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Book Review: The Forest by Michaelbrent Collings

cover art for The Forest by Michaelbrent Collings

( Amazon.com )

 

The Forest by Michaelbrent Collings

Written Insomnia Press, 2020

ISBN: 9798670345958

Availability: paperback, Kindle

 

The Forest is a bit different from the last few releases by Michaelbrent Collings.  His recent titles (Terminal, Scavenger Hunt, Stranger Still) were combination thriller/horror novels that relied on a fast pace and a lot of action.  The Forest relies less on action, and more on creating an atmosphere of helplessness and dread.  As usual with Michaelbrent’s writing, it’s a mystery also, and any reader will have a very difficult time unraveling the puzzle before the last few pages.  It’s a good plot and a decent read, and parts of it are excellent.   However, it does drag a bit at times and might have been better served by trimming some pages.

 

Tricia and Alex are the two main characters. They were students at the same school, and later got married.  The whole book revolves around their time interacting with the Forest, a place known to all the kids to be haunted, and of course it contains the proverbial “cabin in the middle of the woods”.

 

As kids, Tricia and Alex went into the forest to try to rescue their friend Sam from his crazy mother, and they came out having failed to rescue Sam, and with no memory of what happened.  All they know is the Forest is a bad place.  As adults, they drive by the Forest one day, and their only child vanishes into the Forest.  Later, at the advice of their therapist, they re-enter the Forest to face their fears and achieve some closure over what happened to Sam and their kid.  Needless to say, the Forest is NOT kind to visitors, and Tricia and Alex are treated to a kind of dimension-bending hell where time doesn’t exist, entities want to kill them (or save them) and nothing makes any sense.

 

Although Tricia and Alex are the primary protagonists, the true star of the book is the Forest itself.  Collings does a nice job of making it seem to be a living, breathing entity in its own right.  The use of  never-ending fog, various shapes that appear, and flashing lights do a good job of piling on the spooky atmosphere, and the secondary characters that drop in and out (some offering hints as to the nature of the Forest) only serve to enhance the effect.  Again, this book isn’t written in the usual 100 mph fashion of Collings’s past few novels, it’s more of a grim, spooky atmosphere that relies on vagueness and a fear of the unknown to make its point.  Think the 2016 Naomi Watts film The Forest (no relation to this book) and you’ll get the idea.  When it works, it’s done very well.  The sequence with Trish and Alex going crazy trying to unravel the mystery of the stream that keeps switching flow direction is the best part of the book, and may be one of the best sequences Collings has ever written.

 

As good as the writing is, there are times when it feels like Collings went just a bit too over the top with the descriptions, and it does slow the book down a bit.  There are times when the reader might find themselves skimming pages a bit, just to get to the next part.  A bit more dialogue and a bit less exposition could have pushed this book to the next level.  It’s still a good read, just a bit of a notch down from his usual work.  Also worth noting is the explanation for the mystery of the Forest may be a bit difficult for some readers to comprehend.  It’s best not to think about it too much, just take it at face value.

 

Overall, another decent one from one of the most consistent authors out there today.  Recommended.

 

Contains: violence, limited gore, profanity

 

Reviewed by Murray Samuelson

Posted on January 30, 2021 by , Reply

Book Review: In the Vines by Shannon Kirk

Cover image of In The Vines by Shannon Kirk

In The Vines: A Thriller by Shannon Kirk (Bookshop.org | Amazon.com )

Thomas & Mercer, Seattle, 2018

ISBN-13: 9781503901940 (hardcover)

ISBN-13: 9781503900752 (paperback)

Available: Hardcover, Paperback, Kindle edition, compact disc, MP3 CD

 

In The Vines: A Thriller by Shannon Kirk is a murder mystery with a sprinkling of horror and gore. Fans of Edgar Allan Poe will recognize the technique of peeling away the layers of an onion, slowly revealing past sins, guilt, self-doubt and escalating violence. The main characters are Mary Olivia Pentecost, aka Mop, and Lynette Viola Vandonveer, aka Aunty Liv. They are descendants of Boston Brahmins, both with scions  who seem to have guilty secrets, as well as privilege and power. Their character traits and secrets lead to tragedy.

 

Mop is a recent college graduate searching for her own identity She is to marry her childhood sweetheart, a son of a nouveau-riche family with an adjoining estate in Rye, New Hampshire. Aunty Liv is an unmarried nurse having an illicit affair with a Boston surgeon, and is spying on her lover’s wife. The novel begins with Mop bleeding from a leg wound, dragging an unconscious, unnamed companion out of hiding during a nor’easter. An unidentified, shrouded figure wields an ax over them. Who are they? How did they come to this? What will be the story’s denouement?

 

The author uses the voices of Mop and Aunty Liv to narrate the story. The story jumps back and forth between scenes from the present, two years in the past and two weeks ago. Kirk’s technique is disconcerting, but it is important in slowly revealing the characters’ secrets and building a sense of frustration, anxiety and anticipation in readers. The main characters are well-drawn, and readers will understand why they make seemingly bad decisions that often lead to disaster.  The author describes the ocean, beach, rocks, cliffs, trees and brambles of New England’s coast beautifully. They become participants in the story. Highly recommended for adults.

 

Contains: Moderate gore, moderate violence, mild profanity

 

Reviewed by Robert D. Yee

Posted on June 7, 2020 by , Reply

Book Review: The Last Seance: Tales of the Supernatural by Agatha Christie

The Last Séance: Tales of the Supernatural by Agatha Christie

William Morrow Paperbacks, 2019

ISBN-13: 978-0062959140

Available:  Paperback, Audiobook, Kindle

 

The Last Séance: Tales of the Supernatural contains twenty short stories of the occult and supernatural penned by the Queen of Mystery, Agatha Christie. While each of the stories has unique aspects, a few stood out over the rest as exceptionally well executed. “The Last Séance” tells the story of an exhausted medium holding a session for a woman with disastrous results. In “Philomel Cottage”, heiress Alix King takes a new husband whose past she knows nothing about. An elderly widow receives messages from her deceased husband through a wireless set in “Wireless”. In “The Strange Case of Sir Arthur Carmichael”, the titular character has taken on the characteristics of a cat that had been killed by the lady of the house. “The Dressmaker’s Doll”, undoubtedly the best story in the collection, involves a doll that suddenly appears in a dressmaker’s workroom, and is found to move about the room when it is unoccupied.

There are a few stories where Christie’s famous detectives, Miss Marple and Hercule Poirot, get involved, too. The most entertaining of these takes is “The Flock of Geryon”, in which Poirot aids an heiress in investigating a dangerous cult. In “The Idol House of Astarte”, members of the Tuesday Night Club gather to discuss the strange circumstances of a murder at a fancy dress party, and the club wants Miss Marple’s opinion on the case.

The book contains a bibliography of books and magazines where her short stories were first published, as well as alternate titles for the stories if applicable.

While the subtitle of the book indicates that the stories contained in its pages are supernatural, this is somewhat deceiving. There are aspects of the occult and supernatural in the stories, but most of them have quite logical explanations to them. Another topic to address is language used in the stories. Christie’s treatment of the Asian culture is not what we would call respectful now. By using the term Oriental and associating Asian characters in her stories as mysterious, sly, and similar, it is definitely problematic. Treatment of mental illness is also something readers needs to be aware of with works from this time period. For instance, it is not unusual to see the terms “loon” or “loonies” used.

None of that is to say I disliked the book. On the contrary, I enjoyed this, and it was a quick read. Christie had a unique way of crafting her stories, and there is a good reason why she is called the Queen of Mystery. I would not, however, call her the Queen of the Supernatural. I would recommend this for readers who are Christie fans, or for those who aren’t quite ready to get into horror. This might be good for anyone who wants to explore spooky tales without the extremes the genre can get into. Recommended.

 

Reviewed by Lizzy Walker

Posted on October 30, 2019 by , Reply
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