Tag Archives: horror

Book Review: Dust & Grim by Chuck Wendig

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Title: Dust & Grim
Author: Chuck Wendig
Release Date: 5 October 2021
How I Got It: borrowed from the library
Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

My close friends know this about me, but I suppose it’s probably not common knowledge on my social media accounts: I love middle grade fiction. I’ve raved on this blog before about Artemis Fowl (which I adore with my whole heart) but it doesn’t stop there. I love a lot of middle grade fiction. I used to read a lot of it when I was in my undergrad, and working at a Borders Bookstore as the children’s and YA expert. I’ve fallen a bit out of touch with some of the current releases though, so I decided I needed to change that. 

To start with, I picked up Chuck Wendig’s first foray into middle grade: Dust & Grim. I love Chuck Wendig’s adult fantasy and horror, and I’ve been following him on Twitter since 2010, where is a delightfully hilarious (and staunchly progressive) oddball. I trust him and his work well enough to go into Dust & Grim blind, so I picked it up at the library without looking at reviews and dove in.

And what a delight!

Here’s the basic premise: Molly Grim is a 13-year-old girl with a problem — her penniless, worthless, neglectful father has just died leaving her with nothing. But! There’s a bright side, turns out that the mother she has never known (also deceased) owned a funeral home which is half Molly’s by rights, and which is currently being run by the 18-year-old brother she has never met. Molly and her brother Dustin never knew the other sibling existed until the day Molly shows up at the funeral home with her lawyer uncle demanding that Dustin either sell the funeral home and give her half, or buy her out of the property. She’s not exactly nice about it, because she’s lost and snarky and feeling defensive. Dustin is not exactly nice about it either, because he’s got bigger things to worry about. Turns out, the funeral home is not your normal run-of-the-mill kind. It’s a funeral home for monsters, and Dustin is still trying to prove to the monster community that he can handle his mother’s old job, young though he is.

As you might imagine, things get messy quickly. Molly, while staying in the residential section of the funeral home with her brother, deals with ghosts, terrifying spectral wolves in a forest that is far larger than it should be, and her uncle pressing her to find dirt on her brother so they can strong-arm him into giving her the money she is owed.

I don’t want to say too much more for fear of giving some things away. But the book features a charming fay, a wizard who is also a chef, and the most normal/boring vampire ever seen. The book is the perfect balance of suspense and horror, with Chuck Wendig’s signature brand of snarky humor and pop culture references, all appropriate for a middle grade book but still absolutely enjoyable for an adult. One thing I particularly loved was Molly’s love for cosplay. Her big plan in life is to go to an art school that specializes in fashion and costume design. She spends the whole book devising various cosplay outfits that help her to face whatever new obstacle comes her way. She also makes lots of pop culture references — some real references like Star Wars and some that are made-up but obviously veiled references to things like Sailor Moon (I assume this was a matter of getting the rights to use the actual brand names). I giggled my way through most of it, and found a few descriptive sections genuinely creepy.

I will warn that, while the first chapter was sufficiently intriguing to start with, the next few chapters were a tad slow to get the action moving. There were a few points early on where Molly seemed slow to connect the dots and I wanted the book to just get on with it. But once things pick up, they really pick up, and the last third of the book especially is fast-paced and highly entertaining. The ending, while having a perfectly satisfying conclusion, leaves room for the possibility of further installments. I really hope the book does well enough that the publisher will pick up a sequel or two. I’d love to see more of Molly and Dustin. I think this could make for another really fun middle grade series like Artemis Fowl or the Percy Jackson books. I have my fingers crossed!

PS: in the spirit of getting back into current middle grade fiction, I also picked up Zachary Ying and the Dragon Emperor by Xiran Jay Zhao (which looks AMAZING) and hope to have time to read that one and review it as well soon!

Queer Romances Redux: Whyborne & Griffin Series

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Back at the beginning of June, I planned on doing several posts about queer romances I loved in the spirit of Pride Month. I made one post on the topic, and then (in typical Amanda fashion) disappeared again. I won’t spend several posts on the subject now, so far after the fact, but I wanted to at least talk about the one really big romance series that I’ve been obsessing over. I’ve mentioned in a couple previous posts, but wanted to dedicate a full post to it here.

I’m talking about the Whyborne & Griffin series by Jordan L. Hawk.

Jordan L. Hawk is a transmasc author with a long resume of writing queer romances, of which the Whyborne & Griffin series is just one option. While I plan to read his other books eventually, this series will probably remain my favorite. I love these books so much. I picked up the first book on Dec 23rd 2021. I remember the date specifically because I had spent days finishing a huge house-cleaning sweep in preparation for my grandmother coming to visit for the holidays. I finished cleaning on the afternoon of the 23rd, and my grandmother would be arriving in the evening, so I might a cup of hot tea and downloaded the first book, Widdershins.

I finished that first book that night. And downloaded the rest of the ENTIRE ELEVEN BOOK SERIES immediately. And proceeded to read the first five books in five days, while playing host to my grandmother over Christmas. The reading slowed down a bit after that because I had to go back to work, but I had still managed to finish reading the whole series by the end of January. I devoured them.

Then, I decided I wanted print copies, not just ebooks, so I bought a couple at a time and did a re-read as they arrived, finishing the series for a second time at the end of June. And now I’m already thinking about re-reading the first few again. That’s how much I love this series.

So here’s the basic premise: the series is set in late-Victorian New England, in a city called Widdershins. But this is not our New England, because this series is deeply rooted in the Lovecraftian universe. You do not have to be familiar with Lovecraft Lore to understand and enjoy the series (all the creeps and ghouls and eldritch gods are fully explained and fleshed out with the context of the series), but if you are already familiar with Lovecraft it is endlessly amusing to suddenly recognize a name or reference from the Lovecraft mythos. The main setting of the series, Widdershins, is a city of Hawk’s devising, but with references to Lovecraft lore. And in keeping with that mythos, the main character, Dr. Percival Whyborne (who goes only be Whyborne thank you very much), is a linguistics scholar who works at a museum and went to college at Miskatonic University.

Whyborne is a tall, perpetually-awkward, shy and repressed scholarly man who works in the basement of the museum. He comes from a wealthy family but despises his father and has renounced his claim to the family money or power. He is routinely harassed and bullied by other scholars at the museum, and has a single friend: archeologist Dr. Christine Putnam (who, being the only woman in a field of men, is likewise often harassed and bullied, but unlike timid Whyborne, has a mouth that NEVER STOPS SNARKING. And god I love her for it.) Whyborne is also gay, but he has never allowed himself to act on that knowledge.

Enter Mr. Griffin Flaherty: an ex-Pinkerton, turned private detective, and the most attractive man Whyborne has ever seen. Griffin is on a case to solve the mysterious death of a rich man’s son, and needs the assistance of a linguist to decipher a coded journal that belonged to the dead man. He also has several secrets to keep under wraps, not the least of which is that he has recently been released from an asylum.

Whyborne reluctantly agrees to help the enormously charming Griffin, and before long the two are on a fast-track to becoming friends and quite possibly more. Along the way, they discover that magic is real. In fact, it’s not only real, it’s deadly and it’s coming for the city.

I’m trying my best here not to give too much away, which leaves me speaking in vague phrases and doing lots of hand-waving. There is dark magic, eldritch terrors, necromancy, angst, and romantic drama. And that’s just the first book!

Each book ratchets up the drama, the dark magic, the danger, and the deadly horrors, building toward an overarching plot that is intricate and enormously satisfying. There’s also some of the best, steamiest sex scenes ever put to paper. And a few love confessions/speeches to make even the most hard-hearted swoon.

Perhaps what I love most about these books is that they deeply explore what it means to be an outsider, from many different perspectives. As a queer man, as a woman, as a person of color, as well as from the more genre-specific angles of being magical or non-human, perhaps even a “monster.” And that take on the monstrous is another thing I love about these books. Hawk’s takes the horrors of Lovecraft lore and examines them, dissects them, reimagines them until the characters and the readers are forced to reconsider what makes someone or something a “monster,” or whether the word has any real meaning at all.

These are also books about acceptance and love and family. Found family, mostly, which is one of my all-time favorite tropes. The characters throughout the series are often rejected by their actual families, their “people,” and so they come together in beautiful ways to make their own family (a family I would give my right arm to be a part of, lol).

The whole series is, to me, the perfect blend of queer erotic romance and dark paranormal fantasy adventure. I know some readers prefer more of one or the other, but I love the balancing act between the two genres played out here. It’s a style of writing and plot that would probably not have sold well twenty or thirty years ago, but in recent decades this kind of cross-genre/genre-bending work has become more and more popular (thanks at least in part to the post fanfic-internet-world, lol). And I, for one, am very grateful for it.

I guarantee you will love these characters — Whyborne and Griffin and Christine and the whole cast of people that come as the story progresses. You might even see yourself in one or more of them (I am entirely too much like Whyborne, it’s slightly embarrassing actually). If you love romance novels but are squeamish about some pretty gross-out-worthy horror elements; or, if you love dark fantasy/horror novels but are squeamish about some pretty graphic sex scenes, than these are NOT for you. But if you enjoy the mix of both in any capacity, I pretty much guarantee you will love these books!

Here’s a link to the first book on amazon: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00AHH0YF2?tag=jolha-20

Here’s a link to Jordan L. Hawk’s author page: http://www.jordanlhawk.com

If you’ve read these before and love them, sound off in the comments below! If you pick them up later, I’d love to hear your thoughts as well!

Book Review: The Monster of Elendhaven

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One of the first books I read for my 2020 “Storm the Castle” Reading Challenge was the novella The Monster of Elendhaven by Jennifer Giesbrecht. I read this book on Audible (a good majority of my reading is done through audiobooks these days). It is a fantasy/horror story and it was a) very dark and twisted, b) very good, and c) very gay. I loved it!

I used to write book reviews semi-regularly, but I am very out of practice so this will probably not be horribly structured or formal. And I haven’t decided how I am going to quantify my feelings into a number or star system, so that’s very up-in-the-air right now… (shrug). That said, I will try to keep this review from being TOO spoilery, while still providing enough information for you to decide if this book sounds like something you’d like to check out or not.

The city of Elendhaven lies in the far north, on the edge of a dark, mysterious ocean. It is a city filled with gruesome myths and haunted by plague and betrayal and death. In this city, the story begins with the “birth” or perhaps “creation” of the main character: a creature shaped like a man but not entirely human, a thing with no name until he baptizes himself and decides his name is now Johann. Johann, tall and dark and menacing, yet somehow nearly invisible in society, quickly learns how to make a “living” for himself by whatever criminal and violent means necessary: stealing, stalking, killing, etc. He also discovers that he, apparently, cannot die. Stabbed, beaten, jumping off very tall buildings… it doesn’t matter the method, he does not die.

In the course of his criminal endeavors, Johann begins stalking a wealthy young man he sees often in the bars around the city, named Florian. Florian is small and frail and almost femininely-pretty, but when Johann finally attacks him in a dark alley, Florian is unafraid and unimpressed, but intrigued by the possibilities Johann’s talents might afford him. Florian is, in fact, a sorcerer… possibly the very last one of a breed who have been hunted and executed to near-extinction.

Thus begins a dark, twisted partnership as Johann becomes Florian’s willing servant on a mission of depraved science experiences, murder, and revenge. 

oil slick stock image

This novella is black as pitch, sleek and glimmering and beautiful and yet greasy, like an oil slick. It is amazing how much of a punch it packs in a slim 160 pages (about 4.5 hrs on my audiobook)! Johann is violent and terrifying, yet strangely guileless – obsessed with, enamored of delicate but depraved, nearly-heartless Florian. The relationship between the two is a tangle of fascination, disgust, obsession, and deeply-buried genuine affection. And Florian’s plans and motives are so secretive and mysterious that it takes the entirety of the novella to really put together all the pieces. (At one point I thought Florian might be trans, but I was wrong. Gay as shit though). The story is half-horror as Florian instructs Johann to carry out his ruinous revenge of the city and the people who had so horribly wronged him and his family; and it is half-romance as Johann tries to charm Florian with his bizarre mix of flattery, affection, and sado-masochistic penchant for violence.

Jennifer Giesbrecht’s prose is wonderfully baroque, gothic, and poetic. The language lingers, takes it time, stays on the tongue and against the teeth. It features such lines as:

“Power was sweeter than apples. It was cheaper than water, and sustained the soul twice as well. If Johann was going to be a Thing with a name, then from now on he would be a Thing with power, too.”

— Jennifer Giesbrecht, The Monster of Elendhaven

And the first description of the city of Elendhaven is nicely indicative of the tone and style as well:

“Southerners called its harbour the Black Moon of Norden; a fetid crescent that hugged the dark waters of the polar sea. The whole city stank of industry. The air was thick with oil, salt, and smoke, which had long settled into the brick as a slick film, making the streets slippery on even the driest days. It was a foul place: foul scented, foul weathered, and plagued with foul, ugly architecture—squat warehouses peppered with snails and sea grass, mansions carved from heavy, black stone, their thick windows stained green and greasy from exposure to the sea. The tallest points in Elendhaven were the chimneys of the coal refineries. The widest street led south, rutted by the carts that dragged whale offal down from the oil refineries.
Hundreds of years ago, the North Pole had been cut open by searing magic, a horrific event that left the land puckered with craters like the one Elendhaven huddled in. For five centuries, the black waters had been poisoned with an arcane toxin that caused the skin to bubble and the mind to go soggy and loose like bread in broth. Once in a while, the fishermen would pull up an aberration from the ocean floor: something frothing and wet with its insides leaking out its eyes. ‘Demons and monsters,’ visitors whispered, ‘such creatures still sleep inside the Black Moon.’”

— Jennifer Giesbrecht, The Monster of Elendhaven

I’ve seen a few reviews of this novella online. Some people really liked it, and others gave it a tepid response, claiming that it starts well but is missing something. I’ll be honest, I’m not sure what they think is missing. Sure, the ending is ambiguous and open-ended, but I think that is all to its merit. I admit I do wonder what could have been, had this story been fleshed out into a full-length novel, but in general I love novellas – I love the big explosive power of the tiny package – and I think this novella works very well. I really enjoyed it, and I believe anyone who likes their fantasy with a horror-twist and a bit of a gut-punch will enjoy it as well.

I’m still shaking out how to do my reviews, but for now I’d say it’s a 4.5 out of 5 stars.

For more info:

You can read the first chapter on tor.com’s site here

You can also check out the author’s playlist and some fanart on Jennifer Giesbrecht’s website here