Poke Your Eye Out With a Sharp Stick. A Review of Doctor Ice Pick.

 

I read a lot of horror, but the most horrifying thing is what real people do to others. There's a reason Freeman was known as Dr. Ice Pick (though he wasn't actually a doctor.) He performed lobotomies by inserting an ice pick above his patients' (victims') tear ducts, then wiggles the ice pick around until he severed the frontal lobe. Some patients bled to death, some turned into shadows of their former selves, most became incontinent. And most, this is sad, never consented to the operation.

This is a nonfiction book. If you're interested in how awful someone can be to helpless people, check Doctor Ice Pick out.

My Annual Share-a-Skeleton Cartoon for your Halloween viewing pleasure.

 Silly Symphonies - The Skeleton Dance - YouTube

Rumble in the Jungle. A Review of Our Share of the Night

 This is a long book. I like the depth the author goes into with the characters. The descriptions of buildings, jungles, people, monster/thing/darkness are excellent. After a while, though, the novel felt like a slog to go through. Descriptions of horrific child abuse got to be too much for me.

I know this is horror, and sometimes horror is grim, but graphic, bloody, torturous child abuse just...ugh.

My other problem was that the folks doing all the torturing didn't seem to understand why they did it. They were appeasing a violent, big, dark thing without being sure it could give them what they wanted. A lot of people were lying, hurting, torturing, and being hurt themselves without a clear understanding of why. The book is commentary on the brutal Argentine military rulers, but it might have been better as a thriller instead of a horror novel.

Honestly, the story gave me nightmares. The brutal torture of small children was too horrendous to me Thank you to Netgalley and Random House for allowing me to read and review Our Share of the Night...even if it gave me nightmares.

Ah, Catrina, My Heart Begs to Live Somewhere Where People Do Cool Things Like This

 

Very Cool Movie Poster. 1931 Dracula Vampire Cinema: The First 100 Years

 

                    VFrom Christopher Frayling's new book, Vampire Cinema: The First 100 Years

Do you write historical fiction? How about historical horror fiction? A very short line of advice.

 

“If you wish to know an era,” wrote sci-fi seer William Gibson, “study its most lucid nightmares. In the mirror of our darkest fears, much will be revealed.”

From Hellbent and Hydebound - The Millions

                                                             Coming November 15, 2022

I'm lusting after a fictional character. A review of Tread of Angels.

 To begin with, Ms. Roanhorse makes the demon lord so gorgeous, kindly, intelligent and understanding, that if he wasn't a fictional character, I'd ask for his phone number. He's great. The love-of-his-life, Celeste the protagonist, is mildly interesting. What did he see in her?!

I agree with some of the other reviews that Tread of Angels needed to be fleshed out some more. The dialogue was predictable, The characters could have been more interesting had there been more detail of their lives. It's a short novel so there was room to explore. It would be a great story because it has a great premise, but there wasn't enough background to really care about the characters. Bit players instead of supporting actors. They seemed two dimensional., except for the demon lord. If it turns out that he's real, and not fictional, will someone give him my email address? Might he be on a dating app?

I greatly enjoy Ms. Roanhorse's books. I think I've read all of them. But Tread of Angels felt like it wasn't the final draft. As I said, the premise is so good that this could be a marvelous tale with a little more of the characters' lives fleshed out.

Thank you to Netgalley and Saga Press for allowing me to read and review Tread of Angels.

Put your Longjohns on to read this one because you'll shiver from the cold...and the fright. A review of The Drift.

 I'm amazed at how the plots came together. There are twists in time, mistaken identity, several who-done-it's, and lots of surprises I never saw coming. Nothing and nobody are what they appear to be. Even the timeframe comes as a surprise. I want to pick apart the book to see how the author did it. I want to talk about the twists and turns but then we'd have a spoilerfest.

I have to say that there are so many characters that at first, I thought I'd never keep them straight. That turned out to not be a problem. Between murders, questionable accidents, a virus, and more murders, characters exit the scenes rapidly. I should mention that there is violence, gore, and illness. Oh, and every character manages to roll their eyes. That's my only complaint. Everybody answers questions with a roll of the eyeballs. Please. Just stop. Every book I read lately is full to the brim with eyeball rolling. Dexter the dog was the only one not participating in the eyeball-rollathon..

Other than eyerolling, I found the story exciting. About 50 percent through, I said I was going to stop for the night. Instead, I stayed up until 4 a.m. and finished the book. The mysteries, the twists, the horror, the mistaken identities made it impossible to put down.

Thank you to Netgalley and Ballentine Books for allowing me to read and review The Drift.

With Friends Like These...You Know the Rest. A review of Things We Do to Our Friends.

 You do not want to be friends with these people. Especially Clare.

But it's delicious to read about them.

Delicious may not be the word I want to use, since the story opens with a forced feeding. It will whet your appetite for what's to come.

After the grim opening, I thought Clare was a little dull, a lonely college freshman looking for friends. About 1/3 of the way through the book, those friendships become dark and dangerous. The friendships are not boring, nor are they safe.

A lively but brutal opening, then the pace slows, then the mysteries and darkness speeds up to a point where I stayed up late to finish reading The Things We Do to Our Friends are not things you want your friends to do to you. Reading about these monstrous friends is much more enjoyable than being one of their friends.

Thank you to Bantam Books and Netgalley for allowing me to read and review The Things We Do to Our Friends.

The Things We Do to Our Friends did not involve a flower bouquet but did involve sexy underwear.
There's some pigs, too, but they're not in sexy underwear.