Reviews

Queer Fear: Gay Horror Fiction by Michael Rowe

rampaginglibrarian's review

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3.0

not for the faint of heart
Although the title might be give-away enough, Queer Fear: gay horror fiction edited and with an introduction by Michael Rowe is not for everyone. Like all short story collections the quality of the stories tends to be somewhat uneven, and some of them include graphic sex, violence, and horror (but what do you expect?). If you're willing to take it on, they make for nice little stories to read as breaks between the other books you may be reading (at least that's what i was doing this month.)
My favorites in the collection included Little Holocausts, a beautifully told tale, by Brian Hodge, The Sound of Weeping (set in a morgue) by Thomas S. Roche, Hey Fairy (about an actual fairy who has had enough) by Edo Van Belkom, Genius Loci (a ghost story) by Becky Southwell, and Nestle's Revenge by Ron Oliver (reminds me a little of David Sedaris if he decided to go the murderous route). Goodbye by Michael Thomas Ford was an absolutely wonderful and very touching story but i'm not sure why it was in this collection. Caitlin R. Kiernan's Spindleshanks (New Orleans, 1956) seemed to go nowhere, and David Quinn's The Perpetual was a bit too much (even for me) it seemed to be written to appeal to the prurient serial killer inside the reader and i don't think that's in me. And Nancy Kilpatrick's No Silent Scream was ALMOST like just another day in my life (now that's really scary!)
Just a thought i had as i was reading: if we heterosexuals choose not to expose ourselves to certain lifestyles that is certainly our prerogative, but where does that leave the other ten percent of the population who literally has our lifestyle flung in their faces on a daily basis?

atomic_tourist's review

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2.0

Queer fear?! More like cishet ennui!!

cadeunderbooks's review

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challenging dark emotional funny mysterious sad tense medium-paced

4.25

There was a slump of stories in the middle of this collection that really slowed me down, but I'm so glad I read through them all, because the last four were all bangers. This anthology was published in 2000, so it has quite a few slurs (usually voiced by the antagonists, but not really challenged in the text) & a use of outdated, potentially offensive, terminology (but not used in a negative context in the story). I've listed content warnings for a few of the stories below that I thought were especially explicit, but also, this is a horror collection, & there's gore, body horror, death, & terrible & creepy things, etc., happening within each story, so please be cautious if horror is not your usual thing.

Some of these were written so, so beautifully & truly haunted me; others were just very disappointing, because a clever premise was right there, & executed very poorly. (Which is like most collections, haha, but the contrast between some of the highs & lows here felt very stark.) My tippy-top faves were: The Siege, Little Holocausts, Tabula Rasa, The Bird Feeders, Nestle's Revenge, and Second Shadow.

See below the *~* line for my somewhat spoiler-y thoughts for each piece. The average rating was 4 stars, but I ended up giving it a lil extra love, because I love horror & all things queer, & this collection ended up feeling like a treat.

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

The Nightguard by C. Mark Umland // Content warning for pretty graphic rape scenes. There's a sort of interesting literal hellscape situation going on, but I don't think the twist at the end worked. This is just a sad end to a sad life, with some overwrought language, as well as questionable dialect & reasoning from the other main character. 2/5
p.21-36

Piercing Men by Douglas Clegg // A solid, sort of sinister, look at two men having an affair. When one of them goes too far, their reactions to the... misdeed, is the nice kind of skin-crawling horror I was looking for in this collection. 3.75/5
p.37-49

The Siege by Michael Marano // Oooh, this one was so weird & I loved it! Essentially, it's about souls that have been wronged (murdered), they've come back in other bodies, & are determined (& supernaturally attuned (& aware of each other)) to waiting for the right moment to get their revenge on their murderers. The writing was strange & twisty, but I thoroughly enjoyed the imagery, & how the city of Charleston was its own haunted character. 4.5/5
p50-61

Bear Shirt by Gemma Files // This one was strange to like at all because the main character is a fellow who fell lustfully for a neoNazi guy, eventually leaves the whole violent-tinged situation, but can't forget about him. MC's ex is super obsessed with his actual ideal goal -- fighting a bear to reclaim his "true nature" & skin (the titular "bear shirt"), & years later, MC is lured out to ex's cabin under the pretense of his death. I liked the writing on the surface level & the MC's inner narration... but yeah, I don't really understand giving the ex neoNazi connections at all, (or not examining that infatuation more) when his true motivation, & their central conflict, was his pursuit of a supernatural transformation. It's like American History X meets decent fanfiction for Teen Wolf or True Blood or something. 3/5
p.62-78

Little Holocausts by Brian Hodge // I loved this one. It has an ache to it, to the characters, to the words, to the plot that weaves between horrible reality & wistful supernatural release. I loved how the title came to be understood in the very last bit of imagery. I loved the passages about how 
"The city grows at night...the city had sorted out long ago who it could use to maintain itself, and who would taste best between its teeth." p.87-88
This was just everything meaty & raw & depressing that I love about horror & cities, things that eat you up, almost without you realizing it, until it's too late. 5/5
p.79-96

The Sound of Weeping by Thomas S. Roche // Short, blunt, necrophilic, second-hand embarrassment. I'm just imagining Quinn being discovered in the morgue drawer & there isn't anything supernatural at all occurring & um, yeah, that's a scarier image than this short story conjured in its short span of pages. 2/5
p.97-104

"Hey, Fairy!" by Edo Van Belkin // Content warning for graphic assault imagery. Interesting premise (fairies hopping into human bodies & experiencing new things by observing while hidden in the back of the host's mind), blargh execution (repetitive, overwrought writing, with swearing like a middle schooler, which was just annoying). I liked the revenge/justice aspect to the story, just think it could have been better. 2.75/5
p.105-113

The Spark by William J. Mann // Well, I mean, another cool idea, but there's really nothing here. No depth to the characters, no weight to the deaths, the ending was the wrong kind of ambiguous for me... because I don't really care which side of "Did MC really beat up death/a devil & become immortal or not?" question I end up on. Just left me feeling frustrated. 2/5 p.114-127 

Spindleshanks (New Orleans, 1956) by CaitlĂ­n R. Kiernan // The only story to feature a sapphic couple, I absolutely loved the atmosphere of this piece. It was dripping with tension, ennui, the humid swampiness of New Orleans in the summertime. I was a bit disappointed, it didn't really seem to go anywhere, but for vibes, top marks. 3.75/5
p.128-137

The Perpetual by David Quinn // I really did not like the execution of this one. & it was the one where I started to really notice the sentence level typos & editing errors. (I'm still not sure if, during a part, it was intentional that the script parts were suddenly not in italics...) Sorry to sound trite, but the ending felt like it was trying way too hard to be life-affirming, with literally leaving the pack of cigarettes on the rock. I didn't vibe with the narrator, what fractured world-building we did get from the MC's attempted vampire script -- it was word salad to me. Just... not for me. 1/5
p.138-145

Genius Loci by Becky N. Southwell // Cool title, & pretty solid extrapolation of that title. A sort of classic haunted location infecting the next visitors tale. 3/5
p.146-158

Goodbye by Michael Thomas Ford // This is the sweetest story in the collection, without being too saccharine, I think. A young boy honors his grandmother with a goodbye ritual involving butterflies & fireflies. It was nice to have a story in this collection that both had a sympathetic, kind adult figure in a queer person's life, & a ghost-y, hopeful resonance (in contrast to the surrounding death, gore, & mayhem). 4/5
p.159-163

Tabula Rasa by Robert Boyczuk // This one might be my favorite of the collection. From the opening quote from The Great Gatsby (a very queer book -- & I'm so happy it's in the public domain now for authors to have fun with retellings), to the delicious tension & creepiness & terror (especially of the possessive Marcus). The scene on page 179 with the two men trapped in the car being pulled into the abyss of the storm -- shudder!! & quite a unique scare. I love that this one can be read as literal/supernatural anguish, but also a metaphor for an abusive relationship. 5/5
p.164-183

You Can't Always Get What You Want by T.L. Byers // I did not like this one. The protagonist was just dumb, & the narrative didn't give me as a reader a chance to care about his plight. I've read a similar story by Tanith Lee where the narrator became obsessed with someone she assumed was an assassin, but oh no it was death all along, & it was done so much better -- better suspense, better build-up, better world-building & characterization. So the seed of a cool story was here, but it was very straightforward & boring. 2/5
p.184-188

The Bird Feeders by David Nickle // As this story progressed, I liked it more & more. Even though I didn't really understand how the "deals" were being made, the cosmic level horror of these giant birds & the way it was written as they feasted on & mutilated the people trapped in that other world -- very good, very creepy. & I loved the bookended imagery of wanting to have the fear-induced "gooseflesh" caressed away from your skin, & the different, twisted, contexts for each moment. 4/5
p.189-212

No Silent Scream by Nancy Kilpatrick // One of the best character studies I've read. The paranoia, the sadness, the descent & crescendo into violence. "Why do they make life so difficult?" 4/5
p.213-220

Nestle's Revenge by Ron Oliver // Content warning for death of an animal & descriptions of an undead animal. The voice of the narrator in this piece is *chef's kiss* level of absurdly funny. It's a campy, over-the-top, yet fully believable (because of the writing) murder spree. It felt very Love, Death, and Robots (which I love). 4.5/5 p.221-242

Second Shadow by Joseph O'Brien // As a meditation on loss, fear, hate, death & (losing) love, this short story is quite captivating. It takes you to a strange place, but the narration really drove home some relatable feelings of longing & desperation. Also, knowing that the word "Egren" means  "to make eager; to encourage or induce" ... A nice poignant ending note to the collection. 4/5 
p.243-247
11.28.22

sirlancelot2021's review

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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? Yes

3.5

queerbillydeluxe's review

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4.0

8 of the 14 were awesome. The other 6 weren't bad--just not my favorites. Caitlin Kiernan's was, of course, the best imho. Only 4 in the anthology were by women and even fewer involved lesbians. This is my main issue with anthologies of "gay fiction." Most of the time the number of male writers far surpasses the women. I still enjoyed it though, and I do want to read the second volume--it is, after all, gay horror.

librarydino's review

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4.0

8 of the 14 were awesome. The other 6 weren't bad--just not my favorites. Caitlin Kiernan's was, of course, the best imho. Only 4 in the anthology were by women and even fewer involved lesbians. This is my main issue with anthologies of "gay fiction." Most of the time the number of male writers far surpasses the women. I still enjoyed it though, and I do want to read the second volume--it is, after all, gay horror.
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