otterno11's review
3.0
Altogether an interesting small press collection of short horror stories, some intriguingly experimental, some tongue in cheek. While the stories themselves are a bit uneven, they draw from a surprising variety of themes and influences making for a good mix different styles and ideas. A few use overt and covert references to Lovecraft, while others draw from the close to home horror of family, or crime. There is definitely some very adept use of atmosphere to up the creepiness, particularly of rural locations, though many of them are quite gruesome and not very subtle in their use of horror. Still, a good and quick read for a dark autumn night. My favorites were probably Colin Scharf’s “Spooklights,” a surreal, hallucinatory account of a musicians search for his missing family, drawing on high weirdness and with no easy explanations, and Toni Nicolino’s “Dark Matter,” creepy, evocative, exploration of being haunted by one’s family background with some of the strongest characterizations in the collection. I would be interested to see more work for many of the writers included as they continue to explore the macabre, the spooky, and the dark.
More...