A review by oddly
Terror is Our Business: Dana Roberts' Casebook of Horrors by Kasey Lansdale, Joe R. Lansdale
3.0
I have read a bit of Lansdale before, but this was a horse of a different color, as the saying goes.
Terror Is Our Business is a collection of stories featuring supernatural (*ahem* excuse me, supernormal) investigator Dana Roberts and her assistant Jana as they battle weird and strange beings that creep, haunt, and disturb the natural world. She’ll tell you all about why she prefers the term “supernormal” in the book. Believe me, you can’t miss it.
I was a little put off by the first few stories, which are only told from Dana’s perspective, as she is a very dry and almost dull storyteller—just tells the facts as they are without offering anything that makes the story all that interesting. This felt to be a stylistic choice on the author’s part, but it just made the stories a bit forgettable and boring to me.
But when Jana is introduced, things get spicier. Jana is everything Dana isn’t—outgoing, funny, inventive, messy, daring, wild, and very descriptive. She is also a much more relatable character for the reader. Once the stories are told from her perspective, we get to see what she thinks of uptight, egotistical Dana, and I have to say I always agreed with her assessment. As a force against evil, they make a good team and the stories were much more fun after that.
I think I would have enjoyed this collection more overall, but it felt very formulaic to me, the basic plot of all the stories going something like: things go bump in the night, they research and investigate, set up some protections, and vanquish the evil. I would have liked to see a bit more variation, but perhaps if they continue writing these stories, there can be some continuity and depth that is brought into the overall plot.
My favorite story was definitely the Jana standalone story “Blind Love.” It varied the most from all the other stories and I had no idea how it was going to turn out. It was kooky, a bit gory, and a unique and interesting tale told by a great female character.
My thanks to Smith Publicity and Cutting Block Books for sending the Nightworms copies of this book to read and review!
Terror Is Our Business is a collection of stories featuring supernatural (*ahem* excuse me, supernormal) investigator Dana Roberts and her assistant Jana as they battle weird and strange beings that creep, haunt, and disturb the natural world. She’ll tell you all about why she prefers the term “supernormal” in the book. Believe me, you can’t miss it.
I was a little put off by the first few stories, which are only told from Dana’s perspective, as she is a very dry and almost dull storyteller—just tells the facts as they are without offering anything that makes the story all that interesting. This felt to be a stylistic choice on the author’s part, but it just made the stories a bit forgettable and boring to me.
But when Jana is introduced, things get spicier. Jana is everything Dana isn’t—outgoing, funny, inventive, messy, daring, wild, and very descriptive. She is also a much more relatable character for the reader. Once the stories are told from her perspective, we get to see what she thinks of uptight, egotistical Dana, and I have to say I always agreed with her assessment. As a force against evil, they make a good team and the stories were much more fun after that.
I think I would have enjoyed this collection more overall, but it felt very formulaic to me, the basic plot of all the stories going something like: things go bump in the night, they research and investigate, set up some protections, and vanquish the evil. I would have liked to see a bit more variation, but perhaps if they continue writing these stories, there can be some continuity and depth that is brought into the overall plot.
My favorite story was definitely the Jana standalone story “Blind Love.” It varied the most from all the other stories and I had no idea how it was going to turn out. It was kooky, a bit gory, and a unique and interesting tale told by a great female character.
My thanks to Smith Publicity and Cutting Block Books for sending the Nightworms copies of this book to read and review!