Reviews :: Book Genre :: Horror :: Page 3

I recently went back to do a re-read of Robert McCammon’s SPEAKS THE NIGHTBIRD (Amazon). Though, I suppose, a “re-listen” is more accurate as I bought the audiobook. It’s been a long time since I read this novel, and with the sixth Matthew Corbett novel, FREEDOM OF THE MASK coming in just a few short months, I wanted to go back to Matthew’s origins as a refresher.

It is incredible how well this novel stands up to multiple reads.

SPEAKS THE NIGHTBIRD follows a young Matthew Corbett as he participates in the trial of Rachel Howarth, who is accused of murder and witchcraft. Th novel channels the fear, suspicion, and paranoia of the Salem witch trials which occurred just six years before the events of this novel. This is before Matthew’s days as a “problem-solver” that we see in QUEEN OF BEDLAM (Amazon) and beyond, and seeing the near-innocent (in adult matters) attitude and world-view Matthew has in NIGHTBIRD is so interesting.
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Stephen King is one of those authors I continue to pick up despite the fact that I’m frequently frustrated by the way his books end. There’s just too much good he does right to completely sign off and avoid reading his stuff. This is most especially true when it comes to the way his books begin. This book was one that I was really intrigued with and considerably interested in reading because it’s a sequel to THE SHINING (Amazon), which is probably one of the most preeminent ghost stories ever written. A really creepy book. Was hoping for much the same from its sequel.
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I don’t mention cover art all that much in my reviews. It’s likely a failing of mine, but for some reason or another it only very seldomly comes up when I’m putting together my thoughts on a book. This time around though, I really have to mention it because it not only introduced the setting of the novel just perfectly (worth a thousand words and more), but also gave me a solid image to build upon while reading the beginning of the book, which was quite good all on its own, but brilliantly set when paired with the cover.
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Have you ever finished a novel and thought to yourself, “My goodness… that was… special.” Not just good. Not great. Better than that. A book that you immediately know will stay in your top five until the day you die? For me, that book was BOY’S LIFE by Robert McCammon (Amazon).

Now, I’m a pretty big McCammon fan. I’ve loved everything I’ve read of his. THE WOLF’S HOUR (EBR Review) remains one of my favorite novels ever. But even that novel is beat out by BOY’S LIFE. In fact… nearly every novel by every other author I’ve ever read gets beat out by BOY’S LIFE. How do you even review a novel like this?
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I was flipping through the TV channels recently and saw that “Fried Green Tomatoes” was playing. I’d never seen the show before (travesty, I know, I plan to rectify that soon) so I stayed and watched for a while. I was coming in about midway through the show and there was a scene where two young women were sitting in an otherwise empty restaurant talking about some of the problems in their lives. In a very few minutes, I felt like I knew these two women and where they had come from. What and who they were, at their core. It was brilliant and seemingly effortless. It was in the same incredibly simple and beautifully elegant way that the story in this novel began with two young women talking to one another in a bar about the pieces of their lives, and I knew at once that I was going to enjoy this book.
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Charlie is worried. Ever since his father died a few years ago, he constantly worries about everything. Will he fall asleep in his soup and drown? Will his toes freeze off if he forgets to wear his socks? But Charlie’s sister Georgie loves an adventure, and unlike her brother doesn’t think about the consequences.

So when Grandmother Pearl invites them to visit, Georgie thinks it will be an exciting adventure. However, Charlie knows that they don’t have a Grandmother Pearl, that both their mother and father’s parents are long dead. But mother seems to be in a stupor and Charlie can’t snap her out of it. With mother needing medical care, the children have no choice left but to go, and they head to granny’s.

And discover that everything Charlie worries about is nothing compared to what awaits him at grandmother’s house.
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How often is it that you come across a horror story (novel or even movie for that matter) where the main POV character has both drive and motive for doing the things that make us go, “Oh please, don’t go in there. Just please… NO!” Instead offinding these words bubbling from my lips, however, I frequently find myself saying, “Why are they going in there again? Do they WANT to die a horrible, gruesome death?” There are relatively few instances of the former that I’ve come across, and I just wish there were more. Makes horror stories so much better when they do. The only example that I could think of, in fact, was the movie “The Ring.” Can you think of any others? Drop a comment here, if you do. I’d love to find me some really good horror. In the meantime, there’s this one, and it ain’t half bad.
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From Dark Regions Press, we have a great novella from one of my favorite authors, Joe Lansdale. PRISONER 489 (Amazon) is short, sweet, and a terrific read. While I simply adore Lansdale’s Westerns, I’m an even bigger fan of his writing.
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Lizzie Borden is the town pariah of Fall River because she’s suspected of hacking her father and stepmother to death with an axe. Certainly she was acquitted at trial, but there’s more to the story than anyone knows. Well… her sister Emma knows, but she’s not telling. And together with their inheritance from their father, they buy a house outside of town, name it Maplecroft, and begin to research in privacy to discover what really happened.

Cherie Priest takes the original Lizzie Borden story (Wikipedia) and presents to us a alternate explanation of their parents’ deaths. What if the illness the Bordens experienced wasn’t simple food poisoning? What if it were something much more sinister? What if it were related to their deaths?
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When it comes to author Dan Wells, people seem to point to his Dystopian YA Partials series. Those are good novels, no doubt about it. But the novels that won me over were those in his John Cleaver series. It’s no secret how much I love Horror, and Wells’ first novel, I AM NOT A SERIAL KILLER (EBR Review), hit all the right notes for me. After three novels in that series, I wondered if I would ever again read a new John Cleaver story. I feared the worst…

…until Wells said he was writing a new John Cleaver trilogy.
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