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

Chalk Bones: a timely environmental tale about how much humanity takes from nature and the price that will need to be paid at some point if we don’t give back

To Forget and Be Forgotten: The Shining meets Hereditary, and maybe my favourite in the book so far. Ample time is spent on build-up, but in a way that works really well as we are gradually introduced to each element and the building unfolds to us. It leaps forth at a cracking pace, leading to a really solid climax in what I think is otherwise a rumination on aging, loneliness, and later-life care.

Unsewn: pretty cool, although not very spooky. The changing of third- to second-person and back to explore identity is a fun idea, and the ending is a nice Equality punch, but I’d have liked it to be more visceral or to have a little more bite.

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

Juracán: I liked this one in theory, but not to much in practice. Evil spirits coinciding with natural disasters is a classic, and the premonition angle is a a cool idea, but the execution here felt rushed and didn’t give any element enough time to develop, feeling pretty Tell and not Show :(

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