Jennifer Giesbrecht
The Monster of Elendhaven
The Monster of Elendhaven is the rare grimdark fantasy about a foppish little accountant, his profound lust for revenge, and the monstrous servant who is an ambulatory weapon against the world. This slim novel feels like it was conceived under the influence of the Decadent movement; the world feels weary of its own historical burden, the prose is wry and poetic, and the characters feel like they were doomed from birth.
Deidre Sullivan
(illustrated by Karen Vaughan)
Tangleweed and Brine
Tangleweed and Brine is a book of rewritten fairy tales; I discovered it on a trip to a children's book museum, though I have to say that I'm not sure the intended audience for this one is actually children. While I might give a child a book rife with blasphemy, incest, and lesbian sex, I'm told this is not how it is generally done. Fans of Angela Carter's tales in this mode will find much to love, but I would hate to see this book written off as derivative; Sullivan very much as her own voice, with its own peculiar cadence, that carries through each story. Instead of men are from Mars, women are from Venus, he learn that men are Kings and women are Witches: a fraught gender dynamic for sure, but one that allows a space to talk about chains of expectation and the leers and fists that enforce them--and the ways they get navigated, even if only ever painfully. The art, by Karen Vaughan, gives me Harry Clarke and David Palladini feelings--which means I love it. In fact, I made a separate post with a few samples of it here.
Gwendolyn Kiste
The Rust Maidens
In a city with a failing steel industry, a a strange malady that turns the bodies of young women into horrific reconfigurations of metal and glass that weep gray fluid begins to take hold. A Rust Belt nightmare than anyone who grew up in a post-industrial wasteland will recognize; the desire for escape from a hometown whose despair, desperation, and sheer small-mindedness has welded shut all routes out is palpable. In such a situation is an inward escape into abjection and monstrosity even a less dreadful prospect? I immediately bought another book by Gwendolyn Kiste after reading this one.
Lisa Kroger and Melanie R. Anderson
Monster, She Wrote: The Women Who Pioneered Horror & Speculative Fiction
As a history of women's contributions to horror and speculative fiction, Monster, She Wrote is part biographical sketch, part neglected history, and part reader's guide. Readers not well versed in the stranger alleys of genre fiction will probably get the most out of the book, but there will probably be a few names that even aficionados of the weird will want to seek out. For example, after reading Monster, She Wrote, I couldn't not pick up a copy of Margaret St. Clair's The Shadow People when I saw it in the wild.
Chen, Benitez, Montiel, Sotelo
Lady Mechanika: The Lost Boys of West Abbey, La Dama de la Muerte, The Clockwork Assassin, La Belle Dame Sans Merci
I never really see anyone else talking about Lady Mechanika, but I love this pulpy, gothy, steampunky Victorian action comic. Realistically, Lady Mechanika probably gives me what other people get out of superhero comics--it's just that I like this book's aesthetics better. Now that I've finished the trades that have been published to date, I need more. Sangre can't get collected in a trade soon enough.
Joe Hill and Gabriel Rodriguez
Locke & Key vol. 1-6
I planned to read a bunch of Locke & Key before the Netflix show arrives, and luckily it is as good as its reputation promised. So good, in fact, that I finished all of it within a couple days. The series becomes less horror focused and more fantasy oriented as it progresses, though it never fully loses its willingness to up-end its characters' lives in spectacularly violent ways. I loved the way the "back-up" story about the keys' origins in colonial America eventually made its way into the main plot, and the light touches of Lovecraftiana worked much better than I suppose a more heavy-handed approach would have.
The Turning
It's pretty true to Henry James's The Turn of the Screw, the actors did a fine job (especially the child actors), and it is aesthetically interesting, but most audiences are going to be very put off by The Turning's ending. Or lack thereof. (It either had two endings, or none, depending on how you look at it.) I'm honestly shocked that a major studio let this one hit the big screen in this form. Charitably, you could say the ending is ambiguous. It's doubly odd in that the James story has a very definitive climatic scene that has a lot of impact, but it just wasn't used here. The Turn of the Screw is still ambiguous (just look at the variety of analyses of it!), but you can still point to the ending as something that happened. I enjoyed the movie, but I would have a hard time recommending it to anyone in particular.
The Nightingale
Brutal depiction of colonialism in early 19th century Australia. A convict woman finds herself allied with an indigenous Australian as they track down a group of British colonial solders with revenge on their minds. Abuse and violence beget abuse and violence, but the film also gestures toward the natural ends of brutality and the consequences of the casual disregard of shared humanity that practically define the imperial project. Pair The Nightingale with There Will Be Blood for the maximum bleakness.
