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Amuse-Bouche: Strange Stories and Peculiar Poems
Strange Stories and Peculiar Poems serves up bite-sized tales with lingering aftertastes—dark, strange, and sometimes wickedly funny. From haunted technology to backwoods horrors, from surreal dreamscapes to sharp stabs of reality, each piece is a quick hit of the unexpected. Sip them slow or devour in one sitting—either way, you’ll leave the table changed.
108 pages, Kindle Edition
Published August 6, 2025
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December 19, 2025
One thing I learned was what the title means, in French, Amuse-Bouche means ‘amuse mouth’ which is basically a teaser from the chef - so it’s the author’s offering: a hint of more to come. The cover was a reflection on this as it featured spoons with various icons… dragon, gun, key, snake, etc.
I came across this book due to a post on Medium by the author who included a content warning: dark, violent. That had me curious. I read the digital version. It’s an anthology of the author’s short fiction with a few poems included. The poems didn’t speak to me but many of the stories did.
My favorite stories were Sleeper of the Kingdom, Running Down Rust and The Tribulations of Gerald Penobscot. I would say they ranged from fantasy to futuristic and even dystopian. The promised darkness and violence peeks throughout. It’s very raw and keeps one guessing.
To give you a little taste of the author’s style here is a short excerpt from Sleeper of the Kingdom:
<. . . > Something exhales a slow, sad song in wounded vibrations that no human can hear. It lives in the roots and the rocks and the rot. It grows up through the weeds and blinks at the sun, bleary and petulant, before scuttling back into the soil through decaying seed pods and desiccated animal leavings. Away down South and West, there is something that men barely remember, and when they do recall it, those few, they scoff and chortle and spit self-satisfied yarns. <. . .>
You can see the author has an excellent way with words and storytelling. I was surprised the author’s best work was at the end of the book instead of at the beginning. There were also some very short stories that felt more like a distraction from the more fleshed out stories. They were well written but didn’t work as “appetizers” for the story they preceded.
In his second short story collection I hope to see the author’s best speculative/futuristic tales and if flash and/or poems are included they will more closely introduce or connect to the longer fiction works they precede or follow.
I can recommend to anyone who enjoys speculative fiction with good descriptive writing and a fiery imagination. As the first reviewer I rounded up to a 4 from a 3.6
I came across this book due to a post on Medium by the author who included a content warning: dark, violent. That had me curious. I read the digital version. It’s an anthology of the author’s short fiction with a few poems included. The poems didn’t speak to me but many of the stories did.
My favorite stories were Sleeper of the Kingdom, Running Down Rust and The Tribulations of Gerald Penobscot. I would say they ranged from fantasy to futuristic and even dystopian. The promised darkness and violence peeks throughout. It’s very raw and keeps one guessing.
To give you a little taste of the author’s style here is a short excerpt from Sleeper of the Kingdom:
<. . . > Something exhales a slow, sad song in wounded vibrations that no human can hear. It lives in the roots and the rocks and the rot. It grows up through the weeds and blinks at the sun, bleary and petulant, before scuttling back into the soil through decaying seed pods and desiccated animal leavings. Away down South and West, there is something that men barely remember, and when they do recall it, those few, they scoff and chortle and spit self-satisfied yarns. <. . .>
You can see the author has an excellent way with words and storytelling. I was surprised the author’s best work was at the end of the book instead of at the beginning. There were also some very short stories that felt more like a distraction from the more fleshed out stories. They were well written but didn’t work as “appetizers” for the story they preceded.
In his second short story collection I hope to see the author’s best speculative/futuristic tales and if flash and/or poems are included they will more closely introduce or connect to the longer fiction works they precede or follow.
I can recommend to anyone who enjoys speculative fiction with good descriptive writing and a fiery imagination. As the first reviewer I rounded up to a 4 from a 3.6
Displaying 1 of 1 review