All posts tagged: Gothic

Japanese Gothic by Kylie Lee Baker

Japanese Gothic by Kylie Lee Baker

Published by Jenni Sidey

Some houses are simply old. The house at the center of Japanese Gothic by Kylie Lee Baker is something else entirely. Hidden at the bottom of an incline in Chiran, Kagoshima Prefecture, veiled by sword ferns and wild ginger, ringed by flowers that should not bloom in the same season, it has a heartbeat. Not a metaphorical one. The walls drink sound. The window that looks out to the yard is not always there. And a room that measures six feet longer from the inside than the outside should end any reasonable debate about whether the house is normal. Somehow, it only makes things worse. Baker has built a career writing Japan through a lens of darkness and myth. Her debut YA duology, The Keeper of Night and The Empress of Time, followed a half-British, half-Japanese Shinigami navigating the supernatural politics of the Meiji Era. Bat Eater and Other Names for Cora Zeng followed. With Japanese Gothic, she makes the leap into adult horror, and the shift is palpable. The writing is denser, the damage …

Holly Humberstone: Cruel World review – Taylor Swift fave trades gothic melancholy for pop glow-up | Music

Holly Humberstone: Cruel World review – Taylor Swift fave trades gothic melancholy for pop glow-up | Music

Published by Sam Flores

As a profession, pop stardom has been in existential crisis for some time. It used to be simple – a hit single was the only real qualification – but in a post-monocultural world, the job title is often bestowed as a result of more piecemeal success: a Brit rising star award and Taylor Swift support slot here, 4m monthly Spotify listeners and a Top 5 album there. Cruel World album artwork. This, specifically, is the CV of Lincolnshire’s Holly Humberstone, who has established herself in the pop sphere without ever troubling the singles chart. While an undeniable banger has eluded the 26-year-old, her sound is faultlessly chart-friendly. Like Swift, Humberstone delivers earnestly wordy lyrics in intimate, near-ASMR tones atop 80s synth-pop decorated with a deluge of hooks. For this second album, she has dropped the hint of gothic melancholy that accompanied her debut, Paint My Bedroom Black. Cruel World is peppy bordering on euphoric: inordinately sunny break-up song To Love Somebody is powered by a stadium-ready pre-chorus, while the brilliantly catchy White Noise plugs into …

Eight books of immersive dark gothic fantasy

Eight books of immersive dark gothic fantasy

Published by José Betancourt

This content contains affiliate links. When you buy through these links, we may earn an affiliate commission. Del Rey, publisher of Innamorata by Ava Reid Once there was an island where the dead walked the earth, and seven noble houses ruled by necromancy, until a conqueror’s blade brought them low. But defiant against the new order stands the House of Teeth and its last living members: beautiful Marozia, and her cousin, the uncanny Lady Agnes. Though she has not spoken in seven years, Agnes carries the House’s legacy. She must recapture the secrets of death magic and avenge her family’s fallen honor. A gruesome new duology begins… Confession: I’m fairly new to fantasy. I have only been reading the genre for a few years. But when I found out that dark fantasy existed? When I learned that dark Gothic fantasy existed? Suffice to say, I was determined to start making up for lost time. These books feature all my favorite parts of classic Gothic literature: run-down houses, mysterious figures, and centuries-old curses; as well as …

Gothic horror that gets under your skin

Gothic horror that gets under your skin

Published by José Betancourt

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Whispering Walls and Haunted Halls: 8 Gothic Novels

Whispering Walls and Haunted Halls: 8 Gothic Novels

Published by José Betancourt

This content contains affiliate links. When you buy through these links, we may earn an affiliate commission. The houses are grand and decaying. Ghost surely haunt their halls. The settings are atmospheric, the vibes uneasy. Emotions run high, omens abound. There’s a damsel in distress, there might be some mystery and romance, and everything’s shrouded in a bit of doom and gloom. If all of that sounds like a good time to you, come have a seat in the crumbling chair next to me. Whether you’re new to gothic novels or inhale them on the regular, you’ve probably heard of the gothic classics: Rebecca, The Picture of Dorian Gray, Wuthering Heights (which is not the greatest love story ever told), the works of Shirley Jackson and Edgar Allen Poe, or Southern Gothic classics like Beloved by Toni Morrison and Wise Blood by Flannery O’Connor. You don’t have to look too hard to find fantastic gothic lit, but maybe you’re looking for more recent works of gothic fiction. Below you’ll find nine new and recent gothic …

Stacey Lee on Gothic Fiction and YA Books That Make You Sit with Discomfort

Stacey Lee on Gothic Fiction and YA Books That Make You Sit with Discomfort

Published by Jenni Sidey

** Author photo by Aaron Blumenshine The Gothic I Tried Not to Write by Stacey Lee Whats Up in YA Sign up for What’s Up In YA? to receive all things young adult literature. Subscribe to Selected No Thanks I never meant to write a gothic. In fact, if you’d asked me at any point in my life whether I considered myself a gothic person, I would have said absolutely not—probably with the same energy I use when a friend suggests a horror movie. Growing up, I’d read all the classics: Wuthering Heights, Rebecca, The Fall of the House of Usher. I respected them, sure. But did I enjoy sleeping with the lights on afterward? Absolutely not. I was always more Young Frankenstein than Frankenstein: give me jokes, give me charm, give me anything other than the feeling of a cold draft on the back of my neck. I’m also extremely suggestible. If I watch something scary, it sets up long-term residence in my imagination. Weeks later, I’ll be brushing my teeth and suddenly remember a shadowy hallway scene I should never …

6 Great New Gothic Romances You Should Read

6 Great New Gothic Romances You Should Read

Published by Jenni Sidey

This content contains affiliate links. When you buy through these links, we may earn an affiliate commission. Del Rey, publisher of The Fox and the Devil by Kiersten White Five years ago, Anneke Van Helsing’s father was murdered . . . she’ll stop at nothing to find the killer. In this electrifying gothic fantasy, the daughter of a famous vampire hunter embarks on a dangerous journey to find the woman she believes to be responsible for the killing her father and for a slew of violent murders that seem to erupt everywhere this woman goes. Yet as Anneke Van Helsing unearths more about the immortal killer’s past, she suspects there’s still a heart somewhere in that undead body. A heart that beats for Anneke alone. There is a long tradition of Gothic romances that have actually become some of the best-known classic novels today. From Rebecca to Jane Eyre or Wuthering Heights, there are tons of stories like these that involve the tense atmosphere, haunting emotion and dark, isolated settings of gothic novels and mix …

You’ve Read WUTHERING HEIGHTS, Now Check Out These Atmospheric, Gothic Novels Out This Year!

You’ve Read WUTHERING HEIGHTS, Now Check Out These Atmospheric, Gothic Novels Out This Year!

Published by José Betancourt

Innamorata by Ava Reid (Del Ray, March 17) Ava Reid’s latest novel is a dark, gothic romantasy about an all-consuming love. Several noble houses versed in the art of necromancy once lived together on an island. But then one day, a conqueror destroyed it all: the families, their libraries and sources of knowledge, and the magic that they held so dear. Now the only house remaining is the House of Teeth. Marozia is the heiress to the house, and her cousin, Lady Agnes, has been tasked with uncovering the secrets of the death magic and arranging a betrothal for her cousin to restore their family’s honor. But Lady Agnes’s heart seeks out other things: revenge and love. Source link

The Undefined Gothic | Beatrice Radden Keefe

The Undefined Gothic | Beatrice Radden Keefe

Published by Jenni Sidey

“Gothic” began as a term of abuse. In his Lives of the Artists, Giorgio Vasari blamed the Goths and other northern invaders for the unclassical architecture filling up Italy. He found the medieval buildings “monstrous,” “barbarous,” and “disordered.” Three centuries after Vasari, John Ruskin was full of admiration for this “architecture of the North” in The Nature of Gothic (1853). Ruskin saw structures like Strasbourg Cathedral and Westminster Abbey as the “work of an imagination as wild and wayward as the northern sea; creations of ungainly shape and rigid limb, but full of wolfish life; fierce as the winds that beat, and changeful as the clouds that shade them.” Ruskin was writing in a century marked by its medievalism. The art and architecture of the Middle Ages, newly accessible in museums and through photographs in books and magazines, captured the interest of a broad public. Toward the end of the nineteenth century, the Gothic cathedrals of Europe—dating from the twelfth century to the sixteenth—were thronged by tourists, while knockoff Gothic furniture and stick-on stained glass …