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Book Review: The Booking by Ramsey Campbell

The Booking by Ramsey Campbell, illustrated by Santiago Caruso
Dark Regions Press, 2016
ISBN-13: 978-1-62641-139-5
Available: Trade paperback, ebook edition.

The Booking is a book collector’s nightmare. Kiefer, an unemployed librarian, finds work creating a website for the proprietor of a bookshop selling rare (or at least old) books, called Books Are Life. This isn’t a well organized, pleasant place to work: it’s dark and dusty, and the owner, Brookes, is abrasive, secretive, and paranoid. Kiefer is expected to describe the books in a way that misrepresents their condition and post the descriptions online, and to work his way through the piles of disorganized books quickly. Brookes, mistrustful of technology, insists that Kiefer turn off the camera to his laptop, making communication difficult, especially after his living arrangements are disrupted and he is forced to move into the shop. Kiefer becomes obsessed with cataloging the books, rarely sleeping or leaving the store, and the atmosphere becomes more and more claustrophobic. Cut off from the outside world, he begins to buy into Brookes’ paranoid belief that he is being spied on through a chip secretly installed in his head. As the story progresses, the shop seems bigger and more crowded, a maze crowded with books that are closing in on Kiefer, finally trapped, alone, in the shop.

As a book lover who is surrounded by books, I found this to be profoundly unsettling. The treatment of the books, which are neglected, misrepresented, and disorganized, is disturbing. The atmosphere of the bookshop is closed-in, crowded, and labyrinthine; it takes a setting and activity I typically find enjoyable and transforms it into an extremely uncomfortable situation that makes me want to get as far away from crowded bookshelves as possible. Those who aren’t avid readers still will experience the creeping dread that accompanies Kiefer’s growing paranoia and isolation, but people who surround themselves with books will feel the impact the most. Highly recommended for lovers of psychological horror and of books.

Note: The Booking is the third novella from the Black Labyrinth imprint of Dark Regions Press. The Black Labyrinth imprint is a series of psychological horror novellas, illustrated by artist Santiago Caruso. The copy I reviewed is an advance copy that did not include the artwork. However, based on Caruso’s previous work, I am sure it will make an excellent complement to the story.

Posted on March 10, 2016 by , Reply

Book Review: The Casquette Girls by Alys Arden


The Casquette Girls by Alys Arden
Skyscape Books, 2015
ISBN-13: 978-1503946545
Available: Hardcover, paperback, Kindle edition, Audible

New Orleans, with its rich history and varied people, reeks of life, death, and mystery, intriguing both writers and readers. Anne Rice, Heather Graham, and  Poppy Z. Brite have captured the wonders and horrors well: the Big Easy is more than a colorful backdrop, it is a living, breathing character integral to their stories.

New Orleans native Alys Arden, with her debut novel, The Casquette Girls, succeeds at this as well: she knows her city, and her audience will experience much more than the glitz of Bourbon Street. While it’s being marketed as a YA title, this is a great story that will intrigue readers of all ages and from many genres. The horror burns sweeter than a midnight car bomb on St. Louis Street, the romance as bitter  and satisfying as the coffee at Café Du Monde. The mystery tugs the reader  in deeper than the voodoo shops lure tourists off the beaten paths.

Adele is a sixteen-year-old resident of New Orleans who returns from vacation after Hurricane Katrina has destroyed the city. Now home, she finds that New Orleans has become a dark and dangerous place, as bodies begin to turn up in the streets. Adele uncovers secrets in her attic, locked up for over three centuries, that unleash monstrous results into her life and town. The lives of her friends, schoolmates, and father are in peril,  and Adele soon realizes that there is much more going in the city, and with her friends, than she knew.  She encounters strangers who may be the key to survival, and finds herself torn between two boys, each with a dangerous past.

While the plot seems to follow along standard lines for YA paranormal romance, there is much more to the story, and it is worth your time to allow the story to unfold at a smooth but suspenseful pace. Discovering the Casquette Girls themselves, and their stories, alone is worth the journey.

Arden has produced an excellent debut novel, and with writing as polished as this, we can expect to see much more from her in the future. Highly recommended.

Reviewed by David Simms

Posted on March 5, 2016 by , Reply

Women in Horror Month: 5 Books By Women Writers That Horror Readers Might Not Know (But Should)

Far be it from me to dictate an entire canon of works (at least today) but there are definitely some books by women authors that deserve to be known better than they are, and they often get shorted because the story of Mary Shelley and Frankenstein is pretty amazing, so everybody writes about her. There are lots of great women writers who aren’t Mary Shelley, though, and I can only claim to have read a few of them, despite my intention to do better. Here are some books you might have heard of but passed on for some reason– or maybe they are unknown to you.

1.) Beloved by Toni Morrison.

Toni TheMorrison is a great American writer, so I hope most people at least recognize her name. Beloved was made into a movie, so it’s you may at least know of that. The story concerns Sethe, an escaped slave, living in Ohio many years after her escape, in a house haunted by a ghostly child.  To say more than that is to give away what was (to me, anyway) the breathtaking, visceral shock of some of  the book’s later events. Morrison uses a nonlinear writing style, and the events move back and forth in time, so this is not a quick, light, beach read. But it is certainly one that will leave an impact.

2.)  The Keep by Jennifer Egan

The Keep is a nested story, with a story about a character situated in a Gothic trope– visiting an acquaintance who is renovating a castle with Gothic terrors and trappings, which is also a playground for bored people who want to imagine they are living in the Gothic… and all of this is framed by yet another story. The Keep does not tie up all of its loose ends, so if that bothers you, be warned. It’s really hard to describe this in just a few sentences without giving up some of the surprises in the plot, but suffice it to say that it is suitably creepy and unsettling. I’d save this for when you have plenty of time.

3.) The Castle of Los Angeles by Lisa Morton

The Castle of Los Angeles won a Stoker award in 2010, and was mentioned in the second edition of The Readers’ Advisory Guide to Horror. Two of our reviewers chose to review it independently of each other, and both of the reviews were glowing. Despite her reputation as a horror writer, though, it is possible that you might not have come across this book, because it was published by a small press, Gray Friar Press, that does not (to my knowledge) seem to exist anymore. Cemetery Dance has republished it as an ebook, but hard copies appear to be only available used, so you would probably have to be looking for it specifically, or be blessed with serendipity, to come across it. The Castle of Los Angeles  takes place in a haunted theater, the Castle. While it uses many Gothic tropes, Morton makes them her own, and her eccentric mix of characters and their reasons for living in the Castle make it a unique contribution to the haunted house genre. It is a treasure for lovers of quiet horror.

4.) Doomsday Book by Connie Willis

If you are purely a horror reader you might not have come across the brilliant Connie Willis, who is primarily known as a science fiction writer. Among her other works, she has written a loosely connected series of books about historians in an alternate future who use time travel in their research. In Doomsday Book, history student Kivrin’s research trip to the Middle Ages is derailed when the tech running the machine collapses, having entered incorrect coordinates that send her to the time of the Black Death. The tech turns out to have contracted an unknown and deadly disease that spreads rapidly through the area, and the time travel lab is quarantined due to suspicion that the disease escaped from the past when Kivrin went through, trapping her there. This isn’t horror in the traditional sense, but the reader is a witness, through Kivrin, to the despair and terror caused by the Black Death. The parallel plot of the quarantine during the spread of the unknown disease in the future is more science-fictional, but Willis does not pull her punches, and she doesn’t seem to have compunctions about killing off characters you’ve grown to care about. The story builds over the course of the novel, and it is exhaustive in its detail, so you have to be patient, but it is so worth poking your toe outside the horror genre to delve into the horror and consequences of the spread of an epidemic disease.

5.) Nameless: The Darkness Comes by Mercedes M. Yardley

While she has published short stories and novellas before, this is Mercedes Yardley’s debut novel, and the first book in her Bone Angel trilogy. It’s relatively new, having just been released in December. We just reviewed it here, and when I asked my reviewers for a book by a top woman writer in the horror genre, this is the one that was suggested.  Luna, the protagonist, can see and speak to demons. When her niece is kidnapped by Luna’s brother’s ex-wife, a demon named Sparkles, the game is on! Described as “whimsical”, “gritty”, and “macabre”,  this novel, while technically an urban fantasy, gets high marks from lovers of horror as well.

 

I hope you’ve had a great month of reading women horror writers this month– but don’t stop now! Enjoy!

Posted on February 29, 2016 by , Reply
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