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Book Review: The Fourth Whore by Ev Knight


The Fourth Whore by Ev Knight (Bookshop.org | Amazon.com)

Raw Dog Screaming Press, 2020

ISBN: 978-1-947879-16-4

Availability: paperback, Kindle

 

The Fourth Whore is the debut novel from Ev Knight.  It’s the eclectic, and often bloody, story of Kenzi, a young, woman with hard luck, caught up in a centuries-old struggle of the gods.  Written from a number of character viewpoints, The Fourth Whore is a dark tale combining the ugliness of humanity with the insanity of the deities who are involved with it.

 

Kenzi is the focal point of the book, and her life sets the overall grim tone of the story in the first few pages.  She’s saddled with trying to pay for a slum apartment and supporting her junkie mother, which she does by peddling dope.   She also peddles herself to the landlord for rent.  Despite the fact that she’s quintessential street trash, it’s easy to like her.  She does have dreams of a better life, and her upbringing hardly resembles re-runs of The Brady Bunch.  Her pseudo-guardian, Sariel, is also intriguing; he’s a study in contrasts.  Kenzi knows him as the ‘Scribble Man,’ but he’s actually Death, the collector of souls for God.  However, he’s no faithful servant: his job is a punishment, not a blessing.  Also, his occasional sympathy for the dead, and sometimes aiding Kenzi in her times of extreme need, render him all too human.   His collecting allows for some hilariously bleak humor at times, such as when he grows impatient waiting for a young man to throw himself into a river with a load of heavy chain, thereby drowning himself.  Very morbid, but the thoughts Sariel voices are also quite amusing in a twisted way.

 

Kenzi and Sariel’s lives are quickly tied into the ‘god’ story thread, as both of them become targets of Lilith, a demi-god.  The story takes a nice turn here, as the author has re-worked the Bible story of Adam and Eve.  In this version, Lilith was the original wife of Adam, but she was tossed from Eden and tormented for failure to be a 1950’s style, submissive housewife to Adam.  Needless to say, when freed from her prison, she’s angry and wants revenge on…everything, and everyone.  She’s the closest thing to pure evil in the book, although some readers, especially women, may actually find her quite sympathetic, perhaps more so than any other character.

 

Therein lies Knight’s primary strength: she’s very good at painting her characters as somewhat sympathetic, or at least relatable, to all types of readers.   The story itself is good, but it’s the characters and how they feel that carry the book to its conclusion.  The only minor drawback is the occasional lack of cohesion around some of the plot elements in the book.  Things happen, but the reader might be questioning how they happened, as no hint of reason is given.  Events don’t always relate to each other, and seem occasionally random.  A little more explanation for some sections would have helped boost the story to the next level.

 

Overall, a solid first effort from Ev Knight, and worth reading.

 

Contains: profanity, graphic violence and gore, graphic sex.

 

Reviewed by Murray Samuelson

 

 

 

 

Posted on June 12, 2020 by , Reply

Book Review: Arterial Bloom edited by Mercedes M. Yardley

Arterial Bloom edited by Mercedes M. Yardley ( Bookshop.org | Amazon.com )

Crystal Lake Publishing, 2020

ISBN-13: 9781646693108

Available: Paperback, Kindle, comiXology

 

Arterial Bloom is another great anthology from Crystal Lake Publishing, edited by Bram Stoker Award-winning author Mercedes M. Yardley. This is the first anthology with Yardley at the helm, and she curated some beautiful and horrific tales. A unique feature of this particular anthology is that it does not rely on a cohesive theme to direct the tales in its pages. I was dubious at such a risky decision, especially as this is Yardley’s first anthology as an editor. However, it is clear she is in touch with the genre. The anthology contains 16 stories. Rather than discuss all of them, I will highlight the ones that were particularly enthralling.

In “The Stone Door” by Jimmy Bernard, three sisters must keep a bike equipped with a lever system operating in order to keep a monster behind a door. The door must remain closed. When one of the sisters falls ill, they worry about how much longer they can keep this up. “Dog (Does Not) Eat Dog” by Grant Longstaff is told in a post-apocalyptic world where two old friends find themselves at a dangerous crossroads. Linda J. Marshall’s “Kudzu Stories” entwines three separate lives where they come to different ends when the kudzu gets entangled in the human condition. In “Welcome to Autumn” by Daniel Crow, a mysterious bandaged stranger posing as a journalist visits the wife of a brilliant artist who has gone missing under mysterious circumstances. “The Darker Side of Grief” by Naching T. Kassa tells the story of George, a young boy who grieves his recently deceased mother and finds himself haunted by something that calls itself his mother. On top of that, George and his sister Mindy have a new babysitter, Carla Runningdeer. He’s heard all of the rumors about their new caretaker’s violent tendencies and wonders if they are true. Ken Liu’s “In the Loop” tells the story of a young girl watching her father turn into an abusive monster who eventually kills himself. He had been a drone strike operator for the military and suffered from severe PTSD. She signs up with a company whose representative tells her they are making software to completely replace humans at the controls, something that Kyra believes will free others of experiencing the tragedy and guilt of wartime. She develops the algorithm for their drones to recognize threats, but when two of those drones kills a group of children, things get messy.

Other authors include Christopher Barzak, Armand Rosamilia, Jennifer Loring, Kelli Owen, Jonathan Cosgrove, Steven Pirie, Dino Parenti, Todd Keilsing, and Carina Bissett, all of whom contributed powerful stories. Yardley did an excellent job selecting stories that resonate with the reader, despite not having a theme behind them. I also didn’t find myself questioning character motivations or wondering why a story was included. Yardley has a good eye for horror, and I hope she continues as an editor as well as a writer. Highly recommended.

Contains: domestic violence, implied child abuse, discussion of prostitution, murder of a child, PTSD, suicide

 

Reviewed by Lizzy Walker

Posted on June 12, 2020 by , Reply

Musings: Making Sense of Horror

One nice thing about reading is that a story has a beginning, a middle, and an end (except for a few left unfinished when the author died, like The Mystery of Edwin Drood). If the story is messy on the page, I can skip it, I can choose another. Outside the conventions of storytelling or the covers of a book, I have to live in an increasingly messy world that does not make a lot of sense (as do we all), and is frankly quite terrifying. I grew up in a nice little bubble where the ugliness of the world really didn’t infringe on my daily life and even now, despite many challenges, and with a lot more knowledge of the world, it doesn’t touch me the way it does for many, many others.

The past few years, and especially the time since the pandemic became a prominent part of our lives, have revealed a lot of that ugliness, but many of us thought surely there was a way forward for change. One story would end, we would get to start another with a new political season where we could change the system without tearing it apart. A vaccine for the coronavirus would be found, our lives could go back to the way they were. Not a happily ever after, but a story does end, even if another one begins right away.

There is a cloud of horror around the events taking place in Minneapolis and surrounding areas, and in other cities (including two in my own state) where peaceful protesters have been attacked with tear gas and rubber bullets. In a city near me, a medic center had its supplies taken by the police (including milk, used to treat tear gas) just before they sprayed tear gas on protesters. The rage and disorder have been building for a long time and the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis was the spark. I can’t make it coherent and I can’t see ahead.

Who are the monsters who come next in our fiction? Originally, Godzilla was a response to dropping the atomic bomb, zombies and vampires have come to mean different things as time has changed. Even as people are already writing pandemic fiction, there are still inequities the pandemic exposes, and the wounds it opens and salts provide a lot of fresh material. What horror awaits us in fiction that isn’t already here?

 

A note: Be kind to one another and give each other grace. We all need it, especially now.

Posted on May 30, 2020 by , Reply
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