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Book Review: Hexis by Charlene Elsby

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Cover art for Hexis by Charlene Elsby

Hexis by Charlene Elsby  (Bookshop.org)

CLASHbooks, February 2020

ISBN: 9781944866525

Available: Paperback, Kindle

 

Hexis, the slickly crafted debut novella from Charlene Elsby, is entertaining, while using almost none of the conventions of typical horror writing.  Linear stories, easy to follow happenings…they don’t exist here.  Instead, you get a down-the-rabbit-hole journey into the inner mind and musings of a seriously disturbed lady.  This is what might have happened if Aristotle and Timothy Leary had decided to pool their intellectual resources to create their own version of serial killer Aileen Wuornos.  Sound insane?  So is the book.

 

Hexis is written in an extremely vague, open-ended fashion, so much so that even describing the book is difficult, a lot of it will depend on how the reader interprets it.  It seems to be about a lady who is never even named, so for this review, she’ll be called ‘X.’  X had a crummy relationship with a man at some point in her younger years, so she killed him.  From time to time as her life progresses, the man shows back up in her life, so she kills him, again…and again…and again.  The End.

 

If only it were that simple.  Due to the vague way this is written, even determining what actually happens will depend on personal perception.  Is he somehow brought back to life each time, forcing her to kill him again?  Is she simply killing people who look like him, and her deranged mind fills in the blanks to make it seem like the same person?  Does the whole thing take place completely in her mind, and none of it really happened?  No explanation is ever given, and that’s the enjoyable part about the book; the story allows the reader to decide what actually happened.  The whole book is an introspective study of X: what she feels, her anti-social tendencies, how she perceives her reality, or lack of it.  The story does not move in a linear fashion; it’s more akin to jumping in and out of the river of time at different points, for a brief moment.  Some of those moments are loaded with graphic sex and violent, gory killings, and that’s about the only nod to conventional horror writing.  This is written to appeal to a certain type of horror fan: the ones who like a lot of psychology and musings, and aren’t as interested in fast-paced plots that zip from Point A to Point B.  It’s a very well written piece of work, it just works best for a certain type of reader.  The book works best if you read a chapter or two at a time.  Take a break, think about what you just read, what it means to you, and what you think happened.  Then, read another chapter or two, and prepare to have your cerebrum twisted yet again.  Trying to burn through this book cover to cover in a sitting or two won’t work, you really need to take the time to think about it and enjoy it.  Otherwise, you’re missing the point.  This is meant for you to ponder over, not have everything explained and handed to you.  That’s why it’s so much fun, you can almost mold the story to your own liking.  It’s an unusual way to write, and makes for an “out there” reading experience.

 

Also worth noting is the author’s ability to write long passages that at times, don’t really mean anything at all… but they sound really good.  It’s not just rambling for the sake of wasting pages, it’s done to sound incredible, without really saying much at all.  It’s as if the words are no longer words, they are musical notes that form a melody, and it’s a quite a melody.  You may find some meaning, or it may mean nothing at all, but the melody sounds beautiful.  It’s not something you find often in horror writing; I really can’t think of any other examples to compare it to.  Well done, and truly original.

 

Bottom line: if you are looking for something that is truly unique and different from a standard horror novel, and you want a mind-breaker of titanic proportions, this is the way to go.  If you prefer straight-ahead stories where all is explained, look elsewhere.  It will be interesting to see where author Elsby goes next; she’s got an original and enjoyable style.  Highly recommended, for the reader type mentioned.

 

Contains:  graphic violence, profanity, graphic sex

 

Reviewed by Murray Samuelson

Posted on December 9, 2020 by , Reply

Book Review: The Plumbers by Terry M. West

A note from the editor: It is now December and Monster Librarian still needs to raise the funds to pay for our hosting fees and postage in 2021. If you like what we’re doing, please take a moment to click on that red “Contribute” button in the sidebar to the right, to help us keep going!  Even five dollars will get us closer to the $45 we still need to keep going at the most basic level. We have never accepted paid advertising so you can be guaranteed that our reviews are objective. We’ve been reviewing and supporting the horror community for 15 years now, help us make it another year! Thank you! And now our review of The Plumbers by Terry M. West.

cover art for The Plumbers by Terry M. West

The Plumbers by Terry M. West  ( Bookshop.org | Amazon.com  )

Pleasant Storm Entertainment, 2020

ISBN: 9781916084520

Available: Paperback (October 2020), Kindle edition (available now)

 

Once again, it’s ANOTHER story with zombies as the main monsters!  Thankfully, Terry M. West’s The Plumbers takes the road less traveled; this isn’t another story with the world fully decimated and a small group of plucky survivors trying to survive a zombie apocalypse.  West’s approach is more reminiscent of George A. Romero’s take on walking corpses in the film Land of the Dead.  It’s a fun, 110 page novella, perfect for a couple of hours of escapism.

 

The story concerns Liam and Pierce, two “average Joe” plumbers.  The undead (called ‘plauguers’) are scattered throughout the country, and people survive in three different zones based on risk of zombie attack: green, orange, and red.  The whole book is just one day in the life of  these two wrench jockeys, as they deal with traffic jams, irritable customers, blown water service connections, trying to order pizza, and undead mayhem, among other things.  It’s a quick snapshot of what life might be like for those that survive and try to carry on as normal in an abnormal world.

 

The story is a nice blend of action and character development, although it does lean a bit heavy towards the conversation between the characters.  That’s as close as there is to a flaw in the story.  A bit more actual plumbing would have brushed up the characters a bit, there isn’t a whole lot of pipework.  When action does happen, it’s entertaining enough, whether it’s Pierce bashing zombies in the head with his favorite hammer (dubbed ‘Uncle Fran’) or tossing pipe bombs out the vehicle window to decimate the hoards pursuing them.  The climax of the story is solid enough: it’s not edge of your seat excitement, but it’s enough to keep the reader turning pages.   There are moments of occasional wry humor, usually provided by Pierce.  He’s probably the only person who can be trapped in a room with zombies outside the door, and calmly read a book and fall asleep.  There’s not much in the way of backstory for the cause of the zombies, and in a short story like this, it isn’t needed.  It’s enjoyable to read a narrative that doesn’t bother trying to explain everything, but just tells what is happening at the current time, with any further explanation is happily tossed off to the side.  The gore in this story is kept fairly minimal, although there’s the occasional person torn apart or body part amputated.  This is one zombie story that concentrates on driving a simple theme along instead of splashing figurative blood all over the pages, a la Jack Ketchum.

 

The Plumbers is a nice, slightly different from the average, story to breeze through for a quick zombie fix.  Considering that novellas usually only cost around $10 for an actual paperback, it’s worth the minimal investment for an evening of entertainment.

 

Contains: violence, gore, profanity

 

Reviewed by Murray Samuelson

Posted on December 1, 2020 by , Reply

Book Review: Into The Forest And All The Way Through by Cynthia Pelayo

A note from the editor:

It is the end of November and Monster Librarian still needs to raise the funds to pay for our hosting fees and postage in 2021. If you like what we’re doing, please take a moment to click on that red “Contribute” button in the sidebar to the right, to help us keep going!  Even five dollars will get us closer to the $45 we still need to keep going at the most basic level. We have never accepted paid advertising so you can be guaranteed that our reviews are objective. We’ve been reviewing and supporting the horror community for 15 years now, help us make it another year! Thank you! And now our review of  Into The Forest And All The Way Through by Cynthia Pelayo.

 

cover art for Into the Forest and All The Way Through

Into The Forest And All The Way Through by Cynthia Pelayo ( Bookshop.org | Amazon.com )

Burial Day Books, 2020

ISBN: 9781735693613

Available:  Paperback, Kindle edition

 

Through a collection of terrifying portraits, Cynthia Pelayo creates a true crime portfolio in her provocative book of poems Into the Forest and All the Way Through. Each poem memorializes a particular child or woman who was murdered or simply vanished never to be seen again. Some of the poems describe the victim and some the scene of the murder. Others give us a snapshot of tragic moments in time or suggest the final minutes of agony and fear that these people suffered.

 

Pelayo’s choice of genre lends itself well to revealing the random clues left behind pointing to abduction, the details of clothing collected from people trying hard to remember something that might prove useful to an investigation, and the cataloguing of the victim’s habits, interests, and favorite places. All of these fragments paint a picture in the reader’s mind of the terror of those whose lives have been taken and of those left behind to deal with either the finality of death or the suffering of never knowing what really happened or why. There are also some poems in the collection that depict the murderers: their brutality, lack of human emotion, and even glee in frustrating the efforts of loved ones wanting to find a body to bury.

 

The most bone-chilling poems are those that describe the things that scare us the most – what we can’t see and what we can’t stop. There is the woman “found stuffed in a chimney” where different people had lived for years without knowing she was there or the man who worked at a home for the disabled and took the life of “a sweet young woman” “like a child, innocent.” The abducted “island girls” whose pictures have been discovered in the ground are “singing their mourning songs” “pleading come find / Me.” The poems in this book forcibly call us to be aware of the thousands of “forgotten and ignored women,” the dangers that still exist, and the problems that have gone unsolved, just as their murders and disappearances have to this day. Recommended.

 

Reviewed by Nova Hadley

Posted on November 30, 2020 by , Reply
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