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Book Review: Raising Hell by Bryony Pierce

cover art for Raising Hell by Bryony Pearce

Raising Hell by Bryony Pearce

UClan Publishing, 2021

ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1912979547

Available: Paperback  ( Amazon.com.uk )

 

Four years ago Ivy Mann and her friends Danny and Elena did a ritual to raise their friend Violet from the dead. Violet came back as a revenant and killed Danny before Ivy was able to stop her, and the ritual opened a rift that gives teenagers the ability to spellcast, bringing demons and hellhounds through and raising the dead. Ivy has been abandoned by her parents and Elena, her only company a cat possessed by the spirt of her Gran. Now nineteen, she works as a security guard at her old high school, detecting and confiscating magical contraband to protect other kids. In the case of Norah Ortega, she is too late to stop Norah from manifesting hellhounds in the school hallway. Although she defeats the hellhounds, she accidentally gives Norah a concussion, and Norah’s wealthy older brother Nicholas demands that Ivy be fired. Returning home, her Gran insists that Danny is there.

 

Then Norah shows up at Ivy’s place, asking for help. She is still connected to one of the hellhounds and it is draining her life force away. Nicholas follows shortly, and after surviving another hellhound attack, the three of them are off on a journey, chauffered by Nicholas’ bodyguard Andrews. Norah has to stay on consecrated ground, so Ivy, Nicholas, and Andrews go off to find the mysterious store where Norah got her spellbook, in hopes that the spell can be reversed, and discover Elena, who has found a way to bring Danny back because she believes that the three of them must all be there to reverse the ritual and close the rift.  In the meantime, she’s sold an awful lot of copies of the Necronomicon to unstable teenagers intent on raising the dead. What could possibly go wrong?

 

This fast-paced urban fantasy doesn’t make a lot of sense, but it is a lot of fun and it contained some unexpected surprises, including a political subplot that will probably be better appreciated by residents of England. There’s a fair amount of blood, dead teenagers, and zombie gore– Ivy is not a perfect heroine or superpowered, and she isn’t able to prevent collateral damage from taking place– but she’s funny (her machete is named Matilda), no-nonsense, and kicks butt.  Pearce did a great job bringing her character to life. Pearce’s teenagers are a mix of unlikable and sympathetic– regardless of her previous actions, Norah is grieving the death of her sister– which is pretty realistic, and something I appreciated.

 

The one thing that was really strained was Pearce’s attempt to push Ivy and Nicholas together romantically. Not only did he get her fired over his sister’s actions, but their own interactions weren’t romantic and they had no chemistry. It looks like Pearce has set things up for a sequel, so maybe that will be developed a little more, but that romance has a lot to overcome in order to be convincing. Raising Hell may be enjoyed by young adults who enjoy energetic urban fantasy with a dark edge.

 

Contains: blood, violence, zombie gore, self-harm

Reviewed by Kirsten Kowalewski

 

 

Posted on June 23, 2021 by , Reply

Book Review: Echoes of Home: A Ghost Story by M.L. Rayner

Echoes of Home: A Ghost Story by M.L. Rayner

Question Mark Press, 2020

ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 979-8553179045

Available:  Hardcover, paperback, Kindle edition ( Amazon.com )

 

Les Wills is alone in the world. His brothers aren’t keeping in touch, he’s just buried his mother, and he’s depressed by it all. One night his brother Jonathan unexpectedly turns up, gifts him the deed to a remote cottage in the Scottish Highlands, and tells him that if he wants it he’ll need to be there by the next evening. With nothing keeping him, Les optimistically takes off to his new property. Jonathan’s description of the cottage wasn’t exactly accurate, though, and instead of a sales agent meeting him with the keys to a cozy cottage, he discovers a dark, chilly, isolated residence, luckily with the keys in the door.

 

After an uneasy night in his new home, Elphin Cottage, Les drives into town for supplies and breakfast, where he meets Michael Coull, an elderly resident who warns him that the cottage has a “dark past” and that many locals have seen things on the property “they dare not speak of.” Although he is entranced by the beauty of the area, Les starts to wonder if he is seeing and hearing things: a mysterious figure at the edge of a brook, tapping on the window that has no apparent cause, flickering lights in an abandoned cottage, and voices; he has vivid, unsettling dreams.

 

Proving to have the worst survival skills ever, Les wanders the area on his own despite poor weather, an unfamiliar environment, a house clearly unprepared for winter, and the feeling that he is being watched and his home invaded in his absence by… something. His terror is enough for him to flee Elgin Cottage on foot in a blizzard through several feet of snow and through a wooded area in hopes of reaching the closest inn. While there, he once again encounters Coull, who finally gives him the details of Elphin Cottage’s dark past and how to free it of its hauntings. M.L Rayner took inspiration for the story and names for the characters behind the haunting of Elphin Cottage and the surrounding area from his own family genealogy. Although it takes place at the time of the Irish Potato Blight, the story is set in the Scottish Highlands, which I did not know was also affected.

 

Rayner’s lyrical prose brings the remote environment to life, and draws vivid pictures of the starving families and blighted crops during the crop failures that led to the deaths of the ghosts haunting Elphin Cottage. The cruelty of the landowner towards his tenants and the complicity of his guests is heartwrenching.  Rayner also does a great job of creating creepy and suspenseful situations and making the reader question the mundane: did the door blow open on its own, or was it something supernatural? Les, the narrator, is less compelling, and it’s only through the relationship he builds with Michael Coull that we get any sense of him.

 

The unique backstory and creepy, suspenseful atmosphere make Echoes of Home worth checking out.

 

Reviewed by Kirsten Kowalewski

Posted on June 11, 2021 by , Reply

Book Review: In The Woods by Tana French

cover art for In The Woods by Tana French

In The Woods(Dublin Murder Squad #1) by Tana French

Viking, 2007

ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0670038602

Available: Used hardcover, Kindle edition, paperback, mass market paperback, audiobook.

( Bookshop.org | Amazon.com )

 

 

In one of the sessions at StokerCon this year panelists brought up the Suburban Gothic. Does it exist? The suburbs probably don’t seem like a source of dark family secrets and horrific events to you,  but I live in the suburbs, and there’s a lot more hidden beneath the surface than most people might expect.

 

What better place to start exploring Suburban Gothic than with In the Woods (Dublin Murder Squad #1) by Tana French? Taking place in 2004 Ireland, this is a messed up story from the beginning. Twenty years ago, three twelve-year-old kids disappeared into the wooded area behind their subdivision, and only one of them was found, with his clothes covered in blood, unable to remember anything. The survivor, Adam Ryan, moved across the country, started going by another name, and eventually worked his way up though police bureaucracy to the elite Dublin Murder Squad. Now a new murder has been committed in the same place… is it possible it is the same person responsible for his friends’ disappearance? Rob’s partner Cassie is doubtful that he can be objective, but she keeps his secret as the two of them investigate the murder of a twelve-year-old girl found on a sacrificial altar at an archaeological site near the woods.

 

Rob, the narrator, is an unreliable narrator who disintegrates in front of the reader’s eyes as his memories start to unravel and the personality he’s constructed for himself since his friends’ disappearance begins to peel away. It’s unclear even how much of what he’s telling us is actually happening and how much his mind is playing tricks on him as he and Cassie track down leads on their current case, thinking that perhaps it will also lead to the solution of Rob’s friends’ disappearance. In the midst of it all the workers at the dig are up against a deadline as developers plan to dig up the site to start construction on a motorway, and (speaking from experience here) there’s nothing like corrupt developers with money on the line and government officials in their pocket to liven up surburbanites against new construction.

 

French does a great job with build ups, but I felt her follow through on plot points and building relationships was sometimes a let down, or confusing. Character development is confusing, possibly because we are seeing everything through Rob’s eyes and his perceptions are unreliable. Rob himself is not an especially likable character–and from the beginning pages we know he can’t be trusted– but I loved the friendship between Rob and Cassie and was not happy with how French handled it at the end. French’s language can be evocative and lyrical: the woods of the title appear a magical, haunted place, even as close to the rather prosaic subdivision Rob, and the victim he is investigating, grew up in.

 

Compelling and disturbing until the last few pages (there is one major, essential piece of the story that is never explained, leaving it with a bothersome hole at the endcover art for In The Woods by Tana French) Tana French has successfully evoked Suburban Gothic, the darkness that lies under the pleasant-looking surface of suburbia.

Posted on June 11, 2021 by , Reply
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