Taste the Books: Review Morsels #65 Christine Ferko, Carly Racklin, Darya Bobyleva

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.

The Darkness Greeted Her by Christine Ferko (ARC Review)

★★★

A girl suffering from harm OCD joins a therapy retreat where she and her fellow campers start getting plagued by vivid hallucinations - or are they? - and end up fighting for their lives against a monster unlike any other.

***

Rated 3.5 really.

First off...DISCLAIMER: this title was up for grabs on NetGalley (in the Read Now section). Thanks to Sourcebooks Fire for providing a temporary ecopy. This didn't influence my review in any way.

A supernatural twist on the camp-slasher trope with a good dose of heart, a dollop of queer romance, and a believable (if at times simplistic/expedient) approach to trauma and mental health. The horror parts are hard-hitting and masterfully done, and the monster lore is both imaginative and exciting, though its connection to Clara (the first victim from one year before) creates some issues and a bit of confusion. I found the characters to be likeable enough and I loved the female kinship aspect, but like in any slasher, I felt the need to know the cast better than this kind of plot allows. To her credit, the author gives us a bit of insight into each girl's past (namely, the trauma that branded them) in a series of at times poetical flashback chapters...but I was still left wanting more. Seeing the main character battling and copying with her harm OCD was indeed empowering, and will probably resonate with a number of young readers - but this senior one was far more enthralled by the very vivid, trauma-related hallucinations and the way they were handled/portrayed (there's a nice twist in there). All in all, I'd recommend this one (especially for the appropriate age range), as long as you can handle reading about intrusive thoughts, domestic abuse and other though topics (see the note at the start of the book), and gore/body horror/bug horror.

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

Funeral Song by Carly Racklin (ARC Review)

★★★

In an isolated town where a gift from the Angel of Death allows the deceased to return to life, a young woman who was killed by her wife and resurrected against her will feels compelled to solve a murder and to retrieve Death's gift to prevent the town from falling into eternal oblivion.

***

Rated 3.5 really.

First off...DISCLAIMER: this title was up for grabs on Edelweiss (in the To Download section). Thanks to Dead Sky Publishing for providing a temporary ecopy. This didn't influence my review in any way.

This was such a gothic, sad piece, with an old-fashioned feel (though in this world, gender identities and sexual preferences are never questioned - there's even a NB character), and I'm not sure I understood all the implications of Death's gift of resurrection and what the protagonist's wife wanted to accomplish by murdering her. But it was a unique, well-written novella, and even if the style and genre weren't exactly my cup of tea, it kept my interest enough for me to reach the last page. The mythology and worldbuilding the author wove around her revenants are cleverly planned and appropriately horrifying, and she managed to make her dead characters feel so very human even while (or especially because) they were left to grapple with a second life that was mostly just a mocking of their first one. If you're looking for a peculiar afterlife/undead narrative and you don't mind a somehow-open ending (and a gloomy atmosphere, and some graphic body horror), this novella is worth the price of admission.

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).

The Village at the Edge of Noon by Darya Bobyleva (ARC Review)

★★★★

A small Russian village find itself suspended in time and cut off from the rest of the world, while its inhabitants start to disappear or - in some cases - mutate, and a solitary young woman may be the only one equipped to solve the mystery...but at what cost?

***

First off...DISCLAIMER: I requested this title on NetGalley. Thanks to Angry Robot for providing an ecopy. This didn't influence my review in any way.

Premise: this was my first foray into Russian literature (if you don't count a classic like War and Peace), so pretty much everything was new for me - most notably, I wasn't familiar with the dacha way of life and the myths that inspired the supernatural side of the story. Despite this, I was able to follow the chain of events quite nicely - I mean, the denouement confused me a little, but probably just because I didn't pay enough attention to a certain flashback interlude. This was a slow burn and a somehow episodic tale (for perfectly valid reasons) with strong characterisation, steadily upping the horror/body horror factor along the way and working as social commentary - especially when it comes to how women/outsiders/non-conforming individuals are perceived in a traditional contest (no matter that, ironically, in this case, it's them who are left to try and save the day from a menace that comes from the village's outskirts and makes itself at home in it), and how forced isolation counterintuitively results in more divisiveness and distrust (COVID, anyone? except this book was written in 2017...). The ending was bittersweet and very magical-realism-coded, but unless you want things wrapped in a pretty bow, also perfect. Recommended for all the folk-horror fans and those looking for a story off the beaten path (in more than one sense...)..

Note: as a rule, I review every book that I rate 4 stars and above in full, unless it's a novella or an anthology. But I didn't want to go in too deep about this one to avoid spoilers, and it felt easy to summarise its contents (and my opinions) in a few sentences, so I took the mini-review route.

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?