There aren’t any specific alt prompts this year, but you can substitute one square from last year instead (more options!). Check the announcement post for specifics.

Currently about halfway through Shutter by Ramona Emerson.

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Finished Cathedral of the Drowned by Nathan Ballingrud (weird sci-fantasy horror) | bingo: new, x of y, short

Follows the fates of side characters from the first book, Crypt of the Moon Spider. Half a brain in a satellite travels the solar system, while on Earth, a gang leader faces encroachment from the Mafia.

Ehhhh. There were parts of this I liked, but I generally found it a let-down after Moon Spider. It’s a much less focused story, and it loses the particular flavor of creepiness that made the first book so fun. Definitely check content warnings, as they’re quite different from the previous entry.

Awesome, early congrats!

Sounds like a good amount of progress, well done! Checking off squares by reading naturally is an excellent way to do it.

They’re definitely not for everyone, but that’s ok! We’re still glad to have you around.

I’ve been finding more time to read this year, so I already finished one card and am almost halfway through another. (This is less impressive than it sounds, as I think ~13 of those squares are works under 200 pages.) The first card is all hard mode (sans the Cozy Read square), and the one I’m working on now is (almost) all normal mode. (I didn’t want to read Harry Potter or A Man Called Ove, so those two squares are going to default to hard mode.)

Normal-only is surprisingly challenging in places (LGBTQIA+ Lead without a significant romance? Steppin’ Up with an MC that does become a ruler?).

Acceptance by Jeff VanderMeer. I loved Annihilation, but Authority, while not bad, was so different (and slow) that it killed my momentum through the series. I’m maybe 1/3 of the way through Acceptance, but every time I try to go back to it, I just put it back down after a couple of pages.

Currently reading Cathedral of the Drowned by Nathan Ballingrud, sequel to last year’s Crypt of the Moon Spider that I liked so much.

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Finished The Works of Vermin by Hiron Ennes (weird fantasy with body horror elements) | bingo: different continent, minority author, orange, x of y, LGBTQIA+, new

In a glamorously tattered city, a debt-ridden exterminator hunting a dangerous bug and an ailing perfumer in upper-class society each navigate a season of political and cultural revolution.

The setting of this reminded me vaguely of the Cemeteries of Amalo series: steampunk-ish but not (and plant- and bug-based in Vermin), low magic, large class divides, lavish fashion, and a focus on opera. Vermin is, however, much less soft and gentle: violent regime changes are practically expected every generation; character deaths on stage are real, not simulated; and poor people being exploited is par for the course. Even the perfume is laced with a reality-warping toxin that, in strong enough potencies, can remodel entire buildings or cause terrible mutations.

The blurb for this made me expect the bug extermination would be the main plot (with much more emphasis on horror), but that’s actually just a small piece of a grand epic with two alternating story lines. I wish I had known better what I was diving into, and that it was less slow-paced, but I liked it.

I’m about 80% of the way through The Works of Vermin by Hiron Ennes. I’m enjoying it, but I’m also ready to be finished with it; unlike Leech (their first book), which picked up in the latter half, this has been a bit slow for me the whole way through.

So I went looking for that cover image of the girl and woman hugging, because I thought it was interesting an artist did the AI hands thing long before AI, but uh… are you sure it’s not actually AI? Even Tineye can’t find it, and it doesn’t seem to really match the style of his early paintings, either.

Totally fair. It’s impressive you’ve kept reading so far into the series; I’ll grit my teeth through one book with pacing that doesn’t work for me (and complain the whole time), but not much beyond that.

Reading The Works of Vermin by Hiron Ennes, which I’ve been looking forward to. So far, so good.

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Read Harrow County, Volume 1: Countless Haints by Cullen Bunn (writing) & Tyler Crook (art) (southern gothic folk horror comic, issues 1-4) | bingo: short HM, steppin’ up HM

A teenager becomes tangled up in her community’s witch-murdering past.

Picked this out for spooky season, since my current read isn’t horror. This volume tells a complete story arc, so while I’ll probably read more of it at some point, I’m satisfied for right now. It’s fun, though, and the art is gorgeous.

The show definitely condenses/changes stuff (mostly in a good way), although weirdly I found the seasons with the Marco Inaros drama to be more grating than the book versions.

Have you liked any of plot lines so far, or has it been a slog all the way through?

Started Orange World and Other Stories by Karen Russell, although I think I’ll be reading it in chunks.

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Finished The Worm and His Kings by Hailey Piper (culty cosmic horror) | bingo: creature, minority author, short, LGBTQIA+ lead HM, steppin’ up HM)

While searching for their missing partner, a homeless person stumbles onto a doomsday cult.

MC seemed well done, interesting ending. Overall, though, I think this was just “fine”, and probably won’t be reading the sequels.

If you’re still taking suggestions for the list:

• Predator (1987) tmdb
• The Cell (2000) tmdb
• Child’s Play (1988) tmdb
• One Missed Call (2003) tmdb
• Suspiria, either (1977) tmdb or (2018) tmdb
• Bone Tomahawk (2015) tmdb
• The Addams Family (1991) tmdb
• Lost Boys (1987) tmdb
• The Mist (2007) tmdb
• Godzilla Minus One (2023) tmdb
• Howl (2015) tmdb
• Terrified (Aterrados) (2018) tmdb
• [REC] (2007) tmdb
• The Endless (2018) tmdb
• The Void (2016) tmdb
• Haunt (2019) tmdb
• From Beyond (1986) tmdb
• A Tale of Two Sisters (2003) tmdb
• Three… Extremes (2004) tmdb
• I Saw the Devil (2011) tmdb
• Exhuma (2024) tmdb

Also, maybe try crossposting to some of the horror communities (if not for today’s movie night, then for later ones)?

EDIT: A few more (sorry!)

• Mandy (2018) tmdb
• Pearl (2022) tmdb
• Ready or Not (2019) tmdb
• The Fog (1980) tmdb
• The Omen (1976) tmdb

Look, I’m just a lurker, so I don’t really have any standing here, but I figured I should explain my downvote:

Every time you promote in here, it’s framed negatively (“we’re more active than you”), rather than encouraging friendly coexistence (“if you want even more movie stuff, come check us out, too!”). Sure, it may just be a difference in phrasing, but to me, it also changes whether your posts actually contribute something to this community or not.

True! Agreed. Hemlock & Silver’s MC is also pragmatic and middle-aged, btw, which is nice.

I’ve only read a few of her books, so that’s probably a better question for @JaymesRS@literature.cafe, honestly. I started with Nettle & Bone, though, which is probably as good a place as any. One note: her MCs seem to generally all have a very similar “plucky heroine” kind of voice, which may affect how well her horror novels work for you, if you’re thinking of starting there (I’m not a fan, but I do still have What Moves the Dead on my TBR pile).

I’m reading The Worm and His Kings by Hailey Piper, and then (hopefully) starting All of Us Murderers by K.J. Charles, which came out today.

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Finished Hemlock & Silver by T. Kingfisher (fantasy with mild horror elements) | bingo: folklore, new, steppin’ up HM

This was billed as a retelling of Snow White, but while it certainly uses elements from that story, it’s mostly its own thing. If you like T. Kingfisher’s other fantasy/fairy tale stuff, you’ll probably like this, too.

Uses Lovecraft IP:

• The Ballad of Black Tom by Victor LaValle retells “The Horror at Red Hook”.
• Clark Ashton Smith, who was friends with Lovecraft, wrote a lot of Cthulhu-related stuff.

Strongly Lovecraft-inspired:

• The Fisherman by John Langan gets recommended a lot.
• Carter & Lovecraft by Jonathan L. Howard
• B.P.R.D., the sister series to Hellboy, has a lot of Lovecraftian influence in certain story arcs, if you like comics.

General cosmic horror/looser Lovecraftian vibes:

• Annihilation by Jeff VanderMeer is pretty different from the movie.
• The Immaculate Void by Brian Hodge
• Agents of Dreamland by Caitlín R. Kiernan
• The Willows by Algernon Blackwood (free on Gutenberg )

Obviously not an exhaustive list (there’s a lot I haven’t read yet!), but hopefully you’ll find something to get you started.