megapolisomancy's review against another edition
4.0
Another year, another Datlow collection. As always, she favors the weird and the eerie over the shocking and gory. Ups and downs (as always), but more of the former than the latter:
I̶c̶e̶ ̶C̶o̶l̶d̶ ̶L̶e̶m̶o̶n̶a̶d̶e̶ ̶2̶5̶ȼ̶̶ Haunted House Tour: 1 Per Person (Paul Tremblay)
Paul reflects on his lonely childhood in the 80s, when he stole someone else’s creepy ghost. Oops - not only is it a memento mori, it's also a memento-lost-pieces-of-yourself. Very nice.
A Song for Wounded Mouths (Kristi DeMeester)
A shitty band explores an abandoned house for a music video. They find teeth, and other things, and feel compulsions. Seems a bit afield from her other stories I’ve read, but then her trademark focus on families and abuse comes into frame. Good creepy bits, but a very annoying love triangle and some almost-meta commentary from the characters that falls flat.
Birds of Passage (Gordon B. White)
A father and son run into something numinous on a camping trip. A bit of “The Willows,” a bit of “A Bit of the Dark World,” nicely captures the yearning and awe-struck terror (not horror) of the experience. Good (and surprisingly hopeful) stuff.
The Puppet Motel (Gemma Files)
A student manages (and then occupies) a creepy Airbnb: sick building syndrome, or something even darker? It's something even darker. Ligottian in outlook; pure Files in affect and relentless forward momentum (and Torontonian-ism). Excellent.
The Senior Girls Bayonet Drill Team (Joe Lansdale)
On an alien planet, tSGBDT make their way to a match. There are off-handed references to how bloody and brutal it will be, but overall this is just the story of a sports team bonding. Huh. Written well enough, I suppose.
They Are Us (1964): An Oral History (Jack Lothian)
An oral history (go figure) about a cult movie based on a cult book about doppelgangers (nicely creepy). Very much my thing, formally/thematically, but felt a bit brief; an excellent idea that needed a bit more grounding.
The Night Nurse (Sarah Langan)
A miserable mother in Brooklyn accepts help from a mysterious witch. There’s a fee. A nice dark fairy tale, the mother’s desperation conveyed very nicely, as is the husband's uselessness; the prose a little too casual/hyper-contemporary for my taste at times.
As Dark As Hunger (S. Qiouyi Lu)
Secondary-world fantasy where a woman takes in a wounded mermaid, just as an old lover shows up on a mermaid hunt. Thematically concerned with belonging/diaspora/transitioning/assimilating. I would quibble about genre, but who cares. Very good!
I Say (I Say, I Say) (Robert Shearman)
Embodied joke caricatures live in surreal existential horror. Absolutely jet-black humor, well-told and -constructed, pretty sui generis. Guess I’m going to have to scare up a copy of We All Hear Stories in the Dark, damn it.
The Pain-Eater’s Daughter (Laura N. Mauro)
A woman watches her Romani father and grandfather die from taking on the pain of others, for which they are paid a pittance. Something of Omelas but with actual characters. Beautiful, although the simmering tension did lead me to expect a swerve or eruption or irruption that never came.
The Hope Chest (Sarah Read)
A little girl tries to survive her abusive mother after her beloved grandmother dies. She finds solace with a dress form. Usually not on board with stories where you're just waiting for karma to catch up with an abuser, but the comfort of the grandmother worked well here. Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark by way of Ray Bradbury.
Nor Cease You Never Now (Ren Warom)
Twins survive a boat wreck that kills all their classmates. Also there’s a big traffic accident. Their parents are full of guilt, the fens are full of creepy water, the twins are also full of guilt. Cartoonishly gory, constant POV shifts, scrambled words, choppy prose, a bit of an overwrought mess.
Playscape (Diana Peterfreund)
You knew that woman whose baby vanished at the playground, but you weren't really friends, and you'd never let that happen to your own baby, right? ... right? I'm a sucker for 2nd person, this hit close to home, great stuff.
Adrenaline Junkies (Ray Cluley)
Adrenaline junkies skydive over a cenote in Mexico. They’re beset by a swarm of feathered serpent bat monsters. The monsters are also adrenaline junkies. Flashbacks twine throughout about a dead lover. Good; surprisingly abrupt ending.
Watching (Tim Lees)
Kidnapping, child abuse, murder, more child abuse. Very, extremely, indubitably, inarguably not my thing.
Mr. and Mrs. Kett (Sam Hicks)
A girl comes home to find her parents have taken in two mysterious guests, who guide them all in building a maze in the backyard. Aickmanesque, slightly surreal, understated and very British. Killer. Hicks's first published story was in last year's volume, and I was very impressed with it for a first outing, and this is even better. An author to watch.
Below (Simon Bestwick)
A pair of truants in 1980s Manchester fall into a subterranean city of monsters. Some initial creepiness gives way to diminishing returns and a series of deus ex machinas.
My Name is Ellie (Sam Rebelein)
A girl recounts her creepy family’s creepy houses and creepy figurines. A good story marred by a grating narrative conceit, a stream of single-sentence paragraphs that almost all start with “Which...” to sell the precocious narrator.
Slipper (Catriona Ward)
A brother and sister attend their father’s funeral and make plans for his estate, which comes with a lot of baggage. You know I love things dark and melancholy but this is just abject misery: pissy bickering, child abuse, incest, alcoholism, etc.
How to Stay Afloat When Drowning (Daniel Braum)
A man goes fishing in Montauk to help his sister with a business deal. He's got a lot of things to be sad about. Opening yourself up is bound to attract sharks.
This Was Always Going to Happen (Stephen Graham Jones)
You get a flat tire driving up a mountain near Denver. A cyclist stops to "help"... ?" Another second-person humdinger, just absolutely incredibly tense and odd for a very brief number of pages.
The Butcher’s Table (Nathan Ballingrud)
A gloriously lurid, unabashedly pulpy tale of pirates and the damned at the shores of Hell; cartoonishly gory, narratively taut, incredibly inventive, god damn.
I̶c̶e̶ ̶C̶o̶l̶d̶ ̶L̶e̶m̶o̶n̶a̶d̶e̶ ̶2̶5̶ȼ̶̶ Haunted House Tour: 1 Per Person (Paul Tremblay)
Paul reflects on his lonely childhood in the 80s, when he stole someone else’s creepy ghost. Oops - not only is it a memento mori, it's also a memento-lost-pieces-of-yourself. Very nice.
A Song for Wounded Mouths (Kristi DeMeester)
A shitty band explores an abandoned house for a music video. They find teeth, and other things, and feel compulsions. Seems a bit afield from her other stories I’ve read, but then her trademark focus on families and abuse comes into frame. Good creepy bits, but a very annoying love triangle and some almost-meta commentary from the characters that falls flat.
Birds of Passage (Gordon B. White)
A father and son run into something numinous on a camping trip. A bit of “The Willows,” a bit of “A Bit of the Dark World,” nicely captures the yearning and awe-struck terror (not horror) of the experience. Good (and surprisingly hopeful) stuff.
The Puppet Motel (Gemma Files)
A student manages (and then occupies) a creepy Airbnb: sick building syndrome, or something even darker? It's something even darker. Ligottian in outlook; pure Files in affect and relentless forward momentum (and Torontonian-ism). Excellent.
The Senior Girls Bayonet Drill Team (Joe Lansdale)
On an alien planet, tSGBDT make their way to a match. There are off-handed references to how bloody and brutal it will be, but overall this is just the story of a sports team bonding. Huh. Written well enough, I suppose.
They Are Us (1964): An Oral History (Jack Lothian)
An oral history (go figure) about a cult movie based on a cult book about doppelgangers (nicely creepy). Very much my thing, formally/thematically, but felt a bit brief; an excellent idea that needed a bit more grounding.
The Night Nurse (Sarah Langan)
A miserable mother in Brooklyn accepts help from a mysterious witch. There’s a fee. A nice dark fairy tale, the mother’s desperation conveyed very nicely, as is the husband's uselessness; the prose a little too casual/hyper-contemporary for my taste at times.
As Dark As Hunger (S. Qiouyi Lu)
Secondary-world fantasy where a woman takes in a wounded mermaid, just as an old lover shows up on a mermaid hunt. Thematically concerned with belonging/diaspora/transitioning/assimilating. I would quibble about genre, but who cares. Very good!
I Say (I Say, I Say) (Robert Shearman)
Embodied joke caricatures live in surreal existential horror. Absolutely jet-black humor, well-told and -constructed, pretty sui generis. Guess I’m going to have to scare up a copy of We All Hear Stories in the Dark, damn it.
The Pain-Eater’s Daughter (Laura N. Mauro)
A woman watches her Romani father and grandfather die from taking on the pain of others, for which they are paid a pittance. Something of Omelas but with actual characters. Beautiful, although the simmering tension did lead me to expect a swerve or eruption or irruption that never came.
The Hope Chest (Sarah Read)
A little girl tries to survive her abusive mother after her beloved grandmother dies. She finds solace with a dress form. Usually not on board with stories where you're just waiting for karma to catch up with an abuser, but the comfort of the grandmother worked well here. Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark by way of Ray Bradbury.
Nor Cease You Never Now (Ren Warom)
Twins survive a boat wreck that kills all their classmates. Also there’s a big traffic accident. Their parents are full of guilt, the fens are full of creepy water, the twins are also full of guilt. Cartoonishly gory, constant POV shifts, scrambled words, choppy prose, a bit of an overwrought mess.
Playscape (Diana Peterfreund)
You knew that woman whose baby vanished at the playground, but you weren't really friends, and you'd never let that happen to your own baby, right? ... right? I'm a sucker for 2nd person, this hit close to home, great stuff.
Adrenaline Junkies (Ray Cluley)
Adrenaline junkies skydive over a cenote in Mexico. They’re beset by a swarm of feathered serpent bat monsters. The monsters are also adrenaline junkies. Flashbacks twine throughout about a dead lover. Good; surprisingly abrupt ending.
Watching (Tim Lees)
Kidnapping, child abuse, murder, more child abuse. Very, extremely, indubitably, inarguably not my thing.
Mr. and Mrs. Kett (Sam Hicks)
A girl comes home to find her parents have taken in two mysterious guests, who guide them all in building a maze in the backyard. Aickmanesque, slightly surreal, understated and very British. Killer. Hicks's first published story was in last year's volume, and I was very impressed with it for a first outing, and this is even better. An author to watch.
Below (Simon Bestwick)
A pair of truants in 1980s Manchester fall into a subterranean city of monsters. Some initial creepiness gives way to diminishing returns and a series of deus ex machinas.
My Name is Ellie (Sam Rebelein)
A girl recounts her creepy family’s creepy houses and creepy figurines. A good story marred by a grating narrative conceit, a stream of single-sentence paragraphs that almost all start with “Which...” to sell the precocious narrator.
Slipper (Catriona Ward)
A brother and sister attend their father’s funeral and make plans for his estate, which comes with a lot of baggage. You know I love things dark and melancholy but this is just abject misery: pissy bickering, child abuse, incest, alcoholism, etc.
How to Stay Afloat When Drowning (Daniel Braum)
A man goes fishing in Montauk to help his sister with a business deal. He's got a lot of things to be sad about. Opening yourself up is bound to attract sharks.
This Was Always Going to Happen (Stephen Graham Jones)
You get a flat tire driving up a mountain near Denver. A cyclist stops to "help"... ?" Another second-person humdinger, just absolutely incredibly tense and odd for a very brief number of pages.
The Butcher’s Table (Nathan Ballingrud)
A gloriously lurid, unabashedly pulpy tale of pirates and the damned at the shores of Hell; cartoonishly gory, narratively taut, incredibly inventive, god damn.
ericgaryanderson's review against another edition
4.0
A solid anthology put together by an old pro. I especially liked the stories by Paul Tremblay, Kristi DeMeester, Gemma Files, Sam Rebelein, and Stephen Graham Jones.
neilsb's review against another edition
challenging
dark
emotional
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? N/A
- Strong character development? N/A
- Loveable characters? N/A
- Diverse cast of characters? N/A
- Flaws of characters a main focus? N/A
4.0
pearseanderson's review against another edition
adventurous
dark
medium-paced
3.0
Not an especially strong collection, unfortunately: I left a lot of the pieces thinking I devoted too much time to reading them and trying to get invested in characters or plots that weren't doing it for me. The winners, as I see them: Robert Shearman (ofc)'s I Say (I Say, I Say), The Senior Girls Bayonet Drill Team, Adrenaline Junkies, and The Butcher's Table. Ballingrud takes the cake, making this collection worthwhile if you just read his novella, tbh. Stunning.
Connection: Ballingrud edited my work at Shared Worlds, years ago, and I helped suggested some seafaring food culture for him to add to this story.
Connection: Ballingrud edited my work at Shared Worlds, years ago, and I helped suggested some seafaring food culture for him to add to this story.
rubyhosh's review
dark
sad
tense
medium-paced
4.25
Content Warnings
Graphic: Body horror, Injury/injury detail, Blood, and Violence
Moderate: Rape, Incest, Torture, Physical abuse, and Murder
horrorbound's review
challenging
dark
mysterious
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
4.0
gentryatkinson's review against another edition
3.0
I did really love a few of the stories but overall this anthology was very “meh.” I know they are short stories, but most were still too vague.
More...