Review: Creepy, Well-Written Collection of Horror Tales
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 04 14, 2014
"From Darkness" is a stellar, unsettling collection of short horror stories that run the gamut from the supernatural to the evil that sometimes lives within a human soul. There's a mix of short, shocking tales and longer stories that build up in suspense, but each is unique.The opening story, "The Suitor," has one of the most shocking endings--in it, a young poet and his lover are threatened with separation when a mysterious, sinister stranger offers to buy the girl's hand in marriage (and the Dickensian names of the characters are one of the best parts). "The Suitor" is followed by stories such as "The Portrait," in which an artist's attempt to capture his soul on canvas drives him mad, and "Reddening Tide," about a woman's violent encounter with her own doppelganger. In "The Beast," one person's cute child becomes a monster in the eyes of another, while in "Alice" a poignant piece about a child's imagination segues into a nightmare.Those are only a few of the stories in "From Darkness," which covers horror from demons to sinister fairies. Each is well-written no matter what style the author chooses, from more modern prose to that more in the style of old-school horror writers. A combination of vivid imagery and the author's knack for packing a lot of tension and eeriness into even the shortest tale makes for a creepy, memorable read. If you love horror and more specifically the short story genre, I recommend "From Darkness."