Idyllic Turner Falls, Oregon, a town centered around a biotech company, one that attracts the best and brightest, is the perfect setting for one of the best supernatural thrillers you will encounter this year. In a high school classroom, a young man snaps, violently attacking and killing the teacher with his bare hands. Unfortunately this is not an isolated incident as a group of outcast teens, led by the narrator, Lucy, herself a survivor of trauma, quickly come to realize that the town’s rich kids have all been infected with something that is leading them to violence, a violence that is being driven by a very unnatural technology, one that wants to replicate itself at all costs. This is a fast paced tale, filled with action and tension, told over one desperate night, as our protagonists try to stay alive and stop the spread before it can leave town, even if that necessitates their own destruction. But Johnson gives readers more than a thrill ride. THE LOOP is also a cautionary tale, a satisfying, darkly humorous satire of, well, everything. This is a highly original, apocalyptic tale that is uncomfortably perfect for our current timeline. Imagine Blake Crouch and Mira Grant getting together to re-write Wanderers by Wendig but with a compressed time frame, and you can see the wide audience who will flock to this heart pounding and deeply unsettling tale.
YA Statement: Teen protagonists drive both the story’s emotions and plot so of course there will be YA interest, but more importantly, it is the novel’s themes of the creep of technology into every facet of our lives and bodies that will resonate uncomfortably loud for them, hitting teens in a space they navigate on a daily basis.
Three Words That Describe This Book:
race against time, deeply unsettling, technology gone rogue
Readalikes: Besides the three in the review above, this remind me so much of Stephen King's Cell, just a more sophisticated technology. I would also suggest Survivor Song by Tremblay or Devil's Wake by Barnes and Due
First published August 2020 (Booklist).
The sequel to the fun, original, and action driven historical horror Stoker’s Wilde, brings back vampires, secret societies, and of course, the odd couple, monster fighting duo of Bram Stoker and Oscar Wilde, expect this time, they have left their civilized London society for the American Wild West where they are enlisted by the government to root out vampires and help stop a rich land developer from trying to open another portal into a dark realm. While the first book followed the style of a Victorian novel, this one channels its setting through a cadence steeped in the traditions of the Western itself, utilizing the genre, its tropes, real life characters [such as Calamity Jane] and its overall mythology to serve as a foundation for the paranormal adventure to come. Once again, the epistolary style serves readers well, allowing multiple voices to emerge, revealing characters’ personalities, eccentricities, and feelings about one and other while also magnifying the immediacy of danger and suspense. Stoker and Wilde, and their amusing relationship, still take center stage, but Stoker’s wife, Florence also blossoms from a bit player into a major actor here, no longer simply a damsel in distress. Add in an ending that introduces the next dangerous adventure and readers will be clamoring for more. Fans of paranormal alternative history featuring well drawn characters and strong world building such as Molly Tanzer’s Diabolist's Library series, Robert McCammon’s I Travel by Night series or The Hunger by Alma Katsu will be lining up for this one.
Further Appeal: This is a highly entertaining and fun series. The second book builds perfectly off the first. There is depth here if you want it, with nods to genre traditions and the works of Wilde and Stoker themselves, but readers can also just read it as a western-paranormal. That's why it is great for a public library audience.
Three Words That Describe This Book: vampires, alternative history, epistolary
Readalikes: I have more readalikes posted here in my review of the first book.
Aug. 2020. 388p. Word Horde, paper, $19.99 (9781939905604).
First published August 2020 (Booklist).
Langan presents another solid collection of immersive tales shrouded in dread and darkness that start off uneasy, quickly building to a full on horror that satisfyingly consumes the reader, entering their body, digging its claws deep, hanging on throughout the entirety of the page count. It is by soliciting these intense, elicit, and enticing emotions that Langan has earned numerous accolades and awards for himself; however, in assembling this collection he has also done something new. As described in the volume’s “Story Notes,” Langan realized that the stories he was including, while each very different standing alone, placed together, created a family tree, his “Genealogy.” He has assigned inspiration authors and filmmakers [Stephen King, Laird Barron, David Lynch, eg] to each story, resulting in a collection that reads like the very best fanfiction, stories with an admitted nod to a source, but yet, ones that also stand strongly on their own. The twenty-one stories include gems previous only produced as part of Con program books, the eerie and visceral fungus tale, “Hyphae,” the fascinating “The Communion of Saints” centered around a tired and defeated Albany detective and pop culture’s “new” horror monsters [Freddy Kruegger, Hannibal Lecter, et al], and many stories that reflect Langan’s lifelong literary conversation with Lovecraft and his contemporaries, such as the title story. While Langan freely admits that his “geneology” is currently too white and male for his liking he vows to work on that going forward, but in the meantime, you can suggest this collection to fans of an emerging class of stellar horror writers who have been inspired by Langan himself such as Usman Malik, Rachel Eve Moulton, and Silvia Moreno-Garcia.
Further Appeal: Langan is an author whose collections should be in every library. His writing is extremely influential. Many of today's most popular horror authors cite him as a personal favorite. He is also asked to submit for every one of Ellen Datlow's award winning anthologies, and is one of the founders of the Shirley Jackson Award.
But this collection specifically, I cannot stress enough how impressed I was that he admitted his white privilege and bias, accepting it as problematic, and then resolved-- in print-- to move forward going forward.
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