The Queen of the Cicadas

I was approved to receive an e-Galley ARC of The Queen of Cicadas, authored by V. Castro, cover created by Flame Tree Studio, from publisher Flame Tree Press and NetGalley, for review consideration. What follows below is my honest review, freely given. I rated this novel 5 stars. This book slaps. It may be the playlist my husband has playing atm (it totally is), but that sums it up best. It slaps hard. One of my favorite uses for nonlinear storytelling is drawing out the known horror of a terrible event, when it is done right. And it is done to perfection here, the reader’s heart strings a simple instrument in the hands of an artist, Castro leaves no emotional stone unearthed and then shattered. There is the Legend of La Rena de Las Chicharras and we will be privy to how it came to be. But legends are not made from gentle happenings, and I was right there with Belinda; gripped with alternating, sometimes simultaneous feelings of sorrow and rage while learning of Milagros cruel fate. One of my favorite chapters is seven, told from the perspective of Mictecacihautl. From my pitiful reference tool of Le Google, there isn’t as much information on the Queen of the Dead as there is for her husband, Miclantecuhtl. But from what little I was able to find online, I think the author captured the essence of the deity and brought her to life on the page. Part of Hector’s story arc, whether to finally claim his family’s strength and power, had me thinking about how so much of the novel was a celebration to read even while being a horror novel, and a good chunk of it being of painful events. Grief or grieving horror is a relatively new term applied to a subset of the horror genre, even though we can all agree that grief has been strongly threaded through horror from the beginning. Cozy horror is maybe becoming a thing, a term for horror without violence, more atmosphere and location to set the stage, a sub-set of Gothic. This novel and other titles have felt like they were of their own term too, which I think of as reclamation horror. In different parts on the novel, Mictecacihautl speaks on being forgotten and how the Christian god is a jealous one. It made me think on the lack of diversity in publishing, authors having their books picked apart for being too ethnic, or queer. It doesn’t make sense to me, because we are made up of all these different people, so why can’t we read about them? I like to think we are getting better, and reading this book, like a said was such a joy. I loved it. And I hope we get to see more books written by great diverse authors keep getting published.