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millennial_dandy's review against another edition
3.0
"Horror is not a genre [...] it is not a kind of fiction, meant to be confined to the ghetto of a special shelf in libraries or bookstores. Horror is an emotion. It can be found in all literature."
So spake Douglas E. Winter, editor of the 'Prime Evil' horror anthology.
I'm inclined to agree, which is indeed part of where my love of horror comes from; it is a limitless playground for the imagination since there are an infinite number of things that can scare us, and an infinite number of ways to dress them up.
That being said, because of its inherent lack of limitations when it comes to convention, it's really hard to hand a horror fan just any work falling into that broad categorization and expect them to enjoy it. What type of horror fan are they exactly? Do they gravitate towards monsters and ghosts, do they like gore, blood, decaying Gothic manors, violence, darkness, realism, fantasy? Do they want to battle death, social anxiety, PTSD, grief, existential dread?
This would definitely speak to why it was that reviews of this collection were so mixed. This wasn't a collection with a through line (e.g. 'Vampire anthology', 'Ghost Stories', etc.) -- it's a smorgasbord of all things horrific: ghost stories, body horror, child abuse, insanity, PTSD, vampires, nervous breakdowns, aliens. The gang's all here. But not everyone in the gang is for everyone.
From what I can gather, Winter certainly had the credentials to choose well-executed works from established authors, so I don't question the actual caliber of the stories, but I, like anyone presented with sundry options, liked some more than others; my final rating coming down to, really, how closely my taste aligned with Winter's.
Like any good 'Poe hoe', I like a good bit of cracked sanity in my horror, so I share the seemingly popular opinion that 'Orange is for Anguish, Blue for Insanity' by David Morrell was a standout, though I wish the ending had left a bit more to the imagination (like, did we need to have it spelled out where the madness came from? Did that not just knock some of the terror out of things?)
I also liked Thomas Ligotti's 'Alice's Last Adventure', which was on the more subtle side in terms of offering any sort of explanation for anything, though it also explored a bit of frayed sanity, perhaps a nervous breakdown of an aging writer of children's fiction, now haunted by her own creation.
Many of the others were fine. 'Food' was the expected value of body horror, but written well. 'The Night Flier' was the expected value of Stephen King, complete with the morally bankrupt protagonist pissing himself not once, but twice.
'The Juniper Tree' by Peter Straub was definitely the most polarizing of the bunch. Unsurprising, considering the subject matter of sexual abuse of a child described in pretty graphic detail from the perspective of that child having to reckon with that abuse as an adult. Everyone seems to agree that it was well-written (including me), but stories like that do raise questions about where the line is exactly (and if there should even be one) when it comes to gratuitous depictions of certain things (sexual abuse, violence, torture, sex, etc.). Honestly, that line will likely be in different places for different people. I don't like graphic torture scenes. For this reason, I'd never watch something like 'Martyrs.' But do I think it crosses a line just because I don't like it? Super hard to say.
I tend to be interested in the harm caused by the slant of the messaging of a text more than the degree of graphicness with which a text depicts distasteful things. A lot of the sex scenes in bodice rippers bother me more than, say, that scene in 'Lolita' where Humbert Humbert gets Dolores to unknowingly jerk him off with her foot, and it all comes down to framing. Bodice rippers tend to frame a lack of consent as just part of the ritual of sex--as sexy even, whereas Nabokov is careful to frame the sex in 'Lolita' as disgusting and horrific. And to what end? Bodice rippers aim to be titillating while 'Lolita' is meant (in part) to be an exploration of how easily charismatic people can spin a narrative in their own favor even if their monstrousness is out in the open.
'The Juniper Tree' doesn't romanticize what happens to its protagonist, but instead goes out of its way to criticize the culture that allows such disturbing things to happen; the ways in which a lack of sex education leads to children being more easily manipulated by adults with malevolent and predatory intentions. Given the publication date of 1988, this could also be seen as a retrospective critique of the parental neglect of the 'latchkey' generation.
There's stuff going on if you pop the hood is my point.
It's also definitely horror in the emotional sense that Winter describes in the introduction (the introduction, by the by, is definitely worth a read on its own), and so I agree with Winter that it belongs in a collection of 'modern horror' (as proclaimed by the book's subheading).
Definitely not for everyone, though, and one could argue that certain things could have been implied rather than shown without the story losing its sting.
Honestly, my biggest issue with many of the stories wasn't that they weren't to my taste, or explored themes I'm uninterested in, but more so that there was all the subtlety of a sledgehammer to most of them. Explore grief and PTSD and madness, yes, but (and maybe I'm just world-weary after all my years in the horror game) have some finesse, leave some mystery, some ambiguity. These are stories for adults, and I wish more of the authors involved in the project had trusted their readers a bit more.
In any event, 'Prime Evil' does what it sets out to do, I think; presenting horror as not a genre but a feeling that can come from many places, and it's a good introduction to popular and talented late 20th century writers for newer horror fans who may well only have heard of Stephen King. It's also a great collection for a budding horror fan still trying to feel out their taste.
So spake Douglas E. Winter, editor of the 'Prime Evil' horror anthology.
I'm inclined to agree, which is indeed part of where my love of horror comes from; it is a limitless playground for the imagination since there are an infinite number of things that can scare us, and an infinite number of ways to dress them up.
That being said, because of its inherent lack of limitations when it comes to convention, it's really hard to hand a horror fan just any work falling into that broad categorization and expect them to enjoy it. What type of horror fan are they exactly? Do they gravitate towards monsters and ghosts, do they like gore, blood, decaying Gothic manors, violence, darkness, realism, fantasy? Do they want to battle death, social anxiety, PTSD, grief, existential dread?
This would definitely speak to why it was that reviews of this collection were so mixed. This wasn't a collection with a through line (e.g. 'Vampire anthology', 'Ghost Stories', etc.) -- it's a smorgasbord of all things horrific: ghost stories, body horror, child abuse, insanity, PTSD, vampires, nervous breakdowns, aliens. The gang's all here. But not everyone in the gang is for everyone.
From what I can gather, Winter certainly had the credentials to choose well-executed works from established authors, so I don't question the actual caliber of the stories, but I, like anyone presented with sundry options, liked some more than others; my final rating coming down to, really, how closely my taste aligned with Winter's.
Like any good 'Poe hoe', I like a good bit of cracked sanity in my horror, so I share the seemingly popular opinion that 'Orange is for Anguish, Blue for Insanity' by David Morrell was a standout, though I wish the ending had left a bit more to the imagination (like, did we need to have it spelled out where the madness came from? Did that not just knock some of the terror out of things?)
I also liked Thomas Ligotti's 'Alice's Last Adventure', which was on the more subtle side in terms of offering any sort of explanation for anything, though it also explored a bit of frayed sanity, perhaps a nervous breakdown of an aging writer of children's fiction, now haunted by her own creation.
Many of the others were fine. 'Food' was the expected value of body horror, but written well. 'The Night Flier' was the expected value of Stephen King, complete with the morally bankrupt protagonist pissing himself not once, but twice.
'The Juniper Tree' by Peter Straub was definitely the most polarizing of the bunch. Unsurprising, considering the subject matter of sexual abuse of a child described in pretty graphic detail from the perspective of that child having to reckon with that abuse as an adult. Everyone seems to agree that it was well-written (including me), but stories like that do raise questions about where the line is exactly (and if there should even be one) when it comes to gratuitous depictions of certain things (sexual abuse, violence, torture, sex, etc.). Honestly, that line will likely be in different places for different people. I don't like graphic torture scenes. For this reason, I'd never watch something like 'Martyrs.' But do I think it crosses a line just because I don't like it? Super hard to say.
I tend to be interested in the harm caused by the slant of the messaging of a text more than the degree of graphicness with which a text depicts distasteful things. A lot of the sex scenes in bodice rippers bother me more than, say, that scene in 'Lolita' where Humbert Humbert gets Dolores to unknowingly jerk him off with her foot, and it all comes down to framing. Bodice rippers tend to frame a lack of consent as just part of the ritual of sex--as sexy even, whereas Nabokov is careful to frame the sex in 'Lolita' as disgusting and horrific. And to what end? Bodice rippers aim to be titillating while 'Lolita' is meant (in part) to be an exploration of how easily charismatic people can spin a narrative in their own favor even if their monstrousness is out in the open.
'The Juniper Tree' doesn't romanticize what happens to its protagonist, but instead goes out of its way to criticize the culture that allows such disturbing things to happen; the ways in which a lack of sex education leads to children being more easily manipulated by adults with malevolent and predatory intentions. Given the publication date of 1988, this could also be seen as a retrospective critique of the parental neglect of the 'latchkey' generation.
There's stuff going on if you pop the hood is my point.
It's also definitely horror in the emotional sense that Winter describes in the introduction (the introduction, by the by, is definitely worth a read on its own), and so I agree with Winter that it belongs in a collection of 'modern horror' (as proclaimed by the book's subheading).
Definitely not for everyone, though, and one could argue that certain things could have been implied rather than shown without the story losing its sting.
Honestly, my biggest issue with many of the stories wasn't that they weren't to my taste, or explored themes I'm uninterested in, but more so that there was all the subtlety of a sledgehammer to most of them. Explore grief and PTSD and madness, yes, but (and maybe I'm just world-weary after all my years in the horror game) have some finesse, leave some mystery, some ambiguity. These are stories for adults, and I wish more of the authors involved in the project had trusted their readers a bit more.
In any event, 'Prime Evil' does what it sets out to do, I think; presenting horror as not a genre but a feeling that can come from many places, and it's a good introduction to popular and talented late 20th century writers for newer horror fans who may well only have heard of Stephen King. It's also a great collection for a budding horror fan still trying to feel out their taste.
dnemec's review against another edition
2.0
Some really great stories, but some really meh stories.I thought Orange is for Anguish, Blue for Insanity by David Morell, Night Flier by Stephen King, and The Pool by Whitley Strieber were all great. The rest.. not so much. I was rather disappointed overall
jeremyjfloyd's review against another edition
adventurous
dark
mysterious
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
3.5
magpie_666's review against another edition
2.0
I didn't enjoy any of these stories. They were either written in a way that made it hard for me to read, or the story fell flat past way through
I think 'Food' was the best as it had a solid start but was only a 3 star overall for me.
I think 'Food' was the best as it had a solid start but was only a 3 star overall for me.
ryan_giblet's review against another edition
1.0
Sorry guys, this kinda tarnished my view of all short story collections. There were a couple good ones, but they weren't good enough to outweigh the bad. For a lot of them, it just felt like I was reading word salad. I feel the stories would have benefited from being longer so I could get more invested, but at the same time, I feel like they dragged on for too long. This is my opinion so don't send death threats ty.
rustcohle's review against another edition
3.0
El relato de Clive Barker y Thomas Ligotti son mis favoritos. Esta antología se editó en español (al menos en España) dividida en dos la primera parte "Escalofríos" y la segunda parte llamada "Pesadillas"
ihavetrashtasteinbooks's review against another edition
1.0
Sorry guys, this kinda tarnished my view of all short story collections. There were a couple good ones, but they weren't good enough to outweigh the bad. For a lot of them, it just felt like I was reading word salad. I feel the stories would have benefited from being longer so I could get more invested, but at the same time, I feel like they dragged on for too long. This is my opinion so don't send death threats ty.
golivia's review against another edition
3.0
A strange read. Stories by Morell and Straub are the clear highlights of this collection. The ratings shift in between a two and a four, so therefore it gets a 3.
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