Today, in a desperate attempt to look like we know what’s going on in weird and horror fiction, we are relieved to have guest reviewer Dave Brzeski with us to cover a range of slimmer book releases. So we will hand you over immediately, and scurry off to find out what we did with all those other books we were sent…
SIZE ISN’T EVERYTHING
Reviews by Dave Brzeski
My favourite format to read these days tends to be the novella. They’re long enough to get your teeth into, but not so long that you can’t finish them in one, or two sittings. Having said that, reviewing them does have its issues. It’s much more difficult to find a lot to say about a novella, especially what the story is about, without risking spoilers. Some of the books below are very new; some not so much (I can’t deny that the older ones may well have been books I picked up to review when they came out, but simply didn’t manage to get to at the time).
Title: THE PICK (2021)
Author: Scott MacKillican – Illustrated by Mutartis Boswell
Publisher: Backwaters Press
Format: Paperback
I have to confess that it was the illustrator, not the author that drew me to this slim volume. I’ve worked with Paul ‘Mutartis’ Boswell in the past, and he kindly sent me a copy of this signed, limited edition paperback for review, since he is also the publisher.
I’d not come across MacKillican before, and the only other story of his I’ve managed to track down so far is another, now out of print, illustrated slim volume from Backwaters Press.
The story is very much in the folk horror subgenre. It tells the misadventures of three lads, Adam, Dave and Steve, as they take a trip to Wales, where they know of a really good place to pick magic mushrooms – which they plan on selling to keep themselves in their happy, stoner lifestyle for a good while. As is the way of these things, they encounter a fairly weird old hippy in a pub who, out of the kindness in his heart, tips them off to a place where the pickings will be richer than they have ever dreamed of. Spoiler: This does not end well!
It would be remiss of me if I failed to give some warnings here. Yes, it’s folk horror, with a bit of a Lovecraftian feel, but it’s also extreme horror, which trips over into body horror. If you don’t have a fairly strong stomach, you may want to leave it alone. I’m not generally a huge fan of the stomach turning stuff myself, but I did really enjoy this story, and would certainly read more by MacKillican.
There are a lot of illustrations by Boswell, and they are of a very high standard indeed. I suspect that the story may have been more in service of the art than vice versa, but that’s to be expected when the artist is much better known than the author. The book itself is a beautiful thing, printed on heavy stock throughout. This is also in service of the art, obviously, but it did come with some minor problems. The text does come a little too close to the gutter, making it slightly difficult to hold the book open enough to read comfortably with pages that do not bend easily. A nice bonus is that you get a high quality A5 print of one of the best illustrations in the book.
I should also mention that it’s limited to just 100 copies, and I doubt there’s very many left, albeit the publisher does still have it available at time of writing.
https://boswellart.bigcartel.com/product/the-pick-a-folk-horror-novella-by-scott-mackillican
Title: HELPMEET (2022)
Author: Naben Ruthnum
Publisher: Undertow Publications
Format: Paperback, ebook
I first became aware of this one when it was mentioned on one of Thomas Wagner’s Monday Mailbag videos that he posts as SFF180 on YouTube. The blurb intrigued me, and since I had already decided to put together a collection of reviews of shorter work, I contacted the publisher for a review copy.
I’m so glad I did, as this one is a bit special in a number of ways. Firstly, it’s literary in a way that recalls past writers, such as Algernon Blackwood, but it combines this beautiful prose (which I must stress for those who are turned off by the word ‘literary’ is very easy to read) with a very disturbing story, which could also be described as extreme, or body horror. As I said above, I myself, am not a fan of the gross-out type of horror, but I make a very definite exception for this remarkable book. Not a single word here is in any way gratuitous. It’s all necessary to the story Ruthnum is telling.
Literary horror… body horror… this is also very much weird fiction. Louise Wilk is looking after her husband, Edward, who is suffering from a very nasty wasting disease that some doctors have wrongly diagnosed as syphilis. Those doctors who accept that he doesn’t have syphilis, and can’t offer an alternative diagnosis, simply say they don’t know and run away.
Edward is not a good husband. He’s an incurable sex addict who is constantly seeking out new thrills outside of his marital bed. His wife is aware of this, knows that nothing will change his nature, and loves him anyway. The sheer horror in the way his body is failing him would be enough to drive away any wife, irrespective of how faithful their husband was, but Louise is a devoted nurse to the end. Edward knows that it was one of his sexual encounters that led to his current condition… and he knows that ‘she’ will eventually come for him, to take back what was left inside him.
From there it just gets weirder. Very highly recommended.
Title: THE DOUBLE-EDGED SWORD: A TALE OF THE FALLEN HERO (2023)
Author: Ian Whates
Publisher: NewCon Press
Format: Paperback, hardback
“Fantasy / Grimdark / Sword and Sorcery” is the claim made on the back cover, and it’s pretty accurate. The unnamed hero (anti-hero?) of this short novella doesn’t know much about sorcery, and pretty much doesn’t believe in it… albeit he has a suspicion that the leader of his former band of swords for hire could have had some sort of supernatural charm, which might explain his success with the ladies. Apart from that, the story involves a very rare, supposedly magical gem, but no real evidence is offered to support that supposition.
In some ways, the protagonist reminds me of Robert E. Howard’s Conan, in that he’s something of a cynical pragmatist — he’s neither bad, nor good, just a fighting man who does whatever is necessary to ensure his survival.
The first chapter was originally published in Afterburn SF in 2006, and while it does work as a stand alone story, with a satisfying ending, it also works very well as the opening chapter in a continuing saga, albeit this expanded version still only runs to 72 pages of story.
It’s told with a wry humour that makes it a true pleasure to read, and while the ending is very satisfactory, it leaves the reader wanting more. There are enough hints of future possibilities that I feel almost sure Whates will feed that desire at some point.
Highly recommended.
Title: SORROWMOUTH (2022)
Author: Simon Avery
Publisher: Black Shuck Books
Format: Paperback
Let me begin by stating that I am a huge fan of Simon Avery’s work. I first came across him, when he submitted a story to Occult Detective Quarterly #4, which I really liked, and it seemed he’d written connected stories which had appeared in Black Static, that I immediately went in search of. I even went to the effort of bringing his name up in an email to one of the best UK independent publishers, as someone they should watch. They haven’t snapped him up as yet, which is something Black Shuck Books has reason to be grateful for…
Sorrowmouth is frankly an amazing piece of work. I know nothing of Avery’s personal life, but it seems evident to me that he knows much of emotional suffering. Underhill certainly knows all about such things – having survived an abusive father, and the suicide of his mother. Now, he is accompanied wherever he goes by Sorrowmouth, a thing that took its shape from a William Blake painting – The Ghost of a Flea.
Avery states, on the back cover, that this novella was pulled together from several separate ideas in his notebook, when he realised that they actually shared common ground. He goes on to admit that all these disparate elements were actually about him looking for some truths about his own life, and that of people he has known. It certainly makes for a powerful, and moving piece of work.
In lesser hands the creature, Sorrowmouth, would have been the instigator of his problems, the cause, but we, and he gradually discover the truth.
Very highly recommended with one caveat… it may well make you cry.
EDITOR’S NOTE: We’re pleased to add that more of Simon Avery’s work will be one of the main features in Occult Detective Magazine #10, with a brand new 12,000 word novelette. Due this Summer!
Title: A SMALL THING FOR YOLANDA (2020)
Author: Jan Edwards
Publisher: Alchemy Press
Format: Paperback
This short novella (just under 80 pages) was originally published by Lycopolis Press in 2018, in Into the Night Eternal: Tales of French Folk Horror, an anthology of four novellas. For this reason, this Alchemy Press novella is marked as the second edition, albeit it is the first in this standalone format.
Set in Paris, the story involves Laeticia Toureaux, an Italian ex-pat widow to a French husband, who occasionally performs dubious information gathering jobs for the French authorities under her nom-de-plume of Yolanda. These jobs usually entail getting ‘close’ to various men, to extract information.
Her handler, Georges Rouffignac, of Agence Rouff, has a job for her, but the men she’ll be working for will not tell her exactly what they are trying to find out. Coupled with the feeling that she has been followed, this does not fill her with enthusiasm, but the money is very good. It’s not long before she’s not so sure it’s anywhere near good enough!
Yolanda is an entertaining character, and I soon found myself caught up in the story, as it goes from one bad situation to worse. From the date, it’s not unexpected that Nazis are involved, and the original anthology title gives away the supernatural element. It’s a fun short read, and it left me hoping for more tales of Yolanda, and Agence Rouff.
Finally for this session, a slim collection which seemed to fit the review theme:
Title: STONE BABY AND OTHER STRANGE TALES (2021)
Author: Nikki Nelson-Hicks
Publisher: Third Crow Press
Format: Paperback, ebook
This entire book runs to just 114 pages, but includes a dozen short stories, so none are long ones, and it opens with ‘Coon Hunt’, which at just under three pages is one of the shortest. This was something of a lesson for me that I should not read ‘just one more story’ very late at night, when I am way too tired to read much of anything. It wasn’t until I reread it a couple of days later that it made sense. Some words have more than one meaning… Clever.
‘Clever’ is a word that came up again, when I read, ‘A Very Good Year’. Fifty year old Jackie decides to follow up on the invitation for a luxurious spa treatment that arrived, unbidden in her mailbox. The innocent phrase, ‘It’s going to be a bumper crop this year’ soon takes on a more insidious meaning.
‘The Tipping Point’ tells the story of Shane – a gay single father. His partner bailed after deciding he didn’t want to be doing with all that parenthood nonsense after all. Shane fell apart after that. He started drinking for a while, was forced to move to a much less comfortable house with his son, Kyle. He has a job interview… a really good opportunity, but having ruled out his waste-of-space wreck of a homophobic mother, he’s out of options for a babysitter. All of which becomes moot when he finds out why Kyle always wants to sleep in his bed. This is a really good variant on the thing under the bed (in the closet in this case) trope that really should have been considered for a ‘Best Horror of the Year’ anthology.
The high quality, and originality continues with, ‘The Cleaner’, a very different look at a haunted house (in that the house has already been burned to the ground at the beginning of the story). It’s presented as a sort of one-sided conversation with the Cleaner’s client, after the fact. I’m a little disappointed that this one wasn’t submitted to Occult Detective Magazine. There is potential, though, for more featuring the same unnamed protagonist.
‘Reginald’, is the second shortest tale in the book, being just a single line of text longer than ‘Coon Hunt’. A discussion on the subject of cross-breeding with animals, it can be added to my list of things that made me go ‘hmm.’… in a good way… I think.
In 1935 a man sits in a phone booth, his life ebbing away from gunshot wounds. If only his friend would call back. Many decades later, long after the phone booth is history, that return call still rings, in ‘The Unanswered Call’.
As if in answer to my prayers, ‘What the Armless Guy Said’ features the return of the nameless protagonist from ‘The Cleaner’, except he now has a name – Travis Dare. This time, he’s camped out in the wilderness, waiting for the ghost of a young hero – at least that’s what the papers called him – to show up. It’s another fun story, full of wry humour. I most definitely want to see more of this character.
There’s a theory that ghosts are actually psychic impressions that can be imprinted on a place, or an object when someone dies in particularly stressful circumstances. In ‘Thumb Drive’, Lanie tries to record a nice, sexy video to surprise her husband, Mark, while on his business trip, to make up for the fact that he wouldn’t let her come with him. He’d walked in on her, and laughed at her. She thought she’d turned the webcam off, but she’d only minimised it… and it kept recording.
‘The Answer Bell’ was, for me, the weakest tale in the book. It did, however, introduce us to another of Nikki Nelson-Hicks’ occult detective characters, one Todd ‘Ghoul’ Gould of the Tennessee Bureau of Investigations: Occult Crime Division. Division is something of an overstatement, since Todd is the only agent. It’s a Cthulhu Mythos story, which would have been fairly obvious, even without the inclusion of Der Vermis Mysteriis, one of the well-known tomes of the mythos. It’s Mythos, so it doesn’t end well. It’s not bad, just not as good as the other stories in this book. I would like to read more about Mr Gould, though.
‘Stone Baby: A Southern Gothic Tryptych’ is the title story of this collection, and so my expectations were high. In his back cover quote, fellow author Paul Bishop describes Nikki Nelson-Hicks as “the |undisputed queen of the warped and the weird”. Nowhere is that claim more borne out than in this story. My initial thought on finishing it was, “Nikki, that’s just nasty. Bloody strange, but nasty!” Told from the viewpoint of three characters, it slides gradually into areas most author don’t realise exist, let alone go to.
The tone is lightened with the final story, ‘The Five Stages of Sleep’, which is presented as an apology from the monster under the bed. When he did what he did, which made his charge do what he did, which caused the poor guy to end up where he ended up, he was trying to be helpful, honestly he was.
I have worked with this author in the past, and edited a few of her stories, so my expectations were already quite high, but she genuinely surprised me here with the breadth of her imagination. I found myself appreciating her keeper husband, Brian, for the sacrifices he has made in keeping us all safe from what I now see as a clear, and present danger to all our immortal souls.
Next time… goodness knows. But we’re hoping to get back on schedule this month! In the meantime, why not indulge yourself with some classically-set mysteries and horrors, edited by JLG for Belanger Books and all available now…
