Hi I’m Deboki, and this is okidokiboki,
and today I want to talk about two books I
read in the past few months that I loved.
The first is The Year of the Witching by Alexis
Henderson, and the second is Mexican Gothic
by Silvia Moreno Garcia.
I’m going to talk about these books as their
own specific things, but there are kind of
a few important commonalities between them.
They were both released this summer, they’re
both horror novels, and they have these really
interesting heroines who—as heroines in
horror novels often are—are contending with
issues related to patriarchy and racism, but
in very different settings
So let’s start with The Year of the Witching.
The Year of the Witching is about Immanuelle
Moore.
She’s living in this very rigid puritanical
society called Bethel, which is ruled by a
dude named the Prophet.
He is married to a bevy of wives, including
at the beginning of the book, he is about
to get married to one of Immanuelle’s friends.
Immanuelle herself is biracial, and that coupled
with other parts of her family history make
her somewhat of an outcast.
But what really sets her family on edge is
that she’s drawn to the Darkwood, a forest
that is forbidden—naturally—because of
the witches.
Inevitably, Immanuelle finds herself in the
Darkwood, and while she’s there, she learns
more about the witches that are there, she
learns more about her family history, and
she learns more about how this all ties to
a series of plagues that Bethel is facing.
I had not heard about this book at all until
I saw a tweet about it, I think it was from
the author Alyssa Cole.
I think she might have retweeted something
about it on the day it was being launched
or the night before it was being published.
And I just saw it and was like, this sounds
amazing!
I just really want to read a dark, witchy
story.
And so this is a horror novel, so you’d
expect some darkness.
But I do want to say outright that there are
some very violent and misogynist systems and
individual behaviors that are being explored
in this book, and that includes sexual assault
of a child.
It is not super, super vivid in its descriptions
of those things, especially the sexual assault.
But it is there.
Outside of those darker themes, it is more
gory.
It is definitely pretty vivid.
And given that this is a book that features
it’s own sorts of plagues and pandemics,
that is also another thing to be on the lookout
for, you know, given the state of the world
right now.
I was in the mood for something that was going
to be dark and, you know, really lean into
it.
And so I really loved this book because I
appreciated how much it embraced a lot of
the darkness that’s at the center of it,
especially in relation to this puritanical
dystopia that’s shaping the center and setting
of everything, as well as the witchy outliers
that you know you’re going to learn more
about.
But I also underestimated this book because
when I started, I was like you know, I’ve
read my share of books with a puritanical
society and a bunch of witches, I’ve seen
the various feminist and un-feminist iterations
of that.
So like, I feel like I have a sense of where
this book is gonna go.
I don’t think you can have a book about
puritanical societies and witches without
it being in part about patriarchy.
That’s in like everything from The Chilling
Adventures of Sabrina to The Crucible, and
so like of course, I expected this book to
have that.
And The Year of the Witching, when I started
reading it, felt like it was going down very
familiar storylines about how witches would
play into this idea of resistance and whatnot,
especially for the first quarter or so of
the book.
But then it sort of made this switch where
it became clear that the book was very willing
to be murky about people’s complications,
especially women’s complications in response
an ideologically rigid and oppressive society.
There are different ways of surviving in this
book, and they don’t always feel “clean”
or inherently virtuous just for existing.
In fact some of them uphold the patriarchal
system at the core of this world, and others
create more violence in response to it.
But I think what the book is trying to understand
is how violent and unjust systems create these
responses that will sometimes perpetuate it
even if they’re create to try and survive
that initial framework.
And I think this book is both sympathetic
but also capable of condemning these varied
survival mechanisms while also trying to figure
out if there is a way to break these cycles
of harm.
With that said, there are some times where
it felt like the book had so many thoughts
and ideas going into it that they don’t
all get to fully be explored.
I think this is Henderson’s debut novel,
and so it sort of has that debut feel of there
are like so many things going into the writing
of this novel because it is the first one.
The ending in particular I found to be a bit
rushed because there were multiple threads
that get resolved within a few pages of each
other, and they’re these pretty complicated
things to try and unravel.
And so they don’t fully get unraveled because
they happen so quickly, and it also creates
this sort of disconnect that makes all these
huge important moments in the context of the
story feel a little bit mushy.
It felt a bit like a book that should’ve
been longer, but I would also be happy if
there was a sequel that explores this world
more.
There’s also a romance to this story that
will feel especially familiar if you’ve
read a lot of YA romances, which I don’t
say to denigrate this romance, it just has
a lot of familiar beats.
Ezra, the romantic interest, he’s got that
sort of like slick, but broody dude thing
going on.
He’s sort of a forbidden love interest sort
of thing.
And I resented him at first, especially because
the beginning of the book felt so sapphic,
especially when we’re finding all these
witches and stuff.
And so I was kind of like…do we need a dude
in this story, you know?
But he actually grew on me, which is kind
of unusual for this type of hero, so I was
kind of surprised by that.
I think it’s because he kinda does stuff,
and he actually does have an interesting conflict
of his own that he’s dealing with.
And my only complaint there at the end is
that I think a lot of the changes he has to
undergo don’t get to be fully explored because
it’s not really his story.
Which is not a complaint about this book,
just that there’s something there that I
think would also be super interesting and
that is part of why I want a sequel because
I think related to a lot of those themes of
like violence and cycles and all of these
things, there is a lot there to like unpack.
And I would really really love if we got to
unpack that in a future book.
So the other book I wanted to talk about is
Mexican Gothic, which is about a debutante
named Noemi, who gets a disturbing letter
from her cousin who just recently married
into an English family that once owned mines
but has since fallen into hard times.
Noemi’s father asks her to figure out what’s
going on, so sends her off to High Place,
the mansion owned by that family, that English
family.
Once she gets there—surprise—things take
a turn for the gothic.
The house is creepy, the family is unsettling.
And Noemi is just trying to figure what’s
going on with her cousin, and especially her
cousin’s husband who keeps creeping on her,
and there’s this patriarch who has this
tendency—habit?
Whatever you want to call it?—of being a
fetishizing eugenicist at her.
There’s this sort of-matriarch who keeps
getting mad at her for breaking really dumb
rules.
There’s just all sorts of unsettling things
that keeping happening.
I’ve been a recent discoverer to the of
Silvia Moreno-Garcia, thanks to a lot of people
on booktube and Gods of Jade and Shadow.
And I also love Gothic horror, so as soon
as I heard she was putting out this book,
I was 100% in.
And I loved the way that she took that gothic
horror setting, especially that very specific
English Gothic horror setting, and transported
it to Mexico where it takes on even more insidious
connotations of exploitation.
And the book really explore this from this
eugenics angle.
This book is set in the 1950s, and eugenics
was in this disturbing—I mean, eugenics
was always in a disturbing place—but like
in its timeline, it was in this place where
people had realized that eugenics is this
very racist and baseless fantasy that basically
the Nazis have used.
So some people were kind of moving away from
it, but there were also strong adherents who
were trying to carry the torch of eugenics
into polite society.
And one of the things I love about a particular
type of gothic horror is when it’s used
to explore the horrific trappings of the privileged,
and the things that they do to cling onto
a vague notion of power.
And for the men of the High Place house, what
they’re clinging to is biology, but a false
notion of it driven by patriarchy and racism.
And this all makes Noemi a really compelling
heroine to deal with all that.
She is herself this sort of glamorous, charming
debutante, and she’s very aware and deliberate
about how she wields those things.
She’s also smart and educated.
And those are all functions of her own personality,
but they are also a result of her upper class
upbringing.
Which makes her somewhat privileged, but also
a threat to many of the notions barely holding
High Place together.
And so there’s this really unsettling tension
between desire and repulsion throughout this
book from a lot of different characters.
And I really loved reading that, it is very
unsettling—like I said—and there are ways
that it’s very disturbing and uncomfortable,
but I think that’s part of the horror that
the book is creating.
And I really liked reading Noemi find her
way through this unsettling situation.
The book kind of takes a turn in the last
third.
And it’s in ways that looking back, I’m
kind of like, okay, I see the things that
were building to this.
But it took me completely by surprise the
first time around.
And I don’t want to spoil it, but I’m
just going to say that it is that it is very
weird, and it was also very much up my alley,
and I’m kind of obsessed with it.
And so I’m debating, I’m not sure if it’s
going to happen, but I might make a video
in the future that will be more spoiler-y
kind of diving into that last third because
it think there’s a lot of stuff here that
she’s doing with how she’s using science
and nature in relation to the horror that
is really, really interesting.
My one minor complaint is that towards the
end, as things get revealed, it kind of feels
like there are things that are getting over-explained?
I think part of it was just that there was
so much action that needed to happen, but
it would get paused to also explain what was
happening in relation to the big reveal, and
so it didn’t always flow as well as I found
that the rest of the book did.
But this is a thing that I think is always
hard to pull off in horror, and sometimes
also in fantasy and sci-fi books as well,
so it’s a relatively minor complaint in
the grand scheme of the whole book.
So those are both of the horror books I read
and loved this summer.
I guess we’re heading into fall now.
I’m wearing a sweater and it’s the last
week of August because apparently right now,
it feels like autumn here.
So I don’t know, maybe we’re already in
fall.
I don’t know.
The point is that if you are a person who
likes your seasonal reading, I think both
of these books are perfect for fall.
Very good for the next few months, so highly
recommend them.
Let me know if you’ve read these books,
what you thought about them.
And if you have recommendations for other
horror novels that you want to leave my way,
do that as well!
