what i love most about reading these old abyss horror paperbacks is, even when they’re bad they’re certainly interesting. luckily, prodigal is a good what i love most about reading these old abyss horror paperbacks is, even when they’re bad they’re certainly interesting. luckily, prodigal is a good one: edgy, experimental, unsettling, not totally like anything i’ve read before . . . exactly what i look for in these abyss paperbacks.
i did struggle in the first few chapters, however: couldn’t quite gel with lucy’s character or her inner thoughts, and i felt her family (especially the parents) were rather flat, dull. but this is a book from the point of view of a twelve-year-old girl: the prose is fittingly unfussy and direct, like the very thoughts of an adolescent. lucy’s parents perhaps aren’t fully drawn because who really knows their parents that well at twelve? this book, like the age of twelve, is ambiguous, often shrouded in mystery—and a little frightening.
a slow burn and a puzzle and a successful rumination on loss and guilt, prodigal isn’t a book that offers up easy answers or immediately reveals itself, and i wouldn’t want it any other way. this joker is going to stick in my mind. ...more
Stitch, the second novel by author Mark Morris, seems to have really fallen under the radar over the years — even for an Abyss Paperback title. I don’Stitch, the second novel by author Mark Morris, seems to have really fallen under the radar over the years — even for an Abyss Paperback title. I don’t see this one discussed much online at all, which is a shame. Coming in at over 500 pages, this is a tome filled with everything horror readers could want: gruesome murders, suspense, cosmic horror, Magic, properly developed characters . . . this novel is truly the whole package! It even includes healthy doses of splatterpunk without going too far as to alienate those who do not care for hardcore horror.
This novel is primarily set on a college campus, and that also ups the score for me. I am a sucker for horror stories set in high schools or colleges; I find kid and young adult characters are somehow more intriguing than adults in horror fiction. Maybe it is because they are more ‘open’ to the horrors facing them; they do not try to write it off, or ignore it. Don’t get me wrong, there are several noteworthy adult characters in this novel too! And the author does an excellent job of fleshing them out, making them stand apart from one another while taking care to assure the reader they could be real people.
If I had to complain about anything in this book, I’d have to go with the insta-love that happens between two of the main characters. This book takes place over the span of a week or so, and in that time two young people meet, begin dating, and are already declaring their love to one another. No, that just isn’t realistic. Not at all. That is the single glaring flaw in what is one of the better horror novels I’ve read in some time. Luckily this book can be found for cheap on the used boo market. I recommend it!...more
First: Lost Futures is not the horror novel the cover implies. Bodily torture is not present whatsoever. But hey, it’s a sweet piece of art.
Lisa TuttFirst: Lost Futures is not the horror novel the cover implies. Bodily torture is not present whatsoever. But hey, it’s a sweet piece of art.
Lisa Tuttle’s 1992 Abyss release plays on a common human weakness: regret. Regret of the past — not getting a chance to say goodbye to a loved one before his or her death, not going on that date in high school — and the consequences failures of the past can have on the present.
The book’s MC, Clare, is a lonely homebody with a predictable, boring life, a lot of regrets, and a penchant for daydreaming. Feeling trapped, she finds herself often musing on choices she could have made differently, other paths she could have taken.
And that is where Tuttle ever-so artfully pulls the rug out from under the reader by throwing Clare down the rabbit hole — far into dreams within dreams. By mixing psychological horror and sci-fi, this novel is a powerful concoction brimming with possibility, one sure to send any reader into a head-trip. It asks the questions all good literature should: What is our purpose? From where do we come from? Do parallel universes exist?
This has shot straight to the top of my list of favorite 2018 reads. And I will check out more works from this author....more
This mixed bag of a story is uncertain in tone, unsure if it wants to be a sci-fi thriller or a horror show — without ever finding a coDNF @ Page 139.
This mixed bag of a story is uncertain in tone, unsure if it wants to be a sci-fi thriller or a horror show — without ever finding a comfortable spot between the two. The conceit — club dancer wakes up one morning, unsure of her former life and convinced she is now a man — is highly gripping and I was sure I would love this novel . . . alas, it was not to be. The characters are highly unsympathetic and the author tries for a grunge aesthetic a’la other titles in the Abyss line without actually pulling it off. Pass. ...more
This is the second Abyss Paperback I’ve read, and I’m discovering this: these horror novels are grotesque, challenging, and often buck typical horror This is the second Abyss Paperback I’ve read, and I’m discovering this: these horror novels are grotesque, challenging, and often buck typical horror tradition. And while Nancy Holder’s Dead in the Water doesn’t quite reach the levels of The Cipher, it is still a very good, and involving, story.
Like Kathe Koja’s debut novel, Water is psychologically demanding and does not give up all its secrets at once . . . or even when the final page is turned. And unlike The Cipher, this novel is filled with likable characters the readers can root for — characters I was afraid for, too.
Despite a somewhat flabby middle section, this is a gripping and horrific nautical novel about ghosts and possession and cabin fever. And unlike many genre novels, this one definitely sticks the landing — thus rendering any flaws in the chapters leading up to the climax forgivable. The last two chapters are chilling, and I am happy to say the author thoroughly shocked me in the final passages. Highly recommended!...more
How is it Kathe Koja can take something as simple as an artist slipping and busting his head (or a strange couple of friends finding an even stranger How is it Kathe Koja can take something as simple as an artist slipping and busting his head (or a strange couple of friends finding an even stranger hole in their apartment building . . . .) and turn it into an entertaining — and edgy — grand statement? She makes it seem so easy. The paranoia drips off the pages of this tale of love lost . . . and an artist driven mad by the visions in his head . . .
Her works were cutting-edge back in the ‘90s; now, perhaps, they are even more so . . . the grunge era aesthetics only bolster the fundamental power of Bad Brains.
A book I’m not quite worthy of reviewing, this 1992 horror paperback is, perhaps, my favorite read of the year thus far . . . . and certainly should be on all readers’ radars. (This is especially fine reading for fans of The Cipher.)...more
Poppy Z. Brite is a master at writing unlikable, unsympathetic characters that are just fun (well, fun to me . . . your mileage may vary!) to read aboPoppy Z. Brite is a master at writing unlikable, unsympathetic characters that are just fun (well, fun to me . . . your mileage may vary!) to read about.
Lost Souls, Brite’s early nineties debut novel, is a vampire tale set in New Orleans. Anne Rice territory this isn’t, though; Rice aims for the romantic and luxurious, whereas Brite’s characters are dirty and sweary and don’t give a damn for morality.
I really can’t put my finger on why this book effected me so, though I’m not surprised. I read Brite’s later novel Exquisite Corpse a few years back and knew from the jump it was something special. Brite’s writing features a strong edge, a daring sense of nihilism and the grotesque not seen in horror since.
Lost Souls is a grungy, sweaty outing filled with gore, sex, rock music, angsty teens doing drugs, and more sex. All the sex! Brite, a master of the prose, brings it all together with style and class. This is a story that matters....more
”It really couldn’t get any weirder, now could it? Weirder or any worse, no. Just more of the same, world without end. Funhole forever. Skin and bone,”It really couldn’t get any weirder, now could it? Weirder or any worse, no. Just more of the same, world without end. Funhole forever. Skin and bone, dissolving. Matter over mind.”
1991’s The Cipher, Kathe Koja’s debut release, is infamous amongst vintage horror readers for being hard to find in physical form for cheap. I scored a copy for just under forty bucks (a steal, really, for what was the debut production in the Abyss Paperback line). Was paying that much money worth the story I got?
Yes. Oh, yes.
I don’t know if I’ve ever read a horror novel more of its time than this one. Even if I did not know before reading that it had been written in the early nineties, I would be able to guess by the time I was done reading. Filled with the grungy aesthetics of the era, this is a strange novel of the inexplicable is about two characters, Nicholas and Nakota, that discover a strange hole in the storage room of Nicholas’s apartment building. The hole seems to go to nowhere, and things come back from it . . . changed.
Written in poetic and hallucinogenic prose, this is the dirty, raw unraveling of the human psyche. Koja’s characters are distinctly unlikable, letting their base desires drive them without much hesitation or regret. This is a wholly unsettling, and unique, read.
Abyss was one of the last gasps of the great Horror Boom, and it started off with this filthy wretch of tale of friends and foes obsessively inflicting pain on themselves and each other. This is not the horror of Stephen King or Peter Straub or VC Andrews or Thomas Tryon; Koja’s debut novel is totally unlike anything that came before it. My highest recommendation. To any reader that can handle it, anyway....more
Cody | CodysBookshelf
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