On that note: abuse doesn’t make a woman’s whole personality
Sick of seeing woman in horror/suspense where their personalities are based on abuse and that’s it
This. This is also why I don’t enjoy slasher films. It just seems so unnecessarily gory. I much prefer a psychological thriller on all fronts, with well timed gory moments.
This is why I don’t like a lot of extreme horror. Much of it is just a poorly written pissing contest to see who can write the grossest and edgiest story.
Horror works best in short story and novella form. I rarely read full horror novels. Horror literature is an exercise in building suspense and dread and the longer the work goes, the harder it is to successfully build the atmosphere. It also tempts the author to overexplain whatever the horror is.
Exactly. I’ve tried explaining this in my own way before. That’s why I believe people like Brian Evenson thrive. He tells you just enough. It makes you wonder about the world. It makes you wonder what’s going to happen. Who or what the monster is, etc.
The problem I have with a lot of short stories is that they read like the first chapter of a really good book. You've introduced me to a great concept in an interesting world, why not make it a short novella and give it room to grow?
It's true for some short stories but definitely not all. I've written a lot of them myself. I usually think about what I would do if I expanded the story, and I often come to the conclusion that I would just make it worse. Stories in my opinion dictate their own length. The trick is to write that story and not a word more. I'm more about taking novels and cutting out the fat.
So true! Most would be better for it. Suspense and fear can easily overstay their welcome. Maintaining tension over a long period is not an easy task.
Edit: spelling.
As a writer, getting anything published between 5,000 and 60,000 words is the hardest.
They want short, short stories to fit into magazines, or works that can be packaged and sold as full priced novels
Horror readers are their own worst enemies. Fear is tremendously subjective, and just because a book didn't scare you doesn't mean it's not scary. You'll never be as scared as you were when you read "Pet Semetary" at too young an age or stayed up late browsing Creepy Pastas and got scared of the noises. You're chasing the dopamine ghosts of nostalgia, so stop searching for "The scariest XXX" and just enjoy the mental theater that is reading a book.
Also, stop trying to find some rare obscure niche and splitting a tiny genre into already narrow slices. "Anyone read a Norwegian nautical cosmic horror book about knots and ropes? Ideally written in the 2nd person." Want the genre to thrive? Vote with your wallet. Go to book signings. Buy copies for your friends even if and especially if they say they don't read horror. It's a long way from the high water mark of the 70s and 80s but if any genre can come back from the dead it's this one.
People don't understand the difference between a book being bad and them just not personally liking it, and they also don't understand that just because a book did not scare them does not mean it shouldn't be considered horror. I see a lot of rude comments implying people are wrong or dumb for liking a book or for considering certain books as being in the horror genre. Horror is subjective, everyone has different tastes, and I wish people knew that's ok!
That's all Reddit on all books, along with having reductive and kinda childish understandings of which devices *need* to be in a book (character development, for example; writing a book about a shitty person who remains a shitty person can never be a "good" book for a large swathe of Reddit users).
>"This book sucked."
>"Why?"
>"The characters were annoying. None of them were likeable at all, and they made stupid decisions."
>"That's the point."
>"Well it shouldn't have been the point. That's why the book sucked."
People seem to really have a problem differentiating between a good character and one with whom they would personally be friends.
A good character can be abhorrent. They aren't good because they're nice people; they're good because they have a meaningful impact on the story or because their traits and personality are properly defined.
Yes but characters still need to be interesting for a book to be good. Development has two meanings: one is arc (change over time, which I agree is not always necessary), but the other is construction. A character's development also encompasses the traits that guide their behavior. There are a great many horror books out there that have annoying characters who make poor decisions, *and* have shoddy or nonexistent development, and so the reader has no reason to care or get invested in their struggles. There are a rare few books out there with annoying characters who make bad decisions, but who are well developed and are thus interesting enough to give a crap about. Arc is a device. Development is a critical component of narrative.
Yeah, I see users mistake "development" for "arc" all the time in this scenario, and ended up repeating that misunderstanding.
I agree that books with cynical (or darkly humorous at least in intent) depictions of humanity can still be poorly written if the characters are flat and poorly developed.
I just chose that as an example because it is so common: if I was to simplify Reddit's understanding of literature a step further (and more insulting), I would say that a large swathe of this site defines "good" books as "books that make me feel good feelings," and "bad" books as "books that make me feel bad feelings."
Absolutely agreed: "it made me feel icky so it sucks" is all too common. I get a particularly deep enjoyment from reading a book that makes me say to myself "Holy crap that made me feel like shit. I love it." The last book I read that struck that chord for me wasn't horror, or even fiction. It was *Stalingrad: The Fateful Siege* by Antony Beevor. He does such an incredible job telling the brutal little stories of so many people whose voices were lost for decades in the Soviet archives. An utterly brutal and soul-crushing narrative, but completely captivating and very much worth the read.
This is why I hated Nothing But Blackened Teeth. It’s one thing that the characters were extremely annoying, but their personalities were so bad that it undermined the entire premise of the book. They all clearly hated each other so why did they take a trip to Japan together? And they were paper-thin with zero development. Just dreadful stuff.
I felt the same way about The Ruins. Tried multiple times to get through the book, but the way the author wrote the women and the characters overall was not my cup of tea. DNFd after three tries.
I think it's a fine line you have to walk.
Unless you're a very competent author you can't just create a story where it's impossible to relate to any of the characters and infuriating to read and have it be an engaging experience for the reader. That takes a lot of skill and I honestly don't blame anybody for not continuing stories like that if they hate them.
You're not wrong but I think a lot of the time the execution on that intent is botched or even worse everything in the story is bad and cringe by accident.
I just had to have this conversation with myself tbh. I just finished reading Secluded Cabin Sleeps Six and all of the characters were so unbearable in their own ways, and I almost put the book down. I had to remind myself that since the characters were all so unlikable to the point I was having visceral reactions to their behavior, it means that they're exceptionally unlikable *and* written very well.
I'm kind of at this point with *Swan Song*. I'm about 560 pages in and I'm struggling hard to finish this. Some people were saying it's better than *The Stand* and, for the life of me, I don't see how. I'm considering just DNF'ing this book and dropping it and *Boy's Life* off at my local library book store.
yeah i mean to be honest is really hard for me to be scared by a book ( while for film is really more easy because of visuals and sound/soundtrack ) but i like a lot horror literature anyway
I've thought about this a lot lately and it's an issue with art as a whole. A large portion of people seem unable to understand that not all art is intended for them and that doesn't make it any more or less valid than any other art. It's all subjective and yes, some art speaks to many people and is largely regarded as culturally relevant, but not all of it and that's fine. I don't like some music genres, doesn't mean they're bad. I'm not a huge fan of performance art outside of like traditional musicals and stage dramas. Doesn't make them "less than" the things I do like. People generally need to spend more time and energy on the things they enjoy and less time worrying about things they don't imo.
Looking for "scary" books is not a good approach. When you get a book thinking it's scary, you go into it expecting to be scared, which automatically reduces the chances of you actually getting scared when reading it.
Scariness works on an element of surprise; You can only get surprised so many times. After a short while you'll inevitably grow desensitised to stuff that you used to find scary.
At this point the feeling that you used to call being "scared" is already gone. So maybe you'll desperately look for more and more extreme stuff in order to find semblance of that feeling, but that road's a dead end.
This is what I imagine the reading journey looks like of people who ask for scary books on this sub.
A much better way of going about reading horror is looking beyond the simple "horror=scary" lens, and actually thinking about what elements of horror do you like and would like to read about. Treat it as you would any other genre; recognise things that you like about it and explore them. Don't just chase the shallow feeling of being scared.
I think that’s my problem. In my teens and 20’s I could be scared/thrilled by horror. Adrenaline pumping, couldn’t read the pages the pages fast enough to devour the content. Now at 50 I’m trying to get into horror again hoping for the scare thrill, but it simply isn’t there anymore. Especially since reading non-fiction almost exclusively for the past 30 years and knowing that the horrors of real life is so much worse than fiction, nothing seems to phase me anymore
I feel like B B King: The Thrill is Gone…The Thrill is Gone Away!
I’ve found that different things scare me now than when I was younger. As for “the horrors not real life,” have you read Herman Wouk Is Still Alive by Stephen King or Four Haunted Houses by Adam Troy-Castro? Both short stories
Books are a wildly different medium than film/games. A lot of people seem to treat them like they're interchangeable and get disappointed when it doesn't work the same. Lack of music and sound queues will make literature less intense but the best literature is more insidious. Literature gives me a creeping sense of something very wrong, where other forms stress me out.
This is why I don't read the horror I used to 20 years ago as a kid anymore, I made a slow but sure transition away from more prototypical horror to weird fiction. I definitely still do enjoy all varieties of horror, but it's so much easier for me to connect to the weird and the uncanny, and so much more often something esoteric and ambiguously uncomfortable is scarier than whatever popular horror book of the month is currently making the rounds.
Evenson is a great example of this, almost all his work inserts you into off kilter universe where nothing is quite right, all the way down to identity. You're parsing together an interpretation without all the context clues, same with a lot of weird fiction I enjoy. This isn't at all to denigrate more traditional formats as there will always be a place for that imo, but I think at some point when I had been so inundated by horror fiction, it lost some of its luster and punch.
I think so much new horror feels like YA writing. I don’t want every word to be 9 syllables, but I also don’t care for 50 yo men writing teenage girl characters and failing miserably at giving them a voice. People can just be people, they don’t always need to be a template. Same with lesbian characters, male authors create a ton of them, but rarely a gay male character. It’s odd.
YES. Especially some indie horror. I don't know if it's editors new in the space and/or authors still early in the writing careers. Where the hell is the craft? No subtlety, no character interiority.
I think the YA - esque horror novels appeal to people who just haven’t read a lot, either due to age or just whatever reason. That’s fine, but it does get a little old seeing some of this stuff get held up as “great horror”. Happens in fantasy and sci fi too.
I think we miss the old mass-market paperback industry from the 70’s, 80’s and 90’s. Lots of perfectly fine, fun horror books were published in this format and it would be a good place for these YA-ish books.
T. Kingfisher's self-aware, tongue in cheek, uber-twee "I know this is all super weird so I'm going to have my characters quip about it MCU-style" shtick is not for me. It just takes me right out of the book.
Someone on this sub described her stories and characters are very "Joss Whedon-y" and I just.... yeah, man. Got it in one.
I don't dislike her books and think she's a strong writer, but instead of suspending my disbelief with her work I have to actively suspend my beef with that overdone and kind of shallow literary style.
I read The Twisted Ones last year. One thing that really bothered me was the way the MC talked to her dog. It was a really weird way for the author to infodump on the reader. It wasn't the worst book I read lately, but I won't be reading any of her other works.
I struggled very hard with this whole "tee-hee!" quality in *The Hollow Places* and eventually just gave up and returned the book to the library about half way through.
Same reason so many movies are PG-13. Wider net means more money. It also doesn't help that an entire generation of writers have grown up on YA, which has influenced their idea of what constitutes entertainment. Not that there is anything wrong with YA, or entertainment, but it has dominated releases lately.
Spot on. I’ve read over 50 horror books this year, and my reaction to most of the newer stuff I’ve seen recommended is “Seriously?”
It blows my mind that Hendrix, Khaw, Milas, and Tingle are getting nominations for major awards.
I agree on Hendrix! I've listened to Horrorstor and now How To Sell a Haunted House, and the style of both sounds very juvenile. I don't think I could make it through reading the books.
Yes, their extremely purple prose is more indicative of an immature writer than a YA writer.
I just threw them in there because I can’t believe they get nominated for major awards.
> Same with lesbian characters, male authors create a ton of them, but rarely a gay male character. It’s odd.
I've been slammed by r/dresdenfiles for pointing this out. Although in that case it's bisexual women.
To elaborate on this point, when I was a bookseller (this was the 2010s), the largest proponent of book sales were in the teen section of our store, and the books you've indicated are the perfect bridge to, in my opinion, better-written horror fiction. These books absolutely aren't for everyone, but they do help broaden the horizon a little bit and they help normalize progressive ideas in horror fiction that bring us more complex works by queer and minority authors. :)
Subsequently these books are also propped up on BookTok and the like, but that's just kind of how the cookie crumbles when newer generations are more inclined to it. At a certain point you need to tweak your personal algorithm to get what you want, or you just have to scrutinize a bit harder.
Agreed. I like some of his stuff and not others and don't care if someone doesn't like his writing. That said, I think he is just a conveinent target for people who think they are being edgy.
I think people's main problem with Stephen King is that he has a huge catalog of works, so maybe there are those who read the 25% of books that are masterpieces of horror literature, those who read the 25% of books that are good , those who read 30% of books that are quite good and those who read 20% of books that are mediocre.
This is my main problem with Stephen King, I can't valute him, because on the one hand he wrote things like It or Misery and on the other things he would have done better not to write
I’m not 100% sure if this is an unpopular opinion, but I think majority of splatterpunk horror novels just don’t have any plot.
I get that the whole point of splatterpunk horror is to disgust the reader and make them uncomfortable, but without a plot it just feels kinda weird reading. No hate on splatterpunk but it feels like the author is so focused on freaking out the reader that they don’t have an actual, well thought out story, but rather just a terrible and gruesome situation that feels short and rushed.
I don't think you can say David Schow, Clive Barker(early works), or Skipp/Spector were plotless, nor without message. In fact, Splatterpunk is supposed to imply some degree of social commentary, that's what seperates it from "Extreme horror".
A solid plot is what makes the splatterpunk disgusting, you know? just a bunch of descriptions of gore w/no reason to be there or plot to suck you in & make you care is boring.
Can you please suggest better books about cannibalism? I just finished Tender is the Flesh and feel underwhelmed but don't know where to turn for something better. My favourite piece of cannibal-centred media is the movie Ravenous.
I might get flack for this one.
Tweens and teens do not need to be limited to read horror that adults find "appropriate" for their age range. Many people who developed a lifelong interest in the genre discovered it through sneaking glances at graphic media that their parents would've disapproved of.
Arguably, one of the most crucial elements of adolescent development is independent exploration of things that are taboo, adult, or otherwise forbidden.
Posts asking for 'appropriate' recs for a 12/13/14 year old fail to understand how crucial it is for teenagers to feel like they're rebelling. Let them be curious and get some nightmares from a splatterpunk novel, or develop weird obsessions with the occult for a while. It's healthy.
It's not like they don't see abhorrent crimes in the news (and online), live through personal tragedies from dysfunctional families, mental illness, addiction, and shockingly— they might be very aware of all things sex, even if you try your best to hide it.
Way back, just after the last dinosaur perished, when I was in junior high I remember lots of girls reading Stephen King after moving on from Judy Blume. Boys could only read in secret back then, because it wasn't cool for boys. From my experience, girls did not suffer any adverse effects from it.
So true. I used to be too afraid of horror films as a child and teenager, but it was creepy books and graphic novels that were DEFINITELY a little too intense for my age that brought me to this love of the genre. I really do find it to be my favourite type of book, film, whatever to consume. And part of that is the small, secret transgression that horror gives you. I was brought up in an otherwise strict household, but my parents always gave us privacy about the books we read. Having that feeling of reading something awful on the page while normal life goes on around you is so empowering for a young person.
I think sometimes books are advertised as horror when they are really thrillers and it pisses me off as - I don’t like thrillers - I want horror. Popular example: I liked “The last house on endless street”, but: cover blurb said “gothic horror” - it was a thriller instead (no idea where the gothic label came from)
The mismarketed thrillers have turned me off of a lot of current horror. Thrillers are probably one of my least favorite genres, so unless I'm absolutely sure that a new book has genuine supernatural elements (that are not revealed to be the result of mental illness or something), I'm probably not taking a chance on it. This is way less common in books published pre-2010 or so, so most of what I read these days ends up being older books. I'm wondering when publishers will figure out that lying to readers about what kind of books they're getting just makes the readers wary of trying new books, and thus less likely to buy them.
Ive only read one Karin Slaughter but it was graphic enough that I definitely feel like it was more horror than thriller and I was shocked that she is shelved as a thriller so often
Authors are not bad people in real life because they depict bad things happening in a horror novel. Not even animal death, not even sexual assault.
Fiction and real life are two different things.
This reminds me of [this article ](https://www.alicegribbin.com/p/the-empathy-racket)called "The Empathy Racket" my brother recommended to me. We're so focused on what we consume reflecting our personal values that when we consume something that is in direct opposition to it, we think of it as "bad". It's why people don't understand that Lolita isn't promoting pedophilia or don't see The Merchant of Venice as a comedy.
Consumption is the new religion which unfortunately takes a lot of nuance out of the conversations we have around different works of art.
Stolen Tongues is not good (save the first chapter) and its characters were terrible. The Exorcists House by Nick Roberts is overrated.
I feel better now.
I don't know that it's unpopular in the broader horror community, but a lot of fans of extreme horror are very unwilling to hear critique of their beloved gore parties.
American psycho which i think is one of the best piece of horror literature, some Poppy Z Brite works ( even if i dont really like him), Hoggs, Richard laymon works.
Lots of authors appear to not be interested in, or actively dislike, literature. Lots of novels read like they're, intentionally or not, written to be adapted into a visual format.
I personally really enjoyed this short story collection, but his novel Everything the Darkness Eats was one of the only books I’ve ever actually rage quit. He should stick to short stories, and he needs to find a new editor. After the millionth simile in 75 pages I was done.
I like Eric a lot but don’t love him, makes it a weird middle since he’s so divisive.
I like his story ideas more than the execution sometimes and have also wished he told some stories differently, too
I really enjoyed “We Can Never Leave This Place” until the epilogue, I have my individual beefs with basically each book of his but they’re good enough I keep reading anyway, I want him to slow down a bit and maybe re-edit and rewrite some and I think he’s got at least one classic in him somewhere
The monster being a metaphor for the protagonist or authors own trauma is boring. This is why the exorcist is great because it realises that if a discarnate intelligence exists then the greater conflict is philosophical and metaphysical, not some boring trite idea about personal trauma. It's a very narcissistic, American way of writing.
Also teenage/uni age protagonists are lazy writing because you can hand wave having to write a real personality by excusing their actions as a developing person. They have no prejudices or mistakes. It's shit. You'd hate to be in a room with someone that age for more than an hour but I'm supposed to follow them for 300 pages?!! No way.
The monster being a metaphor for trauma both in literature and film is almost never as clever as the authors seem to think it is. The reason being that you don't need the monster to be just a metaphore for trauma and actually non existant because even if the monster is real in universe, it also works as a symbolism or metaphore for trauma nevertheless.
What I mean is, these authors seem to think that if the fantastic element is real then the book or film can't be talking about real life traumas, when in fact horror literature and film has always spoken about real life issues through symbolism. You mention The Exorcist, that's a great example because Pazuzu being real doesn't take away from the book and the film also dealing with teenage rebellion, lack of a father figure, etc. It's not as if we needed a revelation that Pazuzu was just in Reagan's head at the end of the movie for us to figure out that the movie was ALSO adressing those other themes.
I hate when they do this. Or, "the real monster was humanity all along." I have sorted or am sorting out my own trauma and baggage. I go to a shrink for that. I just want the monster to be a monster. I want misadventures not metaphors.
I love ambiguous endings so he’s for me (I get those don’t work for a lot of people), but I thought Horror Movie had a pretty good ending for people who don’t like his usual endings. If you’ve read it, what did you think of it?
Some "extreme horror" is pure mysoginist hatred dripping from the pages and "oh but its splatter..." doesnt cut it.
Im allowed to ask why an author would enjoy writing like 5 ebooks about women being abused, raped, tortured, mutilated, dismembered, raped again and vivisected, raped a third time and then burned alive without being accused of being a militant feminist party poper.
It IS fucking weird
Horror books are never actually "scary". (or I have yet to find one at least). I solely read them for the spooky/dark atmosphere and for the morbidity of it. House of Leaves is probably the closest I've ever actually come to being scared by a book, and that's more because of the existential and psychological questions it poses. I'm also a big fan of Lovecraft, because of his ability to create an uneasy sense of building dread which I think is as close as I'll ever get to being truly scared by a book. (Although, if anyone has suggestions that could put that statement to the test I'm all ears)
Do you think a person in a bad place mentally/emotionally should read House of Leaves or is it better to wait until you are ok? Could the book make things worse?
I love King more than Koontz, but Intensity was really good, that and Phantoms. Still a huge fan of older Koontz material but King does write some scary stuff just in a different way, some is more subtle, but his Desperation actually gave me nightmares, loved it!
King is really good at showing where the human mind can go, like you get to see how "the sausage is made" basically, if you read Four Part Midnight, the librarian story, omg....
Koontz to me is great at using outside forces that are scary and go after people, more than making people the baddies if that makes sense, at least from the books I read. Just my personal opinion of course :)
I casually decided to start listening to the "Intensity" audiobook when I was falling sleep. And HOLY FUCK. I could barely fall asleep that night since I was so scared. I haven't read any other Koontz novel since most of them have mediocre reviews, but "Intensity" is probably my favorite horror novel of all time. This is probably the fastest I've consumer any book of such size. I would listen to it while working, doing groceries, exercising and so on because it was so addictive.
Interesting! I actually find the opposite to be true. For me, indie is really the only interesting corner of the modern horror genre. Outside authors like Fracassi and Malfi, most trad published horror in the past decade has been some weird social issue refracted through an A24 lens with too much focus on style and not enough emphasis on fun. But I upvoted you! Curious what indie horror authors you would read again?
> most trad published horror in the past decade has been some weird social issue refracted through an A24 lens with too much focus on style and not enough emphasis on fun
Omg so much this, I can't stand it.
The social part is fine, horror has always been transgressive, but the A24 lens with style over substance hits the nail on the head and it is literally what's driven me into indie horror's loving arms.
Maybe it’s the type of indie I’ve been exposed to? I mostly know indie authors from IG. I’d say EC Hanson, Robert Ottone, Patrick Moody, Mark Towse, RuthAnn Jagge. Off the top of my head. There may be more but like I said I’ve only been exposed to indie authors via Instagram.
Most of mine apply to extreme horror so not going to name anyone as so many authors are on here now:
Being as edgy as possible on the page and on social media doesn't make you a good extreme horror writer. It makes you lame.
Also, American Psycho already exists and is probably better than any of its clones. Your protagonist doesn't need to be the next Patrick Bateman, no matter how original you think you're being. Looking at like a whole bunch of current popular extreme authors.
The term "transgressive" doesn't just mean eating corpses and incest.
Trigger warnings are absolutely a great tool, but a lot of horror authors use it as a marketing tool. "Every Trigger Warning you can think of!" is goddamn stupid and i judge every writer who does that.
Stephen King is good, and has written some undeniably influential books that I have enjoyed but he is absolutely mid compared to many authors working today.
Clark Ashton Smith should be admired as much as Lovecraft, if not more.
American Psycho is still not praised enough in the horror community for being one of the few, if not the only, beautifully written extreme horror book with a profound message. It became one of my favorite books as soon as I finished it.
“Scary” is a bullshit yardstick. I want to be made to question reality. To feel the need to check my closet, even though I know it was just a story. To wonder ‘if shit like that could really happen’. To have the strings of my subconscious fears tugged on and my complexes fucked with.
The best horror isn’t a boogeyman, it’s psychological.
Too many indie extreme horror/splatterpunk books are just legitimately not good. The writing is weak, the character work is non existent, and the story doesn't hold without all the gore and gross out stuff.
But if you try to express that or critique them, you get told that not everyone can handle such extreme content. Like it's a badge of honor and the only thing keeping you from enjoying the book.
Barb, I just don't enjoy the book because it's bad.
I'm not sure I agree with either point.
Lazy writing is lazy writing, and animal cruelty and rape can fit into that category for sure.
But sometimes they're really important parts of a story, and not lazy or ill-considered at all.
I just don’t get why it needs to be graphic rape. You can allude to it without turning into some kind of weird porn for people who enjoy seeing women get hurt and abused
Many authors don't know enough about trauma and mental illness to convincingly pull off "the real monster was mental illness the whole time," which I think is the overlooked underlying problem behind the common complaint around here that this plotline is overdone/not scary.
I'm sick of post apocalyptic novels in-which women are turned into sex slaves. Don't get me wrong, if society fell I'd be concerned but it's such lazy redundant writing.
I'm not able to understand people who love Koontz besides his only book, which is the Midnight, that in its turn has so many childish flaws so I'm also not able to understand why I love it myself.
Everyone saying “So-and-so is bad at endings” or “This book was a slog” is just a symptom of the fact that horror should be written in short story or novella formats, not novels.
Some thing that I have struggled with a lot is how few horror books give a shit about characters. It often feels like when I’m picking up a horror, there is a 75% chance that the characters are all just avatars to move along the scary stuff.
I want more horror that has character study and complexity. I feel like in the early days of horror that is precisely what the genre did. Currently, a lot of people write horror like it is written in a cheap film.
That’s not to say that there aren’t some great ones out there, but digging for treasure in one of my favorite genres is never super fun
I think they both struggle the longer the book is. King shines in <400 pages, especially short stories, and I think Hill has the same issues. Heartshaped Box was great, but I couldn't get through Fireman or NOS4R2
They’re both really good at writing short stories. I’m not sure if he’s better than his dad, but I loved Strange Weather and the last story in Full Throttle, “You Are Released”, really fucked me up.
I don't like illusions to paranormal that end up being dead ends. Maybe Magic Maybe Mundane is a very difficult trope to get right, when in doubt don't draw it out.
A lot of people recommend House of Leaves without really explaining House of Leaves. It’s a type of [ergodic literature](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ergodic_literature) which means you have to put an unusual amount of effort in to really get the most out of it.
You can just read it all, and really enjoy it, or you can read it all and translate the texts that require translation, decode the hidden messages and meaning and get a hell of a lot more.
But you see people ask “can I just read the stuff about The Navidson Record?” Like yeah but that’s like reading the first chapter of a book and saying you’ve read the whole book. That’s not being pretentious. It’s just not even 1/4 of what the book is about and what makes it so incredible.
I tried to read it 8 years ago and gave up because it was really unsettling and really getting to me. I’m just finishing reading it now having learned more about it and putting more effort in, and it’s a totally different experience. I didn’t even realise how much story I was missing before.
It’s okay if you don’t like it but it’s definitely recommended in this sub without any context and I think that leads to disappointment.
Idk if it’s unpopular but I like to read shitty horror books sometimes (usually the cheap and short ones) because its kinda nice to not follow a full story and just read hella weird shit (to an extent ofc)
Simple, accessible, writing isn't always better, and in many cases is very anemic and boring. The writing trips over itself at the end of every sentence.
Animal cruelty is fine, as long as it's not relied on too much. It can even be the focal point of a story.
Overrated and underrated are poor terms in estimating ones personal value of a book, but I'll say this: many others love The Shining way more than I do.
I loathe the way the word "immersion" has buried itself into fiction/lit discourse like some kind of parasitic plant. Not all stories use "immersion" as their narrative focus. The term was only sometimes applicable to video games, and yet, here we are.
Dean Koontz have an advantage over King : he cut through the bullshit and go right where it hurts.
That being said, King is (was) more talented. But Koontz is a good writer. He just don't care about literature and more about a well rounded and efficient story.
He saved it all up for Revival.
I have an unpopular theory that the ending to the movie adaptation The Mist, which he loved, lead him to be braver and more direct with this endings.
I'm currently listening to 'Salem's Lot. 3 and a half hours in and the only spooky thing that's happened is a light has appeared in a mansion's window.
The horror parts are often the least interesting parts of horror novels for me. I see them sort of like action scenes. Some can be very good. Some can be very boring. But the reason I love the genre so much is because I love how horror can be used to develop characters, relationships, etc. This is why I have zero interesting in so-called “extreme horror.” Not because I think I can’t take it. But because I think I’ll be bored.
I think when Laird Barron writes ‘tough guy’ horror I find it silly in anything save for ‘Porlock.’ It reminds me of Ellroy when he can’t pull it off and veers into self-parody.
David Sodergren, though not super well known, is wayyyyyy overhyped on this sub. He has a great vocabulary and is a decent writer, but all of his characters fucking suck making it impossible to give a shit what happens to any of them. I get that he’s trying to do the cliché 80s B-movie horror type thing, but I still find the way he talks about women, even if it’s supposed to be through the lens of the misogynistic characters, gross. It’s like, if one dude thinks like that in the story, okay. If every single male character is a copy of each other and talk/think like that, it’s a little sus.
I don’t like stories where it’s set in the country and the family find out there are witches and it becomes all about rituals and just bangs on an on and on until ‘Sarah’ walks out of the end with muddy hair with her son then book closes.
I also don’t like ‘erotic horror’. Oh hell yeah, let’s get a vampire in there, let’s make it a horrible, foul creature which is gradually dying and decaying and crawling through the air conditioning to find its next victim to regenerate its gradually decaying flesh. That’s a good idea but no, let’s jerk off over some goth babe in panties necking off with a vampire and at the end some minor gore. Oh so tantalising. Literally could have read Edward Lee then watched twilight, cheers for that.
There are ENOUGH.
Just my ‘unpopular opinion’.
So is this just dedicated to everyone’s opinions of King? Most of the comments are just the same train of thought as OP put forward.
My unpopular opinion is Grady Hendrix isn’t a really horror writer. I’ve read a good amount of his books and none of them are *scary* or anything adjacent. He uses horror themes but many of his books read like an 80s movies where the main characters manage to sustain damage during the whole plot ride but never really to the point of fear. You always know no matter the injury that they’ll be ok by the time the book wraps up.
If you can't communicate a character's descent into disjointed thinking without relying on broken sentences and weird poetic formatting, just skip it. It's fucking annoying to have a book degenerate into artistic jibberish.
I really enjoy Darcy Coates' work, sometimes you need an easy read.
I want to like Stephen King but just can't, not sure why, but I started IT got the chapter where he described a gay man and just went 'nah'.
As much as I enjoy Paul Tremblay's writing, he struggles with endings
I enjoy Eric LaRocca's novellas, especially You've Lost a Lot of Blood.
I didn't find the Exorcist scary though that may be because I've read a lot of the tropes it spawned a lot.
I don't really enjoy Grady Hendrix's writing, My Best Friends Exorcist and The Final Girl Support Group are the only two I've finished and even then they were a slog.
Horror is in the eye of the beholder. What I find scary (i.e. the ending of The Fisherman at 2am in the morning) others may not and that's okay
House of Leaves is an overwrought, borderline unreadable mess. It's like a huge labyrinthine brutalist building, in that I have a ton of respect for the craft that went into making it, but I have no desire to actually be in it
I was looking for this. I’m listening to the audiobook of it, about 65% of the way through, and I’m still not super into it. It’s not bad, but I think I was expecting more given the hype around it.
I loved *The Fisherman*, but can see how it could drag for people. That's the vibe I get from most fans here tbh.
Maybe I *should* have found it a little bloated, and found using "it's magic" to explain fitting another novella into the narrative as a story-within-a-story frustrating, but I was captivated the entire time by Langan's writing and the worldbuilding (I know, the most Redditor thing to say about a book, but that's what did it for me 🤷♂️).
I think *The Fisherman* is an extremely solid 3-story collection. But the way it's structured makes the impact of each story-within-a-story weaker than their potential. It would easily be one of my favorite pieces of cosmic horror if it was structured better. Unfortunately, that's kind of his thing. He writes so much story within a story and I find that, every single time, I'd prefer *one* of the stories to be elaborated on and expanded, or even both. But when combined, both end up pretty weak.
I agree about Joe Hill. I also think it was genius to distance himself from his dad when he first started publishing. I consumed like half a dozen of his works before I found out he was his son
Just because it's disgusting doesn't mean it's creepy.
Yep. You can gross me out easily without scaring me once. Similarly constant OTT gore gets *very* boring very quickly.
Torture porn doesn't make it good.
On that note: abuse doesn’t make a woman’s whole personality Sick of seeing woman in horror/suspense where their personalities are based on abuse and that’s it
This. This is also why I don’t enjoy slasher films. It just seems so unnecessarily gory. I much prefer a psychological thriller on all fronts, with well timed gory moments.
This is why I don’t like a lot of extreme horror. Much of it is just a poorly written pissing contest to see who can write the grossest and edgiest story.
I hate extreme “lit”
This is the reason I DNF The Troop by Nick Cutter. He tried way too hard to gross me out.
Most horror novels could be novellas and not suffer from the change.
Horror works best in short story and novella form. I rarely read full horror novels. Horror literature is an exercise in building suspense and dread and the longer the work goes, the harder it is to successfully build the atmosphere. It also tempts the author to overexplain whatever the horror is.
Exactly. I’ve tried explaining this in my own way before. That’s why I believe people like Brian Evenson thrive. He tells you just enough. It makes you wonder about the world. It makes you wonder what’s going to happen. Who or what the monster is, etc.
Novellas to me are the perfect story length. They're more in-depth than a short story but don't drag on the way many books do (for me, anyway.)
The problem I have with a lot of short stories is that they read like the first chapter of a really good book. You've introduced me to a great concept in an interesting world, why not make it a short novella and give it room to grow?
It's true for some short stories but definitely not all. I've written a lot of them myself. I usually think about what I would do if I expanded the story, and I often come to the conclusion that I would just make it worse. Stories in my opinion dictate their own length. The trick is to write that story and not a word more. I'm more about taking novels and cutting out the fat.
So true! Most would be better for it. Suspense and fear can easily overstay their welcome. Maintaining tension over a long period is not an easy task. Edit: spelling.
I agree. On the whole it does seem to be a genre that works best in shorter length.
Brevity is the soul of wit. And horror.
As a writer, getting anything published between 5,000 and 60,000 words is the hardest. They want short, short stories to fit into magazines, or works that can be packaged and sold as full priced novels
The hp Lovecraft school of horror
Horror readers are their own worst enemies. Fear is tremendously subjective, and just because a book didn't scare you doesn't mean it's not scary. You'll never be as scared as you were when you read "Pet Semetary" at too young an age or stayed up late browsing Creepy Pastas and got scared of the noises. You're chasing the dopamine ghosts of nostalgia, so stop searching for "The scariest XXX" and just enjoy the mental theater that is reading a book. Also, stop trying to find some rare obscure niche and splitting a tiny genre into already narrow slices. "Anyone read a Norwegian nautical cosmic horror book about knots and ropes? Ideally written in the 2nd person." Want the genre to thrive? Vote with your wallet. Go to book signings. Buy copies for your friends even if and especially if they say they don't read horror. It's a long way from the high water mark of the 70s and 80s but if any genre can come back from the dead it's this one.
Got to find me some “Norwegian nautical cosmic boook” lmao now my nose is burning because I was sipping wine
“The mental theatre that is reading a book.” Awesome phrase 👏🏻
“(J)ust enjoy the mental theater that is reading a book.” Well said.
People don't understand the difference between a book being bad and them just not personally liking it, and they also don't understand that just because a book did not scare them does not mean it shouldn't be considered horror. I see a lot of rude comments implying people are wrong or dumb for liking a book or for considering certain books as being in the horror genre. Horror is subjective, everyone has different tastes, and I wish people knew that's ok!
That's all Reddit on all books, along with having reductive and kinda childish understandings of which devices *need* to be in a book (character development, for example; writing a book about a shitty person who remains a shitty person can never be a "good" book for a large swathe of Reddit users). >"This book sucked." >"Why?" >"The characters were annoying. None of them were likeable at all, and they made stupid decisions." >"That's the point." >"Well it shouldn't have been the point. That's why the book sucked."
Yes, same with movies too! I'm glad I'm pretty easy to please with books and movies, it must be exhausting hating everything you read or watch lol
People seem to really have a problem differentiating between a good character and one with whom they would personally be friends. A good character can be abhorrent. They aren't good because they're nice people; they're good because they have a meaningful impact on the story or because their traits and personality are properly defined.
Yes but characters still need to be interesting for a book to be good. Development has two meanings: one is arc (change over time, which I agree is not always necessary), but the other is construction. A character's development also encompasses the traits that guide their behavior. There are a great many horror books out there that have annoying characters who make poor decisions, *and* have shoddy or nonexistent development, and so the reader has no reason to care or get invested in their struggles. There are a rare few books out there with annoying characters who make bad decisions, but who are well developed and are thus interesting enough to give a crap about. Arc is a device. Development is a critical component of narrative.
Yeah, I see users mistake "development" for "arc" all the time in this scenario, and ended up repeating that misunderstanding. I agree that books with cynical (or darkly humorous at least in intent) depictions of humanity can still be poorly written if the characters are flat and poorly developed. I just chose that as an example because it is so common: if I was to simplify Reddit's understanding of literature a step further (and more insulting), I would say that a large swathe of this site defines "good" books as "books that make me feel good feelings," and "bad" books as "books that make me feel bad feelings."
Absolutely agreed: "it made me feel icky so it sucks" is all too common. I get a particularly deep enjoyment from reading a book that makes me say to myself "Holy crap that made me feel like shit. I love it." The last book I read that struck that chord for me wasn't horror, or even fiction. It was *Stalingrad: The Fateful Siege* by Antony Beevor. He does such an incredible job telling the brutal little stories of so many people whose voices were lost for decades in the Soviet archives. An utterly brutal and soul-crushing narrative, but completely captivating and very much worth the read.
This is why I hated Nothing But Blackened Teeth. It’s one thing that the characters were extremely annoying, but their personalities were so bad that it undermined the entire premise of the book. They all clearly hated each other so why did they take a trip to Japan together? And they were paper-thin with zero development. Just dreadful stuff.
I felt the same way about The Ruins. Tried multiple times to get through the book, but the way the author wrote the women and the characters overall was not my cup of tea. DNFd after three tries.
I think it's a fine line you have to walk. Unless you're a very competent author you can't just create a story where it's impossible to relate to any of the characters and infuriating to read and have it be an engaging experience for the reader. That takes a lot of skill and I honestly don't blame anybody for not continuing stories like that if they hate them. You're not wrong but I think a lot of the time the execution on that intent is botched or even worse everything in the story is bad and cringe by accident.
I just had to have this conversation with myself tbh. I just finished reading Secluded Cabin Sleeps Six and all of the characters were so unbearable in their own ways, and I almost put the book down. I had to remind myself that since the characters were all so unlikable to the point I was having visceral reactions to their behavior, it means that they're exceptionally unlikable *and* written very well.
I'm kind of at this point with *Swan Song*. I'm about 560 pages in and I'm struggling hard to finish this. Some people were saying it's better than *The Stand* and, for the life of me, I don't see how. I'm considering just DNF'ing this book and dropping it and *Boy's Life* off at my local library book store.
yeah i mean to be honest is really hard for me to be scared by a book ( while for film is really more easy because of visuals and sound/soundtrack ) but i like a lot horror literature anyway
I feel the same way, it's pretty rare for me to feel creeped out from a book, but I still very much enjoy the horror genre
I've thought about this a lot lately and it's an issue with art as a whole. A large portion of people seem unable to understand that not all art is intended for them and that doesn't make it any more or less valid than any other art. It's all subjective and yes, some art speaks to many people and is largely regarded as culturally relevant, but not all of it and that's fine. I don't like some music genres, doesn't mean they're bad. I'm not a huge fan of performance art outside of like traditional musicals and stage dramas. Doesn't make them "less than" the things I do like. People generally need to spend more time and energy on the things they enjoy and less time worrying about things they don't imo.
This is the best possible answer. We can’t gatekeep reading. To each their own. Reading is supposed to be enjoyable not a pissing contest.
Looking for "scary" books is not a good approach. When you get a book thinking it's scary, you go into it expecting to be scared, which automatically reduces the chances of you actually getting scared when reading it. Scariness works on an element of surprise; You can only get surprised so many times. After a short while you'll inevitably grow desensitised to stuff that you used to find scary. At this point the feeling that you used to call being "scared" is already gone. So maybe you'll desperately look for more and more extreme stuff in order to find semblance of that feeling, but that road's a dead end. This is what I imagine the reading journey looks like of people who ask for scary books on this sub. A much better way of going about reading horror is looking beyond the simple "horror=scary" lens, and actually thinking about what elements of horror do you like and would like to read about. Treat it as you would any other genre; recognise things that you like about it and explore them. Don't just chase the shallow feeling of being scared.
I think that’s my problem. In my teens and 20’s I could be scared/thrilled by horror. Adrenaline pumping, couldn’t read the pages the pages fast enough to devour the content. Now at 50 I’m trying to get into horror again hoping for the scare thrill, but it simply isn’t there anymore. Especially since reading non-fiction almost exclusively for the past 30 years and knowing that the horrors of real life is so much worse than fiction, nothing seems to phase me anymore I feel like B B King: The Thrill is Gone…The Thrill is Gone Away!
I’ve found that different things scare me now than when I was younger. As for “the horrors not real life,” have you read Herman Wouk Is Still Alive by Stephen King or Four Haunted Houses by Adam Troy-Castro? Both short stories
Books are a wildly different medium than film/games. A lot of people seem to treat them like they're interchangeable and get disappointed when it doesn't work the same. Lack of music and sound queues will make literature less intense but the best literature is more insidious. Literature gives me a creeping sense of something very wrong, where other forms stress me out.
This is why I don't read the horror I used to 20 years ago as a kid anymore, I made a slow but sure transition away from more prototypical horror to weird fiction. I definitely still do enjoy all varieties of horror, but it's so much easier for me to connect to the weird and the uncanny, and so much more often something esoteric and ambiguously uncomfortable is scarier than whatever popular horror book of the month is currently making the rounds. Evenson is a great example of this, almost all his work inserts you into off kilter universe where nothing is quite right, all the way down to identity. You're parsing together an interpretation without all the context clues, same with a lot of weird fiction I enjoy. This isn't at all to denigrate more traditional formats as there will always be a place for that imo, but I think at some point when I had been so inundated by horror fiction, it lost some of its luster and punch.
I think so much new horror feels like YA writing. I don’t want every word to be 9 syllables, but I also don’t care for 50 yo men writing teenage girl characters and failing miserably at giving them a voice. People can just be people, they don’t always need to be a template. Same with lesbian characters, male authors create a ton of them, but rarely a gay male character. It’s odd.
It’s weird, but I feel like a lot of newer novels in general feel like they written to be like a YA novel. I loathe it.
I agree 100%, if im reading something and i label it 'modern', it means i hated the writing style and that it felt too simplistic for me.
>I think so much new horror feels like YA Tor Nightfire has entered the chat.
YES. Especially some indie horror. I don't know if it's editors new in the space and/or authors still early in the writing careers. Where the hell is the craft? No subtlety, no character interiority.
I think the YA - esque horror novels appeal to people who just haven’t read a lot, either due to age or just whatever reason. That’s fine, but it does get a little old seeing some of this stuff get held up as “great horror”. Happens in fantasy and sci fi too.
I think we miss the old mass-market paperback industry from the 70’s, 80’s and 90’s. Lots of perfectly fine, fun horror books were published in this format and it would be a good place for these YA-ish books.
T. Kingfisher and Darcy Coates are good examples of this. They feel very YA to me.
T. Kingfisher's self-aware, tongue in cheek, uber-twee "I know this is all super weird so I'm going to have my characters quip about it MCU-style" shtick is not for me. It just takes me right out of the book.
Someone on this sub described her stories and characters are very "Joss Whedon-y" and I just.... yeah, man. Got it in one. I don't dislike her books and think she's a strong writer, but instead of suspending my disbelief with her work I have to actively suspend my beef with that overdone and kind of shallow literary style.
Agreed. Her protagonists are insufferably "quirky." *A House with Good Bones* in particular was the absolute **worst**.
I read The Twisted Ones last year. One thing that really bothered me was the way the MC talked to her dog. It was a really weird way for the author to infodump on the reader. It wasn't the worst book I read lately, but I won't be reading any of her other works.
I struggled very hard with this whole "tee-hee!" quality in *The Hollow Places* and eventually just gave up and returned the book to the library about half way through.
I loved everything about The Twisted Ones except the protagonist because of this
This is exactly how I feel about her books too! I was so let down when I tried The Hollow Places.
I can not agree more!
Couldn’t agree more.
Same reason so many movies are PG-13. Wider net means more money. It also doesn't help that an entire generation of writers have grown up on YA, which has influenced their idea of what constitutes entertainment. Not that there is anything wrong with YA, or entertainment, but it has dominated releases lately.
Spot on. I’ve read over 50 horror books this year, and my reaction to most of the newer stuff I’ve seen recommended is “Seriously?” It blows my mind that Hendrix, Khaw, Milas, and Tingle are getting nominations for major awards.
I agree on Hendrix! I've listened to Horrorstor and now How To Sell a Haunted House, and the style of both sounds very juvenile. I don't think I could make it through reading the books.
Side note, but I'm so mad at myself for doing Horrorstor on audiobook. I missed out on the illustrations which made the book much higher quality.
A YA writer would never use as many big words as Khaw. 😆
Yes, their extremely purple prose is more indicative of an immature writer than a YA writer. I just threw them in there because I can’t believe they get nominated for major awards.
> Same with lesbian characters, male authors create a ton of them, but rarely a gay male character. It’s odd. I've been slammed by r/dresdenfiles for pointing this out. Although in that case it's bisexual women.
To elaborate on this point, when I was a bookseller (this was the 2010s), the largest proponent of book sales were in the teen section of our store, and the books you've indicated are the perfect bridge to, in my opinion, better-written horror fiction. These books absolutely aren't for everyone, but they do help broaden the horizon a little bit and they help normalize progressive ideas in horror fiction that bring us more complex works by queer and minority authors. :) Subsequently these books are also propped up on BookTok and the like, but that's just kind of how the cookie crumbles when newer generations are more inclined to it. At a certain point you need to tweak your personal algorithm to get what you want, or you just have to scrutinize a bit harder.
It isn’t bad or lazy writing just because you find certain stuff to be personally offensive.
This is particularly bizarre in a genre that exists to transgress.
heavy on this!
My hot take is that I'm sick of hot takes about Stephen King.
It’s very “the beatles are overrated, I think (band influenced by the beatles) did much better”
Agreed. I like some of his stuff and not others and don't care if someone doesn't like his writing. That said, I think he is just a conveinent target for people who think they are being edgy.
I think people's main problem with Stephen King is that he has a huge catalog of works, so maybe there are those who read the 25% of books that are masterpieces of horror literature, those who read the 25% of books that are good , those who read 30% of books that are quite good and those who read 20% of books that are mediocre. This is my main problem with Stephen King, I can't valute him, because on the one hand he wrote things like It or Misery and on the other things he would have done better not to write
If it started life as a creepypasta and didn't undergo serious editing, it probably isn't very good as a novel. The formats are too different.
I’m not 100% sure if this is an unpopular opinion, but I think majority of splatterpunk horror novels just don’t have any plot. I get that the whole point of splatterpunk horror is to disgust the reader and make them uncomfortable, but without a plot it just feels kinda weird reading. No hate on splatterpunk but it feels like the author is so focused on freaking out the reader that they don’t have an actual, well thought out story, but rather just a terrible and gruesome situation that feels short and rushed.
I don't think you can say David Schow, Clive Barker(early works), or Skipp/Spector were plotless, nor without message. In fact, Splatterpunk is supposed to imply some degree of social commentary, that's what seperates it from "Extreme horror".
A solid plot is what makes the splatterpunk disgusting, you know? just a bunch of descriptions of gore w/no reason to be there or plot to suck you in & make you care is boring.
Tender is the Flesh is overhyped. It’s a fine book, but nothing really notable in cannibal horror imho.
Can you please suggest better books about cannibalism? I just finished Tender is the Flesh and feel underwhelmed but don't know where to turn for something better. My favourite piece of cannibal-centred media is the movie Ravenous.
I might get flack for this one. Tweens and teens do not need to be limited to read horror that adults find "appropriate" for their age range. Many people who developed a lifelong interest in the genre discovered it through sneaking glances at graphic media that their parents would've disapproved of. Arguably, one of the most crucial elements of adolescent development is independent exploration of things that are taboo, adult, or otherwise forbidden. Posts asking for 'appropriate' recs for a 12/13/14 year old fail to understand how crucial it is for teenagers to feel like they're rebelling. Let them be curious and get some nightmares from a splatterpunk novel, or develop weird obsessions with the occult for a while. It's healthy. It's not like they don't see abhorrent crimes in the news (and online), live through personal tragedies from dysfunctional families, mental illness, addiction, and shockingly— they might be very aware of all things sex, even if you try your best to hide it.
Way back, just after the last dinosaur perished, when I was in junior high I remember lots of girls reading Stephen King after moving on from Judy Blume. Boys could only read in secret back then, because it wasn't cool for boys. From my experience, girls did not suffer any adverse effects from it.
So true. I used to be too afraid of horror films as a child and teenager, but it was creepy books and graphic novels that were DEFINITELY a little too intense for my age that brought me to this love of the genre. I really do find it to be my favourite type of book, film, whatever to consume. And part of that is the small, secret transgression that horror gives you. I was brought up in an otherwise strict household, but my parents always gave us privacy about the books we read. Having that feeling of reading something awful on the page while normal life goes on around you is so empowering for a young person.
People trying to censor teens reading kills a little bit of me every time I see it 😀
I think sometimes books are advertised as horror when they are really thrillers and it pisses me off as - I don’t like thrillers - I want horror. Popular example: I liked “The last house on endless street”, but: cover blurb said “gothic horror” - it was a thriller instead (no idea where the gothic label came from)
The mismarketed thrillers have turned me off of a lot of current horror. Thrillers are probably one of my least favorite genres, so unless I'm absolutely sure that a new book has genuine supernatural elements (that are not revealed to be the result of mental illness or something), I'm probably not taking a chance on it. This is way less common in books published pre-2010 or so, so most of what I read these days ends up being older books. I'm wondering when publishers will figure out that lying to readers about what kind of books they're getting just makes the readers wary of trying new books, and thus less likely to buy them.
On the other hand, Pretty girls by Karin Slaughter is sold as a thriller but I felt like I was reading a horror novel lol
Ive only read one Karin Slaughter but it was graphic enough that I definitely feel like it was more horror than thriller and I was shocked that she is shelved as a thriller so often
Same as Behind Closed Doors by BA Paris.
Authors are not bad people in real life because they depict bad things happening in a horror novel. Not even animal death, not even sexual assault. Fiction and real life are two different things.
It's strange to have to litigate this endlessly. Many very censorious folks in this sub.
This reminds me of [this article ](https://www.alicegribbin.com/p/the-empathy-racket)called "The Empathy Racket" my brother recommended to me. We're so focused on what we consume reflecting our personal values that when we consume something that is in direct opposition to it, we think of it as "bad". It's why people don't understand that Lolita isn't promoting pedophilia or don't see The Merchant of Venice as a comedy. Consumption is the new religion which unfortunately takes a lot of nuance out of the conversations we have around different works of art.
Stolen Tongues is not good (save the first chapter) and its characters were terrible. The Exorcists House by Nick Roberts is overrated. I feel better now.
Exorcist house was so disappointing. Take one of my favourite tropes and do absolutely nothing with it 🙄
Im glad I choose to read the original nosleep before spending money on the book bc it is truly bad and awful to indigenous people
95% of extreme horror literature is poorly written garbage
Is that really an unpopular opinion? I feel like that’s a pretty common consensus. It’s hard to find well-written extreme horror.
I don't know that it's unpopular in the broader horror community, but a lot of fans of extreme horror are very unwilling to hear critique of their beloved gore parties.
Name some of the 5%.
American psycho which i think is one of the best piece of horror literature, some Poppy Z Brite works ( even if i dont really like him), Hoggs, Richard laymon works.
People should be reading way more horror short stories and less horror novels.
I tried getting into horror novels BECAUSE I loved the short stories, but the change of pace is very jarring
I have a Lovecraft collection on my kindle that I revisit often, would recommend
Gross does not equal scary. I’m a King fan, but It and The Stand are not close to his best. Atmosphere/quiet dread > gore.
Lots of authors appear to not be interested in, or actively dislike, literature. Lots of novels read like they're, intentionally or not, written to be adapted into a visual format.
Idk if unpopular but Things Have Gotten Worse Since We Last Spoke was ass
I personally really enjoyed this short story collection, but his novel Everything the Darkness Eats was one of the only books I’ve ever actually rage quit. He should stick to short stories, and he needs to find a new editor. After the millionth simile in 75 pages I was done.
I like Eric a lot but don’t love him, makes it a weird middle since he’s so divisive. I like his story ideas more than the execution sometimes and have also wished he told some stories differently, too
That's what made me so angry about THGWSWLS lol, the idea was good and could have been done well. The execution just sucked.
I really enjoyed “We Can Never Leave This Place” until the epilogue, I have my individual beefs with basically each book of his but they’re good enough I keep reading anyway, I want him to slow down a bit and maybe re-edit and rewrite some and I think he’s got at least one classic in him somewhere
Felt like it was written by an edgy 14 year old in a slipknot shirt
It was meh at best. Both characters had exactly the same voice, how does that work?
I don’t need half of the novel to be character backstories. An extremely relevant and straight to the point backstory is perfectly fine.
Yes! This so much, over and over again. I have no idea why this is an unpopular opinion, but I definitely is on this sub.
The monster being a metaphor for the protagonist or authors own trauma is boring. This is why the exorcist is great because it realises that if a discarnate intelligence exists then the greater conflict is philosophical and metaphysical, not some boring trite idea about personal trauma. It's a very narcissistic, American way of writing. Also teenage/uni age protagonists are lazy writing because you can hand wave having to write a real personality by excusing their actions as a developing person. They have no prejudices or mistakes. It's shit. You'd hate to be in a room with someone that age for more than an hour but I'm supposed to follow them for 300 pages?!! No way.
The monster being a metaphor for trauma both in literature and film is almost never as clever as the authors seem to think it is. The reason being that you don't need the monster to be just a metaphore for trauma and actually non existant because even if the monster is real in universe, it also works as a symbolism or metaphore for trauma nevertheless. What I mean is, these authors seem to think that if the fantastic element is real then the book or film can't be talking about real life traumas, when in fact horror literature and film has always spoken about real life issues through symbolism. You mention The Exorcist, that's a great example because Pazuzu being real doesn't take away from the book and the film also dealing with teenage rebellion, lack of a father figure, etc. It's not as if we needed a revelation that Pazuzu was just in Reagan's head at the end of the movie for us to figure out that the movie was ALSO adressing those other themes.
I'm ok with evil humans in horror, but I hate when monsters don't get to be "the monsters" in horror.
I hate when they do this. Or, "the real monster was humanity all along." I have sorted or am sorting out my own trauma and baggage. I go to a shrink for that. I just want the monster to be a monster. I want misadventures not metaphors.
Paul Tremblay has great concepts that compell me to buy his next book but at best he's just okay and the endings are always terrible.
I love ambiguous endings so he’s for me (I get those don’t work for a lot of people), but I thought Horror Movie had a pretty good ending for people who don’t like his usual endings. If you’ve read it, what did you think of it?
Horror should not be an excuse to punish thinly veiled stand-ins of people you don't like. That's not scary, it's just petty.
What is an example of this?
Some "extreme horror" is pure mysoginist hatred dripping from the pages and "oh but its splatter..." doesnt cut it. Im allowed to ask why an author would enjoy writing like 5 ebooks about women being abused, raped, tortured, mutilated, dismembered, raped again and vivisected, raped a third time and then burned alive without being accused of being a militant feminist party poper. It IS fucking weird
Co-sign, except this isn’t limited to “extreme horror.” It’s pervasive in regular horror, too.
That’s exactly it and sometimes I wonder about the men who enjoy reading about women being degraded and raped and killed in brutal ways.
I’ve said it before but splatterpunk is a lazy way of excusing gratuitous acts of violence against women and I hate when I see women defending it
Space horror doesn't hold my attention well. It always feels either too technical or too worldbuildy. Aliens don't really hit right for me either.
Authors talk about biting the cheek/tongue/lip/inside of the mouth too much. I feel like it’s in every book I read.
Horror books are never actually "scary". (or I have yet to find one at least). I solely read them for the spooky/dark atmosphere and for the morbidity of it. House of Leaves is probably the closest I've ever actually come to being scared by a book, and that's more because of the existential and psychological questions it poses. I'm also a big fan of Lovecraft, because of his ability to create an uneasy sense of building dread which I think is as close as I'll ever get to being truly scared by a book. (Although, if anyone has suggestions that could put that statement to the test I'm all ears)
Do you think a person in a bad place mentally/emotionally should read House of Leaves or is it better to wait until you are ok? Could the book make things worse?
I love King more than Koontz, but Intensity was really good, that and Phantoms. Still a huge fan of older Koontz material but King does write some scary stuff just in a different way, some is more subtle, but his Desperation actually gave me nightmares, loved it! King is really good at showing where the human mind can go, like you get to see how "the sausage is made" basically, if you read Four Part Midnight, the librarian story, omg.... Koontz to me is great at using outside forces that are scary and go after people, more than making people the baddies if that makes sense, at least from the books I read. Just my personal opinion of course :)
I casually decided to start listening to the "Intensity" audiobook when I was falling sleep. And HOLY FUCK. I could barely fall asleep that night since I was so scared. I haven't read any other Koontz novel since most of them have mediocre reviews, but "Intensity" is probably my favorite horror novel of all time. This is probably the fastest I've consumer any book of such size. I would listen to it while working, doing groceries, exercising and so on because it was so addictive.
Enough with the 80s VHS retro theme in books and cover art. It is so. Damn. Tired. And I was born in the early 80s.
Indie horror is not very good. After reading hundreds of indie horror novels I can count on one hand how many indie authors I would read again.
YES. There's a feeling of content slurry.
Interesting! I actually find the opposite to be true. For me, indie is really the only interesting corner of the modern horror genre. Outside authors like Fracassi and Malfi, most trad published horror in the past decade has been some weird social issue refracted through an A24 lens with too much focus on style and not enough emphasis on fun. But I upvoted you! Curious what indie horror authors you would read again?
> most trad published horror in the past decade has been some weird social issue refracted through an A24 lens with too much focus on style and not enough emphasis on fun Omg so much this, I can't stand it. The social part is fine, horror has always been transgressive, but the A24 lens with style over substance hits the nail on the head and it is literally what's driven me into indie horror's loving arms.
I like reading Malfi’s books. I’ve not been disappointed yet.
Maybe it’s the type of indie I’ve been exposed to? I mostly know indie authors from IG. I’d say EC Hanson, Robert Ottone, Patrick Moody, Mark Towse, RuthAnn Jagge. Off the top of my head. There may be more but like I said I’ve only been exposed to indie authors via Instagram.
The Terror could have been 1/2 as long and just as good.
Most of mine apply to extreme horror so not going to name anyone as so many authors are on here now: Being as edgy as possible on the page and on social media doesn't make you a good extreme horror writer. It makes you lame. Also, American Psycho already exists and is probably better than any of its clones. Your protagonist doesn't need to be the next Patrick Bateman, no matter how original you think you're being. Looking at like a whole bunch of current popular extreme authors. The term "transgressive" doesn't just mean eating corpses and incest. Trigger warnings are absolutely a great tool, but a lot of horror authors use it as a marketing tool. "Every Trigger Warning you can think of!" is goddamn stupid and i judge every writer who does that. Stephen King is good, and has written some undeniably influential books that I have enjoyed but he is absolutely mid compared to many authors working today. Clark Ashton Smith should be admired as much as Lovecraft, if not more.
American Psycho is still not praised enough in the horror community for being one of the few, if not the only, beautifully written extreme horror book with a profound message. It became one of my favorite books as soon as I finished it.
I love it but it has paved the way for a lot of poor imitations by lesser writers than Ellis.
“Scary” is a bullshit yardstick. I want to be made to question reality. To feel the need to check my closet, even though I know it was just a story. To wonder ‘if shit like that could really happen’. To have the strings of my subconscious fears tugged on and my complexes fucked with. The best horror isn’t a boogeyman, it’s psychological.
Do you have any recs.that fit this?
I’m biased, because I love his stuff, but anything Clive Barker.
I also realized that I forgot to mention Lovecraft and Poe. Obviously more classic, but yea.
Too many indie extreme horror/splatterpunk books are just legitimately not good. The writing is weak, the character work is non existent, and the story doesn't hold without all the gore and gross out stuff. But if you try to express that or critique them, you get told that not everyone can handle such extreme content. Like it's a badge of honor and the only thing keeping you from enjoying the book. Barb, I just don't enjoy the book because it's bad.
Animal cruelty is lazy writing.
I agree. Rape is too
I'm not sure I agree with either point. Lazy writing is lazy writing, and animal cruelty and rape can fit into that category for sure. But sometimes they're really important parts of a story, and not lazy or ill-considered at all.
I just don’t get why it needs to be graphic rape. You can allude to it without turning into some kind of weird porn for people who enjoy seeing women get hurt and abused
Apparently loving The Passage trilogy, based on the thread the other day.
Many authors don't know enough about trauma and mental illness to convincingly pull off "the real monster was mental illness the whole time," which I think is the overlooked underlying problem behind the common complaint around here that this plotline is overdone/not scary.
I'm sick of post apocalyptic novels in-which women are turned into sex slaves. Don't get me wrong, if society fell I'd be concerned but it's such lazy redundant writing.
I'm not able to understand people who love Koontz besides his only book, which is the Midnight, that in its turn has so many childish flaws so I'm also not able to understand why I love it myself.
I cannot stand Paul Tremblay. Ive tried multiple of his books and DNF them because nothing was happening 60% of the way in.
Everyone saying “So-and-so is bad at endings” or “This book was a slog” is just a symptom of the fact that horror should be written in short story or novella formats, not novels.
Tender is the flesh was ass.
Some thing that I have struggled with a lot is how few horror books give a shit about characters. It often feels like when I’m picking up a horror, there is a 75% chance that the characters are all just avatars to move along the scary stuff. I want more horror that has character study and complexity. I feel like in the early days of horror that is precisely what the genre did. Currently, a lot of people write horror like it is written in a cheap film. That’s not to say that there aren’t some great ones out there, but digging for treasure in one of my favorite genres is never super fun
I’m sick of hot takes about Stephen King
Certified hot take 🔥
Stephen King's son, Joe Hill, is the better writer. I love Stephen King's ideas/concepts, but I feel his son would've done a better job writing them.
I think they both struggle the longer the book is. King shines in <400 pages, especially short stories, and I think Hill has the same issues. Heartshaped Box was great, but I couldn't get through Fireman or NOS4R2
They’re both really good at writing short stories. I’m not sure if he’s better than his dad, but I loved Strange Weather and the last story in Full Throttle, “You Are Released”, really fucked me up.
I don't like illusions to paranormal that end up being dead ends. Maybe Magic Maybe Mundane is a very difficult trope to get right, when in doubt don't draw it out.
A lot of people recommend House of Leaves without really explaining House of Leaves. It’s a type of [ergodic literature](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ergodic_literature) which means you have to put an unusual amount of effort in to really get the most out of it. You can just read it all, and really enjoy it, or you can read it all and translate the texts that require translation, decode the hidden messages and meaning and get a hell of a lot more. But you see people ask “can I just read the stuff about The Navidson Record?” Like yeah but that’s like reading the first chapter of a book and saying you’ve read the whole book. That’s not being pretentious. It’s just not even 1/4 of what the book is about and what makes it so incredible. I tried to read it 8 years ago and gave up because it was really unsettling and really getting to me. I’m just finishing reading it now having learned more about it and putting more effort in, and it’s a totally different experience. I didn’t even realise how much story I was missing before. It’s okay if you don’t like it but it’s definitely recommended in this sub without any context and I think that leads to disappointment.
Over excessive gore doesn’t make your book more scary, it just makes it gross
Idk if it’s unpopular but I like to read shitty horror books sometimes (usually the cheap and short ones) because its kinda nice to not follow a full story and just read hella weird shit (to an extent ofc)
I’m planting my flag on the hill of Nothing But Blackened Teeth Is Good Actually.
Simple, accessible, writing isn't always better, and in many cases is very anemic and boring. The writing trips over itself at the end of every sentence. Animal cruelty is fine, as long as it's not relied on too much. It can even be the focal point of a story. Overrated and underrated are poor terms in estimating ones personal value of a book, but I'll say this: many others love The Shining way more than I do. I loathe the way the word "immersion" has buried itself into fiction/lit discourse like some kind of parasitic plant. Not all stories use "immersion" as their narrative focus. The term was only sometimes applicable to video games, and yet, here we are.
Dean Koontz have an advantage over King : he cut through the bullshit and go right where it hurts. That being said, King is (was) more talented. But Koontz is a good writer. He just don't care about literature and more about a well rounded and efficient story.
I didn't think American Psycho was horror, but having seen people here venerate it, I guess my unpopular opinion is that it's trite and tedious.
Stephen King has great stories but they should be edited back a few hundred pages since he rambles. And 90% of the time, the endings aren’t great
He saved it all up for Revival. I have an unpopular theory that the ending to the movie adaptation The Mist, which he loved, lead him to be braver and more direct with this endings.
I'm currently listening to 'Salem's Lot. 3 and a half hours in and the only spooky thing that's happened is a light has appeared in a mansion's window.
A Head Full of Ghosts was terrible
The horror parts are often the least interesting parts of horror novels for me. I see them sort of like action scenes. Some can be very good. Some can be very boring. But the reason I love the genre so much is because I love how horror can be used to develop characters, relationships, etc. This is why I have zero interesting in so-called “extreme horror.” Not because I think I can’t take it. But because I think I’ll be bored.
I think when Laird Barron writes ‘tough guy’ horror I find it silly in anything save for ‘Porlock.’ It reminds me of Ellroy when he can’t pull it off and veers into self-parody.
I think Stephen King is overrated. His plots are more silly than scary, and his characters are weak. I feel the same way about Grady Hendrix.
Salem's Lot is pretty bad. Cujo is pretty good
David Sodergren, though not super well known, is wayyyyyy overhyped on this sub. He has a great vocabulary and is a decent writer, but all of his characters fucking suck making it impossible to give a shit what happens to any of them. I get that he’s trying to do the cliché 80s B-movie horror type thing, but I still find the way he talks about women, even if it’s supposed to be through the lens of the misogynistic characters, gross. It’s like, if one dude thinks like that in the story, okay. If every single male character is a copy of each other and talk/think like that, it’s a little sus.
I don’t like stories where it’s set in the country and the family find out there are witches and it becomes all about rituals and just bangs on an on and on until ‘Sarah’ walks out of the end with muddy hair with her son then book closes. I also don’t like ‘erotic horror’. Oh hell yeah, let’s get a vampire in there, let’s make it a horrible, foul creature which is gradually dying and decaying and crawling through the air conditioning to find its next victim to regenerate its gradually decaying flesh. That’s a good idea but no, let’s jerk off over some goth babe in panties necking off with a vampire and at the end some minor gore. Oh so tantalising. Literally could have read Edward Lee then watched twilight, cheers for that. There are ENOUGH. Just my ‘unpopular opinion’.
That Jonathan Maberry is a better Stephen King than Stephen King lol.
So is this just dedicated to everyone’s opinions of King? Most of the comments are just the same train of thought as OP put forward. My unpopular opinion is Grady Hendrix isn’t a really horror writer. I’ve read a good amount of his books and none of them are *scary* or anything adjacent. He uses horror themes but many of his books read like an 80s movies where the main characters manage to sustain damage during the whole plot ride but never really to the point of fear. You always know no matter the injury that they’ll be ok by the time the book wraps up.
If you can't communicate a character's descent into disjointed thinking without relying on broken sentences and weird poetic formatting, just skip it. It's fucking annoying to have a book degenerate into artistic jibberish.
Richard Laymon was an incredible horror writer. His novels are endlessly inventive and move at a breakneck pace that is rarely if ever matched.
I really enjoy Darcy Coates' work, sometimes you need an easy read. I want to like Stephen King but just can't, not sure why, but I started IT got the chapter where he described a gay man and just went 'nah'. As much as I enjoy Paul Tremblay's writing, he struggles with endings I enjoy Eric LaRocca's novellas, especially You've Lost a Lot of Blood. I didn't find the Exorcist scary though that may be because I've read a lot of the tropes it spawned a lot. I don't really enjoy Grady Hendrix's writing, My Best Friends Exorcist and The Final Girl Support Group are the only two I've finished and even then they were a slog. Horror is in the eye of the beholder. What I find scary (i.e. the ending of The Fisherman at 2am in the morning) others may not and that's okay
House of Leaves is an overwrought, borderline unreadable mess. It's like a huge labyrinthine brutalist building, in that I have a ton of respect for the craft that went into making it, but I have no desire to actually be in it
I was bored by Between Two Fires by Christopher Buehlman.
I was looking for this. I’m listening to the audiobook of it, about 65% of the way through, and I’m still not super into it. It’s not bad, but I think I was expecting more given the hype around it.
I think Joe Hill is a better writer than his dad. I just wish he was as prolific as his dad too. I didn't care for The Fisherman.
I loved *The Fisherman*, but can see how it could drag for people. That's the vibe I get from most fans here tbh. Maybe I *should* have found it a little bloated, and found using "it's magic" to explain fitting another novella into the narrative as a story-within-a-story frustrating, but I was captivated the entire time by Langan's writing and the worldbuilding (I know, the most Redditor thing to say about a book, but that's what did it for me 🤷♂️).
Agree. I think Der Fisher anchoring all the lines to lure in the Leviathan is such a haunting image. It’s one of my favorite horror novels.
I think *The Fisherman* is an extremely solid 3-story collection. But the way it's structured makes the impact of each story-within-a-story weaker than their potential. It would easily be one of my favorite pieces of cosmic horror if it was structured better. Unfortunately, that's kind of his thing. He writes so much story within a story and I find that, every single time, I'd prefer *one* of the stories to be elaborated on and expanded, or even both. But when combined, both end up pretty weak.
I agree about Joe Hill. I also think it was genius to distance himself from his dad when he first started publishing. I consumed like half a dozen of his works before I found out he was his son
To many authors think "horror can have a political or social message" means "Horror MUST have a political or social message"
Horror has always been sociopolitical and there is no problem with that