recent read; Best New Horror: Volume 25 edited by Stephen Jones

It's hard to go wrong with any of these The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror anthologies from Stephen Jones.

This volume came out in 2014, and contains stories from 2013. It also includes a dense "Introduction: Horror in 2013" which informs about all manner of publications in the horror field for 2013. The only drawback is that titles are embedded in the prose. You'll need to distill your own list, if you are interested in following up on any of the mentioned books.

The stories are all quality, I don't need to review each one. A few weren't to my taste, which is nearly always a given with any anthology. Some of my favorites were "Click-clack the Rattlebag" by Neil Gaiman, "The Middle Park" by Michael Chislett, "Into The Water" by Simon Kurt Unsworth (an Innsmouthian tale,) and "The Sixteenth Step" by Robert Shearman.

The volume also includes the entire novella, "Whitstable" by Stephen Volk, featuring a fictionalized account of Peter Cushing's off-screen life as he deals with a real life monster. Well done and worth the read.

The thick volume ends with "Necrology: 2013," which, sadly, is an "in memoriam" essay. Many people were lost to the horror field in 2013.

As I said at the top, you can't really go wrong with any of these. Worth having. Worth reading.

p.s.; Jones has been republishing earlier volumes through PS Publishing for e-book editions. New ones are e-book and hardcover. (Dropping the The Mammoth Book Of... moniker.) They have new EC Comic style covers, too.

recent read; The Seeds of Nightmares

The Seeds of Nightmares by Tony Tremblay

Tony Tremblay has had horror stories published in various venues, and here he collects them together with a few previously unpublished offerings to round out the book. (Some of those tales were published under his penname, T. T. Zuma, for those keeping track.)

Tony shows variety and knows how to punch with a strong ending. His strongest strength is luring a reader into the story with grounded reality and characters, supplemented with a setting of quiet horror, before he unleashes the big horror, gore and/or darkly fantastical elements.

There are thirteen stories in this collection. I'll highlight a few of my favorites.

Things start off with a bang in "The Strange Saga of Mattie Dyer" - a Weird West tale, with plenty of weird to go around. "The Old Man" delivers straight ahead noir. "The Burial Board" is another tale of old times, featuring the gruesome practice of leaving a dead family member on a wooden board during winter until the spring thaw allows burial.

"Husband of Kellie" offers a zombie tale packed with emotional punch.

"The Pawnshop", from Wicked Tales, appears here, too. I really enjoyed its blend of noir meets Twilight Zone oddness.

"Chiyoung and Dongsun's Song" features the strangest twisted folk tale romance I've ever read.

The other stories are solid, too and all worth a read.

Another fun aspect of this collection are the author's notes that preface each tale. I enjoy author notes. For some reason, I enjoy them even more for short stories collections and anthologies.

Tony Tremblay is an author in the horror realm whose work is worth keeping an eye on - and more importantly - to enjoy reading.

The Return of Wagner's Kane (for real)

Not a tease, this time.

Chatting on Fb about Karl Edward Wagner, and the question came up about Kane being out-of-print again, and wondering when the Centipede editions might start to appear (if they are still happening,)
I poked my head in at Amazon.

Boy, was I surprised.

What you're seeing are the ebooks covers I pulled from Barnes & Noble, actually.  Amazon has the books listed, but they have incorrect covers. (and I mean incorrect - wrong book, wrong author.)

Not every Kane tale, of course, but it's great to see something available (or will be available tomorrow!)

Priced at $3.99 each, it's finally a chance for those who haven't experienced Kane to get in the door cheap!

December sales

I don't mean to be a pitch-man for Amazon so much, but there are some deals this month I think a lot of readers here would be interested in.  Some have already been reviewed on other blogs in my circle (Keith West,) so I thought I would note them.

I have loads of running Amazon wishlists and keep going over them constantly.  This month's deals aren't quite as stunning as last year (when Amazon dropped prices on 1,000 MP3 albums to coincide with their Kindle Fire launch) but still worth digging around.

Kindle specials;

Agincourt by Bernard Cornwell $1.99

The Archer's Tale by Bernard Cornwell  $3.79

Cradle of Solitude (Rogue Angel) $1.24  (see Keith's review of another Rogue Angel title)

Daily Life in the Middle Ages by Paul B. Newman $3.99 (good reference for fantasy & historical, I would imagine)

The Serpent Sea by Martha Wells $1.99 (see Keith's review)

God's War by Kameron Hurley $1.99 (I don't know of a review in particular, but it's a Night Shade Books title, so it's probably just fine)

Seven Princes by John R. Fultz, his debut novel $2.99

Did you know that Amazon also has Bargain Books (just like the front of the B&N brick'n'mortar store?)

It's almost a wash, but you can get the Kindle edition of LeGuin's Tales from Earthsea for $1.43 - or pony up a few more cents and get the mass market paperback for only $1.51.  The same applies for The Other Wind.  I haven't read them myself, but coming that cheap, and I enjoyed the original trilogy, I had to grab these - I went for the paperback to complete my print Earthsea collection.

Similarly, the above mentioned Cradle of Solitude, is almost as cheap in mmp.  And, The Dragon's Mark, is available cheaper as mmp than e'book right now, too.

Howard A. Jones' Desert of Souls hardcover is down to $10, and it has better cover art than the more expensive paperback.

Bargains include graphic novels, too.

The Orc Trifecta

Apologies on being late with this post.  Busy month, lazy month, etc.
Most of you know about these stories, and with the slim number of followers I have, I suppose this is late and preaching to the choir.
But, I need to keep this blog afloat so, here goes.

Recently, three writers have self-published e-tales involving Orcs.  The only common thread, aside from the Orcs, is that the stories were salvaged from a canceled anthology.  Each runs for $.99, or sometimes free if you catch them at the right time.  For $.99, they are cheaper than a cup of gourmet coffee, and each is satisfying in its own way.

Amarante: A Tale of Old Tharduin by Scott Oden.
Of the three tales, this felt the most "epic" fantasy, though Oden delivers hard-hitting scenes that put this tale more into the "sword-&-sorcery" sub-genre.  Two Orcs, barely escaping some powerful (and well described) sorcery, seek vengeance against the humans who refuse to bow to their Orc overlords.  Oden creates a well-crafted viewpoint between the Orcs, with good interplay between the reluctant allies.  The Orcs are right bastards, and the "bad guys" - you don't exactly want them to win,  but there is enough tension that you want to follow them through to the end.

Harvest of War by Charles Gramlich.
Gramlich flips our expected sympathies by showing the dark side of humanity, as a lone Orc is captured, tortured, and treated worse than a zoo exhibit.  Not that Khales the Orc, doesn't have blood on his hands, either.  The nice turn in this story is not only the examination of human brutality, but human shortsightedness.  The humans zealous extermination of the Orc race puts them at a disadvantage they are not even aware of.  A really well-executed tale.

Blackskull's Captive by Tom Doolan.
Doolan takes us into space opera territory, which might seem odd to some readers, but Black Library, for instance, have Orks in their futuristic universe of Warhammer 40,000.  Doolan's setting is also heavily influenced by the animated movie, Treasure Planet, (in turn based on Treasure Island,) so we also get an Age-of-Sail vibe.  A captive human, Jack Munro, becomes an unwitting aide to an Orc pirate captain.  Staying alive could be at the price of his soul, as the Orcs ply him to help plan attacks on more human ships.  Doolan could easily have skirted the issue with a tale just long enough to get Jack off the ship before the next raid, but instead he makes Jack deal with the issue, and this gives the story an extra emotional edge.

All these tales are worth your time, and worth your three dollars!

(p.s. - for now, I will ignore that Tom Doolan published another Orc tale this week, thus breaking the trifecta theme ;P  But, you can check that out, too.  More at his blog.)