Cassandra Calls Nothing But Blackened Teeth seems to be a
horror book that has divided people as I've seen it both on
the list of the best horror books ever and the worst horror
books ever. As a big horror fan myself, I
wanted to check it out because, you know, why not.
I will say the cover art is absolutely phenomenal.
It is creepy, it is dark, it is definitely memorable, it has an
incredible setting, an incredible premise, and it seems
to be exactly my kind of thing. I'll give you the summary.
A Hayanira mansion stands abandoned, its foundation
resting on the sons of a bride and it's walls packed with the
remains of the girls sacrifice to keep her company.
It's the perfect venue for a group of thrill seeking friends
brought back together to celebrate a wedding.
A night of food, drinks and games quickly spirals into a
nightmare as secrets get dragged out and relationships are
tested. But the house has secrets too,
lurking in the shadows as a ghost bride with a black smile
and a hungry heart. And she gets lonely down there
in the dirt. At just 125 pages it is bound to
be a quick read so I thought we would just jump in today and
let's see what we think. As with a lot of my book
reviews, I do like this. I wrote my script as I went
along, so you're going to be getting my like real time
reactions to what I was reading on the page.
Part 1 How the F are you this rich?
I took in the old festivule, the wood ceiling that domed our
heads. Time etched itself into the
shape and stretch of the Hain mansion, its presence apparent
in even the texture of the crumbling dark.
It felt profane to see the place like this, without curators, to
chaperoners, no one to say do not touch and be careful.
This was old, before the word for such things existed.
That Philip could finance its desecration, lock stock, no
question, and do so without self reproach was symptomatic of our
fundamental differences. He shrugged, smile cocked like
the sure thing that was his whole life.
So this is how the book opens and it is very indicative of
everything that it's become. Lots of over the top flowery
descriptions contrasted with very basic dialogue with a lot
of swearing and quite one-dimensional characters who
were just like these annoying rich kids that we are about to
be introduced to. I say kids.
They're not really kids, although for the longest time in
this book I had no idea how old they were meant to be.
Really confused me. On the one hand they act like
teenagers, on the other hand I was like maybe they're like
young adults. On the other hand they put a lot
of money. So I was like anyway turns out
they're like 25 ish or something like that but I was really
confused. First up we got Philip, who is a
billionaire who has flown them all out there and rented the
mansion for a few nights. His vasty jacket, still
perfectly fitted to his broad quarterback frame, blazed indigo
in yellow where it caught the sun in the dusk.
Letters of his name were guilt and glory and good stitching.
Poster boy perfect. Everyone craved him like a vice.
Seriously though, it's no big deal.
So again, having this be the first bit of like character
description really confused me because again, I had no idea how
old they were meant to be. I thought vasti jacket meant
like skit still in school and a teenager.
But then I was like, if he's a teenager, how does he have the
money to fly his friends to Japan?
Why was friends getting married? Like I was really confused to
me, like knowing that he's like an adult still wearing a varsity
jacket gives like peaked in high school.
But the narrator of this book, the main character still thinks
he's attractive for God knows what reason.
And it's like the only thing she ever says about him.
It's like Philip did this. Did I mention he's super hot?
And then Philip did this, and oh, my God, he's so hot.
Philip did this. Yeah.
So hot. It's really annoying.
And honestly, like, that is the only thing we ever learn about
Philip. By the end of the book.
He is rich and attractive. That is it.
Nothing more. Like if you want to play a
drinking game during this video, right?
And if you're using alcohol, please don't.
You may die. Feel free to play along with
whatever else. Soft drink water, milk.
Drink every time cat the narrator gushes over how hot
Philip is. Drink anytime there's an F word.
I'll tell you there are 76 of them in the 125 page book, so
that's one every other page pretty much more than what else
can we do? Drink every time there's over
flowery language. Leave your other drinking game
things down in the comments because it'll be fun.
Cat, have you ever cannonballed into a cold lake?
The shock of an old memory is kind of like that.
Every neuron singing a bright hosanna.
Here we are. You forgot, that is, but we
didn't forget about you. Only one other person had ever
said my name that way. Is Lynn coming?
I licked the corner of her tooth.
No comment. You could just about smell the
cream on the lip of Philip's grin, though I tried not to
cringe, to wince, beset by a zoeotrope of sudden emotions.
I hadn't spoken to Lynn before I checked myself into.
We'll get there. It was a mental health facility,
basically, but when you're reading stuff like this, it's
like the author sword a thesaurus, and not in a good
way. She really reminded me of Milo
Winter when we read his poetry, and it was just like he was
throwing words in that sounded fancy and big, but weren't
necessarily right for the way he was using them.
At least in this I can tell. Like she's using the right words
in the right context most of the time.
It just still sounds wrong. It sounds like she's using them
to be fancy, not because they're the best word for the situation.
So I hadn't spoken to Lynn since before I checked myself into the
hospital for terminal on Wii. Exhaustion so acute it couldn't
be sanitised with sleep, couldn't be remedied by anything
but A twist of rope tucked tight.
And this is something else. You'll see.
She can't just do 1 description. She'll be like, it was like
this, like this, like this, like this, and it just, it gets a
lot. We don't need that many
descriptions of the same thing. Sometimes less is more.
The doctors kept me for six days and then sent me home.
Pockets stuffed with pills and appointments and placards
advocate in the commandments of safer living.
I spent six months doing the work, a shooting committed to
the betterment of self University and my study of
Japanese literature, both formal and otherwise, shelved
temporarily. So of course, she has a tragic
back story of mental illness that doesn't really go anywhere.
So last year I read Kikoko's Cameras.
There's no such thing as an easy job, and in my opinion that does
a much better job of representing the feelings of
depression and melancholy and general on we and general
malaise than this book does. If you want to hear someone
living with those kinds of feelings or lack of, go read
that book. This book does not do it that
well. The main character in that book
doesn't go as far as Cat in this book, like she doesn't try and
commit suicide or anything like that, but I just find her whole
tone and behaviour a lot more believable and well written.
Another thing is that I find it so hard to believe that a
heavily depressed woman who's only just putting herself back
out into the world would be using such grandiose language
and vivid descriptions. The tone and subject matter are
jarring and not in a good way. It feels like this is the voice
of the author, not the voice of the narrator, which that sounds
like the same thing, but they're not.
They're very, very different. Because, for example, like the
way I talk would be very different to the way a fictional
character spoke. So if I was writing a book from
the perspective of a certain character, I'd need to make sure
I was giving them their voice and not my voice.
I feel like that's not what's happened here.
I feel like Cassandra is writing Cat's narration in her voice,
not Cat's voice, and that's why there's such a jarring
juxtaposition between the dialogue and the descriptions.
And it feels like the descriptions don't feel
realistic for Kat and her supposed depression.
You know, I don't, I don't know, I don't know, maybe I'm reading
too much into this at this point.
We also meet Faze and Talia who are apparently the couple
getting married. A door thumped shirt and we both
jumped, turned like cogs. See what I mean about like this
happened like this, this happened like that.
Like there's too many descriptions for like the same
thing. All my grief riled somewhere
else. I swear, if that moment wasn't
magic, wasn't everything that is right and good, nothing else in
the world is allowed to call itself beautiful.
It was perfect. A Hallmark commercial and freeze
frame, autumn leaves swirling against a backdrop of Beech and
white cedar, God rays dripping between the bows.
Phase and Talia emerging, arms looped together, eyes only for
each other, smiling so hard that all I want to do was promise
them that forever will always, eternally, unchangingly be just
like this. Tis a lot, and I'm all for
showing, not telling, but this is taking that to the extreme
where it just almost feels like too much.
Like a you know what reading this book reminded me of feeling
overstimulated, like sensory over stimulation, but with
words. It wasn't pleasant.
I felt like I had to shut out a lot of it to like get to the
real meaning underneath it, which is not what you want in a
book. And, and don't get me wrong, I
love a nice flowery book. I love a lot of vivid
descriptions, I just think there's authors that do it
better than this. This felt like a lot of noise
rather than a lot of detail. Without warning, Honorate, a cat
hears a creepy voice speaking to her in Japanese.
I'm not even going to try to pronounce any Japanese words
here, but I will say it translates to at sooner
Matsuyama. Even the waves have a voice.
We don't actually find out the meaning in book until later, but
I figured I'd just tell you now because why not.
My head Jack knifed up there. It was the stutter of a girl's
voice, sweet despite its coarseness, like a square of
fabric worn ragged, like a sound carried on the last ragged
breath of a failing record player, a hallucination.
It had to be. It needed to be see again.
Like the use of two similes in succession like that is too
much. It's needless.
Use one if you want, but use some sparingly for more impact.
You know, when you're bombarded with image, image, image, you
never really get to the true meaning, the true feeling.
Like when you use, sorry, I'm going off script here, but like
when you use a simile, you're not just like painting a picture
in someone's head and saying this is like this, that you can
picture it, but the particular image that you use or comparison
that you use that connotes something else.
So for example, you know, comparing this to a square of
fabric worn ragged, that has different connotations than, for
example, the last ragged breath of a failing record player.
Both of them are given you raggedness.
I mean, it says ragged twice. But when we think of, for
example, like fabric worn, we might think of it as like worn
rough because it's been touched a lot.
Maybe it's been touched with love, with tenderness.
It used to be comforting to the point where like it's been worn
away. When we think of, for example,
like last breath of a failing record player, we think of
something that's maybe been played over and over again in
joy and happiness that's been like used so much in excitement
that you know it's finally broken and worn down and it's
not useful anymore. With the fabric, when it gets
ragged, maybe like there's still comfort in that.
Maybe it's not that it's damaged now, it's that it's changed.
With the record player. It's like it's been so overused
that we can't use it anymore, that it's poorer quality, that
it's not giving us the sound it used to when there's less
enjoyment there. So even though both of them are
giving ragged, they say very different things.
So when we have the same voice described as both this and this,
I'm like, wait, is it meant to be comforting or is it meant to
be like, oh, it's like not fit for purpose anymore?
Is it meant to be like this used to be comforting, but it's
changed? Or is it like this used to be
fun and now it just is a bit uncomfortable?
Like if she picked one or the other, I would know more of her
meaning, but it's it's hard and I, I I get it sweet.
Despite its coarseness, we could say the fabric is the sweet bit.
We could say that the record player is the coarseness.
But then again, I think even just saying like a square
fabric, one record, we could say that that is sweet.
Despite its coarseness, A failing record player.
I don't see how that could ever be sweet.
It just, I don't know, They don't work for me putting them
together. It's just it's unnecessary.
It muddies the meaning. I just, yeah, sorry, I've gone
off script there, like a little ramble, but yeah, there you go.
And no, let me know in the comments if you agree with me or
not. Maybe you like this.
Maybe you think both are necessary.
I'd love to hear your thoughts. So Honorary A cat tries to play
all off as a joke, but it's clear that her and Philip had
some sort of relationship between them that ended badly in
the past. He says.
I know, but that crap I did, that wasn't cool.
You and me, I should have found a better way of ending things.
And his hands fluttered and fell in time with the backbeat of his
confession. Philip's expression cracked with
the guilt he'd held for years. Like a relicory.
Like I say, sometimes less is more.
But again, I wouldn't mind this language.
I find it hard to pronounce. I'm not going to read it out
loud, but I wouldn't mind some of this language.
But there's just too much of it all piled together for me.
I want this is going to sound silly.
I want beautiful words and beautiful vocabulary used
sparingly sometimes so that you can really appreciate it, so you
can really let that word choice linger and really, like, soak it
all in and really pick up all its meaning when you just have
like, big word, big word, big word.
I'm just like, sometimes there's too much.
And like I keep saying, it muddies the meaning.
Truth was, I hated that he still felt guilty.
It wasn't charitable, but apologies didn't exonerate the
Sinner, only compelled graciousness from its recipient.
The words, each time they came, so repetitive that I could tune
a clock to their angst, soared through me.
You can't move forward when someone keeps dragging you back.
I trapped the tip of my tongue between my teeth, bit down, and
exhaled through the sting again. I feel like some of this was
written with the intention of it being like, quoted on Tumblr.
You know, I feel like 20 years ago on Tumblr, this would have
killed it. Us teenagers would have loved
that. I will say though, and there's
some bits I do like in this and we'll get on to one in a minute,
but one of the things I do like is, as you can imagine from the
title of the book, there is this repeated image throughout the
book of teeth and teeth in various states.
Licking a tooth, blackened teeth, white teeth, teeth doing
this, this, I think that's good. I really like that.
I'll discuss it more later in the video, but I it's the thing
that I do really like about this book.
There are a lot of things I don't like, but it does have
some really good bits and I want to talk about them.
Another bit that you like, though, listen to this.
A breeze slouch through the decaying soji screens.
Lavender, mildew, sandalwood, rotting incense.
Some of the paper panels were peeling in strips, others nod to
the still vividly lacquered wood.
But the tatami mantling the floors, there was so much, too
much for everywhere, more than even a Hans Noble house should
hold. And all of it was pristine,
store bought fresh, even when the sentry should have chewed
the straw to mulch. So as much as I struggled was
reading that, I do like this. It's atmospheric.
I like that juxtaposition of old and new, sweet and sour, life
and death. The scents, you know, lavender
and mildew, sandalwood and rotting incense.
You can really smell that and picture it.
And that juxtaposition makes you uncomfortable, as it should.
I think this is really, really good.
I like how uncomfortably out of place the mats are.
I think it's great. I think it's really unsettling.
The whole setting for this book I love.
I feel like it's such a good setting.
It's based on so many amazing bits of folklore, and there's
all these like, amazing references to characters and
beings from Japanese folklore. And I find some of the
descriptions so beautifully creepy and so unsettling and
just like, oh, it gets me like, really shivering.
I feel like this book had so much potential.
It just doesn't use any of that as well as it should.
It feels like a real waste of potential.
It's a real waste of some amazing folklore back story and
setting. And I find that really, really
sad to be honest. Like even this amazing
description is then ruined as the paragraph continues.
The sight of it itched under my skin.
Like someone fed those small black picnic ants through a
vein, somehow got them to spread out under the thin layer of
dermis, got them to start digging again.
Sometimes less is more. If you just left it at the ants
under the skin or maybe ants in my veins, that would have been
creepy enough. That would have been atmospheric
enough. We would have got that feeling.
We don't necessarily need every description to go on and on and
on and on, you know? So we learned a little bit of
back story to the characters. They're all childhood friends.
There were five of them, I think Philip, who's rich because of
some inherited family money, Faze and Talia, who are getting
married, Cat on narrator and someone called Lynn who isn't
there yet. And it's unclear if they will
be, but spoiler they will. The mansion that they're staying
in is also known for being creepy and haunted and having a
really cool history, and it's unclear exactly what strings
Philip had to pull and who we have to pay to let them stay
there. But this definitely isn't like a
regular hotel Airbnb somewhere they're actually allowed in.
Tourists don't regularly go there.
This is meant to be like a special thing.
It's like usually bordered up. It's like a historical building
basically. We also start to learn why
there's some tension between them all.
Cat said something horrible about Talia and phase as a
couple. Phase she describes as her best
friend and is the only reason that Talia didn't wall her out
her words after all the drama. We're constantly told that Phase
and Cat are best friends, but we never see them acting as best
friends. We never see any of that
relationship. We never actually see much of
their friendship. We're told a lot about it and
we're told a lot of history and back story, but we don't really
see very much of it. Cat and Phase are meant to be
best friends, but they never act like best friends.
We never really see like, you know, maybe them having a nice
joke together or having a moment where they like, oh, I missed
you, I missed you so much. Oh I love you lots.
They don't have like some heart to heart.
They don't have like, oh, like sit and share secrets together.
They don't have like, oh, let me tell you about my life.
Let me tell you about yours. They don't have like inside
jokes. They don't have, you know, any
of the things I feel like I do with my best friends regularly.
You don't see in them. So I feel like we're told
they're best friends, but that doesn't mean much because we
never see it again. I'll I'll well, I'll tell you
now. The horrible thing that cat said
about Talia and Faye is it, I guess it kind of was horrible.
And basically, Talia says that Cat has insisted they break up
because they weren't happy, and Talia says you nearly cost me
everything. Talia said, still staccato in
her rage. I have both your best intentions
at heart. Are you sure?
Her expression shaded with pity. I glanced at the boys.
Or were you hoping to get Faze back?
And at this point I was like, you know, I'm actually on
Talia's side here. You don't want your partner's ex
who told them to break up with you at your wedding, do you?
So that's the whole thing. So here's the drama.
Cat used to date Phillip and then Phillip broke up with her.
Cat also used to date Phase who's now her best friend and
now Phase is marrying Talia. And when Phase and Talia got
together, Cat was like you 2 should break up, you're awful
together and now Talia is mad at Cat.
Obviously, we never see why Cat thinks they should break up.
We're told it was, you know, you was in your best interest.
But like, why? Why do you think they're a bad
couple? We've seen no evidence of them
being toxic together or them being bad for each other.
And now you're saying like, oh God, I wish they could just stay
like this forever. Like there's no consistency.
We don't see any of this stuff. We're told a lot of it, and we
don't see any of it on the page. There's a lot of telling and not
showing in building these relationships.
And that's why I think I kind of don't care about any of these
characters. So yeah, the other thing to note
here, this is a very incestuous friendship group.
So far we have two men. Cat has dated them both.
She then replies to what I think is Talia's very valid point with
I'm effing sure of it, and Jesus, I don't want your man.
I told her with as much detachment as like a scrounge
not wanting to sell a face short.
Not after all this. It's been years since we were
together and I don't know what more you want from me.
I've apologised, I've tried to make it up to you, although we
never know how. And Talia let a corner of her
lips with her. You could have stayed home.
Yeah, well, Talia has a point. We're at 13% of the way into
this book, and Team Talia, I'll be honest, we also get a nice
little excuse to infodump about the location, too.
I'm not mad about this. I don't mind a nympho dump when
it's relevant, when it's done well, when it's about one of the
few interesting things in this book, which is the setting and
its history. So tell me about this place,
Philip, said Talia, voice billowing in volume, filling the
room, the house. And it's dark.
Tell me this isn't secretly Matsu Castle because I'd kill
myself if it is. I heard they buried a dancing
girl in the walls, and the castle shakes if anyone even
thinks about dancing near it. The manna seemed to breathe in,
drinking her promise. I could tell we all noticed it
all at once, but instead of hightailing it, we bent our
heads like this as a baptism. The house might hold you to
that. I blurted before I could stop
myself. And the sheer wrongness of the
statement, the weird puppyish earnestness and it's jump from
my throat made me cringe. I just don't like cat.
I don't you'll may be seen on my channel.
I recently did a review of yesteryear by Carol Claire
Burke. Great book.
I think it's fantastic. Hated the narrator in that as
well. But when meant to like she's
meant to be awful and like because of that, I think it's a
brilliant book and I was so invested in it.
I loved it. This.
I just hate cat. That's it.
I just hate cat. Anyway, turns out they don't
know the mansion's name, but when asked about its back story.
I don't know, Philip said, the singsong timbre of his voice
familiar, the sound of it like a coyote lying about where he'd
left the sun. But rumour has it that this was
once supposed to be the site of a beautiful wedding.
Unfortunately, the groom never showed up.
He died along the way. So I was thinking here we're
getting some foreshadowing, right?
Talia dies, it looks like a suicide or it is a suicide and
then face is going to disappear or die before the wedding,
something like that. I was thinking like, they really
bring this back story into like the present day and have like a
connection. It'd be really cool.
No, no they don't do. Of course they don't do that.
That would be too interesting anyway, said Philip with a
clearing of his throat. The bride took her abandonment
in stride and told her wedding guests to bury her in the
foundation of the house alive. I whispered.
I thought of a girl holding both hands to her mouth, swallowing
air, then dirt, her hair and the hems of her wedding dress
becoming heavier with every shovel's worth of soil to come
down alive, said Philip. She said she had promised to
wait for him, and she would. She kept the house standing
until his ghost finally came home.
And every year after that they buried a New Girl in the walls,
said Philip. Why start phase startling
somehow at this revelation? The F would they do that?
I, I don't like that bit dialogue.
I do not. It's weirdly split up.
You didn't. I feel you don't need to split
it there because it gets lonely down there in the dirt, Philip
continued. And you know what, as creepy
backstories go, I like this. This is creepy as hell.
And it sort of makes sense in that over the top, dramatic way,
You know, that imagery of a woman being buried alive, of her
waiting until her dead lover comes to join her, that, that is
horrifying. That is kind of, I wasn't going
to say kind of believable, but like, yeah, that is something
that I can imagine this, like, tragic character doing and then
like, you know, her ghost haunting the place for centuries
after waiting and waiting. That that part is great.
That works for me. I love that.
I feel like you can then have, like, similar parallels with the
characters in this time and the ghost, like interacting with
them in this way or making them behave in certain ways.
I think that's fantastic. That is like that back story.
That's a book I want to read. That's a film I want to see.
That's, you know, horror I want to experience, but I just don't
think it's used well. I think it's a waste of an
amazing back story, This book. You'll see.
We'll get there. I couldn't shake the idea of an
eminently practical family, one that understood that bone won't
rot where wood might, ordering the workers to stack the girls
like bricks, arms here, legs there, a vein of skulls wet, fed
into the manners, framing insurance against a time when
traditional architecture might fail.
Might as well. They were here for the long
haul. One day these doors would open
and wedding guests would pour through and there would be a
marriage. Come the cataclysm or modern
civil, the house would wait forever until it happened.
One girl each year, 206 bones times 1000 years.
More than enough calcium to keep this house standing until the
stars ate themselves clean, picked the sinew from their own
shining bones, all for one girl as she waited and waited alone
in the dark. And again, this feels a little
overwritten, but I can forgive that for the creepiness because
those images are a house literally built on bones of
like, young women's bones being built into the walls, like girls
stacked like bricks. That is a horrifying image, and
I love it. For a horror book, I think it's
brilliant. This is such a creepy setting
with so much potential. And again, having like, the
ghost having that motivation of like, waiting for her lover and
now you're having a married couple here.
I'm like, the potential here is amazing.
I think it's fantastic. It doesn't go anywhere, like it
doesn't pay off in a satisfying way.
I'm telling you that now, and it's really frustrating.
Philip leaves to go take photos of the building and nothing ever
comes of that. Nothing's mentioned of it again.
The nothing comes of the photos, nothing creepy happens with the
photos. The photos never come up again.
I think they just want an excuse to get him out of the room.
Meanwhile, everyone is treating Kat with awkward kid gloves.
Kat describes Philip as a Rembrandt in high definition,
which I kind of hate for some reason.
You know why not? And also drink for Philip being
hot again, when Cat follows Philip at the room when he's
taking photos and when they're alone, Cat asks him when did you
date Talia? Was it after or while we were
seeing each other? About a month after.
But we weren't exclusive or anything.
You never did like exclusive things?
No, it's not that. So much sincerity in those gold
blue eyes, crowns of honey around black pupils.
It's just we were kids. We're still kids.
These relationships won't last into adulthood.
Most of them won't. Tyler and Vaze, that's something
else. Anyway.
When I'm older I'll settle down but these are the best years of
my life and I don't want to waste them shackle to a person I
won't like at 30 again. I was so confused about the ages
of these characters and since it's turned out they're like
2526 and whatever. Like it feels weird he's talking
like this but whatever. I'm also really confused about
the timelines of everyone's relationships but here we go.
Incestuous friendship. Talia has dated Philip and then
Faze and now she's marrying Faze.
Cat dated Faze and then Philip and then Philip dumped her and
dated Talia and then tell it. I don't care.
I don't care about any of these people.
Just go date other people you're not friends with and just stop
complicating things. It's not that hard.
I'm just wondering if Faze knows you two were together.
He stilled. That's some Talia to tell him,
not me. I mean, you're his friends so
you could say something, but OK. I considered my next words in
case he doesn't know. I feel like you should make it a
point to pretend you 2 weren't ever an item.
Guile was the reply. Why?
I thought of Faze and his teeth, bad and blunt and bitter.
Faze might not like suddenly finding out you slept with his
fiance. He's an adult and male.
He's not going to care about someone's sexual history.
Better safe than sorry, Philip. I paused.
I'm sorry. You can't use it exclusive.
He's an adult, he can deal with it.
But when you're talking about you also feel like I'm still a
kid. Shut up.
Sorry, you're the same age. Better safe than sorry, Philip.
I paused. Also, FU Phase is an adult who
can make his own decisions, but you're a kid who shouldn't
commit yet. There you go.
Hey, people mature at different speeds.
Literally my point though, It's so annoying.
So, so far we got 23% of the way into this book.
We have a super cool setting, really cool bit of intriguing
history, and we have a group of annoying entitled people of
indeterminate age who all seem to hate each other and have been
incestuously dating for the last God knows how many years,
swapping partners and resentment and God knows what else.
They seem awful at this point. I don't give a damn about any of
them. I don't care what happens to any
of them. I was just hoping at this point
we got like a cool intertwining of like the relationships
between the characters and the relationship of like the bride
waiting for her husband and that kind of thing.
But that doesn't happen. So all I wanted at this point
and throughout the rest of the book is to tell them to grow up.
Philip thinks that they are going to see a ghost in the
mansion and that she'll be hot and it's OK that he's being
gross about it all because he's just a hot blooded male.
He confessed doing what hot blooded males do.
I said in my original script, I hope he dies 1st and we get to
witness a grisly death. Sometimes wishes do come true.
Cat finds these sliding doors painted with big scenes of
animals and yokai which are like these creepy shape shifting
demons and ghosts which some sometimes take the form of
animals or have like animal like features.
They're a really cool, creepy part of Japanese mythology and
folklore and I think their inclusion here is really damn
cool. I wish there was more of a focus
on them. I wish some of the descriptions
of them have been expanded on a bit more.
I think it could be really, really fun, and I wish there was
more about these paintings and less of hearing about how Kat
thinks Philip is so hot with his grin like a politician's smile
beaming up from the cover of GQ, only better because it was
actually sincere, larger than life, yet still intrinsically
boy next door. I don't care.
Tell me about the creepy painting, and please excuse my
terrible pronunciation here. I'm probably going to butcher a
few of these words, but I promise I will try my best.
It was all yokai, A veritable parade, kitsune and elaborate
Thomas Sode, tails curling with questions, Ninjio crawling from
the jewelled sea, Kappa and towering Oni negotiating for
baskets heaped with cucumbers everywhere, every last brush
painted face insight. Even the housewives, some with
eyes, some with only lips, some with gaping smiles sliced into
place. Every last one of them.
All effing yokai, creepy as hell.
I love this. I want more of this, please.
And again, I'm really sorry if I butchered some of that
pronunciation, but I think the inclusion of it and like the
like, this is all so creepy. These are brilliant, perfect
horror elements. I love like some of the creepy
aspects of old Japanese mythology.
Like I've read so many of those old stories and I think they're
wonderful and their inclusion could bring so much to this
story, but it feels like they're just set dressing without
actually being integral to the story.
And I think that's a real, real shame and it's real wasted
potential. And I also like, I find this
really jarring to read as well because the setting is so
creepy, but the characters are just so insufferable and
annoying that it's jarring, but not in a way that's like
purposely uncomfortable, just in a way around like I wish, I wish
they weren't together. The prose of the narration is
trying to be so poetic and flowery and over the top, and
yet the dialogue is like, you're good people talk to the hand
bitch, she's hurt just to hurt bearded male and all that vapid
nonsense. And every single one of those
was a direct quote from the text.
I'm not making that up. So having that next to this like
awfully flowery descriptions, just it just feels off.
It doesn't work for me. And again, I wish there was more
focus on the creepy horror elements and the mythology
elements than the like, oh, to the hand and used to her
bloodied meal. Like, you know what I mean?
The first chapter or part of this book ends with Cat hearing
the whispered words again, and she narrates a whisper so quiet
the cerebellum wouldn't acknowledge its receipt.
The words were drowned by the reverb of phases, voice calling,
an afterimage, an impression of teeth on skin.
We exit the room, the future falling into place behind us
like a wedding veil, a morning call like froth on the lip of a
bride drowning on soil. Again.
I feel like this also could benefit from being a little bit
more simplistic in places. Like the descriptions are so
flowery and the dialogue is so cheesy and over the top.
Like it's from like a 2000s raunchy comedy like American Pie
or something like that. I don't know, you know, you know
what I mean? Like the dialogue feels like
it's straight out of that era of crappy film.
I just want her to rein all of it in, Rein it all back a bit,
be a bit more subtle, focus on just telling a good creepy
story. One of my favourite horror books
I've read recently was a Ketsu's Strange Houses, and while it's
very simple in its writing style, there were certain
passages which just creeped me out so much to the point where
at the time when I was reading it, I I still have my Chira and
at the time I was just like Kyra.
You are not leaving my side. I was so creeped out and I was
like, you were staying with me on the bed while I'm reading
this book. You know, I was like, Mama needs
you to protect her. And I found that really cool
because it's such a simple book and even the premise is quite
simple. But he didn't overcrowd the page
with overly complex descriptions or language.
He didn't let the dialogue be super cheesy and over the top.
He just let the creepiness of the situation in that particular
building he was describing. He just let it build on the page
and take over your mind and your imagination kind of filled in
the gaps and you get so creeped out when you're reading.
And I love that. I thought it was fantastic.
I did not get that at all with this book.
So that's a shame. Like I keep saying, it's a
fantastic setting, but there's just no atmosphere.
It often felt like particularly creepy elements were being like
listed off like a checklist, Like we need to include this and
this and this and this. Now shove them all in a scene
and they're there, but they never really actively part of
the story and they never really create a creepy atmosphere.
They don't there's no room for your imagination to fill in the
gaps. And that's what I think they get
really scary with horror stories when you let your imagination
fill in the gaps, you know, and I've been reading a lot of
horror books recently. I think that's some that do it
really well and some that do it not so well.
I just think it's a shame. So they all go off to kind of
explore the house a little bit together.
And we poured across its spaces alone and together, sifting
through the ruins. In one room sat terracotta
monks. Heads waited with an ancient
regret, and another dolls with mouths lacquered black, and
another books, or at least the corpses of books.
The volumes were mulch eaten by insects, infested edifices
turgid with egg chambers right from the rot.
Despite the horror of the visuals, they did not smell of
anything but a green, dark wetness.
There's so many elements here that are like they're put in but
but nothing ever comes of them. This author could learn from
like the basics of like Chekhov's gun.
You know, if you show a gun in Act one, it needs to go off in
Act 3. She throws these in here like
the creepy dolls and the terracotta monks.
Nothing really ever comes of them.
They're not mentioned again. It's not really a thing.
The books do get unmentioned, but this is such a brief mention
and set up here that I forgot they were even there.
So we'll get to that though. That's it though.
I'm very into the whole haunted house thing.
I love that. I think there are so many books
that do it better than this one though.
And so Craig de Louise episode Code 13 is one that springs to
mind as being an amazing haunted house.
It's got the whole creepy house changing proportions thing going
on. House of Leaves is another
fantastic choice. I recently just finished reading
horror stuff since finishing this script by Grady Hendrix.
And that's set in kind of like an IKEA knockoff.
And but even that has some really cool bits with like, you
know, the shop floor being haunted and like changing
passageways and the whole creepy setup and kind of elements of
like not being sure where you are.
I think that does a great job with it.
And I just think there's a lot more books that do this kind of
haunted house setting better, which is a shame.
Although in the comments, if anyone can recommend a really
cool haunted house book that has this kind of setting, you know,
and this kind of back story, but it's done better, I'd love to
read it because again, I feel like this has potential, it's
just not realised. So if there are any books out
there that are like this, but with actual, you know, realised
potential, then I'd love to read them.
Cat immediately kills the mood by being catty about, so I guess
she's living up to a name. It isn't too late to head back
to Kyoto or something, You know, Talia has wanted to get married
in a haunted house since she was a kid.
I'm not going to take that away from her.
He swallowed hard between each sentence, face calcified.
Not after what it took to get us here.
I don't want to diminish Talia's wants and dreams here, but
someone has to say it. I tried for a smile.
Which freaking kid grows up wanting to get married in a
haunted house? I mean come on.
I wish more was made of this. I wish we got like some back
story for Talia and found out like why she wanted this in the
1st place. Why it was important to her.
I wish that had some relevance on the plot, but it doesn't.
Even this is never brought up again.
It feels like they just needed a reason to get them to the house.
It's like it's like the reason was made for the book, not that
the characters actually had a real reason.
Does that make sense? The point of them being there is
for the plot, not the point of them being there is because
Talia wanted this and felt like this, and her motivation was
this and this. You know, I thought of the rooms
and the Osseries they'd become the books separating flat bodied
beetles, hollowed, hallowed in their decay.
I think this is all a mistake. Us coming here, us being here, I
think they're going to regret it, that's all.
I would be more creeped out about her worries and her fears
about the house and everything if I wasn't just distracted by
her pettiness. And I just feel like, again, a
lot of this creepiness is unearned.
I know she's heard a whispered voice twice now, but other than
that, there's no like, creepy atmosphere in the house.
I don't really know what she's worried about.
Again, it feels like she's worried for the plot, not
because of something that's happened in the plot.
Like, OK, it's a creepy house filled with history and
potentially made out of bones, but you're a jealous ex who's
hearing voices after having some sort of mental health problem.
I feel less creeped out by a ghost story.
I'm more worried this is like an unhealthy woman who may be out
to get some sort of revenge. But even then, like, I thought
if this is all in her head and she's making this up and she is
having some sort of, like, mental breakdown, I was like
this. That could actually be like a
really cool twist on the story. But it's not even that.
Anyway, then Lynn arrives. Lynn was ahead of his time,
ahead of the curve ahead of us with a Wall Street job, a Wall
Street wife, a brownstone mortgage with a hydroponic herb
garden on a baroque little balcony.
Again, how old are these people? He's brought a crap tonne of
beers in an icebox and everyone is making a big massive pot of
soup or casserole or something in the communal space.
I have questions. Why hasn't he brought his wife?
Is that not just normal to like bring your wife to a wedding?
But OK, I guess not. I guess the author didn't want
to add in another character but she wanted to make him married.
Also, Lynn is the only one I think, who hasn't slept with
everyone in the group, so he's special for that reason.
Cat narrates. If you're going to debauch
history, go big. I feel like this is begging for
teenagers on Tumblr in the early 2000s to quote this.
You know, there's a really weird interaction I don't understand.
Is Faye still in the other room? Said Talia.
Who said Lynn, He was one of your groomsmen.
I had like 16 groomsmen. You can't expect me to remember
them all. It was an event after all.
You made him fly to Iceland? Talia, thin to mouth Lynn draped
an arm around me. I made everyone fly to Iceland.
He's the reason you're here. We're getting married, that's
the whole point. You came.
Oh, Nah. Lynn glanced at me, smoking.
I thought I was just here to see Cat.
I froze long enough for Talia to see and for her mouth away with
condolence. Linda, with his thoroughbred
wife and his Immaculate life, still blind from those late
night Manhattan lights, took no notice at all.
I don't understand if he's joking or not.
It's just really bizarre. He does this thing throughout
the book while like he pretends not to know the others.
And I don't know if that's meant to be like him trying to be
like, Oh, you guys treated Cat badly and when she had a
breakdown and I'm siding with her and I don't I don't, I don't
understand. Lynn seems to just be like
obsessed with Cat for some reason and like protecting her
and making sure she's OK. And he's like, I'm only here for
you. And it's like if you told me
that Lynn and Cat were best friends, I didn't believe that.
But then Cat and phase are meant to be best friends, but we never
see them acting like that. I don't understand any of these
characters or their relationships or the motivations
or and many of their actions. It just it.
It's so bizarre. Either way, Lynn doesn't seem
like a very nice person. None of these people seem like
they're very nice people. None of them seem like they're
friends. Even Faze and Talia don't even
really seem like they like each other that much and they're
apparently getting married. They all seem like they hate
each other. I don't know if we've touched
that yet, but there's some kind of drama between Faze and Philip
where they kind of hate each other.
Lynn hates everyone except Kat. Everyone seems to hate Kat
except for Lynn and Faze. Kat hates Talia, Talia hates
Cat, Cat has resentment towards Philip but he's hot so it's OK.
Philip seems to have weird guilt about dumping Cat.
And then I, I don't know, I don't, I don't care, I don't
care. I don't understand why any of
these people are friends. That's that's the summary I
think I've said before in my other videos, and I'll say it
again, when you're an adult, you don't need to hang around with
people you don't like. It is OK to go off and make
other friends. You don't need to stay with your
same group of childhood friends that you've all had incestuous
relationship with and have all this like drama around.
If you don't like each other, don't be friends.
It's that simple. Phase comes back in, holding
like a little box of presents for everyone.
And I'm here, sorry. Phase's voice came from behind a
soji screen, quickly overshadowed by a shrill of
splintering timber worm wounded fibres coming apart.
The panel to our right shuddered before it fell over.
No fanfare, no collateral damage to the adjunct architecture, not
even a plumbing of grey dust, only an audible smack as it hit
the floor, A sound like a pawn colliding with a cheek.
We froze like hairs. Crap, Said Faze.
Faze stood smiling at us from behind the devastation. 6 feet,
but not quite of shame and self loathing.
He cradled a stack at slim rectangular boxes, each packet
wrapped in guilt bows on everyone.
Sorry. We laughed as a group this time,
and we all sounded drunk on being alive.
Philip got up and walked over to phase, punched the other man
square in his shoulder, half enough to dislodge his cargo.
The gifts stumbled free gloss and gold trimmed ribbons.
Philip caught them all naturally, 1 armed and
effortless Golden Boy to phase as dross.
This Lin muttered with too much Glee, is how super villains are
born. So I thought this was like
trying to set up some sort of like phase feeling lesser than
Philip, but it's just confusingly written.
I wish, I wish there was like more of a relationship developed
between them because like, this does come up later, Faze feeling
lesser than him. And it's like, it's like an
integral part of the story. It's you know what, honestly, it
ends up being like the only relationship in this book that
actually matters. So they open the gifts.
The room laid stream with wrapping paper.
Faze and Talia had bought us gifts, statuettes of deepest
jade, the green of an ancient lake.
They were, each of them shaped like a woman, her head bowed as
though sacralized by grief, her legs faded into a half finished
column. She is being buried alive,
buried by a Lord's hope, buried to hold steady the weight of her
master's manner. Hito Bashira.
I stroked A restless thumb of my effigy's cheek.
There were neither eyes nor mouth on her, no way for her to
scream or see. How'd they know to gather these?
I wondered. The trip was billed as a
surprise. Had Talia known?
Had Philip, our Golden Boy, God, king of small towns, perfect
Philip, who no woman would reject, coyly spoken to Talia
beforehand. Take another drink for how hot
Philip is. Gonna be honest, like a bit of a
creepy gift. Cool.
For those of you unfamiliar, he'd have a share a really cool
little history there. It's like a historic ritual
sacrifice where a person was buried alive under a big
building or a structure as a sort of offering to protect the
building from natural disasters or damage.
So I guess this has like similar links to the back story of the
mansion here with, you know, the woman being buried alive waiting
for her husband to return and then other girls being buried
alive every year. Similar, similar stories.
So to gift a little statue of someone this has been done to,
it's both in theme with the house they're currently in, but
also quite an odd morbid gift for a wedding, right?
But the question is like, how did Faze and Talia know to give
these gifts for the house if they didn't know the Baxter of
the house before they got there? They didn't know what house they
were going to it. It's bizarre.
And and like I say, odd choice to say thank you for coming to
my wedding with a symbol of ritual murder.
I thought these little statues would like play more of a role
in the story. Maybe they would do something
later, They would come back up. They would be relevant later.
They're not. I don't think they're ever
mentioned again. This is like that one and only
thing. I thought the idea of like
either Faisal Talia knowing about the house before they got
there. I thought, you know, hinting at
that. I thought that would be relevant
to the plot. It's not.
I thought that might be relevant to like some sort of character
development or character relationship.
It's not. I don't.
I don't understand the point of this.
It makes no sense. Talia then suggests they play a
game, which the name of it translates to a gathering of 100
ghost stories, which is a game about telling scary stories and
blowing out candles as you do. And as you blow out the last
one, which is often the 100th 1, you can play a smaller version
with fewer candles. And as you blow out the last
one, it's meant to open the doors to the spirits and let
them into our world. Talia has already prepped for
this game by lighting 100 candles in another room.
Not sure when she found the time to do that, but OK.
I thought there might be some relevance to her being the one
to suggest it, but there's not. And I thought like, this would
be really cool. I was like Oh my God, like we're
going to get some like really creepy stuff here, it's going to
be great. No, that doesn't happen.
Before they can play this game and it actually gets
interesting, Lynn decides to start to like, stir up some
trouble by saying to Philip about Talia.
You're still sweet on her, aren't you?
Said Lynn, face cracked into a grin he pushed from the wall.
What? He threw a shrug, hands tossed
up so quickly that his fingers, if they had been birds, would
have broken in the violence. We're all thinking it, the
stupid little figurines that Talia gave us.
This was supposed to be a surprise allotment.
How did she know? Dude, come on, tell me.
That's like the only relevance of the figurines.
That's it. Like they never come back up
again. Philip moves to attack Lynn, but
Cat stops him and says. He glared at me then, and his
eyes were cold, so cold your heart would freeze in that blue.
You're right, he said. Philip, we all knew, had his
universal script. I'm above that.
But you're not above sleeping with someone else's wife.
Lynn collared his own neck with his hands and rubbed his Adam's
apple after Philip had let him go smile.
Enduring is a bad habit. I didn't sleep with Talia, but
that's not what he was saying earlier to Cat, so I don't know.
I'm confused whether he did or not, I don't have a clue.
I don't care, it's not real, none of it's relevant.
I don't care, he then says. His rage began to Slough as he
spoke. I don't know, I lost my temper.
That bum hole does it to me all the time.
I think I can keep my crap together, but something about
Lynn just makes me want to punch a wall.
Yeah, Nah. Own it, mate.
No one makes you violent but yourself.
Calm down. There's more jealousy and
nonsense. It's boring.
Let's skip over it. Even though it's literally the
entire book. Cats are like, is he right?
Do you still like her? And Phillip's like you sound
like you want it to be. And he doesn't even give a
proper answer. We never find out.
He then goes to apologise to Lynn and Kat starts hearing the
creepy voice again. You know the little whisper.
A female voice, solicitous and sweet.
Distantly the brain stem screeched, stress hormones
wailing at my motor system, demanding I run, run now, escape
into the sanctuary of multiplicity, disappear into the
waiting herd. Do anything, so long as I remove
myself from probable harm, Anything.
Just go. Go now.
But my limbs would not concede to their urging.
I want to find this creepy, but the overflowery language just
takes me out of it. This is what I mean about like
Cat's narration not fitting with her voice in the dialogue
writing. My limbs would not concede to
their urging. When your character doesn't talk
like that to other people just sounds pretentious and
ridiculous and it takes me out of it there.
There can be reasons why your character speaks differently in
dialogue to other characters to how they speak in their head.
Maybe they're hiding different aspects of their personality.
Maybe they're trying to protect tend to be one thing when
there's something else, but that's not the case here.
It it's just jarring for no reason.
I want tension. I want creepiness.
I want real fear. I don't want someone to be badly
trying to be PO and failing. Edgar Allan Poe was a master of
horror and creepiness and creating tension and using this
absolutely beautiful descriptive language.
He did that with so much skill. He didn't just pile words in for
the sake of it. You know, every word was chosen
with such intention. He focused so much on making
sure his work had a proper rhythm and that like, it speed
up and slowed down, like the literal prose speed up and
slowed down to create tension and like build suspense in
certain places. This is all just like in
comparison. You know what?
The word pebbled in my throat, cold and dead.
Haltingly, head full of static, I lurched stiff leg towards the
mirror. This was a dream.
This was not a dream, this was a haunting, A possession, and any
second now I cut my throat. The first casualty of the night.
After all, isn't that the foremost commandment in the
scripture of horror? They who are queer, deviant,
tattooed, tongue pierced other, must always die first.
The slurred remnants of my consciousness chewed on the
thought as my eyes stood across the mirror.
My stomach clenched. And this is the first of many
attempts to kind of get matter in this.
So normally I love a book that's self aware of its genres, usual
conventions and actively subverts or critiques them.
I think there's some great examples of this.
So not horror, but look at Benjamin Stevenson's Everyone in
my family has killed someone and everyone on this train is a
suspect. He's also got two more out there
was like a Christmas Story and there's a like a fourth book in
the series, but I've not read those two yet.
But the first two are great. They're about like, this author
who and his main job in life is to write about like murder
mysteries and whodunits. And he writes about the genre
conventions and like, here's how you can write your murder
mystery and that sort of thing. And he finds himself in the
middle of a real murder mystery twice or more with the other
books, I guess. And so he uses his knowledge of
the genre to try and figure out who actually is the murderer and
who actually, like, committed these crimes and so on.
They're great books. They're funny.
They're smart. They're really great at leaning
into and at times subverting expectations at the right times.
Yeah. And I love those books.
And I think even within the horror genre, this can be done
really well. So look at the original Scream
film, which was so revolutionary at the time.
You know, your murderers were literally horror film fans who
were saying, like, these are the conventions of horror films.
These are the rules of horror films.
If you do this, this happens. If you do this, this happens.
And that's why they became, and that's why like the reveal at
the end of the film was so surprising and dramatic.
But at the same time, they've been telling everyone from the
start what they were doing and why they were like explaining
their reasons with, you know, the rules of horror films like
this and this. And it was, it was great films
like Cabin in the Woods and more recently from that, films like
The Final Girls. These take the genre conventions
of horror films and slashes and so on.
And they lean into them and at times subvert them.
And it's really cool. It's really meta.
So my point is this can be really great and really
effective. Similar to this.
If you've ever seen The Woman in Black, yes.
So it was originally a book and then it became a play and it's
also been a film as well. But I'm specifically talking
about the play version and it's absolutely amazing.
Two person play, so damn creepy. Like I was terrified at times.
It was brilliant. And when I went down to London
to see that, I got to do a really cool workshop with the
actors from that play. And the whole acting workshop
was about how to create a suspense on stage, but also, so
like, it's a great set of rules that can translate to writing
and creativity and films and all sorts of stuff.
And it was all about managing the audience's expectations and
knowing when to lean into what they expect and when to subvert
what they expect and how. That's a huge part of creating
tension and suspense and horror in general.
It's something that's always stuck with me.
And so in general, I like the idea of this book getting a
little better and being like, I feel like I'm in a horror film
right now. In horror, X must die first,
therefore I can expect this person to die first and so on.
And like, I feel like this could work, but it's weird that it's
only been introduced now like 25% of the way into the book.
And I don't understand why like Cat's suddenly doing this.
Like we've had nothing before that says Cat has any interest
in horror in film or books or any other medium, so I don't
understand why she's suddenly like, getting met her about it.
If we knew she was a horror fan, it would make sense.
The other characters start doing it too.
Like I think Lynn starts doing it at one point and again, if
maybe he'd been established as a horror fan, it would make sense,
but he's not. So it feels weird that they're
suddenly doing this out of nowhere.
Also, Cat been like, I'm either queer, deviant, tattooed, tongue
pierced or other. And so she's like, that's why
I'm going to die first. But at this point we don't know
that she's any of them. We were like, well, we know
nothing about Cat. Is she queer?
Turns out, yes, she's bisexual, but we don't know this at this
point, so this line makes no sense in context.
Is she deviant? Is she tattooed?
Is she tongue pierced? We don't know any of these
things. As far as we know, she's none of
them. It's bizarre.
It's really bizarre. It's just, it's done so poorly.
I think if you want to get meta, you need a context for it to get
meta. In another example.
So I just finished the book How to Survive a Horror Story by
Mallory Arnold and it was fine. It was.
I'm not sure if I liked it all that much that it had its ups
and downs. I didn't.
The ending was very good. Actually, the ending kind of
made me rate a bit higher than I was going to, but I thought it
was really cool. And the premise of it is this
famous horror writer has died, and he's collected a bunch of
other horror writers all in his mansion for, like, the reading
of a will. And he's basically said, OK,
like, you will inherit my house, my entire fortune, my
everything, if you can get out of this house.
And to get out of this house, you have to solve a bunch of
riddles. You have to go through all these
different like horror tropes, essentially.
And so again, it's quite meta. But again, that makes sense
because you've got the setup that the man setting this up is
a horror writer. The people living through this
are horror writers. They know the genre, they know
the conventions, so they know what to expect and what to not
expect and so on. And that's how it can be like
really good when you get meta in this.
We never get any inkling that any of them are horror fans in
any way. They they don't read horror
books, they don't watch horror films.
They just suddenly start getting meta for no reason.
I'm just like, I need some context for the metanus of it
all. I need a reason for you to start
talking about horror films. You know, the average person
doesn't do that. So imagine I went to the shop
one day and I was like, well, you know, in a crime book,
someone would burst through the doors right now and we'd all be
held hostage. Like that would be really weird
for me to do because nothing prompted that.
I just went to the shop on a normal day.
Now, if I was like a known crime author and then I saw this was
shady and this was shady and this was shady.
And I was like, Oh my God. Like in my genre that I write
and I know and I live, this is what happens in crime books.
And I'm seeing a clue here and I'm seeing a clue there.
It might be logical for me to
say, oh God, in a crime book, this is what might happen next.
But in your average day-to-day existence, you don't do that.
You don't say that. So in a book, when you want to
get metal like that, you need to set it up.
You need to have a reason why the characters are talking like
that, and you need something to actually set them off, to draw
those comparisons and so on. And I've been talking about this
for too long. The point is, it annoyed me.
It really annoyed me. So Talia comes in to check on
Cat and says she was staring at the wall and Cat says was I?
And then Talia snaps back with that slimming of her mouth
again, and when she spoke it wasn't with her satin Polish,
bitterness coursing up her tone. You know we don't have to like
each other, but you don't have to be a bitch.
Bitch is the kind of word that reads like a gunshot, rings like
a punch. I snapped straight at the sound.
The word clarified again, distant warm candle glow and
Talia's glacial stare. What is your problem with me?
I mean, besides the one I already know.
Honestly, I'm still team Talia here.
Kate's like, did you actually mean it when you asked if I was
OK? And then it gets all weird
between them. F me, shoot and score.
That's what I get for trying to be nice to you.
That's what you get for being fake.
That's Can't Sing, That's Talia. What do you want from me?
Her voice brittled. I'm trying for Faze.
I don't like you, and I don't think I'm a bum hole for it.
You tried to break us up, but you know what?
I'm working on that. I would trade a lot of money for
you to not be here, but this is where we are effing meet me
halfway. If it helps, I wish you weren't
here either. I hope this house eats you,
Talia. Her charity only good for so
much. I hope the same about you.
So so far Cat is an awful person.
I am completely team Talia here. I don't get why Cat is so
horrible to Talia. We never find out why she
dislikes her so much. We never see Talia really doing
anything that warrants Cat to dislike her.
It's just, you know what awful to chapter 4 now, and I'd really
like some more creepiness here instead of petty fighting and
jealousy between immature people of unknown age.
But sadly, we don't get it. This chapter starts with them
playing the candle game and telling stories in a room full
of candles. You know, dark room, creepy
candlelight, creepy stories. There's also a bunch of creepy
dolls in there. As the game is progressing,
they're slowly blowing out the candles, so this could be really
damn cool. Except all the interesting stuff
up and off page, just like between the chapters, we're not
showing it. All the stuff that could
actually build atmosphere and tension and maybe tell us
something really cool about the characters and their backstories
and their motivations. All of it happens off page.
We don't see any of it. We are now 42% of the way into
the book and it's honestly kind of boring so far.
We killed a candle with every story until there was one last
flickering survivor. It's light twitched through the
Soji screen. The walls here frothed with
waves and rough ocean through its lambent waters, the paint
glittering as though tinctured with crushed sapphire.
Woodblock octopi watched as incuriously and at this point I
was like I don't want to read this book anymore.
This is a pet hate of mine but I'm sorry if you already heard
me rant about this a million times in videos.
It's not octopi. Octopi is wrong.
It is octopuses as the plural. You can also use the archaic
octopods if you want, but the correct modern plural is
octopuses. Octopi never has and never will
be correct. Stop saying octopi.
And it's not just me that like talks about this right?
My favourite ever book, The Soul of an Octopus by Sy Montgomery.
Literally in her the opening page she says I knew a little
about octopuses. Not even that the scientifically
correct plural is not octopi, as I'd always believed.
It turns out you can't put a Latin ending I on a word derived
from Greek, such as octopus. Octopuses, not octopi.
Where was her editor annoyed me. This is why I will never like
this book. I can forgive many a thing.
I can forgive annoying characters and bad storytelling
and flowery writing. But I cannot forgive the wrong
use of the plural of octopus. So Kat says she's going to tell
the like, sorry, all that aside, do you see what I mean?
That was all we got for setting up the atmosphere and the game
and everything. And like, that game could have
been so interesting. There could have been so much to
it, and that's all we got. It's annoying as hell.
Kat says she's going to tell the very last story, Story 100.
But first, blah, blah, blah, she's drinking beer.
Cool. Lynn's drinking plum wine.
My teeth were just sugar now. Third, with so much plaque, I
couldn't stop working my tongue over them.
Over and over, like a horse, like a dog that had gotten into
a bag of toffee. Back forth, back forth.
I've got a story again, this sort of imagery with the teeth,
something that's repeated throughout the whole book, and
it could be super creepy and uncomfortable.
I hate teeth. They gross me out.
But again, I feel like this is just a bit overwritten.
I don't need more than one simile, I don't need like this,
like this, like this, it's too much.
Face spoke up first, Sometimes he still remembered how to be a
best friend. You don't have to.
You've had a rough night, just suddenly enjoy how she had a
rough night. When was she having a rough
night? Because she was mean to Talia,
that means she's had a rough night.
Why they suddenly babying her? This makes no sense.
I'm so confused. And it's not that I've missed
out stuff and like just not told you about stuff that's happened,
I've told you at all. Kat is now very drunk but she
brags about having the bestest ever ghost and tells Linda and
puts her finger to his mouth like a patronising dog owner.
She's sloppy and Phase and Talia try to get a drink water but
cats too busy being horrible. I've known phase.
I strangled the rest of the sentence and sat down again, a
knot of acid sizzling just under where my ribs fought from my
sternum. Like Chapel doors or a wishbone.
Oh God, sorry, I just realised how gross this is.
I've no face since before the thought of effing him was a wet
spot in your crotch. I got damn vomit. 2 fingers
bolted over my lips. Just let me tell my story.
It's my drunk voice and but yeah, please just tell you a
story. Seriously.
Like I want something scary in a horror book, not a bunch of
adult children bickering. I hope to hell in that moment
that she was listening. Half because I was tired of
being unloved, being pitied like a form panting its last handful
of breaths into a ditch because I hoped it was all true.
A little bit of magic. Even if it was hungry, even if
it was a house with rotting bones and a heart made of dead
girls. Ghost.
I'd give it everything it wanted just for scraps.
Some unabridged attention, some love, even if it was from a
corpse with blackened teeth. Anything to feel alive right
now. Again, I really want to like
this. Like I do feel like this could
have been such a great depiction of depression and loneliness and
how you know she she feels so lonely and excluded from her
friend she reaches out to like a potential ghost for attention.
Like, that could have been so amazingly creepy, but Kat is
just so horrible and unsympathetic that I'm really
struggling to care about her all Once Upon a time I repeated.
Once Upon a time there was a house in the middle of a forest,
and it stood silently until a group of honey somethings barged
through the door looking for ghosts.
Philip and Faze gave each other high fives.
They their dinner. They drank their beer, they
played a game to call it the dead from their rest.
As I said, they didn't have to. The house already knew they were
there. I saw it backwards, weight
balanced on the heels of my palms.
Watch that one fly as it wiggled from a crack in the ceramic
boy's skull and buzzed to another doll, squeezing through
its black lipped mouth. I thought I could hear its feet
scratching the lacquer. Lincol on 1st, did you see
something? A cow?
I whispered, it should have sounded like a joke, something
stupid, but a wind frizzened through the cracks in the soji
and it was as if the manner was laughing at me.
I was sure it's voice dripping with termites, A pale little
bride with a smile full of ink. Right on cue all the lights went
out. So again, this could have been
great, but there was just no tension built for me before any
of this. I know it's a short book, but I
just wanted more. You can do so much in just a
short few pages with building tension.
And also just this game in general.
Like playing this game could have been a really great
opportunity for us to learn about the characters from the
stories they chose to tell and how they reacted to each other's
stories. Like, you know, a bit like
haunted but but not, you know, like each of the characters in
the theatre has their own story to tell and they do like
performance and it tells us something about their back story
and also how they see themselves and the world and how they ended
up there and so on. We could have had something like
that here, but like, you know, shorter but with just as much
impact. So the author could have like
built up this tension slowly as we see each person getting more
and more creeped out as more and more stories are told.
And slowly as each candle is blown out and the room gets
darker and darker. Cat gets drunker and drunker
slowly. And so we see her becoming a
more and more unreliable narrator.
And again, even her portrayal of like being drunk, I feel doesn't
work for me because like, she's there apparently slurring her
words and like this. And like, that's kind of clear
in her dialogue. But then when she's narrating
and she's like, yes. And then the wind.
But I don't like when I'm reading a drunk, unreliable
narrator, I want even their narration to seem drunk.
So I'm getting that they're unreliable and they're not
really aware what's going on. And I want to feel that
disorientation when I'm reading. What I want to see is like the
slow build up through like each story.
You know, we could could have learned about what drives each
character. We could have learned about what
each of them thinks is the scariest thing.
And we actually vaguely learn later that each of these
characters has like a really cool background.
Like each one's from a completely different country and
culture and all this sort of thing.
And they all came together in like a different place and
they're all different and like races and ethnicities.
So it could have been a really cool opportunity to be like, OK,
well, like this person's from here, let's have them tell a
ghost story or like something from like their cultures
mythology. This person's from here.
So we could have a ghost story from this culture.
This person's from here, we could have a ghost story from
this culture. Even something like that could
have been so damn good. Let's say either Faisal Talia is
having like worries about getting married or something.
Maybe they're ghost stories that they tell, could have hinted
towards that and like whatever insecurities they have.
If you want to build up the insecurities that Fais has
towards Philip, you could have had like some ghost story about
like some little man getting revenge on the big guy.
Do you know what I mean? Like we could have learned so
much about the characters and their motivation from the story.
They chose to tell, but instead we don't know what any of it is,
none of it's told and it's just such a waste.
It's a real shame. Anyway, now they're apparently
scared because they think Cat, who's drunk, saw something and
apparently that means they're all scared now.
And so they all grab their phones for light and for some
reason Talia goes running off. We never really found out why
but she goes running off, Faiz and Philip full of her.
But Lin and Cat stay behind. Lin says he doesn't care about
the others or what happens to them.
And then the book tries to get Metro again, like for no reason
with no build up he knows. Hold his head against my temple.
Exhaled Cat. This is literally the part where
the supporting cast dies horribly.
You're bisexual. I'm the Comic Relief.
It's going to be one of us. But Philip's white, he'll be
fine. Faze is the hero, so he won't
die in the first effing act. And Talia, well, maybe Talia's
thoroughly effed, but I don't care about her, he said.
It's so casually, like it was the easiest line in the
universe. That's nice.
It also feels like a really weird, like, info dump of like,
cat sexuality in here. It feels kind of pointless and
like I'm all about, like, having representation in books.
We do generally need more queer characters in literature and I
think that's great. I just don't understand like the
choice to make her queer when it has no impact on this.
I just, I don't know, her only relationships in this book are
with men. The only complications in this
friendship are because she's had relationships with men.
The fact like she's bisexual doesn't come into this at all.
And it feels like an odd thing to throw in just to try and like
maybe make this a bit more meta and be like, queer characters
die first so you expect her to die first or something like
that. I don't, I don't know.
I don't know what the author was thinking but I feel like it
doesn't work in general. I think all of this could have
been handled so much better. Anyway, Talia appears back out
of nowhere and she says she's found something and then Phase
and Philip reappear too. Again, all the interesting stuff
happens off page while we just have to sit and listen to their
petty drama. Cat starts to freak out because
she thinks doors and corridors have appeared where they weren't
there before. Again, this whole creepy house
changing thing is one of my favourite like creepy bits of
fiction. It really gets to me.
Episode 13 House of Leaves both did it brilliantly and I love
that even Horror Story did it a little bit as well.
I just didn't care that much here.
It just happened out of nowhere with no build up and even Oh my
God Marcus Cluers we used to live here.
That does it really well as well.
So damn creepy that book. Loved that.
Although I feel like I wanted more from it.
It ended. I was like no give me more.
They all handled the whole changing house horror so much
better than this random line. Anyway, Cat's like oh that
appeared out of nowhere and then that's as tense as it ever gets.
And then Talia, Phase and Philip all go running down this
apparently newly appeared hallway, and cats like don't go
down there, but then they do anyway.
The words came together, but I swallowed them stillborn.
It was too esoteric, too ambiguous to get across.
Maybe I'd been wrong, but if I wasn't, I got up Lin bellowing
protests and staggered after the clacker, sandals on wood, half
blind as I followed my Dante's into damnation.
On to chapter 5. We're travelling through the
house, we could have had some really cool stuff with like the
house changing and moving and her not being sure where she is
and feeling really like, disoriented, but instead that
all happens off page between the chapters and just suddenly
they're on a bridge. Kat's still drunk.
She starts going across a bridge that's across a garden.
Lynn's trying to tell her not to go.
The writing's kind of confusing here and it's all a bit all over
the place, but from what I can tell, Kat now thinks the others
are in danger. She implies she needs to save
them. Because they were there for me
when you weren't. I blotted tears from my eyes,
slowing thought for a moment on the value of pointing out what
had happened as the world smeared into a sodium haze.
Somehow Lynn had taken no notice of the spatial weirdness.
So I said nothing. We were effed, clearly, might as
well die without any bad blood. They kept me going, they got me
to come out of the house. They made me feel normal.
Well, if you just called and so, and now I'm confused.
Apparently like they all hate her because she said she didn't
want Faze and Talia to be together.
But then apparently like they're all weird about her because she
had this breakdown. But apparently they were there
for her when she had the breakdown, which is why they're
friends. But then like Lindsay and the
one who's always been there for her, but then he abandoned her
during her breakdown, but now he's back and he's the one who
likes and there's no consistency.
I do not understand any of this. The characters are so poorly
written for a book that's all about their drama.
It's very confusing. So she complaints that Lynn
wasn't there for her and didn't even tell her that he got
married. And he's like, I didn't think
you'd want to know, 'cause you're unhappy.
Again, I think there's potential in how these characters respond
to someone with mental health issues.
That could be an interesting part of the story.
That could be an interesting part.
Like to link it to the horror elements in this.
But none of it's handled well and none of it's interesting.
None of it's well executed. Lynn apologises.
And Cat says you came back and that's what's important.
We're friends again. I'm still sorry, Lynn said,
threading his fingers with mine. It, it's OK, you're here now,
but we gotta go now. This time, Lynn didn't argue.
And that's it, That's all their friendship drama resolved
quickly. Done like that, and it's never
brought up again. It never has any consequences.
That's it. Then again, all the action
happens off page and the next sentence is literally by the
time we found them, Talia was all dressed up in someone else's
wedding clothes. So we've gone from zero to 102
pages again at this point. I appreciate the repetition of
the teeth imagery. This is cool.
Against the Vermilion of the overcoat, Talia's skin seemed
depthless. Not brown, but black as ink on
teeth. Like I say, I like this motif
throughout the book, it's just not always as creepy as I want
it to be, but I appreciate it being there nonetheless.
It's one of the few things I do like about the book where the F
Lynn wasn't smiling for once. No attempt to defuse, disarm.
You know what doesn't effing matter?
You know this probably belong to a dead person, right?
The hell is wrong with you? Face trotted out from a side
room, wearing execution as blacks, a regular suit, slightly
rumpled bow tie and everything. If you're going to be a bum
hole, get out. Sorry.
Lynn said, not sounding like he was at all, just pointing out
the obvious. Faze pinched his brow.
You 2 are drunk idiots at this point.
I was so confused. I was like, I don't know if Lynn
and Kat are just drunk imagining all the creepy stuff and like,
these guys are trying to like, actually get married and they're
like, oh, this is all weird. Or if it's all really happening.
I didn't know. And I was like, that kind of
added to like, the creepiness of it all.
But like, it's weird because like, the author seems kind of
aware of all of this confusion, but instead of writing it well,
she just kind of makes it a plot point.
Are you talking about the ghost girl?
Philip circled around from behind me, cupped me below the
arms and lifted me straight up, propped me against an alcove
where vase blooming with dead flowers sat.
The petals crumbled to ashes as they leaned back.
The air tasted like honey had a chewiness to it.
No one's seen her, don't worry. No, not like honey, I corrected
myself. It was sinewy, sweet as a knot
of tendon after you'd gnawed on it for minutes.
A faintly corrupt delight. We need to go after the
ceremony, said Philip. We need to go, I said again.
It'll be fine. Spoken like a true white guy.
Lynn rolled a frustrated noise in his throat.
Entirely animal. Ahead of us, Faiz and Talia
joined shy hands in front of an altar to the faded dead, the
small gods of whatever still lived in the eaves.
You could feel the house pulling a breast, You could feel its
eyes. I could.
Ignoring everything Kat said, how does any of this seem like a
good idea? Even assuming it's all just the
delusions of an incredibly drunk mind, this is just plain weird.
How the F does any of this make sense to you people?
And like I say, I love a bit of metafiction, but this just all
falls flat for me. Talia tells Lynn to go away
because no one wants him here except Cat, and Cat says fine,
we're leaving. And then phase is like new cat
stay. We just want Lynn to go, but
then Talia is like, no, they can both go.
And I'm like, can I just please be the one to go because I don't
want to read any more of this. And it's awful.
They are all acting like children on the playground.
Then out of nowhere things just get crazy.
It it's so weird how they all just like accept this is a
creepy horror situation and go on with go along with it without
like questioning anything. I, I don't know, I don't know.
Cat and Lynn turn to leave, but then Lynn just changes his mind
at the last minute. And out of nowhere, for no
reason, with no prompting because they just stood there
doing nothing, Lynn lunges at Talia, grabs her veil, tears her
veil, and then suddenly there's a reveal that oh, that's not
Talia after all, it's a demon. I don't know if this is like a
demon that's possessed Talia or possessed her dress or replaced
her. I don't know what, it's not
clear, but suddenly Talia's gone.
It's a demon. She hid nothing this time, the
thing beneath Talia's veil. My girl from the mirror.
There wasn't a face to remember, because there wasn't a face to
find. Black hair tendriled across
contourless meat, no features to be seen, only suggestions, only
smooth flesh. And that grinning mouth, those
red lips stretched as far as they go.
Black teeth and the smell of ink.
As I gawked, Talia's kimono bled itself of colour, pinks and
golds running from every layer, pouring into the dust at her
feet. So all was left was white, the
colour of expensive chalk and boneless to cook in the sun.
The Oha Guru Batari began to laugh before any of us could
think to scream. This is actually a part that I
like this description, so I will say that now.
So again, if you're not familiar Oha Guru Batari, they are these
spirits which appear as like beautiful women in wedding
dresses, have like blank faces except giant mouths with
blackened teeth. Super creepy.
It makes sense with the name of the book, you know?
It's why the book has its name. Makes sense for the teeth
imagery throughout the book. That's all really cool.
They're known for having a creepy laugh and being known to
lure young men in. I love this inclusion.
I think it's a really creepy character.
Really good to bring this element of like Japanese
folklore into this. I think it's great.
I think this description of the demon thing basically creepy as
hell. Love that.
I just wish there'd been more build up to the reveal.
They were just stood around and they're like you leave.
No, you leave. No, you leave.
Oh, I'm going to grab the veil. Oh, there's a demon now.
There was no build up. It's all just rushed and there's
no tension. There's no like, we don't
understand the motivation for anyone.
We don't really understand how any of this has happened.
It's just, I don't know. I don't know.
It's just like, oh, petty drama one minute.
Oh, and now he is a demon and we're meant to find it scary and
I don't. Chapter 6.
And everyone's scared now. The demons that were painted on
the walls and the room dividers now all seem to come to life and
they turn to face them with mocking expressions.
This is creepy as hell. I love that.
I think this is a really cool moment.
And we get these like, cool creepy descriptions for like,
you know, a little tiny bit, but instead of it being used to
like, build attention and like, build fear and make it a really
horrifying moment, it's all ruined because told you she was
probably going to be possessed and everything was going to
hell. Lynn said, more satisfied,
maybe, than anyone had the right to be.
No, he didn't. But I'm glad we've got clarity
now that she's actually been possessed and that's what's
happened, because it wasn't clear before.
The dead girls are singing Talia's Place, Faze's changeling
bride. Why?
As a tongue of wax, let her laugh to ebb to a giggle, low
and coquettish. Demurely, she raised her sleeve
to her mouth, her chin ducked and moved towards each of her
steps, causing a scramble back of his.
He whimpered, head lolling. Yeah, I love this description of
her, I think it's brilliant. Again, I just wish it had more
impact. Because we don't really care
about Talia at this point. We don't really know what's
happened to her, We don't know really why she's been possessed.
I mean, I guess she was the bride, so that kind of makes
sense, but there's no build up to it.
If anything, we thought Cat was the one being haunted, but now
she's taking Talia. I don't know, we kind of don't
care. This is a really creepy
description that is wasted on utterly boring book with
horrible characters that we don't care about.
I think if we'd seen more of her and Faye's being a happy couple
too, we'd care about it more and it would have more impact
because we'd be like Oh no, this wonderful happy couples being
split up by this like demon possessing the bride.
What a shame. But as it is, we don't care.
We don't give a damn. So the Oha guru Batari starts to
say the Japanese phrase that Cat's been hearing for the whole
book. And this time Cat translates it
to everyone and says it's from a poem.
Then a memory filled my mouth. If I were one that had a heart,
that would cast you aside and turn to someone else.
Then waves would rise above the Pines of Suno Matsu Mountain.
That's the poem, the thing she keeps repeating.
It's part of the poem. I said she's still waiting for
her husband to be after all these years.
She's hanging on to the hope he's coming home.
That, or she's saying it ironically, declared Lynn.
Which I can tell you now worries me because that sounds like the
recipe for an angry, effing ghost.
He paused. Or an angry ghost effing.
I find the attempts of humour in this alongside the creepiness
like it doesn't work for me. It's just jarring again, like
because I neither find it funny nor creepy.
Faze finally decides to ask the spirit where Talia is, and to
give her back. I mean, took him long enough,
really. Faze hit her his first bore into
her sternum through it. But there was no crunch, no wet
pop of bone concaving, no sound to speak of, nothing but
softness, the oh, her guru's body bending into the impact,
swallowing his arm to the elbow. For a moment I thought she might
have a mouth buried in the mound of white silt that we were a
sliver of a breath away from, hearing Faze scream self bloody.
Again, this could be really creepy and if I cared about the
characters it might have an impact on me.
But I don't, so it doesn't. And then the demon just
vanishes. The painted demons all around
them, they stay and they're still watching them.
Again, this would be creepy, but like, there's no tension,
they're just forgotten about. And you know what?
They're never mentioned again after this scene.
They don't do anything, they don't have any impact.
There's no point to them. I don't know.
Even the descriptions of the demons here are so overwritten
with simile, simile, simile, simile that you don't feel
creeped out by it and you should.
Again, so much potential that's just wasted.
Lynn again is like, we need to leave.
And then Philip's like, no, we need to stay and find Talia.
And then Faze cries on the floor and Cat finally drinks water
because, you know, she's drunk. Of course, Cat uses this moment
to tell us how hot Philip is again, because it's all she
cares about. Philip, for all of his easy
swagger, knew the trick of standing smaller, being shorter.
Most days you couldn't tell he was 6 foot three, an artist
rendition of the American Dream, Broad shoulders, muscled thighs,
a ruggedy Neolithic jaw. But now he'd given that up,
exchanged his approachability for something more contentious,
A predatory stillness that drove a scream through the medulla
oblongata. We get it, you're into him.
Please give us a break. Go ahead and stay, I guess.
But this is when the murder star, you know, this is when the
murder star. Lynn's voice cracked twice
through the sentence. He removed his glasses, wiped
them along the hem of his shirt. We're going to die here.
So even though Cat started off being the voice of the meta
narrative, now it's Lynn for some reason again, we don't know
why he doesn't have a back story of, like, being into horror
books or films or being a writer or reading a lot of stuff.
Like none of that. It just started Cat.
Now it's Lynn because I guess someone has to because the
author fancied it, but the characters have no motivation.
It's silly. Lynn then just starts singing
out of nowhere. Gonna die, gonna die, gonna die.
La La la, we're all gonna die because they're dead or lonely
in the dark and they all miss the sun.
So apparently he's insane now. I think that's what I meant to
believe. It's just come out of nowhere
over 3 pages, just ramped up quickly.
It's bizarre. Again, it has no impact.
It's also rushed. Phase also decides to jump in on
the whole meta thing and says there's a library in the house,
so there must be a book with information at this point.
In my original script, I said this would have more impact if,
one, we'd seen a library before because, you know, Chekhov's
gone. And two, we hadn't been told the
house was decaying with holes in the ceiling because if there are
books, do we really think they're in good enough condition
to read and give information about?
And three, why would he suddenly get meta like this when Phase
has never referenced horror films or stories or stuff
before? Or I don't know, why is he doing
it now? Turns out, oh, I was wrong.
We did have that one mention of books earlier and something
about rotting, but like it wasn't a library, but it was
like, oh, there's some books in this room.
You know what I mean? I don't care.
I really don't care. Can you tell how much I just
like this book? You know, it's so funny.
Few books have got me as like annoyed to review as this one.
It's it's a lot when I've reviewed bad books before, like
Haunting Adeline, like Zodiac Academy, like they're just bad.
The premise isn't well thought out.
The characters are annoying the setting.
Annoying. The actions are problematic,
there's just not really much to them.
There's nothing redeeming about them.
So like, they're bad, but then you're like okay, cool, throw
out the book, whatever. This I think annoys me so much
more because and want to like it.
I feel like the story has so much potential, the premise has
so much potential, the setting has so much potential, the demon
has so much potential. Like this would be a book that I
would love if it was just well written with a good plot and
good characters. And I want character
development. I want a ghost story that ties
into the characters and their story and their journey and we
don't get any of it. And I think that's why it's
frustrating me, because there's potential here that's just left
unfulfilled. Dude, that's just fiction.
In real life, people don't just leave around solutions like like
it's some kind of video game. I said we have to go.
I'm sorry, I'm sorry about Talia, but we're going to need
to leave. It's too late.
We should go. We should go.
We need to go. You need help.
It's Kat saying this. Kat was the one who was like
getting meta 1st and being like in horror films, I'd be the
first to die, blah, blah, blah. You can't go from being the
voice of meta to suddenly trying to be the voice of reason and
logic. It doesn't make any sense.
None of these characters are consistent in any way.
Philip suggests Cat and Lynn, you leave Faze and me will stay
and find Talia. And then Faze is like, no, you
can't go. We all have to stick together
for God knows what reason. I don't know why they don't just
like call someone for help. They've all got phones that
they've been using as tortures. So why don't they just like be
like, hey, we're in a creepy old house, our friends gone missing,
come help us please. I don't know why they don't do
that. It's never explained.
Then there's just a lot of sitting around and talking about
what they could do instead of actually doing anything.
That's the annoying thing about this book.
There's a lot of sitting around and talking and arguing and
being petty, and then they do something off page and then we
watch them sit around and talk and be petty and then they do
something off page and then they sit around and talk and be petty
again and again. I think that's really annoying.
Cat notices that Faze's eyes are weird and she narrates Read 100
books on heart. So she's the she's the voice of
Metro again for some reason. OK, this has happened.
I guess we've switched back. Read 100 books on Horror and
you'll find that every last one possesses at least one mention
of someone's eyes gone strange, unfocused and unsettling to
witness. I'd always thought it sounded
kitschy, hammy, a lazy trope implanted into the creative
subconscious by sub par mentors. Pure Hollywood dross.
But the look tenanting phase eyes remedied those
preconceptions. All the lights were on.
All the ghosts were home too. It wasn't the face of a killer
or the face of a suicide, but someone too exhausted to be
either, which was somehow all the worse.
When you're tired enough, you'll do anything for sleep.
It's just so inconsistent as like, again, this would have
more impact if we'd known that Kat, for example, liked reading
horror books, like that line, read 100 books on horror and
you'll find that would have so much more impact and make so
much more sense for her to say. If we knew that in her life,
she'd read 100 horror books. Like maybe she's a horror
author. Maybe she studied horror
literature at university. Maybe she just carries a horror
book around with her all the time.
And we could have a thing where like, you know, when she's
alone, she's reading it in the house or like we see her slip it
into her bag when Philip gets there or something like that.
Like we could have just had a small thing of like knowing she
likes to read horror books or maybe she references them
sometimes. And she could have been like
when she first allowed, she could be like, oh, I read a book
about this where blah blah blah happened and something, anything
to let us know she reads horror books.
Because otherwise, why would she bring this up?
Why would she say this? It bothers me.
Similarly, out of nowhere, Phase says we have to do the ritual.
Phase said no variation in intonation.
What? The Hitabashari ritual.
We have to do it. It'll give Talia back.
I know it. Len's voice spiked.
We're not bringing someone to get your effing girlfriend back.
Where has this come from? Where's any of this come from?
When they were given the statues, Kat mentioned what
Hitabashari was, but they never discussed it between them as a
group. There's nothing that says Faze
knows what this is. There's nothing linking it
necessarily to the house. There's the back story of like
the girls being buried every year, but it's never called
that. It's I, I don't know.
I don't know. This doesn't make sense.
It doesn't tie back in what we've seen in a cohesive way.
It whatever, OK. And again, Phase isn't supposed
to know anything about the history of its house or its
history before they got there. Maybe he did because of the
little figurines that him and Talia got everyone.
Still, why would he know about it?
Why would he know what it is? We haven't been told he knows
anything about that or its history or whatever.
I I don't understand. And OK, let's say, let's say
Phase doesn't know the history of the house.
He knew it before they got there, and that's why they
decided to give the figurines to everyone and so on.
In in the story with the history of the house the girls buried to
keep the original ghost company, right?
That's the reason for in the story, in the original myths of
Hita Bashari, they're basically human sacrifices to protect a
building or protect a structure of some kind.
OK. It's meant to be like, hey,
we're giving you this, you protect the building, please.
How the hell, knowing those two things, would he jump to if we
give you a sacrifice, you'll give our possessed friend back.
It's not logical. It doesn't make any sense.
I hate this book, He goes on to say the whole logic out the
window. I'll be the sacrifice.
She's my fiance. I'll I'll be the one to do it.
Phase sinambulated through phases.
Annunciation gone. The crispness of his voice
diluted by misery. Really, he's sinambulated.
You can just say sleepwalk. You couldn't say he was slurring
his words a bit. You couldn't have said like he
was just, I don't know anything. Anything simpler, anything that
would have the same effect but be more accessible to the
average reader. Anything that would be a little
bit more visual. You know what I mean?
Anything that could make us really hear his words.
I this is what I mean about it being overwritten.
I feel like she's choosing big words over the right words
sometimes. Sometimes less is more.
Again, this doesn't make sense with what we know about like the
history of the house. In the history of the house, to
appease the original ghost, they buried young women so they could
be her friend and keep her company.
Why would Faze think that he like sacrificing him would be
what she want? Maybe he could argue the
original bride ghost wanted a husband.
I'm due to be a husband. Sacrifice me and maybe she'll
let Talia go. Maybe that will appease her and
she'll stop haunting this. Maybe she'll finally leave if
you do that. If he said that, that might make
sense, but that is never once spoken.
Not at all. Instead he's just like Oh yeah I
love Talia and if we give her anyone they'll give her back so
kill me because I love her. Like none of this makes sense.
So they are just sit around arguing instead of actually
doing anything and then out of nowhere Faze decides to be nasty
to Cat. I thought they were meant to be
best friends. We've seen nothing of them
acting like best friends. We've seen like one basic
interaction with them where like Faze vaguely stuck up for Cat
vaguely, and now the next like big interaction they have is
this like you can't just say Oh my best friends and then like
never have them interact or do anything and then suddenly have
like, oh, he's nasty out of nowhere.
You don't understand any of this.
He's backed choppily, kneeling in tears again, the pitch of his
voice going stratospheric towards the end.
The yokai applauded. Of course they'd love it.
You've never had a proper relationship.
You know what it's like to need someone to love, someone to, to
give a crap you don't know because you're always too busy
running away to whatever new effing thing you have waiting.
You don't understand, you never. These people all hate each
other, don't they? It's, this is just a book about
toxic friendships. It's not a horror book, it's
just annoying people doing horrible things to each other.
He's like blah blah blah, let's go get the book from the
library. And then Cat's like, do we even
know there's a book there? I heard myself say, of course
there is. We saw them when we got in this
place. This place is rotten with books.
There were libraries everywhere. We're going to have answers
there. I know.
And like I say, I was so confused by this.
I actually like flip back to see if books had been mentioned
anywhere else. And like I said, there was that
one small mention of in another room, books, or at least corpses
of books, the volumes of mulch eaten by insects.
That's not libraries everywhere, that's not even books.
That's like corpses of books. Like it said, no mention of
libraries. It's just a room with some
rotten books. I, I don't care anyway.
Then there's a lot of swearing, like every other word, and I'm
not going to repeat it. Lynn still wants to leave.
Nothing's changed there. Cat thinks they shouldn't split
up. Philip decides they need to find
the library library that's appeared out of nowhere, so they
go to this previously non existent library.
And in this chapter, it wasn't so much a library as much as it
was an archive of corpses. Manuscripts chewed up by the
sentries edges went out by insects.
They're leather fested with mould, with mushrooms, wide
brimmed with fluting bodies, tiered like cheap apartments and
blanched by the half light. Some could barely be labelled as
books anymore. They're paper digested, then
regurgitated as building material.
There were so many of them. Wasps nests, almost intestinal
in luck, built atop the remains of a terrarium, it's inhabitants
long dead. So this is just the room with
writing books that was mentioned earlier.
It's not a library. It's not many libraries.
I OK, first thinks he finds a book and he tells them
everything. But then everyone else is like
what he says. The book says that this place is
consecrated to the four kings, and each of them requires a
different sacrifice. And the four kings apparently
requires sacrifices of blood, bone, semen and an organ.
I don't know where he gets this from.
He's not even like reading a book.
He's just like looking at these like, disintegrated pages.
I OK Phez is like, I'll do it. I'll cut my heart out for Talia
because he doesn't want to go on without her.
And so Cat slaps him and says you're not cutting your effing
heart out. What the effing F do you think
this is an effing Shakespeare tragedy or some effing crap like
this? We're not effing letting you.
And then she cuts off. Do you see what I mean about
like the flowery language next to this is just jarring.
There's more swearing followed by drink, guys, more
descriptions of how hot Philip is.
Whoa, guys. Wonder Boy Philip Glossy is the
cover of Forbes $100. Clean fade and a jawline to
slice open your heart slid between us.
You could always count on Philip to save the day.
Forget the initial argument. He had room to play heroes.
Stop it. I don't care.
How many more times do you want to compare him to a magazine
cover? And I'm done with this.
Cat kicks Philip like a child. And then in the next room,
apparently the OHA guru Batari appears again and starts
laughing. That could be creepy, but again,
no. Chapter 8 opens and apparently
off page something creepy happened that we never get to
see. I don't know.
And now Phase has again off page.
All the action happens off page. Phase has pulled out his own
tooth and tried to offer the house blood and semen.
Lovely. I mean, I'm glad that wasn't on
page, but here we go. All this stuff like in pulling
his tooth out on whatever, that would be so much more grotesque
if it did happen on page. Like that is something that I
would find really uncomfortable because I I already have issues
with teeth. Like seeing that I would, oh, I
would be so uncomfortable. I would be so creeped out.
That could be so visceral. You could really like, you know,
make the reader feel it. I'm not really a fan of gore in
general, but I still think it would be better to have it on
page than just oh by the way, between chapters that happened,
all the horror happen happens off page and instead the stuff
we see on page is all focused on petty arguments and
interpersonal drama and I just kind of don't care.
People tell Phase he's crazy. Cat goes on about how hot and
muscly Philip is, and then Philip calls Phase melodramatic
drink again for Philip being hot.
Lynn decides that of nowhere to start smoking weed because why
not, I guess. Cat joins in because, you know,
why not be more impaired? Apparently the creepy spirit
bride is just hanging around now.
She's just just sat there doing nothing.
Yeah, like I, at this point in the book, forgot she was even
there because she's so non consequential.
It's just like, oh, I know what makes a horror book.
Let's put a demon in the room and then just not mention her
while we sit around smoking weed.
Yeah. This is not horror.
This is not creepy. This is not good storytelling.
Yeah, apparently she's just around now and she's sitting
beside them. And I don't know.
He lit cigarette, hand rolled cook with tamarind peel and
weed, and squatted beside me, smoke curling between his teeth.
The OHA guru Batari followed, kneeling beside him.
Beside us, Lynn didn't look at her once, but I did.
I stared at the yokai as I took a toke from Lynn's joint.
She had the angles of someone carefully starved from cradle to
nuptials, clavicle and collarbone in stark chioscuro.
Her skin didn't just look like porcelain, it was porcelain,
enamelled and gleaming, faultless save for her red
mouth. No eyes, no nose, no fill trim,
not even the conceit of cheekbones.
But even her flesh wasn't as pale as the shiramuku.
She wore the satin the colour of expensive chalk.
Again. Is anyone else just getting
like, no atmosphere from this at all?
She should be creepy, she should be terrifying, but it's just
like, OK, she's there, I guess. Cool.
Lynn says that phase isn't Kat's responsibility and they should
go. Kat says he is because he's a
best friend again. It's like you don't even like
each other. How?
Like why do we care about your friendship?
We've not seen you be best friends.
Why do I believe this? I why should I care?
Why should any of us care? I nodded.
There wasn't much else to say, so we sat for a long minute,
passing the cigarette between us until it shrivelled to an ember.
Phase and Phillip fighting the whole while.
So apparently they're fighting, that's just happening.
And what? It's like an aftersaw.
OK, no tension there. They diversified the character
attacks, petty insults. All those years of friendship
run through the abattoir back and forth until every secret was
turned inside out. Any second now something was
going to snap, a neck or a temper or a spine.
And this sums up the whole book, to be honest.
Like the whole pinnacle of this book revolves around Phase and
Phillips tension in their friendship.
Except that friendship is never built up.
We're not told they were close. At one point it's hinted at that
they kind of have a rivalry, but it's never really.
They never have a back and forth.
There's no tension built between them.
It's like we're told, oh, this could cause tension in the
future. Cool, blah blah blah blah blah
blah blah blah blah blah blah. All the tensions reach boiling
point is like, wait, how did we get here?
It was never building. It was just told this could
potentially happen. Oh look, it's happening right
now. There's nothing that makes us
care about this. I'm so, so tired of this.
OK, Lynn says that phase or Philip is going to kill one
another and Cat narrates getting better again.
This is the problem with horror movies.
Everyone knows what's coming next, but actions have momentum,
every decision and equal and justified reaction.
Just because you know you should doesn't mean that you can stop.
Again. The meta thing is not working
for me. I hate it.
Philip punches face and breaks his nose.
Lynn says this is the part where we all die and we're 86% of the
way through the book. So I was like, thank God,
finally kill them all please. That's the only thing that could
save this book for me. If these horrific characters
have horrific deaths and I get to celebrate it, face pulls out
a knife. God knows where he got it from.
This was never spoken about earlier.
Like again, I wish she'd Chekhov's gun this like if she'd
like set it up earlier where like, you know, maybe he carried
a knife for protection or like we saw him like pick it up after
the meal when they weren't running off or simply, but no,
suddenly he just has a knife out of nowhere.
It's like even in the in the middle of this video, if I just
like, oh, by the way, here's a knife.
Like you'd be like, wait, where did that come from?
It doesn't make sense because where would I get a knife from?
Where did he get a knife from? Suddenly, though, there's a
knife. He stabs Philip in the stomach
and Oh my God, look at that Philips dying.
I feel like this should have been a big dramatic turning
point, a point of no return. It should have been dramatic and
tension filled and we should have had it building and
building and building, but instead it just falls flat and
it's like, oh, his knife came out of nowhere and oh, he
stabbed in the stomach. I like I say, I wish they'd
built up that relationship more. Like they hinted that kind of
rivalry, but they never really showed it.
They never built it, their really feelings of jealousy over
Talia. Did Phase really feel inferior
to him? And if so, like how was that
show and how did it come out? Like we could have had all of
this shown with like dialogue between them.
We could have had it shown with the stories they chose to tell
in the game. We could have had like Philip
like acting touchy feeling with Talia and Phase getting jealous
about it and trying to get between them, something like
that. I don't know.
It's never explored.
And therefore this payoff of Phase stabbing him in the
stomach, it feels like a nothing.
It just, oh God, I don't care. Faze cries.
The OHA guru Batari laughs because Oh yeah, by the way,
she's still there. Yep, cool, doing nothing, just
laughing away. Faze apologises and he's like,
I'm sorry. Sure you are.
Lynn's voice shook. Sure, absolutely.
You have absolutely no motivation at all to kill a guy,
your fiance yesterday, the Greek God to your sedentary geek.
No reason, nothing like that ever crossed your consciousness.
In fact, you're so sure about this being an accident, you can
guarantee this never crossed your subconscious either.
Doesn't like an attempt to explore this potential rivalry
between them, but like, it's too late now.
Why are you doing it now after he's already dead?
I God knows. And also like we don't even know
at this point if he even knew that Philip and Talia used to
date for a We know this could be the first time he's hearing
about this. I don't know.
There's no, no build up, so stupid Cat then says, but
Philip's dying so we, I, let's make it count for something, I
guess. And they decide to use Philip's
dying body because he's not quite dead yet.
He's dying on the floor. They decide to use him for this
ritual sacrifice that they've decided they need to do because
phase was going through decayed pages of books and was like the
four kings, the four sacrifices. Oh, we need to do.
I don't know where he got it from, but apparently it's now
factual and they're using Philip's body.
They need blood, bone, semen and organs.
So, so they basically had to like, you know, masturbate the
dying Phillip and get his semen. That sexual assault that feels
like sexual assault. So Cat says that let's make it
count for something, I guess. And the very next sentence is we
dug a hole at the base of the fourth pillar.
What? What is this fourth pillar?
Where does this even come from? Where are these pillars?
We dug a hole at the base of the fourth pillar and placed
Phillip's viscera into the cradle of shallow loam, 1 coil
at a time. Time Faiz and Lynn fought over
whether we should cut his throat or whether we should measure out
his awful and fill another three holes, just to be sure.
One last act of mercy for the man we've known since we were
all 16. Or have his death matter.
But then the man aside. A long, slow breath, a dying
man's breath spun of silk filaments, and suddenly there
was Talia, propped up against the wall, still garlanded in her
wedding whites. It was exactly like the fairy
tales from what fairy tales? What fairy tale it was exactly
like the fairy tales promised. A little blood, a little bone, a
little semen, and a little bit of organ.
And the manner returned the girl of Fazer's dreams.
She smelled of the earth and summer sunlight, honeysuckle and
fabric softener and skin warmed on a stoop in the sun.
When Faze took Talia in his arms, Philip's heart gave out
one last exhausted pump. I thought he was already dead to
get her back. He died alone while our backs
were turned. Then how do you know?
24 years of being the centre of everyone's attention.
And that's how he went out. Not with a bang or a whimper,
just a sigh in the world going colder and the last light from
the lanterns dimming to nothing, fireflies and blind eyes.
We went home after that. What else are we supposed to do?
And that's where the main book ends.
That is it. There is an epilogue.
I'll talk about it in a minute. But like, it's so annoying that
Philip gets absolutely no character development.
He doesn't have the character arc.
He's just there being rich and hot, and then he dies being rich
and hot, stabbed by Faze, and that's it.
Why am I supposed to care? There's an epilogue.
Like I say, Catlin and Faze go to memorial for Philippine
Canada. Talia is apparently in hospital
nursing her nightmares. It turns out after they left,
they all set the house on fire and they tried to claim that
Philip died in the fire. Everyone believes them and they
just got away with murder. Lovely Cat goes back to uni
again. How old are these people?
OK, and then the very last paragraph of the book is.
Lately I've begun to wonder if the OHA guru Batari followed us
from the Manor. I see her sometimes, or at least
I think I do, reflected in the windows, her face as Wayne as
mine. But it is always my reflection,
the eyes smudged of definition, the mouth blotted in shadow so
it looks like there's nothing but blackened teeth.
And that's it. That's where the book ends.
I don't understand why the spirit that was supposedly tied
to the house waiting for her husband like would follow you.
I thought she was tied to the house.
I thought she was there waiting for him so why would she follow
you? I thought like if she took Talia
and gave her back when she got Philip then wouldn't Philip
fulfil that need and she wouldn't need to fall?
I it doesn't make it. The story makes no sense and
none of this makes any sense. I don't get it.
Or maybe it's trying to imply that like this was all in Cat's
head and because she's still not mentally well it's following
them now and that like they all just got paranoid and Faze
killed Philip for no reason. But then where was Talia the
whole time? I don't know.
This is so stupid I hate it.
The setting, the use of the Oguru Batari, the other little
demons and spirits, it could have all been so damn good.
The house, the back story, that could have been amazing.
Tying in all the Japanese myths and folklore and that could have
been incredible. It could have been so damn
creepy and well thought out and tying those old myths to like
modern day stories and relationships could have been so
good. But as it stands all we got was
a crappy story about a toxic friend group who kept being
toxic until one of them killed another and then they covered up
the murder. The spirits and creepy stuff in
the end had like no real impact, not even in terms of like we
could say it's like a mental health story and it was their
paranoia. And because it wasn't really, it
was what they did. Like even then it doesn't stand
up as a good story. What was the point of this all?
It was such a waste of potential.
Here's how I would fix the book if this was me.
First, let's address Kat's mental health issues.
Maybe instead of just generic depression and a suicide
attempt, we turn her into a proper unreliable narrator,
right? Maybe she was having some kind
of hallucination or she was able to tell what was reality and
what wasn't. Maybe she had some kind of like
psychosis or something going on. She's now on medication and she
thinks she's functioning well again, but when all the creepy
stuff starts happening in the house, she doesn't know if it's
real or in her head. So she doesn't know if she can
trust herself and she doesn't want to tell the others in case
like they think she's crazy again.
So we get her doubting herself and not knowing what's real and
what isn't. And as the story goes on and
progresses, she still doesn't know what's real.
So we don't know what's real and we get her being a proper
unreliable narrator. Secondly, I want to know more
about the character relationships and who each one
is as an individual. Tell me their values.
Tell me what drives them. Show that they actually do like
each other and care about each other and like, especially when
they're in peril, show those moments of friendship.
Show those bonds. Show those like, you know,
instead of just like we ate and got drunk together, Show like
them actually having a heart to heart.
Show them actually being kind to each other.
Show them supporting each other. And horror games like Until Dawn
do this really well because it has these complex characters who
aren't all good or bad, but you can tell they do care about each
other and that their relationships mean something and
that there's a rich back story there.
So even when things are complicated, you get really
invested in the characters and what happens to them and you
want to save them. I mentioned earlier, but like a
really good way to show this would have been in the 100
candles game. The stories each of those
characters chose could tell us about who they are, what they
valued, what they thought of each other.
And it would be a great way for the audience to infer a lot
about the characters and like come up with their own theories
about oh, they chose the story for this reason.
The stories don't shows this about their psyche and so on.
Each of the characters had really different cultural
backgrounds. So it's mentioned Philip was
Canadian, Lin was Chinese, Phase was half Japanese.
I'm not sure what the other half of his family was.
Talia was from somewhere else. And again, I think it would have
been really cool if they'd brought in cultural elements
into their ghost stories as well.
Because we could have got like some really cool interesting,
like mythology and folklore and like, you know, stuff like tying
in there. It would have been really,
really damn cool. Thirdly, I wish the actual back
story of the house and the use of the Ohaguru Batari had been
better incorporated because as it stands honestly that could
have been any ghost or any monster in any location and the
outcome would have been exactly the same.
I wish they'd utilised this amazing setting and back story a
lot more like. So for example, if the haunting
started because the bride was waiting for her husband to
arrive who died on the day of their wedding, then why did she
kidnap Talia or not Faze or possess Talia or not Faze?
Surely it would have made sense for her to steal a groom for
herself, no? Or maybe she possessed Talia
because she's the bride and so she wanted to hide as Talia
until the wedding and then she was discovered too early so it
got like out of hand or something.
Like I don't. I just, I wish they'd made it
more relevant to the story and the outcome and how everything
was settled and so on. Since you had like such an
incestuous friendship group, maybe you could have had that
playing into it all a little bit more.
I don't know, Like, like if Talia wanted to get phase back,
then she could be like, OK, we need to sacrifice a woman to
keep the bride company as the story suggests.
So come on Kat, we're going to kill you because I want my
future husband back. Something like that.
And then Kat's considering it because of her history's phase
and she's like, well, he is my best friend.
We've shown this best friendship in the story.
That would be good. So of course I'm going to want
to sacrifice myself for him. Plus, you know, I've just been
suicidal or depressed or whatever.
So like, maybe I'm feeling like I don't have much to live for.
So yeah, I'll factors, I'll sacrifice myself for phase, but
at the same time she's like, Oh no, but actually like, why does
Talia get to get to have the happy ending with him?
And I don't like, maybe I should have had that with her.
Like, that could have all tied into it.
That could have been really damn cool.
You know, maybe she's still jealous of Talia and she's like,
well, you don't even want phase. You actually want to be with
Phillips. You've got that going on.
I'm the one who really loves Phase, even if it's just as a
best friend now. So you should sacrifice yourself
for him or something like that. I don't know.
As it stands, I feel like Lynn was an absolutely nothing
character in this. He had no impact on the story.
I don't understand why he was there.
Nothing. He did have any consequence.
He did nothing. You could Take Me Out the story
and it would be exactly the same.
So if I was improving this book, I would actually give him a
role. Maybe if you want to do the
whole meta narrative thing, he's the friend who's a writer or a
reader. He's the one who's coming in
with all the meta stuff because, you know, he is really into
horror and he starts to like see it and he's like, here's the
tropes and blah, blah, blah. Or just give him something to
do. Same with the creepy demon
paintings on the wall coming to life, right?
I love that idea. I found the descriptions creepy.
I think that imagery was creepy. I love that.
Why didn't they actually do anything?
Why did they never pose a threat?
Why did they never interact with the people?
Why weren't they used in the story at all?
They were just there and then they were never mentioned again.
They were forgotten about. And again, you could take these
moving demons out and it would be the exact same book, just
like you could replace the demon with any kind of monster or
ghost or anything and it would be the exact same book.
And that's a problem. Like you literally could have
had these people in like, like like a house like this, OK.
You could have had five people in a Victorian house in
Yorkshire where no one had died and it has no back history.
And it's blah, blah blah. They all get together the night
before a wedding. And then Faze finds out Philip
had a thing for Talia. Talia runs off because she's all
sad. Faze and Philip argue, Faze
stabs Philip, they all cover up, bam, same book done without any
of the supernatural elements. It would have been exactly the
same. The exact same things would have
happened and it would be just as not creepy.
There is a lot more I can say about this book.
It is a book with a lot of potential, but it was just a let
down for me and I find that really, really sad.
I wanted so much more from it and I think that's why I'm so
frustrated like I said earlier, because this is a book that
could have been amazing and it just wasn't.
I thought I would end this video by looking quickly a few reviews
that other people have left and seeing what other people
thought, the positives and the negatives.
This was a two star review. That said the prose was
burdensome to read and I usually like that sort of thing, but
with this I had to wade through it for some reason.
The metaphors and imagery were unusual and I would literally
have to stop and think about how it made any sense.
Very purpley but also a little poetic which I do struggle with.
This wasn't person's full review but I definitely agree with a
lot of what they said but it's interesting because not everyone
felt the same. This person gave it four stars
and said most of this rating is frankly for the prose.
The book takes its prose from gothic horror and the amount of
disturbing phrasing added to the atmosphere in a terrifying way.
It's not character developed or character heavy in any way.
Like most gothic horror. The main character is the
setting. It's disturbing and also
horrifying. Are the characters fully fleshed
out? No, but they don't really need
to be for this. The book does what it wanted to
do and it does it very well. And I understand where this
person's coming from. And as always, they're
completely entitled to their own opinion.
That's absolutely fine. But just personally I disagree.
I wish the house had been more of a character, you know, So
like, for example, in Riley Sager's Only one left or pose
the Fall of the House of Usher and or even T Kingfishers, what
moves the dead. Yeah, the houses in those books
are very much characters. They are very much part of the
story. Those books would be very
different in very different settings.
Like in the Only One Left, you have the whole house being on
this Cliff edge and tilted and feeling like it could fall at
any moment. And at the end of the book it
does. And that's like a whole like
metaphor and analogy for, I guess, the lies and storytelling
of the characters who live in the house.
And you feel very off kilter and off balance while you're in
there because you don't like the house is so tilted and you don't
quite know like, where you're standing and what's safe and
what isn't. So it makes sense in those books
that the house is a character, House of leaves, the house is a
character. Even in episode 13, to some
extent, the house is a character.
But in this, the mansion is just a setting that is underutilised
and not really explored enough. It's there, we get some
descriptions that should be creepy, but it's not creepy.
There's no tension, there's no nothing.
And I I also disagree with this review that the characters don't
need to be fleshed out more. I think for me to enjoy this
more, I either need the characters to be fleshed out or
for the house itself to play a bigger role.
But as it stands, the book did neither, and it just left me
wanting more. As for the prose being inspired
by gothic literature, I'd agree that this is clearly what the
author's going for, but as I said over and over, it just
didn't work for me because it was too out of place with the
basic sweary, cheesy modern dialogue, and the bits which
could have been done often ended up being overwritten for my
tastes. I felt like there were some good
ideas in there, and like I say, there are a few descriptions I
really did like and really did find creepy, but overall I think
it needs a lot of editing to be enjoyable by a lot of people.
I think where it fails being like gothic horror literature is
that it wants to be lyrical, but it isn't.
It doesn't have that rhythm, that flow.
It doesn't have that imagery that is beautiful and vivid.
Also, the thing about like gothic literature, whether it's
whether it's Poe or whether it's something like Frankenstein, is
that the descriptions are often detailed and and lyrical and
full of this beautiful, vivid imagery.
But it's never more complex than it needs to be.
And I feel like in this, it's complex for the sake of
complexity and I just find it a little off putting.
Another reviewer said two stars, unfortunately not as epic as the
cover. Basically just a friend reunion
where every single person is toxic, but it's in a haunted
house. I think that's pretty spot on.
And this person said again, two stars.
Great premise, poor execution. The ending was slightly cheesy
too. Agreed, and I also think the
ending was incredibly rushed, which didn't really work for me.
Another person said the writing style is so choppy and
unnecessarily flowery it's impossible to read without
getting distracted. At times the use of adjectives
is so redundant it becomes laughable despite its original
intent. Why do I need to read 3 or 4
synonyms one after the other when they mean the exact same
thing? I got the concept, thank you
very much. The characters ruined everything
else. I dare you not to hate every
single one of them from page 4. They're petty jealous.
Arguing took such a big part of this novella, there wasn't much
space left for the horror. I came for the dead bride and
Japanese demons, not these ridiculous squirrels about who
slept with whom. I completely agree 100%.
This person however, gave it a four-star review and said I
really love the incorporation of so much Japanese language and
culture in this story. The inclusion of mythological
Japanese creatures really added to the story and I agree that I
loved those elements, but I didn't feel they were actually
incorporated in the story. It's like they were kind of
stuck on almost like an afterthought.
And I wish it had been incorporated more.
I wish we'd have more of those elements.
Give me more Japanese creatures and mythology and folklore and
culture like I want. I want more of that, You know,
that's, that's what I went into this book wanting and I just
felt like it under delivered. Oh, OK.
Anyway, this is where I'm going to end the video because I have
been ranting so much and I'm so sorry.
I have been very like, I've been way more emotional in this
review than I thought. It's just, again, nothing annoys
me more than wasted potential. So I've had a lot of big
feelings about this and but I would love to hear your thoughts
on this book down in the comments.
If you loved it, if you hated it, let me know.
If you disagree with me, let me know as well.
That's absolutely fine. Otherwise, please let me know
what are the horror books you love or hate or you would
recommend to me either to read for fun or to make bad book
reviews about. I can do either.
I just love a good horror book. And if you do want to see what
I've been reading recently, you can follow me over on Goodreads
because I've been reading quite a bit of horror recently, quite
a few thrillers. I've been reading loads.
It's been really great. Actually, it's been a really
good reading year so far. I am making little reading wrap
UPS over on my second channel, but I'm a little bit behind with
posting them at the minute, but I'm slowly getting on top of it.
But yeah, if you want, you can follow me over there or
occasionally I will post about little books and stuff that I'm
reading over on Instagram so you can follow me there as well at
Rachel Oates with Air 0 instead of an O.
Thank you so much for watching. I appreciate you guys so much.
Thank you so much for your time, for your attention.
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Go have a look at that if you want, but absolutely no
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watching. I appreciate you guys, you are
wonderful. Have a great rest of your day.
I'll see you again soon.