From Goodreads: This brand new collection by Bram Stoker Award-Winning author and poet David Niall Wilson brings together fourteen tales of madness, horror, fantasy, zombies, and dark magic, as well as fourteen original poems. Spanning more than two decades of his career, the stories offer a wide range of glimpses into the creative process that has formed his career.

From me: it’s a hit or miss collection of short stories, and for me a definite miss on the poetry. That being said, the stories that are hits really knock them out of the park. 3.5 stars

This is a good book for people who want something that they don’t have to be too committed to, in that it’s a short story collection and is easy to pick up and put down.

None of the stories are particularly long or tedious, some are definitely better than others. It’s obviously written for people who prefer to feed dark and occasionally taboo side of writing.

He admits up front that a lot of these stories are older and are not written in a style he’d used today. He’s tried to preserve them as best he could with has little editing as possible, which must be extremely difficult for an author who clearly believes he’s evolved over the years.

I think there’s a lot in here that a new writer could learn from in terms of crafting a story – not every story, but a significant number of them.

“Through An Eyeglass Darkly” was perhaps a bit long, but a modern take on classic tension building. “Fear of Flying” encompassed to teenage thought process quite well. “Headlines” was funny if slightly predictable, and “To Strike a Timeless Chord” will definitely strike a chord.

While the “The Purloined Purse” (although again, a bit long) was obviously one of the authors favourites, for this reader “Etched Deep” was the superstar of this collection.

Most of the poetry, really. Although I should mention that one of his Bram Stoker awards is for one of his joint collections of poetry called The Gossamer Eye. Keeping that in mind, I admit that I may just not enjoy his poetry and that someone else may find it quite fascinating. And in balanced fairness, “Revelation” is really good. “Dark Man” is a weird-but-really-good love poem.

The story “Redemption” was extremely well written, but not my cup of tea, and the content of that one left me cringing for days. Other than that one story, I can’t state that I found anything particularly offensive or wrong with any of the stories in here.

Decide if this is one of the ones I would own and try to learn from, or if it was just a fun read. I’m still on the fence.

With the exception of the aforementioned story, I found it quite enjoyable, with some snippets of writing that will stay with me.

Wilson has won the Bram Stoker award several times. He is also an ordained minister. Relevance outside of shock value? No idea.

It’s an accessible entry-level invitation to short story writing, despite its flaws. There should be something in here that appeals to almost everyone.

If you’re looking for dark poetry, this may not be the book for you. And if you're highly sensitive about sexual content, avoid "Redemption".

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Created Jan 14, 2018 at 7:00pm • Submit your own review...