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A review by roese
Poe's Children: The New Horror by Peter Straub
3.0
Overall I enjoyed this anthology. As with any short story collection everyone will have different stories they love and hate. I am not going to recap all the stories here. I figure if you want to read them, do so. I did not think any were bad enough to make me warn a potential reader about a particular story.
My biggest complaint is that some of the stories really have no horror or even fantastical element in them at all. This does not make them bad stories just a bit puzzled at their inclusion in a book with "The New Horror" in it's title. In the forward Straub explains he is trying to pick stories that do not follow the blood, guts, gory violence idea of a horror story. Aiming for tales that more go bump in the night or make you think a little, he does hit the mark in his selections part of the time.
My favorites were "The Ballad of the Flexible Bullet" which I had read before but still really effects me and is King at the top of his game. The other story that stuck with me was "Leda". It was a disturbing story and does a nice, although not subtle, play on the Greek myth.
My biggest complaint is that some of the stories really have no horror or even fantastical element in them at all. This does not make them bad stories just a bit puzzled at their inclusion in a book with "The New Horror" in it's title. In the forward Straub explains he is trying to pick stories that do not follow the blood, guts, gory violence idea of a horror story. Aiming for tales that more go bump in the night or make you think a little, he does hit the mark in his selections part of the time.
My favorites were "The Ballad of the Flexible Bullet" which I had read before but still really effects me and is King at the top of his game. The other story that stuck with me was "Leda". It was a disturbing story and does a nice, although not subtle, play on the Greek myth.