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A review by mjputnam
This Dreaming Isle by Gareth E. Rees, Catriona Ward, Richard V. Hirst, Angela Readman, Jeanette Ng, Alison Littlewood, Robert Shearman, Alison Moore, Gary Budden, Stephen Volk, Aliya Whiteley, Ramsey Campbell, Andrew Michael Hurley, James Miller, Jenn Ashworth, Dan Coxon, Tim Lebbon, Kirsty Logan
3.0
Halfway through this anthology I felt it was firmly in the 2-star range, however after finishing I'm giving a tentative 3/5.
I wasn't blown away by any of the stories, and felt none were truly frightening, but what this collection of shorts has going for it is a vague feeling of malaise which accompanies most of the tales within.
Many of these are rather predictable and follow a similar, almost cookie-cutter formula for telling a creepy story—a normal person finds themself in a new situation, something uncanny occurs, and in the final few paragraphs the reader is bludgeoned with a dramatic supernatural event or revelation. Despite this the stories are all well-written, with several I rather enjoyed, which in the end is what bumped it from a 2 to a 3 for me.
I wasn't blown away by any of the stories, and felt none were truly frightening, but what this collection of shorts has going for it is a vague feeling of malaise which accompanies most of the tales within.
Many of these are rather predictable and follow a similar, almost cookie-cutter formula for telling a creepy story—a normal person finds themself in a new situation, something uncanny occurs, and in the final few paragraphs the reader is bludgeoned with a dramatic supernatural event or revelation. Despite this the stories are all well-written, with several I rather enjoyed, which in the end is what bumped it from a 2 to a 3 for me.