Jack Duggan’s Reviews > Roots of My Fears: Terrifying Stories of Ancestral Horror > Status Update

The Woods: apologies to the author, but this was the worst story so far by a long way. At times it read more like bad fanfiction, leaning heavily on telling-not-showing and unnatural dialogue. There is some really interesting surreal imagery that I think would work really well on film, but it tries to do way too much with the little time. Expand the subplots to novella length and this could work *really* well, though

Laal Andhi: this one had some really cool, evocative imagery and I desperately want to like it more than I did, but it’s all over the place. The action gets jumbled and hard to follow, there are flashbacks to two different inciting incidents that don’t seem to affect one another in any way I could make sense of, and worst it drastically needed the editor to go over it once more for grammar checks. A real shame.

Crepuscular: the second collection in as many months trying to disguise the King In Yellow. Themes of doing anything for your child and possibly the fear of them leaving home(?) work pretty well, but the action is jumbled and at times it’s really hard to follow what characters are doing

The Saint in the Mountain: really well paced, the intrigue builds up really nicely to a reasonably satisfying climax, playing off the fears of adolescence nicely

One of Those Girls: another very cool one, balancing the classic ghost story against a story that felt more 1970s in it’s approach to unplanned pregnancy, like the music video for a Madonna song directed by Guillermo Del Toro

In Silence, In Dying, In Dark: my favourite in the collection took so far. It manages to insinuate so much so quickly, and the motif of silence to portray both secrecy and grief works really well

The Faces at Pune Dunes: longer than usual, which is nice as it gives plenty of time to build intrigue. The portrayal of the Northwest feels almost anachronistic and outside of time, which makes sense once an incredibly jarring name gets dropped. Overall this didn’t have the same Folk-horror vibe previous stories did, drawing instead from a specific Mythos, but it paces itself well

The House That Gabriel Built: a classic Haunted House tale with an international twist. Folk Horror is possibly my favourite kind, and the transition to Nigeria as a setting is neat, but I can’t help feel it lacked depth. The description of how the house came to be was fun, but it feels sort of like the horror is in things being unholy, which kind of predisposes the non-religious to not actually being bothered

Lamb had a Little Mary: quite a cute little story, if not particularly scary one, about neglectful parenting. Works pretty well as a fable, but it would be nice if it were more obviously directly scary instead of just as a metaphor