Other Voices, Other Tombs

individual stories were all in the “okay” to “good” spectrum but the collection as whole lacked identity. There was no common theme or content I can see in this collection, the stories are not even the same types of horror. I think this did a disservice to all the individual stories. Particularly Urban Moon which is a story of a graphic and realistic sexual assault. There is nothing inherently wrong with it and certainly I can see why it'd be classified horror (personally I wouldn't read this story at all if I knew going into it but that's another matter) but it's particularly strange to see it sandwiched between stories of body horror or “Parent Trap but if the kids were, like, evil dude!”. It gives the impression the subject matter isn't taken seriously through no fault of the author herself.

My favorites were This is How it Goes by Gemma Files and Three Lanes Deep by Gemma Amor though there were no real duds (besides the story that I mentioned above which I don't think should be in this collection) but I also doub't even my favorites among them will stay in my memory for long.