book reviews
Book reviews for horror fans; weather a sleepless night with literary accounts of hauntings, possessions, zombies, vampires and beyond.
"The Turn of the Screw" by Henry James
I was fairly young the first time I read this - around ten or eleven. I’m not going to lie to you, I had my dictionary at the ready and was looking up strange words left, right and centre. First time around, I didn’t really get it, so I went back and read it again and scared myself half to death because, after reading it once, I knew what all the words meant now. For a few days, I didn’t get much sleep and I was up most nights thinking about those weird children and the haunting coldness of Bly Manor. I would re-read the book over the years because the way in which the ghosts psychological enrapture the children is so incredibly intense even though the text itself is relatively short. You’d imagine you would need a long novel to build that kind of atmosphere, but Henry James does it in a short amount of time, leaving you with a shivering and shuddering feeling long after the text has ended. The last time I read it was when I was teaching it, maybe last year some time in the Spring. The students I was teaching it to often admitted that the text felt very dark because of the fact the bad things were happening to children. I think that much like novels such as “The Exorcist” by William Peter Blatty and “Suffer the Children” by John Saul, Henry James offered us a darker look at hauntings and horror through his writing of the innocence and child-like nature of Flora and Miles. It is not only frightening, in some cases it is rather disturbing too.
By Annie Kapur6 years ago in Horror
"The Haunting of Hill House" by Shirley Jackson
I first read this book when I was about fourteen years’ old and honestly I can say that I lost a lot of sleep afterwards. I found it in the library and the copy was a bit tattered and old, it looked like it had been there for a while and I took it home to read at night time. Honestly, I didn’t think it was going to be that bad because by that time, I’d already read and watched William Peter Blatty’s “The Exorcist” and read a bit of Stephen King. I was pretty solid during my teens. But this book is a book that literally chilled me because different to all of those, it was a book in which your mind is completely turned and twisted and even the language makes you swallow your pride. The book is a reality of one woman who slowly loses it and yet, you lose it with her. It’s almost impossible not to feel the book in your body whilst your going through the insanity of its history, its story and every single one of its three dimensional, dark and flawed characters. Before you ask, I wasn’t a big fan of the TV show even though I did watch it - it didn’t seem to have anything similar to the book but the name. I hope they don’t do the same thing with “The Turn of the Screw” by Henry James. I really hope they don’t. But, Carla Gugino was stunning as always.
By Annie Kapur6 years ago in Horror
"Frankenstein" by Mary Shelley
I read “Frankenstein” by Mary Shelley primarily because it was on the syllabus for GCSE Literature whilst I was at school. I found it on a reading list online and thought I would spend the summer trying to understand the angles of it, even if we didn’t study it - I thought it was a good exercise in my ability to read and understand an older text. I was thirteen years’ old and it would prove one of the most intense experiences of my life. It took me only one day to read the entire book. I just could not drag myself away from these extensive narratives. Over ten years’ later when I would be in the midst of teaching this book, I found I had the same passion and the same vigour for the novel I had felt in my teen years. It made me feel almost so young again. This book would become to a thirteen year old what a best friend that accepts a freak becomes to the freak. It became a statement of power. It became to me what I had never really had too much of before - it would become my friend. Especially the Monster. The Monster would be my very best friend.
By Annie Kapur6 years ago in Horror
There's Someone Inside Your House
This book is every person’s nightmare turned into a reality. Whether you believe in intuition or not, everyone has those moments in life when you feel as though you are being watched, as if there is someone just out of your line of sight that is keeping tabs on your every move. Some people feel this more strongly than others, and for those of us, myself included, who feel this so strongly that the hairs stand up on the back of our necks, I would offer a word of caution before reading this book; this book takes the illusion of your home representing safety and security and smashes it to pieces. A lifetime of horror movies have taught me to trust my intuition and that you never investigate mysterious sights/sounds, especially if it’s coming from your dark, musty basement.
By Kurt Mason6 years ago in Horror
Odriel's Heirs by Hayley Reese Chow
Rating: 5/5 Synopsis: The brave, burning with fire, harnessed the Dragon's Rage.... As the Dragon Heir, seventeen-year-old Kaia inherited the power of flame to protect her homeland from a Tell necromancer’s undead army. But after centuries of peace, the necromancer has faded to myth, and the Dragon Heir is feared by the people. Persecuted and cast out, Kaia struggles to embrace and control her seemingly useless gift while confined to her family’s farm.
By Ashley Nestler, MSW6 years ago in Horror
Washington Irving and The Legend of Sleepy Hollow
Washington Ivring and The Legend of Sleepy Hollow part one: setting and time period Ivring was a writer who wanted to bring folklore and fairy tales to the real world. He wanted to us to feel as if this was a legend that had truly happened in some forgotten little town full of sleepwalking people. Its is in this tiny town that a ghost lurks at night, riding down dirt roads and past new churches into the unknown wilderness that lie before the residents of Sleepy Hollow.
By Liv Atterson6 years ago in Horror
The Beating Heart of a Dead Man
Unreliable Narrator Analysis The Tell-Tale Heart (Poe, 1843) The Beating Heart of a Dead Man Edgar Allan Poe is one of the most famous horror writers of all time. Even after his untimely death in 1849 his work gained even more popularity and is widely read, almost 200 years later. One of Poe's most famous short horror stories, and his shortest is "The Tell-Tale Heart" published in 1843. It tells the story of a man who lives with an old man and becomes obsessed with the old man's eye that he plots to kill him in his sleep. "The Tell-Tale Heart" opens with this line: "True!--nervous--very, very dreadfully nervous I have been, and am; but why will you say that I am mad? The disease had sharpened my senses--not destroyed--not dulled them. Above all was my sense of hearing acute. (Poe, 1186)" Throughout this reading, I wondered if the narrator is truly unreliable because he is insane or perhaps mentally ill and it is the sickness doing this to him?
By Liv Atterson6 years ago in Horror
Hunted
I’m really not sure where to start with this one because I absolutely loved every minute of it! I have been a fan of Darcy Coates ever since I read her book “Craven Manor” last summer. There is just something about the way that she writes that can beautifully and so vividly pull you into the universe that she creates on the page. With Coates’ amazing ability to craft a story that sucks you in, I found myself unable to put this book down.
By Kurt Mason6 years ago in Horror
Is Junji Ito just "gross" horror?
I happened to purusing through YouTube to find some Junji Ito stories to read, and I found this video about how overrated Junji Ito was, I was fair and I watched the video on his stance. The main point was that his work was just "gross". I could understand the fact because of most of Junji Ito's work does involve some uncomfortable moments of what happens to someone, a terrifying transformation, or an unfathomable demise to a character. As a fan of Junji Ito's I immediately was on the fence about this argumentative fact, but I am a neutral person, I see this from both sides.
By Samantha Parrish6 years ago in Horror
