Category Archives: Collection

Written in Darkness by Mark Samuels – review by Mario Guslandi

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23462553WRITTEN IN DARKNESS

By Mark Samuels

Egaeus Press 2014,

Hardcover, 127 pages

A review by Mario Guslandi

The latest short story collection by British author Mark Samuels ,aptly entitled “Written in Darkness” , confirms his ability to unearth the dark side of the universe as well as the dark depths of the human soul. Darkness is everywhere, in the failing economy, in the breakdown of our place of work, in the emptiness of the daily routine, in the loneliness of our life, in the nature of our secret feelings. That is the common ground of the nine stories assembled in a slim, elegant volume published by Egaeus Press.

Obviously, not all the stories have the same intensity and some are more accomplished than others. The general tone may sound a bit depressing, so I advise you to savour each tale in separate reading sessions rather than being engulfed in a spiral of pessimism and melancholy : you will enjoy the stories more.

In my opinion the best stories are : “A Call to Greatness” a Kafkaesque piece featuring a stern Baron hopelessly fighting against the Bolsheviks, “My Heretical Existence”, a short, sinister tale about an elusive zone of an European city where a different, dangerous reality is lurking and “Outside Interference”, a puzzling example of urban horror involving the employees of a corporate firm located in a building,the basement of which conceals deadly secrets.

My favourite ,however, is a very traditional horror story, the deliciously creepy “Alistair” where a little boy becomes privy of the dark mysteries surrounding an old mansion and the adjacent cemetery.

- review by Mario Guslandi

The Bitterwood Bible and Other Recountings By Angela Slatter – review by Mario Guslandi

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IMG_0594The Bitterwood Bible and Other Recountings

By Angela Slatter

Tartarus Press 2014, Hardcover, 277 pages

Award-winning Australian author Angela Slatter returns with yet another collection of fantastic stories where she can display once again her fertile and powerful imagination, her extraordinary ability as a storyteller, endowed with an elegant narrative style and a remarkable sensitivity to the mysteries of the universe and the secrets of the human heart.

The present volume, enhanced by a bunch of delightful illustrations by Australian artist Kathleen Jennings, assembles thirteen tales of dark fantasy which will please especially the sophisticated readers fond of well written,stylish fiction.

The gorgeous, British Fantasy Award-winning “The Coffin-Maker’s Daughter” masterfully blends death and lust within the frame of the professional duties of a dismal job.

“The Maiden in the Ice” is an extraordinary, enticing fairy tale for adults, where the hidden secrets of a little village are disclosed after the retrieval of a girl trapped in the ice.

The delicious “The Badger’s Bride” features a girl whose task is to copy a mysterious, ancient book, while the vivid “By My Voice I Shall Be Known” depicts a case of unfaithful love and of a terrible vengeance obtained by means of black magic.

In the atypical vampire story “The Night Stairs” a young girl seeks revenge on a couple of undead but falls victim of an unexpected outcome, while in the fascinating “Terrible as an Army with Banners” we make the acquaintance of a weird sisterhood devoted to save books and knowledge.

Among so many excellent story my favourite,perhaps, is “The Burnt Moon” , a superbly crafted, disturbing story of withcraft,love and fire, a standing example of Slatter’s enormous talent.

Highly recommended.

- review by Mario Guslandi

Strange Gateways by Simon Kurt Unsworth – Reviewed by Mario Guslandi

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strange-gateways-jhc-simon-kurt-unsworth-2139-p[ekm]301x420[ekm]Strange Gateways

by Simon Kurt Unsworth

PS Publishing 2014

Hardcover ,148 pages

Reviewed by Mario Guslandi

The third collection by Simon Kurt Unsworth is actually his second, appearing in print later than his most recent work (the remarkable collection Quiet Houses). Thus the present book assembles eleven earlier stories penned by this talented British author who, in a few years, has managed to gain respect and acclaim in the dark fiction area.

Having greatly admired his more recent body of work, I confess I was slightly disappointed by some of the material featured in Strange Gateways. A strange mix of horror and pulp fiction, the present collection cannot be considered as a real setback, but is not certainly up to my expectations.

Again, what we have here is a bunch of old tales which, evidently, are particularly dear to the author, maybe more because of the circumstances under which they have been written (as described in the interesting Afterword) than for their intrinsic value.

Don’t get me wrong: Unsworth is always worth reading (pun intended) and the book includes three outstanding pieces that I’d like to mention.

“The Knitting Child” is a delicate, insightful tale very effectively portraying a young bride saddened by her inability to get pregnant; “Implementing the Least Desirable Solution” is a quite horrific, scaring and breathtaking tale about a murderous, impossibly strong monster getting rid of the inept scientists devoted to investigate its nature; “Mami Wata” is another powerful , memorable piece of supernatural horror, set in a mine in Zambia where a terrible secret is lurking.

Those three stories alone amply deserve the purchase of the book.

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‘Last Year, When We Were Young’ by Andrew J McKiernan – review by Greg Chapman

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DISCLAIMER: Thirteen O’Clock is managed by Alan Baxter, Felicity Dowker and Andrew McKiernan as Contributing Editors. While the Contributing Editors’ roles at Thirteen O’Clock are editorial and critique, all three are primarily writers. It is inevitable that their own work will form part of the Australian and international dark fiction publications which are Thirteen O’Clock’s focus, and as such it is also inevitable that their work will be reviewed at Thirteen O’Clock (to prohibit this would not only be unfortunate for Baxter, Dowker, and McKiernan themselves, but for their hardworking editors and publishers).

Thirteen O’Clock will always have a third party contributor review the Contributing Editors’ work. Such reviews will be unedited (aside from standard corrections to typos and grammar), posted in full (be they negative or positive), and will always be accompanied by full disclosure of Baxter, Dowker, and McKiernan’s place at Thirteen O’Clock. At no point will Baxter, Dowker or McKiernan review their own work.

Last Year, When We Were Young - coverLast Year, When We Were Young
by Andrew J McKiernan

Satalyte Publishing (www.satalyte.com.au)

Paperback: ISBN 978-0-9925095-2-1
E-book: ISBN 978-0-9925095-3-8

Review by Greg Chapman

Andrew J. McKiernan’s collection, Last Year When We Were Young, is proof yet again of the incredible writing talent that can be found in Australia and further still, proof that horror can have a meaningful voice that goes well beyond blood and gore.

Whether it is a story about a secretary taking phone messages from the dead, a group of clowns trying to avoid forced conscription in a travelling circus, or astronauts encountering cosmic monsters in the depths of space, the impossible in McKiernan’s stories never fails to engage because the stories always orbit characters that are quantifiably human.

McKiernan’s deft hand with prose is also addictive, with each turn of phrase sweeping the reader away from reality. Although many of his supernatural tales exude mysterious atmosphere, demonic forces or faith, I think the stories where the uncanny takes a back seat are where he really shines. Here the horror is less inexplicable, but no less haunting. The tales, White Lines, White Crosses, The Memory of Water, Calliope: A Steam Romance, and the title story being prime examples.

Overall, the collection is engrossing, every story leaving the reader with sensations of loss, hope, melancholy, repulsion and joy. It’s not often that a writer can convey such a broad section of emotions, but this is what makes collections so worthwhile – and enjoyable.

I recall reading one of Andrew’s Facebook posts some time ago about how he was finding it a real challenge to select the stories for Last Year, When We Were Young, but I can safely say that he and Satalyte Publishing have put together a wonderful treasury of fiction that is well worth any reader’s time, horror fan or no.

Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Last-Year-When-Were-Young/dp/0992509521/
Goodreads: http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/22523234-last-year-when-we-were-young

Review by Greg Chapman (http://www.darkscrybe.blogspot.com/)

Here With The Shadows by Steve Tasnic Tem – review by Mario Guslandi

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mid_shadows1Here With The Shadows

by Steve Rasnic Tem

Swan River Press 2014

First Edition Hardcover, 165 pages

A review by Mario Guslandi

Here’s a short story collection by an American writer, published by a small British imprint, reviewed by an Italian reviewer and posted on an Australian website. Globalization has reached the world of dark fiction and this is a good thing because the present volume deserves to be enjoyed by as many readers as possible.

Steve Tem is a very prolific author of  “quiet” horror in its various shades, probing the secrets hidden in the human heart, which is the very source of any real horror. In his work you’ll hardly find monsters, gore and violence; you’ll find the sad, disquieting side of the horrors that affect our daily  life.

This particular collection is devoted to ghost stories, but, again, you won’t find here howling spectres lurking in old castles, but disturbing shadows lingering at the corners of our towns and cities. And most of those shadows are images of a past that still haunt our souls.

Among the fifteen tales assembled in the book, most are really outstanding examples of how good Tem is at his best.

The title story “Here with the Shadows” is a delicate, insightful piece where an old man lives his last days surrounded by a crowd of shadows, the shadows of the dead, while “A House by the Ocean” is a mesmerizing ghost story full of sorrow and despair, featuring two sisters separated for too long.

In the gentle  “G is for Ghost”, the main character is the ghost of a child, while in the subtly unnerving “Telling” the hidden secrets of a haunted house are finally disclosed.

“Back Among the Shy Trees” is an enigmatic, disturbing tale where a man returning to his now abandoned family house discovers some sinister facts about his long forgotten childhood.

“Seeing the Woods”, a story of intense lyricism, portrays an old semi-blind lady living in a cabin in the woods. Here the ghosts are those of her beloved trees burned down during a fire.

The nostalgic, melancholy “Smoke in a Bottle” depicts how the past is a ghost haunting our present and “Est Enim Magnum Chaos” is yet another great story about life and death, loneliness and old age, where people, as in the lyrics of the famous song “Ol’ Man River” are “tired of living but scared of dying”.

All great stuff.

-Review by Mario Guslandi

Caution: Contains Small Parts by Kirstyn McDermott – review

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smallpartsCaution: Contains Small Parts

by Kirstyn McDermott

ISBN 978-1-922101-05-1

This book is a collection of four short stories by award-winning author, Kirstyn McDermott. There are themes here of gender and sexuality, damage and rehabilitation, but those themes never overpower the stories. It’s an excellent collection and well worth its recent Aurealis Award nomination.

McDermott is a powerful writer, evoking a great sense of place with all her work and her characters are well-drawn and fully realised. I found the writing in this collection to be a little less poetic than some of her other work, like the novel, Madigan Mine, for example, but no less impactful for that difference. And she retains her masterful use of language, the occasional phrasing that’s just so electrically right.

The four stories here are all bordering on horror and reality, skating that thin line between the real and the fantastic.

What Amanda Wants follows the trials of a counselor who has fluffed her way through actual qualifications because she has a supernatural ability to see to the very heart of people’s issues and actually, physically relieve them of those burdens. Until she is presented with Amanda, a troubled young woman whose walls are so solid, the powerful counselor can’t see anything through them.

In Horn, we have an unusual narrative broken into parts – regular storytelling, interviews, excerpts from academic papers – all slowly building the picture of a writer who hit the big time with a big fat fantasy series about warring unicorns and the problems that’s brought him. Very interesting asides into fantasy gender tropes in this story, but the format didn’t quite work for me as well as I might have hoped.

The title story, Caution: Contains Small Parts, is a poignant and disturbing horror story about a man haunted by a toy dog. He tries to get rid of it and can’t, it keeps coming back and will clearly continue to do so until he stops and works out what it wants. This is a very sad story, and powerfully written.

The final story is a long one, novelette length, I think, called The Home For Broken Dolls. This is a truly disturbing story about those realistic sex dolls that many people collect and truly obsess over. It’s told form the point of view of Jane, a woman horribly disfigured and traumatised in a moment of domestic violence, who has found peace in refurbishing damaged dolls. This story received a nomination for Best Horror Short Story in the Aurealis Awards as well as the collection as a whole getting a nod in the Best Collection category. You can see why. This is by far my favourite story in the book. McDermott does a great job in normalising the fetishes of these people, as of course, their fetish is entirely normal to them. It’s also very much on the border between literary/fantastic fiction and horror. It’s not a horror story like you’d expect, the darkness subtle and almost hidden behind the fantastic and the allegorical. But it is a truly excellent tale. And quite disturbing.

This is a great collection and a testament to McDermott’s skill. Highly recommended.

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North American Lake Monsters by Nathan Ballingrud – review

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9781618730602_medNorth American Lake Monsters

by Nathan Ballingrud

Published July 2013
Trade cloth: 9781618730596
Trade paper: 9781618730602
Ebook: 9781618730619

Small Beer Press

I’ve never come across the short fiction of Nathan Ballingrud before, but when this book was released I saw a sudden buzz around my social media feeds. I always pay attention to that sort of activity, so I picked up a copy of the ebook. Having just finished reading it, I went straight back to the Small Beer Press and ordered the Trade cloth edition. This is a book that needs to stand proud on a bookshelf.

There are nine stories in this debut collection from Ballingrud and each one of them is amazing. There is not a low point anywhere in this book. Balligrud’s writing is both beautiful and unrelenting, artistic and brutal. The same can be said for every story and every character. He draws on pain for his work, whether that pain is a lost young white supremacist, a broken down waitress, a man who recently got out of jail and doesn’t know his daughter any more, a man who lost his child, a husband who has become increasingly disconnected from his wife who suffers terrible depression and regularly attempts suicide. Against those characters of raw realism and terrible everyday struggle, Ballingrud draws the most incredible supernatural and horrific environments in which to put those people. The crass, the ugly, the brutal, the terrifying. It exists in every inch of every story and the characters reflect their terrible situations as much as those situations reflect the characters.

And yet, while I might make it sound horrendously bleak by the above description (and believe me, it often is!) it’s also sublimely beautiful, in both idea and execution. This book contains one of the most amazing vampire yarns I’ve ever read. Also one of the best werewolf stories and, at a stretch, the best zombie story ever. It’s not a zombie story in the Romero tradition, but even so. It’s better than that. More subtle, more heartbreaking. I’ve also read several stories based around the horror of New Orleans and Katrina, but Ballingrud’s The Way Station blows them all away. And there’s a touch of Cthulhu mythos in this book, equally well handled.

There are no answers here, no happy endings. Some stories are left hanging, almost too soon, but only better for that. There’s no suggestion of a way out of the darkness drawn by these tales, whether that’s the darkness of Elder gods, blood sucking vampires or humanity’s incredible ability to care so little for its fellows. Yet for a book with such a diverse eye for monsters and the supernatural, the overall sensation left after reading is one of humanity. Which should ever be the root cause of horror writing, that exploration of the truly dark nature of the human, in the face of monsters or of themselves.

Ballingrud’s touch is light, his implications subtle. For that reason, the moments of stark and visceral horror have all the more impact. This is without a doubt one of the best short fiction collections I’ve ever read. Not for the faint of heart, but worth the trauma for the incredible writing, absolutely real characters and palpable sense of wonder that comes from every touch of the unnatural along the way. This book is a dark road, emotionally battering and utterly incredible. I can’t recommend it highly enough.