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RestingB1tchFace posted:I'm mostly a sci-fi donk. Read 'Hyperion' by Dan Simmons around ten years ago and loved it. Truthfully it is one of my favorite books of all time. Since then I've knocked through a number of his books.....seeing as how he jumps between and blends horror with sci-fi and historical fiction. 'Carrion Comfort' is an absolute tomb. But the way Simmons busts it up into three distinct sections makes it pretty palatable. Finished it a second time this past week. It's a masterpiece nearing 'Hyperion' imo. Didn't care for 'Summer of Night' nearly as much. 'Drood' was a complete slog. Interesting premise....but Simmons seemed too eager to inject it full of studied research that the casual reader cares nothing about....ballooning the book to a stupid length with way too much dead weight. I really really liked The Terror and to a lesser extent, Abominable but they are very heavy in detail about their respective settings and focus (Arctic exploration and travel, and mountaineering respectively) so if you don't have an interest in those aspects they're possibly a bit of a slog. They're my favourite of his however.
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Apr 4, 2022 00:14
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value-brand cereal posted:*stumbles into the thread in a daze* Hey y'all read Sundial by Catriona Ward. A lot of heavy themes like explicit domestic abuse, child abuse, animal cruelty / experimentation. If none of that is off putting, definitely dive in. It's REALLY good. She also wrote Rawblood if the name seems familiar. Yeah just finished it and completely agree, it's really really good, probably one of the most enjoyable horror novels to me since The Fisherman. I realised partway through that it was the same author who wrote The Last House on Needless Street which I also liked a lot, though there is something about both books that I feel pretty uneasy about in its portrayal of trauma and the effects it can have. It's kinda a shame cos I did enjoy the plot twist in Sundial that she's focusing on the wrong daughter, but in terms of a realistic portrayal of trauma and the messaging in the book, in some ways it would have been much stronger if it finished a few pages earlier with the takeaway message being that it's the environment that you're exposed to that shapes who you are and how you behave, not some weird genetic trait that makes you a psychopath. If it had ended with Rob realising that there was no such thing as genetic markers for evil/psychopathy and that indeed her abusive husband was the problem, I feel that would have been a more solid resolution in many ways. It's all kinda messy, but as a therapist who has worked with a lot of trauma and who has had plenty of mental health issues myself I feel really conflicted about these themes in horror. On the one hand, psychological horror is probably my favourite and I absolutely love stuff that blurs the line between reality and a character's internal perceptions if it's done well and particularly when it's used to explore themes like grief, trauma etc. At the same time it can feel kinda icky how it comes across, particularly when there's any sort of sense that characters with mental health struggles or trauma experiences are irreparably damaged by them or worse, become evil/bad people because of it. All of that aside, I loved the book and the weird setting and the fact that in their own ways pretty much all of the characters were sympathetic and just doing their best in a godawful situation. Looking forward to checking out her other work now - Little Eve sounds super interesting as well. Edit: ^^^ That's a solid tip Kerro fucked around with this message at 06:36 on Apr 14, 2022 |
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Apr 14, 2022 06:31
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Flaggy posted:Have you tried The Last Astronaut? Not a bad haunted spaceship story. I really wanted to like this one cos I love the idea of spaceship-horror and also haven't found anything that's lived up to 'Ship of Fools' since reading it 10 years ago, but I couldn't finish The Last Astronaut. It felt like every character had been given a single driving motive, and that they would make whatever decision no matter how stupid so long as it fit with that motive. By the halfway point I was asking 'why would you do that' so frequently I just couldn't keep going. Looking forward to giving 'All the White Spaces' a shot as I love arctic exploration/horror and have already read Dark Matter and The Terror. I also recently finished Revelator which I loved, Southern Gods which was fine but not great, and Winterset Hollow which is more dark fantasy than horror maybe? Thought it was great though.
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May 4, 2022 22:43
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Yeah that was my main issue with it as well. It's well written and I really enjoyed the read, but the subtext made me really wonder what if any point the author was trying to make given how the novel plays out.
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May 20, 2022 19:53
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I finished Little Eve by Catriona Ward recently which I think probably falls into folk horror? Though I don't quite know what that term encompasses. I really enjoyed it, it's about a small and extremely odd 'family' who live on an island in remote Scotland that is only connected to the mainland at low tide. The family/cult has some pretty bizarre beliefs and practices that culminate in some terrible poo poo happening and lead to the protagonist trying to escape which is made more challenging by the fact that she's heavily indoctrinated into the family's beliefs. As with Catriona Ward's other books which I've also enjoyed, it's pretty dark and includes some pretty believable child abuse dressed up as being part of the family's traditions and practices for ensuring loyalty. I also recently got around to reading I'm Thinking of Ending Things which I liked a lot. I totally get the criticisms about the ending, and did feel like it was a bit disappointing (not to mention that the transition into the (ending spoiler) revelation that the main character didn't really exist happened rather abruptly and in a way that felt fairly clunky. Reading it, it did feel like one of those books that just couldn't possibly deliver on everything it had built up so I wasn't that let down by it, and some of the stuff in the lead-up - particularly the scenes at the family home - was amazing and some of the creepiest and most unsettling stuff I've read. I'd really enjoy any other recommendations for this kind of creepy, unsettling 'something-is-clearly-terribly-wrong-but-we're-not-sure-what' sort of horror. I then read Six Stories based on the recommendation earlier in the thread and enjoyed that too. I dunno if it quite falls into the horror category, but it feels close enough. While not being groundbreaking it was a solidly written story that kept me engaged throughout so I can definitely see it as a good recommendation for anyone who enjoys that sort of 'horror-through-documentary' style of book. Lastly, I tried to read The Shaft by David Schow and persevered longer than I could, but eventually gave up at about 40%. Schow is clearly a competent writer, but the level of horny in this book combined with the fact that all the characters are just horrible made it too much of a slog for me. I'm assuming the horror picks up later in the book - and there were a few fun and creepy scenes in the first half, but the vast majority of the first part of the book seems to be sex scenes (in one instance just from a character's memory since that character is not getting laid but I guess we have to shoe-horn some sex scenes in there anyway), location descriptions (which again, are at least well-written), and lovely characters being derogatory and dismissive of women for no apparent reason. I genuinely can't tell if the author wants us to hate all the characters, or since this was published in the early 90s just actually thinks this way himself but either way, ugh. Edit: Oh yeah, just remembered that the one scene with a retired older woman who only appears in the novel to have something bad happen to her to establish the horror also for some reason spends her time thinking in detail about sex despite just pottering about in her apartment at the time.
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Jun 21, 2022 23:00
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I did really enjoy The Last House On Needless Street but I also felt it was the weakest of her three books that I've read - I liked Sundial and Little Eve quite a bit more (I think because the format of the narrator is more straight forward in the others, and didn't totally work for me in Needless Street). So if you enjoyed it at all I'd definitely recommend trying Sundial as well which was probably my favourite.
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Oct 12, 2022 18:25
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I really liked Hell House and Kill Creek as well.
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Mar 23, 2023 02:35
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Finished Catriona Ward's Looking Glass Sound and it was great. I think I've found another author where I enjoy and will now read anything she puts out (joining John Langan, Tana French, CJ Sansom and Harry Bingham). Last House On Needless Street was the weakest for me but still a really enjoyable read, but I thought Looking Glass Sound was really strong even if it felt like less of a horror novel than some of her other work and more in the psychological thriller vein. I dunno why but these coming-of-age combined with hosed-up-poo poo novels (IT, Summer of Night, December Park, even stuff like The Secret History and If We Were Villains) really strike a chord with me.
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Sep 18, 2023 22:02
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gey muckle mowser posted:Sounds interesting, I'll check it out. The only two books by Catriona Ward I've read were Sundial and Little Eve, and my experience with both was that I wasn't sure if I liked them at all until about halfway through when I realized I was hooked. Sundial was definitely the stronger of the two but I liked both well enough to keep reading her work. Yeah I think Sundial is my favourite so far, but I have really enjoyed the others. A lot of her books seem to play with the narrative structure of things in ways that mean the later parts of her books often read very differently to the first parts so I definitely get the sense of not being hooked until partway through.
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Sep 19, 2023 00:28
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AARD VARKMAN posted:Can anyone recommend any books in the vein of The Clovehitch Killer and Summer of '84? Stories of kids suspecting local person/family member is a serial killer. I haven't read the ones you named, so not sure if these quite meet the request but these are all great and all have local kids who end up intertwined in stuff happening involving possible serial killings: Robert Mccammon Boy's Life Catriona Ward Looking Glass Sound Ronald Malfi December Park
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Oct 4, 2023 19:56
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escape artist posted:Just snagged this today... Hopefully you'll enjoy Boy's Life too then - it's absolutely one of my favourite coming-of-age stories, and my favourite McCammon book that I've read (though I've only read Swan Song, They Thirst, The Listener, and the Matthew Corbett series). I am surprised that his work hasn't been adapted to the screen the way King's work has.
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Oct 4, 2023 23:21
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Kestral posted:I didn't notice it at first because I was on mobile, but now - oh my god I love this subforum so much. I don't think it's a spoiler to say that Boy's Life is not really horror at all, it's very much more a coming of age story with a mystery/thriller in the background. To answer your question specifically though, no there's nothing really supernatural going on here.
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Oct 5, 2023 19:05
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GhastlyBizness posted:Just finished Adam Nevill's The Reddening and holy poo poo it was good. Excellent deep time prehistoric horror, all red-stained creeps with flint hand axes, and some excellent evocation of an eerie Devon landscape. I quite liked his Wyrd and Other Derelictions, which is all odd little dialogue-free static vignettes, like little camera surveys of a horror scene while the blood is still cooling. I enjoyed The Reddening well enough but actually found it one of the weaker of his books so if you liked it I definitely recommend trying some others. Last Days was probably my favourite, but The Ritual (more so the first half) and No One Gets Out Alive were both good too - the latter being a pretty unpleasant read in places though.
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Nov 9, 2023 02:54
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