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the_coycaterpillar_reads's review against another edition
4.0
25 Gates of Hell is perpetually locked in the darkness. It is a frank and conclusive investigation of how dark humanity can be. 25 stories from 25 writers, each one steeping into the fires of hell unsure of whether they could escape again. As the title suggests, each story is focussed on the opening of hells gates and the implications upon mankind. Each one is gritty, dark as hell and it kept my black heart beating for a little while longer.
25 Gates of Hell reminded me just why I love Horror short stories. They are quick to the point, devastating to the point of despair and they can display all branches of emotion, something that other genres just struggle to display effectively. This anthology was so brutal and bloody that I could almost taste the metal in my mouth, hear the fear from all around me and my breath quicken with the anticipation of what would come next. The urgency was palpable, and every author had adept ways of hooking me from the first sentence. If you expect this to be the kind of book that you can pick up over the course of a few days, forget about it…this beast will consume and be consumed within hours.
A Child’s Game by Brandon Scott was the perfect opening to this fear inducing anthology. This tale is enough to permanently instil the cold dread into every reader but the fact that it was centred around a young child committing such atrocities made a dark shadow cross over my heart. The gore and the imagery was so horrifically sublime that I knew it would become a favourite.
The Ecstasy of Gold by Jill Girardi not only blew my socks off, but it took the skin with it too. How many people do you know that have had an undeniably hard start to life, and how many people would fall into the trap of doing anything for vast amounts of riches. A tale that examines humankinds’ affinity for greed and how that impacts everyone around them. A pickpocket that quite possibly has stolen the motherload and gotten more than he bargained for.
I’ll Come Back to You by Brian Keene was probably my favourite. Short, sharp and a blade that happily cut you from ear to ear. You immediately got a correlation to mental health and the human brains consciousness and how it loves to trick you in all lights. Cleverly written but with enough left hanging for you to sit in questioning silence.
Hook, Line and Sinker by Janine Pipe was just perfection. If anyone were to utter the words that women can’t write extreme gore – Pipe would tear them a new one and display it as art! The narrative was snappy, with enough elements of wit and horror to make it personable. It gave me the chills and flashbacks to old 80’s slasher movie vibes. A serial killer with a hook for a hand – winning!
25 Gates of Hell is an anthology that shows that its bark is just as bad as its bite. Each author knows how to get into the readers head and cranks the fear dial to the maximum.
25 Gates of Hell reminded me just why I love Horror short stories. They are quick to the point, devastating to the point of despair and they can display all branches of emotion, something that other genres just struggle to display effectively. This anthology was so brutal and bloody that I could almost taste the metal in my mouth, hear the fear from all around me and my breath quicken with the anticipation of what would come next. The urgency was palpable, and every author had adept ways of hooking me from the first sentence. If you expect this to be the kind of book that you can pick up over the course of a few days, forget about it…this beast will consume and be consumed within hours.
A Child’s Game by Brandon Scott was the perfect opening to this fear inducing anthology. This tale is enough to permanently instil the cold dread into every reader but the fact that it was centred around a young child committing such atrocities made a dark shadow cross over my heart. The gore and the imagery was so horrifically sublime that I knew it would become a favourite.
The Ecstasy of Gold by Jill Girardi not only blew my socks off, but it took the skin with it too. How many people do you know that have had an undeniably hard start to life, and how many people would fall into the trap of doing anything for vast amounts of riches. A tale that examines humankinds’ affinity for greed and how that impacts everyone around them. A pickpocket that quite possibly has stolen the motherload and gotten more than he bargained for.
I’ll Come Back to You by Brian Keene was probably my favourite. Short, sharp and a blade that happily cut you from ear to ear. You immediately got a correlation to mental health and the human brains consciousness and how it loves to trick you in all lights. Cleverly written but with enough left hanging for you to sit in questioning silence.
Hook, Line and Sinker by Janine Pipe was just perfection. If anyone were to utter the words that women can’t write extreme gore – Pipe would tear them a new one and display it as art! The narrative was snappy, with enough elements of wit and horror to make it personable. It gave me the chills and flashbacks to old 80’s slasher movie vibes. A serial killer with a hook for a hand – winning!
25 Gates of Hell is an anthology that shows that its bark is just as bad as its bite. Each author knows how to get into the readers head and cranks the fear dial to the maximum.
inky_bat's review against another edition
4.0
As these are stories relating to the gates of hell from the imagination of the writers, if you are looking for happy endings, this is not the book for you. That said, I really did love the majority of stories in this collection. They were so very creative, from across the globe, space, ghosts, ungodly terrors, you name it. Some were really memorable and quite frightening, it made me wish they were longer/stand-alone, but now that I am familiarized with the authors, it gives me even more for my TBR. They really were all well written and laid out, the stories flowed from one to another really well.
errantdreams's review
adventurous
dark
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? N/A
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
4.0
"25 Gates of Hell" (a horror anthology) is described in terms of gates opening and unleashing Hell on earth, with these writers chronicling the results. This is a fairly specific theme–although there’s obviously flexibility of course–and a good handful of these stories just don’t seem to fit the theme of “Hell on earth” beyond the fact that they’re horror stories. I’m always a bit disappointed when that happens, because I pick up themed anthologies because I’m specifically looking forward to that theme. Anyway…
My favorite stories in here were written by Brian Keene, Flint Maxwell, Matthew Hollis Damon, Janine Pipe, Nicholas Catron, and Gregg Chamberlain. Among these stories you’ll find people chasing down their past through alternate realities, rushed bridge constructions that might be haunted, monsters in closets, something in need of learning one or two tricks from “The Matrix,” a VR simulation gone horribly wrong, a pair of detectives trying to hunt down a vigilante “hook man” serial killer, and an alien crash-landing. Despite how much I loved these, a couple of them don’t seem to meet the theme. But there are some great characters, chilling twists, unusual demons, and nasty pranks.
Other really good stories tell of stolen wallets with strange properties, unusual power sources, strange portals found through traversing drainage pipes, a Bluebeard-like tale (you can see everything coming a mile away, but the execution is very good), mysterious creatures haunting the Bayou, an undertaker who’s been swindled, colonizers reaching Australia, zombie-bear attacks, a man who lost his wife and daughter in a crash and finds himself at a mysterious hotel, a man who wakes up in a coffin, a serial killer who’s looking for something inside bodies, and a food fight in a school cafeteria.
Some of the things I haven’t enjoyed (mostly in my less-favorite stories, but a few of these refer to the ones I actually quite like) include one with a detail that’s necessary for the plot that makes no sense to me at all. (If you have a patient in a psych ward who killed her family, and you wanted her to start art therapy, would you begin with a room full of children? I didn’t think so.) As often happens with short horror stories, some of them really left me wanting more. A few felt like they ended just before the climax of the story, or inadequately showed what was going on (I still can’t figure out how one of them ended, and in another I just felt like I missed something essential). Some hint at background that’s frustratingly lacking. One story seems to think that characters shouting is how you show drama. Certainly no deal-breakers, and many of these are problems that show up reasonably often in short horror stories.
Oh the whole, the stories are quite good. If you’re looking to find a few new authors to follow, it’ll be a good resource!
Content note: animal death, gore, mention of sexual violence/rape.
Content Warnings
Moderate: Animal death
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