Book Recap: Moonlit Obsession, Chapter 1

Hello and welcome back to hell, everyone!

Today's project is sort of an amalgamation of new and old ideas. You see, back in 2021, poor innocent Oculus saw a historical romance/adventure novel in their favorite used bookshop and bought the only available copy. The back cover promised an epic story about a British spy and an American patriot falling in love during the Napoleonic Wars; so poor innocent Oculus picked up that book expecting either a roaring good time with a fiery, heartstopping romance, or something faintly ridiculous but entertaining in classic bodice-ripper fashion. What I found instead was a jaw-droppingly stupid narrative with the most incompetent spies I have ever seen, and so many red flags and creepy undertones that it sent several seasoned bad-story veterans screaming from the chat in my writing group. Yours truly included, at a certain point.

I'm sure y'all would feel terribly slighted if I didn't share the pain with you.

Originally, I thought of writing up a review here and I've been meaning to get to it at some point next year, but that just wouldn't give me enough space to dissect every single brain-punchingly dumb or horrifying plot point. And since my latest recaps were fun to do and reasonably well-read so far, I figured I'd try the same with this book. It'll be less funny-snarky and more analytical-snarky this time around, but I'll do my best to let the fail speak for itself. Behold: the first chapter of the eyebrow-raisingly-titled Moonlit Obsession, written by one Jill Gregory.

source: Goodreads

Oculus Reviews: Magical murder mystery? Yes please!

Welcome back to Oculus Reviews, everyone.

You know, I perfectly understand why, given the social climate of today, some people are uncomfortable with reading or watching stories about heroic cops. I'm not gonna go deeper into it because this is a fun genre fiction blog, and I'd like to keep it that way. But we all know that regardless of the country, real-life police work isn't like the idealized version you can see in detective shows, and the gazillion crime fiction books where tough, relentless peacekeepers with a heart pursue justice no matter what it costs them. Still, I grew up with exactly this kind of literature and TV, and while I acknowledge the reality of the world we live in, the "tough, relentless peacekeeper" archetype still is my guilty pleasure I sometimes indulge in. And if there's anything I love no matter the context, it's fantasy and murder mysteries. Put these three things together, and you get the book of my dreams...

Okay, maybe not.

 

Before we dive into Simon R. Green's first book of the Hawk & Fisher series, can I just say how much I love this cover of my well-loved copy - gritty, atmospheric, showing the reader just what kind of no-nonsense badasses the leads are. I especially love the boobtacular outfit on Fisher - lady hero or not, it was still the 90's when this book came out. My respect to Luis Royo (credited in the book as Royo) for this fantastic work.

Haven is a dark city. The home to wizards, politicians, struggling poor people, prostitution rackets, murder and all sorts of not-so-benevolent mystical creatures, it's a place of sleaze, slime and dark magic. Captain Hawk and his wife and partner, Captain Fisher, are the city Guard's best-known and most feared peacekeeping couple; they patrol the streets with an axe and a sword at their sides, keeping the folk safe from criminals of the mundane and the supernatural kind. (They kind of suck at it, but they try. You'll see.) After getting rid of a hungry vampire terrorising the streets, they get assigned to bodyguard duty to a party thrown at a powerful wizard's house, babysitting a politician widely hated for being honest and dedicated to social reform. Alas, the politician gets murdered in his bedroom while Hawk and Fisher are downstairs taking a rest (told ya), and because Hawk wisely decides to seal off Wizard Gaunt's house with an isolation spell while the killer is still inside (double told ya), it's up to him and Fisher to find who did in William Blackstone, and stop them before they strike again. (No luck there.)

As I said, I know perfectly well that this is an idealized cop story, and boy howdy did I wince sometimes when it got especially blatant, such as when Hawk states that not cooperating with the police- I mean, Guard is grounds for arrest. And as for one of the characters stating that he wanted to protect one of the suspects/witnesses because Hawk and Fisher have a reputation for violence... Oh, man, I ain't touching that one with a ten-foot spork. Yes, Hawk & Fisher is very much a product of its time, and I understand why that would put some off from reading it; but I for one don't regret that I did. I mean, it's true enough that it's not exactly a lost classic. The characters (honest politician, less honest politician, shy witch, Conan the Barbarian-type swordfighting hero, snotty aristocrats with a grudge against Hawk and Fisher, and so on) are just about two-dimensional, and that, sadly, does include the leads, who are basically Tough Cop and Tough Cop But Girl. Still, I found myself quite liking these two by the time the book wrapped up: as flat as they are, they have some good banter and chemistry, and I could genuinely believe that these are married people who are very fond of each other. I realize that's kind of a low bar to clear, but I'm sick of troubled and bickering married people in my reading, so it's always refreshing to see a genuinely affectionate couple.

 

As for the mystery and the general plot, it's... so-so. Hawk and Fisher make some truly unjustifiably stupid decisions: see above for locking up a houseful of guests with a murderer, or letting the guy they were supposed to guard out of their sight long enough for him to get murdered. Even if they repeatedly say that Gaunt's house is very heavily protected, one would think that the best cops- I mean, Guards of the city would know better. And if these are the best Guards the city of Haven can offer, I... kind of understand why it's in such a state. There are also two big plot twists, one of which is telegraphed from so far away you could spot it from the Moon without a telescope; but the actual, final twist and the identity of Blackstone's killer is genuinely well-built up, foreshadowed and explained, and fits in with the fantasy setting perfectly. Bravo, Mr. Green.

Still, what left me with a bit of a frown after reading was the ending of the book itself. I'm going to dip into a bit of a spoiler here to discuss; not gonna reveal the identity of the killer, don't worry, but I'm gonna drop a hint, so head to the next paragraph if you want to experience this book entirely for yourself. Basically, the message of the final twist seems to be that no matter how hard you try to be good, being born into a bad family means that you yourself will succumb to evil sooner or later, because there's no escaping the bad tendencies and leanings inherited from your forebears. Now, I know perfectly well that upbringing, transgenerational patterns and hereditary traits (guess who's a freshly minted psych student) are very important to a person's development and identity; but still, to think that you're entirely determined by them leaves a bitter taste in my mouth. I like to believe that we humans are better, more complex, and have more free will than that.

 

So yeah, as a whole, the themes of this book are rather... uncomfortable for me. (Trigger warning: if you're sensitive to child abuse, there's also that, and not briefly either.) And I'm very sorry about that, because as a fantasy-crime novel it's a perfectly adequate read: quick, airy, not too deep, but still entertaining and absorbing enough to make me finish in one go without groaning aloud once. (Internal groaning, though...) I spent a fun, if not very mentally taxing evening with it - I guess it's up to you whether that sounds like a recommendation.

Writing: Kind of dry and flawed sometimes (I caught a few word repetitions a more thorough editor would have probably vetoed), but quick enough and easy to follow, without cruelty to the English language. I know that's faint praise, but I've read worse. Much worse. 3/5

Availability: No ebook of this, I'm afraid, but used copies can be found for under ten dollars if you know where to look, and there's an audiobook too if you wish to liven up your morning commute. 4/5

Entertainment value: Fun enough if you're into this kind of storytelling, but definitely not one of the more brilliant books I've read. Still, I'd be up for reading more of this series because I do like our main couple. 3/5

Do I recommend it?: I... guess I do? The premise of a fantasy crime novel is certainly original enough, and it makes for a light and entertaining read even if it's a bit of a groaner sometimes; but I don't feel like anyone would be missing out on a life-changing reading experience if they decided to skip this one. 3/5

Oculus Reviews: Bats in the moonlight, oh my

Welcome, folks, to Oculus Reviews.

Busy, busy, busy, but that doesn't mean I don't read! In the past few weeks I've gone through several good and some not-so-good books, from horror novels to literary fiction and even chick lit (look, I'm not immune to stories about little quaint village bakeries). I've read morality tales (blargh), kitschy beach reads (double blargh) and some absolute gems like The Haunting of Hill House (if you haven't read it yet, you owe it to yourself to correct that ASAP). If I had to choose a best book of the year, I'd be very hard-pressed. But as for most fun read so far? Oh, yeah, I know which one I'd pick.

The price sticker I didn't have the heart to take off this book informs me that someone, at some point, has owned it for precisely one dollar, and for the life of me I can't tell if they paid too much or not enough for it. It's that kind of book.

Chris Blaze is an undercover detective in Miami. He's also blond, blue-eyed, works out regularly, and he's so handsome that he's making the bad guys look even uglier, as the book kindly informs us in his very first scene. Where he's busting a cult trying to sacrifice a virgin on Walpurgis night, because of course. The cult, by the way, is led by a man named Batiste Legendre (I'm not kidding) and worships a god of hate named Hadifes, as we find out precisely in the first three paragraphs. To paraphrase a friend from my writing group, one page in I knew I had a goddamn treasure in my hand.

So, Chris busts the evil cult with a classic "Freeze, Legendre, or I'll blow your fucking head off!" line, letting us know that he's a Tuff Cop Man right off the bat. Alas, the bust goes awry, and while the cult is subdued, Legendre curses Chris with immortality, doomed to walk the night as a vampire; as Chris soon discovers when another undercover bust gets outed and he's pumped full of lead, gets back up, and proceeds to go through a roomful of bad guys like papier-mache. It's kind of awesome. However, Chris is soon forced into the night shift by his acute sunlight allergy, where he's paired up with a smart-talking black cop named Reggie who regularly hoses down the pages with quips and wisecracks, because of course. He also romances a cute night-shift doctor named Sue with a domineering fiance, who he falls in love with pretty much at first sight, because of course. And then he gets assigned to some mysterious killings happening at night, and the killer's identity is something I'd rather not spoi... Oh, fuck it, he's a vampire named Yosekaat Rakz (still not kidding, guys) and he inspired Dracula's legend, because of course. [EDIT: I just remembered that he's actually a descendant of the guy who was the inspiration for Dracula, but still. I also remembered that according to this book Bram Stoker was Van Helsing himself, only no one wanted to buy his memoir, so he released it as fiction under a pen name. Which... wow. I wonder if the biographers knew that. /s] And now it's up to Chris, his cute girlfriend and smart black sidekick to stop him, because of course.

Oh, man, I'm giddy just talking about this book - I swear, this puppy has to have been one of the most entertaining trashsploshions I've ever read. One-dimensional characters, Darwin Award-winning plot points, wooden dialogue, tired racism (the racists are actually pointed out to be racist, but I hope you can stomach the n-word) and tin-eared descriptions litter the pages, and yet the whole thing has so much going for it. There's this manic, deadly serious trashy energy to Vampire Beat which makes it a quick, compulsive read, miles above groaners we've seen here like The Terrified Heart. The book has a whole lot of gory killing, but also holy water, staking, giant rats, turning into bats (!) and even a zombie (!!!), plenty of fun nastiness for everyone who likes to dip into the less sophisticated side of horror every now and then. And while these heroes have to be some of the dumbest I've ever seen, there are a few mildly (mildly) clever bits like the aforementioned zombie episode, which I found myself smiling at, and the finale was honest-to-god exciting to read. Above all I abhor dullness in my horror literature, and while my keyboard would probably crack in two if I called this book good, I certainly can't call it dull. The bad guys are all entertainingly nasty, and the fact that they appear to have been written by a middle schooler (seriously, Yosekaat Rakz? With a name like that, he must be from the mystical region of Fictionalia) just ups the fun factor of the whole thing. And if you think the fact that the writing is bad means that the writing is bad, take a gander at magnificent quotes like...

Drago had a face only a mother could love, and even then she would have to be blind.

...and...

A snooty-looking bitch came out of the little girl's room with her nose up in the air. She looked good and knew it. Everyone she passed smiled at her. She could see them out of the corner of her eye. Too bad she couldn't also see the trail of toilet paper she was dragging behind her.

I'll let you be the judge. Thank you, Vincent Courtney, for blessing my Halloween season with one of the dumbest books I've ever read.

Writing: Trying to rate the writing style of this book is like trying to rate an exploding garbage can that's somehow also on fire. It stinks, but it makes for excellent entertainment. 3/5

Availability: While this book is pretty obscure as far as vintage horror literature goes, copies of it aren't that hard to find and go for relatively cheap. 3/5

Entertainment value: Through the roof, baby. 5/5

Do I recommend it?: Oh, man, I can't recommend this book enough - but at the same time, if you've gotten this far in this review, you probably already know if it's your kind of story or not. Vampire Beat is for serious trash enthusiasts and vampire fanatics only, those who like their horror fun, nasty, not too smart, and with enough ham and cheese to feed a small country. 3/5

Oculus Reviews: Thanks a lot, Horace Walpole

Welcome, folks, to Oculus Reviews.

 

Why, oh why do I keep catching the crap of the crop when it comes to 70's Gothic novels?! I've gotta stop picking up little-known stuff with pretty covers and good taglines, because it turns out that a lot of obscure books are obscure for a reason. I mean, as far as bad books go, the one I'm discussing today wasn't nearly as yeet-your-brain irritating as Nella Waits, but it also didn't have much else going for it, other than some absolutely hilaribad prose every now and then. And that isn't nearly enough to carry a book... even a 192-page one.

Let's dive in, shall we?

In The Terrified Heart, a 1973 novel by Alicia Grace (actually the pseudonym of one Irving Greenfield, as you will soon be painfully aware), Danielle Marsh is a 24 year-old university professor of ancient Greek with a PhD and two years of teaching experience, and okay, I need to call a time-out because what. Either she skipped a grade, or the author skipped a number on the keyboard when he wrote this - and trust me, you're only getting a taste of the level of magnificent realism and thorough editing this book stands at (other gems include Danielle hoping for a "ddcent" relationship, and one character having a master's "certicate" in... sailing, sure). Anyway, she one day respons to a newspaper ad with a job offer by one Keith Wyler, a wealthy, brilliant translator haunted by the murder of his wife that he was accused of. He wants Danielle to work as his assistant at translating an ancient manucript; the catch? She has to go with him to his family mansion, posing as his wife, because insert incredibly flimsy bullshit excuse about family traditions and marriage that even a baby squirrel would see through, but which fools Danielle instantly. The real reason he wants her is to lure out the murderer of his dead wife by turning up with a new one, which is supposed to... Hell if I know. What a chessmaster.

 

So off the zeroes go to Eleusis, the Wyler estate... after several days spent with very essential things like clothes shopping, and awkwardly wrestling with the author insisting they're madly in lust with each other, despite having less spark than a firefighter convention. And they reach the mansion after page... 118. Out of 192. God give me patience.

To tell you folks what happens at Eleusis would be a spoiler (not that anyone would mind, I think, since about two people and a shoelace must be planning to read this), but this book is, holy moly macaroni, where do I even begin. It's not terrible, mind you - but it's so achingly mediocre that spending even the five or so hours reading it are five hours from my life I will never get back. The plot is basically nonexistent until past the middle of the book, after which point plot revelations randomly happen or are just plain told to the characters, to wrap things up in time for a slapped-together finale that made me facepalm. The characters - the ingenue heroine, Diet Mr. Rochester, his evil, unfaithful murdered wife, crazy aunt, hateful disabled brother and sweet old family friend/surrogate father figure - are papier-mache, the descriptions are dry, dull and full of telling, not showing. (And like I said, I was painfully aware that this book was written by a man at each of the gazillion descriptions of the heroine's naked or near-naked body, and especially at the scene where she's taking a bath and takes the time to describe the way her breasts float in the water. Ladies, if your boobs do that, please see a doctor. Or an exorcist.) Also, every now and then the author commits acts of violence against the English language for no reason, like Danielle "obediently" shaking her head to accept a job offer, or Aunt Elizabeth having a "corking-like voice", whatever the hell that means - does she sound like a champagne bottle being popped? But my absolute favorites have to be Danielle comparing unrequited love to a seed planted in shallow soil four pages in (ease up, Emily Brontë, you're in 1973, not 1873), or her landlady expressing her disapproval of Keith's job offer thusly:

"Young people today are not only willing to play in the frying pan, but they must also jump into the fire."

 

What has that poor idiom ever done to you?!

Despite the... everything, I can't say I wasn't the least bit entertained while reading this book. There's a certain dollar-store trashy charm to how ineptly written it is, and since it was so short, it didn't torture me with said ineptitude until I lost my patience, like the other Gothic novel I slam-dunked into the metaphorical trash... I mean, reviewed on this blog. But this is faint praise indeed. I can't in good faith recommend it because there are both much, much better and much more entertainingly bad books for y'all to pass the time with, but... but... at least the cover is pretty?

Yeah, I've got nothin'. Don't read this book.

Writing: Corking-like voice. I rest my case. 1/5

Availability: I have found precisely one copy of it for sale on my usual book sites, although it only goes for a few dollars, plus shipping - make of that what you will. You might luck into another copy in a used bookstore like I did, but don't hold your breath. 2/5

Entertainment value: I'll admit that the hilaribad writing got the occasional chuckle out of me, and I did have a good time riffing the hell out of the plot with my writer friends, but without them it would have been a deadly dull experience. 2/5

Do I recommend it?: Do I look like I recommend it? 1/5

(I know, I know, don't explain the joke, but I've gotta - Horace Walpole was an architect and the author of The Castle of Otranto, usually considered the first work of Gothic fiction in the English literary canon. Thanks a lot for Nella Waits and The Terrified Heart, Horace.)

Oculus Reviews: The past is in your blood

"Have you the blood, John?"

Welcome to the first Oculus Reviews in a year, folks.

If you're like me, you know that hunting down underrated and lesser-known genre books is the literary equivalent of going out into the Wild West - you never know what you'll find along the way. Sometimes you unearth a lost classic like the Terminator novelization; sometimes you find a book that makes you long for the excitement of unloading the washing machine. And sometimes it's Nazi Leprechauns.

Today isn't one of the "lost classic" days, because the book I'm about to review is still in print and relatively easy to find; but it's definitely a quieter gem of the horror paperback boom, one that is little talked about by non-fans of niche horror literature and very much appreciated by fans of it. Which includes me now, because this book bewitched me the way maybe not a single non-King horror read has managed to do.

"Have you the blood, John?" begins Alan Ryan's 1984 novel Cast a Cold Eye, setting the mood with a single sentence for a beautifully written, evocative ghost story, set in the wildest parts of Ireland where the past still rules the present. Jack Quinlan, an American writer of Irish descent, decides to travel to the country to do research for his latest historical novel, which takes place during the Great Famine. At first everything goes well: he meets friendly Irish beauty Grainne, with whom he shares a real spark, and finds himself a nice place for research in the isolated village of Doolin. But Doolin has a few secrets hanging heavy over it, secrets Jack senses immediately: ghostly figures in the road at night, old folk doing something inexplicable in the cemetery, a strange distance in the behavior of the friendly old priest, Father Henning (easily my favorite character in this, besides Grainne). And naturally, the more time Jack spends reaching for the ghosts of the past, the more they reach back for him.

Where do I even begin with this book? Let me say first that the William Peter Blatty quote on the front, unlike a lot of these paperback praise quotes, is entirely accurate: the late Alan Ryan's prose is something to behold. Literate, moody, atmospheric - these are just a few words to describe it. He had a real skill with painting a scene with his words; his descriptions of the gloomy Irish countryside, the lashing cold rain, the muddy sheep grazing on the hillsides were vivid and almost poetic, without ever going into purple prose, the bane of my existence. Listen to these descriptions:

In the village of Doolin, where the breezes carried the salt and scent of the ocean onto the stone-strewn hills, a man named Padraic Mullen was nearing death.

The circle of people stood silent among the graves. Near Jack's feet, a stone, its inscription long ago blurred away by wind and rain, leaned over as if weary of its own weight.

It's books like this that make me want to become a writer myself. The atmosphere, that sense of foreboding and dark secrets, is done perfectly in every single sentence. Even before Jack witnesses the four village elders pouring a vial of blood into an open grave, we already know that Doolin is a haunted place, and I don't mean it in the ghostly sense (oh, that comes later): a place haunted by history and old customs, and by the very real horrors of the Great Famine. Ryan sketches the picture rather subtly, and rarely ratchets up the quiet chill into real terror... but when he does, oh man. The scene where Jack hears a baby crying outside his house on a foggy day and goes to investigate ended with some of the most shocking imagery I have seen in a horror novel; not grotesque like a Barker or in-your-face like a splatterpunk, but something that honestly chilled me to the bone. Too many horror writers never learned how to write a scene like this.

The character portraits, too, are wonderful. Jack, I'll admit, won't be my favorite protagonist ever (if I never see another straight white male writer in a horror story it'll still be too soon), but he does feel like a real person, rather than a blank slate or a thinly veiled self-insert. He's a bit of a tool sometimes: his approach to historical accuracy is basically "if I research too much it'll bog down the book, so I'll just make up a few things" - I can almost feel my writing circle cringe collectively as I write this - and he's not above spying on a funeral if it means inspiration for a new scene. But I'd rather have a flawed protagonist than a bland one, so that's more than fine with me. Jack's chemistry with Grainne is open, easy and sincere, an affectionate but down-to-earth romance that brings a little warmth into the cold seaside air of Doolin. Father Henning, the old men and women and the quiet, hard-faced sons of the village all felt like people I could have met and walked among, the sense of community - one of the central themes of this book - subtly woven into everything they said and did.

The plot of this book is, I think, what will make it or break it for horror fans. Relatively little actually happens: a lot of the story concerns Jack's comings-and-goings, his relationship with Grainne, and his slow discovery that something past his understanding is happening in Doolin. Which, again, is fine with me: the sense of something big slowly approaching, the ghostly secrets teased and hinted at, and the simple, believable character dynamics carried this book forward and absorbed me a lot more than a 100-page trashy romp would have. (Nothing wrong with trashy romps, of course, but they don't attract me nearly as much as thoughtful chillers like this one.) And the finale... "Beautiful" is the only word that comes to mind. But if you like your monsters, entrails and adrenaline, you won't get it in Cast a Cold Eye. What you will get is a haunting, at places almost lyrical slow-burn story of relationships, community, kinship and the power of old traditions. Whether that is your kind of book, I can't tell - but I know it will stay with me for a while.

Writing: Some of the best I've read outside of straight-up literary fiction. 5/5

Availability: While this probably isn't a book you'll find on every bookstore shelf like a King or a Koontz, it never quite fell out of print either, and used copies of it - even the first edition I own with this gorgeous Gothic cover - go for relatively cheap as far as I could tell. And if that's not for you, there's always the ebook. 4/5

Entertainment value: This is one of the most absorbing horror books I've ever read, but I know the slow pace and ominous atmosphere aren't for everyone. 4/5

Do I recommend it?: I'm biased because I love this book, but yes - very much. As a matter of fact, this is a new favorite for me, not just from this year, but from the genre in general. 5/5

Oculus Reviews: A little indie horror treat

Hey, everyone, this is Oculus Reviews.

Today we’re gonna be doing things a little differently, because I’m covering a medium I haven’t done on the blog yet: video games. I’ve brought two horror games from indie developers, called Anatomy by Kitty Horrorshow and DIA by Vidas Games.

First: Anatomy.

kittyhorrorshow.itch.io

I actually can’t tell you too much about this game because it’s relatively short and simple and most things I could tell you would be spoilers, but let me just say that I love it. LOVE it. The basic rundown is that you’re in a house and you collect audio tapes with narration about the build and layout of a house and what you could call its anatomy compared to a human being. However, things soon start to get… not normal.

I won’t tell you where this all goes, but I was genuinely scared all the way through. It’s a psychological horror game, so rather than relying heavily on jumpscares and chase scenes (which are fine, of course, I’m just not a fan of ‘em) it mostly opts for unease that slowly mounts into terror as you go on with the game. The tagline on the developer’s site is “Every house is haunted”, and if you play, that tagline will soon make terrifying sense to you. The game is based on a very old fear, that the safest, most basic personal space in your life is not so safe after all, but takes that in a direction much more insidious than simply a ghost or monster going BOO in your face. As the narrative – if you can call it that – slowly unfolds, the experience inside the house becomes genuinely terrifying to sit through, even if the gameplay mechanics are simple and straightforward: walk around, find tape, play tape. If you want gameplay that’ll make you sweat I’d suggest a different game, but play this one for the dread.

That being said, I do have some issues with this game. For one, it is very dark, and I don’t just mean the content, but literally dark. You can’t see more than a few inches in front of your face. Now I realize that this is intentional and part of the gameplay, and I’ll be the first to say that it’s very effective because you just never know what could be lurking in the dark. And once things start to lighten up a little, you’ll wish they hadn’t. However, in the beginning I actually couldn’t see something very important because it was too dark. I simply kept missing a room I needed to go into, and my dumbass had to look up a walkthrough so I wouldn’t just wander around in the darkness like an idiot. But that might just be me being terrible at games.

My biggest issue, though, is the lack of subtitles. This game is very dialogue-heavy, and as things start to unravel it also gets very static- and distortion-heavy, and while there’s some in-game text none of it belongs to the dialogue. Now, I’m thankful that my auditory issues aren’t bad enough to warrant medical attention, but I do have problems with making out distorted dialogue, especially because English isn’t my first language. And I imagine there are would-be players of this game with very different and possibly worse auditory processing problems than mine who might have been thankful for a little help. I was at first unsure if you can put subtitles into a Unity game, which is the engine on which Anatomy was made, but some friends assured me that you can put subtitles into any game – and here especially I feel like that effort should have been made.

Thankfully, though, these are my biggest gripes, and I still found the game a very intense and beautifully crafted horror experience. Rather than being in-your-face with its approach, it’s subtle, weird, unsettling in an almost eldritch way, which in my opinion is the best kind of horror there can be. Sorry, Five Nights at Freddy’s. If you want an unconventional and genuinely unnerving horror game that won’t give you a heart attack every five minutes I strongly recommend Anatomy. It’s more than worth the price the developer is asking for it; and I found it so cool that I’ll definitely be replaying it a few more times. (That’s also a little joke to y’all who have already played it.)

Now, on to DIA, another little gem – and I do mean little.

As far as gaming goes, I’d call DIA more interactive fiction or a short walking simulator, since literally all you can do is walk along and play into the story; and the gameplay time wasn’t longer than, say, 10 minutes or 12 if you want to be generous. However, what little there is is worth getting into. Without telling you too much, you’re in a town named DIA covered in blue fog and snow, and there’s a mysterious dead body that keeps turning up no matter where you go...

Tell you the truth, I was actually dreading the damn thing as the game went on, because that’s what DIA does excellently even with such few tools: creep you the hell out. And the ending… well, there’s a BRUH moment if ever I’ve seen one. The only thing that kinda lost me was what happened after the ending. [SPOILERS:] It does the thing a famous free horror visual novel also did (do you know the one?) where it gets your username from your PC to make it look like it’s calling you by your name. But if you’ve got your username on the default setting or just something that’s not your name, that just becomes Narm instead. Plus I feel like it’s kind of a cheap shot to begin with. [end of spoilers] That little questionable moment aside though, DIA is a fun, short ’n’ sweet creepy experience, especially because I love winter horror; the replay potential is sadly not very high, but it’s definitely worth experiencing once.

Visuals: Anatomy has genuinely the most creative I've seen in a Unity horror game; and DIA is just lovely in a wintery, unnerving way. 5/5 to both.

Audio: You want unsettled? You'll get unsettled. Also, good voice acting. 5/5 to both.

Gameplay: I won't rate this one because I for one enjoy simple and to the point games, but to hardcore gamers it might be a turn-off. I liked not having to count on my terrible reflexes, that's all I'll say.

Availability: They're indie, one of them is free and the other literally costs 3 bucks. I can't tell you any system requirements, but from the looks of it they'd probably run even on a coffee machine. 5/5

Get ANATOMY here from Kitty Horrorshow.

Get DIA here from Vidas Games.

 

When a house is both hungry and awake, every room becomes a mouth.

Oculus Reviews: The smart, intimate horrors of Lisa Tuttle

Hey, y'all, this is Oculus Reviews.

How do you like your horror fiction? Some people like it old-fashioned, with vampires and ghouls and ghastly creatures; others like to dip into the strange, the amorphous, the unnamable. Some seek sophisticated scares that reach deep into the psyche, others are here for blood and guts and a trashy good time. Me, I'm a pretty anything-goes kind of horror fan, but if I had to choose a favorite subgenre, I'd be pretty torn between psychological horror and ghost stories (I read my first "true" ghost story at age 5 and it was love at first sight). What I like the most, though, in any subgenre, is smart horror. I like my ghouls and creepy-crawlies and buckets of blood just fine; but sometimes you just really want to read or watch something carefully written, well-thought out, something with real insight that shows you a thing or two about human nature.

Enter Lisa Tuttle, a new horror favorite for me.

My first Lisa Tuttle was actually a short story in the groundbreaking 1980 horror anthology Dark Forces, titled Where the Stones Grow, a beautiful, folkloric chiller with a very unusual supernatural twist; but her 1986 short story collection, A Nest of Nightmares, had been on my to-read list for a while. And now that I've read it, I really wish I'd gone for it sooner.

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A collection of 13 stories with mostly female protagonists, this is a gem of short horror writing for everyone who likes their horror fiction thoughtful and personal. The really scary things in this book aren't just ghosts and monsters and maniacs with chainsaws, but something much more down to earth: isolation, loneliness, the stress of everyday life, grief, failing relationships—and insidious real-world horrors like SPOILER/trigger warning rape, child death and child abuse. Yes, Lisa Tuttle goes there, and while her approach to some issues feels like a product of its time, for the most part they're handled in a thoughtful and not at all crude way. One story in particular (I'm not spoiling which one) has one of the most chilling portrayals of rape I've ever seen, written with a woman's hand and a woman's eye. The women and girls in these stories are mothers, sisters, wives and lovers who have their own flaws, their own problems, their own—sometimes ugly—worldviews and insecurities. They feel like real people, which in horror short stories is a real blessing.

The first story, Bug House, is one of my favorites from the book, a dark and suffocating tale of a woman in marital trouble visiting her dying aunt, with an absolute gutpunch of an ending. The next tale, Dollburger, is more traditional horror with a child's perspective and a nice and nasty finale. The high points of the book for me, though, were the next two tales, Community Property and especially Flying to Byzantium. They're not the kinds of stories to make the reader afraid to turn off the lights—they couldn't be more everyday—but they're amazingly uncomfortable, bleak looks at a failing marriage between selfish people and at the ugly world of female insecurities. The characters in these tales just aren't good people (Community Property has to hold a record for some of the most slap-worthy protags I've ever seen, and oh, Flying to Byzantium had me squirming the entire time), and I love 'em for that. These tales wouldn't look out of place in a literary fiction anthology either—smart and insightful, like I said.

Treading the Maze is another favorite, a lovely mix of pagan horror and heartbreak; The Horse Lord, on the other hand, I don't feel guilty not personally recommending. It's great as a horror story, with a particularly chilling twist, but I'm just tired to death of the good ol' 80's horror trope of the cursed Native American property, and I didn't much care for the protagonist's husband writing "slave novels" and wondering "how to get the chief slave into bed with the mistress of the plantation without making her yet another clichéd nymphomaniac". Yikes. Yicycles.

The Other Mother, though, is another beautifully written story, this time about the frustrations of motherhood with a supernatural twist. Lisa Tuttle acknowledges the reality of women who were never meant to have children but did so anyway, who love their kids at the same time that they feel suffocated by them, in a sensitive and understanding way that was a real delight to read. The horror side of this tale is excellent too, and genuinely gave me a chill, even though I wouldn't call A Nest of Nightmares a terrifying book per se:

That night Sara dreamed of a woman in white, gliding along the lake shore, heading towards the house. She was not a ghost; neither was she human.

Need and A Friend In Need are both tales about lonely people reaching out to others in hard times; one is a story of a melancholy loner and a self-centered college girl forming an unlikely friendship in a cemetery (and I think every single woman would nod with understanding at the part in Need where Corey feels creeped out by the strange boy but feels compelled to be polite anyway), while the other one is a heartbreaking story of female friendship reaching through the bounds of imagination. The story between these two, The Memory of Wood, features one of my favorite scary tropes, the implied horrors: what will horrify you about this tale is not what actually happens (although that's plenty spooky) but what it doesn't state outright because it doesn't have to. Connect the dots and be disturbed, dear reader.

Stranger in the House is a somewhat unassuming story that again, leaves a lot implied but has an absolutely spine-tingling ending; Sun City is probably the most outright scary of the collection, with gruesomeness and more intimate horror intertwined, but I'd recommend to read this one with a critical eye because it's a very... white person-y horror story. The Nest on the other hand is a beautiful note to end the book on, a tale of troubled sisterhood and ominous almost-Gothic imagery that leaves just enough to the imagination to chill the reader.

Despite its (few) flaws, I feel pretty much obligated to recommend this book because of how well-written and sensitive it is; at its core it's an examination of human relationships, but with beautifully done horror imagery and a uniquely female focus. It's the exact kind of intelligent, literary horror I'm always eager to see more of, ranging from simply dark stories to a few genuine chillers. And since the Kindle version doesn't cost a whole lot, I'd say it's a crime for any fan of short horror fiction not to grab this one and at least give it a try.

Writing: The best of the best; sharp, clean prose with great imagery and insight. 5/5

Availability: The original 1986 paperback edition of this book is a collector's item that you won't find anywhere under 40 or 50 dollars; the Valancourt Books reprint from last year, I think? Is still a little pricier than some of the paperback horror out there, but those folks are truly doing the literary gods' work making obscure and rare fiction available in new print, so I say support 'em if you can. The Amazon Kindle version on the other hand is only a few bucks and an absolute delight, even if you can't hold the beautiful original cover physically in your hands that way. Go and get it! 4/5

Entertainment value: I wouldn't call this a fun book; but if you're aiming for some genuinely unsettling fiction, you couldn't find any better. 5/5

Do I recommend it?: For any horror fan who's not strictly with the blood 'n' guts crowd. 5/5

Oculus Reviews: Cornfields, angst and watching paint dry

Hey, y'all, this is Oculus Reviews.

Have you ever read something so mediocre that words were escaping you to even describe it? Something so dull and tepid and just nothing that it's the literary equivalent of chewing on cotton wool? And when you closed the back cover on it, you lamented the hours of your life you could have spent doing something more useful, like sewing all your shirts' neckholes shut or counting grains of rice? Because I've run into such a book and am now cursing my completionism that made me finish it when I have authors like Lisa Tuttle, Chinghiz Aitmatov and Larry McMurtry waiting for me on my bookshelf.

I suppose I should name the monster, shouldn't I? Let's dive into Marlys Millhiser's 1974 novel, Nella Waits.

goodreads.com

I'm proud to report that even though this book sucked me dry and made me want to break a window several times over, it didn't break me. Finishing it might have been the most pointless enterprise of my life, but I came through, dammit. When I came across it in the local library several years ago, the beautiful cover and the tagline A novel of the supernatural had instantly caught my attention, but I hadn't been quite in the mood to read it at the time. A few days ago, though, I was browsing the library catalog when I came across this book again, and a little Google-fu netted me the surprising results that print copies of it were relatively rare, going for prices like 28 dollars and above on eBay and Thriftbooks. My curiosity was duly piqued. Marlys Millhiser is apparently the author of several Gothic, romantic thrillers and mysteries, and while I'm not big on Gothic literature—I like my spooky fiction leaner and meaner—several of those seemed promising (especially Willing Hostage—what a thrilling title!), and I've preemptively put a few on my TBR list before diving into Nella Waits.

Yeah, that'll teach me.

Twenty-four year-old widowed nobody Lynnette Stewart has to travel back from Colorado to Boringville, Alabama (actually, Roggins, Iowa, but the sentiment is there) for her father's funeral and soon becomes trapped in a suffocating small town she'd been trying hard to escape from. At the same time, Jay Van Fleet, the mysterious bastard heir to the spooky Van Fleet estate is finally tracked down after several years abroad and arrives back to claim his inheritance. The two meet and share some non-flirting charged with non-chemistry, attracted by mutual loneliness and the fact that they both have the personalities of a slice of toast, but the jealous ghost of Jay's mother zzZZzZZzz...

I'm sorry. I'm sorry! I'm genuinely trying to write a review here, but this book is so boring I'm having trouble even remembering what it's about. I tried, folks, I really tried. The first few chapters were actually promising, making me lament what came after: I adore my small town horror fiction, all the closely intertwined lives shaken up by the supernatural (I've grown up in a village myself, and what I wouldn't have given for a ghost or two), and I was sort of intrigued by the subtly chilling prologue of Jay's old uncle finding his death in the Van Fleet house at the hands of his dead sister. Lynn's frustration with her family, who still treat her like a child and expect her to jump at their every whim even though she's twenty-four and has already been a married woman, was believable. But after a while my enthusiasm waned because nothing. Was. Happening. A good 70% of the book is taken up by tepid small-town intrigue between characters who share zero physical or emotional spark, despite the book weakly insisting that they're just so attracted to each other. Ghostly encounters are described in lackluster prose when they actually happen at all, and eventually everything comes together to die a whimpering death in a non-climax so barely-described and nonsensical I'm genuinely not sure what happened, with the obligatory The End... Or Is It?! type epilogue that I love to hate.

Actually, the lackluster prose is mostly what ruined this book for me. Cliche as it is, and even with so little actual plot, this could have been a lurid and perfectly entertaining chiller (there's a SPOILER/trigger warning possible incest plotline that's straight out of some of the more scandalous kind of Gothic fiction), but the beige prose really kills the tension after a while. I'm not a big fan of overdone purple prose either (another reason I rarely read Gothic stuff—lean and mean, like I said), but the "they went there and did this, and then went there and did that" style of writing became so grating after a while. (And it made the obligatory sex scene about as erotic as my electricity bill, in case well-written sex scenes are a draw for some of y'all in a book—the one in Nella Waits is one to avoid, and not even in the Bad Sex In Fiction Award kind of way, alas.)

Not that the characters helped my opinion, once we truly came to know them. Lynnette is a well and truly useless protagonist who has to be rescued over and over and over again, Jay Van Fleet is an unlikeable jerk (and not in the "sexy bad boy you love and hate" way); Hymie, Lynnette's childhood friend is an enigma in that he's repeatedly described with nice and ableist language (I hope y'all can stomach the r-word if you plan on reading this dreck), but he's easily the most perceptive and likeable of the cast; Nella is the most annoying, white-hot hatred-inducing ghost I've ever read about, with the maturity of a twelve year-old even though she's supposed to be a forty year-old mother (there are few words in the English language that make me go HULK SMASH faster than "mischief" or "making mischief"); the rest of the characters are perfectly forgettable, much like the writing itself.

Come to think of it, "Perfectly forgettable" would have been a much better tagline for this book.

Writing: Hemingway this ain't. Or King, or Joe R. Lansdale. You get my point. 1/5

Availability: Only if you have a good 30 bucks or more to throw out the window for a book; but the Kindle edition is there if you don't mind the fact that Amazon is evil. Alas, often it's the only legal source for a book some of us can afford. 3/5

Entertainment value: Rice grains, I'm telling ya. Or I could have repainted the bathroom. 1/5

Do I recommend it?: Well, maybe if you were shipwrecked on a deserted island and this was the only book you could rescue... Otherwise for ghost story fanatics or Marlys Millhiser fans only. I don't think I became one after reading this. 1/5

Oculus Reviews: The Terminator (no, not that one)

Good morning, y’all, this is Oculus Reviews. How do you like your coffee? I like it black and bitter like my soul. But what do you do if it’s fresh and too hot to drink? People have different solutions to that: some put it aside until it’s cool enough, or put cold milk in it… or drink it anyway. But me, I’ve invented a different path. Put water in it! Not only will your diluted coffee taste like the devil’s taint, and not only will you piss yourself off first thing in the morning with having to drink it, but you’ll get to enjoy that sweet, sweet caffeine straight out of the pot. It's a win-win scenario, isn't it?

When I told my Aussie friend about my shrewd coffee strategy, her response was “call that coffee a Depresso”—and wasn’t that the best thing I’d heard all day. I can practically hear the commercial. “Tired? Sad? Feeling like the whole world is against you? Why not make it worse? Depresso.”

Anyway, here I am, done with my daily Depresso and ready to talk about the movie I love the most in the whole wide world.


It’s no secret of mine that the first Terminator is my favorite movie ever—no secret because I will blather on and on and on about it to anyone foolish enough to bring it up. I just love it to bits, y’all. I’ve seen it at least six times all the way through, not counting the times I only rewatched parts, and man, it still makes me sob like my dog’s been shot every single time. As far as I'm concerned, the Terminator franchise is the best thing since celluloid film was invented; and by franchise, I of course mean Terminator, Judgment Day and Dark Fate. I don’t recall any other movies because those don’t exist. Right?

Now as for the novelization… that’s a bit more complicated. There are two versions for the original movie; one of them, the more widely accessible one, was written by Shaun Hutson. You know… THIS GUY.

goodreads.com

And let's just say that I ain't touchin' that one with a ten-foot spork. (Although the Slugs cover does rock.)

The other novelization was written by Randall Frakes and Bill Wisher, both people who have worked on the movie script itself—so you know the story was in better hands here. Unfortunately, the book has fallen out of print pretty much immediately, and nowadays it’s a rare collector’s item; good luck finding it under 40 bucks, really. I’d love to say that I was one of the lucky ones to snag it cheap, but the truth is that I dropped a pretty penny for this baby. Was it worth it? Hoo boy.

I assume most of us would be familiar with the basic plot of The Terminator, either from the first movie or the second one, but I'll give it a quick rundown nonetheless. From the year 2029, after a bitter war fought between humans and machines, two men are sent back into 1984 to find a nineteen year-old waitress named Sarah Connor—who's much more important to the world than she thinks. One of the men is her protector... and the other is a machine designed to kill her no matter the cost. It's a matter of who gets to her first that will decide the fate of mankind.

Boys, girls and pals, this book broke me. Here I thought the movie was heartbreaking. If it wasn't for the heinous prices and difficulty finding this novelization, I'd honestly urge every single Terminator fan to find a copy. It's beautifully written. Frakes and Wisher flesh out a lot that the movie doesn't show, from Sarah's everyday life and friendships to the Terminator's victims, or Kyle Reese's trauma and life as a soldier of the future; it's alternately funny, deeply romantic and absolutely devastating. Under the authors' pen even the most minor characters gain lives, become human and real rather than just set pieces. One of my favorite scenes from this story, for instance, is the one with the biker guy the Terminator shoves aside to get the phonebook in an early part of the story. After realizing that the huge, dead-eyed man is looking for women named Sarah Connor he briefly contemplates calling them to tell them about the weird person searching for them, only to forget it; and later he's filled with horror and remorse when he sees that two of those women were murdered and realizes that he might have been able to warn them in time. Even the nameless bit characters from the movie get names and realistic inner lives in this, and it's a real delight to see—for a 240 page-long book, it really packs some heart and humanity.

The action scenes, of course, are just as good, filled with as much relentless intensity as they are in the movie, so reading them will get your heart pounding as much as watching them would. I'm usually not a marathon reader—I prefer to immerse myself in a book, take it slow, as it were—but I stayed up until 4 in the morning to finish this one because I couldn't. Put it. Down. And this after already knowing the story by heart; the richness of this novelization, of the prose and the characters and all the emotion and adrenaline, really surprised me. And if you happen to like Kyle Reese, prepare to be absolutely demolished by pretty much everything he thinks and does in this novel. He picks a strawberry and feeds a stray dog, y'all.

Or there's this particular passage which I have to show you guys, because you're all welcome to cry with me.

The Terminator, page 173.

WHY MUST YOU HURT ME SO.

The good things about this book are many, and the bad are few; I could mention the occasional typo or the maybe one scene where I thought one of the protagonists was thinking a little OOC (at least as far as my own interpretation of the movie goes), but really, these bad parts are like needles in a haystack. If you're as immersed in this story as I was, you'll probably barely notice them.

In conclusion? The Terminator book is really freakin' good—because it was clearly made by people who knew what they were doing and gave a damn. It's a skillfully written, relentlessly dark, but also deeply touching novel that does the movie justice and fleshes it out in a way I haven't seen many movie novelizations do. If I could somehow make it so that every Terminator fan could get a copy of it, I would. And to answer the earlier question to myself... yes, it was worth it. Boy, was it ever.

Writing: While hardly literary fiction, this is really the best kind of vintage genre writing: rich, atmospheric, heart-poundingly intense when it has to be, soft and poetic where it hits you the hardest. 5/5

Availability: Why isn't this back in print?! 1/5

Entertainment factor: Couldn't. Put it. Down. 5/5

Do I recommend it? What else have I been doing until now? 5/5