Normally a big, big fan of this particular anthology I can't help but feel a bit let down by this entry. The collection starts and ends with excerpts from Kim Newman's "Anno Dracula 1980" Both of which I found a bit cliche and just overall mediocre. Then we move on to Neil Gaiman's "Click-Clack The Rattle Bag". Now from what I gather here this was a story Gaiman was known for telling verbally, and it probably was a fun, if predictable little horror romp then...but reading it loses most of that effect and it just comes off as not only predictable, but just...boring. Boring in the sense that near immediately you know how the story is going to end, and it does, no flash, no payoff...just EXACTLY what you expected and with a resulting thud rather than a bang.
"Isaac's Room" by Daniel Mills gets things moving at a better clip though, and while pretty brief is a pretty enjoyable short story. It feels like a professionally written creepy pasta story you'd find online, but it works and it's well written. My only complaint here was I felt it ended itself a little prematurely, a lot more could have still been done with the subject matter. Overall a fun read though.
A bit further in we come to Ramsey Campbell's "Holes For Faces". Normally I'm a fairly big fan of Ramsey's work, but it can be hit or miss, though with more hits than misses usually. This one is a lot more of a miss. It takes the very typical and tired (from Campbell anyway) perspective of a child with strict parents, particularly a strict, over-protective mother. (Seriously, a LOT of Campbell's shorts have this perspective and them. Painting the mother character as an annoying, overbearingly strict bitch.) But the horror here is lackluster as well. Maybe to a young child, such as the leading character here it might be terrifying...but to the average reader I can't see a lot that's worthwhile. It tries to work on a psychological horror angle, which I'm all for normally, in fact I love that theme...but it just falls flat. Uninteresting and dull. A shame considering some of the material Campbell has put into previous entries of this anthology.
"Into the Water" by Simon Kurt Unsworth starts off with the author saying that he wanted to write a Lovecraftian piece while not actually coming off as such, and hoping to do the late, great Howard Phillips justice at the same time. Well, he succeeded and failed respectively. This deals in a Lovecraftian theme, similar to Dagon or Shadow Over Innsmouth and feels different enough to not feel like a copycat mythos tale. But at the same time is pretty uninteresting, has all of zero real development, especially character wise and goes almost nowhere, all while moving at a snail's pace to what you might hope would be a big conclusion or payoff. It ends just as it begins, with a "meh".
"Lavie Tidhar brings us "What Do We Talk About When We Talk About Z-" Described by the author as a zombie story without zombies in it. Man, this is bar none the absolute low point of this collection. In fact it's one of the worst I've read across several volumes of this anthology. It's terrible. It's not just that it's a story that's been done to death, but several times better, but also that it's just plain written poorly. Do yourself a favor, absolutely skip this one entirely. You're missing nothing.
There are some good reads here though, it's not all bad or mediocre. I'd include the aforementioned "Issac's Room" with these. Along with "The Gist" by Michael Marshall Smith, "The Sixteenth Step" by Robert Shearman, and "Guinea Pig Girl" by Thana Niveau. These stories made me not truly regret buying the book. But overall this one kind of came off as a dud to me. Even the good stories here weren't GREAT.
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Reviewed in the United States on December 21, 2014
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Reviewed in the United States on September 25, 2017
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What it is is a collection of beautifully and masterfully written stories that are more psychologically suspenseful ...
Reviewed in the United States on December 19, 2014Verified Purchase
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Charlie488
Here's to the next 25 volumes!
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on January 16, 2015Verified Purchase
Murrie
Surprisingly Good
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Brian
Great read
Reviewed in Canada on October 13, 2018Verified Purchase
Judy Pryce
Best New horror25
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on May 22, 2015Verified Purchase
Sally
Not remotely scarey!
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on September 3, 2015Verified Purchase
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