Four Summoner’s Tales starts with an interesting premise. If you could truly raise people from the dead, of course, there would be people willing to pay you to do it, to bring their loved ones back. But wouldn’t there also be people willing to pay you not to do it? Could you blackmail that trophy wife, whose 90-year-old husband just left… Read more
I was very excited to receive this collection of stories. This is the third Ellen Datlow collection I’ve read, the second that I’ve reviewed, and I think she does a great job of choosing really interesting stories that all play to a theme. Blood and Other Cravings isn’t your typical book about vampires. These aren’t necessarily creatures that suck your… Read more
Jokers Club is a quick read with plenty of twists and turns. Geoff is a failed writer with a brain tumor, returning to his hometown for a reunion with old friends (who, for the most part, were more tormentors than friends). His friends start dying and weird things start happening, but its uncertain whether these are real or caused by… Read more
It’s Christmas Eve and Vera Coffey is on the run. What she brings to the little town of American Rapids is certainly not holiday cheer. She has something with her, and the people following her will do anything to get it back. In Pitch Dark, Steven Sidor sets an extremely creepy stage. A small town in the middle of nowhere,… Read more
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Okay, today we have a guest post that is not polite, not politically correct and not afraid to state a controversial opinion — what a great way to end the week! Just as I would caution people that Jake Bannerman’s book, Pitchfork Diaries, is not for the faint of heart, I would warn you that this guest post is not… Read more
This story comes at a perfect time. As I posted earlier today, my current book is Naked City: Tales of Urban Fantasy, full of stories about fae and other wildfolk, most of them taking place in urban environments. In the Dunes, a story/novella by John Leahy, runs along similar lines. Two good friends, on a golfing vacation in Ireland, find… Read more
The news reports talk about riots, civil unrest, perhaps some sort of viral epidemic. They have to say that — who would take them seriously if they started talking about vampires? In The Fall, the second book in Guillermo del Toro’s The Strain trilogy, nothing less than the future of mankind is at stake. The people massing in the lowest… Read more
The prologue will give you nightmares. (Do you know what sort of sound human vertebrae make when they give way under pressure?) Other sections of the book made me want to cover my eyes and read through my fingers. The killer in Thomas White’s The Book of Matthew would give Hannibal Lecter a run for his money. This is not… Read more
Ignatius Perrish spent the night drunk and doing terrible things. He woke up the next morning with a thunderous hangover, a raging headache…and a pair of horns growing from his temples. It’s a great beginning to a promising story: part thriller, part horror, part treatise on the nature of the devil. While Horns occasionally gets bogged down in reminiscence, it’s… Read more