We are never told explicitly about said beef, however, though it is hammered into you over and over again that they’ve all incestuously been in love or lust with each other at some point in the past, and now they all feel salty about it.
In all, it’s VERY hard to feel in the loop, and even more impossible to care about what basically amounts to petty squabbling between the friends.
Though Khaw’s prose itself wasn’t necessarily cliché, the characters ended up feeling like clichés. The flowery language imbued the book’s characters—and their many messy romantic entanglements—with a sense of canned melodrama more befitting a cringe-worthy soap opera than supernatural horror novella.
The casual rep was great, though. Cat, our narrator, is bisexual and Chinese, raised in Malaysia. Lin is also Chinese. Nadia is part Bengali and part Telegu, Faiz is half-Japanese, and Phillip is white (a fact that the others often rag on, which was pretty freakin’ entertaining).
Indeed, I thought the ending redeemed the novella for me; … That was a nice inversion of tropes.
◻️◻️◻️◻️◻️◻️◻️◻️◻️◻️◻️◻️◻️◻️◻️◻️◻️◻️◻️◻️◻️◻️
Bottom line: Nothing But Blackened Teeth was too decadently purple for me, but I absolutely recommend that you read this creepy story to make that call for yourselves.
Thank you NetGalley and Macmillan-Tor/Forge for this ARC in exchange for an honest review.
November 10, 2021
The damn hell! These people sucked arse but the creepy story was good!
Mel 🖤🐶🐺🐾
"Well, shit. Yeah. It’s a giant mansion in the middle of nowhere full of dolls and creepy shit."
Mel 🖤🐶🐺🐾
February 13, 2024
I'm so sad that this was so bad! I've read another book by Cassandra Khaw that I loved and this one was so underwhelming. The story is paired with horrible characters and a lack luster plot making it a not so enjoyable reading experience.
October 1, 2021
Take this obscenity out of my sight or I’m going to barf, ugh.
I don’t even know what to say, there’s literally nothing I enjoyed about this novella. For such a short book I didn’t think I would find so many elements I would absolutely hate but here we are.
The writing style is so choppy and unnecessarily flowery it’s impossible to read without getting distracted. At times the use of adjectives is so redundant it becomes laughable, despite its original intent. Why do I need to read three or four synonyms one after the other when they mean the exact same thing? I got the concept, thank you very much.
The characters ruined everything else. I dare you not to hate every single one of them from page 4. Their petty jealous arguing took such a big part of this novella there wasn’t that much space left for the horror. I came here for the dead bride and Japanese demons, not for these ridiculous squabbles about who slept with whom.
The aim of the story is very clear, in fact it might just be too on the nose. I think it’s an amazing idea to take hurtful horror tropes and flip them on their heads, but here it was executed so poorly I’m sad about it. I couldn’t stand how the author made comments on horror tropes through the characters. It became apparent what was going to happen after it was continuously mentioned that people of color are the ones that usually die in all horror stories.
The book part and epilogue had me facepalm so hard. Brain cells have been lost. I thought it was cool how the main character had to be super ruthless at the end, but that’s the only good thing I can say.
Final verdict: I wish I could remove all things associated with this novella from my brain.
I’m so grateful to have been gifted the opportunity to read this book early. I’m SORRY.
I don’t even know what to say, there’s literally nothing I enjoyed about this novella. For such a short book I didn’t think I would find so many elements I would absolutely hate but here we are.
The writing style is so choppy and unnecessarily flowery it’s impossible to read without getting distracted. At times the use of adjectives is so redundant it becomes laughable, despite its original intent. Why do I need to read three or four synonyms one after the other when they mean the exact same thing? I got the concept, thank you very much.
The characters ruined everything else. I dare you not to hate every single one of them from page 4. Their petty jealous arguing took such a big part of this novella there wasn’t that much space left for the horror. I came here for the dead bride and Japanese demons, not for these ridiculous squabbles about who slept with whom.
The aim of the story is very clear, in fact it might just be too on the nose. I think it’s an amazing idea to take hurtful horror tropes and flip them on their heads, but here it was executed so poorly I’m sad about it. I couldn’t stand how the author made comments on horror tropes through the characters. It became apparent what was going to happen after it was continuously mentioned that people of color are the ones that usually die in all horror stories.
The book part and epilogue had me facepalm so hard. Brain cells have been lost. I thought it was cool how the main character had to be super ruthless at the end, but that’s the only good thing I can say.
Final verdict: I wish I could remove all things associated with this novella from my brain.
I’m so grateful to have been gifted the opportunity to read this book early. I’m SORRY.
![Profile Image for s.penkevich [mental health hiatus].](/_next/image?url=https%3A%2F%2Fi.gr-assets.com%2Fimages%2FS%2Fcompressed.photo.goodreads.com%2Fusers%2F1735525095i%2F6431467._UX200_CR0%2C11%2C200%2C200_.jpg&w=128&q=75)
October 25, 2023
“I hope this house eats you.”
“I hope the same about you.”
The thing about a haunted house is that, no matter how ghastly the exterior or cacophonous the creaks and shrieks from within, we are still drawn to enter through their foreboding doorway. There are even psychological studies that show people find the fear of entering a haunted house like the kind operating for the Halloween season to offer a sort of soothing post-experience effect, further drawing us to them. Haunted houses have become an archetype in fiction, often acting as a repository for grief and guilt but also functioning as a psychological mirror reflecting and enlarging the traumas inside the occupants minds. In this way it manipulates and preys upon us all and plays a role that seems just as alive as any character. Though a house is not always empty as such a place has often been twisted and traumatized by those who have perished within, and they may still lurk in the shadows… Such is the case with Cassandra Khaw’s Nothing But Blackened Teeth which, like a haunted house itself daring us to enter inside it’s pages, masterfully manipulates tropes as a sort of meta-commentary by way of chilling story, all brought to life by a gorgeous prose style that feels like it's tearing into the viscera of language and displaying it in all its bloody glory. A rather polarizing book and a quick read, I found this to be an absolute delight functioning on multiple levels that deliver a shocking and scary tale while also examining the intensity of grief, the archetypes of horror fiction and testing the rivets of friendship. It is a novel as gorgeous as it is gruesome.
Haunted Houses come in many varieties. In his introduction for the novel Burnt Offerings, horror author Stephen Graham Jones offers two distinctions: the Stay Away Houses and the Hungry Houses. ‘ Whereas Stay Away Houses just want to be left alone,’ Jones writes, ‘Hungry Houses aren't complete without people to digest for reasons or decades or centuries.’ The latter category is most often exemplified by Shirley Jackson’s Hill House and here Khaw offers us another example with their own twists. When a group of friends, all former ghost hunters, enter an abandoned Heian-era mansion in Japan so Nadia and Faiz can achieve Nadia’s dream of being married in a haunted house, they are poking the home in the very wound that set it down into legend. Long ago, after hearing her bridegroom had perished before returning for their wedding, a bride had herself buried alive in the walls of her mansion and each year another girl would meet the same fate until the mansion finally fell into disrepair and disuse. Every aspect of the house is dripping dread and portending trauma as Khaw skillfully crafts an atmosphere and tone to the novel that transports you directly into the terror—you swear you can hear your own footsteps reverberating in the prose— and a lexicon of devouring and digestion sinks its teeth into much of the descriptions of the house.
This is not just any hungry house, however. In Night Side of the River, Jeanette Winterson offers a dichotomy of hauntings where either it is the place that is haunting you or it is the person being haunted from within—Winterson uses Hill House, which Jones’ also classified as a ‘Hungry House’, as an example of the latter where the house magnifies your own internal haunting and brings it externally. Khaw’s house, however, manages to be both as it preys on the mental states and fears of the group while also being a haunted place that, not unlike a Stay Away House, has sent its array of hitobashira and yokai out to torment and steal people away. This plays into an aspect of Asian horror and ghost lore that is different from the Western tradition, which we’ll get into shortly, but it also makes the character’s personalities such an important part of the story.
‘After all, isn't that the foremost commandment in the scripture of horror? They who are queer, deviant, tattooed, tongue-pierced or other must always die first.’
The characters are what really made this story work for me. It is a group of friends, but one where the tight-knot of friendship has frayed and old resentments are larger in the mind than older, fonder memories—‘Compassion, like everything else, can be worn dull by rough use.’ They get frustrated with their friends and must survive each other just as much as they must survive the mansion. When you inevitably want to yell at one of them, a character will as if on your behalf which is another clever way Khaw makes you feel inside the story with them.
Our narrator, Kat, is fresh out of a hospital stay for what they term ‘terminal ennui’ and is still treading waters in a sea of grief (a primary target for Hungry Houses). Kat is close friends with Faiz, a friendship that was ‘guilt-bruised, gestated in the shambles of a stillborn relationship. But a friendship nonetheless.’ and Nadia feels threatened by their past so tensions are high. There is also Phillip, the white White-Knight type character with as much charm and charisma as his bank account that paid for this entire trip. Finally there is Lin, who is doing well on his own and provides excellent comic relief for the reader and frustration for the group as he finds it is ‘easier to run your mouth, run from the Sisyphean work that was being emotionally open.’
A quick aside because I LOVE Lin. I’ve always wanted a character in a horror who just cracks jokes and giggles things like “oh we are all gonna die” because that would be me. Taking none of it seriously. Being kind of a dick to everyone, smoking a joint instead of running, being not very helpful. And is the character who knows the rules to horror (a great horror trope) and seems resigned to them. Lin rules.
‘Don’t spook the ghosts.’
So much of this is an exploration of grief, a grief that awakens the spirits within, a grief the ghosts feed off of. And Kat invites them in not just through grief, but quite literally asking the house to keep her company.
Because loneliness is terrible. I found the depictions of grief to be quite extraordinary here, not just Faiz in terror at the possible loss of Nadia and showing how someone can completely fall apart, but the way grief is shown all muffled and imagery of being submerged in water is a frequently used technique.
Kat experiences the haunting most profoundly, seeing all the spirits and hearing the constant chant of their voices. Khaw is exceptional at using language to transfer seamlessly from the “real” to the “supernatural,” with ghosts and fears being tasted just as much as seen.
‘ I didn’t know someone else’s pain could have a texture, a bite, a gelatinousness you could hold in your teeth, but I could almost gnaw on [Redacted]’s dying.’
Something I find particularly interesting in Blackened Teeth is the way the supernatural is so much a part of the “real” world, something that draws from the Eastern folklore around ghost where their realm can conjoin with ours and is just a natural thing you hope to avoid upsetting. This is the tradition Kat grew up in, like Khaw who is also from Malaysia, and where the group of friends did their ghost hunting:
For those who are interested, I found this really cool list of haunted places in Malaysia that would likely be places our group would have checked out. This style of horror, however, is different than the US versions of horror where it is usually an intrusive evil that must be overcome and deafeated—Phillip portrays this trope in his character as someone who must muscle his way to victory—and here the house must be assuaged. Victory isn’t even part of the equation.
In this way, I quite enjoyed that Khaw has opted to include multiple languages in the text and leave them untranslated. It works on several levels, particularly if they aren’t words you recognize because it emphasizes that this is foreign to you, that you are the stranger here and not the ghosts. And if it upsets you, there’s a chance Phillip is your avatar in the narrative as he sees everything as an experience he can purchase and own to accommodate and center him (there’s an argument to be made there is a subtle anti-colonialism message in this novella, especially when ). The language in all of Khaw’s work is something to marvel at and they create a prose that feels more like poetry. The figurative language swirls like smoke and is almost intangible the way it works in a poem and the vocabulary is so well chosen. It feels very ornate in a way that also feels like it is probing a supernatural past, and seem to similarly embody a sense of language that is like the objects in the house that seem to say ‘this was old before the word for such things existed.’ Khaw absolutely dazzles.
‘This is the problem with horror movies: Everyone knows what's coming next but actions have momentum, every decision an equal and justified reaction. Just because you know you should, doesn't mean that you can, stop.’
Which all brings me to what I loved so much about this novella: it is an examination of horror and the psychology behind it all. If haunted houses are a mirror of our psyche, it is only natural to fall into a sort of trope of your own psychology and each character well represents that. The fear kicks in and the emotions take the controls. All the pieces are set, the roles chosen, the rules to survive the house are pre-established: it’s like a board game fresh out of the box. They even joke about the order they should likely die in. I delighted at the scene where they search for a library to find a book that has answers because, well, that’s just how it goes in a haunted house. It’s very playful and amusing and the text is full of clever nods to its own self-awareness. It is a horror story playing itself out and we feel like we are rolling the dice along with them.
‘My head swam, full of static again, like someone’d tuned the inside of my head to a broadcast decades dead.’
I have to say, Nothing But Blackened Teeth completely charmed me as much as it chilled me. It is sharp as it is smart, especially in Khaw’s excellent examinations of horror dynamics. But above all, this is a really heartfelt novel where underneath the hauntings and violence it digs into ideas of grief and the awkward sadness of a slowly unraveling friend group. All constructed with prose that makes me grin ear to ear (picture creepy horror monster that feeds off poetry grin?) when I read it. A worthy addition to the literary canon of haunted houses, Cassandra Khaw’s Nothing But Blackened Teeth is a frightfully good time. Let it devour you.
5/5
“I hope the same about you.”
The thing about a haunted house is that, no matter how ghastly the exterior or cacophonous the creaks and shrieks from within, we are still drawn to enter through their foreboding doorway. There are even psychological studies that show people find the fear of entering a haunted house like the kind operating for the Halloween season to offer a sort of soothing post-experience effect, further drawing us to them. Haunted houses have become an archetype in fiction, often acting as a repository for grief and guilt but also functioning as a psychological mirror reflecting and enlarging the traumas inside the occupants minds. In this way it manipulates and preys upon us all and plays a role that seems just as alive as any character. Though a house is not always empty as such a place has often been twisted and traumatized by those who have perished within, and they may still lurk in the shadows… Such is the case with Cassandra Khaw’s Nothing But Blackened Teeth which, like a haunted house itself daring us to enter inside it’s pages, masterfully manipulates tropes as a sort of meta-commentary by way of chilling story, all brought to life by a gorgeous prose style that feels like it's tearing into the viscera of language and displaying it in all its bloody glory. A rather polarizing book and a quick read, I found this to be an absolute delight functioning on multiple levels that deliver a shocking and scary tale while also examining the intensity of grief, the archetypes of horror fiction and testing the rivets of friendship. It is a novel as gorgeous as it is gruesome.
Haunted Houses come in many varieties. In his introduction for the novel Burnt Offerings, horror author Stephen Graham Jones offers two distinctions: the Stay Away Houses and the Hungry Houses. ‘ Whereas Stay Away Houses just want to be left alone,’ Jones writes, ‘Hungry Houses aren't complete without people to digest for reasons or decades or centuries.’ The latter category is most often exemplified by Shirley Jackson’s Hill House and here Khaw offers us another example with their own twists. When a group of friends, all former ghost hunters, enter an abandoned Heian-era mansion in Japan so Nadia and Faiz can achieve Nadia’s dream of being married in a haunted house, they are poking the home in the very wound that set it down into legend. Long ago, after hearing her bridegroom had perished before returning for their wedding, a bride had herself buried alive in the walls of her mansion and each year another girl would meet the same fate until the mansion finally fell into disrepair and disuse. Every aspect of the house is dripping dread and portending trauma as Khaw skillfully crafts an atmosphere and tone to the novel that transports you directly into the terror—you swear you can hear your own footsteps reverberating in the prose— and a lexicon of devouring and digestion sinks its teeth into much of the descriptions of the house.
‘[The mansion] smelled instead like such old buildings do: green and damp and dark and hungry, hollow as a stomach that'd forgotten what it was like to eat.’
This is not just any hungry house, however. In Night Side of the River, Jeanette Winterson offers a dichotomy of hauntings where either it is the place that is haunting you or it is the person being haunted from within—Winterson uses Hill House, which Jones’ also classified as a ‘Hungry House’, as an example of the latter where the house magnifies your own internal haunting and brings it externally. Khaw’s house, however, manages to be both as it preys on the mental states and fears of the group while also being a haunted place that, not unlike a Stay Away House, has sent its array of hitobashira and yokai out to torment and steal people away. This plays into an aspect of Asian horror and ghost lore that is different from the Western tradition, which we’ll get into shortly, but it also makes the character’s personalities such an important part of the story.
‘After all, isn't that the foremost commandment in the scripture of horror? They who are queer, deviant, tattooed, tongue-pierced or other must always die first.’
The characters are what really made this story work for me. It is a group of friends, but one where the tight-knot of friendship has frayed and old resentments are larger in the mind than older, fonder memories—‘Compassion, like everything else, can be worn dull by rough use.’ They get frustrated with their friends and must survive each other just as much as they must survive the mansion. When you inevitably want to yell at one of them, a character will as if on your behalf which is another clever way Khaw makes you feel inside the story with them.
Our narrator, Kat, is fresh out of a hospital stay for what they term ‘terminal ennui’ and is still treading waters in a sea of grief (a primary target for Hungry Houses). Kat is close friends with Faiz, a friendship that was ‘guilt-bruised, gestated in the shambles of a stillborn relationship. But a friendship nonetheless.’ and Nadia feels threatened by their past so tensions are high. There is also Phillip, the white White-Knight type character with as much charm and charisma as his bank account that paid for this entire trip. Finally there is Lin, who is doing well on his own and provides excellent comic relief for the reader and frustration for the group as he finds it is ‘easier to run your mouth, run from the Sisyphean work that was being emotionally open.’
A quick aside because I LOVE Lin. I’ve always wanted a character in a horror who just cracks jokes and giggles things like “oh we are all gonna die” because that would be me. Taking none of it seriously. Being kind of a dick to everyone, smoking a joint instead of running, being not very helpful. And is the character who knows the rules to horror (a great horror trope) and seems resigned to them. Lin rules.
‘Don’t spook the ghosts.’
So much of this is an exploration of grief, a grief that awakens the spirits within, a grief the ghosts feed off of. And Kat invites them in not just through grief, but quite literally asking the house to keep her company.
‘Even if it was a house with rotting bones and a heart made out of a dead girl's ghost, I'd give it everything it wanted just for scraps. Some unabridged attention, some love.
Even if it was from a corpse with blackened teeth.
Anything to feel alive again right now.’
Because loneliness is terrible. I found the depictions of grief to be quite extraordinary here, not just Faiz in terror at the possible loss of Nadia and showing how someone can completely fall apart, but the way grief is shown all muffled and imagery of being submerged in water is a frequently used technique.
‘Have you ever cannonballed into a cold lake? The shock of an old memory is kind of like that; every neuron singing a bright hosanna: here we are. You forgot about us, but we didn’t forget about you.’
Kat experiences the haunting most profoundly, seeing all the spirits and hearing the constant chant of their voices. Khaw is exceptional at using language to transfer seamlessly from the “real” to the “supernatural,” with ghosts and fears being tasted just as much as seen.
‘ I didn’t know someone else’s pain could have a texture, a bite, a gelatinousness you could hold in your teeth, but I could almost gnaw on [Redacted]’s dying.’
Something I find particularly interesting in Blackened Teeth is the way the supernatural is so much a part of the “real” world, something that draws from the Eastern folklore around ghost where their realm can conjoin with ours and is just a natural thing you hope to avoid upsetting. This is the tradition Kat grew up in, like Khaw who is also from Malaysia, and where the group of friends did their ghost hunting:
‘Growing up where we did, back in melting-pot Malaysia, down in the tropics where the mangroves spread dense as myths, you knew to look for ghosts. Superstition was a compass: it steered your attention through thin alleys, led your eyes to crosswalks filthy with makeshift shrines, offerings and appeasements scattered by traffic.’
For those who are interested, I found this really cool list of haunted places in Malaysia that would likely be places our group would have checked out. This style of horror, however, is different than the US versions of horror where it is usually an intrusive evil that must be overcome and deafeated—Phillip portrays this trope in his character as someone who must muscle his way to victory—and here the house must be assuaged. Victory isn’t even part of the equation.
In this way, I quite enjoyed that Khaw has opted to include multiple languages in the text and leave them untranslated. It works on several levels, particularly if they aren’t words you recognize because it emphasizes that this is foreign to you, that you are the stranger here and not the ghosts. And if it upsets you, there’s a chance Phillip is your avatar in the narrative as he sees everything as an experience he can purchase and own to accommodate and center him (there’s an argument to be made there is a subtle anti-colonialism message in this novella, especially when ). The language in all of Khaw’s work is something to marvel at and they create a prose that feels more like poetry. The figurative language swirls like smoke and is almost intangible the way it works in a poem and the vocabulary is so well chosen. It feels very ornate in a way that also feels like it is probing a supernatural past, and seem to similarly embody a sense of language that is like the objects in the house that seem to say ‘this was old before the word for such things existed.’ Khaw absolutely dazzles.
‘This is the problem with horror movies: Everyone knows what's coming next but actions have momentum, every decision an equal and justified reaction. Just because you know you should, doesn't mean that you can, stop.’
Which all brings me to what I loved so much about this novella: it is an examination of horror and the psychology behind it all. If haunted houses are a mirror of our psyche, it is only natural to fall into a sort of trope of your own psychology and each character well represents that. The fear kicks in and the emotions take the controls. All the pieces are set, the roles chosen, the rules to survive the house are pre-established: it’s like a board game fresh out of the box. They even joke about the order they should likely die in. I delighted at the scene where they search for a library to find a book that has answers because, well, that’s just how it goes in a haunted house. It’s very playful and amusing and the text is full of clever nods to its own self-awareness. It is a horror story playing itself out and we feel like we are rolling the dice along with them.
‘My head swam, full of static again, like someone’d tuned the inside of my head to a broadcast decades dead.’
I have to say, Nothing But Blackened Teeth completely charmed me as much as it chilled me. It is sharp as it is smart, especially in Khaw’s excellent examinations of horror dynamics. But above all, this is a really heartfelt novel where underneath the hauntings and violence it digs into ideas of grief and the awkward sadness of a slowly unraveling friend group. All constructed with prose that makes me grin ear to ear (picture creepy horror monster that feeds off poetry grin?) when I read it. A worthy addition to the literary canon of haunted houses, Cassandra Khaw’s Nothing But Blackened Teeth is a frightfully good time. Let it devour you.
5/5
January 19, 2024
and this was supposed to be a horror story? the only unsettling thing about this novella is that cover.
Nothing But Blackened Teeth was probably my most anticipated October 2021 release, and boy, did it disappoint. I mean, given that N.K. Jemisin called it “Brutally delicious!” I went into this novella with high expectations. After getting through this novella’s opening scene, my expectations were quashed. There is an argument of sorts between 4 generic people that was as realistic-sounding as, say, any line of dialogue from Riverdale (“Besides, my money is your money. Brothers to the end, you know?” / “You nearly cost me everything,” Talia said, still staccato in her rage.”).
Our narrator is at this allegedly creepy mansion in Japan that will serve as a wedding venue because the bride happens to be in haunted places. Our narrator doesn’t get on with the bride, there is beef between them because of whatever. They bicker and swear a lot (so edgy of them). Nothing much happens. Characters think the place is creepy, they hear something, and then towards the latter half of the novella, the story gives a half-hearted attempt at horror. There were 0 stakes, the 4 or 5 characters in this novella were different degrees of bitchy and hysterical. Their reactions/responses and the way they interacted with one another struck me as unbearably fake and unconvincing. The narrator’s edgy descriptions of their hands, faces, and voices did nothing to make their words or actions credible. I made the mistake of listening to this audiobook as I was re-reading The Haunting of Hill House and let me just say that Nothing But Blackened Teeth is not it. This novella is devoid of nuance and seems to believe that it is being a lot grittier and more subversive than it actually is. The characters are paper-thin and the mc’s narration is so self-dramatising as to be unbearable. In addition to weak dialogues and non-existent characterisation, this novella fails at atmosphere and tone. The haunted house is described so vaguely that it never struck me as a real place. The ghost is cheesy. While the novella tries to be more self-aware of horror tropes it ends up dishing out the same tired clichéd and ‘twists’. The narrator is bi but she only shares romantic/sexual tension with the 3 male characters (she dislikes and is disliked by the bride-to-be). Also, as you may have by now realised, I have already forgotten all of these characters' names. Our narrator is a bitch, the bride-to-be is a fake, the groom exists, there is a character who is supposed to be a joker but comes across as plain rude and unfunny, and, lastly, there is a white guy who tries hard to be the golden boy. That's all I remember about them. And they all like to get into really inane arguments that serve as mere page-filler.
While Nothing But Blackened Teeth is by no means the worst thing I've read this year, it is a truly banal horror story.
If you liked it, fair enough. If you are interested in reading it I suggest you check out more positive reviews as I have nothing good to say about it (wait, i lie, that cover is relatively disturbing, so there you go).
February 18, 2021
Not gonna lie, I know nothing about Japanese culture and I didn't even know what an "Heian" era was, (in Japanese culture, it's the period that runs from 795 to 1185),before I started this book. Now I know and I also have learned that Cassandra Khaw is a phenomenal writer!
In a famous haunted mansion from the Heian era, a young couple, for whatever twisted reason, wants to get married. Only a few friends are invited as it's a long trip and let's face it-this kind of thing is not for everyone. All the people here have history with each other, which makes for some interesting dynamics-which takes a back seat when the supernatural action starts up. Will the happy couple be able to get married without a problem? Will any of them escape with their lives? You'll have to read this to find out!
I've long said that the novella is a perfect vehicle for a horror story. It's just long enough to introduce the characters and create feelings towards them, while short enough to keep the tension high and the scares well...scary. All of the that is the case here, and more.
The prose? The prose is purply beautiful at times, while at other times, sharp as a knife. The beauty of the mansion is hidden behind the rot and corruption that have taken over and the way that Khaw describes how that came to be is gorgeous. The imagery is vivid and bright, and I had no problems picturing any of the scenes, while at the same time the sharpness of the prose could be like a knife point. For example: "I hope the house eats you." It doesn't get much sharper than that!
I think I'm going to leave this review at what I've already written. I don't want to give any part of the story away, but I will add that Cassandra Khaw is a force to be reckoned with. I can't wait to read more of her work!
My highest recommendation!
Available October, 2021.
*Thank you to Nightfire and to NetGalley for the e-ARC in exchange for my honest review. This is it!*
In a famous haunted mansion from the Heian era, a young couple, for whatever twisted reason, wants to get married. Only a few friends are invited as it's a long trip and let's face it-this kind of thing is not for everyone. All the people here have history with each other, which makes for some interesting dynamics-which takes a back seat when the supernatural action starts up. Will the happy couple be able to get married without a problem? Will any of them escape with their lives? You'll have to read this to find out!
I've long said that the novella is a perfect vehicle for a horror story. It's just long enough to introduce the characters and create feelings towards them, while short enough to keep the tension high and the scares well...scary. All of the that is the case here, and more.
The prose? The prose is purply beautiful at times, while at other times, sharp as a knife. The beauty of the mansion is hidden behind the rot and corruption that have taken over and the way that Khaw describes how that came to be is gorgeous. The imagery is vivid and bright, and I had no problems picturing any of the scenes, while at the same time the sharpness of the prose could be like a knife point. For example: "I hope the house eats you." It doesn't get much sharper than that!
I think I'm going to leave this review at what I've already written. I don't want to give any part of the story away, but I will add that Cassandra Khaw is a force to be reckoned with. I can't wait to read more of her work!
My highest recommendation!
Available October, 2021.
*Thank you to Nightfire and to NetGalley for the e-ARC in exchange for my honest review. This is it!*
November 25, 2021
I've been looking forward to this one, but it didn't really work for me. In my opinion, novellas work best when they're short novels, instead of long short stories. This book's problem is that it is a very, very bloated and verbose short story. The prose was so purple it was almost black. The actual story part of the book could have been told in about half the pages used. The rest is just $10 words, filler and Japanese terminology I had to look up. It felt like a school assignment where you had a page minimum and your teacher was already wise to the expanded margins and larger font, so you had to whip out the thesaurus and adjectivify the hell out of that paper.
Character development isn't too critical if you've got a short, plot based story, but some basic character descriptions would be nice. It wasn't until almost the 20% mark before we found out the main character was a woman. Some of the details we do get add nothing to the story, except for confusion. We're told early on that the characters went to school together in Malaysia. Okay, so they're Malaysian. Well, actually, one of them is white and rich. About halfway thru, we find out that two of them are Chinese, but one of those guys is also half Japanese. Everyone forgets that the main character can kind of understand spoken Japanese. Is she Japanese? The rest of the characters? No clue. Other than gender and name, that's about all we get. In a throwaway line, we find out the main character is bisexual. It never really comes up again, but I guess it's good enough to get that LGBTQ classification on Amazon.
The only character history that was covered in any detail was that everyone in the group has dated everyone in the group. How could I forget that? They spend more time talking about that than ghosts.
Apparently it was also a prerequisite that we've taken at least one college course on Japanese history, folklore and architecture/decoration before reading this book. Seriously. I spent more time Googling terms in this book than I did reading it. That's including the time spent re-reading paragraphs after researching the unfamiliar words and forgetting what I'd already read. Seeing as this is being marketed towards a Western audience, footnotes would have been a huge help getting thru this.
Here's a line for example:
"On the walls, the yokai danced like they invented the idea, pirouetting through genres and periods, Nara to Muromachi, every shogunate of literati painting, austere to aureate, twelve bodies to a cosmic tango."
Nothing builds tension and dread like constantly stopping reading to visit Wikipedia and a dictionary to figure out what you're reading.
In the end, this read more like a young adult drama than a horror story. We get one jump-scarish moment when the ghost first shows up, then after that, the ghost(s?) are basically set dressing while everyone else argues. Really. The ghost sits around and laughs at them for the remainder of the book The dating history was far more important to the plot than the ghost. I'm not even going to comment on the slopped together ending. I'd call this 1.5 stars, but I'm rounding up because of the amazing cover art.
11/25/2021 edit: Dropped it back down to one star. This is one of those books that still irk me every time I think about it. No matter how good the cover is, I can't justify the 2 stars.
Character development isn't too critical if you've got a short, plot based story, but some basic character descriptions would be nice. It wasn't until almost the 20% mark before we found out the main character was a woman. Some of the details we do get add nothing to the story, except for confusion. We're told early on that the characters went to school together in Malaysia. Okay, so they're Malaysian. Well, actually, one of them is white and rich. About halfway thru, we find out that two of them are Chinese, but one of those guys is also half Japanese. Everyone forgets that the main character can kind of understand spoken Japanese. Is she Japanese? The rest of the characters? No clue. Other than gender and name, that's about all we get. In a throwaway line, we find out the main character is bisexual. It never really comes up again, but I guess it's good enough to get that LGBTQ classification on Amazon.
The only character history that was covered in any detail was that everyone in the group has dated everyone in the group. How could I forget that? They spend more time talking about that than ghosts.
Apparently it was also a prerequisite that we've taken at least one college course on Japanese history, folklore and architecture/decoration before reading this book. Seriously. I spent more time Googling terms in this book than I did reading it. That's including the time spent re-reading paragraphs after researching the unfamiliar words and forgetting what I'd already read. Seeing as this is being marketed towards a Western audience, footnotes would have been a huge help getting thru this.
Here's a line for example:
"On the walls, the yokai danced like they invented the idea, pirouetting through genres and periods, Nara to Muromachi, every shogunate of literati painting, austere to aureate, twelve bodies to a cosmic tango."
Nothing builds tension and dread like constantly stopping reading to visit Wikipedia and a dictionary to figure out what you're reading.
In the end, this read more like a young adult drama than a horror story. We get one jump-scarish moment when the ghost first shows up, then after that, the ghost(s?) are basically set dressing while everyone else argues. Really. The ghost sits around and laughs at them for the remainder of the book The dating history was far more important to the plot than the ghost. I'm not even going to comment on the slopped together ending. I'd call this 1.5 stars, but I'm rounding up because of the amazing cover art.
11/25/2021 edit: Dropped it back down to one star. This is one of those books that still irk me every time I think about it. No matter how good the cover is, I can't justify the 2 stars.
May 22, 2022
A group of friends who grew up together in Malaysia gather to spend one night in a dilapidated Heian-era manor house to celebrate an imminent wedding between two of their number. An historic home built on the bones of an entombed bride-to-be and more than two hundred companion girls carries a certain fascination for them, as ghostly thrill-seeking used to be their lifeline. After all, what better venue to plan a wedding and waste a large portion of their near-billionaire friend Phillip's inheritance than here?
Despite this semi interesting plotline and stunning cover there were many things that bothered me.
What took me off guard with this book was that it had a lot of dialogue where it was attempting to be self-aware and borderline comedic. And while I don't hate a laugh or two mixed in with my scares, a lot of the discussions between characters took me out of the moment from this incredibly dark atmosphere that Cassandra Khaw had been building.
I was uninterested in any of the characters. I wouldn't have given a fuck if they had died. Every time, their reasoning and feelings astounded me.
Simply put, it wasn't creepy in the least.
Despite this semi interesting plotline and stunning cover there were many things that bothered me.
What took me off guard with this book was that it had a lot of dialogue where it was attempting to be self-aware and borderline comedic. And while I don't hate a laugh or two mixed in with my scares, a lot of the discussions between characters took me out of the moment from this incredibly dark atmosphere that Cassandra Khaw had been building.
I was uninterested in any of the characters. I wouldn't have given a fuck if they had died. Every time, their reasoning and feelings astounded me.
Simply put, it wasn't creepy in the least.
January 8, 2022
Are you familiar with the legends of the Ohaguro-Bettari? She's a Japanese spirt typically known for having no eyes or nose, but her mouth is full of blackened teeth. She's been featured in many legends and there's been a lot of artists who have tried to capture the idea of what she would look like. Many different takes but one thing is consistent, those black teeth.
(I do so love that cover)
This book follows a group of "friends" (and those quotation marks are very much needed) who have traveled to Japan to attend a wedding. As they have taken several ghost hunting trips, one of their friends decides to get them access to a supposedly haunted house, where a ghost bride is said to still remain. What they find there is that classic blackened teeth spirit mentioned above.
I picked this book up when it first came out, seeing the discription and adding it to my to read list. After finishing I went online and was surprised to see that the average was under three stars. This was made even more surprising by seeing that most (though not all) of my friends on here liked it and most of the top reviews are at least fairly positive.
Based on what I've seen there seems to be two major complaints which I will address now, which may be considered a warning to readers who these aspects would annoy.
First: The prose is overwritten. This is very much a "your mileage will vary" sort of thing as I personally loved the writing. I've read another of Khaw's books before (the excellent Hammers on Bone) and both books are written in a style that delights me. The prose is indeed purple, but it flows so well and creates images that at times truly got under my skin. Phrases like the following appealed to me; "Her footsteps frictionless as envy." It's poetic, but obviously not for everyone.
Second: The characters are unlikable. Well this one probably bothers people who feel a need to connect to the characters. I'm not criticizing anyone who feels that way, and indeed I too have disliked books partially for this reason. Characters need to be either likable or interesting… and while these ones were certainly not likable, they did interest me. These are people who are knowledgeable about the very tropes of the genre they have walked into. They know the rules, if not the exact stories, and they try to both play by them and deconstruct them.
All in all, I found this a delightful little haunted house story. It's subtilty unnerving while never getting to horrific in my opinion, but it was a delight to read. There's also a delightful little aspect that I may be reading into, but if I'm correct puts a lovely little spin on the story… but spoilers are very much a part of it.
4/5 stars and recommended for all horror fans not bothered by the above issues.
(I do so love that cover)
This book follows a group of "friends" (and those quotation marks are very much needed) who have traveled to Japan to attend a wedding. As they have taken several ghost hunting trips, one of their friends decides to get them access to a supposedly haunted house, where a ghost bride is said to still remain. What they find there is that classic blackened teeth spirit mentioned above.
I picked this book up when it first came out, seeing the discription and adding it to my to read list. After finishing I went online and was surprised to see that the average was under three stars. This was made even more surprising by seeing that most (though not all) of my friends on here liked it and most of the top reviews are at least fairly positive.
Based on what I've seen there seems to be two major complaints which I will address now, which may be considered a warning to readers who these aspects would annoy.
First: The prose is overwritten. This is very much a "your mileage will vary" sort of thing as I personally loved the writing. I've read another of Khaw's books before (the excellent Hammers on Bone) and both books are written in a style that delights me. The prose is indeed purple, but it flows so well and creates images that at times truly got under my skin. Phrases like the following appealed to me; "Her footsteps frictionless as envy." It's poetic, but obviously not for everyone.
Second: The characters are unlikable. Well this one probably bothers people who feel a need to connect to the characters. I'm not criticizing anyone who feels that way, and indeed I too have disliked books partially for this reason. Characters need to be either likable or interesting… and while these ones were certainly not likable, they did interest me. These are people who are knowledgeable about the very tropes of the genre they have walked into. They know the rules, if not the exact stories, and they try to both play by them and deconstruct them.
All in all, I found this a delightful little haunted house story. It's subtilty unnerving while never getting to horrific in my opinion, but it was a delight to read. There's also a delightful little aspect that I may be reading into, but if I'm correct puts a lovely little spin on the story… but spoilers are very much a part of it.
4/5 stars and recommended for all horror fans not bothered by the above issues.
September 16, 2021
TW: gore, body horror
Maybe it’s odd to say that this novella was a wonderful treat given its content, but let’s be honest here. It was a wonderful treat. The writing was gorgeous and I truly felt like I was in the story. The beginning confusion of the dynamics of the friend group slowly being unraveled as the story gets darker and darker was easily my favorite part. I can’t even begin to explain how I felt. And then the ending was just the cherry on top. Just the right amount of shock and blood. Amazing.
*Thank you to the publisher for sending me an advanced copy of this book in exchange for an honest review
Maybe it’s odd to say that this novella was a wonderful treat given its content, but let’s be honest here. It was a wonderful treat. The writing was gorgeous and I truly felt like I was in the story. The beginning confusion of the dynamics of the friend group slowly being unraveled as the story gets darker and darker was easily my favorite part. I can’t even begin to explain how I felt. And then the ending was just the cherry on top. Just the right amount of shock and blood. Amazing.
*Thank you to the publisher for sending me an advanced copy of this book in exchange for an honest review
September 8, 2021
THAT COVER, Y'ALL.
A deliciously disturbing horror tale filled with Japanese folklore references. Creepy as fuck (just the way I like it).
My only complaint is that it's quite a small book and the characters were so interesting that I wanted more.
A deliciously disturbing horror tale filled with Japanese folklore references. Creepy as fuck (just the way I like it).
My only complaint is that it's quite a small book and the characters were so interesting that I wanted more.
October 23, 2021
4.0 Stars
Normally, haunted house stories don't work particularly well for me, but this was a wonderful exception. This story successfully balanced a creepy atmosphere with an exciting climax.
I really loved the incorporation of so much Japanese language and culture in this story. The inclusion of mythological Japanese creatures really added to the story.
In many ways, this was a very simple, traditional horror narrative. This book is filled with horror tropes, yet the diverse setting made the story feel fresh. Personally, I never tire of the breakdown of a group of friends. It's clear that the author shares my love for a classic survival story.
Overall, I really enjoyed this novella and would absolutely recommend it to any horror reader.
Disclaimer I received a copy of this book from the publisher.
Normally, haunted house stories don't work particularly well for me, but this was a wonderful exception. This story successfully balanced a creepy atmosphere with an exciting climax.
I really loved the incorporation of so much Japanese language and culture in this story. The inclusion of mythological Japanese creatures really added to the story.
In many ways, this was a very simple, traditional horror narrative. This book is filled with horror tropes, yet the diverse setting made the story feel fresh. Personally, I never tire of the breakdown of a group of friends. It's clear that the author shares my love for a classic survival story.
Overall, I really enjoyed this novella and would absolutely recommend it to any horror reader.
Disclaimer I received a copy of this book from the publisher.
July 22, 2025
“Is Lin coming?” I licked the corner of a tooth.
“No comment.”
You could just about smell the cream on the lip of Phillip’s grin, though. I tried not to cringe, to wince, beset by a zoetrope of sudden emotions. I hadn’t spoken to Lin since before I checked myself into the hospital for terminal ennui, exhaustion so acute it couldn’t be sanitized with sleep, couldn’t be remedied by anything but a twist of rope tugged tight."
A group of frenemies gather together in celebrating a couple among them in an ancient Japanese mansion. The story is short and quite sharp, I loved it! A haunted house trope with a dash of Oriental mythology executed flawlessly. The pace is frenetic, the narrative is intricate, descriptive and witty. I liked that the main protagonist was recovering from mental health issues because when written well, the inner life can be portrayed quite intimately. I thoroughly enjoyed my time with this read so much so that I didn't want it to end. Highly recommended.
"“He’s going to die, Cat. He’s dead. He’s dead. So, don’t look. Don’t.”
I did anyway. I shrugged his embrace apart and shambled towards where Phillip lay, bile and blood soaking into the mouldering straw. I read somewhere that it takes about twenty minutes to die from disembowelment, which doesn’t sound long at all but hurt has a way of stretching out a heartbeat into an infinity of going colder, slower, every breath another starburst of too much to cope with, lighting up the cerebrum with constellations of anguish. Phillip’s eyes were rolled up to the whites and he stank of piss. I didn’t know someone else’s pain could have a texture, a bite, a gelatinousness you could hold in your teeth, but I could almost gnaw on Phillip’s dying. "
I've seen the prose employed here by Cassandra Khaw being referred to as overly flowery or even purple but my experience of it was rather more pleasurable than not. It has certainly enhanced my immersion into the story and added quite a few words to my vocabulary.
2022 Read
“No comment.”
You could just about smell the cream on the lip of Phillip’s grin, though. I tried not to cringe, to wince, beset by a zoetrope of sudden emotions. I hadn’t spoken to Lin since before I checked myself into the hospital for terminal ennui, exhaustion so acute it couldn’t be sanitized with sleep, couldn’t be remedied by anything but a twist of rope tugged tight."
A group of frenemies gather together in celebrating a couple among them in an ancient Japanese mansion. The story is short and quite sharp, I loved it! A haunted house trope with a dash of Oriental mythology executed flawlessly. The pace is frenetic, the narrative is intricate, descriptive and witty. I liked that the main protagonist was recovering from mental health issues because when written well, the inner life can be portrayed quite intimately. I thoroughly enjoyed my time with this read so much so that I didn't want it to end. Highly recommended.
"“He’s going to die, Cat. He’s dead. He’s dead. So, don’t look. Don’t.”
I did anyway. I shrugged his embrace apart and shambled towards where Phillip lay, bile and blood soaking into the mouldering straw. I read somewhere that it takes about twenty minutes to die from disembowelment, which doesn’t sound long at all but hurt has a way of stretching out a heartbeat into an infinity of going colder, slower, every breath another starburst of too much to cope with, lighting up the cerebrum with constellations of anguish. Phillip’s eyes were rolled up to the whites and he stank of piss. I didn’t know someone else’s pain could have a texture, a bite, a gelatinousness you could hold in your teeth, but I could almost gnaw on Phillip’s dying. "
I've seen the prose employed here by Cassandra Khaw being referred to as overly flowery or even purple but my experience of it was rather more pleasurable than not. It has certainly enhanced my immersion into the story and added quite a few words to my vocabulary.
2022 Read
December 26, 2021
buddy read with girl who wants to get married in a haunted house
just your classic friend group where everyone has fucked everyone (but only as long as it's straight) fighting over dumb shit until someone dies
the characters were so goddamn awful. and boring. i am trying to read horror and get scared, i don't care about your stupid incestuous relationship. get over it. who cares who sucked faiz's cock first, i want you all to get eaten by the faceless woman.
the writing in this was so awfully and unnecessarily descriptive, i barely understood what was happening.
listen, i love me my pretentious lyrical purple prose shit, the more the better. but there is a time and place to do it and this totally wasn't it. it didn't feel natural at all, it added nothing to the story, instead it made it hard to read. half the sentences didn't make any sense in the context. it just felt like the author wanted to write this EXACT VERY SPECIFIC flowery sentence and didn't even care whether it fit anything happening around it at all.
the most horror thing that happened in this was when that one dude just - and i quote - fucked his own hand raw, trying to eke out a little bit of spunk to drip into the floorboards in the middle of the room.
at least it was short, i guess
just your classic friend group where everyone has fucked everyone (but only as long as it's straight) fighting over dumb shit until someone dies
the characters were so goddamn awful. and boring. i am trying to read horror and get scared, i don't care about your stupid incestuous relationship. get over it. who cares who sucked faiz's cock first, i want you all to get eaten by the faceless woman.
the writing in this was so awfully and unnecessarily descriptive, i barely understood what was happening.
listen, i love me my pretentious lyrical purple prose shit, the more the better. but there is a time and place to do it and this totally wasn't it. it didn't feel natural at all, it added nothing to the story, instead it made it hard to read. half the sentences didn't make any sense in the context. it just felt like the author wanted to write this EXACT VERY SPECIFIC flowery sentence and didn't even care whether it fit anything happening around it at all.
the most horror thing that happened in this was when that one dude just - and i quote - fucked his own hand raw, trying to eke out a little bit of spunk to drip into the floorboards in the middle of the room.
at least it was short, i guess
October 31, 2022
"Nothing But Blackened Teeth" by Cassandra Khaw is a creepy and atmospheric listen!
The setting is an ancient abandoned Japanese mansion with a bride buried beneath its foundation, its walls packed with the bones of girls sacrificed to keep her company. She gets lonely down there...
The event is a unique wedding celebration with six 'edgy' friends sharing delicious food, drinks, and secrets.
When the drinks begin to flow and the games begin, the festivities go horribly wrong.
The writing in this novella is descriptive and addictive!
I'm mesmerized by how the audiobook narrator, Suehyla El-Attar, recites the first-person narrative so authentically, as if she's actually the character(s) speaking in this ancient building. Her performance is very strong!
A different spin on a haunted house story that wasn't scary but it was creepy, atmospheric, and the characterizations were a perfect blend of ridiculous and certifiable.
A lesson about relationships, grief, and...getting the heck out of that mansion while you still can! 3.75 stars!
The setting is an ancient abandoned Japanese mansion with a bride buried beneath its foundation, its walls packed with the bones of girls sacrificed to keep her company. She gets lonely down there...
The event is a unique wedding celebration with six 'edgy' friends sharing delicious food, drinks, and secrets.
When the drinks begin to flow and the games begin, the festivities go horribly wrong.
The writing in this novella is descriptive and addictive!
I'm mesmerized by how the audiobook narrator, Suehyla El-Attar, recites the first-person narrative so authentically, as if she's actually the character(s) speaking in this ancient building. Her performance is very strong!
A different spin on a haunted house story that wasn't scary but it was creepy, atmospheric, and the characterizations were a perfect blend of ridiculous and certifiable.
A lesson about relationships, grief, and...getting the heck out of that mansion while you still can! 3.75 stars!
October 7, 2021
Originally published at Cemetery Dance:
https://www.cemeterydance.com/extras/...
It’s one of the most beloved horror tropes: A group of friends travels to an abandoned building rumored to be haunted. The friends are either going to film a documentary, or just see what happens when they attempt to spend the night.
Horror ensues.
It’s tempting to believe this trope has been done too many times to promise anything original but, thankfully, horror writers disagree and keep telling the story in their own, unique voice. Nothing But Blackened Teeth is the tale of a dysfunctional group of friends who are gathering together for an experiential, destination wedding ceremony inside a Heian period mansion notorious for its ghost-bride legend.
Strong comparisons to The Ritual by Adam Nevill in the set-up, with the focus on the tense dynamic between friends in order to build tension.
The setting is rich with potential for mind-numbing horror. The author holds back at first, developing an atmosphere rife with past hurts and wrongs; soon, the book slowly begins its descent into darkness.
All the characters are self-absorbed and preoccupied with their own circumstances. They are highly sensitive people; reactive to every small offense. Much to the reader’s dismay, everyone is utterly oblivious to the nature of their surroundings as they argue over mundane things.
The drama is entertaining and Khaw’s prose is wickedly sharp, but the emphasis on the characters’ relationships is a disproportionate distraction for such a short ghost story.
Eventually, Khaw indulges in terror-inducing imagery and some seriously unsettling scenes but it was quickly upstaged by more bickering and banter.
I enjoyed the darker twists and turns but ultimately, I wanted more. This is such a tease! I’m hoping that Cassandra Khaw has a lot more horror up her sleeve. I’m here for it.
https://www.cemeterydance.com/extras/...
It’s one of the most beloved horror tropes: A group of friends travels to an abandoned building rumored to be haunted. The friends are either going to film a documentary, or just see what happens when they attempt to spend the night.
Horror ensues.
It’s tempting to believe this trope has been done too many times to promise anything original but, thankfully, horror writers disagree and keep telling the story in their own, unique voice. Nothing But Blackened Teeth is the tale of a dysfunctional group of friends who are gathering together for an experiential, destination wedding ceremony inside a Heian period mansion notorious for its ghost-bride legend.
Strong comparisons to The Ritual by Adam Nevill in the set-up, with the focus on the tense dynamic between friends in order to build tension.
The setting is rich with potential for mind-numbing horror. The author holds back at first, developing an atmosphere rife with past hurts and wrongs; soon, the book slowly begins its descent into darkness.
All the characters are self-absorbed and preoccupied with their own circumstances. They are highly sensitive people; reactive to every small offense. Much to the reader’s dismay, everyone is utterly oblivious to the nature of their surroundings as they argue over mundane things.
The drama is entertaining and Khaw’s prose is wickedly sharp, but the emphasis on the characters’ relationships is a disproportionate distraction for such a short ghost story.
Eventually, Khaw indulges in terror-inducing imagery and some seriously unsettling scenes but it was quickly upstaged by more bickering and banter.
I enjoyed the darker twists and turns but ultimately, I wanted more. This is such a tease! I’m hoping that Cassandra Khaw has a lot more horror up her sleeve. I’m here for it.
November 15, 2021
And her mouth, of course, from its teeth through to the tunnel of its throat: black.
I've only had the pleasure of reading Cassandra Khaw's short stories before now, and while I loved those too, I now consider myself irrevocably hooked. Whatever Cassandra writes, I don't think I'll need a premise or a blurb; I'm sold on the way their dark and twisted prose has dug deep into my mind and won't leave.
Nothing But Blackened Teeth starts off with a refreshing twist on a favorite trope: a group of slightly estranged friends escaping off to a secluded spot for a reunion (in this case, a wedding). This is one of my favorite horror setups, but Khaw makes it shiny and new (or, should I say, moldy and decaying) by setting it in a legendary, decrepit manor in rural Japan. Our cast of characters are all immensely flawed, some downright unbearable whether due to cruelty or cowardice, but the protagonist had my heart from page one (a fellow chronically depressed bi person, how could I not love Cat?).
The atmosphere is palpable; every moment, I felt as though I could turn around and find myself in one of these rotting rooms. The scares are unique, bizarre, and unsettling in the sense that the spirits' motives feel at times entirely unhinged. There's an element of brutality that had me in awe, and a suspense that kept me on the edge of my seat. Truly, I adored everything about Khaw's storytelling and I know this is a book I'm going to be recommending to anyone who will listen for a long time to come.
✨ Representation: Cat is bisexual and Chinese, Lin is Chinese, Faiz is Chinese/Japanese, Talia is Bengali/Telegu
✨ Content warnings for:
All quotes come from an advance copy and may not match the final release. Thank you so much to the publisher for providing me with this review copy in exchange for an honest review!
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October 30, 2024
Huh. I don't think I disliked this one as much as some other reviewers, but it really isn't all that scary (except for the cover, anyway, which is truly the stuff of nightmares) and the characters are all awful people. The writing's a bit pretentious and the prose is very purple.
It was all mildly interesting, though, I suppose. I mean, I wouldn't read it again or anything, but if you're into Japanese folklore, it might be worth the short amount of time that it'll take to read it. 2.75 stars, rounded up.
It was all mildly interesting, though, I suppose. I mean, I wouldn't read it again or anything, but if you're into Japanese folklore, it might be worth the short amount of time that it'll take to read it. 2.75 stars, rounded up.
December 29, 2021
mocked the hell out of horror
October 31, 2023
I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.
My Review: No one gets do-overs in life. The one thing Horror teaches us, firmly and finally, is that single adamantine truth...that final, fierce fact that trumps them all.
When privileged and pretty people want to play, they go mad. They have no reason to consider consequences and no desire to moderate their demands on the Universe's supply of goodwill. There's nothing to say that a destination/theme wedding, a haunted-house horror wedding for five, couldn't be just lovely.
Except, of course, common sense.
As the events of the day unfold, as the people whose lives were compressed into a block of being by the exigencies of education and privilege come unstuck, their masks reveal the real cracks in their faces. Then the masks fall off. Then the faces fall off. This is a horror novella about the awfulness of unslakable appetites, and the enduring pain of never, ever having Enough. Being enough. Finding enough.
Author Khaw has used the silences of screaming people to make this dread-soaked, foregone-conclusion-led, story into a fable for our use. You can find anything in it. You're going to try, so don't bother to front. Looking for a climate-change metaphor? The ancient house with the dead people in its walls. Looking for a religious metaphor? The Forces of Evil animating one of the young people to perform uncharacteristic acts. Revenge fantasy? Dude!
Slasher fans: You have a new talent to follow. Author Khaw understands why we love to see the world end in a welter of blood. Go down the dark alley leading up to the ancient haunted mansion with the moldy old books falling apart in its library.
Go on. You know you want to.
My Review: No one gets do-overs in life. The one thing Horror teaches us, firmly and finally, is that single adamantine truth...that final, fierce fact that trumps them all.
When privileged and pretty people want to play, they go mad. They have no reason to consider consequences and no desire to moderate their demands on the Universe's supply of goodwill. There's nothing to say that a destination/theme wedding, a haunted-house horror wedding for five, couldn't be just lovely.
Except, of course, common sense.
As the events of the day unfold, as the people whose lives were compressed into a block of being by the exigencies of education and privilege come unstuck, their masks reveal the real cracks in their faces. Then the masks fall off. Then the faces fall off. This is a horror novella about the awfulness of unslakable appetites, and the enduring pain of never, ever having Enough. Being enough. Finding enough.
Author Khaw has used the silences of screaming people to make this dread-soaked, foregone-conclusion-led, story into a fable for our use. You can find anything in it. You're going to try, so don't bother to front. Looking for a climate-change metaphor? The ancient house with the dead people in its walls. Looking for a religious metaphor? The Forces of Evil animating one of the young people to perform uncharacteristic acts. Revenge fantasy? Dude!
Slasher fans: You have a new talent to follow. Author Khaw understands why we love to see the world end in a welter of blood. Go down the dark alley leading up to the ancient haunted mansion with the moldy old books falling apart in its library.
Go on. You know you want to.
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