13 Subgenres of Horror Books

Colleen at The Thursday 13 holds a weekly blogging prompt where bloggers make a list of 13 things on Thursdays. The topic is for you to choose. The blog host doesn't have any official graphics to display on the Thursday 13 posts, so I decided to whip one up myself. 🙂   

Since this is a book topic, I will be combining it with the Book Blog Discussion Challenge.

This is an appropriate book topic for this month. And since I am trying to read mostly spooky stuff for this month, I have been discovering different subgenres, many I did not know about. Some came up in the challenges I am doing this year. I have found many besides the obvious ones--ghosts, vampires, werewolves and monster horror--which I will not be listing. Click on this link to see more.

1. Horror Comedy: Often combines horror themes with comedic elements, using humor to lighten the horror.
2. Weird Fiction: Focuses on the weird, blending elements of horror, fantasy, and speculative fiction.  
3. Quiet Horror: Focuses on creating a sense of dread and the uncanny through subtle and often psychological means, rather than relying on graphic violence.  
4. Techno Horror: Uses elements of technology to create fear, often involving computers, robots, or other forms of advanced technology. 
5. Lovecraftian Horror: Inspired by the work of H.P. Lovecraft, this subgenre often involves cosmic horror of the unknown and the unknowable more than gore or other elements of shock.
6. Splatterpunk: A movement within horror literature that aims to emphasize the gory, visceral, and often extreme nature of horror. 
7. Eco-Horror: Involves stories where the horror is derived from nature or the environment.
8. Erotic Horror: Blends elements of horror and erotica, using sexual themes to elicit fear and dread.
9. Survival Horror: These stories often involve protagonists trying to survive in hostile environments.
10. Crime Horror: Combines elements of horror and crime fiction, often involving serial killers or violent criminals.
11. Historical Horror: Uses historical settings or elements to heighten the horror.
12. Southern Gothic: Employs the use of macabre, ironic events to examine the values of the American South.
13. Cthulhu Mythos: A shared fictional universe, based on the work of American writer H. P. Lovecraft

Most of these were new to me. It's amazing how many subgenre there can be of one main genre. I don't always pay attention to what different subgenres are called, but I'm become more of aware of different ones. In this challenge, the category "eldritch horror" came up. I knew if I completed that one, it would be in October. Same with "weird horror," that came up in this one. Both were new to me. As I said in this post, I will be reading The Diviners for eldritch horror and I have already finished How to Sell a Haunted House. I don't know which subgenres the fall under and have not bothered finding out 🙂 

While looking at Goodreads lists for some subgenres above, I discovered I'd read some books in some of the lists, meaning I'd read some of these genres without knowing they existed. This book came up in the Splatterpunk list. A lot of the others on that list seem a little out of my reading comfort zone, so this was a surprise. And 11/22/63 came up as a Techno Horror book. 

Do any of these seem familiar to you? Check to see if maybe you've read one of  the subgenres without knowing it exists.