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leootherland's reviews
164 reviews
House of Rot by Danger Slater
4.0
Okay…
House of Rot.
I am going to preface all of this by saying: this book isn’t my taste in horror. This is very much the form of horror where the characters walk into a situation and everything is predetermined. They are not getting out alive, no matter what they do, no matter what choices they make, nothing will change. Everything is creepy, disgusting, and disturbing. There is no resolution but death.
None of these things are bad. In fact, these are all staples of horror that many of us love and are happy to see in our choice of reading material. My own personal preferences (which run more in the vein of characters having a bit of a chance and maybe some okayish resolution) do not nullify this reality.
So, don’t let the fact this book isn’t my cup of tea stop you from reading it. In fact, if all of this sounds like YOUR cup of tea, go get this book and read the hell out of it! I recommend it.
House of Rot made me squirm for a lot of reasons. Not the least of which being the fact I despise mushrooms and mold, and watching as the two characters were slowly eaten alive did not make me feel good. It kind of made me want to claw my skin off, honestly… And if that doesn’t scream horror, I don’t know what does.
Other things that made me squirm were the inescapability of it all. I knew from the beginning where the story was going and I DID NOT LIKE IT!! My innate phobias were screaming “Fuck, no!,” the whole time as I winced my way through watching these characters get themselves killed. Also, creepy, willfully stupid neighbor action gave me the twitchy, squeamish feelings. Just… no.
As I write this, I realize House of Rot is not the type of horror I enjoy, AND it pushed all my fear buttons. Which… honestly, is a high bit of praise. Most horror does not disturb me. This… obviously did.
So.
While this is not a book I ever anticipate personally reading again, I do recommend grabbing yourself a copy if any of what I’ve said makes you think this is a book you will read over and over. The people at Tenebrous Press are absolute gods of horror, and I will never stop singing their praises.
House of Rot.
I am going to preface all of this by saying: this book isn’t my taste in horror. This is very much the form of horror where the characters walk into a situation and everything is predetermined. They are not getting out alive, no matter what they do, no matter what choices they make, nothing will change. Everything is creepy, disgusting, and disturbing. There is no resolution but death.
None of these things are bad. In fact, these are all staples of horror that many of us love and are happy to see in our choice of reading material. My own personal preferences (which run more in the vein of characters having a bit of a chance and maybe some okayish resolution) do not nullify this reality.
So, don’t let the fact this book isn’t my cup of tea stop you from reading it. In fact, if all of this sounds like YOUR cup of tea, go get this book and read the hell out of it! I recommend it.
House of Rot made me squirm for a lot of reasons. Not the least of which being the fact I despise mushrooms and mold, and watching as the two characters were slowly eaten alive did not make me feel good. It kind of made me want to claw my skin off, honestly… And if that doesn’t scream horror, I don’t know what does.
Other things that made me squirm were the inescapability of it all. I knew from the beginning where the story was going and I DID NOT LIKE IT!! My innate phobias were screaming “Fuck, no!,” the whole time as I winced my way through watching these characters get themselves killed. Also, creepy, willfully stupid neighbor action gave me the twitchy, squeamish feelings. Just… no.
As I write this, I realize House of Rot is not the type of horror I enjoy, AND it pushed all my fear buttons. Which… honestly, is a high bit of praise. Most horror does not disturb me. This… obviously did.
So.
While this is not a book I ever anticipate personally reading again, I do recommend grabbing yourself a copy if any of what I’ve said makes you think this is a book you will read over and over. The people at Tenebrous Press are absolute gods of horror, and I will never stop singing their praises.
Godly Heathens by H.E. Edgmon
5.0
Special thanks to NetGalley and St. Martin’s Press for the ARC copy they provided.
What’s the best way to describe Godly Heathens?
OH MY F@#$ING GODS!!!
Like literally, that is going to be your reaction to SO many parts of this book as you read it. If you’re not prepared to scream at your screen (or actual, physical book, if you’re lucky enough to have one of those), you are not prepared for this book.
Where to start with this book… From beginning to end, Godly Heathens feels like a rollercoaster, the highs just setting you up for the sudden drops that make you want to scream. (And potentially throw your phone or physical book.) Everyone is mildly feral, has something to hide, and plays both hero and villain.
Rather like life, if you think about it.
To make things simpler, I’ll say the main character, Gem Echols, happens to be a god.
They just also happen to be a god everyone hates, and to be stuck in the body of a human teenager. The ultimate in existential horror…
The games begin early in the book with Gem plagued by intense dreams of an alluring demon and the bloody crimes they committed together. While still processing THAT, the goddesses of Death and War show up at Gem’s school with scores to settle and zero trust for the god they blame for destroying their world and their places in the pantheon.
Luckily for Gem, the goddess of Earth and the god of Things Forbidden just happen to love them for who they are, bloody hands and all.
And that is one of the points of this book I am extremely happy with. Almost every book that features a love triangle forces the characters to choose. Someone has to win and someone else has to lose. Godly Heathens has as little thought of choosing as Gem Echols does. Gem Echols loves both their god and their goddess, and they have no intention of picking just one of them.
The sweet and accepting polyamory is one of my favorite pieces of this wonderfully queer, and utterly undomesticated book where “there are no cis gods.” I was fully able to see myself in many of these characters, especially Gem, and that is a gift for any queer reader who has ever felt they were “bad at being human.” Too often when reading books by cis authors, queer readers can feel non-existent and unseen. Godly Heathens has none of that. Queerness permeates the pages, and I was so there for it.
In addition to the queer identities and sexualities being everywhere, Godly Heathens doesn’t fall into the trap of making every single one of its queer characters a saint. They are as real and multi-layered as any person on the street. No one is all “good” or all “bad.” They just are, and they play the villain in other people’s lives as much as they play the hero on their own.
That’s life, and that’s one of the major themes of Godly Heathens. “Sometimes evil is just a person whose needs are at odds with yours.”
When that “evil” is coming at you with every intention of destroying you and making you suffer for what you’ve done, it’s hard to remember the fact, but the fact is no less true. And if we’re not careful, we become “evil” to other people.
Gem figures this paradox out as Godly Heathens unfolds, and at the penultimate moment they make a choice that spirals the end of Godly Heathens off into the second book in the Ouroboros Duology, Merciless Saviors. I’m not going to say too much about what that choice IS, but you can bet it’s one poor choice and they’re going to be dealing with the consequences all through the upcoming book.
I very rarely pick up a first novel and find myself interested enough to read a sequel, but for Godly Heathens I’ll make an exception. I am SO looking forward to book two, and all the OH MY F@#$ING GODS!!! moments it’s sure to have.
One hundred percent recommend this book for anyone who loves queer dark fantasy.
What’s the best way to describe Godly Heathens?
OH MY F@#$ING GODS!!!
Like literally, that is going to be your reaction to SO many parts of this book as you read it. If you’re not prepared to scream at your screen (or actual, physical book, if you’re lucky enough to have one of those), you are not prepared for this book.
Where to start with this book… From beginning to end, Godly Heathens feels like a rollercoaster, the highs just setting you up for the sudden drops that make you want to scream. (And potentially throw your phone or physical book.) Everyone is mildly feral, has something to hide, and plays both hero and villain.
Rather like life, if you think about it.
To make things simpler, I’ll say the main character, Gem Echols, happens to be a god.
They just also happen to be a god everyone hates, and to be stuck in the body of a human teenager. The ultimate in existential horror…
The games begin early in the book with Gem plagued by intense dreams of an alluring demon and the bloody crimes they committed together. While still processing THAT, the goddesses of Death and War show up at Gem’s school with scores to settle and zero trust for the god they blame for destroying their world and their places in the pantheon.
Luckily for Gem, the goddess of Earth and the god of Things Forbidden just happen to love them for who they are, bloody hands and all.
And that is one of the points of this book I am extremely happy with. Almost every book that features a love triangle forces the characters to choose. Someone has to win and someone else has to lose. Godly Heathens has as little thought of choosing as Gem Echols does. Gem Echols loves both their god and their goddess, and they have no intention of picking just one of them.
The sweet and accepting polyamory is one of my favorite pieces of this wonderfully queer, and utterly undomesticated book where “there are no cis gods.” I was fully able to see myself in many of these characters, especially Gem, and that is a gift for any queer reader who has ever felt they were “bad at being human.” Too often when reading books by cis authors, queer readers can feel non-existent and unseen. Godly Heathens has none of that. Queerness permeates the pages, and I was so there for it.
In addition to the queer identities and sexualities being everywhere, Godly Heathens doesn’t fall into the trap of making every single one of its queer characters a saint. They are as real and multi-layered as any person on the street. No one is all “good” or all “bad.” They just are, and they play the villain in other people’s lives as much as they play the hero on their own.
That’s life, and that’s one of the major themes of Godly Heathens. “Sometimes evil is just a person whose needs are at odds with yours.”
When that “evil” is coming at you with every intention of destroying you and making you suffer for what you’ve done, it’s hard to remember the fact, but the fact is no less true. And if we’re not careful, we become “evil” to other people.
Gem figures this paradox out as Godly Heathens unfolds, and at the penultimate moment they make a choice that spirals the end of Godly Heathens off into the second book in the Ouroboros Duology, Merciless Saviors. I’m not going to say too much about what that choice IS, but you can bet it’s one poor choice and they’re going to be dealing with the consequences all through the upcoming book.
I very rarely pick up a first novel and find myself interested enough to read a sequel, but for Godly Heathens I’ll make an exception. I am SO looking forward to book two, and all the OH MY F@#$ING GODS!!! moments it’s sure to have.
One hundred percent recommend this book for anyone who loves queer dark fantasy.
The Black Lord by Colin Hinckley
5.0
Special thanks to Tenebrous Press for the ARC copy they provided.
The Black Lord is a unique experience, one that grips a reader hard, right from the beginning, and will not let go. I’m a fan of childhood horrors that prove real, and The Black Lord is a take on this troupe I didn’t fully anticipate.
The unexpected plays out first in the structure of the book. The Black Lord only boasts a handful of chapters, but each is from a different point of view. Every character has their moment narrating the story, and this alternating structure paints a twisting picture of the book readers would not otherwise be privy to.
The book rightly starts from the perspective of Eddie, the youngest of the Sutners. Eddie highlights the base, innate fear of the monster coming out of the shadows and into the light of our everyday world. It’s appropriately horrifying, and drags the reader, unresisting, into the narrative.
From Eddie’s point of view, The Black Lord moves on to the perspectives of his parents, grandmother, and the monster itself. Each stop on this trail of exploration is a new splinter of the story the reader gets to examine and interact with, and these fragments are by turns terrifying, hopeful, and sad. Colin Hinckley weaves the language of this book so skillfully, in one short passage, the monster becomes someone the reader can identify with and pity.
And that is only part of this interesting tale.
There is also The Black Lord, the entity that is equal parts inscrutable and alien. Despite being the namesake of the book, The Black Lord is not the monster. The reader can even argue that The Black Lord is neither for nor against the monster and the chaos that spawned it. The Black Lord simply IS. It exists and oversees, and it too has its time narrating the story.
This is something I particularly like with The Black Lord. Non-human narrators are a favorite of mine, and seeing the shift from the human, to the monster, to the unknown and unknowable being, made my day as I read this book.
The Black Lord does something else very well. It ends abruptly on a note that leaves the reader grasping for more, reaching for deeper understandings they won’t receive. It is exactly the right feeling for this book.
Childhood horrors often don’t have explanations, and they leave us only with the fading knowledge that the events happened. Perhaps we tuck those memories away and only pull them out and shake them off like old, unused tablecloths, as we think, “This happened, but I don’t understand it. I don’t know how or why, and I don’t want to think about it.”
If a person comes in contact with something not of our reality, it isn’t likely they get all the answers. The Black Lord leaves the reader with precisely the emotion a person in the Sutners’ position would feel. An abrupt drop back into reality, knowing they’ve lost something and they’ll never get it back, and they’ll never be able to explain to anyone else how or why it happened.
There isn’t even the full assurance they are safe.
For the moment, the monster is gone, but the chaos behind it is not thwarted. Temporary reprieve seems to be the only thing won.
And that too, is exactly how it should be. In reality, there is no surety. The Black Lord effortlessly gives the reader that realistic sensation, and I couldn’t be happier about it. The Black Lord is a quick and wonderful read that will give you the right amount of chills.
The Black Lord is a unique experience, one that grips a reader hard, right from the beginning, and will not let go. I’m a fan of childhood horrors that prove real, and The Black Lord is a take on this troupe I didn’t fully anticipate.
The unexpected plays out first in the structure of the book. The Black Lord only boasts a handful of chapters, but each is from a different point of view. Every character has their moment narrating the story, and this alternating structure paints a twisting picture of the book readers would not otherwise be privy to.
The book rightly starts from the perspective of Eddie, the youngest of the Sutners. Eddie highlights the base, innate fear of the monster coming out of the shadows and into the light of our everyday world. It’s appropriately horrifying, and drags the reader, unresisting, into the narrative.
From Eddie’s point of view, The Black Lord moves on to the perspectives of his parents, grandmother, and the monster itself. Each stop on this trail of exploration is a new splinter of the story the reader gets to examine and interact with, and these fragments are by turns terrifying, hopeful, and sad. Colin Hinckley weaves the language of this book so skillfully, in one short passage, the monster becomes someone the reader can identify with and pity.
And that is only part of this interesting tale.
There is also The Black Lord, the entity that is equal parts inscrutable and alien. Despite being the namesake of the book, The Black Lord is not the monster. The reader can even argue that The Black Lord is neither for nor against the monster and the chaos that spawned it. The Black Lord simply IS. It exists and oversees, and it too has its time narrating the story.
This is something I particularly like with The Black Lord. Non-human narrators are a favorite of mine, and seeing the shift from the human, to the monster, to the unknown and unknowable being, made my day as I read this book.
The Black Lord does something else very well. It ends abruptly on a note that leaves the reader grasping for more, reaching for deeper understandings they won’t receive. It is exactly the right feeling for this book.
Childhood horrors often don’t have explanations, and they leave us only with the fading knowledge that the events happened. Perhaps we tuck those memories away and only pull them out and shake them off like old, unused tablecloths, as we think, “This happened, but I don’t understand it. I don’t know how or why, and I don’t want to think about it.”
If a person comes in contact with something not of our reality, it isn’t likely they get all the answers. The Black Lord leaves the reader with precisely the emotion a person in the Sutners’ position would feel. An abrupt drop back into reality, knowing they’ve lost something and they’ll never get it back, and they’ll never be able to explain to anyone else how or why it happened.
There isn’t even the full assurance they are safe.
For the moment, the monster is gone, but the chaos behind it is not thwarted. Temporary reprieve seems to be the only thing won.
And that too, is exactly how it should be. In reality, there is no surety. The Black Lord effortlessly gives the reader that realistic sensation, and I couldn’t be happier about it. The Black Lord is a quick and wonderful read that will give you the right amount of chills.
The Clackity by Lora Senf
5.0
There is something about reading a book and finding it is an author's first and reading their acknowledgments. The Clackity is a marvelous fall/Halloween/Samhain read, and I look forward to what comes next from Lora Senf.
Merciless Waters by Rae Knowles
5.0
Special thanks to NetGalley and Brigids Gate Press for the ARC copy they provided.
This is the first book review I’ve started in awhile where I’ve sat down with nothing to say off the top of my head. No lines to quote, no scenes that intensely stand out in my mind that I need to shriek about.
And yet, all of that is a supreme compliment because generally when I’m reading an ARC, and I know I will be writing a review, I go in looking for those things I mentioned above. I go slow, picking out the pieces that deserve a call out in my review. Reading Merciless Waters made me forget to do any of that.
I started reading, and immediately fell in and didn’t come out again until the book was done. It was a slow day on the job, and I literally read this book all in one sitting, without a thought. It consumed me, heart, soul, and body, and, really, what more could you ask of a book? That is WHY we go to books, to be consumed.
And Merciless Waters delivers.
In spades.
Merciless Waters begins at exactly the right place, the middle of a long history, and effortlessly takes you back to the beginning, while still propelling you toward the unexpected, but completely logical ending. Every piece of the book is built to deliver you to that inevitable end, and yet, do you expect it? No. Not in the least.
And for me, a person who prides himself on his love for, and dedication to, story development, that is the highest praise.
This book was satisfying in all the right ways. Dark, unexpected, and delightfully sexy, with deep mythology strewn so subtly throughout that you won’t even notice it until near the penultimate moment.
Beautiful.
If you’re looking for a read that will pick you up like water, and carry you through to the satisfying shore of compilation, this book is for you. Highly looking forward to whatever Rae Knowles writes next.
This is the first book review I’ve started in awhile where I’ve sat down with nothing to say off the top of my head. No lines to quote, no scenes that intensely stand out in my mind that I need to shriek about.
And yet, all of that is a supreme compliment because generally when I’m reading an ARC, and I know I will be writing a review, I go in looking for those things I mentioned above. I go slow, picking out the pieces that deserve a call out in my review. Reading Merciless Waters made me forget to do any of that.
I started reading, and immediately fell in and didn’t come out again until the book was done. It was a slow day on the job, and I literally read this book all in one sitting, without a thought. It consumed me, heart, soul, and body, and, really, what more could you ask of a book? That is WHY we go to books, to be consumed.
And Merciless Waters delivers.
In spades.
Merciless Waters begins at exactly the right place, the middle of a long history, and effortlessly takes you back to the beginning, while still propelling you toward the unexpected, but completely logical ending. Every piece of the book is built to deliver you to that inevitable end, and yet, do you expect it? No. Not in the least.
And for me, a person who prides himself on his love for, and dedication to, story development, that is the highest praise.
This book was satisfying in all the right ways. Dark, unexpected, and delightfully sexy, with deep mythology strewn so subtly throughout that you won’t even notice it until near the penultimate moment.
Beautiful.
If you’re looking for a read that will pick you up like water, and carry you through to the satisfying shore of compilation, this book is for you. Highly looking forward to whatever Rae Knowles writes next.