A review by kjcharles
Evil is a Matter of Perspective: An Anthology of Antagonists by Adrian Collins

Did not finish book.
I picked this up a) because the title interested me greatly (I maintain that you can't write a good villain without understanding their motivation, which will be more than just "bwahaha I love to do bad things") and b) because I've said a lot of rude things about grimdark as a genre without reading much if any so I thought, give it a fair try.

Well.

The introduction has a passionate defence of putting rape scenes in books because moral relativism or rape happens or something. The usual but as a philosophy. I can't be bothered so here's a great piece to read instead.

Then the first story has a MC called Anomie. (Anomie, n., lack of the usual social or ethical standards in an individual or group.) I get characters called Chastity or Suffer-Not-Injustice or Gabriel Oak, but Anomie? You might as well call the MC Dystopia, or Angst.

I read four and skimmed two and got bored because for me this wasn't "evil is a matter of perspective" so much as "this story is from the perspective of an Evil Person". Lots of gory death, not so much moral and human flaws, or self deception, or honest yet rigid belief in good things leading inexorably to bad things, or whatever other texture to why the evil was done. So, yes, it was all grim and dark and if you like grimdark I'm sure it has lots of nuances that weren't apparent to me (or maybe the remaining stories had more variety, I DNFd early), but as a novice to the genre, it mostly felt monotonous. Dark, dark, dark, irrecoverably dark without all hope of day, which is fine, but my days of painting my bedroom black and listening to Joy Division on repeat are behind me, so I'm out.