Customer Reviews

Told by the Dead

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

 

 

This stellar collection contains twenty-three stories written over thirty-five years, beginning right after Demons by Daylight and ending with the publication in 2002 of "The Retrospective" in Dark Terrors 6. In his afterward, Campbell confesses that he's losing his perspective on these stories; readers, however, will experience a writer who continues to evolve, a talented professional whose current output remains as vital and enthralling as his estimable earlier efforts.

Campbell remains a master of mood, of creating an underlying sense of menace in everyday settings. Witness this bit of stage setting from "Twice by Fire":

"A department store occupies most of the next block. Legs wearing shoes stand in a window, torsos without limbs expose their underwear beside an arrangement of half a dozen heads whose lidless eyes turn inwards, fixed on their nightmares. Light as pale as a mortuary, and rendered meaningless by the desertion of the street, freezes all these objects as though preserving evidence."

Perfect. And there's more where that came from.

Despair is a key element in these tales, on vivid display in such tales as "Agatha's Ghost" and "The Entertainment." So is disorientation, used to good effect in "Accident Zone" or "All for Sale." Campbell ranges far and wide for his effects, effortlessly shifting from the big city to rural settings to create his intimate hells. Campbell even addresses the literary milieu, capping the collection with three very effective pieces, "Worse Than Bones," a tale about readers' relationships with their books, "No Story In It," about a horror writer slowly fading into obscurity, and 'The Word," a tale of a global bestseller that conveys a personal message to each of its readers. Each has telling points to make about readers, writers, and the literary world in general.

As Poppy Z. Brite concludes in her introduction, "Because he is able to...horrify us in a way that touches not just our brains and viscera, but our souls--Ramsey Campbell truly is the best of us all, and his own best is well represented in this collection." Kudos to Ms. Brite for saying it so well.