Category: Horror

Skyward Inn by Aliya Whiteley

The most rational part of my brain understands exactly what I’ve just experienced with this book, but every other part of me, the emotional, the lizard brain, the higher consciousness etc. is absolutely 100% going, “What the fuck did I just read?!” and not in a bad way either. Inspired by Daphne du Maurier’s Jamaica …

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2021/03/19/skyward-inn-by-aliya-whiteley/

Kickstarter Alert! Out Of The Darkness edited by Dan Coxon

We here at The Frumious Consortium are huge fans of Unsung Stories, one of the UK’s finest independent purveyors of speculative fiction, so we were super excited to find out about their upcoming project, Out Of The Darkness! OotD, edited by Dan Coxon, is an anthology of dark fantasy and horror fiction, raising awareness of …

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2021/03/11/out-of-the-darkness-edited-by-dan-coxon-kickstarter/

Sisters by Daisy Johnson

This is one of those books that’s so propulsive that you want to devour it in one sitting, even as the harrowing nature of what you’re reading is telling you to maybe put it aside and take a nap, for the sake of your own mental health. Sisters follows September and July, two teenage girls …

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2021/02/03/sisters-by-daisy-johnson/

Gideon the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir

How would a sword-and-sorcery author who basically wanted to have a hell of a lot of fun write in the twenty-first century? They’d write like Tamsyn Muir does in Gideon the Ninth, I think. “In the myriadic year of our Lord—the ten thousandth year of the King Undying, the kindly Prince of Death!—Gideon Nav packed …

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2020/12/31/gideon-the-ninth-by-tamsyn-muir/

The Haunting Of Hill House by Shirley Jackson

I don’t know whether the authors invited to write companion essays to classic novels have any say in the placement of their pieces in relation to the main text, but God Almighty, is it irritating to read a spoiler-filled introduction by Laura Miller when at least Jonathan Lethem’s smug thoughts on We Have Always Lived …

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2020/12/14/the-haunting-of-hill-house-by-shirley-jackson/

A Golden Fury by Samantha Cohoe

It’s been so long since I’ve read a standalone YA novel that I barely know what to do with myself at the end of A Golden Fury, in no small part due to Samantha Cohoe’s gifts as an author. Despite the ending being quite firmly The End, I’m so invested in these characters and their …

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2020/10/16/a-golden-fury-by-samantha-cohoe/

An Interview with J. S. Barnes, author of Dracula’s Child

Q. Every book has its own story about how it came to be conceived and written as it did. How did Dracula’s Child evolve? I think it’s been evolving ever since I first read Stoker’s extraordinary novel at around eleven or twelve (oddly, and I suspect not entirely coincidentally, the same age as Quincey in …

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2020/10/15/an-interview-with-j-s-barnes-author-of-draculas-child/

The Willows by Algernon Blackwood

The afterword of T Kingfisher’s terrific The Hollow Places (which I’ll shortly be reviewing over at CriminalElement.com) mentions that it’s based on the classic horror short story The Willows by Algernon Blackwood, which has been cited by H. P. Lovecraft as being one of the most terrifying stories ever written. Being a voraciously curious reader, …

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2020/09/28/the-willows-by-algernon-blackwood/

Dracula’s Child by J.S. Barnes

As pastiche, J. S. Barnes’ Dracula’s Child is a remarkable sequel to Bram Stoker’s classic tale of vampiric horror, the legendary Dracula. Told in an epistolary manner similar to its predecessor, it tells the tale of the surviving vampire hunters some thirteen years past their execution of the dark Transylvanian lord, as pieced together by …

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2020/09/22/draculas-child-by-j-s-barnes/

The Cabin At The End Of The World by Paul Tremblay

In contemporary popular literature which takes as its default Christianity as the dominant belief system, there are two main kinds of believer: the kind who want prayers answered and the kind who want to complain bitterly about how God could possibly let such-and-such happen. The two main protagonists of The Cabin At The End Of …

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2020/08/07/the-cabin-at-the-end-of-the-world-by-paul-tremblay/