Mothwoman by Nicole Cushing
Publisher ‏ : ‎ Word Horde (11 Oct. 2022)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 254 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1956252045
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1956252040

A Horror Book Review by Jim McLeod 

We have all heard of the Moth man, right? And we have all seen the film The Mothman Prophecies.  Or are you like Donald and me in this novel from Nicole Cushing, having only watched part of the film? Either way, Nicole Cushing's The Mothwoman is a novel that you must finish, don't be a Donald by only reading some of it; that would make you almost as bad as the tiny-fingered halfwit. Oh yes, Cushing takes a wonderful pop at the most dangerous ginger to ever walk the face of the earth. 


The Mothwoman is an odd book to describe in terms of plot details; the basic premise is a mentally ill woman embarks on a road trip to visit her sick father, but on the way, she discovers that she is more than she seems, and soon finds herself the centre of attention at a Mothman convention, the NSA and the whole lot more. However, this fascinating novel takes on way more in terms of themes, subject matter and horror tropes while battering the reader about the brain with spectacularly surreal storytelling.  


It doesn't take long for the reader to know that they are in for a wild ride; I loved the first-person narration used here; imagine being stuck in a car with that one friend of yours that cannot bear to have a minutes silence, that's what this book is like, however at no point do you ever think "oh please shut up". The machine gun-style approach of her narration style is utterly captivating, and you are carried along in the passenger seat of her car with the desert wind blowing over your face, as though you are in a Hunter S Thompson novel if Hunter S Thompson had doubled the doses of all of the substances he was want to abuse.  


There is a humourous heart to The Mothwoman, and you will surely chuckle along numerous times. However, Cushing uses humour to offset some of the deep and powerful topics this book never shies away from tackling. There is one scene in particular where our narrator remembers the time that she was raped in college; it is a potent and upsetting passage in the book, and despite never being gratuitous in the description of the vile act, Cushing delivers an almighty gut punch to your emotions, that ensures that you the reader, are left shaken and somewhat empty inside.  


Taking in themes of mental illness, grief, sexism, the Covid Pandemic, the sense of being lost both within the world, themselves and their place in a family unit, as well as the political landscape of the USA, The Mothwoman is nothing if not a compelling tale of the hardships that women face in the world today. It is a forceful story that never pulls any punches while still being assertive in its narrative aims. one of the novel's strengths is Cushing's ability to tackle all of these heavy themes convincingly while never sacrificing the story itself. It could have been all too easy for these themes to take over and rob the story of its ability to hold the reader's attention, but Cushing has a deft hand when it comes to presenting them in a way that keeps the reader hooked on the story.


We often talk about the unreliable narrator, and with the Mothwoman's Nancy, we are presented with one of the most momentous ones I have had the pleasure of reading. She takes you on a trip, not just on the road to her father but a trip through time, space and the twisted and torn centre of her mind. I loved how at one point in the story, Nancy gives a figurative two fingers up to Joseph Campbell and his "hero's journey". Don't come into this book expecting a simplistic character arc or a character's resolution. There will be times when you are banging your head against a wall at Nancy's indecisions and the choices she makes, but everyone she takes is delivered with pure conviction from Cushing's point of view.  


I tell you, my friends, this is a brilliant book action! So slap some white tanning butter on your face, move out with the music at top volume, and ride this strange torpedo right to the end!​

I love the idea of the Bermuda Triangle. I was fascinated reading articles about it in The Unexplained magazine of my childhood and I remember a B-Movie documentary shown in the cinema before the main feature once (yeah I am old enough to remember that being a thing) which posited all sorts of theories about Aliens and Atlantis.

So, a novel set around The Triangle was always going to be of interest to me!

The Triangle is a little bit Waterworld, a little bit The Abyss, a smattering of Sphere and a dash of Event Horizon. It’s a little bit of a lot of things that have clearly inspired Ottone to create the world of The Triangle and the characters who inhabit it. Azlynn makes for an interesting Heroine; a young girl who has been raised in a floating city where water levels have risen, and the old world has all but disappeared. She and her father are survivors and the perfect pair to lead an expedition into the treacherous waters of The Triangle. They are joined by her best friend Ellis and gatekeepers Shotaro and Hudson as they head out to explore the mysteries of The Triangle.

Their initial concerns over being at the mercy of cannibalistic pirates, The Eaters, wane as they get closer to The Triangle. Once inside their mysterious destination they find a lost cruise liner, considered a myth by many, and things take a sinister turn as forces beyond their understanding take a toll that none of them were prepared for.

Robert P Ottone delivers a solid story that, although a little predictable in places and riffing off a number of previous classics, involves believable characters who you care about and want to survive. It wastes no time getting into the action and at 228 pages is an easily manageable length for a one-sitting read.

The title obviously suggests that this is the first in a trilogy and although I was a bit concerned, the story is contained enough to be resolved in this volume, but also opens up nicely to allow for more adventures with Azlynn. Not everything is explained in this volume and there is clearly something very special about Azlynn that needs exploring further, but the book reaches a satisfactory conclusion even if you don’t go on to read any more volumes. I was left intrigued enough to want to read more..
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The Triangle is a solid introduction to Azlynn and the world she survives in, and I am sure I will find myself back with her some time in the future.

The Dark Between The Trees  by Fiona Barnett

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Solaris (13 Oct. 2022)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 352 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1786187132
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1786187130

A Horror Book Review by Jim McLeod

Despite the trappings of the modern world, there are situations that trigger our most profound rooted genetic memories and fears. We all like to think that we are above silly superstitions, old wives' tales, and the often told stories of myths and legends told by that old bloke sitting at the bar in the local pub. But those fears remain buried deep in our psyche, just lying in wait for an opportunity to remind us that no matter how evolved we think, we are thralls to our pneuma.  


The Dark Between the Trees by Fiona Barnett is one such book that magnificently plays on this notion. Our irrational fear of deep dark woods and the secrets they hold within their misty realms are central to the novel's main narrative drive and, used perfectly, to raise a deep sense of dread and fear within the reader.  


It is why folk horror, when done correctly, can be such an influential subgenre of horror; what's the chance of coming across a real-life slasher? What's the possibility of actually meeting a vampire or a zombie? Pretty slim. However, most of us live just a short journey away from places we don't associate with a safe, modern life. To paraphrase an old saying, we are only a few hundred yards away from panic. One wrong turn or an encounter with a weird local, the hairs on the back of your neck will stand up, and the cold chill sweat of panic will be dripping down your neck. In the case of The Dark Between the Trees, you are always just one page away from this happening to you, even in the comfort of your front room.  


Told in a dual narrative thread with one half of the story concerning a troop of Parliamentarian soldiers during the English civil war and the second half concerning an all-women research team looking for evidence and proof of the fate of the Parliamentarian soldiers who disappeared while hiding out in the woods. With each chapter alternating between the two points of view, Fiona Barnett meticulously weaves the two threads into one coherent and ultimately fascinating story that pokes deep into our primal fears.  


The Dark Between the Trees is a rich, character-driven novel that uses elicits a sense of fear and dread not just from the supernatural going on within the pages of the book but from an impressive use of the breakdown in the, for want of a better phrase, the chain of command. We all know how this goes down; everything is fine and dandy whether you are a soldier hiding out from your enemy or a researcher hiking through the woods, but as soon as things begin to go south, or east, west or north, if you are trapped in these bewildering woods, as soon as the person in charge starts making the wrong decisions, things are going to get nasty pretty quickly.  


One of the strengths of The Dark Between the Trees is how both of the narrative strands blend seamlessly into each other, with both groups of protagonists almost seemingly going through the exact same predicaments. Should they keep going, should they try and retrace their steps, or should they leave their wounded and infirm teammates behind? It felt as though they were doomed to failure no matter what they did. The dynamics between all the characters in this regard are handled exceptionally well, with both groups making similar mistakes. The interpersonal conflicts that arise from the hellish situation they all find themselves in are presented as entirely believable and plausible. There are so many novels where the reader will sit there and think, well, that was just stupid; why didn't they just this or that? But The Dark Between the Trees is written with such a commanding understanding of the human condition that we, the readers, will never once think that how the propagandists react to the events of the book aren't how we would respond.  


The soldiers and the researchers are not the only characters within this excellent novel; I would be remiss not to talk about two of the other essential characters of the novel, the woods themselves and the "monster" of the story, the Corrigal!


Barnett's depiction of the woods is divine; the shifting nature of the woods and how it seems to transcend the laws of science, nature, and time lends the narrative a profound claustrophobic nature. Her description of the woods drips with an ending sense of oppressive fear. Every musty smell of rotting leaf litter, every crack of a twig as someone or something stands on it fuses into one complete and chilling background for the story. As someone who spends most of his free time traipsing through ancient woods, I could picture every single deer trail and every single dense patch of undergrowth that may or not be hiding something, not wishing to be seen. It is challenging to bring something like this to life within the confines of the written word, but Barnett achieves this with dominion over the woods.  


As for the Corrigal, Barnett takes the same approach to her monster as Ridley Scott did with the Alien. Rather than giving the creature a front and centre spotlight early on in the book, she shrewdly keeps the creature mostly hidden behind a moss-covered tree, only hinting at the true shape of the beast.


  I loved this approach, as it dragged up so many memories of other great folkloric creatures, from bigfoot to even Herne the Hunter from the classic TV series Robin of Sherwood. Even when the Corrigal is placed front and centre on the page, she still somehow manages to give it a degree of uncertainty, almost as though we are looking at it through a dirty, cracked pair of binoculars. It was just perfect for this novel as it tied in with the concept of things not being as they are and the mysterious ever, shifting nature of the woods.  


This brings us to how Barnett deals with the conclusion to the story; I'm not going to spoil anything for you, but suffice to say, it fits this story perfectly; those looking for easy answers won't find them here, as Barnett, ensures that the ethereal, elusive nature of reality within the woods is carried on right through to the conclusion of the story. It is an authentic and suitable way to end this magnum opus of a novel.  


The Dark Between the Trees is an atmospheric folk horror story that will make anyone think twice about heading off to their local woods for a walk; the forestry commission might not be happy about this, but the reading world should be ecstatic that a new and immensely talented author has brought us their version of a primordial forest.  ​

An unforgettable, surrealist gothic folk-thriller with commercial crossover appeal from a brilliant new voice.

1643: A small group of Parliamentarian soldiers are ambushed in an isolated part of Northern England. Their only hope for survival is to flee into the nearby Moresby Wood... unwise though that may seem. For Moresby Wood is known to be an unnatural place, the realm of witchcraft and shadows, where the devil is said to go walking by moonlight...

Seventeen men enter the wood. Only two are ever seen again, and the stories they tell of what happened make no sense. Stories of shifting landscapes, of trees that appear and disappear at will... and of something else. Something dark. Something hungry.

Today, five women are headed into Moresby Wood to discover, once and for all, what happened to that unfortunate group of soldiers. Led by Dr Alice Christopher, an historian who has devoted her entire academic career to uncovering the secrets of Moresby Wood. Armed with metal detectors, GPS units, mobile phones and the most recent map of the area (which is nearly 50 years old), Dr Christopher's group enters the wood ready for anything.

Or so they think.

Les Femmes Grotesques by Victoria Dalpe 

Publisher ‏ : ‎ CLASH Books
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 274 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1955904235

A Horror Book Review by Tony Jones 

An impressive eighteen-tale collection which uncovers horror everywhere
​
I first came across Victoria Dalpe back in 2018 with her impressive debut novel Parasite Life, which was a very mature and seriously dark YA (or New Adult even) vampire tale. Do not be put off by the YA label, this book has the juice to shock anybody and when it is rereleased in 2023 I will be interested to see if it is continued to be marketed at teens. It was originally published on the teen brand of the now defunct ChiZINE and fully deserves a second shot at literary success with new home Nightscape Press. It was so good we also ranked Parasite Life fortieth in our Top Fifty YA Novels of the Last Decade in which the standard of the full list was through the roof. If anybody knows how TicToc works for connecting books to readers I strongly recommend they look at this intense LGBTQIA+ themed vampire novel as it stands far above most “TicToc made me buy it” recommendations flooding the older teen markets. You can read my full review here, which also has comments from Victoria:

https://www.gingernutsofhorror.com/young-blood/parasite-life-by-victoria-dalpe

The majority of the stories in Les Femmes Grotesques have been previously published in a wide range of magazines and anthologies including Breaking Rules Horror Magazine, Ink Stains, Women in Horror 2, Real American Horror, Wicked Weird and Tragedy Queens: Stories Inspired by Sylvia Plath. This is always a good sign that the author takes writing short fiction very seriously and has not released a collection of stories nobody else was interested in releasing. Before I realised that most had been previously published, I did wonder whether they had been written with a theme in mind, as they were almost exclusively (except for a couple) female narratives, often with the main character undergoing some type of change or intense experience. As Dalpe has featured in over thirty anthologies she may well have cherry picked stories in which female characters had transformations to fit her titled theme. Note of caution: do not expect too many happy conclusions, they are truly in short supply.

Overall, the standard in this eighteen-story collection was impressively high with Dalpe being adept at skilfully setting often very normal scenes before slowly letting the story fan out. On the most part they were nicely unpredictable, with a range of swift or twist endings which blended both the familiar and the uncanny beautifully. There were also a few I wished were longer as they ended suddenly and I would have liked to see events played out longer over more pages. Others cleverly contrasted the every-day blandness with something uncanny, with the reader unsure when the strangeness was going to drop or play out.

If transformations were an overarching theme then Dark Inheritance featured one of my favourite changes. Poor Emiline has a life sucking supernatural creature called a ‘Mara’ slowly drinking her life force and when she is sent to live with an elderly relative begins to search for a cure. But her fightback does not go as planned and watch out for the killer ending, which had a tone reflected in several of the other tales. Unravelling has a sly sense of humour and features a woman who would perhaps rather be human instead of a God who has become bored of smaller ever decreasing cults worshipping her. Like Emiline in the previously mentioned story the God (after she finishes her coffee) decides to take matter into her own very destructive hands. The Rider also has a whiff of cult activity, where Andy who feels very detached from life is lured into a secretive organisation who believe certain people (such as Andy) have the ability to allow others to inhabit their bodies. A word from the wise: be careful what you share!

Folded into Shadows temporary abandoned the transformation theme in favour of a traditional haunted house story, which was built upon a smart premise. There is a virtual reality TV show in which supposed haunted houses are given a makeover with some human-interest story, but this tale has added spice, as the participant Agnes has bought Tremaine House, the location where her brother disappeared into thin air years earlier. This was a cool story and you know things will not end well. The Dare was another haunted house story, where two teens break into a haunted house for a dare and regret it, but it lacked the edge and focus of Folded into Shadows. The Drowned Siren was another ghost story, but in this tale the haunted house is abandoned in favour of a restless spirit which tries to lure those who sit at the bank of her lake to their death.

Woman very much are in charge and are in control in most of the stories, with The Woman in the Woods being a notable example in which a witch takes control of her own destiny after bringing a boy back from the dead. In Rig Rash the prostitute who narrates the tale does her level best to stay one step ahead of an otherworldly version of the clap which infects the oil workers in the dodgy town of Sanctuary where she has the misfortune of ending up. She spins her story in a matter of fact, non-sympathetic, almost droll manner and makes no apology for her unsavoury occupation.

Unhappiness and discontentment thread through several of the entries, in The No Places Beth who is recovering from a breakup has a very unsettling experience after meeting a strange old woman at a remote gas station. The central character in The Wife is even unhappier than Beth and longs to escape her abusive and dominating husband with fragments of memory calling her to another place and a life she has forgotten. Horror of Sycamore Lane features another seemingly browbeaten wife, but we the reader, never see beyond Barbara and Bob’s curtains, in a story told via whispers and gossip. Bob is rarely home and the couple keep themselves detached from the nosy neighbours until the abrupt finale, which unfortunately did not quite match the clever build up. Although it was a nice story the reader perhaps deserved slightly more from the ending.

In Those Beneath Devour an occult ritual goes horribly wrong when a popular young woman disappears and in The Guest seventeen-year-old Angeline becomes more that friends with a work colleague of her father who moves into their family home and never leaves. There were also a couple of other noticeably short entries Mater Annelida and The Grove which also dealt with the themes of transformation or rebirth. The Girl in the Stairwell was the only story in the collection which featured no supernatural elements at all, this was a short reflective piece about a woman who finds a young woman dead on a nightclub stairwell and impulses claims to know her and inserts herself into the narrative of the story.

And what of the male half of the species? Although Les Femmes Grotesques most certainly puts women front and centre, both A Creak in the Floor, a Slant of Light and The Ranch have wildly different male narratives (and luck) but are equally quirky. In the former Charlie Chan appears at a shared house looking for old friend Pete, who seems to have disappeared. After meeting the oddball assortment of housemates Charlie decides to investigate the basement where he was supposed to hang out. We have all read enough horror to know never to visit the basement! Depending on how you look at things, bank worker James Ashton has much better luck than poor Charlie Chan when he visits The Ranch looking to approve a loan for a rancher looking to expand his spread. But what he finds there is not quite of this world, but hey, things could be worse!
​
Les Femmes Grotesques has an impressive range of stories and I found myself marvelling at the plotlines, changes of pace, varied settings and unsettling clashes of the everyday mundane with the supernatural. I usually read collections rather slowly, however, as I advanced through this book my pace quickened and found myself thinking “just one more” which is always a good sign. And before I knew it all eighteen were sadly behind me.
Tony Jones

​In each of these stories, the reader is lured into a sinister shadow space, one both familiar and uncanny.
 
Life is strange, beautiful, and terrible in the world of Victoria Dalpe's debut short story collection. Her characters run the gamut from nosy neighbors to boomtown prostitutes, sentient moss to ghouls with a taste for artist’s flesh. The stories contain chance encounters with truck stop mystics, haunted reality show renovations, and cat people roaming the western plains. In Dalpe's writing, horror mixes with humor, and the ordinary with the macabre. Les Femmes Grotesques is a unique and lush reading experience. Tragic and transformative—an unabashed exploration of the dark feminine.

In each of these stories, the reader is lured into a sinister shadow space, one both familiar and uncanny.Life is strange, beautiful, and terrible in the world of Victoria Dalpe's debut short story collection. Her characters run the gamut from nosy neighbors to boomtown prostitutes, sentient moss to ghouls with a taste for artist’s flesh. The stories contain chance encounters with truck stop mystics, haunted reality show renovations, and cat people roaming the western plains. In Dalpe's writing, horror mixes with humor, and the ordinary with the macabre.
​
Les Femmes Grotesques is a unique and lush reading experience. Tragic and transformative—an unabashed exploration of the dark feminine.

​https://victoriadalpe.square.site/about

In culinary terms, certain flavors compliment one another, and the more palatable combinations become iconic, even a part of our collective culture: hamburgers and fries, peanut butter and jelly, spaghetti and meatballs, pizza and beer, salted caramel. In entertainment, too, the mixing of distinctly separate genres can oftentimes yield potent new hybrid strains of literary or cinematic enjoyment. Vampire fiction, for instance, though undeniably a foundational cornerstone of horror, lends itself easily to the overwrought melodrama of gothic literature and the bodice-ripping eroticism of romance novels. The shadowy essence of hard-boiled pulp detective stories paired with sleek science fiction tropes eventually birthed the cyberpunk movement. Even the banal romantic comedy is a cross-pollination of two seemingly incompatible narrative types that merged to form the silver screen equivalent of apple pie and ice cream.
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Of course, some genre mash-ups, like some food pairings, are at best an acquired taste (horror-comedy), and at worst barely edible (sci-fi westerns). At loose somewhere in the world is surely an author or auteur burning with desire to pen the first 'animated tap dancing buddy cop torture porn' extravaganza, but there's a reason, after all, why The Powers That Be in the entertainment industry stick to the tried-and-true genre formulas. The line between creative innovation and immolation is thread-thin, and not everyone succeeds in making their particular vision a fulfilling effort.    

So it is that Seven Sorrows Publishing takes a gamble with Body and Blood, the debut novel from Plattsburgh, New York based author Michael Gallagher. Interweaving the grim 'n gritty Gibsonian tech-noir dystopia of the aforementioned cyberpunk milieu with the satanic panic shenanigans of The Exorcist and the supercharged action-fueled gun-fu common to John Woo may seem a particularly unusual literary concoction, but it's one that works precisely because, and not in spite of, this one-of-a-kind blending.

The base premise is simple: in a technologically advanced, morally bankrupt near future where bionic enhancements and New Age occultism run rampant, inner cities have been divvied up into crude criminal fiefdoms between battling urban street hoodlums, the mafia, and biker gangs. The lawgivers in these anarchic neighborhoods aren't the police, but rather the local dioceses of a resurgent Catholic Church, an institution so openly engaged in combat with otherworldly evil that it's empowered every priest with the authority to confront the Dark One's minions wherever they may be and by any means necessary.

When the St. Gregory Thurmaturgus Roman Catholic Church is broken into by demonically possessed thugs under the unearthly sway of an unassuming yet powerful bruja seeking to enact a ceremony to bring her devilish overlord to earth, the parish’s pastors, young Father Akono Nwosou and his 68-year-old mentor Father James Keenan, find themselves on the front line of a conflict as ancient as creation itself. Forging alliances with adjacent churches, Catholic-in-their-own-way Russian mobsters and a rough group of bikers known as The Widow Makers, Keenan and Akono strive to bring the battle to the witch herself, but will they be able to save the kidnapped young woman intended to be a sacrifice and save their own heads when a hired assassin comes after them?  
 
There's much to appreciate about Body and Blood. Gallagher's prose pulses with heart-thumping energy and his dialogue crackles--every character has a clearly defined voice, and an abundance of laugh-out-loud humor appears in the most unexpected places (hardcore gangbanger Ojo bullies, swears at and threatens friend and foe alike...except the waitress at his local diner, to whom he's unerringly polite). The grime-coated future setting, too, is dynamic and decadent without overpowering the plot or sinking into cliché; instead of losing the storyline amid the world-building backdrop, Gallagher wisely focuses the reader's attention on the action instead.

As protagonists, Keenan and Akono shimmer with vitality; the older, haunted, hot-headed Keenan (who at one point has a biker ally staple a church flyer to the forehead of a nightclub owner), is portrayed as anything but your average priest. Hard-drinking, dark-humored and indelicate, he's witnessed a lifetime's worth of chaos and has made his share of costly mistakes, yet still relies on his ever-present faith to guide him through tough times. Akono is quieter, more thoughtful, but no less dangerous to potential enemies (he's described early on as 'six foot three, two hundred forty pounds of solid muscle and the color of dark English oak', and his brutally effective hand-to-hand skills back up the depiction). Together they form a vicious fighting pair, and the imagery Gallagher conjures during the novel's many kinetic sequences is riveting. Using an assortment of weaponry both worldly (conventional firearms, sci-fi inspired 'blasters', homemade holy water hand grenades) and not (each priest is an adept at various rites of exorcism and tote the rituals as surely as a rifle), they lead their motley crew with panache and swaggering style (their scripture-emblazoned muscle car is dubbed the Dopemobile) right up to the breathtaking climax.

If there's any weakness to the novel, it's one of denseness. The narrative becomes bogged down by the sheer amount of activity transpiring within its pages; the time, consideration and care Gallagher spent crafting even the secondary characters--Katherine, the Rectory's beyond-devout, gun-toting, no-nonsense type-A secretary, Zivon, the profane but good-hearted Russian mafia boss, The Blender, an ingenious hitman so outwardly dull he disappears into any crowd--is both evident and impressive, but there are so many characters, each vividly drawn and fascinating in their own right, that it becomes increasingly difficult to keep track of them, their motivations and importance in the overall scheme, frustrating readers eager to learn more. It's a competently realized experience Gallagher presents, and the concept could easily support a series; as a stand-alone novel it feels too compact, to the point that Keenan and Akono regretfully lose their place as the book's central figures by the third act, becoming just two of the many enticing characters on display.

That said, there's far more to enjoy about Body and Blood than not. It's energetic, entertaining and replete with memorable characters, blood chilling horror and gripping ideas. Owing as much to the film The Boondock Saints as it does to Blade Runner, there's enough pulse-pounding action to satisfy any reader looking for something substantial to sink their teeth into, and it's for that reason that I give Body and Blood a perfectly respectable 3.5 (out of 5) on my Fang Scale. I look forward to seeing what Gallagher has in store for an encore.

Stunning debut set in a brutal society where punishment is by amputation


This year even the most prolific readers of dark fiction are unlikely to come across a more striking and original debut than Laura Kat Young’s The Butcher. This was one of many random books I was sent for review (had never heard of it) but within ten pages was totally under its captivating spell until the sad, powerful and moving ending 316-pages later. When the Horror Writers Association turn to their next run of Bram Stoker Awards this striking story is essential reading for the First Novel category.


The blurb calls The Butcher “suspenseful small-town horror novel of oppression” which is a serious understatement of the sheer horrors, both psychological and physical, which lie within these brutal pages. The story is set in ‘Settlement 5’ and you will quickly find yourselves looking for clues for where this precise location might be. Good luck with that! Is it set in the future? Perhaps. After a future apocalypse? Possibly. Another planet? A long shot. An alternative version of America? It would not surprise me. Take your pick, all or none of these suggestions are possible, as the inhabitants of Settlement 5 never ever leave this grim place with all both born and destined to die in its grim surroundings.


The story is dystopian in nature in that those in Settlement 5 (and we know there are other similarly named settlements) have very limited rights and most inherit the job or occupation of their parents. The superb main character Lady Mae (who becomes the ‘Butcher’ of the title) will inherit the same hated occupation which also belonged to her mother, grandmother and great-grandmother before her. We do not know the history behind any of this, but as with all the great dystopian novels going all the way back to Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four, information is power and the mass-population have none of it. Instead of Orwell’s Big Brother and his terrible minions the majority are controlled through fear in The Butcher by the Deputies, a group of cruel lawmen who enforce their code, rooting out blasphemy, via brutality.


Fear courses through every page of The Butcher as in this community every individual has the right to report anybody else of a crime (even a misspoken word or spreading gossip) which quickly goes to court and the Deputies decide what the punishment (known an ‘atonements’) will be. However, we are not talking about thirty days in prison, an old-fashioned public lashing or night in the stocks, in this community crimes are punished by amputation. For example, one atonement might cost you a toe or a finger and five atonements will have the price of a hand or a food. There are so many petty crimes or blasphemies that the majority of Settlement 5 have lost digits or limbs.


The novel is narrated in the third person by Lady Mae who has accepted that when she turns eighteen will inherit the job of the Butcher from her mother Winona. The two have an incredibly strong relationship and although the Butcher is feared, she is also hated in equal measure which has led to a lonely childhood for Lady Mae, whose only friend is Arbuckle, a few years older who helps with her schooling. The novel revolves around the heart-breaking circumstances which lead to Lady Mae becoming the Butcher and buried deep in her heart, the opportunity for revenge should it ever occur.


Much of the violence, very cleverly, happens off-page like you might see in an atmospheric horror film and the book is all the stronger for it. Instead, there are uneasy descriptions of the Butcher’s ‘tools of the trade’ and which limb or digit they might be used on. There is not an amputation until well into the story, by which point the tension was at breaking point, with lots of shocking little teasers leading towards the more graphic moments. In one of these Lady Mae stops a tiny object drop out of the folds of her mother’s dress and she realises it was the tip of a finger. We are then told, in a shockingly matter of fact manner, that most people like to take their amputation home with them. Although this was unpleasant reading the manner in which it was framed was unnervingly realistic and was comparable in brutality and realism to Cody Luff’s brilliant Ration.      


A very convincing and perfectly pitched love story beats at the centre of The Butcher which I found very moving. Lady Mae’s teacher Arbuckle has his own problems connected to his hated father and his own inheritance and so the pair conduct a long-distance friendship, through letters, which is often more about what is unsaid than said. Genuine happiness was hard to come by in Settlement 5 and again it made me thing of Nineteen Eighty-Four and the fleeting happiness Winston Smith finds when he meets Julia.


The dystopia Laura Kat Young has created in The Butcher is as bleak as they come as there seemed no escape, mainly because there seemed nowhere to escape to, except for some vague pipedream of finding somewhere new in the hills, where you might not be hunted. The Deputies are monstrous creations and you will soon be wondering how humanity and society ended up with them as the leaders.


Yes The Butcher is a dark, devastating and alarming book but I also found it to be fused with melancholy and both a strangely moving and uplifting experience. Lady Mae was a superb creation, who in her own way was incredibly humane and others saw this in her, who had no choice but to perform the amputations set before her. I am not a fan of violence for violence sake, or books which glorify pain and The Butcher is the complete opposite of this where even the smallest mark of rebellion is a victory against a horrific system. A truly remarkable debut.


Tony Jones

Howls From the Dark Ages: An Anthology of Medieval Horror  by P.L. McMillan  (Editor), Solomon Forse (Editor)
Publisher ‏ : ‎ HOWL Society Press LLC (12 May 2022)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 354 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1736780042
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1736780046

A Horror Book Review by Mark Walker

I have to admit that I was initially drawn to this due to it having the name Christopher Beuhlman on the front. Obviously being a Fantasy Book Nerd, his name was recognisable to me due to his fantasy novel, The Black Tongue Thief, but not only that, his horror fiction had already caught my attention and had been added to the dreaded TBR.


However, when I investigated further, I realised that this was an anthology of stories that had been curated by the Horror Obsessed Writing & Literature Society (HOWL) revolving around horror in dark age settings.


I really enjoyed this collection. It was deliciously dark and there were a plethora of different tones with the stories. There were some that hit better than others, which obviously is something that is going to happen with a collection of stories. However on the whole it certainly did its mark.


One of the things that I was surprised was that there were a number of different settings in the book that did not wholly revolve around a European setting.


The first story, The Crowing by Caleb Stevens, who has had a number of stories published and his short story, The Wallpaper Man is currently been adapted for film,  was a fantastic opening story about a young princess abducted by a coven of witches called The Old Crows. This one had a fantasy edge to it, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. When we first begin the story, we have a period of disorientation as we work out where we are and what is going on. After this initial feeling of shared helplessness, we learn that she expects to be rescued by her father, the King, along with her brother. However, now that she is turned 18, she is to undergo the crowing. I loved this story which involves themes of family and betrayal. As I said, this has some really good fantastical elements to it that really worked well. Such a brilliant opener that hooked me into the oncoming stories the book promised.


So quickly moving onto the next story, Angelus by Phillipa Evans, the co - creator of the podcast Everything is Awful Forever. The story revolves around a priest and his acolyte as they return from a witch burning. They both know that the sentence was wrong, and this has an impact on them. Father Adelard employs the help of his acolyte to craft a bell to celebrate the power of God. However, things are not as they seem.

I am not familiar with Phillipa Evans' writing, but on the strength of this I will be investigating a little deeper.


Palette by J.L. Keifer is a tale about a young woman whose obsession are her looks. She has a dysmorphic interest in powders and other image altering substances, despite the costs to herself. This is an understated story about the cost of image and beauty and the lengths that people will go.


Brother Cornelius tells the story of two young priests who find a secret room with the Brother Cornelius forever bound to writing some unknown work in their search for beer.  They are told in no uncertain terms never to go near the room  or disturb Brother Cornelius again. You can see where this is going can't you? This story is full of dark humour that had me chuckling away - especially with the trumpet!


A standout story for me was Hailey Piper's In Thrall to this Good Earth, a tale about three bounty hunters hunting a mysterious being that haunts a local baron. I loved this sly, subversive tale by Hailey Piper that ends with unforseen consequences, for both the protagonist and the wider land in general.


One of the tales that moved out of the European setting, In Every Drop by Lindsay Ragdale seems to be set in a Mesoamerican setting and gives a different take on a familiar theme (sorry for the vagueness, but I don't want to give spoilers). The story maintains that sense of horror and mystery centring around a terrifying occurrence which is affecting the main character's village. In this, we get a tale of motherhood and the lengths will go to protect their children.


Deus Vult by Ethan Yoder is a tale about a knight taking shelter in a village where he is told that the only aid comes from the bishop, who also happens to be the Baron. It is a tale of PTSD as the knight relives the horrors of the crusades and what he has personally done. The knight is a dead thing, and he is pressed into service as the Bishops protector. A creepy story that had echoes of Dracula in it for me. The story was a good one, but the ending came a bit too suddenly


The Final Book of Saint Foy’s tells the story of a beggar boy and his father who go to Conques to give thanks to Saint – Foy. The boy’s father is a brute and the boy prays for him to die, which he does. In recompense the boy is charged to spread the word of Saint Foy, but he does not carry this out. As punishment he is to bring the thing that he holds most dear in a year’s hence. This showed the capricious nature of children, and was quite dark in nature, especially the holy Saint Foy who meters out as much punishment as she does miracles.


The second non-European tale is by Michelle Tang called A Dowry for your Hand. This was a bit of a slow burner, but it suddenly ramps up the pace and the horror towards the end and transforms into a creepy bit of body horror.


In the mouth of Hell by Cody Goodfellow tells the tale of a page who loyally attempts to save his master from damnation. We follow him as he traverses Hell to search for his soul. I really liked this one. It showed the lengths that people will go for fanaticism. The journey through hell reminding me of Dante’s inferno and the medieval perception of hell.


Lady of Leer Castle by Christopher O’ Halloran. I didn’t really connect with this one. It does have some good bits in it, particularly the relationship between Domnall and his lover Breccan. But sadly, I left this one feeling a little underwhelmed.


Schizarre was again an understated one that had a delicious turn of fortunes. It tells of the love between two monks and how one of them, in order to obtain his heart’s desire will go to any length, when a bizarre illustration in a book shows him the location of a mushroom that grows in the Abbey. You know that things are not going to turn out as expected, but I liked the poignancy of this one.


The King of Youth vs The King of Death by Patrick Barb has an epic feel to the story. In some respects, it reminded me of Gawain and the Green Knight, particularly with its epic imagery between the two main protagonists. Again, you do not see how this one is going to end, and the ending did blind side me a bit.


The Forgotten Valley by CB Jones is another tale not set in a European setting. It tells the tale of Tsaleah, who in attempt to win back her stolen lovers heart searches for a spear that can grant wishes. The story takes a sharp left in the last quarter of the story. However, I did feel a little unfulfilled at this one.


The Fourth Scene by Brian Evenson is another of the stories that did not quite connect with me. The prose that Brian Evenson writes with is good solid prose and had the feeling of epic questing literature, and I think that that is my hang up personally as this is not my favourite kind of tale, and the end I was left with a felling of ‘Oh, Ok!’


White Owl by Stevie Edwards was just amazing. One of the standout tales in the collection for me. It had a fairy-tale edge to the prose and kind of debased the medieval view of witches, turning them into feminist protectors of the weak and vulnerable.


I think my favourite of all the tales was A Dark Quadrivium by David Worn. A gruesome cosmic horror tale that after its initial set up suddenly erupts into an otherworldly gorefest that ticked all my personal boxes. Everything about this story was fantastic, and when the cosmic horror is introduced, the story moves at a fantastically bloody pace.


The final entry of the book was The Lai of the Danse Macabre which is a poetic tale. There was some good imagery in here, but I am sad to say that on the whole poetry is wasted on me, I am not very good with it. I think far more people will get more from this one than I did because I am a bit of a Luddite when it comes to poetry, so you will forgive me if I don’t comment much on this one.


Howls from the Dark Ages is a good collection of stories set in the middle ages. On the whole this anthology hit home for me. This was a satisfying set of tales set in the dark mists of ages past, and I loved it.