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Book Review: Extasia by Claire Legrand

Extasia by Claire Legrand

Extasia by Claire Legrand

Katherine Tegen Books, 2022

ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0062696632

Available: Hardcover, paperback, Kindle edition, audiobook

Bookshop.org |  Amazon.com )

 

Extasia is a fiercely feminist dark novel of a post-apocalyptic community drenched in patriarchy and cult-like violent misogyny straight from The Crucible and Year of the Witching. The dogma is that women were responsible for the destruction of the world and thus four young girls are honored with the “sacred duty” of becoming saints, scapegoats who once a month face brutal mob violence from the community in order to expiate their sins. A serial killer has been murdering men, and the upcoming sainthood of Amity Barrow is expected to bless the community and end the killing. When the murders continue, Amity and her sister saints realize they must find a way to either solve the murders or escape. Just as things seem desperate, she is transported with her sister saints to a secret world, Avazel, and invited to join a coven and learn to wield the magical, dark power of extasia to end the killings and realize her own strength… but there’s more going on under the surface than she knows.

 

Extasia is visceral, violent, and disturbing in its intensity, but Amity is not completely isolated. She develops imperfect but strong relationships with girls and women from her community and the coven that survive even significant disagreements. While it’s somewhat heavy-handed, Legrand has outdone herself in creating a dark, powerful, horror story made even more terrible by the foundation of lies, grisly violence, and hate on which human survival after the apocalypse has been built..Recommended for ages 16+

 

Contains: violence to and killing of animals, attempted rape, torture, gore, murder, body horror, violence, gaslighting, religious trauma.

 

Reviewed by Kirsten Kowalewski

Book Review: The Kindly Ones by Cliff James

cover art for The Kindly Ones by Cliff James

The Kindly Ones by Cliff James

Lethe Press, 2021

ISBN: 2370000883131

Available: paperback, Kindle

 

The Kindly Ones is not your standard horror novel.  No fast pacing.  No big thrills.  No wild climax, where all is explained.  Instead, it’s a dark, brooding tale that relies heavily on atmosphere, a methodical pace, and excellent writing to pull the reader in, and it does it very well.  Fans of Robert Eggers’s films (The Witch, The Lighthouse) will love this book, as well as anyone who enjoys a story outside the norm.

 

After The Calamity, (world apocalypse) the story centers on two small groups of people trying to eke out an existence in a remote forest, away from the remains of humanity.  One is the uber-religious Mann family, consisting of Mother and her sons.  The other is a group of more socially permissive people: Rhea, Fran, Ky, (female) and the youngest, teen-age Lugh (male).  Conflict eventually ensues, since the groups have very contrasting worldviews, especially when it concerns the intimate relationship between Lugh and Abel, one of Mother’s sons.  There’s another plot thread concerning the reclusive Father Ambrose, who lives alone in a mansion nearby.   It becomes clear that one group must prove superior, so the other group has to be driven out, or eliminated.

 

Instead of opting for a story arc with peaks and valleys, the book opts for a slow, calculated pace, and relies on creating an overall atmosphere of unease that persists throughout the story, and it does it extremely well.  Much of it is due to the author’s phenomenal way with words; the writing is art in story form.  If the 19th century masters of British literature had decided to go wild and write horror, The Kindly Ones is what one of them might have produced.  However, like reading Dickens, this is best read slow, so nothing is missed and the author’s meaning is understood.  Example: “and power was given to kill with sword, and with hunger, and with death”, he said, heaving the axe into the air, over his head, onto hers, “and to kill with the beasts of the earth.”  It’s easy to miss that someone just got an axe slammed into their head, if you are turning the pages too fast!  The book is an AP course on how to write well, and could be enjoyed for that alone.

 

Incredible writing aside, The Kindly Ones is still a good enough story that most readers should enjoy and appreciate it.  As noted, the plot isn’t fast, but moves at a measured, steady pace, although it might be too slow for thrill readers.  It relies upon small happenings to move the story, and leaving parts deliberately vague helps add to the mystery of the story.  For example, are The Kindly Ones real monsters in the woods, or are the Mann family members the actual monsters?  How did Father Ambrose wind up in the mansion by himself?  What’s with the wild-haired guy with goats who shows up on rare occasions?  Instead of answering, the author chose to provide the situations and let the reader draw their own conclusions.  Leaving plot threads open-ended can help or hurt a story, in this case it enhances it.  There’s no real conclusive ending, it just…ends, leaving open possibilities for the reader to think about.

 

If you’re looking for an unusual book that paints a picture instead of just telling a story, The Kindly Ones is for you.  Recommended.

 

Reviewed by Murray Samuelson

Book Review: The Apocalyptic Mannequin by Stephanie M. Wytovich

The Apocalyptic Mannequin: Poetry by Stephanie M. Wytovich

Raw Dog Screaming Press, 2019

ISBN: 978-1-947879-13-3

Available: Paperback, Kindle

 

It is shocking and deeply disturbing to know that in the aftermath of the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki and after the nuclear accident at Chernobyl, many people continued to survive, suffered through radiation poisoning, and then died. This living death is the theme of a relentless catalogue of ugliness in The Apocalyptic Mannequin: Poetry by Stephanie M. Wytovich.

Wytovich intends this collection to be a warning about the end of the world, or the end of the world as we know it, through war, violence, disease, and finally death. The images in these poems accomplish this goal by painting a setting littered with bloated dead bodies, twisted metal and ashes. Bodies transform into “meat,” clothing into “gasmask couture,” and survivors into “mannequins” who wander the apocalyptic landscape crawling with plague and vermin, barely able to survive or inevitably wanting to commit suicide.

The poems build a narrative in snapshots from the chaos of the first post-impact days, through the struggle to find relief, and, ultimately, to what will be the new normal. Wytovich deftly uses sensory details to create transitions between groups of poems. The initial poems are extremely dark with scenes of destruction that reduce the imagery to a handful of repetitive words that mirror the setting in a literal way.

The next group of poems represents a middle stage in which the survivors struggle to make sense of a world in which they have lost communication. They feel left alone to make sense of a situation in which they must now protect themselves from other people in need who bang at their doors and windows. The speaker in these poems recognizes that the survivors must start over and “re-make Eve” “with the tree of knowledge growing” in their “wombs.”  However, this is not to say that there is much hope because in the final group of poems, instead of new plants growing, there are  ”blossoms of collagen” with “the forest floor” growing “femurs.” The imagery in this section involves shape and color to describe the poisoning of the environment.

In the final group of poems, the imagery becomes more familiar and symbolic because its origin is memory. The speaker’s heart is hidden in “trunks of abandoned cars” and “empty cafes,” and she feels like a “broken doll.” But the world has changed, and so has she. After experiencing tragedy, hunger,  anger, and abandonment, she has turned into a scarred “scavenger” and a witch who has “woken.” Meanwhile, the new world is, ironically, still full of impending death. That is its toxic message to us in these poems.

 

Contains: body horror

 

Reviewed by Nova Hadley

Editor’s note: The Apocalyptic Mannequin was nominated to the final ballot of the 2019 Bram Stoker Award in the category of Superior Achievement in Poetry