effingunicorns's reviews
384 reviews

Hellblazer (1988), Volume 2 by Jamie Delano

3.5

This volume is really all over the place story-wise, a bunch of shorter stories grouped together like they don't fit anywhere else, but even as disjointed as it is I apparently liked it well enough.

'Salem's Lot by Stephen King

3.5

The major obstacles to me finishing this in a timely fashion were a bunch of shit happening IRL at the end of October and beginning of November (in addition to the god-awful election) and Chapter 13 being an entire fucking novella.

Anyway, there's a solid air of mystery even if you already have a general idea of how things play out from either or both movie adaptations, and some equally solid tension in waiting for the bad things to happen. The glimpses of the human darkness that make Salem's Lot a prime target for Barlow feel almost mundane in how recognizably horrible they are--especially when we finally saw the bus driver again, and that one I admit was satisfying. I think otherwise the main points of interest for me are how wild it was to discover Barlow in the book is more Dracula than Nosferatu, and seeing how the various events played out when not condensed for runtime. 

I do feel like the whole "let's look at the whole town" thing stretched coverage of individual characters a little thinner than I would've liked, and the whole Hubie Marsten thing in particular felt underutilized, but overall there are far worse things you could read for spooky season (extended).

Never Whistle at Night: An Indigenous Dark Fiction Anthology by Shane Hawk, Theodore C. Van Alst Jr.

3.75

On the technical end, the writing was great, lots of highly skilled authors showing their chops. On the satisfaction end... well, some stories were great, again, and then some stories reminded me of why I didn't gel with the Shirley Jackson short story collection: you can't scare a crazy person with stories of unaddressed craziness. There were some great monster stories, though, so over all I'd still recommend this to anyone who's in the mood for a wide-ranging horror anthology or looking to sample a lot of Native American authors in a short time frame.

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Child abuse, Mental illness, Pedophilia, Rape, Sexual assault, and Injury/Injury detail

The Book of Witches by Jonathan Strahan

medium-paced

3.5

This is generally a pretty solid collection, with stories ranging from a multicultural sampling of classic storybook witches to critical examinations of gender roles and who gets to be called/is forced into the role of a witch. There's also Wicca-flavored bullshit and one author who's recently outed herself as a transphobe! These problems are only a sliver of the total work, though, so I'd recommend picking it up anyway if you want a sampler of a lot of promising current names in spec lit.

I Got Reincarnated in a (BL) World of Big (Man) Boobs, Volume 1 by Tsukiji Nao

funny

4.0

I have no excuses.

I Got Reincarnated in a (BL) World of Big (Man) Boobs, Volume 2 by Tsukiji Nao

funny

4.0

Constantly getting called out by a fucking manga, but I don't care because I want Onizuka to get his man...

I Was a Teenage Slasher by Stephen Graham Jones

• Plot- or character-driven? Character

4.0

Honestly I spent a not-insignificant part of this book thinking about how this would make an awesome backstory for a superhero who never makes it higher than second string because his power's too creepy and tragic, so I was too attached to really accept the inevitability of Tolly's death. That being said! I appreciated the big switcheroos of Amber being the final girl rather than Mel and peanuts being Tolly's weakness even after he became a slasher. Both points were obvious, but in that really satisfying way a good story gets where the payoff makes you feel clever and/or attentive.

My Sister Took My Fiancé and Now I'm Being Courted by a Beastly Prince (Manga) Vol. 2 by Kiduki Hoshikawa, Yu Sakurai, Ren Hidou

fast-paced

2.0

What the hell was this? Where the first volume was a cute, soap opera-style distraction, this volume resolved and revealed things so abruptly that it felt like a TV series where the writers are trying to fit five years of planned plot into what they've just found out are the last two episodes ever. Except the story continues after this! And then, on top of that, the resolutions especially in the first half of the volume have that fake, overly direct "and then everybody clapped" therapy homework monologue vibe, which sucked all the tension out of the story.

I dunno. I might take a peek at the next volume to see if the series gets back on track after this, but I've got a million other things to read so I'm probably out.

The Queen of the Damned by Anne Rice

slow-paced

2.5

Honestly there's this weird pervasive nihilism that makes me feel like, in light of Rice's subsequent born-again Christian phase, Akasha is the main Anne Rice insert in this book. There's a lot of other stuff to unpack, of course, and frankly Stan's poetry wasn't doing it for me, but the high-density worldbuilding and laundry list of POVs after spending a whole book with Lestat was a nice change, I still broadly enjoy the story of the origin of vampires, and I have to give this book credit for being the one where the gay shit was finally outright stated instead of strongly implied.

I am absolutely not continuing past this point in the series this time around, though. I have better things to do with my time!

The Poisons We Drink by Bethany Baptiste
Did not finish book. Stopped at 28%.

I genuinely wanted to like this book as a counter to all the shenanigans, but... well, some things just aren't meant to be. The vocabulary feels like it was only recently divorced from those lists that convince innocent young writers that "emerald orbs" is a suitable replacement for "green eyes", the narration is clunky and repetitive, and I've read and watched too many stories about witches to buy into the conceit of potion-brewing being a uniquely dangerous form of magic. I wish Ms. Baptiste nothing but the best and hope she finds many loving readers, but this book is just not for me.