exlibrislarsen

Barnes & Noble reader “Faithful85” has posted a review of SHADOW MASTERS: AN ANTHOLOGY FROM THE HORROR ZINE, featuring my short story, “The People Eaters”:

Pick up your copy of SHADOW MASTERS at Amazon.com.

I have read some of the other Horror Zine anthologies and also read most of the things they have online. When I saw this come out, I had to grab a copy. The first few stories in here grab hold of you and let you know just what you are about to get into. I won’t go into too much detail on the huge amount of stories in here, but I will cover my favorites. This book is full of win, but I have to say the ones I mention are the ones that hit the creep factor button in me. Remember that fear is personal and you should read it and judge for yourself the ones you like best.

The book starts strong and ends strong. Both James Marlow‘s story, ‘The Thing That Was Not There’ and Aaron J. French‘s ‘Flame of Freedom’ get you on all the right levels. Bentley Little brings a quiet yet creepy story called the ‘End of the Trail’, and Elizabeth Massie and Scott Nicholson are as good as ever with their stories. Ronald Malfi, a writer I only learned about a year or so ago, brings a great story called ‘The Housewarming’, while people new to me like Christopher Nadeau, William Rasmussen and Lisa Morton have turned me into fans. Jeani Rector, the editor, also hits a homerun with one of her two offerings called ‘Re-Animated’ and shows that she is as good as a writer as she is an editor. But the top three stories in this one, in my humble little opinion, have to be Shaun Meeks‘ ‘Red Velvet’, Christian A. Larsen‘s ‘The People Eaters’ and Tim Jeffreys‘s ‘The Cellar’. These three writers are still newish too me, yet I have been seeing their names more and more. And each story I read that this trio has put out has been better than the last. I particularly like Shaun Meeks’ story for the sheer strangeness of it. It skates along that thin line of bizarro without crossing over to the absurd.

Overall, there isn’t a single story in here I wouldn’t read again. Highly recommend it.

This entry was posted on September 8, 2013 at 8:34 am and is filed under Book Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.