Blogtober Day 28: The Year's Best Dark Fantasy and Horror 2018

The Year's Best Dark Fantasy & Horror 2018 is an anthology of dark fantasy and horror stories. It was edited by Paula Guran and contains more than twenty stories, each by a different author. This is the ninth edition of the yearly anthology that Guran has edited and released.

Since The Year's Best Dark Fantasy & Horror 2018 is a collection of stories, and contains so many, this review is going to be a little different than my other reviews. With around 30 stories, there's no way I could review every single one of them without making this review unbearably long. At the same time, I can't give a review of the book as a whole, since each story is so different. Instead, I'm going to talk about five stories: three that were my most favorite, and the two I disliked the most.

The Crow Palace by Priya Sharma is the story of a woman named Julie who returns home following the death of her father. She left him and her sister, with cerebral palsy, years ago and has only returned to bury her father and take care of a few last minute things. While she's visiting, she uncovers a dark family secret. I think the reason why I enjoyed this story so much was because it subverted my expectations. Julie's family has a very strange connection with birds, which is apparent on the first page. What the connection is, and how deep it goes, is revealed much later. The thing that made this story stick in my mind, though, was the final revelation regarding the birds.  I won't spoil the ending, but let's just say, Julie's assumption about what the birds did, and who they did it to, is wrong.

The Little Mermaid in Passing by Angela Slatter can best be described as telling the story of the Little Mermaid from the Sea Witch's perspective. In the original fairytale, the reader doesn't ever learn why the Sea Witch would help the Little Mermaid. In the Disney film, Ursula obviously has a masterplan to take over the ocean, but the original story never reveals that. I liked this story because it took a story I already knew, and showed it from a different angle. Much like other stories such as Wicked, it made me rethink how I viewed the "villain". I found the writing style and the direction the story went in to be unique and unexpected as well.

Secret Keeper by Bonnie Jo Stuffelbeam I would categorize as halfway between psychological horror and teen drama. The story takes place almost entirely in a high school. It tells the story of a Ghost Girl, who isn't dead and lives in the bowels of the school, who begins training Chrissie, an actress in the school musical, to sing better.  If this set-up sounds like Phantom of the Opera, but with the Phantom having a different gender, that's because it kind of is. While the set-ups are similar, the plots are different. The Ghost Girl wants something different from what the Phantom wanted. The ending was unexpected as well, since it's ambiguous regarding what was and wasn't reality.


Moon, and Memory, and Muchness by Katherine Vaz tells the story of a woman grieving the loss of her child who encounters a little girl that reminds her of her deceased daughter. She owns a tea shop and the girl and her mother become regular customers. The story is chock full of Alice in Wonderland references as well.It's somewhat of a thriller, but I wasn't a huge fan. It's not a bad story, just one with weird pacing. The story goes from 0 to 100 very suddenly, then back to 0, and I don't feel there was enough build-up beforehand.

Survival Strategies by Helen Marshall is the story of a British scholar going to New York to do a piece of a famous horror author, who's supposed to be Stephen King, but isn't. This was my least favorite story, mostly because not a lot happens. She does some research, talks to the author's ex-editor and that's pretty much it. Scenes of the narrator talking about the author's career are interspersed with her mentioning how bleak and tense things are in the world due to politics. Perhaps some might find the story suspenseful, but I didn't. The only way this story is connected to horror is that the author she's researching, who never appears, writes horror.

The Year's Best Dark Fantasy & Horror series, for a lack of a better term, is one of my favorite releases, because its one of the ways I find new authors. It's also where I find some of the most interesting and creative stories. I feel like authors of short stories are more willing to take risks and try new things than with full length novels.

Rating: 3.5 stars. I didn't love every story, but I liked the collection as a whole.

Blogtober Day 27: What type of horror movie villain would you be?

Hello everybody. We're officially 4 days away from Halloween and its time to get extra-spooky. I read a lot of horror novels. I watch a lot of horror movies and that got me thinking: if I was the villain of a horror movie, what kind would I be?

Part of me wants to say a slasher/chainsaw wielding maniac, only because I can't think of a single horror movie off the top of my head, that has a female slasher villain. Except for the original Friday the 13th but since every later film had Jason as the killer, the fact that he's not the killer in the original has been forgotten by most. I don't think I would do very well, either, mostly because 1) I'm clumsy and would most likely cut myself in half, not my intended victims and 2) I don't do well with blood.

I wouldn't want to be a demon or a ghost, because that would mean I was either dead or had just escaped from Hell. So, I'd already be in a sucky situation from the start. Being dead doesn't seem like fun. As for being a demon, I could do it, I just wouldn't love it. Monster-horror is also out, due to the fact that most monster-horror isn't scary any more. It consists of jump-scares and a lot of gore but very little suspense or tension.

Which is exactly why I'd want to be the villain in a psychological horror movie. Those are the ones I find the most interesting. It's not about the blood and guts and creative kills in that subgenre, it's about the mind. Messing with people's minds. In some psychological horror films, there's no clearly defined villain. Sometimes, its a cult or some unseen force orchestrating events, other times it's the protagonist's own mind creating the suspense. In others, there's a clear bad guy or group of bad guys directly causing trouble. Regardless of which "type" of psychological horror villain, I'd want to be one, since it fits my flair for the dramatic. I think I'd do particularly well as part of a creep cult when I think about it.

What type of horror movie villain would you be?

Blogtober Day 26: Paranormal Romance

Paranormal romance is the intersection between a romance novel and the supernatural. Often times, the story follows the formula of one character meeting and falling in love with some mysterious love interest who turns out to be some sort of supernatural being. Sometimes a vampire, other time the love interest is some kind of shapeshifter. 

In order to qualify, at least from the criteria on Goodreads, the story needs to have both romance and the supernatural element at its forefront. If there’s a vampire love interest, let’s say, but him being a vampire isn’t a major part of the plot, it doesn’t qualify. The same is true if the story itself is paranormal, but there isn’t a romance at the center of the story. The best, and most well-known, example of a paranormal romance is, of course, Twilight. There’s a romance, regardless of how much its love or hate, and the paranormal element, Edward being a vampire and that being a central part of the story.

Now that we’ve established what it is, let me tell you my thoughts on paranormal romances. I’m not a huge fan. I’ve got nothing against anyone that writes this subgenre or reads it, but it’s just not for me. I’ve read many, and there are a lot of things about the subgenre that I just don’t like. 

Usually, the main character, who’s almost always a girl, learns her crush is a vampire or werewolf or whatever when she finds herself in a dangerous situation and he rushes in to save her. I’m not a big fan of women being damsels in distress. Often, the main character is bland. She’s bland, she’s boring. She’s not pretty, or smart, or talented. She has all of the personality of a paper bag. I know, there’s an argument to be made about the story being wish fulfillment, but why does that mean the main character has no personality? Boring main characters make the story so much harder to read and it takes me out of the story. If I don't care about the main character, why should I care about what happens to her?

A lot of these stories are YA novels, and YA novels tend to over-dramatize relationships or make aspects that shouldn’t be seen as romantic appear like they’re relationship goals. Also, it weirds me out that hundred/thousand-year-old beings have nothing better to do than lurk around high schools. It’s weird and creepy. Even when the supernatural being in question isn’t a thousand years old, there’s almost always an age-gap. Maybe the protagonist is in high school, and the love interest is college-aged it’s still weird, especially given the prevalence of adult men dating “mature” teenagers which is just a smokescreen to hide the predatory behavior of said men. It sends the message that dating someone older than you is fine, because it means you’re more mature, not that he’s predatory. 

There’s sometimes a soulmate aspect, which works when used correctly and appropriately, but it often isn’t. The angle is used to wave off any problematic aspects of the text that someone might object to. The love interest follows her around or breaks into her house? He’s not stalking her; he’s just worried about his soulmate. He loses control when she cuts her hand or it’s a full moon? Of course, he wasn’t really going to kill her, she’s his mate. Also, I find the concept of soulmates, and the implication that the characters are incomplete without each other, to be dumb. In some, there’s an added problem of the main character being the creature’s soulmate meaning she’s somehow responsible for “fixing” him. I don’t see why she’s all of a sudden responsible for what this random person, who she probably just met, does.

The last pet peeve that I have about young adult paranormal romance is the bad dialogue. This isn't the case with every novel in the genre, but a number of them have this problem. The characters are supposed to be teenagers, yet they don't sound like teenagers. They sound like what a 40-year-old thinks teens sound like.  It easy to tell when the author is much older than the demographic they’re writing for in this case. I’m sorry, but no teenager these days is going to call someone a “trollop”. No one’s used that word in about 40 years. As soon as I read that, it takes me completely out of the story itself and all I focus on is the dialogue. Additionally, and this has nothing to do with paranormal YA in particular, but exposition/info dumps through dialogue also needs to go. It needs to stop. It’s unrealistic. No one’s going to explain the entire, centuries-long war between two factions, their first time meeting someone.

These have been my thoughts on paranormal romance, more specifically young adult paranormal romance. As I said earlier, I’ve got nothing against the genre, it’s just not for me. I also know that not every book has these issues, but I thought I should mention why I dislike certain parts of the genre rather than just say something like “it’s just stupid”. What are your thoughts on paranormal romance?

Blogtober Day 25: Zombies

So, zombies. For the last few years, they've appeared in pretty much every form of media. I think we've reached zombie overload, much like we did with vampires about ten years ago and like we did with ghosts forever ago. I like zombies, sometimes, in fiction. It really depends how they're being used and what purpose they serve.

I know, you might be thinking, zombies have a purpose? Well, kind of. Zombies are normally just the massive horde of beings that the protagonists need to avoid. Usually, the zombies are chasing, slowly, after the humans because they're hungry. Unlike other monsters, they aren't trying to create more of their kind, they just want to eat. Usually, the zombies exist because of an outbreak, or in Zombieland's case, an infected burger. When I say "purpose" I mean how they're used, as the villain, in the story. What's the theme or message the film is trying to portray?

For example, George A. Romero's 1968 film Night of the Living Dead is viewed by many to be a reflection of the tensions in the United States during that period in history. Others see is as a criticism of government ineptitude, domestic racism and the politics of the Cold War. The zombies in Night of the Living Dead were so terrifying because, to paraphrase film historian Linda Badley, the monsters weren't aliens or creatures from some unknown land, they're us. Ben, the African-American protagonist, isn't killed by zombies at the end of the film, but by a posse of rednecks who mistake him for being one of the infected.

Other times, zombies exist just to create a post-apocalyptic world. A war, or illness, or some form of nuclear catastrophe could substitute for the zombie outbreak in the story, and the plot wouldn't change that much. These zombies tend to exist in media where a large aspect of the story isn't about trying to cure the infected, or finding some safe haven or even how the world got to this. They're a threat, but the real threat, the real tension comes from some other group of survivors posing a threat to the group the protagonist is in. Later seasons of The Walking Dead fit into this category. People such as the Governor and Negan pose more of a threat to anyone than the zombies. This is also where all the films putting forth the idea of "humans are the real monsters" exists. I don't hate this type of story, but I feel like zombies are used too often as "here's how the world ended" explanation and I'd like to see a more creative reason.

Sometimes, zombies are just zombies and the entire film is about people thrown together randomly trying to get to safety. The 2004 remake Dawn of the Dead is about a group of people trapped in a shopping mall during a zombie outbreak. These are the movies I like the most, because I watch zombie movies for zombies, not to see people do horrible things to others because they can. For as bad as the Resident Evil film series is, and how unfaithful it is to the games, the first two weren't completely awful because the plot was about the zombies, not about weird things with the Umbrella Corporation.

There are, of course, some variations in zombie media. Sometimes the zombies are fast. Sometimes characters don't need to get bitten to become a zombie. Other times, the humans are able to find a cure. There are a few movies out there where, despite being zombies, they still have thoughts and higher brain function. And sometimes, a zombie falls in love with a human and falling love makes them not be a zombie anymore (looking at you, Warm Bodies). 

So, in conclusion, I like zombies. They're cool. I think we need to take a break from them being everywhere for a while, but on the while, I can't complain.

Blogtober Day 24: Fall Activities and Trends I Dislike

As I mentioned in an earlier post, autumn is my favorite time of year. However, no season is perfect, not even my favorite one. While I like fall itself, there are some trends and traditions during fall that I just don't like. Some I find boring. Some don't fit my tastes and some I just don't like and I don't really have (or feel the inclination to give) a reason for why I dislike them. With that said, let's discuss some fall things I don't like.

Apple and Pumpkin Picking

I have nothing against apples. I like apples. I have nothing against pumpkins. They make excellent pies. Here's the thing though apple picking, going to the pumpkin patch, wandering through the fields trying to decide which one to pick. It's boring. I know some people really like it, but I don't.

Pumpkin Spiced Everything

This will probably upset a lot of people, but I don't like pumpkin spiced things. Pumpkin spiced lattes aren't actually that great. There are so many, other, better coffee drinks out there. A group of people decided they were really into the Starbucks Pumpkin Spiced Latte and all of a sudden, everyone else should be too. Because its not just lattes anymore. Pumpkin spiced donuts, pumpkin spiced cereal. Pumpkin spiced ice cream. Pumpkin spiced pudding. Can we please stop with the pumpkin spiced madness? Please?

Hayrides

I have really bad allergies. Needless to say, I don't have a ton of fun on hayrides because I spend a lot of time sneezing. Even if I wasn't sneezing all of the time on hayrides, they kind of have no point? You just ride around in this cart? If you're lucky, the ride takes you to a corn maze or something. Otherwise, you just go from one side of a field to another. I have friends who love hayrides and I just don't understand them.

Those are the three things about fall that I don't like. There are a few others, but they're a little nitpicky and I didn't want to write a completely negative post where I mention every little thing or trend I don't like.

What are your favorite fall activities?