Tag Archives: Horror

Silver Nitrate – Silvia Moreno-Garcia

Mexican horror movies, golden age cinema and Nazi occultism combine to great effect in Silver Nitrate, another fantastic novel from prolific, genre-hopping author Silvia Moreno-Garcia. In 90s Mexico City, horror movie-aficionado Montserrat is a sound engineer fighting to keep her place in the male-dominated industry, and Tristán is a washed-up soap actor struggling to find work in the wake of a tragic accident. When the two friends meet once-famous horror movie director Abel Urueta, it doesn’t take much for them to agree to help him complete an unfinished film of his, the ‘lost’ movie that essentially ended – and maybe cursed – his career. As they learn more about the origins of the film and its occult subject matter, and the other parties originally involved in it, they find themselves caught up in a dangerous new world where film and ritual combine.

Continue reading →

In the Coils of the Labyrinth – David Annandale

With his first Arkham Horror novel, In the Coils of the Labyrinth, David Annandale delivers a slow-burn tale of physical illness and mental torment that ably demonstrates why this is such a perfect author/setting combination. Worn down by what she’s long suspected is tuberculosis, Professor Miranda Ventham reluctantly checks herself into the Stroud Institute, Arkham’s newly-opened sanatorium. While the care she receives there seems genuinely beneficial to begin with, something about the Institute feels unsettling, and Miranda’s plagued by troubling, confusing dreams. Determined to understand what’s happening, and helped on the outside by her friend, parapsychologist Agatha Crane, Miranda sets out to learn what she can about the Institute and its director, Donovan Stroud. As dreams and reality become harder to tell apart though, the darkness at the heart of the Institute threatens to drag her down and never let her go.

Continue reading →

V. Castro – Excerpts From Las Posadas & Hairspray and Switchblades

Hello and welcome to Track of Words, where today I have something a little different – kindly provided by horror author V. Castro, I’m delighted to present a pair of excerpts giving you a taste of what to expect from two of her stories. The first one is very much appropriate to the time at which I’m publishing this, being a Christmas (horror) story, while the second gives a glimpse of a family of jaguar shapeshifters – how cool is that? With a great-sounding IP fiction novel recently released – Aliens: Vasquez, exploring the character of badass Marine Jenette Vasquez – and a whole host of fantastic horror stories available, from short stories to full-length novels, if you’re after some Latinx horror then V. Castro has got you covered!

Continue reading →

A Few More Thoughts On: Leech by Hiron Ennes

How do you review a book like Hiron Ennes’ Leech, a novel that’s as disturbing as it is compelling, in which a theoretically benign parasitical distributed consciousness has possessed the entire population of medical practitioners, but finds itself in unwanted, unexpected competition when it stumbles upon a new, opposing parasite? It’s a book that does things entirely its own way, with a blatant disregard for normal genre conventions that somehow really works but which makes it very, very hard to talk about without giving spoilers. Well, I did manage to write a review, which you can read here, but this book is so strange and so damn good that I want to tell as many people about it as possible. If there’s any author’s work that Leech reminds me of, it’s the brilliant Peter Fehervari, so I thought I’d add a few more thoughts about that comparison.

Continue reading →

The Immortality Thief – Taran Hunt

A sinister, thousand year-old abandoned spaceship hides a world-shaking secret in Taran Hunt’s action-packed adventure novel The Immortality Thief. Forced into joining a mission he doesn’t want to take part in, small-time thief Sean Wren finds himself part of a rag-tag team of ‘volunteers’ forced to retrieve a mysterious prize from the aforementioned ancient spaceship before it’s destroyed in an imminent supernova. With few useful skills under the circumstances other than a knack for languages, Sean is instantly out of his depth but determined to see the mission through and keep his promise to look out for his friend/fellow survivor Benny. When things quickly go wrong however, and the ship proves to be full of horrifying monsters, Sean finds himself caught between a half-starved Republic soldier and an unstoppable alien warrior, not able to trust either but forced to rely on them simply in order to survive.

Continue reading →

Leech – Hiron Ennes

Hiron Ennes’ Leech is eerily good, an unsettling tale of parasites, shared consciousness and collective history that’s quietly creepy and endlessly compelling. In a bleak, ravaged world, the Interprovincial Medical Institute has cornered the market in medical personnel…by possessing the body of every living doctor, sharing its gestalt awareness across countless physical forms. When one of its number dies in a remote snow-shrouded château, it simply sends another to take its place. When the replacement arrives however, it finds that its predecessor’s death was far from natural, with a horrifying parasite having taken root in that body. As a bitter winter closes in and the presence of its distant bodies fades, the château’s doctor is soon trapped inside with the fractious residents, few real resources, and an insidious, unseen but utterly deadly enemy.

Continue reading →

Planet Havoc – Tim Waggoner

The second Zombicide novel from Aconyte Books, Tim Waggoner’s Planet Havoc explores the science fiction setting of Zombicide: Invader, pitting two opposing groups of humans against an insidious, lethal alien menace in an action-packed tale of soldiers, mercenaries, monsters, artificial life and corporate greed. Recruited by the deeply dubious Leviathan Guild for a dangerous mission to a forbidden world, Luis Gonzalez and his team of mercenaries are intercepted by Coalition soldiers patrolling the off-limits system, both crews soon finding themselves stranded on the desolate PK-L10, or Penumbra. As each side waits for reinforcements they’re forced into a wary truce when the planet is revealed to be home to a ferocious breed of aliens known as Neo-Xenos, and the folly of ever venturing into this interdicted system is made abundantly clear.

Continue reading →

Mask of Silver – Rosemary Jones

Rosemary Jones’ first contribution to Aconyte Books’ range of Arkham Horror novels, Mask of Silver blends the Golden Age of cinema and sinister mysticism in a subtly creepy combination of Hollywood and cosmic horror. Costume designer Jeanie Lin and her film star sister Renee Love are part of a close-knit crew working with director Sydney Fitzmaurice on his popular, chilling ‘nightmare movies’. For their latest production they set up in Sydney’s home town of Arkham, ostensibly to keep costs down, but it’s not long before the filming is best by unexplained accidents and strange goings-on in and around the creepy Fitzmaurice family home. As the shoot progresses, Jeanie is increasingly haunted by nightmares and worried about the toll that making this film is having on her and her sister.

Continue reading →

Empire of Wild – Cherie Dimaline

Mixing family drama, social commentary and sinister folklore, Cherie Dimaline’s Empire of Wild is a strange and beautiful novel exploring life, love, grief and fear in a small Métis community in Canada. Nearly a year after her husband Victor walked out and never came back, Joan still refuses to give up hope, despite her heartache and the unsubtle exhortations of her family. The last thing she expects, however, is to stumble upon Victor in a group of traveling preachers, with a new identity – as the Reverend Eugene Wolff – and no apparent awareness of who she is. As she searches for a way of bringing him back to himself and back into her arms, she turns to folk tales and old lore to combat the darkness that has claimed her husband.

Continue reading →

Certain Dark Things – Silvia Moreno-Garcia

First published in 2016 before being re-released in 2021 by Jo Fletcher Books (in the UK – Tor Nightfire in the US), Silvia Moreno-Garcia’s vampire-noir novel Certain Dark Things confidently blends style with substance to deliver a darkly compelling tale of undead cartels, ancient alliances and unlikely friendship on the streets of Mexico City. Young, street-smart but a little naive, Domingo makes his living picking garbage and daydreaming about the vampires he reads about in the comics. When he crosses paths with Atl, the last remaining vampire of her family, he finds himself drawn to her, mesmerised by her mystery and beauty. Alone (apart from her dog, Cualli), afraid and hunted by both a rival clan and a gang of vampire-hating criminals, Atl is desperate to find a way out of the city, and begrudgingly accepts Domingo’s help, despite what she knows it will mean. As Domingo learns what vampires are really like – not necessarily how the comics portray them – so Atl gets a glimpse of the human way of life.

Continue reading →