cover image Soul of the Unborn

Soul of the Unborn

Natalia Brothers. City Owl, $3.99 e-book (384p) ISBN 978-1-5337-7007-3

This tensionless, awkward, and too-long supernatural debut, nominally inspired by Russian folklore, starts with the format of a teenage scare flick—whiplash social conflicts, gaslighting, and rapid flip-flops among bravery, curiosity, and fear—and grates it against the first-person narration of a broody, anxious central character who is too hard to classify as villain or victim, in a paranormal rules-bound setting that requires more clarity. Virginian Debra Alley, her three college friends, and her older cousin go to the small Russian village of Visenky for Valya Svertlova’s creepy overnight storytelling tour, hoping to find out what made her friend Kenny come back shaken the previous year. She has no idea that Valya has lured the group there because Debra is of her bloodline; Valya hopes to prove that her supernatural sensitivities are hereditary and not due to the fact that she is a soulless monster reanimated as a baby by the local witch after being stillborn. Monsters, including a deadly underwater possum and ghosts of Valya’s dead friends, show up haphazardly; the plot is jumpy; and Brother’s language elicits no frisson of the scary or strange. (Nov.)