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mellonbread posted:I tried reading Necroscope, but got bored when they did a multi-chapter deep dive into the chosen one child protagonist doing his middle school math homework.  It's important when he meets Pythagoras and August Ferdinand Mobius.
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May 21, 2024 19:07
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So I'm a fan of the World of Darkness RPG and one of the more interesting clans in it called the Tzimisce is supposed to be based off the monsters in the Necroscope books. I was thinking of trying them out. Far as I can tell, they're all available on Audible, which is very cool. Just curious what folks here think of them? The only Horror Lit I've read is Stephen King, who I mostly read for the story and characters, not really to be scared or for grossness. Also my searching for just random posts on the author of Necroscope led me to this audiobook: The Greatest Horror Stories of the 20th Century It has "The Viaduct" by the author as well as other stories read by various actors which is cool. Might introduce me to other writers to look into. quote:This collection of classic horror tales is as remarkable for its literary value as for its scream factor. You'll hear stories by the masters of the genre, past and present, including "The Graveyard Rats" by Henry Kuttner, "Passengers" by Robert Silverberg, "Calling Card" by Ramsey Campbell, "Something Had to be Done" by David Drake, "The Viaduct" by Brian Lumley, "Smoke Ghost" by Fritz Leiber, "Coin of the Realm" by Charles L. Grant, "Sticks" by Karl Edward Wagner, and "Casting the Runes" by M.R. James.
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May 21, 2024 21:24
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While I haven’t read Necroscope itself, I can tell you that if the Tzimisce are your jam, horror lit has you covered. Flesh-shaping horror-transhumanism is a whole thing, and body horror in particular is a deep well. It’s not super my thing (I’m more of a haunted houses and cosmic horror kind of guy) so other posters here will be better able to help you, but definitely stick around and get some recommendations!
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May 21, 2024 22:58
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Kestral posted:Flesh-shaping horror-transhumanism is a whole thing, and body horror in particular is a deep well. I will always take any recs anyone has in this vein
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May 21, 2024 23:09
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NikkolasKing posted:So I'm a fan of the World of Darkness RPG and one of the more interesting clans in it called the Tzimisce is supposed to be based off the monsters in the Necroscope books. I was thinking of trying them out. Far as I can tell, they're all available on Audible, which is very cool. I wanna say one of these involves a genuine out-loud "holy poo poo"-tier twist, if I'm remembering the title to the actual story. Prob try to go back thru and find out if I can and see if I can track if it's the one I'm thinking of
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May 22, 2024 06:30
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UwUnabomber posted:
It's also the first sign of Harry's powers and the reason Sir Keenan Gormley finds out about him in the first place. The point is that Harry isn't doing his homework; his maths teacher's father - who died 30 years previous - is doing it for him.
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May 22, 2024 08:59
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I really enjoyed All The Fiends Of Hell, mainly because you're no wiser to the nature of the invasion at the end of the book than you were at the beginning. Never explain horror to me. Also the modus operandi of the aliens/demons/things is much creepier than eviscerating them, or devouring them, or dissolving them into goop. They really really need to kill all humans, but apparently just to turn them into ornaments?? Baffling. I love it!
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May 22, 2024 09:37
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Just for a change of pace, I am one of the people who loved The Only Good Indians but found My Heart Is A Chainsaw to be a bloated mess. I wanted to DNF it but I forced myself to finish and was still disappointed. Definitely not reading the sequels. I have been listening to The Wishing Pool by Tananarive Due. Pretty solid so far, I love her writing. Then I got the Jordan Peele edited Out There Screaming anthology up next.
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May 22, 2024 18:15
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Kestral posted:While I haven’t read Necroscope itself, I can tell you that if the Tzimisce are your jam, horror lit has you covered. Flesh-shaping horror-transhumanism is a whole thing, and body horror in particular is a deep well. It’s not super my thing (I’m more of a haunted houses and cosmic horror kind of guy) so other posters here will be better able to help you, but definitely stick around and get some recommendations! Yeah that is kinda my deal. I love RPGs which let you play as what would be, in most stories, the bad guy. Maybe you even still are the bad guy, but the whole point is to get in the bad guy's head and understand their hosed up psychology. Whether it's the Tzimisce in WoD or Zon-Kuthon and his like in Pathfinder, that is my jam. (I already read Hellbound Heart years ago, by the by lol)
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May 22, 2024 19:18
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NikkolasKing posted:Yeah that is kinda my deal. I love RPGs which let you play as what would be, in most stories, the bad guy. Maybe you even still are the bad guy, but the whole point is to get in the bad guy's head and understand their hosed up psychology. Whether it's the Tzimisce in WoD or Zon-Kuthon and his like in Pathfinder, that is my jam. While I’ll still need to let others do the heavy lifting on recommendations here, your mention of wanting to get in the villain’s head plus body horror makes me ask: do you have any tolerance for sci-fi in your horror? Because if so, Peter Watts did a story called The Things that is John Carpenter’s The Thing from the perspective of the alien, and it’s great.
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May 22, 2024 22:04
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NikkolasKing posted:So I'm a fan of the World of Darkness RPG and one of the more interesting clans in it called the Tzimisce is supposed to be based off the monsters in the Necroscope books. I was thinking of trying them out. Far as I can tell, they're all available on Audible, which is very cool. Necroscope vampires aren't really doing that much flesh-sculpting but they're pretty gross in other ways. I'd say read the first one and see if it grabs you. They get progressively weirder in a silly (imo) way. I take it you already read any WoD tie-in novels?
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May 22, 2024 22:56
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ravenkult posted:Necroscope vampires aren't really doing that much flesh-sculpting but they're pretty gross in other ways. I'm guessing you didn't get past the first book, then. I'm definitely with you on the "gross in other ways" part, though. Lumley took a look at the romanticised Anne Rice vampire bollocks and said "Hell no, vampires are literally leeches, they're absolutely revolting" and ran with it past any sane limit.
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May 22, 2024 23:28
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I never finished the last Necroscope book I posted about in here because it's gross as gently caress. I will some day but not right now. There's a lot of flesh sculpting.
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May 22, 2024 23:33
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Jedit posted:I'm guessing you didn't get past the first book, then. I stopped at the third one I think.
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May 23, 2024 01:01
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Kestral posted:While I’ll still need to let others do the heavy lifting on recommendations here, your mention of wanting to get in the villain’s head plus body horror makes me ask: do you have any tolerance for sci-fi in your horror? Because if so, Peter Watts did a story called The Things that is John Carpenter’s The Thing from the perspective of the alien, and it’s great. I love Dead Space so sci-horror is just fine in my book. I'll definitely check that out. ravenkult posted:Necroscope vampires aren't really doing that much flesh-sculpting but they're pretty gross in other ways. I'd say read the first one and see if it grabs you. They get progressively weirder in a silly (imo) way. I take it you already read any WoD tie-in novels? I haven't, actually. I prefer audiobooks (due to a visual impairment) and I don't think there are any of those, even fan ones. I will use TTS if need be but it doesn't work so well for fiction, you know? But I honestly didn't even think about the novels. That's a good idea.
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May 23, 2024 01:17
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ravenkult posted:I stopped at the third one I think. Then you already saw a hell of a lot. Like, in book 3 siphoneers are still living people turned into water pipes.
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May 23, 2024 09:18
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With Necroscope, I didn't mind the body horror half as much as the constant feeling Lumley was typing it with one hand.
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May 23, 2024 12:01
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It was the necropedophilia for me.
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May 23, 2024 14:03
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Kestral posted:Peter Watts did a story called The Things that is John Carpenter’s The Thing from the perspective of the alien, and it’s great. Owns
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May 25, 2024 16:21
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I read Duncan Ralston's Woom last night. Not a fan. I guess I'm too old for "extreme horror" I prefer quality of violence over quantity eh, I should've known I wasn't going to like it but I read it hoping there would be somethign of value. escape artist fucked around with this message at 18:01 on May 25, 2024 |
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May 25, 2024 17:20
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Read All the Fiends of Hell. I've read worse, but it was a bit of a slog. After like 1/3 of the way through the book, the encounters with the creatures get kind of repetitive and lose a lot of impact. The 'villain' seems really specific like he might be the author airing his grievances with an annoying neighbor or relative. I think I feel that way because it felt like there was no loving way a guy like that making the choices he did survives long enough to make it to the climax of the book. I liked that the invasion was really unexplained and baffling in ways, but maybe I would have liked a little more speculation or world building to explain why the creatures didn't venture beyond land. Also the ending was written as hopeful, but unless there is a sequel coming, they only saved themselves for a few months. Currently reading Between Two Fires because of the thread title and it does rule. Very different than the Witcher books, but does give some of those vibes. Kind of episodic \ monster of the week structure. Instead of twisted fairy tales it's looking up messed up poo poo that happened in europe in the 1340s on wikipedia. Vishass fucked around with this message at 18:05 on May 25, 2024 |
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May 25, 2024 17:59
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Horror book thread: messed up poo poo that happened in europe in the 1340s
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May 26, 2024 00:02
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"Messed up poo poo" being literally the Black Death and the 100 years war lol
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May 28, 2024 15:00
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Michael McDowell's Katie and Gilded Needles marked down to 2.99 https://www.amazon.com/Katie-Valancourt-20th-Century-Classics-ebook/dp/B00T8C5IMQ/ https://www.amazon.com/Gilded-Needles-Valancourt-Century-Classics-ebook/dp/B010EQ7HBO/
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Jun 2, 2024 00:41
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Finished Blackwater a little while ago. Absolutely loved it throughout. Great recommendation whoever got me onto it.
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Jun 2, 2024 01:34
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Just read Pilgrim by Mitchell Luthi for some medieval horror, and Between Two Fires it is not, but I genuinely enjoyed it. Like many books with this theme it straddles the line between horror and dark fantasy, with our group going on a journey to deliver a thing to a place. What lands this more on the horror side is that the protagonists have basically no chance of combatting any of the threats they encounter. It's mundane people with swords just trying to live another day when shunted into a plane of existence populated with demons(?) and ancient malevolent gods. The problem is in the pacing. This book did not need to be almost 700 pages in my opinion. It takes quite a while before you get to the meat of the story, and it likes diverting into 10 page flashbacks or dream sequences that don't usually amount to much. Also its free on KU
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Jun 2, 2024 01:37
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My favorite medieval horror story is the intro segment of The Croning. It's also my favorite part of The Croning, which is otherwise a weaker version of stuff Barron does better in his short stories. Second favorite is probably Prosper's Demon, though that's only arguably horror.
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Jun 2, 2024 19:15
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I had to read Hidden Pictures by Jason Rekulak for a book club, and was enjoying it as a predictable horror story right from the jump. Apparently "kid draws creepy pictures" horror was a novel idea to everyone who voted on the book. Throughout most of the story I could easily picture this one of those 6 out of 10 Netflix horror movies I put on during my Halloween month marathon. It's by the numbers, with some obvious Chekov's guns. But then I started to pick up on some little things - some right-wing dog-whistles that troubled me. The parents are liberal stereotypes, right up to claiming to be all-accepting but actually not. They ban even saying "god bless you" when someone sneezes in their house. The main character is a God-fearing Christian, but this mainly comes up to show how the liberal parents wrinkle their nose at it. The author seems to have strong opinions on drug users, even casual pot enjoyers. The main character is a former addict, but this is mostly an excuse to write about how pure she is. There was something that seemed culturally insensitive about how Adrian, the hot young Hispanic landscaper, was portrayed, but I can't say what. Maybe the Hispanic landscaper stereotype. I have to talk about the twist because it brought all my dislike for the book together. It's the final dog-whistle that was a bit louder than the others, and perfectly muddled to give a sliver of doubt. Big spoiler for Hidden Pictures: The parents kidnapped a young girl and brainwashed her into being their son. See, it's ironic because the lib couple thought they were "saving" the girl from a lousy immigrant single mother. It's straight out of Fox News. The kid eventually gets rescued with the help of the Godly Christian ex-junkie (who steadfastly resists the one time in the whole book she gets the slightest bit of temptation) and the ghost. The only discussion I could find about this twist was on Reddit, where some people argued that it wasn't anti-trans, it was a reason to explain why the little girl wasn't discovered, because she'd been disguised as a little boy. No one on Reddit that I could find mentioned the two instances of namedropping J.K. Rowling. The first is mid-way through, when the main character says she bought the book to read to the kid, and the secretive liberal mom laughs as though she's just said something funny. The second is at the very end of the book. As it turns out, the whole book was written by the main character. She says her friend said it's "okay not to sound like J.K. Rowling". First of all, plenty of books have had the "this was all an autobiographical account" ending, but this was the first where it felt like the author was trying to push back any potential critique of his first novel by claming it was done by an inexperienced writer. Second, no one in 2022 is praising J.K. Rowling's writing, right? If you're praising Rowling in the 2020s, I have to assume you've got some very specific beliefs. Even if I give Jason Rekulak the benefit of the doubt, it's still lovely. Even ignoring all that, I don't think this book would have gained any popularity if it didn't include the creepy kid's drawings. It's clever, but not in a way that shows originality (remember all the horror movies that use this exact trope). But rather in a way that gets people talking about it on #BookTok, and attract non-horror readers who would be impressed by the plot. The Annie/Anya twist was dumb and relies on a huge coincidence with the neighborhood's ghost story having huge parallels to the actual ghost story, like both women being artists.
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Jun 3, 2024 15:06
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These sound more like bullhorns and not dog whistles. Thanks for the review, I was thinking of picking this book up, now I know to stay far away.
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Jun 3, 2024 16:37
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Read Lovely, Dark and Deep by Megan Stockton and its a really good quick read. The character writing is great and I really like how they handled the character perspectives once they start transforming into the monsters (sea vampires?). The misdirect with the dad actually fooled me for a while, which is rare for that type of thing. The last chapter simply shouldn't have existed, though. Everything it explains was already well enough implied earlier and the previous chapter wrapped things up perfectly.
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Jun 7, 2024 21:04
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I borrowed the complete Blackwater edition from my local library based on this threads recommendation. Whoever decided on the cover should never handle any book covers again. I would have instantly passed based on it alone if I had been browsing for a horror book without any recommendations
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Jun 8, 2024 15:43
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It's a shame because the individual covers for the Blackwater series are some of the best out there. But yeah, the complete edition cover is garbage.
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Jun 8, 2024 16:00
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Dr. VooDoo posted:I borrowed the complete Blackwater edition from my local library based on this threads recommendation. Whoever decided on the cover should never handle any book covers again. I would have instantly passed based on it alone if I had been browsing for a horror book without any recommendations lol that's actually why I just bit the bullet and bought the original paperbacks
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Jun 9, 2024 00:03
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Yeah I love having the collected edition for convenience but after finishing it I immediately splurged on copies of the original six individual books. Valancourt is usually so good on covers too. One of their other McDowell reprints has a loving Mignolia cover, fer chrissakes!!! It’s horrid that one of the best things they’ve ever published looks like some teen’s DeviantArt page circa-2011. In DESPERATE need of a new printing.
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Jun 9, 2024 00:38
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value-brand cereal fucked around with this message at 17:02 on Mar 26, 2025 |
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Jun 9, 2024 15:54
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I finished reading Between Two Fires. Real fun read. One aspect I was really impressed by is how the various monsters were both actually disturbing yet felt like they would be myths and things pulled from Medieval manuscripts
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Jun 9, 2024 16:33
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Just finished Adam Cesare's Clown in a Cornfield... that had NO right being that good. I was expecting something much more trite from the title, but now I'm really looking forwarding to reading the sequel.
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Jun 10, 2024 16:43
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I'm abandoning Thomas Olde Huevelt's Oracle about half way through. It's just too scattershot. There's good scenes and paragraphs, but overall it just can't seem to build tension because it's trying to tell like 5 different overlapping stories with divergent bordering on incompatible forms of horror. I'm changing my opinion to "I'm a fan of Hex, but not of him as a writer". It's like all the problems I had with Echo are back and now it's got a police procedural and adolescent characters tacked on. There's also something weird going on with the voice. It's told in third person omniscient, but the text uses colloquialisms and voice from the character so it reads kind of like first person. Maybe it's a Dutch translation thing? Whatever the reason, it keeps throwing me out of the text, like a pinch of sand in a salad.
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Jun 10, 2024 16:46
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value-brand cereal fucked around with this message at 17:02 on Mar 26, 2025 |
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Jun 10, 2024 17:34
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The guy in your spoiler is a character in HEX, which is about the events in that town he's from I preferred HEX to Oracle e: unless you're referencing some other part of his past I have already forgotten that goes past the events of HEX. Sorry if so
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Jun 10, 2024 17:45
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