Strange Aeon: 2023: Wonderfully Human

Strange Aeon/Strange Legacy Anthologies #4

by M. Keaton (Editor), Damir Salkovic (Contributor), Christopher Pate (Contributor)

The Strange Aeon anthology series returns, bringing you tales of the weird and the wondrous, the horripilating and the humbling, in the tradition of the genre begun by authors like H. P. Lovecraft, Robert Howard, and Clark Ashton Smith.

This year’s collection includes tales
Carl Hughes
Bryson Richard
Morgan Chalfant
Gordon Linzner
Damir Salkovic
Matthew R. Davis
Tais Teng
Michael Piel
Davin Ireland
Christopher Pate
Eve Morton
Charles Wilkinson
John Wolf
Joshua Green

and your host, M. Keaton, with original art by Joel Martin.

Kindle Edition

First published October 28, 2023

About the author

M. (R) Keaton has the traditional author's resume: a wildly diverse series of jobs to supplement a lifetime of writing. He has installed poultry equipment, dug graves, called the rain, and worked as an environmental chemist for over a decade. And that just scratches the surface.

From a literary standpoint, he has put words on paper for money for almost forty years. He has written fiction, non-fiction, filler text, and operating procedures in every form from work-for-hire to under his own imprint. He has worked as an author, editor, and publisher.

None of which matters. What matters is, can he tell a good story? It appears that the answer is, at least in the opinion of his readers, yes.

Reviews

[John Wolf · Rating 4 out of 5]

Full disclosure: I do have a story in this anthology. I will leave reviewing/commenting on that one to other readers!

I think it's easy to look at a "Lovecraftian" or Lovecraft-themed anthology and assume (sometimes correctly) you know exactly what you're getting. Luckily, as a reader, I did not find that to be the case with this series. This is an anthology with great variety of stories.

You'll get a darkly comic take on dark tomes and forces through the lens of our social media age with Bryson Richards' "A Book By Its Cover." I read this one with a sly, evil grin at the corner of my mouth the entire time. A wicked little commentary on BookTok and social media running headfirst into older, more powerful movements.

Then there's a cleverly written horror story about the best Giallo film we never got in "Il Re Giallo" courtesy of Mathew Davis. Seriously, this story made me wish the titular fictional movie was really out there, mental consequences be damned. Might remind you of other cursed film titles like Night Film, Cigarette Burns, or The Ring, but the sort of "found footage" aspect and Italian horror trappings really make this one its own monster.

Would you expect Cold War thriller crossed with Arctic Horror? Well, you also get that with Christopher Pate's mean, sleek "Beneath Ice Long Abeyed." The story moves quickly and mercilessly as an avalanche, taking us down into the ice where the newer ideologies no longer hold sway.

Those are just 3 of the stories I enjoyed in this collection. You truly won't read one story that's like another, a testament to M. Keaton's skill as an editor. Not to mention Keaton's own update/take on a classic horror story from the 19th century. Check it out, leave a review, support a smaller press putting out good work!