These Long Teeth of the Night by Alexander Zelenyj 
Publisher ‏ : ‎ Fourth Horseman Press (22 Feb. 2022)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 430 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0988392216
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0988392212

A Book Review by Tony Jones 

    Brilliant career spanning ‘best of’ collection which defies categorisation


If you intend to take a wild punt on one short story specialist you have never previously read in the near future then I strongly suggest you choose Alexander Zelenyj. This creative and highly original Canadian author has spent the last twenty years writing short fiction and has had several collections already published, including Experiments at 3 Billion A.M (2009) and Blacker Against the Deep Dark (2018) which I previously reviewed and was greatly impressed. He has been published by a wide range of independent and literary presses, including Eibonvale Press and Fourth Horseman Press, who between them have been responsible for a decent percentage of his work.


These Long Teeth of the Night features twenty-eight of Zelenyj’s favourite or most personal (rather than ‘best’) stories from the last twenty years and has been released by Fourth Horseman Press, a long-term home for his unique genre-defying style. I would wager Zelenyj to be a significantly bigger name if his fiction were easier to categorise. But it is not. In fact, it is impossible to pigeonhole and I imagine the author likes it this way and is happy to grace the literary shadows rather than the limelight. That is not to say he does not write about traditional horror story topics, but it is his perspective which makes his voice so distinct, for example A Valley for Dorothy concerns a bounty hunter sent to kill a demon (at first glance a very traditional story), but the story veers from a potentially all action tale into a more introverted and painful family drama.


Books should not be defined by genre, but we try to do it anyway and Zelenyj’s fiction is best described as slipstream which is a style of fantastic or non-realistic fiction that crosses conventional genre boundaries between science fiction, fantasy, and literary fiction. This type of literature is not particularly commercial and often drops under the radar and Zelenyj is an absolute master craftsman at this style. A sizable number of his stories are noticeably short (maybe 3000-5000 words) and for 80-90% of the tale the characters might be living very normal lives before something inexplicable happens, which often goes unexplained. Poppy, The Girl Of My Dreams, And The Alien Invasion I Can Detect Like Radar Through My Braces is a notable example of this, with two girls reading a diary of a neighbour and realising the world might soon end. The Bloodmilk People is another terrific illustration of this style, a bookshop clerk discovers a gross bloody mess in the bathroom and puts it down to a difficult day, until a young man comes over and bizarrely explains why he deliberately left the gross deposit. Neither is Zelenyj particularly interested in twist or surprise endings as many short story specialists often enjoy, but The Bloodmilk People does have a killer last line!


Zelenyj’s fiction often asks questions but rarely provides answers, some readers might find this frustrating, but if you take his stories to be melancholic snapshots of quiet moments in time most work beautifully. Literary ambiguity threads through stories which combine horror with fantasy, mythology, comedy, sex, historical settings, various wars, science fiction and magical realism. A deep sense, often quite beautiful, of sadness is often laced throughout the tales, a few of which I had to read more than once to genuinely appreciate. At 420 pages in length, I would recommend tackling the collection slowly to fully savour the pieces. Zelenyj also provides lovingly and very personal notes before every story which vary in length and provide the inspiration behind them or just how he was feeling at the time. Some stories came easily, others were much harder work to complete and I enjoyed these insights into the thought process immensely.


There were too many terrific stories to mention individually, so firstly I’m going to pick out a few of my favourites, some of which I had read before but enjoyed revisiting. Both Highway of Lost Women and The Priests had little in common except that both were beautifully observed character studies. In the former four young women Alex, Darcy, Billie, Sam discovers a naked line of women standing across the middle of the road whilst driving along a remote highway. The plot then back-flips to how they got there and beautifully taps into the feelings and insecurities of the women before going full circle.  The Priests was a different type of character study and in some ways looked at the failings of man. Pastor Garfield meets a horribly deformed character known as the Priests, who resembles triple cojoined twins and is so ugly he frightens and disgusts everyone he meets. After the Pastor welcomes Priests into his home, the poor unfortunate tells his moving story, calling for tolerance, mercy, and humanity, qualities he rarely sees.


Gladiators in the Sepulchre of Abominations was another monster story and a personal favourite in which a man revisits his destroyed childhood and reflects upon the monster (or was it a god?) his family kept locked in the basement. I found this tale strangely moving and maybe the beast is still out there roaming the Canadian countryside? If I had ever heard the fictional obscure cult band ‘The Deathray Bradburys’ who are the focus of On Tour With The Deathray Bradburys I reckon I would have been a fan, hell, I probably would be wearing their t-shirt! This story is written in a semi-factual informative style, about the disappearance of the mythical band and their most devoted fans. Elopers of Sirius has a vaguely similar theme about the mass suicide of a Jim Jones style cult, with science fiction overtones indicating that it is us that was missing a trick and not the dead.


Numerous inclusions leaned heavily on science fiction and there were two particular standouts. With top billing was Journey To The End Of A Burning Girl an outstanding tale of a new extremely dangerous drug Verntellus which leads to speculation that the substance has a weird transportation property. After digested the user vanishes, leaving behind strange ashen imprints of themselves called signatures, burned into the surface of their last known location. The story is very dark, oozes hopelessness, taking in a number of characters including the police who are all seeking the drug for their own reasons. We Are All Lightless Inside is also well worth a look, in this peculiar story disease can take physical form and soldiers battle an eternal role for mankind’s survival against these living viruses.


I could go on and on about other unsettling, weird treasures lurking within the pages of These Long Teeth of the Night, with Another Light Called 1-47 also hitting the spot, a sad tale of a rocket disappearing into space and its loss felt over the many following years of those left behind. Love in Uncertain Times wonders if there was proof of supernatural life before man and if so how would it impact us? And if you fancy another melancholic tale then Potato Thief Beneath Indifferent Stars features an old guy whose life takes on new meaning when he finds a green creature living in his garden.


If you are looking for slightly off-beat stories that might resonate with you long after completion then These Long Teeth of the Night has much to offer. They often capture unique moments, snapshots of life or individuals trapped within the ripples of otherworldly occurrences. The natural ability to effortlessly flow between genres is a rare literary gift and few are more skilled at this art than Alexander Zelenyj.


Tony Jones

The Knock-Knock Man by Russell Mardell 

Publisher ‏ : ‎ RedDoor Press (10 May 2022)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 352 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1915194016
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1915194015

A Book Review by Jim Mcleod 

Settled in the 9th century by seafaring Scandinavian explorers, Iceland sits alone just below the Arctic Circle amid the frigid waters of the North Atlantic, its imposing, glaciated, volcanic shores having evolved from one of the poorest areas in Europe into one of the most technologically advanced, peaceable and ecologically friendly nations on Earth. Yet in spite of its modern reputation as a marvel of renewable energy and beloved tourist destination, Iceland retains a crucial mystique. The average American's knowledge of the island has less to do with its Viking-era sagas and eddas than with its quirky cultural oddities--Björk, the Icelandic Phallological Museum, Keeping Up With The Kattarshians, svið (Google it at the risk of losing your appetite)--but to simply accept Iceland as a place of cute eccentricities is to ignore its shadowy legacy. Poised at the pinnacle of the world, Iceland is steeped in both mythic and literal darkness; at the summer solstice the midnight sun never sets, but as the steady march toward winter advances, light dies, day by day, hour by hour, until all that remains is the night.

Best known for her continuing Nocturnal series of Young Adult vampire novels (Nocturnal Blood, Nocturnal Farm and Nocturnal Salvation, with a fourth installment on the way), Icelandic horror author Villimey Mist delves dauntlessly into that same blackened nightscape of her remote native isle with St. Rooster Books' release of As The Night Devours Us, a feverishly fearsome fifteen-story compendium of some of the finest terror fare in recent literary memory.

'A Mother's Job,' the volume's introductory tale, sets the tome's tone when a woman seeking to protect her daughter during a zombie apocalypse performs the grimmest of maternal duties. The Icelandic reverence for nature comes into conflict with a group of disrespectful American travelers at 'The Moss Covered Volcano', just as a father's deranged actions initiated in the name of his daughter infuses 'Hope' with harrowing, heart-wrenching power. A young woman disturbed by dolls finds her fears justified in unexpected ways when searching for a missing friend in 'The Doll Museum', while the frenetic action of 'Split' serves as a pulse-pounding escape into the treacherous world of espionage.

The volume's second half unfolds with 'Skötumóðir', an unusually effective written experiment within the 'found footage' film subgenre that's only one of Mist's many chronicles to explore Iceland's rich folklore. Similarly, the country's fabled Christmastime menace, the Yule Cat, viciously proves to a group of self-centered youths that 'Receiving Is Better Than Giving'. Unforeseen consequences align against a young musician who enlists the aid of a friend to bury the body of a vagrant he accidentally killed in 'Shed The Night's Skin', while the Japan-set 'Kokkuri-san' utilizes Shinto beliefs to realize the retribution sought by a bullied teenager. And a woman battling a demon must prepare the grisliest of haute cuisine to save her children in the tense 'What The Chef Recommends'.

There's an eclectic assembly of horror's myriad subtypes available within these pages; werewolves, devils, sea beasts, the undead, mental illness and a gallery of monsters both human and not spread their maleficence in a multitude of ways. Yet As The Night Devours Us is no simplistic compilation of creature features. Mist's ability extends far beyond that, far beyond even routine splatterpunk blood and guts; her dexterous and kinetic prose is so effective at conveying the intricate spectrum of human experience that each carefully-chosen word lures the reader further into the benighted forest. Her clear vision, deft wit and gift for fully rendering a character's interior state, their motivations, desires and insecurities, cut to the heart of every story and act as a stable center for the presented situations. An impressive and sure-handed use of Iceland's unique mythology, too, elevates As The Night Devours Us above the mire of mediocre horror pretenders. Themes of vengeance abound, as do observations on the bonds of family and the importance of friendship, the perilous disregard for the environment, the abuse of trust and the shattering terror of revelation. And while most collections, like many musical albums, contain at least some filler material, there's nary a dud in Mist's authorial arsenal; every tale strikes its intended target, though five stories deserve acknowledgement for their unabashed supremacy.

For pure shivers, both 'The Rescue' and 'Nails' deliver on the diabolical promise of their premise; in the former, a police detective infiltrating a cult to facilitate a young girl's escape uncovers the shocking truth about the nature of the commune's dreadful deity, while the latter's depiction of a young man's unraveling mind features some of the most hygienically disquieting scenes of mental disintegration ever scribed. A different kind of depraved thought process, that of a serial killer who discovers his latest victim isn't what she seems, is detailed with chillingly realistic effect in 'The Thrill Of The Hunt', while the Viking castaways who survive their sinking longboat struggle to outlast each other as well as the legendary undersea monstrosity, 'Taurmur'.  
           
Many of the selections in As The Night Devours Us would make excellent cinematic adaptations, yet more than any other, it's the volume's culminating entry, 'The Banquet', that earns top accolades as a story strong enough to build a Hollywood franchise upon. Originally released as a stand-alone charity novella, the narrative focuses on Maria, a traumatized sexual assault survivor who is invited by a mysterious organization that gives women the chance to exact revenge upon their attackers. The unrelenting scenario benefits from some of the most excruciating torture scenes yet penned in modern indie horror, but the explicitness here never exploits; indeed, Maria's interior state is so devastated by her rape that the final confrontation becomes nothing less than undiluted spiritual catharsis. With its deep emotional resonance, savage gore and hints at a worldwide clandestine conspiracy, 'The Banquet' rivals such films as Last House On the Left, I Spit On Your Grave, Hostel and Martyrs in its breadth of intensity.   
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Beautiful in its own way but not for the faint of heart, As The Night Devours Us is an all-too-rare example of what can truly be accomplished with short fiction in general and genre fiction in particular. With her flair for creating realistic characters, her unflinching resolve to push boundaries and willingness to explore, Villimey Mist's triumphant work succeeds in shaking the very pillars of contemporary horror, and it's for that reason that I feel compelled to bestow As The Night Devours Us the full 5 (out of 5) on my Fang Scale. A dark and dangerous talent arises. Prepare to be devoured.

Bishop by Candace Nola

Narrator: Jamison Walker
3 hours and 44 minutes
Audible.co.uk  Release Date: 13 July 2022
Publisher: Uncomfortably Dark Horror

A Book Review by Rebecca Rowland
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Bishop is an outcast, the lone wolf residing deep in the forests of Alaska whose name is only spoken of in hushed warnings. When a mother and daughter disappear during their treacherous hike through those same forests, their closest relative Troy travels to the nearest ranger station to assist in the search and rescue, but when the weather takes a turn for the worse, it seems only one man can help locate the women in time: Bishop. However, the man shrouded in mystery has a secret no one could have anticipated, and it comes with both power…and danger. Troy teams with Bishop in a race to find his sister and niece, but there is something much deadlier than the Alaskan wilderness stalking all of them, and not everyone will make it out of this expedition alive.
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Candace Nola’s novella Bishop vacillates between the stranded hikers and the search team, and while the scenes depicting the dangers inherent in traversing the harsh winter terrain are harrowing enough, the chapters featuring the monster are the ones that really bring the chills: “Her left hand began creeping along the ledge for the lighter she left there after lighting the stove. Touching cold plastic, she grasped it and flicked the button. The small flame exploded to life, and she screamed in terror, dropping the lighter. The monster was crouched over her, its decaying visage staring right into her eyes, dragging bony clawed hands down the walls on each side of her. Needle-sharp teeth dripping with gore filled its grinning mouth as it began to cackle and screech in a hideous raspy voice” and the creature’s predatory assault begins. As a whole, the book is both a quickly-paced adventure thriller and a creature-feature with echoes of Stephen King’s Cycle of the Werewolf: a fun, fast read that keeps the reader turning the pages until the very end.

The horror reading community seems to be split on the usefulness of audiobooks. Some claim they cannot properly achieve what an author strives to create because the words are reinterpreted through the narrator. However, if the narrator understands what the author is creating and communicates it properly, an audiobook can enhance the reader’s enjoyment of a story. While it was already available in print and eBook, Splatterpunk Award-nominee Nola recently released an audiobook version of her novella Bishop, and Jamison Walker’s elevates the narration of it to a level on par with a radio play. His voice practically sizzles through the speakers when he voices the creature’s ominous taunts, evoking the monstrosity Nola constructs for her villain in lines like “There isssss no God here” with gravelly whispers.

I first met Bishop when I acquired Nola’s book in print in the late spring; I was able to reacquaint myself with him by listening to the audio version this summer. While I rarely make this claim about a character, I must say: I would enjoy seeing a sequel. Bishop is a fascinating, well-developed antihero on par with other “monsters fighting monsters” such as Marv Wolfman’s day-walking vampire Blade. Nola has given him a proper backstory and established him as a force to be reckoned with; I’m excited to see what terrors lurking in the darkness he’ll take on next.

The Headsman by Cristina Mîrzoi  

ASIN ‏ : ‎ B09V32VFZR
Publisher ‏ : ‎ Independently published (14 Mar. 2022)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 50 pages
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 979-8431866302

 A Book Review by Ben Walker

​Weaving 10 short stories and an epilogue together, Cristina Mirzoi's The Headsman wears its folklorish influences on its sleeve; from the simple yet effective titles, which evoke memories of reading fairy tales as a child, to the stories themselves, which are both cautionary and cruel.


As you may already know, the original fairytales and fables are a lot darker than the gradually sanitised versions kids were given to read through the years, and the ten stories here owe a lot more to those darker originals. From the outset, Mirzoi manages to reach inside your chest and constrict your heart with dread, as men who think they own women are spurred on by their community, or outsiders bring dark secrets to the village where all the stories are set.


There are themes of justice and duty, betrayal and longing, all ripe ground from horror to spring up from, which it does from various angles, taking in bloody murder, sexual violence and occasional tinges of the paranormal. It's effectively creepy and unsettling, especially as the horrific parts aren't too drawn out; delivered in short, stark bursts that are pretty much guaranteed to have you squirming.


As for the overall concept of having the stories intertwine, each one is headed up by a specific character, which provides different viewpoints on the events that take place, before the epilogue tries to tie them all together. It's easier to make sense of these connections if you read the whole book in one go – a manageable task, as each tale is pretty short. That said, the general mood, settings and character voices all tend to blend together after a while, and the book starts to feel a bit samey by the midway point. It's  no less entertaining or effective for it though, as Mirzoi continues to poke at your nerves with those quick jabs of horror. And by the end, it's tempting to dive straight back in for a careful re-read, to see how the final parts line up with earlier moments you might have seen as throwaway.


In all, it's nice to see something different done with the standard single author collection concept. While some stories rely on you having read the others to be fully satisfying, there are a few standouts which you could happily re-read without delving back into the others. Well worth a read.

​Take a glimpse into the world of a headsman, a gloomy village in which each dweller has a secret: an evil witch, a shrewd florist, a naive young man, a foreign merchant, a dreadful husband, a mischievous maid, and a lustful duke. These stories are intertwined, weaving a dark narrative of love, trickery, brutality, and loss.

Under the bleak aesthetic, raw human emotions unravel themselves in a gripping story about moral decay. In a world that belongs to the wicked, how far can one walk this path while keeping a clean conscience?

The Headsman is a collection of short stories that focus on interconnected characters, sometimes looking at the same event from a different perspective. As a genre, it falls somewhere under dark fiction territory.

The Devil's Mountain by Jack Harding  DarkLit Press, 126 pages
A Book Review by ​Damascus Mincemeyer 

During the 1980’s a wave of hyper-explicit genre fiction emerged, dubbed ‘splatterpunk’ by the horror press, that focused less on classical story spookiness than visceral expressions of extreme violence. Led by a vanguard of young, hip writers like Clive Barker, David J. Schow, Craig Spector and John Skipp, Richard Laymon and, later, Poppy. Z Brite, the loosely-defined movement instigated a polarizing split among the practitioners of literary terror. Some critical authors, most vocally notable being the late Charles Grant, lambasted the new gory aesthetic and advocated a return to more traditional forms of written fear in the vein of Shirley Jackson, Richard Matheson and Ray Bradbury, with their focus on atmosphere, mood, setting and character rather than imitative cinema slasher-style butchery. This so-called ‘quiet horror’ gained counter-revolutionary reactive traction against splatterpunk, but the echoes of that long ago Cold War between the two stalemated factions of frightful fiction remain. Questions of how far is too far to go in terms of story violence linger, and the steady rise in popularity of ‘slow-burn’ tales--itself influenced by films such as The VVitch, Midsommar, and The Lighthouse--have led to a similar surge in more meditative depictions of the macabre.

Portsmouth, UK writer Jack Harding’s novella, The Devil’s Mountain, recently released by DarkLit Press, is one such example of modern ‘quiet horror’. Steeped in foreboding, the plot centers on a digital-age British couple, fun lunkhead Dylan and his bratty-but-brainy girlfriend of four months, Nikki, as they visit Teufelsberg, the titular Devil’s Mountain, a remote, graffiti-tattooed Soviet Bloc-era intelligence base-turned-tourist-destination buried deep in what was once the East German forest. Much time and care is spent establishing the two protagonists and, in particular, their stark, wintry surroundings. Teulfelsberg as a structure, too, is described in vivid, Masque of the Red Death-like detail, its chilly corridors and crumbling granite glory given frigid life through Harding’s almost hypnotic prose. Alone on the base with only an hour before closing, a ticking countdown ramps up the unease the further Dylan and Nikki venture into the facility. At five o’clock the gates close, trapping anyone left inside for the night, and while Nikki assures there’s plenty of time for spelunking, once the pair become separated and Dylan sees a spectral figure among the ruins, getting out takes a back seat to simply staying alive.

The Devil’s Mountain seethes with mood. A shroud of dread is drawn over Dylan and Nikki’s early whimsical banter that only thickens as the novella progresses. If there’s any fault in the scenario it lies with the ending, specifically the fact that, given the meticulous set-up, there isn’t one in the conventional sense. Once separated, Dylan’s quest to locate his girlfriend literally screams to an abrupt halt, only for the storyline to pick up years later, leaving a purposefully-inserted black hole for readers to fall through.  The intention is to allow the audience’s own anxieties to fill the gap, and to a certain extent the ploy works, yet the final result feels too jarring, too sudden, to be fully satisfying. It’s the ultimate in anti-climax, and diffuses the precisely-pieced machine Harding spent so much pain to construct; it’s horror so quiet it’s become mute, a vehicle stripped down so much that the engine refuses to turns over when readers need it to the most, and the unanswered questions and unresolved situation stifles the previously riveting tension.
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That aside, The Devil’s Mountain is nonetheless an intriguing, well-crafted yarn, rife with trepidation, sparse, dark tone, a wonderfully unique setting, and stands as an example of what one can do to inspire shudders without slathering scenes in blood. For a quick shot of ominous escape during an otherwise average afternoon, a bookworm could do worse, and I therefore give The Devil’s Mountain a decent 3 (out of 5) on my Fang Scale.

​From the author of React and Driving in the Dark comes a fresh slice of slow-boiling, psychological horror that will chill you to the bone.

Deep in Berlin's Grunewald forest, lurking in the silent winter fog, lies a man-made hill forged from the ruins of World War 2. On top of the hill stands an old spy station that's been empty since the fall of the Iron Curtain nearly 30 years ago.
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Dylan and Nikki are a young, adventurous British couple who have just one more sight to check-off their abandoned Berlin list before they head home. Journey with them as they explore the darkened halls and corridors of a Cold War mausoleum caught between the past and the present- frozen in time. Journey with them to The Devil's Mountain, a place that will change their lives forever…

As I’m sure you already know, there are some books that are ok, others are good or even very good, and some you consume like a shark in a literary feeding frenzy because you have to know what happens next or you are just compelled to keep going. I found When  The Night Bells Ring on my ebook reader whilst I was on holiday and guessed that it came from my review list which I’d left at home. I soon found myself consuming page after page of compelling narrative of likeable characters and horrific circumstance.
    
The novel starts with two women travelling across the desert as Earth is being consumed by catastrophic climate change. In search of water, the women find an abandoned ghost town with an equally abandoned mine. Unsurprisingly for a horror book, they end up trapped only to discover that they are not alone. They discover a diary from the 1860’s in one of the rooms which contains the gripping narrative of a woman who travelled across the desert to the silver mine to escape her husbands fraud, so that he could make their fortune. It is a very feminist narrative, the main character are all women who are richly rounded, complex and feel like they are real. They make relatable mistakes and form relationships based on mutual need. There are also rare droplets of humour which I cherish like water and blood is cherished in the narrative. Yes, the diary is intertwined with grizzly murders, where people are drained of blood and the town is supposedly cursed, ever since something was released from digging too deep into the depths of the silver mine.
    
From the beginning until the grizzly but oddly touching end, a number of themes have ran through the novel. People are the real monsters through both narratives with their greed, brutality and over consumption. Thirst runs through both narratives as does the need for human relationships, particularly between women. Also the willingness to do whatever it takes to survive, or save your loved one knits the narratives together.
    
​Seriously guys, get this book because it is amazing and I hope you love it as much as I did.

A haunted house for the climate change era

This Sri Lanka set novella presents a view of a country I know very little about. By itself, this is interesting enough to get my attention but factor in well drawn characters, an intriguing mystery and good writing and we have a winner.

The core of the novella has Bernhard Zimmerkrug (consistently mispronounced by the locals) trying to film a documentary about the impact of climate change on the local communities. He stumbles across a deserted mansion and looks into its history.

To say more would veer into spoiler territory, but briefly he finds missing children, absent uncles and stories about the Sap Mother and the Dry House.

There are frequent time jumps, usually at the start of each act, but these are never confusing because of the skill of the author. The story takes on a rhythm of its own and we soon reach the somewhat inevitable climax.

I would have liked to know more about the Sap Mother as details are on little vague throughout the novella. Her infrequent appearances are used to build tension, but I was still unsure of her purpose by the end. What exactly is she? An old witch? Something more ancient?  She’s described as a spirit of the forest, but what does that mean?

Furthermore, this is described as ‘a haunted house for the climate change era’, but the house isn’t haunted in the traditional sense – there are no ghosts – and the cause of the events in the house are not solely down to climate change (or at least not to this reader).

I also had a problem with the ending, as there seems to be a rather obvious solution to Bernhard’s predicament. To say more would break my rule on spoilers, but feel free to ask me about it on Twitter, or in the comments below.

However, none of these flaws detract from a well-constructed, well told story. It succeeds in being creepy at times and manages to make you genuinely care about the children.

Overall, I really enjoyed this snapshot of a culture I know next to nothing about. Recommended.