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6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
Cliches, Bad Writing, Gratuitous Sexual Violence: i.e. DRECK, July 27, 1998
This review is from: Darkside: Horror for the Next Millenium (Paperback)
Although this collection contains a few outstanding finds, they are buried in a pile of unrelenting dreck. After opening with Robert J. Levy's "Skinwriters," an imaginative, terrifically well-written piece, the collection descends into a mire of mindless violence and bad writing. Look, I'm an ardent, lifelong fan of horror fiction, and my disgust with this book is not related to "shock" or to an inability to handle its subject matter -- which is unremittingly violent, brutal, and sadistic. What is repellent is that this explosive subject matter is given slipshod, sensationalistic treatment: there is no artistry here, no concern for anything beyond immediate shock value. This is the kind of sloppy writing, sloppy thinking, and disdain for any reader's intelligence that gives the entire genre of horror a bad name. Even the good writers here seem to have phoned in their stories. After all, I expect dreck from someone like Roberta Lannes (I can't tell you what her story was about, because I fell asleep reading it), but I do expect more from writers like Steve Rasnic Tem, who turned in a piece of incomprehensible mush, and Lucy Taylor, whose piece must have been meant as a joke. Elizabeth Massie is a superb writer, but her contribution here, co-written with Robert Pettit, is weak, silly and pointless. And that arrogant subtitle -- Horror for a new millenium? Please. "New" is the last thing anything here is. This is nothing but a garbage heap of worn-out cliches and mind-numbing, repetitive, gratuitous sexual violence. By my count, at least 80% of the stories dealt with sexual abuse/incest, with nothing new to say, no new twists or insights. Either that subject is the theme to this anthology or, as I suspect, merely indicative of a dwindling supply of imagination among the authors represented here. If you want truly superior anthologies of horror fiction, check out Robert Bloch's "Psychos," a rollicking collection of stories that really zing and zap, or ANY anthology edited by Stephen Jones. As for Darkside, that's where it belongs -- in the darkest side of your dumpster.
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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Thirty tales of horror ranging from creepy to downright gruesome!, July 6, 2006
This review is from: Darkside: Horror for the Next Millenium (Paperback)
John Pelan does it again, putting together a great collection of modern-day horror masters, along with intriguingly ghoulish stories from some fresh names. If you are a fan of the short-story horror anthologies as I am, you won't want to miss this first edition of Pelan's 'Darkside' books.
Table Of Contents:
'Skinwriters' by Robert J. Levy
'Ice Dreams' by Elizabeth Massie and Robert Petitt
'Wasting' by Lauren Fitzgerald
'Backseat Dreams & Nightmares' by K.K. Ormand
'The Stick Woman' by Edward Lee
'Soul Of The Beast Surrendered' by Wayne Edwards
'October Gethsemane' by Sean Doolittle
'Scars' by Lucy Taylor
'Ystrey orm' by Brian McNaughton
'Tears Seven Times Salt' by Caitlin R. Kiernan
'One-Eyed Jack' by S. Darnbrook Colson
'Elena' by Steve Rasnic Tem
'Family Album' by Adam-Troy Castro
'Having Eyes, See Ye Not?' By Sue Storm
'Sisters In Death' by D.F. Lewis
'Window Of Opportunity' by Roman Ranieri
'Envy' by Christa Faust
'The Man Of Her Dreams' by Alam M. Clark
'For The Curiosity Of Rats' by Jeffrey Osier
'The Stranger Who Sits Beside Me' by Yvonne Navarro
'In Pieces' by Deidra Cox
'Voices Lost & Clouded' by David B. Silva
'If Memory Serves' by Jack Ketchum
'The Tears Of Isis' by James S. Dorr
'Stick Around, It Gets Worse' by Brian Hodge
'Voices In The Black Night' Larry Tritten
'Stealing The Sisyphus' Stone by Roberta Lannes
'The Nightmare Network' by Thomas Ligotti
'Fiends By Torchlight' by Wayne Allen Sallee
'... & Thou Hast Given Them Blood To Drink' by t. Winter Damon & Randy Chandler
With such a line-up, I can only mention a few of my favorites. 'Skinwriters' is a haunting tale of a writer's success putting pen to milk-white flesh. 'Wasting' will give you a terrifying view of anorexia. 'The Stick Woman' showcases Edward Lee at his sickest, flaunting his uncanny fetish for amputations and poo. 'Soul Of The Beast Surrendered' brings you into contact with the strangest imaginary friends I've ever read about. 'Scars' calls upon a deadly evil lurking in a small African village. 'Ystery Orm' left a vicious chill settled in my spine after reading it: this is the place of a nightmare, strange buildings with unexplainable entrances containing nothing but empty, crawling dread. 'Tears Seven Times Salt' left me feeling damp, shivering with cold, fright, and mystery. 'Voices In The Black Night' is a tale of words captured from library books by a strange man.
'Darkside: Horror For The Next Millennium' is the first of Pelan's 'Darkside' collections. Be sure to pick up 'The Darker Side: Generations Of Horror', 'Walk On The Darkside: Visions Of Horror', and 'Lost On The Darkside: Voices From The Edge Of Horror' if you like this collection. Horror is back, creeping around your house at night, settling its poison to the bottom of your water glass, and howling at the moon as you turn restlessly in your sleep. Light a candle, pour a glass of wine as red as blood, and settle into your armchair for a full night's reading pleasure with a 'Darkside' book. Enjoy!
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
Does anyone even know what "horror" means?, July 30, 2010
This review is from: Darkside: Horror for the Next Millenium (Paperback)
I bought this book at a little news stand while waiting for my train. I've long been a reader of Lovecraft, Poe, King, Stoker, Wilson and others, but these authors aren't exactly new to the genre. In fact, the newest horror writer I've read is Clive Barker, so this book and its subtitle piqued my interest. Full of authors and stories I'd never heard of (except for Ligotti), I was curious to see what more recent horror writers had to offer.
As it turns out, almost nothing at all. As with so many so-called horror movies in Hollywood, these authors don't seem to know what horror means at all. What we have is a collection of stories rife with guts and gore and ghastly sexual perversions. The crowning jewel, Stick Woman, is a magnificent display of torture, degradation, despair, perversion, and disgust. Whoopty-doo if that's what you like, but where's the HORROR? Horror writing can certainly contain these things too, but horror itself means FEAR, and not one of these stories barely grazes it, nor even tries to. Stick Woman and many of the other stories in this anthology belong in the same category as the works of the Marquis de Sade, not with Lovecraft and Stoker and Barker.
It's hard enough for literary bigwigs to take horror writing seriously. If this is what is now being embraced by the genre, then for once they may have a point. How very discouraging.
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