Home » Posts tagged "psychological horror" (Page 2)

Book Review: The Forest by Michaelbrent Collings

cover art for The Forest by Michaelbrent Collings

( Amazon.com )

 

The Forest by Michaelbrent Collings

Written Insomnia Press, 2020

ISBN: 9798670345958

Availability: paperback, Kindle

 

The Forest is a bit different from the last few releases by Michaelbrent Collings.  His recent titles (Terminal, Scavenger Hunt, Stranger Still) were combination thriller/horror novels that relied on a fast pace and a lot of action.  The Forest relies less on action, and more on creating an atmosphere of helplessness and dread.  As usual with Michaelbrent’s writing, it’s a mystery also, and any reader will have a very difficult time unraveling the puzzle before the last few pages.  It’s a good plot and a decent read, and parts of it are excellent.   However, it does drag a bit at times and might have been better served by trimming some pages.

 

Tricia and Alex are the two main characters. They were students at the same school, and later got married.  The whole book revolves around their time interacting with the Forest, a place known to all the kids to be haunted, and of course it contains the proverbial “cabin in the middle of the woods”.

 

As kids, Tricia and Alex went into the forest to try to rescue their friend Sam from his crazy mother, and they came out having failed to rescue Sam, and with no memory of what happened.  All they know is the Forest is a bad place.  As adults, they drive by the Forest one day, and their only child vanishes into the Forest.  Later, at the advice of their therapist, they re-enter the Forest to face their fears and achieve some closure over what happened to Sam and their kid.  Needless to say, the Forest is NOT kind to visitors, and Tricia and Alex are treated to a kind of dimension-bending hell where time doesn’t exist, entities want to kill them (or save them) and nothing makes any sense.

 

Although Tricia and Alex are the primary protagonists, the true star of the book is the Forest itself.  Collings does a nice job of making it seem to be a living, breathing entity in its own right.  The use of  never-ending fog, various shapes that appear, and flashing lights do a good job of piling on the spooky atmosphere, and the secondary characters that drop in and out (some offering hints as to the nature of the Forest) only serve to enhance the effect.  Again, this book isn’t written in the usual 100 mph fashion of Collings’s past few novels, it’s more of a grim, spooky atmosphere that relies on vagueness and a fear of the unknown to make its point.  Think the 2016 Naomi Watts film The Forest (no relation to this book) and you’ll get the idea.  When it works, it’s done very well.  The sequence with Trish and Alex going crazy trying to unravel the mystery of the stream that keeps switching flow direction is the best part of the book, and may be one of the best sequences Collings has ever written.

 

As good as the writing is, there are times when it feels like Collings went just a bit too over the top with the descriptions, and it does slow the book down a bit.  There are times when the reader might find themselves skimming pages a bit, just to get to the next part.  A bit more dialogue and a bit less exposition could have pushed this book to the next level.  It’s still a good read, just a bit of a notch down from his usual work.  Also worth noting is the explanation for the mystery of the Forest may be a bit difficult for some readers to comprehend.  It’s best not to think about it too much, just take it at face value.

 

Overall, another decent one from one of the most consistent authors out there today.  Recommended.

 

Contains: violence, limited gore, profanity

 

Reviewed by Murray Samuelson

Posted on January 30, 2021 by , Reply

Book Review: Lakewood: A Novel by Megan Giddings

cover art for Lakewood by Megan Giddings

( Bookshop.org | Amazon.com)

Lakewood  by Megan Giddings

Amistad, 2020

ISBN-13 : 978-0062913197

Available: Hardcover, audiobook, Kindle edition

 

After her grandmother dies, college student Lena discovers her disabled, neurologically impaired mother is unable to pay her bills or afford the medication she needs to manage her disability. So when she is recruited for a research study on memory for a substantial sum of money she pushes her reservations to the side, signs an NDA and paperwork stating her agreement to any procedure the study may require, drops out of school, and tells her mother and friends she has a new, well-paid job in the small town of Lakewood as an employee at a warehouse. Bizarre psychological testing, vaccines, pills, induced isolation, and hallucinations become normalized as different test subjects come and go. Realizing that something must be very wrong, Lena attempts to question observers and participants in the study and to find information online, but is blocked at every turn, until finally she discovers that unethical government experimentation on Black people has historical precedent. Despite her unsettling findings, Lena continues to participate in the study so her mother can keep her health insurance and pay the bills.

Obviously inspired by the Tuskegee experiment and other research studies that exploited Black people in the United States, as well as the Flint water crisis, Lakewood carries that legacy forward into the present, through generations of trauma. Ir is timely in its exploration of scientific racism, the drastic actions family members will take to help ill and disabled family members afford healthcare, and government gaslighting and neglect of the study participants and their own health.

Told from Lena’s point of view, this history metamorphoses into a personalized, hallucinatory, and terrifying situation that will appall, disturb, and shock the reader as the layers peel away. Highly recommended.

 

Contains: body horror, mutilation, murder, gore, violence, medical experimentation

 

Posted on January 23, 2021 by , Reply

Book Review: Hexis by Charlene Elsby

Editor’s note: Straight up, Monster Librarian needs $45 to cover hosting fees. I mean that is the absolute base. To revamp our static site would be a much larger cost but this is what we need to keep moving forward. We are one of the oldest horror fiction review sites online. If you find any benefit at all to what we do, I really need the financial support. I can’t do it all alone. Please use the link to Bookshop.org to purchase the books we review through our affiliate storefront or contribute through PayPal  using the red “contribute” button in the menu on the right to support our work. And now our review of Hexis by Charlene Elsby.

Cover art for Hexis by Charlene Elsby

Hexis by Charlene Elsby  (Bookshop.org)

CLASHbooks, February 2020

ISBN: 9781944866525

Available: Paperback, Kindle

 

Hexis, the slickly crafted debut novella from Charlene Elsby, is entertaining, while using almost none of the conventions of typical horror writing.  Linear stories, easy to follow happenings…they don’t exist here.  Instead, you get a down-the-rabbit-hole journey into the inner mind and musings of a seriously disturbed lady.  This is what might have happened if Aristotle and Timothy Leary had decided to pool their intellectual resources to create their own version of serial killer Aileen Wuornos.  Sound insane?  So is the book.

 

Hexis is written in an extremely vague, open-ended fashion, so much so that even describing the book is difficult, a lot of it will depend on how the reader interprets it.  It seems to be about a lady who is never even named, so for this review, she’ll be called ‘X.’  X had a crummy relationship with a man at some point in her younger years, so she killed him.  From time to time as her life progresses, the man shows back up in her life, so she kills him, again…and again…and again.  The End.

 

If only it were that simple.  Due to the vague way this is written, even determining what actually happens will depend on personal perception.  Is he somehow brought back to life each time, forcing her to kill him again?  Is she simply killing people who look like him, and her deranged mind fills in the blanks to make it seem like the same person?  Does the whole thing take place completely in her mind, and none of it really happened?  No explanation is ever given, and that’s the enjoyable part about the book; the story allows the reader to decide what actually happened.  The whole book is an introspective study of X: what she feels, her anti-social tendencies, how she perceives her reality, or lack of it.  The story does not move in a linear fashion; it’s more akin to jumping in and out of the river of time at different points, for a brief moment.  Some of those moments are loaded with graphic sex and violent, gory killings, and that’s about the only nod to conventional horror writing.  This is written to appeal to a certain type of horror fan: the ones who like a lot of psychology and musings, and aren’t as interested in fast-paced plots that zip from Point A to Point B.  It’s a very well written piece of work, it just works best for a certain type of reader.  The book works best if you read a chapter or two at a time.  Take a break, think about what you just read, what it means to you, and what you think happened.  Then, read another chapter or two, and prepare to have your cerebrum twisted yet again.  Trying to burn through this book cover to cover in a sitting or two won’t work, you really need to take the time to think about it and enjoy it.  Otherwise, you’re missing the point.  This is meant for you to ponder over, not have everything explained and handed to you.  That’s why it’s so much fun, you can almost mold the story to your own liking.  It’s an unusual way to write, and makes for an “out there” reading experience.

 

Also worth noting is the author’s ability to write long passages that at times, don’t really mean anything at all… but they sound really good.  It’s not just rambling for the sake of wasting pages, it’s done to sound incredible, without really saying much at all.  It’s as if the words are no longer words, they are musical notes that form a melody, and it’s a quite a melody.  You may find some meaning, or it may mean nothing at all, but the melody sounds beautiful.  It’s not something you find often in horror writing; I really can’t think of any other examples to compare it to.  Well done, and truly original.

 

Bottom line: if you are looking for something that is truly unique and different from a standard horror novel, and you want a mind-breaker of titanic proportions, this is the way to go.  If you prefer straight-ahead stories where all is explained, look elsewhere.  It will be interesting to see where author Elsby goes next; she’s got an original and enjoyable style.  Highly recommended, for the reader type mentioned.

 

Contains:  graphic violence, profanity, graphic sex

 

Reviewed by Murray Samuelson

Posted on December 9, 2020 by , Reply
First « 12345 » Last