honigfrosch: Close-up of two men making suspicious "WTF?" faces (nope.)
[personal profile] honigfrosch
(cross-posted from my journal in full)

In my previous review I mentioned that I read three horror books this year that dealt with occult music, and that they all disappointed me. This novella was number three. Not only was it not that good, it downright pissed me off.

What the backcover blurb says )

I was willing to be totally sold on this. Instead I got a misogynist, repetitive mess full of clichéd writing.

Warning: I am going to spoil the shit out of this book that you will not want to read after I'm done. My deepest insincere apologies. By the way, some of the quotes are totally Not Safe For Work. And there is mention of sexual assault.

1,278 words of relatively unstructured vitriol )
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[personal profile] hexmix
The ShortBox Comics Fair runs every October and features dozens of original comics from different artists/authors. There's a still a few days left in the fair, so I wanted to rec (and review) my favorites that I've read this year. There are far more featured comics, however, much much more than I was able to afford/get to, so do take a look if it piques your interest!

For additional preview images, you can click on the title of each comic which will take you directly to the ShortBox page, where you can find a few pages from each comic.



Title: Impasto
Author: SJ Miller
Genre: horror
Content Warnings: (from the ShortBox website) Contains violence, cannibalism and other potentially disturbing imagery. Reader discretion advised.

Edgar hasn't been working as Lord Sharpe's valet for very long, and while the Lord himself seems kind enough, his walls are hung with strange and gruesome paintings that fill most visitors with unease. This on its own might be easy enough to ignore, were it not for an unsettling experience with one particular painting, which leads to equally unsettling changes to Edgar's body. In order to stop what is happening to him, Edgar must appease the paintings, though their appetites seem to be growing ever more voracious.

review/rec behind the cut )



Title: Home by the Rotting Sea
Author: Otava Heikkilä
Genre: fantasy
Content Warnings: (from the ShortBox website) violence, sexual themes and imagery, miscarriage, SA

After a transgression by their King, Ilta and Laulu are taken from his harem and offered up as tribute to the Väki, a race of giants that the human women initially find both mysterious and fearsome. Life with a fickle and uncaring king has led them to expect little else from the Väki, however the longer the women remain among them, and the more they learn and are allowed to heal, the more this impression changes.

I really can't do this one justice with a summary. It's beautiful and heart-wrenching and hopeful, and I cannot recommend it enough.

review/rec behind the cut )



Title: Blade of the Fane
Author: Theo Stultz
Genre: fantasy
Content Warnings: n/a

Osric, the heir to a long line of mystics sworn to protect the realm from all manner of evil beasts, is the least suited to take over after his grandmother dies: he has no magic, nor the ability to see the evil he's been charged with fighting; he barely even believes in it. But the Queen has ordered that Osric oversee that year's Culling; rumors abound that a beast more evil than all others prowls the kingdom, and these rumors eerily echo his grandmother's final warning. Fortunately for Osric, the arrival of an old friend means he will not have to face the Culling alone.

review/rec behind the cut )
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[personal profile] luvbarryfefe






Title: Party Games (Fear Street Relaunch #2)

Author: R.L. Stine

Genre(s): Young Adult, Horror, Thriller

Content Warnings: Mentions of animal death (taxidermy)


There’s an adage that says: “You can’t go home again.” That’s certainly the case with this Relaunch (AKA reboot) of the original “Fear Street” series by R.L. Stine. Let me tell you, as a teenager, I devoured Stine books by the barrel full. (After I randomly picked up a copy of The Knife at a Scholastic book fair - I’m showing my age here, aren’t I? - I was hooked!) As an adult, I still collect copies of his 90’s novels.


R.L. Stine's books are special to me because they helped develop my imagination and discover the love of reading. When I was a lonely, misunderstood teenager they kept me company and gave me something to wile away the hours I wasn’t in school.


So, I almost feel bad - okay, I do feel bad - saying this book was not good, but I can’t lie. It wasn’t. While Stine’s books have never exactly been Shakespeare, they had an addictive quality to them that kept you wanting to turn the pages to find out how it was all going to end. The only reason I kept turning the pages of Party Games? I wanted it to end so I could be done with it. That’s a huge distinction.


What made this book so unlikeable?

A few spoilers under the cut )


As a loyal R.L. Stine fan, I have to advise you not to bother with this novel and instead seek out his original series of Fear Street books. Some of his best ones include The Overnight, The Knife, The Wrong Number, Haunted, The Stepsister, The First Evil (Fear Street Cheerleaders), and Fear Hall: The Beginning & Fear Hall: The Conclusion. Enjoy!

 
honigfrosch: a stark, stylized black and white photo of a man's face in semi profile (Default)
[personal profile] honigfrosch
(cross-posted from my journal in full)

Not to take the wind out of my own sails, but I am starting this review with the backcover blurb in part because I have already forgotten the characters' names. Besides, we all know blurbs are often marketing lies, but as a horror fan, I find this instance particularly annoying. If you call Leeds "a powerful new voice in horror" and marvel at "how thoroughly [the debut novel] thrums with life", my suspicion is that you are also afraid of brewing your tea too strongly. Somehow, this year I read three (three!) horror novels that dealt with occult music, and all of them were disappointments.

So here's the official synopsis, followed by my thoughts on this book. (Minor spoilers, but you'll probably thank me for dodging this bullet anyway.)

Read more... )
cornerofmadness: (books)
[personal profile] cornerofmadness
(I think today was my day. Here have two reviews at once)



Title You Have Gone Too Far
Author Carlene O'Connor
Genre - Mystery

The review )





Title Stitches
Author Junji Ito & Hirokatsu Kihara
Genre horror (illustrated short stories with bonus manga)

The blurb says it all. In this slender volume of nine 'stitches' (i.e. short stories) you have two power houses the horror manga great Junji Ito teaming up with author Hirokatsu Kihara. These little stitches are treasure boxes of a short story, theoretically true, but definitely with an urban legend feel to them and each are lushy illustrated in Junji's typical style which has become iconic in horror. There is also a bonus manga by Junji at the end.

We have tumors with a face, little girls haunting libraries, frightening lights, dead neighbors, unphotographable beauties, puppets with phantom puppeteers (which is the one that got me as puppets freak me out) haunt kimonos, barefoot girls in the snow and disembodied lips (which was the only one I didn't care for) and then Junji's bathhouse bonus manga.

I very much enjoyed this. I was a little torn about the hard cover though it wasn't much more than most manga volumes these days because of it (but is much less pages).
honigfrosch: a stark, stylized black and white photo of a man's face in semi profile (Default)
[personal profile] honigfrosch
(cross-posted from my journal in full)

Here I am, fighting a cold on a Sunday, trying to review a book that haunted me for decades. I'm not sure I can do it justice, but at the least you should come away with an understanding of why this early nineties horror novel infected the minds of so many readers, and how it got its claws into mine. It's probably more of an exorcism than a review.

Part One: Context. )
~*~
Part Two: The Plot. )
~*~
Strengths, Weaknesses, Themes, and a Conclusion. )
silversea: Blonde girl laying (Default)
[personal profile] silversea
October 2024, Booknook, Review-a-Thon


Title: The Butcher of the Forest
Author: Premee Mohamed
Genre: Fantasy

A spooky novella featuring a middle-aged woman, Veris Thorn, who was the only one to come in and out the north forest, a strange wild forest with its own rules. When the conquering lord of the lands loses his children to the forest, he forces Veris to go in the forest and save his children. If she fails, her village would be killed.

Review: The novella is gorgeously written, with a great spooky atmosphere from the very beginning to the ending. The stakes are high, with Veris responsible for the tyrant's two children and her family and village's survival, and the pacing never forgets that. I often have issues with novellas' writing, usually the story is just too short or too long for the format's length, but I found this to be just right. Relying on many well known tropes such as a forbidden magical forest, a ruthless and brutal tyrant ruler, the trickery and cruelty of fae creatures, Mohamed cuts down on unnecessary exposition.

Veris is a fairly well written and likeable protagonist. She's brave, clever, and resourceful enough to survive the north forest, cynical and world-wearied by her age and life experience, but still kind. She is no fool, and she isn't emboldened by her previous experience. Her mysterious past gradually unravels throughout the story, as the forest demands more and more from her.

The two children has less screentime, but despite the limitations, I still liked their characters just fine. Alone in a foreign land with a cruel man as their father, they have no one but each other to rely on. Their protective sibling relationship was nice.

Spoilers )

I would not describe this as full on horror, but it has just enough of a creepy atmosphere to keep you on your toes the whole time. The forest, with their strange creatures and their unknown laws, is unnerving enough. Though the creatures are never explicitly named as fae, this is what I'd expect from a fae horror story.

I enjoyed this novella, and would recommend to anyone looking for a spooky but not too frightening read, perfect for getting in the Halloween mood!
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[personal profile] ysabetwordsmith
Recipes from the World of H. P. Lovecraft: Inspired by Cosmic Horror
Hardcover – July 25, 2023
by Olivia Luna Eldritch


This cookbook draws inspiration from H.P. Lovecraft and the Cthulhu Mythos. In addition to photographs of delicious food, it also features a lot of eldritch horror illustrations, some black-and-white, some full color. There's also a good deal of information about Lovecraft, his writing, his eating and hosting preferences. So there's an interesting mix of actually eldritch-themed recipes and others that are inspired by things he liked or his home territory. The chapters are Breaking Fast, Lighter Bites, Strange Feastings, Toothsome Sweets, Potions & Concoctions.
Read more... )

spacedogfromspace: a close up of a Sims 4 cat's face. It's a calico with giant green eyes that point different directions (spleens)
[personal profile] spacedogfromspace

The cover of the book, 'The Hollow Places.'

The Hollow Places by T Kingfisher

Synopsis

After her divorce, Kara moves into her uncle's museum. It's a roof over her head, and helping her uncle with the museum's day to day operations and cataloguing the collection occupies her mind. One day, a portal to another world opens in one of the walls of the museum. Upon exploring it, Kara and her friend Simon discover that this other world is a hub to countless portals to alternate worlds. The prospect of other worlds is exciting... until they get lost, and all they want to do is return home and never come to this place again.


Content Warnings: Mild Gore


Plot Summary - Spoilers!

Kara is recently divorced, without a job, and can no longer afford to keep her home. She doesn't want to move in with her mother again, but she doesn't know where else to go. Luckily, her Uncle Earl calls her up, and aware of her situation, invites her to come stay with him at the Museum.

Uncle Earl has always been the proprietor of the Glory to God Museum of Natural Wonder, Curiosities, and Taxidermy, also known as just the Wonder Museum. It's a shopfront collection of taxidermy and various other artifacts, some real, and some entertaining hoaxes. Kara has fond memories of the place from her childhood, and is grateful to her Uncle Earl for offering her a place to stay, so she decides to take him up on his offer to move into the spare room of the Museum. She works for her keep, helping run the Museum and cataloguing the Museum's collection. This keeps her busy and distracted from her divorce for over a year, and everything is normal.

One day, the Museum receives a package from Uncle Earl's friend, Woody Morwood. This isn't uncommon, as most of the things in the Museum are donated to them, and Woody has sent them things before. They open the package and discover a strange carving. On one side, the carving is an otter, but the other side depicts a human corpse. Kara thinks it's odd, but no more odd that anything else in the Museum. She catalogues it and places it on the wall upstairs beside the river otter taxidermy.

Uncle Earl has been having trouble with his knees since before Kara moved into the Museum, and eventually he has to get knee surgery. He will have to stay with Kara's mother while he is recovering, so Kara will be in charge of the Museum while he is away.

Kara is working in the Museum when she finds a hole knocked into the wall upstairs where the corpse-otter carving was. She assumes that a customer put a hole in the wall and didn't own up to it, and laments to Simon— the barista from the coffee shop next door —about it. Simon turns out to be pretty handy, and offers to help patch the drywall. The two go to examine the hole to see what kind of materials they will need, and discover that there is a space behind the wall. There's a hallway behind the wall, but it stretches further than the length of the building in both directions. They realize that the hole in the wall is some sort of portal. Exploring this hallway beyond the portal, they find a very old corpse, and a door that is bolted shut with numerous rusted deadbolts.

They briefly consider calling the police about the corpse they found, but decide that explaining the portal and impossible hallway would lead to too much trouble. They decide to leave the police out of it for the moment and open the door. When they go through, they find themselves in some kind of bunker. When they go up out of the bunker, they are in a strange foggy bank on the edge of a river. There are hundreds of little islands covered in willow trees. Each island has its own bunker, presumably portals to other worlds.

They decide to explore, and make sure to pay attention to their surroundings so they can find their way back to their bunker. They come across a school bus with the name of a county that does not exist in their world. They decide to rest in the bus, but the seats start writhing as if there are children trapped in the seats themselves. Terrified, Kara and Simon run away, trying to get back to their bunker. But they quickly realize that their surroundings are different— it's as if the willows had moved. It's getting late, and they are now lost.

They search for their bunker, feeling strange presences, not from the willows, but the empty spaces between them. They feel unsettled, and don't want to be out after dark, so they shelter in another bunker for the night. They find some evidence of other travellers from other worlds. Some sort of military squad had apparently been exploring the strange world, as told by one of the men in his left-behind journal. The journal entries mention that They caught and changed each one of his troupe one by one, killing them in horrible ways.

On their way out of the bunker they see a strange man rowing a boat through the river. At first they want to call out to him, but they have a bad feeling about him, and decide to hide in the bunker until he passes. They explore another bunker, partially flooded, and are surprised to find a person living inside, sitting in the water. He introduces himself as Martin Sturdivant, and he tells them about how he knew someone who lasted two weeks in this world. He also explains that if they think too hard, They will hear them. And if They come for them, they'd better hope that They are hungry. Because if they aren't... well, the journal entries explain what happens when They aren't. Kara and Simon flee from the bunker when they realize that Martin Sturdivant doesn't have a body from the waist down, and is floating in his own entrails in the water.

Eventually, they find their way back to their own bunker and are home, having missed a couple of days, which sparks a lot of questions from the Museum's tourists, regulars of the coffee shop, and Kara's mom. Kara makes up an excuse that Simon had a medical emergency and she had to take him to the hospital, where she couldn't get cell signal, and this appeases everyone and stops the questions. Kara and Simon deadbolt the door shut and cover the hole in the wall, moving a cabinet in front of it. Kara has to find another place for the corpse-otter carving, and puts it in the display case with the albino raccoons for the moment.

The next day visitors to the Museum notify Kara that there is broken glass upstairs. Kara goes to investigate, and finds that the case with the albino raccoons is broken, and one of the raccoons is missing. She assumes that someone broke the case and stole the raccoon, and thinks nothing else of it.

Late one night, she hears a strange scratching sound at her bedroom door. Assuming it's a rat, she sends the Museum cat to deal with it. When she catches a glimpse of it, she realizes that it is much bigger than a rat, white, and not making a sound. She worries for the cat but he emerges with just a few minor scratches. The rat is nowhere in sight though. Kara goes back to bed, deciding to find the dead rat in the morning. In her search, she finds the taxidermy raccoon under a cabinet, with its stuffing all torn out. She digs around inside, assuming the rat climbed inside and died, but instead she finds the corpse-otter carving. She thinks this is strange, and puts the carving in the river otter case.

One night, she notices a strange silvery glow in the Museum. She sees the river otter taxidermy come to life. She realizes that the corpse-otter carving is causing all of this, and that it is trying to get back to the other world. Now, it is possessing the river otter, and is hunting her. Kara runs through the portal, the otter following her, and their showdown ends when she stumbles into Martin Sturdivant's bunker. The otter follows her in, and it gets too close to Martin Sturdivant, and is torn apart by him.

Kara returns home, and she and Simon drywall over the hole, closing the portal forever. They then call up Woody Morwood to demand answers and ask why he would send them such a thing. He explains that the artifact was creating portals all over the place, and he thought that if he sent it somewhere with no willows, it would be powerless. He said that he sent a note with the carving explaining the danger, but they must have missed it when they opened the package.

Uncle Earl returns to the Museum, and everything returns to normal. Kara and Simon are still traumatized by the events, and become close friends because of their shared experience.


Thoughts - Spoilers!

I did not like this book. To be fair, most of that is on me, because I chose to read a portal fantasy when I do not like portal fantasies. But genre aside, I found this book pretty lacking. It's atmospheric and creepy, and obviously inspired by Algernon Blackwood's 'The Willows,' which is really neat. But I feel like this isn't explored or executed very well. The characters kind of ruin it by constantly trying to puzzle out why or how any of the things are happening. And they don't ever really come up with answers, so there are just paragraphs of text where the characters are just speculating and theorizing. I feel like that should be the role of the reader, not the characters, and it takes away from the terror these characters are supposed to be feeling. Having to read through the characters coming up with theories is just kind of exhausting.

About half way through the book I started to get really annoyed with the characters, mostly Kara, because it is really obvious that what is causing the portal and all the strange occurrences with the taxidermy animals is the corpse-otter carving. It's so obvious that the carving is trying to get back to the world with the willows that it makes Kara seem infuriatingly stupid for taking so long to figure it out.

The characters are also just kind of flat. Kara is a sad divorced lady and Simon's whole character is being quirky and gay and having a magic eyeball, I guess. I just didn't care for any of them because neither of them have any real depth. Uncle Earl, who is barely in this book, has a more fleshed out character than the main protagonists.

A lot of things just stacked up to make this book annoy the crap out of me, which sucks. I was excited going into this book, but it was a pain to finish and I was excited to be done with it and not have to listen to Kara compare the willow world to Narnia anymore.

I didn't like this book, but if you like portal fantasy, it might be worth a try. It's like Narnia, if Narnia was creepy.

spacedogfromspace: a close up of a Sims 4 cat's face. It's a calico with giant green eyes that point different directions (spleens)
[personal profile] spacedogfromspace

The cover of the book, 'Dead Silence.'

Dead Silence by SA Barnes

Synopsis

Two months ago, Claire and her team stumbled upon the lost luxury spacecruiser Aurora, which had mysteriously vanished twenty years prior along with all souls on board. Now, she is in a medical facility with a fractured skull, being interviewed by two corporate investigators. The only problem is, she can't quite remember what happened in the time in between.

Something went horribly wrong on that spacecruiser, both twenty years ago and then again two months ago. Something caused the passengers to lose their minds and kill each other. Was it mass psychosis? An alien disease? A monster? Whatever it was, they had better find out soon, because the Aurora is on the move— and its destination is Earth.


Content Warnings: Suicide, Death, Mild Gore


Plot Summary - Spoilers!

Now
Claire is in a rehabilitation centre, suffering from a fractured skull, amnesia, and possibly a psychotic break. She keeps seeing dead people— but that's nothing new. She has always been able to see ghosts. But right now she is being accused of killing her entire team so she could acquire a larger share of their find.

Then
Two months earlier, Claire is on her last mission before being grounded. She works for a company called Verux, and is the team lead on a small ship that maintains the commweb beacons in the outer reaches of civilized space. They are nearing the end of their eight-month run, heading towards a rendezvous point where they can meet up with a larger ship and catch a ride back to Earth. Claire doesn't want to be grounded. Space is her home. There aren't many people around this far out in space. And the less people around, the less ghosts she has to see.

But they decide to detour when Lourdes discovers a distress signal. An old one, by the looks of it, since distress signals hadn't been broadcast on that particular channel in years. They puzzle over it, and theorize that it is just an echo, but they can't be sure. Despite the team— with the exception of Claire —being more than ready to go home, they decide to investigate. After all, they are kind of required to investigate distress beacons.

Just outside the reaches of the commweb, they discover the source of the beacon. It's the Aurora, the only luxury spacecruiser to ever have flown, which vanished on its maiden voyage twenty years ago. The team decides to claim the wreckage, which is extremely valuable both because of the expensive loot onboard and because of the ship's mysterious legacy. This find could make them all rich. They just need to board the Aurora and find something unique to the ship to bring back with them, to prove their find and their claim. It is decided that Claire and Voller will board the ship.

Now
The story Claire keeps telling the investigators, Max and Reed, is that some sort of presence onboard the Aurora drove everyone insane, and they all killed themselves. It's revealed to her by Max that the Aurora is on the move. Claire demands to know where it is headed, but they won't tell her unless she continues her story— and tells the truth this time. As far as she can remember, Claire has been telling them the truth— they just don't believe her.

While she is being interviewed, Claire keeps seeing the ghosts of her team, with the strange exception of one— Nysus. She wonders if it's possible that he is still alive on board the Aurora.

Then
Claire and Voller board the Aurora. Their goal is to find the ship's black box and something expensive and exclusive to the Aurora to serve as proof of their discovery, since they know the black box will quickly be confiscated. In the cargo bay, Claire sees the ghost of her mother, screaming at her.

Claire hadn't seen her mother since she was rescued from Ferris Outpost as a child, when her mother guided her through contacting the rescue ship. At that point, her mother had been dead for a week. Claire was the sole survivor of the disaster that had befallen Ferris Outpost.

While Claire and Voller are making their way up the levels of the massive spacecruiser, they come across strange scenes. Cabin doors are locked, with furniture built up in the halls to barricade the doors, as if someone wanted to keep the door from being opened from the inside. As they continue on, they end up in the Atrium, a enormous grand room. They reflect that it is weird that they have yet to discover any bodies. But when Voller finds a way to turn on the lights, prompting Claire to look up, she realizes why they haven't seen bodies— they're all floating adrift in the space above their heads.

It is quickly apparent to them that the passengers did not die natural deaths, or accidental deaths, like from a life support failure. Some have ropes around their necks, some have horrible wounds. Some have knives clutched in their hands.

Moving along, they find the captain and first officer near the bridge, both dead, obviously. It looks like the first officer shot himself. From investigating the bridge, they determine that the ship was shut down voluntarily.

Now
Reed interrupts her story, unable and unwilling to believe that the ship could have been shut down voluntarily. Max tells Claire to continue with her story.

Then
Claire and Voller return to their little maintenance ship— the LINA —and the team regroups to decide how to proceed. Nysus tells them about something called the Versailles Contingency, which was something of a conspiracy in the forums back when the ship launched, but might have some truth to it. It's a protocol that locks the bridge and certain personal quarters away from the rest of the ship, which could be run on entirely different systems. They decide that if the Versailles Contingency was real, that they can use it to bring the Aurora back. They plan to board the Aurora, lock themselves in the front of the ship using the Versailles Contingency, get the ship up and running again, and fly back into range of the commweb, where they will broadcast themselves to the public so Verux can't deny their find later, at least not without public backlash.

Claire, Kane, and Voller board the Aurora first and get to work. Claire is frustrated with Kane— the ship's medic and only person to know about her history —because he doesn't seem to want to let her do anything alone while aboard the Aurora. But the three get to work clearing the corpses out of the front of the ship in preparation for booting up the systems.

The LINA is parked in the Aurora's cargo bay and the rest of the crew— Nysus and Lourdes —join the others on the bridge. They discover that the navigation system is entirely fried, so they decide to use some of the LINA's systems to repair it. Once they do this, the LINA is rendered useless, and there is no going back.

Twenty years ago, there was a reality show being filmed aboard the Aurora. Nysus finds some video footage from un-aired episodes that shows what was happening when things got out of hand. But no matter how much they review and analyse the footage, they can't determine what caused everyone to suddenly go berserk. Claire decides that nobody is to be alone on the ship, ever. The buddy system is a must. She sends Kane, Voller, and Nysus to rest for six hours, while she and Lourdes take the first watch.

While sitting on the bridge, Claire keeps hearing doors opening and closing, and assumes that it is Kane, Voller, or Nysus returning to the bridge, but whenever she turns around, nobody is there. Lourdes doesn't hear any of the sounds. Eventually, Kane actually returns to the bridge, and scares the crap out of Claire. Claire and Lourdes retire to one of the rooms for their six hours of rest. While Claire is in the bathroom, Lourdes calls out to her, asking what it was Claire said, she couldn't hear her through the door. But Claire hadn't said anything, or at least she didn't think she had. Trying to ignore the anomaly, Claire and Lourdes go to sleep. When Claire wakes up, Lourdes is gone, and there is a strange sound from under the bed. When Claire looks under it, she sees one of the corpses they found under one of the beds earlier—one wearing a tight blindfold. She reaches out for Claire, causing her to fall off the bed in a start and hit her head. When Claire looks back under the bed, nothing is there.

Trying to shake it off, Claire goes back to the bridge, expecting Lourdes to be there, but she isn't. She is about to ask after Lourdes when Nysus summons her to look at something he found, and she is distracted by the readings that indicate the power to the noise dampers was spiking and redlining when there was no reason for them to be working so hard. Nysus also recovered a bit of the Captain's log, in which she reports that she saw her wife, who has never stepped foot on the Aurora. Then, they hear Lourdes scream, and can smell the scent of death.

Everyone runs out into the hall to find the door to one of the suites open— it's one of the ones they sealed off earlier because of a large amount of blood that would have begun to decompose the moment they turned the life support systems back on. The door had been locked, and Claire had the only key on her nightstand when she went to sleep. Lourdes is in the room, and she asks Claire why she would make her look at the grisly scene inside. She explains that Claire had been leading her around through the rooms and had beckoned her to enter this one. But Claire had gone straight from her room to the bridge after she woke up, and Lourdes was already gone.

Later, Claire talks to Kane and tells him he should remove her from command. Maybe she did lead Lourdes around, and didn't remember it. Maybe she was losing her mind. Kane confides in Claire that he saw his daughter earlier. He tries to explain to Claire that she isn't the only one seeing things, and that she shouldn't be removed from command because of it.

The group talks and they establish that many of them are seeing people who aren't really there, including the captain of the Aurora, as they discovered through her logs. But so far, Claire is the only one who is seeing dead people, everyone else is seeing people that are supposedly still alive. Voller has a very painful and persistant headache, and keeps complaining about continuous tapping sounds that nobody else can hear. They still haven't figured out what is causing the hallucinations, so they decide to search the rooms again, this time for clues.

Things start to change when Nysus starts to see his grandfather, who is dead. Claire sees Becca, the ghost of the little girl who beckoned Claire to break quarantine on Ferris Outpost. Kane starts talking to a hallucination of his daughter. While Kane and Claire are searching rooms together, struggling to tell hallucination from reality, they hear a scream from the bridge. It's Nysus. When they get to the bridge to see what is going on, they find Nysus and Lourdes trying to wrestle their plasma drill away from Voller. Voller is arguing that if they just let them in, they'll stop knocking. But they know that if they open the doors into the rest of the ship, they'll all die. So Claire joins the struggle, but gets hit hard in the head by the butt of the plasma drill, fracturing her skull. She can't do anything but watch as Voller shoots himself in the head with the drill.

Claire is in and out of consciousness. When she wakes up for a short while, she sees Lourdes. Two of Lourdes. One is standing over Claire, frowning at her, saying that she doesn't understand. The other Lourdes is stretched out next to Claire, eyes bandaged and face clawed apart. She is dead. The ghost of Lourdes starts to claw at her eyes, and Claire looks away. When she looks back, only the body of Lourdes remains.

Now
Claire explains to Reed and Max that this is the last thing she remembers. Now that she has explained her story in full, with as many details as she can remember, she demands to know the course heading of the Aurora. The Aurora is heading to Earth, and they are going to go and meet it before it gets there. They want to bring Claire as their expert guide, but she doesn't want to go back there. A recording is played for Claire of a distress call from the Aurora, and Claire recognizes the voice as Kane's. This convinces Claire to agree to go with them to the Aurora.

Claire hides the sedatives she has been taking so her head won't be clouded by them. She needs to be able to see everything and remember everything. Without them, she starts seeing ghosts everywhere.

When Max and Reed take Claire to their transport— the Ares —she is surprised to see military personnel on board with them. She expresses that whatever it is that's on the ship, they can't just shoot at it.

When they arrive at the Aurora, they can't establish contact. They form a boarding party, which includes Claire and Reed. Max stays on the Ares to supervise. Once again, as they are boarding the ship via cargo bay, Claire sees the ghost of her mother.

When they board the ship, the different teams split off, ignoring Claire as she tells them it's better to stick together. In the Atrium, Claire finds three bodies wrapped in sheets. She knows two of them are Lourdes and Voller. She pulls back the sheets on the other and discovers Nysus, who has a screwdriver driven into his ear.

While the military personnel are bagging up some bodies, Claire and Reed go searching for Kane. They squeeze into one of the rooms, and find Kane in it, with mattresses lining the floors and walls. He is alive, but has been alone for weeks, hallucinating. It takes him a while to realize that Claire is real and not a hallucination. Diaz, one of the military leaders, closes the door on Claire, Reed, and Kane, and seals it, locking the three in.

Claire gets into contact with Max, and he explains everything. He explains that before the Aurora disappeared and Verux acquired CitiFutura— the original owner of the Aurora —the two companies were in competition with one another. Verux developed a device to create vibrations that would cause headaches, paranoia, dread, and depression, perhaps some hallucinations, but rarely. They put the device on the Aurora to sabotage CitiFutura by making their first luxury cruise have poor reviews. But the vibrations turned out to be far more intense than intended after CitiFutura changed their specs, causing everyone on board to die. Nobody was supposed to find the Aurora and find out what happened.

Claire realizes that she and Reed are the cover story. Max is going to blow up the ship with them in it, claiming it was Claire's doing. Their death's— Reed's especially —are to make it convincing.

The three manage to escape the room, and Claire uses her acclimatization to hallucinations as a weapon against everyone else on the ship. She turns off the sound dampers, succumbing everyone to the full force of the device. This renders Kane into a zombie-like state, and Claire has to nudge him along with her. Reed starts seeing things, and gets super paranoid, eventually attacking Claire. She and Kane have to run away from Reed, back to the cargo bay.

Claire's plan is to find a EVA helmet for herself— she had to leave her helmet behind in the room — and a full suit for Kane so they can pose as Max's people to get back on the Ares. Claire finds a helmet for herself, but still needs to find a suit for Kane so they can escape. Claire leaves Kane in the LINA where he will be safer as she goes off in search of a suit.

Max appears in the cargo bay, and is surprised to see that Claire got out of the room she was locked in with Reed and Kane. They have a standoff. One of the team finds the device and disconnects it. They are taking the device so nobody will find it in the Aurora's wreck after it explodes.

Reed appears, unintentionally creating a distraction for Claire, who hooks herself to the Lina's safety tether. Claire shoots at the seal to the extendable airlock between the Ares and the Aurora, and the vacuum of space rips everything, including Max, out into space.

Claire waits for the pressure to equalize, but the airlock on the other side of the cargo bay is open, meaning a lot more air has to escape. The LINA isn't properly strapped down, so it starts to get dragged towards the open airlock. Eventually, she and the LINA are pulled out into space. She tries to pull herself along the tether towards the LINA, but her oxygen is running dangerously low and she can't. But then she feels the winch bringing her in.

Claire wakes up on the LINA with Kane looking after her. He has recovered a bit since the device was shut off, and he noticed Claire out on the tether and brought her back in. The Aurora is set to blow up, but the LINA doesn't have helm control because they took it apart to fix the Aurora. But they still have thrusters, and they manoeuvre the LINA to a position that keeps them from taking too much damage from the blast. After the Aurora blows up, they are essentially dead in the water, with no navigation or way to communicate... but the Aurora's emergency beacon is in the LINA. So they try to use it to hail rescue.

Epilogue
Two years later, Claire buys and refits her first ship for her new company. She asks Kane to join her, and he agrees.


Thoughts - Spoilers!

This was a fun sci-fi horror. It does a good job at being creepy, so it's a good introduction to the horror genre. I did find it was kind of lacking in actual scariness, but that is probably down to personal preference.

I think my biggest qualm with this book is that the Then-Now structure of the book is broken just over halfway through, where everything is suddenly solely told from the present, as Claire has no more story to tell and they have to take action based on her story. The shift is rather jarring, and even though we find out what happened to Kane and Nysus through clues later on, I wish we got to see the rest of Claire's story from her perspective, and learn why she left in the escape pod. I think the Then-Now structure is part of why I didn't feel like the book was particularly scary. The 'then' parts are quite creepy and delightfully atmospheric, but all the suspense and tension gets broken every time the book cuts back to the 'now,' and all of that build up has to start all over again.

I think that the cause of all the horror was kind of underwhelming when it's revealed to be a device planted just to sabotage a company by making it's customers complain. I don't know that an alien presence or some disease would have been more fulfilling, or even not having an answer at all, but I just found this explanation to be kind of boring. The mystery was super hyped up but in the end the answer was just underwhelming. All this supernatural stuff is actually just corporate greed? It just kind of seems like it's trying to add a twist for the sake of a twist. Max is supposed to be one of the good guys, and without any earlier indication turns out to be the moustache twirling villain. The story sets us up to think that the cause of the mass psychosis is some kind of presence, maybe an alien, and I honestly think the story should have run with those predictions.

I also found that there were some issue in the character writing. I especially noticed it in Lourdes, who was just super inconsistent. Before she goes to the Aurora, she is super adamant about how looting bodies would be really bad and totally unacceptable, but as soon as she is on the ship she seems to forget those strong feelings and goes to town playing dress up with a dead person's clothes. The characters are all just kind of flat and one note. Lourdes is naive and obnoxiously child-like, Voller is mean, Nysus is a nerd. As the love interest, Kane gets a bit more to him, but it's really just the detail that he's divorced and has a daughter. So when these characters die or are put in danger, I feel like there is no stakes because I wasn't given a reason to care about these people.

And finally... for all the explanation we get about the source of the hallucinations experience on the Aurora, why do we never get an explanation for Claire's penchant for seeing ghosts? Seeing people who aren't really there is Claire's entire backstory, and we can't get anything about that? It would be less of a big deal if there wasn't such a cut and dry explanation for the other hallucinations, but I just feel this was something that got missed.

It's not a terrible book, but I think there is some lost potential. Overall, the story is enjoyable, there's a creepy atmosphere, and a mystery to be solved.

I recommend this book to sci-fi lovers who want to start getting into the horror genre as well.

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