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Book Review: Dear Laura by Gemma Amor

Dear Laura by Gemma Amor

Self published, 2019

ISBN: 978-1-797875-7-12

Available: Paperback, Kindle edition

 

There are a lot of horrors in modern reality that don’t require monsters and boogeymen.   When combined, child abduction and fear of the unknown are two of the most effective ones.  In Gemma Amor’s quick 120 page novella, she uses them well.  This is a fast story with no drag between the pages, although the minimalist style she writes with may be off-putting to readers who prefer heavily developed stories.   Those who get squeamish about child abduction and murder in their fiction may want to look elsewhere, although there are no gory details.

 

Laura is a 14-year-old girl, who has the misfortune to leave her best friend and first boyfriend, Bobby,  alone at the bus stop for five minutes.  She returns to see him violating the #1 rule for kids: don’t ever get in a van with a stranger.  The van leaves, and that’s the last anyone ever hears from Bobby.  It’s not the last Laura hears, though.  On her birthday, she receives her first letter from ‘X,’ who claims to have taken Bobby.   Thus begins a bizarre game of quid pro quo, where X reveals a little more of Bobby’s fate with each yearly letter, as long as Laura leaves a personal object he requests at a specified location.  Some of the objects are mundane, and some require a personal and painful sacrifice of a physical nature from Laura.  This continues for decades, until the story resolves in the final few pages.

 

The story is told in the third person, and only from the point of view of the protagonist, it never shifts away from Laura.  The narration throughout Dear Laura is a very stripped-down, bare bones type of writing.  There is little time given to description in this book, and the backstory to the characters is essentially non-existent.  Dialogue?  Forget about it, there’s only ~10-15 lines of dialogue scattered throughout Dear Laura‘s 117 pages.  This is very straightforward writing: it tells what is happening, and doesn’t elaborate on anything.  Does the simplistic style weaken the writing?  No, it doesn’t.  Considering the bleakness of the subject matter, the basic style that author Amor uses lends to the curiously odd appeal.   People always seem to want answers to everything in life, and when people read books, they don’t want to just know what the villain did; they want to know WHY he did it.  Amor doesn’t waste time elaborating on such niceties, as they would get in the way and slow down the story.  That’s why her sparse writing style really shines with the novella’s subject matter. Sure the reader will have more questions than answers at the end of the story, but often, that’s what life is like anyhow.  Considering how often people in this world do evil things for no particular reason, the overall lack of explanation for actions of certain characters in Dear Laura make it all the more interesting…and realistic.

 

For readers that want an interesting, quick-paced story with no wasted time, Dear Laura should land right in their wheelhouse.  Most readers should find this appealing, the only exceptions being people who require densely layered stories and no plot holes.  Recommended.

 

Contains: violence, child abduction

 

Reviewed by Murray Samuelson

 

 

Editor’s note: Dear Laura was nominated to the final ballot of the 2019 Bram Stoker Award in the category of Superior Achievement in a First Novel.

 

Posted on April 7, 2020 by , Reply

Book Review: Shapeshifters: A History by John B. Kachuba

Shapeshifters: A History by John B. Kachuba

Reaktion Books Ltd, 2019

ISBN-13: 978 -1789140798

Available: Hardcover

 

 

Do you know the origin of the word berserk?  Have you heard about a community of vampires in Buffalo, New York? Do you think of Jesus as a shapeshifter? These are some examples of information from the ancient past to the present that you will find in John B. Kachuba’s Shapeshifters: A History. This is a short book packed full of interesting details from myths and legends from around the world, historical research that sifts through the beliefs about shapeshifters in different cultures, and many brief stories of the exploits, drama, and dangers associated with these sometimes frightening creatures whether animal, human, or supernatural in form.

 

Kachuba presents a wide-ranging array of shapeshifters that stretches the definition of the word from physical transformations to psychological anomalies. He branches out to consider masks and costumes as ways people attempt to shape shift. Individual chapters suggest narrow categories such as the shapeshifting powers of gods, goddesses, and faeries, even gender transformations, but within the chapters, there is an attempt to pull in so many different categories, time periods, cultures, and religions that some sections become descriptive lists interspersed with storytelling and repetitive analysis. The vampire and werewolf chapters contain mainly information that will be familiar to most seasoned readers, but even so, there are fresh perspectives and analysis.

 

As Kachuba takes us back and forth through the centuries, he provides historical perspective and takes time to examine the origins of the beliefs and how they have been related to morals, values, education, and parenting. He notes the positive and negative influences that a belief in shapeshifting has had around the world and over time. The section on literature and the media provides young adult readers with information on related books, films, art, and television shows that will reveal how shapeshifting is still interesting to us today. Overall, this entertaining book is the type you’ll want to dip into according to your whims and use to further your own explorations on the topic. Recommended.

 

Reviewed by Nova Hadley

 

Editor’s note: Shapeshifters: A History was nominated to the final ballot of the 2019 Bram Stoker Award in the category of Superior Achievement in Non-Fiction.

Posted on April 7, 2020 by , Reply

Book Review: Eden by Tim Lebbon

Eden by Tim Lebbon

Titan Books. 2020

ISBN-13: 978-1789092936

Available: Paperback, Kindle edition, audiobook.

 

Lebbon’s back to nature horror again, which is where he shines the brightest. His novels The Silence to The Nature of Balance, set the bar for subsequent titles as Scott Smith’s The Ruins and the movie A Quiet Place. Lebbon’s skill at turning the natural world on its ear and creating believable, unique adversaries from both animal and plant kingdoms is unsurpassed.

Eden will undoubtedly draws comparisons to Jeff Vandermeer’s Annihilation, but Lebbon’s tale veers into thriller territory rather than the straight out weird  of Vandermeer’s  world (althoughthat’s a stellar read itself). The pacing of the story is akin to the best thrill rides, replete with rocket-fast action scenes, balanced with smooth exposition that avoids the trap of  miring the reader in information dumps.

In Lebbon’s near future, the world has become almost unlivable due to pollution and climate change. Sounds familiar, in our age of disgusting deregulation of environmental laws and reckless destruction of pristine lands. Lebbon never preaches but doesn’t have to– anyone living through today’s world and its frightening descent into chaos will likely be chilled by the “news” clips preceding each chapter that describe life in the “Virgin Zones.” These zones were set up in thirteen areas across the world to jumpstart nature and give environments human-free time to develop.

Of course, men are never smart enough to follow directions.

These clips often feature the “guards” of each zone, the Zeds, a force to prohibit intruders that bring to mind ICE and border patrols here in the states, and these set up the tone for each scene.

Thrill-seekers Dylan and his daughter Jenn, along with his team, enter Eden, the oldest, most pristine, and dangerous of the zones, to race through it. Jenn also has another motive– to find her mother, Kat, who abandoned the family years ago and entered the zone with her own team, which Dylan and Jenn quickly learned was ill-fated.

The search also expands as the characters seek a legendary Ghost Orchid, which is reported to have miraculous healing properties. When they find a corpse that is growing within a tree and through it, the dread and tension become as thick as the humidity of the jungle. Lebbon creates a world both claustrophobic and horrific, almost as if Clive Barker set out to rewrite the book of Genesis.

When follows is a discovery of creatures that grew unencumbered by human involvement, possibly to halt it from tainting this new world. These new organisms will do whatever possible to keep their home free from the infection of humans.

Dylan and Jenn’s journey is a thrilling one that incorporates the best elements of suspense, horror, and science fiction and surpasses the high expectations set by previous efforts.

Lebbon’s recent foray into thrillers and his Relics trilogy are on display here with stellar description and characterization that elevates it in a gorgeously painted world– with teeth. This could be our future. Highly recommended reading.

 

Reviewed by David Simms

 

Posted on April 7, 2020 by , Reply
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