Sister, Maiden, Monster by Lucy A. Snyder

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.

Under Twin Suns Edited by James Chambers

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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Itchy, Tasty: An Unofficial History of Resident Evil by Alex Aniel

Don’t let anyone convince you Twitter is all bad. Thanks to @MiskatonicL, a Twitter friend who shares a mutual love of horror, I discovered Itchy, Tasty: An Unofficial History of Resident Evil. I’ve been a Resident Evil fanatic since 2002 (the first movie led me to the games). The mix of horror, monsters, and action hooked me, and I quickly purchased and worked my way through every available entry in the series. To date, I’ve played twenty-three of the twenty-eight released games. The ones I missed were either not released in the US, non-canonical, or repackages of games I’d already played in another form. Suffice it to say, I know my Resident Evil games, but I was still surprised by how much I learned in Itchy, Tasty.

For those who don’t know, the phrase “itchy, tasty” comes from the diary of a person turning into a zombie in the original Resident Evil. Fans of the series fondly recall the first time they read that haunting tome. I was amused to learn that in Japanese, the phrase is “kayui uma,” but due to the words being homonyms in that language, the phrase can mean “itchy, tasty,” or an odd assortment of amusing other things such as “delicious porridge,” “itchy porridge,” or “itchy horse,” to name a few. I was also amused to learn that the voice and live actors in the first Resident Evil were, essentially, a hodgepodge of English speakers with no voice acting experience pulled in off the streets of Japan.

While I knew the name Shinji Mikami, the director of the first and fourth Resident Evil games, prior to reading this book, I was delighted to discover the names of Kenichi Iwao and Noboru Sugimura. Iwao was the writer for the first Resident Evil, and Noboru Sugimura wrote most of my favorite Resident Evil games after the first one. As a writer, I loved learning more about the people who created some of my favorite characters and scenarios. Sugimura in particular, was responsible for the story of the original Resident Evil 2, which I consider an unsurpassed masterpiece.

In addition to learning new bits of information about the development of the Resident Evil games, I experienced continual waves of nostalgia as I was reminded of things I’d forgotten. For instance, Capcom had decided to release Resident Evil games exclusively for Nintendo’s GameCube for a short time. As a kid, I didn’t have a GameCube, but my brothers had one at my dad’s. As a result, I spent most of my weekends and summers at my dad’s playing Resident Evil Remake, Resident Evil Zero, and Resident Evil 4 (which were all exclusive to GameCube for a time). I was also reminded of playing Resident Evil: Outbreak and Resident Evil Outbreak: File 2. These were the first online games I ever played, and I had to use my uncle’s PlayStation 2, which had an online adapter, to connect with other players during a short visit to his apartment in Philadelphia over the summer of 2005.

I don’t typically review nonfiction, but I thought, since the subject is horror related, I’d make an exception for Itchy, Tasty. If, like me, you love Resident Evil, I’d say this book is a must read. I’d even highly recommend it if you’re just a fan of gaming, as you’ll learn a ton about Capcom’s history. This book provided me a much-needed break from fiction, while also supplying me with inspiration as I learned about how the various creators at Capcom worked around countless challenges to release my favorite games. In Itchy, Tasty, Alex Aniel wisely chooses to focus on the period from 1996 to 2006, what old school Resident Evil fans tend of think of as the golden age of the franchise. That said, I’d certainly be interested in a follow-up book covering 2006 to the present.

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