Natural Beauty by Ling Ling Huang

Natural Beauty is Huang’s first novel and this body horror is a banger of a start.

The first person narrator, daughter of Chinese immigrants who fled the Cultural Revolution, was once a promising pianist but a traumatic family event left her psychologically unable to play. While working as a dishwasher, a woman who saw her play invites her to come to a high end beauty and wellness clinic named Holistic. There she is offered a job. Working at HolistiK isn’t just a job, it’s a commitment to a way of life. The employees use the products  and are given regular tune-ups. The narrator is told “We don’t sell products. We’re selling a lifestyle. Desire.The possibility for them to become us.”

The exotic products and treatments are an exaggerated parody of what you can find celebrities promoting. For example, one treatment involves remora eels and crabs. Even as the narrator finds herself drawn deeper into the Holistic culture, she finds that the products and treatments she receives are having an effect. They aren’t merely cosmetic, skin deep as it were, but are gradually altering her body.

The narrator is recruited into a special program which deepens the mystery of what Holistik really is and is the start of the full on body horror she experiences in the second part of the book. The horror Huang portrays is nicely done and leaves the reader both repulsed feeling sympathy for those who succumbed to the lure of finding beauty.

Natural beauty touches upon self-worth, race and identity, and consumerism where Holistik creates a demand for their products and treatments with the employees serving as living advertisements to clients who desire the “natural” beauty they see. The more outlandish the treatment the more people with the means will embrace it.

I hope to read more from this author.

The Bandit Queens by Parini Shroff

 If you enjoy an excellent, character driven novel that immerses you in a different culture giving the reader a vivid sense of place then this might be the book for you. It was for me.

You can approach it as a crime story but it is so much more than that.

The setting is contemporary in a small village in India where having a refrigerator and indoor bathroom are luxuries. Geeta is the main character. The villagers believe she “disappeared” her husband. Though innocent, letting people believe she murdered her husband has benefits. No one messes with her. Her hero is the bandit queen Phoolan Devi, a real person of the Dalit caste (i.e. untouchable), who exacted bloody revenge on the men who horrifically abused and tortured her.

Geeta is part of a female loan group that has taken out a small business loan. They meet monthly to make a payment to the loan officer. Her relationship to the other women is not at all friendly given her reputation, it’s strictly business. One of the group, Farah, often has difficulty making her payment due to her husband who bleeds her dress making business dry to fuel his alcoholism. This jeopardizes the loan which doesn’t make the other women happy. She approaches Geeta for help in disposing of her husband. Geeta isn’t a killer but finds herself reluctantly helping Farah plan the murder. When another woman sees Farah’s success, she looks to Geeta for her expertise.

The core of the story is the relationship that builds among the women. They find strength together in a culture of systemic misogyny and abuse. Geeta loses her aloofness as the women bond. The dialog is smoothly realistic and frequently wry, sly, witty, snarky, and funny, just what I enjoy. There are also scenes of thrilling danger and extreme peril but even there Shroff finds a way to inject humor.

Around this story of female empowerment and friendship is the structure of embedded misogyny and the caste system which is still in the culture particularly in small villages. I've never had a book pull me into a culture like this one does. The issue of caste is shown by through character Khushi, a Dalit widow who has a cremation business. We see her in public and the strictures under which she and her children have to conduct themselves. It both appalls and sparks empathy in the reader. But in her home, away from the higher castes, Khushi is a strong, assertive woman who isn't shy about putting Geeta in her place when she tries to "help".

I loved and cared about the characters and what happened to them. I enthusiastically recommended this book.

Ten Low by Stark Holborn

 

So you're looking for a really good space adventure? Have I got the book for you.

Our protagonist is Ten "Doc" Low, a medic, ex-convict, ex-soldier on the losing side of a war with PTSD and crippling remorse for what she did in the war. She's eking out an existence on the barren, arid moon Factus on the edge of the known universe.

She rescues a young girl from a crashed ship who turs out to be an augmented super soldier. Ten sees redemption in getting General Gabriella "Gabie" Ortiz to safety but to do so they have to cross a wasteland and dodging bandits, cult-like organ harvesters, military hit-squads, and bounty hunters. Along the way they pick up allies but numbers don't equal safety and the future is far from certain.

Holborn does a masterful job of world building. She doesn’t try to explain everything at once but shows us as the story unfolds. The reader feels the bleakness of Factus, its its low oxygen atmosphere and filthy hardscrabble life.

The characters are well developed and you come to care for them. Ten's remorse and torment for what she did in the and need for redemption is real and visceral. The author has fun with General Ortiz, only13 years old but a hard-bitten, hard-drinking, soldier who will kill without blinking or regret. The group that forms around these two are equally well fleshed out and their motivation explored.

The book is fast paced with action scenes that are well written and near unbearable at times: narrow escapes, tense standoffs, gunfights, it's all here. But the story and character development are not sacrificed to the action. There also is a mysterious force that seems to be guiding but I don't think it veers into magic.

Someone suggest that readers who like The Locked Tomb series (Gideon the Ninth is the 1st) by Tamsyn Muir will also like this book. While there is no similarity in themes I get the vibe since I also love that series.

There are 2 more books in this series and I will be reading them.

Tender is the Flesh by Agustina Bazterrica, translation by Sarah Moses

 

First sentence: “Carcass, Cut in half. Stunner. Slaughter line. Spray wash.”

Tender is the Flesh is a horror story set in a world where an infectious virus has infected all animal meat  making the meat lethal to eat or even be around (supposedly). To adjust to this reality, the governments instituted the “Transition” which allows for the consumption of human flesh, euphemistically referred to as “special meat”. The meat industry has retooled itself to breed and slaughter human beings who are merely called “head”.

Marcos is a supervisor in a slaughtering facility who oversees the receiving of new head, processing, and making sure the breeders are delivering quality head. He is weary from dealing with family issues and tries to not think too much about what he does and maintain an emotional detachment. Then one of the breeders servicing his facility sends him a prime female head delivered to his remote home. Marcos begins to relate to the woman as a human being and treats her like one. This is forbidden and could result in Marcos himself being sent to slaughter.

This is my first book by Bazterrica and won’t be my last. She has a new book coming out in March 2025, also translated by Sarah Moses, which I have pre-ordered. Bazterrica and Moses are a good team. The prose is clean and sharp and flow allowing the reader to immerse themselves in the story.

There are two aspects to the horror within the book. The first is the treatment of humans like so many head of cattle and the acts of breeding, slaughtering, and packaging them. The second, and to me more horrible, is the way these acts are normalized, treated as an everyday part of life. I’m not exaggerating when I say that it was a “jam a knuckle in the mouth” reaction to the images brought forth by the matter of fact way the “special meat” industry is conducted. It is thought provoking and raises the question, could this become a reality in the face of climate change and threats to food supplies. I think of Tender is the Flesh as an extension of Soylent Green which I thought of as pretty horrible when the movie came out but this is much worse. Unfortunately I don’t now see it as a stretch to think consumers would quickly adjust.

The actual motivations and practicalities of institutionalized cannibalism are left to the reader's imagination.But could the governments really pull it off aren’t really important. Marcus himself has doubts that the virus really exists. He refuses, unlike everyone else, to carry an umbrella in case a bird should poop on them.

Tender is the Flesh is a well written work of horror that should repulse the reader that also makes the reader question if we could descend to this level. I loved it but would need to know someone well before recommending it to them.

The Spirit Bares Its Teeth by Andrew Joseph White

First let me say that this is a terrific title and it is one reason I picked up the book. If you decide to read it, keep in mind that there might be more than one spirit.

The Spirit Bares Its Teeth is set in 1883 in an alternative Victorian England. Decades before, the veil separating the spirit from the physical world thins and at the same time people are born with violet eyes. These people can lift the veil and see into and exploit the spirit world. In England at least, people with this ability are rigorously controlled through acts of parliament and the Royal Speaker Society. Anyone practicing spirit-work without being sanctioned could be executed or sent to an asylum. Women are not allowed to lift the veil, ostensibly because of their constitutions; they are subject to veil sickness. In reality, men realize the power that comes from being able to see beyond the veil and want it for themselves. Women born with violet eyes are relegated to the role of brood mare, to be married off to wealthy men in order to produce violet-eyed male babies.

In this misogynistic world we meet our protagonist, Gloria/Silas, a neurodiverse 16 year old born female who only wants two things: to live her life as a man and to become a surgeon. Her brother, George, is a surgeon and indulges Silas (as I will henceforth refer to him), in both her desires. Under George’s tutelage she develops an extensive knowledge of anatomy and surgery.

In an attempt to avoid marriage and her horror of pregnancy and being a mother, Silas attempts to join the Royal Speaker Society by pretending to be someone else. She is discovered to be female. She would likely have been executed for this crime but for the intervention of Lord Luckenbill, the president of the society, who wants her for his son, Edward.

To save her, Silas’ parents agree to Luckenbill’s suggestion to send Silas to Braxton's Finishing School and Sanatorium to be broken in spirit and turned into a good and subservient wife. Really, it’s the Victorian version of a conversion. This is where the story gets going. All is not as it seems at Braxton’s, girls disappear completely and are not heard from in the outside world again. Silas is determined to find out what happened to the missing girls.

I picked up this book after one of my favorite booktubers, Willow Talks Books, flashed the cover in her tier ranking of 267 books; it’s in her A tier. I loved the cover and title, but I didn't read much about the book before I checked it out. I was 103 pages in before I knew it, slowed down, and realized that it’s a YF book. I hadn’t noticed that in the description. I confess I might have let it go had I known. But a 100 pages had flown by and I was loving it. I have to say that YA has come a long way since I was a yute. I can’t imagine themes of transgenderism and body horror in books I read back then.

Something that struck me is that had it been aimed toward an older audience it would have been longer and developed in a more detailed manner. Instead it’s more “this is the way it is and let’s keep moving”. This isn’t a criticism and doesn’t take away from the book. White is a very talented writer whose words flow across the page.

I like White’s style of writing. I find it smooth and flowing. Like I said above, after starting the book I was 100 pages in before I came up for air. I also finished it in a day and that’s without skimming. I like the way the author writes Silas and how he generates empathy in the reader.as Silas deals with his neurodiversity and frustration at not being able to live his own life the way he wants, as a man and surgeon. Later in the book Silas finds an ally in another trans character, Daphne, a biological male desiring to live as a female. I’m an old, white, CIS guy but I felt that the author does a good job of conveying the deep needs of the two trans characters particularly within the moral strictures of Victorian England.

This book is horror and potential readers need to anticipate they will experience intense misogyny, psychological, emotional, sexual assault, revenge, and body horror. Trigger warnings apply. The author hits hard on the misogyny and how the patriarchy had no compunctions to declaring someone ill who flaunts societal standards. In the book this is called veil sickness which is treated by institutionalizing, brainwashing, and in extreme cases death. The stakes for survival are high for Silas and his ally, Daphne. This may be YF but the author doesn’t hold back. The reader is repulsed by the Victorian misogynistic treatment of women and lifted up by the resilience of the main character to meet the terrors they face.

I don’t know if the author intends this to be a standalone but I would really like to see more of these characters and this world.