Take a photo of a barcode or cover
challenging
dark
mysterious
tense
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
Thank you to Tor Nightfire for sending me an uncorrected bound manuscript.
First of all, wow, what a novel. I knew as soon as I read the word botfly that this book was going to get disgusting, but I was not prepared for how utterly foul it would get. I like to think of myself as relatively sound when it comes to gross stuff in horror novels, but having to read about the horrific botfly warbles on Saul’s back not once, not twice, not even thrice, but four separate times made my skin absolutely crawl with phantom bugs. Eugh, I’m shuddering even now thinking about it.
The prose used in this book really immersed me in the world; word choices and turns of phrase and mannerisms felt like this was from someone’s diary that we just happened to be reading, which I really appreciated. Too many authors want to write a period piece, but end up using recent expressions or try to throw in a modern idea to the book’s detriment, but I never once felt like Sonia Wilson would know what an iPhone is (Asa Phelps, meanwhile, would absolutely accuse someone of witchcraft if they showed one to him).
The thoughts Miss Wilson has throughout the book where she’ll focus on what colours she’d like to paint whatever scene she’s looking at start out as endearing asides that bring out her creative personality, and slowly devolve into dissociative escapes as she beholds the horrors happening in front of her, whether it be half-dead vampire-eel-men being infected with various botflies (truly one of the most heinous bugs to ever exist on this planet) or strange turn-of-the-century backwoods religious men holding guns on her, and I really enjoyed seeing that progression. It felt a bit like an episode of The Joy of Painting if Bob Ross decided to regale us with horrific stories of human experimentation during the war while using some Prussian blue to get the shading of the shadow across the mountain just right.
I pictured a lot of this novel in my head as being set at Bly Manor from Mike Flanagan’s Netflix series, rather than the backwoods of North Carolina, and I think a lot of that was due to the character of Mrs Kent, who in my mind was an amalgamation of Hannah Grose, the character played by the wonderful T’Nia Miller, and Owen, played by the gorgeous Rahul Kohli. And that isn’t a dig in the slightest–Mrs Kent very quickly became one of my favourite characters in the entire novel, and I physically had to set my book down to applaud when she appeared at the climax hefting a shotgun, Jackson right on her heels providing light for his woman to mow some dudes down with. This might be too niche a reference, but for anyone that’s seen this most recent season of Love Island USA, the Kents gave me heavy Nic/Olandria vibes in the sense that Jackson knows he’s with the most stunning woman he’ll ever meet in his life, and he’s just happy to be there.
Can we talk about the eel-vampire-man? Let’s talk about the eel-vampire-man, because Ms Kingfisher, what in the fuck are we talking about?? Hello??? Miss Wilson meanders down to a scary dark hole in the ground on the estate of man she knows is weirdly obsessed with botflies (once again, the most heinous bug known to man–god truly has forsaken us to leave us with those monstrous beings), which is already a bad move, only to meet a dead man who isn’t actually dead, just has dozens of botflies living and reproducing inside of him, and that still isn’t the wildest thing that happens in this novel? The man isn’t even a man but is instead some parasitic organism that’s been living among humans and also has teeth like an eel that just live in his throat? And that’s thrown at us within the last like forty pages of the book, Ms Kingfisher, I’m going to need an entire novel dedicated to what in the exact hell those creatures are!! Are they aliens? Did they evolve alongside humans from the get? Are they a different species of homo sapiens? Give me the tea, girl!!
This was a fantastic novel and I’m immensely grateful that I was sent a copy by Tor Nightfire; I’ve been on a bit of a Star Wars kick recently and it’s been tough for me to read anything that isn’t set a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away, but this book sunk it’s weird eel teeth into me straightaway and quite honestly still hasn’t let go. I’m even more scared of botflies now than I was previously, which I didn’t think possible, and I will now be going to scrub myself down in the shower, even though I’ve never once encountered a botfly and likely never will but I’ll be damned if I think one into existence anywhere in my vicinity. Thank you Tor Nightfire for the manuscript, thank you Ms Kingfisher for validating my fears on botflies, and a final thank you to Satan for creating those vile creatures in the first place; otherwise we wouldn’t have gotten the despicably beautiful novel that we did. And you know what they say; maybe the real devils were the botflies we met along the way. Or something like that.
The prose used in this book really immersed me in the world; word choices and turns of phrase and mannerisms felt like this was from someone’s diary that we just happened to be reading, which I really appreciated. Too many authors want to write a period piece, but end up using recent expressions or try to throw in a modern idea to the book’s detriment, but I never once felt like Sonia Wilson would know what an iPhone is (Asa Phelps, meanwhile, would absolutely accuse someone of witchcraft if they showed one to him).
The thoughts Miss Wilson has throughout the book where she’ll focus on what colours she’d like to paint whatever scene she’s looking at start out as endearing asides that bring out her creative personality, and slowly devolve into dissociative escapes as she beholds the horrors happening in front of her, whether it be half-dead vampire-eel-men being infected with various botflies (truly one of the most heinous bugs to ever exist on this planet) or strange turn-of-the-century backwoods religious men holding guns on her, and I really enjoyed seeing that progression. It felt a bit like an episode of The Joy of Painting if Bob Ross decided to regale us with horrific stories of human experimentation during the war while using some Prussian blue to get the shading of the shadow across the mountain just right.
I pictured a lot of this novel in my head as being set at Bly Manor from Mike Flanagan’s Netflix series, rather than the backwoods of North Carolina, and I think a lot of that was due to the character of Mrs Kent, who in my mind was an amalgamation of Hannah Grose, the character played by the wonderful T’Nia Miller, and Owen, played by the gorgeous Rahul Kohli. And that isn’t a dig in the slightest–Mrs Kent very quickly became one of my favourite characters in the entire novel, and I physically had to set my book down to applaud when she appeared at the climax hefting a shotgun, Jackson right on her heels providing light for his woman to mow some dudes down with. This might be too niche a reference, but for anyone that’s seen this most recent season of Love Island USA, the Kents gave me heavy Nic/Olandria vibes in the sense that Jackson knows he’s with the most stunning woman he’ll ever meet in his life, and he’s just happy to be there.
Can we talk about the eel-vampire-man? Let’s talk about the eel-vampire-man, because Ms Kingfisher, what in the fuck are we talking about?? Hello??? Miss Wilson meanders down to a scary dark hole in the ground on the estate of man she knows is weirdly obsessed with botflies (once again, the most heinous bug known to man–god truly has forsaken us to leave us with those monstrous beings), which is already a bad move, only to meet a dead man who isn’t actually dead, just has dozens of botflies living and reproducing inside of him, and that still isn’t the wildest thing that happens in this novel? The man isn’t even a man but is instead some parasitic organism that’s been living among humans and also has teeth like an eel that just live in his throat? And that’s thrown at us within the last like forty pages of the book, Ms Kingfisher, I’m going to need an entire novel dedicated to what in the exact hell those creatures are!! Are they aliens? Did they evolve alongside humans from the get? Are they a different species of homo sapiens? Give me the tea, girl!!
This was a fantastic novel and I’m immensely grateful that I was sent a copy by Tor Nightfire; I’ve been on a bit of a Star Wars kick recently and it’s been tough for me to read anything that isn’t set a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away, but this book sunk it’s weird eel teeth into me straightaway and quite honestly still hasn’t let go. I’m even more scared of botflies now than I was previously, which I didn’t think possible, and I will now be going to scrub myself down in the shower, even though I’ve never once encountered a botfly and likely never will but I’ll be damned if I think one into existence anywhere in my vicinity. Thank you Tor Nightfire for the manuscript, thank you Ms Kingfisher for validating my fears on botflies, and a final thank you to Satan for creating those vile creatures in the first place; otherwise we wouldn’t have gotten the despicably beautiful novel that we did. And you know what they say; maybe the real devils were the botflies we met along the way. Or something like that.