Home » Posts tagged "weird fiction"

Book Review: The Eris Ridge Trail by Larry Hinkle

 

 

Cover art for The Eris Ridge Trail by Larry Hinkle

The Eris Ridge Trail, by Larry Hinkle

Four Winds Bar Publishing, 2025

ISBN: 9798992454215

Available: Paperback, Kindle edition

Buy: Bookshop.org | Amazon.com

 

The trail in The Eris Ridge Trail is not a friendly one for thru-hikers!  Instead of the serenity of nature, the four unfortunates who end up on the trail find themselves in a confusing alternate dimension with frequent landscape shifts.  The setting shifts frequently, with little explanation for the hazards encountered by the characters.  Does it work for this story?  Yes.  Readers who want entertainment and aren’t concerned with a story where all ends are tied up neatly will find this quite enjoyable.

 

The book wastes no time getting down to business, as Wayne, Shelley, Craig, and Erik each get a quick chapter that tosses them right into the other dimension.  This is also the only part of the book that feels like it could have used a bit more fleshing out, to lead into the main story.  Two of the characters simply give a quick recounting of their arrival to their companions later in the book, while the other two protagonists get a very quick narration chapter.  It would have been nice to make all the lead-in to the main plot part of the third person narrative, as it sounded very intriguing.  There’s a car ride with a very odd individual, and a tunnel crawl through the basement of the Stanley Hotel (yes, THAT Stanley Hotel) but little detail is given.  That might have helped build up some anticipation for the main story, which only Shelley’s opening chapter did.

 

That minor quibble aside, the story takes off at a run, as the four of them (and two lovable dogs) find that their new home almost is like an LSD-laced dream.  One minute they can be in a desert, take five steps and PRESTO!, they’re in a desert.  A bit further, and SHAZAM!, it’s a prairie.  It could be confusing, but the author writes well enough that the transitions don’t seem jarring or random:: they flow with the story and are believable.

 

Although this is an adventure story, the real core of the story is the character interactions.  Craig, Shelley, Erik, and Wayne are four strangers tossed into a reality that makes no sense, but they have to survive and maybe find a way out.  That requires teamwork and trust, which develops over the course of the story, and is done very well.  The author clearly has a flair for writing characters, and he does an excellent job having them overcome their foibles and gel together into a cohesive unit.  Their new reality throws all sorts of fun stuff at them: weird skittering sort-of humans, six-legged freak squirrels called Squixells, and DINOSAURS!  (can’t go wrong with those!)  It’s all well-imagined and written in a style that keeps the reader turning pages quickly.  Sure, there is little to no explanation given for why or how these things happen, but who cares?  Much like the classic novel Picnic at Hanging Rock, The Eris Ridge Trail works better leaving explanations to the reader’s imagination.  The ending is excellent.  It doesn’t resolve things, but does wrap the story up perfectly.

 

Bottom line: take a hike along the unique Eris Ridge Trail, it’s a brain-tweaking journey.  Recommended.

 

Reviewed by Murray Samuelson

 

 

Posted on June 6, 2025 by , 1 comment

Book Review: Fourteen Days edited by Margaret Atwood and Douglas Preston

Fourteen Days edited by Margaret Atwood and Douglas Preston

HarperCollins, 2024

ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0358616382

Available: Hardcover, paperback, audiobook, Kindle edition

Buy:   Bookshop.org  |  Amazon.com 

 

Fourteen Days is a collaborative novel written by thirty-six American and Canadian authors, benefiting the Authors Guild Foundation. It takes place during the Covid-19 pandemic in a dilapidated apartment building during fourteen days under a shelter-in-place edict in New York City. Yessenia, the new super, is stuck in the building without the resources to do her job and unable to get through to the nursing home where her father is a resident. The previous super left his things behind, including a journal with notes about and a nickname for each tenant.

 

Unable to stand staying isolated inside, the residents start gathering on the rooftop each evening to tell stories, each night over the course of fourteen days. Yessenia never refers to them by name, only their nickname, and she secretly starts to record the stories on her phone and transcribe them into the super’s journal.

 

The structure of people isolating themselves to tell stories during a plague reminded me of  The Decameron but the editors specifically say it is not… and one of the stories, told by a professor who attended a book group that read from it, acts as a critique that suggests that this is actually a counter narrative, including people from different ages, belief systems, backgrounds, and races: the people who, unlike the characters of The Decameron, don’t have the wealth to escape the city as the plague rages.

 

At first the book seems grounded in realism: maybe it’s not something likely to occur, but it seems possible, with events that did occur, like the inability to get through to nursing homes, and unlike many stories set during the pandemic, here it is integral to the story. But unexplained events start to occur. Is the building haunted? Did a spider girl really interrupt their gathering? What’s the noise in the apartment above the super’s?

 

The stories also get weirder, more confessional, and gruesome, such as the story of Elijah Vick, who lost his arm to an alligator gar, and a story of retribution against a rapist. Other readers may guess the ending sooner than I did, but it managed to surprise me.

 

Fourteen Days does not have many contributions from horror writers, but it does have many “literary” authors contribute strange, unsettling, and disturbing tales, including Dave Eggers, Tommy Orange, and Margaret Atwood. It is a haunted novel, and worth the time to untangle.

 

Reviewed by Kirsten Kowalewski

 

Posted on May 28, 2024 by , Reply

Book Review: The Serpent’s Shadow by Daniel Braum

Cover art for The Serpent's Shadow by Daniel Braum

 

The Serpent’s Shadow by Daniel Braum

Cemetery Dance, 2023

ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1587679322

Available: Paperback

Buy: Bookshop.org

 

Daniel Braum’s writing is always intriguing. His NIght Marchers and Other Strange Tales was an outstanding collection of dark fiction. The Cemetery Dance release of his first novel departs from quiet horror to regale readers with a chilling story that is well worth the read.

 

David and his family land in Cancun, circa 1986. He and his sister are looking for adventure, hoping to escape their parents. They find it in a nightclub where he meets Anne Marie, a beautiful young woman to steal the eighteen-year-old’s heart. Yet she isn’t seeking to kill him, only to befriend him. Her innocence and ties to the city only ensnare his attention even more.

 

The true adventure begins as they explore a Mayan temple. The cab driver informs them that not everything is ancient history. The teens discover the pyramid holds a group of natives, many of the modern sort, who ache to bring Cancun back to the olden days when magic ruled the land.

 

What ensues is a blistering dark fantasy story that brings the horror. Braum knows how to deliver solid horror: how to build the tension, slowly tightening the noose on the readers. The setting is rendered beautifully, both the tourist trap of the city with its saccharine glitz, and the rich culture of the Mayans and Mexicans, struggling to reclaim a culture lost

.

David and Anne Marie are fascinating in the depth of their characterization, as both stretch out in intriguing manners. The plot twists and turns, via the dive into the cultural dichotomy of past and current, as even the slightest characters contribute to the story. The less said, the better about this short novel, as the surprises creep off the page.

 

Braum paints a bizarre tale that leaves readers aching to read more of the writer’s work. Recommended.

 

Reviewed by David Simms

 

Posted on January 1, 2024 by , Reply
12345 » Last