The Violence by Delilah S. Dawson

 A mysterious plague that causes random bouts of violence is sweeping the nation. Now three generations of women must navigate their chilling new reality in this moving exploration of identity, cycles of abuse, and hope.

Chelsea Martin appears to be the perfect housewife: married to her high school sweetheart, the mother of two daughters, keeper of an immaculate home.

But Chelsea's husband has turned their house into a prison; he has been abusing her for years, cutting off her independence, autonomy, and support. She has nowhere to turn, not even to her narcissistic mother, Patricia, who is more concerned with maintaining the appearance of an ideal family than she is with her daughter's actual well-being. And Chelsea is worried that her daughters will be trapped just as she is--then a mysterious illness sweeps the nation.

Known as The Violence, this illness causes the infected to experience sudden, explosive bouts of animalistic rage and attack anyone in their path. But for Chelsea, the chaos and confusion the virus causes is an opportunity--and inspires a plan to liberate herself from her abuser.

In a post Covid world a new virus is sweeping through the nation, mainly confined to warmer climates, and known as The Violence. There is a vaccine, but only for the very wealthy. Those who contract the virus have bouts of murderous rage causing them to kill whoever happens to be handy at the time, and have no memory of doing so once the rage passes.  Those who have or are suspected to have The Violence are herded into quarantine centers that are basically prisons, sometimes never to be seen or heard from again.

In this backdrop we meet Chelsea, neglected as a child and now abused as a spouse, along with her two daughters. Chelsea plans to use the virus as a means to save her children and escape from her abusive husband, but things don't go according to plan.

This is a book that I found in the horror section, but it was more a dysfunctional family drama. There was much that I enjoyed about the story, but more than a few spots were a bit draggy and drawn out. All of the male characters had extreme personalities. They were either abusive mysogynistic borderline perverts, or over the top sensitive sympathetic and empathetic to a woman's every need. It kind of gave me whiplash going from one extreme to the other and I wished that someone could have been just plain normal. There were a few plot points that seemed to contradict each other, but I can't really go into it much without giving away spoilers.

I'm going to give this a 3 out of 5 stars, as something I liked but did not love.

My thanks to Del Rey Books for the advance copy.

Available for Pre Order

About the author

Delilah S. Dawson is the New York Times-bestselling author of Star Wars: Phasma, Black Spire: Galaxy's Edge, and The Perfect Weapon. With Kevin Hearne, she writes the Tales of Pell. As Lila Bowen, she writes the Shadow series, beginning with Wake of Vultures. Her other books include the Blud series, the Hit series, and Servants of the Storm.

She's written comics in the worlds of Marvel Action: Spider-Man, Lore's Wellington, Star Wars Adventures, Star Wars Forces of Destiny, The X-Files Case Files, Adventure Time, Rick and Morty, and her creator-owned comics include Star Pig, Ladycastle, and Sparrowhawk.

Find out more at www.whimsydark.com

Spontaneous Human Combustion by Richard Thomas

 

With a foreword by Brian Evenson.

In this new collection, Richard Thomas has crafted fourteen stories that push the boundaries of dark fiction in an intoxicating, piercing blend of fantasy, science fiction, and horror. Equally provocative and profound, each story is masterfully woven with transgressive themes that burrow beneath the skin.

• A poker game yields a strange prize that haunts one man, his game of chance now turned into a life-or-death coin flip.
• A set of twins find they have mysterious new powers when an asteroid crashes in a field near their house, and the decisions they make create an uneasy balance.
• A fantasy world is filled with one man’s desire to feel whole again, finally finding love, only to have the shocking truth of his life exposed in an appalling twist.
• A father and son work slave labor in a brave new world run by aliens and mount a rebellion that may end up freeing them all.
• A clown takes off his make-up in a gloomy basement to reveal something more horrifying under the white, tacky skin.

Powerful and haunting, Thomas’ transportive collection dares you to examine what lies in the darkest, most twisted corners of human existence and not be transformed by what you find.

So apparently even though I consider myself to be well read, I have been living under a rock because this is my first read by this author.

There are a wondrous range of stories here from dark fiction to fantasy and horror, some with elements of sci-fi. Not all were a perfect hit with me but all are beautifully written which may seem like an odd thing to say about horror and yet I did find beauty even in the ugly situations.

These are not stories to be devoured when you want to drift off to sleep but tales best to ponder when your mind is at it's sharpest because there are events that really made me think. 

It should be noted that I read an advance copy which states that the finished product will contain illustrations that are not present here. Even though I did not get to see the artwork I feel I should mention how much I love when a collection has a picture to go with each story.

4 out of 5 stars

My thanks to Turner Publishing for the review copy.

Available for Pre-order

About the author

The Beyond by Ken Brosky

 

Moon Song’s brother has gone missing in the town of Blackrock, Pennsylvania. Worried that her brother has slipped back into addiction and desperate for answers, Moon hires private investigator Ben Sawyer to help her uncover the truth. Together they discover what the people of Blackrock refuse to acknowledge: something terrible has happened inside the coal mine that defies all logical explanation, and it threatens the lives of every single person in town. Bodies are piling up at the funeral home, and many others have seemingly vanished.

Moon’s only hope of finding answers rests in the hands of a local professor who knows the mine’s horrible secrets. But the professor has problems of his own, and unless he can confront the creature that’s hunting him, Moon’s chances of making it out of town alive are darker than a seam of coal.

Dive into Ken Brosky’s horror-fueled nightmare and find out what’s in The Beyond!

Moon Song and her brother Hye were very close. Even after his drug use and other problems caused a rift between Hye and their parents, the siblings stayed in frequent contact until one day he stopped answering his phone and never returned calls. It is for this reason she hires Ben Sawyer, a private investigator who generally spends his time in lackluster stake outs of cheating spouses in between his vacation time. She accompanies Ben to the mining town of Blackrock, her brother's last known residence and place of employment. There they find some very strange goings on but no sign of Hye.

I didn't care much for Ben at first, but he grew on me and I loved Moon Song and her fierce love for her brother. I loved the way she faced her fears.

Nothing creeps me out more than people acting out of character or beyond the norm, and there seems to be nothing normal in Blackrock. Personalities have changed drastically. A professor who reports to the dean that a student has made inappropriate sexual advances toward him is basically told to go for it. And that's just the start of these bizarre happenings. Don't get me started on the clinic, or the funeral home. What does all of this have to do with the reopened coal mine? You'll have to read to find out.

Recommended highly to all horror readers and especially to those who enjoy Bentley Little novels. I am a huge fan of small town horror where the last remaining normal people turn into unlikely heroes, and that is just part of the reason this fast paced story was a hit with me.

5 out of 5 stars

My thanks to Timber Ghost Press for the review copy.

Available for Pre Order

Road of Bones by Christopher Golden

 

A stunning supernatural thriller set in Siberia, where a film crew is covering an elusive ghost story about the Kolyma Highway, a road built on top of the bones of prisoners of Stalin's gulag.

Kolyma Highway, otherwise known as the Road of Bones, is a 1200 mile stretch of Siberian road where winter temperatures can drop as low as sixty degrees below zero. Under Stalin, at least eighty Soviet gulags were built along the route to supply the USSR with a readily available workforce, and over time hundreds of thousands of prisoners died in the midst of their labors. Their bodies were buried where they fell, plowed under the permafrost, underneath the road.

Felix Teigland, or "Teig," is a documentary producer, and when he learns about the Road of Bones, he realizes he's stumbled upon untapped potential. Accompanied by his camera operator, Teig hires a local Yakut guide to take them to Oymyakon, the coldest settlement on Earth. Teig is fascinated by the culture along the Road of Bones, and encounters strange characters on the way to the Oymyakon, but when the team arrives, they find the village mysteriously abandoned apart from a mysterious 9-year-old girl. Then, chaos ensues.

A malignant, animistic shaman and the forest spirits he commands pursues them as they flee the abandoned town and barrel across miles of deserted permafrost. As the chase continues along this road paved with the suffering of angry ghosts, what form will the echoes of their anguish take? Teig and the others will have to find the answers if they want to survive the Road of Bones. 

Felix Teigland, known as "Teig," has had most of his projects go south. He owes money, he wants to be solvent, he wants at the very least to pay back his last remaining friend Prentiss, who is just about the only one left in the world who will still give him the time of day. He also has his reasons for wanting to believe in ghosts, needing to feel there is something else that comes after this life, that it's not just the end. That there is more than nothingness for those who have passed on.

It is with this purpose he attempts to make a documentary on The Road Of Bones, and the people who live in the coldest place on earth. But wait... where is everyone? The settlement is deserted. Doors are left open, everyone is gone.

I loved these characters. Their friendship feels genuine. They each have their own baggage and yet accept themselves and each other as they are. There is a depth and sincerity to this relationship that leaps off the page. The remote and desolate setting is brutal! The descriptions of the bitter cold wind and snow had me wanting to burrow under my blankets and crank my heat up full blast but it wouldn't have helped because there is so much more than the weather causing this dreadful creeping chill. 

Can you survive the Road of Bones?

5 out of 5 stars

I received an advance copy from St. Martin's Press

Available for pre-order

About the author