Horror Reviews
Crow Shine by Alan Baxter
A well respected novelist, Australian writer Alan Baxter is also the author of many short stories, appeared in various venues, but never before assembled in a single volume.
Crow Shine is a massive collection of Baxter's dark tales which will pleasantly surprise the reader not yet acquainted with this excellent author.
The large majority of the stories included therein are original,well crafted pieces of disturbing fiction.
"TIny Lives" is a beautiful tale fu...
The Passage by Justin Cronin
I've been aware of The Passage for years but never had chance to pick it up - even though I have family connections to the Cronin surname (although doubtfully any connection to the author!). Recently the final novel in the series was released which prompted me to begin reading.
The book describes a highly contagious pandemic that sweeps the United States, turning people into savage, vampiric beasts (known colloquially as Virals). This outbreak is caused, as is often the case, by...
The Winter Hunt and Other Stories by Steve Lockley & Paul Lewis
Steve Lockley and Paul Lewis form a British writing duo ( although they also publish individually) whose work has been appearing in various genre anthologies during the years.
Fifteen of their tales of horror and terror are now assembled in an enjoyable collection from Parallel Universe. The overall quality of the stories is uncommonly high and quite remarkable.
Particularly worth mentioning are the following.
"Never Go Back" is a nightmarish piece showing how ...
Nightmares Realm: New Tales of The Weird and Fantastic by ST Joshi
"Life is but a dream" wrote Calderon De La Barca and "All that we see or seem is but a dream within a dream" confirmed Edgard Allan Poe. Dreams and nightmares constitute part of our nightly life, but they usually vanish as soon as we wake up. Sometimes, however, they stay with us and haunt also our normal, daily existence.
The present collection assembles seventeen new tales by contemporary authors addessing that fascinating issue. The list of the distinguished contributors includes...
The Disciple by Stephen Lloyd Jones
Given that today is Halloween, I thought it only right that we review a horror novel. It's also a damn good one - The Disciple by Stephen Lloyd Jones.
It all starts on a stormy night as Edward Schwinn navigates the country roads at the edge of Devil's Kitchen, Snowdonia. On a dark road in the middle of a forest he finds a scene of devastation. Cars wrecked and on fire, bodies everywhere, but in one a heavily pregnant woman still alive.
The woman gives birth to a gi...
A Head Full of Ghosts by Paul Tremblay
A Head Full of Ghosts was first released last year and won the coveted Bram Stokers award for Best Novel. It's also received pretty much the finest compliment a Horror novel can receive when Stephen King said of the book:
Â
Scared the living hell out of me, and I'm pretty hard to scare.Â
Titan Books are launching the paperback this month and I've finally found time to give it a read. I have to say it lives up to all expectation, even that of "Th...
Becoming David by Phil Sloman
A horror novella that sets out its stall early on, Becoming David by Phil Sloman is a carefully constructed novella that investigates the mind of a perfectionist serial killer from both the inside and the outside.
To begin, we are introduced to Richard, a self-sufficient serial killer who has worked out and perfected his method of 'scratching the itch'. The anonymity of the Internet allows him to arrange dates with young men and lure them into situations where he can murder ...
Mongrels by Stephen Graham Jones
Mongrels is a book that grips you by the jugular right from the start, a bit like the way a werewolf might. Funny enough that's what Mongrels is all about - a family of werewolves who are forced to travel around the USA avoiding the authorities and others who take a dislike their kind. It's a country that shuns them at every turn and we see this journey, this forced isolation, from the viewpoint of a young boy as he grows up.
His family consist of aunt Libby and uncle Darren...
Hex by Thomas Olde Heuvelt
Thomas Olde Heuvelt won last years Hugo award for his novelette The Day the World Turned Upside Down. Reading Hex I can see why.
The idea is incredible — A woman named Katharine is killed as a witch in the 16th Century and then begins haunting the woods around the village of Black Spring where she lived and died. Eventually the army march the woods and find the vengeful spirit, restricting her powers by sewing up her eyes and mouth. All those present die. Centuries pass and the vill...
The Whispering Death by Sara Jayne Townsend
Live roleplaying, ritual sacrifice and 14th century magic. There’s a lot of buttons being pushed right upfront in Sara Townsend’s very English hobby horror.
We begin amidst a woodland adventure with our main characters introduced in a blur between real (fictional) life and their fantasy characters questing through a forest in the dark. There’s a clear sense of Townsend writing from experience here as the mechanics are laid out carefully to set up the plot which will become the m...
Allhallows Eve by Richard Laymon
It’s been awhile since I picked up one of Mr Laymon’s books and I was quite looking forward to reading this book. With this in mind I picked it up and started ahead. Now for those of you who aren’t aware Laymon was a very prolific writer right up to his death. His books ranged from short sharp shocks to much more well written well plotted novels.
Allhallows Eve falls among the foremost, being one of Laymon’s shorter pieces of fiction. There are plenty of shocks too and t...
Sawbones by Stuart Macbride
What a neat little idea in a neat little book. Book is probably a touch generous coming in at just over a hundred pages but don’t let that spoil your fun, what you have here is actually a twisted tale, gruesome in the telling and packs a punch other books only hope to imitate.
Sawbones tells the tale of a serial killer travelling across country abducting young blonde girls and hacking their limbs off while they are still alive and then leaving them for dead. His evil knows no ...
Horror - also known as Horror fantasy - is a genre of literature that is intended to induce fear, terror or horror in it's readers.
Horror can be be fantastic, supernatural or simply fictional in nature and is considered to be a genre that has existed in some form for hundreds of years. As with any genre there is always some ambiguity as to what constitutes horror and there does seem to be a modern predilection for a greater degree of dark fantasy and speculative fiction rather than the classic definition of Horror, however there are still some authors producing some top rate novels within the genre.
Here you can see reviews of the latest new horror books along with some of the best classics of the genre.
The easy confidence with which I know another man?s religion is folly teaches me to suspect that my own is also
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