{Put This One on Your TBR List} Book Review: Leech by Hiron Ennes by Karen S. Wiesner

 

{Put This One on Your TBR List}

Book Review: Leech by Hiron Ennes

by Karen S. Wiesner

 

 

Be aware that there may be spoilers in this review. 

I picked up Leech by Hiron Ennes at a used bookstore and bought it because 1) it was in the science fiction/horror section, 2) it sounded like a combination of genres I love and the back cover blurb definitely appealed, and 3) I liked the intriguing cover, which, by the way, my wastewater treatment manager husband immediately said, tongue in cheek, "Look, a BOD bottle--but what's that weird, black gunk coming out of it?" 

I barely know where to start with this review. I've never before read a book quite like Leech, which was published in 2022 and was the debut novel by the author, who works in the field of medicine. Leech runs the gamut when it comes to genre classification: Gothic, Victorian era literature, historical, science fiction, horror, medical mystery, speculative and post-apocalyptic fiction are some of the fitting categories, along with two others that may also (but I'm not quite sure) qualify: steampunk and body horror. In the case of the latter, I've only heard of such a thing in relation to Caitlin Starling, an author I really like who's also a narrative designer that creates art exhibitions. These could be considered (by the squeamish like myself) body horror. 

The back cover blurb barely seems adequate to cover what takes places in this unusual novel. But maybe that's the best place to start, with a posting of the blurb on the book. This reveals to us what the author and publisher intended to give away freely about the major themes in the story. 

Meet the cure for the human disease. 

In an isolated chateau, as far north as north goes, the baron’s doctor has died. The doctor’s replacement has a mystery to solve: discovering how the Institute lost track of one of its many bodies. 

For hundreds of years the Interprovincial Medical Institute has grown by taking root in young minds and shaping them into doctors, replacing every human practitioner of medicine. The Institute is here to help humanity, to cure and to cut, to cradle and protect the species from the apocalyptic horrors their ancestors unleashed. 

In the frozen north, the Institute's body will discover a competitor for its rung at the top of the evolutionary ladder. A parasite is spreading through the baron's castle, already a dark pit of secrets, lies, violence, and fear. The two will make war on the battlefield of the body. Whichever wins, humanity will lose again. 

There are strongly overt clues running all through this blurb as to what the underlying plot is, but it's not really something that's realized fully until the reader is well into the novel--something I'll talk about again soon. 

I instantly liked this story when I started reading it because it has evocative depictions of the Victorian era--the picturesque setting (in this case, a desolate one filled with frigid, imposing mountains, dense forests, and a ruin of a "castle"); the genteel manners and mannerisms practiced by all with the classes of society always firmly occupying their proper places; the quiet, subtle, eerie, and insidious sense that absolutely nothing is as it seems on the surface. In fact, one of the things I liked most in those beginning chapters was how much the main character (who isn't specifically named through most of the story--it's written in first person point-of-view) reminded me of Jonathan Harker, a new solicitor, traveling to Eastern Europe to meet with his very first client. Leech takes place mainly in Verdira, located in a remote, frozen stronghold where wheatrock--an extremely valuable commodity used for many different things--is mined. 

What the back cover blurb plainly hints at but doesn't firmly verify for most of first two-thirds of the novel is that the pathologist the Institute has sent to investigate the death of the previous one is in fact a hive-mind body host of a parasite that's replaced all medical practitioners in existence in the past five-hundred years since it established predominance over living creatures. This very same parasite was in part responsible for most human beings being transformed into mutated states while some other, unspecified (but hinted at being caused by a "{galaxy?} flying machine") physical disaster turned the world's oceans acid, shattered the moon, and created feral machines called ventigeaux ("orphans of biotechnology", as the author describes them). 

Most of the characters in the book were transformed by that parasite in one way or another from mechanic hearts, to vestigial tails to Verdira's Baron being kept alive mainly through arcane machinery. The author intended it to be the norm in this world for regular patients to display "unconventional physical attributes" such as "a mechanical limb or a migratory birthmark or a literal doppelganger". 

In this feudal society, while the Institute handles all medical matters, powerful barons run local areas. In addition to the misery-inducing Baron who rules over Verdira and doesn't have a kind word for anyone living in the crumbling chateau with him are his family and servants. His grown son Didier cares nothing about the lost miners and numerous massacres that have and are taking place in Verdira so long as the precious wheatrock is capable of being mined to contribute to their ongoing wealth. His wife drinks but never escapes the fact that she is, sadly, little more than a breeder. Her only worth is in producing heirs. And she knows it. Due to the mutations from the pathogen, she's suffered a long series of stillborn births. Her only surviving progenies are twin girls creepily described as "A tangle of dark hair…two small bodies sprouting like stems from its middle." Additionally, there's the tragic houseboy, Èmile, the last survivor of genocide against indigenous cave and mountain dwellers. 

While the back cover blurb and the writing itself were almost blatant about touting the "symbiont" parasite that's running the medical show in this world, it wasn't immediately apparent what exactly was taking place in the story as I read through the first two-thirds. It took me that long to make all the necessary connections to comprehend that I was reading a book that was in the point of view of a pathogen for most of that time. (Guess having been in the POV of a dinosaur in another book I read isn't as odd as I formerly thought compared to this.) Only later in the story, when the previous owner of the host body re-exerted her (or them-) self and emerged despite the controlling parasite inhabiting the Institute's hive-mind also being there, did it become clear that the true horror of the story was that the main character in the host body had come to realize what had happened to her or them. At the same time, the hive-mind of that parasite had identified a brand-new parasite called Pseudomycota that killed the former doctor's host body and infected nearly everyone in Verdira. 

Stated in an interview on the BookPage website as the author's main influence for writing Leech are "…the stories science can tell us about our own cells. … Deep in our mitochondria lives a strand of DNA…an essential piece of our cellular network without which we would die. …Scientists…propose it is the genome of a foreign organism that hitched a ride inside us back when we were single-celled. It’s been sitting there ever since, perpetuating itself. … Does it care about me, or does it only care about my reproductive success? … You stay awake so many nights thinking about stuff like that, and eventually you write Leech." I found this to be one of the most unique premises I've ever heard for a story. It's part of why I found it so tantalizing as I tried to piece together the tapestry of what was happening. 

It's a brilliant story that was well-written…up until the last bit of the book, where the narration shifts from hive-mind parasite to former host-body consciousness. While this does make sense in the theme of the story, the end made for a lot of curse words strung together with poor grammar in an almost too modern tone of voice that I don't believe fit the previous Victorian style. Or maybe that was the point. I also felt like the book dragged on too long near the middle. Firmer editing in both these situations wouldn't have been remiss. 

Beyond that, the unfortunate side effect of keeping readers in the dark about the basic scenario of the story is that, when details are finally given to fill in the many, many gaps that'd been deliberately left hanging earlier in the story, now suddenly readers are overwhelmed, smothered, even crushed beneath the weight of it all. I found the last third of the book very hard to process, and quite honestly, I didn't understand the end scene one iota. It almost seemed to imply that one of the characters turned into a werewolf or a dog, like the ones he cared for at the chateau (gulp! a ventigeaux???). I wasn't entirely sure, and I could be completely off about that. 

In reflecting after I finished reading the book and then allowed myself to research it so I could figure out all the things that seemed foggy while I was reading, I asked myself if I actually liked the story. My answer is kind of the same answer as I would give for Never Let Me Go written by the absolutely brilliant author Kazuo Ishiguro. You can read Margaret Carter's review of the book here on Alien Romances Blog: https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2023/01/clones-as-organ-donors.html. Ishiguro is the same writer who gave us The Remains of the Day, which will probably always be in my top ten of favorite novels. When I read Never Let Me Go, I felt like I was missing a vital piece of the puzzle--the one in fact that would give everything else there focus an intense meaning. Without it, nothing made sense. I had flashes of feeling like I understood what was going on in the story while reading it, but nothing cohesive, nothing strong enough to help me bridge the gap. When I finished the book and then, again, allowed myself to research it, I found myself deeply and irrevocably disappointed. If the author had given me one crucial bit of information, I would have not only liked the book I would have loved it. Instead, I felt disgruntled by the lack of clarification that should have been given within the book--in my opinion, as early as possible. Without it, I had no sense of cohesion or resolution, and I felt cheated. I was left angry enough to not read another Ishiguro book to this day. I know, sad. I've decided this manner of not quite finishing a book in a way that brings everything full circle isn't really my cup of tea when it comes to reading. 

In a similar but nowhere near as drastic way, Leech kind of gave me everything other than the illuminating key to understanding the whole book until the very end, at which point I did eventually get most of what was needed for clarity and closure. Nevertheless, I did feel that a search for deeper explanations to bring everything together was needed even then. Unfortunately, a lot of the websites that I found information about Leech saw this as an allegorical tale. Like Tolkien, I distrust and abhor allegory, and I try not to include it in any of the books I write. So I passed over all that without reading much, not wanting or even being willing to read "real world parallels" into a fictional story. I do recommend Leech, especially for those who love speculative horror set in the backdrop of Victorian-era-like literature. 

Karen Wiesner is an award-winning, multi-genre author of over 150 titles and 16 series.

Visit her website here: https://karenwiesner.weebly.com/

and https://karenwiesner.weebly.com/karens-quill-blog

Find out more about her books and see her art here: http://www.facebook.com/KarenWiesnerAuthor

 

Visit her publisher here: https://www.writers-exchange.com/Karen-Wiesner/

Karen S Wiesner: {Put This One on Your TBR List} Book Review: The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova

{Put This One on Your TBR List}

Book Review: The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova

by Karen S. Wiesner

A novel that took 10 years to write, completed in January 2004, sent to a literary agent in March of that year; two months later (and two days after sending the manuscript to publishers), the first-time author is offered a deal…that she refuses! The rights are auctioned off and finally bought for $2 million. That alone sounds like something made up. Add to the unrealistic quality of such a testament: Elizabeth Kostova's debut novel The Historian was published in June 2005, landed at #1 on The New York Times bestseller list in its first week, and by August of that same year, it'd sold in excess of 900,000 copies and gone through six printings.

I love vampires, Dracula (historical and fictional), and literary novels about people who love books--a particular theme in this book, as described by the main character Paul: "It is a fact that we historians are interested in what is partly a reflection of ourselves we would rather not examine except through the medium of scholarship; it is also true that as we steep ourselves in our interests, they become more and more a part of us." The history and folklore of Vlad Tepes and his fictional equivalent Count Dracula are explored in narratives told by Paul, a professor; his mentor Rossi; and Paul's daughter (who's never named), while utilizing letters and oral accounts, and covering 1930s, 1950s, and 1970s timelines. The goal is to find Vlad's tomb.

Described as a mash of genres including Gothic, adventure, detective, travelogue, postmodern historical, thriller, and epistolary, The Historian's origin centered on the author's father (a professor) telling her "real history" vampire tales when she was a child. Her librarian mother's love of books also had a profound effect on Kostova. Later, the author had a notion to write about a father spinning tales about Dracula tales to an entranced daughter with Dracula listening in--because Dracula's still alive. Two days later, Kostova started writing.

Interestingly, Kostova never wanted her novel to be classified as a horror, nor was she pleased with the comparisons it got with Dan Brown's Robert Langdon series. [Ironically, the reason for the bidding war for the rights to publish The Historian stemmed from the houses believing "they might have the next Da Vinci Code within their grasp" (according to Publishers Weekly).] While I can understand the connection to comparing The Historian to Brown's historical thrillers, better comparisons, I think, would be to Charlie Lovett's The Bookman's Tale or Arturo Perez-Reverte's The Club Dumas, both fantastic novels that won't disappoint readers.

The author intended to write a chilling Victorian ghost story. She chose the figure of a vampire for many reasons, not the least of which was because "our fear of Dracula lies in the fear of losing ourselves, of relinquishing our very identities as human beings." Not surprisingly, the main characters in The Historian become obsessed, all but losing their individual identities in their quest to discover the dark side of human nature in the complex figure of Dracula.

While this novel is large enough to be overwhelming to some readers (nearly 700 pages in the trade paperback), I found myself so riveted by the adventures these learned bibliophiles undertake that span the globe, I barely noticed the pages flying by. It's very hard to imagine that this was the author's very first book, considering how masterfully it's constructed and written. If you haven't already, I highly recommend reading The Historian. If you've already enjoyed it once, maybe it's time to re-read this timeless novel? I've already put it back on my TBR pile.

Karen Wiesner is an award-winning, multi-genre author of over 150 titles and 16 series.

Visit her website here: https://karenwiesner.weebly.com/

and https://karenwiesner.weebly.com/karens-quill-blog

Find out more about her books and see her art here: http://www.facebook.com/KarenWiesnerAuthor

Visit her publisher here: https://www.writers-exchange.com/Karen-Wiesner/

Karen S Wiesner: {Put This One on Your TBR List} Book Review: The Travelling Bag and Other Ghostly Stories and Farthing House and Other Stories by Susan Hill

{Put This One on Your TBR List}

Book Review: The Travelling Bag and Other Ghostly Stories

and

Farthing House and Other Stories

by Susan Hill

by Karen S. Wiesner

Susan Hill is one of those authors that effortlessly puts you directly into the fictional settings and personal lives of her characters with so much atmospheric reality, you're convinced of the authenticity of everything. While many of her stories are ghost and/or horror, as in the case of the first collection I'll review today The Travelling Bag and Other Ghostly Stories, others are simply brutally realistic and disturbing vignettes of the darker side of life, as we'll see in Farthing House and Other Stories. One reviewer describes Hill's work as "locating the horrific in everyday life". Simply put, few other authors capture such haunting qualities that linger on in the memory long after reading as Susan Hill does consistently.

 

The Travelling Bag and Other Ghostly Stories was published in 2016 and contains four short stories. The 2017 edition also included a fifth story, "Printer's Devil Court", which I reviewed previously in this column. The title story is classic Susan Hill, when revenge takes on a new supernatural twist. A wife searching for answers to her husband's untimely death brings in a psychic detective to find out the truth by utilizing the deceased doctor's favorite travelling bag. This is as good of a story as any Hill has written. The focus of the story is a man seeking revenge on his apprentice who stole his life's work while he was besieged by illness. The unexpected denouement really makes this story clever.

"Boy Twenty-One" harkens back to two of Hill's stories I reviewed previously "The Small Hand" (2010) and "Dolly" (2012), adding a hair-raising element to the slightly disturbing, undying friendship of a young boarder at a boys' school with a fellow student who doesn't return after the summer holiday. This particular tale got bad reviews. One in particular said of it that "it feels more like indecision on the writer's part, as though she is still playing with ideas", adding that it wasn't "fully realised". I, on the other hand, believe the faltering is what added to the creepy aspects of the story. The narrator had trouble establishing friendships, finally found of soulmate of sorts, and unfathomably lost that friend. The story ended abruptly in a way that felt shocking, incomplete, unresolved--just as it needed to in order to realistically portray the events and the character's stunned uncertainty combined with an unwillingness to let go.

The story "Alice Baker" is a strange, tragic little tale. Office workers are using an old building that harbors a forgotten origin while a better one is being constructed for them. An odd new employee brings both curiosity and dread to co-workers. All the senses come alive in this lovely little spine-chiller.

"The Front Room" is menacing and goes against everything we're taught is good and right. A couple is inspired by a sermon about feeding the hungry and being a blessing to the destitute. They invite the husband's aged stepmother Solange to live with them and their growing family. The woman they remember, but weren't particularly fond of, has changed almost beyond recognition. What a wonderfully warped, ominous (but intriguing) story that might draw from it a lesson opposite of what the Good Samaritan parable tried to establish.

All of these tales are perfect for Halloween or when you're just in the mood for really good, short ghost stories.

Most of the nine stories included in Farthing Hill and Other Stories aren't supernatural or have little to do with such mystic meanderings, although "Farthing Hill" itself is, "Kielty's" has an edge toward the strange, "Red and Green Beads" is the quintessential ghost story, and maybe "Mr Proudham and Mr Sleight" could be considered otherworldly but I honestly didn't understand that particular story at all enough to figure out what it was intended to be. Oddly enough, given my love of all Susan Hill's other ghost stories, the weird, extramundane stories in this collection are the ones I liked least (though I did enjoy all but the latter one I mentioned).

The tale that stood out most for me was titled "The Custodian". For a good portion of the story, I had no idea why it was named as it was. An old man sacrificially takes on the care of his young grandson. The old man is good to the young boy, and they learn and enjoy their time together. Everything changes when the boy's father returns unexpectedly. What a devastating, forlorn glimpse of a life and what a sad commentary about putting all of one's self into another being--and yet this is the very thing that can give life meaning and purpose. There's no good reconciliation to this existential quandary. I was left gasping at the contradiction and simple summary of life as we know it.

"The Albatross" is another mournful story of an 18-year-old boy with disabilities who's taking care of his wheelchair-ridden mother. The mother is hard and harsh and does everything in her power to keep her son with her, even when the home environment becomes toxic and the breaking point is reached. While not much sympathy can be roused for the mother, I nevertheless found it easy to imagine feeling helpless in her condition. To be alone when there's no one to care for or about you, or to share your life is a terrifying, lonely thought--not that it justifies her behavior toward her son. I appreciated the efforts of secondary characters to intervene, but sometimes in life we learn there is just no way to turn something horrible into something good.

"Halloran's Child" moved me with this shameful tale of a family treated badly and shunned without justification by fellow townsfolk. I've always been disturbed about the "levels" in society and how badly people can treat others in the name of social status. The rich, the poor, the middle-class--we're all guilty of this kind of thing. Why can't we just genuinely show respect and kindness to everyone around us, not setting ourselves up as more worthy than anyone else? Sigh. This story really brings mankind's cruelties home, but it's told from the point of view of a human being who's simple, humble, and even sweet, so the despicable events are that much more shocking and dismaying.

"How Soon Can I Leave?" is another odd little slice of life revealing two women who share a strange relationship that both enriches and hinders their lives. We're only in the point of view of one of them, and you can't help but see in this tragic tale how a person can lie to herself and manipulate her own mind to believe what she wants to about herself, her motives, and those of others.

"The Badness Within Him" shares the sadness of the previous installments in this collection with a boy considered the black sheep of the family, but there's a twist that I didn't expect at the end. It really made me think and grieve about similar things I've her about and experienced.

Susan Hill's stories consistently highlight the bleak darkness inherent within the commonplace; the sinister, preventable failures, wrong-headed foibles, and fragile beauty in a life where least expected. In these two collections, this author nails those bitter, heart-rending and life-changing concepts.

Note that these stories are published separately as well as in the author's other collections.

Karen Wiesner is an award-winning, multi-genre author of over 150 titles and 16 series.

Visit her website here: https://karenwiesner.weebly.com/

and https://karenwiesner.weebly.com/karens-quill-blog

Find out more about her books and see her art here: http://www.facebook.com/KarenWiesnerAuthor

Visit her publisher here: https://www.writers-exchange.com/Karen-Wiesner/

Karen S Wiesner: {Put This One on Your TBR List} Book Review: The Woman in Black and Printer's Devil Court by Susan Hill

{Put This One on Your TBR List}

Book Review: The Woman in Black and Printer's Devil Court 

by Susan Hill

by Karen S. Wiesner

Susan Hill is one of those authors that effortlessly puts you directly into the fictional settings and personal lives of her characters (many of her stories are ghost and/or horror) with so much atmospheric reality, you're convinced of the authenticity of everything. Two stories that seem to go together extremely well are The Woman in Black and Printer's Devil Court. Both are haunting (forgive me but it's fitting) ghost stories that linger on in the memory long after they're read.

The Woman in Black was published in 1983. Most people have heard of it because of the 2012 film adaption starring (Harry Potter) Daniel Radcliffe, which was excellent but not quite as good as the book. There were changes made to the movie (ones that I think worked there) that weren't in the book, and it’s within the pages of the novel that the story, characters, and unforgettable settings are breathtakingly expanded.

The novel is narrated by Arthur Kipps and follows his life. In this one, we start at the end, and work our way to the beginning. In the initial scenes, we see Kipps settled with his wife and stepchildren. They ask him to tell them his own ghost story. Kipps resists but eventually decides to write it down. He starts at the beginning when he was young  and engaged to be married the following year. As a junior solicitor, Kipps is assigned to attend the funeral of Alice Drablow in Crythin Gifford, a small town on the coast of England. He’s charged with settling her estate, the secluded, desolate Eel Marsh House situated on Nine Lives Causeway, which is surrounded by marshes. At high tide, the property is completely cut off from the mainland.

During the funeral, Kipps sees a mysterious woman in black lurking in the background. As he learns more about his deceased client and her sister, who became pregnant out of wedlock, one of the wealthy landowners from town divulges the horrifying truth that none of the other townsfolk want to talk about--that Jennet has returned often in the years since her death, and a sighting of this “Woman in Black” presages the death of a child.

This story reflects on the deep, indelible impressions death can leave on lives, and the damage that harshness, unforgiveness, and loss can have on the mind. The Woman in Black is everything I love in a ghost tale. It has great potential for re-reading often.

In Printer's Devil Court, a Victorian spooky tale, four medical students discuss the ramifications of interfering with death as it approaches. In truth, they should have talked about whether it's advisable at all. But, in the throes of youth untouched by the taint of regret and uncertainty, so many evils are perpetrated and simply never questioned in the face of imminent exploration and discovery. The experiments the men embark on in the cellar of their lodgings in Printer's Devil Court and a little used mortuary in a subterranean annex of the hospital is unnatural and horrifying.

Hugh, one of the doctors, found he couldn't continue with the unethical undertakings, but years later he's called back to the unpleasant memories of the events he had a unwilling but intrigued hand in bringing about. Now he sees the damage that lives on unceasingly. But is it possible to change the consequences of monstrous actions?

This story reflects on the deep, indelible impressions of life and death, what happens in-between, and how inept man is at playing God in these areas. The reader is forced to consider the frailty and violence inside men. This Frankenstein-like story swept me along, unable to put it down for long. As an author, I couldn’t help marveling at how the author chose the best narrator for this story. If she’d chosen any of the other medical students, the story wouldn’t have any the same impact. Stories like these make for good warnings against getting involved in ambiguous things that make you uneasy and are sure to keep your conscience at full alarm until you extricate yourself.

If you haven’t read a ghost story before or are simply looking for the best of its kind, these two are not to be missed.

Note that these stories are published separately as well as in the author's own collections.

Karen Wiesner is an award-winning, multi-genre author of over 150 titles and 16 series.

Visit her website here: https://karenwiesner.weebly.com/

and https://karenwiesner.weebly.com/karens-quill-blog

Find out more about her books and see her art here: http://www.facebook.com/KarenWiesnerAuthor

Visit her publisher here: https://www.writers-exchange.com/Karen-Wiesner/

Karen S Wiesner: {Put This One on Your TBR List} Book Review: The Small Hand and Dolly by Susan Hill

{Put This One on Your TBR List}

Book Review: The Small Hand and Dolly by Susan Hill

by Karen S. Wiesner

Susan Hill is one of those authors that effortlessly puts you directly into the fictional settings and personal lives of her characters (many of her stories are ghost and/or horror) with so much atmospheric reality, you're convinced of the authenticity of everything. Two stories that seem to go together extremely well are The Small Hand and Dolly. Both are unforgettable ghost stories.

The Small Hand was published in 2010. In this story, an antiquarian book dealer gets lost in the countryside after visiting a client and ends up at a derelict Edwardian House. While there, he's compelled to the entrance, where he feels a small hand slip into his own. This experience haunts him over the next several weeks, plaguing him with nightmares, unexpected panic attacks, along with further visits from this disembodied, ghostly small hand. His only choice is to delve deeply into the mystery of the house and its desolate, overgrown garden.

While the description of this story may sound vaguely silly, nothing about the story was that. The mere idea of this experience was always rendered as a genuinely chilling occurrence. I invested myself in this tale, as well as into the point of view of the main character with his investigations. I wanted to know what was going on. The answer wasn’t what I was expecting—the twist was even better than I could have hoped for.

In Dolly, published in 2012, the main character is a boy Edward sent to live with his aunt. While there, his like-aged, spoiled cousin Leonora comes to stay for the "holiday" as well. They're the children of siblings who hated each other. Their aunt Kestrel was the older sister of the two siblings. Kestrel's decaying Iyot House is situated in the damp, desolate Fens of Eastern England. Edward is polite and withdrawn, having learned to keep his thoughts private to avoid trouble. What a contrast he is to his bratty cousin who throws a fit about everything and anything. While the reader can't help feeling sorry for her because the girl's mother treats her like possession she's only sometimes in the mood for having around, sympathy can only go so far with such bad behavior. The one thing Leonora has always wanted from her mother is a specific doll. Knowing only that Leonora wants a doll for her birthday, Kestrel makes a special trip to get her a beautiful, expensive one. However, it's not the one Leonora has always wanted. She proceeds to smash it in her terrible rage at again not getting what she wanted (and probably not from the person she'd wanted it from). Edward picks up the pieces and puts it back in the box. All that night, he hears the paper around the shattered doll rustling along with crying. At first he puts the box under his bed, then into a deep cupboard, but the crying so haunts him, he eventually takes it and buries it in the church cemetery not far from the house.

Edward is a character you can’t help but love. The author put us directly into his situation, into his heart and mind, seamlessly. I could feel his shock and even a bit of awe at his cousin, who was beautiful to look upon, but his wariness toward her was warranted. Even as he longed for a companion, she was too selfish and volatile. The story also takes place when they're adult, after their aunt had died and her will is to be read. Even then, the characters are wonderfully brought to life.

The brilliance in this disturbing horror story is in the delicate hand the author displayed in fleshing out the psychology of the characters. Edward and Leonora are opposites--light and dark, good and evil. But light and dark, good and evil aren't easily defined or examined. Using the doll to explore the angle of whether evil is inherent or whether psychological damage causes it leads to a question about forgiveness or the lack thereof passing down through the generations of a family like a dark stain that those who experience it (firsthand, second, and on and on) can never wash off.

Note that both of these stories are published separately as well as in the author's own collections.

Karen Wiesner is an award-winning, multi-genre author of over 150 titles and 16 series.

Visit her website here: https://karenwiesner.weebly.com/

and https://karenwiesner.weebly.com/karens-quill-blog

Find out more about her books and see her art here: http://www.facebook.com/KarenWiesnerAuthor 

Visit her publisher here: https://www.writers-exchange.com/Karen-Wiesner/

Karen S Wiesner: {Put This One on Your TBR List} Book Review: The Man in the Picture and The Mist in the Mirror by Susan Hill

{Put This One on Your TBR List}

Book Review: The Man in the Picture and The Mist in the Mirror

by Susan Hill

by Karen S. Wiesner

Susan Hill is one of those authors that effortlessly puts you directly into the fictional settings and personal lives of her characters (many of her stories are ghost and/or horror) with so much atmospheric reality, you're convinced of the authenticity of everything. Two of my favorite stories by this author, though it is very hard to choose, are The Man in the Picture and The Mist in the Mirror.

The Man in the Picture was published in 2007. An oil painting depicting masked revelers at a Venetian carnival has the power to entrap and destroy. This story is told from several points of view as those who have experienced the horror give heartrending testimony about what they've gone through, what they've lost. The overarching message of this very complex and well-written story is, Never underestimate the power of fury or the depths people will sink to in order to get revenge or to achieve their own goals. As an unsuspecting bystander caught up with the excitement of the celebrating crowds (a very apt comparison, considering this particular theme), I become ensnare within this novel and all the chilling events. In the process, I was swept along until I was all but lost in the storytelling. Every part of this tale of terror beguiled me. 

Set in the Victorian age, The Mist in the Mirror was published in 1999. The hero Sir Monmouth's life has been filled with travel. He's lived his life mostly alone, and there's an undeniable innocence about him. He believes unwaveringly in the innate goodness of his fellow man. As the story opens, he arrives in England intending to devote himself to learning more about a fellow explorer from the past, Conrad Vane, and perhaps document the adventurer's life. However, as he sets about following this trail, he's warned by many well-meaning others not to go down that road. Apparently, Vane was a man who plummeted the depths of depravity and cruelty and, even after his death, the foolish one who pursued him would become tainted by his evil. Extraordinary, disturbing events plague Monmouth with nightmares, involving a shrouded little boy and an old woman behind the curtain. Despite all this, he stubbornly continued on his course. Monmouth's quest quickly becomes a relentless obsession that threatens to steal his health, his sanity, even his life. Overarching themes in the story point to care being taken to the one you choose to make your idol, as that person may not be who or what you assume him or her to be.

While at first blush, this story didn't seem like there could possibly be enough material to flesh out into a full novel, it quickly became larger than life, frighteningly claustrophobic, the protagonist someone to rail against but also to sympathize—even emphasize—with as he lost control of his own compulsion. I read equally compulsively, lost in the fog that this gothic horror story seemed to conjure, blocking out my own reality. When I finished it, I couldn't shake the chill--and the warning to heed the regrets of the main character--that remained.

Both of these stories provide frightening lessons to be learned about taking anything to the extreme. Addictions can so easily steal and usurp purpose in life, so that a person becomes the opposite of what he or she intends or desires.

Note that both of these stories are published separately as well as in the author's own collections.

Karen Wiesner is an award-winning, multi-genre author of over 150 titles and 16 series.

Visit her website here: https://karenwiesner.weebly.com/

and https://karenwiesner.weebly.com/karens-quill-blog

Find out more about her books and see her art here: http://www.facebook.com/KarenWiesnerAuthor

Visit her publisher here: https://www.writers-exchange.com/Karen-Wiesner/

Karen S. Wiesner {Put This One on Your TBR List} Beneath the Shadows by Sara Foster

{Put This One on Your TBR List}

Book Review: Beneath the Shadows by Sara Foster

by Karen S. Wiesner

I'm a fan of Gothic suspense thrillers, and there aren't as many really good ones as I'd like out there. I read Beneath the Shadows by Sara Foster right after it came out in 2012. In this book, Adam inherits Hawthorn Cottage from his grandparents, and he and his wife Grace move there with their infant daughter, intending to leave the hustle and bustle of city life. The North Yorkshire moors set the stage for the opening landscape of creepy, moody desolation--with something scary lurking around every corner. Adam disappears abrupt, leaving his young daughter in her stroller on the doorstep. Everyone tries to convince Grace that he left her, but even a year later she can't reconcile what happened with what she knew of the man she loved.

Determined to find the answers the police couldn't uncover, she returns to the cottage. A winter storm effectively cuts her and Millie off from the rest of the world, and Grace finds herself in a spooky house filled with dark family secrets and maybe even a few ghosts. She's living in a small village with odd, taciturn inhabitants who give a semblance of friendliness that, in a room full of shadows, could just as easily be mistaken for menace.

The intriguing characters and atmospheric setting drew me in. Tension kept me riveted to the pages. This story has some minor flaws and inconsistencies that did little more than make me miss a beat. Nothing kept me from wanting to finish the slightly formulaic tale and reread it in the future--as well as look into discovering others that followed from the author. Lovers of Gothic suspense will find this the ideal story to read while housebound during a storm of one sort or another.

Check out my latest novel!

https://karenwiesner.weebly.com/bloodmoon-cove-spirits-series.html

https://www.writers-exchange.com/bloodmoon-cove-spirits-series/

Karen Wiesner is an award-winning, multi-genre author of over 150 titles and 16 series.

Visit her website here: https://karenwiesner.weebly.com/

and https://karenwiesner.weebly.com/karens-quill-blog

Find out more about her books and see her art here: http://www.facebook.com/KarenWiesnerAuthor

 

Visit her publisher here: https://www.writers-exchange.com/Karen-Wiesner/