If you’ve been around these parts for more than a couple seconds, you know I pride myself on being a spooky gal. Back in my younger days (also known as the days in which I had excess fucks) it was easier to tell by the cover, though I do still slap on the occasional coat of goth aesthetic when the mood, energy, and occasion converge to strike me. As I approach level 43, the evidence is more evident on my bookshelves and various reading devices and okay, maybe also the fact that if you did see me at the beach I’d be much more likely to be recreating that photo of Tom Hiddleston and Jessica Chastain reading on the set of Crimson Peak than risking lobster-itis by allowing the sun to touch me.

But there’s still the fact that my beach reads have a high likelihood of being packed with monsters, evil spirits, wicked witches, loathsome barely-humans, psychotic murderers, final girls, demons, and dark magic-wielding mafiosos. Because no matter what the New York Times Review of Books says, I’m of the mind that a beach read is any book you read on the beach and thus, it logically follows a summer read is any book you read… stay with me here… during the summer.

Because publishing works the way it does, summer is when we lucky few who review books get advanced copies of books set for fall release. That’s right, witches and warlocks, we get double spooky season; one now and then a second one to share with everyone else in the fall. Mwahahahahahahahahahaha.

I’m not so wicked of a witch that I’d keep all the treats to myself though so I’ve decided to blog my summer horror marathon. I’ll even throw in some early chills and older thrills I’m enjoying for the first time so you too can get a head start on the shenanigans if you so wish.

Note: Are all of these “traditional” horror as defined by whomever it is defines these things? No, probably not. Horror is more of an umbrella under which a great many compound types of story fall. I’ll make notes  for each. It will for sure be 100% my opinion. It’s my post, I’ll define how I want to.

Ready?

Set?

Scream!

Bottle Demon (Eric Carter, Book 6) by Stephen Blackmoore (DAW; urban fantasy)

Y’all know I love this series and it’s misanthropic, unapologetic, “I will survive even if I have to kill you to do it,” protagonist. There’s something refreshing about a character who’s honest enough to admit he’s willing to stab you in the back if it comes down to it. Especially when he was just fine being dead and someone decided it was okay to bring him back without asking godfucking damnint.

Quite frankly, I can’t imagine anything more horrible than bring brought back to this hellhole from a nice, final retreat in Mictlan. Especially if a real pissed off djinn was after me and every place I’d once thought secure was trying to devour my soul. One of the few people I thought I could trust was being shady as shit. Puppet golems were making bad situations worse. As they do.

Eric Carter’s sixth adventure is dirty and messy and bloody and I wouldn’t want it any other way. Blackmoore’s very special brand of breakneck, whatever-can-go-wrong-will-blow-up-so-spectacularly-in-your-face-you-won’t-even-be-able-to-taste-the-ash storytelling is the perfect way to kick off a demon infested reading spree. Bring snacks because once you start, you’re not moving until you’re finished. You may also want a poncho, that gore has a pretty decent splatter range.

Bungo Stray Dogs Vol. 1 & 2 by Asagiri Kafka and Harukawa Sango (Yen; monsters, black magic, comedy)

I am late to the party again and it is a literary magic party, shame on me. Well, I’m here now and that’s the important thing.

I am obsessed. Those of you who have already read Bungo Stray Dogs and have met me are doubtlessly nonplussed by the news that I am living for a manga about a “detective” agency staffed by individuals wielding abilities rooted in stories by the authors they’re named for. They fight monsters and curses and mafiosos who fuck with dark magic and all roll natural 20s in snark. If there was ever a work of fiction that was more my jam, I cannot think of what it might be.

If you’re gore-phobic, proceed with caution; yes, like most manga, Bungo Stray Dogs is black and white but the style is very… expressive. And things like, say, internal organs on people’s externals don’t need to be full color to be accurate.

The blood and guts is very much lightened up by a sense of humor that is the most fantastic combination of black and airy I’ve every experienced in a comic or, for that matter, any book. I’m in awe. Friends, comedy horror is hard. I know this because I do it and of the hundred of tries I have made, I’ve succeeded maybe twice. I also seek it out and real gems are few and far between. The balance Asagiri strikes here, the perfect synthesis of deepest dark and absolute hilarity is immaculate. I am in awe. Also I keep laughing so hard I fall off furniture.

Goth (manga) by Otsuichi and Oiwa Kendi (Viz; psychological, slasher) 

The novel came first; I’m reading it after the manga because it’s my list and I can do what I want but I am reading it both because I’m a completionist and because the end of the manga was confusing. I feel as though I may have missed something either because my reading device skipped a page which it occasionally does when flipping in manga direction (I did go back through several times but who knows) or because my brain did a dumb (it’s been doing that a lot lately). Regardless, Goth is slasher at its finest. Otsuichi knows his sociopathy, that claustrophobic, breath on the back of your neck, “how well do I really know the neighbors,” “there but for the laws of society goes my next birthday,” fear that creeps in when you heard the weird creak in the basement in the middle of the night.

Is there anything worse?

Yup. And Oiwa’s sharp, shadowy, gestural style is going to make sure you never forget it.

Perfect beach read. Bright light of day. Under the wet towels at night. So it can’t escape. And cut your hands off.

Also allow me to say here that I don’t do body horror but in my quest to explore Japanese, Indonesia, Korean, Malaysian, and Filipino horror, it turns out that I sometimes do body horror.

The Final Girl Support Group by Grady Hendrix (Berkley; slasher, suspense, comedy/satire)

I was late to the Grady Hendrix party but now that I’m here, I’m staying.

An author who can do The Thing while simultaneously using The Thing as a commentary on The Thing is a Word Alchemist of highest caliber.

An author who gets it right every. Single. Time. Is a genus.

Hendrix has yet to miss a step.

Full disclosure: I was going to love The Final Girl Support Group. Final girls have a very special place in my heart as you know if you’ve dropped by The Roarbots in October and had a chuckle at one of our Franchise Frenzy free-for-alls. I also love slasher flicks. I love them because they’re absolutely ludicrous. I love them because the gore is so over the top. I love them because they’re screamo stupid fun. Because sometimes it’s okay to shut off and yell about SAM HAIN!

But Hendrix, as always, gave me a whole other level to love his story on, a cerebral level (damn it) that has the reader considering the larger concept of the final girl and her meaning not only in cinema history but in society. About why she is what she is, about what the slightest changes to her story would mean, the freedom they would have given the symbol and thus, the girl. How pop culture, as represented by market value couldn’t handle that and the larger culture followed along behind by making certain to keep women in their place.

Like the men who refuse to believe their wives in The Southern Book Club’s Guide and prove themselves more monstrous than a blood sucking vampire and the adults in My Best Friend’s Exorcism more dangerous than the satanic in the panic…

… We are our own worst enemies.

Hex by Thomas Olde Heuvelt (Tor; psychological horror, speculative horror)

Caveat: Dutch is not on my list of languages and thus, I read this one in translation. I think that’s always important to note because no matter how good a translator is, it is impossible to capture 100% of linguistic nuance, especially in fiction, especially when the receptive language is a clunker like English.

That said: the premise of Hex is great and it got my spec fic engine revved which is not easy to do these days. The idea of building an entire community around appeasing a pissed off 17th century witch, even developing technology  to deal with her vagaries and (justified) vendettas? *Chef’s kiss* It kept me reading when I would have otherwise DNFed and I would have DNFed because sweet baby Jesus, here is another man who thinks he knows how to write woman and does not.

It’s of particular issue here because the whole story is built around the wrong done the witch which one would think would make her a character. It does not. It makes her a plot device. All of the the women are pieces slotted in to place to fill assigned roles. They are basically interchangeable but for a generic quirk that makes them “this” instead of “that” (you’ll notice I didn’t use “her.” It’s because they’re objects not subjects). And, in the end, through Big Drama(TM) that I think is supposed to make a Statement (also TM) about generational trauma but is really just mysoginoir, the witch loses her story to a man.

Huge bummer because we could have had it all. Alas, we got this. I read it so you don’t have to.

Near the Bone by Christina Henry (Berkley; psychological, monsters)

Christina Henry is a master at blending psychological horror and more traditional creature or haunting tales and she hits the perfect balance again in Near the Bone where we meet Mattie, a young woman living an isolated and very traditional life in a cabin on a remote mountain. How she got there we’re not sure, nor is Mattie which is, of course, suspicious.

It becomes even more so when three cryptid hunters with a GoPro and hi-tech gear very unlike Mattie’s plain, homesewn clothes and basic necessities appear. Along with the mutilated corpse of a fox. And then, oh look, a cave of bones. Laid out like trophies.

Is the cryptid the real threat, though? Or is Mattie’s husband William more monstrous even than the beast with claws and teeth that hangs still-living bodies from trees?

Stories that play with this question are some of my favorites, not only in horror but overall; and they’ve only become more relevant over the last five or so years.   Because we instinctively fear what lurks in the cold, in the woods, in the primordial darkness, but in the end, those monsters are symbolic. The monsters who actually do us harm? They look exactly like us. They are us.

I love a good dose of irony in the morning.

My only caveat on this one is that the end was a little… diffuse and the final knife thrust was a little less effective for it. Shaving off fifty, or even twenty-five pages would have tightened the tension screw perfectly and heightened the impact of the big reveal to peak screaming evisceration. Definitely worth the read though.

Nothing But Blackened Teeth by Cassandra Khaw (Tor Nightfire; body horror, yokai, haunted house) (10/19)

I read Nothing but Blackened Teeth in one sitting. My kids probably needed food and stuff but there were other adults around so I let them take care of it. I almost never do that because the kids come and ask me anyway so, “Ugh, fine, I’ll handle it,” is the easier course. Not so with this novella on my Kindle. Nope, I was stuck in a crumbling mansion with the bones of a bride and yokai in the walls people who think they know better than history. This story is damp and rotting and it smells bad and I didn’t know which direction I was supposed to look and I loved it. I want more. I want to be stuck there again. I’d be stuck there for hundreds of pages and I say that as someone who thinks almost every book she’s read in the last five year should have been at least fifty pages shorter.

Also, here is a thing I have realized (I may be totally wrong and if I am, someone please tell me): in contrast to Western horror, which tends to start with the premise that the protagonist is going to have to convince others the supernatural is real, horror with Asian roots (especially Japanese, Malaysian, and Filipino) begins with people accepting the supernatural as a given. Khaw played with this in a particularly interesting way in Nothing But Blackened Teeth in that Lin has a history of mental illness – something that would mark her as unreliable in a Western story – and her “friends” question everything she says and does except the creepy shit. No one, at any point, doubts her interactions with the supernatural and, in fact, they looked to her for leadership when it all goes really hairy real quick.

I love it. I love it so much. Why do we waste so much time in heaps on the floor sobbing and tearing our clothes because no one believes Aunt Betsy is making creepy fingers in the corner? Why aren’t there more stories where people are like:

“Whatchya lookin’ at?”

“Ghost.”

“Ghost?”

“Yup.”

“Huh. Cool. So, I assume it’s giving us a Thing To Do.”

“Yup.”

“I’ll pack the snacks.”

I mean… first of all, everyone wants to know about the snacks and cutting out a hundred pages of crying and winging and canned, flip-floppy concern leaves room for detailed descriptions. I, personally, am much more likely to go on a quest with someone who gets the individual bags of Tempting Mix from Trader Joe’s because it has dried cherries, chocolate, and peanut butter chips.

Here’s the other thing: horror likes to play with mental health tropes. And a vast proportion of the time, those explorations end up being clichéd garbage based on previous clichéd garbage rather than actual mental health research or an acknowledgement that, perhaps, someone is simply justifiably upset that no one believes them despite their being very sure off what they are seeing. People can be very upset without becoming psychotic. They can problem solve without dissociating. The fact that Western authors, and Western society, necessarily conflate the two, even as a plot device, does a disservice to those actually suffering from mental illness and makes their very real delusions comedic pratfalls. So maybe we can take a cue from other types of horror and not only expand our creative gene pool but also be not jerks.

Round 1 done! Lots more to come. More hours of daylight means more time to read outside and don’t worry. Those monsters will wait in the basement until the days get shorter again. I think I can hear them warming up their violins already…