The face of horror fiction continues to be enhanced, both in representation and in relevance.
Horror writers representing varied cultures, genders, and sexual orientations contribute stories cataloging anxieties of, and toward, “the other”—whatever that “other” may be.
The subtitle, An Inclusive Anthology, hammers home what Bram Stoker Award winners Liaguno and Mason have assembled: a trailblazing anthology in which LGBTQ+ characters and people of color are both feared and preyed upon in jolting, haunting, sometimes funny, and/or graphically violent tales. Dramatizing fears, anxieties, and phobias held by and against those perceived as socially marginal can be a delicate, even dicey process. But the stories here are mostly tough-minded and emphatic in such provocative variations on this theme as Jennifer McMahon’s tautly woven, wickedly ingenious “Idiot Girls,” about teen lesbian lovers whose secret trysts pit them against the immigrant groundskeeper of their apartment complex—and put them in the path of a serial killer. Then there’s “Night Shopper,” Michael H. Hanson’s revenge fantasy in which a Muslim trans woman with a penchant for Wittgenstein’s aphorisms finds unlikely salvation from hate crime in the shut-ins to whom she delivers groceries. Similar if subtler gratifications are available in Usman T. Malik’s “Mud Flappers,” which reaches further afield to an island off the Karachi coast whose residents have sustained an effective—and grisly—way of resisting would-be exploiters. A different, if no less bizarre, act of retribution is submitted for our approval by the crime writer S.A. Cosby in “What Blood Hath Wrought,” in which a Black history professor calls upon otherworldly powers to seek out from among a motley collection of Pancake Shack diners the homicidal descendant of a sadistic slaveholder. The terrorism of anti-Asian racism aroused by Covid-19 swells into more widespread and profoundly transfiguring scientific phenomena in Denise Dumars’ “Scrape,” while in Hailey Piper’s “The Turning,” adolescent girls are swept up by a plague that transforms them into prehistoric mammals, thus creating newer, scarier forms of “the other” that frighten the grown-ups—and resist any efforts to change back to whatever they were before. One could go on and on citing stories by such writers as, Alma Katsu, Gabino Iglesias, Nathan Carson, and others.
The face of horror fiction continues to be enhanced, both in representation and in relevance.Pub Date: July 19, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-358-65889-4
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 24, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2022
A beautiful meditation on queer identity against a supernatural backdrop.
Three women deal very differently with vampirism in Schwab’s era-spanning follow-up to The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue (2020).
In 16th-century Spain, Maria seduces a wealthy viscount in an attempt to seize whatever control she can over her own life. It turns out that being a wife—even a wealthy one—is just another cage, but then a mysterious widow offers Maria a surprising escape route. In the 19th century, Charlotte is sent from her home in the English countryside to live with an aunt in London when she’s found trying to kiss her best friend. She’s despondent at the idea of marrying a man, but another mysterious widow—who has a secret connection to Maria’s widow from centuries earlier—appears and teaches Charlotte that she can be free to love whomever she chooses, if she’s brave enough. In 2019, Alice’s memories of growing up in Scotland with her mercurial older sister, Catty, pull her mind away from her first days at Harvard University. And though she doesn’t meet any mysterious widows, Alice wakes up alone after a one-night stand unable to tolerate sunlight, sporting two new fangs, and desperate to drink blood. Horrified at her transformation, she searches Boston for her hookup, who was the last person she remembers seeing before she woke up as a vampire. Schwab delicately intertwines the three storylines, which are compelling individually even before the reader knows how they will connect. Maria, Charlotte, and Alice are queer women searching for love, recognition, and wholeness, growing fangs and defying mortality in a world that would deny them their very existence. Alice’s flashbacks to Catty are particularly moving, and subtly play off themes of grief and loneliness laid out in the historical timelines.
A beautiful meditation on queer identity against a supernatural backdrop.Pub Date: June 10, 2025
ISBN: 9781250320520
Page Count: 544
Publisher: Tor
Review Posted Online: March 22, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PERSPECTIVES
PERSPECTIVES
Even when King is not at his best, he’s still good.
Two killers are on the loose. Can they be stopped?
In this ambitious mystery, the prolific and popular King tells the story of a serial murderer who pledges, in a note to Buckeye City police, to kill “13 innocents and 1 guilty,” in order, we eventually learn, to avenge the death of a man who was framed and convicted for possession of child pornography and then killed in prison. At the same time, the author weaves in the efforts of another would-be murderer, a member of a violently abortion-opposing church who has been stalking a popular feminist author and women’s rights activist on a publicity tour. To tell these twin tales of murders done and intended, King summons some familiar characters, including private investigator Holly Gibney, whom readers may recall from previous novels. Gibney is enlisted to help Buckeye City police detective Izzy Jaynes try to identify and stop the serial killer, who has been murdering random unlucky citizens with chilling efficiency. She’s also been hired as a bodyguard for author and activist Kate McKay and her young assistant. The author succeeds in grabbing the reader’s interest and holding it throughout this page-turning tale of terror, which reads like a big-screen thriller. The action is well paced, the settings are vividly drawn, and King’s choice to focus on the real and deadly dangers of extremist thought is admirable. But the book is hamstrung by cliched characters, hackneyed dialogue (both spoken and internal), and motives that feel both convoluted and overly simplistic. King shines brightest when he gets to the heart of our darkest fears and desires, but here the dangers seem a bit cerebral. In his warning letter to the police, the serial killer wonders if his cryptic rationale to murder will make sense to others, concluding, “It does to me, and that is enough.” Is it enough? In another writer’s work, it might not be, but in King’s skilled hands, it probably is.
Even when King is not at his best, he’s still good.Pub Date: May 27, 2025
ISBN: 9781668089330
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2025
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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