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Book Review: Daphne by Josh Malerman

Daphne by Josh Malerman

Del Rey, 2022

ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0593157015

Available:  Hardcover ( Bookshop.org )

 

Will Daphne continue the massive success for horror’s superstar author/musician/nice guy? 

 

Without spoilers, that would be a resounding “yes.”

 

Josh Malerman hasn’t written the same novel twice. That’s an amazing thing– he keeps on spinning his muse into fascinating circles, from the blockbuster Bird Box, to the utter weirdness of Unbury Carol, to the stunning Inspection. I won’t even attempt to describe Pearl. The bottom line is that he doesn’t seem capable of churning out a bad story.

 

Enter Daphne. At first, the story might seem to be your basic slasher novel. Yet in Malerman’s hands, nothing is rote, cliche, or a retread. There’s always something twisted that elicits something beautiful from what could easily be a miss in lesser hands.

 

Kit Lamb is in her senior year and a star on the basketball team. She’s fresh off the win in her latest game and contemplating her future. She has a quirk that adds something both unique and relatable to the teenage mindset. She shoots the free throw and asks the question she’s thinking.

 

She asks the rim about Daphne, a legendary killer that might be a figure from the supernatural or simply a regretful death caused by the previous generation, in a similar vein as Freddy Krueger. Of course, she makes the basket, and the story takes off from there.

 

Stories of the brutal killer begin to circulate and confuse the town. Who or what is Daphne? What does she want? Why does she only appear when thought about? As Kit struggles with her own destiny, one by one the basketball team begins to fall. Malerman allows us to contemplate the reasoning while ratcheting up the tension. The novel separates itself from the typical slasher by developing the characters of Kit and her friends.

 

Kit suffers from anxiety. Not the typical teen stress– true generalized anxiety disorder, which so many of us know well (raises hand high). It’s handled well here: Malerman obviously knows more than a little about the condition himself. 

 

Daphne is another must-read novel by Josh Malerman, written with the relatable prose of that King guy, but with a voice all Malerman’s own. Highly recommended.

 

Reviewed by David Simms

 

Posted on February 3, 2023 by , Reply

Book Review: The Raven by Dani Lamia with Gwendolyn Kress

 

Cover art for The Raven by Dani Lamia with Gwendolyn Kress

The Raven by Dani Lamia

Level 4 Press, Inc.

ISBN-13: 978-1933769707

Available: Preorder paperback, Kindle edition, MP3 ( Bookshop.org | Amazon.com )

 

I received a .pdf ARC of this from the publisher.

 

Rebekah is bullied horrendously at school, mostly cruel jokes originating with popular Coralie Renner and her friends. Things get much worse when Beka accidentally spills a drink on her skirt at a party and Coralie nicknames her “piss bitch.” Not only does she face name calling and humiliation but someone pees in her locker, destroying her textbooks, clothes, and sketchbook.

 

As a young child Beka had a dream friend, the Raven, who eventually stopped visiting but left her with a special edition of the works of Poe. She starts dreaming of him and carrying the book again. This time her dreams are vengeful. The students who have been tormenting her begin to appear one at a time as she watches, waking up the next day with real physical damage- a broken tooth or arm, hair pulled out in a clump. They claim the damage is from accidents but all remember bad dreams.

 

This wouldn’t normally be concrete enough for a police investigation, but after parents insist, a cop is sent to investigate, who happens to be Beka’s neighbor, Mike Wilson. Mike is a couple years older than Beka and has a crush on her. Despite her being a potential suspect and it being completely inappropriate, they start dating.

 

Meanwhile things with the Raven are escalating inside Beka’s magical Poe-inspired dreams. She asks the Raven, who has stepped things up and is now killing, to stop, and he refuses. She realizes he is not merely a dream creature, but a person who can invade dreams who has taken a personal interest in her.

 

I liked the premise a lot, but I felt like the story started to go off the rails with the police investigation and other plot threads once we got closer to the end.

 

Contains: bullying, brief description of rape, scenes of torture and murder.

 

Reviewed by Kirsten Kowalewski

Posted on January 8, 2023 by , Reply

Book Review: Unquiet Spirits: Essays by Asian Women in Horror edited by Lee Murray and Angela Yuriko Smith, foreward by Lisa Kroger

Cover art for Unquiet Spirits: Essays by Asian Women in Horror edited by Lee Murray and Angela Yuriko Smith

Unquiet Spirits: Essays by Asian Women in Horror edited by Lee Murray and Angela Yuriko Smith, with a foreword by Lisa Kroger.

Black Spot Books Nonfiction, 2023

ISBN-13: 978-1645481300

Available: Hardcover, paperback, Kindle edition

( Bookshop.org | Amazon.com )

 

I read an uncorrected ARC of this book.

 

Unquiet Spirits is a collection of 24 personal essays by women across the Asian diaspora, grounded in the authors’ family history, relationship to their culture, and the supernatural.

 

One of the takeaways from reading this is that the Asian diaspora is far from monolithic. Each of the authors has a distinct background and set of circumstances: one certainly cannot speak for all.

 

Some of the authors include Nadia Bulkin, who is Javanese-American, Geneve Flynn, who is a Chinese-Australian born in Malaysia, Rena Mason, who is a first-generation immigrant to America of Thai-Chinese descent, and Tori Eldridge. who was born in Hawaii and is of Hawaiian, Korean, and Norwegian descent, all of whom approached their essays differently.

 

The diversity of the authors and their choices of what each individual focused on is what really drew me in. That I read almost 300 pages in tiny print on a PDF is a testament to the quality of the writing.

 

I learned a lot from these essays: in Lee Murray’s essay on displaced spirits I learned that Chinese immigrants to Australia expected to be returned to China for burial, or become hungry ghosts, and from Nadia Bulkin’s essay that the terms “amok” and “latah” originated in Indonesia, to name just a few. The authors wrote about growing up feeling out of place, feeling unwilling or unable to meet expectations about filial duty, marriage, and motherhood. They wrote about hungry ghosts, fox demons, and yokai
They wrote about finding and using their voices.

 

I read this a few essays at a time. There’s a lot to think about in each one, so I think that’s a good way to approach this book. I highly recommend taking the time to do so.

 

Reviewed by Kirsten Kowalewski

Posted on January 7, 2023 by , Reply
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