Previous SFF Author: Anthony Horowitz
Was 2011 a bad year for the horror novel? I’ve yet to read any of the nominees for the 2012 Bram Stoker Award for best novel except Flesh Eaters by Joe McKinney, the winner, and I find myself puzzled. Was this really the best the year had to offer? It’s a competent enough zombie novel, but nothing special.
Flesh Eaters tells the story of the loss of Houston, Texas, to a close series of tropical storms,
June 4th, 2012. Terry Weyna´s rating: 2 | Joe McKinney | Horror | SFF Reviews | 7 comments |
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Victor Apfel, a lonely middle-aged veteran of the Korean War, gets a recorded phone call asking him to come to his reclusive neighbor’s house to take care of what he finds there. The voice promises that he’ll be rewarded. Victor would like to ignore the message, but he gets another call every 10 minutes. When Victor arrives at Charles Kluge’s house, he finds Kluge dead and slumped over his computer keyboard, so he calls another neighbor — a computer operator named Hal (har,
May 28th, 2012. Kat Hooper´s rating: 4 | John Varley | Audio, Horror, Hugo Award, Nebula Award, Stand-Alone | SFF Reviews | 2 comments |
Indignities of the Flesh by Bentley Little
Until I read Indignities of the Flesh I hadn’t heard of Bentley Little, although he’s been published in magazines like Cemetery Dance, which I used to read. Indignities of the Flesh is an anthology containing ten of Little’s surrealistic horror tales. One, “Valet Parking,” is original to this collection.
Bentley Little provides a paragraph before each story, talking about the inspiration. Not surprisingly, many of his inspirations for horror stories are things that frighten him or creep him out;
May 14th, 2012. Marion Deeds´s rating: 3 | Bentley Little | Horror | SFF Reviews | no comments |
So it’s April 1912, and here I am aboard R.M.S. Titanic, on her maiden voyage. By heaven, she’s a lovely ship! Big, too. But I’m a little worried we’re getting rather close to that iceberg. Oh I say, we’ve struck it! Not to worry, old man, everyone knows this ship is unsinkable. What’s that? We’re sinking anyway? Dash the luck! Off to the lifeboats then. What do you mean, there’s no more room? Blimey. Rest assured I’ll write a strongly worded letter to the White Star Line about this!
May 7th, 2012. Thomas M. Wagner (guest)´s rating: 2.5 | Matt Forbeck | Horror, Stand-Alone | SFF Reviews | 3 comments |
Araminta Palomer is the daughter of an elderly wealthy businessman and his second wife. Minta has been sheltered for all her life, living in the family mansion which is surrounded by high walls and patrolling Doberman Pinschers. She has a governess and is driven to town only rarely for shopping. Because she’s lonely, Minta creates an imaginary friend — an egg-shaped furry creature who loves her. Prophetically, she names him Willbe and she imagines him with sharp needle-like teeth because she’s got a really nasty older stepbrother.
April 23rd, 2012. Kat Hooper´s rating: 2.5 | Ardath Mayhar | Audio, Horror, Stand-Alone | SFF Reviews | no comments |
Act of Love by Joe R. Lansdale
Originally published in 1981, Joe R. Lansdale’s Act of Love is a serial-killer thriller. A year before Thomas Harris’s Red Dragon took us into the mind of a sadistic serial killer, Lansdale was doing it, giving us chapters in the point of view of a necrophiliac, sadistic, misogynist cannibal as he terrorizes the city of Houston, Texas.
Act of Love is set in the 1980s and follows the murders committed by the Houston Hacker.
April 2nd, 2012. Marion Deeds´s rating: 2.5 | Joe R. Lansdale | Horror, Stand-Alone | SFF Reviews | no comments |
Graham Masterton is relatively unknown in the United States except among the horror cognoscenti. Although he’s written or edited more than 20 books, he is mostly known in his native England. He can write a slick little work of horror like House of Bones and make it haunt you no matter where you live, though; there’s something about the idea of being pulled right through the walls or floor of your home that can make anyone shudder. It would be nice if he were better known in these parts.
February 13th, 2012. Terry Weyna´s rating: 2 | Graham Masterton | Horror | SFF Reviews | 1 comment |
The Concrete Grove by Gary McMahon
Many countries, including the United States, house their poor in such unpleasant places that they are rethinking the way to provide housing assistance for them. Numerous high rise facilities have been demolished, like the infamous Cabrini Green in Chicago or Atlanta’s Bowen Homes, and replaced with mixed-income housing projects. In England, they are called council estates. High rises are even more problematic there, for England has never taken much to the skyscraper, at least as a place to live. So it’s not surprising that there are places like The Grove,
February 6th, 2012. Terry Weyna´s rating: 4 | Gary McMahon | Horror | SFF Reviews | 3 comments |
It took an act of faith for me to read the new issue of Phantasmagorium – the second in its run. The first quarterly issue, published in October 2011, was disappointing despite its lovely cover photograph, which suggests an angel taking flesh from a stone sculpture. A few stories were well-written, but not particularly original or frightening: Scott Nicolay’s “Alligators,” Simon Strantzas’s “Strong as a Rock” and Stephen Graham Jones’s “No Takebacks.” They were overwhelmed by the inexplicable “Cardoons!” by Anna Tambour,
January 30th, 2012. Terry Weyna | Genevieve Valentine, Laird Barron, Nadia Bulkin | Horror, Short Fiction | SFF Reviews | 2 comments |
I Am Not A Serial Killer by Dan Wells
First novels by new authors are like surprise packages that come in the mail: you don’t know what you’ll find inside, not really, even if there was advance hype. Sometimes you find something so unappealing you wonder that anyone could have thought it was for you. Other times you get a teenaged sociopath who’s fighting hard not to become a serial killer despite his deep-seated wish to create dead bodies, and then you know you’ve got Dan Wells’s I Am Not A Serial Killer.
January 16th, 2012. Terry Weyna´s rating: 4 | Dan Wells | Horror | SFF Reviews | 4 comments |
Previous SFF Author: Anthony Horowitz
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