Category Archives: supernatural

American Gods

fantasy, fiction, supernatural June 16, 2019 Comments: 2

Neil Gaiman’s American Gods is a book I first read at the recommendation of a friend in 2007. I revisited it because the TV adaptation started airing in 2017.

Let’s just say they are two very different things, although since I think of them that way, I have no preference for one over the other.

I enjoyed revisiting the book. One of the arguments against Gaiman that I’ve seen is basically that he tells different variations of the same story over and over – basically a (white) guy becomes the hero in a secret world not visible to most of the rest of the population.

This story doesn’t bother me, and I tend to like the way Gaiman tells it.

Shadow Moon was THISCLOSE to getting out of prison and home to his wife when he’s released three days early. His wife and best friend die in a car accident. Later, Shadow finds out his wife was cheating on him with his best friend. I won’t retell the whole story here but basically this revelation sets Shadow adrift and pushes him into the employment of Mr. Wednesday as his “bodyguard.”

Ultimately, Shadow finds himself caught up in battle between the Old Gods – the gods we studied as part of our high school history and English classes – and the New Gods – the gods of money, media, and globalization.

I feel like I somehow missed a lot of the book when I read it in college, so it was sort of like discovering a new book all over again. I had completely forgotten large portions, and some of the portions were new, because the audiobook was the 10th anniversary edition with the author’s preferred text which included an additional 12,000 words and was performed by a full cast. It was very well done and I thoroughly enjoyed rediscovering it.

Criticism of Gaiman as a guy who tells different versions of the same story over and over is somewhat valid, but I find his insight into America uniquely interesting in this book. As someone who is now 10-12 years older than I was when I read it the first time, and has paid a lot more attention to the country I grew up in over those years, Gaiman’s take on the United States as a “bad place for Gods” is both the opposite of what people would think and also incredibly true.

Power belongs to the people/things men give it to. While you would think the United States of Jesusland was an excellent place for what we think of as the Christian God – it still is in many places – it’s bad in the sense that things constantly change here, with power constantly moving from one thing to the next as society and its opinions evolve. The “new gods” of money, media, globalization are hugely powerful now, but eventually their power will fade too. Maybe not entirely and maybe not in our lifetime, but they will, eventually, fade away as well. In a way, it’s already starting, between claims of “fake news” and a growing backlash against money in politics, and the instinct of many ordinary Americans to fight against sending jobs overseas.

As the United States continues to look for itself and continues to try to find itself, things will continue to change. As Gaiman points out, the United States is the only place in the world that doesn’t have a set definition of what it is, or necessarily even cares much.

“This is the only country in the world,” said Wednesday, into the stillness, “that worries about what it is.”

“What?”

“The rest of them know what they are. No one ever needs to go searching for the heart of Norway. Or looks for the soul of Mozambique. They know what they are.”

It’s an incredibly relevant take lately, particularly as we approach a presidential election in 2020.

American Gods remains firmly in its position of my second favorite Gaiman book. I’ve read quite a few. It was nice to revisit, and I’m sure I will revisit it again.

Ghostland: An American History in Haunted Places

history, non-fiction, supernatural April 5, 2018 Leave a comment

This was another book I read in the spirit of Halloween, and it didn’t disappoint!

Colin Dickey’s Ghostland: An American History in Haunted Places is full of ghost stories. He takes us to prisons, abandoned mental asylums, old mansions, cemeteries, churches, “Indian burial grounds,” and the like.

There are some stories everyone probably already knows – like the stories of the Winchester house, Amityville, the LaLauries of New Orleans, etc… – are well known. Dickey does jump in to debunk some of these myths and legends. For example, the Winchester House legend – that Sarah Winchester built a house to confuse spirits murdered by her husband’s Winchester rifles after speaking to a medium – is stoked by even the caretakers of the home, but in reality, it just isn’t true. Sarah Winchester had a lot of money and a taste for unusual architecture. She wasn’t any more afraid of ghosts than anyone else in the 1800s.

Aside from jumping into (and in some cases, debunking) well known myths and legends of American culture, Dickey uses ghost stories as a critical lens to explore the American psyche. Ghostland takes a look at why we, as Americans, both use and need ghost stories to explain ourselves to ourselves. A ghost story may white wash history, or try to assuage our consciences about something that happened that we can’t justify. They can be used to calm fears and teach lessons to children.

Dickey says:

“Paying attention to the way ghost stories change through the years — and why those changes are made — can tell us a great deal about how we face our fears and our anxieties. Even when these stories have a basis in fact and history, there’s often significant embellishment and fabrication before they catch on in our imagination, and teasing out these alterations is key to understanding how ghosts shape our relationship to the past.”

I loved this book. Loved it. As someone who has always loved a good ghost story, it was fun reading, in depth, about lots of well known American hauntings. It was fun to listen to their backgrounds and what these stories tell us about ourselves.

Anyone interested in pop culture, hauntings, and history ought to read Ghostland. It’s a lens we don’t look examine ourselves through too often, and well worth a read (or a listen on audiobook, which is how I experienced it).

Carrie

fiction, horror, supernatural March 28, 2018 Leave a comment

I read (listened to) Carrie as part of my ongoing effort to get through more of Stephen King’s prolific collection of published works.

Sissy Spacek performed the reading and I liked the touch because she played Carrie in the 1976 film.

Of all the Stephen King books I’ve been through so far, and admittedly, I haven’t been through that many, this was probably my least favorite. All of King’s books can be haunting and jarring and all deal with hints of the supernatural and that kind of thing, and Carrie is no different.

But I disliked it because it made me cringe. Carrie’s naivete is hard to deal with, although I guess without sex-ed and the internet you wouldn’t know what your period was. That said, I think I disliked it more because I hate bullies.

Carrie is bullied. Relentlessly. It’s clearly gone on for years before the the start of events actually chronicled in the story and goes on throughout the novel. For all my short comings (and believe me, there are many) I am not a bully, and reading about how every single kid picks on this girl just drove me crazy.

I get that not every kid is going to stick up for the kid getting bullied. But in my experience, there’s usually at least one. I don’t know where authors go to school (because it’s not just King, there are other authors I’ve read who write about kids being bullied and nobody ever stands up for the kid) but usually someone will stick up for the victim. At least where I lived and grew up. I can’t think of any kid who didn’t have any friends or, at the least, a sympathetic classmate. Carrie kind of gets one in Sue Snell, but Sue’s still a little too wishy washy publicly to make a real difference.

I also spent most of the book wishing I could beat Carrie’s mother to death. Carrie’s mom bullies her too, and I don’t particularly understand her religious views, which are basically entirely related to sex and how evil it is, even when you’re married to someone. She’s one of those people that, upon reflection, make you think that maybe there really isn’t enough to do for young people in certain parts of this country in their formative years. Like many of King’s stories, this one takes place in Maine.

I did like the (fake) scientific articles on telekinesis throughout the story. Something about fake science is a lot of fun for me. It sounds like it could be real.

Anyway, Carrie was a good story, but not my favorite. It’s also obviously one of King’s earlier works, and I enjoyed the references to things like payphones and paying a quarter for a burger and soda. Nostalgia is fun, guys!

The Supernatural Enhancements

horror, supernatural, suspense / thriller March 3, 2018 1 Comment

I really enjoyed Edgar Cantero’s The Supernatural Enhancements. It was pretty weird though.

The story takes place in the fictional town of Point Bless, Virginia, where our main character, a European young man only called “A.,” has inherited a supposedly haunted mansion. With him he brings Niamh, his bodyguard. She’s Irish, a mute, and 16. A. is about 23.

A. inherited the house from a distant cousin named Ambrose Wells, who he doesn’t know well. He doesn’t know the Wells branch of his family much at all. Wells supposedly committed suicide by jumping out a third story window. Soon after moving in, A. and Niamh start experiencing supernatural phenomena almost immediately. As they research the Wells family and the dead relatives from generations back, they find clues to a secret society that met once a year at the Wells home.

The book isn’t written as a normal book. It’s written as journal entries, articles, poems, letters, and other things, making it a unique experience of a book that reminded me of other supernatural and horror stories, as well as a Scooby Doo cartoon.

I really don’t want to give away much more than that. I was really satisfied with the ending, and I didn’t figure it out. This book was a lot of creepy fun and I highly recommend it for its plot, its pace, its horror, its humor and its characters, which grew on me more and more as the book went on.

I’ve already bought Cantero’s next book, Meddling Kids, which is a take off on a Scooby Doo cartoon. God, I’m so excited already.

Four and Twenty Blackbirds [An Eden Moore Story]

fantasy, fiction, supernatural April 25, 2011 1 Comment

Four and Twenty Blackbirds by Cherie Priest is a story that I really, really, really wanted to like. And I thought I did for awhile.

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From Amazon:

The classic Southern gothic gets an edgy modern makeover in Priest’s debut novel about a young woman’s investigation into the truth of her origins. What Eden Moore digs up in the roots of her diseased family tree takes her across the South, from the ruins of the Pine Breeze sanitarium in Tennessee to a corpse-filled swamp in Florida, and back in time to the Civil War, when the taint in her family bloodline sets in motion events building only now to a supernatural crescendo. Priest adds little new to the gothic canon, but makes neo-goth chick Eden spunky enough to deal with a variety of cliché menaces—a scheming family matriarch, a brooding Poe-esque mansion and a genealogy greatly confused with inbreeding—that would have sent the genre’s traditional wilting violets into hysterics. Eden is a heroine for the aging Buffy crowd, and her adventures will play best to postadolescent horror fans.

I’ve been looking forward to this book because of both the title and the cover art. This is another entry from my Women of Fantasy book club. The cover art is a bit spooky, which I love and begs me to read. Also, in my own weird way, I’m obsessed with nursery rhymes. They all have secret meanings. I actually bought my mom a book on secret nursery rhyme meanings, which she asked for, but which I will probably get to first.

So, I dove into this story. I found out too late that the title has little to do with the actual story. Disappointing.

…beware, mild spoilers ahead!

I enjoyed the premise. Eden sees ghosts who try to protect her from him. Who is he? As Eden gets older, she discovers more and more about her history, which is very mysterious, of course, and she discovers who he is.

I liked Priest’s writing style. I also enjoyed, deeply, the relationship between Eden and her aunt, Lulu. The idea that sometimes things change and never go back/are never the same again is something I relate to and understand completely, having gone through a life-changing family experience.

The conflict with Malachi I found enjoyable. He’s like some damn obnoxious bug that just wouldn’t.go.away. As well as the old woman, Tatey. They were amusing.

But the biggest problem I had with the story was that I didn’t like the resolution. It just didn’t seem realistic to me – at all, in any way. I don’t want to say that I expect total reality in my fantasy series, but this is urban fantasy, and I expect some sense of “this could really be happening.” Considering these people were mere mortals living in modern America, the idea of someone surviving for 150 years through a concoction of blood, marsh grass, and chanting (as well as a child being reincarnated over and over again), I just didn’t buy. There wasn’t enough explanation for me to really believe that the antagonist harnessed his magic. In Prospero Lost and Prospero in Hell, the magic makes sense. You understood how it worked, and why. Here, it’s just evil black magic that just kind of…goes on. It was revenge, it was a desire for immortality, it was…just not something I could realistically believe. The foundation of the magic just wasn’t solid enough, and the motives for the magic weren’t well justified. There were just a whole bunch of half reasons that didn’t seem to fully develop.

The second major problem I had with the book: I didn’t like Eden. I thought I did, at first, but as I reflected on the book, the more and more I just couldn’t like her. As someone who is around Eden’s age when the story takes place, I felt as though I shouldn’t be aware of exactly how stupid she was. There were a whole bunch of moments where I decided this girl was really too stupid to be living. She was smart in a lot of ways, but not smart enough to come out of the experience alive. I also felt Priest spent a lot of time having Eden talk about her own attributes instead of showing Eden’s attributes. Some of these attributes also seemed to come out of nowhere as Eden needed them – it was very Mary Sue.

(Side note: I found Cora the most interesting of the secondary characters, and would have liked to see her relationship with Eden develop, but she disappeared early on. The end of her story came so suddenly and disappointingly that I was a little rattled by it – the way it was completely glossed over and thrown in there, as though it was just a detail that needed to be wrapped up. Eden doesn’t even stop to feel a pang of sadness or anything. The time dedicated to Cora early on warrants a bit more than the one sentence mention towards the end of the book.)

But even with Eden’s slight Mary Sue-ness, there was something about Eden that was just obnoxious. I don’t know if was the way she thought she was tough (but stupid, which she never managed to mention) or the way she seemed to go out of her way to be the typical “I know everything” young adult, but it was really.really.annoying.

The last major issue I had with the story was the fact that to understand it, you have to literally diagram Eden’s family tree. Too many people who were related distantly or in more than one way (we’re talking brother/cousins here). It was ridiculously hard to keep track of who was who and what their relationship was to everyone else. I had to keep going back and rereading parts just to understand who was related to who and how they were related. I’m not a stupid person, but I couldn’t keep it straight in my head, and I found that irritating.

Overall, I can’t say I felt good at the end of this book. I really wanted to. I liked the premise a lot. I liked the magic, the ideas, the very weak foundation the story was built on. The book was too short to really get into that foundation, which was disappointing, and is keeping me from really recommending the book. And unlike at the end of Prospero Lost, I don’t feel any real need to go on to the second story.

Yes, there are two more Eden Moore stories…that I’ve added to my Amazon wishlist, by the way, but I don’t really intend to buy. Someone might buy them for me if they’re looking for gift ideas, that’d be fine. I’d read them. If I happen upon them at a used bookstore or a library sale (or something like that) for a good price, I’ll pick them up. Until then, farewell Eden. It’s been real.