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A review by macbean221b
Dark Screams: Volume Five by Del James, Bentley Little, J. Kenner, Mick Garris, Kealan Patrick Burke
2.0
I received DARK SCREAMS: VOLUME FIVE as an ARC from NetGalley.com.
This collection opens up with EVERYTHING YOU'VE ALWAYS WANTED by Mick Garris. This story takes up slightly more than half of the entire book. And I very strongly disliked it. First of all, I'm not a big fan of body horror. Every once in a while it's done in a way that doesn't make me feel like I'm watching someone's horrible idea of pornography, but...so very rarely. Almost everything in this story made me want to just skip to the next one, from things like ethnicity being described in food terms (this just sends up big red flags for me) to the fact that the main character is completely detestable and unrelatable and not even in an interesting way. Ugh.
The next story is THE LAND OF SUNSHINE by Kealan Patrick Burke. I'm just going to copy the notes I made right after finishing: I spent most of this one trying to figure out what was going on and what it was supposed to be about, and...I failed. I didn't know what was coming, and I don't understand it. Also, it felt like it was written with heavy use of a thesaurus, resulting in gems like "[a feeling] of something not quite amiss, but awry." Again: ugh.
MECHANICAL GRATITUDE by Del James was the first story in DARK SCREAMS: VOLUME FIVE that I didn't feel like I'd wasted my time reading. It wasn't the most memorable story but I enjoyed it while I was reading it, and at the end I wished it had been expanded a little bit more.
Next was THE ONE AND ONLY by J. Kenner. Looking at the story summary, I don't really remember it, and my notes read only "Predictable." So...uh...not exactly a ringing endorsement.
The final story in the book was the one I was most looking forward to: THE PLAYHOUSE by Bentley Little. I have to admit, I am a fan of Bentley Little, though I'm a pretty critical fan. This story was, I felt, the best one in the collection. I was properly creeped out at a couple different points in it, and for the second time in this book I wished for something a little longer with some more details. Not a whole novel, though; my most common criticism of Bentley Little is that his novel-length stories tend to go off the rails a little and wind up being a bit of a disappointment.
So. Two stories out of five I felt were worth reading. Doing the math, the DARK SCREAMS series averages about two and a half stars for me. I'm not sure if I'll continue reading/reviewing them if more of them are published.
This collection opens up with EVERYTHING YOU'VE ALWAYS WANTED by Mick Garris. This story takes up slightly more than half of the entire book. And I very strongly disliked it. First of all, I'm not a big fan of body horror. Every once in a while it's done in a way that doesn't make me feel like I'm watching someone's horrible idea of pornography, but...so very rarely. Almost everything in this story made me want to just skip to the next one, from things like ethnicity being described in food terms (this just sends up big red flags for me) to the fact that the main character is completely detestable and unrelatable and not even in an interesting way. Ugh.
The next story is THE LAND OF SUNSHINE by Kealan Patrick Burke. I'm just going to copy the notes I made right after finishing: I spent most of this one trying to figure out what was going on and what it was supposed to be about, and...I failed. I didn't know what was coming, and I don't understand it. Also, it felt like it was written with heavy use of a thesaurus, resulting in gems like "[a feeling] of something not quite amiss, but awry." Again: ugh.
MECHANICAL GRATITUDE by Del James was the first story in DARK SCREAMS: VOLUME FIVE that I didn't feel like I'd wasted my time reading. It wasn't the most memorable story but I enjoyed it while I was reading it, and at the end I wished it had been expanded a little bit more.
Next was THE ONE AND ONLY by J. Kenner. Looking at the story summary, I don't really remember it, and my notes read only "Predictable." So...uh...not exactly a ringing endorsement.
The final story in the book was the one I was most looking forward to: THE PLAYHOUSE by Bentley Little. I have to admit, I am a fan of Bentley Little, though I'm a pretty critical fan. This story was, I felt, the best one in the collection. I was properly creeped out at a couple different points in it, and for the second time in this book I wished for something a little longer with some more details. Not a whole novel, though; my most common criticism of Bentley Little is that his novel-length stories tend to go off the rails a little and wind up being a bit of a disappointment.
So. Two stories out of five I felt were worth reading. Doing the math, the DARK SCREAMS series averages about two and a half stars for me. I'm not sure if I'll continue reading/reviewing them if more of them are published.