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Book Review: Cure by Kali Metis

Cure by Kali Metis

Running Wild Press, 2022

ISBN: 9781955062312

Available: Paperback, Kindle edition

Buy:  Bookshop.org  | Amazon.com

 

Cure is an entertaining, fresh take on werewolves in today’s world.  It isn’t the standard “bite and claw” wolf-fest, but focuses more on their place in the present.

 

The plot is the best part, due to the nature and overall scope.  Luna Auber is an expert confectioner at a specialty bakery.  She has a normal life, except for the nerve problems and shaking she occasionally experiences.  Her brother’s suicide and last request lead her to Sweden, where she learns of her lycanthropic heritage, which explains her shakes– they’re the first step of her transformation.

 

The tale expands into a country-wide story involving two different werewolf societies, and that’s a big part of the book’s appeal.  This isn’t just one wolf or pack running wild, decimating an area.  Instead, the focus is the competing philosophies of the two groups, and how they believe werewolves should behave in the modern age.  Luna is the lens the reader sees both groups through as she learns more about them, and she  eventually has to choose a path.  This is a bit like a political thriller: it’s an unusual and intriguing way to write a werewolf story.

 

Luna’s character, with her unpredictability and her own doubts, drives the story effectively, She isn’t an anti-hero, but isn’t a fighter for justice either– at least not all the time.  She is emotional, impulsive, and makes some stupid decisions with her newfound abilities, like most people would probably do.  She sometimes uses her powers for her own benefit, without respecting the gift (or curse) she has been given.  This goes a long way towards making her a realistic character, and fits well with the overall narrative.

 

Some minor quibbles: the chapters are VERY short, and there is a lot of back and forth between two timelines in the first half of the book.  That might be good for the short attention span that so many younger people seem to have, but I found it frustrating.  There are also times where the sentences seem fragmented.  Tweaking that would have helped the flow of the reading.

 

Cure is a good story that takes the old  ‘howl at the moon’ model of werewolves and does something different with it. It’s worth reading. Recommended.

 

Reviewed by Murray Samuelson

 

 

 

 

Posted on December 22, 2024 by , Reply

Book Review: Welcome to the Splatter Club, Volume 3 by various authors

Welcome to the Splatter Club, Volume 3

Welcome to the Splatter Club, Vol. 3, by various authors

Blood Bound Publishing, 2024

ISBN: 9781940250632

Available: Paperback, Kindle edition

Buy: Amazon.com

 

If you read the other Splatter Club books, you know what to expect: gore, raunchiness, creativity, and warped humor. The third installment continues the tradition.  Overall, it’s very good, although not quite to the level of Volume 2: but that’s a pretty high bar to clear.  It’s certainly good enough to confirm the series as one that should keep running in the future.

 

There are nine short stories of varying length, plus four additional stories of a couple pages each that were winners in last year’s gross-out writing contest at Authorcon II.  The book would have been better off leaving those four out, as they really don’t add anything, and just read like an excuse to be disgusting.  Still, for readers that just want some barf-inducing material, they’re here.

 

The other nine stories are all good ‘uns, with Rachel Nussbaum’s ‘”You’re Mine Now” being the runaway winner for the best.  The hard-luck protagonist gets partly possessed by a somewhat nice demon, who proceeds to help him fix his life, in suitably violent and bone-crunching fashion.  It’s the interplay between the lead character and the demon that makes this roaring good fun: their conversations are priceless.  The whole ‘demon with a bit of heart’ is an angle that doesn’t get used often, it’s an intriguing one.

 

Stephen Kozeniewski’s ‘”Self Reporting” also deserves mention, for its wickedly humorous style, and re-doing of a horror trope.  We all know killing your family is bad, but this turns it into survival of the father, in a hilariously warped way.  This is definitely a new way to use a pandemic for a horror story.

 

Setting aside the four gross-out shorties, the rest are what make the Splatter Club series better than the rest.  There are no bad stories to be found. The quality does vary, but the absolute worst you can say about any of them is “pretty good..” There are no misses to be found.  I’ve reviewed a LOT of short story anthologies over the past few years, and it’s almost impossible to find one without at least a couple duds.  Splatter Club pulls off the trick of consistent quality throughout, and that’s pretty rare.  Not all the stories will blow your socks off, but there are none to skip over.

 

Drumroll please!  The BOTTOM LINE is…if you want creative craziness with plenty of bloody mayhem and twisted humor, you want this book.  Read it, destroy your mind, and carry on, till hopefully Volume 4 arrives.  Recommended.

 

Reviewed by Murray Samuelson

 

 

Posted on October 16, 2024 by , Reply

Book Review: The Wishing Pool and Other Stories by Tananarive Due

The Wishing Pool and Other Stories by Tananarive Due

Akashic Books, 2024

ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1636141794

Available: Paperback, hardcover, Kindle edition, audiobook

Buy:  Bookshop.org |  Amazon.com

 

The Wishing Pool is a brilliant collection of of horror and Afrofuturistic short stories centering Black characters, Tananarive Due’s first short story collection since Ghost Summer. While it’s mostly reprints, there are a few stories that only appear here, and the majority of readers will find plenty of work new to them.

 

The collection is divided into four sections: “Wishes”, “The Gracetown Stories”, “The Nayima Stories”, and “Future Shock”.

 

“Wishes” includes “The Wishing Pool”, a heartbreaking story in which Joy, desperate to restore her father from his dementia, makes a wish on the wishing pool, despite knowing it might have unpleasant consequences,  “Incident at Bear Creek Lodge”, which won the World Fantasy Award, and “Dancing”, in which  Monique, her recently deceased grandmother’s caretaker, is forced to dance to death after internalizing her thwarted dream to become a ballerina, among its six tales.

 

“The Gracetown Stories” includes five stories, all involving individuals from the fictional Gracetown, Florida, where racism, Florida weirdness, and the supernatural combine. Gracetown first appears in Ghost Summer, and the Gracetown School for Boys is the setting for Due’s Stoker-winning novel The Reformatory. Due does a great job creating an atmospheric Florida setting, laced with terror. in “Last Stop on Route 9”, Charlotte and her 12 year old cousin Kai drive out of a mysterious fog and pull over to a gas station to ask for directions… which could be the last thing they ever do. “Rumpus Room” follows a single mother who has lost custody of her daughter after she takes a job working as  housekeeper, living in an unattached “rumpus room” that used to belong to her employer’s deceased daughter. There’s something disturbingly wrong about the room, though… Due does a great job creating an environment of uncertainty, dread, and panic.

 

“The Nayima Stories”  are a pair of stories that follow Nayima, immune but a carrier of a plague that has caused mass deaths. “One Day Only” takes place during the plague, with survivors staking their places in an abandoned Malibu until they’re forcibly moved, taking a moment to come together. “Attachment Disorder” takes place after a vaccine has been discovered…. but that hasn’t made things easier for carriers. Due’s world-building is fantastic- you really feel like you are inhabiting Nayima’s world.  “Future Shock” contains three additional plague and post-plague stories, unrelated to Nayima’s world, taking place in the future. “The Biographer” is a disorienting story about Olivia, an elderly screenwriter whose prescient movie about a global plague made her famous, who has been assigned a very strange Biographer to tell her life story.

 

Short story collections usually have misses as well as hits. The Wishing Pool is the rare collection where every story is outstanding, Highly recommended.

 

Reviewed by Kirsten Kowalewski

Posted on September 20, 2024 by , Reply
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