Zraitor

An interesting and varied collection of horror filled with the author's usual favorite themes: Religion, serial killers, and making the reader part of the “fun”. Every story is dark and violent and he likes to remind us that we are choosing to read these things and thus that must be what we want. (I know I do!)

Like most short story collections, some stories didn't hit the mark in my opinion but that is just how it often goes in these things. Everything was well written with great character work, as usual. Worth reading overall.

One-sentence summary attempts and quick thoughts:

Isolated- A couple who rent a theatre to make a messed up and violent sex video find themselves under attack.

-This story sets it all up and is incredibly uncomfortable. Here we are introduced to the fact that the viewer (reader) is a part of this whole thing and we are being shown a bunch of disturbing videos (stories) because that is what we came to see.

Haunted- A fallen angel writes letters to both Heaven and Hell trying to manipulate one side or the other to take them back after a botched cult ritual happens in the graveyard it “haunts”.

-While I am just not into the religious themes as much as the author this story was interesting and the gore was pretty top-notch.

Harkestown General- A man with a hospital fetish (You heard me!) who fakes various problems to get into them checks into the wrong one and finds his comeuppance.

-Great story that is just so weird. I certainly never considered that an obsession for someone to have...

The Normal Florals- A young man who is disgusted by his grandmother that suffers from Alzheimer's disease plays a trick on her with terrible results that lead to a family battle royale.

-Quite a ridiculous story that I suppose was funny from a dark humor sort of view but I wasn't that into it.

Tandem- A wife randomly tells her husband one day that she was once a cult member that was raped which led to the birth of two twins and one is currently in prison for murder.

-Okay, that was a hard one to do a one-sentence summary of. A lot is going on in this story with a lot of different character perspectives. I'm not normally a fan of evil satanic children stories but this one was really good. It ends abrupt and unfinished as it is the first part and will be finished in Volume 2 of this apparently.

A Matter of Perspective- A woman at the movies with her daughter bumps into a black man and then she goes off on a racial tirade which leads to quite an argument.

-I wasn't sure what to think about this one. Yes, racism sucks but the story was so-so and I didn't get the point I suppose. The character work was interesting enough.

Green- A scriptwriter has his big break and moves into a house with a horribly painted green wall that drives him to madness as he tries to paint over it.

-Great story. Another with a lot going on in it. Some very vivid imagery later on as he becomes crusted with flecks of paint after many failed attempts to paint over the wall. The character work is great and serves well to show his descent into madness.

A Conversation With Gaia- A man pumping gas suddenly falls through the ground and ends up talking to the personification of Mother Earth and she reveals to him many awful things and that she wants him as her lover.

-Another interesting story with awesome imagery as Gaia produces all kinds of nature displays to either mess with or impress the man. Wouldn't have expected this story from the author with all his usual religious interests but maybe that was the draw, I don't know.

Dialogue- The author writes himself into the story as a gas station employee who begins to lose his sanity with various versions of himself talking in his mind.

-Basically, a meta-story where the author hates on himself and turns it into a horror story that fits the theme of this collection. I hope he found some catharsis from this. As for the story itself while the constant going back and forth from different versions of Bobby was annoying it had a messed-up sort of charm to it.

Logan's Lesson- The aftermath of what happens in the first story, Isolation, which confirms what you probably already guessed was going on.

-Another one that was interesting but it is there mainly just to wrap the whole thing up and once again point out to us that we want this messed up stuff to happen and are responsible for its creation through that desire.

Which is fair enough in my case.

Taking place over three distinct acts and with a found document wrap around this feels very much like other vampire stories (Dracula especially) but the cultural elements make it stand apart and I found it was always interesting.

Rory is a white American who is adopted by Filipinos and he is grateful for this but he doesn't take their fables very seriously. On his journey to the village in the Philippines, he is told many stories about various myths in the area and everyone seems afraid. He also encounters quite a lot of religious talk and he becomes unnerved by the atmosphere at times and although not a religious man he finds that he is making prayers as well.

During this, the tension is also built up well due to Rory's increasingly violent thoughts he doesn't understand. He does his best to push all these things away and enjoy the company of his Aunt, Uncles, and just generally settling into the life in the village. This is just as fun as the vampire parts as the author clearly has a great love for this and it shows.

Soon he meets a young woman in the rain and seeing her without an umbrella he chases after her to offer her a spare one. She runs away and doesn't answer his calls, but upon returning to his family home he finds a note asking him to meet her at night. This begins a romance that while great at first goes horribly wrong setting off a fast-moving tale of love and violence...

It is never boring and it is never bogged down by anything unnecessary. The story takes us to many places and really gets into the aswang myth and shows us all their powers and their awful uses. Rory is also a great main character who must deal with loving Lilibeth while she slowly reveals her cruel nature to him throughout.

As usual from the author, it is also incredibly character-driven and no character is there just to be there. And as usual, it gets very dark and gory! Apart from that though, it is a bit different otherwise than his other work and I found that refreshing.

As I said at the top the cultural themes are just so well done and felt authentic. They make what could have been just another vampire story so unique and fun. Hard to talk about this one without heavy spoilers as the three acts it takes place in see the story change so much and well. It's definitely worth the read.

I can't tell you how true to the original stories these are but I can tell you they are fun and have a great sense of adventure.

Unfortunately, they are also repetitive, and if you've read the author's other work you will see the same old stuff popping up that he has most of his characters tackle. How many times do we need to stumble across a preserved lost world ecosystem!? I'm done with that.

The story the collection is named after, The Kew Growths is by far the best and nails all the characters personalities and general themes. Carnacki makes an appearance in this one and he and Challenger clash right away and it's very enjoyable.

The author loves to show off his biology knowledge and it is extremely suited to the things these two come across. After that, it still retains its fun and has all sorts of cameos and shout outs to other author's works but it definitely became tiresome by the end.

I love the time period and setting and all the nonsense the characters get into so don't think I'm too down on it... I've just read a lot of this author's work and he repeats a lot of things. It's worth a look.

While well-written this one gets a bit too far fetched and goes way too far out there with little to ground it. We follow Eddie Schumbert, a serial killer with multiple personalities. Lots of them.

The Counselor, his main personality for controlling him and trying to get by discovers things aren't quite right in Eddie's mind after a period of relative stability and begins to interrogate the other personalities to find out what is going on.

She has a degree in psychology and he seems to have developed this personality to understand himself. There are fun bits about her female persona trying to control his male body and uncomfortable situations it puts her in during her stay in college.

The Counselor is joined by The Warden to keep the worst of Eddie's personalities at bay, the so-called Lowers. Eddie's mind is divided into the Upper End, Lower End, and of course, the Window where a personality walks through and gains control of the body.

We meet a lot of these different personalities and while in Eddie's mind they all have different appearances from him and completely their own quirks and talents which he uses to do various things in the real world. However, as he is a serial killer most of these multiple personalities are killers themselves and they all seem to have their own wants and needs.

Which is where we get our main conflict in this story... Most of them want out and to be in control of Eddie to satiate their own sick desires. There is a lot of gore in this as you would expect from both a serial killer story and this author.

So while we do eventually learn all about Eddie and everything is revealed I was left a bit annoyed and frustrated reading this at times. Due to the nature of the character and his many versions of himself, there wasn't much for me to latch onto. I didn't really care about which persona would win the battle or if The Counselor would figure it out and stop it all because what's to gain in the end? The Counselor is Eddie Schumbert, they all are. This is a huge plot point and the purpose of the story but that didn't change anything for me.

It's not bad by any means and it was interesting to see a mind like this play out. The always cranked up to eleven factor made it exhausting to read and it definitely felt twice as long as it was. This hurt the race against time thing it had going on because I was just waiting for it to get on with it and stop being totally nuts.

An interesting concept - An event happens all over the world that causes people to develop magical abilities. These range from completely useless to insanely powerful and are varied.

Lorna Donovan the main character can read minds, but not control that in the beginning. Her abilities become much more powerful in her battle against Doctor Raoul von Rached who has similar powers. Both are rather prideful and stubborn individuals and you get a what happens when an immovable object meets an irresistible force thing going on in their back and forth encounters.

Rached runs a facility that kidnaps these people, named the Cursed for his usually unethical experiments. He uses his psychic powers in some truly awful ways to get what he wants.

The story has many characters and all are well done and developed. The bulk of it follows Lorna and Rached's point of views. Otherwise, it is just jam-packed with constant action and filling out the lore of what is going on that seems rich and has a lot to it.

It definitely felt a little too long and has way too many experiment on patient scenes when I felt the point was established and I was hoping the story would progress. I'm not docking any points because I know it is a long series and it needs to set things up and I tend to get impatient about these things.

Lots of action, great characters, interesting lore... a promising start to series.

Ignore those forced and unnecessary blurbs invoking the names of popular horror writers on the store page; this one is good enough to stand on its own.

Noelle Blackwood is offered a lot of money to ghostwrite for another popular author. The job involves her checking into a creepy hotel though and her room is some weird forest theme and includes a sex swing. Err.

The story must include the devil for a reason you probably already know, and while researching a new and exciting way to portray him she muses about all sorts of meta thoughts about struggling authors and religion in general. She also has many brainstorming sessions with herself that include the author she is ghostwriting for actually being there and talking to her, which is really odd and over the top.

In between flirting with the bellhop, throwing ice buckets at drones that spy on the hotel and other strange happenings around the area she is staying in she manages to get a first draft done. Then just when this is getting too meta and cutesy and I was wondering what the point was, the story kicks it up and includes some insane and vivid imagery that makes this fun and wild. The reveal of what is going on is awesome too but you'll have to see for yourself. Check it out.

All right well if you've read the other Derek Adams stories you know the deal: We're getting a case and going pub hopping to get clues from colorful characters with heavy Scottish accents.

While searching for someone's missing grandaughter he comes across an odd mirror involved in strange cases of people being consumed by fire. It also includes an old journal written by a certain detective who came across the mirror as well that was in another William Meikle collection and can be seen as a continuation of that story I suppose.

It doesn't even try to stray from its usual things but it manages to be a good read because it is well-written and moves fast.

Despite always leaning too heavily on its formula these stories are enjoyable to me. The setting feels alive and the characters are fun. Hopefully, something will shake it all up in future stories but for now, I can accept it for what it is.

Really quickly told side stories from the Fallen tales the author has written.

The artwork was nice and I loved the silly dark humor advertisements that randomly popped up.

It bounced around a few sets of main characters and was mainly just an introduction to their stories. The plots were the usual stuff of morals gone wrong in the apocalyptic setting but we'll see where it all goes.

The author's minimalist writing style worked well for this format and it was worth the quick read.

A short story collection with a lot of variety and mostly weird offbeat plots which meant I rarely knew what was coming next.

I like the way the author does characters; all of them are written well and come off like real and personable people. It helps to ground a few of these stories that get zany and over the top.

Philosophy played a big part throughout this collection and it offered up a bunch of interesting things to think about but I'm sure most of it went over my head.

Now some of the stories didn't click with me and seemed out of place in a collection named Twisted Fantasies; Crowd Game being the one that stands out most. I kept waiting for something crazy to happen and well it was actually a straight forward tale and I didn't understand the running through crowds stuff. It was well written and fine; it just wasn't for me. There were a couple of other stories that play out like this but overall I enjoyed the collection.

A good weird collection, but not very well named... Only a few of the stories are about world-ending scenarios. The description tries to skirt this by saying “Every hour is someone's private armageddon.”, but that doesn't work for me. We all have our things that we nitpick, and there's one of mine.

Every story is very well written, but when I say weird... I really mean it. Sometimes it was hard to decipher what is going on. The author is great at creating bizarre settings. As usual in weird stories, not knowing what is really going on leads to a great amount of lingering creepiness but also frustration and annoyance since you never get to truly know.

A lot of the stories have repeating themes. Being a killer running in the family genes and factory workers or just the common working man are the main ones. Oh, and the color blue. Usually, when a color is mentioned it is blue. Blue blue blue blue blue. There was still a wide variety of stories with these things in mind.

So, even though most of the stories aren't about doomsdays, and the characters often act wildly over the top and don't always seem realistic, and the weirdness is hard to make sense of sometimes this was a good read. The imagination and great writing make up for it.

This one gets going quickly. After getting a mission to go to the Congo to rescue a WHO team investigating a plague, (No, not that one!) the S-Squad finds themselves split into two and under attack by dinosaurs.

While of course, we are reading these for the action, we get a little character development with Hynd and even a little romance. It is not much but, anything that helps these be more than mindless action is always welcome to me.

The side characters, the WHO team, are mostly just there and forgotten about except for the female doctor and the black-haired male doctor who uses his knife a lot.

The setting is well done in this one and the adventure through it had an Indiana Jones-like feel to it. A lot of effort was put into bringing it to life and while it wasn't very original it worked well.

But at any rate, this is book nine in a series and you already know the deal. If you want to know if this one is fun and action-packed like the rest? Yes, it is.

This one is incredibly violent, gruesome, gory, and every other one of those kinds of words. It just never lets up.

The game the group of college students is forced to play is done with a lot of dark imagination and the attacks both physical and psychological are wildly over the top and throw in everything except for the kitchen sink. There were a lot of great scenes described as they move through the game and the author was clearly enjoying themselves coming up with all this craziness.

Although it is also very heavy-handed and forced at times and honestly kind of corny as well. Everything is described as the Devil's Game, The Devil's Playground, the Devil's Auditorium ... you get the picture. I could just hear the overdramatic voice over of that being said in my head every time and I rolled my eyes. This sometimes felt against just how dark and serious the things being done to the group were.

The character work is great and you'll get to know all of them as they are brutalized throughout the story. Cameron, the main character, is of course given the most development and backstory but for a large group they were all given attention and fleshed out.

Unfortunately, as we reach the end the story goes off the rails and I couldn't tell if the author just didn't know how to end this crazy ride or what. The final torture against the group was also the worst they get and I could see it upsetting some people as it is very perverse.

However, most importantly this was just fun to read and I recommend to anyone who doesn't mind this kind of absolute insanity. (You know who you are and that's okay!)

Quick to read weird tales collection that was pretty good.

I didn't care much for Post #153, as it felt a little bland and unoriginal. The other two were great though especially The Yellow House.

All three were definitely well written though. They were subtle and made you pay attention to figure out what was going on.

Before you get into the horror bits you are presented a realistic relationship that is falling apart. Then when you do get into the crazy and weird stuff later it keeps it grounded and relatable for most. This makes it easy to recommend even for non-horror fans.

And those horror bits are really nuts and are never fully explained, which in this case is to its advantage. It is a mix of psychological and body horror, and good old slashers.

I found it be the perfect length: nothing is wasted and there is no filler trying to pointlessly make it longer for the sake of it. The characters are great, the horror is great, the plot is great, it is just great.

It starts off really strong with The Deadman's Gift, which is a great story and incredibly sad. It's also a complete punch to the gut at the end but eh.

Unfortunately, after that, I wasn't too into this collection. Too many of them are morality tales that I just didn't agree with or what read like power fantasies where a guy had some special ability and was so awesome and different and that usually impresses some woman that was almost always described the same with a ‘coke bottle body'. There are also all these weird Gurus in the tales and I just didn't understand what that was all about.

There was also a lot of being chased through the forest by creatures where you can only see the hands. Several stories had groups of people telling fantasy tales to each other which were mostly OK.

Now don't get me wrong I enjoyed the writing and I still liked most of the character work outside what I already mentioned. I just didn't find this as fun and interesting as the other things I have read from the author. (The Devil's Game and Twisted Fantasies.)

A little too repetitive and didn't click with me but I'm sure there are others who would like it more than me.

Fun and full of charming characters. But also full of many plot conveniences. Though it owns them and doesn't care and then just rockets through to an obvious but good ending.

Phyllis, the ‘Gram' accepts her deal with the Grim Reaper to gain a year of life for every kill she makes. She is reluctant at first but thankfully she has an annoying friend with a weak heart. She also knows many other seniors who are just awful people that she can knock off with a “clean conscience.” As it goes on she gains a taste for murder...

Luckily for her, she has an incredibly trusting grandson and just no one can seem to believe it is her despite her being around so many of these people before they die.

Phyllis and Grimm are great characters and it was fun to see them banter back and forth. Everyone else is mostly just there to fill out the plot but were still likable.

It seemed a little rushed at times but it still delivers an enjoyable and dark tale.

This owes a lot to Scream and I Know What You Did Last Summer and those sorts of meta-horror. It is fun, fast-paced, and doesn't have any padding.

The characters are mostly okay it is just that the author leaned way too heavily on tropes for them. Most of their backstories involved cheating to get ahead in some area and each character is given their reveal when their name is called in the game. They reminded me way too much of the typical CW show type characters. You know, pretty people with problems. They were not without their charms though. (This is just a personal taste thing here, use your best judgment.)

It was well-written throughout though and every scene whether they were simply driving in a car, hanging out in a tiny apartment, or running for their lives in a haunted house attraction everything was brought to life with great detail.

Since it moves so fast and involves a murder mystery that I wanted to know the results of this was easy and enjoyable to read overall. It wasn't very gory but it had its fair share of action and violence. The way it all wraps up didn't try to insult you or pull a fast one on you and was intelligently done.

A strange bird-like creature flies into a boy's room and regurgitates stories into his mouth that make up this collection. I thought it was a pretty cool and original way to start one of these.

The short stories were incredibly creative and feature social media, twitter mostly, the magic of childhood, a terrible future where people called ‘Gamers' do awful things to the lower class, and even a few that were wholesome and a nice change of pace. The one with a girl who gains photoshop powers in real life was fun and gruesome...

Some of them are pretty vague and don't leave you with many conclusions but overall I enjoyed the whole of this collection. It was just so imaginative and out there in a good way. When the bird flies away to rest satisfied so too will most of the readers I'd bet.

After the short stories section ends it includes a few essays by the author. I'll just be honest and say I had no interest in those and didn't read them.

This was great and is an easy recommendation to make for someone looking for some weird tales.

The collection's theme, the seven deadly sins, allows for a huge variety of stories. They could be about any old random thing, and boy are they ever.

Blood plagues, a one seemingly about Superman, a people eating octopus that grows alongside its owner's also growing greed, one with a D&D setting which doesn't entirely make sense but shut up and just go with it ... Many others are of course more subtle and slow, and several are just character studies with little plot. But even those are all twisted and creepy in some way.

They all mostly nail the theme of the collection. After each story, the sin it was about is written after in BIG BOLD LETTERS and it was fun while reading them trying to figure out which it would be before I saw it.

Now, it's not perfect. Too many of the stories just end abruptly with the GOTCHA endings or just end period with nothing happening making them seem like a snippet of a longer story. A few them just made me shrug and go whatever, what's the next story gonna be about?

But I enjoyed it and found it to be a good read. I love the randomness in these kinds of collections and there was a great deal of creativity on display.

Freaky Tales From the Force is the often mentioned TV show in the other two Kotto stories. This book covers season one of it and is it great? Yes, it is.

The format allows the overarching story to keep switching point of views and subjects keeping it constantly fresh, and not suffering from the usual ever-diminishing returns of weirdness that often happens in such tales. It manages to retain the over top crazy in the others but has good characters and keeps offering all kinds of viewpoints on the absolute insanity going on. You know, it's not just going LOOK HOW WEIRD AND GOOFY I am, it's still offering good plot and meaningful development to ground it.

But of course, it IS weird and goofy. Space vampires, nazi mages, slime monsters, wendigos .. well that's SOME of it. The battle against the space vampires is the plot that runs through the different stories, or episodes. Some of these are written by different authors, and that also plays into keeping it fresh throughout the collection.

The main characters are back, Kotto is once again his crazy conspiracy self. There are a lot of small character things thrown in, Veronica with her tree monster dreams, Richards musing about his soldier past, and poor Dean running around with his camera always annoyed and lost. A story has Richards and Kotto seemingly switch attitudes between skeptic and believer and it was really funny. Some stories have other deputies sworn in which pays off in the end.

Well, really most of it is funny. Kotto yelling at monsters to stop eating his constituents, an undead being promised “Train Weirdos”, fidget spinners being said to have mind-controlling properties, the line “Against Goblinry, For The People.” just making me laugh... I could go on and on.

It ends finely after the “Season Finale”, which contains a bar fight, and Richards firing on a big rig with a machine gun purchased with taxpayer funds, which he believes makes Kotto proud. And of course, so much more action packed into that one but I'm done going on. Just go read it.

–>I received a free copy of this in exchange for an honest review.
This one has a lot of absurd, over-the-top, and silly stories compared to the first volume. Oh, there are still a lot of things written in here seemingly just for the shock value but nowhere near as bad as before, thankfully.

I Am Meat I Am in Daycare, Free to Good Home, Alien Fajitas, and The Losers vs Beelphegor are most of the weird, and/or comedy-horror stories that made the collection fun. Those were my favorites, or maybe I just needed them after enduring the first volume.

There are still plenty of straight-up horror stories in here though so don't worry. Trapped Light Medium was the stand out of those. It managed to do all the gore and make a great story out of it.

Unfortunately for me, the two stories I liked the least were back to back in order... Drawn and Meat-Boy. Drawn just has the dumbest ending and Meat-Boy well... I try my hardest not to dump on stories I don't like but, Meat-Boy was honestly one of the worst stories I've ever read. What the heck was that?

It ends on a Lovecraftian story from out of nowhere, and while it wasn't very original it was well-written and enjoyable.

I found it to be a good collection and a clear step up from the first volume.

A well-written tale, the Lovecraftian elements are subtle and in the background mostly, but completely set up everything. The world-building is excellent and it feels alive, and while the story is short the characters are developed well and enjoyable.

A lot of care and detail was put into the mystery. There are a lot of characters and motives all crashing into one another and it was a great, quick read. This one doesn't need a long review, just read it.

We follow Natalia, a sixteen-year-old girl who's failure to watch her brother playing results in him breaking his leg. The town doctor does what he can but without proper supplies, he'll likely have to amputate the soon infected leg. But Natalia knows stories of a witch that lives in the woods and she takes her brother to her...

While this does work out and the boy's leg is healed Natalia's very religious mother figures this out and turns her in which leads to the wrath of the Church and the obvious results afterward...

From there Natalia must deal with a tough decision while the town comes under attack by nature leading to many gory and great scenes. These were well detailed and the highlight of the story for me.

The plot moves rather quickly and nothing was dragged out. Although I found it to be mostly too straightforward with little surprises and would have liked there to have been more to shake it up.

The writing really brings the little town and surrounding forest to life. I have to admit though that I honestly would have never known it was set in the Cold War era if the book description didn't tell me so. I mean it was obvious it wasn't modern times but still.

It really commits to and explores its themes and was well thought out. Definitely worth the read.

Incredibly, incredibly violent, and gory. After a young woman is raped and murdered in a snuff film she comes back as a vengeful ghost.

She's mostly just in the background until its time for one of her over the top gore fests though. We follow another young woman who gets caught up in this and has to force herself to love a criminal to stay alive, and the heroine junkie that is tricking these women into these films to get his fix.

It gets a bit silly at times as it really has to stretch out some reasons to keep these characters alive. They go through so many crazy situations that I just don't believe they would have made it through.

The character work is great though, albeit there was way too much romanticizing the gangsters as noble despite the awful things they get up to into this story. The junkie was the most interesting as he used to build up most of the world with his inner dialogue and comments.

As the worlds of the normal people, gangsters, and the junkie collide we throw in another one out of the blue towards the end. Magic is real and not only does one of the main characters just randomly blurt out that of course he has seen ghosts before in his line of work... but he also has a gypsy sister who can deal with it. Yeah sure. I felt it was a little too convenient of a way to handle it all and I didn't like the change into magic being completely real; the ghost stuff mixed with gangsters doing snuff films was already enough.

But at any rate, this is a fun and gory ride from beginning to end with some great characters carrying it through even when it gets a little too much and silly.

After a time skip we catch up with Lorna and everyone else now living on a mountain that serves as a safe place for all the cursed, now called the Gifted. We see how life is after the damage caused by the events in the first book and all is more or less stable.

But it's not long before things are ruined by an attack from Doctor von Rached setting off magical storms and awakening something that may destroy the world...

Although of course a story like this must go big and have world-threatening plot lines I much preferred the smaller personal battles and the X-men like struggle for acceptance the Gifted go through. Thankfully plenty of that is there too. The character work in this is top-notch and the highlight of it. Everyone is always being challenged and growing and it's done intelligently. Even Doctor von Rached finds himself not being so completely sociopathic... well relatively, of course.

Much like the first we have things that linger on and make the story go too slowly at times. In the first it was the experiment scenes, here the main characters are constantly dreaming and talking to other powerful magical beings who keep telling them over and over a battle is coming, be prepared, etc etc etc... This happens so many times and I was like... just get on with it!

And by the time the storyline finally does the book ends. It's a huge set up for what's to come in the third book. But as it is filled with excellent characters, still plenty of action, and a lot of new information on the lore it was a great read.