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Edited by Al Sarantonio |
999: Twenty-nine Original Tales of Horror and Suspense |
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Comments: 999: Twenty-nine Original Tales of Horror and Suspense 999: Twenty-nine Original Tales of Horror and Suspense is a consistently solid collection of short stories, never published before being included in this book. More than one made best of collections in the year it was published. Al Sarrantonio set out to collect only high quality stories, and even had the rather lofty goal of starting another upsurge in horror sales. While he didn’t necessarily succeed at all he set out to do, this IS an extremely solid collection that belongs on the shelf of all serious horror fans. Joe Lansdale’s “Mad Dog Summer” is the best of a very impressive lot, and I also greatly enjoyed William Peter Blatty’s short novel Elsewhere. Oddly enough, I wasn’t as impressed with several stories by authors who I am a fan of, including T. E. D. Klein’s “Growing Things” and Thomas Ligotti’s “The Shadow, The Darkness”, though I’m sure a lot of you will disagree with me as to the quality of those and other tales in the list below.
Comments: What do Rasputin’s skull, dead tourists come back to life, and a prominent member of the Soviet government have to do with one another in an apocalyptic future? One whole hell of a lot apparently!
Comments: The Matheson family, especially the children, are paying for past crimes of their family. These crimes only become clear after a long, lonely, somehow OFF summer at rural Cross Hill, ancestral home of the Mathesons.
Comments: At first I didn't like this one much, but the ending is a nice little shocker.
Comments: Famous horror author Richard Kinnell quickly enough comes to regret buying a painting with certain, shall we say, DISTURBING properties.
Comments: The narrator is one cold-hearted bastard...and that's being nice!
Comments: I've heard many good things about Klein, but I didn't particularly care for this one. The reader is forced to jump to too many conclusions for this house to be the one which appears in the home improvement magazines.
Comments: I've heard of cheerleaders becoming vampire hunters, but nuns? I like it.
Comments: Brother Capricorn’s New Zodiac Club isn’t showing the civility he had desired in his club members. And to make matters worse, their eating habits are a bit peculiar as well…
Comments: William gets a chance to look over his life from an unlikely source. "Itinerary" Comments: I didn’t really get this one. It apparently involves a man trying to warn himself of impending disaster through a phone call. "Catfish Gal Blues" Comments: Hop Armstrong has a way with the ladies, even non-human ladies. He should've made sure she didn't have a boyfriend first though.
Comments: Tom Shone (Thompson) arrives in town too late to find a normal hotel. Instead he finds something out of a nightmare...
Comments: Frankie Paone pays for his sins through an unlikely source.
Comments: Elizabeth is bound and determined to be a good mother, unlike her own. But it's going to take time and probably more than one body...
Comments: This one is VERY Lovecraftian in tone and outlook, something I normally enjoy. In other words, mere human beings do not stand a chance against the cosmic forces arrayed against us, and there is no use trying. However, I just didn't like the actual story very much.
Comments: The theater at the tops of a set of stairs behind a locked door holds some horrifying secrets, secrets which Putnam learns only too well.
Comments: Dominic Kazan gets a chance to go back and stand up to his father, improving his current life many times over in the process. Al Sarrantonio says this reminds him of a Twilight Zone episode, and I have to very much agree.
Comments: Harlow Winton has gone from an orphan to a wealthy man overnight. His great-uncle left everything to him…including his peculiar house where SOMETHING lurked in the darkness. I like the way McKiernan keeps the monster vague. My imagination runs wild when I read a story like this.
Comments: The author of The Exorcist penned this excellent short novel of a haunted house and the efforts of a group of people to spend five days there. As I read this one, I found myself sharing in the protagonists’ growing sense of dread and confusion. I guessed the twist rather early on, but it made no difference as far as the story’s effectiveness went.
666 pp. |
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