Review of "Passages of Peculiarity" by Mark K. McClain

​Score: 94+/100 (9.4+ out of 10)

Literature can often serve as a sort of catharsis. It can explore the darkest crevices of human nature as well as exploring humanity's deepest, most uncomfortable questions.
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Passages of Peculiarity by Mark K. McClain exemplifies that.

Passages of Peculiarity is a dark, unsettling, and thought-provoking collection of short-stories by Mark K. McClain!

It explores themes like guilt versus agency, the price of power, cycles of abuse and retaliation, greed’s boomerang, and how evil can hitch a ride on objects, ideas, and even “good intentions.”

“What Have You Done” opens with a moral pressure cooker: abused siblings, a dead father, and a dapper Anubis who treats damnation like paperwork. It is chilling, clever, and sets the book’s ethical stakes.

In “Thieves”, a crew chasing easy money finds that the ground they disturb is keeping score.

“The Knife” weaponizes compulsion, a siren-voice blade that passes from hand to hand, turning violence into a contagious spell.

“Dreams” shifts into epistolary dread, arguing that sleep itself can be the villain.

In “Potion Master”, a lonely and bullied teen is offered real power by a charming guide who forgets to mention the cost.

“Purification” shows how grand plans to “fix” people reveal how faith and funding can be twisted into harm.

“Ehre deinen Vater” (Honor Thy Father) is revenge as ritual cleansing. It is methodical, grim, and thematically on-brand.

“Trouble in Balnorvia” widens the canvas with a surprising science fiction story mixed with gothic vibes.

In “Darkness”, a watcher follows clues into the underground and learns the night has rules of its own.

In “The Perfect Plan”, a clever teen invites her tormentors to a very old house and lets the house do the talking.

BE WARNED: This book is full of potentially triggering content, pretty much everything you could think of.

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ALSO, BE WARNED: MAJOR SPOILERS AHEAD!
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The first story, "What Have You Done" really sets the tone for how dark and disturbing this collection is going to be. It follows Charlie and Sarah, a brother and a sister with a physically and sexually abusive father and an extremely neglectful drunk/addict mother. One day, Charlie takes a baseball bat in his hands and resolves to finally defend his sister from being sexually assaulted by their father again, something which has seemingly become a regular occurrence. Charlie initially takes out one of his father's legs, an act which can be argued to be in defense of life and safety. However, as his father (who turns out to be a Vietnam Veteran who is probably living with enormous amounts of PTSD and other serious mental health concerns) provokes and goads Charlie on, challenging Charlie's manhood, fortitude, and willingness to finish the job. His father then approaches the kids despite Charlie's warning, prompting Charlie to bash the abuser's brains in multiple times with the bat.

This prompts the question: is it moral or right to kill someone who is abusive, cruel, and evil? To take justice in your own hands rather than leaving it to CPS and law enforcement (who we've seen fumble and leave innocent people vulnerable time and time again)?

There is a slight hint of incest in the story--no, not with the father and his kids, but between the siblings. That angle is never explicit or obvious, but there is some talk about the siblings feeling good about sleeping in the same bed again like they did when they were younger.

Now, it's possible we're reading into that too much. It's actually more likely that Sarah just feels more safe and comfortable being around her brother because she's afraid to sleep alone in the same room her father just died a bloody, violent, gruesome death in. It also makes the Anubis-angle of the story flow more seamlessly since he appears to both of the kids at once rather than separately.

And that brings us to Anubis, the deathly demon-like deity/spirit who visits the kids after they've committed the dark deed and attempted to conceal it by burying the body. Anubis is conflated with the devil, and it becomes clear he has dark machinations. Similar to Seth in a story later on, he feeds into the siblings' distressed, anxious state, dangling relief in front of them like a carrot to a starving mare. By the way, it's very possible that Anubis and Seth may be the same character in different times and places. It can't be a coincidence that both their names have Egyptian-mythos origins and they pretty much behave the same.

We're constantly on edge during this story because it seems like being caught, being killed, or being sexually assaulted lies behind every corner. Anubis essentially explains to the kids that a sort of karma exists, but in a different sense from the Hindu & Buddhist variations: when a life is taken, another life also needs to be taken. What goes around comes around. And, apparently, this cycle of death can never end. So, while law enforcement seems to be gradually gaining on the kids, who are already sweating bullets that the killing will be discovered, they are faced with an even graver threat: they can offer their mom's life, but then what? Whose life can they offer next? Each other's? It's a slippery slope!

We will say that this story is very similar to another story later in the book: “Ehre deinen Vater” ("Honor Thy Father") which likewise features a son (Aaron) who steps up to kill an evil, abusive, sadistic father (Reinhold) in order to protect a little-sister-like figure (Lily). Really, the biggest difference is just the addition that the evil father is a serial killer in this story. And there's no Anubis. Other than that, it's almost beat-for-beat the same story.

We move on to "Thieves"--a story about a group of grave robbers. The story focuses on one in particular: Elle, the uneasy and morally conflicted lookout whose new black ring becomes the story’s curse engine. We watch her slip the ring on, notice strange golden characters that weren’t there before, and wish aloud for easier treasure hunting. The ring heats and begins to glow, literally lighting up graves to plunder.

And now's a good time to talk about the theme of CONSCIENCE.

Elle seems to have a conscience and qualms about what the thieves are doing. Charlie & Sarah were haunted by guilt, fear, and paranoia after killing and concealing their dad's body. Lily seems uneasy about Aaron sawing his father's/the serial-killer's body into pieces. Later on, we meet Marv, a character who very clearly feels compassion, regret, and guilt--who clearly is apprehensive about taking his revenge on the bullies too far.

Actually, let's talk about Marv and his story.

"Potion Master" features Marv, a boy who is relentlessly bullied. He disturbingly starts idealizing bringing one of his father's weapons to school to take revenge, but his conscience decides against it. He is not a monster. And he isn't evil.

As we were alluding to: that's what's special about this story. Like Walter White from Breaking Bad, he didn't start off as a bad guy. But then Seth comes along, one of the evilest characters in this book (and possibly a return of Anubis). Seth is a manipulative spirit in the form of a "friend" who seems to be trying to get Marv addicted to using magic to kill his enemies, all while trying to prepare Marv to take his place, essentially as a Dark One or a Death Angel.

The magic that he teaches Marv is quite interesting. It transforms him into different creatures, essentially monsters from the depths of Marv's imagination.

This story is special, but it might've been more special if "The Perfect Plan" didn't seem like almost the exact same story, except with Destiny taking the place of Marv as the victim of bullying (and sexual assault) who uses magical/mythical beings to get her revenge.

Ok, there's one story in this book that we really didn't like. It stuck out like a sore thumb and we just couldn't shake it.

That story is "Trouble in Balnorvia". This story is so different from any other story in this book in so many ways.

Most of the other stories are grimdark, horror, paranormal, or fantasy. But "Trouble in Balnorvia" is more like a science-fiction story—like War of the Worlds. It seems really... off. Essentially, you've got an alien invasion and humanity reacting to it. And what's funny to us is that the aliens really aren't that scary, especially compared to all the other freaky, disturbing stuff we read about. The aliens are literally described as cycloptic, four-feet tall, and have four legs.

This story seems to be trying to make the argument that humanity fears what they don't understand. And, yes, that goes along with the reoccurring theme of this book: FEAR and how people deal with it.

But it just sticks out like a sore thumb.

One story that stuck out to us as a positive was "Dreams". Dreams is incredibly disturbing as it features an individual who is essentially in a medieval-esque dungeon full of unbearable, horrible tortures. He is whipped mercilessly. One of his fellow prisoners, a woman, has her ear cut off. Another fellow prisoner, a man, has his tongue and arms cut off. It horrifying!

But, as the name suggests, it turns out to be a dream. What's very interesting is that we get the fascinating recommendation/urge to: "Never dream."

That reminded us a lot of Real Dreamwalker or Nightmare on Elm Street!

It's also a surprisingly optimistic reminder that the things in our real lives that seem so bad are actually nowhere near as bad as they could be.

It makes you value the waking hours, the fact that you're not in those horrific situations, and life in general.

Check it out on Amazon!