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New horror

Started by holyzombiejesus, September 18, 2019, 02:16:57 PM

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holyzombiejesus

Not old horror, not MR James, Lovecraft or Aickman but stuff written in the last few years. Anything decent?

DukeDeMondo

The only recent-ish horror novel I've read that has stayed with me and that I would recommend is Andrew Michael Hurley's The Loney, although to be honest the actual capital H Horror bits in that are pretty underwhelming. The first half of it, beautifully written and full of captivating character sketches and bizarre goings on, makes a lot of promises that the second half can't keep, unfortunately. There's a sentence towards the end that I really wish I hadn't read, and not for any of the reasons it might imagine itself to be a sentence folk might read and then wish they hadn't.

(I know, that wasn't a very pretty sentence there either, but is it an IMPORTANT SCARY SENTENCE in a SCARY BOOK? No it isn't.)

Anyway it's still worth reading. That first half really is brilliant. And maybe the other stuff will work for you in a way that it didn't for me. It's worth a try, especially if weird old customs and unforgiving landscapes are your bag.

(They're very much my bag, mind you, and yet here we are.)

BlodwynPig


Jerzy Bondov

Haven't read much that has really grabbed me for a while but these are all fairly recent:

Fever Dream by Samanta Schweblin stressed me out a lot. Parental anxieties mixed with industrial pesticides. Horrible inevitability to everything that happens. Hard to look away. Very good.

The Fisherman by John Langan is a slow burning bit of folk/cosmic horror about a couple of sad blokes going looking for a nice place to fish and finding fucked up shit. Nested stories about the creepy history of the area as well. I've got his new short story collection here, looking forward to it.

Little Eve by Catriona Ward is a nice bit of gothy unpleasantness. Cult on a Scottish island worshipping a snake that comes out the sea or something. Twists and turns, thrills and kills. Her earlier Rawblood was good too (messed up Dartmoor family history) but I preferred this. Both filled with weird old customs and unforgiving landscapes.

Really short little novella by Daniel Kehlmann called You Should Have Left which I see is being made into a film with Kevin Bacon. A very well done 'house that goes full mental' book.

holyzombiejesus

Quote from: DukeDeMondo on September 22, 2019, 11:32:26 PM
The only recent-ish horror novel I've read that has stayed with me and that I would recommend is Andrew Michael Hurley's The Loney, although to be honest the actual capital H Horror bits in that are pretty underwhelming. The first half of it, beautifully written and full of captivating character sketches and bizarre goings on, makes a lot of promises that the second half can't keep, unfortunately. There's a sentence towards the end that I really wish I hadn't read, and not for any of the reasons it might imagine itself to be a sentence folk might read and then wish they hadn't.


Quote from: Jerzy Bondov on September 23, 2019, 11:46:49 AM
The Fisherman by John Langan is a slow burning bit of folk/cosmic horror about a couple of sad blokes going looking for a nice place to fish and finding fucked up shit. Nested stories about the creepy history of the area as well. I've got his new short story collection here, looking forward to it.

Little Eve by Catriona Ward is a nice bit of gothy unpleasantness. Cult on a Scottish island worshipping a snake that comes out the sea or something. Twists and turns, thrills and kills. Her earlier Rawblood was good too (messed up Dartmoor family history) but I preferred this. Both filled with weird old customs and unforgiving landscapes.

Really short little novella by Daniel Kehlmann called You Should Have Left which I see is being made into a film with Kevin Bacon. A very well done 'house that goes full mental' book.

Really liked The Loney, felt like it was permanently happening in that eerie dusky light, helped by the 70s setting I guess.

The Fisherman was great too. Please feedback about his short stories.

Will check the other two.

I liked the first book in that series that's written like a podcast. Five Stories or something? I was ill when I read it and had really disturbing dreams about some creature roaming the woods. Got the third to read soon.

Jerzy Bondov

Six Stories by Matt Wesolowski. I thought it was alright. He nailed the podcast voice anyway. He's pumping them out now, got another due this year.

I can feedback about John Langan's previous short story collection, The Wide Carnivorous Sky. It's excellent. The title story is probably the best; Iraq veterans vs genuinely scary vampire. The last story, Mother of Stone, is novella length and very unsettling. Some idiots dig up a statue and it starts making bad shit go on. Highly recommended especially if you liked The Fisherman. He's got an earlier collection (Mr Gaunt) which I haven't read yet, and an earlier novel (House of Windows) which I have read. Sometimes I think he gets a bit too literary, but he's obviously a very clever bloke.

Small Man Big Horse

I read and quite liked The Troop by Nick Cutter (aka Craig Davidson), it's nothing that special and a bit Stephen King-esque style wise but the body horror aspects were well done.

dry_run

Really enjoyed The Troop. Pretty straight-forward but really well executed.

Done a couple of Adam Neville ones - I love The Ritual, even the 2nd half. The short stories I enjoyed but can't remember except one called Mother's Milk that constructed a wonderfully nasty family.

Most interesting newish author I've read is Matthew M. Bartlett. I've only done the short stories there but "The Stay-Awake Men and Other Unstable Entities" is great as is "Gateways to Abomination". Really weird.

The Fisherman is on my list (is that on Kindle yet) and I'll be checking out The Lonely. I'm incredibly forgiving of bad endings/second halves in horror.

ASFTSN

Nathan Ballingrud - North American Lake Monsters

TE Grau - The Nameless Dark

Mark Samuels - Glyphotech

ASFTSN

Quote from: dry_run on September 25, 2019, 10:00:34 PM
Most interesting newish author I've read is Matthew M. Bartlett. I've only done the short stories there but "The Stay-Awake Men and Other Unstable Entities" is great as is "Gateways to Abomination". Really weird.

Really want to check out this bloke after hearing an interview with him.

holyzombiejesus

Just finished Things We Lost in the Fire, a collection of short horror stories by Argentinian writer Mariana Enriquez. Really good, just the right amount of exposition and some genuinely creepy moments.

Mobbd

I think of myself a horror lover but to be honest I mainly watch old movies (saw 1980's The Changeling last night). I see perhaps only the "big event" new horror movies (Hereditary, Us, etc) and rarely read a new horror book, having a preference for the comfort food of old Stephen Kings. Shame. On. Me.

But I just got shown this cute but seemingly-well-informed guide to horror novels for wusses (well, that's harsh; the guide is organised along 'tolerance to horror' levels; one might want to avoid the softy ones. Or maybe you were recently rescued at sea and are in no mood to be harrowed):

https://www.tor.com/2019/10/01/horror-recommendations-for-all-tolerance-levels/

There are lots of new(ish) horror novels here and they all look good.

I fancy a go at Hex by Thomas Olde Heuvelt.

QuoteThe residents of Black Spring can't leave. There's a curse on the town, and her name is Katherine. She's been dead since the 1600s, when she was executed for witchcraft, but that doesn't stop her from appearing around town at random—in the woods, on the streets, and in people's homes. The town elders have worked very hard to keep Katherine a secret from the rest of the world, but for a group of younger residents, that secrecy is a yoke they're not willing to bear any longer. Their efforts to expose Katherine will have devastating consequences for their families, and the town as a whole.

BlodwynPig

There was an excellent horror on film book in a store in Chicago that i would have loved. But too massive to carry on the plane

BlodwynPig

Oh and thanks for that link, will order Hex and the others like Fishermen

Mobbd

Quote from: BlodwynPig on October 17, 2019, 09:04:54 AM
Oh and thanks for that link, will order Hex and the others like Fishermen

Yeah! Nice one. I'll read Hex soonish as well and will leave a comment or two here about it.

dry_run

Ok just finished Hex. Hmmmm.

It reminded me a bit of Under the Dome in that it imagines a strange supernatural set of circumstances and then tries to play out people's lives/society within that. And the premise is great, a small town co-existing with a witch who they have to keep secret. It's nearly scary at that point because oh mate if I had to accept a witch appearing in my house every now and then... no thank you.

But unlike King (and I suppose it's an unfair comparison) the characters don't land. King may cheese it up with these sometimes but he'd give you 2 pages on a character's past that would frame them and drive the whole thing, and that never happens. There's about 6 kids who are all the same and need to be 3 kids. It doesn't really hang together in the end game. Also the guy is obsessed with breasts, and whatever, but maybe notice when you keep putting them in your book. It's translated so there's a load of strange references to a woman's big forehead which I'm going to let pass. Might mean something in Dutch.

It was very inventive and memorable, but muddled. After a bad ending I did actually enjoy the final scene though. - 3/5

surreal

Quote from: DukeDeMondo on September 22, 2019, 11:32:26 PM
The only recent-ish horror novel I've read that has stayed with me and that I would recommend is Andrew Michael Hurley's The Loney,

Odd - just reading this today and my BookBub mailer has come through and this is top of the list at 99p on Amazon for Kindle (probably today only so hurry up).

holyzombiejesus

Quote from: dry_run on October 21, 2019, 08:52:24 PM
Ok just finished Hex. Hmmmm.

It reminded me a bit of Under the Dome

- 3/5

Bah, had this lined up. Fancy a bit of spooky trash. Think the new one from Loney bloke is out next week so might find some filler until then.

BlodwynPig

Bah 2 - do i now buy hex to read on my iphone - 7 quid or something or not bother. Thanks for ruining things with your crummy review

garbed_attic

What's that one about the man obsessed with the silent film comedian that some of you liked?

dry_run

The grin of the dark by Ramsey Campbell. That's a good one yes.

I shouldn't have given Hex a score. In fact I'd propose that horror books need two scores. A peak potential score for how good in could have been while reading, and a final score because they nearly always end badly.

Hex was exciting and I raced through. Peak potential score was 4+ for a while. Worth a read for the premise which is original and fun to explore. It just didn't land in the final 25% and then you think back over it and reassess.

I've started Little Eve which is great so far.

The Loney is indeed 99p still and has been snapped up. The new Adam Neville is out next week too I believe.

Jerzy Bondov

Just finished The Troop. I thought it was great. Proper minging stuff going on. Broad but enjoyable characters, some surprises, thrills and chills. Not showy, nor subtle, but very nicely done.

dry_run

Little Eve is great. Delivers both stylistically and plot wise. Has my favourite device which is a child/young adult narrator describing their messed up world and rituals as of it was normal. Other examples would be We have always lived in the castle and The wasp factory. In the buzz of finishing this I feel like it's up there with them but we'll see, I'll definitely read again at some point, the plot and clues were quite dense so I'm sure I missed something.

Jerzy Bondov

Quote from: dry_run on September 25, 2019, 10:00:34 PMMost interesting newish author I've read is Matthew M. Bartlett. I've only done the short stories there but "The Stay-Awake Men and Other Unstable Entities" is great as is "Gateways to Abomination". Really weird.
Read half of Gateways to Abomination last night. Absolutely fucking mental. There's more mad shit in half this short book than other horror writers come up with in their entire lives.

dry_run

Finished The Reddening by Adam Neville. This was good. There's a few layers of stuff going on, from crime/murder/cult to supernatural things and he balances and interweaves them nicely. There was a bit in the middle where it got VERY exciting like a thriller.

Not sure it hit the heights of The Ritual but it never really lagged and the end was satisfying (especially the very end).

Loney next I guess...

Catalogue Trousers

Just want to add another vote for The Grin Of The Dark. As I think I've said before on here, it remains wonderfully ambiguous as to whether the supernaturally evil or the more mundane but no less frightening mental illness is truly to blame. Or, indeed, both. Genuinely un-nerving.

Bingo Fury

Quote from: holyzombiejesus on September 23, 2019, 02:20:53 PM
The Fisherman was great too. Please feedback about his short stories.

Um ... one of them was based on me?

Is that the kind of thing you were looking for?

Jerzy Bondov

Quote from: Bingo Fury on November 28, 2019, 12:02:45 PM
Um ... one of them was based on me?

Is that the kind of thing you were looking for?
Do go on

Bingo Fury

Quote from: Jerzy Bondov on November 28, 2019, 01:49:46 PM
Do go on

A gentleman (excessively concerned with anonymity) never tells. I'm just really chuffed for how well John's doing, especially the attention The Fisherman's had. It'll be movies soon.

Artie Fufkin

Quote from: DukeDeMondo on September 22, 2019, 11:32:26 PM
The only recent-ish horror novel I've read that has stayed with me and that I would recommend is Andrew Michael Hurley's The Loney,

I loved this book. It was like the most disturbing episode of Father Ted, like, EVAH. Really atmospheric.