Book Review: Vanishing Daughters by Cynthia Pelayo

 

Vanishing Daughters by Cynthia Pelayo

336 pages, Paperback

Expected publication March 11, 2025 by Thomas & Mercer

Now that I have been podcasting and interviewing authors for a couple of years a new thing has started to happen. Towards the end of most interviews, I will say “What are you working on now” or “What is coming next?” I am starting to have the regular experience of getting to read those books and it is really fun. The latest example is Cynthia Pelayo’s latest, and as much as I enjoyed Forgotten Sisters, this one was even better.

Despite being marketed on the cover as a thriller, Cina’s Wheelhouse is a horror novel about haunted Chicago. That would be cool enough, Chicago is a city I have enjoyed visiting but Pelayo’s Chicago is haunted not just by ghosts but by the long specter of this strange history that has swirled around the Windy City. In the hands of a less talented storyteller this history would roll out in fake newspaper articles or prologues, but the characters in her novels are haunted by history and the information as much as the ghosts. Part of the vibe is the modern fairy tale, and as such Pelayo is building a reliable catalog. No surprise as she has Bram Stoker and Latino book awards on her shelf.

Vanishing Daughters has all the elements that she is known for while adding some subtle but meaningful Sci-fi elements. It is the story of Bri, a journalist whose mother died recently in her massive southside childhood home. Her mother had passed on obsessions with what she calls “thin” places, haunted places including their home, and one that will become important, Archer Avenue. The thin place nature of their home always affected her with nightmares just around the surface. 

Those nightmares included visions of a serial killer, very similar to the deaths of fifty-one women around Chicago, Bri feels the killer behind her. As a horror fan who is also an archive nerd, I love how Pelayo’s vibe almost always includes musty old books and a story that depends on someone cracking those spines to get answers. 

Two plots interweave as the killer is obsessed with the idea that he is putting his victims to sleep, so you can guess which fairy tale Pelayo is playing with her. He has his eyes set on Bri, and she gets closer to the truth of origin, tied directly to the real-life history of the city. Chicago is a city I find interesting, and this novel is horror, Chicago history all pulled together with a light sprinkle of sci-fi worked for me. As much as I liked Forgotten Sisters, I enjoyed this one even more. I had one nitpick that I will talk about in spoilers. If you want a recommendation before I get into light spoilers about the novel then yes, Read Vanishing Daughters if the elements I described interest you. 

Now let's talk about a few parts that highlight why it works for me. 

“My mother didn't really tell me what her favorite Chicago hauntings were, but it was easy to guess. In the library, she had an entire shelf dedicated to Archer Ave. There were Manila folders full of documents in pictures. When I asked her why she was so fascinated with a single road.”

 Much like Stephen Graham Jones needed story reasons for his narrator to be a gifted writer Bri in this story had to be an investigator, she is a journalist and her mother is her access to all the history and lore. Pelayo is working with several recurring themes but the houses and the ‘thin places’ around her beloved Chicago operate in her novels like a power cord does in a Ramones song.  

“Archer Ave. is an energy center. A thin place. Just like this house…”

 I love the concept of a thin place. This novel gives us the feeling that the two characters at the center exist in this thin place. I don’t know if Archer Ave, of if it is a real place but I get the sense now that I am two novels into this author that she likes to start from these real places and history. I could google but I want to preserve that Mystery.

“What's also scary is sometimes when you're trying to wake up from a nightmare, you just can't. You open your eyes and you're just there in your bed, feeling trapped and paralyzed.”

Vanishing Daughters is not exactly an instant nightmare like some novels, but for the reader who connects with Bri we understand her fears.  She is a defined character enough; with motivations we can understand. I did have the question marks with her that I did with Anna in CP’s Forgotten Sister. I cared enough about Bri that I cringed internally wondering how she might survive and thrive.

There is some commentary on haunting, grieving, and death that might come off as old hat to some horror readers but again I enjoy those moments when they are well done. A horror story is a part of a long tradition. Moments like this…

“We speak of haunted houses as if they are grim and gruesome things, but what makes a house haunted?

People.

A person dies.

A soul is restless, and I do not know if I believe in souls or spirits or ghosts but what I do believe is that I'm slowly losing parts of myself.”

There are parts of Vanishing Daughters that feel familiar, as a horror novel and thematically like a Cynthia Pelayo novel. This is a feature, not a bug.  At the same time, several things make this novel stand alone. I love a novel that is the product of a singular voice. No one else could write this novel. It is not just the setting, the killer that makes it unique my Dickheads will enjoy a slightly Matheson or PKD-inspired sci-fi touch to the afterlife

“He points at me. “brilliant. Exactly. According to the CIA, if the frequency of human consciousness drops from ten to the power of thirty centimeters per second but remains above the state of total rest, it can transcend space-time.”

I think this will pass right by some readers as world-building details but I loved it.

“Think of a radio example. Imagine a human consciousness is a radio playing a certain music station. Well, if you move that dial and start searching for another station and just land on nothing on that fuzzy place we call snow, that is total rest. That is where you transcend space and time.”

“We’re radios, in a way, tune to a song? Sometimes there are people who can connect to the station we're playing, and they linger here with us for a while during this life. Sometimes the song they want to listen to changes, but sometimes they turn off altogether.”

I am looking forward to talking on the podcast with Cina, she told me parts of this novel were inspired by PKD’s UBIK and yeah… 

“is it possible to have consciousness that's so expanded, so far-reaching beyond space and time and dreams, that you could communicate not just with the living, but with the dead, or the murderer, and ask them… what happened to you?”

I don’t want to give away the ending but I love the final backstory behind that connects to one of the most infamous of Chicago killers.

“It was Father who told me I could not die. I asked him how he knew this. He said he tried to poison me many times, and not once did the poison affect me because of that father said we believed I wasn't human he said he read about fairies who looked like humans and believed, then, that I was a fairy.”

This is a twist hidden in the open for those of us familiar with the historical events Pelayo ties into the novel.

As great as it is, and it is 200% a recommendation I have only one minor issue. Pelayo appears as committed to writing in the first person as she is setting her novels in Chicago. I have never been shy about expressing my feelings about how limiting the first person can be. Because the narrative switches POV there is no indication in some chapters who is I writing to us. I was confused the first time we switched POV. A few of the chapters I was lost for a page or two until a specific detail told me – this is the killer or Bri. Ultimately, it was a minor issue.

98% of this novel I was delightfully lost in the narrative and most readers probably will not notice. Vanishing Daughters is a fantastic novel that I very much enjoyed. The Midwest setting, the history, The light Sci-fi, and the horror elements were perfect alchemy.  Now that I have read two novels, Pelayo officially has a locked in reader.

 

Book Review: The Book of Elsewhere by Keanu Reeves and China Mieville

 

 

 The Book of Elsewhere by Keanu Reeves and China Mieville 

352 pages, Hardcover

Published July, 2024 by Del Rey

 I admit to a bit of jealousy reading this one, working with Neo on SF looks like a blast, and the two authors are all smiles everytime they do press. China Mieville is an author whose work I have been hit or miss on. Don’t get me wrong, he is an amazing writer, his style and my taste have been hit or miss.  I loved City and the City, Embassytown and in theory, all the books sound great. The execution of a few seemed a little too overwritten. I think the man is a genius. It is the second piece of evidence that I would like this is that Keanu Reeves has good literary taste. The first proof came when He was doing press for A Scanner Darkly and told the press his favorite PKD novel (and mine) was The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch. (Keanu - my screenwriting partner and I have totally have a script for Three Stigmata hit me up)

The set-up for the immortal warrior is introduced with style.

 "She said, We needed a tool. So I asked the gods.

There have always been whispers. Legends. The warrior who cannot be killed. Who’s seen a thousand civilizations rise and fall. He has had many names: Unute, Child of Lightning, Death himself. These days, he’s known simply as “B.”

Book of Elsewhere is an interesting piece of science fiction, on the surface China Mieville doesn’t seem like the writer for this project, it felt more like an action-adventure set-up. I think of CM as a new weird, with monsters and intense fantastic set-ups mixed with deep philosophical and political themes. Where is this concept felt like it needed a writer known for action. There are times when CM feels almost too smart, too intellectual for the material, but of course that means the book about the immortal warrior who can punch through skulls has more philosophical nuance than expected and that is a good thing.

My favorite moment in the book is an excellent example of how the novel explores a deep understanding of B’s dilemma.

“Did you have thoughts of suicide today?”

Diana remembered when she last asked B that. Not even long ago. After a particularly intense mission, replayed in the glowing lights of B’s readouts, of his various bodily and mental responses, in a strange and fabulous display. New synapses, new thoughts. The question had been a provocation. It always was.

“I told you,” he had said. “I don't want to die. What I want is mortality, and that's not the same thing.”

Sure the novel is loaded with ideas. You can feel the energy of the conversations back and forth between Reeves and Mieville. We know it was China mostly getting these down on paper, but a unique once-in-a-million thing about this book is you see B, hear his voice because there is a good chance one of the names on the spine will play him in a project for Netflix.

Now I have not read the comics, yet, but the authors were clear that this book stands alone which is good.  This is a cool science fiction novel, I almost feel that the novel could’ve sold the concept with a simpler more pulpy prose style, but I suppose the comics exist for that.

The Book of Elsewhere is fine piece of science fiction. There was a time in the 90s when most of the Star Trek actors were writing or co-writing their own novels. Shatner and Levar Burton were doing more than adding their names. Keanu Reeves feels very invested in developing B as a character and this novel is a fascinating ride. I hope this universe grows.

 

 

 

Book Review: Model Home by Rivers Solomon

 

Model Home by Rivers Solomon

304 pages, Hardcover

Published October, 2024 by MCD

Rivers Solomon has entered a new territory with this reader. I have read all four of their books and so far I have liked them all. I suppose that puts Solomon in the category of author I will follow in any genre. I should say that my start with this author was a little rough, as I did not enjoy The Unkindness of Ghosts during the reading experience. A curious thing happened as I broke it down for my review, I realized elements at work. More than any other book, writing the review changed my mind on the book. For one thing, I had to let go of my ideas about the genre the book is written in. My ideas of what a generation starship novel didn’t matter and once I accepted that I allowed myself to enjoy it more.

The novella The Deep was good but didn’t completely hook me, but the body-horror superhero tale  Sorrowland rocked my world and probably remains my favorite Solomon novel. That said, Model Home, a true haunted house horror novel is objectively more of a masterwork. Like all of Rivers Solomon's novels they stay with you, you think about them and your perception of the novel grows and changes.  As many haunted house novels as there are it is not a minor feat to do something NEW and IMPORTANT let alone create a masterwork. Here we are - Model Home ticks lots of boxes. 

This novel feels lived in, not quite autobiographical but it is clear the author mined their personal life for events and vibes in this novel. I have nothing besides gut feeling and honestly, I hope not because this is not based on true life events. Why? Because this novel contains some gut-wrenching drama as well as horror. 

Set in Dallas Texas the main characters are a black family who grew up in Oak Creek Estate, a wealthy upper-class gated community. Even though Ezri, Eve, and Emmanuel have left home none of them have an interest in going back. Despite their parents still living there over the years. The siblings become worried when they get strange out-of-character messages from their mother. Ezri comes from England to investigate and find their parents dead in the house. 

Most of the novel is told through Ezri, a character who like the author escaped this country for England. I suppose that is the reason why I suspected elements were autobiographical but I tried to resist that.  

The set-up for a political haunted house novel is so well done by the neighborhood who reject the black family, and the parents who insist on staying to prove a point. (Every haunted house novel has to have a reason the people don’t just leave). The excellently written and realized characters are the last pieces that complete the puzzle.  In the guise of a haunted house novel, Solomon makes statements on child abuse, identity politics and normalized white supremacy.  

“Even when you fight with everything you have to escape the house, it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter, because outside the house, is just as bad as inside the house.” 

 I like the idea that the haunting is as much the parents and their effect on the kids as it was actual ghosts. If you think about it, the actions of parents are the kinda thing that can haunt a person and there is no supernatural anything that has to be involved. I was lucky enough to have good parents but I have known many people who have been basically haunted their entire lives by the actions of one or both parents. That trauma is the haunt in this haunted house. Impressive metaphor and an excellent way to do something new with the genre horror. 

“How cruel that our parents, unexorcisable, go on inside of us. How cruel that we cannot disimbricate their ghosts from our being.”

Model Home has several disturbing moments, including one of the most painfully raw sex scenes I have read in a book.  There are moments with characters of humor and joy that help to create the “Care” in Scare. No idea if horror is a genre Solomon intends to keep working in, but this novel is a masterwork.