Customer Reviews

Gathering the Bones

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

 

 

This book's back cover proclaims that "horror may never be the same." Well if this predominantly mediocre collection is any indication, that statement is unfortunately accurate. Perhaps modern writers, trapped with the rest of us in our media-saturated society, have lost the ability to be truly scary. Personally I've never read anything more frightening than ol' Edgar Allan Poe and H.P. Lovecraft; and even Stephen King, Clive Barker, or Dean Koontz, when each was in his prime, could deliver serious thrills and chills. But this collection, of what currently passes for "horror," proves that it may be time to nail the coffin shut on this genre for good.

Granted, of the 34 short stories here, there's a smattering of winners. Robert Devereaux offers a quite disconcerting look at our society's obsession with beauty, while Michael Marshall Smith, Stephen Dedman, and Adam L.G. Nevill show an affinity for inherent human evil that's healthily influenced by the classics. Still-dependable Ray Bradbury even supplies a whimsically dreadful update on the Grim Reaper. There are a few other stories here that can keep the reader perfectly interested even if they're not particularly scary, with well-drawn themes and characters.

But otherwise, the majority of selections here illustrate, embarrassingly, everything that's wrong with current "horror" writing (plus the editing of collections such as this). I'll make an example of Lisa Tuttle. Her story features a woman who is suspicious of her boyfriend's secrecy, so she goes through his stuff, learns he's a murderer, and that's pretty much the end. Oh the horror! Aaron Sterns and Chris Lawson/Simon Brown deliver stories that frightfully showcase human cruelty or struggle, only to have stock undead creatures or supernatural processes pop up in the final paragraphs, as unsatisfying explanations for man's inhumanity. These so-called surprises are actually far more predictable than they are scary. Several other tales are so genre-deficient that you wonder why they're even in a "horror" collection, those by Melanie Tem and Fruma Klass being prime examples. This collection is a failure in so many respects that it's almost scary. But not in a good way. [~doomsdayer520~]

This particular story in "Gathering The Bones" has made it impossible for me to watch The Wizard of Oz without looking for the fabled "hanged man."
I'd heard of this urban legend many times before, but Nagy's well-drawn characters and compelling, mindbending narrative has brought the cinematic oddity to life. I'll never be able to watch that movie again without feeling just a bit creeped out.

The two stories I most enjoyed in this book, convince me that I am not a fan of contemporary horror. Tiger Moth by Graham Joyce, and the Big Green Grin, by Gahan Wilson, are more in tune with the fantasy genre.

Most of the other stories are well written, but they didn't scare me, or make me break out in a cold sweat. In my opinion, several are simply depressing, (Picking up Courtney, Sounds Like, Bedfordshire) and that is not what I look for in any story. Terry Dowling's "The Bone Ship" reminded me of Roald Dahl's story The 'Landlady', except I didn't care for the protagonist. I didn't finish Lil' Miss Ultrasound because the subject matter didn't interest me. I thought Stephen Dedman's story was interesting, but in the end seemed to be a fairly predictable tale of revenge. I lost interest in Andrew Brown's story half way through, I thought it was too long. Perhaps it is OK to use said bookisms/adverbs in dialogue, if Simon Brown's story is a guide. No man's land, finished suddenly, I thought there might be more to it, the ending didn't impress me at all.

Overall, this is a better anthology than "Dreaming Down Under", but if these tales are representative of where contemporary horror is headed, then it is not my cup of tea.

I read a lot of horror. Lots of it. And I should know by now that any book which promises to redefine the genre with taglines like, "Horror may never be the same!" really means, "These authors had agents with enough clout to intimdate the publishers into printing this dreck!"

I picked up this anthology because it promised stories from "around the world", and I thought it would have some interesting ideas and stories. Turns out that England, Australia, and the US are so similar in culture and outlook that this collection really brings absolutely nothing new to the genre. At least three of the stories in here focus on vampires. Vampires, for crying out loud! Vampires haven't been scary since Anne Rice emasculated them in the 70s. And most of the anthologies I read have stories from these three countries anyway, so I did not encounter anything new. A truly international collection of horror would contain stories from Asia (Chinese ghost stories are among the creepiest I've ever read), more of Europe (although the English may deny it, Europe is a much bigger continent than just the UK), and Latin America (the brand of magical realism that Latin American writers bring to their fiction can be truly frightening). Even if you're going to stick with England, America, and Australia, though, you could still find excellent African American writers, or Aboriginal writers, and so on. Instead, this anthology offers just another mediocre collection of generic white bread horror with nothing shocking, bloodcurdling, or new.

Unless you like contemporary horror and want just more of the same stuff you've already been reading, don't bother with this collection.

The only reason I'm giving this book a 2 instead of a 1 is because there are one or two stories in here that are at least interesting.

That is what this book should be used for--target practice. Not a single tale is remotely bloodcurdling. More than a dozen yawns went unsurpressed while attemptly with foolhardy optimism to complete this pedestrian compilation. Why stifle a yawn, that'll kill ya. STAY AWAY!

We *know* the beautiful Judith mentioned in this book. And it's all TRUE!