bickleyhouse's review
3.0
I'll start off by saying I'm not sure I get the title, here. In fact, I almost didn't read it because of the title. But the subtitle convinced me to go ahead and read it.
I think I would have liked this author more if I had read some of his stories in a collection of various authors. There is a lot of sameness in this collection, almost as if there are only two or three different plots told fifteen different ways. I will say that it definitely lives up to the subtitle, as there is plenty of madness, and there is plenty of macabre, if by "macabre" you mean blood, blood, and more blood.
I started out thinking I would give this book four or five stars, but then I got to the story, "Red Joe," which totally lost me. But there were still some after that, that I really liked. Some of my favorites are "If Not For All The Screaming," "The Ghost of Korrim McKarthy," "Dreams of Blood," and the last story, "Behind the Curtain," which is really my favorite story in the book. "Behind the Curtain" also departs drastically from the formula that defines most of the other stories.
One thing I found distracting was the number of either typos or outright grammatical errors. It's very annoying to me to read a book and find these not edited properly. I find this to be more true with ebooks than print books, for some reason. There were even a few apostrophe abuses, which I find totally unacceptable in the work of a professional author.
It's not a bad book, and I don't feel like it was time wasted. Most of the stories were entertaining. But I found myself getting bored with it toward the end.
I think I would have liked this author more if I had read some of his stories in a collection of various authors. There is a lot of sameness in this collection, almost as if there are only two or three different plots told fifteen different ways. I will say that it definitely lives up to the subtitle, as there is plenty of madness, and there is plenty of macabre, if by "macabre" you mean blood, blood, and more blood.
I started out thinking I would give this book four or five stars, but then I got to the story, "Red Joe," which totally lost me. But there were still some after that, that I really liked. Some of my favorites are "If Not For All The Screaming," "The Ghost of Korrim McKarthy," "Dreams of Blood," and the last story, "Behind the Curtain," which is really my favorite story in the book. "Behind the Curtain" also departs drastically from the formula that defines most of the other stories.
One thing I found distracting was the number of either typos or outright grammatical errors. It's very annoying to me to read a book and find these not edited properly. I find this to be more true with ebooks than print books, for some reason. There were even a few apostrophe abuses, which I find totally unacceptable in the work of a professional author.
It's not a bad book, and I don't feel like it was time wasted. Most of the stories were entertaining. But I found myself getting bored with it toward the end.
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