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Book Review: The Serpent’s Shadow by Daniel Braum

Cover art for The Serpent's Shadow by Daniel Braum

 

The Serpent’s Shadow by Daniel Braum

Cemetery Dance, 2023

ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1587679322

Available: Paperback

Buy: Bookshop.org

 

Daniel Braum’s writing is always intriguing. His NIght Marchers and Other Strange Tales was an outstanding collection of dark fiction. The Cemetery Dance release of his first novel departs from quiet horror to regale readers with a chilling story that is well worth the read.

 

David and his family land in Cancun, circa 1986. He and his sister are looking for adventure, hoping to escape their parents. They find it in a nightclub where he meets Anne Marie, a beautiful young woman to steal the eighteen-year-old’s heart. Yet she isn’t seeking to kill him, only to befriend him. Her innocence and ties to the city only ensnare his attention even more.

 

The true adventure begins as they explore a Mayan temple. The cab driver informs them that not everything is ancient history. The teens discover the pyramid holds a group of natives, many of the modern sort, who ache to bring Cancun back to the olden days when magic ruled the land.

 

What ensues is a blistering dark fantasy story that brings the horror. Braum knows how to deliver solid horror: how to build the tension, slowly tightening the noose on the readers. The setting is rendered beautifully, both the tourist trap of the city with its saccharine glitz, and the rich culture of the Mayans and Mexicans, struggling to reclaim a culture lost

.

David and Anne Marie are fascinating in the depth of their characterization, as both stretch out in intriguing manners. The plot twists and turns, via the dive into the cultural dichotomy of past and current, as even the slightest characters contribute to the story. The less said, the better about this short novel, as the surprises creep off the page.

 

Braum paints a bizarre tale that leaves readers aching to read more of the writer’s work. Recommended.

 

Reviewed by David Simms

 

Posted on January 1, 2024 by , Reply

Book Review: Through the Witches’ Stone by Scott A. Johnson

Cover art for Through the Witches' Stone by Scott A. Johnson

 

Through the Witches’ Stone by Scott  A. Johnson

Timber Ghost Press, 2023

Available: Paperback

Buy:  Bookshop.org  |  Amazon.com

 

 

12 year old  Hadley and her younger twin brothers are stuck for the summer on her grandma’s isolated farm. It isn’t as boring as she expects: she learns she is descended from a long line of witches, and her grandmother starts teaching her magical spells. Hadley’s grandma has only three rules: stay out of the locked rooms upstairs, stay out of the woods, and don’t invite strangers into the house. But while the twins have each other, Hadley has no one her age to talk to, until one night she spots a girl in a white dress and sneaks out to meet her.

 

Although her brothers are uneasy, Hadley keeps it a secret from her grandma. There’s a magical barrier that prevents the girl from crossing between the house and the woods, so she lets the girl lead her into the woods, and they become friends. Then Hadley makes the mistake of inviting the girl into the house. She turns out to be a changeling, who kidnaps Hadley’s brothers and grandma. Hadley must go into the inhospitable woods alone and attempt to find and defeat the changeling to rescue her brothers and grandma. She saves a pukwudgie (a short creature with hedgehog quills down its back and a large nose that originates in Native American mythology) She is also accompanied by a duo of brownies she calls Tom and Jerry. Despite the unfriendly folk and forest, Hadley wins them over and eventually, after some really creepy and compelling adventures, rescues her family.

 

There’s a lot of grief work going on. Hadley’s father was killed in a car accident she blamed her mother and herself for. Her mother is grieving her sister, husband, and father. The pukwudgie is grieving his family. Much of this is about making peace and letting go of grief and fear, but it does not overwhelm this fantastical, scary tale reminiscent of Mary Downing Hahn’s books, the Spiderwick Chronicles, and Outside Over There.

 

 

Posted on December 31, 2023 by , Reply

Book Review: More Deadly Than the Male: Masterpieces from the Queens of Horror edited by Graeme Davis

More Deadly Than the Male: Masterpieces from the Queens of Horror edited by Graeme Davis

Pegasus Books Ltd., 2019

ISBN-13: 9781643130118

Available: Hardcover, Kindle, audiobook, audio CD

Buy: Amazon.com

 

More Deadly Than the Male gives us 26 tales of terror written by women between 1830-1908. Some of my favorite Gothic and horror tales were written around this time period. Davis has selected some great stories in this anthology by well-known, and some not as well-known, women authors. In addition to select stories, Davis includes brief biographies with information about the authors’ lives and challenges they faced as women writers, and about the stories themselves. While I enjoyed all of the stories in More Deadly Than the Male, there are several that stand out. Some of my favorite tales include the following.

 

The volume opens with Mary Shelley’s “The Transformation,” in which Guido, seeking revenge, makes a deal with a monstrous being to trade bodies. What will become of the man trapped in a monster’s body?

 

In “Lost in a Pyramid, or the Mummy’s Curse” by Louisa May Alcott, Evelyn begs Forsyth to tell her how he came to be in possession of an ancient and strange gold box. He tells a tale of exploration, colonization, greed, hubris, and the mummy of an ancient sorceress and mysterious seeds found in the box.

 

Edith Nesbit’s “The Mass for the Dead” is a haunting story about a couple who change their history because of a vision. Jasper mourns that the woman he loves, Kate, is to marry someone else. When she reveals she is not marrying for love, but for wealth, he still insists that she should break her engagement. Out of familial obligation, she refuses to end the engagement in order to help her father with his finances. When she shares her vision of a mass for the dead with Jasper, they believe it to be a sign of her impending marriage. Later, when he reveals his own vision to Kate, they find they may have misinterpreted the vision entirely.

 

“The Vacant Lot” by Mary E. Wilkins-Freeman is a lovely ghost story. The Townsend family has decided to move to Boston, and the man of the house has purchased a home for a more than reasonable cost, originally $25,000 for a mere $5,000. The family wonders what the catch is with such a low dollar amount. After a month goes by, they find out. There are strange happenings in the vacant lot next door, and shadows moving about with nobody to cast them.

 

Other authors include Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Mary Austen, Elizabeth Gaskell, Edith Wharton, Eliza Lynn Linton, Margaret Oliphant, Vernon Lee, Mary Louisa Molesworth, Ada Travenion, Edith Wharton, and more.

 

It’s not new or controversial to say that horror is subjective. When we read the Gothic or older horror tales of the past, we may not be frightened, we may not get the spine tingles we are looking for or may scoff at the fainting or other what we would deem as “quaint behaviors” of the heroines. Descriptions tend to be much longer and go too far for modern audiences. I, for one, love Gothic and older horror stories, thanks to my late grandmother Phyllis, so these early stories were great to read. I just recently heard about a subgenre called “cozy horror,” and I believe these would qualify. Also, not only would this be a good addition to a Gothic fiction collection, but it would also be an interesting addition to a Gothic novels course.

 

Highly recommended

Reviewed by Lizzy Walker

 

Posted on December 24, 2023 by , Reply
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