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A review by jdhacker
Dark Celebrations by Calvin Demmer
adventurous
dark
funny
lighthearted
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
3.0
I picked up Dark Celebrations not because of previous exposure to Calvin Demmer's work, or because of a recommendation per se, but rather because on the whole I liked the collections Duane at Planet X Publications was putting together and this was one of few I didn't have. Speaking strictly about the publishers work, the cover art is great, but the line spacing and font size are both on the larger size, leading the book to be probably at least a third longer than in page count than it probably needs to be. So, it'll read much faster than you might be expecting as a reader!
Its interesting that Demmer and Duane went with essentially two themes for Dark Celebrations. The first is related to the title, each entry is supposed to correspond with a holiday or cultural celebration of some kind, though some of those are a little questionable. I'm not I'd classify spring break, prom, or a couple other of these as 'holidays' per se. But hey, the author is South African, I can easily see how these *look* like holidays for Americans. Secondly and less explicitly stated are 'monsters' as an overarching theme. I'd seen it implied elsewhere that the focus was 'classic' monsters...your vampires, zombies, ghosts, werewolves, even mummies, etc. Which are certainly here. There are also some neat things done with some nonstandard 'monsters' like mermaids, witches, aliens, what might be a dragon or maybe a fire elemental (or something else, its not really said), and an unfortunate end story including Cthluhu and also seeming to exclude any semblance of a holiday.
There are some weak entries at the beginning to stumble through before you get to more enjoyable material. The opener, 'Hungry Ghosts' felt particularly weak and the behavior and dialogue a bit nonsensical. 'Labor Day Hunt', our vampire story, was terrible but also wasn't great and feels like its not bringing anything interesting to the vampire table. There is a weird easter egg that connects to the final Cthulhu story. I'm not really clear if this was an accident, laziness in naming, or an attempt to try to create some sort of unified setting for these stories. If the latter is the case, I'm not really sure it works as the potentially shared locale is only mentioned in two stories explicitly with a third story referencing most (but not all) of the stories happening in the same world. As it stands, it feels like an afterthought or something that should have been omitted. I found 'Thanks Sinning' (devils), 'Three Dead Men' (mummies), 'Dying Valentine' (witches), 'Happy Dark Year (mermaids), and 'She Will Rise' (ghosts again) to be the strongest entries, with the latter three being the real stars of the collection. Both 'Unidentified Fatherly Object' (aliens) and 'Independence Delayed' (cthulhu) are unfortunately weak closing entries.
All in all, not a bad collection, though the best meat is in the middle.
Its interesting that Demmer and Duane went with essentially two themes for Dark Celebrations. The first is related to the title, each entry is supposed to correspond with a holiday or cultural celebration of some kind, though some of those are a little questionable. I'm not I'd classify spring break, prom, or a couple other of these as 'holidays' per se. But hey, the author is South African, I can easily see how these *look* like holidays for Americans. Secondly and less explicitly stated are 'monsters' as an overarching theme. I'd seen it implied elsewhere that the focus was 'classic' monsters...your vampires, zombies, ghosts, werewolves, even mummies, etc. Which are certainly here. There are also some neat things done with some nonstandard 'monsters' like mermaids, witches, aliens, what might be a dragon or maybe a fire elemental (or something else, its not really said), and an unfortunate end story including Cthluhu and also seeming to exclude any semblance of a holiday.
There are some weak entries at the beginning to stumble through before you get to more enjoyable material. The opener, 'Hungry Ghosts' felt particularly weak and the behavior and dialogue a bit nonsensical. 'Labor Day Hunt', our vampire story, was terrible but also wasn't great and feels like its not bringing anything interesting to the vampire table. There is a weird easter egg that connects to the final Cthulhu story. I'm not really clear if this was an accident, laziness in naming, or an attempt to try to create some sort of unified setting for these stories. If the latter is the case, I'm not really sure it works as the potentially shared locale is only mentioned in two stories explicitly with a third story referencing most (but not all) of the stories happening in the same world. As it stands, it feels like an afterthought or something that should have been omitted. I found 'Thanks Sinning' (devils), 'Three Dead Men' (mummies), 'Dying Valentine' (witches), 'Happy Dark Year (mermaids), and 'She Will Rise' (ghosts again) to be the strongest entries, with the latter three being the real stars of the collection. Both 'Unidentified Fatherly Object' (aliens) and 'Independence Delayed' (cthulhu) are unfortunately weak closing entries.
All in all, not a bad collection, though the best meat is in the middle.