Taste the Books: Review Morsels #67 Courtney Gould, Seanan McGuire, Eric J. Guignard

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 STILL writing long reviews too - but for anthologies, shorter books or books that I didn't enjoy/don't have enough to say about, I decided to stick to minis, and I took to writing them also for novels that I can do justice to in a less wordy fashion, in order to ease my reviewing burden. In addition to that, I sometimes write minis for books I don't want/don't have the time to review in full at the moment, but plan on rereading and writing "proper" reviews for later. Lastly, just be warned - this feature is VERY random!

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

What the Woods Took by Courtney Gould

★★★★

Five troubled teens who were shipped away at a wilderness camp find themselves alone in the woods and plunged into a nightmare, and will have to come clean with one another (and themselves) if they want to have a chance at surviving.

***

If you think this type of scenario has been overdone, I'm here to tell you Gould gives it a lot more depth than your average survival thriller, and even the monsters in this one are a breath of fresh air (mind you, they resemble a type of aliens I saw on Doctor Who once, but I have no reason to think Gould took her clue from those - and then again, her monsters work differently). Stylistically, WTWT is atmospheric and creepy, hitting you with a nice twist exactly when you start to lull in a false sense of security, but also able to flip the tables on you again from there; content-wise, it has strong (lesbian) enemies-to-lovers and found-family arcs, but most of all, an emphasis on battling your own demons and trusting other people with them. Some things that gave me pause: 1) a fostered teen on the verge of 18 would never be enrolled in a wilderness therapy program; 2) two 20-something could never lead such a program; 3) 50 days to cross a forest sounds like a stretch; 4) you need a job to leave home, and nowhere in the book is it mentioned that whoever is doing that got any (plus I thought Devin was the only one nearing legal age?); 5) near the end of Ch.27, there's an "it's" instead of "its" («It's grip eases») that really rubbed me the wrong way. Regardless, this one was a wild ride with a lot of heart, and despite some cliches, it qualifies both as a sure hit with teens and a gripping read for adults.

Content note: see the author's list of triggers here.

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..

Through Gates of Garnet and Gold by Seanan McGuire

(Wayward Children # 11)

★★★★

When her world is threatened by a horde of the unquiet dead killing the living statues, Nancy goes back to the School for Wayward Children to recruit her old friends in order to save her new ones - and while dealing with (literal) grave danger, the group is in for a surprise or two...

***

Rated 4.5 really.

As a rule, the quest/ensemble books are my favourite in this series, but I didn't expect the one featuring Nancy's return to click with me this much. The fact is, McGuire finally had me buying into Nancy's world of choice and her reasons for feeling at home there, even if I still can't say I understand its appeal personally (it's always struck me as one of the most demanding worlds, bordering on cruel). On the other hand, it's interesting how, for the first time, some aspects of a world are openly criticised - which is just as well, since its inhabitants are getting murdered and its rulers aren't doing much to save them. And leave it to Sumi to scold the latter properly for that 😂. In this installment McGuire balances the core group of old friends (Sumi, Christopher, Kade and Nancy herself) with a new, intriguing character, delves deeper into the mythology of the Doors, surprises us with a couple of twists no one could see coming (though they are, indeed, earned), and in the end pulls the rug from under our feet - except we were warned somehow - with a very last twist that makes complete sense, even if it apparently upends one of the foundations of the series. Kudos to the author for keeping the ball rolling and having us look forward to more Wayward Children adventures...

Full review to come.

After Death... by Eric J. Guignard et al.

★★★★

An eclectic, imaginative, both heartfelt and tongue-in-cheek mix of afterlife and afterlife-adjacent storie, spanning (different kinds of) Hell and Heaven, religion and mythology, reincarnation and digital eternity, humans and other forms of life, with a musician or two thrown in for good measure...

***

As far as anthologies go, After Death was definitely a winner for me - I did skim/not finish three or four of the stories, but that reflects my personal tastes a lot more than the collection's quality. The contributions are varied in every possible sense: encompassing different kinds of afterlife or putting a far less conventional spin on "what comes next"; focusing on the destination or on the road to get there (wherever "there" is); tackling inter-species reincarnation or building a thriller around the concept of digital consciousness; and so on. Here you can meet Charon, Lethe and Baccus; Joe Strummer (in its ghostly flesh), Whitney Houston and John Lennon (sort of); faithful dogs and vindictive sharks (again, sort of); robots with a soul and killers in search of redemption; bureaucrats and torturers; ghost kids stuck in place and dead men bound (quite literally) to their past...The stories range from sad to emotional to hopeful, to violent to irreverent to thought-provoking, but one thing is true: everyone looking for a bite of the Great Unknown will find lots to sink their teeth into in this collection.

Note: definitive review (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?