A review by ericarobyn
Undead folk by Katherine Silva

challenging dark emotional mysterious sad tense medium-paced

5.0

Undead Folk by Katherine Silva is a short and intense tale of grief, horror, and the lengths in which someone will go for closure and vengeance.

Wandering a barren landscape, this character finds what she was looking for; a dead fox. Carrying it back to an abandoned space, she completes a ritual and falls asleep. Waking up to a voice, she sees that her ritual has worked and begins her journey of revenge.

I don’t want to go too in-depth here as readers need to explore the darkness for themselves. But like all of Kat’s work, it’s just stunning. I had such a hard time picking out my favorite passages to feature as I found myself highlighting passages on almost every page. The grief is thick here, weighing on readers’ shoulders like a backpack filled with rocks. You just know something dark is simmering underneath the character’s cool exterior, but she keeps the reasoning behind this mission to herself, only slowly revealing bits and pieces as they travel.

Showing strength in every meaning of the word, readers’ hearts will break time and time again as more of her past is revealed.

One other quick note – Chapter Seven! Oh my gosh! My heart… this poor girl. And this wasn’t even the most intense chapter of the book!

My Favorite Passages from Undead Folk –

“Okay. The reason I ask is because the house we’re in looks pretty fucked up. Like someone committed an armed robbery and then maybe a triple homicide happened and then after a few years of rumors milling around town, a bunch of kids had a rager-party in it.”

The darkness swam like schools of frightened fish in her vision, lurching this way and that.

The encampments were the last bastion of the unlucky ones: a collective of wanderers who broke apart and came together like a hive of bees.

The image of her dad’s body on the tracks renewed in her mind’s eye: a sight she’d sworn to herself she’d bury beneath the memories of a hundred beautiful things he’d done for her before his death.

My Final Thoughts on Undead Folk –

Are you ready to dive into this story with an atmosphere thick with sorrow that will utterly captivate you as you journey right alongside the main character and her companion?