With Skull Full of Kisses Michael West throws his tales into the long list of single-author collections available to horror readers today. With ten tales of love and monsters, Skull Full of Kisses gives readers more meat than many other lengthier collections out there.
West’s style is easy to read, but well-paced and well-formed, delivering solid stories page after page….
Full review at DarkScribeMagazine.com
25
Feb
Yasmin Stoker is a tour guide in one of the most haunted fictional cities ever. She’s also a wraith, an undead creature who feeds off the life of revenants — that is mindless, murderous newly-risen vampires. Nicomedes, a blind, mad Lich Lord and undead ruler of the city, orders Yasmin to derail a PI’s investigation into a series of murders of young girls. Yasmin has no choice but to obey, but the strange appearance of one of victims, prowling the streets on hunts of her own, takes Yasmin on an adventure to find the killer, which might just unbalance the current power system and let loose a horde of demons on the city….
Full Review at DarkScribeMagazine.com
ISBN: 9781439167618
I was given this book to review.
Book three in the Megan Chase series finds Megan, human ruler of a demon clan and psychiatrist, in more trouble. This time Megan is preparing for a big time demon meeting, where a cluster of inhuman beings will try to force her into performing a ceremony that would make her a full demon. It doesn’t help that an FBI agent arrives at her office, offering immunity if she’ll just testify against the other demons (most of whom run various illegal cartels, not to mention they all seem to attract bodies in large quantities), which includes Megan’s rather serious boyfriend, fire demon Greyson Dante.
Megan finds unexpected pressure put on her relationship as the meeting starts, not from the FBI, but from the realization that if she is to have any future with him she will have to become a demon, or let him go forever. Balancing her wants against her needs, and the needs of her clan of “personal demons” is hard enough without the appearance of an angel, who is most definitely trying to kill her. Now Megan must find out who sent the angel, defeat it, decide whether she values her humanity or Greyson more and most importantly: Survive.
Demon Possessed is fast, a little confused at the beginning as all the threads present themselves but before they come together as one related plot. Megan is a bold urban fantasy heroine, who unlike others doesn’t seem to be opposed to being rescued, married, and playing a female-oriented role, she just doesn’t want to lose herself to other peoples’ demands on her. As emotional as the previous book, Demon Inside, but focusing on Megan’s future rather than her past, Demon Possessed is at times hard to stomach due to intensity of emotion, not intensity of graphic violence. But it’s a good read, and a sad farewell to Megan and Greyson and their family, as this is the last anticipated book in the series.
5
Jan
ISBN: 9781906584122
I was given this magazine for review.
Issue 8 of Murky Depths is chock full of tight, short tales of speculative terror. It opens with a poetic ode to the corporate head honcho bad guy, “The Majority Shareholder” by Edward R. Norden.
Then comes an end of the world tale where the most important character is a cat, David Tallerman’s “Peachy”, followed by another chiaroscuro graphic strip from Luke Cooper, “The Wrath of God part 1”. This time Cooper’s favorite characters, Halo the Nephalim and Goulding, the cop with a heart of an angel, literally, still can’t escape getting the weird cases. They’re facing a vigilante that’s decided killing Halo is the way to get back to Heaven. It looks to be an interesting new storyline in Cooper’s wicked noir world.
“What the Tongue Will Taste” by Sam J. Drane is a money-and-power tale of what men who have it all and have done it all do when they get bored. There are clones involved making this tale a fun little masturbatory fantasy, depending on how you look at it.
Geoffrey Girad’s “Collecting James” is also a tale of a rich and powerful man getting what he wants. In this one he wants the gifts others have he doesn’t, and takes them from his victims in the form of trepanning and discs of bone that retain their former owners’ memories. But the twist in this one is better than readers will expect.
“Hero in Hell” by James Johnson (the piece that inspired this issue’s awesome cover) is a great concept, a super hero finds himself in hell after death, but it suffers from the most common problem in these graphic shorts, there’s just so much more story to be told than can come out in this space. It was sad to see it end.
“Out of Time” by J Westlake is predictable, but the storytelling here is more about experiencing the story, which is a very accurate and interesting portrayal of depression. Readers can walk in the experiences of the depressed main character as his isolation and uncontrollable sadness take literal forms in the story world.
Following the mental illness theme (and the writer theme established with “Collecting James”), Christine Luca’s “My Muse Wears Army Boots” is a tale of hypergraphia, the compulsion to write, sparked by a sadistic and abusive muse. The interesting early set up of a wanna be writer who can read corpses is dropped in favor of the hypergraphia angle, making this tale feel like two in one. The plot line at the end is easy to anticipate, taking some of the umph out of the story, even if the visuals are strong.
“Recall” a graphic strip by Chris Huff follows, pitting eternal youth against fate. It’s immediately followed by a glimpse at another artist’s vision of Huff’s tale, as the first artist was forced to abandon the tale. It is interesting to see how two people visualized and affected the same story.
“The Undead” by Lawrence Buentello is the best of the issue, and the kind of story you want to point out to other people, saying “Read this one.” J T is suffering from the loss of his wife, but his lasting love with her leads to the power to bring back the dead—all the dead—within the vicinity of J T, except for the one thing he wants back. With a chilling, almost beautiful end it shouldn’t be missed.
“Endless” by Sylvanus Moxley is the second poem in this issue, and not altogether a dismal or depressing one. In fact, in a way, it’s an almost hopeful tale of a man trapped in a ship orbiting the moon.
“Monitor” by Richard Rippon delves somewhat into postpartum depression, except poor new mom Sarah is dealing with a truly evil little newborn. Uncomfortably creepy it’s also an excellent read.
“Nosing with the Four-Stroke Kid” by KC Ball is another short, spiky addition to this issue, the tale of a unique motorcycle and its rider. Finally comes “The Pilgrimage” a last graphic offering by Kristopher Barker, about a woman who will go to any means to find her path to salvation.
Another fine collection of tales, Murky Depths bears a resemblance to the classic Tales from the Crypt publications, only with significantly better stories.
31
Dec
ISBN: 978-0345512093
I requested this book from the author.
Jessie Shimmer is an apprentice wizard who wants nothing more than to spend a pleasant afternoon with her lover and Master, Cooper. Instead their spell to summon rain goes wrong and Cooper vanishes, leaving Jessie alone in a park suddenly torn apart by magic. Despite being sealed off and left to die by the other magic users of the city, Jessie defeats the demon that came through the tear that took Cooper, taking severe damage herself.
When she wakes in the home of Mother Karen, her friend and a healer things only get worse, for the magical ruler of the city wants Jessie silenced and Cooper to remain gone, permanently. With Mr. Jordan trying to crush her will and her desire to see Cooper back safely in her arms Jessie must risk losing it all, suffer the guilt of her past that she didn’t even know about and try to save Cooper from his.
Spellbent is a fast paced, hard to put down novel. Somewhere between Jim Butcher’s Harry Dresden and Terry Pratchett’s magical sections of Discworld, Snyder takes readers on a ride through strange creatures, powerful magic, true evil and personalized hell dimensions.
Accompanied by her familiar, a sometimes ferret, sometimes something else altogether, and motivated by family and love Jessie is a lead that gets things done. Many urban fantasy novels have begun to display themes of friendship or defying the odds. Snyder gives her characters a familiar dark past, save that the focus is far more on their modern life and current survival than on a constantly circling cycle of dealing with the trauma of their pasts.
A strong, enticing debut for Snyder in urban fantasy, this one is definitely on my list of must reads for the year.
The Outsider series book 1
ISBN: 9780982175682
I received this book through the LibraryThing Early Readers program.
Warning: I am rating this book DNF.
The premise has potential, Livvie is a Soul Catcher, gifted with the power to magically summon demons via painting them then banishing them by burning the painting. She is also a multi-reincarnated soul who is haunted by a soul mate and a demon who refuses to let them be together.
In execution though the book fails on nearly every level. Livvie is a character straight out of addict recovery show, rambling about relatively unimportant things one minute, setting up scenes the next only to ramble some more and finally update the reader on what they missed while she was rambling. It’s like the author and character have teamed up to avoid actually showing the story. Not to mention Livvie’s horrible drug use is more like Tylenol PMs and wine.
Apparently in the first few scenes Livvie dreams of Pig Face, the demon who has been killing herself and her soul mate for countless lives. Instead of burning the painting the painting flies out of Livvie’s hands in a sudden and fortuitous gust of wind. This of course means Pig Face escapes the painting. However the only way I knew that this is what happened, and that it was a major plot event, is because I read other reviews that explained this. These “major events” are written in a style that makes them seem convoluted, utterly unimportant and routine.
Pig Face apparently possesses the body of a man Livvie shows interest in, gains her trust after a few exchanged lines of dialog and leads her outside where he beats her and rapes her. The actual action (not that I’m eager to read that scene) is all off screen and only explained after a chapter break in brief retrospect, much like all the action in this book so far.
Livvie receives aid from her landlords, who, as Livvie is barely conscious, sum up everything that’s happened so far in the book (apparently they are all-knowing NPCs) in explanation to each other. These two go on to call what happened to Livvie “a downer” and explain that they are some sort of soul friends who know all about her, what she is, and who Pig Face and Ian are too. Rather than taking Livvie to a hospital to, you know check for brain damage and internal injuries, they just stitch her up themselves in their spare bedroom.
The hot mess of a plot continues to ramble on, with more actual on screen scenes, that don’t make much more sense, until about fifty pages in when Pig Face attacks Livvie again (in a police station, with a bunch of cops nearby, where they were accusing her of killing a guy she worked with, who killed himself in public, and who had no other link to her). Only this time Livvie calls to Ian (who I’m assuming is haunting her) for help and Ian ends up possessing the body Pig Face raped Livvie with.
I gave up on this book not much after, when more rambling started. I personally despise rape-as-romance plots. No amount of this style of writing or these flat characters was going to redeem this book for me, especially if it continued to spend the next two hundred pages alternating between “Livvie is crazy”, “Pig Face is brutally and gorily attacking everyone she’s ever known” and “Livvie needs to trust this guy who raped her in the second chapter because they are true loves”.
This book was just too convoluted, with Livvie’s completely unlikable nature, Pig Face’s cruel torturous slaughter for no reason other than he could, and the constant distractions from every ghost, animal, “boon” and spirit talking to Livvie (seriously, two spirits in the form of flies tried to protect her by buzzing around a cop’s head to distract him). The world building is so confusing I never had any solid picture of the characters, the places, or even the rules of the magical world. I cannot recommend this book, because I cannot think of a single avid reader that I know of who would find it an exciting, enjoyable read.
3
Dec
Reviewed for MonsterLibrarian.com
Bare Bone #6 edited by Kevin, L Donihe
Raw Dog Screaming Press, 2004
ISBN: 0974503185
Available: New and used
Bare Bone #6 is a solid collection of horror tales and poetry, all well written and entertaining to the point where it’s hard to pick standout stories. Inside, readers will find subtle and dark tales of unexpected killers, unspoken of traditions that befall children, as well as two holiday tales, “Daddy Didn’t Forget” by Mollie Burleson that mirrors The Nutcracker and “Don Huavaca’s Dia De Los Muertos” by Kendall Evans which offers a tongue-in-cheek, but dark look at the tradition of honoring the dead. Between the former story and “Momma’s Lesson” by Tanya Twombly there’s a delightful variety in cultural point of views as well.
Bare Bone #6 would make an excellent addition to private and public collections, and between the variety, solid writing and slim, but not skinny size it makes for an easy, enjoyable read.
16
Nov
ISBN: 9780441017805
I purchased this book.
In the Kate Daniels urban fantasy series by husband and wife writing team “Ilona Andrews” sarcasm, action and things that go bump in the night rule, so I was eager to pick up another Andrews world to delve into.
In this world there is The Weird, where magic rules and beasts run rampant, The Broken, our world where magic is dead and guns run rampant, and The Edge, which sits between and has a little of both. Rose is a single mom, by courtesy of being the adult left to raise her two younger brothers after her mother died and her father abandoned them. She has just enough power to hold her own, but too much for the other residents of The Edge to feel comfortable with her (or ignore her). Like has happened many times before since her powers surfaced, one day a handsome, arrogant man shows up on her lawn demanding to have her as his bride<~~Cross out broodmare and unwilling to give her a choice in the matter.
The gorgeous blueblood from the Weird, Declan, triggers every bad male instinct Rose has and threatens her family and her sanity. But no matter what the pretense, Declan is not just in The Edge for Rose. He’s come for a monster stalking the woods as well. Declan, Rose, and the distrusting community of The Edge must find a way to come together before the monster picks them all off to feed.
On the Edge has a very urban fantasy feel, and Andrews retains a balance of action, humor and darkness that I truly enjoy. In many ways this is an urban fantasy book, but the differences are enough to push the still new genre into a wider interpretation.
Translated into the horror genre, On the Edge would be set in a mysterious backwoods community that’s hiding a strange power, but represents a real danger to any outsider who doesn’t leave them be. Washed with urban fantasy influences instead, readers will still find the mysterious and potentially dangerous community that lives in a rural area (that particularly speaks to me with the experiences I’ve had in rural central Kentucky communities) which has formed a unique kind of magic, some would see as a bastardized form of high or formal magic.
The community here has a good reason for their wariness of outsiders. The Broken sees them as freaks, and in some cases illegal aliens. The Weird sees them as weak mongrels. Rose herself can’t even trust the neighbors since a few of them tried to sell her into “marriage” to bluebloods who expect her power to breed true.
On the Edge is a deliciously complex debut world, with full, unique characters and enough plot and intrigue to keep it out of the paranormal romance genre. It has elements of fantasy, romance, mystery, thriller and awesome. I eagerly await the second book in this series and can’t wait to see how this family evolves in the world that challenges them.