Bizzaro fiction is something of a new experience for me. I’ve read small bits of it before, but it’s not a genre I consider myself well versed in so this is going to be a less neutral review that takes the experiences of an inexperienced reader into account. What I’m looking for in a good weird story is intelligence despite absurdness, a story I’m capable of understanding despite skewing the idea of reality and an emotional response with some aspect of the story.
Polluto # 2, dubbed “Apocalypses & Garden Furniture”, is a hefty collection of tales.
With her life no longer at the whims of the werecat alphas, Faythe Saunders, the first female enforcer, and if things work out the first female Alpha in North America, thinks she’ll be able to focus on helping her father face a political battle that started (last book) with his top enforcer and her lover being kicked out of the pack. Instead she finds herself escorting Manx, a female werecat Faythe rescued from a pack of strays who were using her as a breeder, to her own trial for killing her captors. Almost as soon as they step into the Free Area west of the Mississippi river they get caught up in an ambush, and a deep, dark plot that centers on Marc, Faythe’s exiled lover.
With long running series the threat is that readers and the author will become so attached to the characters that the book loses bite as both side don’t want to see harm done to or death of loved characters. But not only does Vincent skirt the edge between independent female lead and anti-baby, anti-family rebel, she holds true to the spirit of the series, which gives no guarantees that everyone will live. Prey is hard forged into a delicate place between gender roles and genres, without ever losing the balance that makes the characters and setting so interesting and compelling. Furthermore the book is nearly 400 pages long, but at the end it’s not going to be enough for readers, leaving off on another cliffhanger. This series far surpasses so many others in terms of each book presenting individual situations and mysteries, yet all the books being so tightly tied together that a marathon reading session would leave very little room to pause.
I can’t ever recall reading a series so tight, so interconnected, before. To top things off there’s definitely a thriller/edge-of-your-seat feel to every book, not to mention a delectable, cliff-hanger end to each volume.
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Red by Paul Kane
Skullvines, 2008
ISBN: 978-0-9799673-5-1
Available: New
Red is a fairly short, straightforward retelling of “Little Red Riding Hood” that breaks both the monster and the fairy tale form back down to their horrific beginnings. Kane’s monstrous wolf is a creature out of our nightmares, all appetite, both sexual and digestive. He’s a true shapeshifter, a “wolf in sheep’s clothing” who takes on the forms of people around him in order to get closer to his victims. Also true to the first fairy tales, this isn’t a light-hearted tale with magical creatures that is tied up in a nice happy bow. It’s a brutal tale of stalking and hunger. The only down side is that it doesn’t deviate from the traditional story much, making it a simplistic and quickly read tale. Recommended for private collections due to the sexual content and cost vs. length factors.
Contains: Violence, gore, sex
Prompted by this StoryTellers Unplugged article the issue of gender and genre is rearing its head again. There was a long, nice discussion of this on Brian Keene’s board, ut at other horror genre hang outs there doesn’t seem to be much discussion, just a routine dismissal.
Bev Vincent’s experiences are on one hand ridiculous, it seems that the editor in question was looking for reasons to dismiss his work, and since there is nothing to be won in a battle where the opposition is close minded and beligerant for the sake of simply opposing you, his solution to the problem was the only right one.
The idea that women can’t write horror, and that horror is a male genre, is ridiculous. Any time you reject someone from your target audience you fail. It’s not a writer’s job to say “This story is for men”. It’s the audience’s job to decide what they like and what they want to read.
This idea feeds directly into the depressing, sexist role of females in horror. Women, by and large, in horror are there to be token damsels in distress in order make the situation more serious. Or they are there to be raped and murdered. Occasionally they get to be villains, but when they are they’re just as flat and bland as male villains.
I think that the failure of horror to cater to a female audience has directly influenced the rise of urban fantasy, and led to that genre progressively leading down darker and darker paths. I think books like Rachel Vincent’s werecats series, Charlaine Harris’s Sookie Stackhouse and Harper Connelly books, and Ann Aguirre’s Blue Diablo prove that women love the dark stuff too, and could easily grow a love of horror.
Defining horror as male is also insulting to males. How many writers out there have been told to dumb down their work, or have been constricted with the idea that this, and ONLY this is horror? That Horror is only the plucky group of people slowly being picked off by the bad guy/monster.
When I started Rot it was with two things in mind. 1) How do I write a zombie story that isn’t just a plucky group os survivors trying to get to safety and being eaten one by one? and 2) How do I write a convincing male lead who is also openly emotionally? How do I do the male lead and zombies differently, but convincingly?
Because I don’t think that writing the same old tale fosters intelligence and creativity. Not in Horror, not in urban fantasy, and not in romance. There is a satisfaction in reading a tale with familiar elements, but there’s a danger in it too. It’s called complacency, and that in turn leads exactly to where we are, in a genre so static that even though the idea of only males being able to write it may be dismissed, but it’s not fought against. It’s not out right challenge.
So, my dear horror people, I invite you to buy a copy of Rot (when it goes on sale), which is the product primarily of two women. Think of it as my response to the challenge “Women can’t write horror”. I refuse to simply dismiss the idea, I prefer to prove it entirely wrong.
And if you think I’m alone, why not try out these other female horror/dark fiction writers.
Chelsea Quinn Yarbro
Nancy A. Collins
Kathe Koja
Lucy Snyder
Charlaine Harris
Polly Frost
Fran Friel
Cherie Priest
Jennifer Pelland
Shirley Jackson
Mary Shelley
Sarah Langan
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Paperback: 78-0-9550631-3-8
Paperback: 9780778326816, $7.99
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