This is a collection of Vox Day's work that includes stories he wrote from before the Throne of Bones and Quantum Mortis series. If you've ever read his earlier War in Heaven books, you'll know that he's come a long way as a writer over the past several years. Unfortunately, many of the stories in this collection seem to date from before he really mastered his craft, and their quality suffers for it. The worst of them is probably the rambling "Medal for a Marine", which goes on for pages and pages as a female officer describes a complicated war in a near-future Europe. There's no payoff, no interesting ideas, and the conclusion is flat. "Demons in the Disk Drive" is little better, skewering the convention culture of the technology industry in the late 90s and early 2000s. This thankfully short story is good for bringing you back to the Clinton administration, but not much else.
That aside, there are some real gems here. Vox has an eye for quiet, calm horror, and the Maupassant-inspired "Logfile", "The Last Testament of Henry Halleck", and "The Deported" are creepy and unsettling. "Logfile" in particular treads familiar ground, and yet does it in a way that keeps the reader's interest. I got chills as I read the story. "The Deported" and "Henry Halleck" are excellent too, though they can be read for free on the author's website. The titular "Altar of Hate" is a short, but excellent story set in Italy during the time of Romeo and Juliet.
Overall, I would say this book is only for big fans of Vox Day's writing, who've exhausted everything else he's written. If you're just getting introduced to him, I would suggest "A Throne of Bones", or the astonishingly good "The Programmed Man", or "The Last Witchking" if you're looking for something shorter. Vox's early writing is just too spotty to be worth reading on its own, and the rest of the content doesn't quite justify the price unless you absolutely have to read everything the man has written.
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Luke Hollows
A good mix
Reviewed in Australia on June 14, 2018Verified Purchase
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