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I’m 80% through The Elementals and I’m going to want to know what of his to read next. The supernatural bits of this book work so well with the geographical setting, I love it.
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Feb 25, 2020 21:03
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Blackwater is an investment but it is his peerless work imho
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Feb 25, 2020 21:09
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Mel Mudkiper posted:Blackwater is an investment but it is his peerless work imho Yeah I'm about halfway through it and it's insanely good. I mean, it's 90% southern gothic family politics, and 10% terror, but it's still a really good read.
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Feb 25, 2020 21:21
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COOL CORN posted:Yeah I'm about halfway through it and it's insanely good. I mean, it's 90% southern gothic family politics, and 10% terror, but it's still a really good read. Its also the closest in content to The Elementals in that it is set around the legacy of families and three neighboring houses and ghosts the traumatic legacy left behind by controlling mothers They are so close in both when they were written and in the content that I suspect Elementals opened up a whole bunch of buried skeletons in his psyche he had to write Blackwater to get rid of
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Feb 25, 2020 21:27
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Mel Mudkiper posted:Its also the closest in content to The Elementals in that it is set around the legacy of families and three neighboring houses and ghosts the traumatic legacy left behind by controlling mothers I haven't read The Elementals yet, so hell yeah now I can't wait
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Feb 25, 2020 21:35
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COOL CORN posted:I haven't read The Elementals yet, so hell yeah now I can't wait I’m liking it more than I liked hill house. COOL CORN posted:Yeah I'm about halfway through it and it's insanely good. I mean, it's 90% southern gothic family politics, and 10% terror, but it's still a really good read. Awesome. I love when an author clicks and it’s just like “next book!”
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Feb 25, 2020 21:41
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Did anyone finish the Peter Clines Threshold series? The fourth is audiobook only and I have a hard time with audiobooks if I'm not currently taking a long trip. I really liked the first two books, enjoyed the third but it seemed to have nothing at all to do with the overarching narrative, especially after slowly trying to get through the fourth. They go back to older characters and stories and it's bizarre to me that a middle story is hundreds of years in the future on the loving moon. I really like the monsters though, so I keep going. It's just a bizarre series.
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Feb 25, 2020 23:10
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Man the greatest crime ever committed was the cover they chose for the Blackwater collected edition. The originals were so iconic. Compare these gorgeous covers       To this cartoon nonsense 
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Feb 25, 2020 23:40
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COOL CORN posted:Man the greatest crime ever committed was the cover they chose for the Blackwater collected edition. The originals were so iconic. that's a loving newgrounds narrative anime game rear end cover right there
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Feb 25, 2020 23:42
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drat Blackwater is 6 books? And you all say I’ll like it if Elementals was an A+?
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Feb 25, 2020 23:43
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Rolo posted:drat Blackwater is 6 books? It's technically 6 books but they're all on the shorter side (by modern genre publishing standards), maybe like 100-200 pgs per book in paperback form if I had to guess. And yeah if you dug Elementals it's pretty much a must read. Like others have said it's more kind of supernatural southern gothic family drama than out-and-out horror, but there are still some pretty chilling moments throughout.
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Feb 26, 2020 00:00
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Rolo posted:drat Blackwater is 6 books? Each one is pretty short.
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Feb 26, 2020 00:01
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Aesthetically I preferred the original covers but I do think the Valancourt anthologized version is more "honest" to the story tbh
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Feb 26, 2020 00:41
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COOL CORN posted:Two interesting Ballingrud news tidbits: Ah, the Ghosts of Mars novelization is a good get
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Feb 26, 2020 00:49
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Ok I just finished Elementals. That was a great recommendation, it had me gripped and was exactly what I was asking for. Kudos for the pick, chernobyl kinsman!
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Feb 26, 2020 03:17
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i just keep recommending it bc i didnt really understand what was going on with the photo/drawing of the woman and the deformed baby and im hoping eventually someone explains it to me
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Feb 26, 2020 03:45
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chernobyl kinsman posted:i just keep recommending it bc i didnt really understand what was going on with the photo/drawing of the woman and the deformed baby and im hoping eventually someone explains it to me I have a theory There are actually two supernatural forces at play in the story one is that the family is cursed by the dead wife who ate her own baby. That is why the ending line of "these babies are Savages" is meant to suggest that they have inherited a sort of darkness from the family legacy that will pass down the generations. The elementals, on the other hand, are simply a supernatural force of nature that are empowered by being near the curse. If the Savages were not near those houses, the Elementals would never show up or care. Its also why the oil company never had a problem with the area after the Savages sold the land. Its not enough for the elementals to be present, they have to be present around a darkness to empower them, which the Savages have Alternatively, who cares spooky don't need answers
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Feb 26, 2020 04:11
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A brief review of La Belle Fleur Sauvage: Plague of the Womb by Caitlin R Kiernan: fancily named novella with a cool cover from Dark Regions Press; of course I had to have it. It's very similar to Kiernan's other works for better or for worse - - as a novella, similar to her other novellas you can tell it is desperate to be a novel. These are scenes that have been cut from a larger work and presented and they would work better if they had more space but they do not. While I forgive this in Agents of Dreamland and Black Helicopters (and not so much in Dry Salvages), I don't here because there's this sense of too much being left out, too many unaddressed plot threads. She built a living breathing dying world and made it feel like it has a lot of stories to tell, and then it's over. - the trend of writing about writing returns. realistic perhaps as her characters start a journal with "i'm writing this because" and then meander, but I would appreciate if these bits were edited out. - best scenes: the parade, the glimpses of the apocalypse in motion, the museum - the chapter about how prostitution works in the dying world where people with wombs have to be "cut" and have to be scarred to prove it was hosed up. believable but hosed up. - surprisingly gore filled for kiernan's works (not to say there isn't gore in the rest of her stuff) but also - interestingly - very little of the gore was due to the supernatural horror thing. it's mostly from humans being awful to themselves and each other. Ultimately I enjoyed it but it's very much a novella for Kiernan fans only, as it has a lot of the hallmarks of her writing style.
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Feb 26, 2020 05:20
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Mel Mudkiper posted:I have a theory I took it as a mini-twist that the babies had something off about them. Sorta opens the door to what you’re saying, that the family brings their own supernatural factors to the table. It would explain things like the mortar around the mother’s casket being cracked in the mausoleum and the bird who doesn’t talk saying one single ominous thing. The girl eating that woman’s eyes to gain her sight was pretty metal.
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Feb 26, 2020 06:26
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Now that I'm done with Wounds, I would give anything for a Butcher's Table movie
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Feb 27, 2020 22:21
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COOL CORN posted:Now that I'm done with Wounds, I would give anything for a Butcher's Table movie I've been saving that story. Last thing he's published that I haven't read. I'm gonna be sad when I am done with it. I think I'll get to it tonight.
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Feb 27, 2020 23:08
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COOL CORN posted:Now that I'm done with Wounds, I would give anything for a Butcher's Table movie My exact same thought. I would love just to be in the room for the pitch.
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Feb 27, 2020 23:13
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Spoilering my thoughts about Butcher's Table here My favorite thing about Butcher's Table is how it sort of culminates ideas from all the other stories but also stands as entirely its own thing. You have the iron box monks from the first story, the lotus head which hearkens back to the flower headed girl from Skullpocket, the angels from The Visible Filth, and more ideas I'm sure. Yet at the same time all of those ideas seem original and fresh when they show up in Butcher's Table. Ballingrud is really an amazing author. And as for it being his last thing, he has a short story in a collection coming out called Final Cuts edited by Ellen Datlow.
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Feb 28, 2020 01:54
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I’ve been salivating over the idea of a Butcher’s Table movie since I finished Wounds. Done right, with the correct budget, it would be the coolest movie ever.
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Feb 28, 2020 02:51
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Just finished up Blackwater. Overall I'd give books 1-4 a 5/5 and books 5-6 a 3/5. You get so invested in these core members of the Caskey family over the first few books but like, it's a story that takes place over 60 years, so naturally there's some turnover in the characters later on and I just... I didn't find myself as emotionally invested in the descendants of the family. Overall though, the whole story was fantastic and it's really an incredible work of fiction for what it is, and despite it taking place over nearly 1000 pages of novellas and 60 years of in-story time, McDowell manages to stick the ending in a very poetic and poignant way that made me appreciate the journey all the more. It's an investment, but highly recommended.
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Feb 28, 2020 20:34
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I just got around to watching Wounds and it seems to be a fairly straightforward adaptation of The Visible Filth. I recall seeing a lot of complaints that the movie was misleadingly marketed or not what they expected... how so?
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Mar 1, 2020 03:40
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Fallom posted:I just got around to watching Wounds and it seems to be a fairly straightforward adaptation of The Visible Filth. I recall seeing a lot of complaints that the movie was misleadingly marketed or not what they expected... how so? some of the published reviews of it read that armie hammer plays his character like nothing more than a hollow shell - and that it was mostly a pretty meandering character drama. i loved it myself, because it is a faithful adaptation and his character is meant to be an absolute nothing. but i dunno how it was marketed really
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Mar 1, 2020 03:50
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Mel Mudkiper posted:Ok, putting together a list You’re the Aquarium guy so I’m pretty sure you’ll really dig North American Lake Monsters
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Mar 1, 2020 04:50
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i'm desperate to read aquarium too but again, capitalism
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Mar 1, 2020 07:50
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a foolish pianist posted:Has anyone mentioned Bartlett's The Stay-Awake Men? It's a fantastic collection, up there with Evenson's short story collections. I picked up The Stay-Awake Men and so far it's very good.
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Mar 1, 2020 11:14
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So I always thought that Ligotti lived in Alaska for some reason. I guess Nethiscurial? Something about the vibe of the islands or whatever makes me think of that kind of climate. But I guess he lives in Florida, that's some black sloth country.
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Mar 3, 2020 10:19
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Ligotti living in Florida makes perfect sense
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Mar 3, 2020 15:56
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ligotti is clearly from the suburbs. you only get that kind of existential despair there
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Mar 3, 2020 16:14
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I'm reading Apple and Knife by Intan Paramaditha. It's more of a dark fairy tale Angela Carter vibe than full horror but the stories are engaging, punchy and it's cool to read stuff in this genre from the perspective of an Indonesian feminist author.
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Mar 3, 2020 16:56
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What "classic" horror/gothic works are worth reading? I'm talking like 18th-19th century stuff. I've read Dracula, Frankenstein, Poe, Jekyll & Hyde, etc. basically all the ones that you'd run into normally if you were looking for "classic" horror literature. But how are works like The Mysteries of Udolpho, The Castle of Otranto, The Monk, Melmoth the Wanderer, Sheridan Le Fanu, etc? I feel like someone said somewhere on SA that the first two, at least, were pretty rough to go back to, but I don't remember why exactly. Also, are there any other must-read early horror or gothic literature that maybe flies a bit under the modern radar?
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Mar 3, 2020 17:10
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have you read wuthering heights
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Mar 3, 2020 17:12
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chernobyl kinsman posted:have you read wuthering heights No, but I was just about to! I know shockingly little about Wuthering Heights so I kind of forgot it was a gothic novel.
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Mar 3, 2020 17:24
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SniperWoreConverse posted:So I always thought that Ligotti lived in Alaska for some reason. I guess Nethiscurial? Something about the vibe of the islands or whatever makes me think of that kind of climate. But I guess he lives in Florida, that's some black sloth country. you could say alaska is a northern border state, if not a northern border town
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Mar 3, 2020 19:04
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Uldolpho was not a one I was able to get into. Turn of the screw imo was not worth it either, I just can't really deal with the mindset of those people I guess.
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Mar 4, 2020 14:29
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Tommy Ligotti's "Special Plan for This World" is suicide right I listened to Current 93's version of it this morning and now my mood for the day is ruined lol
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Mar 4, 2020 14:52
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