Review: An Above Average Collection!
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 01 4, 2014
I enjoyed the heck out of this collection!There are some excellent, extremely imaginative stories in this volume. I also liked that most of them were very short. It seems to me that most short stories are no longer any such thing. That is not the case here. These were nice bite sized pieces of bloody fun!The stories that worked the best for me were:"Literary Sweets", (which wasn't really a horror story, but I liked it anyway). It was sort of like a whimsical Dickens tale."The Monitor", was also not really a horror tale, but every once in a while even I enjoy a happy ending.That's the end of the "not really horror stories." At this point the stories continually became darker. I think this was an awesome job of the author putting the tales into an order that flows very well towards the darkness.The title story was a descent into a true WTF just happened? moment. I listened to this tale on audio book, (which I won through a contest held by the author), but then I had to read it to be sure I understood. (Turns out I did understand, it was just seriously messed up. I love messed up!)(At this point I switched from the audio to the printed version. The audio book had a clear and concise narrator that was wonderful, but I realized that for short fiction, where every word counts, actually reading the stories worked better for me. )"That Thing About a Picture and a Thousand Words" was an excellent story that reminded me a lot of a John R. Little book I recently read titled "Dreams In Black and White". The concept worked for me in the Little book and it worked for me here. 5*"Machinations" was a neat little sci-fi/horror short that was, yet again, very imaginative. 5*"He Who Laughs Last" (was hilarious before it turned horrific), " Come To Jesus Meeting" (even though this Jesus comes to you), and "Snuggles" round out my favorites of this collection. 5* each.There were very few stories that didn't work for me, one of them being " A Friendly Reminder" (I'm not sure I understood it properly, but if I did, it just didn't work for me.Overall, deducting just half a star for the few stories that didn't push my buttons, this strange, brutal, horrific and sometimes funny collection ranks well above average with me, so I rated it 4.5 stars. Highly recommended for fans of short stories.