Review by Booklist Review
This anthology focuses on the figure of "the Other" in horror fiction, particularly by engaging with horror and its relationship with the various systems of oppression that deem people "other" in the first place. Some stories deal with haunting histories of racism, such as Tananarive Due's 1970s-set "Incident at Bear Creek Lodge," where a young Black boy visits his retired actress grandmother's remote and sinister cabin, or S. A. Cosby's "What Blood Hath Wrought," where a group of people at a roadside diner have an encounter with a man possessed by a massacre's legacy. There are also stories about characters confronting the boundaries and limitations set for them by society such as Hailey Piper's "The Turning," in which a mysterious plague transforms teenage girls in horrifying yet exhilarating ways, or M. E. Bronstein's "The Voice of Nightingales," where a young linguist is captivated by the work of a group of lesbian poets whose only record is the elaborate form of notation created to censor their work. There is a wide array of types and genres of horror on offer in this collection, which should more than satisfy any reader interested in exploring the fear of otherness, in life or in fiction.
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Stoker Award--winning editors Liaguno and Mason cleverly subvert the common horror trope of the monstrous other in this powerful anthology that spotlights 24 writers with marginalized identities. In these stories, LGBTQ and BIPOC people take center stage in both terror and terrorized roles. Jennifer McMahon's "Idiot Girls" pits older immigrants against teen lesbians in a supernatural whodunit. "Night Shopper" by Michael H. Hanson offers a satisfying revenge fantasy as vampires and ghouls protect a trans woman as one of their own, while generational revenge against a bloodline of enslavers takes center stage in S.A. Cosby's thrilling "What Blood Hath Wrought." Denise Dumars twines the rise of anti-Asian racism during Covid-19 with medical body horror in "Scrape." Gabino Iglesias's "There's Always Something in the Woods" puts a Latinx twist on a classic creature story. With impactful writing and authentically embodied characters, this anthology succeeds by lifting up a diverse and skilled group of authors and letting them dive deeply into the horror that sits next door to their own lived experiences. The result is unmissable for horror fans of all backgrounds. Agent: Alec Shane, Writers House. (July)
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Review by Kirkus Book Review
Horror writers representing varied cultures, genders, and sexual orientations contribute stories cataloging anxieties of, and toward, "the other"--whatever that "other" may be. The subtitle, An Inclusive Anthology, hammers home what Bram Stoker Award winners Liaguno and Mason have assembled: a trailblazing anthology in which LGBTQ+ characters and people of color are both feared and preyed upon in jolting, haunting, sometimes funny, and/or graphically violent tales. Dramatizing fears, anxieties, and phobias held by and against those perceived as socially marginal can be a delicate, even dicey process. But the stories here are mostly tough-minded and emphatic in such provocative variations on this theme as Jennifer McMahon's tautly woven, wickedly ingenious "Idiot Girls," about teen lesbian lovers whose secret trysts pit them against the immigrant groundskeeper of their apartment complex--and put them in the path of a serial killer. Then there's "Night Shopper," Michael H. Hanson's revenge fantasy in which a Muslim trans woman with a penchant for Wittgenstein's aphorisms finds unlikely salvation from hate crime in the shut-ins to whom she delivers groceries. Similar if subtler gratifications are available in Usman T. Malik's "Mud Flappers," which reaches further afield to an island off the Karachi coast whose residents have sustained an effective--and grisly--way of resisting would-be exploiters. A different, if no less bizarre, act of retribution is submitted for our approval by the crime writer S.A. Cosby in "What Blood Hath Wrought," in which a Black history professor calls upon otherworldly powers to seek out from among a motley collection of Pancake Shack diners the homicidal descendant of a sadistic slaveholder. The terrorism of anti-Asian racism aroused by Covid-19 swells into more widespread and profoundly transfiguring scientific phenomena in Denise Dumars' "Scrape," while in Hailey Piper's "The Turning," adolescent girls are swept up by a plague that transforms them into prehistoric mammals, thus creating newer, scarier forms of "the other" that frighten the grown-ups--and resist any efforts to change back to whatever they were before. One could go on and on citing stories by such writers as, Alma Katsu, Gabino Iglesias, Nathan Carson, and others. The face of horror fiction continues to be enhanced, both in representation and in relevance. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
