Customer Reviews

Tombs

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I was really impressed with this anthology of morbid short stories themed around tombs and the macabre of death. Forrest J. Ackerman introduced the book to us. It's not for everybody. It's kind for an audience who prefers science fiction, horror, and thriller to melodrama. Some of the material is not for children or for squeamish adults.

The Contents Read as Follows:
Tomb Swift by Forrest J. Ackermman
In trust: Ben Bova
The Amber Room: Ian Watson (One of my personal favorites)
THe Butterfuly Effect: Kathleen Ann Noonan (remember the AShton Kutcher movie, I wonder if it's the same story.)
Epistrophy: Michael Bishop
No Ordinary Christians:
White Lady's Grave: Lisa Tuttle
Burial at Sea: Larry Bond & Chris Carlson (about a submarine's final voyage, another good story,)
The Unchained:Kathe Koja, Barry Z. Malberg (one of my favorites about a gay man dying and his partner in the hospital)
The Time Garden: Ian McDonald
He on Honeydew: Stewar Von Allmen
City Deep: Jeremy Dyson (a great story about the London underground.)
But None I Think Do There Embrace: S.P. Somtow
Tales of Brittanica Castle: Christopher Fowler (another great story about a woman who wants to be free but can't because of her family's past)
Heartfires: Charles De Lint
Drowning with Others: Gary A. Braunbeck ( a sad, disturbing tale about a brother's strange relationship with his younger sister.)
Station of the Cross: Colin Greenland
Queen of Knives: Neil Gaiman
God's Bright Little Engine: Stephen Gallagher
The Darkest Doctrine: Brad Linaweaver (another personal favorite about the truth below the Vatican.)
The Land of the Reflected Ones: Nancy A. Collins
The Temptation of Wilfred Malachey: William F. Buckley Jr.
Blue Flame of a Candle: Storm Constantine

Some good stories, some truly bad, but nothing really stands out. There's nothing really to say more than that, since it's an anthology--read the ones you like, skip the others. Some of the good ones--"White Lady's Grave" and the one about the Church and the dying businessman (can't remember title). The others were either okay or completely a waste of time, but having just read "The Earth Strikes Back", even the worst ones looked okay. I'm not sure if you'd want to spend your money on this--it's not that good, so why not borrow it from a library?

I don't read too many anthologies. Certainly, this one will only inspire a moderate amount of enthusiasm for me to go buy more.

It's published by White Wolf, which also is responsible for highly successful and intricately detailed RPGs such as Vampire: The Masquerade and Werewolf: The Apocalypse. (One of the weaker stories in the collection is by Steward von Allmen, who appears to be a key White Wolf founder.) I believe I picked this book up at GenCon; it's now out of print.

The anthology starts off very unpromisingly, with an embarrassing little number from beloved sci-fi/fantasy/horror fan Forrest J. Ackerman. This is the lowest point of the book, but luckily it rebounds from there. Ben Bova offers a story that has a perfect "Twilight Zone" twist, and Michael Moorcock tosses in an excursion to his Eternal Champion milieu in a tale that has a bit of an "English Patient" flavor to it. Ian McDonald in "The Time Garden" gives us an enchanting and lyrical exploration along the border of Faerie in a story that is reminiscent of the works of Robert Holdstock. (I believe, in fact, this may be why the basic Amazon review shown above claims that Holdstock is a contributor to the anthology, when in fact he is not.)

Jeremy Dyson's "City Deep" is another macabre tale with a dark cinematic flair such as would be found in one of the TV anthology shows. Two other stories are almost poetically elegant yet starkly simple: Charles de Lint's "Heartfires", about wandering Native American spirits losing their way in the present-day U.S., and Stephen Gallagher's "God's Bright Little Engine", with its beautiful and haunting ending. The story provided by Storm Constantine, "Blue Flame of a Candle", while not entirely successful, is nonetheless packed with intricate detail and manages to create a rich history with merely a few suggestions.

Other stories are much less powerful. The joint effort by Kathe Koja and Barry Malzberg is frankly unreadable, while that of Larry Bond and Chris Carlson is at best workmanlike and much more suited for a military-themed collection. Other stories are plain silly or sadly bland. The one by William F. Buckley (!) can only be considered an interesting experiment. Ian Watson's "The Amber Room" never comes together, and Christopher Fowler's "Tales of Britannica Castle" reads like a pointless pastiche of "Gormenghast".

While there is indeed good material to be found here, the lesser works really drag down the overall level of quality. A few of them should just have been jettisoned to save the rest.

Still, this is a suitable sampler for some authors who are rarely seen, and it definitely shows that some, such as Gallagher and McDonald, are worth following.