“On the level of Matheson, Grey is one of the best living short fiction writers of our time.”

That quote, from a recent Goodreads review of my 2022 collection How to See Ghosts & Other Figments, obviously made me very happy – especially as I think How to See Ghosts is the most underread of my collections so far, probably due in no small part to coming out in the midst of the pandemic, when everything was very… challenging.

I love getting reviews in those few publications that still do book reviews, on big websites, and so on. Of course I do. Who doesn’t? But I think what I love best is seeing a reader really connect with one of my books, whether that’s in the form of a Goodreads or Amazon review, by sending me an email directly, or however I may encounter it.

Lately, a couple of my more recent books have enjoyed some very kind and insightful reviews that I wanted to draw a little attention to here, despite having already linked them on social media.

Dark Intersections, the blog of Lyana Rodriguez, has been a longtime booster of my work, starting off with my nonfiction Monsters from the Vault and Revenge of Monsters from the Vault volumes, so it only makes sense that they would leave a glowing (no pun intended) review of Glowing in the Dark, my latest nonfiction collection.

“Orrin Grey loves monsters and movies more than anyone. By the time you’re done with this book, so will you.”

My most recent book, Notes from Underground: The Hollow Earth Story Cycle just came out last month, so it hasn’t received a whole lot of reviews just yet. The most amusing is probably this one on Goodreads: “I finally read the Dostoevsky classic Notes from Underground. Who knew that Russian scholars were believers in the Hollow Earth theory?”

This relative paucity meant that I was particularly excited to see a review of it pop up in a place I was previously unfamiliar with: The Blog Without a Face. That the review in question was extensive, insightful, and seemed to really understand many of the book’s themes was an absolute bonus.

“This is Grey’s most unified book, a capstone to his museum-of-monsters vibe that threads his obsessions into a single, durable rope. It sits neatly beside recent folk-cosmic hybrids while remaining unabashedly in love with the kind of retro adventure furniture that new-weird often pretends it never borrowed.”

The reviewer also calls me “the nice ghoul of weird fiction, the guy who loves rubber-suit monsters and midnight movies yet writes with a librarian’s care for lore.” Which I obviously appreciate.

Writing is an inherently lonely vocation. We write to write, but most of us also write to be read. It’s nice when I’m reminded that people occasionally read my books, and nicer still when they seem to really get what I’m trying to do.