Review: Some good ideas, could use more work
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 12 27, 2013
I received a copy of this book in exchange for a non-reciprocal review.This was a collection of stories and I'll discuss each briefly. I'll try to avoid including spoilers in the summaries, but when I discuss them further it will include spoilers."Salazar's Flamenco Dancer" was sort of like a discussion about a cursed painting. It felt a little like if a friend was telling you about something weird that happened."Hidden Canyon" was about a boy who has to kill a bear in order to be considered a man in his tribe. He comes across a strange beast that seems intent on killing him."Chimera" was about a woman suffering from sleep paralysis and seeing a strange snake man in her bedroom. It's written as a letter from her to her doctor explaining what happened."Old Billy" is about the groundskeeper of a cemetery and a kid who lives nearby it and visits it often."The Wind in the Hollow" follows a young man who is attempting to sell his farm after it's been considered cursed, and shows why people consider is cursed."El Curandero" is about someone visiting a shaman to get help."The Bells of San Xavier" is a poem. My eyes glaze over when I see poetry, so even though I read it I couldn't even begin to describe what it's about.In "Skull Valley" the story is told through diary entries and is about an ancient book that has been found and people who are attempting to translate it.In "Eyes of the Pine" a man is driving to meet his friends at a camping site when he gets strange texts warning him not to text and drive."Midnight Guests" is about a team of ghost hunters visiting a ranch to help explain a mysterious light that was appearing in the distance."The Ballad of Red Feather" was another poem."Biting Words" was a story about a woman attempting to find a hotel and get to her party. On the way, she keeps getting interrupted by homeless asking her for things like donations."We are Seven" is about a small schizophrenic girl and her hallucinations as she leaves the asylum and is taken in by her aunt.The first four stories I felt were okay. Reading the first one was like hearing an anecdote about what happened because of a curse. There's some follow-up on how the painting came to be cursed, but I felt like that was the weaker part of the story.The second had a good set-up. The character was likable enough that I was interested in what would happen to him.The third I was interested in what would happen to her, but the story never left me feeling threatened. Sleep paralysis can be a very frightening thing in and of itself so it's a good enough set-up, but I think describing the creature see saw and it essentially standing there trying to look threatening took away from the story. I just didn't think it was scary.And for the fourth, it had some interesting parts but was confusing as well. At the end I still wasn't sure why some of the stuff with the tree was happening, or how it could happen. I didn't see a connection between spitting out gems and killing people, and even if I were to just say "supernatural tree" I'd still be wondering why it has a ton of gems. This probably could have been fixed if instead of gems coming up, something like jewelry was coming up. Then, when the boy sees the man killed and buried under the tree, there would be a connection to how jewelry ended up there."The Wind in the Hollow" was one of my favorite stories from this book. It's the longest one, and gives the most time to build up the characters. One of the things a lot of horror films have a problem with is making people care that something is happening to the characters, but here I genuinely felt bad for the characters. There was some time to show who they were and what happened. When it got to the scary scene and the narrator was caught in the middle of it, it was scary and had me flipping the pages to see what would happen next. The story stays pretty strong throughout and ends in a way that makes sense, though a little too much time is spent on things like talking about directions in a cornfield. I think it only had two weaknesses that stuck out to me: one was the explanation, which I felt like it was thrown in there. There wasn't much that hinted about what the explanation would be until a character tells the narrator. The second was I didn't have a clue who the narrator was for much of the story. I do think this story is worth a read, though, and I liked it very much."El Curandero" left me confused. The story was mostly going into the man's place and seeing weird things. While I'm sure some of it would be strange to see in person, it never felt that menacing. Nothing quite seemed like a conflict or climax or anything in it."Skull Valley" had a decent premise. I was let down by the big reveal because it left me wondering, "How long could they get away with this before a bunch of police were raiding the city?" If people were disappearing when they went into a small town, especially if there were witnesses to horrible things happening there who could report it, it probably wouldn't last very long. At least at the end the narrator was thinking of calling the cops.I think this story had a case of people not being believable. Even when the characters felt threatened and people were obviously doing things to get at them, they stuck around when they could have easily driven away."Eyes of the Pine" has a really good premise for the story. It's modern and it was creepy. Again, the payout at the end felt a little forced like some of the others, but I feel like this story could really be good. It started out very ominous and you could instantly connect with how creepy it would be to be in the character's position."Midnight Guests" was another one where I felt like the explanation was a bit weak. It's very hard to write the payout for a scary story, because the moment the scares are explained it tends to take away the fear.I did enjoy the two main characters for the story. I was invested in them and I was interested in hearing about the mystery. I think the build-up was good."Biting Words" had the same issue as "Skull Valley". I could understand the character to an extent. She was a woman out at night in a dangerous area trying to find a party. Being approached by a strange, large man would be a scary thing for her. That's perfectly understandable.She reacted in a way that didn't make sense to me, though. Instead of trying to politely get away from people she seemed more like she was going to provoke violence. When she's the smaller person and most likely to lose a fight, it doesn't make sense for her to needlessly aggravate people who she already believes are unstable. The only one that made sense to me was the elderly woman. The woman was in poor shape and non-threatening, so the main character wouldn't have reason to believe anything bad would happen to her for yelling at the old woman.I could believe her thinking bad things about the people, but it seemed overly short-sighted for her to readily voice her opinions about people when she thought they might hurt her.I think the last story, "We are Seven", had the best connection with the beginning and the end. There are clues beforehand that connect to the explanation given at the end. The character here, even though she's mentally ill, is fairly understandable. It's easy to see why she would like her friends and dislike other people. When she meets the priest we can see why she would try opening up to him at first and get increasingly annoyed when they talked about her as if she wasn't there right in front of her.I think the interesting part about this story is that she could very well be mentally ill for most of it to happen with nothing supernatural involved. I think only the part with the priest didn't make much sense to me. If it had been changed a little, in a way were it could have happened even if her friends weren't real, it would have been better. For most of the actions in the story I could see a way where she could have done something herself and then seen it as her friends doing it. For example, she could have easily overheard someone speaking about a stolen ring, and later on her friend tells her an explanation for how the ring got stolen. It could easily have been information she overheard or made up based on what the character herself knew.The very end was a little strange but I think the overall story was a good one and the main character was interesting.As a whole, the book had a few strong stories, a few weak stories, and several stories that were in the middle. One of the strong points for the author was making characters that the reader could get invested in. This isn't done very well in a lot of horror.The endings and explanations for a lot of the stories left something to be desired. Some came out of nowhere with no hints. I think the last story was the strongest when it came to this.A lot of the stories had good ideas that I could see being molded into something really good with some work.There were a few errors here and there but not enough to distract from the stories.My favorites were "The Wind in the Hollow" and "We are Seven". They happen to be the two longest. I think "The Wind in the Hollow" had the best scary scene in the entire book, as well as some good characters that readers could feel for. "We are Seven" has an interesting protagonist. Her character can be horrible yet understandable at the same time, and she could carry a story if done right.For a lot of this book I would give around 3 stars. For those two stories though, I'd give around four or a little more.