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Sunday, April 28, 2024

The Grimmer by Naben Ruthnum

The Grimmer by Naben Ruthnum. Recommended. Read if you like cats, book stores, punk rock.













Formats: Print, audio, digital

Publisher: ECW Press

Genre: Dark Fantasy, Sci-Fi

Audience: Y/A

Diversity: Indian Canadian author and characters

Takes Place in: BC, Canada

Content Warnings: Alcohol Abuse, Death, Drug Use/Abuse, Racism (Highlight to view)


Blurb:
The small-town mysteries of John Bellairs are made modern with a dash of Stranger Things in this spine-tingling supernatural horror-thriller After his father returns from treatment for addiction, highschooler Vish ― lover of metal music and literature ― is uncertain what the future holds. It doesn’t help that everyone seems to know about the family’s troubles, and they stand out doubly as one of the only brown families in town. When Vish is mistaken for a relative of the weird local bookseller and attacked by an unsettling pale man who seems to be decaying, he is pulled into the world of the occult, where witches live in television sets, undead creatures can burn with a touch, and magic is mathematical. Vish must work with the bookstore owner and his mysterious teenage employee, Gisela, to stop an interdimensional invasion that would destroy their peaceful town. Bringing together scares, suspense, and body horror, The Grimmer is award-winning author Naben Ruthnum’s first foray into the young adult genre. This gripping ride through the supernatural is loaded with vivid characters, frightening imagery, and astonishing twists, while tackling complex issues such as grief, racism, and addiction.

I received this product for free in return for providing an honest and unbiased review. I received no other compensation. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255: Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.

It’s 1996, and Vish Maurya is finally returning from his Vancouver Island boarding school to his home of Kelowna, BC (where Ruthnum grew up). Normally, he’d spend the summer playing music with his best friends, Danny and Matt Pearson, but they’re no longer on speaking terms after the brothers told their music teacher about Vish’s father’s opioid addiction. Somehow, the entire school found out and Vish was sent away to boarding school while his father went to detox and worked on his recovery. Now he spends his days in his room brooding and pretending everything at is normal at home.

Kelwona is very white, and it’s hard for Vish being one of the only Indian kids. Other children do imitations of his parents’ Indian accents (never mind that neither of them has a strong accent). They joke that his beautiful mother is a mail-order bride or make snide remarks about arranged marriages because “there was no way someone that beautiful would willingly end up with someone who looked like his dad.” Parents tell him how much they love butter chicken and samosas. So, it’s a relief when Vish meets another Indian person, a cool but sick-looking young man named Agastya who runs a bookstore called Greycat books. A shop I would totally visit for the name alone if it existed in the real world. There’s even a shop cat named Moby. Little does he know that Agastya, a punk teen named Gisela, and a strange man named Mr. Farris are about to change his life forever.

And this is where the book veers into a mix of dark fantasy and science-fiction à la a Wrinkle in Time. Mr. Farris is a nachzehrer, an undead creature from German folklore that is said to be able to drain its victim’s lifeforce. Gisela is also a 700-year-old German witch, but somehow still 16 so it’s totally not creepy for Vish to harbor a crush on her because they’re technically the same age due to magic and time travel. She gave me the impression of a punk version of a Manic Pixie Dream Girl, that is, a woman who exists only to help and fulfil the male protagonists. She rescues her love interest from his own boring life and guides him to become a better version of himself. Gisela at least has her own motivations and desires, using Vish to stop the antagonist, but her “not like other girls” vibes still grated on me. I also didn’t like how Agastya and Gisela keep promising to tell Vish everything, then would end up dropping new, horrible surprises on him. You can hardly blame him for getting frustrated with them. They would act like they cared, but then seemed to be only interested in using poor Vish.

I found the Grimmer’s magic system confusing, somehow both extremely detailed and vague. Despite multiple explanations of both magic and magical beings I still had no idea how everything worked (something to do with very complex math and physics?). All this seemed to do was make the book feel unnecessarily drawn out. Kudos to Ruthnum for putting so much thought into his world, but I would’ve liked to have seen less world building and more character development, especially for Gisela. I could have also used more horror, given that the book is advertised as horror, though what little there was felt genuinely creepy.

Although The Grimmer takes place in the 90s, it avoids relying too much on nostalgia or making a plethora of pop culture references that might alienate its young adult audience. I liked how the book dealt so deftly with heavy topics like racism and addiction and showed the adults as imperfect. I like that Vish’s father, a well-educated psychiatrist, struggles with drug addiction while we see Agastya, a successful book store owner, abuse alcohol to help cope with the death of his wife.

Anyone can suffer from a substance use disorder, including a successful doctor and family man like Vish’s father, but you wouldn’t know it from looking at most media. At my day job, I work with patients struggling with substance use disorder (SUD), and half the battle is confronting the stigma surrounding addiction. Stereotypes about those with SUD include being “bad” people who can’t hold down jobs, live in squalor, have no meaningful relationships, are uneducated (often drop outs) and choose to be this way. Often, I will hear patients tearfully tell me that they’re not bad people, not like those other “addicts.” They’re afraid we’ll judge them, even though they suffer from a disease that can affect anyone, because the stereotypes surrounding addiction are so pervasive. Unfortunately, their fears aren’t unfounded because even in healthcare addiction carries a lot of stigma and providers will treat these patients as “lesser.” Some patients can’t even admit they have a problem because they don’t fit the mold of what they think someone with SUD looks like. They have a successful job, a family, they own their own house, they go to church, etc. so they can’t possibly be someone with an addiction. Their inability to accept reality (of course) makes recovery even harder. The fanciful aspects of The Grimmer were hit and miss for me, and I felt like Giselle could have been a stronger character, but the book was solid and the more serious issues (grief, addiction, racism) were all handled well and were, for me at least, the strongest parts of the story. 

Wednesday, April 10, 2024

Hammers on Bone by Cassandra Khaw

Hammers on Bone by Cassandra Khaw. Highly Recommended. Read if you like Lovecraftian Horror, Noir Detective Fiction.


Formats: Print, digital

Publisher: Tor

Genre: Body Horror, Monster, Occult, Psychological Horror, Sci-Fi Horror
Audience: Y/A

Diversity: Queer character (Gay woman), POC characters (Black, Creole woman, unknown POC character), Bisexual author, Malaysian author

Takes Place in: London

Content Warnings: Alcohol Abuse, Body-Shaming, Bullying, Child Abuse, Child Endangerment, Death, Gore, Pedophilia, Physical Abuse, Racism, Rape/Sexual Assault, Sexism, Sexual Abuse, Slurs, Slut-Shaming, Verbal/Emotional Abuse, Violence (Highlight to view)

Blurb:
John Persons is a private investigator with a distasteful job from an unlikely client. He’s been hired by a ten-year-old to kill the kid’s stepdad, McKinsey. The man in question is abusive, abrasive, and abominable.

He’s also a monster, which makes Persons the perfect thing to hunt him. Over the course of his ancient, arcane existence, he’s hunted gods and demons, and broken them in his teeth.


As Persons investigates the horrible McKinsey, he realizes that he carries something far darker. He’s infected with an alien presence, and he’s spreading that monstrosity far and wide. Luckily Persons is no stranger to the occult, being an ancient and magical intelligence himself. The question is whether the private dick can take down the abusive stepdad without releasing the holds on his own horrifying potential.


During one of my late-night explorations of the internet (when I should have been sleeping but was instead googling all the random thoughts that pop into my head at 2 AM) I stumbled upon the work of Malaysian author Cassandra Khaw, a nerdy, queer woman who writes video games and short horror stories. Instantly intrigued, I purchased one of her novellas, Hammers on Bone, and I have to say, I fell absolutely, head-over-heels in love with Khaw's writing. Her beautifully crafted stories are full of wonderful words like "penumbra" and "ululation" (one of my favorite Latin derived words), deliciously grotesque descriptions, and unique characters. English is Khaw's third language, yet she uses it with a mastery that puts even native English speakers to shame. Her writing has a lot of range, too. These Deathless Bones is a feminist fairy tale about a witch getting sweet revenge on her wicked stepson. Rupert Wong, Cannibal Chef is a comedic splatterpunk series, as hilarious as it is gory, about the misadventures of the titular chef who prepares decadent meals of human flesh for gods and ghouls and gets wrapped up in international deity politics. Khaw has even dabbled in chick-lit (while also managing to poke fun at the more problematic elements of the genre) with her book, Bearly a Lady, about a bisexual, plus size wear-bear that works at a faerie-run fashion magazine. Then there's her Persona Non Grata series. Much like Victor LaValle's The Ballad of Black Tom, Khaw's novellas take place in a Lovecraft inspired universe, but she flips the famously racist HP the bird by putting people of color at the forefront and using his creations to address social issues like racism, poverty, and abuse. Both stories feature the private investigator, John Persons, one of the most interesting characters I've come across in horror fiction. It's the first of Person's two novellas, Hammers on Bone, that I'll be reviewing here.

Persons speaks and acts like the "hardboiled detective" characters from 1930s pulp magazines, complete with dated American vernacular and machismo, despite living in modern day London. This makes John seem incredibly out of place and occasionally downright ridiculous, like when he describes a little boy running into his arms for a hug as "crashing into me like a Russian gangster's scarred-over fist." When he's not working as a PI, John spends his time saving the world from destruction by Star Spawn and Elder-Things. He's adept at using magic, smokes cigarettes to dull his inhumanly strong sense of smell, enjoys the cold, and can pick up memories from objects and people through physical contact. He also happens to be a Dead One (though not one of the Great Old Ones, Persons is quick to explain), an otherworldly creature whose true, terrifying form comfortably possesses resides in a human body which he shares with the ghost of its previous inhabitant. I bet that's why he has the most unimaginative, made-up sounding name ever; it was probably the first thing that popped into his head when he started inhabiting his meat suit.

Persons and his human body have an interesting relationship, more commensal than parasitic. While other Star-Spawn and Elder Things simply take what they want, invading human flesh like a disease and eventually destroying their hosts, Persons tries to minimize damage to his meat suit (he may be immortal and resilient, but his human form still suffers from wear and tear, and he feels pain when it's damaged), and gives his phantasmal passenger a say in certain decisions. Even though he's in the driver's seat, John's body will still react to its original owner's thoughts and feelings, independent of him. In one scene, the meat suit becomes aroused by the proximity of a beautiful woman. Persons is aware of "his" body's quickening pulse and rising temperature (among "other" rising things, heh), and states that the sensation is "not unpleasant", but he describes the physical reaction with the detached interest of scientist observing a cell under a microscope. He is, after all, still an alien being.

Not much is known about the man whose skin he now wears, except that he's an older person of color who lived during the interwar period, and gave John his body willingly after being asked. The whole Philip Marlowe / Sam Spade persona Persons adopts to appear more human is as an homage to his meat suit's original owner. I guess it's kind of sweet that he does that, in a very weird way, but unfortunately his stubborn refusal to update his dated vocabulary and attitudes, or venture into any genre that isn't detective noir makes John come off as pretty sexist. He refers to women as "skirts," "broads," "dames," and "birds", and divides them into victims and femme fatales. This attitude backfires on him spectacularly since, of course, the real world isn't like his detective novels, and John keeps misjudging the women he interacts with.

What sets the monstrous PI apart from his fellow cosmic entities, besides seeking consent from his body's original owner, is his fondness for humanity, his dedication to following the law and maintaining order, and his desire for earth to remain more or less the way it is, i.e. not a barren hell-scape inhabited by Eldritch abominations.  Most of the monsters he fights are chaotic evil, infecting and destroying whenever they go, but John Persons is closer to lawful neutral, occasionally leaning towards good. He's not exactly heroic since, in his words, "Good karma don't pay the bills," but Persons does have a strong set of morals. As previously mentioned he's big on consent and describes the act of possessing a willing host's body as "better than anything else I'd ever experienced" and feels incredibly guilty when he accidentally reads a woman's mind after touching her arm. When she becomes understandably angry at the violation, screaming "You don't take what you're not given!" John doesn't try to minimize, excuse, or defend his behavior (even though the intrusion was an accident), he simply apologizes, mortified by what he's done. He can even show compassion at times, but how much of his altruistic behavior is due to the remaining sentience of his body's former inhabitant acting as his ghostly conscience is unclear.

It's his spectral companion who convinces John to take the case of a young boy named Abel, who wants Persons to kill his abusive stepfather. While initially hesitant about committing murder, John is convinced once the boy reveals that his stepfather is a monster, both literally and figuratively, and both Abel and his little brother's lives are in danger. He might not be a hero, but Persons does seem to genuinely want to help the two boys, even if he claims it's just because they're clients. It may be simply because he wants the ghost with whom he cohabitates to stop nagging him, as John is usually pretty indifferent to human suffering on his own, or perhaps it's because an Old One is involved, and he'd really prefer it not destroy the world. Regardless of the reason, he agrees to help.

In his eagerness to play white knight (or his meat suit's eagerness) Persons often fails to realize that the "helpless victims" he seeks to rescue are often perfectly able to take care of themselves, like the waitress whose mind he reads. He's also quick to victim blame the boys' mother for not leaving, clearly unable to understand the psychological element of abuse or how dangerous it is for a person to try and leave an abusive partner, just making her feel worse than she already does. John struggles when it comes to comforting victims or dealing with their emotions. He claims his lack of skill when it comes to words and feelings is due to being a "man" (or at least inhabiting the body of one), though it's just as likely it's because he's an eldritch abomination, and he's just been using sexism to avoid learning the nuances of human emotion. While Persons is better at managing his desire to destroy and devour than the other monsters and is able to maintain a detached control over his meat suit's emotions and baser instincts, he's not immune to the effects of his human body's testosterone or his own toxic misogyny. When the PI is feeling especially aggressive his true form starts to writhe beneath his human skin, straining to break free from his epidermis and rip apart the object of his ire. Even his thoughts start to degrade into a sort of violent, inhuman, babble when he gets too riled up. John actually has to fight to keep control of his monstrous body when he first encounters the abusive stepfather, he's so desperate to disembowel and devour him. His true nature is a stark contrast to the cool and logical detective persona Persons has adopted. I won't lie, I did enjoy seeing him act all protective of Abel and his little brother. There's something amusing about what is essentially an immortal abomination that can effortlessly rip a grown man in two, doing something as mundane and sweet as escorting his young client home while carrying the child's kid brother on his hip. It's also heartbreaking when you realize the two boys are safer with a literal monster than their step dad, McKinsey (even before he was possessed).

The step-father is a real piece or work, and throughout the story I desperately wanted John to give in to his monstrous instincts and tear the bastard apart, limb by limb. But being a man/monster of the law, Persons won't do much more than saber-rattle until he has solid proof of McKinsey's wrong doing, much to Abel's frustration. The kid would much rather the PI solve things with his fists (teeth, tentacles, claws, and other miscellaneous alien appendages) than waste time talking to witnesses, and I'd certainly be annoyed too if the monster I hired to kill someone wasted time playing detective instead of just eating his target. But Persons did warn Abel that he's not a killer for hire and wants to do things "by the book". Unfortunately, like most real monsters, McKinsey excels at hiding his wrong doing and camouflaging his true nature which makes it difficult for John to find a solid lead. People like McKinsey and describe him as a "loving family-man".  Those who haven't been completely conned by his act either don't care he's a monster (like his boss) or are too terrified to do anything (like his fiancée). None of the adults in the boys' lives are fulfilling their duty of protecting two vulnerable children. This is where the real horror lies in Khaw's story-- not the eldritch abominations like Shub-Niggurath, or the threats of world destruction, but the all too painful reminder that we so often fail abuse victims. Khaw is tasteful when describing what the two boys go through, and it isn't played for titillation or described in explicit detail. She only reveals enough to lets us know the two boys in the story are going through something no child should ever have to suffer. I also liked her choice to make the victims male. Far too often male survivors are overlooked, erased, or mocked because society tells us males can't be victims, even though the CDC states that "More than 1 in 4 men in the United States have experienced rape, physical violence, and/or stalking by an intimate partner in their lifetime" and a study published in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine found that 1 in 6 boys will be sexually abused before the age of 18. As depressing as these statistics are, the situation isn't completely hopeless, because monsters aren't invulnerable, even the kind that have been infected by Elder Things. As Person muses towards the end of the book "I don't remember who said it, but there's an author out there who once wrote that we don't need to kill our children's monsters. Instead, what we need to do is show them that they can be killed." For those of us who can't go out an hire a eldritch abomination PI, at least we have RAINN (Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network) and their recommended resources for cases of abuse and sexual assault.