Review: Short stories, with the punch of a full novel
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 04 7, 2014
I'm a big fan of short horror collections like this, and this one is quite exceptional.  It has a good variety of styles, and time periods to keep things mixed up.There are seventeen stories, and a great poem to start things off.  The author's writing style is great, and he is able to vary it in an amazing way to meet the needs of each story.We start off with a classically styled story set in old London, with a greedy father, inadvertently losing his daughter.  The tension and pacing is better than reading any classic tale.Throughout all of author D R Gordon's short stories, he build the small world's incredibly well in such a short span. And surprisingly the collections has excellent dynamic character development. A lot of authors don't build up the characters in shorts and focus on the story alone. This was a very nice surprise.What I like best of all is the eclectic nature of the collection. It  varies from old London, to back woods hunting, to a man with a mysterious tail that grew overnight. One thing is for sure, it isn't stale or boring. I read through the whole book in one night, I just wanted to see what the next one was going to be about, and before I knew it, I was done.I recommend this to any fan of horror stories, even if you don't typically go for the short ones, these don't read like your every day short story.