Cry Your Way Home by Damien Angelica Walters

Title: Cry Your Way Home

Author: Damien Angelica Walters

Date Read: 2.March.2018
On TBR for: 8 days
TBR status after reading: 269 books to read (TBR expected to be cleared in 2036)
Format: Ebook - ePub format
Source: LibraryThing Early Reviewers
Challenges: Pace yourself; Keep things balanced


 This review was written for LibraryThing Early Reviewers

"Once upon a time there was a monster. This is how they tell you the story starts. This is a lie."

So starts Cry Your Way Home, a collection of short stories by Damien Angelica Walters. These stories span from fairy tale-like to science fiction to magical realism, with the common thread of being dark, dealing with loss and grief, dealing with monsters (allegorical or not) and things that go bump in the night.

Most of the 17 stories in this collection were enjoyable - only a few didn't quite work for me. The opening story, Tooth, Tongue, and Claw, had me worried that there wouldn't be a happy ending, that that would be the tone of the entire collection. But while most of the endings are not happy, this one included, they are not grim and dark and full of hopelessness has I had feared. In most of the cases there is some kind of closure to be had.

And still speaking of endings, a few of the stories felt incomplete, like the actual story had just started and then it ended. Two others were a variation of this: they felt as the start of something great, something that I would love to read in a longer format. The Serial Killer’s Astronaut Daughter feels like this, and so does The Floating Girls: A Documentary, but the latter still works very well as a short story and was my favourite of the book.

Although some of the stories weren't totally to my liking, I enjoyed this book. It was well written, and vivid enough to leave me with that pleasant-unpleasant feeling in the pit of my stomach that something terrible was about to happen.

Rating: 4 out of 5

Quotes I enjoyed:

Is a final word even important if no one hears? Is a final apology meaningful if every preceding action says otherwise?

You think it’ll kill you, but it’s a hell of a lot more clever than that because it lets you live. Only thing you can do is give it the finger and move on as best you can. Only thing anyone can do.

It’s the sort of floor on which a girl could dance a pirouette and a woman, a waltz. I do neither, afraid I might trip over my own aspirations.

Autumn, like Alzheimer’s, turns everything strange and unfamiliar, and when you look for the shape of the real hidden within, you find only a promise of the winter to come.

This is the way the world breaks you. It takes everything you know and love and turns it inside out. It leaches the color from your hair, yellows your teeth, and curves your spine, and even though you wish you were the same person you’ve always been on the inside, you go grey and stained and frail there, too.

Other Reviews: Vegan Daemon

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The Trees: A Collection by Todd Brabander

The Trees: A Collection

I received this book in ebook format from the Author, through LibraryThing Member Giveaway

Monsters, legends, and things that we would rather not think about, this collection of three short stories and two pieces of flash fiction will treat readers to a strange and frightening world that lies in the shadows of the Pacific Northwest.

The Trees is a collection of short stories and flash fiction by Todd Brabander. All the stories share a certain surreality and horror, but they are different from each other

Laroche, the first one, is spooky. Something about the setting, and the description made my hair stand, as if something bad was going to happen. I was not wrong. A nice story that mixes myth and everyday life.

Happiness Is A Dead Ladybug is rather stranger and rather sweet at the same time. Very short, a dialogue between owner and robot, that could have easily been between mother and a 4-year old.

I liked Sheltered, although I kind of guessed the ending almost from the start. Still, it was a good story.

The tittle story, The Trees, was also a good story. This had a feel of a folktale, of tricksters and and riddles. It even had a bit of humour. And a gruesome ending, but that made the story.

And the last story, The First Date, was the WTF? moment of the book. Really, did the author forget to finish this? It didn't feel like a story at all.

I enjoyed this book, but it was just a taste of Todd Brabander's writing. I liked the longer stories more than the flash fiction. I will be on the look out for more of his work, hopefully longer stories than the ones in The Trees.


Rating: 3.5 out of 5

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A Sabedoria dos Mortos by Rodolfo Martinez

A Sabedoria dos Mortos [The Wisdom of the Dead]
This book is only available in Spanish [Sherlock Holmes y la sabeduria de los muertos], in French [La sagesse des morts] and in Portuguese .

This a collection of three stories, pretending to be new, unpublished adventures of Sherlock Holmes, that never saw the light of day because of their uncanniness. The author proposes that these have been written by John Watson, M.D. (not Arthur Conan Doyle – but there is an explanation for that), and that his job as been merely of translating the texts found on box in an antique shop in Soho.

The first story, and longest, gives the title to the book. It's “Sherlock Holmes meets Lovecraft”. And Lovecraft does make an appearance in the story, although it's not H.P. Lovecraft, but his father. But it's safe to say that what made Lovecraft Lovecraft is hinted at this story.

It was a nice, long story, that kept me on my toes while reading. Of course there where things that irked me, I kind of wished it was less Lovecraftian and more Holmesian, in the sense that I prefered a better, more satisfying ending to the story. Still, it was worth reading and it's always fun to see Sherlock Holmes on different situations.

The second story [Desde a terra mais além do bosque – From the land a bit further from the woods], my favourite, can be best defined as Sherlock Holmes meets Dracula. And how cool is that? We have, side by side, Sherlock Holmes and Van Helsing investigating and fighting vampire things.

Maybe because I have read Dracula and liked (whereas with Lovecraft my knowledge is limited) I liked this one more. I felt there was more purpose to it, and the fact that is written by two points of view, of John Watson and of John Seward, certainly helped a lot.

A Aventura do assassino fingido – The Adventure of the fake assassin
This third story is the most normal one – nothing really paranormal about it. A simple mystery, in which Holmes keeps his distance, as he has retired from his investigating pursuits. It falls on Watson to find who the culprit is, with the sole help of Sherlock letters.

This one was ordinary. That's the best world I can find to describe it. Nothing paranormal, nothing mindblowing. Just a regular Holmes-kind-of-story.


Overall it was a nice book, it makes me wish I read more of Sherlock Holmes and H.P. Lovecraft. While I was reading I had some trouble in believing that John Watson could have written these stories. Not because he is a fictional character, but because it showed that the author of this story didn't have English as native language. Part of these objections where put to rest on the Translator's Note at the end of the book, but still I am unconvinced (especially having spend the entire book with those objections).

(4/5)

Other Reviews: Bookeater/Booklover 

One bloody thing after another by Joey Comeau

One Bloody Thing After Another is an apt title to this book. It is a gory horror story, told in an episodic manner, with short chapters.

It tells us the stories of Jackie, her trees and schoolgirl crush on her friend Ann; of Ann and her mother's strange disease that transforms her into something akin to an animal; and of Charlie, his dog that walks into corners, and the headless ghost that has him bother a tenant every single day. These storylines cross somewhat, but follow their own path.

Jackie's story was interesting and, had this been another kind of book, I would have wanted to know more about her crush on another girl and her family life. It also felt like all the anger issues came out of nowhere, but then again maybe it was intended to be this way.

In Ann's story I felt that something was missing. It seems like the we never went further that the surface of the character. The same thing with her mother and sister's affliction. I would have liked to know where it came from, what exactly it was. Anyway, this is probably the most frightening part of the book, and certainly the most gory.

Charlie's story, and Mitchie's was lovely, probably my favourite, and I only wish there was more to of it

I liked the way the book is structured, the short chapters with "to-the-point" language. I absolutely loved the [not so] hidden message in between chapter (it took me a while to realize it was there, I blame it on being a ebook, I'm not used to those), it stands as a story of its own, and completes the others. The entire concept of the third part of the book is amazing: very surreal and a bit like a dream, with the repetition of the same events, changing ever slightly (reminiscent of the movie Groundhog day, only darker. And weirder).

I enjoyed this book, even if it's not my favourite genre. It is a fast read, but delivers what it promises.

Recommended to gore and horror fans.

(3,5/5)
I got this book from ECW Press, through Netgalley