Scan barcode
weaselweader's review
4.0
Great story-telling that builds on a uniquely Canadian understanding of our own character!
Northern Frights 4 is a short, entertaining collection of stories that beautifully covers the entire spectrum of emotions that well written horror and dark fantasy can elicit. These stories are moody, thought-provoking, frightening, darkly humorous and just plain old creepy! To my pleasure, these Canadian stories were also written in that distinct, uniquely Canadian flavour with a quiet and unerringly accurate pride of place and setting.
It would be hard to beat this excerpt, for example, to more accurately characterize driving in Canada's far north as one approaches the tree-line:
" 'Forest' was a generous description of the countryside. The trees were thin as tent poles, holding aloft airy webworks of leaves beneath an empty grey sky. 'Road' didn't begin to describe the rutted, muddy pathway they were driving on. The worst parts had bridges of freshly felled trees which hammered like angry demons at the 4x4's undercarriage. It might have been exhilarating at a greater speed than Father was driving. At least he was forced to pick up the pace a bit by the mosquitoes which filled the cab whenever then went too slow."
The top-notch quality and diversity of themes is really quite astonishing in such a short collection.
Dead of Winter, for example, can’t really be characterized as anything other than a ghost story that wants to be a romantic tear-jerker – love transcends the darkening shroud of Alzheimer’s and recalls the specter of a man’s long dead wife. In Reasons Unknown, readers are treated to the touching story of the ghost of a father who helps a grieving son deal with the father’s death and the bitter memory of a mother who abandoned them both and walked out of their lives. A trucker in Canada’s far north in Ice Bridges realizes that good luck might not be everything it’s cracked up to be. Having personally enjoyed the beauty of long-distance hiking and experienced dehydration on Ontario’s world famous Bruce Trail, I found Red Mischief’s cautionary tale of water and werewolves especially amusing. Environmentalists will shiver and chuckle somewhat wryly to the poetic Skinny Dipping that warns against the possibilities of acid rain. The title Consuming Fear is a perfectly chosen play on words to described the mental devastation wrought on a young girl as a result of years of sexual abuse.
One might close by echoing the sentiment found in the introduction to Northern Frights 4: “I don’t usually read horror but Northern Frights is good”. But for a small handful of entries in the collection that didn’t move me to applause, the rating would have been a solid 5-stars. Definitely recommended.
Paul Weiss
Northern Frights 4 is a short, entertaining collection of stories that beautifully covers the entire spectrum of emotions that well written horror and dark fantasy can elicit. These stories are moody, thought-provoking, frightening, darkly humorous and just plain old creepy! To my pleasure, these Canadian stories were also written in that distinct, uniquely Canadian flavour with a quiet and unerringly accurate pride of place and setting.
It would be hard to beat this excerpt, for example, to more accurately characterize driving in Canada's far north as one approaches the tree-line:
" 'Forest' was a generous description of the countryside. The trees were thin as tent poles, holding aloft airy webworks of leaves beneath an empty grey sky. 'Road' didn't begin to describe the rutted, muddy pathway they were driving on. The worst parts had bridges of freshly felled trees which hammered like angry demons at the 4x4's undercarriage. It might have been exhilarating at a greater speed than Father was driving. At least he was forced to pick up the pace a bit by the mosquitoes which filled the cab whenever then went too slow."
The top-notch quality and diversity of themes is really quite astonishing in such a short collection.
Dead of Winter, for example, can’t really be characterized as anything other than a ghost story that wants to be a romantic tear-jerker – love transcends the darkening shroud of Alzheimer’s and recalls the specter of a man’s long dead wife. In Reasons Unknown, readers are treated to the touching story of the ghost of a father who helps a grieving son deal with the father’s death and the bitter memory of a mother who abandoned them both and walked out of their lives. A trucker in Canada’s far north in Ice Bridges realizes that good luck might not be everything it’s cracked up to be. Having personally enjoyed the beauty of long-distance hiking and experienced dehydration on Ontario’s world famous Bruce Trail, I found Red Mischief’s cautionary tale of water and werewolves especially amusing. Environmentalists will shiver and chuckle somewhat wryly to the poetic Skinny Dipping that warns against the possibilities of acid rain. The title Consuming Fear is a perfectly chosen play on words to described the mental devastation wrought on a young girl as a result of years of sexual abuse.
One might close by echoing the sentiment found in the introduction to Northern Frights 4: “I don’t usually read horror but Northern Frights is good”. But for a small handful of entries in the collection that didn’t move me to applause, the rating would have been a solid 5-stars. Definitely recommended.
Paul Weiss
More...