book reviews
Book reviews for horror fans; weather a sleepless night with literary accounts of hauntings, possessions, zombies, vampires and beyond.
Reed's Literary Horror Review of 'Tortured Willows' by Christina Sng, Angela Yuriko Smith, Lee Murray, Geneve Flynn
Lord, there is a lot of pain in the first few poems alone. I have to admit, I'm like... the worst guy to submit poetry to for review. But I felt that this collection really needed to be heard and I had to contribute what meager opinions I could on the matter.
Reed AlexanderPublished 2 years ago in Horror
Sleeping Beauties, Vol. One - Review
Capitalizing on a wide array of prior successes, author Rio Youers and artist Alison Sampson have adapted Stephen and Owen King’s 700-page novel Sleeping Beauties into a ten-issue comic series released by IDW Publishing. Alison Sampson has created artwork for comic projects including Hit Girl, Winnebago Graveyard, and Jessica Jones, while Rio Youers has authored a handful of well-received thriller/horror novels, including The Forgotten Girl and Halcyon, as well as a trove of novellas and short stories. In Sleeping Beauties, Youers and Sampson combine strengths to deliver a surreal version of the father/son King duo’s apocalyptic tale about a town in West Virginia tearing itself apart as a mysterious sleeping sickness, dubbed Aurora, targets the world’s female population. While the series debuted in June 2020, IDW released a hardcover graphic novel in April of this year that collects issues one through five, allowing readers to experience the first half of the series in one volume.
Philip CanterburyPublished 2 years ago in Horror
Jumping the Shark With Stephen King
You're probably familiar with the term "Jumping the shark." It became popular in the late 90s and early 2000s as a way to pinpoint when something good went wrong, and it refers to the moment when the long-running sitcom "Happy Days" definitively downhill, in an episode where anti-hero Fonzie is waterskiing in California, preparing to do a jump, and there's a shark in the water. The shark lunges for him and he jumps over the shark. From that point on, the show was just not good.
Book Review: "The Troop" by Nick Cutter
I have read a few terrifying books in my time which include the theme of the graphic depiction of violence. Books such as: “Exquisite Corpse” by Poppy Z. Brite, “Blood Meridian” by Cormac McCarthy, “American Psycho” by Bret Easton Ellis and even yes, “Haunted” by Chuck Palahniuk. Graphic depictions of violence in novels are often used not just for the effect of horror, but also to make the reader truly see what is happening as it is something that the reader has (hopefully) not witnessed in person before. To make a depiction of violence believable we need something more than just the way in looks, we need to way it truly feels to be in that position. The mixture of feelings of terror and descriptions of the physical in the violent act causes the scene to be even stronger than it would have been without the atmospheric description. Ideas not only surrounding darkness, but the deep and philosophical - possibly existential and absurd - have found to be even more effective in producing some incredible descriptions when involved in depictions of violence in a horror novel. Nick Cutter’s “The Troop” is no exception to this recipe for a brilliant horror book which is truly quite terrifying.
Annie KapurPublished 2 years ago in HorrorWe All Float Down Here
Hi, Georgie! Don't you want a balloon? - Stephen King, IT When I first laid eyes on Pennywise, the clown, my life changed. I couldn't shower for a week, terrified someone was actually in the drains, but I couldn't look away.
Shannon MoosePublished 2 years ago in HorrorA Definitive Guide To The 7 Princes Of Hell
All Demons Are Apparently Not Created Equal And they even have specialization in their sinister works, at least according to German theologian, scholar, and Bishop, Peter Binsfield.
Jessica BuggPublished 2 years ago in HorrorWomen Writing Horror
Many people believe that women writers of horror is a new thing and something subversive and original to the genre. If that person describes you then I would like to introduce you to people like Mary Shelley, author of "Frankenstein" (1818) and Mary Elizabeth Braddon, author of many ghost stories and salacious fiction of deviant women - one of my favourite stories by her is "The Shadow in the Corner". The idea the women are becoming more popular in horror is something that we take on the chin - of course, there are far more women writers of horror now than there have been ever since women are using their own voices so much more. But, we also have to remember that the 20th century writers of horror were not nearly exclusively men either - men were just far more active in the genre. For example: there are more books by Stephen King than there are by Daphne Du Maurier and Shirley Jackson combined, but that does not mean that Shirley Jackson and Daphne Du Maurier are in any way less of authors that Stephen King. All three of them are as credible as each other and all three can scare the pants off you.
Annie KapurPublished 2 years ago in HorrorFive Nights At Freddy's Fazbear Frights #1 Into the Pit Review
The books , Five Nights at Freddy's Fazbear Frights series is book series , made by Scott Cawthon , with either Elley Cooper ,Kelly Parra and/or Andrea Waggener, consists of three stories , set in the corners of the Fnaf Universe, each describing the suspense and horror of the unknown , in the third person point of view .
Aletze CastellanosPublished 2 years ago in Horror10 Horror Novels I Adored in 2021 (so far!)
I really do believe that anything that plays on the psychological is far more terrifying than any amount of blood, gore or monsters than can possibly be in literature and film. This is why a film like 'American Psycho' is normally considered more frightening than a film like 'Evil Dead'. Even though 'American Psycho' is not technically a horror film, it is still far more horrifying than the movie which contains more blood and monsters. Why? 'American Psycho' deals with the psychological. It deals with the fact that you could be at your normal office job with someone who murders other people at nighttime and you will never know how close you really are.
Annie KapurPublished 2 years ago in Horror
Reed's Literary Horror Review of '3:33 AM' (2021)
I have to say, this book's characters are absolutely marvelously defined. This is probably some of the most detailed and engrossing characters and character development I've read in a long time. They're richly tangible and relatable with dialog that is both full and natural.
Reed AlexanderPublished 2 years ago in Horror
Reed's Literary Horror Review of 'Son of the Right Hand: Ze'ev Book 2' (2021), by John Baltisberger
In my review of Treif Magic (2020), I mentioned that Ze'ev was a matured anti-hero that understood the consequences of his action, accepted his fate, and made the leap into darkness without hesitation or angsty whining. Unlike John Constantine from Hell Blazer who persistently refused to take responsibility for his own mistakes the whole while complaining about the consequences.
Reed AlexanderPublished 2 years ago in Horror
Reed's Literary Horror Review of 'Fright Train' (2021) edited by Charles R. Rutledge and Scott T. Goudsward
Opening with a run-on sentence is a baller move. It's the reader's introduction (well... past the introduction anyway) to the anthology. That's a seriously "high risk" maneuver that could instantly throw off any reader. For me, it had damn well better be a declaration of how amazing every word that follows is. It stuck out so much I had to include it in my review.
Reed AlexanderPublished 2 years ago in Horror
