Roots of My Fears
In the prologue to season 5 of the horror podcast “Old Gods of Appalachia” the host Steve Shell talks about Appalachia, where “traditions feel like obligations” and a world outside Appalachia “where generations of judgment and expectations don’t hang over your head”, and I thought of these phrases and my own childhood in (and desire to escape) Appalachia as I was reading Roots of My Fears.
The stories in Roots of My Fears (edited by the talented Gemma Amor) , although fiction, read like deeply personal horrors, and, though quite distinct from one another, the feeling of voyeurism into the protagonists’ and, by proxy, the writers’ darkest minds and hearts carried throughout the collection - so much so that at times, I felt discomfort and dread which bordered on fear - and may have once or twice tipped over.
Amor does not ease us into the horror. She punches us hard and doesn’t let up until the cover closes, starting with Lamb Had a Little Mary from Elena Sichrovsky, told from the point of view of a child through whose eyes we realize is protecting her infant sibling from their abusive mother.
Parental issues pop up several more times throughout the collection, such as in the cosmic horror-laced The Faces at Pine Dunes from Ramsey Campbell, where a young man is dragged from town to town by his parents until he learns who they really are and what his legacy is - and Nadia El-Fassi’s The Saint in the Mountain - whose protagonist has a challenging relationship with her mother until she learns for herself why her mother is the way she is.
Many of the stories, by nature of the theme, lean towards folk horror, including those already mentioned, but especially - and perhaps my favorite of a strong collection - Sarah Deacon’s Chalk Bones, about a village whose inhabitants are being displaced by a highway and a young girl who feels the village’s fate is her responsibility.
Not only do the stories speak to universal experiences of family and ancestry, they are also beautiful written. For literal days, I’ve had images in my mind from In Silence, In Dying, In Dark by Caleb Weinhardt thanks to three words, “roots embrace me.”
This collection is one that I see myself going back to time and again to reread stories or even paragraphs from some of the stories, and I think any horror fan will find something in it that speaks directly to them - or at least scares the hell out of them.
Thank you to NetGalley and Titan Books for the advance copy in exchange for my honest review. Pub. date: 9/9/25
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