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CHROMOPHOBIA

A STRANGEHOUSE ANTHOLOGY BY WOMEN IN HORROR

Extraordinary tales of terror that are as grim as they are delightful.

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Colors haunt, unnerve, and kill in this polychromatic horror anthology of stories written by women.

In Sonora Taylor’s “Eat Your Colors,” Eve craves a healthier diet; she decides to follow a seemingly simple plan to eat foods of every color of the rainbow each day.However, she learns the hard way that not following the diet’s strict rules has sickening results. Most of the 25 tales in this collection instill a sense of dread into seemingly innocuous hues. For example, in Red Lagoe’s “Tangerine Sky,” a woman is repulsed by orange, as it’s shown to remind her of her lost sister. Elsewhere, the bright colors of a “radiant sunset” comprise Death’s wings in Nu Yang’s “Elegy,” and a man’s suicide precedes an unexpected “blazing array of blues” on display. Other tales take a more traditional approach by accentuating the glaring redness of blood, which tints many pages. G.G. Silverman turns the gloominess of an overcast day into full-scale horror in “The Gray” as a mist relentlessly terrorizes a town, draining residents of hope. These works make use of numerous familiar genre elements along the way, from ghosts and things with sharp teeth to unhinged murderers and terrible psychological torment. The book’s opening story, Frances Lu-Pai Ippolito’s “Hei Xian (The Black Thread),” is particularly sublime; in it, Taiwanese American Xing-Yun discovers an enigmatic black thread attached to his wrist. A red thread signifies love, but his symbolizes “inescapable death,” and his attempt to save himself leads to something unspeakable—and unforgettable.

Tantlinger, the author of the poetry collection Cradleland of Parasites (2021), has gathered a set of admirable stories featuring delicious twists, eerie creatures, and visceral imagery. They necessarily linger on assorted colors, befitting this anthology’s theme, but the prose throughout is vibrant in other ways. As Bindia Persaud memorably writes in “The Dyer and the Dressmakers,” “I forgot how to breathe for a moment. I wasn’t the only one. Elation, tinged with fear, rendered us immobile.” Throughout, the authors effectively evoke a range of senses, describing the touch of cool water, the loud hum of a passing helicopter, and any number of putrid smells. KC Grifant’s “The Color of Friendship” conjures impressive atmosphere as a woman continually looks for whatever is swimming in a nearby lake during her friends’ weekend getaway. These elements set the mood for stories that deliver shocks and ghastly plot turns. Women are frequently the main characters in these tales; Christa Wojciechowski’s “The Oasis” ably explores a woman’s post-abortion depression, and in Chelsea Pumpkins’ “Toxic Shock,” the protagonist’s “technicolor” menstruation is the start of a harrowing and inexplicable ordeal. In some stories, women initially seem to be passive victims only to be revealed as aggressors. Overall, readers will fly through these works, some of which could have easily been expanded to novel length. It’s a fine sampling of an array of voices in the horror genre that will assuredly garner a bevy of new fans.

Extraordinary tales of terror that are as grim as they are delightful.

Pub Date: N/A

ISBN: 978-1-946335-43-2

Page Count: 268

Publisher: Strangehouse Books

Review Posted Online: June 28, 2022

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A BLIGHT OF BLACKWINGS

A charming and persuasive entry that will leave readers impatiently awaiting the concluding volume.

Book 2 of Hearne's latest fantasy trilogy, The Seven Kennings (A Plague of Giants, 2017), set in a multiracial world thrust into turmoil by an invasion of peculiar giants.

In this world, most races have their own particular magical endowment, or “kenning,” though there are downsides to trying to gain the magic (an excellent chance of being killed instead) and using it (rapid aging and death). Most recently discovered is the sixth kenning, whose beneficiaries can talk to and command animals. The story canters along, although with multiple first-person narrators, it's confusing at times. Some characters are familiar, others are new, most of them with their own problems to solve, all somehow caught up in the grand design. To escape her overbearing father and the unreasoning violence his kind represents, fire-giant Olet Kanek leads her followers into the far north, hoping to found a new city where the races and kennings can peacefully coexist. Joining Olet are young Abhinava Khose, discoverer of the sixth kenning, and, later, Koesha Gansu (kenning: air), captain of an all-female crew shipwrecked by deep-sea monsters. Elsewhere, Hanima, who commands hive insects, struggles to free her city from the iron grip of wealthy, callous merchant monarchists. Other threads focus on the Bone Giants, relentless invaders seeking the still-unknown seventh kenning, whose confidence that this can defeat the other six is deeply disturbing. Under Hearne's light touch, these elements mesh perfectly, presenting an inventive, eye-filling panorama; satisfying (and, where appropriate, well-resolved) plotlines; and tensions between the races and their kennings to supply much of the drama.

A charming and persuasive entry that will leave readers impatiently awaiting the concluding volume.

Pub Date: Feb. 4, 2020

ISBN: 978-0-345-54857-3

Page Count: 592

Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine

Review Posted Online: Nov. 24, 2019

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2019

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MASTERS OF DEATH

A reasonably charming urban fantasy that could have used a more rigorous edit before primetime.

The latest in a series of rereleases from a prolific fantasist’s previously self-published works is a contemporary spin on the fairytale “Godfather Death.”

Viola Marek is an aswang, a shapeshifting vampire from Filipino folklore. She’s also a Chicago real estate agent trying to sell a mansion even while the ghost of its last owner, Thomas Edward Parker IV, is doing his supernatural best to block the sale.  In a desperate attempt to earn her commission, she hires Fox D’Mora, Death’s mortal godson, to use his connection to get the ghost to leave. Unfortunately, Death is unavailable: He’s been kidnapped, and to get him back and prevent a worlds-spanning catastrophe, Fox, Vi, the ghost, and assorted other supernatural creatures will have to enter a high-stakes gambling game that usually only immortals can play…but rarely win. The story begins with an unusual blend of myth, fairy tale, and cosmology and inevitably descends to an almost unbearable level of sentimentality, which is simultaneously a refreshing change from Blake’s usual tableau of self-involved, selfish characters who seem driven toward tragedies of their own making. Blake could definitely do a better job at showing the love between characters rather than merely telling the reader that they’re in love. She also has an unfortunate tendency to skip potentially intriguing bits of backstory if they don’t immediately drive the plot along, which is why readers never learn anything about Fox’s childhood and what it was actually like having Death as a parent. Nor does she explain why only two of the four archangels, Gabriel and Raphael, play outsize roles in determining the order of the cosmos, while Uriel and Michael are nowhere to be seen. Bits of anachronism—like the use of a rubber band as aversion therapy 200 years ago or the presence of a magical wristwatch from a time long before watches were common—might be intended to be Pratchett-style humor or chalked up to magic? It’s hard to tell what’s intentional and what is simply careless. Now that Blake has a traditional publisher, perhaps the editors of her future novels will guide the author to address these issues when they arise.

A reasonably charming urban fantasy that could have used a more rigorous edit before primetime.

Pub Date: Aug. 8, 2023

ISBN: 9781250892461

Page Count: 416

Publisher: Tor

Review Posted Online: Aug. 19, 2023

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2023

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