Twisted Ones

[psocoptera]

The Twisted Ones, Ursula Vernon as T Kingfisher. Damn, this was good. Read the first half+ staying up too late by myself at night while a storm made noise, which was excellent; didn't have the discipline to wait and finish it in similar circumstances (minus storm) and read the rest at karate today but was still very good. Spoilers: I got to read through what you might call the "passive" act while reading at night, which for me was the scariest part, the increasing dread, the startles, the besieged feeling, and the "active" act, with the switch to going out and taking action, was never going to be as scary (I don't think) even if I had read it under different circumstances. I've been thinking about why I liked this so much even though I don't think of myself as liking horror, and I think it's that last act that made the difference. I think of a lot of horror as being all about how it doesn't make a difference what you do or how hard you try, you're just fucked, by bad luck or one mistake or whatever it was. But here, Mouse gets to be brave and try to do the right thing, and go have an adventure (a creepy adventure, but an adventure) and the outcome felt "fair". Like, this is horror but it's not grimdark or whatever we're calling it now. Mouse ends up with PTSD, but she doesn't lose her sense of self or her values or "become the darkness" or any of that. Which, I mean, is very Vernon... the world has some really horrible things and people in it, but we don't have to be nihilists about it... which, maybe that's why I liked it so much, it was still very Vernon.