Customer Reviews

Sick Things: An Anthology of Extreme Creature Horror

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Sick Things is a sequel of sorts of Vile Things. Instead of body horror though, this time we get creatures. Now body horror is my favorite but creature horror comes in at a very close second. God Bless Comet Press for giving us great collections of wonderful NEW ideas. What a revelation. Gone are (most) of the creatures herein are new and different ideas. Hell the only "zombie" story here is unconventional, funny, gory, and written by former Spin City star Michael Boatman! I'm so sick of zombies and vampires I could spew and I'm so glad the editor of Sick Things saw fit to keep the genre tropes down to a minimum. Many of the same authors that were included in Vile Things and/or The Death Panel return here, and again they're the best of the bunch. Fred Venturini turns in a story about creatures that steal secrets, Randy Chandler tells us about a woman raped by demons. Tim Curran gets my award for most descriptive tale in the bunch, a retelling of Hansel and Gretel, Sean Logan's tale, "The Neglected," was so disturbing and uncomfortable I almost couldn't get through it. One of the more creative and bizarre of the bunch, Legacy of the Last Invader by M. Shaw, is about a now exstinct group of aliens whose sole purpose was to repopulate their race with our women, the problem is they're hung like baseball bats and kill nearly every woman they meet. The always impressive John Shirley turns in a story about the after life and Jefferey Hale finishes the set with a story every adolescent male would cringe at. 17 stories in all and not a bad one in the bunch. Some are more successful than others but all were a good read.

Comet Press once again has produced a superior collection of extreme horror. Honestly I feel like this one's the best yet from them. All the authors here turn in tight, sharp work that surpass the previous collections. Most of the authors here are virtual unknowns some are even publishing their first work here but don't let that deter you, these are going to be the horror leaders of tomorrow, catch them now and be ahead of the curve. Recommended.

Extreme creature horror? Well, there are creatures, but I found little here that was horrifying or extreme.

Some stories had some gore, one or two had some gross-out moments, but in almost every case the writer's descriptions were so blase' that you hardly felt a twinge. Also notable by it's absense was any convincing sense of dread in any of the stories.

As with all anthologies, you take your chances, and there are a couple of nicely original stories here that are at least a good read; even if they aren't necessarily scary or horrifying.

The word "extreme" may have applied in, say, the turn of the century, but there's nothing here that pushes boundries today. I don't feel the least bit compelled to read any of these stories again, even the few I liked.

This collection simply doesn't deliver on it's title or your expactations. OK, there's a critter of some kind in almost all, but the stories are not extreme, they're not horrifying, and they're not even creepy. Some could have been, because there are some great concepts here, but the authors simply fail to pull off instilling any feeling of drama, creepiness or dread in the reader.

I hope the authors grow to really capitalize on their inspiration. But for now, this collection is way too short on atmosphere and real horror.

Stories were less "Creature" than I expected. I was expecting campy monsters and overgrown insects rather than the deep dark monsters of the soul kind of creature.

Not very exciting at all. Does not grab the mind and wisp you off into that other world. Is pretty sick and gross though. Note very creative like I expected.