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Stoker Review Project: Links to Reviews

 

Monster Librarian has been reviewing the nominees on the final ballot for the Bram Stoker Award and they have been coming in steadily! Here’s a list of the nominees for each category with links to our reviews so far. I’ll be updating this as new ones come in, so check back regularly!

Interested in purchasing any of these? Here’s a link to Stoker Nominees at Monster Librarian’s Bookshop Page.

 

5/22: Grotesque: Monster Stories by Lee Murray has a link added in the category of Superior Achievement in a Fiction Collection.

5/20: Children of the Fang and Other Genealogies by John Langan has a link added in the category of Superior Achievement in a Fiction Collection.

5/19: The Return by Rachel Harrison has a link added in the category of Superior Achievement in a First Novel! We’ve reviewed all the first novels now, scroll down to the links and see what we had to say!

5/19: True Story by Kate Reed Petty has a link added in the category of Superior Achievement in a First Novel.

5/19: Ghost Wood Song by Erica Waters has a link added in the category of Superior Achievement in a Young Adult Novel! We’ve got all the books in this category reviewed now!

5/17: The Taxidermist’s Lover by Polly Hall has a link added in the category of Superior Achievement in a First Novel.

5/16: Tome by Ross Jeffrey has a link added in the category of Superior Achievement in a First Novel.

5/15: Women Make Horror: Filmmaking, Feminism, Genre edited by Alison Peirse has a link added in the category of Superior Achievement in Non-Fiction.

5/12: Devil’s Creek by Todd Keisling has a link added in the category of Superior Achievement in a Novel.

5/11: Bent Heavens by Daniel Kraus has a link added in the category of Superior Achievement in a Young Adult Novel.

5/9: End of the Road by Brian Keene has a link added in the category of Superior Achievement in Non-Fiction.

5/7: The Bone Carver (Night Weaver #2) by Monique Snyman has a link added in the category of Superior Achievement in Young Adult Fiction.

5/4: Cradleland of Parasites by Sara Tantlinger has a link added in the category of Superior Achievement in Poetry.

5/4:  Spectre Deep 6 by Jennifer Brody and Jules Rivera has a link added in the category of Superior Achievement in a Graphic Novel.

5/3: Road of Bones by Rich Douek, art by Alex Cormack has a link added in the category of Superior Achievement in a Graphic Novel.

4/22: The Masque of the Red Death  by Steven Archer has a link added in the category of Superior Achievement in a Graphic Novel.

4/22:  Worst Laid Plans: An Anthology of Vacation Horror  has a link added in the category of Superior Achievement in an Anthology

4/5:  Two Truths and a Lie by Sarah Pinsker has a link added in the category of Superior Achievement in Long Fiction.

 

 

Superior Achievement in a Novel

Superior Achievement in a First Novel

Superior Achievement in a Graphic Novel

Superior Achievement in a Young Adult Novel

Superior Achievement in Long Fiction

Superior Achievement in a Fiction Collection

Superior Achievement in a Poetry Collection

Superior Achievement in an Anthology

Superior Achievement in Non-Fiction

Posted on April 3, 2021 by , Reply

Book Review: The Apocalypse Strain by Jason Parent

cover art for The Apocalypse Strain by Jason Parent

The Apocalypse Strain by Jason Parent

Flame Tree Press, 2020

ISBN-13: 978-1787583535

Available: Hardcover, paperback, Kindle edition

 

Back in 2014, French scientists made an ancient virus found in Siberian permafrost infectious again after 30,000 years. This real-life event raised the possibility that diseases we thought were long gone might reappear. Add to that a post-pandemic world in which it seems as though science fiction has become real life, yet again, and we have to wonder what the future will hold. Our collective literary imagination will now need to take us to a new level of horror fiction contagion. Who better to infect us than Jason Parent in The Apocalypse Strain?

 

In this exciting and shockingly plausible book, a group of international scientists are under attack at a remote site that will self-destruct in case of an accident. Their human bodies are invaded, consumed, and incorporated into living, moving blobs of squirmy flesh when their research process goes terribly wrong. Within the facility, a woman with MS mysteriously becomes mobile, infected plants grow with abandon, a man marked with a black cross on his forehead seems bent on terrorism, many people die violently, and it becomes very difficult to tell who or what can be trusted. Everyone is focused on containing and exterminating the hybrid monsters, but will some humans escape only to spread doom outside the lab?

 

The action is nonstop in The Apocalypse Strain. With relentless intensity, Parent’s fantastic descriptions of the ever-morphing threat and the horrible deaths suffered by the victims are disgustingly graphic and amazing in their variety. As for the characters, they are not just stereotypes of people in their profession. We get to know the personal histories of some who are lured to destruction by actual, whispering voices from their past. Others are revealed by their fleeting thoughts or visceral reactions to their coworkers, details that are startlingly normal in contrast to the terrible circumstances in which they are trapped.

 

As the apocalypse seems imminent, we realize that this tale is not really the end of anything. If you like speculating about where science can take us and how science can potentially end us, The Apocalypse Strain will give you plenty to ponder. Recommended.

 

Reviewed by Nova Hadley

 

 

 

 

 

Posted on April 3, 2021 by , Reply

Book Review: The Cuckoo Girls by Patricia Lillie

cover art for The Cuckoo Girls by Patricia Lillie

The Cuckoo Girls by Patricia Lillie  ( Bookshop.org | Amazon.com )

Trepidatio Publishing, 2020

ISBN-13 : 978-1950305247

Available: Paperback

 

The Cuckoo Girls is a collection of eighteen stories (three are “drabbles” and counted as one in the table of contents), eight of which are original to the collection, and includes “Abby”, a story narrated by the mother of an autistic teenage girl that appears to be an early version of the beginnings of  Lillie’s debut novel The Ceiling Man (I wish she had mentioned this in her story notes as I was not familiar with the novel). I’m glad Lillie expanded the story as the novel apparently includes Abby’s point of view, something I felt was really missing here.  In stories like “That’s What Friends Are For”, about a woman who grew up in a haunted house where she made friends with the ghosts,  and “Mother Sylvia”, which is told from the point of view of the witch in Hansel and Gretel, Lillie shows the imagination to re-vision and reverse familiar schemas, so it appears that in “Abby”, she just needed more space to express that. It’s an eerie and disquieting story as it is.

 

Doppelgangers, twins, parasites, and children gone wrong populate Patricia Lillie’s stories, from her surreal “The Cuckoo Girls” and  “In Loco Parentis”, to those, like “Mother Sylvia” and “The Robber Bridegroom” clearly based on fairy tales, and those mystical but grounded in fact, like “Notes on the Events Leading Up to the Mysterious Disappearance of Miss Lotte Clemens” ,  a fascinating story based on actual newspaper accounts. Other stories are brief but clever, such as “Laundry Lady” and “Three Drabbles Brought to You By the Letter E”, and there is commentary on the tragedies that can be caused by small town “togetherness” in “And One For Azazel (With Jellybeans), a Bradbury-esque tale about a little girl who is blamed for causing the colors of things in her town to change, and “Wishing You The Best Year Ever” about a family held responsible for the fate of a town’s star baseball team.

 

This is an enjoyable and imaginative, if uneven, collection of insightful, quiet, and disquieting, stories about women and girls trapped by circumstance, family, society, and themselves, that leaves me intrigued enough to look into Lillie’s novel. Having now seen the difference between “Abby” and the first few chapters of The Ceiling Man, I would say she’s grown significiantly as a writer and is one to watch for in the future. Recommended.

 

Contains: mention of suicide, mild gore, violence, dismemberment, body horror

Reviewed by Kirsten Kowalewski

 

Editor’s note: The Cuckoo Girls is a nominee appearing on the final ballot for this year’s Bram Stoker Award in the category of Superior Achievement in a Short Story Collection. 

 

 

Posted on March 29, 2021 by , Reply
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