The Twisted Ones

Skyril

The Twisted Ones felt like a 290 page build-up to nothing with a befuddled main character along for the ride, her one big decision a stupid one. I'm not saying I hated it, but it was... lacking, and it had problems. Granted, some of the twists along the way were interesting once I'd gotten over my disappointment of how unscary most of it was, but none of them filled me with emotion or pushed me to the edge of my seat. The shock, body-horror, mind-tripping, terror of The Hollow Places, another book by T. Kingfisher, wasn't successfully present in The Twisted Ones. It's feels to me the author was still learning and hadn't quite embraced the horror of the story she wanted to write. I'm going to break this down into pieces. ~The Plot Great concept, mediocre execution with contrived mechanics to keep the main character, Mouse, in dangerous territory. It took quite a while for the real story to begin unfolding. The threat was subtle for far too long with a great deal of superfluous house cleaning and dumpster dropping, and once the plot did start to kick in (after over 200 pages), I was eager for what was going to happen next only for "next" to be... mild. Yes, pretty surprising, but through a combination of disappointing twists and average, unemotional writing in this section, not exciting. ~The Characters "Mouse" was appropriately nicknamed, for she was a frightened little creature, much preferring to dig herself into a hidey hole and ignore the danger than dare face it, trap it, or kill it. She once thinks to herself that she should have bought a baseball bat when she was in town, yet when she goes to town again a few pages later, knowing the danger is still lurking, she doesn't buy a baseball or any other weapon - she doesn't even think about it. The one time she (idiotically) decides to have a backbone is obviously a writer's mechanic to further the plot along. But does Mouse prepare? No. Does Mouse get a weapon now? No. Does she at least do some research? Not remotely. I didn't hate Mouse in general. She was... fine. She was human and relatable. But I don't like stupid characters, and the further the story went on the more Mouse was terribly stupid. Foxy, her neighbor was a pretty amazing character. She had everything Mouse didn’t, from age to style to courage and the smarts to actually prepare, at least a little. She was funny and generous in a country hippy sort of way, and I liked her a lot. Bongo, the dog, was fantastic. Realistic. Cute. I could hear him when he howled and bayed, and I could see him when he cowered and whined. The author clearly knows dogs, and that translates well into this story. ~Writing Style The good, the bad, and the ugly - it's all there. Kingfisher writes in a style that's easy to read. It's simplistic, down to earth, and it flows, so reading her books isn't hard, and it's even, for the most part, enjoyable. But it also can get repetitive. Although this was my one of my minor critiques of The Hollow Places it's more noticeable in The Twisted Ones. There were times I found my eyes rolling, weary of thoughts/phrases that had been so oft repeated they'd lost their meaning. I also couldn't conjure up much feeling at all during the climatic ending, even though Mouse was supposedly petrified. Finally, there's a big section that's the reading of another person's story. I get why it was included, and it does give some interesting backstory. The problem is, it’s almost entirely irrelevant to the plot. I thought some of the things mentioned in the manuscript would show up as some type of twist. Some kind of foreshadowed, impossible-but-here-thing. It's just... again, it's mostly superfluous. If, perhaps, it had been shaved down and used later in the novel as a type of research in which the information was used, then okay, I could accept that, but... It wasn't. Altogether... I generally like Kingfisher's writing style, but this didn’t have the power I've seen from her before. ~Trigger Warnings Off-screen suicide Mentioned miscarriages Animal mutilation that already happened, nothing current or actively described Firearms Mentioned body horror Probably others, your usual supernatural horror novel creepiness with a bit of violence ~In Summary I feel as if I have a mental chart of all the critiques I have for this book, and I haven't even laid out here many of them in order to keep my review succinct and spoiler free. Yet, I didn't hate The Twisted Ones. There were times I scared myself with the potential of some inhuman creature looking in at night through my windows, and I made sure everything was locked up tight when the sun started setting. The concept was very cool, and while the twists at the end weren't what I was expecting or hoping for, they were interesting choices that made me think. There are bits of the story that I'll remember because they're good ideas, and they inspire other twists and stories in my mind. Even though there's a laundry list of things that could have been improved here... I'm not sorry I read it. It was alright. And while I wouldn't particularly recommend this one, I will be looking out for Kingfisher's other novels in the future.