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Book Review: Betty Bites Back edited by Mindy McGinnis, Demitria Lunetta, and Kate Karyus Quinn

Betty Bites Back: Stories to Scare the Patriarchy edited by Mindy McGinnis, Demitria Lunetta, and Kate Karyus Quinn

Demitria Lunetta, 2019

ISBN-13: 9781733666749

Available: Paperback, Kindle edition

 

Betty Bites Back contains sixteen short stories and poems about girls and women who are done being held down, stepped on, and demeaned by a world that favours misogyny and the patriarchy. Stories include dark fantasy, body horror, murder mystery, and more. I found each of the stories in this anthology to be unique and well written. A few of my favourites are the following.

In “Vagina Dentata” by Mindy McGinnis, a woman talks with a plastic surgeon’s physician’s assistant about a unique opportunity.In  E.R. Griffin’s “What She Left Behind” a teenage girl discovers that the house she and her mother moved into is haunted by a girl whose trauma bridges the gap between them and pushes an act of violent revenge. In Jenna Lehne’s “@Theguardians1792”, a teenage girl is tired of being harassed by boys about her changing body and standing up for herself, leading to her getting punished for their actions. She discovers a group calling themselves @Theguardians1792 on social media, and boys in the area are found beaten, bloodied, or worse. In “The Whispers” by Lindsey Klingele, set during the time of the suffragettes fighting for the woman’s right to vote, a small community faces a boisterous, loud, and assertive group of young women, quite the scandal of the time. After they are silenced by a mysterious and ill-meaning doctor, murders of prominent community members occur, and women in white are seen around the edges of town.

There is a short author biography at the end of each of the stories, as well as a brief statement by the authors about their inspiration and influence for writing their particular tale. Though short, they provide a great insight into the authors’ processes, and other works that they have written for further reading. I highly recommend Betty Bites Back readers of feminist horror, especially indie horror.

 

Contains: blood, gore, misogyny, murder, racism, rape, sexual assault, sexual content, suicide

 

Highly recommended

 

Reviewed by Lizzy Walker

Posted on May 3, 2020 by , Reply

Book Review: Invisible Chains by Michelle Renee Lane

Invisible Chains by Michelle Renee Lane

Haverhill House Publishing, 2019

ISBN: 978-1-949140-03-3

Available: Hardcover, paperback

 

Jacqueline, an enslaved Creole growing up on a Louisiana plantation in Michelle Renee Lane’s Invisible Chains, learns all too soon what it means to be black and female. She is beaten, raped, and terrorized but manages to survive by using the secrets of Vodun her mother taught her and by tapping the powers of the vampire and werewolf who assist her on the flight toward what she hopes will be a rescue.

Even though monsters help Jacqueline, she is still threatened by them and in constant danger, even from love. Lane uses these relationships, including a flirtation with the vampire, to highlight the suffering, marginalized groups depicted in this novel. This includes enslaved people and monsters but also mixed race people, Spanish Jews, Irish immigrants, circus performers, Gypsies, seers and couples in interracial relationships. People who are considered different by the larger white society are powerless and can survive only by appeasing and imitating their oppressors or using magical or supernatural powers against them.

Although the book often moves quickly from one terrifying event to the next, Lane effectively traces Jacqueline’s growing sense of her own talents and strengths. Jacqueline learns that each horrific experience enhances her abilities as a conjurer and intensifies her understanding of herself, thus making it possible for her to voice her demands and choose what she needs to live. She also learns that she must protect her mind and soul most of all and that she has a certain power in knowing the future in which her true freedom will never be a reality. However, she continues to be brave, heroic, and unstoppable. Recommended.

Contains: Graphic violence including rape and torture; sexual situations

 

Reviewed by Nova Hadley

Editor’s note: Invisible Chains was nominated to the final ballot of the 2019 Bram Stoker Award in the category of Superior Achievement in a Novel.

Posted on April 12, 2020 by , Reply

Book Review: Wanderers by Chuck Wendig

Wanderers by Chuck Wendig

Del Rey, 2019

ISBN: 978-0-399-18210-5

Availability: hardcover, audiobook, ebook

 

It’s inevitable that any 782 page magnum opus about the end of the world like Wanderers will get compared to the two titans of the apocalyptic pantheon, Stephen King’s The Stand and Robert McCammon’s Swan Song.  Wendig’s tome compares fairly well. The prose is excellent, character development is strong, and the plot has plenty of surprises.  Wanderers might have been able to join the other two at the top of the mountain, but it does have a couple of faults.  The story sputters to a muddled conclusion at the finish line, and the author’s insertion of his own political beliefs into the stories detracts from the strength of some of the characters, reducing them to stereotypical cardboard cutouts.

 

14 year old Nessie one day starts walking down the driveway in an unresponsive trance, leaving the home she shares with her older sister Shana and her father. Others with the same symptoms soon join her, and soon there is a pseudo-parade of walkers and supporters marching across the country, although no one knows where they are going.  The real focus of the story, however, isn’t the walkers themselves, it’s the reaction of the rest of the country to them.  Are the walkers carriers of a new disease?  A sign from God?  Messengers of the devil?  They become national news in an election year, and reactions vary from solidarity with the walkers to outright violence against the “devil’s parade”.   It becomes a race for medical professionals to find the cause of the trance-walking, set against the backdrop of a country on edge due to its own political beliefs about the walkers.

 

There isn’t much to dislike in the book.  The author writes extremely well in a tight-but-loose fashion, the story peppered with numerous asides and pop culture references that give the book a unique feel.   This is truly a character-driven story.  It’s not so much about what the characters do: how they think, feel and respond to their own lives, and the world falling apart around them is what keeps the story flowing.  Summing up the actual actions of the first 500 pages could be done in a few sentences, but that would miss out on the richness of the characters’ thoughts and emotions.  The plot itself is an unusually complex take on the “end of the world” scenario, as artificial intelligence and nanotechnology play a part.  It is partially a detective story, and it’s not an easy puzzle to figure out, especially with the final twist inserted in the last few pages.

 

The drawbacks to Wanderers are minor, but they prevent a good story from becoming a great one.  As noted, the final showdown between good and evil was a bit convoluted and didn’t really fit the rest of the story.  The real problem is the author’s use of stereotypes when it comes to his antagonists from the conservative side of the political spectrum.  These make the villains far too predictable in their actions and reasons.  Author Wendig also has a bad habit of inserting his own liberal beliefs into the story as narration asides, not as part of the character development.  That damages the narrative, when it is written from the author’s point of view to make a political case, and not to further the story.

 

Overall, Wanderers is a well-written, epic saga of the end of the world, and well worth the time investment to read its almost 800 pages.  However, conservative readers will have to put aside their own feelings and viewpoints to enjoy reading this.  Otherwise, they will probably get mad and quit within the first 100 pages.  Recommended.

 

Contains: violence, mild gore, racial slurs, rape

 

Reviewed by Murray Samuelson

Editor’s note: Wanderers was nominated to the final ballot of the 2019 Bram Stoker Award in the category of Superior Achievement in a Novel.

Posted on April 10, 2020 by , Reply
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