Reviews and Comments

Kat

koosli@bookwyrm.social

Joined 3 years, 3 months ago

Currently I'm reading horror, almost exclusively

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Silvia Moreno-Garcia: Silver Nitrate (Hardcover, 2023, Del Rey) 4 stars

Montserrat has always been overlooked. She’s a talented sound editor, but she’s left out of …

Enjoyable as heck

5 stars

Film and sound nerdery, Crowley-esque occult magic and meatballs, what else would you want? I really enjoyed this one and can't wait to read Mexican Gothic (which Father Christmas has kindly bestowed).

Jeff VanderMeer: Borne (2017, MCD/Farrar, Straus and Giroux) 4 stars

In a ruined, nameless city of the future, a woman named Rachel, who makes her …

My favourite Vandermeer to date

5 stars

What an original little book. Borne (who in my mind usually looked like Philippe from Achewood, only a tentacled vase?) is a weird creature found by the main character, Rachel. Despite being set in yet another post-collapse dystopia, this book is anything but cliché.

Cassandra Khaw: The Salt Grows Heavy (Hardcover, 2023, Titan Books) 4 stars

Myths are full of lies. This is not one of them.

Fleeing the downfall of …

A beautiful and horrific love story

5 stars

I loved this and I needed to sit with it a while after I finished, before starting my next book. It's a body-horror/fairytale/love story between a 'mermaid' on land and her (plague) doctor, as they intervene in a morbid cult run by three false saints. It's like nothing I've read before (okay, maybe it's a bit T. Kingfisher-y - a good thing) and it's really beautifully written.

reviewed Welcome to Night Vale by Joseph Fink (Welcome to Night Vale, #1)

Joseph Fink, Jeffrey Cranor: Welcome to Night Vale (2015) 4 stars

Dreamy mystery filled with non-sequiturs

3 stars

I haven't listened to the podcast this is based on but I don't think it mattered. It's an entertaining book filled with weirdness and silliness, but with a real story underneath. It was good? But I don't think it will leave much of an impression on me.

The Hollow Places (Paperback) 4 stars

Gripping and terrifying

5 stars

We can confidently say I am now a committed T. Kingfisher fan since reading What Moves The Dead, and now this. The Hollow Places follows two likeable main characters as they stumble upon a multiverse portal through a wall in the back of an eccentric small town museum. The story is gripping and unpredictable and once I got so far I literally couldn't put it down. More please!

Alison Rumfitt: Tell Me I'm Worthless (2023, Doherty Associates, LLC, Tom) 4 stars

Difficult, harrowing, and almost great

4 stars

I hesitate to recommend this book because it covers some difficult terrain. Having said that, I've already recommended it to a couple of people. I was mostly enthralled and terrified by the story but I could have done without the prologue and epilogue, which seemed to lack the originality of the rest of the book.

Stephen Graham Jones: Don't Fear the Reaper (Paperback, 2023, Titan Books Limited) 4 stars

Jade Daniels faces down a brutal serial killer in his pulse-punding tribute to the golden …

High intensity slasher, back in Proofrock with our friends

4 stars

The second book in the Indian Lake trilogy, and it definitely feels like a middle book. The first, My Heart is a Chainsaw, blew my mind and I really enjoyed this though not quite as much. It's probably unfair to compare it, to be honest. Don't Fear the Reaper gives us a terrifying new slasher, kind of a cross between Candyman and Jason Vorhees, and beloved characters Jade/Jennifer, Letha and others are back. Proofrock has a new class of seniors but hasn't really moved on from the Lake Witch Slayings aka the Independence Day Massacre. This book hurls Jade and the readers back into the path of danger and keeps things at a high intensity from there. It's bloody and brutal. I can't wait for the third book.

T. Kingfisher: What Moves the Dead (Hardcover, 2022, Tor Nightfire) 4 stars

From T. Kingfisher, the award-winning author of The Twisted Ones, comes What Moves the Dead, …

Creepy, gothic, fungal homage

4 stars

I enjoyed this from start to finish. I really liked the characters and connected with Alex Easton immediately. The remote location constrained the setting and I felt immersed in it. The contemporary treatment of gender was interesting, relevant to the story and understated. And the story was as creepy as heck.