Shutter by Courtney Alameda

Formats - Print, digital

Publisher: Square Fish Books

Genre: Monster, Ghosts/Haunting, Zombie, Vampires, Blood & Guts, Thriller, Horror, Romance

Audience: Y/A

Tags: POC (Love interest is part Aboriginal Islander, author is Latina), Disability (PTSD)

Takes Place in: California, USA

Content Warnings: Violence, Gore, Child Death, Physical Abuse, Emotional Abuse, Child Abuse, Sexism, Sexual Harassment/Assault, Torture (Highlight to view)

Blurb:

Lock, stock, and lens, she's in for one hell of a week. Micheline Helsing is a tetrachromat-a girl who sees the auras of the undead in a prismatic spectrum. As one of the last descendants of the Van Helsing lineage, she has trained since childhood to destroy monsters both corporeal and spiritual: the corporeal undead go down by the bullet, the spiritual undead by the lens. With an analog SLR camera as her best weapon, Micheline exorcises ghosts by capturing their spiritual energy on film. She's aided by her crew: Oliver, a techno-whiz and the boy who developed her camera's technology; Jude, who can predict death; and Ryder, the boy Micheline has known and loved forever. When a routine ghost hunt goes awry, Micheline and the boys are infected with a curse known as a soulchain. As the ghostly chains spread through their bodies, Micheline learns that if she doesn't exorcise her entity in seven days or less, she and her friends will die. Now pursued as a renegade agent by her monster-hunting father, Leonard Helsing, she must track and destroy an entity more powerful than anything she's faced before . . . or die trying. Shutter by Courtney Alameda is a thrilling horror story laced with an irresistible romance.

As a 90's kid, I grew up with some truly terrible action films. And I loved them. Mortal Kombat, Wild Wild West, and Total Recall are all proudly displayed on my DVD shelf. So I like to think I'm pretty forgiving when it comes to plots full of holes and cookie-cutter characters, as long as the story itself is fun and entertaining. Keeping that in mind, let's dive into Shutter, the literary equivalent of a bad action film.

We'll start with our four, action-cliché, main characters. We've got the leader of the good guys, complete with her obligatory tragic backstory, the tough guy who always has her back, the smart guy who's good with computers but not so great at fighting, and the wise cracking jackass who we're supposed to like but just comes off as sexist and irritating. They exist to spout "clever" quips at each other, provide exposition at awkward times, and act like bad asses.

Following a standard action movie formula, the hero decides to rush off on her own without backup, and gets suspended by the boss (who's also her abusive dad). But they go after the bad guy anyway because screw the rules, they're action heroes! Then there's lots of cool action scenes, explosions, some TRULY creepy shit, and a love story that gets shoehorned in there.

Okay, so the writing is "meh", the characters are kind of flat, and the story formulaic as hell, but was it at least exciting and entertaining?  Was their nail biting suspense and horror? I'll get to that in a minute. First, I need to address some major issues I had with story, the first being its heroine, Micheline.

No, Micheline, it's a French-Hebrew name that means "Close to God".

Micheline is a tetrachromat, able to see the invisible "ghost light" given off by the undead. As a direct descendant of Abraham Van Helsing, (because of course she is) she is sworn to protect the world from monsters, and captures and exorcises ghosts on her camera, à la Fatal Frame. Now, I'm going to give the author major props for making the lead a woman, something that doesn't happen often in the action genre (but is slowly becoming more common). So that's great. What's not so great is that Micheline has this really annoying habit of having to prove what a "Strong Female Character TM" she is by running head first into danger, then needing to be rescued by the guys. Apparently nothing says "bad ass" like poor decision making and being a damsel in distress.

Great teamwork there.

I can understand why she might want to prove herself; Micheline is struggling with PTSD and an abusive father, so it would make sense if the story was about her difficulty returning to active duty while suffering from flashbacks. Overcoming something like that is no easy task. But her trauma and strained relationship with her father seem to be their own separate thing, with little to nothing to do with her foolhardy, reckless, and selfish behavior. At least Micheline doesn't take her grief out on everyone else, like her jerk-ass dad, she just puts their lives in danger by keeping important information from them, making everything about her, and refusing to deal with her issues. So, basically a pretty awful leader. I also got this whole "I'm not like other girls, I'm a cool girl" vibe from Micheline. Throughout the book she kept putting down other women and/or viewing them as competition for her "boys", which was just sexist and gross. Basically, what could have been a cool, strong, female action hero was ruined by internalized sexism, bad decisions, and needing men to save her all the freaking time.

Another huge problem with Shutter was the flow of the action scenes. There is SO MUCH exposition and info dumping, and it keeps interrupting the suspenseful parts of the story. I mean, it's wonderful how much thought Alameda put into this world, and I was certainly interested in the science behind monster hunting, but I don't want to read a full page about how a camera works right when Micheline is about to be killed by a ghost. It'd be like pausing the duel scene between Luke and Vader to give a five minute lecture on the technology behind lightsabers. It's cool and all, but really not the right time, and completely destroys the tension.

Forget the incredibly dramatic fight scene, let's learn about trichromsticism!

Okay, so now for the moment you've been waiting for, was it at least entertaining? Heck yeah it was! The overall story was great, suspenseful, and fun, with some truly terrifying scenes. By the time I got to the second half of the book, I couldn't put it down! The monsters were incredibly creative and creepy, like something out of Silent Hill, and the horror scenes were spot on. Alameda does an excellent job of building suspense and creating a creepy atmosphere (minus the random info dumps that kill the mood). It's worth pointing out that this is the author's debut novel, so it's understandable that the book has flaws. Even the great Terry Pratchett's early work was, admittedly, not that great, and he's one of my favorite authors! So Alameda definitely has time to hone her skills and improve on her characterization and exposition. She's already great at world building, horror, and action scenes. And honestly, it's nice to see a horror novel written by a Latina author. The genre is severely lacking in Latinx, Chicanx, and Hispanic writers, and the few I know of are mostly men. 

Overall, Shutter is a fun, suspenseful read, even with its flaws. If I could just take out the annoying characters, and focus on the plot, the monsters, and the fight scenes, the book would be perfect, like a horror survival game. That's actually not a bad idea, it could be a cross between Fatal Frame and Resident Evil, where you can just explore abandoned buildings and fight monsters instead of listening to pointless dialogue. At least in a video game I can skip random info dumps. 

I just imagine all annoying video game tutorials as being done by either Navi or the Microsoft Paperclip.

Everything I Know About Zombies I Learned in Kindergarten by Kevin Wayne Williams

Formats: Print, digital

Publisher: Mott Haven Books

Genre: Apocalypse/Disaster, Blood & Guts, Zombie

Audience: Adult

Diversity: Black/African American/Caribbean American characters, Trinidad, Jamacian, Hispanic/Latinx characters

Takes Place in: New York City, USA

Content Warnings: Abelism, Animal Abuse, Animal Death, Body Shaming, Bullying, Cannibalism, Child Death, Child Endangerment, Death, Drug Use/Abuse, Forced Captivity, Gore,  Medical Procedures, Miscarriage, Racism, Rape/Sexual Assault, Slurs, Suicide, Violence (Highlight to view)

Blurb:

Finalist for Foreword Reviews' IndieFab Novel of the Year for Multicultural fiction and Horror. Even before the apocalypse, nine-year-old Letitia Johnson's life had never been simple. Shuttled from foster home to foster home in the impoverished neighborhood of Mott Haven, it was all she could do to keep track of her little sister. When the apocalypse came, she tried to keep her sister's kindergarten safe by locking them all in a tiny school bathroom, hiding while they waited for a rescue that never came. For five days, they hid. They hid while their teachers were being eaten, while their classmates were being killed. They hid while the Bronx was being evacuated. Now, there's no one left to help them. There's no place left to hide. It's just her, one ax, twelve kindergarteners, twelve garden stakes, and a will to live. While the cast of this novel is primarily children, the book is intended for adults and contains material unsuitable for younger readers.

When it comes to horror, kids come in two types. Either they're sweet, innocent, completely helpless victims the protagonist needs to protect at all costs, or they're evil little bastards that will send you into the cornfield, control you with their telepathic powers, or just straight up murder you because they're the spawn ofSatan. The children in Everything I Know About Zombies I Learned in Kindergarten somehow land right dab in the middle of the victim/villain scale. They're neither helpless nor innocent after being forced to go through things no child should go through, nor are they actively malicious, only killing for survival. They also don't seem to possess the immunity to handle situations that most children do in horror stories. Kids get eaten by Zombies, shot, torn apart, and baby zombies get spiked in the head. So if you can't stomach minors getting killed in fiction, I recommend staying far, far away from this book.

 Letitia, the nine-year-old protagonist, is easily the most competent, clever, and practical character in the book, organizing her little sister's kindergartners into a unit of efficient zombie killers and quickly picking up survival skills. Growing up with a drug addicted mom, Letitia is used to taking charge and picking up adults' slack, in addition to becoming wary of the world at a young age. In the early chapters, they try to look for the childrens' parents, eager to be rid of such a heavy responsibility, only to discover their dickbag guardians all evacuated without them. (Who the hell just leaves their kid behind during a disaster? You'd think they'd at least make some effort to save them, damn.) The adult survivors actually pose more of a threat than the zombies (or cucos, as the children call them), their greed and despair claiming far more lives than the undead do. It's weird, even though the children are far from innocent, having become skilled killers, the adults are the ones who've become morally bankrupt. The few who do manage to hold on to their optimism and naivety don't last long, foolishly trusting the wrong people or refusing to admit the world, and the rules, have changed. The kids might be depressingly cynical and violent now, but they're merely adapting to their new reality, and are much more practical than their grown counterparts. It's no wonder the adults are so unnerved by them.



Some of the kids enjoy killing a little too much.

I was expecting the children being eaten by the undead to be the most disturbing part, until the book turned out to be about the death of innocence, and children being forced to adapt to a situation no child should ever go through. It's one thing to read about fantastical monsters like Zombies attacking a bunch of helpless kids, but quite another when they're dying from gun violence, or growing up in crushing poverty. In the first, the situation is pure fiction, no real child is ever going to be attacked by the undead, and you can feel safe in that knowledge. But it hits close to home when it comes to real world problems. Even if the children in the story are fictional, you know millions of real kids out there right now who are surrounded by abuse, violence, and probably living without basic necessities, and that's super depressing. So basically, it's a story about how kids with rough lives can't rely on adults (because they're either malicious, incompetent, or ignorant) and have to take charge of their own safety and survival, which probably would've ended up happening with or without undead hordes overtaking the city. I know zombie apocalypse stories are generally bleak, but damn.

 The zombies in the story are pretty much your typical Romero zombies, slow-moving and stupid, and not too difficult to kill as long as there aren't a lot of them and their brains are destroyed, a feat which the children usually accomplish by stabbing them in the eye with garden stakes. Unfortunately, everyone becomes zombified upon death, regardless of how they die, so the undead multiply even if they can't bite anyone. Letitia quickly figures out that the zombies are attracted to movement and sound, and is smart enough to stick to quiet, secluded areas, while the adults continue to attract the undead with the buzz of their emergency generators and gun fire (because the adults are somehow less competent than grade schoolers, another reason Letitia avoids them).

 Unfortunately for me, most of the book is dedicated to the practically of surviving in an abandoned New York City, wandering around and looting mini-marts for supplies…which made for less than stimulating reading. I'm going to admit right now, I don't like camping or fishing, or any form of "roughing it," and I don't like reading about it, either. I'm pretty sure I'd die if I went for more than 40 minutes without WiFi.  So I've long ago accepted the fact that I would probably be the first person to die in a zombie apocalypse type situation due to my dependence on modern conveniences and comfort, and I'm okay with that. I'm sure some people will find all the survivor type stuff super interesting, as is evident from Discovery Channel's programming, but I was hoping for way more suspense and undead violence, and less foraging and guinea pig farming. Speaking of which, there's a decent amount of animal death too, apparently Zombies like to eat puppies as much as they like to eat little kids.



I would not last long in an Apocalypse, or even a dead zone. How did I even function back in the 80's? 

Stepping away from the story for a moment, I feel it's worth mentioning that while this book was a finalist for a multicultural fiction award, and has a very diverse cast, it was written by a white guy. Obviously, I prefer Own Voices books, but I've reviewed non-minority authors writing about minority characters on here before, and I probably wouldn't even be mentioning the author's race except for one thing that was bothering me. For the most part Williams does do a pretty decent job at representing a very racially diverse cast, and has clearly put a lot of effort into making the children's voices seem authentic. But the way the protagonist, Letitia, spoke came off as iffy to me, and I found myself side-eyeing like I always do when white people try to replicate the slang and speech patterns used by people of color within their communities. Now, it's totally possible Letitia is completely accurate to how Caribbean children speak, and I'm just super ignorant. It's just as possible Williams was trying to portray the way an average nine-year-old speaks, and Letitia's ethnicity had nothing to do with it. I mean, I have no idea what children are supposed to sound like, and my mom was a grammar obsessed English major so I probably sounded like an overly-formal weirdo at that age. (No one says "to whom are you referring" or "may I please", when they're in Kindergarten mom, GOD.) I honestly don't know, so I'm afraid I'm going to have to leave that distinction to someone more qualified. And if I am jumping to conclusions, well, blame it on all the racist pidgin I've heard spouted by characters like Long Duk Dong and the Crows from Dumbo (did you know the main crow's name is Jim? Damn, Disney...) over the years making me super wary.


Seriously, Jim Crow! WTF were you thinking Disney!?! At least they're not as bad as Sunflower from Fantasia.

Everything I Know About Zombies I Learned in Kindergarten definitely has flaws, most of the adults (and a few of the kids) get so little characterization it's hard to figure out who's who, the action scenes are confusing, and Williams spends way too much time on boring minutiae, but it's still an enjoyable read. The horror is less the gory, run away from the monster kind like I was expecting, and more a slow building horror at the nature of humanity and how adults kind of suck.