"Nothing But Blackened Teeth"

This horror novella had an intriguing basis but was more halting and hazy than haunted. At least, it was short.

Summary:

An estranged group of friends reunites for one of them to tie the knot, but unlike other weddings, the happy couple wants their ceremony to take place in a haunted house. Once the site of a wedding gone wrong, legend says that the jilted bride was buried alive in the floors of the ancient Japanese mansion. Each following year, another woman was offered as a human sacrifice and placed in the house's foundation. Will this party join their ranks?

Verdict: 2/10

The story didn't really make sense. Granted, I'm not familiar with Japanese folklore so maybe someone who knows the legends associated with the yokai would latch onto this more. There really was no explanation for those unfamiliar with the culture or language. I had to look up various terms, particularly those of the monster itself.

But I'm glad I did as the myths of ohagura-bettari are fascinating! Apparently ancient Asians in the Heian era considered pure black the ideal for beauty and took to dyeing their teeth pitch black. So these spirits look like beautiful women from that time, but are revealed to be faceless demons. In particular, the spirit in this story would be a bride with inky teeth who has transformed into this vengeful type of ghost.

The premise was fine, but the execution was lacking. The characters were utterly unlikeable and didn't like each other to begin with either. And the plot jumped around continuously. Khaw didn't bother to explain how people arrived in certain rooms or came to certain conclusions, opting to stir up unnecessary relational drama instead. Seriously, the characters did nothing but sit around and bicker for the whole book. And the ghosts were no better, playing little to no role in the outcome of the story.

(SPOILER ALERT TO THE END OF THE POST) Besides kidnapping one character and ultimately trading them for another, the ohagura-bettari did not physically harm anyone. She really just showed up as a scary prop in the room to and urged them towards human sacrifice. Even the accompanying yokai spectres did nothing but watch (on par with the rest of the cast). When everything inevitably starts to go wrong, the only two supposedly logical characters just sit there. Though there's continued talk of needing to leave, no one takes any action.

This book left me confused and frustrated. Besides some disturbing imagery in the main character's visions, the scare factor was tame, bordering on bland. There was hardly any death! Only one person died and not even in a gruesome or ghostly way. Even for a short novel, this felt like a lot of buildup for a let-down of an ending. When the cover is the scariest thing about your book, it's not worth opening the page.