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The Truest Sense by Laura Keating

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Important Note: I kept things spoiler free, so read without worry.

 

The Truest Sense is a collection that feels like a throwback to the excellent horror I grew up with in the 90s. Reading through these tales reminded me of coming home from school to watch an episode of Goosebumps, or daring to read from In a Dark, Dark Room and Other Scary Stories. The cover (done by Chad Wehrle) even evokes the haunting artwork of the Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark series. There’s also a tremendous sense of fun to many of these tales. In terms of tone, this collection reminded me of the Stephen King and George A. Romero classic, Creepshow. Suffice it to say, you will have a good time inhabiting the spooky landscapes and disturbed minds conjured up by Laura Keating.

All the stories in The Truest Sense are worth your time, but I especially enjoyed “Final Notes on the Failed Expedition to the Sixth Theater,” “Forgetting Leviathan,” “It’s a Helluva Thing, Bill,” “When You Reach the Lighthouse,” and “Moon Rocks on Mars.” I also need to give a special shoutout to “Recipe Cards of Miss Grace Procktor, with Notes,” just for being a horror story told via a series of recipes. From a quick glance at the publication history, it appears all of these are original to The Truest Sense, so if you’re a publisher who does reprint publications, you need to get on acquiring a few of these gems for your audience!

A key component of most of my favorite stories was how time was used to great effect. Whether a protagonist was losing time, the story was jumping around in time, or things just progressed in an unusual manner, I found myself fascinated by Keating’s ability to weave a story without relying on the traditional flow of time or A to B causality. This ties into my next point. I think the thing I enjoyed most about Keating’s prose was her mastery of providing just enough detail to keep her horrors suggested rather than outright revealed.

In addition, several of the tales in The Truest Sense maintain a dreamlike atmosphere throughout, and you’re left wondering what was real. This is especially true of Keating’s stories where she puts you in the head of an unreliable narrator. There are also great insights into life. One line that struck a chord with me was relayed after a teen car accident: “Everyone was sad that they were dead, but excited that they had been killed.” This feels tragically true of all horrors in the social media age as people rush to engage with the worst news because it’s more exciting than a slow news day.

I didn’t go into overt detail on the various stories found within The Truest Sense because I wanted to keep this review spoiler free, but I noted several possible influences that potential readers might be interested to read about. Stephen King is obviously a huge one, but there’s also bits of Alex Garland’s Annihilation, Invasion of the Body Snatchers (78 is my preferred take), and It Follows, to name a few. Lastly, Keating is a master of describing seaside settings, presumably drawing from her real-life experience living around the coasts of eastern Canada. Fans of nautical horror tales like The Lighthouse and The Fog will find a lot of love in The Truest Sense.

You can pre-order a copy of The Truest Sense here, and you can learn more about the author by checking out my recent interview with Laura Keating.

 

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Sister, Maiden, Monster by Lucy A. Snyder

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Sister, Maiden, Monster is the latest novel by Lucy A. Snyder, a horror writer whose work I adore. I’ve previously discussed her impact on my writer’s journey in my Women in Horror Month article from 2020, which is the same year I wrote an enthusiastic review of her short story collection, Halloween Season. Last month, while perusing my local Barnes and Noble on my birthday, I came across a copy of Sister, Maiden, Monster a day before its release. I went home and read it in a flash.

Spoilers Below

Broadly speaking, Sister, Maiden, Monster reminded me a little of Arthur C. Clarke’s Childhood’s End. That’s a novel that I think should be discussed more in horror circles, especially among cosmic horror fans, but I digress. Childhood’s End has a similar short, tight page count and deals with an end of the world scenario brought about by contact with an alien species. Furthermore, like Childhood’s End, Sister, Maiden, Monster grew out of a previously published short story (the 2012 Bram Stoker Award Winning “Magdala Amygdala”). That’s where the comparisons end though. Snyder’s work blazes with its own unique fire.

This novel is told in three sections which correspond to three different protagonists. The first section belongs to Erin, who is infected with a virus that transforms her into an eldritch beast. This section is the one expanded from “Magdala Amygdala.” The second section belongs to Savannah, a woman who gets off on death and does the bidding of the Old Ones who seeded the virus that transformed Erin. This part of the novel is also expanded from a previously published short story. Due to Sister, Maiden, Monster being mostly made up of two previously published works, I believe that technically makes it a fixup novel. That’s just an interesting tidbit for any writers reading this. In the last section, we get Mareva. Unlike the prior two protagonists, she’s much more reliable as a narrator, but she’s unfortunately chosen to be the brood mare for the Old Ones’ offspring and witnesses the end of days.

Okay, I just went through a lot. Hope you’re still with me. To sum it all up, this novel rocks. Snyder managed to craft a narrative where each protagonist’s section informs and connects to the next without getting convoluted. Both the Erin and Savannah bits focus heavily on sex and gore, while Mareva’s is relatively tame. This change in focus is partially due to the fact that Erin and Savannah revel in those things and Mareva does not. To be sure, Mareva’s section has gore, but there’s no sex to be found, which is a good contrast with the rest of the book. All the women in the novel undergo monstrous transformations, but whereas Erin and Savannah accept their change, as much as they can, Mareva rejects hers. This sets up a potential sequel in the post-apocalyptic wasteland left at the end of this work, and I can’t wait to read what comes next.

Okay, I better wrap this up, or I’ll spend another four paragraphs rambling about stuff I liked in this book. One last thought before I conclude, Snyder is a master of monsters. The eldritch beasts that the virus in the novel creates are a horrible form of life that is well thought out and believable due to the copious details Snyder provides about their workings and life cycle, which also reminded me a little of humanity’s fate in Childhood’s End. Okay, one more quick thing. If you’re a fan of Robert W. Chamber’s The King in Yellow, you’ll love this tale’s ending. In closing, I’ll say that I wasn’t sure I’d be able to enjoy virus-related tales post-Covid, but Sister, Maiden, Monster proved I still had room in my heart for reading about the collapse of civilization.

P.S.

I conveyed to Lucy A. Snyder how much I loved this novel when she visited Midtown Scholar on her book tour. Thanks to a little too much caffeine, I came off more manic than intended, but it was great getting to hear her talk about this story. One thing the interviewer (author Tara Stillions Whitehead) mentioned that I heartily agreed with was that Sister, Maiden, Monster is a novel without a saggy middle. It keeps ramping up from the first pages. If you’re into horror and cool with some gore and sex, you will love this novel.

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Under Twin Suns Edited by James Chambers

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I received Under Twin Suns: Alternative Histories of the Yellow Sign as a Christmas present and read it in only a few days. Unfortunately, January and February were busy months, and I couldn’t finish my review of this anthology until now. In the time since I read Under Twin Suns, it made the final ballot for the 2021 Bram Stoker Awards. Congratulations are in order for the editor, James Chambers, publisher, Hippocampus Press, and all the authors. The Bram Stoker nomination is a well-deserved accolade for this fantastic collection.

I’m an avid fan of Robert W. Chamber’s The King in Yellow. I’ve written a few tales loosely connected to the King in Yellow, and I even took a trip to visit the author’s grave in Broadalbin, New York. Suffice it to say, when I first heard about Under Twin Suns, I was excited by the prospect of an anthology consisting of King in Yellow-inspired stories. My excitement only doubled when I found out some of my favorite authors, such as John Langan, had tales included.

Per the advice of James Chamber’s introduction, I read this collection from front to back. It’s a testament to the quality of the work in Under Twin Suns that I was able to do that with no issue. I often find that anthologies have ebbs and flows, like a novel, and some stories prove to be more or less engaging based on your mindset while you’re reading. Occasionally, you may even skip a tale to revisit. There wasn’t a single story in Under Twin Suns that didn’t hold my interest. I read each one and moved right to the next until I was finished.

I’ve listed a few of my favorite tales in this collection below, but I wanted to note again that each work included in Under Twin Suns is great. These stories are just the ones that resonated most with me on my first reading. “Robert Chambers Reads The King in Yellow” by Lisa Morton is the first tale, and I loved the meta nature of it. “The King in Yella” by Kaaron Warren felt like a modern take on Karl Edward Wagner’s “The River of Night’s Dreaming.” “The Yellow House” by Greg Chapman ramped up to a stunningly insane climax. “Freedom for All” by JG Faherty felt topical as it dealt with a conspiracy theory driven cult. “Y2K” by Todd Keisling gets props for bringing David Bowie into the King in Yellow mythos. “Veiled Intentions” by Linda D. Addison was an excellent poetic inclusion. Lastly, “The Exchange” by Tim Waggoner was a perfectly Twilight Zone-esque story with a wonderful ending.

If you haven’t read Under Twin Suns yet, I highly recommend you pick up a copy. That said, be sure you’ve read at least “The Yellow Sign” and “The Repairer of Reputations” by Robert W. Chambers before you dive into this anthology. I’m sure you can still enjoy this collection if you’re not familiar with those tales, but you’ll get a lot more out of each author’s work with some prior knowledge of The King in Yellow. If you need a taste of Chamber’s prose before picking up his work, you can check out this video, where I read an excerpt from his story “The Yellow Sign” while visiting the author’s final resting place.

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