poisonenvy's reviews
844 reviews

Rated as an average of all stories

What better way to spend spooky month than by reading an anthology of spooky stories?  I read one story a night, just before bed (except actually Halloween night, when I intended to finish the collection and instead just fell right asleep). 

Not all of these stories were horror stories in the traditional sense of how we might think about them.  But they all brought something chilling to the table.

(Any misspellings that follow are because I can't read my own handwriting; my apologies)

Kushtuka by Mathilda Zeller 3.5*
This story was good and action-packed, but something about the ending just didn't quite work for me.

White Hills by Rebecca Roan Horse 5*
Roan Horse's prose is phenomenal, and in this story she utilizes it to very effectively create an absolutely chilling atmosphere throughout. Every word helped build the tension, right up until the ending. 

Navajos Don't Wear Elk Teeth by Conley Lyons 5*
Lyon's story is nearly anxiety inducing, and manages to very effectively personify colonization.

Wingless by Maracie R. Rendon 4*
Okay, so I apparently wrote this review when I had mistakenly read the title of this anthology as "Dark fantasy" rather than "Dark fiction" so it's pretty useless as a review, which is: "I do not recall anything especially fantastic in this story, but it's a very effective horror story regardless." 

Quantum by Nick Medina 3*
This story made me angry, and made me consider as well.  We don't have Blood Quantum in Canada (at least, not in the same way that they use it in the USA), and so it's not something I've put much thought into overall, but this story just made me mad (which I think was probably the author's intention.  I'm not mad because the story was bad, but because of the topic).

Hunger by Phoenix Boudreau 4.5*
This was more actiony than it was horror-y, but I really, really enjoyed it and I would absolutely read a series based on this short story of Boudreau ever chose to write one. 

Tick Talk by Cherie Dimaline 5*
I want to give this story a one-star review, I really do, but if we're rating stories on how badly they scared us, then this one gets a 5.  There are only two things on this world that I'd consider myself phobic of, and ticks are definitely one of them.

The Ones Who Killed us by Brandon Hobson 2.5*
I will admit that I could probably do a reread for this one, but I don't think I got it on my first read.  There also seemed to be a lot of unnecessary $100 words when a $10 word would've worked just as well and probably more effectively. 

Snakes are Born in the Dark by D.H. Trujillo 3*
Karmic justice can be sweet, but I"ll confess that I think the ending went over my head.

Before I Go by Norris Black 3.5*
It's only been a couple days since I read it, but I've already forgotten most of it.  I don't think this is the fault of the story though, and I enjoyed it. 

Behind Colin's Eyes by Shane Hawk 3.5*
I feel like I"m missing some essential lore to really understand this one, but it's effective at its goals regardless. 

Heart-Shaped Clock by Kelli Jo Ford 3.5*
This story did a really good job with the family horror. 

Scariest. Story. Ever. by Richard Van Camp 5*
It's hard to tell a moralizing story that is also good, one with a lot of building tension and one that hooks you.  It's a mark of a very good storyteller to be able to do it well.  So it's a good thing Van Camp is a very good storyteller.

Human Eaters by Royce K. Young Wolf 3*
Another morality tale, and a folk tale, and I found both of them very interesting, though it's one that I read a week and a half before I wrote a review for it and I had forgotten most of it and needed to do a very quick skim over it for my review.

The Longest Street in the World by Theodore C. Van Alst Jr 2.5*
This story took me a bit to get into, partly because it also uses the longest sentences in the world.  But it was kind of funny and kind of irreverent, and I mostly enjoyed it even if I did struggle a little with the prose.

Dead Owls by Mona Susan Power 3.5*
This story is both very sad and very sweet.  I enjoyed it.

The Prepper by Morgan Talty 4*
A story more tragic than it is scary, about mental illness.  It's definitely one of the more memorable stories in this collection. 

Uncle Robert Rides the Lightning by Kate Hart 2.5*
I don't know what, but something about this story just didn't work for me.

Sundays by David Heska Wenbli Weiden 3.5*
Trigger warning for the sexual assault of children.  A tough story to read, with a satisfying ending (and a very frustrating middle. Content wise, not writing-wise).

Eulogy for a Brother, Resurrected by Carson Faust 3*
Lol that last name for this story.  But okay.  This story gave me so many FMA vibes.  I enjoyed it, even if I don't think I understood the ending. 

Night Moves by Andrea L. Rogers 3*
I can't complain about a good werewolf tale, even if the story didn't feel especially memorable to me otherwise.

Capgras 3*
I did not write down the author's name for this one and that's a shame.  It was very well written, but it just wasn't my kind of story. 

The Scientist's Horror Story by Darcie Little Badger 4.5*
Not your traditional sort of scary story, but one that I found very effective.  The ending really gut-punched me. 

Collections by Amber Blaeser-Wardzalla 5*
I loved this a lot.  The rising tension and the atmosphere were both very well done, and that ending was excellent. 

Limbs by Waubgeshig Rice 3*
I think it was the pacing that didn't do it for me.  This story could have been a good deal longer, with more rising tension.  Every shift just felt very abrupt to me.  The metaphor was very clear, however.  

Two-Spirit people is a collection of essays from a variety of two-spirit indigenous scholars (mostly, not all of them are scholars, and in one case, not all of them are two-spirit/indigenous). This book examines indigenous sexuality and gender in a variety of different ways. 

This book was written and published in the late 90s, and so a lot of the concepts they're working on articulating, especially around gender, have become a little more mainstream.  Reading this collection, I have to wonder now how much of our understanding of non-binary gender identities are able to be articulated now, even in Caucasian communities, because of the work that two-spirit scholars put in.  

One of the essays written by a white woman made me go "Wow, this person has read way too much Castaneda books, and then she went on to mention the book by name which I guess proved my point, but other than that one all of these essays were very thoughtful and well put together.  

I especially enjoyed Sabine Lane's "Various Kinds of Two Spirit People: Gender Variance and Homosexuality in Native American Communities", "Traditional Influences on a Contemporary Gay-Identified Sisseton Dakota" by Michael Red Earth, and "I Ask You to Listen To Who I Am" by Doyle V. Robertson, but I found the entire collection well worth the read.

I think it's important to note, first and foremost, that Gregory Smithers is not Indigenous. He is forthright in the fact that he is, in fact, a white man from Australia. But in this book, he does centre Indigenous voices, having spoken with two-spirit people from nations all over North America, and claims that his whiteness may have been a boon in some regards: no one he spoke to assumed he had culture knowledge, and so they were careful to explain specific nuances that they may have taken for granted that he understood otherwise. I can't say for sure how accurate this assessment might be, but I'll roll with it until I have evidence to the contrary. 

This book begins with colonial and pre-colonial history, examining written colonial accounts of, to use an anachronist term, queer indigenous people and then taking those colonial accounts (which were beyond degrading) and attempting to filter them through indigenous cultural knowledge and beliefs. He discusses how quickly homophobia spread across North America in the 19th/20th centuries, and discusses too how Two-Sprited people have worked to reclaim this part of their culture and history. 

The Two-Spirit movement is a pan-tribal movement -- queer Indigenous folks have worked across nations to bring it to what it is -- but Smithers doesn't fall into the trap of thinking that means that it's a universal experience across nations. He makes sure to talk with people from a variety of different nations to gather their individual experiences as people, and also to discuss the specific terms used in their own languages and the traditions in their own nations. He speaks with a great deal of people, and had those conversations help shape the book he wrote. He speaks about queer and Two-Spirit indigenous leaders, and the people who helped bring the movement to where it is now, and how they have been working to decolonize their identities. 

Overall, this seems to be a very well-researched and thoughtful book. 

I listened to at least part of this book on audio, and the audiobook was very listenable.

I'll be blunt: I'm not a big fan when books lecture me. And that is what this book does? Not in the setting or the premise, I think those both really worked. But that every single conversation between adults in this book was a soapbox speech/exposition.  What twists there were really foreshadowed badly, and what foreshadowing there was was more like a forecast, though I will admit that the very end was satisfyingly unexpected. The action was confused and muddled and impossible to follow. In one or two scenes Harry seemed to have fusion problems, but this was literally never expanded on it confirmed.  

This book had something specific it really wanted to say, and unfortunately, the story itself suffered for it. 

I listened to about 2/3rds of the story on audiobook, and I will say that the story worked for me a little better in audio.  

I don't know if you've ever watched Pirates of the Caribbean, where the first three movies are really good and then the fourth movie is all about Jack Sparrow, who, as it turns out, works out really well as supporting cast but cannot carry a movie on his own? 

Same vibes. 

Well. 

That was lovely. 



I wish I could have taken my time with this novel; could have doled it out piece by piece to really savour it. 

But alas, I was on a deadline. I'll reread it someday though, and likely soon, and I'll read it at the pace I want. 

A Two-Spirit Journey by Ma-Nee Chacaby is an emotional retelling of a life of a Ojibwe-Cree Elder, who speaks to her many difficulties growing up and into her adulthood.  Throughout it she pulls herself out from addiction, and recounts both the abusive and familial relationships she has. 

What she speaks surprisingly little of, given the title of the book, is her journey through her two-spirited identity.  While her biography is sprinkled throughout with references, it is not a focus of the book; given the title of the biography, I thought it would feature more prominently.  

Despite that, however, this is a heartbreaking, but ultimately hopeful, biography of Ma-Nee, and very readable and engaging.  I listened to it largely through audio, and Marsha Knight did an extraordinarily good job of making this story listenable; her cadence and speech were beautiful and lulled me right in. 

The title Queer Indigenous Studies is not a misnomer. This book's main focus is about decolonizing academia, and trying to find new ways to study indinginity and queerness through a academic lens that isn't so steeped in colonial methodologies. It is made up by a number of essays that explore this topic, though the last third of the book is made up of critiques of queer, indigenous literature.  

It was a very good read, but highly academic -- not necessarily in the language, which is relatively accessible, but in terms of topic.  

Arthur Ponsonby's book, Falsehoods in Wartime, is a book that discusses British wartime propaganda and lies during World War II. It discusses specific falsehoods that were spread during the war, with some attempt to discern where they may have come from.  

There's very little analysis, if that was something you were looking for.  It is exactly what it is stated.  "This is something that was said during the war.  It is false.  These are the people who spread it. These are the people who did not refute it."  Pretty simple. Some common tactics of propaganda discussed explicitly. Decent if you're writing a paper about propaganda and need a citable source for common tactics.  

 

 Will Naomi Novik ever write something that I don't love? Probably not. I've not rated each individual story since I loved pretty much all of them. This is an absolutely solid anthology of short fiction from one of my top two favourite authors.

Araminta, or, The Wreck of the Amphidrake A lot of fun. I can read Naomi Novik's Regency AUs all day and never get bored. I loved this a lot; would absolutely read more with these characters.

After Hours This is the Scholomance short story, and man, what a great story. It takes place after the events of the Scholomance, so we can see how things are going after all of that, and it's everything I'd hoped it would be. Ngl, I totally teared up at one point.

Vici I didn't read that in this collection, just because I've very recently read this story in another collection. This is a short story set in the Temeraire universe, and tells the story of the first dragon to ever be "tamed". By Marc Anthony. It really is a great story and I loved it a lot.

Buried Deep This retells the Greek Myth of Ariadne and the Minotaur, and it is also very, very excellent. Look, this is going to be a lot of my reviews, okay? Partly because I didn't review them each after reading them so they're not fresh, but also because they were.

Spinning Silver How the novel Spinning Silver might have been. This is a fun little AU of her own novel, told in like, 50 pages.

Commonplaces A short little Sherlock Holmes fic that was a lot of fun.

Seven I loved this. A story about what to sacrifice for your art, and what art is worth without life.

Blessings lmao, this was pretty silly. What if a baby is given just too many blessings from her fairy godparents? Very cute.

Lord Dunsany's Teapot Yet another story that kind of made me tear up a little. Wow. What a story.

Seven Years from Home Not going to lie, this one lost me a bit and it was a struggle to get through to the end.

Dragons & Decorum I read this story in Golden Age and Other Stories, but it's been a while and I have just recently finally read Pride and Prejudice for the first time and so I decided to read it again. Let me tell you, with the P&P under my belt, this was so much more enjoyable than the first time around. Elizabeth Bennett gets a dragon during the Napoleonic Wars, so what happens when she catches the eye of Mr. Darcy?

Castle Coeurlieu Another fun one that I enjoyed. Much tension. A great ending.

The Long Way Round This is the short story that introduces us all to Naomi Novik's upcoming series, Folly, and boy let me tell you I'm so freaking excited.