Dark Matter by Michelle Paver (Orion Books) is a suspenseful ghost story about a 1937 British arctic scientific expedition to Gruhuken, an isolated Norwegian bay. There are rumors that Gruhuken is haunted. The story is told mostly in the form of a diary written by Jack Miller, a twenty-eight year old desperate to escape London where he feels he’s a failure. Reminiscent of Dan Simmons’ brilliant epic novel The Terror in its depiction of the cold and bleakness of the Arctic winter, Dark Matter is a smaller, more intimate story, told in one voice. But the increasing claustrophobia, the sense of entrapment, and the haunting itself are all extraordinarily effective.
The Diviner’s Tale by Bradford Morrow (HMH/An Otto Penzler Book) is an excellent slow boil of a novel about Cassandra Brooks, a struggling single mother who is a diviner by trade, hired to dowse for water in upstate New York. While dowsing in the forest, she has a vision of a girl hanging from a tree, but when she reports it to the sheriff, the girl has vanished. Morrow captures Cassandra’s voice brilliantly and builds up a lovely little frisson as secrets unfold.
The German by Lee Thomas (Lethe Press) is a chilling novel about a mysterious German ex-soldier living in a small U.S. town during the height of World War II, when tensions and suspicions are at a peak against German refugees, and even citizens of German ancestry. Who better to scapegoat for the brutal murder of a young man than a foreigner, who is also considered a sexual deviant?
Napier’s Bones by Derryl Murphy (ChiZine Publications) is an enjoyably dark novel about a world much like ours but in which some people, known as numerates, can manipulate numbers to their advantage. One such numerate Dom, is searching for a mathematical treasure in the desert when he’s attacked. After regaining consciousness he discovers another being inside him and the story becomes a road trip with Dom, his “passenger,” and a young woman traveling across Canada to prevent a very powerful, very nasty numerate from dominating the world.
The Enterprise of Death by Jesse Bullington (Orbit) is an engaging dark fantasy about a young African slave’s journey toward becoming a necromancer in Renaissance Europe as the Spanish Inquisition is in full swing. So much of this book is about death, dying horribly, being brought back to life to do dastardly things, and ultimately cheating death, that although it loses its punch as a horror novel it evolves into a totally demented variation of Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales.
The Silent Land by Graham Joyce (Gollancz/Doubleday) is another dark fantasy about death but it’s a contemporary, lush, joyous celebration of life, love, and trust in the face of mystery and fear. A married couple skiing in the Pyrenees are engulfed by an avalanche. Jake digs Zoe out and they make their way back to their hotel, which is deserted. From there, things take a strange turn as food left out by the missing hotel staff remains fresh over a period of days, people appear and disappear, and the couple believe that they must be dead — or in some kind of weird stasis. Just as you think you know where the plot is heading, the reader (and the characters) come across another little twist and turn. I, for one, was delighted to have followed the road.
The Taker by Alma Katsu (Gallery Books) is an effective debut that opens with a young woman covered in blood being brought in handcuffs to the emergency room of a small town in Maine. The doctor who examines her becomes enmeshed in a story that, according to the woman, encompasses several hundred years.
The Girl Who Would Speak for the Dead by Paul Elwork (Amy Einhorn Books/Putnam) is another impressive debut, this one about thirteen-year-old Emily, who discovers that she has a talent for causing her ankle to “knock.” How this revelation snowballs into her and her twin Michael’s entry into spiritualism, a fad popular in the 1920s is what the rest of the book is about. Reaching back into the family’s past, the novel becomes a ghost story without ghosts, but with enough secrets, mysteries, and hints of the supernatural to engage readers interested in dark fiction.
Aloha From Hell by Richard Kadrey (Harper Voyager) is the third novel about Sandman Slim, the last Nephilim (an “abomination” born of human and angel), who’s got a really bad attitude — maybe because he’s the only live soul sent down to Hell and brought back. After doing some jobs for Lucifer in L.A. (volume 2, Kill the Dead)—he’s got even worse stuff to deal with. Also, he really wants to get the guy who sent him down to Hell in the first place. Witty, nasty, profane, and thoroughly enjoyable.
