Eden Royce writes beautifully. Her descriptions are rich and evocative, and her tales magical and strange. Spook Lights 2, like the first anthology, is a collection of short, dark fairy tales. They are full of romantically portrayed powerful women of colour who can make the impossible possible – witches, priestesses and elementals. Extraordinary Gothic characters both contemporary and historical reveal deep truths about the past and present lives of people of colour in the Deep South, and the importance of family.
The tales build slowly, steeped in mystery, hinting at the strangeness to come. Then they end suddenly, occasionally too suddenly, making the reader work hard to imagine what happens next.
My personal favourites from the collection are “Basque of the Red Death” with its weaponised young virgin, “To-Do List” with its contrary male protagonist, and the surreal and poetic “Folk”.
The second story in the collection seems comparatively empty, but the other twelve more than make up for it. A couple of narrative errors confused me momentarily, e.g. changing the relative ages of daughters in one story – but these don't spoil the flow even for a pedant like me.
Spook Lights 2 contains very different tales from what we would normally find in the horror genre, but don't let that worry you. While the gore is minimal, many of the stories are as creepy as hell. To imagine this collection of dark mythology, think “Tales of the Unexpected” mixed with voodoo (or root magic as Royce explains) and you'll get some idea. Someone should write a TV script from these stories for Netflix or Shudder. I can see TV producers lapping up Eden Royce's style.
4/5 stars.
Watch out for my interview with author Eden Royce, coming soon.
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