Archive for the ‘Review’ Category

Review: “Helloween” by Duncan Ralston

Posted: July 28, 2025 in Novel, Review, Scary Stuff, Writing
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No, you didn’t read that wrong. That’s not a misspelling on my part of “Halloween.” That is the name of the novel, and since I heard of it, I’ve wanted to read it. I mean, with a name like that, how could I not? And with the audio book just getting released recently, I decided to give it a listen and see if this would become a new classic for spooky season.

Taking place during the Halloween immediately following the September 11 attacks, several strange things are happening in the small town of Crook’s Corner, Massachusetts. A famous scream queen is kidnapped in town while filming a new horror film. A science teacher is putting together a machine that causes those near it to see strange shapes. A Goth teenager and her little sister use the latter’s psychic abilities to play pranks on their grandmother. All this and more herald the coming of something evil: a cosmic being who wishes to become a god over all humanity. And this Halloween, they may get their chance.

This book was so hard to put down (or should I say put on pause?). The first chapter, where the scream queen is kidnapped, is shocking enough, but then the novel jumps back several hours, showing what the main characters–a group of high schoolers filming a horror movie for a class–are up to. And with those opening chapters, you get several different plot threads and you wonder how they’re all going to wrap up into one neat little package.

Which, much to my delight, they did come together nicely, leading to a harrowing story with a strong atmosphere of dread and tension. In fact, that’s probably the book’s biggest strength: the atmosphere. Once the horror part really gets going in Helloween, it’s just nonstop threat to the characters. Even in the pauses to the horror, there’s so much tension, it’s hard to relax. Add in some of the events in the latter half of the book, and you start to wonder if the characters can even triumph over the great evil.

And that’s the book’s second biggest strength: it’s characters, particularly the antagonist Geth. Geth is an ancient entity who schemes to become a god, and when it–or they, I should say–gets the ball rolling on their plans, you better believe that shit will hit the fan! And the way Geth is written, this alien being who thinks differently than us but plans to become a god over us, just makes them fascinating to follow. Even as you fear their victory due to their overwhelming power and disregard for both human life and human autonomy.

The other characters are great, too. Ralston manages to make almost all of the supporting characters– from kooky science teacher Ernie Combs and the Catholic priest to would have been right at home during the Crusades, to scream queen Darla Knight and the annoying kid who annoys almost all the other characters–feel real and fleshed out. And yes, there are a lot of them, but at no point did I ever feel like I was overwhelmed with the number of characters I encountered in the book.

Of course, our six main characters were no exception. At first glance, they do feel like your typical high school stereotypes: Cody the jock; Britney the popular girl; Jay the computer geek; Walden the film buff; Cassandra the Goth and her sweet little sister Taylor. But early on, we see that they all have deep dimensions to them, and that only grows as we get deeper into the story. Before I knew it, I couldn’t help but root for and love these characters dearly.

All in all, Helloween by Duncan Ralston is scary AF and sure to become a Halloween classic in time. On a scale of 1 to 5, I’m awarding it a 4.8. Consider picking up a copy and adding it to your reading list this spooky season. If you’re a horror fan, you won’t regret it.

“Beautiful Darkness:” This Graphic Novel Will Disturb You

Posted: July 21, 2025 in Review, Scary Stuff
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This isn’t my normal review. But then again, this is far from a normal graphic novel.

So, when you think of tiny, humanoid people, what do you think of? Fairies? The Borrowers? How about tiny people living inside you (and I don’t mean the emotions from Inside Out)? Not with Beautiful Darkness, a graphic novel by Fabien Vehlmann and Kerascoet.

The graphic novel starts out prettily enough. A girl named Aurora, who is like a Cinderella in a 1950s housedress, is being courted by a princely character named Hector. She’s helped by a short little friend named Plim. In the first page and a half, their romance is going just like a fairy tale…until the cutely drawn characters’ home starts dissolving around them, forcing them to leave.

And then it’s revealed that home is the body of a little girl, left abandoned in the woods to rot. Her name, who she might have been, and how she died, never revealed.

And that’s just the start of a very dark saga dressed up in art that, in another graphic novel, would fit nicely in the children’s section at your local library.

This image is so disturbing, I almost didn’t include it in this review.

Aurora quickly finds herself trying to be a leader as she and the other survivors learn to grasp their new surroundings. However, Aurora, who might be the most realistic, as well as the most idealistic, of this community of tiny people, do not have it easy. Except for one mouse, all the animals and insects are as wild as you’d expect, and do what animals do best. The elements take their toll as well. Schemes to survive lead to further deaths or maiming, such as when one character tries to sneak into a nest full of baby birds and eat with them. The result is that her mouth gets torn open by the mother bird’s large beak, leading her to throwing up blood and running away.

But worse than animals, or nature, or survival attempts, are Aurora’s compatriots. Perhaps because they lived inside the body of a little girl, they are almost oblivious in their innocence and naivete. They see each other die, and move on to fish or fly kites or dance like it was nothing. They scheme against and backstab one another. They even kill each other, and do it with such callousness, never once sparing a thought for the lives they’ve taken!

All this betrayal and disappointment wear on Aurora, especially after her leadership role, and her lover, are usurped by rival leader Zellie. She later thinks that she’s found a friend in a loner survivor named Jane, but events soon force her to make the ultimate choice.

A prime example of how dark and uncaring the world of these characters is.

I’ve written before about “corruption of the innocent” before. The idea that the horrors one faces through a horror story destroys whatever innocence you have left and transforms you into something new. It could be childhood innocence, or that you thought the world was a rational place full of rational people, or that the world is ruled by a loving and merciful god. In some subgenres of horror, like Gothic, it could be considered essential. I certainly consider it essential, to the point I have a tattoo on my back representing it.

And it’s been such a long time since I’ve seen it done so well. Aurora tries to stay strong, but her innocence is destroyed in a world where she and her people are as inconsequential as dust motes, and those she should be able to rely on smile innocently while they betray her. In a way, it’s like cosmic horror, only instead of Cthulhu and the Great Old Ones, it’s a forest full of hungry animals and violent nature, as well as your own community.

(That’s not my observation, BTW: it’s the YouTube channel Tale Foundry, where I first heard of this graphic novel and which I highly recommend. You can check out their video about it here, but beware of spoilers.)

Anyway, it’s probably only a matter of time till this graphic novel appears on my personal shelves. In the meantime, I’m awarding Beautiful Darkness by Fabien Vehlmann and Kerascoet a 4.8 out of 5. It’s dark, it’s disturbing, it’s possibly the prime example of a new subgenre called “innocent horror,” and I think you should check it out.

Just don’t show it to young children afterwards. It’ll mess them up in all the wrong ways.

Review: “The Liminal Zone 2” by Junji Ito

Posted: April 14, 2025 in Review, Scary Stuff
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You know the drill: Junji Ito releases a new collection in the States; I read it; I review it. And in his latest collection, The Liminal Zone 2, Ito-sensei once again gives us four stories that try to toe the line between the world of human-caused horror and the more supernatural kind. (Plus the complicated relationships between fathers and sons, now that I think about it.)

You may recall, but I was not impressed with half of the stories in the first Liminal Zone (see my full review here). And, as Ito-sensei himself says in the afterword of Liminal Zone 2, he feels he’s having fewer ideas for stories every year. Can what ideas he has work for me this time?

For the most part, yes.

The first story, “Demon King of Dust,” follows a young boy living in what remains of a hot springs inn with his increasingly unstable father and two servants. The father is paranoid about dust, claiming it’s part of a terrible demon that rules over the abandoned resort town where the inn is located. It’s a very freaky story, where every couple of pages reveals more and more strange and disturbing imagery and truths. I love how it just escalates and how you’re left guessing how much is real or how much is in the father’s head.

The second story, “Village of Ether,” is about four college students returning to the small town one of them grew up in, and where a pair of scientists were supposedly developing perpetual motion machines (machines that lack an external power source and are considered impossible by mainstream scientists). However, the town is very changed from when the one student was a kid, and the only remaining scientist is hiding secrets that are about to come to the surface. Again, the art here is imaginative and terrifying, especially the “automaton servants,” and it just keeps getting freakier up until the end, which I would define as “explosive.”

The third story, “The Strange Hikizuri Siblings, Chapter 3: Uncle Ketanosuke,” is the latest venture in the Hikizuri siblings, six strange and dysfunctional siblings who have appeared in previous, increasingly supernatural stories (don’t worry, you don’t have to have read the previous stories to enjoy this one). In this tale, a girl named Hotaru senses a strange aura from the Hikizuri family home and ends up staying with the siblings in the hope that it may explain why she’s always felt a heavy weight upon her soul from early childhood. Be careful what you wish for, because the truth is as freaky as these siblings, and I bet a live-action film on just this one tale would be both hilarious and creepy!

The fourth and final story, however, is the weakest of the bunch. “The Shells of Manjunuma” is about a young man living in an area where the local turtles and crows are considered evil and cursed, and the turtles’ belly plates can predict who will die under mysterious circumstances. Ito-sensei himself all but admits in the afterword that he was really scraping the bottom of the barrel with this one, and it shows. The story feels pretty pointless, which only detracts from some of the very gruesome art.

But all in all, this is a much better collection of Ito-sensei’s work. Whereas The Liminal Zone earned a 2.5 out of 5, I’m awarding The Liminal Zone 2 a 3.8 out of 5. Plenty of great storytelling and scary imagery to match! Just skip the last story and you’ll be sufficiently creeped out.

Review: “Victorian Psycho” by Virginia Feito

Posted: March 24, 2025 in Novella, Review, Scary Stuff
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Wow, it’s just been good book after good book after good book lately. At least I’m having luck in that area lately.

Set in my beloved Victorian England, Victorian Psycho follows Winnifred Notty, a governess who comes to Ensor House, the country home of the Pounds family to help instruct and raise the children. However, Winnifred is about as far from Mary Poppins as you can get. She’s got a history, has a mind that works in mysterious ways, and has some terrible plans in store for the Pounds family. Ones that will come to terrible fruition on Christmas Day.

Whoo-boy, this was a wild one. Written entirely from the point of view of Ms. Notty, you really get in her head, and it’s an uncomfortable place to be. She sees things that aren’t there (or are they?), does things that defy both common sense and my uncommon sense, and puts up red flags left and right while making the funniest observations (like what she says about the head maid’s sexual history). Compounded by the fact that you can’t rely on anything she says (I highly doubt most of the people’s last names in this book are their real last names), it’s an intriguing read that keeps you wanting to read more.

It’s also darkly funny, satirizing the manners and beliefs of the age in a way that somehow manages to keep things between insane and believable. I could hardly believe it when one character mentioned that when he got home, he’d have to deal with both a depressed wife (apparently she’s delaying getting over her child’s death much too slowly for her husband’s sake), and a chimney sweep who’s stuck in their chimney (they tried to light a fire under him to press the issue that they didn’t want him hanging around. It didn’t work).

And then what happened a few pages later…well, I’ll just say that was a real thing Victorians did, and seeing it depicted here was kind of amazing.

As far as downsides go, I did think some parts of the ending could have been tweaked. Also, maybe it was just because I was listening to the audio book, but I was only able to listen to this book in short spurts before needing a break. Which is weird, because when I first started, I thought this was the sort of story I would nearly binge from start to finish, and that feeling is hardly ever wrong.

All in all, though, Victorian Psycho by Virginia Feito is a quick and enjoyable read. On a scale of 1 to 5, I give it a 4.2 for its witty, stomach churning portrayal of insanity and evil set against the backdrop of banal, Victorian melodrama and morals. A movie version is set to release next year with Margaret Qualley in the lead, and if she brings the same A-game she brought for The Substance (which I recommend if you can deal with body horror), it’s going to be a hell of a film.

In the meantime, better go brew some (hopefully poison-free) tea, lie back in the drawing room, and crack open a copy of Victorian Psycho. Trust me, it’s worth a read.

Review: “I Am the Dark That Answers When You Call” by Jamison Shea

Posted: March 17, 2025 in Novel, Review, Scary Stuff
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(Note: This review contains some spoilers for this book’s predecessor, I Feed Her to the Beast and the Beast is Me. So, if you haven’t read that one and want to go in unspoiled, you’ve been warned.)

Sequels are tough. I’ve tried to write sequels before, and they are fucking tough to write. Not only do you have to continue the story you set up in the previous entry, but you have to keep up the tension and further develop the characters. And, if possible, up the stakes from the last story. So, when I started listening to I Am the Dark That Answers When You Call, the sequel to I Feed Her to the Beast and the Beast is Me (see my review here), on audio book, I hoped that the sequel would be up to the same level as the original book.

Starting a few months after the events of I Feed Her to the Beast, Laure Mesny is back in Paris and trying to move on with her life. However, things are not as easy as she would like. For one thing, not only is she the vessel for the dark god Acheron, who constantly whispers in her ear, but she’s also being haunted by ghosts from her past, both literal and figurative. And on top of that, Elysium, the strange dimension below Paris where the gods reside, is dying, setting in motion a chain of events that will see either Laure’s ascendancy…or her doom.

I enjoyed I Feed Her to the Beast immensely, but I think I enjoyed I Am The Dark even more.

For one thing, let’s look at the horror. There’s definitely more of an emphasis on the cosmic horror aspects in this volume, and they work well, with the power of the gods becoming a corrupting influence as Elysium continues to degrade and rot. The new human villains of Neve and her retinue were a great addition to the story, as was Laure’s relationship to Acheron, which I expected to be more like Eddie Brock and Venom in the movies but turned out completely different.

I also liked the development of Laure as a person. If the first book was about Laure trying to get what she wanted and deserved, only for her to see its dark side, then the second book was about Laure trying to find who she is and what she really wants out of life now that the Paris Ballet is behind her. Jamison Shea handles that deftly, leading to a climax that left me on the edge of my seat (metaphorically; I was cooking dinner during those scenes).

Finally, there were a lot of surprises in the story that threw me for a loop, which only deepened my enjoyment of it overall. Several times, I was like, “What? Are you serious?” And it’s not easy to surprise me, so kudos to the author for that.

If I have any criticisms, it’s that I thought the linking of the cosmic horror elements to the Cthulhu Mythos felt a little forced to me. Also, I thought a certain character introduced in the story was going to have a bigger role when it was revealed how much they were aware of, so it was kind of disappointing that they didn’t have that bigger role. I understand why the author did–it was part of Laure’s personal growth, after all–but still.

All in all, though, I came away from I Am the Dark That Answers When You Call by Jamison Shea very satisfied. On a scale of 1 to 5, I’m giving it a 4.8, which is 0.3 points higher than its predecessor. Unrelenting, cosmically dark, and full of twists and turns. I’m almost sad that there’s not a third book in the works (as far as I know), though Laure’s story does work well as a duology.

Anyway, if you’re at all interested, or if you enjoyed I Feed Her to the Beast, you won’t be disappointed by I Am the Dark. Give it a read and see for yourself.

That’s all for now. Until next time, my Followers of Fear, good night and pleasant nightmares.

Review: “The Reformatory” by Tananarive Due

Posted: March 4, 2025 in Novel, Review, Scary Stuff
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Having read The Good House before, I knew I was in for a good time (see my review here). But I was not prepared for Tananarive Due’s latest novel. After starting it, I learned the book was based not only on the Dozier School for Boys, a reform school in Florida where numerous atrocities were committed against the kids there, but on a relative she had who died at the school. And even after learning that, I still wasn’t prepared for what was to come.

Set in Florida in 1950, The Reformatory follows twelve-year-old Robert Stevens (named after her relative) and his older sister, Gloria. After kicking a white boy who makes advances on Gloria, young Robert finds himself sent to the Gracetown School for Boys, a reform school where the boys are under threat by both the spirits haunting the campus after years of mysterious deaths, and the Warden Haddock, a terrifying personage with a sadistic streak. When Haddock learns Robert can see the ghosts on campus, he forces the kid to help him catch the spirits. Meanwhile, Gloria attempts to find a way to free her brother from the horrible reformatory, setting them both on a path that will change them forever.

Man, this book was a rough read! Due does not skimp on the human horror the characters face, whether that be the horrible things Robert faces at the reformatory at the hands of the adults and the other kids, or the racism Gloria faces trying to get her brother out of that place (not to mention the utterly disgusting advances Lyle McCormick makes on Gloria in the novel), it feels all too real. Not to mention kind of timely!

Speaking of feeling real, the worldbuilding is amazing! Gracetown, the location of the reformatory and most of the other events of the book, as well as the people in the book, feel extremely real. I noticed that with The Good House, but Due is great with character development, and setting can be as much a character as the characters! I also loved how Gracetown apparently has this reputation as a place where children are able to interact with spirits and lose the ability as they grow older. That’s a pretty cool idea, and Due uses it to flesh out the spirit world of Gracetown and the reformatory so well.

I think the one thing I didn’t like was that I feel we only scratched the surface of the Gracetown School for Boys. I know that might sound masochistic, considering what we saw was pretty horrific, but we only saw a fraction of the school grounds, of life at the school, and the sordid history there. And as much as that would’ve scarred my psyche, I would’ve like to see all that explored more.

Maybe an anthology based around the Gracetown School for Boys? They’re doing one for The Stand, after all. I can dream.

All in all, though, The Reformatory by Tananarive Due is a soul-shaking journey of abuse, racism, and the darkness of humankind that, at times, I had to take a break from, I was that shook. On a scale of 1 to 5, I give it a 4.5 out of 5. I feel like I get why this book was talked about so much when it came out last year, and I wish I’d read it sooner. And if you haven’t read it yet, you should go and read it, too.

Or listen to it. The audiobook is fantastic!

Review: “Witchcraft for Wayward Girls” by Grady Hendrix

Posted: February 6, 2025 in Novel, Review, Scary Stuff
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The photo I took the day I got my copy from the library. Can you tell I was excited?

We’re only five weeks into 2025, but I may have already found my favorite new book of the year. In fact, at times I got so deep into this book, I had dreams about it! You don’t know how special a treat that was for me.

Set in 1970, Witchcraft for Wayward Girls follows four girls sent to Wellwood House, a home for unwed mothers in Florida: Fern, a young high schooler who wants her old life back; Rose, a rebellious hippie with a bit of a mean streak and a bit of a nice streak; Zinnia, a young musician who plans to marry her baby’s father; and Holly, whose youth and silence hides a dark and terrible secret. Hidden away from the world like shameful secrets and repeatedly told that they are at fault for their condition and that the only good thing they can do now is give up their babies for adoption to a loving couple, the girls seek any way to take back a little control over their lives and bodies. When a mysterious librarian hands them a book that’s full of actual magic, they think they’ve found their solution. But when it comes to magic, everything comes at a price. And the price they have to pay may be bigger than any of them can pay.

So, if it wasn’t clear from the first paragraph, I freaking loved this book! For one thing, the horror is palpable from the first couple of chapters. Not from the witches, but from the people. Through Fern’s eyes, we see how everyone blames her, including herself, for getting pregnant outside of marriage, even though it takes two to tango. From what I’ve been told, that really was the attitude towards unwed mothers back then, and Hendrix does a great job bringing it to life throughout the story, as well as the callous cruelty the girls face as unwed mothers, even after they’ve given birth.

I also really liked the witches of the story. They’re not exactly old school wicked witches, but they’re not entirely good witches or granola-crunching Wiccans, either. They’re their own thing, a group of women with access to power and who are trying to ensure the continuation of their way of life and their freedom, and they’re willing to get their hands dirty to do so.

To list out all the colorful characters would keep us here too long, but some of my favorites included hippie Rose, who grew on me as the story went on and whose experiences midway through the book broke my heart; Hagar, the cantankerous cook at the Wellwood House, who does try to help the girls, if rather reluctantly; Zinnia, who has more sense than most of the other characters in the book; and Fern, who really does learn something from her experience.

All these elements come together into a fantastic story where I struggled to guess what would happen next and was surprised more than a few times by certain developments. It really was amazing.

Hendrix admits in the acknowledgments that he’s probably the last person to be writing a book where nearly every character is pregnant, but given how phenomenal of a job he did, I think we can forgive him. I can’t think of a single flaw in this story, it was just that good. On a scale of 1 to 5, I’m giving Witchcraft for Wayward Girls by Grady Hendrix a full 5. Grab a copy, put on an appropriately witchy playlist (I hope “Abracadabra” by Lady Gaga is on that playlist), and settle down for a read.

Trust me, this is one you don’t want to miss.

“Symphony for Walpurgis” Got Its First Review!!!

Posted: February 3, 2025 in Novelette, Progress Report, Review, Scary Stuff, Writing
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Oh, happy day! It’s still only three months away, but Symphony for Walpurgis has its first review! And holy crap, it’s a five-star review! Everybody start dancing!

No surprise, this review, which I discovered on Goodreads yesterday, comes from an ARC reader. And not just any ARC reader, but from Priscilla Bettis, who is not just a fellow author, but has been a Follower of Fear for several years now. Since…I want to say before Rose came out? Anyway, she got the ARC of Walpurgis the other day and apparently got through it in a week before leaving a review.

Don’t be fooled, though: just because she’s a longtime Follower of Fear, doesn’t mean Priscilla isn’t willing to criticize a story when she dislikes it or finds something problematic. I should know, she’s beta read a few of my stories. So the fact that she gave Walpurgis five stars means she must’ve really liked it.

Here’s some of what she wrote:

Symphony for Walpurgis is a collection of novelettes, all horror. There are themes of money-power-arrogance (I should just say “corruption), abuse of nature and one another, grief, and (my favorite) insects.

Dragon bats … not a story title, but a thing. One of the best creatures Rami’s ever created. You’ll find them in “Disillusionment and Trauma Sometimes Go Hand-in-Hand.”

In “Blood and Paper Skin,” Grey, a college-aged man, and a group of his friends run into deadly trouble when out to buy drugs. It’s scary and tense, and Ungar makes it easy to like Grey and cheer him on. But there are twists. Other characters besides Grey come to the forefront. This is the twisty-ist story in the collection, great fun!

“The House on Lafayette Square” is a Jewish demon-exorcism story with freaky-scary descriptions. The story takes a left turn somewhere, so instead of everything being tied up in a neat bow, I was left DISTURBED at the end, maybe because I am a mother IRL. (Kudos to Ungar for that.)

Wow. I disturbed her. For a horror writer, that’s a serious compliment. Especially from someone who’s a big fan of horror.

And that’s only half the review! You should see the rest of it. In fact, I hope you do. Because I’m aiming to amass fifty (hopefully positive) reviews on Amazon and on Goodreads in the first year alone, so this is a good start! So, if Priscilla’s review gets you even a little bit interested in reading the book, then I hope you read the rest and then go preorder the book.

Here’s the back cover blurb for the book, which is out May 1st:

What’s the difference between humans and monsters? Is there a fine line, or is it more gray and blurred? Rami Ungar, author of Rose and Hannah and Other Stories, explores this question in his latest collection, Symphony for Walpurgis. From legendary cryptids to malevolent spirits and from Ohio in the 1950s to modern-day California, readers will be treated to nine terrifying stories of the weird and macabre. So settle down and be prepared. For you have bought your ticket to Symphony for Walpurgis.

I’ll leave links below in case you want to check the book out. And if, after the book is released, you read it and like it (or don’t), I hope you’ll leave a review. Positive or negative, I love reader feedback, and it helps both me and other readers out in the end.

Anyway, that’s all for now, my Followers of Fear. I’ll be sure to check in with you guys when I have updates on Walpurgis or on anything else going on in my life and/or in my writing career. So, until next time, good night and pleasant nightmares!

Amazon
Apple Books
Goodreads
Kobo

Review: “Midwestern Gothic” by Scott Thomas

Posted: November 29, 2024 in Novella, Review, Scary Stuff
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As many of you know, Kill Creek by Scott Thomas has become one of my favorite novels, if not my favorite (you can read my review from 2018 here). So, when I heard Thomas was releasing a collection of four novellas, I had to get my hands on it. And while it took me longer than I wanted to get through it (I picked it up in September and only just finished it), I’m glad I got to read it.

Taking place in a fictional version of Kansas that’s part of the same universe as Kill Creek (and possibly his other novel Violet, I’m not sure), each novella follows a native who gets pulled into horrors beyond their control. Three of these stories connect to the very land and the entities, natural or supernatural or preternatural, that inhabit and make up Kansas, all of these stories deal with dark histories and hidden truths, and each story connects in some way to the authors who were the stars of Kill Creek,* enhancing the reading experience.

The first novella, The Door in the Field, follows a young construction worker with anger issues who joins his boss for a drink after an incident, and ends up spending a night in terror. This story does move a bit slow at times, but it’s a thrilling tale full of blood, violence, and cosmic horror that pays off well at the end with the reveals and the main character’s growth. My one major criticism is that the novella is kind of a story within a story, and the framing device doesn’t really add much to the story. It doesn’t take anything away, but it doesn’t add much, either.

The second novella, Wear Your Secret Like a Stone, follows a troubled young woman who, after her pick of book for the Halloween display at her job is taken down by a customer complaint, goes on a mission to get her favorite book back. Only along the way, she learns some frightening local history which is more alive than she thought. I think this might have been my favorite novella of the bunch. It’s atmospheric, the protagonist is likeable, and the ending is a dark fantasy twist that will bring you chills.

The third novella, The Boy in the Woods, is about a young boy who, on the last night at camp, finds himself in the middle of a slasher story with a rage zombie twist. It’s a wild ride of a story with a sympathetic protagonist and a the way the slasher/rage zombie aspect are approached gives both tropes new life that I wasn’t expecting. If Wear Your Secret was my favorite, then The Boy in the Woods is a close second.

The final novella, One Half of a Child’s Face, is about a mother who is able to see into her ex’s apartment building al a Rear Window. There, she frets about not having her daughter living with her full-time and gets a vicarious thrill at watching the residents live their lives…until a strange painting in an empty apartment seems to throw an evil influence over the building’s residents. Of the four novellas, I would consider this the weakest. It takes a long time to build to anything and there are quite a few plot threads left hanging at the end. However, the last fifty pages are so were hard to put down and I enjoyed reading them.

All in all, Midwestern Gothic by Scott Thomas is a worthwhile collection of novellas. On a scale of 1 to 5, I would rate it a 3.9. Pick up a copy, settle down in your favorite chair, and prepare to be transported to a different sort of Kansas.

*If you haven’t read Kill Creek, don’t worry. You can still read the collection just fine. Kind of like how you can watch The Big Bang Theory and still laugh at all the jokes while not necessarily getting every sci-fi or comic book reference the characters make. Still, I highly recommend Kill Creek, so if you’re curious, read that one, too.

Review: “I Feed Her to the Beast and the Beast is Me” by Jamison Shea

Posted: October 1, 2024 in Novel, Review, Scary Stuff
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I love horror and I love ballet. I often combine the two in my work. And when I find another author who has combined the two forms of storytelling, I want to read it. And if it’s good? I’m especially glad to read it. Jamison Shea’s novel I Feed Her to the Beast and the Beast is Me is one of those books I’m especially glad to have read.

Taking place at the Paris Ballet and its attached academy, I Feed Her to the Beast follows Laure Mesny, a dance student in Paris who is the most talented in her class, but has had to deal with privilege and racism in the academy and the company every day. When a fellow ballerina she admires leads her into the tunnels of the catacombs, she is introduced to an ancient godlike entity that offers her a deal: her blood in exchange for the power she has always craved. Laure takes it, and it leads her on a path that could end in her stardom, or her destruction.

Where do I start?

Well, let’s talk about the horror. While there is some eldritch occult horror here, the real horror is with the human characters. Not just what the characters are willing to do for their goals, but what they’re willing to do to each other out of spite. Laure’s fellow dancers, often white and privileged, treat her horribly and tell her, behind her back and to her face, that she doesn’t belong and will never be good enough, even though she is amazing. More than a few bring up that she’s black and from a poor background and, in their view, wouldn’t be a good fit for the company. When Laure finally gets some power, it’s kind of scary how quickly she not only gets used to it, but how much she enjoys using it, including to do violence!

Not to say there isn’t some more traditional horror. The gods living beneath Paris are quite cool, as is the destruction they wrought, and there’s a murder mystery throughout the story which resolves in a way that surprised even me and which felt quite satisfying.

I also liked how most of the characters felt real. They’re all extremely complicated, especially Laure. She’s had it rough, coming from a broken family and dealing with racism and poverty, and often being told to be better and be perfect despite doing everything she should. And despite all that, she still wants to belong and feel loved by her coworkers, which honestly feels very human to me. I also empathized with her struggle to try to balance her dreams and her relationships. She’s not all good, and she’s very flawed, but it’s hard not to root for her, even at her worst. And we see her at her worst a lot.

I think the one flaw is that some of the supporting characters could have used some more development, especially Keturah. She sort of becomes a sister figure to Laure halfway through the novel, but I never really felt like we got a chance to see past her surface. Maybe in the sequel. (Yes, there’s a sequel, and I’ll check it out as soon as I can.) And, at times, the story did drag a little.

All told, I award I Feed Her to the Beast and the Beast is Me by Jamison Shea a 4.5 out of 5. This is a riveting slow-burn novel that delights in being bad and in delving into the darkest parts of humanity. Get yourself a copy, put on Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring, and prepare to be transported. Believe me, it’s worth the read.

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