Taaqtumi: An Anthology of Arctic Horror Stories By Aviaq Johnston

Actual Rating: 4.5/5

This was a really solid short story anthology for my taste in horror short stories. So many of these were very unsettling and had wonderful pacing leading to the kind of open endings I enjoy in stories.

Favorite Stories:
Iqsinaqtutalik Piqtuq - A blizzard arrives during school and the children get to leave early to go home. But quickly things escalate from a half day off school to dealing with monsters in the storm. This really hit me nostalgically and I still think about the ending and atmosphere.

Revenge - Initially I didn't love this one but its grown on me. We are looking at the revenge of an individual in parallel with an ancient beast and I loved it.

The Wildest Game - This one I just appreciate its complete commitment to grotesque imagery and descriptions of a cannibals' confessing its sins. 184 3.5 stars

A very cool collection with a few standouts that I loved. And, if nothing else, an interesting window into a very harsh landscape with different attitudes to horror than the usual Westernized/White lens.

Atmosphere: ★★★★
Diversity in horror tropes: ★★★
Enjoyment: ★★★

It's always weirdly hard to review a short story collection. Given the wide range story types, lengths, and writing styles included, there always seem to be some all-star favorites and...some duds. Taaqtumi was no exception.

I found this collection to be chilling. Metaphorically AND literally, given its icy landscape setting! (I couldn't resist that reference.)

There are tales that ring of science fiction, of small town horror, of indigenous roots. There are stories about characters of all genders doing a myriad of things and experiencing horrors both large-scale and intimate. The Arctic landscape is its own character in all of them.

I recommend this collection to all horror fans, but more specifically, for those who are also afraid of the unique horrors awaiting us in the dead of winter. The snow, the cold, the sense of permanent isolation... there are things to be afraid of here in the cold dark.

Blog | Instagram 184 From the Inuktitut word meaning in the dark, behold a collection of stories about just that, all the terrifying things hiding in the profound lack of light and desolation that can be found along the Artic region. Some frights you have to go North for, far, far North with its stark beauty and unforgiving climate and tenebrous nights. This collection turned out to be a lovely find, albeit lovely might not be morbid enough of a descriptor for an anthology featuring zombies, cannibal and a diverse plethora of nightmares. Some specific to the area, some fairly universal. For me just being there would be scary enough, just the sheer amount of winter at its most brutal is horrifying enough without whitewalkers to add to the mix. It’s very much an entire world altogether and that was my favorite thing about this collection. Being a huge fan of thematic anthologies and travelogues, this book seems to offer the best of both worlds. It takes you far away and scares the living daylights out of you. Quite literally at times, both living and daylights. I wasn’t familiar with any of the authors, but the book offered an excellent line up quality wise. Not a dud to be found, although the longest of the stories (and also the one most likely to be voted science fiction at the prom) didn’t engage me quite as much. The zombie story offered a poignant metaphor on the relationship between the First Nations and the white settlers. The cannibal story was pretty great in its own right for just being a credible first person cannibal narration that didn’t feature fava beans. And while I’ve read Canadian fiction before, this might be the first time I can honestly consider it to be an international read, because it’s a completely different world, not just north of here, but the real North. All in all a great quick read that’s sure to delight the most seasoned genre fans, especially ones looking for something different and well, not exotic, per se, but along those lines. For maximum effect, read at night, if you can, on a winter night if possible. Recommended. Thanks Netgalley. 184 Overall it seems that my fellow book club members enjoyed this book more than I did. It started off weak, with the fist couple stories being mediocre, bordering on bad, and I was afraid I was going to be in for a lot of tedium. Fortunately the third story turned out to be a lot better, partially because it had some unusual and weird elements, and partially because it felt like there was a fleshed out world being built behind the scenes. I had mixed feelings about the fourth story Revenge because it featured as asshole who was murdering animals and then just leaving the dead bodies to lure something from the deep, however the ending won me over when the giant walrus god killed the stupid asshole man. Several of the stories had ambiguous endings, for example Sila for which I thought of three ways to interpret the ending (Everyone in the book club seemed to think one particular interpretation was clearly correct, and it was my favorite anyway, so we'll go with that.) I think my favorite story was probably Strays because it made me very uncomfortable, so I don't know if favorite is the correct word; in any case, it made an impression. 184 Taaqtumi means in the dark in the language of the Inuit, and this collection of horror stories by indigenous writers of the Arctic is certainly dark. Most of the stories make use of the climate and geography to add to the danger. My favorite stories include the opening story of a young boy followed home by a dark shadow in a blizzard, the revenge story of a seal hunter and a giant polar bear, and Utiqtuq, which showcases the horrors of zombies and the forced relocation of indigenous peoples.

Many thanks to the readers at Worlds Beyond the Margins for selecting this book as a group read! 184

Horror stories that take place in cold climate is my all time favorite. The freezing landscape and dark, forlorn ambience is pretty chilling on its own. But then, add in a paranormal entity or some crazed maniac, for example, is just pure horrifying. And I LOVE IT!!

This book is a collection of short stories written by Northern writers, all whom are of Inuit descent.

What I appreciated most about this collection is learning more about the Inuit culture. A culture that has always intrigued me. To live in a vast, isolated, region with temperatures below freezing is nothing less than extraordinary.

All in all, I really enjoyed this collection. There were a couple that stood out and will most likely haunt my dreams:

The Haunted Blizzard, The Door, Sila and The Wildest Game. 184

Some of the short stories featured can be either a hit or miss. Amongst the read, my favorites were the 'Haunted Blizzard' and 'The Door', and everything else pretty much fell under the radar and nothing else stood out. They were uninspired and didn't drawn me in enough to immerse myself in the read. Overall, there's not much to rave about.

184 3.5 Stars
Inuit Horror Short Stories set in the Canadian Arctic... Sign me up!

This was a fantastic diverse anthology featuring Arctic horror stories written by and about the Inuit experience of living in the north. As a Canadian, I particularly love cold weather horror like these stories because they are so atmospheric and suspenseful.

All the stories in the collection were written by authors of Inuit descent which made this a fantastic example of #ownvoices horror. Through the stories, I was exposed to the culture, language and experience of this unique indigious group. I learned about everything from hunting practices to legends to traditions and so much more. I particularly appreciated the glossary at the end of the book that provided definitions and pronunciations of the Inuit words used throughout the stories.

With one exception, the stories in this collection were not particularly scary. Certainly, many of the stories had creepy elements, but the cultural and environmental aspects were usually at the forefront of the narratives, rather than the elements of horror.

As always with anthologies, I enjoyed some of the stories more than others.  My personal favourite stories in the collection were:

Blizzard by Aviaq Johston - This was an incredibly atmospheric story that would be wonderful to read during a snowstorm. While not overly scary, this one had still some fairly creepy moments.

The Wildest Game by Jay Buckaert - I LOVED this one! This story is told from the first person perspective of a cannibal, which was such an interesting narrative choice. Given the subject matter, this was easiliest the more horrifying story in the collection with a lot of fantastic body horror and gruesome descriptions. It was probably one of the scariest short stories that I have read. 

Needless to say, I really enjoyed this collection and I would recommend it to anyone looking to read northern #ownvoices horror stories. 

Disclaimer: I received a digital copy from the publisher. 184 Overall I really enjoyed this collection. It contains a wide variety of stories that as a whole bring chilling life to the words Arctic Horror. But more than that, Taaqtumi (Inuktituk for in the dark) represents the perspective of northern Indigenous writers whose tales are imbued with the unique sense of a culture tied to the Arctic environment. As I read through this anthology I was both impressed and also filled with appropriate levels of creeping dread.

Iqsinaqtutalik Piqtuq: The Haunted Blizzard by Aviaq Johnston (4/5) - Captures that scared feeling you try to talk yourself out of, trying to justify it as an irrational fear. Only sometimes it isn't.

The Door by Ann R. Loverock (3.5/5) - A story about overwhelming compulsion and the consequences of giving in.

Wheetago War II: Summoners by Richard Van Camp (3/5) - An oral recounting of a horrible encounter in what seems to be a kind of post-apocalyptic world. What is there is good, but I would have liked a bit more.

Revenge by Thomas Anguti Johnston (3/5) Revenge with the expected outcome of a terrible cost associated with it. This one utilises the arctic setting quite particularly.

Lounge by Sean and Rachel Qitsualik-Tinsley (3.5/5) A striking near future story with science fictional elements reminicent of Annalee Newitz and Kameron Hurley, but with a distinctive Northern voice.

Utiqtuq by Gayle Kabloona (4/5) Utiqtuq is an Inuktitut word meaning returning or going back. So an interesting tidbit I learned from this story is that the Inuktitut word for zombie is ijiraujaq (e-yi-ROW-yaq), and I shot a zombie is ijiraujaq qukiqtara. Horror on two levels: zombies, and white men who want to relocate survivors from their traditional lands.

Sila by K.C. Carthew (4/5) Short, and with no supernatural element, the effective horror here comes from the inevitability of circumstances.

The Wildest Game by Jay Bulckaert (4.5/5) Written in the form of a letter, this brief but chilling entry hits its human being as source of horror points in short order.

Strays by Repo Kempt (4/5) the cold, arctic setting provides a perfect backdrop for this story of manifested guilt made real.

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A bit about the publisher of this little gem, Inhabit Media:

Inhabit Media Inc. is the first Inuit-owned, independent publishing company in the Canadian Arctic. We aim to promote and preserve the stories, knowledge, and talent of the Arctic, while also supporting research in Inuit mythology and the traditional Inuit knowledge of Nunavummiut (residents of Nunavut, Canada’s northernmost territory). Our authors, storytellers, and artists bring traditional knowledge to life in a way that is accessible to readers both familiar and unfamiliar with Inuit culture and traditions. 184 I loved this own-voices Inuit horror anthology. The furthest north reaches of North America have always held their own inherent spookiness for me; an addiction to stories about HMS Terror, Erebus, and other doomed voyages only added to that. Add in the rich folklore of the locals and I was thoroughly entertained and totally creeped out by this collection.

It was even educational, with a full glossary of included Inuit vocabulary from the stories. I learned the kind of parallel Inuit version of a wendigo was a wheetago, and several useful words like ijiraujat for zombie.

A few of the standouts for me:

The haunted blizzard was a great goosebumps-esque tale that easily justifies how terrifying a combined snowstorm and power outage are.

Utiqtuq is a horrifying and grim nod to Canada's residential school atrocities, and a warning for how a parallel situation could plausibly play out in a dystopian world.

Sila was a tragic look at how being a good Samaritan can cost you everything in a land where every odd is against you in the first place.

Strays carries trigger warnings for animal mistreatment and death, but is a satisfying revenge tale of such. 184

“Taaqtumi” is an Inuktitut word that means “in the dark”—and these spine-tingling horror stories by Northern writers show just how dangerous darkness can be. A family clinging to survival out on the tundra after a vicious zombie virus. A door that beckons, waiting to unleash the terror behind it. A post-apocalyptic community in the far North where things aren’t quite what they seem. With chilling tales from award-winning authors Richard Van Camp, Rachel and Sean Qitsualik-Tinsley, Aviaq Johnston, and others, this collection will thrill and entertain even the most seasoned horror fan.

Ages- 16+

Includes some explicit content. Taaqtumi: An Anthology of Arctic Horror Stories

characters Taaqtumi: An Anthology of Arctic Horror Stories