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Book Review: The Horror Collection, Black Edition by Kevin Kennedy


The Horror Collection: Black Edition edited by Becky Narron and Kevin J. Kennedy

KJK Publishing, 2019

ISBN-13: 978-1798000991

Available: Paperback, Kindle edition

 

The Horror Collection: Black Edition is an anthology of horror short stories.

“The Lake is Life”, by Richard Chizmar describes a troubled, teenage girl whose parents are facing divorce. She seeks emotional refuge visiting her grandmother at a tranquil lake.  There is a bloody massacre, and the keys to who and why are in the girl’s past. Unfortunately, the author never clearly explains her past.

“Pie Bingo: Last Man Standing”, by Veronica Smith describes a dystopian future with overcrowded jails.  The authorities need to winnow the jail population. Prisoners can opt to play bingo for pies, conjugal visits and freedom. However, if they don’t win, they won’t like the consolation prizes. The story is memorable because of the gruesome, sadistic details of the contest.

“Goblin Financial”, by Lee McGeorge is a lesson about the consequences of bad debts. A woman reneges on a loan she should have used for her education, causing her creditors emotional pain. She runs, but they have a hideous debt collector, and a horrific way of making themselves whole.

Readers familiar with the concept of informed consent in human experiments will cringe at “The Switch”, by Mark Lukens.  A financially desperate man agrees to be locked alone in a room for pay and told he must not flip a switch on the wall. The purpose, benefits, alternative choices and risks are not explained to him. Readers can guess what happens; it’s not really an experiment, because the researchers know the outcome.

“Those Who Watch from on High”, by Eric Guignard is an interesting account of emotional and psychological stresses on a drone pilot. Bored, isolated and suffering from disrupted sleep/wake cycles, an Air Force lieutenant in the Nevada desert struggles with reality. Is he looking down at a terrorist’s young son in the Afghan desert with a drone, or is he watching the terrorist’s hut from the desert floor? When he gets the order to fire on the hut, will he obey? If he does, what will he do the next day?

“The Ghost of Agnes Gallow”, by James Byers is an impressive poem about a witch whose curse stalks a family over generations on Halloween Eve.  Reciting his poem of ten stanzas of rhyming couplets out loud adds to the enjoyment.

Kevin Kennedy warns that  “A Tarantino Oz”contains strong doses of sex, violence and profanity. Readers who dislike Quentin Tarantino’s movies and misogyny should skip this story. Kennedy says all fairy tales were originally horror stories. In this tale, characters of L. Frank Baum’s The Wonderful Wizard of Oz meet for an orgy and murderous rampage.

In “Smolder”, Michael Arnzen uses the well-known difficulty of stopping smoking and the Surgeon General’s health warning to draw readers into his story. Who knew that there is something magical about each word of  “SURGEON GENERAL’S WARNING: Smoklng Causes Lung Cancer, Heart Disease, Emphysema, And May Complicate Pregnancy”?  A concerned husband tries to help his pregnant wife kick the habit. He finds a hidden pack of cigarettes, but has no idea that calamity strikes smokers when words of the warning are destroyed.

 

Contains: Gore, graphic sex and profanity

 

Reviewed by Robert D. Yee

Posted on May 16, 2019 by , Reply

Long Fiction Review: Dead Lovers on Each Blade, Hung by Usman Malik (Nightmare Magazine, Issue 74)

“Dead Lovers on Each Blade, Hung” by Usman Malik

Nightmare Magazine, Issue 74, November 2018

ASIN: B07K386T2B

Available: Kindle edition

 

“Dead Lovers on Each Blade, Hung” is an #ownvoices novelette that takes place in Pakistan. The narrator is a cleaned-up heroin addict who has been accused of killing a doctor in Uch, a site of pilgrimage, at various times, for Sufis, Hindus, Sikhs and Muslims. The tale is his confession to the police, who he is certain will turn him over to some very angry heroin dealers who think he swindled them.

The narrator tells the story of being rescued and sobered up by a doctor studying snake venoms for their healing uses,  who has been asking addicts in the park if they have seen a girl in a photo he carries. The girl turns out to be his wife, Maliha, purchased by him when she was eight years old, who became a herpetologist. Maliha ran away to seek the Serpent Pearl, a mythological stone given by the Serpent King of the underworld to his wife, which gave her the power to command animals and birds, immunity to venom, open a gateway to other worlds, and immortality, that she believed could be found in Uch. The doctor decides to follow her to Uch, accompanied by the narrator, who is now on the run from heroin dealers.

In Uch, they approach a shrine during a musical festival. The narrator follows the doctor past the crowd and into the shrine, and witnesses the doctor’s apparent, and fatal, reunion with his wife, who may be a cobra, or an apparition, or may be something else entirely, driving him to poison the water supply of Uch with snake venom as he loses touch with reality.

The setting and much of the language are way outside of my realm of experience, and I don’t feel that I can truly do this story justice, but I can say that the summary above in no way can express the feeling of this tale. It is a fever dream that creates a world that envelops the reader in a combination of the grim life of a heroin addict, with a dark mythology grounded in both Pakistani folklore and cosmic horror.  At the same time, it is grounded in a terrible real-life story: the doctor who purchases a wife when she is eight, and chases her down when she runs away as a young woman. In “Dead Lovers on Each Blade, Hung” Usman Malik steps the reader into an unreal, fantastic, and horrifying world that he makes very, very real.

 

Reviewed by Kirsten Kowalewski

 

Editor’s note: “Dead Lovers on Each Blade, Hung” is a nominee on the final ballot of the 2018 Bram Stoker Awards in the category of Superior Achievement in Long Fiction. 

Posted on May 14, 2019 by , Reply

Book Links: Stoker Awards 2018 Final Ballot for Superior Achievement in a Fiction Collection

Well, we didn’t get all reviews for every category in before the Stoker Awards were actually announced, but I finally can provide you with links to reviews to all the books nominated for the category of Superior Achievment in a Fiction Collection. The award went to Eric J. Guignard for That Which Grows Wild on Saturday, and you can check out our review of his book, as well as those of the other nominees, by clicking on the links below.  Congratulations to all the nominees, and well done, Eric!

 

That Which Grows Wild  by Eric J. Guignard

Garden of Eldritch Delights  by Lucy A. Snyder

Coyote Songs  by Gabino Iglesias

Spectral Evidence  by Gemma Files

Dark and Distant Voices  by Tim Waggoner

 

 

We still have one more review of a Stoker nominee (in the Long Fiction category) to publish, so keep your eyes peeled for that and for the links to all the reviews for the nominated titles in the category of Superior Achievement in Long Fiction.

Enjoy!

Posted on May 13, 2019 by , Reply
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