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Into the Forest: Tales of the Baba Yaga edited by Lindy Ryan with a foreword by Christina Henry

Cover art for Into the Forest; Tales of the Baba Yaga edited by Lindy Ryan

Into the Forest: Tales of the Baba Yaga with a foreword by Christina Henry, edited by Lindy Ryan

Black Spot Books, 2022

ISBN-13 ‎978-1645481232

Available: Paperback, Kindle edition, audiobook, audio CD  Bookshop.orgAmazon.com )

 

This anthology collects stories inspired by the Slavic folk character Baba Yaga, a child-eating witch with iron teeth who lives deep in the woods in a house with chicken feet, rides in a mortar and pestle, and can either help or hurt visitors, especially women, for a price, and depending on her whim. All the stories are by women writers of horror.

 

Standout pieces include Stephanie M. Wytovich’s vivid poem “Dinner Plans with Baba Yaga”; Gwendolyn Kiste’s “Last Tour into the Hungering Moonlight”, a real estate pitch that draws neighborhood women into the woods; Sara Tantlinger’s “Of Moonlight and Moss”, a fairytale that isn’t; “Wormwood” by Lindz MacLeod, and “Flood Zone” by Donna Lynch, both with the witch as justice-bringer, in very different ways; “Sugar and Spice and the Old Witch’s Price” is a dread-inducing counterpart to Kiste’s earlier story; “Herald the Knight” by Mercedes M. Yardley is Baba Yaga’s love story; Jill Baguchinsky’s “All Bitterness Burned Away” is an interesting reversal of Hansel and Gretel; “A Trail of Feathers, A Trail of Blood” by Stephanie M. Wytovich is a heartbreaking story that explores the true meaning of sacrifice; “Baba Yaga Learns to Shave, Gets Her Period, and Comes Into Her Own” by Jess Hagemann reflects the teenage girl’s experience of being trained to conform;  EV Knight’s memorable and powerful “Stork Bites”, in which Roe vs Wade has been dismantled, leaving an unusual method of illegal abortion, with disturbing consequences, as the only resort for ending a pregnancy; “Where The Horizon Meets the Sky” by R.J. Joseph is a sort of “Monkey’s Paw” tale; the vivid and gruesome “Maw Maw Yaga and the Hunter” by Alexandrea Weis; and the descriptive, poetic stories “Baba Yaga in Repose” by Heather Miller and “Shadow and Branch, Ghost Fruit Among The Lullabies” by Saba Syed Razvi.

There is a lot of variety in approach and interpretation. If you have an interest in Baba Yaga, witches, folklore, or supporting women writers, this is a collection to enjoy. Recommended.

 

Reviewed by Kirsten Kowalewski

Book Review: Maggie’s Grave: A Horror Novel by David Sodergren

cover art for Maggie's Grave: A Horror Novel by David Sodergren

Maggie’s Grave: A Horror Novel by David Sodergren

Paperbacks and Pugs, 2020

ISBN: 9798680192276

Available: Paperback, Kindle edition Amazon.com )

 

Things not to do when visiting Scotland: Don’t visit a dead witch’s mountaintop grave; don’t light the grave’s cross on fire; and DON’T have sex on the grave with one of the local teenagers.  Why?  Because when Maggie the witch wakes up she is going to be extremely pissed off and want revenge on the tiny town below, since they cut her baby out of her and killed it and her a few hundred years prior.  Author David Sodergren is quickly carving out a niche as one of the better writers in the horror genre.

 

The plot is actually a bit more elaborate than that, but there is no sense spoiling the fun for the reader.  There’s just enough time spent developing the setting and characters to get you interested in them, and then it’s off to the races.  In this case, the main characters are the four (and only) teen-agers in the dying town of Auchenmullan, with a whopping total population of forty-seven.  Almost no one is ever born there, and people only move away, not to the town.  The teens have nothing to do but work an occasional menial job, have sex, get drunk, and hang out at the local bowling alley.  Heck, their theme song, to the Joan Jett melody, is “I love…t’get drunk n’ bowl!”  A dumb, wandering, American tourist provides some diversion, and on the trip to Maggie’s grave, all hell breaks loose.

 

As he did in his first two books, Sodergren keeps his foot on the gas throughout the book; there’s no slowdown.  He fills in the backstory of Maggie throughout the book, and the other members of the town are involved in the plot.  Thankfully, the mystery isn’t revealed in one long, drawn-out monologue at the end, but in pieces where appropriate, so the novel’s pacing doesn’t slow down.  Maggie is responsible for almost all of the bloodletting in the book, and she makes enough of a mess to keep gorehound readers happy: she has a habit of inventing new ways to mangle people when they are unclothed and in compromising positions.  She also isn’t constrained by the boundaries of the town, which allows the story to move outside of Auchenmullan at times for some variety.  There’s dark humor throughout, and, once again, the author comes up with a perfect twist for the ending that the reader won’t see coming.  The story also does a good job throughout playing on the classic Vulcan axiom: do the needs of the many truly outweigh the needs of the few…or the one?

 

It’s now a string of three winning horror novels in a row for the author. Horror fans won’t be disappointed by this one.  Recommended.

 

Reviewed by Murray Samuelson.

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