HORROR BOOK REVIEW: CHROMOPHOBIA, EDITED BY SARA TANTLINGER

27/10/2022

Sara Tantlinger’s masterful curation skills are on full display in Chromophobia: there isn’t a weak entry in the line-up, but more importantly, the stories vary beautifully so that the motif never grows stale or feels repetitive.

Chromophobia, edited by Sara Tantlinger

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Rooster Republic Press (25 July 2022)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 268 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1946335444
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1946335449

A Horror Book Review by Rebecca Rowland

Although Chromophobia is billed as a color-themed collection, it functions quite nicely as a icosikaipentagon of horror’s darkest corners illuminated by some of today’s brightest scribes. Each of dark fiction’s subgenres are represented within its array of twenty-five stories, so there is certainly a tale to please every horror lover, and the caliber of writing is consistently stellar.

In Jo Kaplan’s sinisterly psychedelic “Stygian Blue,” a river with mysterious qualities opens doorways to other dimensions, but it’s a multiverse far darker that any Marvel screenwriter might conjure. Another water-themed entry is KC Grifant’s “The Color of Friendship.” There, four friends escape on a scenic getaway to a lakeside cabin, but simmering about the gray-green water are unresolved grudges and petty jealousies, the stench of which quickly becomes “rotten…bordering on putrid.” Grifant makes hearty use of the verdant setting as her protagonist discovers a strange and ravenous creature: “She threw some chips on the water and held her breath hoping—she didn’t know what for. It was stupid, but her breath seemed to come easier when she saw the bubbles appear on the surface. It wasn’t a hand this time, but a set of protruding eyes, ringed with emerald bands. Watching.” In the isolation felt within a pack of mean girls grown up, there is a monster lurking just under the surface, both literally and metaphorically.

Love, or at least, companionship, is explored in all of its nuances. In “Five Stars” by J. B. Lamping, an unnamed narrator trolls the bar scene, looking for men to appease her sweet tooth, but the desserts she craves aren’t the kind one might expect to find on the menu. Geneve Flynn’s haunting “Double Happiness” tackles a macabre tradition: the arranged marriage to a ghost bride. “His stomach roiled, but he told himself that the girl was already long dead. He was providing her spirit a place on his family altar. She would be lost, otherwise: an aimless ghost…The matchmaker drew out a life-sized dummy of a young woman in a traditional wedding dress. Her face had been crudely painted a heavy, inhuman pink. He grinned. ‘Congratulations. Here is your bride.’ The effigy’s mismatched eyes seemed to stare at Jin. He gathered his courage.” As the protagonist learns the real price he must pay for fulfilling his ailing father’s requirements for an inheritance, Flynn’s new Gothic tale bleeds reds and pinks.

The concept of loss is also interpreted by multiple authors within the collection. In EV Knight’s cosmic horror “Red Light/Green Light,” little Luna shares a fascination with lightning storms with her grandmother, but when the girl catches a glimpse of something ominous in the sky’s flashes, she tracks it faithfully for many years following, convinced that what it brings will change existence as we know it. In Ali Seay’s “Nesting,” Andi visits a psychic for guidance after her husband succumbs to cancer, but her grief is too immense to be ameliorated. “Pick, pick, pick. I wedge my thumbnail beneath the breach in the mattress. I dig at it until a bit of fluff emerges. I put it to my face, smell it, hoping for a scent of him. Maybe a long-ago scent of sex or laughter or happiness. It just smells like bed. After a pause, my mother goes on. ‘We’re going to dinner in an hour or so. Just me and daddy.’ By that she means no other people. I can’t be around a lot of people. I tend to start leaking from the face. Once, I started screaming. My brain isn’t ready for the world and the burden of seeming okay.” Shades of yellow dance across the tale; it’s “the color of rebirth,” the seer explains, and any birth is a difficult process, as Andi soon discovers.

Editor Sara Tantlinger’s masterful curation skills are on full display in Chromophobia: there isn’t a weak entry in the line-up, but more importantly, the stories vary beautifully so that the motif never grows stale or feels repetitive. The dark hues of one tale serve as foils for the brighter colors in a neighboring one; a wide array of voices, points-of-view, and pacing is meticulously arranged so that each entry shines showroom new, even if featuring a similar palette. While some authors soak their stories in one shade or another, others choose to dye their narratives more subtly, and both approaches are successful. As Tantlinger notes in her Introduction, “Sharing the experience of color will always be a little different from person to person, but the wondrous and weird ways we can attempt to share an experience may inspire us along the way, for better or worse, for beauty or for terror.” Women in horror month may fall in February (or is it March?), but this anthology proves that 2022 has been a showcase for women in horror year-round.

Chromophobia: A Strangehouse Anthology by Women in Horror

“Extraordinary tales of terror that are as grim as they are delightful.” -- Kirkus Reviews

“… clever, unsettling stories … push the boundaries of conventional horror.” -- BookLife Reviews

The follow-up anthology to Strangehouse Books' Stoker-nominated NOT ALL MONSTERS, edited by Stoker Award-winning author and poet, Sara Tantlinger. CHROMOPHOBIA brings together the talents of twenty-five authors, newcomer and veteran writers alike, who explore the role of color in horror and deliver stories that use color in creative, unconventional, and unnerving ways. Featuring stories by: Frances Lu-Pai Ippolito; Jo Kaplan; Sonora Taylor; Ali Seay; Chelsea Pumpkins; Pippa Bailey; Jess Koch; G.G. Silverman; EV Knight; Kathryn E. McGee; Bindia Persaud; Jaye Wells; Lauren C. Teffeau; Geneve Flynn; Red Lagoe; KC Grifant; Christa Wojciechowski; Christine Makepeace; K.P. Kulski; Jacqueline West; Lillah Lawson; Tiffany Morris; J.B. Lamping; Jeanne E. Bush; Nu Yang.