Horror, especially queer horror, is something that I’ve been dipping my toes in more and more as I get older. I’m a squeamish person; during medical shows I look away during surgery scenes, and I despise jump scares. But I find both elements much more manageable in book form. And The Woods All Black was a wonderful marriage of queer history and queer horror. At 150 pages, it was an easy choice to pick up.
Read If Looking For: Appalachian settings, queer history, religious horror
Avoid if Looking For: engaging romances, lots of supernatural content
Elevator Pitch:
Leslie is a frontier nurse. Having served as a nurse in the First World War, he now visits remote towns to provide medical care, oftentimes presenting as a woman to make others more comfortable, and keep himself safe. He finds himself at Spar Creek which, despite inviting him to come provide care, now treats him with extreme frostiness. Something unnatural is going on in this town, but the biggest threat might be the preacher, who sets his sights on Leslie immediately.
What Worked for Me
Mandelo does a great job of creating atmosphere in his prose. Spar Creek is vividly realized as this incredibly haunting and foreboding place. His characters feel grounded in their reality without being twisted out of proportion. And, like some of the best queer horror, reality is its largest inspiration. I learned a lot in this book, and Mandelo provides research sources in his acknowledgements at the end of the book. You’ll learn a lot about historical trans identities from this book. This story feels incredibly centered in a place of time and space, and leverages that as the primary driver of horror. There are supernatural elements in this story, but the majority of the time this book reads like historical fiction. It does a great job of sucking you in.
As one would hope, queer experience was another highlight. There’s this delightful tension in the story around pronouns right from the start. The push and pull between the male pronouns of the narration and the name Leslie. Of the genders others place upon him. Of the concessions he must make to safety, and to providng the care he so desires. This is not a coming of age narrative. Leslie is very comfortable with himself as an invert (again, you’ll learn a lot about queer history), but others struggle constantly with it. It allows Mandelo to bake creeping dread directly into the narrative style, instead of resorting to philosophical musings to build up theme. It allows him to make great use of the limited space novellas allow for.
What Didn’t Work for Me
The romantic subplot in this book was mediocre. I wasn’t mad at it, but I also don’t think the book would have lost much if there had been casual hookups instead of a romance. I will say that one of the sex scenes near the end was not my thing, but I’ll fully acknowledge that as a preference. This is less a negative, and more a neutral, I guess?
Overall I really liked this one! I don’t think it was transformative enough to crack my favorites list, but its a story that I’d heartily recommend to anyone vaguely interested in queer horror, especially considering what it does with a short length.
In Conclusion: An atmospheric queer horror book that finds success in leveraging reality as the primary driver of horror.
- Characters – 4
- Worldbuilding – 5
- Craft – 5
- Themes – 4
- Enjoyment – 4
Marked for Plot 
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