Review
“It is a falsehood—a lie repeated so often it has been taken as fact and sadly, the truth often hurts!”” - Tony Triskaideka Books, here hitting out with an early title in their arsenal, present a collection of sixteen original dark genre stories for your delight. Masters of Horror, and there's a name that will need to be backed up, is unrepentant horror, there are no Sci-Fi or Fantasy yarns despoiling the mix here like you tend to get in other collections. While there doesn't appear to be any central theme to the collection, the usual tropes of horror are lurking in the dark ready to pounce on the unwary reader. A lot of these stories play for keeps kids so if easily frightened then run screaming back to shallow water rather than risk the sharks and other denizens of the dark depths. If you like pure horror, then this one is going to have you trampling your friends to get at it. Let's rip back the front cover and see if the collection lives up to the title! Surprisingly, for a collection containing a whole bunch of writers I hadn't read before and of course some I had, there wasn't a huge amount of weak entries in Masters of Horror. Excellent selection of a wide range of dark delights that had me entertained, my arachnophobia kicking in big time, and the blood almost splashing off the page. From memory I jumped one story, only due to the style not being my thing, and re-read five or six as I got my read totally on with this book. The style, if we can discuss that in a collection, is overall brisk, refreshing, and modern. You don't get a lot of shades rattling chains in old castles on forgotten Scottish moors, you do get psycho killers and all manner of nasties invading the suburbs however. So yeah we're talking a post-modern approach that speaks to the movement of horror away from the traditional that Stephen King amongst others began. Perhaps the major issue I had with the collection was the low number of Kiwi writers presented between the covers and the almost non-existent Australian contribution. Marty Young keeps the clever Country's flag flying with his excellent yarn, Fireflies of the Bushfire, and if you are confused about fireflies and the Aussie bush then read the story to get the gist pal! Still early days and I note Triskaideka have a second volume in what I hope is a series heading our way, so fingers crossed we get a rising level of Downunder content. Please note, no offence meant to our foreign contributors, but hey it's a BBQ in our backyard, we like a lot of local flavour here at Scaryminds. I picked up the smashwords edition of the book, you can pick up your bottom jaw yes I don't normally do ebooks, so can't comment overly on the actual physical book. However the cover art by Robert Elrod, only available in the print version, is fairly striking and the package as a whole looks solid enough to last an aggressive read. About the only problem I had with the ebook version was that some time needed to be spent getting the stories to start at the top of a new page, yes I'm anal but someone has to hold the thin line of quality assurance here. I had the pdf so this may work better on kindle or other e-readers, hence not being a problem, and something I shouldn't have mentioned really. Moving along. To the stories I guess, which is why you are here, and do we ever have a bumper crop. Rather than rabbit on about each, threatening a huge amount of boredom, I'll simply throw on a highlights tour with the proviso that this is a sensationally good collection that will have you sweating on the next release. Carole Gill's Truth Hurts was simply excellent stuff and a well needed smack in the mouth to those Paranormal Romance writers who have pretty much de-fanged the modern day vampire. Writing in a quintessential English style, it's almost a wink at the Reader. It's all in the Cards, J.C. Hart, is pretty much our lycanthrope yarn for the evening, though there's a whole twist to things within the story that will have even the most cynical and world weary werewolf fan bouncing up and down and high fiving their imaginary friends. Equally the story is a very clever twist on the hoary old horror adage, “be careful what you wish for”. Excellent stuff. And finally Larry Kokko presented a well received haunted house tale, with a twist, in the outstandingly good The Clifton House. Just between you and me, Masters of Horror is worth sourcing on the strength of this story alone. Leading the Downunder charge Marty Young presents his excellent story Fireflies of the Bushfire, after the recent devastation caused by the Victorian bushfires the whole concept has become a part of the Aussie horror landscape, and Marty Young has written one of the best of what could be a new sub-genre. One Day sees Karen Johnson Mead hit a pretty cool shaggy dog yarn, the twist caught me out as our serial killer does his thing. I took Lee Pletzers' Teeth to be kind of a Cthulhu story mixed with a sort of zombie flavour, to give something fairly unique and surprising. It's an interest story, and a welcome inclusion in the collection. Just to round things out here, before I mention every story in the collection, Richard Barnes with Something Unpleasant shows the ability to match two different story subjects to great effect, I was rocking with this one, though I had this really weird Stephen King The Raft feeling going down. Regardless, superb yarn that should have a number of film makers sourcing Barnes' number. Completely out of room here, so closing off. I had a good time with Masters of Horror: The Anthology and am throwing a full recommendation in it's direction. A pure, unadulterated, journey through the dark forests of horror. You really can't ask more from a collection, pure adrenaline folks, for best results read after midnight with a glass of merlot. Masters of Horror is available in either print form or various ebook formats via the Triskaideka official site. As of writing a print version is going to set you back $9.99, while a download is priced at $2.99. For other formats check lulu.com or Amazon.com. Wide variety of options available kids, everyone should be happy.
ScaryMinds Rates this read as ... Excellent collection to get your teeth into.
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