The Grunge Narratives: A Rare Horror Collection

A horror short collection of ten stories, taking place around Southern Indiana and connected through a shared universe.

Continuing with the story and themes started in the novel Land of the Hoosier Dawn, this further brings in reimagined horror monsters such as werewolves, vampires, and several Native American myths. While each short is self-contained, there is an overarching story of strange happenings in the area and the why of that is touched on a little more in most of the stories, creating a larger narrative that you only get bits and pieces of, which retains the mystery and its power. Even when you learn of the place it is possibly coming from, it is never truly revealed and left to your imagination.

The author is absolutely amazing at world-building and loves to fill in the details on everything. It brings every short story to life and is never done to the point of irritation. His characters are simply great, each story is filled with unique and interesting characters, there isn't a repeating archetype that begins to get old. I found this to be done best in Don't Bury Me.

Evan, a guilt-ridden man working to fix some of the damage he's caused to the world by releasing a deadly supernatural plague, comes across a little girl named Tuli. His battle to keep her alive in time so that a cure may be found is emotional and heartbreaking and her character is so wonderfully done. This one became my favorite and I thought about it the most.

On the other hand, Cry Little Sister features a vampire who is a complete sociopath and loves to hurt people to get what he wants. The story is mostly done through his inner dialogue, and seeing how he thinks is unnerving. It also features the author's take on vampires and their lore in his universe here. He balances showing the reader that and telling the actual tale, and it's done so well. This is the same case in the werewolf story, Ride the Lightning. In this collection he always keeps the stories moving along and doesn't bog the reader down with a huge upfront information dump like in Land of the Hoosier Dawn, which was my biggest complaint with that.

The collection stays high in quality throughout, save for one story that didn't work for me, and I'm still not entirely sure how I feel about it now. Nocturnal Pods returns to the vampires but brings with it a political message as a setup, and even though I agree with that message I don't feel it added anything to the story, leaving only a little character work that I did enjoy, but wasn't enough. It's not terrible by any means! Probably just me not getting something, maybe not an issue for others.

As a little warning to potential buyers, nine of these stories were released by themselves, only Raw Nerves at the time of me writing this is unique to this collection, so if you enjoy the author make sure to watch out you don't double buy if that would bother you. This wasn't a problem for me as I'm reading through Kindle Unlimited and them being released separately gave me the chance to review each one.

The world-building is just so good as well as the attention to detail, and I've come to seriously enjoy the author. So many unique takes on old legends and monsters, and I love the connected universe, making the stories feel more meaningful and giving the reader things to pick up on and old characters to root for. This is a must-read for all horror fans.