A solid compilation that will satisfy avid fans of a range of horror subgenres.
The editor of the award-winning 1970s and ‘80s horror magazine Deathrealm presents a collection of eclectic stories.
Rainey helms this set of spine-tingling and sometimes stomach-churning works from 20 authors. As with many anthologies, not every tale works, but it hits its stride in its third offering, Timothy G. Huguenin’s “To Fear and To Rage,” about a father and son whose remote mountain town is slowly overrun by unsettling faceless, eyeless creatures. Later, readers are transported to the Wild West in Larry Blamire’s “The Murder Wagon,” which ends with an unexpected and satisfying twist. David Niall Wilson’s “I Was Going to Tell You Tonight” is a delightfully disgusting foray into body horror, telling of a twisted relationship between two pest exterminators—one of whom has an increasingly strange obsession. The standout of the collection, Maurice Broaddus’ “The Running People,” is unflinchingly tense and brutal in its story of a mother’s daily run to the suburbs from a sequestered cabin in the woods to pick up rations for her and her daughter; it masterfully blends themes of inequality, bigotry, climate change, and cosmic horror in an all-too-believable postapocalyptic setting. “Bloody Roots” by Brian Keene is a fun, inventive twist on classic haunted-house stories with its tale of an ex-Amish exorcist/medium/occult detective who’s called in to rid a family of malevolent force terrorizing their home, and Kasey Lansdale's “The Disappeared" is an effectively atmospheric study in suspense in which two young girls investigate a mystery after discovering a body at a local creek. Others are a mixed bag, with some premises that don’t meet expectations or endings that lose momentum. Overall, though, this is a serviceable anthology for readers looking for a scare.
A solid compilation that will satisfy avid fans of a range of horror subgenres.Pub Date: Oct. 17, 2023
ISBN: 9781959565178
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Shortwave Media
Review Posted Online: Oct. 11, 2023
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
Though it falters a bit under its own weight, this series still has plenty of fight left.
In this long-awaited fifth installment of Shannon’s Bone Season series, the threat to the clairvoyant community spreads like a plague across Europe.
After extending her fight against the Republic of Scion to Paris, Paige Mahoney, leader of London’s clairvoyant underworld and a spy for the resistance movement, finds herself further outside her comfort zone when she wakes up in a foreign place with no recollection of getting there. More disturbing than her last definitive memory, in which her ally-turned-lover Arcturus seems to betray her, is that her dreamscape—the very soul of her clairvoyance—has been altered, as if there’s a veil shrouding both her memories and abilities. Paige manages to escape and learns she’s been missing and presumed dead for six months. Even more shocking is that she’s somehow outside of Scion’s borders, in the free world where clairvoyants are accepted citizens. She gets in touch with other resistance fighters and journeys to Italy to reconnect with the Domino Programme intelligence network. In stark contrast to the potential of life in the free world is the reality that Scion continues to stretch its influence, with Norway recently falling and Italy a likely next target. Paige is enlisted to discover how Scion is bending free-world political leaders to its will, but before Paige can commit to her mission, she has her own mystery to solve: Where in the world is Arcturus? Paige’s loyalty to Arcturus is tested as she decides how much to trust in their connection and how much information to reveal to the Domino Programme about the Rephaite—the race of immortals from the Netherworld, Arcturus’ people—and their connection to the founding of Scion, as well as the presence of clairvoyant abilities on Earth. While the book is impressively multilayered, the matter-of-fact way in which details from the past are sprinkled throughout will have readers constantly flipping to the glossary. As the series’ scope and the implications of the war against Scion expand, Shannon’s narrative style reads more action-thriller than fantasy. Paige’s powers as a dreamwalker are rarely used here, but when clairvoyance is at play, the story shines.
Though it falters a bit under its own weight, this series still has plenty of fight left.Pub Date: Feb. 25, 2025
ISBN: 9781639733965
Page Count: 576
Publisher: Bloomsbury
Review Posted Online: Dec. 12, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2025
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