The Girl from the Well by Rin Chupeco

Genre: YA horror
Pages: 267
Published: 2014

Synopsis:

You may think me biased, being murdered myself. But my state of being has nothing to do with the curiosity toward my own species, if we can be called such. We do not go gentle, as your poet encourages, into that good night. 

A dead girl walks the streets.

She hunts murderers. Child killers, much like the man who threw her body down a well three hundred years ago.

And when a strange boy bearing stranger tattoos moves into the neighborhood so, she discovers, does something else. And soon both will be drawn into the world of eerie doll rituals and dark Shinto exorcisms that will take them from American suburbia to the remote valleys and shrines of Aomori, Japan.

Because the boy has a terrifying secret - one that would just kill to get out. 

Review (previously posted on Goodreads):

If you have ever thought to yourself while watching a slightly clichéd but entertaining horror movie, "Wow, I wish I could *read* this slightly clichéd horror movie," then this is surely the book for you. It has many of the qualities of your average horror flick: the dialogue is pretty wooden, the characterization mostly shallow and only what is necessary to tell the story, and the plot is intriguing enough to keep your eyes glued to the screen (er, page) for a few hours.

I liked the character and backstory of Okiku, the titular avenging ghost girl from the well who is determined to punish all those who kill innocent children. But unfortunately the book is actually less about her and more about a couple of American teenagers who I just couldn't bring myself to care about very much. I also was distracted by said teenagers' very unusual names. The guy's name is Tarquin (you know, like the Roman emperor, obviously, 'cause that was one of the top baby names in 2002) and the young woman's name is Calliope Starr. There is a serial killer whose name is Quintilian Saetern, but that turns out to just be an alias... his real name is Quintilian Densmore. Good job with that alias.


There are some interesting scenes with creepy, possessed dolls and again Okiku is OK. I think she had the potential to be more than OK and a downright fascinating character if The Girl from the Well was actually about Okiku, the girl from the well. I also enjoyed learning a little about Japanese folklore. But overall, I kind of wish I'd just rewatched The Ring or The Grudge instead.

Wytches by Scott Snyder

Genre: graphic novel, horror
Pages: 192
Published: 2015

Everything you thought you knew about witches is wrong. They are much darker, and they are much more horrifying. Wytches takes the mythology of witches to a far creepier, bone-chilling place than readers have dared venture before. When the Rooks family moves to the remote town of Litchfield, NH to escape a haunting trauma, they're hopeful about starting over. But something evil is waiting for them in the woods just beyond town. Watching from the trees. Ancient...and hungry.

I had my eye on this graphic novel for a while.  When I finally bought it, after flipping through the first few pages, I had high hopes.  Creepy witches who stalk a family from the shadowy cover of the woods and cover art that reminded me of the art from the 30 Days of Night graphic novels--count me in!

While the concept is indeed a different take on witches, I was disappointed to find that the story is more strange and gory than scary.  As a horror fan, I am always on the hunt for scary, which is quite a different thing from downright disturbing or gory.  On the other hand, I enjoyed the writing and the characters, and grew to care about them enough that I feel certain I will read the next volume when it is released.  Sailor, who has just moved to a new house and a new school after being involved in a mysterious death, immediately drew me in as a character.  Though outwardly cool and hipster-ish, she has anxiety and is struggling with her past along with her fears for the future.

Her father, a goofy and eccentric man who writes and illustrates children's books, is also a great character.  His paternal love for Sailor is the driving force behind all of his actions in the story, and in many ways he is the real hero of the graphic novel as he undergoes a number of trials and tribulations in an attempt to save Sailor from a terrible threat.

The art, on the other hand, turned out to be less than brilliant in my opinion.  Many panels look perfectly decent, especially when it is daytime.  But other parts of the story, particularly the creepier parts which take place at night, look oddly blurred or just weird.  Sometimes I found myself squinting just to try to figure out what I was looking at.  While the style is definitely unique and the colors are striking, I prefer reading graphic novels where I can actually tell what is going on.  Part of that may be purposeful, since for most of the story it is difficult to even guess what exactly is happening, but overall I think the art just wasn't for me.

Scott Snyder also wrote a short piece at the back of the graphic novel that gave me a good shudder.  It turns out that the backstory behind Wytches is just about as creepy as the story itself.  When Scott Snyder was a kid, he and his friend would wander around playing in the woods near their houses.  Snyder, apparently already a story-teller at a young age, would make up these outlandish stories about the horrid witches who roamed the forest.  Years and years later, Snyder returned home and walked through the woods alone, heading towards this old abandoned meat-packing truck where he and his friend used to hang out.  Suddenly, he thought he saw a vaguely human-shaped blur moving from tree to tree.  Though he never found out who (or what) this figure might have been, Snyder developed the concept for Wytches shortly after having this eerie experience.

While the story isn't perfect and the art is not a style that I found appealing, I did enjoy Wytches.  I grew to care a lot about the characters considering the length of the graphic novel, and will definitely be eagerly anticipating the release of the second volume of this horror comic.

The Mysteries of Udolpho by Ann Radcliffe

Genre: Gothic romance
Pages: 650
Published: 1794

"'But my dearest Catherine, what have you been doing with yourself all this morning?--Have you gone on with Udolpho?'

'Yes, I have been reading it ever since I woke; and I am got to the black veil....I am delighted with the book!  I should like to spend my whole life in reading it.  I assure you, if it had not been to meet you, I would not have come away from it for all the world.'  

--Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen

I had wanted to read The Mysteries of Udolpho for a long time, ever since reading the passages in Northanger Abbey where Catherine and her ridiculous friend Isabella discuss how perfectly scary it is.  I tried for the first time nearly a year ago, but was unable to make it past the first hundred pages.  My initial impression was that the book was hopelessly dull and long-winded.  Radcliffe spends pages describing the picturesque landscapes which Emily and her father experience during an extended journey by carriage.  Very little of importance happens in those first hundred pages.  Emily herself is a somewhat dull protagonist, not exactly unlikable but so stiff and formal and helpless as to be irritating at times.

Now, having said all that...

I was not so put off by Udolpho that I didn't eventually return to it.  I sensed that maybe it had not been the right moment to read this book.  I tried again a couple of weeks ago, taking the book along on a long road trip so that, I thought triumphantly, I would be forced to read it out of sheer boredom!  As it turned out, I need not have worried.  During my second (and successful) reading of The Mysteries of Udolpho, I am happy to report that I found my inner Catherine Morland.  After those uninspiring first hundred pages, I became swept up by this sentimental story and very invested in finding out what horrible fates or happy endings might befall the characters.  Far from having to force myself to read it, I could barely put Udolpho down!  Once I stopped inwardly scoffing so much at the more wooden dialogue or rolling my eyes at the lengthy descriptions of scenery or Radcliffe's poems extolling the virtues of nature (inserted liberally throughout the book, even during otherwise frightening or suspenseful parts), I began to understand why this Gothic romance was heralded as such a thrilling sensation, a bestseller of its day.

The setting is sixteenth-century Europe and the premise is classically Gothic.  Teenage Emily St. Aubert has to leave her peaceful family home in the French countryside after her beloved parents die.  After enduring another painful separation from her beloved Valancourt, who would marry her if her aunt allowed it, Emily is forced to leave France and everything that she knows.  She must move with her aunt and her aunt's sinister new husband, a certain Montini, to Montini's isolated Italian castle, which appears to be haunted by at least one mysterious ghost, if not several.  In addition, Emily's captivating beauty and youthful innocence are such that nearly every man she encounters seems to want to marry or kidnap her.  She is subjected to the unwanted attentions of several remarkably persistent suitors and, at the castle of Udolpho, surrounded by bandits, Venetian prostitutes, and cavaliers who have turned to banditry to make a living.

Emily's chamber at Udolpho is down the corridor from a room which all the servants are terrified of, a room from which she thinks she can sometimes hear beautiful music being played.  In one corner of Emily's room is a sinister old door which leads down an unknown passage and which might permit anyone to force their way into her chamber as she sleeps at night.  And then there is the infamous black veil, the black veil which hangs over something extraordinarily gruesome, something utterly horrid... er, what is it? Emily faints not once but twice after having pulled back the veil and seen what lies behind it, but Radcliffe does not tell us what it was that terrified her heroine until nearly the end of the book!  I found this strange and very vexing, because like Catherine in Northanger Abbey I felt I had to know what was behind that veil.  Reading about Udolpho did give me a strong desire to visit some ruins and castles in the Gothic style, though not to spend the night in one of them!

Emily's guardian Signor Montini is no guardian at all, but rather wants to steal Emily's family fortune, and vows that he will torture or kill the young heiress if she does not sign over her estates to him.

Emily, while a rather uninteresting heroine in some respects and never what one might call "strong," nevertheless does have a strong response to Montini's demands:

"'You may find, perhaps, Signor,' said Emily, with mild dignity, 'that the strength of my mind is equal to the justice of my cause; and that I can endure with fortitude, when it is in resistance of oppression.'

'You speak like a heroine,' said Montini, contemptuously; 'we shall see whether you can suffer like one.'"

I liked Montini's sinister threat there!  It made my inner Catherine Morland gasp, 'Oh my, what next?'

Emily is the quintessential Gothic heroine who would inspire many others in the next century of literature, and she certainly does suffer in each setting she encounters (though the book is called The Mysteries of Udolpho, there are also a number of scenes in Venice, southern France, and at a monastery among other places).  She is oppressed and punished for her attempts to lead the sort of moral life she thinks her mother and father would have wanted for her, separated from the only person in the world who loves her (Valancourt), and mistreated by the people on whom she is legally dependent.

The theme of the importance of fortitude and inner strength resonates throughout the book.  Another reoccurring theme is the superiority of the life of the mind and the quiet admiration of nature over the corrupting influences of the city, material wealth, and vice which have made Madame Cheron (Emily's aunt) so frivolous and Montini so vicious.  Emily's father, a gentle and intellectual nobleman who gave up his life at Paris and other European capitals to retire to his country estate with his family, instills a love for nature in Emily, a love which is shared by her beloved Valancourt:

"'These scenes,' said Valancourt, at length, 'soften the heart, like the notes of sweet music, and inspire that delicious melancholy which no person, who had felt it once, would resign for the gayest pleasures.  They waken our best and purest feelings, disposing us to benevolence, pity, and friendship.'"

Landscape with Travelers by Salvator Rosa

 While I found Radcliffe's nature poetry to be mediocre and rather intrusive upon the story,  I did appreciate some of her scenery descriptions and I concur with Emily that nature and simple pleasures such as friendship, family, and good books are some of the greatest things in life, far superior to those material and industrialized things touted by some as indispensable.  I understood where Radcliffe was coming from and felt that this book helped me to better understand the times in which she wrote.

This was during the Industrial Revolution in England.  As cities and their populations expanded and industry grew, many people saw cities as centers of vice and inhumanity and longed for simpler times in the countryside before the time of enclosure and the building of railways.  The nostalgia for "medieval times" is far from new, but was a key part of Romanticism.  Like other British Romantic writers and artists, Radcliffe was enamored of landscape paintings like those of Salvator Rosa.  Salvator painted nature at its most gorgeous but, like Radcliffe, he also liked to create some seriously creepy scenes!  This beauty at right is entitled "Witches at Their Incantations."  It reminds me of some of Goya's darker paintings.

This combination of strong admiration for nature and fear of primeval darkness, barbarities of antiquity, and/or the supernatural is very evident in Udolpho.  At one point Emily comes across an old instrument of torture and, imagining the gruesome work it might have done in the not so distant past, she swoons.

Did I mention that Emily faints quite a lot?  I think everyone who has heard of Udolpho knows that the heroine faints all the time, and I did start the book knowing that much.  While she may be strong in fortitude and resistant to oppression, she is depicted as physically frail and easily overwhelmed.  I took the liberty of counting how many times Emily faints in the book, and I came up with eleven.  (I saw another reviewer on Goodreads said it was ten times, but I think they must have overlooked one scene where Emily fainted and then immediately fainted again upon reviving.)

Three Panel Review of Udolpho by Kate Beaton

While the fainting is a bit silly, Emily is somewhat justified in that she does end up in some truly harrowing situations.  The suspense  as Emily approaches the dreaded black veil or goes to plead with Montini on the behalf of her aunt is palpable, and once again I had difficulty putting the book down after I got through the first hundred pages. 

I was less thrilled with the last fourth or so of the book, which introduces many new characters all at once and contains a very silly plot twist, along with a pointless subplot about some secondary characters' adventures in a cave filled with bandits.  However, I did not find my attention lagging!  Another pet peeve is that we do not find out the fates of all of the characters, a few of whom disappear from the pages entirely.  Certain things are inconsistent; certain plot revelations are disappointing and others seem too incredible.

I did end up really enjoying Udolpho, though, and am very glad that I finally read it.  I would recommend to it any fan of Jane Austen and Northanger Abbey, which parodies many elements of this book, but also to anyone interested in the Gothic genre.  I am feeling brave enough to add Radcliffe's The Romance of the Forest to my to-read list and I may even try another of her bestsellers, The Italian.  What did Ann Radcliffe have against Italians, anyway?

This book is

verbose                    melodramatic              suspenseful         chilling

Locke & Key by Joe Hill, Gabriel Rodríguez (Series Review)

Genre: graphic novel, fantasy/horror
Pages: 6 volumes, about 180 pages each
Published: 2014

Synopsis: Locke & Key tells of Keyhouse, an unlikely New England mansion, with fantastic doors that transform all who dare to walk through them. Home to a hate-filled and relentless creature that will not rest until it forces open the most terrible door of them all...

Review:

I originally intended to review this series volume-by-volume, but I think a series review will be better.  Locke & Key has a plot with so many twists and different characters introduced in each volume that I don't think I would have much to say about each individual volume without revealing tons of spoilers.

I started reading the Locke & Key series because I love, love, love anything to do with haunted mansions on mysterious islands.  The title of the first volume, Welcome to Lovecraft, also caught my eye because I recently read a ton of HP Lovecraft stories and really enjoyed them.  Because the individual volumes are unreasonably exorbitant at $25 each, I made a gamble and bought the box set with all six volumes to save about $100.  I love gorgeous box sets!

Locke & Key is the story of siblings Tyler, Kinsey, and Bode, who move with their mother to a family property on the East Coast after their father, a school guidance counselor, is tragically murdered by a deranged student.  Keyhouse is enormous and filled with mysteries, as six-year-old Bode finds out when he discovers that there is a serious echo in the estate's well-house.  Not merely an echo that repeats what Bode says, but an echo that speaks back to him and seems to know a lot about his father and his troubled family...

The "echo" in the well begins to emerge.

The echo bides Bode to find a key in the house which will set it free.  Meanwhile, Sam Lesser, the boy who killed the Locke kids' father also hears the voice of the thing that lives in the well while in prison on the other side of the country.  Sam manages to escape from jail and sets off to finish murdering the rest of the Locke family at the "echo's" behest.

The keys hidden around Keyhouse prove to be the Lockes' only defense against the incredible numbers of deranged killers and shadowy monsters that seek to destroy them and open a gateway to another, more brutal world in the town of Lovecraft.  These are extraordinary keys forged by Keyhouse's former inhabitants from an otherworldly substance and which can do virtually anything they are designed to do.  One key can unlock someone's head, permitting all of their memories to be removed or new ones planted.  Another can transform a person into an animal, another can give them wings.

Kinsey Locke trying out her wings

I cannot really write much more about the various supernatural threats which the Lockes encounter without spoiling at least the first volume.  However, I can say that it is not simply the fantasy elements or the simply gorgeous full-color illustrations that caused me to read all six volumes within about a week.  (To clarify, for many years the only graphic novel type books that I read were manga, which are largely inked in black and white, so I still find myself somewhat impressed upon reading full-color graphic novels.  My reaction would probably be comical to devoted readers of Western-style comics, but I catch myself thinking, "Wow, they colored in everything?!")

My favorite aspect of Locke & Key is the characters, especially the major characters Tyler and Kinsey.  These teenagers confront bizarre, catastrophic, and possible apocalyptic circumstances like...well, like most teenagers would!  Tyler feels an extraordinary amount of guilt about his father's death and tries to adjust to his new school by joining the hockey team, though he doesn't like hockey, and spending most of his time with Zach Wells, a smooth-talking guy whose history he knows very little about.  Kinsey is also dealing with her fair share of guilt and grief.  She is quick to use the magical keys to attempt to solve her problems, literally removing all her fears and insecurities from her head with the "head key" and giving herself wings to fly far away from Keyhouse and the school where she has trouble deciding where (or if) she fits in.  The fact that Kinsey has a different hair style in almost every volume is, to me, so reflective of the transitional and confusing place that she finds herself.  Some of my other favorite characters are Kinsey's friends Scot, Jackie, and Jamal.  They are very visibly the outsiders at preppy Lovecraft Academy, and provide a lot of the series's humor.  Did I mention Locke & Key is hilarious?  Because it is.

Ironically Joe Hill, the brilliant writer behind Locke & Key, is the son of that other renowned horror writer whose book Bag of Bones I just wrote a very meh review of, Stephen King.  While his horror novels seem to be as enormous as his father's, I do hope to try reading one of Joe Hill's books, perhaps NOS4A2.  Apparently it is both a vampire book and Christmas-themed???  OK, because we are talking about the author of Locke & Key, I will give it a shot!

Series Rating:

Update to 2016 Graphic Novel/Manga Reading Challenge: with Locke & Key, I have now read 6 of the 24 graphic novels I hope to have read by the end of this year!

Bag of Bones by Stephen King

Genre: horror
Published: 1998
Pages: 736

Synopsis: Four years after the sudden death of his wife, forty-year-old bestselling novelist Mike Noonan is still grieving. Unable to write, and plagued by vivid nightmares set at the western Maine summerhouse he calls Sara Laughs, Mike reluctantly returns to the lakeside getaway. There, he finds his beloved Yankee town held in the grip of a powerful millionaire, Max Devore, whose vindictive purpose is to take his three-year-old granddaughter, Kyra, away from her widowed young mother, Mattie. As Mike is drawn into Mattie and Kyra's struggle, as he falls in love with both of them, he is also drawn into the mystery of Sara Laughs, now the site of ghostly visitations and escalating terrors. What are the forces that have been unleashed here—and what do they want of Mike Noonan?

Review:

As an assistant at my high school's library, I came to know the titles and covers of Stephen King's books very well.  They were some of the few books at the school library that I had to constantly check in and out; Stephen King is very popular with teenagers, as well as with everybody else.  I myself checked out Carrie, which I didn't really like, and Firestarter, which I loved.  Other than that, I had not read any of Stephen King's oeuvre until I picked up Bag of Bones a few weeks ago, although I love horror and the film adaptations of King's novels like Misery and the Shining.

Unfortunately, Bag of Bones did not live up to the high expectations I had for Stephen King.  This book is an absolute brick, weighing in at more than 700 pages, and though it starts off with a bang (the death of Mike Noonan's wife Jo), I found the story to be surprisingly slow-paced after that.  King actually does an excellent job creating Joanna as a likable character, even though she dies in the first few pages.  He also sets up this mystery of what she might have been up to before she died (Noonan discovers she was secretly pregnant with a child that might not have been theirs together.)  But the reader has to slog through about a hundred pages of Noonan grieving for Jo and having the occasional creepy dream about their lake house before he actually decides to go to the lake house, called Sara Laughs, on Dark Score Lake.  

An old lakeside shack with a pretty but eerie name and a dark past!  I had a feeling the book was going to become a lot more interesting, and it did.  A little.  King's writing and the level of detail which he delves into is such that he makes the atmosphere and the characters feel incredibly real.  It is also such that I felt myself growing a bit bored on more than a few occasions.  I wanted to learn more about that old creep Max Devore, determined to steal the daughter of Mike's new friend Mattie, not read about Mike going to the Village Café for the third time.  The haunted happenings in the lake house Sara Laughs progress a bit stereotypically, for someone who freely admits to having watched every episode of Paranormal Witness.  Mike feels a cold breeze, the magnets rearrange themselves on his fridge, he hears a child crying, he dreams about corpses (a lot!)  The aspect of the novel I liked best was Mike's discovery of the tragic story of Sara Tidwell, the original "Sara Laughs," a Blues singer who lived and died near Dark Score Lake.  

And the aspect of the novel I liked least, other than the overly detailed writing and slow pace?  That would be the protagonist and first-person narrator, Mike Noonan.  It is easy to feel sorry for him since he has lost his wife, but for whatever reason, I did not find it so easy to like him.  Admittedly horror is not a genre known for its likable characters.  Protagonists in horror tend to have shadowy pasts and dark secrets, which is interesting, but Mike did not even have that.  His deceased wife Jo was the one with the unknown past and secrets, but the story is narrated by Mike, not Jo.  And Mike is a bit bland, as are a lot of the characters he meets around Dark Score Lake.  

Not so Pierce Brosnan or Anika Noni Rose, though!  After I finished reading Bag of Bones, I watched the 2011 mini-series.  It stars Pierce Brosnan as Mike Noonan and features Anika Noni Rose (The Princess and the Frog, Dreamgirls) as the Blues singer Sara Tidwell.  While I would by no means call Bag of Bones the greatest horror mini-series ever, it was well-acted, riddled with creepy jump scares, and tells basically the same story as the seven hundred page novel in a mere two hours.  Best of all, the mini-series can currently be watched for free on Youtube.

In short, this is one of very few cases in which I would recommend the movie instead of the book.  I really wanted to like Stephen King.  He is obviously a masterful writer, but honestly, the slow pacing of his books and their high page counts may mean that they are not for me.  However, if anyone knows perhaps a lesser-known Stephen King book that they really enjoyed, then I would love a recommendation.

My rating:

2016 Horror Reading Challenge & Graphic Novel/Manga Challenge

In my hunt for reading challenges to take on the rest of this year, I've found two more that are right up my alley.

The first is the 2016 Graphic Novel/Manga Challenge, hosted by Nicola at the challenge's blog.  I really like this challenge button, because it is very eye-catching and perhaps a little scary.

Mostly I just really want to see the rest of this guy's costume!  For this challenge, I am going to sign up for the Bronze Age or intermediate level, that is to say, I am going to try to read and review 24 graphic novels, comic collections, and/or mangas during the remainder of this year.  Since I am in the middle of reading several excellent graphic novel and manga series, including Locke & Key and Attack on Titan, I hope this shouldn't be too difficult!  Other graphic novels I want to read soon include The Umbrella Academy, Rat Queens, Lumberjanes, the next few volumes of Lazarus, Outcast, The October Faction, American Vampire...yeah, quite a few, to sum it up.

The next challenge I'm signing up for is the 2016 Horror Reading Challenge, co-hosted over at the blog Cornerfolds and at Books, Movies, Reviews, Oh My!

I am going to try to read and review 16 or more books that belong to the horror genre, and win the Horror Hound badge.  I usually read a lot of horror, especially collections of nineteenth-century ghost stories and Gothic novels, which I adore.  I have been trying to force myself to read The Mysteries of Udolpho by Ann Radcliffe, a very classic Gothic novel, but admittedly it has a very slow start which is discouraging me.  Last year I read Matthew Lewis's The Monk, which is insanely entertaining and twisted, and also Horace Walpole's Castle of Otranto, arguably one of the first English Gothic novels.  Otranto is pretty silly, and features a guy getting crushed to death by a giant helmet (no, really), but it was wildly popular after its publication.  Right now I am reading something a little more modern: Stephen King's Bag of Bones.  I am not a big fan of King typically, so we will see how that goes.  I'm looking forward to reading books for both of these challenges, and will add them to a new Challenges page so I can keep track of them more easily.

And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie

Genre: suspense, mystery
Pages: 264 (paperback)
Published: 1939

Synopsis: 
First, there were ten - a curious assortment of strangers summoned as weekend guests to a private island off the coast of Devon. Their host, an eccentric millionaire unknown to all of them, is nowhere to be found. All that the guests have in common is a wicked past they're unwilling to reveal - and a secret that will seal their fate. For each has been marked for murder. One by one they fall prey. Before the weekend is out, there will be none. And only the dead are above suspicion.

Review:

It's strange to think that I had never read a single Agatha Christie novel before deciding, on a whim yesterday, to pick up And Then There Were None.

I generally will read every genre with the notable and pretty strict exceptions of romance and mystery.  In the case of mystery, I have to admit that part of my prejudice stems from my utter lack of skill in predicting "whodunit" or what will happen next.  I so do not find it elementary, Watson, and frankly, this is partially a result of the way I operate as a reader.  I'm not a speed reader of the kind that you can find on Youtube, apparently absorbing whole books at the rate of five seconds a page.  However, I do read quite quickly and I read for information, purposefully picking out the most necessary bits on every page and somewhat skimming over the little details.  But in mystery novels it is these little details that matter the most, and this is definitely the case with And Then There Were None.  Tiny details of setting and dialogue that Christie briefly alights on turn out to be key to the twists and turns of the plot.  Even as a reader generally uninterested in the genre, I found myself captivated by the book and appreciative of her mad skills--truly, Christie was the "Queen of Mystery."

I also appreciated that this is not at all a detective story in the usual sense.  There is no central detective figure trying to wrap up the mystery of a previously-committed murder, but rather the murders are happening in the present.  Readers who share my aversion to mystery and detective stories but embrace horror will enjoy the sense of suspenseful inevitability of the murders on Indian Island, a sense created not only by the title And Then There Were None (note: the novel was originally published as Ten Little N******; click the link to read an article about the racist title's evolution through the years) but by the device of the morbid nursery rhyme which each of the characters find posted in their rooms upon arriving at the empty house on Indian Island.  The murders of the guests adhere strictly to this rhyme about "ten little Indians," so that we have a rough idea of how the next victim will die, but now when or who the victim will be.  For example, the rhyme declares, "Six little Indians playing with a hive; A bumblebee stung one and then there were five."  Just as in a number of good horror films, apparently childish things or nonsensical rhymes turn on to have a eerie power of life and death over the characters.

As far as the characters, one among the ten people on Indian Island is presumed to be the murderer, causing all these gruesome deaths that accord with the creepy nursery rhyme.  The rest of the guests  are essentially accused of murder by a mysterious disembodied Voice who terrifies them by announcing their respective crimes during their first evening in the island house's sitting room.  Taken together, these two facts kind of discourage the reader from getting too attached to any of them, and the novel is plot-driven to say the least even though knowing the characters is central to figuring out what is going on.  Christie does a good job characterizing the island guests considering that her writing is pretty sparse, and so is the dialogue.  We quickly see that Philip Lombard is cold-blooded like a character out of Heart of Darkness, Vera Claythorne is smart and intuitive, and Emily Brent is one of those well-meaning but frustrating ladies who thinks of herself as a living saint.  As always, I was completely stumped by the question of who the murderer might be!  All of my speculations turned out to be wrong, and the revelation at the end relies on a wild and ingenious twist which I don't think even many readers better-versed in the mystery genre would guess if they weren't already familiar with the story.      

The novel is absorbing and fast-paced, the sort of book that appeals to a huge variety of readers.  One can see why it has been adapted into so many films and series and plays over the years.  As usual, though, nothing can be better than reading the original novel and spending a few hours of a rainy day appreciating Christie's craft and the diabolical eeriness of it all, watching the twisted nursery rhyme play out.

I wholeheartedly recommend this classic suspense story and intend to pick up another Christie book soon, although I don't know which one.  She wrote so many!  I must be in the mood to scare myself to death by reading about old, haunted, secluded houses and the ghosts and murderers and madpeople in the attic who inhabit them, because I've also just started reading Stephen King's Bag of Bones and have contemplated yet another reading of Jane Eyre.

Rating:

The Turn of the Screw by Henry James

Genre: Gothic/Victorian
Pages: 172 (paperback)
Published: 1898


Synopsis:
Henry James, a master of haunting atmosphere and riveting tension, presents one of the most famous ghost stories of all time. A young governess is sent to a country home to take charge of two orphans, and unsettled by a sense of intense evil within the house, becomes obsessed with the belief that malevolent forces are stalking the children in her care. Growing increasingly uneasy, she becomes drawn into a frightening battle against an unspeakable evil that may or may not be real.
 
Review:
 I was almost entirely unfamiliar with this admittedly well-known classic ghost story before reading The Turn of the Screw. I've seen the Nicole Kidman movie it inspired, The Others, but otherwise came into this not knowing what to expect.  The Woman in Black (which I someday might review) is one of my favorite short horror novels.  It isn't Victorian, but it is set in that time period and shares some of the same eerie psychological horror with Turn of the Screw-- but this little book turned out to be far better.

So, the story is a story within a story-- a guy at a party tells a story about a ghost story which he has written down by a woman he once knew to someone, presumably Henry James.  So, metafiction-- and for the rest of the book this doesn't come up again.  The protagonist and first-person narrator after the prologue is a young governess, the daughter of a parish priest.  She goes to the country estate of Bly (and how might one pronounce this??) to take care of two children at the behest of their always-absent-on-business uncle.  We never learn this governess's name or much about her, already evoking a sense of mystery and, well, vagueness. 

The two children, Flora and Miles, who the governess must look after fit the Victorian ideal of children: they are angelic in both appearance and behavior, bright and determined to please.  Our narrator is happy in her new position-- until she begins to see a strange man, a man who she instinctively feels to be evil, around the grounds of Bly. 

When she tells the housekeeper what she has seen, the terrified woman identifies the man by the governess's description: he is Peter Quint, a man who once worked for the estate and who apparently spent a lot of time with young Miles.  Soon after the terrifying appearance of Quint, a second ghost-- the ghost of the governess's predecessor at Bly-- appears.  The governess, never once doubting her instinctual feeling that these apparitions want nothing more than to hurt her innocent young charges, seeks a way to protect them from the spectors and the corruption she associates them with.  

I don't think it is much of a spoiler to add that there are two main readings of The Turn of the Screw, as you might guess from just reading the synopsis: A. this is a true ghost story, and the governess, having perfectly identified the ghosts of people she had never met, is correct in that these spectors are trying to lead the children to their own deaths (and possibly corrupt them as well).  Reading B: the governess is paranoid, to the point of halluncinating the apparitions, and possibly insane; she creates malevolent figures where in fact there are none, for various psychological reasons.  I lean towards reading B, though I don't have a satisfying explanation for how the governess knew what Quint and Miss Jessel, the other ghost, looked like.  The character of Mrs. Grose-- the housekeeper-- seems suspect in this: maybe she matched the governess's vague descriptions of the apparitions to those of Quint and Jessel because she had always thought them to have sinister intentions.  The thing is, there are several occasions when the governess sees the ghosts and points them out hysterically to the children or to Mrs. Grose, and nobody else sees anything.  Maybe a "meeting point" between the two readings is that Jessel and Quint did corrupt the two children-- the boy and the girl-- before their deaths, and their dark influence lingers, though they are not ghosts, in the sometimes bizarre behavior of the children.  Miles in particular turns out to be much less angelic than he first appears to be...

The governess's conviction towards the nature of the ghosts has the reverse effect of causing the reader to be skeptical of their existence.  Anyway, so I really enjoyed this book.  And yet, halluncinations or not, these ghosts are more frightening to me than the ones which populate 21st century horror movies.  The description of the "pale face" of the ghost of Quint looking in through the window at the children having dinner is beyond eerie-- oh, that scene beat out only by the one with Miss Jessel by the governess's writing desk!  And I feel like I'm spewing spoilers again, but point being, there are some truly eerie scenes.  

The Turn of the Screw succeeds as a ghost story and as an interesting character study...the ambiguity of the supernatural elements and the governess's identity is great and, actually, a little bit maddening.  The ending came as a shock to me, to say the least.  Not sure how I missed the million BBC adaptations of this, but I'm glad I did-- this thin pageturner packed with heavy ambiguity and a great deal of creepiness was a unique reading experience.

My rating:

Interview with the Vampire: Claudia's Story by Anne Rice & Ashley Witter

Genre: graphic novel
Pages: 256 (hardcover)
Published: November 2012 by Yen Press

Synopsis: A richly-illustrated adaptation of Anne Rice's Interview with the Vampire, told through the eyes of the vampire Claudia, who was just a little girl when she was turned by the vampire Lestat. Though she spends many years of happiness with her two vampire fathers, she gradually grows discontent with their insistence upon treating her like a little girl, even though she has lived as long as any mortal man...and her lust to kill is certainly no less than theirs...

My Take:
I had to have this beautiful graphic novel.  Firstly, because Interview with the Vampire is one of my all-time favorite books and Anne Rice has been one of my favorite authors since I was a pre-teen.  Second, just look at that gorgeous cover!  I had serious cover lust over Claudia's Story, and the pages between the covers are no less beautiful or intriguing.

The art is beyond gorgeous: every illustration is perfectly shaded, with splashes of carefully-placed crimson which perfectly compliment the story's dark feel.  The three main characters-- the doll-like Claudia, sensitive, dark-haired Louis, and of course, the arresting and impulse Lestat-- are portrayed as very similar to their characters in the movie Interview with the Vampire.  Some of the illustrations are gorgeous enough to frame and artist Ashley Marie Witter definitely proves that she's a fantastically-talented artist in this graphic novel, her debut.

Claudia's Story essentially follows the exact same storyline as Interview with the Vampire, examining the conflict and dynamic between Claudia and Louis and Lestat, her two vampiric "fathers", to whom she must cling because she is an eternal little girl and cannot care for herself.  As Claudia, a vampire created as a child, grows mentally and emotionally older, she begins to resent her fellow vampires for creating her, for trapping her inside a child's "doll-like" body forever.  She has no hope of gaining independence, of fulfilling her terrible blood lust on her own, or of becoming the woman she became long ago in her heart and mind. 

Many direct quotes from Interview are used in Claudia's Story, along with some of Claudia's internal monologue, written in the slightly melancholy narrative style typical of Louis's monologue style in Interview.  I don't feel like we readers learn very much about Claudia's character, or a single new thing about the plot, that was not revealed in the original novel.  I didn't really mind, though.  This graphic novel is entertaining and faithful to the original Anne Rice canon.  The art, as I said, is beyond belief.  Anything Ashley Marie Witter illustrates in the future, I will almost certainly be reading.  I really hope this book sells a ton of copies-- at least as many as the Twilight graphic novels have, especially considering that the art of Claudia's Story is about ten times more mature and well-drawn.  And, you know, Claudia and Louis and Lestat do a very minimal amount of sparkling.

Rating:

Rotters by Daniel Kraus

Genre: YA contemp/ horror
Published: 2011 by Delacorte Press
Pages: 448 (available in paperback-- check it out on Amazon)

Synopsis: Grave-robbing. What kind of monster would do such a thing? It's true that Leonardo da Vinci did it, Shakespeare wrote about it, and the resurrection men of nineteenth-century Scotland practically made it an art. But none of this matters to Joey Crouch, a sixteen-year-old straight-A student living in Chicago with his single mom. For the most part, Joey's life is about playing the trumpet and avoiding the daily humiliations of high school.
    
Everything changes when Joey's mother dies in a tragic accident and he is sent to rural Iowa to live with the father he has never known, a strange, solitary man with unimaginable secrets. At first, Joey's father wants nothing to do with him, but once father and son come to terms with each other, Joey's life takes a turn both macabre and exhilarating.
    
Daniel Kraus's masterful plotting and unforgettable characters make Rotters a moving, terrifying, and unconventional epic about fathers and sons, complex family ties, taboos, and the ever-present specter of mortality.

Cover Thoughts:
Definitely like this cover better than the original hardcover, with all the gloomy tombstones!  It has the neat feel of a collage, like it could be scribblings on the inside of a young grave-robber's notebook.  Dark, yet whimsical, and downright intriguing. 


My Take:
Rotters is definitely not your typical YA book, or your typical book, period!  It's utterly unpredictable, extremely absorbing, and both thought-provoking and disturbing in ways that matter.  I totally wanted to read it because of that interesting cover and because I'd read reviews saying that it's a completely different kind of read-- having read it, I couldn't agree more.

Forced to move after his mother's sudden death, our protagonist Joey is shocked to find himself an instant outcast at his new high school.  His father is the local parish-- the Garbageman, everyone calls him, and Joey has inadvertently become the Garbageman's Son.  Living in his new home, a ramshackle house which indeed does smell of something strange and foul, and dealing with his bizarre, reclusive father, Joey finds himself unprepared for the incredible, sickening truth, even as he comes to suspect it: his father is a grave-digger, and worse, a grave-robber.  He is part of an ancient and dying order of men, nicknamed the Diggers, who make their unorthodox living by traveling the country and digging up the treasures buried with the newly-dead.  At first, Joey is repulsed... but also fascinated.  The Diggers are a strange and dying breed of men, and as he begins to understand their creed, he also begins to unravel the mystery of his father's dark past and the secret of his father's one-time best friend, a man known as Boggs, who is a parish even among the outcast order of the Diggers. 

Rotters is written in first-person, easy to read except in a very few slow parts in the middle of the book, and fairly fast-paced.  Despite this, it manages to be strangely philosophical-- kudos to Daniel Kraus for doing that while still keeping the book entertaining!  It's difficult to explain exactly what a "rotter" is-- and no, it's not simply a corpse-- without having read the book, but the revelations Joey makes constantly come as surprises-- there is nothing predictable about this mad-cap, ingenious plot.   
Rotters doesn't go on my shelf of favorites, simply because it isn't the kind of book I would re-read again (that's kind of top criteria for that mental bookshelf).  But it is the kind of book I will always remember very clearly: Rotters is a story both exhilarating and haunting, one that I think all but the most faint of stomach or heart readers will enjoy if they give this terrific book a chance.

Book Rating:

Extras:
--Rotters on Goodreads
--Daniel Kraus on Rotters and his other books & a book trailer

Similar Reads:
--The Monstrumologist by Rick Yancey (male narrator, with a similar but more Victorian feel: scary monsters and Jack the Ripper)
--Devil's Kiss by Sarwat Chadda (girl inherits a legacy as dark as grave-digging-- but there's more paranormal and more romance)

Scariest Movies Part II

Continuing from Part I yesterday... Ava and I have rounded up a dozen or so of our favorite horror movies from a multitude of sub-genres.  We each picked a movie for each category without consulting one another-- so you get double the scary recommendations!

#8: Best Monster Movie

Kat:                                                        Ava:

 

 Kat: The Cave (2005): Really scary creature-feature, more thriller-esque than horror.  Honorable mentions: The Village, Jeepers Creepers.  A monster movie I still really want to see this October is The Wolfman with Anthony Hopkins-- it looks really good!

Ava: Red Riding Hood (2011): Amanda Seyfried (Kat-- she of the humongous blue eyes) stars as Red Riding Hood in this cool dark romance movie.  Also has Gary Oldman as a werewolf hunter.

#9: Best Serial Killer Movie

Kat:                                                         Ava:

Ava: Se7en (1995): Morgan Freeman and Brad Pitt... this is a seriously disturbing film, but really well done, we both agree.  Honorable mention: The Silence of the Lambs!

Kat: The Silence of the Lambs (1991): Hannibal Lector is my favorite serial killer.  Weird thing to have a favorite of, but it's true.

#10: Best Scary Movie We've Seen Recently

Kat:                                                             Ava:

Kat: Fright Night (2011): Really liked this Lost Boys-esque remake.  It's lots of fun and Colin Farrell in it-- therefore, it could hardly go wrong with me.

Ava: 30 Days of Night (2007): Residents of Barrow, Alaska are trapped in a month-long darkness.  Vampires come to prey.  These vampires are not the Twilight variety.  Like, at all.

#11: Best Scary Movie Series/ Franchise

Kat:                                                 Ava:

 

Ava: Final Destination (5 movies, starting in 2000): Characters who have "cheated death" are forced to reckon with it again. 

Kat: A Nightmare on Elm Street (9 movies-- the first one came out in 1984): Freddy Krueger has made me afraid to go to sleep on multiple occasions over the years.  I like the original best-- it has a young Johnny Depp as Nancy's boyfriend.

#12: Most Absolutely Terrifying Movie We've Ever Seen in Our Entire Freakin' Lives

Kat:                                                        Ava:

Kat: The Haunting in Connecticut (2009): I think I may have sobbed (just a little bit) while watching this movie.  It's incredibly frightening, has a ton of the dreaded "jump" moments, and is generally incredibly disturbing.  I will probably never watch it again.  Honorable mentions: Insidious, Mirrors.

Ava: Mirrors (2008): Kiefer Sutherland is a nightguard assigned to the ruin of an old mall where, years ago, a tragic fire left terrible scars.  Kat-- The mall is maybe the most horrifyingly creepy setting ever used in a horror movie!

  

Talkin' Bout Scary Movies Part I: Kat & Ava Pick the Best of the Best

 What's my favorite part of Halloween-- the costumes, the candy, or the nice autumn weather?  Actually, none of the above.  In my house, the month of October is marked by late-nighters watching Chiller channel specials and SyFi movie marathons, by plenty of screams and popcorn being thrown. Yep, I confess to being a major horror movie buff.  I've seen them all: the chilling, the gory, the downright ridiculous.  In fact, the only person I know who has seen more horror movies than me has done me the most spectacular honor of appearing as a guest blogger at A Myriad of Books today... *drumroll*... Could we have a warm round of applause for my most delightful sister, Ava?

Yep, she's herrree.

Today and tomorrow, we're excited to be posting about our favorite scary and Halloween movies.  But, since a gory movie is far from everyone's cup of tea (my cup of tea included) and not everyone wants to be kept awake at night by the threat of ghosts lurking in their bedroom, we've decided to split our movie recommendations up into **categories**.  To make things extra interesting, Ava and I didn't consult each other on our choices for each category-- I sent her the list of movie categories and we each picked our favs separately.  (Note: If we both picked the same movie for a category, then consider it to be doubly-recommended.)  The results are in, and they are *spooky voice* verrryy interesting...

#1: Best Spooky or Sorta-Scary Movie: 

Kat:                                                                Ava: 

Kat: Poltergeist (1982):  Poltergeist is the classic spooky movie.  It's not so scary or otherwise inappropriate that kids can't enjoy it as well, yet there are some definitely creepy moments.  The one that made me afraid to look under the bed for years: the scene where the creepy Raggedy Ann doll comes alive in the little boy's bedroom.  Um, yikes!

Ava: Carrie (1976): Based on the Stephen King book with the same name.

#2: Best Vampire Movie (Horror or Otherwise):

Kat:                                                                Ava:  

Ava: The Lost Boys (1987).

Kat: The Lost Boys (1987): This movie is such a favorite in our family.  These vampires are pretty, alright (ie teenage Kiefer Sutherland!), but they are far from sparkly and peace-loving.  This movie is classic 80s with a throwback feel, an awesome 80s soundtrack, and a lot of great humor.  Honorable mentions: Let Me In; Fright Night (2011).

#3: Best Haunted House Movie:

Kat:                                      Ava:

Kat: The Amityville Horror (2005): This remake of the old Amityville is probably my favorite haunted house movie.  It revolves around a very eerie premise and is absolutely packed with creepy happenings and moments of terrible, exhilarating suspense.  This house has to got be the most haunted cinema house of all time.  My honorable mention is The Messengers.  

Ava: The Shining (1980): Best haunted hotel movie.  My honorable mention: Insidious.

#4: Best Halloween Movie for Kids:

Kat:                                  Ava:

Ava: Beetlejuice (1988): Cult classic hilarious and feel-good spooky movie by Tim Burton.  My honorable mention-- The Nightmare Before Christmas!

Kat: Tim Burton's A Nightmare Before Christmas (1993): Awesome movie, catchy soundtrack, beautiful animation, and an incredible cast of characters.  All of Tim Burton's stop-motion animation movies are great (like Corpse Bride, a runner-up), but this one is a cult classic.  So, so good!  Another honorable mention: Coraline.  And I also love the book Coraline.

#5: Best POV or Mockumentary Horror Movie:

Kat:                                                     Ava:

  

Kat: Paranormal Activity 3 (2011): All of the films in the Paranormal series are fantastic sleepover movies.  In my opinion, #3 takes the cake: it is absolutely the scariest and most compulsively-watchable of the bunch and the way the cameras were used is absolutely genius.  Creepiest moment: when the babysitter is sitting at a table in the kitchen and a ghostly sheet is standing silently and sinisterly behind her-- we viewers scream, and the camera pans away, leaving us in suspenseful agony!  Strange coincidence that we both picked the same movie from the series as the best.

Ava: Paranormal Activity 3 (2011)-- Once again, we are in uncanny agreement. 

#6: Worst/Most Ridiculous Scary Movie You've Ever Seen:

Kat:                                                           Ava:

Ava: The Devil Inside (2012): Bad version of the better Anthony Hopkins horror movie, The Rite.

Kat: The Blair Witch Project (1999): I guess I am that one person who really was disappointed by The Blair Witch.  I know, it's supposed to be a classic, but I thought it was a let-down.  The ending... I mean, come on!  I did see the sequel and thought it, unusually enough, to be much better.

#7: Best Ghostly/Supernatural Movie:

Kat:                                                 Ava:

Kat: The Woman in Black (2012): As Ava well knows, this movie scared me half to death!  Movies with plenty of "jumpy" scenes and vengeful ghosts are absolutely the most frightening kind to me (I startle easily and am a little superstitious).  Ava and one of our friends actually played a very nasty, but very funny, prank on me which is related to this film... but it's too long to go into here.  Ask me in the comments if you really want to know.  ;)  The book on which the movie is based is very creepy, too, and a good quick read for October.  Honorable mentions: Insidious, The Shining, The Haunting, Dark Remains, Stephen King's Bag of Bones.  This is the genre which scares me the most, but also my favorite. 

Ava: The Others (2001):  Freaky movie with Nicole Kidman.  My honorable mention: An American Haunting.

That wraps up all the categories for today!  Tomorrow, we'll pick our favorite movies about monsters, serial killers, the best scary movie franchise series, and you'll get to find out what horror movies are the Absolutely Most Terrifying Movies We've Ever Seen In Our Lives.  And I know exactly what movie I'm going to pick... Hope you have enjoyed our post today, and we'd love to hear what scary movies you love or hate!