A host of sublime writers and settings create an entertainingly macabre collection.
This dark anthology explores sinister legends and harrowing mythological creatures spanning the Western Hemisphere.
According to documents that open this book, the enigmatic and decades-old Umbra Arca Society has long compiled myths and legends. Though some question the organization’s very existence, it has allegedly archived a book “for each corner of the world.” This anthology, however, focuses on the Americas with a series of moody poetry and short fiction. Most of the entries follow a traditional format—a hero confronts an otherworldly, typically vengeful being or something equally heinous. But the spotlight shines brightest on the myths and legends themselves, originating from various locales. These include monstrous dogmen in Ohio (Tim Waggoner’s “God Spelled Backward”), the bogeymanlike Sack Man in São Paulo (Josh Malerman’s “Door to Door”), and a heart-eating female demon in the Yucatán Peninsula (Julia Rios’ “Xtabay”). Recognizable characters crop up, such as sea and lake monsters or the tooth fairy in Annie Neugebauer’s spine-chilling “You Ought Not Smile as You Walk These Woods.” Other less-familiar tales prove just as fascinating, from raining fish in Honduras to the colossal “devil whale” in Jeanne C. Stein’s Colombia-set “Diablo Ballena.” An array of talented authors elevates this collection with indelible prose. Christina Sng, for example, delivers a series of creature-laden poems based in Mesoamerica and South America. In “The Massacooramaan,” she writes, “We reached Georgetown by morning. / It was empty / But for the dead bodies / Crisp under our Guyanan sun.” Editors Bissett, Dodge, and Viola stylize the book like an archive and include email correspondence, handwritten notes, photos, and sketches. Bissett and Dodge also contributed several Umbra Arca “case files,” detailing phenomena like mermaids in Mississippi and unexplained ghost lights in Saskatchewan, Canada. Meanwhile, Lovett’s complementary artwork, whether of grotesque, menacing creatures or dreamlike imagery, simply astounds.
A host of sublime writers and settings create an entertainingly macabre collection.Pub Date: Nov. 30, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-73659-643-2
Page Count: 440
Publisher: Hex Publishers
Review Posted Online: Nov. 22, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.
Are we not men? We are—well, ask Bigfoot, as Brooks does in this delightful yarn, following on his bestseller World War Z(2006).
A zombie apocalypse is one thing. A volcanic eruption is quite another, for, as the journalist who does a framing voice-over narration for Brooks’ latest puts it, when Mount Rainier popped its cork, “it was the psychological aspect, the hyperbole-fueled hysteria that had ended up killing the most people.” Maybe, but the sasquatches whom the volcano displaced contributed to the statistics, too, if only out of self-defense. Brooks places the epicenter of the Bigfoot war in a high-tech hideaway populated by the kind of people you might find in a Jurassic Park franchise: the schmo who doesn’t know how to do much of anything but tries anyway, the well-intentioned bleeding heart, the know-it-all intellectual who turns out to know the wrong things, the immigrant with a tough backstory and an instinct for survival. Indeed, the novel does double duty as a survival manual, packed full of good advice—for instance, try not to get wounded, for “injury turns you from a giver to a taker. Taking up our resources, our time to care for you.” Brooks presents a case for making room for Bigfoot in the world while peppering his narrative with timely social criticism about bad behavior on the human side of the conflict: The explosion of Rainier might have been better forecast had the president not slashed the budget of the U.S. Geological Survey, leading to “immediate suspension of the National Volcano Early Warning System,” and there’s always someone around looking to monetize the natural disaster and the sasquatch-y onslaught that follows. Brooks is a pro at building suspense even if it plays out in some rather spectacularly yucky episodes, one involving a short spear that takes its name from “the sucking sound of pulling it out of the dead man’s heart and lungs.” Grossness aside, it puts you right there on the scene.
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.Pub Date: June 16, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9848-2678-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Feb. 9, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
An author to watch, Buehlman is now two for two in delivering eerie, offbeat novels with admirable literary skill.
Cormac McCarthy's The Road meets Chaucer's Canterbury Tales in this frightful medieval epic about an orphan girl with visionary powers in plague-devastated France.
The year is 1348. The conflict between France and England is nothing compared to the all-out war building between good angels and fallen ones for control of heaven (though a scene in which soldiers are massacred by a rainbow of arrows is pretty horrific). Among mortals, only the girl, Delphine, knows of the cataclysm to come. Angels speak to her, issuing warnings—and a command to run. A pack of thieves is about to carry her off and rape her when she is saved by a disgraced knight, Thomas, with whom she teams on a march across the parched landscape. Survivors desperate for food have made donkey a delicacy and don't mind eating human flesh. The few healthy people left lock themselves in, not wanting to risk contact with strangers, no matter how dire the strangers' needs. To venture out at night is suicidal: Horrific forces swirl about, ravaging living forms. Lethal black clouds, tentacled water creatures and assorted monsters are comfortable in the daylight hours as well. The knight and a third fellow journeyer, a priest, have difficulty believing Delphine's visions are real, but with oblivion lurking in every shadow, they don't have any choice but to trust her. The question becomes, can she trust herself? Buehlman, who drew upon his love of Fitzgerald and Hemingway in his acclaimed Southern horror novel, Those Across the River (2011), slips effortlessly into a different kind of literary sensibility, one that doesn't scrimp on earthy humor and lyrical writing in the face of unspeakable horrors. The power of suggestion is the author's strong suit, along with first-rate storytelling talent.
An author to watch, Buehlman is now two for two in delivering eerie, offbeat novels with admirable literary skill.Pub Date: Oct. 2, 2012
ISBN: 978-1-937007-86-7
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Ace/Berkley
Review Posted Online: Sept. 1, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2012
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