cynicaltrilobite's reviews
93 reviews

I adore the concept, the creature designs, and the atmosphere. I fucking hate fridging female characters. So, make of that what you will.

How many times do we have to say it, stop reading books of eldritch lore unless you can hold off a dude that literally turns you into a pile of dust.

It's ok, but amazing, not terrible. I did like the descriptions of how everything was slowly starting to rot all around our main character though.

Pretty good! No overt racism, so good on ya Lovecraft, but vaguely prejudice against the Dutch??? Ah well, baby steps.

Lovecraft does have this weird fascination with breeding and lineages that can be a somewhat alien concept to modern readers. A number of his monsters come about because someone fucked a fish person, a tentacled entity, or their own cousin. Gives a somewhat interesting look into the man's mindset.

I do really enjoy the mystery that the Lurking Fear presents and how all the clues eventually make sense once the big reveal comes about. That being said, I do feel this suffers from one of his common pitfalls of being extremely long and wordy for the sake of being long and wordy, but what can ya do.

Give this one a read for sure.

Gang, this is why we microdose before taking enough drugs to cross the spacetime continuum.

A fun little romp of a man who manages to get so high that he's able to travel back to the space before spaces and the time before time and in the process catches the ire of a group of extremely alien pursuers.

The eponymous hounds are anything but doglike. They're never fully described but are referred to with angular and sharp language. Appropriately, they can only travel through angles and are befuddled by smooth curves.

Cue our protagonist plastering up all the corners in his wall in a futile attempt to stave off the beasts(?)

I like this one for just how alien the antagonists are. It's also really not clear WHY they're so gung ho about killing the protagonist. Their reasons are entirely alien, through and through.

Once more everyone, don't follow strange rituals found in obscure pieces of crumbling lore. It never ends well.

Decent, and the twist of the pamphlet trap is fun. Everything else gets muddled and cluttered. It becomes a sort of fucked up rescue attempt to get a decapitated dudes head out of the strange nether realms two idiots sent him to.

Not awful, but could have been much more.

A fun little story that contains two genres I really enjoy, cosmic horror and detective stories. I can't wait to take in more Peter Van Melsen tales!

I guess my only complaint would be that I found it surprisingly easy to dispose of the eponymous Soul Stealer. But, I am not a fan of sudden bright lights in a well accustomed dark room myself, so I can't say I blame the creature for shriveling up.

Sasquatch Jerky. Sasquatch Jerky. Sasquatch Jerky. Sasquatch Jerky.

First things first, I read this thing in 3 days, a reading feat I haven't accomplished since middle school. Yay me!

I didn't really like this when it started. The characters (barring a few) were all obnoxious on the nose caricatures of the west coast "I'd have voted for Obama a third time" type liberals. The kind of upper middle class people who go to a New Mexico suburb to seek spiritual enlightenment. I did enjoy the almost stream of consciousness style that the main character's journal had.

I was also freaked the hell out to learn that Mt. Reiner is ABSOLUTELY capable of blowing its top and absolutely decimating the surrounding population centers with massive super heated mudslides. So, thanks Max Brooks!

The real tension of the book is the encounters between bigfoot and our stranded characters. And holy shit, it takes its time getting going but wowza when it starts it's absolutely brutal. It's one thing to think about getting eaten by a mountain lion or a bear. Something else entirely to think about a big ass ape chowing down on your bone marrow.

Last thing I'll say, Mostar is the best character, that's all.

This book, I swear on God. I want to like it so badly, I really do. The technical writing and the imagery are just top notch phenomenal. I think the characters can be a little one note, but they're serviceable. I also think the villain is absolutely wretched and thus his eventual death is a delight.

And then, there's the issues. This book is too real with its horror. Yes, there's a vampire running around sucking blood, controlling rats, and disliking sunlight. He also really prefers to feed on children and starts by targeting poor black kids. So... there's that. Also, an old woman with dementia is eaten alive by rats. Also also, there's a super vicious and disturbing rape sequence about 2/3 of the way through, so thanks for that.

By far the worst part of this book is the husbands. Explain to me how a book written in 2020 has worse male characters than another vampire book written in 1897 (Dracula, my beloved)? I cannot STAND how the wives are constantly talked down to, pushed around, and sometimes literally beaten by these awful shitty men. I get that it happens in real life, I get that it's a reality for millions of women every day, but why the fuck is it in my whimsically titled "The Southern Book Club's Guide to Vampire Slaying?" I feel like I was given a damned bait and switch.

I am also not a fan of how this book treats its black characters and it's a sparrow fart away from some white savior nonsense.

The thing that most frustrates me is that I can't just say "Oh, this sucks, one star" and move on with my day. It's very very well written and I love certain aspects of it, the initial attack by Ann Savage and the attic scene are *chef's kiss*. In fact, the extended dismembering scene at the end of the book is the sole reason I didn't give it one star and call it a day.

The thing I want to end on is that in his Forward, Grady Hendrix says that this book is the fruition of the idea "What if my Mom fought Dracula?" After reading this book, that sentence is absolutely fascinating to me in all the wrong ways.

Definitely see where this fits into the modern vampire landscape puzzle. Whereas book Dracula definitely takes a more backseat approach to tormenting his victims, Carmilla is out here taking tea with them and then mocking their funeral processions. My brother astutely joked that Dracula and Carmilla are two sides of the same shitty coin that is pubescent boys girls in highschool. But you know... vampires.

I also find it fascinating how much love the sapphic community has towards Carmilla despite her very clearly being a predator/murderer of women. I've spoken with several much more well read friends of mine about the matter and it seems to be a mix of genuine lack of cool lesbians to look up to along with the "danger is cool so long as it's fiction" thing that we are all guilty of. I know damned well that I thirsted over the tall Resident Evil vampire lady despite full well knowing she had a torture basement and was a horrible sadist.

My main complaint with the story is that it retreads itself for most of the last 1/3 of its length and repeats more or less what we've already observed but in a more contained manner. Hell, our narrator isn't even present for the staking of Carmilla (to be fair, Carmilla is sleeping in a coffin filled with 7 inches of blood and screams when staked, so props).

Def give it a read, but keep in mind that it does show its age in a few notable ways.

Wow. That's all I can say is wow. For a book that's 126 years old, Dracula has held up amazingly well. It's certainly a case of a book earning the title of "a classic."

I could gush for probably paragraphs about everything I love in this book, but I'll keep it exceedingly short and sweet with just a few things.

• There's an honest to God Texan cowboy in it

• Lucy Westenta did nothing wrong and I will die on her hill

• Dracula is legitimately creepy and a horrific force to overcome

• The book has oddly comedic moments like Dracula throwing a wolf through a window or three terriers coming at the call of a whistle to kill an army of Dracula controlled rats

• Wasn't sold on Renfield until his story all came together the end

• I adore the whole Boyfriend Squad actually

• Mina and Jonathan Harker are couple goals, like seriously

• Mina girlbosses so hard

• Van Helsing is great as well

Seriously, give this a read. I was so pleasantly surprised by it and it's very quickly risen to become one of my favorite books I've ever read.