Hellweg's keep by Justin Holley

 

Thirty-seven miners disappear without a trace within a Titanium mine, Hellweg’s Keep, deep within Zeta One, a moon orbiting the planet, Terra. When FBI agent Kendra Omen arrives via the spaceship Marietta, strange phenomenon begins to manifest…suicides, shadows a shade darker than the shadows they move within, disembodied whispers, and Kendra would swear she catches a glimpse of her own deceased daughter walking the dimly lit halls of Hellweg enterprises. But that’s impossible. Isn’t it? As evidence of occult practices at the mine emerges, Kendra realizes the answers they seek, and hopefully the thirty-seven miners will only be found underground in the claustrophobic labyrinth of shafts and natural caverns within Hellweg’s Keep.

I have never been much of a sci-fi fan but if you throw in some ghostly apparitions and a mystery you'll grab my attention. That and the fact that I enjoyed a previous book by this author is why I was willing to follow Justin Holley to Hellweg's Keep on his demons in outer space adventure.

While on her journey to investigate the mysterious disappearance of 37 miners an FBI agent is warned by a dying psychic medium not to go to Hellweg's Keep. She is told there is nothing but never-ending pain and suffering there with no hope of escape even in death. Of course, she does not let that dissuade her from her mission.

Strange happenings are already going on in Hellweg's before they even begin their descent deep underground in search of those who went missing. People are seeing spirits of the dead who fill them with despair and try to tempt them to suicide. Things get increasingly more dangerous for the search team the deeper they go.

I loved the first three-quarters of the book more than the ending. It was an action packed read but the ending bothered me. I would recommend this book for fans of the Alien franchise and The Thing movies.

3.75 stars rounded up to 4 out of 5

My thanks to Flame Tree Press.

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No Child of Mine by Nichelle Giraldes

 

There's something in the dark. And it's starting to whisper...
Essie Kaur has defined herself by her ambitions, a fiercely independent woman whose only soft spot is her husband, Sanjay. She never imagined herself as a mother. It was never a part of the plan. But then she finds out she's pregnant. As her difficult pregnancy transforms her body and life into something she barely recognizes, her husband spends the nights pacing in the attic, slowly becoming a stranger, and the house begins to whisper.

As Essie's pregnancy progresses, both her and Sanjay's lives are warped by a curse that has haunted her family for generations, leaving a string of fatherless daughters in its wake. When she's put on bedrest, Essie trades the last aspects of her carefully planned life for isolation in what should be a welcoming home, but she isn't alone. There's something here that means to take everything from her…

No Child Of Mine is told on two timelines. In the current day, we have Essie and her husband Sanjay, and several generations earlier we have Ana and Isabelle, two women who were profoundly in love in the days when it was just impossible for women to be together.

From the book's description I was expecting a scary read but mostly what I got was a love story interspersed with bouts of morning sickness. Or morning noon and night sickness since poor Essie seemed to be plagued with vomiting at all hours of the day and night, and although I remember what that feels like from my own experience, it did get a bit repetitive to read about crackers and nausea and bile for so many pages.

I enjoyed the characters from the past more than the present day and learning how the curse came to be. An awful curse born of both love and selfishness has taken fathers from their daughters for generations in Essie's family.

 I had hoped there would be some spookiness in Essie's new house but other than some whispering and an object occasionally being displaced nothing much happened. Even when the curse began to take hold there wasn't any suspense. The ending seemed too simplistic after so many generations had suffered this curse.

You may enjoy this one more than I did, but it just wasn't for me.

My thanks to Poisoned Pen Press.

Under the Moon in Illinois Stories from a haunted land by Kipling Knox

 Welcome to the fictional town of Middling, Illinois, where ghosts conspire to redeem a troubled community. Combining social satire with humor and tragedy, these interconnected stories explore the challenges we face in an anxious time. We follow a cast of midwestern characters, dead and alive: a farmer widow, an earnest criminal, a corrupt pastor, teen-agers on a date, a phantom hitchhiker, time-traveling professors, the spirit of a guilty ad man—and one brave woman journalist, in particular. At times dark, these tales are inherently hopeful.

Stories from this collection have been published or recognized in the Madison Review, Narrative Magazine, the TulipTree Review, the Bellingham Review, and the Whitefish Review.

It's a good thing that Middling is not a real town because it's a very unnerving place to find yourself.

Here I met a woman who lives in a school house with her children. It had a feel of being back in the 1800s except they had cell phones. I also tagged along on a date with a couple of teenagers and honestly could not tell whether this boy wanted to date this girl or kill her, and whether this girl wanted to date this boy, or was just using him. I met more than one ghost in and out of more than one cemetery, including a road trip with Resurrection Mary.

Under The Moon In Illinois is a collection of loosely connected stories, even though at first I failed to see how they were related other than the setting. Some of the tales that I enjoyed the most also irked me when they ended and I felt that they were over too abruptly, but fear not, the final story ties the book together and resolves some of the loose ends.

These are not horror stories per se but there are enough ghosts and mysterious happenstance throughout, told with enough suspense and humor to keep me engaged. 

I know that a lot of you will pick up an anthology or a collection and read a story or two in between reading novels. I often do that as well, but I would not recommend it here. For maximum enjoyment, you should read this book all the way through as if it were a novel. Otherwise, you may just feel like you walked into a movie that was halfway over and the film broke before you made it to the end.

3.75 rounded up to 4 out of 5 stars

My thanks to the author and Prairie State Press.

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About the Author

Kipling Knox is an author, publisher, and conservationist with roots in Washington State and Illinois. After two decades as a software engineering manager in Seattle, he returned home to create books in print and audio, with original illustrations. He also works to promote biodiversity, even on a backyard scale, with a special interest in prairie lands.

In the past year, Kipling’s short stories have been published or recognized in the Madison Review, Narrative Magazine, the TulipTree Review, the Bellingham Review, and the Whitefish Review.

Bad Movie Night by Patrick Lacey

 

Welcome to So Bad, So Good, YouTube’s most successful channel dedicated to trash cinema. This week, we’ll be watching and discussing the elusive horror flick Creepies. Some say the film is cursed, that its cast members died in unusual ways. Others claim the writers, producers, and directors have gone into hiding because of the movie’s macabre reputation. Countless viewers have experienced flashbacks to scenes within the film, as if they themselves were characters. But surely those are just rumors, right? Let’s fire up the VCR and find out. Grab some popcorn, crack open a cold one, and ignore the scratching in the walls.

Who doesn't love a bad movie night? Count me in.

A small group of friends have turned their love of horror movies into a semi-famous YouTube channel. When a bootleg copy of an obscure film mysteriously appears in the studio it's like a dream come true. They can't wait to watch, and film an episode about it. So what if it's rumored to be cursed? It's only a movie right?

I'll be honest with you, I had a moment of doubt when I opened this book and found it written in second person. I can count on one hand the number of books I've enjoyed from that point of view. However, Patrick Lacey has really pulled it off and it works well here. From this perspective, you are the star of the book and you will take the risk of bringing the curse upon yourself.

The movie scenes played out in vivid detail, to the point that I feel like I actually saw it. I wanted to tell them not to watch but they could not look away and neither could I, even when the curse began to take hold. The main character's depression over a traumatic incident in the past seems to make him (You) more susceptible to the curse but that doesn't mean it's safe for anyone else to watch this movie.

I read this book in one sitting and I never do that. If I never post again you'll know the curse took me.

My thanks to Patrick Lacey.

 

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