Home » Posts tagged "horror fiction" (Page 62)

Graphic Novel Review: Hellboy Omnibus, Volume 2: Strange Places by Mike Mignola, art by Mike Mignola, Gary Gianni, and Richard Corben

Hellboy Omnibus Volume 2: Strange Places stories by Mike Mignola; “Into the Silent Sea” story by Mike Mignola and Gary Gianni; “The Right Hand of Doom”, “Box Full of Evil”, “Conqueror Worm”; “The Third Wish”, and “The Island” art by Mike Mignola; “Being Human” art by Richard Corben

Dark Horse, 2018

ISBN: 978-1-50670-688-7

Available: Paperback, Kindle edition, comiXology

 

Hellboy Omnibus Volume 2: Strange Places includes Hellboy’s adventures from 1998 to 2005, in chronological order. In these tales, Hellboy searches for answers about himself and his destiny.

In Hellboy: The Right Hand of Doom, the titular character meets Adrian Frost, the son of Professor Malcolm Frost who spent the last years of his life trying to kill Hellboy. The priest tries to convince Hellboy of his father’s fear of him, and that he wasn’t an evil man. He offers to sell Hellboy the only surviving clue that he found in his father’s notes about himself. The price is a story, the story of Hellboy. He tells a story of the Mad Monk who came back, his death at Hellboy’s hand, and the search for who Hellboy really is, who he is meant to be.

“Box Full of Evil” finds Hellboy and Abe Sapien investigating the case of a mysterious man who can paralyze a household while he digs through the walls of a gentleman’s sitting room only to pull out a small locked box and a pair of commonplace fireplace tongs. What could the box hold, and who is the man who had the power to subdue everyone in a large house merely with a hand shaped candle?

In B.P.R.D.: Being Human, Hellboy convinces the B.P.R.D. to let him take Roger the Homunculus out in the field to investigate the dead bodies of the Quillen family, who walk out of their graves to return to their run-down estate. They discover a Black woman with a vendetta to settle. She was born out of the rape of her mother at the hands of the head of the household, and she wants them to pay in their afterlives.

Roger and Hellboy are sent out again in Conqueror Worm, with a guide to Hunte Castle, to stop the Nazi spacecraft that is estimated to crash land there. Hellboy discovers the terrible truth about something the BPRD decided to add to Roger’s internal workings when they brought him back to life. When they arrive at the castle, they find they were led into a trap, and Lobster Johnson is real.

Trapped by the nail of the Bog Roosh, Hellboy must fight his way to freedom in “The Third Wish”. The youngest mermaid of three proves an unlikely ally in his journey, and reconciles with her father in the process. Hellboy meets the cursed being that set his existence into motion in “The Island”. This creature underestimates Hellboy’s strength and humanity in the end. In the final story in the omnibus, Into the Silent Sea, the true commander of a crew of men on the ship named Rebecca is called by something in the sea, just as she calls to it. Will anyone survive her visit?

Also included in this volume is a Hellboy sketchbook with notes by Mignola. The sketchbook is a bonus to see how Mignola crafts his stories and artwork as well. It has been fantastic to read these stories in chronological order to see how Hellboy’s story unfolds. This also provides a new reader the opportunity to become familiar with the short stories in the Hellboy/B.P.R.D universe. There are, of course, mythological and Lovecraftian overtones galore. Something that seems to be prevalent in the Hellboy stories is the subject of humanity’s inability or unwillingness to recognize the fact that Hellboy is not human, based on his actions and decisions to aid humans when at all possible, even risking his own life at times. They don’t have any qualms about calling other creatures, whether they be demons or homunculi, inhuman. This, of course, gets under Hellboy’s skin and he is not shy about addressing it. We even see the big red guy quit the B.P.R.D. as a result of something he can’t sit by and watch. Highly recommended.

Contains: some blood, violence

Reviewed by Lizzy Walker

Posted on August 17, 2018 by , Reply

Book Review: Haunted Nights edited by Ellen Datlow and Lisa Morton

Haunted Nights edited by Ellen Datlow and Lisa Morton

Blumhouse Books, 2017

ISBN-13: 978-1101973837

Available:  Paperback, Kindle ebook, Audible, and audio CD

Haunted Nights collects sixteen previously unpublished tales of Halloween. It is co-edited by Ellen Datlow, a highly respected genre editor, and Lisa Morton, an authority on Halloween. Haunted Nights presents stories of related holidays as well (e.g. All Souls’ Day and Día de los Muertos).

While I enjoyed all of the stories in Haunted Nights, a few stood out from the others. In “With Graveyard Weeds and Wolfsbane Seeds,” Seanan McGuire weaves a great haunted house story that switches perspective between the dead and the living. Mary can’t abide the teenagers who disturb her house, especially on her birthday, but she knows how to take care of her house, and the intruders. Stephen Graham Jones presents a tale of familial loss and a disturbing return in “Dirtmouth.” Jonathan Maberry’s “A Small Taste of the Old Country,” set in 1948, proves revenge can be served warm and comforting. Garth Nix always delivers an excellent story, and his entry in this collection does not disappoint. In his tale, “The Seventeen Year Itch,” the new hospital administrator disregards all of the warnings from staff about patient Broward and the incessant itch he feels compelled to scratch every Halloween. “A Kingdom of Sugar Skulls and Marigolds” by Eric J. Guignard is set during Día de Muertos rather than Halloween. A misspelling on a sugar skull leads to an eventful night for a man in mourning. Paul Kane’s “The Turn” takes the perspective of multiple characters, and is surprisingly well done in such a short story. Tom Nolan has never gone out on Halloween, but the urgent call from the hospital about his dying grandmother drives him outdoors on the most haunted night of the year.

This collection belongs on the bookshelves of readers who love Halloween and other ghost-related holidays. Other authors in this anthology include Joanna Parypinski, Kate Jonez, Jeffrey Ford, Kelley Armstrong, S.P Miskowski, Brian Evenson, Elise Forier Edie, Pat Cadigan, John Lanagan, and John R. Little.

Contains: blood, bullying, homophobia, rape, sexual content

Recommended

Reviewed by Lizzy Walker

Posted on August 15, 2018 by , Reply

Musings: Fear the Reaper by David Simms


Fear the Reaper by David Simms

Macabre Ink, 2018

ISBN-13: 978-1948929790

Available: Paperback, Kindle edition

Fear the Reaper was released in June, and it is frighteningly timely. I read it just after finishing coursework in special education, which included the effects of eugenics on public education, and right at the time that the family separation of immigrants seeking asylum started to receive intense media attention. I have heard many people say “this isn’t the American way”.  This is a historical novel grounded solidly in fact, and it hits home that this isn’t the first time the American way has included dehumanizing and forcibly separating “inferior” or “weak” populations.

It’s 1933, and psychologist Sam Taylor, designer of a test that can separate the “feebleminded” from the general population, has been hired to evaluate patients at a sanitarium in rural Virginia that has a solid commitment to practicing eugenics. Eugenics is a philosophy that grew from the conviction that only healthy, able, intelligent, heterosexual, attractive white people should be allowed to contribute to human genetic evolution. Many people not fitting that description, including homosexuals, foreigners, the disabled, mentally ill, and cognitively impaired, and African-Americans, were sterilized(or worse) so they wouldn’t be able to pass on their genes.

The superintendent of the sanitarium, Joseph Dejarnette, was a real person, the sanitarium in the book is very similar to the one he ran, and many of the scenes in the book are based on primary sources. While there is a mild supernatural aspect to this, it’s not the ghost haunting the main character that is horrific– it’s the things people do to each other, or are complicit in. And it’s not that it’s only one person– Dejarnette is just a representative of an entire movement, well-funded by corporate donors, committed to “improving” and “purifying” the human race, that is systematically eliminating anyone who gets in the way. Even knowing a little about the eugenics movement, as I was reading this, I thought “is all of this really real?” It is so outrageous and appalling in places that it’s easy to think that the author got carried away by his topic– it is fiction, after all– but having spoken to him, I can tell you that yes, people really believed and acted this way, dehumanizing the patients and practicing brutal treatments on them.

If you are looking to have your faith in humanity revitalized, this is probably not your best choice. It is a terrifying, eye-opening look at the eugenics movement, and how people become complicit in reinforcing and participating in evil. Simms does an effective job with character development; even brief interactions with minor characters make you feel you know them well enough that when they are caught in the events that occur it’s even more heartbreaking and awful. The ghost didn’t contribute much to the story, nor did the romance (the protagonist is not a likable guy), but the overall sweep of the story carried me past that. It’s an excellent piece of fiction documenting a rarely mentioned part of our history that will creep in, and stay in your mind, long after you finish it.

Editor’s note: David Simms is a personal friend and reviewer for Monster Librarian.

Posted on July 20, 2018 by , Reply
First « 6061626364 » Last