Blood Mountain: Collection Review

Why howdy, dear reader!

Have you been wondering where I’ve been since I didn’t post last week? I was in Chicago actually and completely forgot to plan ahead and schedule a post.

Oh well. Regardless, I have an awesome week planned for you. Today I am reviewing Blood Mountain by Brenda S. Tolian and then, on Thursday, my interview with her will go live! That’s right, another review/interview power combo!

The Author

Brenda S. Tolian is the author of Blood Mountain published by Raw Dog Screaming Press and her short fiction has appeared in HauntedMtl.com, 101 Proof Horror, Consumed Tales Inspired by The Wendigo, The Jewish Book Of Horror, and Twisted Pulp Magazine issue 3. She is also the co-host of the horror podcast The Burial Plot.

She is a member of the HWA, AWP and the Angela Carter Society. As a graduate of Adams State University, Regis University (MFA) and a Doctoral Student of Literature at Murray State University, Brenda also writes academically on subjects such as postmodernism, Vladimir Nabokov, and the female body within horror. She is a lead instructor of dark fiction with Al•che•my Writers Workshop in Denver and one of a trinity of directors at Ouroboros Screaming. She now calls New Orleans home after a long stint in the southwest.

You can find her on her website or on Twitter.

The Collection

In this mosaic of Southwestern Gothic Horror tales, a primordial goddess awakens deep within the Sangre de Cristo Mountains. The mountain hungers for revenge as invaders leave her emaciated with their greed and brutality. She cries out for blood, infusing the minds of those who do not belong—twisting them outwardly into the dark forms of their true intentions.

An Under Sheriff struggles to grasp brittle threads of hope within the valley and mountains, his soul tormented by the unanswered questions of crimes he can’t explain and the dead and missing he could not help. The demented Red Women fracture the meaning of being maiden, mother, and crone within the shadows of twisted belief systems. Men and women devolve into the grotesque, drowning in their greed and violence transmuting into creatures too hideous to name. Others find seduction on her rocky hips and release within the baptism of her blood. The valley steeped in cults and crime hides something dark, where mirage plays with the senses, disappearances go unexplained, UFOs and creatures await watching in hunger.

This composite of interwoven stories and brief vignettes invites the reader to hear the hypnotic call of the Blood Mountain. Will she ask you into her vortex or swallow you whole? — Blood Mountain landing page on Raw Dog Screaming Press’s website

Published in June 2022 by Raw Dog Screaming Press, Blood Mountain contains twelve brutal and bloody stories, all sharing a central location and many of the same themes, and separated by short second-person POV snapshots of an under sheriff struggling with his own experiences with the same mountain. From cannibals to cults, disappearances to hauntings, not one story is the same in this collection.

The Review

This whole collection is thick with blood, despair, and the overpowering menace of the landscape, the mountain, and nature herself. I was hooked by the first page and yanked in, drowning deliciously in Brenda’s beautiful prose and brutal themes. My top favourites were “Blood Mountain” (what hungers lay beneath the mountain’s stone skin?), “The Stone Mother” (brutal, horrifying, and will live rent-free in my head forever), and “Slaughter Lodge” (a tragic love story, loved the fungus elements). My favourite part of Brenda’s writing is how visceral it is and how she weaves in real-world issues like abortion and rape into her stories without it feeling heavy-handed. The way she ties these themes into the idea of nature, environmental damage, and the human effect on the world is masterful to say the least. It’s like poetry in prose form.

There were a handful of stories that made me flinch, still others that left me with a haunting feeling of being unsettled, all were masterfully written and poignant. Needless to say, this collection, which deals with grief, heartbreak, retribution, and sins, is not for the faint of heart but Blood Mountain is a collection the horror community needs. Brenda doesn’t shy away from writing about the many horrifying and unforgiving truth all women have had to deal with, her stories are a raw song of what it means to be a woman in a world that often wants to hurt them.

This collection will make you uncomfortable. It will unnerve you. And that’s a good thing. You can tell how passionate Brenda is about exploring the theme of the female body/women in horror. It paints every page of Blood Mountain and soaks every word with vivid crimson.

I can’t gush enough about how much I enjoyed this collection. You know an author did a good job when you can’t stop thinking about their stories, days after, and that’s the case with Blood Mountain (looking at you “The Stone Mother”, my god.)

10/10

Don’t forget to come back on Thursday and watch my interview with Brenda S. Tolian herself! We chat about Blood Mountain, about the female body in horror, and more!

x PLM