Only finished 4 in May (seems to be a recurring theme anymore!).
1. Imajica by Clive Barker. Took me a while to get through this one, as at times the story really flowed & other times I struggled with even picking the book up. Overall, I thought the storytelling and world building was very good, though I thought the book was 25% too long & for a book of that length I found the climax to be a little lacking. Maybe like Weaveworld I would have a greater appreciation on a second read, where I could just concentrate on the story and not worry about keeping things straight in my mind.
3.5 / 5
2. Fright Train ed. by Charles Rutledge, Tony Tremblay & Scott Goudsward. An anthology of horror & fantasy stories set on or around trains. Mainly new stories, though it did include two classics from Charles Dickens (The Signalman) and Arthur C. Doyle (The Lost Special). My favorites were the two ghost stories that closed the volume, ‘A Traveler Between Eternities’ by Amanda DeWees (a recently miscarriaged woman fleeing an abusive husband meets a lost child on a train) & ‘All Aboard’ by Christopher Golden (a woman mourning the death of her child & contemplating suicide starts hearing the legendary local ghost train the same time every night). 3.6 / 5
3. Sherlock Holmes: Lord of Damnation by Simon Clark started out good enough, though about half way through it got kind of ridiculous. Another author may have been able to salvage the story, but based on my previous history with Clark, I didn’t have any faith he would be able to do it. DNF
4. In a Lonely Place by Karl Edward Wagner is certainly in the running for the best collection I’ve read this year. The first three stories are all great (In the Pines, Where Summer Ends & Sticks), and while there might be a slight drop off in the remaining stories, there’s not a bad story in this collection. Easy to see why this is regarded as a seminal horror collection. 4.3 / 5
5. Kong: a screenplay by Edgar Wallace ed. by Stephen Jones is an interesting bit of memorabilia for King Kong fans. Wallace’s original screenplay contains a lot of the ideas that were used in the original movie (the beauty and the beast angle, most of the dinosaur scenes & the ending (though different from the movie) atop the Empire State Building), though there were a lot of differences also with the final movie version. Jones also includes an extensive overview of the life of Edgar Wallace and, to a lesser degree, an overview of the making of the original first classic film. A must for King Kong fans. 4 / 5
B
1. Imajica by Clive Barker. Took me a while to get through this one, as at times the story really flowed & other times I struggled with even picking the book up. Overall, I thought the storytelling and world building was very good, though I thought the book was 25% too long & for a book of that length I found the climax to be a little lacking. Maybe like Weaveworld I would have a greater appreciation on a second read, where I could just concentrate on the story and not worry about keeping things straight in my mind.
3.5 / 5
2. Fright Train ed. by Charles Rutledge, Tony Tremblay & Scott Goudsward. An anthology of horror & fantasy stories set on or around trains. Mainly new stories, though it did include two classics from Charles Dickens (The Signalman) and Arthur C. Doyle (The Lost Special). My favorites were the two ghost stories that closed the volume, ‘A Traveler Between Eternities’ by Amanda DeWees (a recently miscarriaged woman fleeing an abusive husband meets a lost child on a train) & ‘All Aboard’ by Christopher Golden (a woman mourning the death of her child & contemplating suicide starts hearing the legendary local ghost train the same time every night). 3.6 / 5
3. Sherlock Holmes: Lord of Damnation by Simon Clark started out good enough, though about half way through it got kind of ridiculous. Another author may have been able to salvage the story, but based on my previous history with Clark, I didn’t have any faith he would be able to do it. DNF
4. In a Lonely Place by Karl Edward Wagner is certainly in the running for the best collection I’ve read this year. The first three stories are all great (In the Pines, Where Summer Ends & Sticks), and while there might be a slight drop off in the remaining stories, there’s not a bad story in this collection. Easy to see why this is regarded as a seminal horror collection. 4.3 / 5
5. Kong: a screenplay by Edgar Wallace ed. by Stephen Jones is an interesting bit of memorabilia for King Kong fans. Wallace’s original screenplay contains a lot of the ideas that were used in the original movie (the beauty and the beast angle, most of the dinosaur scenes & the ending (though different from the movie) atop the Empire State Building), though there were a lot of differences also with the final movie version. Jones also includes an extensive overview of the life of Edgar Wallace and, to a lesser degree, an overview of the making of the original first classic film. A must for King Kong fans. 4 / 5
B
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