Only two reads this month – one long novel and a short story collection.
I’ve already written about Shrine to some degree with the comparison I made to the movie adaptation, The Unholy.
Focusing on the novel alone, it’s an effective slow-burn. Journalist Gerry Fenn is out seeking a story for the local paper, when he nearly runs down deaf-mute Alice. He follows her to a tree by the church in the village of Banefield, where he’s sure she speaks…
This starts a series of miracles at the site, and the novel grows in scope as we see multiple characters trying to take advantage of the situation. The whole time there is a sinister undertone which grows and grows as Fenn comes to realise what’s really driving the events at the church.
While the pace is slow, there are some absolutely fantastic scenes, including an encounter in a church basement and a breath-taking escape from a burning building.
If anything lets the story down, it’s the ending which involves an underdeveloped character. If feels like a little of their part was edited out, making their actions less significant, but overall it’s an enjoyable tale.
Dark Voices is an anthology featuring 10 horror writers, many who I was reading for the first time. Some of the stories are excellent, while a couple fail to hit the mark. As a whole the anthology mixes traditional horror ideas with some really inventive elements, so we get the undead, and we get vampiric creatures, and ghosts, but there are also giant alien ants, parasitic worms and nightmarish scenarios.
Some of the stories really surprised me. Michelle von Eschen’s opener The Madness Coil I feared was going a bit James McAvoy in Split, but then it becomes something much more surprising, something much more horrific, much better. CL Raven’s Buried at Sea is an unusual but effective subsea haunting. Rod Glenn’s clearly having fun with Seahouses Slaughterhouse. J.R. Park gives us a gore-fest in Grinderhouse and the Babyface Killer is particularly inventive. I loved Matt Shaw’s depiction of a brain that won’t leave you alone when you feel terrible in Toss and Turn. The highlight for me was Dave Jeffrey’s We Are the Cosmos. It’s a beautifully affecting tale of a haunting. It captures a life, a love, and evokes genuine sadness.
There’s something for every horror fan in this collection.