Mary RickertRecensioni

"What happens when the Krampus come?" "Chaos."

After her family are murdered and the family house burns to the ground, Ro finds herself at a diner during the holiday season. There she meets 4 other people, all strangers, all alone. She invites them to an impromptu Christmas dinner where they share holiday ghost stories…

What Ro doesn’t know, all the years later when they all meet up again at the home of Grayson, that sometimes stories are more true that the imagination can comprehend. And that the monsters are real.

This novella is a nestling tale with a perfect atmosphere. And the ending of this story is indeed shocking. But this is less a creature holiday feature with Krampus at the center and more of a psychological horror tale of suspense that examines the cruelty of human nature. This is a tightly packed and elegantly told novella and yet it left me wanting more. And I'm not gonna lie, it isn't really a Krampus story per se. We don't see the horned beast terrorizing the characters and whipping them like we do in the movies. Here Krampus serves as a metaphor for Ro's chaotic life.

I'm not sure what I was expecting from this novella. But it is certainly well-written and atmospheric and a bit shocking. Well worth an hour or two of your time on a cold winter afternoon.

DNF @ about 35%

The story dangles a carrot the whole time about two big secrets. "Something bad happened in the past" and "someone needs to be told something soon, before it's too late." At 35% I still don't know what either of those are. The description says as much but I didn't think we'd not progress by 35%. That is not enjoyable. I don't enjoy mysteries and in this book, the in-between, the parts not related to the "mystery", aren't enough to keep me around.

There are some really wordy reviews on & off GR but there aren't any spoilers which is infuriating. I guess it's one of them "it's about the journey books" bleh.

I received a copy of this novella from the publisher in exchange for an honest review.

Roanoke Syger is an aspiring horror writer with a troubling past. One Christmas she and four strangers gather to memorialize their favorite diner. They exchange cheap gifts and tell ghost stories. One that captivates them all is the story of the Krampus. Then they drift apart as “friends” forced by circumstance are want to do. Decades later, they once again meet to celebrate Christmas, but now a mystery looms over the party. Is everything as creepy as Ro feels it is, or is she just a paranoid horror novelist? In addition, exactly what or who is Krampus?

When I received this novella from the publisher, I was ecstatic. I am a huge Krampus fan. I have been to Krampusnachts around the country and I even have a mask to hang on the wall. There is just something about the monster that is appealing to me. Maybe because during a time of year of magic and jocularity, Krampus reminds us that the night is longer than the day and that there are consequences to our actions. Krampus is the antidote to too much Hallmark Holiday Cheer ™.

Yet, this is not the kind of Krampus story I was expecting. Not even, close. Instead of a long-tongued holiday demon, this is a look at the monsters around us. The demons we walk past every day and ignore. The monsters waiting for the chance to strike, but we are too naïve to see them.

Despite the initial slight disappointment, I found myself really enjoying this novella. M. Rickert has a good voice in their prose. There was this sense of dread that was pervasive throughout. Even in the most mundane scenes, there was a feeling that something was just off. As if we were reading seconds before a corpse was discovered. It made for a gripping page-turner.

I definitely recommend it. If this winter you are overdosed on holiday cheer, then give it a read. It will put thoughts of jingle bells out of your mind and make you appreciate the Christmas lights that hold back the winter night.

3.5 stars.½

Lucky Girl by Mary Rickert is a short story just in time for Halloween. I am not sure why the title is called Lucky Girl, but maybe it is because she escaped death when her family was killed when she was young.

Backing up a bit, Roanoke, Ro for short, is the protagonist, she is an aspiring author. She is not fond of Christmas but when she is in a diner she meets five people, strikes up a conversation, and suggests that they get together for Christmas. They do and over subsequent Christmas get-togethers, we get to know more about Ro and her friends.

There is mention of Krampus, a horned anthropomorphic creature that comes out at Christmas. His goal is to scare children that have misbehaved all year. He does this with Santa and they reward the good children and punish the bad children.

The six people that get together, exchange gifts with the caveat that they steal the gifts. Doesn't matter what it is as long as it is stolen. Plus they are all supposed to tell a horror story. Quite the party if you ask me.

I found the short story to be a bit discombobulated at first, but after a while it started to make some sense. I do love a good horror story and this one is right up there. I think if you are looking for a story that will appease the Halloween spirit in you, then go get this one.

Lucky Girl by M. Rickert is a wonderful short story that I wish was turned into a novel. If more time had been spent on character development I would be raving about this story from the top of a gothic mansion! I could also see this making a fantastic movie.

There were a couple of flashbacks when Ro thinks back to what led to her family being killed and her house being burnt to the ground, which were needed for the story and did help to develop Ro a bit, but at the same time they felt a bit disjointed. Not that it’s necessarily a bad thing since what can make a horror story very unnerving is when there is a bit of instability to the story or unanswered questions.

And the unanswered questions part do lend to giving Lucky Girl a deeper horror vibe, but once again if it had been a longer story/novel, I think I would have enjoyed it more. None of the unanswered questions really left me with a sense of unease, which I really enjoy when horror is done really well.

If you’re looking for a short story that has some really interesting ideas, touches very briefly on Krampus, and has a perfect horror ending, then grab yourself a copy of Lucky Girl.

Outstanding collection of weird holiday themed stories. Two real duds hold me back from five stars but they are at least short. Otherwise the rest are great. It’s difficult to pull off a themed collection in any case. It would be difficult to impossible to categorize the book but suffice it to say it runs the gamut from the real, to sf, to fantasy, to horror. Many of the stories will leave a lasting impression.

This is my first exposure to Rickert but I think I have another somewhere if I can only find it...

I abandoned this one. Not a bad book; strong female characters in a coming of age story. But, it’s obviously a YA book and I don’t do YA. I was a teenager waaaay too long ago.

I was approved to receive an e-Galley ARC of The Shipbuilder Of Bellfairie, authored by M. Rickert, cover artwork by Tithi Luadthong, cover design by Vince Haig, interior design, editing and layout by Courtney Kelly and proof-reading by Carolyn Macdonell-Kelly, from Edelweiss and Undertow Publication. What follows below is my honest review, freely given.

I rated this novel 5 stars. This is a title I pre-ordered, and it has arrived before release date; I want to mention how gorgeous the physical copy came out! The craftsmanship and care the publisher put into the title helped bring this story to the height it deserves to reach, just a beautiful pairing.

This is a novel that leaves a soreness that radiates like a bruise perpetually pressed by an unseen hand, a wound from which your emotion fountains, a forever weeping part of you now. The main character Quark is the lost child that can be found in so many of us, where a bruised smile and faraway eyes are part of the everyday dress. To hear remarks to the more painful remembrances of his childhood from Bellfairians, not even uttered with affection or apology, more almost in an offhand way after not seeing him in town for years, it just gouged something from me. The impression, this claustrophobic panic that grips you as the reader, is that you can never escape the corner you’ve been backed into when you’ve live in a small town. Even if you have left, as Quark did, all that is reset to how they remember and treated you. And he is a disadvantage, poor Quark, a gentle giant without emotional armour to deflect even the softest of volleys. But as his initial reason for returning to Bellfairie lead to an unexpected result, and then dubious happenings cause the town folk to look to him in distrust, the volleys do not remain soft, growing barbed and poisoned.

The author’s voice is magical and mournful in turn, I found myself swept up in the ‘truestory’ of Bellfairie with Coral one chapter, and rudderless beside Quark turning over a new corner of his own forgotten history the next. “Grief is a ship without a captain” will be a phrase I remember to the ends of my nights, even now it brings a prick of tears to my eyes because it immediately causes me to think of Quark, tipping his hat. His hat, oh how my heart dropped over his hat too (when you know, you’ll understand)! Even now, I am horrified, broken by the indecision I have over Quark. And that final chapter, leading me to the most poignant, just brutal final two sentences. They ended the book so beautifully, I adore and abhor them with the very essence of my being, I am that extra over this, when I finished the book and I honestly just teared up again dammit. I closed the book and couldn’t do anything for several minutes, I didn’t want to end the moment. This is horror that is tied to our humanity, it will not shake from your shoulders easily, but you may find you welcome it as I did. The Shipbuilder of Bellfairie is a modern classic of horror, mark my words, and M. Rickert will be a lasting voice.

When the least shit story in your collection is about a woman being raped by a swan, you've outdone yourself -- this is probably the worst sci fi short story I've ever encountered. Surprisingly even otherwise decent authors (Bruce Sterling) turned in horrible work here.

This is a very well written and captivating book. While a lot of the story seems inconsequential as I read it, I still felt compelled by the suggestion that something of significance was in the next few pages.

I honestly found this powerful and charming. Just great.

This is a 2015 World Fantasy Award nominee for Best Novella.

This is a horror story.

I don't like horror stories.

I like this horror story.

A very handsome man named Jeffrey comes to the dingy small town of Voorhisville, and charms all the women he meets. They aren't even put off by the fact that he drives around in a hearse. The story unfolds for us in a number of voices--fifteen-year-old Ellie, her mother Theresa, widowed Sylvia, and others, as well as a collective voice calling itself "The Mothers."

Each becomes pregnant, and each gives birth to a beautiful baby boy. Jeffrey, by this time, is long gone.

The babies all have wings. Hard, sharp, black wings you can cut yourself on.

Each of the women hides the secret of her baby's wings, for as long as she can. They are even slower to realize that they have all had the same lover. But as their babies start to fly, one by one, they realize the other women have the same problem.

The horror builds slowly, in their paranoid protection of their babies, in the reactions of those around them, in their almost accidental gathering at the Ratcher farm, and in the utterly reasonable-seeming tone of the Mothers' collective account of their decisions and actions.

Beautifully written, subtle, and effective. Highly recommended.

Full disclosure: Mary Rickert is one of my favorite authors.

For those new to Mary Rickert's work, this collection from Small Beer Press is an excellent representation of, introduction to, her eclectic style. I love Mary's work because it's all about the story and not about squishing that story to fit inside a particular (genre) box. Only reason I rated You Have Never Been Here 4 instead of 5 stars is that it contained only 3 new stories: "The Shipbuilder," "The Corpse Painter's Masterpiece," and "The Mothers of Voorhisville." Now, if like me you don't read online, this collection is the first time you'll have a chance to read the latter, which alone is worth the book's purchase price.

Highly recommended for hardcore fans (like yours truly) of Rickert's and those looking for a unique voice in SFF, especially dark fantasy. Chances are, if you like Neil Gaiman, Shirley Jackson or Angela Slatter, you'll fall head-over-heels for Rickert's stories.

4 stars

Note: You can read "The Mothers of Voorhisville" on Tor.com.

Is it totally selfish that I'm jonesin for another novel by Mary?

The Memory Garden by Mary Rickert is a pensive and lyrical narrative about the trepidation and surprise of aging, its physical discomfort and pain, its impending inevitability. It’s also a story about the vitality and trust of a friendship between women that’s depth and longevity prove to be unchanged regardless of how much time has passed. It’s also a story of the weight of guilt, its burden, and the poison of secrecy and its old haunts that can pollute one’s life with sadness, fear, regret. Lastly, it is a story of meaning—of flowers and of love.

The narrative in The Memory Garden is as quietly lush and punctuated with flare and oddity as its descriptive garden filled with orphaned shoes and wild flowers.

It’s that of Nan, her worries and complaints of aging, her resignation to its unexpectancy, but its harsh inevitability.

And it’s that of Bay, the restless longing and rebellion of youth, its innocence and confusion, its desire for identity and truth.

The result is an intimate discourse on the mother-daughter relationship, its joy and weariness, its gaps not only in age, but in the mystery of the unknown. And it is at its heart, a window to the uniqueness and flair in which the two live, as both outcasts in their small town, victims of rumour and discrimination.

To read the rest of my review, you're more than welcome to visit my blog, The Bibliotaphe Closet at: http://zaraalexis.wordpress.com

- Zara

Magical realism to keep you entranced! Rickert manages to spin a story that is light and funny and heart-breaking all at the same time. The initial question of whether Bay's mother is a witch turns into a much deeper story of longing, regret and the desire for forgiveness. If you enjoy stories by Alice Hoffman or Sarah Addison Allen, this is a great book choice for you. Also, the Reader's Guide at the back of the book is one of the best I have seen, providing lots of ideas to think about and discuss.

You Have Never Been Here is a collection of fantastical stories set in contemporary America's small towns and rural areas and featuring people isolated from their communities by internal grief or external prejudices.

The publisher's summary states that Rickert "writes hard, political stories that yet encompass the gentle wisdom of the ages" but it's all very Victorian in its sentiments and sensibilities. Several of the stories focus on mothers as monsters, too in love with their children to make reasonable choices. There's a thread of other retrograde politics running through as well, including anti-choice commentary and a nostalgia for simpler times.

Readers who like tea room-style ghost stories and monstrous matriarchs might like these. Personally, I'm tired of the world's miseries being encapsulated by stories of genteel terror. Somebody ought to write a creepy ghost story with a wizened ship breaker as the protagonist.

I loved this book. Intrigued with secrets, witches and moonflowers, then this is your summer read. Here is my full review on my blog: Thank the Maker. http://girlsguidetoscifi.blogspot.ca/2014/07/ida-review-of-memory-garden.html

A mysterious man with brilliant blue eyes impregnates most of the fertile women in a little American town. Each of the babies has bat wings, hearty appetites, and grows rapidly. Eventually the mothers piece together what has happened and huddle together in an old farmhouse in hopes of protecting their strange children.

It could have been a cool remix of the Village of the Damned, but instead it just felt rambling and pointless. Eventually it devolves into surreal nonsense. On the one hand, I liked that Jeffrey's identity and the babies' purpose are never really explained; on the other, this felt far too long with far too little meat to it.

I loved this book. Intrigued with secrets, witches and moonflowers, then this is your summer read. Here is my full review on my blog: Thank the Maker. http://girlsguidetoscifi.blogspot.ca/2014/07/ida-review-of-memory-garden.html

There are short stories in ‘You Have Never Been Here’ that are unsettling and disturbing, odd and brilliant, strange and weirdly beautiful, all at the same time. All the short stories share an ever-present vibe of dark suspense and skewed reality that keeps you on edge throughout, and some of the stories are so skillfully executed in their madness that I know they will stick with me for a long time.

Rickert’s tales teem with death and ghosts and bones, love and loss and haunting imagery. There are dead children, winged children, ghost children, and children collecting bones. There are drowned women who work in coffee shops, a shoe-box full of stones that hold memories of past lives, men building boats in their backyards, a corpse painter, and a strange place that might or might not be a hospital, and a train that might or might not really be a train taking patients to that hospital.

The stories that appealed to me most were ‘Memoir of a Deer Woman’, where a woman is slowly turning into (back into?) a deer; ‘The Shipbuilder’, where a man named Quark tries to understand his own past and his abusive father (or is it really his father?); and especially ‘The Christmas Witch’.

‘The Christmas Witch’ perfectly crafted: a complex weave of witchcraft, weirdness, family, childhood, grief, fear, and loss; with a child at its center who is just as complicate and ornery and powerful and strange as real children can be.

This is a strange and often wonderful collection of stories, even though there are a couple of tales (‘Holiday’ and ‘The Chambered Fruit’ come to mind) that I found so unsettling that they were almost difficult to read. That said, I have a feeling that different readers will find different tales to be the most unsettling.

If you’re into twisted tales that veer off into suspense and even a dab of restrained horror, then this is a book for you.

Holiday is a themed collection of short stories and novellas by Mary Rickert aka M. Rickert, winner of the Nebula, International Horror Guild, World Fantasy and Crawford Awards. Dark fantasy, magical realism, myth and (quiet) horror -- though, I dare you to read Mary's stories and fit them into just one tidy little box. And don't expect simple, literal "holiday" stories; think, Joe Hill's exploration of "ghosts" in 20th Century Ghosts. From the Introduction:

"Not everyone has happy holidays; the stories collected here are not, for the most part, what I would call happy. I am inclined not to call them sad either...People sometimes find my stories strange, but what could be stranger than life? For me, I choose to celebrate the strange, the misshapen, the forgotten, even the inevitable death. For many people this is not what holidays are all about. For me, this is what everything is about. (ix)"

I absolutely loved that I had no idea where each story was going. So often I find myself, without conscious effort, predicting what's happening, where it will end. Not the case with Holiday. I'd recommend this collection to anyone who favors the darker side of fiction with deeper meaning, heart and maybe even truth, but only if they don't mind mashed up genres or ambiguous endings.

4.5 stars

After The Memory Garden and now this collection, I must read everything I can get my hands on by Mary Rickert.½

This book is a compilation of different stories. I won this on Early Reviewers, and had no idea what it was about.

I just read the first story (Memoir of a Deer Woman), I'm not really sure how I feel about it. On one hand, I didn't like the writing style of this story, but on the other hand, when you finished the story it had a deeper meaning than at first glance. I think the symbolism was a little hard to follow all the time, and made the story a little convoluted for me.

I'll try the next story, but based off the first story, I'm not sure about this book...

I read the next story: Journey into the Kingdom, and I found this story much more interesting and enthralling. Very interesting.

These stories are absolutely wonderful - eerie and unsettling, even upsetting at times, but moving glimpses at a world not entirely our own. Rickert uses an amazing combination of supernatural and deeply realistic fears, such as in "The Chambered Fruit," a Persephone story from the point of view of Demeter, about the horror of losing a child and the horror of having her back again; or in "Journey into the Kingdom," in which a young man falls in love with the fantastical young woman in a story, which may or may not be the same person as the young woman who wrote the story. It's hard to pick a favorite, but "The Mothers of Voorhisville" and "The Christmas Witch" both hit me where I live.

What frightens Nan is the way the past sneaks up on the present, consuming all in its path.

Give me a story featuring a young adult, who doesn't quite know the person she is yet or what she wants to do with her life, living with an old woman, who has secrets to tell and wisdom to bestow, set in a small town in which the two rank highest on the gossip hounds' list, and I'm happy as a petunia in early July. The Memory Garden was that, times 100.

I loved how every chapter started with a plant description; how Nan could tell who was lying by the way their words tasted; how the garden was almost as predominant a character as Bay, Nan, Mavis and Ruthie; how Nan used the shoes people threw at her house as planters; how I could taste every dish during the Flower Feast; how magic felt completely real and incredibly possible.

But my favorite thing about this book was the way it explored friendships: the loyalty and devotion; that it's never too late to forgive, let go and move on.

4 stars