Kampung Kreepy

I've decided to add select book reviews to my blog in keeping with its themes of horror, fantasy and superheroes. I also usually post these reviews to Amazon and/or  Goodreads .  Here is my review of  Tidepool , a gothic horror novel by Nicole Willson.  5 stars: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Tidepool pulled me in with the first sentence: “Tidepool looked like the kind of place where people went to die, not to live.” I thoroughly enjoyed this quirky story in which one Sorrow Hamilton sets out to the seaside town of Tidepool, Md., to find her missing brother. It turns out the sad little town’s horrible odor may be due to something more sinister than dead fish washing up on shore. I picked this book up because of its Lovecraftian undercurrents. Thankfully, however, author Nicole Willson doesn’t emulate H.P. Lovecraft’s overwrought writing. Instead, she describes the town, the atmosphere and the characters in spare but skillfully chosen words, bringing them alive in my mind. I thought her writing also was

I just watched the first season of Netflix’s Cracow Monsters . It’s been a treat, especially since my husband and I spent a few days in that lovely city in 2018 and I love folklore and mythology. In the series, a medical school student and her classmates investigate strange events involving missing and dead children, resurrected corpses, and ancient Polish gods. While the storyline was pretty run-of-the-mill urban fantasy, there were quite a few suspenseful and hair-raising moments. The acting and the production quality also were good. What I especially liked was how the makers of the series took care to film in many of Krakow’s most iconic landmarks. That includes the city's Main Market Square, which dates back to the 13 th century and is the largest medieval town square in Europe. I loved seeing the square, the Vistula River, Wanda’s Mound and, of course, the Wawel Dragon in the series. The Wawel Dragon You can’t talk about Krakow without touching upon the Wawel Dragon. Acc

The Forgotten Guardian , the second book in my Geomancer’s Apprentice series, features a white tiger. Such beasts hold a special place in Chinese mythology. In ancient China, the white tiger symbolized war and military might. The white tiger also is one of feng shui’s Five Guardians . The beast represents the west, the fall season, and the feng shui element of metal. Among other folklore surrounding the animal, it was said the white tiger would appear only if the Chinese emperor ruled with goodness, or if there was world peace. Another myth has it that a tiger’s tail would turn white when it reached 500 years of age. Some ancient Chinese peoples worshiped the white tiger as a god. Today, a few Chinese minority groups still claim they are descended from the white tiger. They believe that the star of the white tiger fell to earth and gave birth to their ancestors. In real life, white tigers are the result of a genetic mutation known as leucism. Leucism is akin to albinism. However,