I read two books last week, both horror, both the kind of horror that used its tropes to tell a larger tale…
Play Nice****
I’ve confessed my love for Rachel Harrison’s work many times in this space. If you don’t count Stephen King — who I don’t exclusively read for horror — Harrison is my favorite horror writer. I love her textured takes on womanhood and the decisions women have to make at critical moments of their lives.
I’m glad I was cued into her ad campaign before the book because I got a sense of what Harrison was doing with her MC…which is good because I couldn’t stand her at first. Or really for most of the book. She’s complex in a way Harrison’s protagonists often are but she’s insufferable in a way they’re usually not. Harrison wrote the character as an homage to the Difficult Women of 90s pop culture. And that steeled me to at least appreciate what she was doing because the pay off is one of her better ones. I appreciated the journey even if I didn’t always like the guide. It’s not up there with her best (Black Sheep) or my favorite (Cackle) but it’s still very good and her descriptions of the house, of the tension, of horror in general are the best in the biz.
Fiend***
You can tag anything with Succession-but-make-it-x and I’ll likely read it. Succession where a demon is the source of this family’s power? Sure! Why not? It’s fine. Alma Katsu is having fun with it, unfortunately, she doesn’t develop the characters or the plot effectively enough to make me care for any of it. But it’s still a fun hang.