Tag Archives: LGBT

Graveyard Romance: A Review of The Ghost and the Real Girl

Book cover for The Ghost and the Real Girl by Avery Carter. Image on cover shows a black and white drawing of the profile of a woman’s face. Her hair has been piled on top of her head in a Victorian-style puffy bun, and she has a scarf with a few sprigs of flowers tired around her neck. There is also an oval border around this drawing that has roses, vines, and leaves sprouting around it. Title: The Ghost and the Real Girl

Author: Avery Carter

Publisher: Self-Published

Publication Date: October 31, 2022

Genres: Fantasy, Paranormal, LGBTQ+, Romance, Historical

Length: 124 pages

Source: I received a free copy from the author.

Rating: 4 Stars

Blurb:

“There was never a good night to rob a grave, but the night of a full moon was certainly the worst…”

When Sera is hired to rob a 200 year old grave, the last thing she expects is the ghost of Lady Clementine de Quill rising up to scold her for it. Though her world is full of magical echoes from a not-so-distant past, a ghost is completely unheard of. What’s more, no one else can see or hear Clem. Sera tries everything to get rid of her– selling the items she took from her grave, bathing in saltwater, even putting herself through a religious smoke cleansing from the Church of the Wheel. Nothing works, and Sera finally resigns herself to having a ghost follow her around for the rest of her life.

Despite their differences, a partnership begins to bloom between the streetwise gravedigger and the cultured noblewoman. Just as they realize that maybe they aren’t so different after all, Clem starts to fade, flickering in and out for longer and longer stretches of time. Sera begins to realize that with each time Clem vanishes, there’s a chance that she won’t come back. There’s only one problem: she can’t imagine life without her anymore.

Review:

Who says cemeteries have to be scary places?

The romantic storyline was handled perfectly. This is something I’m saying as someone who usually steers clear of that genre, so don’t let that label dissuade you from reading this if you’re the same way. The author did an excellent job of creating two unique, realistically flawed characters and giving them a ton of time to pursue other goals in life before the slightest hint of romance filled the air. Having all of those things established ahead of time made it much easier for me to understand why these characters ended up becoming romantically interested in each other.  I loved this portion of the plot just as much as the rest of it.

There were a few spots where the pacing sagged a little due to how much character development and  world-building the author needed to do. While I appreciated it later on, I did find myself feeling a little restless in that moment when the storyline slowed down and I wasn’t sure why. Keep the slow moments in mind as you read.  I wish certain scenes had been sped up a little, but there is a payoff coming if you persevere!

I was impressed with the world building, though. It’s hard to create a complex society in a shorter work like a novella, but I was immersed in Sera and Clementine’s world by the end of the first scene. More details were released over time, of course, and I relished the opportunity to expand my understanding of where they came from and how their society had evolved in the few hundred years between Clementine’s death and Sera deciding to dig up Clementine’s grave.

The Ghost and the Real Girl made me yearn for more.

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A Review of Jathniel, the Immortal

Book cover for “Jathniel, the Immortal” by Eugene Roy. Image on cover shows an analog clock that has been stretched into a spiral so that you keep seeing the numbers 3, 6, 9, and 12 repeating themselves as the clock swirls down into an indeterminate point in the centre of the picture. Title: Jathniel, The Immortal

Author: Eugene Roy

Publisher: Self-Published

Publication Date: April 29, 2023

Genres: Fantasy, Paranormal, LGBTQ+, Contemporary

Length: 42 pages

Source: I received a free copy from the author.

Rating: 4 Stars

Blurb:

Angel Of Death’ Jathniel’s assignment at an elementary school shooting challenges his faith, and breaks his heart. But, like all Transitional Guides, he is supposed to be emotionally sterile. As a means of reset, Jathniel is thrust into unknown territory – life as a mortal canine, where he is granted the experience of love in its purest form, trusting and unconditional.

Review:

Content Warning: Car accident, mass shootings, death of a child, death of a pet, HIV.

Love comes in many different forms.

Jathniel’s reaction to each of his new assignments made me smile. I can’t go into a lot of detail about those moments without giving away spoilers, but I was delighted by how adaptive he was to new situation. The one where he was transformed into dog and had to adjust to a world where he understood the humans perfectly well but they weren’t able to return the favour well at all was especially fun. It truly felt like the author had tapped into dog psychology in those scenes, and I chuckled along as Jathniel adjusted to being someone’s pet instead of the powerful spirit being he had normally been.

My only piece of constructive criticism for this short story has to do with the ending. I found myself getting a little confused about one character’s transformation into someone else, and I would have benefited from a longer explanation about what was going on there. As much as I loved the rest of it, this scene did hold me back from going for a full five-star rating there.

The world building was fabulous. Did I want to dive deeper into it? Of course, but I was also satisfied with how much the author shared about what Jathniel did as an Angel of Death and why he was able to move so seamlessly from one death to the next. If Mr. Roy ever decides to write a sequel, I hope I’ll be the first person in line to read and review it. This was something I was thrilled to have stumbled up, and I’m not quite ready to say goodbye to it yet.

Jathniel, The Immortal made me yearn for more.

 

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A Review of Love’s Refrain – A Victorian Ghost Story

Book cover for Love’s Refrain - a Victorian Ghost Story by Stephen Glick. Image on cover shows an 1800s-style black and white photo taken of a young woman wearing a flouncy white dress and sitting on an old-fashioned couch. Her hair is arranged in a fancy, curly bun on top of her head, and her arms are gently placed beside each other on her lap. There is a man in a black suit standing facing the wall to the right of her. His head is turned so that he’s looking at her. Title: Love’s Refrain – a Victorian Ghost Story

Author: Steven Glick

Publisher: Self-Published

Publication Date: December 18, 2018

Genres: LGBTQ, Paranormal, Historical

Length: 100 pages

Source: I received a free copy from the author.

Rating: 3 Stars

Blurb:

A ghost from the past. A chance meeting in the present. A terrifying séance. Charlotte Stanton’s perfect married life is turned upside down when a secret love she buried long ago hauntingly returns. Still the question remains: are the supernatural events intruding upon Charlotte’s life happening only in her mind? Is she heading down a path toward madness? Set in Boston’s Gilded Age and accompanied by period drawings and silhouettes, LOVE’S REFRAIN explores one woman’s search for love, and the power of the past to emancipate the present.

Review:

It’s never too late to make things right.

Charlotte stirred up so many different emotions in me. Sometimes I felt endless empathy for her, while in other scenes I shook my head in frustration at how naive and sheltered she was. Surely the average adult would have figured out some of the stuff that she found so confusing much faster than she did! With that being said, I appreciated how nuanced her personality was, and I’d much rather read about a realistically flawed character than someone who always made the right decision. The more I got to know her, the more I liked her. If the author ever writes a sequel, I’d sure like to follow along on more of her journey.

I would have loved to see more details included in this story. For example, we never learned how Charlotte met her husband or what killed the ghost who was haunting Charlotte. That cause of death could have been a good way to get to know the deceased and explain why she was so attached to the protagonist. I also had some questions about the ending as far as the practicalities of life Charlotte would need to face after the final scene was wrapped up. While I can’t go into detail about that without giving away spoilers, it was yet another moment in this tale when having more details would have made the storyline richer in my opinion.

Spiritualism is one of those topics that I don’t think is discussed enough in fiction, especially in paranormal stories set in the late 1800s. I was pleased to see how much attention it received here. Whether you already know a lot about this movement or nothing at all, don’t worry. The most important details will be spelled out clearly, and everything else will be a happy bonus for those of us who do have preexisting knowledge of it. Some of the most interesting scenes were the ones that explored the various responses to the spiritualist movement from different portions of society. Many different points of view were represented, and I thought the author did a good job of showing why so many people were drawn to it and what they hoped to get out of speaking to their dead loved ones.

Love’s Refrain – a Victorian Ghost Story made me smile.

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Second Chances: A Review of Building Beauty

Book cover for Building Beauty by Rachel Eliason. Image on cover shows a close-up shot of the eye, eyebrow, and skin beneath the eye of a wooden robot that’s been designed to look human. The eye has a purple-blue iris that is quite unique. Title: Building Beauty

Author: Rachel Eliason

Publisher: Self-Published

Publication Date: September 29, 2012

Genres: Science Fiction, Romance, LGBTQ, Historical

Length: 33 pages

Source: I received a free copy from the author.

Rating: 3 Stars

Blurb:

In the waning days of World War One, Alejandro Faidosky is sent to serve the Tsar in a distant corner of the Russian Empire. In the industrial center of Chelyabinsk, deep in southern Siberia Alejandro discovers a factory producing “automatons”, clockwork robots. His job is to sculpt a robotic prostitute for the common soldier. “Of all the men in Mother Russia I must be the most ill equipped for this assignment” Alejandro moans to himself, but he must not let Major Dmitri know, and he must somehow build beauty.

Review:

Content Warning: Grief and prostitution.

Assumptions make the world go around.

Some of the most memorable scenes were the ones that explored the difference between what certain characters thought the world should be like and how it actually was. Yes, I know I’m being vague there, but this is one of those themes that is best left for new readers to fully explore for themselves. There’s nothing like reaching the ending of a paragraph or scene and suddenly realizing what the protagonist was hinting at earlier or what the author might have been gently nudging the readers to think about with some well-placed comments about the world we live in. I enjoyed those moments and hope other readers will as well.

Alejandro was such an intelligent, cautious, and thoughtful person that I struggled to understand why he chose the unusual design he did for the robotic prostitute he was building. That decision did not fit in well with everything else I’d learned about him. It would have been understandable for him to privately dream about a robot that he found appealing, but openly revealing such information was an entirely different story for that era. I wish this had been explored in greater depth so that I could better understand why he took this risk and what he hoped to gain from it. There was so much more the author could have done with Alejandro in this regard.

This is something I’m saying as a reader who usually has a strong preference non-romantic speculative fiction, but the author blended together the fantasy and romance genres together in this tale perfectly.  The storyline genuinely needed both of them, and I loved seeing how they strengthened each other and kept the characters moving along briskly to their destinies. It was my first time reading Ms. Eliason’s work, and her creative approach to how she mixed these genres together makes me want to read more from her as soon as possible.

Building Beauty was a romantic and inventive read.

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Creating Consciousness: A Review of MARiiMO

Book cover for MARiiMO by Tyrel Pinnegar. Image on cover shows a drawing of a grey robot with blobby arms and legs and a white head. The bottom portion of the head is filled with a blue liquid, an the rest of the head is white and blank. TitleMARiiMO

Author: Tyrel Pinnegar

Publisher: Self-Published

Publication Date: November 17, 2018

Genres: Science Fiction, Romance, LGBTQ+

Length: 124 pages

Source: I received a free copy from the author.

Rating: 3 Stars

Blurb:

This is the journal of Tammy Maheswaran, a reclusive roboticist living with undiagnosed autism. It documents the creation of Mariimo, a developmental robotics platform through which Tammy subconsciously externalizes her issues with isolation, anxiety, and touch. Upon the machine’s activation, Tammy gradually begins to realize that in the act of constructing Mariimo, she’s been unknowingly deconstructing herself.

Review:

Content Warning: Detailed descriptions of what it feels like to have anxiety, phantom pain from a limb amputation, and brief flashbacks to a car accident during which the main character was seriously injured.

Not everything can be planned out in advance.

I enjoyed Tammy’s character development. She told the audience almost nothing about herself when we first met her, so it was refreshing to see her slowly evolve into sharing more details about her personality and interests as the storyline progressed. I liked the process of exploring parts of her life she’d been completely silent about before. My opinion of her was fairly neutral in the beginning, but it swung over to something warm and positive  once I had a stronger understanding of how her mind worked and why she made the choices she did.

The pacing was very slow, especially during the first third of the book. While I understand that this was done on purpose due to the fact that Tammy had undiagnosed autism and was meticulous about how she created MARiiMO, I did have some trouble remaining interested as the narrator gave me so many chapters on the many different materials she used (or, in some cases, decided not to use) to make her robot come to life. I was glad I stuck through with it to the end, but the pacing was enough of a deterrent for me as a reader that it did have a negative affect on my rating. 

Some of the most memorable scenes were the ones that compared the differences between how a human and a robot may react to the same unexpected event. Even Tammy’s thorough planning phase in this experiment couldn’t predict everything MARiiMO did after she was created. I don’t want to give away any spoilers, but I thought this subplot was one of the most realistic and well-developed ones of them all. The author pushed everything to its logical conclusion and wasn’t afraid to extrapolate even more plots twists from the tiniest wisp of earlier ideas. 

MARiiMO was a thoughtful read.

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Top Ten Tuesday: Books I Liked About Asexual Characters


Hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl

A photograph of 18 heart-shaped sugar cookies. They are frosted with various combinations of green, yellow, orange, purple, white, and blue frostings as well as thinner frostings that have written X’s and O’s on them or left romantic messages like “hugs and kisses” or “forever” on them. Happy Valentine’s Day to everyone celebrating it!

For today’s Valentine’s Day freebie, I’ll be sharing a list of books I’ve read and enjoyed about asexual characters.

I’m actually on the asexual spectrum myself, so it’s been wonderful to see such an explosion of stories about people who are like me or similar to me.

This is a complex topic that could easily take up its own blog post, but go to this link if you’re curious about the wide variety of identities that exist within the asexual spectrum.

In the meantime, here’s my list.

Book cover for “Loveless” by Alice Oseman. It is a warm purple colour and has a black and white drawing of a slim person who has straight shoulder-length hair and is wearing jeans, a sweater, and a pair of sneakers. They are standing up but their neck and head are bent over as they look at a large heart they are holding in their hands. The heart is steadily releasing dozens of tiny little hearts into the air, and the little hearts are floating up and away from the person.

1. Loveless by Alice Oseman

 

Book cover for Let's Talk About Love by Claire Kann. The image on the cover shows a radiant dark-skinned black woman with an Afro. She’s wearing a sleeveless white blouse with ruffles near her neck and his holding both arms up in a triumphant pose as she grins and closes her eyes.

2. Let’s Talk About Love by Claire Kann

 

Book cover for Finding Your Feet (Toronto Connections, #2) by Cass Lennox. Image on the cover shows a background drawing of the famous outline of Toronto that includes the CN tower. In the foreground, you can see a drawing of two people’s legs as they dance together. One has light skin and appears to be Caucasian while the other has dark skin and appears to be African.

3. Finding Your Feet (Toronto Connections, #2) by Cass Lennox

 

The Cybernetic Tea Shop by Meredith Katz book cover. Image on cover shows a steaming cup of tea in a white mug that has fancy ridges and floral patterns on it.

 

4. The Cybernetic Tea Shop by Meredith Katz (My Review)

 

If you’ve read any other good books about asexual characters, I’d love to hear your suggestions.

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A Review of The Cybernetic Tea Shop

The Cybernetic Tea Shop by Meredith Katz book cover. Image on cover shows a steaming cup of tea in a white mug that has fancy ridges and floral patterns on it. Title: The Cybernetic Tea Shop

Author: Meredith Katz

Publisher: Soft Cryptid (Self-Published)

Publication Date: July 30, 2019

Genres: Science Fiction, LGBTQ, Romance

Length: 118 pages

Source: I borrowed it from the library. Thank you to Berthold Gambrel for reviewing it and bringing it to my attention!

Rating: 4 Stars

Blurb:

Clara Gutierrez is an AI repair technician and a wanderer. Her childhood with her migrant worker family has left her uncomfortable with lingering for too long, so she moves from place to place across retro-futuristic America.

Sal is a fully autonomous robot. Older than the law declaring her kind illegal due to ethical concerns, she is at best out of place in society and at worst vilified. She continues to run the tea shop previously owned by her long-dead master, lost in memories of the past, struggling to fulfill her master’s dream for the shop while slowly breaking down.

They meet by chance, but as they begin to spend time together, they both start to wrestle with the concept of moving on…

A F/F retro-future sci-fi asexual romance. A story about artificial intelligence and real kindness, about love, and the feeling of watching steam rising softly from a teacup on a bright and quiet morning.

Review:

Content Warning: Arson.

It’s never too late to try again.

Some of my favourite scenes were the ones that explored how Sal’s programming nudged her to make decisions that many humans would not. For example, her idea of terms like lifespan or forever were not the same as they were for Clara. The author did an excellent job of digging deeply into the psychology of artificial intelligence and showing the audience how a robot might really think about and interact with those around them.

I did find myself wishing for more world building in this story. This was set at least three hundred years in the future, yet most of the technology and culture was fairly similar to what we have today. That struck me as odd and pulled me out of the plot. It would have been helpful to either have a good explanation for why things had advanced so slowly or to see more examples of how their world was different from ours.

This was such a refreshing take on the romance genre. Whether you read a ton of romance novels or tend to avoid that genre altogether, I suggest going into this one without any assumptions about what’s going to happen next. It broke so many of the rules about how falling in love is supposed to look that I honestly couldn’t say for sure what would happen from one scene to the next. That’s the sort of thing I love to discover when trying out new authors, so I will definitely be keeping an eye out for what Ms. Katz comes up with next.

The Cybernetic Tea Shop was a cozy and romantic read.

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A Review of The Future Is Female! Volume Two, the 1970s

Vintage Science Fiction month takes place every January, and has a few guidelines:

 – read, watch, listen to, or experience something science fiction / fantasy that was created in 1979 or earlier

 – talk about it online sometime in January

 – have fun

If any of my readers are interested in participating\ use the hashtag #VintageSciFiMonth or tag @VintageSciFi_ or @redhead5318 on Twitter if you’d like your posts to be included in the official retweets and roundups.  


Drawing of white woman wearing a spacesuit and walking on the surface of a red alien planet. Title
: The Future Is Female! Volume Two, the 1970s – More Classic Science Fiction Stories by Women

Author: Lisa Yaszek (editor)

Publisher: Library of America

Publication Date: 1971 – 1979 for the original publication dates. October 11, 2022 for this specific compilation.

Genres: Science Fiction, LGBTQ, Historical

Length: 548 pages (including author biographies, etc).

Source: I borrowed it from the library.

Rating: 5 Stars

Blurb:

n the 1970s, feminist authors created a new mode of science fiction in defiance of the “baboon patriarchy”—Ursula Le Guin’s words—that had long dominated the genre, imagining futures that are still visionary. In this sequel to her groundbreaking 2018 anthology The Future is Female!: 25 Classic Science Fiction Stories by Women from Pulp Pioneers to Ursula K. Le Guin, SF-expert Lisa Yaszek offers a time machine back to the decade when far-sighted rebels changed science fiction forever with stories that made female community, agency, and sexuality central to the American future. 

Here are twenty-three wild, witty, and wonderful classics that dramatize the liberating energies of the 1970s:

  • Sonya Dorman, “Bitching It” (1971) 
  • Kate Wilhelm, “The Funeral” (1972)
  • Joanna Russ, “When It Changed” (1972) NEBULA AWARD 
  • Miriam Allen deFord, “A Way Out”(1973)
  • Vonda N. McIntyre,  “Of Mist, and Grass, and Sand” (1973) NEBULA 
  • James Tiptree, Jr., “The Girl Who Was Plugged In” (1973) HUGO AWARD 
  • Kathleen Sky, “Lament of the Keeku Bird” (1973)
  • Ursula K. Le Guin, “The Day Before the Revolution” (1974) NEBULA & LOCUS AWARD 
  • Eleanor Arnason, “The Warlord of Saturn’s Moons” (1974)
  • Kathleen M. Sidney, “The Anthropologist” (1975)
  • Marta Randall, “A Scarab in the City of Time” (1975) 
  • Elinor Busby, “A Time to Kill” (1977)
  • Raccoona Sheldon, “The Screwfly Solution” (1977) NEBULA AWARD 
  • Pamela Sargent, “If Ever I Should Leave You” (1974)
  • Joan D. Vinge, “View from a Height” (1978)
  • M. Lucie Chin, “The Best Is Yet to Be” (1978)
  • Lisa Tuttle, “Wives” (1979) 
  • Connie Willis, “Daisy, In the Sun” (1979)

Review:

Content warning: Starvation, dehydration, cancer, attempted murder, murder, zombies, and snakes. I will not discus these topics in my review.

There’s nothing like being introduced to so many fantastic science fiction authors at once.

I’ve never been interested in hunting frogs, but I did like the conversational style of Chelsea Quinn Yarbro’s “Frog Pond.” Althea was such a sweet and innocent person that I wondered why she kept disobeying her parents orders to avoid the creek and the mysterious pink and green patches that sometimes appeared in the water there. Surely there had to be something more than frogs to pique her curiosity. There were several wonderful layers to this story that I don’t want to spoil for everyone. What I can say is that the world building was fantastic and Althea was full of surprises for me. I’d love to visit her and her unusual little town again someday.

Vintage Science Fiction Blog Challenge badge. It shows a rocket ship against a red background. There is a bubble city in the background.  The sudden appearance of old age and impending death in “If Ever I Should Leave You” by Pamela Sargent piqued my curiosity. These things obviously worked different in this world than they do in our own, and it was interesting to slowly figure out what the rules were there. I also appreciated what this tale had to say about aging and grief. There were layers of meaning to it that I slowly unwrapped as I kept reading, although I should leave the details of that for other readers to discover for themselves.

As soon as I realized that the main character of “Hey, Lilith” by Gayle N. Netzer was a middle-aged woman who befriends someone much older than herself, I couldn’t stop reading. So many science fiction books are about teenagers and people in their early 20s that it’s a thrill to see other age groups represented. I appreciated the protagonist’s wry approach to suddenly finding herself in a post-apocalyptic storyline. Honestly, I’d react the same way, and her previous knowledge of how dangerous these settings can be made her refreshingly cautious about her predicament.

This is the second anthology in a series that does not need to be read in order.

The Future Is Female! Volume Two, the 1970s – More Classic Science Fiction Stories by Women was even better than the first volume of The Future Is Female. I’d wholeheartedly recommend it to anyone who loves vintage science fiction.

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A Review of In a Glass Darkly

Vintage Science Fiction month takes place every January, and has a few guidelines:

 – read, watch, listen to, or experience something science fiction / fantasy that was created in 1979 or earlier

 – talk about it online sometime in January

 – have fun

If any of my readers are interested in participating\ use the hashtag #VintageSciFiMonth or tag @VintageSciFi_ or @redhead5318 on Twitter if you’d like your posts to be included in the official retweets and roundups.  

Thank you to Berthold Gambrel for recommending this book to me


In a Glass Darkly by J. Sheridan Le Fanu book cover. Image on cover shows a ghostly figure reaching out to someone who is sleeping peacefully in a bed. The sketch is done in black and white and looks like it’s from the 1870s based on hairstyles, clothing, bedding, etc. Title
: In a Glass Darkly

Author: Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu

Publisher: Richard Bentley & Son (original publisher) and Duke Classics (the publisher of the reprinted volume I read).

Publication Date: 1872

Genres: Science Fiction, Fantasy, LGBTQ, Historical

Length: 169 pages

Source: I borrowed it from the library.

Rating: 4 Stars

Blurb:

In a Glass Darkly collects together five short stories from gothic horror and mystery writer Sheridan Le Fanu. The book, published in 1872 a year before Le Fanu’s death, is named from a passage in Corinthians which speaks of humankind perceiving the world “through a glass darkly.” The stories are told from the posthumous writings of an occult detective named Dr Martin Hesselius. In Green Tea a clergyman is being driven mad by an evil demon that takes the ephemeral form of a monkey, but is unseen by others as it burdens the victim’s mind with psychological torment. In The Familiar, revised from Le Fanu’s The Watcher of 1851, a sea captain is stalked by a dwarf, “The Watcher.” Is this strange character from captain’s past? In Mr Justice Harbottle a merciless court judge is attacked by vengeful spirits, dreaming he is sentenced to death by a horrific version of himself. The story was revised from 1853’s An Account of Some Strange Disturbances in Aungier Street. In The Room in the Dragon Volant, a notable mystery which includes a premature burial theme, an innocent young Englishman in France tries to rescue a mysterious countess from her unbearable situation. Lastly, Carmilla tells the tale of a lesbian vampire. It was a huge influence on Bram Stoker’s writing of Dracula and the basis for the films Vampyr in 1932 and The Vampire Lovers in 1970.

Review:

Content warning: demonic possession, stalking, murder, beheading (of a monster), minor drug use, and a few brief references to blood.  I will briefly discuss the demonic possession and stalking in my review.

If you like genre mash-ups that defy the reader’s expectations, keep reading.

The blurb gave a great overview of each of the five stories in this collection, so I’m going to use my review space to share my impressions of them a bit more casually than I would generally do. Somehow that feels right for this book.

I was a preacher’s kid growing up, so “Green Tea” grabbed my attention immediately. Clergymen and their families are exposed to portions of other people’s lives that the general public often knows little to nothing about. No, my family was never haunted by a monkey-shaped demon like the poor Reverend Jennings was, but I was intrigued by the difference between what people want others to think their lives are like versus what’s actually going on behind closed doors. This tale captured the sometimes jarring experience of moving back and forth between the two quite well. I thought it also well at explaining why secrets can be so corrosive for a person’s mental wellbeing, especially when they’ve convinced themselves that they will be rejected, or worse, if anyone finds out the truth about them.

One of the things I mulled about while reading ”The Familiar” was how blurry the lines were between science fiction, fantasy, horror, and other speculative fiction genres in the 1800s. This collection fit into all of those categories simultaneously in ways that are unusual when compared to how a similar story about a dwarf stalking a sea captain would probably be written and marketed today. I like stories that blur these lines, but this particular one was hard to get into because of how much time was spent discussing everything other than the sea captain’s adventures. If only there had been more details about the dwarf and why he was following the captain around.

“Mr. Justice Harbottle” made me think of the people in this world who have purposefully harmed others and never faced the consequences of those actions. Sometimes it can feel like justice will never be served in those cases. That made this an even more satisfying read. It was interesting to me to compare this  storyline to what happened in Charles Dickens’ “A Christmas Carol.” If you haven’t read that particular Dickens’ tale yet, definitely do check it out before reading this book. There’s not much else I can say about this one without giving away spoilers as the plot was pretty quickly paced and straightforward for this era.

Vintage Science Fiction Blog Challenge badge. It shows a rocket ship against a red background. There is a bubble city in the background. Pinning down the genre of ‘The Room in the Dragon Volant” was tricky. It dabbled in the mystery, adventure, horror,  thriller, and science fiction genres without ever fully committing to any of them. This is one of the reasons why I like reading speculative fiction from the 1800s so much. Just about anything could and often did pop up in a “science fiction” story back then. Authors didn’t seem to be as concerned with following the rules of their genre back then as many of them are today. With that being said, I struggled to get into this particular tale because of how much more time it spent jumping around from one idea to the next instead of focusing on character development. I never reached the point where I’d feel comfortable describing the personalities of the main characters in anything but the simplest details like what their professions were.

My favorite instalment in this book was ”Carmilla,” which, according to Wikipedia, was Bram Stoker’s inspiration for writing “Dracula.” The main character, Laura, was a young woman whose loving father had given her a safe but extremely sheltered life in a rural setting up until this point. She was naive about the outside world and incredibly excited to meet anyone new who crossed her path. When she reacted romantically to another woman, she didn’t have a word to describe her feelings. I thought it was fascinating to see how she handled these moments and what she thought was happening during them. Her father’s reactions to the rumours that were spreading around about various young women in the community who were suddenly dropping dead one after the next also piqued my interest. He blamed the fear surrounding those bizarre deaths on superstition and was far less interested in seeing if there were any specks of truth to the wild stories being passed around than I would have been. It made me wonder if he was in some ways even more sheltered than Laura was given how much faster she was to accept that something odd was happening.

In a Glass Darkly was a thought-provoking read. I’m glad I gave it a try for Vintage Science Fiction Month.

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Looking Back, Moving Forward: A Review of Ghost Stories for Christmas

Ghost Stories for Christmas by Shane Brown Book cover. image on cover shows a painting of a small, rural community in the 1800s. There is a thick layer of snow on the dirt road with two brown tracks through it. A church and some houses in the distance are snow-covered, too, and people are walking on the snowy sidewalk all bundled up as well. Title: Ghost Stories for Christmas

Author: Shane Brown

Publisher: Self-Published

Publication Date: December 3, 2021

Genres: Paranormal, Holiday, Historical, Contemporary

Length: 105 pages

Source: I received a free copy from the author.

Rating: 4 Stars

Blurb:

Five ghost stories set during the Christmas period to add an extra chill to the festive season! In “Houses Never Forget,” a man returns to the village he grew up in, only to find that a house hasn’t forgiven him for something he did as a boy. “The Philatelist” tells the story of two brothers, one good and one bad – but even the good might want revenge from beyond the grave. “Breaking Up is Hard to Do” is the tale of a man who is forced to repeat a tragic evening from his student days every year, but what happens when he tries to break the cycle? A university professor rents a remote cottage on the grounds of a former school in order to write up his research in “The Stranger in the Snow,” but, when the snow falls, he finds he’s not alone. Finally, “The Gift” is the heart-warming tale of an old man who is given an unusual gift by a department store Father Christmas. From the author of “The Pied Piper,” “The School Bell,” and “The Successor.” 

Review:

Content Warning: arson, death of parents, hypothermia, possession, grief, widowerhood, infertility, homophobia, mental illness, someone getting beat up, car accident, murder, and references to the Covid-19 pandemic. One minor character died of Covid-19 before the tale they were in began. I will not discuss these topics in my review.

Christmas is the perfect time to reflect on the past for the living and the dead alike.

Here’s an interesting tidbit of information for you as I get this review started: all of these stories are set in the same village, Brandley. Keep that in mind as you read them.

The unnamed protagonist in “Houses Never Forget” was someone who rarely thought about his rash childhood decision that that angered the house in his village so much. I can’t go into a lot of detail about what he did without giving away spoilers, but I thought this was an intelligent sketch of a character who would be easy to villanize but whose decision was also one that many other folks make every single day without realizing just how corrosive small town gossip can be.

Joshua, the bad son in ”The Philatelist,” was a violent troublemaker who never showed signs of empathy for anyone. I was intrigued by how the adults around him reacted to him when he destroyed property and physically harmed others. He was the sort of person I’d never want to cross paths with, and yet I couldn’t help but to wonder what had made him behave the way he did and why he enjoyed bullying his younger brother so much. It would have been helpful if the narrator had explained the origins of his behaviour because of how erratic and violent he was, but I also recognize that there are people like him walking around in real life whose decisions are just as difficult to understand. The plot of this one was straightforward, so I was glad to have some character development to ponder while I read.

After the heaviness of the previous story, “Breaking Up Is Hard to Do” was a nice change of pace. I think we all probably have at least one thing in our pasts we wish we could go back and change. When that isn’t possible and there’s a ghost involved who insists on repeating the same evening over again on the anniversary of her death every December, what’s the next best option? Other readers should discover the answer to that question for themselves, but I thought this was a thought-provoking look at the unhelpful patterns people can find themselves in when they’re unwilling to face their pasts. If only the narrator had dove more deeply into the topic. There seemed even more that could have been said about it, and I would have gone for a full five-star rating if a few minor things like this had been adjusted in this collection.  The final scene made me wish for a sequel, too, given all of the hints in it about what was about to happen to the main character next.

Everyone needs peace and quiet sometimes. Paul thought he’d found it in “The Stranger in the Snow” until the snowstorm hit. His compassionate response to the visitor who appeared after it had been snowing for a while told me everything I needed to know about him. I enjoyed seeing how they interacted and quietly waited for an explanation of why someone would be out in a snowstorm alone without enough layers to keep them warm. The ending, too, was my favourite of all of the endings in this collection. I held my breath as it was announced and wished I could dive back into the opening scene to warn Paul about what was to come.

”The Gift“ had such a cynical beginning that I honesty wasn’t sure what to think of that protagonist. Was Arnold this grumpy about everything, or was it only Christmas that he thought had been irrevocably ruined? Luckily, I didn’t have to wait long to get my answer, and when it arrived it softened my opinion of him immediately.  One never knows what others are quietly struggling with, and I wiped away a few tears as Arnold slowly shared more of his past with the audience. This was such a beautiful and heartwarming way to close off this collection.

Ghost Stories for Christmas made me smile.

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