Hey everyone, I’m back with part 2 of my ‘Ugly Little Things‘ review. 🙂
If you missed part 1, here’s the link – in part 2 I’ll be looking at the final three stories in the collection. And the one that kicks off the final trilogy is a doozy!
When Karen Met Her Mountain is brutal, the kind of tale which hits you over and over again without letting up. In it you’ll meet Karen and her husband, road-tripping and trying to find their way back to each other after a tragic loss. In it, you’ll meet Karen’s therapist and a group of strange, violent, mask-wearing cultists. And in it, you’ll witness Karen’s descent (or is it an ascent) into madness. Not for the faint of heart, but brilliantly written.
In The Harbinger, a journalist in need of redemption and a career-saving story travels to a town famous for pigs and dolls. How those two (pigs and dolls) are connected, and what Felix Proust discovers as he digs deeper into the town of Dalton and it’s mysterious celebrity (the doll-maker), make this a truly memorable, creepy tale, which works on all the senses, too. Dolls have long had a unique creep-factor; Todd adds the that creep-factor while doing something unique, yet, terrible (in the terror-sense of the word) with dolls.
My favourite of the lot. I became of fan of Robert Chamber’s ‘The King in Yellow‘ without knowing it, thanks to the first incredible season of True Detective. Fast-forward a couple of years and I’ve been reading ‘The King in Yellow‘ for a while now; I’m honestly obsessed with it. I’ll explain that when I post my review, but suffice it to say that I haven’t read anything resembling ‘The King in Yellow‘. It’s utterly unique.
Which makes what Todd did with ‘The Final Reconciliation‘ that much more incredible. Todd takes a metal band (The Yellow Kings), an evocative yet utterly unsettling track list, a self-proclaimed gypsy, and the creation of a new album, and marries them with what reads like the true-life account of this band’s rise and fall. The tale is full of weird imagery and lyrical brilliance, and positively sings with the strange, unsettling aspects of what makes ‘The King in Yellow‘ so strange – yet Todd pulls it off in a way that adds to the mythos Chambers created, putting everything that makes that strange book stand out in a modern context, yet also not explaining anything. You’ll have to read it to understand what I mean. What’s terrible about this tale (terrible, yet utterly creepy) is that now, more than ever, I want to delve deeper into ‘The King in Yellow‘, and even though I probably won’t survive it, I need to hear The Final Reconciliation in all it’s mind-breaking brilliance.
This is, for damned sure, one of those must-have collections. 10/10
To order your copies, click the Amazon link; you can also add it to your Goodreads shelf, and check out the trailer.
And don’t forget to check out Todd’s website for more info, and Crystal Lake Publishing’s website for more excellent books.
Until next time,
Be EPIC!
Dave de Burgh 