Month: March 2021

Review of The Cliffhouse Haunting – A Thorne and Cross novel

/ danielwalterc / Leave a comment

Hey you

Me?

Yeah you! Remember that one “American Horror Story” season, with that lodge by the lake and that creepy blue lady ghost?

Let me think…Oh yeah! She was creepy. Man, Jessica Lange impressed again, this time as Constance Leigh Welling, the self-published “authoress.”  Dragging around her assistant by his nose, the poor young Luke Donovan, played so well by Evan Peters. How she thought she was so talented, so young, so beautiful, so popular! That old narcissistic bitch! She really got her comeuppance! Thank God the daughter of the owners, Sara Baxter-Bellamy played by Taissa Farmiga, became Luke’s love interest, making Constance jealous and eventually giving him the encouragement to leave that bitch.

Uh..yeah.

Oh, and I won’t forget Dr. Roger Siechert, played by Dylan McDermott. That hilarious German-folk enthusiast, who not only took up killing people, but also liked to stick that severed finger up is ass! He called it the “chocolate wander” and it was also “The Happy Wander”, like the German song, “Valeri, Valera! Valeri , Valer- Ha Ha Ha Ha HA HA HA “

Yeah..sure.

How about that Hammerhead serial killer, named because he killed his victims with the hammer! Man, we never discovered who he was until the end. Who played him?

Beats me. Hey listen-

And through it all – the blue lady ghost! When the bathrooms in the lodge rooms flood, there were her soggy footprints in the carpeting. And even when there was no flooding, the mirrors of the bathrooms would suddenly fill up with moisture, and when that happened you just knew the blue lady was coming! You just knew it!  Thanks for the memories! I’m going to log in to Netflix and watch it again!

You won’t find it. I’ve been trying to stop you before you got to carried away, but I was too late.

What do you mean? And why did they take it down already?

I mean, it never aired. It wasn’t an American Horror Story season at all. This was a book by Thorne and Cross called “The Cliffhouse Haunting”

Then why did you tell me it was?

I don’t know. I just don’t know.

But I know! Afterall, I’m the idiot that wrote up that goofy exchange up there! A little more than halfway through the book, I had the thought that the Constance character resembles the appearance and actions of the kinds of characters Jessica Lange plays on American Horror story. As for the happy wandering doctor, the assistant and lodge daughter? The AHS actors I’ve chosen for the parts “sort of” fit, but come on, I had a narrative-thing going on, so I had to make them fit. There are other interesting and kooky characters in this book as well, but I couldn’t make them all fit into roles that are to be played by other notable AHS actors, cramming them it like puzzle pieces in the wrong spots (my Dad used to do this when working a jigsaw puzzle. It would piss my Mom off). AHS stories always have multiple plots. So does The Cliffhouse Haunting! AHS often has too many plot threads going on for its own good. The Cliffhouse Haunting has just the right amount. So perhaps its too good of a story for that famous cable show?

Thorne and Cross have been promoting audio versions of their books lately.  I came across their promotion for the audiobook copy of The Cliffhouse Haunting. Alas, it didn’t coax me to seek it out. It’s just that I’ve never done the audiobook thing. Hell, I have had Bluetooth for my last two cars and I never set it up. I guess for me, if it’s not music, then it doesn’t need to be transmitted to me electronically. BUT, the ad DID get me to purchase a copy to read on my Kindle app. And read it I did. So now, The Cliffhouse Haunting will join the other books by this haunting and hilarious duo that have made my page or reviews. These include The Ghosts of Ravencrest (the story has continued on, I have to catch up!), Five Nights at a Haunted Cabin, and book written by on half of the duo, Tamara Thorne, called Hunted. I do believe that The Cliffhouse Haunting is the first book by this duo.

The Cliffhouse Haunting is more of an entertaining book than it is scary. Yes, there’s the Blue Lady Ghost, and she’s creepy, but the word “entertaining” encompasses a larger umbrella of descriptors. “Scary” fits underneath its domain, as does “gory”, and “weird”. And “funny”, for which you can also remove the “ny” to make it a “fun” book, and that it is.

The authors take a divergent set of characters and flesh them out in a “fun” ghost story.  There’s the typical small-town sheriff; capable, modest, down-to earth. The lodge proprietors two married men with a college-aged daughter that helps her dads run the place. I’ve already mentioned Constance, the Happy Wandering Doc, and Hammerhead; but there is the mortician that is dominated by his overbearing wife. There is the lady who can’t control her obnoxious kids. Oh, I can’t forget the person that likes to vandalize buildings with penis-graffiti art.  Thorne and  Cross love to give their characters sexual idiosyncrasies. It just wouldn’t be a Thorne and Cross book without the characters that seek out different ways to satisfy themselves. Every once in a while, one of these characters will have a criminally deranged perversion, but damn it, these are horror novels! So, be afraid and even disgusted at those characters who kill and maim in the goal of fantasy fulfillment, but laugh at the ones that who have harmless albeit different hobbies. “The Chocolate Wander” – laugh, this is funny, it wanders where “chocolate” gathers! Well, I should say, laugh until someone gets hurt, because sometimes what starts as fun and weird ends rather badly.

Oh, I forgot to mention that I like this book. I guess that’s the point of a review, isn’t it, to state whether you like it or not? I could go into more detail about the Blue Lady and the hauntings how she possesses people, and  I could delve into the legends from the past and how the circumstances surrounding serial killings from one-hundred years ago are happening again in an eerily similar manner. Like I said, I COULD go into all that, but nah, read about that for yourself when you buy the book and read it OR listen to it. Take a journey through its pages. Happy Wandering!  

Review of Dark House of Dreams

/ danielwalterc / Leave a comment

Gods and goddesses and demons, oh wow! Arachnids and familiars and oracles, oh dear! Earthquakes and famine and war, oh shit! Shiny men – skinless women – revived dead, say what?

And ghosts. So many ghosts. Hanging out on the roads, in the alleys, in your darkest dreams. Oh, and they hang out in houses too. This last point provides me with the necessary loop hole to include Joe Pawlowski’s novel Dark House of Dreams in my reviews of haunted house literature. But for the most part, it belongs in an entirely different genre.

The genre of the novel as per Amazon.com is dark fantasy.  Scrolling through best sellers that fall into this category, I came across title words such as “summoner,” “underworld,” “dragon,” and “retribution.” Hopefully these words conjure the kinds of themes this genre deals with. I am largely unfamiliar with this genre. I do not normally review books that fall into this category since my genre consists of stories pertaining to ghosts and haunted houses. A reader that is solely attracted to Gothic literature might not be interested in a book of this sort. Likewise, a reader exclusively dedicated to modern haunted house fiction might not be smitten with the stuff of this novel either. Fans looking for similarities to The Haunting of Hill House, The Shining or The Amityville Horror will find nothing of the sort in Dark House of Dreams.

The plot is rather complex and difficult to describe. Dark House of Dreams is one book in a series; the Ring Gargery Series. Much of the book devotes itself to fleshing out a story arc that will reach its curve in future novels. However, this isn’t the first of the series. The Watchful Dead: A Tale of Old Hastur (A Ring Gargery Thriller) predates this novel and is described as “a nightmare blend of gothic traditionalism, magical realism and dark fantasy.”  Perhaps this novel might align more closely to haunted house fiction theme? I should have read this first. Oh well.

Ring Gargery is the protagonist, but he’s by no means the only character to lend readers a perspective. Having spent his childhood isolated within the walls of his house, he comes of age outside the walls, in a world of slaves and nobles where travel is done by boat or horseback, villages are many miles apart and great turmoil is afoot.

An earthquake caused by a demon has ravaged a neighboring community. A giant spider, a god, is burrowing under the town and rising every so often to claim a victim. All this while Ring ekes out a living as a stableman. His pastimes include drinking bowls of wine with friends at pubs and engaging in romantic rendezvous with women. He is also searching for his mother, who mysteriously “went lost”.  Meanwhile, he has these prophetic dreams that place him in a dark house where he is tasked with exploring different “rooms” each time he drifts off to sleep.  When crossing the threshold, he enters not  a room but a landscape of some sort.

What is my favorite slice of turmoil in this story? Why that would be the ghosts, of course! A sorceress has broken down the gates of the underworld and the ghosts have been freed to walk the ….earth? (I’m not even sure this story takes place on earth). The community is forced to live side-by-side with these phantoms. They are mostly a nuisance, but sometimes they can be dangerous enough to be maddening or even deadly.  For mysterious reasons, Ring’s childhood house is overrun with ghosts. They are drawn to it the way flying insects are attracted to light.

Then there is more. There’s politics; councilmen argue and point fingers and do underhanded things. There are murders and kidnappings. There is death by public execution. And then there is more. I can go on and on.

How did I stumble upon this book and why am I reviewing it?  I found an advertisement for this book in one of the many Facebook groups I belong to that encourage authors to promote their books. The title caught my eye. When a haunted house guy such as myself sees the words “dark house”, he reads on. When he sees the word “ghosts” in the synopsis, he considers it for purchase. If the price is right (it was), he goes in for the buy. And that’s what I did. Though there are only a few instances of ghostly goings-on’s that frighten the occupants of a house or castle, dog gone it, I just wanted to say something about Dark House of Dreams.  It took work to finish this book. So many unusual character names, so many unique names for various families, tribes or religious sects (thank you Joe Pawlowski for the list of characters with descriptions at the book’s end!).  I wanted there to be something to show for my efforts. Hence this article; it’s my participation trophy.

Did I like it? In a nutshell, yes. I wouldn’t have finished it if I didn’t. I have no criticisms.  I can’t say that I’m in love with it though. It’s just a matter of taste. It is remarkably well written. And to think of the work involved in creating the world of this novel, set in a mysterious place. Every word spoken, every object used, every place the reader is taken to props up this world and fits neatly together to forge this fantastic setting.  Yes, it took work to comprehend this setting, but much less I am sure than it took to create it. So no, it’s not really a haunted house tale. And it probably does not belong within my catalog of reviews. But here it is anyway. Sue me if you must.