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megapolisomancy's review against another edition
4.0
You know the drill with these.
I Remember Nothing – Anne Billson
A woman wakes up with no memory of the night before, next to a man she doesn't know and draws the obvious conclusions, which turn out to be wrong. Gorier than I usually like, although I appreciated the nightmare urgency and confusion of the whole scenario. Surreal body horror, emphasis on the horror (and the bodily fluids). From an anthology of stories inspired by Joy Division's Unknown Pleasures - I think we're running out of anthology themes.
Monkeys on the Beach – Ralph Robert Moore
A young second wife vacations with her husband and stepchildren on a Carribean island. Cultural differences are throwing everything off-kilter before the outright surreal tragedies start. Ends in a jackhammer stream of brutally short, chopping sentences. I really liked this one. Fictional step parents don't often get a chance to shine!
Painted Wolves – Ray Cluley
In South Africa's Kruger National Park, a crew(the sad sack sound guy narrator, a bully, and a lackey) and the Z-list celebrity host (a starlet whose closest claim to fame was being on Big Brother) of the nature documentary they're making are briefly stalked by African hunting dogs. Violence comes from another direction. I'm torn about this one - I would love to never read another story about this kind of violence for the rest of my life, but it was well-written, the dogs were suitably creepy (and a nice red herring), the structure (addressed from the sad sack to the starlet) was nice, and the ending dissolution was well-differentiated from the previous narrative.
Shit Happens – Michael Marshall Smith
Literally. Shit zombies. Do with that what you will.
You Know How the Story Goes – Thomas Olde Heuvelt
An urban legend role reversal where the narrator/victim is the hitchhiker picked up by a supernatural entity in Croatia. The Tall Lady is a creepy presence of ever-shifting proportions, but she doesn't make up for an annoying narrative voice and the whole thing felt a bit too creepypasta (ugh) for me.
Back Along the Old Track – Sam Hicks
English folk horror about a creepy, isolated family and an anxious visitor from the city. Shades of Poroth Farm, always a good thing. Doesn’t quite stick the landing but for the author’s first published work this is very impressive.
Masks - Peter Sutton
A sharp little number about shipwreck survivors that nicely trickles out details and knows exactly when to end. More surreal than she usually worked, but echoes Shirley Jackson.
The Donner Party - Dale Bailey
Cannibals, but not the ones you think. Unsettling class politics in Victorian England, also exactly as long as it needed to be and with a sharp, perfect ending. I really need to dig more deeply into Bailey's work - I was just thinking about "I Was a Teenage Werewolf" the other day.
Milkteeth - Kristi DeMeester
Another anthology mainstay, DeMeester continues to hone a very particular and personal kind of story: nightmarish, hazy, focused on women’s/girls' experiences of family and predation and socialization. Beautiful work.
Haak - John Langan
An astonishing cavalcade of literary allusions and nested narratives hinging on Peter (The Great God) Pan bookended by a paean to the power of teaching.
Thin Cold Hands - Gemma Files
A changeling story, an undead(?) fairy(?) facetiously(?) compared to Tinkerbell (hints of Haak!). Creepy but something about the prose style kept me from connecting with it fully. Files knows what she's doing so this was probably on purpose.
A Tiny Mirror - Eloise C. C. Shepherd
A child's imaginary(?) friend helps him cope with his father's death. Builds a mood nicely but then it's over just as it seems like it's getting going. Rather old-fashioned, right up to the strangely inconsequential framing device.
I Love You Mary-Grace - Amelia Mangan
A deconstructed werewolf story, the narrator's ennui and loneliness channeled through choppy sentences and increasingly-sensory details of rural poverty and suburban disconnection. Good stuff!
The Jaws of Ouroboros - Steve Toase
Standing stones turn out to be mysterious mouths that begin devouring the UK. An intriguing setup, although I had a bit of trouble following the imagery on a mechanical level, and the actual plot of drugdealing savagery didn't do much for me.
A Brief Moment of Rage - Bill Davidson
A deconstructed zombie story (sensing a theme here?); short and punchy, with a great last line.
Golden Sun – Kristi DeMeester, Richard Thomas, Damien Angelica Walters, and Michael Wehunt
Four recollections about a middle child's disappearance on a family vacation. Creepy refrains, unreliable(ish) narrators, vague and unsettling, just the way I like it.
White Mare - Thana Niveau
Mari-Lwyd-adjacent folk horror about an American girl and her single dad inheriting a house in the UK that comes with a horse BFF. Very YA-ish (ie not the way I like it).
Girls Without Their Faces On - Laird Barron
A woman realizes her mysterious new boyfriend is privy to things that should not be. Excellent cosmic horror about final girls and Alaska. There's one absolutely haunting scene in this one (involving puppet strings) that I'm going to be hung up on for a long time.
Thumbsucker - Robert Shearman
A man’s elderly father starts sucking his thumb after dinner one day, which seems to be a social phenomenon. Shades of “Dangerous Laughter,” loneliness, and human contact. Not really horror but I’m glad to have read it.
You Are Released - Joe Hill
A passenger jet full of caricatures take turns relaying the beginning of a nuclear WWIII. A real throwback, both to Cold War era apocalyptic fiction and to 2017's momentary panic over North Korea threatening Guam. Hill never connects with me.
Red Rain - Adam-Troy Castro
Bodies begin to rain from the sky. Incredibly bloody and effectively stressfully told in a second person interrogative voice (Note that that's how I reviewed Datlow's collection last year and my lawyers will be contacting Castro soon). This sort of gorefest is usually very much not to my taste but the voice and narrative momentum of this story is undeniable. Very good stuff.
Split Chain Stitch - Steve Toase
A knitting club is up to no good and the cop trying to infiltrate them comes to no good end. Rather pro forma, down to the ominous knitting instructions sprinkled throughout.
No Exit - Orrin Grey
Years after a cult massacre, the sister of one of the victims lets her curiosity get the better of her. Feels like a strong Barron influence (a good thing), until the very un-LB ending, not the usual kind of denouement I enjoy but here it was effective.
Haunt - Siobhan Carroll
A slow shipwreck and _something_ out in the storm prompt confessions from the crewmembers who used to work the slave trade. Heavy, wonderfully realized, absolutely crushing.
Sleep - Carly Holmes
An absolutely harrowing story of the exhaustion of single mothers, especially those whose child is some sort of sleep vampire. An excellent end to the volume.
I Remember Nothing – Anne Billson
A woman wakes up with no memory of the night before, next to a man she doesn't know and draws the obvious conclusions, which turn out to be wrong. Gorier than I usually like, although I appreciated the nightmare urgency and confusion of the whole scenario. Surreal body horror, emphasis on the horror (and the bodily fluids). From an anthology of stories inspired by Joy Division's Unknown Pleasures - I think we're running out of anthology themes.
Monkeys on the Beach – Ralph Robert Moore
A young second wife vacations with her husband and stepchildren on a Carribean island. Cultural differences are throwing everything off-kilter before the outright surreal tragedies start. Ends in a jackhammer stream of brutally short, chopping sentences. I really liked this one. Fictional step parents don't often get a chance to shine!
Painted Wolves – Ray Cluley
In South Africa's Kruger National Park, a crew(the sad sack sound guy narrator, a bully, and a lackey) and the Z-list celebrity host (a starlet whose closest claim to fame was being on Big Brother) of the nature documentary they're making are briefly stalked by African hunting dogs. Violence comes from another direction. I'm torn about this one - I would love to never read another story about this kind of violence for the rest of my life, but it was well-written, the dogs were suitably creepy (and a nice red herring), the structure (addressed from the sad sack to the starlet) was nice, and the ending dissolution was well-differentiated from the previous narrative.
Shit Happens – Michael Marshall Smith
Literally. Shit zombies. Do with that what you will.
You Know How the Story Goes – Thomas Olde Heuvelt
An urban legend role reversal where the narrator/victim is the hitchhiker picked up by a supernatural entity in Croatia. The Tall Lady is a creepy presence of ever-shifting proportions, but she doesn't make up for an annoying narrative voice and the whole thing felt a bit too creepypasta (ugh) for me.
Back Along the Old Track – Sam Hicks
English folk horror about a creepy, isolated family and an anxious visitor from the city. Shades of Poroth Farm, always a good thing. Doesn’t quite stick the landing but for the author’s first published work this is very impressive.
Masks - Peter Sutton
A sharp little number about shipwreck survivors that nicely trickles out details and knows exactly when to end. More surreal than she usually worked, but echoes Shirley Jackson.
The Donner Party - Dale Bailey
Cannibals, but not the ones you think. Unsettling class politics in Victorian England, also exactly as long as it needed to be and with a sharp, perfect ending. I really need to dig more deeply into Bailey's work - I was just thinking about "I Was a Teenage Werewolf" the other day.
Milkteeth - Kristi DeMeester
Another anthology mainstay, DeMeester continues to hone a very particular and personal kind of story: nightmarish, hazy, focused on women’s/girls' experiences of family and predation and socialization. Beautiful work.
Haak - John Langan
An astonishing cavalcade of literary allusions and nested narratives hinging on Peter (The Great God) Pan bookended by a paean to the power of teaching.
Thin Cold Hands - Gemma Files
A changeling story, an undead(?) fairy(?) facetiously(?) compared to Tinkerbell (hints of Haak!). Creepy but something about the prose style kept me from connecting with it fully. Files knows what she's doing so this was probably on purpose.
A Tiny Mirror - Eloise C. C. Shepherd
A child's imaginary(?) friend helps him cope with his father's death. Builds a mood nicely but then it's over just as it seems like it's getting going. Rather old-fashioned, right up to the strangely inconsequential framing device.
I Love You Mary-Grace - Amelia Mangan
A deconstructed werewolf story, the narrator's ennui and loneliness channeled through choppy sentences and increasingly-sensory details of rural poverty and suburban disconnection. Good stuff!
The Jaws of Ouroboros - Steve Toase
Standing stones turn out to be mysterious mouths that begin devouring the UK. An intriguing setup, although I had a bit of trouble following the imagery on a mechanical level, and the actual plot of drugdealing savagery didn't do much for me.
A Brief Moment of Rage - Bill Davidson
A deconstructed zombie story (sensing a theme here?); short and punchy, with a great last line.
Golden Sun – Kristi DeMeester, Richard Thomas, Damien Angelica Walters, and Michael Wehunt
Four recollections about a middle child's disappearance on a family vacation. Creepy refrains, unreliable(ish) narrators, vague and unsettling, just the way I like it.
White Mare - Thana Niveau
Mari-Lwyd-adjacent folk horror about an American girl and her single dad inheriting a house in the UK that comes with a horse BFF. Very YA-ish (ie not the way I like it).
Girls Without Their Faces On - Laird Barron
A woman realizes her mysterious new boyfriend is privy to things that should not be. Excellent cosmic horror about final girls and Alaska. There's one absolutely haunting scene in this one (involving puppet strings) that I'm going to be hung up on for a long time.
Thumbsucker - Robert Shearman
A man’s elderly father starts sucking his thumb after dinner one day, which seems to be a social phenomenon. Shades of “Dangerous Laughter,” loneliness, and human contact. Not really horror but I’m glad to have read it.
You Are Released - Joe Hill
A passenger jet full of caricatures take turns relaying the beginning of a nuclear WWIII. A real throwback, both to Cold War era apocalyptic fiction and to 2017's momentary panic over North Korea threatening Guam. Hill never connects with me.
Red Rain - Adam-Troy Castro
Bodies begin to rain from the sky. Incredibly bloody and effectively stressfully told in a second person interrogative voice (Note that that's how I reviewed Datlow's collection last year and my lawyers will be contacting Castro soon). This sort of gorefest is usually very much not to my taste but the voice and narrative momentum of this story is undeniable. Very good stuff.
Split Chain Stitch - Steve Toase
A knitting club is up to no good and the cop trying to infiltrate them comes to no good end. Rather pro forma, down to the ominous knitting instructions sprinkled throughout.
No Exit - Orrin Grey
Years after a cult massacre, the sister of one of the victims lets her curiosity get the better of her. Feels like a strong Barron influence (a good thing), until the very un-LB ending, not the usual kind of denouement I enjoy but here it was effective.
Haunt - Siobhan Carroll
A slow shipwreck and _something_ out in the storm prompt confessions from the crewmembers who used to work the slave trade. Heavy, wonderfully realized, absolutely crushing.
Sleep - Carly Holmes
An absolutely harrowing story of the exhaustion of single mothers, especially those whose child is some sort of sleep vampire. An excellent end to the volume.
pharmdad2007's review against another edition
3.0
Some pretty horrifying stories. Everything from modern vampires to urban legends about dead hitchhikers. Very enjoyable if you like horror.
greyhart's review against another edition
2.0
A few stories I liked but majority either bored or annoyed me.
nerdymamabooks's review
dark
mysterious
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
3.75
jmbz38's review
dark
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
3.75
tracey_s's review against another edition
3.0
I received a free e-arc from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.
This huge compendium of horror stories from the last year or so is also huge in its scope which was impressive.
From cannibalism to ghost ships via zombies and creepy children, this collection offers some high standard writing that any horror fan will enjoy. It has definitely brought to my attention many authors whose work I want to investigate further.
3.75 stars.
This huge compendium of horror stories from the last year or so is also huge in its scope which was impressive.
From cannibalism to ghost ships via zombies and creepy children, this collection offers some high standard writing that any horror fan will enjoy. It has definitely brought to my attention many authors whose work I want to investigate further.
3.75 stars.
tucker68511's review
dark
mysterious
tense
medium-paced
3.25
Content Warnings
Graphic: Gore, Body horror, and Murder
chaoticquill's review against another edition
2.0
A collection that disappointed more than I expected. Many of the stories seemed to be included not because of the merits of the work itself, but because of the merits of the author. Some were brilliant, but I'd avoid this one unless you can get it from the library. The audio version made some of the stories difficult to follow as well; read it, don't listen, if you've the option.