Home » Posts tagged "supernatural fiction" (Page 12)

Book Review: Whispered Echoes by Paul F. Olson

Whispered Echoes by Paul F. Olson

Crystal Lake Publishing, 2017

ISBN: 9781640074743

Available: Hardcover, paperback, Kindle edition

Whispered Echoes was originally published in 2016 as a limited edition hardcover by Cemetery Dance Publications. The stories in this collection were previously published in various magazines and edited anthologies with the exception of the novella “Bloodybones”, which appears for the first time in this book. The stories appear in this volume in chronological order as they were published. There are a few stories that stand out in this anthology.

Kent Barclay is “The Visitor” to the small town of Patterson Falls once a year. That’s when the accidents began. They started out small: a non-lethal bike accident here, someone injured by a glass door there. Then eight year old Sarah McKennon met with a deadly accident in the presence of Barclay. Matthew is appointed to talk sense to Barclay, to get him to leave town voluntarily, but to no avail. Now, Matthew waits for Barclay’s return, and the accidents that await Patterson Falls this year.

In “From a Dreamless Sleep Awakened”, police chief Carl Holt calls for Father Jurgens to help him with the strange situation of nine-year old Tommy Gallagher, a child who went missing after he unearthed bones in a small cave a month previously. When the missing child is found, he’s changed. This wasn’t a particularly unique story, as the Indian burial ground, an office calling on a priest for exorcism, and possession of the weak are familiar tropes. Even so, it was well done.

The world is different in “The More Things Change.” The natural world is no longer obeying the laws of nature: the sky changes colour, the river starts to reverse its flow…and bears are riding motorcycles. A cadre of the town retirees starts talking about the new guy in town, Jock Bartholomew, wondering if he is responsible for the sudden changes. The subject of witchcraft comes up conversation and the men laugh it off. Elvin, one of the party, interprets it as just a laugh, that there was no malice behind it. Despite this, Elvin can’t help but wonder. He warns Jock about the potential danger he is in after analyzing the situation further. They both learn first hands what happens when a community falls to herd mentality and the danger it poses when the men and other people from the town show up at Jock’s house, yelling for the witch to come out and face his consequences.

The novella of the anthology, “Bloodybones”, is both beautiful and terrifying.  Six months after Amy’s disappearance on her way home, her boyfriend, David, decides to investigate the old lighthouse she lived in. Amy’s sister arrives to find her own answers as well. As they search for what could have happened to a woman they both cared about, they find information about Bloodybones. Who was this entity, and what did it want? More importantly, what did it do with Amy?

The tales mentioned above are just the tip of the iceberg. There are so many great stories in this volume. Olson truly has a way with storytelling. The reader can see his writing progression from the first story to the last. Highly recommended.

Reviewed by Lizzy Walker

 

Posted on January 22, 2018 by , Reply

Musings: Drawing on the Walls: The Boy Who Drew Cats

The Boy Who Drew Cats adapted by Lafcadio Hearn and Margaret Hodges, and illustrated by Aki Sogabe

Holiday House, 2002

ISBN-13: 978-0823415946

Available:  Used hardcover and paperback, Audible audiobook

 

I had a reader request the name of a book about a little boy drawing all over the walls. The classic story about a boy drawing himself into a story is Harold and the Purple Crayon by Crockett Johnson, but that didn’t seem quite right. I finally remembered a Japanese folktale about a boy who drew all over the walls of a temple and drove a demon away, and was able to find what I think is really the answer to this question; it’s a story called “The Boy Who Drew Cats”, and it has been adapted and illustrated many times. The copy pictured above was adapted by Lafcadio Hearn and Margaret Hodges, and illustrated by Aki Sogabe, but there are MANY other versions.

The story follows a young man who is obsessed with drawing cats; he draws only cats, but he draws them amazingly well. Forced to leave home to find a trade, he spends the night in an abandoned temple, with empty screens all around, just begging to be painted with cats. After painting the walls, the boy falls asleep, waking in the night to hear a tremendous fight. In the morning, he discovers a terrible rat demon, dead, and notices the cats on the screens are not in the same positions he had painted them in. His cats have defeated the monster and saved his life, revealing his artistic ability and enabling him to become a professional artist.

Walls can be the source of creativity, as they are in the nonfiction picture book Painting for Peace in Ferguson, a story about the creative approach the community of Ferguson took to beautify  and inspire neighborhoods where the buildings had been boarded up or defaced following demonstrations against police brutality that turned violent. They can become a personification of insanity or paranoia, as they are in Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper”, in which the protagonist has delusions of a trapped woman creeping behind the room’s wallpaper, or the whispers from her dead mother that one character hears in Amy Lukavics’ The Women in the Walls.

Walls can be an “in-between” place, as they are in Neil Gaiman’s The Wolves in the Walls and Coraline,  in which the main characters have to make choices about whether they will be passive or active participants in their own lives. If you are on the outside, walls can be a barrier you look to cross that conceal a treasure inside, as in The Secret Garden, and if you are on the inside they can be a trap– a haunted house that won’t let go, a locked-room mystery you can’t escape, like the inhabitants of the island in Agatha Christie’s And Then There Were None. If you are the builder, like Hugh Crain in The Haunting of Hill House, you can make the walls be disorienting and disturbing to inhabitants to influence their minds, and if you want to keep people away, like Baba Yaga, you can decorate with human skulls.

Or you can follow your passion where it goes, and both protect and beautify the world by transforming walls into something new, like the boy who drew cats.

Posted on December 13, 2017 by , Reply

Book Review: Injection, Volume 1 by Warren Ellis, art by Declan Shalvey

Injection, Volume 1 by Warren Ellis, art by Declan Shalvey

Image Comics, 2015

ISBN: 9781632154798

Available:  Paperback, Kindle edition, and comiXology ebook

Injection centers around five eccentric geniuses dealing with the paranormal, and the consequences they must face after inflicting The Injection on the planet. Years earlier, Maria Kilbride founded the Cross Culture-Contamination Unit (CCCU), funded through a partnership between the British government and an up-and-coming company. She hand-selected the members of this new unit: computer geek Brigid Roth; Vivek Headland, a logician and ethicist; folklore expert Robin Morel; and Simeon Winters, a strategist and double agent for the Foreign Office. Fast-forward to the time after The Injection: everyone has established new lives and secured new employment allowing them to track progress on The Injection. The supernatural encroaches more quickly as the days pass, threatening humanity’s time on Earth. The former members of the CCCU must come together to investigate a case of a possessed laboratory and a mysterious disappearance.

This first volume is slow to start, but it definitely picks up. As with Ellis’ previous work, he gives very little away until he’s ready to hit you with something. When he does, it’s intense. I wouldn’t recommend picking up the first volume unless you are a die-hard Ellis fan and are willing to continue with his storytelling regarding this story. I’m not going to give anything in the subsequent volumes, but I would recommend giving this a chance.

Volume 1 collects issues #1-5.

Contains blood, gore, and nudity

Reviewed by Lizzy Walker

Posted on November 21, 2017 by , Reply
First « 1011121314 » Last