Customer Reviews

Abominations: 17 Spine-Tingling Tales Of Murderous Monsters And Horrific Creatures

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

FINALLY, a true and original, (not cheesy at all) creature fest! I am a 30+ yr lover of anthologies of horror, and find many to lack scariness or a fast pace. This was devoured my me in 3 nights, with hardly any time to read with a 1 yr old baby boy! I loved it. Couldnt reccomend it enough- I PROMISE you wont be dissapointed. GET IT!

An excellent sophomore release by Shroud Publishing, the dark fiction publishing house behind Shroud: The Journal of Dark Fiction and Art and their first anthology Beneath the Surface: 13+ Shocking Tales of Terror. In this collection of stories, Shroud brings us 17 tales that range from giant insects to nightmarish undead demons! Excellent variety, excellent stories, fantastic authors like Gerard Houarner, the author of Road To Hell and Road From Hell, and David Dunwoody, the author of the epic Zombie masterpiece, Empire: A Zombie Novel. There is much, much more though, like Eric Christ's evil dwarf in "Riding the Oak Mill Bridge" and Farnsworth's Black Eyed Kids in "BEKs." I highly recommend this anthology if you are a fan of the Saturday matinee monster flicks of the 50s and 60s.

I read the first anthology (Beneath the Surface) put out by this company (Shroud) and it was an excellent compilation. When I saw this book I decided to pick it up to take on vacation with me. Books with short stories are perfect for travel plus you get the exposure to multiple authors, a story buffet of sorts.

ABOMINATIONS is a well put together book of 17 short and (at times) disturbing stories.

I found this to be a highly enjoyable read, and the cover art is spectacular!!

The stories were so well written in this one that I got to the point where I had to stop reading it by the pool so that I would have something left for my flight home.

You don't have to be a hardcore fan of horror to enjoy the stories you will find in here but fans of the genre will certainly be satisfied with what they find within the pages.

Abominations is a small investment for maximun enjoyment, I would recommend this book to anyone looking for a solid read, who wish to escape from the norm to let their minds wander off into those dark places where things take place that we hope never happen to us.

When it comes to collected pieces like this one, you really don't know what you are getting into. That seems to be one of the problems now; with the influx of writing that makes it to the shelves, you sometimes find yourself with a hard decision. To make these matters more convoluted, you know who you are willing to side with and who you are not willing to read, but what about people you have never heard of?

A few weeks ago I was presented with this and decided I would try this collection out. I had heard of Tim Deal a few times, and I was willing to give a new selection a try because everyone was unheard of once. As I read it I found that I liked quite a bit of the book, found a couple of the stories not to my liking, and saw the greatness of the small press in all its action here. Sometimes that meant a style that was different, a sentence structure that I may or may not agree with, or words that I was unaccustomed to seeing anymore.
I liked that, too, because it spiced things up.

Within these stories were a lot of oddities, mostly dealing with monsters in some way or another. Out of those was perhaps my favorite which dealt with a river and the occupants that happened to come out of it. I also liked the picnic with the gargantuant visitors, and a few others that were interesting.

One of the things I really liked here were the things that got these stories picked. Sometimes you could see the way a monster impacted a sotry or, in other tale,s you could see the people making it. In the river story, for example, both came to view. You had the people and what they did mixing with the things and what they did, poiting to an event that was more than just oddity. I liked that, too, because few things are truly monsterous anymore.

I liked this a little more than a 4 but not a 5. Tha tmeans that a few stories hurt the mix BUT that I was happy with the buy. Would I do it again - yes, and I would say that anyone that likes it should do it, too.

"A bone chilling glimpse into lurking evils" cries the cover.
Unfortunately this is not the case, every tale here appears to be by writer still learning their craft, only 2 come close to meeting the opening blurb: Starvelito & Papa Mort have that enigmatic quality, that lightening in the bottle that make them worth re-reading (plus they're just plain nasty) The rest are simply average with the opener so poor I nearly gave up.
Having said that if we don't support new writers and small print publishers then we deserve the rubbish that crowds the horror shelves renamed Dark Fantasy...(bleugh!!)
25% return on the 17 tales makes this a worthy purchase in today's market of vampire/zombie/romance crap so definately buy it but don't expect too much hidden gold.