Published - Out Now

Price - £15.99 paperback £2.99 Kindle eBook

Bigger. Bolder. More Personal.

Picking up where My Life In Horror Volume I left off, this book collects the final five years of essays in Kit Power's celebrated My Life In Horror blog series, each one revisited and revised for this edition. For Volume II. The subject matter is even more eclectic than Volume I, with totemic horror works sitting alongside other pop culture artifacts and deeply personal experiences as Kit digs deeper, really trying to get under the skin of the art that moved him as a child and young man... and to answer that seemingly eternal question, Why Horror?

This volume two collection includes essays on The Nightmare On Elm Street franchise, Candyman, George Ramero's Martin, Bodycount's debut album, Natural Born Killers, Superman III, The Columbine massacre, and many, many more. As with Volume I, each essay has been revisited and revised, creating a second autobiography via the medium of pop culture.

Please note this is the follow up to the great My Life In Horror Volume 1 by Kit Power you can read either first but they’re both great

There are many ways to review. Some of my people love to explore plot, characters and pace. I tend to focus on themes. Other reviewers look at how a book fits into the wider context of the genre. Very often in all of this we are as reviewers trying hard not to take over the review; more a subtle voice of temptation or criticism. But an equally valid but harder way to explore what the subject you’re reviewing means to you - placing yourself in the narrative and being honest about how and why this has made an impact. Kit Power returns to do this in style with the great My Life In Horror Volume 2 that shares the joy and pain of growing up as a geek in the 1980s and 90s

As with Volume 1 this collection of essays each picks a particular cornerstone of culture and how Power first encounters it and what that meant to their young self. This time we cross from Primary School, Teenage years and most terrifying of all becoming an adult. In the early section we get to feel the strangeness of finding the Tripods on your TV and an exposure to SF that is not Doctor Who. Horror is not always found in horror novels and movies and i cnqa definitely relate to the strangeness of finding an evil Supermann battling Clark Kent in Supoerman III very disconcetring and the weird gothic terror of Young Sherlock Holmes or the weirdness of The Black Hole. These are the tasters that make us all seek main courses in horror. Telling us its ok to be scared of things.

We get to experience reactions to music such as discovering that the disconcerting nature of Pink Floyd’s The Wall heard at a very early age. How Nirvana’s Nevermind offers something bleaker and more disturbing that Power’s normal favourite band Guns’N’Roses and yet he writes with joy how one song listened to while drunk on a stage led to a moment of pure joy and release. Power’s love of music and explaining how this means things to a young person who felt alone in school and not understood is powerful and beautiful writing that really captures the atmosphere of schools in this period that I know many will recognise.

As Power gets older we get looks at some of the famous movies and TV shows of the period. A fascinating look at all the Nightmare on Elm Street movies finds their high and low points and why they work so well for a teenage audience. Power equally explains the power and flaws of Candyman as we explore some of the troubling racial power imbalances in the original film. He also explains how as a seasoned teenage horror fan he saw Scream and explains how this film plays with an audience’s expectations and in particular those who know the traditional tropes get massively taken for a ride. Its a very engaging way to explain to the readers how clever you have to be to decide to invert a trope and therefore why Wes Craven should indeed be praised. This is joyous and intelligent criticism that also looks at the experience through both teenage and adult eyes and that is not an easy thing to do at all. Power delivers it throughout.

Horror growing up is not always going to be through genre or indeed fake. Throughout the collection Power gets to explore those moments when you realise life isn;t always cosy. Finding themselves as a child staying at the Greenham Common protests; attending a school that really disliked outsiders are explored and context for these periods given. There is a powerful exploring of Hillsborough in a review of Cracker, the myths that surround the school killings at Columbine are angrily and eloquently explained and what this meant for anyone who was feeling an angry outsider at the time. Finally two excellent pieces of writing really struck me. Power details working in a terrible bar in London and the disturbing people he met there and one in particular seemed to want to kill him. Power’s skill as a horror writer can be seen even in this startling memory that oozes with menace. Power also explores a toxic dominant former friend who crosses lines that you can only realise as a much older adult were not healthy.

My Life in Horror Volume 2 is just as powerful and entertaining as it’s predecessor. It is criticism that makes us feel the power of witnessing these things at an early age and how it impacts our future tastes and love of the genre. It makes us relive growing up and also importantly looking back at these experiences with adult eyes and perhaps judging how we actually were back then - sometimes with fondness and sometimes exasperation. This style of writing is never easy and you can feel Power has looked at themselves with a scrutiny most of us reviewers shy away from. Its very very very good and well worth a look if you love horror, lived in the 1980s and 90s as a young person or just appreciate good criticism. Highly recommeded!