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catseye6773's review against another edition
5.0
Great anthology, good for finding authors to check out
murphyc1's review against another edition
I read about half of this anthology at least a decade ago. I remember thinking that the quality of the stories was terribly uneven, and eventually I just put it down.
moonlit_shelves's review against another edition
dark
mysterious
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
2.5
kandicez's review against another edition
5.0
Those five stars are for my favorite five stories in this collection. I am going to review each of them separately below when I have a few minutes. I didn't love every story presented, but those I did more than made up for those I didn't. Awesome editing Sarrantonio.
"The Road Virus Heads North" by Stephen King *****– This is a very scary story and I have read it many times. A recurring theme in King’s writing is a character’s ability to see the future in some way, and yet be powerless to change or stop it. Such is the case here. What always gets me most with this story is the phrase “filed teeth”. I cringe just typing those words. Not only do I imagine they look terrifying, but I clench in anticipation of pain at the idea of actually DOING that to oneself. Again, ick!
"Keepsakes and Treasures: A Love Story" by Neil Gaiman ***** – I read this on the plane and cannot tell you how uncomfortable I was almost from the first paragraph. I was actually sweating and had to reach up and turn on the little fan thing above my seat. I was squirming and felt a little grimy just for having witnessed what happened between the lines on the page. Gaiman is very careful to never come right out and say what’s happening, but anyone with half a brain just knows. Yuck! Kudos to him for not only making me feel so strongly, but for doing it in so few pages.
"Elsewhere" by William Peter Blatty ***** This is just a mindf*#k! I mean a serious screwing. You read it and then you are carried back to the beginning. It’s an absolute ourobouros which is my very favorite kind of story. Blatty is a genius storyteller, as everyone knows, and this is not exception to his craft.
"The Road Virus Heads North" by Stephen King *****– This is a very scary story and I have read it many times. A recurring theme in King’s writing is a character’s ability to see the future in some way, and yet be powerless to change or stop it. Such is the case here. What always gets me most with this story is the phrase “filed teeth”. I cringe just typing those words. Not only do I imagine they look terrifying, but I clench in anticipation of pain at the idea of actually DOING that to oneself. Again, ick!
"Keepsakes and Treasures: A Love Story" by Neil Gaiman ***** – I read this on the plane and cannot tell you how uncomfortable I was almost from the first paragraph. I was actually sweating and had to reach up and turn on the little fan thing above my seat. I was squirming and felt a little grimy just for having witnessed what happened between the lines on the page. Gaiman is very careful to never come right out and say what’s happening, but anyone with half a brain just knows. Yuck! Kudos to him for not only making me feel so strongly, but for doing it in so few pages.
"Elsewhere" by William Peter Blatty ***** This is just a mindf*#k! I mean a serious screwing. You read it and then you are carried back to the beginning. It’s an absolute ourobouros which is my very favorite kind of story. Blatty is a genius storyteller, as everyone knows, and this is not exception to his craft.
highladyofthenightcourt21's review against another edition
3.0
3.5 stars! Honestly, this rating is so high because of the quality of like, 2, of the stories. But they’ve stuck in my mind the entire time, which tells you something!
Out of this book, I think the most worth reading were:
1) Rio Grande Gothic - so enticing and the most realistic story in this anthology, which is my favorite kind of horror
2) Mad Dog Summer - you can tell I have a type, which again is realistic horror. This is such a great story with a nice twist. Beware if you don’t like stories where an animal dies (I hate this unnecessary evil, but was able to look past it somehow in this story).
3) Catfish Gal Blues - unique and interesting
4) The Owl and the Pussycat - awesome twist and super unique
5) Good Friday - baaaaadass ending!
6) The Ruins of Contracoeur - very Haunting of Hill House vibes
7) Hemophage - a nice unique vampire story!
Most of the others are worth a read, but I wouldn’t read them again. Overall, a very good anthology!
Out of this book, I think the most worth reading were:
1) Rio Grande Gothic - so enticing and the most realistic story in this anthology, which is my favorite kind of horror
2) Mad Dog Summer - you can tell I have a type, which again is realistic horror. This is such a great story with a nice twist. Beware if you don’t like stories where an animal dies (I hate this unnecessary evil, but was able to look past it somehow in this story).
3) Catfish Gal Blues - unique and interesting
4) The Owl and the Pussycat - awesome twist and super unique
5) Good Friday - baaaaadass ending!
6) The Ruins of Contracoeur - very Haunting of Hill House vibes
7) Hemophage - a nice unique vampire story!
Most of the others are worth a read, but I wouldn’t read them again. Overall, a very good anthology!
trudilibrarian's review against another edition
2.0
I am judging this collection of short stories with an especially critical eye for several reasons:
1) it promises to deliver some of the best original horror stories by authors at the pinnacle of their craft (including Stephen King, Neil Gaiman, Edward Lee and William Peter Blatty)
2) it received the 1999 Bram Stoker Award for Best Anthology
and 3) despite my commitment to finish this 700+ page anthology (and neglecting many other books while I persevered), it still took me too long to finish - almost 2 weeks! That tells me at no time was I ever so engrossed the pages turned themselves.
Finally, upon finishing, I'm hard pressed to remember salient details from any of the stories. The majority feel blurry. Not one punched me in the solar plexus and left me thinking about it for days. Even Stephen King's contribution, "The Road Virus Heads North" isn't one of my favorites by him (and one I had read before anyway when it was republished in King's anthology [b:Everything's Eventual: 14 Dark Tales|10579|Everything's Eventual 14 Dark Tales|Stephen King|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1166254238s/10579.jpg|2330175]).
I am particularly disappointed with the contributions from Neil Gaiman and William Peter Blatty. Gaiman's story is dark and crude, rough and profane, nothing about it even "felt" like Gaiman. Blatty offers up a very underwhelming haunted house story that borrows too heavily from other sources like Richard Matheson and Shirley Jackson. Blatty not only closes the anthology, his story is more the length of a novella. The extra pages don’t help in my opinion. It is an easily forgettable tale with a “surprise” ending that should come as no surprise because we’ve seen it too many times before.
Stories that did manage to stand out though include:
“The Owl and the Pussycat” by Thomas M. Disch:
this one has a nice creepy feel and once you finally understand what’s happening, the “a-ha” moment is very rewarding. I’ve never read anything quite like it, and for that alone it gets high marks. A diamond in the rough indeed.
“Catfish Gal Blues” by Nancy A. Collins
This one features a freeloading, womanizing pretty boy guitar player with a streak of greed that leads him down the path to a final comeuppance. There is a bluesy, southern feel to it all that I liked very much.
“The Entertainment” by Ramsey Campbell
I haven’t read a lot by Campbell but plan on rectifying that as soon as possible. I’m not sure exactly what the hell is happening in the freakish hotel the main character finds himself stranded in one rainy night (I’m not sure I want to know). It’s bad news, I know that, and I was thoroughly creeped out the whole time and just wanted him to get the hell out of there post-haste. Parts of this story actually reminded me somewhat of how I felt reading [b:The Pilo Family Circus|4748221|The Pilo Family Circus|Will Elliott|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1266921571s/4748221.jpg|4812858]. There is no humor in Campbell’s story though; it is all very deadly serious.
“ICU” by Edward Lee
I don’t know if I should be surprised or not that my favorite story of the entire collection is this little diddy by gore master Edward Lee. My only exposure to Lee has been his notorious novel [b:The Bighead|905659|The Bighead (Author's Preferred Version)|Edward Lee|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1179341792s/905659.jpg|2574243] (which I just couldn’t stomach and failed to finish). Here, he offers up his devilish version of a “just desserts” story. The ending isn’t completely original, I just love how Lee delivers it in his own demented style. For a guy who usually cannot hold back on the gruesome details, he is nicely subtle here allowing the reader to imagine the worst.
“Angie” by Ed Gorman
I really liked this one too. It’s a simple story effectively rendered, a real snapshot of regular people and the choices made when driven by pure selfishness. There is no comeuppance here, no just desserts, which is likely much more a reflection of reality. I think we would be shocked to learn just what ordinary people would be capable of doing (and doing so without suffering any guilt). I think more sociopaths walk among us than we would like to think about or admit.
October Country 2011 #7
1) it promises to deliver some of the best original horror stories by authors at the pinnacle of their craft (including Stephen King, Neil Gaiman, Edward Lee and William Peter Blatty)
2) it received the 1999 Bram Stoker Award for Best Anthology
and 3) despite my commitment to finish this 700+ page anthology (and neglecting many other books while I persevered), it still took me too long to finish - almost 2 weeks! That tells me at no time was I ever so engrossed the pages turned themselves.
Finally, upon finishing, I'm hard pressed to remember salient details from any of the stories. The majority feel blurry. Not one punched me in the solar plexus and left me thinking about it for days. Even Stephen King's contribution, "The Road Virus Heads North" isn't one of my favorites by him (and one I had read before anyway when it was republished in King's anthology [b:Everything's Eventual: 14 Dark Tales|10579|Everything's Eventual 14 Dark Tales|Stephen King|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1166254238s/10579.jpg|2330175]).
I am particularly disappointed with the contributions from Neil Gaiman and William Peter Blatty. Gaiman's story is dark and crude, rough and profane, nothing about it even "felt" like Gaiman. Blatty offers up a very underwhelming haunted house story that borrows too heavily from other sources like Richard Matheson and Shirley Jackson. Blatty not only closes the anthology, his story is more the length of a novella. The extra pages don’t help in my opinion. It is an easily forgettable tale with a “surprise” ending that should come as no surprise because we’ve seen it too many times before.
Stories that did manage to stand out though include:
“The Owl and the Pussycat” by Thomas M. Disch:
this one has a nice creepy feel and once you finally understand what’s happening, the “a-ha” moment is very rewarding. I’ve never read anything quite like it, and for that alone it gets high marks. A diamond in the rough indeed.
“Catfish Gal Blues” by Nancy A. Collins
This one features a freeloading, womanizing pretty boy guitar player with a streak of greed that leads him down the path to a final comeuppance. There is a bluesy, southern feel to it all that I liked very much.
“The Entertainment” by Ramsey Campbell
I haven’t read a lot by Campbell but plan on rectifying that as soon as possible. I’m not sure exactly what the hell is happening in the freakish hotel the main character finds himself stranded in one rainy night (I’m not sure I want to know). It’s bad news, I know that, and I was thoroughly creeped out the whole time and just wanted him to get the hell out of there post-haste. Parts of this story actually reminded me somewhat of how I felt reading [b:The Pilo Family Circus|4748221|The Pilo Family Circus|Will Elliott|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1266921571s/4748221.jpg|4812858]. There is no humor in Campbell’s story though; it is all very deadly serious.
“ICU” by Edward Lee
I don’t know if I should be surprised or not that my favorite story of the entire collection is this little diddy by gore master Edward Lee. My only exposure to Lee has been his notorious novel [b:The Bighead|905659|The Bighead (Author's Preferred Version)|Edward Lee|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1179341792s/905659.jpg|2574243] (which I just couldn’t stomach and failed to finish). Here, he offers up his devilish version of a “just desserts” story. The ending isn’t completely original, I just love how Lee delivers it in his own demented style. For a guy who usually cannot hold back on the gruesome details, he is nicely subtle here allowing the reader to imagine the worst.
“Angie” by Ed Gorman
I really liked this one too. It’s a simple story effectively rendered, a real snapshot of regular people and the choices made when driven by pure selfishness. There is no comeuppance here, no just desserts, which is likely much more a reflection of reality. I think we would be shocked to learn just what ordinary people would be capable of doing (and doing so without suffering any guilt). I think more sociopaths walk among us than we would like to think about or admit.
October Country 2011 #7
kingfan30's review against another edition
dark
mysterious
tense
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
3.0
bickleyhouse's review
5.0
First off, let me say that there are quite a few typo errors in the version that I read. However, they in no way detracted from my enjoyment of this most excellent collection of stories in the horror genre, collected by Al Sarrantonio. This is at least the third book that I have read that was edited by Mr. Sarrantonio, and I must say that I like his choices.
This is a rather hefty book, weighing in at almost 700 pages (666 for the ebook and more than that for the paperback), and includes a very large number of stories by authors that are both instantly recognizable, and some, not so much, or at least I had not heard of them before. The chilling finale of the book is a novelette by William Peter Blatty (famed author of The Exorcist), called "Elsewhere." I think it wise that Al chose to save it for last, because it might be the best story in the collection.
Among my other favorites were "The Ruins of Contracoeur," by Joyce Carol Oates, "The Road Virus Heads North," by Stephen King (one of my all time favorite King shorts), "Keepsakes and Treasures: A Love Story," by Neil Gaiman, "An Exaltation of Termagants," by Eric Van Lustbader, "Itinerary," by Tim Powers, "Catfish Gal Blues," by Nancy A. Collins, "The Grave," By P.D. Cacek, "The Shadow, the Darkness," by Thomas Ligotti, "Rio Grande Gothic," by David Morell, "The Ropy Thing," by Al Sarrantonio, "The Book of Irrational Numbers," by Michael Marshall Smith, and "Mad Dog Summer," by Joe R. Lansdale. This doesn't mean I didn't like the rest of the stories. These are just the ones that really stood out.
I would recommend this book for any fan of the genre. It is, as I said earlier, a most excellent representation of the variety of the horror genre, and introduced me to some excellent authors.
Incidentally, is it a coincidence that the ebook version of 999 had exactly 666 pages?
This is a rather hefty book, weighing in at almost 700 pages (666 for the ebook and more than that for the paperback), and includes a very large number of stories by authors that are both instantly recognizable, and some, not so much, or at least I had not heard of them before. The chilling finale of the book is a novelette by William Peter Blatty (famed author of The Exorcist), called "Elsewhere." I think it wise that Al chose to save it for last, because it might be the best story in the collection.
Among my other favorites were "The Ruins of Contracoeur," by Joyce Carol Oates, "The Road Virus Heads North," by Stephen King (one of my all time favorite King shorts), "Keepsakes and Treasures: A Love Story," by Neil Gaiman, "An Exaltation of Termagants," by Eric Van Lustbader, "Itinerary," by Tim Powers, "Catfish Gal Blues," by Nancy A. Collins, "The Grave," By P.D. Cacek, "The Shadow, the Darkness," by Thomas Ligotti, "Rio Grande Gothic," by David Morell, "The Ropy Thing," by Al Sarrantonio, "The Book of Irrational Numbers," by Michael Marshall Smith, and "Mad Dog Summer," by Joe R. Lansdale. This doesn't mean I didn't like the rest of the stories. These are just the ones that really stood out.
I would recommend this book for any fan of the genre. It is, as I said earlier, a most excellent representation of the variety of the horror genre, and introduced me to some excellent authors.
Incidentally, is it a coincidence that the ebook version of 999 had exactly 666 pages?
rufus666's review against another edition
5.0
a lot of really good stories in here. joyce carol oates' 'the ruins of contracoeur' is amazing. terrifying. everything.