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A review by maddietherobot
The Bone Key: The Necromantic Mysteries of Kyle Murchison Booth by Sarah Monette
4.0
I was genuinely worried there for a while that I just don't really like horror (or at least—horror writing; horror movies of course take the cake). But worry not! It's just bad horror (writing) that I dislike.
These stories are fun, though probably not particularly scary, and well paced; though I think some points where (I think?) I was supposed to realize the subtle horror that had been there the whole time...um..where is this sentence going? What I mean is sometimes I think the "subtlety" of it didnt work, maybe because it was just too subtle or maybe because I'm just dumb. But there were several points where the main character apparently is stricken with growing realization about, um, something.
Speaking of: the main character, the subtitular Kyle Murchison Booth, is compelling, too, a fun twist on the smarmy academics of Lovecraft and co., and the stories do good work at developing his humanity without it being the main focus of most of them. In fact I think that background work, developing Booth as well as the world at large, is the high point of Monette's writing, and justifies the packaging of these as a collection, a pseudo novel, rather than real stand-alones. That being said, I think they could be read as stand-alones, or anyway could be read in basically any order, though I wouldn't recommend it.
These stories are fun, though probably not particularly scary, and well paced; though I think some points where (I think?) I was supposed to realize the subtle horror that had been there the whole time...um..where is this sentence going? What I mean is sometimes I think the "subtlety" of it didnt work, maybe because it was just too subtle or maybe because I'm just dumb. But there were several points where the main character apparently is stricken with growing realization about, um, something.
Speaking of: the main character, the subtitular Kyle Murchison Booth, is compelling, too, a fun twist on the smarmy academics of Lovecraft and co., and the stories do good work at developing his humanity without it being the main focus of most of them. In fact I think that background work, developing Booth as well as the world at large, is the high point of Monette's writing, and justifies the packaging of these as a collection, a pseudo novel, rather than real stand-alones. That being said, I think they could be read as stand-alones, or anyway could be read in basically any order, though I wouldn't recommend it.