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Book Review: Night Shadows by Stephen L. Brayton

cover art for Night Shadows by Stephen Brayton

Night Shadows by Stephen L. Brayton

Black Rose Writing, 2024

ISBN: 9781685134143

Available: Paperback, Kindle edition

Buy: Bookshop.org | Amazon.com

 

 

Night Shadows fits perfectly in the B level ranks of horror fiction.  There is nothing really new or unique in it, but it’s sure entertaining, and enough to keep the pages flipping.  It’s a decent one for a few hours of horror escapism.

 

The ingredients that make up the story are all ones you’ve seen, many times.  Weird, killer creatures?  Got it.  Two mismatched law enforcement agents?  Yep, it’s here.  A book of black magic styled after the Necronomicon, and an eccentric professor to explain it all?  Check.  Plot twist at the end that can be guessed?  That’s here too.  All the usual elements, but still fun when used well, which the author does.  There’s enough go-juice in the writing to keep the reader’s interest and the pages moving, just not at the “up all night” (sleep all day) level.

 

The best parts of the book are probably the night shadows (the book’s antagonists) and the cop on cop interplay.  The shadows are nasty fun and do a good job wreaking bloody havoc around Des Moines, Iowa, as they multiply the city’s homicide rate exponentially over the course of a few nights.  The book is messy enough for the gorehounds, especially when the strip club gets trashed. The mismatched cops bit works well, with Detective Reznick’s sarcastic, everyday-joe attitude paired with Agent Campisi’s Vulcan-like demeanor.  Everything goes smoothly in the story, until it purrs comfortably across the finish line of its 236 pages.  If a bit of touch-up could have been used anywhere, it would be with the mystery element.  The idea of a house being present that has no business existing was excellent, and could have used some more elaborating.

 

Bottom line, In the Night Shadows is not a must-buy, but it is a fun read. if you have the spare cash, give it a look, and enjoy watching the city’s darkness tear apart its inhabitants.

 

Reviewed by Murray Samuelson

 

 

Posted on June 16, 2024 by , Reply

Graphic Novel Review: When I Arrived at the Castle by Emily Carroll

Cover art for When I Arrived at the Castle by Emily Carroll

When I Arrived at the Castle by Emily Carroll

Silver Sprocket, 2024 (previously published by Koyama Press in 2019)

ISBN-13: 9798886200409

Available: Paperback, Kindle edition

Buy:    Bookshop.org | Amazon.com

 

On a dark and stormy night, a cat woman arrives at the mysterious Countess’ castle on an unspoken mission. The Countess mentions that this attractive visitor is not the first to come on this mighty errand. She is offered a warm bath after being out in the rain for so long, for which she accepts, and this is interrupted by loud knocks on the door. The cat woman ventures out to search out her prey, peeking through a keyhole, where she sees the Countess shedding her skin. When the Countess catches her at the door, a violent and erotically driven confrontation happens between the noblewoman and the cat.

 

I appreciate Carroll’s attention to Gothic literature tropes in her sequential art. The structure of the story flows in such a way that the eyes do not have time to rest most of the time. The frenetic pace blends with the reader’s sense of unease as the cat woman explores the castle and is dragged along the halls by the Countess, and when the final battle ensues.

 

Something else I enjoy about Carroll’s work is her use of color, as she uses the most bold selection almost as another character itself. In the case of When I Arrived at the Castle, she uses black, white, and red. The red acts as solid backgrounds, text bubbles, the text itself, outlines of various figures, doors, flooring, skin, blood, and more. Spending a few minutes exploring the red in the pages was an interesting exercise in reading images without words.

 

If you are looking for a standalone Gothic horror graphic novel for your collection, you can’t go wrong with When I Arrived at the Castle. If you have not picked up Carroll’s Through the Woods, I encourage you to do that, as well. Recommended.

 

 

Reviewed by Lizzy Walker

Posted on June 1, 2024 by , Reply

Book Review: Fourteen Days edited by Margaret Atwood and Douglas Preston

Fourteen Days edited by Margaret Atwood and Douglas Preston

HarperCollins, 2024

ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0358616382

Available: Hardcover, paperback, audiobook, Kindle edition

Buy:   Bookshop.org  |  Amazon.com 

 

Fourteen Days is a collaborative novel written by thirty-six American and Canadian authors, benefiting the Authors Guild Foundation. It takes place during the Covid-19 pandemic in a dilapidated apartment building during fourteen days under a shelter-in-place edict in New York City. Yessenia, the new super, is stuck in the building without the resources to do her job and unable to get through to the nursing home where her father is a resident. The previous super left his things behind, including a journal with notes about and a nickname for each tenant.

 

Unable to stand staying isolated inside, the residents start gathering on the rooftop each evening to tell stories, each night over the course of fourteen days. Yessenia never refers to them by name, only their nickname, and she secretly starts to record the stories on her phone and transcribe them into the super’s journal.

 

The structure of people isolating themselves to tell stories during a plague reminded me of  The Decameron but the editors specifically say it is not… and one of the stories, told by a professor who attended a book group that read from it, acts as a critique that suggests that this is actually a counter narrative, including people from different ages, belief systems, backgrounds, and races: the people who, unlike the characters of The Decameron, don’t have the wealth to escape the city as the plague rages.

 

At first the book seems grounded in realism: maybe it’s not something likely to occur, but it seems possible, with events that did occur, like the inability to get through to nursing homes, and unlike many stories set during the pandemic, here it is integral to the story. But unexplained events start to occur. Is the building haunted? Did a spider girl really interrupt their gathering? What’s the noise in the apartment above the super’s?

 

The stories also get weirder, more confessional, and gruesome, such as the story of Elijah Vick, who lost his arm to an alligator gar, and a story of retribution against a rapist. Other readers may guess the ending sooner than I did, but it managed to surprise me.

 

Fourteen Days does not have many contributions from horror writers, but it does have many “literary” authors contribute strange, unsettling, and disturbing tales, including Dave Eggers, Tommy Orange, and Margaret Atwood. It is a haunted novel, and worth the time to untangle.

 

Reviewed by Kirsten Kowalewski

 

Posted on May 28, 2024 by , Reply
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