Review: ANEMIC  (Sorry, but I couldn't resist)
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 04 25, 2012
I am a great fan of the Megpack series, all of which provide many hours of entertaining, escapist reading pleasure for a very low price, so it's hard to be overly critical of any of them. However, in my opinion, this is not one of the better collections in the Megapack series. While most Megapacks are, qualitatively speaking, a mixed bag, this one is a particularly uneven mixture of new and old in which the new tales don't measure up to the old. "Kvetchula"? "Dracula's New Dress"?  C'mon already. And why repeat the much-anthologized "Dracula's Guest" and Benson's "The Room in the Tower" (both of which already appeared in previous Megapack anthologies)? If the editors had difficulty locating public domain vampire stories to include, there would seem to be a great many creepy ones from the "Weird Tales" (magazine) era which could have been considered. Repeating stories is not a wise thing to do because it runs the risk of alienating loyal customers of this product-line. But Wildside Press, to its credit, has repeated stories only infrequently, and it has also revised, improved and updated more than a few of its previously published Megapacks, so one cannot be too critical of an occasional blunder. Also on a positive note, this collection does include Gautier's creepy classic "Clarimonde" and enough solidly entertaining tales to make up for the few repeats and duds. So while this may not be as great as other Megapacks, it is still generally OK (and at only a dollar, still worth a try). Nevertheless, it remains disappointing because it COULD have been so much better.