Month: May 2022

Book Review: And in Her Smile, the World by Rebecca J. Allred & Gordon B. White

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And in Her Smile, the World
Rebecca J. Allred & Gordon B. White
Trepidatio Publishing (February 11, 2022)
Reviewed by Andrew Byers

I went into the reading of And in Her Smile, the World with no expectations for what I was about to experience and was promptly blown away by the sheer creepiness and surreality of the story. I think that’s the right way to approach this one, so I won’t give away too many of the twists and turns. This really is a case where the less you think you know about this novella’s premise the better.

The reality of the world of And in Her Smile, the World is not what we think it is. There is a being known as the Quiet Woman with the power to unmake the world and a hidden cult of women who serve her and whose smiles can alter reality in sudden and terrifying ways. Jeffrey and Serena discovered something of these truths during their childhoods and, as adults, are drawn much deeper into this mystery. What happens when you discover that the world is not what you think it is? What happens when you discover that you yourself have the power to change reality?

And in Her Smile, the World is a prime example of how to create a truly original work of cosmic horror when you throw out all the old paradigms and cosmologies and start from scratch to create something truly new and original. The result was extremely creepy—which is always appreciated—and I have to say that it’s going to be hard to look at a big, toothy grin the same way after reading And in Her Smile, the World.

Rebecca Allred is a new writer to me, though I was already familiar with Gordon White’s excellent Rookfield (reviewed here previously). Their joint prose stylings are smooth and effortless. This is a quick-moving tale with just the right blending of action, characterization, and uncertainty for the reader about what’s coming next.

It’s the mark of an excellent tale that can take something as innocuous as a stranger walking toward you—as the film It Follows did—and make it genuinely terrifying. That’s rare, but And in Her Smile, the World has now done something similar with a simple smile. A haunting smile that just keeps growing and growing, exposing more and more teeth all the while…and with the power to consume and alter reality. If you’re seeking a creepy, surreal tale of cosmic horror, look no further than And in Her Smile, the World. Recommended.

This review originally appeared in Hellnotes.

Week 224 – Weekly Horror Short Story Reviews: Golden, Mignola, Basso, La Spina, and Wilson

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Welcome to Week 224 of my horror short fiction review project! Some okay stories this week with one clear stand-out: “H.P.L.” by Gahan Wilson. If you have any fondness for Lovecraft, I think you’ll appreciate this one as a very pleasant fantasy about how Lovecraft’s life might have turned out had he lived longer.

Hellbound Hearts, edited by Paul Kane and Marie O’Regan (Pocket Books, 2009)

“Mechanisms” by Christopher Golden and Mike Mignola

Overly long for not nearly enough payoff. Colin Radford is a young man studying at Oxford, probably at some point in the nineteenth century. He returns home after being notified that his father has gone missing. The man seems to have built a Rube Goldberg-esque machine in the basement to contact his dead wife. The man seems to have entered it, becoming one with the machine. His son follows. Not bad by any means, but also entirely unconnected with the Hellraiser mythos—no one has committed a transgression worthy of being dragged off to Hell. A man simply built a machine to contact his dead wife’s spirit.

The Weird: A Compendium of Strange and Dark Stories, edited by Ann and Jeff Vandermeer (Tor, 2012)

“The Beak Doctor” by Eric Basso

A plague doctor lives in a permanently fog-shrouded city that is afflicted with a strange disease that causes random citizens to fall into coma-like slumbers from which they cannot be awoken. These slumbering near-corpses are sometimes raped by passersby when it happens in public. That’s mostly about it. This was far, far, far too long of a story and not worth the lengthy wordcount in my view.

Weird Vampire Tales, edited by Robert Weinberg, Stefan R. Dziemianowicz, and Martin H. Greenberg, (Gramercy Books, 1992)

“The Antimacassar” by Greye La Spina

Kind of disappointing really. Lucy is a mother driven to madness by the fact that her daughter Kathy has become a vampire and murdered a woman. Comes off like way too much of a soap opera for my liking.

Cthulhu 2000, edited by Jim Turner (Del Rey, 1999)

“H.P.L.” by Gahan Wilson

Long but charming. Edward Haines Vernon is a young writer who is in regular correspondence with a 100-year-old Lovecraft in an alternate universe where Lovecraft learned to harness the power of various Cthulhu Mythos beings on his deathbed and went on to live a very happy and successful life. He even managed to resurrect a deceased Clark Ashton Smith from his “essential saltes” to serve as his companion. The duo live in a wonderfully described mansion, and take young “Edwardius,” as HPL calls him, as an understudy. It seems that HPL must periodically make sacrifices to the Mythos beings, though those are just bad people who write negative reviews of his work and the like, so no harm done. Eventually HPL is taken off by one of these summoned entities and Edwardius must live on in his stead. A wonderful, long life for poor HPL, which we all wish he had gotten to enjoy.


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Book Review: The Golden Road by Selene dePackh

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The Golden Road
Selene dePackh
JournalStone (February 25, 2022)
Reviewed by Andrew Byers

I read a lot of supernatural horror—don’t get me wrong, I love supernatural horror—but The Golden Road is a reminder that you don’t need supernatural elements to have a thoroughly enjoyable, creepy, suspenseful horror story.

While Selene dePackh was new to me as an author, I very much admire what she’s done here. The novella’s premise is a pretty simple one: we have two older women, Stephanie and Sylvie—deeply close friends—who live in rural Maine. Stephanie discovers a badly injured wolf-dog hybrid and brings it to Sylvie, who is a gifted healer. Several complications emerge immediately: the dog is potentially extremely violent, and probably not even suitable to keep as a pet; Stephanie is being stalked by an ex-husband who is insane, twisted, and increasingly desperate; and Sylvie is barely clinging to sanity via her spiritual practices. This is a recipe for a titanic, suspenseful, highly satisfying clash, and The Golden Road doesn’t disappoint.

A story like this hinges on the depth of the characterization for the central characters. I’m delighted to report that dePackh doesn’t disappoint—her characterization of Stephanie and Sylvie was supremely good. These are women who come off as fully realized, and deeply troubled, people. Everyone in The Golden Road, human and animal alike, is damaged. There’s nothing better than reading about how damaged individuals cope with stress, trauma, and danger. I would also add that The Golden Road offers a fascinating and detailed examination of mental illness, individual spiritual practices, and the uses of spirituality for dealing with trauma and mental illness. This can be dreary or hopelessly vague stuff if done poorly, but it works well here. We’ve also got a genuine sense of menace throughout. Stephanie’s stalker ex who sets things in motion is chilling, as is his use of surveillance. I’m increasingly coming to find the use of newer technologies for illicit surveillance and nefarious purposes deeply creepy, so it was very nice—and by “nice” I mean extremely creepy—to see how that plays out in this story.

I thoroughly enjoyed The Golden Road and was on tenterhooks the entire I was reading it. It’s a very taut tale of suspense and tension throughout that lends itself to binge-reading. Recommended.

This review originally appeared in Hellnotes.

Week 223 – Weekly Horror Short Story Reviews: Garris, Tiptree, Kline, Long, and Russ

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Welcome to Week 223 of my horror short fiction review project! Some good stories this week. While I really liked Mick Garris’ story set in the Hellraiser universe, my favorite was “The Psychologist Who Wouldn’t Do Awful Things to Rats” by James Tiptree, Jr. Since this one involves unspeakable animal cruelty in the name of “science,” this one is not for the faint of heart, but I think it’s an outstanding story.

Hellbound Hearts, edited by Paul Kane and Marie O’Regan (Pocket Books, 2009)

“Hellbound Hollywood” by Mick Garris

A washed-up filmmaker desperate to make a comeback in Hollywood foolishly decides to film his next movie at the house at 55 Ludovico Street (longtime Hellraiser fans will understand why that is a terrible idea). There, he makes contact with the Cenobites, who corrupt his mind. He seduces a female member of his crew and the two are dragged off to Hell. Atmospheric and fun. Good callbacks to the centrality of lust to the original Hellraiser concept.

The Weird: A Compendium of Strange and Dark Stories, edited by Ann and Jeff Vandermeer (Tor, 2012)

“The Psychologist Who Wouldn’t Do Awful Things to Rats” by James Tiptree, Jr.

Tilly Lipsitz works at an animal laboratory that conducts horrifying experiments, including torture and vivisections, on animals. Tilly has a kind heart and treats his experimental animals well, and is mocked and professionally threatened for doing so. After his job is threatened, he gets drunk on absinthe and returns to the laboratory to kill all of his animals and start over. He has some vivid hallucinatory experiences there (I’ve drunk absinthe and unlike the urban legends about it, it no more induces hallucinations than any other kind of liquor) and is transformed. By the end of the story he plans to embark on a twisted series of experiments on horses, the cuter the better. Horrifying and hard to read at times, but good.

Weird Vampire Tales, edited by Robert Weinberg, Stefan R. Dziemianowicz, and Martin H. Greenberg, (Gramercy Books, 1992)

“Return of the Undead” by Otis Adelbert Kline and Frank Belknap Long

A group of medical students unearth a corpse and use it in a plan on one of their friends, but they unwittingly unleash a vampire on campus. Not bad, and probably a bit too long, but still decent for a period story set on a college campus.

Cthulhu 2000, edited by Jim Turner (Del Rey, 1999)

“’I Had Vacantly Crumpled It into My Pocket … But By God, Eliot, It Was a Photograph from Life!’” by Joanna Russ

Irvin Rubin, a socially awkward bookkeeper and incessant reader, has met an ominous and mysterious woman who seems, inexplicably, romantically interested in him. He plans marriage, but those plans go awry and poor Irvin ends up dead in the snow. I think that implication may have been that the woman was a MI-Go wearing a human body disguise, but she may have been intended as some other Mythos entity. Not bad, it’s certainly evocative.


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Week 222 – Weekly Horror Short Story Reviews: Pinborough, Etchison, del Rey, and Newman

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Welcome to Week 222 of my horror short fiction review project! Some good stories this week. While I really liked Kim Newman’s tale of WWII Hollywood and the Cthulhu Mythos, my favorite was “The Confessor’s Tale” by Sarah Pinborough. Here we’ve got the crappy lives of Tsarist Russian peasants blended with the horrors of Hellraiser.

Hellbound Hearts, edited by Paul Kane and Marie O’Regan (Pocket Books, 2009)

“The Confessor’s Tale” by Sarah Pinborough

Arkady is a Russian orphan (living in Tsarist Russia) whose tongue was torn out in infancy either by a wolf or his own mother, the stories vary. He inherits a strange set of tiles from his mother, who dies early on, that fill in with intricate designs after people confess their darkest sins to him. (People are strangely drawn to confess to the mute and illiterate boy.) These people then find themselves dying in strange and horrible ways shortly after their confessions, though Arkady himself is not the means of their demise. Arkady is then taken into a boyar’s service, who likewise confesses to him and then…the Cenobites show up. Very evocative characters and setting—I liked the expansion of the Hellraiser mythos here.

The Weird: A Compendium of Strange and Dark Stories, edited by Ann and Jeff Vandermeer (Tor, 2012)

[previously reviewed] “The Hospice” by Robert Aickman

“It Only Comes Out at Night” by Dennis Etchison

McClay and his sleepy (or sick, it’s unclear) wife Evie are traveling through the desert at night in their car. I got a vague sense that they might be fleeing something, but the context for why they are on this road trip remains unclear. They encounter a rest stop, which McClay stops at briefly and considers taking a nap there, but decides to press on. He changes his mind a while later and returns to find that something horrible and inexplicable has occurred. The cars seem to have aged a great deal and been in place at the rest stop for what seems like a very long time, plus there are obviously murdered people inside the cars. Creepy, though some kind of sense as to what is going on here—even the merest hint or speculation on McClay’s part—would have helped immensely.

Weird Vampire Tales, edited by Robert Weinberg, Stefan R. Dziemianowicz, and Martin H. Greenberg, (Gramercy Books, 1992)

“Cross of Fire” by Lester del Rey

A man who has been afflicted my vampirism for some time is struck by a cross-shaped bolt of lightning, which somehow (divinely?) frees him of his curse. He has partial amnesia, but the horrified reactions of the local citizenry to him and a conveniently placed diary clue him in on what has transpired. He then destroys his sister and a former servant, both now vampires, as well as himself. Good.

Cthulhu 2000, edited by Jim Turner (Del Rey, 1999)

[previously reviewed]“Fat Face” by Michael Shea

“The Big Fish” by Kim Newman

Too long, but fun nevertheless. A stereotypical hardboiled detective in WWII Los Angeles is hired by an actress to find the mobster who, she says, has abducted her son. Things turn out to be much more complicated than that in a plot involving the creation of Deep One hybrids, an abandoned casino ship moored off the coast, and a team of Allied government agents who I’m sure I was supposed to recognize from pop culture, given that this is a Kim Newman story. Lots and lots of pop culture references throughout. Enjoyable.


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Week 221 – Weekly Horror Short Story Reviews: Williams, du Maurier, Johnson, and Chappell

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Welcome to Week 221 of my horror short fiction review project! Some good elements in this week’s stories but my favorite was “The Adder” by Fred Chappell about a copy of the Necronomicon in an antiquarian book shop in Durham, North Carolina (where I used to live), and some really horrifying implications for the world. Really fun existential horror.

Hellbound Hearts, edited by Paul Kane and Marie O’Regan (Pocket Books, 2009)

“The Cold” by Conrad Williams

Detective Gravier is hunting a serial killer who kills young women and then dumps the bodies in a pile of ice. Gravier is my favorite kind of detective: rude, abrasive, deeply unhappy, with a broken marriage and an empty life entirely devoid of meaning. He eventually finds Lady Ice, who is likely a Cenobite, who likes to vivisect young women, including her latest victim, a woman who she says was Gravier’s soul mate (he encountered this woman briefly years ago but never followed up). I liked everything about this story except the reveal of the killer, which seemed a little crude and poorly done. I get that she’s a Cenobite, but it was unclear why she was killing the women.

The Weird: A Compendium of Strange and Dark Stories, edited by Ann and Jeff Vandermeer (Tor, 2012)

“Don’t Look Now” by Daphne du Maurier

John and Laura are a married couple vacationing in Venice and trying to get over the death of their young daughter. They encounter two old sisters, one of them blind and psychic, who give Laura comfort and a warning to leave Venice ASAP. They soon get a call that their son has been hospitalized with appendicitis and Laura departs. John stays behind with the car and luggage, but then thinks he sees Laura the next day with the sisters, and, fearing the worst, initiates a police investigation to find out what is going on. John also learns that a murderer is on the loose in Venice. Not long thereafter, he encounters a young girl, who appears to be pursued by a man (the killer?). The “girl” turns out to be a murderous dwarf who kills John. This whole murderer sub-plot feels extremely tacked-on, and I think the story would have been much stronger without it.

Weird Vampire Tales, edited by Robert Weinberg, Stefan R. Dziemianowicz, and Martin H. Greenberg, (Gramercy Books, 1992)

“The Silver Coffin” by Robert Barbour Johnson

Not much to this one. The caretaker of a crypt takes a visitor on a tour of the crypt he maintains, where notorious vampire Andrew Holt is imprisoned in his coffin (the eponymous silver coffin, of course). It seems that Holt is still alive (or unalive, I suppose) in the coffin, and makes this known when he scents the visitor’s blood. A bit of a letdown actually. I didn’t love this one—it just seemed like a fizzle, and a real missed opportunity.

Cthulhu 2000, edited by Jim Turner (Del Rey, 1999)

“The Adder” by Fred Chappell

An antiquarian bookseller in Durham, North Carolina (where I lived for more than a decade; sadly, there are no actual antiquarian bookstores there) is handed a copy of Al Azif (you might know this forbidden tome better by its alternate title, the Necronomicon) by his uncle for safekeeping. His uncle warns him that the book, like an adder, “first it poisons then it devours.” This is ominous, but inadequate in terms of how the book should be properly stored during the week it resides in Durham. The bookseller hides it with a battered old copy of Milton’s poetry. Too late, he realizes that Al Azif has begun to corrupt the text, then make it go away entirely by consuming it—and this is every copy of Milton’s work everywhere in the world, along with everyone’s memories of the original text, not just that single copy. The bookseller and his uncle work hard to restore the words, with imperfect results. Really excellent and thrilling tale.


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