Reviews

Chthonic: Weird Tales of Inner Earth by Belinda Lewis, Gemma Files, Ramsey Campbell, Scott R. Jones

amy_da1sy's review

4.0

I really liked these short stories they had a very creepy feeling around them.

jdhacker's review

mysterious reflective sad 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

4.75

Another great collection from Martian Migraine Press. Chthonic's theme is tales involving the earth and what lurks beneath the surface. As is common with a Martian Migraine collection, this theme can be stretched pretty far in its interpretation, but in wonderful way. Like 'Resonator', this collection gels around its theme extremely well. Ranging from firmly 'weird' stories to more straightforward horror and science fiction, I did not find a single weak entry.
The expected Lovecraft inclusion is 'The Rats in the Walls', for the uninitiated that's the one with the famously badly named cat. Though on this upteenth reading it strikes me that the cat is treated a bit as a protagonist/hero, alerting the humans to danger, accompanying them in trying to investigate and stop it. Which made me reflect on it a bit differently.
I particularly loved John Linwood Grant's WWI period piece, Orrin Grey's 'Hollow Earths', and the deeply weird and nonlinear 'Some Corner of a Dorset Field that is Forever Arabia' by David Stevens, but as I said, there is not a weak entry in here.