Thursday, June 22, 2023

SciFi/Fantasy/Horror Anthology Review: Night of the Living Queers: 13 Tales of Terror & Delight: Edited by Shelly Page and Alex Brown

 

Full Disclosure:  This book was read as an e-ARC (Advance Reader Copy) obtained via Netgalley from the publisher in advance of the book's release on August 29, 2023 in exchange for a potential review.  I give my word that this did not affect my review in any way - if I felt conflicted in any way, I would simply have declined to review the book.

Night of the Living Queers is an upcoming YA horror anthology featuring 13 stories by queer writers of color, collected and edited by Alex Brown and Shelly Page. The anthology features a set of 13 stories united by a few common things: First, each features a queer teen of color; Second, each takes place on Halloween during a "Blue Moon" - the name for a phenomenon where there is a 13th Full moon during the year instead of 12. The authors are a mix of those who I've heard of before (and who are somewhat prominent, like Kalynn Bayron) and those who I hadn't, so I was very intrigued by the collection when I was given a shot at an early copy for review.

And Night of the Living Queers does largely deliver what it promised: YA Horror or Horror adjacent stories that turned the narrative of queer people being the monsters on their heads by having them be the protagonists of their own stories. The stories themselves range from truly dark and horrific, sometimes dealing with powerful and harsh subjects like the struggles and abuse queer people face, to stories that are light and comedic (or that are somewhere in between), so there's a bit of something for everyone here. As with any anthology, some of these stories are better than others, but in general, this is a pretty damn solid anthology that I'd easily recommend for the YA Horror reader.
Since this anthology only contains 13 stories, I will actually do a quick summary of them all without spoiling:

Welcome to the Hotel Paranoia by Vanessa Montalban: A story featuring a girl whose crush had seemingly abandoned her last year to hang with the more popular rich crowd only to find that crush having invited her to a party at an abandoned hotel....but the abandonment was not what it seemed...

The Visitor by Kalynn Bayron: A girl stays home for Halloween with her widowed dad, rather than go out with her girlfriend, as if they were waiting for someone, like the mother who once passed away.....

A Brief Intermission by Sara Farizan: A pair of queer teens help run a Drive-In theater, and are asked to help the owner by playing a specific movie on halloween while the theatre is closed and to then leave immediately....but the two can't help but stay to see who shows up....

Guested by Rebecca Kim Wells: A girl tries to infiltrate a "Ghosted" party, where the inhabitants are supposedly temporarily inhabited by ghosts/spirits they are interested in, after her sister went to one and came back....changed.

Rocky Road with Caramel Drizzle by Kosoko Jackson: A year after gay boy Julian was beaten on Halloween for his queerness, his only friend insists he stop feeling sorry for himself and come out with her...but Julian cannot move past the abuse he suffered and how its perpetrated suffered no consequences, and on this Halloween, he may accidentally summon a kindred spirit out of the ether...

The Three Phases of Ghost-Hunting by Alex Brown: A teen girl, along with her best friend (who's also her crush), investigates a mall her brother works security at to discover the truth behind the legend of its resident ghost, Terrifying Bob, the pirate who seeks pizza at the food court.

Nine Stops by Trang Thanh Tran: Two teens on a 7 train watch a viral video of a girl enacting a ritual in the memory of a murdered sister, a video the author claims they'll die from if they stop watching...

Leyla Mendoza and the Last House on the Lane by Maya Gittelman: A queer teen Leyla is persuaded unwillingly to wear girl's clothes for Halloween by her mother, but finds a surprise when she leads her cousins/siblings to the supposed haunted house filled with deadly vines that is supposed tended by an old man/deadly wizard.....

In You to Burn by Em X. Liu: A girl who is seemingly always around fires that mysteriously start up as she grows up finds herself at a party staring at Harley, the girl she almost burned a year ago, the girl she hated...the girl she can't stop paying attention to, despite her trying to fight it, due to some elemental attraction....

Anna by Shelly Page: A girl takes a last minute babysitting job on halloween for a pair of twins instead of going to her girlfriend's party....but when the kids find a Ouija board in the attic, the job turns anything but normal on this Halloween.

Hey There, Demons by Tara Sim: A teen boy, with no friends due to his family's move, is left to care for his 4 year old sister on Halloween in a house he swears is haunted by a poltergeist no one else believes in. So he finds directions for how to use a geometric symbol to banish it...but summons a demon instead....

Save Me from Myself by Ayida Shonibar: An Indian girl, who thinks of herself as having no friends and no one who cares for her or gives her a reason to live - invokes Kali on the night of hte Kali Pujo festival...but as she goes to school with the boy she thinks befriended her as a charity case and his girlfriend, that invocation turns things on its head....

Knickknack by Ryan Douglass: A geeky teen boy, near college age, is home babysitting his younger brother in a town haunted by a kidnapping and murderous clown, and is forced to obtain help from the best friend he crushes on (but who surely isn't also gay, right?) and two jocks when his brother is taken by the clown....

As you can see from the above, the 13 stories above all cover a wide range of topics and cultures and hit a wide variety of tones too. Some of these stories are light fun and romantic more than scary - like The Three Phases of Ghost Hunting, Hey There Demons, or even Knickknack to a certain extent. A few of these stories deal with the abuse and depression faced by queer teens in today's world, such as Rocky Road with Caramel Drizzle and Save Me from Myself. One, Sara Farizan's "A Brief Intermission" even deals with the horror of a queer teen of today facing the imposition of straightness straight out of the 1950s.

Not all of the stories work - a few of them, which I won't name - just feel like generic Halloween YA stories that could've been told in any anthology, and while it's a good thing for such stories to feature a queer protagonist instead of a straight one, it kind of feels like a waste for this particular anthology, which is supposed to turn the defaultness of queerness = being monstrous on its head. One story I really enjoyed, Kosoko Jackson's Rocky Road with Caramel Drizzle, did exactly that, as its queer protagonist keeps being told he has to suck it up and just get past his abuse and think about everyone else instead of him, leading him to go down the road of monsters and demons in search of support and happiness...because the straight people can't understand. Another story doing that is Leyla Mendoza and the Last House on the Lane by Maya Gittelman, where a queer/trans teen whose filipino family can't understand that finds a miracle in the supposedly monstrous old wizard who lives in the house covered with killer vines, allowing the teen to move forward with some hope and optimism even as the teen remains connected to a home and family they'll never quite be fully apart from.

Other stories I really enjoyed didn't quite do that but were fun and romantic in ways that made me smile anyway, which made them great to enjoy. So The Three Phases of Ghost-Hunting by Alex Brown is just incredibly cute as its protagonists deal with a ghost who wants pizza as well as the protagonist's attraction to her best friend, an attraction she's afraid to act upon (guess what happens). Similar tones are there in Hey There, Demons and Knickknack, all of which take a monstrous premise to some comedic directions and add in a romantic element for our protagonists. They're very different in tone from the powerful dark stories that are elsewise in this collection (including others I don't highlight above) but they made me smile and happy they were there to balance it out.

The result is a nice balanced anthology, not too long, which will be excellent for YA readers, especially those who are queer people of color....but not just them, because straight white teens could certainly use the lessons imparted within, just as those readers could use the reminder that the straight white viewpoint is not the only valid one for horror/romantic stories.

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