Book Review: Haunted Ecologies by Corey Farrenkopf (2025)
Most people (...well, most people who read books) recognize that our planet is in a state of ever-increasing peril. Rising temperatures, ocean acidification, plastic waste, biodiversity loss, permafrost thaw, and increasingly contaminated air and water supplies all make the marquee of ecological issues, but the most damning element of the situation may be the absence of adequate measures to address them. However, if we’re going to find a (exceedingly tarnished) silver lining, it may be that the present duress provides an rich backdrop in which to place the more conventional terrors we’ve explored in our fiction throughout the modern era. After all, an abandoned apartment complex built on an eroding coastline is far more scary if there’s mutant creatures swimming in the flooded lower levels, right?
Enter Corey Farrenkopf and his new collection, Haunted Ecologies, fifteen stories detailing environmental horrors and the dark things born in their shadow. Each tale confronts a person in a different place and time, and the loose theme of horrors being spawned from, or enabled by, a particular environmental degradation proves an interesting exploration without feeling restrictive.
“Don’t need to pray when you've got technology.”
Farrenkopf’s writing style is fresh, creative, and appreciably direct, generally putting the reader right into the story without laying out too much behind or ahead so that the narrative can progress naturally from the character’s perspective. The prose is polished and accessible, the pacing smooth, and Farrenkopf offers some wonderfully new perspective on creature horror.
My only fault with the collection, mechanically speaking, is that Farrenkopf sometimes concludes his stories adequately-but-abruptly, letting an arc that has reached its natural conclusion wrap up quietly rather than end on a literary high note. I would have loved to see a few endings that really turn the screw in the final stretch, adding a new layer or angle by which to view what came before. Assuredly, doing that organically and without friction is one of the hardest parts of writing fiction, and it’s why authors like Stephen Graham Jones and Gillian Flynn have the reputations they do. To be clear, Corey’s endings aren’t disappointing, but they often lack the fervor he finds when setting up a story and pushing it forward, and this contrast is recognizable when reading.
It’s also worth mentioning that this collection can be a bit bleak, as the dark parts of these stories are closer to reality than fiction. Even if there is no tendrilled monster in the polluted wetland, there is still the polluted wetland and consequences it creates. I value fiction that can make us connect, even painfully, with experiences in our real lives, but readers foremost seeking escape may not find it here. Trigger warning for existential depression?
All in all, it’s a strong, themed collection that showcases the work of a very talented young writer, and I look forward to reading further works by Farrenkopf as his career progresses. He’s an accomplished and smart creator of short fiction, and I’m keen to see how is writing evolves going forward.
“There was always another poorly-reasoned reason to stay.”
While I enjoyed the collection as a whole, and believe it to be uniformly above-average-to-great, the following were my favorite entries:
“Exoskeleton”
Lark, a disgraced entomologist, reflects on his fall from academia while working in a recycling center. This one had some deeply creepy reflections on the character’s mental state, and I loved the consciousness in the story’s structure, as the reader is instinctively inclined toward sympathy at the outset while the story does a great job of obfuscating what exactly he is accused until late on. Lark, though perhaps innocent of the specifics, may nonetheless have landed in a space he theoretically deserves. I loved this one.
“Mother's Wolves”
A graduate student explores the wilds of western Maine in search of evidence that the timber wolf population has recovered, finding herself in the same wilderness where her mother disappeared years before. Smart, effectively written, and refreshingly original, this is a great entry that does a solid job illustrating the situational reflectiveness in its main character’s perspective.
“Dredging the Bay”
Richard, a transplant to the bay who has never quite settled, learns that the old ways of bargaining with the sea may persist when his trawling expedition turns up a washing machine carrying grisly cargo. Classically creepy, and reminiscent of the work of other famed New England authors, this story showed an impressive amount of creative versatility, and Farrenkopf’s ability to find something new in familiar territory.
Finally, I also really enjoyed the two-part story that bookends the collection as a whole, as it gives readers a chance to return to where they started in the collection for a very satisfying conclusion (concession: this was an above-par ending).
Final Thoughts
Overall, it’s an excellent collection where every story succeeds to a greater or lesser degree. As young writers go, I think Farrenkopf’s fiction has a very high floor, never disappointing but not always capitalizing on its promise. He occasionally concludes a bit too abruptly, the main character smirking at the until-then ignored camera lens as she gets one over on the challenges that beset her, but this is a minor issue.
Score: 7.5
Strengths
Diverse entry points and structure
Solid writing with smooth pacing
Theme appropriately present, without being restrictive
Weaknesses
Endings don’t always do justice to what led to them
Occasionally feels like low-risk fiction?
You can purchase Haunted Ecologies on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, or preferably, through a bookstore in your community.
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