Customer Reviews

The Nightmare Chronicles

5 star:		(24)
4 star:		(8)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(7)
1 star:		(8)

 

 

The Nightmare Chronicles by Douglas Clegg is the peak literary achievement of a novelist and short story writer who has truly developed his talent, disregarding the standard formulae of either paint-by-numbers fiction-writing or gross-out extremist writers. This collection is the point in which pulp meets literature head-on.

In this collection of short fiction, Clegg has managed to conjure up some of the most disturbing tales in which the supernatural touches everyday life, where paranoia meets truth, and where dreams and nightmares cross over into day-light.

For anyone looking for standard fare, The Nightmare Chronicles is not the book. If you want something scary that appeals to light and mindless reading, try Goosebumps or a Young Adult book, find an Anne Rice vampire novel or pick up the latest commercial mishmash. This is not a book for horror lovers alone, but for readers who really enjoy a superb experience with fiction.

But, if you are a serious reader of the best that genre fiction has to offer, try this collection of short stories. Someone here mentioned this has no plot. Well, of course it does not have a plot; it's a collection of short fiction. This should be obvious to anyone who has actually gotten beyond the first page of this book. The characters are ordinary but thrust into the mouth of terror, disturbance, and shadow. The imagery within these tales is startling.

Of the tales, the best are "White Chapel," "I Am Infinite; I Contain Multitudes," "Underworld," and one of the most interesting short horror stories I've ever read, "The Rendering Man."

I have read two of Clegg's novels, both of which were good, but I have no doubt that it is in the short story, as exemplified in The Nightmare Chronicles, that he excels.

I am new to Douglas Clegg's fiction, but I can guarantee that The Nightmare Chronicles will be just the first in a long line of books I'll read by this guy.

What struck me about this collection of short stories was that it is like entering a room with someone who is going to tell you stories in the dark. The set up of the kidnapping story that wraps around the dozen or so short stories in this book is intriguing but doesn't overpower the main event.

The main event are some of the most delicious short stories of terror I've read since I read early Stephen King, Robert Bloch, or Richard Matheson. Clegg is not as much of a structuralist as those other writers. One can almost feel him going with the imagery in some cases over the plot. I would go so far as to suggest that what this writer finds in the horror of his fiction is beauty and some kind of kinship.

"White Chapel" is a standout, as is "I Am Infinite; I Contain Multitudes." They're like bookends to the other stories, some brief "The Little Mermaid," some a bit overly complicated like "Chosen."

One or two of the stories seemed ragged to me, but still inspired.

The reason I'm writing this review is because I bought the book here and something in it definitely spoke to me. There is something very personal in this collection.

I recommend it to readers who want horror fiction that goes beyond the page.

I found out about Douglas Clegg from Amazon.com's "customers who bought books by Peter Straub also bought books from the following authors" list. Straub's Ghost Story is to this day one of my all time favorite books. Another one of my favorites is Boy's Life by Robert McCammon (I sure hope he reconsiders retirement). When I started to read some reviews of Clegg's works and saw that they were drawing comparison to McCammon as well as Straub, along with Dan Simmons and Stephen King (two of my other perennial favorites), I knew it was time to check this guy out. So I immediately placed an order for his new novel You Come When I Call You. But my anticipation got to me. Imagining how great it would be to be reading a new author on the par with these other greats, I decided I couldn't wait the three or four days for the book to arrive by UPS. So I went downtown to my local used bookstore and bought a copy of The Nightmare Chronicles.

Right off the bat, the cover made me feel I was in McCammon country. A paperback original short story collection with a darkish blue graveyard in the foreground and a huge moon looming in the background. Just like McCammon's Blue World. Since that was the first book I read by McCammon, I thought this was probably a good place to start with Clegg.

The first story, "Underworld," did remind me of McCammon. The next one, "White Chapel," was very Dan Simmons-esque. It takes place in India and features a woman reporter trying to track down a psychopath who has been transformed into a kind of cult religious figure. Very Jospeh Condrad, for that matter. By the time I was on page thirty or forty, I was already very impressed with Clegg's writing style. It's similar in ways to McCammon, but tends to have the more visceral bite of Clive Barker or Joe R. Lansdale's edgier stuff. Although his style is similar to these other authors, it is also very much his own. What I liked right away was the amount of small, perceptive, telling detail with which Clegg imbues his writing. Reading Clegg, you very quickly get the reassuring feeling that you're in the hands of someone who knows what he's doing.

Clegg is great at pulling you into his stories by setting up a bizarre premise which leaves you hungering to find out exactly what is going on. More often than not, he never tells you exactly what's going on, but only nudges you in the general direction. The stories slowly get stranger and stranger as you make your way through this well-written book. A couple big themes soon emerge which tie the stories together rather impressively. First off, Clegg seems to be fascinated with the idea of religion and penance. Characters are often trying to atone for things they have done. The concept of brutality as an act of love is also present in several of the stories (as in "Of Mice and Men," where George kills Lenny out of his love for him). Flowers, vaginas and various types of openings are a symbol which shows up repeatedly. Clegg's stories often deal with the origins and endings of things, with the physicality of life and death and the doorways that communicate between the two worlds.

I thought The Nightmare Chronicles was a very well-written, truly scary collection of stories, and I would easily give it five stars for the writing alone. However, I felt the stories tended heavily toward the darker side of the spectrum. So if you're not into delving the pyschology of the insane and the ruthless, as I tend not to be, these stories may not be your exact cup of tea. But no matter what, you're bound to appreciate Clegg's well-honed story-telling skills. That's what got me in the end.

Also worth noting, this book just recently won the Bram Stoker Award for best horror collection.

I ran across Doug Clegg's novel haphazardly on the internet and decided to check it out.

Not being one to normally go for "Horror" novels, I was surprised to find that The Nightmare Chronicles was a unique and well crafted book of short stories. Not so much what I would consider "horror", but more Mystery, more Thiller, and more Fantasy than your usual fare.

Each story reflected its own distinct flavour of "hell". The characters are predominantly a cross section of humanity (and thats not to say they're all June and Ward Cleaver wannabe's, some of them are unnervingly evil). Each is then thrust into circumstances that are unsettling and disturbing.

It took me awhile to figure out that Clegg's style isnt the normal Pop-horror schtick that you find with mainstreams novelists. His style is to take something normal and begin to skew and twist it until you find yourself wondering if you will ever look at that particular thing the same way again. A rose is definitely not a rose with Clegg.

Take the time to settle down and read this Book!

The only down side to any of this is that now that I have such high expectations of clegg, I don't want to be dissapointed by the next book of his that I read!

These 13 stories will make you retch, make you laugh, and make you cringe all within a few pages of each reaction. Mr. Clegg doesn't hold back on the violence or the disturbing image which makes for great Horror fare. Tied together through the dreams of a captive young boy who is more than he seems the stories vary in content from backwoods horror (The Rendering Man) to a bachelor party gone terribly wrong (The Night Before Alec Got Married) to a dark sense of obligation (Damned If You Do) to just plain weird (I Am Infinite; I Contain Multitudes). Bottom line: this collection is better read, any attempt at explanation would misconstrue the stories. So pick this book up and let Mr. Clegg take you into his strange little world. Winner of the Bram Stoker Award.

I've seen this book of short stories compared to a Pandora's Box. Yes, it's that but it's also like that little chinese puzzle box in the Hellraiser movies by Clive Barker.

Clegg, who has numerous novels, (Goat Dance, Children's Hour, Halloween Dance etc), under his literary belt, has crafted some superb short stories, thematically joined at the hip as it were, by the underlying story of a mysterious young "boy" kidnapped and held for ransom in the bowels of a New York tenament.

He turns the tables on his captures, a homocidal mama and her two sons, and they soon become his victims. Not for the squeamish, these 13 stories are well above the usual horror and fantasy and will remain to haunt you, a long, long time!

A book for lovers of stories long or short. A book that is as unorthodox structurally as the plots of these stories. There are no boundaries to Douglas Clegg's horrific imagination, and as far as authors writing books that actually scare, Douglas Clegg is primo. Just wonderful. Buy it!

If you've never tried horror short stories, THE NIGHTMARE CHRONICLES is the place to start. Clegg definitely made HALLOWEEN MAN scary as hell, but with NIGHTMARE CHRONICLES you get a different fright with every story -- and each and every one here packs a huge punch. The only way you could go wrong with Clegg would be to not read him at all.

Nightmare Chronicles caught my eye because of the cover. Its a dark cemetery filled with gravestones, against a spooky moon with wild trees in front of it. Nightmare Chronicles was like discovering a whole new territory of horror. It reminded me of picking up the first Books of Blood by Barker or the stuff by younger Ray Bradbury. This is one hell of a ride through stories and terror. There's a boy in a cellar who gives these nightmareish visions to this older woman. What she sees are the dozen orso stories in Nightmare Chronicles. The best one was called Fruits of Her Womb, about a mystery cult in a very ordinary small town. Another good one is called White Chapel about a woman who goes looking for a demonic killer and a goddess in India.

If you are a fan of the best that exists in horror fiction, you might try Nightmare Chronicles.

I loved Nightmare Chronicles! I grabbed this book as soon as I saw it and devoured all 13 stories in one sitting. This is the best horror collection I have read since King's Night Shift. Clegg is now my favorite horror novelist.

If you like King and Koontz and Simmons and McCammon and Barker, you will love Douglas Clegg.