We’re back with our review round-up featuring three recommendations that we hope you’ll check out!
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Kindred by Octavia E. Butler
Octavia E. Butler’s bestselling literary science-fiction masterpiece, Kindred, now in graphic novel format.
More than 35 years after its release, Kindred continues to draw in new readers with its deep exploration of the violence and loss of humanity caused by slavery in the United States, and its complex and lasting impact on the present day. Adapted by celebrated academics and comics artists Damian Duffy and John Jennings, this graphic novel powerfully renders Butler’s mysterious and moving story, which spans racial and gender divides in the antebellum South through the 20th century.
Butler’s most celebrated, critically acclaimed work tells the story of Dana, a young black woman who is suddenly and inexplicably transported from her home in 1970s California to the pre–Civil War South. As she time-travels between worlds, one in which she is a free woman and one where she is part of her own complicated familial history on a southern plantation, she becomes frighteningly entangled in the lives of Rufus, a conflicted white slaveholder and one of Dana’s own ancestors, and the many people who are enslaved by him.
Held up as an essential work in feminist, science-fiction, and fantasy genres, and a cornerstone of the Afrofuturism movement, there are over 500,000 copies of Kindred in print. The intersectionality of race, history, and the treatment of women addressed within the original work remain critical topics in contemporary dialogue, both in the classroom and in the public sphere.
Frightening, compelling, and richly imagined, Kindred offers an unflinching look at our complicated social history, transformed by the graphic novel format into a visually stunning work for a new generation of readers.
Now in paperback—revised and expanded to include an exclusive Q&A with the creators, Damian Duffy and John Jennings—as well as a teacher’s guide, unpublished sketches, and developmental work.
Audra’s Teaser Review
This is a straightforward and dense adaptation, heavy on text and dialogue pulled directly from Butler’s book. (AKA, my kind of graphic novel!) Having just read the novel, I was still just as pulled in to the story the second time around. I especially loved the art; the illustrator John Jennings did a lot of heavy lifting, creating vivid scenes of moments both horrifying and beautiful.
Read Audra’s entire review at Goodreads.
Tender Is The Flesh by Agustina Bazterrica
Working at the local processing plant, Marcos is in the business of slaughtering humans —though no one calls them that anymore.
His wife has left him, his father is sinking into dementia, and Marcos tries not to think too hard about how he makes a living. After all, it happened so quickly. First, it was reported that an infectious virus has made all animal meat poisonous to humans. Then governments initiated the “Transition.” Now, eating human meat—“special meat”—is legal. Marcos tries to stick to numbers, consignments, processing.
Then one day he’s given a gift: a live specimen of the finest quality. Though he’s aware that any form of personal contact is forbidden on pain of death, little by little he starts to treat her like a human being. And soon, he becomes tortured by what has been lost—and what might still be saved.
Laurie’s Teaser Review
This is a well-written gruesome book filled with unimaginable atrocities of the worst possible kind. I don’t say this lightly or with exaggeration. It is meant to disturb you and make you think about a few things.
Read Laurie’s entire review at Goodreads.
The Haunting of Leigh Harker by Darcy Coates
Sometimes the dead reach back…
Leigh Harker’s quiet suburban home was her sanctuary for more than a decade, until things abruptly changed. Curtains open by themselves. Radios turn off and on. And a dark figure looms in the shadows of her bedroom door at night, watching her, waiting for her to finally let down her guard enough to fall asleep.
Pushed to her limits but unwilling to abandon her home, Leigh struggles to find answers. But each step forces her towards something more terrifying than she ever imagined.
A poisonous shadow seeps from the locked door beneath the stairs. The handle rattles through the night and fingernails scratch at the wood. Her home harbours dangerous secrets, and now that Leigh is trapped within its walls, she fears she may never escape.
Do you think you’re safe?
You’re wrong.
Kathy’s Teaser Review
I cannot say enough about Darcy Coates’ writing style. I love the way she smoothly integrates similes, metaphors, personification, and a rich vocabulary to bring her story to life. Her use of foreshadowing at the end of each chapter drives the reader to continue turning the pages to satisfy their curiosity. Gray, black, and white colors, as well as images of cold, heat, light, and dark, provide an eerie setting for Leigh’s frustration, depression, and fear.
There are only a handful of books that have really scared me, and The Haunting of Leigh Harker is one of them. I loved this book and highly recommend it.
Read Kathy’s entire review at Goodreads.
Thank you for joining us today! We hope you found something to add to your tbr list. Please share your recent reads with us in the comments below.
If you are a LOHF writer and have a book you’d like us to consider for a review please visit our review submission page here.
Laurie is one of our LOHF Admins. Laurie creates our review posts, coordinates review requests, oversees the Ladies of Horror Fiction directory, and manages our LOHF Goodreads group.
You can find Laurie on her blog Bark’s Book Nonsense, on Twitter as @barksbooks, on Instagram as @barksbooks, and on Goodreads.
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