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A review by nintenspiders
Haunted by Chuck Palahniuk
3.0
Haunted is about as subtle as a sledgehammer to the face, the plot began boring and for the first hundred pages I honestly worried I was going to have to sit through 400 pages of unnecessarily sexual disturbing content like so many splatterpunk novels are, but this isn’t haunted.
Haunted is the story of what people are willing to do for a new life, encapsulated by the only possibly supernatural story in the book, Obsolete. But there are no ghosts in haunted, the only thing haunting these authors is their past and the shot at a new future.
This book has a very weak beginning with Guts being front loaded as the most overtly sexual and disturbing story in the book, there wasn’t really a thematic reason for this at all, and felt like a very odd choice for a first story. Foot Work, Green Room, and Slumming all felt very similar in tone, with little of interest happening in the frame at this point.
While Swan Song was fine, the book goes into overdrive during its next few stories with Dog Years and post production both being fantastic, with ambition being the only real skip. This streak finished with the fantastic Exodus which was probably the best short story in the collection.
While the next two stories fail to live up to the previous streak the last 12 stories are just a straight shot of unique and well written story after well written and unique story.
As for criticisms while there were a lot of boring low points I also feel there were far too many characters and stories, why do we need 17 writers? By the end 9 basically just die off screen. I felt several stories could’ve been cut and characters could’ve been combined to get over their one note personalities. I feel like 10 writers and the two “hosts” would be a healthy number, maybe even pushing it.
Anyways here is my ranking of the stories from best to worst to finish this review
Fantastic
1. Exodus
2. Speaking Bitterness
3. Hot Potting
4. The Nightmare Box
Great
5. Dissertation
6. Dog Years
7. Civil Twilight
8. Obsolete
9. Cassandra
Good
10. Product Placement
11. Post Production
12. Crippled
13. Evil Spirits
14. Something’s Got To Give
Fine
15. Swan Song
16. Guts
17. Poster Child
18. Foot Work
19. Ritual
Bad
20. Ambition
21. Slumming
22. Green Room
23. Punch Drunk
Haunted is the story of what people are willing to do for a new life, encapsulated by the only possibly supernatural story in the book, Obsolete. But there are no ghosts in haunted, the only thing haunting these authors is their past and the shot at a new future.
This book has a very weak beginning with Guts being front loaded as the most overtly sexual and disturbing story in the book, there wasn’t really a thematic reason for this at all, and felt like a very odd choice for a first story. Foot Work, Green Room, and Slumming all felt very similar in tone, with little of interest happening in the frame at this point.
While Swan Song was fine, the book goes into overdrive during its next few stories with Dog Years and post production both being fantastic, with ambition being the only real skip. This streak finished with the fantastic Exodus which was probably the best short story in the collection.
While the next two stories fail to live up to the previous streak the last 12 stories are just a straight shot of unique and well written story after well written and unique story.
As for criticisms while there were a lot of boring low points I also feel there were far too many characters and stories, why do we need 17 writers? By the end 9 basically just die off screen. I felt several stories could’ve been cut and characters could’ve been combined to get over their one note personalities. I feel like 10 writers and the two “hosts” would be a healthy number, maybe even pushing it.
Anyways here is my ranking of the stories from best to worst to finish this review
Fantastic
1. Exodus
2. Speaking Bitterness
3. Hot Potting
4. The Nightmare Box
Great
5. Dissertation
6. Dog Years
7. Civil Twilight
8. Obsolete
9. Cassandra
Good
10. Product Placement
11. Post Production
12. Crippled
13. Evil Spirits
14. Something’s Got To Give
Fine
15. Swan Song
16. Guts
17. Poster Child
18. Foot Work
19. Ritual
Bad
20. Ambition
21. Slumming
22. Green Room
23. Punch Drunk