Month: August 2023

Nautical Gothic

What could be more frightening than the crumbling spires of an ancient castle or the echoing halls of a cursed family’s ancestral home? How about the alien landscape of the open sea! With its unknowable depths and mercurial moods, the ocean is rife with mystery and danger. And out in the middle of the ocean, one can experience an isolation far more profound than even the most remote cliffside abbey. In many ways, the ocean is the perfect Gothic landscape. On any given voyage, a sailor might have to battle against the weather and natural environment, against monsters, against the restless dead, against the depravity and superstitious nature of his fellow man, or even against the phantasms of his own mind. Here are just a few examples of Gothic works that take place, in whole or in part, at sea:

Oil painting showing one ship being tossed about on rough waves while beside it is the faint, ghostly image of another, larger ship
Painting of the Flying Dutchman by Charles Temple Dix

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Review of The Sleepless—A Debut Sci-Fi Thriller

The Sleepless coverWhat would you do if you had twenty-four waking hours per day? As tempting as that prospect sounds, journalist Jamie Vega learns that these extra hours aren’t necessarily all they’re cracked up to be in Victor Manibo’s debut, The Sleepless, a sci-fi thriller which came out last year. Continue reading Review of The Sleepless—A Debut Sci-Fi Thriller

Humorous Ghost Stories

Not every ghost story has to be terrifying! Indeed, horror and humor are surprisingly similar modes of writing—both depend on eliciting certain emotional reactions from the reader through carefully timed revelations and unexpected juxtapositions. Horror can all too easily give way into unintentional humor, as any connoisseur of schlocky B-movies can tell you. But that blurred line can also be courted intentionally. All throughout the Golden Age of the ghost story—from the mid-nineteenth century through the early twentieth—writers poked fun at the popular genre with silly and satirical takes on the ghost story. Here are just a few of my favorite examples of spectral tales more likely to make you split your sides with laughter than scream in fright:

Photo of a sheet ghost holding a yellow smiley face balloon in front of an elaborate clock-face window
Photo by Tandem X Visuals on Unsplash

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Review of A House with Good Bones—Bugs, Blooms, and Boogeymen

A House with Good Bones coverOld houses always have buried secrets. An archeological entomologist is perhaps extra qualified to dig those up—and she’ll need to if she wants to get to the bottom of her mom’s strange behavior in A House with Good Bones, a delightful Southern Gothic by T. Kingfisher which came out back in March. In a fun coincidence, the audiobook for this one is narrated by Mary Robinette Kowal, author of the book I reviewed last week, The Spare Man. Continue reading Review of A House with Good Bones—Bugs, Blooms, and Boogeymen