Martonfi’s voice is productively restless. Danger forces the refugee on the road, but she can still appreciate the beauty in a field of flowers.
Category: Book Reviews
Playing a Cruel God: An Interview with Joseph Halden
Joseph Halden explores the evil psyche of an evolutionary scientist in "G," included in the speculative fiction anthology E is for Evil.
City of the Shrieking Tomb by Patrick A. Rogers
Reading City of the Shrieking Tomb made me feel as if I was seeing something that, as a tourist, I was not meant to see. In fact, it was as if I’d been expressly forbidden from seeing it.
Archival Hauntings: A Review of The Bone Mother by David Demchuk
David Demchuk, who attended Montreal's Blue Metropolis festival earlier this year, is the author of a Scotiabank Giller Prize-nominated collection of horror short stories, The Bone Mother. This was quite an accomplishment for a horror writer, especially since writers of horror fiction are so often excluded from the literary mainstream. The Bone Mother, set in …
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An Occult Rebellion: a Review of The Flaw in the Stone by Cynthea Masson
The Flaw in the Stone, Cynthea Masson’s second novel in her Alchemists’ Council trilogy, explores the occult origins of the Rebel Branch’s revolution against the Alchemists’ Council. In a world where manuscript scholarship is the key to harmonizing the universe’s dimensions, the balance of power is about to be thrown off kilter. Genevre, an outside …
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Venera Dreams: A Weird Entertainment by Claude Lalumière
Back in November, I met Claude Lalumière at the Yellow Door readings, where he read from his phantasmagorical mosaic Venera Dreams: A Weird Entertainment. His latest book details the history of a mysterious city-state and its erotically-charged populace of artists and madmen. It is a visionary piece of work filled with atavistic rituals, ancient goddess cults, and …
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A Kiss with Teeth by Max Gladstone
I have never read a more Halloween Father's Day story than "A Kiss with Teeth" by Max Gladstone. In this dark but ultimately heartwarming tale, Dracula has moved to suburbia to raise a family, but begins to grow apart from his wife Sarah and his son Paul as he suffers from the seven-year itch. It …
Weird #5 Casting the Runes by M.R James (1911)
Book reviewing can be a perilous profession, especially when the author of the book in question knows a thing or two about alchemy and Runic magic. In such cases, it is not advised to write an overly negative review, for fear of reprisals on the part of the sorcerer in question. Unfortunately, in M. R. …
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Weird #4 Srendi Vashtar by Saki (1910)
In "Srendi Vashtar" (1908) by Saki, a sickly boy named Conradin has a lively imagination exasperated by the dreariness of his Edwardian childhood. Having been given five years to live by a doctor whose "opinion counted for very little" (53), he declares, in the midst of his loneliness and boredom, that his polecat-ferret is a god. …
Weird #3 The Willows by Algernon Blackwood (1907)
No weird tale that I have read captures a sense of dread and impending doom so subtly and beautifully in its descriptions of the natural world as "The Willows" by Algernon Blackwood (1907), the third story included in The Weird: A Compendium of Strange and Dark Tales. In this story, two canoeists journey down the …
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Matthew Rettino 