Voices (2008)

Editors Mark S. Deniz & Amanda Pillar
Publisher Morrigan Books
Length 176 pages
Genre Collection
Blurb In every room, there is a story ...
Country

Talk us through it

Voices is an anthology of horror and supernatural stories based in the rooms of a specific mythical Hotel. The reader gets a collection of eighteen short stories and flash fiction pieces from predominantly Australian Writers with a splattering of Yanks and Brits tossed into the mix to keep things interesting.

The anthology is split into four sections, each section being neatly contained on a separate floor. A flash piece by Robert Hood introduces each section, and for added Hood fan pleasure you also get a collection prologue and epilogue by the same Author. There's a unformed theme running through Robert Hood's pieces that provides the underlying structure of Voices.

Let's book a room for the night and see what we might find in the darkened halls.

Review

"Almost like something there is alive" - Ruben

I wasn't aware of Morrigan Books until Voices came across my desk in all it's splendour. There's always something cool in finding a new Publisher releasing collections in your area of interest, not the least of which is checking out the back catalogue to see what else is available. Morrigan have clearly been happy enough to publish local Authors in amongst the International fold so I was pretty excited to sit down and check into the Voices hotel to see what the service was like.

For Down Under readers the Author list should be solid enough to ensure a blind buy on it's own strength. Local heavy weights Robert Hood, Martin Livings, and Shane Jiraiya Cummings are joined by a number of other Writers I'm not familiar with to give you something new and something comfortable to dabble with. I wasn't disappointed by either category and had some fun times reading the various stories. Because each story has been deliberately selected for the collection you aren't going to run across pieces published elsewhere, good times ahead friends and neighbours new fiction to be read. About the only thing missing was perhaps a novella involving some subterranean terror that had influence the atmosphere of the Hotel over the decades. Guess you can't have everything you could wish for else we would end up with a 10,000 page door stopper, or perhaps something edging too close to Stephen King territory to be comfortable with.

The Editors keep things humming along and don't deviate from their defined goal with the collection. Something we can all aspire to but tend to put into our swag rather than constantly referencing.

Overall the structure of the collection is working like a Liberal Party apologist, there's something inherently spooky about Hotels at night folks and some of the Authors on display here are taking full advantage of the fact. Equally I guess what happens behind closed doors around you, what might have happened in the room you have just hired, or what skeletons are in the closet are fertile grounds for a good imagination and the concepts are taken full toll of here. As one would expect in a dark genre collection there are stories simply out to tell a yarn mixed in with more subversive work to make your sleep just that little bit more uneven.

The collection is split into four major sections that I guess sort of work in and of themselves and as parts of the overall anthology. I wasn't able to discern what made a story sit in any section to be perfectly honest, but then again this isn't a University English paper so I'm allowed some latitude to ramble on incoherently. Each section moves steadily up the floors of the hotel, from the foray to the fourth floor. To a certain extent, and this might be me reading more things into the collection than envisaged by the Editors, the stories become more mythical as we progress up the Hotel's darkened staircase. Robert Hood, famed ghost story writer extraordinary, was the perfect choice to supply flash pieces at the conclusion of each section of the collection and for the prologue and epilogue. Taken together Mr Hood's pieces do add up to an overriding story in their own right, perhaps more aptly termed a cycle if we wanted to be artsy.

Naturally the Editors aren't content to allow the various Authors freedom to run rough shod through the collection, there's a far amount of cackling going down as Deniz and Pillar stir the cauldron to add that little extra bit of magic to your reading experience. An excellent “Foreword” section, that seeks to enlighten us as to how we came to hold the collection in our blood stained mitts, adds some venom to the mix. There's a feeling throughout the collection that while allowing the Authors freedom to follow their own particular dark dreams that freedom also has to fit in with the overall look and feel of the collection.

One feature Voices does contain that helps elevate the anthology above the run of the mill collection of horror yarns, any given Sunday folks, is the attention to Author bios and the genesis of how the individual stories came about from the Writer's perspective. So we learn a little about each Author and also what motivated them to write the actual story appearing in the collection. I'm one of those horrid people who are never ceasing in their pursuit of background details, so this aspect of the collection was working like a mining tax consultant for me. Nice attention to detail and a good way to round out each story in my jaded opinion.

To the actual stories contained between the covers, I ranged from really enjoying some entries hence making the collection a must have for my bookshelf to wondering if I could skip to the end of some of the more strained selections. Once again I would point out personal preference does cloud judgement, but I found the entire first section of the book, “Illusions”, hard to get through and forced myself onward toward the good stuff. For me the collection improved the further I got into it and there are some classic stories contained here that make a purchase of the collection a worth while pursuit. While not claiming that Voices is in anyway the perfect addition to your reading list, what collection is friends and neighbours, I would argue that you are going to be very dirty on yourself if you don't dial in here.

Overall I had a good time as I wandered the corridors of the Hotel, some stories got a read more than once, and I pretty much approached things from opening page to final page with a slight detour here and there to read favourite Authors. You don't need to read things chronologically, with the exception of the Robert Hood flash pieces that provide the framework, and you can quite happily put the book down and return to it at leisure. An engaging collection that delivered on the rather purple prose that adorns the back cover. In the final wash up I'm more than happy to see what else Morrigan have in the back catalogue that might wet my fancy based on the contents of Voices.

Voices is available online from Morrigan Books for the quite reasonable price of $19 plus shipping. Please note $2 of that amount is donated to the Paul Haines Cancer Fund, so call it your good deed for the day. If wanting to save a bit of cash then you also have a choice to purchase Voices as an electronic download, Click through for $4.99 (USD). For non Australian readers, Morrigan do ship worldwide and there are purchase options available on their website for various Countries.

ScaryMinds Rates this read as ...

  Very solid horror collection for your pleasure.