Reading through Charlee Jacob’s fiction, it is easy to identify the varieties of horror that she found most fertile. For one, she showed a particular fascination with relationships between predators and prey: strong characters, often men, brutalising women and children in a process that warps and damages both victim and perpetrator. Jacob’s stories incorporate this…
REVIEW: I Read Good Neighbors So You Don’t Have To
Good Neighbors dissects one summer when the residents of Maple Street implode, hunting down a potentially fabricated boogeyman. All against the backdrop of an unbearable heatwave, the appearance of a massive sinkhole, and the recovery of a body. The story pits the Wildes—a down-and-out family from Brooklyn who are new to Maple Street and don’t…
Remembering Charlee Jacob: Season of the Witch
Season of the Witch was nearly the last Charlee Jacob novel to be published (only one more, Containment, was to follow), yet it was the first that she wrote. She penned it in the ’80s, after which it remained a “trunk novel” until 2016. Jacob evidently revised the manuscript to some extent prior to its…
REVIEW: Forget Russia Is Frustratingly Forgettable
I volunteered to review Forget Russia by L. Bordetsky-Williams because I saw the word “Russia” in the title and thought, “Oh, this is relevant to my interests.” The summary was also promising: an American girl with Russian roots exploring her heritage and identity is something I can generally get behind, as a Russian Jewish immigrant….
Fugitive Telemetry lets Murderbot Crack the Case: Spoiler-free Review
Fugitive Telemetry, the sixth Murderbot book in the bestselling science fiction series by Martha Wells, has the beats I love from locked room murder mysteries and procedural crime dramas, and it has the voice and themes I love from the Murderbot series. It’s just as engaging and affirming as the rest of the series has…
REVIEW: Legendborn Reimagines the Roots of King Arthur’s Return
Revisiting Arthurian lore, Tracy Deonn introduces a young hero who will turn what the longstanding Order believes about the Roundtable’s descendants upside down in Legendborn.
Remembering Charlee Jacob: The Myth of Falling
Published in 2014 by Sinister Grin Press, The Myth of Falling is both Charlee Jacob’s final collection of short stories and the single most personal work in her bibliography. In most of her collections, save for Up, Out of Cities that Blow Hot and Cold with its brief introductions for each story, Jacob allowed her…
Vampires on the Margins: Forbidden Desires
One reason for the enduring appeal of the vampire as a concept is its erotic element, and this is something that manifests in both heterosexual and homosexual terms. From the lesbian vampire exploitation films of the seventies to the queer undead of Anne Rice’s bestsellers, modern audiences have come to expect vampires to exist outside…
REVIEW: Under the Cape Isn’t Insightful About Romance or Relationships
Under the Cape: An Anthology of Superhero Romance delves into that ubiquitous part of every superhero story—love and romance. With stories across the spectrum of romantic relationships, the book shares the sweet and steamy side of what brings two people together—and what can tear them apart when one or more participants have superpowers and secret…
The Twisted Ones: T. Kingfisher, Arthur Machen, and Weird Perspectives
Melissa (Mouse to her friends) is tasked with clearing out the North Carolina cottage that once belonged to her grandmother, a woman known for her cruelty to all those around her – including her husband Cotgrave, Mouse’s “step-grandfather”. Once Mouse temporarily moves into the woodland cottage, her main companions are her dog Bongo and her…
Remembering Charlee Jacob: Still
Still, published in 2007, is perhaps Charlee Jacob’s most accessible novel. This is not to say that it is more conventional than her other books: the dreamlike surrealism, loose narrative structure and graphic portrayals of depravity that characterise much of her oeuvre are all present and correct. Rather, Still is comparatively accessible because of its…
Vampires on the Margins: Women’s Perspectives
Modern vampire fiction has been shaped in large part by female authors: Anne Rice, Charlaine Harris, Nancy Collins, Laurell K. Hamilton, Stephenie Meyer and others each played a part in establishing vampire literature as the thriving commercial genre that it is today. In terms of both authorship and readership, it is safe to say that…