Customer Reviews

October Dreams:: A Celebration of Halloween

5 star:		(14)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

October Dreams: A Celebration of Halloween edited by Richard Chizmar & Robert Morrish is a collection of new and previously published short stories, novellas and true-life memories taking place on Halloween, also included is a brief (and interesting) history of Halloween and guides to Halloween film and fiction all written by some of my favorite horror and dark fantasy writers. And if you think that's a mouthful you should see the size of this book . . .

I've been working at this one for over a month and not due to disinterest either (for a change). This sucker is HUGE and its anthology format makes it the perfect book to pick up and put down whenever the mood strikes. I feared I'd overdose on Halloween stories if I read a big chunk of it in one sitting so I've been savoring it. Fortunately, the stories were, for the most part, strikingly different. Since the list of stories alone is three pages long a blow by blow synopsis of them by me simply isn't going to happen. Instead I'll do my best to highlight the stories that lingered in my memory for one reason or another. Most of the stories range from good to excellent but there were a small handful that bored me enough to give up halfway through (a rare thing considering the size of this tome). The tone of the stories runs the gamut from mournfully sad to laugh out loud funny but the thing that the majority of these stories have in common is the lack of gore and sex and the reliance on atmosphere and good old fashioned storytelling to chill the bones. Here goes:

Dean Koontz story "The Black Pumpkin" begins this tome and is a creepy little tale about a decent and good little boy and his Eeeevil big bully of a brother. The two come across a spooky old man who has a talent for carving pumpkins into malevolent creations. Big brother picks out the ugliest scariest pumpkin in the bunch (naturally) and brings home much more than a spooky pumpkin. This story is a spooky-ooky but not terribly original tale about bad folks getting their comeuppance. I liked it.

"Mask Game" by John Shirley is about people and their nasty little secrets and it had me reading way past the point of exhaustion the other night. Unfortunately it got a bit cluttered and more than a bit confusing towards the end and, well, I fell asleep.

"Gone" by Jack Ketchum takes a look inside the life of the weird woman who lives down the road, the lady all of the neighbors whisper about. It's an affecting and sad tale about a woman's attempt to celebrate Halloween after a long stint of hiding away from the world and anything involving children.

Two other standouts for me were Richard Laymon's "Boo" and Douglas E. Winter's "Masks". "Boo" tells the tale of a young group of trick or treaters in the mood for a little fright. They end up getting much more than they bargained for when a stranger joins their merry little group. It's the stuff nightmares are made of and reminded me a bit of a warped Twilight Zone episode. Delightfully dark ~ I loved it. "Masks" is both an emotionally gripping and terrifying glimpse into the life of a young boy struggling with personal loss and a step-mother from hell. Written with a relentless sense of impending dread this story shook me up.

Sandwiched between the works of fiction are true life stories of the author's Halloween memories. Most of these I enjoyed even more than the fictional tales. Might it be because I'm nosey and enjoy indulging in a bit of literary rubbernecking? Probably. But knowing that all of this creepy, odd and sometimes very funny (or very sad) stuff really happened made these pages fly. Growing up shy and traipsing from house to house in my cheesy store bought costume with my dad and (also shy) younger sister made my Halloween outings a relatively boring affair. These true life walks back in time about tricks gone awry or funky handmade costumes fascinated me and have inspired me to be a bit more creative this year.

Also included is an informative short history of Halloween and its origins, a handy list of must see Halloween movies with interesting synopsis for each that had me rushing to Blockbuster to find the gems I've missed (few of which they carried I might add) and then there's a guide to Halloween reading for those who feel the need for more after gobbling up this book.

Overall this is one of the best collections I've come across and it comes highly recommended to those looking for the ultimate in Halloween reading.

Anthologies are usually, simply by their nature, uneven. When you depend on many different brains to come up with quality stories, you're bound to get some duds. It is this expectation that makes October Dreams so surprisingly well-executed. In fact, there are so many good pieces in here, that it's easier to pick out the minuscule number of bad ones (Hugh B. Cave and Dominick Cancilla, you know who you are).

October Dreams is subtitled "A Celebration of Halloween" and it takes this task seriously. Interlaced with classic Halloween stories--and new ones written especially for this collection--are "My Favorite Halloween Memory" reminiscences from the authors, as well as a reading list, a film list, and a history of Halloween that focuses more on the modern cultural aspects (as opposed to the pagan aspects).

October Dreams has to be the most consistent collection of stories I have ever read. Usually, I've found a few disappointments by the time I've read five stories, but I didn't find anything to criticize until about the middle of the book. Editors Richard Chizmar (editor of the horror magazine Cemetery Dance) and Robert Morrish have really done their work here. Of course, with a selection of authors like Dean Koontz, Poppy Z. Brite, Ray Bradbury, Ramsey Campbell, Peter Straub, and F. Paul Wilson, how could they go too far wrong?

A few stories stand out from the pack, and these were the ones I chose to read out loud on Halloween night. First was "The Circle" by Lewis Shiner which is a Twilight Zone-style tale of a group of people who gather to read stories on Halloween who get a surprise when one of their members decides to absent himself but sends in a story to read anyway. Viewers of the series will probably detect the twist before the end, but it is still an enjoyable read because it follows the formula so well. The other stand out is "Mask Games" by John Shirley, where a family invites a mysterious cousin over for a Halloween party and she brings a strange game for everyone to play. This one was disturbing and creepy and kept me riveted throughout its thirty-five pages.

That "Mask Games" is one of the longer offerings in October Dreams is also a bonus, as a story can generally be read in one sitting. The one exception is "Porkpie Hat" by Peter Straub, which is a seventy-odd page novella and another disappointment. The length, I think, is the main problem. Straub--known for being long-winded at times--takes far too long to relate the central story within the story and made me wish he would just get on with it. The beginning and end were of much tighter form and contained an idea I would like to see expanded upon, that of an interview with a reclusive jazz legend.

Other reviews have mentioned that F. Paul Wilson's story "Buckets"--about an abortion doctor who is terrorized by the spirits of his pre-natal victims--does not belong in this collection, due to its obvious agenda. I disagree. I think that Wilson, as a practicing physician, is simply tapping into his own fears--sort of a "what if?"--which makes the terror that much more palpable. Terror is an emotion that is not rampant in these tales, most of which are walk along the fun side of fear, while others aim merely for disturbing. Surprisingly, "Heavy Set" by Ray Bradbury is one of these. The ending does not spell out the actions of the character in question, which makes us project our own ideas--and my imagination can run wild. I would have been more comfortable with being told, but perhaps that's just an example of Bradbury's genius.

October Dreams is certainly worth the cover price (although the last time I checked it was available for much less from Book Closeouts.com, where I bought my copy along with Chizmar's other collections, The Best of Cemetery Dance, Volumes One and Two). It is perfect reading for the week before Halloween (I know, that's when I read it) as it really gets the reader in the spirit of the holiday. Plus, the reading list ("Trick-or-Read" by Stefan Dziemianowicz) and film list ("'First of all, It Was October...'" by Gary Braunbeck) give other suggestions for holiday entertainment to be relished after you've finished with this wonderful book.

Happy Halloween!

Some of the stories and memories in this long book are literate, charming, and atmospheric, capturing the candy apple and night glow essence of Halloween in many and varied ways. There's nostalgia, real horror, and comedy. Unfortunately, some of the bad entries (F. Paul Wilson's "Buckets" would be more at home in Clinic Bomber's Monthly than this publication) bring the rating down. Such stories are horrifying only in the political sense.
Buy the book if you're not spooked by the high price tag, but be prepared to skip around. I read it cover to cover, and would probably have liked it better if I'd been more discriminating, since the editors weren't.

A perfect gift for your favorite horror and monster lover is October Dreams, a collection of new and reprinted fiction, along with various essays and reflections, all centering on everyone's favorite holiday, Halloween.

October Dreams carries over twenty fiction pieces (new versus reprint being about half and half), by many of the heaviest hitters in the field: Douglas Clegg, Poppy Z. Brite, Charles L. Grant, Peter Straub, Dean Koontz, Ramsey Campbell, Ray Bradbury, the late Richard Laymon and many, many others. Many of the authors also contribute short reflection pieces, detailing their favorite Halloween memories. Lastly, several essays explore such aspects of the holiday as its history, Halloween in literature, and a detailed look at "Halloween"-related movies.

I won't go into a "this story is great, that story sucked" litany, as such things are subjective. I can, however, say that the overall quality of the stories is very good. I found several to be flat-out excellent. Perhaps one of the best compliments one can pay this anthology is that I will be pursuing other works of many of the authors within this collection that I've heretofore been unfamiliar with, as a result of the impressiveness of their stories here.

The authors' Halloween remembrances run the gamut of emotions: from humorous to scary, nostalgic, and sorrowful. In perhaps the saddest memory, Halloween for Ray Bradbury will never again be the same.

Lastly, there are the essays. One, covering the history of Halloween, is entertaining and informative. Even the most knowledgeable Halloween expert may learn something new here. A well-researched piece covering Halloween fiction nicely scratches the surface of a topic that definitely needs many more pages. Lastly, an overview of Halloween films is one of those fun lists in which you're sure to disagree with the author at some point, hollering out: "How could he have left out: (fill in the blank)?"

The only noticeable misstep for the book, in my opinion, is the exclusion of any of the Halloween-themed tales from one of the undisputed masters, Robert Bloch.

Don't be scared off by this book's price tag. Considering the incredible lineup of genre authors included here, the quality of the work, and the fact that the book comes in at over 660+ pages, the book is a bargain. Don't pass this one up.

This is a celebration indeed. It's not a horror anthology; I can't say that a lot of it is even scary. More than half of the stories are essays of the author's memories of Halloween. I feel that this is as it should be. Halloween is a look backwards, before the disenchantment of the world. When there were still dark corners of the earth, where the unexplained still covered a wide variety of phenomena, before positivist materialism drew the colors out of life, leaving only gray. Halloween has both a dark and an exciting side, where the dead may rise to life and spirits of the dead may revel, but also where people can see and experience that something more than this world exists, that we are more than just ashes and dust and that life is has a purpose more than the 70-odd years we have. We love to be comfortably scared, and so we have one night a year where we allow ourselves to believe in phantoms and faeries, that we can feel "something that's just not right."

That's why I like the memories better than the stories. Most people who write about Halloween write about things that scare themselves, things that they allow themselves to be afraid of once a year. For many people that's losing a child, or or a spouse, being confronted with an unbearable secret, or whatever lives underneath the bed at night. If you don't share the author's fears, or if frankly the fear is too personal for you, it is difficult to lose yourself in the story. Suprisingly, the memories were better. They were sort of a safe nostalgia, most of which involved some weird or supernatural occurrence. And we, the readers, can comfortably enjoy imagining being in the same circumstances. The memory essays were also better at evoking the mood of Halloween - the dry, crumbly leaves, the cool wind and crisp nights, the dark sky above and bonfires below, the good food at home as the harvest time begins.

One of the agonies of modern man is that he has lost his sense of time. In the soulless cubicle, spring is summer is autumn is winter. The world turns, but he lacks any markers to delineate the passage of time. Without any means to measure his progress through time, he loses any sense of meaning for the here and now. We appreciate the present more when we build snowmen in winter, fly kites in the spring, eat ice-cream and catch fire-flies in the summer, and rake leaves in the fall. We need Halloween to keep faith with the past, to share feelings we normally repress with those who have gone before us. So happy Halloween, even if all you get is a bag of rocks!

Do you love Halloween? Are you a horror fan? Then hurry up and buy this wonderful anthology. In the entire book there is only one clunker of a story and it is short. It starts with Dean Koontz's "The Black Pumpkin", one of the most frightening short stories I've ever read and rolls onto to end with "Porkpie Hat" which is simply remarkable. How Peter Staub could write so realistically about black life before the Civil Rights era is almost supernatural in itself. Another stand out is "Heavy Set" a story that when I first read it at 13 I didn't understand. Reading it again as an adult I finally got the hideous point Ray Bradbury was makinng. The stories are laced with essays on the authors favorite Halloween memories. Some are tragic, others a little sad and several were quite funny.

Whether you like unabashed gore, or cool,subtle horror there is a story in this book for you.

You need to buy this book if you are passionate about Halloween because just like It's the Great Pumpkin Charlie Brown, this is something you'll want to re-visit every October. I've had it for three years now and now it's become an October icon to me, just like pumpkins, dead leaves, candy corn, and those unmistakeable autumn scents. If I want to feel the Halloween spirit immediately, then I read this book outside while eating candy or drinking hot chocolate... it works every time (especially if I'm in a cemetery)!

October Dreams is over 600 pages and is filled with suspenseful short stories, fascinating essays, and charming collections of authors' favorite Halloween memories. A few of my favorite stories are "The Black Pumpkin" by Dean Koontz, "The Whitby Experience" by Simon Clark, "Boo" by Richard Laymon, "The Circle" by Lewis Shiner, and the twisted and grotesque "Pay the Ghost" by Tim Lebbon.

I bet that in Halloweentown, this is the book Jack Skellington reads most nights before going to bed.

This is a fun book to read! As I went from story to story, my own Halloween memories rose to remember again! What a treat! The best thing about this book is that it isn't a rehash of the same story - each author has his/her own twist to their essays and memories. I had no expectations and was pleasantly surprised at the variety of stories. A good read for anyone who loves Halloween!

It's unfortunate most of the world will miss out on Cemetery Dance's October Dreams, a knockout anthology of new and classic short stories and non-fiction pieces revolving around every horror lover's favorite holiday, Halloween. Some of the excellent writers represented here are Jack Ketchum, Douglas Clegg, and the late Richard Laymon. The book is oversized and beautiful, so don't let the price tag scare you off. It's downright huge, and will keep you reading for days. While not the out-and-out genius that "Best of Cemetery Dance" is, "October Dreams" is probably going to go down as one of those anthologies in the small-press that everyone is sorry they missed a couple of years from now.

Just a few thoughts, not a full-fledged review:

I just came to the anti-abortion story in the book. It struck me as odd. I wanted to see the horror in it, but it seemed to me to be more like an author's crusade against abortion clinics. I guess I'm one of those readers who needs to feel justified in the victim's deaths--a la Crypt Keeper. (I don't know why. Horror is filled with good people dying. Isn't that what makes it horror?) This story, "Buckets," however, jolted me out of the Halloween experience.

I began October Dreams excited. The first couple of stories really worked on me. Then I saw that it was more than a collection of fiction. The short stories traded spaces off and on throughout the book with authors' memories of their favorite Halloweens. There are also a few essays on Halloween fiction, movies, and whatnot.

I thought, "This is a cool book."

And I guess it still is. But, in practice, I find myself skipping the favorite Halloween memories, the essays, the recommendations for books and film, and, of course, the "whatnot." I go straight for the fiction, and if I start getting bored with a story, which has happened several times--several, several times--I skip to the next one. I've only read half of this book, and at this rate I'll be finished in a couple of days, a skim-read of hundreds of pages. It's a thick tome.

Maybe the rest of you will like the filler. It does flesh out the book, almost giving the short stories a sense of glue. I think October Dreams is OK. It's unusual, a nice attempt at giving you something more for your dollar.