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Big Mad Drongo
Nov 10, 2006

Xiahou Dun posted:

Is it any good?

I remember kind of liking it ages ago when the blog format was novel, but the writing wasn"t great even then and I imagine it reads like a primitive, overly long exploration-based SCP these days.

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SniperWoreConverse
Mar 20, 2010



Gun Saliva
It was worth reading, iirc the end kinda went wonky but i'd give it a shot

Ham Cheeks
Nov 18, 2012

Feeling hammy
That's it! Thank you, it goes wonky at the end but oh well.

Opopanax
Aug 8, 2007

I HEX YE!!!


The General Horror Thread: it goes wonky at the end but oh well.

SniperWoreConverse
Mar 20, 2010



Gun Saliva
Rereading it I think it holds up better than I thought, but the blog framing doesn't do any favors & kinda hurts it tbh

oh god oh fuck
Dec 22, 2019

anyone read ted's caving page recently to see how that holds up?

SniperWoreConverse
Mar 20, 2010



Gun Saliva
that's one where it actually should be in the form of a piece of poo poo blog from the incredible futuristic year 2000.

My main criticism of the sick land is that there's no possible way it could work as described, the weakest part is the blog concept because there's no way the military industrial complex would allow it to be posted. It'd be better if it had been posted using the device of "i found this kinda cool old rear end computer at a thrift store in [foreign country] and got it working and there's these files on there..." or something roughly like that.

e2: The Sick Land is pretty good and i think works, but it would have worked better if the author had had a better grip on academics (probably, i'm a dropout but some of it seems like a stretch) & computer stuff. There's a few things I'd think about changing to try and make it more plausible but it's basic concepts i think work really well.

e3: it's kind of a link between the ideas of lovecraft what you get in annihilation or roadside picnic or stalker or w/e, except i think annihilation might have come out after

SniperWoreConverse fucked around with this message at 18:40 on Nov 27, 2022

Idle Amalgam
Mar 7, 2008

said I'm never lackin'
always pistol packin'
with them automatics
we gon' send 'em to Heaven
Suggestions for other collections like Wounds? It's something I constantly recommend and love.

I did lose interest in carrier wave but I'll maybe revisit it some day.

Opopanax
Aug 8, 2007

I HEX YE!!!


Idle Amalgam posted:

Suggestions for other collections like Wounds? It's something I constantly recommend and love.

I did lose interest in carrier wave but I'll maybe revisit it some day.

I’m assuming you read North American Lake Monsters but absolutely do that if not. Is there anything specific you’re looking for or just good horror anthologies?

Traxis
Jul 2, 2006

Idle Amalgam posted:

Suggestions for other collections like Wounds? It's something I constantly recommend and love.

I did lose interest in carrier wave but I'll maybe revisit it some day.

The Immeasurable Corpse of Nature by Christopher Slatsky

Lil Mama Im Sorry
Oct 14, 2012

I'M BACK AND I'M SCARIN' WHITE FOLKS

Idle Amalgam posted:

Suggestions for other collections like Wounds? It's something I constantly recommend and love.


I ran through Matthew Bartlett’s collections lately and loved them. Its more genre horror than Wounds but there’s an underlying pathos in his writing that hits kinda the same vein.

Also, Nicole Cushing is a little extreme i guess but ive read a few of her novellas now and they’re pretty great.

Lil Mama Im Sorry fucked around with this message at 04:09 on Dec 2, 2022

Conrad_Birdie
Jul 10, 2009
Brian Evenson’s short story collections

Bilirubin
Feb 16, 2014

The sanctioned action is to CHUG


Traxis posted:

The Immeasurable Corpse of Nature by Christopher Slatsky
A favourite of mine as well. Its a bit bleaker (think more Laird Barron in tone) than Wounds but its stories really stick with you.

Lil Mama Im Sorry posted:

I ran through Matthew Bartlett’s collections lately and loved them. Its more genre horror than Wounds but there’s an underlying pathos in his writing that hits kinda the same vein.

I love his work as well. Similarly, Philip Fracassi.

And I'm also a Gemma Files stan

Xiahou Dun
Jul 16, 2009

We shall dive down through black abysses... and in that lair of the Deep Ones we shall dwell amidst wonder and glory forever.



Opopanax posted:

I’m assuming you read North American Lake Monsters but absolutely do that if not. Is there anything specific you’re looking for or just good horror anthologies?

The more specific about you liked about Wounds, the better the recommendations, but obviously I gotta plug Wide Carnivorous Sky.

poo poo, I need to finish Corpsemouth.

Lil Mama Im Sorry
Oct 14, 2012

I'M BACK AND I'M SCARIN' WHITE FOLKS

Bilirubin posted:

And I'm also a Gemma Files stan

I just snagged Spectral Evidence after reading In That Endlessness, Our End, which is a great collection that sorta falls off towards the end but has some bangers in the front half.

Bilirubin
Feb 16, 2014

The sanctioned action is to CHUG


Lil Mama Im Sorry posted:

I just snagged Spectral Evidence after reading In That Endlessness, Our End, which is a great collection that sorta falls off towards the end but has some bangers in the front half.

We Will All Go Down Together is my favourite of hers so far but I have enjoyed all these collections very much

ShutteredIn
Mar 24, 2005

El Campeon Mundial del Acordeon
I went back to Gemma Files’s first collection and it leads off with extremely detailed necrophilia. It’s…. a lot.

Idle Amalgam
Mar 7, 2008

said I'm never lackin'
always pistol packin'
with them automatics
we gon' send 'em to Heaven

Opopanax posted:

I’m assuming you read North American Lake Monsters but absolutely do that if not. Is there anything specific you’re looking for or just good horror anthologies?

That is definitely one I enjoyed as well. Just looking for good collections that are tonally similar.

Traxis posted:

The Immeasurable Corpse of Nature by Christopher Slatsky

Added it to the list. Thank you!

Lil Mama Im Sorry posted:

I ran through Matthew Bartlett’s collections lately and loved them. Its more genre horror than Wounds but there’s an underlying pathos in his writing that hits kinda the same vein.

Also, Nicole Cushing is a little extreme i guess but ive read a few of her novellas now and they’re pretty great.

Added some of Bartlett's collections to the list. I've listened to the audiobook for Gateways to Abomination. I've not heard of Nicole Cushing and will have to do some investigating.

Conrad_Birdie posted:

Brian Evenson’s short story collections

Definitely got a few of these on the list.

Xiahou Dun posted:

The more specific about you liked about Wounds, the better the recommendations, but obviously I gotta plug Wide Carnivorous Sky.

poo poo, I need to finish Corpsemouth.

I've got maybe one or two stories left in Corpsemouth, and am about halfway through the updated Mr. Gaunt and Other Uneasy Encounters.

Bilirubin posted:

A favourite of mine as well. Its a bit bleaker (think more Laird Barron in tone) than Wounds but its stories really stick with you.

I love his work as well. Similarly, Philip Fracassi.

And I'm also a Gemma Files stan

I've tried a couple times to get into Laird Barron, but I could not. I want to give their stuff another try.

I'll have to look into Philip Fracassi and Gemma Files.


I appreciate the recommendations!

Good Citizen
Aug 12, 2008

trump trump trump trump trump trump trump trump trump trump
Saw a new Aaron Beauregard came out about a week ago, Playground, and decided to give him another chance. If you want to read about kids going through a Saw 2-esque playground themed trap gauntlet then its pretty much that. Even if that sounds good to you I'd advise skipping the chapter(s) with the evil head lady's backstory tho, nobody needs to read all that.

As a palette cleanser I also ready Night Weaver by Brian Berry and if you want some quick B-movie spider schlock then I'd recommend. It's a horror movie playing on TNT on a Saturday afternoon from the 90s in book form, and will take you about as long to get through.

I'd post more but mostly I'm just reading a dozen different short story collections at once and can't keep them straight in my head.

escape artist
Sep 24, 2005

Slow train coming
seconding Phillip Fracassi, he's a genius, the collection Beneath A Pale Sky was one of my favorite reads

Help a goon out! Lots of books - horror, nonfiction, classics and more for sale.

Bilirubin
Feb 16, 2014

The sanctioned action is to CHUG


ShutteredIn posted:

I went back to Gemma Files’s first collection and it leads off with extremely detailed necrophilia. It’s…. a lot.

There are books she wrote (I have heard) that verge more on the side of erotica too, but its minimal in the three collections mentioned ITT

I don't recall what you are speaking of though, was that in Experimental Film?

e. I'm guessing that was from Kissing Carrion, given that title. Have not read.

Bilirubin fucked around with this message at 20:19 on Dec 3, 2022

ShutteredIn
Mar 24, 2005

El Campeon Mundial del Acordeon

Bilirubin posted:

There are books she wrote (I have heard) that verge more on the side of erotica too, but its minimal in the three collections mentioned ITT

I don't recall what you are speaking of though, was that in Experimental Film?

e. I'm guessing that was from Kissing Carrion, given that title. Have not read.

Yeah, Kissing Carrion. I don’t really recommend it, there’s a few interesting stories but she really hadn’t found her style yet - most of it reads like she was aping Poppy Z. Brite but not really hitting it,

FPyat
Jan 17, 2020
How is The Secret of Ventriloquism?

escape artist
Sep 24, 2005

Slow train coming

FPyat posted:

How is The Secret of Ventriloquism?

I wanted to like it, really badly, but I found it to be a chore and pretty derivative. :(

Help a goon out! Lots of books - horror, nonfiction, classics and more for sale.

Opopanax
Aug 8, 2007

I HEX YE!!!


Fanatical has a pretty decent looking horror comics bundle . Nothing I've read personally but a few I've definitely heard good things about.

value-brand cereal
May 2, 2008

Sooooooo. It's the end of the gregarious year. Anyone have some spotify esque top 10 hits to rec?


I got hit with a reading slump and all I've read in the last month is....

It Rides a Pale Horse - Andy Marino

quote:

From a new star in horror fiction comes a terrifying novel of obsession, greed, and the shocking actions we’ll take to protect those we love, all set in a small town filled with dark secrets.

The Larkin siblings are known around the small town of Wofford Falls. Both are artists, but Peter Larkin, Lark to his friends, is the hometown hero. The one who went to the big city and got famous, then came back and settled down. He’s the kind of guy who becomes fast friends with almost anyone. His sister Betsy on the other hand is more… eccentric. She keeps to herself.
When Lark goes to deliver one of his latest pieces to a fabulously rich buyer, it seems like a regular transaction. Even being met at the gate of the sprawling, secluded estate by an intimidating security guard seems normal. Until the guard plays him a live feed: Betsy being abducted in real time.
Lark is informed that she’s safe for now, but her well‑being is entirely in his hands. He's given a book. Do what the book says, and Betsy will go free.
It seems simple enough. But as Lark begins to read he realizes: the book might be demonic. Its writer may be unhinged. His sister's captors are almost certainly not what they seem. And his town and those within it are... changing.
And the only way out is through.


Supernatural and paranormal.
hosed up magic users.
hosed up magical book - not Necronomicon but in that [ha!] vein
Eldritch horror with a hint of folk horror, but not lovecraft. Think a la Experimental Film but with apocalyptic themes.
Small town locale.
Small rag tag team.
Otherworlds / unreality.
If you like the general concept of SCP foundation but on a much smaller scale, you might like the bad guys here. But they aren't containing anything so much as the opposite.
Good amount of gore but not splatterpunk levels. Body horror involved, too.
Art horror theme. It sort of reminds me of a few episodes from the podcast 'I Am In Eskew', specifically the art museum gallery one with the labyrinthine situation.

No Gods For Drowning by Hailey Piper.

quote:

IN THE BEGINNING, MAN WAS PREY. WITHOUT THE GODS, THEY'LL BE PREY AGAIN
The old gods have fled, and the monsters they had kept at bay for centuries now threaten to drown the city of Valentine, hunting mankind as in ancient times. In the midst of the chaos, a serial killer has begun ritually sacrificing victims, their bodies strewn throughout the city.
Lilac Antonis wants to stop the impending destruction of her city by summoning her mother, a blood god—even if she has to slit a few throats to do it. But evading her lover Arcadia and her friends means sneaking, lying, and even spilling the blood of people she loves.
Alex and Cecil of Ace Investigations have been tasked with hunting down the killer, but as they close in—not knowing they're hunting their close friend Lilac—the detectives realize the gods may not have left willingly.
As flooding drags this city of cars and neon screaming into the jaws of sea demons and Arcadia struggles to save the people as captain of the evacuation team, Lilac’s ritual killings at last bear fruit, only to reveal her as a small piece in a larger plan. The gods’ protection costs far more than anyone has ever known, and Alex and Cecil are running out of time to discover the true culprit behind the gods’ disappearance before an ancient divine murder plot destroys them all.
Set in an alternate reality which updates mythology to near-modern day, No Gods For Drowning is part dark fantasy, part noir detective story, and unlike anything you've read before, from an author whose imagination knows no boundaries.


Apocalypses and eldritch horror centered mystery. Yes there's cop characters but it's not copaganda imo. I liked the mystery and rotating cast.

The Witch In the Well by Camilla Bruce

quote:

The Witch in the Well is a dark Norwegian thriller from Camilla Bruce, author of You Let Me In.

When two former friends reunite after decades apart, their grudges, flawed ambitions, and shared obsession swirl into an all-too-real echo of a terrible town legend.

Centuries ago, beautiful young Ilsbeth Clark was accused of witchcraft after several children disappeared. Her acquittal did nothing to stop her fellow townsfolk from drowning her in the well where the missing children were last seen.
When author and social media influencer Elena returns to the summer paradise of her youth to get her family’s manor house ready to sell, the last thing she expected was connecting with—and feeling inspired to write about—Ilsbeth’s infamous spirit. The very historical figure that her ex-childhood friend, Cathy, has been diligently researching and writing about for years.
What begins as a fiercely competitive sense of ownership over Ilsbeth and her story soon turns both women’s worlds into something more haunted and dangerous than they could ever imagine.


Eh. Ehh. It was interesting enough that I'd rec it, but her other novel, You Let Me In, was far better. Read that if the concept of 'incest csa horror but fae themed and it's not the fae who are the main abusers' appeals to you. I know that book is still stuck in my head next to Experimental Film and Night Film.

Malice House by Megan Shepherd

quote:

Of all the things aspiring artist Haven Marbury expected to find while clearing out her late father’s remote seaside house, Bedtime Stories for Monsters was not on the list. This secret handwritten manuscript is disturbingly different from his Pulitzer-winning works: its interweaving short stories crawl with horrific monsters and enigmatic humans that exist somewhere between this world and the next. The stories unsettle but also entice Haven, practically compelling her to illustrate them while she stays in the house that her father warned her was haunted. Clearly just dementia whispering in his ear . . . right?
Reeling from a failed marriage, Haven hopes an illustrated Bedtime Stories can be the lucrative posthumous father-daughter collaboration she desperately needs to jump-start her art career. However, everyone in the nearby vacation town wants a piece of the manuscript: her father’s obsessive literary salon members, the Ink Drinkers; her mysterious yet charming neighbor, who has a tendency toward three a.m. bonfires; a young barista with a literary forgery business; and of course, whoever keeps trying to break into her house. But when a monstrous creature appears under Haven’s bed right as grisly deaths are reported in the nearby woods, she must race to uncover dark, otherworldly family secrets—completely rewriting everything she ever knew about herself in the process.


I'd compare this in the same but very VERY distanced venn diagram of Alan Wake. Only in the sense of fictional creations altering reality. I thought the mystery was great, the supernatural poo poo really did ramp up at the end.


Honorary recs that I liked but have no strong feelings about.
The Leviathan by Rosie Andrews
Historical gothic demonic possession with witch hunts and mild political social maneuvurign? Good poo poo.

The House of Footsteps by Mathew West <-I feel questionable about this because it has a predatory gay character and while it makes sense in a historical context it comes across as uhm. Odd. Especially considering the ending wherein MAJOR ENDING SPOILERS The male MC rejects the gay male character to enter a marriage with the ghost witch woman. Is this simple horror or a weird way of reinforcing cishet gender norms? Idk, I'm not going to think much on this. Sometimes it's not that deep. It did leave a weird feeling in my lil gay bones. The isolation, small town horror was neat.

Bonus. This is not horror at all but it was suspenseful and hosed me up enough to add it here. Because phew what the gently caress.
The Skeleton Key by Erin Kelly


Kestral posted:

Horror thread, I have a weirdly specific request: first-person epistolary horror with a reading level that isn't impenetrable for an inexperienced reader.

One of the teens I work with recently discovered Doki Doki Literature Club, and was telling me about how much they liked the short story hidden in that game, which is essentially the first-person confession letter of young sociopath describing the circumstances of her first murder. Since I'm always eager to get these kids to read, and they said they'd be interested in checking out other things that strike a similar chord, I'm looking for something that might work for them. The first-person epistolary format is the secret sauce here, and I also don't want to scare them off with prose that's going to make them run to the dictionary every paragraph. Honestly, even good creepypasta might fit the bill, and act as a gateway drug to more serious horror lit. Any suggestions?

This is so way late but. Maybe The Last Days of Jack Sparks by Jason Arnopp? I remember that being comedic and not too hardcore.

ClydeFrog
Apr 13, 2007
Empathize with stupidity and you’re halfway to thinking like an idiot
My reading list has so much from this thread and the majority still come from your write ups value-brand cereal.

Thank you fellow forum posters for keeping me spooked throughout 2022

Jedit
Dec 10, 2011

Proudly supporting vanilla legends 1994-2014

ShutteredIn posted:

I went back to Gemma Files’s first collection and it leads off with extremely detailed necrophilia. It’s…. a lot.

Well I'm glad I didn't go in cold.

ClydeFrog
Apr 13, 2007
Empathize with stupidity and you’re halfway to thinking like an idiot

Jedit posted:

Well I'm glad I didn't go in cold.

Unlike the character I assume :barf:

Enfys
Feb 17, 2013

The ocean is calling and I must go

ClydeFrog posted:

Thank you fellow forum posters for keeping me spooked throughout 2022

Antivehicular
Dec 30, 2011


I wanna sing one for the cars
That are right now headed silent down the highway
And it's dark and there is nobody driving And something has got to give

Just read Things Have Gotten Worse Since We Last Spoke last night, and I'm echoing a lot of the same disappointment as other people in this thread. The pacing is janky -- I get that the idea is that the main characters are lonely people moving way too fast, but it still feels like this should all take more time, with maybe some elided time to imply a "normal" borderline-abusive power-exchange relationship happening before things start getting gory -- and the character voices read much too much alike and much too "writerly" for this setup, IMHO. I think there are good bones here (Agnes's history of generational family violence creating warped expectations of intimacy, and Zoe constantly testing Agnes's boundaries and being simultaneously horrified and fascinated that those boundaries don't really exist), but it all needed more time and space and more distinct voices.

About halfway through the next story in this edition, "The Enchantment," and it's... okay, I guess? LaRocca keeps doing this thing where we get huge ideas with minimal exploration, and it bothers me even though I know being evocative is the point. I just feel like "science has disproven the afterlife" is a big thing to just throw out there! Why? How? Maybe there's going to be some payoff for this, but I'm not sure, because LaRocca doesn't seem to do payoff worth half a drat.

UwUnabomber
Sep 9, 2012

Pubes dreaded out so hoes call me Chris Barnes. I don't wear a condom at the pig farm.

Opopanax posted:

Fanatical has a pretty decent looking horror comics bundle . Nothing I've read personally but a few I've definitely heard good things about.

I liked Something Is Killing the Children but I didn't read very far.

Lil Mama Im Sorry
Oct 14, 2012

I'M BACK AND I'M SCARIN' WHITE FOLKS
The collection that stuck with me the most this year was probably The Puppet King and other Atonements by Justin Burnett — the standout story for me being “devourer” which sorta twists the whole “academic researcher goes too far in the search of forbidden knowledge” into a music journalism horror piece.

Idle Amalgam
Mar 7, 2008

said I'm never lackin'
always pistol packin'
with them automatics
we gon' send 'em to Heaven

ShutteredIn posted:

I went back to Gemma Files’s first collection and it leads off with extremely detailed necrophilia. It’s…. a lot.

It's a sick story though. Literally and figuratively. I just finished it and :ok:

value-brand cereal
May 2, 2008

ClydeFrog posted:

My reading list has so much from this thread and the majority still come from your write ups value-brand cereal.

Thank you fellow forum posters for keeping me spooked throughout 2022

Oh you're welcome! I also get my recs from word of mouth so I'm glad to share the horror and joys!

My current attempt to get back into reading involves some recent releases.

A History of Fear by Luke Dumas. His work also showed up in some lgbt anthologies but I forget if it was horror related. All the same, the premise sounds interesting.

quote:

The Devil is in Scotland.

Grayson Hale, the most infamous murderer in Scotland, is better known by a different name: the Devil’s Advocate. The twenty-five-year-old American grad student rose to instant notoriety when he confessed to the slaughter of his classmate Liam Stewart, claiming the Devil made him do it.

When Hale is found hanged in his prison cell, officers uncover a handwritten manuscript that promises to answer the question that’s haunted the nation for years: was Hale a lunatic, or had he been telling the truth all along?

Unnervingly, Hale doesn’t fit the bill of a killer. The first-person narrative that centers this novel reveals an acerbic young atheist, newly enrolled at the University of Edinburgh to carry on the legacy of his recently deceased father. In need of cash, he takes a job ghostwriting a mysterious book for a dark stranger, but has misgivings when the project begins to reawaken his satanophobia, a rare condition that causes him to live in terror that the Devil is after him. As he struggles to disentangle fact from fear, Grayson’s world is turned upside-down after events force him to confront his growing suspicion that he’s working for the one he has feared all this time—and that the book is only the beginning of their partnership.​​



You Have Never Been Here by Mary Rickert aka M. Rickert

quote:

Open this book to any page and find yourself enspelled by these lush, alchemical stories. Faced with the uncanny and the impossible, Rickert's protagonists are as painfully, shockingly, complexly human as the readers who will encounter them. Mothers, daughters, witches, artists, strangers, winged babies, and others grapple with deception, loss, and moments of extraordinary joy.



The Transgressionists and Other Disquieting Works by Giorgio de Maria [anthology of short fiction] I loved Twenty Days of Turin so mcuh that it's stuck in my head. If you like weird fiction, give this a go.

quote:

Before an untimely mental breakdown cut short his two-decade career, Giorgio De Maria distinguished himself as one of Italy's most unique and eccentric weird fiction masters. With a background in the post-war literary culture of Turin -- Italy's urbane but eerie "city of black magic" -- De Maria drew inspiration from the Turinese underbelly of occultism, secret societies and radical politics. His writing coincided with the decade of terrorist violence known to Italians as the Years of Lead; the outcome was a weird fiction suffused with panic, rage, trauma, paranoia and meditations on antisocial hubris. In 1978, he told an interviewer: "...I think that the dimension of the fantastic, as much as this may seem paradoxical, is the most fitting one to express a reality as complex as ours today." 

De Maria's debut novel, The Transgressionists (1968) portrays a cell of malicious telepaths who meet in the cafés and jazz clubs of 1960s Turin to plot world domination. After experiencing the worst of their power, an embittered office clerk resolves to join them and prove himself worthy to share in their villainy. He cultivates twisted mindfulness techniques to awaken his inner sociopath. He fights off predatory phantoms that seem maddeningly drawn to him. He prepares for the dangerous "Great Leap" which will make him into a fully-fledged Transgressionist. But could his megalomania strain relations with his fiancee? Will he sacrifice love in his quest for omnipotence?

The other works in this volume are no less surreal and startling. The Secret Death of Joseph Dzhugashvili (1976) gives us a nightmarish fantasy Soviet Union, where a dissident poet finds himself trapped in a psychological experiment conducted by Stalin himself. In "The End of Everydayism," a group of futuristic artists begin using corpses as a medium -- with violent, unforeseen results. The antihero of "General Trebisonda" is a possibly insane commander who prepares for a war crime in an eerily deserted fortress. 

Available in English for the first time, this collection contains two novellas, two short stories and a dystopian teleplay, The Appeal, which the post-cyberpunk novelist Andrea Vaccaro has lauded as "worthy of the best episodes of Black Mirror." Meanwhile, an introduction by translator Ramon Glazov offers a detailed account of De Maria's background, creative context and thoroughly unusual life.


If my brain doesn't like words, I can always fall back on this very friendly picture book, goofy smile emoji,
The Devil's Atlas by Edward Brooke-Hitching [nonfiction]

quote:

The Devil’s Atlas is an illustrated guide to the heavens, hells and lands of the dead as imagined throughout history by cultures and religions around the world. Packed with colourful maps, paintings and captivating stories, the reader is taken on a compelling tour of the geography, history and supernatural populations of the afterworlds of cultures around the globe.

Whether it’s the thirteen heavens of the Aztecs, the Chinese Taoist netherworld of ‘hungry ghosts’, or the ‘Hell of the Flaming Rooster’ of Japanese Buddhist mythology (in which sinners are tormented by an enormous fire-breathing cockerel), The Devil’s Atlas gathers together a wonderful variety of beliefs and representations of life after death. These afterworlds are illustrated with an unprecedented collection of images, ranging from the marvellous ‘infernal cartography’ of the European Renaissance artists attempting to map the structured Hell described by Dante and the decorative Islamic depictions of Paradise to the various efforts to map the Garden of Eden and the spiritual vision paintings of nineteenth-century mediums.

The Devil’s Atlas accompanies beautiful images with a highly readable trove of surprising facts and narratives, from the more inventive torture methods awaiting sinners, to colourful eccentric catalogues of demons, angels and assorted death deities. A traveller’s guide to worlds unseen, The Devil’s Atlas is a fascinating study of the boundless capacity of human invention, a visual chronicle of man’s hopes, fears and fantasies of what lies beyond.

value-brand cereal
May 2, 2008

Wanders back into the thread hi hey. A long while ago I posted about an anthology of epistolary-esque found horror called Journals of Horror: Found Fiction, edited by Todd Keisling. I found [ha!] another anthology, just published this year in october! Woo! I have no idea on the quality, or the plots. I'm hoping for Scanlines by Todd Keisling, but I'll settle for Wylding Hall.

*dangles it in the thread like catnip* someone kindly read this and report back, thanks in advance /jk

FOUND: An anthology of found footage horror stories by Cull, Andrew; Baxter, Alan; Cook, Georgia; Hepler, Jeremy; McGregor, Tim; Kolakowski, Nick; McLeod Chapman, Clay; Vincent, Bev; Wilkes, Ally ISBN 9780648731528 (ISBN10: 0648731529) <- I added the isbn because 'found' is a terrible name for an anthology or novel. Way too generic, way too hard to sift for. Nitpicking, I know.

quote:

Eighteen stories of found footage horror. Between April and August 2021 eighteen horror writers disappeared. Gathered together for the first time, these are the stories they were writing at the time of their disappearances.

Reader caution is advised. Advance readers of this anthology have reported nausea, feelings of anxiety, paranoia and hallucinations after reading the texts included.

Table of Contents
Two Months Too Long by Holly Rae Garcia
Face Down Death Volume VIII by Josh Rountree
Junk Pickup by Fred Fischer, IV
Disappearances at Coal Hill by Nick Kolakowski
The Veiled Lady by Angela Sylvaine
Spew of News by Clay McLeod Chapman
Ghost Town Adventures by Joe Butler
Regular Saint by Donna Lynch
Walls and Floors and Bricks and Stone by Georgia Cook
Summons by Ally Wilkes
Green Magnetic Tape by Tim McGregor
Accidents, of a Sort by Kurt Fawver
A Grave Issue by Bev Vincent
The Novak Roadhouse Massacre by Alan Baxter
This Video is Unavailable by Robert Levy
Dear Penny by Jeremy Hepler
The Pall by Aristo Couvaras
A Small Hand-Built House by Ali Seay

Sorry for the lousy summary but that's the best that's offered on websites... Effort.jpg, I agree. I personally added the table of contents, by the way. God, why are ebooks formatted so poorly? My version has all caps table of contents, then another non hyperlinked TOC after two different editor introduction essays.

OhAreThey
Oct 12, 2012

I like your nurse's uniform, guy.

Antivehicular posted:

Just read Things Have Gotten Worse Since We Last Spoke last night, and I'm echoing a lot of the same disappointment as other people in this thread. The pacing is janky -- I get that the idea is that the main characters are lonely people moving way too fast, but it still feels like this should all take more time, with maybe some elided time to imply a "normal" borderline-abusive power-exchange relationship happening before things start getting gory -- and the character voices read much too much alike and much too "writerly" for this setup, IMHO. I think there are good bones here (Agnes's history of generational family violence creating warped expectations of intimacy, and Zoe constantly testing Agnes's boundaries and being simultaneously horrified and fascinated that those boundaries don't really exist), but it all needed more time and space and more distinct voices.

About halfway through the next story in this edition, "The Enchantment," and it's... okay, I guess? LaRocca keeps doing this thing where we get huge ideas with minimal exploration, and it bothers me even though I know being evocative is the point. I just feel like "science has disproven the afterlife" is a big thing to just throw out there! Why? How? Maybe there's going to be some payoff for this, but I'm not sure, because LaRocca doesn't seem to do payoff worth half a drat.

The overly written first part of Things Have Gotten Worse drove me insane, and it was so unnecessary! He doesn't write like that in the two other stories in the collection. I agree that the pacing was way off. The idea behind the story is excellent, but the execution is disappointing.

What did you think of the final story in the collection? I liked it a lot!

escape artist
Sep 24, 2005

Slow train coming
drunk idiot

escape artist fucked around with this message at 02:25 on Dec 19, 2022

Ornamented Death
Jan 25, 2006

Pew pew!

Themed anthologies have been around for decades. If you want collections, there are no shortage of them.

That said, Found was mediocre. A few decent stories and a few stinkers. You're not likely to see any of them in the usual Year's Best anthologies.

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ravenkult
Feb 3, 2011


Ah yes, the anthology, the lazy man's collection.

What?

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