At the top of Cassandra Khaw’s "Nothing But Blackened Teeth" (Tor Nightfire), five friends have just arrived at a decaying mansion in rural Japan for a wedding. A strange setting for such an affair, to be sure, but not for this group. While other crews might vacation on sandy beaches or snowy mountains, these five friends are connected through their mutual love of ghost hunting. So all-consuming is this interest that two of their cohort, Faiz and Nadia, have decided to make their union official in this ancient Heian-era building. Thankfully, the wealthy and white Phillip was only too happy to foot the bill.

For protagonist, Cat, this trip marks her reentry into society after an extended hospitalization for an otherwise unnamed bout of ennui. Even though Cat agreed to the trip, she can’t quite shake the discomfort of being thrust back into a world that kept moving on without her. Her best friend, Faiz, seems changed; his fiance Nadia can barely stand to be in the same room with her. Even the near-perfect Phillip and always affable Lin seem uneasy around her—unable to get over their past transgressions, whatever they may be. Although it’s never discussed directly, it’s clear from the friends’ interactions that their shared history is fraught with failed relationships, hookups, and unspoken hurt. Khaw, however, isn’t interested in elaborating on these aspects of the story. Instead, "Nothing But Blackened Teeth" prefers to keep its focus squarely on the inevitable haunting. And in that regard, Khaw delivers nicely.

At its core, "Nothing But Blackened Teeth" is a literary exercise in haunting prose. Khaw’s poetic style mesmerizes the reader as her precisely chosen similes flow past the eyes like a refreshing steam in a forest of lush metaphor. Khaw wants to tell a story, but she’s far more interested in ensuring the reader feels it. Every sensation and interaction is detailed with such keen description that it’s impossible not to feel yourself getting sucked into her world. But this attention to analogy isn’t without its drawbacks. Khaw’s deeply poetic style may cause some readers to lose track of the action in some places.

If you’re looking for something to break up the never ending parade of monsters, gore, and plot-driven pop-fic, take a step off the beaten path and pick up "Nothing But Blackened Teeth" and experience something as fresh as it is fearsome.

This was much better than All Consuming Worlds, but still didn't feel right. I just don't think Khaw's style is for me.

First, can we acknowledge how amazing this cover is?

This doesn't read like a novel to me, more like an episode of a television show where you get new people each time and it's just a story. Kind of how Supernatural has it's main storyline but each episode gives us a smaller plot line and characters to unravel, then never see again.

It's a pretty short read and its reads so flowery. It's riddled with metaphors and the like. It does read very beautifully if you enjoy that style.

I liked that we get a horror story wrapped up in a fairytale (rumor) surrounding a haunted palace. It was quick and crazy how it unfolded and I was just along for the ride. I thought it was interesting. I say if you like horror, especially the old cheesy horror, read this. Keep an open mind.

Thank you to Netgalley and Macmillan-Tor/Forge for allowing me the advanced copy to read and give my own opinion in review.

"We exited the room, the future falling into place behind us. Like a wedding veil, a mourning caul. Like froth on the lip of a bride drowning on soil."

This short novella is just stunning. Readers may be familiar with Khaw's Hammers On Bone books, but this one certainly shows that their talents are diverse and the scope of their writing is almost limitless. The inclusion of Japanese lore and traditions, plus a diverse cast of characters, fully rounds out this scary tale of love gone wrong.

A group of friends, a rag tag bunch with lots of history, has no idea what is going to happen and there is no way to say much more without spoiling the book and ruining reader discovery. Just know that Khaw has a talent for saying just what they need to at times and at others adding embellishments that delight and terrify. A must-read for 2021.

This is the story of a group of old friends, adventure seekers, and ghost hunters gathering at a crumbling ancient Japanese house for a half serious wedding. It’s ill-advised, tense, and ultimately a big mistake as friendships dissolve, pasts are uncovered, and the empty, moulding mansion doesn’t seem so empty after all.

Khaw is a hell of a writer. Her prose is poetic and lush and creepy. She paints a picture of a group falling apart at the seams as beautifully as she evokes the rot of the house. But where her prose is darkly beautiful the story feels lacking at times. The layout of the house is never clear and the character backstories feel ill defined. Past relationships are alluded to but the details are scarce and because so much of the intensity of the book is entwined in these people and their past arguments, secrets, and affairs we are left more confused than anything.

The haunting bits are well done, pushed along nicely by Khaw’s incredible command of language and her use of Japanese lore. There is a sense of history to the story that is much appreciated. Especially in a genre that can feel very samey at times. The imagery is disturbing and the events are unsettling and even with an uneven story there are scares to be had.

I’ve never been one to claim a book should be longer, In and Out is always my preference, but this book feels like it could have used a couple dozen more pages. To fill in the backstories, to flesh out the relationships, to explore the house, and use these additional elements to play into the haunting. Obviously Khaw wrote the book she wanted and I applaud that but I can’t say it entirely worked for me.

Nothing But Blackened Teeth is out October 19, 2021. ARC received through NetGalley.

Nothing But Blackened Teeth is a good haunted house style horror story rooted in Japanese folklore. Throw in some good dialogue (where either the intent was to be self aware/meta or not?) and the dynamics between these characters is just off the charts fun. The writing and style held my interest as the story unfolds. The story tells of an atmospheric setting full of all the subtle eerie and spooky vibes. My personal qualm with the story is that I thought so much of the book was hanging on the relationships of the characters and since it was a novella there was not as much character development as there could have been. It would have worked better for me as a full length novel, but still I enjoyed it! And the cover of this... *clutches pearls* ... is just one of the best!

A perfect nibble of a horror novella. The setting at a haunted Japanese mansion combined with the jilted at the alter ghost and group of (not-so-great) friends is sure to entertain any horror reader. The witty commentary of horror tropes is just the cherry on top.

I will write a full review at Daily Kos to coincide with the pub date. Khaw has taken the archetypal haunted house story and made it entirely new and unsettling. The dynamics among five old friends who have fallen away, and the ways that their pasts, their submerged (and not-so-submerged) conflicts and jealousies, drives the events to a shocking, but inevitable conclusion, would have been clunky in the hands of a less accomplished storyteller. Khaw's prose is at once gorgeous and poetic, and also lean. Nothing is amiss, nothing extraneous. And in all, it's a fabulous offering for Halloween.

Before I get to the bulk of the review, for context, I’ve been reading horror for a long time, even before Sci-Fi and Fantasy. I watched my first horror films at 8 and read King at 10 (I’m 46) so I’ve seen/read a lot of horror.

And this is part of the reasons Nothing But Blackened Teeth didn’t jibe with me. First, for such a short novella, I’d expect the pace to be quick and fly through the events, but NBBT spent a lot of time on internal dialogues and setting up the environment where our characters party. I enjoyed all the background stories, but it needed a bit more length (page wise) to justify this amount of history.

My biggest pet-peeve of NBBT—and that is where your past exposure to horror might provide a completely unique experience—is in the ghost character or supernatural components of the story. We’ve seen it before and it was predictable. I was hoping to be dazzled throughout the book with a twist or gory/dreadful element only to experience the same tropes of a ghost-haunted-house story.

On the positive side, although not recommended for YA audiences and intermediate readers (as they call them at my local library), Cassandra used strong prose with tons of complex/strong analogies to describe the events and emotional distress our characters were suffering. Although I felt the pace of the story was affected by it, the internal dialogue was a pleasure to read and I wish this would’ve been a longer book, so the author gives more room for the plot.

So in conclusion, not one for me. But if you’ve never read horror or just starting out, and love short stories with a strong-internal-dialogue-prose driven narrative, then Nothing But Blackened Teeth might just be a great novella for you.

Once again, Cassandra Khaw is a master in novella storytelling. You get just what you need to be hooked and it does not let up till the very end; and even then you sit there thinking about what you just read.

This time, a group of friends decide the best place to elope is a haunted house in Japan. And then they start telling scary stories. Do we think this is a good idea? And then of course, bad shit starts happening and reality becomes skewed for a couple members of the friend group. Along the way sacrifices must be made. And to be honest, I am not even sure if the ending is real, or part of a skewed reality, or an insanity break.

But overall, good solid read and I am thankful to NetGalley and Tor.com for this arc. Definitely get your hands on this short book for the spook season!

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for an ARC.

A deliciously atmospheric haunted house story. Having unstable Cat as the narrator is fantastic - are there really mythological Japanese spirits following them around? Are the walls really rearranging? Or is Cat just spiraling out? The uncertainty and awkwardness between friends really sets the scene, and things go bad very fast.

Thank you NetGalley for this copy of Nothing but Blackened Teeth.

This story had a lot of potential, the synopsis was on point.
The story its self is wonderful, and I know this is a book in translation but I found myself turning to google to look up a lot of what the statues were in the house. Something simple but bugged me. The other thing holding me back on a higher rating is the over use of the work f*ck. I don't mind swearing in books, but this was just too much.

Over all I am divided to recommend this book to my followers because of my two reasons stated above would bother others as well.

I'll preface this review by stating that horror can be a challenging genre for me. While I like to read horror, there is a balance between enough information to understand what is happening but not so much information that the feelings of suspense and horror are lost. This novella walks that line, with multiple feelings of what the fuck is going on. Five "friends" are meeting for a wedding in a haunted Heian-era mansion in the middle of nowhere. When they find what they're looking for, there is a sense that it's all at once expected, and a surprise. This is not a novel where the reader is going to have all of the answers, although there is a clear sense that there are answers to be found (or assumed). While the language of this novella may be offputting to some (as another reviewer noted, it is VERY elaborate and somewhat purple), I think that this elevated the novella and made the horror that much more engaging. I loved trying to understand what was happening, and the feelings of the individual characters (there are especially questions of what, exactly, happened to Cat, why their friend group is so fractured, and whether this whole event was an elaborate plot or true ghost story). This novella is best for those who prefer to feel their horror rather than get all of the gory details. It's certainly not for everyone, but I definitely loved it.

Nothing But Blackened Teeth is a perfectly creepy read out just in time for Halloween. Get in the spirit and turn out all the lights, but try not to get too spooked. This story takes Japanese folklore and puts it into written form with gorgeous prose. A group of young people have a wedding at an abandoned, haunted mansion. Creepy things start occurring and it doesn't take long for regret to kick in. Highly recommended!!

Khaw's novella was my creepy choice to kick off my fall semester reading. However, what's set up to be an eerie ghost story falls short with an unempathetic cast and shallow setting. The reader is thrown in very quickly, which is understandable for a novella, but not much history is given between the friends. Backstory is alluded to as the story unfolds, but not enough to connect with the characters. The summary teases a bit of perspective from the ghost so I was a little let down when she only appeared the couple of times. The dialogue was compelling and the prose beautiful, but all in all, I was a little dissatisfied with the abrupt ending.

A group of friends grown distant find themselves reunited to see two of them wed. The setting: a deeply haunted Japanese estate. As we learn the secrets and histories tangled throughout the lives of these young people, increasingly it is the supernatural forces which inevitably shape the unfolding of events.
Although some of the scene changes seemed abrupt, the fantastical description and the teetering between reality, the supernatural, and outright madness helped push me through. Add in an ever tightening ballet of circling yokai and a we have a fine tale of ancient tragedy, eternal yearning, and the ultimate loneliness of ghosts.

This was so good and intense! I absolutely loved the writing in here; it was so...rich and heavy and just, well, purple. I can definitely see how it may not work for some folks; indeed, I thought at times it was a bit too metaphorical and abstract, to the point of distracting from what the plot, but I also think it worked really well with the atmosphere of the novel, which overall felt very claustrophobic. There were so many sensory details incorporated into the writing that really upped the horror elements.

Really enjoyed the inclusion and use of Japanese mythology as well as the inversion of horror tropes re: the ending. Also just, really great character development? None of the characters are likable at all, but they're all very vivid and real. None of them really seem to like each other, either, and the contention between the group is amplified when shit starts to get real. Their interpersonal drama is the real horror here, tbh.

I only wish that there had been a little bit more oomph to some of the twists and turns of the plot, a little more reflection on the part of the characters, so that it felt less like a fever dream and more like a horrific series of events. (less)

I've read a couple of haunted house books in the last year or so and was happy to pick up this one.

I read this book in a single sitting and was generally pretty engrossed. However, I couldn't fully immerse into the story because the flowery writing style, heavy on drawn out metaphor and simile, just didn't resonate with me. I would read a few lines and then pause, have to go back and re-read, because I frankly had no idea what it said.

Also, the characters just did not react reasonably to the eldritch horror that was unfurling around them. I recall one scene in particular in which a horrifying monster is roaming the room and characters are sipping from their water bottles and cracking jokes and trying to use their phone's translation app to figure out what it is saying.

Overall, good atmosphere building, but I just wasn't able to lose myself in the story.

That being said, I would continue to keep an eye out for more quick horror novellas from the author.

Pro: this is a very short novella, so I can read it at my desk!
Con: I am now hiding under my desk.

This is wonderfully spooky and gory without being hokey. It's a great blend of Japanese folklore and utter creepiness. And the prose is just. so. gorgeous. I was surprised at how abruptly the story ended, but in retrospect, that may be for the best--this is one of the few horror stories I've ever read that is actually frightening.

I was so excited for this book, and it did not disappoint! I am a long time fan of horror, especially Japanese folklore and the horror from Japan. I am excited to buy this for my collection. I'm not sure that it would do well in the library where I work due to how horror circulates in my community, but I think I'm going to recommend it anyway to see how it does!