Wendy N. Wagner

I read The Deer Kings in a creaky old country house that stands beside a forest which I am fairly convinced is haunted and which is most certainly overrun with deer who frequently come quite close to the house. Thanks to the particular ways in which this novel is terrifying, I too am now haunted, and I will never look at a deer the same way again.

The Deer Kings is a pitch-perfect take on the innate horror of run-down towns and the run-down people who infest them. It reads like both an show more homage to classic small-town horror stories and an update that transforms the tired old misogynistic and queerphobic tropes common to such classic works into something new, fresh, and rather more sympathetic to the mores of 21st-century readers. Wagner’s subtle prose is fluid and unobtrusive in a way ideally suited to the novel, supporting and displaying the vivid characters and fast-moving plot without distracting through the over-the-top language one sometimes finds in books of this type. Using just the right amount of description to reveal without ever dumping, Wagner builds an ever-more-tangible atmosphere of dread from the book’s first pages through its inevitably horrific conclusion.

I would say that The Deer Kings is not a book for the faint of heart—it is very, very scary—but then again I am a total coward when it comes to horror and I absolutely loved it. Perhaps the easily frightened might best enjoy this one with the lights on, a hot drink near at hand, and a trustworthy person or animal close enough for comfort.

I received a free digital advance copy of this novel from the author in exchange for my review. show less

Buried secrets only spread. Erin's brother Bryan has been missing for five years. It was as if he simply walked into the forests of the Pacific Northwest and vanished. Determined to uncover the truth, Erin heads to the foothills of Mt. Hood where Bryan was last seen alive. He isn’t the first hiker to go missing in this area, and their cases go unsolved. When she discovers the corpse of a local woman in a creek, Erin unknowingly puts herself in the crosshairs of very powerful forces from show more this world and beyond, hell-bent on keeping their secrets buried.
Erin, who is a travel reporter comes to the small former mining town of Faraday with four friends...Hari, the podcaster Matt, the tech savvy one, Kaylee, who runs a shelter for endangered woman, and Kaylee’s sister Madison who is going to write an article about Faraday’s charm and eco-tourist-friendly attitude. Madison is really there to investigate the towns recent and old, missing persons cases. She may possibly write a book, but it will diffidently be an episode of her podcast, and to finally find closure for the disappearance of her brother, Bryan. Bryan's case has been ruled as a suicide by the local police but no body has ever been found.

Erin and her party immediately encounter locals some nice, like hiking enthusiast Jared, and river tour guide Dahlia, and not so nice, like the Steadman brothers, and landlord Olivia Vanderpoel, deputy sheriff Duvall, and local mushroom expert Ray. There are a lot of characters to keep up with, but this author manages that task very well. Wendy Wagner has a wonderful knack for imbuing characters with depth. It's almost like watching this story come alive on the "silver-screen". There are LOTS of deaths in this story and each has its own emotional impact, even the ones that occurred before the current events of the book.

The entire mood is well done to make the whole story dark and mysterious. There is also something that I don't believe I have ever encountered in a novel... a pervading sense of claustrophobia. Anyone who has ever been lost in the woods or walking through a cave or a dark house will recognize it right away. Along with that atmosphere is an undercurrent of danger that rolls off of every page. Even the mushrooms in the woods have their own distinct "personalities" and a major role in this story. I have never read anything before or ever thought of a genus even exiting that could be labeled as "fungi-based horror"... but this is a real "spoor story"! Parts of it are vivid, but it is the perfect blend of mystery and real "fungal" horror.

Any fan of unexplained horror will more than likely like Girl in the Creek. Now I have to find more of this author's books. show less

This is eerie and icky and starts a little more rooted in reality than a lot of fungal horror books, so I found that an easy entry into the story. It starts out as a missing person mystery, with a journalist coming to find clues about her lost brother and others who have vanished in a small PNW town. There is an old quicksilver mine involved, and some locals who have vanished that seem to pop up here and there. I really enjoyed the way the fungus consumed and controlled towards the end, very show more gross descriptions. show less

I got this as part of the Hugo Packet

I got started reading this for The Sound of Children Screaming by Rachael K Jones and curiousity kept me reading and I actually enjoyed The Cello in the Cell by David Janisch. I'm not a big reader of horror but both of those stories stood out for me. More the Cello one than the Children one.
The sound of Children Screaming is a portal story, set during a school shooting. Where a teacher and some of her children find a door in the safe pod in the class show more and when they go through they discover a world that seems to want children to be their leaders, as this is a horror story you can see where this might lead... this says a lot about school shootings where an unknown might be more attractive than facing the possibility of someone coming in to kill.
The Cello in the Cell is a story of a futuristic penal system where when you enter you get a cello and there is compulsory recitals of one piece, over and over and you are supposed to try to learn to play it. But you have no music, the cello is out of tune and over time it begins to eat at you. As someone who played an instrument for many years a lot of it sounds like torture.
The others were interesting but didn't really engage me that much. show less