Author Archives: Elisabeth Ring

‘The Fervor’ An Uncomfortably Relevant Horror

Good horror will send a shiver down your spine. Great horror will revisit you in your quiet moments, reminding you that you’re never quite safe. But the best use of horror is the one that both frightens its audience and shows that the things that go bump in the night are nothing compared to whatContinue reading “‘The Fervor’ An Uncomfortably Relevant Horror”

‘Spindle’ Lovingly Splinters Fairy-Tale Tropes

There’s been no shortage of fairy tale retellings or mythology reinterpreted lately. Alix E. Harrow‘s A Spindle Splintered is proof positive that another addition to a well-populated genre can still be done uniquely and oh-so-effectively. Zinnia Gray is doomed to die. She’s one of the last surviving members of an unfortunate club of kids whoContinue reading “‘Spindle’ Lovingly Splinters Fairy-Tale Tropes”

‘Body’ Examines Many Facets of Race, Family

Race, as some say, is only skin deep—beneath different colored skin, we’re really all alike. And that’s true, to an extent. By and large, I think we can agree that gas prices are too high, cat videos are the heart and soul of the internet, and Kate Bush has quite the banger. Beneath the superficialityContinue reading “‘Body’ Examines Many Facets of Race, Family”

‘Tomorrow’ A Video-Game Tale Rooted in Reality

The tension of “will they or won’t they” has done a lot of heavy lifting for stories through the ages, including many that wouldn’t have been nearly as intriguing otherwise. In the case of Gabrielle Zevin’s Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, that question is a touchpoint throughout the years for its characters, but the answer isContinue reading “‘Tomorrow’ A Video-Game Tale Rooted in Reality”

‘Survivor Song’ a Prescient Tale

I had to stop multiple times while reading Paul Tremblay’s Survivor Song to check whether it had been written before or during the pandemic. And then check again, and again, because the way his fictional society reacted to his fictional outbreak felt far too close to reality circa March-April 2020. But Survivor Song was publishedContinue reading “‘Survivor Song’ a Prescient Tale”

Barker’s ‘Women’ is a Dazzling Return to Troy

Thousands of years after the fall of Troy and long after the Greek gods’ influence faded, the stories and myths from that golden era still persist. Pat Barker’s The Silence of the Girls revisiting of that era by unspooling a single mention of a Trojan woman, Briseis, who was given as a token in aContinue reading “Barker’s ‘Women’ is a Dazzling Return to Troy”

‘Song for the Unraveling of the World’ Strange and Compelling

The first story in Brian Evenson’s collection Song for the Unraveling of the World is less than two pages long. That page and a half, though, is a good litmus test. If you don’t like it, you can confidently move onto some other short story collection. But if you find yourself intrigued and uneased, there’sContinue reading “‘Song for the Unraveling of the World’ Strange and Compelling”

‘Sundial’ Not For the Faint of Heart

In horror, fear can come from a variety of places. Ghosts, demons (real or imagined), zombies, fascists, fascist zombies—the possibilities are endless. In the case of Catriona Ward’s Sundial, the call, as it were, is coming from inside the relationship. From the outside, Rob looks like a picture of suburban perfection: nice clothes, a polishedContinue reading “‘Sundial’ Not For the Faint of Heart”

‘Home By Now’ Paints a Tempting Picture of Remote Living

Over the last couple of years, the fear of catching a deadly disease has brought about a long-overdue shift to remote working for many jobs, and along with that has come a migration away from many big cities. If all you need to communicate with your colleagues is a decent internet signal, why pay forContinue reading “‘Home By Now’ Paints a Tempting Picture of Remote Living”