Category: crime

Butchers

A Vampire Novella by Todd Sullivan

3/5 Star Review

After a botched raid in an attempt to apprehend Cheol Yu, high school student Sey-Mi is kidnapped and forced to join the Gwanlyo. The Gwanlyo Company acts as the governing body of vampires in South Korea. They create, monitor, discipline, and enforce all vampire activity in the country to maintain order and secrecy. Sey-Mi is Cheol Yu’s blood relative and will stop at nothing to get her back. He partners with Hyeri, a rogue agent, to track her down and free her. They end up finding an unexpected ally in Min Gun, a Gwanlyo agent, who develops feelings for Sey-Mi.

Butchers is a solid read and will scratch that itch if you’re looking for something a little fresh and a little different in a vampire story. Sullivan clearly draws from his experience living and teaching in Asia and paints a believable backdrop for the novella. While Butchers is touted as extreme horror, I would argue that it’s more straight horror with a few scenes of hyper violence and a sexual assault. If you’re not normally a reader of extreme horror, don’t let that description put you off because if you’re a horror reader, you can handle this. Then again, if SA is a trigger for you, you’ll want to avoid this read all together.

While I had a few nitpicks with this novella, I would recommend it to fans of the vampire genre who are looking for something a little more unique than your standard fare. Butchers ends on a bit of a cliff-hanger, but there is a follow-up novella available, The Gray Man of Smoke and Shadows.

I received a free copy of this novella in exchange for an honest review.

On The Savage Side

A novel of unforgettable women by Tiffany McDaniel

5/5 Star Review

After Betty, Tiffany McDaniel cemented herself as an absolute must-read author for me and On the Savage Side did not disappoint.

First and foremost, this novel is dedicated to, and inspired by, six real-life women who have come to be known as the Chillicothe Six: Charlotte Trego, Tameka Lynch, Wanda Lemons, Shasta Himelrick, Timberly Claytor, and Tiffany Sayre. They went missing over the course of 2014-2015 and their murders remain unsolved. These women were mothers, sisters, daughters, and friends – they were people who mattered to someone and it’s important that they be remembered as such and not just another statistic.

“The first sin was believing we would never die. The second sin was believing we were alive in the first place.”

On the Savage Side is a novel about twin sisters, Arcade and Daffodil, who are born to addicts. During their childhood, they are often pulled away from that environment by their loving grandmother – a woman full of love and stories. After a tragic accident that leaves their grandmother dead, the girls are forced back into their home with their parents and aunt and enter the cycle of generational poverty and addiction. Arc and Daffy are working the streets of Chillicothe when the first woman is found dead in the river. One by one, their friends start to disappear and Arc becomes increasingly desperate to save her sister and herself.

This novel left me utterly gutted. It is tragic and bleak and heart-wrenching. McDaniel’s lyrical prose paints a landscape that is beautiful in its brutality and characters who are unforgettable. On the Savage Side pulls no punches and details what life is like for the women who we like to forget exist in our society. The women who we look down upon because of poverty and addiction. The women who are someone to somebody, but whose disappearances and assaults go unsolved because of their station in life.

It’s taken me some time to write this review. It’s not often that a book hits me so hard that I have to sit it down and walk away, but this one did. Several times. I felt so many emotions reading this novel – anger, disgust, sadness, depression – that when I finally finished it, I had to spend some time digesting it.

Horror fans might wonder why this would appeal to them and they shouldn’t be deceived by the novel being touted as literary fiction. This novel contains many horrific elements, the most prominent eliciting a strong feeling of dread throughout the entirety of the book.

While this is the most devastating coming-of-age tale that I have ever read, I can’t recommend it highly enough. It’s a difficult read, but well worth the investment of your time.

If there is one takeaway from On the Savage Side, it’s this – Do not forget. Never forget.

Master of Horror: Poppy Z. Brite

Revisiting Lost Souls, Drawing Blood, and Wormwood

Some books feel like coming home again – if home is a ramshackle house out on Violin Road in Missing Mile, North Carolina.

I recently decided it was time to revisit some old favorites and it’s been more than twenty years since I’ve picked up these novels and short story collection from Poppy Z. Brite. These books got me through high school. I was a goth kid in a surfer town and it brought me unbelievable comfort knowing there were other kids like me out there in the world – even if they were fiction.

First up was Drawing Blood. This was my favorite when I was younger and I found it to still be my favorite even now. Trevor’s father is a struggling artist whose inability to draw has turned him onto the bottle. One night, when Trevor is just five years old, his dad takes a hammer and kills his mother, brother, and then hangs himself – leaving Trevor alive. Fast forward twenty years and Trevor has returned to Missing Mile, to the house where it happened, looking for answers. Zach, a hacker on the run from the cops, is also newly arrived in town. The two meet and have an immediate bond. As Trevor tries to get to the bottom of the mystery as to why he was left alive, Zach keeps him grounded with one foot still in our world while the other swings wildly into the supernatural. I love how untraditional this haunted house novel is and I’m not sure that I have yet read its equal.

Next up was Lost Souls. Technically a prequel to Drawing Blood, this novel takes place predominately in Missing Mile and New Orleans. They do not have to be read in order, but there are nods to events and such in Drawing Blood that happen in Lost Souls. Nothing is a baby left on a doorstep and by the time he is fifteen he realizes that he just doesn’t belong where he is. He steals a $100 from his parents and buys a bus ticket as far south as he can go. His favorite band is a group call Lost Souls? and he decides to head to where they’re from, hoping to meet them. Once the bus money runs out, Nothing starts hitching and fate brings him to the van carrying Zillah, Molochai, and Twig – three vampires. What Poppy Z. Brite did for the haunted house trope in Drawing Blood, he does for the vampires in this novel.

Finally, I took a dive into Wormwood (formerly titled Swamp Foetus). This is a short story collection that contains twelve short stories. Including two that feature Steve and Ghost of the band Lost Souls? They are two of my favorite characters so it was a pleasure to see them again here. Other standouts for me are The Sixth Sentinel about the ghost of Jean Lafitte; A Georgia Story about the lives of four boys who once lived in an abandoned church; The Elder about a man’s love for his son; and His Mouth Will Taste of Wormwood, about two men who can never be satisfied. There is truly not a bad story in this collection.

What’s the takeaway, you may ask? Reading these books again, at almost forty, I found that they still held up extremely well. Some horror dates itself, and not in a good way. Poppy’s books are cloaked in nostalgia and are so character-driven that they could almost happen at any place, during at any time. Poppy knows the south and it flows through these books like very few others. Long story short, I hope it’s not another twenty years before I pick these books up again and I hope you’ll pick them up with me.

And the Devil Cried

A blend of crime noir and extreme violence by Kristopher Triana

Readers of this blog will know that I am a huge Kristopher Triana fan. It doesn’t matter what genre he writes in, he always knocks it out of the park and leaves his own unique flavor behind. And the Devil Cried is no exception to that remark. This novel is as dark and gritty as crime fiction gets. It’s written in first person and our protagonist, Jackie, is the most detestable human being imaginable.

The story begins as Jackie is being let out of prison and set up for the illusion of a straight life by crime boss, Pino. He has an apartment, a job in a deli, and begins working small jobs for Pino on the side. It’s not long before Pino needs Jackie for a job that’s right in his wheelhouse because Jackie is known for doing the jobs that no one else will – jobs that involve women and children.

Jackie is one of the most detestable, unlikable, and vile characters you are going to come across in any genre. He is a complete sociopath. His actions are reprehensible and dare I say, triggering.

I’m not a proponent of trigger warnings in general. Simply put, what triggers me may not trigger you and in this genre it’s difficult to pinpoint all of the triggering subject matter. I know this is an unpopular opinion, but that’s how I feel about it. That being said, if you have a problem with extreme violence and/or abuse, this may not be the book for you and I would be happy to recommend another Triana book to start with.

While I loved the novel, I personally struggled with the abuse of Natalie. She is the counter girl at the deli where Jackie works. He chooses her to be his, for lack of a better word, beard. She represents the normal, straight life he maintains on the surface while still living a dirty, sleazy life just underneath. The mental, physical, and emotional abuse was borderline too much for me. As a victim of emotionally and mental abuse, I wanted a redemption for Natalie that never really happened.

And the Devil Cried is the first release from new publisher, Stygian Sky Media. SSM is the child of Death’s Head Press head-honcho, Jarod Barbee, and acclaimed author, Jeremy Wagner.

If you ask me, this was a great pick to launch the new press and I will be looking forward to future releases from both SSM and Kristopher Triana.