The Lee Child story was good. Lionel Chetwynd's - who I've never heard of before, and cannot find much about as an author (though he is some sort of pThe Lee Child story was good. Lionel Chetwynd's - who I've never heard of before, and cannot find much about as an author (though he is some sort of prolific genius in film and television circles) - contribution is truly memorable; I would consider awarding it five stars as a stand alone. There were a couple others that I really liked. None were bad, not at all. I've got a nice first edition of this title signed by the editors and five of the contributors. I've already gotten fingerprint smudges on the page edges, though. Wash yr hands after cleaning yr pipe. Sherlock would....more
Pull the shutters, cover your head and cower. This is Laird Barron's fifth story collection, picking up where he left off with 2016's Swift to Chase. Pull the shutters, cover your head and cower. This is Laird Barron's fifth story collection, picking up where he left off with 2016's Swift to Chase. Here we encounter an array of friends and foes, both new and old. Of course there is Alaska, frigid, vast and mean... And we revisit the scene of Innsmouth's final doom... There's more than one reference to the Devil, to armageddon, and a corrupt red light that permeates all... Casual occurrences such as "the universe fractur[ing] into a blizzard of eternally replicating slivers of ice" are commonplace, and the Black Kaleidoscope grants monstrous visions: Elder Gods, crawling horrors, black stars... Femme fatales, spoiled, rich and evil... And the triumphant return of Jessica Mace - a radically updated, wisecracking, whisky swilling, cigarette smoking paranormal detective, of sorts...
There's a lot to love in this book, if by love you mean to fear and loathe. Laird Barron has literally faced death, and more than once - he's looked into the fathomless inclimity of Nature, heard it laugh. He's been granted a short, indefinite reprieve, and he returns home from his field research in Tartarus with tales to tell. It's been awhile, but totally worth the wait.
(And those crime/noir Isaiah Coleridge novels held me over nicely, they are very good also...)...more
A 'modern' horror author, such as Mark Samuels, operating at not just the intersection of Lovecraft and Poe, but also within the influence of Thomas LA 'modern' horror author, such as Mark Samuels, operating at not just the intersection of Lovecraft and Poe, but also within the influence of Thomas Ligotti's vortex of cosmic nihilism. Musolino crafts a different darkness indeed, one all his own - "I had my own personal abyss and I was determined to fathom it... " And we all know what happens when you stare too long into the Abyss... You write a book like this one. Rife with stinking sewers and bottomless pits. Darkness in all its, yes, different forms: roiling, coiling, oily, seething, moist, fecund, robust, fecal, ripe, and feral... "There was always a shadow. Black and stinking." There are at least two stories in this collection that I found honest to jesus scary, and the rest ain't bad at all either... Four stars from left field......more
"... where the weather becomes cloudy, contours blur, and the world is taken over by the kingdom of darkness."
I'm glad to see that this guy's tales ar"... where the weather becomes cloudy, contours blur, and the world is taken over by the kingdom of darkness."
I'm glad to see that this guy's tales are steadily becoming more available to English speaking readers. The Stefan Grabinski "Masters of the Weird Tale" from Centipede Press is a great starting point for this author, but if you know anything about MotWT books, you'll know they are hardly accessible. (I own two, they are absolute beauties, but I don't know if I'll ever have a third.) The present collection from Valancourt remedies that with fourteen tales - not overlapping with the Centipede book - in an affordable TPB.
Grabinski likes fire. Grabinski likes trains. His characters are often wounded - and ultimately destroyed by - yearning and nostalgia. Terribly, beautifully haunted; violently, sometimes. They are no strangers to sex, and can be obsessive, neurotic.
I would say that every weird fiction library should house at least one Grabinski book. This one is worth your time....more
"During the night he woke several times, sweating and near panic, with visions of bleeding, pulsating, keening landscapes still careening around the i"During the night he woke several times, sweating and near panic, with visions of bleeding, pulsating, keening landscapes still careening around the inside of his head."
The demarcation between life and death, blurred. Society, crumbling. Cannibals, rampant. This is the world of Kurt Fawver: A place rife with virulent disease, both mental and physical; inhabited by ambulatory voids, existential nobodies. This is where dreams - and everything else - go to die. His vision is clear and it is lit by a luminescent darkness, revealing the road of decay which is the only road there is. Some are even still naive enough to be travelling hopefully... Kurt Fawver remedies that - the closest thing to hope in these pages is unrequited yearning. Or delusion. Strong three stars.
"The scratching continued, louder and faster, as though something was peeling away layers of reality, tearing into [his] apartment from an unseen dimension..."...more
A long forgotten supernatural whodunit. A passable novel. The most interesting part was editor John Pelan's introduction, in which he discusses the atA long forgotten supernatural whodunit. A passable novel. The most interesting part was editor John Pelan's introduction, in which he discusses the attendant mysteries and his research into the book's author Mark Hansom. Midnight House is one of the most underrated publishing houses - they produced some very fine books back in the day, but no one has heard about them....more
MMB has so many little books that it's great to finally be able to sit and sample his oeuvre in one handsome volume, between two hardcovers. This man MMB has so many little books that it's great to finally be able to sit and sample his oeuvre in one handsome volume, between two hardcovers. This man is a very good writer. Some of his trippy SFX would be right at home in a Philip Dick novel - If Philip Dick lived in a slaughterhouse, or the back room at K Mart. The friction here, the horripilation, comes from the juxtaposition of the macabre and the mundane - In one of my favorite stories, Carnomancer, or the Meat Manager's Prerogative, a grocery store middle manager glimpses his fate through raw flesh. Another of my favorites, Night Dog, is a tale of corporate conspiracy and demonic infiltration that would be at home in a Mark Samuels collection. Plenty of evil cults preforming unspeakable rituals - though Bartlett seems to speak them quite fluently. There are even a couple 'hardboiled' pieces in here that are really good, including a private detective story about a low life who is not a private detective, but may be a child molester... or a maniac. And hardly a postscript, Mr. White Noise is an evil god that gives malignity a bad name. This book is a grab bag full of diabolical fun. (or is it scum?)
A good book. Though I wish there were a few more longer pieces. Don't get me wrong, I love the flash fiction - it's kind of MMB's thing - but longer narratives, like those mentioned above, the apocalyptic No Abiding Place on Earth, and the interconnected Rangel and Gaspar, left me satisfied in a way that the pieces culled from the 'mosaic novels' did not. The Long Lost Parent is a creep out of an 'evil book' story, and is highly recommended.. Have You Seen This Man? is just not the same without the disturbing daguerreotypes - they really shoulda been included in this book, as they are, in my opinion, critical to the atmosphere of the flash fiction.
So, if you like your horror fiction with a microdose of satanic psychedelia - full of terrible transformations, meat magic, and 'tinged with a blasphemy of citrus' - your search ends here. If you are only going to own one of Bartlett's books, this volume is a great retrospective. As of this writing Chiroptera Press has a few signed hardcovers and bunch of trade paperbacks left....more
Another fine author (re)discovered by the late John Pelan and his Midnight House imprint. (Actually, this is Darkside Press, which is an imprint of thAnother fine author (re)discovered by the late John Pelan and his Midnight House imprint. (Actually, this is Darkside Press, which is an imprint of the imprint.) Jacobs is kind of a genre defying, Gonzo Ray Bradbury. His imagination is out of this world and he seamlessly integrates ideas into his stories that would be unwieldy in the hands of other, lesser authors. Earth's salvation through synchronized swimming is a even weirder concept than it sounds. A message from a (dead) talking salmon is the voice of fate, dictating the trajectory of a man's life. His protagonists are often folk of an artistic temperament trapped in a nine to five workaday world who learn, for good or ill, that magic really does exist. In spite of the often bizarre subject matter, the pieces in this collection showcase the author's eye for honest, human concerns, and can even be uplifting - not common in the world of weird fiction. (Sometimes it is good to remember that there are other philosophers than Tom Ligotti.) Tongue in cheek yet utterly sincere, these stories (real and surreal) totally deserve a more devoted readership. If you are reading this, track down a copy while you can! There are only five hundred out there, and these Midnight House books are finally beginning to fetch the prices on the secondary market that they deserve. (For years there were any number of titles available for twenty or thirty bucks apiece...)...more
I read Thomas Ligotti and I am frightened. Truly. I'm also amazed. Not one wasted word. Near perfect craftsmanship. And so very frightening. The firstI read Thomas Ligotti and I am frightened. Truly. I'm also amazed. Not one wasted word. Near perfect craftsmanship. And so very frightening. The first five star read of the year. ...more
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