Graphic Content: Die by Kieron Gillen and Stephanie Hans

 

I may be really dating myself here, but I remember the early 80’s Dungeons & Dragons cartoon where a fantasy-themed amusement park ride takes a group of teenagers to a magical realm where they become the rangers, barbarians, and wizards many kids became on paper. Kieron Gillen has expanded this idea by getting back with these kids after they have escaped their fantasy world and become bitter, disillusioned adults. This premise, the main pillar of Gillen’s fantasy epic Die, sounds like a satirical look at role-playing games, but the subject matter is really not funny.

All teenagers Sol, Ash, and their friends wanted to do was play a role-playing game, one Sol described as a one-of-a-kind experience. That experience forcibly pulled them into the fantasy world of Die, one they barely escaped. Sol never made it out and the rest have meandered through their lives for almost 30 years until they are drawn back in, and these now adult games must come to terms to what they did to the world of Die and the consequences of the roles they played.

Writer Keiron Gillen could have phoned this story in. He could have just created the standard ranger, barbarian, thief, etc., added a few dragons here and there for familiarity, and finished with a few fantasy touches that were different enough to avoid being sued, but he creates a fantasy world that borrows from different kinds of fantastic fiction tropes yet maintains its unique feel. This is in large part due to Stephanie Hans’s artwork, a gorgeously painted world that draws the eye while also allowing for the more subtle details like the expressions of these erstwhile adventurers who are once again trying to get home. Even the classes that exist are different from anything most people find in the typical tabletop RPG, from the Godbinder who calls in favors from deities, to the Grief Knight, whose sadness powers his attacks. Die is a great book for fans of D&D and dark fantasy, and it’s also for people who aren’t too old to remember what being a hero is like.

New Arrival: Everything the Darkness Eats by Eric LaRocca

 

Eric LaRocca is an author that diehard horror fans have recently discovered. He has written such unnerving works as Things Have Gotten Worse Since We Last Spoke and You’ve Lost a Lot of Blood. LaRocca has recently spread his light-absorbing wings, creating his first novel length work called Everything the Darkness Eats, a work that threatens to put all of us under its oppressive shadow.

That shadow rises from the depths of Henley’s Edge, a small Connecticut town, with anger and bigotry boiling beneath its veneer of Americana. This is where eccentric older gentleman Heart Crowley drives around in his Rolls Royce looking for victims to help with his occult rituals. Another local from Henley’s Edge is Ghost, a young man reeling from personal loss and a little spirit that feeds off his misery. The two men meet just as police officer Malik tries to solve the town’s rash of disappearances and Crowley’s dark deeds start to come to fruition. Malik might be in over his head because what Crowley has in his basement could destroy Henley’s Edge and the universe that exists beyond it.

Those who’ve seen John Carpenter’s In the Mouth of Madness might find a lot of things similar in Henley’s Edge, particularly the cosmic horror brewing underneath. Ghost and Heart are delightfully and expectedly weird, but the real terrors come with officer Malik and his husband bearing the brunt of the town’s simmering prejudice, first as scare tactics and then slowly but surely upping the brutality, culminating in an assault that will leave readers gasping. LaRocca’s story is a blend of otherworldly horrors and all-too-familiar ones, particularly if one watches current events. Overall, this story feels like a collaboration between Stephen King and Clive Barker if they were 30 years younger, but it still has all the bloody flourishes that marks it as straight from the brain of Eric LaRocca.

Graphic Content: Tales from Harrow County Library Edition

 Harrow County is one of my favorite horror graphic novels. When I reviewed it years ago, I was enraptured with its setting n the Appalachian hills of yesteryear, its worldbuilding where it introduces a whole secret world of haints and magic, and its coming-of-age tale of young Emmy accepting her role within both worlds. Emmy’s story felt like it was completed, and I felt very satisfied by the ending. However, I would turn down the opportunity to revisit Harrow County and Cullen Bunn’s Tales from Harrow County Library Edition for the most part, didn’t disappoint.

It’s been ten years since Emmy left Harrow County and now it has a new protector, Emmy’s best friend Bernice. There’s more to fear in Harrow County besides the supernatural as World War II is calling many young men away from Harrow County never to return. Except a strange song has called all the dead back and Bernice must find a way to stop that song before other, angrier things are summoned. The real world is affecting Bernice’s home, but it’s still in the firm grip of the supernatural.

Writer Cullen Bunn’s and Tyler Cook’s stories as well as Naomi Franquiz’s and Emily Schnall’s illustrations all work together to make this book feel like Harrow County while trying to break new ground. The book spends a lot of time establishing that Bernice is different; she’s an adult, in a surprisingly progressive relationship with the town nurse, and seemingly confident in her abilities. Bunn could simply rehash a few monster-of-the-week style storylines to scratch fan’s nostalgia itches, but he also widens Bernice’s world by introducing more strange residents of Harrow County that aren’t haints. There are elements that still feel like the same old ground readers know intimately, but Vol. 1 does a solid job of introducing this new Harrow County with Bernice at its center.

Have You Read This?: A House with Good Bones by T. Kingfisher

 

Family can be a source of comfort, but family can also be a source of anxiety, even trauma. When those who are supposed to protect us do the complete opposite, it can be uniquely terrifying. Jack Torrance running through the halls of the Overlook with a mallet is scary, but it’s particularly terrifying to Danny Torrance (and the readers when they are seeing Jack through his son’s eyes). The betrayal of grandparents might not have the sting of a parent emotionally harming a child, but those wounds can still run deep, especially when it forces someone to confront that grandparent’s influence on them.  T. Kingfisher’s A House with Good Bones features a less-than-kind grandmother who has already sowed the seeds of trauma within the minds of her family. 

Sam Montgomery heads to North Carolina to spend some time with her mother in the family home, the one inherited from Gran Mae. Sam loves dearly, but she notices that something is off with her. The changes range from her nervous energy and weight loss to the more obvious redecorating of the house in a style more similar to Gran Mae’s. Gran Mae was a spiteful and controlling old woman whose influence has somehow lasted even after her death. Sam tries to figure out what is happening to her mother and hopefully save her.

Kingfisher seems to excel in creating narrators who are human as well as humorous. Sam has a wry sense of humor that she manages to maintain even as she catalogs all the strangeness around her. There’re a few spooky phenomena in this book, but the unease comes more from Mom’s odd behavior. The terror doesn’t really kick in until late in the book where the supernatural elements decide to stop hiding. It’s a tonal shift, but readers will be rewarded with an off-the-wall yet heartfelt ending, if they stick with the book. The book being a novella, and the likability of Sam, makes finishing this book as easy as a trip through a not-haunted garden.