Month: September 2025

Book Review: The Solstice by Elaine Pascale

On By bibliorexIn Book ReviewsLeave a comment

The Solstice
Elaine Pascale
Trepidatio Publishing (April 11, 2025)
Reviewed by Andrew Byers

Elaine Pascale’s The Solstice is a ferocious and uncompromising dystopian horror novel that imagines a near-future America ruled by the old who unhesitatingly prey upon—literally—the young. In Pascale’s chilling vision, society is stratified by color-coded neckbands, with the elder “Red Bands” reigning as decadent, cannibalistic overlords who mark each seasonal solstice with a state-sanctioned purge of the weaker (and younger) classes. Within this nightmarish framework, Pascale weaves a tale that is part socio-political allegory, part psychological horror, and part speculative satire.

The novel opens with a grim trip to the market, as a Lavender-Banded woman—one of the society’s disenfranchised—struggles to purchase desperately needed medication on the eve of the winter Solstice. The Red Bands, once called simply “Boomers,” now rule through opaque policies, nostalgia-fueled cruelty, and an experimental pharmaceutical called Solidox. The Red Bands, you see, now dominate their society ruthlessly, literally preying upon those younger than themselves. The rules of the Solstice are clear: everyone must leave their homes; anyone caught indoors will be executed. The streets become a hunting ground for the Red Bands, who select their prey based on color, class, and whim.

Pascale’s narrative blends visceral horror with sharp social critique. Her dystopia is not built from abstract tyranny but from a warped exaggeration of contemporary generational anxieties and consumerist excess. The Red Bands aren’t merely villains—they are grotesque parodies of entitlement and longevity, dolled up in sequins and boat-themed T-shirts as they disembowel and consume their victims. Pascale leans into the absurdity of their privilege, creating villains who are both terrifying and painfully recognizable.

What makes The Solstice truly disturbing is its plausibility. The world is fully realized and horrifying in its logic. The Solidox drug—developed initially to stimulate appetite in terminal cats—transforms its users into carnivores with enhanced sensory perception and a taste for human flesh. The chapters detailing the drug’s research history and unintended human applications are among the book’s most chilling. Particularly memorable is the backstory of Dr. John, a lonely child prodigy whose desire for maternal approval sets the groundwork for the Red Band regime’s rise.

Despite its bleak premise, Pascale’s novel is deeply human. Through the interwoven lives of characters like Leroy, the store manager trying to survive another Solstice from his supermarket ceiling, or Holly Blue, a woman clinging to normalcy in a collapsing world, Pascale captures the small acts of resistance and survival that persist even in the most brutal conditions. These moments give the novel its emotional weight, even as they underscore the futility of rebellion in a system designed to exploit hope itself.

Pascale’s prose is efficient and evocative, at times almost poetic in its despair. Pascale balances tone and structure with skill, shifting between perspectives and stylistic modes—first-person horror, pseudo-scientific reports, allegorical vignettes—without losing coherence. The result is a novel that is both thematically rich and structurally ambitious.

The Solstice will appeal to fans of dystopian fiction with a taste for the grotesque—readers of Margaret Atwood, Chuck Palahniuk, or Kathe Koja will find much to admire here. Pascale has created a world that is simultaneously surreal and brutally logical, filled with moments of satirical brilliance and gut-punch horror.

This is not escapist fiction; it is a ruthless examination of generational resentment, class cruelty, and the false promises of medical and technological progress. But within that bleak vision lies a dark, compulsive energy—a fierce commitment to storytelling that refuses to flinch.

Pascale’s The Solstice is provocative, original, and deeply unsettling.

This review originally appeared in Hellnotes.

Book Review: The Secret House by Gregory Frost

On By bibliorexIn Book ReviewsLeave a comment

The Secret House
Gregory Frost
JournalStone Publishing (June 13, 2025)
Reviewed by Andrew Byers

Gregory Frost’s The Secret House is a gripping historical fantasy and occult thriller that masterfully fuses gothic horror with an alternate retelling of a pivotal moment in American political history. Set in the shadowy aftermath of President William Henry Harrison’s abrupt death in 1841, the novel imagines what might have transpired inside the White House during Vice President John Tyler’s sudden ascent to power—not just in terms of political chaos, but in the unsettling possibility of malign supernatural forces at work behind the scenes.

At the heart of the story is James Hambleton Christian, a literate, enslaved man of mixed race owned by the Tyler family, who becomes an unexpected witness—and eventual participant—in a strange and possibly otherworldly conspiracy unfolding within the walls of the Executive Mansion. When Tyler assumes the presidency under ambiguous constitutional circumstances, James is brought to Washington as his personal servant. What he finds there is a decaying house of power filled with uneasy spirits, anxious servants, a scheming sorcerer/occultist, the spirit of a dead man that refuses to rest quietly, and doors that open by themselves onto things that should not be.

Frost’s prose is precise and evocative, bringing to life both the crumbling opulence of the early nineteenth-century White House and the intense claustrophobia of being caught between political intrigue and supernatural dread. His eye for period detail never overwhelms the narrative but enriches it, creating a deeply immersive world. The book’s early chapters, with their vivid depictions of foggy streets, half-lit rooms, and anxious whispers, immediately evoke the mood of classic haunted house tales. But The Secret House is more than a ghost story—it’s also a biting commentary on power, servitude, and the erasures of history.

The novel excels in its portrayal of James, whose intelligence, inner life, and growing desperation give the narrative its emotional weight. His knowledge of Shakespeare, music, and literature sets him apart in a world that refuses to see him as fully human, and his perspective allows Frost to explore the contradictions of a nation built on freedom yet riddled with bondage. The other characters—particularly the imperious and self-absorbed John Tyler, the enigmatic Miss Letitia, and the household staff left behind by Harrison—are rendered with subtlety and complexity, adding depth to the unfolding mystery.

What sets The Secret House apart is its slow, measured build of unease. The horror here is atmospheric rather than overt. Rooms open on their own. Shadows move where none should be. Spiders nest in the chandeliers. And at the center of it all lies the body of President Harrison, whose presence continues to cast a long, uncanny shadow. Frost smartly resists cheap jump scares or conventional genre resolutions. Instead, he crafts a narrative that is both intellectually and emotionally resonant, balancing the demands of historical fiction with the conventions of weird horror.

The Secret House is a bold, imaginative novel that invites comparisons to the works of Victor LaValle and Tananarive Due—writers who similarly blend the supernatural with the legacies of American injustice. Frost’s story is rooted in deep research and historical insight, yet it remains eerie, disorienting, and speculative in the best sense. This is a haunted house novel in which the real ghosts are history, power, and the people America has tried to forget.

A haunting, thought-provoking, and elegantly written book, The Secret House is one of the most original recent American Gothic novels.

This review originally appeared in Hellnotes.

Book Review: Rabbit Face and Further Awful Encounters by Thomas C. Mavroudis

On By bibliorexIn Book ReviewsLeave a comment

Rabbit Face and Further Awful Encounters
Thomas C. Mavroudis
JournalStone Publishing (April 25, 2025)
Reviewed by Andrew Byers

In Rabbit Face and Further Awful Encounters, Thomas C. Mavroudis offers readers a compelling collection of thirteen literary horror stories that are both richly atmospheric and deeply unsettling. This is Mavroudis’s debut collection, and it announces the arrival of a distinct voice in weird fiction, one that confidently blends the uncanny with emotional depth and narrative precision.

The titular story, “Rabbit Face,” is a standout work of psychological horror. Set in a snowbound cabin on a remote mountain lake, it follows young Gordon as he accompanies his father and uncle on a winter fishing trip that slowly turns hallucinatory and horrific. With prose that is quietly lyrical and charged with dread, Mavroudis captures the ambiguity of trauma, the complexity of familial relationships, and the terrible pull of the wilderness. The story’s slow-burn unease, paired with a genuinely frightening climax involving a mysterious rabbit mask and a doppelgänger-like presence, makes for one of the most memorable horror tales in recent memory.

The pieces that follow vary considerably in tone, structure, and style, but are unified by their interest in identity, memory, and the intrusion of the irrational into the everyday. In “The Bloody Cask of Rasputin,” Mavroudis pivots to paranoid debauched horror, weaving together Cold War anxieties, a pagan immortality cult, and tabloid sleaze. The result is a pulpy but tightly constructed narrative that wears its literary and pop-cultural influences with pride while carving out something wholly original. It’s this kind of tonal flexibility—equal parts darkly comic and sincerely terrifying—that gives the collection its vitality.

Another standout is “Antumbra,” a surreal and claustrophobic tale set within a childhood home’s crawlspace. Here, the author evokes the feel of early Clive Barker and Thomas Ligotti, where subterranean spaces and half-seen figures suggest not only monsters, but buried traumas. Likewise, “A Pantheon of Trash” and “Dinner and a Show” experiment with narrative voice and form, revealing Mavroudis’s range as both a stylist and a storyteller.

Despite the eclecticism of its contents, the collection is cohesive in its mood and motifs. Many stories explore the legacy of violence—familial, historical, or cosmic—and the disorienting ways in which past and present bleed into each other. The settings range from grimy urban apartments to isolated forests, from Cold War-era England to contemporary America, yet each story is rooted in character and atmosphere. The horror in these tales is rarely straightforward. Instead, it is existential, internalized, and often tied to the failures of communication and the slow erosion of self.

Mavroudis is especially skilled at evoking a kind of middle space between the real and the unreal, often leaving readers with a lingering sense of wrongness that refuses neat resolution. His language is spare but evocative, and his dialogue—particularly in family scenes—is naturalistic and emotionally resonant. This is horror fiction for readers who appreciate ambiguity, emotional nuance, and a willingness to stare into the abyss without blinking.

Rabbit Face and Further Awful Encounters is a confident and accomplished debut. Mavroudis writes with the assurance of someone who understands the uncanny not as a trope but as a psychological condition. Fans of literary horror, particularly those who admire the work of Robert Aickman, Brian Evenson, or Laird Barron, will find much to admire here.

This review originally appeared in Hellnotes.