Can't-Wait Wednesday: The Dead Take the A Train by Cassandra Khaw, The Witches at the End of the World by Chelsea Iversen, & Richard Kadrey, A Haunting on the Hill by Elizabeth Hand, & Silent City by Sarah Davis-Goff

    

Can't-Wait is a weekly meme hosted by Wishful Endings that spotlights exciting upcoming releases that we can't wait to be released! This meme is based off of Jill @ Breaking the Spine's Waiting on Wednesday meme.

This week's upcoming book spotlights are:

The Dead Take the A Train by Cassandra Khaw & Richard Kadrey
Publication: October 3rd, 2023
Tor Nightfire
Hardcover. 400 pages.
Pre-order: Amazon | Bookshop.org

From Goodreads:
"Bestselling authors Cassandra Khaw and Richard Kadrey have teamed up to deliver a dark new story with magic, monsters, and mayhem, perfect for fans of Neil Gaiman and Joe Hill.

Julie Crews is a coked-up, burnt-out thirty-something who packs a lot of magic into her small body. She’s been trying to establish herself in the NYC magic scene, and she’ll work the most gruesome gigs to claw her way to the top.

Julie is desperate for a quick career boost to break the dead-end grind, but her pleas draw the attention of an eldritch god who is hungry for revenge. Her power grab sets off a deadly chain of events that puts her closest friends – and the entire world – directly in the path of annihilation.

The first explosive adventure in the Carrion City Duology, The Dead Take the A Train fuses Khaw’s cosmic horror and Kadrey’s gritty fantasy into a full-throttle thrill ride straight into New York’s magical underbelly."

This sounds incredibly wacky, and I'm here for it!

The Witches at the End of the World by Chelsea Iversen
Publication: October 17th, 2023
Sourcebooks Landmark
Hardcover. 307 pages.
Pre-order: Amazon | Bookshop.org

From Goodreads:
"Rage burns brighter than any spellfire…  Deep in the birchwoods of Norway, magic courses through the veins of two sisters. For years they've been alone, but sweet-tempered Kaija is tired of living in shadows and longs for a life filled with community, even if it means stifling her magic. But Minna is a witch through and through, with wrath always simmering just below the surface. Different as they may be, both will never forget the day they were driven from their village. The day their mother burned.  When Kaija leaves to pursue a new life, Minna is left alone in the darkness of the forest. Devastated and outraged at the betrayal, Minna casts a curse to punish those who took everything from her. What she doesn't realize is that this act will incite a deadly chain of events. Soon it will destroy everything, including the life Kaija has lovingly built. But once a witch's rage boils, regret means nothing―she can't take back what's already done.   Someone will have to burn."

I am always up for a good witchy book in October and this sounds absolutely perfect for the season! 

A Haunting on the Hill by Elizabeth Hand
Publication: October 3rd, 2023
Mulholland Books
Hardcover. 336 pages.
Pre-order: Amazon | Bookshop.org

From Goodreads:
"From three-time Shirley Jackson, World Fantasy, and Nebula Award-winning author Elizabeth Hand comes the first-ever authorized novel to return to the world of Shirley Jackson's  The Haunting of Hill House:  a suspenseful, contemporary, and terrifying story of longing and isolation all its own.

Holly Sherwin has been a struggling playwright for years, but now, after receiving a grant to develop her play, The Witch of Edmonton, she may finally be close to her big break. All she needs is time and space to bring her vision to life. When she stumbles across Hill House on a weekend getaway upstate, she is immediately taken in by the ornate, if crumbling, gothic mansion, nearly hidden outside a remote village. It’s enormous, old, and ever-so eerie—the perfect place to develop and rehearse her play.

Despite her own hesitations, Holly’s girlfriend, Nisa, agrees to join Holly in renting the house out for a month, and soon a troupe of actors, each with ghosts of their own, arrive. Yet as they settle in, the house’s peculiarities are made known: strange creatures stalk the grounds,  disturbing sounds echo throughout the halls, and time itself seems to shift.  All too soon, Holly and her friends find themselves at odds not just with one another, but with the house itself. It seems something has been waiting in Hill House all these years, and it no longer intends to walk alone . . ."

I feel nervous about this taking on Hill House, but I also love The Haunting of Hill House so much that I love this chance to revisit it. 

Silent City by Sarah Davis-Goff
Publication: October 17th, 2023
Flatiron Books
Hardcover. 256 pages.
Pre-order: Amazon | Bookshop.org

From Goodreads:
"Orpen has always been an outlier in Phoenix City - the only outsider ever admitted to the ranks of the banshees, the female warriors who enforce order, and protect it from the skrake - the ravening creatures that have laid waste to the rest of the country, and gather at the city walls.

Unrest is building in the city - a deadly sickness is spreading through the workers, while an unspoken disillusionment is creeping amongst the fighting women, weary of enforcing the all-male management's patriarchal rule, and of the cost, to their sisters, and to young new recruits, of upholding this order.

Rumour has it that banshees have been taking matters into their own hands, and taking swift and violent revenge. When Orpen's troop leader falls under suspicion it becomes clear that Orpen will need to muster all her courage and prowess if she and her fellow banshees are going to be able to find a way to escape, and rebuild a society worth fighting for."

This sounds like it has a lot of familiar ideas, but it's a premise I'm always intrigued by, so I'm looking forward to checking it out.

Review: Nothing But Blackened Teeth by Cassandra Khaw

  

Nothing But Blackened Teeth by Cassandra Khaw
Nightfire
Publication Date: October 19th, 2021
Hardcover. 128 pages.

About Nothing But Blackened Teeth:

"Cassandra Khaw's Nothing But Blackened Teeth is a gorgeously creepy haunted house tale, steeped in Japanese folklore and full of devastating twists. 

A Heian-era mansion stands abandoned, its foundations resting on the bones of a bride and its walls packed with the remains of the girls sacrificed to keep her company. 

It’s the perfect wedding venue for a group of thrill-seeking friends. 

But a night of food, drinks, and games quickly spirals into a nightmare. For lurking in the shadows is the ghost bride with a black smile and a hungry heart. 

And she gets lonely down there in the dirt."

Nothing But Blackened Teeth was a very promising horror novella that I'd been anticipating for quite a while, and unfortunately it was... definitely not what I expected. This is a very difficult to review to write and I really didn't even want to write it because, if we're being completely honest with one another, I really disliked this book. I don't really know how it happened and I know so many readers who have really enjoyed and/or even loved this book, but something about it just did not click with me whatsoever and I'm perfectly happy to consider that it's a 'me' problem and not a book problem, but you can decide that for yourself if you choose to read it. Maybe this book just didn't click with me, but regardless, let's talk about this book a bit.

Nothing But Blackened Teeth takes place in Japan in an old, rotting Heian-era mansion. I loved the Japanese folkloric elements and I actually think Khaw did a great job of incorporating those and sharing them in her story. I also did really like the 'lore' of the mansion and the atmosphere Khaw evoked by sharing it amidst the crumbling ruins of the mansion and the many creepy elements of it. Outside of that, however, I pretty much hated everything else about this book. The main problem for me, I think, is that this is set up as what seems to be a character-driven horror with some interesting character dynamics an plenty of baggage, but it was written more as a slasher with less focus on characters and instead a focus on shock, some gore, and some vivid, descriptive writing (which was really nice on its own!). 

Since the characters are a central focus of this novella (or so it appears), let's start with them. I get that this is a novella and there's not really much time to explore character dynamics and development, but this story desperately desperately needed it. These characters had so much baggage between themselves that there was absolutely no time for this book to cover even half of it. I found the slow sort of disintegration (?) of their mental states as things in the mansion got progressively more intense completely sudden and it did not flow at all with the story. Actions the characters took did not make any sense and I genuinely kept wondering if maybe I was missing a chunk of the story here and there, as if perhaps my ARC was messed up or something, but sadly, I don't think it was. 

The plot premise was promising, but much like the characters, it devolved pretty quickly after the first chapter or so. I remember telling my husband that I think I enjoyed the first couple Kindle pages of my ARC, but after that I really think I kept reading because I kept hoping it would get better, and it was some sort of train wreck I couldn't look away from--and not because I wanted to find out what would happen, but because I just couldn't understand this book. 

I think Khaw is a good writer and her prose was really nice and atmospheric–she definitely knows how to set a scene. What I didn't like were her attempts to be clever and somewhat break into a fourth wall style of talking about horror movies. A character would point out that they were just the comic relief and would definitely be the first to die, or mention a cliche horror trope before proceeding to implement said horror trope (fully aware, as it was meant). I don't mind this type of thing and I honestly usually like it, but it just felt so incredibly forced, and it made every other sequence in this plot feel like it was following a very specific set a horror checklists and the author just needed to check off each one, no matter whether it fit or flowed or not. The way things devolved made no sense. I understand in high stress situations, especially possessions and hauntings, things probably get intense very quickly, but these people's reaction made no sense to me. They tended to over- or under-react, and most of the time it was under-reacting. 

I didn't really want for this review to be a rant review because I definitely appreciate what Khaw was trying to do with this book and I also very much respect the fact that a lot of people really enjoyed this book, so I'm going to wrap up this review. Personally, it was an enormous flop for me and I cannot say how disappointed I was when I started reading it after hoping it would be one of the best little scary horror novels I'd read this October. If you've read this book, I would love to hear your thoughts on it! Overall, on Goodreads I gave this book one star, which I haven't done in ages, because I was just so frustrated and mad at it. Not sure if that rating will stay there or not, but that's where we're at, apparently!

*I received a copy of Nothing But Blackened Teeth courtesy of the publisher in exchange for an honest review.*

Buy the book: Amazon | Indiebound 

Can't-Wait Wednesday: The All-Consuming World by Cassandra Khaw & Stolen Earth by J.T. Nicholas

Can't-Wait is a weekly meme hosted by Wishful Endings that spotlights exciting upcoming releases that we can't wait to be released! This meme is based off of Jill @ Breaking the Spine's Waiting on Wednesday meme.

 

This week's upcoming book spotlights are: 

The All-Consuming World by Cassandra Khaw
Publication: September 7th, 2021

Erewhon

Hardcover. 288 pages.

Pre-order: Amazon | IndieBound

From Goodreads:

"A diverse team of broken, diminished former criminals get back together to solve the mystery of their last, disastrous mission and to rescue a missing and much-changed comrade... but they’re not the only ones in pursuit of the secret at the heart of the planet Dimmuborgir. The highly-evolved AI of the universe have their own agenda and will do whatever it takes to keep humans from ever controlling the universe again. This band of dangerous women, half-clone and half-machine, must battle their own traumas and a universe of sapient ageships who want them dead, in order to settle their affairs once and for all. 

Cassandra Khaw’s debut novel is a page-turning exploration of humans and machines that is perfect for readers of Ann Leckie, Ursula Le Guin, and Kameron Hurley."

I already have an ARC of Khaw's October release (All the Blackened Teeth), but I didn't even realize there was another one coming out! I think this premise sounds like it's going to be a lot of fun and I'm excited to check out Khaw's work.

and...

Stolen Earth by J.T. Nicholas

Publication: September 21st, 2021

Titan Books

Paperback. 384 pages.

Pre-order: Amazon | IndieBound

From Goodreads:

"Firefly meets The Expanse in a future where humanity has destroyed the Earth through ecological disaster and warfare, and a totalitarian state prevents any access to their home... 

Environmental disasters and uncontrolled AI armies have caused the human population of Earth to flee. They lie scattered across innumerable space stations and colonies, overcrowded and suffering. The Earth is cut off by the Interdiction Zone: a network of satellites to prevent anything getting into or out of the planet. The incredible cost of maintaining it has crippled humanity, who struggle under the totalitarian yoke of the Sol Commonwealth government, whose rich grow richer while the poor are on the brink of starvation. 

Many have been driven to the edge of society, yearning for freedom and taking any work offered, criminal and otherwise, in order to survive. The crew of the Arcus are just such people. 

A client has come to the table claiming to have the codes necessary to penetrate the Interdiction Zone. Once through, a world of priceless artifacts awaits, provided anyone crazy enough to make the run can be found. They've all heard the rumors - ships that have set down, pilfered the ruins of a museum or private collection, and escaped with enough priceless works to retire. Arcus Captain Lynch knows better - he's been on-world before, a brief and harrowing experience that he's in no hurry to relive. But fuel is running low and cred accounts even lower, and the Arcus' survival might depend on taking the job. 

Yet on arrival on Earth, the crew discovers that what remains on their world is not as they have been told, and the secrets they find are big enough to bring the entire Sol Commonwealth tumbling down..."

I love futuristic sci-fi like this that play with some really big concepts. Really can't wait to see what the author does with this premise!

What do you think about these upcoming releases? What are your anticipated upcoming releases?