Lies Of Tenderness is Stephen Volk’s latest collection from PS Publishing; seventeen short stories, plus an introduction by Priya Sharma and a generous set of story notes.


And it’s superb.


The collection starts with The Holocaust Crasher; the tale of an elderly man who has discovered a newfound sense of purpose in old age by touring schools and delivering speeches-plus-Q&As to classes of schoolchildren about his experiences surviving the holocaust. The only slight wrinkle being that his number tattoo is drawn on with biro, because he’s an imposter, delivering stories synthesised from studying history.


So much of what makes Volk such a brilliant writer is encapsulated in this tale. For starters, there’s the voice - the narrative is first person, so we’re inside the mind of the main character from the opening, seeing the deceit play out almost in real-time. The man is avuncular and honest (er, well, with us, anyway), and as repellent as his behaviour is, I found it increasingly hard not to enjoy his company. It’s an incredibly accomplished character portrait.


Then there’s the simple brilliance of that core conceit; what makes someone live a lie? And what makes this someone pick that particular lie? One of the things Volk talks about in the story notes afterwards is how he’s especially attracted to stories where it’s, on the surface, hard to sympathise with a protagonist or position; one is left with the impression that in some cases the stories come from an attempt to make sense of the apparently nonsensical.


That tendency is certainly on display in this opening tale, and I was left marvelling at Volk’s ability to generate interest and sympathy for such an on-the-surface unlikeable character, as well as weaving a narrative that I’ve found my mind returning to again and again since I completed my initial read.


It’s a thread that is woven into many of the tales that follow; The Little Gift and Adventurous feature very different takes on adulterous relationships, Sicko takes in a thief who has a date with cinematic history (or, does she?), and Bad Langage is a gut-wrenching journey into the dark side of grief and rage. In many of these stories, people are committing immoral, even monstrous acts; but regardless of the consequences, Volk doesn’t stint on displaying their essential humanity, frailties and strengths, virtues, and sometimes fatal flaws.


Another thing that makes the collection impressive is how these elements sit alongside tales of the mystical and mythical. Agog and A Meeting at Knossos take us behind the eyes of ancient mythical creatures, while The Airport Gorilla gives us a modern mythology to chew on, from the perspective of the titular stuffed toy. And if that sounds funny, well… it is.


At first.


Then there are the moments where these modes of storytelling collide (in what happen to be two of my favourite stories in this exceptional collection): Outside of Truth or Consequences and the previously mentioned Adventurous. The former is an absolute classic tale of American crime fiction meets The Twilight Zone, with a twist ending that still makes me grin to recall. And Adventurous pulls off the amazing feat of presenting a central conceit that is gleefully demented and yet manages to be simultaneously hilarious and oddly touching, all at once. And I think the why of how it works is instructive about the collection as a whole; Volk is alive to the absurdity of the situation, but, crucially, never sells the characters short, and their sincerity gives proceedings a quiet pathos that accentuates the comedy.


Two other stories fell somewhat into that glorious Twilight Zone mode, for me; The House That Moved Next Door and Beat The Card Home, though I note there’s elements of that genre of storytelling in Vardoger and even The Flickering Light, in a way. One of the things I enjoyed about the collection is Volk’s ability to move between stories of naturalism and tales of the supernatural (and even mythical); because of his commitment to realism in terms of the characters, as a reader I was never sure which way the stories were going to turn - and indeed with The Flickering Light I found a pleasing ambiguity that left a lingering impression.


Another thread that runs through the collection, in the best possible way, is a sense of Volk’s social conscience. In addition to being attracted to ‘difficult’ subjects and people, there’s a real sense of anger in many of these stories; a sense of profound dissatisfaction with the brutality of the status quo, and a desire for things to be other, better. Elements of this approach abound, but these tendencies are especially pronounced in The Black Cat (which takes on historic racism with a brutal directness, without ever for a moment spilling into prurience) and another personal favourite, Unchain the Beast, which is a genuinely thrilling story that also poses some really tough, fundamental questions about the role of art in the face of brutal authoritarianism.


In summary, Lies Of Tenderness is another absolutely outstanding collection from Stephen Volk, a writer who continues to challenge, to grapple with contentious ideas, and subjects, and who in the process produces work with an incredible range of moods, textures and emotions, but which are united by an exceptional level of quality. It’s an absolute belter of a collection, in other words, and I recommend it enthusiatisically and unreservedly.


KP
20/5/22

CONTENTS
Introduction by Priya Sharma
The Holocaust Crasher
The Airport Gorilla
The House That Moved Next Door
Unchain the Beast
Outside of Truth or Consequences
The Little Gift
The Black Cat
Beat the Card Home
Vardøger
A Meeting at Knossos
Sicko
The Naughty Step
Adventurous
The Flickering Light
Bad Language
Agog
Orr
Story Notes & Acknowledgements

I first reviewed Richard Farren Barber back in 2017 and having explored his impressive back catalogue became a huge fan and am always keen to check out his new fiction. Considering he has been published by a host of top indie presses including Black Shuck Books, Crossroad Press, Demain Publishing, and Hersham Horror Books it is surprising that he is not better known. I rarely see Richard’s work being discussed on horror Twitter feeds or Facebook pages and this is a great shame as his novella and substantial short story output ranks amongst the very best in the business. I was so struck by Richard’s work that I featured him in one of my Unsung Heroes of Horror articles for the Inkheist site back in 2019. Click here for a closer look:


https://inkheist.com/2019/07/03/unsung-heroes-of-horror/


Before we get onto the superb Twenty Years Dead (on Crystal Lake Publishing this time) here are some further top tips should you wish to explore Richard’s work further. If there was such a thing as a novella ‘specialist’ then this author qualifies hands down and Closer Still (2018), a tale of a teenage girl haunted by her best friend is hard to beat, beautifully capturing the angst with the terror. I rated this piece so highly we placed it 35th in our top 50 YA novels of the last decade in a huge 2020 Ginger Nuts feature. Back in 2017 his post-apocalyptic thriller Perfect Darkness, Perfect Silence was in my top ten reads of the year and in 2019 Richard’s debut novel The Living and the Lost was another top ten choice. Richard has a very restrained style and rarely uses blood, thunder or sensationalism in his horror and this trademark was beautifully captured in his atmospheric novelette, The Coffin Walk.


Sadly, his debut novel The Living and the Lost is currently out of print and I hope it finds a new publisher shortly as it is much too good to be unavailable, interestingly it shares a similar theme to Twenty Years Dead as they both concern the industry of ‘death’. In The Living and the Lost there is a council department which dealt with the spiritual ‘cleaning’ of houses after an individual dies. In Twenty Years Dead there is an occupation called ‘Family Director’, individuals who are paid to put the dead at peace when they briefly reanimate after twenty years, the highly original and core plotline of this new book.


Like Richard’s previous novel The Screaming Dead (co-written with Peter Mark May), the action takes place entirely in a graveyard and on this occasion is set over a few hours. This was such a gripping read I could quite easily have devoured the whole novella over one sitting as it had me totally on the hook for how events were going to play out in the big finish, which the whole night was building up to.  Like with The Living and the Lost the author gives very little away on how the supernatural works within the context of the story and in the first few pages the reader is dropped in the midst of a bizarre situation which has a simply brilliant hook to it.


David and Helen are on their way to an isolated graveyard where in the next few hours his father Graham Chadwick will reanimate. It is not explained how this phenomenon has come around and the author cleverly sidesteps any cliches you might expect regarding zombies, flesh-eating or standard horror tropes. If you know the exact time of your loved one’s death then the exact time of ‘their rising’ can be pinpointed twenty years later to the precise minute. The problem is David does not exactly when his father died, so they have to hang around the grave and wait. And wait. He is also (at best) an amateur.


At this point the plot gets very clever, David was very young when his father died and hopes his rising will give him the opportunity to briefly get to know him better, as they can potentially share their secrets with the living. Also, David believes that the ‘professionals’ the Family Directors are rip-off merchants and even though it is not advisable thinks he can handle the rising himself, even though he is not exactly sure what is going to happen. He is rather cynical (and very funny) believing watching You Tube videos have taught him enough! Along the way there is some very entertaining patter with a couple of Family Directors who are in the graveyard on other business, all of which was totally absorbing and helped built up the momentum for what would happen at the rising of his father.


Richard Farren Barber is a highly skilled operator at building tension and developing smart and very readable stories with very neat hooks and Twenty Years Dead is a fine example. David should just have fronted the cash and paid the expert! (but where would be the fun in that?) and instead we have an inept beginner dealing with a situation in which he is way out of his depth, carrying heavy emotional baggage along with it.


After reading this most readers will probably agree that spending the cash on a Family Director is money well spent and that the DIY approach is best kept to furniture rather than restless spirits! Richard Farren Barber’s Twenty Years Dead comes with the very highest of recommendation, turning a great idea into a very readable, funny and chilling page-turner. If you have never tried his work before you will not get a better opportunity to sample his highly original take on life (albeit it briefly!) after death.   


Tony Jones

Dancing in the Shadows: A Tribute to Anne Rice
Edited by Elaine Pascale and Rebecca Rowland
Yuriko Publishing, LLC
Release date: May 22, 2022 in paperback and eBook
Page count: 291
ISBN: 978-1-7372083-6-5
Book website: https://rowlandbooks.com/dancing-in-the-shadows


Immortality in More Ways Than One


There’s a certain mood that you come to expect when you read a Rice. Whether you were partial to her vampires, or her witches, or her more sensational works, there’s a sultry slow darkness that prompts you to curl up in an overstuffed armchair and let yourself be carried away.

If you pick up one of her books—which you should do, frequently—you know what you’re after, and know you’ll be left trembling and satisfied, and that’s exactly what you’d want to see from a tribute anthology as well.

Dancing in the Shadows not only gives you that proprietary Anne Rice blend of gloom & thrill in spades, it also shows how beautifully those rock-solid foundations can be built upon by new voices, exceptionally cultivated and curated by Elaine Pascale and Rebecca Rowland.
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The two editors seem in perfect control not only of the voice of the anthology overall, but also of the rhythm & order of their selections, doing their damndest to leave you rather breathless by the end. There’s no doubt in my mind they’re fans of the original work, and their mission, as pointed out in the poignant foreword by Lisa Kröger, was to contribute to Anne Rice’s immortality: “ “I want to be loved and never forgotten. […] I want to be immortal.” Anne Rice did not have to become a vampire to live forever. She is alive in her words. And she is alive in her legacy.”

Picking favorite stories doesn’t seem right in this case. The original work that inspired these stories has many facets ranging from thrilling twists to delectable sensory elements to historical and architectural detail, and they’re all represented here. Those aspects of Rice’s work that titillated me most might be the ones you suffered through to get to your favorite parts, and the same may very well apply to this collection. What I can guarantee, however, is that you’ll have access to a broad range, of which the baseline quality is very high.

The opening story, C. W. Blackwell’s “House of Blood and Stone”, firmly and skillfully shows you the classic moods and roots of what you signed up for and why we still seek out those moods today, while the exit point, “Only Bees Remember” by E. F. Schraeder, takes an approach that spans both time and genres, excitingly touching on thriller and even eco-horror tones, without ever forgetting its Gothic core.

Holley Cornetto needs no more than three lines to hook you beyond hope, break your heart, and raise your temper in “Black Mold Lullabies”, while Morgan Sylvia’s “The Witch Mirror” lets you gracefully sink into a carefully-set scene before taking you on a languorous trip through generational magic.

Kristi Petersen Schoonover’s “Haint Gonna Happen” lures you in with its wry conversational humor that makes you feel like you’re being told a ghost story by your funniest friend—who happens to be an expert in marine life!—while Scotty Milder’s “A Little Stain” is standing by to rip your heart out with grief and give you the full-body sob you didn’t know you needed.

The mysterious buildup to the fierce, wild brutality of Trish Wilson’s “Dirty, Unhappy Things” is likely going to leave you in a state of shock, while Angela Yuriko Smith’s “Interview with the Almighty” will have you nodding along to the perversely familiar power struggle between humans and the divine.

I could go on through every entry, but truly, this range and breadth is something you deserve to discover for yourselves.

That’s not to say that you won’t find a coherent voice fueled by common themes. You’ll get your old manor houses with secret pasts exposed under full moons, your abbeys and cemeteries, your last will and testaments, your psychics, your hauntings, and even a much-beloved-by-horror-fans daguerreotype. More importantly, you’ll get to explore and experience occult forces, colorful characters, strained family relationships, secrets, sanity, and very real human pain, trauma, and catharsis. What this collection doesn’t have (or need!) in terms of modern trappings, it has in terms of modern sensibilities, the voice of today’s fears and hopes shining through the seemingly classic tales.

As for who might not be thrilled by this publication, and what might bother them: I’ve not been able to find any entry in this anthology that I couldn’t immediately trace back to its mission and inspiration, nor one that didn’t deserve to stand among the others. Having said that, it’s normal that not all books are right for everyone. Readers who find Gothic styles a bore, or who enjoy modern voices and unprecedented settings, might not find what they’re looking for in this anthology. There’s nothing wildly experimental about it, nor will you find exact in-universe replicas of the stories that inspired it. I’d also say that if your favorite aspect of Rice’s work was the eroticism, that’s not particularly the focus of this publication. Everyone else, however, is guaranteed to find at least a handful of new favorite stories, here.

As an avid reader of short fiction, I found myself loving the book’s format that placed author bios right at the end of their respective story, giving me an immediate chance to learn who I’m enjoying and what else of theirs I can read. The rest of the form & formatting, including the heading illustration and fonts, really contribute to the complete feel and experience.

Overall, I’d say: listen to your heart. Has it been too long since you’ve read a Rice? Do you want to learn who else in the modern literary world might help you scratch that same sultry itch? Then pick up Dancing in the Shadows and breathe that evening blossom-scented marshland air in.

Nitty Gritty:

Dancing in the Shadows pays tribute to Rice’s legacy with tales from today’s most innovative authors, drawing from the darkness where vampires and witches, mummies and rougarous, spirits and demons move to the music of nightmares.
Featuring stories by C. W. Blackwell, Anthony S. Buoni, Holley Cornetto, Stephanie Ellis, Douglas Ford, Lee Andrew Forman, Holly Rae Garcia, KC Grifant, Greg Herren, Christine Lajewski, Tim Mendees, Scotty Milder, Kristi Petersen Schoonover, E. F. Schraeder, Angela Yuriko Smith, Morgan Sylvia, Lamont A. Turner, Gordon B. White, and Trish Wilson; edited by Elaine Pascale and Rebecca Rowland.

All proceeds from this anthology will be donated to ARNO.

Animal Rescue New Orleans (ARNO) is an organization created and dedicated to the rescue and aid of abandoned and homeless animals in the New Orleans area, including responding to the immediate needs of those in need of medical care or those too old, too young, too sick, neglected, abused and deprived of love. ARNO promotes the foster, adoption and reunion of pets with caretakers as well as spaying and neutering all companion animals through our no-kill shelter.

In his latest release, Douglas Ford returns with a creature feature centered around the most unusual of monsters: leeches and wild pigs. On the surface, the two life forms seem wildly incongruous, but Ford expertly weaves a yarn of Trevor, a university maintenance worker, his wife Madeline, a herd of aggressive swine oppressing a college campus, and a new pet that (literally) grows to become something much more in Little Lugosi, and it comes together so well, you’ll be loath to put the novella down before sailing through the story in one sitting.

When Trevor’s wife receives a package in the mail marked “For Medical Use Only,” Trevor thinks it strange, but when Madeline opens the box to reveal its contents, he is even more flabbergasted. When he first encounters the leech she ordered, he is hesitant to jump on board with the responsibilities required when owning a blood-sucking pet. “Trevor left the bubbling water and approached close enough to regard the black thing inside the container. It didn’t seem to move at first, but then he realized it was flexing itself, almost pulsing on the side of the plastic. Madeline held out the container as if she expected him to take it. ‘What do you mean by feedings?’ he asked. ‘You know what a leech eats, don’t you?’ [she said.] Trevor did. He just didn’t want to answer out loud and so let his silence say it for him. She said, ‘I have a name picked out already. Little Lugosi. I want to take him out of the container. You think it’s too soon?’ Trevor assumed she meant too soon to take him out of the container. Should it ever come out of its watery home?”

Soon, Lugosi becomes a pervasive presence in their marriage, both in and outside of their bed. Madeline repurposes a bookshelf in their living room as a kind of shrine to the miniature vampire, “his plastic container a constant fixture between the two candles she kept lit, replacing them when they burned down too low. Trevor assumed she did this because leeches liked light, or something along those lines, but Madeline drew his attention to how the flickering illumination played upon the surface of the plastic, creating an ever-present aura around the leech. ‘A sacred effect for a sacred creature,’ she said.” It is soon after this that the story really shifts into high gear, barreling headlong into transgressive horror and sailing around hairpin turns of bizarro fiction in the most disturbing ways imaginable.

Some of the more unsettling—and difficult to put down—scenes include the immediate aftermath of a hunting expedition for a white whale of a wild pig and a series of nightmares experienced by the protagonist that feature prominently a former patient of Madeline’s with a strange connection to Trevor, his wife, and their parasitic ward. The climax of the story opens with a scene of bedridden paranoia on par with Paul Sheldon’s imprisonment under the care of Annie Wilkes. “Soberly, she regarded the bloodstains on the sheets that Trevor pointed out. She said, ‘Looks to me like you’ve been coughing up blood.’ ‘Not me,’ said Trevor, his voice hoarse. ‘I’ll clean this up later. I’ll be here for a while. For you both.’ Then that half-smile again, so much like Madeline’s. ‘Stop smiling,’ Trevor said. ‘That’s not your smile.’ ‘Rest,’ she said, smiling.” The creepiness grows to an unimaginable level as Trevor sinks into an agitated fever dream of helplessness and confusion, and Ford gathers all of the breadcrumbs he’s left along the way to serve up a banquet of satisfying conclusion.
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Appearing in much of Douglas Ford’s recent fiction, Vissaria County has become the Castle Rock of Florida: like King, Ford has constructed a world in which Everyman could live and every creature imaginable might lurk. Little Lugosi has a little bit of everything for the horror literature aficionado: body horror, sticky gore, cult insidiousness, quick pacing, and blood…lots and lots of blood. Those with delicate stomachs, take heed: the largest of terrors can hide in the smallest of companions.

About the Book
“Everyone from Jalard knew what a bloodoath was. Legendary characters in the tales people told to their children often made such pacts with the gods. By drawing one’s own blood whilst speaking a vow, people became ‘Bloodsworn’.

And in every tale where the oath was broken, the ending was always the same. The Bloodsworn died.”

It has been twelve years since The War of Ashes, but animosity still lingers between the nations of Sharma and Gavendara, and only a few souls have dared to cross the border between them.

The villagers of Jalard live a bucolic existence, nestled within the hills of western Sharma and far away from the boundary which was once a warzone. To them, tales of bloodshed seem no more than distant fables. They have little contact with the outside world, apart from once a year when they are visited by representatives from the Academy who choose two of them to be taken away to their institute in the capital. To be Chosen is considered a great honour… of which most of Jalard’s children dream.

But this year the Academy representatives make an announcement which is so shocking it causes friction between the villagers, and some of them begin to suspect that all is not what it seems. Just where are they taking the Chosen, and why? Some of them intend to find out, but what they discover will change their lives forever and set them on a long and bloody path to seek vengeance

Review

Tej Turner adds an interesting voice to the epic fantasy stock with the first book in The Avatars of Ruin trilogy, Bloodsworn.

The story revolves around a group of young teens and their teacher thrust into a world of intrigue and war.

When we start the story we meet Kyra, who is late for a very important date. We are not sure what this is, but as the opening scene unfolds, we learn that she is a female (the only) initiate in the local fighting school and that the very important date that she is late for are her assessments that will hopefully lead her towards being a Chosen in the Military Academy at the capitol of Sharma. However, when things don’t go as expected and the two pupils most unlikely to succeed are chosen their lives are irrevocably changed.

Initially, Bloodsworn starts like any number of epic fantasy tales with the main protagonists living a bucolic existence in an isolated village very far from anyone. We are instantly introduced to the rivalries of the main group of adventurers and their various instructors, including Baird who is there to teach the younger inhabitants of the village how to hold a sword and any other weapon in response to the end of the War of the Ashes, which was a conflict between the country of Sharma (in which our main protagonists live) and the neighbouring country Gavendara.

However, things do not turn out as expected and the two most likely students are not picked in favour of what seems to be the two most unlikeliest students.

With the choice of the least popular students, we learn that the War of the Ashes is far from over and when Jaedin and Sidly (the choices made to go to the academy) are kidnapped along with their tutors, Baird and Miles, we learn that far from being over, a secret war is being waged and the Gavendarians are carrying out arcane experiments on their captives.

Back in Jalard, in an attempt to mollify the two brightest stars, Rivan and Kyra, the leaders of the village send them on a supply mission to neighbouring villages. Rivan and Kyra, along with the third member of the party, Aylen. Whilst fulfilling their mission they come upon a scene of violence which leads them to discover the plot by the Gavenadrians and their friends,  leading to consequences and ramifications that they could not foretell.

I think that one of the reasons why this book works so well, is that Tej Turner has a pretty good eye for characterisations, and immediately when we are introduced to the book through Kyra’s perspective, you are instantly drawn into finding out what is going to happen. It is interesting to see Tej Turner take a familiar formula and alter it to make something that feels fresh and engrossing, in that when you read Bloodsworn you recognise tropes that you are accustomed to reading in epic fantasy like found family, coming of age tales and hidden dark lords that are rising up to threaten the world. However, Tej Turner finds a way to make this formula feel fresh and relevant for modern readers.

One of the things that I found quite refreshing in Bloodsworn was the characters. The group in Bloodsworn are mainly teenagers, and in all honesty, this is a regular thing in epic fantasy. However, what normally ends up happening is that the teenagers in most books usually end up behaving more like adults and their age becomes something of an irrelevancy. In Bloodsworn, Tej Turner is not afraid to let the disparate group of teenagers act like a disparate group of teenagers. They maintain their petty rivalries and insecurities, sometimes letting these things cloud their judgement. At times they are irrational, impulsive and sometimes downright spiteful to each other. They bully Jaedin, whose only difference is being gay, and they mercilessly judge his abilities on his differences. However, the adults aren’t much better. Baird and Miles who end up looking after and trying to keep the irreverent bunch into some kind of cohesive group are equally as mismatched. For instance, when Bryna joins the group, Baird regularly berates her and as we sometimes have an insight into the thoughts of the characters, you get to see how inept Baird is to lead the group.  There were many times that I hoped that someone would just to tell him to eff off and shut the flub up, and don’t get me started on Miles!

After, the initial start of the story, the pace of the tale is quite fast, especially when the group are being chased and harried in their bid to reach the capitol. As I said, I think the characterisations of the ensemble cast works well, with a number of different characters point of view being brought in to give different perspectives and motivations. Another thing that I liked is that Tej Turner is not afraid to write violent and well-paced action scenes that are gory, and for a change shows that character deaths have an impact on both individuals and the group dynamics.
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I have to say that I enjoyed Bloosworn and found it to be a modern take on the classic epic fantasy tale.

About the author (2021)

Tej Turner has spent much of his life on the move and he does not have any particular place he calls 'home'. For a large period of his childhood he dwelt within the Westcountry of England, and he then moved to rural Wales to study Creative Writing and Film at Trinity College in Carmarthen, followed by a master's degree at The University of Wales Lampeter.After completing his studies, he moved to Cardiff, where he works as a chef by day and writes by moonlight. He is also an intermittent traveller who every now and then straps on a backpack and flies off to another part of the world to go on an adventure. So far, he has clocked two years in Asia and a year in South America. He hopes to go on more and has his sights set on Central America next. When he travels, he takes a particular interest in historic sites, jungles, wildlife, native cultures, and mountains. He also spent some time volunteering at the Merazonia Wildlife Rehabilitation Centre in Ecuador, a place he hopes to return to someday.Bloodsworn is his third published novel. His debut novel The Janus Cycle was published by Elsewhen Press in 2015, followed by his sequel Dinnusos Rises in 2017. Both of them were described as 'gritty and surreal urban fantasy'. He has also had short stories published in various anthologies.He keeps a travelblog on his website, where he also posts author-related news.

Created as an homage to the 1980 classic horror anthology, Dark Forces, this collection contains 12 original novelettes showcasing today’s top horror talent edited by John F.D. Taff. Within these pages you’ll find tales of dead men walking, an insidious secret summer fling, an island harbouring unspeakable power, and a dark hallway that beckons. You’ll encounter terrible monsters―both human and supernatural―and be forever changed. These stories run the gamut from traditional to modern, from dark fantasy to neo-noir, from explorations of beloved horror tropes to the unknown―possibly unknowable―threats.

I’m doing it again. Another anthology! I think the attraction for me, certainly when reviewing books around a busy work and home life, is that you can dip in and out without losing track as easily as you can with a full-length novel. It’s nice to be able to grab a book before going to work or over lunch and be able to devour a tale in one sitting; short stories are great for busy people or those who don’t manage their time well. I’m saying nothing.

Dark Stars is a powerful addition to my recent roster of anthologies, and I enjoyed reading the twelve dark tales contained within. There is no real over-arching theme with Dark Stars, it is just a solid and varied collection of creepy tales and unnerving characters. What you get here is an eclectic mix of vampires, murderers, aliens, pagans, voodoo, ghosts, demons, and a wendigo! All from a great collection of authors including Caroline Kepnes, Ramsey Campbell, Priya Sharma, Livia Llewellyn, Stephen Graham Jones, Chesya Burke, Alma Katsu, John F.D. Taff, Gemma Files, Josh Malerman, Usman T. Malik, and John Langan.

It's usually about this time in the review that I say how I won’t look at each story in turn or pick out my favourites for fear of suggesting that there are any poor entries in the book. This isn’t the case for Dark Stars; this time around they are all excellent, and every entry is worthy of a place in this book. Inevitably everyone will find particular stories that they resonate with more than others but, with Dark Stars, I enjoyed them all and found none of them lacking. They all had an impact on me and intrigued me and I never found myself flicking forward to see if I was near the end of a story that was not working or with which I was bored. Dark Stars was a breath of fresh (rank) air.

A couple of the stories that I really enjoyed were Josh Malerman’s “Mrs. Addison’s Nest” a multilayered, King-esque fight against the forces of darkness shared by old school friends and John Langan’s “Enough for Hunger and Enough for Hate” a slow-burn encounter with the Wendigo. Also, Livia Llewellyn’s “Volcano” speaks volumes of the power and rage inside women and is particularly pertinent when considering everything that is going on in the world right now. But, regardless, every tale presented here is a triumph, there are no album fillers here.

This might be the shortest review I have written for Ginger Nuts as there really is no real reason I can think of as to why you wouldn’t want to read this collection. If you want horror, darkness, mystery, and death, then you need look no further. In his foreword, Josh Malerman talks about Horror "having a moment” and how this collection is a celebration of that moment; a collection of twelve writers marking a mini renaissance of Horror. Dark Stars houses an incredible pool of writers and a collection of talent that it would be an honour to be part of.

“Horror is everywhere,” he says, and it is true, regardless of what the more conservative among us might think, Horror pervades every part of our lives, on TV, radio, in films and books – even real life. It is everywhere. And Dark Stars is a celebration of the diversity, variety and joy of horror, an escapist joy to die-hard fans, and the start of a slippery, yet attractive slope for newbies.


So, grab a copy, settle in, and enjoy.


Come


Join us


And gaze at the stars

Review by: Mark Walker
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Superheroes have a long history of violence, solving problems with a punch or, as comics “matured”, ever more explicit and extreme forms of justice. And if they were too clean-cut to lobotomise someone with a laser eye-blast or pull someone's spine out, you could be damn sure that someone, somewhere, was drawing them doing what their creators dare not (or were legally bound not to do). Creator-owned comics then let artists and writers run amok, and Wrath James White's Hardcore Kelli feels kind of like a novelisation of something Image or Chaos! Comics might have put out in a limited run back in the heyday of 90's independent comics.


Following soon-to-be-ex boxer Katy through a few troubling events, we gradually learn more about her past as she decides to head back to her family and her home town, where her little sister introduces her to the Hardcore Kelli character & comics. Fiction soon bleeds into reality, with danger stalking Katy's waking life and her nightmares, as she finds herself on a violent path to destiny, not to mention a bloody great big axe.


Going back to that comparison with Chaos! Comics' output, this reminded me a lot of 90's bad girl comics like Chastity (a punk rock vampire turned vampire slayer); stories that revelled in giving their villains as bloody a send-off as they could imagine, while also showing you a lead character broken by their past. Katy is definitely troubled, thanks to a head injury which has her unable to tell the difference between fantasy and reality at times, but when push comes to shove she isn't afraid to use her fists. As you might expect from White, all the scenes involving fisticuffs, whether in or out of the ring, are superbly authentic, to the point where you can almost hear the blood splatter across the page.


When Katy goes too far, it's because she's up against a rogues gallery of shitty men, from strip club patrons who can't keep their hands to themselves, to child kidnappers and worse, who Katy sometimes mistakes for literal comic book characters. You'll never be rooting for the bad guys here, but one of them is given a comic-style rendering which didn't quite click with me. There are two main Big Bads who Katy squares off against, and neither of them feel as big or bad in their comic book styles as their real-life versions, which scuppered my enjoyment a fair bit.


That said, Katy's journey is what keeps you invested until the bittersweet ending, as Kelli almost becomes a mask for her aggressive tendencies. Viewers/readers of Moon Knight will see something of a parallel with that comic's anti-hero, as similar themes of mental instability and regaining control/power are explored. Katy is powerful in some ways and vulnerable in others, wanting to protect her family while also losing control, which gives the story's action a complicated edge, swinging from tragic and satisfying from chapter to chapter, with a killer final showdown that pits Katy against a group who really need to be murdered a lot more often. And it's a fast read too, even though it takes its time building up Katy's origin story before the super-violent superheroing begins.


I can't say it's my favourite WJW story ever – that honour still goes to The Resurrectionist – but it's a fairly solid novella, and one I'd recommend for completionist fans of extreme horror, 90's indie comics, or bloody revenge stories.

“Fran had grown up with money, back when money stil meant something, and she had that middle-class brain disease that makes people think calamities can be controlled. It had been that way since they were kids. Beth knew better. No matter how prepared you were, some things just rolled over you in a hot, sticky black tide and you were lucky if they left you standing.”

“Community is when you never let go of each other. Not even after you’re gone.”

Gretchen Felker-Martin’s Manhunt (2022) is an incredible and urgent work of horror fiction. It is both a grisly splatterpunk apocalypse tale and an excoriating exploration of transphobia and fascism. Just as Alison Rumfitt’s Tell Me I’m Worthless (2021) unflinchingly dissects the links between transphobia and fascism in the UK, so Felker-Martin’s novel does for the US. Felker-Martin brilliantly engages with the tired trope of the gender apocalypse from a trans perspective, centring the people those books tend to erase or denigrate. Manhunt is thus able to dissect the legacy of gendered violence whilst outright rejecting the restrictive notions of a gender binary. By centring trans characters who are complex and messy human beings, the novel is able to explore the idea of trans and queer communities and their social complexities. On top of that, Manhunt is an excellent horror novel, one that for all its grisly goriness never treats its violence as trivial and is deeply invested in exploring the trauma that follows in its wake on both the perpetrators and victims. Felker-Martin has written a modern classic, an essential work of horror that shows just how much the genre can achieve.

Beth and Fran are two trans women who, following an apocalyptic event that has turned all men into feral, flesh-eating creatures devoid of humanity or reason, travel across the New England coast hunting feral men. Following the collapse of civilisation, it turns out the best source of oestrogen is from harvesting feral men’s testicles. Robbie is a trans man who has survived by his gun and his wits, wary of other people after a horrific event in his past. Brought together when Robbie helps Beth and Fran escape a deadly ambush, the three of them find themselves navigating post-apocalyptic America together. On the run from militarised TERFs who want to eradicate all trans people, Beth, Fran and Robbie have to deal with the insane daughter of a billionaire and her cult-like bunker community and their complex feelings for each other, as they try to find home and community in a ravaged world.

Manhunt is in direct conversation with all those gender apocalypse novels that imagine a future where one of the sexes has been eradicated. Many of those texts tend to reinforce ideas of biological essentialism, with all men or all women wiped out, and trans people either ignored entirely or lumped in with their assigned gender at birth. Felker-Martin takes this premise and explores the lives of trans characters in this world, disrupting the gender essentialism of many of these texts. Manhunt acknowledges the full complexity of gender, making space for trans men like Robbie, trans women like Beth and Fran who have to find other solutions to their hormones no longer being attainable through the normal channels, and genderqueer people. The apocalyptic disease that turns men into slobbering animals does not simplify gender, rather it serves to highlight all the ways in which people do not conform to a simple gender binary. Felker-Martin explores the new ways in which queer communities come together under times of intense pressure, and while it is never easy for her characters, there are places where they are able to find and become part of a vibrant, caring community that exists in spite of the apocalypse.

Of course, there are those who would rather gender was a simple binary, and these people are explicitly the villains in Felker-Martin’s novel. She effectively shows the fascism inherent in TERF ideology through her exploration of the militaristic TERF organisations that take over large parts of the East Coast and attempt to murder all trans people and anyone who cares for them or shelters them. Manhunt spends a reasonable amount of time with Ramona, a commander in the Maryland Womyn’s Legion who is attracted to trans women but lacks the moral strength or courage to stand up to her superiors. Through her and Teach, the leader of the Maryland Womyn’s Legion, we get a thorough exploration of the self-loathing and denial that form the bedrock of much fascism, and the utter moral decrepitude of TERFism. Felker-Martin shows us a world in which the TERFs actually have what they want – no longer bound by the restrictions of society, they can set up their ghastly little dictatorships and murder with impunity. The novel is, quite rightly, utterly unforgiving towards them.

Beth, Fran and Robbie are the main viewpoint characters, and Felker-Martin draws each of them with precision, showing us their strengths and weaknesses in uncomfortable detail. All three characters have responded to the apocalypse differently, based on the differing levels of privilege that shape their world. Fran comes from a background with money, and can easily pass as a cis woman, whilst Beth is working class, and as a “brick” she knows she will never be mistaken for a cis woman. Robbie’s experience as a trans man equally shape his perspective. All three suffer from gender dysphoria, and have experienced transphobia in various guises throughout their lives. As trans women, Beth and Fran were cast out from their queer community at the beginning of the apocalypse for fear that they would become feral like the cis men around them. Felker-Martin shows us how much safety is worth in unsafe times, with Fran having to decide if she prioritises the safety of the bunker over Beth’s wellbeing. Felker-Martin’s characters are believable in their humanity and messiness, and don’t always make the decisions that we want them to, but this makes them feel all the more real.

Manhunt is striking in its use of violence. The novel revels in splatterpunk gore, with some truly stomach-churning moments, but at the same time, Felker-Martin never trivialises violence. Characters take a long time to heal from their wounds, and carry their scars and their injuries with them. More importantly, they carry the psychological scars as well – everyone in the apocalypse is broken to some degree thanks to the horrendous violence they have experienced and perpetrated in order to survive, and violence in Felker-Martin’s novel always comes with a price for both those who commit it and those who experience it. The novel acknowledges the trauma inherent in its characters’ experiences, and treats that as a part of their psychological makeup. Thus, for all that it is a violent and gory book, Manhunt is profoundly empathetic and thoughtful in how it explores violence.
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Manhunt is exactly the kind of vital and visceral horror that we need from the genre right now. Utterly unflinching, the novel is unafraid to explore themes of fascism and trauma, whilst holding up a deeply uncomfortable mirror to the increasingly transphobic society of the US and the UK. Felker-Martin has written a modern horror classic, and I look forward to whatever she writes next.   ​