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Dark Fuse - @lockwayart

My rating: 2 of 5 stars The Blade This Time opens with our Narrator waking in the tunnels beneath New York's subways. After escaping back to the surface, he wanders the streets until he comes across a wig shop with notice of an apartment for rent. The apartment was previously rented by a painter, Max Leider, who has fled the scene and left behind his clothes and paintings of the tenement across the street. The Narrator quickly becomes fascinated with these paintings, and the woman, garbed in funeral clothes, across the way. I enjoyed what Jon Bassoff did in his previous books, The Incurables and Factory Town, the latter especially with its incongruous puzzle-box nature of storytelling. Unfortunately, I just didn't find myself all that interested in his latest effort. The Blade This Time is too straightforward and linear, especially in comparison to the surreal, dreamscape narrative of Factory Town, and it was disappointing to have Bassoff spill all his secrets so early in the narrative. The book opens with a definition of a particular psychological disorder, which sets up the narrative nicely, but there's not many shocks or surprises to follow. This is a slow, psychological work of dark fiction, but it never really picks up or leads to any particular revelations, or at least none that aren't clearly, and disappointingly, telegraphed within the book's first few chapters. Bassoff does a particularly fine job of writing those darker psychological compulsions that plague his characters, though. The Narrator's descent into madness is well-drawn, and there's a few terrific parallels drawn between him and the various characters he crosses paths with. But, for me, it's a lesser work in Bassoff's growing body of novels, and I kept wishing the plot would get more wrinkly and complicated than it does. [Note: As a member of the DarkFuse Reader's Group, I received a complimentary copy of this novel from the publisher via NetGalley.] View all my reviews

My rating: 4 of 5 stars I've only read a couple of Edward Lorn's short stories previously, but I'm a fan of the dude on a personal level. So, full disclosure time - I follow and occasionally interact with Ed on a variety of social media platforms, including Goodreads (his honest and candid book reviews is how I happened upon him in the first place), and I was thrilled to hear he had signed with DarkFuse for this release. This, however, has not impacted my view of the work, and the following is my honest review of the material. Fairy Lights is a simple wrong place/wrong time horror in the woods story. Something dangerous is lurking in the forest, and a mother, her son, and his friend inadvertently stumble into the thick of things while on what should have been a fun weekend camping getaway. This novella is a fun read, and it kept me engaged and entertained during my brief moments of lucidity as I battled to the near-death with the stomach bug from hell. It's also yet one more reason to add to the pile for why I won't ever go camping. Lorn creates some pretty chilling monsters here, in both human form and otherwise. The violence is visceral and left me squirming a few times (one scene involving an arm and a machete is unlikely to leave my mind anytime soon). And the characters, thankfully, and for the most part, are pretty entertaining. The central leads are two teenage boys, and their snarky camaraderie reminded me of some of the circles I ran in during my youth. My only real criticism is that the book feels a bit lopsided, and that's chalked up to the way plot is executed. There's a lot of sex and sexuality running through the book's first half, with hardly a chapter gone by without some reflection on penis size, pornography, or sex acts (consensual or otherwise). Some of this material felt a bit too extraneous in the grander scheme of things, particularly with its near-total absence in the second-half (granted, there is a reason, story-wise, for this, but I'm not going to spoil it). The second-half of the book, in general, is a lighter, almost breezier affair, as the characters deal with the fallout of the book's previous half and the nature of the threat becomes almost existential for a few of the survivors. Despite a little bit of imbalance to the story as a whole, Fairy Lights is a fast-paced and entertaining horror romp. View all my reviews

A Kiss of Thorns by Tim Waggoner My rating: 5 of 5 stars With A Kiss of Thorns author Tim Waggoner crafts a brilliant "throwback" horror novel inspired by those 1980s cabin in the woods films like Friday the 13th, but still manages to toss in a few good shocks between bouts of frenzied sex and violence. Lonny is your typical horror movie slasher, living in a disused cabin off the hiking trails of an Ohio lakeside resort cabin. Waggoner pulls no punches in showcasing the lad's rotten childhood and various depravities, including an infatuation that gives motive to his many murders, and his latest target Julie. Julie and her husband, a young couple barely out of their teens and with their shotgun marriage already in a rut, hope to reignite their spark on a second honeymoon. At least until Julie, a horror movie fanatic, gets lost in the woods... Waggoner crafts a vicious short story with this one, presenting a couple horrifying moments straight out of NBC's Hannibal in a highly satisfying one-sit read that's pure, bloody good fun. [Note: I am a member of the DarkFuse Readers Group and received a complimentary copy of this title from the publisher.] View all my reviews

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