Reviews

From the Borderlands: Stories of Terror and Madness by

_lilbey_'s review against another edition

3.0

Liked it better than the first installment.

emheld's review

2.0

Eh. Some stories were great, but so many left me cool or just unhappy with the time spent reading them. And it certainly took me quite a while to plow thru this. I kept putting it down, lacking any driving motivation to finish other than to get it off my "currently reading" list.

I think it's because many of the stories have a brand of "horror" that isn't something I like - somewhat real-world pervy "human horror" as opposed to the supernatural. The stories that stood out as exceptional, aside from King's, had high concepts and/or an element beyond human understanding.

Again, eh. Largely forgettable. Not stories of terror and madness, except a few. No, these are tales of creeps and disturbing portraits of humanity.

wombat_88's review

dark mysterious tense medium-paced

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

3.0

vdarcangelo's review

4.0

Faves:

Gary A. Braunbeck: "Rami Temporalis"

Holly Newstein: "Faith Will Make You Free"

Adam Corbin Fusco: "N0072-JK1"

Brian Freeman: "Answering the Call"

Dominick Cancilla: "Smooth Operator"

Bentley Little: "The Planting"

John McIlveen: "Infliction"

Gene O'Neill: "Magic Numbers"

Tom Piccirilli: "Around it Still the Sumac Grows"

Bev Vincent: "One of Those Weeks"

rbz39's review

3.0

Picked this up at a paperback store and enjoyed its grab-bag of spooky stories. Some are humerous, others dark, but all tend towards the bizarre and supernatural. While I enjoyed most of the stories, several of the tales contained graphic sexual violence or disturbing content so I would recommend reading in bursts. Several times I had to put the book down because I was reviled by the content within. Regardless, they are well written and certainly scary so I would recommend! The Stephen King story at the end is a fun concept, but not the best one of the bunch.

bookwisp86's review against another edition

3.0

Decent collection but most of the stories feel dated and contrived. Fair warning that I started this collection off on a bad note because I really don't like F. Paul Wilson and since his is the first story in the collection it colored the whole thing for me. There are a few good stories in here (Apathetic Flesh was a favorite) but overall I would give it a miss.

innae's review

2.0

Finally finished reading this. Obviously there was a reason it took so long. Many of the stories are just not to my liking.

I did like The Food Processor because it was sick and wrong...

and I LOVED Stationary Bike which is Stephen King's addition to this anthology.

So many of the stories were just WEIRD. and would mean more thought than I want to put into stories at this point in my life

bill_gauthier's review

5.0

My story "The Growth of Alan Ashley" is in this book. It pretty much gave me a career.

acknud's review

4.0

Pretty good collection of stories. There were the usual losers that you find in a collection such as this but there were some real gems as well. The Goat, Prisoner 392 and Story Time with the Bluefield Strangler all come to mind as good reads.

debbiewinnsmith's review

3.0

Loved the novella by Stephen King, Stationary Bike. Some of the other stories included were not as good, but enjoyed reading new authors.