An enjoyable horror anthology with a strong midnight chillers concept.
A genre anthology offers creepy tales inspired by 1980s horror movies.
A high school horror cinephile goes to check out a rare, locally directed film at his town’s drive-in only to suspect that the space parasites in the movie might be real—and possessing the audience. Some high schoolers perform a dark ritual in order to save the theater where they all work from shuttering, but whatever they summoned turns on them instead. Two couples go on a double date to a movie night at a natural outdoor amphitheater—only to have the picture ruined when a severed human arm flies across the screen. Blood and guts are a lot less campy in real life, as the horror movie fans that populate these stories learn again and again. The theaters themselves frequently become places of genuine terror, as in Betty Rocksteady’s “Rise, Ye Vermin!” in which a cineplex employee enters a theater to find the audience composed entirely of corpses: “Dozens of women in various states of decay twitched and jittered. Jenn stumbled, jolting a fresh new pain through her broken jaw. She tripped into one of the aisle seats and fell into a woman with long, dark hair and a hat. The hat jostled and roaches poured out of her empty eye socket.” The anthology, edited by Viola, mixes stories by horror mainstays like Stephen Graham Jones and Steve Rasnic Tem with tales by relative newcomers, such as K. Nicole Davis. Many of the writers have Colorado connections, which leads to some entertaining uses of locations, like Davis’ “On the Rocks,” set in the famous Red Rocks Amphitheater. The book also features frightening illustrations by Smith and retro cover art by Nazzaro that will get any ’80s nerd’s nostalgia juices pumping. The blend of voices working within a loose framework gives the volume some stylistic variety (though it remains—like its source material—noticeably male-dominated). As with any anthology, some of the pieces are stronger than others, but all of them exhibit an understanding for the odd brew of ingredients that make ’80s horror movies so much fun.
An enjoyable horror anthology with a strong midnight chillers concept.Pub Date: Sept. 15, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-73391-775-9
Page Count: 316
Publisher: Hex Publishers
Review Posted Online: April 29, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
At turns spooky and funny, with bits of inside baseball and a swimming pool’s worth of blood.
Hill, son of the master, turns in a near-perfect homage to Stephen King.
Arthur Oakes has problems. One is that his mom, a social justice warrior, has landed in the slammer for unintentional manslaughter. And he’s one of just three Black kids at an expensive college (in Maine, of course), an easy target. A local townie drug dealer extorts him into stealing rare books from the school’s library, including one bound in human skin. The unwilling donor of said skin turns up, and so do various sinister people, one reminiscent of Tolkien’s Gollum, another a hick who lives—well, sort of—to kill. Then there’s Colin Wren, whose grandfather collects things occult. As will happen, an excursion into that arcana conjures up the title character, a very evil dragon, who strikes an agreement with fine print requiring Arthur and his circle to provide him with a sacrifice every Easter. “It’s a bad idea to make a deal with them,” says Arthur, belatedly. “Language is one of their weapons…as much as the fire they breathe or the tail that can knock down a house.” King Sorrow roasts his first victims, and the years roll by, with Arthur becoming a medieval scholar (fittingly enough, with a critical scene set at King Arthur’s fortress at Tintagel), Colin a tech billionaire with Muskian undertones (“King Sorrow was a dragon, but Colin was some sort of dark sorcerer”), and others of their circle suffering from either messing with dragons or living in an America of despair. There’s never a dull moment, and though Hill’s yarn is very long, it’s full of twists and turns and, beg pardon, Easter eggs pointing to Kingly takes on politics, literature, and internet trolls (a meta MAGA remark comes from an online review of Arthur’s book on dragons: “i was up for a good book about finding magical sords and stabbing dragons and rescuing hot babes in chainmail panties but instead i got a lot of WOKE nonsense.…and UGH it just goes on and on, couldve been hundreds of pages shorter”).
At turns spooky and funny, with bits of inside baseball and a swimming pool’s worth of blood.Pub Date: Oct. 21, 2025
ISBN: 9780062200600
Page Count: 896
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: July 19, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2025
SEEN & HEARD
A charming and persuasive entry that will leave readers impatiently awaiting the concluding volume.
Book 2 of Hearne's latest fantasy trilogy, The Seven Kennings (A Plague of Giants, 2017), set in a multiracial world thrust into turmoil by an invasion of peculiar giants.
In this world, most races have their own particular magical endowment, or “kenning,” though there are downsides to trying to gain the magic (an excellent chance of being killed instead) and using it (rapid aging and death). Most recently discovered is the sixth kenning, whose beneficiaries can talk to and command animals. The story canters along, although with multiple first-person narrators, it's confusing at times. Some characters are familiar, others are new, most of them with their own problems to solve, all somehow caught up in the grand design. To escape her overbearing father and the unreasoning violence his kind represents, fire-giant Olet Kanek leads her followers into the far north, hoping to found a new city where the races and kennings can peacefully coexist. Joining Olet are young Abhinava Khose, discoverer of the sixth kenning, and, later, Koesha Gansu (kenning: air), captain of an all-female crew shipwrecked by deep-sea monsters. Elsewhere, Hanima, who commands hive insects, struggles to free her city from the iron grip of wealthy, callous merchant monarchists. Other threads focus on the Bone Giants, relentless invaders seeking the still-unknown seventh kenning, whose confidence that this can defeat the other six is deeply disturbing. Under Hearne's light touch, these elements mesh perfectly, presenting an inventive, eye-filling panorama; satisfying (and, where appropriate, well-resolved) plotlines; and tensions between the races and their kennings to supply much of the drama.
A charming and persuasive entry that will leave readers impatiently awaiting the concluding volume.Pub Date: Feb. 4, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-345-54857-3
Page Count: 592
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Nov. 24, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2019
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