And then it was October. That time of year we spooky folk can’t wait for. For a solid month, horror movies are prominently featured on streaming services, ghosts and ghouls adorn houses and businesses alike, and excuses are made to eat all of the candy purchased to give out to trick-or-treaters with the understanding that another box will be purchased before the big day and, when that one has been consumed, a third box of inferior candy will be bought in its place.
I got through eight books this past month, many of which were really good, and at least one that blew my socks off…
From a Buick 8 by Stephen King
This was my second time reading this book; I’ve been re-reading a lot of older Stephen King books that I first read in my younger days. By and large I’m finding that I enjoy them a second time through, in some cases even more so than the first time I read them. This one, however, was one that I did not enjoy quite as much.
From a Buick 8 is not so much a novel as it is a collection of anecdotes spread over a conversation had in a police station smoking pit. The book follows a young man named Ned whose father, a Pennsylvania police officer, is killed in a traffic stop. After his dad’s death, Ned hangs out and eventually works part time at the police station his dad worked out of. Throughout the book, the police officers at the station recount to Ned the strange happenings surrounding an odd car they found decades earlier.
The car, which resembles an old Buick Roadmaster, is the epicentre of bizarre events from things vanishing around it to nightmarish creatures appearing from within it. Many of the tales told about it revolve around Ned’s late father, who was most enthusiastic about the car’s appearance.
Thing is, even with all the strange occurrences, not much of anything happens. The car is almost a big carrot that King dangles in front of the reader, never really giving much more than a whiff, let alone a bite, to anyone whose interest it catches.
Grady Hendrix (How to Sell a Haunted House) brazenly calls this the novel in which “…King totally loses faith in the power of narrative.” I wouldn’t go so far as to say that, though I completely understand Hendrix’s argument, but this book does seem to mark a shift in the writer’s modus operandi.
Annihilation by Jeff Vandermeer
Yes, this is the same book that inspired the 2018 film starring Natalie Portman.
Annihilation follows a team of four women who are sent on the twelfth expedition into a mysterious zone known as Area X. Very little information is given about Area X except that it is an ever-growing area cut off from civilization.
The story is told through journal entries made by the Biologist of the group—the characters in this book are known only by their job title as it applies to the expedition into Area X. It doesn’t take long after the team arrives at their base camp for things to take a dark and bizarre turn.
A lot of this book, like much of Vandermeer’s work, deals with strange ecological events that are never really explained. I enjoy this kind of ambiguous storytelling, when done well and not obviously out of laziness, but I know some readers like to be rewarded with at least some answers as to why such-and-such is happening.
This book is short, puzzling, thought provoking, and rife with beautiful, weird, dreamlike imagery. If you can handle being left in the dark on a number of happenings, I don’t think you’ll regret giving this one a read.
Slattery Falls by Brennan LaFaro
Some of my favourite books are of the buddy adventure-horror sort. I’m talking about books like the John Dies at the End series by Jason Pargin and Meddling Kids by Edgar Cantero. Slattery Falls, uh, falls into this category.
The book follows three friends on the paranormal investigation of a house in the titular town. Things go tits-up, and our heroes wind up fighting for their lives against a hopelessly powerful force.
There are some really good moments in this book; nicely written scary scenes and touching moments of love and friendship. It’s a short book and things move along at a good pace, so it’s not much of a time commitment. Slattery Falls is part of a trilogy and I’m looking forward to checking out the next entry.
I Found Puppets Living in My Apartment Walls by Ben Farthing
Last month I read a book called I Found a Circus Tent in the Woods Behind My House. It was an absurd and harrowing tale of a father and son’s fight for survival. The author wrote another I Found… book, and it’s just as strange and equally terrifying.
I Found Puppets in My Apartment Walls is the story of Johnny, who inherits his grandfather’s apartment after his death. Grandpa was one of the stars of a kids television puppet show called R-City Street, which is very obviously a parody of Sesame Street. Grandpa operated a puppet named Smoopy and, during Johnny’s first night in the apartment, Smoopy comes shambling out of a dark corner and stands over the bed before disappearing into shadow again. Thus begins a descent into an increasingly horrific, mad world of hungry, sentient puppets.
Like Farthing’s other I Found… book, I read this one in a day. It grabs you by your fear nerve and drags you into a basement of madness and gaping puppet mouths. If you’re afraid of puppets, this book might warrant some therapy afterwards. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.
Just Like Mother by Anne Heltzel
Oh boy. This was far from my favourite read of the month.
Just Like Mother follows Maeve, the former victim of a mother-centric cult. When she reconnects with her cousin, who she was in the cult with, Maeve knows that absolutely nothing can go wrong and leaps into the relationship with blind abandon. All of the red flags go over her head and she winds up fighting for her life and to escape traumatic memories of her childhood.
This book seemed to be wanting to say something, maybe about motherhood, or parenthood in general, or about the female body, or maybe about abuse.
I don’t want to give a lot of energy to dumping on something I didn’t enjoy, so I’ll just say I can not recommend this book. It has won awards though, so please don’t take mine as the final word on it.
The Moorstone Sickness by Bernard Taylor
I’ve read some great older, rather obscure horror novels over the years. The Religion by Nicholas Condé, The Great White Space by Basil Copper, and The Tribe by Bari Wood are just a few. While The Moorstone Sickness doesn’t hold a candle to any of those titles, it was a fairly enjoyable read.
The Moorstone Sickness follows Hal and Rowan to the village of Moorstone, where they hope to forget a tragic loss. While there, the couple experience unheard of levels of hospitality from the villagers. They soon learn that people enjoy Moorstone so much that they seldom leave.
Bernard Taylor creates a sense of mounting dread throughout the tale, even as Hal and Rowan go about mundane daily rituals. Even the glimpses into the more insidious goings-on are done so subtly that the reader can hardly know for sure that anything untoward is being done.
At the time of its publication, the premise of this book was probably a lot more effective. Maybe I’ve read too much speculative fiction and watched too many spooky / science fiction movies, but I saw what was going on in Moorstone pretty early on. I won’t give it away, but I think most readers will pick up on it pretty quick.
The worst part of this book was its conclusion. There is some fantastic buildup and things come to a chilling climax. Then the story just ends with the most obvious and least entertaining and enjoyable of all possible endings. It’s a bit disappointing given how cool the story itself was, but not enough to ruin the experience.
The Deep by Nick Cutter
This was another re-read for me. Not for lack of something interesting to read, more so because it popped up on my audiobook app and I was curious to know how it turned out. Also it’s a book I really enjoyed the first time around. I’ll stop justifying my reading choice now.
The Deep takes place during a mysterious pandemic colloquially known as the ‘Gets, called so because its victims quickly forget things, starting with the mundane and ending with sufferers forgetting how to perform necessarily bodily functions like eating and breathing. The world’s last hope turns to renowned scientist Clayton Nelson, who is investigating a strange discovery deep in the Marianas Trench. When communication with Clayton is lost after a final message, his brother, Luke, is sent down to fetch him. Luke soon learns that something terrible has befallen the Trieste, the deep sea research station Clayton is working in—terrible in the veins of The Thing and Event Horizon. It quickly becomes apparent that this is no pandemic novel, its horrors coming from something much more primeval and infinitely more monstrous.
This book is tough for a lot of reasons. The claustrophobic nature of the Trieste is utterly unnerving throughout. Add to that the isolation and separation from the surface, the monstrous presence aboard the station, and some of the most visceral images of gore that can be imagined, and you’ve got a cocktail not fit for the weak of constitution.
Big SPOILER - this book has the most drawn out and heart wrenching dog death I have ever read. It’s horrible and relentless.
The ending of this book caught me entirely off guard the first time I read it. The second time through makes it a little easier to handle, but it’s still completely insane, in the best sort of way.
As far as the audiobook is considered, narrator Corey Brill does a fantastic job. His vocal range goes from conversational to a truly unnerving baritone. I’d love to hear him narrate It.
Let the Right One In by John Ajvide Lindqvist
This book blew me away. It’s one of the absolute best books I’ve read all year, if not the best.
Let the Right One In is ostensibly about a young boy’s burgeoning relationship with a young girl who turns out to be a vampire. It was turned into a Swedish film in 2008 and was adapted into an American film in 2010, under the title Let Me In.
I’d seen the American movie and thought I knew what I was getting into, but the book is its own beautiful, terrible beast. Lindqvist does a remarkable job of exploring the secret lives of adolescents and some of the horrors inherent to youth. The lives he writes of are heartbreaking and endearing with a tragic beauty that will stick with me for a long time.
The American film (I haven’t yet seen the Swedish version) eliminates some key components of the story that change the narrative dramatically. Many of these elements are upsetting and were hard to read, but make the reader helpless to fall in love with Eli and Oskar, the book’s protagonists.
Let the Right One In has to be the best modern vampire novel written since Anne Rice’s Interview with the Vampire.
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All in all a good month for books! Have you read any of these? What are your thoughts? Let me know in the comments, by dropping me a line through the Contact page, or by hitting me up on social media: @authorchristophersweet on Instagram & Facebook, @thischrissweet on Twitter, newly on Bluesky as @christophersweet.bsky.social (I think…it’s confusing), and also finally on TikTok as @christophersweetauthor
Have an awesome month. You’ll hear from me again in November!
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PS - Did you know I’m running a Kickstarter campaign for my next novel, The Orchid Room? There are some cool rewards to be had for backers. Check out the link and support if you’re able: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/christophersweet/the-orchid-room
Thanks!