(no subject)

[darchildre]

I realize that this would be entirely unworkable, but I do wish that books would give you a warning about 50 pages in if they're going to turn out to have a Scooby Doo ending. I just finished my third book of the year that sold itself as a horror novel, started out strong on apparently supernatural happenings, and then collapsed into "Yes, but actually the answer to all of this mysterious stuff is a completely non-supernatural human murderer and everything has a completely non-supernatural explanation."

I get that, for many readers, this is a satisfying conclusion. But to me it always feels like a cop out. It's lazy. And it poisons the whole book - even if the rest of it was a fun reading experience, I come away from it feeling cheated. I would like a tipoff that it's going to happen, so that I can brace myself. At least if you're watching Scooby Doo, you know that you're watching Scooby Doo.

(It is perhaps worth noting that all three of them have been books I found by going to the library ebook site and telling it to show me all the horror novels currently available for checkout. I think the library and I define horror differently.)

Comments

[nostalgia]

Yeah I can see how that'd be annoying AF. The book LIED to you!

[darchildre]

Right? I don't mind a mundane thriller from time to time but I like to know that's what I'm reading from the beginning.

[silveradept]

Feels like there could be some better tagging at work, between mundane horror and supernatural horror. But what would a signal like that be? The presence of a Great Dane in the background somewhere?

[darchildre]

Selfishly, I just want the entire world to adhere to my personal and very idiosyncratic definition of What Counts As Horror and not tag things as horror that don't fall under that definition. This is not workable, however.

[silveradept]

Fair enough. Wouldn't it be nice if we could reconfigure reality to our own preferences and it would only work for us?

[frenchroast]

Oh, I know exactly what you're talking about. I hate when something that's billed as supernatural turns out not to be. I WANT MAGIC, DAMMIT.

The only way I've found around it is to look for stuff specifically labeled paranormal/supernatural horror.

If you're looking for recommendations, Grady Hendrix does a lot of great supernatural horror. His latest isn't, but the rest of his stuff has been.