Blackened Teeth felt rushed the drama was petty childhood nonsense that carried over to adulthood and the allegations concerning the mansion's haunting were farcical at best. While both stories have an unreliable narrator, Hill House was complex and uncertain. The Haunting of Hill House delivered a deeply insightful adventure concerning the questionable mental decline or possession of a weak central character. One of the reviews, by Stephen Graham Jones, claims this is 'Hill House for this century.' I completely disagree and question Jones' insight, ability, and status as a writer for making that comparison. The other characters constantly shit on his for being rich and white until they eventually disembowel him, torch his corpses, and lie to his mother about how he died at his funeral. Philip, the rich white guy, who considered everyone in the group to be his close friends, his 'wolf pack,' buys them all first class tickets to Japan, gets them access to an historic allegedly haunted mansion, and facilitates the marriage of two of the characters, one who's lifelong dream was to get married in a haunted house. Khaw is clearly trying to show the world how woke she is. Looking at the book from that perspective, it's the story of a group of fake friends murdering the only guy who's been good to all of them in a weird anti-white male human sacrifice. Her view on the haunting was more likely her own alcohol fueled delusions. The overarching drama suggests a haunted house, but the protagonist was an unreliable narrator who was drunk half the book. Khaw seemed to try to channel her inner Clive Barker but can't hold a candle to his prose. More simplistic language would have made the story flow better and would have allowed for metaphors to make more sense.

There were times when this actually made sentences unreadable. At points, it actually felt like the author was using large obscure words for the sole purpose of demonstrating the scale of her vocabulary despite not using the words correctly.

Separate from culturally specific terms, the use of english vocabulary was strange. But for folks like me who aren't, I had to Google words on almost every page. If you're very well versed in Japanese culture and the language associated with that, you'll be fine. Turns out, the writing was really good at points but really obscure at others. Kingfisher, Stephen Graham Jones, Paul Tremblay, etc.). There were some amazing reviews from some high profile and talented authors (T.

I found it nestled between some Stephen King books. Picked it up last night at Barnes & Nobles while perusing the horror section. It was released in October 2021 so it's barely a month old.

Nothing but blackened