dontjudgeabrooke 's review for:

The Elementals by Michael McDowell

2.5

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Not quite the Southern Gothic horror novel I was looking for, unfortunately. It just never quite grabbed me. For as short as this book is, it felt like it took forever to get through and I never found myself looking forward to reading it. A few of my biggest gripes:

-McDowell's use of the "magical negro" trope and feeling the need to point out that Odessa & Martha-Ann are black every single time they're mentioned

-Too much tell, not enough show

-Threads that go unexplored/unresolved

(What was the deal with the Savage mausoleum? And what was up with the drawing India made of Dauphin's ancestor? For that matter, what was up with the whole Savage family? What was their connection to the Elementals?)

-There's not much of a plot, which normally isn't an issue my character study-loving self, but I'm looking for a little more from my horror novels.

-Despite how much Odessa hypes up the Elementals as being impossible to predict or outsmart, they seemed

really easy to defeat. Like they can seemingly only arrange themselves into one physical monster at a time, and you just have to hack at that monster with a sharp object till it dissolves into sand

. In general, most of the book seems like it's leading up to something that never really happens.

-Maybe it's because I've been inundating myself with horror content this month, but this just wasn't all that scary to me. To be fair, it's super rare for me to get scared by a book--it really has to hit just the right notes. 

I do appreciate that this is sand-centric horror, which is not something I'd encountered till now, but this was overall pretty meh for me. I guess I shouldn't have been too surprised based on McDowell's film writing credits, since I'm actually...not the biggest Beetlejuice/Nightmare Before Christmas fan either. I know, I know--a cardinal sin for anyone who purports to love all things dark & spooky. But this is my truth.