Roots of My Fears
I really enjoyed this collection. I think this overall is a really cool prompt to explore across various cultures and backgrounds. So many different interpretations of ancestral horror. I was familiar with some authors within this collection and others were new to me. That’s something I really love about short story collections. It’s a great way to meet new-to-me authors and add more books to my tbr. From this I am really looking forward to reading more from Nuzo Onoh, Nadia El-Fassi, Usman T. Malikm, and Ai Jiang.
However, of course there were some stories that I didn’t connect with or didn’t particularly like. ’The Faces at Pine Dunes’ by Ramsey Campbell was the only story here that I really didn’t vibe with. I’m a very visual reader and although there were pleanty of adjectives in the story I had a hard time visualizing what was going on. At the beginning of the story I was picturing the main character as a 10 year old boy. Imagine my shock when within the next few scenes he’s downing beers and hitting on someone. From there thing just remained confusing and I had a hard time keeping focus on the story.
Another that didn’t quite land for me was ‘The Woods’ by Erika T. Wurth. I have read from Wurth before, the first being ‘White Horse"‘. I really loved this story! I read it back in 2023 for the Skoden Readathon hosted by Kim from @NativeLadyBookWarrior. Last year I read ‘The Haunting of Room 904’ with my friends Austin and Unique. However all three of us weren’t fans of this story. So I was very curious as to how I would like her short story. And unfortunately the answer was not at all. The stand out reason was an underlying plot that the main character cheated on her partner because she wanted to have a baby and he didn’t. That just rubbed me the wrong way and I had a hard time understanding what the point of the story was.
My favorite story was ‘The Saint in the Mountain’ by Nadia El-Fassi! WOW THIS STORY! I wanted it to be longer because I was so captivated! A young girl gets her period, she tried hiding it from her mom because her mom has odd vibes…something ain’t right. But she is unable hide it and her mom takes her away to H_____ immediately. That’s not a typo or lack of memory on my end that is how this place is spelled in the story, simply H____. So they are on this roadtrip right, and they stop on the side of the road for a bit of a break. There’s a vendor there and he asks the girl where she is going and she says H_____. The man seemingly frightened says “Don’t djinn live in H_____.” Momma gets pissed and they leave. She then tells the girl “There is no djinn, there is only the Saint.”. The way the story unfolds from there is so spectacular! I was hooked! For a fleeting moment I forgot I was reading a short story collection.
I hope this book finds it’s way on your tbr because I think it’s a great way to explore authors! I like this chosen topic of ancestral horror, it was really interesting to read how that was interpreted.
