Month: September 2022

Week 242 – Weekly Horror Short Story Reviews: Buck, Ajvaz, Metcalfe, and Patterson

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Welcome to Week 242 of my horror short fiction review project! Some decent stories, none amazing, but my favorite was “The Feasting Dead” by John Metcalfe, which has some distinctive Gothic and Victorian sensibilities about it, though it’s nominally set in the 1950s, including English schoolchildren, mysterious mansions, and ghosts that have preyed upon the living for several generations–how can you go wrong?

The Black Magic Omnibus, edited by Peter Haining (Taplinger, 1976)

“Transgressor’s Way” by Doris Pitkin Buck

The second story in the collection and my second disappointment. This one apparently concerns the infamous medieval serial murderer-rapist of children, though the character is never addressed by his name, nor is he depicted as committing any of these acts in the story. The prose style of the story is bizarre, confused, confusing, and worst of all, boring. How can one write about Gilles de Rais—purported inspiration for the character Bluebeard—and make it boring? I only knew this one was about de Rais from the editor’s introduction. Not good.

The Weird: A Compendium of Strange and Dark Stories, edited by Ann and Jeff Vandermeer (Tor, 2012)

[previously reviewed] “His Mouth Will Taste of Wormwood” by Poppy Z. Brite

“The End of the Garden” by Michal Ajvaz

More magical realism in the collection. Sigh. The narrator gets involved in a dispute/relationship (?) between a woman and an intelligent Komodo dragon. Absurd and kind of silly.

A Taste for Blood, edited by Martin H. Greenberg (Barnes & Noble Books, 1992)

[previously reviewed] “The Shunned House” by H. P. Lovecraft

“The Feasting Dead” by John Metcalfe

Fascinating, though I wish the novella had actually wrapped up—it just seems to stop. Colonel Habgood’s son Denis becomes entranced by some kind of ghostly vampiric being at the estate of the Vaignon family in France (distant cousins of Denis’ deceased mother). This being seems to have cursed the Vaignons for the last eighty years or so, and has likely driven many of them mad during that period. This is one of those truly slow burns with no clear answers or a neat resolution. It’s Gothic to be sure, though set during the 1950s, mostly in rural France. Creepy atmosphere throughout; it’s suspenseful though that doesn’t ultimately pan out.

The Children of Cthulhu, edited by John Pelan and Benjamin Adams (Del Rey/Ballantine, 2002)

“Principles and Parameters” by Meredith L. Patterson

I didn’t love this one, though it started off promisingly. Claire is a computational linguist who has a computer program that can identify obscure language by analyzing language samples. She’s asked to translate a sample of the Pnakotic Manuscripts, which diligent readers of Lovecraft will recognize as a text created by the time-traveling Great Race of Yith. She ends up traveling to the Dreamlands. There are some interesting elements here, but it’s just an okay/meh kind of story. It’s essentially an intriguing premise that never goes anywhere interesting.


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Week 241 – Weekly Horror Short Story Reviews: Zelazny, Oates, Moore, and Reaves

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Welcome to Week 241 of my horror short fiction review project! One of our four collections is new today: The Black Magic Omnibus, which contains a wealth of obscure stories from some very well-known authors, all on the topic of black magic. My favorite story of the week was “Black Thirst” by C. L. Moore, which is a Northwest Smith story set in a kind of retro-futuristic setting that is vaguely SF, but containing many horrific elements.

The Black Magic Omnibus, edited by Peter Haining (Taplinger, 1976)

“The Salvation of Faust” by Roger Zelazny

I normally love Zelazny’s work (he’s one of my favorite writers), but I found this one woefully underwhelming. It’s just a snippet of a story about Faust that really does nothing remarkable or memorable. Disappointing coming from Zelazny and an inauspicious start to the collection.

The Weird: A Compendium of Strange and Dark Stories, edited by Ann and Jeff Vandermeer (Tor, 2012)

“Family” by Joyce Carol Oates

The story of a family living on a remote-ish ranch in a strange dystopia in which it seems society is collapsing. This family is beset by all manner of terrible diseases, deaths, tragedies, and mutations. I don’t quite know what to make of it to be honest. Some horrific happenings here though.

A Taste for Blood, edited by Martin H. Greenberg (Barnes & Noble Books, 1992)

“Black Thirst” by C. L. Moore

The second Northwest Smith story I’ve read. He’s an adventurer and well-known scoundrel in a kind of pulpy future setting where humans and quasi-humans and alien species have settled on Venus and Mars. There are also implications that these places have been settled for a very long time—thousands of years—and that there were previous human civilizations from Earth that had voyaged into space and settled on these places. So, an intriguing kind of setting. Here, Northwest Smith is hired by Vaudir, a Minga courtesan to perform some unspecified task and secreted into the Minga stronghold. The Minga seem to be some ancient commercial concern that breeds incredibly beautiful women who are sold as pleasure slaves. Once inside, Smith is nearly driven insane by the inhuman level of beauty of the other Minga women, who are never allowed to leave the stronghold because humans couldn’t take this level of beauty. The head of the Minga, Alendar, seems to be some kind of alien vampire that feeds on beauty. Smith eventually manages to kill Alendar, returning it to the primordial slime from whence it came. It’s a padded story (I get it, it was likely sold by a working writer to an editor paying by the word), but there are some very interesting ideas here.

The Children of Cthulhu, edited by John Pelan and Benjamin Adams (Del Rey/Ballantine, 2002)

“Red Clay” by Michael Reaves

Zeb is a hillbilly who lives alone in a remote area. He finds a pool of strange red clay that seems to compel him to use it to obsessively sculpt statuettes of monstrous beings and creepy trees. Not a bad story for what it is—a kind of creepy take of unexplained obsession—but my terse description here literally sums up the entire story.


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Week 240 – Weekly Horror Short Story Reviews: Brenchley, Hand, Howard, and Dorr

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Welcome to Week 240 of my horror short fiction review project! This week is the last of Hellbound Hearts (a collection that I enjoyed overall, though like many, it’s a bit uneven); starting next week that one will be replaced with a new collection, The Black Magic Omnibus, which is an obscure tome I happened upon in a used book shop (isn’t that the basic premise of so many wonderful stories?). I can’t honestly say that I loved any of the stories this week, but the best was a Solomon Kane tale, “The Hills of the Dead” by Robert E. Howard, about the Puritan adventurer encountering some vampire-zombie-undead creatures during his sojourn in Africa.

Hellbound Hearts, edited by Paul Kane and Marie O’Regan (Pocket Books, 2009)

“’Tis Pity He’s Ashore” by Chaz Brenchley

The narrator is a gay sailor who acquires an antique Chinese compass, which he takes to a high-rise hotel with a prostitute. In the night, a freak storm rolls through, the winds smash the window and suck the prostitute out the window to his death. This is just not a very interesting story, and it remains unclear to me exactly how all of this is related to the Hellraiser Mythos.

The Weird: A Compendium of Strange and Dark Stories, edited by Ann and Jeff Vandermeer (Tor, 2012)

“The Boy in the Tree” by Elizabeth Hand

Wendy is an autistic empath and there’s a program to develop other such empaths  (I think), though they seem more like psychic vampires to me. Note my uncertainty as to even basic plot elements—the prose style was extraordinarily confusing, or perhaps I simply didn’t enjoy the story enough to concentrate on it enough to more fully understand what was going on. I’d suggest avoiding this one.

A Taste for Blood, edited by Martin H. Greenberg (Barnes & Noble Books, 1992)

“The Hills of the Dead” by Robert E. Howard

Solomon Kane (Howard’s beloved Puritan adventurer) is traveling in Africa, drawn deep into the interior for some unstated reason. He is allied with the witch doctor N’Longa (who seemed to me to be a sinister figure, though he’s a faithful ally here), who gives Kane a staff that turns out to be a powerful magical artifact. Kane encounters a young girl in the wilderness, and escorts her closer to her home village when they encounter two undead (called vampires here, but they seem closer to sentient zombies than true vampires). Kane manages to dispatch the undead, though they learn of the existence of a whole city of these creatures. Oh and N’Longa possesses the body of the girl’s lover. It’s an interesting enough story, but there’s very little context; my sense is that this is the middle part of a serial with which I am unfamiliar. I do always enjoy Solomon Kane tales, so I was moderately entertained nevertheless.

The Children of Cthulhu, edited by John Pelan and Benjamin Adams (Del Rey/Ballantine, 2002)

“Dark of the Moon” by James S. Dorr

The premise of this story is way better than the execution. A team of astronauts who have just landed in a lunar crater must deal with the fact that something awful was contained within the comet that impacted the moon a long time ago. I wanted this one to be much, much better than it turned out to be. This could have been the next The Thing (or something else), but instead it’s very understated and focuses on only the boring parts of the story. I was disappointed.


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Book Review: The Puppet King and Other Atonements by Justin A. Burnett

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The Puppet King and Other Atonements
Justin A. Burnett
Trepidatio Publishing (May 20, 2022)
Reviewed by Andrew Byers

I can see why Burnett’s prose has been compared to the likes of Jon Padgett, Brian Evenson, and Thomas Ligotti. Part of that is subject matter—Burnett includes these authors’ sense of bleak nihilism and even some similar recurring motifs, like puppets, in his work—but much of that comparison simply derives from Burnett’s prose sensibilities and stylistics. It would be a serious mistake to dismiss Burnett’s fourteen stories in The Puppet King and Other Atonements as hewing too closely to that of Ligotti and Padgett; these are genuinely strong works that stand on their own merits and contribute to the growing body of contemporary cosmic horror.

Space doesn’t allow me to delve deeply into each of the collection’s stories, but I will spend some time with my personal favorites.

Let me start with “Devourer,” which I found to be incredible. On the surface, it’s simple: a music interviewer goes to a decrepit trailer in the middle of nowhere to interview Mike “Devourer” Lowry, a renowned metal musician who’s finally coming out with a new album, but it’s so much more than that. This one is a really subtle and cosmic story that I don’t want to spoil by over-explaining.

In “The Rubber Man,” Kaire is a woman who escapes her entire life—literally leaving everything behind—and travels to live in the ruins of an abandoned lighthouse on a small private island she has inherited. Eerie, creepy, chilling, and again, very subtle. Whatever horror there is in this story mostly exists offscreen, and that very much works.

“Endemic” ended up going in very different directions than I expected, but it’s very, very good. The narrator’s mother was a biologist who has disappeared, leaving behind a houseful of junk and some strange specimens. Pursuing his mother’s research leads him and his family to larger mysteries and sets them in the path of those who don’t want those mysteries coming to light. I don’t want to give anything else away, so will just leave it at that. A really fine piece of cosmic horror. You’re probably starting to sense a theme of ineffable cosmic horror in these stories.

I suspect that “Our Endeavors” will resonate very strongly with readers, as it did me. A man’s son dies accidentally during a family outing, he experiences a great deal of grief in the aftermath of the accident, his relationship with his girlfriend (the boy’s mother) ends, unsurprisingly, and so forth. It’s a tragic tale, but one that unfurls exactly as one might expect. But the framing device for this story is what really makes it so powerful: the man and his situation are being observed by someone (something?), which consistently refers to him as “the subject.” Is he being experimented on by some cruel and dispassionate being? It is being told from the perspective of God? An alien? Some being that instigated the tragedy for its own inscrutable purposes? Who knows, and that’s what makes it so fascinating.

The collection closes with “The Puppet King: A Monologue,” which would have been much less interesting if it had been presented simply as a non-fiction essay that offers reflections on the existential nihilism that (I think) pervades Burnett’s philosophy and his fiction. That’s not to say that it’s not a great non-fictional piece—it is, and one I happen to agree with philosophically—but it’s fascinating because it’s presented as an intensely creepy monologue on philosophy, pessimism, cosmicism, Ligotti, Lovecraft, the roles that humans play, and some reflections (a la Ligotti) on the idea of humans as puppets. It’s the story’s framing device that makes this one work and helps nicely blur the line between fiction and non-fiction.

There’s much more I could say about the remaining stories, but I’ll just tantalize you with some additional elements in Burnett’s remaining stories in the collection: plucked out eyeballs; secret societies; stargazing; symbiotes (always good for a dash of body horror); animated dolls; an unethical psychotherapist who gets his comeuppance; and a hunt for a serial killer with an unusually personal connection to the investigator.

Justin Burnett is an excellent prose stylist and wordsmith. His imagination may be bleak and twisted, but I love him for that. He’s a force to be reckoned with and I very much look forward to more from him. If you appreciate the feeling of being unsettled by a good horror story, and like a sense of the cosmic in your horror fiction, The Puppet King is definitely recommended.

This review originally appeared in Hellnotes.

Week 239 – Weekly Horror Short Story Reviews: Braunbeck, Snyder, Okri, Cave, and Foster

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Welcome to Week 239 of my horror short fiction review project! While I really enjoyed several of the stories this week, the stand-out was, for me, “Murgunstrumm” by Hugh B. Cave. Sure, it’s pulpy, but it features a really tense stand-off between a nest of vampires and some doughty vampire hunters in the vampires’ lair.

Hellbound Hearts, edited by Paul Kane and Marie O’Regan (Pocket Books, 2009)

“However…” by Gary A. Braunbeck and Lucy A. Snyder

Three captives are being held and tortured by a sadist couple in their basement. One of them manages to get upstairs and finds a puzzle box (we know what this is), which one of the captives manages to solve while their captives are away. This, of course, summons the Cenobites. At first they are disinterested in the captives since they have nothing to offer the Cenobites, who prefer to simply leave them where they are. But then…the situation changes. Good story.

The Weird: A Compendium of Strange and Dark Stories, edited by Ann and Jeff Vandermeer (Tor, 2012)

“Worlds That Flourish” by Ben Okri

An example of Nigerian magical realism, though nothing very “magical” happens in the course of the story. I’ve come to realize that I don’t just despise Latin American magical realism, I dislike it wherever in the world it emerges from. A grieving widower is badly abused by his neighbors, various thieves, the local police, and soldiers in what seems to me to be a hopelessly corrupt hellscape of a city. He takes a car trip into the countryside to escape (I don’t blame him), where he sees a few mildly weird things. Nothing actually interesting happens to him. Just not for me.

A Taste for Blood, edited by Martin H. Greenberg (Barnes & Noble Books, 1992)

“Murgunstrumm” by Hugh B. Cave

Really good. This is a very long but highly suspenseful novella. Paul escapes from an asylum where he has been forcibly committed, and has a plan to rescue his fiancée Ruth, who has also been forcibly committed to a different asylum. You see, this pair of lovebirds were committed after they encountered a nest of vampires using a spooky old inn, the Grey Toad, as a base of operations. The place is run by a man named Murgenstrumm, who turns out to be the human toady (ha! I couldn’t resist) of the vampires. Paul and a few associates raid the inn and narrowly escape with their lives. Excellent story.

The Children of Cthulhu, edited by John Pelan and Benjamin Adams (Del Rey/Ballantine, 2002)

“A Fatal Exception Has Occurred At…” by Alan Dean Foster

Two FBI agents are trying to track down a man who says he has scanned in a copy of the Necronomicon (thanks, Harvard) and is about to post it online unless he is paid a hefty ransom. To prove his sincerity, he uses the tome’s evil occult lore to cause a number of “natural” disasters. They turn to a friendly computer hacker who has just what’s needed to put an end to the guy’s nefarious plan. Nice one.


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Book Review: Of Starfish Tides and Other Tales by Suzanne J. Willis

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Of Starfish Tides and Other Tales
Suzanne J. Willis
Trepidatio Publishing (May 6, 2022)
Reviewed by Andrew Byers

I’ve always been a fan of fantasy, but mostly gave up on the genre years ago when it became clear that many fantasy authors were more interested in producing epic doorstopper series rather than something genuinely original. I’m delighted to say that in Of Starfish Tides and Other Tales Suzanne J. Willis has produced a masterful collection of seventeen of her dark fantasy fiction stories that has rejuvenated my love of the fantasy, Willis’ brand of dark fantasy in particular. I’d love to peer inside her imagination—it must be full of dark fae and talking crows and strange magics.

Because there are so many stories, each different from the last, that I can’t devote as much space to all of them as I’d like, so let me delve a little deeper into a few of my favorites that illustrate the strengths of the collection as a whole.

Let me note that one of the first stories in the collection, “A Silver Thread between Worlds,” as being almost a kind of archetypal Willis story. Here we’ve got really rich and beautiful prose about humans and their interactions with the faerie realm, and what it is that some faeries want from humans. They’re creepy and chilling and inscrutable, as the Fae should always be. I would also note “Rag and Bone Heart” as one of my very favorite stories in the collection. This is nothing less than a superb tale of revenge by a young girl avenging her lost sister, who was sent off to serve a king with the Midas touch. Grim and wonderful. Willis is perhaps at her very best when writing about dark fantasy kingdoms and the whims of faeries.

There’s really neat worldbuilding throughout Of Starfish Tides; each of the stories sets up a wonderfully detailed world of its own. For example, in the world of “The Psychometrist,” memories can be imprinted in objects or places and be retrieved, transferred as memories, or even be cleansed/erased. They can also be bought and sold, and the people doing the buying and selling of memories, it seems, tend to be interested in the darkest kinds of resonances of the past. “Sundark and Winterling” provides a neat little setting populated with ghosts and shape-shifting dragons and dragon bones that still retain the dragon’s personality.

“North, at the End of the World” was a super dark story, which caught me by surprise and hit me unexpectedly hard. Told from the perspective of a finch after an apocalypse has destroyed human civilization and, well…we learn that the few remaining humans are just another food source for the remaining animals. It’s never fun learning that you’re just a pile of meat.

I would be remiss if I didn’t specifically call out the excellent “Blackhearts and Sorrowsong.” This long story is probably worth the price of admission alone. Mara is the last gargoyle in a city dominated by an oppressive religion that has exterminated her people and enslaved her for countless human generations. There’s a great deal more to the story, but suffice it to say that it’s wonderful. It also sets up a sequel nicely; I’d love to see Willis return to these characters and setting.

I’ve only begun to scratch the surface of all the elements Willis includes in Of Starfish Tides. To whet your appetite, here’s a taste of what else you’ll find scattered about in these stories: marionettes and other animated puppets; magical maps; books of tattooed skin after the end of the world; dark magic of various sorts; and scarecrows that are much, more than they seem.

One other brief note on these stories: I found them highly inspirational—after reading each of them, I found my imagination flying free and creating all kinds of fanciful ideas about dark fae and dragons and strange fantastical cities, which is the hallmark of genuinely inspired (and inspiring) prose, so well done there. Suzanne J. Willis is a master wordsmith and Of Starfish Tides and Other Tales is definitely recommended.

This review originally appeared in Hellnotes.

Week 238 – Weekly Horror Short Story Reviews: Kilpatrick, Ellison, Le Fanu, and Finch

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Welcome to Week 238 of my horror short fiction review project! This week marks the debut of a new collection, A Taste for Blood. My favorite tale this week was, unsurprisingly, “Carmilla” by J. Sheridan Le Fanu, which I had read once before. If you’re at all a fan of vampires and haven’t already read this classic novella, you should.

Hellbound Hearts, edited by Paul Kane and Marie O’Regan (Pocket Books, 2009)

“The Promise” by Nancy Kilpatrick

Twelve former teen Goths reunite twenty years later in a cemetery. They have returned here to keep a promise to three Cenobites, who they accidentally summoned as teens. A terrible Faustian bargain is enacted. This all takes place inside the Lemarchand family crypt. A good one.

The Weird: A Compendium of Strange and Dark Stories, edited by Ann and Jeff Vandermeer (Tor, 2012)

“The Function of Dream Sleep” by Harlan Ellison

McGrath dreams that a mouth has appeared on his side after grieving the loss of several friends. He becomes obsessed with the idea that this mouth is actually real and conducts an investigation to find out what is going on. Long and boring and no significant revelations. I really didn’t care for this one.

A Taste for Blood, edited by Martin H. Greenberg (Barnes & Noble Books, 1992)

“Carmilla” by J. Sheridan Le Fanu

The classic nineteenth-century tale of a lesbian vampire. I had read this once previously and I have to say that it holds up well on re-reading. Lonely teenager Laura and her father take in Carmilla, who, of course, turns out to be a 150-year-old vampire who preys on girls and young women, killing them in short order after they become afflicted with an unknown wasting disease” (anemia and exsanguination). An old retired general and an elderly eccentric baron who has made the study of vampires his life’s work help track down and destroy Carmilla after she escapes (before Laura, one of her victims, dies). Obvious lesbian undertones here, which must have been shocking when first published. A very good novella.

The Children of Cthulhu, edited by John Pelan and Benjamin Adams (Del Rey/Ballantine, 2002)

“Long Meg and Her Daughters” by Paul Finch

Nick is a British cop who arrested a serial rapist eighteen years previously; now, the man has escaped prison and Nick travels to the rapist’s old haunts—a rural, isolated area—to see if he can re-catch the man. A couple problems with this plan: (1) the man was/is affiliated with a cult of Shub-Niggurath and (2) there are a lot of other cultists in this area. Basically the whole community, in fact. Really good action drama that shows how to nicely blend modern-day police work with the Cthulhu Mythos. Good stuff.


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