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Book Review: Dead Aware: A Zombie Journey by Eleanor Merry

 

Dead Aware: A Zombie Journey by Eleanor Merry

LAC, 2019

ISBN-13: 978-1999212810

Available: Paperback, Kindle edition

 

When does a zombie story become interesting again, after the glut that’s thicker than the goo between the undead’s ears?

Dead Aware  is a tale that’s enjoyable from start to finish, that was an unexpected pleasure. Told from the points of view of an undead couple, Merry’s story chronicles Clara and Max Jacobs from living to dead to undead to… whatever.

A strange virus – F.I.R.E. (Fever Induced Rapid Encephalitis) hits the world hard – and fast. The onset is pretty standard for a zombie novel,  but that’s just where the fun begins. Both Max and Clara succumb to the affliction while separated on different ends of Canada:  him in Toronto, and her in British Columbia. Through the help of Jay (a fascinating character that truly helps “flesh” out this story), Max recovers slightly and begins to speak again, think again, and remember his love for Clara.

Max embarks on a journey to find her, a trek wrought with obstacles that would stop most of the living. Being undead comes with its own bevy of obstacles, but he’s determined to get back home, without devouring any humans on the way.

Meanwhile, Clara is captured and tested by a military group that wants the zombies dead. However, Rachel, a scientist who knows something about this virus, is dead set on finding a cure, or at least a way to help the afflicted to “live” in society peacefully. The relationship between the two women brings yet another dimension to the novel that separates it from most of its kind.

Merry has written a story that deserves to be read, enjoyable for fans of the undead or simply those who enjoy their horror with a heart. Her writing is solid and intriguing. The characters ring authentic– creating empathy for the undead is pretty tough to accomplish– yet she pulls it off in just 154 pages. As this is the start of a series, it will be intriguing to see where the story heads next.

Eleanor Merry is a new writer to watch.

 

Reviewed by David Simms

 

Posted on September 12, 2019 by , Reply

Book Review: Slasher Girls & Monster Boys edited by April Genevieve Tucholke


Slasher Girls & Monster Boys edited by April Genevieve Tucholke

Speak, 2015

ISBN-13: 978-014751408

Available:

 

 

Slasher Girls & Monster Boys  is an anthology of stories by YA authors, including Kendare Blake, Jonathan Maberry, Carrie Ryan, Leigh Bardugo, and Marie Lu. Each story is based on a horror movie, television show, or fiction, or some combination. Strangely, the inspirations for the stories are only indicated at the end of each story, upside down in tiny print at the bottom of the page. Observant fans with a wide knowledge of the genre will probably be able to hazard some good guesses, but it really doesn’t matter– the theme is incidental, and the stories stand on their own.

Some stories stand out more than others. Nova Ren Suma’s “The Birds of Azalea Street” is a creepy tale about three girls who uncover a neighborhood pedophile. April Genevieve Tucholke’s “The Flicker, The Fingers, The Beat, The Sigh” riffs on I Know What You Did Last Summer, with an outcast girl from school as the victim. The awfulness of the teenagers, and the regret and memories of the narrator, as well as the eventual consequences, are what make this a horrific and tragic story. In “Fat Girl With a Knife” Jonathan Maberry gives us a great character with a taste for revenge who discovers a talent for zombie-killing. I would love to see him do more with this character, as it felt like this ended too quickly.  Megan Shepherd spins a story about a girl who outwits death in “Hide and Seek.”  In “Sleepless”, Jay Kristoff pulls the rug right out from under your feet, just when you think you’ve figured out what’s going on. This is one of the best stories in the book.  In Marie Lu’s powerful “The Girl Without A Face” a boy at the height of privilege is forced to face the consequences of raping a girl who died by suicide by her ghost. What part of this story is most horrifying is up to the perception of the reader. “Stitches”,  by A.G. Howard, while it required a significant suspension of disbelief as regards medical procedures, is an imaginative twist on Frankenstein, and a great character study of a girl whose abusive father makes a deal with a “collector” to have her amputate his body parts and replace them with others in order to pay the bills. Finally “On the I-5” gives us the story of a hitchiker ghost out for revenge.

Some stories didn’t hit quite the right note with me. Carrie Ryan’s “In The Forest, Dark and Deep”, is a surreal, disturbing, and bloody take on Alice in Wonderland. It’s one of the truly horrific tales in the set, but I’m not sure most teens will have the patience for the style. “Emmeline”, by Cat Winters, mixes up several movies and books to create a supernatural tale set in the era of World War I, setting up an uneasy Angela Carter-esque romance that can only end badly. While I enjoyed the story I don’t know that it has a contemporary enough tone to appeal to modern teen readers. “Verse Chorus Verse” gets into the price a parent is willing to pay for their child’s fame, and the build-up is freaky, but as it’s mostly told from the parent’s point of view, it didn’t seem to really belong in a YA anthology.  In”The Dark, Scary Parts and All” a bullied, grief-stricken girl is offered the power to do her worst, if she’s willing to take it. The relationships and decisions in this story just felt off.  “M” is a strange little story that seems to belong more in an Agatha Christie novel than in an anthology of horror stories. I wanted to like it more, as there was a very Edward Gorey-esque influence, and the choice of a blind main character was interesting, but it wasn’t enough. “A Girl Who Dreamed of Snow” seemed more like fantasy than horror, with a shaman girl  sacrificing the men who kidnap her to appease spirits who will end a plague and save humanity from extinction.

A strong majority of the authors in this anthology are women, which seems to be the case overall in YA horror right now, as are the majority of the protagonists. In the cases where the story is told from a boy’s point of view, he is not usually presented in a terribly sympathetic manner, and generally it’s difficult to believe he isn’t getting his just desserts. Very few stories stood out to me as presenting a woman with agency: “Fat Girl With a Knife” has a main character who’s already out for revenge against the school bullies when a zombie outbreak starts, “A Girl Who Dreamed of Snow” has a girl with a plan in place that she carries through, and the girl in “Hide and Seek” is smart, strategic, and tricky. I loved seeing these characters take charge.

While I found this anthology to be a mixed bag, it covers a lot of ground, and I think most readers, especially girls, will find something to enjoy. Recommended.

 

Contains: gore, violence, murder, torture, references to pedophilia, references to rape, references to suicide, body horror

 

Editor’s note: Slasher Girls and Monster Boys was a 2019 Summer Scares YA pick. 

 

Posted on September 11, 2019 by , Reply

Book Review: Her Body and Other Parties by Carmen Maria Machado

Her Body and Other Parties: Stories by Carmen Maria Machado

Graywolf Press, 2017

ISBN-13: 978-1555977887

Available: Hardcover, paperback, Kindle edition, audiobook, audio CD

 

Carmen Maria Machado centers women, and especially their bodies, in this genre-bending collection of stories. Her story “The Husband Stitch”, which appears in this book, has been generating buzz (and admiration) for years. Now that I’ve read it, I can say that it deserves the attention. Framed around the urban legend “The Green Velvet Ribbon”, anyone who knows that story will predict the ending, but, narrated by the woman in the story, there is so much more inside. “Inventory” starts out as a list of one woman’s sexual experiences, but against a background story of a spreading pandemic, it starts to take on a feeling of dread and inevitability.  “Mothers” is a hallucinatory story with an unreliable narrator that involves a fragmented relationship between two women that may also involve a baby. “Especially Heinous” recounts surreal, fictional summaries of episodes from 12 seasons of Law and Order: SVU. This particular story, even with supernatural elements, doppelgangers, and interpersonal drama, was far too long. I feel like in “Mothers” and “Especially Heinous”, Machado was experimenting with style, and maybe this worked for some readers, but not for me. “Difficult at Parties”  about the effects of trauma and rape on the body, mind and intimate relationships, is very different from the other stories, which have a slightly surreal or fantastic feel to them. Other stories include “The Resident”, “Eight Bites”(this gets into eating disorders), and “Real Women Have Bodies”.

One thing I really loved about this book was the way Machado writes about sex. Her characters aren’t passive. They enjoy sex, sometimes paired with love and sometimes casual, both with men and women. It’s so refreshing to find this! She does a skillful and fluid job of describing sex and passion. Her writing is unapologetically feminist and queer, but her way with words is lyrical and it all flows into the story. I kind of want her to write about the early days of Mary Shelley’s love affair with Percy Shelley after reading this!

Her Body and Other Stories is an uneven collection: it has a few outstanding stories, a couple of reasonably good ones, and some I don’t feel the need to revisit. Machado does a good job at creating a sense of the uneasiness and dread that come from, and are felt by, women’s bodies, and it’s a collection well worth visiting. I’m adding “The Husband Stitch” to my list of “favorite short stories”, and this is the perfect time of year to read it. Recommended.

 

Contains: sex, violence, descriptions of pornography, references to rape, domestic violence, eating disorders

Posted on September 6, 2019 by , Reply
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