Josh's Reviews > Cursed Bunny

This collection of short stories by Bora Chung (translated by Anton Hur) isn't confined within the bounds of a single genre; CURSED BUNNY takes core horror elements and spreads them to the far reaches of fiction to provide the reader with a unique and deep experience.

THE HEAD, and THE EMBODIMENT immediately conjure images of Japanese body horror akin to Junji Ito's manga masterpieces where the scariest part of the story isn't what lurks behind closed doors or waits patiently in the depths of dark alleyways, but rather what's bubbling beneath the surface, ready to breakout and consume us from within (or consume our waste to make a doubleganger which will ultimately replace us, as it were...). Both are equally as good as one another and were perfect stories to set the tone of the collection.

CURSED BUNNY takes the reader down a slightly different path, where curses are sewn into the fabric of items gifted to unsuspecting souls. The result is a decent horror read which is just as much about character emotion as it is genuine scares. THE FROZEN FINGER, on the other hand (no pun intended) is pure horror written in a way which leaves the reader questioning the narrator's reliability and grips on their own reality - I really liked this one.

SNARE reads like a folktale and focuses on greed and abuse. There's a literary undertone which is thought provoking yet the writing is such that the story flows nicely without you having to sit an contemplate the actions of the characters too much if you don't want to. SNARE was another favorite of mine.

I'm being deliberately vague about each the content of each story as I feel this collection is best experienced 'cold'.

Now, onto the most life-like story of them of all, and perhaps the most scariest due to its plausibility; GOODBYE, MY LOVE reads like a script written for the Black Mirror TV series. Robots, companionship, artificial intelligence, humanoids...yeah, you know where this is going...

SCARS takes a little someone from Conan and a little something from Gladiator, and a little something from folklore (specifically the horror-kind) and mashes it all together to make a meaty broth of fantasy with a protagonist who, whilst mostly beast is genuinely the most 'human' character in the story. I would love to see SCARS written and fleshed out as a full fledged novel someday (it is the longest story in the collection but I could've read another 100 pages of this easily).

HOME SWEET HOME is the requisite ghost story, yet it doesn't read like a ghost story, with the characters and their all too real world problems taking centre stage. The chills in this one spine tingle at the end. Where the collection pivots is with RULER OF THE WIND AND SANDS which took me back to one of the stories in The Midnight Club by Christopher Pike. The fantasy element is high here but again, the theme of CURSED BUNNY shines through with pure character driven storytelling at the forefront.

REUNION rounds out the collection by adding another ghost story, which, whilst still enjoyable didn't hit the same highs as HOME SWEET HOME. This time round, the story focuses on a relationship bound by a ghost in a park square - it's an interesting take which works well, yet there's nothing scary which jumps off the page, but them again, I don't think that's the purpose; do I dare say this one is semi-romance? REUNION adds that last piece of the puzzle to a diverse and enjoyable collection of short stories.

If I were to rank my top five favorites from CURSED BUNNY, it'd go something like this:
1. THE HEAD
2. GOODBYE, MY LOVE
3. THE EMBODIMENT
4. SCARS
5. HOME SWEET HOME

Many thanks to Scibe for providing a review copy of this book! This did not influence my review in any way.

This review first appeared on my site: http://justaguywholikes2read.blogspot...