Reviews

Isolation: The Horror Anthology by Dan Coxon

theonlyusernameavailable's review against another edition

dark mysterious fast-paced

3.75

babyfacedoldsoul's review against another edition

adventurous challenging dark emotional tense medium-paced

sdeeim's review against another edition

Reading other stuff want to read other thing. Not a priority but may check out again

bat_books's review

3.0

A lot of stories in this were huge misses for me, but I'm glad I stuck it through because I ended up finding some fantastic 4 star and 5 star reads in this mix. I feel I can only give this 3 stars because my ratings for each of the stories varied greatly, but I still highly recommend reading this anthology. This is a great read for someone who is exploring their preferences with horror.

My personal favourites were: Full Blood by Owl Goingback, How We Are by Chịkọdịlị Emelụmadụ, Solivagant by A.G. Slatter, The Peculiar Seclusion of Molly McMarshall by Gwendolyn Kiste, Fire Above Fire Below by Lisa Tuttle, and Second Wind by M.R. Carey

This was my first horror anthology, as someone who always believed they were not a fan of short stories, and it has definitely inspired me to check out more in the future!

shrewdbard's review

I recommend this collection if:

• you like horror tropes, but scare easily, and want to avoid anything too severe
• you are looking for thoughtful meditations on isolation
• you want to read a literary, slow-paced collection of reflective short stories

If you're looking for page-turning horror, don't bother. It's a shame because this collection fundamentally has better writing than the last horror anthology I read, but it's also much less interesting, hence the DNF. Many stories ended the moment anything interesting started to happen; just a sudden, mildly-shocking paragraph, no elaboration, then end of story. Still, the stories I did like stood out enough that I saved some of these writers' other works to my To Read list. Too lazy to check which I saved and list them here haha

myadventurewithbooks's review

fast-paced

3.0

jhallford's review

dark mysterious medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Plot
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? N/A

4.5

wildadvent604's review

adventurous dark emotional medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

3.5

kathran's review

dark mysterious tense

• Plot- or character-driven? N/A
• Strong character development? N/A
• Loveable characters? N/A
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? N/A

4.0

I ❤️ horror anthologies. Some of these were really good, some were really bad. The idea of having an entire anthology based off of the theme of ‘isolation’ was really interesting to me, but it got boring and repetitive after a while (especially when authors would go for the obvious, ones that dealt with either Covid itself or obviously Covid inspired pandemics were a slog to read through). Some stories will definitely stick with me, though (the man who befriends a homeless woman he unwittingly and then sort-of-wittingly traps was fun, and the story of a woman being emotionally consumed by her pregnancy and her tale of grief on the coast of Maine was very well written and interesting). Altogether a fun read that got me through many long bus rides! My favorite from the entire anthology was most likely the one about the indigenous girl with the power to incite sickness and death through touch who is kept under her grandmother’s thumb. Very interesting and also queer and got three cheers from me. Also many zombie stories! And you know me, I am zombie lover #1.

torchyblane's review

adventurous dark reflective sad tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Plot
• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
• Flaws of characters a main focus? N/A

3.25