Taste the Books: Review Morsels #59 Arkady Martine, Josh Winning, Alex Brown et al.

Intro

Hello beauties!

Welcome again to my own brand of mini reviews! I never thought I'd do minis, until I recapped a few of my long reviews in some digest post in 2014, and then guest-posted some shorties for a blogging event in 2015. And Karen from For What It's Worth started praising my short recs/recaps 😊. Just to be clear,  I'm NOT taking a break from writing long reviews - no such luck LOL (though for anthologies, shorter books or books that I didn't enjoy/I don't have enough to say about, I decided to stick to minis). But while I'm making up my mind about a new book I've read, I might as well give you the short version 😉. Just be warned - this feature will be VERY random!

Note: all the mini blurbs (in italics) are of my own creation.

Rose/House by Arcady Martine (ARC Review)

★★★★

In a not-so-distant future, a detective tries to outsmart a house which is an AI - as opposed to being embedded with one - while investigating an impossible murder inside its (her?) walls.

***

First off...DISCLAIMER: I requested this title on NetGalley. Thanks to Pan Macmillan/Tor for providing a temporary ecopy. This didn't influence my review in any way.

Rose/House is a sci-fi (or better, speculative) novella that almost reads like a supernatural one - which makes sense, since the titular AI is often described as a "haunt". Set about a century from now, in a California plagued by droughts that are only implied by the mention of water thefts, the story is as creepy, intriguing and eerily removed from the outside world as the compressed diamond that once was the body of Rose House's creator (now resting on a plinth within its walls) is in relation to the house itself. Mind you: this is a thriller, and a character study (if mainly of the non-human character), and an homage to/a satire of high-brow art and the architectural field (but obliquely, of most human obsessions), and a look at a toxic mentor/protégé relationship, and a few other things, yet its focus isn't on any of them. The dreamlike, yet unsettling atmosphere takes center stage, and in the end, you won't exactly have answers, but you'll have probably forgotten the questions as well (or at least dismissed them as inconsequential). I'm in two minds about the writing - quite lovely and evocative, yet at times hard to make head or tail of, or strangely bent ("Improbability itches, a flutter in the numbers like gossamer foam"; "Tired lensing into pissed off"). But I did enjoy this one-of-a-kind take on AI and haunted/haunting places, and I'd definitely recommend it to anyone looking for an almost impalpable, atmosphere-driven story.

Note: definitive review (I don't have enough to say to justify writing a full-length one later; also, due to time commitments, I've decided not to write full-length reviews anymore for short stories, novellas and anthologies, except in special cases or unless they're part of a series).

Heads Will Roll by Josh Winning

★★★

After getting canceled for a bad tweet that cost her her job and her fiancè, a sitcom star joins an "electronic free" camp for a social-media detox, but when her fellow campers start disappearing, internet shame becomes the last of her problems.

***

Rated 3.5 really.

Disclaimer: I've known Josh for a few years, and I even beta-read his brilliant puppet fantasy novel The Shadow Glass (2022). Since then, he's branched out into slasher horror, first with Burn the Negative (2023), then with Heads Will Roll. So, second (and opposite) disclaimer...I might be less in tune with this genre, because even if I did enjoy the author's later offerings, I didn't love them as much as I did TSG. Anyhow, here goes...

Josh Winning is fully capable to reinvent a genre while paying homage to it, as he demonstrated in The Shadow Glass and (to a slightly lesser extent) in Burn the Negative. That's why I expected more from Heads Will Roll, which instead seems to follow the camp slasher formula a bit too closely for my tastes. As in BTN, Winning blends slasher horror with social commentary - about cancel culture in this case - though he keeps it fairly tame (which helps if, like me, you tend to agree with the practice of holding people accountable for their mistakes. Sorry, not sorry 🙂). But in the end, that's the only thing that truly stands out and differentiates this story from most of its peers. I had to suspend my disbelief for a number of things (including the instalove, the impressive amount of coincidences, and the killer's physical strength and prowess). One detail made me guess the accomplice's identity early on - not to mention, in the texts between this person and the killer, the latter doesn't match the unhinged and disheveled version of themselves we see in the final showdown. On the other hand, I found the actual horror bits to be excellent, if at times a tad too creative (can a severed head still see and think in the moments after it's been detached from the body? eh, I don't think so) and goofy (the car scene got ridiculous after a while. Girl, pick the darned ax and chop the bastard, will ya?), and the characters very well-rounded for a story where most of them are supposed to give up the ghost. All in all, I had a ton of fun with this book, but I missed the heart, the depth, and last but not least, the more articulated writing style of The Shadow Glass. Fans of camp slashers will probably receive this one better than I did, though.

Note: definitive review (I don't have enough to say to justify writing a full-length one later).

The House Where Death Lives by Alex Brown et al.

★★★★

Sixteen YA stories from a female POV, often with queer and diverse girls at the forefront, framed by the same house and dealing with all types of hauntings - including the ones we bring upon ourselves.

***

A good batch of stories, mostly of the supernatural kind - some incorporating mythical creatures, from tiyanak to manananggal to djinn, some centering on demons or ghosts - more often than not dealing with grief, guilt, isolation, resentment, which sometimes cause the protagonists to fall prey to the creatures in question...though a handful get a good bargain out of it, and/or ultimately become the villain in their own story. A number of twists, overall good/excellent writing (Tori Bovalino's Bloom 😃), lots of (sometimes intersectional) rep. The only story I genuinely disliked was What Lies in Silence, due to the old-fashioned vibe and outdated/cliche references (seriously, Italian music is so much more than O Sole Mio, just saying...plus no one of Italian heritage would ever dream of addressing a loved one as "L'uccellino" - that is, "The bird" - with the determinative article 😖. I mean, the author in question has two surnames, one of them Italian-sounding, but I have trouble believing that anyone ever talked to her that way). I wish that the premise had been more cohesive - most of the stories don't give the impression to be set in the same house, except for the random detail mentioned in passing. Also, the tales are clearly contemporary in nature, so one is left wondering how all these different families managed to live in the same place long enough to have history with it in the same century or less...is the house an interdimensional nexus? and why do all kinds of weird things happen in/around it, for that matter? Regardless, a satisfying collection of scares for teens that will appeal to the more mature crowd as well.

Note: definitive review (I don't have enough to say to justify writing a full-length one later; also, due to time commitments, I've decided not to write full-length reviews anymore for short stories, novellas and anthologies, except in special cases or unless they're part of a series).

So, have you read/are you planning to read any of the above? And if you have, what do you think of them? Do you post mini reviews? Do you like to read them?