I've been enjoying a lot of horror-adjacent novels in the last couple of years, and playing horror-focused games such as Call of Cthulhu, so I thought I'd be fine reading two new horror collections in rapid succession for Skiffy and Fanty. I was not fine. Maybe the problem is with me, and the way the world is now, not with those two works I had requested on NetGalley; regardless, I couldn't summon enough enthusiasm for either to write full reviews for the wider audience that sees my Skiffy and Fanty posts. So I'm giving quicker reactions here for each collection.
Demo Reels and Arthouse Madness is a collection of poetry by Vince A. Liaguno, coming out on Feb. 25. He's "a self-identified unapologetic horror and pop culture junkie" and an award-winning editor and novelist. He has an amazingly vivid way with words, and makes some really interesting connections between seemingly disparate elements. I thought the ideas behind "Dumbwaiter", "Demo Reels", and other poems were arresting, and numerous poems contained kernels of brief, dark humor. He eloquently states a thesis in "Storytelling":
"Fuck once upon a time and happily ever after, all those
lazy literary conceits that lull into false senses of security.
Good storytellers are like doomsday preppers
who spin conspiracies of fear wrapped in quaint fable jackets,
who knew the fictions that demand attention are the ones
with the piranhas' serrated bite."
But I strongly oppose Liaguno's apparent conviction that horror stories are the only ones worth telling. His poems are often viscerally effective, but rarely uplifting; the closest they get to that mood is exemplified by a couplet in "Horrors of the Female Persuasion":
"Hear her roar and listen to her scream and watch her kill and see her survive.
She's a woman in horror: Cheer her. Fear her. Reengineer her. Revere her."
Mind you, Liaguno obviously isn't trying to be uplifting. He seems focused on exploring various facets of people and cultures and how they can be monstrous and perpetuate horrors, individually and socially, and reactions to these horrors (with a few resisters and even fewer survivors), and he's very good at his craft. I also really appreciate his "Movie Reference by Poem" appendix, helpful to readers. Some people will definitely find this book very rewarding. It's definitely good work; it's just not my cup of tea.
Fever Dreams of a Parasite is a collection of horror short stories by Pedro Iniguez, coming out on March 13. They are effectively written, displaying various scary, nightmarish, weird, and folk-horror elements throughout that were told in coherent tales. And I like and sympathize with a fair number of the protagonists, some of whom are just trying to get by in hard times, including discrimination and economic deprivation, and some who are struggling to help and protect others.
However, en masse, the collection doesn't quite work for me. Perhaps that's because I was reading one story right after another rather than spacing them out the way one might encounter them in magazines. The characters and setups were different, but most of them consisted of "Here comes Doom! ... Here's the Doom! Let's roll around in it for a little while!" Sometimes they end when the Doom is complete, and sometimes there's a little epilogue where the Doom is spreading or, rarely, when a survivor reflects on their escape; however, they seemed much of a muchness to me.
"But Trish," you may say, "Aren't you just being one of those awful reviewers who complains when an [insert genre] book is written in [insert genre] style?
Maybe so, but I've reviewed a number of books in the last year or so that at least contained strong horror elements, and positively enjoyed and recommended quite a few. The stories here by Iniguez don't reach that level for me, but I definitely hope that Iniguez keeps writing and trying out new ideas, and that he'll find some kind of spark or story seed that he'll develop well enough for me to think of him as a master storyteller rather than a promising journeyman. In the meantime, anyone who wants distraction from the horrors of the real world via supernatural stories (with enough real-world flavor to keep them grounded) could do a lot worse than giving this collection a try.
Content warnings for both books: Horror, body horror, mental invasions, sexual violence, child abuse, deaths, poverty, discrimination.
Disclaimers: I received a free eARC of each book for review.
