I finished five in April, with one DNF.
1. A Darker Shade of Noir was an anthology of dark fiction all by female authors, edited by Joyce Carol Oates. The best story was a cringe inducing body horror piece by Aimee LaBrie (‘Gross Anatomy’). There were also good stories by the always dependable Elizabeth Hand, Valerie Martin, & Yumi Dineen Shiroma. The rest of the anthology was pretty forgettable. 2.9 / 5
2. I really liked the first half of The Third Rule of Time Travel by Philip Fracassi, which read like a futuristic tech-noir thriller about a grieving woman trying to hold onto her intellectual property. I didn’t enjoy the second half as much, which seemed to me to get bogged down on the pseudo science of the time travel mechanics. Overall I liked it, but not my favorite from Fracassi. 3.5 / 5
3. Similar to The Third Rule, I really liked the first two thirds of Little Boy by James Cooper, a coming of age story about two 12 year old friends in a small English town. I didn’t care for the last third at all, which introduced two unrealistic story lines. The conclusion to the main story line felt rushed and needed more explanation. Overall, Little Boy was a big disappointment, given its promising start. 2 / 5
4. Another disappointment was Kill Your Darling by Clay McLeod Chapman. Chapman pulls you into the story in the opening pages with his descriptions of the murder victim, but after that the story just kind of wallows. I had no interest in the characters, I thought the 40 year timeline added a completely unrealistic angle to the story, and worse of all, the concluding confession at the end of the story doesn’t match up with opening descriptions of the murder. 1 / 5
5. None of You Shall be Spared was a decent collection of 21 stories by Brian Evenson. The stories tended to be more of the weird tale variety than straight up horror. I enjoyed the stories in the second half more than the first half, where the stories tended to be more surrealist in nature. It didn’t help that the closing novella, the longest piece in the collection, was the story I liked the least. 3.4 / 5
6. The Pink Agave Motel by V. Castro. I didn’t care enough about the short stories and vignettes that opened this collection to invest the time in the short novel that closed the collection out. DNF
B
1. A Darker Shade of Noir was an anthology of dark fiction all by female authors, edited by Joyce Carol Oates. The best story was a cringe inducing body horror piece by Aimee LaBrie (‘Gross Anatomy’). There were also good stories by the always dependable Elizabeth Hand, Valerie Martin, & Yumi Dineen Shiroma. The rest of the anthology was pretty forgettable. 2.9 / 5
2. I really liked the first half of The Third Rule of Time Travel by Philip Fracassi, which read like a futuristic tech-noir thriller about a grieving woman trying to hold onto her intellectual property. I didn’t enjoy the second half as much, which seemed to me to get bogged down on the pseudo science of the time travel mechanics. Overall I liked it, but not my favorite from Fracassi. 3.5 / 5
3. Similar to The Third Rule, I really liked the first two thirds of Little Boy by James Cooper, a coming of age story about two 12 year old friends in a small English town. I didn’t care for the last third at all, which introduced two unrealistic story lines. The conclusion to the main story line felt rushed and needed more explanation. Overall, Little Boy was a big disappointment, given its promising start. 2 / 5
4. Another disappointment was Kill Your Darling by Clay McLeod Chapman. Chapman pulls you into the story in the opening pages with his descriptions of the murder victim, but after that the story just kind of wallows. I had no interest in the characters, I thought the 40 year timeline added a completely unrealistic angle to the story, and worse of all, the concluding confession at the end of the story doesn’t match up with opening descriptions of the murder. 1 / 5
5. None of You Shall be Spared was a decent collection of 21 stories by Brian Evenson. The stories tended to be more of the weird tale variety than straight up horror. I enjoyed the stories in the second half more than the first half, where the stories tended to be more surrealist in nature. It didn’t help that the closing novella, the longest piece in the collection, was the story I liked the least. 3.4 / 5
6. The Pink Agave Motel by V. Castro. I didn’t care enough about the short stories and vignettes that opened this collection to invest the time in the short novel that closed the collection out. DNF
B
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