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Book Review: Birds in the Black Water by Kodie van Dusen

Birds in the Black Water by Kodie Van Dusen

Big Cheese Books, 2022

 ISBN: 978-1-7782271-0-3

Available: Paperback,  Kindle edition ( Amazon.com )

 

Note: contains some spoilers.

Birds in the Black Water by Kodie Van Dusen is a supernatural and psychological thriller. Neviah, a clinical psychologist,  and her younger brother Jaak, are gifted with the ability to inhabit both the real world and the Other Side. The latter is a dangerous, often malevolent, dark version of our world. Neviah and Jaak exist in the interface between the two worlds. Their nightmares, or a troubled person’s touch, can propel them into the Other Side where disturbing memories from their past or the other person’s past emerge. The touch often wounds them. Staying in the Other Side too long can kill them. They aren’t safe even in the real world; koels, resembling giant, black ravens or cuckoos with long tendrils for wings, appear around them, especially when danger is close.

 

 

Neviah’s and Jaak’s gift alienates them from others. Neviah has no close friends and is estranged from her aloof father and deluded mother. Her mother, who was pregnant with Jaak, crashed a truck and horse trailer. Traumatized by the accident, she has become a religious zealot, who dotes on Jaak and is cold to her strange daughter.

 

 

When Jaak succumbs to the Other Side and kills himself. Neviah thinks she could have prevented his death. She decides to become a psychologist and help troubled families. She shares her secrets with her boyfriend Ezra after Jaak’s death. They marry and buy a large farm where Neviah houses and counsels parents and their children. But Ezra is worried when Neviah uses a client’s touch to uncover memories from the Other Side and he sees Neviah’s injuries.

 

 

On a wintry night, a half-frozen, six-year old boy knocks on their cabin door. Gabriel is searching for his mother Martha. Ten years-ago during her psychology apprenticeship, Neviah failed to help a troubled, teenaged Martha escape from her drug-addicted mother and abusive father. Guilt makes Neviah search for Martha, but longing for a child of her own complicates her motives. The threads of the complicated plot come together. Why did Martha abandon her son? Will Neviah’s marriage survive? Will Neviah’s gift and guilt about Jaak’s death destroy her career and even kill her?

 

 

The author, Kodie Van Dusen uses Neviah’s voice to narrate the story. The writing style is straightforward. Van Dusen alternates events in the past and present, but develops the plot clearly. Her description of the Other Side is interesting. Her portrayal of Neviah’s emotions, e.g. her grief and guilt about Jaak’s death is moving.  

 

 

Van Dusen is a clinical psychologist. Her description of the conflict between Neviah’s personal interests and her professional obligations is particularly effective. Her novel is appropriate for and will be enjoyed by teens and adults.

 

Highly recommended

 

Contains: suicide, mild gore

 

Reviewed by Robert D. Yee

 

 

 

 

 

 

Posted on October 18, 2022 by , Reply

Book Review: And Then I Woke Up by Malcolm Devlin

 

 

And Then I Woke Up by Malcolm Devlin. (Bookshop.org  | Amazon.com)

Tor.com. 2022

ISBN: ‎978-1250798077

Available: Paperbsck, Kindle edition.

 

 

This was an PDF ARC provided to me by Ellen Datlow so changes may have been made prior to publication.

 

And Then I Woke Up has an unreliable narrator, a middle-aged man named Spence, who (we are told) is at a mental facility for people who have been “infected” by a virus that caused a mass delusion that made them believe people around them were flesh-eating zombies, reinforced by a media narrative, and by infected charismatic leaders who emerged from the chaos to take control of small groups of “survivors”.

 

Spence notices Leila, a new patient, is not fitting in. After accidentally seeing a snippet of a news report she decides to break out and Spence goes with her. We learn Spence’s story– or do we? The story he remembers is not the one other infected people remember, or the one the Army reported, or the account in the news, or the one the families of people he attacked remember. And only one of those stories is the one the therapist wants to hear him repeat.

 

Leila wants to return to join her group because it was easier to understand the world in black and white, but needs a different narrative to justify her survival so Spence comes up with one, or maybe a second, or maybe a third– he’s not sure what actually happens, although he hopes her story will be enough to influence the narrative positively so infected, cured, and uninfected can coexist peacefully.

 

But Spence’s imagination will no longer allow him to believe in a single narrative and as he dreams of both past events and possible futures he loses his grip on reality.

 

What’s interesting about Spence is his lack of interest in the media or politics. His reaction to the infection establishes him as a “believer” fully enough that it completely alters his perceptions despite that. Rather than simply a story about a zombie invasion or pandemic, Devlin has written a critique of how narrative can be shaped to influence even people who don’t start out with an interest in it.

 

And Then I Woke Up is a short piece that will appeal to readers who appreciate unreliable narrators, but those looking for a straightforward narrative will want to look elsewhere.

 

There’s a lot about storytelling, narrative, othering, grief, guilt, and what makes a believer. This felt political, but makes its mark on a very personal, heartbreaking, and terrifying level.

 

Reviewed by Kirsten Kowalewski

Posted on September 8, 2022 by , Reply

Book Review: The Girl and the Ghost by Hanna Alkaf

cover art for The Girl and the Ghost by Hanna Alkaf

The Girl and the Ghost by Hanna Alkaf

Harper, 2020

ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0062940957

Available: Hardcover, Kindle edition, audiobook  ( Bookshop.org  | Amazon.com )

 

 

When a dark witch who is the master of a pelesit dies, the pelesit must go in search of a new master.

 

A pelesit is a Malaysian ghost in the shape of a grasshopper that has been bound to a master, created through dark magic and used to give the master power and protection. The master uses it for monetary gain, directing the pelesit to create trouble, so its victims will pay for solutions. It must feed regularly on the blood of its master and is bound to its master and the following generations. Without a binding, it causes chaos that can’t be controlled. This pelesit knows he needs to be controlled to keep darkness from completely taking him over.

 

When the pelesit finds the witch’s closest relatives, he discovers the witch’s daughter has shut herself off completely from the supernatural world. Her young daughter, Suraya, is another story. Unlike her grandmother, she makes the world a brighter place, and he binds her to him with three drops of blood in her sleep. Once the pelesit is bound to her, she changes: trouble seems to follow her, but nothing bad ever happens to her, and people start to avoid her. She names the pelesit Pink, and he becomes her only friend. But he is a dark spirit of chaos and it is a struggle for him to hold it back, especially when he perceives a threat to Suraya, and later when she does make her own friends, out of jealousy.

 

As time passes, struggle between Suraya’s brightness, widening world, and increasing independence and Pink’s darkness, and possessiveness can only lead to more and more terrible things, and also many, many Star Wars references. If insects and maggots bother you, be warned.

 

According to the author, this is a retelling of a Malaysian folktale, but she has very much made it her own. This story about family, friendship, grief, and the supernatural is compelling, unusual, occasionally funny, and sometimes disturbing, Seeing events from Pink’s point of view provides a more nuanced look than if we only witnessed events from the outside, and the author’s careful description of Malaysian ghosts, spirits, and exorcisms, contributes significantly to world-building. Highly recommended for grades 4-8.

 

Contains: child death, mutilation, insects and maggots, blood

 

Reviewed by Kirsten Kowalewski

 

Posted on November 12, 2021 by , Reply
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