incurable lover of the grotesque

Frankenstein (Mary Shelley)

The Great God Pan and other Stories (Arthur Machen)

The King In Yellow (Robert W. Chambers)

Annihilation (Jeff VanderMeer)

Our Wives Under the Sea (Julia Armfield)

Authority (Jeff VanderMeer)

Acceptance (Jeff VanderMeer)

Absolution (Jef VanderMeer)

Wylding Hall (Elizabeth Hand)

The Fisherman (John Langan)

The Willows (Algernon Blackwood)

The Reddening (Adam Nevill)

The Haar (David Sodergren)

What Moves the Dead (T. Kingfisher)

The House on the Borderland (William Hope Hodgson)

The Yellow Sign (James Hodge) - DNF

Carmilla (J Sheridan Le Fanu)

None of You Shall Be Spared (Brian Evenson)

The Autopsy: Best Weird Stories of Michael Shea (Michael Shea)

White Pines (Gemma Amor)

Intercepts (T. J. Payne)

Motherthing (Ainslie Hogarth)

Seed (Ania Ahlborn)

White Ibis (Wendy Dalrymple)

By the Light of Dead Stars (Andrew van Wey) - DNF

The Nothing That Is (Kyle Winkler)

The Buffalo Hunter Hunter (Stephen Graham Jones)

Bat Eater and Other Names for Cora Zeng (Kylie Lee Baker)

The Reformatory (Tananarive Due)

Mean Spirited (Nick Roberts)

A Head Full of Ghosts (Paul Tremblay)

The October Country (Ray Bradbury)

Lost count of the number of Lovecraft stories but I'm making my way through his whole library

Biggest faves:

The Southern Reach series (Jeff VanderMeer)

The Buffalo Hunter Hunter (Stephen Graham Jones)

Seed (Ania Ahlborn)

The Great God Pan (Arthur Machen)

Authors I want to read more of this year:

Stephen Graham Jones

Brian Evenson

Kyle Winkler

Adam Nevill

Ania Ahlborn

Paul Tremblay

INKTOBER DAY 31: AWARD

Had to bring back the tentacles just one more time

This one touches on themes of mental health and suicide, so take care if those subjects are triggering for you.

PLOT: Sci-fi horror about a secret human experimentation facility where subjects are kept imprisoned in a sensory-deprived state. They're known as Antennas, because from time to time they're "tuned" (through a torture-like process) to receive "intercepts", information that can be used to track terrorists and other threats to national security. It's assumed that the Antennas aren't capable of coherent thoughts, but one of them has learned the name of the site supervisor and is plotting revenge.

MY THOUGHTS:

The site supervisor, Joe Gerhard (I wonder if that's a Dr Mengele reference..."Wolfgang Gerhard" was one of his post-war aliases), is one of the main perspective characters. Given the nature of his job, I was initially expecting him to be some kind of monster. But of course he wasn't, because that's part of the horror: that humans can detach themselves and be part of terrible things, finding ways to justify it, while still being relatable, and retaining qualities that we'd consider to be positive.

Overall I liked the plot, but found the writing a bit variable. Some scenes were written better than others, though I appreciate that's quite subjective. I'd say it was mainly some of the dialogue-heavy scenes that fell flat for me.

The body horror was okay but not very realistic. I get that realism isn't always the aim, and maybe I'm biased since I never set out to read something for the gore. Other scenes did manage to creep me out a little, which doesn't happen very often.

PLOT: Muriel is a widow in her 80s, who is one of the last few residents in a Scottish coastal village, where the land is being bought up by a ruthless and unethical American billionaire property developer. Muriel is tough and determined to stand her ground, but things start to escalate. She rescues a strange sea creature on the beach and discovers that it has certain powers that could be useful to her, but there's a price.

MY THOUGHTS:

It was fun, but maybe not my thing. There were some wildly unrealistic happenings, crude sex scenes that turned into body horror, two-dimensional villains and thuggish henchmen, and a not-subtle plot about how powerful people don't give a damn about old and/or poor people. I mean, that's true, but it was very 'in your face' here.

Having said all that, I don't think it was "bad", just not my fave type of horror. I liked the main character a lot; she didn't feel two-dimensional at all. The gore was very creative, which I don't mind, but I also don't particularly love it these days. I'm sure if I'd read this when I was younger, I would have appreciated it more.

There was also a part of the plot that was quite sweet and sentimental. I was surprised, amidst all the silliness and grossness. I think it made a nice balance, but I also couldn't take it fully seriously in the context.

(cut for mention of suicide but the book touches on lots of other potentially triggering subjects as well)

INKTOBER DAY 14: TRUNK

Can't draw any kind of container anymore without putting a horror inside of it.

INKTOBER DAY 10: SWEEP

I didn't know this until I was looking for different definitions of the word, but a well sweep is a construct for lifting buckets of water (or other things)

It follows Cade, who works for a catering company with an irritating boss. He picks up a strange voicemail from a new customer who claims to be part of an "extreme" food club and has some unusual catering requests. Cade decides to take the job privately, which is how he ends up meeting "Mr Dinosaur" (not a real name, not a real person).

This all sounds like a setup for a story about cannibalism but I promise it's a lot weirder than that. It involves exploding graveyards, something unfathomable and timeless, and female biker gangs who dabbled in the occult. It's existential, bleak, creepy, and darkly funny.

INKTOBER DAY 6: PIERCE

INKTOBER DAY 5: DEER

INKTOBER DAY 4: MURKY

INKTOBER DAY 3: CROWN

INKTOBER DAY 2: WEAVE