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A review by krisrid
The Bone Key: The Necromantic Mysteries of Kyle Murchison Booth by Sarah Monette
5.0
Normally, I'm not a fan of short-story compilations, but this was an exception. I absolutely LOVED almost every story in this short story collection!
Couple of reasons why I think I enjoyed this so much:
1) All the various stories in the book were linked through a single character who appears in each story in a more or less prominant role - Kyle Murchison Booth. Booth is a socially inept, but brilliant curator and rare book and puzzle/mystery expert at the Samuel Mather Parrington Museum, where he seems to come across more than his share - more than most ANYONE'S share, really! - of malevolant spirits, haunted artifacts and just generally creepy things. The link of Booth being involved in each story made it feel more like a connected book, even though each of the tales is a unique story with the other characters and events each being a stand-alone.
2) The "necromantic mysteries" as the subtitle of the book describes the various vignettes are, we are told in the author's prologue, all meant to be homages to the works of H.P. Lovecraft and M.R. James. Having not read either of those authors myself, I can't speak to that, but I can say that all these stories were very Hitchcockian and/or Poe-esque, because all the stories have a surface veneer of normality and ordinariness that is ultimately proven to be false. These stories are seriously creepy, and gave me the delicious thrills and chills of the very best ghost-stories. If you think too much about how some of them play out, you could conceivably let your imagination run away with you and be obsessively checking in empty rooms, or sleeping with the lights on.
The stories are all really creative and well-written. As I said earlier, each story is unique with a completely different otherworldly focus but all of them have something that should make you shiver. I really enjoyed this anthology and would recommend it to those who like to be scared by their books just enough to get the blood flowing, without a lot of gore or slashing - there's really none of either here - all the stories rely on psychological terror to grab you by the throat. A wild but enjoyable ride!
Couple of reasons why I think I enjoyed this so much:
1) All the various stories in the book were linked through a single character who appears in each story in a more or less prominant role - Kyle Murchison Booth. Booth is a socially inept, but brilliant curator and rare book and puzzle/mystery expert at the Samuel Mather Parrington Museum, where he seems to come across more than his share - more than most ANYONE'S share, really! - of malevolant spirits, haunted artifacts and just generally creepy things. The link of Booth being involved in each story made it feel more like a connected book, even though each of the tales is a unique story with the other characters and events each being a stand-alone.
2) The "necromantic mysteries" as the subtitle of the book describes the various vignettes are, we are told in the author's prologue, all meant to be homages to the works of H.P. Lovecraft and M.R. James. Having not read either of those authors myself, I can't speak to that, but I can say that all these stories were very Hitchcockian and/or Poe-esque, because all the stories have a surface veneer of normality and ordinariness that is ultimately proven to be false. These stories are seriously creepy, and gave me the delicious thrills and chills of the very best ghost-stories. If you think too much about how some of them play out, you could conceivably let your imagination run away with you and be obsessively checking in empty rooms, or sleeping with the lights on.
The stories are all really creative and well-written. As I said earlier, each story is unique with a completely different otherworldly focus but all of them have something that should make you shiver. I really enjoyed this anthology and would recommend it to those who like to be scared by their books just enough to get the blood flowing, without a lot of gore or slashing - there's really none of either here - all the stories rely on psychological terror to grab you by the throat. A wild but enjoyable ride!