By the Seaside, Ooooh, By the Beautiful Sea

So I might be a tiny bit obsessed with Winter Tide. There’s something about the feel of it. It’s like I can taste salt. Like a post-Lovecraftian Innsmouth-inspired sea salt lick… ANYWAY. In 1928 the government relocated the people of Innsmouth, taking them as far as possible from their home ocean and their sleeping gods. They deposited them in dusty camps in the desert and left them to die. Aphra and Caleb Marsh were the only ones to survive their camp. Now, the same government that destroyed her people needs Aphra’s help recovering dangerous secrets they that they believe the Communists have stolen from Miskatonic University. A task that will lead her home to the ruins of Innsmouth and the sea beyond.

Lagoon definitely leans more towards sci-fi than horror on the multi-axis sliding scale of genre fiction. But there are moments frightening enough and themes dark enough to qualify as both, so I’m slipping it in here. Lagoon charts the fraught encounter between humanity and extraterrestrial life, as a massive object falls from the sky and lands in the ocean off the coast of Lagos. The descent of this impossible object unites the lives of three strangers–a marine biologist, a rapper, and a soldier–as they band together to save their country and their world.

You might recognize All the Murmuring Bones from last month’s list of forthcoming horror tiles for 2021. In fact it just came out a couple of weeks ago at the start of March! And, as with all things saltwater and scary, I’m all over it (or I will be… once I bust down the rest of my TBR a bit. I’m starting to feel like my unread books are judging me.) Many years ago, the Mer asked for one child of each generation in return for granting the O’Malley’s the guaranteed safety of their ships upon the sea. But by the time Miren O’Malley was born, her family had long since been unable to keep their side of the bargain and their fortunes have fallen. Miren’s grandmother will do anything it takes to regain the favor of Mer, even if it is Merin who may end up paying the price.

The Route of Ice and Salt is beautiful, haunting, and a real gem in the history of queer horror that has finally been translated (gorgeously) to English by David Bowles, thanks to Silvia Moreno-Garcia’s Innsmouth Press. Zárate’s cult vampire novella is a queer retelling of a small portion of the plot of Bram Stoker’s Dracula: the journey of the doomed Demeter. Varna to Whitby is a route the steadfast captain of the Demeter has traveled many times, alone among his men, dreams full of longings and pleasures he cannot permit himself. But something about this journey is different. Wrong. Rumors spread that something evil is stalking the captain’s ship and the crew are uneasy, looking to their captain to protect them.

I don’t have words for how much I loved this book. The prose is perfection. There are scenes that will stick with me forever. It’s like someone handed me a part of Stoker’s novel that was missing, and I can never unread this now. Not that I’d ever want to. Suggestion: Do yourself a favor. Buy The Route of Ice and Salt, and S.T. Gibson’s January release, A Dowry of Blood, and have yourself a queer Dracula fest. Please. It’s self care.