Fearful Symmetries

Some are good, some are great. As stated by editor Ellen Datlow there isn’t really a theme, though “monsters” crop up frequently. The greatest strength of short stories is also its weakness: you can drop the reader into something electric without much explanation. The downside is if the reader is trying to puzzle out what’s happening then it is hard to get invested in the story. But the highs here outweigh the lows.Highly recommended for horror fans who favor a literary bent.

This gets off to a terrific start. The first two tales, Gemma Files’ “A Wish from a Bone” and Nathan Ballingrud’s “The Atlas of Hell,” are thrilling and intense experiences. I couldn’t put them down and couldn’t wait to see where the anthology would take me next.Not quite as far as I’d hoped.While the 18 tales that follow are mostly readable (save for a couple of duds), they rarely measure up to expectations sync’ed to the openers, and my inner editor kept making mental margin notes.Happily, there are exceptions. Robert Shearman’s “Suffer Little Children” comes closest to honest-to-goodness dread -- though it doesn’t quite get there, possibly because its protagonist is a distant figure. (It’s rare to find dread without intimacy.) And Michael Marshall Smith’s “Power” is a riveting take on Silicon Valley obsessiveness.But, that said, many of the other stories seemed slight or somehow burdened. Laird Barron’s breezy “The Worms Crawl In” flew out of my head as quickly as it entered. Brian Evenson’s “The Window” felt more like an intro to a story than a story in itself. Terry Dowling’s “The Four Darks” seemed unnecessarily complicated. The out-of-order conceit in “Wendigo Nights” is a dated effect without persuasive justification. John Langan had a wonderful core idea for the afterlife in “Episode Three: On the Great Plains, in the Snow,” but made the mistake of crowbarring an actual monster into the tale, which almost instantly turns pedestrian. (Sometimes monsters are better suggested than seen.) And while most of Carole Johnstons “Catching Flies” is a lovely blend of attachment and detachment, the child-like and precocious, the vague and the specific, the appended afterword has the effect of defusing it.

I am an anthology connoisseur and have been since I read my first some 30 years ago.... One that just happened to be penned by Steven King.I take great pleasure in losing myself in the ebb and flow, the subject variety and emotional ferocity, and the ever-changing tone, voice, and conceptualization from a variety of authors or authors' works.I've read many anthologies that Ellen Datlow has helped to midwife into existence. Every one is absolutely greater than the sum of its parts, as they should be. Every one has also lead me to finding at least one new author whose works I happily and voraciously consume upon finishing the anthology in which they featured. Hope anyone considering finds as much joy here as I did.

Here is the metric I use to rate the books I review:One Star: Couldn't finish it.Two Stars: Finished it and didn't like it.Three Stars: It was worth reading.Four Stars: It was very good.Five Stars: It was unforgettable.I COULD NOT get into this collection. Gave up at 25%.

Excellent set of stories, all were very good. Easily one of the best collections I’ve read this year. Great read.

Some of these stories were very good indeed. Well-paced, creepy, and thoughtful.Others- well, I am not usually a horror reader, and I am probably missing something of modern horror conventions- but several of the stories struck me as being so oblique that they did not actually make sense to me.Most, though, were very good, and some were excellent.Generally recommended, even for non-horror fans.

An odd and disturbing collection of stories-but in all the best ways! I had never heard of most of the authors before but will definitely be looking for their work from here on out.

Beautiful condition, great delivery speed

One of her very best.

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