Customer Reviews

Atrocitas Aqua: Horrors of the Deep

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"Atrocitas Aqua" is an anthology containing 16 murky stories of waterlogged terror. The tone is set with Justin Stanchfield's Bone Lake, a hauntingly romantic tale which deftly switches between modern day and frontier past to tell two stories at once. Halo of Blood by Jason Brannon is fraught with high seas suspense featuring madness, sharks, pirates and voodoo...not necessarily in that order.

You'll find plenty of tales about deadly beasts that make water their home. Perhaps the best of these is Walt Hicks' The Swamper which sheds just enough light on the swamp to scare you silly. For a lesson in the power of desire mixed with vengeful spirits look no further than Peggy Shumate's Living Doll: Jewel of Lost Souls.

The creepy tentacled world of H.P. Lovecraft rears it's ugly head in Black Thorn by Christopher Fulbright. Steve E. Wedel tells an equally mysterious tale of calamity in When the Lady of Byblos Calls which proves even the water within the human body holds fear.

Although the quality of the writing and the ideas is not consistent in this the collection the stand out stories are well worth the read.

Jennifer Barnes, www.dreampeople.org

A fairly well done collection, holding a group of talented writers. The over-all concept is an interesting one, but, alas, the execution falls a little short. For every good story here there is an average one. Still, a number of them are finely crafted. Jason Brannon and Christopher Fulbright enter excellent tales. Megan Powell, Walt Hicks, And Steve Shrewsbury do a good job, too. The production of the product is very good, though.

A super kewl mixture of horror stories in this watery anthology. I really enjoyed The stories by Brannon, Hicks, Blount and Shrewsbury. The Lovecraft one by Fullbright was creepies major! The cover art is what drew me to this right off.

Production values in p.o.d.'s usually are bad, but this collection from double dragon is put together well.

Nevertheless, good production does not a good anthology make.
For the most part, the stories are predictable and made me lose interest quick.
While a couple of stories read well, several were not in the sphere of professionalism. The concept was fine: The selected stories could have been better. Were they memorable? The one with pirates and voodoo was good, and the story about the English channel read different and catty, but seemed not to belong here.

A good collection of short stories. I never really heard of any of these people, but purchased this book on recommendation. The stories are good for the most part, but nothing to get excited about. I really enjoyed a couple stories more than others, but, suffice it to say, these two winners were worth wallowing in the average ones.