book reviews

Book reviews for horror fans; weather a sleepless night with literary accounts of hauntings, possessions, zombies, vampires and beyond.

Book Review: "Salem's Lot" by Stephen King
For those of you who remember the movie, the miniseries or the subculture that spun off from this I would like to say that if you have done all of this but not read the book then you will definitely enjoy it so go and do so. If you have and you’re like me who got the ever-living daylights scared out of them by the novel more than the series or the film then you have come to the right place. Stephen King’s “Salem’s Lot” is a book that grows with age. I read it for the very first time when I was just about turning twelve and now, I’m re-reading it thinking - how is this still making me feel uncomfortable almost a decade and a half later? There are many scenes in this book that are not wholeheartedly ‘scary’ but there are many scenes where I think I felt far more uncomfortable than if I just read a straight up horror and gore novel. I remember as a pre-teen that I read a couple of those uncomfortable scenes and just started to cry. Not cry out loud, but tears would run down my face and my muscles would tense up and really, only a few authors can do that to me. One of them is Stephen King.
By Annie Kapur4 years ago in Horror
The Blue Castle Hag
The Blue Castle under the water. In the castle lived a mean old hag.Every night she would look through one of the windows. This happened during the night.Passer bys can see her pointing her finger and luring many into the castle . They can hear her say "Come here to my humble abode and have some tea and crumpets". Noone could refuse tea and crumpets. Everyone that passed by never came out of the castle. One by one they have been disappearing. Never to be seen or heard from again. People can see the castle from afar.The above water place looks like a huge see through swimming pool above the ground. The Blue castle looks quite creepy in the middle of the night. Complete with special glow in the dark shadows and spooky looking spiked tiny creatures. These creatures are scattered all around the castle. They only seem to come out at night. The daylight seems to scare them the most. Once the crack of dawn comes. The creatures go back into hiding.There are openings everywhere close to the castle. Noone can see them . Unless they look closely . The creatures seem to keep themselves around to maintain safety for a specific time. Every year around Halloween alot of changes takes place. The hag gives everyone who visits one trick and one treat. Never to be seen or heard from again. Maybe, the hags top choice is for population control.One may want to know the disappearances of all these people in a well populated area. One my have to ask the mean old hag. Ask the mean old hag,if you dare. One day you may disappear yourself.Never knowing the truth about the little old hag and the Blue castle . Night after night strange things happen all around the castle. One can hear water trickling down a window pane. Drip by drip a small puddle appears. On the ground one can see an opening through the puddle. The many drops makes the opening bigger and stronger.I heard many of these openings lead to different rooms throughout the world. Where these drops of drips lead. Noone knows where they all lead .To follow the drops of drips.One must wait for a small puddle to appear. Wait for a clear strong opening. Then leap forward and jump in. Jumping in one of the puddles may lead you to the mean old hag.After you arrive in front of the hag ask her, if you dare.Many who have come into contact with her seem to have disapppeared one by one. Darkness sets in around the castle. A dark clo headed for the castle . Thunder can be heard from afar.Rain clouds form and rain droplets start a huge puddle.A purple lightning strike. Lit up part the pale blue sky.Huge puddles in different places. One can jump in any puddle and dont know where it leads.Sometimes , all it takes is leaping into the ,amotivation to do .One must remember looking into dark places.In one of the puddle may lead you to the blue castle hag.Can =The Blue cas=tle hag may turn up.Noone knows the exact puddle one can see the Blue castle hag appear in.Everytime one visited the Blue castle hag one disappeared. Never to be seen or heard from again.Be careful after you come across a blue castle hag. Stay away from the Blue castle hag.Everyone that has been contact with her disappears.Disppearing , never to be seen or heard from again . From this moment on and until the next. Noone ever dared to go near the hag again .
By Karen4 years ago in Horror
20 Books That Terrified Me. Top Story - October 2021.
Halloween is my favourite season not just because everything is scary and dark, but also because of the flavours. These include: ginger, pumpkin, dark chocolate, almond, apple and so many more. They are such delicious flavours and you can eat them warm. But in reality, everything is still scary and dark.
By Annie Kapur4 years ago in Horror
Book Review: Stitched Lips: An Anthology of Horror from Silenced Voices
Tired of the same old thing? So much of what we read is homogenous. Far too often, the people whose voices we need to hear most are silenced by the louder ones of the majority. STITCHED LIPS pushes back on that. Within these pages, you'll find eleven staggeringly original and well-crafted horror stories, from amazing authors who are People of Color, LGBTQ+ folks, and writers who identify as women. All profits from this anthology will be donated to the Southern Poverty Law Center, an organization whose goal is the advancement of human rights for all people.
By Crysta Coburn4 years ago in Horror
Book Review: "Dreamcatcher" by Stephen King
Stephen King is one of the greatest writers ever and I for one am glad I live in a time where he is still alive. As a teen, I was pretty obsessed with reading all the Stephen King I could get my hands on because it was considered contraband. I went to a school for girls and so, as young women, we weren’t supposed to be reading something as profane as Stephen King and my English Teacher was surprised when I would turn up with one of his books. I read “Misery” when I was a teen and so, I think that really set of the spark to read more. As you know, I didn’t finish “Pet Semetary” when I was a teen, instead only actually reading the whole thing about a few weeks ago, wondering why I never finished it. A decade ago, I was absolutely terrified of that novel - needless to say, I didn’t remember that when I picked it up a few weeks ago. I read “The Shining” and “The Dreamcatcher”. I read “Salem’s Lot” and “Carrie”. I read a lot of them well into my early 20s. But here I sit now about to tell you of the second time I read Stephen King’s “Dreamcatcher” and why it is a highly underrated book by him.
By Annie Kapur4 years ago in Horror
SuzeReviews: Billy Summers
From any other writer, it would have been just another schlocky action porno: a hit man on a cursed last job, traveling the country with a bombshell ingenue. But Stephen King‘s Billy Summers shows that even with a tenuous premise, he can deliver a meaningful, character-driven opus that hums with power.
By Suze Kay4 years ago in Horror
5 Books recommended by Stephen King
Who is Stephen King? Writing books for more than 4 decades, with worldwide sales of more than 350 million, he is one of the most successful fiction authors anywhere in the world today. Born on the 21st of September 1947, in Portland, Maine. He grew up in a family of five children with both his parents. His father was a merchant seaman who traveled the world, and his mother stayed at home raising the children.
By Borba de Souza4 years ago in Horror
Reading Junji Ito’s ‘Army of One’ in the Age of Isolation
I haven’t read manga in a long time. My early teen years were spent feverishly tearing through shōjo series, such as Fruits Basket and Tokyo Mew Mew, all borrowed from my secondary school’s library. I remember proudly showing my aunt how to read them – “you go from right to left…” - when I visited for dinner a few times.
By Lauren Entwistle4 years ago in Horror
Reed's Literary Horror Review of 'Tortured Willows' by Christina Sng, Angela Yuriko Smith, Lee Murray, Geneve Flynn
Lord, there is a lot of pain in the first few poems alone. I have to admit, I'm like... the worst guy to submit poetry to for review. But I felt that this collection really needed to be heard and I had to contribute what meager opinions I could on the matter.
By Reed Alexander4 years ago in Horror
Sleeping Beauties, Vol. One - Review
Capitalizing on a wide array of prior successes, author Rio Youers and artist Alison Sampson have adapted Stephen and Owen King’s 700-page novel Sleeping Beauties into a ten-issue comic series released by IDW Publishing. Alison Sampson has created artwork for comic projects including Hit Girl, Winnebago Graveyard, and Jessica Jones, while Rio Youers has authored a handful of well-received thriller/horror novels, including The Forgotten Girl and Halcyon, as well as a trove of novellas and short stories. In Sleeping Beauties, Youers and Sampson combine strengths to deliver a surreal version of the father/son King duo’s apocalyptic tale about a town in West Virginia tearing itself apart as a mysterious sleeping sickness, dubbed Aurora, targets the world’s female population. While the series debuted in June 2020, IDW released a hardcover graphic novel in April of this year that collects issues one through five, allowing readers to experience the first half of the series in one volume.
By Philip Canterbury4 years ago in Horror
Jumping the Shark With Stephen King
You're probably familiar with the term "Jumping the shark." It became popular in the late 90s and early 2000s as a way to pinpoint when something good went wrong, and it refers to the moment when the long-running sitcom "Happy Days" definitively downhill, in an episode where anti-hero Fonzie is waterskiing in California, preparing to do a jump, and there's a shark in the water. The shark lunges for him and he jumps over the shark. From that point on, the show was just not good.
By Gene Lass4 years ago in Horror
Book Review: "The Troop" by Nick Cutter
I have read a few terrifying books in my time which include the theme of the graphic depiction of violence. Books such as: “Exquisite Corpse” by Poppy Z. Brite, “Blood Meridian” by Cormac McCarthy, “American Psycho” by Bret Easton Ellis and even yes, “Haunted” by Chuck Palahniuk. Graphic depictions of violence in novels are often used not just for the effect of horror, but also to make the reader truly see what is happening as it is something that the reader has (hopefully) not witnessed in person before. To make a depiction of violence believable we need something more than just the way in looks, we need to way it truly feels to be in that position. The mixture of feelings of terror and descriptions of the physical in the violent act causes the scene to be even stronger than it would have been without the atmospheric description. Ideas not only surrounding darkness, but the deep and philosophical - possibly existential and absurd - have found to be even more effective in producing some incredible descriptions when involved in depictions of violence in a horror novel. Nick Cutter’s “The Troop” is no exception to this recipe for a brilliant horror book which is truly quite terrifying.
By Annie Kapur4 years ago in Horror