Scissor Sisters

I received an ARC of this title from Netgalley. These are my honest thoughts.

Scissor Sisters is a horror anthology about villainous lesbians. I found it under the horror category on Netgalley, and that's the genre I see it listed as elsewhere.

I love anthologies. Depending on if you're a half full or half empty person, they either provide you with new opportunities to fall in love regularly or they provide you with stories that sometimes might not be to your tastes, or perhaps the good stories end too soon.

To that, I say, “Yes.”

Scissor Sisters is full of really good stories, and if you're a fan of the premise, there will be stories that please you. There are also stories, however, that needed work, or that fall apart if you think too hard. And there are stories that really needed to be expanded to work. There was only one story that made me want to gouge my eyes out.

While it's subjective, I'd also label some of the stories as more fantasy than horror. I like fantasy, I just like to choose when I want to read something.

The anthology starts out very strong for me. Gladys Glows at Night, by Hatteras Mange was the nearly perfect entry in. If you've read Radium Girls (non-fiction) and thought that there still needed to be more justice, lots more justice, this is a satisfying story.
You Oughta Be in Pictures, by Anastasia Dziekan was also a strong story to have in the beginning. Gory, and lovely, and deep, and tragic. It left me sad and uncomfortable, and so it should.

Teratoma, Cacodaemon, Erinya, by Avra Margariti was about our inner furies. And it was kinda gross. And touching. Torbalan's Gift, by Grace R. Reynolds was about freedom and anger.

Buckskin for Linen, by Mae Murray was haunting, and while I didn't mean the pun, it's appropriate. It's a tale reminding us of the horrors – ugh, there I do again – of residential schools and denying people their families, culture, and heritage. Like the aforementioned Gladys Glows at Night, it's satisfying to read about girls and women meting out justice. And then of course sadness that this justice hasn't been attained in the real world. That the stories are also sapphic makes them all the more powerful.

Some of the stories channel fairy tales like Hansel and Gretel,or classic horror like Frankenstein, or  just plain classics like Great Expectations, with – for me – mixed results.

I want to give a mention to the “odd man out.” According to the note at the back, the pub wants to give the reader a little something more – lagniappe – at the end of their books, so they added a queer (but not sapphic) story called The Call of the Sea, by Eric Raglin, which was delightful.

There's a list of content warnings in the back of the book, which I appreciate. With so many stories the list of CWs will be extensive. I also found them validating because one story is listed as having pseudo-incest and when I read this story, and that bothered me, I didn't know how I'd deal with it in a review. Was I reading too much into it? Would people TELL me I was reading too much into it? No, it's listed right there.

While I loved the stories I mentioned – for the most part – and enjoyed others like Enamored (Shelley Lavigne ) and Oubliette (L.R. Stuart) there were a few stories I felt were misplaced in a horror anthology (subjective, I know.) Or that needed to be novella length, like a story that had an amazing beginning and ending, but there was nothing in the middle, so it all fell flat. And there was one of two that felt more vibes than stories, and as if the author couldn't really say what was going on either. One was just spot on and amazing until an ending that got it's shock value from directly contradicting itself.

I do recommend Scissor Sisters, and I think I found some new authors, which I think anthologies are great at doing, but I really felt those exceptions to the quality.