OYENTE

Molly Mix

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Solidly entertaining creature feature

Total
4 out of 5 stars
Ejecución
4 out of 5 stars
Historia
4 out of 5 stars

Revisado: 02-09-24

This was a solidly entertaining creature feature with an intriguing premise and a new-to-me twist on an old monster. It's definitely a bit of a slow burn, but there were enough tantalizing and disturbing happenings to keep my interest. I thought I HATED the ending initially, but after thinking about it for a bit, and giving it time to settle on me, I changed my mind.

I think the amazing narration may one of the things that kept it from dragging a bit in the middle for me. I'm not sure if the paper and glue version would match the energy.

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Inventive and scary double-jeopardy tale

Total
4 out of 5 stars
Ejecución
4 out of 5 stars
Historia
5 out of 5 stars

Revisado: 02-08-24

Blood & Salt by Hubert L. Mullins is excellent! I enjoyed the heck out of this inventive double jeopardy concept - mashing up a creature feature with the the already super tense and anxiety-inducing tale of the doomed Titanic.

It was written beautifully in a literary style that complimented the era and was a pleasure to read. The author vividly brought the the ship to life in my mind, including her passengers and monsters. And what a coterie of monsters it was - definitely not your usual garden-variety terrors, but blood thirsty nightmares that didn’t just bite your neck, they destroyed you, body and soul.

It didn’t feel like a novelty two ideas just slapped together in a ‘let’s see what happens’ sort of way - Mullins did an excellent job of weaving compelling and detailed vampire lore into the Titanic drama, going all in on both.

And the characters! I really LOVED a lot of these characters. Mullins made me real sad a time or two on their behalf.

The only drawback was that I struggled a bit with the narrator. For the first chapter I couldn’t decide if she was human or AI because of her odd cadence and pronunciation. After deciding she was a human, I continued to be distracted by her inconsistent interpretation of English and Irish accents. But, in the end, she did kind of grow on me, and I was less and less distracted as the story sucked me in deep.

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I saw the whole thing as a movie in my head!

Total
4 out of 5 stars
Ejecución
4 out of 5 stars
Historia
4 out of 5 stars

Revisado: 01-26-24

First of all, I LOVE the book title - I think it's really clever and I wish I'd thought of it. As for the rest of the book, it was an entertaining, properly twisty, anxiety-inducing jaunt with some truly cringe-worthy gore that I'd be watching through my fingers if it were a movie - in fact, I can easily see this as a movie!

Slashtag is a Big Brother inspired televised immersive horror reality competition following seven celebrities as they set up camp at the infamous Propitius Hotel, built by notorious and prolific serial killer Arthur Wilson. The hotel is a character itself, slightly reminiscent of H.H.H. Holmes' Murder Castle, with booby trapped rooms, haunted lore, and way too many dark corners for nasty surprises to hide in. There are also cameras EVERYWHERE and they are televising ALL OF IT for the audience at home.

The celebrities were brought on board by special invitation, and secrets and mysterious motivations go deep: the participants have them, the producers have them, the sponsors have them, the ghosts might have them too, if they turn out to be real. And if the ghosts are real, does that mean the screaming and the impressive bloody mayhem is real too?

The participants' intriguing backstories and reasons for accepting the invitation to Slashtag are collected in bits and pieces as we go, so we have to do a bit of puzzle work to put it all together alongside them as they work out the puzzles in the game, trying to find their way out of the hotel with their dignity intact if this really is all a game, and all their limbs intact if it isn't. The characters were well drawn. They aren't always likable, but they aren't supposed to be. They learned better as they went and built alliances and friendships that gave them more dimension, and I did find myself rooting for them to make it. I was definitely rooting for certain people to get their comeuppance.

All told, this was both fun and disturbing, and thoroughly entertaining. I will be keeping Jon Cohn on my TBR list.

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A non-stop, full-tilt romp through bizarro world!

Total
5 out of 5 stars
Ejecución
5 out of 5 stars
Historia
5 out of 5 stars

Revisado: 01-26-24

This book is a non-stop, full-tilt, action-packed romp through bizzarro world and I loved every single second of it!

It's a super weird and wonderful mash-up of dark urban fantasy horror with heart and humor. I picked up some faint vibes reminiscent of a few of my favorite authors: Neil Gaiman (particularly Neverwhere), Jasper Fforde, Max Frei, and Christopher Moore (particularly A Dirty Job) - but it was entirely its own creation and it is straight up my street.

Narrator Aaron Camacho is brilliant, and second only to Joe Hempel when it comes to who I most want to read me a story. He had me mesmerized and glued to my headphones.

This story is mad inventive, clever, insightful, really fun, and funny even as it disturbs. Everard makes an entirely relatable and mostly sympathetic driver for the story as he accidentally descends into the Periphery, an interdimensional shadow city in the underbelly of Washington DC, and encounters all sorts of behind-the-looking-glass mayhem and madness. Here lies my only real issue - while specific parts of the city below the sidewalk came to life crystal clear in my mind, I struggled to conceptualize the city as a whole. Maybe that's just me being an apex nerd and angling for inclusion of a map at the front of one more book. I love maps.

I don't have to worry about spoilers with this one; I don't think I could spoil it if I tried - it's too big to spoil! And speaking of big, the cast of characters is impressive. I recommend keeping crib notes to track the them, and their alliances. Or maybe that's just me and my sad post-COVID brain.

Everard doesn't always know what he's even doing down below, and who he should trust to help him figure it out. And neither do we. The 'friendlies' he encounters are pretty layered and maybe some of them are not as friendly as he thinks, and the 'villains' certainly think they are on the right side of the chaos which is clearly heading for some sort of reckoning. They all have their reasons for doing what they do. Everard has to figure all of that out, while also trying to figure out his own just-discovered super power, and how to use what he knows and what he can do to save the people he loves and two whole cities from certain destruction. No big deal.

The characters are vibrant and unforgettable: Undone Duncan and his terrifying cult of the reskinned, The chilling Perforated Woman with her swarming face holes, the mercurial Aluromancer (having listened to this, I have no idea how that's spelled!), legendary creatures with mysterious purpose (including a rampaging boogeyman on the loose), the formidable Loretta, and good ole Bill-Bill.

I might have lost the thread, or wondered if I lost the thread, every once in awhile, but everything always eventually came back around to reorient me, and I was NEVER bored. It was supremely entertaining and a genuine pleasure to listen to. I was bummed out when it ended, but it sounds like there's at least one more book delving into the Periphery - The Piper's Graveyard.

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This is a solid collection

Total
4 out of 5 stars
Ejecución
3 out of 5 stars
Historia
4 out of 5 stars

Revisado: 01-21-24

I really enjoyed this collection. Standout stories for me were sinister creepers The Wallpaper Man and The Backwards Man, the heartbreaking You Have to Let Him Burn and If Only a Heart, and the final story - Stephens ended strong with the creepy fever dream that was The Atoll. There were one or two stories I found myself losing focus during, but the the majority of them captured my interest early and held my attention.

The only real critique I have is the narration & production, complete with sound effects, was a little too much of a distraction at points. I think reading this one might be the better way to go. Regardless, it’s definitely well worth the read.

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This brutal old-school horror novel delivers

Total
4 out of 5 stars
Ejecución
5 out of 5 stars
Historia
4 out of 5 stars

Revisado: 01-11-24

Gothic took me back to the horror books I snuck off my mom and dad's shelves in the late 70's / early 80's - raw, unfiltered, brutal, and truly unsettling. The prose feels elevated and literary. The story, though not new, is beautifully executed - it pushes all the right buttons, and evokes all the right feelings. As for the story itself - objects possessed by evil are one of my favorite tropes, The characters really come fully to life, likable, or not, and their individual descents into madness and terror are striking and powerful. Fracassi is really gifted at creating characters that inspire strong emotions in the reader. I found myself genuinely infuriated and anxious and truly sad, as if I were reading stories about people I know. The ending initially left me wanting a bit more, but the more I thought about it after the fact, the more I settled into it.

I will for sure read more books by this author. I keep hearing raves about The Boys in the Valley on the Books of Horror facebook group, so that will probably be next.

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One of the best short story collections I’ve ever read

Total
5 out of 5 stars
Ejecución
5 out of 5 stars
Historia
5 out of 5 stars

Revisado: 01-03-24

Slinging out a bunch of superlatives about the stories in this collection feels disingenuous. It’s way beyond that. It’s real life, but for people experiencing it at its most surreal and traumatic - like a peek behind the curtain at the ugliest, most confusing, terrifying, and life altering bits - the stuff we are afraid might exist just below our conscious awareness, but don’t know for sure. The stories don’t tread familiar ground. The trajectory is harrowing and haunting. The existential dread lingers. That’s all you can really ask for in a reading experience.

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Not like anything I’ve ever read before

Total
5 out of 5 stars
Ejecución
5 out of 5 stars
Historia
5 out of 5 stars

Revisado: 12-26-23

This book really took me by surprise. I thought it was maybe going to be a claustrophobic gross-out read - I was curious, but not in a hurry. After getting it for Christmas, I just meant to peek at the first few pages, and then I was just going to finish the first chapter, and the I couldn’t put it down. When I was too tired to keep my eyes open anymore, I bought the audiobook so I could keep going. And I did, all the way to the end. It was that compelling. It went deep, both literally and figuratively. I wasn’t expecting a journey through grief and broken familial relationships with a man in the guts of a whale, with any possibility of survival relying upon him coming to terms with his dead father. It’s intense and heartbreaking. It’s meaningfully introspective. And it’s claustrophobic, upsetting, and gross. I have absolutely zero idea if any of it is actually real, but if so, I also learned a bit about whale anatomy and behavior. I also have zero idea if being swallowed by a whale and spending a couple hours in its digestive tract is survivable. I’ll have to do a bit of a research deep dive and find out. I don’t really care either way - it was a ripping good story.

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Extremely visceral experience!

Total
4 out of 5 stars
Ejecución
5 out of 5 stars
Historia
4 out of 5 stars

Revisado: 12-24-23

John Durgin is SO good at creeping readers the heck out with his super gritty, visceral scenes of mayhem and absolute grotesquerie. This had me cringing so hard - if it was a movie, I’d have been watching it through my fingers. It’s an inventive thrill ride from beginning to end, with lots of chilling and disturbing moments. He never disappoints. And Joe Hempel’s narration is always right on point.

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Mysterious, terrifying, and disturbing

Total
4 out of 5 stars
Ejecución
5 out of 5 stars
Historia
4 out of 5 stars

Revisado: 12-19-23

The first third of The Watchers had me totally absorbed, turning pages as fast as I could. The middle third was engaging, but somewhat less absorbing. The final third was a mix of both. The author left a lot of clues to what was going on if you pay attention. It’s beautifully written. The characters are easy to connect with. The overall story is solid. I really enjoyed the read and will definitely check out the author’s other books.

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