Still Life With Pig Fetuses by Dirk Bannion

 

Still Life with Pig Fetuses is a clever collection of short stories from a group on a Discord server covering a number of different genres based on writing prompts.

 

The prompts themselves range from length, to a series of words that must form the first word of a sentence, to a lucky dip of piecing random fragments together, to having a plot highjacked by another author. The skill with which these prompts were used (especially the first word prompt) is staggering and showcases the talent out there.

 

The contents of the stories are very diverse, and sometimes what you would guess from the title is completely different from what you get. The stories cover clinical trials, a detective foiling a crime, the sweetness of revenge, an out of body experience, what makes for a bad YouTube video, a summoning interfering with a poker game, a portal used to gather national intelligence situated in a penis (insert shocked face here), and the story the collection is named after: trying something new with pig fetuses.

 

The stories are short enough to breeze through quickly, but contain nuggets of treasure that make you stop and reread a sentence or two or even laugh out loud. Even though the stories are so varied in content and length, the writing styles allow them to form a cohesive collection and the stories “fit together”. I admit that I even learnt a few new words like callipygian and glozed! Since this is volume one, I would be keen to see what future volumes bring.

 

The one thing that I wished could be added to the book was a table of contents, as it would have been easier to navigate if I was looking for a particular story.  

 

I do still recommend this collection for an intriguing look into the processes of writing and to highlight how creative some authors are with the time or style restraints they have.

Thanks to Reedsy Discovery for the opportunity to review the book.

The Many: The Complete Trilogy by Nathan Field

 

The Many is a trilogy made up of the three books: The Many, Ancestral, and European School. It is part thriller, part mystery, part conspiracy theory, with a dash of horror thrown in.

 

Book One starts with siblings Karl and Stacy. Stacy goes out on a date with a doctor she met on an app that seems far too good to be true. When she comes back the next morning, Karl notices that her behaviour has changed somewhat even though she insists the date went well. She is more aggressive, her demeanour has sexual undertones, and she even accuses Karl of lusting after her. As the days go by, she sinks further and further into high and low episodes where she starts remembering men without faces and having sex in an underground room. Not long after this, it all becomes too much for her and she does something drastic.

 

Elsewhere, Isobel, Dawn’s mother, also uses an app to find a date and the same scenario occurs with her where her moods swing violently and she starts remembering bad things that happened to her. Isobel feels compelled to do the same as Stacy did, leaving Dawn looking for answers.

 

On essentially the same quest, Karl and Dawn’s paths intersect on the journey to find the faceless men. Both of them will be pushed into situations they could never imagine themselves in and make decisions that will change their lives forever.

 

As they move through the next book, Dawn discovers that she may have been a part of the whole thing from the beginning once she is kidnapped and discovers she is pregnant. The book now moves through Karl looking for her and being pursued by the faceless men. The story opens wider with more twists, and new characters being introduced.

 

This leads into the concluding book which starts of with a completely different setting and different set of characters. Elijah is being sent to an elite boarding school that is not found on any map and once he is dropped off, he may not see anyone outside the school until he graduates. The schoolgoers are odd in a number of ways. They all look similar, the teachers are afraid of the older ones, and the ones in higher years have secrets that they keep aggressively, with the explanation that the younger ones will learn in time.  Elijah also comes across a deformed person living under the school that no one will acknowledge is there. The culmination of the story is the intersection of the three characters and the underlying secret behind the entire plot. Who is the actual kingpin?

 

I received this trilogy from NetGalley (thank you for that) and was looking forward to a three-book thriller/horror fest. The story starts with a great hook, and even though some details are quite graphic, you really have no clue why certain things are happening. Book one sucks you in and sets up the base story while not giving you too much to work on when it comes to figuring out the reason.  Book two adds more clues and you get to see a different side of the characters – especially Dawn and using violence to get information by any means necessary. Certain parts ask you to stretch the believability factor and things like the “cult ritual” had my eyebrows raised in disbelief at the ease of it happening (this may have taken place in the third one but they all kinda blurred together for me). Book three takes place fifteen years later, so, in the interim, a lot has happened. This book stretched things even further and took one of the oldest conspiracy theories to use as its base. I was hoping for a fresh idea, but this one has been done before. Book one drew me in quickly and book two kept me going for a while, but by book three, I was reading for the sake of reading. The pacing and story just threw it off-angle and I was disappointed with the ending. To have characters “accepting” the reason why didn’t feel right.

 

Karl started off as a strong character, but as time went by, I kept questioning why he was giving up his whole life. And considering what happened to him, well... Dawn may have been pushed to extremes, but her behaviour became too inconsistent and her ability to “persuade” seemed odd. Elijah’s parentage – we will just leave it at that…

 

So this is a bit of a mixed bag. It starts off with a great idea but fizzles out. Things are not all ended/explained and bits like the masks would have been interesting to find out more about. Kudos to the writer though for the style of writing and the “almost there” story. Thanks to NetGalley for the opportunity to review the book.

 

The Thicket by Noelle Ihli

 

The Thicket is an innocuous hiking trail at times of the year but a series of haunted cabins and scenes while in season.

 

Aimed at the thrill seekers of horror, the scenes in the cabins depict gruesome images designed to get the blood pumping. However, a few years ago someone died here – just an unfortunate accident, they said. This time, a youngster named Brandon meets his fate. And those that witness the corpse, think it part of the scenery.

 

Norah, Brandon’s sister, can’t get over the fact that it happened in the short time she left him alone. And now the Thicket is open for business again, so Norah is determined to find out what happened. A few of Norah’s classmates have decided to check it out too. But the killer has not been caught…

 

I truly enjoyed this horror thriller and the ride it took me on. The ending (but not ending) left me wanting a follow up. The author has portrayed some very scenic imagery as you move through the Thicket and the places and people are well described. The journey of emotions we go through between a family torn apart by death, the ambivalence of teenage “it’ll never happen to me”, and the fascination of the public by the macabre makes for a deep look into how we react under peer pressure.

 

The editing and proofing of the book was very good and only a few punctuation errors crept through, but nothing to interrupt the reading flow. However, some things stood out. Norah makes mention that they move to the town when her brother is three and she is ten. But when he dies at twelve, she is sixteen. Then there is a section in the maize where they are looking for Maren and Aaron, but all of a sudden, Aaron is with Jamie. And without spoilers – what happened to Tyson?

 

I would definitely recommend The Thicket not just as a serial-killer thriller, but as a look into our own psyche and behaviours.

Thanks to Reedsy Discovery for the opportunity to review the book.

When Lions Roar by Karen Gruber

 

When Lions Roar is a mixed bag of a book. We start off in Maggie’s story which is a horrific tale of spousal abuse and alcoholism and the shining light that is her daughter Hannah. When her husband is transferred and they have to uproot their lives and move to South Africa, Maggie is terrified. Her days become a numb blur of alcohol and the same things happening over and over until one day she wakes up to find her daughter missing. With their current location being in the bush, anything could have happened to her. Maggie sits at a crossroads now to decide whether she is incapable of carrying on once she realises what her life has become, or whether she is strong enough to pick up the pieces and make herself whole again.
On the other side, we have a fable-type story from the wildlife’s perspective and it’s a tale as old as time itself: love, greed, deception, and courage. And forefront to this story is The Golden Creature – one who will right the wrongs and bring about peace and unity once more. Little did they know that the human Hannah would be the one they needed.
Will Hannah help them end the tyranny lurking around every corner? And will Maggie ever see Hannah again?

It was very strange to read both tales as it honestly seemed as though they were two completely different stories side by side. Both tugged at my heartstrings in different ways and yet the deep thread running through both was the feeling of having reached rock bottom and not knowing whether or not the courage was there to rise up and carry on. Interspersed were snippets of possible new beginnings, people helping others for the sheer sake of helping, and different cultures experiencing the same basic relationship issues and how they chose to deal with them.

There were a few questions like what really happened to Hannah while missing and why her husband reacted as he did at the end, but the telling of each was simple and true.

While not the most riveting book ever written, and with characters not quite achieving being fleshed out fully, its quiet moral and teachings of resilience resound.

The Silent Patient by Alex Michaelides

 

Alicia Berenson has not uttered a word since she allegedly killed her husband. That has to mean she is guilty, right? Who wouldn’t defend themselves if they were innocent? But why would she do it? She is a successful painter married to an also successful fashion photographer and by all accounts they seemed happy and in love.

Theo Faber, a psychotherapist, has decided to make it his life’s mission to get her to talk. But to do this he needs to get a position at the institute she is in and somehow make her trust him enough to open up. After being accepted at the Grove, Theo starts to do his own investigations into what happened and finds something out that he thinks the police might have missed. She may have been stalked just before the murder.

So… I was pulled in by the hype and the promise of a blow-your-mind thriller. It started off well and got me thinking, but then it got to the point where stopping to think or question something made me annoyed because it pulled me out of the reading. And it was happening far too often.

You have the story told via Alicia’s diary entries (very odd entries as she records conversations word for word and in direct speech, and even when she thinks her house is being broken into, she is still filling in her diary) and Theo’s experiences. This supposedly adds to the teaser on the way to the twist but so much doesn’t actually align.

Then in the story you have psychiatrists changing meds randomly without a withdrawal process, no real policies and procedures regarding patient care, dodgy medication sales that barely get attention, mental disorders being called illnesses, and medical staff calling patients “bitches” and “crazy”.

There are loads of little sub-plots meant to direct you in certain ways but they become irritating when they don’t get finished. And then simple things like “action sequences” where someone gets hit over the head with a baseball bat and suffers no injuries or someone gets injected with enough meds to drop a rhino but still finishes managing to write an incriminating document. Just no.

I did not like the stereotyping throughout, not only of appearances, but also personality traits.

I do love a good psychological thriller and this was definitely not one of those. Closer to the middle the answer is obvious and I found the tie in connection to the painting very, very thin. The reason she was silent is just not believable and when you turn the last page you are left wanting.

The Marvelous Misfits of Westminster by Andrea Hahnfeld

 

Irving is a dog who hunts shadows. And the prophecy about where and when to find them lies in the pattern on the body of one who has escaped from flames. Sounds a bit odd, right? It gets odder.

Clement has been asked to judge a dog show at Westminster once again. He never thought he’d get another chance after a previous infamous decision. This time, apparently, he is meant to judge the Best in Show and how Irving even made it into the competition he’ll never know. After meeting Irving’s human parents, Clement has the very foundation of his understanding rocked, when he learns what has to be done to save someone he loved. This could change his life and hers forever, so can he suspend disbelief enough to trust in a process that has been working in secret for hundreds of years?

Who doesn’t need a quick story about a hero dog? The premise sounded intriguing but I will admit that I was a little confused after reading the first page. Nonetheless I pushed on with high hopes, and I was hugely rewarded. In fact, when I finished it, I felt a little in awe, as so much could be read into the deeper meaning of the shadows that needed to be killed. The characters were described beautifully and I could picture exactly how the Hunts as well as Irving looked. The idea behind the help that is offered and how it gets shared throughout the years is really clever. I will probably never look at a dog in the same way again!

For me, and it might not worry others but it interrupts my flow of reading horribly, the inconsistency between straight and curly apostrophes was annoying. A very minor detail in an otherwise beautifully crafted book.

Suitable for all ages, The Misfits of Westminster ticks boxes for comedy, drama, mystery, and definitely covers all the feels!

 

Thanks to Reedsy Discovery for the opportunity to review the book.

Gnomads by Steve Dean

 

Darren is your typical teenager. With one eye on becoming the next famous rock guitarist in the form of Dazz “The Axe Man” Wild, and the other on a certain young lady named Paige, all he has to do is get through high school and somehow survive his annoying family. Forced to go to a car boot sale, Darren is doing his best to hide from his embarrassing mum and aunt when he stumbles upon Paige at a stall, and in a rush to hide his uneasiness, he buys an eagle pendant. Happy with his purchase and floating on cloud nine, Darren heads off home knowing that Paige has noticed him. However, as Darren loses himself in practising his music but with his family irritating him, his one wish is to be anywhere else. And since his new eagle pendant is magic, it obliges!

 

Darren wakes up in a world completely removed from his own and surrounded by five small, odd-looking people. It turns out he has been transported to a time in the past where trolls, dragons, and gnomes are commonplace! Darren befriends the upbeat group of gnomes who have a band and call themselves the Gnomads. As he joins in on their adventures on how to promote their band, Darren is caught up in trying to find a way back to his timeline, not get eaten by trolls, and teach the band members to play the same song at the same time. It’s going to take a strength he didn’t know he had. Is he ready for all of that?

 

This is a fun book for children roughly ages 9–12 and is a feel-good story about perseverance and digging deep to find out what you are really capable of. Darren’s journey often mirrors our own in life, where we have to go through something in order to find out what we really want and to learn the value of hard work. A very good message in this book is about staying positive and that helping others often leads to help for you.

 

I did find the pacing a little slow, as often the same kind of scene was repeated. There were a few proofing errors, but nothing jarring. The humour kept the book upbeat and the writing style was easy to read. I certainly enjoyed Darren’s journey and his engaging story.

 

Thanks to Reedsy Discovery for the opportunity to review the book.