Rootin’ tootin’, screamin’ dyin’
Synopsis
Darlene Boone is a survivor. For more than a year, she’s been bartending at the famous Teegarden Saloon, a honky tonk in the Texas Hill Country, while attempting to put her life back together in the wake of an abusive past. But when an axe-wielding maniac descends on The Teegarden during one of the bar’s busiest nights of the year, Darlene, along with everyone else in the crowded establishment, will have to put down their whiskeys and take up the nearest weapon if they’re to survive this unexpected night from hell. No one knows if they’ll make it out alive, least of all Darlene, but one thing’s for sure no matter what: Texans don’t go down without a fight.
Review
What do I, nerd of the masked killer genre, want in a good slasher? Well first I’ll take an isolated location, with its own unique vibe, something a little bit different to what we’ve seen before. Then give me a terrifying killer obviously, and some brutally twisted kills, all from the victim’s POVs to make it that much more poignant. Then, make me care: give me a small cast of friends, and let me root for them. And then, of course, there’s the Final Girl—the haunted past, the dreams up in the air, and a killer come to change her life for good. Mix it all up well enough, and you’ve got a damned good slasher, and in Neon Moon, Grace R. Reynolds has the secret sauce because her debut novella, out from Dark Matter Ink on May 5, is set at a legendary Texan country music bar where the whisky-swilling and rhinestone-flashing denizens are about to meet a killer set to ruin their honky-tonking good night. And crucially, this book isn’t just a successful rendition of everything I said above, but something with a lyrical beauty all of its own. This is a great slasher, and a big statement from Reynolds.
Plot wise, Darlene is bartender at the famous Teegarden Saloon. She’s also an abuse survivor. And one fateful night, during a busy night at the Saloon, both her, her regulars, the visiting country band and the drunk bridal party will have to contend with a hatchet-wielding maniac who’s descended on the Teegarden to make it a night to remember.
Character wise, I was instantly impressed by Reynolds’ ability to, in the short confines of a novella, quickly make you care about both the barstaff and the barflys at the Teegarden, thanks to her skill with natural dialogue and her ability to get you to care about a character in just a couple of pages. There’s a sense of Texan goodwill here, that sense of found family that’s separate from the religion or more divisive culture some might associate with the South (I may be projecting here—as ever, the reader’s prerogative, I’m afraid—but there’s a feel of a more progressive Texas in this book, of the welcome stereotype-challenging kind). And there’s also a new addition to the “animal companion” library in the form of an opossum (Google it, fellow Brits) which I think makes this my first opossum-centric story, though hopefully not my last. The story, though, belongs to Darlene, and the way Reynolds writes her throughout and ties her story of abuse to the plot without making it define her puts you under no illusion that whether or not she survives the night, she has more than earned her Final Girl status.
But alongside the great character work is a great killer, and I winced at the horrific brutal deaths from the insane hatchet-wielding maniac stalking the Teegarden, all described from the victim’s POVs, many of whom go out with poignant heroism or even a little bit of poetry. I was reminded in this sense of the great work of Brian McAuley’s recent slashers; but Reynolds has an art all of her own here, at the same time brutally and vividly described yet also enhanced by the poetic prose she can clearly pull off. Indeed, there’s a certain dreamlike quality to the whole thing, even as the insane climax hits, like this is all taking place in a honky-tonk nightmare in some sleeper’s mind as they drift off under a Texan moon.
Overall, with a truly horrific killer to remember and characters you’ll come to root for in the unique setting of a Texas honky-tonk saloon, Reynolds gives us some Southern slasher charm with lyrical prose all steeped in a whisky-soaked nightmare of Survivor revenge and Texan grit. An innovative slasher that made me stop my table dancing long enough to take note of an exciting new horror voice.
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