Review for This Wretched Valley By Jenny Kiefer

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I read this based on Cynthia Pelayo’s comments about it. She was Jenny’s mentor. It did not disappoint.

It’s been a long time since a book truly freaked me out. Last Days by Adam Nevill is the last one I can remember wanting to stop because I was freaked out. This was like that.

I’m getting ahead of myself, so I’ll backtrack.

The opening of this book reminds me of At The Mountains of Madness. They stumbled upon something amazing, a rockface that appeared out of the blue and where it shouldn’t be. Much the way it happened in Madness.

I’d been around climbing as a kid. My biological father did technical climbing. He climbed Mt. Rainer and a few others. I never learned this, though I would like to.

This book starts with how many of the lost in the woods books do, but when it takes a turn, it’s a hard turn. There are elements of Jack Ketchum in the darker parts of this book, as well as The Woods Are Dark by Richard Laymon.

I nearly stopped this book at 65%. I was completely freaked out by what was happening. My brain needed a break. I chalk this up to the prose and how well Jenny writes. Luckily, my Kindle, which I use to read books from NetGalley, needed to be charged. It gave me a few hours of respite. I dove in as soon as it was ready.

There are so many things to say about this book. It does not come out until January, but I would order it now. It’s going to be one of my favorite books going forward. Jenny’s description, her knowledge of climbing, and her sense of knowing what to put that will scare you all coalesce into a story about survival. About wanting something bad enough to risk your life to attain it.

This underlying theme in the story, whether one character or another, stayed with me when I closed the book. I’ll be thinking about this one for a while. This will be my last review for a while unless something piques my interest. I do have other books to review through NetGalley, but I’ll be watching cartoons or reading comics for a while after this book. I need to wash my brain out for a bit.

Review for Never Dead by Joe Scipione.

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What is it about Chicago stories landing in my lap recently?

I reviewed Cynthia Pelayo’s Forgotten Sisters last week. You can read the review here. Like all of Cynthia’s books, it’s set in Chicago. I haven’t read any of Joe’s stories before. I came into this fresh, but the beginning drew me in.

The opening, and so much of this book, reminds me of Frankenstein. The gothic feel, the trips to the graveyard, and other things about the story. There’s a darkness to this story that’s unsettling. It’s a deep yearning in humanity to continue. So many of us fear death. The older I get, the more it comes to the forefront.

Joe brings this out. He doesn’t talk about it, except in small moments between characters as they’re being “fitted” with the devices that would change humanity. Joe could have taken a more graphic tone with the fittings and all it entails. He took a more tame path. It fits better with the story.

Behind the story of Creighton, the Doctor(who we never know his name), and Clyde, there’s the story of the reporter, Michael. I liked this part of the story almost more than the other three.

I care about Michael. I care about his family and what he’s trying to do in Chicago. I also understand his fear. He wants to dive into the mob stories in Chicago, but the fear of doing that and/or losing his family holds him to change what he does.

His journey and the journey of the other three collide. Michael’s investigation throws him into the crosshairs of the other three, unwittingly so. It’s in Michael, not Clyde, whom I grew to feel sorry for, that I wanted to see become triumphant. Clyde is the man who hides his intelligence, while Michael puts it on display, to his detriment.

In the end, Michael falls prey to the other three. It’s when the story recommenced after years pass that we see Michael become the hero he wanted to be. He does it to save someone from his fate. He chooses to become the hero. Clyde does the same by Michael’s side.

When we recommence with the story, it feels more like a vampire or zombie story. This turn of story lands perfectly, in my opinion. Joe does a great job of imagery throughout the novel. From the lightning, the graveyard, the catacombs under the house, there’s the monolith of the house itself.

I grew up in a town with great old houses. They felt intimidating, though their beauty was majestic. Creighton’s house is no different. If you’ve toured an old house, you know the feeling. The smell of the wood, the way the light pours through the front windows at certain times of the day. It has that reverent feeling, much the way the house in Forgotten Sisters does the same thing.

Both houses in the last two stories I’ve reviewed are characters of their own. Each of them holds secrets. And each plays a part in the greater story within the house itself.

I loved the feeling of this novel. I’ll be looking for Joe’s other books at my local library. Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for letting me read this one. I thoroughly enjoyed it.

Review For Forgotten Sisters by Cynthia (Cina) Pelayo

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My oldest and I went to Chicago when they were six. It was Father’s Day weekend. I’ve wanted to go to Chicago since I was a kid. I’ve been a Blackhawks fan since I was in Mites. If you don’t know, I was seven or eight. I’ve been fascinated by it. By the lake, the river, and the sports teams.

We went to the Adler Planetarium. We stayed at the Hotel Lincoln, where I had a ghost experience and attended a Cubs game at Wrigley.

Cina knows Chicago. She knows what the air tastes like in the winter. How the river freezes, leaving chunks of ice floating through it in the winter. She brings this knowledge to every story about Chicago. Its presence drips from the prose in her books and stories.

She takes you into her stories and their fairy tales the way no one can. She knows the city, the fairy tales she reconstructs and places them into the city’s history.

We should all know the story of the Little Mermaid, either from Disney or Hans Christian Andersen, but it’s Andersen’s version she takes hold of in Forgotten Sisters.

It opens with two sisters. They’ve suffered a tragedy, but we don’t know what it is early on.

The sister’s link to a series of deaths in Chicago opens many things about the story. Cynthia takes hold of the narrative of death, intricately weaving a tale about grief, loss, and death. The death from long ago and the death of the sister’s parents weave a tapestry rich with the history of Chicago, the ghosts who haunt the city, of which there are many, and take us on a journey of discovery with the main character.

Anyone whose lost a loved one knows this journey. We’re angry about what happened. We wish we could have fixed it, but in the end, we find our way to dealing with it the best way we can.

We think about that person often. We remember the good times we had. We consider what we lost when they left, and we sit in these memories.

We are born in a world where loss is inevitable. Sometimes we see it coming. Other times, it strikes when we least expect it.

Cina is one of my favorite writers. She carries a story through to the end. She makes the connections. I found tears in my eyes when I finished this book.

I try not to give spoilers in my reviews. You should come into Forgotten Sisters blind. I didn’t give much away. This has jumped to one of my favorite reads of the year. I can’t wait for its release.

I watched Exorcist: Believer so you don’t have to, A Review

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I went into this knowing the reviews; maybe that skews this, but I don’t think so.

It takes a bit to get into, just as the original film did.

There will be Spoilers in this review.

Two girls, one of whose mom died when she was born, after a blessing in Haiti moments before the earthquake hit.

Fast forward 13 years. The girl wants to communicate with her dead mother. Her friend, from a religious family, takes her into the forest beyond their school to help her communicate. Why a little Christian girl knows how to communicate with the dead is beyond me. They disappear for three days (Jesus’s three days reference).

They return, and neither remembers what they did or where they went for those three days. It’s left to the viewer to figure it out, which we don’t have to because weird things start to happen. One girl wets the bed. Hello, Regan, at the party.

The connection to the original movie is based on a book Chris McNeil wrote. The mom from the first movie. She has no contact with Regan.<–save for later.

Here’s a bright spot in this review. The two young actors who play the young girls are amazing. They dive into the parts. They are Olivia O’Neill and Lidya Jewett. Give these two more roles. They were brilliant.

She throws herself on the floor, which is a habit that both of the girls do. Convulses and ends up in the hospital. Let’s move to other parts that stick out for me.

The tropes are everywhere. This is the 2020s. Necks snapping, girls cursing at their mothers, throwing themselves on the floor, that’s old hat. It’s an overused trope that was done better in other movies.

Let’s move to a part that made me laugh. The various religions unite, like The Super Friends. Catholicism and its rite of exorcism come to save the day, but it doesn’t happen that way.

So, smoke comes out of the girl’s mouths. I was waiting for Sam and Dean to show up.

I will leave it to you, but the overt religiosity of it, the trope-filled script, and so many things make me give it a bad review. The end shot is excellent. I love the original and the book. I don’t think Green should be allowed near horror again. Halloween was good, Kills was awful, and Ends along with this were terrible.

Now, I’m going to watch the original to cleanse my palette.

The days grow

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There are moments in my writing where the days grow wider. The wind blows outside. There are times when I see things more clearly than others, and then, there are times like now.

It’s been a couple of months since I’ve written anything decent. Reading Tim Waggoner’s book lit some sort of fire, though it may have been a combination of several things.

I did a ghost hunt at Mercur Cemetery with the Utah Chapter of the HWA this past Friday. I got some great pictures of a sunset. That night has been with me since. I think about how old it is. The Town of Mercur went away in the early 1900s. After two fires and the closure of a mine, it fell apart. This happened to many towns around the same time.

The cemetery sits on a hill overlooking the valley below, but there was something about that night. Something about the sounds. The feelings, and then there was how I felt and my youngest felt. I’ve always been sensitive to places like that. It was their first time at a place like that. They did not enjoy it. It was overwhelming to them.

I’ve talked to them about it since. They’re getting better. But the atmosphere of that place is different. The air shifts when you walk up the hill to it. It’s subtle, but they and I noticed it.

I’ll be using that trip to work. It’s the least I can do. I may post pictures from it. I got some great ones. It was the uncomfortableness of it. It wasn’t the dark, but the sounds. The chittering in the dark. It has stuck with me.