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Book Review: The Fifth Doll by Charlie N. Holmberg

The Fifth Doll by Charlie N. Holmberg
47North, 2017
ISBN-13:978-1477806104
Available: Paperback, Kindle edition, Audible, MP3 CD

 

The Fifth Doll is an excellent fantasy novel for pre-teens and young adults.  Charlie N. Holmberg has written several novels about young heroines who face the trials and tribulations of life and magic.  The current novel gives readers not only an interesting plot that keeps them guessing, but also a bit of cultural history about what life might have been like in an early 20th century Russian village.

Matrona, the daughter of a dairy farmer, is unusual in at least two ways.  She is an only child, and, at age 26, isn’t married yet.  Her family and the carpenter’s family have arranged a marriage for her.  She hopes she will come to love her aloof betrothed, but she is secretly attracted to the potter’s son, Jaska.  Matrona’s village is unusual, too.  No one has ever left, except Slava, the tradesman.  Slava leaves the village periodically with his horse and cart, into the surrounding forest, and returns with goods from the outside world.  No one else knows what that world is like.

The weather is almost perfect.  The villagers have never experienced a freezing winter and have no concept of what snow is, but Matrona has nightmares of gray skies, rows of box-like houses unlike the village’s colorful farmsteads, trodden dirt roads and the sound of tramping feet.

Matrona accidentally enters Slava’s house and discovers a room full of nesting, or matryoshka, dolls.  Each doll has the painted face of a villager.  Slava has a secret plan, and Matrona is an unwilling part of it.  Each doll has power over its original.  Slava forces Matrona to open her own doll one doll at a time every three days.  When she refuses, he threatens her family.

When Matrona opens each doll, there are disturbing consequences.  Her secret thoughts are revealed to the entire village, she has excruciating headaches, and hears an inner voice chastising her for her faults.  Her vision is alerted.  She sees faint lines in the sky and snow for the first time!  Matrona can’t escape through the forest.  Each path she tries leads her back to the village.

If she opens the fourth doll and reveals the fifth, Slava’s plan will be complete and Matrona will be his substitute.  What is his plan?  What is in the outside world?  Can Matrona and Jaska save themselves and the village? Holmberg keeps the reader guessing until the very end. Highly recommended. 

 

Reviewed by Robert D. Yee

 

 

Posted on July 12, 2017 by , Reply

Book Review: Black Feathers: Dark Avian Tales: An Anthology edited by Ellen Datlow

Black Feathers: Dark Avian Tales: An Anthology edited by Ellen Datlow

Pegasus Books, 2017

ISBN: 9781861773216

Available: Hardcover, Kindle edition

This anthology of avian-themed fiction, edited by Ellen Datlow, presents a fantastic collection of short stories by some of the best authors in the horror genre. Each story features, as the anthology title indicates, birds that act as agents of death, sentinels, communicators, and more. The authors present the darkness the bird realm can represent, and present unique philosophical questions and uncomfortable answers in this collection.

Datlow has collected some of the best writers for this anthology. Authors include Sandra Kasturi, Nicholas Royle, Seanan McGuire, Paul Tremblay, Joyce Carol Oates, Richard Bowes, Alison Littlewood, Jeffrey Ford, Mike O’Driscoll, Usman T. Malik, Stephen Graham Jones, A.C. Wise, M. John Harrison, Pat Cadigan, Livia Llewellyn, and Priya Sharma.

There is not a single story in this anthology that does not linger with the reader. A struggling academic studying owls gets too close to his research subjects, much to his wife’s concern, and ending in a deadly discovery. What happens to him will change his family forever. A young girl obsessively counts the types of birds she sees throughout the day, and interprets the numbers to mean certain things will happen. She’s never wrong. A grieving widow begins to relate to the herons on her property, who help her deal with the death of her husband. The birds seemingly take care of her problems and provide her with a new sense of freedom. Rogue birds are being investigated by an occult group for helping humans cheat death. A twin returns home after her father’s death, reconnects with her sister, and finds out the terrible truth about herself after the funeral. These tales are only a fraction of what this collection offers to the reader.

While there is very little in the way of gore, there are definitely psychological horrors that the reader will encounter. Sometimes these can be more terrifying than any amount of blood and guts.

Datlow has won multiple Hugo, Locus, and Shirley Jackson awards and has received several lifetime achievement awards, including the Bram Stoker Award. She is adept at anthology selection, and I promise you won’t be disappointed with this collection. Highly recommended

Contains: brief sex, abuse, psychological terror

Reviewed by Lizzy Walker


Posted on April 14, 2017 by , Reply

Book Review: Relics by Tim Lebbon

Relics by Tim Lebbon
Titan Books,  March 2017
ISBN-13: 978-1785650307
Available: Pre-order, paperback and Kindle edition

Tim Lebbon is no stranger to penning genre-twisting tales. He has written the apocalyptic novels Silence, Coldbrook, and The Nature of Balance, and the more fantastic Fallen and Echo City. Now he has hit 2017 hard, with the first book of what promises to be a breathtaking trilogy. Equal parts thriller, horror, and fantasy, Relics showcases Lebbon’s skill at world building. A dark market exists in this world, a place where items that harken back to “The Time”, can be bought and sold.  The market is hidden from most of humanity, but those who do know of it seek to collect these artifacts, at all costs.

Angela Gough lives a quiet existence, a happy one, with her lover, Vince. When he disappears, she fears the mundane: a new lover, an accident, or even murder. What she discovers is almost beyond her comprehension; another world exists, and she needs to become a part of it to have any chance of retrieving him alive.  On her journey, she discovers unlikely allies: some are human, others are not. Figuring out who is deadly and who she can trust is a challenge, with everyone promising to be a savior to her lover, even while pursuing their own dark agendas. With her partners in adventuring, she begins a journey into the darkness. There, she discovers creatures hidden both in the shadows and right under our noses; some wish for peace, while others seek our destruction.  What Angela finds shatters her view of reality; in her quest to find her lover,  a new world that might spell disaster for humankind, is converging with ours.

In Relics, Tim Lebbon has created yet another wonderful world for readers to lose themselves in, one that will likely remind of both Gaiman and Barker, yet speeds along with the thriller pace of a James Rollins or John Connelly novel.  Lebbon’s writing, as always, seduces his readers, inviting them into his imagination, where they find themselves immersed in a fantastic, horrific roller coaster ride that ends too soon. Luckily, there will be two additional books to allow us back into this world, and complete the journey begun here.

Highly recommended. If you weren’t a fan of Tim Lebbon before, this will likely be the novel to change your mind.

Reviewed by David Simms


Posted on March 4, 2017 by , Reply
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